When Durell was persuaded to sit down again, and fill his glass, and Aaron had been summoned by his sister to come and listen, there were no bounds to the interest with which the surveyor’s tales of sorrow and crime were listened to. He set out with declaring that there was scarcely a possibility of a trader’s escaping persecution, loss, or even ruin, if the excise officer who was over him happened to be his enemy.
He unfolded such scenes of strife, fraud, hardship, and bitter woe, as terrified the tender-spirited women, and made even Aaron look grave at the thought of committing himself to be acted upon by such a system. He trembled at tales of masters being betrayed by faithless servants; of false oaths taken by men who appeared weekly at church in a frame of decent piety; of fathers selling their children’s beds from under them to pay arbitrary penalties innocently incurred; of a widowed mother following her only son to prison, eagerly explaining to all who beheld his shame, that it was not for any “real fault,” but for a factitious offence,—a boast alas! never repeated; for it is they who are imprisoned for factitious crimes who come out broken-hearted and reckless, apt to become, first smugglers, and then felons, like the youth whose tale Durell was telling. The more he told, the more he had to tell,—the more impassioned became his speech, and the more eager his recourse to his glass. Brennan had not yet moved from his attitude of fixed attention, and even Jack was still frowning and gazing in his father’s face, when Le Brocq perceived that his guest was no longer in a state to be listened to as one who knew what he was about. Perhaps he was overcome as much by intense feeling as by what he had taken; but he slid from his tone of solemn and reasonable denunciation to senseless invective, to ridicule, to mirth, to nonsense, till his friends could bear the humbling scene no longer. Anna hastened, in an agony of fear and shame, to tell Mrs. Durell that Aaron and his father were bringing her husband home. It was the only thing that could be done with him; for he had taken some imaginary offence, and would not remain in their house for a moment longer, and was too riotous to be kept on any other part of the premises.
“I know what you are come for,” said Mrs. Durell mournfully to Anna. “It is not the first time by many, since he was made an officer. If he should be cut off in his drink, I shall always say his office was answerable for it.”
Anna could not leave the unhappy wife when Durell was lying in the next room, breathing hard, and angrily muttering in his drunken sleep.
“You must not be too hard upon him to-morrow,” said she, thinking that she saw signs of wrath in the burning tears which could not be repressed. “You have reason to know the tenderness of his heart; and it is my belief that it is that tenderness that betrays him.”
“To be sure it is. Every day of his life he crosses somebody that he wishes well to, and feels that he can do nothing for others that he sees oppressed, and that as often as he shows mercy, he is betraying his trust. Hard upon him! When he begins to make light of God’s providence, and to slight the sorrows that he sees, I will be hard upon my husband.”
“You deserve to be the wife and the comforter of such a man.”
“Thank you for saying so while he is lying there!” exclaimed the wife, looking up through her tears. “You and I know that he is more fit to hold some friendly rule over the people than to dog them as an enemy.
Some would laugh at such a thought, and say he cannot rule himself. But, depend upon it, if it were not for the misrule that is every day before his eyes, he would govern himself like the most moderate of them all; and then he would never be so wretched in his shame as he will be to-morrow.”
“Do you think Mr. Durell will be better to-morrow, so as to take me where he promised?” asked Brennan, who had silently followed into the room, and was now watching the rain-drops chasing one another down the window-panes.
Mrs. Durell shook her head, and the boy’s heart sank at the sight. He was told that he might sleep here to-night, to take the chance. It was not very likely that Stephen would come back to-night, having been abroad since he slipped out by himself in the morning. Anna did not now ask any question about Stephen, fearing that it might seem like reminding Mrs. Durell of her husband’s roughness on that subject when she was last within his doors.
“Will you please to come here, ma’am?” said Brennan, beckoning her to the window.
She saw Studley standing under a gateway, as if for shelter, but laughing, and pointing very significantly at Durell’s house. Brennan whispered that Studley had met master and Mr. Aaron when they were trying to make Mr. Durell walk straight; and that he had followed them all the rest of the way, talking about fair traders’ luck in choosing their time for making surveyors drunk.
CHAPTER VII.
HARDER LESSONS IN LOYALTY.
While Durell, as much ashamed of himself the next morning, as his wife had foretold, made an exertion to perform his promise to Brennan, notwithstanding a desperate head-ache, Anna was making experiments with the new tea her brother had helped her to manufacture. It was so good as to make her wonder why all but the wealthier classes in England did not mix a larger or smaller proportion of those leaves with the genuine tea.
