TWO FINE LESSONS.
At the _Old Barn_ that afternoon, no sooner was young Sir Thomas gone,
than remarkable things began to happen. As was observed in a previous
case, few of us are yet so vast of mind, as to feel deeply, and fairly
enjoy the justice of being served with our own sauce. Haply this is why
sauce and justice are in Latin the self-same word. Few of us even are so
candid, as to perceive when it comes to pass; more often is a world of
difference found betwixt what we gave, and what we got.
Fox was now treated by Nicie's brother, exactly as he had treated Gilham
about his sister Christie. He was not remarkably rash of mind--which was
ever so much better for himself and friends--yet he was quick of
perception; and when his sister came and looked at him, and said with
gentle sympathy--"Oh, Jemmy, has Sir Thomas forbidden your bans? No
wonder you threw his hat at him"--it was a little more than he could
do, not to grin at the force of analogy.
"He is mad." He replied, with strong decision. Yet at the twinkle of her
eyes, he wondered whether she held that explanation valid, in a like
case, not so very long ago.
"I have made up my mind to it altogether;" he continued, with the air
magnanimous. "It is useless to strive against the force of
circumstances."
"Made up your mind to give up Nicie, because her brother disapproves of
it?" Christie knew well enough what he meant. But can girls be
magnanimous?
"I should think not. How can you be so stupid? What has a brother's
approval to do with it? Do you think I care twopence for fifty thousand
brothers? Brothers are all very well in their way; but let them stick to
their own business. A girl's heart is her own, I should hope; and her
happiness depends on herself, not her brother. I call it a great piece
of impudence, for a brother to interfere in such matters."
"Oh!" said Christie, and nothing more. Neither did she even smile; but
went to the window, and smoothed her apron, the pretty one she wore,
when she was mixing water-colours.
"You shall come and see him now;" said Jemmy, looking at the light that
was dancing in her curls, but too lofty to suspect that inward laughter
made them dance. "It can't hurt him now; and my opinion is that it might
even do him a great deal of good. I'll soon have him ready, and I'll
send his blessed mother to make another saucepanful of chicken broth.
And Chris, I'll give you clear decks, honour bright."
"I am quite at a loss to understand your meaning." The mendacious
Christie turned round, and fixed her bright eyes upon his most grandly;
as girls often do, when they tell white lies--perhaps to see how they
are swallowed.
"Very well then; that is all right. It will save a lot of trouble; and
perhaps it is better to leave him alone."
"There again! You never seem to understand me, Jemmy! And of course, you
don't care how much it upsets a poor patient, never to see a change of
faces. Of course you are very kind; and so is Dr. Gronow; and poor Mrs.
Gilham is a most delightful person. Still, after being for all that time
so desperately limited--that's not the word at all--I mean, so to some
extent restricted, or if you prefer it prohibited, from--from any little
change, any sort of variety of expressions, of surroundings, of in fact,
society----"
"Ah yes, no doubt! Of etcetera, etcetera. But go you on floundering,
till I come back, and perhaps then you will know what you mean. Perhaps
also you would look a little more decent with your apron off," Dr. Fox
suggested, with the noble rudeness so often dealt out to sisters. "Be
sure you remind him that yesterday was Leap-year's day; and then perhaps
you will be able to find some one to understand you."
"If that is the case, you may be quite certain that I won't go near
him."
But before very long she thought better of that. Was it just to punish
one for the offences of another? With a colour like the first bud of
monthly rose peeping through its sepals in the southern corner, she ran
into the shrubbery--for there was nothing to call a garden--and gathered
a little posy of Russian violets and wild primrose. Then she pulled her
apron off, and had a good look at herself, and could not help knowing
that she had not seen a lovelier thing for a long time; and if love
would only multiply it by two,--and it generally does so by a
thousand--the result would be something stupendous, ineffable, adorable.
Such thoughts are very bright and cheerful, full of glowing youth and
kindness, young romance and contempt of earth. But the longer we plod on
this earth, the deeper we stick into it; as must be when the foot grows
heavy, having no _talaria_. Long enduring pain produces a like effect
with lapse of years. The spring of the system loses coil, from being on
perpetual strain; sad proverbs flock into the brain, instead of dancing
verses.
Frank Gilham had been ploughed and harrowed, clod-crushed, drilled, and
scarified by the most advanced, enlightened, and practical of all
medical high-farmers. If ever Fox left him, to get a breath of air,
Gronow came in to keep the screw on; and when they were both worn out,
young Webber (who began to see how much he had to learn, and what was
for his highest interest) was allowed to sit by, and do nothing. A
consultation was held, whenever the time hung heavily on their hands;
and Webber would have liked to say a word, if it could have been uttered
without a snub. Meanwhile, Frank Gilham got the worst of it.
