Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 3 of 3

“Well! I never heard such a thing. Why, you might be transported, Eoa!”

“Yes, I know, if they found me out; but they are much too stupid for that. Besides, it is such fun; the only fun I have now, since I left off jumping. You know the old thing is so stingy.”

“Old thing, indeed! Why, she is not five–and–twenty!”

“I donʼt care; she has got a child. She is as old as Methusalem in her heart, though she is so deucedly sentimental” – the old Colonelʼs daughter had not forgotten all her beloved papaʼs expressions – ”I know I shall use what you call in this country ‘physical force,’ some day, with her. I must have done it long ago, only for picking her pocket. She would be but a baby in my hands, and she is quite aware of it. Look at my arm; itʼs no larger than yours, except above the elbow, and it is nearly as soft and delicate. Yet I could take you with one hand, Amy, and put you into the brook. If you like, Iʼll do it.”

“Much obliged, dear; but I am quite content without the crucial test. I know your wonderful strength, which none would ever suspect, to look at you. I suppose it came to you from your mother.”

“Yes, I believe. At any rate, I have heard my father say so; and I could hold both his hands most easily. But oh, she is such a screw, Amy, that sympathetic Georgie! She never gives any one sixpence; and it is so pleasant to hear her go on about her money, and handkerchiefs, and, most of all, her gloves. She is so proud of her nasty little velvet paws. She wonʼt get her gloves except in Southampton, and three toll–gates to pay, and I steal them as fast as she gets them. She grumbles about it all dinner–time, and I offered her eighteenpence for turnpikes – out of her own purse, of course – because she was so poor, I said. But she flew into such a rage that I was forced to pick her pocket again at breakfast–time next morning. And the lies she told about the amount of money in her purse! Between eight and nine pounds, she said the last time, and there was only two pounds twelve. Uncle Cradock made it good to her, because he guessed that I had done it, though he was afraid to tell me so. But, thank God, I stole it again the next day when she went out walking; and that of course he had nothing to say to, because it did not occur in his house. Oh what a rage she was in! She begins to suspect me now, I think; but she never can catch me out.”

“You consummate little thief! why, I shall be afraid to come near you.”

“Oh, I would never do it to any one but her. And I should not do it to her so much, only she thinks me a clumsy stupid. Me who was called ‘Never–spot–the–dust!’ But I have got another thing of hers, and she had better take care, or Iʼll open it.”

“Something else! Take care, Eoa, or I will go and tell.”

“No, you know better than that. It is nothing but a letter she wrote, and was going to post at Burley. I knew by her tricks and suspicious ways that there was something in it; and she would not let it go in the post–bag. So I resolved to have it; and of course I did. And she has been in such a fright ever since; but I have not opened it yet.”

“And I hope you never will. Either confess, or post it at once, or never call me your friend any more.”

“Oh, you need not be hot, Amy; you donʼt understand the circumstances. I know that she is playing a nasty game; and I need not have any scruples with her, after what I caught her doing. Twice she has been at my desk, my own new desk Uncle Cradock gave me, where I put all the letters and relics that were found on my dear, dear father.” Here Eoa burst out crying, and Amy came near again and kissed her.

“Darling, I did not mean to be cross; if the wretch would do such a thing as that, it justifies almost anything.”

“And what do you think I did?” said Eoa, half crying, and half laughing: “I set a fishhook with a spring to it, so that the moment she lifted the cover, the barb would go into her hand; and the next day she had a bad finger, and said that little Flore bit it by accident while she was feeling her tooth, which is loose. I should like to have seen her getting the barb out of her nasty little velvet paw.”

“I am quite surprised,” cried Amy; “and we all call you so simple – a mere child of nature! If so, nature is up to much more than we give her credit for. And pray, what is your next device?”

“Oh, nothing at all, till she does something. I am quits with her now; and I cannot scheme as she does.”

Suddenly Amy put both her hands on Eoaʼs graceful shoulders, and poured the quick vigour of English eyes into the fathomless lustre of darkly–fringed Oriental orbs.

“You will not tell me a story, dear, if I ask you very particularly?”

“I never tell stories to any one; you might know that by this time. At any rate, not to my friends.”

“No, I donʼt think you would. Now, do you think that Mrs. Corklemore is at the bottom of this vile thing?”

