'Have no fear for the chair,' I said, for it creaked under me very fearfully, having legs not so large as my finger; 'if the chair breaks, Annie, your fear should be, lest the tortoise-shell run into me. Why, it is striped like a viper's loins! I saw some hundreds in London; and very cheap they are. They are made to be sold to the country people, such as you and me, dear;and carefully kept they will last for almost half a year. Now will you come back from your furniture, and listen to my story?'
Annie was a hearty dear, and she knew that half my talk was joke, to make light of my worrying. Therefore she took it in good part, as I well knew that she would do;and she led me to a good honest chair; and she sat in my lap and kissed me.
'All this is not like you, John. All this is not one bit like you: and your cheeks are not as they ought to be. I shall have to come home again, if the women worry my brother so. We always held together, John;and we always will, you know.'
'You dear,' I cried, 'there is nobody who understands me as you do. Lorna makes too much of me, and the rest they make too little.'
'Not mother; oh, not mother, John!'
'No, mother makes too much, no doubt; but wants it all for herself alone; and reckons it as a part of her.
She makes me more wroth than any one: as if not only my life, but all my head and heart must seek from hers, and have no other thought or care.'
Being sped of my grumbling thus, and eased into better temper, I told Annie all the strange history about Lorna and her departure, and the small chance that now remained to me of ever seeing my love again. To this Annie would not hearken twice, but judging women by her faithful self, was quite vexed with me for speaking so.
And then, to my surprise and sorrow, she would deliver no opinion as to what I ought to do until she had consulted darling Tom.
Dear Tom knew much of the world, no doubt, especially the dark side of it. But to me it scarcely seemed becoming that my course of action with regard to the Lady Lorna Dugal should be referred to Tom ***gus, and depend upon his decision. However, I would not grieve Annie again by ****** light of her husband; and so when he came in to dinner, the matter was laid before him.
Now this man never confessed himself surprised, under any circumstances; his knowledge of life being so profound, and his charity universal. And in the present case he vowed that he had suspected it all along, and could have thrown light upon Lorna's history, if we had seen fit to apply to him. Upon further inquiry I found that this light was a very dim one, flowing only from the fact that he had stopped her mother's coach, at the village of Bolham, on the Bampton Road, the day before I saw them. Finding only women therein, and these in a sad condition, Tom with his usual chivalry (as he had no scent of the necklace)allowed them to pass; with nothing more than a pleasant exchange of courtesies, and a testimonial forced upon him, in the shape of a bottle of Burgundy wine. This the poor countess handed him; and he twisted the cork out with his teeth, and drank her health with his hat off.
'A lady she was, and a true one; and I am a pretty good judge,' said Tom: 'ah, I do like a high lady!'
Our Annie looked rather queer at this, having no pretensions to be one: but she conquered herself, and said, 'Yes, Tom; and many of them liked you.'
With this, Tom went on the brag at once, being but a shallow fellow, and not of settled principles, though steadier than he used to be; until I felt myself almost bound to fetch him back a little; for of all things Ido hate brag the most, as any reader of this tale must by this time know. Therefore I said to Squire ***gus, 'Come back from your highway days. You have married the daughter of an honest man; and such talk is not fit for her. If you were right in robbing people, I am right in robbing you. I could bind you to your own mantelpiece, as you know thoroughly well, Tom; and drive away with your own horses, and all your goods behind them, but for the sense of honesty. And should I not do as fine a thing as any you did on the highway?
If everything is of public right, how does this chair belong to you? Clever as you are, Tom ***gus, you are nothing but a fool to mix your felony with your farmership. Drop the one, or drop the other; you cannot maintain them both.'
As I finished very sternly a speech which had exhausted me more than ten rounds of wrestling--but I was carried away by the truth, as sometimes happens to all of us--Tom had not a word to say; albeit his mind was so much more nimble and rapid than ever mine was. He leaned against the mantelpiece (a newly-invented affair in his house) as if I had corded him to it, even as Ispoke of doing. And he laid one hand on his breast in a way which made Annie creep softly to him, and look at me not like a sister.
'You have done me good, John,' he said at last, and the hand he gave me was trembling: 'there is no other man on God's earth would have dared to speak to me as you have done. From no other would I have taken it.
Nevertheless every word is true; and I shall dwell on it when you are gone. If you never did good in your life before, John, my brother, you have done it now.'
He turned away, in bitter pain, that none might see his trouble; and Annie, going along with him, looked as if I had killed our mother. For my part, I was so upset, for fear of having gone too far, that without a word to either of them, but a message on the title-page of King James his Prayer-book, I saddled Kickums, and was off, and glad of the moorland air again.
