“_Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad_” is a
hackneyed adage, undeniably true in the case hereunder quoted. For when
young Mortimer’s not very shining repartee to the False Retreat in the
dandy red forage-cap was mentioned in Dispatches, by request of the
Duke of Bambridge, and reproduced, with additions and embellishment,
in all the daily papers, headed “Amusing Incident During The Action Of
Alma,” or “Good For The Guards,” or “Smart Retort Of A Young Ensign,”
the joy of Thompson Jowell almost turned his brain.
The man exulted like a triumphant ogre. He had said to the boy “Win
distinction!--it’s in your blood!” and by Gosh! the youngster had gone
and done it! He wearied Cowell, Sowell, Dowell, and the rest to the
verge of tears with endless boasts--with windy prophecies of Morty’s
future greatness. At home, or at his office or Club, or in the sacred
ante-rooms of stately Government Departments, he would sit heaving and
swelling and fermenting like a large moist, crimson heap of beetroot
being distilled into the old Jamaica rum supplied by Mowell to Her
Majesty’s Forces--until he broke and burst in bubbles of pride. On an
average he must have repeated the “I’m dam’ if I retreat! I’m blest if
I do, so there!” utterance upwards of a hundred times a day.
The fact of his son having ceased to write to him since his unrelenting
reply to the letter we know of, did not shake the monstrous egotism of
the father’s certainty that all would be well between them by-and-by.
Meanwhile he laid domineering, greedy hands on all letters that the
son wrote to his mother--opening them first, and permitting that
much-bullied woman, as a favor, to read them when he had done. He had
only to get richer, and Mortimer would come to heel, like a blundering
young pointer, none the worse in his owner’s estimation, for having
shown spirit in threatening to break away.
And every day that dawned _did_ see the man rise up with a thicker
coating of golden mud upon him, to be scraped off and invested in safe
things. He had boasted to his heir that he stood to make millions by
the War, and his boast was verified. There had been moments when his
success had almost frightened him.
But now, between paternal pride and gratified vanity, his greed of gain
was quickened, and his few remaining scruples sailed down the wind
like thistle-blow. His conscience slept behind his gorgeous waistcoat,
seldom calling for Cockle’s pills or any other helpful remedy. He left
off jolting up in bed o’ nights with the gray sweat of terror standing
on him, when the north-west wind roared among the elms of his country
place near Market Drowsing, or bellowed among the sooty chimney-pots of
Hanover Square. He could think placidly under these circumstances of
_The Realm_ thrashing on her way to the Bay of Balaklava, looking
for the Black Sea gale she was not meant to weather through. He could
await with calmness the arrival of the cablegram which should cram the
coffers of Cowell, Towell, Powell, Sowell, Bowell, Crowell, Dowell, and
Co. with solid golden drops wrung from the veins of victimized firms
of underwriters--and materially hasten the hour that should transform
himself into a glittering joss of solid bullion, before whom the
world--and chief of all the world--his son--should burn incense and bow
down.
And all the time his Fate was drawing nearer, sword uplifted.... And a
day dawned when the blade flashed and fell. And it bit deep through
the little slanting forehead, behind which all the creatures of the
Noah’s Ark--the Goose and the Donkey uppermost lately--were jumbled and
packed away.
* * * * *
It had been a wild wet summer in the British Isles that year, and
a wild wet autumn had followed. November had set in with gales and
thunderstorms. The floods were out when Jowell went down to his little
place in Sloughshire. Suppose him humming “Marble Halls” and building
castles in the air of Government hay-trusses at twenty pounds a ton,
as the train carried him through the submerged country, where men in
punts were lassoing the floating stacks and cornricks, and fishing with
grapnels for drowned pigs, sheep, and cows.
Where the land was not under water, laborers were breaking up the
green fallows for the Spring sowing. They were veterans or striplings
for the most part. Middle-aged men and young men were almost as rare
as strawberries in winter--so many had been taken by the War.... And
the cry was for more men, and more, unceasingly. At every barracks
and police-station, at every town-hall or railway booking-office,
gayly-pictured placards were posted offering bounties, baited lines
were dangled, to catch the Recruit.... Brakes carrying brass-bands,
and with beribboned warriors on the box, drove through the country
towns on market days, to the strains of “Rule, Britannia” and “See the
Conquering Hero”; the alluring stories of the dashing sergeant, battled
with newspaper-reports of a country where there was wonderful little in
the way of eating, and scarce a drop o’ beer.
But the bounties scored in the long run. Gearge and Tummus, Market-Day
over, would go back to their field-work and plod behind the teams,
whistling stray bars of “See the Conquering” and “Rule, Britannia!”
