Mrs. Hockin, however, had not the pleasure promised her by the facetious1 Major of seeing me “make up to my grandmamma.” For although we set off at once to catch the strange woman who had roused so much curiosity, and though, as we passed the door of Bruntlands, we saw her still at her post in the valley, like Major Hockin’s new letter-box, for some reason best known to herself we could not see any more of her. For, hurry as he might upon other occasions, nothing would make the Major cut a corner of his winding2 “drive” when descending3 it with a visitor. He enjoyed every yard of its length, because it was his own at every step, and he counted his paces in an under-tone, to be sure of the length, for perhaps the thousandth time. It was long enough in a straight line, one would have thought, but he was not the one who thought so; and therefore he had doubled it by judicious4 windings5, as if for the purpose of breaking the descent.
“Three hundred and twenty-one,” he said, as he came to a post, where he meant to have a lodge6 as soon as his wife would let him; “now the old woman stands fifty-five yards on, at a spot where I mean to have an ornamental7 bridge, because our fine saline element runs up there when the new moon is perigee8. My dear, I am a little out of breath, which affects my sight for the moment. Doubtless that is why I do not see her.”
“If I may offer an opinion,” I said, “in my ignorance of all the changes you have made, the reason why we do not see her may be that she is gone out of sight.”
“Impossible!” Major Hockin cried —“simply impossible, Erema! She never moves for an hour and a half. And she was not come, was she, when you came by?”
“I will not be certain,” I answered; “but I think that I must have seen her if she had been there, because I was looking about particularly at all your works as we came by.”
“Then she must be there still; let us tackle her.”
This was easier said than done, for we found no sign of any body at the place where she certainly had been standing9 less than five minutes ago. We stood at the very end and last corner of the ancient river trough, where a little seam went inland from it, as if some trifle of a brook10 had stolen down while it found a good river to welcome it. But now there was only a little oozy11 gloss12 from the gleam of the sun upon some lees of marshy13 brine left among the rushes by the last high tide.
“You see my new road and the key to my intentions?” said the Major, forgetting all about his witch, and flourishing his geological hammer, while standing thus at his “nucleus.” “To understand all, you have only to stand here. You see those leveling posts, adjusted with scientific accuracy. You see all those angles, calculated with micrometric precision. You see how the curves are radiated —”
“It is very beautiful, I have no doubt; but you can not have Uncle Sam’s gift of machinery14. And do you understand every bit of it yourself?”
“Erema, not a jot15 of it. I like to talk about it freely when I can, because I see all its beauties. But as to understanding it, my dear, you might set to, if you were an educated female, and deliver me a lecture upon my own plan. Intellect is, in such matters, a bubble. I know good bricks, good mortar16, and good foundations.”
“With your great ability, you must do that,” I answered, very gently, being touched with his humility17 and allowance of my opinion; “you will make a noble town of it. But when is the railway coming?”
“Not yet. We have first to get our Act; and a miserable18-minded wretch19, who owns nothing but a rabbit-warren, means to oppose it. Don’t let us talk of him. It puts one out of patience when a man can not see his own interest. But come and see our assembly-rooms, literary institute, baths, etc., etc. — that is what we are urging forward now.”
“But may I not go first and look for my strange namesake? Would it be wrong of me to call upon her?”
“No harm whatever,” replied my companion; “likewise no good. Call fifty times, but you will get no answer. However, it is not a very great round, and you will understand my plans more clearly. Step out, my dear, as if you had got a troop of Mexicans after you. Ah, what a fine turn for that lot now!” He was thinking of the war which had broken out, and the battle of Bull’s Run.
Without any such headlong speed, we soon came to the dwelling-place of the stranger, and really for once the good Major had not much overdone20 his description. Truly it was almost tumbling down, though massively built, and a good house long ago; and it looked the more miserable now from being placed in a hollow of the ground, whose slopes were tufted with rushes and thistles and ragwort. The lower windows were blocked up from within, the upper were shattered and crumbling21 and dangerous, with blocks of cracked stone jutting22 over them; and the last surviving chimney gave less smoke than a workman’s homeward whiff of his pipe to comfort and relieve the air.
The only door that we could see was of heavy black oak, without any knocker; but I clinched23 my hand, having thick gloves on, and made what I thought a very creditable knock, while the Major stood by, with his blue-lights up, and keenly gazed and gently smiled.
“Knock again, my dear,” he said; “you don’t knock half hard enough.”
I knocked again with all my might, and got a bruised24 hand for a fortnight, but there was not even the momentary25 content produced by an active echo. The door was as dead as every thing else.
“Now for my hammer,” my companion cried. “This house, in all sound law, is my own. I will have a ‘John Doe and Richard Roe’— a fine action of ejectment. Shall I be barred out upon my own manor26?”
With hot indignation he swung his hammer, but nothing came of it except more noise. Then the Major grew warm and angry.
“My charter contains the right of burning witches or drowning them, according to their color. The execution is specially27 imposed upon the bailiff of this ancient town, and he is my own pickled-pork man. His name is Hopkins, and I will have him out with his seal and stick and all the rest. Am I to be laughed at in this way?”
