THE BEDESMAN OF ST SEPULCHRE
Philip lay long ill on board the hospital ship. If his heart had
been light, he might have rallied sooner; but he was so depressed he
did not care to live. His shattered jaw-bone, his burnt and
blackened face, his many injuries of body, were torture to both his
physical frame, and his sick, weary heart. No more chance for him,
if indeed there ever had been any, of returning gay and gallant, and
thus regaining his wife's love. This had been his poor, foolish
vision in the first hour of his enlistment; and the vain dream had
recurred more than once in the feverish stage of excitement which
the new scenes into which he had been hurried as a recruit had
called forth. But that was all over now. He knew that it was the
most unlikely thing in the world to have come to pass; and yet those
were happy days when he could think of it as barely possible. Now
all he could look forward to was disfigurement, feebleness, and the
bare pittance that keeps pensioners from absolute want.
Those around him were kind enough to him in their fashion, and
attended to his bodily requirements; but they had no notion of
listening to any revelations of unhappiness, if Philip had been the
man to make confidences of that kind. As it was, he lay very still
in his berth, seldom asking for anything, and always saying he was
better, when the ship-surgeon came round with his daily inquiries.
But he did not care to rally, and was rather sorry to find that his
case was considered so interesting in a surgical point of view, that
he was likely to receive a good deal more than the average amount of
attention. Perhaps it was owing to this that he recovered at all.
The doctors said it was the heat that made him languid, for that his
wounds and burns were all doing well at last; and by-and-by they
told him they had ordered him 'home'. His pulse sank under the
surgeon's finger at the mention of the word; but he did not say a
word. He was too indifferent to life and the world to have a will;
otherwise they might have kept their pet patient a little longer
where he was.
Slowly passing from ship to ship as occasion served; resting here
and there in garrison hospitals, Philip at length reached Portsmouth
on the evening of a September day in 1799. The transport-ship in
which he was, was loaded with wounded and invalided soldiers and
sailors; all who could manage it in any way struggled on deck to
catch the first view of the white coasts of England. One man lifted
his arm, took off his cap, and feebly waved it aloft, crying, 'Old
England for ever!' in a faint shrill voice, and then burst into
tears and sobbed aloud. Others tried to pipe up 'Rule Britannia',
while more sate, weak and motionless, looking towards the shores
that once, not so long ago, they never thought to see again. Philip
was one of these; his place a little apart from the other men. He
was muffled up in a great military cloak that had been given him by
one of his officers; he felt the September breeze chill after his
sojourn in a warmer climate, and in his shattered state of health.
As the ship came in sight of Portsmouth harbour, the signal flags
ran up the ropes; the beloved Union Jack floated triumphantly over
all. Return signals were made from the harbour; on board all became
bustle and preparation for landing; while on shore there was the
evident movement of expectation, and men in uniform were seen
pressing their way to the front, as if to them belonged the right of
reception. They were the men from the barrack hospital, that had
been signalled for, come down with ambulance litters and other marks
of forethought for the sick and wounded, who were returning to the
country for which they had fought and suffered.
With a dash and a great rocking swing the vessel came up to her
appointed place, and was safely moored. Philip sat still, almost as
if he had no part in the cries of welcome, the bustling care, the
loud directions that cut the air around him, and pierced his nerves
through and through. But one in authority gave the order; and
Philip, disciplined to obedience, rose to find his knapsack and
leave the ship. Passive as he seemed to be, he had his likings for
particular comrades; there was one especially, a man as different
from Philip as well could be, to whom the latter had always attached
himself; a merry fellow from Somersetshire, who was almost always
cheerful and bright, though Philip had overheard the doctors say he
would never be the man he was before he had that shot through the
side. This marine would often sit making his fellows laugh, and
laughing himself at his own good-humoured jokes, till so terrible a
fit of coughing came on that those around him feared he would die in
the paroxysm. After one of these fits he had gasped out some words,
which led Philip to question him a little; and it turned out that in
the quiet little village of Potterne, far inland, nestled beneath
the high stretches of Salisbury Plain, he had a wife and a child, a
little girl, just the same age even to a week as Philip's own little
Bella. It was this that drew Philip towards the man; and this that
made Philip wait and go ashore along with the poor consumptive
marine.
The litters had moved off towards the hospital, the sergeant in
charge had given his words of command to the remaining invalids, who
tried to obey them to the best of their power, falling into
something like military order for their march; but soon, very soon,
the weakest broke step, and lagged behind; and felt as if the rough
welcomes and rude expressions of sympathy from the crowd around were
almost too much for them. Philip and his companion were about
midway, when suddenly a young woman with a child in her arms forced
herself through the people, between the soldiers who kept pressing
on either side, and threw herself on the neck of Philip's friend.
