THE 'Green Pig' stood in the solitude of the North Road. Its simple
front, its neatly balanced windows, curtained with white, gave it an air
of comfort and tranquillity. The smoke which curled from its hospitable
chimney spoke of warmth and good fare.
To pass it was to spurn the last chance of a bottle for many a weary
mile, and the prudent traveller would always rest an hour by its ample
fireside, or gossip with its fantastic hostess. Now, the hostess of
the little inn was Ellen Roach, friend and accomplice of Sixteen-String
Jack, once the most famous woman in England, and still after a weary
stretch at Botany Bay the strangest of companions, the most buxom of
spinsters. Her beauty was elusive even in her triumphant youth, and
middle-age had neither softened her traits nor refined her expression.
Her auburn hair, once the glory of Covent Garden, was fading to a
withered grey; she was never tall enough to endure an encroaching
stoutness with equanimity; her dumpy figure made you marvel at her past
success; and hardship had furrowed her candid brow into wrinkles. But
when she opened her lips she became instantly animated. With a glass
before her on the table, she would prattle frankly and engagingly of
the past. Strange cities had she seen; she had faced the dangers of an
adventurous life with calmness and good temper. And yet Botany Bay,
with its attendant horrors, was already fading from her memory. In
imagination she was still with her incomparable hero, and it was her
solace, after fifteen years, to sing the praise and echo the perfections
of Sixteen-String Jack.
'How well I remember,' she would murmur, as though unconscious of her
audience, 'the unhappy day when Jack Rann was first arrested.
It was May, and he came back travel-stained and weary in the brilliant
dawn. He had stopped a one-horse shay near the nine-mile stone on the
Hounslow Road--every word of his confession is burnt into my brain--and
had taken a watch and a handful of guineas. I was glad enough of the
money, for there was no penny in the house, and presently I sent the
maid-servant to make the best bargain she could with the watch. But the
silly jade, by the saddest of mishaps, took the trinket straight to the
very man who made it, and he, suspecting a theft, had us both arrested.
Even then Jack might have been safe, had not the devil prompted me to
speak the truth. Dismayed by the magistrate, I owned, wretched woman
that I was, that I had received the watch from Rann, and in two hours
Jack also was under lock and key. Yet, when we were sent for trial
I made what amends I could. I declared on oath that I had never seen
Sixteen-String Jack in my life; his name came to my lips by accident;
and, hector as they would, the lawyers could not frighten me to an
acknowledgment. Meanwhile Jack's own behaviour was grand. I was the
proudest woman in England as I stood by his side in the dock. When you
compared him with Sir John Fielding, you did not doubt for an instant
which was the finer gentleman. And what a dandy was my Jack! Though he
came there to answer for his life, he was all ribbons and furbelows. His
irons were tied up with the daintiest blue bows, and in the breast of
his coat he carried a bundle of flowers as large as a birch-broom. His
neck quivered in the noose, yet he was never cowed to civility. 'I know
no more of the matter than you do,' he cried indignantly, 'nor half so
much neither,' and if the magistrate had not been an ill-mannered oaf,
he would not have dared to disbelieve my true-hearted Jack. That time
we escaped with whole skins; and off we went, after dinner, to Vauxhall,
where Jack was more noticed than the fiercest of the bloods, and where
he filled the heart of George Barrington with envy. Nor was he idle,
despite his recent escape: he brought away two watches and three purses
from the Garden, so that our necessities were amply supplied. Ah, I
should have been happy in those days if only Jack had been faithful.
But he had a roving eye and a joyous temperament; and though he loved
me better than any of the baggages to whom he paid court, he would not
visit me so often as he should. Why, once he was hustled off to Bow
Street because the watch caught him climbing in at Doll Frampton's
window. And she, the shameless minx, got him off by declaring in open
court that she would be proud to receive him whenever he would deign to
ring at her bell. That is the penalty of loving a great man: you must
needs share his affection with a set of unworthy wenches. Yet Jack was
always kind to me, and I was the chosen companion of his pranks.
