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  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Ninth Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Ninth Instalment

    Picture a May Day festival on an English village green, complete with Morris dancers and maypole, the main setting for this instalment. May Day is a tradition widespread in the Northern Hemisphere, celebrating fertility and the return of Spring. There are indeterminate roots in the pagan Roman Floralia, dedicated to the goddess Flora, in which participants danced and wore floral wreaths.

    The popularity of the festival was intermittent across the centuries. Some argue that the British May Day tradition in its present form was a reinvention of the Victorians, who formalized and cleansed it of risqué pagan elements.

    Despite the fact that they were, in reality, the usual celebrants, adolescents were excluded from direct participation in such sentimentalized representations. It would seem that even the image of teenagers of both sexes gathering flowers in the woods on a spring morning might have been considered immoral (as the practice itself certainly was considered; maying’s potential as an opportunity for youthful sexual adventures was one reason why the festivals had nearly been suppressed early in the century.)

    Louise Lippincott, Lawrence Alma Tadema: Spring (1990)

    In 1881 John Ruskin (1819–1900), the uber-influential writer, art critic, and social reformer, inaugurated a new style of May Festival at Whitelands College in London, which was emulated throughout England. He borrowed from European festivals, with their Queen of May and weaving together of ribbons that hung down from the top of the maypole. Students elected, in Ruskin’s words, the ‘nicest and likablest’ among them to be May Queen — someone ‘full of pure and uncontending natural worth’ (The Companion).

    Ruskin, by Herbert Rose Barraud, 1885. Public Domain. Source: LIFE Photo Archive; Wikimedia Commons

    It is tempting to see in Smith’s use of the festival, below, an emphatic nod to Ruskin, given the wholesome nature of his own heroes and heroines, and his constant promotion of values inherent in a rural way of life. In particular, his passage on the adverse effects of aspects of contemporary change — ‘an unnatural system of forcing’ — upon youth and courtship, is redolent of Ruskin’s polemic against nineteenth-century industrial capitalism.

    CHAPTER NINE

    The May-Day Festival — An Old-Fashioned Country Squire and his Guests — Arrival of an Unexpected Visitor

    Sir George Meredith felt extremely gratified by his purchase of Chellston; not that he cared much about the revenue derived from it, being already sufficiently rich, but it rounded his estate and increased his interests in the county. He could now turn the elections. The world said that he wanted a peerage; they were mistaken; he had twice refused it. Probably his having no son had something to do with it.

    On his rare visits to London the fashionable world in which his ancient name and large fortune entitled him to move, pronounced him a little coarse; not in mind, for he was manly, upright, and honest. But, then, he shocked their conventionalities, not by any positive vulgarisms — he was too much of a gentleman for that — but by doing things in his own way. For instance, when he gave a dinner-party, he would invite any of his neighbors from the country who happened to be in town. Frock-coats might occasionally be seen at them, and even top-boots.

    Our readers, probably, will wonder why a man so perfectly indifferent to the usage of the world — he never neglected its proprieties — should have been so generally welcomed. The reason will appear sufficiently plain when we inform them that he had an only daughter — the greatest heiress in the eastern counties.

    Clara Meredith was not strictly beautiful; some did not consider her even pretty. She possessed a fine figure, black, curly hair, eyes of the same color that sparkled with wit and humour. Sometimes there appeared a slight touch of sarcasm in her conversation. It was not very pronounced, but it made her enemies. The only thing society really admired in her was her horsemanship. Trained by her father to the hunting-field, she had become a matchless rider. Her first appearance in the Park created quite a sensation. Clara had been presented at court; passed one season in London, which she pronounced a bore, and then returned joyously to her home, vowing never again to quit it. Her father and friends laughed at her, predicting that she would one day change her resolution. The saucy girl shook her head and merely answered:

    ‘We shall see.’

    Possibly she felt piqued. Not by her want of success at balls, routs, and flower shows; but she did think it strange that her cousin, Lord Bury, had not been introduced to her. It was negligent on his part, to say the least of it. They had never met since they were both children; but his lordship had seen her in the Park, and pronounced her not his style of girl — an opinion he kept strictly to himself, and only imparted it to his father when that scheming nobleman ‘hinted’ at a marriage between them. As our readers may recollect, his lordship scouted the idea.

    Chellston lay heavy on his heart. Not so much for the value of the place as its associations. His boyhood had been passed there. At Chellston he had experienced a mother’s love, rode his first pony, fired his first shot upon its lands. Having an idle week upon his hands, Lord Bury made up his mind to revisit the still fondly-remembered spot. It was his last chance of doing so, for the London season was about to commence. The first of May was near at hand.

    ‘It will be the more galling,’ he thought. ‘I must visit with those I do not care to meet — wear a smiling face. The world must not suspect how shamelessly I have been duped. The honor of our name must be preserved.’

    Chellston, really, is a very pretty village, situated a few miles from Scole, on the borders of Norfolk. In the centre an extensive green, dotted on the skirts with comfortable-looking farmhouses; it had also a church, school, and, what is rarely now to be met with in once merry England, a lofty May-pole, the pride of the inhabitants, who were entitled, by long-established custom, to cut down the tallest tree once in ten years growing on the adjacent common. Some said a charter existed to that effect. Be that as it may, in our time the lord of the manor had never disputed the right.

    Poets love to dwell on the resemblance between human life and the seasons of the year. Youth and May are both the springtime of the future. First they put forth delicate, sensitive leaves, which shrink alike from the cold embrace of winter and too sudden contact with the summer’s sultry breath.

    The world has lost much of its freshness. Since the race of life became so keenly contested from an unnatural system of forcing, the human plant loses in perfume more than it gains in strength; and even that is fictitious. The mere boy springs like a young gladiator from the school-room into the arena; advances by antagonism; the warning cry, ‘Woe to the conquered,’ excites instead of restraining him. His courage may be high, but it is pitted against the craft of age; his impulses pure, till the cynical lessons of experience force him to change his weapons, and the battle is renewed upon more equal ground.

    The result is generally unfortunate. Youth has no latent forces to rely upon.

    Even in that sex whose domain is beauty, whose influence has civilised the world, whose smile adds lustre to the poet’s wreath and the soldier’s laurel, without whose presence home becomes an empty word, the change has been equally great. What we complain of is, there are more women and fewer girls — girls in the artless, loving, lovable sense of the word. Courtship has lost much of its charm since Cupid’s shafts have been aimed at the pocket rather than the heart.

    Toilet, too, has become an important enemy to matrimony.

    Oh! for the days when simple muslin was an institution as sacred to girlhood as satins and velvets to matron dignity and honoured age; when a bright-coloured ribbon, more or less, a rose in the hair, made all the difference between morning and evening dress; when dainty feet, instead of being confined in instruments of torture, which cripple them, were cased in tiny slippers; when girls could dance and —

    Patience, reader! Patience! These murmurings are but the echoes of an old man’s dreams, drawn from his recollections of a world that has passed away.

    On the first of May not only the population of Chellston but most of the neighbouring villages were on foot at an early hour. Great preparations had been made; the May-pole duly garlanded; a rustic throne of turf and spring flowers erected for the mimic queen — an uncommonly pretty, modest girl, the daughter of John Burr, organist of the village church.

    Seats also had been prepared for Sir George Meredith, his family and friends. As lord of the manor, he held it almost a religious duty to attend the May-Day games, distribute prizes to the morris dancers, and keep order by his presence.

    Just as the baronet was about to proceed to the green, accompanied by his daughter and guests, a carriage drove up to the door of the mansion, and a servant announced Lord Bury. The eyes of Clara and her father met; those of the former had a rather saucy expression in them.

    ‘At last,’ said the old gentleman, ‘it is time that he renewed his acquaintance with us. I thought the loss of Chellston,’ he added, in a whisper, ‘would bring him down.’

    ‘Come to look over the estate and its incumbrances,’ answered the young lady, warily. ‘I wonder what he is like?’ The question was asked mentally.

    ‘If I thought that, I’d –‘

    What her father would have done, most probably will never be known, for his words were cut short by the appearance of his nephew, whom he received with just that fitting amount of cordiality due to a relative and a visitor — nothing more. Sir George was not without tact.

    ‘Allow me to introduce you to my friends. The Nevilles, mother and two daughters;  Lord Wiltshire and his sisters, our worthy rector and his wife — ought to have named them first; Captain Waterpark — but, of course, you are acquainted with him, seeing that you are both in the army; Count Villa Benson, and others, are on the lawn; and last,’ he added, ‘your saucy cousin Clara.’

    His daughter courtesied demurely.

    ‘You mean mischief, Clara,’ whispered her friend, Rose Neville, to the heiress. I can read it in your eyes.’

    ‘Perhaps,’ was the reply.

    Lord Bury received the introductions with well-bred ease, but rather coldly — but, then, it must be remembered that he was in the Guards; shook hands with the Nevilles and Wiltshire — they were of the best families in the county; elevated his eyebrows slightly at the supposition that he and Captain Waterpark were already acquainted, being both in the army. The speaker ought to have known that the Guards had a club-house of their own and rarely fraternised with the line. Having done all he considered necessary, he turned his attention to Clara. His first attempts at conversation were anything but successful.

    ‘I should scarcely have known you, cousin,’ he said, in that soft, low tone with which a true gentleman invariably addresses those of the opposite sex. ‘You are so grown.’

    ‘I have had nothing else to do,’ answered the young lady, very quietly. ‘You, too, are changed — almost a man — so different from the little boy in red morocco shoes and black velvet jacket that used to go birds’ nesting with me! Do you recollect falling from the willow-tree? How you floundered in the pond till the farmer’s son pulled you out with a hay-rake, and how you cried over the loss of one of your pretty red shoes?’

    The gravity with which the speaker had commenced her reply appeared to give way to the remembrance of the scene, and she laughed heartily.

    ‘Is the girl an idiot, or merely trying to make me appear ridiculous?’ thought her cousin, as he bowed to conceal his annoyance at the scarcely suppressed smile on the countenances of the guests which the description had called up.

    ‘I have frequently thought,’ added the heiress, ‘how much I should like to have a sketch of the scene; it would make such an interesting picture. The old towers in the distance, your lordship floundering like a Newfoundland dog — a very young one, of course, for old ones swim beautifully; the farmer’s boy with the hay-rake, and poor I, screaming like a frightened goose at the edge of the pond. O, it would be delicious.’

    ‘What does Clara mean by red shoes, Newfoundland dogs, and pond?’ muttered Sir George Meredith to himself, ‘I must put a stop to this folly.’

    Perhaps he had better let it alone.

    Whether the new owner of Chellston entertained similar ideas to Viscount Allworth on the subject of a marriage of their children, we cannot venture to decide; certainly he had never hinted at such a project. He loved his daughter too well, and felt too proud of her to offer her hand to anyone.

    Lord Bury no longer asked himself if his cousin were an idiot. He had seen too much of the world not to detect her real character at once. She was piqued, and had taken her own way of showing it; Clara had passed a season in London. His lordship must have known it, yet he had never once called or proffered the slightest attention, although they were such near relatives.

    The young guardsman was as generous as he was proud, and he reflected on his conduct, scarcely blamed her; still he felt mortified, and determined to meet her with her own weapons. As they were neither of them in love, the combat promised to be an amusing one.

    ‘My friends tell me,’ he observed, ‘that I possess some talent with the pencil. I will do my best to carry out your idea, on one condition.’

    That I stand and scream on the edge of the pond?’ asked Clara archly.

    ‘That you accept it when it is finished,’ added her cousin, gracefully; ‘not that it will be worthy of you, but recollections go for something.’

    ‘Can’t wait any longer,’ exclaimed the baronet, looking at his watch. ‘The tenants and villagers will  think I am dead or laid up with a fit of the gout. Egbert, give your cousin your arm. May Day is a sort of family festival. Never mind your travelling dress; your valet will arrange your things long before you return.’

    This was the first intimation that he expected his nephew to take up his residence at the Hall.

    ‘Mrs. Neville, accept my escort, The rector will take charge of his wife, and the rest of our young friends pair off as they please. Hey for the green.’

    The arrangements were made just as the speaker suggested. Everyone felt satisfied, with the exception perhaps of Clara. She had fenced well — made the first hit — but felt that the second one counted against her.

    Sarcasm is a dangerous game for girls to play at; they get the worst of it, especially if the weapons of their antagonists are polished ones.

    ‘An Old English Custom Dancing Round the Maypole on the Village Green’, engraving, c. 1896, from The Graphic newspaper (cropped). Robert Walker Macbeth (1848-1910).

    When Sir George Meredith and his friends appeared upon the green the rustic crowd set up a loud shout of welcome, and a chorus of young girls sang the following madrigal, set to music by the old organist in honor of the day:

    Come, gentle May,
    Spring for thy sweet breath is sighing;
    Fading away,
    The cold storms of winter are dying;
    And maidens fair
    Are seeking their woodland bowers,
    To deck their hair
    With wreaths of thy beautiful flowers.

