 Chapter 50. The Panacea. As if my own trouble were not enough, so deeply was I grieved by this sad news that I had a great mind to turn my back on my own and fly too far off disasters. To do so appeared for the moment a noble thing, and almost a duty, but now looking back I perceived that my instinct was right when it told me to stay where I was and seek out my own sad story first. And Betsy grew hot at the mere idea of my hankering after a miller's affairs, as she very rudely expressed it. To hear about lords and ladies and their crimes and adventures was lovely, but to dwell upon a people of common birth and in trade was most unbeseeming. A man who mended his own mill, had hands like horn, well, even she was of better blood than that, she hoped. Before these large and liberal views had been fairly expounded, Major Hockenor wrought, with his mind in such a state that he opened his watch every second. "'Irama, I must speak to you alone,' he cried. "'No, not even you, Mrs. Strauss, if you please. If my ward likes to tell you why, of course she can. But nobody shall say that I did. There are things that belong to the family alone. The most royal retainers, you know what I mean. General, I was not aware that you belong to the family. But this way, sir. This way, if you please, there is lathe and plaster to that wall and a crack in the panel of the door, sir. But here is a room where I keep my jams, with double brick and pat blocks, from my sweet tooth lodgers. The scruction goes over the keyhole, general. Perhaps you will see to that while I roll up the carpet outside, and then if any retainers come, you will hear their footsteps. Bless the woman what a temper she has, whispered the major, in dread of her ears. Is she gone, Irama? She wants discipline. Yes, she is gone, I said, trying to be lightsome. But you are enough to frighten anyone.' So far from that she has quite frightened me, but never mind such trifles, Irama. Since I saw you I have discovered, I may almost say everything. Coming upon me so suddenly, even with all allowance made for the major sanguine opinion of his own deeds, this had such an effect upon my flurry brain that practice alone enabled me to stand upright and gaze at him. Perhaps you imagined when you placed the matter in my hands, Miss Castlewood, he went on, with sharp twinkles from the gables of his eyes, but soft caresses to his whiskers, that you would be left in the hands of a man who encouraged a crop of hay under his feet. Never did you or anybody make a greater mistake that is not my character, Miss Castlewood. Why do you call me Miss Castlewood so? You quite make me doubt my own right to the name. Major Hocken looked at me with surprise, which gladdened even more than it shamed me. Clearly his knowledge of all, as he described it, did not comprise the disgrace which I feared. You are almost like Mrs. Strauss today, he answered, with some compassion. Which way is the wind? I have often observed that when one female shows asperity, nearly all the others do the same. The weather affects them more than men, because they know nothing about it. But to come back, are you prepared to hear what I have got to tell you? I bowed without saying another word, for he should be almost the last of mankind to give a lecture upon irritation. Very well, you wish me to go on, perceiving how sadly you were upset by the result of those interviews. First with Hanken, and then with Goad. After leaving you here I drove it once to the office-studio, place of business or whatever you pleased to call it, of the famous fellow in the portrait line, whose anagram, private mark or whatever it is, was burned into the back of the ivory. Hanken told me that the fellow was dead, or, of course, his work would be worth nothing. But the name was carried on, and the register kept, at a little place somewhere in Soho, where, on the strength of his old repute, they keep up a small trade with inferior hands. I gave them a handsome order for a thing that will never be handsome, I fear, my old battered physiognomy. And then I produced the locket, which in some queer state of mind you had given me, and made them hunt for their old books, and at last discovered the very entry. But, to verify it, I must go to Paris, where his son is living. A who's son, Lord Castlewoods? Erema, have you taken leave of your senses? What son has Lord Castlewood? The artist's son, to be sure. The son of the man who did the likeness. Is the vellum in the stuff upon it that has so upset your mind? I am glad that you showed it to me, because it would have been mean to do otherwise, but show it to no one else, my dear, except your cousin, Lord Castlewood. He has the first right of all to know it, though he will laugh at it as I do, trumpery of that sort. Let them produce a certified copy of a register. If they could do that, need they ever have shot that raffish old lord? I beg pardon, my dear, your highly respected grandfather? No, no, don't tell me. Nicholas Hocken was never in any way famous for want of brains, my dear, and he tells you to keep your pluck up. I never can thank you enough, I replied, for such inspiring counsel. I have been rather miserable all this day, and I have had such a letter from America. Without my intending any offer of the kind, or having such idea as the furthest tip of any radius of mind, I found myself under a weight about the waist, like the things the young girls put on now. And this was the arm of the major, which had been knocked about in some actions, but still useful to let other people know, both in this way and that, what he thought of them. And now it let me know that he pitied me. This kindness from so old a soldier made me partial to him. He had taken an age to understand me, because my father was out of the army almost before I was born, and therefore I had no traditions. Also from want of drilling I had been awkward to this officer, and sometimes mutinous, and sometimes a coward. All that, however, he forgave me when he saw me so downhearted, and while I was striving to repress all signs, the quivering of my lips perhaps suggested thoughts of kissing, whereupon he kissed my forehead with nice dry lips, and told me not to be at all afraid. How many times have you been brave, he inquired to set me counting, knowing from all his own children, perhaps, that nothing stops futile tears and the waste of sobs like prompt arithmetic? Six is seven times you have displayed considerable valor. Are you going to fall away through some wretched imagination of your own? Now don't stop to argue. Time will not allow it. I have put Cosmopolitan Jack as well upon the track of Captain Brown. I have not told you half of what I could tell and what I am doing, but never mind. Never mind it is better that you should not know too much, my dear. Young minds from their want of knowledge of the world are inclined to become uneasy. Now go to bed and sleep soundly, Arema, for we have lots to do to-morrow, and you have had a most worrying day to-day. To-morrow, of course, you must come with me to Paris. You can parlez-vous better than I can. However, as it happened, I did nothing of the kind. For when he came back in the morning, and while he was fidgeting and hurrying me, and vowing that we should lose the tidal train, a letter from Brunsey was put into my hand. I saw Mrs. Price's clear writing, followed by Good Aunt Mary's crooked lines, and knew that the latter must have received it too late to be sent by her messenger. In a few words it told me that if I wished to see my cousin alive, the only chance was to start immediately. Shock and self-reproach and wonder came, as usual, before grief, which always means to stay, and waits to get its morning ready. I loved and respected my cousin more deeply than anyone living, save Uncle Sam, and now to lose them both at once seemed much too dreadful to be true. There was no time to think. I took the Major's cab and hurried off to Paddington, leaving him to catch his tidal train. Alas, when I got to Castlewood there was but a house of mourning. Faithful sticks and eyes were dim, and he pointed upward and said, Hush, I entered with great awe and asked, how long? And he said, four and twenty hours now, and a more peaceful end was never seen, and to lament was sinful, but he was blessed if he could help it. I told him through my tears that this was greatly to his credit, and he must not crush fine feelings which are an honour to our nature. And he said that I was mistress now, and must order him to my liking. I asked him to send Mrs. Price to me if she were not too busy, and he answered that he believed her to be a very good soul and handy. And if he had ever been thought to speak in a sense disparishing of her, such things should not be borne in mind with great afflictions over us. Mrs. Price, hearing that I was come, already was on her way to me, and now glanced at the door for Mr. Stixham to depart in a manner past misunderstanding. He gives himself such airs, she said. Sometimes one would think, but I will not trouble you now with that Miss Castlewood or Lady Castlewood. Which do you please to be called Miss? They say that the barony goes on when there is no more discount. I please to be called Miss Castlewood, even if I have any right to be called that. But don't let us talk of such trifles now. I wish only to hear of my cousin. Well, you know, ma'am, what a sufferer he has been for years. If ever an angel had pains all over and one leg compulsory of a walking stick, that angel was his late lordship. He would stand up and look at one and give orders in that beautiful silvery voice of his, just as if he was lying on a bed of down, and never a twitch, nor a hitch in his face, nor his words nor any other part of him. I assure you, Miss, that I have been quite amazed and overwhelmed with interest while looking at his poor legs and thinking, oh, I can quite enter into it. I have felt the same. But please come to what has happened lately. The very thing I was at the point of doing, then last Sunday, God only knows why. The pain did not come on at all. For the first time, for seven years or more, the pain forgot the timepiece. His lordship thought that the clock was wrong, but waited with his usual patience, though missing it from the length of custom, instead of being happy. But when it was come to an hour too late for the proper attack of the enemy, his lordship sent orders for Stixon's boy to take a good horse and ride to Pangborn for a highly respectable lawyer. There was no time to fetch Mr. Spines, you see, Miss, the proper solicitor who lives in London. The gentleman from Pangborn was here by eight o'clock, and then and there his lordship made his will to supersede all other wills. He put it more clearly, the lawyer said, than he himself could have put it, but not, of course, in such legal words, but doubtless, far more beautiful. Nobody in the house was forgotten, and the rule of law being it seems that those with best cause to remember must not witness. Two of the tenants were sent for and wrote