concluded they were not to sit here on a stone all night, looking at Alderney. Stephen begged pardon. He knew every step of the way so well that he had forgotten how much more important daylight was to his companions than to him. He rose from the vetch-strewn sand where he had laid himself at ease, loaded himself with what he could conveniently carry of the family luggage, saying that the rest might remain where it was, as there was no chance of rain before morning, and set forward over the heathery waste.
This was the first ground the party had trodden since they left London; and even Mrs. Le Brocq observed the difference between Lambeth pavement and the turf on which they were now walking, matted with fragrant heath, with patches between of blossoming thyme. Little white-tailed rabbits trotted in all directions to their burrows; and swarms of the celebrated honey-bee (called the leaf-cutter, from its hanging its cell in the sands with rose-leaf curtains) hovered and hummed over the thyme-beds and the briar-rose bush which was now closing its blossoms from the honey-searcher. The dash and roar of the strait were left behind, and the deepest silence succeeded. None of the party spoke while they proceeded with noiseless steps, Stephen leading the way, with his staff for his protection. He would go first and alone, lest he should lose his way by relaxing his attention. At last, his step slackened, and he felt the ground about him.
“Is there a bit of grey rock hereabouts, like a sofa?”
“There is a stone seat that you might fancy like a sofa, twelve yards from your right hand.”
“Give me your arm round to the other side of it. There! now there is a path downwards, almost from your feet, is not there?”
“Yes; a very steep path,—difficult to get down, I should think. The honeysuckles are like a hedge on either side. You smell the honeysuckles?”
“It was the honeysuckles that guided me, after we had half crossed the heath. You were too busy with the thyme to attend to them, I dare say; but the honeysuckles were what I was on the look-out for. If we have to go to Serk, you will find the air as sweet as Paradise with them.”
“Why should we go to Serk?”
“I may be able to tell you within an hour or two, or we may have to wait till morning. In the last case, I know of a snug cave where we will light a fire with a little of yonder furze; and it will be odd if we do not fall in with something good to eat and drink, and something soft to sleep upon.”
“I sleep in a cave!” exclaimed Mrs. Le Brocq. “I cannot do any such thing. I never slept in a cave in my life.”
“If you see any place that you like better, I am sure I am very glad,” replied Stephen. “Yonder sofa would not be a bad place on a soft summer’s night. Only, a brood of Mother Carey’s chickens might chance to flap their wings about you and startle you; or, if you woke, you might happen to find yourself in the middle of a circle of strangers, all smoking their pipes; and then you might wish yourself down with me in the cave. If you look round, ma’am, you will see no blue roofs in all the island,—unless they have altered it since I knew it.”
Mrs. Le Brocq shuddered as she said that it was too dark to see blue roofs or any thing else.
“And there are the Casket lights,” cried Anna. “Only two! yes; there is the third. Look, mother! like three red stars.”
“Now,” said Stephen, “one of you must be so good as to help me down this path,—just to the turning.”
Anna guided him, her mother calling out all the way, that they must not go far: she did not choose to be left alone.
While they were for a few minutes out of sight, she had recourse to her prayers, finding herself in too strong a panic for tears. Those nasty birds would come and pick out first her eyes and then Anna’s; and then they two would be more blind than Stephen, and could never get away; and their bones would lie stark and stiff on the cold ground. Before she had done praying that she might live to die in her bed, her companions re-appeared, to save her eyes for the present from the birds.
When Stephen and Anna had reached the first turn of the winding path, he desired to know what was to be seen beneath. “Scarcely anything,” replied Anna. “Between the Casket lights and these rocks, there is nothing but the dark grey sea.”
“And nothing under these rocks?”
“Only a little patch of sand, with nothing upon it; and the white birds sailing out and in. Not a boat on the sea, nor a living person on the land! What a place to bring us to, Stephen!”
“Not a living person on the land! Do you suppose there are any dead, Miss Anna? Do you see any white skeletons among the dark rocks?”
