CONVICTION
Sir Montague Hockin, to my great delight, was still away from Bruntsea.
If he had been there, it would have been a most awkward thing for me to
meet him, or to refuse to do so. The latter course would probably have
been the one forced upon me by self-respect and affection toward my
cousin; and yet if so, I could scarcely have avoided an explanation with
my host. From the nature of the subject, and several other reasons, this
would have been most unpleasant; and even now I was haunted with doubts,
as I had been from the first, whether I ought not to have told Mrs.
Hockin long ago what had been said of him. At first sight that seemed
the honest thing to do; but three things made against it. It might seem
forward and meddlesome; it must be a grievous thing to my cousin to have
his sad story discussed again; and lastly, I had promised Mrs. Price
that her words should go no further. So that on the whole perhaps I
acted aright in keeping that infamous tale to myself as long as ever it
was possible.
But now ere ever I spoke of him--which I was always loath to do--Mrs.
Hockin told me that he very seldom came to see them now, and when he did
come he seemed to be uneasy and rather strange in his manners. I thought
to myself that the cause of this was clear. Sir Montague, knowing that I
went to Castlewood, was pricked in his conscience, and afraid of having
his vile behavior to my cousin disclosed. However, that idea of mine
was wrong, and a faulty conception of simple youth. The wicked forgive
themselves so quickly, if even they find any need of it, that every body
else is supposed to do the same. With this I have no patience. A
wrong unrepented of and unatoned gathers interest, instead of getting
discount, from lost time. And so I hated that man tenfold.
Good Mrs. Hockin lamented his absence not only for the sake of her
darling fowls, but also because she considered him a check upon the
Major's enterprise. Great as her faith was in her husband's ability and
keenness, she was often visited with dark misgivings about such heavy
outlay. Of economy (as she often said) she certainly ought to know
something, having had to practice it as strictly as any body in the
kingdom, from an age she could hardly remember. But as for what was now
brought forward as a great discovery--economy in politics--Mrs. Hockin
had tried to follow great opinions, but could only find, so far,
downright extravagance. Supply (as she had observed fifty times with her
own butcher and fishmonger), instead of creating demand, produced a
lot of people hankering round the corner, till the price came down to
nothing. And if it were so with their institutions--as her dear husband
called his new public-house--who was to find all the interest due to
the building and land societies? Truly she felt that Sir Rufus Hockin,
instead of doing any good to them, had behaved very badly in leaving
them land, and not even a shilling to work it with.
It relieved her much to tell me this, once for all and in strict
confidence; because her fine old-fashioned (and we now may say quite
obsolete) idea of duty toward her husband forbade her ever to say to
him, or about him, when it could be helped, any thing he might not like,
any thing which to an evil mind might convey a desire on her part to
meddle with--with--
“Political economy,” I said; and she laughed, and said, Yes, that was
just it. The Major of course knew best, and she ought with all her
heart to trust him not to burden their old days with debt, after all the
children they had brought up and fairly educated upon the professional
income of a distinguished British officer, who is not intended by his
superiors to provide successors.
“Perhaps it is like the boiled eggs they send me,” the old lady said,
with her soft sweet smile, “for my poor hens to sit upon. Their race is
too good to be made common. So now they get tinkers' and tailors' boys,
after much competition, and the crammed sons of cooks. And in peace-time
they do just as well.”
Of such things I knew nothing; but she seemed to speak with bitterness,
the last thing to be found in all her nature, yet discoverable--as all
bad things (except its own) are--by the British government. I do not
speak from my own case, in which they discovered nothing.
By the time these things had been discussed, my host (who was always
particular about his dress) came down to dinner, and not until that was
over could I speak of the subject which had brought me there. No sooner
had I begun my tale than they both perceived that it must neither be
flurried nor interrupted, least of all should it be overheard.
