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Title: Seven Xmas Eves : Being the romance of a social evolution
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Seven Xmas Eves : Being the romance of a social evolution" ***
SEVEN XMAS EVES
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
(_Frontispiece_).
“God bless us all.” (_Page 246_)
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
_BEING THE ROMANCE OF
A SOCIAL EVOLUTION_
]
BY
_CLO. GRAVES_
_B. L. FARJEON_
_FLORENCE MARRYAT_
_G. MANVILLE FENN_
_Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED_
_JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY_
_CLEMENT SCOTT_
WITH 28 ILLUSTRATIONS BY DUDLEY HARDY
London
_HUTCHINSON & CO_.
34 PATERNOSTER ROW
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRINTED AT NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND)
BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND)
AND
TALBOT HOUSE, ARUNDEL STREET
LONDON, W.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
EVE THE FIRST.
PAGE
THE TESTIMONY OF MRS. MARY CHEEVERS 1
BY CLO GRAVES.
EVE THE SECOND.
THE OPINION OF DAVID DIX, NIGHT WATCHMAN 43
BY B. L. FARJEON.
EVE THE THIRD.
STRAY RECOLLECTIONS OF P.C. CHALLICE, 999 X 71
BY FLORENCE MARRYAT.
EVE THE FOURTH.
STATEMENT OF ARTHUR ROWAN, WARDER 113
BY G. MANVILLE FENN.
EVE THE FIFTH.
SOME EVIDENCE OF ALFRED CURRAN, REPORTER 151
BY MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED.
EVE THE SIXTH.
REMARKS OF CHARLES TURRILL, ESQ., M. P. 205
BY JUSTIN HUNTLY McCARTHY.
EVE THE SEVENTH.
OLD MEMORIES BY A LONELY CLERGYMAN 237
BY CLEMENT SCOTT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SEVEN CHRISTMAS EVES.
EVE THE FIRST.
THE TESTIMONY OF MRS. MARY CHEEVERS REGARDING THEM TWO.
_By CLO GRAVES._
NEVER having had much book-learning in my time, having entered into that
state of life into which it pleased them above to call me, more than
fifty years before the piano began to be taught in Board-schools, with
part singing on the cistern of the tonic sofas, as to hear Cheevers’s
sister Eliza’s daughter Grace’s eldest Emmeline sing “Come buy my
Coloured ’Errin’,” and recite “Not a Drum was ’Eard” and the “Fall of
Smackerib,” makes you feel oysters creepin’ up and down the small of
your back.
Being a plain person, accustomed to call a spade a spade, and so hope do
not give offence—I, the undersigned Mary Cheevers, washer-woman, being
called on by some as I have reason, the dear Lord knows, to love and
reverence, write my plain story in my own plain way, and with the best
of intentions, though a difficulty with the spelling—Eliza’s Grace’s
Emmeline not being always handy—and a cramped hand from soaking in the
tub for many, many labouring years.
Me and Cheevers was newly married at the time I am asked to go back to,
and in poor circumstances, but hopeful, Cheevers doing a small trade in
coke an’ cheap vegetables, and me taking in what washing I could get,
which was mostly that of poor folks; but poverty will sometimes ’ide a
empty cravin’ under a clean shirt, and all the more credit I says, as my
motto have been throughout my whole life— and I have seen some ups and
downs in my time—Keep Yourself Respectable.
[Illustration:
Mrs. Mary Cheevers.
]
I think my attention was just drawn to them through seeing ’em so much
together.
Me and Cheevers lived on the ground floor in Lemon’s-passage East, one
room—and glad to keep that over our heads—with the bed kept under the
counter in the daytime, and the sacks of coke and greens with bundles of
kindling and a package of sulphur matches forming what might be called
the stock-in-trade.
You might have expected to see soap, but there was little if any call
for such an article—except in my way of business—neither yellow nor
mottled, as when only used on Saturday nights one bar will last a
wonderful time, and who is to blame you if—your walk in life being a
grimy one—you gets into the habit six days out of the seven of going
grimy yourself?
Talking of grime, I never see two poor little souls more smothered in it
than Them Two.
Being boy and girl and always together, I took it for granted they was
brother and sister, but presently found no relations—and made the story
pitifuller in my eyes, which Cheevers jeered at as my woman’s way of
taking an interest in anything by the nature of sweethearting.
Bless their poor little hearts! Being not more than seven year old, when
first my attention was drew to ’em, what could they know of such a
thing? But their being both alone in the world, and both half-naked—for
such rags I never did see—and both more than half-starved, brought them
together; and, if grown people find it impossible to live without
something to love and be loved by, how much more two innocent children?
Seven year old, I should say, when first I began to notice them paddling
in the gutter or sitting on the warm, greasy step of the fried-fish
shop; and though a Jewess—and something unpleasant in a general
oiliness—with black ’air you might ’a seen your face in, and garnet
rings on yellow, dirty hands—more honour to her for the daily scraps she
give ’em.
It was she who told me their names—for Cheevers relished her fried
potatoes and eels, though they went against me—and Nick and Nan they
were then, and are now, though in such different circumstances, as you
might fancy a fairy tale, if not known to be true, and told by an old
woman as owes O! many, many prayers for ’em and blessin’s on ’em, more
than a grateful heart can ever call down on them two grateful hearts.
So I began by nodding as they passed my door, and them—with their dirty
little thumbs in their mouths at first—by and by nodded back; and me,
with no more an idea, that they lived by themselves, like two wild
animals up in that hole in the roof—which I would not insult a decent
attic by giving it the name—until Mr. Rumsey called for his rent on a
Saturday, the twenty-fourth of one bleak December, being Christmas Eve,
and him stopping to pass a remark or two in a friendly way—for me and
Cheevers paid our rent regular—gave me a turn, quite surprising by
telling me how the land lay.
“The boy was brought here at three year old or thereabouts,” says he,
“by a woman, who gave herself out as his mother, and was, I believe,
because of a certain likeness between them.
“She had a superior kind of manner, for all her poverty and
wretchedness. The attic up at the top of this house she rented of me, on
and off, for several years, and I will say kept up to the mark as far as
paying rent went.
“One day, about two years ago, she took her hook, leaving the boy Nick,
as the lodgers call him, and a few bits of things only good for
firewood.
“These I had took away, but, there being no lock on the door, the boy
still hung about the place, it being the only home he has ever known;
and a chimney having broke part of the roof in one windy night, and
me—in regard of these hard times—not caring to go to the expense of
having repairs done, and no lodgers unparticular enough—even in this
unparticular locality—to take the place as it stands—there he has
stopped to this hour. How he lives I could not tell you, ma’am, except
that poor people are more sinfully prodigal as regards charity, than the
rich ones as calls ’emselves philanthropists.”
Mr. Rumsey stopping to take breath, I throwed in a question respecting
the girl.
“She’s the child of Nobody, and she comes from No Man’s Land,” says Mr.
Rumsey, in his joking way. “The boy found her and brought her here, they
tell me, and shares whatever he gets with her. And that ain’t enough to
grow fat on,” he says, giving me a condescending wink.
“‘Nan’ she has come to be called, because ‘Nan’ was her way of saying
‘No’ when asked if she would like to go away from Nick and be took care
of. I have heard, Mrs. Cheevers, that the French are in the habit of
employing the same word as a negative.”
Mr. Rumsey was a very superior gentleman in his knowledge and
conversation.
“Which shows that nation to be a wasteful nation, Mrs. Cheevers, which
takes three letters to spell a word which we can spell with two.”
And he bid good afternoon and a Merry Christmas, and walked off rattling
the money in his pockets, as his way was, leaving me with the tears in
my eyes at the thought of my own baby that was coming, and its ever
being left, poor helpless innocent! as Them Two, and O how many others!
are left, in this cruel world, under the Eye of Heaven.
And that night, after Cheevers had had his supper, and a poor one at
best, though he was as cheerful over it, as if it had been venison with
turtle-sauce, I took the candle and said: “Jem, I am a-going on a voyage
of discovery.”
And Cheevers followed me up the stairs, till we got to the attic ladder,
as was that rotten and crumbly, that he went up first, trying every step
for fear of me a-falling, and presently nods back at me through the
square hole in the lath and plaster, with cobwebs in his hair like a
Bedlamite, and up I comes, him lighting me with the candle, which
dripped and flared in the draught that came through the holes in the
attic roof.
And there we see Them Two a-lying in each other’s arms.
[Illustration:
“And there we see Them Two a-lying in each others arms.”
]
It was a fine, frosty night, and the stars shone, through the big hole
in the roof above the fireplace, bigger and brighter than ever I
remember to have seen them. And now and then a stray flake of snow would
flutter down like a feather.
Where the roof sloped down to the rotten floor-boards was, being more
sheltered, the place where they had laid themselves down to rest in each
other’s arms.
Babes in the Wood couldn’t ’a been more sorrowful nor more innocent than
Them Two, and one could hear their teeth chattering with cold as they
slept.
I believe if the boy had had anything on, except the upper half of a
ragged pair of full-sized trousers, which his thin little bare arms come
through the pocket-slits and the bracebuttons was fastened together with
bits of old bootlace, an’ so kep’ up about his neck—he’d ’a took it off
to cover the gal with.
She lay with her face on his shoulder and her thin little hand in his,
quite peaceful, and when a drop of warm candle-grease waked her, by
falling on her face—Cheevers always held to it, it wasn’t a tear—she
clung to him, for protection like. And he was bold for her though afraid
for himself, it was plain to see.
“Are you a-goin’ to move us on?” he says, rubbing his big eyes with his
poor chilblained knuckles. “We ain’t done nuffin’, not her nor me, and I
can’t go away. I’ve got to wait for mother to come ’ome.”
Well, Cheevers and me did what we could. We took ’em down with us and
give ’em what we could spare, and hunted up an old tarpaulin, to cover
’em that night; we having but our one small room, and them, poor
neglected innocents! not being Christianly clean enough, to keep at
close quarters.
The next day, being Christmas Day, we went with a little less, that they
might have a little more, and that bit of roast meat was the first they
had ever put to their poor dear lips, it was plain to see, for they tore
at the mouthfuls like raging wolves.
Mr. Rumsey would ’a had something to say about the sinful prodigality of
the poor, if he’d ’a seen that sight, but, knowing his feelings, I never
breathed my lips to him then or afterwards, that me and Cheevers was
doing a friend’s turn for Them Two, and him, being dead many years ago,
probably looks upon such things with a different eye, either up or down.
And that night by our fire, while Cheevers was up in the attic, trying
to stop up the hole in the roof, with another old tarpaulin—which
afterwards led to Mr. Rumsey getting a lodger for the dreadful place,
and throwed Them Two altogether on our hands—I did my best to tell ’em,
in my own ignorant way, the story of the first Christmas Eve as ever
was, when the bright star stood over Bethlehem and the heralding angels
sang of peace on earth, an’ good will to all men.
That it was a pinch, I will not deny, me and Cheevers being but poor
folk, when, as I have said, Mr. Rumsey took the roof, or part of one,
from the heads of Them Two and let the attic—Cheevers’ tarpaulin
included—to a reduced gentlewoman, who sold matches at the corner of
Gracechurch-street.
But we had got ’em clean, meaning Nick and Nan, and a few poor decent
things upon ’em, and mention of the workhouse seemed cruel, as the boy
had that idea in him, that strong about his mother—a pretty mother too!
though I never said as much in his hearing—coming back one day to fetch
him.
And so it came to Cheevers starting a barrow, and taking Nick along to
mind it, while he did business at hall doors and airy railings. And
though in bad weather a dreary business, shouting in the muddy streets,
with the rain soaking you through and through, they did well.
I could not undertake to say for certain, but it may have been because I
lost my own dear baby, after a week of happy mother hood—and he was a
boy—that Nick was always my favorite of Them Two.
He had silky hair with a curl in it, that was brownish red, like the
colour of a new chestnut, and brave blue eyes, and a white skin, when I
had taught him to keep it clean. And he had nice ways, and was grateful
for any little thing done for him. And to hear that boy whistle!
I believe the blackbird, at the bird shop at the corner, died of envy
and not of old age, as they pretended, Nick’s imitation of him being so
much better than himself!
But there! I never know when to stop, when I start talking of my boy—as
I used to call him—and call him now, for that matter!
[Illustration:
“And so it came to Cheevers starting a barrow.”
]
Cheevers was more soft on the girl: a thin little thing, with great,
black eyes and a bush of black, curly hair.
No amount of scrubbing would make Nan’s skin white; it was brown by
nature, and brown it is to this day. Foreign blood was in her
complexion, as in her ways, and her temper, which was loving as lambs
when unprovoked, but fiery when crossed.
She proved a deal of help to me, that child.
If it had been in these days, both of Them Two ’ud ha’ been caught and
sent to Board School, to learn to be no use to themselves or us. But
this was years and years ago, and my boy’s chestnut hair is a handsome
grey, and he an upright, portly gentleman of forty-two.
And she bears her years as well as him, though not a white hair, and her
eyes as bright as ever. And they love each other, as true and dear
to-day, as they did at seven years old; it does my heart good to say it.
* * * * *
As months went on, Nick said less and less, but, it was plain to see, he
still kept that idea of his wretched mother coming back one day; and
come back she did, once, and never no more, for which be thankful, I
said to myself, though remembering what was said, concerning the casting
of stones at another sinful woman.
My boy came into the room, where I was ironing, with Nan to help me with
the heaters—an’ as willin’ an’ cheerful as a little bird, I will ever
say—one early twilight on a Saturday in the June of that year, and his
eyes was brighter than usual, and he held something in his hand, behind
his back.
“Guess what it is,” he told us; and Nan and me guessed all sorts of
things to humour him. But at last the cat came out of the bag.
Cheevers had took to taking him round with the barrow, as I have said,
and servant girls, who found him obliging, would often give him a penny,
for the sake of his pretty face and civil manners—for he’d learned of me
everything I could teach him, long ago. And their mistresses, too, would
notice him, sometimes, and he’d saved the coppers all up and bought—what
do you think?—a bright red ribbon for Nan. And now he brought it out,
all beaming with pleasure.
But I soon sent the happy look out of his face. I’d been ironing all
along through a sultry day, and I was a bit hurt, besides, to think he’d
forgotten me, that had been almost a mother to him all these months.
Sharp I spoke up—and next minute I could have bitten my tongue off.
“Red ribbons for a child as lives on charity!” I says, “and looks to
poor folks who ain’t got too much of their own, for every bit and drop.
And you ought to know better, than to throw away good money in that way,
being in the same situation and owing the same obligations”—only I spoke
coarser than that—“to my husband and me.”
He blushed up, as red as the ribbon, and I could see his little heart
swelling under his little waistcoat, that I’d made myself out of an old
bodice of mine.
“Oh, mother!” he says, “it was on’y tuppence, an’ I’d saved _this_ to
give you—all your own!” An’ he pulls out a shilling an’ puts it in my
hand, and bursts out sobbing, and runs away for dear life, and me after
him, full pelt.
Down the passage he shot like a arrow, with his head held down, and the
tears blinding him, so that he runs into a woman, as happened to be
turning the corner suddenly, and nearly knocked her down.
She was miserably dressed, and handsome in a wild, haggard way, and when
she caught at the wall, staggering beneath the shock of Nick’s jostle
and her own weakness, for she seemed to be in the last stage of decline,
or something—an’ the last ray of the smoky London sunset struck full on
her face—my heart turned cold inside me, for well I knew it must be
Nick’s mother.
Nick knew her too. There was a light in them blue eyes of his, as I’d
never seen there before. With that look of joy on his face, and the
tears still standin’ on his cheeks, I shall see him to my dying day.
“Oh, mother!” he says. “Oh, mother! You’ve come back!”
At that she stood stock-still, and stared at him. Then she thrust out
her hand and caught him by his curls, with a clutch that hurt him—I
could see by the quiver of his lips—and dragged his head to her and
looked him hard in the eyes.
Then she laughed a deep, hoarse, cracked kind of laugh, and says—but not
speaking like a common person at all—
“It _is_ the boy. Why, I thought you were dead long ago, you miserable,
little wretch!”
At which my blood boiled, and I upped and spoke.
“If he ain’t dead,” I says, “it’s no fault of yours, as left him to
starve, two years ago.
“Which a natural feeling towards her own flesh and blood, is what I
should have looked for, in a woman and a mother, whatever her walk in
life might be. And a better and a dearer lad than him, you have treated
so cruel, never lived,” I says, “as I can testify, as have took a
mother’s place to him, for many a day past and gone.”
She frowned at that and turned upon me fiercely, but her speaking was
prevented, by a terrible fit of coughing, that seized her and shook and
rent her, like one of the evil spirits in Scripture.
When quite exhausted, she leant against the wall and wiped her face with
her torn shawl and tried to set her tattered bonnet straight, with a
shaking hand; and all her hair—beautiful, chestnut hair like Nick’s—came
tumbling about her face. And then—
“Whoever you are,” she says, with a lofty kind of air, “in doing, what
you have done by this unfortunate child, you meant well, I daresay.” At
which Nick, who had slipped his hand into mine, gave me a grateful
squeeze.
“What I did, was done, first for Heaven’s sake, and then for his own,”
says I; “so say no more about it. Me and Cheevers asks no thanks.”
“I don’t suppose, you expect me to go down on my knees to you,” says the
poor lost soul defiantly, “and if you did, you’d be disappointed.
“I don’t thank you. Nor will the child thank you, when he grows to be a
man. Better far, have let him die, and be put away, where shame can
never come to him. Better far, if he had died, when he was born. Best of
all, if I, his mother, had never drawn the breath of life.”
And the wretched creature dropped in a heap on a doorstep nigh by and
rocked herself and moaned a bit. And then she pulled herself together,
and struggled up.
“I must go,” she says dazedly. “I don’t know what led me back here, if
it wasn’t Fate.
“I have walked days and nights to reach this place, driven by the same
whip that, now I am here, goads me away. I must be moving—there’s no
rest for me!” And she turned away blindly and went down the passage.
“Oh, mother, don’t go!” says Nick, following and pulling at her sleeve.
“Wait till you’ve had something to strengthen you,” I says, as could not
help but pity her; “come home with me an’ I’ll make you a cup o’ tea.”
But I don’t believe she heard a word. She brushed past me and Nick, as
if she’d forgotten all about us, and turned out of Lemon’s-passage, and
went down the street, walking at a good pace. Nick darted after her in a
minute, and I was bound to follow Nick. It’s a mercy, I happened to have
my old bonnet on, or I should ha’ been took up for a lunatic.
On we went, Nick following her, and me following him—and turned up by
Saint Paul’s, and so went westwards. The streets got bigger and more
crowded, the shops grander. I never troubled to wonder where she was
leading us, I was so afraid of losing sight of Nick. And, by and by, the
woman began to go slower.
Once she stopped—it was in front of a grand place like a theatre—and
began to posture on the pavement, and throw her arms about, and roll out
grand-sounding words, for all the world like a play-actress.
A policeman told her to move on, and she turned on him like a tigress.
“Move on, fellow!” says she. “What do you mean? My foot is on my native
heath,” or some such gibberish.
“Do you see these iron gates? Night after night crowds of people, rich
and great, fine and fashionable, have thronged in at them, to see _me_.
These walls have echoed to the voices of thousands, applauding _me_. I
was their idol then! and to-day I’ve got to move on at _your_ bidding!
Ha, ha, ha! It’s a funny world, isn’t it, my man?”
And she laughed—a dreadful mad-sounding laugh, and went on, with me and
the boy still at her heels, as she might have seen, if ever she’d looked
round. But she never did.
It was dark when she next stopped, before a great house in a fashionable
square.
The windows were all lighted up, and awnings were out, and carpets laid
down the steps and across the sidewalk, for the grand ladies and
gentlemen, that kept rolling up, in their shining carriages, to walk on.
And a crowd of curious people was gathered by the area railings, staring
at the diamonds and stars and ribbons, and wondering what was going to
be for dinner.
And Nick’s mother—I knew no other name, then, to call her by—looked up
at the brilliant windows and the open hall-door, and laughed again.
“Times are changed,” I heard her say, quite loud. “Who would think now,
that this used to be _my_ house? Yet those women, going up the steps,
would hold aside their skirts from the touch of mine, to-day. Oh, I have
done well by myself and others, and this is my reward.”
“Take yourself off, you,” says a constable, hustling her roughly, “or I
shall have to lock you up.”
She laughed again for all her answer and walked away, heading down
towards the Strand this time.
“We’d best go home, my dear,” I says to Nick, “it’s getting late!”
But he tugged at my hand and his eyes looked at me, so wild and wistful
in the light of the street lamps, we was a-standing under, that I gave
in, and we followed on.
When the great buildings of Somerset House rose up before us, I knew
where we were. The traffic had fallen off, the streets were nearly
empty; we only met one or two passengers, as we turned out on to
Waterloo Bridge.
The night was very fine and still, and the great, wide river ran under
the arches, as silently as Time itself rolls on to meet the eternal sea.
