It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 22

Blinds up, Mr. Meadows out.

White blind down, Mr. Meadows in.

Blue blind down, Mr. Meadows in, but not alone.

The same key that opened the garden-door opened a door at the back of the house which led direct to the pa.s.sage above-mentioned. On the window-seat lay a peculiar whistle constructed to imitate the whining of a dog. Then Meadows would go to his book-shelves, which lined one side of the room, and pressing a hidden spring open a door that n.o.body ever suspected, for the books came along with it. To provide for every contingency, there was a small secret opening in another part of the shelves by which Meadows could shoot un.o.bserved a note or the like into the pa.s.sage, and so give Crawley instructions without dismissing a visitor, if he had one.

Meadows provided against surprise and discovery. His study had double doors. Neither of them could be opened from the outside. His visitors or servants must rap with an iron knocker; and while Meadows went to open, the secret visitor stepped into the pa.s.sage and shut the books behind him.

It was a room that looked business. One side was almost papered with ordnance maps of this and an adjoining county. Pigeon-holes abounded, too, and there was a desk six feet long, chock full of little drawers--contents indicated outside in letters of which the proprietor knew the meaning, not I.

Between the door and the fireplace was a screen, on which, in place of idle pictures, might be seen his plans and calculations as a land surveyor, especially those that happened to be at present in operation or under consideration. So he kept his business before his eye, on the chance of a good idea striking him at a leisure moment.

"Will Fielding's acceptance falls due to-morrow, Crawley."

"Yes, sir, what shall I do?"

"Present it; he is not ready for it, I know.

"Well, sir; what next?"

"Serve him with a writ."

"He will be preciously put about."

"He will. Seem sorry; say you are a little short, but won't trouble him for a month, if it is inconvenient; but he must make you safe by signing a judgment."

"Ay! ay! Sir, may I make bold to ask what is the game with this young Fielding?"

"You ought to know the game--to get him in my power."

"And a very good game it is, sir! n.o.body plays it better than you. He won't be the only one that is in your power in these parts--he! he!" And Crawley chuckled without merriment. "Excuse my curiosity, sir, but when about is the blow to fall?"

"What is that to you?"

"Nothing, sir, only the sooner the better. I have a grudge against the family."

"Have you? then don't act upon it. I don't employ you to do your business, but mine.

"Certainly, Mr. Meadows. You don't think I'd be so ungrateful as to spoil your admirable plans by acting upon any little feeling of my own."

"I don't think you would be so silly. For if you did, we should part."

"Don't mention such an event, sir."

"You have been drinking, Crawley!"

"Not a drop, sir, this two days."

"You are a liar! The smell of it comes through your skin. I won't have it. Do you hear what I say? I won't have it. No man that drinks can do business--especially mine."

"I'll never touch a drop again. They called me into the public-house--they wouldn't take a denial."

"Hold your prate and listen to me. The next time you look at a public-house say to yourself, Peter Crawley, that is not a public-house to you--it is a hospital, a workhouse, for a dunghill--for if you go in there John Meadows, that is your friend, will be your enemy."

"Heaven forbid, Mr. Meadows."

"Drink this basinful of coffee."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. It is very bitter."

"Is your head clear now?"

"As a bell."

"Then go and do my work, and don't do an atom more or an atom less than your task."

"No, sir. Oh, Mr. Meadows! it is a pleasure to serve you. You are as deep as the sea, sir, and as firm as the rock. You never drink, nor anything else, that I can find. A man out of a thousand! No little weakness, like the rest of us, sir. You are a great man, sir. You are a model of a man of bus--"

"Good-morning," growled Meadows roughly, and turned his back.

"Good-morning, sir," said Peter mellifluously. And opening the back door about ten inches, he wriggled out like a weasel going through a c.h.i.n.k in a wall.

William Fielding fell like a child into the trap. "Give me time, and it will be all right," is the debtor's delusion. William thanked Crawley for not pressing him, and so compelling him to force a sale of all his hogs, fat or lean. Crawley received his thanks with a leer, returned in four days, got the judgment signed, and wriggled away with it to Meadows' back door.

"You take out an arrest"--Meadows gave him a pocketbook--"put it in this, and keep it ready in your pocket night and day."

"I dare say it will come into use before the year is out, sir."

"I hope not."

