to melancholy. Far from it. He was a brisk, active creature, about
middle height, with jet black hair, and a quick circulation. He was
never overcome, as he might reasonably have been, with meditations on
the flux of time. He never rose in the morning saddened by the thought
that the day would be just like the day before, or that the watches
with which he had to deal would show just the same faults and just the
same carelessness on the part of their possessors. On the contrary, he
always sprang out of bed with as much zest and buoyancy as if he were a
Columbus confidently expecting that before noon the shores of a new
world would rise over the ocean's edge.
Giacomo, when he succeeded to the business, married the daughter of a
small farmer in the neighbourhood. It all came about through a couple
of little oak wedges. He took a tall clock home after it had been
repaired, and as the floor of the living-room on which it stood was
uneven, the front of the clock at the base was always wedged up to
bring it perpendicular, and keep the top from overhanging. He was
obliged to ask Miriam, the eldest girl, to stand on a footstool, and
push the clock towards the wall. As she stretched her right arm up
just under the little gilt cherub who expanded his wings above the
dial, holding the frame with her left, he stepped back a little, and
was suddenly struck with the beauty of her attitude. A lovely line it
was from the tips of her fingers down to her heel, and the slight
strain just lifted the hem of her gown, and showed the whitest of white
stockings, and a shapely foot. Giacomo instantly fell in love.
"Is that right, Mr. Tacchi?" she said.
"Quite right; nothing could be better."
Giacomo would not, however, insert the wedges; they were soft, and
might be broader; he would cut some better ones out of mahogany or oak,
and bring them the next day. The next day he brought them, and in a
very short time married Miss Miriam solely on the strength of the
lovely line, the white stockings, and the foot. When she came to live
at his house in Cowfold, he found that she did not always stand on the
footstool and display the same curve, but nevertheless she made him a
fairly good wife, and he and she lived together on the usual marital
terms, without any particular raptures, and without any particular
discord, for five years, when unfortunately she died, after giving
birth to her second child, which was named Miriam, after its mother.
Giacomo was left with an elder boy, Andrew, and with the infant.
Andrew grew up something like his mother, a fairly average mortal who
learned his lessons tolerably, was distinguished by no eminent virtues
nor eminent vices, no eminent gratitude nor hatreds; and it seemed as
if he would one day in the fulness of time do what Cowfold for
centuries had done before him--that is to say, succeed his father in
his business, marry some average Cowfold girl, beget more average
Cowfold children, lead a life unvexed by any speculation or dreams,
unenlightened by any revelation, and finally sleep in Cowfold
churchyard with thousands of his predecessors, remembered for perhaps a
year, and then forgotten for ever.
Miriam, however, was of a different stamp. Her real ancestry was a
puzzle. In some respects she resembled her father. Knowing that she
was Giacomo's child, it was easy for the observer to trace the lineage
of some of her qualities; but nevertheless they reappeared in her on a
different scale, in different proportions, so that in action they
became totally different, and there were others not inherited from
Giacomo which modified all the rest. It is impossible to throw a new
characteristic into a given nature, and obtain as a result the original
nature _plus_ the characteristic added. The addition will most likely
change the whole mass, and often entirely degrade or translate it. It
is just possible, such are the wonders of spiritual chemistry, that
there may have been nothing in Miriam but her father with a touch of
her mother, and that the combination of the two may have wrought this
curiously diverse product; or the common explanation may have been
correct, that in her there was a resurrection of some unknown ancestor,
either on the father's or mother's side. She was a big girl--her
father was rather short and squat--with black hair and dark eyes, limbs
loosely set, with a tendency to sprawl, large feet and hands. She had
a handsome, regular face, a little freckled; but the mouth, although it
was beautifully curved, was a trifle too long, and except when she was
in a passion, was not sufficiently under the control of her muscles, so
that her words escaped not properly formed. Generally she was rather
languid in her attitudes, sitting in her chair in any way but the
proper way, and often giving her father cause of correction on this
point as she grew up, inasmuch as he properly objected that when she
came to be thirteen or fourteen she ought to show that she duly
appreciated the reasons why her frocks were lengthened. Her room was
never in order. Nothing was ever hung up; nothing was put in its
place. Shoes were here and there--one might be under the
dressing-table and the other under the bed; but with, an odd
inconsistency she was always personally particularly clean, and
although bathing was then unknown in Cowfold, she had a tub, and used
it too with constant soap and water. With her lessons she did not
succeed, more particularly with arithmetic, which she abhorred.
