There was a crowded courthouse next day when Ralph Mytton and Cyrus
Vetch were brought before the Mayor and charged with breach of the
peace and malicious damage to the property of lieges. It was the
first time that the Mohocks had been caught in the act, and their
being well connected added a spice to the event.
The two prisoners bore themselves very differently. Mytton, a
nephew of the member of Parliament, assumed an air of bravado,
smiled and winked at his friends in court, evidently trusting to
his high connections to get him off lightly. Vetch, on the other
hand, was sullen and morose, never lifting his eyes from the floor
except when I was giving my evidence, and then he threw me a glance
in which I read, as clearly as in a book, the threat of venomous
hate. Both he and Mytton were very heavily fined, and the Mayor was
good enough to compliment me on the part I had played.
As we were leaving the court, a tipstaff came up to Joe Punchard,
and formally arrested him as a runaway 'prentice; at the instance,
I doubt not, of Vetch himself. But the matter ended in a triumph
for Joe, for Captain Benbow accompanied him before the Mayor and
declared that as a mariner in the King's navy he was immune from
civil action. Whether the plea was good in law I know not. The
Mayor did not know either, and the clerk, to judge by his
countenance, was in an equal state of puzzlement. But Benbow was
clearly not a man to be trifled with, and Joe had certainly had a
part in bringing the Mohocks to book, and for one reason or another
he was given the benefit of the doubt. When he left the court he
was mightily cheered by a mob of 'prentices among the crowd, and
would have accepted the invitations to drink pressed upon him but
for the peremptory orders of his captain, who was no wine bibber
himself, being therein unlike many of the navy men of his time.
The fines levied on Mytton and Vetch were the least part of their
punishment. The incident of the dust bin brought on them open
ridicule; they became the laughingstock of Shrewsbury. The school
wag, who afterwards became famous for his elegant Greek verses at
Cambridge, pilloried them in a lampoon which the whole town got by
heart, and for days afterwards they could not show their faces
without being greeted by some lines from it by every small boy who
thought himself beyond their reach. It began, I remember:
Come list me sing a famous battle,
A dustbin and a watchman's rattle;
The hero he was nominate Cyrus,
The scene was Shrewsbury, not Epirus.
The rhymester introduced all the characters; for instance:
Another who the dust has bitten
Was a brawny putt by name Ralph Mytton;
And Richard Cludde, a Cambridge lubber,
He ran away home to his mam to blubber;
and so the doggerel went on, chronicling the details (more or less
imaginary) of the fight, the entrance of Mr. Benbow and Punchard on
the scene:
And Nelly Hind's bashed portal closes
On bandy legs and Roman noses;
and ending thus:
Carmen concludo sine mora:
"Intus si recte ne labora,"
which being the school motto (dragged in by the hair of the head,
so to speak), pleased Mr. Lloyd, the master, mightily.
The rage of the persons chiefly concerned knew no bounds, and this
good came of it, that the Mohocks troubled Shrewsbury streets no
more.
Captain Benbow, and with him Joe Punchard, stayed but a few days in
the town. They had come on a flying visit in an interval of the war
against the French on the high seas, and very proud we were that
the captain, one of ourselves, was winning himself a name for
prowess and gallantry in his country's service.
Before he departed, however, I got from Joe a relation of what had
befallen him since the night he stole away. He arrived in Bristowe
footsore and ragged, and there came nigh to starving before he
found employment. One shipmaster swore his hair was too red: it
would serve for a beacon to French privateers; another, that he was
too bandy: his legs would never grip the rigging if he essayed to
go aloft. But at length he obtained a berth on a tobacco ship
trading to Virginia, and suffered great torture both from the sea
and from the harsh and brutal ship's officers. He made other
voyages, to the Guinea coast, the Indies, and elsewhere, and one
fine day, being paid off at Southampton, he chanced to hear that
Captain Benbow was in port, and making himself known to that
officer as a fellow townsman, he was taken by him to be his
servant, and had never left him since.
"And have you pickled any pirates' heads?" I asked, remembering the
story, and bethinking me of the silver-mounted cup possessed by Mr.
Ridley, the captain's brother-in-law, which was said to have once
covered the head of a sallee rover.
"Pickled fiddlesticks!" says Joe. "Dunnat believe every mariner's
tale you hear, Master Humphrey."
And then he proceeded to tell me a fearful and wonderful tale of a
sea serpent, and was mightily offended when I said it was all my
eye.
Joe went away with his captain after a few days, and I own I envied
him, and for the first time felt a secret discontent in the
prospect of a life among pigs and poultry, a feeling which was
heightened when Dick Cludde soon afterwards departed with a
commission from His Majesty. Dick was a lubber and, I believed
then, though I had afterwards proof to the contrary, a coward; and
matching myself against him I knew I would do the king's navy more
credit than he. But I kept my thought to myself--and next day made
a sad bungle, I remember, of my construe of Thucydides' account of
the sea fight at Salamis.
