HERMETICALLY SEALED
The discovery which I have described above (but not half so well as
the miller tells it now) created in my young heart a feeling of really
strong curiosity. To begin with, how could this valuable thing have got
into the Moon-stream, and lain there so long, unsought for, or at best
so unskillfully sought for? What connection could it have with the
tragic death of my grandfather? Why was that man so tardily come to
search for it, if he might do so without any body near him? Again,
what woman was this whose beauty no water or mud could even manage to
disguise? That last was a most disturbing question to one's bodily peace
of mind. And then came another yet more urgent--what was in the inside
of this tight case?
That there was something inside of it seemed almost a certainty. The
mere value of the trinket, or even the fear that it ever might turn
up as evidence, would scarcely have brought that man so often to stir
suspicion by seeking it; though, after so long a time, he well might
hope that suspicion was dead and buried. And being unable to open this
case--after breaking three good nails over it, and then the point of a
penknife--I turned to Master Withypool, who was stamping on the grass to
drain himself.
“What sort of a man was that,” I asked, “who wanted you to do what
now you have so kindly done for me? About a month or six weeks ago? Do
please to tell me, as nearly as you can.”
If Mrs. Withypool had been there, she might have lost all patience with
me for putting long questions so selfishly to a man who had done so much
for me, and whose clothes were now dripping in a wind which had arisen
to test his theory of drying. He must have lost a large quantity of
what scientific people call “caloric.” But never a shiver gave he in
exchange.
“Well, miss,” he said, “I was thinking a'most of speaking on that very
matter. More particular since you found that little thing, with the
pretty lady inside of it. It were borne in on my mind that thissom were
the very thing he were arter.”
“No doubt of it,” I answered, with far less patience, though being
comparatively dry. “But what was he like? Was he like this portrait?”
“This picture of the lady? No; I can't say that he were, so much. The
face of a big man he hath, with short black fringes to it. Never showeth
to my idea any likeliness of a woman. No, no, miss; think you not at all
that you have got him in that blue thing. Though some of their pictures
is like men, the way they dress up nowadays.”
“I did not mean that it was meant for him; what I mean is, do you see
any sign of family likeness? Any resemblance about the eyes, or mouth,
or forehead?”
“Well, now, I don't know but what I might,” replied Master Withypool,
gazing very hard; “if I was to look at 'un long enough, a' might find
some'at favoring of that tall fellow, I do believe. Indeed, I do believe
the more I look, the more I diskivers the image of him.”
The good and kind miller's perception of the likeness strengthened
almost too fast, as if the wish were father to the thought, until I saw
clearly how selfish I was in keeping him in that state so long; for I
knew, from what Mrs. Busk had told me, that in spite of all his large
and grand old English sentiments about his clothes, his wife would make
him change them all ere ever she gave him a bit of dinner, and would
force him then to take a glass of something hot. So I gave him a
thousand thanks, though not a thousandth part of what he deserved, and
saw him well on his homeward way before I went back to consider things.
As soon as my landlady was at leisure to come in and talk with me,
and as soon as I had told her how things happened, and shown her our
discovery, we both of us did the very same thing, and said almost the
very same words. Our act was, with finger and nail and eye, to rime into
every jot of it; and our words were,
“I am sure there is something inside. If not, it would open sensibly.”
In the most senseless and obstinate manner it refused not only to open,
but to disclose any thing at all about itself. Whether it ever had been
meant to open, and if so, where, and by what means; whether, without
any gift of opening, it might have a hidden thing inside; whether, when
opened by force or skill, it might show something we had no business
with, or (which would be far worse) nothing at all--good Mrs. Busk and
myself tested, tapped, and felt, and blew, and listened, and tried every
possible overture, and became at last quite put out with it.
“It is all of a piece with the villains that owned it,” the postmistress
exclaimed at last. “There is no penetrating either it or them. Most
likely they have made away with this beautiful lady on the cover. Kill
one, kill fifty, I have heard say. I hope Master Withypool will let out
nothing, or evil it will be for you, miss. If I was you, I would carry a
pistol.”
“Now please not to frighten me, Mrs. Busk. I am not very brave at the
best of times, and this has made me so nervous. If I carried a pistol, I
should shoot myself the very first hour of wearing it. The mere thought
of it makes me tremble. Oh, why was I ever born, to do man's work?”
“Because, miss, a man would not have done it half so well. When you
saw that villain digging, a man would have rushed out and spoiled
all chance. And now what man could have ever found this? Would Master
Withypool ever have emptied the Moon River for a man, do you think? Or
could any man have been down among us all this time, in this jealous
place, without his business being long ago sifted out and scattered over
him? No, no, miss; you must not talk like that--and with me as well to
help you. The rogues will have reason to wish, I do believe, that they
had only got a man to deal with.”
In this argument there were points which had occurred to me before; but
certainly it is a comfort to have one's own ideas in a doubtful matter
reproduced, and perhaps put better, by a mind to which one may have lent
them, perhaps, with a loan all unacknowledged. However, trouble teaches
care, and does it so well that the master and the lesson in usage of
words are now the same; therefore I showed no sign of being suggested
with my own suggestions, but only asked, quietly, “What am I to do?”
“My dear young lady,” Mrs. Busk replied, after stopping some time to
think of it, “my own opinion is, for my part, that you ought to consult
somebody.”
“But I am, Mrs. Busk. I am now consulting you.”
“Then I think, miss, that this precious case should be taken at once to
a jeweler, who can open it without doing any damage, which is more than
we can do.”
