JOHNNY BEER’S MASTERPIECE
Minnie Sweetland had no time to lose, for well she understood that
the police would not wait her pleasure. It behoved her, if possible,
instantly to prove her husband’s innocence, and, in order to do so,
certain witnesses and a magistrate, before whom they could testify upon
oath, were necessary. On the night of the catastrophe, before she slept,
Daniel’s wife was permitted to see Mrs Prowse, the widow who had attended
to Rix Parkinson during his last hours; and this woman, familiar with
the truth, promised to do all that was right before the following day.
Finally, the wife obtained a physician’s solemn promise that the police
should not take her husband until Sir Reginald Vivian was familiar with
the circumstances; then, knowing that Dan was safe, she slept. But her
repose proved fitful and broken by pain. Thankfully she welcomed dawn and
gladly prepared for an ordeal now hastening upon her.
At eleven o’clock a magistrate, with Sir Reginald Vivian, Henry Vivian,
Mrs Prowse, her son, Samuel Prowse, and a shorthand writer entered
the room where Minnie lay. Nurses were also in attendance, and before
Mrs Sweetland told her story, Daniel and the physician of the hospital
appeared.
Then the wife made her statement. She spoke calmly and clearly; there was
no hesitation in her voice; and those present were able to confirm her
account in every particular.
“When Titus Sim told me that poor Rix Parkinson was going to die and
wanted to see me before he went, I was ready to visit him at once. Mr Sim
said that he believed that Rix Parkinson could prove my husband innocent.
It was understood also that there must be a witness of what was said. And
Mr Sim was to be that witness. I have never trusted him; so I thought it
would be well if there was another witness. I told Mrs Prowse about it,
and she agreed with me that it might be safer. I had already spoken to
Sam Prowse here. He was always a friend to my Daniel, and I trusted him.
As he lived next door to Mr Parkinson, it was easy to have him there. His
mother took Samuel into the sick man’s room while Mr Parkinson slept.
He was hidden in a hanging cupboard, and heard every word that passed.
Afterwards, when we had gone, and the sufferer was asleep again, his
mother let him out. None knew about it excepting Mrs Prowse and Samuel
and me. Samuel wrote down from memory everything that Rix Parkinson said.
You can compare what he wrote with what I am going to tell you. I have
not seen Sam Prowse since that day, and I do not know what he wrote.”
Minnie then told the story of all that the dead man had confessed,
and young Prowse confirmed it. His mother also explained how she had
concealed him in the room of the dying man. Minnie went on to tell of
Sim’s offer of marriage and his threat when she refused him. Daniel next
told his story, related that he had revealed himself to Sim, and that
Sim, inflamed by passion, had returned truth for truth and laid bare
his own plot to destroy his old friend and marry the widow. Of this
statement, however, there was no witness; but, viewed in the light of
Sim’s subsequent actions, it appeared in the highest degree credible.
That Sim was the dead poacher’s accomplice also seemed certain. Minnie
mentioned the broken pipe found by her after the poaching raid at Flint
Stone Quarry, and the horn button, which she had picked up in Middlecott
Lower Hundred. She had kept both articles, and, after sewing on another
button for him, was positive that the button found at Middlecott
belonged to Sim’s legging, by reason of its unusual pattern and notched
edge. To the button Sir Reginald attached no importance, since Sim had
been early upon the scene of the murder in the wood: but the pipe was
serious evidence.
Titus Sim himself proved not well enough to be interrogated at this stage
of affairs; but a week later he left the hospital under arrest, and, on
the same day, Sweetland also departed. The footman confessed to nothing;
but his wife’s testimony proved sufficient to free Daniel and prove him
innocent. A very genuine triumph therefore awaited the young man. Even Mr
Corder from Plymouth wrote and congratulated him; and in the streets the
small boys crowded behind him and shouted “Hurrah!”
His father now wearied the world with Dan’s praises; his mother spent
half her time on her knees thanking God, and the other half running after
her son. But, thanks to Henry Vivian and Sir Reginald, something more
solid than popularity awaited Daniel. The knight, who counted little of
first importance but the life and prosperity of his son and heir, amazed
even Daniel’s mother by his attitude towards young Sweetland.
He sent for the hero of the moment, and a curious scene took place
between them, the drift of which was hidden from Daniel until some weeks
afterwards. Upon this occasion Sweetland, off whose face Jesse Hagan’s
dye had scarcely as yet departed, found the master of Middlecott and the
village schoolmaster awaiting him. On the study table were pens, ink
and paper, statements of accounts, and various more or less complicated
memoranda.
