Erema; Or, My Father's Sin Part 27

"Why, what in the world do you mean?" I asked, being startled by the old man's voice and face.

"Nothing, miss, nothing. I was only a-joking. If you bain't come to no more discretion than that--to turn as white as the clerk's smock-frock of a Easter-Sunday--why, the more of a joke one has, the better, to bring your purty color back to you. Ah! Polly of the mill was the maid for color--as good for the eyesight as a chaney-rose in April. Well, well, I must get on with her grave; they're a-coming to speak the good word over un on sundown."

He might have known how this would vex and perplex me. I could not bear to hinder him in his work--as important as any to be done by man for man--and yet it was beyond my power to go home and leave him there, and wonder what it was that he had been so afraid to tell. So I quietly said, "Then I will wish you a very good evening again, Mr. Rigg, as you are too busy to be spoken with." And I walked off a little way, having met with men who, having begun a thing, needs must have it out, and fully expecting him to call me back. But Jacob only touched his hat, and said, "A pleasant evening to you, ma'am."

Nothing could have made me feel more resolute than this did. I did not hesitate one moment in running back over the stile again, and demanding of Jacob Rigg that he should tell me whether he meant any thing or nothing; for I was not to be played with about important matters, like the boys in the church who were cracking nuts.

"Lord! Lord, now!" he said, with his treddled heel sc.r.a.ping the shoulder of his s.h.i.+ning spade; "the longer I live in this world, the fitter I grow to get into the ways of the Lord. His ways are past finding out, saith King David: but a man of war, from his youth upward, hath no chance such as a gardening man hath. What a many of them have I found out!"

"What has that got to do with it!" I cried. "Just tell me what it was you were speaking of just now."

"I was just a-thinking, when I looked at you, miss," he answered, in the prime of leisure, and wiping his forehead from habit only, not because he wanted it, "how little us knows of the times and seasons and the generations of the sons of men. There you stand, miss, and here stand I, as haven't seen your father for a score of years a'most; and yet there comes out of your eyes into mine the very same look as the Captain used to send, when snakes in the gra.s.s had been telling lies about me coming late, or having my half pint or so on. Not that the Captain was a hard man, miss--far otherwise, and capable of allowance, more than any of the women be. But only the Lord, who doeth all things aright, could 'a made you come, with a score of years atween, and the twinkle in your eyes like--Selah!"

"You know what you mean, perhaps, but I do not," I answered, quite gently, being troubled by his words and the fear of having tried to hurry him; "but you should not say what you have said, Jacob Rigg, to me, your master's daughter, if you only meant to be joking. Is this the place to joke with me?"

I pointed to all that lay around me, where I could not plant a foot without stepping over my brothers or sisters; and the old man, callous as he might be, could not help feeling for--a pinch of snuff. This he found in the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat, and took it very carefully, and made a little noise of comfort; and thus, being fully self-a.s.sured again, he stood, with his feet far apart and his head on one side, regarding me warily. And I took good care not to say another word.

"You be young," he said at last; "and in these latter days no wisdom is ordained in the mouths of babes and sucklings, nor always in the mouths of them as is themselves ordained. But you have a way of keeping your chin up, miss, as if you was gifted with a stiff tongue likewise. And whatever may hap, I has as good mind to tell 'e."

"That you are absolutely bound to do," I answered, as forcibly as I could. "Duty to your former master and to me, his only child--and to yourself, and your Maker too--compel you, Jacob Rigg, to tell me every thing you know."

"Then, miss," he answered, coming nearer to me, and speaking in a low, hoa.r.s.e voice, "as sure as I stand here in G.o.d's churchyard, by all this murdered family, I knows the man who done it!"

He looked at me, with a trembling finger upon his hard-set lips, and the spade in his other hand quivered like a wind vane; but I became as firm as the monument beside me, and my heart, instead of fluttering, grew as steadfast as a glacier. Then, for the first time, I knew that G.o.d had not kept me living, when all the others died, without fitting me also for the work there was to do.

"Come here to the corner of the tower, miss," old Jacob went on, in his excitement catching hold of the sleeve of my black silk jacket. "Where we stand is a queer sort of echo, which goeth in and out of them big tombstones. And for aught I can say to contrairy, he may be a-watching of us while here we stand."