“To be sure; I have thought of that,” I replied. “But how can that
be done without arousing curiosity?--without the jeweler seeing its
contents, if indeed it has any? And in that case the matter would be no
longer at our own disposal, as now it is. I have a great mind to split
it with a hammer. What are the diamonds to me?”
“It is not the diamonds, but the picture, miss, that may be most
important. And more than that, you might ruin the contents, so as not
to make head or tale of them. No, no; it is a risk that must be run; we
must have a jeweler, but not one of this neighborhood.”
“Then I shall have to go to London again, and perhaps lose something
most important here. Can you think of no other way out of it?”
“No, miss, at present I see nothing else. Unless you will place it all
in the hands of the police.”
“Constable Jobbins, to wit, or his son! No, thank you, Mrs. Busk, not
yet. Surely we are not quite reduced to such a hopeless pass as that. My
father knew what the police were worth, and so does Betsy, and so does
Major Hockin. 'Pompous noodles,' the Major calls them, who lay hold of
every thing by the wrong end.”
“Then if he can lay hold of the right end, miss, what better could you
do than consult him?”
I had been thinking of this already, and pride alone debarred me. That
gentleman's active nature drove him to interfere with other people's
business, even though he had never heard of them; and yet through some
strange reasoning of his own, or blind adoption of public unreason, he
had made me dislike, or at any rate not like, him, until he began to
show signs at last of changing his opinion. And now the question was,
had he done that enough for me, without loss of self-respect, to open my
heart to him, and seek counsel?
In settling that point the necessity of the case overrode, perhaps, some
scruples; in sooth, I had nobody else to go to. What could I do with
Lord Castlewood? Nothing; all his desire was to do exactly what my
father would have done: and my father had never done any thing more than
rove and roam his life out. To my mind this was dreadful now, when every
new thing rising round me more and more clearly to my mind established
what I never had doubted--his innocence. Again, what good could I do by
seeking Betsy's opinion about it, or that of Mrs. Price, or Stixon, or
any other person I could think of? None whatever--and perhaps much harm.
Taking all in all, as things turn up, I believed myself to be almost
equal to the cleverest of those three in sense, and in courage not
inferior. Moreover, a sort of pride--perhaps very small, but not
contemptible--put me against throwing my affairs so much into the hands
of servants.
For this idea Uncle Sam, no doubt the most liberal of men, would perhaps
condemn me. But still I was not of the grand New World, whose pedigrees
are arithmetic (at least with many of its items, though the true Uncle
Sam was the last for that); neither could I come up to the largeness of
universal brotherhood. That was not to be expected of a female; and few
things make a man more angry than for his wife to aspire to it. No such
ideas had ever troubled me; I had more important things to think of,
or, at any rate, something to be better carried out. And of all these
desultory thoughts it came that I packed up that odious but very lovely
locket, without further attempt to unriddle it, and persuaded my very
good and clever Mrs. Busk to let me start right early. By so doing I
could have three hours with a good gentleman always in a hurry, and yet
return for the night to Shoxford, if he should advise me so.
Men and women seem alike to love to have their counsels taken; and the
equinox being now gone by, Mrs. Busk was ready to begin before the tardy
sun was up, who begins to give you short measure at once when he finds
the weights go against him. Mrs. Busk considered not the sun, neither
any of his doings. The time of day was more momentous than any of the
sun's proceedings. Railway time was what she had to keep (unless a good
customer dropped in), and as for the sun--“clock slow, clock fast,” in
the almanacs, showed how he managed things; and if that was not enough,
who could trust him to keep time after what he had done upon the dial of
Ahaz? Reasoning thus--if reason it was--she packed me off in a fly for
the nearest railway station, and by midday I found the Major laboring on
his ramparts.
After proper salutations, I could not help expressing wonder at the
rapid rise of things. Houses here and houses there, springing up like
children's teeth, three or four in a row together, and then a long
gap, and then some more. And down the slope a grand hotel, open for
refreshment, though as yet it had no roof on; for the Major, in virtue
of his charter, defied all the magistrates to stop him from selling
whatever was salable on or off the premises. But noblest and grandest
of all to look at was the “Bruntsea Athenaeum, Lyceum, Assembly-Rooms,
Institution for Mutual Instruction, Christian Young Men's Congress, and
Sanitary, Saline, Hydropathic Hall, at nominal prices to be had gratis.”
“How you do surprise me!” I said to Major Hockin, after reading all
that, which he kindly requested me to do with care; “but where are the
people to come from?”
“Erema,” he replied, as if that question had been asked too often, “you
have not had time to study the laws of political economy--the noblest
of noble sciences. The first of incontrovertible facts is that supply
creates demand. Now ask yourself whether there could even be a Yankee if
ideas like yours had occurred to Columbus?”
This was beyond me; for I never could argue, and strove to the utmost
not to do so. “You understand those things, and I do not,” said I, with
a smile, which pleased him. “My dear aunt Mary always says that you are
the cleverest man in the world; and she must know most about it.”
“Partiality! partiality!” cried the Major, with a laugh, and pulling his
front hair up. “Such things pass by me like the idle wind; or rather,
perhaps, they sadden me, from my sense of my own deficiencies. But,
bless me! dinner must be waiting. Look at that fellow's trowel--he
knows: he turns up the point of it like a spoon. They say that he can
smell his dinner two miles off. We all dine at one o'clock now, that I
may rout up every man-Jack of them.”
The Major sounded a steam-guard's whistle, and led me off in the rapidly
vanishing wake of his hungry workmen.