_Involves a doubtful affair still deeper in doubt, through the attempts
made to clear it up; and at the same time finds Colin Clink a reputable
father, in a quarter the least expected._
Shortly after the maid-servant had returned to Kiddal, (a name by
which Squire Lupton's family-house had been known for centuries,) and
explained to her master, as in duty bound, how she found Mistress Clink,
and how she left the linen, and how, likewise, another boy had been
added to the common stock of mortals, that benevolent and considerate
gentleman assumed a particularly grave aspect; and then, for the
especial edification and future guidance of the damsel before him, he
began to “improve” the event which had just taken place in the village,
and to express his deep regret that the common orders of people were so
very inconsiderate as to rush headlong, as it were, upon the increase
of families which, after all, they could not support without entailing a
portion of the burthen upon the rich and humane, who, strictly speaking,
ought to have no hand whatever in the business. His peroration consisted
of some excellent advice to the girl herself, (equally applicable to
everybody else in similar situations,) not by any means to think of
marrying either the gardener or the gamekeeper, until she knew herself
capable of maintaining a very large family, without palming any of them
upon either generous individuals or on the parish. She could not do
better than keep the case of Mistress Clink continually before her eyes,
as a standing warning of the evil effects of being in too great a hurry.
The girl retired to her kitchen filled with great ideas of her master's
goodness, and strengthened in her determination to disbelieve every word
of the various slanders afloat throughout the lower part of the house,
and through the village at large, which turned the squire's kindness to
mere merchandise, by attributing it to interested motives.
That same evening, as the squire sat alone by lamplight taking a glass
of wine in his library, he was observed by the servant who had carried
in the decanter to be in a humour not the most sprightly and frolicsome
imaginable; and so he told the maid who had been lectured in the
afternoon, at the same time going so far as to say, that he thought if
master was more prudent sometimes than some folks said he was, it might
be that he would not have occasion to be melancholy so often. The maid
replied, that she knew all about it; and if the squire was melancholy,
it was because some people in the world were so very wicked as to run
head-first on to families, and then go for to come on the first people
in the parish to maintain them. It was his own supernumerary goodness
that got imposed on by deceitful and resolute women, who went about
having children, because they knew that the squire was father to the
whole parish, and would not let little innocents starve, let them belong
to whomsoever they might.
John was about rising to reply to this able defence when the library
bell rang, and called him up stairs instead. The squire wanted to see
his steward immediately, but the steward was just then getting his
dinner; and therefore--as the dinner of a steward, in a great house with
an easy master, is not, as Richard Oastler well knows, a matter of
very easy despatch--he sent word that he was at that moment very deeply
engaged in digesting his accounts, but would wait upon his master as
soon as possible. In the mean time, the kitchen was converted into a
debating room by John and the maid; but as the same subject was very
shortly afterwards much better discussed in the second chamber, we will
repair thither and ascertain what passed.
“Come in, Longstaff,” cried the squire, in reply to a tap at the door
which announced the presence of the steward, and in another second that
worthy approached the table.
“Dined, Longstaff?--take a glass of wine? Sit down, sit down. I've a
little matter on hand, Longstaff, that requires to be rather nicely
managed, and I know of no man so likely to do it well as you are,
Longstaff, eh?”
“You flatter me, sir--” began Mr. Longstaff: but the squire interrupted
him.
“No, no, Longstaff, no,--I flatter no man. Plain speaking is a jewel;
but I know I can depend upon you for a little assistance when it is
needed, better than upon any other man that ever entered my service.”
“You flatter--” again began the steward, but a second time was
interrupted by his master.
“No, no Longstaff, no, no,--truth's no flattery, as everybody knows; and
no man need be afraid or ashamed of speaking truth before the best face
in all Christendom.”
Mr. Longstaff mistook this last observation, and interpreted it as a
compliment to his own beauty; he therefore felt himself bound to repeat
his previously intended observation, and accordingly began, “You flat--”
but for the third time was prevented giving utterance to it, through the
interruption of Squire Lupton.
“I 'll tell you what, Longstaff,--the thing is here. A little
secresy and a little manoeuvring are just what's required. If you can
_Talleyrand_ it a little,--you understand me?”
And the squire eked out his meaning with a certain jerk upwards of the
head more significant than words, but which when dimly translated
into English, seemed to mean as much as the mysterious popular phrase,
“that's your ticket.” He then drank a bumper, and, pushing the bottle
to Longstaff, waited in seeming anxiety half a minute before he filled
again.
