Уилки Коллинз - Hide and Seek

“Ah! no wonder, no wonder!”

“It was a wonder to me, though. I should have laughed at any man, if he’d told me I should be took so at hearing what I heard about her, after all the time I’d been away. I couldn’t make it out then, and I can’t now. I didn’t feel like my own man, when I first set eyes on the old place. And then to hear she was dead—it cut me, as I told you. It cut me deeper still, when I come to tumble over the things she’d left behind her in her box. Twenty years ago got nigher and nigher to yesterday, with every fresh thing belonging to her that I laid a hand on. There was a arbor in father’s garden she used to be fond of working in of evenings. I’d lost all thought of that place for more years than I can reckon up. I called it to mind again—and called her to mind again, too, sitting and working and singing in the arbor—only with laying holt of a bit of patchwork stuff in the bottom of her box, with her needle and thread left sticking in it.”

“Ah, dear, dear!” sighed Mrs. Peckover, “I wish I’d seen her then! She was as happy, I dare say, as the bird on the tree. But there’s one thing I can’t exactly make out yet,” she added—“how did you first come to know all about Mary’s child?”

“All? There wasn’t no all in it, till I see the child herself. Except knowing that the poor creeter’s baby had been born alive, I knowed nothing when I first come away from the old place in the country. Child! I hadn’t nothing of the sort in my mind, when I got back to London. It was how to track the man as was Mary’s death, that I puzzled and worrited about in my head, at that time—”

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Peckover, interposing to keep him away from the dangerous subject, as she heard his voice change, and saw his eyes begin to brighten again. “Yes, yes—but how did you come to see the child? Tell me that.”

“Zack took me into the Painter-man’s big room—”

“Zack! Why, good gracious Heavens! do you mean Master Zachary Thorpe?”

“I see a young woman standing among a lot of people as was all a staring at her,” continued Mat, without noticing the interruption. “I see her just as close to, and as plain, as I see you. I see her look up, all of a sudden, front face to front face with me. A creeping and a crawling went through me; and I says to myself, ‘Mary’s child has lived to grow up, and that’s her.’”

“But, do pray tell me, how ever you come to know Master Zack?”

“I says to myself ‘That’s her,’” repeated Mat, his rough voice sinking lower and lower, his attention wandering farther and farther away from Mrs. Peckover’s interruptions. “Twenty year ago had got to be like yesterday, when I was down at the old place; and things I hadn’t called to mind for long times past, I called to mind when I come to the churchyard-gate, and see father’s house. But there was looks Mary had with her eyes, turns Mary had with her head, bits of twitches Mary had with her eyebrows when she looked up at you, that I’d clean forgot. They all come back to me together, as soon as ever I see that young woman’s face.”

“And do you really never mean to let your sister’s child know who you are? You may tell me that, surely—though you won’t speak a word about Master Zack.”

“Let her know who I am? Mayhap I’ll let her know that much, before long. When I’m going back to the wild country, I may say to her: ‘Rough as I am to look at, I’m your mother’s brother, and you’re the only bit of my own flesh and blood I’ve got left to cotton to in all the world. Give us a shake of your hand, and a kiss for mother’s sake; and I won’t trouble you no more.’ I may say that, afore I go back, and lose sight of her for good and all.”

“Oh, but you won’t go back. Only you tell Mr. Blyth you don’t want to take her away, and then say to him, ‘I’m Mr. Grice, and—‘”

“Stop! Don’t you get a-talking about Mr. Grice.”

“Why not? It’s your lawful name, isn’t it?”

“Lawful enough, I dare say. But I don’t like the sound of it, though it is mine. Father as good as said he was ashamed to own it, when he wrote me that letter: and I was afraid to own it, when I deserted from my ship. Bad luck has followed the name from first to last. I ended with it years ago, and I won’t take up with it again now. Call me ‘Mat.’ Take it as easy with me as if I was kin to you.”

“Well, then—Mat,” said Mrs. Peckover with a smile. “I’ve got such a many things to ask you still—”

“I wish you could make it out to ask them to-morrow,” rejoined Matthew. “I’ve overdone myself already, with more talking than I’m used to. I want to be quiet with my tongue, and get to work with my hands for the rest of the day. You don’t happen to have a foot-rule in the house, do you?”

On being asked to explain what motive could induce him to make this extraordinary demand for a foot-rule, Mat answered that he was anxious to proceed at once to the renewal of the cross-board at the head of his sister’s grave. He wanted the rule to measure the dimensions of the old board: he desired to be directed to a timber-merchant’s, where he could buy a new piece of wood; and, after that, he would worry Mrs. Peckover about nothing more. Extraordinary as his present caprice appeared to her, the good woman saw that it had taken complete possession of him, and wisely and willingly set herself to humor it. She procured for him the rule, and the address of a timber-merchant; and then they parted, Mat promising to call again in the evening at Dawson’s Buildings.

When he presented himself at the timber-merchant’s, after having carefully measured the old board in the churchyard, he came in no humor to be easily satisfied. Never was any fine lady more difficult to decide about the texture, pattern, and color to be chosen for a new dress, than Mat, was when he arrived at the timber-merchant’s, about the grain, thickness, and kind of wood to be chosen for the cross-board at the head of Mary’s grave. At last, he selected a piece of walnut-wood; and, having paid the price demanded for it, without any haggling, inquired next for a carpenter, of whom he might hire a set of tools. A man who has money to spare, has all things at his command. Before evening, Mat had a complete set of tools, a dry shed to use them in, and a comfortable living-room at a public-house near, all at his own sole disposal.

Being skillful enough at all carpenter’s work of an ordinary kind, he would, under most circumstances, have completed in a day or two such an employment as he had now undertaken. But a strange fastidiousness, a most uncharacteristic anxiety about the smallest matters, delayed him through every stage of his present undertaking. Mrs. Peckover, who came every morning to see how he was getting on, was amazed at the slowness of his progress. He was, from the first, morbidly scrupulous in keeping the board smooth and clean. After he had shaped it, and fitted it to its upright supports; after he had cut in it (by Mrs. Peckover’s advice) the same inscription which had been placed on the old board—the simple initials “M. G.,” with the year of Mary’s death, “1828”—after he had done these things, he was seized with an unreasonable, obstinate fancy for decorating the board at the sides. In spite of all that Mrs. Peckover could say to prevent him, he carved an anchor at one side, and a tomahawk at the other—these being the objects with which he was most familiar, and therefore the objects which he chose to represent. But even when the carving of his extraordinary ornaments had been completed, he could not be prevailed on to set the new cross-board up in its proper place. Fondly as artists or authors linger over their last loving touches to the picture or the book, did Mat now linger, day after day, over the poor monument to his sister’s memory, which his own rough hands had made. He smoothed it carefully with bits of sand-paper, he rubbed it industriously with leather, he polished it anxiously with oil, until, at last, Mrs. Peckover lost all patience; and, trusting in the influence she had already gained over him, fairly insisted on his bringing his work to a close. Even while obeying her, he was still true to his first resolution. He had said that no man’s hand should help in the labor he had now undertaken; and he was as good as his word, for he carried the cross-board himself to the churchyard.