the secret service submarine a story of the present war by guy thorne new york sully & kleinteich 1915 the verses used as preface appeared in the issue of _truth_ for 4th november 1914. they are reproduced here by special and courteous permission of the editor. the verses were published anonymously, but the author has kindly allowed me to mention his name. he is mr. william booth. the song of the submarine this is the song of the submarine afloat on the waters wide. like a sleeping whale in the starlight pale, just flush with the swirling tide. the salt sea ripples against her plates the salt wind is her breath, like the spear of fate she lies in wait, and her name is "sudden death." i watch the swift destroyers come, like greyhounds lank and lean, and their long hulks sleek play hide-and-seek with me on the waters green. i watch them with my single eye, i see their funnels flame, and i sing ho! ho! as i sink below, ho! ho! for a glorious game! i roam the seas from scapa flow to the bight of heligoland; in the dover strait i lie in wait on the edge of goodwin's sand. i am here and there and everywhere, like the phantom of a dream, and i sing ho! ho! through the winds that blow, the song of the submarine! william booth. contents part i i. rejected for service. mr. john carey's explanation 11 ii. "there is something very wrong about this house" 23 iii. bernard carey, lieutenant-commander of submarines 37 iv. doris and marjorie give a supper party. the arrow flies in morstone sea-wood 59 part ii v. at midnight on the marshes. the secret of the old hulk 77 vi. how john carey fought with the german giant in the saloon, and "mr. jones" met unexpected things in the night 103 vii. the murder of mr. lockhart 122 viii. the truth at last, the incredible truth! and how they fought for the submarine 128 part iii ix. out in the north sea. preparing for action 145 x. the spear of foam 154 xi. the submarine fights for england 164 xii. the last chapter--in two parts- doris and marjorie have a late visitor 177 return of the seven heroes 184 [illustration: john carey's map of the marshes] the secret service submarine part i chapter i rejected for service. mr. john carey's explanation on thinking it over, i date the extraordinary affairs which so thrilled england and brought me such undeserved good fortune from the day on which i tried to enlist. the position was this. my father was an engineer with a small, but apparently thriving, foundry at derby. my mother died and my father sent me to oxford, my younger brother, bernard carey, being an officer in the navy. at oxford, i was one of that perennial tribe of young asses who play what used to be called the "giddy goat" in those days with the greatest aplomb and satisfaction to themselves. i was at a good college--exeter--for originally we were west-country people, and all sons of devon and cornwall go to exeter. i was immensely strong and healthy. i did not row, but played rugby football, being chosen to play in the freshmen's match, and subsequently got my "blue." i did no reading whatever. my father gave me a more than sufficient allowance, and in my second year, having sprained myself badly, i bought a motor car--an expensive rolls-royce--on credit, and became a "blood." i could not play games any more, though i was healthy enough, so i used to go constantly to london "to see my dentist," which, of course, meant dinner at the café royal, too many cocktails at the empire, and a wild rush home in the car to get to college before twelve o'clock at night. when any musical comedy company visited oxford, i, in company with my friends, used to invite the ladies of the chorus to tea. i did all the silly things possible, got sent down for a term, and eventually only just managed to scrape through a pass degree, after being ploughed several times in this or that "group." then my father died, and it was found that he had nothing whatever to leave us. his works were in the hands of his creditors--it seems that things had been going wrong for years--and there was i, with a game leg, an excellent taste in such dubious vintages as the oxford wine merchants provide, a somewhat exact knowledge of ties, waist-coats, and socks, a smattering of engineering which i had picked up from my father purely from a liking of the subject, and, when my bills were paid, exactly £14, 7_s._ 3_d._ knowing nothing whatever of the slightest value to anybody, myself included, i naturally decided to devote my attention to the education of youth. my "blue," short as the time was that i enjoyed it, would be an asset, i imagined; and, for the rest, to teach urchins their latin grammar for a few hours a day could not be a very arduous occupation. accordingly, i went to see a suave gentleman in the strand, who received me courteously, but without enthusiasm. this gentleman was one of the mediums by which those who would instruct the young find a field for their activities. i paid him a guinea, i think it was, and he then took down my qualifications. when i mentioned my "blue" with pride, he shook his head. "my dear sir, 'blues' are now a drug in the market," he said. "surely you read the daily papers, especially the _daily wire_"? "no," i replied, "i am no bookworm." he coughed rather nastily and i began to get irritated with the fellow. "then i must explain," he continued, "that there has been a great outcry against over-athleticism in the public schools, in all schools, in fact, and i fear your 'blue' is not worth ..." "quite so," i broke in; "'not worth a damn,' you were going to say." "i was going to say no such thing, mr. carey," he replied stiffly. "at any rate, we will do our best for you. you cannot hope for more than a private school at first, and your success in the profession you have--er--chosen, will depend entirely upon your success in a comparatively humble sphere." a week afterwards, i received two or three little forms telling me to apply to various headmasters. prospects were not cheering, and the salaries offered would about have kept me in cigarettes at oxford. to cut a long story short, i eventually became third master--there were only three of us--in morstone house school in norfolk, at a salary of eighty pounds a year and all found--except washing. morstone house school was a sort of discreet modern edition of dotheboys hall. i do not mean to say, of course, in these enlightened days, that the boys were starved or ill-treated. but everything was cut down to the very margin--to the margarine, as my colleague lockhart, who was a cripple, and a wit--the head got him cheap for that--would occasionally remark. for two years i remained at morstone, a miserable enough life for an ex-blood, you will say--only there were consolations. one of them, and to me it was a very great one indeed, was that morstone was situated in a remote village on the east coast, on the edge of vast saltings or sea marshes intersected by great creeks of sullen, tidal water. it was five miles to the nearest little town, blankington-on-sea, and as lonely a place as well could be conceived. nevertheless, these vast marshes stretching for many miles on either side formed one of the finest wild-fowl districts in the whole of england. i was, and always had been, passionately fond of shooting. i had saved my guns from the wreck, and the whole of my leisure time in winter was taken up with perhaps the most fascinating of all sports. the wild geese would fly at night over the lonely mud-flats with a noise like a pack of hounds in the sky. duck of all sorts abounded, teal, widgeon, mallard, and the rarer pintail and even the crested grebe. there were plenty of snipe, stint, golden plover and shank--in short, it was a paradise for the sportsman. i kept fit and well from the first day of august to the last day of february. my work at the school was easy enough, and i had an absolutely absorbing pursuit to take me out of myself and make me forget what a very sorry part i was playing in the battle of life--for i think it only due to myself to remark that i was a young ass without being a fool. this is a nice distinction, but there are those who will understand my meaning. the second consolation--i do not put it second because it was the lesser of the two, but from a somewhat natural reluctance to speak of it until the last necessary moment--was doris. this brings me to that extraordinary man, my chief. i am not going to discount the interest of this narrative by saying too much of this gentleman at the outset. his name is familiar enough to england now. i will merely describe him and his surroundings. the headmaster of morstone house school was doctor upjelly. his qualifications for the position he held were, to say the least of it, peculiar. he was "doctor" by virtue of a german degree obtained during what must have been a singularly misspent youth--they are coarse brutes at these german universities, or i should be the last to refer to early indiscretions!--at heidelberg. love of teaching he had none. love of money seemed to be his predominating characteristic, though he was as keen on wild-fowling as i was myself. this was the only thing that made me regard him as human--that is to say, at the beginning. what doctor upjelly's early life had been, nobody knew. he had travelled much abroad, at any rate, and spoke french, german, and italian fluently. he had been in england for a great many years, the last six of which he had spent at morstone house. he had purchased the school from the decayed clergyman who ran it before him, and seemed to be perfectly contented with his life, though he often made visits to london and occasionally entertained visitors at morstone. he had married an englishwoman in germany, we always understood, a lady with two daughters by a former marriage, doris and marjorie joyce. doris was twenty-two and marjorie twenty-one. they lived at morstone and kept house for their stepfather, supervised the school accounts, and generally did work which ought to have been done by the matron, a sinister old hag called mrs. gaunt, and apparently the only person in whom doctor upjelly ever confided. to say that doris and marjorie hated their stepfather would be to put it with extreme mildness. they were both young and high-spirited girls, and they would have left him like a shot had it not been for some promise extorted from them by their dying mother, which they felt bound to observe. this was mrs. joyce's only bequest to her daughters, and, like most promises given to a semi-conscious person probably quite unaware of what she is saying, about as cruel and immoral a thing as ever bound quixotic inexperience. old upjelly was a tyrant. he did not interfere in the affairs of the school much--that was to his daughters' and the masters' gain, to say nothing of the wretched boys. but the girls were forced to lead a semi-monastic life. they were not allowed to accept invitations to tennis parties at local rectories, or even to play duets at the nasty little schoolroom concerts which were always being got up by fussy parsons' wives. and most of all, they were not allowed to have anything to do with the assistant masters. now, as both doris and marjorie, of whom i naturally saw a great deal, confided to me, they had never wished to have anything to do with the assistant masters until my arrival. this did not make me vain, in view of my two other colleagues and of some who had preceded me and of whom i had heard. the first master, who lived in a cottage in the village with a wife as senile and decrepit as himself, was the reverend albert pugmire. in dim and distant days, he had held various curacies, from which he had been politely requested to retire owing to a somewhat excessive fondness for old tom gin. i understand there had never been any actual inhibition on the part of a justly outraged bishop, but mr. pugmire, at any rate, had become chief drudge to doctor upjelly. pugmire was about sixty-two. in appearance he was exactly like one of those tapers with which one lights the gas, thin, white, ghostly, except for one vivid splash of colour, a nose resembling nothing so much as a piece of coral, which he averred was the result of indigestion. he really was a classical scholar of remarkable attainments. he would even teach a boy who wanted to learn, and once, when the son of a local clergyman with a taste for the classics wormed his way into the horrid old man's confidence, i remember with what a thunderclap of amazement it came upon us all when this young philips gained an open scholarship at magdalen. the event was so unprecedented that i saw doctor upjelly at a loss for the first time in his life. he did not know what to say, and that night old pugmire had to be carried home. the affair, however, soon sank into oblivion and was never mentioned. the second master, who taught such mathematics as each imp condescended to learn, was poor little lockhart, a misshapen bundle of bones, as hollow and bitter as a dried lemon. when a baby, his nurse, during a heated altercation with the cook, had thrown him at the latter lady, and the poor chap had never known any happiness since. he had an income of his own of about a hundred a year and was able enough in his way, but he was too acid for ordinary intercourse--though, as will presently appear, he had unsuspected qualities. then i came, the ex-blue with the game leg. having said so much, it will be fairly obvious that the second consolation i have mentioned in my life was doris. the great war broke out and, in common with every other decent englishman of my own age, i heard the call of the country. i am not going to sentimentalise about this--there is no necessity--but, of course, i was keen as mustard to go. i was exactly six feet high; my eyesight was far above the average--the man who does most of his shooting at twilight, by moonlight, or in early dawn and at long ranges, has far keener sight than most men. my teeth were so good that i could eat upjelly's mutton with ease, if not with satisfaction. as far as personal strength went, i was as strong as a bull--indeed, if the music halls had remained in their pristine simplicity and had not been given over to the elaborate spectacle, i could have earned a living as a weight-lifter in a leopard skin and pink tights; but, and here was the thing that made me lie awake at night grinding my teeth and cursing fate--not knowing what she had in store for me--there was my leg. now, i could walk and outwalk most men i knew on the marshes, the most difficult form of progression probably known to man, as anyone who has tramped the thick, black mud and the marrum grass well knows. no professional wild-fowler from stiffkey or cockthorpe could outdo me. yet, when i went to norwich and offered myself for the east norfolk territorial battalion, a fool of a doctor in goggles, with whom i wouldn't have cleaned my ten-bore, rejected me at once, despite all i could say or do--and, what is more, told me that i would have no possible chance elsewhere. i told him what i thought of him, and nearly cried. then i went out into an adjacent pub, had some beer, and cursed bitterly, until the recruiting sergeant whom i had first interviewed, likewise in search of beer, happened to come into the private bar. he was a decent sort of johnny and told me a few eye-opening things about doctors. he said that he would be proud to have me in his company, and he gave me an invaluable tip. finding out that i knew something about engineering, he suggested that i should go to london and try and get into the royal naval flying corps. at that time, the great fleet of armoured motor cars was being got ready. i could drive a car with any man and i was a fairly good motor mechanic. my brother, bernard, was, as i said, in the navy. he was, by this time, lieutenant-commander in the submarine section, and he was in london, having been shot in the arm during a little scrap off heligoland. i got leave from old upjelly, who, for some queer reason or other, did not seem to take to the idea of my enlisting--though, heaven knows, he had never shown any appreciation of my services--and went up to town. i found bernard just out of hospital. he had to rest for another month, and, as he had hardly any money beyond his pay and special allowances, he wanted to do it on the cheap. i suggested that he should come down to morstone and stay in the village pub. he was as keen on shooting as i, and he hailed the idea with joy. he took me to the then depôt of the r.n.f.c., at the big _daily mail_ air-ship shed at wormwood scrubbs, and he used every possible bit of influence he had got to get me in. the naval people were all awfully jolly, but regulations were strict, and though they moved heaven and earth for me, it could not be done. i said good-bye to my brother, who was to come down to morstone almost immediately, and one dull, bitter afternoon in the middle of december, i found myself in a third-class carriage going home--once more a hopeless failure. i could see old upjelly's mocking sneer, i could hear little lockhart's titter; old pugmire would say, "a gin and soda is clearly indicated in this crisis." and doris--what would doris say? well, doris, poor doris, would weep. she would know it was not my fault, dear little girl, but she would weep. and for many days i should read my newspaper, which arrived in the evening, over the fire in my sitting-room in the north wing at the end of the dormitory, and if i did not weep too, it would be because i was a man and not a girl. other people would be doing glorious things. two-thirds of the men of my own college were already either at the front or in training. some smug, who could not get into the second fifteen at exeter, would become d.s.o. or v.c. morstone would be full of farm lads, who had gone out louts and come back wounded heroes. and for me, only what some priggish hymn or other describes as "the daily round, the common task," how damnably common, only i myself knew. the afternoon, as i have said, was dark and lowering, and as i changed at heacham for the local train, a bitter wind, which cut like a knife, swept over the vast flats, straight from heligoland, the kiel canal, and the tossing wastes of the north sea. we crawled along slowly, stopping at half a dozen stations, until, with a groan, the train drew up in the god-forsaken little terminus of blankington-on-sea. the sea was two miles away over the mud flats, and blankington consisted of an enormous church, five maltsters' yards, a few fly-blown shops, and seventeen public-houses, where the townspeople and labourers on the weekly market day defied the marsh fogs with ardent spirits. wordingham, the husband of the woman who kept the morstone inn, was waiting with his dog-cart. i hoisted in my kit-bag and jumped up beside him and we started off. it was pitch dark, and we had five miles to go along a level road. on the right were huge fields of barley stubble, all in the great shoot of the earl of blankington, whose yearly head of "birds," as partridges are called in norfolk, to say nothing of pheasants, was second only to that of sandringham itself, not so very far away. to the left were a few more fields where some plovers wailed mysteriously, "it's dark and late," or "it's late and dark," and beyond, the vast creeks and saltings towards the ocean. even as we got out of the little town, i heard the great boom of a double ten-bore far away. well, i could at least go back to my wild-fowling, and wordingham told me that the geese were working backwards and forwards in skeins of at least a hundred, right over the morstone miels. chapter ii "there is something very wrong about this house" we bowled along through the night, and i turned up the collar of my thick ulster, for it was bitterly cold. "well," i said, "any news, wordingham?" wordingham was a big, strong, nut-brown, silent man, who took time before he spoke. at last he did so, but without replying to my question. "my missus," he said slowly, "has got the parlour behind the bar ready for your brother, sir. it is a snug, ship-shape little place, and we will do our best to make him comfortable. and if you and i can't show the captain a bit of sport, well, there's no one in this part of the country who can." "good," i said. "my brother has still got a month to get thoroughly fit before he goes back to join the north sea squadron. i want him to have as much shooting as possible." wordingham nodded and flicked up his horse. he was a well-known wild-fowler in east norfolk and, if report spoke true, a very skilful poacher too. the marshes were free to everyone, right up to where the sea came on rare spring tides. wordingham had an excellent mahogany punt, with a long, black-powder gun, and he would often get as many as thirty brace of duck at a single shot after hours of cautious water-stalking. but, apart from the wild birds of the saltings, morstone was in the very heart of one of the most famous shoots in england. the villagers were poachers to a man, and it was well known that fast motor cars often made sudden appearances at night, whereby the poulterers of leadenhall market were greatly enriched next morning. many and many were the "old things" that found their way into the capacious side-pockets of my friend--"old thing" being the local name for hare, a word which is never spoken aloud in a norfolk village by those who find it "their delight of a moonlight night," &c. &c. i thought none the worse of sam wordingham for that. i had no big shoot and no expensive machinery of game-keepers and night-watchers to keep up. i, myself, was a bit of an ishmael, to say nothing of a lover of sport. "i am sure we can do my brother very well," i said. "it is a fine fowling year with all this cold, and there are a lot of worthy fowl about, as many as i have ever seen. but has there been no news in the village since i left?" "you will be surprised to hear as the doctor himself dropped in to the private bar yesterday evening." "doctor upjelly?" sam nodded. "it was about nine o'clock. mr. pugmire was settin' by the fire, not to say boozed, but as is usual about nine o'clock. 'muzzy' is how i put it. thinks i, 'here's the doctor come after mr. pugmire,' though i never knew such a thing in all these years before, and everyone knows mr. pugmire's little failings, the doctor included." "was it that?" "no, it weren't," and sam turned his big, brown face toward me. i knew sam. many and many a midnight had we spent together waiting for flighting time. i forbore in anticipation. "'e sets himself down and 'e calls for a bottle of strong, old ale--fowlers' tipple. 'e nods quite pleasant to mr. pugmire, what was looking at him like a cat looks when you catch it stealin' cream. 'pugmire,' says he, 'you will join me in a little refreshment?' but the old gentleman, he was too scairt, and 'e mumbles something and shuffles off 'ome--and i'll lay that's the first time mr. pugmire has been 'ome partly sober this year. then the doctor, he makes 'imself very pleasant, 'e does. my missus comes in and he begins asking about--what do you think 'e arst about, sir?" "i haven't an idea." "about the captain, about your brother." i was startled. i hadn't told the doctor that my brother was coming to stay in the village--it was no business of his, and we had few confidences on any subject. lockhart knew and, of course, doris and her sister, but they were not likely to have said anything. "what did he want to know?" i asked. "where he was sleeping, and if we were going to make the gentleman comfortable, and if he had a taste for shooting, had i heard? regular lot of questions!" "well, it's very kind of the doctor to take an interest in my brother," i replied. "very, sir," wordingham answered dryly. "mr. jones, he came down last night at ten o'clock, came down from london in his motor car, 'e did. he's at the school now, or leastways, with this tide and the moon getting up in an hour or so, he will be out on the marshes with the doctor. i heard tell that they was to be out all night. bill jack pearson, from the school, 'e told me." again there was silence, while i thought over this little bit of information, for anything is news in such a stagnant hole as morstone. mr. jones was a friend of the doctor's who often came to see him. he was a short, sturdy, red-faced man with bright blue eyes and a very reserved manner. we always understood that he was in business in the city, and well-to-do. like the doctor, he had a passion for wild-fowling, or that, at any rate, was supposed to be the reason for his visits, though doris had more than once hinted to me that she thought marjorie, her younger sister, was a bit of an attraction too. "ever been out with mr. jones, sir?" wordingham asked. "not i. why, i've only been out with the doctor once in all the time i've been at morstone. he seems to prefer to be alone." "aye, he's a solitary man, is the doctor. on that time you went out with him, did you get anything, sir?" "i got a couple of brent geese, but the doctor was not in form at all and missed his one chance when they came over." "now, would you be surprised, sir, if i was to tell you that the doctor is one of the worst shots in the parish?" "i should be very surprised indeed. why? he gets awfully good bags night after night--whenever he goes out, in fact." "you know jim long up at cockthorpe?"--he was mentioning a famous professional wild-fowler who lived by supplying the markets with duck and taking out sportsmen from london over the difficult and intricate marshes at night. "of course i do. been out with him lots of times." "well, sir, don't say as i told you, don't mention it to jim and don't mention it to a living soul, but i found out only last month, accidental like, that jim's been supplying the doctor with teal and widgeon and grey geese and plover and what not for goodness knows 'ow long. 'e leaves a nice little bag in the doctor's old hulk in thirty main creek, and the doctor finds 'em there and brings 'em home. and, what's more, mr. jones, 'e can't shoot for nuts, neither. i've see'd 'im firing off their guns, to get 'em dirty, from the deck of the hulk!" at this i began to laugh, though the news was a bit of a shock to me, for i had always regarded the doctor and his friend as true sportsmen. i saw no reason to disbelieve what wordingham had said, for he was not a man who spoke rashly, and, comic though the business was, i could not help that sort of odd discomfort one feels when an illusion is shattered. the only good thing i knew of upjelly was now a thing of the past. of course, i had heard of the type of sportsman who buys a creel of trout at the fishmonger's on his way home, or gets his pheasants at the poulterer's--about the cheapest and nastiest form of vanity that exists, i should think. but i had never heard of anything of the sort in connection with wild-fowling; and indeed, a man who, night after night, will go through the extraordinary discomforts, the freezing cold, the occasional real danger, the weary hours of waiting in the dark, merely to get a reputation as a fowler, must be king and skipper of all the humbugs and pretenders since mr. pecksniff himself. i had little more conversation with sam, his news occupied all my thoughts and for a time i forgot my own troubles. i remember thinking, in a childish sort of way, what a rag it would be to stalk old upjelly one night, and catch him in the very act. what a hold i should have over him afterwards! we approached the village. the wind cried in the chimneys of the houses with a strange, wailing note. the moon just peeped out behind the gaunt church tower, amid the scud of ghostly clouds, and its light grew brighter as we turned to the left towards the school itself. at the same moment, the wind, smelling salt of the marshes and of the open sea a mile beyond, and carrying particles of sand, struck me with its full force, so that i had to bow my head. in three minutes we were at morstone house school. it was a long, low building of considerable extent, shaped like the letter l. the shorter arm was three storeys high and was the doctor's own quarters, together with his cook, housemaid, and the old matron, mrs. gaunt. the longer wing contained the schoolrooms on the ground floor, a bare apartment known as the dining-hall, and two dormitories in each of which there were about fifteen boys, the whole school consisting of some fifty boys, thirty of whom were boarders. this part of the building was only two storeys high, save at one end, where there was a small tower. just outside each dormitory was a master's sitting-room and bedroom. one of these was mine--the top one--the other, down below, that of lockhart. there were three main entrances to the school. one, the front door, in the middle of the longer portion of the building, another, a small door in the angle, used only by the masters, and the doctor's private entrance, opening out into his garden on the other side of the block. it was just ten o'clock as i drove through the playing fields and on to the gravel sweep in front of the house. bill jack pearson, the school porter, opened the masters' door and took my bag. he was a pleasant, cheery fellow, who liked me. "well, bill jack," i said, "everything all right?" "everything all right, mr. carey. the doctor and mr. jones, who came last night, have gone out towards cockthorpe. the geese are working there, and they won't be back till dawn. there's some supper in your room, and i've lit the fire." then i asked a question which the porter quite understood. "and mrs. gaunt?" "the old cat's gone to bed, sir," he said in a lower voice. "i've just come from the doctor's kitchen, and cook told me." i passed through the little paved lobby which led to the long corridor of class-rooms, and hurried up the bare, wooden stairs. there was a good fire in my room and the lamp was lit upon the supper-table, where a jug of beer flanked a cold wild goose--and ordinary mortals who have not tasted that delicacy have missed a lot. i took off my coat, went into my bedroom and washed my hands, peeped into the dormitory, where only a single lamp was burning dimly and all the boys seemed asleep, and then returned. as i closed the door and saw my own familiar things around me, the remembrance of what had happened came over me in a great flood. i groaned aloud. upon the walls, washed with terra-cotta, were my college groups, reminding me of oxford and happier days. there were some silver cups upon a shelf. in a glass-fronted cupboard by the side of the fireplace were my guns. over the mirror on the mantelpiece was a faded blue cap, and on the writing-table was a pile of filthy, dogs-eared, little exercise books, in which reluctant urchins had been scribbling attempts at latin prose. i bit my lip hard and sat down to supper, which did not take more than five or six minutes. then i prepared myself for something that was yet to come. against the wall by the window was a bookshelf containing the few volumes i possessed and such schoolbooks as i used in my work. i took down smith's classical dictionary, and liddell and scott's greek ditto, and, inserting my hand in the place this left, withdrew a pleasant little instrument which i had bought for twenty-seven-and-six--see advertisement in the _strand magazine_--from a scientific toy-shop in holborn. this was known as "our portable house telephone," and, not to elaborate the mystery, a little wire ran out of my window, through the ivy, and round the angle of the building to the doctor's block, where it found unobtrusive entry through another window. at this end was an instrument exactly like the one i held in my hand, but which rested in a hole made in the plaster of the wall and was concealed by that touching engraving, "the soul's awakening." i had fixed up the whole thing myself some two months before, when the doctor was away in london, mrs. gaunt at market in blankington-on-sea, and the boys engaged in a paper chase. doris was waiting, of course. "dearest, so you've got back--i heard the trap!" "yes; can you come?" "in a minute. the connecting door to the school is locked, but i made bill jack lend me his key." "right-o!"--and i waited breathlessly for doris. i daresay such a proceeding as this may strike the ultra-proper with dismay. but we loved each other, there was no harm in it, and, besides, what the deuce were we to do? it was the only way we could meet at all, and even then, it only happened now and again. the door of my sitting-room opened without a sound and doris entered. doris's hair is dark red, and, when it is down, it reaches almost to her heels. titian red, i believe, is the right name for it, though i'm sure i don't know why. her eyes are dark blue, like the blue on the wing of a freshly killed mallard--i am not good at this sort of thing, but she is a ripper. directly she had closed the door, which she did noiselessly, she saw from my face what had happened. i felt a rotten tout, i can tell you, to stand there, chucked again. "well, here i am," i said, "returned empty, declined with thanks, his majesty having no use for my services! same old game, doris dear, and if they lose the war now, they can't blame me!" i spoke bitterly, but lightly also; yet when doris put her arms round my neck and i held her close, when i could feel warm tears upon my cheek, i was as near breaking down as i have ever been in my life. "never mind, johnny darling, never mind," she whispered, "i love you just the same--you've always got me--and it isn't your fault. you've tried as hard as you possibly can to go." she could only stay a quarter of an hour; it wasn't safe longer. marjorie was keeping cave, for the sisters occupied the same room. i told her everything as shortly as i could, and with a sigh, we both agreed that we must make the best of it. she wanted me to go, she longed for me to go, i knew that. what patriotism there was in morstone house school was confined to the boys and to the doctor's stepdaughters. upjelly himself seemed to take very little interest in the conflagration of the world, or, if he did, he never showed it. but i knew as well as i knew anything that doris would rather have had me go to the front and get a bullet through my head than that i should stay at home; which, i may remark, is the right sort of girl. "well," she said at length, "let us hope the germans invade us--it will be somewhere about here, i suppose, if they do--and then you can have a smack at them with your single eight-bore, johnny; that would be something, wouldn't it?" she told me the news of the school, such as it was, and then, with a final kiss, we separated and i was left alone. the bitterness was still in my heart, a deep sort of fire at the bottom of everything which i can't put into words--like the gentlemen in the boys' historical novels, who always begin: "i am but a plain, unlettered yeoman, and more handy with the sword than with the pen"--you know what i mean. still, i was a man and a strong one, and an englishman whose brother was fighting for his king. i did not know before that life could hurt so badly as it was hurting now. for nearly an hour, i suppose, i walked up and down my room, until the fire grew low and the wailing of the wind outside seemed to speak of disaster and complete the innuendo of the time. and then, quite suddenly, i do not know what it was, my spirits began to clear. it was like a thick sea-mist on the marshes, which hangs like a dull, grey blanket for hours, with the birds calling all round, only you cannot get a shot at them. suddenly the sun, or a puff of wind, makes the whole thing roll up like a curtain, and you see a herd of curlew or a wisp of snipe quite close to you. that is how i felt. i caught sight of my face in the glass, and i was surprised. it was positively glowing--just as if i had been made commander-in-chief of the r.n.f.c. and admiral jellicoe had asked me to come and have a drink. i am not used to analysing my feelings, which seem to me like chemicals--the more you analyse them, the worse they smell; so i could not account in the least for this sudden change. well, i was wondering at it and thinking that i had better turn in before i got the black dog on my shoulders again, when there was a tap at the door, and in shuffled little lockhart. he had a bottle of whisky under one arm and a syphon under the other, and he looked, as usual, like a plucked spring chicken that had not been properly fed--bones sticking out everywhere. "thought perhaps you hadn't any whisky," he said--and then, "hallo! pulled it off this time?" he was looking at my face. i started, because there was something in his voice i had not heard before, and something in his eyes i had not seen. "my dear chap," he went on, banging down the whisky on the table and holding out his hand. "i can't tell you how glad i am!" well, this made it rather hard. of course, i had to tell him that i had got the kick out again, but i didn't feel the depression coming back, all the same. what i did feel, though, was a sudden liking for the odd little fellow who was my colleague. we had always got on well enough together, never had rows or anything of that sort, but he was too cynical for me as a rule. in five minutes, however, i found myself sitting on one side of the fire--which we made up--with lockhart on the other, talking away as if we had been intimate friends for years. by jove, how the little fellow came out! if his body was maimed and crippled, he had a big soul, if ever a man had. i can recognise beautiful english when i hear it or read it. this man seemed inspired. his talk of england and what we were going through and of what we still had to go through was like that wonderful passage in richard ii which i had been trying to make my idiot boys learn for rep. he was so awfully kind and sympathetic, too. he said all that doris had said, though in quite another way. it was like a wise man, who had known and done everything, comforting one. when he had finished, and sat looking at the fire, i had to tell him what i felt. "i'm awfully indebted to you, lockhart," was what i said. "you've pulled me together and made a man of me again, and i can't thank you enough. i'm afraid we haven't been such friends as we ought to have been"--and i held out my hand. he took it and there was a strained smile upon his wizened little face. "carey," he said, "don't you be downhearted, for you are going to have your chance yet, unless i am very much mistaken." "what do you mean?" i asked, for there was obviously something behind his words. for answer, he did a curious thing. he slipped out of his arm-chair, hopped across the room like a sparrow, and as quietly, and opened the door, looking into the passage. then he closed it and came back into the middle of the room. "in the first place, john carey," he said, "i mean that there is something very wrong about this house." chapter iii bernard carey, lieutenant-commander of submarines i had just finished my tub the next morning, and was about to shave, when there was a knock at my bedroom door. the school porter came in with a message--"the doctor sends his compliments, sir, and will you give him the pleasure of your company at breakfast this morning?" this was quite unusual on the part of my chief. he always breakfasted alone in his own house; even his daughters did not share the meal with him. lockhart and myself breakfasted with the boys--that is to say, we sat at a table at one end of the room, while old mrs. gaunt, the matron, presided over the bread-and-scrape and the urn of wishy-washy tea which was all the boarders got, unless they provided delicacies for themselves. about half-past eight, i went downstairs, round the rectangular wing, into the doctor's garden, and knocked at his front door. i was almost immediately shown into the breakfast-room, a comfortable place, with a good many books and a fine view over the marshes. old upjelly was standing upon the hearthrug as i entered, and i must describe for you a very remarkable personality indeed. the doctor was six feet high and proportionately broad. he was not only broad from shoulder to shoulder, but thick in the chest, a big, powerful man of fifty years of age. his face was enormous, as big as a ham almost, and it was of a uniform pallor, rather like badly-cooked tripe, as i once heard lockhart describe it. a parrot-like nose projected in the centre of this fleshy expanse; small, but very bright eyes, sunk in caverns of flesh, looked out under bushy, black brows which squirted out--there is no other word. he was clean-shaved and his mouth was large, firm and curiously watchful, if i may so express it. upjelly could make his eyes say anything he pleased, but i have always thought that the mouth is the feature in the human face which tells more than any other. and if upjelly's mouth revealed anything, it was secretiveness, while there was a curious chinese insensitiveness about it. lockhart, who had rather a genius for description, used to say that he could conceive doctor upjelly locking himself up in his study and sitting down to spend a quiet and solitary afternoon torturing a cat. he greeted me with his soft, rather guttural voice and with something meant for an expansive smile. "ah, here we are," he said, "and tell me at once, mr. carey, if you have been successful in your application." of course, i was quite prepared for this question and briefly related the facts of the case, explaining that even my brother's influence had failed to secure my entry into the royal naval flying corps. "i am truly sorry," he said, with the unctuous manner he reserved for parents, "truly sorry; but you must remember, mr. carey, that 'they also serve who only stand and wait.'" and as he said it, or was it my fancy, there came a curious gleam into those little bits of glistening black glass he called his eyes. a minute or two afterwards, and just as the maid was bringing in various hot dishes, the door opened and mr. jones entered. i had been introduced to mr. jones some months before, though neither he nor upjelly had ever invited me to shoot with them. i had only met him for a few minutes and had never formed a very definite opinion about him one way or the other. he shook hands with me kindly enough, and i noticed how extremely firm and capable his grip was. it was not at all the sort of grip one would expect from the ordinary city man, though, of course, nowadays everybody plays golf or does something of the kind, even in business circles. mr. jones' face was clean-shaved, too, and rather pleasant than otherwise, though it was somewhat heavy. his eyes were bright blue, his hair, thinning a little at the top, a light yellowish colour. he walked with a slight roll or, shall i say swagger?--i really hardly know how to describe it--which somehow or other seemed reminiscent, and he spoke almost pedantically good english. when i say good english, i mean to say that he chose his words with more care than most englishmen do--almost as if he were writing it down. we sat down to breakfast, and i saw at once that neither doris nor her sister were to be there. the meal was elaborate; i had no idea upjelly did himself in such style, for except at oxford or cambridge, or in big country houses, breakfast is not generally a very complicated affair in an ordinary english family. the coffee was excellent--there was no tea--and there was a succession of hot dishes. i noticed, however, that mr. jones took nothing but coffee, french rolls--i suppose the doctor's cook knew how to make them--and a little butter. and i noticed also that, after all, he could not be of very great importance or good breeding, because he tucked his table-napkin into his collar round his chin, an odd proceeding enough! we began about the war, of course. upjelly asked me my impressions of london, and was most interested when i told him of all i had seen going on at the r.n.f.c. depôt at wormwood scrubbs, especially about the great rolls-royce cars and the guns they were mounting on them. i never thought the man took such an interest in anything outside his food and his shooting--if indeed he took an interest even in shooting, which wordingham's story of last night led me to doubt. somehow or other, i was convinced that upjelly did not care either way about my failure to enlist. he said the conventional things, but i knew he was inwardly indifferent. it was not the same with mr. jones, whom i began to like. he seemed genuinely sorry. "i can understand, mr. carey," he said, "that you have been extremely disappointed. i can sympathise with you most thoroughly. it is the duty and the privilege of every man who is capable of bearing arms to fight for the fatherland which has given him birth." of course, this was a bit highfalutin, but he meant well. "thank you," i said, "it certainly has been pretty rotten, but perhaps i may get something to do yet. i would give anything just to have one go at those swines of germans! you saw what they did yesterday at the little village of oostcamp, in belgium?" "we must not believe all we read in the papers, mr. carey," upjelly said, wagging his head and piling his plate with ham--the beast ate butter with his ham! "i know," i replied; "of course, it is not all true, but there have been enough atrocities absolutely proved to show what utter soulless beasts the germans are. it is a pity that we are not at war with a nation of gentlemen, like the french, if we have to be at war at all!" the doctor flushed a little. i suppose he thought i was too outspoken. "i have lived much in germany in my youth," he said, "and always found them most hospitable and kind. you must not condemn a nation for the deeds of a few." "well, you may have been in germany," i thought, "but you can't explain away louvain, for instance, or lots of other places!" still, it was not my place to shove my oar in too much, and i turned to jones. "what do you think, mr. jones?" i asked. he hesitated for two or three seconds, as if he was trying to make up his mind. "no one deplores certain incidents in belgium more than i do," he said at length, "but we must hope that, as doctor upjelly says, there is a brighter side to the picture. you must remember that even a german probably loves his country just as much as an englishman." well, of course i knew that was all rot. i had never been in germany, but people who let a chap like the kaiser rule them and who live on sausages and beer about as interesting as ditchwater, must be thorough blighters! however, i changed the subject. "now, the navy," i said, "from all accounts, are quite a decent lot of chaps. what a sportsman von müller was till we bagged the _emden_. he behaved like a white man all through, and we let him keep his sword, which i think we were quite right in doing." mr. jones smiled suddenly, revealing a row of very white and even teeth. "you," he began, "i mean we, are an arrogant people, we english!" and he chuckled as if he were amused at what i had said. "i quite agree with you, however," he went on, "that the german naval officer is a fine fellow. your brother, by the way, is in our navy, isn't he?" "yes," i said; "he was wounded in a little affair off heligoland the other day. but he is getting fit now. oh, by the way, doctor, he is coming down here to get some shooting. he is going to stay at the morstone arms." "so i heard," upjelly answered--the old fox, i thought i was going to catch him out!--"i went in there last night, a thing i don't often do, in order to see if i could find old mr. pugmire, and i heard from mrs. wordingham. i shall hope to have the pleasure of making his acquaintance when i return." "you are going away, doctor?" "yes. that was one of the things i wanted to see you about. mr. jones is very kindly going to drive me up to town in his car this morning, and i shall be away for a couple of days. i want to leave you in charge as my representative." "but lockhart----" i began. "mr. lockhart is not quite as capable of keeping discipline in the school as you are, carey." "thank you very much, sir," i replied; "i will do my best." the meal continued and we all got on very well. upjelly seemed really interested in my brother and, after a cigarette, when i rose to go into school, both he and jones shook me very cordially by the hand. as i was leaving the room, i noticed one curious thing. there was a little writing-table by the door and on it i distinctly saw the navy list for that month, obviously fresh from london. what old upjelly could want with a navy list, a book which, of course, i had upstairs, i could not conceive, and it gave me food for thought, especially in view of what i shall have to relate very shortly. at the eleven o'clock break, when the boys had come out and were punting about a soccer ball in front of the school, i saw mr. jones' big green car, with himself at the wheel and the doctor by his side, come round the house and start off for london. i felt as if a great oppression was removed. my brother would arrive that afternoon; upjelly was out of the way; i was in charge of the whole place. it would be hard if i did not see more of doris than i had been able to do for months past. we went into school again. i was taking what, in a pitiful attempt at persuading ourselves we were a public school, we called the sixth form, in virgil. my boys, there were about ten of them, were a pleasant enough set of lads, ranging from fifteen to the two eldest boys, both of whom were seventeen. they were twins, dickson max. and dickson major, the sons of a poor clergyman near norwich, who could not afford to send them to a better school. they had tried for entrance scholarships at repton and at denstone, but had failed, and at all that concerns books or learning were rather duffers. yet they were clever boys in their way, good sportsmen and, despite a perfectly abnormal talent for mischief, could be depended on in the main. i liked them both and i was sorry for them. their one hope was that the war would last long enough for them to enlist, for their father was too poor even to pay the necessary expenses to send them into the public schools corps, where lads of such physique and cheery manners could have been sure of a welcome. "_per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum_," droned out dickson max., in painful endeavour to bury a dead language in the very stiff clay of his mind. "through various causes ..." "now how can you say 'causes,' dickson? you know perfectly well what it is that aeneas is saying. he is exhorting his followers to press towards rome against all sorts of bad luck. '_casus_' should have been translated 'chances.' '_per tot discrimina rerum_' is, of course, 'through so many changes of fortune.' imagine aeneas is sir john french, pressing onwards to berlin." it was fatal; that gave the signal. "sir," said dickson major instantly, "did you see any of the royal naval flying corps in london?" dickson max. put down his virgil. "is it true, sir, that they have got a hundred armoured motor cars, each one with a maxim gun on it?"--questions from eager faces were fired at me from all parts of the room. i trust i am no precisian, as the people in stevenson's stories are always saying, and i confess that, for the next quarter of an hour i held forth in an animated fashion about all that i had seen and done in london. after all, it is the duty of a schoolmaster to encourage patriotism, isn't it? i was just describing some of the new aerial guns that we are mounting on some of the principal london buildings for the defence of the city against zeppelins, when there was a most appalling crash and howl outside in the corridor. there was dead silence for an instant, then i jumped down from my desk and rushed out. an unpleasant, almost a terrifying spectacle met my eyes. old mrs. gaunt, the matron, was rolling upon the flags of the corridor like a wounded ostrich, yelping, there is really no other word for it, as if in agony. her face was pale as linen and her mouth was twisted. she was obviously in great pain. "whatever has happened?" i said, trying to help her, but as i lifted the old thing by the shoulder she shrieked loudly and i had to lay her down again. "my leg's broken!" she cried, "my leg's broken! one of those filthy boys left his ball about, and i trod on it"--and indeed i saw, a few yards away, the white fives ball which had been the cause of her disaster. the porter was summoned, we improvised an ambulance somehow, and took the poor old thing to her room in the doctor's wing, doris and marjorie attending to her, while the porter rushed off on his bicycle for the nearest doctor. in about an hour the doctor came. it was perfectly true, mrs. gaunt had broken her leg. it was a simple fracture and, as the doctor told me afterwards, the woman was as tough as an old turkey, but she would be confined to her bed for a fortnight at least, and the injured limb was already encased in plaster of paris. it was strictly against the rules for any boy to leave a fives ball about. an accident had nearly happened once before for the same reason. at lunch, i conducted a stern inquisition as to the culprit's identity. it was dickson max., who owned up at once, and i told him to come to my room after the meal. i could not very well cane a boy of seventeen who would have been at sandhurst if his people could have afforded. besides, i was too inwardly grateful to him to have the slightest wish to do anything of the sort. i gave him a thousand latin lines and told him to stay in that afternoon, which was a half-holiday, and on three subsequent halves, and i am sorry to say that he grinned in my face as i did so. it was not an impudent grin, or i should have known how to deal with it, but it was one of perfect comprehension, and i fear i blushed as i told the young beggar to clear out as quickly as possible. certainly the fates were working well for me, though i had, even then, not the least idea of what an eventful day this was to prove. nothing came to tell me that i was already embarked upon the greatest enterprise of my life. i was to know more before night. now one of my most cherished possessions at that time was a motor bicycle. it was of an antiquated pattern and more often in the workshop than on the road. fortunately, such engineering knowledge as i had enabled me to tinker at it for myself. to-day, though it had recently been running with a most horrid cacophony resembling the screams of a dying elephant and a machine gun alternately, it would still get along, and i mounted it for blankington-on-sea to meet my brother bernard. i put it up at the hotel--i saw the yard attendant wink at the stable boy as he housed it--ordered a trap and went to the station. the train came in to time and my brother descended from a first-carriage. i had seen him in london only a day before, and despite his natural annoyance at the failure to get me into the r.n.f.c., he had been particularly cheery. as we shook hands and the porter took his kit-bags and gun-cases to the trap, i saw that he had something on his mind. he hardly even smiled. i jumped to a wrong conclusion. "bernard," i said, "would you like a whisky-soda before we start? you look as if you had been enjoying yourself too much last night." he shook his head. "no peg for me, thanks; let us get on the road." we went out of the station together and as we came into the yard he said in a low voice: "i have a deuce of a lot to tell you, but not now." then we started for morstone. little more than an hour later we were seated in the parlour at the inn. a comfortable fire glowed upon the hearth and sent red reflections round the homely room, lighting up the stuffed pintail in its case, the old-fashioned, muzzle-loading marsh gun over the mantelpiece, the gleaming lustre ware upon a dresser of old oak, and an engraving of old colonel hawker himself, the king of wild-fowlers and a name to conjure with in east anglia. upon the table was a country tea, piping hot scones made by good mrs. wordingham, a regiment of eggs, a gargantuan dish of blackberry jam. "by jove, this is a good place!" bernard said. "two lumps and lots of cream, please. look at this egg! upon my word, i would like to shake by the hand the fowl that laid it!" we made an enormous meal and then, as he pulled out a blackened "b.b.b." and filled it with "john cotton," my brother began to talk. "we are quite safe here, i suppose?" he said; "nobody can overhear us?" "safe as houses." "very well, then; now look here, old chap, you noticed i seemed a bit off colour when you met me. well, i'm not off colour, but i've had some very serious news and, what is more, a sort of commission in connection with it. after i saw you off yesterday i went to the army and navy club. there i found a letter from admiral noyes, written at the admiralty and asking me to call at once. i was shipmate with noyes when he was captain of the old _terrific_, and he has helped me a lot in my service career. it was he who got me transferred into submarines--where, you know, i have made a bit of a hit. well, now noyes is chief of the naval intelligence department. he sent for me and asked me a lot of questions, specially about kiel and the frisian islands. i was at kiel for the manoeuvres two years ago and i know all that coast like my hat. i didn't quite see the drift of his questions until he told me what was going on. it seems"--and here bernard's voice sank very low--"it seems that, recently, there has been a tremendous leakage of information to the enemy--naval information, i mean. we have our people on the look-out, and there is no doubt whatever that, during the last two months, over and over again the german ships have got information about our movements." "i know. there is a whole lot about it in the _daily wire_: flash signals from the yorkshire coast at night, round about whitby, and so on." "oh yes, i saw that too; but the leakage is not there, my boy. that's newspaper talk. the admiralty know to a dead certainty that the leakage is going on in east norfolk, round about here." i whistled. "i don't see how that can be," i said. "there is no wireless station anywhere near. the few boats that come into blankington-on-sea are only small coasters and they are very carefully scrutinised; and as for flash signals, i am out on the marshes nearly every night, the foreshore is patrolled by sentries, and nothing of the sort has ever been hinted at." "exactly; that is the point. but that there is a leakage and that it is doing irreparable harm, you may take as an absolute certainty. noyes knew that i was coming down to norfolk for a rest and for some shooting. when i applied for leave, i had to state my destination and so forth. noyes got hold of it by chance and sent for me, knowing he could trust me. the long and short of it is, johnny, that i have got a roving commission to keep my eyes very wide open indeed, to see if i can't find something out. don't mistake me. this is not a mere trifling matter. it is one of the gravest things and one of the most perfectly organised systems that has happened during the war. why," he said, bringing his fist down upon the table so that the cups rattled, his face set and stern, "the safety of the whole of england may depend upon this being discovered and stopped!" "but surely," i asked, "they have had people down here already?" bernard nodded. "oh yes," he said, "the coastguards are specially warned, there have been thorough searches, quietly carried out, reports are constantly made from every village by accredited agents--and the admiralty has not a single clue. now, old chap, if you can help me, and if we can do anything together, well, here's our chance! there won't be any difficulty about your getting into the r.n.f.c., or any other corps you like, if we can only throw light upon this dark spot." i caught fire from his words. "by jove!" i cried, "if only there was a chance! i would do anything! but i know every man, woman, and child in this village and the surrounding ones. there is not one of them capable of acting as a spy. there are no suspicious strangers. even the wild-fowlers who come down here are all regular and known visitors, above suspicion." i said this in all good faith, and then, suddenly, a light came to me like a flash of lightning, and i rose slowly from my chair. bernard told me afterwards that i had grown paper-white and was trembling. "what is it?" he said quickly. "i hardly dare say," i replied. "it seems wild foolishness and yet----" he waited very patiently, and still i could not bring myself to speak. then it was his turn to take away my breath. he leant forward on the table and pulled out a pocket-book. "supposing, john," he said, "that you have been living in a fool's paradise for months. supposing that, by some means unknown to me and the admiralty, unknown to anyone, you are actually living in the centre of a cunningly woven web of espionage, whose strands reach from berlin to wilhelmshaven, from kiel to london!" he took a piece of paper from his pocket-book. i saw that there were figures upon it, not letters, but he read it as if they were print. "'paul upjelly,'" he said, "'paul upjelly, ph.d.; english subject; possessed of private means; has been for eight years headmaster of morstone house school; habits'--h'm--h'm--you know all about his habits, john--'man whose past cannot be traced for more than ten years; known to have lived in germany in youth; no suspicion at present attaches.'" "what on earth does this mean?" i gasped. "it only means that in this pocket-book i have lists of forty or fifty people round these coasts who might or might not be in the pay of germany. there is not the slightest suspicion attaching to any one of them, but i saw you stand up suddenly and grow pale--well, i played into your strong suit, that was all. was i right?" "last night," i said, "i had a very curious and significant talk with a brother-master of mine, whose name is lockhart." "get him to come here and have a chat as soon as possible." "that isn't necessary, because upjelly is away in london and an old beast of a housekeeper he keeps, who tells him everything, is in bed with a broken leg. we can go up to the school all right, and i particularly want to introduce you to miss joyce, who is--er----" he nodded. "i know," he said. "you bored me to tears about the young lady last time i saw you. delighted to meet her. we will toddle up to the school as soon as ever you like and i will hear what mr. lockhart has got to say. i suppose you can trust him?" "i am absolutely certain of it," and, with that, things began to fall together in my mind as the glass pieces in a kaleidoscope fall and make a pattern. i mentioned the navy list that i had seen at breakfast that morning, and i told bernard what wordingham had told me concerning the doctor's knowledge of his visit. a gleam came into his eyes. "ah!" he said, very softly, and that was all. we got up to go, and as bernard walked across the room to find his overcoat, for night had fallen and it was bitter cold, i exclaimed aloud. i knew what had puzzled me at breakfast when mr. jones came into the room. he walked exactly like my brother. if you go to chatham, portsmouth, or plymouth, almost every other man in the street walks like that. we went straight to the school, only a quarter of a mile away, and entered by the masters' door. i lit the lamp in my sitting-room, put on some coals, and rang a bell which communicated with the upper boys' room, where they were now at preparation. in a minute, there was a knock at the door and dickson max. entered. "dickson," i said, "i want you to find mr. lockhart and ask him if he would be so very kind as to come to my room--oh and, by the way, this is my brother, commander carey, dickson." the boy grew pale for an instant and then flushed a deep, rosy red. he was a cool young wretch as a rule and i had never seen him so excited before. i loved him for it. the boys knew all about my brother. they had read of his exploits in the submarine e8. i was always being pestered with questions about him. bernard shook hands. "i am glad to meet you," he said. dickson was tongue-tied, but he gazed with an almost painful reverence at bernard. "oh, sir," he stammered, "oh, sir"--and then could get no further. in desperation he turned to me. "i've done five hundred of the lines, sir," he said. "oh well, you needn't do any more," i answered. "and please, sir, i've taken some more snapshots which i think you might like"--and with that the lad pulled out a little bundle of recently developed and printed photographs--he had a small kodak--and laid them on the table. then he bolted and we could hear him leaping downstairs, bursting with the great news. "he's got it badly," i remarked--"hero worship." "jolly good thing," my brother answered. "lord, i remember when i was a midshipman of signals, how i worshipped the flag-lieutenant. i ran after him like a little dog, and i thought he was god. healthy!" we sat without speaking, waiting for lockhart. my brother took up the little bundle of snapshots and looked through them. then we heard a shuffling footstep in the passage and lockhart entered. i introduced him and we shut and locked the door. bernard looked the little man up and down for a minute or two, talking on indifferent subjects. and then, as if satisfied, he plunged into business. he didn't tell my colleague all that he had told me, but he told him enough to set lockhart quivering with eagerness and excitement. "you shall hear all i know, commander carey," he said. "after all, it isn't much, though"--he hesitated for a moment and then began: "this man, upjelly, our chief, is absolutely unfitted to be a schoolmaster. he takes not the slightest interest in the school. john, here, has found out, what i long more than suspected, that the doctor's wild-fowling is really a colossal pretence." "does the school pay?" my brother asked. "just about. there may be a small profit, but not enough to keep any man tied down here if he has the slightest ambition or is anybody at all. and, you haven't met the doctor, but you may take it from me that he is no ordinary man. there has always been an air of mystery and secretiveness about him. he neither asks nor gives confidences. it struck me from the very first that he was a man with an absorbing mental interest of some sort or other. what was it?--that is what i asked myself. "three weeks ago, the doctor had a guest. it was a mr. jones, who frequently visits him, apparently for the shooting. my bedroom is on the floor below this. as you see, i am a cripple and an invalid. i often pass nights of pain, when i cannot sleep. on one such night, three weeks ago, the window of my bedroom was open and i lay in the dark. about half-past three in the morning i heard footsteps on the gravel outside, and the doctor's voice. the night was quite still, though pitch dark. then i heard another voice which i recognised as that of the man jones. "the voices drew nearer until the men were almost underneath my window. they were coming back from the marshes. i only know a few words of german, but i recognise the language when i hear it. they were speaking german." my brother nodded. "that jones," i put in, "i have already told you, bernard, was here when i arrived last night. he left for london this morning, taking the doctor up with him in his car." "four days ago," lockhart continued, "i wanted some waste paper to wrap up a pair of boots i was sending to be mended. i was in my room and i told one of the boys of my dormitory to go downstairs and get some. it was about nine o'clock at night. the boy brought back two or three newspapers. one of them was the _cologne gazette_, very crumpled and torn, but with the date of only five days before. i have got it locked up in my writing-desk. "to-day, being a half-holiday, i thought i would go out for a walk upon the foreshore. an overcoat rather impedes my movements, though i have to wear one sometimes. i thought i would take a scarf instead. i went into the hall, knowing that my scarf was in the pocket of my overcoat, and felt for it. the hall is rather dark and i could not see very well what i was doing. what i brought out of the pocket in which i felt was not my scarf, but--this!" lockhart quietly laid something upon the table, and we bent over to look at it. to me, at any rate, it was an extraordinary object. it was a sort of cross between a large watch and a compass, with a curious little handle. there were letters or figures, for a moment i could not say which, in a double row round the dial. "can you tell me what it is?" my brother was shaken from his calm at last. he gave an exclamation. "yes, i can!" he said. "i know very well. but first, when was this photograph taken?" with dramatic suddenness, he held out one of dickson's prints. it was a picture of mr. jones' motor, with that gentleman at the wheel and the doctor sitting on the far side, taken that very morning as they left for london. "this morning," i said. "that is the doctor and mr. jones going off to town." "mr. jones at the wheel?" my brother asked. "yes, that is the fellow." "let me get it quite clear. the man, you say, walks like me?" "yes." "ah!" said my brother again, and his eyes had the look of a bloodhound on a leash. "and now i will proceed to explain to you the use of this pretty thing." chapter iv doris and marjorie give a supper party. the arrow flies in morstone sea wood "this," said my brother, "is what is known as charles wheatstone's cipher instrument. it is a machine for writing in cipher. you see it has a sort of watch-face, which has the alphabet inscribed round its outer margin in the usual order, plus a blank space. a second alphabet is written on a card or paper and attached to the watch-face within the first alphabet. this has no blank space, and so there are but twenty-six divisions as against twenty-seven in the outer ring. two hands are attached which travel at different speeds when the handle is turned. accordingly, each time the long hand is carried forward to the blank space at the end of a word, the short hand will have moved forward one division on the inner ring of letters. then a word is chosen as a key, written down in separate letters and the remaining letters of the alphabet are written in order beneath it. i'll show you. suppose, for example, we choose the word 'english,' thus." he took a pencil and scribbled for a moment upon the back of one of dickson's photographs: english abcdfjk mopqrtu vwxyz. "now, if you read these letters downwards, you get this arrangement: eamvnbowgcpxldqyifrzsjthku. "this cryptographic alphabet is written on the inner card of the instrument, beginning at a point previously agreed on. then, when a despatch is to be translated into cipher, the long hand is moved to that letter in the outer alphabet, and the letter to which the short hand points in the inner ring is written down. i need not go on, but i am sure the principle will be clear to you. these machines are in use in our secret service. but what i should like to point out to you in regard to this example is that the alphabet here _is in german_." [illustration: the cipher machine that mr. lockhart found] we all looked at each other in silence. "that is conclusive proof," i said at length. "of course, you will have doctor upjelly arrested directly he comes back." "_and_ thank you!" said my brother. "so kind of you to put up your little turn, johnny! will you have a cigar or a cocoanut? my dear boy, if we had this man arrested, ten to one his tracks would be absolutely covered and we could prove nothing. don't you see, what we want to do is to catch him in the act, to find out what he does and how he does it. no such rough and ready methods!"--his voice became very grave and stern. "quarter-deck!" i thought to myself. "this has not got to be taken lightly," he went on. "i believe that fate has put my finger upon the very pulse of what has been puzzling the admiralty for weeks. i honestly believe that here, in this lonely house, is hidden the intellect of the master spy of germany. we are up against it. we must work in silence and in the dark. the slightest slip would be fatal. i cannot exaggerate the importance of this affair, nor," he concluded, looking keenly at lockhart and myself, "nor the danger." little lockhart's face positively brightened at this. "danger!" he cried, as if someone had made him a present. "then i shall be able to do something to help! we shall all be able to do something and----" lockhart started and broke off. at that moment, from behind smith's classical dictionary and liddell and scott's greek ditto there came a faint, muffled whirr. "good god, what's that?" said lockhart. "oh, it's all right," i answered, and i expect i looked about as big an ass as i felt. "that is--er--a little contrivance of my own. by the way, you fellows must keep it absolutely dark." to say that they watched me with interest is to put it mildly. i withdrew "our house telephone, not a toy, 27_s._ 6_d._ net" from its hiding place. doris was speaking. she knew that my brother had come and she was dying to meet him. old mrs. gaunt was sleeping peacefully; in fact i fear, so prone are all of us to error, that doris had administered just twice the amount of opiate that the doctor had prescribed. doris suggested that she and marjorie should come at once to my room. they also suggested that we should dine there, with the connivance of a friendly housemaid. i told her to hold the line for a minute, and explained. my brother's face lost all preoccupation. he was a naval officer, you will remember, and, though a distinguished one, was as young gentlemen in that service usually are in both age and inclination. "can a duck swim?" said my brother. "well, i'll go," lockhart remarked, with just a trace of his old bitterness. "you sit where you are, old soul," i told him. "bernard, both the girls are only stepdaughters of the doctor, who, they have told me, did not treat their mother very well and who is a perfect tyrant to them. they're as true as steel; i can answer for them. they will be of tremendous help." "leave it all to me," he replied. "i am skipper of this from now onwards. you follow my lead." a minute or two afterwards the girls came in. doris, as i have already explained, was as pretty as venus, cleopatra, and gertie millar all in one, and she only beat marjorie by a short head. all the other girls i've ever met were simply "also ran." marjorie's hair was black. she was a brunette with olive-coloured skin and green eyes, like very dark, clear emeralds. she was extraordinarily lovely. indeed, all three of us had seriously considered starting a picture postcard firm, with the girls as models and i to manage it, so that doris and i could get married and have marjorie to live with us. rather a good scheme, only it would have needed at least two hundred pounds capital, which we hadn't got! doris had on her engagement ring, which she generally wore on a string round her neck, underneath her blouse. i had put thirty shillings each way on "baby mine" for the grand national and it had come off--hence the ring. "let me introduce you to my fiancée, miss joyce," i said to bernard. he took her hand and bowed over it, looking out of the corner of his eyes at marjorie. little lockhart gasped. "babe that i am!" he said, "blind mole! to think that i have lived in this house with young john carey for so long, the house honeycombed with secret wires, and an illicit engagement in progress under my nose, and i knew nothing of it!" "well, you are not the only person, mr. lockhart," marjorie said. "and now i am going to fetch up dinner. cook is out for the evening. amy is in the plot. we've got soup--only tinned, but quite nice; there's a round of cold beef; and we will make an omelette on john's fire." "i'll come and help you carry the things," said my brother, and they left the room as friendly as if they had known each other for years. "well, what do you think of my brother?" i asked doris. i'm afraid my arm was round her waist and i had forgotten lockhart. "i'm decidedly of the opinion," she said, "that commander carey knows more than enough to come indoors when it rains." lockhart here revealed qualities of an unsuspected nature--i had never really appreciated lockhart until the night before. "i happen to have, locked up in the cupboard of my sitting-room," he said, "a bottle of claret wine and a bottle of sherry wine. i will go and fetch them to grace this feast." "you nasty, horrid villain, so you drink in secret, do you?" i remarked. "only bovril, but please don't let it be known," was the reply, and then doris and i were alone. i have never been one of those people who kiss and tell, so i will pass over the next minute; but after some business of no importance, she put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the face. "john," she said, "there is something up!" "what do you mean?" "i don't exactly know, but there is something up. i can feel it--and something has happened, too, that i have got to tell you about. before the doctor left this morning, he told marjorie that mr. jones had fallen in love with her and that she would have to marry him after the war was over, when he has straightened out his business affairs." "good lord!" i said, "that thing? why----" "what have you got against him?" she asked quickly. "he's wealthy, the doctor says, he has got good manners; of course, he's older than marjorie, but he's not an old man. i thought you said you rather liked him?" "i did say so, and i liked him better than ever after meeting him this morning. you know i had breakfast with the doctor?" "i know, and there is something up. something to do with your brother--i am certain of it. but why do you object to mr. jones for marjorie?" "what does marjorie say herself?" "she told the doctor"--the girls would never call the doctor "father"--"that if mr. jones had a million a minute and was the last man left on earth after a second flood, she would rather spend her life in the garden eating worms than marry him!" "marjorie's plenty of pluck," i answered, "and is obviously of romantic temperament. anyone else in the wind?" "anyone else?" she said, with a bitter note in her voice, "whom do we ever see? we live as prisoners here, as you very well know, johnny, and if it were not for you i should long ago have jumped into thirty main creek and ended it all." i held her close to me. "dear," i said, "it will all come right, i am certain. somehow or other, we shall be able to be married soon, and then you need never see morstone or the doctor any more." "i love morstone," she replied. "i love the lonely marshes and the bird-noises and the great red dawns and the sweet salt air, but"--she shuddered--"that fiend who married my poor dear mother and drove her to death, i would see burnt to-morrow without a pang of remorse. he has been worse lately, john, far worse. mrs. gaunt has been put to watch us like a spy. i can't tell whether he suspects anything about you and me. he may or may not. at any rate, there is something going on which frightens me. i've no doubt you will think me quite hysterical, quite foolish, and i feel it rather than know it, but i am frightened. only this morning, the doctor said things to dear marjorie which were awful. he caught her by the arm and twisted it when she defied him, and his voice was so ugly and cruel, it seemed so inhuman, that i felt as if someone had put ice to the back of my neck. oh, take me away soon, take marjorie away too!" she clung to me in a passion of appeal, and then and there i resolved that, come what might, we would marry and leave this ill-omened and mysterious place. "what a long time they are!" doris said after a moment or two, when i had soothed her. "oh, here they come!" but it wasn't, it was only lockhart, who knocked at the door loudly and waited for several seconds before coming in with his contribution to the dinner. "i'll run down and hurry them up, as there is no one about," i said. "you'll do nothing of the sort!" she replied quickly. "really, what a babe you are, john!" i was just the least bit in the world offended, not seeing why i should not hurry up the truants, especially as i was extremely hungry again; but they came at last, carrying two piled trays of provisions. i had never seen marjorie look prettier. her eyes were brighter than ever, and she showed not the slightest trace of unhappiness. obviously, she had quite forgotten the events of the morning. i cannot tell you what fun the dinner was. the soup was top-hole--mock turtle, and one of elizabeth lazenby's finest efforts. lockhart was a tremendous success as butler, and the "claret wine"--i should have thrown it at my scout's head at oxford--tasted like "château la rose" at least. bernard and marjorie made the omelette over my fire, while the rest of us sat waiting and lockhart and i smoked a cigarette. marjorie ordered my brother about most unmercifully. suddenly, it was nearing a critical moment and both of them were crouching over the pan, i happened to turn my eyes in their direction. they were not looking at the omelette at all. they were looking at each other and their faces were almost solemn. then it burst upon me and i fear i was indiscreet. i said aloud: "the very thing! oh, my holy aunt, the very thing!" they whipped round. "what is?" bernard asked. "why, the omelette, you blighter!" i replied, and kicked doris under the table. she understood at once. girls are so quick, aren't they? when we had eaten the omelette and the round of cold beef had "ebbed some," as i once heard a rhodes' scholar say at oxford, my brother rose, glass in hand. "mr. vice," he said, "the king!" i had dined in the wardroom with bernard when he was on board the _terrific_, and i knew what to do. "ladies and gentlemen, the king!" i said, and we drank that loyal toast in silence. somehow it altered the mood of each individual. a gravity fell upon us, not sadness or boredom, but we stopped to think, as it were. only two hundred miles away, over the marshes and over the sea, the great german battleships were waiting. nearer than penzance is to london, the armies of england at that moment were shivering in the trenches round ostend. and in morstone house school--what was there that hung undefined, but heavy and secret, like a miasma upon the air? then bernard said: "miss joyce, i have taken the liberty to bring you a little present from london." "'doris,' please," she answered. "very well then, doris. it is a bracelet, a little affair of turquoises and pearls, to commemorate our meeting and in the hope that you will always be a good girl and love your brother-in-law." "oh, commander carey!" "'bernard,' please!" "well then, bernard, how sweet of you!" poor doris, and marjorie too, were not in the way of getting many presents. upjelly saw to that! my brother put his hand in his pocket, and then into another pocket, finally into a third. he hesitated, he stammered, and looked positively frightened. it was the first and last time i ever saw the old sport thoroughly done in. "damn!" he said, and then grew more embarrassed still. "i am the biggest fool in the service. i remember now i left the case on my dressing-room table at the morstone arms." poor little doris's face fell. she could not help it. but i had a bright idea. "oh, that's all right," i said. "there's a certain young imp of mine called dickson max----" "dear boy!" marjorie murmured, and my brother looked at her quickly. "he's seventeen, and quite trustworthy," i went on. "he will be delighted to run and fetch it. anything to be out of school at night!--and as i am headmaster of this east anglian eton, i can do as i like. i will ring for him." lockhart looked slightly upset, but i didn't care. "but i thought," my brother remarked, "that this was somewhat in the nature of a--well, shall we say 'secure-from-observation' dinner party." "oh, billy dickson won't breathe a word," marjorie said emphatically. "well, you command this ship," my brother said, "and it is up to you. certainly i should like to send for the bracelet, and if you don't keep whale island discipline aboard, it's not my affair." i rang for dickson max. he arrived, knocked at the door, stepped in, and then his eyes grew very round indeed, but he said not a word. i told him what was wanted and asked him if he would go. "rather, sir," he said, "i would be only too delighted." i gave him the key of the masters' door. "it's a bitter cold night," my brother put in, "supposing you take my coat and this shooting hat. it'll keep you as warm as toast." of course dickson max. would have scorned the idea of an overcoat under ordinary circumstances, though bernard didn't know that. but the opportunity of wearing the ulster of a wing-commander of submarines, who had been wounded off heligoland, was too much for the youthful mind. he flushed with pleasure, and i won't swear that, as he went out into the passage, he didn't salute. i went downstairs with him, helped him on with the big coat--he was the same height as bernard and much the same figure--and pressed the heather-mixture shooting hat on his head. "now scoot as hard as you can go," i told him, opening the door, and he was gone like a flash into the dark night. when i got back there was a curious silence. somehow or other we none of us seemed to know what to say. i can't account for it, but there it was. it was then that my brother came in and i found a side of him i had only suspected but never seen before. leaning forward in his chair, he began to talk very quietly, but with great earnestness. i saw what he was up to. he was leading the conversation very near home indeed. it was astonishing how he dominated us all, how we hung on his words and how the sense of sinister surroundings grew and grew as he spoke. it was the girls who responded. the skill with which he introduced the subject was enormous, but they were marvellously "quick in the uptake." it was marjorie who leant forward, her great eyes flashing and her lips compressed to a thin line of scarlet. "commander carey," she said, "don't think that i or my sister are entirely ignorant that there is something very wrong about this place. you have turned our thoughts into a new channel." she was wearing a blouse with loose sleeves, ending in some filmy lace. suddenly, with her right hand, she pulled up the left-arm sleeve. there were three dark purple marks upon her white arm. "that was this morning," she said, nodding once or twice. "and now speak out, if you have anything to tell us, about the man who killed my mother as surely as if he did it with a gun, and who has done his best to ruin the lives of my sister and myself. speak without fear!" then bernard, in crisp, low sentences, told the girls and lockhart exactly what he believed. the wind howled outside and hissing drops of rain fell upon the window-pane. the fire crackled on the hearth, the smoke of our cigarettes rose in grey spirals in the pleasant, lamp-lit room. it was a strange night, how fraught with consequences to england, the two beautiful girls, the little cripple, the third-rate schoolmaster, and even the young naval officer himself, did not know! "it has long been suspected," my brother concluded, and his voice sank almost to a whisper, "that one master-mind has been behind all the german espionage, both before and during the war. there is in existence, our intelligence department has had indubitable evidence of it, a king of spies, so subtle of brain, so fertile in resource, that, even now, we cannot find him. we do not know for certain, but it is rumoured that this man's real name is graf botho von vedal, though what name he passes under now none can say." doris's eyes clouded. she seemed as if she was making an effort of memory. "was he once 'wirklicher geheimrat'--privy councillor to the german emperor?" she asked. bernard stared at her. "so i am told," he said. "what do you know about him?" "i can't tell you," she answered with a dazed look upon her face--"some childish memory. the name was familiar. my sister and i speak german as well as we speak english, you know." "if i could put my finger upon that man," my brother continued, "then one of the gravest perils to which england lies open at the moment would be removed." "where is he?" lockhart asked, speaking like a man in a dream. we all looked at each other, and there was dawning consciousness and horror in every eye. "yes," came from my brother at length, and as he spoke he withdrew one of dickson's little photographs from his pocket--i hadn't seen him put it there--"and also, what is admiral kiderlen-waechter doing in england?" we all knew that name. the papers had been full of it at the beginning of the war. kiderlen-waechter was the chief of the german submarine flotillas. it was owing to his ingenuity and resource that ship after ship of our gallant navy had been torpedoed, even in the straits of dover themselves. "what do you mean?" i gasped. "what i say, john. for, unless i am much mistaken--of course, i may easily be mistaken--the gentleman who drove away with doctor upjelly to london this morning is that very man." "mr. jones?" marjorie cried. "the man the doctor swore that i must marry when the war is over?" bernard's eyes blazed. "what?" he said quickly, "i heard nothing of that!" the two were looking at each other very strangely when there was a knock at the door. it opened and dickson max. came in. he went up to my brother and put down a little case of red morocco by his side. "there you are, sir," he said. i looked up sharply. there was something unusual in the lad's voice. he caught hold of the back of lockhart's chair and swayed as he stood. then we saw that beneath the upturned collar of the overcoat one cheek was all red and bleeding. there was a line across it like the cut from a knife. "what on earth is the matter?" i cried, in great alarm. "oh nothing, sir," he answered, "only as i was coming through the sea wood--i took the shorter way--i thought i heard someone behind me. i turned round, and just as i did so there was a noise like a banjo string, and something went past my head singing like a wasp. then i found my cheek all cut." "what did you do? who was it?" "i plunged into the bushes, sir, but could not find anyone. then i pulled out my electric torch, and, sticking in the trunk of a tree, i found this." the boy unbuttoned his coat and held out a long, slim shaft. it was an arrow, such as is used in archery competitions, but the edge had been filed sharp. "some silly blighter trying to frighten me," said dickson max., and then, with a little sob, he fell in a faint upon the floor. i bent over him and forced some wine between his lips. bernard looked round the room with a set, stern face. "they are not losing any time," he said quietly. "you see, they know that i am here, already." note.--for convenience sake i end the first portion of this narrative at this point. it divides itself into three parts quite naturally, as i think my readers will agree when they have read it all. at any rate, on this night was formed that oddly assorted, but famous, companionship which led to such great results. we swore no oaths, we made no protestations. there was no need for that. end of part i part ii chapter v at midnight on the marshes. the secret of the old hulk doctor upjelly returned on the afternoon of the third day after he left for london. directly i heard his trap drive away and knew that he was in his study, i went into his house and knocked at the door. "i have very grave news to tell you, doctor," i said. he started. i distinctly saw him start and he flashed a quick look at me. one might almost have thought that he was frightened, but he swallowed something in his throat and his voice was calm and cold as ever when he answered. "and what is that, mr. carey?" "i am sorry, i am very sorry, to say that dickson max. has run away." there was a momentary silence. i could almost have sworn it was one of relief on the big man's part. "what do you mean, mr. carey? ran away from school?" "yes. he got out of his window on the very night you went. we did not discover it until the next morning. we scoured the country round, thinking it was merely a mischievous escapade, but found no traces of him. i then thought it my duty to acquaint his father at once, so i went to norwich on my bicycle during the afternoon of the day after the discovery. to my immense surprise, i found the boy there. he had walked to heacham station and taken the train. he stated that he was tired of school and it was his intention to enlist. his father seemed to concur in the view after we had had a long talk together. of course, i endeavoured to get the boy back, for the sake of the school, but it was useless. mr. dickson seems a weak sort of man, and he says that he is going to do his best to get an equipment and pay what is necessary for dickson to join the public schools corps." the doctor, who was sitting down, his hand clutching a little brown travelling-bag on the table near him, did his best to show some concern. it was poorly done, however, and i could see that he did not care a rap one way or the other. "i hope you don't blame me, sir?" i said, "but i could not have foreseen anything of the sort. it has never happened before." "no, no. not in the least, mr. carey. i am sure you acted most promptly and wisely in going at once to the boy's father. and his brother?" "his brother is still here and steadfastly refuses to say anything about the affair. as far as i have been able to find out, he was quite in ignorance of his brother's intentions." "well, well. of course, i am sorry to lose the boy, but i like his spirit," said doctor upjelly, without a gleam in his eyes or any warmth in his voice. "after all, perhaps he will be better employed in defending his country than in learning latin grammar here--have a cigar, mr. carey." he handed me his case, a most unusual proceeding. "and how is your brother?" he said. "i trust he is benefiting by our pure air and that you have already been able to show him some sport." i shook my head. "there is another strange thing i have got to tell you, doctor," i replied, pretending to be busy with the lighting of my cigar, though i took very good care to watch his face reflected in the mirror over the mantelpiece. what i saw was significant. now, indeed, the little black eyes gleamed for an instant, and the big, cruel mouth twitched--once. i felt, as surely as if i had been told, that upjelly knew something of what had happened on the night of his departure. "yes," i said, "a most unfortunate affair! my brother was coming up to see me at the school during preparation and i had previously directed him to follow the short cut through the sea wood. it was quite dark, and as he was coming along, finding his way as well as he could, a most unprovoked attack was made upon him." "an attack, mr. carey? you surprise me! who could attack anyone on our marshes?" "that is just what i cannot understand. he says he heard a sort of twanging noise, unlike anything he had ever heard before. then something struck him on the cheek, cutting it deeply. he shouted and ran about in the dark, but could hear no sound, nor could he find anyone. he arrived at the school with a bad cut on his face, bleeding profusely. i bandaged it up as well as i could, gave him a little whisky-and-water, and then accompanied him home, taking my ten-bore with me, though we went by the road. nothing happened, and the thing is a complete mystery. my brother is, of course, not in a very good state of health after his wound. he is confined to the inn, and will be so for some days, so i fear he will get very little shooting at present. he's afraid of the cold getting into his cheek." "dear me, dear me, what an extraordinary occurrence! confined to the inn, you say?" "for at least another week, if he is wise." i could have sworn the great, fat face wrinkled with relief, and after we had discussed the incident for some little time, the doctor advancing all sorts of ingenious theories, i turned to leave. just as i was going, he asked me if i were going to shoot that night. i said that i should very much like to, as the geese were working well and there were reports of many widgeon about. still, i thought it my duty to be with my brother; so that, after preparation, i was going down to the inn and should stay there for some time. "quite so, quite so," upjelly replied. "i am sorry for both of you in losing your sport; but certainly you ought to be with your brother." "i thought of staying till late, if you don't mind," i said. "he is rather feverish." he swallowed the bait like a fat trout. "all night, if you wish," he said, "all night. you will certainly not be wanted here. yes! a good idea! why don't you get mrs. wordingham to put you up a bed?" "if you really think i can be spared?" "my dear carey, on an occasion of this sort it is a pleasure for me to dispense with your services--not that they will be wanted in any way, for i don't suppose any more of my young ruffians are likely to run away to enlist." "then thank you very much; that is what i will do." "yes, by all means. and, for my part, i think i shall go out and try my luck. i must see if i can't shoot for both of you and bring back a goose or two." then i went away. lockhart and i had tea with the boys as usual. there was an air of suppressed excitement in the dining-hall. the exploit of dickson max. had fired the imagination of everyone, though possibly a keener observer than was among his companions might have detected a suppressed and unholy joy in dickson major, which was not entirely due to his brother's escapade. i had always thought that a weak spot in our plan. if the doctor had known anything at all about the characters of his pupils, he would have realised that where dickson max. went, dickson major went too. fortunately the doctor did not. at half-past eight i dressed in fowling kit, a grey sweater, a coat of nondescript colour, grey flannel trousers, and great thigh boots for the marsh. my headgear was an old, dun-coloured shooting hat, the lining of which could be pulled down to make a mask for the face, with two holes to see through; for it is essential to the wild-fowler to wear nothing too light or too dark, to show no glimpse of a pink face, because the wild goose, as even the greatest big-game hunters of the day allow, is the wariest of all created things. then i took my heavy ten-bore, with its dulled barrels and oxydised furniture, slipped my three-inch brass "perfects" loaded with b.b. into my pockets, and telephoned to doris. it was all right. the doctor was in his own room having supper, and marjorie was with him. it was impossible that he could see me leave in fowling kit, and in a moment more i had wished my dear girl good-night and was out in the dark. the wind cried in the chimneys of the old house with a strange and wailing note. the moon was not yet up, and the far-distant sea drummed like an army. as i turned towards the sea wood, some great night-bird passed overhead with an eerie cry, like a man in pain. for myself, my heart was beating rapidly, my teeth were set and i felt nothing of the cold. to-night, if ever, we were to discover the secret of the marshes. my brother had taken the helm of the ship, and his decks were cleared for action. his foresight and resource were admirable. nothing escaped him, and we were meeting the dark plot with another which allowed nothing to chance. this is what had happened. we patched up dickson max. as well as we could--the cut was not deep--and then my brother took him into lockhart's room. what he said to the lad i did not know, even now i do not know, but they came back with the boy's eyes sparkling. he walked like a man--in those ten minutes something had transformed him from a laughing schoolboy into a different being. we took him at once to the morstone arms, and there my brother spent a long time with sam wordingham and his wife. they were as true as steel, this worthy couple. they were not told everything, but it was explained to them that this was "government business" of the highest importance, and that in the king's name they must aid bernard in every possible way. it did me good to see sam's nut-brown face hardening into resolve, and the excitement in his eyes. dickson was put to bed in an attic of the rambling old inn and the door was locked. before it was light that morning my brother stole out, walked five miles in the opposite direction to blankington-on-sea, caught the fish train from a village in the neighbourhood of cromer, and was in london at the admiralty by mid-day. he returned in a fast motor car that night. the car was housed in the garage of the lieutenant of coastguards at cockthorpe, four miles away. it was to be ready for any emergency, and by eleven o'clock my brother was back at the morstone arms. on the morning of that day, i indeed went to norwich on my snorter. she seemed to rise to the occasion, for she did the forty miles to norwich in two hours and without any mishap. i interviewed the rev. harold dickson and swore him to secrecy, and i never saw a parson more delighted. his sons were true chips of the old block, and after lunch at the "maiden's head" the clergyman almost cursed his age and cloth that he was not also available for the service of his country. finally, and this provision of my brother was extraordinarily wise, as it afterwards appeared--though he could have had no idea of what we were to discover at that moment--three of the crew of his own submarine, all recovering from wounds, but all taught and handy men, were, even now, upon their way from harwich to lodge unobtrusively at the coastguard station at cockthorpe, where they could await bernard's orders. i went through the sea wood, towards the inn. this was a place that had been planted to shelter the cultivated fields behind from the keen marsh winds. as one advanced into it from the coast side, the furze, among which innumerable rabbits played, gave way to elders and other hardy shrubs. it was about a quarter of a mile long and not more than two hundred yards in breadth. the timber was all stunted and bushy, the undergrowth was rank and thick. the trees led a life of conflict; they were accustomed to swing there all night long in fierce winter tempests; it was a remote and savage place, where even the pheasants of lord blankington hardly ever came. i pressed through the narrow path until i came to a little open space, a cup or hollow through which a sluggish stream wound its way on to the marsh. here, the bushes were thicker than ever and the stream widened into a pool covered with innumerable water-hen that made cheeping noises in the night. it was covered with them as i came up noiselessly; one could see the little black dots upon the livid, leaden expanse. i sat down, looked at my watch--i had a fowlers' watch with what is called the "radium dial" that showed the time in any darkness--and found it was just half-past nine. waiting till a gust of wind had died away, i whistled the first three bars of "it's a long way to tipperary." there was no response and i whistled again. the last note had hardly shivered away when i felt a hand upon my shoulder and i jumped like a shot man. "it's only me, sir," sounded in my ear with a triumphant chuckle; "i stalked you pretty well, didn't i, sir?" "you young devil!" i replied, "you nearly frightened me out of my life!" "i thought i would try and see what i could do, sir," said dickson max. he was in a black suit. i fear it was his sunday-best. he wore no collar and his face and hands were covered with burnt cork--a grimy, sooty apparition the young imp looked, but, nevertheless, one couldn't have seen him a yard away. "you've done very well," i said. "stick to it. the doctor isn't such a marshman as i am, and if you come up to him like that--well, you won't have a difficult task. you know where i and my brother will be?" "yes, sir," he whispered--"in the gun-pit at the head of garstrike." "right you are. now out along as quickly as possible and bring us news by midnight if you can." "i am going to lie in the rhododendrons in the doctor's garden," he said. "he's sure to come out by his private door, and i'll follow him to heligoland if necessary." i gave him a pat on the back, and as i looked round he had already melted noiselessly into the dark and i was alone. in the inn i found my brother. the kitchen was full of labourers drinking their last pint before closing hour at ten. in the private bar old pugmire was babbling over his gin, but in the sitting-room beyond, with curtains drawn, bernard was all ready for the enterprise, dressed just as i was. "well?" he asked. "it's all serene. i've met dickson and he is watching the doctor now. in about three-quarters of an hour the inn will be closed and all the men gone home. then we can set out." mrs. wordingham came in with two bottles of that famous strong ale which is kept for twenty years and which is the best antidote against the cold of the marshes known to the wild-fowler--only an amateur takes spirits upon the saltings. we drank it in silence. "i don't know what is going to turn up to-night," said bernard. "i trust to your knowledge of the marshes implicitly. but remember this, old soul, it is not a lark of any sort. we shall be in the gravest danger. i cannot exaggerate the importance of what we are doing. the admiralty itself is waiting for news. i am not dramatic in any way, heaven knows! but i'll let myself go for a minute. i believe, john, that it may well be that we two, and the others who are helping us, hold the destinies of england in our hands. god grant that we shall be successful!" "i think we shall." "i believe we are on the right track. but there is one thing i want to say. supposing, just supposing, that one of us does not come back to-night, and assuming it is me"--here bernard hesitated and looked at me rather ferociously. "well?" "well, just give this to miss marjorie joyce, will you?" he pulled a signet-ring from his little finger, a ring that had been our governor's. i told him to keep his hair on and that i would. at a quarter past ten we slipped out of the big door of the inn, skirted the sea wood without entering it, and went down upon the foreshore. it is necessary that i should give you some idea of the famous morstone marshes, and to the description i will add a rough-drawn map which will help to make things clear.