At breakfast I said nothing of Joe's midnight visit, reckoning that
it would not be long before the news of his flight got abroad. It
was indeed the subject of a great buzz of talk among my
schoolfellows, who flocked about me as I walked down Castle Street,
demanding to hear the full story from my own lips. I could tell
them nothing that they did not know, save only my leave-taking with
Joe Punchard, which, of course, I had resolved to keep very close.
I learned from them that Cyrus was abed, and like to stay there,
said Mr. Pinhorn, for a week or more. His father was in a desperate
rage, and had sent horsemen along all the roads in pursuit of the
runaway, and I had some fear that my good friend would be caught
and brought back to receive his punishment.
However, nothing had been heard of him by the time school was over,
so that I had great hopes that he had got himself clean away. I
went to see his mother as I had promised, and said what I could to
comfort her; but the good woman was mightily upset, and declared in
a passion of weeping that she was sure she would never see her Joe
again.
That evening at supper my father was even more quiet than his wont.
Mistress Pennyquick told me afterwards that he had been to see his
sister Lady Cludde and her husband at Cludde Court, and given them
a piece of his mind. What passed between them I know not, but I do
know that my father never set foot in Cludde Court again, nor did
his sister come any more to the farm, even when her brother lay
a-dying. His visit had this good effect, however, that I suffered
no more bullying at the hands of Dick Cludde or Cyrus Vetch. Dick
eyed me with a malignant scowl whenever he met me, and as for
Cyrus, who did not come back to school for a good ten days, he
looked over my head as though I did not exist, which gave me no
discomfort, you may be sure. At the end of that year they were both
taken from school, Cludde going to Cambridge, and Vetch to assist
his father, who was a grain merchant in a substantial way, as all
Shrewsbury supposed.
It would be a tedious matter were I to tell all the little
happenings of the next few years. Whether it was due to my constant
exercise under Captain Galsworthy's tuition, I know not, but
certainly, from that very summer, I grew at an amazing rate,
shooting up until I was as tall as boys three or four years older,
yet hardening at the same time. Twice a week regularly I betook
myself to the captain's little cottage on the Wem road, and spent
an hour with him in mastering the principles and practice of what
he called the noble arts of self defense. He was pleased to say
that I was quick of eye and nimble of body, and, being on my side
very eager to learn, I was speedily in his good books, and he
seemed to take a special pleasure in teaching me.
At first I found our bouts at fisticuffs a severe tax. The captain,
though well on in years, was still hale and active, and, being tall
and spare, he had a great advantage of me. With the long reach of
his arms he could pummel me without giving me the least chance of
reprisal, and many's the day I crawled home after our encounters
bruised and sore, provoking indignant remonstrances from Mistress
Pennyquick. But I refused to let her coddle me, and as my appetite
never failed, and I throve amazingly, the good woman at last ceased
to lament, and, as I discovered, was wont behind my back to vaunt
my growing manliness.
By the time I was fifteen I was as tall as the captain himself, and
then my share of bruises ceased to be so disproportionate. In
skill, whether with the fists or the foils, he was always vastly my
superior; indeed, to this day I have never met his equal. But I had
youth on my side, and sometimes the old man at the end of a
particularly arduous bout would sigh, and wish he were younger by a
score of years.
No one could have been more generous in encouragement and praise.
It would have amused an onlooker, I am sure, to see him, when I had
had the good fortune to tap claret, mopping the injured feature and
all the time maintaining a flow of complimentary remarks.
"Capital, my lad!"--after fifty years I can hear him still--"on my
life, a neat one, Humphrey; I shall make something of you yet, my
boy."
And then we fall to it again, and, being somewhat overconfident,
perhaps, after my success, I fail a little in my guard, and the
captain sees his opportunity and lands me such a series of
staggerers that I see a thousand stars, and there am I dabbing my
nose while he cries again: "Capital, my lad! A Roland for an
Oliver! And now we'll wash away the sanguinary traces of our combat
and allay our noble rage with a mug of cider."
And thus, giving and receiving hard knocks, we continued to be the
best of friends.