Then, as the bright steel share clogged with the fat brown clay, Gearge
would throw down the plow-stilts, swearing bitterly:
“Ten shillin’ to-wick and nowt but bread for dinner! I’ll stand it no
more--be danged if I do now! Wut say, lad? Ool’t jine th’ Army?”
“Ay! wi’ all my heart!” Lad would say. And they would leave the
farmer’s team in mid-furrow in charge of the whimpering plowboy--tramp
the six, ten or fifteen miles to the nearest recruiting station--take
the Queen’s shilling, and be sent up to Regimental Headquarters with
the very next draft.
A month of drill, a week at home to say “Good-by!” and then the rookies
would be shipped to the distant land where very often there was not
even the tough crust to gnaw for dinner; and you plowed your way, not
amidst cleanly clods, but through deep and stinking mud, where dead
bodies of men and beasts that had perished lay bloated and corrupting,
until swine or dogs or ravens had picked their bones.
* * * * *
Arrived at his “little place,” the large pretentious country mansion
standing in its brand-new shrubberies and experimental gardens on the
outskirts of a rustic hamlet within a mile of Market Drowsing, the
Contractor sent for his agent--who in a petty way was another Thompson
Jowell, and went--thoroughly as was his wont--into his rents and dues.
His gross shadow loomed large upon the village, the greater part of
which belonged to him, in virtue of his benevolent habit of advancing
money upon mortgage to small freeholders who were in difficulties, and
subsequently gulping down their land. His trail was upon the ancient
Church--where the brazen pulpit-lamps by which the Parson read his
sermon on winter evenings--the font in which infant pagans were made
Christians--the harmonium that chased the flying choir to the last
line of the hymn, the copper shovels upon which the Church wardens
collected halfpennies and buttons--bore brazen plates, testifying
that they had been presented by Thompson Jowell, Esq. And in the
churchyard an imposing vault, containing the remains of his deceased
mother, transferred from a remote burying-ground in the neighborhood of
Shadwell--where the honest soul had kept a little tobacco-shop--awaited
the hour when her son should condescend to die.
Death did not hover in the mind of Jowell at this particular juncture.
He was happy as he issued mandates for Distraint upon the goods of
non-paying cottage tenants, and indicated those mortgagors who were to
have a little rope, and those others who were to be shown no quarter.
Chief of these unfortunates was Sarah Horrotian, to whom her kinsman
had, some seven years previously, lent cash upon her freehold of the
Upper Clays.
“She’s letting the place go to rack and ruin,” said the agent. “For her
own good, sir, you ought to foreclose!”
His master pondered, routing in the stiff upright hair that had
perceptibly whitened lately. Then he roused himself with a snort, and
said that as it was a fine morning after yesterday’s rain, and the
Clays not two miles distant, he would walk over there, by Gosh, he
would! and see the widow himself.
* * * * *
When he set out, a tussle was going on between the business side of
him and the part that was paternal. The woman owed him money, but
her son had saved his son.... One may suppose, that at first he had
some vague idea of appearing before his debtor in the character of a
grateful father. But as exercise quickened Jowell’s brain, he perceived
that this would be wrong. People who had the impudence to borrow money
without the means to pay it back, were presumptuous no less than
improvident. _Ergo_, to waive his claim to arrears of interest,
was to encourage Sarah Horrotian in presumption and improvidence.
Moreover, other people in the same boat as the widow would hear,
and expect Thompson Jowell to extend to them a similar benevolence.
Further, it was the bounden duty of the trooper to have saved young
Mortimer Jowell from the sea. In common Christianity he couldn’t have
done otherwise. He ought to think himself lucky that he had got the
chance.
And to delay foreclosing would be to wrong this same son Mortimer, who
had won distinction as he had promised his old Governor, and through
whom the name of Jowell was to strike deep root in the County and
spread wide and tower high. Whether the boy wanted it or not, he should
have The Clays for a stud-farm and hunting-box. Tip-top nobs needed
these things. And, by Gosh! Jowell’s son was going to be a tip-top nob.
Baron Jowell of Drowsing, K.C.B., Lord-Lieutenant of Sloughshire. He
said the words to himself over and over, chewing them, ruminating
over them, extracting their juice. And set his face--by dint of
their constant repetition--into so coarse a cast of greed and
mercilessness, that when his squat shadow fell over the half-door of
the farm-kitchen, Sarah Horrotian looked up from the tub of clothes she
was washing, and the feeble spark of hope that had kindled in her gaunt
black eyes at the sight of her great kinsman died out there and then.