For we thought we heard a little screech28 of laughter from the loneliness of the deep dark place, but no other answer came, and perhaps it was only our own imagining.
“Is there no other door — perhaps one at the back?” I asked, as the lord of the manor stamped.
“No, that has been walled up long ago. The villain29 has defied me from the very first. Well, we shall see. This is all very fine. You witness that they deny the owner entrance?”
“Undoubtedly I can depose30 to that. But we must not waste your valuable time.”
“After all, the poor ruin is worthless,” he went on, calming down as we retired31. “It must be leveled, and that hole filled up. It is quite an eye-sore to our new parade. And no doubt it belongs to me — no doubt it does. The fellow who claims it was turned out of the law. Fancy any man turned out of the law! Erema, in all your far West experience, did you ever see a man bad enough to be turned out of the law?”
“Major Hockin, how can I tell? But I fear that their practice was very, very sad — they very nearly always used to hang them.”
“The best use — the best use a rogue32 can be put to. Some big thief has put it the opposite way, because he was afraid of his own turn. The constitution must be upheld, and, by the Lord! it shall be — at any rate, in East Bruntsea. West Bruntsea is all a small-pox warren out of my control, and a skewer33 in my flesh. And some of my tenants34 have gone across the line to snap their dirty hands at me.”
Being once in this cue, Major Hockin went on, not talking to me much, but rather to himself, though expecting me now and then to say “yes;” and this I did when necessary, for his principles of action were beyond all challenge, and the only question was how he carried them out.
He took me to his rampart, which was sure to stop the sea, and at the same time to afford the finest place in all Great Britain for a view of it. Even an invalid35 might sit here in perfect shelter from the heaviest gale36, and watch such billows as were not to be seen except upon the Major’s property.
“The reason of that is quite simple,” he said, “and a child may see the force of it. In no other part of the kingdom can you find so steep a beach fronting the southwest winds, which are ten to one of all other winds, without any break of sand or rock outside. Hence we have what you can not have on a shallow shore — grand rollers: straight from the very Atlantic, Erema; you and I have seen them. You may see by the map that they all end here, with the wind in the proper quarter.”
“Oh, please not to talk of such horrors,” I said. “Why, your ramparts would go like pie crust.”
The Major smiled a superior smile, and after more talk we went home to dinner.
From something more than mere37 curiosity, I waited at Bruntsea for a day or two, hoping to see that strange namesake of mine who had shown so much inhospitality. For she must have been at home when we made that pressing call, inasmuch as there was no other place to hide her within the needful distance of the spot where she had stood. But the longer I waited, the less would she come out — to borrow the good Irishman’s expression — and the Major’s pillar-box, her favorite resort, was left in conspicuous38 solitude39. And when a letter came from Sir Montague Hockin, asking leave to be at Bruntlands on the following evening, I packed up my goods with all haste, and set off, not an hour too soon, for Shoxford.
But before taking leave of these kind friends, I begged them to do for me one little thing, without asking me to explain my reason, which, indeed, was more than I could do. I begged them, not of course to watch Sir Montague, for that they could not well do to a guest, but simply to keep their eyes open and prepared for any sign of intercourse40, if such there were, between this gentleman and that strange interloper. Major Hockin stared, and his wife looked at me as if my poor mind must have gone astray, and even to myself my own thought appeared absurd. Remembering, however, what Sir Montague had said, and other little things as well, I did not laugh as they did. But perhaps one part of my conduct was not right, though the wrong (if any) had been done before that — to wit, I had faithfully promised Mrs. Price not to say a word at Bruntlands about their visitor’s low and sinful treachery toward my cousin. To give such a promise had perhaps been wrong, but still without it I should have heard nothing of matters that concerned me nearly. And now it seemed almost worse to keep than to break such a pledge, when I thought of a pious41, pure-minded, and holy-hearted woman, like my dear “Aunt Mary,” unwittingly brought into friendly contact with a man of the lowest nature. And as for the Major, instead of sitting down with such a man to dinner, what would he have done but drive him straightway from the door, and chase him to the utmost verge42 of his manor with the peak end of his “geological hammer?”
However, away I went without a word against that contemptible43 and base man, toward whom — though he never had injured me — I cherished, for my poor cousin’s sake, the implacable hatred44 of virtuous45 youth. And a wild idea had occurred to me (as many wild ideas did now in the crowd of things gathering46 round me) that this strange woman, concealed47 from the world, yet keenly watching some members of it, might be that fallen and miserable creature who had fled from a good man with a bad one, because he was more like herself — Flittamore, Lady Castlewood. Not that she could be an “old woman” yet, but she might look old, either by disguise, or through her own wickedness; and every body knows how suddenly those southern beauties fall off, alike in face and figure. Mrs. Price had not told me what became of her, or even whether she was dead or alive, but merely said, with a meaning look, that she was “punished” for her sin, and I had not ventured to inquire how, the subject being so distasteful.