At last he had been allowed to leave his bed, and taste a little of the
fine Spring air, flowing down from Hagdon Hill, and bearing first waft
of the furze-bloom. Haggard weariness and giddy lightness, and a vacant
wondering doubt (as to who or what he was, that scarcely seemed worth
puzzling out), would have proved to any one who cared to know it, that
his head had lain too long in one position, and was not yet reconciled
to the change. And yet it should have welcomed this relief, if virtue
there be in heredity, inasmuch as this sofa came from White Post farm,
and must have comforted the head of many a sick progenitor.
The globe of thought being in this state, and the arm of action
crippled, the question was--would heart arise, dispense with both, and
have its way?
For awhile it seemed a doubtful thing; so tedious had the conflict been,
and such emptiness left behind it. The young man, after dreams most
blissful, and hopes too golden to have any kin with gilt, was reduced to
bare bones and plastered elbows, and knees unsafe to go down upon. But
the turn of the tide of human life quivers to the influence of heaven.
In came Christie, like a flush of health, rosy with bright maidenhood;
yet tremulous as a lily is, with gentle fear and tenderness. Pity is
akin to love--as those who know them both, and in their larger hearts
have felt them, for our smaller sakes pronounce--but when the love is
far in front, and pauses at the check of pride; what chance has pride,
if pity comes, and takes her mistress by the hand, and whispers--"try to
comfort him?" None can tell, who are not in the case, and those who are
know little of it, how these strange things come to pass. But sure it is
that they have their way. The bashful, proud, light-hearted maiden,
ready to make a joke of love, and laugh at such a fantasy, was so
overwhelmed with pity, that the bashfulness forgot to blush, the pride
cast down its frightened eyes, and the levity burst into tears. But of
all these things she remembered none.
And forsooth they may well be considered doubtful, in common with many
harder facts; because the house was turned upside down, before any more
could be known of it. There was coming, and going, and stamping of feet,
horses looking in at the door, and women calling out of it; and such a
shouting and hurrahing, not only here but all over the village, that the
Perle itself might well have stopped, like Simöis and Scamander, to ask
what the fish out of water were doing. And it might have stopped long,
without being much wiser; so thoroughly everybody's head was flown, and
everybody's mouth filled with much more than the biggest ears found room
for.
To put it in order is a hopeless job, because all order was gone to
grit. But as concerns the _Old Barn_ (whose thatch, being used to quiet
eaves-droppings, had enough to make it stand up in sheaf again)--first
dashed up a young man on horseback, (and the sympathetic nag was half
mad also) the horse knocking sparks out of the ground, as if he had
never heard of lucifers, and the man with his legs all out of saddle,
waving a thing that looked like a letter, and shouting as if all
literature were comprised in vivâ voce. Now this was young Farrant, the
son of the Churchwarden; and really there was no excuse for him; for the
Farrants are a very clever race; and as yet competitive examination had
not made the sight of paper loathsome to any mind cultivating
self-respect.
"You come out, and just read this;" he shouted to the _Barn_ in general.
"You never heard such a thing in all your life. All the village is
madder than any March hare. I shan't tell you a word of it. You come out
and read. And if that doesn't fetch you out, you must be a clam of
oysters. If you don't believe me, come and see it for yourselves. Only
you will have to get by Jakes, and he is standing at the mouth, with his
French sword drawn."
"In the name of Heaven, what the devil do you mean?" cried Fox, running
out, and catching fire of like madness, of all human elements the most
explosive, "and this--why, this letter is the maddest thing of all! A
man who was bursting to knock me down, scarcely two gurgles of the
clock ago! And now, I am his beloved Jemmy! Mrs. Gilham, do come out.
Surely that chicken has been stewed to death. Oh, Ma'am, you have some
sense in you. Everybody else is gone off his head. Who can make head or
tail of this? Let me entreat you to read it, Mrs. Gilham. Farrant,
you'll be over that colt's head directly. Mrs. Gilham, this is meant for
a saner eye than mine. Your head-piece is always full of
self-possession."
Highly flattered with this tribute, the old lady put on her spectacles,
and read, slowly and decorously.
"BELOVED JEMMY,
"I am all that you called me, a hot-headed fool, and a cad; and
everything vile on the back of it. The doctors are the finest chaps
alive, because they have never done harm to the dead. Come down at
once, and put a bar across, because Jakes must have his supper.
Perlycross folk are the best in the world, and the kindest-hearted,
but we must not lett them go in there. I am off home, for if
anybody else was to get in front of me, and tell my mother, I
should go wild, and she would be quite upsett. When you have done
all you think proper, come up and see poor Nicie.
"From your affectionate, and very sorry,
"T. R. WALDRON."