“What vile thing? The viler it is, the more likely she is to have done it.”

“Oh no, she cannot have done it, though she may have had something to do with it. I mean, of course, about poor Cradock.”

“What about Cradock? I love Cousin Cradock, because he is so unlucky; and because you like him, dear.”

“Donʼt you know it? You must have seen that I was in very poor spirits. And this made me feel it so much the more, when you said what you did. We have heard that an application has been made in London, at the Home Office, or somewhere, that a warrant should be issued against Cradock Nowell, and a reward be offered for him as – Oh, my Cradock, my Craddy!”

“Put your head in here, darling. What a brute you must have thought me! Oh, I do so love you. Donʼt think twice about it, dear. I will take care that it all comes right. I will go to London to–day, dearest, and defy them to dare to do it. And Iʼll open that letter at once. It becomes a duty now; as that nasty beast always says, when she wants to do anything wrong.”

“No, no!” sobbed Amy, “you have no right to open her letter, and you shall not do it, Eoa, unless my father says that it is right. Will you promise me that, dear? Oh, do promise me that.”

“How can I promise that, when I would not have him know, for a lac of rupees, that I had ever stolen it? He would never perceive how right it was; and, though I donʼt know much about people, I am sure he would never forgive me. He is such a fidget. But I will promise you one thing, Amy – not to open it without your leave.”

Amy was obliged at last to be contented with this; though she said it was worse than nothing, for it forced the decision upon her; and, scrupulously honest and candid as she was, she would feel it right to settle the point against her own desires.

“Old Biddy knows I have got it,” cried Eoa, changing her humour: “and she patted me on the back, and said, ‘Begorra, thin, you be the cliver one; hould on to that same, me darlint, and weʼll bate every bit of her, yit; the purtiest feet and ancles to you, and the best back legs, more than iver she got, and now you bate her in the stalinʼ. And plase, Miss, rade yer ould Biddy every consuminʼ word on it. Mullygaslooce, but weʼve toorned her, this time, and thank Donats for it.’”

Eoa dramatised Biddy so cleverly, even to the form of her countenance, and her peculiar manner of standing, that Amy, with all those griefs upon her, could not help laughing heartily.

“Come along, I canʼt mope any longer; when I have jumped the brook nine times, you may say something to me. What do you think of a bathe, Amy? I am up for it, if you are – and our tablecloths for towels. Nobody comes here once in a year; and if they did, they would run away again. What a lovely deep pool! I can swim like a duck; and you like a stone, I suppose.”

Amy, of course, would not hear of it, and her lively friend, having paddled with her naked feet in the water, and found it colder – oh, ever so much – than the tributaries of the Ganges, was not so very sorry (self–willed though being) to keep upon the dry land, only she must go to Queenʼs Mead, and Amy must come with her, and run the entire distance, to get away from trouble.

Amy was light enough of foot, when her heart was light; but Eoa could “run round her,” as the sporting phrase is, and she gave herself the rein at will that lovely afternoon; as a high–mettled filly does, when she gets out of Piccadilly. And she chatted as fast as she walked all the time, hoping so to divert her friend from this new distress.

“I should not be one bit surprised, if we saw that – Bob, here somewhere. We are getting near one of his favourite places – not that I know anything about it; and he is always away now in Mark Ash Wood, or Puckpits, looking out for the arrival of honey–buzzards, or for a merlinʼs nest. Oh, of course we shall not see him.”

“Now, you know you will,” replied Amy, laughing at Eoaʼs clumsiness; “and you have brought me all this way for that very reason. Now, if we meet him, just leave him to me, and stay out of hearing. I will manage him so that he shall soon think you the best and the prettiest girl in the world.”

“Well, I wish he would,” said Eoa, blushing beautifully; “wouldnʼt I torment him then?”

“No doubt you would, and yourself as well. Now where do you think he will be?”

“Oh, Amy, how can I possibly guess? But if I did guess at all, I should say there was just an atom of a chance of his being not far from the Queenʼs Mead.”

“Suppose him to be there. What would bring him there? Not to see you, I should hope?”

“As if he would go a yard for that! Oh no, he is come to look for – at least, perhaps he might, just possibly, I mean – ”

“Come to look for whom?” Amy was very angry, for she thought that it was herself, under Eoaʼs strategy.

“A horrid little white mole.”