[1] [footnote 1: see frontispiece.] if you look at the map of england, you will see wells marked at the top right-hand corner of the wash. then comes a long, blank space till you get to sheringham and finally to cromer. blankington-on-sea was the next town to wells on the west. then five miles east of it comes morstone. so much for our geographical position. looking north, there was nothing between us and iceland; looking a little north-east, we were only three hundred miles from cuxhaven, about three hundred and twenty miles to heligoland, and nothing like that to the frisian islands just below the mouth of the kiel canal. so much for that, and now to be more local. from the foreshore, it was about a mile and a half over the marshes to the sea at low tide. at ordinary high tide it was about a mile. with spring tides and a rare off-sea wind blowing due north, the marshes were covered right up to the foreshore. this happened about twice in the year, and then they were only covered for a depth of about five or six feet, if that. the foreshore, as it is called, is a somewhat misleading term. it did not in the least resemble what one generally associates with the word. it was simply a grassy bank covered with furze bushes and with a grass road going right along it. the coarse grass sloped down till the mud was met. now this mud was a sort of turfy peat on the surface, covered with marrum grass. one could walk on it with perfect safety, it was as hard as an ordinary field, but it was everywhere intersected with creeks of varying depth. some of these were little runnels a foot deep, some of them had steep sides of ten or twelve feet and were crossed by narrow planks in permanent position. the sides were of mud as black as a truffle--i have really no other simile which so exactly fits the case--and at the bottom was two or three feet of water covering softer and more dangerous mud. at high tide these deeper creeks had seven or eight feet of water in them. then, at various points upon the marsh, were creeks which were really like tidal rivers, only that they ended at the foreshore, as a railway line ends at a terminus. these were huge trenches, wider than the widest canal, some of them seventy or eighty yards across. the walls of mud were precipitous, twenty and even thirty feet high. the largest of these had many feet of water in them at all states of the ebb and flow, but when the tide was full they were almost brimming and could have floated a fair-sized ship. anything more utterly desolate and forlorn, even on a bright, sunlit day, than these sullen, winding waterways, so far from the habitations of man, can hardly be conceived. they were the haunt of innumerable fowl. herons stood on the brink and transfixed flat-fish with their long, spear-like beaks. the wild duck gathered in the little bays and estuaries formed by their convolutions. the red-shank and the green-shank whistled over them at all hours. the two largest creeks of all were known as garstrike and thirty main. it was from the heads of these waters that the gun-punts started on their dangerous nightly mission, following this or that creek in and out, wherever there was water. garstrike had always ten feet of water in it at low tide, but thirty main was the largest by far. it stretched straight away from the sea to the foreshore. there was always at least thirty feet of water in its black, evil-looking depths. at high tide, sixty would have been nearer the mark. it wound among the marsh, the centre of endless smaller creeks which ran into it, the great ganglion of the whole system of nerves. it was the study of months to know the marsh. death had come to many fowlers there who did not know its complexities and who omitted to carry an illuminated compass for night work. many men had been cut off on an island of mud covered with the purple sea-thistles, the bronze-green marrum grass, and the rank vegetation of the saltings. and some had been waiting in a minor creek when the tide came fast and swift through all the intricate waterways, who were unable to climb the steep sides of slippery mud, and so met their fate. we crossed the foreshore in a minute and a half and came down upon the mud. the frozen grass crackled under our boots like little rods of glass. the shallow pools were all frozen over as we made our way round the curving shore of garstrike. we were on the right bank, and here and there we had to go along some of the smaller creeks that flowed into it. it is no joke to walk over a twelve-inch plank in the pitch dark with a ten-foot ditch of mud and water below. as an old marshman, i was used to it, though i had known many new-comers give these bridges a miss at the first start off. but bernard skipped over like a bird, and after a quarter of a mile or more of slow progress, aided by my illuminated compass and a faint, ghostly light from the rising moon, we got to the gun-pit marked upon the map. immediately to our left was a low punt-house dug into the steep mud-bank of garstrike and entered at the shore end by a rough ladder. the pit was five feet deep; there was a rough board for a seat and there was about a foot of water in the bottom--rain-water, which had fallen during the last few days. this, however, was nothing, and we scrambled in and sat down. i had taken my ten-bore to the morstone arms, but bernard had told me to leave it there. he had given me a heavy service pistol, which fired ten shots in as many seconds, together with an extra clip of cartridges for the magazine. he had another in the pocket of his coat. so we sat and waited. bent on more pleasant business, we should have had our guns ready in our hands, waiting for the sound of birds flighting overhead as the moon rose, coming from the sand-banks out at sea inland to the stubbles. but now our ears were tuned to a different music, and i am not ashamed to say that i heard some artery within me beating like a drum. it was a solemn hour and strange indeed was the business we were upon. the whole marsh was alive with voices. there was the long, hushed roar of the sea, the fifing of the wind, and then the countless cries of the night-birds. a great heron flapped away somewhere over thirty main, with its hoarse "frank, frank"; there was a rustling whistle far overhead as a company of widgeon flashed by at thirty miles an hour; a paddle of duck were quacking somewhere on the other side of the creek; and then, faint at first, but growing nearer and nearer, came that sound which, to the wild-fowler, is the finest in the world and which many and many a man and woman has said to be the strangest sound in nature. the wild geese were coming. i can never think of that sound without a tightening of the muscles, almost a lump in the throat. it is like a vast pack of ghostly hounds up in the sky, which cuts into the night like nothing else can do, and instinctively i felt for my gun. but it was not to be that night. they passed over us not more than eighty yards high--well within the range of a heavy gun--and the noise was deafening in our ears as the great wedge-shaped formation sped by. "by jove, that's good!" i heard bernard whisper. it was the one chance of the night. no more geese worked our way, and for an hour we sat motionless, growing colder and colder, but patient still. then, at last, there was a low whistle and a crouching figure appeared on the edge of the pit. "i've followed him, sir. he came out of the school with his gun and went straight on to the foreshore. he walked for nearly a mile towards cockthorpe. i crouched behind the furze bushes and he never saw me. he was walking very fast. he passed the head of thirty main and then went down on to the mud, following the bank until he came to the hulk. the bridge was out and he went on board. then he pulled it up--and there he is now. i saw a light struck and a candle lit from one of the windows in the side. then something was pulled over it, and i came away here as fast as i could." "the hulk!" i said. "of course, i might have thought of that before!" "what is it?" bernard asked. "it is the hulk of an old coaster of about eighty tons. it is permanently moored in thirty main creek. upjelly bought it for twenty pounds some two years ago and has had it fitted up. in the summer he sometimes camps out there. in the winter he uses it as a base for shooting on the marshes. there are three or four on the saltings between wells and cromer." "then we must go there at once. how can we approach it?" "it is moored some three yards from the shore--there is deep water right up to the banks on either side of thirty main creek. it's reached by a light bridge and a handrail, which anyone on board can pull up after him by means of a derrick on the stem of the old main-mast. if we were to approach over the mud, we should hear nothing, but we can go by water and get to the far side. wordingham's punt is ready in the house close by. it will take us half an hour poling up to garstrike and then back again down the long, winding creek of morstone miel. that brings us out into thirty main creek--which we can cross and hug the opposite side. the hulk lies in a little bay. when we get nearly there, we shall have to paddle, just as we 'set to birds.' we shan't make a sound, and we ought to hear something or see something if there is anything to be seen or heard." "you'll let me come with you, sir?" dickson asked eagerly. i shook my head. "it's a two-handed punt," i said, "and there's no room for anybody else--you ought to know what a fowling punt is by this time. it's dangerous enough for two experts. no, dickson, you've done very well indeed and i'm proud of you. you must cut home now as quietly as possible and go to bed at the morstone arms. whatever you do, don't show your face at the window in the morning. i'll come and tell you everything." i could see the boy was very disappointed, but a word from bernard comforted him. "you're a first-class scout, dickson," he said; "i wish i had you on board my ship. if you obey orders as you have been doing and anything comes of this business, i'm not at all sure that i can't promise you a billet." if dickson flushed under his burnt cork, i did not see it, but his voice was tremulous with joy. there was no mistake about it this time. he saluted, and in a moment more was gone. "now," i said, "come along. you don't understand punt work, do you, bernard?" "no," he said, "only shore shooting. i've been in some queer craft in my time, but here 'you 'ave me,' as the cabman said. you must be skipper of this cruise!" we hurried over the few yards separating the pit from the punt-shed. i went down the ladder first and unlocked the door. we found ourselves in a long, narrow shed with a little landing-stage along one side and some lockers above it fixed to the wall. in the middle lay the punt, painted a dull green-khaki over its mahogany, almost invisible at night. the big gun stretched out far over the bows; everything was ship-shape and in order, for wordingham was a tidy man, and this punt, which with its gun had cost a hundred and fifty pounds, had been given him by a wealthy fowler, an officer in the guards, who loved to come down in peace time for a week on the waterways of east anglia. "now," i said, "be careful. you get forrard and lie down on your stomach. yes, that's it; brace yourself against the recoil piece of the gun. lie as if you were going to fire it when we come within shot of birds on the water. that'll trim the boat. i'll punt until we get near. then i'll in-pole and paddle. remember you mustn't move and you mustn't make a sound." we glided out on to the black water of garstrike creek. the banks sheltered us somewhat from the wind, but it was nearly high tide and every now and again a freshet sent waves lapping against the low sides of the punt; and occasionally a cupful of water or a lash of spray came over. my brother told me, long afterwards, that it was one of the strangest experiences of his life, and i suppose that the first night in a punt must indeed be that to the tyro. to me, it was ordinary enough, but my blood ran fast and free as i realised that we were out for bigger game than geese or duck to-night. our progress will be seen by the dotted line upon the map. we went up garstrike, keeping close to the right bank. then, quite suddenly, the smaller miel opened out. we made a sharp turn, and now the banks were scarcely more than two yards from us on either side, while punting was easier owing to the shallow water. at low tide, it would have been almost impossible to go from garstrike to thirty main. we followed the sinuous turnings of the small creek for some twenty minutes, in and out between the black walls, like people walking in some dark alley. then miel creek opened out and we shot on to the broad waters of thirty main. here we were on what seemed a wide river. there was an immediate sense of space and freedom and the sea became more choppy. punting was impossible. i knelt down and with infinite caution stretched myself upon my stomach, my head between my brother's legs. then i got out the paddles, which were small implements held in the hand, in shape resembling nothing quite so much as a pair of large butter pats, or shall i say a couple of ladies' hand-mirrors. with my arms over the side, i gradually propelled the punt round the curve where, in a little bay, the hulk was lying. it is thus one approaches the "paddle" of duck or geese upon the water for the last hundred and fifty yards. progress is by inches. the long grey punt steals noiselessly towards its quarry until the supreme moment when the gunner pulls the lanyard, the pound and a half of shot speeds upon its mission, and the punt rears like a horse. but there was to be no roar or concussion to-night. the moon was now high, though it was obscured by driving clouds. there was only a faint and phosphorescent radiance. this was all the better for our purpose, and anyone upon the look-out could hardly have distinguished the grey thing creeping towards the hulk with such infinite slowness. we drew nearer and nearer. thirty yards ... twenty ... ten. then i stopped paddling. it was full high tide, absolutely dead; that moment when flow and ebb alike are suspended. we came alongside the high walls of the old ship without a sound, our hands fending the punt from its curved, barnacle-studded timbers. long swathes of green weed hung from the sternpost as we edged our way round to the port side. now i had never visited the doctor's hulk. when i first went to morstone i thought it strange that he did not ask me, but he had never done so and the matter passed from my mind. i knew nothing, certainly, of its internal arrangements. at the same time, i had been over a similar hulk moored off wells-next-to-sea, which belonged to a wealthy maltster there, and i knew that the same carpenter had fitted up both boats. from what i remember, there was a cabin built out on deck with a glass roof, while the hold below had been fitted up partly as a winter smoking-room and dining-room, partly as berths for sportsmen who wished to sleep after their toil. i was quite right. the old portholes of the boat had all been done away with, but a large square window, some four feet above our heads, bulged in the side of the hulk. no light could be seen, but the top of the window was open, and, even as we glided up, a whiff of cigar smoke came out and we heard the murmur of voices. the murmur of voices! the doctor was not alone upon the old coaster. something was brewing within its sea-worn timbers. we were nearing the heart of the mystery at last! instinctively, we both stood up. the punt rocked perilously, but we steadied it by holding on to the lower part of the window. once, it nearly slipped away from beneath our feet and my brother crouched down again and caught at a great clump of barnacles, motioning me to listen. for a moment or two i could hear nothing but a guarded rumble--it was like voices heard by chance through a telephone. then the wind happened to drop and they became quite clear. i started with surprise, for, though i could see nothing, i was certain that there were three people on board the hulk. upjelly's cool, incisive tones struck immediately upon the drum of the ear. then came another voice, a hoarse, rough voice which i did not know; and finally a third that i did. it was the voice of mr. jones, and i bent down and whispered to my brother. then, as i rose again and listened with my very soul, i shivered with disappointment. the people within were speaking in a language i did not understand--save only a very few words. they were speaking in german! it seemed that upjelly was giving instructions of some sort or other. his voice had a ring of command in it that i had never heard before. it was like a hammer on an anvil, and unless i was much mistaken, it vibrated with excitement. the answers came quickly enough. "_ja, gnädiger herr_," or, "_gewisz, das hab' ich gleich gethan._" that presented no difficulties whatever. upjelly was speaking to someone, obviously an inferior, who replied, "yes, sir," or, "certainly, i have already done it." then jones cut in, and here again i noticed an entire change in the quality of the man's voice. it was not jones speaking now, it was the renowned kiderlen-waechter, of whom my brother had spoken three nights ago, or i would have eaten my hat. there was no mistaking the keen, arrogant note of command. the bland mr. jones never spoke like that, though the voice was the same. then i distinctly heard the sound of a door either being shut or sliding in its grooves. there was the splutter of a match, the sound of a gurgling syphon, and, to my intense relief, doctor upjelly and his unseen companion began to speak in english. "no, it's impossible. i have, in my safe at the school, all the plans. our secret service on this coast has been working untiringly. for three days at least, after to-morrow night, the plans will hold good. in them is the station of every patrolling ship, full maps of this part of the coast, the disposition of forces--everything necessary for the admiral. the tide to-morrow night will be even higher than it is now. the moon is waning; weather conditions point to a dark, tempestuous night to-morrow. she will come and take you away with the plans." "which i shall deliver to the admiral within twenty-four hours, for the rendezvous is arranged, and i shall meet him in the middle of the north sea." "i shall be sorry to lose you, admiral kiderlen-waechter." "it will only be for a time. i shall soon return--as you know." there was a sound of laughter, low, guttural, and strong. "and what will you do, von vedal?" "to-morrow night i shall be with you, as you know, and see you go. then i shall take my stepdaughter to london, to the house you know of, where i shall await you. the issue will not be long and you can claim your reward. i shall leave the school, ostensibly for a day or two, but it will never see me again, as you can understand. fritz has put that meddling commander carey _hors de combat_--the arrow was a clever idea and no one suspects. as a matter of fact, i don't suppose for a moment that his visit was anything but just what it appeared to be--for purposes of rest and a little sport and to see his brother. _gott im himmel_, what fools these people are! now, take for example that brawny young donkey, mr. john carey, my assistant-master. he fancies himself in love with my elder stepdaughter, doris." "and he may well be so, for she is a beautiful and charming young lady. would i not do anything in the world for her sister?" "oh well, yes; i forgot, von waechter. love is not an event that has occurred to me. but this young carey has actually rigged up a telephone between his room and doris's. it is the most transparent device. i knew all about it twenty-four hours after it was done. i shall leave doris behind at the school, and if this young lout cares to marry her and become headmaster of morstone college, i'm sure he is very welcome--that is, provided there is any morstone college left in three days from now." "i will see to that. i rather like that boy, and a detachment of our marines shall guard the place and keep it from harm. that is all, i think." "that is all." "what time is it?" "it's one o'clock--a little too early to go home. we must go upon the marshes and fire a few shots. i have already three duck to carry home as the result of our labours. but let us have another cigar and wait for twenty minutes." again there was the striking of a match. "fritz will be all right, i suppose?" said waechter. "he will be perfectly all right. not a soul suspects that there is anyone on board this hulk, and he's well hidden in the fo'c'sle. a faithful fellow that!" "you would say so if you had seen him as i have! he is the cleverest engineer in the whole of our submarine service, cunning as one of your own wild geese, and absolutely to be depended upon--unless ..." "unless?" "well, i'm a good judge of men, and we must take people as we find them. chief-officer fritz schweitzer is a perfect spy and a first-class officer of submarines. awash or under the surface, he knows no fear. but a little, able-bodied seaman, six weeks ago at kiel, gave him a thrashing in a bierhalle till he wept. one thing we must remember to-morrow--everything must be said in german. i like to talk english, as you know. it pleases me to be taken for a sedentary city gentleman, it's my little vanity, von vedal, but, for safety's sake, to-morrow night, when she comes ..." "quite so. have you finished your cigar? then let us go up on deck and see what the night is like." there was a slight grating sound and an almost imperceptible swish as the gun-punt swung away from the side of the hulk, swept round the miniature headland and raced for the mouth of the miel creek. chapter vi how john carey fought with the german giant in the saloon, and "mr. jones" met unexpected things in the night it was five o'clock, low tide in the marsh creeks, and snow was falling lightly. at high tide, the doctor's hulk rose considerably _above_ the bank of thirty main creek. it was three yards from the solid mud of the salting, and when the bridge was dropped one went up an incline to reach the deck. now it was low tide. the deck of the hulk was a good five feet below the margin where i stood with my brother. it was still only three yards away--nine feet--nothing to a very moderate athlete. by four o'clock the evening had come. by five it was dark as midnight. bernard turned behind us to where two people were waiting. "you quite understand?" he said in a low voice. i did not turn round; for certain reasons i could not. "ready?" bernard asked. "yes, old cock," i answered, "and i hope you can jump it!" i was on my own ground. i had won a lot of pots in the long jump at oxford. i thought i should rather snaffle bernard on this job, which was wicked enough. we went back ten yards for the run. the snow was still falling softly and thickly. there was the deep ditch between the bank and the deck of the dim, desolate old hulk. it looked very ugly, and as i held up my elbows and started the run off, i heard a stifled noise behind me. i knew what it meant, but i would not listen. this was no tune for sentiment. i took off on the very edge of the yielding mud-bank, leapt downwards in a great curve, lighted full over the bulwark of the hulk with a thud, slid forward on the ice-bound deck, and was brought up short against the cabin. i wheeled round as a man does after a long slant at murren. the whole thing did not take more than a second or two. turning, i saw bernard in the air. he lighted as i had done, but his foot slipped before he got his balance and he fell heavily, striking his head against the stump of the main-mast which, with a yard shipped, was used as a derrick to raise the bridge to the marsh. he fell with a noise like a sack of potatoes. i went up to him, tried to raise him, and found that he was unconscious. something like warm varnish was oozing out of his head. my fingers dabbled in it. what i thought does not matter. if he was dead, he was dead, though i was pretty certain a tough old bird like bernard was only stunned. but i had my orders, and i left him where he lay. i stood up upon that slippery deck and pulled out my magazine pistol. i looked round. there was nothing whatever to be seen but the softly falling snow. i tried a low whistle to the people on the bank, but there was no answer. it is a good thing to be under discipline. i had my orders, i waited, listened, and heard nothing. then i crept aft to where a big glass-roofed cabin had been built out on the deck. there was no light shining through the roof. the door was locked. i listened and there was no sound save the soft, falling noise of the snowflakes. it was forrard, then, that i must go; and, treading with the greatest caution, i crept towards the bows of the old ship. the fo'c'sle hatchway loomed up before me. with cold, tingling fingers i felt for the door. it opened in the middle, in the usual way, and the hinges swung back as if they had been well oiled. before me was the companion ladder--a dark well. with my pistol in my hand, i went down the stairs as noiselessly as a cat. i had only got to the bottom when a warm, stuffy smell came to my nostrils. i was in a triangular space roofed by heavy bulkheads. it was not quite dark, for a long rod of yellow light came from behind the stairs, where there was a door. i went up to it and listened. everything was perfectly silent. then i pushed open the door and entered. what i expected to see, i cannot say, but i was prepared for almost anything. what i did see was entirely unexpected. i found myself in a long saloon lit by a swivel lamp hanging from the roof. dark crimson curtains were drawn over windows and possible portholes. the floor was covered with a faded turkey carpet. here and there a mirror was let into the wall. i saw a case of books and an excellent photogravure of the king, over a little grate in which glowed a fire of smouldering coke. there were two or three basket armchairs padded in cretonne. there was a central table, two little smoking-tables, and a sort of buffet at the side of a further door. upon the buffet were glasses, syphons, and various bottles. there was a box of cigars upon the central table and a silver cigarette-box upon one of the smaller ones. i had come into a little, luxuriously furnished club-room, which struck upon the senses with an irresistibly homely and pleasant note as i looked round in wild amazement. there was even a brass kettle on a trivet by the fire, which was singing melodiously to itself. i stared round the place like a child, and caught sight of my face with open eyes and dropping jaws in one of the looking-glasses. what was i doing here? what had i tumbled into? what?... i came back to myself just in time. there was a loud and sudden creak, the yawn of a partly open door. then--bang! the gilt-framed mirror in which i had been gazing at myself smashed in the centre and starred all round, as something whizzed past my head with a ricochet. instinctively i crouched down upon the carpet, wheeling round as i did so. the door at the opposite end of the saloon had been slid back. in the rather dim light from the hanging lamp, i saw a great, bearded, whiskered face, red, and framed in a fury of lint-coloured hair. it seemed just like a gorilla turned white and malevolent in a sudden ray of sunshine. there was another deafening explosion: one! two! three! and the furious noise in the confined space of the cabin filled me with something of its own rage. i saw red. the warm and evil silence of this comfortable place had frightened me far more than this onslaught. unharmed, i leapt to my feet. as i did so, i saw that the man in the dark oblong beyond was feverishly pressing a clip into his magazine pistol. he would be at me again in a second, but i caught up one of the smoking-tables, heavy as it was, and charged him. the table was iron, covered with beaten copper. i ran at the creature like a bull, and as he advanced a yard into the room i was on him with a frightful crash and down he went. i fell also on to the tripod of the table and bruised myself badly, but i was too angry to think of that. i tore my shoulder from it and flung it to the other side of the saloon. the man growled like a mastiff, half rose from the floor, and then i had him by the throat. i am a strong man; i think i said that at the beginning of this narrative. what i mean is that i could out almost any sandow pup in no time. but as i caught this hairy-faced creature by the throat and felt his arms seeking for mine, then i knew that i was in for the time of my life. my hands sank into the great, muscular system of his neck. my thumbs were pressed on each side of the adam's apple--japanese fashion--and my fingers were feeling upwards for the final pressure on the jugular vein. but, with all my weight upon him, he was so strong from the waist up, there was such a resilience in the massive torso, that he rose slowly, as if pressed by some hydraulic piston. as he rose, my legs slithered backwards. i tried to get some purchase with my toes to force him back, but it was useless. he came up almost to a sitting posture. great hairy hands felt for my ears, and for a moment i thought it was all u.p. then i got my right leg under his left and heaved over. we were upon our sides, the german uppermost, my hands still choking his life out of him. naturally, in that position, my grip was bound to loosen. i could put no weight into it. but his arms were all sprawling. one was partly under himself and partly under me, the other beating me like a flail upon the ribs. i felt the sweat pouring from his face on to mine, and he smelt horribly of garlic. it was just touch and go. suddenly i whipped my numbed hands from the fellow's throat, slithered my arms down the front of his body, and gripped him round the lower ribs with a hug like a bear. of course, this was my long suit. there are not many people who can stand my affectionate embrace, especially when i am fighting for my life! i heard one rib crack, and i laughed aloud. i tightened the vice, and as the second went i knew it was all over. the brute made a noise exactly like the water running out of a bath, a sort of choked, trumpeting noise. his body grew limp. i disengaged myself and rose unsteadily to my feet. wow, but i had had it! the beastly smoking-room waltzed round me; i staggered to the buffet like a drunken man. my hands were dark crimson. old upjelly and his confederates were accustomed to do themselves well. i realised it as my eye fell upon the row of bottles--therein was much balm in gilead. there was a long-necked one with "boulestin" upon the label. i pulled out the cork at a venture and drank deep. it was just what i wanted. it was cognac, and my eyes cleared and my arms stopped trembling. i do not suppose the whole affair had lasted for more than three minutes, and as i came to myself i realised the necessity for instant action. my late adversary was lying at the other end of the saloon, his head rocking in the open door which led to his own quarters. he was not unconscious. he frothed at the mouth like i once saw an old pike i caught with a spinner in the broads. his eyes were red and glazed, and he breathed like a suction pump gone wrong. i saw he was harmless as far as further aggression went, but i thought it as well to make sure. i took the bottle and poured as much as i thought right into the chap's mouth. then i snatched the cloth from the centre table, tore it into strips, rolled it up, and tied master fritz schweitzer round the ankles. i pulled him to the wall and propped him up. i knew two of his ribs were broken, and i felt for his collar-bone. that, as it happened, was not broken. it did not matter much anyway if he died, though he was a long way from that. still, we wanted him; so i took the cork out of the brandy bottle, wrapped it up in my handkerchief to make a sort of pad, shoved it in his mouth, and tied the end of the handkerchief round the back of his head. then, when i had secured his hands, i felt we were getting on very well and i took a long breath. i hurried up the companion-way to the deck. the keen night air, the still falling snow, made me sway for a moment like a drunken man. i heard a distant shout from the bank beyond, and with the shout was mingled a high, treble note. that pulled me together more than anything else, and i remembered what a perfect beast i had been not to let them know. of course, they must have heard the shots and been in an agony of fright. "cheery-o!" i shouted. "everything is all right, and i'll let down the bridge in a minute." then i stumbled aft to find my brother. the fight in the cabin could not have been as long as i thought, for bernard was just sitting up and rubbing his head. incidentally, he was swearing sweet wardroom oaths to himself. i forbear to reproduce them; they can only be indicated here. "help me up.... have we made too much noise?... have they heard us below?" "that's all right, old soul," i said. "feeling better now?" "don't talk so loud, you fool!" he hissed. "you'll spoil everything!" "it's all right, old soul. i've said a few words to the crew. now help me to lower this gangway." bernard never said a word of protest. he somehow felt it was all right, and in a minute more we had knocked the catch out of the toothed wheel which lowered the gangway and i let it gently down by the greased halliards. dickson max. came over first. somebody followed him, so like dickson max. as makes no matter. this someone, a slim boy in appearance, put its arms round my neck and nearly sobbed. "it's all right, dear," i answered; "we've won the first trick. now you and your knowledge of german come in. remember you are on the king's service." i do not know whether it was that or her relief at seeing me safe again--for both doris and dickson max. had heard the shots and the dulled noise of the fight below--but my girl pulled herself together in a moment. little sportswoman! she nipped down into the saloon quicker than dickson max., whose sunday suit she was wearing. bernard and i would not have brought her into this business for anything had she not volunteered. but she _would_ come when she knew the truth. neither of us knew german. it was essential that we should have someone with us who did. and in the wild welter of those momentous three days, i am afraid our sense of proportion was lost. we were all young. we were all out to save england if we could. this is my apology for doris being with us. i shall not repeat it. the end justified the means so unforgettably, so gloriously. the man, fritz schweitzer, was still unconscious. he lay like a log, bound and gagged, and an unpleasant sight, too. i felt rather proud of my work as i looked at him, but doris ran forward. "poor fellow!" she said, "i must do what i can for him." "not now, please," bernard answered quickly. "the first thing to do is to search ship. remember that you heard nothing of kiderlen-waechter, who is waiting till midnight for upjelly. the presumption is that he was to stay on board, yet we have seen no sign of him. up with the drawbridge at once, john and dickson, and then come back to me." we tumbled up the companion and in a minute had raised the creaking bridge. it was impossible for anyone lurking on the ship to have got off in the short time we had been. "now then," bernard said, when we got back to the cabin, "get out your pistol, john, and you and dickson search this hulk thoroughly. miss joyce will stay here with me. i wish to speak to her. report to me at once." we went through the narrow door from which schweitzer had fired at me, and found ourselves in a small compartment in the bows of the boat. there was a cooking-stove, some pots and pans, some shelves of groceries and tinned goods, and a berth with tumbled, frowsy blankets, where the german had obviously been sleeping. nothing there; and again traversing the cabin, we went up on deck. the deck-house, as i have said before, was locked, but my weight soon disposed of that obstacle and, flashing my electric torch, with my pistol ready, i entered. the place was simply a storeroom. there were eel spears, some leather cartridge magazines, a couple of old "cripple-stopper" guns, and so forth. only one thing i noticed, and that was a new, stout rope-ladder, with bamboo rungs and zinc hooks at the top. finally, we prised open an old hatchway and peered down into the musty darkness of the bottom part of the hulk. dickson ran and fetched the rope-ladder and i went down first. there was nothing whatever to be seen but the bare timbers of the ship. everything had been gutted and there was a most horrible smell from a foot or two of bilge-water. it was certain that no one lurked unsuspected on board. when we went down again to the cabin, i saw an extraordinary thing. my brother had picked up what remained of the table-cloth, had twisted it into bands, like what i had used on schweitzer, and was tying up doris! her hair was down, too, flowing in a great mass below the shooting-hat she had worn. "what on earth are you doing?" i asked. "shut up," he said, "you will see in a minute. now, miss joyce!" with her arms tied closely behind her, her feet free, doris smiled and went out of the cabin. "now for this swine," said my brother, and taking the soda-water syphon from the table, he squirted it with great force and precision into the wretched schweitzer's face, till his beard looked like the fur of a water-rat and his eyes opened slowly. "take off the gag," said my brother. i did so. "now prop him up in a sitting position--yes, get one of those cushions--that's it." then bernard put some brandy into a tumbler and held it to the fellow's lips. he sucked greedily and gave a great groan. suddenly, as we stood there, there was a slight thud and patter of feet upon the deck above. we all heard it distinctly, and the german's eyes gleamed. my brother turned and dashed out of the cabin, dickson and i following him. there was a loud shriek, a girl's shriek, and a scuffle, and then my brother said in an angry voice: "the fräulein von vedal--sent to warn these spies. bring her down!" then i began to understand. doris fought like a cat. she was almost too realistic; but we hauled her down into the cabin. "tie her up," said my brother in a hoarse voice of command. we tied her up, sitting her in an arm-chair, and reefing our ropes so that she could not stir. then bernard took off his hat and made a low, ironic bow. "gute nacht, gnädiges fräulein!" he said--i believe it was all the german the fellow knew--and then, with a wave of his hand, summoned us to leave the cabin. we did so; he locked the door and ascended to the deck. "now then," he whispered, "let down the drawbridge with as much noise as possible and then go over it. directly we are on the other side, we must take off our boots and creep back down to the cabin door." "what a ruse!" i heard dickson max. say to himself in an ecstasy of joy--he was given to using words from the more highly coloured adventure books he read--"oh, my aunt!" we managed it beautifully, and got into the little space at the foot of the companion, outside the cabin door, with hardly a sound. doris was sobbing bitterly and there was a low growl from the gigantic german, which resolved itself into words at last. then the sobs ceased and doris answered. we none of us could understand a word of the ensuing conversation, but i reconstruct it here from what was told me afterwards, and i am sure it is accurate enough. "who are you, fräulein? what have they done to you?" "hush, they may hear!" "who are they?" "they are the police, the english police. everything is found out. i am the fräulein von vedal. my father has been arrested, but i slipped off in these clothes to try and warn you and admiral kiderlen-waechter. he must not be taken if it can be helped. if he escapes, my father says there is yet a chance. he spoke to me in german until the police silenced him. they do not understand our tongue, these dogs of english." "his excellency has gone with his gun upon the marsh. he wished to pass the time until midnight, when the graf von vedal was to arrive with the papers. he will be back at seven. i was about to prepare his coffee, which takes a long time, for his excellency is very particular. now what shall we do? have they gone?" "i think so. i heard them let down the bridge." "and so did i. but they can't be far away. do they know that the admiral is here?" "i can't tell, but i don't think so. if only i could get free!" "oh yes, fräulein, if only you could! as for me, it matters nothing, but his excellency must escape. then he can meet her to-night and warn her--even though the precious papers are all lost. he could go off in her and escape that way. you know all about her, fräulein?" doris shook her head. "no," she said. "tell me." "if they have not told you already, fräulein, i must not do so. i am sworn. i thought perhaps you knew everything." "you won't tell me? if i can get away it would be of help for me to know." "no, fräulein; i am sworn and i must obey orders...." "and now i think," said my brother, unlocking the door and speaking in his usual voice, "we've heard as much as we are likely to." we all trooped into the cabin and, taking out his pocket-knife, dickson max. cut the cloth strands which held doris in the chair. the german's face grew dead white. his jaw dropped, his eyes blazed like flames; he gave a roar of baffled fury and strained at his fastenings with gigantic strength, the muscles at his temples standing out like blue cords. i never before or since saw such hideous rage. "stop that!" my brother said, whipping out his revolver and pointing it straight at the fellow. it was of no use, however. again that gigantic bellow swelled out into the night. dickson saved the situation. there must be something in these boys' books after all, for i never saw a gag more quickly and deftly inserted. "and now, tell us exactly what you have learnt, miss joyce," bernard asked. she did so in a very few sentences, putting up her hair at the same time, standing before the mirror which schweitzer's pot-shot at me had cracked. strange creatures girls are! "half-past six," said bernard, looking at his watch. "now for the admiral. get that drawbridge up again." we did so, and shortly after my brother joined us. "there will be some signal," he said; "one of us must personate that brute down below. you are the biggest, john, and the broadest." "there's an oilskin and a sou'wester hanging in the man's bunk, sir," said dickson. "just the thing. cut along and fetch them." i rigged myself up in these clothes as well as i could, and went down again into the cabin, from where i was to emerge at the signal. "we must manage it as best we can," said my brother. "dickson and i will go and hide behind the deck-house. when you hear the signal, whatever it is, he will whistle or something, then come up heavily and let down the bridge. he is sure not to speak loudly, so if he asks a question, just growl out something so that he can't hear it till he gets on deck. remember he has got a gun, and grapple with him the moment you can. we will be with you in a second." i sat and waited, smoking one of the doctor's cigars and with a brandy-and-soda in front of me--i did not see why i shouldn't. my ears were wide open, but everything had gone so well up to the present that i did not remember any uneasiness or fear. i was just wondering whether i should light another cigar when i heard something so silvery sweet and unexpected that i jumped. somewhere out in the night, close by, came the silver pipe of a whistle. i never heard anyone whistle so musically before or since. it was the "lorelei" that i heard, the sweet, plaintive music of the rhine maiden. i cannot explain it, but it gave me a lump in my throat. at the sound, the bound giant struggled violently, but he made little or no noise, and what he did was drowned by my heavy footsteps as i walked through the cabin and stumbled up the companion. on the shore, three yards away, was a figure in fowler's kit, which i had no difficulty in recognising as that of my friend mr. jones. i heard him say something, but there was a good deal of wind all round and i ignored it, letting down the drawbridge slowly for him to come on board. it had hardly bridged the chasm when he stepped briskly on to it and came over like a flash. he had his gun on his left shoulder, and he handed it to me, saying something in german. i took it with my left hand, stepped aside for him to pass, and then kicked him smartly upon the shin. it is an invaluable dodge; a west-end bobby told me of it; and down he went full length on his face with an oath. well, the rest was not difficult. my fourteen stone was on the small of his back in a minute. my brother, who had employed the interval of waiting in discovering a coil of wire, had his hands whipped round behind his back in no time, and dickson max. sat on the wretched admiral's head as if he had been a horse. we left his feet free, because we wanted to get him down into the cabin. i held him by the shoulder while my brother pressed the barrel of his mauser pistol--one of the few good things that ever came out of germany, by the way--into the nape of his neck. he came like a lamb and we sat him down in the same arm-chair that doris had just occupied. the wire came in very handy indeed. we made a cocoon of it round him until he could not stir hand or foot. "and now," my brother said, "our next guest will not be here for some little time. supper is, i think, clearly indicated. doris, supposing you and dickson see what the galley has to offer--some tinned food, i think you said, and coffee? excellent. meanwhile, i and john will talk to this gentleman." von waechter--i call him this for short; people should not have such beastly long names--von waechter glanced slowly round the cabin, taking in everything. he saw schweitzer lying gagged upon the floor, the smashed mirror, the bottle of cognac, everything, and i will do him the justice to say he never moved a muscle of his face. "well now, sir, you will understand that the game is up," said my brother quietly. the man nodded in a meditative sort of way, as if he was considering whether that was true or not. "ah, my friend mr. john carey!" he said. "yes, mr. jones," i answered, "and this is my brother, commander carey, of his majesty's navy." von waechter bowed as well as he was able. "ah," he said, "i am a prisoner of war, i see." my brother shook his head. "i'm afraid not, sir," he replied; "i'm afraid you are a captured spy." chapter vii the murder of mr. lockhart doctor upjelly, or the graf von vedal as my readers may choose to think of him, never came to the hulk that night. if this is not the most sensational part of my narrative, it is certainly the grimmest. it must be told quickly. it is too horrible to linger upon. i was not there myself, but i put it down from the words of an eye-witness. the reason that i was able to be out on the marsh at five o'clock without suspicion was that, early in the morning after my brother and i had overheard everything in the gun-punt, i went to the doctor and asked for a day off. i said i was going to london to have a final shot at enlisting. i knew from what i had heard him say to kiderlen-waechter that it did not matter twopence to him either way, whether i went or stayed. he, himself, was making all preparations for flight. he gave me leave quite readily. before i pretended to go i told lockhart everything. it was arranged that he and dickson major, whom he was to take into his confidence to a certain extent, were to watch the doctor with the utmost care. i drove to blankington-on-sea in wordingham's trap, went a station or two up the line, was met by the admiralty motor car, made a great circuit of country, and got back to cockthorpe within four hours. meanwhile lockhart and dickson major watched the doctor. this is the story, the horrible story. doris slipped out without notice, dressed in dickson max.'s clothes--that has already been explained. the late afternoon went on. the boys finished their work, played a dreary punt-about of football, and came in to tea. lockhart was in charge. after tea, 'prep.' began. old pugmire had shuffled off home. old mrs. gaunt was still groaning in bed. at eight-thirty the younger boys went up to their dormitories, only four of the elder ones remaining downstairs. lockhart left them to their own devices--they were roasting chestnuts, i heard--and waited in his own sitting-room. at nine o'clock, marjorie joyce came hurriedly from the doctor's wing and tapped at lockhart's door. the doctor had told amy, the housemaid, to light a fire in his bedroom. he said that he would have much writing to do and that when it was finished he would go out upon the marshes to shoot, as usual. i can picture the scene quite well. pretty marjorie, panting, with wide eyes, in the door of lockhart's sitting-room; the staunch little man, keen as a ferret, wondering what this meant. he knew from me, of course, that upjelly was to go to the hulk that night with his _dossier_ of plans and betrayals. they sent for dickson major from the senior boys' room. they were closeted together for nearly ten minutes. then marjorie led them quietly from the school-wing into the doctor's house. the doctor, at that moment, was having supper by himself. he would not be upstairs for quarter of an hour. marjorie showed lockhart and the lad to the big bedroom with the dancing fire upon the hearth. dickson major had a nickel-plated revolver, of which he was very proud. "if anything happens, sir," he said, "i can do him in with this." then dickson major was put under the bed, where he lay, grasping his revolver, keen as mustard, glad to be in the mysterious business of which he had been told so little and in which his elder twin was so actively engaged. a tear comes into my eye as i think of that quiet bedroom and those two poor conspirators waiting for von vedal, doing their little best, such as it was. there was a big, green curtain, running on rings, in an alcove of the bedroom. behind this, the headmaster of morstone kept a lot of clothes which he never wore and never even looked at. here the ardent cripple, lockhart, was ensconced. there is something comic in the business--the schoolboy and the ferret-faced master hidden in this fashion. i think that all sinister tragedies have their bizarre element of comedy--comedy to change so swiftly into horror. in twenty minutes the doctor came up. he strode into the room with a firm step, carrying a brown leather bag, which he placed upon the table by the fire. then he locked the door. he took off his coat, warmed his soft, pink hands at the fire, unlocked the bag, spread a mass of documents from it upon the table, and began to write steadily. there was a round clock upon the mantelpiece which ticked incessantly. it was a quick and hurried tick that came from the clock, and sometimes it seemed to be accentuated, to be a race with time; at others, it was slow as the death-watch. the doctor wrote on. he covered sheet after sheet with swift, easy writing. when each sheet was done, he blotted it and added it to the pile on his left hand. he had written for three-quarters of an hour, and the hidden watchers had made no sound whatever, when the big man suddenly jumped up from the table. they heard his chair crush over the carpet; they heard him sigh deeply, as if with relief. then dickson major, peeping under the valance of the bed, saw his headmaster go to the mantelpiece, open a box of cigars, select one and light it. it was a long, black, rank hamburg weed, and the pungent smoke curled round the room as the man stood with his back to the fire, looking down upon the table. the smoke went round and round. it grew thick. it curled and penetrated everywhere. it penetrated behind the green curtain where, in an agony of rheumatism and tortured bones, little lockhart was standing. lockhart coughed. the boy underneath the bed was watching all this. he saw the doctor turn quietly and swiftly towards the alcove. he took three soft steps, pulled the curtain aside, and drew lockhart out. it was horrible. von vedal said nothing at all. his great hand descended upon the shoulder of the cripple and he drew him into the middle of the room--into the full light of the lamp--looking down at him with a still, evil scrutiny. lockhart spoke. he did not seem a bit afraid. his curious voice jarred into the quiet, firelit room with almost a note of triumph in it. "you've found me, doctor upjelly; but you've lost everything, graf von vedal!" dickson said that the doctor, bending lower, turned lockhart's face upwards with his disengaged hand, pulling it towards the light. the boy was paralysed. the fingers of his right hand grew cold and dead. the revolver lay in them like a ton weight. he could not move or cry out. he could do nothing. with the greatest deliberation, von vedal took lockhart by the throat. he felt in his trouser pocket and pulled out an ordinary penknife. still clasping his prisoner, he opened the blade with his teeth; and then, without the slightest haste or sign of anger--i cannot go on, but there was a thud and the gallant little cripple lay writhing on the floor. von vedal peered over the edge of the table at him for a moment, and then pushed him gently away with his foot. then he sat down and began to write again. it was as if he had brushed away a fly. he wrote on, and the boy beneath the bed fainted dead away. when again the poor lad's eyes opened, he saw the great, white face bent over its papers, the firm hand moving steadily from left to right, heard the resolute scratch and screech of the pen as it traversed the pages. but he saw also that the huddled heap upon the floor was moving slowly. with infinite effort, though without a sound, the cripple's arm crept down the side of his dying body. with infinite effort, and with what agony none of us will ever know, lockhart withdrew the pistol with which i had provided him. he could not lift his arm, but there was movement in his wrist. slowly, very slowly, the hand rose from the floor. the flash and crash were simultaneous. upjelly's mouth opened wide. he tried to turn his head and could not. he coughed twice and then sank quietly forward upon the records of his treachery. the shot broke the nervous bonds in which young dickson had been held. he scrambled up from beneath the bed. he ran round the table with averted eyes and bent over lockhart. there was a little hissing noise, like a faint escape of gas. dickson bent his ear to the mouth of the dying man. "take miss marjorie to wordingham--inn--village. gather up--all those papers. put them in bag. after--miss marjorie--inn--run--fast as you can--to--doctor's--old hulk--thirty main. give everything--mr. carey. good-bye, boy...." one last gasp, and the word "england!" sighed out into the bedroom. chapter viii the truth at last, the incredible truth! and how they fought for the submarine just after midnight, my brother and myself sat crouching behind the bulwarks of the hulk. it was the weirdest hour, the strangest scene, that my eyes had ever looked upon. snow was falling fast, and yet, somewhere above, there was a moon. it was all white and ghostly-green, shifting, moving, unreal, as befitted the horrors which pressed us close. yet we were exultant; i can testify to that. "the judge was set, the doom begun"; in our hearts was the fiery certainty of success. in the deck-house were bernard's three men, scarlett, adams, and bosustow--all of whom had served with him in his own ship. below, in the saloon, doris, old lieutenant murphy of the coastguards, and the two dickson boys were waiting. let me give the very briefest resumé of events up to the present. dickson major had fulfilled his trust. he had taken marjorie joyce to mrs. wordingham at the inn; then he had come to us with the bag of papers. he had told us everything. all we told doris was that her sister had been taken to the inn and that her stepfather was arrested at the school. we had to keep doris with us for a time, but old lieutenant murphy, who was now entirely in our confidence, would take her back to the village when the adventure of the night was over. his car was waiting there and doris and marjorie would both find refuge with mrs. murphy at cockthorpe. the prisoners, kiderlen-waechter and the german boatswain, had been moved into the galley, where one of the lads was watching them. it was cold beyond thinking. the snow fell softly on us till we were blanketed with white. bernard was whispering. "you see, old john, i look at it this way. when we searched kiderlen-waechter an hour ago we found the signal. doris translated it for us. the lamp is lit in that box they fitted up so carefully in the bows. it can only be seen straight up the creek. they'll make for that." "what do you think it is?" "they've spoken of it as 'she'--it's a boat, of course. i should say either one of those wretched little coasters, or possibly even a fishing-smack. she'll stand a mile out at sea and they'll row into the creek with a longboat, for the plans. there is a huge manoeuvre on--what it is we can't tell yet, and it's touch and go to-night whether we snooker them or whether we don't. you are ready for anything?" "anything! so old upjelly's dead, and poor little lockhart!" "he died for his country, as you and i may do to-night, old john. shed the sentimental tear on some future occasion. what?" his voice rose a little. scarlett, who was on the look-out, had crept along the deck and touched bernard on the shoulder. "come forrard, sir, if you please," the man said in a hoarse whisper. he could hardly get the words out, and at first i thought his teeth were chattering with cold, but it was not so. we crept to the bows of the hulk and peered over the broken, rotting taffrail. two feet below was the beam of the signal lamp shining up the creek towards the sea. the snow had temporarily stopped in this part of the marsh and the moon was bright. thirty main stretched away ahead as far as we could see, two hundred yards long and a hundred wide, of black, gleaming steel. the tide was full at flood. scarlett handed my brother a pair of night-glasses. bernard gazed through them for twenty seconds, and then they fell softly on the deck. "oh god!" he said in a low voice, "so it is _that_, and i never thought of it before! fool! fool!" i stared out also, not daring to say a word. no man can see better at night than i. what _was_ that? something slowly floating down the centre of the creek, a black, oblong patch. was it two or three duck swimming landwards with the tide? then the black patch lifted itself from the water. it seemed to have a long, narrow tail--the whole thing was curiously distinct in the moonlight. in a second i realised that something was _being pushed up from below_. i had never seen anything like it before. i experienced that hideous sensation in the pit of the stomach that comes to people who are face to face with the unknown and the unexpected for the first time in their lives. all this happened in half a minute. the black, oblong thing was now high in the air on the end of a pole which came straight up through the middle of the creek. something else was rising, a black hump, which grew and grew, until a grey tower stood there;--stood there but moved slowly towards us--or did it begin to recede? i heard bernard's voice: "stand by the lamp!" "aye, aye, sir!" scarlett was bending low over the bows of the hulk. in the middle of the waterway something long and lean was showing. there was a soft, metallic clang, and then, from the centre of the dark, floating object, a light flashed quickly, three times. immediately i heard the click of the shutter of our own lamp and saw the occulting beam below flash and disappear in answer. i knew, i think in some subconscious way, i must have known from the very first. the whole thing, in its magnificent and unsuspected daring, its malevolent simplicity, struck me like a blow. this was a german submarine; this was the channel by which the master-spy, von vedal, and his agents had been sending information to the enemy! on my own quiet marshes, in thirty main creek! "one of their 'd' class, sir; same as our 'e.' crew of fifteen, no quick-firing gun, and probably wireless. handy little craft, sir!" "they'll be coming aboard in a minute, scarlett." "aye, aye, sir. if you look, sir, you'll see they are getting one of those collapsible boats up. new thing, sir, and very handy. holds six. ah!" i could see quiet and purposeful activity round the conning-tower of the submarine. a group of dark figures was silhouetted in the moonlight, and presently a little boat, like a bobbing cork, lay by her side. three men got into it and it pushed off. it went towards the other side of thirty main. "concealed moorings, sir," scarlett whispered. "they've been here before. it's dead water, and the ship'd drift, if ..." i heard no more. i watched breathlessly. the boat went to the far side of the creek and remained there for nearly two minutes. if there was a cable, i did not see it, but presently the boat turned and came rapidly towards the hulk. "john, take him quietly to the cabin and shove him in--it's the commander coming aboard," my brother added. "scarlett, get back into the deck-house and light that lamp. mr. carey is dressed like the german boatswain, and he will show the officer straight into the deck-house. it's ten to one the sailors won't come up. remember to do your job without the slightest noise--you, adams, and bosustow." "out him, sir?" "i'm afraid so. there is no other way. directly it is over, take off his clothes and bring them down into the cabin. mind the men in the boat hear nothing." "aye, aye, sir." then my brother turned to me. the boat was now almost by the side of the hulk. "you understand, john?" he said. i touched his arm, afraid to speak. "then go and get the rope-ladder." i stepped to the deck-cabin and saw the three sailors standing round it among the litter of shooting gear. a smoky lamp hung from the ceiling. scarlett passed me the ladder. i took it and went to the side--my brother had disappeared. there was a low hiss seven feet below. i hissed, too, fixed the ladder hooks, and dropped the rest of it. one of the sailors caught it, while the other steadied the boat, and a slim man of just over middle height came up like a cat. he wore some sort of dark uniform, what it was i could not see. the collar was turned up round his face, which appeared to be clean-shaved. i saluted and stepped towards the deck-house. he followed me without a sound. then i tapped on the door, which opened immediately, and as it did so i shot him in with a smart blow between the shoulder-blades. there was just one little gasping sound, and that was all. the door closed gently. the two sailors below in the boat sat quietly enough. i went down into the saloon. quick as i was, my brother was before me. he was talking earnestly to doris in a low voice. i stood at the door at attention, and i think i never saw a stranger scene. old lieutenant murphy, in uniform, was seated at the table. his nostrils were opening and shutting in his tanned face. he was exactly like an old dog brought to the hunt for the last time. the door into the galley was half open. dickson major stood there with a magazine pistol in his hand. dickson max. sat opposite the lieutenant, his face a mask of determination and strength. it was wonderful. "you quite understand, doris? you can be brave?" "i quite understand, bernard." "then we will wait a minute. sit down, john." we all sat down--waiting. one minute--two minutes passed. then came a light tap upon the door. it opened and scarlett entered. his face was rather red, and he breathed heavily. on his right arm he carried a bundle of clothes. my brother looked at him with a lift of the eyebrows, and scarlett nodded, placing the clothes on the table. "go through these clothes, lieutenant," bernard said. then he turned to scarlett and whispered. the man saluted and disappeared. a few seconds after, my brother beckoned to doris. "now, then," he said, "be brave!"--and then, turning to me, "stand out of sight on deck, john, and be ready to help." we crept up on deck. to my unutterable surprise, doris went to the side and leant over. she spoke in german and in a very low voice. "she's telling them that they're to come up on board and have a drink," my brother said. the two figures below rose with alacrity. the first one ascended the ladder as doris whipped down the hatchway into the cabin. the second sailor followed his companion. i was not called upon to help, thank heaven! scarlett, adams, and bosustow rose from nowhere. "that accounts for three," said my brother, but i turned my head away not to see what was going on. when we were again down in the cabin i was shaking like a leaf. "drink this," bernard said sternly, "and pull yourself together. it is war, don't you understand that, man?" doris was leaning over the table by the side of lieutenant murphy. in front of her was a paper. the lovely face, oddly boyish under its cap, was wrinkled with scrutiny. "it is special orders," she said at length, "addressed to admiral kiderlen-waechter. the plans are to be taken on board the submarine at once." her voice broke for the moment, but she made a great effort at control, and the next words came from her slowly and distinctly. to me, i think to all of us, they were like the strokes of a tolling bell. "_the german battleship, friesland, has eluded our fleet in the north sea. our fleet has been decoyed towards the scotch coast by a sortie of the enemy from kiel. the battleship is approaching this part of england. she is attended by destroyers and submarines. she is convoying three troop-ships, each of which contains two thousand german troops. the rendezvous is for two o'clock to-morrow afternoon, when captain von benda is to deliver my stepfather's plans to the german admiral. the landing of the raiding force is to be effected on these marshes some time during to-morrow night._" "to-night," said my brother, looking at his watch and snapping it into his pocket. then there was a dead silence. bernard sat down at the table and buried his head in his hands, motioning us to be silent. for fully five minutes he remained thus, and what was going on within his mind i could but faintly guess. i knew, at any rate, and so, i think, did old lieutenant murphy, how enormous and incalculable were the issues that hung upon the decision of the young commander, whose face was hidden from us. when bernard looked up again his eyes were very bright and he was smiling. "go on deck, john," he said, "and order the men to come down." they came down, and scarlett had upon his arm another bundle of clothes. "attention!" said my brother. the three sailors stood stiffly by the door. "dickson major!"--dickson major came out of the galley. "dickson max.!"--the elder brother sprang to attention also. "john!"--i stood as stiffly as the rest. "these men are under my orders, and they will go to death with me. you three are different. there is no time to explain everything now, but there is just a chance of saving this country from disaster. it is only a chance, mind. it is a forlorn hope. we may fail in half an hour: we may fail in twenty-four hours. in fact, it is almost certain that we shall. still, are you coming?" well, of course there wasn't any palaver about that. it was settled in a minute. then bernard turned to old murphy. "lieutenant," he said, "i am sorry that we are not going to have you with us, but you've got plenty to do ashore." "i'm damned sorry too, sir, for, by george, i'd like to have a smack at 'em before i die!" "you may yet. now, please take your instructions. you know the marsh. get off with miss joyce as quickly as possible. take her to join her sister at the morstone arms. then call up the coastguard for miles round. come here to this hulk--you won't see us in any case--and have the prisoners secured safely. then send these despatches." my brother sat down and began to write in cipher on leaves torn from his notebook. he looked up once. "john," he said, "suppose you go up on deck with doris. make not the slightest noise, but make your adieux." we stole up, and i held my girl in my arms for a minute. she did not see the dark stains which splashed the snow upon the boards. "good-bye, dear," i said. "remember that i loved you more than anything else in the whole world!" oh, she was wonderful! "of course, i shall always remember how you left me to-night," she whispered. "but you are coming back. something tells me that. yesterday i was a quiet girl living an ordinary life. to-night, nothing can disturb me, nothing can frighten me. i have supped too full of horrors, dear john, but i am glad, and proud and happy!" it is hardly necessary to say more. within five minutes the old lieutenant and my girl had passed away like ghosts from the near shore and i was down in the cabin again. bernard was taking off his clothes and putting on those of the dead captain of the submarine. scarlett and adams were already dressed in the uniform of the german sailors. bosustow stood in his shirt and drawers, and so did my two school-boys. "you see, it's like this, johnny," bernard said. "as far as we can judge, there are about twelve men in that submarine. we've got to kill them; there is no other way. we've got to take that submarine out into the north sea and we have got to fight her ourselves. the germans will be looking out for us. they will think us their despatch boat right enough. we may be able to stop them before our own supports get out of harwich, for lieutenant murphy will be telegraphing all over the country within two hours. it is touch and go, but we've got to do it." there was an odd, dual sound, instantly suppressed. i looked sternly towards the end of the saloon. it came from dickson max. and dickson major, and if it was not a chuckle of intense and supreme delight, it was a strangled "hooray." the three sailors standing at attention moved not an inch, but i caught scarlett winking at his right-hand man. bernard smiled grimly for an instant. i knew the signs. he was really happy. then he went on. "now, scarlett and adams will row the boat to the submarine. i shall sit in the stern impersonating the captain, who has recently been killed in action"--and, to my surprise, bernard saluted. "you will be in the bows, john, and they may take you for that fellow, schweitzer, in there. bosustow, and mr. dickson, and mr.----" he looked inquiringly at dickson major. "harold," was the reply. "oh yes, mr. harold dickson will swim in the wake of the boat. we have eight magazine pistols. three will be in the sternsheets. the brevet-lieutenants and the petty officer"--you should have seen my lads' faces as they were commissioned!--"will swim to the ladder on the submarine's quarter and follow us down. but be careful that, in the rough and tumble, you don't shoot any of the first attacking party. is all clear?" "certainly, sir," said dickson max., with a sublime and effective impudence i could never have compassed. already, in his magnificent mind, dickson max. trod the quarter-deck and wore a sword. and the curious thing was, as we all crept up to the deck, that those tried veterans, scarlett, adams, and bosustow, accepted the situation without a doubt. then we started. my brother gripped me by the hand as i went down the ladder, and it was the only sign of emotion that he showed. "good old john!" he whispered. "i've sent marjorie a message by doris." the submarine lay in the middle of the creek, a hundred and fifty to two hundred yards away. as our boat drew near, the moonlight became obscured and there was a sudden drift of snow. we shot alongside, and there was a gleam from a lantern shining down upon us. it showed me a curving steel ladder, which went up over the fish-back of the thing to a long, low deck with a light railing running round it. two men were standing there, and as we made fast, one of them came half-way down the ladder and held out his hand to me. i took it, stumbled for an instant, and found myself upon the steel platform. at my back, the conning-tower rose eight feet high above me. within three yards was an oblong hatchway, from which a faint, orange light came upwards, turning the snowflakes to dingy gold. scarlett was beside me in a second. i took the man nearest and caught him by the throat. he had no time to gasp or cry out. i pressed him back over the rail, which held--krupp steel, i suppose. there was a slight "snick"--it was not that of breaking metal--and i shot the sailor over the far side, where he sank like a log. then i turned. a furious and silent fight was going on between scarlett and the other seaman. they swayed and rocked this way and that. they panted just like the sound of a bellows blowing up a fire. i waited, trying to get in a grip. figures moved past me and disappeared down the hatchway, but i hardly saw them. scarlett swung his enemy towards the conning-tower, and then i got my chance. i "collared him low"--rugger three-quarter style--and brought him down upon the deck. the man gave a loud shout, but it was drowned by a furious noise below. there was no more necessity for silence. i pulled out my pistol and there was an end of the german. scarlett jumped up like a gymnast, and together we heaved the body overboard. "the swine's bin and bit my ear!" said scarlett. "now then, sir, come on!" and he swung himself over the hatchway and dropped. i followed. it is impossible to describe what i saw--at any rate, my pen is not equal to the task. for a moment, i was blinded by brilliant light, through which a multitude of figures danced and leapt, like people in a dream. my ear-drums were almost split by the noise. there was a horrible, bitter smell in my nostrils, and my throat felt as if i was swallowing a bullet of lead. then, as things cleared, and i suppose it could only have been an instant before they did so, i found myself in a gleaming tunnel, surrounded by unfamiliar machinery. a man lying within three yards of me, his face like wet, red velvet, suddenly jerked up his body like a marionette. his arms shot out, there was a deafening explosion, and something rang behind my head like a gong smitten without warning. i shot him in the body, and then i saw three dripping figures growling and worrying upon the floor like wolves. they rolled about with a crash and clank of metal until the great arm of the cornishman, bosustow, rose and fell three times like a flail. at the far end of the tunnel, there were more reports, and then i saw my brother walking along a sort of grating and coming towards me. everything seemed to rock and dissolve. i fell back against an upright of some sort or other and my senses nearly went. i thought i was in bed at morstone house school and the seven-o'clock bell was tolling. once more, things cleared. everything gradually became distinct. the infernal noise, the wild welter of sound, was hushed. only two yards away from me, a man dressed as a sailor was kneeling before my brother, who held a pistol to his head. the man's hands were held up, his face was a white wedge of terror, and a constant stream of words bubbled from his livid lips. "yes, sir. karl, sir. coming, sir. porterhouse steak, sir, what you always used to like. no, sir--swiss really--not a german. oh, captain carey, don't kill me, sir"--the voice rose into a shriek of agony--"_i am karl, sir!_"--the words came in an ecstasy of conviction. "karl, head-waiter at the portsmouth royal! why, sir, you've tipped me half a crown twenty times. oh, sir ..." my brother's face seemed cut in granite, but he began to laugh. "tie this up!" he said, and adams ran forward--adams was all black and red and his clothes were torn. then bernard turned to me. "by god!" he said, "we've done it, john, we've done it so far!" then i realised that, save for the whining creature being trussed upon the grating, the crew of the german submarine were all dead. "mr. dickson!" "sir!" "instruct the boatswain to pipe all hands tidy ship." it was the man adams who, fumbling in his clothes, produced a whistle which shrilled loudly and acted as a strange tonic to us all. "i give you quarter of an hour," bernard said. "bodies to be heaved overboard; gratings to be swabbed as well as possible in the time. get a hose overboard, mr. dickson, and have the hand-pump manned." then bernard took me by the arm and led me up the slippery ladder. we stood upon the long, narrow deck, and the snow fell over us like a mantle. "now, old boy," he said, "pull yourself together. all has gone well, but in half an hour we must be out in the north sea, five fathoms deep. feel a bit sickish? oh, you'll get over that in a few minutes. we have only just begun." end of part ii part iii chapter ix out in the north sea. preparing for action the bees were humming through the orchard with a long, droning sound as i lay in the hammock of my old home, once more a careless boy. my eyes were closed, but the bright sun shone upon my face, and peters, my father's old butler, was coming over the grass to tell me that tea was ready. he touched my arm. it was not peters; it was a pale, clean-shaved fellow with an obsequious manner, who held a wooden bowl of steaming milk and coffee in his hands. i sat up and rubbed my eyes. the deep, droning noise, which had seemed like the bees of childhood in my dream, was the noise of engines not far away. i had slept three hours in the hammock, as my brother had insisted, and here was the captured german waiter bringing me coffee. i took it, but half-awake, and watched the man go to two other hammocks which stretched away in front of me. the dickson boys tumbled out of them and i became fully conscious of where i was. for the moment, but only for a moment, i was unmanned. the horror of all that we had been through so recently rolled over me like a flood. the shambles that the submarine had become, the ruthless killing of fourteen men--the horrible little snick as i broke the back of my own victim!... but it passed. the coffee was excellent and invigorating, and in a minute i tossed the empty bowl into the hammock and stood upon a steel grating, looking about me with wide eyes. at that moment my brother came up, walking briskly, like a man at home. he seemed changed in some way, and i realised what it was--the policeman on his beat, and unbuttoned and at ease, the parson in his pulpit or trimming roses in the rectory garden, are two very different people. "where are we?" i said. "what has happened?" "you've had a very good sleep, john. you went off like a log directly i had the hammock slung. it was necessary, too, or you'd never be fit for what is coming." "have we started?" "started!" he grinned. "we're thirty miles away from morstone marshes, abreast of skegness, i should judge, which, as far as i can calculate, is about sixty miles to the westward--and heading straight out into the north sea. we're just crossing the line of the rotterdam boats from hull." "but there is no movement!" "no, my son, because we're twenty-five feet under water, that's why. now, you had better come and look round the boat; i shall have to explain everything to you and show you what you will have to do later on." he turned to the dicksons. "you come, too," he said, "and if ever the three of you have your wits about you, have them now. you've got to learn in an hour or two what it takes an ordinary seaman six months to learn--or part of it, at any rate." i am not going to describe everything i saw in detail. this is a story of action, and i always skip the descriptive parts in books, myself. the johnnies only put them in to fill up. i expect they are paid so much a page, if the truth were known! still, i must try and give some picture of the strange and unfamiliar world in which i found myself. here i was sailing under the sea for all the world like someone in jules verne, experiencing something that only the tried men of the navies ever know. i was in a long, narrow tunnel, most brilliantly lit. the air was warm and close, tainted a little with a faint suggestion of chemical fumes. it was rather like being in a chemist's shop in winter time when a large fire is burning. immediately to my right, the german waiter was busy over a little electric stove, in a doorless compartment not bigger than a bathing machine, pots and pans hung above him and there were shelves covered with wire netting containing stores of food. we passed him, and i judged, from the breadth from side to side, that we were standing almost in the middle of the submarine. upon white-painted gratings, my brother's sailors moved here and there with bare feet, quiet and alert in their jumpers. the light was caught by, and reflected again, from innumerable pieces of shining machinery, brass and silver and dull bronze. there was a tension both of physical atmosphere and mental excitement, strange and unnatural to me, but which those who go beneath the waters and explore the mysterious deep always have with them. we walked down a central gangway and stopped by two powerful gasolene engines, one on each side--long, lean, polished monsters, that lay inert, but ready to leap into action on the turn of a switch and the pulling of a lever. "those are the engines which run the boat when we are on the surface--'awash,' we call it. we can do seventeen knots then--i am assuming that this german boat is about equal to one of our own of its class, though i have already come across several remarkable improvements in her. we are running now by electric motor and doing about twelve knots, which is first-class, but i'm pushing her along for all i know." we passed onwards and to where bosustow stood beaming over three great purring, spitting dynamos, a piece of cotton waste in one huge paw. "oh, they're daisies, sir," he said, as he patted coils of insulated wire in an ecstasy of appreciation. "they can show us something, sir, the germans can. the sleeve that carries the commutator is keyed to the armature shaft on an entirely new system; it's a fair miracle of ingenuity. but where they beat us hollow is in the accumulators. i've not had time to inspect them thoroughly, but if we get out of this, then the whole of our system will have to be altered." we all bent over a rail towards the great accumulator tanks below, and i felt a faint, acrid odour rising up from them. "you're smelling electricity, sir," said bosustow to me. then he turned to a big, table-like switch-board which controlled the flow of current from below and commanded all the electrical machinery on board. he fingered the big, vulcanite handles as if he loved them and stroked the shining flanged rim of the volt meter as a mother strokes her child. "now mr. carey understands something about machinery, bosustow," said my brother. "you can trust him to follow out your directions without making any blunders, i think. john, your station will be by bosustow until you are wanted forrard, but there is no need for you to stay now. there is a good deal more that i must say." all the voices were sharp and staccato, my own sounded like that in my ears when i answered. they echoed and rang in the heavy air of the sealed, steel tube, voices that were not quite free and natural, for all their readiness of tone. we turned and went forward again, passing an open doorway and a few steps which led upwards to the conning-tower. the gangway ran at each side of it. the long, tunnel-like vista grew narrower and the roof began to slope downward to a point. in front of us, in the extreme bows of the boat, were two huge, circular steel doors, like the doors of a safe, clamped and locked by an intricate mechanism. "these are the mouths of the torpedo expulsion tubes," said bernard. "we carry six torpedoes, i am glad to find--two more than i should have expected in a boat of this size--and, by jove, we shall want 'em! if we throw away a single one, the game will be up, i expect. the torpedoes are run into these tubes along steel rails. they're discharged from the tubes by compressed air from the air tanks below. i see here the pressure is several thousand pounds to the square inch. in some boats we send out the tin fish by exploding a few ounces of cordite, but the air is the better way." he turned to where scarlett was busy and i saw a submarine torpedo for the first time. i confess there was a little inward shudder as i looked upon the deadly thing that could send the largest battleship afloat to the bottom in a few minutes. it was like a huge fish of steel with a large propeller at one end. "these are beauties," bernard said, "and to think that we are going to have the chance of using them against their original owners!" he chuckled. "the propelling engines," he went on, "are inside--for you must remember that a torpedo is a little ship in itself and is not a projectile at all. there are three hundred pounds of trinitrotoluene in this beauty--we've done away with the old-fashioned gun-cotton now--and she's got a range of seven thousand yards--over four miles, johnny, my boy! now, mr. dickson and mr. harold dickson, you will stay here with scarlett. it will be your part, when we go into action, to fire these torpedoes. there ought to be six or seven of you to do it. there are only three, and two of you are quite untrained. scarlett, get to work at once and give these gentlemen a practical drill. show them exactly what they will have to do and explain the orders that will come from me. miss out anything superfluous; remember we've hardly any time. just teach them what is absolutely necessary." "aye, aye, sir!" said scarlett, and as we turned back i heard him at once beginning his lecture. and now we came to the most interesting part of that world of marvels, to the _brain_ of the submarine. adams stood in the first stage of the conning-tower, his hands upon a little leather-covered steering-wheel. in front of him was a gyroscopic compass and a row of speaking-tubes. a light threw a bright radiance upon a framed chart hanging on the wall, marked everywhere with faint purple pencil lines. bernard glanced at the compass and gave the man a few directions. then we went up a short ladder of half a dozen rungs into the highest chamber of all. it was perfectly circular. there was just room for two or three people, and the steel roof was two feet above our heads. a great tube came down through the roof and disappeared beneath the open grating of the floor. it was like the mast of a ship going through the cabin down to the very gar-board strike. there was a row of brass clock-faces with trembling needles and oddly shaped gauges, in which coloured liquid rose and fell. the whole ganglion of nerves met here in the cerebellum of the ship, and at a glance its commander knew exactly what she was doing, her speed, her depth below the surface of the water, the pressure--a thousand other things which i am not competent to name. the whimsical idea came to me that it was like lifting up the top of a man's head and seeing the thoughts which controlled every motion of his body. there were charts, also, spread upon a semi-circular shelf of mahogany, with dividers, compasses, and a large magnifying glass. fastened to the wall, just above this shelf, was something that touched me strangely. it was a photograph in a silver frame, the photograph of a young, light-haired girl, and upon it was written in german, "_an meinem lieber otto_." bernard saw it too and sighed. "it's the skipper's girl," he said. "poor chap! he'll never see her again in this world! it was an ugly death to die, john!" and his voice had a note of deep feeling in it. "but it had to be, and scarlett told me that he didn't know what hurt him. "now," he continued, "i'm going to show you something." he pulled out his watch and then, leaning over to the wall, he snapped over something like the stunted lever of a signal box. then he pressed a button and a bell rang somewhere far down below. a hoarse voice sounded in our ears from a speaking-tube, and there was a quick, throbbing, pumping sound from the column in the wall. looking down, i saw that immediately below us was a circular white table. i put my hand on it and it was painted canvas, dazzlingly white. "the periscope is going up," my brother said. "it should be light, now--watch!" there was a click and the lamp in the roof went out. we were in darkness. a slight creaking sound, a movement of my brother's arm, and there flashed down, in clear light upon the table, a picture of the upper seas. forty feet above, the eye of the submarine surveyed the dawn, and in that still box where we stood, we saw it also. dawn upon the waters! a tossing grey expanse of waves. it was like the film of a cinematograph, only in colour, and as bernard turned the wheel, picture after picture glided over the table--the most incredible thing! not a sail was in sight. the north sea was an empty, tossing waste of waters in the cold light of the winter's dawn. the dawn of--what? chapter x the spear of foam "a little fresh air is clearly indicated," said my brother, "and after that, when i've attended to another little matter, a good breakfast. some of us may be taking our next meal in fiddlers' green, which, they say in the navy, is nine miles to windward of hell, though i hope not." he switched on the light again and went to the side table, where there was a complicated array of wheels and levers, all of which were duplicated in the chamber immediately below and by means of which the commander, watching the picture of the periscope, could control every movement of the boat with his own hands if necessary. he pulled a lever and a bell clanged. at once the loud purring of the electric engines ceased. bernard pulled over another and larger lever with both hands. i suddenly felt myself slipping backwards, until i fetched up against the wall of the conning-tower, narrowly missing the opening to the steersman's chamber. "by jove! i forgot to tell you," said bernard. "you see, i've stopped the electric engines and jammed over the horizontal rudders. we're slanting up to the surface--look!" immediately in front of me and a little above my head, i now saw round portholes filled with amazingly thick, toughened glass. these had been quite black and had escaped my notice before. now, as i watched, they grew a little lighter. click! and the lamp went out. the portholes were grey now, grey melting into green, which grew brighter and brighter until it turned into a froth of soda-water, and then there was nothing but white sky. there was a slight jerk and the floor seemed to right itself. "we're just awash now, but we'll get above water." again the ring of a bell, an order through a speaking-tube. after that came a clang of machinery and an extraordinary bubbling, choking noise, like a giant drinking. "just blown out the water tanks, old soul. feel her lift? now her whale-back is above water and we'll go and say good-morning to the sun, which i perceive is very kindly beginning to show himself. but before that ..." he shouted another order and there came a deafening din from below. bang! bang! bang! till the whole steel hull quivered. "that is the surface engine starting. it'll be all right in a minute," and even as he spoke, the noise subsided into a regular throb. it was for all the world like a motor car starting on bottom speed and then slipping into top gear. scarlett came hurrying up into the conning-tower and he and my brother unlocked the sliding hatch. in a minute we had emerged into the keen air of the morning. how fresh and sweet it seemed to me it is impossible to say. the sun was rising. the bitter cold of the marshes had gone. the small waves were flecked with gold as we stood upon the wet steel plates and drank in the air as if it had been wine. "an ideal day for a submarine action!" bernard said, rubbing his hands. "there's just enough ripple on the surface to make us difficult to detect, and yet it is smooth enough to give me a clear view. this boat is beautifully trimmed, she doesn't roll a bit. i'll send those boys up in a minute or two, but meanwhile i've got to play a bit of bluff. a lot depends on it." i nodded. it was not my place to ask questions. "you see," he went on, "of course the german battleship expects us. i know exactly the spot in the north sea where we are supposed to pick her up some time after lunch--provided, of course, that the germans have carried out their plans successfully and our scouts really have been decoyed away. it is part of a huge scheme. "well, assuming that their own plans are successful, they will be on the look-out for us and they'll send us a wireless message when we're within close range. this will be some prearranged signal, a single letter repeated a certain number of times or something of that sort, so that any of our ships picking it up would not know what it meant. we've got a wireless mast on board which can be shoved up at will and there's a complete installation in a little room down below next to the cook's galley. unfortunately there is not one of us who knows anything about wireless. bosustow is a capable electrician and could control the machinery, but he can't understand the signals. therefore, when we sight the _friesland_--and i want to get as near her as possible so as to make no mistakes--we must signal with flags. "i've got their signal book and in it is a special code made for this occasion. the flags are in the flag locker all right, but i don't understand a word of german and none of us here do, so i'm going to put the fear of god into our friend, karl of the portsmouth royal. a lot depends on that. "just skip down, young john, and tell scarlett to bring him up here." "aye, aye, sir!" i said--it came to me quite naturally, i didn't think about it--and i climbed down into the interior of the submarine. scarlett was standing by the starboard torpedo tube, while the dickson brothers, with their backs turned to me, were chuckling delightedly. i heard a fragment of the conversation. "... and so, sir, i ses to the gal, molly her name was, they used to call her the belle of south-sea pier, 'molly,' i ses, 'you're a little bit of all right, but ...'" i cut short that anecdote. my pedagogic instincts awoke and i forgot that the dicksons were now brevet officers of the king. a sharp order did it. the two lads turned away and began to be ostentatiously busy, while scarlett, his face did not belie his name at that moment, pattered along the grating, caught hold of the ex-german waiter with unnecessary roughness, and kicked him towards the ladder of the conning-tower. i went up first, and when karl emerged he stood to attention with a very pale face, though i did not miss a quick glance round the horizon. my brother was looking down upon a shining magazine pistol in his hand. then he raised his head and his voice grated like a file. "look here, you karl, or whatever you call yourself, you're a spy!" there was a torrent of expostulation. "no, sir, not a spy; i never was that. i was a reservist in our navy. i was called out and i had to go. i'm a prisoner of war, sir, that's what i am." my brother shook his head. "you can't prove that," he said, "and the circumstances are most suspicious. i spared you last night, thinking you might be useful, and you certainly made some very good coffee this morning. but i've come to the conclusion ..."--he lifted the pistol. i had had my brother's word for it that karl was an excellent head-waiter. my own observations showed me that he was a coward, for he fell on his knees and tears began to stream from his eyes. my brother spat over the side in disgust and i kicked the fellow up to attention again. "well, i'll give you one more chance before shooting you out of hand. you must come down with me and translate the german in the flag signal book. you must tell me all you know about the plans of your late commander. then, if you make us a good breakfast--i thought i saw some tinned sausages and some marmalade in your rack--i may possibly not shoot you, though i shall tie you up when we go into action. at any rate, you will have the same chance as the rest of us." the fellow's gratitude was painful to see. he was all smiles and obsequiousness at once, and so that little matter was concluded satisfactorily. we had our breakfast, and an excellent one it was, all sharing alike. afterwards i went up on deck with the dicksons. we saw the sails of two trawlers a mile away on the port bow, but save for them the sea was deserted. the boys were in high spirits. not a thought of what was to come troubled them for a moment. "just think, sir," said dickson max., "what a bit of luck to be in for a rag like this!" but i won't recount any more of their joyous prattle. it was real enough. they had not a trace of fear, but underlying everything there was a deep seriousness that had made them men in a few short hours. * * * * * for two hours i worked hard with bosustow at the engines. there was lots to do. the gauges of the petrol tanks needed attention. there were many details which would only interest an engineer were i to recount them. at a quarter to twelve i went forward with my brother. we were still on the surface--heading fast for our destination--and saw the port and starboard torpedo tubes loaded. it was astonishing how the dicksons had picked up something of their work, and bernard was very pleased. at twelve we lunched and a tot of rum was served out to the three sailors. everything was now ship-shape. we were all dressed in uniforms of the dead crew. we tied up karl and lashed him securely in his galley. then, adams being at the wheel in the lower portion of the conning-tower, my brother assembled us aft, by the clanging petrol engines. "in ten minutes," he said, "i shall sound 'prepare for action,' and from that time onwards you will be at your posts. i believe we are going to surprise the germans and surprise the whole world. i believe we are going to save england from this raid. but we've got to remember that we may not pull it off. i am very pleased, more than pleased, with all you have done. i never want to command a better crew. it is the best scratch crew in naval history. we are only seven and we ought to be fifteen, but that does not matter. we have shown it does not matter, already. now before we get to quarters i think we ought to remember what day this is. it happens to be sunday." i am ashamed to say we all looked up in surprise, but so it was. "well," my brother continued, "by good luck, i happen to have a prayer-book in my pocket and i am going to read a bit of the service and the ninety-first psalm." very straight and stiff, he pulled out a battered little book and began. this is not a scene i wish to linger on, but you will understand my reasons. after the last sonorous amen, bernard said: "well, we've said our prayers and we've thought of our wives and--and of our girls. that is all i have got to say." he nodded to scarlett and a shrill whistle--the trumpet of the navy--rang and rattled through the tube. the two boys and scarlett went forward to the torpedoes. adams was called down from the steering wheel to assist bosustow at the engines. my brother ordered me up into the conning-tower by his side. "you'll be of more help to me here," he said. "i shall control the ship entirely myself, but i may want your assistance. watch me carefully in case i have to go below at any moment." at twelve-thirty precisely, the gasolene engines were stopped. bernard filled the tanks, slightly deflected the horizontal rudders, and we dived into the smooth, green wall of an approaching swell and sank to ten feet. the light was switched off, the periscope rose, and we bent over the white table, white no longer. at five minutes to one the picture of the empty sea was altered. our range of vision was about two miles, and at that distance to the north-east we observed a cloud of smoke upon the horizon. "there she is!" i said, and put my finger upon the rapidly growing smear. within twenty minutes, a large battleship raised her hull, making directly towards us. we altered our course a little, and as we swerved i could see she had four funnels which grew larger every moment. of her accompanying flotilla and of the transports we could see nothing at all. then we rose to the surface. our short-handedness became apparent at once. adams had to be called from the engines to stand at the wheel. scarlett and my brother went on deck as i was useless at the manipulation of flags. it was a critical moment. "i am determined to take no chances," bernard said; "that is why i am risking signalling. we could probably get her without showing at all, but as she expects us and will lay to for us, we can make it absolutely certain." he had the signal book, over which he had pencilled translations of the german, in his hand. "that flag, scarlett--'wireless out of order,' it means." that flag ran up a steel halliard bent to the top of the conning-tower. "ah, they see us!" scarcely three-quarters of a mile away, the great battleship was moving at a snail's pace. her decks were crowded with men--in the clear sunlight i could see every detail. a piece of bunting ran up her mast in a ball and opened to the breeze. "i'm damned if i know what it means, but it's obviously all right. now then, scarlett, the black flag with the white stripe. that means 'am successfully bringing despatches'--got it?--good!" there was another signal from the battleship, to which we had now approached within half a mile. the smoke from her funnels had almost ceased. she was lying to and waiting. slowly we forged onwards. then came a sharp order. we jumped back into the conning-tower and the sliding hatchway closed. scarlett had gone like a flash to his torpedo tubes, and we dived. we sank in just a hundred and fifty seconds. "good!" said bernard, as the periscope panted up and the battleship lay on the table before us. the hum and tick of the electric motors began again. bernard turned his wheel and the picture of the battleship opened out in full broadside. "they don't know what to make of it," he remarked, to himself, rather than to me. "now, i think--steady--steady ..." the ship grew larger every moment, higher and higher. it seemed as if she was rising out of the water. "now!"