Mr. Hazlehurst’s progress towards recovery was so satisfactory that
Alice, when the carriage arrived to fetch her home, felt not the
smallest scruple in leaving him. As Harry considered the distance
between the Grange and Coverdale Park too great for his carriage-horses
to perform twice in one day, the equipage had been dispatched the
previous evening, and the servants were consequently unacquainted with
the events of the past night. Having taken leave of her mother--who,
roused by the necessity of becoming a nurse instead of a patient,
appeared rather benefited than otherwise by the unusual demand upon her
energies--and of Emily, now fast developing into a very pretty girl,
Alice started on her return home, and accomplished the greater portion
of the transit without let or hindrance. When within about five miles
of the Park, however, one of the horses was discovered to have cast a
shoe; and as it would have been worth more than his situation to have
taken it farther in so defenceless a condition, the coachman drew up at
a village blacksmith’s, where the evil might be remedied. Under these
circumstances, Alice determined to walk on till the carriage should
overtake her, which, as the morning was fine, she considered the reverse
of a hardship. Pondering many things--for Alice was no longer the
careless, light-hearted girl we once described her--she trudged on, at
first briskly, then more leisurely, as the road began to ascend, until
she might have proceeded some two miles; and yet the carriage did not
make its appearance. Toiling up hill, attired as ladies usually are
from November to April, with an amount of merino, velvet, and fur, which
might defy the severities of a Siberian winter, and is clearly _de trop_
under the influence of a sunshiny morning in March, not unnaturally
rendered Alice hot and tired; and fancying, from her imperfect knowledge
of the locality, that she must be upon her husband’s territory, she
determined to make acquaintance with the inmates of a cottage which she
perceived by the roadside a short distance higher up the hill, and, with
their permission, to rest herself until the carriage should arrive. With
this intention she approached the cottage, and finding the door
closed, rapped at it with first her knuckles, then the handle of a
most frivolous and ephemeral little parasol; but neither of these
applications producing the desired effect, she, like little Red
Riding-hood, raised the latch and opened the door. The sight which
met her eyes was one calculated alike to stimulate her curiosity and
interest her sympathies. In a cradle, on the opposite side of the room,
lay an unconscious and remarkably pretty and comfortable-looking baby
fast asleep, while near it, with the light from the casement streaming
full upon her smooth dark hair, only partially concealed beneath her
neat white cap, sat the young mother, her face hidden in her hands,
weeping bitterly. Starting at the sound of the opening door, she removed
her hands, and disclosed features which, swollen and disfigured as they
were by grief, yet evinced tokens of unusual beauty. She rose as Alice
entered, and hastily drying her tears, stood regarding her with a wild
eager glance of inquiry.
“What have you come to tell me?” she said: “they have not relented--not
set him at liberty again?--or the other one--he is not worse--oh,
God!--not dead?”
Surprised and embarrassed by the strange eagerness of her manner, and
interested by her appearance and evident distress, Alice hastened to
assure her that she was not the bearer of any tidings, good or evil, and
having explained the object of her intrusion, continued--
“But you are anxious or unhappy about something; will you not tell me
why you were crying so bitterly when I came in--perhaps I may be able to
assist you?”
Thus appealed to, the girl (for she appeared scarcely above twenty)
fixed her dark eyes on Alice’s face, and reading therein her kind and
loving nature, which indeed was so legibly depicted that the veriest
dullard at deciphering character could scarcely fail to discover it,
answered more gently than she had before spoken--
“I beg pardon, lady; but I’m amost crazy with grief this morning, and
my head’s so a-running on it, that I hardly know what I’m a-saying or
a-doing on. Ye’re welcome to rest, lady, as long as you please;” and as
she spoke she dusted a chair with her apron, and placed it for Alice,
who, seating herself, resumed--
“You say you are unhappy, but you do not tell me what about.”
The woman paused for a moment in thought, then continued--“I need make
no secret of it; the whole country round is ringing with it by this
time. Some poor fellows, lady, as had wives and children to feed, and no
money to buy bread to give to ’em, went to get a few of the birds and
things that’s running wild in the woods of them that’s rich, and don’t
want ’em; and the keepers cum to stop ’em, and one of ’em got shot
in the confusion; and the police have took my husband and my brother,
and swear the’re the men that did it; and the’re to be had up to-day
before them that’s sure to condemn ’em, innocent or guilty--gentlemen
that chuses to keep the wild creatures that God sent for food for them
as wants it, all for their own selfish amusement--begging your pardon,
lady--but it’s the truth; and when one’s heart aches like mine does, the
truth will out.”
