Annette had gone to the big metropolis,
which burns in colonial imaginations as the sun of
cities, and was about to see something of London,
under the excellent auspices of her new friend, Mary
Fellingham, and a dense fog. She was alarmed
by the darkness, a little in fear, too, of Herbert;
and these feelings caused her to chide herself for
leaving her father.
Hearing her speak of her father sadly,
Herbert kindly proposed to go down to Crikswich on
the very day of her coming. She thanked him, and
gave him a taste of bitterness by smiling favourably
on his offer; but as he wished her to discern and
take to heart the difference between one man and another,
in the light of a suitor, he let her perceive that
it cost him heavy pangs to depart immediately, and
left her to brood on his example. Mary Fellingham
liked Annette. She thought her a sensible girl
of uncultivated sensibilities, the reverse of thousands;
not commonplace, therefore; and that the sensibilities
were expanding was to be seen in her gradual unreadiness
to talk of her engagement to Mr. Tinman, though her
intimacy with Mary warmed daily. She considered
she was bound to marry the man at some distant date,
and did not feel unhappiness yet. She had only
felt uneasy when she had to greet and converse with
her intended; especially when the London young lady
had been present. Herbert’s departure relieved
her of the pressing sense of contrast. She praised
him to Mary for his extreme kindness to her father,
and down in her unsounded heart desired that her father
might appreciate it even more than she did.
Herbert drove into Crikswich at night,
and stopped at Crickledon’s, where he heard
that Van Diemen was dining with Tinman.
Crickledon the carpenter permitted
certain dry curves to play round his lips like miniature
shavings at the name of Tinman; but Herbert asked,
“What is it now?” in vain, and he went
to Crickledon the cook.
This union of the two Crickledons,
male and female; was an ideal one, such as poor women
dream of; and men would do the same, if they knew how
poor they are. Each had a profession, each was
independent of the other, each supported the fabric.
Consequently there was mutual respect, as between
two pillars of a house. Each saw the other’s
faults with a sly wink to the world, and an occasional
interchange of sarcasm that was tonic, very strengthening
to the wits without endangering the habit of affection.
Crickledon the cook stood for her own opinions, and
directed the public conduct of Crickledon the carpenter;
and if he went astray from the line she marked out,
she put it down to human nature, to which she was
tolerant. He, when she had not followed his advice,
ascribed it to the nature of women. She never
said she was the equal of her husband; but the carpenter
proudly acknowledged that she was as good as a man,
and he bore with foibles derogatory to such high stature,
by teaching himself to observe a neatness of domestic
and general management that told him he certainly
was not as good as a woman. Herbert delighted
in them. The cook regaled the carpenter with
skilful, tasty, and economic dishes; and the carpenter,
obedient to her supplications, had promised,
in the event of his outliving her, that no hands but
his should have the making of her coffin. “It
is so nice,” she said, “to think one’s
own husband will put together the box you are to lie
in, of his own make!” Had they been even a doubtfully
united pair, the cook’s anticipation of a comfortable
coffin, the work of the best carpenter in England,
would have kept them together; and that which fine
cookery does for the cementing of couples needs not
to be recounted to those who have read a chapter or
two of the natural history of the male sex.
“Crickledon, my dear soul, your
husband is labouring with a bit of fun,” Herbert
said to her.
“He would n’t laugh loud
at Punch, for fear of an action,” she replied.
“He never laughs out till he gets to bed, and
has locked the door; and when he does he says ‘Hush!’
to me. Tinman is n’t bailiff again just
yet, and where he has his bailiff’s best Court
suit from, you may ask. He exercises in it off
and on all the week, at night, and sometimes in the
middle of the day.”
Herbert rallied her for her gossip’s credulity.
“It’s truth,” she
declared. “I have it from the maid of the
house, little Jane, whom he pays four pound a year
for all the work of the house: a clever little
thing with her hands and her head she is; and can
read and write beautiful; and she’s a mind to
leave ’em if they don’t advance her.
She knocked and went in while he was full blaze, and
bowing his poll to his glass. And now he turns
the key, and a child might know he was at it.”
