my veracity impeached? Am I to be a martyr to our poor mad relation's
freaks?--Or, possibly, you will tell me that I ought to doubt the
evidence of my own senses?”
“I never presume,” was the reply, “to dictate to a gentleman on so
delicate a point. Perhaps you will allow one of my servants to wait on
you during the remainder of the night.”
“I'll do no such thing,” said Caddy Cuddle: “let the horse be saddled
directly. I'll go home at once, and endeavour to make my peace with Mrs.
Watermark, from whom I expect and merit a very severe lecture, for so
cruelly cutting up her feelings as to stay out a whole night nearly.
Cousin Caddy, good b'ye; ladies and gentlemen, your servant.”
Caddy Cuddle immediately departed, vowing, _per Jovem_, as he went,
never, after that morning, to bestride Anthony Mutch's horse,--to dine
at Caddy Castle, or any where else out of his own house,--or to put on a
strange pair of spectacles again.
[Illustration: 069]
THE BRAINTREES.
It was the boast of old Samuel Gough, who, during a period of
thirty-two years, had been landlord of The Chough and Stump,--a little,
old-fashioned house, with carved oaken angels supporting the roof of its
porch,--that, notwithstanding the largest road-side farm-house in
the village had been licensed and beautified; though tiles had been
substituted for its old thatch; a blue sign, with yellow letters, fixed
over its entrance; and a finger-post erected at the top of the lane,
about the middle of which his own tenement stood, directing travellers
to The New Inn,--The Chough and Stump still “bore the bell.”
“Richard Cockle,” he would often say, “being twenty years butler to
old 'Squire Borfield, ha' made friends among the gentlefolks. The petty
sessions is held in his best parlour, now and then; he hath a' got a
pair of post-horses, and tidy tits they be, I must say; his house is
made post-office; and excise-office, to the tail o' that--for this and
the five nearest parishes; he pays for a wine license, and hath two or
three gentlevolks, may be, once a month, for an hour or two; but not
much oftener, as there be few do travel our cross-country road; and he
do call one room in his house a tap:--but for all that, and his powdered
head to boot, gi' me The Chough and Stump still.” Gough's boast was not
altogether without warranty: his comfortable, old-fashioned kitchen,
with its bacon-rack, broad hearth, dingy walls, and rude mantel-slab,
enriched with strange hieroglyphical scratches, in which his neighbours
traced, or affected to trace, the names of their grandfathers, was
endeared to the inhabitants of the village;--there were old feelings,
and pleasant associations connected with it Sam Gough was a jolly host,
who regaled himself, among his guests, from morning till night; habitual
drinking, for along time, having rendered him, as Abel Harris, the
schoolmaster of the village, said, “invulnerable to intoxication he not
only could, but often did, sing a good old song, and tell a good old
story;--never repeating either the one or the other on the same day; for
he was orderly in his entertainment, and had his Monday's songs and his
Tuesday's songs, as well as his morning stories and his evening jokes:
he never sponged upon a customer but paid his share of the reckoning
to his wife, who officiated as mistress, while he appeared to be only a
constant guest. His ale was generally clear as amber, sweet as milk, and
strong as brandy.” In the tap of The New Inn, which was the name of the
rival house, the company generally consisted of the postilion and
ostler of the establishment, a few out-door servants from some of
the neighbouring gentlemen's houses, and three or four of the gayest,
youthful, village bucks: but the elderly and middle-aged men,--“the
substantial,” as Abel Harris called them, usually congregated, to smoke
their evening pipes, round the oak in front of The Chough and Stump,
when the weather would permit, or in the kitchen settle, before a
blazing fire of logs and turf, when the rustics sat up three or four
hours after sunset Schoolmaster Abel, although he was one of the pair
of parish constables, patronized The Chough and Stump, and grumbled
mightily at being obliged to pay five shillings for a dinner, once a
year, at the New Inn, with the churchwardens, and other official persons
of the parish; which dinner had been instituted solely for the benefit
of Richard Cockle, and much against the inclination of several of
those, who were almost compelled, on account of their connexion with his
wealthy supporters, to attend it. It was at The Chough and Stump that
all the village news was to be heard; and if one of its customers were
not found at his post, on the settle, at the usual hour, old Gough
concluded, that he was either bad, busy, or gone to the rival tap, to
glean gossip about the great families, from the servants, in order to
retail it, the next night, to the grateful crew at The Chough and Stump.
