THE RISE OF THE TIDE.
“Come here,” shouted the blacksmith, who was outside his shop, and still
wore his apron, and the smut and rust on his hands and face. “Come here,
Master Jingles. You’ve come into the midst of us, and we want to know
something from you. Where is your father? We’ve seen nothing of him
since Friday. If he has not been at mischief, why don’t he come forward
like a man? Why don’t your father show his face? He ain’t a tortoise,
privileged to draw it in, or a hedgehog, at liberty to coil it up. Where
is he? He is not at home. If he is hiding, what is he hiding from unless
he be guilty?”
“He may have gone after work,” said young Saltren.
“I heard him say,” said the shoemaker, “that his lordship was doomed to
destruction.”
“I know he said it,” answered the blacksmith, “and I ask, is a man like
to make a prophecy and not try to make what he said come to pass?”
“Human nature is human nature,” threw in the tailor.
“And fax is fax,” added the miner.
“Then,” pursued the blacksmith, “let us look at things as they affect
us. His lordship has kept about twenty-three horses—hunters, cobs,
ponies and carriage horses—and each has four hoofs, and all wants
shoeing once a month, and some every fortnight. That brings me in a good
part of my living. Very well. I ask all who hear me, is his lordship
like to keep such a stud now he is dead? Is he like to want hunters? I
grant you, for the sake of argument, that the young lady and young
gentleman will have their cobs and ponies, but will there be anything
like as many horses kept as there have been? No, in reason there cannot
be. So you may consider what a loss to me is the death of his lordship.
My worst personal enemy couldn’t have hit me harder than when he knocked
Lord Lamerton over the Cleave. He as much as knocked a dozen or fourteen
horses over with him, each with four hoofs at sixpence a shoe, and shod,
let us say, eighteen times in the year.”
“You are right,” put in the tailor, “landed property is tied up, and his
lordship’s property is tied up—tied up and sealed like mail bags—till
the young lord comes of age, which will not be for eleven years. So
Blatchford,”—addressing the blacksmith—“you must multiply your horses by
eleven.”
“That makes,” said the smith, working out the sum in chalk on the
shutter of the shop, “say fourteen horses eighteen times—two hundred and
two—and by four—and again by eleven—and halved because of sixpences,
that makes five hundred and fifty-four pounds; then there were odd jobs,
but them I won’t reckon. Whoever chucked Lord Lamerton down the Cleave
chucked five hundred and fifty-four pounds of as honestly-earned money
as ever was got, belonging to me, down along with him.”
“Fax is fax,” said the miner.
“And human nature is human nature to feel it,” added the tailor.
“There’s another thing to be considered,” said a game-keeper. “In the
proper sporting season, my lord had down scores of gentlemen to shoot
his covers, and that brought me a good many sovereigns and half-sovs.
Now, I’d like to know, with the family in mourning, and the young lord
not able to handle a gun, will there be a house full of gentlemen? It
wouldn’t be decent. And that means the loss of twenty pounds to me—if
one penny.”
“Nor is that all,” said the tailor, “you’ll have Macduff to keep an eye
on you, not my lord. There’ll be no more chucking of hampers into the
goods train as it passes Copley Wood, I reckon.”
The keeper made no other reply than a growl, and drew back.
“There is my daughter Jane, scullery-maid at the Park,” said the
shoe-maker, “learning to be a cook. If her ladyship shuts up the house,
and leaves the place, what will become of Jane? It isn’t the place I
grieve for, nor the loss of learning, for places ask to be filled now
and any one will be taken as cook, if she can do no more than boil
water—but it is the perquisites. My wife was uncommon fond of jellies
and sweets of all sorts, and I don’t suppose these are to be picked off
hedges, when the house is empty.”
“Here comes Farmer Labett,” exclaimed the tailor. “I say, Mr. Labett,
did not his lordship let off five-and-twenty per cent. from his rents
last fall?”
“That is no concern of yours,” replied the farmer.
“But it does concern you,” retorted the tailor, “for now that his
lordship is dead, the property is tied up and put in the hands of
trustees, and trustees can’t remit rents. If they were to do so, the
young lord, when he comes of age, might be down on them and make them
refund out of their own pockets. So that away over the rocks, down the
Cleave, went twenty-five per cent. abatement when his lordship fell, or
was helped over.”
“Ah!” groaned the shoemaker, “and all them jellies, and blanc-mange, and
custards was chucked down along of him.”
“And now,” said another, “Macduff will have the rule. Afore, if we
didn’t like what Macduff ordained, we could go direct to his lordship,
but now there will be no one above Macduff but trustees, and trustees
won’t meddle. That will be a pretty state of things, and his wife to
ride in a victoria, too.”
Then a woman called Tregose pushed her way through the throng, and with
loud voice expressed her views.
“I don’t see what occasion you men have to grumble. Don’t y’ see that
the family will have to go into mourning, and so get rid of their
colours, and we shall get them. There’s Miss Arminell’s terra-cotta I’ve
had my eye on for my Louisa, but I never reckoned on having it so soon.
There never was a wind blowed,” argued Mrs. Tregose, “that was an
unmixed evil, and didn’t blow somebody good. If this here wind have
blowed fourteen horses, and jellies and twenty-five per cent. and the
keeper’s tips over the Cleave—it ha’ blowed a terra-cotta gown on to my
Louisa.”
“But,” argued the tailor in his strident voice, “supposing, in
consequence of the death, that her ladyship and the young lady and the
little lord give up living here, and go for education to London or
abroad, where will you be, Mrs. Tregose, for their cast gowns? Your
Louisa ain’t going to wear that terra-cotta for eleven years, I reckon.”