down their names legitimate, and then his lordship lay back and smiled and said, I shall have no more pain. All that night and three days more he slept a sound as a little child to make up for so many years. We called two doctors in, but they only whispered and looked dismal and told us to have hot water ready at any hour of the day or night. Nobody loved him as I did, Miss, from seeing so much of his troubles and the miraculous way of airing them. And I sat by the hour and hour and watched him, trusting no paid nurses. It must have been eight o'clock on Wednesday morning. What is today? Oh, oh, Friday, then Thursday morning it must have been when the clouds opened up in the east and the light of the sun was on the windowsill, not glaring or staring but playing about with patterns of leaves between it, and I went to screen it from his poor white face. But he opened his eyes as if he had been half awake, half dreaming, and he tried to lift one of his thin, thin hands to tell me not to do it. So I let the curtain stay as it was and crept back and asked very softly, will your lordship have some breakfast? He did not seem to comprehend me, but only watched the window as if a blessed face there was, looking towards heaven's glory, his lordship had it. So I could scarcely keep from sobbing, for I never had seen any living body die, but I knew that it must be so. He heard me catching my breath, perhaps, or at any rate he looked at me, and the poor angel knew that I was a woman and being full of high respect, as he always was for females. In spite of the way they had served him, it become apparent to his mind that his pearl button of his neck was open as ordered by the doctors, and he tried to lift his hand to do it, and then he tried to turn away but could manage neither. Poor dear, the only movement he could make was to a better world. Then I drew the sheet across his chest, and he gave me a little smile of thanks, and perhaps he knew whose hand it was, but the look of his kind soft eyes was flickering, not steady I mean miss, but glancing and stopping and going astray, as drops of rain do on the window glass, but I could not endure to examine him much at such a holy time I felt that to watch death was unholy. Perhaps I ought to have wrung the bell for others to be present, but his lordship was always shy, you know miss, and with none of his kindred left and no wife to say goodbye to him, right or wrong I resolved alone to see him depart to his everlasting rest, and people may talk about hirelings, but I think nobody loved him as I did. Here Mrs. Price broke fairly down, and I could not help but admiring her, to a faithful servant's humility and duty she had added up woman's pure attachment to one more gifted than herself, and ruined for life by her own sex, but she fell away frightened and ashamed beneath my look as if I had caught her in sacrilege. Well, miss, we almost come and go, she began again rather clumsily, and good and great as he was, the lordship has left few to mourn for him, only the birds and beasts and animals that he was so good to, they will miss him, if men don't. There came one of his favorite pigeons, white as snow all over, and sat on the sill of the window and cooed and arched its neck up for his fingers, and he tried to put his fingers out, but they were ice already, whether that or something else brought home his thoughts, who knows, miss, but he seemed to mix up the pigeon with some of his own experience. Say that I have forgiven her if ever she did harm to me, he whispered without moving lips, times and times when I was young I was not always steady, and then he seemed to wander in his mind among old places, and he would have laughed at something if his voice had been sufficient. Bitter grief and pain shall never come again, he seemed to breathe with a calm, soft smile, like a child with its rhyme about the rain when the sun breaks out, and sure enough the sun upon the quilt above his heart was shining, as if there could be no more clouds. Then he whispered a few short words to the lord, more in the way of thanks than prayer, and his eyes seemed to close of their own accord or with some good spirit soothing them, and when or how his sleep passed from this world into the other there was scarcely the flutter of a nerve to show. There he lies like an image of happiness. Will you come and see him? I followed her to the bedroom, and I'm very glad I did so, for it showed me the bliss of a good man's rest and took away my fear of death. End of Chapter 50 Chapter 51 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 51. Life Sinister When business and the little cares of earthly life awoke again, everyone told me, to my great supplies and no small terror at first, but soon to increasing acquiescence, that I was now the mistress of the fair estates of Castlewood, and the mail-line being extinct might claim the barony, if so please me, for that, upon default of mail heirs, descended by the spindle. And as to the property with or without any will of the late Lord Castlewood, the greater part would descend to me under unbarred settlement, which he was not known to have meddled with. On the contrary, he confirmed by his last will the settlement, which they told me was quite needless, and left me all that he had to leave, except about a thousand pounds distributed in legacies. A private letter to me was sealed up with his will, which, of course, it would not behoove me to make public. But thus much, since our family history is, alas, so notorious, in duty to him I should declare, he begged me, if his poor lost wife, of whom he had never spoken to me, should reappear and need it to pay her a certainly yearly sum, which I thought a great deal too much for her, but resolved to obey him exactly. Neither the will nor the letter contained any reference to my grandfather, or the possibility of an adverse claim. I could not, however, be quit of deep uneasiness and anxiety, but staunchly determined that every acre should vanish in folds of, quote, the long robe, unquote, rather than pass to a crafty villain who had robbed me of all my kindred, my hatred of that man deep and vastly, as he became less abstract, while my terror decreased in proportion. I began to think that, instead of being the reckless fiend I had taken him for, he was only a low, plotting, cold-blooded rogue, without even courage to save him. By this time he must have heard all about me, my pursuit of him, and my presence here. Then why not come and shoot me, just as he shot my grandfather? The idea of this was unwelcome. Still, I felt no sort of gratitude, but rather a lofty contempt toward him, for not having spirit to try it. In Shoxford Churchyard he had expressed, if Sexton Rigg was not then deceived, an unholy wish to have me there at the feet of my brothers and sisters. Also he had tried to get hold of me, doubtless with a view to my quietude, when I was too young to defend myself, and left at haphazard in a lawless land. What was the reason, if his mind was still the same, for ceasing to follow me now? Was I to be treated with contempt, as one who had tried her best and could do nothing, as a feeble creature whose movements were not even worth inquiring? Anger at such an idea began to supersede fear as my spirits returned. Meanwhile Major Hawken was making no sign as to what had befallen him in Paris, or what Cosmopolitan Jack was about. But, strangely enough, he had sent me a letter from Brunsey instead of Paris, and addressed in grand style to no less a person than, quote, the right honorable Baroness Castlewood, unquote. A title which I had resolved for the present neither to claim nor acknowledge. In that letter the Major mingled a penny weight of condolence with more congratulation than the post could carry for the largest stamp yet invented. His habit of mine was to magnify things, and he magnified my small grandeur, and seemed to think nothing else worthy of mention. Through love of the good kind cousin I had lost, even more than through common and comely respect toward the late head of family, I felt it impossible to proceed for the present with any inquiries, but left the next move to the other side, and the other side made it in a manner such as I have never even dreamed of. About three weeks after I became, in that sad way, the mistress, escaping one day from lawyers and agents who held me in dreary interview, with long computations of this and of that and formalities almost endless, I went for a breath of good earnest fresh air, beyond precinct of garden or shrubbery. To me these seemed in mild weather to temper and humanize the wind too strictly, and take the wild spirit out of it. And now, for the turn of the moment no wind could be too rough to tumble in. After long months of hard trouble and worry and fear and sad shame and deep sorrow, the natural spring of clear youth into air and freedom set me upward. For the nont there was nothing upon my selfish self to keep it downward. Troubles were bubbles, and grief a low thief, and reason almost treason. I drank the fine fountain of air unsolid, and the golden light stamped with the royalty of sun. Hilarious moments are but short, and soon cold sense comes back again. Already I began to feel ashamed of young life's selfish outburst and the vehemence spring of mere bodily health. On this account I sat down sadly in a little cove of hill, where too the soft breeze from the river came up with a tone of wavelets and a sprightly water gleam. And here, in fern and yellow grass and tufted bites of bottom growth, the wind made entry for the sun and they played with one another. Resting here and thinking with my face between my hands, I wondered what would be the end. Nothing seemed secure or certain, nothing even steady or amenable to foresight. Even guesswork or the wider past of dreams was always wrong. Today the hills and valleys and the glorious woods of wreath and gold, bright garnet and deep amethyst, even that blue river yet unvexed by autumn's turbulence and bordered with green pasture of a thousand sheep and cattle. Today they were all mine, so far as mortal can hold ownership. Tomorrow not a stick or twig or blade of grass or fallen leaf, but might call me a trespasser. To see them while they still were mine, and to regard them humbly, I rose and took my black hat off. A black hat trimmed with morning gray. Then, turning round, I met a gaze, the wildest, darkest and most awful ever fixed on human face. Who are you? What do you want here? I faltered forth, while shrinking back for flight, yet dreading or unable to withdraw my gaze from his. The hollow ground barred all escape from my own land was a pit for me, and I must face this horror out. Here, afar from house or refuge, hand of help or eye of witness, front to front I must encounter this atrocious murderer. For moments which were ages to me he stood there without a word, and daring not to take my eyes from his lest he should leap at me, I had no power, except of instinct, or could form no thought of him, for mortal fear fell