Bensington

“ Then for some moments nothing but a minute muffled confusion from the direction of the rat-holes, and then again a wild yell ... Each man found himself running hard for the guns.
Two shots.
Bensington found himself, gun in hand, going hard through the pine trees after a number of receding backs. It is curious that the thought uppermost in his mind at that moment was the wish that his cousin Jane could see him. His bulbous slashed boots flew out in wild strides, and his face was distorted into a permanent grin, because that wrinkled his nose and kept his glasses in place. ”

“ Stephen was sorely tempted to go first to Bensington, but he knew that both principle and policy directed the previous search for Orme. He found that exemplary gentleman, after an hour’s search, drinking and gambling in a low ale-booth outside South Gate; and having first pumped on him to get him sober, he sent him off to his work with a lecture. Then, going a little way down Grandpont Street, he turned across Presthey, and coming out below Saint Edmund’s Well, took the road to Bensington. ”

“ Bensington, when he chose this calling, when he consecrated his life to the alkaloids and their kindred compounds, had some inkling of the vision,—more than an inkling. Without some such inspiration, for such glories and positions only as a “scientist” may expect, what young man would have given his life to such work, as young men do? No, they must have seen the glory, they must have had the vision, but so near that it has blinded them. The splendour has blinded them, mercifully, so that for the rest of their lives they can hold the lights of knowledge in comfort—that we may see! ”

“ He was at Bensington’s now almost every day. Bensington, glancing from the window, would see the faultless equipage come spanking up Sloane Street and after an incredibly brief interval Winkles would enter the room with a light, strong motion, and pervade it, and protrude some newspaper and supply information and make remarks.
“Well,” he would say, rubbing his hands, “how are we getting on?” and so pass to the current discussion about it.
“Do you see,” he would say, for example, “that Caterham has been talking about our stuff at the Church Association?” ”

“ But Bensington worked in his laboratory now with more emotion than zest. He couldn't, tell whether he wanted serious consequences to his life or not; he was a man of quiet tastes. It was a marvellous discovery, of course, quite marvellous--but--He had already become the proprietor of several acres of scorched, discredited property near Hickleybrow, at a price of nearly ?90 an acre, and at times he was disposed to think this as serious a consequence of speculative chemistry as any unambitious man, could wish. ”

“ Thank God He has a use for you!”
“But the conflict!” said Bensington, “the stress! I don’t know if you have imagined—”
“You ought to have been some sort of little vegetable, Bensington,” said Cossar—“that’s what you ought to have been. Something growing over a rockery. Here you are, fearfully and wonderfully made, and all you think you’re made for is just to sit about and take your vittles. D’you think this world was made for old women to mop about in? Well, anyhow, you can’t help yourselves now—you’ve got to go on.”
“I suppose we must,” said Redwood. ”

“ Then for a time everybody was busy with a gun. For three minutes lives were cheap at the Experimental Farm, and the banging of guns filled the air. Redwood, careless of Bensington in his excitement, rushed in pursuit, and was knocked headlong by a mass of brick fragments, mortar, plaster, and rotten lath splinters that came flying out at him as a bullet whacked through the wall. ”

“ He seemed to consider that the conduct of business from open windows was an entirely legitimate and obvious method. Finally he and Bensington got the Red Lion dogcart and set off with the waggonette, to overtake the baggage. They did this a little beyond the cross-roads, and so reached Hickleybrow first.
Bensington, with a gun between his knees, sitting beside Cossar in the dog-cart, developed a long germinated amazement. All they were doing was, no doubt, as Cossar insisted, quite the obvious thing to do, only--! In England one so rarely does the obvious thing. ”

“ Men went to and fro about him--grimy, energetic men. Cossar moved amongst them like a god.
Bensington drank that delight of human fellowship that comes to happy armies, to sturdy expeditions--never to those who live the life of the sober citizen in cities. After Cossar had taken his axe away and set him to carry wood he went to and fro, saying they were all "good fellows." He kept on--long after he was aware of fatigue.
At last all was ready, and the broaching of the paraffin began. The moon, robbed now of all its meagre night retinue of stars, shone high above the dawn. ”