“A white mole! Why, I had no idea that there was such a thing.”

“Oh yes, there is: but it is very rare; and he has set his heart upon catching this one.”

“That he shanʼt. Oh, I see exactly what to do. Come quickly, for fear he should catch it before we get there. Oh, I do hate such cruelty. Ah, there, I see him! Now, you keep out of sight.”

In a sunny break of tufted sward, embayed among long waves of wood, young Bob Garnet sat, more happy than the king of all the world of fairies. At his side lay several implements of his own devising, and on his lap a favourite book with his open watch upon it. From time to time he glanced away at a chain of little hillocks about twenty yards in front of him, and among which he had stuck seven or eight stout hazel rods, and brought them down as benders. He was trying not only to catch his mole, but also to add another to his many observations as to the periods of molar exertion. Whether nature does enforce upon those clever miners any Three Hour Act, as the popular opinion is; or whether they are free to work and rest, at their own sweet will, as seems a world more natural.

Amy walked into the midst of the benders, in her self–willed, characteristic manner, as if they were nothing at all. She made believe to see nought of Bob, who, on the other side of the path was fluttering and blushing, with a mixture of emotions. “Some very cruel person,” she exclaimed, in loud self–commune, “probably a cruel boy, has been setting mole–traps here, I see. And papa says the moles do more good than harm, except perhaps in my flower–beds. Now Iʼll let them all off very quietly. The boy will think he has caught a dozen; and then how the moles will laugh at him. He will think itʼs a witch, and leave off, very likely, for all cruel boys are ignorant. My pretty little darlings; so glossy, and so clever!”

“Oh, please not to do that,” cried Bob, having tried in vain to contain himself, and now leaping up in agony; “I have taken so much trouble, and they are set so beautifully.”

“What, Master Robert Garnet! Oh, have you seen my companion, Miss Nowell, about here?”

“Look there, you have spoiled another! And theyʼll never set so well again. Oh, you canʼt know what they are, and the trouble I have had with them.”

“Oh yes, Master Garnet, I know what they are; clumsy and cruel contrivances to catch my innocent moles.”

“Your moles!” cried Bob, with great wrath arising, as she coolly destroyed two more traps; “why are they your moles, I should like to know? I donʼt believe you have ever even heard of them before.”

“Suppose I have not?” answered Amy, screwing up her lips, as she always did when resolved to have her own way.

“Then how can they be your moles? Oh, if you havenʼt spoiled another!”

“Well, Godʼs moles, if you prefer it, Master Garnet. At any rate, you have no right to catch them.”

“But I only want to catch one, Amy; a white one, oh, such a beauty! I have heard of him since he was born, and had my eye on him down all the galleries; and now he must be full–grown, for he was born quite early in August.”

“I hope heʼll live to be a hundred. And I will thank you, Master Garnet, to speak to me with proper respect.”

Up went another riser. There was only one left now, and that a most especial trap, which had cost a whole weekʼs cogitation.

“I declare you are a most dreadful girl. You donʼt like anything I do. And I have thought so much of you.”

“Then, once for all, I beg you never more to do so. I have often wished to speak with you upon that very subject.”

“What – what subject, Miss Rosedew? I have no idea what you mean.”

“That is altogether false. But I will tell you now. I mean the silly, ungentlemanly, and very childish manner, excusable only in such a boy, in which I have several times observed you loitering about in the forest.”

Bob knew what she meant right well, although she would not more plainly express it – his tracking of her footsteps. He turned as red as meadow–sorrel, and stammered out what he could.

“I am – very – very sorry. But I did not mean it. I mean – I could not help it.”

“You will be kind enough to help it now, for once and for all. Otherwise, my father, who has not heard of it yet, shall speak to yours about it. Insufferable impudence in a boy just come from school!”

Amy was obliged to turn away, for fear he should look up again, and see the laughter in her eyes. For all her wrath was feigned, inasmuch as to her Bob Garnet was far too silly a butterfly–boy to awake any real anger. But of late he had been intrusive, and it seemed high time to stop it.

“If I have done anything wrong, Miss Rosedew, anything in any way unbecoming a gentleman – ”

“Yes, try to be a good boy again,” said Amy, very graciously; at the same time giving the stroke of grace to his masterpiece of mechanism, designed to catch the white mole alive; “now take up your playthings and go, if you please; for I expect a young lady here directly; and your little tools for cockchafer–spinning would barbarize the foreground of our sketch, besides being very ugly.”