--he leant over a speaking tube. he had hardly given his order when a bell rang smartly, close by my head. i heard staccato voices below in the bows of the submarine, and then the clang and swish of the discharge. we were only three hundred yards away. a white streak appeared shooting towards the monster, like a spear of foam. it was so quick that i could hardly have followed it with my finger upon the table. chapter xi the submarine fights for england can you imagine a narrow belt of foam, rushing over the sea like a live thing with irresistible and sinister suggestion of _something_ terrible below? that is what i saw as i stared down at the toy theatre, the little, coloured microcosm. then the inevitable happened. _der friesland_ was struck full amidships. a wall of white water rose up out of the sea. above it, in an instant, spread a huge black fan of smoke, dark as ebony against the sun. at that moment, my brother put the helm hard down and we flew off at an angle. even as we did so, it seemed that the side of our ship received a terrific blow. we lurched in the conning-tower; we were flung against the starboard wall. there was a nerve-wracking pause, and then, with a jerk, the submarine righted herself, simultaneously as the faintest indication of a mighty explosion fell through the water and came through our armoured walls. "too close!" my brother gasped. "i ought to have allowed for these german torpedoes--look, john, look!" the recoil from the explosion of _der friesland_ had nearly sent us to the bottom, but we were righted again, and we saw upon the table, quivering and indistinct, a piteous mass of unrecognisability, wreathed in black fumes, from which flared out angry bursts of fire, like vesuvius in eruption. all this horror was sinking--sinking into the table, it seemed. blazing all over, broken in two, the wreck of the monster went lower and lower in the water. she was done. bernard gave a great sob, and then hoarse orders rang through the submarine. within two minutes we were upon the surface. the hatch was open. my brother and myself stood there, gasping in the sunlight at the ruin we had made. the sea was covered with debris and dotted with the heads of swimming sailors. there was one boat afloat, crammed with men, under whose weight it hesitated, trembled, and sank like a stone, as we looked on. "good god!" i cried, "can't we help them, bernard?" "no can do," he answered, in navy slang. "it can't be done, old soul. that's that. i'm damned sorry though." we were rolling in a grey sea, churned by the monster's dying struggles. it was a desolate waste, patched with horror. far away, on the port bow, something small and blurred was showing. it was either smoke or the hull of a big ship. "the first transport!" bernard said. "we had better be ..." he did not finish his sentence. something shrieked overhead like an invisible express train. there was a sound like a clap of thunder, and a fountain of spray rose a hundred yards away from us. we wheeled round. not quarter of a mile away, and heading straight for us, we saw two immense, white ostrich feathers, divided as by the blade of a knife. each instant they grew larger. one of the convoying destroyers had made a grand detour and was coming for us at the charge. then, i cannot say when or how, there was a sound like two great hands clapping together in the air above us. instantaneously, the plates of the deck and conning-tower rang like gongs, followed by little splashing sounds, as if someone was throwing eggs. i had no idea what it was. "what the devil ..." i was beginning, when bernard explained. "shrapnel," he said, and held out his left arm to me. it ended in what looked like a bundle of crimson rags. "damn the blighters!" he said, "they've blown off my left hand. quick, john, or we shall lose the trick. your handkerchief!" i pulled it out mechanically. "knot it round my arm--yes--there--just above the wrist. thank god you're strong! now then, you've got to twist it. got anything for a lever?" the only thing i could find was a silver-mounted fountain pen, a christmas present from doris the year before. i whipped it into the knot of the handkerchief, turned it round and secured it. the whole thing did not take more than ten seconds. i had hardly finished, when bernard skipped inside the conning-tower. i followed him. the hatchway slid into its place with a clang, and as we heard another terrific explosion above us, i wrenched the rudder lever over, bernard signalled below to fill the tanks, and through the portholes i saw the welcome green creep up, the light disappear, and felt the gratings sinking beneath my feet. i shouted down for dickson--the first name i could think of. dickson max. was up in a second. "get the bottle of rum," i said, "the captain's hurt." it came. i held it to my brother's lips. he took a little and gave one deep groan. dickson max. stood like a statue. he never asked a question. it was wonderful. "who fired that torpedo?" bernard asked. "i did, sir. mr. scarlett showed me how." "you will be pleased to know, mr. dickson, that you have sunk the german battleship, _der friesland_, with probably a thousand souls on board. this will be remembered." "you are hurt, sir?" "get down to the torpedo tubes. load the empty one and stand by for orders." dickson vanished. "are you all right?" i asked. "right as rain. now then, we've got to find those transports. i took their bearings before we sank. meanwhile i think we'll get a little deeper, out of harm's way." he told me what to do. i pulled the necessary lever and spoke orders to bosustow at the engines. the needle on the manometer quivered and rose. we went down to thirty feet. immediately, it seemed as if the world above, the noise of battle, everything, faded away. we were buzzing along in the depths of the sea, just as we had been, intact, unhurt, until i looked at bernard's hand. he was rather pale, but as pleased in face as if he was just tumbling into the "sawdust club" at portsmouth. "i say," he said, "won't the daily papers spread themselves over this!" somehow or other, a beastly little fly must have got into the conning-tower. it settled on me. i put up my hand to brush it away. my hand came back--pink, and i stared stupidly at it. "you silly blighter!" my brother said, "didn't you know you'd lost half your ear?" i suppose we ran, deep under water, at the top speed of which the motors were capable for at least another ten minutes. adams was called up to the wheel and bernard went down. i stood where i was until the man below shouted up. "captain calling for you, sir!" i tumbled down into the centre of the submarine, looking first aft to where the huge cornishman, bosustow, was quietly moving about his engines. "forrard, sir," said bosustow, and i hastened round the gangway towards the bows. scarlett, the dicksons, and bernard were standing by the torpedo tubes. bernard turned to me. "that concussion has snookered our tubes a bit," he said. "you see we aren't quite accustomed to this new german mechanism. scarlett says, and i quite agree, that it's a toss up if we can make correct aim under water. i think we shall have to go for that transport on the surface." he looked at me with quick interrogation. i knew what he meant. already we had done more than anyone in the world would have thought possible. it was no time for sentimentalism or heroic thoughts, and we knew that, whatever happened, we had earned imperishable fame. we were safe now. should we run another risk? that was what my brother was asking me. even his iron nerve doubted itself for an instant. "the only thing i can see to do," i answered, "is to let 'em have it in the open--out of the trenches, bayonet attack, what?" "my own opinion entirely, sir," said scarlett. "damn it, begging your pardon, sir, we've not 'alf give 'em it yet!" for a moment my brother's glance rested on the two eager boys. was he justified in flinging them to death after they had done so much, behaved so splendidly? they knew it. by some intuition, the young devils saw it at once. "oh, let's have another smack at them, sir!" they said in chorus. without another word, bernard limped along the gratings and i helped him up into the conning-tower again. we rose to the surface. the stars in their courses fought for sisera! when we went out on deck, the first transport was scarcely a mile away from us on the starboard quarter. we had judged it to a tick. but she was no longer heading west. she had turned tail. she was a hamburg-amerika liner converted to a transport, and thick black smoke poured out of her four funnels as she raced back towards heligoland and safety. "she's got nearly three thousand troops on board, i'll bet you a manhattan," bernard said. "we _must_ get her, we simply must!" turning to the west, we saw at least five destroyers rushing for us like express trains. whether they had seen us come up or not i cannot tell, but they knew well enough what our manoeuvre would be, and they were not a mile and a half away. "get down. tell bosustow to cram it all on. increase the spark. we've got to do twenty knots if we scrap the whole thing." i was there in a moment, i told bosustow what the skipper had said. the big man was quietly chewing tobacco, and he spat down on the accumulators as he made a motion to salute. he moved like a slug over his roaring engines, but even as he did so, the angry hum, the muffled explosions, rose into a steel symphony like tchaikovsky's "1812"! i felt the ship leap forward like a whippet out of leash. when i stumbled up on deck again, the wind was whistling all round the conning-tower. it blew my cap off into the sea. we gained, we gained enormously, but so did the pursuing destroyers. we soon knew that. there were sounds behind us like a little street-boy whistling to a friend. they were firing their bow machine guns, taking no careful aim, at the fearful pace they were going, but all around us fountains of foam rose in the sea as we plunged onwards. "you know, john," said my brother, "it's a difficult thing for any gunners at all to fire their bow chasers at a little bobbing thing like a submarine. of course, they may get us with a lucky shot, but i don't think they will." they didn't. the great liner saw us coming and slanted off obliquely to the north. it wasn't any use at all. we had the heels of her, though we knew that at any moment our engines might give out, owing to the fearful strain we were putting on them. it was scarlett who fired the torpedo--"must let the old blighter have his chance!" my brother said--and it went straight and true to the _princessin amalia_, as we afterwards learned she was. i think that was the worst of all. we torpedoed her from six hundred yards. there was no explosion, as there was in the case of the battleship. we could see everything far more distinctly. she simply broke in two and sank in three minutes, defenceless, impotent. "poor chaps!" i said, as we watched. "fortune of war!" bernard answered--"yes, poor chaps! at the same time, remember that they're the same sort of fellows who have been crucifying flappers in belgium and taking out the whole male population of harmless villages and shooting them before breakfast. they would have been doing that all over norfolk in thirty hours, if"--he paused--"if you hadn't been rejected by the r.n.f.c. and also been the right hand of the late lamented doctor upjelly. we must get down quickly, or else ..." he had turned and was holding his binoculars to his eyes. "good heavens!" he said, "what's that?" i turned, and i saw that the five destroyers were sweeping away in a great curve to the north. they were pursuing us no longer. "what is it?" i cried. the answer didn't come from my brother, though i heard it plainly enough. it was like thunder many miles away--a huge, dull boom such as i had never heard before. "why, they're running!" "i should rather think so, old soul!" "are they afraid of us? what is that noise?" "that, my dear young friend, unless i am very much mistaken, is one of the twelve-inch guns of his majesty's ship, _vengeance_. cruiser-battleship, young john. i happen to know she's been lying off harwich for the last week, waiting orders. our friend, lieutenant murphy, has sent my wires to good purpose, and 'now we shan't be long!'" again the great, menacing boom, but this time we saw something. from the deck of a submarine the range of vision is only two miles. the last destroyer was almost disappearing on the horizon, when she suddenly jumped out of the sea and fell to pieces like a pack of cards. "that's old snorty bethune-ranger!" my brother said, wagging his head gravely. "best gunner commander in the fleet, and i know he's on board the _vengeance_. now don't you think we'll have the boys up and let 'em chortle a bit?" "i'll go and call them." i was just going in when i was gripped by the arm so hard that i winced. "look there!" said my brother. i followed his pointing right arm and saw something far up in the sky, something like a crow, which grew larger every second. "one of their hydroplanes, off the deck of the second transport. she's going to try and drop bombs on us." "will she do it?" "can a duck bark?" bernard answered contemptuously. "of course, she may be lucky, but it's never happened yet. the worst of it is that they can see us thirty feet below the surface. still, old sport, she can't do much--hear her coming?" i did. there was a noise like a motor-bicycle in the sky, and the crow grew to an eagle, developed into an aeroplane, such as i had seen so often in the illustrated papers. "i suppose we'd better submerge, though i don't want to run from a beastly mechanical kite, after sinking kaiser bill's lovin' enthusiastic soldiers, all in the box, complete, one shilling! i say, john, would you like a little bit of sport?" "what do you mean?" "well, i don't suppose this fellow is going to do us any harm, and any way, it's a toss up. now you rather pride yourself as a wild-fowler, don't you?" "if i hadn't been a wild-fowler," i said, "we shouldn't have been where we are now." "quite so. now, there's a rack of excellent rifles down below, and dozens of clips; see if you can't pick this johnny off." he bellowed down through the hatch. "bring up a magazine rifle and some ammunition. look sharp!" i got the rifle in a few seconds. i think we were both perfectly reckless. i know i was. i laughed as i tucked the gun into my shoulder. there was a complicated arrangement of sights, but i never even snapped up the foresight. it did not seem worth while; the mark was so big. the hydroplane fetched a sweep of quarter of a mile round us, and then came head on. i could see the pilot distinctly and, a little below him, the gentleman who was getting ready to drop his bombs. it was quite delightful. they were not going at a higher speed than a flock of widgeon. to me, it was child's play. i plugged the bomb expert with the second shot. then, and i really rather pride myself on what i did next, i hit the long, sausage-like petrol tank and ripped it up. there was a huge roar, an overhead explosion, and as the whole beastly thing turned a somersault and fell, i am pretty certain, too, that i put the pilot out of his pain with my last shot. * * * * * we were surrounded by ships--they had come racing north out of harwich just in time. the big _vengeance_ was still booming away, but two snaky-like destroyers were coming up hell for leather and a big seven thousand ton cruiser was not more than three hundred yards from us. puff! puff! a white pinnace, with a shining brass funnel, swirled round and came up on our quarter. my brother and myself, together with the two dickson boys, were standing by the conning-tower. the pinnace was full of men. it was steered by a youngish-looking, clean-shaved officer, wearing the badges of a lieutenant. adams, scarlett, and bosustow were over the side in a minute, a coil of rope ran out, boat-hooks appeared from nowhere. there was a subdued hum of chatter, as the men from the cruiser greeted the three heroes of the submarine. then i heard a sharp and rather squeaky voice. "hallo, whelk!" it said. bernard leant over the rail; he was nearly done, but he found voice to answer that hail. "that you, reptile?" he muttered, "you are more like a stuffed frog than ever!" such are the greetings and amenities of the navy. but the last thing i remember hearing that afternoon came from the lieutenant in charge of the pinnace. "i say, excuse me for mentioning it, but 'well done,' you fellows!" chapter xii the last chapter--in two parts part i.--doris and marjorie have a late visitor note.--i have certainly written this chapter--with a pen, that is. neither my brother's wife nor my own actually set down a word of the following. i am not responsible, and i will say no more. you will understand why when you have read this last chapter. if i were the usual sort of poopstick that often lurks behind such a story, i should say: "this is put in at the request of my friends." it is not. it is done simply to tell you the end of our little affairs, and rather more with my heart in my mouth than my tongue in my cheek.--j. c. it was sunday night in lieutenant murphy's house at cockthorpe. the wires had worked. by dawn there was an army of police from norwich in a fleet of motor cars. they invested morstone house school. old mr. pugmire, startlingly sober for once, was placed in charge of the boarders, who were all sent home during the course of the next day. another, and more dangerous reprobate, mrs. gaunt with the broken leg, was interrogated by a stern-faced inspector in the presence of a doctor. the hag had been in von vedal's confidence for years. the police learned much. by ten o'clock, others than the county police had arrived. there were clean-shaved, quiet-mannered officials from the admiralty. there was a lean, elderly gentleman in khaki, with the red band round his cap and on his shoulders which pronounced him of the war office staff. admiral kiderlen-waechter and the man, schweitzer, were in norwich castle by eleven. the whole countryside and coastline buzzed like swarming bees. a detachment of territorials patrolled the village. nobody knew anything at all of what had really happened, but everyone was very excited. all the local people agreed that there had not been a sunday like this for many years! doris and marjorie joyce were at cockthorpe, in the lieutenant's house. they were being looked after by mrs. murphy, a jolly old irishwoman with all the tact and humour of her nation--a woman who knew when to foil hysteria with a jest, to hearten a girl with a sharp word, and, when the final interrogation was over, to invite the warm relieving flood of tears with the instinctive motherhood of one who nightly prayed to mary to pray for those in distress. the girls were troubled very little. the lieutenant of the coastguards had seen almost everything. there would not be an inquest for two or three days. they had made their statement to a courteous person from london. they were to be left in peace. after lunch the old lady came to them--came to the little sitting-room which opened out of the bedroom she had given them. "now, my dear children," she said, "ye'll just take off your stays and pull down your hair, and i'll tuck ye in under the eiderdown, and ye'll sleep!" she had two tumblers in her plump hands, upon which sparkled many rings--the irish carbuncles, which are so much larger and more brilliant than mere rubies, the ballysheen emeralds, "which you can only find at ballysheen, me dear, and glad the jewellers of regent street would be if they could get a supply of 'em! faith! and the doctor has given me this for you. bromide to calm the nerves--not that i ever had any nerves, meself, when i was your age! but i never had a crool stepfather lying dead in an adjacent village, nor was mixed up with spies, though in the sin-fein riots of '84--marjorie, me darlint, take your shoes off. now then, i'll tuck ye both up and pull down the blinds to keep out the sunlight, though it's shutters i would be putting up when i was a gurl!" it was like a fairy story, and mrs. murphy was the good mrs. bedonebyasyoudid: "the children sank into a deep, dreamless sleep." poor dears, how they must have wanted it after all they had been through! i can see them lying there.... (excision by censor and pencil note in the margin of the manuscript: "john carey, you liar, don't obtrude yourself and your sickly sentiments.") * * * * * it was about six when doris and marjorie awoke. they came out of the bedroom into the sitting-room adjoining. a bright fire burnt upon the hearth with that clear redness which indicates a dry and frosty night. on a little table there was an equipage of tea, and a copper kettle sang gently. these two girls were essentially healthy and plucky. the semi-imprisoned life they had led at morstone house school had broken nothing of their spirit. the death--the righteous execution--of the man who had hurried their mother into her grave affected them not at all. they were too brave and fine to affect an emotion that they did not, could not, feel. all that had happened in the large, l-shaped house was hideous and horrible, yet not to be overmuch remembered or deplored. they had another subject of discussion, these two beautiful sisters. "doris, it was desperate from the first." "yes, it was, marjorie." "then, do you think----?" "that they will come out all right, you mean?" "yes, do you?" "my red-haired sister," doris answered, "if you go on like this i'll be bound to bite!" "of course, commander carey knows all about submarines, and he's one of the bravest officers...." "yes, i rather like bernard myself." "you _rather like_ him, doris!" "well, you haven't known him as long as i've known john. what price johnny, my sweet young sister, and what about the bold, brave dickson max. and dickson major?" they kept it up for a minute or two very well, and then their arms went round each other, and one sister held the other close. the bell from the adjacent church tolled for evensong. it was a lovely night, cold and clear with a great, round, green moon. mrs. murphy mercifully left them alone. they heard the front door close, and saw her rolling up the path towards the church, a long, dark façade with lit windows. as if in a dream, the girls heard the droning murmur of the psalms. their thoughts were far away with a little band of heroes. there was a long pause--it must have been the sermon--and then came a deep, swelling sound. the congregation were singing the last hymn, and it was "for those in peril on the sea." they clasped hands and went to the window, opening it wide to the moonlight. the simple, familiar music flooded into the room. * * * * * bang! bang! bang! the door burst open. it was midnight, and mrs. murphy, in an appalling night-cap and a magenta dressing-gown, was standing by the girls' beds. "get ye up! get ye up!--no, don't bother about your hair, it's well enough as it is. the saints be praised--hush, ye'll not say a word, for i'm a good protestant here, for murphy's sake, and an old gazaboo the clergyman is, to be shure!--but there's a gintleman come down in a big automobile to see you. wirra, phwat news!" while she was shouting and gesticulating, the old lady had pulled doris and marjorie out of their beds, and was wrapping them up in their dressing-gowns with shaking fingers. "news?" doris gasped--"news of john?" "news that'll shake england, aye, and doblin too, to its foundations." "bernard?" marjorie said unsteadily. "ye'll kindly come along with me," said mrs. murphy, and a strange procession went down the stairs into the hall. the three servants of the house were bundled into one corner, and the less said about their attire the better. lieutenant murphy, in his uniform, was trying to light candles, and his wrinkled face was brighter than the flaring, smoking lamp which hung from the ceiling. in the centre of the hall was a tall, clean-shaved, youngish-looking man. he held a cocked hat in one hand and wore a uniform of dead black-blue. directly the old lady rolled down the stairs, followed by the frightened girls, this new-comer made a step forward. his manners were perfect, and he bowed as if he were at court. "miss joyce?--miss marjorie joyce?" "faith, and they're the same, the very gurrls!" said mrs. murphy. "i am sent by the first lord, ladies, to give you some news, which i understand will be most welcome. lieutenant-commander bernard carey, mr. john carey, the two young gentlemen named dickson, and commander carey's three sailors, scarlett, adams and bosustow, have covered themselves with glory." doris was splendid. "ah!" she said, "we were waiting for this, my sister and myself. are they, are they--?" she could not go on. "madam, they are all safe and sound. commander carey is slightly wounded--that is all. they have engaged in action with the great german battleship, _der friesland_, and sunk her. they have sunk a transport. they have evaded a flotilla of german destroyers. in short, they have saved england. our flotilla came up just in time. the admiralty have had wireless messages during the whole of the afternoon." hitherto, the officer--he looked thirty-five, was really fifty, and the son of a duke--had spoken formally. "then?" marjorie sighed. "then, it just amounts to this. no more glorious deed had ever been done in the whole history of our navy, from the days of sir francis drake down to this moment. i was privileged to be at the palace a few hours ago when the news was brought. each member of the crew of the submarine is to receive the victoria cross. it is not only by order of the first lord of the admiralty, but also by express command of his majesty that i have motored down here to-night to bring you the news. my instructions are to ask you if you will accompany me to-morrow to harwich, for we expect and hope that, during the earlier part of the afternoon...." "they will come back!" marjorie shouted. "precisely," said lord william, "and, of course, you must be there to meet them!" "gurrls, i'll chaperone ye! now, get back to bed, and sleep--if ye can. shure, and i'm ashamed of ye appearin' in such dishybayle!" concluded the merry old lady, with a wink. she stood at the foot of the stairs and hooshed her young charges away. then she turned to her guest. "ye'll forgive an old woman appearin' like this," she said simply. "pathrick, take lord william into the dining-room, and we'll make him some supper in a moment. we're all friends in the navy." her voice changed and became very grave. "blessings on you," she said, "that have brought the good news to this house and to those dear gurrls this night!" part ii.--return of the seven heroes it was a tall man with black hair, dark eyes and a pinched face. his black, clerical clothes were rather rusty in the bright morning sunlight, though they were his best. "the young beggars!" he said, "the young beggars!" and there was a catch in his voice. "a commission for both of them and a special allowance, did you say, lord william?" "the admiralty could do no less, mr. dickson. we want a thousand lads like yours, if we could only get them. not that any officer of their age in the navy wouldn't have done the same, but their names will be for ever glorious in the history of the service. it is a feat that england will never willingly forget. you know that they, as well as the rest, are to have the victoria cross?" mr. dickson stared, as if he saw something at a great distance. "no," he said, "i didn't know that--er--excuse me for a moment." the clergyman turned away to the window of the admiral's office, which overlooked harwich harbour, and his shoulders were shaking. "_lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen----_" "shure, and they can't be long now, the admiral says," came from mrs. murphy, sitting in the admiral's chair, at the admiral's table, with all sorts of confidential documents spread in front of her. "pathrick is to have the rank of captain for the part he's tuk in it, though that was pure luck and him being on the spot. and, bedad, we'll have that motor cyar--and i never did see why a mere docthor's wife like mrs. pestle, and him little better than a vetherinary surgeon, should keep a cyar when an officer in his majesty's navy couldn't!" the admiral in command at harwich, a grizzled sailor who had been called up from his peaceful devon home to leave his pheasants and fat cattle, came into the room, rubbing his hands. "well, they'll have the reception of their lives, young ladies," he said beaming; and, with a clank of his sword as he sat down, "mrs. murphy, if you attempt to read any of the papers on that table, i shall regretfully be compelled to have you shot, which will mar the festivity of the occasion! my dears, a special train full of journalists has just come down from town. there are thousands of people flocking to the quays in the spaces provided, and what the papers are saying about our friends will astonish you." he produced a copy of the _daily wire_ and opened it, while they all crowded round to look. modern journalism had secured a triumph. short as the time had been, there were columns and columns of description of the events at morstone of which hardly anybody had been allowed to know anything--and the battle in the north sea, about which nobody knew but the admiralty. there were portraits of the two dickson boys, each apparently about twelve years of age and in broad eton collars. there was a truculent, prize-fighting individual, with distinct side-whiskers, labelled, "mr. john carey, m.a., the heroic schoolmaster who slew the master-spy, 'doctor upjelly,' with his own hands." a smudge on the top of a uniform represented lieutenant-commander bernard carey--also "heroic," with sundry other adjectives; and if those excellent plymouth ladies, mrs. bosustow, mrs. scarlett and mrs. adams, had seen the people represented in the newspaper as their lords and masters walk into paradise row, devonport, they certainly would not have known them. doris gasped. "to call that _john_!" she said; "what a wicked libel! couldn't the editor be arrested?" "an editor is one of the people whom nothing can arrest," said the admiral. "'_in rebus desperatis remedia desperata_,' which means 'what the public wants, the public must have, however short the time in which to fake it up.'" there was a knock at the door, and a young officer entered, saluting. "destroyers sighted, sir," he said, not without an appreciative glance at the two pretty girls close by. he handed a piece of paper to the admiral, adding: "just come in by wireless from the _arethusa_, sir." the old gentleman with the pointed beard and clanking sword read it. he chuckled. "well," he said, "the public is going to have some fun for its money, for commander carey is coming into harbour on board _his own_ boat. now, then, suppose we all go out to the signalling station at the end of the mole and get the first sight of them?" * * * * * half a dozen clouds of black smoke upon the horizon, growing larger and larger every minute; a great murmur of the crowd; officers in dress uniform with binoculars at their eyes; a group of journalists in hard felt hats, making notes!... now the destroyers can be seen in a half-circle, with three great ships in the background. "the transports!" the admiral said--"from seven to eight thousand germans in them--what a haul! look, mrs. murphy, that is the cruiser _arethusa_ by the side of them. i expect they had a handful in disarming all those chaps, and they must be pretty short-handed on board the whole flotilla, for they'll have had to send a lot of men aboard those two liners. fine boats, the new light cruisers, _captain_ murphy?" the old lieutenant of coastguards flushed with pleasure. "never had a chance to go to sea in one of them, sir," he said--"long after my time, i am sorry to say." "look!" marjorie whispered to doris, "they're opening out. isn't it wonderful? how near they're getting! it's just like a figure in the lancers." doris did not answer for a moment. then she said:--"what's that, right in the middle?" the admiral overheard her. "you've quick eyes, young lady," he answered; "that, unless i am very much mistaken, is a certain submarine, lately in possession of the kaiser, and which people are talking about a good deal just now!" it was so. the destroyers slowed down, and made a great lane upon the sea. in the centre of this lane was something infinitely small, a black speck, like a cork floating on the water. it grew and grew. then, from somewhere not far away, there was the heavy boom of a gun. immediately, the air was rent with a noise like hundreds of bellowing bulls as all the ships at anchor opened their steam-sirens until the very stone quays trembled. the cheers of thousands of voices, the wild tossing of hats into the air, the fluttering of hand-kerchiefs like sudden snow; and then, the submarine, its whale-back ploughing through the harbour waters, a white wake of foam behind it, came into full view. from the periscope fluttered two little flags, black and white. in half a minute the cheering, delirious crowd saw what they were. "the skull and cross-bones, by jove--two of 'em!" said a young lieutenant on the admiral's staff to his friend, a newly promoted commander. "so it is! how on earth did they get those on board a german submarine?" "someone of resource on board has spent a happy hour or two on the cruise home." the young gentleman was right, but he did not know that dickson max.'s shirt and the back of dickson major's coat were the materials used by mr. scarlett, who was very handy with his needle. "here they come!" "here they come!" "here they come" "hurrah!" "hurrah!" bang! went a whole salvo of guns. upon the deck of the submarine was a little group of four figures, and, if the truth must be told, four dirtier and more shame-faced human beings have rarely made a public appearance. "those must be the boys," the lieutenant shouted in his friend's ear. the other nodded. he was staring at the submarine. "by jove!" he cried, "there's the 'whelk,' the good old whelk! look at him! we were at osborne together, and he always swore he liked the beastly things--so the name stuck to him. that other chap must be his brother, i suppose--the schoolmaster johnny." "good old whe-e-lk!" he shouted, his hands to his mouth. the lieutenant had never been shipmates with bernard carey. also, his eyes were elsewhere. he twitched his friend's arm. "i say," he said, in an awed voice, "look at the faces of those two girls!" the commander did so. "lucky old whelk!" the end printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. edinburgh & london internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 42618-h.htm or 42618-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42618/42618-h/42618-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42618/42618-h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/ladyoflynn00besaiala transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). text enclosed by equal signs was printed with a line through it, that is, the letters were printed as struck out. [illustration: "gratitude, my lord, to you," he replied.] the lady of lynn by sir walter besant author of "all sorts and conditions of men," "the orange girl," etc. with illustrations new york . dodd, mead and company . . . 1901 copyright, 1900 by sir walter besant the caxton press new york. contents chap. page prologue 1 i. my lord's levee 15 ii. the lady anastasia 29 iii. the "society" of lynn 34 iv. the grand discovery 42 v. the port of lynn 48 vi. the maid of lynn 55 vii. the poet 64 viii. the opening of the spa 70 ix. sent to the spa 83 x. "of the nicest honour" 97 xi. the humours of the spa 104 xii. the captain's ambition 112 xiii. molly's first minuet 120 xiv. molly's country dance 127 xv. the card room 133 xvi. his lordship's intentions 141 xvii. "in the lisbon trade" 147 xviii. the witch 157 xix. a true friend 163 xx. five o'clock in the morning 172 xxi. molly's second appearance 178 xxii. the abduction 185 xxiii. which way to follow? 196 xxiv. the punishment 201 xxv. a grateful mind 209 xxvi. the last step but one 217 xxvii. the expected blow 224 xxviii. warning 231 xxix. the ardent lover 238 xxx. the secret 246 xxxi. the "society" again 254 xxxii. a respite 262 xxxiii. a wedding 270 xxxiv. a new compact 278 xxxv. what does it mean? 287 xxxvi. the day of fate 293 xxxvii. the bubble and the sky rocket 306 xxxviii. the opinion of counsel 312 xxxix. the fruits of submission 320 xl. on my return 332 xli. the first and the second confederate 345 xlii. the third and the fourth confederate 355 xliii. the fifth and last confederate 361 prologue promotion and a basting the happiest day of my life, up to that time, because i should be the basest and the most ungrateful of men were i not to confess that i have since enjoyed many days far excelling in happiness that day, was the 20th day of june, in the year of grace, seventeen hundred and forty-seven. for on that day, being my nineteenth birthday, i was promoted, though so young, to be mate, or chief officer, on board my ship, _the lady of lynn_, captain jaggard, then engaged in the lisbon trade. in the forenoon of that day i was on board and on duty. we were taking in our cargo. barges and lighters were alongside and all the crew with the barges were hoisting and heaving and lowering and stowing with a grand yohoing and chanting, such as is common, with oaths innumerable, in the lading and the unlading of a ship. it was my duty to see the casks and crates hoisted aboard and lowered into the hold. the supercargo and the clerk from the counting-house sat at a table on deck and entered in their books every cask, box, chest, or bale. we took aboard and carried away for the use of the portugals or any whom it might concern, turpentine, tar, resin, wool, pig iron and other commodities brought by our ships from the baltic or carried in barges down the river to the port of lynn. these were the things which we took out--what we brought home was wine; nothing but wine; barrels, tuns, pipes, hogsheads, casks of all kinds, containing wine. there would be in our hold wine of malmsey, madeira, teneriffe, canary, alicante, xeres, oporto, bucellas and lisbon; all the wines of spain and portugal; the sweet strong wines to which our people are most inclined, especially our people of norfolk, marshland, fenland, lincoln and the parts around. thanks to the port of lynn and to the ships of lynn engaged in the lisbon trade, there is no place in england where this sweet strong wine can be procured better or at a more reasonable rate. this wine is truly beloved of all classes: it is the joy of the foxhunter after the day's run: of the justices after the ordinary on market day: of the fellows in their dull old colleges at cambridge: of the dean and chapter in the sleepy cathedral close: of the country clergy and the country gentry--yea, and of the ladies when they visit each other. i say nothing in dispraise of rhenish and of bordeaux, but give me the wine that comes home in the bottoms that sail to and from lisbon. all wine is good but that is best which warms the heart and strengthens the body and renews the courage--the wine of spain and portugal. _the lady of lynn_ was a three-masted, full rigged ship of 380 tons, a stout and strong built craft, not afraid of the bay at its worst and wildest, making her six knots an hour with a favourable breeze, therefore not one of your broad slow dutch merchantmen which creep slowly, like noah's ark, over the face of the waters. yet she was full in the beam and capacious in the hold: the more you put into her, the steadier she sat and the steadier she sailed. man and boy i sailed in _the lady of lynn_ for twenty-five years and i ought to know. we made, for the most part, two, but sometimes three voyages in the year, unless we experienced bad weather and had to go into dock. bad weather there is in plenty: storms and chopping winds in the bay: beating up the channel against east winds: things are always uncertain in the north sea; sometimes the ship will be tacking day after day, getting a knot or two in four and twenty hours: and sometimes she will be two or three weeks crossing the wash, which, as everybody knows, is cumbered with shallows, and making way up the ouse when a wind from the south or southeast will keep a ship from reaching her port for days together. to be sure, a sailor pays very little heed to the loss of a few days: it matters little to him whether he is working on board or in port: he is a patient creature, who waits all his life upon a favourable breeze. and since he has no power over the wind and the sea, he accepts whatever comes without murmuring, and makes the best of it. perhaps the wind blows up into a gale and the gale into a storm: perhaps the good ship founders with all hands: nobody pities the sailor: it is all in the day's work: young or old every one must die: the wife at home knows that, as well as the man at sea. she knew it when she married her husband. i have read of turks and pagan mohammedans that they have no fear or care about the future, believing that they cannot change what is predestined. it seems to me a foolish doctrine, because if we want anything we must work for it, or we shall not get it, fate or no fate. but the nearest to the turk in this respect is our english sailor, who will work his hardest in the worst gale that ever blew, and face death without a pang, or a prayer, or a touch of fear, because he trusted his life to the sea and the wind, and he has no power to control the mounting waves or the roaring tempest. it is as if one should say "i make a bargain with the ocean, and with all seas that threaten and every wind that blows." i say to them, "suffer me to make my living on a ship that your winds blow across your seas, and in return i will give you myself and the ship and the cargo--all your own--to take, if you please and whenever you please." it is a covenant between them. sometimes the sailor gets the best of it and spends his old age on dry land, safe after many voyages: sometimes he gets the worst of it, and is taken, ship and all, when he is quite young. he cannot complain. he has made the bargain and must hold to it. but if one could sweep the bed of the ocean and recover among the tangled seaweed and the long sea serpents and monsters the treasures that lie scattered about, how rich the world would be! perhaps (but this is idle talk) the sea might some day say, "i am gorged with the things that mankind call riches. my floor is strewn thick with ribs of ships and skeletons of men; with chests of treasure, bales and casks and cargoes. i have enough. henceforth there shall be no more storms and the ships shall pass to and fro over a deep of untroubled blue with a surface like unto a polished mirror!" idle talk! and who would be a sailor then? we should hand the ships over to the women and apprentice our girls to the trade of setting sails of silk with ropes of ribbons. i will tell you presently how i was so fortunate as to be apprenticed to so fine a craft as _the lady of lynn_. just now it is enough to set down that she was the finest vessel in the little fleet of ships belonging to my young mistress, molly miller, ward of captain crowle. there were eight ships, all her own: _the lady of lynn_, the ship in which i served my apprenticeship; the _jolly miller_, named after her father; the _lovely molly_, after herself; the _joseph and jennifer_, after her parents; the _pride of lynn_, the _beauty of lynn_, the _glory of lynn_, and the _honour of lynn_, all of which you may take, if you like, as named after their owner. molly owned them all. i have to tell you, in this place, why one day in especial must ever be remembered by me as the most surprising and the happiest that i had ever known. i was, therefore, on the quarter-deck on duty when the boy came up the companion saying that the captain wanted to speak to me. so i followed, little thinking of what they had to say, expecting no more than some question about log or cargo, such as the skipper is always putting to his officers. in the captain's cabin, however, i found sitting at the table not only captain jaggard himself, but my old friend and patron, captain crowle. his jolly face was full of satisfaction and good humour, so that it gave one pleasure only to look at him. but he sat upright and assumed the air of dignity which spoke of the quarter-deck. a man who has walked that part of the ship in command doth never lose the look of authority. "john pentecrosse," he began, "i have sent for you in order to inform you that on the recommendation of captain jaggard here--" captain jaggard gravely inclined his head in acquiescence, "and with the consent of miss molly miller, sole proprietor of this good ship, _the lady of lynn_, i have promoted you to the rank of chief officer." "sir!" i cried, overwhelmed, for indeed, i had no reason to expect this promotion for another two or three years. "what can i say?" "we don't want you to say anything, jack, my lad,"--the captain came down from the quarter-deck and became my old friend again. "give me your hand. you're young, but there's never a better sailor afloat, is there, captain jaggard?" "none, captain crowle--none. for his years." "for his years, naturally. he's salt through and through, isn't he, captain jaggard?" "and through, captain crowle." my skipper was a man of grave aspect and few words. "well, then--let us drink the lad's health." and upon that the cabin boy, who needed no further order, dived into the locker, produced a bottle, opened it and placed three glasses. "no better lisbon," said captain jaggard, pouring it out, "goes even to the table of the king--god bless him!" "now, gentlemen," captain crowle pushed a glass to me, "first, a glass to miss molly--my little maid. jack, you've been her playfellow and you're now her servant." "i could ask nothing better, sir." "i know--a good and zealous servant. drink it off--a full glass, running over, to molly miller." we obeyed, nothing loth. "and now, captain jaggard, here's the health of your new mate--long to serve under you--your right hand--your eyes open when you are off the deck--your sailing master--the keeper of your log--jack pentecrosse, i drink to your good luck." * * * * * that was the event which made this day the happiest in my life. another event, of which i thought little at the time, was more important still in the after consequences. this was the humiliation of samuel semple. in the evening, as soon as i could get ashore, i repaired, as in duty bound, to pay my respects to my young mistress. she lived, being captain crowle's ward, in his house, which was the old house with a tower formerly built for some religious purpose. it stands retired from the street, with a fair garden in front, a garden where i had played many hundreds of times with molly when we were boy and girl together. this evening she was sitting in the summerhouse with some needlework. beside her sat her good old black woman, nigra. "jack!" she dropped her work and jumped up to meet me. "i thought you would come this evening. oh! are you pleased?" "you knew i should come, molly. why, have i not to thank you for my promotion?" she gave me her hand with her sweet frankness and her smiling face. "i would make you captain jack, but my guardian will not hear of it. all in good time, though. i am only waiting. i am proud of you, jack, because everybody speaks so well of you. i met your father this morning and gave him the good news to rejoice his good old heart. he was too proud to confess his joy. but we know him, don't we, jack? well, i confess that i shall not be happy till you are captain pentecrosse, with a share in every cargo." "nay, molly, the ship is yours and i am but your servant--though a proud and joyful servant." she shook her head. "all you brave fellows," she said, "are going out to sea in storm and tempest to work for me. why should all these ships bring riches to me? i have done nothing. they ought to bring riches for those who work." this shows her tenderness of heart. never have i heard of any other woman who complained that her servants worked to make her rich while she did nothing. yet the vicar would rebuke her, saying that riches and increase were the gifts of providence, and that she must accept the things plainly intended by heaven. and captain crowle spoke to the same effect and my father, the schoolmaster, also pointed out that in the divine scheme there were rich and there were poor: the former for an example and for an encouragement to industry: the latter for the virtues of duty, discipline and contentment--things pleasing in the eyes of the lord. but still she returned to her talk about the people who worked for her. and then we sat and talked, while nigra went on with her work, sitting at the feet of her mistress, whom she watched all the time as a dog keeps one eye always upon his master. at this time, my mistress, as i have said, was already sixteen years of age, a time when many girls are already married. but she was still a child, or a young girl, at heart: being one of those who, like a fine orleans plum, ripen slowly and are all the better for the time they take. in person, if i may speak of what should be sacred, she was finely made, somewhat taller than the average, her hair of that fair colour which is the chief glory of the english maiden. lord! if a lisbon girl could show that fair hair, with those blue eyes, and that soft cheek, touched with the ruddy hue and the velvet bloom of the september peach, she would draw after her the whole town, with the king and his court and even the grand inquisitor and his accursed crew of torturers. i know not how she was dressed, but it was in simple fashion. though so great an heiress she went to church no more finely dressed than any of the girls belonging to the better sort, save for a substantial gold chain which had been her father's. and this she always wore about her neck. she was of a truly affectionate disposition--her mind being as lovely as her face. in manners she was easy and compliant: in discourse sometimes grave and sometimes merry. as for her great possessions, she was so simple in her tastes and habits, being in all respects like the daughter of a plain merchantman's skipper, that she understood little or nothing of what these possessions meant or what they might bestow upon her. she was, in a word, a plain and unaffected damsel with no pretence of anything superior to those around her. she was skilled in all household matters although so well read: she could brew and pickle and make perfumes and cordials for the still room: she could make cakes and puddings: she knew how to carve at table: she had poultry, her ducks, her pigs and her dairy, in the fields within the walls hard by the lady's mount. she was always busy and therefore never afflicted with the vapours or the spleen or the longing for one knows not what which afflict the empty mind of the idle and the fashionable dame. there were other good and comely girls in king's lynn. i might perhaps,--i say it not with boastfulness--have married victory, daughter of the reverend ellis hayes, curate of st. nicholas. she was a buxom wench enough and a notable housewife. or i might have married amanda, daughter of dr. worship, our physician--she who married tom rising, and when he broke his neck hunting the fox, afterwards married the vicar of hunstanton. she, too, was a fine woman, though something hard of aspect. but there was never, for me, any other woman in the world than molly, my mistress. no one, however, must believe that there was any thought or discourse, concerning love between us. i had been her companion and playfellow: i knew her very mind, and could tell at any time of what she was thinking. sometimes her thoughts were of high and serious things such as were inspired by the sermon; mostly they were of things simple, such as the prospects of the last brew, or the success of the latest cordial. of suitors she had none, although she was now, as i said, sixteen years of age. there were no suitors. i very well know why, because, perhaps for friendly reasons, captain crowle had told me something of his ambition for his ward. she was too rich and too good for the young men of lynn--what would any of them do with such an heiress? she was too rich and too good even for the gentlefolk of the county, a hearty, rough, good-natured people who hunted and shot and feasted and drank--what would they do with an heiress of wealth beyond their highest hopes--had they any knowledge of her wealth; but i believe that they had none. no one knew how rich she was, except the captain. the girl was intended by her guardian for some great man; he knew not, as yet, how he should find this great man: but he knew that there were very few, even of the noble lords in the house of peers, whose fortune or whose income would compare with that of his ward--his little maid. and i, who knew this ambition, knew also that i was trusted not to betray confidence, nor to disturb the girl's mind by any talk of love. now the mind of a young maid piously disposed is like the surface of a calm sea, which looks up to the sky and reflects the blue of heaven, undisturbed: till dan cupid comes along and agitates the calm with the reflection of some shepherd swain and ripples the surface with new thoughts which are allowed by heaven, but belong not to any of its many mansions. therefore we talked of everything except love: of the voyages to the portugals and their horrid inquisition: of the yarns told by sailors of the places they had seen, and so forth. there was no talk about books because there were none. a ready reckoner; a manual of navigation; mill's geography; a wages book; the bible and the book of common prayer were the only books belonging to the good old captain. nor, in all lynn, save for the learned shelves of the vicar and the curate of st. nicholas are there any books. it is not a town which reads or asks for, books. why, even on market days you will not see any stall for the sale of books such as may be seen every week at cambridge, and at norwich, and even at bury st. edmund's. 'tis perhaps pity that so many gentlemen, substantial merchants, and sea captains never read books. for their knowledge of the outer world, and the nations, they trust to the sailors who, to tell the truth, know as much as any books can tell them: but sailors are not always truthful. for their wisdom and their conduct of life and manners these honest merchants depend upon the old and the new testament: or, since there are some who neglect that treasury of divine knowledge, they trust to mere tradition and to proverbs; to the continuation of their forefathers' habits, and to the memory of what their forefathers achieved. the sun went down as we sat talking. the sun went down and the soft twilight of june, the month which most i love because there is no darkness, and a man on watch can discern ahead breakers and ships as well as the vast circle of the rolling sea. and then nigra gathered her work together and arose. "come to supper, honey," she said. "come, massa jack," and led the way. i have often, since i learned and understood things, wondered at the simplicity with which molly's guardian thought it proper to bring up this young heiress whose hand he intended for some great personage, as yet unknown. he lived for choice in a small parlour overlooking his neighbour's garden: it was nearly as narrow as the cabin to which he was accustomed. his fare was that which, as a sailor, he considered luxurious. the staple, so to speak, was salt beef or salt pork, but not quite so hard as that of the ship's barrels. this evening, for instance, we sat down to a supper consisting of a piece of cold boiled beef somewhat underdone; there was a cold chicken; a sallet of lettuce, spring onions and young radishes; and a gooseberry pie afterwards with plenty of strong brown sugar. with these dainties was served a jug of home-brewed--to my mind a more delicious drink than any of the wine brought home by _the lady of lynn_--i remember now how it stood beside the captain with its noble head of froth, overtopping the brown george in which it was drawn. it had been a joyful day. it was destined to conclude with an event neither joyful nor sorrowful--an act of justice. for my own part i could have sung and laughed all through the supper: the more joyful, because molly looked happy in my happiness. but there was something wrong. when we talked and laughed, the captain laughed with us, but not mirthfully. his face indicated a change of weather, just as in the bay before a storm the waters grow turbid: and i observed also, that molly's mother, though she laughed with molly and applauded our sallies, glanced anxiously from time to time at the captain, who was her cousin as well as her husband's executor and her daughter's guardian. and i knew not what to make of these symptoms, because in the midst of fine weather, with an open sea, a fine sky, and a favouring breeze, one does not expect the signs of head winds and driving sleet. what it meant you shall learn, and why i have said that the day was memorable for two reasons. supper over, the captain, instead of turning round his chair to the fireplace, filling his pipe, and calling for another glass of october, as we expected, pushed back his chair, and rose with dignity. "jennifer," he addressed molly's mother, "the persuader." jennifer was her christian name. she got up and drew from the corner by the cupboard a stout crab tree cudgel, twisted and gnarled like the old tree from which it came. "be not revengeful, john," she said. "no, no. i am a justice of the peace. i am captain on my own quarter-deck. punishment i shall bestow--not revenge." "well, john. but he is young and you are old." captain crowle laughed. "young, is he? and i am old, am i? we shall see." some one was going to be tried, judged, found guilty, sentenced and to receive his sentence at once. the thing was not unusual in the house of a justice of the peace. "come with me, jack. it shall not be said that i inflicted this punishment without a witness. all the world shall know about it, if so be the culprit desires. come with me. jennifer, keep within, and if you hear groans, praise the lord for the correction of a sinner." greatly marvelling i followed the captain as he marched out of the parlour. arrived at the garden he looked around. "so!" he said, "he has not yet come. perhaps it is light enough for you to read some of his pernicious stuff." with that he put his hand into his pocket and drew forth a paper. "read that, jack, i say, read it." i obeyed: the twilight gave sufficient light for reading the manuscript. besides, the writing was large and in bold characters. "why," i said, "i know this writing. it is sam semple's." "very good. go on, therefore----" at the very first words i understood what had already happened and guessed, pretty well, what was going to happen- "molly divine! thy heavenly charms prevail; as when the sun doth rise stars fade and pale." "no need for much more of the rubbish, jack. read the last of it. i read it all and it made me sick." "so, matchless maid, thy silence grants consent. see, at thy feet, the poet's knee is bent- when evening roses scatter fragrance faint and the sad philomel renews his plaint." "did ever man hear such stuff, jack? go on." "within this bow'r afar from sight of men; to-morrow, wednesday, at the hour of ten, that bow'r a shrine of love and temple fair, i will await thee--samuel semple--there." "what do you think of that, jack? samuel semple! the ragged, skulking, snivelling, impudent son of a thieving exciseman! a very fine lover for my little maid! ha! will he? will he?" the captain grasped his cudgel, with resolution. "sir," i said, with submission. "what did molly say to this precious epistle?" "molly? dost think that i would let the little maid see such ranting stuff? not so. the black woman brought the precious letters to me. there are three of them. wait, jack. thou shalt see. hush! i hear his step. let us get into the summerhouse, and lie snug to see what happens." we stepped into the summerhouse, now pretty dark, and waited expectant. like the captain, i was filled with amazement that samuel, whom i knew well, who was my schoolfellow, should presume to lift his eyes so high. alas! there is no bound, or limit, i am assured, to the presumption of such as this stringer of foolish rhymes. yet i felt some compunction for him, because he would most assuredly receive a basting such as would cure him effectually of the passion called love, so far as this object was concerned. presently, we heard footsteps crunching the gravel. "snug, my lad! lie snug," whispered the captain. we heard the steps making their way along the path between the gooseberry and current bushes. then they came out upon the grass lawn before the summerhouse. "the grass is as big as a quarter-deck, jack," said the captain. "it will serve for the basting of a measley clerk. i've knocked down many a mutinous dog on the quarter-deck." the poet came to the summerhouse and stood outside, irresolute. he could not see the two occupants. he hemmed twice, aloud. there was no reply. "matchless molly!" he whispered. "divine maid! i am here, at thy feet. nymph of the azure sea, i am here." "the devil you are!" cried the captain, stepping out. "why, here is a precious villain for you! jack, cut him off in the rear if he tries to get away. so--so, my young quill driver. you would poach on the preserves of your betters, would you? would you? would you?" at each repetition he banged the wooden post of the summerhouse with his cudgel. the poet made no reply, but he looked to right and to left and behind him, for a way of escape, but found none, for i was ready to bar his flight. wherefore, his shoulders became rounded, and his head hung down, and his knees trembled. samuel semple was caught in a trap. some young fellows would have made a fight of it. but not samuel: all he thought about was submission and non-resistance, which might provoke pity. "three times, jackanapes, hast thou presumed to send stuff to my ward. here they are," he took from me the last sheet of doggerel verse and drew from his pocket two more. "here they are--one--two--three--all addressed to the matchless molly. why, thou impudent villain--what devil prompted thee to call her matchless molly--matchless--to such as you! take that, sirrah, and that----" they were laid on with a will. the poet groaned but made no reply--again looking vainly to right and left for some way of escape. "now, sir," said the captain, "before we go on to the serious business, thou wilt eat this precious stuff--eat it--eat it--swallow it all--or by the lord!" again he raised the cudgel, "i will stuff it down thy throat." "oh! captain crowle," he murmured, "i will eat them--i will eat them." the poet took the papers. they were dry eating and i fear tasteless, but in a few minutes he had swallowed them all. "they are down," said the captain. "now comes the basting. and i would have you to understand, lump of impudence, that it is my mercy only--my foolish mercy, perhaps, that keeps me from sending you through the town at the tail of a cart. kneel down, sir, in token of repentance. what? i say--kneel down." the basting which followed was really worthy of the days when captain crowle, with his own hand, quelled a mutiny and drove the whole crew under hatches. the right hand at seventy was as vigorous as at forty. for my own part, i attempted no interference. the captain was wrathful but he had command of himself. if he added to the basting a running commentary of sea-going terms, signifying scorn and contempt, with the astonishment with which a sailor always regards presumption, it was only to increase the terror and the effect of the cudgelling. i am quite certain that he was resolved in his own mind when he should stop; that is to say, when the justice of the case would have been met and revenge would begin. and i hold myself excused for not preventing any portion of this commentary. it was a poor, shrinking, trembling figure full of bruises and aches and pains that presently arose and slunk away. i should have felt sorry for him had he taken punishment like a man. why, i would maroon any of my crew who would cry and grovel and snivel when tied up for his three dozen. it made one sick and ashamed to see him and to hear him, with his-"mercy, captain! oh! enough, good captain! oh! captain, i confess. i deserve it all. never again, captain. oh! forgiveness--forgiveness!" and so on. i say it made me sick and ashamed. when all was over i followed him to the garden gate. "oh! jack," he groaned. "you stood by and saw it all. i am a dead man. he shall be hanged for it. you are the witness. i am nothing but a bag of broken bones. ribs and collar bones and skull. i am a poor, unfortunate, murdered man. i am done to death with a cudgel." "go home," i said. "you a man? you cry like a whipped cur. murdered? not you. cudgelled you are, and well you deserved it. go home and get brown paper and vinegar and tell all the town how you have been cudgelled for writing verses to a matchless maid. they will laugh, sam semple. they will laugh." the captain went back to the parlour, somewhat flushed with the exercise. "justice," he said, "has been done, without the cart and the cat. my pipe, jennifer, and the home-brewed. molly, my dear, your very good health." a day or two afterwards, we heard that sam semple had gone to london to make his fortune. he was carried thither by the waggon that once a week makes the journey to london, returning the following week. but when sam semple came back it was in a chaise, with much splendour, as in due course you shall hear. you shall also hear of the singular gratitude with which he repaid the captain for that wholesome correction. the lady of lynn chapter i my lord's levee it is three years later. we are now in the year 1750. at twelve o'clock in the morning the anteroom of the town house of the right honourable the earl of fylingdale was tolerably filled with a mixed company attending his levee. some were standing at the windows; some were sitting: a few were talking: most, however, were unknown to each other, and if they spoke at all, it was only to ask each other when his lordship might be expected to appear. as is customary at a great lord's levee there were present men of all conditions; they agreed, however, in one point, that they were all beggars. it is the lot of the nobleman that he is chiefly courted for the things that he can give away, and that the number of his friends and the warmth of their friendship depend upon the influence he is supposed to possess in the bestowal of places and appointments. among the suitors this morning, for instance, was a half-pay captain who sought for a company in a newly raised regiment: he bore himself bravely, but his face betrayed his anxiety and his necessities. the poor man would solicit his lordship in vain, but this he did not know, and so he would be buoyed up for a time with new hopes. beside him stood a lieutenant in the navy, who wanted promotion and a ship. if good service and wounds in battle were of any avail he should have commanded both, but it is very well known that in the royal navy there are no rewards for gallantry; men grow old without promotion: nothing helps but interest: a man may remain a midshipman for life without interest: never has it been known that without interest a ship has been bestowed even upon the most deserving officer and after the most signal service. the lieutenant, too, would be cheered by a promise, and lulled by false hopes--but that he did not know. one man wanted a post in the admiralty: the pay is small but the perquisites and the pickings are large: for the same reason another asked for a place in the customs. a young poet attended with a subscription list and a dedication. he thought that his volume of verse, once published, would bring him fortune, fame, and friends: he, too, would be disappointed. the clergyman wanted another living: one of the fat and comfortable churches in the city: a deanery would not be amiss: he was even ready to take upon himself the office of bishop, for which, indeed, he considered that his qualifications admirably fitted him. would his lordship exercise his all powerful influence in the matter of that benefice or that promotion? a young man, whose face betrayed the battered rake, would be contented even with carrying the colours on the cape coast regiment if nothing better could be had. surely his lordship would procure so small a thing as that! if nothing could be found for him then--the common side of the king's bench prison and rags and starvation until death released him. poor wretch! he was on his way to that refuge, but he knew it not; for my lord would promise to procure for him what he wanted. so they all waited, hungry and expectant, thinking how best to frame their requests: how best to appear grateful before there was any call for gratitude. surely a nobleman must grow wearied with the assurances of gratitude and promises of prayers. his experience must teach him that gratitude is but a short-lived plant: a weed which commonly flourishes for a brief period and produces neither flowers nor fruit; while as for the prayers, though we may make no doubt that the fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much, we are nowhere assured that the prayers of the worldly and the unrighteous are heard on behalf of another; while there is no certainty that the promised petition will ever be offered up before the throne. yet the suitors, day after day, repeat the same promise, and rely on the same belief. "oh! my lord," they say, or sing with one accord, "your name: your voice: your influence: it is all that i ask. my gratitude: my life-long gratitude: my service: my prayers will all be yours." soon after twelve o'clock the doors of the private apartments were thrown open and his lordship appeared, wearing the look of dignity and proud condescension combined, which well became the star he wore and the ancient title which he had inherited. his age was about thirty, a time of life when there linger some remains of youth and the serious responsibilities are yet, with some men, hardly felt. his face was cold and proud and hard; the lips firmly set: the eyes keen and even piercing; the features regular: his stature tall, but not ungainly, his figure manly. it was remarkable, among those who knew him intimately, that there was as yet no sign of luxurious living on face and figure. he was not as yet swelled out with wine and punch: his neck was still slender; his face pale, without any telltale marks of wine and debauchery; so far as appearance goes he might pass if he chose, for a person of the most rigid and even austere virtue. this, as i have said, was considered remarkable by his friends, most of whom were already stamped on face and feature and figure with the outward and visible tokens of a profligate life. for, to confess the truth at the very beginning and not to attempt concealment, or to suffer a false belief as regards this nobleman, he was nothing better than a cold-blooded, pitiless, selfish libertine; a rake, and a voluptuary; one who knew and obeyed no laws save the laws of (so-called) honour. these laws allow a man to waste his fortune at the gaming table: to ruin confiding girls: to spend his time with rake hell companions in drink and riot and debauchery of all kinds. he must, however, pay his gambling debts: he must not cheat at cards; he must be polite in speech: he must be ready to fight whenever the occasion calls for his sword, and the quarrel seems of sufficient importance. lord fylingdale, however, was not among those who found his chief pleasure scouring the streets and in mad riot. you shall learn, in due course, what forms of pleasure chiefly attracted him. i have said that his face was proud. there was not, i believe, any man living in the whole world, who could compare with lord fylingdale for pride. an overwhelming pride sat upon his brow; was proclaimed by his eyes and was betrayed by his carriage. with such pride did lucifer look round upon his companions, fallen as they were, and in the depths of hopeless ruin. in many voyages to foreign parts i have seen something of foreign peoples; every nation possesses its own nobility; i suppose that king, lords and commons is the order designed for human society by providence. but i think that there is nowhere any pride equal to the pride of the english aristocracy. the spaniard, if i have observed him aright, wraps himself in the pride of birth as with a cloak: it is often a tattered cloak: poverty has no terrors for him so long as he has his pride of birth. yet he tolerates his fellow-countrymen whom he does not despise because they lack what most he prizes. the english nobleman, whether a peer or only a younger son, or a nephew or a cousin, provided he is a sprig of quality, disdains and despises all those who belong to the world of work, and have neither title, nor pedigree, nor coat of arms. he does not see any necessity for concealing this contempt. he lacks the courtesy which would hide it in the presence of the man of trade or the man of a learned profession. to be sure, the custom of the country encourages him, because to him is given every place and every preferment. he fills the house of commons as well as the house of lords: he commands our armies, our regiments, even the companies in the regiments: he commands our fleets and our ships: he holds all the appointments and draws all the salaries: he makes our laws, and, as justice of the peace, he administers them: he receives pensions, having done nothing to deserve them; he holds sinecures which require no duties. and the people who do the work--the merchants who bring wealth to the country: the manufacturers; the craftsmen; the farmers; the soldiers who fight the wars which the aristocracy consider necessary; the sailor who carries the flag over the world: all these are supposed to be sufficiently rewarded with a livelihood while they maintain the nobility and their children in luxury and in idleness and are received and treated with contempt. i speak of what i have myself witnessed. this man's pride i have compared with the pride of lucifer. you shall learn while i narrate the things which follow, that he might well be compared, as regards his actions as well, with that proud and presumptuous spirit. he was dressed in a manner becoming to his rank: need we dwell upon his coat of purple velvet; his embroidered waistcoat; his white silk stockings; his lace of ruffles and cravat; his gold buckles and his gold clocks; his laced hat carried under his arm; his jewelled sword hilt and the rings upon his fingers? you would think, by his dress, that his wealth was equal to his pride, and, by his reception of the suitors, that his power was equal to both pride and wealth together. the levee began; one after the other stepped up to him, spoke a few words, received a few words in reply and retired, each, apparently, well pleased. for promises cost nothing. to the poet who asked for a subscription and preferred a dedication, my lord promised the former, accepted the latter, and added a few words of praise and good wishes. but the subscription was never paid; and the dedication was afterwards altered so far as the superscription, to another noble patron. to the clergyman who asked for a country living then vacant, my lord promised the most kindly consideration and bade him write his request and send it him by letter, for better assurance of remembrance. to the officer he promised his company as only due to gallantry and military skill: to the place hunter he promised a post far beyond the dreams and the hopes of the suppliant. nothing more came of it to either. the company grew thin: one after the other, the suitors withdrew to feed on promises. it is like opening your mouth to drink the wind. but 'twas all they got. among those who remained to the last was a man in the dress of a substantial shopkeeper, with a brown cloth coat and silver buttons. he, when his opportunity arrived, advanced and bowed low to my lord. "sir," said his lordship, with gracious, but cold looks, "in what way may i be of service to you?" "with your lordship's permission, i would seek a place in your household--any place--scullion in the kitchen, or groom to the stable--any place." "why should i give you a place? have i room in my household for every broken cit?" "my lord, it is to save me from bankruptcy and the king's bench. it is to save my wife and children from destitution. there are already many shopkeepers in westminster and the city who have been admitted servants in the households of noblemen. it is no new thing--your lordship must have heard of the custom." "i do not know why i should save thy family or thyself. however, this is the affair of my steward. go and see him. tell him that a place in my household will save thee from bankruptcy and prison--it may be that a place is vacant." the man bowed again and retired. he knew very well what was meant. he would have to pay a round sum for the privilege. this noble lord, like many others of his rank, took money, through his steward, for nominal places in his household, making one citizen yeoman of his dairy; in leicester fields, perhaps, where no dairy could be placed; another steward of the granaries, having in the town neither barns nor storehouses nor ricks: a third, clerk to the stud book, having no race horses; and so on. thus justice is defeated, a man's creditors may be defied and a man may escape payment of his just debts. when he was gone, lord fylingdale looked round the room. in the window stood, dangling a cane from his wrist, a gentleman dressed in the highest and the latest fashion. in his left hand he held a snuffbox adorned with the figure of a heathen goddess. to those who know the meaning of fashion it was evident that he was in the front rank, belonging to the few who follow or command, the variations of the passing hour. these descend to the smallest details. i am told that the secrets of the inner circle, the select few, who lead the fashion, are displayed for their own gratification in the length of the cravat, the colour of the sash, the angle of the sword, the breadth of the ruffles, the width of the skirts, the tye of the wig. they are also shown in the mincing voice, and the affected tone, and the use of the latest adjectives and oaths. yet, when one looked more closely, it was seen that this gallant exterior arrayed an ancient gentleman whose years were proclaimed by the sharpening of his features, the wrinkles of his feet, the crows'-feet round his eyes, and his bending shoulders which he continually endeavoured to set square and upright. hat in one hand, and snuffbox in the other, he ambled towards his lordship on tiptoe, which happened just then to be the fashionable gait. "thy servant, sir harry"--my lord offered him his hand with condescension. "it warms my heart to see thee. therefore i sent a letter. briefly, sir harry, wouldst do me a service?" "i am always at your lordship's commands. this, i hope, i have proved." "then, sir harry, this is the case. it is probable that for certain private reasons, i may have to pay a visit to a country town--a town of tarpaulins and traders, not a town of fashion"--sir harry shuddered--"patience, my friend. i know not how long i shall endure the barbaric company. but i must go--there are reasons--let me whisper--reasons of state--important secrets which call me there"--sir harry smiled and looked incredulous--"i want, on the spot, a friend"--sir harry smiled again, as one who began to understand--"a friend who would appear to be a stranger. would you, therefore, play the part of such a friend?" "i will do whatever your lordship commands. yet to leave town at this season"--it was then the month of april--"the assembly, the park, the card table--the society of the ladies----" "the loss will be theirs, sir harry. to lose their old favourite--oh! there will be lamentations, at the rout---perhaps, however, we may find consolations." "impossible. there are none out of town, except at bath or tunbridge----" "the ladies of norfolk are famous for their beauty." "hoydens--i know them, "'i who erst beneath a tree sung, bumpkinet, and bowzybee, and blouzelind and marian bright in aprons blue or aprons white,' "as gay hath it. hoydens, my lord, i know them. they play whist and dance jigs." "the norfolk gentlemen drink hard and the wine is good." "nay, my lord, this is cruel. for i can drink no longer." "i shall find other diversions for you. it is possible--i say--possible--that the lady anastasia may go there as well. she will, as usual, keep the bank if she does go." the old beau's face cleared, whether in anticipation of lady anastasia's society or her card table i know not. "my character, sir harry, will be in your hands. i leave it there confidently. for reasons--reasons of state--it should be a character of...." "i understand. your lordship is a model of all the virtues----" "so--we understand. my secretary will converse with thee further on the point of expenditure." sir harry retired, bowing and twisting his body something like an ape. then a gentleman in scarlet presented himself. "your lordship's most obedient," he said, with scant courtesy. "i come in obedience to your letter--for command." "colonel, you will hold yourself in readiness to go into the country. there will be play--you may lose as much as you please--to sir harry malyus or to any one else whom my secretary will point out to you. perhaps you may have to receive a remonstrance from me. we are strangers, remember, and i am no gambler, though i sometimes take a card." "i await your lordship's further commands." so he, too, retired. a proper well-set-up figure he was, with the insolence of the trooper in his face, and the signs of strong drink on his nose. any one who knew the town would set him down for a half-pay captain, a sharper, a bully, a roysterer, one who lived by his wits, one who was skilled in billiards and commonly lucky at any game of cards. perhaps such a judgment of the gallant colonel would not be far wrong. there remained one suitor. he was a clergyman dressed in a fine silk cassock with bands of the whitest and a noble wig of the order ecclesiastic. i doubt if the archbishop himself had a finer. he was in all respects a divine of the superior kind: a dean, perhaps; an archdeacon, perhaps; a canon, rector, vicar, chaplain, with a dozen benefices, no doubt. his thin, slight figure carried a head too big for his body. his face was sallow and thin, the features regular; he bore the stamp of a scholar and had the manner of a scoffer. he spoke as if he was in the pulpit, with a voice loud, clear and resonant, as though the mere power of hearing that voice diffused around him the blessings of virtue and piety and a clear conscience. "good, my lord," he said, "i am, as usual, a suppliant. the rectory of st. leonard le size, jewry, in the city, is now vacant. with my small benefices in the country, it would suit me hugely. a word from your lordship to the lord mayor--the rectory is in the gift of the corporation--would, i am sure, suffice." "if, my old tutor, the thing can be done by me, you may consider it as settled. there are, however, i would have you to consider, one or two scandals still outstanding, the memory of which may have reached the ears of the city. these city people, for all their ignorance of fashion, do sometimes hear of things. the little affair at bath, for instance----" "the lady hath since returned to her own home. it is now quite forgotten and blown over. my innocency is always well known to your lordship." "assuredly. has that other little business at oxford blown over? are certain verses still attributed to the reverend benjamin purdon?" his reverence lightly blew upon his fingers. "that report is now forgotten. but 'tis a censorious world. one man is hanged for looking over a gate while another steals a pig and is applauded. as for the author of those verses, he still remains undiscovered, while the verses themselves--a deplorable fact--are handed about for the joy of the undergraduates." "next time, then, steal the pig. frankly, friend purdon, thy name is none of the sweetest, and i doubt if the bishop would consent. meantime, you are living, as usual, i suppose, at great expense----" "at small expense, considering my abilities; but still at greater expense than my slender income will allow. am i not your lordship's domestic chaplain? must i not keep up the dignity due to the position?" "your dignity is costly. i must get a bishopric or a deanery for you. meantime i have a small service to ask of you." "small? my lord, let it be great: it cannot be too great." "it is that you go into the country for me." "not to bath--or to oxford?" his reverence betrayed an anxiety on this point which was not quite in harmony with his previous declarations. "not to either. to another place, where they know not thy name or thy fame. very good. i thought i could depend upon your loyalty. as for arrangements and time, you will hear from my secretary." so my lord turned on his heel and his chaplain was dismissed. he remained for a moment, looking after his master doubtfully. the order liked him not. he was growing old and would have chosen, had he the power of choice, some fat city benefice with two or three country livings thrown in. he was tired of his dependence: perhaps he was tired of a life that ill became his profession: perhaps he could no longer enjoy it as of old. there was, at least, no sign of repentance as there was no touch of the spiritual life in his face, which was stamped with the plain and visible marks of the world, the flesh and the devil. what is that stamp? nobody can paint it, or describe it: yet it is understood and recognised whenever one sees it. and it stood out legible so that all those who ran might read upon the face of this reverend and learned divine. when the levee was finished and everybody gone, lord fylingdale sank into a chair. i know not the nature of his thoughts save that they were not pleasant, for his face grew darker every moment. finally, he sprang to his feet and rang the bell. "tell mr. semple that i would speak with him," he ordered. mr. semple, the same samuel whom you have seen under a basting from the captain, was now changed and for the better. his dress was simple. no one could guess from his apparel the nature of his occupation. for all professions and all crafts there is a kind of uniform. the divine wears gown and cassock, bands and wig, which proclaim his calling: the lawyer is also known by his gown and marks his rank at the bar by coif and wig: the attorney puts on broadcloth black of hue: the physician assumes black velvet, a magisterial wig, and a gold-headed cane. the officer wears the king's scarlet; the nobleman his star: the sprig of quality puts on fine apparel and assumes an air and manner unknown to cheapside and ludgate hill: you may also know him by his speech. the merchant wears black velvet with gold buttons, gold buckles, white silk stockings and a gold-laced hat; the shopkeeper substitutes silver for gold and cloth for velvet: the clerk has brown cloth metal buttons and worsted stockings. as for the crafts, has not each its own jacket, sleeves, apron, cap, and badge? but for this man, where would we place him? what calling did he represent? for he wore the flowered waist-coat--somewhat frayed and stained, of a beau, and the black coat of the merchant: the worsted stockings of the clerk and his metal buttons. yet he was neither gentleman, merchant, shopkeeper, clerk, nor craftsman. he was a member of that fraternity which is no fraternity because there is no brotherhood among them all; in which every man delights to slander, gird at, and to depreciate his brother. in other words he wore the dress--which is no uniform--of a poet. at this time he also called himself secretary to his lordship having by ways known only to himself, and by wrigglings up back stairs, and services of a kind never proclaimed to the world, made himself useful. the position also granted him, as it granted certain tradesmen, immunity from arrest. he had the privilege of walking abroad through a street full of hungering creditors, and that, not on sundays only, like most of his tribe, but on every day in the week. he obeyed the summons and entered the room with a humble cringe. "semple," said his lordship, crossing his legs and playing with the tassel of his sword knot, "i have read thy letter----" "your lordship will impute----" "first, what is the meaning of the preamble?" "i have been your lordship's secretary for six months. i have therefore perused all your lordship's letters. i have also in my zeal for your lordship's interests--looked about me. and i discovered--what i ventured to state in that preamble." "well, sir?" "namely, that the fylingdale estates are gone so far as your lordship's life is concerned--but--in a word, all is gone. and that--your lordship will pardon the plain truth--your lordship's credit cannot last long and that--i now touch a most delicate point to a man of your lordship's nice sense of honour--the only resource left is precarious." "you mean?" "i mean--a certain lady and a certain bank." "how, sir? do you dare? what has put this suspicion into your head?" "nay, my lord--i have no thought but for your lordship's interests, believe me." "and so you tell me about the rustic heiress, and you propose a plan----" "i have had the temerity to do so." "yes. tell me once more about this girl--and about her fortune." "her name is molly miller: she is an orphan: her guardian is an honest sailor who has taken the greatest care of her property. she was an heiress already when her father died. that was eighteen years ago; she is now nineteen." "is she passable--to look at? a hoyden with a high colour, i warrant." "a cream-coloured complexion, touched with red and pink: light hair in curls and blue eyes; the face and figure of a venus; the sweetest mouth in the world and the fondest manner." "hang me if the fellow isn't in love with her, himself! if she is all this, man, why not apply yourself, for the post of spouse?" "because her guardian keeps off all would-be lovers and destines his ward for a gentleman at least--for a nobleman, he hopes." "he is ambitious. now as to her fortune." "she has a fleet of half a dozen tall vessels--nay, there are more, but i know not how many. i was formerly clerk in a countinghouse of the town and i learned a great deal--what each is worth and what the freight of each voyage may produce--but not all. the captain, her guardian, keeps things close. my lord, i can assure you, from what i learned in that capacity and by looking into old books, that she must be worth over a hundred thousand pounds--over a hundred thousand pounds! my lord, there is no such heiress in the city. in your lordship's interests i have enquired in the taverns where the merchants' clerks congregate. they know of all the city heiresses. the greatest, at this moment, is the only daughter of a tallow chandler who has twenty thousand to her name. she squints." "why have you given me this information? the girl belongs to your friends--are you anxious for her happiness? you know my way of life. would that way make her happier?" the man made no reply. "come, semple, out with it. your reasons--gratitude--to me--or revenge upon an enemy?" the man coloured. he looked up: he stood upright but for a moment only. then his eyes dropped and his shoulders contracted. "gratitude, my lord, to you," he replied. "revenge? why what reason should i have for revenge?" "how should i know of any? let it be gratitude, then." "i have ventured to submit--not a condition--but a prayer." "i have read the clause. i grant it. on the day after the marriage if the plan comes to anything, i will present thee to a place where there are no duties and many perquisites. that is understood. i would put this promise in writing but no writing would bind me more than my word." "yet i would have the promise in writing." "you are insolent, sirrah." "i am protecting myself. my lord, i must speak openly in this matter. how many promises have you made this morning? how many will you keep? i must not be pushed aside with such a promise." lord fylingdale made no reply. "i offer you a fortune of a hundred thousands pounds and more." "i can now take this fortune without your assistance." "with submission, my lord, you cannot. i know too much." "what shall i write, then?" "i am only reasonable. the girl's fortune when you have it will go the same way as your rents and woods have gone. provide for me, therefore, before you begin to spend that money." "semple, i did not think you had so much courage. learn that a dozen times i have been on the point of kicking you out of the house. now," he rose, "give me paper and a pen--and i will write this promise." semple placed a chair at the table and laid paper and pen before it. "let me presume so far as to dictate the promise," he said. "i undertake and promise that on the day after my marriage with the girl named molly miller, i will give samuel semple such a place as will provide him for life with a salary of not less than â£200 a year. so--will your lordship sign it?" he took up this precious paper from the table, read it, folded it and put it in his pocket. "what next?" asked his patron. "i am preparing a scheme which will give a plausible excuse for your lordship's visit to the town. i have already suggested that certain friends should prepare the way. the lady's guardian has prejudices in favour of morality and religion. they are, i know, beneath your lordship's notice--yet still--it will be in fact, necessary that your lordship's character shall be such as will commend itself to this unfashionable old sailor." "we will speak again upon this point. the girl you say has no lover." "she has no lover. your lordship's rank: your manner: your appearance will certainly carry the day. by contrast alone with the country bumpkins the heart of the girl will be won." "mr. semple," his lordship yawned. "do you suppose that the heart of the girl concerns me? go and complete your scheme--of gratitude, not revenge." chapter ii the lady anastasia the lady anastasia was in her dressing-room in the hands of her friseur, the french hairdresser, and her maid. she sat in a dishabille which was a loose robe, called, i believe a nightgown, of pink silk, trimmed with lace, which showed the greater part of a very well shaped arm; she had one slipper off and one slipper on, which showed a very small and well shaped foot, but no one was there to see. her maid was busy at the toilette table which was covered with glass bottles containing liquids of attractive colour; silver patch boxes; powder boxes; powder puffs; cosmetics in pots, and other mysterious secrets into which it would be useless and fruitless to inquire. the artist, for his part, was laboriously and conscientiously building the edifice--object of so much ingenuity and thought--called a "head." she was in the best temper imaginable. when you hear that she had won overnight the sum of a hundred and twenty guineas you will understand that she had exactly that number of reasons for being satisfied with the world. moreover, she had received from an admirer a present in the shape of a piece of china representing a monkey, which, she reflected with satisfaction, would awaken in the minds of her friends the keenest feelings of envy, jealousy, hatred, longing, and despair. the lady anastasia was the young widow of an old baronet: she was also the daughter of an earl and the sister of his successor. she therefore enjoyed the freedom of a widow; the happiness natural to youth; and all the privileges of rank. no woman could be happier. it was reported that her love of the card table had greatly impaired her income: the world said that her own private dowry was wholly gone and a large part of her jointure. but it is a spiteful world--all that was known for certain was that she played much and that she played high. perhaps fortune, in a mood of penitence, was giving back what she had previously taken away. the contrary is commonly the case, viz, that fortune, which certainly takes away with alacrity, restores with reluctance. perhaps, however, the reports were not true. she kept a small establishment in mount street: her people consisted of no more than two footmen, a butler, a lady's maid, a housekeeper, and three or four maids with two chairmen. she did not live as a rich woman: she received, it is true, twice a week, on sundays and wednesdays, but not with any expense of supper and wine. her friends came to play cards and she held the bank for them. on other evenings she went out and played at the houses of her friends. except for fashions and her dress--what fine woman but makes that exception?