“Come into my lock-up,” cried the Major; “or, better still, let us go
out of doors. We can sit in my snuggery on the cliff, with only gulls
and jackdaws to listen, and mount my telescope and hoist my flag, and
the men know better than to skulk their work. I can see every son of a
gun of them as clearly as if I had them on parade. You wish Mrs. Hockin
to come, I suppose. Very well, let us be off at once. I shall count my
fellows coming back from dinner.”
With a short quick step the Major led the way to a beautifully situated
outpost at a corner of the cliff, where land and sea for many a fair
league rolled below. A niche of the chalk had been cleverly enlarged and
scooped into a shell-shaped bower, not, indeed, gloriously overhung, as
in the far West might have been, but broken of its white defiant glare
by climbing and wandering verdure. Seats and slabs of oak were fixed to
check excess of chalkiness, and a parapet of a pattern which the Major
called Egyptian saved fear of falling down the cliff, and served to
spread a paper on, or to rest a telescope.
“From this point,” said the Major, crossing wiry yet substantial legs,
“the whole of my little domain may be comprised as in a bird's-eye view.
It is nothing, of course, much less than nothing, compared with the Earl
of Crowcombe's, or the estate of Viscount Gamberley; still, such as it
is, it carries my ideas, and it has an extent of marine frontage such
as they might envy. We are asked 5 pounds per foot for a thread of land
fronting on a highway, open to every kind of annoyance, overlooked,
without any thing to look at. How much, then, per fathom (or measure, if
you please, by cable-lengths) is land worth fronting the noble, silent,
uncontaminating, healthful sea? Whence can come no coster-mongers'
cries, no agitating skir of bagpipes or the maddening hurdy-gurdy, no
German band expecting half a crown for the creation of insanity; only
sweet murmur of the wavelets, and the melodious whistle of a boatman
catching your breakfast lobster. Where, again, if you love the
picturesque--”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Hockin, gently, “you always were eloquent from the
first day I saw you; and if you reconstitute our borough, as you hope,
and enter Parliament for Bruntsea, what a sensation you will create!
But I wished to draw your attention to the fact that Erema is waiting to
tell her tale.”
“To be sure. I will not stop her. Eloquence is waste of time, and I
never yet had half a second to spare. Fear no eloquence from me; facts
and logic are my strong points. And now, Erema, show what yours are.”
At first this made me a little timid, for I had never thought that any
strong points would be needed for telling a simple tale. To my mind the
difficulty was, not to tell the story, but to know what to make of it
when told; and soon I forgot all about myself in telling what I had
seen, heard, and found.
The Major could not keep himself from stamping great holes through
his--something I forget the name of, but people sow it to make turf
of chalk--and dear “Aunt Mary's” soft pink cheeks, which her last
grandchild might envy, deepened to a tone of rose; while her eyes, so
full of heavenly faith when she got upon lofty subjects, took a most
human flash and sparkle of hatred not theological.
“Seven!” she cried; “oh, Nicholas, Nicholas, you never told me there
were seven!”
“There were not seven graves without the mother,” the Major answered,
sternly. “And what odds whether seven or seventy? The criminality is the
point, not the accumulation of results. Still, I never heard of so big a
blackguard. And what did he do next, my dear?”
The way in which they took my story was a great surprise to me, because,
although they were so good, they had never paid any attention to it
until it became exciting. They listened with mere politeness until the
scent of a very wicked man began to taint my narrative; but from that
moment they drew nearer, and tightened their lips, and held their
breath, and let no word escape them. It made me almost think that
people even of pure excellence, weaned as they are from wicked things by
teaching and long practice, must still retain a hankering for them done
at other people's cost.
“And now,” cried the Major, “let us see it”--even before I had time to
pull it out, though ready to be quick, from a knowledge of his ways.
“Show it, and you shall have my opinion. And Mary's is certain to agree
with mine. My dear, that makes yours so priceless.”
“Then, Nicholas, if I retain my own, yours is of no value. Never mind
that. Now don't catch words, or neither opinion will be worth a thought.
My dear, let us see it and then judge.”