Black barges and hulks lay quiet at their moorings—the yellow lights of
the great city seemed to twinkle, jeering-like, at the pure shining
stars overhead. And Nick’s mother went on before us with light, unsteady
steps to the End, that was in store.
About the middle of the bridge she stopped, and began to wave her arms
and talk to herself, as wildly as before.
Some of the words she said were plainly to be heard; the rest were lost
in muttering; and, with the dread, that had been growing in me for some
time, cold and heavy at my heart, I bid the boy wait where he was, and
went forward by myself and spoke to her.
“Poor soul!” I says, “haven’t you no home to go to?”
She looked at me with eyes that didn’t know me, and nodded her head.
“Then go to it,” I says, “for the love of Heaven.”
She nods and whispers, “I am going.”
“Then here’s a trifle to help you,” I says, “and I would spare more if I
could, be sure.”
But she put my hand away with the money in it.
“This is the Last Act,” she says, not speaking to me, but loud and
clear, as if she had been giving orders to someone at a distance. “Ring
down the curtain!”
She clapped her hands above her head, and laughed that awful laugh, and,
before I could breathe, jumped on the parapet, as lightly as a
rope-dancer.
I screamed for help and caught at her poor clothing, but the rotten
stuff seemed to melt in my hands, and Nick’s mother was gone—down in the
black water!
I see it all, like a picture, as I write, and my dear boy a-trying to
jump in after her, and me a-holding him in my arms, and the policemen
that came running up.
* * * * *
She was never seen again. The river that has kept so many cruel secrets
since London Town was London Town, and will go on a-keeping of ’em till
want and poverty, misery and despair, are names that stand for nothing,
took her and hid her out of sight.
Her story we heard long after. Let those that have never known
temptation be gentle in their thoughts of her. Let them as has knowed it
and overcome it, thank the Merciful Power as made ’em stronger to suffer
and endure than Nick’s dead mother.
It seems all this while, as if I was neglecting Nan. The best of
children always, and the most willing, and helpin’ me at the wash-tub,
with all her little strength, as, even with my pattens on, she were
hardly tall enough to reach it.
[Illustration:
“I screamed for help and caught at her poor clothing.” (_Page 31_)
]
I have said my boy was handsome in his open-faced, bright-eyed, manly
way, and so he were, but Nan was worth turning round to look at any day
in the week. With her clear, brown skin and her big, grey eyes, that
would change in colour according to her moods—an’ she had plenty of
’em!—with her bush of dancin’ black curls—as I could never damp out
straight—an’ her red laughing mouth, and lively, high spirited ways, she
was just Nick’s companion picture.
She was over-ruling and high in her ways with other children, taking the
lead in their games in her hours of play-time, dividing whatever came to
’em in the way of sweets and such truck, and making no fuss about boxing
the ears of any big boy as tried to rob ’em.
But she’d break off in the middle of hopscotch or honey-pots, if she saw
Nick a-coming. (She was wonderfully fond of him and he of her, as I’ve
said before.)
She had a high, shrill voice in singing, you could hear her above all
the other children; and to see her dance, to the organs’ playing, was
quite wonderful. It seems strange to me, looking back, that Nick should
have none of that kind of talent in him.
But, bless you, then and now he was as solid as a rock.
Looking back again, it seems to me, as if Them Two brought me and
Cheevers luck, from the very beginning, for before they was twelve years
old, as near as I can guess, in spite of the call on us, that an extra
two in family must ever make, me and Cheevers had extended the premises
by taking the opposite room on the ground floor, and was paying a
neighbour, as owned a shed in a backyard for stabling of a donkey.
That was a rise in the world for us, our getting that donkey! It dropped
upon us, as one might say, from the skies, ’Ampstead ’Eath being so much
above the level of Lemon’s-passage.
For Nick and Nan were wonderful fond of ’Ampstead ’Eath, and would make
nothing of trudging all the way there of a holiday, with a calico net to
catch tittlebashes in, an’ a medicine bottle to put ’em in, when caught
they were.
I’d give ’em a good slice of bread-an’-dripping each, an’ could trust
’em to be away the whole day without drowning themselves, though nothing
more or less, when they did come back, but a mask of mud.
I have heard of strange things being discovered on ’Ampstead ’Eath in
unexpected places, but that in a lonely part, where there are sandpits
and blackberry bushes, and the grass grows short and thin, being sat
upon so much by picnickers on Bank Holidays, a first-class perambulator
should be found, with a stout, well-dressed baby sittin’ up inside it,
sucking its thumb, come upon me as a startler.
“We looked all round,” said Nick, “but not a speck of a livin’ soul was
there to be seen. If any lady had come along, Nan would ha’ run up to
her and asked her: ‘O please ’m, did you happen to lose a ‘baby?’”
“But we saw nobody, for a fog had come on, and all the people, out
walkin’ on the ’Eath, had gone home. An’ somehow, we never thought of
handin’ the perambulator over to a policeman; the most nat’ral thing
seemed to be, to wheel it straight to you.
“Nobody noticed us, till we got into the Passage, and then Old Cutties,
as keeps the whelk-stall, sings out: ‘’Ullo, Nick! I never knowed you
was a family man!’ and some more on ’em come round and wanted to have a
look at the baby. But we wouldn’t allow no larks. And now, here it is,
an’ what are we goin’ to do with it?”
“Feed it fust,” says Cheevers, as the baby, after staring at each of us
in turn, opened its blessed mouth in a hungry roar. “Give it some bread
and milk, and then lay information at the police station.
“The superintendent will telegraph to Hampstead, and if that child has
got such a thing as a distracted parent a-looking for it everywheres,
that parent will be down herein a jiffy!”
Not in a jiffy, but in a neat dogcart did the owner of that poor
innocent turn up, as if the gift of prophecy had descended on Cheevers,
and before two hours was past.
A genteeler-lookin’ young couple I never did see; him junior partner in
a City firm of shippers, and her his young wife, married to him but
eighteen months. And the story of how she lost that baby, deliberate and
by her own act, as told to me, by her own lips with streaming eyes, was
as here set down.
Says she, huggin’ the baby, till you’d ha’ thought she’d ’a squeezed it
to death, but that mothers have a way of doin’ these things—“Mrs.
Cheevers, I do assure you it’s nobody’s fault but my own, and to my
shame, be it said.
“My dear Alfred,” as was her husband, “knows, that before I married him
I had literary ambitions, and had nearly written a whole novel,” says
she, “when our marriage made me break off at the end of the second
volume.
“At first, with one thing and another, I had no time to take it up
agin,” she says, “yet still the cravin’ to win glory by my pen, was in
me, so to speak. An’ when baby was six months old, which happened a week
ago, a longin’ came over me,” she says, “to go on with that story.
“So I laid in a store of pens and ink and paper, unbeknown to Alfred,
and began. But my ideas refused to flow. I could not remember the endin’
of them people in the story, try how I would. And this very afternoon as
ever was, I made up my mind to give up the ideas of a literary career
and sink into contented obscurity.
“So, quite calm and resigned, I wheeled out the baby in her perambulator
for an airin’, an’ just about the high part of the Heath I stopped for a
rest. If you’ll believe me, Mrs. Cheevers—I’d no sooner sat down, than
the whole thing came back upon me like a flash of thunder. I felt, as if
I should die if I didn’t go home and write it all down.”
“And you did go?” I says, quite petrifacted with surprise, “and left
your baby!”
“I forgot all about her,” says the young lady, beginning to cry again.
“How such a thing could happen, I don’t know. But happen it did. I never
thought of her till I walked in at our own garden-gate—and then I flew
back like the wind. But she was gone. And now that I’ve got her back—as
I don’t deserve to, being such an unnatural parent as to abandon my own
child—I’ll burn that novel, as soon as I get home.”
So off she went, with many thanks an’ blessings, and her young husband
and her baby, and we heard no more of ’em for three days. Until a young
man in cords come down our court leadin’ a handsome donkey drawing a
neat, plain truck behind it.
[Illustration:
“For Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers.”
]
To our door he brought it, an’ there hands to me an envelope with
“FOR MR. AND MRS. CHEEVERS”
wrote upon it, and inside, more writing—
“FROM NICK AND NAN,”
and a five-pound note. And as Mr. and Mrs. Hurley, the pa and ma of the
lost baby, had chose this way, so delicate an’ so kind, of rewardin’ us
for the little we had done, and as Them Two showed such pleasure in the
pleasure of Cheevers and me, what could we do, but thankfully accept?
An’ after that no more shoving the barrow, with rheumatic pains in
Cheevers’ joints, but a shaggy willing beast to draw it, not too nice to
eat damaged greens or anything else, when they ran short.
While Nick saw to that donkey his own self, and many a time I have sat
behind him, as proud and glad, as if he was four bays with rosettes
behind their ears, when Cheevers thought a jaunt as far as Kew ’ud do me
good, and over them tram-ruts is certainly a stimulant to the liver.
Them days were good days, though there was showers between the sunshine,
but of what came after, others better fitted may better tell, and so
with ever love to both my dears, always boy and girl to me!—
MARY CHEEVERS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EVE THE SECOND.
THE OPINION OF DAVID DIX, NIGHT WATCHMAN, ABOUT THAT BOY AND THAT GIRL.
_By B. L. FARJEON._
[Illustration]
It is many years ago, since I used to walk my beat of a night in the
East-end of London, where I was born and worked my way steadily up the
ladder of life, which, if you please, is no ladder at all, strictly
speaking, but a double flight of steps. When you get to the top of one
side of this flight, you begin to go down on the other side, till you
reach the bottom, where a bed is made for you, and your life’s toils and
struggles are over.
I am supposing that you reach man’s allotted span, and are not called
upon to say farewell to the world, till your hair is white and all your
vital forces spent.
This good fortune is mine, and I am waiting for the summons, with a firm
belief in the Divine message of a better world beyond.
Not that I have anything to complain of; I have done my duty to the best
of my ability, and if I fell short now and then, it was not from lack of
willingness to do what was set down for me, but because I had gone to
the extent of my powers and was unable to go further; up to this point
only can you, with any sense of justice, make a man responsible. And
this, mind you, opens a wide question, into which I am not going to
enter—the question of responsibility for committed acts.
Under what circumstances you are born, how you are brought up, by what
influences your earlier years have been surrounded—these form a
succession of lessons, which you are bound to accept, because you know
no better, and are taught no better.
Judges and legislators should take this into account, and pass judgment
according; though I have observed that a gentleman or lady, who has
broken the law of the land, is, as a rule, let off more lightly than the
poor wretch, who has not had the advantage of good teaching and a proper
education. In my opinion, it should be the other way.
My grandfather was a night watchman, and my father stepped into his
shoes; and when he was too tired to walk in them any longer I put them
on with a proud and cheerful heart, thinking it a fine thing to do, as
my betters had done before me.
So that you see there were three generations of us, and as we were all
steady men, confidence was placed in us. I often heard it said, “You may
trust David Dix; he is like his father.”
In my father’s time, I have no doubt, they said the same of him. He was
a good stamp of a man, and he gave me a home education, and taught me
how to speak and write fair English, for which I say “God bless him.” By
so doing, he took the locks off the caves of enchantment, we find in
books. “Open, Sesame!” I cried, flourishing my spelling book—and I saw
wonders.
I had both public and private duties to perform.
My public duties mainly were to see that the houses and shops were
properly secured, to keep an eye on suspicious characters, and to take
care that no place was broken into and robbed.
Poor as were the streets, I perambulated night after night, for seven
nights in the week and three hundred and sixty-five nights in the year,
very few burglaries took place in them. Thieves and cracksmen, when they
got to know me, had a wholesome fear of my watchfulness, and fought shy
of the premises I protected.
My private duties were chiefly to rouse people, who wanted to get up
very early in the morning. A penny a week was my charge for this, and I
sometimes had as many as thirty or forty people on my books.
I bring to mind two memorable nights in connection with Nick and Nan.
The girl came first, the lad second.
I had for company at this time a white mastiff, I called Dummy, who
trotted at my heels, from the moment I commenced my work of a night,
till I got home in the morning and threw myself, regularly tired out, on
my bed.
Dummy was not a nice-tempered dog, but he never interfered with anyone,
who did not interfere with him, or unless he had, in his own opinion, a
good reason for interfering.
He was a faithful creature, and would not make friends with strangers,
and although I have always been sociably inclined myself, I did not find
fault with him, for this disinclination for any society but mine. Every
man likes something, that he can call really his own, and Dummy’s
conservative ways made me all the more attached to him.
One night, about ten o’clock, there was a scrimmage in Chapel-street,
and before I knew where I was, I found myself in the middle of it.
It was an ugly row between Lascar sailors and sugar-bakers, and I don’t
know which looked most like devils, the Lascars with their dark faces
and flashing eyes, or the sugar-bakers, who had trooped out of the
factory, naked to their waists, and with their matted hair hanging in
disorder about their perspiring foreheads. They had snatched some of
their red-hot tools from the furnace, and the Lascars out with their
knives. Dummy was in the middle of the fight, and I was a good deal
knocked about.
When it was all over, I was some distance from the spot, upon which the
row had commenced, and Dummy was not by my side. I went about the
streets calling and looking for him, and after half an hour’s search, I
saw him on the ground, with his leg badly gashed, and a girl kneeling by
him and attending to the wound.
“Mind, my girl,” I cried, “or the dog will bite you. He’s savage to
strangers.”
I knelt down, and Dummy licked my hand.
“He won’t hurt me,” said Nan. “Poor doggie! His leg’s cut to the bone.”
And so it was, but Nan had done what she could for it, and the look of
gratitude in Dummy’s eyes showed that he properly appreciated her
kindness. From that night Dummy and Nan were friends, and there were
occasions when he would even leave me to go to her.
For some time before this adventure I had noticed Nan and Nick walking
together of an evening, when I was sitting at my window smoking my pipe,
but I had not paid much attention to them.
Now, however, they had become objects of interest to me, and I wondered
how it was, that I had been blind to little ways of theirs which were
different from the ways of other boys and girls.
They would walk along the streets talking and smiling—Nick doing most of
the talking and Nan most of the smiling—as earnestly as if they were the
only people in the world. Sometimes he would have an open book or a
paper in his hand, from which he would be reading to her, and she would
be listening with all her might, and her eyes would shine as mine used
to shine, when I was deep in a fascinating story.
I discovered afterwards that he was farther advanced than I was at his
age, and that though they were both fond of Dickens and Bulwer and
Ainsworth, they often read books of adventure (which were scarcer then,
than they are now) and even dipped into poetry and imaginative stories
of a superior kind. When we were better acquainted Nick introduced me to
favorite books of his—“Undine,” “The Lady of the Lake,” and other of Sir
Walter Scott’s poems, and “Marco Polo.”
It was a curious mixture, and how it was, he came to pick the best books
out of the baskets on the second-hand bookstalls, is more than I can
say; it was a kind of instinct that was born in him, I suppose, and it
went towards the making, in the end, of a man out of the common run.
What brought me into closer connection with him, was his coming to me
one night, and saying,
“You call people up early in the morning; I wish you would call me up.”
“I will, my lad,” I said. “What time?”
“Five o’clock,” he replied. “I can wake myself, as a rule, by fixing it
well in my mind, the night before, and saying, ‘Five o’clock, five
o’clock, five o’clock, I must get up, I must get up, I must get up at
five o’clock,’ and keeping on saying it, till I fall asleep; but I might
miss it now and then, and I don’t want to miss it once.”
“Because,” said I, “you have to get to work at a certain time?”
“Yes,” he answered, “because of that.”
“And it’s not in you to be a minute late,” I observed, “as much as one
morning in a month.”
“I don’t want,” said he to this, “to be a minute late one morning in a
year.”
I looked at him in admiration; there was purpose, there was earnestness
in his face, and there was a glow in his eyes, that made me take to him
more and more, and to feel almost like a father to him. “This is a boy,”
said I to myself, “that is going to get on in the world.”
“I’ll call you,” I said. “Is it a new place you’ve got?”
“Yes,” he answered, “and I’m to get five shillings a week, and a
shilling rise at the end of twelve months, if I give satisfaction. Then
there’s a chance of overtime.”
I nodded. “What time are you due in the morning?”
“Half-past seven.”
“It must be a long way off from here?”
“Oh, no; I can get there in twenty minutes.”
“Then what on earth do you want to be called at five o’clock for?”
“I want an hour to myself, Mr. Dix; there is so much I’d like to know.”
“Very well, Nick; I’ll call you.”
“And if I don’t wake,” said he, “please pull me out of bed, will you?”
“I’ll get you up all right.”
“How much a week do you charge, Mr. Dix?” he asked.
“My charge to you,” I said, “will be nothing a week.”
“No,” said he in a tone of decision, “that will not be fair. If I work I
want to be paid for it. Please tell me how much?”
“Won’t you let me do it out of a friendly feeling, Nick?”
“Not this, please, Mr. Dix. It will make me feel ever so much better, if
you will let me pay what other people pay.”
I said to myself, “This boy is arguing out of a spirit of right and
justice, and it will not be kind on my part to baulk him;” so I told him
I would charge him a penny a week, and upon these terms we settled it.
He was never once late. Hail, rain, snow, or shine, there he was,
trudging out every morning at seven o’clock, with a bright face and a
willing heart singing softly to himself a favorite song of Nan’s as he
went along. Often he was up and dressed before I went to wake him, and
nineteen times out of the other twenty he would call,
“Thank you, Mr. Dix, I’m dressing myself. How glad you must be that the
night’s over.”
And there he was at his books, every morning for an hour and a half at
least, with a little bit of candle, if it was dark, as happy and hopeful
as a prince—perhaps more so, because princes, having everything they
want, must, in my opinion, have a precious dull time of it.
Why, a prince going to his private box at the opera can’t get a
thousandth part of the pleasure, that Nick enjoyed as, with Nan with her
sprightly step and pretty face at his side, he marched about once every
three months to the sixpenny gallery at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, where
Mr. Samuel Phelps was doing his best to amuse, in an intellectual way,
the poor people in the north and east of London.
Mr. Phelps did a power of good in his day, and there are many well-to-do
people living now, who have the best of all reasons to be grateful to
him.
[Illustration:
“She would go and meet him when his work was over.”
]
Often of a morning Nan would walk with Nick to the place he worked in
and would leave him there, and more often she would go and meet him when
his work was over. Being a bright, capable lad, Nick, you may depend,
had many temptations from boys and girls of his age to join in pleasures
which lead to no good; but he resisted them all with firmness and good
temper, and as he never preached to them that it was wrong to do this or
that—being, indeed, too busy to meddle with anyone’s business but his
own or Nan’s—he did himself no harm by refusing.
At the end of the year he got his shilling rise, and at the end of six
months another shilling, and with seven shillings a week he considered
himself quite rich. And all this time he went on reading and studying,
and storing up for the future. It is surprising what a boy can do for
himself in this way. All the schooling in the world is of small value in
comparison with what an earnest youngster can teach himself out of
school hours.
As time went on Nan’s walks with Nick to and from his workshop became
less frequent. She was growing in years and beauty, and she felt that
she ought to do something towards earning a living.
There was a little confectioner’s and cake shop in Whitechapel, opposite
the butchers’ stalls, and she obtained a situation there. I don’t know
how much a week she got; it must have been very little, because the shop
did a poor business, but Nan was happy in the knowledge that she was
making herself useful. What struck me as being a very beautiful thing
was the pride she and Nick took in each other, the thoughtful, loving
way in which they would look at each other, the dependence and trust she
placed in him, the tender and protecting air he showed towards her.
It did not occur to me that they were too much in each other’s company,
and that Nan’s beauty was a dangerous possession; if it had, I don’t
think it would have troubled me, so strong was my belief in Nick’s
honesty and straightforwardness, and in Nan’s sense of what was right.
Once a week Nick had to work till nearly midnight, and Nan took it into
her head to go and meet him on his way home.
I spoke to Nick about it, and said it was hardly safe, for a young and
pretty girl like Nan, to be out by herself at such an hour. There were
rough characters living round about, and when they had had too much to
drink, it was as well to give them a wide berth. Nick, in his turn,
spoke to Nan, and bade her not to venture out alone so late at night. He
told her in my presence, but she pleaded so hard to be allowed to go and
meet him that I saw he was wavering, and would give way, so I said,
“Well, you shall go, Nan; but not alone. Dummy shall go with you.”
They both thanked me gratefully, and Nick and I felt easier in our
minds. As for Nan, she never had any fear.
The sense of that dog! On the nights he was told off to do duty and take
care of Nan, there he was ready, and he trotted by her side, every nerve
in his body alert with watchfulness, and with a wicked look in his eyes
which boded ill to the evilly inclined. When Nan and Nick met, he would
leave them and come back to do duty and take care of me. Faithful old
Dummy! Little did we think that we had pronounced his doom.
He was with Nan—on a Thursday night it was—and it was nearer twelve than
eleven, when I heard screams for help ringing through the air and,
immediately upon the screams, the howling of a man in pain.
