THE AUNT AND HER NEPHEW.
While we leave Roger Acton in the jail, waiting for the very
near assizes, and wearing every hour away in penitence and prayer, it
will be needful to our story that we take a retrospective glance at
certain events, of no slight importance.
I must now speak of things, of which there is no human witness;
recording words, and deeds, whereof Heaven alone is cognizant, Heaven
alone--and Hell! For there are secret matters, which the murdered cannot
tell us, and the murderer dare not--let him confess as fully as he will.
Therefore, with some omnipresent sense, some invisible ubiquity, I must
note down scenes as they occurred, whether mortal eye has witnessed them
or not; I must lay bare secret thoughts, unlatch the hidden chambers of
the heart, and duly set out, as they successively arose, the idea which
tongue had not embodied, the feeling which no action had expressed.
Hitherto, we have pretty well preserved inviolate the three grand
unities--time, place, circumstance; and even now we do not sin against
the first and chiefest, however we may seem so to sin; for, had it
suited my purpose to have begun with the beginning, and to have placed
the present revelations foremost, the strictest stickler for the unities
would have only had to praise my orthodox adherence to them. As it is, I
have chosen, for interest sake, to shuffle my cards a little; and two
knaves happen to have turned up together just at this time and place.
The time is just three weeks ago--a week before the baronet came of age,
and a fortnight antecedent to the finding of the crock; which, as we
know, after blessing Roger for a se'nnight, has at last left him in
jail. The place is the cozy house-keepers room at Hurstley: and the
brace of thorough knaves, to enact then and there as _dramatis personæ_,
includes Mistress Bridget Quarles, a fat, sturdy, bluffy, old woman, of
a jolly laugh withal, and a noisy tongue--and our esteemed acquaintance
Mister Simon Jennings. The aunt, house-keeper, had invited the nephew,
butler, to take a dish of tea with her, and rum-punch had now succeeded
the souchong.
"Well, Aunt Quarles, is it your meaning to undertake a new master?"
"Don't know, nephy--can't say yet what he'll be like: if he'll leave us
as we are, won't say wont."
"Ay, as we are, indeed; comfortable quarters, and some little to put by,
too: a pretty penny you will have laid up all this while, I'll be bound:
I wager you now it is a good five hundred, aunt--come, done for a
shilling."
"Get along, foolish boy; a'n't you o' the tribe o' wisdom too--ha, ha,
ha!"
"I will not say," smirked Simon, "that my nest has not a feather."
"It's easy work for us, Nep; we hunt in couples: you the men, and I the
maids--ha, ha!"
"Tush, Aunt Bridget! that speech is not quite gallant, I fear." And the
worshipful extortioners giggled jovially.
"But it's true enough for all that, Simon: how d'ye manage it, eh, boy?
much like me, I s'pose; wages every quarter from the maids, dues from
tradesmen Christmas-tide and Easter, regular as Parson Evans's; pretty
little bits tacked on weekly to the bills, beside presents from every
body; and so, boy, my poor forty pounds a-year soon mounts up to a
hundred."
"Ay, ay, Aunt Bridget--but I get the start of you, though you probably
were born a week before-hand: talk of parsons, look at me, a regular
grand pluralist monopolist, as any bishop can be; butler in doors,
bailiff out of doors, land-steward, house-steward, cellar-man, and
pay-master. I am not all this for naught, Aunt Quarles: if so much goes
through my fingers, it is but fair that something stick."
"True, Simon--O certainly; but if you come to boasting, my boy, I don't
carry this big bunch o' keys for nothing neither. Lord love you! why
merely for cribbings in the linen-line for one month, John Draper
swapped me that there shawl: none o' my clothes ever cost me a penny,
and I a'n't quite as bare as a new-born baby neither. Look at them
trunks, bless you!"
"Ay, ay, aunt, I'll be bound the printer of your prayer-book has left
out a 'not,' before the 'steal,' eh?--ha! ha!"
"Fie, naughty Simon, fie! them's not stealings, them's parquisites.
Where's the good o' living in a great house else? But come, Si, haven't
you struck out the 'not,' for yourself, though the printer did his duty,
eh, Nep?"
