_A Jew, unfortunately slain on the sands of Sheba Cove, in the parish of
Ruan Lanihale, August 15, 1810: or so much of it as is hereby related by
the Rev. Endymion Trist, B.D., then vicar of that parish, in a letter to
a friend._
My dear J--,--You are right, to be sure, in supposing that I know more
than my neighbours in Ruan Lanihale concerning the unfortunate young
man, Joseph Laquedem, and more than I care to divulge; in particular
concerning his tragical relations with the girl Julia Constantine, or
July, as she was commonly called. The vulgar knowledge amounts to
little more than this--that Laquedem, a young Hebrew of extraordinary
commercial gifts, first came to our parish in 1807 and settled here as
managing secretary of a privateering company at Porthlooe; that by his
aptitude and daring in this and the illicit trade he amassed a
respectable fortune, and at length opened a private bank at Porthlooe
and issued his own notes; that on August 15, 1810, a forced "run" which,
against his custom, he was personally supervising, miscarried, and he
met his death by a carbine-shot on the sands of Sheba Cove; and, lastly,
that his body was taken up and conveyed away by the girl Julia
Constantine, under the fire of the preventive men.
The story has even in our time received what I may call some fireside
embellishments; but these are the facts, and the parish knows little
beyond them. I (as you conjecture) know a great deal more; and yet
there is a sense in which I know nothing more. You and I, my old
friend, have come to an age when men do not care to juggle with the
mysteries of another world, but knowing that the time is near when all
accounts must be rendered, desire to take stock honestly of what they
believe and what they do not. And here lies my difficulty. On the one
hand I would not make public an experience which, however honestly set
down, might mislead others, and especially the young, into rash and
mischievous speculations. On the other, I doubt if it be right to keep
total silence and withhold from devout and initiated minds any glimpse
of truth, or possible truth, vouchsafed to me. As the Greek said,
"Plenty are the thyrsus-bearers, but few the illuminate"; and among
these few I may surely count my old friend.
It was in January 1807--the year of the abominable business of Tilsit--
that my churchwarden, the late Mr. Ephraim Pollard, and I, in cleaning
the south wall of Lanihale Church for a fresh coat of whitewash,
discovered the frescoes and charcoal drawings, as well as the brass
plaque of which I sent you a tracing; and I think not above a fortnight
later that, on your suggestion, I set to work to decipher and copy out
the old churchwardens' accounts. On the Monday after Easter, at about
nine o'clock P.M., I was seated in the Vicarage parlour, busily
transcribing, with a couple of candles before me, when my housekeeper
Frances came in with a visiting-card, and the news that a stranger
desired to speak with me. I took the card and read "Mr. Joseph
Laquedem."
"Show the gentleman in," said I.
Now the fact is, I had just then a few guineas in my chest, and you know
what a price gold fetched in 1807. I dare say that for twelve months
together the most of my parishioners never set eyes on a piece, and any
that came along quickly found its way to the Jews. People said that
Government was buying up gold, through the Jews, to send to the armies.
I know not the degree of truth in this, but I had some five and twenty
guineas to dispose of, and had been put into correspondence with a Mr.
Isaac Laquedem, a Jew residing by Plymouth Dock, whom I understood to be
offering 25s. 6d. per guinea, or a trifle above the price then current.
I was fingering the card when the door opened again and admitted a
young man in a caped overcoat and tall boots bemired high above the
ankles. He halted on the threshold and bowed.
"Mr.--?"
"Joseph Laquedem," said he in a pleasant voice.
"I guess your errand," said I, "though it was a Mr. Isaac Laquedem whom
I expected.--Your father, perhaps?"
He bowed again, and I left the room to fetch my bag of guineas.
"You have had a dirty ride," I began on my return.
"I have walked," he answered, lifting a muddy boot. "I beg you to
pardon these."
"What, from Torpoint Ferry? And in this weather? My faith, sir, you
must be a famous pedestrian!"
