CHAPTER LXXIII.
POLLY’S DOLL.
In this present state of things, and difficulty everywhere, the one thing most difficult of all is to imagine greater goodness than that of Mr. Bottler. He had a depression that could not be covered by a five-pound note, to begin with, in the value of the pig-meat he was dressing scientifically, when he had to turn it all out to be frozen, and take in poor Alice to thaw instead. Of that he thought nothing, less than nothing—he said so; and he tried to feel it. But take it as you will, it is something. A man’s family may be getting lighter, as they begin to maintain themselves; but the man himself wants more maintenance, after all his exertions with them; and the wife of his old bosom lacks more nourishment than the bride of his young one. More money goes out as more money comes in.
And not only that, but professional pride grows stronger as a man grows older and more thoroughly up to his business, especially if a lot of junior fellows, like the man at Bramber, rush in, and invent new things, and boast of work that we know to be clumsy. If any man in England was proud of the manner in which he turned out his pork, that man was Churchwarden Bottler. Yet disappointment combined with loss could not quench his accustomed smile, or plough one wrinkle in his snowy hose, as he quitted his cart on the following morning, and made his best duty and bow to Alice.
Alice, still looking very pale and frail, was lying on the couch in the pigman’s drawing-room; while Mabel, who had been with her all the night, sat on her chair by her pillow. Alice had spoken, with tears in her eyes, of the wonderful kindness of every one. Her mind was in utter confusion yet as to anything that had befallen her; except that she had some sense of having done some desperate deed, which had caused more trouble than she was worthy of. Her pride and courage were far away. Her spirit had been so near the higher realms where human flesh is not, that it was delighted to get back, and substantially ashamed of itself.
“What will my dear father say? And what will other people think? I seem to have considered nothing; and I can consider nothing now.”
“Darling, don’t try to consider,” Mabel answered softly; “you have considered far too much; and what good ever comes of it?”
“None,” she answered; “less than none. Consider the lilies that consider not. Oh, my head is going round again.”
It was the roundness of her head, which had saved her life in the long dark water. Any long head must have fallen back, and yielded up the ghost; but her purely spherical head, with the garden-hat fixed tightly round it, floated well on a rapid stream, with air and natural hair resisting any water-logging. And thus the Woeburn had borne her for a mile, and vainly endeavoured to drown her.
“Oh, why does not my father come?” she cried, as soon as she could clear her mind; “he always used to come at once, and be in such a hurry, even if I got the nettle-rash. He must have made his mind up now, to care no more about me. And when he has once made up his mind, he is stern—stern—stern. He never will forgive me. My own father will despise me. Where now, where is somebody?”
“You are getting to be foolish again,” said Mabel; much as it grieved her to speak thus; “your father cannot come at the very first moment you call for him. He is full of lawyers’ business, and allowances must be made for him. Now, you are so clever, and you have inherited from the Normans such a quick perception. Take this thing; and tell me, Alice, what it can be meant for.”
From the place of honour in the middle of the mantelpiece, Mabel Lovejoy took down a tool which had been dwelling on her active mind ever since the night before. She understood taps, she had knowledge of cogs, she could enter into intricate wards of keys, and was fond of letter-padlocks; but now she had something which combined them all; and she could not make head or tail of it.
“I thought that I knew every metal that grows,” she said, as Alice opened her languid hand for such a trifle; “I always clean our forks and spoons, and my mother’s three silver teapots. But I never beheld any metal of such a colour as this has got, before. Can you tell me what this metal is?”
“I ought to know something, but I know nothing,” Alice answered, wearily; “my father is acknowledged to be full of learning. Every minute I expect him.”
“No doubt he will tell us, when he comes. But I am so impatient. And it looks like the key of some wonderful lock, that nothing else would open. May I ask what it is? Come, at least say that.”
“It will give me the greatest delight to know,” said Alice, with a yawn, “what the thing is; because it will please you, darling. And it certainly does look curious.”
Upon this question Mrs. Bottler, like a good woman, referred them to her learned husband, who came in now from his morning drive, scraping off the frozen snow, and accompanied, of course by Polly.
“Polly’s doll, that’s what we call it,” he said; “the little maid took such a liking to it, that Bonny was forced to give it to her. Where the boy got it, the Lord only knows. The Lord hath given him the gift of finding a’most everything. He hath it both in his eyes and hands. I believe that boy’d die Lord Mayor of London, if he’d only come out of his hole in the hill.”
“But cannot we see him, Mr. Bottler?” asked Mabel; “when he is finding these things, does he lose himself?”
