ENTER AND EXIT
The summer having been fine upon the whole, and a very fair quantity
of fish brought in, Miss Twemlow had picked up a sweetheart, as the
unromantic mothers of the place expressed it. And the circumstances were
of such a nature that very large interest was aroused at once, and not
only so, but was fed well and grew fast.
The most complete of chronicles is no better than a sponge of inferior
texture and with many mouths shut. Parts that are full of suctive power
get no chance of sucking; other parts have a flood of juice bubbling at
them, but are waterproof. This is the only excuse--except one--for
the shameful neglect of the family of Blocks, in any little treatise
pretending to give the dullest of glimpses at Springhaven.
The other excuse--if self-accusation does not poke a finger through
it--is that the Blockses were mainly of the dry land, and never went to
sea when they could help it. If they had lived beyond the two trees and
the stile that marked the parish boundary upon the hill towards London,
they might have been spotless, and grand, and even honest, yet must
have been the depth of the hills below contempt. But they dwelt in the
village for more generations than would go upon any woman's fingers,
and they did a little business with the fish caught by the others, which
enabled it to look after three days' journey as if it swam into town
upon its own fins. The inventions for wronging mankind pay a great deal
better than those for righting them.
Now the news came from John Prater's first, that a gentleman of great
renown was coming down from London city to live on fish fresh out of
the sea. His doctors had ordered him to leave off butcher's meat, and
baker's bread, and tea-grocer's tea, and almost every kind of inland
victuals, because of the state of his--something big, which even
Springhaven could not pronounce. He must keep himself up, for at least
three months, upon nothing but breezes of the sea, and malt-liquor, and
farm-house bread and milk and new-laid eggs, and anything he fancied
that came out of the sea, shelly, or scaly, or jellified, or weedy.
News from a public-house grows fast--as seeds come up quicker for
soaking--and a strong competition for this gentleman arose; but he
knew what he was doing, and brought down his cook and house-maid, and
disliking the noise at the Darling Arms, took no less than five rooms at
the house of Matthew Blocks, on the rise of the hill, where he could see
the fish come in.
He was called at once Sir Parsley Sugarloaf, for his name was Percival
Shargeloes; and his cook rebuked his housemaid sternly, for meddling
with matters beyond her sphere, when she told Mrs. Blocks that he was
not Sir Percival, but only Percival Shargeloes, Esquire, very high up
in the Corporation, but too young to be Lord Mayor of London for some
years. He appeared to be well on the right side of forty; and every
young lady on the wrong side of thirty possessing a pony, or even a
donkey, with legs enough to come down the hill, immediately began to
take a rose-coloured view of the many beauties of Springhaven.
If Mr. Shargeloes had any ambition for title, it lay rather in a
military direction. He had joined a regiment of City Volunteers, and
must have been a Captain, if he could have stood the drill. But this,
though not arduous, had outgone his ambition, nature having gifted him
with a remarkable power of extracting nourishment from food, which is
now called assimilation. He was not a great feeder--people so blessed
seldom are--but nothing short of painful starvation would keep him lean.
He had consulted all the foremost physicians about this, and one said,
“take acids,” another said, “walk twenty miles every day with two Witney
blankets on,” a third said, “thank God for it, and drink before you
eat,” and a fourth (a man of wide experience) bade him marry the
worst-tempered woman he knew. Then they all gave him pills to upset his
stomach; but such was its power that it assimilated them. Despairing of
these, he consulted a Quack, and received the directions which brought
him to Springhaven. And a lucky day for him it was, as he confessed for
the rest of his life, whenever any ladies asked him.
Because Miss Twemlow was intended for him by the nicest adjustment of
nature. How can two round things fit together, except superficially?
