The Wooden Hand. Hume Fergus

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      The Wooden Hand / A Detective Story

      CHAPTER I

      MISERY CASTLE

      "Ah well, Miss Eva, I 'spose your pa'ull come home to spile things as he allays have done. It ain't no wonder, I ses, as you sits moping by the winder, looking double your age, and you only twenty, as has no right to look forty, whatever you may say, though I took my dying alfred-david on its blessed truth."

      This slightly incoherent and decidedly pessimistic speech was moaned, rather than spoken, by a lean-bodied, hard-faced, staring-eyed woman to a pretty girl, who did not look at the speaker. And small wonder. Mrs. Merry-inappropriate name-was unattractive to the eye. She was angular, grey-skinned, grey-eyed, grey-haired, and had thin, drooping lips almost as grey as the rest of her. In her black stuff gown-she invariably wore the most funereal dresses-with uneasy hands folded under a coarse apron, she stood before Eva Strode, uttering lamentations worthy of Jeremiah at his worst. But such dumpishness was characteristic of the woman. She delighted in looking on the black side of things, and the blacker they were, the more she relished them. Out of wrong-doing, and grief and things awry, she extracted a queer sort of pleasure, and felt never so happy as when the worst came to the worst. It seemed unfit that such a walking pageant of woe should be called Merry.

      Eva, already depressed by the voice and sentiment of this lamentable dame, continued to look at the gaudy hollyhocks, even while she answered calmly, "I expect my father is the same as he was when he went to South Africa five years ago. I don't hope to find him an angel. I am certain he has not changed."

      "If you're thinking of black angels," said the lively Merry, "you can have satisfactions from thinking him Beelzebub, for him he are."

      "Don't call my father names. It does no good, Mrs. Merry."

      "Beg pardon, miss, but it do relieve the heart and temper. And I will call him a leper, if that's a name, seeing as he'll never change his spots, however persuaded."

      "What's the time?"

      Mrs. Merry peered into the dial of a clock on the mantelpiece. "You might call it six, Miss Eva, and a lovely evening it is, though rain may spile it unexpected. Your pa 'ull be seated at the table in the next room at eight, let us hope, if nothing do happen to him, and I do pray on my bended knees, Miss Eva, as he won't growl at the meal, his habit allays when your poor dear ma-her ladyship was alive. Ah well," said Mrs. Merry with emphasis, "she's an angel now, and your pa ain't likely to trouble her again."

      "Why, don't you think my father may come home? I mean, why do you fancy anything may happen to him?"

      "Oh, I ain't got no cause, but what you might call the uncertainties of this vale of tears, Miss Eva. He have to drive ten mile here from the Westhaven station, and there's tramps about them lonely roads. Coming from South Africa, your pa 'ull naturally have diamonds to tempt the poor."

      "I don't know what he has got," said Eva rather pettishly. "And no one, save you and me, know he is returning from Africa."

      "No one, Miss Eva?" questioned the woman significantly.

      Miss Strode coloured. "I told Mr. Hill."

      "And he told his pa, and his pa, who have a long tongue, told all the village, I don't doubt. If ever there was a man as fiddled away his days in silliness," cried Merry, "it's that pink and white jelly-fish as you call Hills."

      "Hill," corrected Miss Strode; then added colouring: "His son doesn't take after him."

      "No," admitted the other grudgingly, "I will say as Mr. Allen is a tight lad. His mother gave him her blood and sense and looks; not that I say he's worthy of you, Miss Eva."

      "Mrs. Merry," said Eva quietly, "you let your tongue run on too freely about my friends."

      "Not the father Hills, if I die in saying it. He's no friend of yours, seeing he's your pa's; and as to Mr. Allen, I never had a sweetheart as I called friend, when you could call him something better."

      Eva took no notice of this speech, but continued, "You are my old nurse, Mrs. Merry, and I allow you to talk openly."

      "For your good, Miss Eva," put in Merry.

      "For my good, I know," said the girl; "but you must not run down Allen's father or mine."

      "As to his father, I say nothing but that he's a drivelling jelly-fish," said Mrs. Merry, who would not be suppressed; "but your own pa I know, worse luck, and I don't think much of him as a man, whatever I say about his being Beelzebub, which he is. Fifty years and more he is, fine-looking at that, though wickedness is in his aching bones. Not that I know of their aching," explained Mrs. Merry, "but if sin would make 'em smart, ache they do. You've been happy with me, Miss Eva, dear, in spite of a humble roof and your poor ma's death, four and a half year back. But your pa's come home to make trouble. Satan let loose is what I call him, and if I could stop his coming by twisting his wicked neck, I would."

      "Mrs. Merry!" Eva rose quickly and flushed. "You forget yourself."

      "There," said Mrs. Merry, casting up her eyes; "and I fed her with my own milk."

      Eva, who was tenderly attached to the angular, dismal, chattering woman, could not withstand this remark. "Dear Nanny," she said, comforting the wounded heart, "I know you mean well, but my father is my father after all."

      "Worse luck, so he is," sobbed Mrs. Merry, feeling for Eva's hand.

      "I wish to think of him as kindly as I can, and-"

      "Miracles won't make you do that," interrupted the woman, dropping her apron from her eyes, and glaring. "Miss Eva, I knew your pa when he was a bad boy, both him and me being neighbours, as you might say, though I did live in a cottage and he in a Manor House not two mile from here. He and that jelly-fish of a Hills were always together doing mischief, and setting neighbours by the ears, though I do say as your pa, being masterful, led that jelly-fish away. Then your pa ran away with Lady Jane Delham, your ma, as is dead, and treated her shameful. She come here to me, as an old friend, for friend I was, tho' humble," sobbed Mrs. Merry weeping again, "and you were born. Then your pa takes you away and I never set eyes on you and my lady till five years ago when he brought you here. To settle down and make you happy? No! not he. Away he goes gallivanting to South Africa where the blacks are, leaving a lady born and bred and his daughter just a bud, meaning yourself, to live with a common woman like me!"

      "I have been very happy, Nanny, and my mother was happy also, when she was alive."

      "Ah," said Mrs. Merry bitterly, "a queer sort of happiness, to be that way when your husband goes. I've had a trial myself in Merry, who's dead, and gone, I hope, where you'll find your pa will join him. But you'll see, Miss Eva, as your pa will come and stop your marrying Mr. Allen."

      "I think that's very likely," said Eva sadly.

      "What," said Mrs. Merry under her breath, and rising, "he's at it already is he? I thought so."

      "I received a letter from him the other day," explained Eva; "knowing your prejudice against my father, I said nothing."

      "Me not to be trusted, I 'spose, Miss Eva?" was the comment.

      "Nonsense. I trust you with anything."

      "And well you may. I fed you with my heart's blood, and foster sister you are to my boy Cain, though, Lord knows, he's as bad as his father was before him-the gipsy whelp that he is. Not on my side, though," cried Mrs. Merry. "I'm true English, and why I ever took up with a Romany rascal like Giles Merry, I don't know. But he's dead, I hope he is, though I never can be sure, me not knowing where's his grave. Come now," Mrs. Merry gave her face a wipe with the apron, "I'm talking of my own troubles, when yours is about. That letter-?"

      "It is one in answer to mine. I wrote to Cape Town three months ago telling my father that I was engaged to Allen Hill. He wrote the other day-a week ago-from Southampton, saying he would not permit the marriage to take place, and bade me wait till he came home."

      "Trouble! trouble," said Mrs. Merry, rocking; "I know the man. Ah, my dear, don't talk. I'm thinking for your good."

      It was hot outside, though the sun was sinking and the cool twilight shadowed the earth.