“Not he, Miss!” replied the man of bacon. “He knows where he is, go where he will. You can hear him a-whistling down the lane now. He knoweth when I’ve a been easing of the pigs, sharper than my own steel do. Chittlings, or skirt, or milt, or trimmings—oh, he’s the boy for a rare pig’s fry—it don’t matter what the weather is. I’d as lief dine with him as at home a’most.”
“Oh, let me go and see him at the door,” cried Mabel; “I am so fond of clever boys.” So out she ran without waiting for leave, and presently ran back again. “Oh, what a nice boy!” she exclaimed to Alice; “so very polite, and he has got such eyes! But I’m sadly afraid he’ll be impudent when he grows much older.”
“Aha, Miss, aha, Miss! you are right enough there,” observed Mr. Bottler, with a crafty grin. “He ain’t over bashful already, perhaps.”
“And where do you think he found this most extraordinary instrument? At Shoreham, drawn up by the nets from the sea! And they said that it must have been dropped from a ship, many and many a year ago, when Shoreham was a place for foreign traffic. And he is almost sure that it must be a key of some very strange old-fashioned lock.”
“Then you may depend upon it, that it is a key, and nothing else,” said Bottler, with his fine soft smile. “That boy Bonny hath been about so much among odds, and ends, and rakings, that he knoweth a bit about everything.”
“An old-fashioned key from the sea at Shoreham? Let me think of something,” said Alice, leaning back on her pillow, with her head still full of the Woeburn. “I seem to remember something, and then I am not at all sure what it is. Oh! when is my father coming?”
“Your father hath sent orders, Miss Alice,” said Bottler, coming back with a good bold lie, “that you must go up to the house, if you please. He hath so much to see to with them Chapman lot, that he must not leave home nohow. The coach is a-coming for you now just.”
“Very well,” answered Alice, “I will do as I am told. I mean to do always whatever I am told for all the rest of my life, I am sure. But will you lend me Polly’s doll?”
“Lord bless you, Miss, I daren’t do it for my life. Polly would have the house down. She’m is the strangest child as you ever did see, until you knows how to manage her. Her requireth to be taken the right side up. Now, if I say ‘Poll’ to her, her won’t do nothing; but if I say ‘Polly dear,’—why, there she is!”
Alice was too weak and worn to follow this great question up. But Mabel was as wide awake as ever, although she had been up all night. “Now, Mr. Bottler, just do this: Go and say, ‘Polly, dear, will you lend your doll to the pretty lady, till it comes back covered with sugar-plums?’” Mr. Bottler promised that he would do this; and by the time Alice was ready to go, square Polly, with a very broad gait, came up and placed her doll without a word, in the hands of Alice and then ran away, and could never stop sobbing, until her father put the horse in on purpose, and got her between his legs in the cart. “Where are you going?” cried Mrs. Bottler. “We will drive to the end of the world,” he answered; “I’m blowed if I think there’ll be any gate to pay between this and that, by the look of things. Polly, hold on by daddy’s knees.”
CHAPTER LXXIV.
FROM HADES’ GATES.
In the old house and good household, warmth of opinion and heat of expression abounded now about everything. Pages might be taken up by saying what even one man thought, and tens of pages would not contain the half of what one woman said. Enough, that when poor Alice was brought back through the snow-drifts quietly, every moveable person in the house was at the door. Everybody loved her, and everybody admired her; but now with a pendulous conscience. Also, with much fear about themselves; as the household of Admetus gazed at the pale return of Alcestis.
Alice, being still so weak, and quite unfit for anything, was frightened at their faces, and drew back and sank with faintness.
“Sillies!” cried Mabel, jumping out, with Polly’s doll inside her muff; “naturals, or whatever you are, just come and do your duty.”
They still hung away, and not one of them would help poor Alice across her own father’s threshold, until a great scatter of snow flew about, and a black horse was reigned up hotly.
“You zanies!” cried the Rector; “you cowardly fools! You never come to church, or you would know what to do. You skulking hounds, are you afraid of your own master’s daughter? I have got my big whip. By the Lord, you shall have it. Out of my parish I’ll set to and kick every dastardly son of a cook of you.”
“Where is my father?” said Alice faintly; “I hoped that he would have come for me.”
At the sound of her voice they began to perceive that she was not the ghost of the Woeburn; and the Rector’s strong championship cast at once the broad and sevenfold shield of the church over the maiden’s skeary deed. “Oh, Uncle Struan,” she whispered, hanging upon his arm, as he led her in; “have I committed some great crime? Will my father be ashamed of me?”
