THE SILVER VOICE
Many shrewd writers have observed that Britannia has a special
luck--which the more devout call Providence--in holding her own, against
not only her true and lawful enemies, but even those of her own bosom
who labour most to ruin her. And truly she had need of all her fortune
now, to save her from the skulking traitor, as well as the raging
adversary.
“Now I will have my revenge,” said Carne, “on all who have outraged and
plundered me. Crows--carrion-crows--I will turn them into owls without
a nest. Prowling owls, to come blinking even now at the last of my poor
relics! Charron, what did that fellow say to old Jerry, the day I tied
the dogs up?”
“He said, my dear friend, that he missed from the paintings which he had
taken to his house the most precious of them all--the picture of your
dear grandmother, by a man whose name it is hard to pronounce, but a
Captain in the British Army, very much fond of beloving and painting
all the most beautiful ladies; and since he had painted the mother of
Vash--Vash--the man that conquered England in America--all his work was
gone up to a wonderful price, and old Sheray should have one guinea if
he would exhibit to him where to find it. Meedle or Beedle--he had set
his heart on getting it. He declared by the good God that he would have
it, and that you had got it under a tombstone.”
“A sample of their persecutions! You know that I have never seen it,
nor even heard of the Captain Middleton who went on his rovings from
Springhaven. And, again, about my own front-door, or rather the door of
my family for some four centuries, because it was carved as they cannot
carve now, it was put into that vile Indenture. I care very little for
my ancestors--benighted Britons of the county type--but these things are
personal insults to me. I seldom talk about them, and I will not do so
now.”
“My Captain, you should talk much about it. That would be the good
relief to your extensive mind. Revenge is not of the bright French
nature; but the sky of this island procreates it. My faith! how I would
rage at England, if it were not for the people, and their daughters! We
shall see; in a few days more we shall astonish the fat John Bull; and
then his little kittens--what do you call them?--calves of an ox, will
come running to us.”
“Enough of your foolish talk,” said Carne. “The women are as resolute as
the men. Even when we have taken London, not an English woman will come
near us, until all the men have yielded. Go down to your station and
watch for the boat. I expect an important despatch to-night. But I
cannot stay here for the chance of it. I have business in Springhaven.”
His business in Springhaven was to turn young love to the basest use, to
make a maiden (rash and flighty, but not as yet dishonourable) a traitor
to her friends and father-land, and most of all to her own father. He
had tried to poison Dolly's mind with doses of social nonsense--in which
he believed about as much as a quack believes in his own pills--but his
main reliance now was placed in his hold upon her romantic heart, and in
her vague ambitions. Pure and faithful love was not to be expected from
his nature; but he had invested in Dolly all the affection he could
spare from self. He had laboured long, and suffered much, and the red
crown of his work was nigh.
Riding slowly down the hill about half a mile from the village, Carne
saw a tall man coming towards him with a firm, deliberate walk. The
stranger was dressed very lightly, and wore a hat that looked like a
tobacco leaf, and carried a long wand in his hand, as if he were going
to keep order in church. These things took the eye afar, but at shorter
range became as nothing, compared with the aspect of the man himself.
This was grand, with its steadfast gaze--no stare, but a calm and kind
regard--its large tranquillity and power of receiving without believing
the words of men; and most of all in the depth of expression reserved by
experience in the forest of its hair.
Carne was about to pass in silent wonder and uneasiness, but the other
gently laid the rod across his breast and stopped him, and then waited
for him to ask the reason why.
“Have you any business with me, good sir?” Carne would have spoken
rudely, but saw that rudeness would leave no mark upon a man like this.
“If so, I must ask you to be quick. And perhaps you will tell me who you
are.”
“I think that you are Caryl Carne,” said the stranger, not unpleasantly,
but as if it mattered very little who was Caryl Carne, or whether there
was any such existence.
Carne stared fiercely, for he was of touchy temper; but he might as
well have stared at a bucket of water in the hope of deranging its
tranquillity. “You know me. But I don't know you,” he answered at last,
with a jerk of his reins.
