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THE SCOTTISH BEADLE.
HALF A CENTURY AGO.
Just as the old familiar landmarks of a place undergo in the course
of time that change and decay which are the common lot of all things
earthly ere they are finally removed from sight, nevermore to exist
save as a name or memory, so many of the features or characteristics
of our social life are continually being submitted to that process of
transformation, and, in many respects, of obliteration, which prevails
alike in the moral and the physical world. That process is to be
witnessed every day. It is a result of the inevitable law to which
everything human, every institution of man’s making or developing, is
finally subservient. Assuredly, there is no feature or characteristic
of life, whether viewed in a national or in an individual sense, but
has to submit sooner or later to this universal order of things; and
so, naturally, we may look, and look in vain to-day for that which but
yesterday was an interesting and distinguishing trait in a certain
aspect of the social life of those who then filled, as we do now, the
measure of the time.
This reflection is irresistible in considering such a subject as that
of ‘Beadles,’ a class of individuals who once filled a unique and
peculiar place in the humbler walks of the social life of their time;
for, as a class, they certainly cannot be said to form a feature in
the social life of the present day. Of course, even yet the number of
persons fulfilling the orthodox functions appertaining to the beadle
is as large as ever—in all probability, larger. No minister surely, in
Scotland at least, but enjoys his appurtenance in the person of his
‘man’ or officer. But the beadle of fifty years ago, the beadle with
whom Dean Ramsay delighted to ‘forgather,’ where now is he? Sadly do
we fear that he is at length sleeping his last long sleep within the
quiet precincts of his ‘ain kirkyard,’ while another performs, after a
fashion, those functions of his office which were ever his delight and
pride, and which brought him in their performance not a little of that
social renown which assuredly belonged to him, and to him alone.
The many stories told of the doings and sayings of beadles—the old
originals—would fill, we believe, a goodly-sized volume. Not a few such
stories have already been related by Dean Ramsay in his delightful
_Reminiscences_, while many more are collected in other well-known
books of Scottish anecdote. These stories go to prove the beadle to
have been a character which, as has been said, is all but extinct
in our times. A few remote parishes may yet retain worthy enough
representatives of the quaint and ancient ‘bedellus,’ but, generally
speaking, they are mere milk-and-water copies of the old originals.
Initially, he has lost his very name, which mincing modern speech has
corrupted from beadle to ‘church-officer.’ Then, as to his personal
identity, in place of the old-time periwig he was wont to wear, he has
now—why often, he has nothing to show! Instead of the blue swallow-tail
coat with the brightly burnished buttons, and the quaint knee-breeches
whereby there were displayed those ‘shrunk shanks’ of his which
betokened their possessor to have arrived at that sixth age of the
human cycle, he now wears ‘a customary suit of solemn black.’ Instead
of that delightful affection and familiarity which existed between
himself and his minister, there is now a due and proper regard paid to
their respective ‘places.’ Instead of the minister and his elders being
ever in awe of their ‘man,’ he has now to bear himself with appropriate
respect and deference towards the minister and his session. All,
indeed, is now changed; and his ancient worthiness cannot surely be
identified among the plain and—in point of public character—featureless
individuals who methodically and perfunctorily follow in his footsteps.
If he survive at all, it is only here and there in a few stray stories
and traditions embodying a pathetic remembrance of him as having lived
in a bygone time in that social life of our country to which he was
peculiarly indigenous, and of which he was, in a remarkable degree, so
distinctive and interesting a feature.
Perhaps the time when the beadle flourished at his best and attracted
to himself most of that social renown which made him a personage of
no little importance—in rural districts at anyrate—was from half a
century to a century ago. Of course many persons will yet vividly
remember certain beadles of their acquaintance who were extant even
within a decade or two ago, and enjoying in the flesh all that ‘pride
of place’ to which their connection with ecclesiastical affairs had
elevated them. Indeed, not a few may yet be living in various parts
of the country who may not unworthily claim to share in that peculiar
notorious regard which so many of their predecessors in office enjoyed;
but it is to be feared that even they are every year becoming more
and more a minus quantity, and the time is all but come, if it has
not already come, when, so far as their social popularity as a class
of characteristic individuals is concerned, they will soon, like the
flowers of the forest, be ‘a’ wede away.’
Half a century ago or so, however, it was a poor country parish that
had not within its confines some entertaining worthy in the person of
the beadle; for where the parishioners lacked entertainment, whether
of a social or a graver kind, in the efforts of their clergy, which,
indeed, was rarely the case, then they were almost certain to obtain
it in some form or other in the sayings and doings of the inferior
but not less interesting functionaries, their beadles. In not a few
places, the popularity of the latter far eclipsed that of the former:
a fact which was once at least ludicrously emphasised by the story of
the very jovial beadle who excused his too frequent indulgences in
strong drink—a propensity which had merited the repeated rebukes of his
minister, who naturally enough quoted his own sobriety as an example—on
the ground of the greater popularity he enjoyed, and to which the
minister could not, he declared, make anything like the same claim.
