Kitabı oku: «Eve», sayfa 5

CHAPTER IX.
THE POCKET-BOOK

Jasper drew in full draughts of the delicious air, leaning back on the bench, himself in shade, watching the trees, hearing the hum of the bees, and the voices of the harvesters, pleasant and soft in the distance, as if the golden sun had subdued all the harshness in the tones of the rough voices. Then the waggon drew nigh; the garden was above the level of the farmyard, terraced so that Jasper could not see the cart and horses, or the men, but he saw the great load of grey-green hay move by, with Eve and Barbara seated on it, the former not only crowned with roses, but holding a pole with a bunch of roses and a flutter of ribands at the top. Eve’s golden hair had fallen loose and was about her shoulders. She was in an ecstasy of gaiety. As the load travelled along before the garden, both Eve and her sister saw the sick man on his bench. He seemed so thin, white, and feeble in the midst of a fresh and vigorous nature that Barbara’s heart grew soft, and she had to bite her lip to control its quiver. Eve waved her staff topped with flowers and streamers, stood up in the hay and curtsied to him, with a merry laugh, and then dropped back into the hay, having lost her balance through the jolting of the wheels. Jasper brightened, and, removing his hat, returned the salute with comic majesty. Then, as Eve and Barbara disappeared, he fell back against the wall, and his eyes rested on the fluttering leaves of a white poplar, and some white butterflies that might have been leaves reft from the trees, flickering and pursuing each other in the soft air. The swallows that lived in a colony of inverted clay domes under the eaves were darting about, uttering shrill cries, the expression of exuberant joy of life. Jasper sank into a summer dream.

He was roused from his reverie by a man coming between him and the pretty garden picture that filled his eyes. He recognised the surgeon, Mr. – or as the country people called him, Doctor – Coyshe. The young medical man had no objection to being thus entitled, but he very emphatically protested against his name being converted into Quash, or even Squash. Coyshe is a very respectable and ancient Devonshire family name, but it is a name that lends itself readily to phonetic degradation, and the young surgeon had to do daily battle to preserve it from being vulgarised. ‘Good afternoon, patient!’ said he cheerily; ‘doing well, thanks to my treatment.’

Jasper made a suitable reply.

‘Ah! I dare say you pull a face at seeing me now, thinking I am paying visits for the sake of my fee, when need for my attendance is past. That, let me tell you, is the way of some doctors; it is, however, not mine. Lord love you, I knew a case of a man who sent for a doctor because his wife was ill, and was forced to smother her under pillows to cut short the attendance and bring the bill within the compass of his means. Bless your stars, my man, that you fell into my hands, not into those of old Crooke.’

‘I am assured,’ said Jasper, ‘that I am fallen into the best possible hands.’

‘Who assured you of that?’ asked Coyshe sharply; ‘Miss Eve or the other?’

‘I am assured by my own experience of your skill.’

‘Ah! an ordinary practitioner would have trepanned you; the whole run of them, myself and myself only excepted, have an itch in their fingers for the saw and the scalpel. There is far too much bleeding, cupping, and calomel used in the profession now – but what are we to say? The people love to have it so, to see blood and have a squeal for their money. I’ve had before now to administer a bread pill and give it a Greek name.’

Mr. Jordan from his study, the girls from the stackyard (or moway, as it is locally called), saw or heard the surgeon. He was loud in his talk and made himself heard. They came to him into the garden. Eve, with her natural coquetry, retained the crown of roses and her sceptre.

‘You see,’ said Mr. Coyshe, rubbing his hands, ‘I have done wonders. This would have been a dead man but for me. Now, sir, look at me,’ he said to Jasper; ‘you owe me a life.’

‘I know very well to whom I owe my life,’ answered Jasper, and glanced at Barbara. ‘To my last hour I shall not forget the obligation.’

‘And do you know why he owes me his life?’ asked the surgeon of Mr. Jordan. ‘Because I let nature alone, and kept old Crooke away. I can tell you the usual practice. The doctor comes and shrugs his shoulders and takes snuff. When he sees a proper impression made, he says, “However; we will do our best, only we don’t work miracles.” He sprinkles his victim with snuff, as if about to embalm the body. If the man dies, the reason is clear. Crooke was not sent for in time. If he recovers, Crooke has wrought a miracle. That is not my way, as you all know.’ He looked about him complacently.