“ A faint shout came to Bensington’s ears, and then he perceived the remaining two rats bolting divergently, and Cossar in pursuit towards the holes.
The whole thing was an affair of misty shadows; all three fighting monsters were exaggerated and made unreal by the delusive clearness of the light. At moments Cossar was colossal, at moments invisible. The rats flashed athwart the eye in sudden unexpected leaps, or ran with a movement of the feet so swift, they seemed to run on wheels. ”

“ Bensington’s sword of Damocles, so to speak, with an expression of sad detachment. “You don’t want to run thith Farm for profit. No, Thir. Ith all the thame, Thir. Ekthperimenth! Prethithely.”
He said they could go to the farm at once. He was doing nothing at Dunton Green except a little tailoring. “It ithn’t the thmart plathe I thought it wath, and what I get ithent thkarthely worth having,” he said, “tho that if it ith any convenienth to you for uth to come....” ”

“ Bensington went up and down the room, regardless of his corns, and spoke to her quite firmly and angrily without the slightest effect. He said that nothing ought to stand in the way of the Advancement of Science, and she said that the Advancement of Science was one thing and having a lot of tadpoles in a flat was another; he said that in Germany it was an ascertained fact that a man with an idea like his would at once have twenty thousand properly-fitted cubic feet of laboratory placed at his disposal, and she said she was glad and always had been glad that she was not a German ”

“ I tell you all is arranged."
"Tell me the rest of the story," said the priest.
"There is not much more. So it stands at present. I tell you her Grace hath been tossed to and fro like a ball at play. She was at Chatsworth, as you know; she has been shut up in Chartley like a criminal; she was at Babington House even. God! if I had but known it in time!"
"In Babington House! Why, when was that?"
"Last year, early—with Sir Ralph Sadler, who was her gaoler then!" cried Anthony bitterly; "but for a night only.... I have sold the house."
"Sold it!"
"I do not keep prisons," snapped Anthony. ”

“ Now he was going in for the landed-proprietor stuff, citrus fruits, peon servants, hammocks in the shade of palms, with the Missus in a rocking-chair on a broad piazza under the roses Oh, boy, that would be the life! (Any tropic prospectus will prove it! )
“When I get the finca all jazzed up, right,” said Bennington, I’ll send for Beatrice, and she’ll have to admit I was right!”
Bennington gazed out over the patio at the shimmering plain, the range of the Sierra Hedionda, the buzzards volplaning far aloft. He felt all manner of exotic things. One just bit him under the shirt. ”

“ That must have been in the winter, and it was in the same winter perhaps that he came home with Blessington and two other children—girls, and larger than himself—whom he grew to believe were his sisters, through a wood of fir-trees between the trunks of which shone a round red ball that resembled the coals in the nursery-grate. He knew—perhaps Blessington, perhaps a sister, perhaps his mother had told him—that it was Christmas Eve, and he saw that when Blessington spoke to him she steamed delightfully at the mouth, as if there had been a hot bath just inside her lips. ”

“ Tales ran about the country on every side. One man would say that he had it from London direct that Parliament had sentenced her; another that the Queen of England had given her consent too; a third, that Parliament had not dared to touch the matter at all; a fourth, that Elizabeth had pardoned her. But, for Robin, his hesitation largely lay in his knowledge that it was on the Babington plot that all would turn, and that this would have been the chief charge against her; and here, but a yard away from him, in the gloom of the chimney-breast sat Anthony's wife and sister. ”

“ The widow blew a ribbon of smoke from those red lips into the sunlit air under the palm-tree, kissed her slim hand at Benninglon, and laid that hand on her heart.
“Good night!” gulped Bennington, and fled.
BENNINGTON spent three weeks of toils and complications incredible to one who knoweth not the ways and customs of folk in the spig belt. He wrote, however, enthusiastic letters home to Beatrice, all about the land flowing with milk and honey. In case something might yet be salvaged from the wreck, he might never have to own the awful truth. ”