I ran quick to the spot, and there was Nan, white and nearly fainting,
and a man—a beast rather—and Dummy struggling together. At the same
moment Nick came running round the corner, and flew to Nan and caught
her in his arms.
The ruffian, it seemed, had suddenly darted forward and seized Nan, and
Dummy, without so much as a growl, had leaped up and fixed his teeth in
the brute’s throat. There they lay rolling on the ground, and as I did
not wish the dog to kill the villain, I called him off. Dummy relaxed
his hold, and as he did so, the brute pulled out a knife and plunged it
into the dog’s body. Poor old Dummy! He gave a convulsed gasp, and
rolled over.
“Oh, Dummy, poor Dummy!” cried Nan, throwing herself by his side, and
raising his head to her lap. “Are you hurt much?”
The faithful creature lifted his eyes to her face, then turned them to
me, and fell back dead!
How we all grieved, Nan most of all. She sobbed, as though her heart was
breaking, and I kept my own feelings in check so as not to make her
worse. I could not leave my duties, and they carried the devoted
creature to my lodgings, and remained up with him all the night, till I
came home.
“It is a brave death,” I said to Nan, and did my best to comfort her.
[Illustration:
“She sobbed as though her heart was breaking.”
]
We buried Dummy the next night, and you may guess how I missed him. You
may guess, too, how much closer this sad event drew us to each other. On
every Sunday afternoon now, Nick and Nan would come to tea with me, and
the hours we spent together were to me the happiest in the week. Nick
read to us the books he loved best, and would talk of them in a way it
would have surprised you to hear.
[Illustration:
“Nick and Nan would come to tea with me.”
]
He was an ambitious lad and wanted, when he was grown quite to man’s
estate, to be something better than the promise of his surroundings held
out. He did not know exactly how to put in words his ideas of what he
wished to be, for they were crude and unformed, but the yearning was in
him.
“And whatever I become,” he said, “Nan is to be with me always, and to
share my lot. It may be good, it may be bad, but we are to be always
together.”
“Yes, Nick,” said Nan, softly, “I could not be happy without you.”
“Nor I without you, Nan,” he said, with serious tenderness.
They were approaching that wonderful change in life, when the boy
realizes that he is a man, and the girl that she is a woman. Then the
world takes a different colour.
There is a new light in the sky, a new meaning in the song of birds and
the kiss of the summer’s breeze. All that is brightest and most
beautiful rises to the surface, and stirs with solemn significance the
pulses of those whose hearts are attuned to what is highest and best in
Nature. It is not all joy; touches of sadness come in when we begin to
understand things aright; and it is out of those new experiences that
the angel of Pity is born.
It was so with Nick and Nan. I bring to mind the last Christmas Eve we
spent together. Before another Christmas came round, there was a woeful
change in their fortunes, and dark clouds had settled upon their young
lives.
I had called the hour—eleven o’clock—when Nick and Nan joined me
unexpectedly.
“Christmas Eve, Mr. Dix,” said Nick.
“Yes, Nick,” said I, “Christmas Eve. What brings you out?”
“We thought we would like to pass an hour with you,” said Nick, “and
walk about a bit.”
“I shall be glad of company,” I said, and so we walked on, talking of
Christmas and what it meant.
Nan pressed something into my hand. It was a pipe; I have it now.
Nick pressed something into my hand. It was a packet of tobacco; that is
smoked long years ago, but I can see, even at this distant day, what
brought a touch of sacred tenderness into my feelings for them, as the
curling wreaths of smoke from their Christmas gifts floated in the cold
air.
A light snow was falling, but they did not mind that; nor did I. The
stars were shining, and the moon came into the sky as the Christmas
bells were ringing. We stopped and listened, and, cold as it was and
poor as we were, something of the sweetness of the time entered our
hearts, and we were gratefully happy.
A woman, in rags, passed us, shivering and muttering to herself. She
stopped, as she saw us.
“Hullo, Mr. Dix,” she said, through her chattering teeth, and her voice
sounded like a mixture of sobs and groans, “a Merry Christmas to yer! It
_is_ a Merry Christmas, ain’t it? Oh, _wot_ a Merry Christmas it is!”
She stumbled past us, shuddering with cold, hugging misery to her breast
in defiant despair.
I knew her. She was an unfortunate.
Nan looked after her, and a little sob came into her throat. Suddenly
she ran from us towards the living emblem of human sorrow, shame, and
woe. We followed slowly, divining the impulse that led her on.
We saw her take the woman’s hand, we saw the woman try to snatch it
away, but Nan held it fast. Standing a little apart from them, we saw
that Nan was speaking tenderly; the light shone upon her upturned face,
and, as the woman’s eyes rested upon it, the hard, rebellious look
softened; her lips quivered, and her limbs trembled so, that she could
hardly keep herself from falling.
Nan took out her poor, common purse, and pressed a coin or two into the
woman’s hand. God knows it could have been very little, perhaps sixpence
or eightpence, but had it been wealth untold, it would not have enhanced
the sweetness of the act.
“Thank yer, miss,” we heard the woman say. “I can pay for a bed now. God
bless yer!”
There were tears on Nan’s face, when she joined us. We walked on in
silence for many minutes. Then Nick put his arm round Nan’s neck and
kissed her.
“Dear Nan!” he whispered.
“Dear Nick!” she murmured.
Well, that was very nearly the last I had to do with them as boy and
girl. Before the New Year I was laid up in a hospital with rheumatic
fever, and remained there a good many months. Some part of the time I
was delirious, and the last Christmas Eve I had spent with Nick and Nan
came back to my fevered mind in all sorts of ways, and I never saw Nan’s
sweet phantom face, that it did not soothe me and ease my pain. When I
got about, I heard news that cut me to the heart. What it was, I must
leave to another to relate.
DAVID DIX.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EVE THE THIRD.
STRAY RECOLLECTIONS OF CHARLES CHALLICE, POLICEMAN 999 X, RESPECTING
THAT YOUNG MAN AND THAT YOUNG WOMAN, WHO GOT INTO TROUBLE.
_By FLORENCE MARRYAT._
IT’S many a time and oft, as I’ve been had up in the police courts and
ordered by the beaks to stand forward and narrate on oath all I had seen
or heerd on concerning certain strange circumstances, as had come across
my path whilst on dooty. And I never made no bones about it neither, but
spoke up, bold and true, for it seemed to come nateral like, and all in
the way of the perfession.
[Illustration:
Charles Challice, 999 X.
]
But when a man is called upon, at my age, to give the perticulars of the
most tenderest memory of his life, it don’t come so easy, and if these
here words as I’m about to put down is to be printed and published, and
happen to fall into my missus’s hands, why, the Lord help me! for I
shall never hear the end of it.
Howsomever, it’s been put to me, as my testimony is needed to complete
the history of the life of a young woman, as was once a great friend of
mine, and so I won’t refuse to give that testimony, though the doing of
it may go to scrape the ashes off a fire, as was kindled twenty-eight
years ago.
Twenty-eight years ago! Only to think of it, and yet I can remember
everything as took place then, as plain as if it happened yesterday,
though I’m a married man now, with six boys and gals round me a-growing
up to men and women as fast as they can do it.
First there’s my Charley, a fine strapping young feller, as will be in
the Force with me before long; and then his sister Maggie, as was
married more than three months ago; and little Annie, in the Telegraph
Office, who’s keeping company with the brewer’s young man. And after
them come three youngsters, all in the Board School as yet (though it’s
little enough, they’ll learn there to be any use to them), and the
youngest is eight year old, so you may suppose their mother and I are no
chickens.
Though my wife’s a comely woman still and a good woman into the bargain
(if her tongue was a bit shorter), still she’s a hard worker and she
means well by all of us, and she has a nice red and white skin and a
plump figger as any man might be proud of.
Yet, would you believe it, that sometimes, after all these years, as I’m
sitting opposite to her at the table and thinking what a fine, well-kept
woman she is, her chestnut hair and her blue eyes and white skin seems
all to fade away from me, and I sees instead of them a thin, almost a
pinched, little face, with pale cheeks and large, dark eyes, like two
stars glowing in the sky at night, and a tangle of black curls falling
all about a young gal’s neck.
And when that vision (or whatever you likes to call it) rises before me,
I feel as if the food I was eating would choke me, and I’m forced
sometimes to make an excuse to rise from the table, in order to sweep
the back of my hand across my eyes. And yet it all happened eight and
twenty years ago, and she’s a lady now, and rides in her carriage.
Well, well! we mortals are fools at the best, and I suppose I’m not
behind my neighbours. But I must tell you the story, and then you can
judge for yourself.
Twenty-eight years ago, I was four and twenty years of age, and had not
long entered the Force. I believe I was a tolerably good-looking chap,
at least the women used to tell me so. I know I was strong and big,
measuring forty-eight inches round the chest, and standing six foot two
in my stocking feet. But I didn’t think much about women in those days.
People make great mistakes about policemen. The comic papers print so
much fun about the cooks and rabbit pies, that the public take it all
for gospel. But, that ain’t the ambition of all of us. I can speak for
myself that, in the days that I was young, I wouldn’t have looked at a
cook as was a cook in the way of sweethearting. Cooking is an art as
comes by experience, and though I liked a good dinner as well as any
man, I couldn’t have gone to the length of making love to a greasy old
woman in order to get it, nor I wouldn’t have accepted, what wasn’t hers
to give away, neither.
I was brought up by my sister Margaret (having lost my poor mother,
before I could remember her), and the first thing she taught me was
never to lie and never to steal, and, thank God, I’ve not forgotten the
lesson.
Margaret’s a good woman, the best I’ve ever known, and if I’m found on
the right hand, at the last day, it will be all due to her. As soon as
father was dead and didn’t want her no more, and she had got me into the
Force, she went for a hospital nurse, and at the time I speak of was
going on nicely and giving great satisfaction to the doctors. Whenever
she could get an hour’s leave I used to try and get leave too, to go and
meet her, and if it was impossible she would come down to my beat and
stand in one place, maybe for half a day at a time, only to exchange a
few words with me as I passed backwards and forwards. And I didn’t
loiter on my beat those times, I can tell you!
I loved my sister Margaret as much as she loved me, and her cheery face
and words was better for me to see and hear than those of any
woman—leastways till I met Nan. And this is how I met her.
In those days my beat lay up Whitechapel way, and a nasty neighbourhood
it is, particularly at night time—full of thieves and drunkards, and not
fit for a decent woman to pass through.
Hardly a night passed without some serious row. The men thought no more
of sticking their knives into each other, than of swearing, and as for
the females—well, I was pretty case-hardened by that time, but it turned
my blood cold to hear those females go on at one another and the men!
I used to think sometimes, as I pushed my way amongst them, that hell
itself couldn’t be worse them they was.
Well! there was a little baker’s and sweet stuff shop in those days,
standing not far from the theayter, and sometimes I’d turn in there to
get something to eat, for I was growing still and could stow away any
amount of food. And behind that there counter, in that there common
little shop, I seed the most beautiful young woman as ever my eyes fell
on.
Not one of your red and white beauties at all, mind ye! None of your
yellow-haired buxom gals, with broad shoulders and a pinched-in waist.
On the contrairy, she was very thin and slight, with a figure like a
willow wand, and a soft, brown skin without a bit of red in it, except
on her scarlet lips. But her hands and feet were as small as small could
be, and her eyes!
Well, _I_ never seed such eyes before or after! They was like two
glowing lamps set in her face, and her hair was like a black silk,
curling all over her head and shoulders!
She _was_ a beauty—well-made and clean cut, from the crown of her head
to the soles of her feet. She seemed very poor to me, for she was worse
clad, than ever I’d seen my sister Margaret, and we was humble folk.
Her black dress was patched in several places, and more brown than
black, but I noticed how beautiful her hair was kept, and that she
generally contrived to have a bit of clean white frilling round her
neck. She was mostly grave and serious when she was serving me, but if
anything made her laugh—and I could see she had a merry soul by
nature—Lord, how beautiful her mouth would be! Well, I fairly fell in
love with that gal.
I went into the little shop as often as I could, and I fell to dreaming
of her on my beat, and to watching her, as she went in and out. She
didn’t live there, for I often saw her arrive at about seven in the
morning, sometimes with her poor thin shawl wet through with the rain,
and with never an umbrella, which went to my heart; and sometimes, when
she left off work (which was never till late) a lad, whom I took to be
her brother, used to wait outside for her, but oftener she went home
alone.
The reason I took the young man to be her brother was, not only, because
they were much of an age, but, because she always seemed so pleased to
see him and used to kiss him on the face right before everybody, and
tuck her arm under his and go off singing, as if she was a queen.
Not that the lad resembled her at all, for he had hair and eyes more of
my colour than hers, and a fair, clean complexion. But he seemed no
better off—just a rough working lad in fustian and corderoys—and I put
them down as some labourer’s children, and fell to wondering, if she
would think a policeman’s wages enough, to keep a decent home on.
From seeing her so often and thinking of her so much, I come to seem to
know her as a sort of friend, and I always said “Good evening, Miss,”
when she passed me. And she would look up with those wonderful eyes of
hers, and answer “Good evening, officer!” in a voice like music.
You know we policemen like to be called “officer!” It sounds higher and
more important like, and when Nan said it, it sounded sweeter and better
than ever.
From passing the time of day, we came to exchanging a few words, but my
love always made me too timid to say much.
I longed to hear all about her family and her home, but I never seemed
to get to know more, than that the lad, whom I took for her brother,
called her “Nan,” and she called him “Nick,” in return. “Dear Nick” and
“darling Nick.” Lord! how I used to envy the feller, though I wouldn’t
have been her brother for all the world.
One night, however, I see something that disturbed me very much. I met
Nan at the end of my beat, walking along home with a young man of the
name of Rummles. Now, I knew this Rummles well. He was an
ostler—leastways he professed to be one—but it was only a cover for
thieving.
He was one of the sharpest pickpockets in the East-end. All the Force
knew it, and yet not one of us had ever catched him at it, and we was
quite on our mettle to do it. He was a flashy-looking cove, as could
dress very well, when it suited his purpose to do so, and there he was,
perking along of Nan, and looking in her face as impudent as you choose.
It was a sight to upset anyone as loved her. I _knew_ Rummles was no
company for her, and yet I had no right to say so. I gave her a look as
I passed, as much as to say, “Well, this is a rum dodge,” but didn’t
speak a word, until I met her again, which happened to be the next
evening.
I was looking out for her, of course, but she was later than usual, and
made a dash to cross the road without warning. I laid my hand on her
shoulder. “Excuse me, Miss,” I said, “but you don’t want to be run over,
do you? The tram’s coming!”
She give a little impatient jerk, and says,
“What nonsense, officer! I could have crossed the road twice before the
tram caught me.”
“But it’s my dooty to see you don’t come to any harm,” I answered; “and
I wish I could see you run no worse risk than this. Is Mr. Rummles
a-waiting for you on the other side?”
She turned them wonderful eyes of hers straight up to my face, and said,
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean as he ain’t no fit company for such as you, and I was very sorry
to see him alongside of you.”
She wrenched her shoulder from under my hand, and turns upon me quite in
a passion, with her black eyes blazing.
“How _dare_ you say that of any friend of mine? It was Nick who
introduced Mr. Rummles to me, and asked him to see me home, and _he_
knows what is right for me to do far better than you. You exceed your
duty, officer.”
And with that she darted away from me, all amongst the cabs and the
trams and the omnibuses, and left me with oh! such a heavy heart to
think I had offended her! And from that day she seemed to look quite
gloomy at me, to what she had done before, and to join that scoundrel,
Rummles, as often as she could. And I think the brute was gone on her,
too, as well he might be, though I never see her give him any
encouragement except as a friend.
Her whole heart seemed wrapped up in the young feller she called Nick,
but the three was quite chummy together, and I’ve often watched them go
arm-in-arm down the Mile End-road, laughing fit to split themselves with
merriment.
One day our chief, Mr. Bostock, says to me, “Who’s that young chap as
goes about so constantly with Rummles?”
“I don’t know, sir,” I answered, “more than I’ve heard the young lady
call him ‘Nick.’”
“Keep your eye on both of them, Challice,” he says, “for no one, who
keeps company with Rummles, will keep straight for long.” And yet I dare
not caution the gal I thought so much of against her brother’s friend.
But I watched him, aye! like a lynx. My eye was never off Rummles, night
nor day. I knew I had but to spot him in the trick to set myself right
with Nan. To gain her heart and to marry her, was the dream of my life
at that period.
If you had told me then, that I should marry Deborah, with her red hair
and blue eyes, and live pretty comfortably with her for the remainder of
my life, I should have called you a liar. Black eyes and black hair was
all the go with me at twenty-four.
Nan was my first love—sometimes I think she was my last. I was hard hit,
no mistake about it, and she was (unfortunately for me) such an uncommon
sort of gal, with a Spanish look about her, and such a devil in her eye,
as made it difficult for a man to forget her!
Well, I followed my chief’s orders to the letter, and kept my weather
eye on Mr. Rummles. The brute seemed to be in luck’s way just then, for
he dressed like a gentleman, and kept his hands, as far as I could see,
out of other men’s pockets. But I knew I had but to bide my time, to
catch him at his old tricks, and so it fell out.
It was a big night at the theayter, the benefit of the manager, who was
a favorite all round London, and the crowd was immense, both going in
and going out. I had watched Mr. Rummles swaggering in, when the play
began—dressed up to the nines, and looking quite the toff, in his own
estimation—paying down his money at the box-office like a lord, and
ogling all the gals through a sham eye-glass.
“There you go, my beauty,” I thought, “and I daresay, if the truth was
known, every copper of your money has come out of your neighbour’s
pocket. But I’m looking after you, my lad, and you’ll have to be very
clever next time, if you want to do it without my seeing you.”
I spoke to one of my pals about him at the same time, who was told off
to look after the inside of the theayter.
“There’s that beauty, Rummles, gone in, Looseley,” I said. “Keep your
eye on him. He bought a dress-circle ticket.”
“All right! I know him well! He won’t get the better of me,” says
Looseley.
I took care to be about the doors when the performance was over, and the
crowd come out. It _was_ a crowd!
A lot of swells had come over from the West-end to show their respect
for the manager, and we couldn’t find cabs enough for them. I was
standing on the kerb, hailing the hansoms one after the other, when I
see a gentleman cross the road, to get one for himself on the other
side.
He was a middle-aged man, very handsome and dignified in appearance, and
well dressed. We policemen see so much of all sorts that we know a
well-dressed man at a glance.
This gentleman had a black cloth cape cloak over his evening clothes,
all lined with black satin, and as it flew open I could see the glitter
of his gold watch chain, and the flash of the diamond solitaire in his
shirt front. He had hailed a hansom, and was standing by the wheel
telling the driver, I fancy, where to go to, when another man rushed
across the road and thrust himself in front of the gentleman, crying
out, “Hi! cabby, are you engaged?”
The cabman said “Yes,” and the first gentleman jumped into the cab and
drove off; but not before I had seen the other pass his hand quickly
under the loose cape and draw out something, that glittered for a moment
as he thrust it in his own pocket.
As he did so, the cab dashed out of sight, and he turned his face
towards the lamplight. I recognized Rummles, and guessed at once that he
had taken the gentleman’s watch. I was after him like a streak of
lightning. “I saw you this time, my lad,” I cried, as I cut across the
road, and at the sound of my voice he began to run.
Lord! how that fellow did run! Talk of greased lightning! It wasn’t in
it with Rummles. He went like a hare down the Mile End-road, darting in
and out of the crowd, and doubling, whenever I gained upon him.
One moment I would think I had lost him altogether, and the next, I
would see him scudding before the wind on the opposite side of the way.
At last, when I was almost inclined to give up the chase, who should I
come upon, outside the Aldgate Station, but my gentleman himself,
leaning—as free and easy as you like—against the wall, not a bit blown,
but quietly striking a match on the heel of his boot to light his cigar
with, whilst Nick and Nan, who seemed to have been to the theayter too,
was standing by, talking and laughing with him. I grasped him pretty
roughly by the shoulder.
“So I’ve caught you at last!” I said, as I give him a shake. “Now! just
hand over that watch, will you, and come along to the station with me.”
“What watch?” he says, looking as innocent as a child.
“The watch I see you take from the gentleman’s pocket,” I answered.
“It’s no good shirking it! I seed you with my own eyes, and you don’t
get off this time, I can tell you, my beauty.”
“All right!” he says. “Search my pockets and take the watch for
yourself, copper! I can’t say fairer than that, can I!”
Looseley, who had joined in the chase, had come up with us by that time,
and together we rummaged the whole of Rummles’ clothes. But not a sign
of the watch could we find anywhere. And yet I knew I had not been
mistaken, but had seen the glimmer of the gold chain in his hand.
“Go on!” exclaimed Rummles, sarcastically; “why don’t yer take the
ticker out? What’s the trouble? P’r’aps it’s in my boots or up the
sleeve of my coat! You’re a fine copper, you are, not to be able to
shake it out.”
But though we did look in his boots and up his sleeves and all over him,
we couldn’t find the watch. I began to think my eyes had deceived me,
but Looseley, who was a much older hand than myself, was not a bit put
out.