‘What will you take, Mr. Coyshe?’ asked Barbara; ‘some of our haysel ale, or claret? And will you come indoors for refreshment?’

‘Indoors! O dear me, no!’ said the young doctor; ‘I keep out of the atmosphere impregnated with four or five centuries of dirt as much as I can. If I had my way I would burn down every house with all its contents every ten years, and so we might get rid of half the diseases which ravage the world. I wouldn’t live in your old ramshackle Morwell if I were paid ten guineas a day. The atmosphere must be poisoned, charged with particles of dust many centuries old. Under every cupboard, ay, and on top of it, is fluff, and every stir of a gown, every tread of a foot, sets it floating, and the currents bring it to your lungs or pores. What is that dust made up of? Who can tell? The scrapings of old monks, the scum of Protestant reformers, the detritus of any number of Jordans for ages, some of whom have had measles, some scarlet-fever, some small-pox. No, thank you. I’ll have my claret in the garden. I can tell you without looking what goes to make up the air in that pestilent old box; the dog has carried old bones behind the cupboard, the cat has been set a saucer of milk under the chest, which has been forgotten and gone sour. An old stocking which one of the ladies was mending was thrust under a sofa cushion, when the front door bell rang, and she had to receive callers – and that also was forgotten.’

Miss Jordan waxed red and indignant. ‘Mr. Coyshe,’ she said, ‘I cannot hear you say this, it is not true. Our house is perfectly sweet and clean; there is neither a store of old bones, nor a half-darned stocking, nor any of the other abominations you mentioned about it.’

‘Your eyes have not seen the world through a microscope. Mine have,’ answered the unabashed surgeon. ‘When a ray of sunlight enters your rooms, you can see the whole course of the ray.’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well, that is because the air is dirty. If it were clean you would be unable to see it. No, thank you. I will have my claret in the garden; perhaps you would not mind having it sent out to me. The air out of doors is pure compared to that of a house.’

A little table, wine, glasses and cake were sent out. Barbara and Eve did not reappear.

Mr. Jordan had a great respect for the young doctor. His self-assurance, his pedantry, his boasting, imposed on the timid and half-cultured mind of the old man. He hoped to get information from the surgeon about tests for metals, to interest him in his pursuits without letting him into his secrets; he therefore overcame his shyness sufficiently to appear and converse when Mr. Coyshe arrived.

‘What a very beautiful daughter you have got!’ said Coyshe; ‘one that is only to be seen in pictures. A man despairs of beholding such loveliness in actual life, and see, here, at the limit of the world, the vision flashes on one! Not much like you, Squire, not much like her sister; looks as if she belonged to another breed.’

Jasper Babb looked round startled at the audacity and rudeness of the surgeon. Mr. Jordan was not offended; he seemed indeed flattered. He was very proud of Eve.

‘You are right. My eldest daughter has almost nothing in common with her younger sister – only a half-sister.’

‘Really,’ said Coyshe, ‘it makes me shiver for the future of that fairy being. I take it for granted she will be yoked to some county booby of a squire, a Bob Acres. Good Lord! what a prospect! A jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, as Solomon says.’

‘Eve shall never marry one unworthy of her,’ said Ignatius Jordan vehemently. She will be under no constraint. She will be able to afford to shape her future according to her fancy. She will be comfortably off.’

‘Comfortably off fifty years ago means pinched now, and pinched now means screwed flat fifty years hence. Everything is becoming costly. Living is a luxury only for the well-to-do. The rest merely exist under sufferance.’

‘Miss Eve will not be pinched,’ answered Mr. Jordan, unconscious that he was being drawn out by the surgeon. ‘Seventeen years ago I lent fifteen hundred pounds, which is to be returned to me on Midsummer Day. To that I can add about five hundred; I have saved something since – not much, for somehow the estate has not answered as it did of old.’

‘You have two daughters.’

‘Oh, yes, there is Barbara,’ said Jordan in a tone of indifference. ‘Of course she will have something, but then – she can always manage for herself – with the other it is different.’

‘Are you ill?’ asked Coyshe, suddenly, observing that Jasper had turned very pale, and dark under the eyes. ‘Is the air too strong for you?’

‘No, let me remain here. The sun does me good.’

Mr. Jordan was rather glad of this opportunity of publishing the fortune he was going to give his younger daughter. He wished it to be known in the neighbourhood, that Eve might be esteemed and sought by suitable young men. He often said to himself that he could die content were Eve in a position where she would be happy and admired.

