GOLD, THE INCORRUPTIBLE WITNESS.
Accipe Hoc.
After she had received the promise she desired from her sons--a promise
burdened with so strange a condition--Madam Melcombe seemed to lose all
the keenness and energy she had displayed at first.
She had desired above all things that honour should be shown to her in
her death; her mind often occupied itself with strange interest and
pertinacity on the details of her funeral. All her wishes respecting it
had long been known to her granddaughters, but her eldest surviving son
had never been mentioned by name to them. She always spoke of him as
"the chief mourner."
Suddenly, however, it appeared to have occurred to her that he might not
be present at it, after all. Everything must be risked to ascertain
this. She must write, she must entreat his presence. But when he and his
brother sent in their cards she, for the first time in her life,
perceived that all she had done was useless. She saw the whole meaning
of the situation; for this estate had come to her through the failure of
heirs male to her father, and it was the provision of his will that she
and her heirs should take back his name--the name of Melcombe.
She knew well that these two sons had always retained their father's
name; but when they sent it in to her, she instinctively perceived
their meaning. They were calling her attention to the fact, and she was
sure now that they never meant to change it.
She had not behaved kindly or justly to her grandson's widow, for people
had called little Peter her heir, and she had not contradicted them. But
she had never made a will; and she secretly hoped that at the last
something would occur to prevent her doing so.
Everything was absolutely in her own power, to leave as she pleased; but
a half superstitious feeling prompted her to wait. She wished her eldest
surviving son to inherit the estate; but sad reflection seemed to assure
her that if it simply lapsed to him as heir-at-law, he would think that
next thing to receiving it through a dispensation of Providence; and she
was such an unhappy mother, that she had reason to suppose he might
prefer that to a direct bequest from her. So she left the kindly women
who shared her seclusion entirely unprovided for, and the long services
of her old domestics unrewarded, in order to flatter the supposed
prejudices of this unknown son, who was destined now to show her how
little he cared for all her forethought, and all her respect for his
possible wishes.
This was now over. She felt that she was foiled. She sat, leaning her
chin on the top of her staff, not able to find anything more to say; and
every moment they spent together, the mother and sons became more
painfully embarrassed, more restless and more restrained.
In the meanwhile Peter's mother and aunt, just as unconscious that his
heirship had ever been a doubt, as that it had been secured to him then
and there, sat waiting below, dressed in their best, to receive these
visitors, and press them to partake of a handsome collation that had
been prepared by their mother's order, and was now spread for them with
unwonted state and profusion in the best parlour.
This large room had not been used for forty years; but as it was always
kept with closed shutters, excepting on those days when it received a
thorough and careful cleaning, the furniture was less faded than might
have been expected, and the old leather-backed chairs, ebony cabinets,
and quaint mirrors leaning out from the walls, looked almost as fresh as
ever.
"Only let me get speech of them," the mother had thought, "and all may
yet come right between us; for it's a long time ago, a weary while since
we parted, and they ought to find it easier to forget than I do!" Then
she had charged her grand-daughter, when the lunch was ready, to ring a
bell, and she would send them down. "Or even, mayhap, I may come down
myself," she had added, "leaning on the arm of my son."
So the bell was rung, and Laura and Mrs. Peter Melcombe waited for the
grandmother and her guests with no little trepidation.
They had not intended to be cordial. Their notion of their own part in
this interview was that they should be able to show a certain courteous
coldness, a certain calm gravity in their demeanour towards these two
uncles, but neither of them knew much of the world or of herself. They
no sooner saw the majestic old men come in without their mother than
Laura, feeling herself blush down to her very finger tips, retreated
into the background, and Mrs. Peter Melcombe, suddenly finding that she
had forgotten what she had intended to say, could scarcely collect
enough composure to answer the gentle courtesy of their rather distant
greeting.
