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THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK
By Pierce Egan
Author Of “The Poor Girl,” &c., &c.
In Three Volumes.
Vol. I.
London: Published By W. S. Johnson & Co.
1865
THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK
CHAPTER I.--THE SHADOW IN THE SUNSHINE.
And the sunlight clasps the earth.
--Shelley.
From her chamber window he would catch
Her beauty faster than the falcon spies;
And constant as her vespers would he watch,
Because her face was turned to the same skies.
--Keats
A bright sunny morning, at the end of June, in busy, restless London.
The overarching vault of heaven was filled with an atmosphere of golden
hue. Sunshine was glowing upon cathedral turrets and upon the church
spires, upon the pinnacles of lofty buildings, and the crowns of tall
factory shafts. The bronzed and tarnished ball and cross of St. Paul’s,
and the shaggy-crested Monument, which “like a tall bully lifts its
head,” shone as if they had been newly gilded. There was sunshine upon
chimney-pots and housetops, golden beams permeating the confined air in
close garrets, through their narrow, half-closed windows; flooding wide
streets, and illuminating pestiferous courts, where riotous hilarity
sometimes, but joy never came.
Sunshine blazed upon the broad and winding Thames, over whose flowing
surface lazy barges dawdled, and panting river steamers raced, leaving
in their sinuous paths myriads of scintillations--and rather an
unpleasant odour as well. Sunshine was on the footways, and in the
roadways, and in the gutters, making mirrors of small muddy pools.
Sunshine there was for the ragged and the richly dressed; for the
beggar and the prince alike; for the robust and, happily, for the sickly
invalid.
Sunshine everywhere, making brilliant the parks and open places, and
interpenetrating all the foulest recesses of this huge city. Giving
light where it was rarely seen, and rousing to a glad activity the
teeming life already in its first throes of daily labour.
Beautiful in this, the bright sunshine! but oh, yet more enchanting in
the glory with which it invested the fair face of a young girl, peering
out of the upper window of a house situated in one of the City’s closest
streets.
She stood there, gazing heavenward, her mild blue eyes bending beneath
the influence of the golden glare of sunny-waves of light, yet seeming
to revel in their luxuriance as though they spoke to her in fairy
language of other and happier times and places now far away.
Upon the opposite side of the street, in the shop of a working
goldsmith, one John Harper, there stood a youth, an apprentice to the
noble art of working in gold. The beauty and the clearness of the fair
morning had elevated and refreshed his youthful spirits, but ah! how
much greater their exhilaration when his upturned eyes were gladdened
by the sight of that beautiful young girl, whose radiant face, and
delicately modelled form, were brought out in brilliant relief by the
dazzling sunbeams.
It seemed to him that his brightest conceptions of the beautiful, his
dreamy fashionings of a faultless ideal, combined with all his native
and his acquired skill, had never yet enabled him to realise “a thing
of beauty” to rival the perfect excellence and marvellous charms of that
young face upon which his eager eyes were now fastened.
Raphael, in his rarest art-performance had not in his belief attained
the sentiment of angelic purity beaming in her features, nor had Carlo
Dolci, in the loveliest Madonna he ever painted, anticipated it.
Motionless he stood, and with suspended breath gazed upon her as though
she were one lone bright star, shining unaccompanied in the vast field
of the deep blue heavens, in the silent night, his mind the while lost
in a maze of rapture and of wonder.
Yet he had seen it often for years!
And now he had a consciousness that a saddening gloom overspread the
earth far and near. What made the surrounding space in a moment so
sombre? Had a huge cloud suddenly sprung up from its sullen rest, and
spreading itself enviously over the broad sky, absorbed the sunlight?
Was the sunshine which had converted smoky London into a city of golden
palaces abruptly withdrawn? No! sunbeams yet glanced upon the
buildings, and danced upon the rippling waters, but the young maiden
had disappeared from her window. She had suddenly fled from it, as a
startled fawn would spring into a covert at the sound of the approaching
footsteps of a hunter bent upon its destruction.
So, though the sunshine was as brilliant as before--the whole universe,
in the eyes of Harry Vivian, the young goldsmith, seemed plunged into a
profound and solemn gloom--for she was no longer where he yet gazed.
He felt oppressed in this glittering sunshine, which had no light for
him, and he drew towards the outer door, that in the free fresh air he
might breathe more freely. As he gained the threshold, he started, and
an exclamation of surprise escaped his lips.
