“Not she. He was too wide awake for that. The sisters can never be in one room half an hour without fighting. He went on about the honour of the family, and adding to the estates with the old Earl’s wealth, and taking the name of Coldpepper, and I don’t know what else—for of course I was not there; but she told me of it afterwards, and she laughed very heartily I can tell you. ‘It is a mere business arrangement,’ she replied, ‘and it must be done in business form, if at all. Write to my solicitors on the subject, proposing exactly what you have proposed to me. Give your reasons for wishing that it may be settled so, and add that there could have been no occasion for it, if your mother had not run away with your aunt’s lover, after locking her in a dark hole where she might have died. You may be quite certain of my consent, as your mother was, when she turned the key on me. Don’t let me detain you, for fear of losing time. Solicitors are never very rapid in their work.’ He could scarcely have been disappointed, but Charles said he did look savage, when he showed him out. And now, what do you think his next card is?”
“How can I tell? Perhaps he’ll come to Uncle Corny, and ask him to sell his garden, and settle it upon him.”
“You are not so very far out after all. Your Kitty has a very rich aunt in the north—no relative of his in any way, not even a connection, for she is related to Kitty on her mother’s side. But she has the reputation of being rather soft, and so off he goes without telling anybody. But we heard of it; we hear a great deal more now; because we’ve got a maid whose sister lives there, and waits upon the two young ladies who are always chattering about their brother; and our Mary can’t do without her Anne, for more than a week, because they are twins. Every Sunday our Mary goes up to the Park, or their Anne comes down to the Manor. And perhaps you may know what ladies’-maids are, Mr. Kit. They really seem to take a deeper interest in the family they serve than the one they belong to. So we know all the young ladies know, and perhaps more than their mother knows; for being so masterful she has things kept from her, as is only natural. And I can tell you one thing, Mr. Kit, which you won’t be sorry to hear perhaps, or at any rate didn’t ought to be. Mr. Downy Bulwrag is in more trouble; not about money I mean, but something worse, or at any rate deeper than money is. His sisters know this; but they don’t know what it is, or else they are afraid to speak of it.”
I thought of Tony Tonks, and the man called Migwell Bengoose, who appeared to Tony to be an English sailor, fallen into foreign ways; and I thought it very likely that he might have brought bad news.
“He goes away at night,” continued Mrs. Marker, “without a word of notice to anybody, and he sneers, or is grumpy, if they ask him about it; and he has been seen with very shabby-looking people, though he used to be so particular about that. And he carries one of those new-fangled pistols, that go off a dozen times with one load, and every one is afraid to go near him almost, because of his temper and all that. From all I am told, you may depend upon it, he is not enjoying himself, Mr. Kit, so very much more than you are. And that is not very much, to go by your face; sorry as I am to see it, sir, after saving me from the jaws of death.”
“Nonsense, Mrs. Marker; you saved yourself, by your presence of mind, and a light young foot.”
“You say things beautifully, Mr. Kit. It was always your gift as a child, I have heard, though not old enough here to remember it. And now, sir, remember that you have one good friend, who will never be happy, till you are. A feeble friend, but a warm one, and able perhaps to do more than you think. Nothing shall go by me that you ought to hear of. Good-bye, sir, good-bye. Everything will come right, and you shall pay me, for telling your fortune.”
CHAPTER LX.
ALIVE IN DEATH.
Downy Bulwrag was indeed in trouble—not brought on by his evil deeds, as good people might have imagined; or at any rate not so caused directly, according to present knowledge, although in the end it proved otherwise. It had seemed an astonishing thing to me, considering his haughtiness and shrewd perception, that he should have deigned to expose himself to that quiet rebuff from Miss Coldpepper. And then that he had gone upon another quest of money, even more humiliating, showed that there must be some terrible strait, some crushing urgency in his affairs.