A sort of urban polish struck her country sense, making her feel at once
that she was a rustic, and that they belonged to a wider and more
cultivated world. She felt herself at a disadvantage, and was angry with
herself that it should be so, in that house of all places in the world,
where she had every right to hold up her head, and they had surely
reason to be ashamed of themselves.
Peter was the only person present who was at ease; the unwonted joy of
finding himself in the "great parlour" had excited him. He had been
wandering about examining the china vases and admiring the little
rainbows which sunshine struck out from the cut-glass borders of the
mirrors.
He was very well pleased to include the two great-uncles among the new
and interesting objects about him. He came up when called by one of
them, answered a few simple questions with childlike docility, and made
his mother more sure than before that these dignified old men were
treating him, her sister-in-law, and herself, with a certain pathetic
gentleness that was almost condescension.
Indeed, both the ladies perceived this, but they also saw that they
could not play the part their old relation had assigned to them. Such a
handsome collation as it was too, but each, after accepting a biscuit
and a glass of cider (the very finest cider and more than ten years
old), rose as if to take leave. One patted Peter on the head, and the
other ordered the chaise. Neither Laura nor Mrs. Peter Melcombe could
find courage to press them to eat, though their secluded lives and
old-fashioned manners would have made them quite capable of doing so if
they had felt at ease. They looked at one another as the two grand old
men withdrew, and their first words were of the disappointment the
grandmother would feel when she heard that they had hardly eaten
anything at all.
Madam Melcombe, however, asked no questions. She was found by them when
Mr. Mortimer and his brother had withdrawn sitting in her favourite
alcove with her chin resting upon her staff. She was deep in thought,
and excepting that she watched the chaise drearily as it wound down
among the apple and pear trees and was lost to sight, she did not appear
to be thinking of her sons. Nor did she mention them again, excepting
with reference to her funeral.
"He's a fine man," she remarked in a querulous tone; "he'll look grand
in his cloak and scarf when he stands over my grave with his hat off;
and I think (though Dan'el, you understand is to be chief-mourner) that
he and his brother had better follow me side by side, and their two sons
after them."
How little Laura and Mrs. Peter Melcombe had ever thought about these
old men, or supposed that they were frequently present to the mother's
mind. And yet now there seemed to be evidence that this was the case.
Two or three guarded questions asked the next day brought answers which
showed her to be better acquainted with their circumstances than she
commonly admitted. She had always possessed a portrait in oils of her
son Daniel. It had been painted before he left home, and kept him always
living as a beautiful fair-haired youth in her recollection. She took
pains to acquaint herself with his affairs, though she never opened her
lips concerning them to those about her.
His first marriage had been disastrous. His wife had deserted him,
leaving him with one child only, a daughter. Upon the death of this poor
woman many years afterwards, he had married a widow whose third husband
he was, yet who was still young, scarcely so old as his daughter.
Concerning this lady and her children the poor old mother-in-law
continually cogitated, having a common little photographic likeness of
her in which she tried to find the wifely love and contentment and all
the other endearing qualities she had heard of. For at rare intervals
one or other of her sons would write to her, and then she always
perceived that the second Mrs. Daniel Mortimer made her husband happy.
She would be told from time to time that he was much attached to young
Brandon, the son of her first marriage, and that from her three
daughters by her second marriage he constantly received the love and
deference due to a father.
But this cherished wife had now died also, and had left Daniel Mortimer
with one son, a fine youth already past childhood.
Old Madam Melcombe's heart went into mourning for her daughter-in-law
whom she had never seen. None but the husband, whose idol she was,
lamented her longer and more. Only fifty miles off, but so remote in her
seclusion, so shut away, so forgotten; perhaps Mrs. Daniel Mortimer did
not think once in a season of her husband's mother; but every day the
old woman had thought of her as a consoler and a delight, and when her
favourite son retired she soon took out the photograph again and looked
sadly at those features that he had held so dear.
But she did not speak much of either son, only repeating from time to
time, "He's a fine man; they're fine men, both of them. They'll look
grand in their scarves and cloaks at my funeral."