“He can’t be such a donkey!”
“And he’s been seen at
the window on the seaside. ’Who’s
your Admiral staying at the house on the beach?’
men have inquired as they come ashore. My husband
has heard it. Tinman’s got it on his brain.
He might be cured by marriage to a sound-headed woman,
but he ’ll soon be wanting to walk about in
silk legs if he stops a bachelor. They tell me
his old mother here had a dress value twenty pound;
and pomp’s inherited. Save as he may, there’s
his leak.”
Herbert’s contempt for Tinman
was intense; it was that of the young and ignorant
who live in their imaginations like spendthrifts, unaware
of the importance of them as the food of life, and
of how necessary it is to seize upon the solider one
among them for perpetual sustenance when the unsubstantial
are vanishing. The great event of his bailiff’s
term of office had become the sun of Tinman’s
system. He basked in its rays. He meant
to be again the proud official, royally distinguished;
meantime, though he knew not that his days were dull,
he groaned under the dulness; and, as cart or cab
horses, uncomplaining as a rule, show their view of
the nature of harness when they have release to frisk
in a field, it is possible that existence was made
tolerable to the jogging man by some minutes of excitement
in his bailiff’s Court suit. Really to
pasture on our recollections we ought to dramatize
them. There is, however, only the testimony of
a maid and a mariner to show that Tinman did it, and
those are witnesses coming of particularly long-bow
classes, given to magnify small items of fact.
On reaching the hall Herbert found
the fire alight in the smoking-room, and soon after
settling himself there he heard Van Diemen’s
voice at the hall-door saying good night to Tinman.
“Thank the Lord! there you are,”
said Van Diemen, entering the room. “I
couldn’t have hoped so much. That rascal!”
he turned round to the door. “He has been
threatening me, and then smoothing me. Hang his
oil! It’s combustible. And hang the
port he’s for laying down, as he calls it.
‘Leave it to posterity,’ says I. ‘Why?’
says he. ’Because the young ones ‘ll
be better able to take care of themselves,’ says
I, and he insists on an explanation. I gave it
to him. Out he bursts like a wasp’s nest.
He may have said what he did say in temper. He
seemed sorry afterwards poor old Mart!
The scoundrel talked of Horse Guards and telegraph
wires.”
“Scoundrel, but more ninny,”
said Herbert, full of his contempt. “Dare
him to do his worst. The General tells me they
’d be glad to overlook it at the Guards, even
if they had all the facts. Branding ’s out
of the question.”
“I swear it was done in my time,”
cried Van Diemen, all on fire.
“It’s out of the question.
You might be advised to leave England for a few months.
As for the society here ”
“If I leave, I leave for good.
My heart’s broken. I’m disappointed.
I’m deceived in my friend. He and I in
the old days! What’s come to him?
What on earth is it changes men who stop in England
so? It can’t be the climate. And did
you mention my name to General Fellingham?”
“Certainly not,” said
Herbert. “But listen to me, sir, a moment.
Why not get together half-a-dozen friends of the neighbourhood,
and make a clean breast of it. Englishmen like
that kind of manliness, and they are sure to ring
sound to it.”
“I couldn’t!” Van
Diemen sighed. “It’s not a natural
feeling I have about it I ’ve
brooded on the word. If I have a nightmare, I
see Deserter written in sulphur on the black wall.”
“You can’t remain at his
mercy, and be bullied as you are. He makes you
ill, sir. He won’t do anything, but he’ll
go on worrying you. I’d stop him at once.
I’d take the train to-morrow and get an introduction
to the Commander-in-Chief. He’s the very
man to be kind to you in a situation like this.
The General would get you the introduction.”
“That’s more to my taste;
but no, I couldn’t,” Van Diemen moaned
in his weakness. “Money has unmanned me.
I was n’t this kind of man formerly; nor more
was Mart Tinman, the traitor! All the world seems
changeing for the worse, and England is n’t
what she used to be.”
