Le bécasseau est de fort bon manger,
Duquel la chair resueille l’appetit.
Il est oyseau passager et petit:
Est par son goust fait des vins bien juger.
I had it in my ears, and more and more despairingly, as I sought the
coverts and dead ferns and icy reed-wrecked pools, and flushed not the
little _oyseau passager_ of my gallantry’s desires. But at last, in a
silent coomb, when my feet were frozen, and my fingers like bundles of
newly-pulled red radishes, William keeper came upon me, and I confided
my abortive wishes and sorrows to his velveteen bosom.
He smiled, warm soul, like a grate.
“Will’ee go up to feyther’s yonder, sir,” said he; “and sit by the
fire, and leave the woodcock to me? The old man’ll be proud to
entertain ye.”
“I will go,” I said meanly. “But tell me first, William, what is your
very practical link with the past?”
He thought the frost had got into my blood; but when I had explained,
he grinned again knowingly.
“’Tain’t me my lady meant, sir,” he said. “’Tis old feyther, and his
story of how the mail coach was robbed.”
The cottage hung up on the side of the coomb, leaning its back to an
ash wood, and digging its toes well into the slope to keep itself from
pitching into the brook below. There were kennels under the faggot
stacks, a horse-shoe on the door, red light behind the windows. It
looked a very cosy corner after the white austerity of the woods.
William led me to it, and introducing me and my errand to his father,
left the two of us together by the fire.
It was a strange old shell of a man, russet and smooth yet in the
face; but his breath would sometimes rattle in him to show how dried
was the kernel within. Still his brown eye was glossy, and his voice
full and shrewd; and in that voice, speaking straight and clear out of
the past, and in an accent yet more of the roads than of the woods, he
told me presently the story of the great mail robbery.
“It ruined and it made me, sir,” said he; “for the Captain, hearing as
how the company had sacked me for neglect of duty, and knowing
something of my character, swore I’d been used damnably, and that he’d
back his opinion by making me his gamekeeper. And he did that; and
here I be, waiting confident for him to check my accounts when I jine
him across the river.”
He pointed to a dusky corner. There hung on the wall an ancient
key-bugle, and an old, old napless beaver hat, with a faded gold band
about it.
“I was twenty-five when I put _they_ up there, and that was in the
year ’14; and not me nor no one else has fingered them since. Because
why? Because it was like as if my past laid in a tomb underneath, and
they was the sign that I held by it without shame or desire of
concealment.
“In those days I was guard to the ‘Globe’ coach, that run between
London and Brighton. We made the journey in eight hours, from the
‘Bull and Mouth’ in Aldersgate to the ‘New Inn’ in North Street—or
t’other way about; and we never stopped but for changes, or to put
down and take up. Sich was our orders, and nothing in reason to find
fault with ’em, until they come to hold us responsible to something
besides time. Then the trouble began.
“Now, sir, as you may know, the coachman’s seat was over the
fore boot, and, being holler underneath, was often used as a box for
special parcels. So it happened that this box was hired of the owners
by Messrs. Black, South, and Co., the big Brighthelmstone bankers, in
order to ship their notes and cash, whenever they’d the mind to,
between London and the seaside, and so escape the risks and expense of
a private mail. The valiables would be slid and locked in—coachman
being in his place—with a private key; and George he’d nothing to do
but keep his fat calves snug to the door, till someun at the other end
came with a duplicate key to unlock it and claim the property. Very
well—and very well it worked till the fifteenth of December in the
year eighteen hundred and thirteen, on which day our responsibility
touched the handsome figure—so I was to learn—of £4000 in Brighton
Union bank notes, besides cash and securities.
“It was rare cold weather, much as it is now, save that the snow was
shallower by a matter of two inches, and no more bind in it than dry
sand. We was advertised to start from the ‘Bull’ at nine; and there
was booked six insides and five out. At ten minutes to the hour up
walks a couple of Messrs. Pinnick and Waghorn’s clerks from the
borough, with the cash box in whity-brown paper, looking as innocent
as a babby in a Holland pinifore. George he comes out of the shades,
like a jolly Corsican ghost, a viping of his mouth; the box is slung
up and fastened in; coachman climbs to his perch, and the five
outsides follow-my-leader arter him to theirs, where they swaddle
’emselves into their wraps strait-veskit-vise, and settin’ as
miserable as if they was waitin’ to have a tooth drawed. Not much harm
there, you’ll say—one box-seat, two behind, two with me in the
dickey—all packed tight, and none too close for observation. Well,
sir, we’ll hear about it.