‘When did Miss Eve’s mother die?’ asked Coyshe abruptly. Mr. Jordan started.

‘Did I say she was dead? Did I mention her?’

Coyshe mused, put his hand through his hair and ruffled it up; then folded his arms and threw out his legs.

‘Now tell me, squire, are you sure of your money?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘That money you say you lent seventeen years ago. What are your securities?’

‘The best. The word of an honourable man.’

‘The word!’ Mr. Coyshe whistled. ‘Words! What are words?’

‘He offered me a mortgage, but it never came,’ said Mr. Jordan. ‘Indeed, I never applied for it. I had his word.’

‘If you see the shine of that money again, you are lucky.’ Then looking at Jasper: ‘My patient is upset again – I thought the air was too strong for him. He must be carried in. He is going into a fit.’

Jasper was leaning back against the wall, with distended eyes, and hands and teeth clenched as with a spasm.

‘No,’ said Jasper faintly, ‘I am not in a fit.’

‘You looked much as if going into an attack of lock-jaw.’

At that moment Barbara came out, and at once noticed the condition of the convalescent.

‘Here,’ said she, ‘lean on me as you did coming out. This has been too much for you. Will you help me, Doctor Coyshe?’

‘Thank you,’ said Jasper. ‘If Miss Jordan will suffer me to rest on her arm, I will return to my room.’

When he was back in his armchair and the little room he had occupied, Barbara looked earnestly in his face and said, ‘What has troubled you? I am sure something has.’

‘I am very unhappy,’ he answered, ‘but you must ask me no questions.’

Miss Jordan went in quest of her sister. ‘Eve,’ she said, ‘our poor patient is exhausted. Sit in the parlour and play and sing, and give a look into his room now and then. I am busy.’

The slight disturbance had not altered the bent of Mr. Jordan’s thoughts. When Mr. Coyshe rejoined him, which he did the moment he saw Jasper safe in his room, Mr. Jordan said, ‘I cannot believe that I ran any risk with the money. The man to whom I lent it is honourable. Besides, I have his note of hand acknowledging the debt; not that I would use it against him.’

‘A man’s word,’ said Coyshe, ‘is like india-rubber that can be made into any shape he likes. A word is made up of letters, and he will hold to the letters and permute their order to suit his own convenience, not yours. A man will stick to his word only so long as his word will stick to him. It depends entirely on which side it is licked. Hark! Is that Miss Eve singing? What a voice! Why, if she were trained and on the stage – ’

Mr. Jordan stood up, agitated and angry.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Coyshe. ‘Does the suggestion offend you? I merely threw it out in the event of the money lent not turning up.’

Just then his eyes fell on something that lay under the seat. ‘What is that? Have you dropped a pocket-book?’

A rough large leather pocket-book that was to which he pointed. Mr. Jordan stooped and took it up. He examined it attentively and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

‘Well,’ said the surgeon mockingly, ‘is the money come, dropped from the clouds at your feet?’

‘No,’ answered Mr. Jordan, under his breath, ‘but this is most extraordinary, most mysterious! How comes this case here? It is the very same which I handed over, filled with notes, to that man seventeen years ago! See! there are my initials on it; there on the shield is my crest. How comes it here?’

‘The question, my dear sir, is not how comes it here? but what does it contain?’

‘Nothing.’

The surgeon put his hands in his pockets, screwed up his lips for a whistle, and said, ‘I foretold this, I am always right.’

‘The money is not due till Midsummer-day.’

‘Nor will come till the Greek kalends. Poor Miss Eve!’

CHAPTER X.
BARBARA’S PETITION

Midsummer-day was come. Mr. Jordan was in suspense and agitation. His pale face was more livid and drawn than usual. The fears inspired by the surgeon had taken hold of him.

Before the birth of Eve he had been an energetic man, eager to get all he could out of the estate, but for seventeen years an unaccountable sadness had hung over him, damping his ardour; his thoughts had been carried away from his land, whither no one knew, though the results were obvious enough.

With Barbara he had little in common. She was eminently practical. He was always in a dream. She was never on an easy footing with her father, she tried to understand him and failed, she feared that his brain was partially disturbed. Perhaps her efforts to make him out annoyed him; at any rate he was cold towards her, without being intentionally unkind. An ever-present restraint was upon both in each other’s presence.

