COMMOTION
The beauty of the calm autumn afternoon was marred by the hubbub in the
road. The rays of the sun came filtering through the foliage of the
trees, the deep blue sky was without a cloud, the air was still and
balmy: imparting an idea of peace. But in that dusty highway, so lonely
at other times, a crowd of people had gathered, and they talked and
swayed, and made much clatter and disturbance.
The affair had got wind. How these affairs do get wind who can tell? It
had been exaggerated in the usual fashion. "Madam was killed; the
dog-cart smashed to pieces; the horse lamed; and Mr. Cris wounded." Half
the gaping people who came up believed it all: and the chief hubbub was
caused, not so much by discussing the accident, as by endeavouring to
explain that its effects were not very disastrous.
The news had travelled with its embellishments to Trevlyn Farm, amidst
other places; and it brought out Nora. Without waiting to put anything
on, she took her way to the spot. Mrs. Ryle was expecting company that
afternoon, and Nora was at leisure and _en grande toilette_: a black
silk gown, its flounces edged with velvet, and a cap of blonde lace
trimmed with white flowers. The persons who were gathered on the spot
made way for her. The wrecked dog-cart lay partly in the ditch, partly
out of it. Opposite was the grinding-machine, its owner now silent and
crestfallen, as he inwardly speculated upon what the law could do to
him.
"Then it's not true that Madam's killed?" cried Nora, after listening to
the various explanations.
A dozen voices answered. "Madam wasn't hurt to speak of, only a bit
shook: she had told them so herself. She had walked off on Mr. George
Ryle's arm, without waiting for the carriage that Mr. Cris had gone to
fetch."
"I'll be about that Jim Sanders," retorted Nora, wrathfully. "How dare
he come in with such tales? He said Madam was lying dead in the road."
She had barely spoken, when the throng standing over the dog-cart was
invaded by a new-arrival, one who had been walking in a neighbouring
field, and wondered what the collection could mean. The rustics fell
back and stared at him: first, because he was a stranger; secondly,
because his appearance was somewhat out of the common way; thirdly,
because he carried a red umbrella. A tall man with a long white beard, a
hat, the like of which had never been seen by country eyes, and a
foreign look.
You will at once recognise him for the traveller who had introduced
himself at the parsonage as the Reverend Mr. Daw, a friend of its owner.
The crowd, having had no such introduction, could only stare, marvelling
whether he had dropped from the clouds. He had been out all the
afternoon, taking notes of the neighbourhood, and since his conversation
with old Canham--which you heard related afterwards to Mr. Chattaway, to
that gentleman's intense dread--he had plunged into the fields on the
opposite side of the way. There he had remained, musing and wandering,
until aroused by the commotion which he speedily joined.
"What has happened?" he exclaimed. "An accident?"
The assemblage fell back. Rustics are prone to be suspicious of
strangers, if their appearance is peculiar, and not one of them found a
ready answer. Nora, however, whose tongue had, perhaps, never been at
fault in its whole career, stood her ground.
"There's not much damage done, as far as I can learn," she said, in her
usual free manner. "The dog-cart's the worst of it. There it lies. It
was Cris Chattaway's own; and I should think it will be a lesson to him
not to be so fond of driving strange horses."
"Is it to the Chattaways the accident has occurred?" asked the stranger.
Nora nodded. She was stooping down to survey more critically the damages
done to the dog-cart. "Cris Chattaway was driving his mother out," she
said, rising. "He was trying a strange horse, and this was the result,"
touching the wheel with her foot. "Madam was thrown into the ditch
here."
"And hurt?" laconically asked Mr. Daw.
"Only shaken--as they say. But a shaking may be dangerous for one so
delicate as Madam Chattaway. A pity but it had been _him_."
Nora spoke the last word with emphasis so demonstrative that her hearer
raised his eyes in wonderment. "Of whom do you speak?" he said.
"Of Chattaway: Madam's husband. A shaking might do him good."
"You don't like him, apparently," observed the stranger.
"I don't know who does," freely spoke Nora.