“Now, Dan,” said Sir Reginald, “I’m a man of few words, and hate to waste
them. Therefore the meaning of this business can very well be left to
take care of itself. To explain it now might be to do an unnecessary
thing; so I’ll explain afterwards, if explanations are called for. This
is Mr Bright, the master of the Board School. You know him already, and
he tells me you were a sharp pupil and good at figures, though abominably
lazy. I hope he’s right for your own sake, so far as the mathematics are
concerned. During the next two hours or more Mr Bright is going to put
you through your facings and see what you are good for. Do your best.
Upon receiving his report, you shall hear from me. When the examination
is ended, some supper will be served for you both.”
Sir Reginald retired and for three hours Dan and his old schoolmaster
wrestled with figures. After midnight the young man went home to Minnie
with his head spinning.
A week later the mystery was solved and Sweetland received a letter from
Middlecott which much surprised him. It was an autograph communication
from Sir Reginald himself.
“My gratitude, young man,” he wrote, “is already familiar to you. Under
Heaven you were instrumental in saving my son’s life, and that alone
ensures for you my active regard and interest while I myself live. The
only question in my mind, since your acquittal, has been to find out how
best I may advance your welfare: and at the instance of my son, whose
brain is quicker than my own, I agreed to offer you a very onerous and
responsible appointment--on one condition. The work requires a clear head
and some knowledge of figures. Experience might also have been reasonably
demanded but this I waived. You have already shown qualities of mental
readiness, nerve and ability which, had they been exercised upon worthy
instead of highly improper pursuits, might have excited admiration
instead of suspicion. But your unruly past is forgotten and forgiven
before the knowledge that you saved Henry Vivian’s life. Therefore,
since Mr Bright reports that your attainments, though not splendid,
are quite respectable, and that your remarkable facility for learning
will soon make you master of the art of bookkeeping by double entry, I
have determined to offer you the post of assistant overseer at my sugar
estates in the island of Tobago. Consult with your wife whether she will
entertain this proposal. The climate is healthy but exceedingly hot.
My son will return to the West Indies for a short time in the autumn;
you will follow if you agree to do so; and the nature of your duties
will then be made clear to you. The necessary practical experience can
only be acquired on the spot; but I trust you to learn quickly, and I
believe that the measure of your knowledge will swiftly increase to the
measure of your gratitude when you receive this offer. But you must not
be too much obliged. I am under an obligation to you of the mightiest
description, and not the least of an old man’s diminishing ambitions is
to see you and your courageous and noble-minded wife happily embarked
upon a worthy and a prosperous career.”
“Minnie!” bawled Daniel, “listen to this here! Of course ’tis settled.
To think of you seeing the world! ‘Exceedingly hot,’ he says. But I lay
’twon’t half be so hot as ’twas last time I was there!”
“If you’d let me read your letter, dear heart, I should know a thought
clearer what you was talking about, and how to advise,” answered Mrs
Sweetland.
* * * * *
There came a merry night at the “White Hart,” and the bar hummed with
conversation and laughter. Not a few friends were present; not a few were
missing.
“Have a drink along o’ me, Matthew?” said Mr Beer. “You’ll ax why I’m in
this shop instead of behind my own counter; but the missus is to home,
an’ I told her that after saying ‘good-bye’ to Dan and Minnie, I should
make a night of it along with a few of the best. Well, they be gone after
the sun. You bore yourself very stiff at the station. If he’d been my
boy, I should have blubbered--such a soft fool am I. But I’m afraid your
missus felt it cruel.”
“She’ll be all right,” said Matthew Sweetland. “Think of the glory of it!
Man’s work he’ve gone to do. An’ no rough job neither. Figures! It dries
my old woman’s eyes when I put it to her how uplifted he be. Hundreds of
pounds will pass through his hands! They trust him, an’ well they may
trust him.”
“And do you trust him yet?” croaked Gaffer Hext from his corner.
The gamekeeper laughed.
“’Tis a fair hit,” he answered. “But I’ve owned up afore all men that I
wronged Daniel, an’ humbly axed my own son’s pardon for doubting him. If
he can forgive me, you chaps did ought to. Come to think of it, ’tis no
business of yourn, when all’s said.”
Mr Bartley and the young man Samuel Prowse were discussing a recent trial.
“In my wide experience of evil-doers,” said the policeman, “I never
met his match for far-reaching cunning. Such a straight Bible face
too--looked you in the eyeball like honesty’s self! And all the time no
better’n a nest of snakes in his heart. From a professional view, ’tis
a thing to be proud of, perhaps--I mean, to have the wickedest criminal
ever knowed in the west country come from among us. ’Tis a sort of fame,
I suppose.”