George Fielding gone to Australia to make a thousand pounds by farming and cattle-feeding, that so he may claim old Merton's promised consent to marry Susan. Susan observing Mr. Eden's precepts even more religiously than when he was with her; active, full of charitable deeds, often pensive, always anxious, but not despondent now, thanks to the good physician. Meadows falling deeper and deeper in love, but keeping it more jealously secret than ever; on his guard against Isaac, on his guard against William, on his guard against John Meadows; hoping everything from time and accidents, from the distance between the lovers, from George's incapacity, of which he had a great opinion--"He will never make a thousand pence"--but not trusting to the things he hoped. On the contrary, watching with keen eye, and working with subtle threads to draw everybody into his power who could a.s.sist or thwart him in the object his deep heart and iron will were set on. William Fielding going down the hill Meadows was mounting; getting the better of his pa.s.sion, and subst.i.tuting, by degrees, a brother-in-law's regard.

Flowers and weeds have one thing in common--while they live they grow.

Natural growth is a slow process, to describe it day by day a slower.

For the next four months matters glided so quietly on the slopes I have just indicated that an intelligent calculation by the reader may very well take the place of a tedious chronicle by the writer. Moreover, the same monotony did not hang over every part of our story. These very four months were eventful enough to one of our characters; and through him, by subtle and positive links, to every man and every woman who fills any considerable position in this matter-of-fact romance. Therefore our story drags us from the meadows round Gra.s.smere to a ma.s.sive, castellated building, glaring red brick with white stone corners. These colors and their contrast relieve the stately ma.s.s of some of that grimness which characterizes the castles of antiquity; but enough remains to strike some awe into the beholder.

Two round towers flank the princ.i.p.al entrance. On one side of the right-hand tower is a small house constructed in the same style as the grand pile. The castle is ma.s.sive and grand. This, its satellite, is ma.s.sive and tiny, like the frog doing his little bit of bull--like Signor Hervio Nano, a tremendous thick dwarf now no more. There is one dimple to all this gloomy grandeur--a rich little flower-garden, whose frame of emerald turf goes smiling up to the very ankle of the frowning fortress, as some few happy lakes in the world wash the very foot of the mountains that hem them. From this green spot a few flowers look up with bright and wondering wide-opened eyes at the great bullying masonry over their heads; and to the spectator of both, these sparks of color at the castle-foot are dazzling and charming; they are like rubies, sapphires and pink topaz in some uncouth angular ancient setting.

Between the central towers is a sharp arch, filled by a huge oak door of the same shape and size, which, for further security or ornament, is closely studded with large diamond-headed nails. A man with keys at his girdle like the ancient housewives opens the huge door to you with slight effort, so well oiled is it. You slip under a porch into an inclosed yard, the great door shuts almost of itself, and now it depends upon the housewifely man whether you ever see the vain, idle and every-way objectionable world again.

Pa.s.sing into the interior of the vast building, you find yourself in an extensive aisle traversed at right angles by another of similar dimensions, the whole in form of a cross. In the center of each aisle is an iron staircase, so narrow that two people cannot pa.s.s, and so light and open that it merely ornaments, not obstructs, the view of the aisle.

These staircases make two springs; the first takes them to the level of two corridors on the first floor. Here there is a horizontal s.p.a.ce of about a yard, whence the continuation staircase rises to the second and highest floor. This gives three corridors, all studded with doors opening on small separate apartments, whereof anon.

Nearly all the inmates of this grim palace wear a peculiar costume and disguise, one feature of which is a cap of coa.r.s.e materials, with a vizor to it, which conceals the features all but the chin and the eyes, which last peep, in a very droll way, through two holes cut for that purpose.

They are distinguished by a courteous manner to strangers, whom they never fail to salute in pa.s.sing, with great apparent cordiality; indeed, we fear we shall never meet in the busy world with such uniform urbanity as in this and similar retreats. It arises from two causes. One is that here strangers are welcome from their rarity; another, that politeness is a part of the education of the place, which, besides its other uses, is an adult school of manners, morals, religion, grammar, writing and cobbling.

With the exception of its halls and corridors, the building is almost entirely divided into an immense number of the small apartments noticed above. These are homely inside, but exquisitely clean. The furniture, movable and fixed, none of which is superfluous, can be briefly described. A bedstead, consisting of the side walls of the apartment; polished steel staples are fixed in these walls, two on each side the apartment at an elevation of about two feet and a half. The occupant's mattress (made of cocoa bark) has two stout steel hooks at each end; these are hooked into the staples, and so he lies across his abode.