She resolved to try a variety of herbs for the same purpose; and hoped that when she had satisfied herself that she had obtained the best article in her power, she might make a profitable little business of her manufacture. Perhaps the reason why she did not hear of others doing so was that few had the advantage of a kiln in which to dry the material quickly, equally, and in large quantities. Meantime, there seemed to be customers ready before she asked for them. A woman, whom somebody pronounced to be Mrs. Studley, came to inquire, and carried away a pound, which she insisted upon paying for before she tasted it. The example once set, several of the people on the premises, or their wives, made similar purchases in the course of the next few days.
Aaron meanwhile recovered from the temporary alarm about his new business connection into which Durell’s disclosures had thrown him. He trusted that the perils of glass-makers had been exaggerated in the heated fancy of the surveyor; and would not believe Anna when she averred that Durell was perfectly sober when he told of the extent to which glass-masters are dependent on their servants. He had made a clear distinction between the present and the former times of the manufacture; showing how the present are an improvement upon the former, though restrictions and hardships enough remain to account for the manufacture being stationary while all circumstances but the interference of the excise are favourable to its unlimited extension. Durell had told a story of a respectable glass-manufacturer who had suffered cruelly, some years ago, from having accidentally affronted one of his men. The man put material into several of his master’s furnaces, and then went and laid an information against the proprietor for charging his furnaces without notice. The consequence was, that George the Third, by the Grace of King, &c., greeted poor Mr. Robinson, and “commanded and strictly enjoined” him (all excuses apart) to appear before the Barons of the King’s Exchequer, at Westminster, to answer his Majesty concerning certain articles then and there, on the king’s behalf, to be objected against Mr. Robinson. These articles of accusation were thirty-one! No wonder the king wished to know what Mr. Robinson had to say. There was, besides charging the furnaces without notice, a long list of other offences, (all, however, committed by the workman without his master’s knowledge,)—putting in metal after gauge, unstopping a pot without notice, taking down the stopper without notice, filling five pots each day for fifty days without notice, omission of entering five hundred makings, and so on. Who can wonder that the father of his subjects was grieved at such a want of filial confidence? The king, however, had less reason to be grieved than Mr. Robinson; for the penalties on the thirty-one offences amounted to 138,700_l._ His Majesty, through his Barons, had compassion; or rather, perhaps, it might be evident to them that to throw a man into jail for the rest of his days, after stripping him of all that he had, for such a crime as his servant beginning to make glass without his knowledge, might be going too far for even excise-ridden England. They made him answerable for one only of the accusations, and let him off for 50_l._—liable, however, to a repetition of the same misfortune, unless he chose to stand day and night beside his furnaces, to see that none of his people violated the law touching glass. Matters have mended since that day. Absurdity and hardship do not now reach such an extreme: but the principle remains. The tyranny of interference still subsists. The morality of glass-making is still an arbitrary morality,—complicated and annoying in its practice, and mercilessly punished in its infraction. There was still enough of peril and disgust to make Anna wish that her brother would think again before he entered upon glass-making. She prevailed no further than to induce him to bespeak a short trial of the business before committing himself irrevocably as a partner. She heard so much more of the ingenuity and taste of the manufacturer he was about to join, than of his experience in business, that she was in perpetual fear that the firm would not long be able to escape the clutches of some of the revenue laws, which seemed to be lying in ambush everywhere to entrap the unwary. Her father, too, was for ever prophesying that the wilful youth would fall into some scrape, and get into jail, sooner or later.
Mrs. Durell observed her husband to be particularly gloomy one evening, when he desired to have his supper earlier than usual. He sat looking at the wall, as he always did when his mind was full of something painful.
He seemed relieved when Stephen left off singing in the next room, though he would not have taken such a liberty with a dependent guest as to interfere with his singing when he was in the mood. When the spirit-bottle was put down near him, he pushed it away. This was good as far as it went. He was not going to drink away his cares, whatever they might be.——A knock at the door.— “Let him in. It is the constable,” said Durell.
“O, then, I know. You are going to watch,” said Mrs. Durell, being aware that entering premises by night could be done only in the presence of a constable. “I am afraid, love, you are going to distress somebody that you wish no ill to.”
“I wish ill to nobody but that cursed race of informers that is as much cherished in this country as if we had a Nero over us.”
“Only about the taxes, love, surely.”
“Only about the taxes! Well, what would you have, when almost everything that is bought and sold is taxed?—Sit down, Simpson. Have you supped? We may be detained some time.”