“He should rather be ashamed of himself, I think,” he answered, for the present declining the subject which he meant to have out with her some day; “but, my dear, he is not quite well; that is why he does not come to see you. And, indeed, he does not know—I mean he is not at all certain how you are. Trotman, open that door, sir, this moment.”
The parson rather carried than led his niece into a sitting-room, and set her by a bright fire, and left Mabel Lovejoy to attend to her; while he himself hurried away to hear the last account of Sir Roland, and to consult the doctor as to the admittance of poor Alice. But in the passage he met Colonel Clumps, heavily stumping to and fro, with even more than wonted energy.
“Upon my life and soul, Master Parson, I must get out of this house,” he cried; “slashing work, sir, horrible slashing! I had better be under Old Beaky again. I came here to quiet my system, sir: and zounds, sir, they make every hair stand up.”
“Why, Colonel, what is the matter now? Surely, a man of war, like you——”
“Yes, sir, a man of war I am; but not a man of suicide, and paralysis, and precipices, and concussions of the brain, sir—battle, and murder, and sudden death—why, my own brain is in a concussion, sir!”
“So it appears,” said the Rector softly. “But surely, Colonel, you can tell us what the news is?”
“The news is just this, sir,” cried the Colonel, stamping, “the two Chapmans were upset in their coach last night down a precipice, and both killed as dead as stones, sir. They sent for the doctor; that’s proof of it; our doctor has had to be off for his life. No man ever sends for the doctor, until he is dead.”
“There is some truth in that,” replied Mr. Hales; “but I won’t believe it quite yet, at any rate. No doubt they have been upset. I said so as soon as I heard they were gone; particularly with their postilions drunk. And I dare say they are a good deal knocked about. But snow is a fine thing to ease a fall. Whatever has happened, they brought on themselves by their panic and selfish cowardice.”
“Ay, they ran like rats from a sinking ship, when they saw poor Sir Roland’s condition. Alice had frightened them pretty well; but the other affair quite settled them. Sad as it was, I could scarcely help laughing.”
“A sad disappointment for your nice girls, Colonel. Instead of a gay wedding, a house of death.”
“And for your pretty daughters, Rector, too. However, we must not think of that. You have taken in the two Lovejoys, I hear.”
“Gregory and Charlie? Yes, poor fellows. They were thoroughly scared last night, and of course Bottler had no room for them. That Charlie is a grand fellow, and fit to follow in the wake of Nelson. He was frozen all over as stiff as a rick just thatched, and what did he say to me? He said, ‘I shall get into the snow and sleep. I won’t wet mother Bottler’s floor.’”
“Well done! well said! There is nothing in the world to equal English pluck, sir, when you come across the true breed of it. Ah, if those d——d fellows had left me my leg, I would have whistled about my arm, sir. But the worst of the whole is this, supposing that I am grossly insulted, sir, how can I do what a Briton is bound to do—how can I kick—you know what I mean, sir?”
“Come, Colonel, if you can manage to spin round like that, you need not despair of compassing the national salute. But here we are at Sir Roland’s door. Are we allowed to go in? or what are the orders of the doctor?”
“Oh yes; he is quite unconscious. You might fire off a cannon close to his ear, without his starting a hair’s breadth. He will be so for three days, the doctor thinks; and then he will awake, and live or die according as the will of the Lord is.”
“Most of us do that,” answered the parson; “but what shall I say to his daughter?”
“Leave her to me. I will take her a message, sir. I have been hoaxed so in the army, that now I can hoax any one.”
“I believe you are right. She will listen to you a great deal more than she would to me. Moreover, I want to be off, as soon as I have seen poor Sir Roland. I shall ride on, and ask how the Chapmans are. I don’t believe they are dead; they are far too tough. What a blessing it is to have you here, Colonel, with the house in such a state! How is that confounded old woman, who lies at the bottom of all this mischief?”
“Lady Valeria Lorraine,” said the Colonel, rather stiffly, “is as well as can be expected, sir. She has been to see her son Sir Roland, and her grandson Hilary. My opinion is that this brave girl inherits her spirit from her grandmother. Whatever happens, I am sure of one thing, she ought to be the mother of heroes, sir; not the wife of Steenie Chapman.”
“Ah’s me!” cried the Rector; “it will take a brave man to marry her, after what she has done.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” answered the Colonel; “a good man will value her all the more, and scorn the opinion of the county, sir.”
