Erema; Or, My Father's Sin

by R. D. Blackmore

It relieved her much to tell me this, once for all and in strict confidence; because her fine old-fashioned (and we now may say quite obsolete) idea of duty toward her husband forbade her ever to say to him, or about him, when it could be helped, any thing he might not like, any thing which to an evil mind might convey a desire on her part to meddle with—with—

“Political economy,” I said; and she laughed, and said, Yes, that was just it. The Major of course knew best, and she ought with all her heart to trust him not to burden their old days with debt, after all the children they had brought up and fairly educated upon the professional income of a distinguished British officer, who is not intended by his superiors to provide successors.

“Perhaps it is like the boiled eggs they send me,” the old lady said, with her soft sweet smile, “for my poor hens to sit upon. Their race is too good to be made common. So now they get tinkers' and tailors' boys, after much competition, and the crammed sons of cooks. And in peace-time they do just as well.”

Of such things I knew nothing; but she seemed to speak with bitterness, the last thing to be found in all her nature, yet discoverable—as all bad things (except its own) are—by the British government. I do not speak from my own case, in which they discovered nothing.

By the time these things had been discussed, my host (who was always particular about his dress) came down to dinner, and not until that was over could I speak of the subject which had brought me there. No sooner had I begun my tale than they both perceived that it must neither be flurried nor interrupted, least of all should it be overheard.

“Come into my lock-up,” cried the Major; “or, better still, let us go out of doors. We can sit in my snuggery on the cliff, with only gulls and jackdaws to listen, and mount my telescope and hoist my flag, and the men know better than to skulk their work. I can see every son of a gun of them as clearly as if I had them on parade. You wish Mrs. Hockin to come, I suppose. Very well, let us be off at once. I shall count my fellows coming back from dinner.”

With a short quick step the Major led the way to a beautifully situated outpost at a corner of the cliff, where land and sea for many a fair league rolled below. A niche of the chalk had been cleverly enlarged and scooped into a shell-shaped bower, not, indeed, gloriously overhung, as in the far West might have been, but broken of its white defiant glare by climbing and wandering verdure. Seats and slabs of oak were fixed to check excess of chalkiness, and a parapet of a pattern which the Major called Egyptian saved fear of falling down the cliff, and served to spread a paper on, or to rest a telescope.

“From this point,” said the Major, crossing wiry yet substantial legs, “the whole of my little domain may be comprised as in a bird's-eye view. It is nothing, of course, much less than nothing, compared with the Earl of Crowcombe's, or the estate of Viscount Gamberley; still, such as it is, it carries my ideas, and it has an extent of marine frontage such as they might envy. We are asked 5 pounds per foot for a thread of land fronting on a highway, open to every kind of annoyance, overlooked, without any thing to look at. How much, then, per fathom (or measure, if you please, by cable-lengths) is land worth fronting the noble, silent, uncontaminating, healthful sea? Whence can come no coster-mongers' cries, no agitating skir of bagpipes or the maddening hurdy-gurdy, no German band expecting half a crown for the creation of insanity; only sweet murmur of the wavelets, and the melodious whistle of a boatman catching your breakfast lobster. Where, again, if you love the picturesque—”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Hockin, gently, “you always were eloquent from the first day I saw you; and if you reconstitute our borough, as you hope, and enter Parliament for Bruntsea, what a sensation you will create! But I wished to draw your attention to the fact that Erema is waiting to tell her tale.”

“To be sure. I will not stop her. Eloquence is waste of time, and I never yet had half a second to spare. Fear no eloquence from me; facts and logic are my strong points. And now, Erema, show what yours are.”