“Your business have turned your head, Bartley,” declared Mr Hext. “’Tis
a thing to be shamed of, not proud of--a blot upon us--that such a
outrageous rip should appear here in this peaceful an’ honest town.”
“He wasn’t Devonshire, however,” explained Prowse. “The man comed from
over the border, I believe.”
“Somerset’s welcome to him,” said Sweetland. “Anyway he’s out of
mischief for five years. Maybe Portland Prison will drive the fear of God
into the man; but I’m not hopeful.”
“’Twas a near touch they didn’t fetch him in mad,” explained Bartley.
“The chap who defended him tried terrible hard to do it; and he based his
plea ’pon the fact that, even after he was bowled out, Titus Sim wouldn’t
confess and wouldn’t support that last dying speech of Parkinson’s.
“But he did afterwards,” Sam Prowse reminded them. “He confessed after
that he’d been Parkinson’s accomplice all along.”
“Yes, after he’d got his five years and knew the worst,” returned Mr
Bartley. “He wasn’t mad, though he certainly had a great gift of loving a
woman, which may be a sort of madness.”
“There were strong qualities in the man,” declared Gaffer Hext; “but once
let the devil in, he’ll soon mix the ingredients of our natures and turn
all sour, however good the material.”
“They found four hundred and seventy-three pounds, ten and eightpence
to his name in the bank,” said Johnny Beer. “Fifty pounds more than I
began wedded life with. A very saving man; the last of the big poachers,
you might say. There’ll be none so great an’ skilled as him an’ Rix
Parkinson in the future.”
“I hope you’m right, Johnny, with all my soul,” answered Mr Sweetland.
“To think of they two young brave hearts on the rolling deep!” mused Mr
Bartley. “I wonder if the ocean be fretful to-night?”
“What was you writing in your pocket-book, Johnny, just after we gave
’em three cheers an’ the train steamed out o’ the station this morning?”
asked Samuel Prowse.
“Why, be sure ’twas verses,” answered Mr Bartley. “At a rare time like
that, ’tis well known the rhyme rolls out of Beer like perspiration off a
man’s brow at harvesting. Come, Johnny, wasn’t you turning a verse about
it?”
“If truth must be told, I was,” confessed the publican. “Upon such great
occasions the fit takes me, like drink will take another. I must rhyme or
be ill. ’Twas the same in the courthouse, while us was waiting for the
verdict. And though I ban’t the best judge, my wife said of the poetry
I done to Exeter assizes at the trial of Sim, that it read like print
an’ made her go goose-flesh down the spine. We all know she’s weak where
I’m concerned, but notwithstanding few have got more sense than her; and
strangely enough, the rhyme about Titus Sim’s sentence and trial be in my
pocket this minute by a lucky accident. If anybody would like--?”
“Nothing upon that grim subject to-night, Johnny,” said Matthew
Sweetland; “but if you’ve got the stuff you turned out at the station,
and if it’s merry, us’ll hear it patiently, I make no doubt.”
Mr Beer was disappointed; but the company supported Daniel’s father.
“As you like, of course; but I haven’t polished it up, you know. Many of
my best verses I’ve often been knowed to write over twice. My wife will
bear witness of it. But as for merry rhymes, I do think I’m better at
solemn ones. There’s more sting to ’em. Mirth an’ joy an’ an extra glass
to the health of a lass, an’ so on, be all very well; but they read tame
unless you was on the spot yourself an’ knowed how it tasted. Nothing on
God’s earth be so uninteresting reading as the account of other folks at
a revel, if you wasn’t there. But with tragic matters, the creepiness be
very refreshing, an’ the fact you wasn’t there adds to the pleasure. The
very heart of comfortable tragedy be to look on at other people in a hell
of a mess, while you’m all right, with your pint an’ your pipe drawing
easy.”
“Merry verses or none, however,” declared Gaffer Hext. “What Sweetland
says be proper. Ban’t a comely thing to gloat over a man when he’s down.
Sim have got five years--an’ that’s prose; an’ ’tis more than any man can
do to make it poetry. So let’s have what you’ve writ to-day of Minnie
Sweetland an’ Dan--that or nought.”
Johnny pulled forth his rhyme.
“I’m in your hands,” he said. “The polish be lacking, but the rhymes is
there I believe. ’Tis pretty generally granted to me that, whatever be
the quality when I pen verses, the quantity’s generous and the rhymes
come regular.”
