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Helen’s collier, cock of the walk in his neighbourhood, made up to the theodolite bearer to wrest it from him by sheer force. A battle took place, the collier was soundly pummelled, but the natives poured in volleys of stones upon the surveyors and their instruments, and the theodolite was smashed to pieces.
I wish somebody that was worthy to possess her would come and take her away—don’t you, Frederick? If the perusal of this letter filled me with dismay for Helen’s future life and mine, there was one great source of consolation: it was now in my power to clear her name from every foul aspersion.
There was something, too, in the manner with which Raymond introduced himself that won for him a place in the crusty old man’s good opinion. "I am Fred Raymond," said he, "your niece Helen’s son, and as poor a jack as there is this side of California. They say you are a stingy old customer, but I don’t care for that. You have got to give me some business, and a home, too."
But for your satisfaction I will add a few words more; because I know you will have a fellow-feeling for the old lady, and will wish to know the last of her history. I did come again in spring, and, agreeably to Helen’s injunctions, did my best to cultivate her acquaintance.
The farmers stationed men at the field-gates with pitchforks, and sometimes with guns, to drive them back. At St. Helen’s, one of the chainmen was laid hold of by a mob of colliers, and threatened to be hurled down a coal-pit. A number of men, women, and children, collected and ran after the surveyors wherever they made their appearance, bawling nicknames and throwing stones at them.
The very fact of sitting exalted aloft, surveying the snowy landscape and sweet sunny sky, inhaling the pure, bracing air, and crunching away over the crisp frozen snow, was exhilarating enough in itself; but add to this the idea of to what goal I was hastening, and whom I expected to meet, and you may have some faint conception of my frame of mind at the time—only a faint one, though: for my heart swelled with unspeakable delight, and my spirits rose almost to madness, in spite of my prudent endeavours to bind them down to a reasonable platitude by thinking of the undeniable difference between Helen’s rank and mine; of all that she had passed through since our parting; of her long, unbroken silence; and, above all, of her cool, cautious aunt, whose counsels she would doubtless be careful not to slight again.
It took the whole eight months, and all Helen’s kindness and goodness to boot, to overcome my mother’s prejudices against my bride-elect, and to reconcile her to the idea of my leaving Linden Grange and living so far away. Yet she was gratified at her son’s good fortune after all, and proudly attributed it all to his own superior merits and endowments.
It was proposed that, instead of causing the death of numbers who had nothing to do with the quarrel, Menelaus and Paris should fight hand-to-hand for Helen; and they began; but as soon as Venus saw that her favourite Paris was in danger, she came in a cloud, snatched him away, and set him down in Helen’s chamber, where his brother Hector found him reclining at his ease, on coming to upbraid him for keeping out of the battle, where so many better men than he were dying for his crime.
In great good humour I sat down to examine the book, and drew the little fellow between my knees. Had he come a minute before I should have received him less graciously, but now I affectionately stroked his curling looks, and even kissed his ivory forehead: he was my own Helen’s son, and therefore mine; and as such I have ever since regarded him.
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