“Well, Longstaff, magistrate as I am, and bound, of course, to carry the
law, while it is law, into execution, I must say this,--and I speak from
my own observation and experience, as you well know,--while the members
of the British Legislature allow that clause of the forty-third of
Elizabeth to remain upon the statute-books, they do not do their duty as
legislators either to man, woman, or child.”
A loud thump on the table, accompanied with corresponding emphasis of
speech, made the word _child_ sound a great deal bigger than either
man or woman. The squire then went on,--“Look at the effect of it,
Longstaff. Any man,--I myself,--you,--any of us, or all of us,--are
liable at any time to have fathered upon us a thing, a brat,--any
tinkers whelp that ever was bred, very likely in Cumberland or Cornwall,
or a thousand miles off,--though, in point of fact, you or I had no
more acquaintance with that child's mother--no, no more than we had
with Donna Maria! Now mark, Longstaff. You know I've been something of
a teazer in the course of my time to people of that sort. I've made them
pay for their whistle, as Franklin says, pretty smartly. Well, what is
the consequence?--what ensues? Why, just this. After I've ferreted out
some of the worst of them, and put them, as I thought, upon better
manners,--the very next time anything of the kind happens again, they
lay their heads together, and have the audacious impudence,--the
rascality, as I may call it,--the--the--the abominable--However, I should
say, to--to go before the overseers of the parish, and persist in
swearing every child, without exception, every one, girl and boy,--to
_me_. Now, Longstaff, I dare say you have heard reports of this kind in
the course of your acquaintance with one person or another, though I
never mentioned a word about it before. Don't you think it a shame, a
disgrace to the Parliament of Elizabeth that passed that law, that all
county magistrates were not personally and especially _excepted_ from
the operation of that clause?--and that it was not rendered a
misdemeanour, punishable by imprisonment or the stocks, for any woman,
no matter what her degree, to swear a child to any county magistrate?
Such a provision, Longstaff, would have effectually secured individuals
like me against the malice of convicted persons, and prevented the
possibility of such statements being circulated, as are now quite as
common in the parish as rain and sunshine.”
“Certainly, sir,” replied Longstaff, acquiescingly; “but then, sir,
might it not have operated, in the case of some individuals of the
magistracy, as a sort of warrant of impunity to--”
“Impunity!” exclaimed the squire. “I mean to assert and to maintain
it, that if Queen Bess had been a man, as she ought to have been,
women would never have had it in their power to swear with impunity one
half,--no, nor one-tenth part of that that they are now swearing every
hour of their lives. Why, look ye,--here again to-day,--this very
morning, that young woman Clink is laid up of another; and, as sure as
there's head and tail to a shilling, so sure am I that, unless something
be done beforehand to find a father somewhere or other for the young
cub, it 'll be laid at _my_ door, along with all the rest. But I 'm
resolved this time to put a stop to it; and, as a man's word goes for
nothing, though he be magistrate or anything else, we 'll try for once
if we cannot fix the saddle on the right horse some other way.”
The complying Mr. Longstaff willingly lent himself to the squire's
designs; and, after some farther conversation of a similar character
to that above given, it was agreed that the steward, acting as Squire
Lupton's agent, should make use of all the means and appliances within
his power, in order to ward off the expected declaration by Mistress
Clink, and to induce her to avow before the overseers the real father of
our hero Colin.
Accordingly, as soon as the condition of that good lady would allow of
a visit from Mr. Longstaff, he waited upon her, stuffed with persuasions
to the very throat; and, after an hour and a half's exhortation, coupled
with a round number of slices of that pleasant root, commonly called
“the root of all evil,” he succeeded, to his great joy and satisfaction,
in extorting from her a solemn promise to confer the honour of her son's
parentage upon any man in the parish rather than upon Squire Lupton.
As a moral-minded historian, I must confess this whole transaction to be
most nefarious, regard it in whatever light we may.
Longstaff was delighted with the success of his negociation, and,
reflecting that there is nothing like striking while the iron is hot, he
would not be satisfied unless Mistress Clink agreed there and then to
go with him to Skinwell the overseer, to make her declaration respecting
Colin's father.
On the road to that functionary's office, Longstaff employed himself
in suggesting to the excellent woman by his side the names of several
individuals, with whom secretly he was upon very ill terms, as fit and
proper persons from amongst whom to select a parent, chuckling with
renewed glee every now and then as the thought came afresh over his mind
of taking revenge upon some one or other of his enemies, through the
medium of two and sixpence or three shillings per week. Mistress Clink
replied to his suggestions by assuring him that she would endeavour to
satisfy him in that particular to his heart's content.
