Shanty the Blacksmith Part 6

"And perhaps murdered," exclaimed Mrs. Margaret; "but go, brother, be quick, and let us have Shanty's advice."

"And I," said Tamar, after the Laird was departed, "will go to the Tower, and if possible get admittance. I will stop the going off of Jacob."

Mrs. Margaret expostulated with her, but all her pleadings came to this,--that she should send a neighbour to watch for Tamar on the side of the moat, the young girl having a.s.sured her kind protectress, that she had nothing to fear for her, and that as the Laird was proverbially a procrastinator, he might let half the day pa.s.s, before he had settled what was to be done.

Poor Mrs. Margaret was all tremor and agitation; at the bottom of her heart, she did not like to be left in the cottage, so near a gang of thieves as she felt herself to be; she was not, however, a selfish character, and after some tears, she kissed Tamar and bade her go, watching her the whole way through the glen, as if she were parting with her for years.

The light step of the young girl, soon brought her to the edge of the moat, and she arrived, as it was ordered by Providence, at a very convenient time, for she met Rebecca on the moor, the old woman having just parted from Jacob, whose figure was still to be seen jogging along the heath. The first words of Tamar were to entreat Rebecca to call Jacob back, and when she found that she was speaking to one who chose to lend a deaf ear, she raised her own voice, but with equal ill success; turning then again to Rebecca, she saw that she was hastening to the bridge, on which she followed her, and was standing with her under the Tower, before the old woman could recollect herself.

The creature looked yellow with spite, as she addressed the young maiden with many bitter expressions, asking her what she did there, and bidding her to be gone.

"I am come," replied Tamar, "to see your master, and I will see him."

"It is what you never shall again," replied the dame; "he has never been himself since he last saw you."

"How is that?" said Tamar; "What did I do, but press him to act as an honourable man, but of this I am resolved," she added, "that I will now see him again," and as she spoke, she proceeded through the postern into the courts, still pa.s.sing on towards the princ.i.p.al door of the Tower, Rebecca following her, and pouring upon her no measured abuse. Tamar, however, remarked, that the old woman lowered her voice as they advanced nearer the house, on which she raised her own tones, and said, "I must, and will see Mr. Salmon, it is a matter of life and death I come upon;--life and death I repeat, and if you or your master, have any thing on your minds or consciences, you will do well to hear what I have to tell you; a few hours hence and it will be too late."

"In that case," said Rebecca, looking at one angry and terrified, "come with me, and I will hear you."

"No," exclaimed Tamar, speaking loud, "I will see your master, my errand is to him," and at the same instant, the quick eye of the young girl, observed the face of Salmon peering through a loop-hole, fitted with a cas.e.m.e.nt, which gave light to a closet near the entrance. Encouraged by this she spoke again, and still louder than before, saying, "See him I will, and from me alone, shall he hear the news I am come to tell." The next minute she heard the cas.e.m.e.nt open, and saw the head of the old man obtruded from thence, and she heard a querulous, broken voice, asking what was the matter? Tamar stepped back a few paces, in order that she might have a clearer view of the speaker, and then looking up, she said, "I am come Mr. Salmon as a friend, and only as a friend, to warn you of a danger which threatens you,--hear me, and you may be saved,--but if you refuse to hear me, I tell you, that you may be a ghastly livid corpse before the morning."

"Rebecca, Rebecca!" cried the old man, "Rebecca, I say, speak to her,"

and his voice faltered, the accents becoming puling.

"Hear her not," said the dame, "she is a deceiver, she is come to get money out of you."

"And heaven knows," cried Mr. Salmon, "that she is then coming to gather fruit from a barren tree. Money, indeed! and where am I to find money, even for her,--though she come in such a guise, as would wring the last drop of the heart's blood?"

"Tus.h.!.+" said Rebecca, "you are rambling and dreaming again;" but the old man heard her not, he had left the lattice, and in a few seconds he appeared within the pa.s.sage. During this interval, Rebecca had not been quiet, for she had seized the arm of Tamar, and the young girl had shaken her off with some difficulty, and not without saying, "Your unwillingness to permit me to speak to your master, old woman, goes against you, but it shall not avail you, speak to him I will," and the contest between Tamar and the old woman was still proceeding, when Salmon appeared in the pa.s.sage.

