Erema - My Father's Sin - Richard Doddridge Blackmore (large screen ebook reader .TXT) 📗

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"To go to the very place itself," I said, speaking strongly under challenge, though quite unresolved about such a thing before; "to live in the house where my father lived, and my mother and all of the family died; and from day to day to search every corner and fish up every bit of evidence, until I get hold of the true man at last, of the villain who did it--who did it, and left my father and all the rest of us to be condemned and die for it."

"Erema," replied my cousin, as he had told me now to call him, "you are too impetuous for such work, and it is wholly unfit for you. For such a task, persons of trained sagacity and keen observation are needed. And after all these eighteen years, or nearly nineteen now it must be, there can not be any thing to discover there."

"But if I like, may I go there, cousin, if only to satisfy my own mind? I am miserable now at Bruntsea, and Sir Montague Hockin wears me out."

"Sir Montague Hockin!" Lord Castlewood exclaimed; "why, you did not tell me that he was there. Wherever he is, you should not be."

"I forgot to speak of him. He does not live there, but is continually to and fro for bathing, or fishing, or rabbit-shooting, or any other pretext. And he makes the place very unpleasant to me, kind as the Major and Mrs. Hockin are, because I can never make him out at all."

"Do not try to do so," my cousin answered, looking at me earnestly; "be content to know nothing of him, my dear. If you can put up with a very dull house, and a host who is even duller, come here and live with me, as your father would have wished, and as I, your nearest relative, now ask and beg of you."

This was wonderfully kind, and for a moment I felt tempted. Lord Castlewood being an elderly man, and, as the head of our family, my natural protector, there could be nothing wrong, and there might be much that was good, in such an easy arrangement. But, on the other hand, it seemed to me that after this my work would languish. Living in comfort and prosperity under the roof of my forefathers, beyond any doubt I should begin to fall into habits of luxury, to take to the love of literature, which I knew to be latent within me, to lose the clear, strong, practical sense of the duty for which I, the last of seven, was spared, and in some measure, perhaps, by wanderings and by hardships, fitted. And then I thought of my host's weak health, continual pain (the signs of which were hardly repressed even while he was speaking), and probably also his secluded life. Was it fair to force him, by virtue of his inborn kindness and courtesy, to come out of his privileges and deal with me, who could not altogether be in any place a mere nobody? And so I refused his offer.

"I am very much obliged to you indeed," I said, "but I think you might be sorry for it. I will come and stop with you every now and then, when your health is better, and you ask me. But to live here altogether would not do; I should like it too well, and do nothing else."

"Perhaps you are right," he replied, with the air of one who cares little for any thing, which is to me the most melancholy thing, and worse than any distress almost; "you are very young, my dear, and years should be allowed to pass before you know what full-grown sorrow is. You have had enough, for your age, of it. You had better not live in this house; it is not a house for cheerfulness."

"Then if I must neither live here nor at Bruntsea," I asked, with sudden remonstrance, feeling as if every body desired to be quit of me or to worry me, "to what place in all the world am I to go, unless it is back to America? I will go at once to Shoxford, and take lodgings of my own."

"Perhaps you had better wait a little while," Lord Castlewood answered, gently, "although I would much rather have you at Shoxford than where you are at present. But please to remember, my good Erema, that you can not go to Shoxford all alone. I have a most faithful and trusty man--the one who opened the door to you. He has been here before his remembrance. He disdains me still as compared with your father. Will you have him to superintend you? I scarcely see how you can do any good, but if you do go, you must go openly, and as your father's daughter."

"I have no intention whatever of going in any other way, Lord Castlewood; but perhaps," I continued, "it would be as well to make as little stir as possible. Of an English village I know nothing but the little I have seen at Bruntsea, but there they make a very great fuss about any one who comes down with a man-servant."

"To be sure," replied my cousin, with a smile; "they would not be true Britons otherwise. Perhaps you would do better without Stixon; but of course you must not go alone. Could you by any means persuade your old nurse Betsy to go with you?"