“Not a doubt of it, an’ you’d be a famous man if you was better knowed,”
declared Mr Sweetland.
“For that matter, they as near as damn it printed a rhyme of mine in
the _Newton Trumpet_ awhile back,” answered Johnny. “I heard two months
afterward, from a young man as works there, that if they hadn’t lost the
poetry, ’twas as like as not they’d have put it in the paper.”
“A near shave without a doubt,” assented Prowse; “’tis any odds but
they’ll print the next.”
“Order for Johnny Beer!” cried Mr Bartley.
Then the poet opened his pocket-book, smiled round about the company,
and read:--
“Let the merry bells be rung
And the joyous songs be sung,
While the happy and lucky pair
For ever leave their native air.
Yet ‘for ever’ I will not say,
Because they may come back some day.
See upon the platform stand
Folks from Middlecott so grand,
To shake the couple by the hand.
And his mother sheds some tears
Owing to very natural fears;
But when we all say ‘Hip horray!’
Then her tears do dry away.
Where they soon will happy be
’Tis a very fine countree.
Palms do wave and flowers do blow
Just wherever you do go.
Cocoanuts from there do come,
Also sugar, also rum;
And the bitters that in sherry
Often make a sad soul merry.
So we’ll wish them a jolly long life--
Both young Daniel and his wife.
Also babbies, fat and hearty,
To make up the little party.
So us’ll give ’em three cheers and one cheer more,
And hope they’ll some day reach a Heavenly Shore.
“You must understand me, neighbours, ’tis not worked up to concert pitch
as yet; but such as ’tis, there ’tis.”
Everybody shouted congratulations. Some stamped their feet; some rapped
their mugs on the bar and on the table.
“’Tis a very fine rhyme an’ meets the whole case both in this world and
the next. I’m sure,” said Mr Sweetland, “it does you credit, Beer, an’ I
thank you for it.”
“Specially that part about the foreign land they’ve gone to,” declared Mr
Bartley. “To hear you talk about palm-trees as if you’d walked under ’em
all your life! Be blessed if I can’t _see_ the place rise up in my mind
like a picture.”
“Sir Reginald Vivian would thank you for a copy, I reckon,” continued
Prowse. “He did shake hands with ’em both. He was almost the last to do
it. I heard his final words to Dan. ‘An’ you tell my son that the sooner
he’s home again the better, because I can’t get on at all without him.’
They was his very words.”
The conversation showed a tendency to drift from Johnny’s verses. But he
brought it back again.
“If you ax me what I like best myself,” he said, “’tis the first two
lines. I never wrote a better matched pair.”
“So they be then. ’Tis a very great gift, Johnny, and the parish ought to
be prouder of you than ’tis,” concluded Mr Sweetland. “I must ax you for
that bit of writing, if you please,” he added, “for my old woman’s like
to have a very snuffly night of it, and these here rhymes of yours will
cheer up her lonely heart better than spirits.”
Mr Beer handed over the paper.
“For such a high purpose, you’m welcome to ’em,” he replied.
* * * * *
That night the sea was black and troubled. Under the obscured glimmer
of a waning moon, the Royal Mail Packet _Orinoco_ pushed down Channel,
while a man and his wife stood upon deck with all the sounds of a great
steamer in their ears. They looked upon the waters and saw white foam
speeding in ghostly sheets astern and great bodies of darkness heave
upwards along the bulwarks, then sink back hissing into the vague. Across
the sky, flying with the low cloud-drift, gleamed brief sparks and stars
that shot upward from the funnels; and below, the round windows of the
engine-room flashed like great eyes upon the night. But forward was no
twinkle or glimmer of light to distract the keen eyes there. The steamer
was keeping double watches. A rushing and a wailing wind filled the upper
air; fingers invisible played strange music on the harps of the shrouds;
steam roared; deep sounds rose from the engine-room; the steering gear
jolted and grated harshly. Now for a moment it was silent; now it
chattered on again, like a violent, voluble, and intermittent voice. From
time to time came the clang of a bell to mark other ships ahead, to port,
or starboard: and through all sounded the throb, throb, throbbing of the
ship’s pulse, where her propeller thundered.
Off the Start a light-house lamp flashed friendly farewell. It shone,
sank into darkness, then smiled out again across the labouring waters.
“How does my own little wife like these here strange sights and sounds?”
asked the man.
“Sea an’ land are all one to me,” she answered, “so long as your dear arm
be where it is.”
* * * * *
COLSTON AND COY., LTD., PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.