* * * * *
Things had gone ill at The Clays since the Second Exodus of Joshua
Horrotian. Betsey Twitch, the half-widow, having been taken on
as dairymaid in place of Nelly, had, in company with the pigman,
Digweed, been detected in scarlet doings, and, with her fellow sinner,
incontinently cast forth. And without even such clumsy supervision as
the departed Jason’s, Sarah’s laborers had ceased laboring and her
weeders took their rest.
Stock had to be sold ere long, to pay up interest due on Jowell’s
mortgage. The stately hayricks vanished one by one. After the
Declaration of War, read by the Mayor from the balcony of the Town Hall
in Market Drowsing, Sarah ceased to sell her eggs, chickens and butter
on Thursdays in the shadow of the civic edifice. She even left off
attending the local Bethesda, where the Mayor was regarded as a shining
light.
For the Almighty would judge the man, she prophesied, for bringing on
the War between England and Russia. If he had set his foot down firmly,
the Lord Mayor of London and Queen Victoria might have been led to see
the error of their ways.
She preached this belief of hers unceasingly, in tones that clanged
like beaten fire-irons. It was no use to argue.--Sarah knew best....
Ere long, when Tudd Dowsall and Joe Chinney took the Queen’s shilling
and trudged away in the wake of the recruiting sergeant, flying ribbons
of patriotic colors, Sarah made no attempt to fill their vacant places.
The last beast had been sold to pay the poor-rates. Her purse was as
empty as the heart behind her wedge-shaped apron-bib, when Thompson
Jowell threw open the half-door, and rolled into the kitchen, keeping
his curly-brimmed, low-topped hat upon his pear-shaped head, and
flourishing his gold-mounted cane.
“What’s this I hear?” he said blusteringly. “Now what does this mean,
Mrs. Horrotian? Here have I come marching up your muddy lane to know!
You’re a religious woman and you don’t pay your debts! Do you call
that a-keeping up of your profession? Four hundred pounds of my money
has gone to bolster up this here farming-business of yours, and two
years’ interest will be due in a week. You may tell me that Juffkins
has taken stock and what-not from time to time, on account of my
Twenty-five per cent. Ay! and he may have--but Cash Payments should
be made in cash. Those cows and pigs and that hay of yours fetched
nothing--I’m a loser by the sum I allowed you for ’em. I am, and by
Gosh! ma’am, what have you got to say?”
“It is the will of the Lord,” returned Sarah Horrotian, returning
Jowell’s stare unflinchingly, though her thin face was as white as
chalk between her graying hair-loops, and her heart beat in sickening
thumps. “Though, if my son were here he would find a word to say for
the mother that suckled him, and the farm be his, take it how you
like it. He have been of age these ten years, and ought to ha’ been
considered. There would be lawyers should say as I ought never to ha’
borrowed money on th’ property wi’out his written name!”
She had put her bony finger on the weak place in Thompson Jowell’s
mortgage. If he had for a moment intended to spare her, the flicker of
pity died out in him as he stood rolling his moist eyes and blowing at
her in his walrus-style. His mind was made up. He would foreclose at
once, in case the bumptious ne’er-do-well of a son should live to come
home, and--taking dishonest advantage of the flaw--rob his son Mortimer
of his hunting-box. There should be no delay.
Meaning to turn the widow out, without fail, upon the morrow, he
spoke of time to pay, even hinted at a further loan. Then Sarah broke
down and wept with loud hard sobs. This brought the ready tears into
the eyes of Thompson Jowell. He called her his dear Cousin Sarah,
quoted the adage about blood being thicker than water, even made
an uncertain dab with his pursed-up mouth at the knobby forehead
between the black-gray hair-loops, as though to plant a cousinly kiss
there--thought better of it, took leave, and went upon his way.
Fate, the grim executioner, walked behind Thompson Jowell as he waddled
across the Upper Clays farmyard, sloppy as of yore, but populous no
longer with squattering ducks, musing pigs reclining on moist litter,
and hairy faces of cows and plow-horses contemplating their world
across the half-doors of stables and sheds.
The white gate clashed behind Fate as well as the Contractor; and, when
he struck into the narrow hedgerow-bordered lane dividing the westerly
slope of the clay-lands, whose deep, sticky mire had made havoc of his
brown cloth spatterdashes on the way up, Fate followed at his heels.
He was portentously cheerful at dinner that evening. Fate stood behind
his chair as he gobbled, and cracked his bottle of Port. When he pulled
his tasseled nightcap down to his great mottled ears and flounced into
bed after his aggressive fashion, Fate snuffed the candle and drew the
brocaded bed-curtains close. And when the meek, dowdy woman, lying
sleepless beside him, wondered why he groaned and snorted?--he was
having his Fate-sent dream.