“You let that man spoil it for
you, sir.” Herbert related Mrs. Crickledon’s
tale of Mr. Tinman, adding, “He’s an utter
donkey. I should defy him. What I should
do would be to let him know to-morrow morning that
you don’t intend to see him again. Blow
for, blow, is the thing he requires. He’ll
be cringing to you in a week.”
“And you’d like to marry
Annette,” said Van Diemen, relishing, nevertheless,
the advice, whose origin and object he perceived so
plainly.
“Of course I should,”
said Herbert, franker still in his colour than his
speech.
“I don’t see him my girl’s
husband.” Van Diemen eyed the red hollow
in the falling coals. “When I came first,
and found him a healthy man, good-looking enough for
a trifle over forty, I ’d have given her gladly,
she nodding Yes. Now all my fear is she’s
in earnest. Upon my soul, I had the notion old
Mart was a sort of a boy still; playing man, you know.
But how can you understand? I fancied his airs
and stiffness were put on; thought I saw him burning
true behind it. Who can tell? He seems to
be jealous of my buying property in his native town.
Something frets him. I ought never to have struck
him! There’s my error, and I repent it.
Strike a friend! I wonder he didn’t go off
to the Horse Guards at once. I might have done
it in his place, if I found I couldn’t lick him.
I should have tried kicking first.”
“Yes, shinning before peaching,”
said Herbert, astonished almost as much as he was
disgusted by the inveterate sentimental attachment
of Van Diemen to his old friend.
Martin Tinman anticipated good things
of the fright he had given the man after dinner.
He had, undoubtedly, yielded to temper, forgetting
pure policy, which it is so exceeding difficult to
practice. But he had soothed the startled beast;
they had shaken hands at parting, and Tinman hoped
that the week of Annette’s absence would enable
him to mould her father. Young Fellingham’s
appointment to come to Elba had slipped Mr. Tinman’s
memory. It was annoying to see this intruder.
“At all events, he’s not with Annette,”
said Mrs. Cavely. “How long has her father
to run on?”
“Five months,” Tinman
replied. “He would have completed his term
of service in five months.”
“And to think of his being a
rich man because he deserted,” Mrs. Cavely interjected.
“Oh! I do call it immoral. He ought
to be apprehended and punished, to be an example for
the good of society. If you lose time, my dear
Martin, your chance is gone. He’s wriggling
now. And if I could believe he talked us over
to that young impudent, who has n’t a penny
that he does n’t get from his pen, I’d
say, denounce him to-morrow. I long for Elba.
I hate this house. It will be swallowed up some
day; I know it; I have dreamt it. Elba at any
cost. Depend upon it, Martin, you have been foiled
in your suits on account of the mean house you inhabit.
Enter Elba as that girl’s husband, or go there
to own it, and girls will crawl to you.”
“You are a ridiculous woman,
Martha,” said Tinman, not dissenting.
The mixture of an idea of public duty
with a feeling of personal rancour is a strong incentive
to the pursuit of a stern line of conduct; and the
glimmer of self-interest superadded does not check
the steps of the moralist. Nevertheless, Tinman
held himself in. He loved peace. He preached
it, he disseminated it. At a meeting in the town
he strove to win Van Diemen’s voice in favour
of a vote for further moneys to protect “our
shores.” Van Diemen laughed at him, telling
him he wanted a battery. “No,” said
Tinman, “I’ve had enough to do with soldiers.”
“How’s that?”
“They might be more cautious.
I say, they might learn to know their friends from
their enemies.”
“That’s it, that’s
it,” said Van Diemen. “If you say
much more, my hearty, you’ll find me bidding
against you next week for Marine Parade and Belle
Vue Terrace. I’ve a cute eye for property,
and this town’s looking up.”
“You look about you before you
speculate in land and house property here,”
retorted Tinman.
Van Diemen bore so much from him that
he asked himself whether he could be an Englishman.
The title of Deserter was his raw wound. He attempted
to form the habit of stigmatizing himself with it in
the privacy of his chamber, and he succeeded in establishing
the habit of talking to himself, so that he was heard
by the household, and Annette, on her return, was
obliged to warn him of his indiscretion. This
development of a new weakness exasperated him.
