Читать книгу The Watchman of Orsden Moss - J. Monk Foster - Страница 6

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"Several reasons, my dear brother," Aaron Shelvocke resumed complacently, "induced me to come to the village of Orsden Green." Though he began by addressing Luke personally, his eyes were roving slowly over the other three as he went on. "Ten years ago I had quite made up my mind that the country I had been forced to fly to, through the Squire of Orsden Hall, his gamekeepers, and the outrageous game laws of Old England, was about good enough for me, and that I would end my days there. I thought the matter over many a time, and could really find no excuse for deserting my quarters."

"You must have prospered then, sir?" Levi Blackshaw ventured to enquire, as his uncle paused, for a moment.

"I'd made a few thousands, was comfortably settled down, and I was not at all certain that my return to Orsden Green would be at all a matter for rejoicing. First there was that keeper and his assistants whom we had mauled; then there were my own relations, who, no doubt, were glad to be rid of me for ever, and would be sorry to see me again; and, finally, there was no one in England that I even cared a rap about."

"And yet you've returned, uncle?" Mat Shelvocke remarked, his brown face and his fine eyes lit up with pleasure as he followed every word his relative uttered.

"Yes, I've returned, lad," was the quiet answer. "I am glad now I have done so, if it were only for old Dan Coxall's sake. When I ran away I was afraid we had killed him, and that was why I came to the village under another name. Perhaps if it had not been for thoughts of the old gamekeeper I might never have thought of coming back at all."

"The sin weighed upon your conscience, Aaron!" Luke cried, with a wag of his head, "an' yo' couldn't rest till yo' coom back an' repented. Well, it's better to mend late i' the day than never."

"Yes, brother; it's decidedly better late than never. Old Dan will think so when he knows what I am going to do for him. Through myself, or one of my wild, reckless companions, Dan lost his arm and almost his life; and the loss of that limb deprived him of the situation he held. He is poor now and old, and has a strong claim upon me, Luke; and I intend to take care that he never wants so long as I have funds. Don't you think, Luke, and you also, Levi, that as a Christian and an honest man, I ought to provide for the poor fellow I nearly killed?"

"Dan Coxall is a drunken owd good-for-nothin'!" the little old chap exclaimed with acerbity; "and if yo' han anny money to throw away yo' could do better nor give it to Dan."

"I have no money to throw away, Luke. If I had come home five or ten years since I could have brought back with me the better part of seven thousand pounds. Now—but that's nothing to do with the question of providing for old Dan. His sons and daughters have all families of their own to look after, and they can't be expected to do anything for the old man now that the Orsden Green Colliery has been closed and he is out of work. What do you say, Levi? I ask you because you are a young man—a temperance advocate, and a Sunday-school teacher, I believe."

"I appreciate the motives, Sir, which impel you to make some provision for the old man you once were the means of injuring; but I believe, with my Uncle Luke, that if you give Dan money it will all be wasted in drink."

"You do! Well, thanks for your opinion, nephew, which is not exactly mine," Aaron Shelvocke said, drily. "And now give me your opinion, Mat."

"My opinion, uncle!" the young miner cried, with some confusion, as the colour mounted his checks. "I'm not quite sure that I have any opinion on the matter. All I know is this, sir. If you have anything to spare give it to owd Dan. He's not a bad sort, anyway. I've heard him talk scores of times about you when you were a wild young man and a poacher, but I never heard him give you a bad name, though he always did maintain that you were the ringleader of the gang that night when he got hurt so badly."

"Quite true that, too!" was Aaron's pleased rejoinder, and his eager eyes flashed a look of triumph at his brother and his dark-visaged nephew. "Well, I have quite made up my mind so far as Dan Coxall is concerned. We are very good friends already, as you have all seen, and I think we shall remain so. I have a thousand pounds, and the interest of it will keep the old chap in bread and cheese and a glass of ale for the remainder of his days."

"Does to meean to sey, Aaron," old Luke broke out with some warmth, "that tha intens to bank o theawsand peynd—"thousand pound"—an' let owd Dan draw a' th' money it makes?"

"That is my intention, Luke," was the ready response, "and I fail to see why you should be displeased about it. If I sinned in the past, surely I ought to make some atonement now?"