So months passed away. I saw with grave concern that my father was
ailing more and more. The attacks of his terrible disease came more
frequently, and Mr. Pinhorn owned that he could do him no good. He
bore his pain with wonderful fortitude, never suffering a complaint
to pass his lips. Many a time in after years I recalled his noble
courage, which helped me to bear the lesser sufferings which fell
to my lot. He seemed to know that his end was approaching, and one
day called me to his private room and talked to me with a kindness
that brought a lump into my throat.
Much of what he said is too sacred to be set down here; I can
truthfully say that his assurance of having made ample provision
for me seemed of little moment beside his earnest loving counsel,
which made the deeper impression because he had so rarely spoken in
that strain.
The end came suddenly, and with a shock that stunned me, for all I
was so well prepared for it. A few brief moments of dreadful agony,
and the good man who had been more than a father to me was no more.
Never once during his long illness had his sister Lady Cludde
visited him; neither she nor her husband accompanied his remains to
the grave: and when we had left him in the churchyard of St. Mary
and returned to the house, I was roused for a little from my stupor
by the sight of Sir Richard among those assembled to hear Mr. Vetch
read the will.
A great wave of anger surged within me when I saw him sitting in my
father's chair, his fat hands folded upon his paunch, and his
bleared eyes rolling a quizzing glance round upon the little
company. So enraged was I that I took little heed of Mr. Vetch at
the table, and heard nothing of what he said as he drew from his
pocket a long paper sealed and tied with tape. No doubt I watched
him untie the knots and break the seal, and spread the document on
the table before him; no doubt I heard his cry of amazement, and
saw Sir Richard and the few friends of my father who were present
rise from their seats and crowd about him; but I remained listless
in my place until a shriek from Mistress Pennyquick woke me to a
sense that something was amiss. Then I heard Sir Richard say, in
his loud blustrous tones:
"Then my lady inherits?"
"Not so fast, not so fast, Sir Richard," said Mr. Vetch in a tone
of great perturbation. "She is, it is true, the heir-at-law, but
our departed friend left his house, messuage, farm and all its
appurtenances to his adopted son Humphrey Bold, with an annuity of
fifty pounds per annum to his faithful housekeeper Rebecca
Pennyquick: I took down his instructions with his own hand, and
engrossed the will myself.
"There is some mistake, gentlemen, something inexplicable. I must
ask you, in all fairness, to postpone your judgment of the matter
until I have made search in my office. Never in my forty years'
experience has so untoward a thing happened, and I must beg of you
to give me time to solve the mystery."
"I will wait on you tomorrow, Mr. Attorney," says Sir Richard.
"Meanwhile I claim this property for my Lady Cludde."
And with that he takes his hat and stick and marches from the room.
The neighbors followed him, giving me commiserating glances, one or
two of them shaking me by the hand and speaking words of
condolence. Mr. Vetch remained for a time staring at the paper
before him; then he folded it and came to me.
"Some devilish prank," he said hurriedly. "Never fear, my lad; all
will come right. I will see you tomorrow, my boy."
And then he too went, leaving me alone with Mistress Pennyquick,
who had done nothing for some while but sob and rock herself to and
fro on her chair.
"That wicked man!" she moaned. "But he will be punished--he will be
punished, Humphrey. What does the good Book say about them that
despoil widows and orphans? Oh, my poor master!"
"What is it, Becky?" I asked, with but little curiosity for her
answer.
"'Tis the doing of that wicked man and his wife! I know it is," the
poor creature sobbed. "And they wouldn't come near the poor soul
when he was in his agony. And now they want to rob us--to rob you,
my poor boy, and me who served him faithful these twenty year. God
will punish him!"
"But what have they done, then?" I asked again.
"Done! Lord knows what they haven't done. I knew summat would
happen when I saw Mr. Vetch come to your poor father a while
ago--you mind, I told you so. Lawyers are all no good, that's my
belief. Don't tell me Mr. Vetch didn't know what he was a-carrying.
He's in league with the wretches, I know he is, for all his mazed
look. Don't tell me he didn't know the paper was as white as the
underside of a fleece. Fleece is the very word for it: he's fleeced
us, sure enough, and I'll come on the parish, and you'll be a
beggar, and they unnatural wretches will wallow in their pride,
and--oh! I can't abear it, I can't abear it!"
And the poor creature burst into a passion of weeping, so that it
was some time before I could learn the cause of her distress. It
was amazing enough. When Mr. Vetch unfolded the document which he
believed to be my father's will, the paper inside was as clean as
when it came from the scrivener's. There was not a single mark upon
it.