Mr. Toner got into his clothes, resolved to have it out with somebody, even if Rufus himself should prove to be the traitor. When, a few minutes later, Mr. Terry, smoking his morning pipe, foregathered with Ben in the stable yard, and asked him what he was after now, the answer he gave was: "Lookin' araound fer somebody to whayul!" to which the veteran replied: "Bin, my lad, it's aisy talkin'."
When the men were out of the kitchen, Mrs. Carruthers and her sister-in-law came in to see the mad woman and her boy. The boy they knew already, and had always been kind to, giving him toys and other little presents, as well as occasional food and shelter. They were much taken with the mother's quiet manners, and, having heard that she had been a milliner, invited her to join them in the workroom. But, when they unitedly arrived at the door of that apartment, they speedily retired to the parlour, and there engaged in conversation. Mrs. Du Plessis was upstairs, with the colonel to play propriety, sponging the dominie's face and hands, and brushing his hair, as if he were her own son. Every now and again Colonel Morton came up to the bedside, saying: "Be kind to him, my deah Tehesa, and remembeh that he saved the life of yoah poah sistah Cecilia's widowah." So the stately Spanish lady shook up the wounded man's pillows, while the colonel put his arm around him and held him up; and then, as he sank back again, she asked. "Are you strong enough to have Cecile come up and read to you?" Wilkinson, sly dog, as the Captain called him, said it was too much trouble to put Miss Du Plessis to; but his objections were overruled. Soon a beatific vision came once more on the scene, and Wordsworth was enthroned as the king of poets. Miss Halbert and Mr. Perrowne were in the garden, and the clergyman had a rose in his button hole which he had not plucked himself. If he had not been in holy orders, he would have thought Miss Fanny was awfully jolly. Then he said to himself, that holy orders don't hinder a man being a man, and Miss Fanny was, really was, awfully jolly, and boarding in the houses of uncultivated farmers was an awful bore. But this was nothing to what was going on in the studiously avoided work room. The lawyer's hands were being washed, because a voice from an arch-looking face said that he was a big baby, and didn't know how to wash himself. It was quite a big baby in size and aspect that was soaped and glycerined, and had some other stuff rubbed into his hands by other pretty hands, one of which wore the victim's ring. Corry felt that he could stand it, even to the putting on of the minister's gloves. When she had finished her work, the hospital nurse said, "that silly little Marjorie, angry because Cecile would not allow her to read fairy stories to Mr. Wilkinson, surrendered you to me."
"O Marjorie, my darlin', and would you throw your lovely self away on a poor, stupid, worthless thing like me?"
CHAPTER XV.
Miss Carmichael Snubs and Thinks—The Constable and the Prisoner—Matilda and the Doctor—The Children Botanize—Pressing Specimens—Nomenclature—The Colonel Makes a Discovery—Miss Carmichael Does Not Fancy Wilks—Mr. Newberry Takes Matilda—Mr. Pawkins Makes Mischief and is Punished—Rounds on Sylvanus—Preparations for Inquest
"Mr. Coristine, I never gave you permission to call me by my Christian name, much less to think that I accepted Marjorie's foolish little charge. I am sorry if I have led you to believe that I acted so bold, so shameless a part."
"Oh, Miss Carmichael, forgive me. I'm stupid, as I said, but, as the Bible has it, I'll try and keep a watch on the door of my lips in future. And you such an angel of mercy, too! Please, Miss Carmichael, pardon a blundering Irishman."