“It is natural, perhaps, that you should think thus in your situation,”
returned Alice, gravely; “but depend upon it your husband and your
brother will not be punished unless they justly deserve it. The
gamekeeper was not killed I hope?”
“Oh no, my lady! not hurt very serious neither I do hope; only they want
to make the most of it, to get a chance to punish my poor fellows, don’t
you see?” was the reply; “and if my husband is put in prison for long,
and lays out of work, what’s to become o’ me and the children?”
“You have more than this one, then?” inquired Alice.
For answer the woman rose, and passing into the inner room of the
cottage, in less than a minute returned, bearing in her arms a little
girl, apparently about two years old, whose bright, rosy cheeks, and
eyes evidently distressed by the vivid sunlight, gave unmistakeable
tokens of having been roused out of a sound sleep. Alice possessed a
thorough woman’s love of children, leading her to consider ugly ones
pretty, and pretty ones “little angels;” so she immediately took this
particular duodecimo angelic specimen on her knee, and won its celestial
affections by allowing it to play with her watch, and a bunch of
miscellaneous rubbish attached thereunto, and denominated, on the _lucus
a non lucendo_ principle, a chatelaine. This reinforcement of infantry
having completely won the day (the “dear” sleeping baby had been a
powerful, unconscious advocate of its parent’s cause), Alice began to
consider how best she could assist the distressed mother. The first
point was to learn to whom to apply in favour of the culprits, and she
accordingly inquired on whose land they had been taken, and in whose
service the wounded gamekeeper resided? The answer was at the same
time embarrassing and satisfactory. Of course, if the offence had been
committed upon her husband’s property, he could, if he would, decline to
prosecute the offenders--if he would?--there lay the difficulty. Alice
was well aware of the serious light in which Harry regarded the crime
of poaching; and the attack on the gamekeeper even she was forced
to reprobate; but if it should prove that the man was not seriously
injured, she trusted to her newly-regained influence to enable her to
place the matter in such a light that Harry would agree with her in
overlooking the culprit’s offence for the sake of his family; or, at all
events, if that was expecting too much of his penitence, she had only
to ask it as a personal favour, and he surely could not refuse her.
So, carried away by her feelings of kindly sympathy, and acting on the
impulse of the moment, she put forth all her powers of consolation,
and ended by disclosing her name, and the relation in which she stood
towards that persecutor of poachers, Harry Coverdale, at the same time
promising to use her influence, which she represented as all-powerful,
to screen the culprits from the effects of their misdemeanors.
Before her consolatory harangue was well concluded, the carriage
arrived, and Alice, having kissed the children (the unfortunate
baby being aroused expressly for the performance of the affectionate
ceremony, a violation of the rights of the subject which it resented
by crying and slobbering with a twenty-infant power over Alice’s velvet
mantle), left five shillings in the hands of their mamma, by way of a
peace-offering, and departed, thoroughly satisfied with her _début_ in
the character of poor man’s friend and cottager’s comforter. All the way
she drove home she was building castles in the air for the benefit and
behoof of the ruined family, having mentally adopted the little girl as
lady’s-maid, and apprenticed the baby, which was of the nobler sex, to a
serious and immaculate carpenter, before she reached the Park.
Coverdale was absent when his wife arrived, having ridden over
to H--------, to assist at the committal of Jack Hargrave and his
accomplice; but she received from Wilkins, who was, in more senses
than one, a confidential servant, an over-full, untrue, and
particularly-exaggerated account of the affray of the previous night,
from which she acquired two facts, which tended considerably to disquiet
her, viz.:--first, that the wounded man was Markum, her husband’s
especial favourite; and secondly, that Harry had been personally
involved in the affair; both of which considerations increased the
difficulty of the negotiation for gaol-delivery to which she had
incautiously pledged herself. Having taken off her things, she
proceeded first to fraternise with her King Charles spaniel and the two
canary-birds (which latter plumed bipeds celebrated her return in songs
of shrill triumph, like a couple of inebriated penny whistles), then
to put all the ornaments right, which the housemaid had dusted into
uncomfortable and heterodox positions. She had just discovered a china
cup, which nobody had broken, and which yet was divided in several
places, having probably split its own sides laughing at the grotesque
figures with which its manufacturer had seen fit to embellish it, and
she was hunting for a bottle of diamond cement wherewith to repair
the damage before her husband’s return, when the sound of horses’ feet
announced that event to have taken place.
