Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1820 page)

Greatly to my surprise, John Jago met this clumsy jesting with a formal and serious reply.

“You are quite right, sir,” he said. “I have no intention of marrying for the second time. What I was saying to Miss Naomi doesn’t matter to you. It was not at all what you choose to suppose; it was something of quite another kind, with which you have no concern. Be pleased to understand once for all, Mr. Silas, that not so much as the thought of making love to the young lady has ever entered my head. I respect her; I admire her good qualities; but if she was the only woman left in the world, and if I was a much younger man than I am, I should never think of asking her to be my wife.” He burst out suddenly into a harsh, uneasy laugh. “No, no! not my style, Mr. Silas — not my style!”

Something in those words, or in his manner of speaking them, appeared to exasperate Silas. He dropped his clumsy irony, and addressed himself directly to John Jago in a tone of savage contempt.

“Not your style?” he repeated. “Upon my soul, that’s a cool way of putting it, for a man in your place! What do you mean by calling her ‘not your style?’ You impudent beggar! Naomi Colebrook is meat for your master!”

John Jago’s temper began to give way at last. He approached defiantly a step or two nearer to Silas Meadowcroft.

“Who is my master?” he asked.

“Ambrose will show you, if you go to him,” answered the other. “Naomi is
his
sweetheart, not mine. Keep out of his way, if you want to keep a whole skin on your bones.”

John Jago cast one of his sardonic side-looks at the farmer’s wounded left hand. “Don’t forget your own skin, Mr. Silas, when you threaten mine! I have set my mark on you once, sir. Let me by on my business, or I may mark you for a second time.”

Silas lifted his beechen stick. The labourers, roused to some rude sense of the serious turn which the quarrel was taking, got between the two men, and parted them. I had been hurriedly dressing myself while the altercation was proceeding; and I now ran downstairs to try what my influence could do toward keeping the peace at Morwick Farm.

The war of angry words was still going on when I joined the men outside.

“Be off with you on your business, you cowardly hound!” I heard Silas say. “Be off with you to the town! and take care you don’t meet Ambrose on the way!”

“Take
you
care you don’t feel my knife again before I go!” cried the other man.

Silas made a desperate effort to break away from the labourers who were holding him.

“Last time you only felt my fist!” he shouted “Next time you shall feel this!”

He lifted the stick as he spoke. I stepped up and snatched it out of his hand.

“Mr. Silas,” I said, “I am an invalid, and I am going out for a walk. Your stick will be useful to me. I beg leave to borrow it.”

The labourers burst out laughing. Silas fixed his eyes on me with a stare of angry surprise. John Jago, immediately recovering his self-possession, took off his hat, and made me a deferential bow.

“I had no idea, Mr. Lefrank, that we were disturbing you,” he said. “I am very much ashamed of myself, sir. I beg to apologize.”

“I accept your apology, Mr. Jago,” I answered, “on the understanding that you, as the older man, will set the example of forbearance if your temper is tried on any future occasion as it has been tried today. And I have further to request,” I added, addressing myself to Silas, “that you will do me a favor, as your father’s guest. The next time your good spirits lead you into making jokes at Mr. Jago’s expense, don’t carry them quite so far. I am sure you meant no harm, Mr. Silas. Will you gratify me by saying so yourself? I want to see you and Mr. Jago shake hands.”

John Jago instantly held out his hand, with an assumption of good feeling which was a little overacted, to my thinking. Silas Meadowcroft made no advance of the same friendly sort on his side.

“Let him go about his business,” said Silas. “I won’t waste any more words on him, Mr. Lefrank, to please
you
. But (saving your presence) I’m d — d if I take his hand!”

Further persuasion was plainly useless, addressed to such a man as this. Silas gave me no further opportunity of remonstrating with him, even if I had been inclined to do so. He turned about in sulky silence, and, retracing his steps along the path, disappeared round the corner of the house. The labourers withdrew next, in different directions, to begin the day’s, work. John Jago and I were alone.

I left it to the man of the wild brown eyes to speak first.

“In half an hour’s time, sir,” he said, “I shall be going on business to Narrabee, our market-town here. Can I take any letters to the post for you? or is there anything else that I can do in the town?”

I thanked him, and declined both proposals. He made me another deferential bow, and withdrew into the house. I mechanically followed the path in the direction which Silas had taken before me.

Turning the corner of the house, and walking on for a little way, I found myself at the entrance to the stables, and face to face with Silas Meadowcroft once more. He had his elbows on the gate of the yard, swinging it slowly backward and forward, and turning and twisting a straw between his teeth. When he saw me approaching him, he advanced a step from the gate, and made an effort to excuse himself, with a very ill grace.

“No offense, mister. Ask me what you will besides, and I’ll do it for you. But don’t ask me to shake hands with John Jago; I hate him too badly for that. If I touched him with one hand, sir, I tell you this, I should throttle him with the other.”

“That’s your feeling toward the man, Mr. Silas, is it?”

“That’s my feeling, Mr. Lefrank; and I’m not ashamed of it either.”

“Is there any such place as a church in your neighbourhood, Mr. Silas?”

“Of course there is.”

“And do you ever go to it?”

“Of course I do.”

“At long intervals, Mr. Silas?”

“Every Sunday, sir, without fail.”

Some third person behind me burst out laughing; some third person had been listening to our talk. I turned round, and discovered Ambrose Meadowcroft.