One winter's evening, although it was neither a Saturday, a holiday,
nor a fast day, the settle was not only completely occupied, but several
occasional visitors to the old kitchen were closely packed along
a narrow bench that ran across the back wall. Many of the poorer
inhabitants of the place were lurking about the porch, and several
women, with their check aprons thrown over their red and almost
frost-bitten elbows, stood peeping in at the window, and eagerly
listening to an old dame, who had placed her ear to a little corner
from which the glass had been broken, and occasionally repeated what she
heard passing within.
“I do pity the mother o' the lad, troth do I,” said a woman about
twenty-five years of age; “her hath a got but one zon--no more have
I--and truth to speak, I do pity her.”
“And well thou may'st, Tabby Mudford,” said the old dame; “for constable
Abel hath just a' told thy husband, that the boy's taken off in a cart,
wi' 'Squire Stapleton's coachman a one side o' un, and constable Tucker
o' t'other, hand-cuffed, and leg-fast, to the county gaol.”
“Poor Meg Braintree! poor soul!” cried several of the women, on hearing
this, and one or two of them actually began to sob aloud.
“Poor Meg Braintree, forsooth!” exclaimed a little sharpnosed female,
with a high-cauled cap, and leathern stomacher;--“I don't zay no zuch
ztuff--not I,” added she, in a shrill, disagreeable voice; “it hath a'
come home to her now; and I said it would, two-and-twenty years agone
come Candlemas, when she scoffed and vlouted poor Phil Govier, and took
up wi' Zaul Braintree, a'ter she'd a' most a' promised, as I have heard
tell, to marry Phil. In my mind, he loved her better, worse luck vor un,
poor vellow, than ever this Zaul Braintree did, and took on zo for two
or dree year a'ter, that there was some that thought he'd never ha' got
over 't.”
“Vor shame, Aunt Dally,” said Tabby Mudford; “Meg Braintree never done
you wrong.”
“I don't know that,” replied Dolly.
“It be true, I ha' heard mother zay, you cocked your cap at Zaul,
yourself; as you did to many more, though you never could trap any body
to have'ee, aunt; but I never could believe it.”
“The vellow did, once upon a time, look up to me,” said Dolly, lifting
her chin, and curling her thin and slightly-bearded lip; “but I
scorned'un. I wouldn't ha' had un if his skin were stuffed wi' gold.”
“And yet you do blame Meg vor scorning Phil Govier! Vor my part,--I were
a child, to be zure,--but by what I do recollect of'em, I'd rather ha'
had Zaul, wi'out a zhoe to's, voot, than Philip Govier, if every hair on
the head o' un were strung wi' pearls.”
“Don't talk to me, Tab,” cried her now incensed aunt, flouncing off; “it
don't become thee. I do zay it ha' come home to her;--her zon be zent to
the county gaol, vor murdering the man whose heart she a'most broke more
than twenty year agone:--get over that if you can. It ha' came home to
her, and I'll bide by it;--wi' her blue clocked ztockings, and putting
up her chit of a daughter to smirk wi' the young 'squire!--I ha'n't a'
got patience wi' zuch pride.”
The supervisor, who was going his rounds, and intended to sleep that
night at The Chough and Stump, now rode up, on his sturdy little grey
cob; and before he could alight, some of the loiterers about the porch
had, in part, acquainted him with the cause of their being assembled
round the inn-door. The old man, however, as he said, could make
“neither head nor tail” of what he heard; and hastened, as well as his
infirmities would allow, into the kitchen. The landlord rose on his
appearance, and conducted the spare and paralytic old man, to the
post of honour, in the settle, between his own seat and that of the
exciseman,--a cunning-looking, thick-set, fat, or, to use an expressive
West Country adjective, podgy, little man, between forty and fifty; with
a round, sallow, bloated face, begemmed here and there with groups of
pimply excrescences, resembling the warts that are occasionally seen
on the cheek that is turned to the sun of a wounded pumpkin. One of the
exciseman's eyes glared at his beholder, dull and void of expression,
while the other was almost concealed beneath its lids;--a circumstance
occasioned by an inveterate habit of winking, all his life, at every
tenth word, with the latter; which operation he was totally unable to
perform with the former.
“Here hath been a sad to-do, sir,” said Gough, addressing the
supervisor, as soon as the latter was comfortably seated; “a sad to-do,
indeed.”
“Ah! so I hear, Gough,--so I hear;--but what is it?--No affray with the
excise, I hope.”
“No--fear of--that, sir,” replied the exciseman, winking, and
puffing the smoke from his lips thrice as he spoke; “we've no enemies
here.--I'll tell you all--about it--sir, when--I have wetted--my lips.”