Skin well, besides being overseer of the parish during the year of which
we are writing, was by profession a lawyer; and, in order to obtain a
living in so small a field, was in the regular practice of getting up
petty squabbles in a friendly way, and merely for the sake of obtaining
justice to all parties, between his neighbours and acquaintances. A
clothes-line across a yard, a stopped-up drain, or the question whether
a certain ditch belonged to the right or to the left land owner, would
afford him food for a fortnight; and while he laboured most assiduously
in order to involve two parties in litigation, he contrived so
ingeniously to gloss over his own conduct with the varnish of “favour
to none, justice to all,” as invariably to come off without offending
either.
On entering Skinwell's office, Longstaff and the lady found that worthy
at work on one side of a double desk, face to face, though divided by a
miniature railing along the top, with a poor miserable-looking stripling
of a clerk, not unlike, both in shape and colour, to a bricklayer's
lath.
Skinwell looked vacantly up at Mrs. Clink, recognised the steward by a
nod, and then went on with his work. In the mean time Mrs. C. sat down
on a three-legged-stool, placed there for the accommodation of weary
clients, behind a high partition of boards, which divided the room, and
inclosed, as in a sheep-pen, the man of law and his slave.
At one end of the mantel-shelf stood a second-hand brown japanned
tin box, divided into three compartments, and respectively lettered,
“Delivery,--Received,--Post.” But there appeared not to be anything to
deliver, nor to receive, nor to send to the post; for each division was
as empty as a pauper's stomach. The remaining portion of the shelf was
occupied by some few fat octavos bound in dry-looking unornamental calf;
while over the fireplace hung the Yorkshire Almanack for the year but
one preceding, Skinwell's business not being usually in a sufficiently
flourishing condition to allow of the luxury of a clean almanack every
twelve months; and even the one which already served to enlighten his
office had been purchased at half price when two months old.
“_Do_ take a seat, Mr. Longstaff!” exclaimed the legal adviser of the
village, as he raised his head, and, in apparent astonishment, beheld
that gentleman still upon his feet, though without reflecting, it would
seem, that his request could be much more easily made than complied
with, there being not a single accommodation for the weary in his whole
office, with the exception of the two high stools occupied respectively
by himself and his clerk, and the low one of which Mrs. Clink had
already taken possession. Longstaff, however, was soon enabled very
kindly to compromise the matter; for while hunting about with his eyes
in quest of a supporter of the description mentioned, he beheld in
the far corner by the fireplace a few breadths of deal-plank fixed on
tressels, by way of table, and partially covered with sundry sheets of
calf-skin, interspersed with stumps of long-used pens, and crowned with
a most business-like, formidable-looking pounce-box. To this quarter he
accordingly repaired, and having placed one thigh across the corner of
the make-shift table, while he stood plump upright on the other leg,
began very seriously to stare into the fire.
Some minutes of profound silence ensued.
The ghostly clerk stopped short in his half-idle labour, as though
hesitating what to do, and then made this learned inquiry of his
employer, “Pray, sir, should this parchment be cut?”
“Certainly it should,” replied the latter testily. “Don't you see it's
an indenture?--and an indenture is _not_ an indenture, and of no force,
until it is cut.”
The novice accordingly, at a very accelerated speed, proceeded to cut
it. Shortly afterwards he again had to trouble his master.
“Should I say 'before said' or 'above said?'”
“Above, certainly,” replied the sage. “'Before said' means the first
thing that ever was written in the world,--before anything else that has
ever been written since. Write 'above,' to be sure.”
The clerk wrote “above” accordingly, while Longstaff and the lady looked
up in admiration of Mr. Skinwells acuteness, and Skin well himself
looked boldly into the steward's face, with all the brass of a knowing
one triumphant in his knowledge.
It will be remembered by the reader, that on the occasion of the birth
of our hero Colin, Dr. Rowel expressed to those about him some curiosity
respecting the little fellow's father.
Happily, then, for the doctor's satisfaction, he chanced to enter
Skinwell's office upon private business just as the above brief
conversation had terminated, and before that examination of Mrs. Clink
had commenced, in which a father was legally to be given him. The
doctor, then, was upon the point of being gratified from the very best
authority.
Having now concluded the writing with which he had been engaged, the
joint lawyer and overseer of the parish called to the woman Clink, and
bade her stand up and look at him; and, in order to afford her every
facility for doing so to the best advantage, he planted both his elbows
firmly upon the desk, rested his chin upon both his hands, which
stood up against his cheeks in such a manner as to convey to a casual
spectator the idea that he was particularly solicitous about a pair of
red scanty whiskers, like moles, which grew beneath, and then fixed his
eyes in that particular place above the wooden horizon that inclosed
him, in which the disc of Mrs. Clink's head now began slowly to appear.