“Be in no hurry,” said the other, mildly; “the weather is fine, and time
plentiful. I hope to have much pleasant knowledge of you. I have the
honour to be your first cousin, Erle Twemlow. Shake hands with your
kinsman.”
Carne offered his hand, but without his usual grace and self-possession.
Twemlow took it in his broad brown palm, in which it seemed to melt
away, firm though it was and muscular.
“I was going up to call on you,” said Twemlow, who had acquired a
habit of speaking as if he meant all the world to hear. “I feel a deep
interest in your fortunes, and hope to improve them enormously. You
shall hear all about it when I come up. I have passed four years in the
wilds of Africa, where no white man ever trod before, and I have found
out things no white man knows. We call those people savages, but they
know a great deal more than we do. Shall I call to-morrow, and have a
long talk?”
“I fear,” replied Carne, who was cursing his luck for bringing this
fellow home just now, “that I shall have no time for a week or two. I
am engaged upon important business now, which will occupy my whole
attention. Let me see! You are staying at the rectory, I suppose. The
best plan will be for me to let you know when I can afford the pleasure
of receiving you. In a fortnight, or three weeks at the latest--”
“Very well. I am never in a hurry. And I want to go to London to see
about my things. But I dare say you will not object to my roving about
the old castle now and then. I loved the old place as a boy, and I know
every crick and cranny and snake-hole in it.”
“How glad they must have been to see you--restored from the dead,
and with such rich discoveries! But you must be more careful, my good
cousin, and create no more anxiety. Glad as I shall be to see you,
when time allows that indulgence, I must not encourage you to further
rovings, which might end in your final disappearance. Two boar-hounds,
exceedingly fierce and strong, and compelled by my straitened
circumstances to pick up their own living, are at large on my premises
night and day, to remonstrate with my creditors. We fear that they ate
a man last night, who had stolen a valuable picture, and was eager for
another by the same distinguished artist. His boots and hat were found
unhurt; but of his clothes not a shred remained, to afford any
pattern for enquiry. What would my feelings be if Aunt Maria arrived
hysterically in the pony-carriage, and at great personal risk
enquired--”
“I fear no dogs,” said Erle Twemlow, without any flash of anger in his
steadfast eyes. “I can bring any dog to lick my feet. But I fear any man
who sinks lower than a dog, by obtaining a voice and speaking lies with
it. If you wish, for some reason of your own, to have nought to do with
me, you should have said so; and I might have respected you afterwards.
But flimsy excuses and trumpery lies belong to the lowest race of
savages, who live near the coast, and have been taught by Frenchmen.”
Erle Twemlow stood, as he left off speaking, just before the shoulder
of Carne's horse, ready to receive a blow, if offered, but without
preparation for returning it. But Carne, for many good reasons--which
occurred to his mind long afterwards--controlled his fury, and consoled
his self-respect by repaying in kind the contempt he received.
“Well done, Mr. Savage!” he said, with a violent effort to look amiable.
“You and I are accustomed to the opposite extremes of society, and the
less we meet, the better. When a barbarian insults me, I take it as a
foul word from a clodhopper, which does not hurt me, but may damage his
own self-respect, if he cherishes such an illusion. Perhaps you will
allow me to ride on, while you curb your very natural curiosity about a
civilized gentleman.”
Twemlow made no answer, but looked at him with a gentle pity, which
infuriated Carne more than the keenest insult. He lashed his horse, and
galloped down the hill, while his cousin stroked his beard, and looked
after him with sorrow.
“Everything goes against me now,” thought Caryl Carne, while he put up
his horse and set off for the Admiral's Roundhouse. “I want to be cool
as a cucumber, and that insolent villain has made pepper of me. What
devil sent him here at such a time?”
For the moment it did not cross his mind that this man of lofty rudeness
was the long-expected lover of Faith Darling, and therefore in some
sort entitled to a voice about the doings of the younger sister. By many
quiet sneers, and much expressive silence, he had set the brisk Dolly
up against the quiet Faith, as a man who understands fowl nature can set
even two young pullets pulling each other's hackles out.