He now raised the jug to his mouth, but before he had finished his
draught, little Tailor Mudford, who sat by his side, taking advantage
of the moment, placed his right elbow on his knee, and still keeping his
pipe between his teeth, leaned forward, and bore away the glory of the
announcement from the exciseman, by stating, that Philip Govier, 'Squire
Stapleton's gamekeeper, had been killed; and young Robert Braintree
committed for trial, as the perpetrator of the crime.
“Robert Braintree! Robert Braintree!” calmly repeated the old man;
“Preserve us from evil! Haven't I seen him?”
“To be sure you have, sir,” replied Gough; “a tall, straight-limbed
chap, between eighteen and twenty, and as fine a young fellow as ever
stood in shoe-leather. I shouldn't ha' thought it of him.”
“I should,” said the exciseman; “a down-looking--”
“Ah! I be zorry vor the lad,” said Mudford, again interrupting the
exciseman, in the brief interval occupied by a puff and a wink; “nobody
could zay harm o' un, except that his vather made un go out a poaching
wi' un, and so vorth: but a zung in the choir o' Zindays; and' though
he never were asked so to do, often joined in, wi' the rest o' th'
neighbours, to reap a little varmer's bit o' wheat, or mow a tradesman's
whoats he ha' done zo by me, many's the time, wi'out any thing but
thanks, and a bit o' dinner and a drop o' drink, which he never wanted
at home. He'd ha' been the last I should ha' zuzpected.”
“But the evidence,” said constable and schoolmaster Abel, “the
circumstantial evidence, doth leave no doubt, either in the mind of me,
or the magistrate, of his guilt.”
“You be d--d, Yeabel!” cried a bluff old fellow in a corner; “Who be
you, I should like to know?--Marry come up, then! times be come to a
vine pass, I trow, when a pig-vaced bit of a constable, two yards
long, and as thin as a hurdle, do zet hi'zelf up cheek-by-jowl wi'
the 'squire!--Who cares vor thy opinion, dost think?”
“Farmer Salter,” responded Abel, with affected humility; “I am educating
your son and heir:--you are a freeholder, and ha' got a vote for the
county--”
“I know that well enough, stupid! and zo had my vather avore me, and
so shall my zon a'ter me.--Poor buoay! you ha' often licked un,
Yeabel:--may be you be right--may be you bean't; but this I do know,
tho' I ha'n't a told un zo, that I do vind, upon casting things over,
whenzoever I do gie you a bit ov a clumzy wipe here, at The Chough
and Stump, over night Jack's zure and zartin to get breeched in your
school-room the next day: now that be odd, yean't it, Gough?”
“Farmer Salter,” pursued Abel, as Gough nodded in acquiescence,
and Salter chuckled at what he had said; “I repeat, you are a
freeholder:--you've a slip of land between the two 'squires' estates,
upon which you and your forefathers ha' grazed a cow, raised a crop
of wheat, hay and potatoes, to last'ee for the year; and built a small
edifice for yourselves, and a sty for your pigs: you do wear a looped
hat at all times, and, on Sundays, a blue coat, wi' a red collar and
cuffs, and crown pieces of the reign of King Jacobus, for buttons; a
flowered and flapped waistcoat; leather breeches, wi' seven-shilling
pieces and silver buckles at the knees; and half a pack o' cards figured
wi' colours in each o' your stockings: you do strut up to church, just
as a 'squire would, and your father did,--whose finery you ha' saved for
such service,--half a century ago:--but you know nothing either of law
or good breeding for all that, fanner Salter.”
The freeholder was about to bristle up indignantly when Abel concluded,
but Zachary Tickel, the hereditary herbalist, or, as he
denominated himself, apothecary of the village, whose nick-name was
“Bitter-Aloes,”--and there were few of his neighbours who were not as
well known by some equally appropriate baptismal of the laity,--took him
by the collar, and endeavoured to tranquillize, while he forcibly held
him on his seat:--meantime, the supervisor inquired what had induced the
constable to suspect Robert Braintree of the murder.
“Why, zir,” said Mudford, cutting in, as a coachman would express it,
before Abel and the exciseman, (each of whom intended to reply,) while
the asthmatic constable was cleansing his throat by two or three hems,
and the exciseman was puffing out a magazine of smoke, which, at that
moment, he had drawn into his mouth, to be retailed and divided into a
dozen or twenty whiffs;--“the vact, zir, is this,” said Mudford; “the
body were vound, dead and stiff, this morning, in the copse, t'other
zide o' the hill;--there was a nail or more of znow on the ground, and
vootsteps ov a dog and a man were traced vrom the body to Braintree's
cottage:--the dog's vootsteps were, likely enough, the vootsteps ov
Ponto, a dog belonging to the Braintrees; a zort ov a crossbred pointer,
az ztrong as a bull, and wi' more zense in his tail-end, as the zaying
is, than many men ha' got in their whole bodies, head and all.”
