In which better days seem to dawn upon the Poacher.
A high-sounding oath from Sir John Slingsby passed unnoticed, for
though every one had heard the shot, each person's attention was
suddenly called to an object of his own. Ned Hayward sprang to the
window and looked out, Dr. Miles started up and turned towards Mr.
Wittingham; and Beauchamp, who was sitting next to that gentleman,
suddenly stretched out his hand, and caught him by the arm and
shoulder, so as to break his fall to the ground, though not to stop
it; for the worthy magistrate, with a low exclamation of horror, which
reached no ear but one, pressed his hand upon his heart, and fell
fainting to the ground, just as if the ball, which had entered the
window, had found out the precise spot in his skin, which had not been
dipped in Styx. Nevertheless, when Sir John and Mr. Beauchamp, and Dr.
Miles, lifted him up off the floor, and seated him on his chair again,
though they undoubtedly expected to find one of those small holes
which I should call a life-door, were it not that they never let life
in, if they often let life out, yet no wound of any kind was to be
perceived, except in the wig. Lights were brought, servants hurried in
and out, cold water was sprinkled on the old gentleman's face, the
butler recommended sal volatile, Sir John Slingsby tried brandy; and
at length Mr. Wittingham was brought to himself. Every one was busy
about him but Ned Hayward; and as Ned was a very charitable and
benevolent man, it may be necessary to say why he bestowed no care nor
attention on Mr. Wittingham. The fact was, that he did not know any
thing was the matter with him; for Ned Hayward was no longer in the
room; the window was open, indeed, and Ned Hayward had jumped out.
To return to Mr. Wittingham, however, no sooner did he recover breath
enough to articulate, than he declared, in a low voice, he must go
home.
"Why, my dear fellow!" exclaimed Sir John Slingsby, "you're not hurt,
only frightened, devilish frightened, that's all, and you're still
white about the gills, and fishy in the eyes. Come, come, finish your
bottle, and get rid of that haddock-look before you go, or you may
faint again in the carriage."
"I must go home," repeated Mr. Wittingham, in a dismal tone.
"Then what's to become of the business you came about?" inquired the
baronet.
"I must leave it in your hands, Sir John," replied Mr. Wittingham,
rising feebly; "l have no head for it to-night. It was about that
notorious poacher, Gimlet, I came; the constables will tell you how I
happen to have him apprehended; but I must go, I must go, I have no
head for it."
"Though the bullet kept out, plenty of lead has got in, somehow or
other," muttered Sir John Slingsby, as his fellow-magistrate tottered
towards the door; but the baronet was not a bad-hearted man, and,
taking compassion on Mr. Wittingham's state, he followed him with a
large glass of Madeira, insisted upon his drinking it, and supported
him under the right arm to the hall-door, where he delivered him over
to the hands of the butler to put him safely into his carriage. While
this was being effected, Sir John turned round and gazed upon the
figure of Stephen Gimlet, and the two officers who had him in charge;
and if his look was not peculiarly encouraging to the poacher, it
certainly was much less so towards the constables. To say the truth, a
constable was an animal, towards which, for some reason or another,
Sir John Slingsby entertained a great dislike. It is not impossible
that his old roving propensities, and sundry encounters with the
particular kind of officer which was now under his thumb, had
impressed him with a distaste for the whole species; but, assuredly,
had he been called upon to give a Linæan description of the creature,
it would have been: "A two-legged beast of the species hound, made to
be beaten by blackguards and bullied by magistrates."
Waving his hand, therefore, with an air of dignity, over his extended
white waistcoat, he said,--
"Bring him in," and leading the way back to the dining-room, he seated
himself in his great chair, supported on either side by decanters; and
while the constables were entering, and taking up a position before
him, he pushed a bottle either way, to Dr. Miles and Mr. Beauchamp,
saying, in as solemn a tone as if he were delivering sentence of
death, "A bumper, gentlemen, for a toast--now Master Leathersides, why
do you bring this man before me?"
"Why, please your worship's honour," replied the constable, "we
apprehended him for poaching in the streets of Tarningham, and--"
"Halloah!" cried Sir John, "poaching in the streets of Tarningham,
that's a queer place to set springes. Leathersides, you're drunk."