“ But now there was no sense of terror; he did not want to call for Blessington, but lay open-eyed and absorbed in the amazing thing that was happening. The night-nursery (where he knew he was) , and he with it, were expanding and extending, till they comprised the lawn and the wood beyond the lawn, and all else that he had ever known. His sisters and his mother and father were all there, though he could not see them; Blessington was there, and Graves the butler, and Walter and William, the two footmen. ”

“ No man, Mr. Mallock, but you and I must know of its very existence. Neither can I tell you now to whom the packet must be given. You must bear it with you, sir, until you have a message from me, signed with the same seal as that which it bears, telling you where you must take it, and to whom. You understand?"
"I understand, Sir."
"You must leave London immediately until your face is forgotten, and until this storm is over. You have a cousin in the country?"
"Yes, Sir; Mr. Jermyn at Hare Street." ”

“ Secretary Walsingham has given you. You told me a while ago that Ballard was on the eve of going to France. Now Walsingham is no fool. I would to God he were! He has laid enough of our men by the heels already."
"By God!" cried Anthony, roused again. "I would not willingly call you a fool either, my man! But do you not understand that Walsingham believes me as loyal as himself? Here have I been at court for the last year, bowing before her Grace, and never a word said to me on my religion. And here is Walsingham has bidden me to lodge in his house, in the midst of all his spider's webs. ”

“ John, who was on the eve of departure for London again to serve his brother there, who was back again in the Fleet by now, wrote that he knew very well that they were all under suspicion, that he had sent on to his son the message she had given, but that he hoped they would yet weather the storm.
"And as to yourself, Mistress Marjorie," he wrote, "this makes it all the more necessary that Booth's Edge should not be suspected; for what will our men do if Padley be closed to them? You have heard of our friend Mr. Garlick's capture? But that was no fault of yours. The man was warned. ”

“ The fellow turned even paler.
"Well, sir; but how can I tell that—"
"Sir," said the page to me sharply, "call the guard!"
"Sir," cried the poor wretch, "I will tell all; indeed I will tell."
"Well?"
"Sir, the Duke of Monmouth was in it—at least we heard so. He was certainly in the former plot!"
"And what was that?" asked the other very quietly.
"Why, sir; the plot to assault Whitehall; it is all one in reality; but—"
"We know all about that," snapped the page sharply. "Well; and what other names?"
"Sir; there was my Lord Russell."
I moved in my chair. ”

“ It appeared that when the news of Sir Edmund's death had come, there had been something of a to-do in the village, of no great signification; for it was no more than a few young men who marched up and down shouting together—as such yokels will, upon the smallest excuse; and one of them had cried out at the gate of Hare Street House. At Barkway there had been more of a business; for there they had burnt an effigy of the Pope in the churchyard; and the parson—who was a stout Churchman—had made a speech upon it. ”

“ Dinner was over, and they sat on the south of the terrace-fronted house; a full moon moved like a queen bee among the swarming stars, and the world was refashioned out of soft darkness and ivory and pearl. Pearl-coloured was Jeannie’s dress, and she the pearl of pearls.
“How strange one’s life goes in acts,” she said. “The act at Wroxton is over now, but what a pleasant one it was. Oh, Jack, I hope this act will be a long one. Do you remember the plank bridge by the mill, and Toby shaking himself?” ”

“ He always was a filthy brute—I never liked him. And you? Are you not married yourself?"
"No, indeed," said Benson, with an involuntary look at Cecelie, who, slim and graceful as a willow wand, was talking to the admiring captain.
"Shall we have some tea together?" pursued Mrs. Batsford-Wring hospitably. "You were very late finishin' your luncheon, weren't you?—but a cup of tea is refreshin' at any time. Now don't look at your watch, Bennie; you can't hurry off when we've so much to talk over. You'll have tea with us, Miss Sherwood?" ”