“Nay!” said Hartopp, whispering also through the darkness, “don’t fear me; I will hold my peace, though ‘tis very hard not to tell Williams at least that you did not take me in. But you shall be obeyed.”
They drew away Merle, who was wondering what the whispered talk was about, catching a word or two here and there, and left the old man not quite to solitude,—Waife’s hand, in quitting George’s grasp, dropped on the dog’s head.
Hartopp went back to his daughter’s home in a state of great excitement, drinking more wine than usual at dinner, talking more magisterially than he had ever been known to talk, railing quite misanthropically against the world; observing, that Williams had become unsufferably overbearing, and should be pensioned off: in short, casting the whole family into the greatest perplexity to guess what had come to the mild man. Merle found himself a lodging, and cast a horary scheme as to what would happen to Waife and himself for the next three months, and found all the aspects so perversely contradictory, that he owned he was no wiser as to the future than he was before the scheme was cast. George Morley remained in the cottage, stealing up, from time to time, to Waife’s room, but not fatiguing him with talk. Before midnight, the old man slept, but his slumber was much perturbed, as if by fearful dreams. However, he rose early, very weak, but free from fever, and in full possession of his reason. To George’s delight, Waife’s first words to him then were expressive of a wish to return to Sophy. “He had dreamed,” he said, “that he had heard her voice calling out to him to come to her help.” He would not revert to the scene with Jasper. George once ventured to touch on that reminiscence, but the old man’s look became so imploring that he desisted. Nevertheless, it was evident to the Pastor, that Waife’s desire to return was induced by his belief that he had become necessary to Sophy’s protection. Jasper, whose remorse would probably be very short-lived, had clearly discovered Sophy’s residence, and as clearly Waife, and Waife alone, still retained some hold over his rugged breast. Perhaps, too, the old man had no longer the same dread of encountering Jasper; rather, perhaps, a faint hope that, in another meeting, he might more availingly soften his son’s heart. He was not only willing, then—he was eager to depart, and either regained or assumed much of his old cheerfulness in settling with his hostess, and parting with Merle, on whom he forced his latest savings and the tasteful contents of his pannier. Then he took aside George, and whispered in his ear: “A very honest, kind-hearted man, sir; can you deliver him from the Planets?—they bring him into sad trouble. Is there no opening for a cobbler at Humberston?”
George nodded, and went back to Merle, who was wiping his eyes with his coat-sleeve. “My good friend,” said the scholar, “do me two favours, besides the greater one you have already bestowed in conducting me back to a revered friend. First, let me buy of you the contents of that basket; I have children amongst whom I would divide them as heirlooms; next, as we were travelling hither, you told me that, in your younger days, ere you took to a craft which does not seem to have prospered, you were brought up to country pursuits, and knew all about cows and sheep, their care and their maladies. Well, I have a few acres of glebe-land on my own hands, not enough for a bailiff—too much for my gardener—and a pretty cottage, which once belonged to a schoolmaster, but we have built him a larger one; it is now vacant, and at your service. Come and take all trouble of land and stock off my hands; we shall not quarrel about the salary. But harkye, my friend—on one proviso—give up the Crystal, and leave the Stars to mind their own business.”
“Please your Reverence,” said Merle, who, at the earlier part of the address, had evinced the most grateful emotion, but who, at the proviso which closed it, jerked himself lip, dignified and displeased—“Please your Reverence, no! Kit Merle is not so unnatural as to swop away his Significator at Birth for a mess of porritch! There was that forrin chap, Gally-Leo—he stuck to the stars, or the sun, which is the same thing—and the stars stuck by him, and brought him honour and glory, though the Parsons war dead agin him. He had Malefics in his Ninth House, which belongs to Parsons.”
“Can’t the matter be compromised, dear Mr. George?” said Waife, persuasively. “Suppose Merle promises to keep his crystal and astrological schemes to himself, or at least only talk of them to you;—they can’t hurt you, I should think, sir? And science is a sacred thing, Merle; and the Chaldees, who were the great star-gazers, never degraded themselves by showing off to the vulgar. Mr. George, who is a scholar, will convince you of that fact.”
“Content,” said George. “So long as Mr. Merle will leave my children and servants, and the parish generally, in happy ignorance of the future, I give him the fullest leave to discuss his science with myself whenever we chat together on summer moons or in winter evenings; and perhaps I may—”
“Be converted?” said Waife, with a twinkling gleam of the playful Humour which had ever sported along his thorny way by the side of Sorrow.
“I did not mean that,” said the Parson, smiling; “rather the contrary. What say you, Merle? Is it not a bargain?”
“Sir—God bless you!” cried Merle, simply; “I see you won’t let me stand in my own light. And what Gentleman Waife says as to the vulgar, is uncommon true.”