I glanced around, as if he were most welcome to be watching me, if only I could see him once. But the place was as silent as its graves; and I followed the s.e.xton to the shadow of a b.u.t.tress. Here he went into a deep gray corner, lichened and mossed by a drip from the roof; and being, both in his clothes and self, pretty much of that same color, he was not very easy to discern from stone when the light of day was declining.

"This is where I catches all the boys," he whispered; "and this is where I caught him, one evening when I were tired, and gone to nurse my knees a bit. Let me see--why, let me see! Don't you speak till I do, miss.

Were it the last but one I dug? Or could un 'a been the last but two?

Never mind; I can't call to mind quite justly. We puts down about one a month in this parish, without any distemper or haxident. Well, it must 'a been the one afore last--to be sure, no call to scratch my head about un. Old Sally Mock, as sure as I stand here--done handsome by the rate-payers. Over there, miss, if you please to look--about two land-yard and a half away. Can you see un with the gra.s.s peeking up a'ready?"

"Never mind that, Jacob. Do please to go on."

"So I be, miss. So I be doing to the best of the power granted me. Well, I were in this little knuckle of a squat, where old Sally used to say as I went to sleep, and charged the parish for it--a spiteful old ooman, and I done her grave with pleasure, only wis.h.i.+ng her had to pay for it; and to prove to her mind that I never goed asleep here, I was just making ready to set fire to my pipe, having c.o.c.ked my shovel in to ease my legs, like this, when from round you corner of the chancel-foot, and over again that there old tree, I seed a something movin' along--movin'

along, without any noise or declarance of solid feet walking. You may see the track burnt in the sod, if you let your eyes go along this here finger."

"Oh, Jacob, how could you have waited to see it?"

"I did, miss, I did; being used to a-many antics in this dead-yard, such as a man who hadn't buried them might up foot to run away from. But they no right, after the service of the Church, to come up for more than one change of the moon, unless they been great malefactors. And then they be ashamed of it; and I reminds them of it. 'Amen,' I say, in the very same voice as I used at the tail of their funerals; and then they knows well that I covered them up, and the most uneasy goes back again. Lor' bless you, miss, I no fear of the dead. At both ends of life us be harmless.

It is in the life, and mostways in the middle of it, we makes all the death for one another."

This was true enough; and I only nodded to him, fearing to interject any new ideas from which he might go rambling.

"Well, that there figure were no joke, mind you," the old man continued, as soon as he had freshened his narrative powers with another pinch of snuff, "being tall and grim, and white in the face, and very onpleasant for to look at, and its eyes seemed a'most to burn holes in the air. No sooner did I see that it were not a ghostie, but a living man the same as I be, than my knees begins to shake and my stumps of teeth to chatter. And what do you think it was stopped me, miss, from slipping round this corner, and away by belfry? Nort but the hoddest idea you ever heared on. For all of a suddint it was borne unto my mind that the Lord had been pleased to send us back the Captain; not so handsome as he used to be, but in the living flesh, however, in spite of they newspapers. And I were just at the pint of coming forrard, out of this here dark cornder, knowing as I had done my duty by them graves that his honor, to my mind, must 'a come looking after, when, lucky for me, I see summat in his walk, and then in his countenance, and then in all his features, unnateral on the Captain's part, whatever his time of life might be. And sure enough, miss, it were no Captain more nor I myself be."

"Of course not. How could it be? But who was it, Jacob?"

"You bide a bit, miss, and you shall hear the whole. Well, by that time 'twas too late for me to slip away, and I was bound to scrooge up into the elbow of this nick here, and try not to breathe, as nigh as might be, and keep my Lammas cough down; for I never see a face more full of malice and uncharity. However, he come on as straight as a arrow, holding his long chin out, like this, as if he gotten crutches under it, as the folk does with bad water. A tall man, as tall as the Captain a'most, but not gifted with any kind aspect. He trampsed over the general graves, like the devil come to fetch their souls out; but when he come here to the 'holy ring,' he stopped short, and stood with his back to me. I could hear him count the seven graves, as pat as the sh.e.l.ls of oysters to pay for, and then he said all their names, as true, from the biggest to the leastest one, as Betsy Bowen could 'a done it, though none of 'em got no mark to 'em. Oh, the poor little hearts, it was cruel hard upon them! And then my lady in the middle, making seven. So far as I could catch over his shoulder, he seemed to be quite a-talking with her--not as you and I be, miss, but a sort of a manner of a way, like."