"No please your honour's worship, I arn't," whimpered the constable,
who would at any time rather have been sent for a week to prison, than
be brought up before Sir John Slingsby; "I said, as how we apprehended
him in the streets of Tarningham, not as he was a-poaching there."
"Then where was he poaching when you apprehended him?" demanded Sir
John, half in fun, half in malice, and with a full determination of
puzzling the constable.
"Can't say he was poaching anywhere just then," replied Mr.
Leathersides.
"Then you'd no business to apprehend him," replied the baronet,
"discharge the prisoner, and evacuate the room. Gentlemen, are you
charged? The king, God bless him!" and he swallowed down his glass of
wine, winking his eye to Beauchamp, at what he thought his good joke
against the constables.
Mr. Leathersides, however, was impressed with a notion, that he must
do his duty, and that that duty was to remonstrate with Sir John
Slingsby; therefore, after a portentous effort, he brought forth the
following words:--
"But, Sir John, when we'd a got 'un, Mr. Wittingham said we were to
keep un'."
"Where's your warrant?" thundered Sir John.
"Can't say we've got one," said the other constable, for Mr.
Leathersides was exhausted.
"If you apprehended him illegally," said Sir John Slingsby,
magisterially, "you detained him still more illegally. Leathersides,
you're a fool. Mr. What's-your-name, you're an ass. You've both
violated the law, and I've a great mind to fine you both--a bumper--so
I will, by Jove. Come here and drink the king's health;" and Sir John
laughed heartily while inflicting this very pleasant penalty, as they
thought it, upon the two constables; but resolved to carry the joke
out, the baronet, as soon as the men had swallowed the wine,
exclaimed, in a pompous tone: "Stephen Gimlet, you are charged with
poaching in the streets of Tarningham, and convicted on the sufficient
testimony of two constables. Appear before the court to receive
sentence. Prisoner, your sentence is this; that you be brought up to
this table, and there to gulp down, at a single and uninterrupted
draught, one glass of either of those two liquors called Port or
Madeira, at the discretion of the court, to the health of our
sovereign lord the king; and that, having so done, you shall be
considered to have made full and ample satisfaction for the said
offence."
"With all my heart, Sir," said Ste Gimlet, taking the glass of wine
which Sir John Slingsby offered him. "Here's to the king, God bless
him! and may he give us many such magistrates as Sir John Slingsby."
"Sir, I've a great mind to fine you another bumper for adding to my
toast," exclaimed the baronet; and then, waving his hand to the
constables, he continued: "Be off, the prisoner is discharged; you've
nothing more to do with him--stay here, Master Gimlet, I've something
to say to you;" and when the door was shut, he continued, with a very
remarkable change of voice and manner: "Now, my good friend, I wish to
give you a little bit of warning. As I am Lord of the Manor for many
miles round the place where you live, the game you have taken must be
mine, and, therefore, I have thought myself justified in treating the
matter lightly, and making a joke of it. You may judge, however, from
this, that I speak disinterestedly, and as your friend, when I point
out to you, that if you follow the course you are now pursuing, it
will inevitably lead you on to greater offences. It will deprave your
mind, teach you to think wrong right, to resist by violence the
assertion of the law, and, perhaps, in the end, bring you to the awful
crime of murder, which, whether it be punished in this world or not,
is sure to meet its retribution hereafter."
"Upon my life and soul, Sir John," said Ste Gimlet, earnestly, "I will
never touch a head of game of yours again."
"Nor any one else's, I hope," answered Sir John Slingsby, "you are an
ingenious fellow I have heard, and can gain your bread by better
means."
"How?" inquired the man, emphatically; but the moment after he added,
"I will try at all events. This very morning, I was thinking I would
make a change, and endeavour to live like other people; but then I
fancied it would be of no use. First, people would not employ me, and
I feared to try them. Next, I feared myself; for I have led a wild
rambling kind of life, and have got to love it better than any other.
If there were a chance of men treating me kindly and giving me
encouragement, it might answer; but if I found all faces looking cold
on me, and all hearts turned away from me, though perhaps I have
deserved it, I am afraid I should just fall back into my old ways
again. However, I will try--I will try for the child's sake, though it
will be a hard struggle at first, I am sure."
