Clara Vaughan, Volume 2 (of 3)

by R. D. Blackmore

  STORY OF EDGAR VAUGHAN.

  "I have always been, as you know, of a roving unsocial nature. Myfather being dead before I was born, and my mother having married againbefore I could walk, there was little to counteract my centrifugaltendencies. I seemed to belong to neither family; though I always clungto the Vaughans, and disliked the Daldys. The trustees of my mother'ssettlement were my virtual guardians; for all the Vaughan estates beingmost strictly entailed, my father had nothing to dispose of, andtherefore had made no will. My mother's settlement comprised onlypersonal estate, for no power had been reserved under the entail tocreate any charges upon the land. The mortgages, of which no doubt youhave heard, as paid off by your father, were encumbrances of longstanding.

  "The estates, I need not tell you, were shamefully mismanaged, duringyour father's long minority. An agent was appointed under the Court ofChancery, and an indolent rogue he was. Meanwhile your father andmyself went through the usual course of education, no difference beingmade in that respect between us. Although we were only half-brothers, wewere strongly attached to each other, especially after a thoroughdrubbing which your good papa found it his duty to administer to me atEton. It did me a world of good; before that, I had rather despised himfor the gentleness of his nature. At Oxford, after your father hadleft, I kept aloof both from the great convivial and from the thinlypeopled reading set, and lived very much by myself. Soon as thehumorous doings, whose humour culminates in the title 'lectures,' soonas these were over, I was away from the freckled stones, punting lazilyon the Cherwell, with French and Italian novels; or lounging among thegipseys on the steppes of Cowley. Hall I never frequented, but dined atsome distant tavern, and spent the evening, and often the night tillTom-curfew, in riding through the lonely lanes towards Otmoor, AstonCommon, or Stanlake. It was strange that I never fell in love, for Ihad plenty of small adventures, and fell in with several pretty girls,but never one I cared for. Gazing on the wreck I am, it is no conceitto say that in those times I was considered remarkably good-looking. Ofcourse I was not popular; that I never cared for; but nobody had reasonto dislike me. I affected no peculiarity, gave myself no airs, behavedpolitely to all who took the trouble to address me; and the world, whichI neither defied nor courted, followed its custom in such cases, and letme have my way.

  "At Lincoln's Inn, my life was much the same, except that wherriessucceeded punts, and evening rides were exchanged for moonlight walks inthe park. It was reported at home, as it is of most men who are calledto the Bar, that I was likely to do great things. There never was achance of it. Setting aside the question of ability, I had noapplication, no love of the law, no idea whatever of touting; and stillmore fatal defect, my lonely habits were darkening into a shy dislike ofmy species.

  "You have heard that I was extravagant. As regards my early career, thecharge is quite untrue. Money, I confess, was never much in mythoughts, nor did I ever attempt to buy things below their value; but mywants were so few, and my mode of life so ungenial, that I neverexceeded the moderate sum allotted to me as a younger son. Afterwardsthis was otherwise, and for excellent reasons.

  "During the height of the London season I was always most restless andmisanthropic. Not that I looked with envy on the frivolous dust offashion, and clouds of sham around me; but that I felt myself lowered asan Englishman by the cringing, the falsehood, the small babooneries,which we call 'society.' I longed to be, if I could but afford it,where men have more manly self-respect, and women more true womanhood.