And in that case one must be upper and the other under; which is not the
proper thing in matrimony, though generally the prevailing one. But take
a full-moon and a half-moon, or even a square and a tidy triangle--with
manners enough to have one right angle--and when you have put them into
one another's arms, there they stick, all the firmer for friction. Jack
Spratt and his wife are a case in point; and how much more pointed the
case becomes when the question is not about what is on the plate, but
the gentleman is in his own body fat, and the lady in her elegant person
lean!
Mr. Sugarloaf--which he could not bear to be called--being an ardent
admirer of the Church, and aware that her ministers know what is good,
returned with great speed the Rector's call, having earnest hopes of
some heart-felt words upon the difference between a right and
left handed sole. One of these is ever so much better than the
other--according to our evolutionists, because when he was a cod, a few
milliards of years back, he chose the right side to begin lying down on,
that his descendants in the thirty-millionth generation might get flat.
His wife, from sheer perversity, lay down upon the other side, and this
explains how some of their descendants pulled their eyes through their
heads to one side, and some (though comparatively few) to the other. And
the worst of it is that the fittest for the frying-pan did not survive
this well-intended involution, except at a very long figure in the
market.
As it fell out upon that day, Miss Twemlow was sitting in the
drawing-room alone, waiting till her mother's hair was quite done up,
her own abundant locks being not done up at all, for she had lately
taken to set her face against all foreign fashions. “I have not been
introduced to the King,” she said, “nor even to the Queen, like those
forward Darlings, and I shall do my hair to please myself.” When her
father objected, she quenched him with St. Paul; and even her mother,
though shocked, began to think that Eliza knew what she was about. The
release of her fine hair, which fell in natural waves about her stately
neck, made her look nearly ten years younger than she was, for by this
time she must have been eight-and-twenty. The ladies of the Carne race,
as their pictures showed (until they were sold to be the grandmothers
of dry-salters), had always been endowed with shapely necks, fit
columns for their small round heads. And this young lady's hair, with no
constraint but that of a narrow band across the forehead, clustered and
gleamed like a bower of acanthus round that Parian column.
Mr. Shargeloes, having obeyed his orders always to dine early, was
thrilled with a vision of poetry and romance, as he crossed the first
square of the carpet. The lady sat just where the light fell best from a
filtered sunbeam to illumine her, without entering into the shady parts;
and the poetry of her attitude was inspired by some very fine poetry
upon her lap. “I don't care what the doctors say, I shall marry that
girl,” said Mr. Shargeloes to himself.
He was a man who knew his own mind, and a man with that gift makes
others know it. Miss Twemlow clenched in the coat upon his back the nail
she had driven through his heart, by calling him, at every other breath,
“Colonel Shargeloes.” He said he was not that; but she felt that he was,
as indeed every patriotic man must be. Her contempt for every man
who forsook his country in this bitter, bitter strait was at once so
ruthless and so bewitching that he was quite surprised into confessing
that he had given 10,000 pounds, all in solid gold, for the comfort of
the Royal Volunteers, as soon as the autumnal damps came on. He could
not tell such an elegant creature that what he had paid for was flannel
drawers, though she had so much strength of mind that he was enabled to
tell her before very long.
A great deal of nonsense is talked about ladies who are getting the
better of their first youth, as if they then hung themselves out as old
slates for any man to write his name on. The truth is that they have
better judgment then, less trouble in their hearts about a gentleman's
appearance, and more enquiry in their minds as to his temper, tastes,
and principles, not to mention his prospects of supporting them. And
even as concerns appearance, Mr. Shargeloes was very good. Nature had
given him a fine stout frame, and a very pleasant countenance; and
his life in the busy world had added that quickness of decision and
immediate sense of right which a clever woman knows to be the very
things she wants. Moreover, his dress, which goes a very long way into
the heart of a lady, was most correct and particular. For his coat was
of the latest Bond Street fashion, the “Jean de Brie,” improved and
beautified by suggestions from the Prince of Wales himself. Bright
claret was the colour, and the buttons were of gold, bright enough to
show the road before him as he walked. The shoulders were padded, as if
a jam pot stood there, and the waist buttoned tight, too tight for any
happiness, to show the bright laticlave of brocaded waistcoat. Then
followed breeches of rich purple padusoy, having white satin bows at the
knee, among which the little silver bells of the Hessian boots jingled.