'Oh, Jem!' she sobbed, 'I've walked all the road from Potterne. I've
never stopped but for food and rest for Nelly, and now I've got you
once again, I've got you once again, bless God for it!'
She did not seem to see the deadly change that had come over her
husband since she parted with him a ruddy young labourer; she had
got him once again, as she phrased it, and that was enough for her;
she kissed his face, his hands, his very coat, nor would she be
repulsed from walking beside him and holding his hand, while her
little girl ran along scared by the voices and the strange faces,
and clinging to her mammy's gown.
Jem coughed, poor fellow! he coughed his churchyard cough; and
Philip bitterly envied him--envied his life, envied his approaching
death; for was he not wrapped round with that woman's tender love,
and is not such love stronger than death? Philip had felt as if his
own heart was grown numb, and as though it had changed to a cold
heavy stone. But at the contrast of this man's lot to his own, he
felt that he had yet the power of suffering left to him.
The road they had to go was full of people, kept off in some measure
by the guard of soldiers. All sorts of kindly speeches, and many a
curious question, were addressed to the poor invalids as they walked
along. Philip's jaw, and the lower part of his face, were bandaged
up; his cap was slouched down; he held his cloak about him, and
shivered within its folds.
They came to a standstill from some slight obstacle at the corner of
a street. Down the causeway of this street a naval officer with a
lady on his arm was walking briskly, with a step that told of health
and a light heart. He stayed his progress though, when he saw the
convoy of maimed and wounded men; he said something, of which Philip
only caught the words, 'same uniform,' 'for his sake,' to the young
lady, whose cheek blanched a little, but whose eyes kindled. Then
leaving her for an instant, he pressed forward; he was close to
Philip,--poor sad Philip absorbed in his own thoughts,--so absorbed
that he noticed nothing till he heard a voice at his ear, having the
Northumbrian burr, the Newcastle inflections which he knew of old,
and that were to him like the sick memory of a deadly illness; and
then he turned his muffled face to the speaker, though he knew well
enough who it was, and averted his eyes after one sight of the
handsome, happy man,--the man whose life he had saved once, and
would save again, at the risk of his own, but whom, for all that, he
prayed that he might never meet more on earth.
'Here, my fine fellow, take this,' forcing a crown piece into
Philip's hand. 'I wish it were more; I'd give you a pound if I had
it with me.'
Philip muttered something, and held out the coin to Captain Kinraid,
of course in vain; nor was there time to urge it back upon the
giver, for the obstacle to their progress was suddenly removed, the
crowd pressed upon the captain and his wife, the procession moved
on, and Philip along with it, holding the piece in his hand, and
longing to throw it far away. Indeed he was on the point of dropping
it, hoping to do so unperceived, when he bethought him of giving it
to Jem's wife, the footsore woman, limping happily along by her
husband's side. They thanked him, and spoke in his praise more than
he could well bear. It was no credit to him to give that away which
burned his fingers as long as he kept it.
Philip knew that the injuries he had received in the explosion on
board the _Theseus_ would oblige him to leave the service. He also
believed that they would entitle him to a pension. But he had little
interest in his future life; he was without hope, and in a depressed
state of health. He remained for some little time stationary, and
then went through all the forms of dismissal on account of wounds
received in service, and was turned out loose upon the world,
uncertain where to go, indifferent as to what became of him.
It was fine, warm October weather as he turned his back upon the
coast, and set off on his walk northwards. Green leaves were yet
upon the trees; the hedges were one flush of foliage and the wild
rough-flavoured fruits of different kinds; the fields were tawny
with the uncleared-off stubble, or emerald green with the growth of
the aftermath. The roadside cottage gardens were gay with hollyhocks
and Michaelmas daisies and marigolds, and the bright panes of the
windows glittered through a veil of China roses.
The war was a popular one, and, as a natural consequence, soldiers
and sailors were heroes everywhere. Philip's long drooping form, his
arm hung in a sling, his face scarred and blackened, his jaw bound
up with a black silk handkerchief; these marks of active service
were reverenced by the rustic cottagers as though they had been
crowns and sceptres. Many a hard-handed labourer left his seat by
the chimney corner, and came to his door to have a look at one who
had been fighting the French, and pushed forward to have a grasp of
the stranger's hand as he gave back the empty cup into the good
wife's keeping, for the kind homely women were ever ready with milk
or homebrewed to slake the feverish traveller's thirst when he
stopped at their doors and asked for a drink of water.
At the village public-house he had had a welcome of a more
interested character, for the landlord knew full well that his
circle of customers would be large that night, if it was only known
that he had within his doors a soldier or a sailor who had seen
service. The rustic politicians would gather round Philip, and smoke
and drink, and then question and discuss till they were drouthy
again; and in their sturdy obtuse minds they set down the extra
glass and the supernumerary pipe to the score of patriotism.