Nor was this general regard in which, as a class, they were held,
derived solely from their connection with the church; for, in addition
to their more serious Sabbath-day functions and opportunities,
they were by no means unwilling to become, in a secular and an
unofficial sense, the valuable receptacles of all the local news and
tittle-tattle, albeit they were not unfrequently at the same time the
ready mouthpiece for the dissemination of the same. In one or two
country districts, we have heard the phrase, ‘to blab like a beadle,’
which gives some colouring to this latter statement; but, on the whole,
it is only fair to say in his behalf that there were others who could
blab as well as he about those parochial secrets with which it was his
business, more or less, to become acquainted. To be a model to his
class, there was, in fact, no secret but he knew all about, and at
first-hand too; no scandal whispered ominously within the precincts of
the manse or session-house but was ‘piper’s news’ to him; and whether
the _fama_ in question related to the latest heterodoxy of the minister
himself, or to some serious moral defection on the part of the laird,
or had regard to the love ongoings of Matty the farmer’s lass, or even
had to do with such a temporal matter as the chronic rheumatism of the
Doctor’s lady, all was known to his beadleship long before the whisper
could be shapen into palpable words; and thus he was ever, Sabbath-day
and week-day alike, as wise as Sir Oracle himself.
His local influence, therefore, was by no means despicable. Many
persons finding in him a man of information, of ripe wisdom, of
undeniable honesty, of excellent counsel, in which neither the village
doctor nor the schoolmaster, nor even the minister, could excel,
however nearly they may have approached him, looked up to him often
with genuine regard and affection, and were easily inclined to forgive
whatever faults and failings occasionally exhibited themselves whether
in his ‘walk’ or his ‘conversation;’ for sometimes even _his_ human
nature was liable to err. Thus, whatever he said, gained the ear of
the parish; whatever he did, filled the popular eye; and while the
doctor and the schoolmaster, ay, and even the minister, are each
and all now well-nigh forgotten, to this day _his_ name is still
remembered, and his sayings repeated. In some places, of course, he
occasionally figured small and unworthily; but, generally speaking,
the beadle of the time indicated was really a very notable and
important social character, although his fame did not extend beyond
the bourn of the parish to which he belonged; but of the result of the
pathetic, although petty part he played on his narrow human stage, all
that remains to us to-day is the not uninteresting though sorrowful
reflection that he was a distinguishing feature of a quiet, easy-going,
giving-and-taking time in the past history of Scotland. But with the
advance of the times, the personality of the beadle becomes less
striking, grows less interesting. His quondam local gossip and tattle,
what are they with the multitudinous-tongued newspaper? What are the
village secrets compared with the great doings in the mighty city,
humming yonder like a vast human hive? Soon did our worthy friend feel
that the big, busy world, of which he and his villagers had heard but
little, and knew less, was now beginning to push itself upon them,
until at length one day it was discovered that his and their identity
were being merged and lost in the ever-increasing crowds of men. But
it was only the way of the world, to which even beadles must submit
themselves. That they have done so is only too apparent to-day, when,
in this little corner of the world, of which they were once as native
as the thistle or the heather, perhaps not a score of them are to be
found of the good old style of fifty years ago.
A few stories about these worthies may not be out of place in
concluding these reflections. Perhaps the most original saying,
embodying a rare thought, quaint yet beautiful, ever expressed by a
beadle was that attributed to Jamie M——, who served in that capacity
for nearly thirty years to the church of B——. His beadleship was, as
far as wages were concerned, trifling, and therefore Jamie had to work
as a stone-breaker to keep body and soul together. At length, after
a long life of patient toil, he took to his deathbed, where one day,
in reply to the minister, who had called to see him, and, by way of
reminding him of the heavenly joys on which he was about to enter,
doubted not that he would soon be joining in the choir celestial, Jamie
said that he had ‘full assurance of faith for certain, but that as for
the choiring, he was aye bad at a tune. Howsoever, when he got to the
New Jerusalem, _he was willin’ to work wi’ his hands if the Maister
wanted him!_’
The office of beadle was frequently, in many country parishes,
combined with that of sexton or gravedigger—an office which afforded
considerable scope for the display of those pathetic, if oftentimes
grotesque, traits of character. We remember one worthy who considered
the latter office of much more interest and importance than the former.
‘As beadle he only waited on the living; but as sexton and gravedigger,
he waited on the dead!’ Another worthy used to say that for performing
the duties of beadle he only got the ‘session’s siller;’ while for
assisting at those more solemn and sad burial-rites, he got the ‘deid’s
perquisites!’
Dr Begg, in his _Autobiography_, tells a story—not, however, for the
first time—of a grave-digging beadle who, in reply to a question put
to him by his minister, said that ‘Trade’s very dull the noo; I hae
na buried a leevin’ cratur for three weeks.’ This same beadle, who
was very much an eye-servant, was appointed to watch the gooseberries
(Scotticé _grosets_) during the days of the communion, when, amongst
a multitude of worthy people, some doubtful characters came about. On
one occasion, when the beadle saw some one coming out of the manse, and
therefore likely to observe and report, he exclaimed with the greatest
apparent zeal to strangers going near the garden: ‘How daur ye touch
the minister’s grosets?’ But as soon as the manse-people had vanished
out of sight, he proceeded to add, in an undertone: ‘Tak ye a pickle [a
few] for a’ that!’
