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Tag: Penny Dreadful

  • 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 — Fifth Instalment

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

    Journalist, publisher and bon vivant Henry Vizetelly (1820–1894) dines out on some wonderful anecdotes about J.F. Smith. In one he recounts the author’s move to Cassell’s Family Magazine. This was a new publication of John Cassell’s (1817–1865), who would found the international publishing group Cassell’s.

    Cassell lured Smith away from the editor of the London Journal, George Stiff, with an extra £5 or so on top of the £10 Stiff was paying him per instalment — Vizetelly puns unkindly on the editor’s name when describing him as a ‘cadaverous-looking character’. Anyway, Smith and Cassell kept their little arrangement top-secret for a time, while Smith continued to write for the Journal.

    The story goes that Smith happened to be midway through a story for Stiff when he decided to ditch him. So in order to bring his story to an abrupt close, he placed all the main characters on board a Mississippi steamboat and blew it up. He handed in his copy and walked down the stairs, out the door, and off up the street to his new job.

    According to Vizetelly, Stiff was ‘thunderstruck’ when he realized what Smith had done, but brought in a new writer to revive the characters and continue the serial.

    I should add that Vizetelly was not one of those raconteurs who allow the truth to get in the way. In his book The London Journal, 1845–83: Periodicals, Production and Gender (Routledge, 2004), Andrew King abruptly grounds us after the explosion, tracing some fatal inconsistencies, such as the fact that the characters in the serial hadn’t left their English village by the time Smith left the London Journal.

    A quick point of interest about Vizetelly, one quite telling about the sensibilities of the late-Victorian era. He was convicted twice, in 1888 and 1889, for purveying obscene material: two-shilling English translations of works by Émile Zola.

    CHAPTER FIVE

    Scene in a lawyer’s office — The old custom of legal hazing — Return of our hero and his friend, Goliah, to the country — The arrest and its consequences

    Although Lincoln’s Inn Fields still retain their ancient name, there is nothing rural in their appearance, if we except the garden in the centre, which is the exact size of the base of the great pyramid of Egypt. In this garden stood the scaffold on which the patriot Lord William Russell laid down his life for the liberties of his country in the reign of that bigot, James II. It is recorded that when the nation had risen almost to a man to welcome his son-in-law, William of Orange, and drive the tyrant from his throne, the bewildered monarch addressed himself to the Duke of Bedford, the father of his victim, for aid and counsel.

    ‘I am too old to afford you either,’ replied the aged peer, with great dignity. ‘I once had a son,’ he added,’ who might have given both, but his voice was silenced.’

    Only for a time. It still speaks to his fellow-countrymen from a blood-stained grave.

    Lincoln’s Inn Fields was one of the numerous places appointed for the exercise of the English archers, and continued to be used for that purpose as long as the tough yew bow remained the national weapon. On the introduction of gunpowder and artillery, it fell into disuse, and the locality was put to other purposes. Gradually it became transformed into a square by rows of massive buildings — courts of law on one side, Surgeon’s Hall and stately looking houses on the other. The nobility, judges, and upper class, for whom these mansions were originally built, have long since migrated to more fashionable quarters, and they are now inhabited chiefly by lawyers and professional men, architects and physicians.

    View of the entrance to Lincoln’s Inn Fields in Duke Street, Westminster, London. Watercolour by John Crowther, 1883. Public Domain. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

    William and his companion had paced more than once round the square without discovering the residence of the uncle of the former, a disappointment easily to be accounted for with persons unacquainted with the peculiarities of the locality. The addresses of the occupants generally refer to the numbers of their chambers, and not to those of the houses in which they are situated.

    As a last resource our hero addressed himself to a gentleman who descended one of the flights of stone steps for information, at the same time showing him the card.

    The gentleman read it.

    ‘There it is,’ he said, pointing to the building he had just issued from. First floor, right-hand side of the landing.’

    After thanking him the two friends mounted and soon discovered a stout oaken door with a brass plate, on which was inscribed: ‘Richard Whiston, Attorney at Law.’ This said plate, had they been more familiar with the usages of the profession, would have told them that the gentleman whose name it bore was an old-fashioned practitioner. The first floor indicated that he was a prosperous one; rents, at the period we are writing of, being exceedingly high in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and first floors let only on lease.

    When the young men entered the office the clerks — there were eight of them — saw from their attire that they were from the country and — they are and always have been, we suspect, a mischief-loving race — determined to have some fun with them. To William’s inquiry whether their master was within, they made no reply, but continued writing or reading as if unconscious of his presence.