“There’s something in that,” assented the woman, and her mouth fell.
“Yes,” she said, after a pause for consideration, “who can tell how many
beautiful dresses and bonnets and mantles have gone over the Cleave
along with the blanc-mange, and the horses and the five-and-twenty per
cent.? I’m uncommon sorry now his lordship is dead.”
“I’ve been credibly informed,” said the tailor, “that his lordship laid
claim to Chillacot, and said that because old Gaffer Saltren squatted
there, that did not constitute a title. Does it give a rook a title to a
Scotch fir because he builds a nest on it? Can the rook dispose of the
timber? Can it refuse to allow the tree to be cut down and sawn up, for
and because he have sat on the top of it? I’ve an old brood sow in my
stye. Does the stye belong to the sow or to me?”
“Fax is fax,” assented the miner.
“And,” urged the blacksmith, “if his lordship wanted to get the land
back, why not? If I lend my ladder to Farmer Eggins, haven’t I a right
to reclaim it? His lordship asked for the land back, not because he
wanted it for himself, but in the interest of the public, to give us a
station nigh at hand, instead of forcing us to walk three and a half or
four miles, and sweat terrible on a summer’s day. And his lordship
intended to run a new road to Chillacot, where the station was to be,
and so find work for hands out of employ, and he said it would cost him
a thousand pounds. And now, there is the new road and all it would have
cost as good as thrown over the Cleave along with his lordship.”
“The captain—he did it,” shouted the blacksmith.
“Fax speak—they are fax. Skin me alive, if they baint,” said the miner.
Giles Inglett Saltren had heard enough. He raised his voice and said,
“Mr. Blatchford, and the rest of you—some insinuate, others openly
assert that my father has been guilty of an odious crime, that he has
had a hand in the death of Lord Lamerton.”
He was interrupted by shouts of “He has, he has! We know it!”
“How do you know it? You only suppose it. You have no grounds
absolutely, no grounds for basing such a supposition. The coroner, as
yourselves admit, refused to listen to the charge.”
A voice: “He was afraid of having his shirt-fronts moulded.”
“Here, again, you bring an accusation as unfounded as it is absurd,
against an honourable man and a Crown official. If you had been able to
produce a particle of evidence against my father, a particle of evidence
to show that what you imagine is not as hollow as a dream, the coroner
would have hearkened and acted. Are you aware that this bandying of
accusations is an indictable offence? My father has not hurt you in any
way.”
This elicited a chorus of cries.
“He has spoiled my shoeing.” “He has prevented the making of the road.”
“My wife will never have blanc-mange again.” And Samuel Ceely, now
arrived on the scene, in whispering voice added, “All my beautiful
darlings—twelve of them, as healthy as apples, and took their
vaccination well—all gone down the Cleave.”
It really seemed as if the happiness, the hopes, the prosperity of all
Orleigh, had gone over the edge of the cliff with his lordship.
“I repeat it,” exclaimed the young man, waxing warm; “I repeat it, my
father never did you an injury. You are now charging him with hurting
you, because you suffer through his lordship’s death, and you are eager
to find some one on whom to cast blame. As for any real sorrow and
sympathy, you have none; wrapped up in your petty and selfish ends.”
A voice: “Fax is fax—he did kill Lord Lamerton.”
The tailor: “Human nature is human nature, and nobody can deny he
prophesied my lord’s death.”
“I dare you to charge my father with the crime,” cried young Saltren. “I
warn you. I have laid by a little money, and I will spend it in
prosecuting the man who does.”
“We all do. Prosecute the parish,” rose in a general shout.
“My father is incapable of the crime.”
“We have no quarrel with you, young Jingles,” roared a miner. “Our
contention is with the captain. Mates, what do y’ say? Shall we pay him
a visit?”
“Aye—aye!” from all sides. “Let us show him our minds.”
A boisterous voice exclaimed: “We’ll serve him out for taking the bread
out of our mouths. We’ll tumble his house about his ears. He sha’n’t
stand in our light any more.”
And another called, “If you want to prosecute us, we’ll provide you with
occasion.”
Then a stone was flung, which struck Jingles on the head and knocked him
down.
For a few minutes the young man was unconscious, or rather confused, he
never quite lost his senses. The women clustered about him, and Mrs.
Tregose threw water in his face.
He speedily gathered his faculties together, and stood up, rather angry
than hurt, to see that nearly all the men had departed. The act of
violence, instead of quelling the excitement, had stirred it to greater
heat; and the body of the men, the miners, labourers, the blacksmith,
tailor, and shoemaker, their sons and apprentices, went off in a
shouting gesticulating rabble in the direction of the Cleave, not of
Chillacot, but of the down overhanging it.
In a moment the latent savage, suppressed in those orderly men, was
awake and asserting itself. Mr. Welsh had spoken the truth when he told
Jingles that the destructive passion was to be found in all; it was
aroused now. The blacksmith, the tailor, the shoemaker, the labourers,
had in all their several ways been working constructively all their
life, one to make shoes and harrows, one to shape trousers and
waistcoats, one to put together boots, others to build, and plant, and
stack, and roof, and now, all at once, an appeal came to the suppressed
barbarian in each, the chained madman in the asylum, and the destructive
faculty was loose and rioting in its freedom.
Thomasine Kite stood before the young man. “Now then,” she said half
mockingly, “if you want to save your mother out of the house before the
roof is broke in, you must make haste. Come along with me.”