"Now the other, Ma'am!" cried Doctor Fox. "Here is another from the
Parson. Oh come now, we shall have a little common sense."
"MY DEAR JEMMY,
"It has pleased the Lord, who never afflicts us without good
purpose, to remove that long and very heavy trouble from us. We
have found the mortal remains of my dear friend, untouched by any
human hand, in a hollow way leading from the Abbey to the Church.
We have not yet discovered how it happened; and I cannot stop to
tell you more, for I must go at once to Walderscourt, lest rumour
should get there before us; and Sir Thomas must not go alone, being
of rather headlong, though very noble nature. Sergeant Jakes has
been placed on guard, against any rash curiosity. I have sent for
the two Churchwardens and can leave it safely to them and to you,
to see that all is done properly. If it can be managed, without
undue haste, the coffin should be placed inside the Church, and the
doors locked until the morning. When that is done, barricade the
entrance to the tunnel; although I am sure that the people of our
parish would have too much right feeling, as well as apprehension,
to attempt to make their way in, after dark. To-morrow, I trust we
shall offer humble thanks to the Giver of all good, for this great
mercy. I propose to hold a short special service; though I fear
there is no precedent in the Prayer-book. This will take a vast
weight off your mind, as well as mine, which has been sorely tried.
I beg you not to lose a minute, as many people might become unduly
excited.
"Most truly yours,
"PHILIP PENNILOE."
"P.S.--This relieves us also from another dark anxiety, simply
explaining the downfall of the S.E. corner of the Chancel."
"It seems hard upon me; but it must be right, because the Parson has
decreed it;" Dr. Fox cried, without a particle of what is now called
"slavish adulation of the Church"--which scarcely stuck up for herself
in those days--but by virtue of the influence which a kind and good man
always gains, when he does not overstrain his rights. "I am off, Mrs.
Gilham, I can trust you to see to the pair of invalids upstairs."
Then he jumped upon young Mr. Farrant's horse, and leaving him to follow
at foot leisure, dashed down the hill towards Perlycross. At the four
cross-roads, which are the key of the position, and have all the village
and the valley in command, he found as fine a concourse perhaps as had
been there since the great days of the Romans. Not a rush of dread, and
doubting, and of shivering back-bones, such as had been on that hoary
morning, when the sun came through the fog, and showed Churchwarden
Farmer John, and Channing the clerk, and blacksmith Crang, trudging from
the potato-field, full of ghastly tidings, and encountering at that very
spot Sergeant Jakes, and Cornish, and the tremulous tramp of half the
village, afraid of resurrection.
Instead of hurrying from the churchyard, as a haunt of ghouls and
fiends, all were hastening towards it now, with deep respect reviving.
The people who lived beyond the bridge, and even beyond the factory, and
were much inclined by local right to sit under the Dissenting
minister--himself a very good man, and working in harmony with the
Curate--many of these, and even some from Priestwell, having heard of
it, pushed their right to know everything, in front of those who lived
close to the Church and looked through the railings every day. Farmer
John Horner was there on his horse, trotting slowly up and down, as
brave as a mounted policeman is, and knowing every one by name called
out to him to behave himself. Moreover Walter Haddon stood at the door
of the _Ivy-bush_, with his coat off, and his shirtsleeves rolled, and
ready to double his fist at any man who only drank small beer, at the
very first sign of tumult. But candidly speaking this was needless,
powerful as the upheaval was, and hot the spirit of enquiry; for the
wives of most of the men were there, and happily in an English crowd
that always makes for good manners.
Fox was received with loud hurrahs, and many ran forward to shake his
hand; some, who had been most black and bitter in their vile suspicions,
having the manliness to beg his pardon, and abuse themselves very
heartily. He forgave them with much frankness, as behoves an Englishman,
and with a pleasant smile at their folly, which also is nicely national.
For after all, there is no other race that can give and take as we do;
not by any means headlong, yet insisting upon decision--of the other
side, at any rate--and thus quickening the sense of justice upon the
average, in our favour.
Fox, with the truly British face of one who is understood at last, but
makes no fuss about it, gave up his horse at the lych-gate, and made off
where he was beckoned for. Here were three great scaffold-poles and
slings fixed over the entrance to the ancient under-way; and before dark
all was managed well. And then a short procession, headed by the martial
march of Jakes, conveyed into the venerable Church the mortal part of a
just and kind man and a noble soldier, to be consigned to-morrow to a
more secure, and ever tranquil, and still honoured resting-place.
This being done, the need of understanding must be satisfied. Dr. Fox,
and Dr. Gronow, with the two Churchwardens, and Channing the clerk,
descended the ladder into the hole, and with a couple of torches kindled
went to see the cause and manner of this strange yet simple matter--a
four-month mystery of darkness, henceforth as clear as daylight.
