THE END OF MARY'S EXPEDITION.
Let us hurry over what is to follow. I who knew her so well can have no
pleasure in dwelling over her misery and degradation. And he who reads
these pages will, I hope, have little sympathy with the minor details
of the life of such a man as George Hawker.
Some may think that she has been punished enough already, for leaving
her quiet happy home to go away with such a man. "She must have learnt
already," such would say, "that he cares nothing for her. Let her leave
her money behind, and go back to her father to make such amends as she
may for the misery she has caused him." Alas, my dear madam, who would
rejoice in such a termination of her troubles more than myself? But it
is not for me to mete out degrees of punishment. I am trying with the
best of my poor abilities to write a true history of certain people
whom I knew. And I, no more than any other human creature, can see the
consequences that will follow on any one act of folly or selfishness,
such as this poor foolish girl has committed. We must wait and watch,
judging with all charity. Let you and me go on with her, even to the
very end.
Good men draw together very slowly. Yet it is one of the greatest
happinesses one is capable of, to introduce two such to one another,
and see how soon they become friends. But bad men congregate like crows
or jackals, and when a new one appears, he is received into the pack
without question, as soon as he has given proof sufficient of being a
rascal.
This was the case with George Hawker. His facility for making
acquaintance with rogues and blacklegs was perfectly marvellous. Any
gentleman of this class seemed to recognise him instinctively, and
became familiar immediately. So that soon he had round him such a
circle of friends as would have gone hard to send to the dogs the most
honourable and virtuous young man in the three kingdoms.
When a new boy goes to school, his way is smoothed very much at first
by the cakes and pocket-money he brings with him. Till these are gone
he must be a weak boy indeed who cannot (at a small school) find some
one to fight his battles and fetch and carry for him. Thackeray has
thought of this (what does he not think of?) in his little book, "Dr.
Birch," where a young sycophant is represented saying to his friend,
who has just received a hamper, "Hurrah, old fellow, I'LL LEND YOU MY
KNIFE." This was considered so true to nature, on board a ship in which
I once made a long voyage, that it passed into a proverb with us, and
if any one was seen indulging in a luxury out of the way at
dinner,--say an extra bottle of wine out of his private
store,--half-a-dozen would cry out at once, "Hurrah, old fellow, I'll
lend you my knife:" a modest way of requesting to be asked to take a
glass of wine better than that supplied by the steward.
In the same way, George Hawker was treated by the men he had got round
him as a man who had a little property that he had not got rid of, and
as one who was to be used with some civility, until his money was gone,
and he sank down to the level of the rest of them--to the level of
living by his wits, if they were sharp enough to make a card or
billiard sharper; or otherwise to find his level among the proscribed
of society, let that be what it might.
And George's wits were not of the first order, or the second; and his
manners and education were certainly not those of a gentleman, or
likely to be useful in attracting such unwary persons as these Arabs of
the metropolis preyed upon. So it happened that when all his money was
played away, which came to pass in a month or two, the higher and
cleverer class of rascals began to look uncommonly cold upon him.
At first poor crushed Mary used to entertain of an evening some of the
ELITE among the card-sharpers of London--men who actually could have
spoken to a gentleman in a public place, and not have got kicked. These
men were polite, and rather agreeable, and one of them, a Captain
Saxon, was so deferential to her, and seemed so entirely to understand
her position, that she grew very fond of him, and was always pleased to
see him at her house.
Though, indeed, she saw but little of any men who came there soon after
any of them arrived, she used to receive a signal from George, which
she dared not disobey, to go to bed. And when she lay there, lonely and
sleepless, she could detect, from the absence of conversation, save now
and then a low, fierce oath, that they were playing desperately, and at
such times she would lie trembling and crying. Once or twice, during
the time she remembered these meetings, they were rudely broken upon by
oaths and blows, and on one particular occasion, she heard one of the
gamesters, when infuriated, call her husband "a d----d swindling dog of
a forger."
In these times, which lasted but a few months, she began to reflect
what a fool she had been, and how to gratify her fancy she had thrown
from her everything solid and worth keeping in the world. She had
brought herself to confess, in bitterness and anguish, that he did not
love her, and never had, and that she was a miserable, unhappy dupe.