--she had no other occupation; no other pursuit; no other subject of conversation, than the playing of cards. she played at all games and knew them all; she sat down with a willing mind to ombre, faro, quadrille, basset, loo, cribbage, all fours, or beggar my neighbour, but mostly she preferred the game of hazard, when she herself kept the bank. it is a game which more than any other allures and draws on the player so that a young man who has never before been known to set a guinea on any card, or to play at any game, will in a single night be filled with all the ardour and eagerness of a practised gamester; will know the extremes of joy and despair; and will regard the largest fortune as bestowed by providence for no other purpose than to prolong the excitement and the agony of a gamester. while the lady anastasia was still admiring the china vase set upon the table, so that she might gaze upon it and so refresh her soul, and while the friseur was still completing her head, lord fylingdale was announced. the lady blushed violently: she sat up and looked anxiously in the glass. "betty," she cried, "a touch of red--not much, you clumsy creature! will you never learn to have a lighter hand? so! that is better. i am horribly pale. his lordship can wait in the morning room. you have nearly finished, monsieur? quick then! the last touches. betty, the flowered satin petticoat. my fan. the pearl necklace. so," she looked again at the glass, "am i looking tolerable, betty?" "your ladyship is ravishing," said betty finishing the toilette. in truth, it was a very pretty creature if one knew how much was real and how much was due to art. the complexion was certainly laid on; the hair was powdered and built up over cushions and pillows; there were patches on the cheek: the neck was powdered; eyes naturally very fine were set off and made more lustrous with a touch of dark powder: the frock and petticoat and hoop were all alike removed from nature. however, the result was a beautiful woman of fashion who is far removed indeed from the beautiful woman as made by the creator. for her age the lady anastasia might have been seven and twenty, or even thirty--an age when with some women, the maturity of their beauty is even more charming than the first sprightly loveliness of youth. she swam out of the room with a gliding movement, then the fashion, and entered the morning room where lord fylingdale awaited her. "anastasia!" he said, softly, taking her hand. "it is very good of you to see me alone. i feared you would be surrounded with courtiers and fine ladies or with singers, musicians, hairdressers, and other baboons. permit me," he raised her hand to his lips. "you look divine this morning. it is long since i have seen you look so perfectly charming." the lady murmured something. she was one of those women who like above all things to hear praises of what most they prize, their beauty, and to believe what they most desire to be the truth, the preservation and perfecting of that beauty. "but you came to see me alone. was it to tell me that i look charming? other men tell me as much in company." "not altogether that, dear lady, though that is something. i come to tell you of a change of plans." "you have heard that the grand jury of middlesex has presented me by name as a corruptor of innocence, and i know not what, because i hold my bank on sunday nights." "i have heard something of the matter. it is almost time, i think, to give these presumptuous shopkeepers a lesson not to interfere with the pursuits of persons of rank. let them confine themselves to the prentices who play at pitch and toss." "oh! what matters their presentment? i shall continue to keep the bank on sunday nights. now, my dear lord, what about these plans? what is changed?" "we thought, you remember, about going to tunbridge, in july." "well? shall we not go there?" "perhaps. but there is something to be done first. let me confide in you----" "my dear lord--you have never confided in anybody." "except in you. i think you know all my secrets if i have any. in whom else can i confide? in the creatures who importune me for places? in friends of the green table? in friends of the race course? my dear anastasia, you know, i assure you, as much about my personal affairs as i know myself." "if you would always speak so kindly"--her eyes became humid but not tearful. a lady of fashion must not spoil her cheek by tears. "well, then, the case is this. you know of the condition of my affairs--no one better. an opportunity presents itself to effect a great improvement. i am invited by the highest personage to take a more active part in the affairs of state. no one is to know this. for reasons connected with this proposal i am to visit a certain town--a trading town--a town of rough sailors, there to conduct certain enquiries. there is to be a gathering at this town of the gentry and people of the county. would you like to go, my dear friend? it will be next month." "to leave town--and in may, just before the end of the season?" "there will be opportunities, i am told, of holding a bank; and a good many sportsmen--'tis a sporting county--may be expected to lay their money. in a word, anastasia, it will not be a bad exchange." "and how can i help you? why should i go there?" "by letting the people--the county people, understand the many virtues and graces which distinguish my character. no one knows me better than yourself." the lady smiled--"no one," she murmured. "--or can speak with greater authority on the subject. there will be certain of our friends there--the parson--sir harry--the colonel----" "pah! a beggarly crew--and blown upon--they are dangerous." "not at this quiet and secluded town. they will be strangers to you as well as to me. and they will be useful. after all, in such a place you need an opening. they will lead the way." the lady made no response. "i may call it settled, then?" he still held her hand. "if you would rather not go, anastasia, i will find some one else--but i had hoped----" she drew away her hand. "you are right," she said, "no one knows you so well as myself. and all i know about you is that you are always contriving some devilry. what is it this time? but you will not tell me. you never tell me." "anastasia, you do me an injustice. this is a purely political step." "as you will. call it what you please. i am your servant--you know that--your handmaid--in all things--save one. not for any other woman, ludovick--not for any other--unfortunate--woman will i lift my little finger. should you betray me in this respect----" he laughed. "a woman? and in that company? rest easy, dear child. be jealous as much as you please but not with such a cause." he touched her cheek with his finger: he stooped and kissed her hand and withdrew. the lady anastasia stood awhile where he left her. the joy had gone out of her heart: she trembled: she was seized with a foreboding of evil. she threw herself upon the sofa and buried her face in her hands, and forgetful of paste and patch and paint she suffered the murderous tears to destroy that work of art--her finished face. chapter iii the "society" of lynn it was about seven o'clock in the evening of early april, at the going down of the sun that i was at last able to drop into the dingy and go ashore. all day and all night and all the day before we had been beating through the shallows of the wash and the narrow channel of the ouse. we had laid her to her moorings off the common stath and made all taut and trim: the captain had gone ashore with the papers: the customhouse officer had been aboard: we were to begin breaking cargo on the morrow. the ship was _the lady of lynn_, 380 tons, robert jaggard, master marines, being captain, and i the mate or chief officer. there was no better skipper in the port of lynn than captain jaggard: there was no better crew than that aboard _the lady of lynn_, not a skulker or a lubber in the whole ship's company; and though i say it myself, i dare affirm that the mate did credit to his ship as much as the captain and the crew. we were in the lisbon trade: we had therefore come home laden with casks of the rich strong wine of the country: the port and lisbon sherry and malaga, besides madeira and the wine of teneriffe and the grand canary. our people of the marshland and the fens and those of lincolnshire and norfolk where the strong air of the east winds kill all but the stoutest, cannot have too much of this rich wine: they will not drink the lighter wines of bordeaux which neither fire the blood nor mount to the head. a prosperous voyage we had made: the bay of biscay suffered us to cross with no more than half a gale: _the lady of lynn_, in fact, was known in port to be a lucky ship--as lucky as her owner--lucky in her voyages and lucky in her cargoes. at the stairs of the common stath yard i made fast the painter and shipped the sculls. and there, waiting for me, was none other than my good old friend and patron, captain crowle. the captain was by this time well advanced in life, being upwards of seventy: yet he showed little touch of time: his honest face being still round and full; his eyes still free from lines and crows'-feet; his cheek ruddy and freckled, as if with the salt sea breeze and the driving spray. he was also as upright as any man of thirty and walked with as firm a step and had no need of the stout stick which he carried in his hand, as a weapon and a cudgel for the unrighteous, more than a staff for the bending knees of old age. "what cheer--ahoy?" he shouted from the quay as i dropped over the side into the dingy. "what cheer, jack?" he repeated when i ran up the steps. "i've seen the skipper. come with me to the _crown_"--but the proper place for mates was the _duke's head_. "nay, it shall be the _crown_. a bowl of punch shall welcome back _the lady of lynn_." he turned and looked at the ship lying in the river at her moorings among the other craft. "she's as fine a vessel as this old port can show--and she's named after as fine a maid. shalt see her to-morrow, jack, but not to-night." "i trust, sir, that she is well and in good spirits." "ay--ay. nothing ails her--nothing ails her, jack," he pointed with his stick. "look how she flourishes. there are fifteen tall ships moored two and two off the king's stath and half a dozen more off the common stath. count them, jack. six of these ships belong to the little maid. six of them--and two more are afloat, of which one is homeward bound and should be in port soon if all goes well. eight noble ships, jack, are hers. and the income of nigh upon eighteen years and houses and broad lands." "she has a prudent guardian, captain." "may be--may be. i don't deny, jack, but i've done the best i could. year after year, the money mounteth up more and more. you love her, jack, and therefore i tell you these things. and you can keep counsel. i talk not in the market place. no one knows her wealth but you and me. they think that i am part owner. i let them think so, but you and i know better, jack." he nodded his head looking mighty cunning. "she cannot be too wealthy or too prosperous, captain. i knew full well that her prosperity only increases the gulf between us, but i had long ago understood that such an heiress was not for a mate on board a merchantman." "she is not, jack," the captain replied, gravely. "already she is the richest heiress in all norfolk--perhaps in the whole country. who is to marry her? there, i confess, i am at a loss. i must find a husband for her. there's the rub. she may marry any in the land: there is none so high but he would desire a wife so rich and so virtuous. where shall i look for a husband fit for her? there are admirals, but mostly too old for her: she ought to have a noble lord, yet, if all tales be true, they are not fit, most of them to marry a virtuous woman. shall i give molly to a man who gambles and drinks and rakes and riots? no, jack, no. not for twenty coronets. i would rather marry her to an honest sailor like yourself. jack, my lad, find me a noble lord, as like yourself as one pea is like another, and he shall have her. he must be as proper a man; as strong a man; a clean liver; moderate in his cups ... find him for me, jack, and he shall have her." "well, but, captain, there are the gentlemen of norfolk." "ay.... there are--as you say--the gentlemen. i have considered them, jack. molly is not a gentlewoman by birth, i know that very well: but her fortune entitles her to marry in a higher rank. ay ... there are the gentlemen. they are good fox hunters: they are good at horse racing, but they are hard drinkers, jack: they are fuddled most evenings: my little maid must not have a husband who is put to bed drunk every night." "you must take her to london, captain, and let her be seen." "ay--ay ... if i only knew where to go and how to begin." "she is young; there is no need for hurry: you can wait awhile, captain." "ay ... we can wait a while. i shall be loth to let her go, god knows---come to-morrow, jack. she was always fond of you: she talks about you: 'tis a loving little maid: you played with her and ran about with her. she never forgets. the next command that falls in--but i talk too fast. well--when there is a ship in her fleet without a captain---but come, my lad." he led the way, still talking of his ward and her perfections, through the narrow street they call stath lane into the great market place, where stands the crown inn. the room appropriated to the "society of lynn," which met every evening all the year round, was that on the ground floor looking upon the market place. the "society," or club, which is never dissolved, consists of the notables or better sort of the town: the vicar of st. margaret's; the curate of st. nicholas; the master of the school--my own father: captain crowle and other retired captains; the doctor; some of the more substantial merchants; with the mayor, some of the aldermen, the town clerk, and a justice of the peace or two. this evening most of these gentlemen were already present. captain crowle saluted the company and took his seat at the head of the table. "gentlemen," he said, "i wish you all a pleasant evening. i have brought with me my young friend jack pentecrosse--you all know jack--the worthy son of his worthy father. he will take a glass with us. sit down beside me, jack." "with the permission of the society," i said. most of the gentlemen had already before them their pipes and their tobacco. some had ordered their drink--a pint of port for one: a brown george full of old ale for another; a flask of canary for a third: and so on. but the captain, looking round the room, beckoned to the girl who waited. "jenny," he said, "nobody calls for anything to-night except myself. gentlemen, it must be a bowl--or a half dozen bowls. tell your mistress, jenny, a bowl of the biggest and the strongest and the sweetest. gentlemen, you will drink with me to the next voyage of _the lady of lynn_." but then a thing happened--news came--which drove all thoughts of _the lady of lynn_ out of everybody's mind. that toast was forgotten. the news was brought by the doctor, who was the last to arrive. it was an indication of the importance of our town that a physician lived among us. he was the only physician in this part of the country: he practised among the better sort, among the noble gentlemen of the country round about lynn and even further afield in the northern parts of the shire, and among the substantial merchants of the town. for the rest there were the apothecary, the barber and blood-letter, the bone-setter, the herbalist and the wise woman. many there were even among the better sort who would rather consult the woman, who knew the powers of every herb that grows, than the physician who would write you out the prescription of mithridates or some other outlandish name composed of sixty or seventy ingredients. however, there is no doubt that learning is a fine thing and that galen knew more than the ancient dames who sit in a bower of dried herbs and brew them into nauseous drinks which pretend to cure all the diseases to which mankind is liable. doctor worship was a person who habitually carried himself with dignity. his black dress, his white silk stockings, his gold shoe buckles, the whiteness of his lace and linen, his huge wig, his gold-headed cane with its pomander, proclaimed his calling, while the shortness of his stature with the roundness of his figure, his double chin, his thick lips and his fat nose all assisted him in the maintenance of his dignity. his voice was full and deep, like the voice of an organ and he spoke slowly. it has, i believe, been remarked that dignity is more easily attained by a short fat man than by one of a greater stature and thinner person. at the very first appearance of the doctor this evening it was understood that something had happened. for he had assumed an increased importance that was phenomenal: he had swollen, so to speak: he had become rounder and fuller in front. everybody observed the change: yes--he was certainly broader in the shoulders: he carried himself with more than professional dignity: his wig had risen two inches in the foretop and had descended four inches behind his back: his coat was not the plain cloth which he wore habitually in the town and at the tavern, but the black velvet which was reserved for those occasions when he was summoned by a person of quality or one of the county gentry, and he carried the gold-headed cane with the pomander box which also belonged to those rare occasions. "gentlemen," he said, looking around the room slowly and with emphasis, so that, taking his change of manner and of stature--for men so seldom grow after fifty--and the emphasis with which he spoke and looked, gathering together all eyes, caused the company to understand, without any possibility of mistake, that something had happened of great importance. in the old town of lynn regis it is not often that anything happens. ships, it is true, come and go; their departures and their arrivals form the staple of the conversation: but an event, apart from the ships, a surprise, is rare. once, ten years before this evening, a rumour of the kind which, as the journals say, awaits confirmation, reached the town, that the french had landed in force and were marching upon london. the town showed its loyalty by a resolution to die in the last ditch: the resolution was passed by the mayor over a bowl of punch; and though the report proved without foundation the event remained historical: the loyalty and devotion of the borough--the king's own borough--had passed through the fire of peril. the thing was remembered. since that event, nothing had happened worthy of note. and now something more was about to happen: the doctor's face was full of importance: he clearly brought great news. great news, indeed; and news forerunning a time unheard of in the chronicles of the town. "gentlemen," the doctor laid his hat upon the table and his cane beside it. then he took his chair, adjusted his wig, put on his spectacles, and then, laying his hand upon the arms of the chair he once more looked round the room, and all this in the most important, dignified, provoking, interesting manner possible. "gentlemen, i have news for you." as a rule this was a grave and a serious company: there was no singing: there was no laughing: there was no merriment. they were the seniors of the town: responsible persons; in authority and office: substantial, as regards their wealth: full of dignity and of responsibility. i have observed that the possession of wealth, much more than years, is apt to invest a man with serious views. there was little discourse because the opinions of every one were perfectly well-known: the wind: the weather: the crops: the ships: the health or the ailments of the company, formed the chief subjects of conversation. the placid evenings quietly and imperceptibly rolled away with some sense of festivity--in a tavern every man naturally assumes some show of cheerfulness and at nine o'clock the assembly dispersed. captain crowle made answer, speaking in the name of the society, "sir, we await your pleasure." "my news, gentlemen, is of a startling character. i will epitomise or abbreviate it. in a word, therefore, we are all about to become rich." everybody sat upright. rich? all to become rich? my father, who was the master of the grammar school, and the curate of st. nicholas, shook their heads like thomas the doubter. "all you who have houses or property in this town: all who are concerned in the trade of the town: all who direct the industries of the people--or take care of the health of the residents--will become, i say, rich." my father and the curate who were not included within these limits, again shook their heads expressively but kept silence. nobody, of course, expects the master of the grammar school, or a curate, to become rich. "we await your pleasure, sir," the captain repeated. "rich! you said that we were all to become rich," murmured the mayor, who was supposed to be in doubtful circumstances. "if that were true----" "i proceed to my narrative." the doctor pulled out a pocketbook from which he extracted a letter. "i have received," he went on, "a letter from a townsman--the young man named samuel semple--samuel semple," he repeated with emphasis, because a look of disappointment fell upon every face. "sam semple," growled the captain; "once i broke my stick across his back." he did not, however, explain why he had done so. "i wish i had broken two. what has sam semple to do with the prosperity of the town?" "you shall hear," said the doctor. "he would bring a book of profane verse to church instead of the common prayer," said the vicar. "an idle rogue," said the mayor; "i sent him packing out of my countinghouse." "a fellow afraid of the sea," said another. "he might have become a supercargo by this time." "yet not without some tincture of greek," said the schoolmaster; "to do him justice, he loved books." "he made us subscribe a guinea each for his poems," said the vicar. "trash, gentlemen, trash! my copy is uncut." "yet," observed the curate of st. nicholas, "in some sort perhaps, a child of parnassus. one of those, so to speak, born out of wedlock, and, i fear me, of uncertain parentage among the muses and unacknowledged by any. there are many such as sam semple on that inhospitable hill. is the young man starving, doctor? doth he solicit more subscriptions for another volume? it is the way of the distressed poet." the doctor looked from one to the other with patience and even resignation. they would be sorry immediately that they had offered so many interruptions. when it seemed as if every one had said what he wished to say, the doctor held up his hand and so commanded silence. chapter iv the grand discovery "mr. sam semple," the doctor continued, with emphasis on the prefix to which, indeed, the poet was not entitled in his native town, "doth not ask for help: he is not starving: he is prosperous: he has gained the friendship, or the patronage, of certain persons of quality. this is the reward of genius. let us forget that he was the son of a customhouse servant, and let us admit that he proved unequal to the duties--for which he was unfitted--of a clerk. he has now risen--we will welcome one whose name will in the future add lustre to our town." the vicar shook his head. "trash," he murmured, "trash." "well, gentlemen, i will proceed to read the letter." he unfolded it and began with a sonorous hum. "'honoured sir,'" he repeated the words. "'honoured sir,'--the letter, gentlemen, is addressed to myself--ahem! to myself. 'i have recently heard of a discovery which will probably affect in a manner so vital, the interests of my beloved native town, that i feel it my duty to communicate the fact to you without delay. i do so to you rather than to my esteemed patron, the worshipful the mayor, once my master, or to captain crowle, or to any of those who subscribed for my volume of miscellany poems, because the matter especially and peculiarly concerns yourself as a physician, and as the fortunate owner of the spring or well which is the subject of the discovery'--the subject of the discovery, gentlemen. my well--mine." he went on. "'you are aware, as a master in the science of medicine, that the curative properties of various spas or springs in the country--the names of bath, tunbridge wells, and epsom are familiar to you, so doubtless are those of hampstead and st. chad's, nearer london. it now appears that a certain learned physician having reason to believe that similar waters exist, as yet unsuspected, at king's lynn, has procured a jar of the water from your own well--that in your garden'--my well, gentlemen, in my own garden!--'and, having subjected it to a rigorous examination, has discovered that it contains, to a much higher degree than any other well hitherto known to exist in this country, qualities, or ingredients, held in solution, which make this water sovereign for the cure of rheumatism, asthma, gout, and all disorders due to ill humours or vapours--concerning which i am not competent so much as to speak to one of your learning and skill.'" "he has," said the schoolmaster, "the pen of a ready writer. he balances his periods. i taught him. so far, he was an apt pupil." the doctor resumed. "'this discovery hath already been announced in the public journals. i send you an extract containing the news.' i read this extract, gentlemen." it was a slip of printed paper, cut from one of the diurnals of london. "'it has been discovered that at king's lynn in the county of norfolk, there exists a deep well of clear water whose properties, hitherto undiscovered, form a sovereign specific for rheumatism and many similar disorders. our physicians have already begun to recommend the place as a spa and it is understood that some have already resolved upon betaking themselves to this newly discovered cure. the distance from london is no greater than that of bath. the roads, it is true, are not so good, but at cambridge, it is possible for those who do not travel in their own carriages to proceed by way of barge or tilt boat down the cam and the ouse, a distance of only forty miles which in the summer should prove a pleasant journey.' "so far"--the doctor informed us, "for the printed intelligence. i now proceed to finish the letter. 'among others, my patron, the right honourable the earl of fylingdale, has been recommended by his physician to try the newly discovered waters of lynn as a preventive of gout. he is a gentleman of the highest rank, fashion, and wealth, who honours me with his confidence. it is possible that he may even allow me to accompany him on his journey. should he do so i shall look forward to the honour of paying my respects to my former patrons. he tells me that other persons of distinction are also going to the same place, with the same objects, during the coming summer.' "you hear, gentlemen," said the doctor, looking round, "what did i say? wealth for all--for all. so. let me continue. 'sir, i would with the greatest submission venture to point out the importance of this event to the town. the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood should be immediately made acquainted with this great discovery; the clergy of ely, norwich, and lincoln; the members of the university of cambridge: the gentlemen of boston, spalding, and wisbech should all be informed. it may be expected that there will be such a concourse flocking to lynn as will bring an accession of wealth as well as fame to the borough of which i am a humble native. i would also submit that the visitors should find lynn provided with the amusements necessary for a spa. i mean music; the assembly; a pump room; a garden; the ball and the masquerade and the card room; clean lodgings; good wine; and fish, flesh and fowl in abundance. i humbly ask forgiveness for these suggestions and i have the honour to remain, honoured sir, your most obedient humble servant, with my grateful service to all the gentlemen who subscribed to my verses, and thereby provided me with a ladder up which to rise, samuel semple.'" at this moment the bowl of punch was brought in and placed before the captain with a tray of glasses. the doctor folded his letter, replaced it in his pocketbook and took off his spectacles. "gentlemen, you have heard my news. captain crowle, may i request that you permit the society to drink with me to the prosperity of the spa--the prosperity of the spa--the spa of lynn." "let us drink it," said the captain, "to the newly discovered spa. but this samuel--the name sticks." the toast was received with the greatest satisfaction, and then, when the punch was buzzed about, there arose a conversation so lively and so loud that heads looked out of windows in the square wondering what in the world had happened with the society. not a quarrel, surely. nay, there was no uplifting of voices: there was no anger in the voices: nor was it the sound of mirth: there was no note of merriment: nor was it a drunken loosening of the tongue: such a thing with this company was impossible. it was simply a conversation in which all spoke at the same time over an event which interested and excited all alike. everybody contributed something. "we must have a committee to prepare for the accommodation of the visitors." "we must put up a pump room." "we must engage a dipper." "we must make walks across the fields." "there must be an assembly with music and dancing." "there must be a card room." "there must be a long room for those who wish to walk about and to converse--with an orchestra." "there must be public breakfasts and suppers." "we shall want horns to play in the evening." "we must have glass lamps of variegated colours to hang among the trees." "i will put up the pump room," said the doctor, "in my garden, over the well." "we must look to our lodgings. the beds in our inns are for the most part rough hewn boards on trestles with a flock bed full of knobs and sheets that look like leather. the company will look for bedsteads and feather beds." "the ladies will ask for curtains. we must give them what they are accustomed to enjoy." "we must learn the fashionable dance." "we must talk like beaux and dress like the gentlefolk of westminster." the captain looked on, meanwhile, whispering in my ear, from time to time. "samuel is a liar," he said. "i know him to be a liar. yet why should he lie about a thing of so much importance? if he tells the truth, jack--i know not--i misdoubt the fellow--yet--again--he may tell the truth----and why should he lie, i say? then--one knows not--among the company we may even find a husband for the girl. as for taking her to london--but we shall see." so he shook his head, not wholly carried away like the rest, but with a certain amount of hope. and then, waiting for a moment when the talk flagged a bit, he spoke. "gentlemen, if this news is true--and surely samuel would not invent it, then the old town is to have another great slice of luck. we have our shipping and our trade: these have made many of us rich and have given an honest livelihood to many more. the spa should bring in, as the doctor has told us, wealth by another channel. i undertake to assure you that we shall rise to the occasion. the town shall show itself fit to receive and to entertain the highest company. we tarpaulins are too old to learn the manners of fashion. but we have men of substance among us who will lay out money with such an object: we have gentlemen of family in the country round: we have young fellows of spirit," he clapped me on the shoulder, "who will keep up the gaieties: and, gentlemen, we have maidens among us--as blooming as any in the great world. we shall not be ashamed of ourselves--or of our girls." these words created a profound sigh of satisfaction. the men of substance would rise to the occasion. before the bowl was out a committee was appointed, consisting of captain crowle, the vicar of st. margaret's, the curate of st. nicholas--the two clergymen being appointed as having imbibed at the university of cambridge some tincture of the fashionable world--and the doctor. this important body was empowered to make arrangements for the reception and for the accommodation and entertainment of the illustrious company expected and promised. it was also empowered to circulate in the country round about news of the extraordinary discovery and to invite all the rheumatic and the gouty: the asthmatic and everybody afflicted with any kind of disease to repair immediately to lynn regis, there to drink the sovereign waters of the spa. "it only remains, gentlemen," said the doctor in conclusion, "that i myself should submit the water of my well to an examination." he did not think it necessary to inform the company that he had received from samuel semple an analysis of the water stating the ingredients and their proportions as made by the anonymous physician of london. "should it prove--of which i have little doubt--that the water is such as has been described by my learned brother in medicine, i shall inform you of the fact." it was a curious coincidence, though the committee of reception were not informed of the fact, that the doctor's analysis exactly agreed with that sent to him. it was a memorable evening. for my own part,--i know not why--during the reading of the letter my heart sank lower and lower. it was the foreboding of evil. perhaps it was caused by my knowledge of samuel of whom i will speak presently. perhaps it was the thought of seeing the girl whom i loved, while yet i had no hope of winning her, carried off by some sprig of quality who would teach her to despise her homely friends, the master mariners young and old. i know not the reason. but it was a foreboding of evil and it was with a heavy heart that i repaired to the quay and rowed myself back to the ship in the moonlight. they were going to drink to the next voyage of _the lady of lynn_. why, the lady herself, not her ship, was about to embark on a voyage more perilous--more disastrous--than that which awaited any of her ships. cruel as is the ocean i would rather trust myself--and her--to the mercies of the bay of biscay at its wildest--than to the tenderness of the crew who were to take charge of that innocent and ignorant lady. chapter v the port of lynn this was the beginning of the famous year. i say famous because, to me and to certain others, it was certainly a year eventful, while to the people of the town and the county round it was the year of the spa which began, ran a brief course, and terminated, all in one summer. let me therefore speak for a little about the place where these things happened. it is not a mushroom or upstart town of yesterday but on the other hand a town of venerable antiquity with many traditions which may be read in books by the curious. it is important on account of its trade though it is said that in former days its importance was much greater. i have sailed over many seas: i have put in at many ports: i have taken in cargoes of many countries--the ways of sailors i have found much the same everywhere. and as for the food and the drink and the buildings i say that lynn is behind none. certainly the port of london whether at wapping or at limehouse or shadwell cannot show anything so fine as the market place of lynn or st. margaret's church or our customhouse. nor have i found anywhere, people more civil of speech and more obliging and well disposed, than in my own town; in which, apart from the sailors and their quarters, the merchants and shipowners are substantial: trade is always brisk: the port is always lively: continually there is a coming and a going: sometimes, week after week, one ship arrives and another ship puts out: the yards are always busy: the hammer and the anvil resound all day long: carpenters, rope makers, boat builders, block makers, sail makers, all the people wanted to fit out a ship--they say that a ship is like a woman, in always wanting something--are at work without intermission all the year round from five in the morning till eight in the evening. they stand at good wages: they live well: they dress warm: they drink of the best. it is a city of great plenty. wine there is of the most generous, to be had at reasonable price--have i not myself brought home cargoes from lisbon of spanish and portuguese--strong and heady--rich and sweet; and from bordeaux of right claret? all the things that come from abroad are here in abundance, brought hither by our ships and distributed by our barges up the river and its tributaries through eight countries at least, serving the towns of peterborough, ely, stamford, bedford, st. ives, huntingdon, st. neots, northampton, cambridge, bury st. edmund's, and thetford. we send them not only wine but also coals (which come to us, sea-borne, from newcastle), deal and timber from norway and the baltic, iron and implements; sugar, lemons, spices, tea (but there is little of that infusion taken in the county), turpentine, and i know not what: and we receive for export wheat, barley, oats and grain of all kinds. in other places you may hear lamentations that certain imported luxuries have given out: the lemons will fail so that the punch is spoiled: or the nutmegs give out--which is a misfortune for the pudding: or the foreign wine has been all consumed. our cellars and our warehouses, however, are always full, there is always wine of every kind: there are always stores of everything that the cook can want for his most splendid banquet. nor are we less fortunate in our food. there is excellent mutton fattened in the marshland: the bacon of norfolk is famous: there are no geese like the geese of the fens--they are kept in farmhouses, each in its own hutch, and all driven out to feed in the fens and the ditches of the fens. every day you may see the boy they call the gozzard driving them out in the morning and bringing them home in the evening. then, since all the country on the west side is lowland reclaimed from the sea, it is, like all such land, full of ponds and haunted by starlings and ducks, widgeon, teal and other wild birds innumerable, which are shot, decoyed, and caught in great numbers. add to this that the reclaimed land is most fertile and yields abundantly of wheat and barley, fruit and vegetables: and that fish are found in plenty in the wash and outside and you will own that the town is a kind of promised land, where everything that the heart of man can desire is plentiful and cheap and where the better sort are rich and comfortable and the baser sort are in good case and contented. another circumstance, which certain scholars consider fortunate for lynn, is that the modern town abounds with ancient buildings, walls, towers, arches, churches, gateways, fragments which proclaim its antiquity and speak of its former importance. you think, perhaps, that a plain and simple sea captain has no business to know anything about matters which concern scholars. that is a reasonable objection. the lord forbid that i should speak as if i knew anything of my own reading. i am but a plain sailor: i have spent most of my life navigating a merchantman. this is an honourable condition. had i to choose another life upon the world i would desire of providence no higher station and no happier lot. a sea captain is king: his vessel is an island over which he rules: he is a servant yet not in a state of servitude: he is a dependent yet is independent: he has no cares about money for he is well paid: he keeps what hours he pleases: dresses as he likes: eats and drinks as he likes: if he carries passengers he has society. no. let me not even seem to be pretending to the learning of a scholar. i do but repeat the things which my father was wont to repeat in my hearing. he was for forty years master of the grammar school; a master of arts of christ's college, cambridge: a learned scholar in latin, greek, hebrew and chaldee: and, like many of his calling, an antiquary and one who was most happy when he was poring over old manuscripts in the archives of the guildhall, and amassing materials which he did not live to put together for the history of lynn regis, sometime lynn episcopi. the collections made by him still lie among the chests where the corporation keep their papers. they will doubtless be found there at some future time and will serve for some other hand engaged upon the same work. it is not to be expected that among a trading and a shipping community there should be much curiosity on such matters as the past history of their borough: the charter which it obtained from kings; the creation of a mayor: the destruction of the monasteries when the glorious reformation restored the sunlight of the gospel and of freedom to this happy land. for the most part my father worked without encouragement save from the vicar of st. margaret's, the reverend mark gentle, s.t.p., to whose scholarly mind the antiquities and charters and leases of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were of small account indeed compared with a newly found coin of an obscure roman usurper, or an inscription on a roman milestone, or the discovery of a roman urn. yet my father would willingly discourse upon the subject and, indeed, i think that little by little he communicated to me the whole of his knowledge, so that i became that rare creature, a sailor versed in antiquity and history: one to whom the streets and old buildings of lynn spoke in a language unknown by the people, even unheard by them. it pleases me to recall the tall form of my father: his bent shoulders: his wig for the most part awry: his round spectacles; his thin face. in school he was a figure of fear, always terrible, wielding the rod of office with justice rhadamanthine, and demanding, with that unrelenting alternative, things impossible in grammar. in school hours he was a very jupiter, a thundering jupiter: our school was an ancient hall with an open timber roof in which his voice rolled and echoed backwards and forwards. nor did he spare his only son. in consequence of some natural inability to cope with the niceties of syntax i was often compelled to become a warning and an admonition to the rest. i have sometimes, since those days, in considering things during the night-watch, asked myself why men of tender hearts force their children to undergo this fierce discipline of grammar--a thing instantly forgotten when a boy goes to sea: and i have thought that perhaps it was invented and encouraged by divines in order that boys might learn something of the terrors of the law divine. out of school, however, no child ever had a parent more indulgent or more affectionate. the post of schoolmaster is honourable and one that should be desired, yet i have sometimes wished, when the disagreeable moments of swishing were upon me, that the hand of the executioner had belonged to some other boy's father--say, the father of sam semple. i will tell you how he used to talk. i remember one day--it might be yesterday--he was standing on the lady's mount and looking down upon the gardens and fields which now lie between the ancient walls and the modern town. "look, boy," he said, "you see fields and gardens: on those fields stood formerly monasteries and convents: these gardens were once enclosed--you may still discern some of the stone walls which surrounded them, for monk and friar. all the friars were here, so great was the wealth of the town. on that green field behind the church of st. nicholas was the house of the austin friars: some fragments of these buildings have i discovered built into the houses on the west side of the field: i should like to pull down the modern houses in order to display those fragments: almost at our feet lay the house of the black friars, yonder to the south, between the road to the gate and the river var, was the friary of the white friars or carmelites: there is the tower of the grey friars, who were franciscans. on the south side of st. margaret's there are walls and windows, with carved mullions and arches--they belong to a college of priests or perhaps a benedictine house--there must have been benedictines in the town; or perhaps they belonged to a nunnery: many nunneries stood beside parish churches. "this is part of the wall of the town. 'tis a pity that it should fall into decay, but when walls are no longer wanted for defence they are neglected. first the weather loosens the stones of the battlements; or perhaps they fall into the moat: or the people take them away for building. i wonder how much of the wall of lynn is built into the churches and the houses and the garden walls; then the whole face of the wall disappears; then if it is a roman wall there is left a core of concrete as in london wall which i have seen here and there where the houses are not built against it. and here is a point which i cannot get over. the wall of lynn is two miles long: that of london is three miles long, as i am credibly informed by stow and others. was then, the town of lynn at any time able to raise and to defend a wall two miles in length? it seems incredible. yet why build a wall longer than could be defended? were these fields and gardens once streets between the religious houses? certain it is that lynn episcopi, as it was then called, was formerly a very busy place yet, i apprehend, more busy than at present in proportion only to the increased wealth and population of the country." so he would talk to me, i suppose, because he could never find anybody else who would listen to him. those who read this page will very likely resemble the company to whom my father ventured upon such discourse of ancient things. they would incline their heads; they would take a drink: they would sigh: they would say, "why, sir, since you say so, doubtless it is so. no one is likely to dispute the point, but if you think upon it the time is long ago and ... i think, neighbours, the wind has shifted a point to the nor'east." the town preserves, in spite of neglect and oblivion, more of the appearance of the age than most towns. the guildhall, where they show the sword and the silver cup of king john, is an ancient and noteworthy building: there are the old churches: there are almshouse and hospitals: there is a customhouse which the hollanders enviously declare must have been brought over from their country and set up here, so much does it resemble their own buildings. our streets are full of remains: here a carving in marble: here a window of ancient shape, cut in stone: here a piece of carved work from some ancient chantry chapel: here a deserted and mouldering court: here a house overhanging, gabled, with carved front: here a courtyard with an ancient house built round it; and with the narrow streets such as one finds only in the most ancient parts of our ancient cities. we have still our winding lanes with their irregularities: houses planted sideways as well as fronting the street: an irregular alignment: gables instead of a flat coping: casement windows not yet transformed by the modern sash: our old taverns; our old walls; our old market places; and the ancient bridges which span the four streams running through the midst of our town. by the riverside you may find the sailors and the craftsmen who belong to a seaport: at the customhouse you may meet the merchants and the shippers: in the market places you may find the countrymen and countrywomen--they talk an uncouth language and their manners are rough, but they are honest: and if you go to the church of st. margaret's or st. nicholas any day for morning prayers but especially on sunday you may find among the congregation maidens and matrons in rich attire, the former as beautiful as in any town or country may be met; the latter stately and dignified and gracious withal. chapter vi the maid of lynn my earliest recollection as a child shows me captain crowle, full-wigged, with a white silk cravat round his neck, the lace ends hanging down before, a crimson silk sash to his sword, long lace ruffles, his brown coat with silver buttons, his worsted hose, and his shoes with silver clocks. in my memory he is always carrying his hat under his arm; a stout stick always dangled from his wrist, in readiness; and he always presents the same honest face, weather-beaten, ruddy, lined, with his keen eyes under thick eyebrows and his nose long and broad and somewhat arched--such a nose as lends authority to a man. in other words, i never saw any change in the captain, though, when i first remember him he must have been fifty-five, and when he ceased to be seen in his old haunts he was close upon eighty. i have seen, however, and i remember, many changes in the captain's ward. she is a little thing of two or three at first; then she is a merry child of six; next she is a schoolgirl of ten or eleven; she grows into a maiden of sixteen, neither girl nor woman; she becomes a woman of eighteen. i remember her in every stage. strange to say i do not remember her between those stages. molly had the misfortune to lose her father in infancy. he was carried off, i believe, by smallpox. he was a ship owner, and general merchant of the town, and was generally reputed to be a man of considerable means. at his death he bequeathed the care of his widow and his child to his old servant, captain john crowle, who had been in the service of the house since he was apprenticed as a boy. he directed, further, that captain crowle should conduct the business for the child, who by his will was to inherit the whole of his fortune whatever that might prove to be, on coming of age, after subtracting certain settlements for his widow. it was most fortunate for the child that her guardian was the most honest person in the world. he was a bachelor; he was bound by ties of gratitude to the house which he had served; he had nothing to do and nothing to think about except the welfare of the child. i would have no secrets with my reader. let it be known, therefore, that on looking into the position of affairs, the executor found that there was a much greater fortune for his ward than any one, even the widow, ever guessed. there were houses in the town; there were farms in marshland; there were monies placed out on mortgage; there were three or four tall ships, chiefly in the lisbon trade; and there were boxes full of jewels, gold chains, and trinkets, the accumulation of three or four generations of substantial trade. he kept this knowledge to himself: then, as the expenses of the household were small and there was always a large balance after the year in favour of the house, he went on adding ship to ship, house to house, and farm to farm, besides putting out monies on the security of mortgage, so that the child, no one suspecting, grew richer and richer, until by the time she was eighteen, if the captain only knew it, she became the richest heiress not only in the town of lynn, but also in the whole county of norfolk and even, i verily believe, in the whole country. i think that the captain must have been what is called a good man of business by nature. a simple sailor, one taught to navigate; to take observations; to keep a log and to understand a chart, is not supposed to be thereby trained for trade. but it must have been a far-seeing man who boldly launched out into new branches, and sent whalers to the arctic seas; ships to trade in the baltic; and ships into the mediterranean, as well as ships in the old trade for which lynn was always famous, that with lisbon for wine. he it was who enlarged the quay and rebuilt the common stath yard: his countinghouse--it was called his and he was supposed to be at least a partner--was filled with clerks, and it was counted good fortune by the young men of the place to enter his service whether as prentices on board his ships, or as bookkeepers in his countinghouse, or as supercargoes or pursers in his fleet. for my own part it was always understood between us that i too was to enter his service, but as a sailor, not as a clerk. this i told him as a little boy, with the impudence of childhood: he laughed; but he remembered and reminded me from time to time. "jack is to be a sailor--jack will have none of your quill driving--jack means to walk his own quarter-deck. i shall live to give jack his sword and his telescope" ... and so on, lest perchance i should forget and fall off and even accept the vicar's offer to get me a scholarship at some college of cambridge, so that i might take a degree, and become my father's usher and presently succeed him as master of the grammar school. "learning," said the captain, "is a fine thing, but the command of a ship is a finer. likewise it is doubtless a great honour to be a master of arts, such as your father, but, my lad, a rope's end is, to my mind, a better weapon than a birch." and so on. for while he knew how to respect the learning of a scholar, as he respected the piety of the vicar, he considered the calling of the sailor more delightful than that of the schoolmaster, even though not so highly esteemed by the world. there were plenty of children in the town of lynn to play with: but it came about in some way or other, perhaps because i was always a favourite with the captain, and was encouraged to go often to the house, that molly became my special playfellow. she was two years younger than myself, but being forward in growth and strength the difference was not a hindrance, while there was no game or amusement pleasing to me which did not please her. for instance, every boy of lynn, as soon as he can handle a scull, can manage a dingy; and as soon as he can haul a rope, can sail a boat. for my own part i can never remember the time when i was not in my spare time out on the river. i would sail up the river, along the low banks of the sluggish stream up and down which go the barges which carry the cargoes of our ships to the inland towns and return for more. there are also tilt boats coming down the river which are like the waggons on the road, full of passengers, sailors, servants, soldiers, craftsmen, apprentices and the like. or i would row down the river with the current and the tide as far as the mouth where the river flows into the wash. then i would sail up again watching the ships tacking across the stream in their slow upward progress to the port. or i would go fishing and bring home a basket full of fresh fish for the house: or i would paddle about in a dingy among the ships, watching them take in and discharge cargo: or receive from the barges alongside the casks of pork and beef; of rum and beer and water, for the next voyage: happy indeed, if i could get permission to tie up the painter to the rope ladder hanging over the side and so climb up and ramble over every part of the ship. and i knew every ship that belonged to the port: every dutchman which put in with cheese and tallow, hardware and soft goods; every norwegian that brought deal: i knew them all and when they were due and their tonnage and the name of the captain. more than this, molly knew as much as i did. she was as handy with her sculls; she knew every puff of wind and where to expect it at the bend of the river; she was as handy with the sails. while her mother made her a notable housewife and taught her to make bread, cakes, puddings and pies; to keep the still-room; to sew and make and mend; to brew the ale, both the strong and the small; and the punch for the captain's friends at christmas and other festivals--while, i say, this part of molly's education was not neglected, it was i who made her a sailor, so that there was nowhere in the place any one, man or boy or girl, who was handier with a boat or more certain with a sail than molly. and i know not which of these two accomplishments pleased her guardian the more. that she should become a good housewife was necessary: that she should be a handy sailor was an accomplishment which, because it was rare in a girl, and belonged to the work of the other sex, seemed to him a proper and laudable object of pride. the captain, as you have already learned, nourished a secret ambition. when i was still little more than a boy, he entrusted his secret to me. molly's mother, the good homely body who was so notable a housekeeper, and knew nothing, as she desired to know nothing concerning the manners and customs of gentlefolk, was not consulted. nor did the good woman even know how great an heiress her daughter had become. now, the captain's ambition was to make his ward, by means of her fortune, a great lady. he knew little--poor man!--of what was meant by a great lady, but he wanted the heiress of such great wealth to marry some man who would lift her out of the rank and condition to which she was born. it was a fatal ambition, as you shall learn. now, being wise after the event and quite able to lock the door after the horse has been stolen i can understand that with such an ambition the captain's only plan was to have taken the girl away; perhaps to norwich, perhaps to london itself; to have placed her under the care of some respectable gentlewoman; to have had her taught all the fashionable fal-lals, with the graces and the sprawls and the antics of the fashionable world; to let it be buzzed abroad that she was an heiress, and then, after taking care to protect her against adventurers, to find a man after his own mind, of station high enough to make the girl's fortune equal to his own; not to overshadow it: and not to dazzle him with possibilities of spending. however, it is easy to understand what might have been done. what was done, you understand. at nineteen, molly was a fine tall girl, as strong as any man, her arms stout and muscular like mine; her face rosy and ruddy with the bloom of health; her eyes blue and neither too large nor too small but fearless; her head and face large; her hair fair and blowing about her head with loose curls; her figure full; her neck as white as snow; her hands large rather than small, by reason of the rowing and the handling of the ropes, and by no means white; her features were regular and straight; her mouth not too small but to my eyes the most beautiful mouth in the world, the lips full, and always ready for a smile, the teeth white and regular. in a word, to look at as fine a woman, not of the delicate and dainty kind, but strong, tall, and full of figure, as one may wish for. as to her disposition she was the most tender, affectionate, sweet soul that could be imagined; she was always thinking of something to please those who loved her; she spared her mother and worked for her guardian; she was always working at something; she was always happy; she was always singing. and never, until the captain told her, did she have the least suspicion that she was richer than all her friends and neighbours--nay--than the whole town of lynn with its merchants and shippers and traders, all together. you think that i speak as a lover. it is true that i have always loved molly: there has never been any other woman in the world for whom i have ever felt the least inclination or affection. she possessed my whole soul as a child; she has it still--my soul--my heart--my whole desire--my all. i will say no more in her praise, lest i be thought to exaggerate. let me return for a moment to our childhood. we ran about together: we first played in the garden: we then played in the fields below the wall: we climbed over what is left of the wall: from the top of the grey friars' tower; from the chapel on the lady's mount; we would look out upon the broad expanse of meadows which were once covered over at every high tide: there were stories which were told by old people of broken dams and of floods and inundations: children's imagination is so strong that they can picture anything. i would pretend that the flood was out again; that my companion was carried away in a hencoop and that i was swimming to her assistance. oh! we had plays and pretences enough. if we went up the river there was beyond--what we could never reach--a castle with a giant who carried off girls and devoured them; he carried off my companion. heavens! how i rushed to the rescue and with nothing but the boathook encountered and slaughtered him. or if we went down the river as far as the mouth where it falls into the ouse, we would remember the pirates and how they seized on girls and took them off to their caves to work for them. how many pirates did i slay in defence and rescue of one girl whom they dared to carry off! or we rambled about the town, lingering on the quays, watching the ships and the sailors and the workmen, and sometimes in summer evenings when from some tavern with its red curtain across the window came the scraping of a fiddle, and the voices of those who sang, and the stamping of those who danced, we would look in at the open door and watch the sailors within who looked so happy. nobody can ever be so happy as sailors ashore appear to be: it is only the joy of a moment, but when one remembers it, one imagines that it was the joy of a life-time. you think that it was a bad thing for children to look on at sailors and to listen to their conversation if one may use the word of such talk as goes on among the class. you are wrong. these things do not hurt children, because they do not understand. half the dangers in the world, i take it, come from knowledge: only the other half from ignorance. everybody knows the ways and the life of jack ashore. children, however, see only the outside of things. the fiddler in the corner puts his elbow into the tune; the men get up and dance the hornpipe; the girls dance to the men, setting and jetting and turning round and round and all with so much mirth and good nature and so much kindness and so much singing and laughing, that there can be no more delightful entertainment for children than to look on at a sailors' merrymaking behind the red curtain of the tavern window. i recall one day. it was in the month of december, in the afternoon and close upon sunset. the little maid was about eight and i was ten. we were together as usual; we had been on the river, but it was cold and so we came ashore and were walking hand in hand along the street they call pudding lane which leads from the common stath yard to the market-place. in this lane there stands a sailors' tippling house, which is, i dare say, in all respects, such a house as sailors desire, provided and furnished according to their wants and wishes. as we passed, the place being already lit up with two or three candles in sconces, the door being wide open, and the mingled noise of fiddle, voices, and feet announcing the assemblage of company, molly pulled me by the hand and stopped to look in. the scene was what i have already indicated. the revelry of the evening had set in: everybody was drinking: one was dancing: the fiddler was playing lustily. we should have looked on for a minute and left them. but one of the sailors recognised molly. springing to his feet, he made a respectful leg and saluted the child. "mates," he cried, "'tis our owner! the little lady owns the barky. what shall we do for her?" then they all sprang to their feet with a huzza for the owner, and another for the ship--and, if you will believe it, their rough fo'c'sle hands in half a minute had the child on the table in a chair like a queen. she sat with great dignity, understanding in some way that these men were in her own service, and that they designed no harm or affright to her but only to do her honour. therefore she was not in any fear and smiled graciously; for my own part i followed and stood at the table thinking that perhaps these fellows were proposing some piratical abduction and resolving miracles of valour, if necessary. then they made offerings. one man pulled a red silk handkerchief from his neck and laid it in her lap; and another lugged a box of sweetmeats from his pocket: it came from lisbon but was made, i believe, in morocco by the moors. a third had a gold ring on his finger--everybody knows the extravagancies of sailors--which he drew off and placed in her hand. another offered a glass of punch. the little maid did what she had so often seen the captain do. she looked round and said, "your good health, all the company," and put her lips to the glass which she then returned. and another offered to dance and the fiddler drew his bow across the catgut--it is a sound which inclines the heart to beat and the feet to move whenever a sailor hears it. "i have often seen you dance," said molly; "let the fiddler play and you shall see me dance." i never thought she would have had so much spirit. for, you see, i had taught her to dance the hornpipe: every boy in a seaport town can dance the hornpipe: we used to make music out of a piece of thin paper laid over a tortoise-shell comb--it must be a comb of wide teeth and none of them must be broken--and with this instead of a fiddle we would dance in the garden or in the parlour. but to stand up before a whole company of sailors--who would have thought it? however, she jumped up and on the table performed her dance with great seriousness and so gracefully that they were all enchanted: they stood around, their mouths open, a broad grin on every face: the women, neglected, huddled together in a corner and were quite silent. when she had finished, she gathered up her gifts--the silk handkerchief--it came from calicut, the sweetmeats from morocco, the gold ring from i know not where. "put me down, if you please," she said. so one of them gently lifted her to the ground. "i thank you all," she curtseyed very prettily. "i wish you good-night, and when you set sail again, a good voyage." so she took my hand and we ran away. at the age of thirteen i went to sea. then for ten years i sailed out and home again; sometimes to the baltic; sometimes to bordeaux; sometimes to lisbon. after every voyage i found my former companion grown, yet always more lovely and more charming: the time came when we no longer kissed at parting; when we were no longer brother and sister; when, alas! we could not be lovers, because between us lay that great fortune of hers, which it would be improper to bestow upon the mate of a merchantman. said my father to me once by way of warning, "jack, build not hopes that will be disappointed. this maiden is not for thee, but for thy betters. if she were poor--but she is rich--too rich, i fear me, for her happiness. let us still say in the words of agur, 'give me neither poverty nor riches.' thou art as yet young for thoughts of love. when the time comes, my son, cast your eyes among humbler maidens and find virtues and charms in one of them. but think no more--i say it for thy peace--think no more of molly. her great riches are like a high wall built round her to keep thee off, jack, and others like unto thee." they were wise words, but a young man's thoughts are wilful. there was no other maiden in whom i saw either virtues or charms because molly among them all was like the silver moon among the glittering stars. you have heard of the great and unexpected discovery, how the town found itself the possessor of a spa--and such a spa!--compared with which the waters of tunbridge were feeble and those of epsom not worth considering. that was in the year 1750, when molly was already nineteen years of age and no longer a little maid, but a woman grown, as yet without wooers, because no one so far had been found fit, in the captain's eyes, for the hand and the purse of his lovely ward. chapter vii the poet you have heard the opinions of the "society" as to sam semple. you have also witnessed the humiliation and the basting of that young man. let me tell you more about him before we go on to relate the progress of the conspiracy of which he was the inventor and the spring. he was the son of one john semple who was employed at the customhouse. the boy could look forward, like most of us, to a life of service. he might go to sea, and so become in due course, prentice, mate, and skipper; or he might be sent on board as supercargo; or he might enter the countinghouse of a merchant and keep the books; or he might follow his father and become a servant of the customhouse. he was two years older than myself and therefore, so much above me at school. of all the boys (which alone indicates something contemptible in his nature) he was the most disliked, not by one or two, but by the whole school; not only by the industrious and the well-behaved, but also by the lazy and the vicious. there is always in every school, one boy at least, who is the general object of dislike: he makes no friends: his society is shunned: he may be feared, but he is hated. there are, i dare say, many causes for unpopularity: one boy is perhaps a bully who delights to ill-treat the younger and the weaker; one is a braggart: one plays games unfairly: one is apt to offend that nice sense of honour and loyalty which is cultivated by schoolboys: another is treacherous to his comrades; he tells tales, backbites and makes mischief: perhaps he belongs to an inferior station and has bad manners: perhaps he takes mean advantages: perhaps he is a coward who will not fight: perhaps he cannot do the things which boys respect. sam semple was disliked for many of these reasons. he was known to be a telltale; he was commonly reported to convey things overheard to the usher, by means of which that officer was enabled to discover many little plots and plans and so bring their authors to pain and confusion. he was certainly a coward who would never fight it out, but after a grand pretence and flourish would run away at the first blow. but if he would not fight he would bear malice and would take mean revenges; he was a most notorious liar, insomuch that no one would believe any statement made by him, if it could be proved to be connected with his own advantage; he could not play any games and affected to despise the good old sports of cocking, baiting the bear, drawing the badger, playing at cricket, hockey, wrestling, racing, and the other things that make boys skilful, courageous and hardy. he was, in a word, a poor soft, cowardly creature, more like a girl--and an inferior kind of girl--than an honest lad. he was much addicted to reading: he would, by choice, sit in a corner reading any book that he could get more willingly than run, jump, row, or race. when we had holidays he would go away by himself, sometimes on the walls, if it were summer, or in some sheltered nook, if it were winter, contented to be left alone with his printed page. he borrowed books from my father who encouraged him in reading, while he admonished him on account of his faults, and from the vicar, who lent him books, while he warned him against the reports of his character which were noised abroad. now--i know not how--the boy became secretly inflamed with the ambition of becoming a poet. how he fell into this pitfall, which ended in his ruin, i know not. certainly it was not from any boys in the school, or from any friend in the town, because there are no books of poetry in lynn, save those which belong to the parson and the schoolmaster. however, he did conceive the ambition of becoming a poet--secretly, at first, because he was naturally ashamed of being such a fool, but it came out. he read poetry from choice, and rather than anything else. once, i remember, he was flogged for taking a volume of miscellany poems into church instead of the book of common prayer. the boys were astonished at the crime, because certainly one would much rather read the book of common prayer, in which one knows what to expect, than a book of foolish rhymes. i myself was the first to find out his ambition. it was in this way. coming out of school one day i picked up a paper which was blown about the square. it was covered with writing. i read some of it, wondering what it might mean. there was a good deal and not a word of sense from beginning to end: the writing was all scored out and corrected over and over again. thus, not to waste your time over this nonsense, it ran something like this: when the refulgent rays of sol =began= prevail early =day= morn to =a=waken=ed= all the maidens of the dale lawn drove morpheus =shrieking from the beds= away --from the maids and swains. and so on. one is ashamed to repeat such rubbish. while i was reading it however, sam semple came running back. "that paper is mine," he cried, with a very red face, snatching it out of my hands. "well--if it is yours, take it. what does it mean?" "it's poetry, you fool." "if you call me a fool, sam, you'll get a black eye." he was three inches taller than myself as well as two years older--but this was the way all the boys spoke to him. "you can't understand," he said, "none of you can understand. it's poetry, i tell you." i told my father, who sent for him and in my presence admonished him kindly, first ordering him to submit his verses for correction, as if they were in latin. it was after school hours: the room was empty save for the three of us--my father sat at his desk where he assumed authority. outside the schoolroom he was but a gentle creature. "boy," he said, "as for these verses--i say nothing. they are but immature imitations. you would be a poet. learn, however, that the lot of him who desires that calling is the hardest and the worst that fate can have in store for an honest man. there are many who can write rhymes: for one who has read ovid and virgil, the making of verse is easy. but only one or two here and there, out of millions, are there whose lips are touched with the celestial fire: only one or two whose verses can reach the heart and fire the brain of those who read them." "sir, may not i, too, form one of that small company?" his cheek flamed and his eyes brightened. for once sam was handsome. "it may be so. i say nothing to the contrary. learn, however, that even if genius has been granted, much more will be required. he who would be a great poet must attain, if he can, by meditation and self-restraint, to the great mind. he must be sincere--truthful--courageous--think of that, boy; he must meditate. milton's thoughts were ever on religious and civil freedom; therefore he was enabled to speak as a prophet." he gazed upon the face of his scholar: the cheek was sallow again; the eyes dull; upon that mean countenance no sign of noble or of lofty thought. my father sighed and went on. "it seems, to a young man, a great thing to be a poet. he will escape--will he?--the humiliations of life. he thinks that he will be no man's servant; he will be independent; he will work as his genius inclines him. alas! he little knows the humiliations of the starveling poet. no man's servant? there is none--believe me--not even the african slave, who has to feel more of the contempts, the scorns, the servitude of the world. such an one have i known. he had to bend the knee to the patron, who treated him with open scorn; and to the bookseller, who treated him with contempt undisguised. one may be a poet who is endowed with the means of a livelihood. such is the ingenious mr. pope; or one who has an office to maintain him: such was the immortal john milton; but, for you and such as you, boy, born in a humble condition, and ordained by providence for that condition, there is no worse servitude than that of a bookseller's hack. go, boy--think of these things. continue to write verses, if by their aid you may in any way become a better man and more easily attain to the christian life. but accept meanwhile, the ruling of providence and do thy duty in that station of life to which thou hast been called." so saying he dismissed the boy, who went away downcast and with hanging head. then my father turned to me. "son," he said, "let no vain repinings fill thy soul. service is thy lot. it is also mine. it is the lot of every man except those who are born to wealth and rank. i do not envy these, because much is expected of them--a thing which mostly they do not understand. and too many of these are, truth to say, in the service of beelzebub. we are all servants of each other; let us perform our service with cheerfulness and even with joy. the lord, who knows what is best for men, hath so ordained that we shall be dependent upon each other in all things. servants, i say, are we all of each other. we may not escape the common lot--the common servitude." let me return to sam. at the age of fourteen he was taken from school and placed in a countinghouse where his duty was to clean out, sweep, and dust the place every morning; to be at the beck and call of his master; to copy letters and to add up figures. i asked him how he liked this employment. "it is well enough," he said, "until i can go whither i am called. but to serve at adding up the price of barrels of tarpaulin all my life! no, jack, no. i am made of stuff too good." he continued for three years in this employment. we then heard that he had been dismissed for negligence, his master having made certain discoveries that greatly enraged him. he then went on board ship in the capacity of clerk or assistant to the supercargo, but at the end of his first voyage he was sent about his business. "it is true," he told me, "that there were omissions in the books. who can keep books below, by the light of a stinking tallow candle, when one can lie on the deck in the sun and watch the waves? but these people--these people--among them all, jack, there is not one who understands the poet, except your father, and he will have it that the poet must starve. well, there is another way." but he would tell me no more. that way was this. you know, because it led to the basting. the day after the adventure in the captain's garden, sam put together all he had, borrowed what money his mother would give him and went off to london by the waggon. after a while a letter came from him. it was addressed to his mother, who brought it to the school because she could not understand what was meant. sam (i believe he was lying) said that he had been received into the company of the wits; his verse, he said, was regarded with respect at the coffee house; he was already known to many poets and booksellers; he asked for a small advance of money and he entreated his mother to let it be known in the town that he was publishing a volume of verse by subscription. his former patrons, he said, would doubtless assist him by giving their names and guineas. the book, he added, would certainly place him among the acknowledged poets of the day--even with pope and gay. there was much difference of opinion as to sending the guineas: but a few of the better sort consented, and in due course received their copies. it was a thin quarto with a large margin. the title page was as follows: "miscellany poems _by sam semple, gentleman_." "gentleman!" said the vicar. "how long has sam been a gentleman? he will next, no doubt, describe himself as esquire. as for the verses--trash--two-penny trash! alas! and they cost me a guinea!" chapter viii the opening of the spa the wonderful letter from sam semple was received in april. no one from the outset questioned his assertions. this seems wonderful--but they could only be tried by a letter to london or a journey thither. now our merchants had correspondents in the city of london, but not in the fashionable quarters, and nothing is more certain than that the merchants of this city concerned themselves not at all with the pursuits of fashion or even with the gatherings of the wits in the coffee house. as for the journey to london no one will willingly undertake it unless he is compelled----you may go by way of ely and cambridge--but the road nearly all the way to cambridge lies through the soft and treacherous fen when if a traveller escape being bogged, a hundred to one he will probably acquire an ague which will trouble him for many days afterwards. or you may go by way of swaffham and east dereham through norwich. by this way there are no fens, but the road to norwich is practicable only by broad wheeled waggons or on horseback, and i doubt if the forty miles could be covered in less than two days. at norwich, it is true, there is a better road and a stage coach carries passengers to london in twelve hours. it is therefore a long and tedious journey from lynn to london and one not to be undertaken without strong reasons. then--even if the society had entertained suspicions and deputed one or more to make that journey and to inquire as to the truth of the letter, how and where, in so vast a city, would one begin the enquiry. in truth, however, the letter was received without the least suspicion. yet it was from beginning to end an artfully concocted lie--part of a conspiracy; an invention devised by the desire for revenge; an ingenious device--let us give the devil his due--by one whose only weapon was his cunning. every man of the "society" went home brimful of the discovery. the next day the doctor's garden was crowded with people all pressing together, trampling over his currant and gooseberry bushes, drawing up the bucket without cessation in order to taste the water which was to cure all diseases--even like the pool of bethesda. many among them had used the water all their lives without discovering any peculiarity in taste--in fact as if it had been ordinary water conferred upon man by providence for the brewing of his beer and the making of his punch and the washing of his linen. now, however, so great is the power of faith, they drank it as it came out of the well--a thing abhorrent to most people who cannot abide plain water. they held it up to the light, admiring its wonderful clearness: they called attention to the beads of air rising in the glass, as a plain proof of its health-giving qualities; they smacked their lips over it, detecting the presence of unknown ingredients: those who were already rheumatic resolved to drink it every day at frequent intervals: after a single draught they felt relief in their joints; they declared that the rheumatic pains were subsiding rapidly: nay, were already gone, and they rejoiced in the strength of their faith as if they were driving an unwelcome guest out through an open door. the doctor made haste to issue and to print his own examination of the water. in this document as i have told you, he very remarkably agreed with the analysis sent down by the egregious samuel. he appended to his list of ingredients certain cases which he indicated by initials in which the water had proved beneficial: most of them at the outset, were the cases of those who, on the first day, found relief from a single glass. many more cases afterwards occurred. after the town, the country. the report of the valuable discovery spread rapidly. the farmer folk who brought their produce, pigs, sheep, poultry and cattle to our markets carried the news home with them: the whole town--indeed, in a few hours was as they say, all agog with the discovery and eager, even down to the fo'c'sle seamen to drink of a well which was by this time reported among the ignorant class not only to cure but also to prevent diseases. then gentlemen began to ride in; on market day there are always gentlemen in the town; they have an ordinary of their own at the _crown_; they were at first incredulous but they would willingly taste of the spring. as fresh water was comparatively strange to them it is not surprising that some of them detected an indescribable taste which they were readily persuaded to believe was proof of a medicinal character. they were followed by ladies also curious to taste, to prove, and, in many cases, to be cured. meantime everybody, both of the town and of the country, rejoiced at hearing that it had been decided to take advantage of the discovery in order to convert lynn regis, previously esteemed as on the same level as gosport in the south of england or wapping by the port of london, into a place of fashionable resort and another bath or tunbridge wells. it was difficult, however, to believe that the old town with its narrow and winding streets, its streams, its bridges, its old decayed courts and ancient pavements could accommodate itself to the wants and the taste--or even the presence of the polite world. then the news spread further afield. the reverend canons in their secluded close beside their venerable cathedral--whether at peterborough, lincoln, ely or norwich, heard the story magnified and exaggerated, how at lynn had been found a spring of water that miraculously healed all wounds, cured all diseases and made the halt to run and the cripple to stand. better than all it restored the power of drinking port wine to the old divines who had been compelled by their infirmities to give up that generous wine. in their great colleges, a world too wide for the young men who entered them as students, the fellows heard the news and talked about the discovery in the dull combination rooms where the talk was ever mainly of the rents and the dinners, the last brew at the college brewery, yesterday's cards, or the approaching vacancy in a college living. they, too, pricked up their ears at the news because for them as well as their reverend brethren of the cathedral gout and rheumatism were deadly enemies. if only providence would remove from mankind those two diseases which plague and pester those to whom their lives would otherwise be full of comfort and happiness, cheered by wine and punch, stayed and comforted by the good things ready to the hand of the cook and the housewife. and from all the towns around--from boston, spalding, wisbeach, bury, wells, there came messengers and letters of inquiry all asking if the news was true--if people had been already treated and already cured--if lodgings were to be had and so forth. and then the preparations began. the committee went from house to house encouraging and stimulating the people to make ready for such an incursion as the place had never before known even at fair time, and promising a golden harvest. who would not wish to share in such a harvest? first, lodgings had to be got ready--they must be clean at least and furnished with necessaries. people at the spa do not ask for great things in furniture--they do not desire to sit in their lodgings which are only for sleeping and dressing--a blind in the window or a curtain to keep out the sun and prying eyes,--a bed--a chair--a cupboard--a looking-glass--a table--not even the most fashionable lady asks for more except that the bed be soft and the wainscot and floor of the room be clean. the better houses would be kept for the better sort: the sailors' houses by the common stath and the king's stath would do for the visitors' servants who could also eat and drink in the taverns of the riverside. houses deserted and suffered to fall into decay in the courts of the town were hastily repaired, the roofs patched up, the windows replaced, the doors and woodwork painted. everywhere rooms were cleaned: beds were put up, all the mattresses, all the pillows, all the blankets and sheets in the town were brought up and more were ordered from boston and other places accessible by river or by sea. certainly the town had never before had such a cleaning while the painters worked all night as well as all day to get through their orders. it was next necessary to provide supplies for the multitude, when they should arrive. i have spoken of the plenty and abundance of everything in the town of lynn. the plenty is due to the great fertility of the reclaimed land which enables the farmers to grow more than they can sell for want of a market. there is sent abroad, as a rule, to the low countries, much of the produce of the farms. there was therefore no difficulty in persuading the farmers to hold their hands for a week or two, and when the company began to arrive, to send into the town quantities of provisions of all kinds--pork, bacon, mutton, beef, poultry, eggs, vegetables and milk. boats were engaged for the conveyance of these stores down the river. there would be provided food in abundance. and as for drink there was no difficulty at all in a town which imported whole cargoes of wine every year. i must not forget the preparation made in the churches. there are two in lynn, ancient and venerable churches both. i believe that they were always much larger than was ever wanted considering the number of the people, but in norfolk the churches are all too large, being so built for the greater praise and glory of god. however, both in st. margaret's and in st. nicholas, the congregations had long since shrunk so that there were wide spaces between the walls and the pews. these spaces were now filled up with new pews for the accommodation of the expected invasion of visitors. i confess that i admire the simple faith in the coming success of the spa which at this time animated not only those most interested as the doctor himself, but also the people of the town who knew nothing except what they were told, namely that the well in the doctor's garden had properties, which were sovereign against certain diseases, and that all the world had learned this fact and were coming to be cured. there were next the public preparations. the necessity of despatch caused the structures to be of wood which, however, when brightly painted, may produce a more pleasing effect than brick. first, there was the pump room. this was built, of course, over the well in the doctor's garden, which it almost covered: it was a square or oblong building, having the well in one corner, and containing a simple room with large sash windows, unfurnished save for a wooden bench running round the wall and two others in the middle of the room. the water was pumped up fresh and cool--it was really a very fine well of water always copious--into a large basin; a long counter ran across the room in front of the basin: the counter was provided with glasses of various sizes and behind the counter were two girls hired as dippers. the doctor's door opened out of the pump room so as to afford readiness and convenience for consultation. lastly it was necessary to provide for the amusement of the visitors. everybody knows that for one person who visits a spa for health, there are two who visit it for the amusements and the pleasures and entertainments provided at these places. i have mentioned the open fields within the walls of the town which were anciently covered with the buildings and the gardens of the monks and friars and the nuns. they are planted in some places with trees: for instance below the lady's mount, in which is the ancient chapel, there lie fields on which now stand many noble trees. the committee chose this spot for the construction of the assembly rooms. they first enclosed a large portion with a wooden fence: they then laid out the grounds with paths: this done they erected a long room where the assembly might be held, with a smooth and level floor fit for dancing. this room was also to be the resort of the company in the mornings and when the weather was rainy: adjoining the long room was the card room, with one long table and several small tables: and the tea room, where that beverage could be served with drinks and cordials to counteract its (possibly) evil effects. a gallery at one end was ready for the music--outside there was another building for the music to play on fine evenings. i must not forget the decoration of the trees. nothing could be more beautiful than this avenue after nightfall: lamps of various colours hung on festoons from branch to branch: across the avenue in arches, and from tree to tree in parallel lines: these in the evening produced an appearance of light and colour that ravished the eye of every beholder. those who knew london declared that in the daytime this place could compare favourably with the mall in st. james's park, and in the evening after dark even with the marylebone gardens or vauxhall. all these preparations were pushed forward with the utmost diligence, so that everything, might be ready by the first of may, on which day it was hoped that the season of the spa would commence. musicians and singers were engaged: they came from london, bringing good recommendation from some of the pleasure gardens where they had performed with credit. they were to play for the dancing on the nights of the assembly; they were also to play in the morning when engaged or bespoke by the gentlemen. they brought with them two or three fiddlers; players on various instruments of brass, and the horns. a dancing master, mr. prappit, came from norwich: he was busy for three weeks before the opening, with the young folks of the town, who had never before danced anything more ambitious than a hey or a jig or a country dance, or a frolic round the may pole. mr. prappit was also engaged as master of the ceremonies, a post of great responsibility and distinction. a theatre is a necessary part of every public place: therefore a troop of strolling players received permission to perform three evenings in the week in the large room of the _duke's head_ inn: i know not what reputation they had as actors, but i can bear witness that they made as much as they could out of a passion, tearing it, so to speak, to rags, and bawling themselves hoarse, so that at least they earned their money, which was not much, i fear. the cock pit was newly repaired for the lovers of that manly and favourite sport to which the gentlemen of norfolk are, as is well known, much addicted. for those who prefer the more quiet games there was the bowling green. and lastly, for those who incline to the ruder sports, there were provided masters of fence who could play with quarter staff or cudgel, jugglers and conjurers, with rope dancers, tumblers, merry andrews and such folk, together with a tent for their performance. these details are perhaps below the dignity of history. i mention them in order to let it be understood that the invention--the lying invention of sam semple, was bearing the fruit which he most desired in the deception of the whole town. there was never, i believe, so great a deception attempted or carried into effect. meantime, the work of the town continued as usual. the port had nothing to do with the spa. for my own part i was discharging cargo from _the lady of lynn_, and making ready to take in a new cargo. all day i was engaged on board: i slept on board: but in the evening i went ashore and looked on at the preparations, and at this new world of fashion and pleasure the like of which i had never seen before. and, as usual, the ships came into port and dropped anchor off the stath: or they cleared out and went down the river with the current and the tide. there were two kinds of life in the place when there had never before been more than one: and while the people in one part of the town had nothing to think of but amusement, those at the other part were as usual, engaged in their various work. the clerks ran about with their quills behind their ears; the porters rolled the casks, the bargemen brought their unwieldy craft alongside with many loud sounding oaths and the yohoing without which they can do nothing; and in the taverns the sailors drank and danced and sang, quite unmindful of the people in the streets behind them. the first arrivals were the gentlefolk from the country round lynn. they learned when everything would be ready and they came in as soon as the gardens were laid out, the long room finished and the first evening announced--they had but a few miles to travel; they engaged the best lodgings and demanded the best provisions. as for wine, they could not have better because there is no better wine than fills the cellars of our merchants or our vintners. as these good people came to the spa it was thought necessary to drink the waters and this they did with much importance, every morning. the natives of norfolk are, i verily believe, the longest lived and the most healthy people in the whole world. with the exception of ague--they call it the bailiff of marshland--the people in this county seldom suffer from any disorder and live to a good old age. yet all with one consent began the day by drinking a glass of the cold bright water served in the pump room. very few of them, i say, were troubled with any kind of complaint: though the gentlemen are hard drinkers, they are also hard riders and the open air and cold winds of the morning drive out and dissipate the fumes of the evening and its wine. for this reason, though many of our sea captains drink hard at sea, they are never a bit the worse for the fresh salt air is the finest restorative, and a sailor may be drunk once every twenty-four hours and yet live to a hundred and be none the worse. most of those who drank the waters had never felt any symptoms of gout or rheumatism, lumbago, sciatica, pleurisy, consumption or asthma, or any other disease whatever. they flocked to the pump room in order to drive away even the possibility of these symptoms. to drink the waters for a month, or even for a fortnight, was considered sovereign for the keeping off of all kinds of sickness for at least a whole year to come. it was strange how quite young men and young maidens suddenly conceived this superstitious belief--i can call it nothing but superstition--that those who were perfectly well would be maintained in health--_although_ young people of this age do not commonly contract the diseases above enumerated--by drinking a glass of water every morning. that old men, who will catch at anything that offers to restore health, should resort to this newly discovered universal medicine was not so strange. captain crowle, who, to my certain knowledge, had never suffered a day's sickness in the seventy years of his life; who kept his teeth firm and sound; whose hair had not fallen off; who stood firm on his legs and square in his shoulders; who still drank free and devoured his rations as eagerly as any able-bodied sailor, marched every morning to the pump room and took his glass. "jack," he said, "the discovery is truly miraculous. by the lord! it will make us all live to be a hundred. already i feel once more like a man of thirty. i shall shake a leg, yet, at the wedding of molly's grandchildren." they all consulted the doctor--the sick and the well alike--the former in order to be cured and the latter in order to guard against disease. now that one knows the foundation of the whole business it is wonderful to reflect upon the number of cures the doctor was able to register in his book: cures about which there could be neither doubt nor dispute, so that one is fain to think that faith alone may be sufficient to drive out rheumatism. the prescription of the worthy doctor rested entirely on the curative power of the water. "you will take," he said to every one who came to him, "every morning before breakfast for choice, a glass of the water. or, if you prefer first to take a dish of tea, a cup of chocolate, or a draught of beer, do so by all means. in that case take your glass an hour--not more--after breakfast. i prescribe in your case, a dose in a glass numbered a or b--or c"--as the case might be. "it contains seven ounces and six drachms"--or some other weight as the case might be. he was very exact in the size of the glass and the weight of the dose. "this is the exact quantity which operates efficaciously in your case. do not take more which will not expedite your cure: nor less which will hinder it. seven ounces and six drachms." the doctor's dignity and gravity indeed were a credit to the town. out of london, i believe, there was no physician with such outward tokens of science. the velvet coat he now wore habitually: a new wig greatly delayed had been brought from norwich: his lace and his linen were clean every morning: his fingers became curly from the continual clasp of the guinea. no one, i am sure, expected to find so grave and dignified a physician in a town occupied mainly by rude tarpaulins and their ladies. where nothing better than a mere apothecary could be expected there was found a physician in manner and in appearance equal to the most fashionable doctor of medicine in london itself. "before breakfast, madam," he repeated. "fasting, if possible. if that is not convenient, after breakfast. think not to hasten the operation of the waters by too generous a use of them. seven ounces and six drachms in weight. let that be your daily allowance: that and no more. for your diet, let it be ample, generous, and of the best quality that the market supplies. it is providentially, considering the wants of the spa--the best market in norfolk, provided with birds of all kinds, both wild and of the farmyard: with beef and mutton fattened on the pastures of marshland; and with fruit and other things of the very best. partake plentifully, madam. do not deny yourself. tea, you may take if you desire it: very good tea can be obtained of the apothecary at a guinea a pound. for my own part i allow the beverage to be sometimes useful in clearing the brain of noxious vapours and the body of corrupt humours. for wine i recommend port, malmesey, madeira or lisbon--but not more than one measured pint in the day. you must take exercise gently by walking in the gardens, or in the long room, or by dancing in the evening. and you may maintain cheerfulness of mind, which is beneficial in any case whether of sickness or of health, by taking a hand in the card room." to the gentlemen who had not as yet fallen victims to any of the prevalent diseases he would discourse much after the same fashion. "put out your tongue, sir--i believe it to be furred---so.... dear me! worse than i suspected. and your pulse? i believe it to be strong. so. as i thought. a little too strong, perhaps even febrile. your habits, i suppose, include a hearty appetite and a full allowance of strong ale and wine. you ride--you hunt--you attend races, cockpit and sport of all kinds; you are not addicted to reading or to study, and you sometimes play cards." "the doctor," said his patients afterwards, "knew exactly and could tell by my pulse and my tongue my daily way of living. 'tis wonderful!" "it is my duty to warn you, sir, that you have within you the seeds of gout--of inflammatory gout--which will fix itself first upon the big toe and thus become like a bag of red hot needles. afterwards it will mount higher--but i will spare you the description of your dying agonies. you may, however, avert this suffering, or postpone it, so that it will only seize upon you should you live to a hundred and twenty, or thereabouts. the surest method is by drinking these waters every year for a week or two. one tumbler every morning fasting. you will take a measured weight of seven ounces and six drachms--" or as i said before some other weight. "i prescribe in your case, no other medicine. let your diet be generous. confine yourself to a single bottle of wine a day. ride as usual and, in fact, live as you are accustomed. nature, sir, abhors a revolution: she expects to perform her usual work in the usual manner." if any came to him already afflicted with gout or rheumatism he prescribed for them in a similarly easy and simple fashion. "you have been taking colchicum--" or whatever it might have been. "i recommend you on no account to discontinue a medicine to which you are accustomed. gout is an enemy which may be attacked from many points. while it is resisting so far successfully the attack by the drugs which have been administered to you, i shall attack it from an unsuspected quarter. ha! i shall fall upon the unguarded flank with an infallible method. you will take, sir, three glasses of water daily; each before meals. each glass contains the measured weight of seven ounces and six drachms," or some other weight was carefully prescribed. "you will, in other respects, follow the diet recommended by your former physicians." "the doctor," said his patients, "is not one who scoffs at his brethren. on the contrary, he continues their treatment, only adding the water. and you see what i am now." "observe," the doctor continued, "my treatment is simple. it is so simple that it must command success. i shall expect therefore, to find in you, for your own share in the cure, that faith which assists nature. nothing so disconcerts an enemy as the confidence of victory on the other side. before that faith, gout flies, terrified; and nature, triumphant, resumes that nice balanced equilibrium of all the functions which the unlearned call health." the doctor also encouraged his dippers, one of whom was a young woman of attractive appearance and great freedom of tongue, to relate for the benefit of those who drank the waters, cases of cure and rapid recovery. this encouragement caused the girl who had a fine natural gift of embellishment or development, to sing the praises of the spa with a most audacious contempt for the structure of fact. "lawk, madam!" she would say, using the broad norfolk accent which i choose to convert into english, because her discourse would be unintelligible save to the folk of the county. "to think what this blessed water can do! that poor gentleman who has just gone out--you saw yourself that he now walks as upright as a lance and as stiff as a recruiting sergeant. he first came to the pump room, was it a fortnight ago or three weeks, jenny? twelve days? to be sure. you ought to know--jenny dipped for him, madam. he was carried in: his very crutches were no good to him; and as for his poor feet, they dangle for all the world like lumps of pork. and his groans,--lawk!--they would move a heart of stone. jenny here, who has a feeling heart, though but a humble dipper at your service, madam, like myself and pleased to be of service to so fine a lady, burst into tears when she saw him--didn't you, jenny, my dear? before all the people, she did. well, he drank three tumblers every day--each exactly seven ounces and six drachms in weight--oh! the doctor knows what to do for his patients--did your ladyship ever see a wiser doctor? on the third day he left off groaning: on the fourth he said, 'i feel better, give me my third tumbler.' didn't he say those very words, jenny? 'give me my third,' he said. on the fifth day he walked in by himself. it was on crutches, it is true, for even this water takes its time. lord forbid that i should tell your ladyship anything but gospel. on the sixth day he used a walking stick: on the seventh, he said, walking upright, his stick over his shoulder, 'if it was not sunday,' he said, 'i should cut a caper--cut a caper,' he said. jenny heard him. and now he talks of going home where a sweet young lady, almost as beautiful as your ladyship, waits for him with a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. she couldn't marry a man, could she, madam, with both feet, as a body might say, in the grave? nobody except the doctor and us dippers, knows the secrets of the spa. if we could talk--but there we are bound to secrecy, because ladies would not let the world know that they have had ailments--but if we could talk, you would be astonished. tell her ladyship, jenny, about the old gammer of ninety, while i attend to the company. yes, sir, coming, sir." and so she rattled on, talking all day long and never tired of inventing these stories. the people listened, laughed, affected disbelief, yet believed. they drank the waters, and put down their twopences, which went into a box kept for the doctor. what with the patients' guineas and the daily harvest of this box he, at least, was in a fair way of proving the truth of his own prophecy that everybody in lynn would be enriched by the grand discovery. chapter ix sent to the spa at the outset, though the pump room was full every morning and the gardens and long room in the evening were well attended, the spa lacked animation. the music pleased, the singers pleased, the coloured lamps dangled in chains between the branches and pleased. yet the company was dull; there was little noise of conversation, and no mirth or laughter; the family groups were not broken up; the people looked at each other and walked round and round in silence; after the first round or so, when they had seen all the dresses, the girls yawned and wanted to sit down. the master of the ceremonies exerted himself in vain. he had hoped so much and promised so much that it was sad to see him standing in front of the orchestra and vainly endeavouring to find couples for the minuet. how should they dance a minuet when there were no leaders to begin? and where were the gentlemen? most of them were at the tavern or the cockpit, drinking and cockfighting, and making bets. what was the use of calling a country dance when there were none to stand up except ladies and old men? mr. prappet, in a blue silk coat and embroidered waistcoat, hat under arm, and flourishing his legs as a fencing master flourishes his arms, fell into despondency. "i make no progress, mr. pentecrosse," he said. "i cannot begin with the beaux of the town; they are nautical or rustical, to tell the truth, and they are beneath the gentry of the county. if i begin with them none of the gentry will condescend either to dance with them or to follow them, and so the character of the assembly will be gone. we must obey the laws of society. we want rank, sir. we want a leader. we want two or three people of fashion, otherwise these county families, none of whom will yield precedence to any other, and will not endure that one should stand up before the other, will never unbend. they are jealous. give me a leader--a nobleman--a baronet--a lady of quality--and you shall see how they will fall in. first, the nobility, according to rank; after them, the gentry; then the town degrees must be observed. but, in order to observe degrees, sir, we must have rank among us. at present we are a mob. an assembly in the polite world should be like the english constitution, which, mr. pentecrosse, consists of lords and commons--ladies, and the wives and daughters of commoners." to me it was amusing only to see the people in their fine dresses marching round and round while the music played, trailing their skirts on the floor, swinging their hoops, and handling their fans; for the lack of young men, talking to the clergy from the cathedrals and the colleges, and casting at each other glances of envy if one was better dressed, or of scorn when one was worse dressed than themselves. "as for the men, jack," said captain crowle, "i keep looking about me. i try the pump room in the morning, the ordinary at dinner, the taverns after dinner. my lad, there is not one among them all who is fit to be mated with our molly. gentlemen, are they? i like not the manner of these gentlemen. they are mostly young, but drink hard already. if their faces are red and swollen at twenty-five, what will they be at forty? my girl shall marry none of them. nor shall she dance with them. she shall stay at home." in fact, during the first week or two after the opening of the spa, molly remained at home and was not seen in the long room or in the gardens. the town was nearly full, many of the visitors having to put up with mean lodgings in the crazy old courts, of which there are so many in lynn, when the first arrival from london took place. it was that of a clergyman named benjamin purdon, artium magister, formerly of trinity college, cambridge. he was a man of insignificant presence, his figure being small and thin, but finely dressed. his head was almost hidden by a full ecclesiastical wig. apparently he was between forty and fifty years of age; he looked about him and surveyed the company with an air of superiority, as if he had been a person of rank. he spoke with a loud, rather a high voice; his face was pale and his hands, which he displayed, were as white as any woman's, on one finger he wore a large ring with a stone on which were carved three graces, or greek goddesses, standing in a row. to some the ring was a stumbling-block, as hardly in accordance with the profession of a divine. "art," however, he was wont to say, "knows nothing of eve's apple and its consequences. art is outside religion;" and so forth. fustian stuff, it seems to me, looking back; but at that time we were carried away by the authority of the man. he came to us down the river by a tilt boat from cambridge, and accepted, contentedly, quite a humble lodging, barely furnished with a chair and a flock bed. "humility becomes a divine," he said, in a high, authoritative voice. "the room will serve. a coal fire and an open window will remove the mustiness. who am i that i should demand the luxuries of lucullus? the cloth should daily offer an example. we must macerate the flesh." he was thin, but he certainly practised not maceration. "we must subdue the body. to him who meditates a hovel becomes a palace. there is an ordinary, you say, daily at the 'crown'--at two shillings? for the better subjugation of the carnal appetite it should have been one and sixpence. nevertheless, i have heard of the green goslings of lynn. perhaps i shall now be privileged to taste them. there were excellent ruffs and reeves when i was at college that came to the market-place from the fens in the may time. you have a portuguese trade i am told--in wine, i hope, otherwise we are not likely to get anything fit for a gentleman to drink. it is, indeed, little that i take; were it not for my infirmities, i should take none. your port, i hope, is matured. more sickness is caused by new wine than by any other cause. give me wine of twenty years--but that is beyond hope in this place. if it is three, four, or five years old, i shall be fortunate beyond my expectation." he did not say all these fine things at once, or to one person; but by bits to his brother clergyman, the vicar of st. margaret's; to captain crowle, to the mayor, to the landlady of the crown inn, to the ladies in the long room. "you see me as i am, a poor scholar, a humble minister of the church--_servus servorum_, to use the style and title of the pope; one who despises wealth." yet his cassock was of thick silk and his bands were laced. "i live in london because i can there find, when i want it, a lectureship for my preaching, and a library--that of sion college--for my reading, study, meditation, and writing. i leave behind me, unfinished, my work--my _magnum opus_--forgive the infirmity natural to man of desiring to live in the memory of men. i confess that i look forward with pleasure to future fame: my 'history of the early councils' will be a monument--if i may be permitted so to speak of it--a monument of erudition. i come here by order of my physician. ladies, this sluggish body, which gives us so much trouble, must be kept in health (as well as in subjection) if we would perform the tasks laid down for us. the waters which i am about to drink will, under providence, drive away those symptoms which have made my friends, rather than myself, anxious. as for me, what cause have i for anxiety? why should i not be ready to lay down pen and book, and teach no more?" he was, perhaps--though we must allow a good deal to his profession--too fond of preaching. he preached in the morning at the pump room. holding a glass of water to the light, he discoursed on the marvels of providence in concealing sovereign remedies under the guise of simple water, such as one may find in any running brook to all appearance, and yet so potent. he would preach in the gardens. he would show the piety of his character even when taking supper--a cold chicken and a bottle of lisbon--in an alcove beside the dancing platform. in this way he rapidly acquired a great reputation, and drew after him every day a following of ladies; there are always ladies who desire nothing so much as pious talk on matters of religion with one who has a proper feeling for the sex, and is courteous and complimentary, deferent and assiduous, as well as learned, pious, and eloquent. the good man, for his part, was never tired of conversing with these amiable ladies, especially with the younger sort; but i believe there were jealousies among them, each desiring the whole undivided man for herself, which is not uncommon even among ladies of the strictest profession in religion. it was presently learned that mr. purdon had offered to take the services at st. nicholas for a few weeks in order to enable the curate to attend the bedside of a parent. he undertook this duty without asking for any fee or pay, a fact which greatly increased his reputation. he continued the morning services, now held in a well-filled church, and delivered a sermon on sunday morning. never before had the good people who sat in the church heard discourses of so much eloquence, such close reasoning, such unexpected illustrations; with passages so tender and so pathetic. the women wept; the men cleared their throats; the sermons of his reverence drew after him the whole company, except those who spent their sunday morning at the tavern, and also excepting the clergymen of the cathedrals and the colleges. these, for some reason, looked upon him with distrust. among those who thus regarded him was the vicar of st. margaret's, the rev. mark gentle. he was, to begin with, the very opposite of the other in all respects. he lived simply, drinking no wine; he was a silent man, whose occasional words were received with consideration; he was a great scholar, with a fine library. his discourses were not understood by the congregation, but they were said to be full of learning. he did not make himself agreeable to the ladies; he never talked of religion; he never spoke of his own habits or his own learning. he was a tall spare man with a thin face and a long nose, of the kind which is said to accompany a sense of humour; and he had sometimes a curious light in his eye like the flash of a light in the dark. "the reverend benjamin purdon," he said, with such a flash, "interests me greatly. he is a most learned person--indeed, he says so, himself. i quoted a well-known passage of a greek tragedy to him yesterday, and he said that his hebrew he left behind him when he came into the country. we must not think that this proves anything. a man's ear may be deceived. i offered him the use of my library, but he declined. that proves nothing, either, because he may not wish to read at present. i hear that the women weep when he preaches; and that proves nothing. sir, i should like the opinion of sion college, which is a collection of all the rectors and vicars of the city churches, as to the learning of this ecclesiastic. he is, doubtless, all that he proclaims himself. but, after all, that means nothing. we shall probably learn more about him. whatever we learn will, we may confidently expect, redound to his credit, and increase his reputation." this he said in my presence, to my father. "i know not," he replied, "how much this learned theologian professes, but humility is not one of his virtues. i offered, meeting him in the herb market yesterday, to show him the school as a venerable monument erected for the sake of learning three hundred years ago. 