Erema; Or, My Father's Sin

by R. D. Blackmore

Triumphantly he drove off, while the Major cried, “Never tie up my rattan again. Oh, it was Mrs. Hockin, was it? What a fool I was not to stop on my own manor!”

“I pray you to disdain such low impudence,” I said, for I could not bear to see him shake like that, and grieved to have brought him into it. “You have beaten fifty of them—a hundred of them—I have heard you say.”

“Certainly I have, my dear; but I had no Bruntsea then, and could not afford to pay the rogues. That makes me feel it so bitterly, so loftily, and so righteously. To be treated like this, when I think of all my labors for the benefit of the rascally human race! my Institute, my Lyceum, my Mutual Improvement Association, and Christian Young Men's something. There is no institution, after all, to be compared to the tread-mill.”

Recovering himself with this fine conclusion, he led me down a little sloping alley, scarcely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, to an old black door, where we set down our parcels; for he had taken his, while I carried mine, and not knowing what might happen yet, like a true peace-maker I stuck to the sheaf of umbrellas and the rattan cane. And thankful I was, and so might be the cabman, to have that weapon nicely sheathed with silk.

Major Hockin's breath was short, through too much talking without action, and he waited for a minute at this door, to come back to his equanimity. And I thought that our female breath falls short for the very opposite reason—when we do too much and talk too little; which happily seldom happens.

He was not long in coming back to his usual sprightliness and decision. And it was no small relief to me, who was looking at him miserably, and longing that his wife was there, through that very sad one-and-eightpence, when he pulled out a key, which he always carried as signer and lord of Bruntsea, the key of the town-hall, which had survived lock, door, and walls by centuries, and therewith struck a door which must have reminded that key of its fine old youth.

Before he had knocked so very many times, the door was opened by a young man wearing an apron and a brown paper cap, who knew Major Hockin at once, and showed us up stairs to a long low workshop. Here were many wheels and plates and cylinders revolving by energy of a strap which came through the floor and went through the ceiling. And the young man told us to be careful how we walked, for fear of getting entangled. Several men, wearing paper caps and aprons of leather or baize, were sitting doing dextrous work, no doubt, and doing it very easily, and the master of them all was hissing over some fine touch of jewel as a groom does at a horse. Then seeing us, he dropped his holders, and threw a leather upon his large lens, and came and took us to a little side room.

“Are you not afraid to leave them?” asked the Major. “They may secrete some gems, Mr. Handkin.”

“Never,” said the lapidary, with some pride. “I could trust these men with the Koh-i-noor; which we could have done better, I believe, than it was done by the Hollanders. But we don't get the chance to do much in diamonds, through the old superstition about Amsterdam, and so on. No, no; the only thing I can't trust my men about is to work as hard when I am away as when I am there. And now, Sir, what can I do for you? Any more Bruntsea pebbles? The last were not worth the cutting.”

“So you said; but I did not think so. We have some agates as good as any from Aberystwith or Perthshire. But what I want now is to open this case. It must be done quite privately, for a most particular reason. It does open, doesn't it? I am sure it does.”