But, notwithstanding, she loved him still, though she dreaded the sight
of him, for she got little from him now but oaths and taunts.
It was soon after their return from Brighton that he broke out, first
on some trivial occasion, and cursed her aloud. He said he hated the
sight of her pale face, for it always reminded him of ruin and misery;
that he had the greatest satisfaction in telling her that he was
utterly ruined; that his father was dead, and had left his money
elsewhere, and that her father was little better; that she would soon
be in the workhouse; and, in fine, said everything that his fierce,
wild, brutal temper could suggest.
She never tempted another outbreak of the kind; that one was too
horrible for her, and crushed her spirit at once. She only tried by
mildness and submission to deprecate his rage. But every day he came
home looking fiercer and wilder; as time went on her heart sunk within
her, and she dreaded something more fearful than she had experienced
yet.
As I said, after a month or two, his first companions began to drop
off, or only came, bullying and swearing, to demand money. And now
another class of men began to take their place, the sight of whom made
her blood cold--worse dressed than the others, and worse mannered, with
strange, foul oaths on their lips. And then, after a time, two
ruffians, worse looking than any of the others, began to come there, of
whom the one she dreaded most was called Maitland.
He was always very civil to her; but there was something about him, his
lowering, evil face, and wild looks, which made him a living nightmare
to her. She knew he was flying from justice, by the way he came and
went, and by the precaution always taken when he was there. But when he
came to live in the room over theirs, and when, by listening at odd
times, she found that he and her husband were engaged in some great
villany, the nature of which she could not understand, then she saw
that there was nothing to do, but in sheer desperation to sit down and
wait the catastrophe.
About this time she made another discovery, that she was penniless, and
had been so some time. George had given her money from time to time to
carry on household expenses, and she contrived to make these sums
answer well enough. But one day, determined to know the worst, she
asked him, at the risk of another explosion, how their account stood at
the bank? He replied in the best of his humours, apparently, "that the
five thousand they had had there had been overdrawn some six weeks, and
that, if it hadn't been for his exertions in various ways, she'd have
been starved out before now."
"All gone!" she said; "and where to?"
"To the devil," he answered. "And you may go after it."
"And what are we to do now, George?"
"The best we can."
"But the baby, George? I shall lie-in in three months."
"You must take your chance, and the baby too. As long as there's any
money going you'll get some of it. If you wrote to your father you
might get some."
"I'll never do that," she said.
"Won't you?" said he; "I'll starve you into it when money gets scarce."
Things remained like this till it came to be nearly ten months from
their marriage. Mary had never written home but once, from Brighton,
and then, as we know, the answer had miscarried; so she, conceiving she
was cast off by her father, had never attempted to communicate with him
again. The time grew nigh that she should be confined, and she got very
sick and ill, and still the man Maitland lived in the house, and he and
George spent much of their time at night, away together.
Yet poor Mary had a friend who stayed by her through it all--Captain
Saxon, the great billiard sharper. Many a weary hour, when she was
watching up anxious and ill for her husband, this man would come and
sit with her, talking agreeably and well about many things; but chiefly
about the life he used to lead before he fell so low as he was then.
He used to say, "Mrs. Hawker, you cannot tell what a relief and
pleasure it is to me to have a LADY to talk to again. You must conceive
how a man brought up like myself misses it."
"Surely, Captain Saxon," she would say, "you have some relations left.
Why not go back to them?"
"They wouldn't own me," he said. "I smashed everything, a fine fortune
amongst other things, by my goings on; and they very properly cast me
off. I never got beyond the law, though. Many well-known men speak to
me now, but they won't play with me, though; I am too good. And so you
see I play dark to win from young fellows, and I am mixed up with a lot
of scoundrels. A man brought an action against me the other day to
recover two hundred pounds I won of him, but he couldn't do anything.
And the judge said, that though the law couldn't touch me, yet I was
mixed up notoriously with a gang of sharpers. That was a pleasant thing
to hear in court--wasn't it?--but true."
"It has often surprised me to see how temperate you are, Captain
Saxon," she said.