'pedagogue!' he answered. 'know thy place!' so he swept on his way, swelling under his silken cassock." captain crowle, however, with many others, was greatly taken with him. "jack," he said, "the london clergyman shames our rusticity. learning flows from him with every word he speaks. he makes the women cry. he is full of pious sentiment. if we have many visitors so edifying, this discovery is like to prove for all of us the road to heaven as well as the means of wealth." alas! the road to heaven seldom, so far as i understand, brings the pilgrim within reach of the means of wealth. but this the captain could not understand, because he had been amassing wealth for his ward, not for himself, and therefore knew not the dangers of the pursuit. the reverend benjamin purdon was only a forerunner. he was followed by the rest of the company--the delectable company--brought together for our destruction. i would not willingly anticipate the sequel of these arrivals among us, but there are moments when i am fain to declare a righteous wrath. as for revenge--but it would be idle to speak of revenge. when a man has taken all that he can devise or procure in the way of revenge--bodily pain, ruin, loss of position, exposure, everything--the first injury remains untouched. this cannot be undone; nor can the injury be atoned by any suffering or any punishment. revenge, again, grows more hungry by what should satisfy it; revenge is never satisfied. revenge has been forbidden to man because he cannot be trusted. it is the lord's. in this case it was the lord who avenged our cause, and, i believe, turned the injury into a blessing, and made our very loss a ladder that led to heaven. a day or two after mr. purdon's arrival came a carriage and four containing a very fine lady indeed, with her maid and her man. she drove to the crown, the people all looking after her. a large coat of arms was emblazoned on the door of her carriage, with a coronet and supporters; her man was dressed in a noble livery of pale green with scarlet epaulettes. a little crowd gathered round the door of the crown while the footman held the door open and the lady spoke with the landlord. "sir," she said, inclining her head graciously and smiling upon the crowd, "i have been directed to ask for thy good offices in procuring a lodging. i am a simple person, but a body must have cleanliness and room to turn about." "madam," said the landlord, "there is but one lodging in the town which is worthy of your ladyship. i have, myself, across the market-place, a house which contains three or four rooms. these i would submit to your ladyship's consideration." this was an excellent beginning. the lady took the rooms at the rent proposed and without haggling; there were two bedrooms, for herself and her maid, and one room in which she could sit; the man found lodgings elsewhere. it appeared from his statement that his mistress was none other than the lady anastasia, widow of the late lord langston, and sister of the living earl of selsey. it was, therefore, quite true, as sam semple had announced, that persons of quality were coming to the spa. the lady anastasia, at this time was about twenty-six years of age, or perhaps thirty, a handsome woman still, though no longer in the first flush of her beauty. her dress, as well as her manner, proclaimed the woman of fashion. i confess that, as a simple sailor, one who could not pretend to be a gentleman and had never before seen a woman of rank, much less conversed with one, i was quite ready, after she had honoured me with a few words of condescension and kindness, to become her slave. she could bear herself with the greatest dignity and even severity, as certain ladies discovered who presumed upon her kindness and assumed familiarity. but while she could freeze with a frown and humiliate with a look, she could, and did, the next moment subdue the most obdurate, and disarm the most resentful with her gracious smile and with her voice, which was the softest, the most musical and the most moving that you can imagine. she had been a widow for two or three years, and, having now put off the weeds, she was rejoicing at the freedom which the world allows to a young widow of fortune and of rank. you may be sure that the news of her arrival was speedily spread through the town. on the first night lady anastasia remained in her lodgings; but the ringers of st. margaret's gave her a welcome with the bells, and in the morning the horns saluted her with a tune and a flourish under her windows. to the ringers she sent her thanks, with money for a supper and plenty of beer, and to the horns she sent out a suitable present of money, also with thanks. later on, a deputation, consisting of the mayor in his robes and his gold chain, accompanied by the aldermen in their gowns, the vicar in his cassock and gown, the doctor in his best velvet coat and his biggest wig, and captain crowle in his sunday suit of black cloth, waited on the lady anastasia. they marched along the street from the town hall, preceded by the beadle in his green coat with brass buttons and laced hat, carrying the borough mace, all to do honour to this distinguished visitor. they were received by the lady reclining on the sofa. beside her stood her maid in a white apron and a white cap. at the door stood her man in his green livery--very fine. as for the lady anastasia's dress, i will attempt on another occasion a more particular description. suffice it to say that it was rich and splendid. the reception which she accorded to the deputation was most gracious and condescending, in this respect surpassing anything that they had expected. they looked, indeed, for the austerity and dignity of rank, and were received by the affability which renders rank wherein it is found, admired and respected. indeed, whatever i shall have to relate concerning this lady, it must be acknowledged that she possessed the art of attracting all kinds of people, of compelling their submission to her slightest wishes and of commanding their respectful affection. so much i must concede. the mayor bade her welcome to the spa. "madam," he said, "this town until yesterday was but a seaport, and we ourselves for the most part merchants and sailors. we are not people of fashion; we do not call ourselves courtiers; but you will find us honest. and we hope that you will believe in our honesty when we venture, with all respect, to declare ourselves greatly honoured by this visit of your ladyship." "indeed, worshipful sir, and reverend sir--and you, gentlemen, i am grateful for your kind words. i am here only in the pursuit of health. i want nothing more, believe me, but to drink your sovereign waters--of which my physician speaks most highly--and when my health allows me, to attend your church." "we hope to offer your ladyship more than the pump room," the mayor continued. "we have devised, in our humble way, rooms for the entertainment of the company with music and gardens, and we hope to have an assembly for dancing in the long room. they are not such entertainments as your ladyship is accustomed to adorn, but such as they are, we shall be deeply honoured if you will condescend to join them. you will find the gentry, and their ladies, of the county and others not unworthy of your ladyship's acquaintance." "sir, i accept your invitation with great pleasure. these gaieties are, indeed unexpected. i look forward, gentlemen, to making the acquaintance, before many days, of your ladies as well." so she rose and dropped a curtsey, while her man threw open the door and the deputation withdrew. the doctor remained behind. "madam," he said, "you have been ordered--advised--by your physician to try the waters of our spa. permit me, as the only physician of the town, an unworthy member of that learned college, to take charge of your health during your stay. your ladyship will allow me to feel your pulse. humph! it beats strong--a bounding pulse--as we of the profession say. a bounding pulse. to be sure your ladyship is in the heyday of life, with youth and strength. a bounding pulse. some of my brethren might be alarmed as at febrile indications; they would bleed you--even _ad plenum rivum_--forgive the latin. for my own part i laugh at these precautions. i find in the strength of the pulse nothing but the ardour of youth. i see no necessity for reduction of strength by blood letting. your ladyship will perhaps detail the symptoms for which this visit to the spa was ordered." the lady obeyed. "these symptoms," said the doctor, "are grave. as yet they are menacing only. nature has given warning. nature opens her book so that we who know her language may read. we meet her warnings by sharp action. your ladyship will, therefore, while continuing the course recommended by my learned brother, take one glass of the water daily; in the morning, before breakfast, fasting. each dose must contain seven ounces and six drachms. i shall have the honour to visit your ladyship daily, and we will regulate the treatment according to the operation of the water." "and must i give up the innocent pleasures offered me by your friends, doctor? surely, you will not be so cruel." "by no means, madam. partake of all--of all--in moderation. cards are good, if you like them. dancing, if you like it--with your symptoms you must, above all things, nourish the body and keep the mind in cheerfulness." the doctor withdrew and proceeded to relate to the pump room some particulars, with embellishments, of his interview with the lady anastasia. "nothing," he said, "can be imagined more gracious than her manner. it is at once dignified and modest. 'i trust myself entirely to your hands,' she said. what an example to patients of lower rank! 'i rely entirely on your skill and knowledge,' she added. it should be a lesson for all. i confess that it is gratifying even though the compliment was not undeserved, and the confidence is not misplaced. we may look for her ladyship in the long room this evening. i hope to present to her many of the ladies of the company. it is a great thing for the visitors and patients of the spa, that this accession of rank and fashion has arrived. her beauty will prove more attractive to the gentlemen than the cockpit and the tavern; her manners and her dress will be the admiration of the ladies. she will lead in the dance, she will be queen of the spa. the widow of the right honourable the lord langston, the daughter and the sister of the right honourable the earl of selsey"--he rolled out the titles as if he could not have too much of them or too many--"has come among us. we will restore her to health by means of our spa; she will instruct our young folk in the manners of the polite world." in the evening the lady came to the long room soon after the music commenced. mr. prappet, bowing low, invited her to honour the evening by dancing a minuet. he presented a gentleman, the son of a norfolk squire, who, with many blushes, being still young, led out this lady, all jewels, silk, ribbons, and patches, and with such grace as he could command, performed the stately dance of the fashionable assembly. [illustration: "he presented a gentleman, the son of a norfolk squire."] this done, the master of the ceremonies presented another gentleman, and her ladyship condescended to a second dance--after which she retired and sat down. the first gentleman then danced with another lady; the second gentleman succeeded him, and dance followed dance. mr. prappet presented to lady anastasia those of the ladies who belonged to the gentry, and she was presently surrounded by a court or company, with whom she discoursed pleasantly and graciously. the spa had found a leader; the assembly was no longer frigid and constrained; everybody talked and everybody laughed; the family groups were broken up; none of the younger gentlemen deserted the assembly for the cockpit; and when the country dance began and lady anastasia led, dancing down the middle, taking hands and freely mixing with ladies who had no pretensions to family, being perhaps the daughters of merchants, and those in lynn itself, the barriers were broken down, and without setting themselves apart on account of family pride, the whole company gave itself up to pleasure. when the music ceased, there was a run upon the supper tables, and you could hear nothing but the drawing of corks, the clicking of knives and forks, the music of pleasant talk, and the laughter of girls. when, at midnight, the lady anastasia called for her chair, a dozen young gentlemen sprang up to escort her home, walking beside the chair to her lodgings, and bowing low as she ran up the steps of her house. the next arrival from london was a person of less consequence. he was quite an old gentleman, who was brought, it appeared, by easy stages in a post-chaise. the roughness of the road, especially towards the end, had shaken him to such an extent that he was unable even to get out of the chaise, and was carried into the house, where they found him a lodging and put him to bed. his man told the people that this was sir harry malyns, a baronet and country gentleman, whose life was wholly devoted to the pleasures of town. those who had seen the withered old anatomy carried out of his carriage laughed at the thought of this ancient person still devoted to the pleasures of the town. "nay," said the varlet, grinning, "but wait till you see him dressed. wait till he has passed through my hands. you think he is at his last gasp. indeed, i thought so myself when i gave him his sack posset and put him to bed, but he will recover. sir harry is not so old but he can still bear some fatigues." and, indeed, you may imagine the surprise of those who had seen him the day before, when, about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, sir harry came out of the house and walked along the street. in place of a decrepit old man they saw the most gallant and the most bravely dressed beau that you can imagine. he appeared from the back and from either side--where his face was not visible--a young gentleman in the height of fashion. to be sure there was a certain unsteadiness of gait, and if his foot struck against an uneven piece of pavement you might perceive his knees knocking together and his legs beginning to tremble. but he rallied bravely, and went on. he carried his hat under his arm, a coloured cane dangled from his right wrist, his left hand carried a gold snuffbox with a lady painted on the outside. he walked with an affected step, such as we call mincing, and when he came to the pump room he entered it upon his toes, with his knees bent and his arms extended. for an example of the manners which mean nothing but affectation and pretence, there was no one at the spa who could compare with old sir harry. the pump room was tolerably full of people who came in the forenoon to talk. sir harry, pretending not to observe the curiosity with which he was regarded, introduced himself to a gentleman by means of his snuffbox. "sir," he said, "have we any company at the spa?" he looked round the room as if disdainfully. "fine women, of course, we have. norfolk is famous for fine women and fat turkeys; but as for company?" "sir, we have many of the country gentry of norfolk and lincolnshire; we have divines from the cathedral cities, and scholars from cambridge." "but of company--such as a gentleman may call company?" "why, sir," said the other, himself a plain gentleman of norfolk, "if you are not satisfied with what you see, you had better find some other place for your exalted society." "pray, sir, forgive me. i am but recently arrived from london. no doubt the assembly is entirely composed of good families. i am myself but a country gentleman and a simple baronet. i used the word company in a sense confined to town." "well, sir, since you are no better than the rest of us, i may tell you that we have among us a certain lady of rank--the lady anastasia langston----" "pray, sir, pray--excuse me. not a 'certain' lady anastasia. if you have the lady anastasia, you have, let me tell you, the very pearl of highest fashion. if she is here, you are indeed fortunate. one woman of her beauty, grace, wealth, rank, and goodness is enough to make the fortune of the spa. bath worships her; tunbridge prays for her return; there will be lamentation when it is known that she has deserted these places for the newly discovered waters of lynn." "indeed, sir, we ought to feel greatly honoured." "you ought, sir. your ladies of norfolk will learn more from her, as concerns the great world and the world of fashion, in a week than they could learn at the assembly of norwich in a year. the lady anastasia carries about with her the air which stamps the woman of the highest fashion. she walks like a goddess, she talks like an angel, and she smiles like a nymph--if there are such nymphs, woodland or ocean nymphs--who wear hoops, put on patches, build up headdresses, and brandish fans." there was another whose arrival from london caused no ringing of bells and salutations by the horns. this was a certain colonel lanyon, who wore the king's scarlet, having served and received promotion in the king's armies. he was about forty years of age; a big, blustering fellow who rolled his shoulders as he walked along and took the wall of everybody. he began, as he continued, by spending his time in the card room, at the cockpit, at the badger drawing, bull baiting, horse racing, cudgel playing--wherever sport was going on or betting to be made. he drank the hardest, he played the deepest, he swore the loudest, he was always ready to take offence. yet he was tolerated and even liked, because he was good company. he sang songs, he told anecdotes, he had seen service in the west indies and in many other places, he had passed through many adventures; he assumed, and successfully, the manner of a good sportsman--free with his money, who played deep, paid his debts of honour at once, and expected to be paid in like manner. now the gentlemen of norfolk esteem a good sportsman above all things, and readily pass over any little faults in a man who pleases them in this respect. as for the ladies, the colonel made no attempt to win their good graces, and was never seen either in the long room or the gardens or the assembly. chapter x "of the nicest honour" last of all came the prince of this company, whom i now know was the arch villain, lord fylingdale himself. we were prepared for his arrival by a letter from sam semple. he wrote to the doctor informing him that my lord was about to undertake his journey to lynn, that he hoped to complete it in three days, and that he would probably arrive on such a day. he further stated that the best rooms at the crown inn were to be engaged, and that he, himself, namely, sam, would accompany his lordship in the capacity of private secretary and, as he put it, confidential companion. to write such a letter to the doctor was to proclaim it as from the house-top. in fact, the good doctor made haste to read it aloud in the pump room and to communicate the news to the mayor and aldermen. sir harry, being asked if he knew his lordship, shook his head. "we of the gay world," he said, speaking as a young man, "do not commonly include lord fylingdale among the beaux and bucks. there is in him a certain haughtiness which forbids the familiarities common among ourselves." "is he, then, a saint?" "why, sir, i know nothing about saints. there are none, i believe, among my friends. i have, however, seen lord fylingdale on the race-course at newmarket, and i have seen him at the tables when the game of hazard was played. and i have never yet seen saint or angel at either place." "then how is lord fylingdale distinguished?" "partly by his rank, but that is not everything. partly by his wealth, but that is not everything. partly by his superiority, which is undoubted. for he has none of the foibles of other men; if he sits down to a bottle he does not call for t'other; if he plays cards he wins or he loses with equal composure, caring little which it may turn out; his name has never been mentioned with that of any woman. yet the world is eager after scandal, and would rejoice to whisper something concerning him." "he will condescend to despise us, then," said the vicar of st. margaret's, "seeing that our world is wholly addicted to sport, and takes fortune with heat and passion." "not so, reverend sir. he will, perhaps, attend our entertainments, but his mind is set above such vanities. as for me, sir, i own that i live for them. but my lord fylingdale lives for other things." "he is ambitious, perhaps. has he thoughts of place and of the ministry?" sir harry took snuff. "pardon me, sir. the world talks. i love the world, but i do not always talk with the world. it may be that there are reasons of state which bring him to this neighbourhood. i say nothing." but he pointed over his shoulder and nodded his head with meaning. it will be remembered that houghton, the seat of sir robert walpole, then the minister all powerful, is but a few miles from lynn. the crowd heard and whispered, and the rumour ran that under pretence of seeking health, lord fylingdale was coming to lynn in order ... here the voice dropped, and the rest fell into the nearest ear. the rev. mr. purdon was more eloquent. "what?" he cried, "lord fylingdale coming here? lord fylingdale? why, what can his lordship want at lynn?" "we have heard that he is sent here to drink the waters." mr. purdon shook his head wisely. "it may be. i do not say that.... there is perhaps gout in the family.... but with a personage--a personage, i say, there are many reasons which prompt to action. however----" "pray, sir, if you know him, inform us further as to his lordship." "madam, i was his tutor. i accompanied him on the grand tour. i therefore knew him intimately when he was a young man of eighteen. i have been privileged with his condescension since that time. he is at once a scholar, a critic, and a connoisseur; he hath a pretty taste in verse and can discourse of medals and of cameos. he is also a man of fashion who can adorn an assembly just as he adorns, when it pleases him, the house of lords. yet not a fribble like certain persons"--he looked at sir harry--"nor a beau, nor a profligate mohock. pride he has, i allow. what do you expect of a man with such birth and such ancestry? his pride becomes him. lesser men can be familiar. he is said to be cold towards the fair sex--i can contradict that calumny. not coldness but fastidiousness is his fault. 'my lord,' i have said to him often, 'to expect the genius of sappho, the beauty of helen, and the charms of cleopatra, is to ask too much. not once in an age is such a woman created. be content, therefore,' i ventured to add. 'genius will smile upon you; loveliness will languish for you; dignity will willingly humble herself at your feet.' but i have spoken in vain. he is fastidious. ladies, if i were young; if i were a noble lord; if i were rich; it is to norfolk, believe me, that i should fly, contented with the conquests awaiting me here. this is truly a land of freedom where to be in chains and slavery is the happy lot." this was the kind of talk with which we were prepared to await the coming of this paladin. he arrived. late in the day about seven o'clock, there came into the town, side by side, his lordship's running footmen. they were known by the white holland waistcoat and drawers belonging to their calling, the white thread stockings, white caps, and blue satin fringed with velvet. in their hands they carried a porter's staff tipped with a silver ball, in which i suppose was carried a lemon. the rogues trotted in, without haste, for the roads were bad behind them, and placed themselves at the door of the crown inn, one on each side. the landlord stood in the open door, his wife behind him; and speedily half the town gathered together to witness the arrival of the great man. his carriage came lumbering heavily along the narrow streets. within, beside his lordship, sat, as grand as you please, our poet sam semple. it was admirable to remark the air with which he sprang out of the carriage, offered his arm for the descent of his patron, followed him into the inn, demanded the best rooms, ordered a noble supper, and looked about him with the manner of a stranger and a gentleman, as if the host of the "crown" had never boxed his ears for an idle good-for-nothing who could not even make out a bill aright. the bells were set ringing for lord fylingdale as they had been for the lady anastasia; in the morning the horns saluted the illustrious visitor; and about eleven o'clock, when his lordship was dressed, the mayor and aldermen, preceded by the bearer of the mace and accompanied by the clergy of the town and the doctor, offered a visit of welcome and congratulation. they retired overwhelmed by the condescension of their guests. "one does not expect," said the doctor, "the gracious sweetness of a lady; but we received every possible mark of politeness and of consideration. as for the mayor, his lordship treated him as if he were the lord mayor of london itself. and for my own part, when i remained on the departure of the rest, i can only say that i was overwhelmed with the confidence bestowed upon me. there has been talk in this pump room," he looked around him, "of other reasons--reasons of state--and of pretended sickness. the company may take it from me--from me, i say--that whatever may be the reasons of state, it is not for us to offer any opinion as to those reasons, the symptoms which have been imparted to me in confidence are such that a visit to the spa is imperative; and treatment, with drinking of the waters, is absolutely necessary." "this lord fylingdale, jack," said captain crowle, who was one of the deputation, "is a mighty fine gentleman, well favoured and well mannered. i have not yet learned more about him. they say at the pump room many things. he received us with condescension and was good enough to promise attendance at our assembly, though, he said, these occasions do not afford him so much pleasure as other pursuits. 'tis a fine thing, jack, to be a nobleman and to have so much dignity; since i have spoken with the lady anastasia i find myself trying to look condescending. but the quarter-deck is one place and the house of lords is another. the captain of a ship, jack, if he were affable, would very quickly get knocked o' the head by his crew." meantime sam semple showed good sense in going round to visit his old friends. among others he called upon captain crowle, to whom he behaved, with singular discernment, in such a way as would please the old man. for on board ship we like a cheerful sailor, one who takes punishment without snivelling, and bears no malice thereafter. a ship is like a boys' school, where a flogging wipes out the offence, and master and boy become good friends after it, whatever the heinousness of the crime. "sir," said sam, standing before the captain, modestly, "you will understand, first of all, that i am reminded, in coming here, of the last time that i saw you." "ay, my lad, i have not forgotten." the captain did not rise from his armchair, nor did he offer sam his hand. he waited to learn in what spirit the young man approached him. "believe me, sir," said sam, "i am not unmindful of a certain lesson, rough perhaps, but deserved. the presumption of youth, ignorance of the world, ignorance of the prize to which i aspired, may be my excuse--if any were needed. i was then both young and ignorant." it must be admitted that sam possessed the gift of words. "indeed, i was too young to understand the humble nature of my origin and my position, and too ignorant to understand my own presumption. therefore, sir, before i say anything more, i beg your forgiveness. that presumption, sir, can never, i assure you, be repeated. i know, at least, my own place, and the distance between a certain young lady and myself." "why, my lad," said the captain, "since you talk in that modest way, i bear no malice--none. wherefore, here is my hand in token of forgiveness. and so, on that head we will speak no more." he extended his hand, which sam took, still in humble attitude. "i am deeply grateful, captain," he said. "you will, perhaps, before long find out how grateful i can be." time, in fact, did show the depth of his gratitude. "well, sir, i am now in high favour with my lord fylingdale, on whom you waited this morning." "i hope his favour will end in a snug place, sam. forget not the main point. well, your patron is a goodly and a proper man to look at. sit down, sam. take a glass of home brewed--you must want it after the ale of london, which is, so far as i remember, but poor stuff. well, now, about your noble lord. he is a married man, i suppose?" "unfortunately, no. he is difficult to please." "ah! and, i suppose, like most young noblemen, something of a profligate--eh, sam? or a gambler, likely! one who has ruined many innocents. eh?" the captain looked mighty cunning. "sir, sir!" sam spread out his hands in expostulation. "you distress me. lord fylingdale a profligate? lord fylingdale a gambler? lord fylingdale a libertine? sir!--captain crowle!" he spoke very earnestly; the tears came into his eyes; he laid his hand upon the captain's knee. "sir, i assure you, he is, on the contrary, the best of men. there is no more virtuous nobleman in the country. my tongue is tied as his lordship's secretary, else would i tell of good deeds. truly, his right hand knoweth not what his left hand doeth. my lord is all goodness." "ay, ay? this is good hearing indeed." "lord fylingdale a gambler? why he may take part at a table; but a gambler? no man is less a gambler. what doth it matter to him if he wins or loses a little? he neither desires to win, nor does he fear to lose. you will, i dare say, see him in the card room, just to encourage the spirit of the company." "a very noble gentleman, indeed." the captain drank a glass of his home brewed, "a very noble gentleman truly. go on, samuel." "also, he is one who, captain, if there is one thing in the world that my patron abhors, it is the man who ruins innocency and leaves his victim to starve. no, sir; his lordship is a man of the nicest honour and the highest principle." "he has a secretary who is grateful, at least," observed the captain. "his sword is ever ready to defend the helpless and to uphold the virtuous. would to heaven there were more like the right honourable the earl of fylingdale!" "look ye, master sam," said the captain. "your good opinion of your patron does you credit. i honour you for your generous words. i have never so far, and i am now past seventy, encountered any man who was either saint or angel, but in every man have i always found some flaw, whether of temper or of conduct. so that i do not pretend to believe all that you make out." sam semple sighed and rose. "i ask not for your entire belief, sir. it will be sufficient if you learn, as i have learned, the great worth of this exalted and incomparable nobleman. as for flaws, we are all human; but i know of none. so i take my leave. i venture to hope, sir, that your good lady and your lovely ward--i use the word with due respect--are in good health." so he departed, leaving the captain thoughtful. and now they were all among us, the vile crew brought together for our undoing by this lord so noble and so exalted. and we were already entangled in a whole mesh of lies and conspiracies, the result of which you have now to learn. chapter xi the humours of the spa and now began that famous month--it lasted very little more--when the once godly town of lynn was delivered over to the devil and all his crew. we who are natives of the place speak of that time and the misfortunes which followed with reluctance; we would fain forget that it ever fell upon us. to begin with, the place was full of people. they came from all the country round; not only did the gentlefolk crowd into the town and the clergy from the cathedral towns and the colleges, but there were also their servants, hulking footmen, pert lady's maids, with the people who flock after them, creatures more women than men; the hairdressers, barbers, milliners, dressmakers, and the creatures who deal in things which a fashionable woman cannot do without, those who provide the powder, patches, cosmetics, _eau de chypre_, and washes for the complexion, the teeth, the hands, and the face; the jewellers and those who deal in gold and silver ornaments; the sellers of lace, ribbons, gloves, fans, and embroidery of all kinds. our shops, humble enough to look upon from the outside, became treasure houses when one entered; and i verily believe that the ladies of the spa took greater pleasure in turning over the things hidden away behind the shop windows, and not exposed to the vulgar gaze, than in any of the entertainments offered them. every other house in mercer street and chequer row was converted into a shop for the sale of finery; at the door of each stood the shopman or the shopwoman, all civility and assurance, inviting an entrance. "madam," said one, "i have this day received by the london waggon a consignment of silks which it would do you good only to see and to feel. enter, madam; the mere sight is better for the vapours than all the waters of the pump room. look at these silks before they are all sold. john, the newly arrived silks for their ladyships," and so on, all along the streets while the ladies walked slowly over the rough paving stones, followed by their footmen with their long sticks, and their insolent bearing. indeed, i know not which more attracted the curiosity of the countrywomen--the fine ladies or the fine footmen. these gallant creatures, the footmen with their worsted epaulettes and their brave liveries, did not venture into the streets by the riverside--pudding lane, common stath lane, or the like--the resort of the sailors, where the reception of those who did venture was warmer and less polite than they expected. for the gentlemen there were the taverns; every house round the market-place became a tavern, where an ordinary was held at twelve. and the gentlemen sat drinking all the afternoon. nay, they began in the morning making breakfast of a pint of canary with a pennyworth of bread, a slice of cheese, and after the meal a penny roll of tobacco. these were the gentlemen belonging to the country families. the attractions of the spa to them were the tavern, the cockpit, the field where they raced their horses, the badger baiting, and sport of all these kinds that can be obtained in the spring and summer, when there is no shooting of starlings in the reeds of marshland, and the decoy of ducks, for which this country is famous. rooms had to be found for the servants; a profligate and deboshed crew they were, of whose manners it may be said that they were insolent, and of their morals, that they had none. two or three of them, however, getting a drubbing from our sailors, the rest went in some terror. it was as if the birds of the air had carried the news of this great discovery north and south, east and west, so that not only was a great multitude attracted to the place in search of health and pleasure, but also another multitude of those who came to supply every kind of want, real or imaginary. a thousand wants were invented, especially for the ladies, so that whereas many of the damsels from quiet country houses had been content with homespun, linsey woolsey, or, at best, with sarcenet, a few ribbons for their straw hats, and thread for their gloves, now found themselves unable to appear abroad except with heads made up on wires and round rolls, their hair powdered and pinned to large puff caps, with gowns of silk, flounced sleeves, and a laced tippet. and when they went home they were no longer contented with the things of their own making, the cordials of ginger, cherries, and so forth, the distilled waters, the home-brewed ale, the small beer, the wines made with raspberries, currants and blackberries. they murmured after tea and coffee, the wine of lisbon and canary, the rosolio and the ratafia, the macaroons, the chocolate, the perfumes, and the many gauds of the dressing-table. and they scorned the honest red and brown of cheek and hands that cared nothing for the sun, as if they would be more beautiful in the eyes of their lovers by having cheeks of a pale white with a smudge of paint, and hands as white as if just out of bed and a long illness. the way of the company was as follows: they met at the pump room about ten; they called for the water; they exchanged the latest scandal; they talked about dress; they bemoaned their losses at cards; they then walked off to morning prayers, chiefly at st. nicholas's, where, as you have heard, mr. benjamin purdon read them with honeyed words and rolling voice. from the church they repaired to a confectioner's called jonathan's--i know not why--where they all devoured a certain cake made expressly for them; from the confectioner's some went to the draper, the milliner, or the haberdasher; some to the long room, where there were generally public breakfasts of tea, chocolate, and coffee; a few, but these were mostly men, went to the bookseller's, where, for half-a-crown a month, they could read all day long and what they pleased. the bookseller came from norwich, and when the season ended went back to norwich. dinner was served at twelve or one. at five o'clock or thereabouts the company began to arrive at the gardens and the long room, where, with music, cards, conversation, and walking among the coloured lamps, the evening was quickly spent. twice a week there was an assembly for dancing, when refreshments were provided at the cost of the gentlemen. for the gentlemen there were also the coffee houses, of which two at least sprang into existence. one laid down twopence on entering, and could call for a dish of tea, a cup of coffee, or one of chocolate. in one of them were found the clergy, the lawyers, and the justices of the peace; they settled the affairs of the nation and decided the characters of the ministers. in the other were those who affected to be beaux and wits. among the latter set one found sam semple, now a person of great authority, as the secretary of lord fylingdale and the author of a book of verse. he pretended to be an arbiter. "sir," he would say, "by your leave. the case is quite otherwise. the matter was lately discussed at will's. a certain distinguished poet, who shall be nameless, whose opinion carries weight even in that august assemblage, was of opinion that...." and so forth, with an air of profound wisdom. as regards wit in conversation, it consists, i believe, in finding different ways, all unexpected, of saying: "you are a fool. you are an ass. you are a jackanapes. you are an ignorant clown. you are a low-born upstart." this kind of wit was cultivated with some success at first, but as it was not always relished by those to whom it was directed, it led to the pulling of noses and the discharge of coffee or tea in the face of the ingenious author of the unexpected epigram. so that its practice languished and presently died out altogether. the most astonishing change, however, was in the market-place. here, instead of one market day in the week, there was a market day all the week long. the stalls were never removed; every day the country people crowded into the town--some riding, some walking, some in boats, some in barges, bringing poultry, ducks, eggs, butter, cream, milk, cheese, honey, lettuce for sallet, and everything that a farm, a dairy, and a stillroom can provide. some sat on upturned baskets, their wares spread out before them; some stood at stalls with white hangings to keep off the sun; the fine ladies went about among them chaffering and bargaining, their maids following with baskets. it was a pretty sight, and to my mind the rustic damsels, for good looks, got the better of the fine ladies and their maids. many of the beaux and young bloods were of the same opinion, apparently, for they, too, went round among the stalls, with compliments not doubtful, and talk more free than polite, chucking the girls under the chin and pinching their cheeks. to be sure these freedoms do a body no harm, and i believe our norfolk girls can look after themselves as well as any. and every day outside the stalls there assembled such a motley crowd as had never before been seen in lynn. it was a perpetual fair, at which you could buy anything. gipsies went about leading horses for sale, the cheap jack stood on the footboard of his cart and bawled his wares; the rogue stood up, with voice and cheeks of brass, and offered his caps, knives, scissors, cups and saucers, frying pans, saucepans, kettles, every morning. his store could never be exhausted; he took a quarter of what he asked; and he went on day after day. nor must we forget the travelling quack, the learned doctor in a huge wig and black velvet; as like to dr. worship himself as one pea is like another. he had his stage and his tumbling clown, who twisted himself upon the tight-rope, turned somersaults, walked on his head, grinned and made mouths and was as merry a rogue as his master was grave. after the tom fool had collected a crowd and made them merry, the doctor advanced, his face full of wisdom, and explained that he came among them newly arrived from persia, that land famous for its learned physicians; that he was not an ordinary physician, seeking to make money by his science; that, on the other hand, what he offered was given, rather than sold, the charge made being barely sufficient to pay for the costly ingredients used in the making of these sovereign remedies. he had his pills and his draughts; his balsams and his electuary; he had his plaster against rheumatism; his famous _pulvis catharticus_ against fever; his _carduus benedictus_ against ague; and, in a word, his infallible remedies against all the ills to which flesh is liable. so he played his part, not every day, but often, for the crowd in the market-place changed continually, and every change brought him new patients. or there was the tooth drawer. you knew him by the string of teeth which hung round his neck like a string of pearls over the neck of a lady or a collar of ss. round the neck of the worshipful the mayor. he pulled teeth at half a crown each, and if that was too much, at a shilling. not only did he bawl his calling among the crowd, but he went through the streets from house to house asking if his services were wanted. the town crier added to the noise and the animation of the scene. almost every day he had something to bawl. he was known by his dress and his bell. he wore a green coat with brass buttons; a broad laced hat, he had a broad badge with the arms of the town upon his arm; in one hand he carried a staff and in the other his big bell. and being by nature endowed with a loud voice, and a good opinion of himself, he magnified his office by ringing more loudly and longer than was necessary, by repeating his "o yes! o yes! o yes!" at the end as well as the beginning of his announcement, and by proclaiming this twice over. towards the hour of noon, when every tavern had its ordinary, and the sausages and black puddings were hissing in the cooks' stalls, there arose a fragrance--call it an incense of gratitude--which pleasantly engaged the senses. it was a hogo of frying fish, chops, steaks, sausages, bacon, ham and onions; it included the smell of gosling and duckling and chicken, roasted rabbit fricasseed; of roast pork, lamb, mutton, and beef; of baked pies--all kinds of pies--custards, cheese cakes, dumplings, hasty pudding. then the feet of those who could afford it turned to the tavern; those who could not pay the ordinary at two shillings, or that at one shilling, dived into the cellar, where they could dine for sixpence, or stood about the stalls where they fried the sausages; those who brought their dinner with them sat on their baskets and devoured their food, or bought of the street criers who now went up and down ringing bells and crying: hot black puddings, hot, smoking hot, just come out of the pot. or, here, dainty brave cheese cakes, come, buy 'em of me; two for twopence, one for a penny; come along, customers, if you'll buy any. it pleased me to recall the humours of the town at that time. except for the rows of booths, one would have thought it stourbridge fair at cambridge, which once i saw. the weather was fine and clear, the cold east winds gone. there was so much money flying about that everybody was buying as well as selling; in spite of all that was brought into the town by the visitors, nothing was left when they went away, because all had been spent. we thought that the harvest would last forever. we looked to a season like that of bath, which goes on all the year round. if our people took more money in one day than they had before taken in a whole month, they thought that it would go on day after day, and they spent it all without restraint. nay, the wives and daughters of those who had kept humble shops and been content with fat bacon and hot milk for breakfast, and more bacon for dinner; who had been clad in homespun, now drank tea with bread and butter for breakfast like the lady anastasia herself; dined off ducks and goslings; drank fine ale and even canary and lisbon; and ventured to attend the assembly where they stood up to the country dance in silk like any gentlewoman. i have mentioned the company of players; they acted three times a week. we who work for our living are apt to despise these mummers and their calling; to pretend every day to be some one else is not, we think, an occupation worthy of a man, while the painting, the disguise, the representation, either in dumb show or in words, of all the passions in turn, must surely leave the actor no real passions of his own. yet i heard, while this company was with us, cases of such generosity and christian charity one towards the other when the money ceased to come in, that i am constrained to allow them at least the great christian virtue of love for one another. besides the players, there were the singers and the musicians of the spa; and there were jugglers, mountebanks, tumblers, tight-rope dancers, ballad-singers, fortune-tellers, conjurers, pedlars and hawkers of all kinds. the town of lynn, formerly so quiet and retired, with no other disturbance than that caused by a brawl among drunken sailors, became suddenly transformed into the abode of all the devils disengaged at the moment. there were sharpers busy at the races and the cocking; men who laid bets, and if they lost, ran away, but loudly demanded their money when they won; there was gambling; there was drinking; there was fighting; the servants were as corrupt as their masters; there were fresh scandals continually; a reputation lost every day; there were duels fought over drunken quarrels, about women, about bets and wagers; the clerks of the counting-houses were filled with the new spirit of gambling; there were lotteries and raffles in which everybody took tickets, even if they got the money for them dishonestly. in a word, the pursuits of pleasure proved a mad race, down a broad and flowery path, on each side of which were drinking booths, and music, and dancing, while at the end there opened wide.... you shall speedily learn what this was. chapter xii the captain's ambition "jack," said the captain, "i am now resolved that molly shall make her appearance at the assembly, and that as the heiress that she is. not lowly and humbly. she shall take her place at once among the fine ladies." "but she is not a gentlewoman, captain," i objected. "she shall be finer than any gentlewoman of the whole company--just as she is better to look at without any finery." "will the company," i asked, "welcome her among them?" "the women, jack, will flout and slight her--i have watched them. they flout and slight each other. that breaks no bones. she shall go." he went on to explain his designs. as you have heard, they were ambitious. "i have this day acquainted molly, for the first time, with the truth. she now knows that she is richer than any one believed. as for herself, she never thought about her fortune, knowing, she says, that it was safe in my hands. i have opened her father's strong place--it is in the cellar, behind a stone, and i have taken out the treasures that even her mother never saw, because her father wished to lead a homely life, and concealed his treasures. there are jewels and gold chains, bracelets, necklaces, rings--all kinds of things--molly has them all--she is even now hugging them all in her lap and trying them on before her looking-glass. she shall go to the assembly covered with jewels." "is there any one among the whole company fit for her?" i asked. "there is one, jack. he is the noble lord--the lord fylingdale--a very great man, indeed." "lord fylingdale? captain, are you serious?" "why, jack, who can be too high and too grand for my molly? he is said to be of a virtuous character and pious disposition; he neither gambles nor drinks, nor is a libertine, as is too common among many of his rank." "but, captain, he will marry one of his own rank." "ta-ta! he will marry a fine girl, virtuously brought up, made finer by her fortune. what more can he expect than beauty, modesty, virtue, and a great--a noble fortune? if the girl pleases him--why, jack, come to think of it, the girl must please him--she would move the heart of an ice-berg--then, i say, i shall see my girl raised to her proper place, and i shall die happy." "but, captain, you will raise her above her mother and above yourself, and above all her old friends. you will lose her altogether." "ay, there's the rub. but i shall be contented even with that loss if she is happy." i can see even now the honest eyes of the good old man humid for a moment as he contemplated his own loss, and i can hear his voice shake a little at thinking of the happiness he designed for his ward. no one would believe that the captain could be so cunning. no one who reads this history would believe, either, that a man could be so ignorant and so simple. we were all as ignorant and as simple. we all believed what these lying people--these creatures of the devil--(when i say the devil i mean lord fylingdale)--told us. sir harry said that he was too virtuous and too serious for the world of fashion; the parson said that he was the most cleanly liver of all young men; the poet swore that he was all day long doing and scheming acts of charity and goodness towards the unfortunate. they were all in a tale--these villains--and we were simple and ignorant folk, credulous sailors and honest citizens living remote from the vices of town, who knew nothing and suspected nothing. as for myself, i was carried away, as much as the old captain, with the thought of the honour and glory that awaited our molly. i concluded, in my simplicity, that the mere appearance and sight of the lovely girl would make all the men fall madly in love with her, without considering the hundred thousand additional charms held in trust for her by her guardian. after this talk with the captain i sought molly. she was in the summerhouse up the garden with her treasures spread out before her. it was a most wonderful sight--but it filled me with madness. i never imagined such a pile of gold and of precious stones. there were diamonds, and rubies, and blue sapphires; there were all kinds of gems, with chains of gold and bracelets--a glittering pile of gold and jewels. yet my heart sank at the spectacle. "look, jack, look," she cried. "they are all mine! all mine!" she gathered up a handful, and let them roll through her fingers. "all mine! only think, and yesterday i was thinking how delightful it must be to have even one gold chain to hang round my neck! all mine!" "has your mother seen them, molly?" "yes; she knew that there were things somewhere, but my father kept them put away. mother didn't want jewels and chains. they came to us from grandfather, who sailed to the east indies and brought them home. look at the dainty delicate work!" she held up a chain most wonderful for its fine small work. "did you ever see anything more beautiful?" i turned away. the sight of the treasures made me sick. for, you see, they showed me how wide was the gulf between molly and me. "you want no jewels, molly. i wish you were poor with all my heart." "oh! jack! and so not to have these lovely things? that is cruel of you. and oh! jack, i am to go to the assembly to-morrow evening." "so the captain tells me." "at last. victory and amanda"--victory was the daughter of the curate of st. nicholas, and amanda was the daughter of the doctor--"have been already, and i have been kept at home. the dear, bewitching assembly! the music! the dancing! the fine ladies!" "there will be none finer than you, molly." "that is what the captain says. i am to wear my gold chains and my jewels. my dress is waiting to be tried on. it came from norwich. i shall not let you see it till the evening. the hairdresser is engaged for to-morrow afternoon. victory says that the fine ladies turn up their noses and hide their faces with their fans when the girls of the place pass before them. why? victory does not thrust her company upon them. nor shall i. as for that, i can bear their disdainful looks and their flouts with patience, i dare say." "if these are the manners of the great," i said, "give me our own manners." "we are not gentlefolk, jack, you and i and the captain. we must not complain. if we intrude upon the quality they will show what they think of us. to be sure, the captain says that i could buy up the whole room. but i don't want to buy up anybody. i would rather let them go their own way, so that i may go mine. jack, if i were a great lady i think i would be kind to a girl who was not so well born, if only she knew her place." "you need not be humble, molly. when they know who you are, and what is your fortune, you will make these fine ladies ashamed." "the captain wants me to marry some great person," she laughed. "oh! if the great person could see me making the bed and baking the apple pie and beating the eggs for the custard, with my sleeves turned up and my apron tied round my waist! what a fine lady i shall make, to be sure!" "well, but, molly, remember that you are rich. you cannot marry anybody in lynn. you must look higher." "jack, it makes me laugh. how shall i learn to be a great lady? how should i command an army of servants who have had but my faithful black? how should i sit in a gilded coach, who am used to ride a pony or to sail a boat?" "you will soon get accustomed, molly, even to a coach and six and running footmen, such as lord fylingdale has. you are not like victory and amanda, and the rest of the girls of lynn, portionless and penniless. you must remember the station to which your fortune calls you." "money makes not a gentleman," she returned. "nor a gentlewoman. i know my station. it is here, with my guardian, among my old friends. well, perhaps i shall not take my place in what you call my station this year--or next year." her face cleared, and became once more full of sunshine. "jack," she said, "has the captain told you? no one is to dance with me to-morrow except yourself. we are to have the last minuet and first country dance together. none of the pretty fellows at the assembly are to speak to me. it is arranged with mr. prappet. they may look on with admiration and longing, mr. prappet says." since the arrival of our master of the ceremonies, mr. prappet, the dancing master of norwich, he had been giving molly lessons in those arts of dancing and the carriage of the body, the arms, the face, the head, which are considered to mark the polite world. as for myself, i was called upon to be her partner. truth to say, i was always better at a hornpipe or a jig than in any of the fashionable dances; but, in a way, i could make shift to go through the steps. "now," she said, "let us practise once more by ourselves." so we stepped out upon the grass, and there--she in her stuff frock, her apron, her hair lying about her neck and shoulders, and i in my workaday garb--we practised the dance which belongs to the assembly, to courts, to stately ladies and to gentlemen of birth and rank. the captain was more cunning than one could have believed possible. he would produce this girl before the astonished company. they should see that she was more beautiful than any other woman in the whole room; more finely dressed; covered with gold chains and jewels; thus proclaiming herself as an heiress of great wealth. she should dance, at first, with none but one of her own station, or near it, and her old companion. she would first make all the world talk about her; but she should be kept apart. it should be understood that she was not for any of the young fellows of the company. then, if she attracted the attention of this young nobleman, so virtuous, so pious, and of such rare qualities of heart and head--the thing which most he desired--her marriage with some man of high position, fit for such a girl, might take place. that was his design, thinking of lord fylingdale. if it failed he would withdraw the girl from the company and cast about for some other way. while we were practising he came into the garden and stood leaning on his stick to look at us. "body and bones!" he said; "you've caught the very trick of it. prappet has taught you how they do it. sprawl, jack; sprawl with a will. twist and turn your body. shake your leg, man. it's a fine leg; better than most. shake it lustily. slide, molly, slide; slide with zeal. slide and bend and twist, and shake your fan. i don't call that dancing! why, there isn't a lad in any fo'k'sle couldn't do it better. give them the hornpipe, jack, when the sliding and sprawling is finished. stand up and say, 'ladies, your most obedient. i will now show a dance that is a dance.'" when we finished he went on with his discourse. "molly has told you, i suppose. she will dance to-morrow evening with none but you. after the country dance lead her to her chair, and we will walk home beside her." "jack will look very fine among all the beaux," said molly, laughing. truly, i had not considered the matter of dress, and i stood in my workaday things--to wit, a brown frieze coat with black buttons, a drugget waistcoat, shag breeches, and black stockings. i remembered the grand silk and velvet of the beaux and stood abashed. "show him, captain," said molly, laughing, "what we have got for him." the captain shook his head. "my mind misgives me," he said. "that boy will feel awkward in this new gear. however, fine feathers make fine birds. also fine birds flock together. since thou art to dance with molly, my lad, thy rig must do credit to her as well as thyself, so come with me." if you believe me, the captain, who thought of everything, had provided such a dress as might have been worn by any gentleman in the room without discredit. it consisted of a blue coat with silver buttons and silver braid; a waistcoat of pink silk, velvet breeches, and white silk stockings. there was added a gold laced hat with lace for throat and sleeves. "so," said the captain when i stood before him arrayed in this guise, "'tis a gentleman born and bred, to look upon. powder thy hair, my lad; tie it with a white ribbon and a large bow. there will not be a fribble in the whole company, even including the poor old atomy, sir harry, to compare with you." [illustration: "'tis a gentleman born and bred, to look upon."] molly clapped her hands. "jack!" she cried, "if i pretend to be a great lady you must pretend to be an admiral, at least. why, sir, i feel as if we had never known you before. as for me--but you shall see." she sighed. "it is only for the evening," she said. "we shall come home and i shall put on my old homespun again and you your shag and your frieze. i am cinderella and you are cinderella's brother, and the captain is the fairy." so we laughed and made merry. yet still i felt that sinking of the heart which weighed upon me from the first night of the great discovery and never left me. there are sailors--i have known such--i think that i am myself one--who know beforehand by such a premonitory sinking when the voyage will be stormy. nay, there are some who know and can foretell when the ship will be cast away and all her crew drowned in the sea or broken to pieces against the rocks. i looked into the parlour and found molly's mother. she sat with her work in her hands, her lips moving, her eyes fixed. and i saw that she was unhappy. she was a homely body always. one could understand that her husband was right in judging that she was not likely to want jewels and gold chains or to show them to advantage. like many women of the station in which she was born (which was beneath that of her husband) she was unlearned, and could not read; but she was a notable housewife. "jack," she said, coming to herself, "molly has told you, i suppose." "i have seen her treasures, and have heard that she is to go to the assembly." "she is richer than i suspected. oh, jack, she will marry some great man, the captain says--and so i shall lose my girl--and she is all i have in the world--all i have--all i have!" she threw her apron over her head--and i slipped away, my heart full of forebodings. it is wonderful to remember these forebodings because they were so fully justified. patience! you shall hear. chapter xiii molly's first minuet i have now to tell you how molly made her first public appearance at the assembly, and how she delighted and pleased the kindly ladies who formed the company. it was a crowded gathering. lord fylingdale, it was known, would be present. many gentlemen, therefore, who would otherwise have been at the coffee house, the tavern, or the cockpit, were present in honour of this distinguished visitor, or in the hope of being presented to him. and all the ladies visiting the spa were there as well, young and old, matrons and maids; the latter, perhaps, permitting themselves dreams of greatness. his lordship arrived brave in apparel, tall, handsome, proud, still in early manhood, wearing his star upon his breast. every girl's heart beat only to think of the chance should she be able to attract the attention and the passion of such a man. he was accompanied (say, followed) by his secretary, our poet--the only poet that our town has produced. the master of the ceremonies received him with a profound bow, and, after a few words, conducted him to the chair or throne on which sat the lady anastasia with a small court around her. then the music began, and lord fylingdale led out that lady for the minuet. and the company stood around in a circle, admiring. he next danced with the young wife of a norfolk gentleman and member of parliament, after which he retired and stood apart. sir harry followed, dancing twice with a fine show of agility. after him others of lower rank followed. towards the conclusion of the minuet molly entered the room, led by her guardian, captain crowle, and followed by myself in my new disguise. the captain was no better dressed than if he were sitting in the crown inn, save that he had exchanged his worsted stockings for white silk. he looked what he was--a simple sailor and commander of a ship. but no one regarded him or myself, because all eyes were turned upon molly. she appeared before the astonished assembly clothed, so to speak, with diamonds and precious stones, glittering in the light of the candles like a crowd of stars. she was covered with jewels. diamonds were in her headdress; they were also hanging from her neck; there were rubies and emeralds, sapphires and opals in her necklace and her bracelets; heavy gold chains, light gold chains, gold chains set with pearls were hanging about her. she was clothed, i say, from head to foot with gold and with precious stones. the intention of the captain was carried out. on her first appearance she proclaimed herself as she stood before them all as an heiress who was able to carry a great fortune upon her back, as the saying is, and to have another great fortune at home. never before had the company beheld so strange a sight; a girl wearing so much wealth and such splendid jewels for a simple assembly. then from lip to lip was passed the words, "who is she? what is her name? where does she come from? what is her family? what is the meaning of this resplendent show of gems and gold? are they real? why does she wear them?" and for the whole of that evening, while molly was in the room, no one thought of anything except this wonderful vision of dazzling jewels. the eyes of the whole company followed her about, and in their conversation they talked of nothing else. for, of all things, this was the most unexpected, and, to all the other maidens, the most disconcerting. they were plain country girls, while molly was a goddess. to say that she outshone them all is to say nothing. there was no comparison possible. truly the captain was right. there was no one in that room who could compare with molly--either for beauty or for bravery of apparel. as for her beauty, it was of the kind the power of which women seem not to understand. men, who do understand it, call it loveliness. venus herself--helen of troy--fair rosamond--jane shore--all the fair women of whom we have heard, possessed, i am sure, this loveliness. your regular beauty of straight features of which so much is made doth never, i think, attract mankind so surely, or so quickly; doth never hold men so strongly; doth never make them so mad with love. it is the woman of the soft eyes, the sweet eyes, the eyes that are sometimes hazel and sometimes blue, the eyes full of light and sunshine, the eyes where cupid plays; the lips that are always ready to smile; the lips so rosy red; so round and small; the cheek that is like a peach for softness and for bloom, touched with a natural pink and red; the rounded chin; the forehead white and not too large; the light brown hair that is almost flaxen, curling naturally but disposed by art. such a woman was molly. yet not a weakly thin slip of a girl. she was tall and strong; her arms were round and white as a woman's should be, but they were big as well, as if they could do man's work--they were strengthened and rounded by the oars which she had handled from childhood. her ample cheek wanted no daub of paint; it had a fine healthy colour, like a damask rose, but more delicate; her eyes were full and bright; there was no girl in the place, not even among the country ladies, could show a face and figure so strong, so finely moulded, of such large and generous charms. when the men gazed upon her they gasped; when the women gazed upon her their hearts sank low with envy. how am i to describe her dress? i know that her head was made in what they called the english fashion, with a structure of lace, thin wires and round rolls on cushions, with ringlets at the sides and pinned to a small cap on the top. all i can safely say about her dress is that she wore a gown of cherry-coloured silk, with gold flowers over a petticoat of pink silk adorned by a kind of network of gold lace; that her sleeves were wide with a quantity of lace--i have never carried a cargo of lace, and therefore i know not its value; that her gloves were of white silk; that her arms were loaded with bracelets which clanged and clashed when she moved; and that chains of gold hung round her neck and over her shoulders. the master of ceremonies received us with distinction. "captain crowle," he said, loudly, "you have too long withheld your lovely ward from the assembly of the spa. i would invite her to dance the last minuet with mr. pentecrosse." all this had been arranged beforehand. the people gazed curiously, and began to press around us as i advanced with molly's hand in mine. "be not abashed, jack," whispered the old captain. "they know not what to think. show them how the dance should be done. slide and sprawl, my lad. sprawl with a will and both together," he added, hoarsely, "with a yo-heave-ho!" then the music began again, and molly stood opposite to me--and the dance began. for my own part i obeyed the captain's admonition. i endeavoured to forget the people who were looking on--i tried to think that we were rehearsing in the garden--and feeling confidence return, i began to slide and sprawl with a will. all the people were gathered round us in a circle. the ladies, holding their fans before their faces, tittered and giggled audibly. the men, for their part, laughed openly, making observations not intended to be good-natured. they were laughing at me! and i was getting on, as i believed, so well. however, i did not know the cause of their merriment, and carried on the sprawling with a greater will than ever. i am sorry now, whenever i think upon it, that molly had not a better partner. for my performance, which was quite correct, and in every particular exactly what mr. prappet had taught me, was distinguished, i learned afterwards, by a certain exaggeration of gesture due to my desire to be correct, which made the dance ridiculous. if only i had been permitted to give them a hornpipe! what had i, a mere tarpaulin, as they say, to do with fine clothes, fashionable sliding and sprawling, and the pretence of fashionable manners? you must not think that molly, though it was her first appearance in public, though she wore these fine things for the first time, though all eyes were upon her, was in the least degree abashed. she bore herself with modesty and an assumed unconsciousness of what people were saying and how they were looking at her, which certainly did her great credit. and i am quite sure that, whatever my own performance, hers was full of grace and ease, and the dignity which makes this dance so fit for great lords and ladies and so unfit for rustic swains and shepherdesses. she smiled upon her partner as sweetly as if we were together in the garden; she played her fan as prettily as if we were rehearsing the dance with mirth and merriment--it was a costly fan, with paintings upon it and a handle set with pearls. the dance was finished at last, and i led my partner to the end of the room, where the maids sat all in a row with white aprons and white caps--among them molly's woman, nigra--to repair any disorder to the head or to the dress caused by the active movements of the dance. and then they all began to talk. i could hear fragments and whole sentences. they were talking about us. "who is she, then?" asked one lady, impatiently. "where does she come from?" "perhaps a sea nymph," replied a gentleman, gallantly, "brought from the ocean by the god neptune, who stands over yonder. one can smell the seaweed." "and the gems and chains come, i suppose, from old wrecks." "or," said the ancient beau, sir harry, "a wood nymph from the train of diana. in that case the old gentleman may be the god pan. the nymphs of diana, it appears, have lately taken lessons in the fashionable dance. as yet, unfortunately----" he shrugged his shoulders. "i cannot choose but hear, jack," said molly. "let us make as if we heard nothing." "she is an actress," said another lady. "i saw her last night in the play. she personated an impudent maidservant. the chains and gems are false; one can see that with half an eye. they are what those vagabond folk call stage properties." yet another took up the parable. "she should be put to the door, or she should stand in a white apron with the maids. what? we are decent and respectable ladies, i hope." "they are not gems at all," observed a young fellow, anxious to display his wit. "they are the lamps from the garden. she has cut them down and hung them round herself. see the pretty colours--red--green--blue." "let her put them back again, then, and leave the company into which she dares to intrude." this was the spiteful person who had seen her on the stage and knew her for one of the strollers. the resentment of the ladies against a woman who presumed to be more finely dressed than themselves, and to display more jewels than they themselves possessed, or even hoped to possess, was deeper and louder than one could believe possible. yet this was a polite assembly, and these ladies had learned the manners which we are taught to copy, at a distance--we who are not gentlefolk. "jack," said molly, "these are the flouts of which the captain warned us. lead me round the room. right through the middle of them, so that they may see with half an eye how false are my jewels." i obeyed. they fell back, making a lane for us, and talking about us after we passed through them, without the least affectation of a whisper. they had an opportunity, however, of seeing the dress and the trappings more closely. "my dear," said one, "the jewels are real. i am sure they are real. on the stage they wear large glass things. those are brilliants of the first water in her hair, and those are true pearls about her neck." "and her dress," said another, "is of the finest silk; and did you see the gold lace in front of her petticoat? the dress and the jewels, they must be worth--oh! worth a whole estate. who can she be?" "such a woman," observed an elderly matron very sweetly, "would probably be ashamed to say where she found those things. oh! but the master of the ceremonies must be warned. she must not be tolerated here again." "how kind they are, jack!" whispered molly. "who is the fellow with her?" i heard next. "he sells flounders and eels in the market. i have seen him in a blue coat and long white sleeves and an apron." "no. he is a clerk in a counting-house." "not at all. the fellow, like the girl, belongs to the strollers. i saw him last night laying a carpet on the stage." "a personable fellow, with a well turned leg." this compliment made me blush. "it is his misfortune that he must be coupled with so impudent a baggage." "you see, jack," said molly, "it all comes back to me." so we went on walking round the room, pretending to hear nothing. we met victory, also walking round the room with her beau, a young merchant of the town. she, fortunate girl! had no jewels with which to excite the envy, hatred, and malice of the ladies. she was unmolested, though not a gentlewoman by station. "molly," she said, "you are splendid. i have never seen such a show of jewels. but you will drive them mad with envy. hateful creatures! i see them turning green. the minuet was beautiful, my dear. oh! jack, you made me laugh. never was seen such posturing. the men are angry, because they think you meant to make them ridiculous." thus may one learn unpalatable truth, even from friends. my "posturing," then, as the girl called it, was ridiculous. and i thought my performance correct, and quite in the style of the highest fashion! then the captain joined in. "famous!" he said. "jack, you rolled about like a porpoise at the bows. never believe that a sailor cannot show the way at a dance. molly, my dear, you were not so brisk as jack. but it was very well, very well, indeed. the women cannot contain themselves for spite and envy. what did i tell you, my dear?" chapter xiv molly's country dance meantime another kind of conversation was going on, which we could not hear. "my lord," the poet bustled up, with his cringing familiarity. "yonder is the heiress of whom i spoke." "humph! she is well enough for a rustical beauty. her shape is good, if too full for the fashion; her cheeks bespeak the dairy, and her shoulders tell of the milking pail. why does she wear as many jewels and charms as an antiquated duchess at a coronation? i suppose they are real. but there are too many of them." "they are real. i would vouch for them, my lord," he added earnestly. "all that i have told you is most true. a greater heiress you will not find in the whole country. even with the jewels upon her she could buy up all the women in the room." "i would make sure upon that point. they say that she has ships, lands----" "and money. accumulations. my lord, if you will not take my word for it--why should you?--ask her guardian. there he stands." "the old salt now beside her, like a cerberus of the quarter-deck? who is the other--the fellow who danced with her--his actions like those of a graceful elephant? is he one of her lovers?" "she has no lovers. her guardian permits none. the young lady has been kept in the house. that man is her servant; he is nothing but a mate in one of her ships. captain crowle would not allow a fellow of that position to make love to his ward." "humph!" said his lordship. "bring the old man here." the captain obeyed the summons somewhat abashed. but my lord put him at his ease. "you may retire, mr. semple. i would converse with captain crowle." then he turned to the captain with the greatest affability. "our good friend, mr. semple, tells me, captain, that yonder beauty--the toast, if i mistake not, of our young gentleman to-night--is none other than your ward." "at your service, my lord." "nay, captain. it is i who should be at her service. frankly, she does honour to your town. had we discovered miss molly there would have been no need to discuss the magical waters of the spa. may i inquire into the name and conditions of her family?" "as for her name, sir, it is plain molly miller. as for her parentage, her father was a ship owner and a merchant. though a citizen and a free man of lynn, he was as substantial a man as may be found in the port of london. her mother, my first cousin, was the daughter and the granddaughter and the sister and the cousin of men who have been captains in the merchant service of lynn--for many generations. most of them lie at the bottom of the sea. we are plain folk, my lord, and homely. but providence hath thought fit to bless our handiwork, and--you see my ward before you--i hope she does not shame the company?" "on the contrary, captain crowle, she adorns and beautifies the company not only with her good looks, which are singular and extraordinary, but also with her fine dress and her jewels, which have won for her already the envy of every woman in the assembly. "there are as many jewels in the locker as have come out of it for to-night," said the captain sturdily. "ay? ay? and there are ships, i hear--many ships. our friend mr. semple speaks of the lady's wealth with as much respect as he speaks of her beauty." "he well may--molly is the greatest shipowner of lynn. she is also owner of many houses in the town and of many broad acres outside the town. and she will have, when she marries, in addition, a fortune of many thousand pounds." "she is, then, indeed, an heiress. i wish her, for your sake, captain crowle, a worthy husband. but it is a grave responsibility. there are hawks about always looking for a rich wife--to restore fortunes battered by evil courses. you must take care, captain crowle." "i mean to take care." "perhaps among the merchants of this port." the captain shook his head. "or among the gentlemen of norfolk." the captain shook his head. "they drink too hard--and they live too hard." "perhaps among the scholars and divines of cambridge." "they are not fit mates for a lively girl." "captain, i perceive that you are difficult to please. even for your charming ward you must not expect a miracle in the creation of a new adam fit for this new eve. be reasonable, captain crowle." his lordship spoke so pleasantly and laughed with so much good nature that the captain was encouraged, and spoke out his mind as to an old friend. "no, no, i want no miracle. i desire that my girl, who is a loving girl, with a heart of gold, should be wooed and married by a gentleman whom she will respect and honour--not a drinker nor a gambler nor a profligate. she will bring him a fortune which is great even for persons of quality." my lord bowed gravely. "you are right, captain crowle, to entertain these opinions. do not change them under any temptations. one would only wish that the lady may find such a mate. but, captain, remember--i say it not in an unfriendly spirit--class weds with class. sir, they are about to begin the country dance, let us look on." the company began to take their places. "captain crowle," lord fylingdale pointed to the dancers, repeating his words: "class weds with class--class dances with class. at the head of the set stands sir harry the evergreen. his partner is a lady of good family. next to them are others of good family. those young people who are now taking their places lower down are---what are they?" "two of them are the daughters of the doctor and the vicar--good girls both." "good girls, doubtless. but, captain crowle, not gentlefolk, and there, i observe, your lovely ward, captain crowle, takes her place modestly and last of all. who dances with her?" "it is young john pentecrosse, son of our schoolmaster, mate on board one of molly's ships. he is her playfellow. they have been together since childhood." "perhaps he would be more. take care, captain--take care." so he turned away as if no longer interested in the girl. but sam semple remained behind. "sir," he said to the captain, "his lordship took particular notice of your ward. 'miss molly,' said my lord, 'is a rustic nymph dressed for the court of venus. never before have i seen a face of more heavenly beauty.' those were his lordship's very words." but sam semple was always a ready liar. "ay, my lad. they are fine words; but fine words butter no parsnips. 'class weds with class,' that's what he said to me." "surely, captain, with such a face and such a fortune miss molly is raised to the rank ... say, of countess. would a coronet satisfy you for your ward? i mean nothing"--here he glanced at the figure of his lordship. "nothing--of course not--what could i mean? how well a coronet, captain, would become that lovely brow!" everybody knows that the country dance should continue until the couple at the bottom have arrived at the top and have had their turn. everybody knows, too, that the country dance, unlike the minuet, is joined by the whole company, with only so much deference to rank as to give the better sort the highest places at the beginning. they were given this evening to the ladies of the county who could boast of their gentility, and, to do them justice, did boast loudly of it, comparing their own families and that of their husbands with those of other ladies present. it seems to me, indeed, that it is better to have no coat of arms and no grandfathers if the possession leads to so much jealousy, backbiting, and slander. all these ladies, however, united in one point, viz, that of scorn and contempt for those girls of lynn who ventured to join the assembly or to walk in the gardens. they showed this contempt in many ways, especially by whispering and giggling when one of the natives passed them. "is it tar that one smells so strong?" if one of the sea captain's daughters was standing near, they would ask. or "madam, i think there must be an apothecary's shop in the assembly," if it was the doctor's daughter, amanda worship. and at the country dance they refused to take the hand of these girls. their greatest possible insult, however, was offered to molly. it was a good dance tune, played with spirit--the tune they call "hey go mad!" we moved gradually higher up. at last we stood at the top, and our turn came to end the dance. imagine our discomfiture at this point when the whole of these kind ladies and their partners left their places and so broke up the dance. we were left alone at the top, while at the bottom were the other two girls of lynn, victory and amanda, with their partners. "it's a shame!" cried victory, aloud. "do they call these manners?" "never mind," said amanda, also aloud; "it's because you outshine them all, molly." but the mischief was done, and the dance was broken up. molly flushed crimson. i thought she would say something sharp. nay, i have known her cuff and box the ear of man or maid for less, and i feared at this moment that she would in like manner avenge the insult. but she restrained herself, and said nothing. meantime, the ladies who had committed this breach of polite manners stood together and laughed aloud, pretending some great joke among themselves; but their eyes showed the nature of the joke and this triumph over a woman who, as amanda said, outshone them all. "your turn will come," i said. "i think, jack," said my girl, quickly, "that my chair must be waiting. the captain said that i was to go after the first country dance." but a great surprise awaited her and the ladies who had played her this agreeable and diverting trick, for lord fylingdale stepped forward, the people falling back to make way for him. he drew himself up before molly and made her a profound bow. the captain walked beside him, evidently by invitation. "miss molly," he said loudly, "your worthy guardian has informed me of your name and quality. we wanted, in the company at the spa, to make it complete--the heiress of lynn. it is fitting that this borough, which is always young and flourishing, should be represented by one graced with so many charms." molly curtsied with more dignity than one could have expected. see what a dancing master can effect in a fortnight. "your lordship," she said, "does me too much honour. the reception which i have met with from these ladies had not, i confess, prepared me for your kindness." "i shall humbly ask the favour of a dance with you, miss molly, on the next occasion." the fans were now all agitation; 'twas like a flutter in a dovecot. "we shall see if we shall be deserted when our turn comes." some of the ladies hid their faces with their fan; some blushed for shame; some bit their lips with vexation; all darted looks of envy and hatred upon the cause of the open rebuke. "sir"--lord fylingdale turned severely to the master of the ceremonies--"the rules of polite society should be obeyed at lynn as much as at bath and tunbridge wells. look to it, sir; i request you." so saying, he took molly's hand, and led her to the chair outside. chapter xv the card room when molly's chair was carried away, lord fylingdale returned to the assembly. the music had begun another moving and merry tune--that called "richmond ball"--the couples were taking their places, the young fellows dancing already as they stood waiting, with hands and feet and even shoulders all together, their partners laughing at them, and, with hands upon their frocks, pretending to set in the joy and the merriment of their hearts. and i believe that the withdrawal of molly made them all much happier. two or three of the ladies standing apart were discussing the public rebuke just administered. they were angry, being ladies who conceited themselves on the score of manners, and were proud of their families. "not the whole house of lords," said one, loud enough for his lordship to hear, "shall make me give my hand to a sailor's wench. let her stick to her tar and her pitch. a pretty thing, indeed!" "i hope," said another, agitating her fan violently, "that his lordship does not put the ladies of norfolk on the same level as the girls of king's lynn." "dear madam," said a third, "lord fylingdale called her an heiress--the heiress of lynn. an heiress does not carry all her fortune on her back. do you not think--some of us have sons--that we might, perhaps, receive this person with kindness?" "no, madam. i will not be on any terms with this creature. in my family we consort with none but gentlefolk." "indeed, madam! but a hundred years ago your family, if i mistake not, were ploughing and ditching on the farms of my family." molly seemed like to prove a firebrand indeed. lord fylingdale, however, passed through them without any sign of hearing a word. he looked round; he observed that the next dance had begun, and that every lady was touching the hands of those who were not of her own exalted family. so that his admonition was bearing fruit. he then left the long room and went into the card room. here he found the lady anastasia sitting at a table, surrounded by a little crowd of players. she held the bank. in the excitement of the play her eyes sparkled; her bosom heaved; her colour went and came visibly beneath the paint on her cheeks; her lips became pale and then returned to their proper colour; she rapped the table with her fingers. she was enjoying, in fact, the rapture which fills the heart of the gambler and makes play the only thing desirable in life. perhaps the preacher could imagine no greater misery for the gamester than a heaven in which there were no cards. the game which the lady anastasia introduced to these country gentlemen and the company generally was one called hazard, which is, i believe, commonly played by gamesters of fashion. indeed, as was afterwards learned, this very lady had been by name presented by the grand jury of middlesex for keeping a bank at the game of hazard on sundays against all comers. at lynn she kept the bank every evening except sunday. it is a game which, more than any other, is said to lure on the player, so that a man who, out of simple curiosity, sets a guinea and calls a main, finds himself, after a few evenings of alternating fortune, winning and losing in turn, so much attracted by the game that he is only happy when he is playing. i know not how many gamblers for life were made during the short time when this lady held the bank. wonderful to relate, no one seemed to consider that she was doing anything wrong. she was seen at morning prayers every day; she drank the waters of the spa; she walked in the gardens, taking tea and talking scandal with the greatest affability; and in the evenings, when she kept the bank, it was with a face so full of smiles, with so much appearance of rejoicing when a player won, and so much kindness and sympathy when a player lost, that no one asked whether she herself won or lost. for my own part, i do not understand how the bank can be held without great risks and losses. but i have been assured, by one who knows, that the chances are greatly in favour of the bank, and that this lady, so highly placed, and of such charming manners, was simply playing to win, and did win very largely, if not every evening, then in the course of a week or a month. "we are all friends here," she said, taking her place and dividing the pile of money, which constituted her bank, into two heaps, right and left. at her right hand stood a man of cold and harsh appearance, who took no interest in the game, but, like a machine, cried the main and the chance, and gave or took the odds, and, with a rake, either swept the stakes into the bank when the player lost, or pushed out the amount won by the player to his seat. they called him the _croupier_, which is, i believe, a french word. he came from london. "since we are all friends here," lady anastasia went on, "we need not observe the precautions that are necessary in london, where players have been known to withdraw part of their stakes when they have lost, and to add more when they have won." among the players seated at the table--there were many others standing, who ventured a guinea or so, and, having won or lost, went away--was the ancient youth of fashion, sir harry, who had now exchanged the dance for the card room. there was also the gentleman of loud voice and boisterous manners, called colonel lanyon. sir harry was the first to call for the dice box, and the dice. "seven's the main," he cried, laying as many guineas on the table. he then rattled the dice and threw. "five!" he cried. "five!" repeated the croupier. "seven's the main, five is the chance." the rule of the game is that the player throws again and continues to throw. if he throws seven first, he loses; if he throws five first, he wins. but there are introduced certain other rules, so that the game is not so easy and simple as it seems. some throws are called "nicks," and some are called "crabs." if a nick is thrown, the caster pays to the bank one main. if crabs, the dice box goes to another player. but any bystander may bet on the odds. i know not myself what the odds are, but the regular player knows, and the croupier calls them; in some cases the bystanders may not bet against the bank, but i do not know these cases. i know only the simple rules, having seen it played in the card room. lord fylingdale looked on with an air of cold indifference. he saw, if he observed anything, that colonel lanyon and sir harry were playing high, but that the rest of the company were timidly venturing single guineas at each cast. some of them were women, and these were the fiercest and the most intent upon the game. most of them were young men, those who commonly spent their days in all those kinds of sport which allow of bets and the winning and losing of money. we have heard of gaming tables in london at which whole fortunes are sometimes lost at a single sitting; of young men who sit down rich and rise up poor--even destitute. the young men of norfolk certainly do not gamble away their estates in this blind fashion; but it must be owned that their chief pleasures are those on which they can place a wager, and that the pastimes which do not allow of a bet are not regarded with favour. for the ladies of the towns a game of quadrille or whist is the amusement whenever two or three can be got together. it must, however, be confessed that the gentlemen are fonder of drinking away their evenings than of playing cards. the games of ombre, hazard, basset, faro, and others in which large sums of money are staked, are commonly played by the people of the town, not of the country. lord fylingdale stood for a while looking over the table. then he pulled out his purse--a long and well-filled purse--and laid down twenty guineas, calling the main "nine." he threw. "nick," cried the croupier in his hard, monotonous note. his lordship had lost. he took out another handful of guineas and laid them on the table. again he lost. the players looked up, expectant. they wanted to see how a noble lord would receive this reverse of fortune. in their own case it would have been met with curses on their luck, deep and loud and repeated. to their astonishment he showed no sign of interest in the event. he only put up his purse and resumed his attitude of looking on. at eleven o'clock the music stopped; the dancing was over. nothing remained but the punch with which some of the company concluded the evening. it was provided at the expense of the gentlemen. the players began to recount their experiences. fortune, which had smiled on a few, seemed to have frowned on most. then lord fylingdale offered another surprise. "ladies," he said, "i venture to offer you the refreshment of a glass of punch. gentlemen, may i hope that you will join the ladies in this conclusion to the evening? i would willingly, if you will allow me, drink to your good luck at the card table. let the county of norfolk show that fortune which has favoured this part of the country so signally in other respects has also been as generous in this. i am not myself a norfolk, but a gloucestershire man. i come from the other side of the country. let me, however, in this gathering of all that is polite and of good family in the county be regarded as no stranger, but a friend." by this time the punch was brought in, two steaming great bowls. the gentlemen ladled it out for the ladies and for themselves and all stood expectant. "i give you a toast," said his lordship. "we are entertained by the ancient and venerable borough of lynn; we must show our gratitude to our entertainers. i am informed that these rooms, these gardens, the music and the singers, together with the pump room, have all been designed, built, collected, and arranged for the company, namely, ourselves. let us thank the good people of lynn. and, since the town has sent to our assembly to-night its loveliest flower, the young heiress whom i shall call the lady of lynn, let us drink to her as the representative of her native place. gentlemen, i offer you as a toast, 'sweet molly, the lady of lynn!'" the gentlemen drank it with enthusiasm, the ladies looked at each other doubtfully. they had not come to lynn expecting to hear the beauty of a girl of the place, the town of sailors, ships, quays, cargoes, casks, cranes, and merchants, the town of winding streets and narrow courts where the deserted houses were falling to pieces. the county families went sometimes to norwich, where there is very good society; and sometimes to bury, where there are assemblies in the winter; but no ladies ever came to lynn, where there were no assemblies, no card parties, and no society. after this toast, the lady anastasia withdrew with the other ladies. lord fylingdale led her to her chair and then called for his own. the gentlemen remained sitting over their punch and talking. "who," said one, "is this sweet molly? who is this great heiress? who is the lady of lynn?" "i never knew," said another, "that there was a lady in lynn at all." "you have been in the card room all the evening," said another. "she danced the last minuet. where can she be hidden that no one has seen her before? gentlemen, 'twas a vision of venus herself, or the fair diana, in a silk frock and a flounced petticoat, with pearls and diamonds, and precious stones. an heiress? an heiress in lynn?" the poet, sam semple, who was present, pricked up his ears. the punch had begun to loosen his tongue. "gentlemen," he said, "by your leave. you are all strangers at lynn regis. norwich you know, and bury and swaffham, and perhaps other towns in the county. but, with submission, lynn you do not know." "why, sir, as for not knowing lynn, what can a body learn of the place that is worth knowing?" "you think that it is a poor place, with a few colliers and fishing smacks, and a population of sailors and vintners." the poet took another glass of punch and drank it off to clear his head. "well, sir, you are mistaken. from lynn goes forth every year a noble fleet of ships. whither do they go? to all the ports of europe. from lynn they go out; to lynn they return. to whom do these ships belong? is a ship worth nothing? to whom do their cargoes belong? is the cargo of a tall three-master worth nothing? now, gentlemen, if most of these ships belong to one girl; if they are freighted for one girl; if half the trade of lynn is in the hands of this girl's guardian; if for twenty years the revenues from the trade have been rolling up--what is that girl but a great heiress?" "is that the case with--with sweet molly?" asked a young fellow who had been drinking before the punch appeared, and now spoke with a thick voice. "is she the heiress and the lady of lynn?" "she is nothing less," sam semple replied. "as for her fortune, i believe, if she wished it, she could buy up half this county." "and she is unmarried.... egad!" it was the same young fellow who spoke, "he will be a lucky man who gets her." "a lucky man indeed," said sam, "but she is above your reach, let me tell you," he added, impudently, because the other was a gentleman. "above my reach? take that," he threw the glass of punch in the poet's face. "above my reach? mine? who the devil is this fellow? the owner of a ship, or a dozen ships, with their stinking cargoes and their cheating trade, above my reach? why----" here he would have fallen upon the offender, but was restrained by his friends. sam stood open-mouthed, looking about him dumfoundered, the punch streaming over his cheeks. "you'd best go, sir," said one of them. "i know not who you are. but, if you are a gentleman you can send your friend to-morrow. if not"--he laughed--"in our country if a gentleman falls out with one whom he cannot fight with swords, he is not too proud to meet him with stick or fist. in any case you had better go--and that without delay." the poet turned and ran. no hostile meeting followed. sam could not send a challenge, being no gentleman, and, as you have already seen, he was not naturally inclined for the ordeal by battle in any other form. the young man was one tom rising, whose estates lay near swaffham. he was well known as the best and most fearless rider in the whole county; he was the keenest sportsman; he knew where to find fox, hare, badger, ferret, stoat, or weasel; he knew where to put up a pheasant or a cover of partridges; he could play at all manly sports; he was a wild, fearless, reckless, deboshed young fellow, whom everybody loved and everybody feared; always ready with a blow or an oath; afraid of nothing if he set his heart upon anything. you shall see presently that he set his heart upon one thing and that he failed. for the rest, a comely, tall, and proper young man of four-and-twenty or so, whose careless dress, disordered necktie, and neglected head sufficiently indicated his habits, even if his wanton rolling eyes, loose lip, and cheeks always flushed with wine, did not loudly proclaim the manner of his life and the train of his thoughts. when sam was gone he turned again to the bowl. in the morning it was reported that there had been wagers, and that a great deal of money had been won and lost. some said that colonel lanyon, one of the gentlemen from london, had lost a great sum; others said that tom rising was the heaviest loser. i judge from what i now know that tom rising lost, that evening, more than his estates would bring him in a whole quarter. and i am further of opinion that colonel lanyon did not lose anything except a piece of paper with some figures on it, which he handed, ostentatiously proclaiming the amount, which was very large, to his honourable friend, sir harry malyus, baronet. chapter xvi his lordship's intentions in the morning the newly laid out gardens were the resort--after prayers, the pump room, the pastry cook, the bookseller, and the draper--of all the ladies and of many of the men--those, indeed, who preferred the pleasures of society and the discourse of the ladies, to the dull talk of the cambridge fellows and the canons of ely in the coffee house, or the noisy disputes and the wagers of the tavern, or the sport of the cockpit. the gardens became the haunt of scandal and of gossip; here a thousand stories were invented; here characters were taken away and reputations dragged in the mud; the ladies in their morning dress walked about under the trees and in the alleys, diverting themselves as best they could. at eleven the music played in the gallery outside the long room. on some days a public breakfast was offered; on other days there was a lottery or raffle, in which everybody took a huge interest. sometimes the company were content to walk or sit under the trees, talking; sometimes there was singing in the long room; or perhaps the rev. mr. purdon would read aloud to a small circle from some book of verse or of romance; or there were parties made up for voyages up the river; or a play was bespoke by the general consent. in a word, it was the resort of a multitude who had nothing to do but to divert themselves; they were full of scandal about each other; a young fellow could not squeeze a girl's hand but it was whispered all over the place that he had run away with her; and though one would think, to hear them, that every woman of the company was ready to tear to pieces every other woman, yet they assumed so pretty a disguise, and professed so much interest and affection and friendship for each other, that one was inclined to believe the scandal and gossip to be a pretence or masque to hide their true feelings. it was natural that in walking about the gardens the people should divide themselves into parties of two, or three, or more. but in the morning, after molly's first appearance, these parties consisted of groups, each of half a dozen and more, talking about last night's unexpected apparition of a woman more finely dressed than any of them, with jewels and gold chains which made the hearts of all who beheld to sink with envy. "the men, they say, admired her face. lord fylingdale himself, they say, toasted her by name as an heiress. what kind of heiress can she be? and there was a quarrel about her over the punch. tom rising poured the whole of the punch bowl upon the head of a gentleman said to be his lordship's secretary. this morning they met outside the walls. the gentleman is run through the body and cannot live. no, through the shoulder and will recover. i heard that it was in the arm, and that he will be well again in a week. but the heiress--who is the heiress?" and so they went on. you may be sure that sam semple found it prudent to keep out of the way. there was, therefore, no one to tell these curious ladies who the heiress was, or what her fortune might be. mostly they inclined to the belief that a thousand pounds would cover the whole of her inheritance, and that lord fylingdale meant no more than an act of politeness to the town, which certainly had done its best to entertain the company. and so on. presently there appeared, walking side by side, lord fylingdale himself and lady anastasia. he carried his hat under his arm, and his cane dangled from his right wrist; his face was as cold and as devoid of emotion as when the night before he had rebuked the company. they passed along under the trees, conversing. when they passed or met any others they lowered their voices. their conversation--i will tell you in due course how i learned it--was important and serious. it was of greater importance to molly and to me, had i known it, than one could imagine or suspect. and this was, in effect, the substance of their discourse. "i know," she said, "that you have some design in coming to lynn, and that you intend me to assist you. otherwise, why should you drag me here, over vile roads, to a low lodging, in the company of fox hunters and their ladies? otherwise, indeed, why should you come here yourself?" "the healing waters of the spa," he suggested gravely. "you have nothing the matter with you. nothing ever hurts you. if other men drink and rake all night they show it in their faces and their swollen bodies. but you--why you look as if you lived like a saint or a hermit in a cell." "yet--to prevent disease--to anticipate, so to speak." "ludovick, you have no longer any confidence in me. you tell me to come here--i come. you order me to set up a bank here every night. i have done so. what has happened? sir harry and the colonel lose and win with each other and with me. you look in and throw away fifty guineas with your lofty air as if they mattered nothing. these country bumpkins look on and wonder. they are lost in admiration at a man who can lose fifty guineas without so much as a word or a gesture. and then they put down--a simple guinea. to please you, ludovick, i have become a guinea hunter. and i am standing at great expense, and i am losing the profits of my london bank." "the change of air will do you good, anastasia. you were looking pale in town. besides, there were too many rumours afloat." "if i had your confidence, i should not care for anything. i am willing to be your servant, ludovick, your tool. i endure the colonel and i tolerate sir harry, with his nauseous old compliments. for your sake i suffer them to bring discredit on my name and my play. but i do not consent to be your slave." "my mistress, not my servant," he murmured, touching her fingers. she laughed scornfully. "will you tell me, then, if you wish me to do anything more for you? am i to continue picking up the guineas of these hard-fisted rustics? am i to figure in their stupid minuets, whenever they have their assembly? how long am i to stay here?" "you ask too many questions, anastasia. still, to show you that i place confidence in you, although you mistrust me, i will answer some of them. of course it is no news to you that i have at this moment no rents--nothing to receive and nothing to sell." "i have known that for two years. you best know how you continue to keep up your establishment." "partly by the help of your table, dear anastasia. i am not ungrateful, believe me." again he touched her fingers, and again she drew herself away. "you have remarked upon the danger of having the colonel and old sir harry about you. both are a good deal blown upon. i would not suffer them to be with you again at bath or tunbridge wells. in this place they are safe. both of them will encourage the play and set an example of high play and great winnings. one of them will also be ready to challenge any who refuses to pay. the colonel has his uses. as for harry, he is useful to me in other ways. like his reverence." "the odious, vile, crawling worm!" "quite so. sir harry and the reverend mr. purdon are useful in assuring the world of my own virtuous character." "why do you want to appear virtuous? you, whose character is notorious." "i have my reasons. anastasia, i will place my whole confidence in you. perhaps you saw at the assembly the other night a certain bourgeoise--a citizen's daughter--a girl dressed in the clothes of the fashion, her face as red as her hands----" "i saw a very remarkable woman, ludovick--her face and her figure fine enough to make her fortune. she was covered with jewels, which they told me were false." "they told you wrongly, anastasia. they are real--diamonds, pearls, rubies, gold chains and all--real. the girl is a great heiress. the people here do not know how great, or the whole country would be on bended knees before the goddess. but i know. and on her account--look you--on her account am i here." the lady anastasia changed her manner suddenly. she glanced at his face. it was impassive; it showed no sign of any emotion at all. "well? what is this heiress to me? can i get her diamonds?" "i want you to become her friend, anastasia. i desire this favour very greatly." the lady anastasia stopped suddenly. she lowered her face; her cheek flushed; her lip trembled. "ludovick," she said, "i am a woman after all. you may command me in anything--anything else. but not in this. if you insist upon this, i will go home at once." he looked surprised. "why?" he began. "surely my anastasia is not jealous--not jealous, after all the proofs that i have given her of fidelity?" "jealous?" she repeated. "what have you to do with the girl, then?" [illustration: "jealous?" she repeated. "what have you to do with the girl, then?"] "my dear mistress, i care nothing about the girl, or about any woman in the world, except one. who should know this except the one herself? it is the girl's fortune that i want--not the girl herself." "how will you get it without the girl?" "that is the very point i am considering. i came here in order to get this fortune. my secretary--the fellow semple--told me of the girl. i sent you here in order to help me to secure this fortune. i sent his reverence here--the colonel--sir harry--all of them--here with the same object, which they must not know. i came here. i have made a friend of the girl's guardian." "if this is true----" "of course, it is true," he replied coldly. "let me go on. you shall not charge me again with want of confidence. the guardian is a simple old sailor. he is a fool, of course, being a sailor. he thinks to marry his ward to a man of rank." "yourself, perhaps?" "perhaps. he also believes in the virtue and piety which my friends here have ascribed to me." "how will you get the fortune without the girl?" "i tell you again--there is the difficulty. anastasia, if you have ever promised to assist me, give me your assistance now. i must win the confidence of the old man and the girl. everybody must speak well of me. i will learn how the money is placed and where. i will get possession of it somehow." "and then--when you have it?" "my difficulties will be at an end. i shall leave the town and the gaming table and everything. you will come with me, anastasia." this time he took her hand. "we will be alexis and amaryllis, the shepherd strephon and the maiden daphne. my anastasia, believe me, i am tired of the world and its noisy pleasures. i sigh for rest and repose." "and the girl?" "she will do better without this huge fortune. ye gods! to give such a girl--this sailor wench--this red and pink bourgeoise--the fortune that should have been yours, anastasia! 