Erema - My Father's Sin, Richard Doddridge Blackmore [read me a book TXT] 📗

have you enterprised with my frau? Explain, Vilhelmina, or I call de policemans, vhat I should say de peelers."

"Stop!" cried the Major, and he stopped at once, not for the word, which would have had no power, although I knew nothing about it then, but because he had received a sign which assured him that here was a brother Mason. In a moment the infuriated husband vanished into the rational and docile brother.

"Ladies and gentlemans, valk in, if you please," he said, to my great astonishment; "Vilhelmina and my good self make you velcome to our poor house. Vilhelmina, arise and say so."

"Go to the back kitchen, Hans," replied Wilhelmina, whose name was "Betsy," "and don't come out until I tell you. You will find work to do there, and remember to pump up. I wish to hear things that you are not to hear, mind you. Shut yourself in, and if you soap the door to deceive me, I shall know it."

"Vere goot, vere goot," said the philosophical German; "I never meddle with nothing, Vilhelmina, no more than vhat I do for de money and de house."

Betsy, however, was not quite so sure of that. With no more ceremony she locked him in, and then came back to us, who could not make things out.

"My husband is the bravest of the brave," she told us, while she put down his key on the table; "and a nobler man never lived; I am sure of that. But every one of them foreigners--excuse me, Sir, you are an Englishman?"

"I am," replied the Major, pulling up his little whiskers; "I am so, madam, and nothing you can say will in any way hurt my feelings. I am above nationalities."

"Just so, Sir. Then you will feel with me when I say that they foreigners is dreadful. Oh, the day that I ever married one of 'em--but there, I ought to be ashamed of myself, and my lord's daughter facing me."

"Do you know me?" I asked, with hot color in my face, and my eyes, I dare say, glistening. "Are you sure that you know me? And then please to tell me how."

As I spoke I was taking off the close silk bonnet which I had worn for travelling, and my hair, having caught in a pin, fell round me, and before I could put it up, or even think of it, I lay in the great arms of Betsy Bowen, as I used to lie when I was a little baby, and when my father was in his own land, with a home and wife and seven little ones. And to think of this made me keep her company in crying, and it was some time before we did any thing else.

"Well, well," replied the Major, who detested scenes, except when he had made them; "I shall be off. You are in good hands; and the cabman pulled out his watch when we stopped. So did I. But he is sure to beat me. They draw the minute hand on with a magnet, I am told, while the watch hangs on their badge, and they can swear they never opened it. Wonderful age, very wonderful age, since the time when you and I were young, ma'am."

"Yes, Sir; to be sure, Sir!" Mrs. Strouss replied, as she wiped her eyes to speak of things; "but the most wonderfulest of all things, don't you think, is the going of the time, Sir? No cabby can make it go faster while he waits, or slower while he is a-driving, than the minds inside of us manage it. Why, Sir, it wore only like yesterday that this here tall, elegant, royal young lady was a-lying on my breast, and what a hand she was to kick! And I said that her hair was sure to grow like this. If I was to tell you only half what comes across me--"

"If you did, ma'am, the cabman would make his fortune, and I should lose mine, which is more than I can afford. Erema, after dinner I shall look you up. I know a good woman when I see her, Mrs. Strouss, which does not happen every day. I can trust Miss Castlewood with you. Good-by, good-by for the present."

It was the first time he had ever called me by my proper name, and that made me all the more pleased with it.

"You see, Sir, why I were obliged to lock him in," cried the "good woman," following to the door, to clear every blur from her virtues; "for his own sake I done it, for I felt my cry a-coming, and to see me cry--Lord bless you, the effect upon him is to call out for a walking-stick and a pint of beer."

"All right, ma'am, all right!" the Major answered, in a tone which appeared to me unfeeling. "Cabman, are you asleep there? Bring the lady's bag this moment."

As the cab disappeared without my even knowing where to find that good protector again in this vast maze of millions, I could not help letting a little cold fear encroach on the warmth of my outburst. I had heard so much in America of the dark, subtle places of London, and the wicked things that happen all along the Thames, discovered or invented by great writers of their own, that the neighborhood of the docks and the thought of rats (to which I could never grow accustomed) made me look with a flash perhaps of doubt at my new old friend.

"You are not sure of me, Miss Erema," said Mrs. Strouss, without taking offense. "After all that has happened, who can blame it on you? But your father was not so suspicious, miss. It might have been better for him if he had--according, leastways, to my belief, which a team of wild horses will never drag out."

