 CHAPTER 33 Lord Castlewood In the morning, when I was called again to see my afflicted cousin, Stixon, Jr., having gladly gone to explain things for me at Brunsey, little as I knew of any bodily pain, except hunger or thirst or weariness and, once in my life, a headache, I stood before Lord Castlewood with a deference and humility, such as I have never felt before toward any human being. Not only because he bore perpetual pain in the two degrees of night and day, the day being dark and the night jet black, without a murmur or an evil word, not only because through the whole of this he had kept his mind clear and his love of knowledge bright, and not even because he had managed, like Job, to love God through the whole of it. All these were good reasons for very great and very high respect of any man, and when there was no claim whatever on his part to any such feeling, it needs must come. But when I learned another thing, high respect at once became what might be called deep reverence, and this came to pass in a simple and, any one must confess, quite inevitable way. It was not to be supposed that I could sit the whole of my first evening in that house without a soul to speak to. So far as my dignity and sense of right permitted, I wore out Mr. Stixon as far as he would go, not asking him anything that the very worst-minded person could call, quote, inquisitive, unquote, but allowing him to talk, as he seems to like to do, while he waited upon me and alternately lamented my hapless history and my hopeless want of taste. Ah! Your father, the captain now, he would have known what this is. You've no right to his eyes, Miss Arema, without his tongue and palate. No more of this, Miss. And done for you a purpose. Well cook will be put out and no mistake. I better not let her see it go down anyhow. And the worthy man tearfully put some dainty by, perhaps without any view to his own supper. Lord Castlewood spoke to me about a Mrs. Price. The housekeeper is she not? I asked at last, being so accustomed to like what I could get, that number of dishes wearing me. Oh, yes, Miss, said Stixon, very shortly, as if that description exhausted Mrs. Price. If she is not too busy, I should like to see her as soon as all these things are taken away. I mean if she is not the stranger, and if she would like to see me. No newcomers here, Mr. Stixon replied. We all works our way up regular, the same as my lad is beginning for to do. New fangled ways is not accepted here. We puts the reforming spirits scrubbing of the steps till their knuckles is cracked and their knees like a beam. The old Lord was the man for discipline. Your grandfather, if you please, Miss, he catched me when I were about that high. Oh, excuse me, Mr. Stixon, but would he have encouraged you to talk, as you so very kindly talk to me, instead of answering a question? I thought that poor Stixon would have been upset by this, and was very angry with myself for saying it, but instead of being hurt, he only smiled and touched his forehead. Well, now, you did remind me uncommon of him, then, Miss. I could have heard the old Lord speak almost, though he were always harsh and distant. And as I was going forward to say, he catched me fifty years ago, next Lamestide, a pear tree of an early sort it was. You may see the very tree, if you please, to stand here, Miss, though the pears is quite altered now, and scarcely fit to eat. Well, I was running off with my cap chock full, Miss. I'll please to keep that story for another time, I said. I shall be most happy to hear it then. But I have a particular wish, if you please, to see Miss's price before dark, unless there is any good reason why I should not. Oh, no, Miss Arama, no reason at all. I am very pleased to bear it in mind, Miss, that she is a courieress woman. She is that jealous, and I might say forward. Well, then, she is capable of speaking for herself. You are right, Miss, there, and no mistake she can speak for herself and for fifty others. Words enough I mean for all of them. But I would not have her know for all the world that I said it. And if you do not send her to me at once, the first thing I shall do will be to tell her. Oh, no, Miss, none of your family would do that. That never has been done anonymous. I assured him that my threat was not in earnest, but of pure impatience, and having no motive but downright jealousy for keeping Miss's price from me, he had made up his mind at last to let her come. And he told me to be careful what I said, and I must not expect it to be at all like talking to himself, for instance. The housekeeper came up at last by dent of my persistence, and she stopped in the doorway and made me a curtsy, which put me out of countenance for nobody ever does that in America and scarcely anyone in England now except in country dancing, instead of being as described by Stixon, Miss's price was of a very quiet, sensible, and respectful kind. She was rather short, but looked rather tall, from her even walk and way of carrying her head. Her figure was neat, and her face clear-spoken, with straight, pretty eyebrows and calm bright eyes. I felt that I could tell her almost anything, and she would think before she talked of it. And in my strong want of some woman to advise with Betsy Bowen being very good, but very narrow, and Mrs. Hocken a mere echo of the major until he contradicted her, and Suan Isco with her fine, large views five thousand miles out of sight just now, this was a state of things to enhance the value of any good countenance feminine. At any rate I was so glad to see her that, being still ungraduated in the steps of rank, though beginning to like a good footing there, I ran up and took her by both hands and fetched her out of her grand curtsy and into a low chair. At this she was surprised, as one quick glance showed, and she thought me, perhaps, what is called in England, quote, an impulsive creature, unquote. This put me again upon my dignity, for I never have been in any way like that, and I clearly perceived that she ought to understand a little more distinctly my character. It is easy to begin with this intention, but very hard indeed to keep it up when anybody of nice ways and looks is sitting with a proper differential power of listening, and liking one's young ideas which multiply and magnify themselves at each demand. So, after some general talk about the weather, the country, the house, and so on, we came to the people of the house, or at any rate the chief person, and I asked her a few quiet questions about Lord Castlewood's health and habits and anything else she might like to tell me. For many things had seemed to me a little strange and out of the usual course, and on that account worthy to be spoken of without common curiosity. Mrs. Price told me that there were many things generally divulged and credited, which therefore lay in her power to communicate without any derogation from her office. Being pleased with these larger words, which I always have trouble in pronouncing, I asked her whether there was anything else, and she answered yes, but unhappily of a nature to which it was scarcely desirable to allude in my presence. I told her that this was not satisfactory, and I might say quite the opposite that having quote alluded, unquote, to whatever it might be, she was bound to tell me all about it, that I had lived in very many countries, in all of which wrong things continually went on, of which I continually heard in just that sort of way and no more, enough to make one uncomfortable but not enough to keep one instructed and vigilant as to things that ought to be avoided. Upon this she yielded either to my arguments to her or her own dislike of unreasonable silence and gave me the following account of the misfortunes of Lord Castlewood. Herbert William Castlewood was the third son of Dean Castlewood, a younger brother of my grandfather, and was born in the year 1806. He was older, therefore, than my father, but still, even before my father's birth, which provided a direct heir, there were many lives betwixt him and the family estates, and his father, having yet no promotion in the church, found it hard to bring up his children. The eldest son got a commission in the army, and the second entered the navy, while Herbert was placed in a bank at Bristol, not at all the sort of life which he would have chosen. But, being of a gentle, unselfish nature, as well as a weak constitution, he put up with his state in life and did his best to give satisfaction. This calm courage generally has its reward, and in the year 1842, not very long before the death of my grandfather at Shoxford, Mr. Herbert Castlewood being well connected, well behaved, diligent, and pleasing, obtained a partnership in the firm, which was, perhaps, the foremost in the west of England. His two elder brothers happened then to be at home, Major and Commander Castlewood, each of whom had seen very hard service, and found it still harder slavery to make both ends meet, although bachelors. Without returning full of glory, they found one thing harder still, and that was to extract any cash from their father, the highly venerated dean, who, in that respect, if in no other, very closely resembled the head of the family. Therefore these brave men resolved to go and see their Bristol brother, to whom they were tenderly attached, and who must now have money enough to spare. So they wrote to their brother to meet them on the platform, scarcely believing that they could be there in so short a time from London, for they had never travelled by rail before, and they set forth in wonderful spirits, and laughed at the strange giddy rush of the travelling, and made bets with each other about punctual time, for trains kept much better time while they knew, and as long as they could time it, they kept time to a second. But, sad to relate, they wanted no chronometers when they arrived at Bristol, both being killed at a blow, with their watches still going and a smile on their faces, for the train had run into a wall of bath-stone, and several of the passengers were killed. The sight of his two brothers carried out like this, after so many years of not seeing them, was too much for Mr. Herbert Castlewood's nerves, which had always been delicate, and he shivered all the more from reproach of conscience, having made up his mind not to lend them any money, as a practical banker was compelled to do, and from that very moment he began to feel great pain. Mrs. Price assured me that the doctors all agreed that nothing but change of climate could restore Mr. Castlewood's tone and system. Being full of art, though not so simple as she said, would she could not entirely reconcile. He set off for Italy, and there he stopped, with the good leave of his partners, being now valued highly as heir to the dean, who is known to have put a good trifle together. And in Italy my father must have found him, as related by Mr. Shovellin, and there received