As she came gradually and modestly up, she met first the gaze of the
lawyer, then of his clerk, then of Dr. Rowel, and then of Mr. Longstaff;
so that by the time she was fully risen, four men's faces confronted her
at once, and with such familiar earnestness, that, though not apt to be
particularly tender-hearted in others' cases, she burst into tears at
her own.
“Ay, ay, doctor,” sneeringly remarked Skinwell to that worthy
professional, “this is just it. They can always cry when it is too late,
instead of crying out at the proper time.” Then looking fiercely in
the downcast countenance of the yet feeble culprit before him, he
thus continued his discourse. “Come, come, woman, we can't have any
blubbering here--it won't do. Hold your head up; for you can't be
ashamed of seeing a man, I should think.” The surgeon, the steward, the
clerk, and the brutal wit himself smiled.
“Come, up with it, and let us look at you.”
Colin's mother sobbed louder, and, instead of complying with this
gratuitously insolent request, buried her face so much lower in the
folds of the shawl that covered her neck, and hung down upon her bosom,
as to present to the gaze of the inquiring overseer almost a full-moon
view of the crown of her bonnet.
“Hum!” growled Skinwell; “like all the rest--not a look to be got at
them. Well, now, listen to me, my good woman. You know what you 're
brought here for?”
A long-drawn snuffle from the other side of the partition, which sounded
very much like what musicians term a shake, seemed to confess too deeply
the painful fact.
Mr. Longstaff's merriment was here evinced by a single explosion of the
breath, which would have done much better to blow a lamp out with than
to convince any body that he was pleased. The surgeon did not change
countenance, while the clerk made three or four discursive flourishes
with his pen on the blotting-paper before him, as much as to say he
would take the propriety of laughing into further consideration. Mr.
Skinwell then continued.
“Now, now, woman,--_do_ attend to me. It is impossible that my valuable
time can be wasted in this manner. Who is that child's father?”
“Yes, yes,” echoed Mr. Longstaff, tapping the poor woman in joyful
expectation upon the shoulder; “just say the word, and have done with
it.”
Every eye was fixed on Mrs. Clink. After a brief pause, during which the
tears yet remaining in her eyes were hastily dried up with the corner of
her shawl, she raised her head with a feeling of confidence scarcely to
be expected, and directing her eyes through the little palisadoes which
stopped the wooden partition full at Mr. Skinwell, she said, in a voice
sufficiently loud to be heard by all present,--
“If you please, sir, it is Mr. Longstaff, the steward.”
The office was amazed; while Mr. Longstaff himself started up in an
attitude of mute astonishment, which Chantrey himself could scarcely
have represented.
“Longstaff, the steward!” ejaculated Skin-well.
“Impossible!” observed Dr. Rowel.
“It's false!” muttered the clerk.
“It _is_ false!” repeated the accused man in a faint voice. “Why,
gentlemen,--a man with a wife and family,--in my situation;--it's
monstrous and diabolical. If I could pull your tongue across your
teeth,” he continued, turning to Colin's mother, and shaking his fist
in her face, “I'd cure it and hang it up, as an eternal example to such
arrant liars. You _know_ I'm as innocent as a March lamb,--you do, you
deceitful woman!”
[Illustration: 049]
Mrs. Clink, however, persisted in her statement, and avowed her
readiness to take her oath upon the fact; so that Mr. Longstaff was
obliged to submit with the best or the worst grace he might.
This small scrap of experience fully convinced him, however, that Squire
Lupton's views upon the subject of the forty-third of Elizabeth, which
he had formerly opposed, were not only perfectly correct in themselves,
but that they ought to have been extended much further, and that the
exemption of which the squire had spoken, ought to have embraced not
only county magistrates, but their stewards also.
How the matter really was, the reader may decide for himself upon the
following evidence, which is the best I have to offer him:--that Mr.
Longstaff regularly paid the charge of three shillings per week towards
the maintenance of that life which I am now writing, and that he failed
not to account for it in the squire's books, under the mysterious,
though very ministerial, title of “secret service money.”
Possibly, however, Mr. Longstaff might economically consider the squire
much more capable of paying it than he was himself. Nor, even in case it
was so, would he have been the first steward in these latter days who,
for his own use, has kindly condescended to borrow for a brief season
his master's money.