“The shoe-marks, permit me to observe,” said Abel, “were decidedly made
by the shoes of Bob Braintree:--I've sworn to't, because I compared'em;
and I apprehended him wi' those identical shoes on his feet.”
“Now, d'ye hear, volks?--d'ye hear?” exclaimed farmer Salter; “how
Yeabel do belabour us wi' vine dixonary words? 'Apprehended,' and
'identical,' quotha!--Why, I should be azhamed to talk zo-vashion.
'Those identical zhoes!' zays he;--'those!'--Bless us, how vine we
be!--'Those,' vorsooth!--Why doan't the vool zay 'they there zhoes,'
like a man?”
Abel cast a glance of contempt on the freeholder, but did not condescend
to reply. A brief silence ensued, which was broken by the herbalist;
who observed, after throwing himself back in the settle, “Bad bird, bad
egg--that's all I've to zay. I bean't so compassionate, and all that, as
zome volk. How hath Zaul Braintree ha' got his living vor eighteen year
past, but by zmuggilin and poaching, and, may be, worse, vor what I
know? Why wen he discharged by 'Zquire Ztapleton, but vor doing what he
shon not do? Didn't poor Phil Govier, that's lying dead, when he wen
under Zaul, detect and prove to the 'zquire, that instead o' Zaul' s
doing his duty, as game-keeper, he were killing hares upon the zly, and
zending'em to market? And when Phil got Zaul's place, have they ever met
without looking at one another like a couple o' dogs that was longing
vor a vight, and yet stood off, as though they were aveard to pitch
into one another? What d'ye think Braintree hath instilled into Bob, but
hatred and malice against Govier?”
“You may talk and talk, old Bitter-Aloes,” said Salter; “but vor my
part, though the'zquire believed Govier's story, and turned away Zaul,
in a way enough to nettle a parson, I didn't think it quite as it should
be. I ha' zeen things o' Phil, what I won't tell ov, now he's gone, as I
didn't while he were alive; but if I had to choose, vor all Phil's quiet
tongue and humble looks,--which were all zlyness, in my mind,--gi'e me
Zaul, I zay.”
“Well,” quoth Gough, “I say nothing--why should I? But Bob was a good
boy; and though he'd noose a hare, or decoy a vlock o' wild ducks, or
stalk a covey, I don't think he'd any harm in him. He'd do what Zaul bid
him, to be zure, but I don't think Zaul would ever tell him to commit
murder; and if I must speak my mind--I don't agree wi' Abel Harris.”
“Abel--I must say,”--muttered the exciseman, “the constable, I
mean;--he--he's no conjuror.”
“I can't make out,” growled Salter, “how he came to be made constable,
zeeing az he's the most uncapable man in the parish. I ha' zeed un run,
as if'twere vor his life, when he thought nobody were nigh, vrom my
gander!--Poor Jack! thoult zuffer, may be, vor this to-morrow;--but I
can't help speaking the truth. Yeabel, doan't thee baste un, or dang me
if I doan't drash thee!”
“There is one thing,” remarked a spare, but hale-looking man, who sat
next the herbalist, “one thing, or, may be, a thing or two, I'll make
bold to observe, which is, namely, this:--though Zaul Braintree were
never over and above vriendly to I--that be nothing--the man's a
man--and I do zay, the'zquire were a bit too hard upon Zaul, to turn
un off wi out more nor an hour's notice, and not gi'e un a good
character:--and what vor, I wonder?--Because this here Phil Govier, a
demure, down-looking twoad, zaid a' poached a bit! A'ter this, what were
Zaul to do? Wi'out a character, he couldn't get a zarvice, and a poor
man bean't to starve: zo a' poached, and that in downright earnest;--and
it ztrikes I, no blame to un neither.”
“Oh! fie! fie!” exclaimed the supervisor; “you should not preach so,
friend; the practice of poaching is highly illegal.”
“Highly illegal,--indeed,--John,--that is,--James Cobb,” said the
exciseman, in his usual manner; “we must not hear--this sort of
a--thing; must we,--constable?”
“Why, it bean't treason, master exciseman, be it?” asked a tall old
fellow, who stood at the end of the settle.