Apropos of the sexton-beadle, the writer lately heard an excellent
story—which has never before been printed—regarding Thomas Carlyle and
a late beadle of Ecclefechan. In the churchyard, which has now been
made famous by the fact that it contains the mortal remains of the
great sage, there stood, and still stands, a very old and dilapidated
tombstone, on which are engraven some illegible hieroglyphics, which
the beadle pretended to decipher, translating their purport in such a
way as to reflect very flatteringly on the moral and social qualities
of the persons—his ancestors—to whom they referred. On one occasion,
when Carlyle visited this place of the dead, the beadle showed him
round, but first of all pointed to this mysterious stone, underneath
which reposed all that was mortal of the beadle’s supposed illustrious
ancestors, and dilated with his well-known exaggeration on the very
high characters which, according to the hieroglyphics of the stone,
they bore when in the flesh. Carlyle, knowing the beadle’s soft point
with regard to his ‘forebears,’ listened for a time in silence to the
glowing description of individuals who never had had any existence save
in imagination, and at length quietly remarked as he passed on: ‘Puir
cratur, ye’ll sune be gathered to them yersel’!’
The social popularity which many beadles enjoyed not unfrequently
encouraged them to take certain liberties, which, nowadays at all
events, would not be permitted either within or without the ‘sphere’
in which they lived and worked. What would be thought of a beadle, for
instance, who would presume to correct the precentor in announcing
from his box a proclamation of marriage between parties, as once did
a beadle of a parish near Arbroath? The precentor had somehow been
provided with a ‘proclaiming’ paper, in which the name of one of the
parties had been wrongly stated, as the beadle supposed; and as the
precentor duly proceeded to make the announcement that ‘there was a
solemn purpose of marriage between Alexander Spink of Fisher’s Loan and
Elspeth Hackett of Burn Wynd,’ he was unceremoniously interrupted by
the beadle suddenly exclaiming: ‘That’s wrang, that’s wrang! It’s no
Sanders Spink o’ Fisher’s Loan that’s gaun to marry Elspeth Hackett,
but Lang Sanders Spink o’ Smithy Croft!’
The story of Watty Tinlin, the half-crazy beadle of Hawick parish,
is another proof of this license, which was, on certain occasions,
supposed to be due to his office. One day Wat got so tired of listening
to the long sermon of a strange minister, that he went outside the
church, and wandering in the direction of the river Teviot, saw the
worshippers from the adjoining parish of Wilton grossing the bridge on
their way home. Returning to the church and finding the preacher still
thundering away, he shouted out, to the astonishment and relief of
the exhausted congregation: ‘Say amen, sir; say amen! Wulton’s kirk’s
comin’ ower Teyit Brig!’ Such conduct on a Sunday in the present year
of grace, if it did not relegate the offender to the police cell, would
at anyrate result in a very solemn and serious sitting of the ‘session’
on the following Monday. But the times are changed; and not only have
beadles, but ministers and churches, too, changed with them; and the
living embodiments of the class whose peculiar and, on the whole, not
unpleasant idiosyncrasies of character and ‘calling’ we have thus
briefly indicated, are now few and far between.
IN ALL SHADES.
BY GRANT ALLEN,
AUTHOR OF ‘BABYLON,’ ‘STRANGE STORIES,’ ETC. ETC.
CHAPTER XVII.
‘We’d better go, Tom,’ Mr Dupuy said, almost pitying them. ‘Upon my
word, it’s perfectly true; they neither of them knew a word about it.’
‘No, by Jove, they didn’t,’ Tom Dupuy answered with a sneer, as he
walked out into the piazza.—‘What a splendid facer, though, it was,
Uncle Theodore, for a confounded upstart nigger of a brown man.—But, I
say,’ as they passed out of the piazza and mounted their horses once
more by the steps—for they were riding—‘did you ever see anything more
disgusting in your life than that woman there—a real white woman, and a
born lady, Nora tells me—slobbering over and hugging that great, ugly,
hulking, coloured fellow!’
‘He’s white enough to look at,’ Mr Dupuy said reflectively. ‘Poor soul,
she married him without knowing anything about it. It’ll be a terrible
blow for her, I expect, finding out, now she’s tied to him irrevocably,
that he’s nothing more than a common brown man.’
‘She ought to be allowed to get a divorce,’ Tom Dupuy exclaimed warmly.
‘It’s preposterous to think that a born lady, and the daughter of a
General Somebody over in England, should be tethered for life to a
creature of that sort, whom she’s married under what’s as good as false
pretences!’
Meanwhile, the unhappy woman who had thus secured the high prize of Mr
Tom Dupuy’s distinguished compassion was sitting on the sofa in the
big bare drawing-room, holding her husband’s hand tenderly in hers
and soothing him gently by murmuring every now and then in a soft
undertone: ‘My darling, how glad we are to know that, after all, it’s
nothing, nothing.’
Edward’s stupor lasted for many minutes; not so much because he was
deeply hurt or horrified, for there wasn’t much at bottom to horrify
him, but simply because he was stunned by the pure novelty and
strangeness of that curious situation. A brown man—a brown man! It was
too extraordinary! He could hardly awake himself from the one pervading
thought that absorbed and possessed for the moment his whole nature. At
last, however, he awoke himself slowly. After all, how little it was,
compared with their worst fears and anticipations! ‘Thomas,’ he cried
to the negro butler, ‘bring round our horses as quick as you can saddle
them.—Darling, we must ride up to Agualta this moment, and speak about
it all to my father and mother.’