"Ah," said Mr. Daw, quietly. "Then I am not singular. _I_ don't."
"Do you know him?" she rejoined.
But to this the stranger gave no reply; he had evidently no intention of
giving any; and the silence whetted Nora's curiosity more than any
answer could have done, however obscure or mysterious. Perhaps no living
woman within a circuit of five miles possessed curiosity equal to that
of Nora Dickson.
"Where have you known Chattaway?" she exclaimed.
"It does not matter," said the stranger. "He is in the enjoyment of
Trevlyn Hold, I hear."
To say "I hear," as applied to the subject, imparted the idea that the
stranger had only just gained the information. Nora threw her quick
black eyes searchingly upon him.
"Have you lived in a wood not to know that James Chattaway was possessor
of Trevlyn Hold?" she said, with her characteristic plainness of speech.
"He has enjoyed it these twenty years to the exclusion of Rupert
Trevlyn."
"Rupert Trevlyn is its rightful owner," said the stranger, almost as
demonstratively as Nora herself could have spoken.
"Ah," said Nora, with a sort of indignant groan, "the whole parish knows
that. But Chattaway has possession of it, you see."
"Why doesn't some one help Rupert Trevlyn to his rights?"
"Who's to do it?" crossly responded Nora. "Can you?"
"Possibly," returned the stranger.
Had the gentleman asserted that he might possibly cause the moon to
shine by day instead of by night, Nora could not have shown more intense
surprise. "Help--him--to--his--rights?" she slowly repeated. "Do you
mean to say you could displace Chattaway?"
"Possibly," was the repeated answer.
"Why--who are you?" uttered the amazed Nora.
A smile flitted for a moment over Mr. Daw's countenance, the first
symptom of a break to its composed sadness. But he gave no reply.
"Do you know Rupert Trevlyn?" she reiterated.
But even to that there was no direct answer. "I came to this place
partly to see Rupert Trevlyn," were the words that issued from his lips.
"I knew his father; he was my dear friend."
"Who can he be?" was the question reiterating itself in Nora's active
brain. "Are you a lawyer?" she asked, the idea suddenly occurring to
her: as it had, you may remember, to old Canham.
Mr. Daw coughed. "Lawyers are keen men," was his answering remark, and
Nora could have beaten him for its vagueness. But before she could say
more, an interruption occurred.
This conversation had been carried on aloud; neither the stranger nor
Nora having deemed it necessary to speak in undertones. The consequence
of which was, that those in the midst of whom they stood had listened
with open ears, drawing their own deductions--and very remarkable
deductions some of them were. The knife-grinder--though a stranger to
the local politics, and totally uninterested in them--had listened with
the rest. One conclusion _he_ hastily came to, was, that the
remarkable-looking gentleman with the white beard _was_ a lawyer; and he
pushed himself to the front.
"You be a lawyer, master," he broke in, with some excitement. "Would you
mind telling of me whether they _can_ harm me. If I ain't at liberty to
ply my trade under a roadside hedge but I must be took up and punished
for it, why, it's a fresh wrinkle I've got to learn. I've done it all my
life; others in the same trade does it; can the law touch us?"
Mr. Daw had turned in wonderment. He had heard nothing of the
grinding-machine in connection with the accident, and the man's address
was unintelligible. A score of voices hastened to enlighten him, but
before it was well done, the eager knife-grinder's voice rose above the
rest.
"Can the laws touch me for it, master?"
"I cannot tell you," was the answer.
The man's low brow scowled fitfully: he was somewhat ill-looking to the
eye of a physiognomist. "What'll it cost?" he roughly said, taking from
his pocket a bag in which was a handful of copper money mixed with a
sprinkling of small silver. "I might know. A lawyer wouldn't give
nothing for nothing, but I'll pay. If the laws can be down upon me for
grinding a knife in the highway open to the world, all I can say is,
that the laws is infamous."
He stood looking at the stranger, with an air of demand, not of
supplication--and rather insulting demand, too. Mr. Daw showed no signs
of resenting the incipient insolence; on the contrary, his voice took a
kind and sympathising tone.