Opposite, at the door of the house in which dwelt the young girl upon
whom his eyes had gazed so fondly, stood a man who in costume and manner
was the reverse of prepossessing. Who was he, and what could he want
there? were questions which Harry at once put to himself. He had come on
business--most disagreeable business--that was beyond a doubt, for there
was nothing either in his garb or in his manner which betrayed the idle
visitor. Harry, therefore, conceived it to be his especial duty--with
rather questionable propriety, however--to observe his movements.
He saw the man examine the house from the scraper at the door, to the
parapet below the roof, and then make a peculiar sign to some person or
persons, who lying _perdu_, prevented Harry from catching a glimpse
of them. Then he gave a treble knock at the door, facing which he was
standing. Young Vivian did not like that knock. It was not a peal of
three distinct knocks for a third-floor lodger, nor was it the easy
rat-tat-tat of a genteel visitor. No; it was a bad imitation of a
postman’s knock, followed by a faltering, sneaking tap.
Had any embarrassed individual, accustomed to visits from
rent-distrainers or process-servers, heard that knock and caught sight
of that man at his door, he would have instantly implored some other
inmate of the house to tell the visitor that he had sailed to the
furthest extremity of the Hudson Bay territory, and would never be home
again.
The fact was, it was not alone that the knock was a tell-tale, but the
man’s dress also loudly proclaimed the purport of the visits he paid.
Upon his head, slinking down to his eyebrows, was a hat which had
long endured severe stress of weather, to its disadvantage. Upon his
body--and that was his mark--he wore a loose brown great coat, styled by
advertising tailors, “the sack,” It was dirty, discoloured, much worn at
the pockets, and strongly impregnated with the odour of the cheapest and
rankest tobacco.
That coat, worn at the hottest end of June, betrayed him. It was his
sign-board. A child brought up in that neighbourhood would have told
you, by that coat, worn in the height of summer heats, the nature of his
profession.
The young goldsmith, on seeing him, held his breath; he had a conviction
that the man’s errand would of necessity prove an unpleasant one;
and, after a moment’s reflection, he stepped over the threshold of the
shop-door, apparently engaged in looking up and down the street, but he
never took his eye for an instant off the man in the dingy brown coat.
That individual had just raised his extremely dirty fingers to repeat
the offensive knock, when the street-door slowly opened, and an elderly,
wan-faced man presented himself.
“It is her father,” muttered the young goldsmith, retiring within his
shop, yet only a few paces, for--though uninfluenced by any meanly
inquisitive motives--he felt constrained to watch the proceedings of the
shabby, brown-coated personage.
He observed the wan old man and his visitor engaged in rather a vigorous
colloquy, conducted with brutal coarseness on the part of the man in
the brown coat, and on the other side with the air of one upon whom some
heavy and startling demand is made, which he is wholly unprepared or
unable to meet.
After some extravagant gestures had been exhibited by both persons, the
individual in the dingy brown sack abruptly terminated it, by thrusting
rudely back the pale-faced old man, springing past him, and ascending
the stairs. Wringing his hands, with a distracted aspect, the old man
staggered after him.
The quick eye of Harry Vivian had detected the agonised bearing of the
old man during the whole time he was in conversation with his unwelcome
visitor. He had with pain perceived the emotion of horror which seemed
to paralyse his limbs as he tottered up the stairs after the dusky
fellow, and, with nervous apprehension, he wondered what scene was then
being enacted in the apartments above.
Was that fair young creature present? In all human probability she
was. Possibly subjected to the coarse insults of the unprepossessing
individual who had forced his way into her presence. The teeth of the
youth set firmly together as the thought intruded itself, and he felt
that it would prove an infinite comfort to him, if he detected the
vulgar rascal in any act of insolence addressed to her, to grip him by
the nape of the neck, and fling him out of the window into the street.
At this moment, old Harper, the goldsmith, his master, and his uncle
too, made his appearance from an inner workshop. Young Vivian, who was
racking his brain for a scheme which should enable him to make one of
the party opposite, turned quickly to him and said--
“Oh, sir, I am glad you have come in! There is the silver race cup from
Rixon’s, which ought to have been sent to the chaser’s; it has been
overlooked. It is wanted home quickly. Don’t you think I had better run
over with it at once to old Wilton?”
“Wilton! No, Hal!”
“No, sir. Why not?”
“He was so slow over the last things we gave him to chase. You ought to
remember that, Hal, for you used to run over there constantly to urge
him on, you know.”
Hal turned suddenly scarlet.
“That won’t do,” continued the goldsmith; “so in future, I think we had
better send all these jobs to old Verity, at the back of the Sessions
House.”
The perspiration stood in small globes on the forehead of young Vivian.