In Trinidad, everybody rides; indeed, there is no other way of getting
about from place to place among the mountains, for carriage-roads are
there unknown, and only narrow winding horse-paths climb slowly round
the interminable peaks and gullies. The Hawthorns’ own house was on
the plains just at the foot of the hills; but Agualta and most of the
other surrounding houses were up high among the cooler mountains. So
the very first thing Marian and Edward had had to do on reaching the
island was to provide themselves with a couple of saddle-horses, which
they did during their first week’s stay at Agualta. In five minutes
the horses were at the door; and Marian, having rapidly slipped on her
habit, mounted her pony and proceeded to follow her agitated husband up
the slender thread of mountain-road that led tortuously to his father’s
house. They rode along in single file, as one always must on these
narrow, ledge-like, West Indian bridle-paths, and in perfect silence.
At first, indeed, Marian tried to throw out a few casual remarks about
the scenery and the tree-ferns, to look as if the disclosure was to her
less than nothing—as, indeed, but for Edward’s sake, was actually the
case—but her husband was too much wrapped up in his own bitter thoughts
to answer her by more than single monosyllables. Not that he spoke
unkindly or angrily; on the contrary, his tenderness was profounder
than ever, for he knew now to what sort of life he had exposed Marian;
but he had no heart just then for talking of any sort; and he felt
that until he understood the whole matter more perfectly, words were
useless to explain the situation.
As for Marian, one thought mainly possessed her: had even Nora, too,
turned against them and forsaken them?
Old Mr Hawthorn met them anxiously on the terrace of Agualta. He saw
at once, by their pale and troubled faces, that they now knew at least
part of the truth. ‘Well, my boy,’ he said, taking Edward’s hand in his
with regretful gentleness, ‘so you have found out the ban that hangs
over us?’
‘In part, at least,’ Edward answered, dismounting; and he proceeded
to pour forth into his father’s pitying and sympathetic ear the whole
story of their stormy interview with the two Dupuys. ‘What can they
mean,’ he asked at last, drawing himself up proudly, ‘by calling such
people as you and me “brown men,” father?’
The question, as he asked it that moment, in the full sunshine
of Agualta Terrace, did indeed seem a very absurd one. Two more
perfect specimens of the fair-haired, blue-eyed, pinky-white-skinned
Anglo-Saxon type it would have been extremely difficult to discover
even in the very heart of England itself, than the father and son who
thus faced one another. But old Mr Hawthorn shook his handsome gray old
head solemnly and mournfully. ‘It’s quite true, my boy,’ he answered
with a painful sigh—‘quite true, every word of it. In the eyes of
all Trinidad, of all the West Indies, you and I are in fact coloured
people.’
‘But father, dear father,’ Marian said pleadingly, ‘just look at
Edward! There isn’t a sign or a mark on him anywhere of anything but
the purest English blood! Just look at him, father; how can it be
possible?’—and she took up, half unconsciously, his hand—that usual
last tell-tale of African descent, but in Edward Hawthorn’s case
stainless and white as pure wax. ‘Surely you don’t mean to tell me,’
she said, kissing it with wifely tenderness, ‘there is negro blood—the
least, the tiniest fraction, in dear Edward!’
‘Listen to me, dear one,’ the old man said, drawing Marian closer to
his side with a fatherly gesture. ‘My father was a white man. Mary’s
father was a white man. Our grandfathers on both sides were pure white,
and our grandmothers on one side were white also. All our ancestors
in the fourth degree were white, save only one—fifteen whites to one
coloured out of sixteen quarters—and that one was a mulatto in either
line—Mary’s and my great-great-grandmother. In England or any other
country of Europe, we should be white—as white as you are. But such
external and apparent whiteness isn’t enough by any means for our
West Indian prejudices. As long as you have the remotest taint or
reminiscence of black blood about you in any way—as long as it can
be shown, by tracing your pedigree pitilessly to its fountainhead,
that any one of your ancestors was of African origin—then, by all
established West Indian reckoning, you are a coloured man, an outcast,
a pariah.—You have married a coloured man, Marian; and your children
and your grandchildren to the latest generations will all of them for
ever be coloured also.’
‘How cruel—how wicked—how abominable!’ Marian cried, flushed and red
with sudden indignation. ‘How unjust so to follow the merest shadow or
suspicion of negro blood age after age to one’s children’s children!’
‘And how far more unjust still,’ Edward exclaimed with passionate
fervour, ‘ever so to judge of any man not by what he is in himself, but
by the mere accident of the race or blood from which he is descended!’
Marian flushed again with still deeper colour; she felt in her heart
that Edward’s indignation went further than hers, down to the very root
and ground of the whole matter.
‘But, O father,’ she began again after a slight pause, clinging
passionately both to her husband and to Mr Hawthorn, ‘are they going
to visit this crime of birth even on a man of Edward’s character and
Edward’s position?’
