We got lost, and were benighted in the forest. Happily we fell in with one of the rangers who had lit a fire.""Do I understand, then," said Yram, as I suppose we may as well call her, "that you were out all last night? How tired you must be! But I hope you had enough provisions with you?""Indeed we were out all night. We staid by the ranger's fire till midnight, and then tried to find our way down, but we gave it up soon after we had got out of the forest, and then waited under a large chestnut tree till four or five this morning. As for food, we had not so much as a mouthful from about three in the afternoon till we got to our inn early this morning.""Oh, you poor, poor people! how tired you must be.""No; we made a good breakfast as soon as we got in, and then went to bed, where we staid till it was time for us to come to your house."Here Panky gave his friend a significant look, as much as to say that he had said enough.
This set Hanky on at once. "Strange to say, the ranger was wearing the old Erewhonian dress. It did me good to see it again after all these years. It seems your son lets his men wear what few of the old clothes they may still have, so long as they keep well away from the town. But fancy how carefully these poor fellows husband them; why, it must be seventeen years since the dress was forbidden!"We all of us have skeletons, large or small, in some cupboard of our lives, but a well regulated skeleton that will stay in its cupboard quietly does not much matter. There are skeletons, however, which can never be quite trusted not to open the cupboard door at some awkward moment, go down stairs, ring the hall-door bell, with grinning face announce themselves as the skeleton, and ask whether the master or mistress is at home. This kind of skeleton, though no bigger than a rabbit, will sometimes loom large as that of a dinotherium. My father was Yram's skeleton. True, he was a mere skeleton of a skeleton, for the chances were thousands to one that he and my mother had perished long years ago; and even though he rang at the bell, there was no harm that he either could or would now do to her or hers; still, so long as she did not certainly know that he was dead, or otherwise precluded from returning, she could not be sure that he would not one day come back by the way that he would alone know, and she had rather he should not do so.
Hence, on hearing from Professor Hanky that a man had been seen between the statues and Sunch'ston wearing the old Erewhonian dress, she was disquieted and perplexed. The excuse he had evidently made to the Professors aggravated her uneasiness, for it was an obvious attempt to escape from an unexpected difficulty.
There could be no truth in it. Her son would as soon think of wearing the old dress himself as of letting his men do so; and as for having old clothes still to wear out after seventeen years, no one but a Bridgeford Professor would accept this. She saw, therefore, that she must keep her wits about her, and lead her guests on to tell her as much as they could be induced to do.
"My son," she said innocently, "is always considerate to his men, and that is why they are so devoted to him. I wonder which of them it was? In what part of the preserves did you fall in with him?"Hanky described the place, and gave the best idea he could of my father's appearance.
"Of course he was swarthy like the rest of us?""I saw nothing remarkable about him, except that his eyes were blue and his eyelashes nearly white, which, as you know, is rare in Erewhon. Indeed, I do not remember ever before to have seen a man with dark hair and complexion but light eyelashes. Nature is always doing something unusual.""I have no doubt," said Yram, "that he was the man they call Blacksheep, but I never noticed this peculiarity in him. If he was Blacksheep, I am afraid you must have found him none too civil; he is a rough diamond, and you would hardly be able to understand his uncouth Sunch'ston dialect.""On the contrary, he was most kind and thoughtful--even so far as to take our permit from us, and thus save us the trouble of giving it up at your son's office. As for his dialect, his grammar was often at fault, but we could quite understand him.""I am glad to hear he behaved better than I could have expected.
Did he say in what part of the preserves he had been?""He had been catching quails between the place where we saw him and the statues; he was to deliver three dozen to your son this afternoon for the Mayor's banquet on Sunday."This was worse and worse. She had urged her son to provide her with a supply of quails for Sunday's banquet, but he had begged her not to insist on having them. There was no close time for them in Erewhon, but he set his face against their being seen at table in spring and summer. During the winter, when any great occasion arose, he had allowed a few brace to be provided.
"I asked my son to let me have some," said Yram, who was now on full scent. She laughed genially as she added, "Can you throw any light upon the question whether I am likely to get my three dozen?
I have had no news as yet."
"The man had taken a good many; we saw them but did not count them.
He started about midnight for the ranger's shelter, where he said he should sleep till daybreak, so as to make up his full tale betimes."Yram had heard her son complain that there were no shelters on the preserves, and state his intention of having some built before the winter. Here too, then, the man's story must be false. She changed the conversation for the moment, but quietly told a servant to send high and low in search of her son, and if he could be found, to bid him come to her at once. She then returned to her previous subject.