It was not ordained, however, that the funeral should take place yet
awhile.
The summer flushed into autumn, then the apples and pears dropped and
were wasted in the garden, even the red-streak apples, that in all the
cider country are so highly prized. Then snow came and covered all.
Madam Melcombe had been heard to say that she liked her garden best in
winter. She could wish to leave it for good when it was lapped up under
a thick fall of snow. Yet she saw the snow melt again and the leaves
break forth, and at last she saw the first pale-green spires shoot up
out of the bed of lilies.
But the longest life must end at last, the best little boys will
sometimes be disobedient.
It appears strange to put these things together; but if they had
anything to do with one another, Peter did not know it.
He knew and felt one day that he had been a naughty boy, very naughty,
for in fact he had got down into the garden, but he also knew that he
had not found the top he went to look for, and that his grandmother had
taken from him what he did find.
This punishment he deserved; he had it and no other. It came about in
this wise.
It was a sweet April day, almost the last of the month. All the
cherry-trees were in full flower; the pear-trees were coming out, and
the young thickets in the garden were bending low with lilac-blossom,
but Peter was miserable.
He was leaning his arms over the balustrade, and the great red peonies
and loose anemones were staring up at him so that he could see down into
their central folds; but what is April, and what is a half-holiday, and
what indeed is life itself when one has lost perhaps the most excellent
top that boy ever spun, and the loudest hummer? And then he had taken
such care of it. Never but once, only this once, had he spun it in the
gallery at all, and yet this once of all misfortunes it had rolled its
last circle out so far that the balustrade had struck it, and in the
leap of its rebound it had sprung over.
At first he felt as if he should like to cry. Then a wild and daring
thought came and shook at the very doors of his heart. What if he
climbed over the gate and got down, and, finding his top, brought it up
so quickly that no one would ever know?
His mother and aunt were gone out for a walk; his great-grandmother and
the nurse were nodding one on each side of the fire. It was only three
o'clock, and yet they had dined, and they were never known to rouse
themselves up for at least half an hour at that time of day.
He took one turn along the gallery again, peeped in at the parlour
window, then in a great hurry he yielded to the temptation, climbed over
the wooden gate, got down the rotten old steps, and in two minutes was
up to his neck in a mass of tangled blossoms. Then he began to feel that
passion of deep delight which is born of adventure and curiosity. He
quite forgot his top: indeed, there was no chance of finding it. He
began to wade about, and got deeper and deeper in. Sometimes quite
over-canopied, he burrowed his way half smothered with flowers;
sometimes emerging, he cast back a stealthy glance to the gallery.
At last he had passed across the lawn, arrived almost at the very end of
the garden, and down among the broken trellis-work of the arbour three
nests of the yellow-hammer were visible at the same time. He did not
know which to lay hands on first. He thought he had never been so happy
in his life, or so much afraid.
But time pressed. He knew now that he should certainly climb over that
gate again, though for the present he did not dare to stay; and
stooping, almost creeping, over the open lawn and the bed of lilies, he
began to work his way homeward by the wall, and through old borders
where the thickest trees and shrubs had always grown.
At last, after pushing on for a little distance, he paused to rest in a
clump of fir-trees, one of which had been dead for so many years that
all its twigs and smaller boughs had decayed and dropped to the ground.
Only the large branches, gaunt and skeleton-like, were left standing,
and in a fork between two of these and quite within his reach, in a lump
of soft felt, or perhaps beaver, he noticed something that glittered.
Peter drew it away from the soft material it was lying among, and looked
at it. It was a sort of gold band--perhaps it was gold lace, for it was
flexible--he had often heard of gold lace, but had not seen any. As he
drew it away something else that depended from a morsel of the lump of
rag fell away from it, and dropped at his feet. It might have been some
sort of badge or ornament, but it was not perfect, though it still
glittered, for it had threads of gold wrought in it. "This is almost in
the shape of an anchor," said Peter, as he wrapped the gold band round
it, "and I think it must have been lost here for ages; perhaps ever
since that old uncle Mortimer that I saw was a little boy."