The first words that met her ear were, “Let one of the helpers go down
to Markum’s cottage, wait till Mr. Gouger has seen him again, and bring
me his report without a moment’s delay; if it should be unsatisfactory
I’ll send for Brodie by electric telegraph. Is your mistress returned?”
A warm embrace, an expression of his delight at having her back again,
a hurried enquiry after Mr. Hazlehurst, and then Harry rushed into his
narrative of the poaching affair, and in his eagerness to detail every
circumstance of a matter which interested him so deeply, did not notice
the tameness of Alice’s sympathy, or the lukewarm manner in which she
seconded his virtuous indignation against the miscreants who had all but
murdered good, honest Markum: “And small thanks to them that it was ‘all
but,’ for, if ever a scoundrel meant mischief, that scoundrel was Jack
Hargrave.”
Alice saw this was no time to urge her suit, and so merely confined
herself to the general remark, that it was a dreadful affair for all
parties, and that she pitied the wives of the wretched men who had
committed the rash act, as much as anybody concerned in the matter; to
which Harry replied:--
“That it served them right for marrying poachers, and that they might
think they were lucky not to be the victims themselves, for that a
fellow who would take to poaching was capable of cutting his wife’s
throat, or of any other enormity.”
Mr. Gouger’s report was, on the whole, satisfactory. Markum was going
on well, though he (Gouger) could not pronounce him out of danger;
the injury was very serious, and several days must elapse before the
ulterior consequences would be apparent; or, as the doctor himself
remarked, the effect of extraneous particles of plumbago, or lead,
introduced into the vital system by the sudden expansion of saltpetre
and other explosive compounds compressed within the narrow limits of a
gun-barrel, and discharged thence by ignition, according to the natural
laws of projectiles, was most subtle and deleterious, leading sometimes
to the total destruction of animal life, at others to a concussion of
the nervous system; or again, &c. &c.: from which sapient opinion Harry
collected that Brodie need not be sent for immediately.
Days glided by, the prisoners were remanded till Markum’s chance of life
or death should be ascertained, and Alice had not found a fitting moment
in which to make her appeal. At length the surgeon, with grave looks,
which might mean everything, anything, or nothing, advised, merely as
a matter of precaution, that the wounded man should make a deposition
before a magistrate, so that if anything _were_ to happen, the
jury might have the advantage of his statement of facts. Coverdale,
therefore, having persuaded one of his brother magistrates to accompany
him, proceeded to the cottage for the above purpose. Shortly after
he had set off, Alice was informed that a poor woman was desirous
of speaking to her; and on ordering her to be shown in, she was less
surprised than embarrassed to recognise in the tearful applicant her
cottage hostess, the wife of the culprit, Jack Hargrave. The result of
the interview may be easily foreseen. Alice descanted on the greatness
of the crime committed, Mr. Coverdale’s virtuous indignation against
the offenders, and the consequent difficulty of persuading him not to
prosecute them. Mrs. Jack brought forward, in reply, the baby and a
flood of tears,--arguments so unanswerable that Alice, having kissed the
one, and all but joined in the other, dismissed the afflicted matron,
having renewed her pledge of exerting her whole influence in favour
of the prisoners. It was with a feeling akin to desperation that she
determined to plead her _protégées_’ cause the moment Harry should
return, certain that if she again allowed her ardour to cool, she should
never have courage to enter upon the subject to him. Accordingly, as
soon as he had finished giving her an account of the clear and able
manner in which Markum had detailed the proceedings of the eventful
night on which the affray had occurred, she began:--
“I, too, have had rather a trying interview; the wife of one of the
men who have been taken up on suspicion has been here--a frail,
delicate-looking, young creature, scarcely more than a girl, with the
dearest, sweetest, little baby imaginable. I do so wish you had seen
it!”
Harry muttered a reply, which, though scarcely audible, conveyed the
impression that he was perfectly content without having had ocular
demonstration of its infantine perfections; and Alice continued--
“Yes, I wish you had seen both mother and child--its sweet, innocent
looks, and the poor girl’s tears, would have pleaded her cause better
than any arguments of mine can do, your kind heart could never have
resisted them.”