“Out of the six insides, all taken, there was three already in place:
a gentleman, very short and fierce, and snarling at everything;
gentleman’s lady, pretty as paint, but a white timidious body;
gentleman’s young gentleman, in ducks and spencer and a cap like a
concertina with the spring gone. So far so good, you’ll say again, and
no connexion with any other party, and leastways of all with the
insides as was yet wanting, and which the fierce gentleman was blowin’
the lights out of for bein’ late.
“‘Guard,’ says he, goin’ on outrageous, while the lady and the young
gentleman cuddled together scared-like in a corner, ‘who are these
people who stop the whole service while they look in the shop-vinders?
If you’re for starting a minute after the stroke,’ says he, ‘dash my
buttons,’ he says, ‘but I’ll raise all hell to have you cashiered!’
“‘All right, sir,’ I says. ‘I knows my business better’n you can tell
it me—’ and just as I spoke, a hackney kerridge come rumbling into
the yard, and drew up anigh us.
“‘Globe?’ says a jolly, fat-faced man, sticking his head out of it.
‘All right, Cato—’ and down jumps a black servant, in livery, that
was on the box, and opens the door.
“The fat man he tumbled out—for all the world like a sheetful of
washing a wallopin’ downstairs—Cato he got in, and between them they
helped from the hackney and across to the coach as rickety a old
figure as ever I see. He were all shawls and wraprascal. He’d blue
spectacles to his eyes, a travellin’ cap pulled down on ’em, his mouth
covered in; and the only evidence of flesh to be seen in the whole of
his carcass, was a nose the colour of a hyster. He shuffled painful,
too, as they held him up under the arms, and he groaned and muttered
to himself all the time he were changing.
“Now, sir, you may suppose the snarling gentleman didn’t make the best
of what he see; and he broke out just as they was a-hauling the
invalid in, wanting to know very sarcastic if they hadn’t mistook the
‘Globe’ for a hearse. But the fat man he accepted him as good-humoured
as could be.
“‘It’s nothing affectionate, sir,’ says he. ‘Only paralysis, which
ain’t catching. The gentleman won’t trouble you.’
“‘Not for my place,’ says the fierce gentleman, bristling up like a
dog. ‘Damme, sir, not for my place. O, I can see very well what his
nose is a-pinting to, and damme if it isn’t as monstrous a piece of
coolness as ever I expeerunced. _These_ seats, sir, are the nat’ral
perkisite of a considerate punctiality, and if your friend objects to
travelling with his back to the ’orses——’
“‘Now, now,’ says the fat man—‘nothing of the sort. You don’t mind
sitting with your back to the ’orses, do you, nunky?”
“‘Eh,’ says the old man, ’usky-like, and starting a bit forward—‘No,
no, no, no, no, no, no—’ and he sunk into the front cushions, while
Cato and the fat ’un dispodged him to his comfort.
“‘Time, gentlemen!’ says I.
“‘Wait a bit’ says snarler. ‘It can’t never be—why, surely, it can’t
never be that the sixth inside is took for a blackamoor?’
“‘Alfred,’ says the lady, half veeping: ‘pray let things be. It’s only
as far as Cuckfield we’re goin’, arter all.’
“‘A poor argument, my dear,’ says he, ‘in favour of suffering forty
miles of a sulphurious devil.’
“‘Pray control yourself, sir,’ says the fat man, still very ekable.
‘We’ve booked three places, for two, just to be comfortable. Our
servant rides outside.’
