[Illustration: Front Cover.]
[Illustration: AT GAZE. Frontispiece]
KATERFELTO
A Story of Exmoor.
BY
G.J. WHYTE-MELVILLE,
AUTHOR OF "DIGBY GRAND," "CERISE," "UNCLE JOHN," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY COL. H. HOPE CREALOCKE, C.B.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1875.
[_All rights reserved._]
LONDON:
BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
"AT GAZE" (_Frontispiece_) PAGE
"UNDER THE GUARD" 8
"WESTWARD HO!" 96
"WELL OUT OF IT" 152
"THE LESSON LEARNT" 165
"THE TALE TOLD" 183
"MOONLIGHT" 206
"MOVED!" 215
"BEAT" 228
"SET UP" 229
"NECK OR NOTHING" 280
"THE GIPSY'S BRIDE" 286
KATERFELTO:
A STORY OF EXMOOR.
CHAPTER I.
DEADMAN'S ALLEY.
On the last day of April, 1763, John Wilkes, refusing to enter into his
recognisances to appear before the Court of Queen's Bench, was committed
to the Tower by warrant of my Lords Egremont and Halifax, His Majesty's
two principal Secretaries of State.
Defiance of constituted authority has never wanted sympathy from that
British public which entertains, nevertheless, a profound respect for
law. Mr. Wilkes became a hero in consequence; and while many a jug of
beer was thereafter emptied, and many a bottle of wine cracked to his
health, diverse street songs, more or less execrable, were composed in
honour of the so-called patriot, whose personal popularity was
incontestable, notwithstanding the unprepossessing exterior, that has
passed into a proverb.
Of these, none were perhaps so absurd as the following ditty, chanted by
a chairman more than half drunk, under the windows of a tavern in Covent
Garden, notwithstanding the protestations of some half-dozen gentlemen,
who, seated at supper in an upper chamber, held that their tastes and
opinions were equally outraged by the persistency of the singer below.
"King Nabuchodonosor," whined the chairman.
"Hold that cursed noise!" exclaimed one of the gentlemen from the
window.
"King Nabuchodonosor," repeated the chairman in all the aggravating
monotony of a minor key.
"You knave!" roared a second voice--"I'll come down and beat you to a
jelly, if you speak another syllable!"
A volley of oaths succeeded this threat, but their object stood fire
manfully under the discharge, and fixing his eyes on vacancy, proceeded
with his song--
"'King Nabuchodonosor
Lived in a golden palace;
He fed from a golden dish, and drank
His swipes from a golden chalice.
_But_ John Wilkes he was for Middlesex,
And they chose him for knight of the shire;
For he made a fool of Alderman Bull,
And called Parson Tooke a liar!'
"Hurrah!" continued the vocalist, who had lost his hat, waving a scratch
wig round his bare scalp with an abortive attempt to cheer. "King
Nabu--Nabu--cho--donosor was a mighty man"--shaking his head with
unimpaired solemnity--"a mighty man, no doubt,
'_But_ John Wilkes he was for Middlesex,
And they chose him for knight of the shire.'
Hip, hip--Hurrah!"
A burst of laughter rang from the party in the tavern, and a gentleman
in a laced waistcoat shut down the window after throwing out a
crown-piece to the singer in the street.
Night was falling, the air felt chilly, though it was summer, and the
party, who had drank several bottles of port, gathered round the fire
over a steaming bowl of punch.
They were of all ages between twenty and fifty. One of them wore a wig,
another powder, a third had brushed his luxuriant hair to the poll of
his neck and tied it in a plain black bow. Their long-waisted coats were
cut to an ample width at skirt and sleeves; their waistcoats heavily
bound with lace. Knots of ribbon adorned the knees of their breeches,
their shoes were fastened with buckles, and each man carried sword and
snuff-box. To drink, to fence, to "lug out" as it was called, on slight
provocation, to sing a good song, tell a broad story, and spill a deal
of snuff in its recital, were, at this period, the necessary
accomplishments of a gentleman.
The room in which these worthies had assembled seemed more comfortable
than luxurious. Its bare floor was sanded, and the chairs, long-legged,
high-backed and narrow-seated, were little suggestive of repose, but the
mahogany table had been rubbed till it shone like glass, the wood-fire
blazed and crackled, lighting up the crimson hangings that festooned the
windows, and though the candles were but tallow, there flared enough of
them to bring into relief a few pictures with which the unpapered walls
were hung. These works of art, being without exception of a sporting
tendency, were treated in a realistic style, and seemed indeed to have
been painted by the same master:--A fighting-cock, spurred, trimmed, and
prepared for battle, standing on the very tip-toe of defiance. A horse
with a preternaturally small head, and the shortest possible tail,
galloping over Newmarket Heath, to win, as set forth in large print
below, "a match or plate of the value of fifty guineas." The portrait of
a celebrated prize-fighter, armed with a broadsword, of a noted boxer in
position, stripped to the waist. Lastly, an ambitious composition,
consisting of scarlet frocks, jack-boots, cocked hats, tired horses and
baying hounds, grouped round a central figure brandishing a dead fox,
and labelled "The Victory of obtaining the Brush."