Tamar instantly sprang to meet him, and seeing that his step was feeble and tottering, she supported him to a chair, in a small parlour which opened into the pa.s.sage, and there, standing in the midst of the floor between him and Rebecca, she told her errand; nor was she interrupted until she had told all, the old man looking as if her recital had turned him into stone, and the old woman expressing a degree of terror, which at least cleared her in Tamar's mind, of the guilt of being connected with the thieves of the secret pa.s.sage.

As soon as the young girl had finished, the old miser broke out in the most bitter and helpless lamentations. "My jewels!--my silver!--my moneys!" he exclaimed, "Oh my moneys!--my moneys! Tell me, tell me damsel, what I can do? Call Jacob. Where is Jacob? Oh, my moneys!--my jewels!"

"Peace, good sir! peace!" said Tamar, "we will befriend you, we will a.s.sist you, we will protect you; the Laird is an honourable man, he will protect you. I have known him long, long,--since I was a baby; and he would perish before he would wrong any one, or see another wronged."

"The Laird did you say," asked Salmon, "your father; he is your father damsel is he not?"

"I have no other," replied Tamar, "I never knew another. Why do you ask me?"

"Because," said Rebecca, "he is doting, and thinks more of other people's concerns than his own."

"Has he ever lost a daughter?" asked Tamar.

"He lost a wife in her youth," answered the old woman, "and he was almost in his dotage when he married her, and he fancies because you have black hair, that you resemble her; but there is no more likeness between you two, than there is between a hooded crow and a raven."

"There is more though, there is much more though," muttered the old man, "and Jacob saw it too, and owned that he did."

"The fool!" repeated Rebecca, "the fool! did I not tell him that he was feeding your poor mind with follies; tell me, how should this poor girl be like your wife?"

The old man shook his head, and answered, "Because, he that made them both, fas.h.i.+oned them to be so; and Rebecca, I have been thinking that had my daughter lived, had Jessica lived till now, she would have been just such a one."

"Preserve you in your senses, master," exclaimed Rebecca, "such as they are, they are better than none; but had your daughter lived, she would have been as unlike this damsel as you ever were to your bright browed wife. Why you are short and shrivelled, so was your daughter; your features are sharp, and so were hers; she was ever a poor pining thing, and when I laid her in her grave beside her mother, it was a corpse to frighten one; it was well for you, as I ever told you, that she died as soon."

"Yet had she lived, I might have had a thing to love," replied the old man; and then, looking at Tamar, he added, "They tell me you are the Laird's daughter,--is it so, fair maid?"

Rebecca again interrupted him. "What folly is this," she said, raising her voice almost to a shriek, "how know you but that, whilst you are questioning the damsel, your chests and coffers are in the hands of robbers; your money, I tell you, is in danger: your gold, your oft-told gold. You were not wont to be so careless of your gold; up and look after it. You will be reduced to beg your bread from those you hate; arise, be strong. Where are your keys? Give them to the damsel; she is young and active; she will swiftly remove the treasure out of the way.

Can you not trust her? See you not the fair guise in which she comes?

Can you suspect a creature who looks like your wife, like Rachel? Is not her tale well framed; and are you, or are you not deceived by her fair seemings? She is the daughter of a beggar, and she knows herself to be such; and there is no doubt but that she has her ends to answer by giving this alarm."

The old man had arisen; he looked hither and thither; he felt for his keys, which were hanging at his girdle; and then, falling back into his chair, he uttered one deep groan and became insensible, his whole complexion turning to a livid paleness.

"He is dying!" exclaimed Tamar, holding him up in his chair, from which he would have otherwise fallen. "He is dying, the poor old man is dying; bring water, anything."

"He has often been in this way since he came here," replied Rebecca. "We have thought that he has had a stroke; he is not the man he was a few months since; and had I known how it would be, it is strange but I would have found means to hinder his coming."