over me, if he would only speak would only move his lips or anything. The barrenness is not brave, he said at last, as if reproachfully, but she need have no fear now of me. Does her ladyship happen to know who I am? The man who murdered my grandfather. Yes, if you put a false color on events. The man who punished a miscreant, according to the truer light, but I am not here to argue points, I intend to propose a bargain. Once for all I will not harm you, try to listen calmly. Your father behaved like a man to me, and I will be no worse to you. The state of the law in this country is such that I am forced to carry firearms. Will it conduce to your peace of mind if I place myself at your mercy? I tried to answer, but my heart was beating so that no voice came, only a flutter in my trembling throat. Wrath with my self-rewind of courage wrestled in vain with pale abject fear. The hand which offered me the pistol seemed to my dazed eyes crimson still with the blood of my grandfather. You will not take it very well. It lies here at your service. If your father's daughter likes to shoot me, from one point of view it will be just, and but for one reason I care not. Don't look at me with pity, if you please, for what I have done I feel no remorse, no shadow of repentance. It was the best action of my life. But time will fail unless you call upon your courage speedily. None of your family lack that, and I know that you possess it. Call your spirit up, my dear. Oh, please not to call me that. How dare you call me that? That is right. I did it on purpose, and yet I am your uncle. Not by the laws of men, but by the laws of God, if there are such things. Now, have you the strength to hear me? Yes, I am quite recovered now. I can follow every word you say, but I must sit down again. Certainly. Sit there, and I will stand. I will not touch or come nearer to you than a story, such as mine requires. You know your own side of it, now hear mine. More than fifty years ago there was a brave young nobleman. Handsome, rich, accomplished, strong, not given to drink or gambling or any fashionable vices. His faults were few, chiefly three. He had a headstrong will, loved money, and possessed no heart at all. With chances in his favour this man might have done as most men do, who have such gifts from fortune. But he happened to meet with a maiden far beneath him in this noble world, and he set his affections, such as they were, upon that poor young damsel. This was Winifred Hoyle, the daughter of Thomas Hoyle, a farmer, in a lonely part of Hampshire, and amongst the moors of Rambleton. The nobleman lost his way while fishing, and being thirsty, went to ask for milk. What matter how it came about? He managed to win her heart before she heard of his rank and title. He persuaded her even to come and meet him in the valley far from her father's house, where he was want to angle, and there, on a lonely wooden bridge across a little river, he knelt down, as men used to do, and pledged his solemn truth to her, his solemn lie, his solemn lie. Such love as his could not overleap the bars of rank or the pale of wealth. Are you listening to me carefully? Or at any rate, not both of them. If the poor farmer could only have given his Winifred fifty thousand pounds, the peer would have dropped his pride, perhaps, so far as to be honest, but farmers in that land are poor, and Mr. Hoyle could give his only child his blessing only, and this he did in London, where his simple mind was all abroad, and he knew not church from Chapel, and he took his daughter for the wife of a Lord, and so she took herself, poor thing, when she was but his kumpkubain. In 1809 such tricks were easily played by villains upon young girls so simple. But he gave her a testation and certificate under his own hand, and her poor father signed it and saw it secured in a costly case, and then went home as proud as need be for the father of a peer but sworn to keep it three years secret till the king should give consent. Such foul lies it was the pride of a Lord to tell to a farmer. You do not exclaim, of course you do not. The instincts of your race are in you, because you are legitimate. Those of the robb side are in me, because I am of the robbed. I am your father's elder brother. Which is the worse you proud young woman, the dastard or the bastard? You have wrongs, most bitter wrongs, I answered, meeting fierce eyes mildly, but you should remember that I am guiltless of those wrongs, and so was my father. And I think that if you talk of birth so you must know that gentlemen speak quietly to ladies. What concern is that of mine? A gentleman is someone's son. I am the son of nobody. But to you I will speak quietly for the sake of your poor father, and you must listen quietly. I am not famous for sweet temper. Well, this great Lord took his toy to Paris, where he had her at his mercy. She could not speak a word of French. She did not know a single soul. In vain she prayed him to take her to his English home, or, if not that, to restore her to her father. Not to be too long about it, any more than he was, a few months were enough for him. He found fault with her manners, with her speech, her dress, her everything, all which he had right perhaps to do, but should have used it earlier. And she, although not born to the noble privilege of weariness, had been an old man's darling and could not put up with harshness. From words they came to worse until he struck her, told her of her shame, or rather his own infamy, and left her among strangers helpless, helpless, penniless, and broken-hearted to endure the consequence. There and thus I saw the light beneath most noble auspices, but I need not go on with all that. As long as human rules remain, this happy tale will always be repeated with immense applause. My mother's love was turned to bitter hatred of his lordship, and, when her father died from grief, to eager thirst for revenge, and for this purpose I was born. You see that, for a bastard I have been fairly educated, but not a farthing did his lordship ever pay for that, or even to support his casual. My grandfather Hoyle left his little all to his daughter Winifred, and upon that, and my mother's toil and mine, we have kept alive. Losing sight of my mother gladly, for she was full of pride, and hoped no more to trouble him, after getting her father's property, he married again, or rather he married for the first time without perjury, which enables the man to escape from it. She was of his own rank, as you know, the daughter of an earl, and not of a farmer. It would not have been safe to mock her, would it? And there was no temptation. The history of my mother and myself does not concern you. Such people are of no account till they grow dangerous to the great. We lived in cheap places and wandered about, caring for no one, and cared for by the same. Mrs. Hoyle and Thomas Hoyle we called ourselves when we wanted names, and I did not even know the story of our wrongs till the heat and fury of youth were passed. Both for her own sake and mine my mother concealed it from me. Pride and habit perhaps had dulled her just desire for vengeance, and, knowing what I was, she feared the thing which has befallen me. But when I was close upon thirty years old and my mother eight and forty, for she was betrayed in her teens, a sudden illness seized her. Believing her death to be near, she told me, as calmly as possible, everything, with all those large, quiet views of the past, which, at such a time, seemed the regular thing, but make the wrong tenfold blacker. She did not die. If she had, it might have been better for both her and me, and many other people. Are you tired of my tale, or do you want to hear the rest? You cannot be asking me an earnest, I replied, while I watched his wild eyes carefully. Tell me the rest, if you are not afraid, afraid indeed. Then for want of that proper tendance and comfort which a few pounds would have brought her, although she survived, she survived as a wreck, the mere relic and ruin of her poor unhappy self. I sank my pride for her sake, and even dain to write him, in rank and wealth so far above me, and in everything else such a clot without my heel. He did the most arrogant thing a snob can do. He never answered my letter. I scraped together a little money, and made my way to England, and came to that house, which you now call yours, and bearded that noble nobleman, that father to be so proud of. He was getting on now in years, and growing perhaps a little nervous, and my first appearance scared him. He got no abesience from me, you may be certain, but I still did not revile him. I told him my mother's estate of mind, and the great care she required and demanded that, in common justice he, having brought her to this, should help her. But nothing would he promise, not a six pence even, in the way of regular allowance. Anything of that sort could only be arranged by means of his solicitors. He had so expensive a son, and with a very large and growing family, that he could not be pledged to any yearly sum. But, if I would take a draft for a hundred pounds, and sign an acquaintance in full of all claims, I might have it upon proving my identity. Ha! What identity had I to prove? He had taken good care of that. I turned my back on him and left the house, without even asking for his curse, though as precious as a good man's blessing. Twas a wild and windy night, but with a bright moon rising, and going across this park, or whatever it is called, I met my brother. At the crest of a road we met face to face with the moon across our foreheads. We had never met till now, and never heard of one another. At least he had never heard of me. He started back, as if at his own ghost. But I had nothing to be startled at in this world or the other. I made his acquaintance, with deference, of course, and we got on very well together. At one time it seemed good luck for him to have an illegitimate kindred, for I saved his life when he was tangled in the weeds of this river while bathing. You owe me no thanks. I thought twice about it, and if the name would have ended with him I would never have used my basket-knife. By trade I am a basket-maker, like many another love-child. However, he was grateful. If ever anybody was, for I ran some risk in doing it, and he always did his very best for me and encouraged me to visit him. Not at his home, of course, that would never do. But when he was with his regiment, short of money as he always was, though his father's nature and his own, which in some points were very the opposite, he was even desirous to give me some of that. But I never took a farthing from him. If I had it at all, I would have had it from the proper one, and from him I resolved to have it. How terrified you look! I am coming to it now. Are you sure that you can bear it? It is nothing very harrowing, but still, young ladies. Ah, I feel a little faint, I could not help saying, but that is nothing. I must hear the whole of it, please to go on without minding me. For my own sake I will