    During the execution of the music, Phœbe Burr, the daughter of the composer, and elected queen of the day, quitted her father’s cottage and walked with modest gracefulness towards the rustic seat prepared for her reception. She was dressed simply in white; not an ornament of any kind except a wreath of maythorn, which contrasted admirably with her dark flowing hair and sparkling black eyes. We question if coquetry itself could have devised a more striking costume. The crowd stared at first, for hitherto the maidens chosen to preside over the rural festival had been accustomed to attire themselves in all the finery they could beg or borrow from the ladies’ maids of the neighbouring gentry.

    The change was a great innovation, but it took.

    ‘She is very beautiful, is she not?’ observed Clara to her cousin.

    ‘Dangerously so,’ replied his lordship, abstractedly.

    The young lady repeated the word, archly.

    ‘Not to me,’ continued  the young guardsman; ‘for I have long since schooled my heart to offer no homage to beauty which honor could not accept.’

    ‘Ah! yes, I understand; birth, wealth, and all those troublesome kind of things,’ said his cousin. ‘To some minds they are indispensable.’

    ‘Birth, certainly,’ said her cousin, ‘as far as it guarantees careful training and high principles; but no farther. As for wealth,’ he added, ‘I can afford to, dispense with that, although I have lost Chellston –‘

    ‘It was a cruel trick Lord Allworth played you.’

    ‘Not a word more upon that subject, I entreat you,’ interrupted her companion, hastily. ‘I have made no complaint; shall make none. The honour of my father is sacred to me as my own, and has never been questioned by me.’

    Clara Meredith regarded him earnestly, and read in his open countenance the perfect sincerity of his words. They had the true ring in them.

    ‘Have I misjudged him?’ she asked herself. ‘They described him to me in London as a mere moth of pleasure, an empty-headed coxcomb, a thing without heart or brains. Now I begin to find that he has both.’

    This little mental soliloquy has let our readers into one secret — that the heiress had been exceedingly curious respecting the character of her cousin, and received her impressions from those the least likely to judge him fairly. Of course the allusion to Chellston and Lord Allworth was dropped.

    ‘At any rate,’ she added, ‘he is not effeminate.’ This had been one of the charges brought against his lordship.

    As soon as Phœbe Burr had taken her seat the maidens chosen to attend upon her during the day advanced with a prettily decorated basket filled with small bouquets of the May flower. It was the privilege of the queen to present them to the lord of the manor and his guests.

    As the girls presented their gifts, they sang a species of invocation, in which only female voices joined:

    Bright Queen of the May Day, young Queen of an hour,
    Whose throne is the greensward; whose sceptre a flower;
    Come forth in thy beauty and reign in thy bower.
    We have rifled the green woods as rifles the bee,
    We have stripped of its blossoms the white hawthorne tree;
    And are come with the sweet spoils in homage to thee.

    When the mimic queen presented Clara with her floral tribute the heiress kissed her upon the cheek. They were about the same age; had been playmates in childhood; and the young lady still retained an affectionate attachment for her simple friend.

    ‘Cousin,’ she whispered in the ear of her companion, ‘you could afford me a very great pleasure.’

    ‘To hear is to obey,’ replied his lordship. ‘Tell me how.’

    ‘Commence the sports by dancing with the May Day Queen.’

    ‘Will that be fitting?’

    ‘Fitting!’ repeated the wilful girl. ‘My father always did so till age and the gout compelled him to give up the privilege. True, he was not in the Guards.’

    This last observation, we fear, had a touch of her old sarcasm.

    ‘It cannot be out of place,’ replied her cousin, ‘to follow the example of Sir George Meredith, although I am in the Guards.’

    Clara felt the reproof, and coloured to the temples.

    ‘Present me to her sylvan majesty,’ he added.

    The invitation was given, and frankly accepted. Phœbe was no coquette, and felt pleased with her partner, who treated her with as much deference as he would have shown to a duchess. His lordship not having visited the neighbourhood since he was a child in red morocco shoes, scarcely a person out of his own set recognised him. There were many surmises that followed, naturally. By the peasantry and young farmers he was set down to be one of their own class, to which error the simplicity of his plain travelling dress not a little contributed.

    The dance being ended, Lord Bury led the mimic queen back to her rustic throne, thanked her for the honor she had conferred, and returned to the side of his cousin.

    Scarcely had he withdrawn from the group, when a tall young fellow, familiarly known by the name of Ned Burcham, or the Squire, broke through the circle. Although possessed of some property, and of a respectable family, he held an anomalous position in the neighbourhood, being as the Neville girls said, neither fish nor fowl — in other words, he was not recognised in society. The exclusion was a just one, his manners and mind being equally coarse.

    Still he was not without his admirers amongst the lower orders, who made way for him.

    ‘Why, Phœbe, girl,’ he exclaimed, ‘you look deucedly pretty, but you ought to have waited. You might have known that I intended to stand up in the first round with you, and not have given your hand to that puppy. But come! It is not too late.’

    He held out his hand. The May Queen saw that he had been drinking, and shrank back timidly.

    ‘Thank you, squire,’ she answered, hesitatingly, ‘but I do not intend to dance again. I have so much to do; the prizes to distribute, and –‘

    ‘Nonsense!’ interrupted the uncouth suitor, seizing her not very gently by the band. ‘I know better than that. We shall be waited for.’

    Phœbe uttered a faint scream, and there were a few cries of ‘Shame!’

    ‘Bury,’ said the heiress, her face flushing with indignation at the insult to her former playmate, ‘see if that drunken fellow, Burcham, is not trying to drag the May Queen from her seat.’

    To relinquish the arm of his cousin, dart back to the spot he had so lately quitted, and hurl the ruffian sprawling upon the grass, was with his lordship the work of an instant.

    Squire Ned rose to his feet, and stood glaring on his antagonist with a look of mingled rage and astonishment that anyone should presume to interfere with his amusements.

    ‘Who are you?’ he growled, at last.

    ‘A man. Perhaps you will inform me how things like you designate themselves,’ was the reply.

    ‘I? O, I am gentleman.’

    ‘A what? A gentleman!’ repeated his lordship, in a tone of contempt more cutting than anger, more galling than passion. ‘Pooh! you are not even the outline of one. You do not know the meaning of the word. Not one of these honest rustics who witnessed your ruffianly conduct but possesses a better claim to the title than you can show.’

    ‘At any rate, I can fight,’ observed the infuriated bully, stung to the quick by the retort. At the same instant he rushed upon his antagonist with the intention, as he proclaimed aloud, of giving the young puppy a lesson. Ned Burcham could not have selected a more intractable scholar. Eton had trained his lordship, Oxford given him his degree in more sciences than one, and the Guards — whatever their folly and shortcomings — failed to make him effeminate. Thrice did the village tyrant measure his length upon the sward beneath his well-planted blows. It was the general opinion of the crowd that Squire Ned had found his match at last.

    In justice to my fellow-countrymen I cannot avoid making one observation. Englishmen have been accused of showing undue subserviency to rank and wealth — in fact, to celebrity of every kind — and with some reason, perhaps; but this much I can fearlessly assert for them — true manliness and courage will always excite their admiration.

    The third time Squire Ned went down a hearty cheer was given for the young stranger.

    The contest was about to be renewed, when a young farmer, his eyes flashing with passion, arrived upon the scene. He was powerfully built, and if not remarkably handsome, had an open, manly countenance.

    ‘Thanks,’ he said, grasping the hand of Lord Bury warmly. ‘If ever you require a friend, call upon Tom Randal. You must leave this bully to me.’

    ‘O, dear, no!’ replied the guardsman, ‘I have not half done with him yet. He will stand considerably more pounding yet.’

    ‘I tell you, it’s my right.’

    ‘Can’t see it,’ was the cool rejoinder.

    ‘I repeat that it is. I am the accepted lover of Phœbe Burr. And now the murder is out.’

    The mother, father, and two maiden aunts of the speaker, wealthy farmers, lifted up their hands in speechless astonishment. His sister only smiled; probably she was in his confidence.

    ‘Well,’ said his lordship, after reflecting for an instant, ‘that certainly does make a difference, and I at once withdraw my claim. On my honour, I do it reluctantly.’

    The contest, however, was not destined to be renewed.

    The baronet and the gentlemen of his party had now reached the scene of contention. Several of the latter, as well as their host, were magistrates, and Lord Wiltshire a deputy lieutenant of the county.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes and Further Reading

    ‘measure his length upon the sward’: ‘Sward’ is a literary term for an expanse of short grass. Thus the phrase means to knock him down.

    ‘the murder is out’: said when something is suddenly revealed or explained. A similar expression is ‘murder will out’, as in Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale (c. 1386): ‘Mordre wol out that se we day by day’ (OED). 

    Louise Lippincott, Lawrence Alma Tadema: Spring (1990). Available online (pdf) at Getty Publications Virtual Library.

    The Companion, available online from The Guild of St. George, a charitable education trust founded by John Ruskin in 1871. For the quotations see, for example, numbers 8 (2008) and 11 (2011).

    Spence, Margaret E., ”The Guild of St George: Ruskin’s attempt to translate his ideas into practice” (1957), Bulletin of the John Ryland’s Library.  Available online at escholar, University of Manchester Library.

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Eighth Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Eighth Instalment

    Part of this instalment outlines the troubled history of Bunce, the courageous tramp who risked his life to defend the two girls in the Red Barn. His childhood memories begin in one of about a dozen martello towers in Essex, which prompts the illustration this week, a scene with Martello Tower No. 1 at Brightlingsea Harbour and the mouth of the River Colne, borrowed from the Journal of the Essex Field Club (1887).

    Over half the 140 Martello towers in Britain were built in the southeast as fortifications during the Napoleonic War between 1805 and 1808; though it turned out they weren’t required for that purpose.

    A typical South East Martello would be about 45 ft (13.7m) in diameter at base and up to 40ft (12m) tall. The masonry walls were built of brick and rendered with lime mortar externally, and were up to 13ft thick.

    geograph.org.uk

    Their name originates from the Torra di Mortella, on which they were modelled, the remains of which stand at Punta Mortella (Myrtle Point), Corsica.

    A Martello Tower at Sandycove in County Dublin, Ireland is the world’s most famous, the site of the James Joyce Tower and Museum. Joyce’s friend Oliver St. John Gogarty rented the tower, where Joyce stayed for six days in 1904, between September 9 and 14.

    In Ulysses, Joyce’s fictional alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, lives there with a medical student, a character modelled on Gogarty and immortalised in the novel’s opening words, in a scene set in the tower: ‘Stately, plump Buck Mulligan […]’ 

    CHAPTER EIGHT

    Mr. Bunce concludes the sketch of his past life — Return home of Lawyer Whiston — The poor tramp finds a fulcrum at last, but without knowing it

    ‘My home,’ resumed the narrator, ‘was an old martello tower, abandoned by the government after the French war. I had few companions, and those few were distasteful to me. Even at this distant period I cannot recall without a shudder the recollection of the miserable long winter nights. No one to love me, no human sympathy, nothing to occupy my brooding brain but the dull, dry lessons of the old schoolmaster. He never smiled upon me; in fact, I never saw him smile upon any one, not even on his own son.’

    ‘Poor Bunce!’ ejaculated his hearer.

    ‘As hope died within me I felt a something which I have often thought must have been akin to death, gradually stealing over me; it was worse than indifference — torpor, apathy. To rouse myself I plunged into the only amusements of the place, fishing and shooting, and at the age of twelve became an expert sportsman; penetrated in pursuit of game the wildest recesses of the marsh. Often did I return home tired and half famished, my feet bleeding from the sharp brambles, wet through with the stagnant waters of the pools I waded or swam through, but never with an empty game-bag. If solitude disintegrates the brain, it leaves certain portions of it harder and brighter than ever. I became sharp-witted — curious I had always been — and my intercourse with the smugglers, whom about this time I began to assist, made me daring. Gradually I was led towards the abyss of crime, and should have plunged doubtless into it had not circumstances rather than innate strength of character preserved me.’

    ‘Crime,’ repeated William, slowly.

    ‘Nothing very serious, observed the former, with a smile; ‘beyond a few plundered hen-roosts and the slaughter of a few gobblers, I have nothing serious upon my conscience.’

    His hearer looked as if he felt considerably relieved.

    ‘I quickly discovered,’ said Bunce, ‘that Blackmore’s occupation of schoolmaster was merely a blind to hide his real occupation — that of agent to the nobleman who owned the Bittern’s Marsh. I never learnt his name. You cannot form the slightest idea of the extensive operations the contrabandists carry on; nearly all the eastern counties are supplied by them with French wines and brandy. London is no stranger to the trade. Blackmore kept the accounts, received the rents, and a share of the profits set apart for the proprietor of the Marsh.’

    ‘Can such a state of things exist,’ exclaimed our hero — ‘here in sober, well-governed England?’

    ‘When you reach my age,’ replied the tramp, ‘you will have discovered that the surface and undercurrents of life flow in opposite directions.