‘Not on him only,’ the old man whispered with infinite tenderness—‘not
on him only, my daughter, my dear daughter—not on him only, but on
you—on you, who are one of themselves, an English lady, a true white
woman of pure and spotless lineage. You have broken their utmost and
sacredest law of race; you have married a coloured man! They will
punish you for it cruelly and relentlessly. Though you did it, as he
did it, in utter ignorance, they will punish you for it cruelly; and
that’s the very bitterest drop in all our bitter cup of ignominy and
humiliation.’
There was a moment’s silence, and then Edward cried to him aloud:
‘Father, father, you ought to have told me of this earlier!’
His father drew back at the word as though one had stung him. ‘My boy,’
he answered tremulously, ‘how can you ever reproach me with that? You
at least should be the last to reproach me. I sent you to England, and
I meant to keep you there. In England, this disgrace would have been
nothing—less than nothing. Nobody would ever have known of it, or if
they knew of it, minded it in any way. Why should I trouble you with a
mere foolish fact of family history utterly unimportant to you over in
England? I tried my hardest to prevent you from coming here; I tried to
send you back at once when you first came. But do you wonder, now, I
shrank from telling you the ban that lies upon all of us here? And do
you blame me for trying to spare you the misery I myself and your dear
mother have endured without complaining for our whole lifetime?’
‘Father,’ Edward cried again, ‘I was wrong; I was ungrateful. You have
done it in all kindness. Forgive me—forgive me!’
‘There is nothing to forgive, my boy—nothing to forgive, Edward. And
now, of course, you will go back to England?’
Edward answered quickly: ‘Yes, yes, father; they have conquered—they
have conquered—I shall go back to England; and you, too, shall come
with me. If it were for my own sake alone, I would stop here even so,
and fight it out with them to the end till I gained the victory. But
I can’t expose Marian—dear, gently nurtured, tender Marian—to the
gibes and scorn of these ill-mannered planter people. She shall never
again submit to the insult and contumely she has had to endure this
morning.—No, no, Marian darling, we shall go back to England—back to
England—back to England!’
‘And why,’ Marian asked, looking up at her father-in-law suddenly,
‘didn’t you yourself leave the country long ago? Why didn’t you go
where you could mix on equal terms with your natural equals? Why have
you stood so long this horrible, wicked, abominable injustice?’
The old man straightened himself up, and fire flashed from his eyes
like an old lion’s as he answered proudly: ‘For Edward! First of all,
I stopped here and worked to enable me to bring up my boy where his
talents would have the fullest scope in free England. Next, when I
had grown rich and prosperous here at Agualta, I stayed on because I
wouldn’t be beaten in the battle and driven out of the country by the
party of injustice and social intolerance. I wouldn’t yield to them;
I wouldn’t give way to them; I wouldn’t turn my back upon the baffled
and defeated clique of slave-owners, because, though my father was an
English officer, my mother was a slave, Marian!’ He looked so grand and
noble an old man as he uttered simply and unaffectedly those last few
words—the pathetic epitaph of a terrible dead and buried wrong, still
surviving in its remote effects—that Marian threw her arms around his
neck passionately, and kissed him with one fervent kiss of love and
admiration, almost as tenderly as she had kissed Edward himself in the
heat of the first strange discovery.
‘Edward,’ she cried, with resolute enthusiasm, ‘we will _not_ go home!
We will not return to England. We, too, will stay and fight out the
cruel battle against this wicked prejudice. We will do as your father
has done. I love him for it—I honour him for it! To me, it’s less
than nothing, my darling, that you should seem to have some small
little taint by birth in the eyes of these miserable, little, outlying
islanders. To me, it’s less than nothing that they should dare to look
down upon you, and to set themselves up against you—you, so great, so
learned, so good, so infinitely nobler than them, and better than them
in every way! Who are they, the wretched, ignorant, out-of-the-way
creatures, that they venture to set themselves up as our superiors? I
will not yield, either. I’m my father’s daughter, and I won’t give way
to them. Edward, Edward, darling Edward, we will stop here still, we
_shall_ stop here and defeat them!’
‘My darling,’ Edward answered, kissing her forehead tenderly, ‘you
don’t know what you say; you don’t realise what it would be like for
us to live here. I can’t expose you to so much misery and awkwardness.
It would be wrong of me—unmanly of me—cowardly of me—to let my wife be
constantly met with such abominable, undeserved insult!’
‘Cowardly! Edward,’ Marian cried, stamping her pretty little foot upon
the ground impatiently with womanly emphasis, ‘cowardly—cowardly! The
cowardice is all the other way, I fancy. I’m not ashamed of my husband,
here or anywhere. I love you; I admire you; I respect you. But I can
never again respect you so much if you run away, even for my sake, from
this unworthy prejudice. I don’t want to live here always, for ever;
God forbid! I hate and detest it; but I shall stay here a year—two
years—three years, if I like, just to show the hateful creatures that
I’m not afraid of them!’
‘No, no, my child,’ old Mr Hawthorn murmured tenderly, smoothing her
forehead; ‘this is no home for you, Marian. Go back to England—go back
to England!’
Marian turned to him with feverish energy. ‘Father,’ she cried, ‘dear,
good, kind, gentle, loving father! You’ve taught me better yourself;
your own words have taught me better. I won’t give way to them; I’ll
stay in the land where you have stayed, and I’ll show them I’m not
ashamed of you or of Edward either! Ashamed! I’m only ashamed to say
the word. What is there in either of you for a woman not to be proud of
with all the deepest and holiest pride in her whole nature!’