not, as well as for yours. I cannot have you fainting and bringing people here. Go to the house and take food and recover your strength, and then come again here. I promise to be here, and your father's daughter will not take advantage of my kindness. Though his eyes were very fierce, instead of being sad, and full of strange, tempetuous light, they bore some likeness to my father's, and inserted power over me. Reluctant as I was, I obeyed this man and left him there, and went slowly to the house, walking as if in a troubled dream. End of Chapter 51 Chapter 52 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. Erema by R. D. Blackmore Chapter 52 For Life, Death Upon my return I saw nothing for a time but fans and feathers of browning fern, dark shags of ling, and potted spurs of broom and furs, and wisps of grass. With great relief, of which I felt ashamed while even breathing it, I thought that the man was afraid to tell the rest of his story, and had fled. But ere my cowardice had much time for self-congratulation, a tall figure rose from the ground, and fear compelled me into courage. For throughout this long interview, more and more I felt an extremely unpleasant conviction. That stranger might not be a downright madman, nor what is even called a lunatic, but still it was clear that upon certain points, the laws of this country, for instance, and the value of rank and station, his opinions were so outrageous that his reason must be affected. And even without such proof as these, his eyes and manner were quite enough. Therefore I had need of no small caution, not only concerning my words and gestures, but as to my looks and even thoughts, for he seemed to divine these last as quickly as they flashed across me. I never had learned to conceal my thoughts, and this first lesson was an awkward one. I hope you are better, he said, as kindly as it was possible for him to speak. Now have no fear of me. Once more I tell you I will not sham any admiration, affection, or anything of that kind, but as for harming you, why your father was almost the only kind heart I ever met. Then why did you say the most vile man to fetch me, when my father was dead in the desert? I never did anything of the sort. It was done in my name, but not by me. I never even heard of it until long after, and I have a score to settle with the man who did it. But Mr. Goad told me himself that you came, and said you were the true Lord Castlewood, and ordered him at once to America. I never saw truth more plainly stamped on a new situation, the face of a rogue. Then I saw it then on the face of Mr. Goad. You are quite right. He spoke the truth to the utmost of his knowledge. I never saw Goad, and he never saw me. I never even dreamed of pretending to the title. I was personated by a mean, low friend of Sir Montague Hawken, faceborn as I am. I would never stoop to such a trick. You will find out the meaning of that by and by. I have taken the law into my own hands. It is the only way to work such laws. I have committed what is called a crime. But compared with Sir Montague Hawken, I am wider than Yonder Shearling on his way to the river for his evening drink. I gazed at his face, and could well believe it. The setting sun shone upon his chin and forehead. Good, resolute, well-marked features. His nose and mouth were keen and clear, his cheeks curt and pale. Though they would have been better for being a trifle cleaner. There was nothing suggestive of falsehood or fraud, and but for the wildness of his eyes and flashes of cold ferocity, it might have been called a handsome face. Very well, he began again, with one of those jerks which had frightened me. Your father was kind to me. Very kind indeed. But he knew the old Lord too well to attempt to interpose on my behalf. On the other hand he gave no warning of my manifest resolve. Perhaps he thought it a woman's threat. And me no better than a woman? And partly for his sake, no doubt. Though mainly for my mother's I made the short work which I made. For he was horribly straightened, and in his free lightway he told me so by his hard curmudgeon of a father. To that man, hopeless as he was, I gave fair grace, however, and plenty of openings for repentance. None of them would he embrace, and he thought scorn of my lenity. And I might have gone on with such weakness longer, if I had not heard that his coach and four was ordered for the moon stuck in. That he should dare thus to pollute the spot where he had so foresworn himself. I resolved that there he should pay justice, either with his wife or death. And I went to your father's place to tell him to prepare for disturbances. But he was gone to see his wife. And I simply borrowed a pistol. Now you need not be at all afraid or shrink away from me like that. I was bound upon stricter justice than any judge sets forth on circuit, and meant to give, and did give, what no judge affords to the guilty, the chance of leading a better life. I had brought my mother to England, and she was in a poor place in London. Her mind was failing more and more, and reverting to her, love-time, the one short happiness of her life. If I could but see him, if I could but see him, and show him his tall and clever son, he would forgive me all my sin in thinking ever to be his wife. Oh, Thomas, I was too young to know it. If I could but see him once, just once. How all this drove me no tongue can tell. But I never let her know it. I only said, Mother, he shall come and see you if he ever sees anybody more. And she trusted me and was satisfied. She only said, Take my picture, Thomas, to remind him of the happy time and his pledge to me inside of it. And she gave me what she had kept for years in a bag of chamois leather, the case of which I spoke before, which even in our hardest times she would never send to the pawnshop. The rest is simple enough. I swore by the God or the Devil who made me that this black-hearted man should yield either his arrogance or his life. I followed him to the Moon Valley, and fate ordained that I should meet him where he foreswore himself to my mother on that very plank where he had breathed his deadly lives. He breathed his last. Would you like to hear all about it? For answer I only bowed my head. His calm, methodical way of telling his tale like a common adventure with a dog was more shocking than any fury. Then it was this. I watched him from the Moon Stock Inn to a house in the village where he dined with company. And I did not know that it was the house of his son, your father. So great a gulf is fixed between legitimate and the bastard. He had crossed the wooden bridge in going and was sure to cross it in coming back. How he could tread those planks without contrition and horror. But never mind. I resolved to bring him to a quiet parley there, and I waited in the valley. The night was soft and dark in patches where the land or wood closed in, and the stream was brown and through no light, though the moon was on the uplands. Time and place alike were fit for our little explanation. The path wound down the meadow toward me, and I knew he must come. My firm intention was to spare him, if he gave me a chance of it, but he never had the manners to do that. Here I waited with the cold leaves fluttering about me until I heard a firm, slow step coming down the narrow path. Then a figure appeared in a stripe of moonlight and stopped and rested on a staff. Perhaps his lordship's mind went back to some five and thirty years, to times when he told pretty stories here, and perhaps he laughed to himself to think how well he had got out of it. Whatever his meditations were, I let him have them out and waited. If he had even sighed, I might have felt more kindness toward him, but he only gave something between a cough and a grunt, and I clearly heard him say, gout to-morrow what the devil did I drink port wine for. He struck the ground with his stick and came onward, thinking far more of his feet than heart. Then, as he planted one foot gingerly on the timber and stayed himself, I leaped along the bridge and met him, and without a word looked at him. The moon was topping the crest of the hills and threw my shadow upon him, the last that ever fell upon his body to its knowledge. Fellow, out of the way, he cried, with a most commanding voice and air, though only too well he knew me and my wrath against him began to rise. You pass not here, and you never make another live step on this earth, I said, as calmly now as I speak, unless you obey my orders. He saw his peril, but he had courage, perhaps his only virtue. Full, whoever you are, he shouted, that his voice might fetch him help. None of these moons struck ways with me, if you want to rob me, try it. You know too well who I am, I answered, as he made to push me back. Lord Castlewood, here you have the choice, to lick the dust or be dust. Here you foreswore yourself, here you pay for perjury. On this plank you knelt to poor Winifred Hoyle, whom you ruined and cast by, and now on this plank you shall kneel to her son and swear to obey him, or else you die. In spite of all his pride he trembled, as if I had been death himself, instead of his own dear eldest son. What do you want? As he asked he laid one hand on the rickety rail and shook it, and the dark old tree behind him shook. How much will satisfy you? Miser, none of your money for us. It is too late for your half-prounds. We must have a little of what you have grudged, having none to spare, your honor. My demands are simple and only two. My mother is full enough to yearn for one more sight of your false face. You will come with me and see her. And if I yield to that, what next? The next thing is a trifle to a nobleman like you. Here I have in this blue trinket false gems and false gold, of course, your solemn signature to a lie. At the foot of that you will have the truth to write. I am a perjured liar and proudly sign it, Castle Wood, in the presence of two witnesses. This cannot hurt your feelings much, and it need not be expensive. Fury flashed in his bright old eyes, but he strove to check its outbreak. The gleaning of life after three score years was better in such lordly fields than the whole of the harvest we got. He knew that I had him all to myself to indulge my filial affection. You have been the misled. You have never heard the truth. You have only heard your mother's story. Allow me to go back and sit in a dry place. I am tired and no longer young. You are bound to hear my tale as well. I passed a dry stump just now. I will go back. There is no fear of interruption. My lord was talking against time. From this bridge you do not budge until you have gone on your knees and sworn what I shall dictate to you. This time it shall be no perjury. Here I hold your cursed pledge. He struck at me or at the locket, no matter which, but it flew away. My right arm was crippled by this heavy stick, but I am left-handed as a bastard should be. From my left hand he took his death and I threw the pistol after him. Such love he had earned from his love-child. Thomas