"I am forced to be," he said; "I must keep my hand steady. See there;
it's as firm as a rock. No; the consolation of drink is denied me; I
have something to live for still. I'll tell you a secret. I've insured
my life very high in favour of my little sister whom I ruined, and who
is out as a governess. If I don't pay up to the last, you see, or if I
commit suicide, she'll lose the money. I pay very high, I assure you.
On one occasion not a year ago, I played for the money to pay the
premium only two nights before it would have been too late. There was
touch and go for you. But my hand was as steady as a rock, and after
the last game was over I fainted."
"Good Lord," she said, "what a terrible life! But, suppose you fall
into sickness and poverty. Then you may fall into arrear, and she will
lose everything after all."
He laughed aloud. A strange wild laugh. "No," said he; "I am safe
there, if physicians are to be believed. Sometimes, when I am falling
asleep, my head begins to flutter and whirl, and I sit up in bed,
breathless and perspiring till it grows still again. Then I laugh to
myself, and say, 'Not this time then, but it can't be long now.' Those
palpitations, Mrs. Hawker, are growing worse and worse each month. I
have got a desperate incurable heart complaint, that will carry me off,
sudden and sure, without warning, I hope to a better sort of world than
this."
"I am sorry for you, Captain Saxon," she said, sobbing, "so very, very
sorry for you!"
"I thank you kindly, my good friend," he replied. "It's long since I
had so good a friend as you. Now change the subject. I want to talk to
you about yourself. You are going to be confined."
"In a few days, I fear," she said.
"Have you money?"
"My husband seems to have money enough at present, but we have none to
fall back upon."
"What friends have you?"
"None that I can apply to."
"H'm," he said. "Well, you must make use of me, and as far as I can
manage it of my purse too, in case of an emergency. I mean, you know,
Mrs. Hawker," he added, looking full at her, "to make this offer to you
as I would to my own sister. Don't in God's name refuse my protection,
such as it is, from any mistaken motives of jealousy. Now tell me, as
honestly as you dare, how do you believe your husband gets his living?"
"I have not the least idea, but I fear the worst."
"You do right," he said. "Forewarned is forearmed, and, at the risk of
frightening you, I must bid you prepare for the worst. Although I know
nothing about what he is engaged in, yet I know that the man Maitland,
who lives above, and who you say is your husband's constant companion,
is a desperate man. If anything happens apply to me straightway, and I
will do all I can. My principal hope is in putting you in communication
with your friends. Could you not trust me with your story, that we
might take advice together?"
She told him all from beginning to the end, and at the last she said,
"If the worst should come, whatever that may be, I would write for help
to Major Buckley, for the sake of the child that is to come."
"Major Buckley!"--he asked eagerly,--"do you mean James Buckley of the
--th?"
"The same man," she replied, "my kindest friend."
"Oh, Lord!" he said, growing pale, "I've got one of these spasms coming
on. A glass of water, my dear lady, in God's name!"
He held both hands on his heart, and lay back in his chair a little,
with livid lips, gasping for breath. By degrees his white hands dropped
upon his lap, and he said with a sigh, "Nearer still, old friend,
nearer than ever. Not far off now."
But he soon recovered and said, "Mrs. Hawker, if you ever see that man
Buckley again, tell him that you saw Charley Biddulph, who was once his
friend, fallen to be the consort of rogues and thieves, cast off by
everyone, and dying of a heart complaint; but tell him he could not die
without sending a tender love to his good old comrade, and that he
remembered him and loved him to the very end."
"And I shall say too," said Mary, "when all neglected me, and forgot
me, this Charles Biddulph helped and cheered me; and when I was fallen
to the lowest, that he was still to me a courteous gentleman, and a
faithful adviser; and that but for him and his goodness I should have
sunk into desperation long ago. Be sure that I will say this too."
The door opened, and George Hawker came in.
"Good evening, Captain Saxon," said he. "My wife seems to make herself
more agreeable to you than she does to me. I hope you are pleased with
her. However, you are welcome to be. I thank God I ain't jealous.
Where's Maitland?"
"He has not been here to-night, George," she said, timidly.
"Curse him then. Give me a candle; I'm going up-stairs. Don't go on my
account, Captain Saxon. Well, if you will, good night."
Saxon bade him good-night, and went. George went up into Maitland's
room, where Mary was never admitted; and soon she heard him hammer,
hammering at metal, over-head. She was too used to that sound to take
notice of it; so she went to bed, but lay long awake, thinking of poor
Captain Saxon.
