“Have you ever been to Knowl, Tom?”
Tom gaped very innocently.
“Anan,” he said.
“Here, Tom, is half-a-crown.”
He took it readily enough.
“That be very good,” said Tom, with a nod, having glanced sharply at the coin.
I can’t say whether he applied that term to the coin, or to his luck, or to my generous self.
“Now, Tom, you’ll tell me, have you ever been to Knowl?”
“Maught a’ bin, ma’am, but I don’t mind no sich place — no.”
As Tom spoke this with great deliberation, like a man who loves truth, putting a strain upon his memory for its sake, he spun the silver coin two or three times into the air and caught it, staring at it the while, with all his might.
“Now, Tom, recollect yourself, and tell me the truth, and I’ll be a friend to you. Did you ride postilion to a carriage having a lady in it, and, I think, several gentlemen, which came to the grounds of Knowl, when the party had their luncheon on the grass, and there was a — a quarrel with the gamekeepers? Try, Tom, to recollect; you shall, upon my honour, have no trouble about it, and I’ll try to serve you.”
Tom was silent, while with a vacant gape he watched the spin of his half-crown twice, and then catching it with a smack in his hand, which he thrust into his pocket, he said, still looking in the same direction —
“I never rid postilion in my days, ma’am. I know nout o’ sich a place, though ‘appen I maught a’ bin there; Knowl, ye ca’t. I was ne’er out o’ Derbyshire but thrice to Warwick fair wi’ horses be rail, an’ twice to York.”
“You’re certain, Tom?”
“Sartin sure, ma’am.”
And Tom made another loutish salute, and cut the conference short by turning off the path and beginning to hollo after some trespassing cattle.
I had not felt anything like so nearly sure in this essay at identification as I had in that of Dudley. Even of Dudley’s identity with the Church Scarsdale man, I had daily grown less confident; and, indeed, had it been proposed to bring it to the test of a wager, I do not think I should, in the language of sporting gentlemen, have cared to “back” by original opinion. There was, however, a sufficient uncertainty to make me uncomfortable; and there was another uncertainty to enhance the unpleasant sense of ambiguity.
On our way back we passed the bleaching trunks and limbs of several ranks of barkless oaks lying side by side, some squared by the hatchet, perhaps sold, for there were large letters and Roman numerals traced upon them in red chalk. I sighed as I passed them by, not because it was wrongfully done, for I really rather leaned to the belief that Uncle Silas was well advised in point of law. But alas! here lay low the grand old family decorations of Bartram–Haugh, not to be replaced for centuries to come, under whose spreading boughs the Ruthyns of three hundred years ago had hawked and hunted!
On the trunk of one of these I sat down to rest, Mary Quince meanwhile pattering about in unmeaning explorations. While thus listlessly seated, the girl Meg Hawkes, walked by, carrying a basket.
“Hish!” she said quickly, as she passed, without altering a pace or raising her eyes; “don’t ye speak nor look — fayther spies us; I’ll tell ye next turn.”
“Next turn”— when was that? Well, she might be returning; and as she could not then say more than she had said, in merely passing without a pause, I concluded to wait for a short time and see what would come of it.
After a short time I looked about me a little, and I saw Dickon Hawkes — Pegtop, as poor Milly used to call him — with an axe in his hand, prowling luridly among the timber.
Observing that I saw him, he touched his hat sulkily, and by-and-by passed me, muttering to himself. He plainly could not understand what business I could have in that particular part of the Windmill Wood, and let me see it in his countenance.
His daughter did pass me again; but this time he was near, and she was silent. Her next transit occurred as he was questioning Mary Quince at some little distance; and as she passed precisely in the same way, she said —
“Don’t you be alone wi’ Master Dudley nowhere for the world’s worth.”
The injunction was so startling that I was on the point of questioning the girl. But I recollected myself, and waited in the hope that in her future transits she might be more explicit. But one word more she did not utter, and the jealous eye of old Pegtop was so constantly upon us that I refrained.
There was vagueness and suggestion enough in the oracle to supply work for many an hour of anxious conjecture, and many a horrible vigil by night. Was I never to know peace at Bartram–Haugh?
Ten days of poor Milly’s absence, and of my solitude, had already passed, when my uncle sent for me to his room.
When old Wyat stood at the door, mumbling and snarling her message, my heart died within me.
It was late — just that hour when dejected people feel their anxieties most — when the cold grey of twilight has deepened to its darkest shade, and before the cheerful candles are lighted, and the safe quiet of the night sets in.
When I entered my uncle’s sitting-room — though his window-shutters were open and the wan streaks of sunset visible through them, like narrow lakes in the chasms of the dark western clouds — a pair of candles were burning; one stood upon the table by his desk, the other on the chimneypiece, before which his tall, thin figure stooped. His hand leaned on the mantel-piece, and the light from the candle just above his bowed head touched his silvery hair. He was looking, as it seemed, into the subsiding embers of the fire, and was a very statue of forsaken dejection and decay.
“Uncle!” I ventured to say, having stood for some time unperceived near his table.
“Ah, yes, Maud, my dear child — my dear child.”
He turned, and with the candle in his hand, smiling his silvery smile of suffering on me. He walked more feebly and stiffly, I thought, than I had ever seen him move before.
“Sit down, Maud — pray sit there.”
I took the chair he indicated.
“In my misery and my solitude, Maud, I have invoked you like a spirit, and you appear.”
With his two hands leaning on the table, he looked across at me, in a stooping attitude; he had not seated himself. I continued silent until it should be he pleasure to question or address me.
At last he said, raising himself and looking upward, with a wild adoration — his finger-tips elevated and glimmering in the faint mixed light —
“No, I thank my Creator, I am not quite forsaken.”
Another silence, during which he looked steadfastly at me, and muttered, as if thinking aloud —
“My guardian angel! — my guardian angel! Maud, you have a heart.” He addressed me suddenly —“Listen, for a few moments, to the appeal of an old and broken-hearted man — your guardian — your uncle — your suppliant. I had resolved never to speak to you more on this subject. But I was wrong. It was pride that inspired me — mere pride.”
I felt myself growing pale and flushed by turns during the pause that followed.
“I’m very miserable — very nearly desperate. What remains for me — what remains? Fortune has done her worst — thrown in the dust, her wheels rolled over me; and the servile world, who follow her chariot like a mob, stamp upon the mangled wretch. All this had passed over me, and left me scarred and bloodless in this solitude. It was not my fault, Maud — I say it was no fault of mine; I have no remorse, though more regrets than I can count, and