To my great surprise, and uneasiness as well, I had found at Bruntlands no letter whatever, either to the Major or myself, from Uncle Sam or any other person at the saw-mills. There had not been time for any answer to my letter of some two months back, yet being alarmed by the Sawyer’s last tidings, I longed, with some terror, for later news. And all the United Kingdom was now watching with tender interest the dismemberment, as it almost appeared, of the other mighty48 Union. Not with malice49, or snug50 satisfaction, as the men of the North in their agony said, but certainly without any proper anguish51 yet, and rather as a genial52 and sprightly53 spectator, whose love of fair play perhaps kindles54 his applause of the spirit and skill of the weaker side. “’Tis a good fight — let them fight it out!” seemed to be the general sentiment; but in spite of some American vaunt and menace (which of late years had been galling) every true Englishman deeply would have mourned the humiliation55 of his kindred.
In this anxiety for news I begged that my letters might be forwarded under cover to the postmistress at Shoxford, and bearing my initials. For now I had made up my mind to let Mrs. Busk know whatever I could tell her. I had found her a cross and well-educated woman, far above her neighbors, and determined56 to remain so. Gossip, that universal leveler, theoretically she despised; and she had that magnificent esteem57 for rank which works so beautifully in England. And now when my good nurse reasonably said that, much as she loved to be with me, her business would allow that delight no longer, and it also came home to my own mind that money would be running short again, and small hope left in this dreadful civil war of our nugget escaping pillage58 (which made me shudder59 horribly at internal discord), I just did this — I dismissed Betsy, or rather I let her dismiss herself, which she might not have altogether meant to do, although she threatened it so often. For here she had nothing to do but live well, and protest against tricks of her own profession which she practiced as necessary laws at home; and so, with much affection, for the time we parted.
Mrs. Busk was delighted at her departure, for she never had liked to be criticised so keenly while she was doing her very best. And as soon as the wheels of Betsy’s fly had shown their last spoke60 at the corner, she told me, with a smile, that her mind had been made up to give us notice that very evening to seek for better lodgings61. But she could not wish for a quieter, pleasanter, or more easily pleased young lady than I was without any mischief-maker; and so, on the spur of the moment, I took her into my own room, while her little girl minded the shop, and there and then I told her who I was, and what I wanted.
And now she behaved most admirably. Instead of expressing surprise, she assured me that all along she had felt there was something, and that I must be somebody. Lovely as my paintings were (which I never heard, before or since, from any impartial62 censor), she had known that it could not be that alone which had kept me so long in their happy valley. And now she did hope I would do her the honor to stay beneath her humble63 roof, though entitled to one so different. And was the fairy ring in the church-yard made of all my family?
I replied that too surely this was so, and that nothing would please me better than to find, according to my stature64, room to sleep inside it as soon as ever I should have solved the mystery of its origin. At the moment this was no exaggeration, so depressing was the sense of fighting against the unknown so long, with scarcely any one to stand by me, or avenge65 me if I fell. And Betsy’s departure, though I tried to take it mildly, had left me with a readiness to catch my breath.
But to dwell upon sadness no more than need be (a need as sure as hunger), it was manifest now to my wondering mind that once more I had chanced upon a good, and warm, and steadfast66 heart. Every body is said to be born, whether that happens by night or day, with a certain little widowed star, which has lost its previous mortal, concentrating from a billion billion of miles, or leagues, or larger measure, intense, but generally invisible, radiance upon him or her; and to take for the moment this old fable67 as of serious meaning, my star was to find bad facts at a glance, but no bad folk without long gaze.
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facetious
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| adj.轻浮的，好开玩笑的 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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windings
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| （道路、河流等）蜿蜒的，弯曲的( winding的名词复数 )； 缠绕( wind的现在分词 )； 卷绕； 转动（把手） | |
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lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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perigee
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| n.近地点 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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oozy
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| adj.软泥的 | |
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gloss
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| n.光泽，光滑；虚饰；注释；vt.加光泽于；掩饰 | |
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marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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jot
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| n.少量；vi.草草记下；vt.匆匆写下 | |
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mortar
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| n.灰浆，灰泥；迫击炮；v.把…用灰浆涂接合 | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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overdone
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| v.做得过分( overdo的过去分词 )；太夸张；把…煮得太久；（工作等）过度 | |
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crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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jutting
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| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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clinched
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| v.（尤指两人）互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的过去式和过去分词 )；解决（争端、交易），达成（协议） | |
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bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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depose
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| vt.免职；宣誓作证 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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skewer
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| n.（烤肉用的）串肉杆；v.用杆串好 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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snug
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| adj.温暖舒适的，合身的，安全的；v.使整洁干净，舒适地依靠，紧贴；n.（英）酒吧里的私房 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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sprightly
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| adj.愉快的，活泼的 | |
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kindles
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| （使某物）燃烧，着火( kindle的第三人称单数 )； 激起（感情等）； 发亮，放光 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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pillage
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| v.抢劫；掠夺；n.抢劫，掠夺；掠夺物 | |
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shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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impartial
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| adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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avenge
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| v.为...复仇，为...报仇 | |
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steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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67
fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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