“The place gives one as horrible an idea as any you can speak,” Anna replied. “This is a place where a poor wretch may be cast ashore, and drag himself up out of sea-reach, and mark the sun set thrice while he is pining with hunger and cannot die, and beholding land far off where he cannot make himself seen or heard, till all is one dark cloud before his dying eyes, and his last terrors seize him, and there is no one to take his hand, and speak the word that would calm his spirit. O, Stephen, what a place to bring my mother and me to!”
“Ay, is not it? You are making up your mind to die here, I see. Come; this is all I have to show you yet. We may go up to the sofa again, and see whether your mother is dreaming about dead men’s bones, or crying because she cannot get away.”
Anna was not disposed to make any answer. She led the way back in silence, and said no more to her mother than to remind her that remonstrance was in vain. Nothing could well be more cheerless than the companionship of the party for the next half hour, while the stars were piercing the heaven, and the sea-birds dropping into the caverns below, and the night breeze going forth on its course, and whispering the rocks which stood as sentries over the restless tide. Mrs. Le Brocq sat bolt upright on the stone sofa; Stephen lay down on the turf, as if to sleep; and Anna walked backwards and forwards, harassed by uneasy thoughts. At the same instant, she stopped in her pacing, and Stephen half raised his head, as a watch-dog does at any sound brought by the night wind.
“What is it?” asked Anna.
Probably her half-breathed question did not reach Stephen; for he yawned, and laid himself down as before. Anna could only suppose that she had heard nothing. There was no use in asking her mother; for she must doubtless be fully occupied with the noise in her head, of which she complained at all times, and especially when under any sort of agitation.
In ten minutes more, Stephen jumped up, saying briskly, “Now, Miss Anna, I must trouble you once more.”
“To do what, Mr. Stephen?”
“To prevent my being lost in the honeysuckles, that is all.”
With some unwillingness, Anna again made herself his guide down the path. When she reached the turn, she stifled an exclamation of astonishment.
“Out with it, Miss Anna!” said Stephen. “You see none but friends. What are they doing below?”
“They have set up a boat sideways, to prevent the fire being blown out; or, perhaps, to hinder its being seen from the sea. What a fire they are making! and every man has his pipe.”
“As is fitting for those that help so many to a pipe which they could not otherwise get. How many are there? Do you see any face that you know?”
“I can scarcely tell yet. The light flickers so! One—two—there are five, I think. O, Stephen!—it never can be,—yes, it is,—Mr. Prince, the shopkeeper at St. Peter’s, that—” “Why should not it be Mr. Prince? The shopkeepers are as likely a set of men to be out on a vraicking eve as any. Is he the only one you know?”
“Yes. I see all their faces now. There is no other that I have ever known, I think. How very odd it is to see Mr. Prince look just as he used to do when he stood smiling behind his own counter!”
“He smiles, does he? Well; I hope you ladies will not be afraid to trust yourselves with Mr. Prince; I have no doubt he will be proud to take care of you back.”
“To St. Peter’s! But we do not want to go to St. Peter’s. Stephen, I believe we shall never make you understand how much we wish to get back to Jersey. I wonder you can trifle with us so.”
“Have patience,” said Stephen. “You well know that there is one thing that you desire even more than to get back to Jersey.”
“About Aaron. There he is! behind the boat!” cried she, passing Stephen, and flying down the steep pathway, as if she had thought it possible for Aaron now to escape her by running into the sea. Aaron had no wish to flee away. Before his sister had made her way through his companions, he had opened his arms to her; and he had no less pleasure in the meeting than herself.
He was all surprise at finding Anna apparently alone on a desert island; and she that he was not expecting her. He knew that his family meant soon to return to their farm; but he would as soon have expected to meet the queen of England in the wilds of Berhou as his sister Anna.
His mother there too!—And his father also? he inquired with an altered voice. His father not being of the party, he became extremely impatient to join his mother.
“That is the way by which I came down,” Anna explained. “There,—by yonder little opening. Let me show you. And poor Stephen: I forgot him;— he is there; and he can neither get up nor down by himself, and I left him alone. O, Aaron, how could you go away as you did?” And all the way up the ascent, Aaron had to justify himself for going away as he did. He scarcely paused a moment to greet Stephen; but ran on to find Mrs. Le Brocq. When the first tears and exclamations were over, the question was heard again, “Aaron, how could you go away as you did?”