'Never can I forget the splendid figure he cut that day at Bagnigge
Wells. We had driven down in our coach, and all the world marvelled at
our magnificence. Jack was brave in a scarlet coat, a tambour waistcoat,
and white silk stockings. From the knees of his breeches streamed the
strings (eight at each), whence he got his name, and as he plucked
off his lace-hat the dinner-table rose at him. That was a moment worth
living for, and when, after his first bottle, Jack rattled the glasses,
and declared himself a highwayman, the whole company shuddered. "But, my
friends," quoth he, "to-day I am making holiday, so that you have naught
to fear." When the wine 's in, the wit 's out, and Jack could never stay
his hand from the bottle. The more he drank, the more he bragged, until,
thoroughly fuddled, he lost a ring from his finger, and charged the
miscreants in the room with stealing it. "However," hiccupped he,
"'tis a mere nothing, worth a paltry hundred pounds--less than a lazy
evening's work. So I'll let the trifling theft pass." But the cowards
were not content with Jack's generosity, and seizing upon him, they
thrust him neck and crop through the window. They were seventeen to one,
the craven-hearted loons; and I could but leave the marks of my nails
on the cheek of the foremost, and follow my hero into the yard, where we
took coach, and drove sulkily back to Covent Garden.
'And yet he was not always in a mad humour; in fact, Sixteen-String
Jack, for all his gaiety, was a proud, melancholy man. The shadow of the
tree was always upon him, and he would make me miserable by talking of
his certain doom. "I have a hundred pounds in my pocket," he would say;
"I shall spend that, and then I shan't last long." And though I never
thought him serious, his prophecy came true enough. Only a few
months before the end we had visited Tyburn together. With his usual
carelessness, he passed the line of constables who were on guard.
"It is very proper," said he, in his jauntiest tone, "that I should be a
spectator on this melancholy occasion." And though none of the dullards
took his jest, they instantly made way for him. For my Jack was always
a gentleman, though he was bred to the stable, and his bitterest enemy
could not have denied that he was handsome. His open countenance was
as honest as the day, and the brown curls over his forehead were more
elegant than the smartest wig. Wherever he went the world did him
honour, and many a time my vanity was sorely wounded. I was a pretty
girl, mind you, though my travels have not improved my beauty; and I had
many admirers before ever I picked up Jack Rann at a masquerade. Why,
there was a Templar, with two thousand a year, who gave me a carriage
and servants while I still lived at the dressmaker's in Oxford Street,
and I was not out of my teens when the old Jew in St. Mary Axe took me
into keeping. But when Jack was by, I had no chance of admiration. All
the eyes were glued upon him, and his poor doxy had to be content with
a furtive look thrown over a stranger's shoulder. At Barnet races, the
year before they sent me across the sea, we were followed by a crowd
the livelong day; and truly Jack, in his blue satin waistcoat laced with
silver, might have been a peer. At any rate, he had not his equal on the
course, and it is small wonder that never for a moment were we left to
ourselves.
'But happiness does not last for ever; only too often we were gravelled
for lack of money, and Jack, finding his purse empty, could do naught
else than hire a hackney and take to the road again, while I used to lie
awake listening to the watchman's raucous voice, and praying God to
send back my warrior rich and scatheless. So times grew more and more
difficult. Jack would stay a whole night upon the heath, and come home
with an empty pocket or a beggarly half crown. And there was nothing,
after a shabby coat that he hated half so much as a sheriff's officer.
"Learn a lesson in politeness," he said to one of the wretches who
dragged him off to the Marshalsea. "When Sir John Fielding's people come
after me they use me genteelly; they only hold up a finger, beckon me,
and I follow as quietly as a lamb. But you bluster and insult, as though
you had never dealings with gentlemen." Poor Jack, he was of a proud
stomach, and could not abide interference; yet they would never let him
go free. And he would have been so happy had he been allowed his own
way. To pull out a rusty pistol now and again, and to take a purse from
a traveller--surely these were innocent pleasures, and he never meant to
hurt a fellow-creature. But for all his kindness of heart, for all his
love of splendour and fine clothes, they took him at last.