“So you are come at last!” said Dolly. “No one who knows me keeps me
waiting, because I am not accustomed to it. I expect to be called for at
any moment, by matters of real importance--not like this.”
“Your mind is a little disturbed,” replied Carne, as he took her hand
and kissed it, with less than the proper rapture; “is it because of the
brown and hairy man just returned from Africa?”
“Not altogether. But that may be something. He is not a man to be
laughed at. I wish you could have seen my sister.”
“I would rather see you; and I have no love of savages. He is my first
cousin, and that affords me a domestic right to object to him. As a
brother-in-law I will have none of him.”
“You forget,” answered Dolly, with a flash of her old spirit, which he
was subduing too heavily, “that a matter of that sort depends upon us,
and our father, and not upon the gentlemen. If the gentlemen don't like
it, they can always go away.”
“How can they go, when they are chained up like a dog? Women may wander
from this one to that, because they have nothing to bind them; but a man
is of steadfast material.”
“Erle Twemlow is, at any rate--though it is hard to see his material
through his hair; but that must come off, and I mean to do it. He is the
best-natured man I have ever yet known, except one; and that one had got
nothing to shave. Men never seem to understand about their hair, and
the interest we feel concerning it. But it does not matter very much,
compared to their higher principles.”
“That is where I carry every vote, of whatever sex you please”--Carne
saw that this girl must be humoured for the moment. “Anybody can see
what I am. Straightforward, and ready to show my teeth. Why should an
honest man live in a bush?”
“Faith likes it very much; though she always used to say that it did
seem so unchristian. Could you manage to come and meet him, Caryl? We
shall have a little dinner on Saturday, I believe, that every one may
see Erle Twemlow. His beloved parents will be there, who are gone quite
wild about him. Father will be at home for once; and the Marquis of
Southdown, and some officers, and Captain Stubbard and his wife will
come, and perhaps my brother Frank, who admires you so much. You shall
have an invitation in the morning.”
“Such delights are not for me,” Carne answered, with a superior smile;
“unhappily my time is too important. But perhaps these festivities will
favour me with the chance of a few words with my darling. How I long to
see her, and how little chance I get!”
“Because, when you get it, you spend three-quarters of the time in
arguing, and the rest in finding fault. I am sure I go as far as anybody
can; and I won't take you into my father's Roundhouse, because I don't
think it would be proper.”
“Ladies alone understand such subjects; and a gentleman is thankful
that they do. I am quite content to be outside the Roundhouse--so called
because it is square, perhaps--though the wind is gone back to the east
again, as it always does now in an English summer, according to a man
who has studied the subject--Zebedee Tugwell, the captain of the fleet.
Dolly, beloved, and most worthy to be more so, clear your bright mind
from all false impressions, whose only merit is that they are yours, and
allow it to look clearly at a matter of plain sense.”
She was pleased to have compliments paid to her mind, even more than to
her body--because there was no doubt about the merits of the latter--and
she said: “That is very nice. Go on.”
“Well, beauty, you know that I trust you in everything, because of your
very keen discretion, and freedom from stupid little prejudice. I have
been surprised at times, when I thought of it in your absence, that
any one so young, who has never been through any course of political
economy, should be able to take such a clear view of subjects which are
far beyond the intellect of even the oldest ladies. But it must be your
brother; no doubt he has helped you to--”
“Not he!” cried the innocent Dolly, with fine pride; “I rather look down
upon his reasoning powers; though I never could make such a pretty
tink of rhymes--like the bells of the sheep when the ground is full of
turnips.”
“He approves of your elevated views,” said Carne, looking as grave as a
crow at a church clock; “they may not have come from him, because they
are your own, quite as much as his poetry is his. But he perceives their
truth, and he knows that they must prevail. In a year or two we shall be
wondering, sweet Dolly, when you and I sit side by side, as the
stupid old King and Queen do now, that it ever has been possible for
narrow-minded nonsense to prevail as it did until we rose above it. We
shall be admired as the benefactors, not of this country only, but of
the whole world.”