Sir John Slingsby laid his finger upon his temple and thought for a
moment. He had been serious for a long while--fully five minutes--and
he had some difficulty in keeping up his grave demeanour; but that was
not all: some words which Ned Hayward had let fall almost at random,
suggested a plan to his mind which he hesitated whether he should
adopt or not. Perhaps--though he was a kind-hearted man, as we have
seen and said before--he might have rejected it, had it not been for
its oddity; but it was an odd plan, and one that jumped with his
peculiar humour. He was fond of doing all sorts of things that other
men would not do, just because they would not--of trying experiments
that they dared not try--of setting at defiance every thing which had
only custom and convention for its basis; and, therefore, after an
instant's meditation, given to the consideration of whether people
would suppose he was actuated by benevolence or eccentricity (he would
not have had them think he did an odd thing from benevolence for the
world), he went on as the whim prompted to reply to Stephen Gimlet's
last words, mingling a high degree of delicacy of feeling with his
vagaries, in the strangest manner possible, as the reader will see.
"Well Ste," he said, "perhaps we may make it less of a struggle than
you think. I'll tell you what, my fine fellow, you're very fond of
game--a little too fond perhaps. Now, my friend, Ned Hayward--that's
to say, Captain Hayward. Where the deuce he has gone to?--I don't
known--ran after the clumsy fellow, I suppose, who fired through the
window and missed the deer too, I'll be bound. It must have been
Conolly, the underkeeper; nobody but Conolly would have thought of
firing right towards the window--but as I was saying, my friend, Ned
Hayward, said just now that you'd make a capital keeper. What do you
think of it, Gimlet? Wouldn't it do?"
"Not under Mr. Hearne, Sir," answered Ste Gimlet. "We've had too many
squabbles together;" and he shook his head.
"No, no, that would never do," replied Sir John, laughing; "you'd soon
have your charges in each other's gizzards. But you know Denman died a
week ago, over at the Trottington Hall manor, on t'other side of the
common--you know it, you dog--you know it well enough, I can see by
the twinkling of your eye. I dare say you have looked into every nest
on the manor, since the poor fellow was bagged by the grim archer.
Well, but as I was saying, there's the cottage empty and eighteen
shillings a week, and you and Hearne can run against each other, and
see which will give us the best day's sport at the end of the year.
What do you say, Gimlet? you can go and take possession of the cottage
this very night; I don't want it to stand empty an hour longer."
"Thank you a thousand times, Sir John," said the man heartily; "you
are a kind gentleman indeed, but I must go up to my own place first.
There's my little boy, you know. Poor little man, I dare say he has
cried his heart out."
"Pooh, nonsense, not a bit," said the baronet, "I'll take care of all
that. I'll send up and have him fetched."
The man smiled and shook his bread, saying, "He would not come with a
stranger."
"What will you bet?" cried Sir John Slingsby, laughing. "I'll bet you
a guinea against your last ferret, that he'll come directly. Here,
Matthew--Moore--Harrison," he continued, first ringing the bell, and
then opening the door to call, "some of you d--d fellows run up and
bring Ste Gimlet's little boy. Tell him, his daddy's here," and Sir
John Slingsby sat down and laughed prodigiously, adding every now and
then, "I'll take any man five guineas of it that he comes."
There is an exceedingly good old English expression, which smart
people have of late years banished from polite prose, but which I
shall beg leave to make use of here. Sir John Slingsby then was known
to be a _comical fellow_. Stephen Gimlet was well aware that such was
the case; and though he thought the joke was a somewhat extravagant
one, to send a man-servant up to the moor at that hour of the evening,
to fetch down his little boy, yet still he thought it a joke. His only
anxiety, however, was to prevent its being carried too far, and,
therefore, after twirling his hat about for a minute in silence, he
said--
"Well, Sir John, perhaps if he's told I am here, he may come; but now
I recollect, I locked the door; and besides, there are all my things
to be fetched down; so if you will be kind enough to give me till
to-morrow, Sir, I will accept your bounty with a grateful heart, and
do my best to deserve it--and I am sure I am most grateful to the
gentleman who first spoke of such a thing. I am, indeed," he added,
with some degree of hesitation, and cheek rather reddened; for while
Sir John was still laughing heartily, he saw that Mr. Beauchamp's fine
lustrous eyes were fixed upon him with a look of deep interest, and
that Doctor Miles was blowing his nose violently, while his eyelids
grew rather red.