    ‘Be they dumb, Willie?’ inquired Goliah.

    ‘I think not.’

    ‘Why doan they speak to ’ee then?’

    William Whiston shrugged his shoulders, to intimate that he had not the slightest idea.

    ‘By gorry!’ added his companion, ‘but I’ll make ’em, or know a reason why.’

    Goliah walked up to the desk of one of the clerks — a young fellow about two or three-and-twenty — and stared him full in the face, to the great amusement of the other scribes.

    ‘Well,’ said the speaker, ‘the critter be alive at any rate. Be thee deaf?’

    The young man shook his head.

    ‘Dumb, then?’

    The sign was repeated.

    ‘If ’ee don’t speak I’ll make thee.’

    The gesture, which was anything but an amicable one, accompanying the words, produced a certain effect. The clerk scribbled a few words upon a piece of paper and handed it to the speaker, who, with the assistance of William, contrived to read the following doggerel verse:

    Who questions here must pay our fee,
    Six and eightpence is the cost;
    Kept whate’er the answer be,
    Whether the suit be won or lost.

    In the author’s young days six shillings and eightpence was the fee invariably demanded in every lawyer’s office before answering any legal question. Clerks, in the absence of their principal, frequently abused this custom by practising a system of hazing and extortion upon rustic clients. It has, however, long since been abolished.

    A broad grin stole over the countenance of Goliah as the meaning of the verse became plain to him.

    ‘And what for should we pay thee six shillin’ and eightpence?’ he demanded. ‘Why, I seed a better looking monkey at Chelmsford Fair for threepence, and it war dear at that.’

    This was answered by a general shout of laughter from the clerks, who enjoyed the joke against their comrade exceedingly. He had the reputation of being not only the greatest dandy, but was the ringleader in most of the practical jokes practised in the office. Stung by the retort, he sprang from the desk, struck what in those days, doubtless, was considered a scientific attitude, then rushed upon the speaker with a benevolent intention of demolishing him.

    ‘He is only jesting,’ whispered our hero to his friend.

    ‘All the better for he,’ was the reply.

    Thanks to William’s assertion of its being all in jest, the assailant succeeded in planting one square blow in Goliah’s chest. Despite the young giant’s respect for the judgment of his companion, he felt there could be no joke in that; the next instant saw the offender stretched helpless as an infant across his knees, enduring a chastisement usually reserved for very juvenile offenders.

    The cries of the victim, the shouts and laughter of his comrades, brought Mr. Prim, who, in the absence of his principal, managed the office, from an inner room. He was a staid, parchment-skinned looking personage, and having been trained under the sharp, methodical rule of Lawyer Whiston, naturally felt a horror at anything like confusion or disorder amongst his subordinates.

    ‘In the name of common sense, gentlemen!’ he exclaimed — ‘if there is such a thing left amongst you — what is the meaning of this disturbance?’

    There was no reply; the clerks had sneaked back to their desks.

    The eyes of the general manager fell upon Goliah and his prisoner. It would be difficult to describe the look of profound astonishment which crept over his saturnine countenance. Although not as striking as the Laocoon, the group appeared nearly as complicated. The legs and arms of the sufferer were in the air. A groan escaped from him, not so much of pain as of mortification, each time that the broad palm of Goliah fell upon the lower part of his back.

    ‘Dear me! Mr. Fribble,’ he asked, ‘is that really you?’

    ‘Oh! sir, will you permit this?’

    ‘Certainly not,’ replied the gentleman.

    Calling up a dignified look — Mr. Prim prided himself very much upon his looks — he walked up to Goliah and demanded what he was doing with his clerk.

    ‘Can’t thee see?’ was the reply, accompanied by an additional whack and the groan which followed it.

    ‘Hem! Yes, the evidence upon that point does appear sufficiently clear. And pray, sir, what brings you here?’

    ‘Cum’d wi’ my friend Willie to see his uncle, Lawyer Whiston,’ was the reply. ‘We know he do live here — seed his name on the door. What be this chap here for?’ added the speaker, pointing to the clerk still stretched athwart his knees. ‘To make fools of honest folk, I s’pose.’

    ‘O dear, no — nothing of the kind,’ replied Mr. Prim, who was not a bad-hearted man, and wished to get his subordinate out of a ridiculous scrape. ‘He is here to be instructed in law.’

    ‘Ah! but thee aint ’structioned him in the right place,’ observed the rustic, with rather a comical expression on his broad, honest face. ‘So I gived un a lesson in civility, and I don’t think he will forget it,’ he added, complacently.

