Meaning to turn the widow out, without fail, upon the morrow, he spoke of time to pay, even hinted at a further loan. Then Sarah broke down and wept with loud hard sobs. This brought the ready tears into the eyes of Thompson Jowell. He called her his dear Cousin Sarah, quoted the adage about blood being thicker than water, even made an uncertain dab with his pursed-up mouth at the knobby forehead between the black-gray hair-loops, as though to plant a cousinly kiss there—thought better of it, took leave, and went upon his way.
Fate, the grim executioner, walked behind Thompson Jowell as he waddled across the Upper Clays farmyard, sloppy as of yore, but populous no longer with squattering ducks, musing pigs reclining on moist litter, and hairy faces of cows and plow-horses contemplating their world across the half-doors of stables and sheds.
The white gate clashed behind Fate as well as the Contractor; and, when he struck into the narrow hedgerow-bordered lane dividing the westerly slope of the clay-lands, whose deep, sticky mire had made havoc of his brown cloth spatterdashes on the way up, Fate followed at his heels.
He was portentously cheerful at dinner that evening. Fate stood behind his chair as he gobbled, and cracked his bottle of Port. When he pulled his tasseled nightcap down to his great mottled ears and flounced into bed after his aggressive fashion, Fate snuffed the candle and drew the brocaded bed-curtains close. And when the meek, dowdy woman, lying sleepless beside him, wondered why he groaned and snorted?—he was having his Fate-sent dream.
You are to know that it seemed to Thompson Jowell that he arose from bed, and without even waiting to throw on his Oriental dressing-gown over the brief and airy garment of slumber, straightway flew to the Seat of War. And presently, with a sound in his ears as though two prehistoric beasts of inconceivable size were roaring at each other, he found himself hanging over the Advanced Line of Siege Works, scanning three finger-shaped plateaus, powdered with snow, and divided from each other by deep ravines.
Beyond a strip of plain, tufted with scrub, and humped with the crumbling ruins of Greek churches—that had been reared above the tombs and temples of ancient Scythian Kings—lay the proud fortress-city of Tsar Nicholas, in the crook of an arm of glittering blue-black sea. And from the marvelous array of Defense-works that had sprung up since the Army of the South had rolled away towards Simferopol, puffs of white smoke accompanied the ringing crash of brazen 64-pounders, and the dull boom of the mortar-firing answered similar puffs, booms, and crashes, hailing from the French and British batteries.
Even as Jowell gazed—hanging suspended under a leaden sky-arch in which pale, luminous meteors crossed and recrossed, whistling like curlews, and sometimes bursting in mid-air, a tremendous explosion not far beneath his naked feet, accompanied by a sound as though an express train, loaded with scrap-iron, had passed upon its journey to Sevastopol, warned him that the Lancaster batteries were upon the cliffs immediately behind him, and that his position had its risks.
“This is all very well,” said the Contractor, “and uncommon like what I have a-read of in the newspapers, proving that the blackguards who write for ’em tell the truth once in a way. But what I have come here for is to see my son, Ensign Mortimer Jowell, Second Battalion Cut Red Feathers. And I’ll give anybody a sovereign who’ll take me to their Lines.”