  "Your parents were married, my darling Clara, at the end of December,1826, six years before your birth. Upon that occasion, your dear father,the only man in the world for whom I cared a fig, made me a veryhandsome present. In fact he gave me a thousand pounds. He would havegiven me a much larger sum, for he was a most liberal man, but theestates had suffered from long mismanagement, and were seriouslyencumbered. I do not hesitate to say that the gross income of thisproperty is now double what it was when your father succeeded to it, andthe net income more than quadruple. During the four years which elapsedbetween that event and his marriage, he had devoted all he could spareto the clearance of encumbrances and therefore, as I said, the presenthe made me was a most generous one. More than this, he invited andpressed me to come and live on the estate, and offered to set me up in afarm which I might hold from him on most advantageous terms. Upon myrefusal, he even begged me to accept, at a most liberal salary, thestewardship of the property, and the superintendence of greatimprovements, which he meant to effect. I remember, as if it wereyesterday, the very words he used. He took my hand in his, and withthat genial racy smile, which very few could resist,

  "'Come, Ned,' he cried, 'there are but two of us; there's room for bothin the old nest; and you are big enough to thrash me now.'"

  At the sweet recollection of his Eton drubbing, as he called it, my pooruncle's eyes grew moist.

  "So you see, my child, instead of grudging your father the property, Ihad every reason to love and revere him. However, I refused this aswell as the other offer; but I accepted his present, and invested itrather luckily. After spending a pleasant month at home--as I alwayscalled it--I returned to London early in April, 1827. There are no twominds alike, any more than there are two bodies; and yet how littlevariety exists in polite society! Surely it were more reasonable towedge the infant face into a jelly-mould, to flute its ears and cheekslike collared head, and grow the nose and lips and eyebrows intorosettes and grapes and acorns, than to bow and cramp and squeeze amillion minds into one set model. Yet here I find men all alike, Daneand Saxon, Celt and Norman, like those who walk where snow is deep, orAlpine travellers lashed to a rope, trudging each in other's footprint,swinging all their arms in time, looking neither right nor left, and soon through life's pilgrimage, a file some million deep. Who went firstthey do not know, why they follow they cannot tell, what it leads tothey never ask. I was marked and scorned at once, because I dared toadopt a hat that did not scalp me in half-an hour, and a cravat that didnot throttle me; and even had the hardihood to dine when I felt hungry.How often I longed for a land of freedom and common sense, where it isno disgrace to carry a barrel of oysters, or shake hands with atradesman. I know what you are smiling at, Clara. You are thinking toyourself, 'how different you are now, my good uncle; and wern't you alittle inconsistent in sanctioning all this livery humbug here?' Yes, Iam different now. I am older and wiser than to expect to wipe away withmy coat-sleeve the oxide of many centuries. As for the livery, it makesthem happy: it is an Englishman's uniform. And I have seen and sufferedso bitterly from the violence of an untamed race, that I admire lesswhat I used to call the unlassoed arch of the human neck. I have seen acoarse line somewhere,

  "'And freedom made a deal too free with me,'

  which expresses briefly the moral of my life. However, at the time Ispeak of, nursing perhaps a younger son's bias against the social laws,and fresh from the true simplicity and unaffected warmth of yourfather's character and the gentle sweetness of your mother's, I couldnot sit on the spikes of fashion's hackney coach, as becomes a poorBriton, till the driver whips behind. Finding of course that no onecared whether I sat there or not, and that all I got at the side of theroad was pea-shots from cads in the dickey, I did what thousands havedone before me, and will probably do again, I voted my fellow-Britons aparcel of drivelling slaves, and longed to be out of the gang. PerhapsI should never have made my escape, for like most of my class, I spentall my energy in small eccentricity, if it had not been for what weidlers entitle the force of circumstances. At a time when my life wasflowing on calmly enough though babbling against its banks, it camesuddenly on an event which drove it into another and rougher channel.

  "Early one afternoon in the month of April, 1829, I launched my littleboat from the Temple-stairs, where I kept it, and feeling more thanusually saturnine and moody, resolved on a long expedition. So Ivictualled my ship like Robinson Crusoe, and took some wraps and
coverings. It was then slack water, just at the height of the flood. Imeant to have gone to Richmond, but being far too indolent to struggleagainst the tide, I yielded to nature's good pleasure, and pulled awaydown stream. In a few minutes a rapid ebb tide was running, and I madeup my mind to go with it as far as ever it chose, and to return with theflood whenever that pleased to meet me.