"Oh, only let me hear you talk of that!" I exclaimed, forgetting all other things. "You know more about it than any body I have ever met with, except my own father, who would never tell a word."

"And quite right he was, miss, according to his views. But come to my little room, unless you are afraid. I can tell you some things that your father never knew."

"Afraid! do you think I am a baby still? But I can not bear that Mr. Strouss should be locked up on my account."

"Then he shall come out," said Mrs. Strouss, looking at me very pleasantly. "That was just like your father, Miss Erema. But I fall into the foreign ways, being so much with the foreigners." Whether she thought it the custom among "foreigners" for wives to lock their husbands in back kitchens was more than she ever took the trouble to explain. But she walked away, in her stout, firm manner, and presently returned with Mr. Strouss, who seemed to be quite contented, and made me a bow with a very placid smile.

"He is harmless; his ideas are most grand and good," his wife explained to me, with a nod at him. "But I could not have you in with the gentleman, Hans. He always makes mistakes with the gentlemen, miss, but with the ladies he behaves quite well."

"Yes, yes, with the ladies I am nearly always goot," Herr Strouss replied, with diffidence. "The ladies comprehend me right, all right, because I am so habitual with my wife. But the gentlemans in London have no comprehension of me."

"Then the loss is on their side," I answered, with a smile; and he said, "Yes, yes, they lose vere much by me."


CHAPTER XXIII


BETSY'S TALE

Now I scarcely know whether it would be more clear to put into narrative what I heard from Betsy Bowen, now Wilhelmina Strouss, or to let her tell the whole in her own words, exactly as she herself told it then to me. The story was so dark and sad--or at least to myself it so appeared--that even the little breaks and turns of lighter thought or livelier manner, which could scarcely fail to vary now and then the speaker's voice, seemed almost to grate and jar upon its sombre monotone. On the other hand, by omitting these, and departing from her homely style, I might do more of harm than good through failing to convey impressions, or even facts, so accurately. Whereas the gist and core and pivot of my father's life and fate are so involved (though not evolved) that I would not miss a single point for want of time or diligence. Therefore let me not deny Mrs. Strouss, my nurse, the right to put her words in her own way. And before she began to do this she took the trouble to have every thing cleared away and the trays brought down, that her boarders (chiefly German) might leave their plates and be driven to their pipes.

"If you please, Miss Castlewood," Mrs. Strouss said, grandly, "do you or do you not approve of the presence of 'my man,' as he calls himself?--an improper expression, in my opinion; such, however, is their nature. He can hold his tongue as well as any man, though none of them are very sure at that. And he knows pretty nigh as much as I do, so far as his English can put things together, being better accustomed in German. For when we were courting I was fain to tell him all, not to join him under any false pretenses, miss, which might give him grounds against me."

"Yes, yes, it is all vere goot and true--so goot and true as can be."

"And you might find him come very handy, my dear, to run of any kind of messages. He can do that very well, I assure you, miss--better than any Englishman."

Seeing that he wished to stay, and that she desired it, I begged him to stop, though it would have been more to my liking to hear the tale alone.

"Then sit by the door, Hans, and keep off the draught," said his Wilhelmina, kindly. "He is not very tall, miss, but he has good shoulders; I scarcely know what I should do without him. Well, now, to begin at the very beginning: I am a Welshwoman, as you may have heard. My father was a farmer near Abergavenny, holding land under Sir Watkin Williams, an old friend of your family. My father had too many girls, and my mother scarcely knew what to do with the lot of us. So some of us went out to service, while the boys staid at home to work the land. One of my sisters was lady's-maid to Lady Williams, Sir Watkin's wife, at the time when your father came visiting there for the shooting of the moor-fowl, soon after his marriage with your mother. What a sweet good lady your mother was! I never saw the like before or since. No sooner did I set eyes upon her but she so took my fancy that I would have gone round the world with her. We Welsh are a very hot people, they say--not cold-blooded, as the English are. So, wise or foolish, right, wrong, or what might be, nothing would do for me but to take service, if I could, under Mrs. Castlewood. Your father was called Captain Castlewood then--as fine a young man as ever clinked a spur, but without any boast or conceit about him; and they said that your grandfather, the old lord, kept him very close and spare, although he was the only son. Now this must have been--let me see, how long ago?--about