The wife probably still showed anxiety; for he said, while buttoning up his coat, “You have no acquaintance among the soap-boilers, my dear, that I know of.”
“Oh, is it soap-boiling that you are going to watch?”
He nodded, kissed her, bade her not sit up for him, and left her relieved.
It was true that the first errand was to a soap-boiler’s,—a man who kept a chandler’s shop, and professed to do nothing else, but who had long continued to carry on an illicit trade in soap. His candles bore the blame of the scent with which his near neighbours were sometimes incommoded; and his being possessed of two handy daughters saved the necessity of his having servants who might betray him, protected by that odious clause of the Act which provides that participators in the offence shall be rewarded instead of punished, if they will inform against their masters or companions. This man found that he could make, very cheap, a particularly good soap, as long as he could evade the excise; and he had, of course, no lack of customers. In his shop, he sold none but dear, duty-paid soap; but nobody knew but himself how many packages went into the country from the back of his premises. The temptation was enough to overpower any man who had his opportunities.
His privacy afforded him the means of trying experiments to improve the article,—too expensive a practice for makers who cannot return the material to the coppers, in case of failure, without the sacrifice of the whole duty upon the portion so returned. Relieved from the duty, he could use better and more expensive materials than the regular manufacturer can employ. Instead of barilla, or the still inferior article, kelp, he could use common salt, which requires much less labour in its application to use, and, from its smaller bulk, might be smuggled into his premises and kept there with greater safety. Besides this, he liked to be able to take his own time about the production of the article, and to use such vessels as might be best fitted for his purposes, instead of having an exciseman standing over him to see that his soap was ready by a certain time, whether it was properly made or not; and that his utensils were of the shape and size required by law; whether or not the having them of that shape and size caused waste of the material. The mere circumstance of being able to discharge the alkaline lye from the copper by a cock inserted near the bottom, instead of by pump and hand, as ordered by law, was of no little consequence, regarding as it did an operation which was perpetually occurring. This chandler had, with an easy conscience, made a pretty little competence by his illicit manufacture; but his day of prosperity was over. Some keen nose or eyes had made the discovery, and the consequence was that the constable visited his premises by midnight.
How the girls started at the first gentle tap at the door! How relieved were they when, having called from the window, they were told it was only a neighbour wanting to light his lamp! How dismayed again, when four men rushed in, the moment the door was opened, and made their way direct to the place where the sinner was pouring off his curdling soap into the troughs! There was nothing to be said,—no license to produce,— no tokens of having paid duty. The whole apparatus and product must be seized, and the man taken into custody, and the daughters left to comfort themselves, and explain the matter to the world in the best way they could. They dreaded the loss of money far more than the loss of character, which could hardly be great in a country where the population professes (judging by the duty) to use no more than 6½lbs. a head per annum; while it is well known that half a pound a week each is the lowest quantity actually consumed. In a country where three-quarters of the soap used is not duty-paid, there can be no very deep or extensive horror of the sin of illicit manufacture. It is far more likely that the ignorant poor should be thankful to him who, in their inability to make soap at home, enabled them to buy for 1½_d._ what the law would prevent their having for less than 6_d._ Even some rich might be found who would pronounce it a monstrous thing that, while the cost of making soap is only 12_s._ per cwt., the duty should be 28_s._, and the expense of excise interference 16_s._ more; but the rich are not concerned like the poor in this matter. Not only is cleanliness,—and so far health,—less difficult, less a matter of question to them, but they pay a much smaller proportion of the duty than the poor. The duty amounts to two-thirds of the price of the soap which the poor man buys, while it forms only an inconsiderable portion of the cost of the refined and scented soaps of the luxurious. While these things are so, who can wonder at the reliance of the illicit trader on the support and good will of society, and his expectation of being blamed for nothing worse than imprudence in carrying on his work in a place liable to detection?
When the daughters had watched their father down the street, after helping to cleanse him from the tokens of his late toil, and had gone crying up to bed, knowing that a guard was left on their premises, Durell and the constable proceeded on another errand, much more painful.