'And this time, too, it was a watch which was our ruin. How often did I
warn him: "Jack," I would say, "take all the money you can. Guineas tell
no tale. But leave the watches in their owners' fobs." Alas! he did not
heed my words, and the last man he ever stopped on the road was that
pompous rascal, Dr. Bell, then chaplain to the Princess Amelia. "Give me
your money," screamed Jack, "and take no notice or I'll blow your
brains out." And the doctor gave him all that he had, the mean-spirited
devil-dodger, and it was no more than eighteenpence. Now what should a
man of courage do with eighteenpence? So poor Jack was forced to seize
the parson's watch and trinkets as well, and thus it was that a second
time we faced the Blind Beak.
When Jack brought home the watch, I was seized with a shuddering
presentiment, and I would have given the world to throw it out of the
window. But I could not bear to see him pinched with hunger, and he
had already tossed the doctor's eighteenpence to a beggar woman. So
I trudged off to the pawnbroker's, to get what price I could, and I
bethought me that none would know me for what I was so far away as
Oxford Street. But the monster behind the counter had a quick suspicion,
though I swear I looked as innocent as a babe; he discovered the owner
of the watch, and infamously followed me to my house.
'The next day we were both arrested, and once more we stood in the hot,
stifling Court of the Old Bailey. Jack was radiant as ever, the one
spot of colour and gaiety in that close, sodden atmosphere. When we were
taken from Bow Street a thousand people formed our guard of honour, and
for a month we were the twin wonders of London. The lightest word, the
fleetest smile of the renowned highwayman, threw the world into a fit
of excitement, and a glimpse of Rann was worth a king's ransom. I could
look upon him all day for nothing! And I knew what a fever of fear
throbbed behind his mask of happy contempt. Yet bravely he played the
part unto the very end. If the toasts of London were determined to gaze
at him, he assured them they should have a proper salve for their
eyes. So he dressed himself as a light-hearted sportsman. His coat and
waistcoat were of pea-green cloth; his buckskin breeches were spotlessly
new, and all tricked out with the famous strings; his hat was bound
round with silver cords; and even the ushers of the Court were touched
to courtesy. He would whisper to me, as we stood in the dock, "Cheer up,
my girl. I have ordered the best supper that Covent Garden can provide,
and we will make merry to-night when this foolish old judge has done his
duty." The supper was never eaten. Through the weary afternoon we waited
for acquittal. The autumn sun sank in hopeless gloom. The wretched lamps
twinkled through the jaded air of the court-house. In an hour I lived
a thousand years of misery, and when the sentence was read, the words
carried no sense to my withered brain. It was only in my cell I realised
that I had seen Jack Rann for the last time; that his pea-green coat
would prove a final and ineffaceable memory.
'Alas! I, who had never been married, was already a hempen widow; but
I was too hopelessly heartbroken for my lover's fate to think of my own
paltry hardship. I never saw him again. They told me that he suffered
at Tyburn like a man, and that he counted upon a rescue to the very
end. They told me (still bitterer news to hear) that two days before
his death he entertained seven women at supper, and was in the wildest
humour. This almost broke my heart; it was an infidelity committed on
the other side of the grave. But, poor Jack, he was a good lad, and
loved me more than them all, though he never could be faithful to me.'
And thus, bidding the drawer bring fresh glasses, Ellen Roach would end
her story. Though she had told it a hundred times, at the last words a
tear always sparkled in her eye. She lived without friend and without
lover, faithful to the memory of Sixteen-String Jack, who for her was
the only reality in the world of shades. Her middle-age was as distant
as her youth. The dressmaker's in Oxford Street was as vague a dream as
the inhospitable shore of Botany Bay. So she waited on to a weary eld,
proud of the 'Green Pig's' well-ordered comfort, prouder still that for
two years she shared the glory of Jack Rann, and that she did not desert
her hero, even in his punishment.