“Do you hear--that?” said the exciseman, turning to his superior; “do
you hear that?--and he an earth-stopper,--and gets his bread by--the
game laws.”
The supervisor looked aside toward the bottom of the narrow table, and
while the ensuing conversation went on, took a deliberate view of
the earth-stopper's person, apparel, and accoutrements. He was a
squalid-looking figure, with half a week's growth of grey beard on his
chin and cheeks; the edge of a red woollen night-cap, which he wore
under a weather-beaten dog's-hair hat, was strained across his pale,
wrinkled brow; his legs were thin, puny, and bent outward in such a
manner, that they seemed to have been moulded on the carcase of a horse.
“Well,” quoth the earth-stopper, in reply to the exciseman's
observation, shouldering his pick-axe and shovel, and lighting the
candle in his lanthorn, as he spoke; “I zuppose a man may move his
tongue, if a' be a yearth-stopper,--or else what be the use o't to
un?--I were one o' the virst to lay hands on young Braintree, and always
ha' ztood vorward on zuch like 'casions; but what o' that? I'd help to
take up thee, or thy betters by the zide o' thee there, if thee wert
zuzpected and accused; but vor all that, I'd speak up my own mind, and
zay, I thought thee wert innocent, iv zo be as I did think thee zo--mind
me:--and now you ha' put me up, I'll go vurther, and ask 'ee, what
business had Phil Govier a' got in the copse that time o' night?”
“Ay, that's true,” observed the landlord; “for it be well known the
'squire's strict orders was, that the keepers shouldn't go out o'
nights. 'Let the poachers have a little o' their own way,' I have a
heard un say;--'I'd rather lose a few head o' game, than ha' blood shed
upon the manor; and meetings by night, betwixt poachers and keepers,
often do end worse than either one or t'other a' looked for.'”
“It's true az I be here zitting,” said Mudford; “that the gamekeeper,--I
mean Phil Govier, of course,--had a' got a hare in one pocket, and a
cock pheasant in t'other;--I zeed'em myself.”
“Come, come;--no ill o' the dead, pr'ythee, now,” quoth the herbalist.
“No ill o' the dead!” cried the man who sat next to him; “I do zay yea,
iv it be truth; and moorauver, in my mind, it be better to zay vorty
_lies_, even, of them that be gone, than to tell one that may do harm to
them that be living. Them wer'n't the virst Phil pocketed, by night or
by day, vor his own profit, as I do think.'T'ant clear to I, that a'
didn't play voul wi' Zaul, long ago;--I wouldn't lie down upon my back
and zwear that a' didn't kill the game what he 'cuzed Zaul o' poaching,
and zo got Braintree out of his place, and popped into't hi'zelf.”
“This is going too far, landlord,” said the supervisor.
“Do 'ee think so, sir?” asked Gough, with a knowing look, accompanied by
a shake of the head, which finished in an acquiescent nod to the man who
sat next the herbalist.
Mudford asked the constable if Saul had seen his son after the committal
of the latter. Abel replied, that an interview had been permitted by
the magistrate, just previously to Robert's removal; “which interview,”
added he, “took place in the presence of myself and colleague.”
“And what did 'em zay?” eagerly inquired three or four of the persons
present.
The constable replied, that it would be highly improper for him to
divulge all that took place, even if he were capable of so doing; but
there was much that he did not hear, and more that he had forgotten. One
part of the brief dialogue he perfectly well remembered:--after having
whispered for a short time, the youth said aloud, “But I be innocent,
vather; you be zure I be.”--“Well, well!” replied Braintree, in a low,
but nevertheless, audible tone; “zuppose things should go against thee,
wou'lt thee die like a man, Bob?”--“I doan't know, vather,--I be but a
boy! I'll try, iv it do come to that; I hope it won't, though; vor I be
aveard I can't bear it--I can't, truly, vather.”
“Zo, thee dost call thyself a buoy, dost?” said Saul; “a vellow here
within a head as high as I be, and gone eighteen these zix weeks!”
“You always tells me I be but a boy.”
“Well, and zo I do--thee'rt _my_ boy; but a boy to nobody else. But I
zay, Bob, woul't thee mind now, and speak up to the lord judge just what
I told thee?”
“Yeas, doan't be aveard.”
“Ah! but woul't tell't cool and zober-vashion, Bob?”
“Never you vear,” replied Robert;--“bless'ee, I shall tell't out to un,
just as iv I were telling out zixpenn'orth o' ha'pence.”
“And Bob--” But here Braintree's voice subsided into a whisper again,
and Abel heard no more of that part of the conversation.