"How good of you to think of it!--how wise you are!" I really could not help saying, as I gazed at his delicate and noble face. "I am sure that if Betsy can come, she will; though of course she must be compensated well for the waste all her lodgers will make of it. They are very wicked, and eat most dreadfully if she even takes one day's holiday. What do you think they even do? She has told me with tears in her eyes of it. They are all allowed a pat of butter, a penny roll, and two sardines for breakfast. No sooner do they know that her back is turned--"

"Erema!" cried my cousin, with some surprise; and being so recalled, I was ashamed. But I never could help taking interest in very little things indeed, until my own common-sense, or somebody else, came to tell me what a child I was. However, I do believe that Uncle Sam liked me all the better for this fault.

"My dear, I did not mean to blame you," Lord Castlewood said, most kindly; "it must be a great relief for you to look on at other people. But tell me--or rather, since you have told me almost every thing you know--let me, if only in one way I can help you, help you at least in that way."

Knowing that he must mean money, I declined, from no false pride, but a set resolve to work out my work, if possible, through my own resources. But I promised to apply to him at once if scarcity should again befall me, as had happened lately. And then I longed to ask him why he seemed to have so low an opinion of Sir Montague Hockin. That question, however, I feared to put, because it might not be a proper one, and also because my cousin had spoken in a very strange tone, as if of some private dislike or reserve on that subject. Moreover, it was too evident that I had tried his courtesy long enough. From time to time pale shades of bodily pain, and then hot flushes, had flitted across his face, like clouds on a windy summer evening. And more than once he had glanced at the time-piece, not to hurry me, but as if he dreaded its announcements. It was a beautiful clock, and struck with a silvery sound every quarter of an hour. And now, as I rose to say good-by, to catch my evening train, it struck a quarter to five, and my cousin stood up, with his weight upon his staff, and looked at me with an inexpressible depth of weary misery.

"I have only a few minutes left," he said, "during which I can say any thing. My time is divided into two sad parts: the time when I am capable of very little, and the time when I am capable of nothing; and the latter part is twice the length of the other. For sixteen hours of every day, far better had I be dead than living, so far as our own little insolence may judge. But I speak of it only to excuse bad manners, and perhaps I show worse by doing so. I shall not be able to see you again until to-morrow morning. Do not go; they will arrange all that. Send a note to Major Hockin by Stixon's boy. Stixon and Mrs. Price will see to your comfort, if those who are free from pain require any other comfort. Forgive me; I did not mean to be rude. Sometimes I can not help giving way."

Less enviable than the poorest slave, Lord Castlewood sank upon his hard stiff chair, and straightened his long narrow hands upon his knees, and set his thin lips in straight blue lines. Each hand was as rigid as the ivory handle of an umbrella or walking-stick, and his lips were like clamped wire. This was his regular way of preparing for the onset of the night, so that no grimace, no cry, no moan, or other token of fierce agony should be wrung from him.

"My lord will catch it stiff to-night," said Mr. Stixon, who came as I rang, and then led me away to the drawing-room; "he always have it ten times worse after any talking or any thing to upset him like. And so, then, miss--excuse a humble servant--did I understand from him that you was the Captain's own daughter?"

"Yes; but surely your master wants you--he is in such dreadful pain. Do please to go to him, and do something."

"There is nothing to be done, miss," Stixon answered, with calm resignation; "he is bound to stay so for sixteen hours, and then he eases off again. But bless my heart, miss--excuse me in your presence--his lordship is thoroughly used to it. It is my certain knowledge that for seven years now he has never had seven minutes free from pain--seven minutes all of a heap, I mean. Some do say, miss, as the Lord doeth every thing according to His righteousness, that the reason is not very far to seek."

I asked him what he meant, though I ought, perhaps, to have put a stop to his loquacity; and he pretended not to hear, which made me ask him all the more.

"A better man never lived than my lord," he answered, with a little shock at my misprision; "but it has been said among censoorous persons that nobody ever had no luck as came in suddenly to a property and a high state of life on the top of the heads of a family of seven."

"What a poor superstition!" I cried, though I was not quite sure of its being a wicked one. "But what is your master's malady, Stixon? Surely there might be something done to relieve his violent pain, even if there is no real cure for it?"

"No, miss, nothing can be done. The doctors have exorced themselves. They tried this, that, and the other, but nature only flew worse against them. 'Tis a thing as was never heard of till the Constitooshon was knocked on the head and to pieces by the Reform Bill. And though they couldn't cure it, they done what they