    ‘I should say not,’ said the managing clerk, emphatically.

    ‘Let him go,’ whispered our hero to his friend, who released the offender instantly.

    No sooner did Mr. Fribble find himself at liberty than he caught up his hat, and without waiting even to change his coat, rushed out of the office, pursued by the half-suppressed titters of his brother clerks, who secretly perhaps were not ill-pleased at his mortification.

    ‘And so you are the nephew of Mr. Whiston?’ observed Mr. Prim.

    ‘Yes, sir.’

    ‘From Deerhurst?’

    ‘From Deerhurst.’

    ‘Does Mr. Whiston expect you in London?’

    ‘I am certain that he does not.’

    ‘This comes o’ having aught to do wi’ lawyers,’ observed Goliah, impatiently, for he did not at all approve of his friend being interrogated so closely. ‘Thank goodness!’ he added, ‘we never had one in our family. That disgrace has been spared us. Does he think we ha’ larned to lie since we set foot in his office?’

    ‘Hush!’ whispered William.

    At these not very complimentary remarks Mr. Prim opened his eyes exceeding wide. They were something new to him. A smile gradually stole over his parchment-coloured visage. He began to understand the speaker.

    ‘We are obliged to be cautious in London,’ he observed.

    ‘So I should think.’

    ‘What I was about to say was this,’ continued the managing clerk. ‘You had better not take any notice to Mr. Whiston of this little affair in the outer office. Anything like a disturbance angers him exceedingly. It might cost the young men their situations; and, after all, it was only a jest.’

    ‘It be a rum place to jest in,’ muttered Goliah.

    The promise was given, and Mr. Prim felt satisfied that it would be kept.

    Further conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Whiston, a thin, angular man dressed in the professional costume of the day — white cravat tied in an enormous bow, black coat, and tightly-fitting pants encased in well-polished Hessian boots. After staring for an instant at his nephew from beneath his gray, bushy eyebrows, as if to make certain of his identity, he held out his hand, exclaiming at the same time in a not very cordial tone:

    ‘What brings you to London, William?’

    Our hero colored to the temples. It was the first time in his life he had to accuse himself of an act of folly, and yet somehow he did not regret it.

    ‘I fear, uncle,’ he began, ‘you will think that I have acted very foolishly.’

    ‘Most likely; boys generally do,’ replied the lawyer. ‘What is it? Be brief. My time is precious.’

    William related, in as few words as possible, the adventure of the proceeding night, the attack of the tramps on the two boys in the barn, and how his friend and himself had yielded to their entreaties and driven them to London without the knowledge of Farmer Hurst.

    ‘Foolish indeed!’ said the man of law. ‘Peter will naturally believe that his horse has been stolen. The affair might be worse but not much. Prim,’ he added, give my nephew a guinea, and send one of the clerks with him to pay his bill at the tavern. I have something far more important to occupy my time just now.’

    The speaker seated himself at his desk, and commenced writing rapidly.

    ‘Don’t thee take it, Willie,’ exclaimed Goliah, indignantly. ‘I ha’ gotten father’s watch,’ — this was in an undertone. ‘We beant beggars,’ he added aloud, ‘and he sha’n’t treat us like beggars. We ha’ done naught wrong. Pretty cowards we should ha’ been to ha’ left two poor gals to the mercy of such a varmint! Let us go!’

    At the word girls Mr. Whiston pricked up his ears.

    ‘Stay!’ he exclaimed. ‘Shut the door, Prim, and don’t suffer them to leave the room till I give the word. Seize them both! Hold them fast!’

    The managing clerk placed his back against the door.

    ‘Lord! Lord!’ muttered the rustic to himself. ‘What fools these Londoners be! He hold us? That’s a good un!’

    ‘William,’ said his uncle, starting from his seat, ‘perhaps I have been a little hasty. So much to think of. Do tell that young savage to be still.’

    ‘Savage?’ repeated his nephew. ‘He is the best, the truest friend I ever had.’

    ‘Well! well, perhaps he is. What is that he said about two girls? You spoke of boys. Do not deceive me. I am your uncle as well as guardian, and have a right to your confidence.’

    ‘I had no intention of deceiving you, sir,’ replied our hero. ‘You cut me short before I could freely explain. The boys, for such they appeared, proved to be girls flying from some danger. The danger was a real one,’ he added. ‘That I know; for we were attacked within a few miles of London by a young officer and his servant. We escaped them. But for the brave heart and strong arm of the young savage, as you called him, it might have terminated differently.’