    Brightlingsea Harbour and Mouth of the Colne with Martello Tower No. 1, Essex Field Club, 1887 (cropped). Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

    ‘One day the schoolmaster told me he was about to quit his abode in the martello tower. Made an independence, I suppose. He could or would not give me any information respecting my parents. A small sum he stated had been placed in his hands when he first took charge of me, but it had long since been exhausted. He advised me to join the band of smugglers. I refused; I had already seen too much of them.’

    ‘Thank Heaven you did not.’

    ‘He next proposed that I should enter as a boy on board one of the king’s ships. I caught at the chance eagerly; it was relief from the monotony of existence — release from the swamp, its vile companionships, the stifling atmosphere which stunted the little that remained of moral nature in me. I accepted, and a few days saw me on board the Peerless, where I served for twelve years, as the certificate I gave your uncle proves, with credit.’

    His hearer began to breathe more freely; he had trembled at the trials and temptations of his new friend.

    ‘I forgot to state,’ added the speaker, ‘that the old woman who kept ship for my guardian — I presume I must call him so –before I quitted my home gave me a packet of papers, charging me never to part with them. It consisted of half burnt letters, several old accounts — evidently having reference to myself — and an old pocket-book. The rest is soon told.

    ‘Three months since the Peerless was paid off, I had grown tired of a sailor’s life, so I sold my kit, bought the rags in which you first beheld me, and started to re-visit the Bittern’s Marsh in the desperate hope of obtaining some clue to my friends and family, if I had any. You know the rest.’

    ‘It is a strange as well as a sad story,’ observed William Whiston. ‘Few could have resisted such trials and temptations as you have done.’

    ‘One circumstance alone I have kept from you, at the request and advice of your uncle. It is a secret.’

    ‘Then I will neither ask nor seek to pry into it,’ said the hearer, emphatically.

    Our readers have not forgotten the papers which Martha had concealed behind one of the beams of the little chamber, when Pike and Bilk attempted to break open the door. Possibly the lawyer had discovered a use for them.

    ‘What I have just told you,’ observed the wanderer, ‘I had previously imparted to Mr. Whiston. Whether the interest he appears to take in me is to prove a momentary or a lasting one, I cannot say. If the former, the loss of your friendship will not be the least of my regrets.’

    ‘No fear of that,’ replied the youth. ‘My uncle is one of those men, who rarely let their hearts run away with their heads. He must have excellent reasons for acting as he has by you. His liberality I expected; his confidence surprises as much as it pleases me.’

    Notwithstanding the want of worldly knowledge which the speaker had displayed in driving to London with the fair fugitives, he could exercise a considerable amount of caution for one of his years — never giving the slightest hint to Bunce that the schoolmaster Blackmore was the father of his false friend Benoni.

    It was getting late towards evening when Lawyer Whiston returned home. His countenance appeared somewhat anxious and careworn, but a smile chased aside the expression when he saw his nephew and the wanderer seated in friendly conversation.

    Both rose upon his entrance.

    ‘Keep your seats, boys — keep your seats,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘I am no friend of ceremony — unless in court,’ he added. ‘How have you passed your time?’

    ‘I have been deeply interested,’ replied William; ‘my friend has been relating the history of his eventful life.’

    ‘All?’ said his relative,.

    ‘All, sir, except the circumstance you wished him to conceal.’

    The uncle nodded approvingly.

    ‘Quite right, William; quite right. Not that I mistrust your truthfulness. I have proved it. It is your inexperience and knowledge of the world I doubt. Youth is unguarded. A look, an unguarded word, will sometimes reveal a secret. Now I prefer to keep mine to myself. As long as I do so I am its master. Once revealed, it would become mine.

    ‘You forget,’ observed his nephew, with a smile, ‘that Bunce already knows it.’

    ‘No, he does not,’ replied the lawyer, laughingly; ‘he has not the slightest suspicion of it. You are both of you keen-witted. Two young heads, putting this and that together, might divine more than I wish you to know till the time comes. Then there shall be no concealment. By the by,’ he added, ‘you have not quitted the house?’

    ‘I thought you told me not to do so, sir.’

    ‘I am answered,’ said his relative, complacently.

    The speaker appeared in excellent humour; informed his hearers that he had not only carried his point in an important case before the Lord Chancellor, but carried it exactly in the form he wished the decision to be made. The young men congratulated him, without, attaching any importance to the fact, which did not concern them. If they felt pleased, it was because the speaker appeared so.

    It is not to be supposed that two such very astute personages as Viscount and Lady Allworth would remain passive under the equivocal circumstances in which they found themselves placed. They had connived at a most unworthy action, the mere suspicion of which would materially affect their position in the fashionable world, which is not so utterly heartless as many suppose. Heaven knows that it allows itself latitude enough, still there are lines of demarkation distinctly drawn. One step beyond them, and social disgrace follows. The attempt to force a girl of Lady Kate’s tender years into an unequal marriage was just one of these steps.

    In the old world, as in the new, money will do a great deal. English judges we believe to be incorruptible. Political influences may have their weight; social ones predispose; but money is powerless. The ‘accursed thirst for gold’ has not yet obtained the power of dictating decisions to the judicial bench. God forbid that it ever should.

    If the judges are unapproachable, it is not always the case with the officers and secretaries attached to their several courts. From one of these channels Lord Allworth acquired the certainty that the guardianship of Lady Kate Kepple’s person had been placed in the hands of Lady Montague. All attempts to recover his legal authority he knew to be hopeless; but his reputation, he thought, might still be guarded.

    ‘We must see Lady Montague at once,’ he said to his wife, ‘and disown all share in the attempt of Clarence. Of course, she will not believe us; but, then, she has a nervous dread of scandal or notoriety of all kinds, and may affect to do so.’

    ‘I cannot endure the thought of her triumph over me,’ replied her ladyship. ‘The insolence of her tone and manner. She never liked me.’

    ‘You could scarcely expect that she should do so,’ observed her husband with provoking calmness. ‘She is the last representative of one of the oldest names in the peerage — her reputation unblemished.

    ‘Oh, that I could detect a spot in it!’ exclaimed the viscountess.

    ‘But you can’t,’ replied the peer. ‘Why then indulge in useless wishes? Juliana,’ he added, ‘when we consented to this mad project of yours to assist your son to acquire a certain distinction by marriage with my ward, I expected we should meet with difficulties; unpleasant considerations; but I did not anticipate on your part this vulgar weakness. All weakness is vulgar,’ he added.

    ‘What am I to do?’

    ‘Ah! now you are getting reasonable. Should Lady Montague appear very indignant at the conduct of Clarence, who acted, it appears, like a commonplace ruffian, your indignation must exceed hers. Declare, as I shall do, your determination to banish him from your home and heart. The last,’ added the speaker, reflectively, ‘may be unnecessary. She scarcely gives you credit for having such a thing. He must quit the Guards.’

    ‘Never!’ exclaimed her ladyship, passionately. ‘You forget the trouble, intrigues, and expense I had to obtain his commission.’

    ‘No, I do not; but I tell you there is no other resource. Bury, when he hears of the affair, will certainly post him.’

    ‘No doubt,’ said his wife, bitterly. ‘He is your son.’

    ‘And, you might add, a young man of exquisite taste,’ observed his lordship. ‘You have a natural talent for intrigue, Juliana; in fact a very pretty talent; but you cannot repair a check. I must do so for you.’

    ‘And will you, for my sake?’

    ‘O, dear, no,’ interrupted the husband. ‘If I take a hand in the game it will be for my own. There is no false sentiment about me.’

    ‘Nor sentiment of any kind,’ observed her ladyship, bitterly.

    ‘Fortunately for you,’ replied her husband, cynically; ‘for sentiment is weakness. You know how I detest a scene. My nerves won’t stand it. You will either follow my direction — place the direction of the affair in my hands — or in the morning I start for Paris.’

    ‘Alone?’

    Of course,’ replied his lordship, sarcastically. ‘Paris is a most expensive city. I know that you dislike it. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I would not deprive Clarence of so able an adviser as his mother.’

    A considerable pause ensued. There was a great mental struggle. Lady Allworth saw that the only means of saving her son from public disgrace and preserving her own position in society was to adhere to the counsel of her husband; without him she could do nothing. Experience had proved to her that he was as clever as unprincipled.

    ‘It shall be as you wish,’ she said.

    The viscount rang the bell and ordered his carriage.

    ‘My dear Mr. Whiston,’ said Lady Montague, when that gentleman placed in her hands the decree by which the chancellor consigned the person of Lady Kate Kepple to her exclusive guardianship, ‘you have managed this terrible affair admirably.’

    The lawyer bowed profoundly.

    ‘I have read all the morning papers,’ added the speaker. ‘What I most dreaded — the scandal — has been avoided, Not a hint, not a word.

    ‘For once the press has been muzzled,’ observed the man of law, with considerable satisfaction. ‘A hint, despite my precautions, had crept out, sufficient to find a paragraph upon, nothing more, or the expense would have been –‘

    ‘Never mind the expense,’ interrupted her ladyship. ‘We can stand that.’

    ‘True. Your niece’s fortune is large.’

    ‘Not a shilling of it must be withdrawn for such a purpose,’ said the aunt. ‘I ought to have been more upon my guard, knowing as I did the doubtful character of the Allworths. We will regulate that.’

    Kate kissed her hand.

    ‘What is the matter, my love? You look dissatisfied.’

    ‘Not dissatisfied,’ replied the fair girl, ‘but I am fearful that those who protected Martha and myself will think us very ungrateful; we quitted them without a word. I should so like to see –‘

    ‘Not to be thought of, my love,’ exclaimed Lady Montague, in a tone of decision. ‘It might render all our precautions useless; but, of course, they shall be handsomely recompensed.’

    Lawyer Whiston saw with surprise the tears which started in the eyes of the niece. More than once, when he had time to think over the conversation, the recollection of them set him musing.

    ‘Your ladyship’s wishes,’ he said, ‘can be easily carried out. I have ascertained the names of the two youths who drove your ward to London, and probably shall discover the third one, who really risked his life in a contest with the ruffians in the Red Barn. He is wretchedly poor,’ he added, ‘judging from your niece’s and Martha’s description of him. Something, I think, ought to be done for him.’

    ‘Very right and proper, Mr. Whiston,’ observed Lady Montague. ‘Act as you think best. I am certain you will be careful. I give you carte blanche.’

    ‘I should so like to see the gifts you purchase for them,’ said Kate. ‘I should be certain then of my wishes being carried out.’

    ‘Child!’ exclaimed her aunt, fondly, ‘can you not trust to the taste of our excellent friend here? But be it as you please. Mr. Whiston,’ she added, ‘you will be kind enough to send the presents you will purchase to Montague House. Lady Kate Kepple desires to see them.’

    It would be curious to say what odd and improbable fancies met in the brains of the lawyer as he drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

    In the course of the day the groom of the chambers brought the cards of Viscount and Lady Allworth to his mistress, whose countenance changed as she read the names aloud.

    ‘You will not see them — for pity’s sake do not see them!’ exclaimed her niece, greatly agitated.

    Her aunt reflected for several instants.

    ‘Since a meeting is inevitable,’ she said, at last, ‘as well now as at a future period. At home, Kate,’ she added, ‘you have nothing to fear; there are at least a dozen servants in the house, sufficient to protect us, should protection be needed; but I do not think it will. You are in London — not in a lone country house like Allworth Park. Remember the dignity of your sex — call up your pride. Let not those wretches see how they have made you suffer.’

    When the two hypocrites entered the reception-room at Montague House, his lordship, with his usual courtly grace, advanced to pay his respects to his aged kinswoman. They were but coldly received.

    Not so his wife. She had a different part to play. Rushing towards the poor girl who had so nearly fallen a victim to her deep-laid schemes, she threw her arms around her, kissed her with well-acted affection, exclaiming at the same time:

    ‘My sweet child, what have you not endured from that mad boy’s impetuous love? Who could have suspected such a headstrong passion in one so young, so manly as I thought him? But he is punished — punished in his hopeless love — the just anger of my lord, the grief of his mother. We have cast him off,’ she added, with a flood of tears, ‘forbidden him the house, refused even to see him.’

    Considering that the young ruffian was at the very time comfortably lounging on a sofa and smoking under her own roof, the conscience of the speaker must have been exceedingly elastic.

    ‘You have acted with discretion,’ observed Lady Montague, with freezing dignity.

    O, how the word ‘discretion,’ which was strongly emphasized, rankled in the heart of the manœuvering woman.

    ‘Could we do less,’ said the viscount, as calm and unruffled as if the discussion turned upon some trivial, everyday occurrence, ‘to mark our abhorrence of my step-son’s conduct? I have even insisted on his leaving the Guards and quitting England for a time till the affair blows over. Should he and Bury meet, I tremble for the consequences,’ he added.

    ‘My poor boy,’ sighed the viscountess, wringing her hands. ‘His only crime — not that I excuse it — is love.’