One of the party had taken on himself to ladle out the punch. Its
effects soon became apparent in the heightened colour and increased
volubility of the company. Voices rose, two or three at once. A song was
demanded, a glass broken. In the natural course of events, somebody
called a toast.
"Blue-Eyes!" shouted a handsome young fellow flushed with drink, waving
his glass above his head.
"A fine!" objected the punch-ladler, judicially. "By the laws of our
society, no member has leave to pledge a female toast. It leads to
mischief. Gentlemen, we have decided to draw the line, and we draw it at
beauty. Call something else!"
"Then here's John Wilkes!" laughed the first speaker. "He's ugly enough
in all conscience. John Wilkes! His good health and deliverance--with
three!"
"Hold!" exclaimed a beetle-browed, square-shouldered man of forty or
more, turning down his glass; "I protest against the toast. John Wilkes
ought still to be fast by the heels in the Tower of London. If he had
his deserts John Wilkes would never have come out again, alive or dead,
and nobody but a d--d Jacobite, and traitor to His Majesty King George,
would venture to call such a toast in this worshipful company. I stand
to what I say, John Garnet. It's you to play next!"
Each man looked at his neighbour. The punch-ladler half rose to
interfere, but shortly plumped into his seat again, finding himself, it
may be, not quite steady on his legs, while the young gentleman, thus
offensively addressed, clenched his glass, as if to hurl it in the last
speaker's face. Controlling himself, however, with obvious effort, he
broke into a forced laugh, glanced at his rapier, standing in a corner
of the room, and observed quietly, "If you desire to fasten a quarrel
on me, Mr. Gale, this is neither a fitting time nor place."
"Quarrel!" exclaimed the man behind the punch-bowl; "no gentleman, drunk
or sober, would be fain to quarrel on John Wilkes' behalf. Sure, he can
take his own part with the best or worst of us, and Mr. Gale was only
playing the ball back to your service, John Garnet. You began the jest,
bad or good. Be reasonable, gentlemen. Fill your glasses, and let us
wash away all unkindness. Here's to you both!"
Mr. Gale, though something of a bully, was not, in the main, an
ill-natured man. He squared his shoulders, filled his glass, and pledged
the person he had insulted with an indifference that almost amounted to
additional provocation. Confident in his personal strength and skill
with his weapon, Mr. Gale, to use his own phraseology, was accustomed to
consider himself Cock of the Walk in every society he frequented. Nine
men out of ten are willing to accept bluster for courage, and give the
wall readily enough to him who assumes it as a right. The tenth is made
of sterner stuff, resists the pretension, and exposes too often a white
feather lurking under the fowl's wing, that crowed so lustily and
strutted with so defiant a gait.
All this passed through the mind of John Garnet, completely sobered by
his wrangle, while he sipped punch in silence, meditating reprisals
before the night was past.
This young gentleman, whom nature and fortune seemed to have intended
for better things, was at present wasting health and energy in a life of
pleasure that failed egregiously to please, but that succeeded in
draining the resources of a slender purse to their lowest ebb. He came
of an old family, and indeed, but for the attainder that deprived his
father of lands and title, would have been the owner of large estates in
the North, and addressed by tenantry or neighbours as Sir John--that
father, devoted body and soul to the Stuarts, died at Rome, beggared
and broken-hearted, leaving his son little besides his blessing, and an
injunction never to abandon the good cause, but bequeathing to him the
personal beauty and well-knit frame that Acts of Parliament were
powerless to alienate. The young man's laughing eyes, rich colour, dark
hair, and handsome features were in keeping with a light muscular
figure, a stature slightly above the average, and an easy jaunty
bearing, set off by a rich dress, particularly pleasing to feminine
taste. Hence, while he repudiated the title of which he had been
deprived, it became a jest among his intimates to call him "plain John
Garnet," a jest of which the point was perhaps more appreciated by the
other sex, than by his own.
Plain John Garnet looked somewhat preoccupied now, sitting moodily over
his punch, and the influence of his demeanour seemed to steal upon the
company in general. Mr. Gale, indeed, held forth loudly on horse-racing,
cock-fighting, and such congenial topics, but spent his breath for an
inattentive audience, not to be interested even by a dissertation on
West-country wrestling in all its branches--the Cornish hug, the
Devonshire shoulder-grip, and the West Somerset "rough-and-tumble catch
where you can."
At an earlier hour than usual the reckoning was called, and the guests,
not very steady, assumed their swords and hats to pass downstairs into
the street. Mr. Gale by accident, John Garnet by design, were the last
to leave the room.
The latter placed himself before the door, observing in a quiet tone,
that the other's reckoning was not yet wholly paid up. "How so?" asked
Gale, in his loud, authoritative voice. "The oldest member has taken my
half-guinea, and entered it in due course. Will you satisfy yourself, my
young friend, by calling the landlord to produce his club-books? Pooh,
pooh! young sir: the punch is strong, and you have drunk too much!
Stand aside, I say, and let me pass!"
He did not like the set look of John Garnet's mouth; he liked less the
low firm tones in which that gentleman repeated his assertion.