‘My darling,’ Edward answered thoughtfully, ‘we shall have to think and
talk more with one another about this wretched, miserable business.’
CHAPTER XVIII.
The very next morning, as Edward and Marian were still loitering over
the mangoes and bananas at eleven o’clock breakfast—the West Indies
keep continental hours—they were surprised and pleased by hearing
a pony’s tramp cease suddenly at the front-door, and Nora Dupuy’s
well-known voice calling out as cheerily and childishly as ever:
‘Marian, Marian! you dear old thing, please send somebody out here at
once, to hold my horse for a minute, will you?’
The words fell upon both their ears just then as an oasis in the desert
of isolation from women’s society, to which they had been condemned for
the last ten days. The tears rose quickly into Marian’s eyes at those
familiar accents, and she ran out hastily, with arms outstretched, to
meet her one remaining girl-acquaintance. ‘O Nora, Nora, darling Nora!’
she cried, catching the bright little figure lovingly in her arms, as
Nora leapt with easy grace from her mountain pony, ‘why didn’t you come
before, my darling? Why did you leave me so long alone, and make us
think you had forgotten all about us?’
Nora flung herself passionately upon her friend’s neck, and between
laughing and crying, kissed her over and over again so many times
without speaking, that Marian knew at once in her heart it was
all right there at least, and that Nora, for one, wasn’t going to
desert them. Then the poor girl, still uncertain whether to cry or
laugh, rushed up to Edward and seized his hand with such warmth of
friendliness, that Marian half imagined she was going to kiss him
fervently on the spot, in her access of emotion. And indeed, in the
violence of her feeling, Nora very nearly did fling her arms around
Edward Hawthorn, whom she had learned to regard on the way out almost
in the light of an adopted brother.
‘My darling,’ Nora cried vehemently, as soon as she could find space
for utterance, ‘my pet, my own sweet Marian, you dear old thing, you
darling, you sweetheart!—I didn’t know about it; they never told me.
Papa and Tom have been deceiving me disgracefully: they said you were
away up at Agualta, and that you particularly wished to receive no
visitors until you’d got comfortably settled in at your new quarters
here at Mulberry. And I said to papa, nonsense; that that didn’t apply
to me, and that you’d be delighted to see me wherever and whenever I
chose to call upon you. And papa said—O Marian, I can’t bear to tell
you what he said: it’s so wicked, so dreadful—papa said that he’d met
Mr Hawthorn—Edward, I mean—and that Edward had told him you didn’t
wish at present to see me, because—well, because, he said, you thought
our circles would be so very different. And I couldn’t imagine what
he meant, so I asked him. And then he told me—he told me that horrid,
wicked, abominable, disgraceful calumny. And I jumped up and said it
was a lie—yes, I said a lie, Marian—I didn’t say a story: I said it
was a lie, and I didn’t believe it. But if it was true—and I don’t
care myself a bit, whether it’s true or whether it isn’t—I said it was
a mean, cowardly, nasty thing to go and rake it up now about two such
people as you and Edward, darling. And whether it’s true or whether it
isn’t, Marian, I love you both dearly with all my heart, and I shall
always love you; and I don’t care a pin who on earth hears me say so.’
And then Nora broke down at once into a flood of tears, and flung
herself once more with passionate energy on Marian’s shoulder.
‘Nora darling,’ Marian whispered, weeping too, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come
at last. I didn’t mind any of the rest a bit, because they’re nothing
to me; it doesn’t matter; but when I thought _you_ had forgotten us and
given us up, it made my heart bleed!’
Nora’s tears began afresh. ‘Why, pet,’ she said, ‘I’ve been trying to
get away to come and see you every day for the last week; and papa
wouldn’t let me have the horses; and I didn’t know the way; and it
was too far to walk; and I didn’t know what on earth to do, or how
to get to you. But last night papa and Tom came home’—here Nora’s
face burned violently, and she buried it in her hands to hide her
vicarious shame—‘and I heard them talking in the piazza; and I couldn’t
understand it all; but, O Marian, I understood enough to know that
they had called upon you here without me, and that they had behaved
most abominably, most cruelly to you and Edward. And I went out to
the piazza, as white as a sheet, Rosina says, and I said: “Papa, you
have acted as no gentleman would act; and as for you, Tom Dupuy, I’m
heartily ashamed to think you’re my own cousin!” and then I went
straight up to my bedroom that minute, and haven’t said a word to
either of them ever since!’
Marian kissed her once more, and pressed the tearful girl tight against
her bosom—that sisterly embrace seemed to her now such an unspeakable
consolation and comfort. ‘And how did you get away this morning, dear?’
she asked softly.
‘Oh,’ Nora exclaimed, with a childish smile and a little cry of
triumph, ‘I was determined to come, Marian, and so I came here. I got
Rosina—that’s my maid, such a nice black girl—to get her lover, Isaac
Pourtalès, who isn’t one of our servants, you know, to saddle the pony
for me; because papa had told our groom I wasn’t to have the horses
without his orders, or to go to your house if the groom was with me,
or else he’d dismiss him. So Isaac Pourtalès, he saddled it for me; and
Rosina ran all the way here to show me the road till she got nearly to
the last corner; but she wouldn’t come on and hold the pony for me, for
if she did, she said, de massa would knock de very breff out of her
body; and I really believe he would too, Marian, for papa’s a dreadful
man to deal with when he’s in a passion.’