Sometimes they were done, sometimes left undone, but she never failed
in history. Her voice was a contralto of most remarkable power, strong
enough to fill a cathedral, but altogether undisciplined. She was fond
of music, and the organist at the church offered to teach her with his
own daughters, if she would sing with them on Sundays; but she could
not get through the drudgery of the exercises, and advanced only so far
as to be able to take her proper part in a hymn. Here, however, she
was almost useless, from incapability of proper subordination, the
sopranos, tenors, and basses being well nigh drowned.
She was fond of live creatures, and had cats, canaries, white mice, and
rabbits, which she treated with great tenderness; but they were never
kept clean, and caused much annoyance to her family. She was also
truthful; but what distinguished her most was a certain originality in
her criticisms on Cowfold men, women, and events, a certain
rectification which she always gave to the conventional mode of
regarding them. There was a bit of sandstone rock near the town, by
the side of the road, which from time immemorial had been called the
Old Man's Nose. It was something like a nose when seen at a certain
angle, but why it should have been described as the nose of an old man
rather than that of a young man, no mortal could have explained.
Nevertheless all Cowfold had for ages said it was the Old Man's Nose;
and when strangers came it was pointed out with a "don't you see, isn't
it hooked, just like a nose, and that is where his spectacles might
lie." But Miriam made a small revolution in Cowfold. She never would
admit the likeness to a nose, but with a pleasant humour observed that
it was like a _mug_ upside down--"mug," it must be explained, meaning
not only a drinking utensil, but in very vulgar language a human face.
Cowfold gradually heard of Miriam's joke, and instantly saw that the
rock was really like a mug. There was the upper part, there was the
handle; the resemblance to the nose disappeared, and what was most
strange, could no more be imagined. Cowfold now repeated to visitors
this little bit of not very brilliant smartness, elaborating it heavily
at times, till it would have become rather a weariness to the flesh, if
it had not been a peculiarity of Cowfold, that it was never tired of
saying the same thing over and over again, and laughing at it
perpetually.
One day a great event happened. There was a fire in the town, and the
house of Mr. Cutts, the saddler, was burnt down. A week afterwards
some very unpleasant rumours were abroad, and the Tacchis, with Mrs.
and Mr. Cattle, and the two Misses Cattle, sat talking over them in Mr.
Tacchi's parlour after supper. The Cattles were small farmers who
lived about a mile out of Cowfold, on the way to Shott, but within
Cowfold parish, and came to Cowfold Church.
"If," said Cattle, "they can prove as the fire broke out in three
places at once, the office has got him."
"His stock," continued his wife, "to my certain knowledge, warn't worth
fifty pound, for I was in the shop a fortnight ago, and says I to
myself, 'What can the man have let it down like this for--who'd come
here for anything; and it _did_ cross my mind as it was very odd, and I
went home a thinking and a thinking, but of course I never dreamed as
he was so awful wicked as this."
"He was always very peculiar, mother," said the elder Miss Cattle. "Do
you remember, Carry," turning to her younger sister, "how he jumped out
of the hedge that Sunday evening, just as we turned down our lane. Oh
my, I never had such a fright--you might have knocked me down with a
straw; and he never spoke, but walked straight on."
"He might have been nutting," said Giacomo--"he was always going out
nutting; and perhaps he didn't notice he had frightened you."
"Not notice! I am sure he might have done; and then, why did he come
out just then, I should like to know. If he had come out just after
we'd got by, I shouldn't have thought so much of it."
"If the poor man was in the hedge, he must come out at some time, and
it happened to be just then," observed Giacomo reflectively.