“Why, mother, is not being here much better than drudging on the tread-wheel, or even than doing nothing in a prison? I tell you, mother, if you did but know the pleasant sort of life I have been leading lately——Well; if that won’t do, let me tell you that it makes me so merry to see you and Anna standing here,—so free, and so far out of the reach of such fellows as Studley,—that I could find in my heart to whiff away all laws like the smoke from one of those tobacco-pipes.”
Anna thought that the use of laws was to enable people to stand free, and out of the reach of knaves and revengeful men.
“To be sure, such ought to be the purpose of laws; but is such the purpose and effect of the excise laws? Nobody knows better than I, and the other men below there, that the raising money for the state is necessary for the security and quiet of the people; but if the money is so raised as to spoil their security and quiet, who is not tempted to wish the laws at the devil, and let the state take its chance for money?
It is a fine thing for us to be here, at any rate, under this open sky, and with plenty of meat and drink below. Come, mother; we will have a good supper to-night, without asking the king’s will about what we shall have, or paying for his leave to enjoy one thing rather than another. We have plenty of vraicking cakes from Alderney, and some fine French wine to drink with them.”
“O, Mr. Stephen,” cried Mrs. Le Brocq, “we are much obliged to you for bringing us here. Here is Aaron so free and happy! and vraicking cakes, and French wine! We are much obliged to you, Mr. Stephen.”
“Yes, we are indeed,” said Anna, heartily. “I beg your pardon, I am sure, for doubting what you were doing for us. But it did seem very forlorn. How well and merry Aaron looks, to be sure! If we were but certain it was all right!”
“How can it be wrong when we are all as merry as children let out of school?” Stephen asked. “I found out your evil thoughts of me, Miss Anna; but now, perhaps, you will trust me another time. I may chance to hear more in a church-bell than the news that the vraicking begins to-morrow.”
“Was it that bell that told you that Aaron would be here to-night? I never thought of that. I never could have guessed it.”
“I dare say not. Some people that have more interest in such matters than you, are no more aware than you of the sly little markets that are held in many a cove and cavern, when an oyster-fishing or a vraicking gives opportunity for many boats to meet together. Such a bell as that we heard in Alderney is a signal to more ears than it is intended for; and lights like those” (pointing towards the Caskets) “serve many eyes for a dial, to show the hour of meeting. Aaron, are there many foreigners off the islands just now?”
“Above fifty small sail of French off Guernsey this morning. The Guernsey folks are fine customers to the French now; which is no little help to our business. We can get anything to order; and when by chance other things fail, there is always corn and wine for the boldest of us to carry; and I, for one, have never had to wait for a port to get them into.——But come; there will be no supper left if we do not make haste down. We jumped ashore with fine appetites, and I would not trust any body with a cooked supper, after such a pull as we have had to-day.
Besides, we have not overmuch time, for we must be off Little Serk before the first farmer is up and overlooking the sea. We have a private errand there.”
“And you are going to leave us—all alone!” exclaimed Mrs. Le Brocq.
“Not if you wish to go with us, mother. At Little Serk you will be all the nearer Jersey, you know. We will take good care of you. Come, Anna; you are not afraid of supping with my partners, are you?”
“O, no; and yet, if anybody had told me——But they do not look at all wild and terrible, as I thought people did when they broke the laws.”
“It depends much on what sort of people break the laws,” observed Stephen; “and that again depends on what sort of laws they are that are broken. When it is not the violent and cruel, but such people as thrifty shop-keepers——” “I cannot help laughing,” said Anna, “to think of Mr. Prince. I am sure nobody could ever dream of being afraid of him. Mother, will you come down, and speak to Mr. Prince, and have some supper?”
“And he will tell us the best plan for getting to Jersey, I dare say. I wonder whether he has been in the way of hearing anything of Louise lately?”
The old lady made little difficulty about the descent; and she and her daughter were presently so far demoralized as to be supping with a company of smugglers, almost as comfortably as if they had been honest men.
CHAPTER VII.
WELCOME TO SUPPER.
