Part 29 (1/2)

'For the sake of what, John? I knew it is not for my own sake. For the sake of what, my boy?'

'For the sake of Ruth,' I answered; 'if you must have all the truth. Who is to mind her when you are gone?'

'But if you knew that I had gold, or a manner of getting gold, far more than ever the sailors got out of the Spanish galleons, far more than ever was heard of; and the secret was to be yours, John; yours after me and no other soul's-then you would wish me dead, John.' Here he eyed me as if a speck of dust in my eyes should not escape him.

'You are wrong, Uncle Ben; altogether wrong. For all the gold ever heard or dreamed of, not a wish would cross my heart to rob you of one day of life.'

At last he moved his eyes from mine; but without any word, or sign, to show whether he believed, or disbelieved. Then he went to a chair, and sat with his chin upon the ledger-desk; as if the effort of probing me had been too much for his weary brain. 'Dreamed of! All the gold ever dreamed of! As if it were but a dream!' he muttered; and then he closed his eyes to think.

'Good Uncle Reuben,' I said to him, 'you have been a long way to-day, sir. Let me go and get you a gla.s.s of good wine. Cousin Ruth knows where to find it.'

'How do you know how far I have been?' he asked, with a vicious look at me. 'And Cousin Ruth! You are very pat with my granddaughter's name, young man!'

'It would be hard upon me, sir, not to know my own cousin's name.'

'Very well. Let that go by. You have behaved very badly to Ruth. She loves you; and you love her not.'

At this I was so wholly amazed-not at the thing itself, I mean, but at his knowledge of it-that I could not say a single word; but looked, no doubt, very foolish.

'You may well be ashamed, young man,' he cried, with some triumph over me, 'you are the biggest of all fools, as well as a conceited c.o.xcomb. What can you want more than Ruth? She is a little damsel, truly; but finer men than you, John Ridd, with all your boasted strength and wrestling, have wedded smaller maidens. And as for quality, and value-bots! one inch of Ruth is worth all your seven feet put together.'

Now I am not seven feet high; nor ever was six feet eight inches, in my very prime of life; and nothing vexes me so much as to make me out a giant, and above human sympathy, and human scale of weakness. It cost me hard to hold my tongue; which luckily is not in proportion to my stature. And only for Ruth's sake I held it. But Uncle Ben (being old and worn) was vexed by not having any answer, almost as much as a woman is.

'You want me to go on,' he continued, with a look of spite at me, 'about my poor Ruth's love for you, to feed your cursed vanity. Because a set of a.s.ses call you the finest man in England; there is no maid (I suppose) who is not in love with you. I believe you are as deep as you are long, John Ridd. Shall I ever get to the bottom of your character?'

This was a little too much for me. Any insult I could take (with goodwill) from a white-haired man, and one who was my relative; unless it touched my love for Lorna, or my conscious modesty. Now both of these were touched to the quick by the sentences of the old gentleman. Therefore, without a word, I went; only making a bow to him.

But women who are (beyond all doubt) the mothers of all mischief, also nurse that babe to sleep, when he is too noisy. And there was Ruth, as I took my horse (with a trunk of frippery on him), poor little Ruth was at the bridle, and rusting all the knops of our town-going harness with tears.

'Good-bye dear,' I said, as she bent her head away from me; 'shall I put you up on the saddle, dear?'

'Cousin Ridd, you may take it lightly,' said Ruth, turning full upon me, 'and very likely you are right, according to your nature'-this was the only cutting thing the little soul ever said to me-'but oh, Cousin Ridd, you have no idea of the pain you will leave behind you.'

'How can that be so, Ruth, when I am as good as ordered to be off the premises?'

'In the first place, Cousin Ridd, grandfather will be angry with himself, for having so ill-used you. And now he is so weak and poorly, that he is always repenting. In the next place I shall scold him first, until he admits his sorrow; and when he has admitted it, I shall scold myself for scolding him. And then he will come round again, and think that I was hard on him; and end perhaps by hating you-for he is like a woman now, John.'