'tis monstrous! it cuts her off from her own people. she would do better to marry the young sailor fellow who stumbled and rolled through the minuet with her, thinking he was on his deck rolling in the bay of biscay. i will set this matter right. i will relieve her of her fortune and throw her into those arms which reek of pitch and tar and rope. happy girl!" the lady anastasia sighed. "there will never be any rest--or any repose--or any happiness for you or for me. have it your own way. i will make the girl my friend. i will tell her that you are the best of men and the most virtuous. yes," she laughed a little, but not mirthfully, "the most virtuous. and now, i think, you may walk with me through their narrow lanes with a bridge and a stream for every one, to the small and dirty cabin where my maid makes shift to dress me every day, so that i may turn out decent at least." chapter xvii "in the lisbon trade" i was greatly surprised, being on duty aboard in the forenoon, to see lord fylingdale on our quay, which adjoins the common stath, in company with captain crowle. in truth, the nobleman looked out of his element--a fish on dry land--in a place of trade. his dress was by no means suitable to the collection of bales and casks and crates with which the quay was piled, nor did his look resemble that of the merchant, who may be full of dignity, as he is full of responsibility, but is never cold and haughty. his secret purpose, as i afterwards understood, was to ascertain the true nature of molly's fortune, which he could not believe to be so great as had been represented to him. his professed purpose was to see what captain crowle was anxious to show him. the good old man, in fact, played the very game which this virtuous gentleman desired; he threw the girl--money, and lands, and ships, and all--at the feet of the very man who wanted the fortune, and for the sake of it would not scruple to bring misery upon the girl. "i have heard," his lordship was saying, as he looked around and marked the crowd of porters, lightermen, and clerks running about, "of ships and shipping. there is a place near london, i believe, where they have ships. but i have never seen that part of town. my own friends own farms, not ships." "ships may be better than farms," the old sailor replied, stoutly. "you have frosts in may; hail in august; drought in spring--where are your farms then?" lord fylingdale laughed pleasantly. "nay, captain, but there is another side to your picture also. storms arise; the waves become billows; there are hidden rocks--where are your ships then?" "the underwriters pay for all. there may be better money, i say, in ships than in land." "then the merchants should be richer than the landowners." "not always, by your leave, my lord. for there are too many merchants; and of landowners, such as your lordship, there are never more than a few. but some merchants are richer than some landowners. of these my ward is one." "i should like to know, captain, what you mean by rich. your ward owns ships, and brings home their cargoes--turpentine and tar--a fragrant trade." "the farmer's muck heap smells no sweeter, and pig-styes, my lord, are no ladies' bowers." "show me one of your ships, captain. if you have one in port, take me on board. make me understand what this trade means. i doubt not that before long we shall all turn our ploughs into rudders, our maypoles into masts, and our oaks into ships, and so go a trading up and down the seas, and get rich like the merchants of lynn regis." i do not know how far he spoke truthfully; i am, on the whole, inclined to believe that he was actually ignorant of trade and shipping of any kind. he and his class build up a wall between themselves and those who carry on the trade which pours wealth into the country and push out their fleets into far distant seas; and he and his class imagine that they are a superior race to whom providence hath delivered the work of administering the kingdom, with all the offices, prizes, places, and honours belonging to that work. they will not admit the merchants to any share; they fill the house of commons--which should be an assembly containing the merchants, and who make the country rich--with placemen (their servants), and their own cousins, sons, and brothers. they command our armies and our navies; they are our judges and our magistrates; for them the poet writes, the player acts, the artist paints. they do not condescend to penetrate into the ports where the ships lie moored and the quays contain the treasures brought home and the treasures sent out. they grow continually poorer instead of richer; their gambling, their troops of servants, their drinking, their pleasant vices impoverish them; they sell their woods and pawn their revenues. all this time the merchants are growing richer; they live in places where they never see anything of the fashionable world--in villages outside london; in towns like bristol, lynn, southampton, newcastle, where there are no noble lords; they do not concern themselves about the government if only the seas are kept open. again, if these noblemen meet the merchants on any occasion their carriage is cold and proud. perhaps they show an open scorn of trade; in any case, they treat them with scanty consideration, as people who have no rank. even when they desire to conciliate these inferiors their manner is haughty, and they speak from a height. one man is not better than another because he makes his living out of fields while this other makes his out of ships. and i do not find that one man makes a better sailor than another because he is the son of a gentleman while the other is the son of a boat builder or a rope maker. however, i am talking likely enough as a fool. it is not for me to question the order of the world. if the merchants go on getting rich they may, some time or other, look down upon the house of lords as much as the house of lords, with their ladies, their sons, their daughters, their nephews, and their cousins, now look down upon merchants and all who earn their livelihood by honest work, and by enterprises which demand courage and resolution, knowledge, patience, and skill. presently i saw them both get into a dingey, which the captain rowed out into the river, making for _the lady of lynn_. he made fast the painter to the companion and climbed up the rope ladder, followed by his lordship, who, with some difficulty, landed on the deck, looking at his tarred hands with curiosity rather than disgust. i must say that he made no complaint, even though his dress, which was not adapted for rope ladders, showed also signs of the tar. "my lord," said the captain, "this is one of my ward's ships, and there is the mate of the ship, mr. pentecrosse, at your service." "at your service, sir," said my lord, from his superior height, and with that cold condescension which i should try in vain to imitate and cannot attempt to set down in words. it is not the voice of authority--every skipper knows what that is and every sailor. it is a manner which is never found except among people of rank. however, i pulled off my hat and bowed low. his lordship took no further notice of me for awhile, but looked about him curiously. "a strange place," he said. "i have never before been on a ship. tell me more about this ship, captain." "she is called _the lady of lynn_. she is three hundred and eighty tons burden, and she is in the lisbon trade." "in the lisbon trade? captain, neither the amount of her tons nor the nature of her occupation enlightens me in the least." "she sails from here to lisbon and back again. she takes out for the portuguese things that they want--iron, lead, instruments of all kinds, wool, and a great many other things--and she brings back what we want--the wine of the country. she comes laden with port wine, sack, malmsey, canary, teneriffe, lisbon, bacellas, mountain--in a word, all the wines of spain and portugal. my ward is an export and import merchant as well as a shipowner; she fills her ships with wine. the country round lynn is a thirsty country; the gentlemen of norfolk, lincoln, and the fen countries, not to speak of the university of cambridge, all drink the wines of spain and portugal, and a great deal of it. we send our wine in barges up the river and in waggons across the country; we send our wine to newcastle and hull by ships. the trade of lynn regis in spanish and portuguese wine is very considerable, and most of it is in the hands of my ward." "this is the lisbon trade. i begin to understand. and what may such a ship as this be worth?" "to build her, to rig her, to fit her for sea, to provision her, would cost a matter of â£1,500 or â£2,000." "and i suppose she earns something by her voyages?" the captain smiled. "she makes two voyages every year; sometimes five in two years. she must first pay her captain and the ship's company; then she must pay for repairs--a woman and a ship, they say, are always wanting repairs--then she must pay for provisions for the crew; there are customs dues and harbour dues at both ends. when all is paid the ship will bring to her owners a profit of â£500 or â£600. it is a bad year when she does not bring in â£600." his lordship's eyebrows lifted. "how many ships did you say are owned by this fortunate young lady?" "she has eight. they are not all in the lisbon trade. some sail to norway; some to the baltic--that is, to revel and dantzig--and bring home what you saw on the quay, the turpentine, deal, skins, fur, and so forth." "eight ships and a bad year when every single ship does not bring in a profit of â£600. then, captain crowle, we may take it that your ward has an income of â£4,800 a year." the captain smiled again. "if it were only that i should not be so anxious about her future. but consider, my lord. for eighteen years she has lived with me--she and her mother--we live in a plain and homely way, according to our station. we are respectable, but not gentle-folk. we live on about â£150 a year. the rest is money saved. some of it is laid out in land. my ward has a good bit of land, here and there, chiefly in marshland, which is fat and fertile; some of it is laid out in houses--a good part of lynn belongs to her--some of it is lent on mortgage. since your lordship hath kindly promised to give me your advice on the matter, it is proper to tell you the truth. the girl, therefore, will have an income of over â£12,000 a year." a strange and sudden flush rose to his lordship's cheek; for a few moments he did not reply. then in a harsh and constrained voice he said: "it is a very large income, captain. many members of the upper house have much less. you must be very careful. at six per cent. it is actually â£200,000 or thereabouts. you must be very careful." "i have been, and shall be, very careful. with such a fortune, my lord, may not my girl look high?" "she may look very high. there are some families which would not admit, even for so great a fortune, a _mã©salliance_, but they are few. there are the jewels, too, of which she wore so many last night. what may they be worth?" "i do not know. they have been lying in a chest for fifty years and more. they were brought from india by molly's grandfather, who sailed there, and made the acquaintance of an indian prince, to whom he rendered some service. they were too grand for him and his wife; and they were too grand for molly's mother, who is but a homely body. therefore they have been locked up all this time. nobody has ever worn them until molly put them on last night." "i am a poor judge of such things, but, captain, i believe that what the lady wore last night must be worth a very large sum--a very large sum indeed." "it may be so. it may be so," said the captain. "there are as many in the box as we took out of it. well, my lord, will her diamonds add to her attractions?" "captain crowle, no one knows or can understand the extraordinary beauty of a woman who is worth â£200,000 and has, besides, diamonds and pearls fit for a duchess. you must, indeed, be very careful." i who stood beside him humbly, hat in hand, wondered within myself as to what his lordship would say if the captain should suddenly or inadvertently reveal his secret ambitions. indeed, he looked so commanding and so noble that these ambitions appeared to me ridiculous. i felt happier in thinking that they were ridiculous. how, indeed, should our girl, who must appear homely to one who knew courts and the charms and splendour of great ladies, attract this cold and fastidious nobleman? he turned suddenly upon me. "this," he said, "is one of your crew?" i was dressed in my workaday frieze and shag, and looked, i dare say, to unpractised eyes, more like a fo'k'sle hand than the chief officer. "it is our mate. i told your lordship before. he is second in command." "oh! sir," he said, bowing, a gesture which politeness demanded and difference of rank allowed to be a slight inclination only, "i beg your pardon. the strangeness of this place made me forget. stay, is not this the--the gentleman who attempted a minuet last night with the fair miss molly?" the question threw me into confusion. the captain answered for me. "gad! he did it rarely." "rarely, indeed. well, sir, you are lucky. you dance with the lady; you are in the service of the lady; by faithful service you help to make her rich. what greater marks of favour can providence bestow upon you?" i made no answer, because, indeed, i knew not what to reply. "and now, sir, if you will show me your ship, i shall be obliged to you. teach me the economy of a merchant man." i obeyed. we left the captain on deck, and i took him over the whole of the ship. he wanted to see everything; he inspected the two carronades on the quarter-deck and the stand of small arms. i showed him the binnacle and explained how we steered and kept her in her course. i took him below and showed him the lower deck, and let him peer into the hole. he saw the galley and the fo'k'sle, and everything. i observed that he was extremely curious about all he saw. he wanted to know the value of things; the wages; the cost of provisioning the ship; the purchase and the sale of the cargo. it was wonderful to find a man of his rank so curious as to every point. "i suppose," he said, "that the old man states the mere facts as to these ships--and the lands--and--and the rest of it." "no man knows better than the captain," i replied. "he has worked for nearly twenty years for his ward." "and for himself, as well, i doubt not." "no, my lord, not for himself. all for his ward. he has taken nothing for himself, though he might have done so. it has been all for his ward." "a virtuous guardian, truly. young man, he should be an example to you. would that there were many guardians so prudent and so careful!" then i invited him into the cabin, and showed him how the log is kept, and the ship's course set down day by day. there was nothing which he did not wish to understand. "i never knew before," he said, "that ships could mean money. pray, captain crowle, could a ship, such as this, be sold and converted into ready money like a forest of oak or a plantation of cedars, or an estate of land?" "assuredly, my lord. if i put up _the lady of lynn_ for sale to-morrow there would be a score of bids for her here in this town. if i sold her in london she would command a higher price." "your ward could, therefore, sell her whole fleet if she chose." "her fleet and her business as a merchant, and her lands and her houses and her jewels--she could sell them all." it seems trifling to set down this conversation, but you will understand in due course the meaning of these questions, and what was in the mind--the corrupt and evil mind--of this deceiver. "but," he went on, "the ship may be cast away." "ay! she may be cast away. then this lad and the whole of the ship's crew would be drowned. that happens to many tall ships. we sailors take our chance." "the crew might be drowned. i was thinking, however, of the cargo and the ship." "oh! as to them, the underwriters would pay. underwriters, my lord, are a class of people who, between them, take the risk of ships for a percentage." "then under no circumstances, not even that of ship-wreck, or of fire, or of pirates, can the owner lose." "the underwriters would pay. but look you, my lord, there are risks in every kind of business. there is the cargo. the owner of this ship is also a merchant. she loads a cargo of wine on her own ship; unloads it on her own quay, and sends it about the country to the inn-keepers and the merchants of the towns. they may not want her wine--but they always do. they may not be willing to pay so much as usual, but they generally do. these are our risks. but it is a safe business on the whole--eh, jack?" "we have never lost much yet, to my knowledge, captain." lord fylingdale sat down carelessly on the cabin table dangling his leg. "i have had a most instructive visit, captain. i do not mind the tar on my hands or that on my small clothes, which are ruined. i have learned a great deal. captain," he added solemnly, "miss molly has, beside the charms of her person and her conversation--out of so fine a mouth pearls only--pearls as fine as those around her neck would drop--twelve thousand charms a year. i do not know her equal in london at this moment. the daughter of a retired tallow chandler was spoken of, some time ago--said to have fifty thousand pounds--with a squint. no, sir, miss molly in london would take the town by storm." he paused and fell into a short meditation. "jack," said the captain, "there is, i am sure, a bottle in the locker. his lordship must not leave the ship without tasting some of the cargo." i produced a bottle and glasses. "your very best, jack?" "the king himself has no better," i replied stoutly, "because no better wine is made." "i give you a toast, captain," said his lordship. "the fair miss molly!" we drank it with enthusiasm. "i have this morning learned a great deal. for one who, like myself, proposes to serve his country, all kinds of knowledge are useful--even the smallest details may be important. i have a good memory, and i shall not readily forget the things which you have taught me. we of the upper house, perhaps, keep too much aloof from the trading interests of the country." "your lordship," said the captain, "should present an example of the better way." "i shall endeavour to do so." he put on his hat and stood up. "before leaving the ship, mr. pentecrosse--you seem to have an honest face--i would exhort you to persevere in faithful service and to deserve the confidence of your employer. i wish you, sir, a successful voyage and many of them." he took a step towards the cabin door, but stopped and turned again to me. "mr. pentecrosse, let me add another word of advice. do not again attempt to enact the part of a fine gentleman. believe me, sir, the part requires practice and study, unless one is born and brought up a gentleman. stick to your quarter-deck, friend, and to your ship's log, and leave, for the future, minuets, heiresses, and polite assemblies to your betters." so saying he walked out of the cabin and climbed down the ladder, followed by the captain. as for me, i stood gaping at the open door, looking, as they say, like a stuck pig, being both ashamed and angry. chapter xviii the witch all that day i remained in a state of gloom. i was ashamed to think that i had brought ridicule upon molly by my clumsy dancing, and i was gloomy because i understood that molly must certainly marry some great man, and that there would be an end of her so far as i was concerned. i was her servant; i was her faithful servant; what could i want more? i was never again to attempt the part of a fine gentleman--and she would live wholly among fine gentlemen. i know now that it was more than the common gloom of humiliation. that i should have thrown off with ease. it was the terror of something evil--the consciousness which seizes the soul without any cause that can be ascertained, and fills it with trembling and with terror. certain words--harmless words--kept recurring to my mind; words uttered by lord fylingdale--"can a ship be sold like a farm?" or words to that effect. why did these simple words disturb me? the captain had no thought of selling any of the ships. and why, when i thought of these words, did i also remember the curious change that came over his face when he understood the great wealth of this young heiress? i seemed to see again the strange flush of his pale, cold cheek; i seemed to see a strange smile upon his unbending lips and a strange light in his eyes. there was never, surely, any gentleman with a face so cold and calm as that of my lord fylingdale. it was as if a perpetual peace reigned in his mind; as if he was disturbed by none of the passions and emotions of ordinary men. therefore the smile and the strange look must have been in my imagination only. was it possible that the captain's secret prayers were to be granted? they were ambitious prayers. i have heard it said that the lord sometimes grants to men the thing they most desire in order that they may learn how much better it would have been for them had their prayers been refused. you shall learn how this lesson was driven into my mind--line upon line--precept upon precept. for my own part, while i honestly desired for molly the best of husbands, the thought of her marrying this cold, stately, proud young nobleman filled me with pity. and i must tell you, moreover, of a strange thing. it happened some three or four years before these events, but i have never forgotten it. it is connected with molly's black woman whom we called nigra. like all black women she was esteemed a witch. in earlier times she would have been burned at the stake for her magic and sorcery. yet she was only a white witch, as they call them; it was very well known that she worked no mischief and cast no spells. nobody was afraid of her. if a child fell into fits the mother, so far from thinking nigra to be the cause, brought her to the black woman to be cured. nobody could look at her kindly, wrinkled old face, which was always smiling through her white teeth; nobody could see those smiles upon her face, which shone in the sun as if it was of burnished metal; nobody could talk with her, i say, and believe that she was of the malignant stuff that makes the witch of the village. she had a great reputation for telling fortunes; she could show girls their future husbands; she could find out lucky days for them, and tell them how to avoid unlucky days; she could make charms to be hung round the necks of infants which would keep them from croup, fits, and convulsions, and carry them safely through measels and whooping cough. she had sovereign remedies against toothache, chilblains, earache, growing pains, agues, fevers, and all the diseases of boys and girls, and with the ailments which fall upon the maids, such as megrims, headache, swoonings, giddiness, vapours, and melancholy. it was believed that even dr. worship himself could not compare with this black woman from the guinea coast. one evening, long before the events that i am relating, i surprised her while she was engaged in her harmless spells and magic rites. it was in the kitchen, where she sat alone at a table before the fire. there was no candle, and the red light of the blazing coal made her face shine like copper and her eyes like two flames, and transformed her red cloth turban into rich crimson velvet. she had on the table before her a string of shells, a monkey's skull--but it looked like the skull of a baby--a thick round stick, painted with lines of red and blue, two or three rags of cloth, a cocoanut shell cut in two to make a cup, and many other tools or instruments which i forget; and, indeed, it matters nothing, because no one would be any the wiser if i set down the whole furniture of this old sorceress. she was bending over the table, arranging in some kind of order these mysterious means for learning the future, and murmuring the while gibberish of the kind which serves these poor blacks for their language. she was so busy that she did not hear my footsteps, till i stole behind her and clapped both my hands over her eyes. then she jumped up with a shriek, letting her magical tools drop, and turned round. "shoo!" she cried, bursting into a laugh. "shoo! it's massa jack. i thought it was de debble come to look on." this was the way she talked. i believe that if you take a negro as a baby and bring him up with christians, so that he hears no word of his own gibberish, in the end he will always speak in this way. it is part of his nature; it is one of the things which belong to his race--wool instead of hair; black skin instead of white; thick speech instead of clear; the shin rounded instead of the calf; a projecting heel, and a big jaw with white, strong teeth. "does the devil often come here, nigra?" "massa jack," she replied, with as much solemnity as she could command, "don't you nebber ask if the debble comes here." "what is he like, nigra?" she sat down and began to laugh. she laughed till her mouth nearly reached her ears; she laughed till her turban nodded and shook, and her shoulders shook, and she shook all over. she laughed, i know not why. "what he like? ho! ho! ho! massa jack--what he like?" "well, but, nigra, tell me how you know him when you see him." "massa jack," she became serious as suddenly as she had fallen into her fit of laughter. "look ye here. when you see de debble--then you know de debble." so saying, she turned to the table again and began to gather up her unholy possessions. "well, but nigra, i am not the devil, and so you may as well tell me whose fortune you are telling." "missy's fortune." "what is it?" she shook her head. "can't tell you, massa jack. mustn't tell you." "why not? come, nigra, you know that i desire the very best fortune for her that can be given to any one." she hesitated. then she laid her hand on mine. "massa jack," she said, "i tell her fortune your people's way, by the cards, and my people's way, by the gri-gri and the skull. it's always the same fortune." "what is it?" "always the same. they say--trouble for missy--great big trouble--she dunno yet what trouble is. bimeby she find out, and then all de trouble go--like as if de sun come out and de rain leave off. all the same fortune." "i don't understand it at all, nigra. why should trouble come to miss molly?" "cards don' tell that. sometimes, jack, de head"--she laid her hand on the skull of the monkey, or was it the skull of a child?--"de head tells me things. befo' you come in de head was talking fine. he say, 'lose to gain; lose to gain. him no good. bimeby bery fine man come along.' dat's what de head said to-night." "nonsense, nigra--a fleshless skull cannot speak." "dat's what de head say to me dis night," she replied, doggedly. i looked at the skull, but it remained silent, grinning with the dreadful mockery of the death's head. "bimeby--bery fine man come along," nigra repeated. i laughed incredulous. then she laid her hand upon my eyes for a moment--only for a moment. "listen, then." it was like a voice far away. i opened my eyes again. before me sat, or stood unsupported, the skull, and nothing else. the room had vanished, nigra and her tools and everything. the eyes of the skull were filled with a bright light, and the teeth moved, and the thing spoke. it said: "lose to gain! lose to gain! by and by a better man will come." i shivered and shook. i shut my eyes for the brightness of the light. i opened them again immediately. everything was as before; the old black woman beside me at the table; the skull and the rest of the things; the red light of the fire. "nigra," i cried, "what have you done? you are a witch." "what did de skull say, massa jack?" "how did you do it? what does it mean?" to this day i know not how she contrived this witchcraft. she would talk no more, however. i suppose she read the signs and tokens according to the rules of her witchcraft, and knew no more. i am not one of those who believe that these black women can penetrate the clouds of the future and can foresee, that is, see clearly, before they happen, the things that are coming. it would be too much to expect of a mere black. why should providence, who has manifestly created the black man to be the slave of the white, confer upon the black woman so great a gift as that of prophecy? it is not credible. all that day, after lord fylingdale climbed down by the rope ladder, i kept hearing over again the words of the black woman, which came back to me, though i had long forgotten them, "by and by. by and by, a better man will come." some there are who laugh at these things, which they call superstitions. i have heard my father and the vicar arguing learnedly that the time for witchcraft has passed away, with that of miracles, demoniac possessions, and the casting out of devils. well, it is not for me to speak of things that belong to the landsman. there may be no such thing as witchcraft; there may be no overlooking; the moon and the planets cannot, perhaps, strike children. but as for what the sailor believes--why, he knows. all the greek and all the hebrew in the world will not shake out of his mind what he knows. he learns new knowledge with every voyage, and new experience with every gale, and when those words of poor old nigra came back to me, and would not leave me, keeping up a continual sing-song in my head, i knew very well, indeed, that some trouble was brewing--and that the trouble had to do with molly. chapter xix a true friend when molly came out of church after morning prayers she stood in the porch to see the company pass out. it was a fashionable company, consisting entirely of ladies who came from the pump room to hear the reverend benjamin purdon, _locum tenens_ for the curate of st. nicholas, read the prayers of the morning service. this he did with an impressiveness quite overwhelming, having a deep and musical voice, which he would roll up and down like the swelling notes of an organ, insomuch that some ladies wept every morning, while he pronounced the absolution with so much weight that every sinner present rose from her knees in the comfortable faith that her sins were absolved and washed away, and that she could now begin a new series of sins upon a clean slate. happy condition, when without penance, which the papists enforce; and without repentance, which is demanded by the protestant faith, a sinner can every morning wipe off the sins of the last twenty-four hours and so begin another day with a robe as white as snow, no sins upon their conscience, and a sure and certain hope. "let us accept," said this reverend divine, "with gratitude and joy all that holy church gives us; above all, her absolution. we have not the sins of yesterday to weigh us down together with the sins of to-day. madam, your silk apron becomes you highly, pink silk with silver matches the colour of your cheeks. it is the colour of venus herself, i vow. ah! there are moments when i could wish i was not an ecclesiastic!" as a rule the morning prayers at our two churches are but poorly attended. the merchants and the captains are at this hour in the counting-houses on the quay, or assembled at the customhouse, which is a kind of exchange for them; the craftsmen and the sailors and the bargemen are at their work; the shopkeepers are standing behind their counters; the housewives and the girls are in the kitchen, pantry, or stillroom; there is no one left to attend the morning service, except a few bedesmen and poor old women. but in the company assembled at the spa there were many ladies of pious disposition, though of fashionable conversation, who, having no duties to perform, after drinking the waters and exchanging the latest gossip at the pump room, were pleased to attend the daily prayers--all the more because they were read by a clergyman from london who could talk, when he pleased, like a mere man of the world, or, also when he pleased, with the gravity and the piety of a bishop. the church was, further, a place where one could gather together, so to speak, all the ladies' dresses and receive suggestions and hints by the example of others what to choose and what to avoid. among those who came out of the church that morning was the lady anastasia, in a long hood lined with blue silk, looking, as she always did, more distinguished than any of the rest. she stopped in the porch, seeing molly, and laughed, tapping her on the cheek with her fan. the other ladies, recognising the girl who wore the chains and the strings of jewels with so fine a dress at the assembly, passed on their way, sticking out their chins, or sniffing slightly, or giggling and whispering, or even frowning. these gestures all meant the same thing; scorn and contempt for the girl who presumed, not being a gentlewoman, to have so much money and so much beauty. envy, no doubt, was more in their minds than scorn. they were agreed, without speaking, to treat the poor girl with every sign of resentment. and then, to their confusion, the greatest lady among them stopped and laughed and patted the impudent baggage on the cheek! "child," said the lady anastasia, "you were at the assembly the other night. i saw you dancing a minuet, and i heard that you were rudely treated at the country dance. i have heard lord fylingdale speak about you. he has made the acquaintance of your guardian, captain crawle or crowle. come, child. let us be better acquainted. where are you going?" "i am going home, madam." "take me with you, then. let me see your home." molly blushed to the ears and stammered that it was too great honour, so she walked away, lady anastasia with her, while the ladies stood in little groups watching in wonder and indignation, through the churchyard and so to the captain's house in hogman's lane, close to the fields and gardens. molly led her noble guest into the parlour. the lady anastasia looked round. "so," she said, "this is the home of the heiress." there was truly very little to indicate this fact. the floor was clean and sanded; a few chairs stood round the walls; one of them was an armchair; on the walls hung certain portraits--for my own part i always considered these as very fine works of art, but i have since heard that the limmer was but a sorry member of the craft. he was an itinerant painter, who drew these portraits in oils at half a guinea each. they represented molly's parents and captain crowle as a young man. on the mantel-shelf stood a row of china cups and over them a dozen samplers. there was a table and there was no other furniture. "you are an heiress, are you not, child?" "the captain tells me so, madam." "the captain's views as to the nature of a fortune may be limited. what is your fortune?" "there are ships, and lands, and houses. i know not how many of each. and i believe there is money, but i know not how much." "strange! is it in such a house that an heiress should be brought up? have you servants of your own?" "i have my black woman, nigra." "humph! have you a coach? or a chair? or a harpsichord?" "i have none of these things." "have you friends among the gentlefolk? who are the people that you visit?" "there are no gentlefolk in lynn. i know the vicar and the curate of st. nicholas and their families, and the schoolmaster and his son." "and the parish clerk, i suppose; and the man who plays the organ. have you been educated?" molly blushed. "the captain says that i have had the best education possible for a woman. i can read and write and cast up accounts; and i can make cakes and puddings, and brew the beer and make the cordials; and i can embroider and sew." "heavens! what a preparation for an heiress! but, perhaps, it is not so great a fortune after all. and do you go about daily dressed like this--in stuff or linsey woolsey?" "it is my workaday dress. i have a better for sunday." "i dare say--i dare say. what do they call you? molly? it is a good name for you. molly. there is something simple about it--something rustical yet not uncouth, like blousabella. your face will pass, molly. it is a fair garden of red and white. your eyes are good; they can be soft and affectionate. i should think they could also be hard and unforgiving. your hair is delightful; even the tresses of amaryllis are coarse and thick compared with yours. your hand, my dear, is a soft and warm hand, but it is too red--you work with it." "why, what else should i work with?" "the only work you should do is the shuffling and the dealing of cards--your hands were made for this purpose--or to handle a fan, or to wear gloves; but not to work, believe me." molly looked at her hand. it was a workwoman's hand, being, though small, thick and strong, with fingers square rather than long. she looked and laughed. "what would you say, madam, if you saw me rowing a boat or handling the sail while jack pentecrosse steers? i have done much rougher work in a boat than in the stillroom." "these confessions amaze me, my dear. with ships--actually the plural of the word ship!--and lands--what lands?--and houses, and that sum of money, that you should live in a house like this, without servants, without dress--your clothes are not dress--without a coach--and that you should be allowed.... pray, molly, what does your mother think of it?" "my mother teaches me to do what she herself does." "yet you came the other night in a costly dress, and you danced the minuet." "the director of the ceremonies, mr. prappet, taught me the dance." "you acquitted yourself tolerably, considering your partner, who made everybody laugh. there was, however, too much of the dancing school in your style. a minuet, child, should convey the idea of gesture unstudied. not natural. heaven forbid that the world of fashion should ever be natural! no, but springing out of the courtesy of the situation, in accordance with the practice of the polite world. the cavalier woos the maiden, not in the country fashion of swain and shepherdess, whose wooing is a plain and direct question with a plain and direct answer, but with formal advances according to well understood rules, which demand certain postures and gestures. who dressed you?" "the dressmaker from norwich who has a shop in mercers' row. she had the dress from london." "the dress was passable. for most girls it would have been too costly. but it proclaimed the heiress. it also awakened the envy, hatred, and malice of the whole assembly--i mean of the ladies. then there were the jewels. child, are you really possessed of all those jewels? are they truly your own? are they truly real?" "i suppose so. they have been locked up for fifty years. my grandfather, who was a ship's captain, brought them from india. they were given to him in return for some service by a native prince. no one has ever worn them except myself. the captain wanted to make the whole world understand that i have these fine things. that is why i took some of them out and put them on." "the world received this intelligence, child, with envy unspeakable. since the assembly the ladies have been entirely occupied in taking away your character. you are a strolling actress; your jewels are coloured glass; your silk dress is a stage costume; i will not repeat the many kind things said concerning you." "oh! but what have i done? what am i to do?" "be not alarmed. everybody's character is taken away in turns, and nobody is one whit the worse. with a girl like you, so innocent of the world, the more your character is taken away the better it becomes." "yet i would rather----" "tut, tut. what matters their talk. but about those jewels, my dear. i am curious about them. will you let me see them all? if you only knew how jewels carry me away!" molly went away, and presently returned with a large casket of wood carved with all kinds of devices, such as figures, flowers, fruit, and leaves. within there were trays lined with red velvet, the colour now somewhat decayed; on these trays reposed the jewels she had worn, and many more. there were strings of pearls; coils of gold chains; bracelets and necklaces; rings, brooches; all kinds imaginable, set with precious stones, diamonds, emeralds, pearls, rubies, turquoise, sapphires, opals--every jewel that is known to men and prized by women. the lady anastasia gazed upon them with hunger and longing; she took up the chains and strings of pearls and rubies and suffered them to fall gently through her fingers, as if the mere touch was sovereign against all ills; she sighed as she laid them down. she sprang to her feet and began to hang them about molly's neck and arms; she twisted the pearls in and about her hair; she strung the gold chains about her neck; she covered her again, as she had been covered at the assembly, with the glittering gauds. "oh!" she cried, sinking into her chair. "'tis too much! take them off again, molly, i burst--i faint--i die--with envy. oh! that you, who care so little for them, should have so many, and i, who care so much, should have so few. women have risked their honour, their name, their immortal souls, for a tenth part of the treasures that you have in this casket. and yet you wonder why they take away your character!" molly laughed and shut the box. "as i never saw them before yesterday i do not understand their envy." "no--you do not understand. ah! how much happiness you lose in not understanding. for you know not the joy of seeing all faces grow black and all looks bitter. well, put them away, out of my sight." then she turned to another subject. "tell me, molly, what your guardian designs for you. are you to marry some merchant who distributes casks of turpentine about the country? or a sailor who pretends to be a fine gentleman and dances like an elephant. the handling of this noble fortune is surely above the ambition of such gentry as these." "indeed i do not know. the captain says that he must look higher than a merchant or a sailor of lynn. and he will not think of any gentleman of the country, neither, because they are all hard drinkers." "the captain is difficult to please. methinks a gentleman would at least bestow promotion. your children would be gentlefolk, i dare say, with the help of this great fortune. what does he want, however?" "he talks about finding a young man of position, who is also virtuous." "oh! he is indeed ambitious. my dear, a young man of position who wants a fortune is easily found. he grows and flourishes in the park, like blackberries on a hedge. but when you speak of virtue, the virtuous young man is not so common. 'tis a wicked world, my dear." "the captain has spoken on the subject to lord fylingdale." "i believe he has done so. he may, indeed, entirely depend upon his lordship's advice, whether it concerns the placing of your fortune or the bestowal of your hand." "the captain, i know, thinks very highly of lord fylingdale's judgment." "i hope also of his virtue. indeed, but for his virtue, his lordship would be even as other men, which would be a pity for other men--i mean, for him." she then began to give molly advice about her next appearance at the assembly. "you must come again; you must come often; i will take care that you find partners. you must not show that you are moved in the least by the treatment you have received. but i would advise a more simple dress. come to me, my dear, and my maid shall dress you. a young girl like yourself ought not to wear so much silk and lace, and the addition of the gold network was more fitting for a matron of rank than a young unmarried woman. and as for the jewels, i would recommend one gold chain or a necklace of pearls and a bracelet or two--i saw one with sapphires, very becoming--and do not put the diamonds in your hair. and you must on no account come with the bear who flopped and sprawled with you before." "poor jack!" "jack? is he your brother?" "no. he is my old friend. and he is mate on one of my ships--_the lady of lynn_." "i dare say he would like to command the other lady of lynn. but, molly, pray be careful. a jack-in-the-box is apt to jump up high. take care." so saying she rose to go, but stopped for a few last words. "well, my dear, you must seriously prepare yourself to take the place that belongs to you by right of your fortune. after all, what is rank compared with wealth? i have no doubt that some sprig of quality will be found to take your hand--with your fortune. at first the women will flout you. keep up your courage. you can buy their kindness; you can buy it by judicious gifts, or by finding out their secrets. i will help you there, my dear. i know secrets enough to crack the reputation of half the town." molly shuddered. "you make me afraid," she said. "am i never to have friends?" the lady anastasia shook her head. "friends, my dear? what does the girl mean? we are all friends; of course we are friends, and we all backbite each other and carry scandal and intrigue. friends, my dear? in the world of fashion?" "i shall never like the world of fashion." "not at first. but the liking will come. there is no other way of life that can be compared with it. you will rise at noon after a cup of chocolate; you will spend the afternoon in dressing; you will go out in your coach or your chair to breathe the air of the park; you will take dinner at four; you will go to the theatre or the opera at six; you will sit down to cards at ten. my simple native, you know not half the joys that await you in the dear, delightful, scandalous town." so she went on, and before she departed she had made molly promise to visit her and to receive a continuation of those lessons by which she hoped, in the interests of lord fylingdale, to make the girl discontented and ready to throw herself, fortune and all, into the arms of herself and her associates. as yet she had made little impression. molly was not anxious for any change. she would be content to go on as before--the darling of the old guardian--with her friends and the people among whom she had lived all her life--simple in their tastes, homely in their manners; to be like her mother, a maker of bread, cakes, and puddings; a brewer of ale; the mistress of the still-room. "why, jack," she said, telling me something of this lesson in politeness. "i am to go away; to live in london; to leave my mother; never to see the captain any more; never to do anything again; not to make any more puddings--such as you like so much; to play cards every night; to have no friends; and to backbite and slander everybody i know. if this is the polite world, jack, let me never see it. 'tis my daily prayer." you shall hear how her prayer was granted, yet not in the way she would have asked. and this, i say again, is the way in which many of our prayers are granted. we get what is good for us--if we pray for that good thing--but not by the way we would have chosen. chapter xx five o'clock in the morning it was the custom with some of the high flyers, or the bucks, as they were called, when the card room was closed, to go off together to a tavern, there to finish the evening drinking, singing, gambling, and rioting the whole night through and long after daylight. truly the town of lynn witnessed more profligacy and wickedness during this summer than all its long and ancient history had contained or could relate. the assembly was held twice a week--on tuesday and on friday. it was on tuesday night that a certain statement was made in a drunken conversation which might have awakened suspicion of some dark design had it been recorded. a small company of the said high flyers, among whom were colonel lanyon and the young man named tom rising, marched off to the tavern most frequented by them, after the closing of the rooms, and called for punch, cards, and candles. then they sat down to play, with the ungodly and profane discourse which they affected. they played and drank, the young men drinking fast and hard, the colonel, after his custom, keeping his head cool. the night in may is short; the daylight presently began to show through the red curtains of the tavern window; then the sun rose; the players went on, regardless of the dawn and of the sun. one of them pulled back the curtains and blew out the candles. but they went on noisily. one of them fell off his chair, and lay like a log; the rest drew close, and continued to drink and to play. among them no one played higher or more recklessly than tom rising. it was a game in which one holds the bank and takes the bets of the players. colonel lanyon held the bank, and took tom's bets, which were high, as readily as those of the others which were low. at five in the morning he laid down the cards. "gentlemen," he said, "we have played enough, and taken more than enough, i fear. let us stop the game at this point." "you want to stop," said tom rising, whose face was flushed and his speech thick, "because you've been winning. i want my revenge--i will have my revenge." "sir," said the colonel, "any man who says that i refuse revenge attacks my honour. no, sir. to-morrow, that is to say, this evening, or any time you please except the present, you shall have your revenge, and as much as you please. i appeal to the company. gentlemen, it is now five o'clock, and outside broad daylight. the market bells have already begun. are we drunk or sober?" "drunk, colonel, drunk," said the man on the floor. "if we are drunk we are no longer in a condition fit for play. let us therefore adjourn until the evening. is this fair, gentlemen, or is it not? i will go on if you please." "it is quite fair, colonel," one of them replied. "i believe you have lost, and you might insist on going on." "then, let us look to the counters." they played with counters each representing a guinea or two or five, as had been agreed upon at the outset. so every man fell to counting and exchanging until all had done except tom rising, who sat apparently stupid with drink. then they began to pay each other on the differences. "twenty-five guineas, colonel." the colonel passed over the money with cheerfulness. "forty-three guineas, colonel." he paid this sum--and so on with the rest. he had lost, it appeared, to every one of the players except tom rising, whose reckoning was not made up. they were all paid immediately and cheerfully. now the gentlemen of norfolk are as honourable in their sport as any in the kingdom, but they seldom lose without a curse or two. this cheerfulness, therefore, under ill fortune surprised them. the colonel turned to tom, whose eyes were closing. "mr. rising, we will settle, if you please, after we have slept off the punch." tom grunted and tried to speak. he was at that point of drunkenness when he could understand what was said, but spoke with difficulty. it is one of the many transient stages of intoxication. "then, gentlemen," said the colonel, "we can meet again whenever you please. i only hope that you are satisfied with me for stopping the play at this point." "we are, colonel. we are quite satisfied." so they pushed back their chairs and rose somewhat unsteadily. but they had all won, and therefore had reason to be satisfied. "i'm not--not satisfied." tom rising managed to get out these words and tried to, but without success, to sit square and upright. "well, sir," said the colonel, "you shall have your revenge to-morrow." "i want it now--i'll have it now. bring another bowl." his head dropped again. "the gentleman," said the colonel, "is not in a condition to play. it would be cruel to play with him in this state." "come, tom," one of them shook him by the arm, "wake up and be reasonable." "i've lost again, and i want revenge." "to-morrow, tom, the colonel will give you as much revenge as you please." tom made no reply. he seemed asleep. "he shall have as much revenge as he pleases. meantime, gentlemen, we have been pleasant together, so far. but this young gentleman plays high--very high. i am ready to meet his wishes; but, gentlemen--far be it from me to hint that he is not a gentleman of large estate--but the fact is that he has lost pretty heavily and wants to go on continually." "yesterday," tom spoke with closed eyes, "it was eight hundred. to-day it's--how much to-day?" they looked at each other. "gentlemen," said the colonel, "you have heard what he says. i hope you will believe me when i assure you that the high play was forced upon me." they knew tom to be the owner of a pretty estate of about â£1,200 a year, and they knew him to be a sportsman, eager and reckless. eight hundred pounds is a large sum to raise upon an estate of â£1,200, even if there were no other demands upon it. "say, rather, had a good estate," said another. "i need not point out, gentlemen," the colonel observed, severely, "the extreme injustice of admitting to our circle those who venture to play beyond their means. play demands, above all things, jealousy in admittance. if men of honour meet for a few hours over the cards, the least they can demand is that, since they have to pay at sight, or within reasonable time, no one shall be admitted who is not able to pay within reasonable time, whatever losses he may make. you and i, gentlemen," he continued, "have not forced this high play upon our friend here." "no. tom would always fly higher than his neighbours." "i think, colonel," said one of them gravely, "that this matter concerns the honour of the place and the county. you come among us a man of honour; you play and pay honourably. we admit tom rising into our company. he must raise the money. but you will grant him time. eight hundred pounds and more----" "perhaps a thousand," said the colonel. "cannot be raised in a moment. we are not in london; there are no money lenders with us; and i know not how much has been already raised upon the estate. but, colonel, rest assured that the money shall be duly paid. perhaps it will be well not to admit poor tom to our table in future, though it will be a hard matter to deny him." then tom himself lifted his head. "i can hear what you say, but i am too drunk to talk. colonel, it's all right. wait a day or two." he struggled again to sit upright. one of his friends loosened his cravat, another took off his wig and rubbed his head with a wet cloth. "why," he said, "i am sober again. let's have another bowl and another game." "no, no," his friends cried out together. "enough, tom; get up and go to bed." "colonel lanyon," he said, "and friends all--gentlemen of this honourable company"--he ran his words together as men in liquor use--but they understood him perfectly. "i will play as high as i like; and as deep as i like; and as long as i like. i will play till i have stripped every man among you to the very bones. why do i say this? because, gentlemen, after friday night i shall be the richest man in the county. d'ye hear? the richest man in the county. you don't know how? very well. do you think i am going to tell you? ho! ho! when you hear the news, you'll say, 'twas only tom--only tom rising--had the courage to venture and to win." "he means the hazard table," said the colonel. "no; not the hazard table," tom went on. "oh! i know the table and the woman who keeps the bank, and pretends to weep when you lose. i know about her. i've heard talk about her. what is it? don't remember. tell you to-morrow." "he should stop talking," said the colonel, "we must not listen to his wanderings." "richest man in the county," he repeated. "colonel, i like your company. you lay down your money like a man. in a week, colonel, i'll have it all; there shan't be a guinea left among you all. richest man in county--make--guineas--fly." his head sunk down again. he was once more speechless. his friends looked from one to the other. what did tom rising mean? "gentlemen," said the colonel, "he has been drinking for many days. he has some kind of a fit upon him. after a sleep he will be better. just now he dreams of riches. i have known men in such a condition to see animals, and think that they are hunted by rats and clawed by devils." again tom lifted his head and babbled confusedly. "the richest man--the richest man in the whole county. after friday night--not to-night--after friday night. i have found out a short way to fortune. the richest man in the county." so they left him sleeping in his chair, with his head on the table among the glasses and the spilt punch. it was not long, however, before they discovered what his words had meant. it was not the raving of a drunken man, but the betrayal in his cups--unfortunately only a partial revelation of the abominable wickedness by which he proposed to acquire sudden wealth. said i not that tom rising was never one to be balked or denied when he had set his heart upon a thing; nor was he to be restrained by any consideration of law, human or divine; or of consequences in this world or the next? you shall now hear what he designed and what he called the shortest way, and how he was going to become the richest man in the county. chapter xxi molly's second appearance molly's first appearance was at the assembly of tuesday; her second on that of friday. between these two days, as you have seen, a good many things happened, not the least important of which was lady anastasia's "adoption," so to speak, of molly. on tuesday she came with the captain, whose appearance betrayed the old sailor, followed by the young sailor, transformed, for one night only, into a fine gentleman. on that occasion she was dressed with an extravagant display of jewels which might have suited an aged duchess at court, but was entirely unfitting to a young girl in the assembly of a watering place; she then danced as if every step had been recently taught her (which was indeed the case) and as if every posture was fresh from the hands of the dancing-master. this evening she came in the company and under the protection of the lady anastasia herself, whose acceptance of her right to appear could not be questioned, save in whispers and behind the fan. the former partner in the minuet, he who sprawled and trod the boards like an elephant; the sailor who would pass for a gentleman--in a word, her old friend, jack pentecrosse (myself)--was not present. i had proposed to accompany her, but in the morning i received a message from lady anastasia, "would mr. pentecrosse be so very good as to call upon her immediately?" i went. i found her the most charming lady, with the most gracious manner, that i had ever seen. she was, indeed, the only lady of quality with whom i have ever conversed. it seemed as if she understood perfectly my mind as regards molly, because while she humiliated me, at the same time she made me feel that the humiliation was necessary in the interests of molly herself. in a word, she asked me not to accompany molly again to the assembly, nor to present myself there; and, therefore, not to remind the company that molly's friends were young men who were not gentlemen. "you have the face and the heart, mr. pentecrosse," she said, laying her white hand on my arm, "of a man of honour. with such a man as yourself, one does not ask for a shield and a pedigree. but where women are concerned some things are necessary. you love our molly"--she said "our" molly, and yet she was in league with the arch villain, the earl among lost souls. "you love her. i read it in your betraying blush and in your humid eyes. therefore you will consent to this sacrifice with a cheerful heart. and, mr. pentecrosse--i would willingly call you jack, after molly's sisterly fashion--come to see me again. it does me good--a woman of fashion, which too often means of hollow hearts--to converse with a young man so honest and so simple. come again, jack. i am here nearly every morning after prayers." i obeyed, of course. who could resist such a woman? well, molly appeared under her protection. she was now dressed with the simplicity that belongs to youth, yet with a simplicity only apparent and not real. for the cloth of gold and the embroidery had vanished; the bracelets, heavy with rubies and emeralds, had disappeared; the golden cestus, the diamonds, the gold chains, all were gone. but the pink silk gown and the white silk petticoat which she wore were costly; the neck and the sleeves were edged and adorned with lace such as no other lady in the room could show; round her neck lay a necklace of pearls as big as cobnuts; on her wrists hung a fan whose handle was set with sapphires; and in her hair, such was the simplicity of the maiden, was placed a white rose. her head was not built after the former manner, but was covered now with natural curls, only kept in place by the art of the friseur. in a word, it was molly herself, not an artificial molly; molly herself, just adorned with the feminine taste which raised the lady anastasia above the blind laws of mere fashion who now entered the room. she proclaimed herself once more as the heiress with a more certain note and with less ostentation. "with her ladyship! with the lady anastasia!" they whispered behind their fans. "what next? are there no ladies in the room but she must pick up this girl out of the gutter?" but they did not say these things aloud; on the contrary they pressed around her ladyship, gazing rudely and curiously upon the intruder. "ladies," said lady anastasia, "let me present my young friend, miss molly, the heiress of lynn. i entreat your favour towards miss molly, who deserves all the favours you can afford, being at once modest, as yet little acquainted with the world of fashion, and endowed by fortune with gifts which are indeed precious." they began with awkwardness and some constraint to express cold words of welcome; but they could not conceal their chagrin, and two or three of them withdrew from the throng and abstained altogether after that evening from the society of her ladyship, and, as they were but plain wives of country gentlemen, this abstention cost them many pangs. for my own part, now that i know more about the opinions of gentlefolk, i confess that i think they were right. if there is an impassable gulf, as they pretend, between the gentleman and the mere citizen or the clown, then they stood up for their principles and their order. why there should be this impassable gulf i know not; nor do i know who dug it out and set one class on one side and one on the other; whereas it is most true that there are many noble families whose ancestors were either merchants or were enriched by marriages with the daughters of merchants. of such there are many witnesses. if, on the other hand, a girl can be received and welcomed among the quality simply because she has a great fortune, there can be no such gulf, and the passage from one class to the other is matter of worldly goods only. there are also cases in which the sons of noble and gentle houses have entered into the service of merchants, and have themselves either succeeded and made themselves rich, or have sunk down to the levels of retail trade and of the crafts. another humiliation was in store for these ladies. when lord fylingdale entered the assembly he walked across the room, saluted lady anastasia, and bowed low to molly, who blushed and was greatly confused at this public honour. "miss molly," he said, "permit me to salute the town of lynn itself in your fair person. the town of lynn is our hostess; you are the queen of lynn; let me invite your majesty to open the ball with me." so saying, he took her hand and led her out to the middle of the room, while the music struck up and the company formed a ring. as for me, you have seen that i made a promise. i kept it in the spirit but not in the letter. that is to say, i went in my ordinary sunday clothes, and stood at the door with the crowd and looked in at the gay scene. molly danced with his lordship. my heart sank when i saw the ease and dignity of his steps, and the corresponding grace of hers. there was neither sliding nor sprawling. then after the dance i saw her standing beside the lady anastasia, her eyes sparkling, her cheek flushed, smiling and laughing, while a whole troop of gentlemen surrounded her with compliments. she seemed quite happy with them. as for me, i felt that i was no longer of any use to her; she was flying far above me; my place was at the door with those who had no right to enter. so i stole away out of the gardens and into the silent streets, while the music followed me, seeming to laugh and to mock me as i crept along with unwilling feet and sinking heart. "go home! go home!" it said. "go home to your cabin and your bunk! this place is not for you. go home to your tarpaulin and your salt junk and your rum!" i did not obey immediately. i went to the captain's. molly's mother was sitting there alone. nigra was at the assembly to look after her mistress; the captain was there also, looking on from a corner; molly's mother was alone in the parlour, her work in her hands, stitching by the light of a single tallow candle; and while she stitched her lips moved. she looked up. "jack," she cried, "where is molly?" "she is enjoying herself with her new friends. i am no longer wanted. so i came away." "my poor jack!" she laid down her needlework and looked at me. "you can't make up your mind to lose her. what do you think i feel about it, then? sure, a mother feels more than a lover. if she goes, jack, she will never come back again. we shall lose her altogether. she will never come back." with this the tears rolled down her cheek. "we ought not to grumble and to grutch," she went on. "why, it is for her own good. the captain has told us all along that she was too great a catch for any of the folk about here. there is never a day but he tells me this, again and again. not a man, he says, is worthy of such a fortune! jack, when i think of the days when my man and me were married; he never wanted me to know how rich he was. what did i want with the money? i wanted the man, not his fortune. the jewels and the chains lay in the cupboard--the foolish glittering things! he followed simple ways, and lived like his neighbours. and as for molly, i've brought her up as her poor father would have had it; there is no better housewife anywhere than molly; no lighter hand with the crust; no surer hand with the home-brewed; no safer hand with the poultry. and all to be thrown away because she's got such a fortune as would be wasted on an honest lad like you, jack, or some good gentleman from the country side." "we can do nothing, mother--except to wish her happiness." "nothing; not even to find out the kind of man she is to marry. the captain is all for taking this lord fylingdale's advice. why his lordship should take to the captain i cannot understand. sammy semple was here to-day--a worm, a wriggling worm--saying how soft and virtuous his lordship is. well, jack, i thought--if he has no masterfulness in him he isn't any kind of man to advise about a woman. now, molly's father had a fine quick temper of his own, and molly needs a master. then this lady anastasia, who seems kindly, offers to take her to town, where she will learn cards and wickedness. but i doubt, jack--i doubt. my mind is full of trouble. it is a dreadful thing to have a rich daughter." "would to god," i said, "she had nothing." "for the men they will come around her; and the women they will hate her--and she will be too good for her own folk, and too low for the folks above, and they will all want her money, and they will all scorn her." "nay," i said, "she is too beautiful." "beauty! much women care about beauty! i have dreams at night, and i wake up terrified and the dreams remain with me still in the waste of the night like ghosts. oh, jack, jack, i am a miserable woman!" i left her. i rowed off to the ship and sought my cabin. after dancing with his lordship, who then offered his hand to a lady of the county, molly stood up with the young man called tom rising, who was by this time as sober as could be expected after such a night. he, in the hearing of everybody, loaded her with compliments of the common kind, such as would suit a milkmaid, but were not proper for a modest woman to hear. to these, however, molly returned no reply, and danced as if she heard them not. she then rejoined lady anastasia, and, with her, retired to the card room, whither many of the young men followed her. she stood beside her ladyship, and obliged the young men by choosing cards for them, which they lost or won. tom rising followed her, and stood beside her with flushed face and trembling hands. it was remarked afterwards that he seemed to assume the care of her. he kept gazing upon molly with fierce and ravenous looks, like a wolf who hungers after his prey and lives to wait for it. he played the while, however, and lost during the evening, i believe, some hundreds of pounds; but, for reasons which you will presently hear, he never paid that money. when the country dances began lord fylingdale led out molly once more, and placed her at the head. it was too much. some of the ladies refused to dance at all. those who did were constrained and cold. but molly was triumphant. she was not an angel. one could not blame her for resenting the flouts and scorn with which she had been treated. now, however, she was the first lady of the company next to lady anastasia, because she had been taken out both for the minuet and the country dance by the first gentleman present. i do not think that his lordship paid her any compliments. he danced as he moved, and spoke with a cold dignity which stiffened his joints. now, in a country dance, molly, for her part, danced all over, her feet and her body moving together, her hands and arms dancing, her eyes dancing, her hair dancing. they danced quite down the lines until every couple had had their turn. "miss molly," said her partner, "you dance with the animation of a wood nymph, or, perhaps, a nymph of the ocean. i would that the ladies of london possessed half the vivacity of the lady of lynn." he offered her the refreshment of wine or chocolate, but she declined, saying that the captain now would be wishing her to go home, and that her chair would be waiting. so his lordship led her to the door, where, indeed, her chair was waiting but no captain, and, bowing low, he handed her in and shut the door, and he returned to the assembly, and molly's chair was immediately lifted up and borne rapidly away, she sitting alone, thinking of the evening and of her great triumph, suspecting no evil and thinking of no danger. a minute later the captain came to the door. there he saw molly's chairmen, waiting with her chair. he looked about him. where was molly? he returned to the assembly. the girl was not there. he looked into the card room. his lordship was standing at the table looking on. "my lord," said the captain, in confusion, "where is my ward?" "miss molly? why, captain, i put her into her chair five minutes ago. she is gone." "her chair?" the captain turned pale. "her chair is now at the door with her chairmen." "what devilry is forward?" cried lord fylingdale. "come with me, captain. come with me!" chapter xxii the abduction the daring attempt to carry off this heiress and to marry her by force proved in the end the most effective instrument in the success of lord fylingdale's schemes that could possibly be desired or designed. so great is my mistrust of the man that i have sometimes doubted whether the whole affair was not contrived by him. i dismiss the suspicion, however, not because it is in the least degree unworthy of his character, but because it is unworthy of the character of tom rising. to carry off a girl is not thought dishonourable, especially as it can always be made to appear that it was with the consent of the girl herself. but to enter into a conspiracy for the furtherance of another man's secret designs would be impossible for such a man. besides, his subsequent conduct proves that he was not in any way mixed up with the grand conspiracy of which most of the conspirators knew nothing. the chair into which molly stepped without suspicion, and without even looking for the captain, who should have walked beside her, stood, as i have said, before the entrance of the long room. outside, the trees were hung with coloured lamps; the place was as bright as in the sunshine of noon--one would think that nothing could be done in such a place which would not be observed. there is, however, one thing which is never observed; it is the personal appearance of servants. no one regards the boatman of the ferry; or the driver of the hackney coach; or the postboy; or the chairmen. the chair, then, stood with its door open opposite to the entrance of the long room. the chairmen stood retired, a little in the shade, but not so far off as to need calling, when lord fylingdale handed in the lady. this done, he stood hat in hand, bowing. the chairmen stepped up briskly, seized the poles, and marched off with the quick step of those who have a light burden to carry. no one observed the faces of the chairmen, or, indeed, thought of looking at them; no one remarked the fact that tom rising walked out of the long room directly afterwards and followed the chair. within, molly sat unsuspecting, excited by the triumphs of the evening. the chair passed through the gardens and the gates recently erected; instead of turning to the right, which would lead into hogman's lane, the chairmen turned to the left, through the town gate, and so, turning northwards, into the open fields. yet molly observed nothing. i think she fell asleep; when she came to herself she looked out of the window. on the right and on the left of her were open fields. it was a clear evening. towards the middle of may there is no black darkness, but only a dimmer outline and deeper shadows. molly, who knew the country round lynn perfectly well, understood at once that she had been carried outside the town; that she was no longer on the high road but on one of the cross tracks--one cannot call them roads which connect the villages--so that there was very little chance of meeting any passengers or vehicles. and by the stars she saw that they were carrying her in a northerly direction. she perceived, therefore, that some devilry was going on. now, she was not a girl who would try to help herself in such a deserted and lonely spot by shrieking; nor did she see that any good purpose would be served by calling to the chairmen to let her out. she sat up, therefore, her heart beating a little faster than usual, and considered what she should do. no one is ignorant that an heiress goes in continual peril of abduction. to run away with an heiress; to persuade her; threaten her; cajole her; or terrify her into marriage is a thing which has been attempted hundreds of times, and has succeeded many times. nay, there are, i am told, women of cracked reputation and in danger of arrest and the king's bench for debt who will visit places of resort in order to pass themselves off as heiresses to great fortunes, hoping thereby to tempt some gallant adventurer to carry them off, and so to take over their debts instead of the fortunes they expected. and there are stories in plenty of adventurers looking about them for an heiress whom they may carry off at the risk of a duello, which generally follows, at the hands of the lady's friends. molly, therefore, though not a woman of fashion, understood by this time her value, especially in the eyes of the adventurer. and she also understood quite clearly at this moment that she had been carried away without the knowledge of her guardian, and that the intention of the abductor was nothing more or less than a forced marriage and the acquisition of her fortune. "jack," she told me afterwards, "i confess that i did wish, just for a little, that you might be coming along the road with a trusty club. but then i remembered that i was no puny thread paper of a woman, but as strong as most men, and i took courage. weapon i had none, except a steel bodkin gilt stuck in my hair--a small thing, but it might serve if any man ventured too near. and i thought, besides, that there would be a hue and cry, and that the country round would be scoured in all directions. they would most certainly grow tired of carrying me about in a chair; they must stop somewhere and put me into some place or other. i thought, also, that i could easily manage to keep off one man, or perhaps two, and that it would be very unlikely that more than one would attempt to force me into marriage. perhaps i might escape. perhaps i might barricade myself. perhaps my bodkin might help me to save myself. i would willingly stab a man to the heart with it. perhaps i might pick up something--a griddle would be a weapon handy for braining a man, or even a frying pan would do. whatever happened, jack, i was resolved that nothing, not even fear of murder, should make me marry the man who had carried me off." there are found scattered about the byroads of the country many small inns for the accommodation of persons of the baser sort. hither resort, on the way from one village to another, the sturdy tramp, whose back is scored by many a whipping at the hands of constable and head-borough. what does he care? he hitches his shoulders and goes his way, lifting from the hedge and helping himself from the poultry yard. here you may find the travelling tinker, who has a language of his own. here you will find the pedlar with his pack. he is part trader, part receiver of stolen goods, part thief, part carrier of messages and information between thieves. here also you will meet the footpad and the highwayman; the smuggler and the poacher, and the fugitive. if an honest man should put up at one of these places he will meet with strange companions in the kitchen, and with strange bedfellows in the chamber. if they suspect that he has money they will rob him; if they think that he will give evidence against them they will murder him. in a word, such a wayside inn is the receptacle of all those who live by robbery, by begging, by pretence, and lies and roguery. it was before such a wayside inn that the chairmen stopped. molly knew it very well. it was at a place called riffley's spring; the inn is "the traveller's rest"; it stood just two and a half miles from lynn, and one mile from the village of wootton. it was a small house, gloomy, and ill-lighted at the best; there was a door in the middle. the diamond panes of the windows were mostly broken in their leaden frames; the woodwork was decaying; the upper floor projecting darkened the lower rooms; in the dim twilight, when the chair stopped, the house looked a dark and noisome place, fit only for cutthroats and murderers. the poles were withdrawn and the door thrown open. molly, looking out, saw before her, hat in hand, her late partner, the young fellow they called tom rising. "oh!" she cried. "is it possible? i thought i was in the hands of some highwayman. is this your doing, sir? i was told that you were a gentleman." he bowed low, and began a little speech which he had prepared in readiness: "madam, you will confess that you are yourself alone to blame. fired with the sight of so much loveliness, what wonder if i aspired to possess myself of these charms. sure a laplander himself would be warmed, even in his frozen region." "sir, what nonsense is this? what do you mean?" "i mean, madam, that your lovely face and figure are sufficient excuse, not only in the eyes of the world, but in your own eyes, for an action such as this. the violence of the passion which----" "sir, will you order your fellows to take me back?" "no, madam, i will not." "then, sir, will you tell me what you propose to do?" "i intend to marry you." "against my consent?" "i have you in my power. i shall ask your consent. if you grant it we shall enter upon married life as a pair of lovers should. if you refuse--i shall be the master, but you will be the wife." molly laughed. "you think that i am afraid? very well, sir. if you persist you shall have a lesson in love-making that will last your lifetime." "everything is fair in love. come, madam, you will please to get out of the chair." "what a villain is this!" said molly. "he is in love with my fortune and he pretends it is my person. he thinks to steal my fortune when he runs away with me. you are a highwayman, mr. rising; a common thief and a common robber. you shall be hanged outside norwich gaol." tom rising swore a great oath, calling, in his blasphemous way, upon the lord to inflict dire pains and penalties upon him if he should resign the lovely object of his affection now in his possession. you have heard that he had the reputation of a reckless dare devil who stuck at nothing, was daunted by nothing, and was like a bulldog for his tenacity. "understand, madam," he concluded this declaration, "i am resolved to marry you. resolved. bear that in mind." "and i, sir, am resolved that i will not marry you. resolved. bear that in mind." "never yet did i resolve upon anything but i had it. no; never yet." "mr. rising, you think you have me in your power. you shall see. once more i ask you, as a gentleman, to send me back. remember i have many friends. the whole town, high and low, will be presently out after me. scouring the country." "in an hour you will be at wootton. the parson hath promised to await us there. you will be my wife in one short hour's time." "you waste words, sir." "you will have to alight, madam. the post-chaise is here to carry us to wootton, where the parson waits to marry us. in an hour, i say, you shall be my wife." molly looked out of the other window. the post-chaise was there with its pair of horses, and the postboy waiting at the horses' heads. she would have to make her stand at once, therefore. to get into the post-chaise with that man would be dangerous, even though she was as strong as himself, and, since she was not a drinker of wine, she was in a better condition. "i looked round at the house," she told me afterwards. "i thought that if i could get into the house i might gain some time--perhaps i could bar the door--perhaps i could find that griddle or the frying pan of which i spoke. or if it came to using the bodkin, there would be more room for my arm in a house than in a chair or a chaise. so i had one more parley, in order to gain time, and then slipped out." "sir," she said, "i give you one more chance of retaining the name and reputation of gentleman. carry me back, or else await the vengeance of my friends. i warn you solemnly that murder will be done before i marry you. understand, sir, murder of you, or your confederates, or myself." she spoke with so much calmness and with so much resolution that she aroused all his native obstinacy. besides, it was now too late. the news of the abduction would be all over lynn--he must carry the thing through. he swore another loud and blasphemous oath. heavens! how he was punished! how swiftly and speedily! molly stepped out of the chair. tom rising, his hat in hand, again bowed low. "madam," he said, "you are well advised. pray let me hand you into the chaise." she made no reply, but, rushing past him, darted into the house. she stumbled down one step and found herself in a room where the twilight outside could not penetrate. it was quite dark. she closed the door behind her and bolted it, finding a bolt in the usual place. then she waited a moment, thinking what she could do next. a rustling and a footstep showed that she was not alone. "who is there?" she cried. "is there no light?" she heard the striking of flint and steel; she saw the spluttering yellow light of a match, and by its flickering she discerned an old woman trying to light a candle--a rushlight in a tin frame, with holes at the sides. molly looked quietly round the room. a knife lay on the table. she took it up. it was one of the rough clasp knives, used by rustics when they eat their dinners under the hedge. she stepped forward and took the light from the old woman's hand. "quick!" she said, "who is in the house?" "no one, except myself. he said the house was to be kept clear to-night." "can they get in?" "they can kick the house down if they like, it's so old and crazy." "is there an upper room?" the old woman pointed to the far corner. molly now perceived that the place was the kitchen, the tap-room, the sitting-room, and all. a table was in the middle; a settle was standing beside the fireplace; there was a bench or two; mugs and cups of wood, pewter and common ware stood on the mantelshelf; a side of bacon hung in the chimney. in the corner, to which the old woman pointed, was a ladder. molly ran across the room. at the top of the ladder there was a square opening large enough for her passage. she went up, and found herself, by the dim rushlight, in an upper chamber, the floor of which was covered with flock beds laid on the boards. there was one small frame of glass in the roof, which was not made to open. the place reeked with foul air, worse than the orlop deck or the hold after a voyage. down below she heard her captor kicking at the door. apparently, the old woman drew back the bolt, for he came in noisily, swearing horribly. apparently, the old woman pointed to the ladder, or perhaps the glimmer from the room above guided him. he came to the ladder and tried persuasion. "molly, my dear," he cried, "come down, come down. i won't harm you. upon my honour i will not. i want only to put you into the chaise and carry you off to be married. molly, you are the loveliest girl in the county. molly, i say, there is nobody can hold a candle to you. molly, i will make you as happy as the day is long. molly, i love you ten times as well as that proud lord. he will not marry you. there isn't a man in all the company i will not fight for your sake. don't think i will let any other man have you. damn it, molly, why don't you answer?" for now she kept silence. the more he parleyed, the more time she gained. but she found one or two loose boards that had been used for laying in trestles for the support of the flock beds. she laid them across the trapdoor, but there was nothing to keep them down. then tom rising began to swear at the old woman. "you fool! you blundering, silly, jenny ass of a fool. what the devil did you give her the candle for?" "i didn't give it. she took it." "go, get another candle, then." "there are no more candles, master," said the old woman in her feeble voice. "she's got the only one." "molly, if you won't come down i shall force my way up." still she kept silence. he took two steps up the ladder and lifted the boards, showing the fingers of his left hand. molly applied her knife, gently but dexterously; but it touched the bone, and taught him what to expect. he drew back with a cry of rage. "come down," he said, "or it will be worse for you. come down, i say." he had not reckoned on a knife and on the girl's courage in using it. "molly," he said again, more softly, "come down." she still maintained silence. "you have no food up there," he went on. "your window is only a light in the roof looking away from the road. no one from lynn will come this way. if they do they will see nothing. you had better come down. molly, i shall wait here for a month. i shall starve you out. do you hear? by the lord, i will set fire to the thatch and burn you out. by the lord, you _shall_ come down." so he raved and raged. meantime the two chairmen, who were his own servants, stood, pole in hand, one in front of the house and one behind, to prevent an escape. but this was impossible, because the room, as you have heard, had no other window than a small square opening in the roof, in which was fitted a piece of coarse, common glass. "jack," she told me, "when he talked of setting fire to the thatch i confess i trembled, because, you see, my knife would not help me there. and, indeed, i think he would have done it, because he was like one that has gone mad with rage. he was like a mad bull. he stormed, he raged, he cursed and swore; he called me all the names you ever heard of--such names as the sailors call their sweethearts when they are in a rage with them--and then he called me all the endearing names, such as loveliest of my sex, fairest nymph, tender beauty. what a man!" meantime she made no answer whatever, and the darkness and the silence and the obstinacy of the girl were driving the unfortunate lover to a kind of madness, and i know not what would have happened. "molly," he said, "willy nilly, down you come. i shall tear down the thatch. i would burn you out, but i would not spoil your beauty. i shall tear down the thatch, and my men shall carry you down." then molly made answer. "i have a knife in my possession. do not think that i am afraid to use it. the first man who lays hands on me i will kill--whether it is you or your servants." "that we shall see. look ye, molly, you are only a merchant's daughter, and i am a gentleman. do you think i value that compared with marrying you? not one whit. when we are married i will buy more land; i will be the greatest landowner of the whole county. sir robert will make me sheriff. i will go into parliament, molly; he will make me a peer. come down, i say." but she spoke no more. then he lost control of himself, and for a while stamped and swore, threatened and cursed. "you will have it, then? here, john, go and look for a ladder. there's always a ladder in the back yard. put it up against the thatch. tear it down. make a hole in the roof. tear off the whole roof." the man propped his chair pole against the door, and went round to look for the ladder and to obey orders. "so," molly told me, "i was besieged. mr. rising was below, but i had my knife, and he was afraid to venture up the steps. i heard the men clumping about outside. i heard them plant the ladder and climb up. now a countryman who understands a thatch is able to tear it off very quickly, either to make or mend a hole, or to tear down the roof altogether. and i feared that i must use my knife seriously. was ever woman more barbarously abused? well--i waited. by the quick tearing away of the straw i saw that the fellow on the ladder knew how to thatch a rick or a cottage. in a few minutes there would be a hole big enough for half-a-dozen men to enter. jack," her cheek flushed and her eye brightened. "god forgive me! but i made up my mind the moment that man stepped within the room to plunge my knife into his heart." if a woman's honour is dearer than her life, then surely it is more precious than a dozen lives of those who would rob her of that treasure. however, this last act of defence was not necessary. "master," cried the postboy, who was waiting with the chaise. "master, here be men on horseback galloping. i doubt they are coming after the lady." tom rising stepped to the door and looked down the road. the day was already beginning to break. he saw in the dim light a company of horsemen galloping along the road; it was a bad road, and there had been rain, so that the horses went heavily. they were very near; in a few moments they would be upon him. he looked at the chaise. he made one more effort. "molly," he said, "come down quick. there is just time. let us have no more fooling." again she made no reply. knife in hand, with crimson cheek and set lips, she watched the hole in the thatch and the man tearing it away. tom rising swore again, most blasphemously. then, seeing that the game was lost, he loosened his sword in its scabbard and stepped into the middle of the road. chapter xxiii which way to follow? i must admit that in the conduct of this affair lord fylingdale showed both coolness and resolution. the news that the heiress of lynn had been abducted spread immediately through the rooms; the whole company flocked to the doors, where lord fylingdale stood, calm and without passion, while beside him the old captain stamped and cursed the villains unknown. he called molly's chairmen. what had those fellows seen? they said that they were waiting by order; that another chair stood before them at the door, the bearers of which were strangers to them, a fact which at this crowded season occurred constantly; that a gentleman whose name they knew not, but whom they had seen in the streets and at the assembly, mostly drunk, had come out hastily and spoken to these chairmen; that his lordship himself had handed the lady into the chair and closed the doors, to their astonishment, because they were themselves waiting for the lady; and that the chair was carried off instantly, leaving them in bewilderment, not knowing what to do. he asked them, next, for a closer description of the gentleman. he was young, it appeared; he was red in the face; he looked masterful; he cursed the chairmen in a very free and noble manner; one of the chairmen gave him his sword to wear, which is not permitted in the assembly; he was swearing all the time as if in great wrath. "my lord," a gentleman interrupted, "the description fits tom rising." "has mr. rising been seen in the assembly this evening?" "he was not only here, but he danced with the lady." "is he here now? let some one look for mr. rising." there was no need to look for him, because the rooms--even the card room--was now empty, all the people being crowded about the doors. "where does he lodge? let some one go to his lodgings." "with submission, my lord," said another. "it is not at his lodgings that he will be found. after the assembly, he goes to the 'rose tavern,' where he drinks all night." "let some one go to the 'rose tavern,' then, and quickly. captain crowle, we will go to the 'crown' while inquiries are made. gentlemen, there is great suspicion that an abominable crime hath been committed, and that this young lady hath been forcibly carried away for the sake of her fortune. i take blame to myself for not making sure that i was placing her in her own chair. this is my business. but i ask your help for the honour of the spa and the company." a dozen gentlemen stepped forward and offered their help and their swords, if necessary. among them was colonel lanyon. "come, then. let us adjourn to the 'crown' and make inquiries. be of good cheer, captain. we will find out which way they took. if they have nothing but the chair to carry her away we can easily catch them up." "i know my girl," said the captain. "it is not one man who can daunt her, nor will a dozen men force her to marry against her will. if they try there will be murder." "if we cannot find the way they took, we must scour the country." at the gates of the garden they learned that the keeper had seen the chair go out, and observed that it was closely followed by a gentleman whom he could only describe by his height, which was taller than the average. now, tom rising was six feet at least. at the "crown," in lord fylingdale's room, they held a brief consultation, after which the gentlemen who had volunteered their help went out into the town to make inquiries. in a few minutes they began to return. it was ascertained that tom rising was not at his lodging; nor was he at the "rose tavern"; nor could he be found at any of the taverns used by gentlemen; this strengthened the suspicion against him. then one remembered the strange words of the tuesday night, in which tom rising had promised his friends that he would, before the week was done, be the richest man in the county; rich enough to play with them until he had stripped every man as bare as adam. those words were taken as mere drunken ravings. but now they seemed to have had a meaning. where was tom rising? another discovery was that of the two men belonging to the chair in which molly was carried off. they were found in one of the low taverns by the riverside, drinking. one of them was already too far gone to speak. the other, with a stronger head, was able to give information, which he was quite ready to do. a gentleman, he said, had engaged the chair, and had given them a guinea to drink if they would suffer him to find his own chairmen. his description of the gentleman corresponded with that already furnished. he spoke of a tall gentleman with a flushed face and rough manner of speech. he knew nothing more, except that two men, strangers to himself, had taken the chair and carried it off. "gentlemen," said his lordship, "there can be, i fear, no doubt the abduction of miss molly has been designed and attempted by mr. rising. fortunately, he cannot have gone very far. it remains for us to find the road which he has taken." they fell to considering the various roads which lead out of the town. there is the high road to ely, cambridge, and london; but to carry a chair with an unwilling lady in it on the high road, frequented by night as well as by day with travellers of all kinds and strings of pack horses, would be ridiculous. there was the road which led to the villages on the east side of the wash; there was also the road to swaffham and norwich; another was also the road to hunstanton. "i am of opinion," said one of the gentlemen, "that he has fixed on some lonely place not far from lynn, where he could make her a prisoner until she complies with his purpose and consents to marry him." captain crowle shook his head. "she would never consent," he repeated. "my girl is almost as strong as any man, and quite as resolute. there will be murder if this villain attempts violence." just then the landlady of the "crown" threw open the door and burst in. "oh, gentlemen, gentlemen!" she cried, "i have found out where they are gone. ride after them. ride after them quick, before worse mischief is done. i have ordered all the horses in the stables to be saddled. there are eight. quick! gentlemen, for the love of the lord, ride after them." "quick! quick!" said his lordship. "where are they? where are they?" the captain sprang up. "they are on their way. they cannot be there yet." "but where? where?" "mr. rising ordered a post-chaise to wait for him at ten o'clock." "he left the gardens," said his lordship, "about that time. go on." "he ordered it at the duke's head. the postboy told the ostler his orders. he was to wait for mr. rising at 'the travellers' rest,' at riffley spring, on the way to wootton." "'the travellers' rest'? what kind of place is that?" "it is a bad place, my lord--a villainous place--on a lonely road up and down which there is little travelling. it is a resort of pedlars, tinkers, and the like--gipsies, vagabonds, footpads, and rogues. it is no place for a young lady." "it is not, indeed," said one of the gentlemen. "gentlemen," the landlady repeated, "ride after him! ride after them! oh! the sweet miss molly!" "are the horses ready?" "they will be ready in a minute." "gentlemen, there are, you hear, eight horses. captain crowle will take one, i will take another. the remaining six are at your disposal. i shall feel honoured if you will accompany me; but on one condition, if you will allow me to make a condition. the man will fight, i suppose?" "tom rising," one of them replied, "would fight the devil." "one could desire nothing better. the condition is that when we overtake mr. rising you will leave him to me. that is understood?" "my lord, we cannot, by your leave, allow your valuable life to be at the hazard of a duel with a man both desperate and reckless." "i shall take care of myself, i assure you. meantime, if i fall i name colonel lanyon to succeed me, and after him, should he, too, unhappily fall, you will yourselves name his successor. gentlemen, we must rescue the lady and we must punish the abductor. i hear the horses. come." chapter xxiv the punishment the postboy, foreseeing events which might require a clear stage, warily drew his chaise off the road, which here widened into a small area trodden flat by many feet, into the grassy field at the side, and stood at his horses' heads in readiness. the men on the ladder, who were pulling away at the thatch with zeal, stopped their work. "what's that, george?" asked one. "seems like horses. they're coming after the young lady, likely;" so he slid down the ladder followed by the other, and they ran round to the front, seizing their poles in case of need. at elections, and on the occasion of a street fight, the chairman's pole has often proved a very efficient weapon. handled with dexterity it is like a quarter staff, but heavier, and will not only stun a man, but will brain him, or break arm, leg, or ribs for him. "for my part," molly told me, "i saw them suddenly desist from their work, though in a few minutes the hole in the thatch would have been large enough to admit of a man's passing through. i was waiting within, knife in hand. do you think i would have suffered one of those fellows to lay hand upon me? well, in the midst of their work they stopped, they listened, and they stepped down the ladder. what did this mean? there was no window to the loft except a single frame with half-a-dozen small diamond shaped panes too high up to serve any purpose except to admit a little light. i put my head through the hole in the thatch. and i heard--imagine my joy--the clatter of horses and the voices of the horsemen. and then i knew, and was quite certain, that my rescue had arrived. 