These years brought changes in their train. One day Joshua Vetch,
Cyrus' father, died suddenly of an apoplectic fit, brought on, folk
said, by disappointment at Mr. Adderton the draper being elected
mayor over his head. And then it was found that, so far from being
wealthy as was supposed, he had been for years living beyond his
means, being ably assisted in his expenditure by Cyrus. His affairs
were in great disorder; Cyrus himself was totally unprovided for,
and but for his uncle, John Vetch, a reputable attorney of our
town, who took pity on him, and gave him articles, God knows what
would have become of him.
At this change of fortune I could not but remember how, years
before, he had sneered at me as a "charity brat." I fancy he
remembered it too, for when I met him face to face one day, as I
returned from school, coming out of his uncle's office, he flushed
deeply and then gave me such a look of hatred that I felt uneasy
for days after.
Cyrus had never borne a good name in Shrewsbury, and after his
father's death he seemed to grow reckless. Dick Cludde was still at
college, though I never heard that he did any good there, and in
the vacations he and Cyrus consorted much together, and became in
fact the ringleaders of a wild set whose doings were a scandal in
Shrewsbury for many a day. Cludde, it seemed, had made a jaunt to
London with other young bloods at the end of the term in the
December of this year 1694, to see the great pageant of Queen
Mary's funeral.
The adventure did him no good, for when he returned to Shrewsbury
he formed, with Vetch and others of his kidney, a gang in imitation
of the Mohocks, as they were called--the band of dissolute young
ruffians who then infested London, wrenching off knockers,
molesting women in the streets, pinking sober citizens, and
tumbling the old watchmen into the gutters. Our streets at night
became the scene of riotous exploits of this kind, and our watch,
being old and feeble men, were quite unable to cope with the
rioters, so that decent folk began to be afraid to stir abroad
after dark. Though they disguised themselves for these forays, it
was shrewdly suspected who they were; but they escaped actual
detection, and indeed, they were held in such terror by the
townsfolk that no one durst move against them openly, for fear of
what might come of it.
Things grew to such a height that one Saturday the mayor, with half
a dozen aldermen, walked out to the little cottage on the Wem Road,
and besought Captain Galsworthy's aid. The captain and I chanced to
be in the thick of an encounter with the foils, and neither of us
heard the rap on the door which announced the visitors. A gust of
air when the door was opened apprised us that we had onlookers at
our sport; but the captain's eyes never left mine until with a
dexterous turn of the wrist, which I had long envied and sought in
vain to copy, he sent my foil flying to the end of the room.
"Capital, capital!" cried he, removing his mask and wiping his
heated brow.
"Good morning, Mr. Mayor," he added; "we have kept you waiting, I
fear; but we were just approaching the critical moment: the issue
was doubtful, and there is little satisfaction in a drawn battle.
"Your looks are portentous, gentlemen: is this a visit of state,
may I ask?"
Whereupon the mayor, an honest little draper, made a speech which I
am sure he had diligently conned over beforehand. He passed from a
recital of the woes under which Shrewsbury suffered to a most
flattering eulogium of the captain's prowess, to which my good
friend listened with an air of approval that amused me mightily.
And then the mayor came to the point, and in the name of the
corporation and all decent citizens of Shrewsbury besought the
captain to suppress the disturbers of their peace.
"Hum! ha!" said the captain, rubbing his nose reflectively. "I am
an old man, Mr. Mayor: methinks this is work for younger blood than
mine."
"No, no!" cried the company in chorus.
"We seed tha knock the steel from the hand of Master Bold there as
'twere a knitting needle," says the mayor, whose speech was as
broad as his figure.
"Well, well," says the captain, "I'll think of it, my friends. You
do me great honor, and I thank you for your visit."
The captain and I talked over the matter between ourselves, and the
upshot of our consultation was that we got together a little band
of his former pupils, and for several nights in succession we
perambulated the streets of Shrewsbury from the English to the
Welsh Bridge and from the Castle to the Quarry, with naked swords
and a martial air. But we had our exercise for nothing. The town
was as quiet as a graveyard, and the only disturber of the peace
that engaged our attention was poor Tom Jessopp, the drayman, who,
one night, having drunk more old October than was good for him,
encountered us as he was staggering home down Shoplatch, and
invited us, first to wet our whistles, and, on our declining, to
fight him for a pint. We escorted him home and put him to bed, not
without some difficulties and inconveniences, and that was the
first and last of our adventures, the captain declaring that to
deal with topers was no work for a man of honor.