Less than a week after that she was confined. She had a boy, and that
gave her new life. Poorly provided for as that child was, he could not
have been more tenderly nursed or more prized and loved if he had been
born in the palace, with his Majesty's right honourable ministers in
the ante-room, drinking dry Sillery in honour of the event.
Now she could endure what was to come better. And less than a month
after, just as she was getting well again, all her strength and courage
were needed. The end came.
She was sitting before the fire, about ten o'clock at night, nursing
her baby, when she heard the street-door opened by a key; and the next
moment her husband and Maitland were in the room.
"Sit quiet, now, or I'll knock your brains out with the poker," said
George; and, seizing a china ornament from the chimney-piece, he thrust
it into the fire, and heaped the coals over it.
"We're caught like rats, you fool, if they have tracked us," said
Maitland; "and nothing but your consummate folly to thank for it. I
deserve hanging for mixing myself up with such a man in a thing like
this. Now, are you coming; or do you want half-an hour to wish your
wife good-bye?"
George never answered that question. There was a noise of breaking
glass down-stairs, and a moment after a sound of several feet on the
stair.
"Make a fight for it," said Maitland, "if you can do nothing else. Make
for the back-door."
But George stood aghast, while Mary trembled in every limb. The door
was burst open, and a tall man coming in said, "In the King's name, I
arrest you, George Hawker and William Maitland, for coining."
Maitland threw himself upon the man, and they fell crashing over the
table. George dashed at the door, but was met by two others. For a
minute there was a wild scene of confusion and struggling, while Mary
crouched against the wall with the child, shut her eyes, and tried to
pray. When she looked round again she saw her husband and Maitland
securely handcuffed, and the tall man, who first came in, wiping the
blood from a deep cut in his forehead, said,
"There is nothing against this woman, is there, Sanders?"
"Nothing, sir, except that she is the prisoner Hawker's wife."
"Poor woman!" said the tall man. "She has been lately confined, too. I
don't think it will be necessary to take her into custody. Take away
the prisoners; I shall stay here and search."
He began his search by taking the tongs and pulling the fire to pieces.
Soon he came to the remnants of the china ornament which George had
thrown in; and, after a little more raking, two or three round pieces
of metal fell out of the grate.
"A very green trick," he remarked. "Well, they must stay there to cool
before I can touch them;" and turning to Mary said, "Could you oblige
me with some sticking-plaster? Your husband's confederate has given me
an ugly blow."
She got some, and put it on for him. "Oh, sir!" she said, "Can you tell
me what this is all about?"
"Easy, ma'am," said he. "Maitland is one of the most notorious coiners
in England, and your husband is his confederate and assistant. We've
been watching, just to get a case that there would be no trouble about,
and we've got it."
"And if it is proved?" she asked, trembling.
He looked very serious. "Mrs. Hawker, I know your history, as well as
your husband's, the same as if you told it to me. So I am sorry to give
a lady who is in misfortune more pain than I can help; but you know
coining is a hanging matter."
She rocked herself wildly to and fro, and the chair where she sat,
squeezing the child against her bosom till he cried. She soothed him
again without a word, and then said to the officer, who was searching
every nook and cranny in the room:
"Shall you be obliged to turn me out of here, or may I stay a few
nights?"
"You can stay as long as you please, madam," he said; "that's a matter
with your landlady, not me. But if I was you I'd communicate with my
friends, and get some money to have my husband defended."
"They'd sooner pay for the rope to hang him," she said. "You seem a
kind and pitiful sort of man; tell me honestly, is there any chance for
him?"
"Honestly, none. There may be some chance of his life; but there is
evidence enough on this one charge, leave alone others, mind you, to
convict twenty men. Why, we've evidence of two forgeries committed on
his father before ever he married you; so that, if he is acquitted on
this charge, he'll be arrested for another outside the court."
All night long she sat up nursing the child before the fire, which from
time to time she replenished. The officers in possession slept on
sofas, and dozed in chairs; but when the day broke she was still there,
pale and thoughtful, sitting much in the same place and attitude as she
did before all this happened, the night before, which seemed to her
like a year ago, so great was the change since then. "Then," thought
she, "he was nothing but a villain after all. He had merely gained her
heart for money's sake, and cast her off when it was gone. What a
miserable fool she had been, and how rightly served now, to be left
penniless in the world!"