    The lawyer wrung the speaker cordially by the hand, laughed heartily, patted him on the shoulder, then went through a somewhat similar ceremony with his companion, to the intense astonishment of the latter, who began to suspect the old gentleman was going mad.

    The managing clerk entertained a similar suspicion. Never before had he witnessed such want of dignity on the part of his principal.

    ‘William,’ continued his relative, after seating himself once more, ‘you must have thought my conduct rather strange.’

    ‘I confess it surprises me, sir.’

    ‘Ah, yes! never mind that. I alluded to my reception of you. I was afraid something discreditable had taken place. Glad to find myself deceived. Forgive the suspicion. I am now perfectly satisfied that you acted rightly — very rightly. Still it is both my advice and wish that you return without any delay to Deerhurst. You know what a weak-minded creature Peter Hurst is; how completely his wife rules him. She has not blinded me to her projects, although I have hitherto seemed to ignore them. It is impossible for me to leave London at this juncture, or I would accompany you, but I will follow in a day or two.’

    ‘The old gentleman be in his right senses after all,’ thought Goliah, who had listened attentively to his words.

    Caricature of William Ballantine, Vanity Fair, 5 Mar 1870. Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

    ‘Do you consent, William?’

    ‘Most willingly, sir,’ answered the nephew; ‘in fact it was our determination. To procure the means, we called here.’

    The wealthy lawyer ordered his carriage and escorted his visitors first to the tavern where he paid their bill, and then out of town till they were on the high road to Essex. On parting he placed five guineas in the hands of each.

    ‘Do thee understand it, Willie?’ said his companion, suddenly, after they had driven a mile or two by themselves.

    Our hero shook his head.

    ‘Nor I,’ added the speaker; but I do think these be real good,’ he said, chinking the coin in his hand.

    This was uttered more in a tone of doubt than positive assertion. Goliah could not understand such liberality; it was the first time in his life he had ever possessed such a sum.

    ‘No doubt of it,’ replied his friend. Uncle Whiston is rich — very rich, and can well afford it. Not that I think the less of his kindness on that account.’

    Evening had commenced closing in when the two runaways drove into the long straggling village of Deerhurst. Both felt considerable amusement at the curious glances with which those whom they met regarded them; children quitted their mud-pies and marbles to rush into the houses and call their mothers and sisters to the door, where they stood staring at them with that vacant expression so peculiar to the bucolic mind.

    ‘There be summat up,’ observed Goliah; ‘the darned fools. They ha’ seed us often enough afore.’

    ‘Something for them to gossip about,’ replied William. ‘My uncle has never been so foolish as to make any fuss after Benoni’s explanation.’

    ‘Never thought much o’ Benoni’s ’splanations. They do allays confuse me. We shall learn what it all means in time, I s’pose.’

    The words were scarcely uttered than a hand was laid on the rein of the mare and the speakers ordered to descend.

    It was the village constable, backed by two assistants, who gave it.

    ‘And what are we to descend for?’ demanded our hero.

    ‘Warrant against you,’ replied the man.

    ‘Against me? On what charge?’

    ‘Stealing Brown Bess and waggon. The uncle swore it out afore Squire Tyrrel agin both on ye, and yer can’t deny it, seeing as we ha’ cotched yer with them.’

    ‘But we have brought them back,’ observed William.

    ‘What differs does that make?’ replied the constable, doggedly.

    It required all our hero’s influence over his companion to induce him to submit quietly to the arrest. Goliah was for resisting, declaring that he could not only thrash his would-be captor but half-a-dozen like him. This was no vain boast, as our hero knew; but he resisted the temptation, and finally his friend and partner in the scrape consented to accompany him to the house of the village functionary, and remain there for the night, there being no other place of detention in Deerhurst.

    ‘I never thought my uncle could have acted so meanly,’ observed William.

    ‘It be his wife’s doing,’ said Goliah; ‘Benoni’s ’splanations haint been very clear.’

    The youth made no reply. A painful feeling crept over him — a doubt of Benoni’s sincerity.

    Like most rustics in office, Baker, the village constable, had a very high opinion of his own importance. He had anticipated resistance; hence the assistants he had provided to secure the arrest of two culprits. Surprised, and not a little pleased, at their quietly surrendering themselves, his ruffled dignity became soothed and his conduct friendly, and whilst his wife was preparing tea, the prisoners extracted from him the following information:

    ‘I was wi’ Squire Tyrrel on justice bizziness,’ he observed, ‘when Peggy Hurst brought her husband to the Hall to swear out warrants ginst ye. Peter did not seem to have much heart in it; but, then, every one knows that the gray mare is the best horse in that stable. Seems he war more mad ’gainst Goliah than Willie.’