kindness and comfort in his trouble, if trouble so deep could be comforted. Now I wondered, and eagerly yearned to know whether my father, at such a time and in such a state of loneliness, might not have been led to impart to his cousin and host and protector the dark mystery which lay at the bottom of his own conduct, knowing how resolute and stern he was and doubtless then embittered by the wreck of love and life. I thought it more probable that he had kept silence, even toward so near a relative, especially as he had seen very little of his cousin Herbert, till he had found him thus. Moreover, my grandfather and the dean had spent little brotherly love on each other, having had a lifelong feud about a copy-hold fursbreak of nearly three-quarters of an acre, as Betsy remembered to have heard her master say. To go on, however, with what Mrs. Price was saying, she knew scarcely anything about my father, because she was too young at that time to be called into the Councils of the Servants Hall, for she scarcely was thirty-five yet, as she declared, and she certainly did not look forty. But all about the present Lord Castle would she knew better than anybody else, perhaps, because she had been in the service of his wife and, indeed, her chief attendant. Then, having spoken of her master's wife, Mrs. Price caught herself up, and thenceforth called her only his, quote, lady, unquote. Mr. Herbert Castle would, who had minded his business for so many years and kept himself aloof from ladies, spending all his leisure in good literature, at this time of life and a state of health, for the shock he had received struck inward, fell into an accident tenfold worse, the fatal accident of love, and this malady raged the more powerfully with him on account of breaking out so late in life. In one of the picture galleries at Florence, or some such place, Mrs. Price declared, he met with a lady who made all the pictures look cold and dull and dead to him. A lovely young creature she must have been, as even Mrs. Price, who detested her, acknowledged, and to the eyes of a learned, but not keen man, as good as lovely. My father was gone to look after me and fetch me out of England, but even if he had been there, perhaps he scarcely would have stopped it, for this Mr. Castlewood, although so quiet, had the family fault of tenacity. Mrs. Price, being a very steady person with a limited income and enough to do, was inclined to look down upon the state of mind in which Mr. Castlewood had become involved. She was not there at the moment, of course, but suddenly sent for when all was settled. Nevertheless she found out afterward how it began from her master's man, through what he had for dinner, and in the kitchen garden at Castlewood no rampion would she allow while she lived. I asked her whether she had no pity, no sympathy, no fine feeling, and how she could have become Mrs. Price if she never had known such sentiments. But she said that they only called her, quote, Mistress, unquote, on account of her authority, and she never had been drawn to the opposite sex, though many times asked in marriage, and what she had seen of matrimony led her far away from it. I was sorry to hear her say this, and felt damped till I thought that the world was not all alike. Then she told me, just as if it were no more than a bargain for a pound of tallow candles, how Mr. Herbert Castlewood, patient and persistent, was kept off and on for at least two years by the mother of his sweet idol, how the old lady held the balance in her mind as to the likelihood of his succession, trying through English friends to find the value and the course of property. Of what nation she was Mrs. Price could not say, and only knew that it must be a bad one. She called herself the Countess of Ixerism, as truly pronounced in English, and she really was of good family too, so far as any foreigner can be, and her daughter's name was Flitimer, not according to the right spelling perhaps, but pronounced with the proper accent. Flitimer herself did not seem to care, according to what Mrs. Price had been told, but left herself wholly in her mother's hands, being sure of her beauty still growing upon her, and desiring to have it admired and praised. And the number of foreigners she always had about her sometimes made her real lover nearly give her up. But alas! he was not quite wise enough for this, with all that he had read and learned and seen. Therefore, when it was reported from Spain that my father had been killed by bandits, the truth being that he was then in Greece, the Countess at last consented to the marriage of her daughter with Herbert Castlewood, and even seemed to press it forward for some reasons of her own. And the happy couple set forth upon their travels, and Mrs. Price was sent abroad to wait upon the lady. For a few months they seemed to get on very well. Flitimer showing much affection for her husband, whose age was a trifle more than her own doubled, while he was entirely wrapped up in her, and labored that the graces of her mind might be worthy to compare with those more visible. But her spiritual face and most sweet poetic eyes were vivid with bodily brilliance alone. She had neither mind enough to learn, nor heart enough to pretend to learn. It is out of my power to describe such things, even if it were my duty to do so, which happily it has never been. Moreover, Mrs. Price, in which she told me, exercised a just and strict reserve, enough that Mr. Castlewood's wedded life was done within six months and three days. Lady Castlewood, as she would be called, though my father still was living, and his cousin disclaimed the title, a way she ran from some dull German place after a very stiff lesson in poetry, and with her ran off a young Englishman, the present Sir Montague Hocken. He was Mr. Hocken then, and had not a half-penny of his own, but Flitimore met that difficulty by robbing her husband to his last farthing. This had happened about twelve years back, soon after I was placed at the school in Langedoc, to which I was taken so early in life that I almost forget all about it. But it might have been better for poor Flitimore if she had been brought up at a steady place like that, with sisters and ladies of retreat, to teach her the proper description of her duties to mankind. I seem now in my own mind to condemn her quite enough, feeling how superior her husband must have been. But Mrs. Price went even further, and became quite indignant that anyone should pity her. A hussy, a hussy, a puppet of a hussy, she exclaimed, with greater power than her quiet face could indicate. Never would I look at her. Speak never so, Miss Castlewood. My lord is the very best of all men, and she has made him what he is. The pity she deserves is to be trodden underfoot, as I saw them do in Naples. After all the passion I had seen among rough people I scarcely could help trembling at the depth of wrath, dissembled and firmly controlled in calm, clear eyes under very steadfast eyebrows. It was plain that Lord Castlewood had, at any rate, the gift of being loved by his dependents. I hope that he took it all right, I cried, catching some of her indignation. I hope that he cast her to the winds without even a sigh for such a cruel creature. He was not strong enough, she answered sadly. His bodily health was not equal to it. From childhood he had been partly crippled and spoiled in his nerves by an accident, and the shock of that sight at Bristol flew to his weakness, and that was too much for him. And now this third and worst disaster, coming upon him where his best hope lay, and at such a time of life, took him altogether off his legs. And off his head too, I might almost say Miss, for, instead of blaming her, he put the fault entirely upon himself. At his time of life and in such poor health he should not have married such a bright young girl. How could he ever hope to make her happy? That is how he looked at it, when he should have sent constables after her. And what became of her, the mindless animal, to forsake so good and great a man? I do hope she was punished in that vile man, too. She was, Miss Castlewood, but he was not. At least he has not received justice yet, but he will. He will, he will, Miss, the treacherous thief, and my Lord received him as a young fellow countryman under a cloud and lent him money and saved him from starving, for he had broken with his father and was running from his creditors. Tell me no more, I said, not another word. It is my fate to meet that, well, that gentleman almost every day, and he, and he, oh, thankful I am to have found out all this about him. The above will show why, when I met my father's cousin on the following morning with his grand, calm face, as benevolent as if he had passed a night of luxurious rest instead of sleepless agony, I knew myself to be of a lower order in mind and soul and heart than his, a small, narrow, passionate girl in the presence of a large, broad-sided and compassionate man. I threw myself altogether on his will, for, when I trust, I trust holy. And under his advice I did not return with any rash haste to Brunsey, but wrote in discharge of all duty there, while Mrs. Price, a clear and steadfast woman, was sent to London to see Vilhamina Strauss. These two must have had very great talks together, and, both being zealous and faithful, they came to many misunderstandings. However, on the whole they became very honest friends, and sworn allies at last discovering more, the more they talked, people against whom they felt a common and just enmity. End of Chapter 33. Chapter 34 of Arema. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Linda Dodge, Irema by R. D. Blackmore, Chapter 34, Shucksford. Are there people who have never, in the course of anxious life, felt desire to be away, to fly away from everything, however good and dear to them, and rest a little, and think a new thought, or let new thought flow into them, from the gentle air of some new place where nobody has heard of them, a place whose cares, being felt by proxy, almost seem romantic, and where the eyes spare brain and heart with a critic's self-complacence? If any such place yet remains, the happy soul may seek it in an inland English village, a village where no billows are to stun or to confound it, no crag or precipice to trouble it with giddiness, and where no hurry of restless tide makes time its own father uneasy. But in the quiet at the bottom of the valley, a beautiful rivulet, belonging to the place hastens or lingers according to its mood, hankering here and there, not to be away yet, and then, by the doing of its own work, led to a swift perplexity of ripples, here along its side, and there softly leaning over it, fresh green meadows lie reposing in the settled meaning of the summer day. For this is a safer time of year than the flourish of the spring tide, when the impulse of young warmth awakening was suddenly smitten by the bleak east wind, and cow slip and cuckoo flower and speedwell got their bright lips browned with cold. Then, moreover, must the meads have felt the worry of scarcely knowing yet what would be demanded of them, whether to carry an exacting load of hay or only to feed a few sauntering cows. But now every trouble has been settled for the best. The long grass is mown, and the short grass browsed, and capers of the fairies and caprices of the cows have dappled worn texture with a deeper green. Therefore, let eyes that are satisfied here, as any but a very bad eye must be, with so many changes of softness, follow the sweet lead of the valley, and there, in the bend of a gently brawling river, stands the never-brawling church. A church less troubled with the gift of tongues is not to be found in England, a church of gray stone that crumbles just enough to entice frail mortal sympathy, and confesses to the storms it has undergone in a tone that conciliates the human sigh. The tower is large and high enough to tell what way of the wind is without any potato-burry on the top, and the simple roof is not cruciated with tiles of misguided fancy. But gray rest and peace of ages and content of lying calmly six feet deeper than the bustle of the quick, memory also, and oblivion, following each other slowly, like the shadows of the churchyard trees. For all of these no better place can be nor softer comfort. For the village of Shucksford runs up on the rise and straggles away from its burial-place, as a child from his school goes mitching. There are some few little ups and downs in the manner of its building, as well as in other particulars about it, but still it keeps us parallel with the crooked river, as the far more crooked ways of men permit. But the whole of the little row of houses runs down the valley from the churchyard gate, and above the church, looking up the pretty valley, stands nothing but the mill and the plank bridge below it, and a furlong above that again the stone bridge, where the main road crosses the stream, and is consoled by leading to a big house, the moon-stock inn, the house in which my father lived so long, or rather I should say my mother while he was away with his regiment, and where we, unfortunate seven, saw the light, stands about half-way down the little village, being on the right-hand side of the road as you come down the valley from the moon-stock bridge. Therefore it is on the further and upper side of the street, if it can be called a street, from the valley and the river and the means below the mill, inasmuch as every bit of Shucksford and every particle of the parish also has existence of no means sort as compared with other parishes in its own esteem on the right side of the river moon. My father's house in this good village, standing endwise to the street, was higher at one end than at the other. That is to say the ground came sloping, or even falling as might fairly might be said, from one end to the other of it, so that it looked like a Noah's Ark tilted by behemoth under the stern post, and a little lane from a finely wooded hill here fell steeply onto the, quote, high street, unquote, as the grocer and the butcher loved to call it, and made my father's house most distinct by obeying a good deal of its outline and discharging in heavy rain a free supply of water under the weather board of our front door. This front door opened on a little steep triangle formed by the meeting of lane and road, while the back door led into a long but narrow garden running along the road but raised some feet above it. The bank was kept up by a rough stone wall, crusted with stuck-up Snapdragon and Valerian, and faced with rosettes and discs and dills of house-leak, pennywort and heartstone. Betsy and I were only just in time to see the old house as it used to be, for the owner had died about half a year ago, and his grandson, having proved his will, was resolved to make short work with it. The poor house was blamed for the sorrows it had sheltered, and had the repute of two specters, as well as the pale shadow of misfortune. For my dear father was now believed by the superstitious villagers to haunt the old home of his happiness and love, and roam from room to room in search of his wife and all of his children. But his phantom was most careful not to face that of his father, which stalked along haughtily, as behooved a lord, and pointed forever to a red wound in its breast. No wonder, therefore, that the house would never let, and it would have been pulled down long ago if the owner had not felt a liking for it, through memories tender and peculiar to himself. His grandson, having none of these to contend with, resolved to make a mere stable of it, and build a public house at the bottom of the garden, and turn the space between them into skittle-ground and so forth. To me this seems such a very low idea, and such a desecration of a sacred spot, that if I had owned any money to be sure of, I would have offered hundreds to prevent it. But I found myself now in a delicate state of mind concerning money, having little of my own and doubting how much other people might intend for me, so that I durst not offer to buy land in a house without any means to pay. And it was not for that reason only that Betsy and I kept ourselves quiet. We knew that any stir in this little place about us, such as my name might at once set going, would once for all destroy all hope of doing good by coming. Betsy knew more of such matters than I did, besides all her knowledge of the place itself and her great superiority of age. Therefore I left to her all the little management, as was in every way fair and wise, for Mrs. Strauss had forsaken a large and good company of lodgers, with only hair Strauss to look after them. And who was he among them? If she trod on one side of her foot or felt a tingling in her hand or a buzzing in her ear, she knew in a moment what it was, of pounds and pounds of which she was being cheated a hundred miles off by foreigners. For this reason it had cost much persuasion and many appeals to her faithfulness, as well as considerable weekly payment, ere ever my good nurse could be brought away from London, and perhaps even so she never would have come if I had not written myself to Mrs. Price. Then visiting Betsy in European Square, that if the landlady was too busy to be spared by her lodgers I must try to get Lord Castlewood to spare me his housekeeper. Upon this Mrs. Strauss at once declared that Mrs. Price would ruin everything, and rather than that, no matter what she lost, she herself would go with me, and so she did, and she managed very well keeping my name out of sight. For, happened what might I would have no false one, and she got quiet lodgings in her present name, which sounded nicely foreign, and the village being more agitated now about my father's material house, and the work they were promised in pulling it down, than about his shattered household, we had a very favourable time for coming in, and were pronounced to be foreigners who must not be allowed to run up bills. This rustic conclusion suited us quite well, and we soon confirmed it unwittingly. Betsy, offering a German Thaler, and I, an American dollar at the shop of the village chandler and baker, so that we were looked upon with some pity, and yet a kind desire for our custom. Thus, without any attempt of ours at either delusion or mystery, Mrs. Strauss was hailed throughout the place as Madame Hall, while I, through the sagacity of a deeply red shoemaker, obtained a foreign name, as will by and by appear. We lodged at the post office, not through any wisdom or even any thought on our part, but simply because we happened there to find the cleanest and prettiest rooms in the place. For the sun being now in the height of August, and having much harvest to ripen, at middle day came ramping down the little street of Shocksford like the chairman of the Guild of Bakers. Every house having lately brightened up its whitewash, which they always do there when the frost are over, soon after the feast of St. Barnabas, and the weeds of the way having fared amiss in the absence of any water cart, it was not in the strong, sharp character of the sun to miss such an opportunity. After the red Californian glare I had no fear of any English sun, but Betsy was frightened, and both of us were glad to get into a little place sheltered by green blinds. This chance to be the post office, and there we found nice lodgings. By an equal chance this proved to be the wisest thing we possibly could have done if we had said about it carefully. For why that nobody ever would impute any desire of secrecy to people who strayed away unpack their boxes at the very headquarters of all the village news? And the mistress of the post was a sharp-tongue woman, pleased to speak freely of her neighbor's doings, and prompt with good advice that they should heed their own business, if any of them durst they a word about her own. She kept a tidy little shop, showing something of almost everything, but we had a side door quite of our own, where Betsy met the baker's wife and the veritable milkman, and neither of them knew her, which was just what she had hoped, and yet it made her speak amiss of them. But, if all things must be brought to the harsh test of dry reason, I myself might be hard-pushed to say what good I'd hoped to do by coming thus, to Shoxford. I knew of a great many things for certain, that never had been thoroughly examined here. Also, I naturally wished to see, being a native, what the natives were, and much more than that it was always on my mind that here lay my mother and the other six of us. Therefore, it was an impatient thing for me to hear Betsy working out the afternoon with perpetual chatter and challenge of prices, combating now as a lodger all those points which, as a landlady, she never would allow even to be moot questions. If any applicant in European Square had dared so much as to hint at any of all the requirements which she now expected gratis, she would simply have whisked her duster and said that the lodgings for such people must be looked for down the alley. However, Mrs. Busk, our new landlady, although she had a temper of her own, as any one keeping a post office must have, was forced by the rarity of lodgers here to yield many points which Mrs. Strauss on her own boards would not even have allowed to be debated. All this was entirely against my wish, for when I have money I spend it, finding really no other good in it. But Betsy told me that the purest principle of all was not to be cheated. So I left her to have these little matters out, and took that occasion for stealing away, as the hours grew on towards evening, to a place where I wished to be quite alone, and the shadow of the western hills shed peace among the valley when I crossed a little style leading into the Shoxford churchyard. For a moment or two I was quite afraid, seeing nobody anywhere about, nor