"I don't doubt it in the least, Ste," said Sir John; "Ned Hayward is a
very good fellow--a capital fellow--you owe him a great deal, I can
tell you. There! there!" he continued, as the door opened to give
admission to the servant, "I told you he would come--didn't I tell
you? There he is, you see!"
Stephen Gimlet gazed for an instant in silent astonishment when he
beheld the boy in the butler's arms, wrapped warmly up in the
housekeeper's shawl; for at Sir John's indisputable commands, they had
taken him from his bed. He was confounded: he was one thunderstruck;
but the moment after, the child, recovering from the first dazzling
effect of the light, held out his little hands to his father with a
cry of delight, exclaiming, "There's my daddy, there's my daddy!" and
the poacher sprang forward and caught him to his heart.
Sir John Slingsby was himself overset by what he had done: the tears
started in his eyes; but still he laughed louder than ever;
out-trumpeted Doctor Miles with blowing his nose, wiped away the tears
with the back of his hand, put on his spectacles to hide them, and
then looked over the spectacles to see Ste Gimlet and his boy.
The child was nestling on his father's breast and prattling to him;
but in a moment the man started and turned pale, exclaiming,
"Fire!--the place burnt! What in Heaven's name does he mean?"
"There, there!" cried Doctor Miles, coming forward and making the man
sit down, seeing that he looked as ghastly as the dead, with strong
emotion. "Don't be alarmed, Stephen. Don't be agitated. Lift up the
voice of praise and thanksgiving to God, for a great mercy shown you
this day, not alone in having saved your child from a terrible death,
but in having sent you a warning with a most lenient hand, which will
assuredly make you a better man for all your future days. Lift up the
voice of praise, I say, from the bottom of your heart."
"I do indeed!" cried the poacher, "I do indeed!" and bending down his
head upon the boy's neck, he wept. "But how did it happen?--how could
it happen?" he continued, after a while, "and how, how was he saved?"
"Why, Ned Hayward saved him, to be sure," cried the baronet. "Gallant
Ned Hayward--who but he? He saw the place burning from the top of the
barrow, man, rushed in, burnt himself, and brought out the boy."
"God bless him! God bless him!" cried the father. "But the fire," he
added, "how could the place take fire?"
"That nasty cross man set it on fire, daddy, I'm sure," said the boy;
"the man that was there this morning. He came when you were away, and
he wouldn't answer when I called, and I saw him go away, through the
peep-hole, with a lighted stick in his mouth. I didn't do it indeed,
daddy."
A glimpse of the truth presented itself to Stephen Gimlet's mind; and
though he said nothing, he clenched one hand tight, so tight that the
print of the nails remained in the palm; but then his thoughts turned
to other things, and rising up out of the chair in which Doctor Miles
had placed him, he turned to Sir John Slingsby, and said, "Oh, Sir, I
wish I could say how much I thank you!"
"There, there, Stephen," replied the baronet, waving his hand kindly,
"no more about it. You have lost one house and you have got another;
you have given up one trade and taken a better. Your boy is safe and
well; so as the good doctor says, praise God for all. Take another
glass of wine, and when you have talked a minute with the little man,
give him back to the housekeeper. He shall be well taken care of till
you are settled, and in the meantime you can go down to the Marquis of
Granby in the village, and make yourself comfortable till to-morrow.
Hang me if I drink any more wine to-night. All this is as good as a
bottle;" and Sir John rose to join the ladies.
The other two gentlemen very willingly followed his example; but
before they went, Beauchamp, who had had his pocket-book in his hand
for a minute or two, took a very thin piece of paper out of it, and
went round to Stephen Gimlet.
"You have lost all your furniture, I am afraid," he said, in a low
voice; "there is something to supply its place with more."
"Lord bless you, Sir, what was my furniture worth?" said the poacher,
looking at the note in his hand, with a melancholy smile; but by that
time Beauchamp was gone.