“Plead her cause,” repeated Coverdale; “that means, because her husband
and his accomplice have been so obliging as to destroy my game, and
murder, or half murder, as the case may prove, my head keeper, she
considers it my duty to support herself and family, I suppose; she
has brought this irresistible baby as a safe dodge to work upon your
feminine susceptibilities; and, with thorough woman’s logic, she has
persuaded you to look upon her as a suffering innocent, and upon me as a
tyannical oppressor. Now confess--is not this the truth?”
“No, really it is not,” replied Alice, eagerly. “I own I think you, from
your passion for field-sports, take rather an exaggerated view of the
crime of poaching; but I quite feel as you do, that wounding poor Markum
was a cruel and cowardly act; still, revenging it upon this family will
not benefit him nor ourselves.”
“I don’t wish the people to starve, of course,” returned Harry, moodily,
“though I should imagine the young woman and her brats can scarcely have
got through all the game in her larder yet. I should not mind starving
on hashed hare and broiled pheasants’ legs myself for a week or two;
however, if the poor girl really is in want, I have no objection to your
relieving her, but do not be imposed upon, darling, that is all that I
mean to say.”
The kindness of her husband’s manner, and the good-natured way in which
he appeared willing to support the family of the man who had injured
him, served alike to remove Alice’s fears, and to lead her to overrate
the extent of her influence with her husband; so, leaning her arm on
his shoulder, while with her other hand she smoothed back his clustering
hair, she continued, “What a good, kind boy it is, though it does growl
sometimes. But now, to show you that my _protégée_ is not seeking to
impose on me for the sake of obtaining money, I will tell you that her
petition was for quite a different object, and one creditable alike to
her feelings as a wife and a sister: she wants you to act as only a
high and generous nature like your own would be capable of acting--she
implores you to pardon her husband and her brother.”
“To do what!” exclaimed Harry sharply, a dark shade coming across his
features.
“To let off two of the men who were engaged in this unlucky
business--her husband and her brother--not to prosecute them, I mean,”
returned Alice, removing her hand from her husband’s shoulder and
preparing to “hold her own,” in the dispute she foresaw impending.
“And their names:” inquired Coverdale.
Alice repeated them.
“As I expected,” resumed Coverdale; “the man who fired the shot and his
accomplice, who, more guilty than himself, urged him to do it. Now, ask
your own good sense, Alice, and reflect a moment before you answer. Even
were I willing, can I in common justice let these fellows off?”
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Alice, without a moment’s deliberation; “it is
so great--so noble to forgive an injury! Revenge is but a mean, petty
feeling, after all.”
“An admirable reason for shaking hands with an individual who has
knocked you down,” returned Coverdale, “but none whatsoever for
screening two malefactors from the just punishment of their ill-deeds;”
then, lapsing into the magistrate, he continued, “You mistake the whole
scope and intention of our penal code, my dear Alice. We do not punish
offenders as an act of revenge upon the individual, but in order to
benefit society by deterring others from committing a like crime;
thus, laying aside personal feeling, I should be doing an injury to the
community at large, by refusing to prosecute these fellows. You see this
clearly, do you not?”
Alice’s reasoning powers did see it, and had seen it all along, but
Alice had also seen the poor wife and the meritorious and seductive
baby, and she cared “fifty thousand times” (as she herself would have
expressed it) more for them than for the community at large; so finding
that the argument was going against her, she, woman-like, adroitly
shifted her ground. “According to your reasoning, there would be no
room for such a quality as mercy,” she began; “stern, inexorable justice
would condemn every criminal, no matter what extenuating circumstances
there might be; in each case punishment must follow sin, as effect
follows cause. I, for one, should be very sorry always to be judged by
such a cruel rule.”
“Oh, if you’re going to put German metaphysical sophistries in the place
of English common-sense, I’ve no more to say about it,” returned Harry,
gruffly; “only it seems to my simplicity that punishment always does
follow crime in this world, as soon as it’s found out. If a brat steals
the sugar, its mother slaps it; if a schoolboy prigs apples, the master
flogs him; if an apprentice bolts with the till, the law transports him;
if Jack murders Tom, the hangman stretches his neck for him:--and serve
’em all right say I; it would be a precious deal worse world to live
in if it were not so, to my thinking.”
Alice paused to consider the justice of this remark--we will follow her
example!