  "After rowing steadily for several hours, I found myself a long way pastmy customary Cape Turn-again. With a strong ebb tide as well as aland-fresh in the river, I had got beyond Barking Reach, and as far asthe Dagenham marshes. Here some muddy creeks, pills, and sluggishchannels wind and welter among the ooze-lands on the north side of theThames. All around them stretches and fades away a dreary flatmonotonous waste; no dot of a house, no jot of a tree, to vary the deadexpanse; except that by the river-side one or two low cabooses, morelike hoys than houses, are grounded among the slime. This, so far as mymemory serves, was the state of these Essex marshes in the year 1829:how it is now I cannot say.

  "It was high time for me to turn: row as I would, I could hardly getback to my haven by midnight. Outrigger skiffs were not yet known; andan oarsman could not glide along at the rate of ten miles an hour. Justas I was working round, a steam packet, which had been moored a shortway below, crippled perhaps in her engines, now at the turn of the tidepassed up, and was quickly out of sight. As she passed me I hailed fora tow-rope; but either they could not hear, or they did not choose tonotice me. There was nothing for it but to bend my back to the oars,and keep a sharp look out. Presently the flood began to make strongly upthe river, and I gave way with a will, my paddles bending and the watergleaming in the early starlight. It was a lonely and melancholy scene.The gray mist returning from some marshy excursion, and hugging the warmsea-water, floated along in dull folds, with a white flaw of steam hereand there curdling over the current. Not a ship, not a barge was insight; no voice of men or low of cattle broke the foggy silence: but thewash of the stream on its sludgy marge, or on some honey-combedmooring-post, surged every now and then betwixt the jerks of myrowlocks. The loneliness and the sadness harmonised with my sombremind. All is transient, all is selfish, all is a flux of melancholy.If we toss and dance we are only boats adrift; we are nothing more thancrazy tide-posts, if we be philosophers.

  "Suddenly a clear loud cry broke my vacant musings. It startled me sothat I caught a crab, ceased rowing, and gazed around. At first I couldnot tell whence it came, till my boat, with the way she had on her, shotround a low spit of the Essex shore, which from the curve of the river Iwas nearing rapidly. Louder and louder the cry was twice repeated, andI heard in the still spring evening the oaths of men and the scufflingof feet. Within fifty yards of me was an ill-looking house, made ofbattens, and raised on piles above high water mark. A tattered signhung on a pole, and a causeway led to the steps. While I washesitating, two figures crossed a lattice window, as if in violentstruggle, and a heavy crash resounded. Three strong strokes of my oars,and the keel grated on the causeway. Out I leaped with the boat-hook,threw the painter over a post, and rushed up the slimy jetty, and thenarrow wooden steps. The door was fastened, I pushed it with all myforce, but in vain. One faint scream reached my ears, as of some one atlength overpowered. Swinging the boat-hook with both hands, I struckthe old door with the butt, and broke it open. In the lower room therewas no one, but a moaning and trampling sounded over head. Upstairs Iran, and into the room where the villany was doing. A poor girl lay onthe floor at the last gasp of exhaustion. Two ruffians with a rope werebending over her. Down went one, at a blow of my boat-hook, flat besidehis victim: the other leaped at my throat. I saw and soon felt that hewas a powerful man, but in those days I was no cripple. We were mostevenly matched. I wrenched his hand from my throat, but twice he got meunder him, twice I writhed from his grasp like a python from a tiger'sjaw. Clutched and locked in each other's arms, in vain we tugged to getroom for a blow. Throttle, and gripe, and roll--which should be firstinsensible? An accident gave me the mastery. For a moment we lay faceto face, glaring at each other, drawing the strangled breath, loosingthe deadly grip, panting, throbbing, and watching. My boat-hook lay onthe floor, my enemy spied and made a sudden dash at it. Instead ofwithholding, I jobbed him towards it with all my might, and as he raisedit, the point entered one of his eyes. With a yell of pain and fury, hesank beneath me insensible. Shaking and quaking all over after thedesperate struggle, I bound him and his mate, hand and foot, with thetwisted tarry junk, which they had meant for the maiden.