The Rector, in his own stout heart, was much of the same persuasion; but it would not do for him to say so yet. So, after a glance at Sir Roland’s wan and death-like features, he rode forth with a sigh, to look after the Chapmans.
CHAPTER LXXV.
SOMETHING LIKE A LEGACY.
A grand physician being called from London, pronounced that Sir Roland’s case was one of asthenic apoplexy, rather than of pure paralysis. He gave the proper directions, praised the local practitioners, hoped for the best, took his fifty guineas with promptitude, and departed. If there were any weight on the mind, it must be cast aside at once, as soon as the mind should have sense of it. For this a little effort might be allowed, “such as the making of a will, or so forth, or good-bye to children; for on the first return of sense, some activity was good for it. But after that, repose, dear sir, insist on repose, and nourishing food. No phlebotomy—no, that is quite a mistake; an anachronism, a barbarism, in such a case as this is. It is anæmia, with our poor friend, and vascular inaction. No arterial plethorism; quite the opposite, in fact. You have perfectly diagnosed the case. How it will end I cannot say, any more than you can.”
One more there was, one miserable heart, perpetually vexed and torn, that could not tell how things would end, if even they ended anyhow. Alice Lorraine could not be kept from going to her father’s bed, and she was not strong enough yet to bear the sight of the wreck before her.
“It is my doing—my doing!” she cried; “oh, what a wicked thing I must have done, to be punished so bitterly as this!”
“If you please, Miss, to go away with your excitement,” said the old nurse, who was watching him. “You promised to behave yourself; and this is how you does it! Us never can tell what they hears, or what they don’t; when they lies with their ears pricked up so.”
“Nurse, I will go away,” said Alice; “I always do more harm than good.”
The only comfort she now could get flowed from the warm bright heart of Mabel. Everybody else gave signs of being a little, or much, afraid of her. And what is more dreadful for any kind heart, than for other hearts to dread it? She knew that she had done a desperate thing; and she felt that everybody had good reason for shrinking away from her large deep eyes. She tried to keep up her courage, in spite of all that was whispered about her; and, truly speaking, her whole heart vested in her father and her brother.
Mabel watched the whole of this, and did her best to help it. But sweet and good girl as she was, and in her way very noble, she belonged to a stratum of womanhood distinct from that of Alice. She would never have jumped into the river. She would simply have defied them to take her to church. She would have cried, “Here I am, and I won’t marry any man, unless I love him. I don’t love this man; and I won’t have him. Now do your worst, every one of you.” A sensible way of regarding the thing, except for the need of the money.
On the third day, Sir Roland moved his eyes, and feebly raised one elbow. Alice sat there at his side, as now she was almost always sitting. “Oh father,” she cried, “if you would only give me one little sign that you know me. Just to move your darling hand, or just to give me one little glance. Or, if I have no right to that——”
“Go away, Miss; leave the room, if you please. My orders was very particular to have nobody near him, when he first begins to take notice to anything.”
Alice, with a deep sigh, obeyed the orders of the cross old dame; and when the doctor came she received her reward in his approval. It was pitiful to see how humble this poor girl was now become. The accident to the Chapmans, her father’s “stroke,” poor Hilary’s ruin, the lowering of the family for years, had all been attributed to her “wicked sin,” by Lady Valeria, whose wrath was boundless at the overthrow of all her plans.
“What good have you done? What good have you done by such a heinous outrage? You have disgraced yourself for ever. Who will ever look at you now?”
“Everybody, I am afraid, Madam,” Alice answered, with a blush.
“You know what I mean, as well as I do. Even if you were drowned, I believe you would catch at the words of your betters.”
“Drowning people catch at straws,” she answered with a shudder of memory.
“And you could not even drown yourself. You were too clumsy to do even that.”
“Well, Madam,” said Alice, with a smile almost resembling that of better times; “surely even you will admit that I did my best towards it.”
“Ah, you flighty child, leave my room, and go and finish killing your father.”
Now when the doctor came and saw the slight revival of his patient, he hurried in search of Miss Lorraine, towards whom he had taken a liking. After he had given his opinion of the case, and comforted her until she cried, he said—“Now you must come and see him. And if you can think of anything likely to amuse him, or set his mind in motion—any interesting remembrance, or suggestion of mild surprise, it will be the very best thing possible.”
“But surely, to see me again will sufficiently astonish him.”
“It is not likely. In most of these cases perfect oblivion is the rule as to the occurrence that stimulated the predisposition to these attacks. Sir Roland will not have the smallest idea that—that anything has happened to you.”