even hearing any sound in the distance to keep me company. For the church lay apart from the village, and was thickly planted out from it, the living folk being full of superstition and deeply believing in the dead people's ghosts. And even if this were a wife to a husband, or even a husband reappearing to his wife, there was not a man or a woman in the village that would not run away from it. This I did not know at present. Not having been there long enough, neither had I any terror of that sort, and not being quite such a coward I should hope. But still, as the mantles of the cold trees darkened, and the stonely remembrance of the dead grew pale, and of the living there was not even the whistle of a grave-digger. My heart got the better of my mind for the moment, and made me long to be across that style again, because, as I said to myself, if there had been a hill to go up, that would be so different and so easy, but going down into a place like this once the only escape must be by steps, and where any flight must be along channels that run in and out of graves and tombstones, I tried not to be afraid, yet could not altogether help it. But lo, when I came to the north side of the tower, scarcely thinking what to look for, I found myself in the middle of a place which made me stop and wonder. Here were six little grassy tuffets. According to the length of children, all laid east and west, without an extent of room, harmoniously. From the eldest to the youngest, one could almost tell the age at which their lowly stature stopped, and took its final measurement. And in the middle was a larger grave, to comfort and encourage them, as a hen lies down among her chicks and waits for them to shelter. Without a name to any of them, all these seven graves lay together, as in a fairy ring of rest, and kind compassion had prevented any stranger from coming to be buried there. I would not sit on my mother's grave for fear of crushing the pretty grass, which someone tended carefully, but I stood at its foot and bent my head and counted all the little ones. Then I thought of my father in the grove of peaches, more than six thousand miles away, on the banks of the soft blue river, and a sense of desolate sorrow, and of the blessing of death overwhelmed me. With such things in my mind it took me long to come back to my work again. It even seemed a wicked thing, so near to all these proofs of God's great visitation over us, to walk about and say, I will do this, or even to think, I will try to do that. My own poor helplessness, and loss of living love to guide me, laid upon my heart a weight from which it scarcely cared to move. Always buried, always done with, all had passed from out the world, and left no mark but graves behind. What good to stir a new such sadness, even if a poor, weak thing like me could move its mystery. Time, however, and my nurse Betsy and Jacob Rigg the Gardener brought me back to a better state of mind, and renewed the right courage within me. But first of all Jacob Rigg aroused my terror and interest vividly. It may be remembered that this good man had been my father's Gardener at the time of our great calamity, and almost alone of all the Shoxford people had shown himself true and faithful. Not that the natives had turned against us or been at all unfriendly. So far from this was the case that everyone felt our troubles and pitied us. My father being of a cheerful and affable turn, until misery hardened him. But what I mean is that only one or two had the courage to go against the popular conclusion and the convictions of authority. But Jacob was a very upright man, and had a strong liking for his master, who many and many a time, as he told me, had taken a spade and dug along with him, just if he were a job and Gardener born, instead of a fine young nobleman. And nobody gifted with that turd of mine, likewise very clever in white-spine cow-cumbers, could ever be relied upon to go and shoot his father. Thus reasoned old Jacob, as he always had done so, and meant ever more to abide by it. And the graves which he had tended now for nigh a score of years, and meant to tend till he called for his own, were, as sure as he stood there in Shucksford Churchyard, a talking to me, who was the very image of my father, God bless me, though not, of course, so big like, the graves of slaughtered innocents, and a mother who was always an angel. And the parson might preach forever to him about the resurrection, and the right coming uppermost when you got to heaven, but to his mind that was scarcely any count at all, and if you came to that, we ought to hang Jack Ketch, as might come to pass in revelations. But while a man had got his own bread to earn, till his honor would let him go to the workhouse, and his duty to the rate-payers, there was nothing that vexed him more than to be told any text of holy scripture. Whatever God Almighty had put down there was meant for ancient people, the Jews being long the most ancient people. Though none the more for that did he like them, and so it was mainly the ancient folk who could not do a day's worth worth eighteen pence that could enter into Bible promises. Not that he was at all behindhand about interpretation, but as long as he could fetch and earn at planting-box and doing boulders, two shelling's and nine pence a day, and his beer, he was not going to be on for kingdom come. I told him that I scarcely thought his view of our condition here would be approved by wise men who had found time to study the subject. But he answered that whatever their words might be, their doings showed that they knew what was the first thing to attend to. And if it ever happened him to come across a parson who was as full of heaven outside as he was inside his surplus, he would keep his garden in order for nothing better than his blessing. I knew of no answer to be made to this, and indeed he seemed to be aware that his conversation was too deep for me, so he leaned upon his spade and rubbed his long blue chin in the shadow of the church tower, holding as he did the position of sexton and preparing even now to dig a grave. I keep some well away from you, he said, as he began to chop out a new oblong in the turf. Many a shelling have I been offered by mothers about their little ones to put them inside of the, quote, holy ring, as we call this little custer, but not for five golden guineas would I do it, and have to face the captain, dead or alive about it. We heard that he was dead, because it was put in all the papers, and a pleasant place I keeps for him, to come home alongside of his family. A nicer, gravelly bit of ground there couldn't be in all the country, and if no chance of him occupying it I can drive down a peg with your mark, Miss. Thank you, I answered. You are certainly most kind, but, Mr. Rigg, I would rather wait a little. I have a very troublesome life thus far, and nothing to bind me to it much. But still I would rather not have my peg driven down just at present. Ah, you be like all the young folk that think the tree for their coffins ain't come to the size of this spade handle yet. Lord bless you for not knowing what he hath in hand. Now this one you see me a raisin of the turf for, stood as upright as you do a fortnight back, and as good about the chest and shoulders, and three times the color in her cheeks, and her eyes amiced as bright as your envy. Not a aristocrat it you must understand me, Miss, being only the miller's daughter, nor instructed to throw her voice the same as you do, which is better than gallery music. But set in these accidents to one side a farmer would have said that she was more preferable, because more come addable. Though not in my opinion, to be compared, excuse me for making so free, Miss, but when it comes to death we have a kind of right to do it. And many a young farmer come into the mill was disturbed in his heart about her, and far and wide she was known being proud as the beauty of the moonshine from the name of our little river. She used to call me Jacob Diggs because of my parochial office, with a meaning of a joke on my parental name. Ah, what a merry one she were, and now this is what I have to do for her. And sooner would I adude it almost for my own old woman. Oh, Jacob, I cried, being horrified at the way in which he tore up the ground, as if his wife was waiting. The things you say are quite wrong, I am sure, for a man in your position. You are connected with this church almost as much as the clerk is. More, Miss, ten times more he don't do nothing but lounge on the front of his desk and be too lazy to keep up aim in, while I at my time of life go about from absolution to the Fifth Lord's Prayer with a stick that makes my rheumatics worse, for the sake of the boys with their pocketful of nuts. When I was a boy there were no nuts, except at the proper time of year, a month or two on from this time of speaking, and we used to crack they at the husk, and make no noise to disturb the congregation. But now it's nuts, nuts, round nuts, flat nuts, nuts with three corners to them, all the year round nuts to crack, and me to find out who did it. But Mr. Rig, I replied, as he stopped, looking hotter in mind than in body. Is it not Mrs. Rig, your good wife, who sells all the nuts on a Saturday for the boys to crack on a Sunday? My Mrs. do sell some to be sure, yes, just a few, but not of a Saturday more than any other day. Then surely Mr. Rig you might stop it by not permitting any sale of nuts, except to the good boys of high principles. And has it not happened sometimes, Mr. Rig, that boys have made their marks on their nuts and brought them again to your shop on a Monday? I mean, of course, when your duty has compelled you to empty the pockets of a boy in church. Now, this was a particle of shamefully small gossip, picked up naturally by my Betsy, but pledged to go no further, and as soon as I had spoken I became a little nervous, having it suddenly brought to mind that I had promised not even to whisper it, and now I had told it to the man of all men. But Jacob appeared to have been quite deaf and diligently went on digging. And I said, good evening, for the grave was for the morrow, and he let me go nearly to the style before he stuck his spade into the ground and followed. Excuse of my making use, he said, of a kind of a personal reference, Miss. But you be that pat with your answers, it maketh me believe you must be sharp inside, more than your father the poor captain were, as all them little grass-buttons argueeth. Now, Miss, if I thought you had headpiece enough to keep good counsel, and ensue it, maybe I could tell you a thing as would make your hair creep out of them courious hitch-ups, and your heart almost bust them their braids of fallowlies. Why, what in the world do you mean? I asked, being startled by the old man's voice and face. Oh, nothing, Miss, nothing, I was only a joking. If you baint come to no more discretion than that, to turn