Penniless, but not friendless. She remembered Captain Saxon, and
determined to go to him and ask his advice. So when the strange weird
morning had crept on to such time as the accustomed crowd began to
surge through the street, she put on her bonnet, and went away for the
first time to seek him at his lodgings, in a small street, leading off
Piccadilly.
An old woman answered the door. "The Captain was gone," she said, "to
Boulogne, and wouldn't be back yet for a fortnight. Would she leave any
name?"
She hardly thought it worth while. All the world seemed to have
deserted her now; but she said, more in absence of mind than for any
other reason, "Tell him that Mrs. Hawker called, if you please."
"Mrs. Hawker!" the old woman said; "there's a letter for you, ma'am, I
believe; and something particular too, 'cause he told me to keep it in
my desk till you called. Just step in, if you please."
Mary followed her in, and she produced a letter directed to Mrs.
Hawker. When Mary opened it, which she did in the street, after the
door was shut, the first thing she saw was a bank-note for five pounds,
and behind it was the following note:--
"I am forced to go to Boulogne, at a moment's notice, with a man whom I
must not lose sight of. Should you have occasion to apply to me during
my absence (which is fearfully probable), I have left this, begging
your acceptance of it, in the same spirit as that in which it was
offered; and I pray you to accept this piece of advice at the same
time:--
"Apply instantly to your friends, and go back to them at once. Don't
stop about London on any excuse. You have never known what it is to be
without money yet; take care you never do. When a man or a woman is
poor and hungry, there is a troop of devils who always follow such,
whispering all sorts of things to them. They are all, or nearly all,
known to me: take care you do not make their acquaintance.
"Yours most affectionately,
"CHARLES BIDDULPH."
What a strange letter, she thought. He must be mad. Yet there was
method in his madness, too. Devils such as he spoke of had leant over
her chair and whispered to her before now, plain to be heard. But that
was in the old times, when she sat brooding alone over the fire at
night. She was no longer alone now, and they had fled--fled, scared at
the face of a baby.
She went home and spoke to the landlady. But little was owing, and that
she had money enough to pay without the five pounds that the kind
gambler had given her. However, when she asked the landlady whether she
could stay there a week or two longer, the woman prayed her with tears
to begone; that she and her husband had brought trouble enough on them
already.
But there was still a week left of their old tenancy, so she held
possession in spite of the landlady; and from the police-officers, who
were still about the place, she heard that the two prisoners had been
committed for trial, and that that trial would take place early in the
week at the Old Bailey.
Three days before the trial she had to leave the lodgings, with but
little more than two pounds in the world. For those three days she got
lodging as she could in coffee-houses and such places, always meeting,
however, with that sort of kindness and sympathy from the women
belonging to them which could not be bought for money. She was in such
a dull state of despair, that she was happily insensible to all smaller
discomforts, and on the day of the trial she endeavoured to push into
the court with her child in her arms.
The crowd was too dense, and the heat was too great for her, so she
came outside and sat on some steps on one side of a passage. Once she
had to move as a great personage came up, and then one of the officers
said,--
"Come, my good woman, you mustn't sit there, you know. That's the
judge's private door."
"I beg pardon," she said, "and I will move, if you wish me. But they
are trying my husband for coining, and the court is too hot for the
child. If you will let me sit there, I will be sure to get out of the
way when my lord comes past."
The man looked at her as if it was a case somewhat out of his
experience, and went away. Soon, however, he came back again, and,
after staring at her a short time, said,--
"Do you want anything, missis? Anything I can get?"
"I am much obliged to you, nothing," she said; "but if you can tell me
how the trial is going on, I shall be obliged to you."
He shook his head and went away, and when he returned, telling her that
the judge was summing up, he bade her follow him, and found her a place
in a quiet part of the court. She could see her husband and Maitland
standing in the dock, quite close to her, and before them the judge was
calmly, slowly, and distinctly giving the jury the history of the case
from beginning to end. She was too much bewildered and desperate to
listen to it, but she was attracted by the buzz of conversation which
arose when the jury retired. They seemed gone a bare minute to her,
when she heard and understood that the prisoners were found guilty.
