He studied philosophy in an attempt to discover some logic in human affairs, which his wanderings had shown him to be totally disordered. He had a remarkable intellect. Upon many subjects, of course, he was very ill informed, but he was perfectly aware of that, and anxious for information.
In principle he was a Republican. He thought poorly of our British institutions, and many an argument did we have upon the subject. But, upon the other hand, he had none of the enthusiasm which generally accompanies revolutionary opinions. He expected little good to come of reform. He believed that injustice and the abuse of power are ineradicable evils in human society. We might, he said, get new masters, but we must for ever expect to live under tyranny of some sort.
He regarded himself as the equal of any man, but was quite free from that peevish, levelling strain which cries: I am as good as you are. True superiority, in any direction, he readily recognised and respected. I was struck by the calm impartiality with which he spoke of his foe, Mr. Lockesley, to whom he allowed some very good qualities.
‘We might have a worse man to lead us,’ he said, ‘should Boney land upon our shores some dark night. Squire Lockesley would not run away, not he! He would never suppose that he could be beaten or that any of his people would disobey his orders to stand and fight. He is so stupid that I daresay he would give us guns and forget powder. But he would have us all there, in Boney’s path, and Boney would have to account for every one of us, beginning with Squire Lockesley, before he could get on. And then he would but get five miles, and there would be another Lockesley in his path and it would be all to do over again.’
I think that it was William’s innate sense of justice which most commanded my admiration.
Since his marriage he had been very happy. Mary, too, had had a hard and solitary life. An orphan, brought up by the Parish, she had been put to work at eight years old. When William first saw her she was servant to a farmer at Gulley’s Cross. William was the first creature who ever spoke a kind word to her. I think his love must have begun in compassion, but, by the time that I knew them, it had become a strong and tender attachment.
For her he was the whole world. She could neither read nor write, but she was by no means a stupid girl. She turned out to be an excellent manager and she had, in her own way, a strong poetic strain. She was the sweetest singer I ever heard. I suppose that music had been her only joy, – the only release that she had ever known, in the brutish slavery of her life. She had but to hear a song or ballad once to remember it; she knew scores. And there was, in the tones of her voice, a kind of wild pathos, and an attention to the sense of what she sang, which is unusual, even in the finest singers. William loved to hear her, and so did I, once we had overcome her natural shyness and got her to sing for me. For the most part she sang the rhymed psalms, or old country songs, – simple ditties of parted sweethearts, old battles, harvesting, sheep-shearing and the like, that you may hear in any ale-house or farm kitchen. But to many she imparted a strong degree of feeling, as though she gave a voice to those countless myriads who have worked, and loved, and died, leaving no memorial behind them save these strains of ‘the unlettered Muse.’
There was one in particular, a favourite with me, for which I often asked. I wish now that I had not done so, and had not learnt to remember it so well. It was a kind of dialogue between a girl and her drowned sweetheart, whose phantom appears to her in the dead of night. He complains that he cannot rest for her endless lamentations and asks when she will have done weeping for him. She replies:
When acorns fall from the mulberry tree,
And the sun rises up in the West.
It is but a country jingle, but the pathetic note in her voice always brought tears to my eyes.
This friendship flourished for several years. After Newsome’s marriage I once took Kitty with me to Gulley’s Cove, hoping that she and Mary might become friends. But this scheme did not prosper. Kitty could not understand my regard for the Hawkers. She thought them very odd sort of people and could not quite forgive them for never coming to church. For my sake she tried to be affable. As a rule she gets on very well with cottagers and has the right manner with all, but here she was totally at a loss. She praised Mary’s tidy kitchen and advised her in the management of the children, of whom the Hawkers now had two. William resented this. He was himself proud of Mary’s good housekeeping, but this way of talking was new to him, – as though Mary were clean and industrious in order to win the approbation of her betters, rather than to make her husband and children comfortable. He became a little stiff. And it did, indeed, strike me as impertinent, though I had never thought so before, when I heard our ladies commending cottage women.
Kitty, for her part, did not like to see so many books in a house of that kind. She said that, for a man of Hawker’s station, too much reading might be an evil and likely to unsettle his mind. The Bible should be enough for him. Both she and Newsome were puzzled at my attachment to Gulley’s Cove. But they were as distressed and indignant as I was, when the blow fell which annihilated that little Eden.
Mr. Justice Hyde
IT WAS UPON a night in July, and we were about to retire, when we heard a knocking at the Parsonage door. Newsome, supposing it a call from some sick parishioner, went out into the hall. A moment later we heard Mary’s voice, raised in agonised supplication. Then she was with us, her dress disordered, her cap half off her head, and herself so distracted that she hardly knew what she did, as she flung herself upon me, grasping my arm and crying:
‘Oh, Mr. Lufton! Oh sir! Save him! Oh save my William! They have taken him. They have pressed him for a sailor!’
We all exclaimed that this was impossible. A farmer could not be pressed. By whose authority had it been done?
‘Squire Lockesley—’
‘But he has no power—’
‘He says that William’s books are wicked. They have found some wicked thing in one of William’s books.’