Rather to prove his courage by defiance than to baffle
Tinman’s ambition to become the principal owner
of houses in Crikswich, by outbidding him at the auction
for the sale of Marine Parade and Belle Vue Terrace,
Van Diemen ran the houses up at the auction, and ultimately
had Belle Vue knocked down to him. So fierce was
the quarrel that Annette, in conjunction with Mrs.
Cavely; was called on to interpose with her sweetest
grace. “My native place,” Tinman said
to her; “it is my native place. I have a
pride in it; I desire to own property in it, and your
father opposes me. He opposes me. Then says
I may have it back at auction price, after he has
gone far to double the price! I have borne I
repeat I have borne too much.”
“Are n’t your properties
to be equal to one?” said Mrs. Cavely, smiling
mother like from Tinman to Annette.
He sought to produce a fondling eye
in a wry face, and said, “Yes, I will remember
that.”
“Annette will bless you with
her dear hand in a month or two at the outside,”
Mrs. Cavely murmured, cherishingly.
“She will?” Tinman cracked his body to
bend to her.
“Oh, I cannot say; do not distress
me. Be friendly with papa,” the girl resumed,
moving to escape.
“That is the essential,”
said Mrs. Cavely; and continued, when Annette had
gone, “The essential is to get over the next
few months, miss, and then to snap your fingers at
us. Martin, I would force that man to sell you
Belle Vue under the price he paid for it, just to try
your power.”
Tinman was not quite so forcible.
He obtained Belle Vue at auction price, and his passion
for revenge was tipped with fire by having it accorded
as a friend’s favour.
The poisoned state of his mind was
increased by a December high wind that rattled his
casements, and warned him of his accession of property
exposed to the elements. Both he and his sister
attributed their nervousness to the sinister behaviour
of Van Diemen. For the house on the beach had
only, in most distant times, been threatened by the
sea, and no house on earth was better protected from
man, Neptune, in the shape of a coastguard,
being paid by Government to patrol about it during
the hours of darkness. They had never had any
fears before Van Diemen arrived, and caused them to
give thrice their ordinary number of dinners to guests
per annum. In fact, before Van Diemen came, the
house on the beach looked on Crikswich without a rival
to challenge its anticipated lordship over the place,
and for some inexplicable reason it seemed to its
inhabitants to have been a safer as well as a happier
residence.
They were consoled by Tinman’s
performance of a clever stroke in privately purchasing
the cottages west of the town, and including Crickledon’s
shop, abutting on Marine Parade. Then from the
house on the beach they looked at an entire frontage
of their property.
They entered the month of February.
No further time was to be lost, “or we shall
wake up to find that man has fooled us,” Mrs.
Cavely said. Tinman appeared at Elba to demand
a private interview with Annette. His hat was
blown into the hall as the door opened to him, and
he himself was glad to be sheltered by the door, so
violent was the gale. Annette and her father
were sitting together. They kept the betrothed
gentleman waiting a very long time. At last Van
Diemen went to him, and said, “Netty ’ll
see you, if you must. I suppose you have no business
with me?”
“Not to-day,” Tinman replied.
Van Diemen strode round the drawing-room
with his hands in his pockets. “There’s
a disparity of ages,” he said, abruptly, as if
desirous to pour out his lesson while he remembered
it. “A man upwards of forty marries a girl
under twenty, he’s over sixty before she’s
forty; he’s decaying when she’s only mellow.
I ought never to have struck you, I know. And
you’re such an infernal bad temper at times,
and age does n’t improve that, they say; and
she’s been educated tip-top. She’s
sharp on grammar, and a man may n’t like that
much when he’s a husband. See her, if you
must. But she does n’t take to the idea;
there’s the truth. Disparity of ages and
unsuitableness of dispositions what was
it Fellingham said? like two barrel-organs
grinding different tunes all day in a house.”
“I don’t want to hear
Mr. Fellingham’s comparisons,” Tinman snapped.
“Oh! he’s nothing to the
girl,” said Van Diemen. “She doesn’t
stomach leaving me.”