So then with the piece of gold band wrapped round his hand he began to
press on, and if he had not stopped to mark the places where two or
three more nests were, he would have been quicker still.
On and on, how dangerously delightful his adventure had been! What would
become of him if he could not get down to-morrow?
On and on, his heart beat with exultation; he was close to the steps and
he had not been discovered; he was close to the top of them and had not
been discovered; he was just about to climb over when he heard a cry
that rang in his ears long after, a sharp, piercing cry, and turning he
saw his great-grandmother in her cloak and hood standing in the entrance
of the alcove, and reaching out her hands as if she wanted to come and
meet him, but could not stir.
"Peter! Peter! Peter!" she cried, and her voice seemed to echo all over
the place.
Peter tumbled over the gate as fast as he possibly could; and as she
still cried, he ran to her at the top of his speed.
All in a moment she seemed to become quite still, and though she
trembled as she seized him, she did not scold him at all; while he
mumbled out, "I only just went down for a very little while. I only
wanted just to look for my top; I didn't take any of the nests," he
continued, mentioning the most valuable things he had been amongst,
according to his own opinion.
His grandmother had let go his hand and raised herself upright; her eyes
were on the bit of gold band. "What's that?" she said faintly.
"It's nothing particular," said Peter, unwinding it slowly from his
hand, and humbly giving it up. "It's nothing but a little sort of a gold
band and an ornament that I found stuck in a tree." Then Peter,
observing by her silence how high his misdemeanour had been, began to
sob a little, and then to make a few excuses, and then to say he hoped
his grandmother would forgive him.
No answer.
"I wish I hadn't done it," he next said. He felt that he could not say
more than that, and he looked up at her. She was not regarding him at
all, not attending to what he had said, her face was very white, she was
clutching the bit of gold lace in her hand, and her wide-open eyes were
staring at something above his head.
"Peter! Peter! Peter!" she cried again, in a strangely sharp and ringing
voice. It seemed as it she would fall, and Peter caught hold of her arm
and held her, while the thought darted through his mind, that perhaps
she had called him at first because she was ill, and wanted him to hold
her, not because she had observed his visit to the garden. He felt sure
she could hardly stand, and he was very much frightened, but in a moment
the nurse, having heard her cry, came running out, and between them they
guided her to her chair in the alcove.
"I'm very sorry, grandmother," Peter sobbed, "and really, really I
didn't take any nests or lilies or anything at all, but only that bit of
stuff. I'll never do it again."
As he spoke he saw his mother and aunt coming up with looks of grief and
awe, and on looking into his grandmother's face he beheld, child that he
was, a strange shadow passing over it, the shadow of death, and he
instinctively knew what it was.
"Can't you move poor grandmother out of the sun?" he sobbed. "Oh do! I
know she doesn't like it to shine in her eyes."
"Hush! hush!" his mother presently found voice enough to say amid her
tears. "What can it signify?"
After that Peter cried very heartily because everybody else did, but in
a little while when his grandmother had been able to drink some cordial,
and while they were rubbing her cold hands, she opened her eyes, and
then he thought perhaps she was going to get better. Oh, how earnestly
he hoped might be so!
But there was no getting better for Madam Melcombe. She sat very still
for some minutes, and looked like one newly awakened and very much
amazed, then, to the great surprise of those about her, she rose without
any aid, and stood holding by her high staff, while, with a slightly
distraught air, she bowed to them, first one and then another.
"Well, I thank you for all your kindness, my dears," she said, "all your
kindness. I may as well go to them now; they've been waiting for me a
long time. Good Lord!" she exclaimed, lifting up her eyes, "Good Lord!
what a meeting it will be!"
Then she sank down into her chair again, and in a moment was gone.