"You may or may not be in debt to the club--it is their affair. You owe
an apology to one of the members--that is mine."
"Apology!" stormed the other. "Apology! what do you mean, sir? This is
insolence. Don't attempt to bully _me_, sir! Again I say, at your peril,
let me pass!"
"Do you refuse it?" asked John Garnet, in a low voice, setting his lips
tighter while he spoke.
"I do!" was the angry reply. "And what then?"
"Nothing unusual," said the other, while he moved out of the way.
"Drawer! Please to show us an empty room."
A frightened waiter, with a face as white as his napkin, opened the door
of an adjoining chamber, set a candle on the chimney-piece, and motioned
the gentlemen in.
Garnet bowed profoundly, making way for his senior to pass. The other
looked about him in uncertainty, and felt his heart sink, while he heard
the voices of their departing companions, already in the street.
He had little inclination to his task. For one moment the burly,
square-shouldered man wished himself safe at home; the next, that
intermittent courage which comes to most of us, in proportion as it is
wanted, braced his nerves for the inevitable encounter and its result.
He grasped his rapier, ready to draw at a moment's notice, while the
other coolly locked the door.
The waiter, fresh on the town, and unused to such brawls, ran down to
summon his master, who was busy over the house accounts in a small
parlour below. Till the landlord had added up one column and carried
its balance to the next, he paid no attention, though his astonished
servant stood pale and trembling before him, with a corkscrew in his
mouth and a bottle under his arm. Then both rushed upstairs in a
prodigious hurry, just too late to prevent mischief.
While yet in the passage they could hear a scuffle of feet, a clink of
steel, a smothered oath, and a groan; but as they reached the door it
was opened from inside, and John Garnet stood before them, panting,
excited, his waistcoat torn, his dress awry, with the candle in his
hand.
"There is a gentleman badly hurt in that room," said he. "Better send
for a surgeon at once, and get a coach to take him home." Then he blew
out the candle, slipped downstairs in the dark, and so into the street.
The gentleman was indeed so badly hurt that all the energies of the
household were concentrated on the sufferer. Nobody had a thought to
spare for the assailant till long after pursuit would have been too
late. Mr. Gale was wounded in the fore-arm, and had received a
sword-thrust through the lungs. With the landlord's assistance he made
shift to walk into a bedchamber, where they undressed and laid him
carefully down; but before a surgeon could arrive there was obviously no
hope, and he only lived long enough to assure the doctor, in the
presence of two witnesses, that the quarrel had been of his own making,
and was fought out according to the usual rules of fair-play.
"I was a fool not to close with him," murmured the dying man, reflecting
ruefully on the personal strength he had misapplied. "But the rogue is a
pretty swordsman; quick, well-taught, supple as an eel, and--I forgive
him!"
Then he turned on his side, as the landlord subsequently stated, and
thereafter spoke never a word more, good or bad.
[Illustration: UNDER THE GUARD.]
John Garnet, meanwhile, made the best of his way into
the street, with the intention of proceeding straight to his lodgings,
and riding out of London next morning at break of day. Duels, though of
no rare occurrence, were serious matters even in a time when every man
carried a small-sword by his breeches-pocket; and to be taken
red-handed, as it were, from the slaughter of an adversary, would have
entailed unpleasant consequences to liberty, if not to life. While it
had been established that a gentleman was bound to defend his honour
with cold steel, it seemed also understood that in such encounters even
victory might be purchased at too dear a price. Nevertheless, so riotous
were the habits of the day, encouraging to the utmost card-playing and
the free use of wine, so lax was the administration of the law, and so
stringent the code of public opinion, that scarcely a week passed
without an encounter, more or less bloody, between men of education and
intellect, who would have considered themselves dishonoured had they not
been ready at any moment to support a jest, an argument, or an insult,
with naked steel. John Garnet, therefore, observing an ancient watchman
pacing his sluggish rounds, turned aside into a bye-street rather than
confront this guardian of the peace; and hastening on as he became less
certain of the locality, was aware that his strength began to fail, and
felt his shirt clinging to his body, wet and clammy with something that
must be blood.
For an instant he thought of turning back into the more frequented
thoroughfare; but the hum of voices, and increasing tread of feet,
seemed too suggestive of discovery, and he stumbled onwards, in faint
hope of reaching the dwelling of some obscure barber-surgeon who might
staunch his wounds, and send for a coach to take him home.
Twice he reeled against the wall of a certain dark passage, called
Deadman's Alley, down which he staggered with uneven steps, and had
almost decided that he must sink into the gutter, and lie where he fell
till a passer-by should pick him up, when he descried a red lamp in a
window ahead, and summoned all his strength to make for it as his last
hope. Half blind, half stupefied, he groped and blundered on, with a
dull, strange fancy that he was on the deck of a ship, labouring in a
heavy sea while she made for a harbour-light, that seemed continually to
dip and disappear behind the waves. The illusion, though not so vivid,
was similar to a dream, and the languor that accompanied it something
akin to sleep; till in a moment, while through his brain there came a
whirr as in the works of a watch when it runs down, the light widened,
broke into a hundred shafts of fire, went out and all was dark.