The party was off Little Serk, as Aaron willed, before the first farmer was abroad on the upland to overlook the gleamy sea. Two of the company had hastened over the heath, while the others were at supper, to bring the larger packages which had been left behind; and all had put off beneath the moon some time before midnight. Mr. Prince had found a little leisure for being civil to his former customers, though he had much to do, as well as his companions, in stowing in one of the caverns the goods he had brought from France, and loading the boat with the packages deposited there by some friendly vraickers and lobster-fishers.
It was not that in these islands any danger attended traffic of any kind; except in the one article of spirits which had not paid duty.
There were here no guards patrolling the sands, or perched upon the steep, to look for thieves in every bark that cleaved the blue expanse, and anticipate murder when the twilight spread its shadows. There were here no questionable abodes,—spy-stations,—niched in places convenient for overlooking the traffic of housewifes with the fishermen who furnished their tables. Here there were no deadly struggles in the darkness, the comrade going down in deep waters, with the bitter consciousness that he was thrown overboard lest his wounds should lead his companions into danger; or left unclaimed upon the beach, while wife or parents are secretly mourning, and longing to give the exposed body the respectful burial which strangers will not yield. No such extraordinary arrangements deform the simplicity and mar the peace of the society of these islands; but, while the coasts of France and England cannot enjoy the same freedom, the islanders are tempted to share in the frauds and the perils of their neighbours. Not content with having corn, wine, and tobacco at their natural cost of production and carriage, they are willing to help others to the same privilege; and will continue to be so willing as long as, by their office of go-between, they can make a profit by the bad legislation of the two kingdoms within whose embrace they lie. There is no remedy for this but rectifying the faults of French and English commercial legislation. As long as taxes are levied by raising the prices of necessary articles so high as to make smuggling profitable, the island boats will steal along the shores, or cautiously cross the straits on the dishonest errands of a mediator between two defrauders; they will land their passengers short of their point, because they have something besides passengers on board; they will make a show of lobsters to hide tea and tobacco. To impose restraints on them, similar to those by which they now profit in pocket and suffer in morals, would only increase the evil by enlarging the field of temptation, and adding the demand of the islands to that of the two neighbouring coasts. There is no remedy but in putting all on an equality, not of restraint, but of freedom.
The lord of Serk and his people had not yet opened their eyes on the morning sunshine, when the boat containing Aaron and his party ran under the perpendicular rocks of the island, and several voices announced that they had arrived at their destination. No landing-place was visible; but the women had by this time become inured to wonders, and resigned to whatever of romantic might come in their way. They asked no questions, even when their boat grated against the rock, and moved uneasily in the ripple without being intended to make any progress. They made no objection when desired to lay hold of a rope which dangled from a ledge thirty feet above their heads; and quietly submitted to be hauled up they knew not whither. Up and down, forward and round-about they went, now seeing a cask taken up from a store-cavern, now dropping a message in a lonely cottage; and at last sitting down to repose in a cavern which was lighted only from a natural opening at the top, upon which the blue sky seemed to rest as a roof. Here the echoes were already awake with the blows of the mattock and the grating of the saw. Here boat-building went on, early and late; for a certain Englishman had found out how well the islanders are off for timber,—the best of timber, which pays no duty; and many a good bargain he made by going forth in a worn-out vessel, and coming home in a boat of Serk workmanship. Aaron was right in supposing that here he should pick up the means of conveying his mother and sister home with their heavy wares. Here he insisted on their resting, after their many fatigues and long watching; but it was not that he might himself repose. He had still a little trip to make.
“My dear, you will be tired to death,” said his mother. “I never knew you work all night in Jersey.”
Aaron laughed, and said that people are seldom tired to death when they work at no bidding but their own: and, as for working at night—— “It is a bad practice, Aaron, depend upon it,” said his sister. “Honest work is done by daylight.”
“Carry your objections to those who taught me to work at night,” answered Aaron. “And not me only, but hundreds more. They are but few who would naturally work when their part of the world is supposed to be asleep;—the nurse beside the sick-bed, and the watchmen that walk the streets of cities; the beacon-keeper that trims the lamps in his high tower, and the helmsman that fixes his eyes upon those lights far out at sea. All but these are supposed to be at rest when God has set his stars for night-lamps, and drawn the darkness about us for a curtain: but there are some who contradict his decree that night is the time for rest;—and they are such as make harsh and unjust laws.”