It took a little time to get the story clear. William had been obliged to go to Ullacombe upon some business and had there, outside the ale-house, encountered a very foul-mouthed and drunken carter, one of Lockesley’s men, with whom he had got into a fight. William was a peaceable man, but the carter had shouted out such intolerable insults, calling him a traitor and a rascally American, that he was obliged to knock the fellow down. Other Lockesleyites joined in and there was a brawl, and William was taken up for a breach of the peace. Lockesley, before whom he was brought, committed him to jail for assault and sent two constables to Gulley’s Cove, in search of treasonable books. They removed several, including The Rights of Man and the Jefferson pamphlet. Lockesley, having these laid before him, declared that William was ‘a malcontent and a notorious spreader of sedition,’ and, as such, fit to be despatched forthwith into His Majesty’s Navy, since the magistrates and sheriffs had been instructed, in every county, to make up the quota by impressing persons of that description.
We knew that any appeal to Lockesley would be useless. He had been long determined to get rid of William. I set off next morning, at daybreak, to see the Sheriff, having rashly promised Mary that I would bring William back with me.
The Sheriff received me civilly enough and may have been impressed by the great names with which I bombarded him. I did not scruple to assert that I was intimately acquainted with half the peerage and that an uproar would ensue, in both Houses, if William were not instantly released. He was obliged to agree with me that the ‘seditious’ books in question might be found upon the shelves of the most respectable citizens, that the evidence against William was of a highly questionable sort, and that farmers are exempt from impressment. But he told me that he had no power to set aside the decision of a Justice of the Peace; for that I must get a writ of habeas corpus from a Judge of the High Court.
I might have known as much, and I cursed myself for the waste of time. When Miles is agitated he acts without reflection. To ride off instantly, and threaten somebody, had been my fi
rst impulse, and I had wasted the better part of the day in getting to Tipton St. John’s, where the Sheriff lived.
Pronto, were he ever to exert himself upon another’s behalf, which is not likely, would have managed the matter more wisely. Precipitate folly is not his weakness; he never acts without reflection, is seldom agitated, nor does he make applications in the wrong quarter. He would have foreseen the unlikelihood of getting the Sheriff to engage in a controversy with Lockesley.
I had, besides, some scruples about applying for a writ; I was far from sure of my ground. I meant to plead that farmers are exempt from forced service, but I doubted whether a judge, if he knew all, would rate William entirely as a farmer. At least half of his livelihood was earned by catching lobsters. And as for the charge of sedition, – a cottager who studies philosophy is so uncommon a creature that a stranger might not believe in my account of him. My case for False Imprisonment must depend upon a number of evasions and suppressions from which I shrank, and I had hoped that intervention by the Sheriff might save me from applying to a judge.
There is, I fear, no doubt whatever that Pronto at this juncture would have been a better friend for William, were he anybody’s friend but his own. He would have gone directly to a judge, with a very good story; he would, moreover, have known where to find a judge, for he makes it his business to know that sort of thing. But I never brought Pronto with me into Devonshire. I regarded my visits to Ullacombe as a vacation from Pronto; I took no trouble to make acquaintance, and visited no houses where Newsome and Kitty were not received. I was perfectly unaware that Mr. Justice Hyde had a house near Dawlish, where he would certainly be found in July, since the Courts were in recess. Pronto would have known of it and would have dragged me off to call upon the old fellow, years before.
The Sheriff, however, gave me this information and told me, what I knew already, that I might come to the judge, for such a purpose, at any hour of the day or night. He told me also that I had little time to lose; William would probably be at Exmouth, where a number of Devonshire men, recently pressed, had been collected, and they would be hurried aboard some vessel with all possible speed. They might indeed be gone already. He advised me that my quickest route to Dawlish would be to go to Exmouth and then cross the bay by boat, since I must otherwise take a wide detour inland.
The day was so far advanced that I decided to spend the night at Exmouth and to take a boat early in the morning. I asked him for a pass, enabling me to see William, which he readily gave me. And so I set off again, refusing his kind offer of refreshment, for I was in a fever to be gone.
I could see that he wondered at my agitation and thought me a very odd sort of Member of Parliament. That I should exert myself on behalf of a friend did not surprise him; he seemed to be a just man and by no means a tyrant of the Lockesley sort. But, though I tried to be calm, I knew that my manner was that of an impulsive youth who does not know the world. I could not help it. Mary’s tears, her anguish, were ever before my eyes.
Off I set, over some upland country which lies between Tipton and the estuary of the Exe. The sun was setting as I came out upon a view of the bay, with Exmouth lying below me. Across the water lay the red cliffs of Dawlish, and I saw how quickly the trip might be made by boat. Exmouth has no harbour, but a good deal of small craft lay at anchor in the bay and among them a sloop which flew the Ensign. My heart sank when I saw this. I feared that William might already be aboard of her.
I had meant to take some food before trying to see him, but my agitation was so great that I hastened at once to the guard-house where the Sheriff had said that he might be confined. There I learnt that the pressed men had not yet been taken off. They were waiting for a party to come in from Dartmoor. The sloop was taking on supplies and would not sail until the following afternoon.