At first, after the disappearance of Eve’s mother, things had gone on upon the old lines. Christopher Davy had superintended the farm labours, but as he aged and failed, and Barbara grew to see the necessity for supervision, she took the management of the farm as well as of the house upon herself. She saw that the men dawdled over their work, and that the condition of the estate was going back. Tho coppices had not been shredded in winter and the oak was grown into a tangle. The rending for bark in spring was done unsystematically. The hedges became ragged, the ploughs out of order, the thistles were not cut periodically and prevented from seeding. There were not men sufficient to do the work that had to be done. She had not the time to attend to the men as well as the maids, to the farmyard as well as the house. She had made up her mind that a proper bailiff must be secured, with authority to employ as many labourers as the estate required. Barbara was convinced that her father, with his lost, dreamy head, was incapable of managing their property, even if he had the desire. Now that the trusty old Davy was ill, and breaking up, she had none to advise her.

She was roused to anger on Midsummer-day by discovering that the hayrick had never been thatched, and that it had been exposed to the rain which had fallen heavily, so that half of it had to be taken down because soaked, lest it should catch fire or blacken. This was the result of the carelessness of the men. She determined to speak to her father at once. She had good reason for doing so.

She found him in his study arranging his specimens of mundic and peacock copper.

‘Has anyone come, asking for me?’ he said, looking up with fluttering face from his work.

‘No one, father.’

‘You startled me, Barbara, coming on me stealthily from behind. What do you want with me? You see I am engaged, and you know I hate to be disturbed.’

‘I have something I wish to speak about.’

‘Well, well, say it and go.’ His shaking hands resumed their work.

‘It is the old story, dear papa. I want you to engage a steward. It is impossible for us to go on longer in the way we have. You know how I am kept on the run from morning to night. I have to look after all your helpless men, as well as my own helpless maids. When I am in the field, there is mischief done in the kitchen; when I am in the house, the men are smoking and idling on the farm. Eve cannot help me in seeing to domestic matters, she has not the experience. Everything devolves on me. I do not grudge doing my utmost, but I have not the time for everything, and I am not ubiquitous.’

‘No,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘Eve cannot undertake any sort of work. That is an understood thing.’

‘I know it is. If I ask her to be sure and recollect something, she is certain with the best intentions to forget; she is a dear beautiful butterfly, not fit to be harnessed. Her brains are thistledown, her bones cherry stalks.’

‘Yes, do not crush her spirits with uncongenial work.’

‘I do not want to. I know as well as yourself that I must rely on her for nothing. But the result is that I am overtasked. Now – will you credit it? The beautiful hay that was like green tea is spoiled. Those stupid men did not thatch it. They said they had no reed, and waited to comb some till the rain set in. When it did pour, they were all in the barn talking and making reed, but at the same time the water was drenching and spoiling the hay. Oh, papa, I feel disposed to cry!’

‘I will speak to them about it,’ said Mr. Jordan, with a sigh, not occasioned by the injury to his hay, but because he was disturbed over his specimens.

‘My dear papa,’ said the energetic Barbara, ‘I do not wish you to be troubled about these tiresome matters. You are growing old, daily older, and your strength is not gaining. You have other pursuits. You are not heartily interested in the farm. I see your hand tremble when you hold your fork at dinner; you are becoming thinner every day. I would spare you trouble. It is really necessary, I must have it – you must engage a bailiff. I shall break down, and that will be the end, or we shall all go to ruin. The woods are running to waste. There are trees lying about literally rotting. They ought to be sent away to the Devonport dockyard where they could be sold. Last spring, when you let the rending, the barbers shaved a whole copse wood, as if shaving a man’s chin, instead of leaving the better sticks standing.’

‘We have enough to live on.’

‘We must do our duty to the land on which we live. I cannot endure to see waste anywhere. I have only one head, one pair of eyes, and one pair of hands. I cannot think of, see to, and do everything. I lie awake night after night considering what has to be done, and the day is too short for me to do all I have determined on in the night. Whilst that poor gentleman has been ill, I have had to think of him in addition to everything else; so some duties have been neglected. That is how, I suppose, the doctor came to guess there was a stocking half-darned under the sofa cushion. Eve was mending it, she tired and put it away, and of course forgot it. I generally look about for Eve’s leavings, and tidy her scraps when she has gone to bed, but I have been too busy. I am vexed about that stocking. How those protruding eyes of the doctor managed to see it I cannot think. He was, however, wrong about the saucer of sour milk.’

