The woman paused for a moment in thought, then continued—“I need make no secret of it; the whole country round is ringing with it by this time. Some poor fellows, lady, as had wives and children to feed, and no money to buy bread to give to ’em, went to get a few of the birds and things that’s running wild in the woods of them that’s rich, and don’t want ’em; and the keepers cum to stop ’em, and one of ’em got shot in the confusion; and the police have took my husband and my brother, and swear the’re the men that did it; and the’re to be had up to-day before them that’s sure to condemn ’em, innocent or guilty—gentlemen that chuses to keep the wild creatures that God sent for food for them as wants it, all for their own selfish amusement—begging your pardon, lady—but it’s the truth; and when one’s heart aches like mine does, the truth will out.”
“It is natural, perhaps, that you should think thus in your situation,” returned Alice, gravely; “but depend upon it your husband and your brother will not be punished unless they justly deserve it. The gamekeeper was not killed I hope?”
“Oh no, my lady! not hurt very serious neither I do hope; only they want to make the most of it, to get a chance to punish my poor fellows, don’t you see?” was the reply; “and if my husband is put in prison for long, and lays out of work, what’s to become o’ me and the children?”
“You have more than this one, then?” inquired Alice.
For answer the woman rose, and passing into the inner room of the cottage, in less than a minute returned, bearing in her arms a little girl, apparently about two years old, whose bright, rosy cheeks, and eyes evidently distressed by the vivid sunlight, gave unmistakeable tokens of having been roused out of a sound sleep. Alice possessed a thorough woman’s love of children, leading her to consider ugly ones pretty, and pretty ones “little angels;” so she immediately took this particular duodecimo angelic specimen on her knee, and won its celestial affections by allowing it to play with her watch, and a bunch of miscellaneous rubbish attached thereunto, and denominated, on the lucus a non lucendo principle, a chatelaine. This reinforcement of infantry having completely won the day (the “dear” sleeping baby had been a powerful, unconscious advocate of its parent’s cause), Alice began to consider how best she could assist the distressed mother. The first point was to learn to whom to apply in favour of the culprits, and she accordingly inquired on whose land they had been taken, and in whose service the wounded gamekeeper resided? The answer was at the same time embarrassing and satisfactory. Of course, if the offence had been committed upon her husband’s property, he could, if he would, decline to prosecute the offenders—if he would?—there lay the difficulty. Alice was well aware of the serious light in which Harry regarded the crime of poaching; and the attack on the gamekeeper even she was forced to reprobate; but if it should prove that the man was not seriously injured, she trusted to her newly-regained influence to enable her to place the matter in such a light that Harry would agree with her in overlooking the culprit’s offence for the sake of his family; or, at all events, if that was expecting too much of his penitence, she had only to ask it as a personal favour, and he surely could not refuse her. So, carried away by her feelings of kindly sympathy, and acting on the impulse of the moment, she put forth all her powers of consolation, and ended by disclosing her name, and the relation in which she stood towards that persecutor of poachers, Harry Coverdale, at the same time promising to use her influence, which she represented as all-powerful, to screen the culprits from the effects of their misdemeanors.
Before her consolatory harangue was well concluded, the carriage arrived, and Alice, having kissed the children (the unfortunate baby being aroused expressly for the performance of the affectionate ceremony, a violation of the rights of the subject which it resented by crying and slobbering with a twenty-infant power over Alice’s velvet mantle), left five shillings in the hands of their mamma, by way of a peace-offering, and departed, thoroughly satisfied with her début in the character of poor man’s friend and cottager’s comforter. All the way she drove home she was building castles in the air for the benefit and behoof of the ruined family, having mentally adopted the little girl as lady’s-maid, and apprenticed the baby, which was of the nobler sex, to a serious and immaculate carpenter, before she reached the Park.
Coverdale was absent when his wife arrived, having ridden over to H————, to assist at the committal of Jack Hargrave and his accomplice; but she received from Wilkins, who was, in more senses than one, a confidential servant, an over-full, untrue, and particularly-exaggerated account of the affray of the previous night, from which she acquired two facts, which tended considerably to disquiet her, viz.:—first, that the wounded man was Markum, her husband’s especial favourite; and secondly, that Harry had been personally involved in the affair; both of which considerations increased the difficulty of the negotiation for gaol-delivery to which she had incautiously pledged herself. Having taken off her things, she proceeded first to fraternise with her King Charles spaniel and the two canary-birds (which latter plumed bipeds celebrated her return in songs of shrill triumph, like a couple of inebriated penny whistles), then to put all the ornaments right, which the housemaid had dusted into uncomfortable and heterodox positions. She had just discovered a china cup, which nobody had broken, and which yet was divided in several places, having probably split its own sides laughing at the grotesque figures with which its manufacturer had seen fit to embellish it, and she was hunting for a bottle of diamond cement wherewith to repair the damage before her husband’s return, when the sound of horses’ feet announced that event to have taken place.
The first words that met her ear were, “Let one of the helpers go down to Markum’s cottage, wait till Mr. Gouger has seen him again, and bring me his report without a moment’s delay; if it should be unsatisfactory I’ll send for Brodie by electric telegraph. Is your mistress returned?”
A warm embrace, an expression of his delight at having her back again, a hurried enquiry after Mr. Hazlehurst, and then Harry rushed into his narrative of the poaching affair, and in his eagerness to detail every circumstance of a matter which interested him so deeply, did not notice the tameness of Alice’s sympathy, or the lukewarm manner in which she seconded his virtuous indignation against the miscreants who had all but murdered good, honest Markum: “And small thanks to them that it was ‘all but,’ for, if ever a scoundrel meant mischief, that scoundrel was Jack Hargrave.”
Alice saw this was no time to urge her suit, and so merely confined herself to the general remark, that it was a dreadful affair for all parties, and that she pitied the wives of the wretched men who had committed the rash act, as much as anybody concerned in the matter; to which Harry replied:—