"And what did he seem to say? Oh, Jacob, how long you do take over it!"

"Well, he did not, miss; that you may say for sartain. And glad I was to have him quick about it; for he might have redooced me to such a condition--ay, and I believe a' would, too, if onst a' had caught sight of me--as the parish might 'a had to fight over the appintment of another s.e.xton. And so at last a' went away. And I were that stiff with scrooging in this cornder--"

"Is that all? Oh, that comes to nothing. Surely you must have more to tell me? It may have been some one who knew our names. It may have been some old friend of the family."

"No, miss, no! No familiar friend; or if he was, he were like King David's. He bore a tyrannous hate against 'e, and the poison of asps were under his lips. In this here hatt.i.tude he stood, with his back toward me, and his reins more upright than I be capable of putting it.

And this was how he held up his elbow and his head. Look 'e see, miss, and then 'e know as much as I do."

Mr. Rigg marched with a long smooth step--a most difficult strain for his short bowed legs--as far as the place he had been pointing out; and there he stood with his back to me, painfully doing what the tall man had done, so far as the difference of size allowed.

It was not possible for me to laugh in a matter of such sadness; and yet Jacob stood, with his back to me, spreading and stretching himself in such a way, to be up to the dimensions of the stranger, that--low as it was--I was compelled to cough, for fear of fatally offending him.

"That warn't quite right, miss. Now you look again," he exclaimed, with a little readjustment. "Only he had a thing over one shoulder, the like of what the Scotchmen wear; and his features was beyond me, because of the back of his head, like. For G.o.d's sake keep out of his way, miss."

The s.e.xton stood in a musing and yet a stern and defiant att.i.tude, with the right elbow clasped in the left-hand palm, the right hand resting half-clinched upon the forehead, and the shoulders thrown back, as if ready for a blow.

"What a very odd way to stand!" I said.

"Yes, miss. And what he said was odder. 'Six, and the mother!' I heared un say; 'no cure for it, till I have all seven.' But stop, miss. Not a breath to any one! Here comes the poor father and mother to speak the blessing across their daughter's grave--and the grave not two foot down yet!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

A SIMPLE QUESTION

Now this account of what Jacob Rigg had seen and heard threw me into a state of mind extremely unsatisfactory. To be in eager search of some unknown person who had injured me inexpressibly, without any longing for revenge on my part, but simply with a view to justice--this was a very different thing from feeling that an unknown person was in quest of me, with the horrible purpose of destroying me to insure his own wicked safety.

At first I almost thought that he was welcome to do this; that such a life as mine (if looked at from an outer point of view) was better to be died than lived out. Also that there was n.o.body left to get any good out of all that I could do; and even if I ever should succeed, truth would come out of her tomb too late. And this began to make me cry, which I had long given over doing, with no one to feel for the heart of it.

But a thing of this kind could not long endure; and as soon as the sun of the morrow arose (or at least as soon as I was fit to see him), my view of the world was quite different. Here was the merry brook, playing with the morning, spread around with ample depth and rich retreat of meadows, and often, after maze of leisure, hastening with a tinkle into shadowy delight of trees. Here, as well, were happy lanes, and footpaths of a soft content, unworn with any pressure of the price of time or business. None of them knew (in spite, at flurried spots, of their own direction posts) whence they were coming or whither going--only that here they lay, between the fields or through them, like idle veins of earth, with sometimes company of a man or boy, whistling to his footfall, or a singing maid with a milking pail. And how ungrateful it would be to forget the pleasant copses, in waves of deep green leaf.a.ge flowing down and up the channeled hills, waving at the wind to tints and tones of new refreshment, and tempting idle folk to come and hear the hush, and see the twinkled texture of pellucid gloom.

Much, however, as I loved to sit in places of this kind alone, for some little time I feared to do so, after hearing the s.e.xton's tale; for Jacob's terror was so unfeigned (though his own life had not been threatened) that, knowing as I did from Betsy's account, as well as his own appearance, that he was not at all a nervous man, I could not help sharing his vague alarm. It seemed so terrible that any one should come to the graves of my sweet mother and her six harmless children, and, instead of showing pity, as even a monster might have tried to do, should stand, if not with threatening gestures, yet with a most hostile mien, and thirst for the life of the only survivor--my poor self.