    Kate shuddered, and her aunt smiled disdainfully.

    ‘What more can we do?’

    ‘Nothing,’ replied Lady Montague, coldly. ‘In fact, I scarcely anticipated that you would do so much.’

    ‘You never did me justice,’ observed his lordship, in the tone of a man who felt deeply hurt.

    ‘We can discuss that point some other time,’ answered the aunt.

    ‘Right!’ exclaimed both the visitors. ‘Our present task must be to stifle everything like scandal. It would be too dreadful!’

    They were astonished when they saw how little effect the word scandal produced. It had been their great reliance.

    ‘There will be no scandal,’ remarked the aunt, ‘unless you circulate it.’

    ‘Oh, Lady Montague!’

    ‘I do not think you will, for your own sakes,’ continued the former speaker. ‘The chancellor kindly heard the application in his private chambers.’

    ‘Chancellor! Application!’ ejaculated Lord Allworth, as if it was the first time he had heard of any such proceedings.

    ‘Yes. I am now sole guardian of my niece’s person as well as fortune.’

    ‘Is this fair — is it even just, towards me?’ said Lord Allworth, in a tone of offended dignity. ‘On the slightest hint that such was your wish, I would have joined in the application to his lordship. What will the world think?’

    ‘I am not answerable for that,’ replied Lady Montague. ‘My first duty was to protect this dear child. If in doing so I have wronged you, I regret it deeply. Prove it to me, and I will do all in my power to atone.’

    ‘Time will do that.’

    ‘To time we had better leave it, then. I need not remind you, kinsman, that I am no longer young, Such discussions agitate me.’

    ‘I understand you, and will take my leave,’ said his lordship. ‘I may have been a gay man — a dissipated one, I do not deny it. But the world has never yet accused me of dishonour. Think calmly over my conduct in this lamentable affair. Anger and prejudice are bad counsellors. Promise me that you will do so, and I have no fear of the result.’

    ‘I do promise you,’ replied his kinswoman, with a little less coldness in her look and voice, ‘and I shall rejoice to find you blameless.’

    With an air of injured innocence the visitors took their leave.

    ‘Hypocrites!’ whispered Lady Montague, as she embraced her niece.

    ‘Dupe!’ thought the viscountess, as she stepped into her carriage.

    Her husband made no remark. He was reflecting on the interview.

    The presents destined for their protectors proved to be two costly gold watches. Lady Kate Kepple examined them very closely, and insisted on making them up into two small packets herself; but her aunt directed them. But her niece had forgotten all but their Christians names.

    Mr. Whiston, into whose care they were given, promised they should reach their destination quickly. They were left by a confidential agent at his own door.

    When William opened his, a small slip of paper fell from the outer case. On it two words were written — ‘From Kate.’

    O, how it set his young heart dreaming!

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Seventh Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Seventh Instalment

    Several of Smith’s writings for the London Journal, beginning in 1849, were illustrated by the artist Sir John Gilbert (1817–1897), knighted by Queen Victoria in 1872. These include his historical romance, Stanfield Hall; a domestic novel, Amy Lawrence, the Freemason’s Daughter; and Minnigrey, generally held to be his best work.

    Frank Jay describes the ‘great draughtsman’s work’ as being ‘artistically conceived, vigorous in execution, and in treatment highly dramatic.’

    An article entitled ‘Cheap Art’, in Macmillan’s Magazine (1859), refers to ‘the spirit and vigour of Mr Gilbert’s designs … [which are] an instance of the power of life-like art to attract an immense audience’. Along with J.F. Smith, he was perhaps an equal star of the London Journal.

    The following wood engraving is a great instance of the power of Gilbert’s work, in distilling in terms of visual feeling and motion the essence of Shakespeare’s lines:

    John Gilbert, wood engraving, in Shakspere’s Songs and Sonnets (c. 1870).

    Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
    Thou art not so unkind
    As man’s ingratitude;
    Thy tooth is not so keen,
    Because thou art not seen,
    Although thy breath be rude.

    The image featured in the present instalment, below, is not by Gilbert but the English painter George Elgar Hicks (1824–1914).

    CHAPTER SEVEN

    Close of the Examination — A False Friend Confounded — Our Hero and Lawyer Whiston Return to London

    Richard Whiston was well-known in Essex, not only as a most respectable lawyer, but as agent for the estates of several of the largest land-owners in the county, Squire Tyrrel included in the number. He was a man of great tact, a little formal, perhaps, in his ideas, but of undoubted honesty. Under ordinary circumstances, his first act would have been to pay his respects to the wealthy magistrate; on the present occasion, however, he forbore to do so till he had shaken hands with his nephew and Goliah, who did not appear in the least surprised by the honour. Not so the Hursts, whose courage began to give way rapidly.

    ‘Ha, Whiston,’ said the squire, ‘glad to see you. What brings you from town? Place a chair,’ he added, to one of the servants.

    The order was at once complied with, and a brief conversation, in a low tone of voice, ensued between the speaker and the lawyer.

    ‘Constables,’ said his worship, perceiving that the farmer and his wife were attempting to sneak quietly out of the court, ‘you will not suffer a single witness to quit the room without my permission. This affair has assumed a very different aspect. Send for Benoni Blackmore, the schoolmaster’s son. Stay,’ he added correcting himself. ‘My clerk will give you a summons. Meanwhile, we will hear the evidence of the prosecutor again.’

    Peter Hurst, in a pitiable state of confusion, advanced towards the dais. Vainly he attempted to catch the eyes of Richard Whiston. They were turned persistently in another direction. A smile, or even a slight nod of recognition, would have been a consolation to him.

    ‘You accuse the prisoners of stealing a bay mare and covered market-waggon?’ said the magistrate.

    ‘Well, not exactly of stealing them,’ faltered the prosecutor. ‘They took them without leave.’

    ‘What! do you mean to go back on your sworn testimony?’ exclaimed the squire, indignanty. ‘There it is, in black and white, attested by your own signature. I fear I shall have to commit you for perjury.’

    Drops of cold perspiration stood on the forehead of the farmer at hearing himself thus menaced. Most heartily did he wish that he had never learnt to write his name.

    ‘Perhaps you want your wife to prompt you?’ added the speaker, sarcastically. ‘Can’t be permitted. No tampering with justice in a court where I preside. Instead of standing there like a poor, hen-pecked idiot, wasting my time and the time of the court, answer my question instantly! Do you mean to go back on your sworn testimony?’

    ‘No, Squire, no,’ answered the old man, very meekly, ‘but somehow there has been a mistake. We only wanted to scare the lad, who has given himself a great many airs lately, and make him give up certain low companions whom we disapproved of. It was half in jest. Willie can come home, and be just as welcome as ever. That is all I have to say.’

    ‘Jest!’ repeated the magistrate, indignantly. ‘And do you mean to tell me that you have dared against the peace and dignity of our sovereign lord the king, the public safety, the respect due to this court and the laws of the realm — see the statutes in such cases provided — to take an oath in jest? You will find it a very dear one before I have done with you. Did any one incite — put you up to, or suggest this abominable conduct?’

    ‘His wife!’ shouted one or two voices at the lower end of the room — an interruption which was instantly repressed.

    ‘I have nothing more to say,’ faltered the farmer, loyally determined not to bring Peggy into the same predicament as himself.

    ‘Peter Hurst reflect!’

    ‘Nothing on that head,’ added the prosecutor, doggedly.

    Benoni, accompanied by the officer who had been sent in search of him, now made his appearance in the court-room. Twice he attempted to meet the looks of the two friends, but his confidence failed him, and his eyes sank beneath their steadfast, honest gaze. William gave one sigh as his doubts were confirmed. The memory of his pretended friendship passed away, but the scar remained. Goliah did not indulge in a chuckle, nor even in a smile. He felt for his fellow prisoner’s disappointment.

    On perceiving Lawyer Whiston seated by the side of the magistrate, the confusion of the hypocrite became pitiable. He wondered how he came there. There had not been time sufficient for intelligence of his nephew’s scrape to reach him by the ordinary post. He admitted that neither our hero nor Goliah knew anything respecting the boys, and that the former had commissioned him to explain the cause of his taking the mare and wagon.

    ‘Thee explained nothing of the kind!’ exclaimed Farmer Hurst. ‘All thee said wor that Willie and Goliah had gone off to London wi’ two gals.’

    ‘I was so confused,’ stammered Benoni.

    William hastily wrote a few lines to Vickers, Chelmsford man of law.

    ‘With your worship’s permission, I wish to ask the witness a few questions.’

    Strong in the presence of the great London practitioner, he had discarded much of his former cringing, servile tone.

    The permission was granted.

    ‘Your name, I believe, is Blackmore?’

    ‘It is, sir.’

    ‘It will be difficult to wash such a blackmoor white.’ Here the little man looked round for applause, but receiving none, resumed the examination.

    ‘I presume, sir, you know the nature of an oath?’

    ‘I hope I do.’

    ‘Hope you do!’ repeated Vickers, delighted at finding someone he couId bully and the opportunity of airing his eloquence in presence of his London confrere.

    ‘Are you trifling with the honourable magistrate and the patience of the court? Are you not certain that you do?’

    ‘I am, sir.’

    ‘Quite certain?’

    ‘Quite certain,’ repeated Benoni.

    ‘Then, sir, on your oath, answer me. Were there not two prisoners, ruffians from the Bittern’s Marsh, who had attempted to rob, beat, or otherwise misuse the two boys in questions — that is, supposing they were boys — lying bound in the Red Barn?’

    ‘I believe so, sir.’

    ‘Now, who released them?’

    The crowd in the justice-room stretched forth their heads, eager to catch the answer, which came hesitatingly and after a considerable pause.

    ‘I don’t know, sir.’

    ‘And that you swear to?’

    ‘Yes,’ said the witness, faintly.

    ‘Then you have sworn to a wicked lie!’ exclaimed a voice from the lower end of the room. ‘I saw you cut the cords that bound them, shake hands with them, and heard you bid them good-bye.’

    ‘Let that person come forward and give evidence,’ said Squire Tyrrel.

    Blushing and trembling with indignation as well as modesty, Susan Hurst advanced to the dais. She swore that her curiosity being excited by the account she had heard, she crept down to the Red Barn, and peeping through the neatly closed doors, saw Benoni Blackmore, after a brief conversation with the two tramps, not only release them, but shake hands with them.

    The witness looked around him; read scorn, loathing, and contempt on almost every face. With a cry of defiance, he sprang through one of the large windows of the justice-room, which had been opened to afford air, and fled with the fleetness of a deer across the park.

    ‘Let him go,’ said Squire Tyrrel. ‘The constables will know where to find him. As for the charge –‘

    ‘A word first,’ interposed Richard Whiston. ‘I cannot permit a doubt to remain as to the honesty of the prisoners’ intentions, or a suspicion to attach itself to the character of my nephew. The prosecutor has not yet proved that the mare and wagon are really his.’

    Here Farmer Hurst felt himself strong.

    ‘That be a good un!’ he exclaimed. ‘There is not a man in Deerhurst but knows I bred Brown Bess myself.’

    ‘What was the name of her dam?’

    ‘Blackfoot. She wor born upon the farm.’

    ‘That is all I wish to elicit,’ said Lawyer Whiston, with a quiet smile. ‘And I move that William Whiston be honorably discharged. Half the farm is his; half the stock and agricultural implements. He could not rob himself.’

    ‘His friend, Goliah Gob,’ he added, ‘must be equally exonerated, as he acted under the authority of the part owner of the mare and wagon.’

    Squire Tyrrel did not attempt to check the shouts which broke from the spectators at this positive, unanswerable proof of the prisoners’ innocence. When the noise had subsided he rose and said, with a certain amount of dignity:

    ‘William Whiston and Goliah Gob, you are both honorably discharged, and will leave the court-room without the slightest stain upon your characters. Whether you will bring an action against the prosecutor for false imprisonment and a still more serious charge, will, I presume, as you are still a minor, depend upon your legal guardian. It is no part of my duty,’ he added,’ to advise you on the subject.’

    As the Hursts, humbled and disgraced in public opinion, were quitting the courtroom amid the jeers and hisses of the crowd, especially the female portion of it, William broke through them, and, taking Susan by the hand, kissed her most affectionately. All who witnessed the action appeared to understand the motive and a dead silence ensued. Even Peggy felt touched by it, and bitterly regretted her temper and headstrong folly.

    ‘The boy does love her after all,’ she thought,

    A faint suspicion of the kind glanced across the mind of Goliah, but he instantly repelled it.

    ‘I beant agoin’ to doubt Willie,’ he muttered to himself.

    The farmer, unable to endure the bitterness of his mortification, had no sooner passed through the lodge gates of Tyrrel Park than he darted down a by-lane, and never relaxed his speed till he reached his home, where he shut himself up in his own room, a prey to bitter reflection. As for Susan and her mother, he felt little or no uneasiness on their account. He knew that his nephew and Goliah would protect them. The lesson was a most severe one. Possibly he may profit by it. His wife, we fear, may have to learn a harder one yet.