“Well, that settled it; and in another minute we was off. I laughed a
bit to myself as I swung up; but I hadn’t a thought of suspicion. What
do _you_ say, sir? Would you have? Why, no, of course not—no more
than if you was a Lyons Mail. There was the five o’ them packed in
there, and one on the roof behind the coachman—three divisions of a
party as couldn’t have seemed more unconnected with one another, or
more cat and dog at that. Yet, would you believe it, every one of them
six had his place in the robbery that follered as carefully set for
him as a figure in a sum.
“As for me, sir, I done my duty; and what more could be expected of
me? At every stage I tuk a general look round, to see as things were
snug and nat’ral; and at Croydon, fust out, I observed as how the
invalid were a’ready nodding in a corner, and the other two gents
settled to their ‘Mornin’ Postses.’
“Beyond Croydon the cold begun to take the outsides bitter; and the
nigger got into a vay of drummin’ with his feet so aggerawacious, that
at last George he lost his temper with him and told him to shut up.
Well, he shut up that, and started scrapin’ instead; and he went on
scrapin’ till the fierce gentleman exploded out of the vinder below
fit to bust the springs.
“‘Who’s that?’ roars he—‘the blackamoor? Damme!’ he roars, ‘if you
aren’t wus nor a badger in more ways than one,’ he roars.
“‘All right, boss,’ says the nigger, grinning and lookin’ down. ‘Feet
warm at last, boss,’ and he stopped his shufflin’ and begun to sing.
“Now, sir, a sudden thought—I won’t go so far as to call it a
suspicion—sent me, next stop, to examine unostentatious-like the
neighbourhood of them great boots. But all were sound there, and the
man sittin’ well tucked into his wraps. It wasn’t like, of course,
that he could a’ kicked the panels of the box in without George
knowin’ somethin’ about it. And he didn’t want to neither; _for he’d
finished his part of the business a’ready_. So he just sat and smiled
at me as amiable as Billy Vaters.
“Well, we went on without a hitch; and at Cuckfield the three back
insides turned out into the snow, and went for a bespoke po’-chaise
that was waitin’ for ’em there. But, afore he got in, the fierce
gentleman swung round and come blazin’ back to the vinder.
“‘My compliments, sir,’ says he, ‘at parting; and, if it _should_ come
to the vorst,’ he says, ‘I’d advise you to lay your friend pretty far
under to his last sleep,’ he says, ‘or his snores’ll wake the dead.’
“‘Hush,’ says the fat ’un. ‘It’s the drowndin’ spirit in him comin’ up
to blow like a vale.’
“‘Is it?’ says the fierce gentleman. ‘Then it’s my opinion that the
outsides ought to be warned afore he gives his last heave——’ and he
went off snortin’ like a tornader.
“The fat man shook his head when he were gone. His mildness, having
sich a figger, was amazing. He sat with his arm and shoulder for a
bolster to old paralysis, who was certainly going on in style.
“‘Now, sir,’ says I, ‘the whole blessed inside is yourn till the end
of the journey.’
“‘Thank you, guard,’ says he; ‘but I won’t disturb my friend, and
we’ll stay as we are, thank you.’
“I got up then, and on we went—last stage, sir, through Clayton, over
the downs, whipping through Pyecombe and Patcham, swish through
Preston turnpike, and so into East Street, where we’d scarce entered,
when there come sich a hullabaloo from underneath as if the devil,
riding on the springs, had got his tail jammed in the brake. Up I
jumps, and up jumps the blackamoor, screeching and clawing at George,
so as he a’most dropped the ribbins.
“‘Eh, boss!’ he yelled. ‘De old man—down dere!—damn bad!’
“George he pulled up; and I thought he’d a bust, till I climbed over
and loosened his neckercher, and let it all out. Then down we
got—nigger and I, and one or two of the passengers—and looked in.
‘What the thunder’s up?’ says I. The fat man were goin’ on awful,
sobbin’, and hiccupin’, and holding on to old paralysis, as were sunk
back in the corner.
“‘I’m afraid he’s dyin’,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid he’s dyin’! O, why did
I ever give way to him, and let him come!’
“Well, we all stood pretty foolish, not knowing what to say or do,
when his great tricklin’ face come round like a leg o’ mutton on a
spit, and, seein’ the nigger, bust into hystrikes.