‘But won’t he be awfully angry with you, darling,’ Marian asked, ‘for
coming here when he told you not to?’
‘Of course he will,’ Nora replied, drawing herself up and laughing
quietly. ‘But I don’t care a bit, you know, for all his anger. I’m not
going to keep away from a dear old darling like you, and a dear, good,
kind fellow like Edward, all for nothing, just to please him. He may
storm away as long as he has a mind to; but I tell you what, my dear,
he shan’t prevent me.’
‘I don’t mind a bit about it now, Nora, since you’re come at last to
me.’
‘Mind it, darling! I should think not! Why on earth should you mind
it? It’s too preposterous! Why, Marian, whenever I think of it—though
I’m a West Indian born myself, and dreadfully prejudiced, and all that
wicked sort of thing, you know—it seems to me the most ridiculous
nonsense I ever heard of. Just consider what kind of people these are
out here in Trinidad, and what kind of people you and Edward are, and
all your friends over in England! There’s my cousin, Tom Dupuy, now,
for example; what a pretty sort of fellow he is, really. Even if I
didn’t care a pin for you, I couldn’t give way to it; and as it is, I’m
going to come here just as often as ever I please, and nobody shall
stop me. Papa and Tom are always talking about the fighting Dupuys;
but I can tell you they’ll find I’m one of the fighting Dupuys too,
if they want to fight me about it.—Now, tell me, Marian, doesn’t it
seem to you yourself the most ridiculous reversal of the natural order
of things you ever heard of in all your life, that these people here
should pretend to set themselves up as—as being in any way your equals,
darling?’ And Nora laughed a merry little laugh of pure amusement, so
contagious, that Edward and Marian joined in it too, for the first time
almost since they came to that dreadful Trinidad.
Companionship and a fresh point of view lighten most things. Nora
stopped with the two Hawthorns all that day till nearly dinnertime,
talking and laughing with them much as usual after the first necessary
explanations; and by five o’clock, Marian and Edward were positively
ashamed themselves that they had ever made so much of what grew with
thinking on it into so absurdly small and unimportant a matter. ‘Upon
my word, Marian,’ Edward said, as Nora rode away gaily, unprotected—she
positively wouldn’t allow him to accompany her homeward—‘I really begin
to believe it would be better after all to stop in Trinidad and fight
it out bravely as well as we’re able for just a year or two.’
‘I thought so from the first,’ Marian answered courageously; ‘and now
that Nora has cheered us up a little, I think so a great deal more than
ever.’
When Nora reached Orange Grove, Mr Dupuy stood, black as thunder,
waiting to receive her in the piazza. Two negro men-servants were
loitering about casually in the doorway.
‘Nora,’ he said, in a voice of stern displeasure, ‘have you been to
visit these new nigger people?’
Nora glanced back at him defiantly and haughtily. ‘I have not,’ she
answered with a steady stare. ‘I have been calling upon my very dear
friends, the District Court Judge and Mrs Hawthorn, who are both our
equals. I am not in the habit of associating with what you choose to
call nigger people.’
Mr Dupuy’s face grew purple once more. He glanced round quickly at the
two men-servants. ‘Go to your room, miss,’ he said with suppressed
rage—‘go to your room, and stop there till I send for you!’
‘I was going there myself,’ Nora answered calmly, without moving a
muscle. ‘I mean to remain there, and hold no communication with the
rest of the family, as long as you choose to apply such unjust and
untrue names to my dearest friends and oldest companions.—Rosina, come
here, please! Have the kindness to bring me up some dinner to my own
boudoir.’
POPULAR LEGAL FALLACIES.[1]
BY AN EXPERIENCED PRACTITIONER.
_KISSING THE BOOK._
Perjury is a crime which strikes at the very root of the administration
of justice; for if no reliable evidence could be obtained, it would
be impossible to enforce by means of legal proceedings the rights of
those who had been wronged, or to settle in a satisfactory manner the
thousands of disputes which come yearly before the various courts.
And yet, we fear that this pernicious practice is more common than is
generally supposed. Our opinion is that nineteen persons out of every
twenty who will tell an untruth will swear to it as a truth—that is to
say, looking at the matter from the moral standpoint alone. The fear
of punishment has a deterring effect upon some; but the offence is one
which is very difficult of detection if well managed. If two or three
persons swear to a consistent story, and an equal, or even a greater,
number contradict their evidence on oath, who is to decide which
set of witnesses are to be believed, and which are to be prosecuted
for perjury? The punishment on conviction may be any term of penal
servitude not exceeding seven years, or imprisonment, with hard labour,
for a term not exceeding two years; and some people are afraid of
risking this—in which fear lies the principal practical advantage of
administering an oath to a witness before he gives evidence in court.
Some persons have a variety of ingenious but vain expedients which
they hope will enable them to lie in the witness-box with impunity;
and while gratifying their personal spite, or earning the wages of
falsehood, to evade the pains and penalties attendant upon the practice
of perjury, and the object of this paper is to show how futile the
supposed precautions are, and in what consists the essence of the
oath, and the violation of it which will render the offender liable to
punishment for the perjury committed by him.
