""In my bare presence would do, of course--that"s all I come for. But how can I be a witness without his seeing me?"
""Why, in this way, sir; if you"ll oblige me by just stepping here." She conducted him a few yards to the left, till they were opposite the parlour window. The blind had been left up purposely, and the candle- light shone out upon the garden bushes. Within the agent could see, at the other end of the room, the back and side of the old man"s head, and his shoulders and arm, sitting with the book and candle before him, and his spectacles on his nose, as she had placed him.
""He"s reading his Bible, as you see, sir," she says, quite in her meekest way.
""Yes. I thought he was a careless sort of man in matters of religion?"
""He always was fond of his Bible," Netty a.s.sured him. "Though I think he"s nodding over it just at this moment However, that"s natural in an old man, and unwell. Now you could stand here and see him sign, couldn"t you, sir, as he"s such an invalid?"
""Very well," said the agent, lighting a cigar. "You have ready by you the merely nominal sum you"ll have to pay for the admittance, of course?"
""Yes," said Netty. "I"ll bring it out." She fetched the cash, wrapped in paper, and handed it to him, and when he had counted it the steward took from his breast pocket the precious parchments and gave one to her to be signed.
""Uncle"s hand is a little paralyzed," she said. "And what with his being half asleep, too, really I don"t know what sort of a signature he"ll be able to make."
""Doesn"t matter, so that he signs."
""Might I hold his hand?"
""Ay, hold his hand, my young woman--that will be near enough."
"Netty re-entered the house, and the agent continued smoking outside the window. Now came the ticklish part of Netty"s performance. The steward saw her put the inkhorn--"horn," says I in my old-fashioned way--the inkstand, before her uncle, and touch his elbow as to arouse him, and speak to him, and spread out the deed; when she had pointed to show him where to sign she dipped the pen and put it into his hand. To hold his hand she artfully stepped behind him, so that the agent could only see a little bit of his head, and the hand she held; but he saw the old man"s hand trace his name on the doc.u.ment. As soon as "twas done she came out to the steward with the parchment in her hand, and the steward signed as witness by the light from the parlour window. Then he gave her the deed signed by the Squire, and left; and next morning Netty told the neighbours that her uncle was dead in his bed."
"She must have undressed him and put him there."
"She must. Oh, that girl had a nerve, I can tell ye! Well, to cut a long story short, that"s how she got back the house and field that were, strictly speaking, gone from her; and by getting them, got her a husband.
"Every virtue has its reward, they say. Netty had hers for her ingenious contrivance to gain Jasper. Two years after they were married he took to beating her--not hard, you know; just a smack or two, enough to set her in a temper, and let out to the neighbours what she had done to win him, and how she repented of her pains. When the old Squire was dead, and his son came into the property, this confession of hers began to be whispered about. But Netty was a pretty young woman, and the Squire"s son was a pretty young man at that time, and wider-minded than his father, having no objection to little holdings; and he never took any proceedings against her."
There was now a lull in the discourse, and soon the van descended the hill leading into the long straggling village. When the houses were reached the pa.s.sengers dropped off one by one, each at his or her own door. Arrived at the inn, the returned emigrant secured a bed, and having eaten a light meal, sallied forth upon the scene he had known so well in his early days. Though flooded with the light of the rising moon, none of the objects wore the attractiveness in this their real presentation that had ever accompanied their images in the field of his imagination when he was more than two thousand miles removed from them.
The peculiar charm attaching to an old village in an old country, as seen by the eyes of an absolute foreigner, was lowered in his case by magnified expectations from infantine memories. He walked on, looking at this chimney and that old wall, till he came to the churchyard, which he entered.
The head-stones, whitened by the moon, were easily decipherable; and now for the first time Lackland began to feel himself amid the village community that he had left behind him five-and-thirty years before. Here, besides the Sallets, the Darths, the Pawles, the Privetts, the Sargents, and others of whom he had just heard, were names he remembered even better than those: the Jickses, and the Crosses, and the Knights, and the Olds. Doubtless representatives of these families, or some of them, were yet among the living; but to him they would all be as strangers. Far from finding his heart ready-supplied with roots and tendrils here, he perceived that in returning to this spot it would be inc.u.mbent upon him to re-establish himself from the beginning, precisely as though he had never known the place, nor it him. Time had not condescended to wait his pleasure, nor local life his greeting.
The figure of Mr. Lackland was seen at the inn, and in the village street, and in the fields and lanes about Upper Longpuddle, for a few days after his arrival, and then, ghost-like, it silently disappeared. He had told some of the villagers that his immediate purpose in coming had been fulfilled by a sight of the place, and by conversation with its inhabitants: but that his ulterior purpose--of coming to spend his latter days among them--would probably never be carried out. It is now a dozen or fifteen years since his visit was paid, and his face has not again been seen.
_March_ 1891.