She cast an affectionate glance at the cripple; then she went on, “Lord! I forgive and excuse all the frolics of your youth; and folks always says things rougher than they mean them.”
Instead of going on to Chillacot, as he had at first intended, Giles now resolved on following the road to the village, and returning home later. He must lose no time in showing himself. He trusted that in the excitement caused by the death of Lord Lamerton no questions would be raised about Arminell, and any little suspicions which might have been awakened by her sudden departure would be allayed.
He was not altogether easy about his father, nor satisfied with Joan’s justification of him. That the jury had returned a verdict of accidental death was a relief to his mind, but it made him uncomfortable to think that suspicion against his father should be entertained. Giles had little or no knowledge of his father’s new craze. He knew that the captain was a fanatic who went heart and soul with whatever commended itself to his reason or prejudice. At one time he took up hotly the subject of vegetarianism, then he became infatuated with Anglo-Israelism, then he believed vehemently in a quack syrup he saw advertised in a Christian paper, warranted to cure all disorder; after that he became possessed with the teetotal mania, and attributed all the evils in the world, war, plagues, earthquakes, popery, and foot-and-mouth disease to the use of alcohol. Recently he had combined his religious vagaries with political theories, and had made a strange stir-about of both. His trouble at losing his situation as captain of the manganese mine, and his irritation against the railway company for wanting Chillacot had combined to work him into a condition of unusual excitability. Giles had heard that his father had seen a vision, but of what sort he had not inquired, because he was entirely out of sympathy with the spiritual exaltations and fancies of his father.
The village of Orleigh was not what is commonly termed a “church town,” that is to say, it was not clustered about the church, which stood in the park, near the mansion of the Ingletts. In ancient days, when the population was sparse, the priest drew his largest congregation from the manor house, and therein he lived as chaplain and tutor; consequently in many places we find the parish church situated close to the manor house, and away from the village which had grown up later. It was so at Orleigh. The village consisted of a green, with an old tree in the midst, an ale-house, the Lamerton Arms, a combined general and grocery store, which was also post office, a blacksmith’s forge, and half-a-dozen picturesque cottages white-washed, with red windows and thatched roofs. Most of these houses had flower gardens before their doors, encouraged thereto by an annual Floricultural Society which gave prizes to those villagers who had the neatest, most cheerful and varied gardens.
Jingles found knots of men standing about the green, some were coming out of, others about to enter the public-house door; another knot clustered about the forge. Women were not wanting, to throw in words.
The dusk of evening had settled in, so that at first none noticed the approach of the young man. He came, not by the road, but across by the blacksmith’s garden, where a short cut saved a round. Thus he was in the midst of the men before they were aware that he was near.
He could not catch all that was being said, but he heard that the death of Lord Lamerton occupied their minds and exercised their tongues. His father’s name was also freely bandied about.
“I say,” exclaimed the village tailor, in a voice like that of a corncrake, “I say that Cap’n Saltren did it. What do you consider the reason why the coroner discharged the jury and called another? I know, if you do not. You don’t perhaps happen to know, but I do, that Marianne Saltren’s aunt, old Betsy Welsh, washes for the coroner. Nothing more likely, were he to allow a verdict against the captain, than that his shirt-fronts would come home iron-moulded. Don’t tell me there was no evidence. Evidence is always to be had if looked for. Evidence is like snail’s horns, thrust forth or drawn in, according to circumstances. If the coroner had wanted evidence, he could have had it. But he was thinking of his shirt-front, and he, maybe, going out to a dinner-party. It is easy done, boil an old nail along with the clothes, and pounds’ worth of linen is spoiled. I don’t blame him,” concluded the tailor sententiously. “Human nature is human nature.”
“And,” shouted a miner, “facts is facts” – but he pronounced them fax.
“Lord Lamerton,” said a second miner, “wanted to make a new road, and carry it to Chillacot. The cap’n didn’t like it, he didn’t want to have a station there. He was set against his lordship on that account, for his lordship was a director. If you can prove to me that his lordship wasn’t a director, then I shall admit he may have come by his death naturally. I say naught against his lordship for not wanting to have his house undermined, but I do say that the cap’n acted unreasonably and wrongly in not letting the company have Chillacot for the station. If he’d have done that, his lordship would have found us work on the road.”
“Ah, Gloyne,” called the other miner, “that’s it. Fax is fax.”
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 carriage 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