as white as the clerk's smock-frock of an Easter Sunday, why, the more of a joke one has, the better to bring your pretty color back to you. Ah, Polly of the mill was made for color, as good as for the eyesight as a chainy rose in April. Well, well, I must get on with her grave. There are coming to speak the good word over him on sundown. He might have known how this would vex and perplex me. I could not bear to hinder him in his work, as important as any to be done by a man for a man, and yet it was beyond my power to go home and leave him there, and wonder what it was that he had been so afraid to tell. So I said quietly, then I will wish you a very good evening again, Mr. Rigg, as you are too busy to be spoken with. And I walked off a little way, having met with men who, having begun a thing, needs must have it out, and fully expecting him to call me back. But Jacob only touched his hat and said, a pleasant evening to you, ma'am. Nothing could have made me feel more resolute than this did. I did not hesitate one moment in running back over the style again, and demanding of Jacob Rigg, that he should tell me whether he meant anything or nothing. For I was not to be played with about important matters, like the boys in the church who were cracking nuts. Lord, Lord now, he said, with his treadled heels scraping the shoulder of his shining spade. The longer I live in this world, the fitter I grow to get into ways of the Lord. His ways are past finding out, saith King David. But a man of war from his youth upward hath no chance, such as a gardening man hath. What a many of them have I found out. What has that got to do with it, I cried? Just tell me what it was you were speaking of just now. I was just a thinkin' when I looked at you, miss, he answered, in the prime of leisure and wiping his forehead from habit only, not because he wanted it. How little us knows of times and seasons and the generations of the sons of men. There you stand, miss, and here stand I, as haven't seen your father for a score of years almost, and yet there comes out of your eyes and into mind the very same look as the captain used to send, when snakes in the grass have been tellin' lies about me comin' late or havin' my half pint or so on. Not that the captain was a hard man, miss, far otherwise, and capable of allowance more than any of the women be, but only the Lord, who doeth all things a right, could have made you come with a score of years a tween, and a twinkle in your eyes like, sailor. You know what you mean perhaps, but I do not, I answered quite gently, being troubled by his words, and the fear of having tried to hurry him. But you should not say what you have said, Jacob Rig, to me, your master's daughter, if you only meant to be joking. Is this the place to joke with me? I pointed to all that lay around me, where I could not plant a foot without stepping over my brother's or sister's. And the old man callous as he might be, could not help feeling for a pinch of snuff. This he found in his right hand pocket of his waist coat, and he took it very carefully, and made a little noise of comfort. And thus, being fully self-assured again, he stood with his feet far apart and his head on one side, regarding me warily. And I took good care not to say another word. You be young, he said at last. And in these latter days no wisdom is ordained in the mouths of bays and sucklings, nor always in the mouths of them as is themselves ordained. But you have a way of keeping your chin up, miss, as if you was gifted with a stiff tongue likewise. And whatever may happen, I has as good mind to tell you, that you are absolutely bound to do, I answered, as forcibly as I could, duty to your former master, and to me his only child, and to yourself and your maker, too, compel you, Jacob Wrig, to tell me everything you know. Then, miss, he answered, coming nearer to me and speaking in a low hoarse voice, as sure as I stand here in God's churchyard by all this murdered family, I knows the man who done it. He looked at me with a trembling finger on his hard-set lips, and the spade in his other hand quivered like a wind-vane. But I became as firm as the monument beside me, and my heart, instead of fluttering, grew as steadfast as a glacier. Then, for the first time, I knew that God had not kept me living when all the others died, without fitting me also for the work there was to do. Come here to the corner of the tower, miss, old Jacob went on, in his excitement catching hold of the sleeve of my black silk jacket. Where we stand is a queer sort of echo, which goeth in and out of them big tombstones, and for ought I can say to Contrary he may be watching of us while we here stand. I glanced around as if he were most welcome to be watching me, if only I could see him once. But the place was as silent as its graves, and I followed the sexton to the shallow of a buttress. Here he went into a deep gray corner, like and enmost by a drip from the roof, and, being both in his clothes and self, pretty much of that same color, he was not very easy to discern from stone when the light of day was declining. This is where I catch as all the boys, he whispered, and this is where I caught him, one evening when we were tired and gone to nurse my knees a bit. Let me see, why, let me see. Don't you speak till I do, miss? Were it the last but one I dug, or could unabend the last but two? Never mind, I can't call to mind quite justly. We puts down about one a month in this parish, without any distemper or accident. Well, it must have been the one of four last, to be sure. No call to scratch my head about an old sally mock, as sure as I stand here done handsome by the rape prayers. Over there, miss, if you pleased to look, about two lanyard and a half away, can you see him with the grass picking up already? Never mind that, Jacob, do please go on. So I be, miss, so I be doing the best of power granted me. Well, I were in a little knuckle of a squat where old Sally used to say, as I went to sleep, and charged the parish for it a spiteful old woman, and I done her grave with pleasure only wishing her had the pay for it. And to prove her mind that I never good sleep here, I was just making ready to set the fire to my pipe, having cocked my shovel in to ease my legs, like this, when from round the corner of the chancelfoot and over again, and there old tree I seen something moving along, moving along without any noise or declarance of solid feet walking. You may see the track burnt in the sod, if you let your eyes go along this here finger. Oh, Jacob, how could you have waited to see it? I did, miss, I did, be in use to a many antics in this dead yard, such as a man who hadn't buried them, might upfoot to run away from. But they know right, after the service of the Church, to come up for more than one change of the moon, unless they have been great malefactors, and then they be ashamed of it, and I remind them of it. Amen, I say in the very same voice as I used at the tail of their funerals, and then they know as well that I covered them up, and the most uneasy goes back again. Lord, bless you, miss, I know fear of the dead, at both ends of life us be harmless, it is in life and most ways in the middle of it we makes all the death for one another. This was true enough, and I only nodded to him, fearing to interject any new ideas from which he might go rambling. Well, that there figure were no joke, mind you, the old man continued as soon as he had freshened his narrative powers with another pinch of snuff, being tall and grim and white in the face, and very unpleasant to look at, and its eyes seem almost to burn holes in the air. No sooner did I see it than it were not a ghosty but a living man the same as I be. Then my knees begin to shake and my stumps of teeth to chatter. And what do you think it was? Stop me, miss, from slipping round this corner, and away by belfry, nor but the hottest idea you ever heard on. For all of a sudden it was born into my mind that the Lord had been pleased to send us back the captain. Not so hamptsome as he used to be, but in the living flesh, however, in spite of these newspapers. And I were just at the point of coming forward, and out of this dark corner, knowing I had done my duty by them graves that his honor to my mind must have come looking after. When, lucky for me, I see sonnet in his walk, and then in his countenance, and then in all his features unnatural on the captain's part, whatever his time of life might be, and sure enough, miss, it were no captain more, nor I must self be. Of course not, how could it be? But who was it, Jacob? You bide a bit, miss, and you shall hear the whole. Well, by that time it was too late for me to slip away, and I was bound to screw jump into the elbow of this nick here, and try not to breathe, and nigh as might be, and keep my lamest cough down, for I never seen a face more full of malice and uncharity. However, he come on as straight as an arrow, holding his long chin out like this, as if he'd gotten crutches under it, as the folk does with bad water. A tall man, as tall as a catmome most, but not gifted with any kind aspect, he tramps over the general graves like the devil come to fetch their souls out, but when he come here to this here holy ring, he stopped short, and stood with his back to me. I could hear him count the seven graves, as Pat is the shells of oysters to pay for, and then he set all their names as true from the biggest to the leastest one, as Betsy Bowen could have done, though none of them got no mark to him. Oh, the poor little hearts, it was so cruel hard upon them. And then my lady in the middle making seven. So far as I could catch over his shoulder he seemed to be quite a-talking with her, not as you and I be, miss, but sort of manner away, like. And what did he seem to say? Oh, Jacob, how long do you take over it? Well, he did not miss. That you may say for Satan. And glad I was to have him quick about it, for he might have reduced me to such a condition I, and I believe he would have, if odds to caught sight of me, as the parish might have had to fight over the appointment of another sexton. And so at last I went away, and I were that stiff from Scrooge and in this corner. Is that all? Oh, that comes to nothing. Surely you must have more to tell me. It may have been someone who knew our names. It may have been some old friend of the family. No, miss, no, no familiar friend, or if he was, he were like King David's. He bore a tyrannous hate against thee, and the poison of asper under his lips. In this here attitude he stood with his back toward me, and his reigns more upright than I be capable of putting it. And this was how he held up his elbow and his head. Looky, see, miss, and then he know as much as I do. Mr. Rigg marched with a long, smooth step, a most difficult strain for his short bowed legs, as far as the place he had been pointing out, and there he stood with his back to me, painfully