"Nonsense," she answered. "I have nothing to pardon; only, I did not want you to misunderstand me." The gloves were on, and she shook hands with him, and laughed a comical little insincere laugh in his face, and ran away to her own room to have a foolish little cry. She heard her friend Cecile reading poetry to the wounded Wilkinson, and, looking out of her window, saw Mr. Perrowne helping her uncle to lift the doctor's chair out into the garden, and her mother, freed from conversation with the madwoman, plucking a flower for Mr. Errol's coat. There, too, was a young man, his hands encased in black kid gloves, sitting down on a bench with Mr. Terry, and with difficulty filling a meerschaum pipe. She thought he had a quiet, disappointed look, like a man's whose warm, generous impulses have been checked, and she felt guilty. It was true they had not known one another long, but what was she, a teacher in a common school, that was what people called them, to put on airs before such a man as that? If it had been Mr. Wilkinson, now; but, no; she was afraid of Mr. Wilkinson, the distant, the irreproachable, the autocratic great Mogul. She looked down again, through the blinds of course. Marjorie Thomas was on the lawyer's knee, and Marjorie Carruthers on the veteran's. The Captain's daughter was combing Coristine's brown hair with her fingers, and pointing the ends of his moustache, much to the other Marjorie's amusement and the lawyer's evident satisfaction. Miss Carmichael inwardly called her cousin a saucy little minx, resenting her familiarities with a man who was, of course, nothing to her, in a way that startled herself. Why had he not saved somebody's life and been wounded, instead of that poetic fossil of a Wilkinson? But, no; it was better not, for, had he saved the colonel's life, Cecile would have been with him, and that she could not bear to think of. Then, she remembered what Corry had told her of the advertisement to the next of kin. Perhaps she would be wealthy yet, and more than his equal socially, and then she could condescend, as a great lady, and put a treasure in those poor gloved hands. Where would they all have been without these hands, all scarred and blistered to save them from death? Everybody was very unkind to little Marjorie's Eugene, and failed to recognize his claims upon their gratitude. Oh, that saucy little minx, with her grand assumptions of proprietorship, as if she owned him, forsooth!
Mr. Bangs called the justices to business. There was a prisoner to examine, and two charred masses of humanity for the coroner to sit upon. So a messenger was sent off to summon the long-suffering Johnson, Newberry, and Pawkins, for the coroner's inquest, and the doctor was carried back into the office for the examination of the prisoner, Mark Davis. The two Squires sat in appropriate chairs behind an official table, at one side of which Mr. Bangs took his seat as clerk. Constable Rigby produced his prisoner, loaded with fetters. "Has this man had his breakfast, Rigby?" asked the Squire. "Certainly not, Squire," replied the constable. "Then take him at once to the kitchen, take off these chains and handcuffs, and let him have all that he can eat," replied the J.P., sternly. The corporal's sense of rectitude was offended. The idea of feeding criminals and releasing them from irons! The next thing would be to present them with a medal and a clasp for each new offence against society. But, orders were orders, and, however iniquitous, had to be obeyed; so Davis was allowed to stretch his limbs, and partake of a bountiful, if somewhat late, morning meal. "To trespass upon your kindness, Miss Hill, with such as this," said the apologetic constable, pointing to his prisoner, "is no act of mine; Squire Carruthers, who, no doubt, thinks he knows best, has given orders that it has to be, and my duty is to carry out his orders to the letter." Breakfast seemed to infuse courage into the dissipated farmer. When it was over, he arose, and, without a note of warning, doubled up the stiff guardian of the peace, and made for the door, where he fell into the arms of the incoming Serlizer. She evidently thought that Mark Davis, smitten with her charms, was about to salute her, for, with the words "Scuse me!" and a double turn of her powerful wrists, she deposited the assailant upon the floor. Sadly, but officially, the constable crawled over and sat upon the prostrate form of the would-be fugitive from justice. The prisoner squirmed, and even struck the doubled-up corporal, but the entrance of Ben Toner put an end to that nonsense, so that, handcuffed and chained once more, the desperate villain was hauled into the presence of the magistrates. In dignified, but subordinate, language, Mr. Rigby related the prisoner's escapade, and, by implication, more than by actual statement, gave the J.P.s to understand that they knew nothing about the management of offenders against the law. They were, therefore, compelled to allow the handcuffs to remain, but summoned sufficient courage to insist on the removal of the stable chains.