“‘O, Cato!’ he roars; ‘O Cato, O Cato! Sich a loss if he goes!’ he
roars. ‘Run on by a short cut, Cato,’ he says, ‘and see if you can
find a doctor agen our drawin’ up at the “New Inn.”’
“That seemed to us all a good idea, though, to be sure, there was no
cut shorter than the straight road we was in. But anyhow, before we
could re’lise it, the nigger was off like a arrer; and one of the
gentlemen offered to keep the fat man company. But that he wouldn’t
listen to.
“‘If he _should_ come round,’ he said, ‘the shock of a stranger might
send him off agen. No, no,’ he said: ‘leave me alone with my dying
friend, and drive on as quick as ever you can.’
“It were only a matter of minutes; but afore we’d been drawed up half
of one afore the inn, a crowd was gathered round the coach door.
“‘Is he back?’ says the fat man—‘Is Cato come back with a doctor? No,
I won’t have him touched or moved till a doctor’s seen him.’
“Then all at once he was up and out, rampageous.
“‘Where is he?’ he shrieks. ‘I can’t vait no longer—I’m goin’
mad—I’ll find one myself’—and, afore you could say Jack Robinson, he
was off. I never see sich a figger run so. He fair melted away. But
the crowd was too interested in the corpse to follow him.
“Well, sir, he didn’t come back with a doctor, and no more did Cato.
And the corpse may have sat there ten minutes, and none daring to go
into it, when a sawbones, a-comin’ down the street on his own account,
was appealed to by the landlord for a verdict, seein’ as how by this
time the whole traffic was blocked. He got in, and so did I; and he
bent over the body spread back with its wraps agen the corner.
“‘My God!’ I whispers—‘there’s no breath comin’ from him. Is he dead,
sir?’
“The sawbones he rose up very dry and cool.
“‘No,’ he says, ‘there ain’t no breath comin’ from him, nor there
never will. It ain’t in natur’ to expect it from a waxworks.’
“Sir, I tell you I looked at him and just felt my heart as it might be
a snail that someun had dropped a pinch of salt on.
“‘Waxworks!’ I says, gaspin’. ‘Why, the man spoke and groaned!’
“‘Or was it the gentleman you was tellin’ me of as did it for him?’
says the sawbones, still as dry as cracknels.
“Then I took one jump and pounced on the thing, and caught it up;—and
I no sooner ’ad it in my ’ands, than I knew it were a dummy—nothing
more nor less. But what I felt at that was nothin’ to the shock my
pullin’ it away give me—for there, behind where it had set, was a
’ole, big enough for a boy to pass, cut right through the cushions and
panels into the fore boot; and the instant I see it, ‘O,’ I says, ‘the
mail’s been robbed!’”
The old man, who had worked himself up to a state of practised
excitement, paused a dramatic moment at this point, until I put the
question he expected.
“And it had been?”
“And it had been,” he said, pursing his lips, and nodding darkly. “In
the vinter of ’13, sir—the cleverest thing ever planned. It made a
rare stir; but the ’ole truth was never known till years arterwards,
when one o’ the gang (it was the boy as had been, now growed up) were
took on another charge, and confessed to this one. The fat man were a
ventriloquist, you see. That, and to secure the ’ole six insides to
themselves while seemin’ strangers was the cream of the job. They cut
into the boot soon arter we was clear of London, and passed the boy
through with a saw and centre-bit t’other side o’ Croydon. He set
to—the young limb, with his pretty innocent ducks!—tuk a piece clean
out of the roof just under the driver’s seat, and brought down the
cash-box; while Mr. Blackamoor Cato kep’ up his dance overhead to
drown the noise of the saw. The box was opened and emptied, and put
back in the boot where it was found; and the swag, for fear of
accidents, was all tuk away at Cuckfield.”
He came to an end. I was aware of William gamekeeper, the younger,
standing silent at the door, with a couple of speckled auburn trophies
in his hand. The fire leapt and fluttered. I rose with a sigh—then
with a smile.
“Thank you, William,” I said gratefully, as I took the woodcock. “How
plump they are; and how I love these links with the past.”