“You forget, sir,” he said, with a pleading tone, “that Wilton has been
long in failing health, that it is not so long since he lost his wife.
Oh! sir, this is not a time to take his work away.”
Mr. Harper gently stroked his chin.
“Well, no, Hal, it is not,” he said, after a short pause; “but, at the
same time, his unfortunate position is not an excuse we can offer to the
firms who employ us for delay in the work with which we are entrusted;
and it would be unfair to ourselves to allow the shortcomings of others
to prove the occasion of loss of custom to us.”
“But I will answer for Wilton’s punctuality this time,” urged Hal,
eagerly; “and you know he is our best chaser. Shall I run over with it,
and impress upon him that it is wanted as soon as it can be done?”
“Well you may, Hal,” said the goldsmith; “but remember to point out to
him the necessity for punctuality. Assure him that if there be any delay
over the completion of this job, he may reckon it as the last he will
have from us.”
The apprentice, with a pleased smile, nodded his head, caught up the
cup, which bore upon it a rare example of his own skill, and ran out of
the shop.
A moment more, and a sharp ringing knock was heard at the door of the
house in which dwelt old Wilton the gold chaser.
Another moment, and the apprentice stood within the chamber he had so
longed to enter, and he became at once a spectator and a participator in
a painful scene.
The sounds of angry altercation caught his ear as he reached the room
door, the gruff tone of voice of the unwelcome guest preponderating.
Acting upon and animated by an impulse which he perhaps would not
have cared to acknowledge even to himself, he did not pause to crave
admission, but entered the room without displaying the courtesy of a
preliminary knock.
He saw before him old Wilton, and facing him the terror-dealing man
in brown. They were at high words. On the appearance of Hal, both men
became silent, and fixed their eyes intently and inquiringly upon him.
They waited for him to speak.
The apprentice cast his eyes quickly round the room, but the maiden he
hoped to see was not there, and he drew breath. He perceived that he was
expected to commence the conversation, and, clearing his voice, he said,
hurriedly--
“Mr. Wilton, I have some work here for you.” He put the silver cup upon
the table. It will require your nicest skill, and the instructions are
therefore rather elaborate, so, if you please, I will wait until you are
disengaged before I”----
“No! no! no!” exclaimed old Wilton, interrupting him, Snatching up
the cup, he thrust it back into the arms of young Vivian--“take it
away--take it away!” he added, almost frantically, “it must not remain
here now. No! no! no!”
“Why not?” asked the individual in the loose great coat, sharply.
“Silence! speak not,” cried Wilton, hoarsely, glaring at him; and
then turning to the apprentice, he ejaculated, with great excitement,
“Go--go; I beg--I entreat you to go away. Pray, young sir, go!”
“But I interposes a objection,” intervened the former speaker, and,
turning to Vivian, he said, with an assumption of authority--“You’ll be
so kind as to put that ’ere piece o’ plate down where you put it jes’
now.”
“Suppose I do not?” rejoined Vivian, sharply, turning his bright eye
full upon the speaker, with an expression that savoured very strongly
of a disposition to resist. The dirty man did not like the language it
spake, but he affected not to be influenced by the threat it conveyed.
He answered, temperately yet impressively--
“That is jes’ what I don’t suppose. Look here, young genl’man, you don’t
know me--my name’s Jukes!”
It might have been Snooks, or Wiggins, or any other name not down in the
category of the young man’s acquaintances or friends. The indifference
he displayed on hearing it could not be greater if it had. He so
expressed himself, for which Mr. Jukes rewarded him with a stare of
astonishment, and whistled. Then he chuckled--
“You’re in luck, you are,” he continued; “but then you are young, you’ll
werry likely know me better some day. I’m a sheriff’s officer.”
Certainly the youth recognised the office if he did not the man’s name.
A thrill ran through his frame as the fellow hissed the words between
his teeth, and a sound like a low wail burst from the lips of old
Wilton.
The youth turned towards him, his bosom swelling with the generous
impulses natural to his age, and, in tones of earnest sincerity, he
exclaimed, “Can I, in any way, aid you, Mr. Wilton?”
The tone, the look, the gesture of the warm-hearted youth needed nothing
to commend them to the keen appreciation of the old gold-worker, and his
eyes filled with tears as the generous proffer fell upon his ears, but
he shook his head sorrowfully.
“I thank you, Master Vivian,” he said; “but you cannot help me. No, you
cannot aid me.”
“You do not know, Mr. Wilton, what I might be able to accomplish, if you
would give me the opportunity,” he urged.