He made no reply to this, but bent over the guineas, fingering them,
holding them up to the candlelight, testing their edges with his
thumbnail, and finally poising them one by one on the tip of his
forefinger.
"I have a pair of scales," suggested I.
"Thank you, I too have a pair in my pocket. But I do not need them.
The guineas are good weight, all but this one, which is possibly a
couple of grains short."
"Surely you cannot rely on your hand to tell you that?"
His eyebrows went up as he felt in his pocket and produced a small
velvet-lined case containing a pair of scales. He was a decidedly
handsome young man, with dark intelligent eyes and a slightly scornful--
or shall I say ironical?--smile. I took particular note of the
steadiness of his hand as he adjusted the scales and weighed my guinea.
"To be precise," he announced, "1.898, or practically one and
nine-tenths short."
"I should have thought," said I, fairly astounded, "a lifetime too
little for acquiring such delicacy of sense!"
He seemed to ponder. "I dare say you are right, sir," he answered, and
was silent again until the business of payment was concluded.
While folding the receipt he added, "I am a connoisseur of coins, sir,
and not of their weight alone."
"Antique, as well as modern?"
"Certainly."
"In that case," said I, "you may be able to tell me something about
this": and going to my bureau I took out the brass plaque which Mr.
Pollard had detached from the planks of the church wall. "To be sure,
it scarcely comes within the province of numismatics."
He took the plaque. His brows contracted, and presently he laid it on
the table, drew my chair towards him in an absent-minded fashion, and,
sitting down, rested his brow on his open palms. I can recall the
attitude plainly, and his bent head, and the rain still glistening in
the waves of his black hair.
"Where did you find this?" he asked, but without looking up.
I told him. "The engraving upon it is singular. I thought that
possibly--"
"Oh, that," said he, "is simplicity itself. An eagle displayed, with
two heads, the legs resting on two gates, a crescent between, an
imperial crown surmounting--these are the arms of the Greek Empire, the
two gates are Rome and Constantinople. The question is, how it came
where you found it? It was covered with plaster, you say, and the
plaster whitewashed? Did you discover anything near it?"
Upon this I told him of the frescoes and charcoal drawings, and roughly
described them.
His fingers began to drum upon the table.
"Have you any documents which might tell us when the wall was first
plastered?"
"The parish accounts go back to 1594--here they are: the Registers to
1663 only. I keep them in the vestry. I can find no mention of
plastering, but the entries of expenditure on whitewashing occur
periodically, the first under the year 1633." I turned the old pages
and pointed to the entry "_Ite paide to George mason for a dayes work
about the churche after the Jew had been, and white wassche is vjd_."
"A Jew? But a Jew had no business in England in those days. I wonder
how and why he came." My visitor took the old volume and ran his finger
down the leaf, then up, then turned back a page. "Perhaps this may
explain it," said he. "_Ite deliued Mr. Beuill to make puision for the
companie of a fforeste barke yt came ashoare iiis ivd_." He broke off,
with a finger on the entry, and rose. "Pray forgive me, sir; I had
taken your chair."
"Don't mention it," said I. "Indeed I was about to suggest that you
draw it to the fire while Frances brings in some supper."
To be short, although he protested he must push on to the inn at
Porthlooe, I persuaded him to stay the night; not so much, I confess,
from desire of his company, as in the hope that if I took him to see the
frescoes next morning he might help me to elucidate their history.
I remember now that during supper and afterwards my guest allowed me
more than my share of the conversation. He made an admirable listener,
quick, courteous, adaptable, yet with something in reserve (you may call
it a facile tolerance, if you will) which ended by irritating me.
Young men should be eager, fervid, _sublimis cupidusque_, as I was
before my beard grew stiff. But this young man had the air of a
spectator at a play, composing himself to be amused. There was too much
wisdom in him and too little emotion. We did not, of course, touch upon
any religious question--indeed, of his own opinions on any subject he
disclosed extraordinarily little: and yet as I reached my bedroom that
night I told myself that here, behind a mask of good manners, was one of
those perniciously modern young men who have run through all beliefs by
the age of twenty, and settled down to a polite but weary atheism.