    ‘I told ’ee so,’ whispered the former. ‘Catch me at the farm agin.’

    ‘But did not Benoni explain?’

    ‘He told farmer thee had driven off wi’ two gals, dressed up as boys. That is what riled thee aunt so.’

    ‘And the other prisoners?’ added William.

    ‘What prisoners?’

    ‘The two we left securely bound in the barn; two rascals from the Bittern’s Marsh, who would have ill-treated the poor runaways. There was a third tramp with them, a brave fellow, who did his best to defend them.’

    ‘Benoni said naught about them.’

    A second time Goliah broke into a hearty laugh, and muttered half aloud the words, ‘Dom him!’ but instantly checked himself when he saw how deeply his friend’s feelings were hurt. There was a wonderful amount of delicacy in the simple, truthful nature of our honest rustic — a gem, uncut, unpolished, and without setting, but still a gem.

    William Hurst perceived all this. The unfavourable opinion his companion had formed of Benoni — the self-control not to pain him by expressing it which he exercised — did not escape him.

    Friendship, in some respects, is even more sensitive than love. The wounds inflicted upon it are equally painful, probably because there is less passion in it. Friendship precedes love; entwines itself with the young heart’s first purest sensibilities. Its ties may be strained, lacerated; but once broken, can rarely again be healed. They may be welded together, perhaps, although an ugly scar in the form of doubt still remains.

    At present neither the scar nor the doubt existed in the heart of our hero. The confidence was still there; but, like a peach which has been too freely handled, the bloom was partly gone.

    When Farmer Hurst heard of his nephew’s arrest he began to experience a sort of vague uneasiness, which ended in a conviction that he had acted wrongly. Although not much given to indulge in feelings of any kind, he was not without them. William was his dead sister’s son. He rather liked the boy, and mentally asked himself if he had acted wisely.

    Kindly, he knew that he had not.

    His scheming wife did not feel quite at her ease. The success of her plan to humble our hero, and break off his intimacy with Goliah, alarmed her. The mare, too, was back again safe in the stable. No penitential letter from William, asking pardon and praying for release, arrived, as she expected; and she, too, half regretted the step that had been taken; but having a temper which, like most women of her class, she prided herself upon, she felt bound not to give way.

    ‘Peggy,’ said the farmer, after they had discussed the matter over at supper, ‘don’t you think the lesson has been carried far enough?’

    ‘Not yet, Peter,’ was the reply. ‘He must be brought up to a sense of his folly — promise to give up all intercourse with Goliah Gob. Then we will see.’

    ‘Willie won’t do either, mother,’ observed Susan, whose eyes were red with weeping; ‘and I should despise him if he did. Goliah is a true, honest lad, not a bit like that sneaking Benoni, who never said one single word before Squire Tyrrel in defence of his absent friends.’

    ‘Hold your foolish tongue, Susan, and don’t meddle with things you are too young to understand.’

    ‘I am not so sure of that, mother,’ continued the girl, seriously. ‘The proof that William had no intention of stealing the horse and waggon is that he has brought them back.’

    The farmer began to look exceedingly puzzled.

    ‘You will only be made ridiculous by bringing such a wicked charge. Mrs. Gob has sent for a lawyer from Chelmsford. Willie, no doubt, has written to his guardian in London, or some of his friends have for him. I know why you hate Goliah,’ added the speaker. ‘I am sure you have no reason. He thinks as little of me as I do of him, and that’s all about it.

    Although the supposition that her cousin had written to his relative in London appeared perfectly gratuitous on the part of the speaker, it caused Mrs. Hurst considerable uneasiness. She had seen so little of the old bachelor that such a possibility had not entered into her calculations. Had she known of their meeting in town it would have been positive terror.

    ‘Hadn’t we better –‘ said her husband.

    ‘Hold your tongue, Peter!’ exclaimed his wife, interrupting him.

    ‘The boy’s pride must be brought down. That I am determined on, at any cost.’

    This was accompanied by a glance at her daughter, who noticed it only by a quiet smile.

    ‘I suppose you know best,’ said the farmer.

    ‘Of course I do,’ was the reply.

    This edition © 2019 Furin Chime, Michael Guest

    Reference

    Vizetelly’s work Glances Back Through Seventy Years (NY, 1891) can be read in full online (digital facsimile) at the Internet Archive.

    Henry Vizetelly, Facts about Port and Madeira, with Notices of the Wines Vintaged around Lisbon, and the Wines of Tenerife (London, 1880). Digital facsimile.