“He’s got accomplices,” he said; “they all have, and he’s passed it on
to one of his pals. Don’t you let go of him, Challice, and I’ll search
this young man and woman,” pointing to Nick and Nan, who were standing
by, open-mouthed with horror at the accusation we had made against
Rummles.
“No, no, Looseley, it ain’t either of them. I know these young people,”
I says quickly, “and they’re quite respectable.”
“All the same I’ll search them,” replied Looseley, and as he was my
senior I had no power to stop him. But, as he approached Nan (who was
shrinking back against the wall), Nick sprang at him like a young lion.
“Don’t you dare to lay a finger on that young woman,” he cried, “or I’ll
fell you to the ground.”
We should have laughed at such a threat from a stripling to Looseley,
who was one of the strongest men in the Force, only as the lad sprang
forward, we could all hear distinctly the rattle of some metal in his
coat-pocket.
“Well, suppose I take you first, my young cockerel,” said Looseley, as
he thrust his hand into the pocket, and drew forth a gold watch and
chain.
“I think we’ve got hold of the right thing and the right man this time,”
he continued, as he clapped the darbies on Nick’s wrists. For a moment
we was all taken so much by surprise, that we hadn’t a word to say, but
Rummles was the first to speak.
“Well! what’s all yer blooming row come to?” he exclaimed. “What price
for my stealing watches now, eh, copper? My friend here’s been to the
theatre as well as me, but I ain’t responsible for his actions, and yer
can’t make me so.”
“They was together, and you mistook one for t’other,” said Looseley to
me, in a low voice.
“They was _not_ together,” I answered firmly, “I haven’t seen Nick
before, to-night. This chap, Rummles, was the only one near the hansom,
and I see him rob the gentleman.”
“Anyway, I took this fellow red-handed,” he said.
“Oh! no, no!” cried Nan, who had found her tongue at last. “Officer, you
know Nick and you know me! We wouldn’t do such a thing. We’ve been
sitting quietly in the gallery all the evening, and walked straight down
here. Oh, Mr. Challice, speak for Nick. Don’t let them think he could do
such an awful thing. Don’t let them take him away. Oh, Mr. Challice! do
be our friend and speak for us!”
She sobbed, as if her heart would break, and I wished to the bottom of
mine, that I’d never been on the look-out to catch Rummles. But there it
was, you see. The watch wasn’t in _his_ pocket and it was in Nick’s, and
the Law goes by facts and not by fancies.
“What are we to do?” I asks of Looseley aside.
“_Do?_” he answers. “There’s only one thing to do! March ’em both off to
the station and have ’em up before the beaks to-morrow morning.”
Nan give such a scream at that, that my heart felt like water within me.
“Nan,” says Nick, very white, but very quiet like, “for _my_ sake don’t
make a disturbance! It can’t do any good! I _didn’t_ take the watch,
_you_ know that, and the truth must win. Let me go quietly, dear, and
you go home as fast as you can, and I’ll come and tell you all about it
as soon as the matter is settled! God bless you, Nan!”
And he held his white face to hers, and she clung round him and kissed
him in a way that brought the water into my eyes; and I couldn’t help
speaking to her.
“Cheer up, my dear!” I says, “depend upon it, it will be all set right,
and we shall find an explanation for the mystery.”
[Illustration:
“God bless you, Nan!”
]
“Oh, let me go with him,” she cried, “dear Mr. Challice! He will be so
lonely and unhappy by himself. Let me come too, and sit by him till the
morning.” But at that I had to shake my head, and Nick reminded her she
had to give an explanation of his absence to them at home.
“Keep up your heart, dear,” he said bravely, “a couple of words will set
this right! Go home, like a good girl, and wait for me.”
And so we watched her go sobbing down the street, with her shawl held up
to her eyes.
“Now, what are yer holding _me_ for?” said Mr. Rummles impudently.
“You’ve got the right chap, and I’ll thank yer to let me go!”
“Yes! I know I _have_ got the right chap,” I answered him, with a good
shake, “and I mean to tell the magistrate so, first thing to-morrow
morning.”
So we hauled them both off to the station-house, and locked them up for
the night, though I never believed for a moment, but that I was right,
and that Rummles, finding himself pursued, had dropped the watch into
the other’s pocket.
It was a very handsome watch, with a heavy chain, and a gold locket
containing hair. On one side of the case was a monogram, but so twisted
and turned that Looseley and I could make nothing of the initials; and
on the other a crest of a dragon and a spear, and some words in Latin
that were spelled thus—“Vivit post funera virtus.”
We couldn’t make nothing of the matter, naterally, but Looseley locked
up the watch safely, and the next morning by ten o’clock we were all
before the beaks.
Well! the upshot of that was, everything went against poor Nick. I felt
sure in my mind it was Rummles as I had seen take the watch; but when my
evidence came to be sifted it was only a supposition after all, for I
couldn’t say I had seen the watch, only the glitter—and supposition
don’t go for much in court. And then the watch had actually been found
on Nick.
There was no supposition about that, and the fact that he was known as a
companion of Rummles went against him. And so the examination ended by
Nick being committed for trial, and that scoundrel, Rummles, let go
free.
When I see his grinning face as he left the court I could have struck
him across the mouth. But I was powerless in the matter, and Nick was
sent to prison to wait his trial for theft. When that poor gal, Nan, who
had been in court at the time, heard the beak’s decision, she dropped
straight down as if she had been shot. Rummles was going to take charge
of her.
“I’ll take the young lady home in a cab,” he says; “I’m a great friend
of hers, and she would rather I would take charge of her.”
“No! you don’t!” I says to him, with a look as black as thunder. “You
don’t lay a finger on that gal or I’ll smash you! You’ve got the best of
it this time, my beauty, but I’ll convict you before I’ve done with you,
or my name’s not Charles Challice.” (And I kept my word, too, for not
three months after I had the good luck to get him seven years’ penal
servitude, for breaking into the house of an unprotected old lady and
stealing all her plate.)
Well, I had Nan carried into one of the court rooms, and when she had
had a glass of cold water and could tell me her address, I took her
home. She didn’t speak one word to me all the way, but when I had put
her down at her place (and a poor place it was), “Officer,” she says,
crying, “shall I ever see him again?”
“See him again?” I replied, trying to speak cheerful, “in course you
will! What’s to prevent it?”
“But how long will they keep him in that horrid place and when he’s as
innocent as I am? My poor, poor Nick!”
“Oh! the gaol ain’t a horrid place by no means, my dear. It’s as
comfortable as it can be, and Nick will have everything he can want
whilst there.”
“But the disgrace, the shame,” she murmured, “it will kill him! And when
will the trial take place?”
“Very soon. P’r’aps in a few days,” I answered her, for the autumn
sessions was on, and I knew we had very few cases. “And now you must
give up work for a bit, my dear, and wait patiently here till you know
the verdict.”
“_Give up work!_” she repeated. “Oh, no! how can I? It is all I have to
depend upon now Nick is away.”
So day after day I used to watch the poor darling, dragging her way up
to the baker’s shop, and it seemed to me as if she grew thinner and
darker, and her eyes more hollow each time I saw her.
I used to say a few words of comfort to her as she passed, but I knew it
wasn’t the time to tell her of my love, for all her mind was wrapped up
in Nick.
Only I determined that whichever way the trial went, I would speak
straight out to Nan, as soon as ever it was over, and ask her to be my
wife, and let me protect and provide for her to my life’s end.
It come off sooner than even I had expected, but I purposely didn’t tell
Nan of the exact date, for I didn’t want to have no scenes in court, and
thought it far better that she shouldn’t be there.
Besides, I was very doubtful how the case would go, and feared the worst
for poor Nick.
When the time came, and he was brought into court, I thought I had never
seen six weeks make such a change in a strong young man.
He was white and thin and haggard. His cheeks was sunken, so was his
eyes, but he bore a defiant look with it all, as though he _dared_ the
jury to call him guilty. However, right don’t always win in this world,
and everything went against him.
The court made very short work of the case. Looseley’s evidence and mine
was taken before everybody, and Nick hadn’t nothing to say for himself,
except that he didn’t know how the watch got in his pocket, which nobody
believed. _I_ thought _I_ knew, but I was not allowed to say so. You
can’t give evidence of what you _think_, only of what you _know_. And
all I knew for certain was that I saw Looseley take the watch out of
Nick’s pocket.
The watch was in court, of course. It had never been owned, and the
judge ordered it to be locked up again until claimed. But the jury found
Nick guilty, and he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. I was
standing next the dock, and he turned an agonized face towards me, as
his sentence was pronounced.
“Nan!” he gasped.
“I will see after her,” I answered, and I could read the thanks in his
poor face.
As soon as I was off duty that night I made a run for her lodgings, and
found her sitting up, pale and mournful.
“You’ve come to tell me when my dear Nick’s trial comes off,” she said;
“I am sure of it, for he has never been out of my thoughts all day. Oh,
Mr. Challice, surely they can never have the heart to pronounce him
guilty!”
“My dear,” I says very softly, and laying my hand on hers (Lord, how the
touch did make me tremble!), “there’s many an innercent man has had to
suffer in this world for the wrong-doing of others, and Nick ain’t no
exception to the rule. He had a bad friend in Rummles, and he has ruined
his life. Be prepared for the worst, my poor gal. The trial came off
this morning, and Nick’s got seven years!”
“_Seven years!_” she repeated slowly. “Not seven years’ transportation?”
“Yes, my dear. I’m sorry to say it, but that’s the truth. He was found
guilty and sentenced to seven years’ transportation.”
“Seven years,” she said again in a dazed manner, “seven years, and I am
only twenty-one. Oh! what shall I do?—what _shall_ I do?”
She didn’t cry loud, but seemed to be asking the question of herself in
right earnest.
“Nan,” I says, emboldened by her despair, “I’ll tell you what to do.
Come home to me and I’ll take care of you! Only say the word and let me
put up the banns. ‘Twouldn’t be a grand home, my dear, but it would be a
clean and comfortable one, and Nick’s home, too, as soon as he’s out of
his time. And I’ll love you, my dear gal, faithful and true!
“I’ve loved you ever since I knowed you, Nan, and if love can make them
seven years go quicker, why, they’ll have all the help in my power, and
I can’t say no more.”
“_You_, Mr. Challice?” she says in surprise. “You? Oh, no! Oh, no!”
“And why not, Nan? My wages is pretty good and rising regularly. And you
shall never do a stroke of work again if I can help it. And I’ll be a
friend to your brother, my dear! I did my best to stand his friend
to-day, but the evidence was too strong for me.”
“_My brother!_ Oh, no, you don’t understand, Mr. Challice! _That_ is the
reason. Nick is _not_ my brother!
“He is my dear, dear friend and my lover, and we were to have been
married in a little while. Oh, my Nick, my darling Nick! I shall never
be the wife of any man but you.” And with that she laid her pretty head
down on the table and sobbed fit to kill herself.
There was nothing for me to say after that! I felt terribly cut up over
it, you may be sure, but ’tweren’t her fault and ’tweren’t mine. It was
a misfortune, and I had to bear it as best I could. But all my thoughts
ran, as how I could best comfort her, and that brought me to think of my
sister Margaret.
I told her all the story, just as if she’d been my mother instead of my
sister, and I brought her to see Nan, and when she took my poor gal in
her arms and kissed her, I knew she’d do by her as she would have done
by me.
Well, it was getting on for Christmas by that time, and, as ill luck
would have it, Christmas Eve was the very day fixed for Nick to sail
from England in the convict ship.
That was a nice Christmas Eve for all of us. My heart was well nigh
broken by the thought that Nan would never be more to me than a friend,
and hers was the same at parting with Nick.
She had been allowed to see him more than once, whilst he was in gaol,
and she had been terribly upset on each occasion, but it was nothing to
the day when she had to say good-bye to him for the last time. Margaret
got leave to accompany her to the prison, for she thought she ought to
have a friend with her at such a trying moment, and she was right.
“Good-bye, my darling!” cried Nick, straining Nan tight in his arms.
“Remember! I am _innocent_. And when I have served my time I will send
for you, and we will begin a happier life in the Colonies as man and
wife.
“Be brave, Nan, as you have always been. This is a terrible trial, but
we did not bring it on ourselves. And it is such a comfort for me to
think I leave you in the care of this dear, good woman, and that you
will have a good home and protection during my absence.”
“Yes,” said my sister Margaret, “you need have no fear on that score,
Nick. Nan will remain in the Children’s Hospital working under me, until
she has gained sufficient experience to take a higher position. But you
may rest assured she will never want for food or clothes or occupation
so long as she behaves herself. And that I’ll warrant she means to do.”
“Indeed, indeed, I will,” sobbed Nan, “if only that I may feel your
heart is at ease about me, Nick.”
“My Nan! my Nan!” he cried brokenly. “Oh! take her away, Miss Challice,
whilst I am master of myself, and may God bless you for all your
goodness to her.”
And so my sister Margaret took the poor girl home to the hospital, where
she was well provided for and guarded against all temptation. And Nick
sailed for the Colonies, clad in his convict dress.
Poor Nan! poor Nick! I felt for them both so much, that I wouldn’t have
stolen her heart from him, not if I had been able. But I’ve never forgot
her, nor my love for her, you see, to this very day. Only may all the
Fates keep this here confession out of my wife Deborah’s hands.
CHARLES CHALLICE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EVE THE FOURTH.
STATEMENT OF ARTHUR ROWAN, WARDER ON BOARD THE CONVICT SHIP “IRONS,”
CONCERNING A PRISONER WHO QUELLED A MUTINY AND WAS AFTERWARDS RELEASED.
_By GEORGE MANVILLE FENN._
[Illustration:
Dick Bird.
]
“GAMMON!” I said to him. “I’m too old a bird to be caught with that kind
of chaff, my fine fellow. Try it on with the chaplain.”
He gave a kind of wince, just as if I’d pricked him with a pin; and as
his eyes puckered up, he ran his thin hand over his damp, white
forehead, and made believe to pass his fingers through his hair.
But he didn’t, for it was cut as short as a Frenchman’s, and then he
gave a bit of a sigh.
“Hah!” I said, “that’s very well done, Number Ninety-seven. Neat bit of
play-acting. Pity you didn’t take to the stage; but it won’t do for me,
so don’t try it on again. I’ve met too many of your kidney, since I’ve
had to do with this sort of work.”
“I beg your pardon. I’m sorry I asked you, Mr. Rowan.”
“Then hold your tongue,” I said sourly. “Don’t make worse of it. I know
you, my lad. You’re perfectly innocent, of course; the jury were a set
of lunatics; and the judge who sentenced you to seven years was an old
fool. You’re one of the good sort of young men, who wants to improve
himself, and likes reading and writing and chucking texts about.”
He stood there before me with his face working, and that made me worse
than ever; for I believe I hated that young fellow then for being so
patient and good-looking, and for never giving me a bit of trouble since
he’d been on board.
Perhaps it was temper, too, consequent on my liver being out of order,
for the heat down south was terrible, and I’d wished myself back in
England over and over again.
It was an unlucky time for him to ask me to be breaking the rules and
supplying him with books and paper, and I flew out at him and let him
have a bit of my mind, as a lesson to keep him quiet and to check some
more of the gang, for we had about as ugly a lot taking out there to
Sydney, as ever left England—for the benefit of their country, and to be
inflicted upon the colonists of New South Wales.
“Perhaps you’re sorry for me,” I went on, like the idiot I was, “and
would like to convert me, and feel ready to tell me, how much better it
would be for me if I was a convict in irons, how it would give me time
to think of my sinful ways. But it won’t do, Ninety-seven. Arthur Rowan
knows your sort by heart, so no more humbug with me.”
“Serve yer right,” said one of the gang, who had been looking on—an ugly
ruffian of a fellow, named Bird, who was going out for fourteen years
for housebreaking. “You’re always on the pious lay. I told yer it
wouldn’t do. Give it him again, sir. He’s a reg’lar snivelling humbug,
that’s what he is.”
“Keep your tongue between your teeth,” I said sharply, as I fixed my
gentleman with my eye. “Who spoke to you?”
He gave his lips a slap, and stared at me as hard as I stared at him,
giving me a nasty ugly look which seemed to say, “Oh! if I had the
chance!” But I looked him down, and his thick eyelids went slowly over
his vicious eyes, as he turned away; and after an order or two I went
out and along the tower deck to where the sentry stood on duty, one of
the several always ready with loaded musket and fixed bayonet, and he
laughed at me.
“Been giving it to ’em hot?”
“Yes,” I said, “it makes me sick when I get hold of a sanctimonious
humbug pretending to be so innocent and good. That’s the worst kind of
black I know.”
“They’re a nice lot.”
“Deal you know about it,” I growled.
“Don’t be huffy, mate,” he said.
“Enough to make any man huffy. It’s all very well for you swaddies just
idling on sentry-go, but you’re too big to have much to do with the
convicts. It would be degrading the scarlet cloth, but it isn’t too hard
for us warder guards. Wish I’d taken to crossing sweeping, or some other
respectable profession before I took to looking after gaol sweepings.”
“Look here, mate,” he said, “you go and get forward on deck where the
wind blows, and have a quiet pipe. You’re out of sorts.”
If he had spoken sharply to me, I should have given him back as good as
he gave, but this disarmed me.
“Yes, I am out of sorts,” I said. “Thank ye, I will the moment I’m off
duty. Nothing like a pipe!”
You see it was like this. I was at the Foreland, and doing pretty well,
when, more for the sake of the change than anything, I volunteered for
Australia, so as to see a little of the world for one thing, but more
especially because I’d had a sort of a quarrel with my young lady.
It was a bit of jealousy, and we parted, when a word of explanation
would have set all right; but that word wasn’t spoken, till the day
before we were to sail with a heavy batch of convicts. Then it was
spoken when it was too late, and I couldn’t back out. However, we made
it up, swore we’d be true, and broke a ring and then said good-bye.
This didn’t improve my temper, which never was one of the best, and when
I tell you that we had too deal with one of the most troublesome, savage
lot of scoundrels ever shipped off, rough weather, a deal of illness,
and my liver—the doctor said it was going all wrong—you will not be
surprised at my temper getting a bit worse.
I never was a favorite with convicts at the Foreland. I was not harsh or
brutal to them, but there were certain rules, laid down by the
authorities, for the men to follow out, and I never would let them scamp
anything.
Then, I never made friends with any of them. If they were obedient and
did their work, and kept themselves and their cells clean, they never
had a word from me; and I’ll swear, that, whenever a man was really out
of sorts and not bad enough to go into the infirmary, I always made it
easy for him. But I was too strict an officer for the convicts to like.
Of course I pretty well knew everyone’s history, and, as I’ve told you,
I took quite a dislike to young Nick.
Prejudice? Well, of course it was. “Young Nick,” I said to myself, “nice
son of his father, Old Nick; and if the law hadn’t nicked him, he’d have
run his course as a pickpocket, and grown into a perfect specimen of the
swell-mobsman.”
That was on one of my bilious days. For I had not seemed to get over the
knocking about and sea-sickness of the first week.
Then, as we got further south into the hot waters, the living on board
didn’t agree with me. You see that’s a good many years ago, before the
days of preserved meat and vegetables; and salt beef—or horse—and
ancient pork out of a pickle-tub, with pease pudding, constituted all
the delicacies of our season, except the flinty biscuit and salt butter,
which never came welcome to a man, who dearly loved a hot roll and a bit
of best fresh.
Of course, you know I’m talking of the days when convicts were sent out
to Botany Bay, as they call it, before the Suez Canal and the great
steamers made a journey to the Antipodes a pleasure trip.
Our journey was in a big transport—a three-masted, full-rigged ship,
fitted up with quarters for the “lags,” as they call ’em; a good strong
warder guard; and a company of Her Majesty’s Noughty Noughth, not armed
with Martini-Henry rifles, but with the old-fashioned Brown Bess musket
muzzle-loaders, you know, with bright ramrods, and each man carrying so
many rounds of ball cartridge, that he had to bite, and a little pouch
at his waist, to hold so many big percussion caps.
Our voyage was round by the Cape, and then down south, to catch the
great currents and favorable winds; and, much sail as our ship carried,
the rate at which we went was a regular crawl, giving plenty of time for
the men to get troublesome and discontented, with the consequence that a
couple of them were flogged.
Bird—“Gaol Bird,” as I called him, though his name was
Richard—Dick—Pretty Dick, eh?—he was one; and you should have seen his
round, close-cropped bullet-head, and big jaw.
If an artist had come to me and said, “Do you know of a man whom I could
sketch as a specimen of a regular rogue?” I shouldn’t have hesitated for
a moment—“Dick Bird” I should have said; “only, if you do draw him, have
him chained up, and then don’t go too near, as he might knock you down
and jump on you, to finish you, with his heavy boots.”
I suppose, Dick got it into his head, that I reported him for his
promotion and stripes; and while his back was getting well, he used to
smile at me in a queer sort of way, as if the cat had got into his
nature, as well as across his back.