“No, no,” replied the old man, “leave me to battle it out with this man
as best I may.”
“And jes’ leave that cup afore you go,” exclaimed Mr. Jukes, addressing
Vivian. “It’ll help the hassets.”
“I do not intend to go yet,” said Hal Vivian; “but when I do, believe
me I shall take no instructions from you about the destination of this
cup.”
Mr. Jukes whistled shrilly by the united aid of his first and third
fingers, and instantly the room door opened. A couple of yet shabbier
and much dirtier personages than Mr. Jukes made their appearance. That
individual waved his hand towards them, and performed the ceremony of
introduction.
“Mr. Nutty and Mr. Sudds, genl’men,” he said. “One on ’em, Mr. Nutty,
I shall leave here in possession on a _fi. fa_., and Mr. Sudds will
assist me in arresting Eustace Wilton on a _ca. sa._ and in taking on
him a country walk to a spunging house.”
Old Wilton turned as pale as death, and groaned in bitter anguish. Young
Vivian felt a flush of heat pass over his frame.
“Can nothing be done?” he asked of Jukes, earnestly.
Mr. Jukes raised his dirty hand to his mouth, and recklessly bit his
foul thumb-nail. He plunged into a fit of reflection. Suddenly he raised
his head, and said to his companions--
“Go outside a moment.”
They obeyed him, and quitted the room. Then he said to the youth--
“I hold warrants on two judgments against Wilton for one thousand pounds
each. On the one I takes his traps, on the other I takes his body. So
you see as he can’t satisfy ’em, young mister, he’ll be cleaned out,
and become a reg’lar pauper, on the poor side, in quod; and he must rot
in quod, for he can’t take the benefit of the hact, that I knows. That’s
bad enuff, ain’t it?”
“It is horrible!” ejaculated Hal, with a glance of commiseration at the
old man, who, with downcast eyes and set teeth, was listening to every
word that fell from the man’s lips.
“Of course it is,” repeated Mr. Jukes, with an air of triumph. “Now
he may save himself from all this, and like the princesses and queen’s
children in fairy tales, live happy ever arterwards, if he chooses not
to be hobstinate.” Mr. Jukes spoke with emphasis. “I wants him jes’ to
sign a little bit o’ paper. He has only to make a flourish with a pen,
and there he is a free man agin with all his traps about him.”
Mr. Jukes paused. Young Vivian approached old Wilton.
“Your position is a grave one, Mr. Wilton,” he said: “let me
respectfully suggest that if a simple signature will free you from two
heavy claims”----
“Two thousand pounds, two _thousand_ pounds!” interposed Jukes,
elevating his voice as he repeated the amount of the sum.
“Simple signature!--simple signature!” almost screamed the old man. “You
do not know what you ask, young sir. Sign it. Never! I will starve, rot,
die, first.”
“Then you must starve, die, and rot,” roared Mr. Jukes, entirely losing
his previous equanimity. “We’ll have no more o’ your nonsense. Hallo
there! Sudds and Nutty, come in here, and let’s go to business; ketch
’old of Eustace Wilton there, Sudds; and you, Nutty, begin to take a
hinventory of these ’ere chattels.”
Had the men thus summoned to appear, indulged themselves while outside
the door with the pastime of listening at the keyhole, they could hardly
have made a quicker response, than they did to the call of Jukes.
But as they entered the room by one door, a young girl ran into it by
another, and cast her arms about the old gold-worker’s neck, saying, in
an affrighted tone--
“Dear, dear father, who and why are these men here? why are you, in such
grief?”
The old man sank upon a seat; bowing his face upon the table and burying
his hands in his gray hair, he sobbed with agony.
The girl only tightened her loving embrace, and turned her face towards
the ruffians who were about to jest at the situation.
It was the young Madonna-faced maiden Vivian had seen at the window,
seeming like a golden seraph in the sunshine.
When Jukes perceived the exquisite countenance of Wilton’s daughter
turned with an aspect of distressed inquiry towards him, he
instinctively removed the hat of many showers from his dusty head, and
made her a slight bow. His satellites also approached as near as
they could to an imitation of his action, and stood still, instead of
displaying, as they had intended, a vast amount of unnecessary activity.
This respect was an instinctive tribute to her innocent loveliness.
Purity commands reverence even as beauty does admiration.
Vivian felt, with a rising in the throat, a sudden desire to produce
from his pocket--which contained but a very few shillings--several
thousand pounds, with which to pay off the debt, and then an almost
irresistible inclination to trundle down the stairs, and out of the
house, the three fellows whose presence created so much misery.