And so it proved. When Alice came to her father’s side, he looked at her exactly as he used to do, except that his glance was weak and wavering, and full of desire to comfort her. The doctor had told her to look cheerful, and even gay—and she did her best. Sir Roland had lost all power of speech; but his hearing was as good as ever; and being ordered to take turtle-soup, he was propped up on a bank of pillows, and doing his best to execute medical directions.
“Oh, my darling, darling!” cried Alice, after a little while, being left to feed her father delicately: “I have got such a surprise for you! You will say you were never so astonished in all the course of your life before.”
She knew how her father would have answered if he had been at all himself. He would have lifted his eyebrows, and aroused her dutiful combativeness, with some of that little personal play which passes between near relatives, who love and understand each other. As it was, he could only nod, to show his anxiety for some surprise. And then Alice did a thing which under any other circumstances, would have been most inconsistent in her. In the drawer of his looking-glass she found his best-beloved snuff-box, and she put one little pinch between his limp forefinger and white thumb, and raised them towards the proper part, and trusted to nature to do the rest. A pleasant light shone forth his eyes; and she felt that she had earned a kiss. Betwixt a smile and a tear, she took it; and then, for fear of a chill, she tucked him up, and sat quietly by him. She had learned, as we learn in our syntax, what “vacuis committere venis.”
When he had slept for two or three hours, with Alice hushing the sound of her breath, he was seized with sudden activity. His body had been greatly strengthened by the most nourishing of all food; and now his mind began to aim at like increase of movement.
“What do you think I have got to show you?” said Alice, perceiving this condition. “Nothing less, I do believe, than the key of the fine old Astrologer’s case! Of course, I can only guess, because you have got it locked away, papa. But from the metal looking just the same, and the shape of it, and the seven corners, and its being found at Shoreham, in the sea, where Memel was said to have lost it, I do think it must be that very same key. And I found it, papa—well I found it under rather peculiar circumstances. Now may I go and try? There can be no harm, if it turns out to be pure fancy.”
Her father nodded, and pointed to a drawer where he kept his important keys, as his daughter of course was well aware. And in five minutes, Alice came back again, with the strange old case in one hand, and Polly’s queer doll in the other. Mabel lingered in the passage, not being sure that she ought to come in, though Alice tried to fetch her. Then Alice set the case, or cushion, upon her father’s bedside table, and with a firm hand pushed the key down, and endeavoured to turn it. Not a tittle would anything yield or budge; although it was clear to the dullest eye that lock and key belonged together.
“It is the key, papa,” cried Alice; “it fits to a hair; but it won’t turn. This queer old thing goes round and round, instead of staying quiet, and waiting to be unlocked justly. I suppose my hands are too weak. Oh there! Provoking thing, it goes round again. I know how I could manage it, if I may, my darling father. In the Astrologer’s room, I saw a tremendous vice, fit to take anything. I have inherited some of his turn for tools and mechanism; though of course in a most degenerate degree. Now may I go up? I shall have no fear whatever, if Mabel comes with me.”
Winning mute assent, she ran for the key of that room, and took Mabel with her: and soon they had that obstinate case set fast in a vice, whose screw had not been turned for more than two centuries. The bottom of the cone was hard and solid, and bedded itself in the old oak slabs.
“Now turn, Mabel, turn; the key is warped, or we might apply more force,” said Alice. They did not know that it had been crooked by the jaws of Jack the donkey. Even so, it would not yield, until they passed an ancient chisel through its loop, and worked away. Then, with a thin and sulky screech, the cogs began to move, and the upper half of the case to slide aside.
“Oh, I am so frightened, Alice,” cried Mabel, drawing back her hands. “And the room is so cold! It seems so unholy! It feels like witchcraft! And all his old tools looking at us!”
“Witch or wizard, or necromancer, I am not going to leave off now,” answered Alice the resolute. “You may run away, if you like. But I mean to get to the bottom of this, if I—if I can, at least.”
She was going to say, “if I die for it.” But she had been so close to Death quite lately, that she feared to take his name in vain.
“How slowly it moves! How it does resist!” cried Mabel, returning to the charge. “I thought I was pretty strong—well, it ought to be worth something for all this work.”
“It is fire-proof! It is lined with asbestos!” Alice answered eagerly. “Oh, there must be an enormous lot of gold.”
“There can’t be,” said Mabel; why a thousand guineas is more than you or I could carry. And you carried this easily in one hand.”