  "At length I had time to look round. On a low truckle bed at the end ofthe long dark room, in which a ship-lamp was burning, there lay anelderly lady in a perfect stupor of fright and illness. Upon the floorwith her head thrown back against the timbers, and her black eyes wideopen and fixed on me, sat a girl of remarkable beauty, though her cheekswere as white as death. A magnificent ring, for which she had foughtmost desperately, was wrenched from its place on her finger and hungover the opal nail, for her hands were clenched, and her arms quitestiff, in the swoon of utter exhaustion. Both ladies were in deepmourning.

  "For the rest a few words will suffice. The poor ladies revived atlast, after chafing of hands and sprinkling, and told me where to findthe woman of the house, who had been locked up in another room by herhusband and brother. There was no one else on the premises. How camethe ladies there, what was their destination, and why were they sooutraged? They were on their return to London from the Continent, beingcalled home by tidings of death, and had sailed from Antwerp two daysand a-half before, in the steamer which I had seen lying to. Steamerswere then heavy lumbering things, and all that time Mrs. Green and herdaughter had been knocking about on a pecky sea. No wonder that thepoor mother had cried out feebly, to be landed anywhere, anywhere in theworld, where things would leave off going round. And before they cameto that tedious halt in the river, fair Adelaide, who had enjoyed hermeals throughout, renewed and completed her poor mamma's excavation, byinquiring calmly with her mouth full of pickled pork, where thepeas-pudding was. Now too Miss Adelaide soon recovered from her fearfulbattle for honour and life. She was what is called now-a-days a girl of"splendid organisation." If she had not been so, she would have lainere now with her mother at the bottom of Barking Reach. The twoscoundrels of that lonesome hostelry had been ordered to send to Barkingfor a conveyance. But they only pretended to do so; for they had castfoul covetous eyes on the wealth of their unknown guests and on braveAdelaide's beauty. Beyond a doubt both ladies would have been murdered,but for the gallant resistance, the vigour, and presence of mind ofAdelaide.

  "Having restored their watches, and scattered trinkets, and led the poorthings from the scene of the combat, I was quite at a loss for means toconvey them home. Barking was a long way off, and the marshy trackunknown to me, and not likely to be found in the dark. Moreover, theremust be some hazard in leaving them still in that villanous den, nomatter how their cowardly foes might be bound. At last, and with greatdifficulty, I embarked the two ladies in my shallop, and wrapped themwarmly from the night air; then after relashing my prisoners, andlocking them up in separate rooms, and the woman downstairs, I pulledaway stoutly for Woolwich. Here I obtained a carriage, and started myconvoy for London, and then returned with two policemen to the "Old RowBarge," as the low caboose was called. But both our birds were flown,as I was inclined to expect. Most likely the woman had contrived to getout, and release them. At any rate the "Old Row Barge" had no crew, andthe deserters had set it on fire. The flames, as we rowed away, aftervainly searching the marshes, cast a lurid glow on the mud-banks, and onthe slackening tide; a true type it was of what soon befell me--theburning of my caboose. The two men were caught long afterwards by theThames Police, and transported for life on a conviction for riverpiracy. At least, I was told that they were the men."

  "And of course, dear uncle, you fell deeply in love with the beautifulAdelaide Green."

  "Of course, my dear, a young lady would con
clude so. But at present Imust not talk any more." I had several times tried to stop him. "Andwhat I have next to relate is matter of deeper feeling. By Jove, tothink how I battled with that strong man! And now your little fist,Clara, would floor me altogether."

  He sighed, and I sighed for him. Then I thought of Mr. Shelfer, andgloried in my prowess, as I wheeled my uncle home.