“Oh!” cried Bob, with a sudden access of his fathers readiness – ”you spin a fellow worse than any cockchafer, and you do it in the name of humanity!”

“Then think me no more a divinity,” answered Amy; because she must have the last word; and even Bob, young as he was, knew better than to paragogize the feminine termination. Utterly discomfited, as a boy is by a woman – and Amyʼs trouble had advanced her almost to that proud claim – Bob gathered up his traps and scuttled cleverly out of sight. She, on the other hand (laughing all the while at herself for her simple piece of acting, and doubting whether she had been right in doing even a little thing so much against her nature), there she sat, with her sketching–block ready, and hoped that Eoa would have the wit to come and meet her beloved Bob, now labouring under his fierce rebuff.

But Eoa could not do it. She had wit enough, but too much heart. She had heard every word of Amyʼs insolence, and was very indignant at it. Was Bob to be talked to in that way? As if he knew nothing of science! As if he really had an atom of any sort of cruelty in him! Was Amy so very ignorant as not to know that all Bob did was done with the kindest consideration, and for the interest of the species, though the pins through the backs were unpleasant, perhaps? But that was over in a moment, and he always carried ether; and it was nothing to the Fakirs, or the martyrs of Christianity.

Therefore Eoa crouched away, behind a tuft of thicket, because her maidenhood forbade her to come out and comfort him, to take advantage of his wrong, and let him know how she felt it. Therefore, too, she was very sharp with Amy all the homeward road; vindicating Bob, and snapping at all proffered softness; truth being that she had suspected his boyish whim for Amy, and now was sorry for him about it, and very angry with both of them.

From that little touch of womanʼs nature she learned more dignity, more pride, more reservation, and self–respect, than she could have won from a score of governesses, or six seasons of “society.”

CHAPTER X

“Not another minute to lose, and the sale again deferred! All the lots marked, and the handbills out, and the particulars and conditions ready; and then some paltry pettifogging, and another fortnight will be required to do ‘justice to my interests.’ Justice to my interests! How they do love round–mouthed rubbish! The only justice to me is, from a legal point of view, to string me up, and then quick–lime me; and the only justice to my interests is to rob my children, because I have robbed them already. Robbed them of their birth and name, their power to look men in the face, their chance of being allowed to do what God seems chiefly to want us for – to marry and have children, who may be worse than we are; though, thank Him, mine are not. Robbed them even of their chance to be met as Christians (though I have increased their right to it), in this wretched, money–seeking, servile, and contemptuous age. But who am I to find fault with any, after all my wasted life? A life which might, in its little way, have told upon the people round me, and moved, if not improved them. Which might, at least, have set them thinking, doubting, and believing. Oh the loss of energy, the loss of self–reliance, and the awful load of fear and anguish – I who might have been so different! Pearl is at the window there. I know quite well who loves her – an honest, upright, hearty man, with a true respect for women. But will he look at her when he knows – Oh God, my God, forsake me, but not my children! – Bob, what are you at with those cabbages?”

“Why, they are clubbed, donʼt you see, father, beautifully clubbed already, and the leaves flag directly the sun shines. And I want to know whether it is the larva of a curculio, or anthomyia brassicæ; and I canʼt tell without pulling the plants up, and they canʼt come to any good, you know, with all this ambury in them.”

“I know nothing of the sort, Bob. I know nothing at all about it. Go into the house to your sister. I canʼt bear the sight of you now.”

Bob, without a single word, did as he was told. He knew that his father loved him, though he could not guess the depth of that love, being himself so different. And so he never took offence at his fatherʼs odd ways to him, but thought, “Better luck next time; the governor has got red spider this morning, and he wonʼt be right till dinner–time.”

Bull Garnet smiled at his sonʼs obedience, with a mighty fount of pride in him; and then he sighed, because Bob was gone – and he never could have enough of him, for the little time remaining. He loved his son with a love surpassing that of woman, or that of man for woman. Men would call him a fool for it. But God knows how He has made us.