doing what the tall man had done, so far as a difference of size allowed. It was not possible for me to laugh in a manner of such sadness. And yet Jacob stood with his back to me, spreading and stretching himself in such a way, to be up to the dimensions of that stranger, that low as it was, I was compelled to cough for fear of fatally offending him. That weren't quite right, miss. Now you look again, he exclaimed, with a little readjustment. Only he had a thing over one shoulder, the like of what the Scotchman wear, and his features was beyond me, because of the back of his head, like, for God's sake, keep out of his way, miss. The sexton stood in amusing and yet stern defiant attitude, with the right elbow clasp in the left hand palm, the right hand resting half-clenched upon the forehead, and the shoulders thrown back as if ready for a blow. What a very odd way to stand, I said. Yes, miss, and what he said was odder. Six and the mother, I heard him say. No cure for it, till I have all seven. Oh, but stop, miss, not a breath to any one. Here comes the poor father and mother to speak the blustin' across their daughter's grave, and the grave not two foot down yet. End of CHAPTER XXXVI. Now this account of what Jacob Rake had seen and heard threw me into a state of mind extremely unsatisfactory. To be in eager search of some unknown person who had injured me inexpressibly, without any longing for revenge on my part, but simply with a view to justice, this was a very different thing from feeling that an unknown person was in quest of me, with the horrible purpose of destroying me to ensure his own wicked safety. At first I almost thought that he was welcome to do this, that such a life is mine, if looked at from an outer point of view, was better to be died than lived out. Also there was nobody left to get any good out of all that I could do, and even if I ever should succeed, truth would come out of her tomb too late, and this began to make me cry, which I had long given overdoing, with no one to feel for the heart of it. But a thing of this kind could not long endure, and as soon as the sun of the moral arose, or at least as soon as I was fit to see him, my view of the world was quite different. Here was the merry brook, playing with the morning, spread around with ample depth and rich retreat of meadows, and often, after maze of leisure, hastening with a twinkle into the shadowy delight of trees. Here as well were happy lanes and footpaths of a soft content, unworn with any pressure of the price of time or business. None of them knew, in spite at flurried spots of their own direction post, whence they were coming or where they're going, only that here they lay between the fields or through them, like idle veins of earth, with sometimes company of a man or a boy whistling to his footfall, or singing maid with a milking pail. And how ungrateful it would be to forget the pleasant copses in waves of deep green leafage, flowing down upon the channeled hills, waving at the wind to tints and tones of new refreshment, and tempting idle folk to come and hear the hush and see the twinkle texture of pellicit gloom. Much, however, as I love to sit in places of this kind alone, for some little time I fear to do so after hearing the sexton's tale. For Jacob's terror was so unfeigned, though his own life had not been threatened, that knowing as I did from Betsy's account, as well as his own appearance, that he was not at all a nervous man, I could not help sharing his vague alarm. It seems so terrible that anyone should come to the graves of my sweet mother and her six harmless children, and instead of showing pity, even as a monster might have tried to do, should stand, if not with threatening gestures, yet with a most hostile mean and thirst for the life of the only survivor, my poor self. The terrible or not the truth was so, and neither Betsy nor myself could shake Mr. Riggs' conclusion. Indeed he became more and more emphatic in reply to our doubts and mild suggestions, perhaps that his eyes had deceived him, or perhaps that, taking a nap in the corner of the buttress, he had dreamed at least part of it, and Betsy, on the score of ancient friendship and kind remembrance of his likings, put it to him in a gentle way whether his knowledge of what Sally Mock had been, and the columny she might have spoken of his beer, when herself in the workhouse deprived of it, might not have induced him to take a little more than usual in going down so deep for her. But he answered, No, it was nothing of the sort, deep he had gone to the tiptoe of his fling, not for many feeling of a wish to keep her down, but just because the parish paid, and the parish would have measurement. And when that was on, he never brought down more than a quart ten from the public, and never had none down afterwards. Otherwise the ground was so ticklish that a man working too free might stay down there. No, no, that idea was like one of Sally's own. He just had his quart of Piercefield Ale, short measure of course with a woman at the bar, and if that were enough to make a man dream dreams, the sooner he dug his own grave, the better for all connected with him. We saw that we had gone too far in thinking of such a possibility, and if Mr. Rigg had not been large-minded, as well as notoriously sober, Betsy might have lost me all the benefit of his evidence by her London bread clumsiness with him, for it takes quite a different handling and a different mode of outset to get on with the London working-class and the laboring kind of the country, or at least it seemed to me so. Now my knowledge of Jacob Rigg was owing, as might be supposed, to Betsy Strauss, who had taken the lead of me in almost everything since I brought her down from London, and now I was glad that, in one point at least, her judgment had overruled mine, to wit that my name and parentage were as yet not generally known in the village. Indeed, only Betsy herself and Jacob, and a faithful old washerwoman, with no roof to her mouth, were aware of me as Miss Castlewood. Not that I had taken any other name, to that I would not stoop, but because the public of its own accord, paying attention to Betsy's style of addressing me, followed her lead with some little improvement, and was pleased to entitle me Miss Romer. Some question had been raised as dispelling me a right, till a man of advanced intelligent proved to many eyes, and even several pairs of spectacles assembled in front of the blacksmith's shop, that no other way could be right except that, for there it was in print, as anyone able might see, on the side of an instrument, whose name and qualities were even more mysterious than those in debate. Therefore I became Miss Romer, and a protest would have gone for nothing unless printed also. But it did not behoove me to go to that expense, while it suited me very well to be considered and pitied as a harmless foreigner. A being who, on English land, may find some cause to doubt whether, even in his own country, a prophet could be less thought of. And this large pity for me, as an outlandish person, in the very spot where I was born, endowed me with tenfold the privilege of the proudest native. For the natives of this valley are declared to be of a different stock from those around them, not of the common Wessex strain, but of Utish or Danish origin. How that may be I do not know. At any rate, they think well of themselves, and no doubt they have cause to do so. Moreover, they were all very kind to me, and their primitive ways amused me, as soon as they had settled that I was a foreigner, equally beyond and below inquiry. They told me that I was kindly welcome to stay there as long as it pleased me, and knowing how fond I was of making pictures, after beholding my drawing book, every farmer among them gave me leave to come into his fields, though he never had heard there was anything there worth painting. When once there has been a deposit of idea into the calm Eocene of a British rural mind, the impression will outlast any shallow deluge of the noblest education. Schoxford had settled two points forever without troubling reason to come out of her way. First, that I was a foreign young lady of good birth, manners, and money. Second, and far more important, I was here to write and paint a book about Schoxford, not for the money of that I had no need according to the Congress of the Silver-Edged Holly, but for the praise and knowledge of it, like, and to make a talk among high people. But the elders shook their heads, as I heard from Mr. Rigg, who hugged his knowledge proudly and uttered dim sayings of wisdom let forth at large usury. He did not mind telling me that the old men shook their heads, for fear of my being a deal too young, and a long sight too well-favored, as any man might tell with his specs on, for to write any book upon any subject yet, let alone an old, ancient town like theirs. However, there might be no harm in my trying, and perhaps the schoolmaster would cross out the bad language. Thus, for once fortune now was giving me good help, enabling me to go about freely and preventing, as far as I could see, at least, all danger of discovery by my unknown foe. So here I resolve to keep my headquarters dispensing, if it must be so, with Betsy's presence and not even having Mrs. Price to succeed her, unless my cousin should insist upon it. And partly to dissuade him from that, and partly to hear his opinion of the sexton's tale, I paid a flying visit to Lord Castlewood, while Madame Straw, as Betsy now was called throughout the village, remained behind at Shoxford. For I long had desired to know a thing which I had not ventured to ask my cousin, though I did ask Mr. Shovelin, whether my father had entrusted him with the key of his own mysterious axe. I scarcely knew whether it was proper even now to put this question to Lord Castlewood, but even without doing so, I might get at the answer by watching him closely while I told my tale. Not a letter had reached me, since I came to Shoxford, neither had I written any, except one to Uncle Sam, and keeping to this excellent rule I arrived at Castlewood without any notice. In doing this, I took no liberty, because full permission had been given me about it, and indeed I had been expected there, as Stixon told me, some days before. He added that his master was about as usual, but had shown some uneasiness on my account, though the butler was all in the dark about it, and felt very hard after all these years, particular when he could hardly help thinking that Mrs. Price, a new hand compared to himself, not to speak of being female, note all about it, and were very aggravating. But there he would say no more, he knew his place, and he always had been valued in it, long afore Mrs. Price came up to the bottom of his waistcoat. My cousin received me with kindly warmth and kissed me gently on the forehead. My dear, how very well you look, he said. Your native