"If he were ever so before," said Tamar "why did you work him up, and talk to him, as you did, about his daughter; but, fetch some water,"

she added.

"I shall not leave him with you," answered Rebecca.

"Nor shall I abandon him to your tender mercies," replied Tamar, "whilst he is in this condition. I am not his daughter, it is true,--but he is a feeble old man, and I will befriend him if I can."

The old gentleman at this moment fell forward with such weight, that Tamar ran from behind him, and dropping down on her knees, received his head on her shoulder, then, putting one arm round him, she was glad to hear a long, deep sigh, the prelude of his returning to partial consciousness; and as he opened his eyes, he said,--"Ah, Rachel, is it you? You have been gone a long time."

Tamar was at that moment alone with the old man. Rebecca had heard voices at a distance, and she had run to pull up the bridge.

"I am not your Rachel, venerable Sir," she said; "but the adopted daughter of the Laird of Dymock," and she gently laid his head back.

"Then why do you come to me like her?" said the old man. "That is wrong, it is very cruel; it is tormenting me before my time. I have not hurt you, and I will give you more gold if you will not do this again."

"You rave, Sir," said Tamar. "Who do you take me for?"

"A dream," he answered. "I have been dreaming again;" and he raised himself, shook his head, rubbed his hands across his eyes, and looked as usual; but before he could add another word, Dymock and Shanty entered the parlour.

Rebecca had been too late in preventing their crossing the bridge, and they with some difficulty made the old gentleman understand that if he had any valuables, they must ascertain whether the place in which they were kept was any way approachable by the cavern. They also told him that they had taken means to have the exterior mouth of the cavern upon the knoll, stopped up, after the gang were in it; that they had provided a considerable force for this purpose; and that they should bring in men within the Tower to seize the depredators. Dymock then requested Tamar to return to Mrs. Margaret, and remain quietly with her; and when she was gone, the bridge was drawn up, and she went back to the cottage.

She had much to tell Mrs. Margaret, and long, very long,--after they had discussed many times the singular scene between Salmon, Rebecca, and Tamar, and spoken of what might be the plans of Dymock and Shanty for securing the Tower,--did the remainder of the day appear to them.

Several times they climbed to the edge of the glen, to observe if aught was stirring; but all was still as usual. There stood the old Tower in solemn, silent unconsciousness of what might soon pa.s.s within it; and there was the knoll, looking as green and fresh as it was ever wont to do.

At sun-set Tamar and Mrs. Margaret again visited this post of observation, and again after they had supped at eight o'clock. They then returned and shut their doors; they made up their fires; and whilst Tamar plied her needle, Mrs. Margaret told many ancient tales and dismal predictions of secret murders, corpse-candles, and visions of second-sight, after which, as midnight approached, they became more restless and anxious respecting their friends, wondering what they would do, and expressing their hopes, or their fears, in dark sentences, such as these:--"We trust no blood may be shed!--if there should be blood!--if Dymock or poor Shanty should be hurt!" Again, they turned to form many conjectures, and put many things together:--"Was Mr. Salmon connected with the gipsies who had brought Tamar to the moor?--Was it this gang that proposed robbing him?--Was the young blacksmith called Harefoot connected with the gipsy?--Had he persuaded Salmon to bring his treasures there, in order that he might pilfer them?--And lastly, wherefore was Mr. Salmon so affected both times he had seen Tamar?"

Here, indeed, was a subject for conjecture, which lasted some hours, and beguiled the sense of anxiety. At length the morning began to dawn on that long night, and Tamar went out to milk Brindle, whose caprices had, in fact, the day before, been the first mover in all this confusion.

Cows must be milked, even were the master of the family dying; and Tamar wished to have this task over before any message should come from the Tower; and scarcely had she returned to the cottage, when the lad who administered the wind to Shanty's forge, came running with such haste, that, to use his own words,--"he had no more breath left for speaking than a broken bellows."

"For the love of prince Charles," he said, "can you give us any provender, Mrs. Margaret? It is cold work watching all night, with neither food nor drink, save one bottle of whiskey among ten of us, and scarce a dry crust."

"But what have you done?" asked Tamar.