The very night after our company was thus dissolved the mayor was
knocked down at the foot of Swan Hill by the Town Wall, gagged and
trussed, and laid upon his own doorstep, where he was found by the
maidservant in the morning, having wrought himself to the verge of
apoplexy by his struggles to rid himself of his bonds. He besought
the captain with tears of outraged dignity to resume his
guardianship of the town; but the old warrior merely rubbed his
nose and spoke of rheumatism.
The outrages occurred only at intervals, and ceased altogether
during the college terms, when Dick Cludde was absent, so that we
were not far wrong in our inference that he was the fount and
origin of the deeds of lawlessness. The townsfolk, you may be sure,
did not love him; nor did the high and mighty airs Sir Richard and
my lady chose to assume in their dealings with the citizens win
them many friends; so that when it became known, about the time
when Dick left Cambridge finally, without a degree, that his father
had suffered serious reverses of fortune in his adventures in
oversea trade, there were few who felt anything but satisfaction.
At this time I was midway in my seventeenth year--a big strapping
fellow standing five feet ten, having quite outgrown the delicacy
of my childhood. I was high up in the school, on good terms with
the masters, though my Latin and Greek was never considerable: on
better terms with the boys, for, I must own, my inclinations were
rather towards baseball and quoits than towards the nice
discrimination of longs and shorts. I had developed in particular
an amazing strength of arm, which stood me in good stead in
wrestling bouts, and led to my being counted two in our tugs of
war. It was this same strength, I fancy, that made my schoolfellows
chary of provoking me to wrath, for which I was somewhat sorry,
having always loved a fight.
During these years no tidings came to us of Joe Punchard. His poor
mother, who earned a living by washing for some of our Shrewsbury
folk, feared the worst from his long silence. But Mistress Nelly
Hind, who kept a coffee shop in Raven Street, called Mistress
Punchard a croaker and bade her be of good cheer, for she had
neither seen nor directly heard from her brother John Benbow for
twenty years; yet he was alive and well, and captain of a king's
ship, if rumor were not a false, lying jade.
"Not that your Joe will ever rise to such a height," she added.
"Sure he's a better boy than ever your John was," said Mistress
Punchard, up in arms for her offspring.
"John's legs are as straight as the bed post," retorted his sister,
and then the two women began a war of words, in the midst of which,
having drunk my dish of coffee, I slipped away.
I rarely speculated on my future, and my father never spoke of it.
We took it for granted that I should succeed him in his little
property, and during the school holidays I sometimes accompanied
him to market, and learned to handle samples of grain and to
discuss the points of his fat cattle.
It was when I was approaching the end of my seventeenth year that I
began to think of the future more nearly. My father had suffered
long--though Mistress Pennyquick and I had known nothing of it, he
being so reticent--from a disease which nowadays physicians call
angina pectoris, a disease that grips a man by the chest, as 'twere
his breastbones are ground together, with breathlessness and
exquisite pain. As he grew older, the attacks recurred more
frequently and with greater violence, and after one of them, the
first I had seen with my own eyes, he sent for Mr. Vetch, the
attorney, and was closeted with him a great while in his room.
Mistress Pennyquick's face was very grave when she spoke to me
about it afterwards.
"'Tis a bad sign when a man sends for his lawyer, Humphrey," she
said. "I can't abide 'un, for they always make me think of my
latter end. Your father have made his will, I'll be bound, and I
wish he spoke more free of things. But there, 'tis always the way;
empty barrels make the most noise, as the saying is, and I will
groan with the toothache while the poor master will suffer his
agonies without a word."
One night as we were sitting reading, my father had an attack which
terrified us. All at once, without a moment's warning, he dropped
his book, and stood up, bending forward, his face blue, his eyes
almost starting from his head. We hastened to him, but he motioned
us away, and then Mistress Pennyquick bade me ride for Mr. Pinhorn.
I snatched my cap, and, knowing that with my long legs I could
reach the town by the fields more quickly than on horseback by the
road, I did not stay to saddle Jerry, but set off at full speed
across five-acre, vaulted the gate into the spinney, and so on till
I gained the bridge, by which time I was blowing like a furnace.