Castlewood, or Hoyle, or whatever else his name was, here broke off from his miserable words and forgetting all about my presence, set his gloomy eyes on the ground. Lightly he might try to speak, but there was no lightness in his mind, and no spark of light in his poor, dead soul. Being so young and unacquainted with the turns of life-worn mind I was afraid to say a word except to myself, and to myself I only said, The man is mad, poor fellow, and no wonder. The sun was setting not upon the vast Pacific from desert heights, but over the quiet hills and through the soft valleys of tame England, and different as the whole scene was, a certain other sad and fearful sunset lay before me. The fall of night upon my dying father and his helpless child, the hour of anguish and despair, here at last was the cause of all laid horribly before me, and the pity deeply moving me passed into cold abhorrence, but the man was lost in his own visions. So, in your savage wrath, I said, you killed your own father, and in your fright left mine to bear the brunt of it. He raised his dark eyes heavily, and his thoughts were far astray from mine. He did not know what I had said, though he knew that I had spoken. The labour of calling to mind and telling his treatment of his father had worked upon him so much that he could not freely shift attention. I came for something, something that can be only had from you, he said, and only since your cousin's death, and something most important. But will you believe me? It is wholly gone, gone from mind and memory. I am not surprised at that, I answered, looking at his large, wan face. And while I did so, losing half my horror in strange sadness, whatever it is I will do it for you, only let my know by post. I see what you mean, not to come any more. You are right about that for certain, but your father was good to me, and I loved him, though I had no right to love anyone. My letter will show that I wronged him never. The weight of the world is off my mind, since I have told you everything. You can send me to the gallows if you think fit, but leave it till my mother dies. Goodbye, poor child, I have spoiled your life. But only by chance consequence, not in murder birth, as I was born. Before I could answer or call him back, even if I wished to do so, he was far away, with his long, quiet stride, and like his life, his shadow fell, chilling, somber, cast away. End of Chapter 52 Chapter 53 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. Arema by R. D. Blackmore Chapter 53 Runce Defiant Thus at last by no direct exertion of my own, but by turn after turn of things to which I blindly gave my little help, the mystery of my life was solved. Many things yet remain to be fetched up to focus and seem round, but the point of points was settled. Of all concerned, my father alone stood blameless and heroic. What tears of shame and pride I shed, for having ever doubted him, not doubting his innocence of the crime itself, but his motives for taking it upon him. I had been mean enough to dream that my dear father outraged justice to conceal his own base birth. That ever such thought should have entered my mind may not make me charitable to the wicked thoughts of the world at large, but, at any rate, it ought to do so. And the man in question, my own father, who had starved himself to save me. Better I had been the most illegal child ever issued into this cold world than dare to think of my father so, and then find him the model of everything. To hide the perjury, avarice, and cowardice of his father, and to appease the bitter wrong, he had even bowed to take the dark suspicion on himself, until his wronged and half sane brother, to whom moreover he owed his life, should have time to fly from England, no doubt he blamed himself as much as he condemned the wretched criminal, because he had left his father so long unwarned and so unguarded, and had thoughtlessly used light words about him, which fell not lightly on a stern, distimpered mind. Hence, perhaps, the exclamation which had told against him so, and then when he broke jail, which also told against him terribly, to revisit his shattered home, it is likely enough that he meant after that to declare the truth, and stand his trial as a man should do. But his wife, perhaps in her poor weak state, could not endure the thought of it, knowing how often jury is injury, and seeing all the weight against him, she naturally pledged him to pursue his flight for her sake, until she could be better able to endure his trial, and until he should have more than his own pure word and character to show. And probably if he had then been tried with so many things against him, and no production of that poor brother, his tale would have seemed but flimsy invention, and guilty would have been the verdict. And they could not know that in such a case the guilty man would have come forward, as we shall see that he meant to do. When my father heard of his dear wife's death, and believed no doubt that I was buried with the rest, the gloom of a broken and faded man like polar night settled down on him. What matter to him about public opinion or anything else in the world just now? The sins of his father were on his head. Let them rest there, rather than be trumpeted by him. He had nothing to care for. Let him wonder about. And so he did for several years, until I became a treasure to him. For parental is not intrinsic value, and then for my sake, as now appeared, he betook us both to a large kind land. Resolving these things sadly, and a great many more which need not be told, I thought it my duty to go as soon as possible to Brunsey and tell my good and faithful friends what I was loath to write about. There, moreover, I could obtain what I wanted to confirm me, the opinion of an upright, law-abiding, honorable man about the course I proposed to take. And there I might hear something more as to a thing which had troubled me much, in the deepest of my own troubles. The melancholy plight of dear Uncle Sam. Wild and absurd as it may appear to people of no gratitude, my heart was set upon faring forth in search of the noble Sawyer, if only it could be reconciled with my duty here in England. That such a proceeding would avail but little, seemed now, alas, too manifest, but a plea of that kind generally means that we have no mind to do a thing. Be that as it will, I made what my dear Yankees, to use the major's impertinent phrase, called straight tracks, for that ancient and obsolete town, rejuvenized now by its senor. The cause of my good friend's silence, not to use that affected word reticence, was quite unknown to me and disturbed my spirit with futile guesses. Resolute, therefore, to pierce the bottom of every surviving mystery I made claim upon Mr. Stixon, Jr., as Stixon's boy had now vindicated his right to be called, up to suppertime, and he with high chivalry responded. Not yet was he wedded to Miss Polly Hopkins, the daughter of the pickled pork man. Otherwise, would he or could he have made telegraphic blush at the word brunfsey? And would he have been quite so eager to come? Such things are trifling compared to our own, which naturally fill the universe. I was bound to be a great lady now and patronize and regulate and drill all the doings of nature, so I durst not even ask, though desiring much to do so, how young Mr. Stixon was getting on with his delightful Polly. And his father, as soon as he found me turned into the mistress, and quote his lady, unquote, as he would have me called then forth whether or no on my part. Not another word would he tell me of the household sentiments, politics, or romances. It would have been thought a thing beneath me to put any nice little questions now. And I was obliged to take up the tone which others used toward me. But all the while I longed for freedom, Uncle Sam, Suat Isco, and even Martin of the Mill. Law business, however, and other hindrances kept me from starting at once for brunsey, impatient as I was to do so. Indeed it was not until the morning of the last Saturday in November that I was able to get away. The weather had turned to too much rain, I remember, with two or three tempestuous nights, and the woods were almost bare of leaves and the Thames looked brown and violent. In the fly from Newport to Brunsey I heard great rollers thundering heavily upon the steep bar of shingle, and such a lake of water shown in the old bed of the river that I quite believed at first that the Major had carried out his grand idea, and brought the river back again. But the flyman shook his head and looked very serious, and told me that he feared bad times were coming. What I saw was the work of the Lord in heaven, and no man could prevail against it. He had always said, through no concern of his, for he belonged to Newport, that even a British officer could not fly in the face of the Lord Almighty. He himself had a brother on the works, regular employed and drawing good money, and proud enough about it, and the times he had told him across a pint of ale, how some ever, our place was to hope for the best. But the top of the springs was not come yet, and a pilot out of Newport told him the water was making uncommon strong, but he did hope the wind had nigh blowed itself out. If not they would have to look blessed sharp to-morrow. He had heard say that in time of Queen Elizabeth's sixth score of houses was washed clean away, and the river itself knocked right into the sea, and a thing as had been done once might just come to pass again. Though folk was also clever now, they thought they were above it. But, for all that their grandfather's goggles might fit them. But here we was in Brunsey town, and, bless his old eyes, yes, if I pleased to look along his whip I might see ancient pilot come. He did believe to warn of them. Following his guidance I described a stout old man in a sailor's dress, weatherproof hat and long boots, standing on a low seawall, and holding vehement converse with some Brunsey boatmen and fishermen who were sprawling on the stones as usual. Driver, you know him, take the lower road, I said, and ask what his opinion is. No need to ask him, the flyman answered. All banks would never be here, miss, if he was of two opinions. He hath come to fetch his daughter out of harm. I doubt the wife of that there bishop Jim, they call him, the chap with two nails to his thumb, you know. Would you like to hear how they all take it, miss? With these words he turned to her the right, and drove into major Hawkins, quote, sea parade, unquote. There we stopped to hear what was going on, and it proved to be well worth our attention. The old pilot perhaps had exhausted reason, and now was beginning to give way to wrath. The afternoon was deepening fast, with heavy gray clouds lowering, showing no definite edge, but streaked with hazy lines and spotted by some little murky blurs or blots, like tarpots carried slowly. Hath Noah's ark ever told a lie? The ancient pilot shouted, pointing with one hand at these, and with clenched fists at the sea, from