The Sheriff’s pass, my own credentials, and a guinea to the guard, got me the accommodation of a small chamber where I might talk to William undisturbed. I waited there, and presently he was brought in to me. He looked very pale, but calmer than I had expected. When he saw who it was he smiled and grasped my hand.
‘This is very good of you,’ said he. ‘How is Mary? Have you seen her? How does she bear it?’
‘Please God,’ I cried, ‘I shall take you back to her tomorrow.’
I told him what I meant to do, but he shook his head and said that he feared I might be too late. Among his fellow captives it was believed that they would not wait beyond midnight for the Dartmoor party. They expected to be taken aboard at daybreak and to sail upon the morning tide. He thought that the sloop would go down to Plymouth, where they should be drafted to the vessels upon which they were to serve.
‘In that case,’ said I, ‘I shall go on to Plymouth, as soon as I have got my writ. Once I have that, I can demand your release.’
‘From whom could you demand it? You never saw Plymouth Roads! You might search among the vessels laying there for a week, and never find me, even supposing your writ gives you the right to board them. Nor is it to be supposed that anyone will help you. Having got their men, they will keep them if they can. No, no! Go back to Mary. You may be of the greatest service to her, but for me I am afraid that you can do nothing.’
He began to give me instructions as to the care of Mary and the children, to which I hardly attended, so resolved was I to bring him home. He seemed quite to have accepted his fate. He said that she must sell Gulley’s Farm, for that there was more work there than she could well do alone. And he gave me a letter which he had written to her, hoping that he might find some means of sending it, before he was taken off. It was a great evil, he said, that she could not read, but I must read it to her and explain it, and I must assure her that he would come back, safe and sound, when the wars were over.
‘And then,’ said he, ‘I shall take them all home to Marblehead.’
‘How!’ cried I. ‘You mean to accept this injustice?’
‘Why, what else can I do? Mutiny, and get myself hanged? A fine thing for Mary that would be!’
‘But you are taken unjustly.’
‘We are all taken unjustly, to my way of thinking.’
I burst into invective against the tyrant Lockesley, but he cut me short.
‘As to that, a little tyrant sends me to fight a great one. Somebody, you know, must fight, if we are to keep Boney off. Why should I lie snug in my bed while others fight my battles for me?’
‘And why should I?’
I thought that he gave me a queer look. He said nothing for a moment and then spoke of a cow in calf that was to be sold, or not sold, – I could not listen. I was thinking of Pronto’s snug bed in Dover Street. Presently I interrupted him to ask if he did not think that the guards might be bribed to accept a substitute. I had plenty of money with me; I had at least thought of that. Some poor creature, with nothing to lose, might well be willing to take William’s place for fifty guineas: I did not suppose that the guards would be so nice as to mind whom they sent on board, provided they sent the correct tally.
‘Easy enough,’ said William, ‘if any were willing to go. Two of my companions have tried it. But all the quota men of that kind are gone from these parts, long ago.’
‘Then,’ cried I, ‘if all else fails, I shall go myself. No! don’t gainsay me! I have no wife. I have no farm. Nobody would be a pin the worse if I died tomorrow. If anybody can be spared to defend our shores, I can. I am singularly useless to my friends in any other way.’
At that he became angry and desired me not to harass him by talking nonsense. What should a gentleman like myself do upon a ship of war? I should be of very little use.
‘You had best go back to your Parliament,’ he said. ‘For you know how to set about work of that kind. I am used to hardship and rough company. I know how to look out for myself. But you – you would be as helpless as a kitten.’
‘I cannot go back to Mary without you. She was sure that I could save you, and I promised her.’
‘Ah, poor thing!
She is very ignorant.’
This nettled me a little, for I knew that he thought me equally ignorant to have made such a promise. He had often accused me, in a good-natured way, of what he called ‘a gentleman’s ignorance.’ He would have it that British justice, which I maintained to be the best in the world, had one face for the rich and powerful, another for the poor and weak. I had thought him prejudiced by his enthusiasm for the American institutions. I could see now that Lockesley’s action shocked him less than it did me; it was no more than he expected.
I repeated that I could not go back.
‘There is very little that we cannot do if we are obliged,’ he said. ‘And besides, Mr. Lockesley will never leave me in peace at Gulley’s Farm. I should only be taken again, and if you are not there poor Mary will have no friend.’
This was true. Half mad as I was, I saw it to be so.
‘There is nothing for it,’ said I, ‘but to get that writ before daybreak, if I can. It is a full moon and a fine night. I shall instantly take a boat to Dawlish. If the judge is in bed, I’ll have him out of it.’
‘And supposing he will not give it to you?’
‘In that case I shall return here and go in your stead. I shall insist upon doing so. I am not as helpless as you think. You may have to leave Gulley’s Cove, but you shall go back to Mary and I shall have kept my promise. But he shall give it! He must give it! I must lose no more time!’
I started up in such haste to be off that I scarcely bade him farewell.
Troy Chimneys Page 10