It was dark, being October, and though I knew every yard of our
ground, I marvel now to think how I escaped breaking my leg in a
ditch or coming to some other mishap. I raced on to Raven Street,
where Mr. Pinhorn lived, and by good luck found him just alighting
at the door from his nag. I told him my errand in gasps; the good
surgeon understood without much telling, and he leaped again into
the saddle (his foot never having left the stirrup) and galloped
away.
My knees shook so violently with the exertions I had made that I
would fain have rested awhile before returning. But the thought
that my father might die in my absence struck me with a chill, and
I set off at a swinging stride after the surgeon.
I had gone but a few yards, however, when ahead of me, by the light
of a flickering oil lamp, hanging from a bracket before one of the
houses, I saw a group of some five or six, youths by their build,
gathered about a doorway. Immediately afterwards I heard from the
same spot a harsh sound as of rending wood, followed by guffaws of
laughter. The party then moved quickly on for a few paces, and
again came to a halt at a doorway, whence in a few seconds the same
sound reached my ears.
Passing the door at which I had first seen them, I noticed that
where the knocker should have been there was nothing but a few bent
nails and a splintered panel. After former experiences my suspicion
scarce needed this confirmation: without doubt these were our
Shrewsbury Mohocks, out for a night's frolic. I had never before
seen them at their diversions, my patrolling of the streets with
Captain Galsworthy having been a mere parade, as I have related,
and now I was in no mood to encounter them, having the trouble of
my father's illness on my mind. But I perceived that they were
engaged in wreaking their knavery upon the sign board of Nelly
Hind, and my blood waxed hot at the thought of the poor woman's
distress, and my fingers itched to strike a blow on her behalf.
Strong as I was, I knew 'twould be mere folly to attempt
single-handed to engage half a dozen, and I was thinking of running
quickly to some of the members of the Captain's disbanded force and
enlisting their help when the situation was changed by the arrival
of old Ben Ivimey, the feeblest of the ancient watchmen to whom the
peace of Shrewsbury was confided. He was past sixty and stone deaf,
and his bent old figure, with a lantern in one hand and a staff in
the other, came round the corner all unsuspecting what was in store
for him.
The Mohocks, intent upon their mischief, did not observe the coming
of the watchman. He was a little man, but must have been of some
mettle in his day, for, perceiving what is afoot, he toddles up in
his odd headlong gait, and laying his hand on the arm of one of the
roisterers, formally arrests him in the name of the mayor.
The fellow swings round at the touch, and bursts into a roar of
laughter. He was masked, as were all his companions; but I knew him
by his make to be Cyrus Vetch. Well, he laughs, and shakes off the
watchman's feeble grasp, and springing back, draws his sword; and
in another instant there was old Ben, the center of the group,
skipping this way and that to avoid their sword points, protesting,
threatening, appealing, escaping one merely to run upon another.
I will say this for them, that they intended to do him no harm;
their lunges were sportive and not in earnest; but diverting as the
sport was to them, it was the very contrary to the old man, whose
cries proclaimed that he thought his last hour was come.
All this happened in the space of a few moments. I was unwilling to
leave old Ben to the mercy of his tormentors while I ran for
assistance, as I was intending; yet it was clear I could do nothing
alone.
"John Kynaston," thinks I, "lives only a couple of hundred yards
away: he and I together might account for the ruffians."
I was just turning to make my way to Kynaston's house, when a cry
of pain from the old man drove out all considerations of prudence.
In dodging one of that ring of steel points it would appear that he
had stumbled full upon another, and the weapon, by accident or
otherwise, had pierced his arm. My blood was up; I clean forgot my
design of running for help. I had no weapon with me, but, hastily
scanning the dim-lit street for a something to wield, my foot
kicked an object in the gutter. In a trice I had seized it in both
hands, barely conscious of its weight. Then I ran with it the few
yards that separated me from the scuffle, and, lifting my weapon
above my head, hurled it at the nearest of the group. There was a
sound of fury from the fellow at whom I had aimed, and from the two
beyond him--a sound muffled and all but inarticulate, for the
missile which had fallen like a bolt among them was a large wooden
bin filled with household refuse, and placed in the gutter for the
coming of the early morning scavenger.