Miss Twemlow was superior to all small feeling, but had great breadth of
sympathy with the sterling truth in fashion. The volume of love, like
a pattern-book, fell open, and this well-dressed gentleman was engraved
upon her heart. The most captious young chit, such as Dolly herself,
could scarcely have called him either corpulent or old. Every day he
could be seen to be growing younger, with the aid of fresh fish as a
totally novel ingredient in his system; his muscle increased with the
growth of brain-power, and the shoemaker was punching a fresh hole
in his belt, an inch further back, every week he stopped there. After
buckling up three holes, he proposed. Miss Twemlow referred him to her
dear papa; and the Rector took a week to enquire and meditate. “Take a
month, if you like,” said Mr. Shargeloes.
This reply increased the speed. Mr. Twemlow had the deepest respect for
the Corporation, and to live to be the father of a Lord Mayor of London
became a new ambition to lead on his waning years. “Come and dine with
us on Saturday, and we will tell you all about it,” he said, with a
pleasant smile, and warm shake of the hand; and Shargeloes knew that the
neck and the curls would bend over the broad gold chain some day.
How grievous it is to throw a big stone into a pool which has plenty of
depth and length and width for the rings to travel pleasantly, yet not
to make one ring, because of wind upon the water! In the days that were
not more than two years old, Springhaven could have taken all this news,
with a swiftly expanding and smoothly fluent circle, with a lift of
self-importance at the centre of the movement, and a heave of gentle
interest in the far reflective corners. Even now, with a tumult of
things to consider, and a tempest of judgment to do it in, people
contrived to be positive about a quantity of things still pending. Sir
Parsley Sugarloaf had bought Miss Twemlow for 50,000 pounds, they said,
and he made her let her curls down so outrageous, because she was to be
married at Guildhall, with a guinea at the end of every hair. Miss
Faith would be dirt-cheap at all that money; but as for Miss Eliza, they
wished him better knowledge, which was sure to come, when it was no good
to him.
“What a corner of the world this is for gossip!” Mr. Shargeloes said,
pleasantly, to his Eliza, having heard from his cook, who desired no new
mistress, some few of the things said about him. “I am not such a fool
as to care what they say. But I am greatly surprised at one thing.
You know that I am a thorough Englishman; may I tell you what I think,
without offending you? It is a delicate matter, because it concerns a
relative of your own, my dear.”
“I know what you mean. You will not offend me. Percival, I know how
straightforward you are, and how keen of perception. I have expected
this.”
“And yet it seems presumptuous of me to say that you are all blind
here, from the highest to the lowest. Except indeed yourself, as I now
perceive. I will tell you my suspicions, or more than suspicions--my
firm belief--about your cousin, Mr. Carne. I can trust you to keep this
even from your father. Caryl Carne is a spy, in the pay of the French.”
“I have long thought something, though not quite so bad as that,”
Miss Twemlow answered, calmly; “because he has behaved to us so very
strangely. My mother is his own father's sister, as you know, and yet he
has never dined with us more than once, and then he scarcely said a word
to any one. And he never yet has asked us to visit him at the castle;
though for that we can make all allowance, of course, because of its sad
condition. Then everybody thought he had taken to smuggling, and after
all his losses, no one blamed him, especially as all the Carnes had done
it, even when they were the owners of the land. But ever since poor
Mr. Cheeseman, our church-warden, tried to destroy himself with his own
rope, all the parish began to doubt about the smuggling, because it pays
so well and makes the people very cheerful. But from something he
had seen, my father felt quite certain that the true explanation was
smuggling.”