There were several little things, that ought to have made me see that a
storm was brewing; but it’s a way with human nature to imagine trouble
and ruin, where there’s none, and to be very blind where there is. ’Tis
our manner to, I suppose, and has to do with the way we were made.
I saw nothing, my mates saw nothing. We were used to convicts, and we
did our duty, seeing that the men did their work, and taking pretty good
care that their irons were all right, and that our locks and bolts were
well shot home.
* * * * *
Storms break out pretty suddenly down in the South, where there’s plenty
of room for the winds to work, and one terrible storm broke out all at
once, when we were about a hundred miles from Sydney.
It was one evening after a fearfully hot day, that the orders were
given, for the men in our charge to be had out on deck, for the doctor
had reported that he would not be answerable for the men’s health if
they were kept so much down in their quarters, which were suffocating at
times.
So the soldiers were called out, and planted here and there with fixed
bayonets; our fellows were on duty, of course, and the convicts were
kept moving about on the deck, while the ports were thrown open below
and everything done to ventilate the place.
I’d been seeing to this with some help, and was very glad to get on deck
again, to run my eye over the men; and I hadn’t been up five minutes,
before I had one of the convicts looking at me in a curious way.
It was Ninety-seven, and he passed on to come round again after a few
minutes, and look at me again in an imploring sort of fashion.
This happened four times, and being in a better temper that evening, I
took a step or two forward, as he came round the fifth time, and spoke
to him.
“What is it, my lad?” I said. “Want a quid of tobacco?”
“I want to speak to you, Mr. Rowan,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“Yes,” I said, “you always did. You were born with too much tongue,
Nick.”
“You don’t believe in me, Mr. Rowan, sir,” he said; “but, for God’s
sake, let me speak to you for a few moments.”
“What, to beg, or to tell me some cock-and-bull story, eh?”
“No, sir, it’s life and death to us. It is indeed, sir. For God’s sake,
let me speak to you.”
The man’s way was so earnest, that his words made an impression on me,
but I only said sternly,
“Go on with your walk, my lad. You’ll be ordered below directly.”
He uttered a deep sigh, and continued his march, with his head down, but
as he came round again I said sharply,
“Ninety-seven!”
He gave quite a jump at this, and followed me below, while I caught
sight of Bird watching us as he went by.
[Illustration:
“For God’s sake let me speak to you.”
]
“Now, what is it?” I said sharply. “What do you want?”
“You to give warning and be prepared.”
“What for?”
“There’s a plot hatching,” he whispered; “the convicts are going to
rise, seize the ship, and take her to some uninhabited part, where they
can all land and escape.”
“Indeed!” I said, with a chuckle; “and how are they going to manage it?
I thought you were all pretty safe.”
“I don’t know, sir,” he said, “but it is a fact; and if you don’t mind
there’ll be murder done.”
“Who will they murder first—you for telling tales?”
“I suppose so, sir,” he said in a low, despondent way. “I was afraid of
that, but I felt that I must speak.”
“Oh, did you?” I said surlily; “and pray who’s at the head of the
mutiny, and when is it to come off?”
“To-night, I think, sir.”
“Oh, to-night, eh?” I said. “Who’s at the head of it?”
Nick was silent.
“Well,” I said again, “who’s at the head of it?”
“I can’t tell you, sir.”
“Don’t you know?”
He nodded.
“Well, then, who is it?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“No, of course you can’t,” I said contemptuously, “because it’s all one
of your hatched-up plans to curry favour.”
“I swear to you it is the truth, sir,” he whispered. “I heard them
talking it over.”
“Heard who talking it over?” I said sharply, but he was silent again.
“Be off on deck!” I cried roughly, and he turned upon me, as if he were
going to throw himself on his knees.
“What can I say, Mr. Rowan, to make you believe me?”
“Tell me who are the ringleaders.”
“I know——” he stopped short. “I can’t tell you, sir. I will not betray
them. I only tell you, to be on the watch to put the rising down.”
“Don’t you be afraid about that,” I said, with a laugh. “Now go on deck,
Nick Ninety-seven. You always were a sneak and a humbug. It’s all a
flam, and I shall be glad to get to Sydney, if it’s only to see your
back.”
He went on deck, and I walked to one of my brother officers, a sturdy
fellow named Fraser.
“Here,” I said, “Ninety-seven tells me the lags are going to rise, seize
the ship, and carry her off to an uninhabited island, to play Robinson
Crusoe.”
“Young Nick’s a humbug and a sneak,” says my mate. “They’ll have to look
sharp then, for we shall be at Sydney to-morrow before this time.”
“Then you don’t think there’s anything in it?”
“Bah! Are they going to try it on now on deck, and half a company of
swaddies facing them?”
“Likely!”
“Down below then, when they’re all locked up?”
“Not likely that.”
“It’s all gammon, mate,” he cried. “Flam to get in favour.”
“What I told him,” I said. “Then you wouldn’t report it?”
“I would if I wanted to be snubbed,” said my brother officer, with a
grin. “Ha! there goes the order for down below, and they haven’t riz,
mate. They’ll be behind the bars in five minutes. Not much flurry
to-night.”
As he spoke, a little squad of soldiers marched down and formed up on
either side of the gate, and the convicts came down singly and went
through till all were in; then the gate was shut and locked, and all was
safe for the night.
“No,” I said, in a whisper; “there’ll be no rising.”
“Not till to-morrow morning, mate, when it’s time to get up.”
As Fraser—a man I’d known for years, as one who thoroughly understood
convicts—thought as I did, I felt I was right about Nick’s warning, and
that it would be folly to go troubling those in authority over us; so I
had my meal, and at nine o’clock—one bell, as they call it on board—I
went on duty with two more; and it was only then, as I stood in the main
decks, looking about me by the light of the swinging lanterns, that I
thought of Ninety-seven again, and the impossibility of the men making
any attempt.
For there they all were safely locked up in irons; we were on duty,
three of us—Fraser, me, and another—well armed; and only a few yards off
there were the sentries with fixed bayonets, and fifty or a hundred
armed men ready to be summoned, at the slightest alarm.
“All rubbish,” I said to myself; and then it all passed out of my mind
again.
It was very hot indeed that night, and all was wonderfully still, when,
as I marched slowly to and fro, with my keys in my belt, I began
thinking of home and a certain person, and whether it wouldn’t be wise
to stay out there and ask her to join me, when, all at once, there was a
stifled sort of cry, right in forward amongst the men’s hammocks, and
this was repeated again and again, as if someone was in pain.
Then came a rustling and a low whispering, and, without recalling Nick
and his warning, I walked up to the grated door.
“What’s up there?” I said severely.
“Don’t quite know, sir,” said a man, drowsily. “Someone talking in his
sleep, I think.”
Then the smothered cries came again.
“Do you hear there?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
A voice answered from far in:—“Someone ill here, sir; Number Seventy, I
think.”
“Oh, doctor! doctor!” came feebly, from out of the darkness.
I turned away, to get a lighted lantern and speak to the two men on duty
with me.
“It’s that bad soup they had to-day,” I growled; “I knew it wasn’t fit.”
“Shall I fetch the doctor?” said Fraser.
“Not yet,” I said. “He wouldn’t like to be roused out for nothing. I’ll
go in and see.”
We warders were so strong, in the belief of our own power, that I
thought nothing of going in there with my lantern amongst that crowd of
half savage, half human beasts; and as the door was unlocked, I left my
two fellow warders on guard and went right in, between the two rows of
hammocks, towards where the moaning arose.
“Here, what’s the matter,” I said. “Who is it?”
I have a vivid recollection of the dim scene, as I asked that question.
The darkness all around, save where the faint light of my lantern shone,
showing the rows of hammocks hanging from the beams of the deck above,
the fierce countenances gleaming out for a moment and the light flashing
from their eyes, where all was silent—a peculiar hushed silence, I
remember now, as a hoarse, rasping voice came from a few feet away from
me.
“Oh! Mr. Rowan, sir, it’s me—Seventy, sir—Bird, sir—I’m dying,
sir—poison, sir.”
“Here, let’s look at you,” I said. “Don’t make that row, man.”
“Haggony, sir—Doctor, sir—an—oh—_make it hot_!”
“Hah! You dog!”
I tried to say more, but the words were choked in my throat, for when,
lantern in hand, I bent over the convulsed face, as its owner writhed
heavily in his hammock, two great sinewy hands seized me by the throat,
I was twisted as it were down upon the deck, and Bird wrenched himself
round over me, saying in a hoarse voice to drown my struggles and
gurgling attempts to cry for help,
“Can’t help kicking, sir. It’s haggony! but I’m a bit better, sir, thank
ye, sir. No, sir, I don’t want the doctor, sir.”
All this and more, repeated, as if in mockery over my distorted face, as
the ruffian gripped my throat with all his force, while above the
singing in my ears and his words, I could hear that something was going
on at the door where I had left my two fellow warders, but what I could
not tell.
All I knew was, that I tried hard to throw the ruffian off my chest as
he knelt upon me, that my senses were departing fast, that Bird would be
hung for my murder, and that I was dying of strangulation.
Then, as if it were part of a dream, I saw the men racing out to attack
and murder the sentries, and make the vessel their own.
“All through my neglect,” I thought, as there were a thousand lights
dancing before my eyes; and then, almost at my last, there was a violent
concussion, a savage snarl, a cessation of the compression at my throat,
and a tremendous struggle going on upon me in the dark.
[Illustration:
“Two great sinewy hands seized me by the throat.”
]
“Get hold on him, some of you,” came to my singing ears in a fierce
growl, as the struggle went on. “Quick! D’yer hear? We shall have ’em
all at us directly. Now then. Quick! You _will_ have it, then.”
There was a dull thud and then a groan, followed by a couple of shots
outside, one following the other; shots which even then, half dead as I
was, gave me a sensation of relief, for I knew they had been fired by
the first sentry and the next to spread the alarm.
Almost at the same moment, I felt a warm gush of something flooding my
face and neck, and with a moan a man fell back across me, as I lay
listening to the rush of feet. Then came loudly, “Now for it, lads!”
There was another rush, and, sounding distant and strange now, as I lay
half suffocated, I heard a fierce yelling, and above it in commanding
tones,
“Halt! Surrender!”
But the rushing and yelling continued; there was the sound of blows, and
then twice I heard loudly the order “Fire!” followed by a rattling
volley; shrieks and groans; the scuffling rush of bare feet, and the
clink of irons; and it seemed to me, that the convicts were running back
to their hammocks.
Then all seemed to be blank till I was awakened by the glare of lanterns
in my eyes, and someone said,
“Here’s Arthur Rowan, sir.”
“Dead?” said a voice, which I knew to be that of one of the officers.
I answered the question myself in a husky voice, with the word seeming
to tear its way out of my throat.
“No.”
“Thank God, my lad! We thought they’d done for you.”
I got a sight now of glittering bayonets, and through the foul powder
smoke, I caught glimpses of the faces of convicts looking over the sides
of their hammocks.
“Turn that man over,” said the same voice I had heard before, as two men
took charge of me. “Dead, I think. Who is it?”
“Ninety-seven,” said one of the warders, and it seemed to be Fraser.
“Oh! Did you stab him, Rowan?”
“No, sir,” I said feebly.
“Humph! someone has. Twice. Look sharp, my lads, or he’ll bleed to
death. To the doctor.”
As fortune had it, I was carried out, and laid down on the deck, just as
the doctor rose, from where he had been on one knee by a figure at my
side.
“Carry him out, my lads; he’s past my help. One of you shot pretty
truly.”
I looked beside me, and caught a glimpse of the dead man. It was Dick
Bird, shot dead as he tried to escape.
“Now you,” said the doctor. “Where’s all this blood from?”
“Not mine,” I whispered, half strangled.
“Humph! Whose then? One more.”
This was as another man was carried along, and laid on my other side.
“Eh?” said the doctor. “Stabbed, eh? How was this?”
“Number Seventy, sir—Bird—knifed him. It was a dodge,” said Fraser.
“Dodge, eh?” said the doctor, whose hands were busy with tourniquets and
bandages. “Rum sort of dodge! What do you mean?”
“The men had planned to rise, sir, and that Bird was the ringleader.
“He shammed ill, and poor Rowan went to help him, to see what was wrong
before calling you. Then Bird caught him by the throat and was
strangling him, when this poor fellow, Ninety-seven—Nick—out here for
picking pockets, went to Rowan’s help. He had warned us just before
dark, but we thought it a flam; and now, when he tried to save my mate,
Bird turned upon him and stabbed him.”
“And got his deserts the next moment, eh?” said the doctor, quietly, as
he tied his bandages tightly. “Well, Master Ninety-seven has got two
terrible stabs, but we must save Ninety-seven’s life. Pickpocket, eh?
Not he. The man’s a hero.”
I did not hear any more then, for everything swam round me
mistily—faces, bayonets, officers, epaulets—and when I opened my eyes to
see clearly, I was lying in a bed in Sydney Infirmary, and the first
question, I asked of the hospital nurse, was,
“Is Ninety-seven dead?”
“No. There he lies across the ward. The doctor says he’ll get well.”
I’d had quite a touch of fever and been queer for days, but from that
hour I rapidly got well, though for many months my voice was as good as
gone.
It was in April, when I left the hospital without seeing Nick. He’d been
taken away to the convict infirmary, and it was in December that I saw
him again.
In the meantime, while I lay in hospital, I had heard from Fraser, my
mate, all I didn’t know about the men getting out after knocking down
and trampling on him and the other; but the sentries had fired, and at
the alarm the guard turned out, and as the men refused to surrender,
fired twice and drove them back.
I said that my voice was as good as gone, but it was strong enough for
me to report all I knew, to those who took my evidence at my bedside;
and I can tell you, I laid it on pretty thick over poor Nick, for I was
mad with myself for doubting the poor fellow, who nearly lost his life
in trying to save that of one, who had behaved to him like a brute.
The consequence was, that Ninety-seven was sent up the country, as what
they used to call an assigned servant, those being well-behaved men, to
whom a chance was given to redeem the past.
[Illustration:
“Went up the country in a bullock wagon.”
]
Three days before Christmas, I, Arthur Rowan, having leave of absence,
went up the country in a bullock wagon, pretty well laden with Christmas
cheer for a present, though the best present of all I was carrying in my
breast.
How I did laugh as I went up, for I felt real happy, and it did seem so
comic.
Here it was just upon Christmas, and me with the plums and peel and
things for a pudding, while the sun shone down so hot, I was nearly
cooked meat myself, when on Christmas Eve I walked up to the shingle and
bark squatter’s house, all amongst the gum and ti-trees.
There was a laughing jackass on the ridge, a tame ’un, and a great lame
kangaroo, and a big long-legged emu stalked about along with the
chickens, as I removed the rail fence, where the man, who drove me,
stopped to hitch on his bullocks.
But I could see no more for staring at a tall, manly-looking brown
fellow in shirt and trousers, though wearing his shirt so open, that I
could see a great red scar at the side of his neck.
“Well, Nick, my lad,” I said in my husky voice.
“Mr. Rowan,” he cried, and he quite reeled. “Don’t say I’m to go back to
the prison.”
“But I do say it, my lad,” I cried, “and at once. Leastwise, we’ll keep
Christmas first. I’ve brought some tackle in the dray.”
He didn’t answer me, but I heard him groan,
“And I was so happy here.”
“Happier than at home, dear lad?” I said.
“What? Home?”
“Ay, and sorry I shall be to see you go, though I wouldn’t believe you
once.”
“Then you’ve brought me news?”
“Yes, lad, this,” I cried, slapping a blue paper into his hand. “They
let me bring it; me, the man whose life you saved.”
He stared at me, as if he could not hear a word, and his face looked
blank and strange.
“Nick, lad, don’t you hear me? I tell you, it’s a free pardon—in the
Queen’s name, though, hang me! if I believe you did that wrong.”
“A pardon!” he cried, “for me!” and he tore the paper open and tried to
read; then I saw him stagger, but he recovered himself, sank down on his
knees, and held the paper to his lips.
“Thank God!” he gasped; and then in a wild, hysterical voice—
“Nan, Nan, my darling! At last—at last!”
ARTHUR ROWAN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EVE THE FIFTH.
SOME EVIDENCE OF ALFRED CURRAN, NEWS PAPER REPORTER, CONCERNING A PAIR
OF TRUE LOVERS.
_By MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED._
Christmas Eve! Strange that that letter should have reached me to-day.
_In medias res_ was always my journalistic motto. Plunge straight into
the heart of your subject, and don’t bore your readers with
preliminaries.
I was thinking of Nan when Jem Starr, mail-man, rode up to the
bachelors’ quarters this afternoon, and chucked the mail-bag on the
veranda at my feet.
He told me to take it to the Big House and give it to the Boss. Took me
for a new chum most likely—said, he was in a hurry to yard his
horse—said, there was a chance of the river coming down with floods up
at the heads, and that it was hot enough for us to be let off a term of
purgatory. A queer independent chap is Starr.
Nan and Nick! Nick and Nan! But I was thinking of Nan more than of Nick.
Yes, it is strange there should have been in that mail-bag a letter,
asking me to tell all I knew of Nan and Nick, and of that Christmas time
at Eungella Diggings, when I was sub-editor of _The Eungella Star_.
[Illustration:
Alfred Curran.
]
Sounds grand—Sub-editor of _The Eungella Star_. It sounded grander
still, when Jessop wrote to me—I was Jessop’s cousin, you know, and he
was under promise to give me an opening if he could. He said he had
started a paper and struck gold, and that if I liked, I might come out
and run the paper, while he looked out for more gold.
Didn’t I jump at the offer, just! Didn’t I make sure, that I’d struck
gold in my line, too! Didn’t I see visions of a fortune and a coming
back to England, and a great Liberal organ started, with all the New
World go, and getting into Parliament, and all the rest!
But it wasn’t for me that destiny reserved the fulfilment of those
dreams. It was for Nan’s husband. Nan didn’t bring me luck.
Sometimes it seems to me, that she brought more bad luck than good, to
the men who loved her—all, that is, except one. And there were a good
many of them. It wasn’t her fault. But that’s how it came out in my
experience of that Christmas Eve.
Anyhow, my fortune hasn’t amounted to much. Eungella Diggings smashed
up, and Jessop smashed up, and _The Star_ smashed up, too. Things have a
way of smashing up in Australia.
And here I am, a hack reporter, glad to get a job on anything. Bush
races or bush-ranging, prize cattle, or a new cure for pleuro; “bush
naturalist” articles, or gush over an election; it is all “copy.”
Election business, it was this time. Election finished; “copy” sent in,
and a free and easy kind of invitation from one of the election
bosses—the biggest squatter in these parts—to loaf about his station and
pick up material, till the Christmas holidays are over.
I like loafing. I’m doing a story of bush life. I’m happy enough in the
bachelors’ quarters. My lady squatteress doesn’t encourage me at the Big
House, though I’m asked there for Christmas dinner to-morrow. The new
chums are “tailing” on an out-station, and the Superintendent has gone
to town for a spree.
That’s how I come to be jotting down shorthand notes of my reflections
on this Christmas Eve.
Every now and then, I drop my pen to go and take a smoke in the hammock
in the veranda, and think a little more of Nan.
I watch the Southern Cross, dipping over the mountains. I listen to the
frogs, flopping from the veranda roof on to the grass, and to the hum of
the flying ants, and the queer buzzings of the myriads of insects, and
the cry of the curlews down by the swamp. I see the heat mist rising on
the plain and the lightning zig-zagging on the horizon, west.
It makes me melancholy, a night like this. Those trumpet flowers give
out a sickly scent, and there’s a Cape jasmine creeper, twined round a
pole, that looks like a ghost. Sets one dreaming—dreaming. And there’s a
girl over at the Big House singing; and I can catch the tune and a word
here and there. It’s a singing kind of thing. It goes—
“For the old love’s sake,
For the old love’s sake!”
And I seem to see Nan. The jasmine reminds me of her, and the pointers
of the Southern Cross are like her eyes. Nan, with her pretty, pale face
and her red lips, so resolute and so sweet, and her deep, bright, dark
eyes, and her black, curly hair.
We came out to Australia together. She was a second-class passenger, and
so was I, but she kept very much to herself; and then she was in her
cabin a good bit the first part, and we didn’t get to know each other
till the voyage was getting on.
[Illustration:
“We came out to Australia together.” (_Page 158_)
]
She was all by herself, but she didn’t seem lonely; and she didn’t seem
to want to talk. I’d watch her on deck, reading and working by the hour
together, and sometimes just thinking, with a happy smile on her face.
She was a great one for reading, and she read clever books—histories and
travels and biographies, and I would even see her studying grammars and
suchlike. I wondered why she was so eager to improve herself, and I
wondered what made her look so happy.
It was seeing me usually reading, too, that made her notice me, I think,
and I contrived to make the books a means of falling into talk.
I offered to lend her one I had, that was the sequel to one of hers, and
it came about after this, that she would let me sit with her on deck,
and she said she learned things from me that none else had taught her.
