CHAPTER XLIV
HERMETICALLY SEALED
The discovery which I have described above (but not half so well asthe miller tells it now) created in my young heart a feeling of reallystrong curiosity. To begin with, how could this valuable thing have gotinto the Moon-stream, and lain there so long, unsought for, or at bestso unskillfully sought for? What connection could it have with thetragic death of my grandfather? Why was that man so tardily come tosearch for it, if he might do so without any body near him? Again,what woman was this whose beauty no water or mud could even manage todisguise? That last was a most disturbing question to one's bodily peaceof mind. And then came another yet more urgent--what was in the insideof this tight case?
That there was something inside of it seemed almost a certainty. Themere value of the trinket, or even the fear that it ever might turnup as evidence, would scarcely have brought that man so often to stirsuspicion by seeking it; though, after so long a time, he well mighthope that suspicion was dead and buried. And being unable to open thiscase--after breaking three good nails over it, and then the point of apenknife--I turned to Master Withypool, who was stamping on the grass todrain himself.
"What sort of a man was that," I asked, "who wanted you to do whatnow you have so kindly done for me? About a month or six weeks ago? Doplease to tell me, as nearly as you can."
If Mrs. Withypool had been there, she might have lost all patience withme for putting long questions so selfishly to a man who had done so muchfor me, and whose clothes were now dripping in a wind which had arisento test his theory of drying. He must have lost a large quantity ofwhat scientific people call "caloric." But never a shiver gave he inexchange.
"Well, miss," he said, "I was thinking a'most of speaking on that verymatter. More particular since you found that little thing, with thepretty lady inside of it. It were borne in on my mind that thissom werethe very thing he were arter."
"No doubt of it," I answered, with far less patience, though beingcomparatively dry. "But what was he like? Was he like this portrait?"
"This picture of the lady? No; I can't say that he were, so much. Theface of a big man he hath, with short black fringes to it. Never showethto my idea any likeliness of a woman. No, no, miss; think you not at allthat you have got him in that blue thing. Though some of their picturesis like men, the way they dress up nowadays."
"I did not mean that it was meant for him; what I mean is, do you seeany sign of family likeness? Any resemblance about the eyes, or mouth,or forehead?"
"Well, now, I don't know but what I might," replied Master Withypool,gazing very hard; "if I was to look at 'un long enough, a' might findsome'at favoring of that tall fellow, I do believe. Indeed, I do believethe more I look, the more I diskivers the image of him."
The good and kind miller's perception of the likeness strengthenedalmost too fast, as if the wish were father to the thought, until I sawclearly how selfish I was in keeping him in that state so long; for Iknew, from what Mrs. Busk had told me, that in spite of all his largeand grand old English sentiments about his clothes, his wife would makehim change them all ere ever she gave him a bit of dinner, and wouldforce him then to take a glass of something hot. So I gave him athousand thanks, though not a thousandth part of what he deserved, andsaw him well on his homeward way before I went back to consider things.
As soon as my landlady was at leisure to come in and talk with me,and as soon as I had told her how things happened, and shown her ourdiscovery, we both of us did the very same thing, and said almost thevery same words. Our act was, with finger and nail and eye, to rime intoevery jot of it; and our words were,
"I am sure there is something inside. If not, it would open sensibly."
In the most senseless and obstinate manner it refused not only to open,but to disclose any thing at all about itself. Whether it ever had beenmeant to open, and if so, where, and by what means; whether, withoutany gift of opening, it might have a hidden thing inside; whether, whenopened by force or skill, it might show something we had no businesswith, or (which would be far worse) nothing at all--good Mrs. Busk andmyself tested, tapped, and felt, and blew, and listened, and tried everypossible overture, and became at last quite put out with it.
"It is all of a piece with the villains that owned it," the postmistressexclaimed at last. "There is no penetrating either it or them. Mostlikely they have made away with this beautiful lady on the cover. Killone, kill fifty, I have heard say. I hope Master Withypool will let outnothing, or evil it will be for you, miss. If I was you, I would carry apistol."
"Now please not to frighten me, Mrs. Busk. I am not very brave at thebest of times, and this has made me so nervous. If I carried a pistol, Ishould shoot myself the very first hour of wearing it. The mere thoughtof it makes me tremble. Oh, why was I ever born, to do man's work?"
"Because, miss, a man would not have done it half so well. When yousaw that villain digging, a man would have rushed out and spoiledall chance. And now what man could have ever found this? Would MasterWithypool ever have emptied the Moon River for a man, do you think? Orcould any man have been down among us all this time, in this jealousplace, without his business being long ago sifted out and scattered overhim? No, no, miss; you must not talk like that--and with me as well tohelp you. The rogues will have reason to wish, I do believe, that theyhad only got a man to deal with."
In this argument there were points which had occurred to me before; butcertainly it is a comfort to have one's own ideas in a doubtful matterreproduced, and perhaps put better, by a mind to which one may have lentthem, perhaps, with a loan all unacknowledged. However, trouble teachescare, and does it so well that the master and the lesson in usage ofwords are now the same; therefore I showed no sign of being suggestedwith my own suggestions, but only asked, quietly, "What am I to do?"
"My dear young lady," Mrs. Busk replied, after stopping some time tothink of it, "my own opinion is, for my part, that you ought to consultsomebody."
"But I am, Mrs. Busk. I am now consulting you."
"Then I think, miss, that this precious case should be taken at once toa jeweler, who can open it without doing any damage, which is more thanwe can do."