“My dear Philip! why should
she leave you? When we have interests in common
as one household ”
“She says you’re such a damned bad temper.”
Tinman was pursuing amicably, “When
we are united ” But the frightful
charge brought against his temper drew him up.
“Fiery I may be. Annette has seen I am
forgiving. I am a Christian. You have provoked
me; you have struck me.”
“I ’ll give you a couple
of thousand pounds in hard money to be off the bargain,
and not bother the girl,” said Van Diemen.
“Now,” rejoined Tinman,
“I am offended. I like money, like most
men who have made it. You do, Philip. But
I don’t come courting like a pauper. Not
for ten thousand; not for twenty. Money cannot
be a compensation to me for the loss of Annette.
I say I love Annette.”
“Because,” Van Diemen
continued his speech, “you trapped us into that
engagement, Mart. You dosed me with the stuff
you buy for wine, while your sister sat sugaring and
mollifying my girl; and she did the trick in a minute,
taking Netty by surprise when I was all heart and no
head; and since that you may have seen the girl turn
her head from marriage like my woods from the wind.”
“Mr. Van Diemen Smith!”
Tinman panted; he mastered himself. “You
shall not provoke me. My introductions of you
in this neighbourhood, my patronage, prove my friendship.”
“You’ll be a good old
fellow, Mart, when you get over your hopes of being
knighted.”
“Mr. Fellingham may set you
against my wine, Philip. Let me tell you I
know you you would not object to have your
daughter called Lady.”
“With a spindle-shanked husband
capering in a Court suit before he goes to bed every
night, that he may n’t forget what a fine fellow
he was one day bygone! You’re growing lean
on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty years old.”
“You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!”
“Jealous, am I? Take the
money, give up the girl, and see what friends we’ll
be. I’ll back your buyings, I’ll advertise
your sellings. I’ll pay a painter to paint
you in your Court suit, and hang up a copy of you in
my diningroom.”
“Annette is here,” said
Tinman, who had been showing Etna’s tokens of
insurgency.
He admired Annette. Not till
latterly had Herbert Fellingham been so true an admirer
of Annette as Tinman was. She looked sincere and
she dressed inexpensively. For these reasons
she was the best example of womankind that he knew,
and her enthusiasm for England had the sympathetic
effect on him of obscuring the rest of the world, and
thrilling him with the reassuring belief that he was
blest in his blood and his birthplace points
which her father, with his boastings of Gippsland,
and other people talking of scenes on the Continent,
sometimes disturbed in his mind.
“Annette,” said he, “I
come requesting to converse with you in private.”
“If you wish it I would rather not,”
she answered.
Tinman raised his head, as often at
Helmstone when some offending shopwoman was to hear
her doom.
He bent to her. “I see. Before your
father, then!”
“It isn’t an agreeable
bit of business, to me,” Van Diemen grumbled,
frowning and shrugging.
“I have come, Annette, to ask
you, to beg you, entreat before a third
person laughing, Philip?”
“The wrong side of my mouth,
my friend. And I’ll tell you what:
we’re in for heavy seas, and I ’m not
sorry you’ve taken the house on the beach off
my hands.”
“Pray, Mr. Tinman, speak at
once, if you please, and I will do my best. Papa
vexes you.”
“No, no,” replied Tinman.
He renewed his commencement. Van Diemen interrupted
him again.
“Hang your power over me, as
you call it. Eh, old Mart? I’m a Deserter.
I’ll pay a thousand pounds to the British army,
whether they punish me or not. March me off tomorrow!”
“Papa, you are unjust, unkind.” Annette
turned to him in tears.
“No, no,” said Tinman,
“I do not feel it. Your father has misunderstood
me, Annette.”
“I am sure he has,” she
said fervently. “And, Mr. Tinman, I will
faithfully promise that so long as you are good to
my dear father, I will not be untrue to my engagement,
only do not wish me to name any day. We shall
be such very good dear friends if you consent to this.
Will you?”
Pausing for a space, the enamoured
man unrolled his voice in lamentation: “Oh!
Annette, how long will you keep me?”