heir has agreed with you. I was getting, in my quiet way, rather sedulous and self-reproachful about you, but you would have your own way, like a young American, and it seems that you were right. I was quite right, I answered, with a hearty kiss, for I never could be cold-natured, and this was my only one of near kin, so far, at least, as my knowledge went. I was quite right in going, and I have done good. At any rate, I have found out something, something that may not be of any kind of use, but still it makes me hope things. With that, in as few words as ever I could use, I told Lord Castlewood the whole of Jacob's tale, particularly looking at him all the while I spoke, to settle in my own mind whether the idea of such a thing was new to him. Concerning that, however, I could make out nothing. My cousin, at his time of life, and after so much traveling, had much too large a share of mind and long skill of experience for me to make anything out of his face beyond his own intention. And whether he had suspicion or not of anything at all, like what I was describing, or anybody having to do with it, was more than I might ever have known, if I had not gathered up my courage and put the question outright to him. I told him that if I was wrong in asking, he was not to answer, but right or wrong, ask him I must. The question is natural, and not at all improper, replied Lord Castlewood, standing a moment for change of pain, which was all his relief. Indeed, I expected you to ask me that before, but Arima, I have also to ask myself about it, whether I have any right to answer you, and I have decided not to do so, unless you will pledge yourself to one thing. I will pledge myself to anything, I answered Rashley. I do not care what it is if only to get at the bottom of this mystery. I scarcely think you will hold good to your words when you hear what you have to promise. The condition upon which I tell you what I believe to be the cause of all this is that you let things remain as they are, and keep silence forever about them. Oh, you cannot be so cruel, so atrocious, I cried in my bitter disappointment. What good would it be for me to know things thus and let the vile wrong continue? Surely you are not bound to lay on me a condition so impossible. After much consideration and strong wish to have it otherwise, I have concluded that I am so bound. In duty to my father or the family or what, forgive me for asking, but it does seem so hard. It seems hard, my dear, and it is hard as well, he answered, very gently yet showing in his eyes and lips no chance of any yielding. But remember that I do not know, I only guess the secret, and if you give the pledge I speak of, you merely follow in your father's steps. Never, I replied, with as firm a face as his. It may have been my father's duty, or no doubt he thought it so, but it cannot be mine unless I make it so by laying it on my honor, and I will not do that. Perhaps you are right, but at any rate, remember that I have not tried to persuade you. I wish to do what is for your happiness, Arima, and I think that, on the whole, with your vigor and high spirit, you are better as you are than if you had a knowledge which you could only brood over and not use. I will find out the whole of it myself, I cried, for I could not repress all excitement, and then I need not brood over it, but may have it out and get justice. In the wildest parts of America, justice comes with perseverance. Am I to abjure it in the heart of England? Lord Castlewood, which is first? Justice or honor? My cousin, you are very fond of asking questions difficult to answer. Justice and honor nearly always go together. When they do otherwise, honor stands foremost, with people of good birth at least. Then I will be a person of very bad birth. If they come into conflict in my life, as almost everything seems to do, my first thought shall be of justice, and honor shall come in as its ornament afterwards. Arima, said my cousin, your meaning is good, and at your time of life, you can scarcely be expected to take a dispassionate view of things. At first I felt almost as if I could hate a dispassionate view of things. Things are made to arouse our passion, so long as meanness and villainy prevail. And if old men, knowing the balance of the world, can contemplate them all dispassionately, more clearly than anything else to my mind, that proves the beauty of being young. I am sure that I was never hot or violent, qualities which I especially dislike. But still, I would rather almost have those than be too philosophical. And now, while I revered my father's cousin for his gentleness, wisdom, and long suffering, I almost longed to fly back to the major, prejudiced, peppery, and red-hot for justice, at any rate in all things that concerned himself. End of chapter 36. Chapter 37 of Arima. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Arima by R. D. Blackmore. Chapter 37. Some answer to it. Hasty indignation did not drive me to hot action. A quiet talk with Mrs. Price, as soon as my cousin's bad hour arrived, was quite enough to bring me back to a sense of my own misgovernment. Moreover, the evening clouds were darkening for a night of thunder, while the silver Thames looked nothing more than a leaden pipe down the valleys. Calm words fall at such times on a quick temper, like the drip of trees on people who have been dancing. I shivered as my spirit fell to think of my weak excitement and poor petulance to a kind wise friend, a man of many sorrows and perpetual affliction. And then I recalled what I had observed, but in my haste forgotten. Lord Castlewood was greatly changed, even in the short time since I had left his house for Shoxford. Pale he had always been, and his features, calm as they were and finely cut, seemed almost bleached by indoor life and continual endurance. But now they showed worse sign than this, a delicate transparent of faint color and a waxen surface, such as I had seen at a time I cannot bear to think of. Also he had tottered forward, while he tried for steadfast footing, quite as if his worried members were almost worn out at last. Mrs. Price took me up quite sharply, at least for one of her well-trained style, when I ventured to ask if she had noticed this, which made me feel uneasy. Oh, dear, no, she said, looking up from the lace-filled pockets of her silk apron, which appeared to my mind perhaps a little too smart and almost of a vulgar tincture, and I think that she saw in my eyes that much and was vexed with herself for not changing it. Oh, dear, no, Ms. Castlewood. We who know and watch him should detect any difference of that nature at the moment of its occurrence. His lordship's health goes vacillating, a little up now, and then a little down, like a needle that is mounted to show the dip of a compass, and it varies according to the electricity, as well as the magnetic influence. What doctor told you that, I asked, seeing in a moment that this housekeeper was dealing in quotation. You are very—she was going to say rude, but knew better when she saw me waiting for it. Well, you are rather brusque, as we used to call it abroad, Ms. Castlewood, but am I incapable of observing for myself? I never implied that, was my answer. I believe that you are most intelligent and fit to nurse my cousin as you are to keep his house, and what you have said shows the clearness of your memory and expression. You are very good to speak so, she answered, recovering her temper beautifully, but, like a true woman, resolve not to let me know anything more about it. Oh, what a clap of thunder! Are you timid? This house has been struck three times, they say. It stands so prominently. It is this that has made my lord look so. Let us hope then, to see him much better tomorrow, I said, very bravely, though frightened at heart, being always a coward of thunder. What are these storms you get in England compared to the tropical outbursts? Let us open a window, if you please, and watch it. I hear myself called, Ms. Price exclaimed. I am sorry to leave you, Ms. You know best, but please do not sit by an open window. Nothing is more dangerous. Accept a great bunch of steel keys, I replied, and gazing on her nice retreating feature, sought quickened, as a flash of lightning passed, with the effort of both hands to be quit of something. The storm was dreadful, and I kept the window shut, but could not help watching with a fearful joy the many hazy pale vibrations, the reflections of the leaven in the hollow of the land. And sadly I began to think of Uncle Sam and all his goodness, and how, in a storm, a thousandfold of this, he went down his valley in the torrent of the waves, and must have been drowned, and perhaps never found again, if it had not been for wearing his leather apron. This made me humble, as all great thoughts do, and the side-long drizzle in among the heavy rain, from the big drops jostling each other in the air and dashing out splashes of difference, gave me an idea of the sort of thing I was, and how very little more. And feeling rather lonely in the turn that things had taken, I rang the bell for somebody, and up came Stixon. Lore, Miss, Lore, what a burning shame a prick! Prick, we call her, in our genial moments, hearing as the K is hard in Celtic language, and all abroad about her husband. My very first saying to you was, not to be too much occupied with her, look at the pinafore on her, Lore be with me, if his lordship has caught me, that day of this very same month, fifty years in the gooseberry bush, to be sure, I said, knowing that story by heart, together with all its embellishments. But things are altered since that day. Nothing can be more to your credit, I am sure, than to be able to tell such a tale in the very place where it happened. But, Miss, Miss Arima, I ain't begun to tell it. Because you remember that I am acquainted with it, a thing so remarkable is not to be forgotten. Now let me ask you a question of importance, and I beg you, as an old servant of this family, to answer it carefully and truly. Do you remember anyone, either here or elsewhere, so like my father, Captain Castlewood, to be taken for him at first sight, until a difference of expression and of walk was noticed? Mr. Stixon looked at me with some surprise, and then began to think profoundly, and in doing so, he supported his chin with one hand. Let me see, like the Captain, he reflected slowly. Did I ever see a gentleman like poor Master George as was? A gentleman, of course, it must have been, and a very tall, handsome, straight gentleman, to be taken anyhow for young Master George, and he must have been very like him, too, to be taken for him by resemblance. Well then, Miss, to the best of my judgment, I never did see such a gentleman. I don't know whether it was a gentleman or not, I answered, with some impatience at his tantalizing slowness, but he carried his chin stretched forth, like this, for Stixon's own attitude had