Miss Dolly was fairly endowed with common-sense, but often failed to
use it. She would fain have said now, “That sounds wonderfully fine; but
what does it mean, and how are we to work it?” But unluckily she
could not bring herself to say it. And when millions are fooled by the
glibness of one man--even in these days of wisdom--who can be surprised
at a young maid's weakness?
“You wish me to help you in some way,” she said; “your object is sure to
be good; and you trust me in everything, because of my discretion. Then
why not tell me everything?”
“You know everything,” Carne replied, with a smile of affection and
sweet reproach. “My object is the largest that a man can have; and
until I saw you, there was not the least taint of self-interest in my
proceedings. But now it is not for the universe alone, for the grandeur
of humanity, and the triumph of peace, that I have to strive, but also
for another little somebody, who has come--I am ashamed to say--to
outweigh all the rest in the balance of my too tender heart.”
This was so good, and so well delivered, that the lady of such love
could do no less than vouchsafe a soft hand and a softer glance, instead
of pursuing hard reason.
“Beauty, it is plain enough to you, though it might not be so to stupid
people,” Carne continued, as he pressed her hand, and vanquished the
doubt of her enquiring eyes with the strength of his resolute gaze,
“that bold measures are sometimes the only wise ones. Many English girls
would stand aghast to hear that it was needful for the good of England
that a certain number, a strictly limited number, of Frenchmen should
land upon this coast.”
“I should rather think they would!” cried Dolly; “and I would be one of
them--you may be quite sure of that.”
“For a moment you might, until you came to understand.” Carne's voice
always took a silver tone when his words were big with roguery; as
the man who is touting for his neighbour's bees strikes the frying-pan
softly at first, to tone the pulsations of the murmuring mob. “But
every safeguard and every guarantee that can be demanded by the wildest
prudence will be afforded before a step is taken. In plain truth, a
large mind is almost shocked at such deference to antique prejudice.
But the feelings of old women must be considered; and our measures are
fenced with such securities that even the most timid must be satisfied.
There must be a nominal landing, of course, of a strictly limited
number, and they must be secured for a measurable period from any
ill-judged interruption. But the great point of all is to have no
blood-guiltiness, no outbreak of fanatic natives against benefactors
coming in the garb of peace. A truly noble offer of the olive-branch
must not be misinterpreted. It is the finest idea that has ever been
conceived; and no one possessing a liberal mind can help admiring the
perfection of this plan. For the sake of this country, and the world,
and ourselves, we must contribute our little share, darling.”
Carne, with the grace of a lofty protector, as well as the face of
an ardent lover, drew the bewildered maiden towards him, and tenderly
kissed her pretty forehead, holding up his hand against all protest.
“It is useless to dream of drawing back,” he continued; “my beauty,
and my poor outcast self, are in the same boat, and must sail on to
success--such success as there never has been before, because it will
bless the whole world, as well as secure our own perfect happiness. You
will be more than the Queen of England. Statues of you will be set up
everywhere; and where could the sculptors find such another model? I may
count upon your steadfast heart, I know, and your wonderful quickness of
perception.”
“Yes, if I could only see that everything was right. But I feel that I
ought to consult somebody of more experience in such things. My father,
for instance, or my brother Frank, or even Mr. Twemlow, or perhaps
Captain Stubbard.”
“If you had thought of it a little sooner, and allowed me time to reason
with them,” Carne replied, with a candid smile, “that would have been
the very thing I should have wished, as taking a great responsibility
from me. But alas, it would be fatal now. The main object now is to
remove all chance of an ill-judged conflict, which would ruin all good
feeling, and cost many valuable lives, perhaps even that of your truly
gallant father. No, my Dolly, you must not open your beautiful lips to
any one. The peace and happiness of the world depend entirely upon your
discretion. All will be arranged to a nicety, and a happy result is
certain. Only I must see you, about some small points, as well as to
satisfy my own craving. On Saturday you have that dinner party, when
somebody will sit by your side instead of me. How miserably jealous I
shall be! When the gentlemen are at their wine, you must console me by
slipping away from the ladies, and coming to the window of the little
room where your father keeps his papers. I shall quit everything and
watch there for you among the shrubs, when it grows dark enough.”