“But for laws,” said Anna, nearly as she had said before, “we might be subject to the robber by night, and the violent man by day. Without laws, none of us could lie down and sleep in peace.”
“Without some wholesome laws: but, if it were not for certain unwise and cruel laws, thousands more of us would lie down and sleep in peace. Ask the country justice in England, whose business it is to enforce the laws, how often it happens that labourers who cannot get work during the day because their superiors have a monopoly of bread, toil unlawfully all the night because their superiors have a monopoly of game. He may dispute the wickedness; but he will not deny what comes of digging pitfalls for men, lest they should set springes for birds. Ask,—(nobody could have told better than poor Durell)—ask any exciseman what time is chosen by certain traders for their traffic, and makers for their work; and he will tell you of the burning, and the boiling, and the distilling, and the packing and removing that take place by night. He will tell you that the noblest works that men can do, and that they ought to do proudly in the daylight, are done by night, because the law has fixed a sin and a shame upon them. To make improvements in human comfort is turned into a sin and shame, when those improvements are made too expensive by a tax; therefore they are tried by night. The exchange of the fruits of men’s labour is made a sin and a shame, when a tax comes in to make such an exchange unprofitable: therefore it is done by night. These innocent things being made a sin and a shame is the reason why tax-gatherers prowl about, like so many robbers, when the sun is down; and why the better men whom they entrap are carried to prison in the morning, to come out blasted and desperate, as if they had committed a crime against God’s majesty instead of against the king’s treasury.”
Mrs. Le Brocq stared in astonishment at her son. With a little hesitation, she asked him whether he had not adopted a new vocation, and turned preacher. The kindness of his manner to her, and the eloquence of his speech, concurred to impress her with the idea. He smiled as he answered, that there would be no lack of preachers or of eloquence upon this subject, if every one who had suffered were allowed to bear witness. A voice would rise up from all the land, and go forth over the sea, if every Briton who is injured by the mode in which he is obliged to pay his contribution to the state, might speak his mind.
But still,—Aaron talked so differently from what he used to do,—so freely,—so cleverly.
“There is all the difference in the world, mother, between——But I do not wish to say anything disrespectful of my father: so I will only mention that the reason why it is found to be prudent for governments to allow people to speak out, is because nothing makes men more eloquent than a sense of wrong; and the stronger the eloquence that is suppressed, the more doggedly will the sense of wrong show itself in some other way. A whole nation can mutter and be sullen, as I used to be; and its muttering and sullenness may prove of more importance than mine. Now I have got an occupation of my own, and am under nobody’s management, I could preach (as you would say) very strongly both to parents and governments about not being spies and meddlers,—that is to say,” (recollecting his father) “about not interfering more than is pleasant with the doings of their children and subjects. To make wise and merciful general laws, and then leave the will and actions free in particular instances, is the only true policy,—the only kind of government which is not in its nature tyranny.”
“But how do you apply that to the paying of taxes?” inquired Stephen.
“How is the state to raise money on such a plan of government?”
“Far more easily than in any other way, in my opinion. Under a general rule that property is to pay such or such a proportion of tax, there is the least possible room for partiality and oppression; for the derangement of people’s affairs, and interference with people’s actions.
There is an open and honest calling to account, at times that are fixed, in a manner that is established, and for purposes that are well understood: while, by meddling as excisemen and custom-house officers meddle, the king is defrauded of the affections of his people; the state is wronged in purse and reputation; and its agents are made masters to teach multitudes a livelihood which need never have been heard of. Which of us would naturally have dreamed of living by defrauding the government, for whose protection we were ready to pay our share?”
“Then you will not go on as you have been doing lately,” said Anna. “You will go home with us, and serve the government as you yourself think the government ought to be served.”