"If I understand my Uncle Luke rightly," Levi Blackshaw broke in at this point, "he does not object so much to your making expiation for wrong done, as in the manner in which you are going to make it. He thinks that this man will not only not be benefited by your generosity, but even degraded. That——"

"Enough, Levi!" Aaron cried authoritatively, as he raised his hand. "This money is mine, and I suppose I can do with it as I wish? But we need not discuss that further. My mind is made up. Dan is old and a cripple; I am young and strong yet, comparatively speaking. Even if I come to need through my generosity I feel sure that I shall always be sure of aid from my brother and my relatives."

The speaker's eyes fell with a questioning look first upon his brother, then upon Levi Blackshaw, next upon Naomi, and last of all upon Matthew Shelvocke. The first two were silent and gave no sign; but the girl nodded emphatically, and Mat said energetically—

"I'm only a collier, Uncle Aaron, and a collier out of work at that; but if ever you need anything I have, or can get, you shall have it as freely as if you were my own father. If things come to the worst, uncle, I daresay I could manage to keep us both."

"Well said, lad; I thank you with all my heart. Whenever I need a bite and a sup I shall not hesitate to come to you."

Aaron Shelvocke had jumped to his feet and was wringing the young miner's hard, brown hand heartily; while the other two men looked on with displeased faces.

"Some folks," old Luke muttered sulkily, "are readier wi promises than penny-pieces! Afore a chap talks abeawt keepin' or helpin' to keep annybody else he owt to keep hissel, an' then——"

Luke Shelvocke stopped suddenly in his snarling, and all eyes were riveted upon his unfavoured nephew. Mat had jumped angrily to his feet, his handsome florid face flushed with feeling, for no one present could mistake the person upon whom the vials of the mine Manager's wrath had been poured.

"I am not aware, Uncle Luke, that I ever troubled you for any favour," the young pitman cried, with gleaming eyes bent upon his aged relative; "and if I ever wanted anything you are the very last man in all the world I should think of going to. Perhaps I am not all I might be; I'm rough and ready, I know; but there's no canting hypocrisy about me, and what I say I mean. I say now what I said before. My uncle here is doing right by helping Dan Coxall, and if ever I can help him—if he needs it—he can try me."

"There, Mat; that will do lad," Aaron said, not unkindly, as his hand patted his nephew's sturdy shoulder. Then he added in a lighter vein, as the irate pitman resumed his seat, "Come now, let us have no quarrelling! This is a family gathering—a sort of family reunion, which I hope we shall all live long to remember and be proud of some day. You were going to say something, Luke."

"I were goin' to sey that if yo' han some money to throw away, Aaron it's yore own business, an' I'm sorry I interfered," the late Manager of the Orsden Green Colliery remarked in a more pacific tone. "An' I am goin' to sey, too," with a dogged shrug of his round shoulders, "what ev'ry other sensible chap would say. If yo've plenty of money, help Dan a bit, but don't forget number one. The Lord tak's care o' thoose as tak's care o' theirsel's. That's my motty, Aaron."

"And you, Levi? What do you think? I should like to have the benefit of your advice, as you seem neither so reckless nor passionate as Mat here; nor so cynically selfish as my brother."

"Well, to be frank with you, Mr. Shelvocke," the swarthy young clerk began, "I am bound to confess that there is golden advice in what Uncle Luke has said. Generosity like charity ought to begin at home. Now if you had only returned to Orsden Green five or ten years ago when you had £5,000 you might have spared £1,000 to a man you considered had claims upon you."

"Still I am glad now that I didn't come then," Aaron cried.

"Glad! Why?" Levi queried, with a puzzled expression on his shrewd, dark countenance.

"Because the seven thousand pounds I had a few years ago have grown considerably since then. When I set foot in Coleclough on Friday last I was able to open an account with a bank there with something over twenty thousand pounds."

"Twenty theawsand peynds!" old Luke Shelvocke muttered avariciously, as his almost toothless jaws ground themselves together, noiselessly, while his shining beady eyes ran over his brother from top to bottom.

"That's the amount, Luke!" Aaron cried gaily. "What do you think of that? Better, isn't it, than vegetating like a cabbage or a rhubarb root at Orsden Green?"

"Some folk has luck!" the older brother muttered, in a voice which meant that those folk had luck who least deserved it. "But yo're only makin' gammon on us a', Aaron?"

"If you care to see my bankbook, brother, perhaps I may show it to you," was the smiling answer. "I daresay it seems a lot of money to you stick-in-the-mud villagers. Sometimes you see, Luke, in spite of all your old saws, a rolling stone does gather moss."