But she had plenty of brains, had Nan; anyone could see that, though, of
course, I saw, too, that she had not been educated in the way girls are,
and, in fact, that she wasn’t a lady, as the saying goes.
Nan was a lady, every inch of her, as far as Nature went; but she hadn’t
the ways of those “born.” I could see that then, having my mother and my
sisters and the dear old Rectory full in my mind. Perhaps I shouldn’t so
easily tell the difference now.
Nan didn’t make any secret of her humble beginnings. She had been a girl
in a baker’s shop, and she had been nurse in a Children’s Hospital.
I supposed that was where she picked up her gentle manners. But that
hadn’t lasted long, she said, and she had never had any time for
improving her mind. And she told me, that her only friends were in a low
walk of life.
That didn’t matter to me. I fell in love with Nan, before we had been
talking half an hour—before, indeed, we had ever spoken at all, and I
asked her to marry me, just ten days before the ship landed at
Australia.
She refused me. I hadn’t supposed she would accept me right off. In
spite of her frank cordiality where she trusted, there was a sort of
impenetrableness and stand-offishness about Nan, which always rebuffed
me. I felt somehow that she wasn’t in love with me. But I thought that
was her way. And I didn’t expect to find that she was on the eve of
being married to somebody else. And yet I might have guessed it if I
hadn’t been a fool.
That was the secret of her dreamy, happy smile—of her suppressed
excitement as the voyage neared its close—of stray allusions which,
preoccupied with my own hopes, I had totally misunderstood. I had got
the impression that she was going to join her brother in Australia; now
I found that it was her lover, who was awaiting her—her lover, whom she
hadn’t seen for seven years.
“Seven long, weary years, Mr. Curran,” she said. “Seven years of waiting
and hoping and struggling—everything, as it seemed, against us.”
Then she told me something of hers and Nick’s story; of the wrongful
accusation and unjust sentence; of its remission, and of his efforts to
earn sufficient money to pay her passage out, so that they might marry
and work together.
But people wouldn’t believe in Nick’s innocence, and in spite of what he
had done, there was a prejudice against employing him. Then, she said,
luck had been altogether against Nick.
Just when he was getting on, his little savings had been lost; and then
he had had a bad illness, and for a very long while she had heard
nothing, and had been almost wild with anxiety.
Letters had miscarried, and at one time she had almost believed that he
had forgotten her. But two years before he had written to tell her that
he had his health again, and that he would never rest until he could
make her his wife. And then had come a letter telling her, that he had
found gold and would be a rich man—a letter enclosing a sum for her
expenses to Australia.
“It seems like a dream,” she said. “I wake of nights, and I can’t
believe, that, in a little while, I shall see my Nick again. And then I
get afraid that he may be disappointed in me, and find that, while he
has risen, I have sunk. For I am only a poor girl, and I’ve led a hard
life.
“It was all right, while I was in the Children’s Hospital, and I think
they would have made almost a lady of me there; but Miss Challice died,
and her brother was removed to another place, and things went wrong, and
one day I found,” she went on, “that I was turned out without a penny in
the world.
“I don’t know how I managed. I got into a factory and worked there, and
after a bit, I got easier work, but I could never save enough to be of
any use. Ah, Mr. Curran, if you knew how Nick and I have loved each
other, and how we have looked forward to this meeting, you wouldn’t
grudge us our happiness.”
It went to my heart, and touched all the best part of me, that girl’s
way of taking my disappointment.
She seemed to think it was her fault, and that she ought to have told me
at the first.
She asked me to let her be my friend, and she asked me to go on teaching
her and helping her to be worthy of Nick.
It’s only good women that can rub it into a chap, by saying things like
that.
Help to improve her for the joy of another man—a man probably, I thought
then, not worthy to tie her shoe-strings! But I said I’d do my best to
be her friend, and I’d love her always. And I think I had a lurking hope
that the other fellow might throw her over at the last, or that she
might find she had been making a mistake.
Of course I didn’t believe all that, about the unjust sentence. I asked
her where he was, and then it seemed like a fate, that she should say
Eungella, and I told her that it was Eungella I was bound to.
She knew he was to meet her in Sydney. I knew it, too. And I shall never
forget the wonderful look on Nan’s face, as we steamed in between Sydney
Heads into the new world.
She was trembling all through her little thin body, and her red lips
were parted, and her eyes were like two shining stars set in darkness.
“Oh, how beautiful it is!” I heard her murmur; “and Nick is there.”
It _was_ beautiful: the great rugged cliffs and the sun setting over the
barren ridge of rock, and then the harbour with all its little bays
lying blue and peaceful, and the town and the forts, and the lovely
Botanic Gardens with their tropical trees and the feathery clumps of
bamboos.
Nan had never seen such trees and plants before. But I don’t think she
distinguished anything; I am sure it was all like a picture in a dream
to her. She could think of nothing, but that she was going to see Nick.
I felt her give a little gasp and a strange cry, as he came pressing
forward from the crowd on the wharf. He never seemed to pause or
hesitate. He knew her at once for his own.
He was a great, tall fellow, with a sunburnt face, and he had a noble
presence—I was obliged to own that. And he had clear, blue eyes and
fair, curly hair. He made me think, somehow, of one of the old Vikings
of the North. I didn’t wonder that she loved him.
[Illustration:
“He never seemed to pause or hesitate.”
]
“Nan!” I heard him say, as she cried “Nick!” and if I had ever had any
hope of change in her or him, it died in that moment, when I saw the
wonderful and immortal love in their eyes.
Love! love, real love! In spite of the cynics, there’s nothing else in
this universe that endures. I turned away feeling lonely and sick at
heart. I’d had my dream, and it was over; but I knew that I should never
love any woman as I loved Nan, and when I saw the two, drawn as it were
into each other’s arms, both uttering that strange yearning cry, of a
longing that was at last to be fulfilled, I swore to myself that I’d be
Nan’s loyal brother and Nick’s friend, as long as Fate kept us three
together.
Eungella Diggings was a wild sort of place to bring a woman to—a
straggling town, set in a hollow of the hills, with claims all about,
and heaps of mullock, as they call the refuse after the crushing of the
quartz, and queer, unsightly erections of machinery, of which the whirr
ceased not day nor night.
Then there were mushroom tenements of canvas, and shanties of bark, and
weather-board lean-to’s, and zinc-roofed buildings, mostly of a public
character—the Courthouse, and Bank, and _The Star_ Office, and the many
public-houses, into which all the scum of the earth seemed to gather
itself. And some of its aristocracy, too.
There was a baronet doing a store business two doors from _The Star_,
and “Honourables” were as thick as peas—or Chinamen, which is saying
much the same thing at the Diggings.
There were all sorts, mostly scamps; and fine, daredevil scamps they
were that went out to Australia in those days. Many are the stories I
could tell, if I hadn’t to tell that of Nick and Nan, about the Diggings
crew.
There were lags, too, of course—old hands, as bad as you make ’em, and
rough miners as honest as you make ’em, and Oxford and Cambridge men,
and army swells, that you’d expect to see in London drawing-rooms.
There were women, too, of all sorts—the worst and the best; and drink
flowing, and divine bank-notes flying, and knives gleaming, and
tomahawks and pistols at men’s belts.
I often wondered what Nan thought of it all, and if things startled her
as much as they sometimes did me. Perhaps it was a good thing for me,
that I had the new work and the queer experiences and the “copy” to
think of; they helped me to reconcile myself to my disappointment,
though I never saw Nan and Nick without a nasty pain at my heart, and at
first I rather avoided seeing them at all.
I cannot think why Nick didn’t marry Nan straight off—why he hadn’t
married her in Sydney, when she arrived, and brought her to Eungella as
his wife.
He was rich enough. He had a good claim, and was turning out gold hand
over hand. I believe that was what he wanted and intended, but Nan had
some romantic notion that she wasn’t educated enough to be his equal,
and that it would be right of her to give him a little time before the
knot was irrevocably tied, so that he might be quite certain of his own
mind.
She was a noble creature, and I am not sure that she wasn’t right. And
she wouldn’t take any more money from Nick, but insisted on working for
herself. She talked it over with the doctor’s wife, and they got her
nursing jobs to do, and she was called there, as she had been called in
the hospital, she said, “Sister Nan.”
There was sickness enough at Eungella—accidents in the mines, and
touches of fever and sunstroke cases as the great heat came on. It was
early in November when we got to Eungella, and hot indeed then. But that
heat was nothing to what came later.
Sometimes on the blazing December days, when the sun would beat on the
zinc roofs, and the glare be reflected from the white stones and the
mullock heaps, and when there was no shade to be got under the straight
lank gum-trees, and the miners, red and grimy and perspiring, would loaf
about the street, and the bars would be filled with the sound of
swearing, I used to fancy that, if you wanted to find an earthly
similitude of Hades, you couldn’t go to a more likely place than
Eungella Diggings.
There were drink cases, too—plenty of them, only Nick drew the line
there. Though he humoured Nan’s pride and independent spirit, he watched
her as carefully as Dummy, the dog, had done in days gone by.
It was to last only a few months—this probation and testing of each
other.
[Illustration:
“Miners, red and grimy and perspiring, would loaf about the street.”
(_Page 174_)
]
Nick made a bargain for a certain date, though he was always begging her
to change her mind, and let him off a month or so, more especially as
the nuggets thickened.
And when he pleaded in his earnestness, Nan’s face, for all its wistful,
resolute look, would brighten and brighten till it seemed to me the face
of an angel, and would give me that nasty pain at my heart once more.
But she was resolute always, and the richer Nick became the more she
held to her determination.
Nan used to live with the Postmaster’s wife, who was a good sort and
something of a lady. She used to take Nan to the entertainments, that
were given at Eungella, and there were balls and picnics and concerts,
and even a kind of theatre, for money was so plentiful there just then,
that actors and conjurors and people of that sort were bound to come.
This was all good for _The Eungella Star_, which flourished mightily,
and I made quite a feature of “social topics.”
It was a short time before Christmas when there was a big ball given at
the Town Hall, as they called the zinc building. That was the wind up of
some races, to which I went as in duty bound, and at which Nick ran and
rode a horse, and Nan was present with the Postmaster’s wife, and
clapped Nick as he went victoriously past the winning post.
Nick could afford to keep racehorses in these days.
It was only a few days before, that he had come into my office—we had
got great friends—I couldn’t help liking the fine, generous fellow in
spite of my love for Nan and the soreness of my disappointment. I am
sure that Nan had told him about the whole affair, though he never said
a word to me on the subject, and that was what made him so nice in his
ways to me.
“Curran,” he said, and his whole face was alight, “do you believe in a
good fairy coming to bring a man luck? Nan is my good fairy—she has
brought me luck. The gold has been coming up thicker and thicker ever
since my darling came out to me. To-day has come the biggest luck of
all. I’m a rich man, Curran—my fortune is made.”
[Illustration:
“He went victoriously past the winning post.”
]
I could not help quoting the old proverb, but Nick only laughed.
“Unlucky in love! Looks like it, eh? Nan and I are a living disproof of
all the saws. Ah, my Nan shall drive down the Ladies’ Mile in her
carriage yet, and I shall perhaps fulfil what has been—next to Nan—my
life’s dream!”
“What’s that?” I said.
“To be a power, Curran—a power for good in that terrible city—that
Babylon in which I was born. I want to do something for the poor and the
vicious; I want to help to save such helpless, deserted children as were
Nan and I from the fate that, but for God’s mercy, might have been Nan’s
fate and mine. I want to get into the English Parliament, Curran; I want
to plead the cause of the friendless—to get protection for the
children—justice for the hireling.”
There was a great solemnity in Nick’s tone, and a curious prophetic look
in his eyes.
He had been talking it all over with Nan, he said. They were to be
married in two months’ time, which was the limit she had fixed, and as
soon as he was in a position to make a good start in the old country, he
would leave Australia. And he would leave no stone unturned to clear
himself of the charge, which would, he knew, cling to him through life,
and hinder the useful career, which he might otherwise carve out for
himself.
But I am getting away from the races. It was after Nick had won his race
that a rather handsome man of a coarse, underbred type, well dressed,
and looking what the Australians call “flash,” was brought up by a
friend of Nan’s, and introduced as Mr. Tempest.
I was standing near Nan at the time. Nick had left her to see after
something about his horse, and she was talking gaily to a little knot of
her Eungella friends, elated at the good luck that had befallen Nick,
and looking cool and fresh and surprisingly beautiful in her white dress
which she had put on in honour of the occasion.
I had been noticing this “Mr. Tempest.” He was a recent arrival at the
diggings, and I did not like his manner or appearance. He was loud,
boastful, and vulgar, with a veneer of smartness—and an occasional lapse
into ways, that would have disgraced a navvy.
Just now he was on his good behaviour. He had evidently been greatly
struck with Nan, who was certainly the belle of the Stand. He made her a
very low bow and said a few words of compliment.
I saw an odd startled look come over Nan’s face, and she looked at him
closely, and repeated his name, as if she were puzzled. “Mr. Tempest?”
“Reginald Tempest—at your service,” said he, with a kind of leer that
made me inclined to strike him.
They began to talk, and at every word, the man said, I saw the mystified
look deepening in Nan’s face. She seemed glad when she spied Nick—away
down the course—and proposed to me that we should walk and find him.
Before she went, however, Tempest had got her promise to dance several
dances with him at the ball that evening.
Nan was greatly agitated. “Mr. Curran,” she said as we walked along,
“that man’s name isn’t Tempest. I wish you’d try and find out something
about him; he is either the brother of a man I knew long ago—the man who
got Nick into terrible trouble—or he is the man himself, and his name is
Rummles. But he has grown a beard and moustache since then, and is
changed in every way, and I can’t be sure.
“Oh, if I knew!” she went on, excitedly. “He, and he only, can clear
Nick, and give him the right to go about the world without a stain.
“Mr. Curran, if there’s any spark of good feeling in him, he’d do it
now—now, after Nick and I have suffered so. And now that Nick is rich
and has a career before him, and wants so to do good—we’d pay him, Mr.
Curran.
“I’d promise for Nick the half of his fortune—you know about the big
nugget—and Nick wants me to marry him at once, and to get away from this
dreadful place, and start a fresh life in England. But what’s the good
of his trying, with that stain always on him? Oh, I feel that I’d almost
sell my soul to clear him.”
She told me that was the reason she had promised the dances to Tempest.
She wanted to find out if he was really Rummles. She said he had been
fond of her once, and perhaps he would tell her the truth now.
Remembering a look in the man’s eyes, when they had rested on Nan, I
told her it was a dangerous game, and that she had best not encourage
this Tempest, or Rummles, whichever he might be. But she shook her head,
and her eyes had that shining look, which Nan’s eyes always took, when
she was determined.
We missed Nick somehow in that walk; and it wasn’t for some time—not
till we got back near the stand—that we saw him coming from it. His face
was quite white, and I could see that he was deeply moved. He came up to
Nan.
“Nan,” he said, hoarsely, “I’ve seen him, I’ve recognized him—our enemy.
And you’ve been speaking to him! Nan, I forbid you to do it. He will
work us harm again, as he did before. And he has been talking about
you—chaffing—pretending that he has made a conquest. I won’t have it,
Nan.”
I never before saw Nick angry. He was almost angry with Nan, and when
she told him that she had promised to dance with Rummles, forbade her
sternly. But Nan tightened her lips. She had her own design, I knew. I
wished that she would not try to carry it out.
There was a coolness, it was very evident, between Nick and Nan that
evening. The Postmaster’s wife told me they had almost had words on the
way to the ball, because Nan wanted to do something that he wouldn’t
allow.
The Postmaster’s wife was curious about it, and there was talk in the
ballroom, for a good deal of interest attached to Nick just now, because
of his splendid find and his rapidly increasing fortune.
Nan looked lovely. She had a soft colour, and her white dress set off
her beautiful eyes and hair.
It was quite a grand affair, the ball. You wouldn’t expect there could
be anything so fine at a place like Eungella Diggings. The stewards had
sent blacks into the scrub, and they had brought back branches of
treefern and bunya cones and creepers, and what with flags and one thing
and another, it was as pretty a sight as you could fancy.
The Baronet had turned out in swell evening clothes, and so had the
“Honourables”—though nobody knew how they had managed it, as they had
only brought their swags on their backs to the diggings. And they had
got out all their London manners, and danced unlike the other men.
The Gold Commissioner was at the ball, too, and the Police Magistrate,
and we had all got ourselves up, as well as we could.
Tempest was in regular dress clothes, with a flower in his button-hole,
and looked like a Strand shopman, I thought.
Nan kept to her word and danced with him, and I saw them sitting out and
talking very earnestly. But for all Nan’s bright colour, she looked
unhappy, and Nick scarcely went near her. “It’s for Nick’s good,” she
said to me, when we were dancing together. “Mr. Curran, I was right; it
_is_ Rummles, and he has promised me—— Oh! Nick will thank me some day.”
Whatever Rummles had promised, he didn’t seem in a hurry to keep his
promise, and tried in the meantime to get as much as he could of Nan’s
company. He was always up at the doctor’s and the Postmaster’s, where
Nan spent most of her time, and the consequence was that Nick went
seldom to see her.
Nick began to look moody and wild; but he was so proud that he wouldn’t
go straight to Nan and have things out. He had got it into his head
already, I could see, that she was being attracted to Rummles.
Now was my time, and the devil did whisper to me—I’ll own it
honestly—that if I chose to foment the mischief by working on Nick’s
suspicions, there’d be a chance for me yet with Nan. But I didn’t yield
to the temptation.
I did my best to put it away, and I even expostulated with Nan for
letting Rummles come between her and Nick. The tears came into her eyes
as I talked to her. She was looking very worn and white and thin. All
she said was, “It won’t last much longer, Mr. Curran; I’ve got his
promise, and Nick will be grateful to me in the end.”
That very afternoon, as I was going across the gully from _The Star_
office to one of my claims, I came upon Rummles and Nan. They were
standing close by the passionfruit hedge, which screened the
Postmaster’s garden, and she seemed to be pleading earnestly, and he was
looking at her in a mad, wicked sort of way.
I crept round the hedge. I suppose it was dishonourable, but I couldn’t
help it. I wanted to take care of Nan, and I felt by that look on
Rummles’ face, that he was up to devilry.
“You’ve got to do this for me,” I heard him say, “and then I’ll do what
you ask. I’ll give you the proofs because I love you—yes, I love you,
Nan, and I’ve always loved you, and I hate Nick because he has taken you
from me.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” she cried. “You mustn’t say that. I love none but
Nick, and you mustn’t say you’re doing it for love of me. You are doing
it for love of right and justice.”
“Very well,” he said with a malign laugh, “I’m doing it for the love of
right and justice. But I’m not going to abate my terms, Nan. You are to
come yourself, and alone.”
She was frightened, and argued with him, and begged him to let her bring
Nick, but he roughly refused.
She had to come alone—to his hut up the gully—after dusk that evening,
and he pledged himself to give her the proof of Nick’s innocence. Then
they parted, and I went on to the claim, a good deal disturbed in my
mind.
I was afraid, that if I told Nick, there would be murder done, but I was
determined Nan should not go to that villain’s hut, without my being
somewhere within earshot.
I skulked about the Postmaster’s house till after sunset, and it was
almost dark when I saw Nan come out, looking very pale and very
frightened, but with the steadfast, resolute look in her face, that I
knew meant she wasn’t to be turned from her purpose. I felt easier about
things when I saw her stop and take a little pistol from her belt, look
at it, and hide it away again under her jacket. Nan was a brave woman,
but she was not blindly foolhardy.
I followed her to Rummles’ hut. I knew he had a mate, and he was by way
of working hard, but I felt pretty sure he would have got rid of his
mate that evening, and it turned out that he had.
He met Nan outside his hut, and he tried to make her go in, but she
refused. She was very quiet and gentle, and she talked to him, as she
might have done if she had been his sister.
He must have had a bad heart, indeed, not to be touched by the way she
begged him, to be true to anything that was good in him, and to turn
over a new leaf, and lead a worthy life. And then she promised him that
she would always be his friend, and that she and Nick would do
everything in their power to help him.
He listened to her for a bit, and then, when she begged him to give her
the proofs he had promised her, he came closer to her, and broke out
into a wild declaration of love; he told her he couldn’t live without
her, abused Nick, and implored her to throw Nick over and run away with
him.
I don’t know what idea he had in his mind about carrying her off.
Anyhow, he wasn’t given the chance of trying the experiment. Directly
his arm went out to draw Nan to him, there was a dash and a scuffle, and
before I could fling myself forward, as I had been about to do on Nan’s
behalf, I saw that another man had darted from the shadow of the hut, on
the opposite side to where I had hidden myself, and that it was Nick who
was wrestling with his enemy, and who finally flung him to the ground.
The fellow lay half stunned; his head had struck against the post, which
supported the bough-shade of the hut, and when I stooped over him, I saw
that blood was streaming from his mouth and nose.
“I’ve knocked one of his teeth out,” said Nick savagely. “Oh, Nan, Nan,
my darling, how could you make me so anxious and miserable?”