“Don’t talk so!” cried Alice; “but work away. I am desperately anxious.”
“As for me, I am positively dying of curiosity. Lend me your pocket-handkerchief, dear. I am cutting my hands to pieces.”
“Here it comes, I do believe. Well, what an extraordinary thing!”
The dome of the cone had yielded sulkily to the vigour and perseverance of two good young ladies. It had slidden horizontally, the key of course sliding with it, upon a strong rack of metal, which had been purposely made to go stiffly; and now that the cover had passed the cogs, it was lifted off quite easily. All this was the handiwork of the man, the simple-minded Eastern sage, who loved the shepherds and the sheep; and whose fine spirit would have now rejoiced to see the result of good workmanship.
The two fair girls poured hair together, with forehead close to forehead, when the round substantial case lay coverless before them. A disc of yellow parchment was spread flat on the top of everything, with its edges crenelled into the asbestos lining. Hours, and perhaps days of care, had been spent by clever brain and hands, to keep the air and dust out.
“Who shall lift it?” asked Mabel, panting. “I am almost afraid to move.”
“I will lift it, of course,” said Alice; “I am his descendant; and he foresaw that I should do it.”
She took from the lathe a little narrow tool for turning ivory (which had touched no hand since the Prince’s), and she delicately loosened up the parchment, and examined it. It was covered with the finest manuscript, in concentric rings, beginning with half an inch of diameter; but she could not interpret a word of that. Below it shone a thick flossy layer of the finest mountain wool; and under that the soft spun amber of the richest native silk.
“Now, Alice, do you mean to stop all night!” cried Mabel; “see how the light is fading!”
The light was fading, and spreading also, in a way that reminded Alice (although the season and the weather were so entirely different) of her visit to that room two and a half long years ago, alone among the shadows. The white light, with the snow-gleam in it, favoured any inborn light in everything else that was beautiful.
Alice, with the gentlest touch of the fairy-gifts of her fingers, raised the last gossamer of the silk, and drew back and sighed with wonder. Mabel (always prompt to take the barb and shaft of everything) leaned over, and looked in, and at once enlarged her eyes and mouth in purest stupefaction.
Before and between these two most lovely specimens of the human race, lay the most beautiful and more lasting proofs of what nature used to do, before the production of women. Alice and Mabel, with the light in their eyes and the flush in their fair cheeks quivering, felt that their beauty was below contempt—except in the opinion of stupid men—if compared with what they were looking at.
Of all the colours cast by nature on the world, as lavishly as Shakespeare threw his jewels forth, of all the tints of sun and heaven in flower, sea and rainbow, there was not one that did not glance, or gleam, or lie in ambush, and then suddenly flash forth, and blush and then fall back again. None of them waited to be looked at; all were in perpetual play; they had been immured for centuries; and when the glad light broke upon them, forth they danced like meteors. And then, as all quick with life, they began to weave their crossing rays, and cast their tints through one another, like the hurtling of the Aurora. And to back their fitful brilliance, in amongst them lay and spread a soft, delicious, milky way of bashful white serenity.
“It is terrible witchcraft!” cried dazzled Mabel.
“No,” said Alice; “it is the noblest casket ever seen, of precious opals, and of pearls. You shall carry them to my father.”
“Indeed, I will not,” said the generous Mabel; “you have earned, and you shall offer them.”
CHAPTER LXXVI.
SCIENTIFIC SOLUTION.
Beauty having due perception and affection for itself, it is natural that young ladies should be much attached to jewels. It does not, however, follow that they know anything about them, any more than they always do about other objects of their attachment. Nevertheless, they always want to know the money-value.
“I should say that they are worth a thousand pounds, if they are worth a penny,” said Mabel, sagely shaking her head, and looking wonderfully learned.
“A thousand!” cried Alice. “Ten thousand, you mean. Now put it all back as we found it.”
“Oh, one more glance, one more good look, before other people see them! Oh, let the light fall sideways.”
Mabel, in her admiration of them, danced all round the Astrologer’s room, whisking the dust from the wheel of his lathe, and scattering quaint rare tools about; while Alice, calmly smiling at her, repacked the case, silk, wool, and parchment, and giving her friend the cover to carry, led the way towards her father’s room.
Sir Roland Lorraine was so amazed, that for the moment the mind resumed command of the body; the needful effort was made; and he “spake with his tongue” once more, though feebly and inarticulately.
“Father, darling, that is worth more to me,” cried Alice, throwing her arms around him, “than all the jewels that ever were made from the first year of the world to this. Oh, I could never, never live, without hearing your dear voice.”