But terrible or not, the truth was so; and neither Betsy nor myself could shake Mr. Rigg's conclusion. Indeed, he became more and more emphatic, in reply to our doubts and mild suggestions, perhaps that his eyes had deceived him, or perhaps that, taking a nap in the corner of the b.u.t.tress, he had dreamed at least a part of it. And Betsy, on the score of ancient friends.h.i.+p and kind remembrance of his likings, put it to him in a gentle way whether his knowledge of what Sally Mock had been, and the calumnies she might have spoken of his beer (when herself, in the work-house, deprived of it), might not have induced him to take a little more than usual in going down so deep for her. But he answered, "No; it was nothing of the sort. Deep he had gone, to the tiptoe of his fling; not from any feeling of a wish to keep her down, but just because the parish paid, and the parish would have measurement. And when that was on, he never brought down more than the quart tin from the public; and never had none down afterward. Otherwise the ground was so ticklish, that a man, working too free, might stay down there. No, no! That idea was like one of Sally's own. He just had his quart of Persfield ale--short measure, of course, with a woman at the bar--and if that were enough to make a man dream dreams, the sooner he dug his own grave, the better for all connected with him."

We saw that we had gone too far in thinking of such a possibility; and if Mr. Rigg had not been large-minded, as well as notoriously sober, Betsy might have lost me all the benefit of his evidence by her London-bred clumsiness with him. For it takes quite a different handling, and a different mode of outset, to get on with the London working cla.s.s and the laboring kind of the country; or at least it seemed to me so.

Now my knowledge of Jacob Rigg was owing, as might be supposed, to Betsy Strouss, who had taken the lead of me in almost every thing ever since I brought her down from London. And now I was glad that, in one point at least, her judgment had overruled mine--to wit, that my name and parentage were as yet not generally known in the village. Indeed, only Betsy herself and Jacob and a faithful old washer-woman, with no roof to her mouth, were aware of me as Miss Castlewood. Not that I had taken any other name--to that I would not stoop--but because the public, of its own accord, paying attention to Betsy's style of addressing me, followed her lead (with some little improvement), and was pleased to ent.i.tle me "Miss Raumur."

Some question had been raised as to spelling me aright, till a man of advanced intelligence proved to many eyes, and even several pairs of spectacles (a.s.sembled in front of the blacksmith's shop), that no other way could be right except that. For there it was in print, as any one able might see, on the side of an instrument whose name and qualities were even more mysterious than those in debate. Therefore I became "Miss Raumur;" and a protest would have gone for nothing unless printed also.

But it did not behoove me to go to that expense, while it suited me very well to be considered and pitied as a harmless foreigner--a being who on English land may find some cause to doubt whether, even in his own country, a prophet could be less thought of. And this large pity for me, as an outlandish person, in the very spot where I was born, endowed me with tenfold the privilege of the proudest native. For the natives of this valley are declared to be of a different stock from those around them, not of the common Wess.e.x strain, but of Jutish or Danish origin. How that may be I do not know; at any rate, they think well of themselves, and no doubt they have cause to do so.

Moreover, they all were very kind to me, and their primitive ways amused me, as soon as they had settled that I was a foreigner, equally beyond and below inquiry. They told me that I was kindly welcome to stay there as long as it pleased me; and knowing how fond I was of making pictures, after beholding my drawing-book, every farmer among them gave me leave to come into his fields, though he never had heard there was any thing there worth painting.

When once there has been a deposit of idea in the calm deep eocene of British rural mind, the impression will outlast any shallow deluge of the n.o.blest education. Shoxford had settled two points forever, without troubling reason to come out of her way--first, that I was a foreign young lady of good birth, manners, and money; second, and far more important, I was here to write and paint a book about Shoxford. Not for the money, of that I had no need (according to the congress at the "Silver-edged Holly"), but for the praise and the knowledge of it, like, and to make a talk among high people. But the elders shook their heads--as I heard from Mr. Rigg, who hugged his knowledge proudly, and uttered dim sayings of wisdom let forth at large usury: he did not mind telling me that the old men shook their heads, for fear of my being a deal too young, and a long sight too well favored (as any man might tell without his specs on), for to write any book upon any subject yet, leave alone an old, ancient town like theirs. However, there might be no harm in my trying, and perhaps the school-master would cross out the bad language.