"Ah!" continued Carry, incapable of replying to Giacomo's philosophy,
and judiciously changing her attack, "whenever you went to buy anything
he never spoke up to you like--there was always an underhand look about
him; and then his living alone as he did with nobody but that old woman
with him."
"He always sold good leather," continued Mr. Cattle, who planted both
his elbows on the table, and placed his head in his hands in a fit of
abstraction, much perplexed by this apparent contradiction in Cutts's
character.
"Sold good leather," retorted his wife with great sharpness, as if in
contempt of her husband's stupidity; "sold good leather--of course he
did. That was part of his plan to make people believe he was an honest
man. Besides, if he hadn't, how could he have got rid of his stock as
he did. Do you recollect," she proceeded with increasing asperity, as
became a Cowfold matron, "as it was him as got up that petition for
that Catchpool gal as was going to be hanged for putting her baby in
the pond?"
"His father," quoth Mr. Cattle, inclining again to his wife's side,
"had a glass eye, and I've heerd his mother was a Papist."
"Well," interrupted Miriam at last, "what if he did set fire to his
house?"
They all looked amazed. "What if he did! what if he did!" repeated Mr.
Cattle; "why, it's arson, that's all."
"Oh, that's saying the same thing over again."
"He'll be transported, that's 'what if he did,'" interposed Mrs. Cattle.
"I suppose," said Miriam, "he wanted to get money out of the Insurance
Office. It was wrong, but he hasn't done much harm except to the
office, and they can afford it."
They were all still more amazed, and justly, for Miriam, amongst her
other peculiarities, did not comprehend how society necessarily
readjusts the natural scale of reward and punishment.
"'Pon--my--word," exclaimed Mrs. Cattle, after a long pause, slowly
dwelling on each syllable, "hasn't--done--much--harm; and for aught we
know, in a month, or at most six weeks, he'll be tried, and then after
that, in a fortnight, he may be on his way to Botany Bay. What do you
think, Mr. Tacchi?"
Giacomo did not occupy the same position as his daughter. His eyes
were screwed very nearly, although not quite, to the conventional
angle; but he loved her, and had too much sense not to see that she was
often right and Cowfold was wrong. Moreover, he enjoyed her antagonism
to the Cattles, of whose intellect he had not, as a clock and barometer
maker, a very high opinion. He evaded the difficulty.
"He hasn't been convicted yet."
"That's true," said Mr. Cattle, to whom, as an Englishman, the
principle of not passing sentence till both sides are heard was happily
familiar. It was a great thought with him, and he re-expressed it with
earnestness--"That's true enough."
But Miriam did not let them off. "I want to know if he is as bad as
those contractors that father was reading about in the newspaper last
week, who filled up the soldiers' boots between the soles with clay.
If they hadn't been found out, the poor soldiers would have gone
marching with those boots, and might have been out in the wet, and
might have died."
"Ah!" retorted Miss Cattle, "that's all very well; but that isn't
arson."
Miss Cattle was not quite so absurd as she seemed. The contractors'
crime was not catalogued with an ugly name. It was fraud or breach of
contract, and that of course made all the difference.
Miriam did not notice her antagonist's argument, but proceeded
musingly--"He was never unkind. He was very good to that old woman,
his aunt."
"Unkind!" Mrs. Cattle almost screamed, her harsh grating voice
contrasting most unpleasantly with the low, indistinct, mellow tones in
which Miriam had uttered the last two or three words. "Unkind! What's
that in a man as is a going to be brought up before the 'sizes. I can
see the judge a sentencing of him now."
"He may have been very poor, and may have lost all his money,"
continued Miriam; "anyhow, he wasn't cruel. I would sooner have hung
old Scrutton, who flogged little Jack Marshall for stealing apples till
his back was all covered with bloody weals."
The clocks in the shop began at that moment to strike ten in a dozen
different tones, as if they discerned the hopelessness of the
discussion, and were determined to cut it short. The company
consequently separated, and Miriam went to bed; but not to sleep, for
before her eyes, half through the night, was sailing the ship in which
she thought poor Cutts would be exiled. Let it not for a moment be
supposed that Mr. Cutts was a young man, and that Miriam was in love
with him. He was about fifty.