    When our hero repaired to the Tyrrel Arms, the only decent hotel in Deerhurst, he found Lawyer Whiston waiting for him rather impatiently.  He thanked him most warmly for having so effectively cleared his character from suspicion.

    ‘Pooh!’ said the old bachelor. ‘I only did my duty.’

    ‘It was efficiently as well as shrewdly done, sir.’

    ‘Yes,’ observed his relative, complacently. ‘Poor Peter did not see the trap I laid for him. Where have you been?’

    ‘Seeing my aunt and cousin safely to the farm.’

    The lawyer smiled.

    ‘Then you don’t feel very angry?’ he said.

    ‘I did at first; but that has passed away. You know how completely Uncle Hurst has been ruled by his wife. A great weakness, no doubt; but the habit of submission has become second nature to him — too late to change it.’

    ‘Then Susan will never rule you,’ observed his guardian.

    William regarded him with surprise.

    ‘I saw the kiss you gave her,’ added the speaker.

    ‘That was gratitude, sir.’

    ‘Not love?’

    ‘Not in the sense you mean it,’ replied the youth with a smile. ‘Love, as the word is generally understood, has never troubled my imagination.’

    Willie coloured slightly, doubtful, perhaps whether he were speaking quite disingenuously; but the suspicion passed away as an idle fancy.

    ‘I do love my cousin,’ he added, ‘for her truthfulness, her sense of right, her unwavering goodness to me — nothing more, I assure you.’

    His hearer not only believed the assertion, but it appeared to afford him considerable satisfaction.

    ‘She is a noble-minded girl, and has acted well,’ he remarked. ‘Time enough to think of such folly ten years hence — that is, if ever you should think of it. She showed much presence of mind as well as courage in sending her letter to me by that ragged messenger. But probably you suggested it.’

    ‘I never heard of it till this morning in the justice-room, sir.’

    ‘All the more remarkable,’ observed Mr. Whiston. ‘The poor fellow appears to have received some sort of an education. Bad antecedents, I fear; great pity, for he rather interested me when he described the adventure in the Red Barn.’

    ‘Bunce?’ ejaculated William.

    ‘Yes, I think he told me that was his name.’

    ‘I trust, sir,’ said the nephew, earnestly, ‘that you did not dismiss him with a simple gratuity. You have no idea what a noble heart he has. Singly and at the risk of his life, he defended the two poor girls from their assailants. One of the ruffians was about to shoot him, when the young savage — you know who I mean,’ he added with a smile — ‘came to his assistance. I had nothing — positively nothing — to do with their deliverance. The merit is wholly theirs.’

    ‘At least I know where to find him again,’ answered the lawyer, somewhat evasively. ‘You must return to London with me.’

    ‘The very thing I wished, sir.’

    ‘To complete your education,’ added his relative gravely, ‘which I ought to have attended to more particularly than I have hitherto done. But boys grow so rapidly in these days that I sometimes ask myself if there are any left. I must be in London in the morning.’

    ‘That will give me time,’ replied our hero, ‘to say good-bye to the only friends in Deerhurst whom I shall regret, or who will regret me.’

    ‘Your cousin Susan?’ said the lawyer.

    ‘Yes sir.’

    ‘And Goliah Gob?’

    ‘The truest-hearted friend that ever man possessed.’

    ‘Ah!’ said Richard Whiston, musingly; ‘I begin to think so, too.’

    We must pass over the adieux.

    On the arrival of uncle and nephew in London they drove to the private residence of the former, a large, roomy house in Soho Square. It was handsomely, if not fashionably furnished. Our hero was conducted to a comfortable bedroom, directly facing the one occupied by his relative.

    This is your home for the present,’ remarked the latter. ‘I have ordered dinner for you, although in all probability I shall not return in time to share it with you; but I will send you a friend.’

    William regarded him inquiringly.

    ‘One whom I think you will be glad to meet. By the by, William, you would me oblige me greatly by promising me one thing.’

    ‘Anything,’ exclaimed the grateful youth.

    ‘Not to quit the house till I return. Most important case before the chancellor — scarcely in time — never kept his lordship waiting before.’

    With a smile which expressed great kindness as well as satisfaction, the speaker took his leave to keep his appointment in the highest court of judicature in the kingdom, always excepting the house of peers.

    After passing two or three hours in the library, William Whiston found that he could not fix his attention upon books. Not only did the last forty-eight hours appear like a dream to him — some moments he charged the girls he had rescued with ingratitude, the next he would have sworn they had excellent reasons for their conduct — sighed, wondered if he should ever see them again, then asked himself if he should wish to do so.

    ‘Maud’ (1882), painting by George Elgar Hicks. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons; Sotheby’s.

    ‘Doubtless they have forgotten me by this time, or are laughing at my credulity,’ he murmured. ‘No,’ he added, ‘there was a truthfulness in the voice and eyes of Kate — I scarcely noticed her companion — that assures me of her sincerity.’

    It is an unmistakable sign of feelings stronger than curiosity when boys of sixteen indulge in such speculations. When the tones of a voice, heard but once, dwell upon the ear, making soft music — when weeping or laughing eyes haunt their sleep, we may be certain that the young, winged god is stealing an entrance to their hearts. Such, we fear, was the case with our hero. He was in love.

    Girls, when they read this, will smile; papas and mammas look serious, as if they did not quite approve, till they regard each other in the face, when some recollection of their own youthful days will rest like a sunbeam on their countenances, and they will smile, too.

    For our own part, we confess being an advocate of early love and early marriages, provided the object of our choice is a fitting one, and circumstances do not render them positively unwise. Like a mansion which at any moment may receive its tenant, the heart should be kept clean.

    Day dreams sometimes make a more lasting impression than those which visit us in our sleep. William Whiston was still indulging in the former when his reveries were broken by the entrance of his uncle’s managing clerk, followed by a young man of about three or four and twenty, his countenance lit up by a bright, sunny smile, hope and excitement glowing in every feature.

    ‘I have brought the friend, sir, Mr Whiston promised to send to you,’ said a Mr. Prim; who, having delivered his message, instantly quitted the library.

    His visitor advanced joyously towards our hero; but seeing that he was not recognised, said, sadly:

    ‘I perceive, sir, that you have forgotten me.’

    The voice of the speaker dissipated the uncertainty of the dreamer; he recognised it instantly. Starting from his seat he cordially grasped his hand, and pronounced the name of Bunce.

    ‘This is indeed an unexpected pleasure,’ he exclaimed. ‘Pardon my seeming coldness; the metamorphosis is so great that I did not know you.’

    ‘It is so great,’ replied the poor tramp, ‘that I scarcely recognise myself. Suppose I shall in time, should the change last. For years I doubted the existence of such things as hearts; no such heresy now; owe it to your uncle. Gave him your cousin’s letter. What a man! What penetration! I could not even have lied to him — not that I felt the slightest inclination,’ he added, sadly, ‘although old habits are hard to overcome. I shall conquer them.’

    ‘You must forget the past,’ observed his hearer

    ‘It will never be forgotten,’ continued Bunce, ’till it is buried with me. With your cousin’s letter I gave him some papers and memoranda of my own which I had preserved since I was a child. The old woman who had charge of me told me they might one day be of service to me and advised me never to part with them. I never did so till I gave them to your uncle.’

    ‘Did he read them?’

    ‘Yes.’

    ‘And then?’

    ‘Placed them as carefully in his pocketbook as if they had been bank notes; after which he looked at me so earnestly that I, if I had told him a lie, felt certain he would have read it in my face.’

    ‘And the result?’

    ‘You may read it in my changed appearance,’ answered the tramp, spinning round gayly on one foot to display his new attire. ‘Boots that no longer leak; good warm clothes to keep out the cold winter; clean linen — ah I you don’t know what a luxury it is — hat, real beaver — no rabbit skin!’

    ‘Once more, my dear fellow,’ said William, ‘let me congratulate you. I spoke of your conduct to those poor girls to him before we quitted Deerhurst. He questioned me most minutely. His conduct to you has been better than I dared hope for. You have found a fulcrum at last.’

    ‘Ah, you recollect my using the word? I dare say you wondered how I came to know the meaning of it. As a boy I received some education. Would you like to hear my history?’

    ‘Yes, if you have no objections to the telling. The story must be interesting.’

    ‘It shall be the truth,’ observed the tramp, gravely. ‘This unexpected stroke of fortune may terminate as suddenly as it came. But I will not add to disappointment the reproach of having deceived you. Gratitude has placed a guard both on my imagination and my tongue.

    ‘Well, then,’ continued the speaker, after a pause, ‘my earliest recollections — perhaps I ought to say dreams — are of a house furnished far more sumptuously than this, and of a fair, delicate woman I believe to have been my mother. Yes,’ he added, musingly, ‘I feel certain she was my mother, for she loved me — and no one else ever did.’

    ‘Poor fellow!’ mentally ejaculated our hero.

    ‘An interval followed, of which I remember nothing certain. I think there was a funeral. I know that I was dressed in black. I know that for a long time I felt exceedingly unhappy, but, boy-like, gradually recovered both health and spirits. From that period my recollections are distinct, vivid as the forked lightning’s flash when it darts through a sombre cloud. I found myself in a sort of school kept by, I have no doubt, a very learned man; at least he was always reading.’

    ‘Did he ill-use you?’

    ‘No, not as the world would understand the question. But there was nothing genial in his disposition. He did his best to instruct us; there all thought and care appeared to end. I never recollect old Blackmore, as we used to call him, to procure us one pleasure or amusement.’

    ‘Whom did you say?’ demanded our hero, greatly surprised.

    ‘Old Blackmore.’

    ‘Was that his real name?’

    ‘I cannot tell,’ answered Bunce. ‘At least I never knew him by any other. He was a reserved and silent man. I question whether he really loved his own child, a boy about three years of age; at least he never caressed him.’

    ‘And his wife?’

    ‘Dead, I presume. An aged woman, who prepared our food, told me so. She had charge of everything — no very onerous task, seeing there were only four of us — in the old martello tower.’

    ‘I thought you told me that he kept a school,’ observed his hearer, fancying he had detected a discrepancy in the narrative.

    ‘I told you truly, but the rest of his pupils were day scholars — an unruly set, sons of smugglers, gypsies, tinkers, and ruffians inhabiting the Bittern’s Marsh. You cannot conceive a more savage, desolate place; tracts of land broken by swamps, with here and there open pools of water, no regular roads, mere bridle paths which could not be followed with out a guide, intersected by fallen trees, half-choked with rank grass which concealed many a dangerous pitfall.’

    ‘The Bittern’s Marsh!’ repeated William Whiston, as soon as he recovered from his surprise. ‘I thought you denied all knowledge of the place to the two ruffians you met in the barn.’

    ‘I told them that I was not a swamp-bird, and I told them truly. Not that I should have hesitated to have deceived them. My safety depended upon their not recognizing me. I knew them at the first glance, although twelve years at least had passed since we had met. The frankness of my confession, I see, has somewhat shaken your confidence in me,’ added the speaker, sadly. ‘I cannot help it. You did not expect a life like mine to be a tale of pleasure.’

    ‘Heed not my interruption,’ said our hero. ‘Pray proceed.’

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Notes and Reading

    On Gilbert, for instance, see Frank Jay, Peeps into the Past (1919). His wood engraving is on page 14 of Shakspere’s Songs and Sonnets, Illustrated by John Gilbert (1870 — 77?). A facsimile is available to read online at HathiTrust Mobile Digital Library.

    Interesting book by George Elgar Hicks, A Guide to Figure Drawing (1853) is available to read online in facsimile at Google Books.

    ‘”Nothing on that head,” said the prosecutor’: ‘on that head’, meaning ‘on that topic/issue/point’ or ‘under that heading’, is an expression that used to be common but has fallen into disuse. I was slightly thrown here until I recalled that Mr. Hurst is referred to as ‘the prosecutor’, since it is he mounting the case against William and Goliah.

    ‘blackmoor’: An archaic, offensive term for a person of colour. Benoni Blackmore is Caucasian, his family probably hailing from Blackmore, in Essex, but the pun is intended as a moral barb. Note that Smith uses the word in a satirical gesture aimed against the idiocy of the character who mouths it.

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Sixth Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Sixth Instalment

    Anecdotal evidence suggests that John Frederick Smith was partial to a drop, and indeed his only extant portrait, reprinted here a few weeks back, attests to the possibility. Apparently, he came to the office once a week, sequestered himself in his room with the previous week’s instalment, a bottle of port, and his pipe and cigars. He wrote the new chapter, emerged, drew his pay, left and stayed away until the next week’s copy was due (Frank Jay, Peeps into the Past, 1919).

    After the great man’s death, an acquaintance recalled that he worked ‘with the devil ever at his elbow’, an expression that conveys a frenzied pace. On one occasion, however, his pen froze, and he was struck with an attack of writer’s block.