"Twenty theawsand peynds!" the old pitman kept muttering to himself in a wondering way. "Only to think o' that! An' here I've bin workin' an' schaymin', scrapin' an savin', a' may lahfe for a hondful o' hunderds! It's a queer warld after a's said an' done!"

"They who venture much sometimes win heavily!" Aaron cried lightly. "You who stop at home and take things easily can't expect to gain much. As a rule the chaps who get the dollars deserve them. What do you say, Mat?"

"I think they do," was all the young miner answered.

"I am sure I have the greatest pleasure in the world, Uncle Aaron, in congratulating you on your good fortune," Levi Blackshaw said, blandly, as he rose and held out his hand. "You must have striven hard to amass so much money, and I sincerely hope you may live long to enjoy it."

"Thanks," Aaron said, drily. He had noticed that his dark nephew had called him uncle just then for the first time, and the thought of it did not please him. Then he turned airily to the gipsy-faced girl. "What do you think now, Naomi, of your scapegrace of an uncle?"

"I am perfectly delighted," she cried, frankly. "I am sure every woman must like a rich uncle. I am only afraid that, having found you so late we shall lose you again very quickly."

"Perhaps not, my dear," he returned thoughtfully.

"I suppose, Aaron," Luke said, in his old grumbling way, giving utterance to an idea his daughter's words had suggested, "that now you've turned up again, like a bad penny which somehow or other has getten' hanged into a gowd sov'rin, you'll be off again an' set up somewheer in a big way as a gentlemon?"

"I had some thought of staying in the village, Luke," was the quite unexpected rejoinder.

"Staying here, Aaron?"

"Yes. I like the place, or I should hardly have come back to it after all these years; and if I could only buy a decent house in the neighbourhood I would do so."

"There's Osden Ha'!" Luke cried.

"Orsden Hall!" Aaron iterated reflectively. "So there is, and it would be a striking illustration of Time's vengeance—of the grim, inevitable irony, of Fate, if the one time poacher, rapscallion, and general ne'er-do-well were to slip into the shoes of the worthless Squire who drove him out of the village!"

Aaron Shelvocke had risen to his feet, and was walking to and fro with a strangely illumined countenance. A new—a striking idea seemed to have sprung up in his brain, and it was evident to those about him that he was pondering somewhat deeply.

"I suppose the Hall will go for an old song," Levi Blackshaw said quietly, with his eyes upon Uncle Luke's eyes.

"The whole job lot—Ha', Moss, cottages, an' colliery—will be gi'en oway to someb'dy!" Luke cried. "That's if there's anny buyers," he added quickly, "which I much misdoubt."

"I have half a mind to go in for the business!" Aaron murmured aloud, yet speaking to himself. "It would be something, wouldn't it, Luke, to become Squire of Orsden Green? You wouldn't be ashamed of your wild, reckless, and sinful brother then, would you?"

He threw himself into his seat with a loud laugh, and stared at his companions with his keen, alert, grey-blue eyes, as if to mark the effect his words had produced upon them.

"I hope, uncle," a soft, melodious voice, murmured at that moment, "that you will stay among us, no matter what else you do."

"Thank you, Naomi," he answered gravely. "But why do you wish me to stay at Orsden Green?"

"I scarcely know," the girl answered, and her soft, dark cheek mantled under his close gaze. "Somehow—I can't tell why—I like you very much!"

"So do I," Mat exclaimed brusquely.

"I thank you two young people very much. If it is only to please you both I think I will remain in the village. Now, you youngsters had better go and have a good long walk," Aaron Shelvocke added, as he rose to his feet again, "I want to have a bit of a private chat with my brother. But there is one thing I want you all to remember."

"What is that?" Blackshaw enquired, as he put on his hat.

"That my name yet is Mr. 'Israel Brown.' If my real identity were to be made public just at this moment certain plans of mine might be made more difficult to carry out."

The young men nodded in assent. Naomi gave her word to keep the other's secret, and then the three passed out, leaving the two brothers together.

"A most singular man that, Matthew," Levi Blackshaw remarked in his patronising way, as they gained the paved space in front of the Black Boar.

"Singular, is he? I call Uncle Aaron a gradely nice chap," was Mat's answer. "And, what's more, Levi, he's as straight-forward as he is decent."