Then she heard Maitland sentenced to death, and George Hawker condemned
to be transported beyond the seas for the term of his natural life, in
consideration of his youth; so she brought herself to understand that
the game was played out, and turned to go.
The officer who had been kind to her stopped her, and asked her "where
she was going?" She answered "to Devonshire," and passed on, but almost
immediately pushed back to him through the crowd, which was pouring out
of the doors, and thanked him for his kindness to her. Then she went
out with the crowd into the street, and almost instinctively struck
westward.
Through the western streets, roaring with carriages, crowded with foot
passengers--like one in a dream--past the theatres, and the arches, and
all the great, rich world, busy seeking its afternoon pleasure, through
the long suburbs, getting more scattered as she went on, and so out on
to the dusty broad western highway; a lonely wanderer, with only one
thought in her throbbing head, to reach such home as was left her,
before she died.
At the first quiet spot she came to she sat down and forced herself to
think. Two hundred miles to go, and fifteen shillings to keep her.
Never mind, she could beg; she had heard that some made a trade of
begging, and did well; hard if she should die on the road. So she
pushed on through the evening toward the sinking sun, till the
milestones passed slower and slower, and then she found shelter in a
tramps' lodging-house, and got what rest she could. In a week she was
at Taunton. Then the weather, which had hitherto been fair and
pleasant, broke up, and still she held on, with the rain beating from
the westward in her face, as though to stay her from her refuge, dizzy
and confused, but determined still, along the miry high-road.
She had learnt from a gipsy woman, with whom she had walked in company
for some hours, how to carry her child across her back, slung in her
shawl. So, with her breast bare to the storm, she fought her way over
the high bleak downs, glad and happy when the boy ceased his wailing,
and lay warm and sheltered behind her, swathed in every poor rag she
could spare from her numbed and dripping body.
Late on a wild rainy night she reached Exeter, utterly penniless, and
wet to the skin. She had had nothing to eat since noon, and her breast
was failing from want of nourishment and over-exertion. Still it was
only twenty miles further. Surely, she thought, God had not saved her
through two hundred such miles, to perish at last. The child was dry
and warm, and fast asleep, if she could get some rest in one of the
doorways in the lower part of the town, till she was stronger she could
fight her way on to Drumston; so she held on to St. Thomas's, and
finding an archway drier than the others sat down, and took the child
upon her lap.
Rest!--rest was a fiction; she was better walking--such aches, and
cramps, and pains in every joint! She would get up and push on, and yet
minute after minute went by, and she could not summon courage.
She was sitting with her beautiful face in the light of a lamp. A woman
well and handsomely dressed was passing rapidly through the rain, but
on seeing her stopped and said:--
"My poor girl, why do you sit there in the damp entry, such a night as
this?"
"I am cold, hungry, ruined; that's why I sit under the arch," replied
Mary, rising up.
"Come home with me," said the woman; "I will take care of you."
"I am going to my friends," replied she.
"Are you sure they will be glad to see you, my dear," said the woman,
"with that pretty little pledge at your bosom?"
"I care not," said Mary, "I told you I was desperate."
"Desperate, my pretty love," said the woman; "a girl with beauty like
yours should never be desperate; come with me."
Mary stepped forward and struck her, so full and true that the woman
reeled backwards, and stood whimpering and astonished.
"Out! you false jade," said Mary; "you are one of those devils that
Saxon told me of, who come whispering, and peering, and crowding behind
those who are penniless and deserted; but I have faced you, and struck
you, and I tell you to go back to your master, and say that I am not
for him."
The woman went crying and frightened down the street, thinking that she
had been plying her infamous trade on a lunatic; but Mary sat down
again and nursed the child.
But the wind changed a little, and the rain began to beat in on her
shelter; she arose, and went down the street to seek a new one.
She found a deep arch, well sheltered, and, what was better, a lamp
inside, so that she could sit on the stone step, and see her baby's
face. Dainty quarters, truly! She went to take possession, and started
back with a scream. What delusion was this? There, under the lamp, on
the step, sat a woman, her own image, nursing a baby so like her own
that she looked down at her bosom to see if it was safe. It must be a
fancy of her own disordered brain; but no--for when she gathered up her
courage, and walked towards it, a woman she knew well started up, and,
laughing wildly, cried out,
"Ha! ha! Mary Thornton."