whence came puffs of sullen air, and turned his gray locks backward. Mackerel sky when the sun got up, Mermaidon's eggs at noon, and now a four sunset, Noah's arcs. Any of them brew with a gale of wind, and the three of them bodes a tempest. At the top of the springs of the year, Tamara, are you daft, or all gone upon the spree, my man? Your father's what a node what the new moon meant. Is this all that cometh out of learning to read? Have a pinch of back, old man, said one, to help you're off with that stiff reel. What consarn can it be a yarn? Don't you be put out, mate, cried another. Never came see as could top that bar and never will in art of time. Go and caulk your old leaky craft, Master Banks. We have rode out a good many gales without seeking profit from Newport, a place never heared on when this old town was made. Come and wet your old whistle at the hawken arms, Banks. You must want it after that long pipe. Hawken arms indeed, the pilot answered, turning away in a rage from them. What hawken arms will there be this time, Tamara? Hawken legs wanted more likely, and hawken wings. And you poor grin and ninnies. As ought to have four legs, you'll be praying that ye had them tomorrow. However, ye've had warning, and ye can't blame me. The power of the Lord is in the air and the sea. Is this the sort of stuff ye trust in? He set one foot against our major's wall, an action scarcely honest while it was so green, and, coming from a hail and very thick-set man, the contemptuous push set out a fathom of it outward. Rattle, rattle went the new patent concrete, starting up the lazy-painted fellas down below. You'll try the walls of a jail, cried one. You'll go to know his ark, shouted another. The rest bade him go to a place much worse. But he buttoned his jacket in disdain and marched away, without spoiling the effect by any more weak words. Right you are, cried my flyman. Right you are, Master Banks. Them lovers will sing another song to Mara. Gee up, old Haas, then. All this and the ominous scowl of the sky and the menacing war of the sea, already crowding with black rollers, disturbed me so that I could say nothing. Until, at the corner of the grand new hotel, we met Major Hawken himself, attired in a workman's loose jacket and carrying a shovel. He was covered with mud and dried flakes of froth. And even his short, white whiskers were encrusted with sparkles of brine. But his face was ruddy and smiling, and his manner as hardy as ever. You hear, Erema! Oh, beg pardon, barren as castle would, if you please. My dear, again I congratulate you. You have as little cause to do that, as I fear I can find in your case. You have no news for me from America? How sad! But what a poor plight you yourself are in! Not a bit of it. At first sight you might think so, and we certainly have had a very busy time. Send back the fly. Leave your bag at our hotel. Porter, be quick with Lady Castlewood's luggage. One piece of luck befalls me, to receive so often this beautiful hand. What a lot of young fellows now would die of envy! I am glad that you can still talk nonsense, I said, for I truly was frightened at this great lake, and so many of your houses even standing in the water. It will do them good. It will settle the foundations and crystallize the mortar. They will look twice as well when they come out again, and never have rats or black beetles. We were foolish enough to be frightened at first, and there may have been a danger a fortnight ago. But since that tide we have worked day and night and everything is now so stable that fear is simply ridiculous. On the whole it has been a most excellent thing, quite the making, in fact, of Brunsey. Then Brunsey must be made of water, I replied, gazing sadly at the gulf which parted us from the sea parade, the lyceum, the baz, the bastion promenade, and so on, beyond all which the streaky turmoil and misty scud of the waves were seen. Made of beer more likely, he retorted with a laugh, if my fellows work like horses, which they did, they also drank like fishes. Their mouths were so dry with the pickle, they said, but the total abstainers were the worst, being out of practice with the can. However, let us make no complaints. We ought to be truly thankful, and I shall miss the exercise. That is why you have heard so little from me. You see the position at a glance. I never have been to Paris at all, Erema. I have not rubbed up against Parle-Vue, with a blast from Mr. Bellows. I was stopped by a telegram about this job. A cry or illium. I had some Latin once, quite enough for the House of Commons, but it all oozed out at my elbows. And two ladies, by some superstition, it is rude, though they treat us too bad French enough. Never mind. What I want to say is this, that I have done nothing but respected your sad trouble, for you took a wild fancy to that poor bedridden, who never did you a stroke of good except about Cosmopolitan Jack, and whose removal has come at the very nick of time. For what could you have done for money with the Yankees cutting each other's throats and your nugget quite sure to be annexed, or at the very best, squared up in greenbacks? You ought not to speak so major Hawkin. If all of your plans were not under water, I should be quite put out with you. My cousin was not bedridden. Neither was he at all incapable as you have called him once or twice. He was an infinitely superior man too, to what one generally sees, and when you have heard what I have to tell, in his place you would have done just as he did. And as for money and happy release, as the people who never wanted for themselves express it, such words simply sicken me at great times they are so sordid. What is there in this world that is not sordid, to the young in one sense and to the old in another? Major Hawkin so seldom spoke in this didactic way and I was so unable to make it out that, having expected some tiff on his part at my juvenile arrogance, I was just in the mold for a deep impression from sudden stamp of philosophy. I had nothing to say in reply and he went up in my opinion greatly. He knew it, and he said with touching kindness, Irama, come and see your dear Aunt Mary. She has had an attack of rheumatic gout in her thimble finger, and her maids have worried her out of her life. And by far the most brilliant of her cocks, worth twenty pounds they tell me, breathed his last on Sunday night with gapes or a croop or something. That is why you have not heard again from her. I have been in trenches day and night stoning out the sea with his own stones, by a new form of concrete discovered by myself. And unless I am very much mistaken, in fact I do not hesitate to say. But such things are not in your line at all. Let us go up to the house, our job is done, and I think Master Neptune may pound the way in vain. I have got a new range in the kitchen now, partly of my own invention. You can roast or bake or steam or stew or frizzle commoms, all by turning a screw. And not only that, but you can keep things hot, piping hot, and ripening as it were, better than when they were first done. Instead of any burned iron taste or scum on the gravy or clottiness, they mellow by waiting and make their own sauce. If ever I have time, I shall patent this invention. Why, you may burn brick dust in it. Bath, brick, hearthstone, or potcherns, at any hour of the day or night while the sea is in this condition. I may only want my dinner, so there we have it. We say grace immediately, and down we sit. Let us not take it by surprise if it can be taken so. Up through my chief drive, instant-er, I think that I scarcely have felt more hungry. The thought of that range always sets me off, and one of its countless beauties is the noble juicy fragrance. Major Hawkins certainly possessed the art, so meritorious and a host of making people hungry, and we mounted the hill with alacrity, after passing his letterbox, which reminded me of the mysterious lady he pointed to, quote, desolate whole, and quote, as he called it, and said that he believed she was still there, though she never came out now to watch their house. And a man of dark and repelling aspect had been seen once or twice by his workmen during the time of their night relays, rapidly walking toward desolate whole, how anyone could live in such a place with the roar and the spray of the sea as it had been at the very door and through the windows. Some people might understand, but not the major. Good Mrs. Hawkins received me with her usual warmth and kindness, and scolded me for having failed to write more to her, as all people seem to do when conscious of having neglected that duty themselves. Then she showed me her thimble finger, which certainly was a little swollen, and then she poured forth her gratitude for her many blessings, as she always did after any little piece of grumbling. And I told her that if at her age I were only as quarter as pleasant and sweet of temper, I should consider myself a blessing to any man. After dinner my host produced the locket, which he had kept for the purpose of showing it to the artist's son in Paris, and which he admired so intensely, that I wish it were mine to bestow upon him, then I told him that through a thing wholly unexpected, the confession of the criminal himself, no journey to Paris was neededful now. I repeated that strange and gloomy tale to the loud accompaniment of a rising wind and roaring sea, while both my friends listened intently. Now, what could have led him to come to you, they asked, and what do you mean to do about it? He came to me no doubt to propose some bargain, which could not be made in my cousin's lifetime. But the telling of his tale made him feel so strange that he really could not remember what it was. As to what I am to do, I must beg for your opinion, such a case is beyond my decision. Mrs. Hawken began to reply but stopped, looking dutifully at her lord. There is no doubt what you are bound to do, at least in one way, the major said. You are a British subject, I suppose, and you must obey the laws of the country. A man has confessed to you a murder, no matter whether it was committed twenty years ago or two minutes, no matter whether it was savage cold blooded premeditated crime or whether there were things to palliate it. Your course is the same, you must hand him over, in fact you ought never to have let him go. How could I help it? I pleaded with surprise. It was impossible for me to hold him. Then you should have shot him with his own pistol. He offered it to you. You should have grasped it, pointed in his heart, and told him that he was a dead man if he stirred. Aunt Mary, would you have done that, I asked? Is it so easy to talk of fine things? But in the first place I had no wish to stop him. And in the next I could not if I had. My dear Mrs. Hocken replied, perceiving my distress at this view of the subject, I should have done exactly what you did, if the laws of this country ordain that women are to carry them out against great strong men who, after all, have been sadly injured, why it proves