    As the tale continues, the said ‘devil’ assumes the form of a so-called printer’s devil, an apprentice whose job it was to run errands, mix ink and fetch type:

    It was as if the sun had stood still. Still more was the boy amazed when this readiest of writers began to nibble his stodgy quill, gaze abstractedly at the grimy ceiling, take dreamy pulls at the port-wine, and, in fact, give every symptom of mental bankruptcy. When at length his ideas began again to flow, he gave them oral expression; but they were then totally unfit for publication.

    The devil by a laugh reminded the author of his presence.

    Turning upon him fiercely, Smith demanded, ‘Boy! Your name — quick!’

    ‘George Markham, sir.’

    Never a word responded Smith, but, frowning portentously, at once resumed his fierce scribbling. The devil trembled lest suspension should follow naming. His mind was set at rest, however, when, in devouring the next installment of Mr. Smith’s novel, he found that his own name — George Markham — had been given to a new character in the tale. Thus did this lofty genius fling fame and immortality to the devil.

    ‘J.F. McR.’, ‘Letter to the Editor’, The Speaker, 1890.

    CHAPTER SIX

    An Eccentric Maiden Lady’s Consultation with her Lawyer — An Interview which Explains a Great Deal to our Readers — Scene in the Court of a Country Magistrate

    Like the slides of a magic lantern, the scene is about to change again.

    As we stated in the preceding chapter, Lawyer Whiston had been absent when our hero and his friend made their appearance at his office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He had been summoned at an unusually early hour to attend one of his best clients, Lady Montague, a maiden lady of great wealth and rather eccentric habits. She cared little for society, and yet was accustomed to receive largely. Her visitors were exceedingly fashionable, if she were not. Talent of every kind, provided it was accompanied by perfect respectability, found ready access to her receptions. Her ladyship had one weakness — we scarcely ever knew a woman who had not — a nervous dread of scandal. The convenances of society were to her like the laws of the Medes and Persians — things too sacred to be tampered with. She could have endured any serious misfortune bravely, but the faintest approach to ridicule upset her equanimity.

    When the lawyer reached Montague House he found his client seated in a comfortable easy-chair by the drawing-room fire; the elderly waiting-woman who received him — all Lady Montague’s servants were elderly — silently placed a chair and then withdrew to a proper distance.

    ‘Not ill, my lady?’ he observed. ‘Not seriously ill?’

    ‘Something worse than that,’ was the reply.

    ‘Impossible!’

    ‘It ought to be,’ said his client; ‘but, unfortunately, it is true. Those wretched Allworths! That it should be my fate to be connected with such equivocal persons! Nothing like them on my side of the family! What do you imagine has occurred?’

    ‘It is an unsafe thing,’ observed her visitor, ‘for men of my profession to indulge in imagination. We can only deal with facts.’

    ‘Facts, Whiston?’ repeated her ladyship. Well, you shall. have them — facts sufficient to set your head whirling in surprise, as it has done mine with imaginations. That young ruffian, Clarence Marsham, has been down to Allworth Park, and endeavoured to terrify my niece, Lady Kate, a mere child as you are aware, into a clandestine marriage.’

    ‘Can this be true?’ ejaculated her visitor.

    ‘True,’ repeated Lady Montague with dignity. ‘The wretch even threatened to employ force. Do you imagine,’ she added, ‘that I would quit my bed at this unnatural hour and send for you to indulge in this unseemly jest?’

    ‘Certainly not. Still report may have been exaggerated –‘

    ‘I have it from her own lips,’ interrupted her ladyship impatiently. ‘She arrived here this morning — I can scarcely tell you how. It is really too dreadful! What will the world say? What will it think?’

    Caricature of Mary Augusta Coventry, Lady Holland. Vanity Fair, 2 Feb 1884. Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

    The speaker appeared so completely unnerved that her legal adviser began to feel seriously alarmed; he dreaded the worst.

    ‘Of course you will protect her?’ he observed.

    The words, although he did not intend to imply a doubt, restored Lady Montague to herself.

    ‘Protect her!’ she repeated, starting to her feet. ‘Aye, to the last guinea of my fortune, through every court of justice in the kingdom. If necessary, by appealing to the king himself. Why else,’ she added, ‘did I send for you?’

    ‘My dear lady, be calm, I entreat you,’ said Mr. Whiston. ‘Trust to me, and everything will go well. Upon application to the chancellor he will doubtless name you guardian of your niece’s person, as you already are of her fortune; that is quite safe; I can vouch for that. Your niece has only to make an affidavit embodying the charge –‘

    ‘That is what I wish to avoid; everything would be made public then.’

    The brow of the man of law became clouded.

    ‘Lady Montague,’ he said, ‘there ought to be no reservation between clients and their legal advisers. If I am really to serve you in this distressing affair, there must be perfect confidence.’

    ‘Yes, I feel you are right,’ answered the aristocratic old maid, ‘yet scarcely can find courage to confess the abominable facts. Lady Kate and the faithful girl who planned her flight and accompanied her did not quit Allworth till after — I really cannot proceed.’

    ‘Till after what?’ demanded Mr. Whiston, struck by a terrible suspicion. ‘This is no time for false delicacy,’ he added seriously.

    ‘Till after disguising themselves in male attire,’ gasped her ladyship.

    ‘Is that all?’ said the lawyer, greatly relieved.

    ‘All!’ exclaimed Lady Montague. ‘What worse did the man expect to hear? And he does not even appear shocked when I tell that my niece, Lady Kate Kepple, the last descendant of one of the best families in the kingdom, tramped along the roads nearly all night, dressed in boy’s clothes, slept under a haystack — afterwards in a wretched barn — and would have been forced back by that young villain Clarence and his servant, had not two brave youths protected and brought them safely to London.’

    ‘Highly distressing,’ observed her adviser. ‘Still, it might have been worse.’

    His client regarded him incredulously.’

    ‘I have heard of ladies of high rank and most undoubted respectability,’ added the speaker, ‘appearing in male attire at a balmasque.’

    ‘A very different affair,’ replied his client. ‘I once went to one dressed as a shepherdess — of course it was in my young days — but I don’t think I have quite forgiven myself for the folly yet.’

    ‘It will scarcely be remembered against you,’ said the gentleman, with a smile. ‘I must now hasten to my office and make a rough draft of the application to the chancellor, and then return to receive the statement of your niece. About what hour may I venture to call?’

    ‘At four, I trust, she may be sufficiently recovered to receive you,’ answered Lady Montague, her dread of scandal somewhat relieved by his assurances; ‘and if the dreadful circumstances I named to you can be suppressed –‘

    ‘I promise that they shall be touched upon as lightly as possible.’

    ‘And the newspapers?’

    ‘His lordship will probably grant a hearing in his private room, where no reporters are ever admitted. I will instruct council to ask it.’

    ‘Spare not for expense,’ said her ladyship as the speaker was about to quit the dressing-room.

    The lawyer smiled. Probably he thought the caution unnecessary.

    ‘Money is nothing,’ added the speaker. ‘Slander and ridicule are what I dread. They would kill me.’

    ‘Be under no uneasiness. Money can do a great deal.’

    Lady Montague retired again to her couch, but in a much more tranquil state of mind than when she quitted it.

    Our readers can now understand the lawyer’s sudden cordiality to his nephew after hearing his adventures, and the promise he had made him of running down to Deerhurst.

    Those who most praise country life, rave of rural simplicity, the absence of hatred, envy, and all uncharitableness, have, we fear, passed but a brief time in villages. This is a sad truth, disguise it as we may, and applies to Deerhurst as well as to other places we could name.

    And yet there were many, especially among the softer sex, who blamed Farmer Hurst’s proceedings against his nephew.

    ‘It be all his wife’s doin’s,’ observed one.

    ‘If ever Peter does a mean thing, she puts him up to it,’ said another.

    This proposition was generally assented to; in short, the popular feeling amongst the female inhabitants of the place was decidedly unfavourable to Mrs. Hurst. With the men it was more equally divided, for whilst those who lived nearest to the Bittern’s Marsh, and suffered most from the loss of horses and cattle, sided with the uncle, many of the young villagers took part for Willie. Probably they did not exercise much judgment in their choice. It was simply a matter of feeling. They did it because they liked him. He was a good hand at cricket, and ever ready to do a kind act to any of his companions.

    No wonder there was considerable excitement in the community, which became still more apparent when, on the following morning, our hero and Goliah were marched through the long, straggling street up to the Hall, the residence for centuries of the Tyrrel family, whose present head, familiarly known as the Squire, had long been a country magistrate — not a very able one, perhaps, but strictly impartial, unless where his prejudice against poaching came into play. Then, we fear, he did sometimes strain the law, but not on the side of mercy. There was quite a shout from the young men when a tall powerful woman darted from the crowd, and threw her arms round the neck of Goliah.

    It was his mother.

    ‘Don’t thee be scared,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘I ha’ hired a lawyer for thee.’

    ‘Where be him? I don’t see him.’

    ‘Up at squire’s,’ replied his parent. ‘I drove to Chelmsford myself, and brought him  back to Deerhurst with me. And that is why I aint been to see thee at constable’s,’ she added.

    Her son, who felt rather hurt at her not having put in an appearance, as the lawyer’s term it, kissed her affectionately.

    The Hall — as the Tyrrel Mansion was generally designated — a fine Elizabethan pile — stood in a well-wooded park, a few rods from the outskirts of the village. One very large apartment on the ground floor had long been set apart by its owner as a justice room. At the eastern end, on a dais of three steps, stood an arm-chair for his worship, with a table in front of it, and a stool for the butler, who acted as clerk. The place was crowded.

    ‘Don’t be cast down,’ said a bustling looking personage — Mr. Vickers the Chelmsford lawyer. ‘Charge ridiculous. You have brought back the mare and waggon. No evidence to sustain it, must be dismissed.’

    Goliah nudged his friend and laughed.

    ‘But I did not want it to be dismissed,’ observed William, ‘without a full investigation. It would leave a stain upon my character.’

    ‘I am not concerned in your case,’ replied Mr. Vickers, sharply. ‘Goliah Gob is my client.’

    ‘Then thee beant for mine!’ exclaimed the latter, angrily. ‘Willie and I be one. If he goes to jail,’ he added, ‘I go wi’ im.’

    Here Mrs. Gob whispered something to the lawyer, who instantly changed his tone, and turning to her son, whispered something that surprised him.

    ‘There he be!’ exclaimed Goliah, as Peter Hurst, accompanied by his wife and daughter, all three looking exceedingly uncomfortable, entered the justice room. ‘Farmer do look like a pig led by the ear; don’t know which way to turn.’

    ‘Yes,’ added Mrs. Gob, ‘and all the folks in Deerhurst do know who is driving him.’

    At this there was a general laugh. The two ladies regarded each other defiantly.

    Susan felt herself painfully situated by the public contempt thus openly expressed at the conduct of her parents, and resolved that she, at least, would do nothing to merit a share in it. Walking up to the table, near which the prisoners were standing, she shook hands cordially with each of them.

    ‘Susan!’ exclaimed her mother, ‘come here directly.’

    Her daughter either did not hear the summons or refused to obey it.

    ‘You don’t believe, William,’ she said, ‘that I had a hand in this?’

    ‘Certain you had not,’ replied her cousin.

    ‘I have written to your uncle in London,’ she whispered. ‘Do you think he will be very angry with me?’

    ‘Why should he?’ was the reply. ‘But will it reach him in time?’

    ‘Think it will,’ she answered, in the same undertone. ‘I sent it by a sure hand.’

    ‘Benoni?’

    An expression of contempt passed over the face of the girl as she replied to his question.

    ‘I dared not trust him; he is not the friend you think him.’

    ‘Susan! Susan!’ repeated Mrs. Hurst, in a tone more peremptory than before.

    This time the summons was obeyed.

    William felt a sad sinking of the heart. As for Goliah, he was delighted. In the first place, Susan had shaken hands with him, a thing she had never done before; in the next, his own opinion of Benoni had been confirmed.

    ‘Don’t thee be grieved, Willie,’ he said, when he saw the effect produced upon our hero by the openly avowed suspicion of Benoni’s treachery, ‘there be a true friend left.’

    A considerable time had elapsed and still the justice had not made his appearance. He was too great a personage to be hurried. In the first place, he, like all county magistrates, held his appointment from the crown; and in the second, the office was an unpaid one. Of course he felt justified in acting just as he pleased.

    Possibly yesterday’s dinner had disagreed with him. He might have taken too much wine, or not got through with the morning papers.

    At last, however, a dim recollection that he had something to do officially dawned upon his mind; and after the butler had twice given him a respectful hint to that effect, Squire Tyrrel quitted his library for the seat of judgment. The warrant on which the arrest had been made was placed before him.

    ‘A Rustic Judge’. Caricature of Lord Justice Williams (cropped). Vanity Fair, 2 March 1899. Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

    ‘Ah, yes, I recollect. Peter Hurst? Why is not the man here? Does he suppose that I will allow the time of the public to be wasted?’