Next morning she was still more distressed. Sometimes the morning
brings forgetfulness of the trouble of the day before, and at other
times it revives with peculiar power just at the moment when we wake,
especially if it be dark. Miriam was confused. The belief that she
ought to do something if possible to help Cutts was just dawning upon
her; but although she was singularly liable to be set fast to any
purpose when once she had it clearly formed, it was always a long time
before it became formed. She was not one of those happy persons whose
thoughts are always beneath them, as the horses of a coach are beneath
the driver, and can be directed this way or that way at his bidding.
She could not settle beforehand that she would think upon a given
subject, and step by step disentangle its difficulties, and pursue it
to the end. That is the result of continuous training, and of this she
had had none. Ideas passed through her mind with great rapidity, but
they were spontaneous, and consequently disconnected, so that in
difficulty the path was chosen without any balancing of the reasons on
this and on the other side, which, forced the conclusion that it was
the proper path to take.
A thousand things whirled through her brain. She had known all about
Cutts before the conversation with the Cattles, or with the Cattle, as
she generally called them; but the case had not struck her till they
and she began to talk about it. She was in a great turmoil, and plans
presented themselves to her, were discarded, and then presented
themselves again as if they were quite new. The next night she slept
well. More than ever was she impressed with horror at what seemed to
be Cutts's certain fate--more than ever was she resolved to help him if
she could; and now at last she was a little clearer, and had determined
to go over to the county town and see Messrs. Mortimer, Wake, Collins
and Mortimer, the solicitors in whose hands the defence lay. She did
not doubt it to be her duty to go, although Cutts was no more to her
than to any other person in Cowfold, and she had no notion of what she
was going to say to the lawyers when she saw them. On the following
morning she started, under the pretence that she wanted something she
could not obtain in Cowfold. Having no mother, and being manageress in
a small way at home, these trips were not unusual. Courageous as she
was, when she reached the office her heart sank, and she then first
remembered that she had no very solid ground for her visit. She had
brooded in her bedroom over Cutts, and had thought what a grand thing
it would be to save him, but when she stepped inside Messrs. Mortimer's
door, and was face to face with a raised desk, protected by rails,
behind which clerks were busy writing, or answering questions, her
dreams disappeared; she saw what a fool she was, and she would have
liked to retreat. However, it was too late, for one of the gentlemen,
behind the rails asked what she wanted.
"I've come about Mr. Cutts."
"Oh yes; committed for arson at Cowfold. Sit down in that room for a
few minutes. Mr. Mortimer will attend to you presently."
Miriam was shown into a little box-like den, in which there was a
round, leather-covered table, with a couple of chairs, but no books,
and no newspaper. She had to wait for twenty terrible minutes, in
which her excitement increased to such a degree that once or twice she
was on the point of rushing out past the clerks, and running back to
Cowfold. But she did not do it, and after a while Mr. Mortimer entered.
"Well, Miss Tacchi, what can I do for you?" He was gentle in his
behaviour, and he soothed by his first words poor Miriam's flutter.
"Oh, if you please, sir, Mr. Cutts is not guilty."
"Why not?"
"It is a cruel thing that he should suffer. He is as kind a creature
as ever lived. You don't know how kind he has been to his old aunt.
He always sold honest things. There are scores of people in Cowfold
who deserve to be transported more than he."
"That won't help him much. Good people are a queer set sometimes. But
why should _you_ interfere?"
"I cannot tell," replied Miriam, her voice beginning to shake; "but I
thought and I thought over it, and it is so wrong, so unfair, so
wicked, and I know the poor man so well. Why should they do anything
to him?" She would have proceeded in the same strain, and would have
compared the iniquity of arson with that of fraudulent contractors and
the brutal Scrutton, but she checked herself. "He is not guilty," she
added.
Mr. Mortimer was perplexed. He was accustomed in his profession to all
kinds of concealment of motives, and he conjectured that there must be
some secret of which he was unaware.