“There; you’ll set her
crying!” said Van Diemen. “Now you
can run upstairs, Netty. By jingo! Mart
Tinman, you’ve got a bass voice for love affairs.”
“Annette,” Tinman called
to her, and made her turn round as she was retiring.
“I must know the day before the end of winter.
Please. In kind consideration. My arrangements
demand it.”
“Do let the girl go,”
said Van Diemen. “Dine with me tonight and
I’ll give you a wine to brisk your spirits,
old boy.”
“Thank you. When I have
ordered dinner at home, I and my
wine agrees with me,” Tinman replied.
“I doubt it.”
“You shall not provoke me, Philip.”
They parted stiffly.
Mrs. Cavely had unpleasant domestic
news to communicate to her brother, in return for
his tale of affliction and wrath. It concerned
the ungrateful conduct of their little housemaid Jane,
who, as Mrs. Cavely said, “egged on by that
woman Crickledon,” had been hinting at an advance
of wages.
“She didn’t dare speak,
but I saw what was in her when she broke a plate,
and wouldn’t say she was sorry. I know she
goes to Crickledon and talks us over. She’s
a willing worker, but she has no heart.”
Tinman had been accustomed in his
shop at Helmstone where heaven had blessed
him with the patronage of the rich, as visibly as rays
of supernal light are seen selecting from above the
heads of prophets in the illustrations to cheap holy
books to deal with willing workers that
have no hearts. Before the application for an
advance of wages and he knew the signs
of it coming his method was to calculate
how much he might be asked for, and divide the estimated
sum by the figure 4; which, as it seemed to come from
a generous impulse, and had been unsolicited, was
often humbly accepted, and the willing worker pursued
her lean and hungry course in his service. The
treatment did not always agree with his males.
Women it suited; because they do not like to lift up
their voices unless they are in a passion; and if
you take from them the grounds of temper, you take
their words away you make chickens of them.
And as Tinman said, “Gratitude I never expect!”
Why not? For the reason that he knew human nature.
He could record shocking instances of the ingratitude
of human nature, as revealed to him in the term of
his tenure of the shop at Helmstone. Blest from
above, human nature’s wickedness had from below
too frequently besulphured and suffumigated him for
his memory to be dim; and though he was ever ready
to own himself an example that heaven prevaileth,
he could cite instances of scandal-mongering shop-women
dismissed and working him mischief in the town, which
pointed to him in person for a proof that the Powers
of Good and Evil were still engaged in unhappy contention.
Witness Strikes! witness Revolutions!
“Tell her, when she lays the
cloth, that I advance her, on account of general good
conduct, five shillings per annum. Add,”
said Tinman, “that I wish no thanks. It
is for her merits to reward her; you understand
me, Martha?”
“Quite; if you think it prudent, Martin.”
“I do. She is not to breathe a syllable
to cook.”
“She will.”
“Then keep your eye on cook.”
Mrs. Cavely promised she would do
so. She felt sure she was paying five shillings
for ingratitude; and, therefore, it was with humility
that she owned her error when, while her brother sipped
his sugared acrid liquor after dinner (in devotion
to the doctor’s decree, that he should take
a couple of glasses, rigorously as body-lashing friar),
she imparted to him the singular effect of the advance
of wages upon little Jane “Oh, ma’am!
and me never asked you for it!” She informed
her brother how little Jane had confided to her that
they were called “close,” and how little
Jane had vowed she would the willing little
thing! go about letting everybody know
their kindness.
“Yes! Ah!” Tinman
inhaled the praise. “No, no; I don’t
want to be puffed,” he said. “Remember
cook. I have,” he continued, meditatively,
“rarely found my plan fail. But mind, I
give the Crickledons notice to quit to-morrow.
They are a pest. Besides, I shall probably think
of erecting villas.”
“How dreadful the wind is!”
Mrs. Cavely exclaimed. “I would give that
girl Annette one chance more. Try her by letter.”