Durell had received a hint from his superiors that all was not right on the premises of the glass-bottle maker, with whom Aaron was becoming connected. It was his belief that Studley had been the informer, both from the date of the occurrence, and from Studley’s knowledge of the concern. Whether it was his design to implicate Aaron, could not be known yet; but, if he really believed Le Brocq to be a rich, close, old fellow, it seemed very probable that he might adopt this means of squeezing a little money out of him; or, possibly, he might nourish revenge against more than one of the family because Le Brocq had refused to be his security for the office for which he was still waiting in uncertainty. However these things might be, Studley was with the men who stealthily let themselves in at a side door, during the twilight, and hid themselves behind some planks which happened to be set on end against the wall. He was with them when they skulked about, after the workmen were gone, peeping into the closets where the stock was placed, and whispering as often as they met with anything which could possibly be construed into a token of fraud. He was the one who called them hastily back to their hiding-place when steps were at length heard approaching. He watched and followed the proprietor when he hastily passed through, with a flaring candle in his hand, as if about to light himself to some dark place. It was Studley who beckoned the men to pursue, and burst into the portion of the premises which had been so contrived as hitherto to elude the notice of the excise. There they found the proprietors, Aaron, and a trusty servant of the establishment, all at work about a small furnace.
Studley stood afar off, and was left to his own reflections, when the door was shut. Durell and Simpson presently afterwards arrived.
“Has this apartment been duly entered?” inquired Durell of the offenders. Nobody answered.
“Has this furnace paid duty?”—No answer.
At length, the elder partner began to explain.
“The fact is, we think we have devised an improvement in our manufacture; and nobody knows better than you, Mr. Durell, that it is impossible to keep any secret to ourselves in our business, while the same excisemen who watch us, see half a dozen other establishments of the same kind in a day. There is really no possibility of improvement but in doing what is constantly done,—working a little in private before we make known our discoveries to the excise.”
“The expense, too, of wasting material, which must pay duty whether we obtain the desired product or not, is an insurmountable obstacle to improvement,” observed the other partner. “You will not deal harshly with us, sir. If you do, we shall suffer for the patriotic attempt to advance our manufacture.”
“I am certain,” declared the first, “that government will gain more by allowing us to complete our experiment, than by fining us to our last shilling.”
With all this Durell had nothing to do. His office was plain. His accustomed duty lay before him,—seizure of the goods and custody of the offenders. He was grieved that his friend Aaron could not escape, though he was not one of the partners. Studley was again at hand to insist that Aaron was liable to fine or imprisonment for being found working on an exciseable product in unentered premises. The informer (for so he was) was very unwilling that Aaron should be permitted to return to his home for the night. He hoped to have seen him marched through the streets to some place of confinement. But Aaron’s peril was not such as could induce him to abscond; and he was dropped at his father’s door, after having given his promise to appear when summoned before the court.
Studley need not have grudged him his home. There was little comfort in it. Before he had well finished his tale, the next morning, and before his father had well begun the series of reproaches which must be expected to follow, a messenger from the Court appeared, summoning, not only Aaron, but Le Brocq, to answer for drawing his kiln without notice, and Anna for an illicit adulteration of tea.
Le Brocq replied only by flinging the summonses under the grate, and by a deep curse upon Durell. Anna, who had sunk into a chair, exclaimed, “O, father, why is he to blame? How has he wronged us?”
“Never tell me that this is not all his doing;—or, at any rate, that be might not have prevented it all, if he had pleased. What is his office for,—what is his power worth,—if his best friends and his countrymen,— strangers that he ought to protect,—are to be persecuted in this manner?”
“I will answer for it, he is more sorry for us than we are for ourselves: but he must do his duty, father.”
“I should like to know what way of doing one’s duty would please my father,” observed Aaron. “Whatever may happen is sure to be somebody’s fault.”
“Whose fault was it, pray, that my kiln was drawn without notice?”
“O, father! Aaron! all this cannot be helped now. Do not let us quarrel now. We must think what must be done.”
“We must go to prison,—that is clear,—unless my father can pay the fines,” said Aaron.
“If anybody goes to prison, it must be you, Aaron. My first duty is to your mother, and my next to your sister, who has never been a disobedient child to me.”
“Pray, father, don’t,” cried Anna. “Perhaps we may none of us have to go to prison.” Her voice faltered at the last dreadful word.
“It is my belief that I can never pay the fines,” replied Le Brocq: “and if they throw me into jail, I shall find some means of telling the king that they give him bad advice who encourage him to use such means as his of getting his taxes. I would willingly have paid him three times as much as he has yet got from me for leave to follow my business in peace.
There is that fellow Durell skulking about before the window now!—to see how we take our troubles, I suppose.—Anna, come back! I won’t have you speak to him. I forbid everybody belonging to me to speak to him.”
“Your own countryman, father!”
“What does it matter to me whether he was born in Jersey, or any where else? He is an exciseman, and that is enough. How in the world to tell your mother of all this!”