“I will see you home, and do my father’s errand at the custom-house,” replied Aaron. “The States shall never have cause to complain of me, as long as they go on to take our taxes as they do now. As for cheating them, I could not if I would: and I am sure I have no desire to do it while they treat me like a man, and ask no more from me than is due from a subject.”
“I am sure I hope they will go on to do so.”
“You may well wish it. If ever they begin meddling with your cider or soap-making, or setting spies upon me when I buy tobacco or hemp, I shall be off to some country,—Turkey may be,—where taxes are demanded and not filched.”
“Turkey! I thought that was a horrible country to live in.”
“So you would find it in many respects; but it is wise and free in its mode of taxation; and the effects of this one kind of wisdom and freedom on the happiness of the people, our neighbours on the north and south would do prudently to study and admit. However, yonder lies Jersey; as good a place as Turkey in this respect, and better in many others; so I have no present wish to sail eastwards.”
It seemed to Mrs. Le Brocq this afternoon that nothing more was necessary to happiness than to be sailing southwards, with Aaron trimming the sail, Anna looking as tranquil as if she had never been in an excise court or a prison, and the beloved island rising on the sight, in which was Louise, probably with a pretty baby in her arms;—a pretty baby, of course, as every thing belonging to Louise must be pretty. How cheerful looked that picturesque coast from Grosnez to Rozel, as promontory after promontory came into view, tapestried with verdure, or crested with cairns or church towers, and casting each its dark shadow to hide its eastern cove from the declining sun! How busy were those coves to-day! how unlike their usual solitude and stillness! At almost every other time, it was a wonder to see more than a solitary loiterer on the narrow path whose precarious line circled the rocks, and penetrated the bays, now winding up to the steep, now dipping to the margin of the water; and, as for the yellow sands, they were left printless from tide to tide while the islanders were busy about their farmsteads. But now, all was as animated as if the land was joyful at the Le Brocqs’ return. Carts were standing in the water to receive the vraic; and the red-capped boy who rode the horse, or the white-sleeved man who wielded his rake in the vehicle, looked bright in the evening sunshine. Here and there, a horse might be seen swimming home from a distant mass of rock, guided by a youth or maiden mounted on the heaped panniers. Boats were plying from point to point; and on every ledge where marine vegetation could be supposed to flourish without danger of molestation, children might be seen tugging at the tenacious weed, while their fathers did more effectual execution with their scythes. There was not an exposed place all along this coast where the lobsters could safely come up this day to sun themselves; and when the infant crabs should next propose to play hide-and-seek in what was to them a sort of marine jungle, they would find their moist retreat stripped and bare, and must betake themselves again to the tide. High on the beach might be seen parties busy at their work, or busier at their recreation,— spreading and tossing the ooze as if it were hay, or broaching the cider cask, and distributing the vraicking cakes. Mrs. Le Brocq once nearly upset the boat, by lifting up her ponderous self with the view of hailing the mowers on shore;—a feat about as practicable in her case as shaking hands with one on the top of Coutances cathedral. She was glad to reseat herself, and be no worse, and try to wait patiently till the boat should have rounded Archirondel tower, and given her up to tread one of the green paths from St. Catherine’s bay to the ridge, on the other side of which was Louise.
From that ridge might be seen the farm-house, just as was expected. It did not seem to have lost an ivy-leaf, nor to have gained so much as a lichen on its pales. The pigeons looked the very same. The fowls strutted and perched exactly as formerly; and the brook trotted over the stones as if it had never grown tired all these many months.
“Who could have thought we had been away?” was Anna’s first exclamation.
Her mother was toiling on too fast to reply; but Aaron gave an unconscious answer to her thought when he presently overtook them, and delivered the result of the observation he had lingered on the ridge to make with his boat glass.
“Who do you think is in the porch, mother?”
“Louise!”
“And who else?—No, not her husband, nor Victorine; but her baby. There is a bundle on her arm; I am sure it must be her baby. Charles is out vraicking, no doubt; and Victorine is milking, I see, behind there. Not so fast, mother, if I may advise. Let me go first. She will be less surprised to see me; and I think she cannot be strong yet, or she would have been out vraicking too.”