That last little touch of self-knowledge in Ruth, which she delivered with a gleam of some secret pleasantry, made me stop and look closely at her: but she pretended not to know it. 'There is something in this child,' I thought, 'very different from other girls. What it is I cannot tell; for one very seldom gets at it.'

At any rate the upshot was that the good horse went back to stable, and had another feed of corn, while my wrath sank within me. There are two things, according to my experience (which may not hold with another man) fitted beyond any others to take hot tempers out of us. The first is to see our favourite creatures feeding, and licking up their food, and happily snuffling over it, yet sparing time to be grateful, and showing taste and perception; the other is to go gardening boldly, in the spring of the year, without any misgiving about it, and hoping the utmost of everything. If there be a third anodyne, approaching these two in power, it is to smoke good tobacco well, and watch the setting of the moon; and if this should only be over the sea, the result is irresistible.

Master Huckaback showed no especial signs of joy at my return; but received me with a little grunt, which appeared to me to mean, 'Ah, I thought he would hardly be fool enough to go.' I told him how sorry I was for having in some way offended him; and he answered that I did well to grieve for one at least of my offences. To this I made no reply, as behoves a man dealing with cross and fractious people; and presently he became better-tempered, and sent little Ruth for a bottle of wine. She gave me a beautiful smile of thanks for my forbearance as she pa.s.sed; and I knew by her manner that she would bring the best bottle in all the cellar.

As I had but little time to spare (although the days were long and light) we were forced to take our wine with prompt.i.tude and rapidity; and whether this loosened my uncle's tongue, or whether he meant beforehand to speak, is now almost uncertain. But true it is that he brought his chair very near to mine, after three or four gla.s.ses, and sent Ruth away upon some errand which seemed of small importance. At this I was vexed, for the room always looked so different without her.

'Come, Jack,' he said, 'here's your health, young fellow, and a good and obedient wife to you. Not that your wife will ever obey you though; you are much too easy-tempered. Even a bitter and stormy woman might live in peace with you, Jack. But never you give her the chance to try. Marry some sweet little thing, if you can. If not, don't marry any. Ah, we have the maid to suit you, my lad, in this old town of Dulverton.'

'Have you so, sir? But perhaps the maid might have no desire to suit me.'

'That you may take my word she has. The colour of this wine will prove it. The little sly hussy has been to the cobwebbed arch of the cellar, where she has no right to go, for any one under a magistrate. However, I am glad to see it, and we will not spare it, John. After my time, somebody, whoever marries little Ruth, will find some rare wines there, I trow, and perhaps not know the difference.'

Thinking of this the old man sighed, and expected me to sigh after him. But a sigh is not (like a yawn) infectious; and we are all more p.r.o.ne to be sent to sleep than to sorrow by one another. Not but what a sigh sometimes may make us think of sighing.

'Well, sir,' cried I, in my sprightliest manner, which rouses up most people, 'here's to your health and dear little Ruth's: and may you live to knock off the cobwebs from every bottle in under the arch. Uncle Reuben, your life and health, sir?'

With that I took my gla.s.s thoughtfully, for it was wondrous good; and Uncle Ben was pleased to see me dwelling pleasantly on the subject with parenthesis, and self-commune, and oral judgment unp.r.o.nounced, though smacking of fine decision. 'Curia vult advisari,' as the lawyers say; which means, 'Let us have another gla.s.s, and then we can think about it.'

'Come now, John,' said Uncle Ben, laying his wrinkled hand on my knee, when he saw that none could heed us, 'I know that you have a sneaking fondness for my grandchild Ruth. Don't interrupt me now; you have; and to deny it will only provoke me.'

'I do like Ruth, sir,' I said boldly, for fear of misunderstanding; 'but I do not love her.'

'Very well; that makes no difference. Liking may very soon be loving (as some people call it) when the maid has money to help her.'