reminded me of a little point in Jacob Riggs' description, which otherwise might have escaped me. Lore now, and he carried his chin like that, resumed the butler, with an increase of intelligence by no means the plurflores. Why, let me see, now let me see. Something do come across my mind when you put out your pretty chin, Miss, but there, it must have been a score of years ago or more, perhaps five and twenty, when a daft old codger I'd be getting, surely, no wonder them new lights put the bushel over me. No, I replied, you are simply showing great power of memory, Stixon, and now please tell me as soon as you can who it was, a tall man, remember, and a handsome one with dark hair, perhaps, or at any rate, dark eyes, who resemble, perhaps not very closely, but still enough to be misled at a distance, my dear father, Master George, as you call him, for whose sake you are bound to tell me everything you know. Now try to think, do please try your very best for my sake. That I will, Miss, that I will, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength, as I used to have to say with my hands behind my back before education were invented, only please you to stand with your chin put out, Miss, and your profiled towards me? That is what brings it up, and nothing else at all, Miss, only, not to say a word of any sort to hurry me, a treacherous and deep thing is the memory and the remembrance. Mr. Stixon's memory was so deep that there seemed to be no bottom of it, or at any rate, what lay there took a very long time to get at, and I waited, with more impatience than hope, the utterance of his researches. I got it now. I got it all, Miss, clear as any picture. The old man cried out, at the very moment when I was about to say, please to leave off, I'm sure it is too much for you. Now, to picture in all our gallery, Miss, two and fifty of them, so clear as I see their man, dark as it was, and a heavy wind blowing. What you call them things, Miss, if you please, as comes with the sun, like a face upon the water, wicked things done again the will of the Lord, and he makes them fade out afterwards? Perhaps you mean photographs. Is that the word? The very word, and no mistake, a sin trespass on the works of God to trickle the vanity of gals, but he never spread himself abroad like them. They show all their earrings and their necks and smiles, but he never would have shown his nose if he could help it, that stormy night when I came to do my duty. He come into this house without so much as a buy your leave to nobody, and vexed me terrible accordingly. It was in the old Lord's time, you know, Miss, a one of the true sort as would have things respectful and knock down any man as soon as look, and it put me quite upon the touch and go, being responsible for all the footman's works, and a young boy promoted in the face of my opinion, having my own son worth a dozen of him. This made me look at the nature of things, Miss, and find it on my conscience to be after everybody. Yes, Stixon, yes. Now, do go on. You must always have been not only after, but a very long way after everybody. Miss Irma, if you throw me out, every word goes promiscuous. In a heffert of the mind like this, it is every word or no word. Now, I did see him come along the big passage, a curry door, they call it, though no more curry in it than there is a door. No, I never see him come along the passage, and that made it more reproachful. He come out of a green bay's door, the very place I can point out to you, and the same self-door, Miss, though false to the accuracy of the mind that knows it by reason of having been covered up red, and all the brass buttons lost to it with them new fangled upholstries. Not that I see him come through, if you please, but the sway of the door being double-jointed was enough to show legs have been there, and knowing that my Lord's private room was there, made me put out my legs quite wonderful. Oh, do please put out your words half as quickly. No, Miss, no. I will listen in those days, though not so stiff at this time of speaking, and bound to be guarded in guidance of the tongue. And now, Miss, I think if you pleased to hear the rest tomorrow, I could tell it better. A more outrageous idea than this was never presented to me. Even if I could have tried to wait, this dreadful old man might have made of his mind not to open his lips in the morning, or, if he would speak, there might be nothing left to say. His memory was nursed up now, and my only chance was to keep it so. Therefore I begged him to please go on, and no more would I interrupt him. And I longed to be ten years older, so as not to speak when needless. So then, Miss Irma, if I must go on, resume the well-cooked stickson. If my duty to the family drive with me to an erring subject, no words can more justly tell what has come to pass than my language to my wife. She were alive then, the poor dear Hengel, and the mother of seven children, which made me, by your leave comparing humble roofs with the grandeur, a little stiff to him upstairs, as come in on top of seven. For I said to my wife when I went home, sleeping out of the house, you see, Miss, till the Lord was pleased to dissolve matrimony. Polly, I said, when I took home my supper, you may take my word for it, there is something queer. Not another word did I mean to tell her as behoove my duty. However, no peace was my lot till I made a clean bosom of it, only putting her first on the testament, and even that not safe with most of them. And from that night not a soul has heard a word till it comes to you, Miss. He comes strident along with his face muffled up for all the world like a burglar, and no more he did he pay to me than if I was one of the pedestals. But I were in front of him at the door, and to slip out so was against all orders. So in front of him I stands with my hand upon the handles, and meaning to have a word with him, to know who he was and such like, and how he comes there, and what he had been seeking, with the spoons and the forks and gravies in my mind. And right I would have been in a court of law if the lawyers was put out of it for my efforts in that situation. And then what do you think he done, Miss? So far from entering into any conversation with me, or hitting me, like a man, which would have done good to think of, he sent me out one hand to the bottom of my vest, as they call it now in all the best livery tailors, and before I could reason on it, there I was, a lion on a stair in six colors of marble. When I come to think on it, it was but a push directed to a part of my system, and not a hit under the belt like of which no Britain would think of delivering. Nevertheless, there was no differ in what came to me, Miss, and my spirit was roused, as if I had been hit foul by one of the prize men. No time to get up, but I let out one foot at his long legs as it was slipping through the door, and so nearly did I fetch him over that he let go his muffle to balance himself with the jam. And the same moment, a strong Russia wind lay bare the whole of his wicked face to me, for a bad wicked face it was, as ever I did see, whether by reason of the kick I gave, and a splinter in the shin, or by habit of mind, a proud and aughty and audacious face, and, as I said to my poor wife, reminded me a little of our Master George, not in his ordinary aspect, to be sure, but as Master George might look if he was going to the devil. Pray excuse me, Miss, for bad words, but no good ones will do justice. And so off he goes, after one look at me on the ground, not worth considering, with his chin stuck up, as if the air was not good enough to be breathed, perpendicular like. And of course you followed him, I exclaimed, perceiving that Stixon would allow me now to speak, without delay you went after him. Miss Irma, you forgot what my duty was. My duty was to stay by the door and make it fast, as a custodian of all this mansion. No little curiosity or private resentment could have borne me out in doing so. As an outraged man, I was up for rushing out, but as a trusted official, and responsible head-footman, Miss, for I were not the butler till nine months after that, my duty was to put the big bolt in. And you did it, without even looking out to see if he tried to set the house on fire? Of Stixon, I fear that you were frightened. Now Miss Irma, I calls it ungrateful after all my efforts to oblige you to put a bad construction on me. You hurts me, Miss, in my tenderest parts, as I never thought Master George's daughter would a dude. But there, they be none of them as they used to be. Master George would have said, if he had ever heard it, Stixon, my man, you acted for the best and showed a sound discretion. Stixon, he would have said, here's a Georgian dragon in reward for your gallant conduct. Ah, that sort of manliness has died out now. This graded it first upon my feelings, because it seemed tainted with selfishness. And it did not entirely agree with my own recollections of my father. But still, Mr. Stixon must have suffered severely in that conflict, and to blame him for not showing rashness was to misunderstand his position. And so before putting any other questions to him, I felt in my pocket for a new half-sovereign, which I hoped would answer. Mr. Stixon received it in an absent manner, as if he were still in the struggle of his story and too full of duty to be thankful. Yet I saw that he did not quite realize the truth of a nobly, philosophic proverb. The half is more than the whole. Nevertheless, he stowed away his half in harmony with a good old English saying. Now, when you were able to get up at last, I inquired with tender interest, what did you see, and what did you do, and what conclusion did you come to? I came to the conclusion, Miss, that I were hurt considerable. Curiosity on my part quelched, by the way, as I had to rub myself. But a man is a man, and the last thing to complain of is the exercise of his functions. And when I came round, I went off to his lordship as if I had heard his bell rung. All of us knew better than to speak to him from beginning, for he were not what they call halfable. But very much to the contrary. So he says, You door-sculker, what do you want there? And I see that he's got his hot leg up, certain to fly to bad language. Accordingly, I asked with my breath in my hand if he pleased to see any young men there just now, by reason that such likes have been observed going out in some direction. But his lordship roared to me to go in another direction, not fit for young ladies. My old lord was up to every word of English, but his present lordship is the opposite extreme. Is that all you have to tell me, Stixon? Did you never see that fearful man again? Did you never even hear of him? Never, Miss, never. And to nobody but you have I ever told all as I told now. But you seems to be born to hear it all. End of chapter 37, recorded by Mary Ann Spiegel in Chicago, Illinois, July 25, 2009.