that women ought to make the laws which, to my mind, is simply ridiculous. End of Chapter 53 Chapter 54 of Erema 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, Erema by R. D. Blackmore, Chapter 54, Brunsey Defeated Little sleep had I that night. Such conflict was in my mind about the proper thing to be done next, and such a war of the wind outside, above and between the distant uproar of the long tumultuous sea. Of that sound much was intercepted by the dead bulk of the cliff, but the wind swung fiercely over this and rattled through all shelter. In the morning the storm was furious, but the major declared that his weather-glass had turned, which proved that the gale was breaking. The top of the tide would be at one o'clock, and after church we should behold a sight he was rather proud of, the impotent wrath of the wind and tide against his patent-concrete. My dear, I scarcely like such talk, Mrs. Hawken gently interposed. To me it seems almost defiant of the power of the Lord. Remember what happened to poor Smeaton? At least I think his name was Smeaton or Stanley was it, but I dare say you know best. He defied the strength of the Lord like the people at the mouth of their tent, and he was swallowed up. Mary, my dear, get your prayer-book. Raspersfly is waiting for us, and the parson has no manners. When he drops off I present to the living, and I am not at all sure that I shall let George have it. He has fond of possessions and all that stuff. The only possession in the Church of England is that of the Lord of the Manor to his pew. I will be the master in my own church. Oh, of course, dear, of course. So you ought to be. It was always so in my father's parish, but you must not speak so of our poor George. He may be high church, as they call it, but he knows what is due to his family, and he has a large one coming. We set off hastily for the Church, through blasts of rain and buffets of wind, which threatened to overturn the cab, and the seaward window was white as in a snowstorm with pellets of froth and the drift of sea-scrud. I tried to look out, but the blur and the dash obscured the sight of everything, and though in this lower road we were partially sheltered by the pebble ridge the driver was several times obliged to pull his poor horse up and face the wind for fear of R being blown over. That ancient church, with its red tile and spire, stands well up in the good old town at the head of a street whose principal object now certainly is to lead to it. Three hundred years ago that street had business of its own to think of, and was brave perhaps with fine men and maids at the time of the Spanish Armada. Its only bravery now was the good old church, and some queer gables and a crypt, which was true to itself by being buried up to the spandals, and one or two corners where saints used to stand, until they were pelted out of them, and where fisher like men in the lodging season stand selling fish caught at Billingsgate. But to Bruncie itself the great glory of that street was rather of hope than of memory. Baleif Hopkins had taken out three lattice windows and put in one grand one of plate glass with finishing blinds all barnished, and even on a Sunday morning Bruncie wanted to know whatever the Baleif was at behind them. Some said that he did all his pickling on a Sunday, and by putting up spectacle glass he had challenged the oldest inhabitant to come and try his focus. Despite all the rattle and roar of the wind we went on in church as usual. The vicar had a stout young curate from Durham who could out shout any tempest with a good stone wall between them, and the Bruncie folk were a thicker constitution than to care an old hat for the weather. Whatever was sent by the Lord they took with a grumble but no excitement. The clock in front of the galley told the time of day as five minutes to twelve when the vicar, a pleasant old-fashioned man, pronounced his text, which he always did thrice over to make a sure of it. And then he hitched up his old black gown and directed his gates at the Lord of the Manor to impress the whole church with authority. Major Hawken acknowledged in the proper manner this courtesy of the minister by rubbing up his crest and looking even more wide awake than usual, whereas Aunt Mary, whose kind heart longed to see her own son in that pulpit, calmly settled back her shoulders and arranged her head and eyes so well as to seem at a distance in wrapped attention while having a nice little dream of her own. But suddenly all was broken up. The Sexton, whose license is warden of the church and even whose duty it was to hear the sermon only fitfully from the tower arch while he watched the boys and sniffed the bakehouse of his own dinner. To the consternation of everybody this faithful man ran up the nave with his hands above his head and shouted, all brownsy be a wash, a wash, sounding it so as to rhyme with lash. The Zee, the Zee be all over us. The clergyman in the pulpit turned and looked through a window behind him while all the congregation rose. It is too true the preacher cried. The sea is in over the bank, my friends. Every man must rush to his own home. The blessing of the Lord be on you through his fearful visitation. He had no time to say more, and we thought it very brave of him to save that, for his own home was in the lower village, and there he had wife and children sick. In half a minute the church was empty, and the street below it full of people striving and struggling against the blast and breasting it at an incline like swimmers, but beaten back ever in a naan and hurled against one another with tattered umbrellas, hats gone, and bonnets hanging. And among them like gulls before the wind, blew dollops of spray and chunks of froth, and every now and then a slate or pantile. Oh, this was so bad that scarcely anybody found power to speak, to think, or to see. The major did his very best to lead us, but by no means could manage it. And I screamed into his soundest ear to pull Aunt Mary into some dry house, for she could not face such buffeting, and to let me fare for myself as I might. So we left Mrs. Hawkin in the bailiff's house, though she wanted sadly to come with us, and on we went to behold the worst. And thus by running the bies of the wind and craftfully hugging the corners, we got to the foot of the street at last, and then could go no further. For here was the very sea itself, with furious billows panting. Before us rolled and ran a fearful surf of crested whiteness, torn by the screeching squalls and tossed in clashing tufts and pinnacles. And into these came, sweeping over the shattered chime of shingle, gigantic surges from the outer deep, towering as they crossed the bar, and combing against the skyline, and then rushing onward and driving the huddle of the ponded waves before them. The tide was yet rising, and at every blow the wreck and havoc grew worse and worse. That long sweep of brickwork, the grand promenade, bowed and bulged with wall and window knuckled in and out like waddles. The sea parade was a parade of sea, and a bathing machine wheels upward lay, like a wrecked Noah's ark on the top of the saline-silical calcarius baz. The major stood by me while all his constructions, quote, went by the board, unquote, as they say at sea, and verily everything was at sea. I grieved for him so that it was not the spray alone that put salt drops on my cheeks. And I could not bear to turn and look at his good old weather-beaten face. But he was not the man to brood upon his woes in silence. He might have used nicer language, perhaps, but his inner sense was manful. I don't care a damn, he shouted, so that all the women heard him. I can only say that I am devilish glad that I never let one of those houses. There was a little band of seamen under a shelter of a garden wall, crouching or sitting or standing, or whatever may be the attitude acquired by much voyaging and experience of bad weather, which cannot be solved as to center of gravity, even by the man that does it. And these men were so taken with the major's manifesto, clenched at once and clarified to them by strong, short language, that they gave him a loud hurrah, which flew on the wings of the wind over house tops. So queer and sound as English feeling that now Major Hawkin became in truth what hitherto he was entitled only, the Lord and Master of Brunsey. A boat, a boat, he called out again. We know not who are drowning. The bank still breaks the waves. A stout boat surely could live inside it. Yes, a boat could live well enough in this cockle, though never among them breakers, old barns, the fisherman answered, who used to take us out for whiting. But Lord, bless your honor, all the boats are thumped to pieces, except the honor one, and who can get at her? Before restoring his hands to their proper dwelling place, his pockets, he jerked his thumb toward a long white boat, which we had not seen through the blinding scud, bereft of its brethren or sisters, for all fluctuating things are feminine. That boat survived, in virtue of standing a few feet higher than the rest. But even so, and mounted on the last hump of the pebble ridge, it was rolling and reeling with the stress of wind and the wash of wild water under it. How nobly our lyceum stands, the Major shouted, for anything less than a shout was done. This is the time to try, institutions, I am proud of my foundations. In answer to his words appeared a huge brown surge, a mountain ridge, seething backward at the crest with the spread and weight of onset. This great wave smote all other waves away, or else embodied them, and gathered its height against the poor worn pebble bank and descended. A roar distinct above the universal roar proclaimed it. A crash of conflict shook the earth, and the shattered bank was swallowed in a world of leaping whiteness. When this wild mass dashed onward into the swelling flood before us, there was no sign of lyceum left, but stubs of foundation and a mangled roof rolling over and over like a hen coop. Well, that beats everything I ever saw, exclaimed the gallant Major. What noble timber, what mortis work, no London scamping there, my lads. But what comes here? Why the very thing we wanted. Barns, look alive, my man. Run to your house and get a pair of oars in a bucket. It was the boat, the last surviving boat of all that hailed from Brunsey. That monstrous billow had tossed it up like schoolboy's kite and dropped it whole with an upright keel in the inland sea, though nearly half full of water. Driven on by wind and wave, it labored heavily towards us, and more than once it seemed certain to sink as it broached to and ship seas again, but half a dozen bold fishermen rushed with a rope into the short angry surf to which the polled shingle bank still acted as a powerful breakwater else all Brunsey had collapsed. And they hauled up the boat with a hearty cheer and ran her straight with yo-heave-ho and turned her on her side to drain and then launched her again with a bucket and a man to bail out the rest of the water