"Ellen Lee?" said Mary, aghast.
"That's me, dear," replied the other; "you're welcome, my love, welcome
to the cold stones, and wet streets, and to hunger and drunkenness, and
evil words, and the abomination of desolation. That's what we all come
to, my dear. Is that his child?"
"Whose?" said Mary. "This is George Hawker's child."
"Hush, my dear!" said the other; "we never mention his name in our
society, you know. This is his too--a far finer one than yours. Cis
Jewell had one of his too, a poor little rat of a thing that died, and
now the minx is flaunting about the High-street every night, in her
silks and her feathers as bold as brass. I hope you'll have nothing to
say to her; you and I will keep house together. They are looking after
me to put me in the madhouse. You'll come too, of course."
"God have mercy on you, poor Nelly!" said Mary.
"Exactly so, my dear," the poor lunatic replied. "Of course He will.
But about him you know. You heard the terms of his bargain?"
"What do you mean?" asked Mary.
"Why, about him you know, G---- H----, Madge the witch's son. He sold
himself to the deuce, my dear, on condition of ruining a poor girl
every year. And he has kept his contract hitherto. If he don't, you
know--come here, I want to whisper to you."
The poor girl whispered rapidly in her ear; but Mary broke away from
her and fled rapidly down the street, poor Ellen shouting after her,
"Ha, ha! the parson's daughter too,--ha, ha!"
"Let me get out of this town, O Lord!" she prayed most earnestly, "if I
die in the fields." And so she sped on, and paused not till she was
full two miles out of the town towards home, leaning on the parapet of
the noble bridge that even then crossed the river Exe.
The night had cleared up, and a soft and gentle westerly breeze was
ruffling the broad waters of the river, where they slept deep, dark,
and full above the weir. Just below where they broke over the low rocky
barrier, the rising moon showed a hundred silver spangles among the
broken eddies.
The cool breeze and the calm scene quieted and soothed her, and, for
the first time for many days, she began to think.
She was going back, but to what? To a desolated home, to a heart-broken
father, to the jeers and taunts of her neighbours. The wife of a
convicted felon, what hope was left for her in this world? None. And
that child that was sleeping so quietly on her bosom, what a mark was
set on him from this time forward!--the son of Hawker the coiner! Would
it not be better if they both were lying below there in the cold still
water, at rest?
But she laughed aloud. "This is the last of the devils he talked of,"
said she. "I have fought the others and beat them. I won't yield to
this one."
She paused abashed, for a man on horseback was standing before her as
she turned. Had she not been so deeply engaged in her own thoughts she
might have heard him merrily whistling as he approached from the town,
but she heard him not, and was first aware of his presence when he
stood silently regarding her, not two yards off.
"My girl," he said, "I fear you're in a bad way. I don't like to see a
young woman, pretty as I can see you are even now, standing on a
bridge, with a baby, talking to herself."
"You mistake me," she said, "I was not going to do that; I was resting
and thinking."
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"To Crediton," she replied. "Once there, I should almost fancy myself
safe."
"See here," he said; "my waggon is coming up behind. I can give you a
lift as far as there. Are you hungry?"
"Ah," she said, "If you knew. If you only knew!"
They waited for the waggon's coming up, for they could hear the horses'
bells chiming cheerily across the valley. "I had an only daughter went
away once," he said. "But, glory to God! I got her back again, though
she brought a child with her. And I've grown to be fonder of that poor
little base-born one than anything in this world. So cheer up."
"I am married," she said; "this is my lawful boy, though it were
better, perhaps, he had never been born."
"Don't say that, my girl," said the old farmer, for such she took him
to be, "but thank God you haven't been deceived like so many are."
The waggon came up and was stopped. He made her take such refreshment
as was to be got, and then get in and lie quiet among the straw till in
the grey morning they reached Crediton. The weather had grown bad
again, and long before sunrise, after thanking and blessing her
benefactor, poor Mary struck off once more, with what strength she had
left, along the deep red lanes, through the driving rain.