I fancy that under the shadow of this suspicion my own manner may have
been cold to him next morning. Almost immediately after breakfast we
set out for the church. The day was sunny and warm; the atmosphere
brilliant after the night's rain. The hedges exhaled a scent of spring.
And, as we entered the churchyard, I saw the girl Julia Constantine
seated in her favourite angle between the porch and the south wall,
threading a chain of daisies.
"What an amazingly handsome girl!" my guest exclaimed.
"Why, yes," said I, "she has her good looks, poor soul!"
"Why 'poor soul'?"
"She is an imbecile, or nearly so," said I, fitting the key in the lock.
We entered the church. And here let me say that, although I furnished
you at the time of their discovery with a description of the frescoes
and the ruder drawings which overlay them, you can scarcely imagine the
grotesque and astonishing _coup d'oeil_ presented by the two series.
To begin with the frescoes, or original series. One, as you know,
represented the Crucifixion. The head of the Saviour bore a large crown
of gilded thorns, and from the wound in His left side flowed a
continuous stream of red gouts of blood, extraordinarily intense in
colour (and intensity of colour is no common quality in
fresco-painting). At the foot of the cross stood a Roman soldier, with
two female figures in dark-coloured drapery a little to the right, and
in the background a man clad in a loose dark upper coat, which reached a
little below the knees.
The same man reappeared in the second picture, alone, but carrying a
tall staff or hunting spear, and advancing up a road, at the top of
which stood a circular building with an arched doorway and, within the
doorway, the head of a lion. The jaws of this beast were open and
depicted with the same intense red as the Saviour's blood.
Close beside this, but further to the east, was a large ship, under
sail, which from her slanting position appeared to be mounting over a
long swell of sea. This vessel had four masts; the two foremost
furnished with yards and square sails, the others with lateen-shaped
sails, after the Greek fashion; her sides were decorated with six gaily
painted bands or streaks, each separately charged with devices--a golden
saltire on a green ground, a white crescent on a blue, and so on; and
each masthead bore a crown with a flag or streamer fluttering beneath.
Of the frescoes these alone were perfect, but fragments of others were
scattered over the wall, and in particular I must mention a group of
detached human limbs lying near the ship--a group rendered conspicuous
by an isolated right hand and arm drawn on a larger scale than the rest.
A gilded circlet adorned the arm, which was flexed at the elbow, the
hand horizontally placed, the forefinger extended towards the west in
the direction of the picture of the Crucifixion, and the thumb shut
within the palm beneath the other three fingers.
So much for the frescoes. A thin coat of plaster had been laid over
them to receive the second series, which consisted of the most
disgusting and fantastic images, traced in black. One of these drawings
represented Satan himself--an erect figure, with hairy paws clasped in a
supplicating posture, thick black horns, and eyes which (for additional
horror) the artist had painted red and edged with a circle of white.
At his feet crawled the hindmost limb of a peculiarly loathsome monster
with claws stuck in the soil. Close by a nun was figured, sitting in a
pensive attitude, her cheek resting on the back of her hand, her elbow
supported by a hideous dwarf, and at some distance a small house, or
prison, with barred windows and a small doorway crossed with heavy
bolts.
As I said, this upper series had been but partially scraped away, and as
my guest and I stood at a little distance, I leave you to imagine, if
you can, the incongruous tableau; the Prince of Darkness almost touching
the mourners beside the cross; the sorrowful nun and grinning dwarf side
by side with a ship in full sail, which again seemed to be forcing her
way into a square and forbidding prison, etc.
Mr. Laquedem conned all this for some while in silence, holding his chin
with finger and thumb.
"And it was here you discovered the plaque?" he asked at length.