It was long, however, before Sir Roland recovered mind and spirit, so as to attempt a rendering of the provident sage’s document The writing was so small, that a powerful lens was wanted for it; the language, moreover, was Latin, and the contractions crabbed to the last degree. And crammed as it was with terms of art, an interpreter might fairly doubt whether his harder task would be to make out the words or their meaning. But omitting some quite unintelligible parts, it seemed to be somewhat as follows:—
“Oh, descendant of mine in far-off ages, neither be thou carried away by desire of riches, neither suppose thine ancestor to have been so carried. I bid thee rather to hold thy money in the place of nothing, and to be taught that it is a work of royal amplitude and most worthy of the noblest princes, to conquer the obstinacy of nature by human skill and fortitude. Labouring much, I have accomplished little; seeking many things, I have found some; it is not just that I should be forgotten, or mingled with those of my time and rank, who live by violence, and do nothing for the benefit of humanity.
“Among many other things which I have by patience and learning conquested, the one the most likely of all to lead to wealth is of a simple kind. To wit, as Glaucus of Chios (following up the art of Celmis and Damnameneus) discovered the κολλησις of iron, so have I discovered that of jewels—the opal, and perhaps the ruby. As regards the opal, I am certain; as regards the ruby, I have still some difficulties to conquer. All who know the opal can, with very clear vision, perceive that its lustre and versatile radiance flow from innumerable lamins, united by fusion in the endless flux of years. Having discovered how to solve the opal with a caustic liquor”—here followed chemical marks which none but a learned chemist could understand—“and how to recompose it, I have spent twelve months in Hungary, collecting a full medimnus of small opals of the purest quality. After many trials and a great waste of material, I have accomplished things undreamed by Baccius, Evax, or Leonardus; I have produced the priceless opal, cast to mould, and of purest water, from the size of an avellan-nut to that of a small castane. Larger I would not make them, knowing the incredulity of mankind, who take for false all things more than twice the size of their own experience.
“Alas! it is allowed to no man, great works having been carried through, to see what will become of them. These gems of inestimable value, polished by their own liquescence, and coherent as the rainbow, demand, as far as I yet can judge, at least a hundred years of darkness and of cavernous seclusion, such as nature and the gods require for all perfect work. And when the air is first let in, it must be very slowly done, otherwise all might fall abroad, as though I had never touched them. For this, with the vigilance of a great philosopher, I have provided.
“Now, farewell, whether descended from me, or whether (if the fates will) alien. A philosopher who has penetrated, and under the yoke led nature, is the last of all men to speak proudly, or record his own great deeds. That he leaves for inferior and less tranquil minds, as are those of the poets. Only do not thou sell these gems for little, if thou sell them. The smallest of them is larger and finer than that of the Senator Nonius, or that which is called ‘Troy burning,’ from the propugnacled flash of its movement. Be not misled by jewellers. Rogues they are, and imitators, and perpetually striving to make gain disgracefully. Hearken thou not to one word of these; but keep these jewels, if thou canst. If narrow matters counsel sale, then go to the king of thy country, or great nobles, who will not wrong thee. And be sure that thou keep them well advised, that neither in skill of hand nor in learning should they attempt to vie with Agasicles the Carian.”
CHAPTER LXXVII.
HER HEART IS HIS.
Long ere the writing of the diffident sage had been thus interpreted, the casket, or rather its contents (being intrusted to the wary hands of the Counsellor, on his return to London) had passed the severest test and been pronounced of enormous value. The great philosopher had not deigned to say a word about the pearls, whether produced or amalgamated by his skill, or whether they were heirlooms in his ancient family. The jewellers said that they were Cingalese, and of the rarest quality; and for these alone one large house (holding a commission from a coalowner), offered fifteen, and then twenty, and finally twenty-five thousand pounds. But Sir Roland had resolved not to part with these, but divide them between his daughter and future daughter-in-law, if he could raise the required sum without them. In this no difficulty was found. Though opals were not in fashion just then (and indeed they are even now undervalued, through a stupid superstition), six of the smaller gems were sold for £65,000, and now their owners would not accept double that price for them.
Lady Valeria right quickly discarded her terror of the casket, and very quietly appropriated the magnificent central gem. It was the cover, with its spiral coils of metal, which had frightened her ladyship. The strongest-minded ladies are, as a general rule, the most obstinate in their dread of what has injured them. The Earl of Thanet, this lady’s father, had been a great lover of the honey-bee, and among his other experiments, he had a small metal hive, which his daughter upset, with results which need not trouble us so much as they troubled the lady. And although so much smaller, the Astrologer’s case strangely resembled that deadly hive.