Thinking none of this, but fretting over fierce heart–troubles, which now began to be too many even for his power of life – as a hundred wolves kill a lion – he turned again down the espalier–walk, where the apple–trees were in blossom. Pinky shells spread to the sun, with the little close tuft in the middle; some striped, some patched, some pinched with white, some streaking as the fruit would be, and glancing every gloss of blush – no two of them were quite alike, any more than two of us are. Yet the bees knew every one among the countless multitude, and never took the wrong one; even as the angels know which of us belongs to them, and who wants visitation.

Bull Garnet, casting to and fro, and taking heed of nothing, not even of the weeds which once could not have lived before his eyes, began again in a vague loose manner (the weakness of which would have angered him, if he had been introspective) to drone about the lawʼs delays, and the folly of institution. He stood at last by his wicket gate, where the hedge of Irish yew was, and there carried on his grumbling.

“Lawyers indeed! And cannot manage a simple thing of that sort! Thank God, I know nothing of law.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Garnet. It is possible that you may want to know something of law, shortly.”

“By what right, sir, dare you break in upon my privacy like this?”

Pale as he was, and scorning himself for the way in which his blood shrunk back, Bull Garnet was far too strong and quick ever to be dumb–foundered. Chope looked at him, with some admiration breaking through the triumph of his small comprehensive eyes.

“Excuse me, Mr. Garnet. I forgot that a public man like you must have his private moments, even at his own gate. I am sorry to see you so hot, my dear sir; though I have heard that it is your character. That sort of thing leads to evil results, and many deplorable consequences. But I did not mean to be rude to you, or to disturb you so strangely.”

“You have not disturbed me at all, sir.”

“I am truly happy to hear it. All I meant, as to knowledge of law, was to give you notice that there is some heavy trouble brewing, and that you must be prepared to meet some horrible accusations.”

“May I trespass further upon your kindness, to ask what their subject is?”

“Oh, nothing more than a very rash and unfounded charge of murder.”

Mr. Chope pronounced that last awful word in a deeply sepulchral manner, and riveted his little eyes into Bull Garnetʼs great ones. Mr. Garnet met his gaze as calmly as he would meet the sad clouded aspect of a dead rabbit, or hare, in a shop where he asked the price of them, and regarded their eyes as the test of their freshness. Chope could not tell what to make of it. The thing was beyond his experience.

But all this time Bull Garnet felt that every minute was costing him a year of his natural life, even if he ever got any chance of living it out.

“How does this concern me? Is it any one on our estates?”

“Yes, and the heir to ‘your estates.’ Young Mr. Cradock Nowell.”

Bull Garnet sighed very heavily; then he strode away, and came back again, with indignation swelling out the volume of his breast, and filling the deep dark channels of brow, and the turgid veins of his eyeballs.

“Whoever has done this thing is a fool; or a rogue – which means the same.”

“It may be so. It may be otherwise. We always hope for the best. Very likely he is innocent. Perhaps they are shooting at the pigeon in order to hit the crow.”

“Perhaps you know best what their motives are. I see no use in canvassing them. You have heard, I suppose, the rumour that Mr. Cradock Nowell has left England?”

“I know very little about it. I have nothing to do with the case; or it might have been managed differently. But I heard that the civil authorities, being called upon to act, discovered, without much trouble, that he had sailed, under a false name, in a ship called the Taprobane, bound direct for Ceylon. And that, of course, told against him rather heavily.”

“Ah, he sailed for Ceylon, did he? A wonderful place for insects. I had an uncle who died there.”

“Yes, Ceylon, where the flying foxes are. Not so cunning, perhaps, as our foxes of the Forest. And yet the fox is a passionate animal. Violent, hot, and hasty. Were you aware of that fact?”

“Excuse me; my time is valuable. I will send for the gamekeeper, if you wish to have light thrown upon that question; or my son will be only too glad – ”

“Ah, your son! Poor fellow!”

Those few short words, pronounced in a tone of real feeling, with no attempt at inquiry, quite overcame Bull Garnet. First extrinsic proof of that which he had so long foreseen with horror – the degradation of his son. He dropped his eyes, which had borne, till now, and returned the lawyerʼs gaze; and the sense of his own peril failed to keep the tears from moving. Up to this time Mr. Chope had doubted, and was even beginning to reject his shrewd and well–founded conclusion. Now he saw and knew everything. And even he was overcome. Passion is infectious; and lawyers are like the rest of us. Mr. Chope had loved his mother.