    Here the butler and clerk whispered to his worship that the prosecutor was already in court.

    ‘Ha! So you are here at last,’ continued Squire Tyrrel. ‘Very improper conduct, to keep the court waiting.’

    ‘Why, we have been waiting for your honor these two hours,’ observed the farmer, mildly.

    ‘Silence, sir! No insolence! I see — warrant for stealing a bay mare and waggon against William Whiston and Goliah Gob.’

    Here Mr. Vickers thought it time to interfere.

    ‘If your worship will permit me,’ he said, ‘I wish most respectfully to observe that both the mare and waggon have been brought back. No theft could have been intended.’

    ‘Who the devil are you, sir?’

    ‘Solicitor for the prisoners.’

    ‘Brought back, have they? Then I suppose the charge is withdrawn?’

    Here Peter Hurst, urged on by his wife, advanced towards the table.

    Our hero was the first to reply.

    ‘I must beg,’ he said, ‘that the charge is not withdrawn. Under very peculiar circumstances at an early hour yesterday morning, I borrowed my uncle’s horse and waggon, drove to London in it, and returned in the afternoon. So much I freely acknowledge; as for the stealing, I most indignantly repudiate the charge. My friend here, who is included in it, acted entirely at my request.’

    The language, manner, and appearance of the prisoner evidently produced a favourable impression upon the magistrate.

    ‘Well, farmer,’ he said, turning to Peter Hurst, ‘what have you got to say? Recollect, he is your nephew.’

    ‘I know that,’ was the reply; ‘and I am sure I wish him no harm, if Willie will only promise to behave for the future, not give himself airs, and give up certain low acquaintances.’

    ‘I have no low acquaintances, and you know it, uncle,’ interrupted William. ‘The friend you would deprive me of is honest, manly, true, and far more worthy of respect than you have proved yourself. I should be worthy of scorn and contempt were I to give any such promise.’

    Again Peggy Hurst whispered something to her husband, who said reluctantly:

    ‘Then the case must proceed.’

    The squire, who saw his advice disregarded, felt annoyed. Had it been taken, it would have terminated what he foresaw might prove a troublesome case.

    ‘Who is that woman?’ he demanded.

    ‘My wife,’ answered the farmer, somewhat ruefully.

    ‘Very well. Let her stand at the lower end of the court-room. If I catch her prompting you again, I shall commit her for contempt.’

    As the constable pointed out a place as far as possible from her husband to Mrs. Hurst, she bit her lips to keep down her rising passion.

    There was a loud laugh at her mortification.

    ‘Silence!’ said the squire.

    ‘Three cheers for our honest magistrate!’ cried a voice.

    They were given with a hearty good will, but this time the great man did not appear to heed the interruption.

    ‘Your worship,’ said Mr. Vickers, advancing a second time towards the table, ‘I respectfully ask you to adjourn the case for two days. We expect an important witness from London; and are ready to give bail for Goliah Gob.’

    ‘And Willie?’ shouted the latter.

    ‘And Willie, too, syne thee wishit it,’ said his mother.

    The probabilities are that the offer would have been accepted. The farmer offered no opposition, and his wife began to feel sick of law, when the noise of a carriage driving up to the door of the Hall interrupted the proceedings. Susan, who had been greatly interested in the affair, ran to the door, but quickly returned and waved her hand to her cousin.

    ‘He is come,’ she said.

    ‘Who be come?’ inquired Goliah.

    ‘My uncle, from London.’

    ‘What! More lawyers?’ replied the farmer. ‘My brain be puzzled enough wi’ one. What will it be wi’ two?’

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Annotation

    ‘syne thee wishit it’: Dialect, ‘since’.

  • J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Second Instalment

    J.F. Smith’s Mystery of the Marsh — Second Instalment

    An astute reader of the first chapter wondered whether the red barn of our tale might be the scene of the infamous 1827 murder of  Maria Marten, perhaps in order to unfold Maria’s tragic plot. That does not seem to be so, however, given the events that occur in this and the prior instalment, which proceed in an independent direction.

    Poor Maria’s red barn was located in Polstead, Suffolk, which is indeed not too far from our location, the Essex marshes of the greater Thames Estuary. There is little question but that our author J.F. Smith (1803 — 1890) who was born in Norwich, and thus definitely in the general vicinity, would have been aware of those terrible events, which culminated in Maria’s ghost pointing out the location of her own grave. The red barn of the present story,  therefore, may well have reverberated with dramatic overtones for readers of the period.

    In editing this work, I have preserved elements of the writing that are characteristic of the period and medium, even where these might create some minor difficulties of readability for a modern reader used to modern popular conventions. Semi-colons, for example, tend to be used more liberally than is the fashion today, even as occasional closing punctuation for direct dialogue. Taken all together such features add charm and even contribute to a Victorian atmosphere.

    All the paragraphing is intact, as it was in the original newspapers. This is actually quite in keeping with online convention, where short paragraphs are considered best practice.

    An occasional point of dialect or cultural schema is not immediately transparent, but most reveal themselves quickly with the aid of context (‘porlite’, ‘loike’), deduction (‘the famous Essex two fives on the skull’)  or Google. I don’t want to invade the text with footnotes and sic’s, but will make a few notes at the end of each instalment to clarify one or two of the slightly more elusive points of interest.

    Don’t hesitate to make any comment or reply at the bottom of the blog post. I very much hope some discussions might ensue. If you like the instalment, please ‘Like’ it at the bottom of the post.

    I’ll take this opportunity to introduce the author.  He is an imposing gent, a brilliant Victorian star writer. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the unsung giant and herald of popular literature, John Frederick Smith, Esquire …

     

    Portrait of J.F. Smith, Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper, I: 385, 22 May 1858. Reprinted in Andrew King, The London Journal, 1845-83 (Routledge, 2004)
    The only existing portrait of J.F. Smith, Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, I: 385, 22 May 1858. Reprinted in Andrew King, The London Journal, 1845-83 (Routledge, 2004)

    CHAPTER TWO

    A Cool Reception — More Tramps — The Friends Compare Notes — Adventures in the Red Barn

    Mrs. Hurst did not appear particularly well-pleased when Goliah Gob entered the keeping-room — as the second parlor is generally named in Essex — in company with her nephew and the schoolmaster’s son; and yet it would have puzzled her very much to explain why she disliked him. Her daughter Susan had never yet shown the slightest preference for him; on the contrary, she rarely missed an occasion of mocking at his uncouth ways and quaint dialect, which she imitated to perfection, sometimes to his face, much to the annoyance of her cousin, who knew the worth, the true-heartedness, and honesty of the lad she thoughtlessly ridiculed; not that she shared in her mother’s dislike of him. William felt perfectly assured of that. Sometimes he thought he could detect a tone of pique blending with her playful malice. Why it should be so he could not understand. Goliah was perfectly civil to her, and even polite in his simple way. He had reasoned and remonstrated with her in vain.

    At last he came to the conclusion that, if his friend had shown himself a little more susceptible of her charms, she would not have been displeased.

    Hence his hint to Goliah, when he refused to accompany him to the farm.

    Possibly the aunt inclined to this opinion. There might also be another reason; Mrs. Gob’s butter was the crack of the market, so that there existed a species of rivalry between the two ladies.

    By this time the rain was falling heavily.

    ‘Come in,’ said Mrs. Hurst, addressing Goliah, who stood rather hesitatingly at the door of the keeping-room. You need not leave till the storm is over.’

    ‘I should think not,’ observed her nephew, dryly. ‘You would not allow a neighbour’s dog, much less a neighbour’s son, to quit the house in such weather; and if you could do so I would not permit it.’

    This was the first time the speaker had hinted his rights as joint owner of the farm. Mrs. Hurst bit her lips; she did not like it. It was treading upon unpleasant ground; so like a clever woman, she hastened to change the conversation.

    ‘Don’t stand chopping words, Willie, which signify nothing,’ she exclaimed, ‘and the rain dropping off of you, but take your friends into your own room and give them some dry clothes. Tea will be ready by the time you come down; the cakes are nearly done. Go with him, Goliah,’ she added, good-humoredly, ‘and don’t mind a thing he says; of course, I am glad to see you, though I don’t make fine speeches. Soft words are not always sincere ones.’

    ‘No more they be,’ observed the young man; ‘and grandmother do say they butter no parsnips.’

    At tea Goliah helped himself unsparingly to Mrs. Hurst’s cake and made sad havoc with the preserved gooseberries, a dish of which he cleared twice, to the great amusement of Susan and anger of her mother.

    ‘You seem very fond of gooseberries, Mr. Gob,’ said the girl laughingly.

    ‘Yes, Miss.’

    ‘And so are we,’ added the young lady, pointedly.

    ‘But not so fond as I be,’ replied the rustic visitor, assisting himself to the last spoonful in the dish. This was too much. The gravity of the table gave way to an explosion of mirth; even Mrs. Hurst’s anger yielded to the contagion of example, and she laughed heartily. Poor Goliah coloured to the temples.

    ‘What have I done?’ he whispered to William.

    ‘Nothing, nothing,’ replied his friend, trying to compose his features. ‘Take no notice,’ he added, in the same undertone.

    ‘Why, thee told I to be free and easy loike.’

    ‘Certainly; say no more, it is quite right.’

    Goliah felt that somehow or other it was all wrong; saw that William was annoyed although he did his best to conceal it, and he made up his mind at the first pause in the storm to take his leave. All confidence had left him as suddenly as it came, and he sat listening silently to the whistling of the tempest which whirled and shrieked round the gables of the house like some human thing in pain. The heavy pattering rain, the solemn peals of thunder ceased at last, and he rose to depart.

    ‘Why in such haste, Goliah?’ observed William. ‘It is only a lull in the tempest; it will soon burst again with redoubled fury. Better remain till morning.’

    As neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hurst seconded the invitation, Goliah Gob felt confirmed in his resolution. Susan looked as if she wished him to stay.

    ‘Thankee, Willie,’ he said: ‘thee hast a kind heart, but I knowed that long ago. I beant a bit afraid o’ the rain; it can’t melt I; ’sides, it be only five miles.’

    ‘Five miles in such a night!’ observed Susan.

    The sturdy rustic, however, paid no attention to the remonstrances of his friends, but after bidding a brief good night to the rest of the family, walked resolutely towards the door, followed by William,

    ‘I am sorry you are so resolute on leaving us,’ observed the latter, as they stayed for an instant on the threshold. ‘See how black the clouds are.’

    ‘No blacker than the looks within,’ replied his friend.

    ‘And the rain will be pouring down in torrents again.’

    ‘I mun go,’ said Goliah, resolutely.

    ‘I am sorry you are so determined,’ said the youth; ‘but when once you have made up your mind I know it is no use arguing with you; so good night, and, bye-the-by, Goliah,’ he added, ‘as you pass the red barn, just look in and see that those two poor boys are all right. Not unlikely that more tramps may have stopped there.’

    ‘I wol.’

    With these words the speakers shook hands and parted.

    ***

    As soon as the youthful wayfarers felt assured they were alone in the barn, they proceeded to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit. First, they partook of the refreshment their friends had left them. Hunger appeased, and they had been very hungry, they next examined the room, which they did by the light of a lantern the eldest boy had discovered hanging from one of the beams; fortunately he had matches in his pocket. Everything appeared as William Whiston had represented. No window or other door to the room than the one of which he had given them the key. As for the bed, it might have looked a little more inviting certainly, still it was comparatively clean, and the sheepskins were in abundance.

    ‘Dear Charley,’ whispered the eldest, at the same time throwing his arms round the neck of his young companion, ‘we are quite safe here. We shall escape them yet.’

    ‘Would I could think so,’ replied the latter; ‘but I cannot. I feel they are on our track; I have only to close my eyes to see them as they sprang upon us whilst we were combing our long hair behind the holly bush, the brutal leering passion in their eyes as they tried to force us to follow them into the marsh. They read our secret. Martha! Martha!’ added the speaker, bursting into tears, ‘but for that honest waggoner and his two sons what should we have been now?’

    ‘Hush, dearest! Not that name! You must call me Hal. Listen to me: Something tells me that our greatest trials are past. You must try to obtain some rest. You need not undress. Let me unlace those coarse, horrid boots and rub your poor, tired feet,’

    Charley — we suppose we must call him so for the present — sank down upon the bed, and the speaker proceeded to remove the heavy high-lows, disclosing a pair of exquisitely turned feet, incased in white silk stockings — rather an unusual article for a tramp to wear.

    Nearly an hour elapsed before tired nature yielded to the approach of sleep. After extinguishing the lantern the wayfarers sank to rest at last, clasped in each other’s arms. No wonder that the sleep of both was broken by dreams and fitful starts. Once or twice the youngest awoke with a faint scream, appeared dreadfully agitated, and muttered incoherent words, till the soothing voice of the elder calmed her again.

    ‘Only a dream, Charley, only a dream,’ whispered his companion; ‘nothing more.’