and a pair of heavy oars brought down by Barns. And nobody knows what other things. Not to steer with, rudder gone, cried one of the men, as the furious gale drove the boat a thwart the street back again. Once another oar, said Barns, what fool I were to bring only two. Here you are, shouted Major Hawkin. One of you can help me pull up this pole. Through a shattered gate they waded into a little garden, which had been the pride of the season at Brunsey, and there from the ground they tore up a pole with a board at the top nailed across it and the following not rare legend, quote, lodging to let inquire within first forefront and backpawlers, end quote. Frustrate thing to steer with, what I never believed you had the sense. So shouted Barns, a rough man, roughened by the stress of storm and fright. Get into starne sheets, if so like it, ye know ye may be useful. I defy you to push off without my sanction. Useful indeed, I am the captain of this boat. All the ground under it is mine. Did you think, you set of salted radicals, that I meant to let you go without me, and all among my own houses? Look, sharp governor, if you has the pluck then, mine we are more likely to be swamp than not. As the boat swung about, Major Hawkin jumped in, and so on the spur of the moment did I. We staggered all about with the heave and the roll, and both of us would have fallen on the planks, or out over, if we had not tumbled, with opposite impetus, into the arms of each other. Then a great wave burst and soaked us both, and we fell into sitting on a slippery seat. Meanwhile two men were tugging at each oar, and Barns himself steering with the signboard, and the head of the boat was kept against the wind and the billows from our breakwater. Some of these seemed resolved, through shorn of depth and height and crossing, to rush all over us and drown us in the washer-woman's drying-ground. By skill and presence of mind our captain Barns foiled all their violence till we got a little shelter from the ruins of the Young Men's Christian Institute. Hold all, cried Barns, only keep her head up, while I look about what there is to do. The sight was a thing to remember, and being on the better side now of the skud, because it was flying away from us, we could make out a great deal more of the trouble which had befallen Brunsey. The stormy fjord which had usurped the ancient track of the river was about a furlong in width and troughed with white waves vaulting over, and the sea rushed through at the bottom as well through scores of yards of petals, as it did in quiet weather even when the tide was brimming. We in the tossing boat with our head to the inrush of the outer sea were just like people sitting upon the floats or rafts of a furious weir. And if any such surge had topped the ridge, such as the one which flung our boat to us, there could be no doubt that we must go down as badly as the major's houses. However, we hoped for the best, and gazed at the desolation inland. Not only the major's great plan, but all the lower line of old Brunsey was knocked to pieces, and lost to knowledge in freaks of wind-lashed waters. Men and women were running about with favorite bits of furniture, or feather beds, or baby's cradles, or whatever they had caught hold of. The butt ends of the three old streets that led down toward the sea-ground were dipped, as if playing seesaw in the surf, as the storm made gangways of them and lighthouses of the lampposts. The old public house at the corner was down, and the waves leaping in at the post office door and wrecking the globes of the chemist. Drift and dash and roar and rush and the devil let loose in the thick of it. My eyes are worn out with it. Take the glass, Erema, and tell us who is next to be washed away. A new set of clothes-props for Mrs. Mangles I paid for the very day I came back from town. With these words the lord of the submarine manor, whose strength of spirit amazed me, offered his pet binocular, which he never went without upon his own domain. And fishermen barns, as we rose and fell, once more saved us from being swamped by his clever way of paddling through a scallop in the stern, with the board about the first floor front to let. The seaman, just keeping way on the boat, sheltered their eyes with their left hands and fixed them on the tumultuous seam. I also gazed to the double glass, which was a very clear one, but none of us saw any human being at present in any peril. Old pilot was right after all, said one, but what a good job as it come middle a day and best of all of a Sunday. I have here to say, replied another, that the like thing come to pass nigh upon 300 years ago. How did you get your things out, Jim Bishop? Jim, the only one of them whose house was in the habit, regarded with a sailor's calmness the entry of the sea through his bedroom window, and was going to favor us with a narrative when one of his mates exclaimed, What do I see, yonder lads? A way beyond the town altogether, seemeth to me like a feller's swimmin'. Miss, will you lend me spyglass? Never seen a double-barreled one before. Can use him with one eye, shut, I suppose? No good that way, Joe, cried barns, with the wink of superior knowledge, for he had often used this binocular. Shut one eye for one barrel stands to reason. Then you shut both for two, my son. Stow that, said the quick-eyed sailor, as he brought the glass to bear in a moment. It is a man in the water's lad and swimmin' to save the witch, I do believe. Bless me, cried the major. How stupid of us! I never once thought of that poor woman. She must be washed out long ago. Pull for your lives, my friends, a guinea piece if you save her. And another one for me, I cried. Whereupon the boat swept round and the tough ash bent, and we rushed into no small danger. For nearly half a mile we had to pass of raging and boisterous water, almost as wild as the open sea itself, at the breeches of the pebble ridge, and the risk of a heavy sea boarding us was fearfully multiplied by having dust across the storm instead of breasting it. Useless and helpless and only in the way, and battered about by wind and sea, so that my sundy dress was become a drag, what folly, what fatuity, what frenzy I might call it, could ever have led me to jump into that boat. I don't know. I only know that I always do it, said my sensible self to its mad sister, as they both shut their eyes at a great white wave. If I possibly survive I will try to know better, but ever from my childhood am I getting into scrapes. The boat labored on with a good many grunts, but not a word from anyone. More than once we were obliged to fetch up as a great billow topped the poor shingle bank, and we took so much water on board that men said afterwards that I'd saved them. I only remember sitting down and working at the bucket with both hands till much of the skin was gone, and my arms in many other places ached. But what was that compared with drowning? At length we were opposite, desolate whole, which was a whole no longer but filled and flooded with the churning whirl and reckless dominance of water. Tufts and tussocks of shattered brush and rolling wreck played round it, and the old gray stone of million windows split the wash like mooring posts. We passed and gazed, but the only sound was the whistling of the tempest, and the only living sight, a seagull, weary of his wings and drowning. No living creature can be there, the major broke our long silence. Land, my friends, if land we may, we risk our own lives for nothing. The men lay back on their oars to fetch the gallant boat to the wind again, when through a great gap in the ruins they saw a sight that startled manhood. At the back of that ruin, on the landward side, on a wall which tottered under them, there were two figures standing, one a tall man urging on, the other a woman shrinking. At a glance, or with a thought, I knew them both. One was Lord Castlewood's first love, the other his son and murderer. Our men shouted with the whole power of their hearts to tell that miserable pair to wait till succor should be brought to them, and the major stood up and waved his hat, and in doing so tumbled back again. I cannot tell. How could I tell in the thick of it? But an idea, or a flit that fancy touched me, and afterward became conviction, that while the man heard us not at all and had no knowledge of us, his mother turned round and saw us all, and faced the storm in preference. Whatever the cause may have been, at least she suddenly changed her attitude. The man had been pointing to the roof, which threatened to fall in a mass upon them, while she had been shuttering back from the depth of eddying waves below her, but now she drew up her poor bent figure and leaned on her son to obey him. Our boat with strong arms laboring for life swept round the old gable of the ruin, but we were compelled to give it a wide berth, as Captain Barn shouted, and then a black squall of terrific wind and hail burst forth. We bowed our heads and drew our bodies to their tightest compass, and every rib of our boat vibrated as a violin does, and the oars were beaten flat and dashed their drip into fringes like a small tooth comb. That great squall was either a whirlwind or the crowning blast of a hurricane. It beat the high waves hollow as if it fell from the sky upon them, and it snapped off one of our oars at the hilt so that two of our men rolled backward, and when we were able to look about again, the whole roof of desolate hole was gone, and little of the walls left standing. And how should we guide our course or even save our lives we knew not? We were compelled to bring up, as best we might, with the boat's head to the sea, and so to keep it by using the steering gear against the surviving oar. As for the people we were come to save, there was no chance whatsoever of approaching them. Even without the mishap of the oar we never could have reached them. And indeed when we first saw them again, they seemed better off than ourselves were, for they were not far from dry land, and the man, a skillful and powerful swimmer, had a short piece of plank which he knew how to use to support his weak companion. Brave fellow, fine fellow, the major cried, little knowing whom he was admiring. See how he keeps up his presence of mind? Such a man as that is worth anything, and he cares more for her than he does for himself. He shall have the society's medal. One more long and strong stroke, my noble friend. Oh, great God, what has befallen him! In horror and pity we gazed. The man had been dashed against something headlong. He whirled round and round in the white water. His legs were thrown up, and we saw no more of him. The woman cast off the plank and tossed her helpless arms in search of him. A shriek ringing far on the billowy shore declared that she had lost him. And then, without a struggle, she clasped her hands, and the merciless water swallowed her. It is all over, cried Major Hawkins, lifting his drenched hat solemnly. The Lord knoweth best he has taken them home. End of chapter 54