* * * * *
You are to know that it seemed to Thompson Jowell that he arose from
bed, and without even waiting to throw on his Oriental dressing-gown
over the brief and airy garment of slumber, straightway flew to the
Seat of War. And presently, with a sound in his ears as though two
prehistoric beasts of inconceivable size were roaring at each other, he
found himself hanging over the Advanced Line of Siege Works, scanning
three finger-shaped plateaus, powdered with snow, and divided from each
other by deep ravines.
* * * * *
Beyond a strip of plain, tufted with scrub, and humped with the
crumbling ruins of Greek churches--that had been reared above the tombs
and temples of ancient Scythian Kings--lay the proud fortress-city of
Tsar Nicholas, in the crook of an arm of glittering blue-black sea. And
from the marvelous array of Defense-works that had sprung up since the
Army of the South had rolled away towards Simferopol, puffs of white
smoke accompanied the ringing crash of brazen 64-pounders, and the dull
boom of the mortar-firing answered similar puffs, booms, and crashes,
hailing from the French and British batteries.
Even as Jowell gazed--hanging suspended under a leaden sky-arch in
which pale, luminous meteors crossed and recrossed, whistling like
curlews, and sometimes bursting in mid-air, a tremendous explosion
not far beneath his naked feet, accompanied by a sound as though an
express train, loaded with scrap-iron, had passed upon its journey
to Sevastopol, warned him that the Lancaster batteries were upon the
cliffs immediately behind him, and that his position had its risks.
“This is all very well,” said the Contractor, “and uncommon like what
I have a-read of in the newspapers, proving that the blackguards who
write for ’em tell the truth once in a way. But what I have come here
for is to see my son, Ensign Mortimer Jowell, Second Battalion Cut Red
Feathers. And I’ll give anybody a sovereign who’ll take me to their
Lines.”
With the words, Jowell began to sink; and--firmly convinced that he was
being taken in the wrong direction--presently found himself standing in
a slushy alley-way.
Upon his right was a ten-foot parapet of yellow clay, strengthened
with sandbags and earth-filled gabions. Upon his left was a low cliff,
in which caves that were magazines for ammunition, and magnified
rabbit-holes that made bomb-proof shelters for human beings, had been
delved and burrowed out. There were embrasures in the right-hand
parapet, and a row of thirty-two pounders was mounted on the platforms
facing the embrasures; and haggard, hairy-faced sentries in tattered
great-coats, wearing leg-bandages of sacking and canvas, were placed at
intervals on mounds of clay, so that their eyes were raised above the
level of the parapet.
The men who worked the guns were Royal Artillery, but the sentries,
and two of a group of haggard men who sat with their backs against the
parapet were Guards, wearing the forage-cap badge of the Garter Star,
peculiarly distinctive of the Cut Red Feathers. Save for those shabby
tarnished badges, and the stained and ragged silk sashes the two men
wore over clumsy coats of rabbit-skin, there was nothing to distinguish
them as officers, except an authoritative manner. Not even the fact
that he knew himself to be in his nightshirt would have kept Jowell
from breaking in upon their conversation. But even as he opened his
mouth, there was a cry of “Shot!” followed by a crash; and earth and
stones flew in showers, mingled with clouds of yellow dust.
A solid projectile from one of the Barbarians’ big brass sixty-two
pounders had struck the parapet, knocking a good-sized piece away. One
of the look-out men had toppled off his earth-mound, and lay sprawling
in the shin-deep icy slush that was all stained with red about him.
Men with gabions and shovels hastened to make good the damage to the
epaulement. One of the seated officers got up, strode over, stooped
down and examined the fallen private. Even to Thompson Jowell’s
unskilled eyes there was no repairing _him_.
But something in the gait of the tall, broad-shouldered, weather-beaten
young officer quickened the beating of the Contractor’s heart, and
brought the tears into his eyes. It was his son, bronzed and whiskered,
hard-bitten and lean, who said, “Gaw! Poor beggar!” as he rose up and
turned away from the headless private. Regardless of his naked legs,
and the freezing blasts that sported with his single garment, Thompson
Jowell ran forwards, with hands outstretched, crying, in a gush of
tenderness:
“Morty! My own boy!”
The face of the young officer had not previously been turned towards
the visitor in the nightshirt. But now it met his fully, and the heart
of Jowell stopped beating with a jolt. For that cold, ignoring look
disowned him and unfathered him. It told him that he had been warned,
and had ignored the warning; and that henceforth, of his own act, he
must be a stranger to his only son.
In the horror of this revelation he screamed out, and awakened. He
leaped out of bed and floundered to the window, pulled aside the blind,
and looked upon a calm, bright dawn. Not a breath of wind creaked his
elms, but far away in the Bay of Balaklava, Fate was brewing that Black
Sea gale _The Realm_ had waited for so long.