“Perhaps we shall not be hardly used, when they find that we are strangers, coming from a place where nothing is known of the excise,” said Anna, trying to command her voice. “Perhaps the king will be merciful when he hears all we have to say; and I still think Mr. Durell is our friend. Perhaps we may not all have to go to prison together; and, at any rate, I suppose we shall soon know the worst.”
END OF THE FIRST PART.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF _TAXATION._ No. IV.
THE JERSEYMEN PARTING.
=A Tale.= BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
LONDON: CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
--- 834.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke-street, Lambeth.
THE JERSEYMEN PARTING.
=A Tale.= BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
LONDON: CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
--- 834.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE 1. A Busy Man at Leisure 1 2. Knitting and Unravelling 20 3. A Mate for Mother Hubbard 44 4. Friend or Foe? 51 5. The Darkening Hour 79 6. The Land of Signals 96 7. Welcome to Supper 117 For some of the materials of this and the preceding No., I am indebted to Mr. Inglis’s very interesting volumes on the Channel Islands.
The next No. will conclude my work.
H. M.
THE JERSEYMEN PARTING.
CHAPTER I.
A BUSY MAN AT LEISURE.
There are but too many people in London who look upon a prison very much as they look upon any other building: but of such people few are from Jersey, or from any place where, as in Jersey, the inhabitants are prosperous, and the temptations to crime are therefore few. The family of Le Brocq had not been accustomed to see a sentence of death lightly received as implying nothing worse than a gratuitous removal to a country where, whatever other hardships there may be, there is no difficulty in procuring food and spirits. They had not been accustomed to the language of penal justice in England, where “transportation” may mean nothing more than removal to Woolwich, to sleep in a stationary vessel at night, and rest upon a broom in the dock-yard during the day, in the intervals of being watched. They had not been accustomed to see convicts adjusting their leg chain in the presence of strangers, as if it had been a boot or a gaiter; nor to hear the merriment of the disgraced; nor to witness calculations as to the economy of living in a prison for a while. To have seen an offender after conviction was to them a rare circumstance; and when such a chance had befallen, there had been a conflict of feeling between their extreme curiosity to see any one in circumstances so peculiar and interesting, and their fear of insulting the fallen.
Durell, though a Jerseyman, had lost some of this feeling through the familiarity with jails which was induced by his office. The idea of depriving a man of his natural liberty, of using force upon him in any way, was as repugnant to him as it will be to everybody a few ages hence; but, the outrage being an actual fact, the attendant circumstances had lost some of their power. If it had not been so, he would not have pronounced that Aaron might go home for the night of his arrest, as his peril was not such as could induce him to abscond. He was wrong. Aaron’s peril for working on unentered premises was of being taken before two magistrates, and sentenced to three months’ hard labour in prison. Whether three months, or three years, or three hours of hard labour, it would have been much the same to Aaron, if within the walls of a prison. Before daylight he was on the cold, foggy Thames, hastening he knew not well whither, and cared little, so long as he was out of reach of the arm of the law.
His father did not abscond, because he had a wife and daughter; but never was any man more perplexed how to choose between two dreadful evils than Le Brocq. Equal to a Jerseyman’s horror of a prison is his repugnance to pay money. Having at home but little money and an abundance of all that he really wants, he will make any shifts with his materials rather than buy. He will first impoverish his live stock rather than go to market to purchase proper food for them; and then, his live stock failing, he will impoverish his land rather than pay for manure. Thus, Le Brocq’s grand inducement to come to England having been the supposed exemption from paying taxes in money, he could not endure the idea of laying down a heavy sum as a fine, while any alternative remained. He persuaded himself, and declared to the court, that he could not raise the money; and went to prison. This was against Durell’s judgment, and in the firm persuasion that Aaron would appear in a day or two, to conduct the business and take care of the women. It seemed to him so utterly ridiculous to consider Aaron’s accident of working on unentered premises as a punishable offence, that there could be no danger of the young man’s being inquired after when he had been found “not at home” for twenty-four hours.
He also was wrong. Anna was alone when she drew near the prison to visit her father, after a few days’ confinement. She had never been out on so painful an errand. She walked past, two or three times, in hopes that the disagreeable-looking people about the gate would have gone away and left a clear path for her: but they stood a long while, leaning against the wall with folded arms, some chatting and laughing, and others abusing the powers within for keeping them waiting. Before they had disappeared, more came; and Anna saw that the time during which she might obtain admittance would pass away if she waited to go in alone.