'jack,' i said to myself, 'has found out the way taken by this villain, and is riding after him.'" alas! i, who should have been riding in the front of all, was at that moment unconsciously sleeping in my bunk aboard _the lady of lynn_. "i thought that at such a moment mr. rising would be wholly occupied with defending himself. i therefore withdrew the boards from the top of the stair and looked down. no one was in the room below, that i could see. i cautiously descended. in the corner of the settle by the fireplace there was the old woman of the house. "'they are coming after you, missy,' she said. 'i knew how it would end. i warned him. i told him that everything was against it. i read his luck by the cards and by the magpies, and by the swallows. everything was against it. they are coming. hark! they are very close now, and they will kill him!' "i ran to the open door. mr. rising was in the middle of the road without his hat, his sword in his hand; behind him stood his chairmen. he was not going to give me up without a fight. the postboy had drawn the chaise into the field, and the sedan chair was standing beside it. and down the road, only a little way off, i saw, in the growing light of daybreak, lord fylingdale leading, the captain beside him, and half-a-dozen gentlemen following, all on horseback." "there she is! there is molly!" cried the captain. "what cheer, lass? what cheer?" lord fylingdale held up his hand. the whole party drew rein and halted. then their leader dismounted. they were now about twenty yards from the men. he threw his reins to the nearest of the little troop. "gentlemen," he said, "we must proceed with this business without hurry or bluster, or threats. mr. rising will, perhaps, threaten and bluster. we are here to rescue a lady and to punish a villain. let both be done without the appearance of wrath or revenge. captain crowle, do not dismount, i entreat you, until the conclusion of the next act. miss molly is, as you see, apparently safe and unhurt." they obeyed. "i shall now measure swords with the young gentleman who thinks that he can carry off heiresses with impunity. i would advise you to advance a little closer to the house. he must understand that punishment awaits him, if not from me, then from some other of this company." "look at tom," said one of them. "his blood is up. he is now all for fighting. he means mischief, if ever he has meant mischief. i remember at swaffham when he fought the young squire of headingley. that was about a girl, too. a mere worthless drab of a tavern servant. tom broke down the man's guard and ran him through in half a minute. i wish we were well out of this job." tom stood in the road, as i have said, his sword in his hand, his hat lying on the ground before him. if flaming cheeks and eyes as fiery as those of a bull brought to bay mean mischief, then tom's intention was murderous. "to thwart tom in anything," the gentleman went on, "is dangerous; but to take away his girl--and such a girl--to rob him of that great fortune just at the moment of success--would madden the mildest of men. he looks like a madman. should one warn his lordship? and he has got two chairmen with their poles in readiness. we should ride in upon them before they can do any mischief." so they whispered. said captain crowle: "kill him, my lord; kill the villain. kill him." "let me warn your lordship," said the gentleman who had last spoken, "his method will be a fierce attack; he will try to break down your guard." "i know that method," lord fylingdale replied, coldly. then he stepped forward and took off his hat. "mr. rising," he said, "this affair might very well be settled by two or three sailors or common porters. we are willing, however, to treat you as a gentleman, which, sir, you no longer deserve." "go on, go on," said tom. "'twill be all the same in five minutes." "i am therefore going to do you the honour of fighting you." "i shall show you how i appreciate that honour. stop talking, man, and begin." "i must, however, warn you that if you are to fight as a gentleman you must try to behave as one, for this occasion only. should you attempt any kind of treachery my friends will interfere. in that case you will certainly not leave the field alive." "what do you want then?" "you must send away those two hulking fellows behind you. i am willing to fight you with swords, but i am not going to fight your lackeys with clubs." tom turned round. "here, you fellows, get off. go and stand beside the chair. whatever happens don't interfere. well, my lord, the sooner this comes off the better." he laid down his sword and took off coat and waistcoat, turning up the sleeve of his right arm. then he turned to molly and saluted her. "mistress molly," he said, with a grin, "you are going to have a very fine sight. perhaps, when it is over you will be sorry for your shilly-shally stand off--no, i won't say it. you're not worth carrying off. if i'd known. now, my lord." lord fylingdale had also removed his coat and waistcoat, and now stood in his shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, hat-less. just at that moment the sun rose swiftly, as is his manner in this flat country. it was as if the sky had leaped into light in order to give these swordsmen a clearer view of each other. they were a strange contrast. molly's champion erect, pale, and calm; his adversary bent, as if with passion, grasping his sword with eager hand. "he means mischief," repeated the gentlemen of the troop. "i would this business was ended. i wonder if the noble lord can fight. he does not look afraid, anyhow." "he looks as if he could feel neither fear nor anger, nor love, nor any passion at all. he is an iceberg. ha! they are beginning." they faced each other. the swords crossed. "look to yourself," said tom. "i will spit you like a pigeon." he stamped and lunged. the thrust was parried, easily and lightly. tom lunged again, and again, with a slight turn of the wrist, the thrust was parried. but as yet lord fylingdale seemed to stand on the defensive. "he knows how to fence," they whispered. "see! he means to tire his adversary. he parries everything. tom thrusts like a madman. why, he exposes himself at every lunge. see! he has lost his head. one would think he was fighting with an automaton who could only parry." at the door stood the object and cause of the encounter, the girl, namely, who had brought all this trouble upon tom rising's head. she stood motionless, hardly breathing, watching the duel, as they say the roman women used to watch the fight of the gladiators in the amphitheatre, and as i have seen the spanish women watch the men who fight the bull in their circus. i believe that women, in spite of their tender hearts, are carried away out of themselves by the sight of mere fighting. it is a spectacle which they cannot choose but gaze upon; it shows the true nature of man as opposed to that of woman. he stands up and risks his life, trusting sometimes to his skill, as in a duel with swords, and sometimes to chance, as on a battlefield where the bullets are flying. molly, therefore, watched the fight with gleaming eyes and parted lips. she was almost ready to forgive the man who had attempted this injury for the sake of his courage, and she could not sufficiently admire his adversary for the cold and impassive way in which he met every furious attack, just with a simple turn of the wrist, as it seemed to her. tom was a strong and lusty fellow, and he could fight after his fashion, which was with thrust upon thrust, fast and furious, as if reckless of himself, so that he could engage his adversary wholly in defence until he found a moment of weakness. he had fought many times, and hitherto without a scratch or a wound, the fight always ending with his adversary lying prostrate before him. on this occasion, however, he found that every thrust was parried; that his adversary yielded not so much as an inch of ground, and that he had to do with a wrist of iron and the eye of a hawk. "jack!" said molly. "i hope that i desired not the death of the young man. but i did desire his defeat. it was splendid to see him stamping on the ground and attacking like lightning. but it was more splendid to see his adversary immovable. he stood like a rock; he showed neither passion nor excitement. he parried every thrust with just a turn of his wrist." the gentlemen on horseback closed in and looked on holding their breath. there was no longer any fear on account of their champion. for the first time in their lives they saw as fine a master of fence as ever came out of the schools of paris. meantime, the other man was as one maddened. he drew back; he roared like a bull; he rushed upon his enemy; he panted and gasped; but he continued the fight undaunted. suddenly, his sword flew out of his hand, and fell in the field beside the chaise. "pick up your master's sword," lord fylingdale ordered the chairmen. the spectators looked to see tom run through on the spot. on the contrary, lord fylingdale remained in his attitude of defence; he was playing with his enemy. "take your sword," he said. "you are at my mercy. but take your sword, man; we have only just begun." tom received his sword, and wiped off the mud upon his shirt. then he renewed the attack; but it was with less confidence. that one should refuse to finish the duel when he had disarmed his adversary was a thing beyond his experience. "tom is dashed," said one of the company. "it is all over with tom." it was. after a few more lunges, parried with the same quiet skill and calmness of manner, tom's sword once more flew out of his hand. then the duel was over, for lord fylingdale made one thrust and his sword passed clean through the right arm at the shoulder, passing out at the other side. tom reeled; one of his chairmen ran to his help, and he fell upon the ground, fainting in a small pool of blood. lord fylingdale paid no attention to him. he wiped his sword on the grass, replaced it in the scabbard, and put on his coat and waistcoat. this done, he advanced to molly. "madam," he said, "we are fortunate, indeed, in being able to effect a rescue. this is not a place for a lady, nor is this a sight that one would willingly offer you. i trust that no violence has been used." "i thank your lordship. it was a horrid sight. oh! do not let the poor man die. he is a villain, but he has failed. be merciful." then the captain came running up. "molly!" he cried, with the tears running down his face. "molly! we are not too late? they haven't married you? the villain is paid. he is paid, i take it. he hasn't married you yet? by the lord, if he has i will brain him with my cudgel, so you shall be a widow as soon as a wife." "captain, can you ask me? the man had a chaise waiting here and would have forced me into it; but i ran into the house, and so to the upper floor, whither he could not follow. he set his men to pull off the thatch. what he would have done next i know not. but i could defend myself." "what is that in your hand, molly?" it was the knife, which she still held in readiness. she threw it away. "i shall not need it now," she said. "what do you think i should have done with it?" "molly, i know what you would have done. i said that there was no man in england who could marry you against your will. it was his heart and not his shoulder that would have received the knife. my dear, i knew my molly. i knew my girl." then the other gentlemen crowded round, offering their congratulations, no one taking the least notice of the unlucky tom, who still lay pale and bleeding on the ground. it was lord fylingdale who came to his assistance. "here, fellows," he ordered the chairmen, "take up your master and put him in the chaise--so. and as for you," he addressed the postboy, "here is a guinea. drive as fast as you can back to lynn. put him to bed in his lodgings and send for a surgeon or a wise woman, or some one to look after the wound." "will he die?" asked one of the bystanders. "i should think it not unlikely. his wound is dangerous, and if i know anything about a man from his appearance i should say that he would be inclined to fever. but we are not concerned with his fate. whether he dies or lives, he has attempted a villainous act and has met with a fitting punishment." the carriage, with the wounded man in it, went rattling along the road, the jerks and bumps among the ruts being enough to keep the wound open and the blood flowing. then lord fylingdale called the chairmen. "who are you?" he asked. "do you belong to the town of lynn?" they looked at each other. then one said, "no; we be from swaffham. squire rising sent for us to do his job." "put in your poles. you must now carry the lady back." "we have done our work," said his lordship. "it remains for us to escort miss molly home again. madam, you can leave this foul den with the consciousness that you are avenged." "indeed, i want no revenge." "justice has been done. justice is not revenge. you can now, madam, go back in the chair in which you were brought here. the villain who made the attempt is already on his way back. since you desire mercy rather than revenge we must hope that his wound is not fatal." so molly reã«ntered the chair. then she was brought home in triumph. the captain rode on one side; her champion on the other; before and behind her rode her mounted escort. if she had been a queen they could not have shown her greater deference and respect. chapter xxv a grateful mind the news of the abduction, you may be sure, formed, next day, the only topic of talk in the pump room and the gardens. there are many rumours and reports. mr. rising was allowed to be a villain of the deepest dye. he was also allowed to be a gentleman of the greatest courage and resolution. the duel was described with such embroideries and additions as the feminine imagination could invent. lord fylingdale was desperately wounded; no, only slightly wounded; no, he was not touched. mr. rising was brought home dead, in a pool of blood; no, he was wounded and not expected to live; and so on. he lay, indeed, at his lodgings in a fever, which held him for some days; but being young and strong, and in good health, except that his habit of drinking had inflamed his blood, he recovered, and, as you shall presently learn, escaped from certain toils and snares that had been laid with skill, and were promising success. i am sorry to say that the opinion of the ladies remained adverse to molly. it was universally acknowledged that she was a forward minx; that she ought to have known her place; that, had she not given encouragement, mr. rising could never have attempted his rash adventure. "she wants to marry a gentleman. naturally; she thinks that money will buy anything. what is the good of having all these fine things--if, indeed, they are hers--if she is to marry in her own class, a quill driver, a shopkeeper, a tarpauling? as everybody knows, mr. rising is a gentleman of good family and good estate; could she look higher? she ought to feel honoured at being carried away by a gentleman. as for any rumour, connecting her with lord fylingdale, one would be sorry for the poor wench if that was true, because nothing could be more impossible. yet the ambition of a girl ignorant of the world may soar to heights incredible, like the soap bubble, only to burst, or the sky-rocket, only to fall ignobly to the ground. it is not likely that his lordship, said to be so fastidious, would bestow a serious thought upon the girl, save as representing the town of lynn." and so on ... with whispers from one to the other at morning prayers, and louder talk in the pump room, and at the confectioner's and in the gardens. meantime, the captain made haste to wait upon his lordship, in order to thank him more formally than in the turmoil and agitation of the evening had been possible. "captain crowle," said his lordship, "there needs no thanks. the honour of the spa--of the company--was at stake. could we look on unmoved when such a crime was committed under our very eyes? sir, there were with me, as you saw, half-a-dozen gallant gentlemen, all pledged to take my place should i fall. their swords were as much at the service of insulted virtue as my own." "you fought a desperate man, my lord. had you lost hand or eye for a moment, you would now be dead." "captain, i do not lose my eye nor my hand. nevertheless, to die for the honour of such a woman as miss molly should be happiness enough for any man." said i not that the abduction was the very best thing that could possibly happen to lord fylingdale? whether he understood the captain's ambitions as regards himself, or not, i cannot say. we know, however, that the old man aimed at nothing short of a great alliance for his ward, a dream that was justified by the noble fortune which would go with her. lord fylingdale knew, besides, that he himself had made a most favourable impression upon this simple sailor, who believed everything that he was told. and now, by the rescue of the girl, he had not only raised himself still higher in the estimation of the captain, but he stood before molly as a hero and a fearless avenger of insult and violence. nothing could have been more fortunate. "sir," he added, "if you will carry me to miss molly herself, i would offer her my congratulations on the happy ending of her adventure. she is perhaps overcome by the terrors of the night." "molly felt no terrors. she had a knife in her hand which might have proved more formidable to the young man than your lordship's sword. but if you will honour my humble house, both molly and i shall be still more grateful." molly was in the kitchen making a beefsteak pie, with her sleeves rolled up and her apron on. "shall i go to my lord as i am?" she said. "let me wash my hands and roll down the sleeves at least." she presented herself, therefore, in her plain morning dress, that in which she performed her domestic work. perhaps she showed to greater advantage thus than in her silks and jewels. "miss molly, your obedient servant." his lordship bowed as low as if he was addressing a countess at least. "i have ventured to inquire after your health. last night's adventure may have proved too great a shock." "i am quite well, my lord, thanks to your bravery and your generosity, which i can never forget--never--not even if i wished to forget." "never," said the captain. "whenever i hear of a brave man i shall think of your lordship, and whenever i think of a gallant fight, it will be your lordship fighting." "you think too highly of a simple affair, miss molly. nevertheless, i am proud to have been of service to you." "at least we must continue grateful, because we have nothing that we can do in return." "i am not so sure of that." he smiled kindly. "we shall see. meantime, miss molly, there is one thing which you might do to please me." "oh, what is that?" "you wore at your first appearance a large quantity of gold chains and precious stones. i am curious about such gauds. will you allow me to see your treasures?" it was an unexpected favour to ask. molly laughed, however, and ran to fetch the box. she poured out the whole of the glittering contents upon the table. "there, my lord, and if i could venture to offer any of these things that would please you." he laughed. "you are kindness itself, miss molly. but i am not a lady, and jewels are of no use to me. i have, however, at my poor house in gloucestershire, my family jewels. let me look at yours." he sat down and began to examine them closely. apparently he understood jewels. it was as if he apprised their value. he placed some on one side; some on the other. "this," he said, "is a diamond of the first water. keep it very carefully. this has a slight flaw, yet, with more careful cutting, it might become a valuable stone. this chain is fashioned by an indian workman. none but an indian can make a chain so fine and so delicate. see, it is no thicker than a piece of twine, and yet how careful and how intricate the workmanship! the man's fingers must have been more delicate than our craftsmen can imagine." and so on through the whole of the treasure. "well, miss molly," he said, "there are few ladies, indeed, even of the highest rank, who can show so good a collection. i congratulate you with all my heart. some day, i hope to see you at court wearing these jewels and bearing--who knows?--a name as honourable as these are precious." "your lordship always encourages," said the captain. "you hear, molly? at court and bearing an honourable name." she blushed and gathered up her treasures. her visitor looked round the room. it was the parlour. the homely appearance of the room, plainly furnished, as might be expected of a man in the captain's position, was strangely inconsistent with the mass of treasure which he had just examined. the plain linsey woolsey of the girl who owned the treasure was also out of proportion, so to speak, for he understood that this glittering pile of jewels represented a vast sum of money, and that the girl was far richer than the poet knew or even the captain guessed. at the mere thought of getting possession of this treasure his blood quickened; but he remained, to all appearance, save for a slight and unwonted colour in his cheek, unmoved. i have never heard, nor can i guess, the value of these jewels, save that they were worth many thousands. "these jewels," he said, coldly, "should belong to a great lady. they deserve to be seen. they are thrown away, save as portable property, unless they can be used to grace the court. however, ... let me hope that they will not be thrown away. i think, miss molly, that your mother lives with you in this house. perhaps this treasure is hers--or is it all your own?" the captain made answer. "molly's mother has no share. a modest sum of money, sufficient for her needs, is paid her out of the estate. the rest--all the rest belongs to molly." "truly she is first favourite with dame fortune, who, i hope, will not turn her wheel. miss molly, will you present me to madam, your mother?" "with all my heart; but my lord, my mother is not used to being called madam." so saying, molly retired to the kitchen, and presently returned, bringing her mother with her. she came in red faced from stooping over the kitchen fire, wiping her fingers, which she had hurriedly washed, on her apron, wearing at her side her great housekeeper's pocket, in which she carried a vast quantity of things necessary, useful, and handy, such as scissors, pins, a needle-case, the nutmeg grater, a corkscrew, a few weights, a thread paper, a yard measure, stockings to be darned, a ball of twine, a skein or two of silk, ends of ribbon, fragments and rags of cloth, lint for wounds, a box of goose fat for ointment, and many other articles indispensable for the complete housewife. jennifer miller, molly's mother, was indeed a homely body, low in stature, inclined to stoutness, somewhat short of breath, and, in appearance, exactly what she was in fact, namely, a woman whose whole delight and study was in housewifery. when she was young i have heard that she possessed some share of beauty, as a rosy cheek, red lips, bright eyes, and so forth. but her daughter took after the father, who was a tall and proper man, as those testify who knew him. his lordship treated her with the respect due to a great lady, bowing as low to her as he had done to molly. "madam, i come to congratulate you on the escape of your daughter. 'twas providential." "with your help, sir. oh! i know a gentleman's modesty. well, sir--my lord, i mean--we are humble folk, but i hope we know how to be grateful. i said to molly this morning: 'look out,' i said, 'among your fine trinkets the very finest thing you've got, and take it yourself with your humble respects to his lordship,' and i would have sent with it some of my last year's ginger cordial to warm the stomach. i warrant it is poor stuff that they give you. servants don't give their minds to cordials. but molly wouldn't go. she was never one of your shy and shamefaced girls, neither. 'go and thank his honour, do,' i said to her, 'what will he think of your manners? don't leave it to the captain. go yourself.' that's what i said." "indeed, madam, miss molly has already thanked me more than enough. i am most fortunate in being of some service to her." "john," the good lady added, "where are your manners, pray? his honour has nothing to drink. a glass of home-brewed, now, or a little of my ginger cordial? unless you will take a bottle home with you. or a glass of lisbon? we are not so poor as to miss it." "nothing, madam, nothing, i assure you." so saying, his lordship, with his most profound bow, quitted the room and the house. his mind was now made up. there was no longer any doubt possible as to the girl's great fortune. he had satisfied himself in every particular. he knew the value of her fleet, and the income of her business. he now knew the value of her jewels. he would make the girl his wife, provided he could do it without the settlement of her fortune upon herself. there must be no settlement. what he proposed to do with her after his marriage i do not know. perhaps he would send her to his country house, from which he had already sold the furniture, the pictures, the books, and everything. it stood, i have been told, in a desert, which had once been a lovely wood. but the wood was felled, and only the stumps were left. there were gardens around, but they had gone to wrack and ruin. the farmers, his tenants, paid their rent to the lawyers; his name was a by-word and a proverb in his own county for mad gambling, for raking, and ungodly living. i say that he might have proposed to take her to this deserted spot, and to leave her there. or he might have taken her to london, there to associate with i know not what kind of women or what kind of men. it is certain, however, that no good woman and no honest man would consort with the wife of the earl of fylingdale. he walked away, however, his mind made up. he would marry the girl if he could get her without settlements. and as he thought of that treasury of precious stones, his unholy heart glowed within him. molly went back to the kitchen and resumed the making of the beefsteak pie. "john," said her mother, "does that young man mean anything?" "he gives me advice. he knows my design as regards molly. he is a very virtuous young gentleman, as well as courageous." "john, do nothing hastily. he did not look at molly in a way--well, i can remember--what i call a hungry way. take care, john. perhaps he only wants her money." "why, jennifer, he is the most fastidious man in the world. do you think he can be taken with molly?" "try him. offer him molly without a farthing. he would turn away. i am sure he would, john. i know what a lover's looks should be. offer him molly with her fortune. ah! then you shall see. john, do nothing rash. remember, molly is ignorant of gentlefolk and their ways. i've heard of their ways. molly is like me; she will expect the whole of her husband, not a part of him." "don't i tell the woman that he is a man of the nicest honour?" "you say so. how do you know, john?" "did he not rescue the girl at the risk of his own life? why, jennifer, what more do you ask?" "ay. that he did. perhaps he was not willing to let her fortune go to some other man. molly is worth fighting for. well, if he means something, why did he go on board the dirty ship with you--and he so fine? why was he so anxious to know what the girl has in ships and things? why did he ask to see her jewels if it was not to find out what they are worth? i tell you, john, i could see in his eyes what he was thinking about." "ay, ay; trust a woman for seeing into a millstone." "he was thinking 'is she worth it?' and he was calculating how it all mounted up. oh! i saw it in his eyes. john, be very careful. if she is taken from us let her go to a man who will make her happy and then i will bear it. but not among them that drink and gamble, nor make a woman mad with jealousy and sick with fear. john, john, be very careful with that man." chapter xxvi the last step but one you shall now hear more of the cunning by which this noble and virtuous person--this adornment and boast of the peerage--laid his plans for securing the fortune and the hand of our molly. he had persuaded the simple old sailor to believe anything he chose to advance; he had shown himself in the eyes of the girl, that which women admire more than anything else in the world, fearless and skilled in fence and ready to fight; he had also shown himself ready to place his courage and his skill at the service and for the rescue of a woman. so far, everything was prepared and in readiness for the next step. but there were certain obstacles still in the way. these he proceeded to remove. the lady anastasia, after the morning prayers, at which she was a regular attendant, generally returned to her lodging, where she sat with her maid engaged in the important affairs of the toilette until dinner. this day, after his examination of the jewels, lord fylingdale was carried to lady anastasia's lodging in the market-place. the lady dismissed her maid. "you have something to tell me, ludovick," she said. "i cannot tell from your face whether you are going to deal truthfully. i have had, as you know, a large experience of the other way. now, what is it?" "what i have come to say is important. anastasia, in this matter i have given you my entire confidence. there have been, i own, occasions when i have been compelled--but all that is over. i now confide absolutely in you and in you alone. my interests are yours." "you have already given me that assurance on other occasions." she implied, perhaps, by these words that the assurance and the fact were not identical. "what can i give you except my assurance?" "nothing, truly. but pray go on. i hear that you have been playing the part of knight errant and fighting for distressed damsels. i laughed when i heard of it. you to fight on the side of the angels? where are your wings, my ludovick?" "the thing happened exactly as i could have wished. the country bumpkin who carried her off had no knowledge of fence. he could only lunge, and he was half drunk. there was a great appearance of desperate fighting--because he was mad with drink and disappointment. i played with the fellow long enough to make a show of courage and danger. then i pinked him." "is he dead?" "i believe that he is in some kind of fever. perhaps he is by this time dead. what matters? well, anastasia, the result of the affair is that i have now arrived at perfect confidence on the part of my old friend the guardian." "and with the girl?" "the girl matters nothing. the first part of the business is done. you can now go back to london." "go back to london?" she repeated, suspiciously. "you have done all i wanted done here. you have given me a very good character; you have charmed the people of the spa; you have flattered the girl and inspired her with discontent. why should you stay any longer?" "to be sure i am living at great expense, and the bank is in a poor way. but what are you going to do?" "anastasia"--he sat down and took her hand--"i have inquired carefully into the whole business. there is no doubt, none whatever, that the girl is far richer than even her guardian understands. she has a huge income--a great accumulation of money--and, what is more, a collection of jewels which is in itself a large fortune. go back to london to-morrow or next day; then sit down and write a letter inviting the girl to stay at your house. bid her bring with her all her jewels and finery. i, for my part, will urge the captain to let her accept the invitation." "all this is very circumstantial. what then?" "i will promise the captain to find her a husband--a man of position, a man of rank, and, above all, one as virtuous as myself." he said this without the least blush or even a smile. "where is that husband to be found?" "as yet i do not know. he must be a creation of our own. he must not know; he must simply obey. we shall find such a person somewhere. i have, i believe, a good many of my former friends in the fleet or the king's bench. now, anastasia, to find one of these unfortunates; to offer him an allowance, say a guinea a week, in return for a power of attorney to administer the property. true, there are the creditors; but we might take over the detainers. he must not be suffered to get out." he went on suggesting deceits and villainies. "you said 'we.' what have i to do with the scheme? it is, you must confess, ludovick, one of those arrangements or understandings which the world calls a conspiracy." lord fylingdale released her hand. her words pained his sensitive soul. "if at this time, after all that we have done together, we are to talk of conspiracies, we had better act separately," he said coldly. "no, i am your servant, as you know. sometimes your most unhappy servant, but always at your command. only now and then it pleases me to call things by their proper names. at such times, ludovick, i look in my glass and i see, not the lady anastasia in a company of fashion, but a poor wretch sitting in a cart with her arms tied down, a white nightcap on her head and a prayer-book in her hand. there is a coffin in the cart." "anastasia! you are ridiculous. what have we done that all the world would not do if it could? these scruples are absurd, and these visions are fantastic. what is your share? you know that half of mine--all that is mine--is yours as well. you shall have my hand and my name. these you should have had long ago had they been worth your picking up. alas! anastasia, no one knows better than you the desperate condition of my affairs." "well, i will obey you. i will go back to town. i will go to-morrow. the other partners in our innocency--they will also go back, i suppose." "they will have done their part--sir harry and the colonel and the parson--they will all go back. they cost a great deal to keep, and they have done their work." "should i see the girl before i go?" "perhaps not. write to her from london. invite her to stay with you. for my own part, i will look about me for the man we want. a prisoner--on the poor side--a gentleman; one who will do anything for a guinea a week. the girl will not know that he is a prisoner--it will be quite easy----" this he said, concealing his real intentions, and only anxious to get this lady out of the way. but he left her suspicious and jealous. that is to say, she had already become both, and this intricate plot of getting a husband from the fleet, and the rest of it, made her still more suspicious and jealous. at the "crown" lord fylingdale found colonel lanyon waiting for him. "i have inquired, my lord, after tom rising. he is in a fever this morning." "will he die? what do they think?" "perhaps. but he is young. they think that he will recover. what are your lordship's commands?" "we have stayed here long enough, colonel." "with submission, my lord. although business has been very bad, it would be as well to wait for the event in tom rising's case. my position is very secure if he recovers. the gentlemen of the company have acknowledged that he forced high play upon me; they are unanimous in that respect. it means over a thousand pounds. if he recovers he must pay the money." "yes. in that case it may be best to wait. if he dies----" "then, my lord, we know not what his heirs and executors may resolve upon. the feeling concerning debts of honour is, however, very strong among the gentlemen of norfolk. i am sorry that they are not richer." "if the man dies you can refer to me, perhaps, as arbitrator with the executors. meantime, make the best of your opportunities and lose no more money. lady anastasia goes home in a few days, perhaps to-morrow." the man retired. lord fylingdale sat down and reflected. the great thing was to get lady anastasia out of the way; the rest might stay or not, as they pleased. yet he would warn them that their departure would not be delayed long. he took pen and paper and wrote to sir harry. "dear beau,--i think that the air of lynn after a few weeks is not wholesome for one no longer in his first youth. i would therefore advise that you should think about going back to town. settle immediately your affairs, gaming and others. leave the hearts you have broken and return to mend those which are only cracked. in a word, the ladies of london are calling loudly for your return, and the wits and pretty fellows are asking what has become of sir harry.--your obedient servant to command, "fylingdale." there remained the parson and the poet. the latter he could send away at a day's notice; the former he would probably want for a certain purpose. he sent for mr. semple, his secretary. "semple," he said, "i have now made inquiry into the truth of your statements--i mean as regards this young lady's fortune." "it is as i told your lordship?" "it is. the fortune you have exaggerated, but it is no doubt considerable. well, i have sent for you in order to tell you that i am now resolved upon carrying out the project you submitted to me. my own affairs are, as you found out, embarrassed; the girl's fortune will be useful to me; her person is passable; her manners can be improved. i have therefore determined to make her my countess." "my lord, i rejoice to have been the humble instrument----" "you have kept the secret, so far, i believe. at least i have seen no sign that any one suspects my intentions. you have invented a lie of enormous audacity in order to bring us all together; myself, your project up my sleeve; and certain friends of mine, to assist in various ways; your inventions have converted an ordinary well into a health restoring spring; you have caused the elevation of this town of common sailors and traders and mechanics into a fashionable spa. semple, you are a very ingenious person. i hope that you are satisfied with your success." "gratified, my lord. not satisfied." "i understand. you shall be satisfied very shortly by the fulfillment of my promise. it is, if i remember, to find you a place under government, worth at least â£200 a year, with perquisites. you shall learn, semple, that i can be grateful and that i can keep my word, written or spoken. now there remains one more service." he proceeded to give him certain instructions. "and, remember, the greatest secrecy is to be observed. neither you nor the captain is to reveal the fact--until the business is completed. everything will be ruined if anything is revealed. your own future depends upon your secrecy. you are sure that you have your instructions aright?" "i am quite sure, my lord. i am your ambassador. i come with a message of great importance. there are reasons why the proceedings are to be kept secret. the lady will be made a countess before a prying and impertinent world can be informed of your lordship's intentions. i fly, my lord. i fly." "one moment, friend semple. before you depart on this mission, resolve me as to a difficulty in my mind." "what is that, my lord?" "you are aware, of course, that my plan of life is not quite what this girl looks for in a husband. she will expect, in fact, the bourgeoise virtues--constancy, fidelity, early hours, regularity, piety. you know very well that she will find none of these virtues. they are not, i believe, expected in persons of my rank. you are preparing for the girl, in fact, a great disappointment, and, perhaps, a life of misery. if i did not want her money, i might pity her." sam's face darkened. "tell me, my friend, in return for what acts of kindness done to you by the captain or by molly herself are you conferring this boon upon the girl?" the poet made no reply for awhile. then he answered, his eyes on the ground. "the thing is as good as done. i may as well let you know. the captain cudgelled me like a dog--like a dog. my gratitude is so great that i have succeeded in marrying his ward to--you, my lord. what worse revenge could i take?" "frankly, i know of none." the devil, himself, you see, can speak truth at times. "you will waste and dissipate the whole of her fortune, and would if it were ten times as great, in raking and gaming; you will send her back to her own people brokenhearted and ruined. that will be my doing." "friend semple," said his lordship, "if i were not fylingdale i would be semple; and, to tell the truth, if i saw any other way of raising money i would--well, perhaps i would--even pity the girl and let her go." chapter xxvii the expected blow that evening the blow, feared and expected, fell, for then, and not till then, i felt that we had lost, or thought we had lost, our maid. i found the captain sitting in the summerhouse alone, without the usual solace of his tobacco and his october. "jack," he said, with a gloomy sigh, "i am now the happiest of men, because my molly is the most fortunate of women. i have attained the utmost i could hope or ask. the most virtuous of men--i should say of noble-men--has asked the hand of our girl. molly will be a countess! rejoice with me!" i stood outside on the grass, having no words to say. "she will marry him immediately. nothing could be more happy or more fortunate. such rank--such a position as places her on a level with the highest ladies of the land, though the daughter of plain folk, with a shipowner for a father and a sailor's daughter for a mother. there is promotion for you, jack!" "she will go away, then, and leave us!" "aye; she will leave us, jack. she will leave us. his lordship--you do not ask who it is." "who can it be, captain, but lord fylingdale?" "the best of men. he will carry her off to his country house, where they will live retired for a while, yet in such state as belongs to her rank. we shall lose her, of course. that, however, we always expected. the country house is in gloucester, on the other side of england. perhaps she may get to see us, but i am seventy-five, or perhaps more, and jennifer, her mother, is not far from fifty. i cannot look to set eyes on her again. what matter." he hemmed bravely and sat upright. "what matter, i say, so that the girl is happy. her mother may, perhaps, set eyes on her once more; but she will be changed, because, you see, our molly must now become a fine lady." "yes," i groaned, "she must become a fine lady." "jack, sometimes i am sorry that she has so much money. yet, what was i to do? could i waste and dissipate her money? could i give away her ships? could i give her, with the fortune of a princess, to a plain and simple skipper? no; providence--providence, jack, hath so ordered things. i could not help myself." "no, captain; you could not help things. yet...." i broke off. "well, jack, why don't you rejoice with me? why the devil don't you laugh and sing? all you want is to see her happy, yet there you stand as glum and dumb as a mute at a funeral." "i wish her happiness, sir, with all my heart." "sam semple came here this afternoon, by order of my lord. sam gives himself airs now that he is a secretary and companion. he came and demanded a private conversation with me. it was quite private, he said, and of the utmost importance. so we sat in the parlour, and, with a bottle of wine between us, we talked over the business. first, he told me that his patron, as he calls him, meaning his master, had been greatly taken with the innocence and the beauty of molly. i replied that unless he was a stock, or a stone, or an iceberg, i expected nothing less. he went on to say, that although a noble earl with a long pedigree and a great estate, his patron was willing to contract marriage with a girl who was not even of gentle birth, and had nothing but her beauty and her innocence. i told him that she had, in addition, a very large fortune. he said that his patron scorned the thought of money, being already much more wealthy than most noblemen of his exalted rank; that he was willing, also, to pass over any defects in manners, conversation, and carriage, which would be remedied by a little acquaintance with the polite world. in a word, his lordship offered his hand, his name, his title, his rank, and himself--to my ward." "his condescension," i said, "is beyond all praise." "i think so, too. beyond all praise. i asked his advice touching a husband for my girl. he promises his assistance in the matter, and he then offers himself. jack, could anything be more fortunate?" "i hope it may turn out so. what does molly say?" "you may go in and ask her yourself. she will tell you more than she will tell anybody else. the matter is to be kept, for the present, a profound secret between his lordship and ourselves. but since sam semple knows it, and jennifer knows it, and you are one of ourselves, therefore, you may as well know it, too. but don't talk about it." "why should it be kept a secret? why should it not be proclaimed everywhere?" "my lord says that the place is a hot-bed of scandal; that he would not have molly's name passed about in the pump room to be the object of common gossip and inventions, made up of envy and malice. he would spare molly this. when she is once married and taken away from the place they may say what they please. whatever they say, they cannot do her any harm. why, some of them even declared that she was one of the company of strolling actresses. there is nothing that they will not say." i made no reply, because it certainly did seem as if in asking for secrecy his lordship had acted in molly's interests. "well, captain, we must make the best of it. you must find your own happiness in thinking of molly's." "what aggravates me, jack, is the ridiculous behaviour of my cousin jennifer. she is in the kitchen crying, and the black woman with her. go and comfort her before you see molly." i looked into the kitchen. molly's mother sat in the great wooden chair beside the fireplace. she held her apron in her hands as if she had just pulled it off her face, and the tears were on her cheeks. when she saw me they began to flow again. "jack," she said, "have you heard the news? has the captain told you? the worst has happened. i have lost my girl. she is to be married; she will go away; she will marry a man who scorns her guardian and despises her mother. a bad beginning, jack. no good can come of such a marriage. a bad beginning. oh! i foresee unhappiness. how can molly become a fine lady? she is but a simple girl--my own daughter. i have made her a good housewife, and all her knowledge will be thrown away and lost. it is a bad business, jack. nigra has been telling her fortune. there is nothing hopeful. all the cards are threatening. and the magpies--and the screech owl----" she fell to weeping again. after which she broke out anew. "the captain says he is the most virtuous man in the world. it isn't true. if ever i saw the inside of a man in my life i have seen the inside of that man. he is corrupt through and through----" "but--consider. all the world is crying up his noble conduct and his many virtues." "they may say what they like. it is false; he is heartless; he is cold; he is selfish. he marries molly for her money. persuade the captain, if you can. he will not believe me." "how can i persuade him? i have no knowledge. are they all in a tale? are you the only person who knows the truth? how do you know it?" "i know it because i love my girl, and so i can read the very soul of a man. i have read your soul, jack, over and over again. you are true and faithful. you would love her and cherish her. but this man? he knows not what love means, nor fidelity, nor anything. go, jack. there is no help in you or in any other. because there is none other----" she spoke the words of the prayer book. "none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, o god! only thou, o god!" she covered her face again with her apron and fell to sobbing afresh. so i went into the parlour where molly was sitting. "jack!" she jumped up. "oh, jack, i want you so badly." "i know all, molly. except what you yourself say and think about it." she had a piece of work in her hands, and she began to pull it and pick it as she replied. for the first time in my life i found molly uncertain and hesitating. "the captain says that it is the greatest honour that was ever offered to any woman to be raised from a lowly condition to a high rank--and all for love." "all for love?" i asked. "why, what else can it be that made him fight for me with that desperate villain? he risked his life. whatever happens, jack, i cannot forget that." "no. it was doubtless a great thing to do. has he told you himself that it was all for love?" "he has not spoken about love at all. he has never once been alone with me. it seems that these great people make love by message. he sent a message by sam semple." "a very fine messenger of cupid, truly!" "offering marriage. the captain cannot contain his satisfaction and sits glum. my mother says she will never be able to see me again and begins to cry." "well--but, molly, to be sure it is a great thing to become a countess. most women would jump at the chance, under any conditions. do you, however, think that you can love the man?" "he hasn't asked for love. oh, jack, to think that people should marry each other without a word of love! if he loves me i suppose he thinks that i am bound to give him love in return." "there, again, molly, do you love the man?" "jack, nobody knows me better than you. what reply can i make?" "he is too cold and too proud for you, molly. how can you love him? perhaps," i added, because i was very sure that she would marry him, "after marriage you will find that his coldness is only a cloak to hide his natural warmth, and that his pride covers his wife as well as himself." "he is a good man. everybody says so. lady anastasia declares that he is the most honourable and high-principled of men. on that point i am safe. and think, jack, what a point it is! why, to marry a drunkard, a sot, a profligate, a gambler--one would sooner die at once and so an end. but i can trust myself with him. i have no fear of such treatment as drives some wives to distraction. yet he is cold in his manner and proud in his speech. i might find it in my heart to love him if i was not afraid of him." and so she went backwards and forwards. he was so good and so great; his wife must always respect him. he was of rank so exalted--it was a great honour to become his wife. he was so brave--she owed her rescue to his bravery. yet he had spoken no word of love; nor had she seen any sign of love. i asked her what sign she expected, and she was confused. "of course," she said, "every girl knows very well when a man is in love with her." "how does she know?" i asked her. "she knows, because she knows." i suppose she felt the man was not in love with her just as her mother felt that his character for virtue and nobility was assumed--"corrupt within," she said. women are made so. and in the next breath molly repeated that what his lordship had done was done for love. "how do you know?" i asked again. "because the captain says so," she replied, with unconscious inconsistency. "is the courtship to be conducted entirely by messenger?" i asked. "no; he will come to-morrow morning and see me. i am to give him an answer then. but the captain has already told him what the answer is to be. oh, jack, i am so happy! i am so fortunate that i ought to be happy. yet i am so down-hearted about it. going away is a dreadful thing. and when shall i see any of you, i wonder, again? oh, i am so fortunate! i am so happy." and to show her happiness she dropped a tear, and more tears followed. what kind of happiness, what kind of good fortune was that which could fill the mind of the captain with gloom and could dissolve molly's mother in tears, and could herald its approach to the bride by sadness which weighed her down? and as for me, you may believe that my heart was like a lump of lead within me, partly because i was losing the girl i loved, but had never hoped to marry, and partly because from the outset of the whole affair--yes, from the very evening when the news of the grand discovery was read to the "society of lynn"--i had looked forward to coming events with foreboding of the most dismal kind. "come to see me to-morrow afternoon, jack," she said. "i must talk about it to some one. with the captain i cannot talk, because he is all for the unequal match, and with my mother i cannot talk because she foretells trouble, and will acknowledge no good thing at all in the man or in the match. do not forget, jack. come to-morrow. i don't know how many days are left to me when i can ask you to come. oh, jack, to leave everybody--all my friends--it is hard! but i am the most ungrateful of women, because i am the happiest--the happiest. oh, jack, the happiest and most fortunate woman that ever lived." chapter xxviii warning in the evening, which was wednesday, i repaired to the gardens, paying for my admission, but no longer in the character of a fine gentleman. lord fylingdale was not present, nor molly. lady anastasia was there, gracious and smiling as usual. nothing was said about her approaching departure. after walking round the long room she retired to the card room, and play began as usual. it seemed to me, looking on with a few others at the door, that there was a kind of awkwardness or constraint among the company. they collected together in small groups, which whispered to each other; then these groups melted away, forming new companies, which in their turn dissolved. something of importance had happened. presently some of the gentlemen in the card room came out. they, in their turn, became surrounded and formed into another group, who whispered eagerly with each other. they were standing near the door, and i overheard some of their discourse. "i am assured," one of them was saying, "that he has been ordered out of the assembly at bath for foul play at cards, and i have it on the best authority that he was driven off the heath of newmarket." i did not know of whom he was speaking. "truly," said another, "we seem to have fallen into the midst of a very pretty set of sharpers. will tom rising, if he gets the better of his wound, have to pay that debt? i think not. a debt of honour can only be contracted with a man of honour." "on the other hand, sir, if tom had won he would have looked for payment." "why, sir, that is true. but observe, when we played with the colonel we took him for a man of honour. some of us have won a few guineas of him. should we return them? no. and why? because we accepted him as a man of honour, and stood to win or lose as between gentlemen. now, one does not play with a sharper knowingly. one would not take his money; one would not pay him if we lost." "then tom must not pay." "if what we hear is true; if the man has been exposed at bath; if he has been warned off the heath of newmarket; most assuredly tom must not pay a farthing." "at present the fever is still upon him. well, but we must wait. all this may be mere rumour." "it may be, as you say; but i think not. the report comes from houghton, sir robert's place, where a certain cousin of tom rising, member of parliament, i think, for ipswich, is now staying as a guest. houghton is only a few miles from lynn. it lies in the marshland. this gentleman, then, heard of the duel and the wound, and has been to see his cousin." "is he still in the town? can one have speech with him?" "i think not. he has gone back to houghton. but he will return. i am informed that he inquired into the whole particulars; that he learned of his cousin's heavy losses at play to one, colonel lanyon. 'lanyon?' says my parliament man. 'i know that name--colonel lanyon? why, the fellow ought not to show his face among gentlemen,' and then out came the whole story." "still," said the other, "he may be mistaken." "men are not often mistaken in such matters. but, sir, i can tell you more. there are gentlemen in sir robert's party, at houghton, who profess to know strange things about others of our visitors from london. i will mention no names, yet there will be a surprise for some who pretend to be what they are not. i say no more, except to advise you not to neglect next friday's assembly. meantime, silence, let us say nothing." the little group broke up. i paid small attention to the words. the colonel was quite unknown to me, except as a constant attendant in the card room. but i observed that the whispering went on, and increased, and that every man in every group presently went away and formed other groups, and that more communications were made and more discussions followed, and that on every one was enjoined a promise of the greatest secrecy. also i observed that every group contained the same varieties of listeners. there was the open-mouthed man, who gaped with wonder; the wise man after the event, who had always entertained suspicions; the indignant man, who was for immediate measures; the slow man, who would wait; and the critical man, who wanted evidence and proof. i dare say there were more. such whisperings and such groups do not create cheerfulness in a company. suspicion and jealousy were in the air that night; the music played and the fiddlers scraped; the singers squalled; the people walked round and round, after their usual fashion; there was plenty of conversation and of animation; they were excited; they were evidently looking forward to some important event; but they were not laughing, nor paying compliments, nor talking of dress, nor were they listening to the music or the singers. and a very curious circumstance happened in the card room. there was at first the usual crowd of players sitting and standing; the usual staking of guineas, and laying and taking odds; it was, in fact, an ordinary evening, when the company pressed round the table and the game went on merrily. then one or two people came in from the long room. there were whispers; two or three left their places and retired from the room. other people came in from the long room; there were more whispers; more players gave up their seats and left the room. after a while there was no one left in the card room at all except lady anastasia, sir harry malyns, and colonel lanyon. the croupier still stood at the head of the table, rake in hand, crying the main and proclaiming the odds. seeing no one else at the table, the two players desisted. "what does it mean?" asked the lady, looking round. "we are deserted." "i know not," sir harry replied. "some distraction in the gardens; probably a quarrel; one of the bumpkins has perhaps struck another." he went out to inquire, but came back immediately. "there is no distraction," he said. "nothing has happened; the people are walking round as usual." "something, surely," said the lady, "must have happened. why are the tables deserted? such a thing has never occurred before. colonel, will you kindly find out what it means? i have the vapours to-night, i think. my mind misgives me." colonel lanyon rose and walked to the door. he looked up and down the long room and returned. "nothing has happened," he said. "they are all strangers to me. but since there is no more play i will e'en betake me to the tavern." "and i," said the lady, "will go home. sir harry, please call my fellows." sir harry led her through the long room to the door. as she got into the chair, she said, "sir harry, there is something brewing. i caught looks of hostility as we passed through the room. do you think it is the jealousy of the women about that girl with the diamonds?" "i observed no hostile looks." "men never see such things. i tell you i not only saw them, but i felt them. we have given these people mortal offence. they are gentlefolk. we come among them, and we admit to our society a girl who has no pretence to gentility. lord fylingdale dances with her; i take her to the assembly. lord fylingdale actually follows her when she is carried off and fights for her and rescues her. this is a thing which he might do for any of those ladies, and with no more than the customary jealousies; but with such a girl it makes bad blood." "hostile looks mean nothing. what if there is bad blood?" "sir harry--sir harry--it is only in london, and not always there, that we account ourselves free from revenge. it is a revengeful world, and there are many people in it who would willingly put you and me and the colonel, not to speak of the parson and the earl himself, in pillory, and pelt us with rotten eggs and dead cats." so she got into her chair, and the old beau, shaking his head, called his own chair and was carried home. but colonel lanyon who walked to the tavern where his friends met every night found the place, to his astonishment, empty. then he, too, remembered certain signs of hostility or resentment, notably the desertion of the players, and the cold looks as he left the place. now, as the worthy adventurer and sharper was by no means conscious of innocence, he began to feel uneasy. to such men as those who live by their wits there is always the danger that some past scandal may be revived, some former half forgotten villainy remembered. therefore he became disquieted. he had some reason for disquiet, for, to begin with, he had done very well. tom rising would recover, it was thought. he would recover in a week or two, or more. he would then, as a man of honour, have to raise, by hook or by crook, the sum of â£1,200, of which, by the compact, one-fourth was to be the colonel's and three-fourths were the earl's. this is a large sum of money to win or to lose. now, if anything inopportune was to occur, such as the revival of an old scandal--say that of bath, or that of tunbridge wells, or that of newmarket, these winnings would be in a dangerous situation. a gentleman who lives by his wits, although he may be a good swordsman and a good shot with a pistol, cannot escape the consequences of a scandal. the thing follows him from place to place. it gets into taverns and hangs about gaming-houses; it stands between him and his prey; it snatches the young and inexperienced player from his grasp; it even prevents the payment of the debts commonly called of honour. now, the colonel had been about town and in the haunts of gamesters for a good score of years, and, truth to tell, he now found it difficult, anywhere, to be received into the company of gentlemen. while he sat in the empty room one of the gentlemen, its frequenters, came in. the colonel looked up. "why, sir," he said, "where is the company this evening?" "there will be no company to-night, colonel." "ay--ay? no company? where are they all, then?" "to be frank with you, colonel lanyon, i am deputed to inform you that certain things are rumoured about you which must be explained." "certain things, sir?" the colonel sprang to his feet. "to be explained? this is a very ugly word. to be explained. the word, sir, attacks my honour." "it does so, colonel. you are quite right." "then, sir, you and your friends will have to fight me." "we will willingly fight with--a man of honour. not only that, but where a man of honour is concerned we should be most willing to offer an apology, if we have attacked his honour. to be brief, colonel, certain things have been said concerning you and your honour. they have been alleged behind your back." "well, sir, suppose my assailant meets me face to face. gad, sir, he shall meet me on the grass." "softly, softly, colonel. there will be no fighting, i assure you. as for anything else, that depends on yourself. frankly, colonel, they are very nasty things. on the other hand, i assure you that, as we have received you without suspicion, we shall stand by you loyally." "in that case we need not talk of explanations." "loyally, i say, unless the explanations are not forthcoming." "give me the statements or the charges." "i cannot, colonel. they are at present vague. but i am instructed to invite you to be present in the card room on friday evening next, when an opportunity will be afforded you of hearing what has been stated and of replying. colonel, we have found you very good company. we all desire to retain you as a friend." "but, sir, permit me. this is monstrous. you tell me of charges, you avoid my society, you refuse to tell me the nature of the charges, and you call upon me to reply on the spot without knowing----" "your reply will be quite easy. it really means either yes or no. and if, as i doubt not, you can disprove whatever is alleged, you will yourself entirely approve of our action in separating for a time from a man accused of things dishonourable, of giving him an opportunity of reply, also of my warning." "why, sir, if to be grateful for such a warning and for such general charges is a duty, i will be grateful. meantime----" "meantime, colonel, you know your past life better than any one. if there is in it anything of which you are ashamed let me recommend you to present that affair in as favourable a light as possible. men will quarrel over cards. accusations are easily made. the duel next morning does not clear away suspicion. if, however, there is nothing, as i hope, come with a light heart and a cheerful countenance, and we shall rally round you as brothers and men of honour. i wish you good-night, colonel lanyon, until friday, after which i hope to sit here beside you, the bowl of punch on the table, and your songs and stories to keep us awake, till we sit down again to the cards." chapter xxix the ardent lover between ten and eleven of the clock next morning, molly's suitor--i cannot call him her lover--arrived at the house. at that hour most of the ladies are at morning prayers, and the gentlemen are either at the tavern taking their morning whet, or at the coffee house in conversation, or engaged in some of the sports to which most of them are so much addicted. lord fylingdale, although the streets at such an hour are mostly deserted, had to cross the market-place on his way to the captain's house, in hogman's lane, and was, therefore, carried in a chair with the curtains drawn, so as to avoid recognition. he was received by captain crowle in the parlour. for the occasion the old man had put on his sunday suit, with white silk stockings; and he wore his sword, to which, as the former commander of a ship, he was entitled. "i am come, captain, to receive in person your answer to the message conveyed to you yesterday by my ambassador. i hope that the message was delivered faithfully, and with due respect." "i believe, my lord, with both." "i assure you, captain crowle, that the respect i have conceived for your character and loyalty is more than i can express in words. that you have inspired, in the mind of your ward, similar virtues i do not doubt, and this confidence, believe me, has much to do with the offer of my hand to that young lady." "your lordship does me the greatest honour. my answer is that i accept in molly's name, and joyfully." "i am delighted. this should be," he added, coldly, "the happiest day of my life." "when we spread the news abroad, everybody in lynn will feel that the greatest honour has been done to the town as well as to this house." "sir, you overrate my position. still ... however, we must keep the matter secret for a day or two yet. i engage you, captain, to profound secrecy." "as long as you please, my lord. the sooner i may speak of it the better i shall like it, for i am bursting with joy and satisfaction." "patience, captain, for a day or two." the captain became serious, even melancholy. "you will take her away, i suppose." "i fear i must. a married man generally takes away his wife, does he not?" "you will take her to your country house, and to london. well, i am old--i am seventy-five already. i cannot expect ever to see her again. her mother, however, is not so old by thirty years. perhaps your lordship will at some time or other--we would not remind you of your lady's humble folk--allow her if she is within an easy journey to come here to see her mother." "surely--surely, captain. could i be so hard-hearted as to refuse? her mother certainly--or yourself. but not her old friends. not the friends of her childhood such as that young sailor man--nor the girls of the place." "i care not for them, so that i may comfort her poor mother with that promise. as for myself, who am i that i should intrude upon her? let me die happy in the knowledge that she is happy." "she shall be as happy as the day is long, captain." "i doubt it not. as for jack pentecrosse, an old playfellow, he is like me. he loves her as if she was his sister, but he desires nothing but the knowledge of the girl's happiness." "i accept your assurance, captain, that he will not endeavour to seek her or to visit her." "he will not. my lord," the captain became very serious, "i can promise you a well-conditioned, virtuous, modest, obedient, and dutiful wife. she will ask for nothing but a continuance of your lordship's affection and consideration, in return for which she will be your willing servant as well as your wife." "again, captain, i doubt it not. else i should not be here." "and when the day comes--when you pass the word, my lord--the bells shall ring and the music shall play and all the town shall make holiday, and we will have such a feast and merrymaking that all the country round shall ring with it. lord, i am so happy!" "but, captain, i have not yet received the consent of the lady." "be assured that you will have it. but the girl is shy and hesitates, being, to say the truth, dazzled by the rank to which she is to be raised. a young maid's modesty will perhaps hinder such freedom of speech as you would naturally desire." "i hope, sir, that i am able to appreciate and value the virtue of modesty. all i ask of the young lady is her consent." "of that you may be assured beforehand." "then, captain, as this is an occasion of some awkwardness and one which it is well to get through as quickly as possible----" did one ever hear of such a lover? "well, to get through as quickly as possible," his first interview with his mistress. "you will perhaps bring miss molly to me or take me to her." molly, meanwhile, was in her bedroom, in a strange agitation, her colour coming and going; now pale, now blushing; for the first time in her life, trembling and inclined to swoon. even for a girl who loves a man it is an event of the greatest importance, and one never to be forgotten, when she consents to make him happy. but when she is in grievous doubt, torn by the consciousness that she does not love the man; that she is afraid of him; that she does not desire the change of rank which he offers; and that she would far rather remain among her own people. in such a case, i say, her trouble is great indeed. however, to do honour to the occasion, she, like the captain, had assumed her sunday attire. her frock, to be sure, was not so fine as that in which she graced the assembly, but it was passable. to my mind she looked more beautiful than in that splendid dress. at her guardian's summons, she slowly descended the stairs. the kitchen door was open; she looked in as she passed. her mother, instead of being busy over her housewifery was sitting in her chair, her hands clasped, her eyes closed, her lips moving. she was praying for her daughter. molly stepped in and kissed her. "mother," she said, "pray that it may turn out well. i must accept him. yet i doubt. oh, pray for me!" "because," her mother murmured in reply, "the captain cannot help, and jack cannot help; and there is none other that helpeth us but only thou, o god!" then molly turned the handle of the parlour door and entered. "miss molly!" her gallant lover, splendid with his star and his fine clothes, took her hand, bowed low, and kissed her fingers. "you would speak with me, my lord." "yesterday i sent a message to your guardian. i told him by my messenger that i was entirely overcome by the beauty and the charms and the virtues of his fair ward. and i offered, unworthy as i am, my hand and all that goes with it--my rank, and title, my possessions and myself." "the captain told me of the message." "i have to-day received an answer from him. but although he is your guardian i would not presume to consider that answer as final. i must have your answer as well." "my lord, i am but a humble and a homely person." "nay, but lovely as venus herself." "i know now, since all the company have come to lynn, how homely and humble i am in the eyes of gentlefolk." "you will no longer be either homely or humble--when you are a countess." "i fear that your friends among the great will make your lordship ashamed of your choice." "my friends know me better than to suppose that i can be ashamed by their opinion. but, indeed, they have only to see you for that opinion to be changed. once seen by the world and all will envy and congratulate the happy possessor of so much beauty." "then, are you satisfied that you are truly in love with me?" "satisfied?" he took her hand again and kissed it. "how shall i satisfy you on this point? by what assurance? by what lover's vows?" she glanced upwards, having spoken so far with hanging head. her eyes met his. alas! they were cold and hard. there was no softening influence of love visible in those eyes; only resolution and purpose. his eyes were as cold as his forehead and as hard as his lips. poor molly! poor countess! "is it not, my lord," she asked, "a mere passing fancy? you will be tired of me in a month; you will regret that you did not choose rather among the fine ladies who speak your language and follow your manners." "molly, i am a man who does not encourage idle fancies and passing loves. you will find no change in me. as i am now so i shall be always." she shivered. the prospect made her feel cold. "then, my lord," she said, "i have nothing more to say. i shall not do justice to your rank, nor shall i bring to your house the dignity which you deserve. such as i am, take me, if you will, or let me go, if you will." "can you doubt, molly? i will take you." he hesitated; he took her hand again; he stooped and kissed her forehead. there was no passion in his kiss; no tenderness in his touch; no emotion in his voice. such as he was then such he would always be. and though the door was closed, molly seemed to hear again the voice of her mother murmuring "but only thou, o god!" her lover drew the captain's armchair and placed it at the open window which looked out into the garden, then filled with flowers, fragrant and beautiful, and melodious with the humming of many bees. "sit down, molly, and let us talk." he did not sit down. he stood before her; he walked about the room; he played with the gold tassels of his sword. "molly, since we are to be married, we must be married at once." "i am your lordship's servant." "as soon as possible. are you ready?" "ready? i suppose i could be ready in a month or six weeks." "why, what is there to do?" "i have to get things--dresses, house linen, all kinds of things." "my dear, you are not going to marry a cit. everything that you want you can buy. there are plenty of shops. you want nothing but what you have--your wardrobe, your fine things, and your common things, and your jewels. you must not forget your jewels." "i thought that brides were always provided with things for the house. but if your lordship has already the linen and the napery----" "good lord! how should i know what i have? the thing is that you will need nothing." "where will you take me?" "i think, first of all, to my house in gloucestershire. it is not fully furnished; the late possessor, my cousin, whom i succeeded, was, unfortunately, a gambler. he had to cut down his woods and to sell them; he even had to sell his furniture and pictures. but i can soon put the house in order fit for your reception." it was he himself, and not his predecessor, who had sold these things. "if it is not so fine, at first, as you would wish, we can soon make it worthy of you." i have often wondered what he intended to do with his bride if things had gone differently. i am now certain that he intended to take her to this great country house, which, as i have understood, stands in a secluded part of the country, with no near neighbours and no town within reach; and that he intended to leave her there, while he himself went up to london to resume the old gaming and raking, which he desired so much, although they had been his ruin. fate, however, prevented this design. "if you desire my happiness, my lord----" "what else is there in the whole world that i should desire?" "you will take me to that country place and live there. i fear the world of fashion and i have no wish to live in london. i have learned from the lady anastasia how the great ladies pass their time." "everything shall be as you wish, molly. everything, believe me." he then, by way of illustrating this assurance, proposed a thing which he himself wished. "we must be married immediately, molly, because i am called away, by affairs of importance, to gloucestershire. i ought to leave this place not later than saturday." the day was thursday. "saturday? we must be married on saturday?" "sooner than saturday. to-morrow. that will give us time enough to make what little preparations may be necessary." "to-morrow? but we cannot be married so soon." "everything is prepared. i have the license. we can be married to-morrow." "oh!" it was all she could say. "there is another thing. your guardian would like to make a public ceremony of the wedding; he would hang the town with flags, and ring the bells, and summon the band of the marrowbones and cleavers, while all the world looked on." "yes. he is so proud of the marriage that he would like to celebrate it." "and you, molly?" "i should like to be married with no one to look on, and no one to know anything about it until it was over." "why--there, molly--there, we are agreed. i was in great fear that you would not think with me. my dear, if there is one thing which i abhor, it is the public ceremony and the private feasting and merriment with which a wedding is accompanied. we do not want the town to be all agog; we do not want to set all tongues wagging; nor do we want to be a show with a grand triumphal march and a feast to last three days afterwards." "can we be private, then?" "certainly. i can arrange everything. now, molly, my plan is this. we will be married privately in st. nicholas church at six in the morning, before the company are out of their beds. no one will see us; after the marriage you will come back here; i will return with you, and we will then inform the captain and your mother of the joyful news. believe me, when they come to think it over, they will rejoice to be spared the trouble and the preparation for a wedding feast." "but i cannot deceive the captain." "there is no deception. he has agreed to the match. he knows that you have agreed. there is one consideration, molly, which makes a private marriage necessary. i could not consent to a public wedding or to a wedding feast, because my rank forbids. it would be impossible for me to invite any person of my own position to such a feast, and it would be impossible for me to sit down with those persons--worthy, no doubt, and honest--whom the captain would certainly wish to invite." this was certainly reasonable, and certainly true. rank must be respected, and a noble earl cannot sit down to feast with merchants, skippers, mates, parsons and the like. "then it shall be as your lordship pleases." "be at the church at six," he said. "i will provide everything and see that everything is ready for you. do not be recognised as you pass along the street. you can wear a domino with the pink silk cloak which you wore the other night at the assembly. then i shall recognise you. no one else, molly, need be considered. are you sure that you understand?" "yes," she sighed. "i understand." "then, molly," he bowed low, and, without offering to kiss her, this wonderful lover left his mistress and was carried home in his chair. chapter xxx the secret all these things were told me by molly herself in the afternoon. you may very well believe that my heart was sick and sore to think of molly being thus thrown away for a bribe of rank and position upon a man who seemed to be of marble or of ice. for of one thing concerning women i am very certain, that to make them happy they must be loved. at the time i could not know, nor did i suspect, that this noble earl was marrying molly for her fortune. like the captain, i pictured him as one lifted above the common lot and apart from all temptations as regards money, by his own great possessions. why, he had nothing--nothing at all. so much i know--he had wasted and dissipated the whole. there was nothing left, and his marriage, especially his private and hurried manner of it, was designed wholly to give him the possession and the control of molly's riches. "to-morrow, then, we lose you, molly." "to-morrow, jack. his lordship consents that whenever, if ever, i am within an easy journey of lynn i may come back to see my mother. but when will that be? alas! i know not. gloucestershire is on the other side of the country." "after all, molly, there are many wives who thus go away with their husbands and never see their own folk any more. they forget them; they find their happiness with the home and the children. why, my dear, in a year or two, when you have grown accustomed to your state and the condition of a great lady, you will forget lynn and the old friends." "never, jack, never. you might as well expect me to forget the days when we were children together and played about the lady's mount and on the walls, and rowed our dingey in the river. forget my own folks? jack, am i a monster?" "nay, but, molly, all i want is to see you happy. remember us if you will, and remember that we are all, the captain, and your mother and your faithful black and myself, daily praying for your welfare." so we talked. it was agreed between us that a private wedding was, under the circumstances, much more convenient than a public one, with all the display and feasting in which lord fylingdale could not take part. i could not but think the business too much hurried and too secret. as for other reasons, especially the absence of any settlements which would protect the wife, i had no knowledge of such things, and therefore no suspicion. i bade her farewell--the last time i should see her in private and converse with her as of old--and with tears, we kissed and parted. but there was no question of love or of disappointment. we were like brother and sister who were separated after growing up together. and so i kissed her and said no more than "oh! molly, if you had no money, we should not lose you," and she replied with a sigh and more tears, "and if i had no money, jack, i should not have to leave my own people and go among strangers who will not welcome me, or love me, or give me even their friendliness." i left her, and walked away. i was too downhearted to stay ashore; i would go aboard and sit alone in the captain's cabin. there is nothing so lonely as a ship without her crew. if a man in these days desires to become a hermit, he should take up his quarters in one of the old hulks that lie in every harbour, deserted even by the rats, who swim away when the provisions are all gone. it is lonely by day, and it is ghostly by night. for then the old ship is visited by the sailors who have sailed in her and have died in her. in every ship there have been many who die of disease or by accident, or fall overboard and are drowned. these are the visitors to the hulk at night. every sailor knows this, and has seen them. i wanted to be alone, i say, therefore, i thought i would go on board and stay there. now, on my way across the market-place, there came running after me a man, who called me by name. "mr. pentecrosse--mr. pentecrosse," and, looking round, i saw that it was the lady anastasia's footman, in the green and gold livery--a very line person indeed, to look at, much finer than myself in my workaday clothes. "sir," he said "my mistress, lady anastasia, desires speech with you. will you kindly follow me to her lodging?" i obeyed. what did the lady wish to say to me? she was in her parlour, half dressed in what they call, i believe, a dishabille. she nodded to the footman, who closed the door and left us alone. "mr. pentecrosse," she said graciously, "this is the second time i have sent for you. yet i gave you permission to call upon me often. is this the politeness of a sailor? never mind; i forgive you, because molly loves you and you love molly." "madam," i replied, "it is true that i love molly, but i have no longer any right to love her except as one who would call himself, if he could, her brother." "so i wanted, mr. pentecrosse--may i say jack?--to learn your sentiments about this affair. i am, of course, in the confidence of lord fylingdale. i believe that i know all his secrets--or, at least, as many as a man chooses to tell a woman. you men have all got your secret cupboards, and you lock the door and keep the key. say, therefore, rather, most of my lord's secrets." "what affairs, madam, do you mean?" i remembered that the business of the betrothal was a secret. "what affairs?" "why ask--the affair between his lordship and molly, of course. shall i prove to you that i know all about it?" "you can do better, madam, you can tell me what the affair is." "oh! jack, you act very badly. never, my dear young man, go upon the stage. of course, you know molly has no secrets from you. listen, then. "on the first night when molly and you distinguished yourselves in the minuet--never blush, jack, a british sailor should always show that he knows no fear--lord fylingdale administered a public rebuke to the company for their rudeness. he showed thereby that he was already interested in the girl. he then paid attention to the old captain, whose simplicity and honesty are charming. i need not point out to you, jack, that the good old man became like wax in his lordship's hands. he even revealed his ambition of finding an alliance for the girl with some noble house or sprig of quality, attracted by the report of her fortune. he was also simple enough to imagine that any young nobleman, a younger son, who would take a girl for her money, must needs be a miracle of virtue, and beyond all considerations of money. so far i am quite correct, i believe." "your ladyship is quite correct, so far." in fact, the captain's ambitions were the common theme of ridicule in the pump room and in the gardens. "he then came to see me, and engaged me as an old friend and one fully acquainted with his qualities----" "virtues, you mean, madam." "qualities, i said--to make myself a friend of the fair molly. this i did. she showed me the amazing collection of jewels which she possesses, and i gave her advice on certain points. she came here and i taught her something of the fashions in dress, carriage, and behaviour. she is an apt pupil, but lacking in respect for the manners of the polite world. i then find my lord entering into further confidential discourse with the captain. he even went on board your ship, and was by you escorted over the whole vessel. he took so great an interest in everything that you were surprised, and at parting he drank a glass of wine to the health of the fair molly." "quite true." i suppose that the captain had told molly, who told lady anastasia. "very well. you see that i know something. but there is a great deal more. at the next assembly, where molly went with me, having been dressed by my own maid in better taste, and without the barbaric splendour of so many gold chains and precious stones, lord fylingdale took her out before all the ladies--the norfolk ladies being more than commonly observant of pedigree and lineage--and danced the first minuet with her and the first of the country dances. what was this, i ask you, but an open proclamation to the world that he was in love with this girl--the daughter of a town full of sailors? so, at least, it was interpreted, i hear, by some of the company. others, out of sheer jealousy and envy, would not so acknowledge the action." "it was not so interpreted by the captain nor by molly herself." "tut, tut" (she rapped my fingers smartly with her fan), "what signifies their opinion? as if they know anything of the meaning of things, even when they are done in broad daylight, so to speak, and in presence of all the fashion in the place. why, jack, there was not a girl in the town, who, if such an honour had been done to her, would not have gone home that evening to see in the looking-glass a coronet already on her head. "and then came the conclusion. oh, the beautiful conclusion! the romantic conclusion when that misguided young gentleman called tom rising endeavoured to carry her off. 'twas a gallant attempt, and would have succeeded, i doubt not----" "madam, with submission--you know not molly." "i know my own sex, jack--and i know that a man is never liked the less for showing courage. however, lord fylingdale took the matter into his own hands--rode after her--fought the unlucky tom and brought back the lady. i am still, i believe, correct." "you are quite correct, madam, so far as i know." "the next day lord fylingdale called at the captain's house to inquire after the lady's health. he saw the captain; he saw the lady herself, who was none the worse, but rather much the better for the excitement of the adventure and the delightful sight of two gentlemen trying to kill each other for her sake. he also saw the lady's mother, who came out of the kitchen, her red arms white with dough and flour, to receive the noble lord. her lively sallies only made him the more madly in love with the girl." how had she learned all this? i cannot tell. but ladies of wealth can always, i believe, find out things, and servants know what goes on. lady anastasia continued her narrative. "next day my lord sent his secretary, mr. semple, as an ambassador to the captain. he was instructed to ask formally the hand of the captain's ward in the name of his master. this he did, the captain not being able to disguise his joy and pride at this most unexpected honour. now, sir, you perceive that i do know the secrets of that young lady. this morning he has again visited the house, and he received the consent--no doubt it was with disguised joy--of the lady herself. and you have just come from her. she has told you of her fine lover and of her engagement." i made no reply. "i will tell you more. my lord desires a private marriage and a marriage very soon. ha! do i surprise you?" "madam, i perceive that he has told you all. you are quite right. the wedding, as you know, is to be in st. nicholas church to-morrow morning at six before the better sort have left their beds. and in order not to be recognised by any of the people, molly will wear a domino and her pink silk cloak." she nodded her head. and she hid her face with her fan, saying nothing for a space. when she spoke her voice was harsh. "that is the arrangement. you have understood it perfectly. well, jack, it is a very pretty business, is it not? here is a young man--only thirty, as yet--with a fine old title, an ancient name, and an ancient estate--who is bound by all the rules of his order to marry only within his own caste. he breaks all the rules; he marries a girl who is not even a gentlewoman; who belongs to the most homely folk possible. what kind of happiness do you think is likely to follow on such a marriage? you who are not altogether a fool, though you are ignorant of the ways, are the right man to marry molly. she understands you and what you like, and how you think. believe me, she can never be happy with this nobleman. sailor man, you do not understand what it means to be a great man and a nobleman in this country. from his infancy the heir must have what he wants and must do as he pleases. no one is to check his fine flow of spirits; he must believe that the whole world is made for his amusement, and that everything in the world is made for him to devour and to destroy. when such a child becomes a man, what can you expect? he wants no friends, because friendships among people like yourself are based on mutual help, and he wants no help. companions he must have; young men like himself. he need never do any kind of work. consequently, his mind is never occupied. he has no serious pursuits; therefore, of simple amusements he soon tires. can such a man be unselfish? can such a man lead a quiet and domestic life? he will rake; he will gamble; he will drink; there is nothing else for him. these will form his life. if he now and then tosses a guinea to some poor wretch, it is counted as an act of the highest charity. the most virtuous of noblemen may also be the most profligate." "is this what one is to think of lord fylingdale?" "think what you please, jack. should you, however, hear that the marriage was forbidden, what should you say?" "forbidden? the marriage forbidden? but how? why? it is to take place to-morrow." "i don't know. answer my question." "madam, i cannot answer it. if it is true that lord fylingdale is the kind of gentleman whose character you have drawn, there is nothing i should more rejoice to see. if, however----" "you may go, jack. you may go. i dare say something is going to happen to-morrow, at six in the morning, at st. nicholas church. yes, something will probably happen. the bride will be recognised by her black domino and her pink silk cloak. thank you, jack. you are a very simple young man; as simple as you are honest, and a woman can turn you round her finger." i went away wondering. i did not understand, being as she said, so simple that i had myself actually given her the information that she desired. i have since learned that the passion of jealousy and nothing else filled her soul and inspired all this reading of lord fylingdale's actions. in his conduct at the assembly she saw the beginning of his passion; his own explanation that he wanted to get her money only made her more jealous, because, although she fully believed that statement, she saw no way of getting at the fortune without marrying the girl. as for his visits to the house, i suppose that she simply caused him to be watched and followed, while her maid, who played the spy for her, could from a certain point in the road look into the parlour when the window was thrown open. it was easy for such a jealous woman to surmise the truth; to jump at the conclusion that, in spite of all his protestations, lord fylingdale had come to the conclusion that he must marry the girl; that his rescue made her grateful and filled her with admiration for his courage; that he sent his secretary to open the business, and that he followed up this message by a formal visit from himself when he placed the lady in a chair at the window and bent over her and kissed her hand. this was not all. when he told lady anastasia that he had no further occasion for her services, and that she had better go back to london at once all her jealousy flared up. she thus divined, at once, that she was to be sent out of the way, so that when she next met him some of the business might have blown over and she herself might be less indignant at his treatment of her. however, something, she said, was going to happen. what would happen? for my own part, i was restless and uneasy. what would happen? had i known more about the wrath of a jealous woman i should have been more uneasy. something was going to happen; could i go to the captain and warn him as to the character of the lover? why, i knew nothing. all that talk about the heir to rank and riches meant nothing except to show the dangers of such a position. a man so born, so brought up, must of necessity be more tempted than other men in the direction of selfishness, indulgence, luxury, laziness, and want of consideration for others. it is surely a great misfortune to be born rich, if one would only think so. the common lot is best, with the necessity of work. all molly's misfortunes came from that money of hers. her father very wisely concealed from his wife the full extent of his wealth, so that she remained in her homely ways, and the captain also concealed from molly until she grew up, the nature of her fortune. why could he not conceal it altogether from the world? then--but it is useless to think what would have happened. most of our lives are made up with mending the troubles made by our own sins or our own follies. poor molly was about to suffer from her father's sin in having so much worldly wealth. chapter xxxi the "society" again the "society" continued to meet, but irregularly, during this period of excitement when everybody was busy making money out of the company, or joining in the amusements, or looking on. the coffee house attracted some of the members; the tavern others; the gardens or the long room others. it must be confessed that the irregularities of attendance and the absences and the many new topics of discourse caused the evenings to be much more animated than of old, when there would be long periods of silence, broken only by some reference to the arrival or departure of a ship, the decease of a townsman, or the change in the weather. this evening the meeting consisted, at first, of the vicar and the master of the school only. "we are the faithful remnant," said the vicar, taking his chair. "the mayor, no doubt, is at the coffee house, the alderman at the tavern, and the doctor in the long room. the captain, i take it, as at the elbow of his noble friend." the master of the school hung up his hat and took his usual place. then he put his hand into his pocket. "i have this day received ..." at the same moment the vicar put his hand into his pocket and began in the same words. "i have this day received ..." both stopped. "i interrupted you, mr. pentecrosse," said the vicar. "nay, sir; after you." "let us not stand on ceremony, mr. pentecrosse. what have you received?" "i have received a letter from london." "mine is from cambridge. you were about to speak of your letter?" "it concerns sam semple, once my pupil, now secretary to the lord fylingdale, who has his quarters overhead." "what does your correspondent tell you about sam? that he is the equal of mr. pope and the superior to mr. addison, or that his verses are echoes--sound without sense--trash and pretence? though they cost me a guinea." "the letter is a reply i addressed to my cousin, zackary pentecrosse, a bookseller in little britain. i asked him to tell me if he could learn something of the present position and reputation of sam semple, who gives himself, i understand, great airs at the coffee house as a wit of the first standing and an authority in matters of taste. with your permission i will proceed to read aloud the portion which concerns our poet. here is the passage." "you ask me to tell you what i know of the poet sam semple. i do not know, it is true, all the wits and poets; but i know some, and they know others, so one can learn something about all those who frequent dolly's and the chapter house, and the other coffee houses frequented by the poets. none of them, at first, knew or had heard of the name. at last one was found who had seen a volume bearing this name, and published by subscription. 'sir,' he said, ''tis the veriest trash; a schoolboy should be trounced for writing such bad verses.' but, i asked him, 'he is said to be received and welcomed by the wits.' 'they must be,' he replied, 'the wits of wapping, or the poets of turnagain lane. the man is not known anywhere.' so with this i had to be contented for a time. then i came across one who knew this would-be poet. 