They were in each other’s arms, the two completely reconciled. And Nan
begged Nick to forgive her, and then they saw me and there was an
explanation, and a half hysterical laughing and crying on Nan’s part.
Nick gripped my hand. “God bless you, Curran,” he said. He told me how
he, too, had been hanging round the Postmaster’s house trying to make up
his mind to go in.
And at first, in the dusk, he had fancied I was Rummles, and when he had
seen Nan come out and me follow her, he had followed us both with rage
and jealousy tearing at his heart, till, when he had reached the hut,
and Rummles appeared, he had found out his mistake.
Rummles groaned at his pain, and Nick told me to stay and look after
him, and took Nan’s hand to lead her away.
Nan, however, clung to the idea of the proofs of Nick’s innocence, which
Rummles had promised her, and would not leave till Nick showed her, that
there could be no proof except Rummles’ own full confession, and that he
had been fooling her all the time.
This episode brought things to a crisis between Nan and Nick. Nan was so
remorseful for the suffering she had caused Nick that she was ready to
agree to anything he wished. And the whole thing had shaken her nerves,
and she longed to get away from Eungella.
As for Nick, he had an almost superstitious dread of Rummles, whom he
looked upon as his evil genius, and was firmly convinced, that, if they
all three remained at the Diggings, Rummles would in the end accomplish
his evil purpose of separating him from Nan. And so, saying no word to
anyone at first, he quietly made his arrangements for departure.
On Christmas Eve the downward steamer would touch at the seaport for
Eungella—a half day’s coach journey from the Diggings. And on the
morning of Christmas Eve Nick was married to Nan.
Nick had got a special licence, and the wedding took place very early in
the morning, and had but few spectators.
[Illustration:
“On the morning of Christmas Eve Nick was married to Nan.” (_Page
196_)
]
The day was tropical in its heat, but a faint breeze crept up the gully,
and there were some misty clouds in the bright blue sky. The grapes were
ripening in the Chinamen’s gardens on the gully slope, and we gathered
some jasmine flowers for Nan to wear. Strange irony of fate—to use the
old penny-a-liner phrase—it was I who gave Nan to her husband.
I went with them to the seaport, and waited with them till the steamer
came in.
It was just such a night as this, and the Southern Cross was shining as
brightly as it shines on me to-night. And in a garden by the wharf there
was a tree of great ghostly strong-scented trumpet flowers.
As I stood on the wharf and watched the steamer going out to sea, taking
Nan out of my life for ever, the clock struck, and I knew it was
Christmas Day. And it seemed a mockery of my sorrow, when the voices of
the children came down to me, from the road above, singing the old carol
of frosty nights and ice-bound roads and clear glistening Northern
constellations, singing here, under these tropical skies and strange
stars, and in the murmurous night laden with rich sickly perfume—
“God bless you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born this Christmas Day.”
And Nan was gone!
I went back to Eungella and duly chronicled the wedding and the
departure of the bride and bridegroom in _The Star_. And I wrote a
leader on Nick’s sudden gain of fortune, and on the finding of big
nuggets in general, and I made Nick the text for a sermon on pluck and
perseverance and fidelity.
But I didn’t write anything about my own aching heart.
I was in _The Star_ office reading over the slips of proof, one night
not long after, when a digger I knew came in. He was one of the
“Honourables,” and he and I were rather chums.
“There’s some ‘copy’ for you down at Ruffey’s,” he said.
Ruffey’s was the big public-house of the place.
“I couldn’t stand it. This devil’s hole has finished me. I am going to
clear out of it to-morrow.”
“What’s the row?” I asked carelessly. Rows were common enough at
Eungella, and knife scratches too.
“Oh, a regular ‘go-as-you-like-it’ fight,” he said. “A digger called
Voucher—you know him, next claim to mine—and another fellow, a
good-looking counter-jumper sort of fellow.
“They brought some tools in to sharpen, and they went drinking, and the
end was a flourish of the tomahawk, Voucher was sharpening. Voucher hit
the other chap on the head with the edge and rubbed it in with the flat.
“I made for the tomahawk and collared it after a scuffle, but not before
the other chap had pulled out a knife. That was the signal for Voucher’s
bowie knife, and the other fellow got a nasty wound. I came off for a
doctor, and I’ve sent him along to Ruffey’s, and now I shall go and turn
in.”
One used to get callous to that sort of thing at Eungella. But it was
“copy” for me. I prepared for a move to the scene of the fight.
“Who is the man, who has been stabbed?” I asked.
“The chap that was after that girl you saw married the other day—Sister
Nan. He is not a friend of yours, is he? If he is, I am sorry for you.
But you needn’t be uneasy. He’ll get over his scratch right enough. They
all do, worse luck.”
“No, he is not a friend of mine,” I answered. And I did not wait for
another word. An idea had taken possession of me. It seemed to me a call
of fate. I took up my hat and rushed to Ruffey’s.
The bar had a curiously quiet look. The men who were in it seemed awed,
I thought.
There was a policeman hanging about, and policemen were not common at
Eungella, and generally kept out of the way when there was a row.
I pushed my way into the inner parlour. A crowd of people were collected
there, and I saw the doctor bending over a stretcher covered with a red
blanket, on which lay the wounded man. The man was Rummles.
I asked the doctor what he thought of the case. “It’s a bad business,”
he answered. “They have sent for the Police Magistrate. He says he wants
to make a deposition, and he had better make haste.”
Rummles looked up and saw me. “You’ll do,” he said, in a broken, hoarse
voice. “I’m done for, and I’d best make what amends I can. I’m doing it
for her; not for justice, mind you, but for her—for Nan.”
The Police Magistrate and the clergyman came in just then. The doctor
cleared a space round the dying man, and he made his last confession.
He confessed that it was he, who had stolen the watch and had placed it
in Nick’s pocket, and allowed Nick to be punished for the theft.
The deposition was read out to him, and, with an effort, he signed his
name. “She’s brought me bad luck,” were his last words. “I’ve never had
any luck since I took that watch. I’ve never had any luck, since I fell
in love with Nan. And just as I was beginning to get on, she came back,
and here’s the worst luck of all. But I’d like her to know that I loved
her, and that it’s done—for Nan.”
ALFRED CURRAN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EVE THE SIXTH.
REMARKS OF CHARLES TURRILL, ESQ., M. P., RELATIVE TO AN EPISODE IN THE
HOUSE.
_By JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY._
[Illustration:
Charles Turrill, Esq., M. P.
]
I HAVE found, in the course of a pretty long acquaintance with men and
things, that the House of Commons is one of the few places of which one
is never weary.
I am speaking for myself, of course. I know there are other men, who
think differently from me, who regard the House of Commons with disdain,
if not with positive dislike, and the men, I have at this moment in my
mind, are not men who affect a contempt for the unattainable thing, but
men who have been in the House of Commons and who could be there again,
if they wished.
But, for my own part, I candidly confess that I am unable to understand
their state of mind on the matter.
To me the House of Commons is always a delightful place. I offer it the
uncompromising admiration that young poets lay at the feet of their
mistresses; I feel for it the affection that a friend feels for a
friend. But I do not wish it to be supposed, because I say all this,
that I am convinced that I have in me the makings of a great statesman,
or, indeed, that my presence at Westminster is in any serious degree
indispensable to the safety of the commonweal.
I like, of course, to think that, when I have given a vote, I have given
it as an honest man for the side which I think to be in the right.
I like, of course, to think that, when I make my little speech—and I
confess that I address the House not infrequently, and the House is good
enough to hear me with patience—that I am doing what lies in me to
advance the general good. But my interest in the House of Commons does
not come in the first instance from philanthropy or a zeal for the
Constitution.
I like the House of Commons as other men like a theatre, as other men
like to travel. I like the theatre, too, and I like to travel; but I
would rather have the House of Commons, than any theatre that ever was
built, and would rather walk through the lobbies, than wander over
Europe.
What play was ever so keenly exciting as a heavy debate at Westminster;
what travels bring one more into touch with all varieties of men than
long experience of the ways of Westminster? None, none, none.
The House of Commons is like the _Eau de Jouvence_; it makes old men
young again, and revives, in the hearts of respectable elderly
gentlemen, the feverish pulses of youth.
The excitement, which leads a noble lord to leap upon the benches and
halloo for joy over a Ministerial defeat, is as keen as any which moves
the pulses of boyhood in the cricket field or the pulses of manhood in
battle or exploration. So the House of Commons is to me as the great
theatre of life, and I find unending pleasures in its acts and its
actors.
I have seen some pretty stirring scenes, too, in my time. I have been in
the House of Commons now for nearly twenty years, and, in that time, I
have been present at almost every event of any note, that has animated
its precincts and inspired its orators.
I have had my share of all-night sittings; have seen men stand at the
bar of the House; have watched the rise and ruin of reputations; have
seen Ministry after Ministry reel to its fall.
But I honestly think that I have never seen a more remarkable scene,
than the one to which you have referred, and about which you have asked
me, as an eye-witness, to give you some few particulars.
I saw Mr. John Drury on the day when he entered the House of Commons,
and I remember very well how struck I was by his commanding presence and
singularly beautiful face.
I use the word “beautiful” advisedly. It is a word we reserve mostly
nowadays for the faces of women; but John Drury’s face impressed me
immediately with a sense of its beauty—its strong, calm, honourable
beauty.
All I knew of him was, that he came from the colonies; that he was
reputed to be wealthy, even very wealthy; and that he had come into the
House of Commons at a by-election, as the advocate of views, which he
had championed with great success in the columns of the London daily
paper, _The Planet_, which he himself owned and had founded.
That was all I knew then. There was, however, much more to know, and I
learned it later in a sufficiently remarkable manner.
It was a winter session, I remember. Fond as I am of the House of
Commons I have no great passion for winter sessions.
My affection for the House is a legitimate, not an abnormal affection,
and I like it to pursue its orderly course.
London is not pleasant in winter, while Cairo is; and, as a general
rule, I would rather spend my Christmas on the Nile than by the Thames.
But I would not have missed seeing the event, which I am about to tell
you, even to have been at Luxor a few weeks earlier, for I got off to
Egypt immediately after the House rose, thank goodness!
That winter session was unavoidable. There were things to do, which
ought to have been done before, and which had to be done then, on the
“better late than never” principle. We were really not very far off from
Christmas Eve, when the event took place, which compensated me at least
for the grey city and the weary winter days and the belated Commons.
Mr. Drury had proved himself to be a force in English public life,
before he entered the House of Commons.
His newspaper, _The Planet_, had made itself the outspoken mouthpiece of
all the interests of the labouring classes and of the poor, and he
himself had earned a very considerable reputation, as a public speaker
at more than one platform in the mining and agricultural regions of
England.
Naturally, when a man attains to any degree of eminence in England, his
fellow citizens want to know all about him. Demand creates a supply, and
the Society papers afforded the world at large the opportunity of
learning a number of facts about the past life of Mr. Drury.
It was soon well known that he had made his fortune at the gold-fields.
It was well known, also, that when he went to the gold-fields he went as
a pardoned felon, as a convict, who had been set at liberty on account
of his gallant conduct in saving a warder’s life, during a mutiny of his
fellow prisoners on board the transport ship.
It would be idle to deny that at first the stories which got into
circulation raised a kind of prejudice against Mr. Drury.
Of course the wrong version of any story always gets the greatest
hearing, and, as the particular line which Mr. Drury took up in politics
was not calculated to make him extremely popular with the easy-going and
with the well-to-do, the wrong story obtained a very considerable amount
of credence.
But it was an entirely wrong story, and its wrongfulness was made plain
soon enough, even to the most obstinate intelligence. For Mr. Drury took
the bull by the horns at once.
He published in _The Planet_ the whole of the proceedings connected with
his trial; he repeated with the most admirable firmness and coolness his
own denial of the crime, and he concluded his defence very triumphantly
by producing the written confession of the real thief—a man named
Rummles, I believe—who died in a drunken brawl at Eungella Diggings, a
confession duly attested by the police magistrate, the clergyman, and
Mr. Alfred Curran, who has since become conspicuous in Colonial politics
as the editor of Mr. Drury’s Australian paper, _The Southern Cross_.
Of course, this confession silenced everybody, or nearly everybody.
Unhappily, there is a class of politician, a small class I am glad to
believe, who will stick at nothing to harm an antagonist, and this small
class, like all other classes, does occasionally find its representative
in the House of Commons.
Mr. Drury had not been long in the House of Commons before he began to
make a name there, as he had already made a name in journalism. It does
not take long nowadays for a man to make his mark at St. Stephen’s.
In old days, before my time, and even in my time, it was a slow business
for a man to take his right place in the House. It was a kind of
unwritten law that a man should not speak at all till he had been in the
House for at least a session, and very scrupulous or very old-fashioned
persons carried the period of probation to a further degree still. But
we have changed all that, as _Sganarelle_ says in Molière’s play.
I have heard a new member make his maiden speech on the very night, on
which he entered the House for the first time, and within a few hours of
the ceremony of taking the oath.
Mr. Drury was not like that, indeed; but neither did he belong to the
old-fashioned school of politicians. He waited a decorous week before
speaking, and when he spoke for the first time, he spoke exceedingly
well, with a modest dignity which pleased all his hearers—or almost all
his hearers—and which won him at once a promising place amongst the
“young men.”
I shall not forget that night, less because of Drury’s first speech,
good though it was, and glad though I always am to hear a good speech,
than for another reason. If I remember rightly, it is Goethe who says
somewhere, that one should never pass a day without reading a beautiful
poem or looking upon the face of a beautiful woman.
Certainly the day in which one does look upon a beautiful woman, is
better than days less blessed, and I am always glad and grateful for the
privilege of seeing a beautiful woman. And I saw a very beautiful woman
that night.
I had gone up into the Ladies’ Gallery to look after the wife and
daughter of a constituent, whom I had been lucky enough to get places
for, when I saw in the gallery a woman’s face, such a glorious face. In
its divine, dark beauty it conquered my attention, my admiration. I
forgot manners, and stared—simply stared.
[Illustration:
In the Ladies’ Gallery.
]
I don’t think she noticed me at all. She seemed to be entirely occupied
by looking steadfastly at someone who was seated in the Chamber below.
Whoever he was, I envied him to have earned the homage of those
glorious, midnight eyes.
As I was leaving the gallery, I asked Wilson, the doorkeeper, who the
lady was, the dark, handsome lady in the front row of the gallery.
Wilson glanced in the direction I indicated, and answered me directly.
“That, sir,” he said, “is Mrs. John Drury.”
As I went down the stairs, to get to the corridor which leads to the
Chamber, I could not help reflecting upon the generous way in which
destiny seemed to have made amends to John Drury. Still young, very
rich, a famous journalist, a rising politician, and, above all, blessed
with a wife of such extraordinary beauty.
“John Drury,” I said to myself, “you are a lucky man, and I hope and
believe that you deserve it.”
But the event, which I know you want particularly to hear about, took
place some little time after that—a couple of weeks later if I remember
rightly.
There were some friends dining with me that night; there were ladies in
the party, and I had got one of the pleasantest tables in the ladies’
dining-room for my little group.
It chanced that John Drury and his wife were dining at the next table,
and if I had thought her beautiful before in the dim light of the
Ladies’ Gallery, I thought her still more radiantly fair in the bright
light of the dining-room.
I guessed from her presence that Drury was about to speak; it was an
important debate on some question of the hours of labour, and by this
time everyone “in the know” was not willing to miss a chance of hearing
John Drury.
So, when our dinner was over, I bundled my little party upstairs, saw
the ladies into their gallery, succeeded in wedging the men in “Under
the Clock,” and got back to my own seat, as soon as I could.
It was very lucky I did so, for I heard a fine speech, which I had
expected and hoped for, and witnessed a scene which I had neither
expected nor hoped for.
John Drury made his speech, and a very able speech it was, spoken with a
Saxon simplicity and straightforwardness, which reminded me a little of
Bright, but enriched with an amount of illustration, which showed a far
wider reading than Bright’s.
In its way I don’t think I ever heard a better speech. I daresay I
didn’t agree with all his arguments—that didn’t matter at all; it was a
real pleasure to listen to such a speech. Its very defect, in being too
eloquent for the modern conversational standard debate in the House of
Commons, gave it a freshness and a charm of its own.
Drury, too, had one great secret—he never wearied his audience. He never
uttered a sentence, never uttered a syllable too much. He said all that
he wanted to say, fully and finely, and then he sat down, as he always
sat down, amidst rapturous applause.
On this particular evening he spoke at his best; and when he sat down
the applause, on his side, was loud and long. While it lasted, I glanced
up at the gilded bars, which hide the occupants of the Ladies’ Gallery,
and thought of that dark, beautiful face which watched its lover’s
triumph, of the glorious dark eyes that widened with delight at their
lover’s success.
By the time that I had sighed the little sigh of envy, which one pays as
a tribute to the happy possessor of youth and beauty, the applause,
which had rung out for Drury’s eloquent championship of the poor, had
died away, and I noticed that a pert young member of the Government had
jumped to his feet to answer him.
[Illustration:
“On this particular evening he spoke at his best.” (_Page 222_)
]
As an answer it was ridiculous enough, about as valuable a contribution,
to the question in hand, as the suggestion of the luckless queen, that,
if the poor people had no bread to eat, they might eat cakes instead.
But it had one significant passage.
The young fellow, flushed and excited by his own pertness, lost his head
and with it his manners.
“The honourable gentleman,” he said, pointing offensively in the
direction, where John Drury sat quietly listening to him; “the
honourable gentleman has made an eloquent appeal for the idle, for the
improvident, for all who go to make up what are rightly called the
dangerous classes. Well, Sir, in this House we go in for the
representation of minorities, and though I am thankful to think that the
dangerous classes are in the minority in this country, it is, no doubt,
according to the latest political lights, fit and proper that they, too,
should find their representative in this House.”
The speaker had got thus far, when several of the men on our side of the
House began to interrupt with cries of “Oh, oh,” which were somewhat
hotly responded to, by cheers from some of the men in the immediate
vicinity of the speaker. Goaded by the hostility and the applause, the
speaker flung out one last defiant, insolent sentence.
“Yes, Sir, the dangerous classes must have their representative in this
House, and where could they, by any possibility, find a better
representative than a convicted felon——”
He was not allowed to finish the sentence. The hubbub that arose of
angry groans and defiant cheers—for I am sorry to say that the foolish
young gentleman had his backers—drowned the rest of his sentence, and he
sat down amidst a display of the stormiest excitement on both sides of
the House.
[Illustration:
The noble Lord.
]
I have seen bad and bitter scenes in St. Stephen’s, but never a worse,
never a bitterer scene than on that night. Men who, I know, in their
hearts did not associate the name of John Drury with any stain, took
sides with his assailant and cheered vociferously for the savage attack
that had just been made upon him.
Drury’s speech had been a severe arraignment of the Government, and the
Ministerialists were sore and angry, and they took their revenge
unchivalrously, as even civilized men will still occasionally do.
I dare not say how many seconds the groaning and the cheering lasted,
groaning and cheering through which, at intervals, the Speaker’s stern
voice was heard calling persistently for order.
But at last it did die down, and when it had died down, half a dozen men
on each side were found standing on their legs, eager to catch the
Speaker’s eye. But when it was found that John Drury had risen with the
rest, the others sat down, and he remained standing, very pale, very
quiet, very determined, facing his antagonists, who greeted him with
cries of “Spoke, spoke, spoke.”
“I wish, Mr. Speaker,” said John Drury, “to make a personal
explanation,” and as he uttered those words all of us, who sat near him,
caught up the phrase, and shouted “personal explanation” as loudly and
as long as we could.
Amidst the tumult the Speaker rose from his chair, and John Drury
immediately sat down. The tumult subsided, as it always does when the
Speaker asserts his authority.
“Does the honourable member,” the Speaker asked, glancing in the
direction where John Drury sat, “wish to make a personal explanation to
the House?”
John Drury raised his hat, the Speaker sat down, gathering the folds of
his black robe about him, and John Drury rose to his feet, this time in
perfect silence. I glanced up to the Gallery, and saw, or thought I saw,
a pale, lovely face, and two enchanting eyes.
“I rise, Sir,” said John Drury, speaking very calmly and slowly, “to
utter, with your permission, and with the permission of this House,
which is always generous to an attacked man, a few, a very few, words of
personal explanation.”
Here almost everyone, even on the Ministerial side, applauded, for, to
do the House justice, it is generally willing to give a man a chance to
defend himself.
“The right honourable gentleman, who has just sat down,” John Drury went
on, “has accused me of being a convicted felon.”
Here a few cheers came from the neighbourhood of the Drury assailant,
but they were not convincing cheers, and they were hushed down by a
storm of disapproval on our side.
“I am in my right,” Drury went on, “in immediately taking notice of that
accusation. Mr. Speaker, the right honourable gentleman is unjust, when
he makes that accusation. I can only hope, for the sake of his own
honour, that he is not wilfully unjust. When he calls me a convicted
felon, he utters, and he knows he utters, words which are false words,
words which frame a lie.”