He could do nothing, however, but clear his voice, and, addressing the
young lady, say--
“This is a most unhappy affair, Miss Wilton; and I regret very sincerely
that it is in my power to do little either in the way of assistance or
advice; but, with your permission, I will fetch over my uncle,
Mr. Harper; he possesses vast experience, and no doubt he will show us a
way out of this maze of difficulty and affliction.”
He did not wait for her permission, but running across the road,
returned the silver cup to its former place; and, in a few hurried,
passionate words, explained to his uncle what had occurred. He succeeded
in prevailing on him to return with him to Wilton’s apartments, in some
vague hope that he would be able to suggest a mode by which the old man
might be saved from destruction.
A most painful scene followed the appearance of Mr. Harper. By pertinent
questions, he elicited that, under circumstances which could not then be
explained, Wilton had given bonds to the amount of two thousand pounds;
that those bonds were over-due; that he had been sued for the recovery
of the amount; that judgment had been obtained against him, and that
execution had issued; but, withal, the man Jukes was empowered to
withdraw arrest and execution, on the condition that Wilton signed a
certain document which Jukes then had in his possession. This signature
Wilton sternly and inflexibly refused to give; and when it was urged
upon him to do so, for the sake of her who was wholly dependent upon
him, he grew frenzied, and vowed that he would submit to death rather
than comply. Mr. Harper, the goldsmith, finding that reasoning,
expostulations, suggestions, and pleadings, were alike in vain, said
there was no way to save him, and matters must take their course. Like
a vulture pouncing upon its prey, Jukes seized upon the almost lifeless
old man, and proceeded to drag him away. His daughter clung in horrified
agony to him--in truth, it was a sad and painful sight. It was scarcely
more than a year since death had ruthlessly torn her mother from this
fair young child, and now it seemed as though the grim tyrant, in the
person of Jukes, was robbing her of her father also.
The old man’s knees trembled, and his under-jaw quivered, as though he
had been smitten with the palsy. He embraced his daughter with frenzied
emotion, and in tones of passionate grief, cried--
“Flo’! Flo’! my own, my beautiful darling, I leave you but for a brief
time. Bear up against this dreadful visitation as bravely as you can,
my girl. It is for the sake of your brother and for you, darling, that
I endure this misery; but have trust, my child, in an all-righteous
Creator--happiness will come to us again some day, my child--some day.”
“I will do my best, dear father, if you will take me with you,” murmured
Flora, through her blinding tears: “I will strive to be brave, and to
endure patiently and calmly; but oh! indeed, indeed it will terrible to
be left here alone.”
She flung herself upon his neck, and sobbed bitterly.
Mr. Harper coughed, a watery mist shrouded everything from the sight of
young Vivian, but Mr. Jukes, declaring that he had no warrant of arrest
against any “gals,” turned spitefully on old Wilton, tore him from the
agonised embrace of his weeping child, and bore him away. Mr. Harper
followed them down the stairs, to see that no unnecessary harshness was
employed in conveying the trembling prisoner into the street.
When they were gone, Flora Wilton sank, half-fainting, into a chair, Hal
approached her, and, in a gentle voice, he said to her--
“Your brother Mark and I were intimate friends, Miss Wilton, before he
went abroad--will you not also look upon me as a friend? It is not in my
power to do much, yet all that I can do to serve you shall be done
with my whole heart. Pray believe me. I will not obtrude upon the very
natural grief which now so heavily weighs you down, but I entreat you,
when you may need aid not to forget me.”
Flora rose up. She turned her large, beautiful eyes--yet more lustrous
from the tears which filled them--upon him, and with a quivering lip,
murmured--
“Oh, Mr. Vivian, kindness at a moment like this is doubly valuable. It
has a language which of late has been very, very strange in our ears;
and now that--that he--he is gone, I--I”--
Her voice gradually became inaudible, as her features were overspread
with a death-like paleness. She stretched out her small white hand, as
though to feel for some place to lean upon for support. She appeared at
a moment to have been stricken with blindness; she tottered, swayed,
to and fro, and would have fallen heavily upon the ground but that Hal,
with a sudden cry, caught her in his strong arms and saved her.
The exclamation uttered by Vivian attracted the attention of Mr. Nutty.
He was making out an inventory of the furniture in the room, and had
just written down in a penny memorandum book, “4 ’orsaire cheers,
1 tabbel,” when he heard the same voice cry--“Run for some water! Quick!
Run!”
He responded instantly:
“Water be blowed; I can’t go for no water; I’m the man in possession.”