    ‘Thank Heaven,’ murmured the frightened sufferer, pressed still closer to his side, ‘it was but a dream!’

    In a few minutes they were asleep again. Meanwhile the storm, which bad lulled once or twice during the evening, broke out afresh, howled like a weird dirge through the leafless trees, and the rain fell, splash! splash! upon the slate roof of the barn, whilst the angry lightning flashed and darted in arrowy, fantastic lines from the sable clouds which obscured the greater part of the heavens,

    God help the poor wanderers exposed to the cold charities of the world on such a night! The hard and thoughtless will doubtless console themselves by reflecting that, without doubt, they have deserved their fate. Perhaps so; but the necessity of shelter is none the less urgent, the obligation to pity and assist none the less binding; for what is man that he should harshly judge his fellow-man, whether for good or ill, blessing or punishment? The results are in higher hands than his.

    Any shelter in that terrible storm must have seemed like an oasis in the desert, a Patmos in the wilderness to the houseless and friendless. So, doubtless, must have thought a young fellow of about three-and-twenty, as he made his way into the red barn. He was evidently a tramp; no mistaking the signs. His shoes leaked water; his clothes — a half-faded summer suit — clung tightly to his shapely figure; the rim of the felt hat that he wore had uncurled itself in the rain, permitting the water to trickle down his back till it wetted him to the bone. He did not seem, however, to mind it very much, for after giving himself a good shake, like some Newfoundland dog after taking a swim, he seated himself upon the floor, and opening a wallet, began to eat. His appetite appeased, he paced up and down the floor of the barn to get himself warm.

    ‘This will never do,’ he muttered to himself, as a sudden chill crept over him. ‘The rain and sleet have struck to my bones. I must have a fire, or be laid up with the marsh ague. There can be no danger; neither hay nor straw in the place.’

    Gathering a small pile of wood which he found scattered in various parts of the building, the young fellow struck a light, and in a few minutes a cheerful blaze not only diffused a cheering warmth around, but it lit up the dreary space around.

    ‘This is what I call comfortable,’ he said, as he stood holding his coat and vest before the front of the fire to dry. ‘I wonder what those who once knew me would think of it, could they see me. What a fool I am to suffer such thoughts to run in my mind,’ he added, ‘They have long since forgotten me. Not all, perhaps. One or two may remember me yet.’

    These and similar thoughts kept chasing each other through his brain as he stood enjoying the warmth. At last his garments were sufficiently dry, and he commenced putting them on again. As he fastened the last button two more of the disinherited ones of the world crept into the barn — coarse, ruffianly looking fellows, several years older than the wanderer who preceded them. Their countenances bore the hard, cynical lines traced by a long career of passion, selfish, brutal indulgence, and crime.

    ‘Well, pal!’ exclaimed the foremost of the new-comers, as he advanced to the fire, ‘you are in luck. Quite pleasant here. Any scran?’

    The young man pointed to the wallet, which still contained some food.

    ‘Here, Bill!’ shouted the speaker to his companion, who had remained behind to close the barn doors. ‘Never mind s’porting the timber. The wind ‘ll keep ’em closed. Here is a good fire, and the right sort o’ pal, thof he don’t seem ’xactly like one of us. A Romany chal, p’r’aps.’

    ‘Not a bit,’ replied the first comer. ‘I am no gypsy.’

    He threw off his wide-awake as he spoke, disclosing a fair, bright, intelligent face, blue eyes, high forehead, shaded by light brown curly though somewhat matted hair.

    ‘I see yer aint,’ observed the questioner, after eyeing him over as critically as he would have done a lurcher or terrier dog. ‘None the wuss, maybe, for that. One of the marsh breed, I see.’

    ‘Neither do I belong to the Bittern’s Nest.’

    ‘Well I thought you might; no harm done, I s’pose. Many a good, honest bird has its nest in the swamp. What’s your name?’

    ‘Bunce.’

    ‘And mine is Pike, and my pal is called Bilk; and now we knows one another.’

    ‘O, yes! certainly!’ replied the former, with a smile.

    The three men seated themselves near the fire; the food remaining in the wallet quickly disappeared. Fuselli, or better still, Dore, might have made a startling picture from the group; Bunce with his pale, sad face, Pike and Bilk, their hideous countenances obscurely seen through the cloud of vapor rising from their saturated clothes; one instant it hid their traits, the next disclosing them with added deformity.

    For some time they remained silent, quitely enjoying themselves in the warmth. Pike, who evidently liked to hear the sound of his own voice, was the first to speak.

    ‘I s’pose you are up to a thing or two?’ he observed, addressing himself to the youngest of the party.

    ‘To a great many things,’ was the reply.

    ‘That’s right, nothing like plain talking; it mayn’t be allays wise to cackle in the ken afore strangers; but here, three honest pals together, it’s all right. I’ve something to tell you. But fust take a dram.’

    He drew a bottle, about half full, and handed it to Bunce, who, before tasting its contents, drew the cork and smelt them.

    ‘Brandy,’ he said.

    ‘You may swear to it,’ observed Bilk, ‘and what’s more, the gauger’s stick has never been in it.’

    Notwithstanding this recommendation the young fellow drank but a very moderate quantity. His suspicions were confirmed; he knew they were from the marsh — the desperate character of whose inhabitants he had heard of — and he determined to be upon his guard.

    ‘Now then,’ said Pike, in a confidential tone, as he replaced the bottle in his pocket, ‘let us talk bizziness; but mind it is all on the square.’

    ‘Of course it is.’

    ‘Have you seen anyone since you came here?’

    ‘You and your friend are the only persons who have entered the barn,’ replied the young man. ‘Why do you stare at me so hard? Do you think I am lying to you?’

    ‘Can’t say,’ replied the ruffian, coolly; ‘hard to tell; don’t signify much if you are; we are two to one. Now jest look at me in the face; I want to see your eyes when I tell you somethink. We are not alone in the barn.’

    ‘Police?’ whispered Bunce. ‘No. Two gals dressed in boys’ clothes.’

    The look of intense surprise, the sudden flush which mantled the countenance of his bearer, were too natural to have been assumed, and the speaker felt satisfied that it was news to him.

    ‘Poor things,’ murmured Bunce, in an undertone. ‘Where?’ he added aloud.

    Pike pointed to the door at the end of the barn.

    ‘There,’ he whispered. ‘Such a lark! My pal and I came upon them behind the bushes, just by the old stone cross, as they were combing out their long hair. Weren’t they scared! Bilk and I were quite porlite and coaxing; tried to get them to go with us into the swamp; but somehow they didn’t see it, so we just tried to make them.’

    ‘And would ha’ done it, too,’ chimed in his companion, ‘if their cries — of course we didn’t mind them — had not brought a waggoner and his two sons, who heard the cackle and leaving their team in the road came running to see what was up. They were three to two, to say nothing of the girls — so we had to sneak off. Awful provoking! Enough to make a parson swear! They rode off with the waggoner; but Pike and I knew a shorter cut, and dogged them till we saw the farmer’s boys hide them in the barn; so we waited and watched. At last we made our way in.’

    ‘The boys may return,’ observed Bunce, anxious to gain time.

    ‘Not such a night as this,’ replied the elder tramp. ‘No great matter if they do. We are now three to three.’

    ‘Why, what do you intend to do?’

    ‘Have ’em out, in course,’ exclaimed Bilk, ‘and have a jolly night. You can whistle whilst we dance,’

    ‘I will have nothing to do with it. Not that I object to a bit of fun; but this might prove dangerous — too near the village.’

    ‘It is nearer to the marsh.’

    ‘But I am a stranger in the marsh,’ replied the young man.

    ‘Oh, my pal and I will make you welcome.’

    ‘I told you I would have nothing to do with it, and intend to keep my word; it is unmanly, dastardly. Better give it up. As far as a hen-roost is concerned, I don’t mind going in with you. Hens were intended to be eaten.’

    ‘And pretty girls to be kissed.’

    ‘If they are willing.’

    ‘Willing or not, we intend to have them out. Bilk, you break open the door of the chamber, whilst I attend to this white-livered cur — to go back on two such pals as we are, and after treating him so ’ansomely, too.’

    Although the speakers were all three active men, the two eldest were by far the most powerful; the Bunce saw that he would have a hard struggle, if it came to blows. With the exception of a stout ash cudgel, such as the natives of the eastern counties play at single-sticks with, he was totally unarmed. The swamp ruffians — for such by their own confession he knew them to be — most probably were better provided. Still he determined not to abandon two helpless girls to the brutal treatment of such wretches. They might not even be respectable; their disguise was unfavorable to the supposition that they were so. He cared not for that; they were women. Possibly he recollected that he had sisters; at any rate, his mind was made up to defend them.

    There was some inherent good in that lone wanderer, after all.

    During the above conversation the pale, trembling girls stood listening at the door, the only barrier between them and possible insult. The mild tone in which the younger tramp had expostulated with the elder one gave them but faint hope.’

    ‘I have a knife,’ whispered Martha to her half-fainting companion.

    ‘Oh, kill me! kill me!’ whispered the youngest of the two.

    Whilst Bilk was thundering with his heavy boots trying to break open the door, Pike was attacking the young fellow who had refused to listen to their shameful proposal. Confident in his great strength, he committed the not unusual fault of undervaluing that of his opponent. Twice had the ash stick of Bunce cut the famous Essex two fives on the skull of the now thoroughly infuriated ruffian, whose loud curses, mingling with the screams of the two females, might have been heard beyond the barn.

    In cudgel playing, anger is about the worst second a man can have. The old tramp was not without considerable skill, but rage rendered him incautious.

    ‘Curse you!’ he exclaimed. ‘Take that!’

    The blow was well aimed, but as skillfully parried. In making the half circular movement to recover guard, Bunce brought his weapon across the head of his assailant. The blow was a terrible one, and the ruffian staggered for an instant as if half blinded. The hero of the skirmish — for such he proved himself — saw his advantage, and turning from his opponent, commenced attacking the second tramp. The door had been nearly broken open.

    ‘Keep up your courage!’ shouted Bunce to the inmates or the little chamber. ‘One of your enemies is powerless to harm you, and the other has almost had enough.’

    ‘No, he aint,’ said Pike, drawing a pistol from his vest.

    He advanced more cautiously than ever to the attack, the weapon in his hand.

    The heart of the generous wanderer sank within him.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Some Annotations

    The chapter highlight ‘The Friends Compare Notes’ seems out of place. I wonder whether these have been added by the newspaper editor in the main one of my two sources.

    Goliah Gob’s British dialect characterizes him beautifully as a diamond in the rough. ‘I mun go’ is dialect for  ‘I must go’. The ruffian, Pike, uses the word ‘thof’, which Goliah used already in Chapter 1. It is dialect for the conjunction ‘though’; and I presume has a link to Middle English pronunciation, of which our irregular ‘-gh’ spelling is a  relic.

    It is rare for Goliah to be used as a first name. Here, the name clearly illustrates the size and might of the character. We have in Chapter 1 ‘like his namesake of Gath, Goliah was a giant in strength’, Gath being the home of the Biblical Goliath.

    Some further brief notes:

    • scran: Dialectal, ‘food‘; the word originates in the British Navy
    • chal: male gypsy
    • lurcher: A crossbred dog, used especially by poachers
    • Marsh breed / Bittern’s Nest:The bittern is a rare, shy heron whose habitat is the marsh. (See the bird’s entry in the Essex Wildlife Trust website.) We can understand the upstanding Bunce’s reluctance to be labelled as ‘one of the marsh breed‘, given the mention in Chapter 1 of the Bittern’s Nest’s ‘proximity to London — not more than thirty miles distant — [which] has made it a refuge for the worst of characters; in a few instances, perhaps, also of the unfortunate.’ Therefore, at the same time, we might sympathise with Pike’s reasonable, egalitarian view that ‘Many a good, honest bird has its nest in the swamp.’
    • ‘Fuselli, or better still, Dore’:  Not ‘Fusilli Jerry’. Fuseli is the more proper spelling for the Swiss painter and art writer Henry Fuseli (1741 — 1825), though the double-l does occur; Dore is the French painter Gustave Doré (1832 — 1883). They share a penchant for creating dark, macabre images.
    • ‘threw off his wide-awake’: Low crowned, wide brimmed soft felt hat; so-named, jocularly, for having ‘no nap’.
    • ‘quitely’: Not ‘quiety’ but ‘quitely’ = ‘completely, entirely’, as in ‘Your ancestres conquered all France quitely’ (Robert Mannyng of Brunne, qtd. in the Century Dictionary (originally published in 1889).
    • Single-sticks:  A martial arts style of sport using sticks or cudgels; variants appear in several different cultures. Pays Googling. For your information, it was an Olympic sport in 1904 only.
    • ‘the gauger’s stick has never been in it’: Unexcised liquor, which we may infer to be either smuggled or illicitly produced.
    • *** : I inserted the asterisks to indicate the scene change, since that was a little unclear in the source.

    More details about John Frederick Smith in future posts

    MG