Altogether human nature turned its sunny side out to Philip just
now; and not before he needed the warmth of brotherly kindness to
cheer his shivering soul. Day after day he drifted northwards,
making but the slow progress of a feeble man, and yet this short
daily walk tired him so much that he longed for rest--for the
morning to come when he needed not to feel that in the course of an
hour or two he must be up and away.
He was toiling on with this longing at his heart when he saw that he
was drawing near a stately city, with a great old cathedral in the
centre keeping solemn guard. This place might be yet two or three
miles distant; he was on a rising ground looking down upon it. A
labouring man passing by, observed his pallid looks and his languid
attitude, and told him for his comfort, that if he turned down a
lane to the left a few steps farther on, he would find himself at
the Hospital of St Sepulchre, where bread and beer were given to all
comers, and where he might sit him down and rest awhile on the old
stone benches within the shadow of the gateway. Obeying these
directions, Philip came upon a building which dated from the time of
Henry the Fifth. Some knight who had fought in the French wars of
that time, and had survived his battles and come home to his old
halls, had been stirred up by his conscience, or by what was
equivalent in those days, his confessor, to build and endow a
hospital for twelve decayed soldiers, and a chapel wherein they were
to attend the daily masses he ordained to be said till the end of
all time (which eternity lasted rather more than a century, pretty
well for an eternity bespoken by a man), for his soul and the souls
of those whom he had slain. There was a large division of the
quadrangular building set apart for the priest who was to say these
masses; and to watch over the well-being of the bedesmen. In process
of years the origin and primary purpose of the hospital had been
forgotten by all excepting the local antiquaries; and the place
itself came to be regarded as a very pleasant quaint set of
almshouses; and the warden's office (he who should have said or sung
his daily masses was now called the warden, and read daily prayers
and preached a sermon on Sundays) an agreeable sinecure.
Another legacy of old Sir Simon Bray was that of a small croft of
land, the rent or profits of which were to go towards giving to all
who asked for it a manchet of bread and a cup of good beer. This
beer was, so Sir Simon ordained, to be made after a certain receipt
which he left, in which ground ivy took the place of hops. But the
receipt, as well as the masses, was modernized according to the
progress of time.
Philip stood under a great broad stone archway; the back-door into
the warden's house was on the right side; a kind of buttery-hatch
was placed by the porter's door on the opposite side. After some
consideration, Philip knocked at the closed shutter, and the signal
seemed to be well understood. He heard a movement within; the hatch
was drawn aside, and his bread and beer were handed to him by a
pleasant-looking old man, who proved himself not at all disinclined
for conversation.
'You may sit down on yonder bench,' said he. 'Nay, man! sit i' the
sun, for it's a chilly place, this, and then you can look through
the grate and watch th' old fellows toddling about in th' quad.'
Philip sat down where the warm October sun slanted upon him, and
looked through the iron railing at the peaceful sight.
A great square of velvet lawn, intersected diagonally with broad
flag-paved walks, the same kind of walk going all round the
quadrangle; low two-storied brick houses, tinted gray and yellow by
age, and in many places almost covered with vines, Virginian
creepers, and monthly roses; before each house a little plot of
garden ground, bright with flowers, and evidently tended with the
utmost care; on the farther side the massive chapel; here and there
an old or infirm man sunning himself, or leisurely doing a bit of
gardening, or talking to one of his comrades--the place looked as if
care and want, and even sorrow, were locked out and excluded by the
ponderous gate through which Philip was gazing.
'It's a nice enough place, bean't it?' said the porter, interpreting
Philip's looks pretty accurately. 'Leastways, for them as likes it.
I've got a bit weary on it myself; it's so far from th' world, as a
man may say; not a decent public within a mile and a half, where one
can hear a bit o' news of an evening.'
'I think I could make myself very content here,' replied Philip.
'That's to say, if one were easy in one's mind.'
'Ay, ay, my man. That's it everywhere. Why, I don't think that I
could enjoy myself--not even at th' White Hart, where they give you
as good a glass of ale for twopence as anywhere i' th' four
kingdoms--I couldn't, to say, flavour my ale even there, if my old
woman lay a-dying; which is a sign as it's the heart, and not the
ale, as makes the drink.'
Just then the warden's back-door opened, and out came the warden
himself, dressed in full clerical costume.
He was going into the neighbouring city, but he stopped to speak to
Philip, the wounded soldier; and all the more readily because his
old faded uniform told the warden's experienced eye that he had
belonged to the Marines.
'I hope you enjoy the victual provided for you by the founder of St
Sepulchre,' said he, kindly. 'You look but poorly, my good fellow,
and as if a slice of good cold meat would help your bread down.'