“Indeed! Do you know at all what it was he saw, and when, and under what
circumstances?” Mr. Shargeloes put these questions with more urgency
than Miss Twemlow liked.
“Really I cannot tell you all those things; they are scarcely of general
interest. My dear father said little about it: all knowledge is denied
in this good world to women. But no doubt he would tell you, if you
asked him, when there were no ladies present.”
“I will,” said Mr. Shargeloes. “He is most judicious; he knows when to
speak, and when to hold his tongue. And I think that you combine with
beauty one of those two gifts--which is the utmost to be expected.”
“Percival, you put things very nicely, which is all that could be
expected of a man. But do take my advice in this matter, and say no more
about it.”
Mr. Shargeloes feigned to comply, and perhaps at the moment meant to do
so. But unluckily he was in an enterprising temper, proud of recovered
activity, and determined to act up to the phosphate supplied by fish
diet. Therefore when the Rector, rejoicing in an outlet for his long
pent-up discoveries, and regarding this sage man as one of his family,
repeated the whole of his adventure at Carne Castle, Mr. Shargeloes
said, briefly, “It must be seen to.”
“Stubbard has been there,” replied Mr. Twemlow, repenting perhaps of his
confidence; “Stubbard has made an official inspection, which relieves us
of all concern with it.”
“Captain Stubbard is an ass. It is a burning shame that important
affairs should be entrusted to such fellows. The country is in peril,
deadly peril; and every Englishman is bound to act as if he were an
officer.”
That very same evening Carne rode back to his ruins in a very grim state
of mind. He had received from the Emperor a curt and haughty answer to
his last appeal for immediate action, and the prospect of another gloomy
winter here, with dangers thickening round him, and no motion to enliven
them, was almost more than he could endure. The nights were drawing in,
and a damp fog from the sea had drizzled the trees, and the ivy, and
even his own moustache with cold misery.
“Bring me a lantern,” he said to old Jerry, as he swung his stiff legs
from the back of the jaded horse, “and the little flask of oil with the
feather in it. It is high time to put the Inspector's step in order.”
Jerry Bowles, whose back and knees were bent with rheumatism and dull
service, trotted (like a horse who has become too stiff to walk) for the
things commanded, and came back with them. Then his master, without
a word, strode towards the passage giving entry to the vaults which
Stubbard had not seen--the vaults containing all the powder, and the
weapons for arming the peasantry of England, whom Napoleon fondly
expected to rise in his favour at the sight of his eagles.
“How does it work? Quite stiff with rust. I thought so. Nothing is ever
in order, unless I see to it myself. Give me the lantern. Now oil the
bearings thoroughly. Put the feather into the socket, and work the pin
in and out, that the oil may go all round. Now pour in some oil from the
lip of the flask; but not upon the treadle, you old blockhead. Now do
the other end the same. Ah, now it would go with the weight of a mouse!
I have a great mind to make you try it.”
“What would you do, sir, if my neck was broken? Who would do your work,
as I do?”
They were under an arch of mouldy stone, opening into the deep dark
vaults, where the faint light of the lantern glanced on burnished
leather, brass, and steel, or fell without flash upon dull round bulk.
The old man, kneeling on the round chalk-flints set in lime for
the flooring of the passage, was handling the first step of narrow
step-ladder leading to the cellar-depth. This top step had been taken
out of the old oak mortice, and cut shorter, and then replaced in the
frame, with an iron pin working in an iron collar, just as the gudgeon
of a wheelbarrow revolves. Any one stepping upon it unawares would go
down without the aid of any other step.
“Goes like spittle now, sir,” said old Jerry; “but I don't want no
more harm in this crick of life. The Lord be pleased to keep all them
Examiners at home. Might have none to find their corpusses until next
leap-year. I hope with all my heart they won't come poking their long
noses here.”
“Well, I rather hope they will. They want a lesson in this
neighbourhood,” muttered Carne, who was shivering, and hungry, and
unsweetened.