"Are you any relation?"
"No."
"Have you ever visited at his house, or has he been in the habit of
calling at yours?"
"No."
He was still more perplexed. He could not comprehend, and might very
well be excused for not comprehending, why the daughter of a
respectable tradesman in Cowfold should walk six miles on behalf of a
stranger, and be so anxious about him.
"One more question. You have had nothing whatever to do with Mr.
Cutts, except by going to his shop, and by talking to him now and then
as a neighbour?"
"Nothing;" and Miriam said it in such a manner, that the most hardened
sceptic must have believed her.
"The fire broke out at a quarter to eight. Had you seen Cutts about
that time?"
"I had met him in the street that evening as I came home."
"Where had you been?"
"Practising in the church."
"What time was it when you met him? Be careful."
Miriam now realised the importance of her answer.
The exact truth was that she had reached home at half-past seven, and
had seen Cutts going into his house then. It must be remembered that
although, as before observed, she was naturally truthful, she was so
because she was fearless, and had the instinctive tendency to
directness possessed by all forceful characters. Her veracity rested
on no principle. She was not like Jeanie Deans, that triumph of
culture, in whom a generalisation had so far prevailed that it was able
to overcome the strongest of passions and prevent a lie even to save a
sister's life. Miriam had been brought up in no such divine school.
She had heard that lying was wrong, but she had no religion, although
she listened to a sermon once every Sunday, and consequently the
relation in which the several duties and impulses stood to one another
was totally different from that which was established in Sir Walter's
heroine. By some strange chance, too, tradition, which often takes the
place of religion, had no power over her; and although hatred of
oppression and of harsh dealing is a very estimable quality, and one
which will go a long way towards constructing an ethical system for us,
it will not do everything.
She began to reflect. She had no watch with her. She had noticed the
clocks when she returned, and she remembered that they showed half-past
seven. She could not at the moment deliberately say a quarter to
eight, although really it did not much matter. Who would be the worse
if she declared it was a quarter to eight? Nobody, and she knew that
Cutts would be the better. She had not specially observed the clocks;
how could she, for she had no notion that anything important depended
upon accuracy. She was short-sighted, and she had not seen the
regulator. Nothing was actually before her eyes but a great Dutch
kitchen clock, which showed half-past seven, and might have been wrong.
Something struck when she left the church, and the strokes chimed again
in her ears as she was shaping her reply to Mr. Mortimer. They sounded
like half-past, and in that case it must have been a quarter to eight
when she stood on her doorstep. Finally, there was the reason of
reasons which superseded the necessity of any further attempt to
persuade herself by any casuistry--she must save Cutts.
"A quarter to eight," she said decisively,
"Odd that you should have seen him just at that time. In less than
five minutes the place was in a blaze. He could hardly have lit it up
himself. Would you swear before the Court it was a quarter to eight?"
If she had been asked this at first she would have hesitated, but she
now boldly said "Yes."
"Very well; I do not see what more I can do now. I will think over the
matter," and Miriam departed.
The lawyer had his suspicions, and determined, after some inquiries in
Cowfold, that Miss Miriam should not be called. He told the story to
his partner, who laughed, and said he did not see anything
extraordinary in it. It was a common case of perjury. Mr. Mortimer
was not sure that it was common perjury. Externally it might be so,
and yet there seemed to be a difference. Moreover, he could not find
out anything in Cowfold to make him believe that there was any motive
for it.
"Perfectly motiveless," he replied. "A noteworthy instance," for he
was a bit of a philosopher, "of an action performed without any motive
whatever. I have always maintained the possibility of such actions."
As to Miriam, she went back to Cowfold without any self-accusation or
self-applause. She did not know that there was anything criminal or
generous in her attempt on behalf of Cutts. We may say in parting that
he was acquitted, to her great delight; and Mr. Cattle, with the pride
of a British citizen who has served on a jury and knows the law, did
not cease to preach to his wife, whenever the opportunity offered, that
you should never pronounce the verdict till you've heard the evidence.