"Not a bit, aunt--not a bit: all sheer honesty and industry. Look at my
pretty little truck-shop down the village. Wo betide the labourer that
leaves off dealing there! not one that works at Hurstley, but eats my
bread and bacon; besides the 'tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff.'"
"Pretty fairish articles, eh? I never dealt with you, Si: no, Nep,
no--you never saw the colour o' my money."
Jennings gave a start, as if a thought had pricked him; but gayly
recovering himself, said,
"Oh, as to pretty fairish, I know there is one thing about the bacon
good enough; ay, and the bread too--the very best of prices; ha! ha! is
not that good? And for the other genuine articles, I don't know that
much of the tea comes from China--and the coffee is sold ground, because
it is burnt maize--and there's a plenty of wholesome cabbage leaf cut up
in the tobacco--while as for snuff, I give them a dry, peppery, choky,
sneezy dust, and I dare say that it does its duty."
It was astonishing how innocently the worthy couple laughed together.
"My only trouble, Aunt Quarles, is where to keep my gains--what to do
with them. I am quite driven to the strong-box system, interest is so
bad; and as to speculations, they are nervous things, and sicken one. I
invest in the Great Western one day--a tunnel falls in, so I sell my
shares the next, and send the proceeds to Australia; then, looking at
the map, I see the island isn't clean chalked out all round, and
beginning to fear that the sea will get in where it a'n't made
water-tight by the Admiralty, I call the money home again. You see I
don't know what to do with gold when I get it. Where do you keep yours
now, aunt, I wonder?"
"O, Nep, never mind me; you rattle on so I can't get in never a word.
I'll only tell you where I don't keep it. Not at Breakem's bank, for
they're brewers, and hosiers, and chandlers, and horse-dealers--ay, and
swindlers too, the whole 'company' on 'em; not in mortgages, for I hate
the very smell of a lawyer, with all his pounce and parchment; not in
Gover'me't 'nuities, for I'm an old 'ooman, boy; and not in the Three
per Cents, nor any other per cents, for I've sense enough to know that
my highest interest lies in counting out, as my first principle is
dropping in." And the fat female laughed herself purple at the venerable
joke.
Simon was a courtier, and laughed too, as immoderately as possible.
"Ah! I dare say now you have got a Chubb's patent somewhere full of
gold?" he asked somewhat anxiously; "take your punch, aunt, wont you? I
do not see you drink."
"Simon, mark me; fools who want to be robbed put their money into an
iron chest, that thieves may know exactly where to find it; they might
as well ticket it 'cash,' and advertise to Newgate--come and steal. I
know a little better than to be such a fool."
"Yes, certainly--I dare say now you keep it in your work-box, or sew it
up in your stays, or hide it in the mattress, or in an old tea-pot,
maybe." And Jennings eyed her narrowly.
"Nephew, what rhymes to money?"
"Money?--Well I can't say I am a poet--stony, perhaps. At least," added
the benevolent individual, "when I have raised a wretch's rent to gain a
little more by him, stony is not a bad shield to lift against prayers,
and tears, and orphans, and widows, and starvation, and all such
nonsense."
"Not bad, neither, Nep: but there's a better rhyme than that."
"You cannot mean honey, aunt? when I guessed stony, I thought you might
have some snug little cash cellar under the flags. But honey? are you
such a thorough Mrs. Rundle as to pickle and preserve your very guineas,
the same as you do strawberries or apricots in syrup?"
"Oh, you clever little fool! how prettily you do talk on: your tongue's
as tidy as your cash-book: when you've any money to put by, come to Aunt
Bridget for a crock to hide it in: mayn't one use a honey-pot, as Teddy
Rourke would say, barring the honey?"
"Ha! and so you hide the hoard up there, aunt, eh? along with the
preserves in a honey-pot, do you?"
"We'll see--we'll see, some o' these long days; not that the money's to
be yours, Nep--you're rich enough, and don't want it; there's your poor
sister Scott with her fourteen children, and Aunt Bridget must give her
a lift in life: she was a good niece to me, Simon, and never left my
side before she married: maybe she'll have cause to bless the dead."
Jennings hardly spoke a word more; but drained his glass in silence, got
up a sudden stomach-ache, and wished his aunt good-night.