Arminell, a social romance/Chapter 38
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE RISE OF THE TIDE.
"Come here," shouted the blacksmith, who was outside his shop, and still wore his apron, and the smut and rust on his hands and face. "Come here, Master Jingles. You've come into the midst of us, and we want to know something from you. Where is your father? We've seen nothing of him since Friday. If he has not been at mischief, why don't he come forward like a man? Why don't your father show his face? He ain't a tortoise, privileged to draw it in, or a hedgehog, at liberty to coil it up. Where is he? He is not at home. If he is hiding, what is he hiding from unless he be guilty?"
"He may have gone after work," said young Saltren.
"I heard him say," said the shoemaker, "that his lordship was doomed to destruction."
"I know he said it," answered the blacksmith, "and I ask, is a man like to make a prophecy and not try to make what he said come to pass?"
"Human nature is human nature," threw in the tailor.
"And fax is fax," added the miner.
"Then," pursued the blacksmith, "let us look at things as they affect us. His lordship has kept about twenty-three horses—hunters, cobs, ponies and carnage horses—and each has four hoofs, and all wants shoeing once a month, and some every fortnight. That brings me in a good part of my living. Very well. I ask all who hear me, is his lordship like to keep such a stud now he is dead? Is he like to want hunters? I grant you, for the sake of argument, that the young lady and young gentleman will have their cobs and ponies, but will there be anything like as many horses kept as there have been? No, in reason there cannot be. So you may consider what a loss to me is the death of his lordship. My worst personal enemy couldn't have hit me harder than when he knocked Lord Lamerton over the Cleave. He as much as knocked a dozen or fourteen horses over with him, each with four hoofs, at sixpence a shoe, and shod, let us say, eighteen times in the year."
"You are right," put in the tailor, "landed property is tied up, and his lordship's property is tied up—tied up and sealed like mail bags—till the young lord comes of age, which will not be for eleven years. So, Blatchford,"—addressing the blacksmith—"you must multiply your horses by eleven."
"That makes," said the smith, working out the sum in chalk on the shutter of the shop, "say fourteen horses eighteen times—two hundred and two—and by four—and again by eleven—and halved because of sixpences, that makes five hundred and fifty-four pounds; then there were odd jobs, but them I won't reckon. Whoever chucked Lord Lamerton down the Cleave chucked five hundred and fifty-four pounds of as honestly-earned money as ever was got, belonging to me, down along with him."
"Fax is fax," said the miner.
"And human nature is human nature to feel it," added the tailor.
"There's another thing to be considered," said a game-keeper. "In the proper sporting season, my lord had down scores of gentlemen to shoot his covers, and that brought me in a good many sovereigns and half-sovs. Now, I'd like to know, with the family in mourning, and the young lord not able to handle a gun, will there be a house full of gentlemen? It wouldn't be decent. And that means the loss of twenty pound to me—if one penny."
"Nor is that all," said the tailor, "you'll have Macduff to keep an eye on you, not my lord. There'll be no more chucking of hampers into the goods train as it passes Copley Wood, I reckon."
The keeper made no other reply than a growl, and drew back.
"There is my daughter Jane, scullery-maid at the Park," said the shoemaker, "learning to be a cook. If her ladyship shuts up the house, and leaves the place, what will become of Jane? It isn't the place I grieve for, nor the loss of learning, for places ask to be filled now, and any one will be taken as cook, if she can do no more than boil water—but it is the perquisites. My wife was uncommon fond of jellies and sweets of all sorts, and I don't suppose these are to be picked off hedges, when the house is empty."
"Here comes Farmer Labett," exclaimed the tailor. "I say, Mr. Labett, did not his lordship let off five-and-twenty per cent from his rents last fall?"
"That is no concern of yours," replied the farmer.
"But it does concern you," retorted the tailor, "for now that his lordship is dead, the property is tied up and put in the hands of trustees, and trustees can't remit rents. If they were to do so, the young lord, when he comes of age, might be down on them and make them refund out of their own pockets. So that away over the rocks, down the Cleave, went twenty-five per cent. abatement when his lordship fell, or was helped over."
"Ah!" groaned the shoemaker, "and all them jellies, and blanc-mange, and custards was chucked down along of him."
"And now," said another, "Macduff will have the rule. Afore, if we didn't like what Macduff ordained, we could go direct to his lordship, but now there will be no one above Macduff but trustees, and trustees won't meddle. That will be a pretty state of things, and his wife to ride in a victoria, too."
Then a woman called Tregose pushed her way through the throng, and with loud voice expressed her views.
"I don't see what occasion you men have to grumble. Don't y' see that the family will have to go into mourning, and so get rid of their colours, and we shall get them. There's Miss Arminell's terra-cotta I've had my eye on for my Louisa, but I never reckoned on having it so soon. There never was a wind blowed," argued Mrs. Tregose, "that was an unmixed evil, and didn't blow somebody good. If this here wind have blowed fourteen horses, and jellies and twenty-five per cent. and the keeper's tips over the Cleave—it ha' blowed a terra-cotta gown on to my Louisa."
"But," argued the tailor in his strident voice, "supposing, in consequence of the death, that her ladyship and the young lady and the little lord give up living here, and go for education to London or abroad, where will you be, Mrs. Tregose, for their cast gowns? Your Louisa ain't going to wear that terra-cotta for eleven years, I reckon."