"To be sure; I have thought of that," I replied. "But how can thatbe done without arousing curiosity?--without the jeweler seeing itscontents, if indeed it has any? And in that case the matter would be nolonger at our own disposal, as now it is. I have a great mind to splitit with a hammer. What are the diamonds to me?"
"It is not the diamonds, but the picture, miss, that may be mostimportant. And more than that, you might ruin the contents, so as notto make head or tale of them. No, no; it is a risk that must be run; wemust have a jeweler, but not one of this neighborhood."
"Then I shall have to go to London again, and perhaps lose somethingmost important here. Can you think of no other way out of it?"
"No, miss, at present I see nothing else. Unless you will place it allin the hands of the police."
"Constable Jobbins, to wit, or his son! No, thank you, Mrs. Busk, notyet. Surely we are not quite reduced to such a hopeless pass as that. Myfather knew what the police were worth, and so does Betsy, and so doesMajor Hockin. 'Pompous noodles,' the Major calls them, who lay hold ofevery thing by the wrong end."
"Then if he can lay hold of the right end, miss, what better could youdo than consult him?"
I had been thinking of this already, and pride alone debarred me. Thatgentleman's active nature drove him to interfere with other people'sbusiness, even though he had never heard of them; and yet through somestrange reasoning of his own, or blind adoption of public unreason, hehad made me dislike, or at any rate not like, him, until he began toshow signs at last of changing his opinion. And now the question was,had he done that enough for me, without loss of self-respect, to open myheart to him, and seek counsel?
In settling that point the necessity of the case overrode, perhaps, somescruples; in sooth, I had nobody else to go to. What could I do withLord Castlewood? Nothing; all
his desire was to do exactly what myfather would have done: and my father had never done any thing more thanrove and roam his life out. To my mind this was dreadful now, when everynew thing rising round me more and more clearly to my mind establishedwhat I never had doubted--his innocence. Again, what good could I do byseeking Betsy's opinion about it, or that of Mrs. Price, or Stixon, orany other person I could think of? None whatever--and perhaps much harm.Taking all in all, as things turn up, I believed myself to be almostequal to the cleverest of those three in sense, and in courage notinferior. Moreover, a sort of pride--perhaps very small, but notcontemptible--put me against throwing my affairs so much into the handsof servants.
For this idea Uncle Sam, no doubt the most liberal of men, would perhapscondemn me. But still I was not of the grand New World, whose pedigreesare arithmetic (at least with many of its items, though the true UncleSam was the last for that); neither could I come up to the largeness ofuniversal brotherhood. That was not to be expected of a female; and fewthings make a man more angry than for his wife to aspire to it. No suchideas had ever troubled me; I had more important things to think of,or, at any rate, something to be better carried out. And of all thesedesultory thoughts it came that I packed up that odious but very lovelylocket, without further attempt to unriddle it, and persuaded my verygood and clever Mrs. Busk to let me start right early. By so doing Icould have three hours with a good gentleman always in a hurry, and yetreturn for the night to Shoxford, if he should advise me so.
Men and women seem alike to love to have their counsels taken; and theequinox being now gone by, Mrs. Busk was ready to begin before the tardysun was up, who begins to give you short measure at once when he findsthe weights go against him. Mrs. Busk considered not the sun, neitherany of his doings. The time of day was more momentous than any of thesun's proceedings. Railway time was what she had to keep (unless a goodcustomer dropped in), and as for the sun--"clock slow, clock fast," inthe almanacs, showed how he managed things; and if that was not enough,who could trust him to keep time after what he had done upon the dial ofAhaz? Reasoning thus--if reason it was--she packed me off in a fly forthe nearest railway station, and by midday I found the Major laboring onhis ramparts.
After proper salutations, I could not help expressing wonder at therapid rise of things. Houses here and houses there, springing up likechildren's teeth, three or four in a row together, and then a longgap, and then some more. And down the slope a grand hotel, open forrefreshment, though as yet it had no roof on; for the Major, in virtueof his charter, defied all the magistrates to stop him from sellingwhatever was salable on or off the premises. But noblest and grandestof all to look at was the "Bruntsea Athenaeum, Lyceum, Assembly-Rooms,Institution for Mutual Instruction, Christian Young Men's Congress, andSanitary, Saline, Hydropathic Hall, at nominal prices to be had gratis."
"How you do surprise me!" I said to Major Hockin, after reading allthat, which he kindly requested me to do with care; "but where are thepeople to come from?"
"Erema," he replied, as if that question had been asked too often, "youhave not had time to study the laws of political economy--the noblestof noble sciences. The first of incontrovertible facts is that supplycreates demand. Now ask yourself whether there could even be a Yankee ifideas like yours had occurred to Columbus?"
This was beyond me; for I never could argue, and strove to the utmostnot to do so. "You understand those things, and I do not," said I, witha smile, which pleased him. "My dear aunt Mary always says that you arethe cleverest man in the world; and she must know most about it."
"Partiality! partiality!" cried the Major, with a laugh, and pulling hisfront hair up. "Such things pass by me like the idle wind; or rather,perhaps, they sadden me, from my sense of my own deficiencies. But,bless me! dinner must be waiting. Look at that fellow's trowel--heknows: he turns up the point of it like a spoon. They say that he cansmell his dinner two miles off. We all dine at one o'clock now, that Imay rout up every man-Jack of them."
The Major sounded a steam-guard's whistle, and led me off in the rapidlyvanishing wake of his hungry workmen.
Erema; Or, My Father's Sin Page 44