Tinman despatched a business letter
to Annette, which brought back a vague, unbusiness-like
reply. Two days afterward Mrs. Cavely reported
to her brother the presence of Mr. Fellingham and
Miss Mary Fellingham in Crikswich. At her dictation
he wrote a second letter. This time the reply
came from Van Diemen:
“My dear Martin, Please
do not go on bothering my girl. She does not
like the idea of leaving me, and my experience tells
me I could not live in the house with you.
So there it is. Take it friendly. I have
always wanted to be, and am,
“Your friend,
“Phil.”
Tinman proceeded straight to Elba;
that is, as nearly straight as the wind would allow
his legs to walk. Van Diemen was announced to
be out; Miss Annette begged to be excused, under the
pretext that she was unwell; and Tinman heard of a
dinner-party at Elba that night.
He met Mr. Fellingham on the carriage
drive. The young Londoner presumed to touch upon
Tinman’s private affairs by pleading on behalf
of the Crikledons, who were, he said, much dejected
by the notice they had received to quit house and
shop.
“Another time,” bawled
Tinman. “I can’t hear you in this
wind.”
“Come in,” said Fellingham.
“The master of the house is
absent,” was the smart retort roared at him;
and Tinman staggered away, enjoying it as he did his
wine.
His house rocked. He was backed
by his sister in the assurance that he had been duped.
The process he supposed to be thinking,
which was the castigation of his brains with every
sting wherewith a native touchiness could ply immediate
recollection, led him to conclude that he must bring
Van Diemen to his senses, and Annette running to him
for mercy.
He sat down that night amid the howling
of the storm, wind whistling, water crashing, casements
rattling, beach desperately dragging, as by the wide-stretched
star-fish fingers of the half-engulphed.
He hardly knew what he wrote.
The man was in a state of personal terror, burning
with indignation at Van Diemen as the main cause of
his jeopardy. For, in order to prosecute his pursuit
of Annette, he had abstained from going to Helmstone
to pay moneys into his bank there, and what was precious
to life as well as life itself, was imperilled by
those two Annette and her father who,
had they been true, had they been honest, to say nothing
of honourable, would by this time have opened Elba
to him as a fast and safe abode.
His letter was addressed, on a large envelope,
“To the Adjutant-General,
“Horse guards.”
But if ever consigned to the Post,
that post-office must be in London; and Tinman left
the letter on his desk till the morning should bring
counsel to him as to the London friend to whom he might
despatch it under cover for posting, if he pushed
it so far.
Sleep was impossible. Black night
favoured the tearing fiends of shipwreck, and looking
through a back window over sea, Tinman saw with dismay
huge towering ghostwhite wreaths, that travelled up
swiftly on his level, and lit the dark as they flung
themselves in ruin, with a gasp, across the mound
of shingle at his feet.
He undressed: His sister called
to him to know if they were in danger. Clothed
in his dressing-gown, he slipped along to her door,
to vociferate to her hoarsely that she must not frighten
the servants; and one fine quality in the training
of the couple, which had helped them to prosper, a
form of self-command, kept her quiet in her shivering
fears.
For a distraction Tinman pulled open
the drawers of his wardrobe. His glittering suit
lay in one. And he thought, “What wonderful
changes there are in the world!” meaning, between
a man exposed to the wrath of the elements, and the
same individual reading from vellum, in that suit,
in a palace, to the Head of all of us!
The presumption is; that he must have
often done it before. The fact is established,
that he did it that night. The conclusion drawn
from it is, that it must have given him a sense of
stability and safety.
At any rate that he put on the suit is quite certain.
Probably it was a work of ingratiation
and degrees; a feeling of the silk, a trying on to
one leg, then a matching of the fellow with it.
O you Revolutionists! who would have no state, no
ceremonial, and but one order of galligaskins!
This man must have been wooed away in spirit to forgetfulness
of the tempest scourging his mighty neighbour to a
bigger and a farther leap; he must have obtained from
the contemplation of himself in his suit that which
would be the saving of all men, in especial of his
countrymen imagination, namely.
Certain it is, as I have said, that
he attired himself in the suit. He covered it
with his dressing-gown, and he lay down on his bed
so garbed, to await the morrow’s light, being
probably surprised by sleep acting upon fatigue and
nerves appeased and soothed.