When they beheld it, they were surprised, not at the thing itself--for
it could scarcely have happened otherwise, under the circumstances--but
at the coincidences, which had led so many people of very keen
intelligence into, as might almost be said, every track, except the
right one. And this brought home to them one great lesson--"_If you wish
to be sure of a thing, see it with your own good eyes._" And
another--but that comes afterwards.
The passage, dug by the Monks no doubt, led from the Abbey directly
westward to the chancel of the Church, probably to enable them to carry
their tapers burning, and discharge their duties there promptly and with
vestments dry, in defiance of the weather. The crown, of loose flints
set in mortar, was some eight feet underground, and the line it took was
that adopted in all Christian burial. The grave of the late Sir Thomas
Waldron was prepared, as he had wished, far away from the family vault
(which had sadly undermined the Church), and towards the eastern end of
the yard, as yet not much inhabited. As it chanced, the bottom lay
directly along a weak, or worn-out part of the concrete arch below; and
the men who dug it said at the time that their spades had struck on
something hard, which they took to be loose blocks of flint. However
being satisfied with their depth, and having orders to wall the bottom,
they laid on either side some nine or ten courses of brickwork, well
flushed in with strong and binding mortar; but the ends being safe and
bricks running short, to save any further trouble, they omitted the
cross-wall at the ends. Thus when the weight of earth cast in pressed
more and more heavily upon the heavy coffin, the dome of concreted
flints below collapsed, the solid oaken box dropped quietly to the
bottom of the tunnel, and the dwarf brick sides having no tie across,
but being well bonded together, and well-footed, full across the vacancy
into one another, forming a new arch, or more correctly a splay
span-roof, in lieu of the old arch which had yielded to the strain. Thus
the earth above took this new bearing, and the surface of the ground was
no more disturbed than it always is by settlement.
No wonder then that in the hurried search, by men who had not been down
there before, and had not heard of any brickwork at the sides, and were
at that moment in a highly nervous state, not only was the grave
reported empty--which of course was true enough--but no suspicion was
entertained that the bottom they came to (now covered with earth) was
anything else than a rough platform for the resting-place. And the two
who could have told them better, being proud of their skill in
foundations, had joined the builders' staff, and been sent away to
distant jobs.
In the heat of foregone conclusion, and the terror created by the
blacksmith's tale, and the sad condition of that faithful little _Jess_,
the report had been taken as final. No further quest seemed needful; and
at Squire Mockham's order, the empty space had been filled in at once,
for fear of the excitement, and throng of vulgar gazers, gathering and
thickening around the empty grave.
Such are the cases that make us wonder at the power of co-incidence, and
the very strange fact that the less things seem to have to do with one
another, the greater is their force upon the human mind, when it tries
to be too logical.
Many little things, all far apart, had been fetched together by fine
reasoning process, and made to converge towards a very fine error, with
certainty universal.
Even that humble agent, or patient, little _Jess_--despised as a dog, by
the many who have no delight in their better selves--had contributed
very largely to the confluence of panic. If she could only have thrown
the light of language on her woeful plight, the strongest clench to the
blacksmith's tale would never have come near his pincers. For the slash
that rewarded her true love fell, not from the spade of a
Churchyard-robber, but from a poacher's bill-hook. This has already been
intimated; and Mr. Penniloe must have learned it then; if he had simply
taken time, instead of making off at five miles an hour, when Speccotty
wanted to tell his tale. This should be a warning to Clergymen; for
perhaps there was no other man in the parish, whose case the good
parson would thus have postponed, without prospect of higher
consolation. And it does seem a little too hard upon a man, that because
his mind is gone astray unawares, his soul should drop out of
cultivation!
That poor little spaniel was going home sadly, to get a bit of
breakfast, and come back to her duty; when trespassing unwittingly upon
the poacher's tricks, at early wink of daylight, she was taken for a
minion of the Evil One, and met with a vigour which is shown too seldom,
by even true sportsmen, to his emissaries. Perhaps before she quitted
guard, she may have had a nip at the flowers on the grave, and dropped
them back, when she failed to make sweet bones of them.
Without further words--though any number of words, if their weight were
by the score, would be too few--the slowest-headed man in Perlycross
might lay to his heart the second lesson, read in as mild a voice as
Penniloe's, above. And without a word at all, he may be trusted to go
home with it; when the job is of other folk's hands, but his own pocket.
"_Never scamp your work_," was preached more clearly by this long
trouble, and degradation of an honourable parish, than if Mr. Penniloe
had stood in the pulpit, for a week of Sundays, with the mouth of King
Solomon laid to his ear, and the trump of the Royal Mail upon his lips.