"My good man, you may put up your money. I can give you no information
about the law, simply because I am ignorant of its bearing on these
cases. In the old days, when I was an inhabitant of England, I have seen
many a machine such as yours plying its trade in the public roads, and
the law, as I supposed, could not touch them, neither did it attempt to.
But that may be altered now: there has been time enough for it; years
and years have passed since I last set foot on English soil."
The razor-grinder thrust his bag into his pocket again, and began to
push back to the spot whence he had come. The mob had listened with open
ears, but had gained little further information. Whether he was a lawyer
or whether he was not; where he had come from, and what his business was
amongst them, unless it was the placing of young Rupert Trevlyn in
possession of his "rights," they could not tell.
Nora could not tell--and the fact did not please her. If there was one
thing provoked Nora Dickson more than all else, it was to have her
curiosity unsatisfied. She felt that she had been thwarted now. Turning
away in a temper, speaking not a syllable to the stranger by way of
polite adieu, she began to retrace her steps to Trevlyn Farm, holding up
the flounces of her black silk gown, that they might not come into
contact with the dusty road.
But--somewhat to her surprise--she found the mysterious stranger had
also extricated himself from the mob, and was following her. Nora was
rather on the high ropes just then, and would not notice him. He,
however, accosted her.
"By what I gathered from a word or two you let fall, I should assume
that you are a friend of Rupert Trevlyn's, ma'am?"
"I hope I am," said Nora, mollified at the prospect of enlightenment.
"Few folks about here but are friends to him, unless it's Chattaway and
his lot at the Hold."
"Then perhaps you will have no objection to inform me--if you can inform
me--how it was that Mr. Chattaway came into possession of the Hold, in
place of young Rupert Trevlyn. I cannot understand how it could possibly
have been. Until I came here to-day, I never supposed but the lad,
Rupert, was Squire of Trevlyn Hold."
"Perhaps you'll first of all tell me what you want the information for?"
returned Nora. "I don't know who you are, sir, remember."
"You heard me say I was a friend of his father's; I should like to be a
friend to the boy. It appears to me to be a monstrous injustice that he
should not have succeeded to the estate of his ancestors. Has he been
_legally_ deprived of it?"
"As legally as a properly-made will could deprive him," was the reply of
Nora. "Legality and justice don't always go together in our parts: I
don't know what they may do in yours."
"Joe Trevlyn--my friend--was the direct heir to Trevlyn Hold. Upon his
death his son became the heir. Why did he not succeed?"
"There are folks that say he was cheated out of it," replied Nora, in
very significant tones.
"Cheated out of it?"
"It is said the news of Rupert's birth was never suffered to reach the
ears of Squire Trevlyn. That the Squire went to his grave, never knowing
he had a grandson in the direct male line--went to it after willing the
estate to Chattaway."
"Kept from it by whom?" eagerly cried Mr. Daw.
"By those who had an interest in keeping it from him--Chattaway and Miss
Diana Trevlyn. It is so said, I say: _I_ don't assert it. There may be
danger in speaking too openly to a stranger," candidly added Nora.
"There is no danger in speaking to me," he frankly said. "I have told
you the truth--that I am a friend of young Rupert Trevlyn's. Chattaway
is not a friend of mine, and I never saw him in my life."
Nora, won over to forget caution and ill-temper, opened her heart to the
stranger. She told him all she knew of the fraud; told him of Rupert's
friendlessness, his undesirable position at the Hold. Nora's tongue, set
going upon any grievance she felt strongly, could not be stopped. They
walked on until the fold-yard gate of Trevlyn Farm was reached. There
Nora came to a halt. And there she was in the midst of a concluding
oration, delivered with forcible eloquence, and there the stranger was
listening eagerly, when they were interrupted by George Ryle.
Nora ceased suddenly. The stranger looked round, and seeing a
gentleman-like man who evidently belonged in some way to Nora, lifted
his hat. George returned it.
"It's somebody strange to the place," unceremoniously pronounced Nora,
by way of introducing him to George. "He was asking about Rupert
Trevlyn."