Mr. Jordan continued nervously sorting his minerals into little white card boxes.

‘Well, papa, are you going to do anything?’

‘Do – do – what?’

‘Engage a bailiff. I am sure we shall gain money by working the estate better. The bailiff will pay his cost, and something over.’

‘You are very eager for money,’ said Mr. Jordan sulkily; ‘are you thinking of getting married, and anxious to have a dower?’

Barbara coloured deeply, hurt and offended.

‘This is unkind of you, papa; I am thinking of Eve. I think only of her. You ought to know that’ – the tears came into her eyes. ‘Of course Eve will marry some day;’ then she laughed, ‘no one will ever come for me.’

‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Jordan.

‘I have been thinking, papa, that Eve ought to be sent to some very nice lady, or to some very select school, where she might have proper finishing. All she has learnt has been from me, and I have had so much to do, and I have been so unable to be severe with Eve – that – that – I don’t think she has learned much except music, to which she takes instinctively as a South Sea islander to water.’

‘I cannot be parted from Eve. It would rob my sky of its sun. What would this house be with only you – I mean without Eve to brighten it?’

‘If you will think the matter over, father, you will see that it ought to be. We must consider Eve, and not ourselves. I would not have her, dear heart, anywhere but in the very best school, – hardly a school, a place where only three or four young ladies are taken, and they of the best families. That will cost money, so we must put our shoulders to the wheel, and push the old coach on.’ She laid her hands on the back of her father’s chair and leaned over his shoulder. She had been standing behind him. Did she hope he would kiss her? If so, her hope was vain.

‘Do, dear papa, engage an honest, superior sort of man to look after the farm. I will promise to make a great deal of money with my dairy, if he will see to the cows in the fields. Try the experiment, and, trust me, it will answer.’

‘All in good time.’

‘No, papa, do not put this off. There is another reason why I speak. Christopher Davy is bedridden. You are sometimes absent, then we girls are left alone in this great house, all day, and occasionally nights as well. You know there was no one here on that night when the accident happened. There were two men in this house, one, indeed, insensible. We know nothing of them, who they were, and what they were about. How can you tell that bad characters may not come here? It is thought that you have saved money, and it is known that Morwell is unprotected. You, papa, are so frail, and with your shaking hand a gun would not be dangerous.’

He started from his chair and upset his specimens.

‘Do not speak like that,’ he said, trembling.

‘There, I have disturbed you even by alluding to it. If you were to level a gun, and had your finger – ’

He put his hand, a cold, quivering hand, on her lips: ‘For God’s sake – silence!’ he said.

She obeyed. She knew how odd her father was, yet his agitation now was so great that it surprised her. It made her more resolute to carry her point.

‘Papa, you are expecting to have about two thousand pounds in the house. Will it be safe? You have told the doctor, and that man, our patient, heard you. Excuse my saying it, but I think it was not well to mention it before a perfect stranger. You may have told others. Mr. Coyshe is a chatterbox, he may have talked about it throughout the neighbourhood – the fact may be known to everyone, that to-day you are expecting to have a large sum of money brought you. Well – who is to guard it? Are there no needy and unscrupulous men in the county who would rob the house, and maybe silence an old man and two girls who stood in their way to a couple of thousand pounds?’

‘The sum is large. It must be hidden away,’ said Mr. Jordan, uneasily. ‘I had not considered the danger’ – he paused – ’if it be paid – ’

‘If, papa? I thought you were sure of it.’

‘Yes, quite sure; only Mr. Coyshe disturbed me by suggesting doubts.’

‘Oh, the doctor!’ exclaimed Barbara, shrugging her shoulders.

‘Well, the doctor,’ repeated Mr. Jordan, captiously. ‘He is a very able man. Why do you turn up your nose at him? He can see through a stone wall, and under a cushion to where a stocking is hidden, and under a cupboard to where a saucer of sour milk is thrust away; and he can see into the human body through the flesh and behind the bones, and can tell you where every nerve and vein is, and what is wrong with each. When things are wrong, then it is like stockings and saucers where they ought not to be in a house.’

‘He was wrong about the saucer of sour milk, utterly wrong,’ persisted Barbara.

‘I hope and trust the surgeon was wrong in his forecast about the money – but my heart fails me – ’

‘He was wrong about the saucer,’ said the girl encouragingly.

‘But he was right about the stocking,’ said her father dispiritedly.