Here the storm broke out afresh, but it was silenced by the Speaker’s
stern call for order, and Drury went on composedly with his defence.
“I was, it is true, convicted; I never was a felon. I was convicted, as
anyone may learn who cares to take the trouble to read what I have
published concerning this matter, on false evidence; I was betrayed by
the treachery of a friend, of a man who on his death-bed confessed to
the crime of which he had been guilty, a confession duly attested by
unimpeachable witnesses.
“I stand here to-night with a conscience as clean as that of any member
of this House, a conscience, I may venture to say, that is cleaner than
that of the man who has wantonly, if not maliciously, accused me of what
he may know, or ought to know, is not true. And, Sir, if I cannot within
the scope of a life filled with many hardships, many temptations, and
few successes, hope to fulfil the motto, ‘Vivit post funera Virtus,’
which, as I only too well remember, was the motto on the watch, which I
was supposed to have stolen, and for the theft of which I was sentenced
to transportation, still, Sir, I can cast back denial in the teeth of
the right honourable member, from whose lips the charge has come, and to
him I say in the presence of this honourable assembly that I can claim
to stand amongst you, shoulder to shoulder, as an honest man.”
Drury sat down amidst renewed excitement; the cheers on our side were
simply deafening, and I am glad to say that they were accompanied by
hearty cheers from the other side.
Before they were quite silenced Drury’s assailant had the grace to get
up and express his regret for what he had, in the heat of an unguarded
moment, allowed himself to say.
So in the phrase familiar to the reports of foreign assemblies, “the
incident then closed,” as far as the outer public was concerned. What I
have told you, you will find in Hansard, if you choose to look for it.
What happened immediately afterwards, you will not find in Hansard.
After Drury’s antagonist had apologized, Drury rose and left the House.
As he did so, one of the occupants of the Treasury Bench, my excellent
friend Barkston, who was a member of the Cabinet, followed his example.
A few minutes later I left the House myself, with my thoughts turned in
the direction of the Ladies’ Gallery. In the long corridor, that runs
parallel with the Library, I found two men in deep colloquy. They were
John Drury and Samuel Barkston.
What Barkston told me himself a little later—we were old friends,
Barkston and I—would seem incredible if it were not actually true.
In John Drury, Barkston had actually discovered his long-lost son.
Perhaps I ought not to use the phrase “long-lost,” for Barkston only
learned that night, that he ever had a son. But that John Drury was his
son there was no doubt whatever. And the curious thing was, that
Barkston was led to make this extraordinary discovery entirely through
John Drury’s speech of that evening.
For when John Drury, in his concluding sentences, quoted the Latin words
upon the watch, that he had been accused of stealing, Mr. Barkston
started as if he had been struck.
For the motto on the watch was his own motto, the motto which, as he
remembered, had been engraved upon the watch, that he had lost.
This it was that led him, as I say, to follow John Drury from the
Chamber, and to begin that conversation with him, which I had witnessed
in the Library Lobby.
In this conversation, bit by bit, Mr. Barkston learned enough to
convince him—and subsequent inquiries absolutely confirmed the
conviction—that John Drury, the brilliant journalist, one of the most
conspicuous of the coming men, was in very fact his own child.
When Barkston was a young man, he fell in love with a beautiful actress
in a burlesque theatre, and, being a rash young man, he married her
privately.
The woman was light-hearted and light-headed to an astonishing degree,
and at a time, when it seemed probable that she was likely to become a
mother, she actually left Barkston in the company of an actor, in the
company to which she belonged.
Barkston tried without success to trace her, but it seemed, after long
inquiries, he ascertained that she gave birth to a boy, that her lover
objected to the encumbrance of the child, and that the unhappy mother
abandoned it. She was herself afterwards abandoned by her lover, and
died, it would seem, wretchedly.
It is a sad little story, my dear friend, and has in it, perhaps, the
pith of a sermon against vice, which some better fellow than I might
preach with advantage to his hearers.
I am not a preacher, I am only a humble looker-on at the grim game of
life, with its joys and its sorrow, its dances and its dirges, and if I
find a lot that is sad in it, I find a lot that is bright and brave as
well.
Anyhow, I think old Barkston is to be envied. It is pleasant to be rich
and to be a Cabinet Minister, but it is more pleasant to be the father
of a man like John Drury.
Let me add that I think it is still more pleasant to be the
father-in-law of a woman like John Drury’s wife.
I have often had the pleasure of meeting her since, and I can honestly
say, that I think she is as clever as she is beautiful, and as good as
she is clever. From which you will gather that so far as a man may be
happy in this world, John Drury—for he kept to the name by which he had
won his way to success—is a happy man.
CHARLES TURRILL.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
EVE THE SEVENTH.
BEING A GOOD-NIGHT CHAPTER CONTAINING A BUNDLE OF OLD MEMORIES BY A
LONELY CLERGYMAN.
_By CLEMENT SCOTT._
I HAVE often heard it said, that a drowning man, before he sinks, never
to rise again in this world, sees mirrored instantly in the dreamy mist,
the dramatic moments and episodes of his life.
I can well believe it. Your hard-fisted sour-minded Puritan will tell
you, that he only sees written in letters of blood the sins he has
committed, the hearts he has broken, and the things which he has left
undone.
A more beautiful belief in an all-merciful Providence persuades me, that
something of the music and the melody of his life is not forgotten even
then, and that, if there be such music and melody, even in the lives of
the worst of us, they are allowed mercifully to alleviate the agonies of
our last moments, to help us through the darkness of that interminable
valley which lives in the future for all of us, and whose end no one
knows.
I felt exactly in the position of that typical drowning man, when I
walked alone—as I shall ever walk alone whilst life lasts—between North
Repps Cottage and my house at The Highlands, in the village of
Syderstrand in Norfolk, one memorable Christmas Eve.
It is not a long walk, as you all know, within shelter of wood and sound
of everlasting sea.
A ruined church, lovingly mantled in dark ivy; a fisher village
modernized out of all recognition; two or three scattered farms, sturdy
and flinty and grim, laughing to scorn the modern gimcrack red houses
that offend the landscape—this is all I passed, from the moment the
hospitable door closed behind me, and I had said a “Good night, God
bless you” to the old Cheevers who went up the hill to their pretty home
in the North Repps almshouses.
The Christmas Eve was over. I had pressed the hand of my old friend and
patron, Samuel Barkston, now the owner of North Repps Hall, who was
sleeping that Christmas Eve under the roof of North Repps Cottage, now
the house of dear old Nick and ever beautiful Nan, and I had made an
appointment for all of them on the morrow after Christmas service to
“take pot-luck” with the lonely old parson, happy and contented in the
care of the simple souls, who dwell in the seaside cottages of
Overstrand and its sister parish Syderstrand.
What were the unexpected words that rang in my ears that Christmas Eve,
when I had toasted them all, a glass of excellently brewed punch in my
hand, in the simple phrase, “God bless us all”? It came from the pipy,
crooning voice of old Cheevers, who spoke with his good old wife’s hand
locked in his own, and thus he spoke:—
“Well, this ’ere is wonderful! wery wonderful, my dear.”
And then Mrs. Cheevers gave a little convulsive sob, and shed another
tear.
“Only to think of our little Nick and Nan, and me and you standing ’ere
and drinking their ’earty good ’ealth, and the ’ealth of them dear
little ones, and a wishing of ’em ‘A Merry Christmas,’ which we does
with all our ’eart, and God’s blessing.”
This is what I heard, with my very own ears, before the hospitable door
closed behind me, and I turned my back on the lights and glowing
Christmas fire, and walked out among the snow-covered rhododendrons, a
lonely and neglected clergyman.
It was then that, under the starry heavens, the keen wind whistling
about my ears, the boughs of the leafless trees shrieking, as if they
were in pain, and the sea moaning its eternal dull chant in the
distance, that my life was mirrored before me, as it must and ever shall
be, until time ends, to the drowning or the dying man.
All my days at Oxford, their wild hopes and ambitions, all my trials of
athleticism and strength, in the old days when port and sherry wine at
the University were thought more of than any Olympian games.
Flash! flash! flash! went the memories across my brain.
The day, oh! memorable day of days, when I was stroke of the Oxford
eight, and we beat Cambridge with seven oars.
The day when I won the silver sculls, and helped to win the silver pair
oars, that rest under a glass case in my East Anglian rectory.
The day when I determined, God willing, to devote my life to the poor,
and found that a dandified Christ Church student, who wore his long hair
in a net—as they did in those days—was changed into an East-end curate
with two daily services to attend to, several sermons to write, and
loathsome, unventilated hovels to visit day by day.
The day when I fell in love, and the day when love’s paradise was closed
to me for ever. That one supremely delicious moment, in years gone by,
when with tears in her eyes she came across the room, where we were
alone together, and kissing me purely on the forehead, looked into my
eyes and whispered “Be a friend to me!”
The day—ah! _nefasti dies_—when in my arms she breathed her last, and
trying to divide her crucifix with me, that we might part in soul no
more for ever, she whispered, “Love, be good!” and I was alone for
evermore.
The day when, distracted with grief, hungry and eager for work, I became
a prison chaplain, in order to bury my grief in comforting others in
their hour of sorrow.
Flash! flash! flash! went the memories, and still the night wind
whistled through the trees, still the great sea moaned its eternal song
under the cliffs that lead to the Garden of Sleep.
Now I was in Australia, whither I had wandered in my despair, standing
white-robed before the altar, where I had made our Nick and Nan man and
wife. Now back again in England, where I fell in with Samuel Barkston,
the _Mascotte_ of my strange, wandering and lonely life.
Why is it, that I look upon this good fellow as the best friend man ever
had on earth? Has he not done everything that one Christian man can do
for another? Has he not well deserved the love of every one of the
villagers round about, and become part of the heart’s life of those who
just now, on this Christmas Eve, at my bidding, said “God bless us all”?
Have you ever seen the modest, picturesque almshouses, that dear old
Barkston built in the village of North Repps, near Cromer? Have you
never passed them in warm midsummer covered with roses, embraced by dark
purple clematis, smelling of new-mown hay, and decked round with old
stocks and golden marigold?
I call it a harbour of refuge. Was it not Samuel Barkston who, at my
simple suggestion, brought down the dear old Cheevers, man and wife, my
old world parishioners, to exchange the dark roar and riot of London,
the dirt, the care, and unrest, where they would have decayed into the
workhouse, to weather their last years out in God’s country, in a haven
of rest, built by man in God’s eternal honour?
Why do they pooh-pooh and ridicule the men of wealth who build these
harbours of refuge for the poor? Surely they do a noble work.
What ignominy is it, to live in this peaceful and blessed dependence?
What disgrace, to accept the hand-clasp of such beautiful charity? I
never pass one of these hospitals of old England, from that of St. Cross
at Winchester down to the most modern building dedicated, “Ad majorem
Dei gloriam,” without taking off my hat and saying a prayer for the rest
of the souls of such pious benefactors.
What, indeed, has not my excellent patron and chosen friend done, for
the dear ones who love him so well?
His son mercifully restored to him, he has placed at North Repps
Cottage, one of the ideal love nests of this beautiful old England of
ours, and there he dwells, when he can be spared from his splendid
philanthropic labours, and from Parliament, and from countless duties,
with the beautiful, dark-eyed, whole-souled, handsome Nan, who is the
Lady Bountiful of the villagers for miles and miles around.
And if, after their wandering life, great sorrows and bitter trials, the
cottage in the wood seems rather a new and restricted sort of domain
after the gold-fields and mighty distances of Australia, their children,
at any rate, have no such ideas or contrasts whatever.
Here, by these primrose woods and bluebell carpets, in this enchanted
district, more than one of the youngsters, who own Nick and Nan as best
of fathers and mothers, were born.
Here they have played since infancy, under the famous copper beeches,
hedged round in June time with rhododendron bloom, and here their sharp
ears have often heard Nick and Nan discuss and compare the varied
beauties of England and Australia. And though Nick would say he loved
Australia best, because there he became the lord and master of the
sweetest woman in the world, still Nan will ever keep on insisting that
there is no place like home, after all, and emphasize the truth of it
with a kiss on her husband’s honest face and faithful lips.
And if Samuel Barkston has done all these things to others, what has he
not done for me—for me, who had no claim upon him, but that of
friendship loyal and sincere?
Did he not discover, in that marvellous way that generous men discover
all that we want and secretly pray for, that this corner of the earth
was the one that I best loved?
Did he not know that, from almost boyhood I had said that if I coveted
my neighbour’s house—which was a very wrong thing to do—it was The
Highlands in the village of Syderstrand that I alone coveted? And why?
Not only because it commands a glorious view of sea and pasture; not
only that the blue of the sky is continued in the sea, or that the gold
of the sun is repeated in the corn; not only that the air, we breathe
here, is life and the atmosphere exhilaration; not only that here the
wicked seem to cease from troubling and that the weary are at rest; not
only that the villagers hereabouts seem the kindliest people in the
world, thankful for every gentle act of thought and proof of sympathy;
not only that I have lived the greatest part of my life amidst these
associations—but there was another reason that influenced my friend in
his greatest act of kindness.
Under the chancel wall of the little village church of Syderstrand,
hidden from the road, in full sight of the sea and the poppy-covered
corn, you may have observed a simple white marble cross.
There, in everlasting peace, rests the only woman who ever had any
influence on my life. We met and loved within a few yards of the spot
where I left her for ever, by the sea that was her delight and the
fields that were the scene of our daily wanderings.
What a gift from man to man! To be presented with the care of these
faithful souls; to preach to them, to pray for them, to visit them in
their sickness, to advise them in their sorrows, to hear their heartfelt
blessings when my feet cross their threshold; to love our
fellow-creatures and to be loved again; to feel one has found a mission
upon earth; to exchange the cares of a long and restless life for one of
profound peace; to be able to retire to rest every night in true
thankfulness of heart; and to be the appointed guardian of the grave of
a woman, one has loved with surpassing love—these have been the gifts
showered undeservedly on the head of the lonely clergyman who, strange
to say, has all his life long been hovering about the homes and the
destinies of nearly all the actors in this strange and eventful drama.
But, as I think over these last fifty years of a tolerably restless
life, the strangest circumstance of all is this—that I have been made
to-day a kind of Peacemaker, and a witness on the most eventful
Christmas Eve of my life of what may be called “Good will towards men.”
It was quite half a century ago, when I came across good, honest,
kind-hearted Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers, who, as you know, were so intimately
connected with the baby lives of poor neglected Nick and Nan. I came up
from Oxford to my parochial work in the East-end of London, fired with
enthusiasm, and settled down determined to do my best for the poor, who
were not so well looked after, in those days, as they are now. My first
curacy was in the New North-road, Hoxton—the long, new thoroughfare,
that led in a pretty straight line from the heart of the City to the
green and delightful suburbs of Highbury and Canonbury.
But what a difference between the old London of those days and the new
London of to-day! Within an easy walk of my lodgings in Brudenell Place
I could pick may off the country hedges.
Mr. Rydon had not commenced his building operations, and the North Pole
Gardens were a rustic retreat for the citizens among the fields.
Highbury and Hornsey were fairly out in the country; Islington was like
the provincial hamlet of to-day; Canonbury was embowered in greenery.
I could walk across fields all the way to Dalston and Hackney; I played
cricket in the Cat and Mutton Fields; and there was still something of
an old-world romance in the Shepherdess Walk!
Yes! it was quite true Samuel Phelps was playing Shakespeare at Sadler’s
Wells in those days, and gathering round him the intelligent playgoers
of his time; and I have often handled a racket at the dear old open
court at the “Belvedere” on Pentonville Hill, which was one of the last
of the roadside ale-houses with green benches and trim gardens facing
the road, inns that were dotted about the coach road between the “Angel”
at Islington and the “Yorkshire Stingo” in Marylebone.
Why, we passed through a turnpike between Hoxton and the City, and in
those days the River Lea and the New River flowed through summer fields
and hay meadows, and skirted houses, as romantically situated as any
that can be found in the Warwickshire of to-day.
I often chat of old times with Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers, and have a
friendly pipe with the old man in the almshouse garden; and, though now
they are spending the winter of their content in a peaceful paradise, I
trust they have still a warm corner in their hearts for many scenes in
the London of fifty years ago.
And as you may know also, it was my blessing and great privilege to be
of some comfort to poor Nick in the dreadful London prison.
Never for a moment did I doubt his innocence, for there is a ring in a
good man’s voice, a warmth in his hand-clasp, and honesty in his eyes
that are absolutely convincing to those who have made a study of
criminal life.
But what can a prison chaplain do, after all, towards establishing
justice and right? He can listen to the heartfelt confession, can
comfort the innocent or the penitent, but he can do little more than
pray that right in the end will overmaster wrong, and that true love,
like truth, will ultimately prevail.
Assuredly they did so in the case of Nick and Nan, for they were my
hands that joined their hands at the altar, and it was I, who put to
them that solemn oath of mutual fidelity which they have never broken to
this hour.
Out of the darkness comes the light, out of the cloud comes the
sunshine, and it is my experience, that those who suffer most, and that
those who “have patience and endure” have some of their reward in this
world as well as in the next.
Whatever the sorrows of my life have been—and they have been many and
bitter ones—I have had the comfort to-day of seeing gathered together
the happiest family in all the land.
I never shall forget the scene this Christmas Eve, in the cosy
sitting-room of their lovely cottage by the sea.
Outside, the sparkling snow covered the garden, and rested softly on the
tree branches and the evergreens.
Inside, the Yule logs sparkled on the hearth, the old oak parlour was
decorated with holly and laurel and arbutus and mistletoe. The table was
laden with the good things of this world, as it should be at Christmas
time. The wine that, honestly and temperately enjoyed, is as much man’s
possession as the corn in the fields or the fruit on the garden trees,
sparkled in every glass. Each face seemed radiant with joy.
There sat old Barkston with his chaplain, as I call myself, at his right
hand, and his youngest girl grandchild on his knee, an auburn-haired
darling of some six summers, who delights the old gentleman by her
shrewd observations and her curious ways.
There sat young Barkston, the Nick of old days, with a girl child on his
knee, “dangling the grapes,” but with the disengaged hand clasped in
that of beautiful and radiant Nan, who, like most fond mothers, had the
best place in her honest heart for her only boy—young Nick, as he is
familiarly called.
A little lower down, a little shy perhaps, but alternately garrulous and
tearful, sat Mr. and Mrs. Cheevers, who were placed at the hospitable
table as amongst the most favoured guests.
But before the party broke up and the evening ended, there came that old
Christmas ceremony that, I regret to say, is falling into disuse and
neglect.
At the command of our excellent host the tables were cleared away, and
the butler brought in a splendid old china bowl of steaming punch,
decorated with holly and flowers, and then all the servants trooped into
the room and were made welcome as part of a united family. On this day
of the year they were no mere masters and mistresses and servants and
dependants, but friends heart and soul.
But before the punch was handed round, there was to be an old-fashioned
country dance. Old Barkston, to her great delight, led out Mrs.
Cheevers, who was great at her steps as her grandmother, so she said,
had been before her.
The hand of Nan was claimed both by old Cheevers and the venerable
butler, but she decided that age should decide the matter, promising an
extra turn to the rejected old gentleman.
Nick had to dance with all the girls in the household, who enjoyed the
joke keenly, particularly when he set the example of kissing his
partners under the mistletoe—an example that the young men were very
slow and shy to follow.
[Illustration:
“And pray that the parting may not be eternal.” (_Page 264_)
]
And then, when the dancing and romping were over, came the punch bowl,
with glasses all round and healths and tears and good wishes. Then it
was that old Cheevers delivered himself, in reply to the universal
toast, “God bless us all,” of the words that still ring in my ears, now
that the doors of that happy home are closed behind me, and I walk
dreaming of the past towards my solitary home.
“Well, this ’ere is wery wonderful, wery wonderful, my dear! Just to
think of our little Nick and Nan, and me and you a standing ’ere and
drinking of their ’earty good ’ealth, and the ’ealth of them dear little
ones, and a wishing of ’em a Merry Christmas!”
Good, honest souls, they had been present at the two most eventful
moments of the lives of Nick and Nan.
And for me, on this never-to-be-forgotten Christmas Eve, there will be
but one ceremony more, a faithful and pious pilgrimage, that I have
never forgotten since the dead and the living were united on that
wind-swept hill within sound of the sea.
When all the lights are out, and the embers are dying down on the
hearth, when silence reigns about this land of love, and the peace is
profound, I shall go in at the gates of the Garden of Sleep, and I shall
kneel down on a grave, that is my dearest possession, and I shall kiss
the marble cross above it, and pray that the parting may not be eternal,
and that we may meet again to part no more for ever!
And then, perhaps, before the prayer is ended, and another day is born,
the Christmas joy bells will answer one another across the frosty hills,
and love and charity will be in all the air, and the words will come
home to me, which will be the text of my Christmas sermon:—
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards
men.”
A LONELY CLERGYMAN.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
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