"There's something in that," assented the woman, and her mouth fell. "Yes," she said, after a pause for consideration, "who can tell how many beautiful dresses and bonnets and mantles have gone over the Cleave along with the blanc-mange, and the horses and the five-and-twenty per cent.? I'm uncommon sorry now his lordship is dead."
"I've been credibly informed," said the tailor, "that his lordship laid claim to Chillacot, and said that because old Gaffer Saltren squatted there, that did not constitute a title. Does it give a rook a title to a Scotch fir because he builds a nest on it? Can the rook dispose of the timber? Can it refuse to allow the tree to be cut down and sawn up, for and because he have sat on the top of it? I've an old brood-sow in my stye. Does the stye belong to the sow or to me?"
"Fax is fax," assented the miner.
"And," urged the blacksmith, "if his lordship wanted to get the land back, why not? If I lend my ladder to Farmer Eggins, haven't I a right to reclaim it? His lordship asked for the land back, not because he wanted it for himself, but in the interest of the public, to give us a station nigh at hand, instead of forcing us to walk three and a half or four miles, and sweat terrible on a summer's day. And his lordship intended to run a new road to Chillacot, where the station was to be, and so find work for hands out of employ, and he said it would cost him a thousand pounds. And now, there is the new road and all it would have cost as good as thrown over the Cleave along with his lordship."
"The captain—he did it," shouted the blacksmith.
"Fax speak, they are fax. Skin me alive, if they baint," said the miner.
Giles Inglett Saltren had heard enough. He raised his voice and said, "Mr. Blatchford, and the rest of you—some insinuate, others openly assert that my father has been guilty of an odious crime, that he has had a hand in the death of Lord Lamerton."
He was interrupted by shouts of "He has, he has! We know it!"
"How do you know it? You only suppose it. You have no grounds absolutely, no grounds for basing such a supposition. The coroner, as yourselves admit, refused to listen to the charge."
A voice: "He was afraid of having his shirt-fronts moulded."
"Here, again, you bring an accusation as unfounded as it is absurd, against an honourable man and a Crown official. If you had been able to produce a particle of evidence against my father, a particle of evidence to show that what you imagine is not as hollow as a dream, the coroner would have hearkened and acted. Are you aware that this bandying of accusations is an indictable offence? My father has not hurt you in any way."
This elicited a chorus of cries.
"He has spoiled my shoeing." "He has prevented the making of the road." "My wife will never have blanc-mange again." And Samuel Ceely, now arrived on the scene, in whispering voice added, "All my beautiful darlings twelve of them, as healthy as apples, and took their vaccination well—all gone down the Cleave."
It really seemed as if the happiness, the hopes, the prosperity of all Orleigh, had gone over the edge of the cliff with his lordship.
"I repeat it," exclaimed the young man, waxing warm; "I repeat it, my father never did you an injury. You are now charging him with hurting you, because you suffer through his lordship's death, and you are eager to find some one on whom to cast blame. As for any real sorrow and sympathy, you have none; wrapped up in your petty and selfish ends."
A voice: "Fax is fax—he did kill Lord Lamerton."
The tailor: "Human nature is human nature, and nobody can deny he prophesied my lord's death."
"I dare you to charge my father with the crime," cried young Saltren. "I warn you. I have laid by a little money, and I will spend it in prosecuting the man who does."
"We all do. Prosecute the parish," rose in a general shout.
"My father is incapable of the crime."
"We have no quarrel with you, young Jingles," roared a miner. "Our contention is with the captain. Mates, what do y' say? Shall we pay him a visit?"
"Aye—aye!" from all sides. "Let us show him our minds."
A boisterous voice exclaimed: "We'll serve him out for taking the bread out of our mouths. We'll tumble his house about his ears. He sha'n't stand in our light any more."
And another called, "If you want to prosecute us, we'll provide you with occasion."
Then a stone was flung, which struck Jingles on the head and knocked him down.
For a few minutes the young man was unconscious, or rather confused, he never quite lost his senses. The women clustered about him, and Mrs. Tregose threw water in his face.
He speedily gathered his faculties together, and stood up, rather angry than hurt, to see that nearly all the men had departed. The act of violence, instead of quelling the excitement, had stirred it to greater heat; and the body of men, the miners, labourers, the blacksmith, tailor, and shoemaker, their sons and apprentices, went off in a shouting, gesticulating rabble in the direction of the Cleave, not of Chillacot, but of the down overhanging it.
In a moment the latent savage, suppressed in those orderly men, was awake and asserting itself. Mr. Welsh had spoken the truth when he told Jingles that the destructive passion was to be found in all; it was aroused now. The blacksmith, the tailor, the shoemaker, the labourers, had all in their several ways been working constructively all their life, one to make shoes and harrows, one to shape trousers and waistcoats, one to put together boots, others to build, and plant, and stack, and roof, and now, all at once, an appeal came to the suppressed barbarian in each, the chained madman in the asylum, and the destructive faculty was loose and rioting in its freedom.
Thomasine Kite stood before the young man. "Now, then," she said half mockingly, "if you want to save your mother out of the house before the roof is broke in, you must make haste. Come along with me."