“I understand the drift of your catechism, sir, though my brother doesn’t,” he said. “Don’t be hard on Silas, sir. He isn’t the only Christian who leaves his Christianity in the pew when he goes out of church. You will never make us friends with John Jago, try as you may. Why, what have you got there, Mr. Lefrank? May I die if it isn’t my stick! I have been looking for it everywhere!”

The thick beechen stick had been feeling uncomfortably heavy in my invalid hand for some time past. There was no sort of need for my keeping it any longer. John Jago was going away to Narrabee, and Silas Meadowcroft’s savage temper was subdued to a sulky repose. I handed the stick back to Ambrose. He laughed as he took it from me.

“You can’t think how strange it feels, Mr. Lefrank, to be out without one’s stick,” he said. “A man gets used to his stick, sir; doesn’t he? Are you ready for your breakfast?”

“Not just yet. I thought of taking a little walk first.”

“All right, sir. I wish I could go with you; but I have got my work to do this morning, and Silas has his work too. If you go back by the way you came, you will find yourself in the garden. If you want to go further, the wicket-gate at the end will lead you into the lane.”

Through sheer thoughtlessness, I did a very foolish thing. I turned back as I was told, and left the brothers together at the gate of the stable-yard.

CHAPTER V. THE NEWS FROM NARRABEE.

ARRIVED at the garden, a thought struck me. The cheerful speech and easy manner of Ambrose plainly indicated that he was ignorant thus far of the quarrel which had taken place under my window. Silas might confess to having taken his brother’s stick, and might mention whose head he had threatened with it. It was not only useless, but undesirable, that Ambrose should know of the quarrel. I retraced my steps to the stable-yard. Nobody was at the gate. I called alternately to Silas and to Ambrose. Nobody answered. The brothers had gone away to their work.

Returning to the garden, I heard a pleasant voice wishing me “Good-morning.” I looked round. Naomi Colebrook was standing at one of the lower windows of the farm. She had her working apron on, and she was industriously brightening the knives for the breakfast-table on an old-fashioned board. A sleek black cat balanced himself on her shoulder, watching the flashing motion of the knife as she passed it rapidly to and fro on the leather-covered surface of the board.

“Come here,” she said; “I want to speak to you.”

I noticed, as I approached, that her pretty face was clouded and anxious. She pushed the cat irritably off her shoulder; she welcomed me with only the faint reflection of her bright customary smile.

“I have seen John Jago,” she said. “He has been hinting at something which he says happened under your bedroom window this morning. When I begged him to explain himself, he only answered, ‘Ask Mr. Lefrank; I must be off to Narrabee.’ What does it mean? Tell me right away, sir! I’m out of temper, and I can’t wait!”

Except that I made the best instead of the worst of it, I told her what had happened under my window as plainly as I have told it here. She put down the knife that she was cleaning, and folded her hands before her, thinking.

“I wish I had never given John Jago that meeting,” she said. “When a man asks anything of a woman, the woman, I find, mostly repents it if she says ‘Yes.’“

She made that quaint reflection with a very troubled brow. The moonlight meeting had left some unwelcome remembrances in her mind. I saw that as plainly as I saw Naomi herself.

What had John Jago said to her? I put the question with all needful delicacy, making my apologies beforehand.

“I should like to tell
you
,” she began, with a strong emphasis on the last word.

There she stopped. She turned pale; then suddenly flushed again to the deepest red. She took up the knife once more, and went on cleaning it as industriously as ever.

“I mustn’t tell you,” she resumed, with her head down over the knife. “I have promised not to tell anybody. That’s the truth. Forget all about it, sir, as soon as you can. Hush! here’s the spy who saw us last night on the walk and who told Silas!”

Dreary Miss Meadowcroft opened the kitchen door. She carried an ostentatiously large Prayer-book; and she looked at Naomi as only a jealous woman of middle age
can
look at a younger and prettier woman than herself.

“Prayers, Miss Colebrook,” she said in her sourest manner. She paused, and noticed me standing under the window. “Prayers, Mr. Lefrank,” she added, with a look of devout pity, directed exclusively to my address.

“We will follow you directly, Miss Meadowcroft,” said Naomi.

“I have no desire to intrude on your secrets Miss Colebrook.”

With that acrid answer, our priestess took herself and her Prayer-book out of the kitchen. I joined Naomi, entering the room by the garden door. She met me eagerly. “I am not quite easy about something,” she said. “Did you tell me that you left Ambrose and Silas together?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose Silas tells Ambrose of what happened this morning?”

The same idea, as I have already mentioned, had occurred to my mind. I did my best to reassure Naomi.

“Mr. Jago is out of the way,” I replied. “You and I can easily put things right in his absence.”

She took my arm.

“Come in to prayers,” she said. “Ambrose will be there, and I shall find an opportunity of speaking to him.”

Neither Ambrose nor Silas was in the breakfast-room when we entered it. After waiting vainly for ten minutes, Mr. Meadowcroft told his daughter to read the prayers. Miss Meadowcroft read, thereupon, in the tone of an injured woman taking the throne of mercy by storm, and insisting on her rights. Breakfast followed; and still the brothers were absent. Miss Meadowcroft looked at her father, and said, “From bad to worse, sir. What did I tell you?” Naomi instantly applied the antidote: “The boys are no doubt detained over their work, uncle.” She turned to me. “You want to see the farm, Mr. Lefrank. Come and help me to find the boys.”