It was, in fact, Louise’s first evening out of doors after her confinement. What an evening it was!—Anna relieving her of all household cares; her mother overflowing by turns with affecting narrative and admiration of the infant; Stephen giving a droll turn to every thing; and no paternal restraint to spoil the whole! It was a pity that night was near, and that it would come to put a stop to the interesting questions and answers that abounded.
“When do you gather your apples, love? I have been thinking we must soon be setting about your cider.”
“But, mother, only think of your coming away from London without seeing the king!”
“My dear, your father did write to him: so it is not as if we had had nothing to do with him.”
“And what was the answer like?”
“Bless me, Anna! we never thought more of the king’s answer. But, really, my head was so full of things, I never recollected to send to inquire at the post-office. However, your father will be more mindful, I dare say. Well, Louise, I cannot think how you managed with the calf, to have such a misfortune happen, my dear. I never failed with one all the time I lived here.”
“And you say you never so much as tried in Lambeth. I do wonder you did not manage it, one way or another.”
“Nobody keeps cows there, love, but the brewers; and then the poor beasts live on the grains, and seldom taste fresh grass. They flourish, in a way, too. A great brewer near us had one brought in, intending that it should have the range of the paved yard, on Sundays, when the gates were shut: but the creature had fattened on the grains so that when the people would have let her out, she could not turn in her stall. When they had thinned her a little, so that she might get exercise, it was thought that the fumes of the liquor had affected her head, she capered about so among the casks. But I never heard but what she yielded very good cream, which you do not always see in London.”
“I wonder how they get cream at all, if, as you say, there are no cows but one in each brewery. Perhaps the excise makes the difficulty with taking some of the cream for the king; as they say the tithing man does for the parson.”
Aaron had not heard of an exciseman being yet instructed to thrust himself between the cow and the milk-pail; but he should not be surprised any day to hear of its being made part of an excise officer’s duty to peep in at a dairy lattice, and see what the milk-maids were about with their skimming dishes. Did not he hear horses’ feet outside?
Could it be Charles? No; Charles was not coming home to-night. What old friend could it be? And he ran out to see.
“An old enemy,” the guest expected to be called. It was Janvrin, the tax-gatherer. Every body was struck with the strangeness of the circumstance that he should appear on this particular night,—to a party who had had so much to do with taxes since they had met him last. There was something much more astonishing to him in the cordiality of his reception.
“The last time I saw you all here,” said he, “you certainly wished me at the Caskets, or somewhere further off still; and now, you are heaping your good supper upon me, as if I were come to pay money, and not to ask it.”
“For our former behaviour,” replied Aaron, “you may call him to account,”—pointing to Stephen. “You heard him say what taxation was in England,—just paying a trifle more for articles when they were bought;— such a mere trifle as not to be perceived. He is not laughing in his sleeve now as he was when he told that traveller’s tale. It is to our having taken him at his word, Janvrin, and made trial of English taxation, that you owe your different reception to-night.”
Stephen expressed his sorrow that his words had taken so much more effect than he had intended. He really would try,—he would do his very best, to avoid telling travellers’ tales for the future.
“The oddest thing is,” said Janvrin, “that there are some who are no travellers that tell the very same tale. There are dwellers in England,— even speakers in her parliament, who ought to know the condition and interests of the people, who go on to insist that the filching system,— the taxing of commodities,—is the best way of raising a revenue. The wonder to me is why the mouths of such men are not stopped,—how such taxes come to be borne.”
“Because it is the ignorant who have to bear the worst of the burden,” Stephen thought. “The payment is made unconsciously by those who pay in the long run. The trader feels the grievance at first, and makes an outcry; but when the time comes for him to repay himself out of his customers’ pockets, he drops his cry, and nobody takes it up. It saves some people much trouble that all should be hush. But the time cannot be far off when honest men will be set to inquire, and then——” “And what then?”
“They will report that the truest kindness to the people will be rather to preserve the worst direct tax, be it what it may, that was ever devised, than to go on taxing glass and soap, and many other things nearly as necessary.”
“If the people are so little aware as you say, I am afraid that day is a long way off.”
“I think it is near at hand; and for this reason; that there has been a beginning made with the excise taxes. The government has set free