'Thank you, sir!' said Philip. 'I'm not hungry, only weary, and glad
of a draught of beer.'
'You've been in the Marines, I see. Where have you been serving?'
'I was at the siege of Acre, last May, sir.'
'At Acre! Were you, indeed? Then perhaps you know my boy Harry? He
was in the----th.'
'It was my company,' said Philip, warming up a little. Looking back
upon his soldier's life, it seemed to him to have many charms,
because it was so full of small daily interests.
'Then, did you know my son, Lieutenant Pennington?'
'It was he that gave me this cloak, sir, when they were sending me
back to England. I had been his servant for a short time before I
was wounded by the explosion on board the _Theseus_, and he said I
should feel the cold of the voyage. He's very kind; and I've heard
say he promises to be a first-rate officer.'
'You shall have a slice of roast beef, whether you want it or not,'
said the warden, ringing the bell at his own back-door. 'I recognize
the cloak now--the young scamp! How soon he has made it shabby,
though,' he continued, taking up a corner where there was an immense
tear not too well botched up. 'And so you were on board the
_Theseus_ at the time of the explosion? Bring some cold meat here
for the good man--or stay! Come in with me, and then you can tell
Mrs. Pennington and the young ladies all you know about Harry,--and
the siege,--and the explosion.'
So Philip was ushered into the warden's house and made to eat roast
beef almost against his will; and he was questioned and
cross-questioned by three eager ladies, all at the same time, as it
seemed to him. He had given all possible details on the subjects
about which they were curious; and was beginning to consider how he
could best make his retreat, when the younger Miss Pennington went
up to her father--who had all this time stood, with his hat on,
holding his coat-tails over his arms, with his back to the fire. He
bent his ear down a very little to hear some whispered suggestion of
his daughter's, nodded his head, and then went on questioning
Philip, with kindly inquisitiveness and patronage, as the rich do
question the poor.
'And where are you going to now?'
Philip did not answer directly. He wondered in his own mind where he
was going. At length he said,
'Northwards, I believe. But perhaps I shall never reach there.'
'Haven't you friends? Aren't you going to them?'
There was again a pause; a cloud came over Philip's countenance. He
said,
'No! I'm not going to my friends. I don't know that I've got any
left.'
They interpreted his looks and this speech to mean that he had
either lost his friends by death, or offended them by enlisting.
The warden went on,
'I ask, because we've got a cottage vacant in the mead. Old Dobson,
who was with General Wolfe at the taking of Quebec, died a fortnight
ago. With such injuries as yours, I fear you'll never be able to
work again. But we require strict testimonials as to character,' he
added, with as penetrating a look as he could summon up at Philip.
Philip looked unmoved, either by the offer of the cottage, or the
illusion to the possibility of his character not being satisfactory.
He was grateful enough in reality, but too heavy at heart to care
very much what became of him.
The warden and his family, who were accustomed to consider a
settlement at St Sepulchre's as the sum of all good to a worn-out
soldier, were a little annoyed at Philip's cool way of receiving the
proposition. The warden went on to name the contingent advantages.
'Besides the cottage, you would have a load of wood for firing on
All Saints', on Christmas, and on Candlemas days--a blue gown and
suit of clothes to match every Michaelmas, and a shilling a day to
keep yourself in all other things. Your dinner you would have with
the other men, in hall.'
'The warden himself goes into hall every day, and sees that
everything is comfortable, and says grace,' added the warden's lady.
'I know I seem stupid,' said Philip, almost humbly, 'not to be more
grateful, for it's far beyond what I iver expected or thought for
again, and it's a great temptation, for I'm just worn out with
fatigue. Several times I've thought I must lie down under a hedge,
and just die for very weariness. But once I had a wife and a child
up in the north,' he stopped.
'And are they dead?' asked one of the young ladies in a soft
sympathizing tone. Her eyes met Philip's, full of dumb woe. He tried
to speak; he wanted to explain more fully, yet not to reveal the
truth.
'Well!' said the warden, thinking he perceived the real state of
things, 'what I propose is this. You shall go into old Dobson's
house at once, as a kind of probationary bedesman. I'll write to
Harry, and get your character from him. Stephen Freeman I think you
said your name was? Before I can receive his reply you'll have been
able to tell how you'd like the kind of life; and at any rate you'll
have the rest you seem to require in the meantime. You see, I take
Harry's having given you that cloak as a kind of character,' added
he, smiling kindly. 'Of course you'll have to conform to rules just
like all the rest,--chapel at eight, dinner at twelve, lights out at
nine; but I'll tell you the remainder of our regulations as we walk
across quad to your new quarters.'
And thus Philip, almost in spite of himself, became installed in a
bedesman's house at St Sepulchre.