Nobody seemed to mind her, after all, and the turnkey was civil enough; so civil, that she found courage, after a moment’s struggle, to do what she considered justice to her father, and assure the turnkey, as he showed her the way, that it was for no crime that her father was there, but only for a mistake about a tax. The man seemed to think this no business of his; and indeed there was nothing in his manner to any of his charge to indicate that such a distinction signified at all.
It was a great disappointment to Anna to find that she could not see her father alone. Two persons were in the same apartment with him,—a dingy, close room, where it must be extremely irksome for three people to pass the day without employment. Anna saw at a glance how irksome it really was. Nothing but the extreme of ennui could have placed her father in the position in which she found him,—trying to play at cards with his companions. Such cards! such companions! and he, ignorant as he was known by Anna to be of modern card-playing! He had borne his part in a single ancient game of cards (though he preferred dominoes) on the gay nights of Christmas or New Year in his Jersey home, when the punch-bowl was steaming and cakes were heaped on the hospitable board round which he had gathered his family and neighbours; but his game and his card-playing notions were little suited to his present place and companionship. It was a dismal amusement here, in this cheerless room, with sordid accompaniments of every kind, and two of the players impatient at the incompetency of the third. Their voices were none of the most harmonious when first heard on the opening of the door; and when it appeared that Anna came to interrupt, Le Brocq’s partner threw down his cards in a pet. Le Brocq cast away his, exclaiming— “My dear, what are you here for?”
“Only to see you, father. But I am in the way, I’m afraid,”—looking at the peevish man opposite.
“Never mind him,” replied her father. “We have time enough and too much for that sort of thing. Why did not you send Aaron, instead of coming yourself into such a place? You know I do not like——” “I knew you would be vexed with me for coming; but my mother was so unhappy about nobody seeing you. When Aaron comes home——But, father, we have not seen him yet.”
“Not yet! Do you mean that he has never come back at all?”
“Never.”
“Nor written? What can the lad mean? Whenever he does come back, he shall learn——I will teach him what he may expect by playing such pranks.”
He saw by Anna’s downcast eyes that she thought such threats, if they could be overheard, were not the most likely means of bringing her brother back again. They put her too much in mind of the scolding mother’s address to her offending child, which she had overheard in the street,—“Come here, you little wretch, and let me flay you alive.” Le Brocq added more gently, “You are not afraid of any harm having happened? Have you asked anybody?”
“Mr. Durell says——” “Durell! That you should go and disgrace our family before that man, of all people! What has Durell to do with us, beyond getting us into mischief?”
“My mother asked him, because we thought he knew most about what people do when they get into trouble with the Excise.”
“Not he. He thought I should pay the fine rather than come here. That shows how much he knows. But what does he say?”
“He does not think Aaron will come back,” said Anna, with a faltering voice.
“He has enticed him away somewhere, then. What should make the lad stay away?”
“When they run away, they get disgusted with the law, Mr. Durell says, and set themselves against it. Too many, he says, turn to secret distilling, or to braving the law in some other way. And that is what we fear for Aaron.”
“Nonsense: he is safe enough with Malet by this time, I have no doubt.
He has been ropemaking there this fortnight, depend upon it.”
“He was not there four days ago, as we learn by a letter from Louise this morning. We were so glad to see the letter! But there is nothing about Aaron, except their supposing that he must be managing the business while——” “I don’t think I need read the letter,” observed Le Brocq, pushing it away from him. He was afraid of the pain of seeing what his daughter might say about his being in prison. “Your mother is happy for to-day, I suppose, now she has heard from Louise?”
“Not very,” answered Anna, with a tear or two. “Father, she is always crying out for Louise to come. She seems as if she thought everything would be right if Louise was here. But I am sure I dare not think of it.
It is something to think that one of us is safe; and why should Louise be more safe than anybody else, if she came? There are other snares yet, Mr. Durell says; and where no stranger can do anything hardly without falling into a snare, is not it much better that Louise should stay away? Is not it, father?”
“To be sure. It was mistake enough for us to come.”
“Then, you will let us go away again? May I tell Louise so?”
“O, yes. Tell her that, as soon as you hear of my being buried, you shall see if you can raise money enough to get back to Jersey; and that I charge her——” “Buried! father.”
“Yes. I am very ill, and it is my belief that I shall die here. So your mother is very unhappy?”
“Yes: but you don’t mean that you are really going to die? I am sure something might be done to persuade the king to take some of your stone-ware, if you have not the money. I am sure they would let you out in that way. And my mother is so miserable! Every footstep that I am apt to take for Aaron’s, she thinks must somehow be Louise; and then she