“My own idea, but not so well expressed,” Major Hockin answered, as he
danced about, while I with stupid haste was tugging at my package of the
hateful locket. For I had not allowed that deceitful thing any quarters
in my pocket, where dear little relics of my father lay, but had
fastened it under my dress in a manner intended in no way for gentlemen
to think about. Such little things annoy one's comfort, and destroy
one's power of being quite high-minded. However, I got it out at last,
and a flash of the sun made the difference.
“Brilliants, Mary!” the Major cried; “brilliants of first water; such
as we saw, you know where; and any officer in the British army except
myself, I do believe, would have had them at once in his camlet
pouch--my dear, you know all about it. Bless my heart, how slow you are!
Is it possible you have forgotten it? There came out a fellow, and I cut
him down, as my duty was, without ceremony. You know how I used to do
it, out of regulation, with a slash like this--”
“Oh, Nicholas, you will be over the cliff! You have shown me how you
used to do it, a thousand times--but you had no cricks in your back
then: and remember how brittle the chalk is.”
“The chalk may be brittle, but I am tough. I insist upon doing every
thing as well as I did it forty years ago. Mary, you ought not to speak
to me like that. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty brilliants, worth twenty
pounds apiece upon an average, I do believe. Four hundred pounds. That
would finish our hotel.”
“Nicholas!”
“My dear, I was only in fun. Erema understands me. But who is this
beautiful lady?”
“The very point,” I exclaimed, while he held it so that the pensive
beauty of the face gleamed in soft relief among bright blue enamel and
sparkling gems. “The very thing that I must know--that I would give my
life to know--that I have fifty thousand fancies--”
“Now don't be excited, Erema, if you please. What will you give me to
tell you who it is?”
“All those diamonds, which I hate the sight of, and three-quarters of my
half nugget; and if that is not enough--”
“It is a thousand times too much; I will tell you for just one smile,
and I know it, will be a smile of unbelief.”
“No, no; I will believe it, whoever you say,” with excitement superior
to grammar, I cried; “only tell me at once--don't be so long.”
“But then you won't believe me when I do tell you,” the Major replied,
in the most provoking way. “I shall tell you the last person you would
ever think of, and then you will only laugh at me.”
“I won't laugh; how can I laugh in such a matter? I will believe you if
you say it is--Aunt Mary.”
“My dear, you had better say at once that it is I, and have no more
mystery about it.” Mrs. Hockin was almost as impatient as myself.
“Mrs. Hockin, you must indeed entertain an exalted idea of your own
charms. I knew that you were vain, but certainly did not--Well, then,
if you will allow me no peace, this is the lady that lives down in the
ruin, and stands like a pillar by my pillar-box.”
“I never thought you would joke like that,” I cried, with vexation and
anger. “Oh, is it a subject to be joked about?”
“I never was graver in my life; and you promised implicitly to believe
me. At any rate, believe that I speak in earnest.”
“That I must believe, when you tell me so. But what makes you think such
a wonderful thing? I should have thought nothing more impossible. I had
made up my mind that it was Flittamore who lived down here; but this can
not be she. Flittamore was unheard of at the time of my grandfather's
death. Moreover, her character was not like this; she was giddy and
light and heartless. This lady had a heart--good or bad, a deep one.
Most certainly it is not Flittamore.”
“Flittamore! I do not remember that name. You should either tell us all
or tell us nothing.” The Major's tone was reproachful, and his eyes from
their angular roofs looked fierce.
“I have not told you,” I said, “because it can have nothing to do with
it. The subject is a painful one, and belongs to my family only.”
“Enough. I am not inquisitive--on the other hand, too forgetful. I have
an appointment at 3.25. It takes me seven minutes and a quarter to get
there. I must be two minutes and three-quarters late. Mrs. Hockin, mount
the big telescope and point it at the ramparts; keep the flag up also.
Those fellows will be certain that I am up here, while I enfilade
them from the western end with this fine binocular. Surprises maintain
discipline. Good-by, my dear, and, Miss Castlewood, good-by. Tea at
6.30, and not too much water.”