The form of taking the oath varies in different nations; but in all,
the essence of the ceremony is the adjuration addressed to a superior
Power to attest the truth of what the witness is going to assert.
The witness who thought that if he told a lie after having taken the
oath, all the jurymen would be sent to everlasting perdition, was an
extreme illustration of the misconceptions which exist on this subject.
Most people know that the invocation of the Almighty—‘So help me
God’—is one the consequences of which are intended to be personal to
themselves. But they dishonour their Maker if they try to escape from
the consequences by a trick.
The form of oath varies according to the circumstances and purpose
in and for which it is taken. The manner of administration to a
Christian witness south of the Border is the same. The witness takes
the Holy Gospels in his right hand, and after the form of oath has
been read over to him, he reverently kisses the book; that is to say,
he is supposed to kiss the book; but some persons will, instead of
the book, kiss their own thumb, or avoid contact between their lips
and the book by holding it at an imperceptible distance. This is a
very common, perhaps the most common, mode of attempted evasion. But
another is often attempted, which is more easy of detection—that is
to say, keeping on the glove, in order that the hand and book may not
become actually in contact with each other. It may appear unnecessary
to say that these devices are both equally unavailing for the purpose
intended.[2] The essence of the oath lies in the reverent assent to the
appeal to the Almighty and omniscient God. The witness must at least
pretend to assent to the formulary read over to him, and if he does
this, he is sworn to all intents and purposes. As the oath is complete
in its religious sense, so also is its legal effect the same whether
the hand and the lips actually touch the cover of the book or not. It
has long been the practice to insist upon the witness holding the book
in his or her right hand; but this is by some writers held to be wrong,
inasmuch as the left hand is supposed to be nearer to the heart, and
would receive a more bountiful portion of the blood which is the life,
were not its natural advantages counterbalanced by the effects of daily
labour; therefore, it is contended by them that the left hand ought to
be used in holding the book, when the oath is taken.
Hebrews are sworn upon the Old Testament, and the witness puts on his
hat before taking the oath; while a Christian invariably uncovers
his head for the purpose. A Chinaman breaks a saucer, the idea being
somewhat similar to our oath—that is to say, he thereby devotes his
soul to destruction if his testimony should be untrue. A Brahmin swears
with his hand upon the head of one of the bulls devoted to his deity.
A West African kills a bird; while his sovereign immolates a few human
beings from among his subjects. And other nations have equally distinct
methods of attesting their intention to speak ‘the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth.’
_UNDERWEIGHT AND OVERWEIGHT._
Formerly, farmers sold butter by customary pounds, some giving eighteen
ounces for a pound, and some twenty ounces; and numerous other articles
were sold by similar local weights. This is now illegal. By the Weights
and Measures Act, 1878, all customary and local weights were abolished.
As these weights of many irregular kinds had been largely used, various
trades were much exercised by their abolition, and evasions have been
frequent, and are not altogether unknown even now. By the Act of
Parliament referred to, the imperial standard pound is the unit of
weight from which all others are to be calculated: one-sixteenth part
of a pound is an ounce; one-sixteenth part of such ounce is a dram; and
one seven-thousandth part of the pound is a grain avoirdupois. A stone
consists of fourteen pounds; a hundredweight of eight such stones;
and a ton of twenty such hundredweights. Any person who sells by any
denomination of weight other than one of the imperial weights, or some
multiple or part thereof, is liable to a fine not exceeding forty
shillings for every such sale, with the following exceptions: gold,
silver, platinum, diamonds, and other precious metals and stones, may
be sold by the ounce troy or by any decimal parts of such ounce, which
is defined as containing avoirdupois four hundred and eighty grains;
and drugs when sold by retail, may be sold by apothecaries’ weight. It
is also enacted that a contract or dealing is not to be invalid or open
to objection on the ground that the weights expressed or referred to
therein are weights of the metric system, or on the ground that decimal
subdivisions of imperial weights, whether metric or otherwise, are used
in such contract or dealing. Any person who prints, and any clerk of a
market or other person who makes any return, price-list, price-current,
or any journal or other paper containing price-list or price-current
in which the denomination of weights quoted or referred to denotes or
implies any other than the standard weights, is liable to a fine not
exceeding ten shillings for every such paper. And every person who uses
or has in his possession for use in his trade a weight which is not of
the denomination of some Board of Trade standard, is liable to a fine
not exceeding five pounds, or in the case of a second offence, ten
pounds; and the weight is liable to be forfeited.
There is, however, one distinction between underweight and overweight
which many persons lose sight of; or rather, they mistakenly deny its
existence. When any article is sold by weight, it is essential that
full weight should be given, or the person who sells will become liable
to a penalty. But if he uses the proper weights corresponding with
the standards, he will not incur a penalty by giving what is commonly
called ‘thumping weight;’ that is to say, any want of precision in
weighing, if it should result in an excess, would not form a good
ground for a prosecution; while a similar discrepancy on the other
side would do so. It is cruel to give a poor person a loaf of bread
which is less than the authorised weight paid for; but if the weight
is in excess of the amount purchased, there is not much harm done: the
overweight was voluntary, and the tradesman cannot be punished for
giving more than was paid for.