When Hilary’s sin had been purged, and himself (at certainly a somewhat heavy figure) allowed to draw his sword again, he soon regained all his former strength, and health, and perhaps a little more than his former share of wisdom. But he did not march into Paris as Colonel Clumps had once predicted; or at least not in that memorable year 1814. But in July of the following year, he certainly put in an appearance there, under the immortal Wellington, who had been truly pleased to have him under his command, but never on his Staff, again. And Hilary Lorraine, at Waterloo, had shown most clearly (through the thick of the smoke) that if the Duke had erred about his discretion, he had made no mistake about his valour.
And it was, of course, tenfold more valorous of him to carry on as he did there, when he called to mind that he had at home a lovely wife, of the name of Mabel, and a baby of the name of Roger. Because he had taken advantage of the piping time of peace,—when all the “crowned heads” were in England,—to put on his own head that “crown of glory” (richer than mural or civic) whereof the wise man speaks the more warmly, because he had so many of them. In June 1814, Hilary and Mabel were made one, under junction of the good Rector; and nature, objecting to this depopulating fusion of her integrals, had sternly recouped her arithmetic, by appeal to the multiplication table.
At Waterloo, Hilary worked his right arm much harder than he worked it through the rest of his life; because there he lost it. When the French Cuirassiers made their third grand charge upon the British artillery, to change the fortune, or meet their fate, Lorraine, with his troop of the Dasher-Hussars, now commanded by Colonel Aylmer, was in front of the rest of the regiment. The spirit of these men was up; they had been a long while held back, that day, and they could not see any reason why they should not have their turn at it. Man and horse were of one accord, needing no spur, neither heeding bridle. As straight as hounds in full view, they flew; and Hilary flew in front of them. In the crush and crash, he got rolled over, dismounted, and left slashing wildly in a storm of horses. An enormous cuirassier made at him, with a sword of monstrous length. Their eyes met, and they knew each other—the robber and the robbed; the crafty plotter and the simple one; the victor and the victim.
Alcides cried in Spanish—“Thou art at thy latest gasp; I have no orders now from my precious wife—receive this, and no more of thee!” With rowels deep in the flank of his horse, he made a horrible swoop at Hilary, spent of strength and able only to present a feeble guard. Hilary’s blade spun round and round, and his right arm flew off at the elbow; and the crash was descending upon his poor head, when a stern reply met Alcides. Through the joints of his harness Joyce Aylmer’s sword went in, and drank his life-blood. His horse dashed on the plain, like the felled trunk of a poison-tree,—that plain where lay so many nobler, and so few meaner than himself. Having run through the whole of the stolen money, he had donned the French cuirass, and left his wife and infant child to starve.
When the times of slaughter passed, and Nature began to be aware again that she has other manure than bloodshed; when even the cows could low without fear of telling where their calves were, and mares could lick their foals unwept on; and hills and valleys began again to listen to the voice of quiet waters (drowned no more in the din of the drum); and everything in our dear country was most wonderfully dear,—something happened at this period not to be passed over. Parenthetically it may be said—and deserves no more than parenthesis—that neither of the Chapmans had been killed (as mendacious fame reported), only knocked on the head, and legs, and stomach, and other convenient places. Steenie wedded their housemaid Sally; and it was the best thing he could have done, to clean up the steps of the family.
But now there is just time to say that it must have been broad August, when the fields were growing white for harvest, after the swath of Waterloo, ere Colonel Aylmer durst bring forth what he nursed in his heart for Alice. His words were short and simple, though he did not mean to make them so. But he found her in old Chancton Ring, where first he had beholden her; and so much came across him, that he never took his hat off, but just whispered underneath it. The whisper went under a prettier hat, where it long had been expected; and if a feather waved at all, it only was a white one.
“Are you not afraid of me?” asked Alice Lorraine, with a tremulous glance, enough to terrify any one.
“That I am, to the last degree. I never shall get over it.”
“That augurs well,” she replied with a smile—such a smile as none else could give; “but I mean more than that; I mean your fear of what the world will say of me.”
“Of that I am infinitely more afraid. It will vex me so to hear for ever—‘What has he done to deserve such a wife?’”
“Then what he has done is simply this,” cried Alice, looking nobly; “he has saved her life, and her brother’s: he has taught her now to fear herself; and her heart is his, if he cares for it.”