'But if there be, as there is in my case-'

'Once for all, John, not a word. I do not attempt to lead you into any engagement with little Ruth; neither will I blame you (though I may be disappointed) if no such engagement should ever be. But whether you will have my grandchild, or whether you will not-and such a chance is rarely offered to a fellow of your standing'-Uncle Ben despised all farmers-'in any case I have at least resolved to let you know my secret; and for two good reasons. The first is that it wears me out to dwell upon it, all alone, and the second is that I can trust you to fulfil a promise. Moreover, you are my next of kin, except among the womankind; and you are just the man I want, to help me in my enterprise.'

'And I will help you, sir,' I answered, fearing some conspiracy, 'in anything that is true, and loyal, and according to the laws of the realm.'

'Ha, ha!' cried the old man, laughing until his eyes ran over, and spreading out his skinny hands upon his s.h.i.+ning breeches, 'thou hast gone the same fools' track as the rest; even as spy Stickles went, and all his precious troopers. Landing of arms at Glenthorne, and Lynmouth, wagons escorted across the moor, sounds of metal and booming noises! Ah, but we managed it cleverly, to cheat even those so near to us. Disaffection at Taunton, signs of insurrection at Dulverton, revolutionary tanner at Dunster! We set it all abroad, right well. And not even you to suspect our work; though we thought at one time that you watched us. Now who, do you suppose, is at the bottom of all this Exmoor insurgency, all this western rebellion-not that I say there is none, mind-but who is at the bottom of it?'

'Either Mother Melldrum,' said I, being now a little angry, 'or else old Nick himself.'

'Nay, old Uncle Reuben!' Saying this, Master Huckaback cast back his coat, and stood up, and made the most of himself.

'Well!' cried I, being now quite come to the limits of my intellect, 'then, after all, Captain Stickles was right in calling you a rebel, sir!'

'Of course he was; could so keen a man be wrong about an old fool like me? But come, and see our rebellion, John. I will trust you now with everything. I will take no oath from you; only your word to keep silence; and most of all from your mother.'

'I will give you my word,' I said, although liking not such pledges; which make a man think before he speaks in ordinary company, against his usual practices. However, I was now so curious, that I thought of nothing else; and scarcely could believe at all that Uncle Ben was quite right in his head.

'Take another gla.s.s of wine, my son,' he cried with a cheerful countenance, which made him look more than ten years younger; 'you shall come into partners.h.i.+p with me: your strength will save us two horses, and we always fear the horse work. Come and see our rebellion, my boy; you are a made man from to-night.'

'But where am I to come and see it? Where am I to find it, sir?'

'Meet me,' he answered, yet closing his hands, and wrinkling with doubt his forehead, 'come alone, of course; and meet me at the Wizard's Slough, at ten to-morrow morning.'

CHAPTER LVIII

MASTER HUCKABACK'S SECRET

Knowing Master Huckaback to be a man of his word, as well as one who would have others so, I was careful to be in good time the next morning, by the side of the Wizard's Slough. I am free to admit that the name of the place bore a feeling of uneasiness, and a love of distance, in some measure to my heart. But I did my best not to think of this; only I thought it a wise precaution, and due for the sake of my mother and Lorna, to load my gun with a dozen slugs made from the lead of the old church-porch, laid by, long since, against witchcraft.

I am well aware that some people now begin to doubt about witchcraft; or at any rate feign to do so; being desirous to disbelieve whatever they are afraid of. This spirit is growing too common among us, and will end (unless we put a stop to it!) in the destruction of all religion. And as regards witchcraft, a man is bound either to believe in it, or to disbelieve the Bible. For even in the New Testament, discarding many things of the Old, such as sacrifices, and Sabbath, and fasting, and other miseries, witchcraft is clearly spoken of as a thing that must continue; that the Evil One be not utterly robbed of his vested interests. Hence let no one tell me that witchcraft is done away with; for I will meet him with St. Paul, than whom no better man, and few less superst.i.tious, can be found in all the Bible.