'i was once myself,' he said, 'at my last guinea when i met mr. samuel semple. he was in rags, and he was well-nigh starving. i gave him a sixpenny dinner in a cellar, where i myself was dining at the time. he told me that he had spent the money subscribed for his book, instead of paying the printer; that he was dunned and threatened for the debt; that if he was arrested, he must go the fleet or to one of the compters; that he must then go to the common side, and would starve. in a word, that he was on his last legs. these things he told me with tears, for, indeed, cold and hunger--he had no lodging--had brought him low. after he had eaten his dinner and borrowed a shilling he went away, and i saw him no more for six months, when i met him in covent garden. he was now dressed in broadcloth, fat, and in good ease. at first he refused to recognise his former companion in misery. but i persisted. he then told me that he had been so fortunate as to be of service to my lord fylingdale, into whose household he had entered. he, therefore, defied his creditors, and stood at bed and board at the house of his noble patron. now, sir, it is very well known that any service rendered to this nobleman must be of a base and dishonourable nature. such is the character of this most profligate of lords. a professed rake and a most notorious gambler. he is no longer admitted into the society of those of his own rank; he frequents hells where the play is high, but the players are doubtful. he is said to entertain decoys, one of whom is an old ruined gamester, named sir harry malyns, and another, a half-pay captain, a bully and a sharper, who calls himself a colonel. he is to be seen at the house of the lady anastasia, the most notorious woman in london, who every night keeps the bank at hazard for the profit of this noble lord and his confederates. it is in the service of such a man that mr. semple has found a refuge. what he fulfills in the way of duty i know not.' i give you, cousin, the words of my informant. i have since inquired of others, and i find confirmation everywhere of the notorious character of lord fylingdale and his companions. nor can i understand what service a poet can render to a man of such a reputation living such a life." "do you follow, sir?" my father asked, laying down the letter, "or shall i read it again?" "nay, the words are plain. but, mr. pentecrosse, they are serious words. they concern very deeply a certain lady whom we love. lord fylingdale has been with us for a month. he bears a character, here, at least, of the highest kind. it is reported, i know not with what truth, that he is actually to marry the captain's ward, molly. there is, however, no doubt that molly's fortune has grown so large as to make her a match for any one, however highly placed." "i fear that it is true." "then, what foundation has this gentleman for so scandalous a report?" "indeed, i do not know. my cousin, the book-seller, expressly says that he has no knowledge of sam semple." "mr. pentecrosse, i am uneasy. i hear that the gentlemen of the company are circulating ugly rumours about one colonel lanyon, who has been playing high and has won large sums--larger than any of the company can afford to lose. they have resolved to demand and await explanations. there are whispers also which concern lord fylingdale as well. these things make one suspicious. then i also have received a letter. it is in reply to one of my own addressed to an old friend at cambridge. my questions referred to the great scholar and eminent divine who takes greek for hebrew. "you ask me if i know anything about one benjamin purdon, clerk in holy orders. there can hardly be two persons of that name, both in holy orders. the man whom i know by repute is a person of somewhat slight stature, his head bigger than befits his height. he hath a loud and hectoring voice; he assumes, to suit his own purposes, the possession of learning and piety. of theological learning he has none, so far as i know. of greek art, combined with modern manners, he is said to be a master. '_inglese italianato diavolo incarnato_' is the proverb. he was formerly tutor on the grand tour to the young lord fylingdale, whom he led into those ways of corruption and profligacy which have made that nobleman notorious. he is also the reputed author of certain ribald verses that pass from hand to hand among the baser sort of our university scholars. i have made inquiries about him, with these results. it is said that where lord fylingdale is found this worthy ecclesiastic is not far off. there was last year a scandal at bath, in which his name was mentioned freely. there was also--but this is enough for one letter!" the vicar read parts of this letter twice over, so as to lend the words greater force. "the man says publicly that he was tutor to lord fylingdale on the grand tour. i have myself heard him. on one occasion he proclaimed with loud voice the private virtues of his patron. sir, i very much fear that we have discovered a nest of villains. pray god we be not too late." "amen," said my father. "but what can we do?" "ay, what can we do? to denounce lord fylingdale on this evidence would be impossible. to allow this marriage to take place without warning the captain would be a most wicked thing." "let us send for jack," said my father. "the boy is only a simple sailor, but he loves the girl. he will now be aboard his ship." it is not far from the "crown" to the quay, nor from the quay to any of the ships in port. i was sitting in the cabin, melancholy enough, about eight o'clock or so, just before the sunset gun fired from the redoubt, when i heard a shout--"_lady of lynn_, ahoy!" you may be sure that i obeyed the summons with alacrity. no one else had yet arrived at the "crown." the vicar laid both letters before me. then, as when one strikes a spark in the tinder and the match ignites, flaming up, and the darkness vanishes, so did the scheme of villainy unfold itself--not all at once--one does not at one glance comprehend a conspiracy so vile. but part, i say, i did understand. "sir," i gasped. "this is more opportune than you suspect. to-morrow morning--at six--at st. nicholas church they are to be married secretly. oh! a gambler--a rake--one who has wasted his patrimony--to marry molly, our molly! sir, you will interfere--you will do something. it is the villain sam; he was always a liar--a cur--a villain." "steady, boy, steady!" said my father. "it helps not to call names." "it is partly revenge. he dared to make love to molly three years ago. the captain cudgelled him handsomely--and i was there to see. it is revenge in part. he hath brought down this noble lord to marry an heiress knowing the misery he is preparing for her. oh! sam--if i had thee here!" "steady, boy," said my father again. "who spread abroad the many virtues of this noble villain? sam semple--in his service--a most base and dishonourable service. mr. purdon, the man who writes ribald verses." i thought of the lady anastasia, but refrained. she at least had nothing to do with this marriage. so far, however, there was much explained. "what shall we do?" "we must prevent the marriage of to-morrow. the captain knows nothing of it. lord fylingdale persuaded molly. he cannot marry her publicly because he says that he cannot join a wedding feast with people so much below him. molly shall not keep that engagement if i have to lock the door and keep the key." "better than that, jack," said the vicar. "take these two letters. show them to molly and ask her to wait while the captain makes inquiries. if lord fylingdale is an honourable man he will court inquiry. if not, then we are well rid of a noble knave." i took the letters and ran across the empty market-place. on my way i saw the captain. he was walking towards the "crown" with hanging head. let us first deal with him. he did not observe me, being in gloomy meditation, but passed me by unnoticed, entered the "crown," hung up his hat on its usual peg, and put his stick in its accustomed corner. then he took his seat and looked round. "i am glad," he said, "that there are none present except you two. my friends, i am heavy at heart." "so are we," said the vicar. "but go on, captain." "you have heard, perhaps, a rumour of what has been arranged." "there are rumours of many kinds. the place is full of rumours. it is rumoured that a certain colonel lanyon is a sharper. it is also rumoured that sam semple is a villain. it is further rumoured that the reverend benjamin purdon is a disgrace to the cloth. and there is yet another rumour. what is your rumour, captain?" "lord fylingdale proposes to marry molly. and i have accepted. and she has accepted. but it was to be a profound secret." "it is so profound a secret that the company at the gardens this evening are talking about nothing else." the captain groaned. "i have received a letter," he said. "i do not believe it, but the contents are disquieting. there is no signature. read it." the vicar read it: "captain crowle,--sir,--you are a very simple old man; you are so ignorant of london and of the fashionable world that you do not even know that lord fylingdale, to whom you are about to give your ward, is the most notorious gambler, rake, and profligate in the whole of that quarter where the people of fashion and of quality carry on their profligate lives. in the interests of innocence and virtue make some inquiry into the truth of this statement before laying your lovely ward in the arms of the villain who has come to lynn with no other object than to secure her fortune." "it is an anonymous letter," said the vicar. "but there is something to be said in support of it. from what source did you derive your belief in the virtues of this young nobleman?" "from sam semple." "who is in the service of his lordship. i know not what he does for him, but if he is turned out of that service he will infallibly be clapped into a debtor's prison." "there is also that grave and reverend divine----" "the man purdon. he is notorious for writing ribald verses, and for leading a life that is a disgrace to his profession." "there is also the lady anastasia." "i know nothing about her ladyship, except that she keeps the bank, as they call it, every evening, and that the gaming table allures many to their destruction." "my friend," said the captain, "what am i to do?" "you must make inquiry. you must tell lord fylingdale that things have been brought to you; that you cannot believe them--if, as is possible, you do not; but that you must make inquiries before trusting your ward to his protection. you are her guardian, captain." "i am more than her guardian; i love her better than if she was my own child." "we know you do, captain. therefore, write a letter to him instantly. there is yet time to prevent the marriage. tell him these things. say that you must have time to make these inquiries. i will help you with the letter. and tell him, as well, that you must have time to draw up settlements. if he is honest, he will consent to this investigation into his private character. if he wants molly, and not her money bag, he will at once agree to the settlement of her fortune upon herself." "i am an old fool, i suppose," said the captain. "i have believed everything and everybody. yet i cannot--no, my friends, i cannot think that this man, so proud, so brave, who risked his life for molly, is what this letter says." "other letters say the same thing. now, captain, let us write." the letter, which was dictated by the vicar, was duly written, signed, and sealed. then it was sent upstairs, without the delay of a moment, to his lordship's private room. chapter xxxii a respite i was as one who carries a respite for a man already in the cart and on his way to tyburn; or i was one who himself receives a respite on the way to tyburn. for, if the charges in those letters were true, there could be no doubt as to the results of an inquiry. now could there be any doubt that lord fylingdale, in such a case, would refuse an inquiry? i ran, therefore, as if everything depended on my speed, and i arrived breathless. molly was alone walking about the garden restlessly. the sun was now set, but the glow of the sky lingered, and her face was flushed in the western light. "jack," she cried, "i thought we had parted this afternoon. what has happened? you have been running. what is it?" "a good deal has happened, molly. for one thing, you will not be married to-morrow morning." "why not? is my lord ill?" "not that i know of. but you will not be married to-morrow morning." "you talk in riddles, jack." "would you like to put off the wedding, molly?" "alas! if i could put it off altogether! i am down-hearted over it, jack. it weighs me down like lead. but there is no escape." "i think i have in my pocket a means of escape--a respite, at least--unless there are worse liars in the world than those we have at lynn." "liars at lynn, jack? who are they? oh, jack, what has happened?" i sat down on a garden bench. "molly," i said, "you hold the private character of lord fylingdale in the highest esteem, do you not?" "there is no better man living. this makes me ashamed of being so loath to marry him." "well, but, molly, consider. who hath bestowed this fine character upon his lordship?" "everybody who knows him--sam semple, for one. he is never weary of singing the praises of his patron." "he is a grateful soul, and, on his own account, a pillar of truth. i will show you presently what an ornament he is to truth. who else?" "the reverend benjamin purdon, once his tutor. surely he ought to know." "surely. nobody ought to know better. i will show you presently how admirable a witness to character this reverend divine must be esteemed." "there is sir harry malyns, who assured us that his lordship is thought to be too virtuous for the world of fashion." "he is himself, like the parson, a fine judge of character. is that all?" "no. the lady anastasia herself spoke to me of his nobility." "she has also spoken to me--of other things. see here, molly." i lugged out the two letters. "what i have here contains the characters of all these excellent persons; the latest scandals about them, their reputation, and their practices." "but, jack, what scandals? what reputations?" "you shall see, molly. oh, the allegations may be false, one and all! for what i know, sam may have the wings of an archangel and mr. purdon may be already overripe for the new jerusalem. but you shall read." i offered her the letters. "no," she said; "read them yourself." "the first, then, is from my father's first cousin, zackary pentecrosse, a bookseller in little britain, which is a part of london. he is, i believe, a respectable, god-fearing man. you will observe that he does not vouch for the truth of his information." i then read, at length, the letter which you have already heard. "what do you think, molly?" "i don't know what to think. is the world so wicked?" "here is another letter concerning the reverend benjamin purdon. observe that this is another and an independent witness." so i read the second letter, which you have also heard. "what do you think of this worthy gentleman, molly?" "oh, jack, i am overwhelmed! tell me more what it means." "it means, my dear, that a ruined gamester thought to find an heiress who would know nothing of his tarnished reputation. she must be rich. all he wanted was her money. she must not have her money tied up. it must be all in his own hands, to do with it what he chose; that is to say, to dissipate and waste it in riot and raking and gambling." "lord fylingdale? jack! think of his face! think of his manners! are they such as you would expect in a rake?" "there are, perhaps, different kinds of rakes. tom rising would spend the night drinking and bawling songs. another kind would practice wickedness as eagerly, but with more politeness. what do i know of such men? certain i am that lord fylingdale would not scour the streets and play the mohock; but that he has found other vices more pleasant and more (apparently) polite is quite possible." "i don't understand, jack. all the gentlemen, like mr. rising, drink and sing. do all gentlemen who do not drink practice other vices?" i think that i must have learned the wisdom of what followed from some book. "well, molly, you have seen the vicar taste a glass of wine. he will roll it in the glass; he will hold it to the light, admiring the colour; he will inhale the fragrance; he will drink it slowly, little by little, sipping the contents, and he will not take more than a single glass or two at the most. in the same time, tom rising would have gulped down a whole bottle. one man wants to gratify many senses; the other seeks only to get drunk as quickly as he can. so, i take it, with the forbidden pleasures of the world. one man may cultivate his taste; the other may be satisfied with the coarse and plentiful debauchery. this is not, however, talk for honest folk like you and me." "go on with your story, jack. never mind the different ways of wickedness." "well, he heard of an heiress. she belonged to a town remote from fashion; a town of simple merchants and sailors; she was very rich; much richer than he at first believed." "who told him about this heiress?" "a creature called sam semple, whom the captain once cudgelled. why, molly, it was revenge. in return for the cudgelling he would place you and your fortune in the hands of a man who would bring misery upon you and ruin on your fortune. heavens, how the thing works out! and it happened just in the nick of time that a spring was found in the town--a spring whose medicinal properties----" "ha!" i jumped to my feet. "molly, who found that spring? sam semple. who wrote to the doctor about it? sam semple. who spread abroad a report that the physicians of london were sending their patients to lynn? sam semple. how many patients have come to us from london? none--save and except only the party of those who came secretly in his lordship's train--to sing his praises and work his wicked will. why, molly." i burst into a laugh, for now i understood, as one sometimes does understand, suddenly and without proof other than the rapid conclusion, the full meaning of the whole. "molly, i say, there has never been any medicinal spring here at all; the doctor's well is but common spring water; there are no cures; the whole business is a plan--a bite--an invention of sam semple!" "jack; have a care. how can that be, when the doctor has a long list of cures?" "i know not. but i do know that sam semple invented the spa in order to bring down this invasion of sharpers and gamblers and heiress hunters. oh, what a liar he is! what revenge! what cunning! what signal service has this servant of the devil rendered to his master!" truly, i was carried out of myself by this discovery which explained everything. "so," i went on, "they came here all the way from london, their lying excuse that they were ordered here by their physicians, and we, poor simple folk, fell into the snare; all the country side fell into the snare, and we have been fooled into drinking common water and calling it what you please; and we have built gardens and engaged musicians, and created a spa, and--oh, lord! lord! what a liar he is! what a liar! this comes, i suppose, of being a poet!" then molly laid her hand upon my arm. "jack," she said, very seriously, "do you really believe this story? only consider what it means to me." molly was more concerned about lord fylingdale than about sam semple. "i believe every word of it, molly. i believe that they have all joined in the conspiracy--more or less; that they have all got promises; and that to-morrow morning, if you do not refuse to meet this man in st. nicholas church, you will bring upon yourself nothing but misery and ruin." "i have promised to meet him. i must at least send him a message, if only to say that i shall not come." "i should like to send him nothing. but you are right. it is best to be courteous. well, you may send him a letter. i will myself take it to the 'crown.'" "but afterwards, jack. what shall we do afterwards? if he is innocent he will take offence. if not----" "if you were engaged to marry a young merchant, molly, or to a skipper, and you heard rumours of bankruptcy, drink, or evil courses, what would you do?" "i would tell him that i had heard such and such about him and i should ask for explanations." "then do exactly the same with lord fylingdale. he is accused of certain things. the captain must make inquiry--he is bound to inquire. why, the vicar himself says that he would, if necessary, in order to ascertain the truth, travel all the way to london, there to learn the foundations, if any, for these charges, and afterwards into gloucestershire, where his country mansion stands, to learn on the spot what the tenants and the people of the country know of him." "but suppose he refuses explanations. he is too proud to be called to account." "then send him packing. lord or no lord, proud or humble. if he furnishes explanations--if these things are untrue--then--why, then, you will consider what to do. but, molly, i do not believe that any explanations will be forthcoming, and that your noble lover will carry it off to the end with the same lofty pride and cold mien." "let us go into the parlour, jack. there are the captain's writing materials. help me to say what is proper. oh! is it possible? can i believe it? are these things true? that proud man raised above his fellows by his virtues and his rank and his principles. jack, he risked his life for me." "ask no more questions, molly. we must have explanations. let us write the letter." it was molly's first letter; the only letter, perhaps, that she will ever write in all her life. certainly she had never written one before, nor has she ever written one since. like most housewives, her writing is only wanted for household accounts, receipts for puddings and pies, and the labelling of her bottles and jars. i have the letter before me at this moment. it is written in a large sprawling hand, and the spelling is not such as would satisfy my father. naturally she looked to me for advice. i had written many letters to my owners and to foreign merchants about cargoes and the like, and was therefore able to advise the composition of a letter which should be justly expressed and to the point. "honoured lord,--this is from me at the present moment in my guardian's parlour. [writing parlour, you see, when i as mate of the ship should have written port or harbour.] it is to inform you that intelligence has been brought by letters from london and cambridge. touching the matters referred to in these letters, i have to report for your satisfaction, that they call your lordship in round terms, a gamester, and a ruined rake; and your companions at the spa, viz, sam semple, the parson, the ricketty old beau, and the colonel, simple rogues, common cheats, and sharpers. shall not, therefore, meet your lordship at the church to-morrow morning as instructed. awaiting your lordship's explanations and commands.--your most obedient, humble servant, "molly." this letter i folded, sealed, addressed, and dropped into my pocket. then i bade molly good-night, entreated her to be thankful for her escape, and so left her with a light heart; verily it seemed as if the sadness of the last two months had been wholly and suddenly lifted. on my way back to the "crown" i passed the lady anastasia's lodging just as her chair was brought to the house. i opened the door for her and stood hat in hand. "why, it is jack," she cried. "it is the sailor jack--the constant lover. have you anything more to tell me?" "only that molly will not keep that appointment of to-morrow morning." "oh! that interesting appointment in st. nicholas church. may a body ask why the ceremony has been postponed?" "things have been disclosed at the last moment. fortunately, in time." "what things, and by whom?" "by letter. it is stated as a fact well known that lord fylingdale is nothing better than a ruined rake and a notorious gamester." "indeed? the excellent lord fylingdale? impossible! quite impossible! the illustrious example of so many virtues! the explanations will be, i am sure, complete and satisfactory. ruined? a rake? a notorious gamester? what next will the world say? does his lordship know of this discovery? not yet. you said it was a discovery, did you not? well, my friend, i am much obliged to you for telling me. you are quite sure molly will not be there? very good of you to tell me. for my own part i start for london quite early--at five o'clock. good-bye, jack." then i went in to the "crown," where i learned that the captain had been reading another letter containing accusations as bad as those in the other two. so we fell to talking over the business, and we congratulated the captain that he had sent that letter; and we resolved that he should refuse to receive the villain sam semple; and that the vicar should, if necessary, proceed to london, and there learn what he could concerning the past history and the present reputation of the noble suitor. meantime, i said no more about the intended marriage at st. nicholas church and the abandonment of the plan. as things turned out, it would have been far better had i told the captain and had we both planted ourselves as sentinels at the door, so as to be quite sure that molly did not go forth at six in the morning. that evening, after leaving me, lady anastasia sent a note to lord fylingdale. "i am leaving lynn early to-morrow morning. i expect to be in london in two days. shall write to molly." chapter xxxiii a wedding i rowed myself aboard that evening in a strange condition of exultation, for i had now no doubt--no doubt at all--that the charges were true, and that a conspiracy of the most deadly kind was not only discovered, but also checked. and i could not but admire the craft and subtlety displayed by the favourite of the muses in devising a plan by which it was made possible for the conspirators to come all together without the least suspicion to the town of lynn. how else could they come? for reasons political? but lynn is a borough in the hands of sir robert walpole, of houghton. nobody could stand against him, nor could any one in lord fylingdale's rank visit the town in its ordinary condition without receiving an invitation to houghton if sir robert was there. unless, indeed, there were reasons why he should not be visited or received. what sam had not expected was, without doubt, the wonderful success of his deception; the eagerness with which the country round accepted his inventions; the readiness with which they drank those innocent waters; the miraculous cures effected; and the transformation of the venerable old port and trading town into a haunt and resort of fashion and the pursuit of pleasure. thinking of all these things, and in blissful anticipation of the discomfiture of all the conspirators, there was an important thing that i quite forgot, namely, to send molly's letter to her suitor in his room at the "crown." i carried the letter in my pocket. i undressed and lay down in my bunk. i slept with a light heart, dreaming only of things pleasant, until the morning, when the earliest stroke of the hammer from the yard and the quay woke me up. it was then half-past five. i sat up. i rubbed my eyes. i then suddenly remembered that the letter was in my pocket still. it was, i say, half-past five. the engagement was for six o'clock. i might have to run, yet, to stop lord fylingdale. it does not take long to dress. you may imagine that i did not spend time in powdering my hair. in a quarter of an hour i was over the side of the ship and in my dingey. by the clock on the common stathe it was five minutes to six when i landed and made her fast. i climbed the stairs, and ran as fast as my legs could carry me to the "crown inn." as i reached the door the clock struck six. was lord fylingdale in his room? i was too late. he had left the house some ten minutes before, and had been carried in his chair across the market-place. i followed. it was already five minutes past the hour. i should find him in the church, chafing at the delay. i should give him the letter and retire. the market-place was filled with the market people and with the townspeople who came to buy. i pushed across, stepping over a basket, and jostled by a woman with poultry and vegetables. it was, however, seven or eight minutes past six when i arrived at the church; the doors of the south porch were open. within i heard the sound of voices--or, at least, of one voice. i looked in. heavens! what had happened? not only was i late with my letter, but--but--could i believe my eyes? molly herself stood before the altar; facing her was lord fylingdale, who held her hand. within the rails stood the reverend benjamin purdon; beside him, the clerk, to make the responses. and the minister, when i arrived, was actually saying the words which the bridegroom repeats after the minister, completing in effect the marriage ceremony. "i, ludovick, take thee, mary, to my wedded wife ..." and so on according to the form prescribed. and again, the words beginning-"with this ring i thee wed...." i stood and listened, lost in wonder. then came the prayer prescribed. after which the clergyman joined their hands together, saying:-"those whom god hath joined together let no man put asunder." i heard no more. i sat down on the nearest bench. what was the meaning of this sudden change? remember that i had left molly only a few hours before this, fully resolved that she would demand an inquiry into the statements and charges made in the two letters; resolved that she would not keep that engagement; her admiration for the proud, brave, noble creature, her lover, turned into loathing. and now--now, in the early morning, with her letter in my pocket stating her change of purpose--i found her at the altar, and actually married. "whom god hath joined together, let no man put asunder." what if the man purdon was all that he was described? the priestly office confers rights and powers which are independent of the man who holds that office. whatever his private wickedness, purdon was a clergyman, and therefore he could marry people. molly stood before the altar as had been arranged; she wore a black silk domino; she had on a pink silk cloak with a hood drawn over her head, so that she was quite covered up and concealed. but i knew her by her stature, which was taller than the common, and by the dress, which had been agreed upon. then the bridegroom offered his hand and led the bride into the vestry. they were to sign the marriage register. and here i rose and slunk away. i say that i slunk away. if you like it better, i crawled away, for i was sick at heart. the thing which i most dreaded, the marriage of our girl to a rake and a gamester, had been actually accomplished. misery and ruin; misery and ruin; misery and ruin would be her lot. and in my pocket was her letter asking for explanations--and withdrawing her promise for the morrow! could one believe one's senses? i crawled away, ashamed for the first time in my life of the girl i loved. women, i said to myself, are poor, weak creatures. they believe everything; lord fylingdale must have been with her early. he had but to deny the whole; she accepted the denial; despite her resolution she walked with him to the church as the lamb goes to the shambles. oh, molly! molly! who would have believed it of you? i left the church and went away. i thought of going to the captain; of telling my father; of telling the vicar; but it seemed like treachery, and i refrained. instead, i walked back to the quay, and paddled to the ship, where presently the barges came alongside and the day's work began. fortunate it is for a man that at moments of great unhappiness his work has to be done and he is desirous to put aside his sorrow and to think upon his duty. but, alas! poor molly! who could have believed it possible? well, you see, i did not follow this wedding to an end. had i gone into the vestry i should have been witness of something very unexpected. why, had not the lady anastasia--who, i now understand, was tortured by jealousy--promised that "something should happen"? * * * * * the clergyman had the registers lying on the table open. he took a pen and filled in the forms. he then offered the pen to the bride. "my lady," he said. "i must ask your ladyship to sign the register. in duplicate, if you please." the bride sat down, and in a large bold hand wrote her name, "mary miller." then the bridegroom took the pen and signed, "fylingdale." the clergyman sprinkled the pounce box over the names and shut up the books, which he gave to the clerk. this officer took the books and locked them in the great trunk which held the papers and books of the church, putting the key in his pocket. "and now," said mr. purdon, "let me congratulate my noble patron and the newly made countess on this auspicious event. i have brought with me a bottle of the finest port the 'crown' possesses, and i venture to drink health, happiness, and prosperity." so saying he produced a bottle and glasses. the bride without saying a word inclined her head to the bridegroom and drank off her glass. lord fylingdale, who looked, if one may say so of a bridegroom, peevish and ill at ease, raised his glass. "to your happiness, molly!" he said. so, all was finished. "you are going home, molly?" he asked. "for the present. that is to say, for a day or two it will be best. i shall claim you very soon. there is no one but ourselves in the vestry," for the clerk, having locked the box and accepted the guinea bestowed upon him by the bridegroom, was now tramping down the church and through the porch. no one but themselves was in the vestry or the church. "you may, therefore, take off your domino." "as your lordship pleases." lord fylingdale started. whose voice was that? "as you order, i obey." so the bride removed her domino and threw back the hood. the bridegroom started. "what is this?" he cried furious, with certain words which were out of place in a church. [illustration: "what is this?" he cried furious, with certain words which were out of place in a church.] "lady anastasia!" cried mr. purdon. "good lord! then we are all undone!" "what does it mean? tell me, she devil--what does it mean? where is molly? but this is play acting. this is not a marriage." "i fear, my lord," said the parson, "that it is a marriage. the registers are in the strong box. they cannot be altered." "go after the clerk, man. order him to give up the keys. tear the pages out of the registers." "i cannot," said mr. purdon. "i dare not. the man is a witness of this marriage; he has seen the entry in the register. i dare not alter them or destroy a single page. i have done a great deal for your lordship, but this thing i cannot do. it is a marriage, i say. you are married to the lady anastasia here." "talk! talk! go after the man. bring back the man. tear the keys from him. silence the man! buy his silence! buy--i will murder him, if i must, in order to stop his tongue." "your lordship forgets your bride--your happy, smiling, innocent bride!" he cursed her. he raised his hand as if to strike her down, but forbore. "i told you," she continued, "that in everything i was at your service--except in one thing. tear the registers; murder the clerk; but the bride will be left. and if you murder her as well you will be no nearer the possession of the lovely molly." the bridegroom sank into a chair. he was terrible to look at, for his wrath and disappointment deprived him of the power of speech. where was now the cold and haughty front? it was gone. he sat in the chair, upright, his face purple, his eyes starting from his head as one who hath some kind of fit. the clergyman, still in his white surplice, looked on and trembled, for his old pupil was in a murderous frame of mind. there was no knowing whom he might murder. besides, he had before this divined the true meaning of the visit to lynn; and he foresaw ruin to himself as well as his patron. lord fylingdale turned upon him suddenly and cursed him for a fool, an ass, a villain, a traitor. "you are in the plot," he said. "you knew all along. you have been suborned." "my lord--my lord--have patience. what could i know? i was bidden to be here at six to marry you. i supposed that the bride was the fair miss molly. i could not tell; i knew nothing. the lady was in a domino. it is irregular to be married in a domino. but your lordship wished it. what could i do?" "send for the key, then, and destroy the registers." "alas! my lord, it is now, you may be sure, all over the town that you have been married, and to miss molly." "where is molly? where is molly, then? why did she keep away?" the bride looked on with her mocking smile of triumph. "you may murder me," she said, "but you will not undo the marriage. i have been married, it is true, under a false name; but i am married none the less." "you have brought ruin upon us all," her husband said. "ruin--headlong ruin. i am at my last guinea. i can raise no more money--i have no more credit. you, yourself, are as much discredited." "if you are ruined," the lady replied, "you are rightly punished. how many vows have you made to me? how many lies have you invented to keep me quiet?" "with submission, my lord," mr. purdon stammered, for terror and bewilderment held him, "this is a bad morning's work. let me advise that before the town is awake we leave the church and talk over the business in her ladyship's rooms, or elsewhere. we must be private. to curse and to swear helps nothing; nor does it help to talk of a jealous revenge. let us go." it was with a tottering step, as if he was smitten with palsy, that the bridegroom walked down the aisle. the bride put up her domino, and threw her hood over her head, and so with the parson, in silence, walked away from the church to her lodging, leaving the bridegroom to come by himself. as yet the market people had not heard the news. but the news spread. the clerk told his wife. "i come from the church," he said. "i have witnessed the marriage of miss molly--captain crowle's molly--with the noble lord who wears the star and looks so grand--a private wedding it was. i know not why. the parson was the reverend mr. purdon, he who reads the morning prayers and preaches on sunday." then the clerk's wife, slipping on her apron--for such folk find the shelter of the apron for their hands necessary in conversation--ran round to the pump room. no one was there as yet, but the two dippers. to them she communicated the news. then she went on to the market and told all the people of the town who were chaffering there. at seven o'clock the captain, walking in his garden, was surprised by the arrival of the horns, who stood before the house and performed a noble flourish. "what the devil is that for?" said the captain. then there arrived the butchers, with their marrowbones and cleavers, and began to make their music with zeal. the captain went out to them. up went their hats. "huzza for miss molly and her husband." "her husband? what do you mean?" "her husband--his lordship--married this morning." "what?" the captain stared in amazement. then he rushed into the house. molly was in the kitchen. "what is this?" he asked. "the butchers are here and the horns, and they swear you were married this morning, molly?" "why, captain, i have not been outside the door. i am not married, i assure you, and i begin to think, now, that i never shall be married." the captain went out and dismissed the musicians. but the thing troubled him, and he was already sick at heart on account of the last night's discourse and its discoveries. chapter xxxiv a new compact what followed, by invention and design of the pious ecclesiastic, mr. purdon, was a villainy even greater than that at first designed--more daring, more cruel. the bride, accompanied by the minister officiating in the late ceremony, walked back to her lodging. she was still exultant in the first glow and triumph of her revenge. he, on the other hand, walked downcast, stealthily glancing at his companion, his big head moving sideways like the head of a bear, his sallow cheeks paler than was customary. the bridegroom, for his part, flung himself into his chair, and so was carried to the lady's lodging. a strange wedding procession! she threw off her cloak and her domino, and stood before her newly-made lord, her eyes bright, her face flushed, her lips quivering. she was filled with revenge only half satiated; but revenge can never be wholly satisfied; and she was filled with the triumph of victory. "i have won!" she said; "you tried to deceive me again, ludovick. but i have won. you have been caught in your own toils." he took the nearest chair, sitting down in silence, but his face was dark. as she looked upon him, some of the triumph died out of her eyes; her cheek lost its glow; she began to be frightened. what would he say--or do--next? as for his reverence, he stood close to the door as if ready for instant flight. indeed, there was cause for uncertainty because the man was desperate and his sword was at his side. "silence!" he said, "or i may kill you." then there was silence. the other two did not speak. the lady threw herself upon the sofa, twisting her fingers nervously. "you have married me, you say. you shall be a happy wife. you cannot imagine how happy you will be." in a contest of tongues the woman has the best of it. "so long as you, my lord, enjoy the same happiness, or even greater, i shall not repine. you intended my happiness in another way." "you have destroyed my last chance. it is a good beginning." "a better ending, my lord. the fond mistress whom you have fooled so long becomes the wife. it is not the duty of a wife to provide for her husband. nor will the countess of fylingdale allow the earl to enter her house. she will want the proceeds of her bank for herself. in a word, my lord, you are not only my husband, but you are now privileged to provide for yourself." he sprang to his feet and fell to common and violent cursing, invoking the immediate and miraculous intervention of that power which he had all his life insulted and defied. the lady received the torrent without a word; what can one say in reply to a man who only curses? but she was afraid of him; his words were like blows; the headlong rage of the man cowed her; she bent her head and covered her face with her hands. then mr. purdon ventured to interfere. "let me speak," he said. "the thing is done. it cannot be undone. would it not be better to make the best of it? does it help any of us--does it help your lordship--to revile and to threaten?" the bridegroom turned upon him savagely. "you to speak!" he said. "you, who are too mealy mouthed and too virtuous even to tear up a page from a register." "i do not wish to be unfrocked, or to be sent to the plantations, my lord. meantime, it would be doing you the worst service in the world if i were to tear out that page." "oh! you talk--you always talk." "of old, my lord, i have sometimes talked to some purpose." "talk again, then. what do you mean by disservice? you will say next, i suppose, that this play acting was fortunate for me." "we may sometimes turn disasters into victories. if your lordship will listen----" his patron sat down again--the late storm leaving its trace in a scowling face and twitching lips. "why the devil was not molly there? how did this woman find out? how did she know that molly was not coming?" "i can answer these questions," said the lady. "molly would not come because she learned last night, just in time, certain facts in the private life of the bridegroom----" "what?" lord fylingdale betrayed his terror. "she has heard? what has she heard?" he had not, as you have heard, received molly's letter, nor had he opened the captain's letter. therefore, he knew nothing. "she had heard more than enough. you have lost your bride and her fortune. i might have warned you, but i preferred to take her place." "what has she heard?" "apparently, all that there is to be heard. not, of course, all that could be told if mr. purdon were to speak. merely things of public notoriety. that you are a gambler and a rake; that you have ruined many; that you are ruined yourself. oh! quite enough for a girl of her class to learn. in our rank we want much more before we turn our back upon a man. i, myself, know much more. yet i have married you." "she has heard--" lord fylingdale repeated. "dear, dear!" said the parson. "all this is most unfortunate--most unfortunate. your lordship has already lost your bride--lost her," he repeated; "lost her--and her fortune. is there no way out?" "who brought these reports? show me the man!" "ta-ta-ta! you need not bluster, ludovick. reports of this kind are in the air; they cling to your name; they travel with you. what? the notorious lord fylingdale? they have come, you see, at last, even to this unfashionable corner of the island. they are here, although we have done so much to declare your virtues. acknowledge that you have been fortunate so far." "are these reports your doing, madam? is this a part of your infernal jealousy?" "i do not know who put them about. it is not likely that i should start such reports--especially after the scandal at bath. i am, in fact, like his reverence here, too much involved myself. oh! we have beautiful characters--all three of us." "who told molly?" "i say that i know nothing. she has been warned. that is all i can tell you, and she has been advised to take no further steps until full explanations have been made in answer to these rumours." "full explanations," repeated mr. purdon. "dear, dear! most unfortunate! most unfortunate!" "your lordship can refer to his reverence here, or to the admirable semple; or to the immaculate sir harry; or to the colonel--that man of nice and well-known honour--for your character. but who will give them a character? understand," she said, facing him, "you had lost your bride before you got out of bed this morning. your only chance now is to imitate the example of tom rising and to carry her off. and she will then stick a knife between your ribs as she intended to do to that worthy gentleman. but no, i forgot, you cannot do that, you are already married." his reverence again interposed. "with submission, my lord, some explanations will be asked. it will not, certainly, be convenient to offer any. there is, however, one way--and only one--that i can suggest." he looked at the lady anastasia. "it will be, perhaps, at first, distasteful to her ladyship. it has, however, the very great advantage of securing the fortune, which, i take it, is what your lordship chiefly desires. as regards the girl, she is in point of manners and appearance so far beneath your lordship's notice that we need not consider her in the matter." "i care nothing about the girl, but hang me if i understand one single syllable of what you mean, or how you can secure the fortune without the girl." "it is not always necessary to carry your wife about with you. she might be left with her friends. a marriage without settlement places, i believe, a woman's fortune absolutely in the hands of her husband." neither of his listeners made the least sign of understanding what he meant. "strange!" he said. "i should have thought that this way would have been seized upon immediately. it is wonderful that you do not understand." "pray, mr. purdon," said the lady, "do not credit me, at least, with the power of following your mind in all its crookedness." "let us consider the situation. i was somewhat surprised when your lordship instructed me to come to this place. surprised and suspicious. naturally, i kept my eyes open. i very soon discovered what was proposed. here was a girl whom semple had represented to your lordship as a great heiress. you want an heiress at this juncture. i followed the course of events with satisfaction. you were civil to the girl when all the company trampled upon her; you were affable to the old fool, her guardian; you made private and personal inquiry into her fortune; you succeeded in representing yourself as a man of virtue and high principle--all this was cleverly managed. but you made one mistake. you concealed your true intentions from the lady anastasia." "it was her infernal jealousy. why couldn't she let me marry the girl and leave her in gloucestershire--out of the way?" "a great mistake. i thought that my pupil knew the sex better. jealousy, my lord, supposes love; and love can always be directed into the other channel of submission. well, the marriage was arranged; you had already taken the precaution of getting a licence. then, at the last moment, these sinister reports began. how far they can be explained away--how many others they involve; how many scandals they revive--we know not. but explanation--explanation--no, no--that would be the devil!" "go on, man. you talk forever." "had these reports been delayed but a single day--had they arrived after the marriage." "but they arrived before the marriage." "quite so; which brings me to my proposal. here you are--at your last guinea. so am i. you can raise no more money. if i were not your domestic chaplain i should be in the king's bench. i have lived on your bounty for ten years and more. i hoped to go on with the same support. to be sure i have earned my money. i have been of service on many occasions, but i am grateful, and i would, if i could, for the sake of old times, assist your lordship on this occasion." "i want all the assistance i can get. that is quite certain." "and i want all the money i can get. i always intended, somehow or other, to get a slice of this pudding. if i put it into your lordship's power to claim and to seize upon this fortune, which seems to have been snatched out of your hands at the last moment, i must have my share." "your share? what do you call your share?" "twelve thousand pounds." "twelve thousand devils!" "you can get nothing without me. if you refuse i can, at least, tell everybody the pleasant truth about this morning's work, and how the biter was bit." "go on with your proposal, then." "you will give me a promise--a bill, if you like, payable in two months--you will not be able to get through all that money in two months--for twelve thousand pounds." "it is a monstrous sum. but, on condition that you place this girl's fortune in my hands--however, it is impossible. well, you shall have my promise--on my honour as a peer." he placed his right hand upon his heart. the clergyman grinned. "your lordship gives me more than i dare to ask. it is a bill--a written document--not a promise, even on your honour as a peer. give me that and i will show you the way. stay--nothing can be done without me--i will tell you my scheme before you sign that paper. now, listen--you had already lost your bride when you arrived at the church. her ladyship most fortunately----" "how, sir, most fortunately?" "a moment. madam saw her way to the revenge of jealousy. she took the place of the bride. and she was married as miss molly; she signed the name of molly miller; the licence was in that name. the clerk who was present has, i am sure, already carried the news all over the place. we have the evidence, therefore, of the bridegroom, the parson, the clerk, the licence, the registers. who is to prove that the real molly was at home all the time? captain crowle, perhaps, though i doubt. the girl herself--but who will believe her? my lord, you have married miss molly, and not the lady anastasia." "what then?" "you have only to claim your bride." "sir. you forget that i am the bride," lady anastasia interposed, quickly. mr. purdon bowed and smiled, rubbing his hands softly. "with submission, madam. i do not advise that his lordship should carry her off, nor that he should claim her _ad mensam et torum_, as we scholars say. his principles would not, i am sure, allow that he should carry off an unmarried woman. not at all. he will leave her with her friends. indeed, he would prefer to do so. i suggest only that we should proclaim the marriage and lay hands upon the fortune." "she is to be the countess. and what am i to be?" "his lordship's best friend. you will rescue him in his deepest need; you will restore him to affluence; it will be a service, madam, of the purest and most disinterested affection, instead of an ugly and ruinous revenge. heavens! can you hesitate?" thus did he gloss over the villainy so that the poor woman almost believed that she was entering upon a course of virtuous benevolence, and, as the man said, a service of love. "but the girl--molly. she will not consent to be a countess in name." "she and her friends will protest; but they will be overborne; meantime, she has the virtue and the pride of her station. will she even consent, do you think, to call herself a countess when she is not married? why, we actually make a ladder for ourselves to climb thereby, out of her virtue." he looked at the lady no longer stealthily, but full in the face, with a smile, as if he was proposing a scheme of the noblest kind; as if there was nothing to be hidden, and there were no perjuries to be advanced. lord fylingdale, too, turned to her with a face of inquiry and doubt. "what is your lordship's opinion?" "it is a scheme of great audacity. it will require bold handling." "it shall be boldly handled, if i may advise." "it is certain to be resisted with the utmost indignation." "of that there is no doubt. but the end is also certain. nothing can withstand the evidence of our case. it is so clear that i myself am of opinion that the bride was actually miss molly." they both looked at lady anastasia, who made no response--her eyes in her lap. "the truth will lie with us three," the tempter went on. "only with us three. none of us will reveal it." "as regards jealousy, anastasia, the girl will be here, and everything will continue just as before." she threw up her arms and sprang to her feet. "oh!" she cried, "it is the most monstrous villainy." "we need not think of the girl. we must think of ourselves." "a service of love," murmured mr. purdon, "a beautiful, a noble service of love!" "the fortune is immense, anastasia. it is ridiculous that the girl should have so much. we will leave her a competence. besides, there are the jewels." lady anastasia gasped. "you yourself will adorn these jewels. it will be my greatest pleasure to atone for my ill-judged deception by giving you all those jewels--the diamonds, the rubies, the chains of pearls, and all the rest of the pretty glittering things." he took her hands, the parson looking on all the time as a physician looks on at a blood-letting or an operation. "what can that girl do with jewels? they shall all be yours. forgive me, anastasia, and let us again work together as we have already done--you and i--with no more jealousy and no more suspicions." he kissed her hand. his manner was changed almost suddenly; he became soft, caressing, and persuasive. it was the old charm which the poor lady could never resist. she suffered him to hold her hand; she allowed him to kiss her hand; her eyes grew humid. "oh!" she murmured, "i must do everything you ask, ludovick, if you are only kind." "how can i be anything but kind?" he replied, with a smile. "you must forget and forgive. the thought that all i had schemed and planned was torn from me--and by you, anastasia--by you--was too much. my mind was upset; i know not what i said. forgive me!" "oh, ludovick! i forgive." "and the jewels shall atone--the lovely jewels. you shall have them all." "you will truly give me the jewels?" "truly, my anastasia. after all, we are man and wife. henceforth we shall only live for each other. your happiness shall be mine. the jewels shall be yours." she yielded; she fell into his arms. there was a complete, a touching reconciliation! "i agree, then, purdon," said his lordship. "we both agree. it remains only to choose the best time, the best place, the best manner." "let it be the boldest manner; the most public place; before the largest company. let there be no mistake possible. leave this to me, my lord. twelve thousand pounds. your ladyship will oblige me with pen, ink, and paper? i may point out" (he turned to his former pupil with an ugly grin) "that if this promise, or bond, or bill is not met i shall proclaim the whole business from the housetop." in other words, lord fylingdale was going to declare that it was molly, and none other, who was married that morning at six o'clock, and to assume the rights and powers of a husband. so that the news of his evil reputation came, after all, too late to be of any use. and as for explanations, who would have the right to ask any explanations of a married man on behalf of his wife. chapter xxxv what does it mean? fortune was with the conspirators. everything helped them. first of all, the dippers whispered the news as a profound secret. then it was whispered about the pump room as a profound secret. then it was carried to the confectioner's; to the book shop; to the coffee houses; to the taverns; to the gardens; and talked about as an event and not a secret at all. it was, indeed extraordinary that a nobleman of lord fylingdale's rank and fortune should stoop to marry the daughter of a plain merchant of lynn; a homely creature, as the ladies declared; one who had no manners, and was actually ignorant of the polite world. it was said that she was rich. could the earl of fylingdale stoop to pick up her paltry fortune? what was the attraction, then? a bouncing figure; big hands and strong arms; fine eyes, perhaps, and there an end; for the rest, a mere common girl, no better than dozens like herself. some there were who whispered a word of ugly import in the country. "it must be witchcraft! surely," they said, "this unfortunate young man has been bewitched. some one, perhaps the negress, has exercised spells over him to his destruction. the pity of it! the pity of it! it will be three generations, at least, before the stain of this alliance can be wiped out of the family pedigree." the vicar heard the rumour. he hastened at once to find out the truth from the person most certain, as he thought, to know the facts, viz, molly herself. "i am to congratulate you, molly," he said, "or must i call you the countess of fylingdale?" "i am certainly not a countess," she replied. "why the horns came here at seven this morning and the butchers with them, all to congratulate me. what does it mean?" "then it is not true, molly? heavens, how glad i am!" "why, certainly not. i wrote to lord fylingdale last night. i told him i should not be at the church this morning, as i had promised." "then--is it not true?--may i contradict the report?" "if you please, sir. did you see jack last night after he left me?" "we did. and we learned your resolution. therefore, i was the more astonished." "oh! sir. pray do not think that i would marry a rake for a title which i do not want and should not adorn." "heavens! my dear molly, what a load you lift from my heart!" so he went away. outside, in the streets, he met the clerk of st. nicholas. "what is all this," he said, "about a marriage early this morning?" "why, sir, it is no secret, i believe. miss molly was married at six o'clock to lord fylingdale. i was present, and gave away the bride." "are we dreaming? are we in our right senses? you say, man, that miss molly was married this morning--this very morning--to lord fylingdale. by whom?" "by his reverence, mr. purdon." "by mr. purdon? was the marriage duly celebrated?" "surely, sir. they were married by licence; and the marriage is entered in the registers." "come to the church and show me the registers." the clerk led the way to the vestry and opened the great trunk. there lay the books of the registers. he took them out and showed the entries. yes; there was no doubt possible. there were the two signatures, "fylingdale" and "mary miller," with the clerk as witness and the signature of "benjamin purdon, clerk in orders," as the officiating minister. "now," said the vicar, sitting down, "what does this mean?" as for myself, i also heard the news. it was brought on board by captain jaggard. "i could have wished," he said, "that captain crowle had seen his way to marry the girl to some honest man of the place--to you, jack, or some other. i suppose she is too rich for a merchant or a simple sailor. pity! pity! this noble lord will take her away, and we shall see her no more." i did not think it necessary to tell him that i was myself an eyewitness of the wedding, but, as soon as i could get away, i went ashore to learn what was said and reported. at my father's house behind the school i found the vicar in a strangely bewildered mind. "molly," he said, "flatly denies the marriage." "molly denies?" i was amazed. "and the clerk swears that he gave her away; the registers are duly entered. what does this mean? what does this mean?" i stared, and for a time made no reply. molly to utter a falsehood? the thing was incredible. yet, what was i to think? "sir," i said, "i remembered, early this morning, that i had forgotten molly's letter to lord fylingdale. i hastened ashore, hoping to be in time to stop his going to the church. i was too late. i hurried on to the church. to my amazement the wedding service was at this moment being read by mr. purdon, and i saw, with my own eyes, molly, wrapped in her pink cloak, the hood over her head, married to lord fylingdale. you cannot think that i was deceived." "why, the thing grows more and more mysterious. given the fact that lord fylingdale is a reprobate, with no principle and no religion, yet he would not pass off another woman as molly. she would have to be a woman of the vilest character. i do not think there is a woman in lynn who could be persuaded to such an act of villainy. no, it is impossible; the clerk could not be deceived; the clergyman--to be sure he is a fit companion for the bridegroom--would not--could not--stoop so low. think, jack. molly stoutly declares that she has not left the house for any purpose whatever. that is a plain assertion. then we have the evidence of yourself, of the clerk, of the registers, and of the two whose evidence might not be considered trustworthy--the bridegroom and the minister. i do not understand. you say that molly was dressed in a cloak that you recognised?" "in her pink silk cloak, such as she throws over her shoulders at the assembly." "there is no escape, i fear, no escape, that i can see. what does it mean? why does molly make this assertion? she must know that it cannot undo the wedding." "i cannot so much as guess. molly is the most candid and the most truthful of women. she cannot lie. it is impossible. there must be some dreadful mistake." "she is, as you say, of a most truthful nature. yet--how to explain? what does it mean?" "i saw her hand placed in the bridegroom's, and i heard the words. then, for my heart sank, i came away." "tell me again. when you left her last night, she was fully resolved not to keep her promise." "she was fully resolved, i say. i have her letter--the letter which she wrote with my help, the letter which i ought to have sent to his lordship." i lugged it out of my pocket; the vicar read it. "humph," he said, "it is written as if by a supercargo--but that matters nothing. the meaning of it is plain. her resolution is fixed. she was agitated, jack." "naturally she was agitated at finding the man, whom she was to marry out of respect and not for love, was unworthy of the least respect." "she was agitated. that was, as you say, natural. she had in her mind, at the same time, the promise to meet her accepted lover at the church at six in the morning. we must remember that. now it is difficult to understand a more serious blow to the mind of a young girl than to be told suddenly, without the least preparation for it, that the man she is to marry is not what she believed him to be; not, that is, a man of honour, not a man of virtue, not a man whose conduct is governed by principle. i say that this knowledge may fall upon a woman in such a manner as to distract her for a time." "but molly was not in the least distracted." "not in your judgment. could you have followed her to the lonely chamber, jack, you might have witnessed a scene of strange distraction in which contempt took the place of respect; loathing of love; and enmity in place of gratitude. in a word, you would have seen a transformation of the girl. had you watched her through the night you would have seen the sleeplessness and the restlessness caused by these emotions; you would have seen, perhaps, with the early morning nature asserting herself and the girl dropping asleep. after an hour or two she awakes, her mind not yet recovered; she remembers her promise, but not her refusal to keep it; she dresses mechanically; she steps out of the house unseen; she meets the man--he had not received your letter--she goes through the ceremony with him. she returns home, mounts to her room still without being observed, and again falls asleep. when she awakes there is no memory in her mind of the wedding service, nor any recollection of what had taken place. there would be left nothing but the memory of last night's revelations." he went on to fortify his theory with an abundance of examples taken from antiquity, and from books in which persons have been known to do strange things while seemingly broad awake and in their senses, who, afterwards, remembered nothing. "i can even understand," he said, "a man committing a crime in this unconscious manner, who, in his sane moments, would be incapable of any wickedness. is this what was formerly called demoniac possession? if so, it is a truly dreadful thing, and one against which we ought to pray." the explanation seemed, at least, one that accounted for the strange denial of a simple fact. "we will leave it so," he said. "i will go and talk to captain crowle about it, though i doubt whether the captain can be made to understand these nice distinctions between things as they are and things as they seem. it is, from every point of view, most unfortunate. the poor girl is now the wife of a villain. what will happen to her nobody knows as yet. nor do i see how we can protect her." accordingly, he laid the matter before the captain, but failed in persuading him. "no, sir," he said; "there is villainy abroad. i know not of what kind. there is villainy, and there are villains. molly is not married. she was not out of the house this morning at all. she was with her mother in the stillroom. besides, do you believe it possible for a woman not to know whether she is married or not?" "captain, i cannot understand it, except by my theory that----" "he shan't have her, whatever he says. what? should i suffer my girl--my ward--to go to him, and that unmarried? say no more, vicar--say no more." thinking over the vicar's distinctions about things as they are and things as they seem, a sudden objection occurred to me. "if molly was actually married, whether she remembered it afterwards or not, what became of the wedding ring?" to this objection i could find no reply. and so the vicar's explanation, in my mind, fell to the ground, and i was as much at sea as ever. for molly, who was always as true and candid as a mirror, was now ... but i could not put the thing into words. chapter xxxvi a day of fate this was the day when all the villainy came to a head and did its worst and met with the first instalment of exposure. i have told you what was done at the church and what was our own bewilderment, not knowing what to believe or how to explain things. for my own part, though i might have guessed, because i had discovered the jealousy of lady anastasia; yet the truth, even the possibility of the truth, never came into my head. i had no manner of doubt, in my own mind, that it was molly herself, and none other, whom i saw standing as a bride at the altar rails with lord fylingdale for a bridegroom. the fact, i say, admitted of no dispute. yet, why should molly change her mind? and why should she deny the fact? i sought her at the house. i begged her to come into the garden and to talk with me privately. then i asked those two questions. her answer to both of them was most amazing. "jack," she said, "i know not what you mean. i have not changed my mind. it is impossible for me to marry a man of whom such things can be said unless he can prove that they are false. how can you think that i have changed my mind? as regards this talk about an early wedding, what do i know about it? at six o'clock i was in the kitchen with my mother and nigra. i have not been out of the house at all." then i persisted. i asked her if she could have gone out and had perhaps forgotten. "forgotten!" she repeated, scornfully. "do you suppose that a woman could by any possibility forget her own wedding? but what is it, jack? what is in your mind?" then i told her. "molly," i said, "last night i forgot your letter. there was so much to think and talk about with these disclosures that i forgot. this morning i remembered. then i hurried ashore. i ran to the 'crown'; it was just upon six. i was too late. his lordship had gone out in a chair. i ran to the church. it was just after six. the doors were open; i heard voices. i went in, molly--do not say that i am dreaming--i saw you--you i say--you, yourself--with your pink silk cloak, the hood pulled over your head, a domino to hide your face--just as had been arranged." "you saw me, jack? you saw me? how could you see me?" "and your hand was in lord fylingdale's, and mr. purdon was pronouncing the words which made you his wife. 'whom god hath joined together let not man put asunder.'" she stared at me with blank amazement. "in my pink silk cloak? jack, are you in your right mind or is it i myself who am gone distraught?" "indeed, i know not which." "did you speak to me? did you congratulate the bride, jack?" "no; i was sick and sorry, molly. i went out of the church. the clerk, however, has been telling the story of this private marriage all over the town. everybody knows it. the marriage is duly entered in the registers. it was a marriage by the archbishop's licence. the man purdon may be all that the vicar's letter exposed, but the marriage was in order." molly said nothing for a while. then she said gently: "the letter from the bookseller, your cousin, spoke of lord fylingdale as ruined. if he were to marry a woman with money it would become his own." "i believe that there are sometimes letters--bills of lading, or whatever they are called--which gives the wife the control of her own property; otherwise, everything becomes her husband's." "why did he wish to marry me? there was never a gleam of love in his eye--nor a note of love in his voice. why--except that he might get my money?" "that is, i am convinced, the reason." "villainy--villainy--villainy. jack, this is a conspiracy. some woman has been made to play my part. then he will claim me as his wife, and lay hands upon all that i have." "no, molly, he shall not while you have friends." "friends cannot help where the law orders otherwise. so much i know, jack. yet you can do one thing for me, you can protect me from the man. he must not take me away." "all lynn will fight for you." "jack, i want more; i want all lynn to believe me. you have known me all my life. am i capable of such a change of mind? am i capable of so monstrous a falsehood as to steal out to marry this man and then to declare that i have never left the house? oh, the villain! the villain!" her cheek was aflame; her eyes flashed. i seized her hand. "molly," i cried, "they shall all believe you. i will tell the truth everywhere." just then the garden door was thrown open and sam semple appeared. with a smiling face and a bending knee he advanced bowing low. "permit me to offer congratulations to the countess of fylingdale." "i am not a countess. i am plain molly miller." sam looked disconcerted and puzzled. i perceived that, plot or no plot, he had no hand in it. "i am come," he said, "from his lordship----" "i have nothing to do with his lordship." "surely, madam--surely, my lady--there is some misunderstanding. i am sent by his lordship with his compliments to ask when it will be convenient for the countess to receive him." "you have been informed, i suppose, that i was married to him this morning." "certainly, my lady." "then go back to lord fylingdale and tell him that he is a villain and a liar; that i have learned his true character; that i am not married to him; and that if he ventures to molest me my friends will protect me. give him that message, sir, word for word." "i believe, sam," i said, for his discomfiture and bewilderment made him reel and stagger, "that you have no hand in this new villainy. it was you, however, who brought that man to lynn, knowing his true character and his antecedents. let us never see your face here again. go; if i thought you were in this new plot i would serve you again as the captain served you three years ago." he went away without another word. then the captain came home, his face troubled. "i know not," he said, "what has happened in this place. i have seen lord fylingdale. i told him of the charges and accusations." "well? did he deny them?" "he denied nothing, and he admitted nothing. he says that you married him this morning, molly." "i know. he has sent sam semple here with the same story. captain, you believe me, do you not?" "believe you, molly? why, if i did not believe you, i should believe nothing. believe you? my dear, i would as soon doubt the prayer book." he laid his hand upon her arm and the tears came into his eyes. "my dear, i have been an old fool. but i did it for the best. he says that you are his wife. let him come and take you--if he can!" "it is not molly that he would take, it is molly's fortune." "why, sir," she said, "if he takes the whole and wastes and dissipates it, so long as he does not take me, what does it matter?" then the vicar came again, and the whole of the business had to be discussed again. at first, he adhered to his theory of unconscious action, because a scholar always likes to explain every theory by examples chosen from latin and greek authors. he had looked up several more stories of the kind from i know not what folio volumes in his library, and came prepared to defend his opinion. but the absolute certainty of molly's assertion; the evidence of her mother, who declared that molly had been working with her since half-past five; the firm belief of the captain; and my own change of opinion and the possibility of deception shook him. finally, he abandoned his learned view, and adopted our more modern explanation of the case, viz, that the marriage was a sham, and that the woman was some creature suborned to personate molly. "but what woman can she be?" asked the vicar. "she can write. i have seen the registers; she has signed in a full, round hand, without bad spelling. the woman, therefore, is educated. my dear, we may perhaps find the woman. my worthy and pious brother in orders is most certainly in the conspiracy. where there are three one is generally a traitor. to begin with, the scheme is both bold and dangerous. it is the first step towards obtaining a large sum of money under false pretences. their necks are in danger, even the neck of a noble earl. "it is inconceivable," he went on, after a little reflection, "how a woman could be found to play such a part. she must be the mistress of the earl; no other could be trusted." "what should be done meantime?" "we must meet the enemy on his own ground. he spreads abroad the report that he married molly this morning. we must publicly and openly deny the fact. captain, there will be a large company at the assembly this evening. you will take molly there. i will go with you. jack shall put on his sunday best, and shall also go with us. we must be prepared for an impudent claim, and we must be ready with a prompt denial. let us court publicity." this was clearly the best advice possible. we were left unmolested all the afternoon, though the captain made me stay as a kind of garrison in case of any attempt at abduction being made. in the evening, molly, in her chair and dressed in her finery, was carried to the gardens, while the captain, the vicar, and myself formed a bodyguard. we arrived after the dancing had begun. lady anastasia was looking on, but her court of ladies and young men, for some reason, seemed to have melted away. she stood almost alone, save for the support of the old beau sir harry. the colonel was also with her. and the reverend benjamin purdon stood behind her. the music was in the gallery at the end of the long room; the dancing was carried on in the middle. lady anastasia was standing on the right of the gallery; most of the company on the left. molly with the captain and followed by the vicar and myself turned to the left. on her entrance all eyes were fixed upon the newly made countess. she had come without her lord. was this part of the secret--a secret known to all the world? or was his lordship before the whole company about to lead his bride to the first place as became her newly acquired rank? some of the ladies regarded her with looks of hatred, the successors of the looks of scorn with which they had at first welcomed her. most of them, however, were kindly; a tale of love always meets with a friendly reception; not a woman in the place but would have taken her place with joy unmeasured; as no other woman could, they were ready to accept their fate and to make friends with the successful and the fortunate winner of so great a prize. it was a great prize, indeed, if they only knew! the minuets were over and the country dances were about to begin when lord fylingdale arrived, followed, as usual, by his secretary. he stood at the door, he looked around; then, with the cold pride which never failed him, he stepped across the room and bowed low to molly. "madam," he said, "with your permission, we will dance this country dance together before i take you away with me." "my lord," replied molly aloud, so that the whole company heard and trembled, "i shall not dance with you this evening, nor on any other evening." "she will never again dance with you, my lord; nor will she hold any discourse with you; nor will she willingly admit you to her presence." it was the vicar who spoke, because the man and the occasion proved too much for the good old captain, who could only roll thunderously between his teeth things more fitted for the quelling of a mutiny than for dealing with such a man as his lordship. "pray, sir," said lord fylingdale, stepping back, "what is the meaning of this? pray, madam," he turned to molly, "what is the meaning of this sudden change? captain crowle, have i, or have i not, the right to claim my wife?" the vicar stepped forward and confronted him. his tall, thin figure, his long cassock, his thin and ascetic face contrasted with the over-haughtiness of his adversary. "my lord," he asked, "how long has this lady been your wife?" "we were married," he said, "at six o'clock this morning, by the rev. mr. benjamin purdon, who is here to bear witness to the fact. the wedding was private at my request, because, as you may perhaps believe, i was not anxious to join in the wedding feast with a company of boors, bumpkins, and sailors." "ladies and gentlemen,"--the vicar raised his voice and by a gesture silenced the orchestra--"i have to lay before you a conspiracy which i believe is unparalleled in any history. you are aware that lord fylingdale, who stands before you, came to the spa a few weeks ago for purposes best known to himself. you will also doubtless remember that certain persons, who arrived before him, were loud in his praises. he was said by them to be a model of all the virtues. i will not repeat the things that were said...." "all this," said lord fylingdale, "is beside the mark. i come to claim my wife." "among those who accepted these statements for gospel was captain crowle, the guardian of the young lady beside me. it was to him a great honour to be admitted to converse with so distinguished a nobleman and to be permitted to consult with him as to the affairs of his ward. he even informed his lordship of the extent of the lady's fortune, which is far greater than was generally understood. thereupon his lordship began to pay attention of a marked character. you have all, i believe, remarked these attentions. then came the attempted abduction and the lady's rescue by lord fylingdale. after this he formally offered his hand and his rank to the lady. the honour seemed very great. he was accepted. he then engaged the lady to undertake a private marriage without festivities, to which she consented. she promised, in fact, to be married at st. nicholas church this very morning, at six o'clock." "all this," said lord fylingdale, coldly, "is quite true. yet why you detain the company by the narrative i do not understand. the lady kept her promise. i met her at the place and time appointed. we were married. once more, captain crowle, i claim my wife." "ladies and gentlemen," the vicar continued, "there is but one reply to the last statement, for the lady did not keep her engagement." "sir," his lordship advanced a step, "are you aware of the meaning of words? do you assert that i was not married at that time and in that place?" the reverend benjamin purdon advanced. "sir," he addressed the vicar, "like his lordship, i am amazed at these words. why, sir, i myself, at six o'clock this morning, performed the marriage service, as prescribed by the church, for the right honourable the earl of fylingdale and miss mary miller." by this time the company were crowding round eagerly listening. no one could understand what had happened. the bridegroom claimed his bride; the bride's friends denied that she was married. "yesterday," the vicar went on, "there arrived, simultaneously, three letters; one of them, an anonymous letter, was addressed to captain crowle; one from a respectable bookseller in london was addressed to mr. pentecrosse, master of the grammar school; and one from a certain fellow of his college at cambridge was addressed to me. all these letters, together, contained charges which show how deeply we have been deceived." "have a care! have a care!" said lord fylingdale. at that moment another arrival took place. it was tom rising, the wounded man. he was pale and weak; he leaned upon the arms of two gentlemen; he was followed by a figure, strange, indeed, in a polite assembly. "by these letters and other sources," the vicar continued, "i learn first as to the noble lord's friends--the following particulars. pray give me your attention. "i find that the lady anastasia langston hath been lately presented by the grand jury of middlesex for keeping a house riotous, of great extravagance, luxury, idleness, and ill fame. she is the third on the list. the first," the vicar read from a paper, "is the lady mordington and her gaming house in covent garden; the second is the lady castle and her gaming house, also in covent garden; and the third is the lady anastasia langston and her gaming house, in or near hanover square, all in this county. "i am informed that lady anastasia hath held a bank every night in this place to the hurt and loss of many. "i turn next to the case of the rev. benjamin purdon, who stands before you. he was the tutor of lord fylingdale; he is described as the companion of his vices; he was the cause last year of a grievous scandal at bath; he is the author of a ribald piece of verse by which he has corrupted many. no bishop would sanction his acceptance of the smallest preferment." "this is very surprising," said mr. purdon, shaking his big head. "but we shall see, we shall see, immediately." "there are next, the two gentlemen known as sir harry malyns and colonel lanyon. their occupation is to act as decoy ducks; to lure young men to the gaming table, and to plunder them when they are caught." both these gentlemen started, but neither replied. "i now come to the noble lord before me. he is a most notorious profligate; he shares in lady anastasia's gaming house; he has long since been refused admittance into the houses of persons of honour; he is an inveterate gambler; he has ruined his own estate--sold the family plate and pictures, library, everything; he is, at this moment, unable to borrow or to raise the smallest sum of money. the fleet and the king's bench prisons are full of the unfortunate tradesmen who trusted him and the young rakes whom he has ruined. "ladies and gentlemen, this was the story which reached us yesterday, fortunately, in time. miss molly broke off her promise, and wrote to his lordship for explanations. captain crowle called upon his lordship this morning for explanations. he was met with derision; he was told that he was too late, the young lady was already married--there was no necessity for any explanations." the company murmured. voices were raised demanding explanations. said his lordship, coldly, "these inventions need no reply. i claim my wife." "she is not your wife," said the vicar. "we are ready to prove that at six o'clock the young lady was already engaged with her mother in the stillroom, or in some other occupations. of that there is no doubt possible. but"--and here he lifted a warning finger, but his lordship paid no attention--"there _was a wedding early this morning_. his reverence mr. purdon performed the service; the wedding was in the name of mary miller as bride; the registers are signed 'mary miller.' this is, therefore, a conspiracy." "you talk nonsense," said his lordship, who certainly carried it off with an amazing assurance. "i claim my wife. once more, madam, will you come with me?" "i am not your wife." "we must endeavour," said the vicar, "to find the woman who personated miss molly. the clerk of the parish testifies to the wedding, but he does not appear to have seen the face of the bride. whoever she was, she wore a domino, and had thrown her hood over her face." the lady anastasia stepped forward, agitating her fan. "reverend sir," she said to the vicar, "in matters of society you are a very ignorant and a very simple person. it is quite true that i have been presented by a middlesex jury for gambling. it is also true that half london might also be presented. as for the rest of your statements, that, for instance, lord fylingdale shares in the profits of my bank, let me assure you that your innocence has been abused; these things are not true. however, it is not for me to answer public insults in a public place. sir harry, my old friend, they call you a decoy--even you, with your name and your reputation. a decoy! sir, your cloth should shame you. sir harry, take me to my chair. if, to-morrow morning, the company thinks proper to dissociate itself from this public insult, i will remain in this place, where, i own, i have found many friends. if not, i shall return to london and to the house presented by the grand jury of middlesex." so saying, she retired smiling, and, as they say of soldiers, in good order. with her, also in good order, the ancient beau, with no other signs of agitation than a trembling of the knees--and this might very well be laid to the account of his threescore years and fifteen, or perhaps fourscore. at this point, however, tom rising, supported by his friends, advanced. "my lord," he said, "i have brought an old friend to meet you, jack gizzard--honest john--the poultry man of bond street. you know him of old, i believe. the advantage of bringing him here to expose you is that you cannot fight a poultry man." i looked on in admiration. the affair could not be turned into a private quarrel, for the fellow was, indeed, no other than a dealer in poultry by trade. yet no better witness could be produced, for no one was better known than jack gizzard--so called from his trade--at all race meetings, at newmarket, at epsom, and at other places. he was, in fact, that rare creature, the man who, not being a gentleman, is yet admitted to the sports of gentlemen; is considered as an authority; is allowed to bet freely with them, yet remains what he was by birth, a mechanic, a shopkeeper, a farmer, a grazier, a horse breeder, or i know not what. i do not know his surname; he was called gizzard on account of his calling, and jack on account of the esteem in which he was held by all sporting men. no one knew better than jack gizzard how to choose, how to train, how to feed a gamecock; no one knew better the points of a horse; no one knew better how to train a dog for coursing; no one knew more of the secrets of the stable; no one knew more intimately the rules of the prize ring, whether for quarterstaff, singlestick, or boxing. no one, again, held a better reputation for honesty in sport; he betted and he paid; he would advise a man even to his own loss. such a man as this tom rising brought to the assembly for the discomfiture of his late adversary. "jack," he said, "here is his lordship, and there--don't go just yet, colonel," for, at the sight of jack gizzard, colonel lanyon was about to leave the room. "not just yet. thank you, gentlemen," as two or three placed themselves between the colonel and the door. jack gizzard stepped forward. he was in appearance more like a butcher than anything else, being a stout, hearty-looking man, with a red face. "my lord," he said, "when you last left newmarket heath you owed me â£500." lord fylingdale made no sign of any kind of response. "i met you again at bath; it was before the time when you were requested by the master of the ceremonies to leave the place with your friend--ah! colonel, glad to see you--with your friend colonel lanyon." lord fylingdale made no sign whatever of having heard. "bath is not very far from gloucestershire. i made a journey there to find out for myself your lordship's position. i found your estate in the hands of money-lenders; every acre mortgaged; your house falling to pieces; its contents sold. you are already completely ruined. i went back to london and inquired further; you had lost your credit as well as your character. you could not show your face at the old places; the cockpit of tothill fields was closed to you; all the clubs of st. james's were closed to you. your name, my lord, stank then as badly as it stinks now." lord fylingdale still paid no kind of attention. "you may consider, my lord, these few remarks as part payment of that â£500." so he turned away. "come along, colonel," said tom rising. "bring the colonel to the front. don't be bashful, colonel." some of the gentlemen obeyed, gently pushing the colonel to the front. "well, poultry man?" said the colonel boldly. "well, sharper?" returned jack gizzard. "gentlemen, this fellow has been a bully about the town for twenty years and more; a bully; a common cheat and sharper. he is now altogether discredited. he was expelled from bath with his noble patron last year. if any of you owe him money do not pay him. he is not fit to sit down with gentlemen of honour. that is all i have to say about you, colonel." "what i have to say, colonel," said tom rising, "is that i owe you â£1,200, and if i pay you one single guinea--then----" he proceeded to imprecate the wrath of heaven upon himself if he showed any weakness in that resolution. lord fylingdale once more turned to molly. "madam, for the last time----" "send him away--send him away," said molly. "he makes me sick." "we deny the marriage, my lord," said the vicar. "that is all we have to say." "at your peril," replied his lordship. so saying he walked away unmoved, apparently. mr. purdon and colonel lanyon went with him; both men were flushed in the cheeks and restrained themselves by an evident effort. i was sorry for sam semple, for he followed, his face full of trouble and disappointment. when they were gone, the vicar spoke once more. "ladies and gentlemen," he said, "we have thought it best to court the greatest publicity possible in this matter. the people whom we have exposed will not again trouble this company by their presence. i know not what the law may decide in this case, supposing his lordship so ill-advised as to go to law. but the truth, which is above the law, remains, that an imposture of the most daring kind has been attempted, and that some woman has been found to personate miss molly. i have to express her sorrow for keeping you so long from your pleasures." and with these words he offered his hand to molly, and we withdrew, and the music struck up a lively country dance. chapter xxxvii the bubble and the sky rocket this was molly's last appearance at the assembly. next day we heard that our distinguished visitors, the prince of purity--or the prince of darkness, which you please--the lady of the green cloth, sir harry decoy-duck, and colonel bully barabbas, with the reverend ananias and the ingenious sam, first favourite of the muses, had all gone away--whether they went away together or separately i never heard. the opinion of the company as to the exposure and the marriage was divided. for some thought that molly was nothing better than a woman who did not know her own mind; that she was first dazzled and carried off her head by the brilliant offer that was dangled before her; that, on lord fylingdale's request she consented to the private marriage; that she became afterwards afraid of the greatness for which she was not fitted either by birth or education, and thought to escape by hard lying and a strenuous denial of the fact. i fear that this opinion was that of the majority. for, they added, there was without any doubt a marriage; it was performed by the clergyman who by his learning, eloquence, and piety had made so many friends during his short stay, and it was witnessed by the parish clerk. if molly was not the bride who could be found so closely to resemble her as to deceive the parish clerk? when it was objected that the private character both of his lordship and his late tutor was of the kind publicly alleged, these philosophers asked for proof--as if proof could be adduced in a public assembly. and they asked further if it was reasonable to suppose that an eloquent divine, whose discourses had edified so many could possibly be the reprobate and profligate as stated by the vicar? as for his lordship there is, as everybody knows, an offence called _scandalum magnatum_, which renders a person who defames a peer or attacks his honour liable to prosecution, fine, and imprisonment. "we shall presently," they said, "find this presumptuous vicar haled before the courts and fined, or imprisoned, for _scandalum magnatum_." but the vicar, when this was reported to him, only laughed and said he should be rejoiced to put his lordship under examination. others there were, principally townsfolk, who had known molly all her life. they agreed that she was a woman of sober mind; not given to vapours or any such feminine weaknesses; not likely to be carried away by terrors; and incapable of falsehood. if she declared that she was not married, she certainly was not married. the business might be explained in some way; but of one thing they were very sure--that molly, since she said so, was not married. this view was strongly held by the "society" of king's lynn at their evening meetings. it must be owned that the departure of the vivacious and affable lady anastasia with that of the agreeable rattle of seventy-five, sir harry, and that of the pious purdon, who had also become a favourite with the ladies, proved a heavy blow to the gaieties of the assembly and the long room. the card room was deserted; conversation in the garden and the pump room became flat; the gentlemen who had gambled at the hazard table now carried on their sport--perhaps less dangerously--at the tavern; many of them, having lost a great deal more than they could afford, were now gloomy; there were no more public breakfasts; no more water parties up or down the river; no more bowls of punch after the dance. in a word the spirit went out of the company; the spa became dull. let me finish with the story of this mushroom. i call it a mushroom because it appeared, grew, and vanished in a single season. you may also call it a sky rocket if you please, or, indeed, anything which springs into existence in a moment, and in a moment dies. perhaps we may liken it most to a bubble such as boys blow from soap suds. it floated in the sunshine for a brief space, glowing with the colours of the rainbow; then it burst and vanished, leaving nothing behind but the memory of it. the company, i say, after the departure of the party from london, became almost immediately dull and out of spirits. the music alone was gay; many of the ladies lamented loudly that they had ever come to a place where the nightly gambling had played havoc with their husbands, fathers, or sons. they found out that the lodgings were cramped, dirty, ill-furnished, inconvenient, and exorbitant in their cost; that the provisions were dear; that they had already taken the waters for a month or more; and that, in effect, it was high time to go home. besides, their own houses in the summer, the season of fruit and flowers, with their orchards and their gardens, were certainly more attractive than the narrow streets and the confined air of lynn. therefore, some making this excuse and some that, they all with one consent began to pack up their baggage and to go home. the departure of our friends from london took place in the middle of june; by the end of june the season was over--the visitors gone. at first the people expected new arrivals, but there were none--the season was over. the market-place for a while was crowded with the women who brought their poultry and fruit and provisions from the country. when they found that no one came to buy, they gradually ceased to appear. great was the lamentation over the abundance which was wasted, and the produce of their gardens doomed to ripen and to rot. then the strolling players put their dresses and properties into a waggon and went away complaining that they were half starved, which was, i dare say, the simple truth. next, all the show folk and the quacks, and the cheap jacks and tumblers and tom fools went away too, and the gipsies brought in no more horses, and the streets became once more silent and deserted, save on the quays and on the river, just as they had been before the spa was opened. and then the music and the horns were sent away; the master of the ceremonies received his salary and went back to norwich; the gardens were closed; the dippers vanished; the pump room was left for any who chose to dip and draw for themselves; the hairdressers, milliners, vendors of cosmetics, powders, paint, and patches all vanished as by magic; the coffee houses were closed; the bookseller carried his books back to cambridge or wherever he came from; the confectioner left off making his famous cakes; and the morning prayers were once more read to a congregation of one or two. the townsfolk, then, having nothing else to do, began to count their gains. the doctor, you remember, prophesied at the outset that all would become rich. what happened was that everybody had made large gains. the takings of the shops had been far greater than they had at any previous time hoped for or experienced. on the other hand the shopkeepers had laid in large and valuable stocks which now seemed likely to remain on their hands. moreover, as always happens, the temporary prosperity had been taken for a continuing, or even an increasing prosperity, with the consequence that the people had launched out into an extravagant way of living, the smallest shopkeeper demanding mutton and beef instead of the fat pork and hot milk which had formerly been counted a good dinner, drinking the wine of lisbon and madeira where he formerly drank small ale, and even taking his dish of tea in the afternoon for the good of his megrims and the clearance of his ill humours. oh! but the next year would bring another flood of fortune; they could wait. therefore they passed the winter in such habits of profuseness as i have indicated. spring arrived, and they began to furbish their lodgings anew and to look to their stores and stocks. the month of may brought warmth and sunshine, but it did not bring the expected company. may passed; june passed. to the unspeakable consternation of the town, no visitors came at all--none. with one consent all stayed at home or went elsewhere. i have never heard any explanation of this remarkable falling off. that is to say, there were many reasons offered, but none that seemed sufficient. thus, the ladies of norfolk had taken a holiday which was costly and could not be repeated every year. it was like a visit to london, which is made once in a life and is talked about for the rest of that life. or the losses of the gentlemen at the gaming table frightened them; they would not again be led into temptation; or the grand invention of sam semple had to be blown upon; or the rheumatic and the gouty who had taken the waters now found that they were in no way the better; or the scandal of those conspirators in high rank drove people away--indeed, such an exposure could do no good to any place of resort. there were, therefore, after the event, many explanations offered, and every one may choose for himself. it is, however, certain that no visitors came; that the pump room was deserted, save for the few people of the town; that there was no need to engage music or to provide provisions or do anything, for no one came. the spa had enjoyed its brief hour of popularity, and was now dead. this was a blow to the town, from which it was slow, indeed, to recover. many of the shopkeepers were unable to pay their rents or to sell their stocks. simplicity of manners returned with the fat pork and the hot milk; and as for the promised accession of wealth, i believe that the spa left our people poorer than it found them. i have been told that this has been the fate of many spas. first there is a blind belief in the sovereign virtue of the well; at the outset the place is crowded with visitors; there is every kind of amusement and pleasure; then this confidence becomes less and presently vanishes altogether, and is transferred to some other well. as faith decays so the company grows thinner and less distinguished. there was formerly, i believe, a fashionable spa near london, at a place called hampstead. this spa had such a rise, such a period of prosperity, and such a fall. another spa which also rose, flourished and then decayed and is now deserted, was the spa of epsom, a village some miles south of london. these places, however, lasted more than a single season. our spa lived but for two or three short months and then passed away. to be sure it was a pretence and a sham from the outset, but people did not know its origin; sam semple, its sole creator, remained unknown and unsuspected. i know not, i say, how the belief in the doctor's well came so suddenly to an end. i do know, however, that the disappointment of the doctor, and, with him, all who let lodgings, kept taverns, provided victuals, and sold things of any kind, was very bitter when the next spring brought no company. they waited, i say, expectant, all through the summer. when it became quite certain that the spa was really dead, they began sorrowfully to pull down the rooms and to take away the fence, and they left the gardens to weeds and decay. and then the town relapsed once more into its former, and present, condition. that is to say, it became again unknown to the fashionable world; the gentry of norfolk resorted to norwich again; they forgot that they once came to lynn; the place lies in a corner with the reclaimed marshes on either hand; it is inaccessible except to those whose business takes them there; travellers do not visit the town; it is not like harwich, or dover, or hull, a place which carries on communication by packet with foreign countries; it is a town shrunken within its former limits, its courts encumbered with deserted and ruinous houses, its streets quiet and silent. yet it is prosperous in a quiet way; it has its foreign trade, its port, and its shipping; its merchants are substantial; the life which they lead is monotonous, but they do not feel the monotony. except for an occasional riot among drunken sailors there is no work for the justices of the peace, and no occupants of the prison. at least we have no great lady using her charms, her gracious smiles, her rank in order to lure our young men to their destruction; we have no profligate parsons; we have no noble lords parading in the borrowed plumes of saint and confessor. chapter xxxviii the opinion of counsel meantime we waited expectant, and in uncertainty. it was possible that the pretended husband would withdraw his claims and that nothing more would be heard of him. it was possible, i say, if we supposed the pretender capable of honour, shame, or of pride, that he would say, in so many words: "you deny the marriage; very well, i will not claim a wife who says that she is no wife." it was, however, far more probable that he would claim his wife and exercise his rights over her property. what should then be done? the subject exercised the "society" greatly; every evening the situation was considered from all possible points of view, and always as to the best manner of protecting molly. it was at this time that the vicar wrote out the statement which he afterwards laid before counsel in london in order to obtain an opinion on its legal aspect. the case drawn up by him was as follows: 1. there was a betrothal between the two parties a. (standing for lord fylingdale) and b. (standing for molly). 2. it is not denied that a private marriage had been agreed upon by both parties. 3. the marriage was to take place on a certain morning at the time of six at a certain church. b. undertook to wear a certain pink silk cloak with a hood drawn over her head, and a domino to conceal her face, so that the people of the town should not recognise her and crowd into the church. 4. at the appointed hour of six a. presented himself at the church. 5. at the same hour a woman also presented herself dressed as had been arranged, wearing a domino to prevent recognition in the street, and a cloak of pink silk with a hood. 6. the marriage ceremony was performed by a clergyman in due form and on the production of a licence by a. 7. the marriage was duly entered in the register and signed, the woman signing in the name of b. 8. there was present at the wedding, besides the clergyman, the parish clerk, who gave away the bride, read the responses, and signed as witness. 9. part of the ceremony, including the essential words, was witnessed by one john pentecrosse, mate of _the lady of lynn_. 10. since a. had no reason to suppose that b. would not keep her promise, it would seem impossible for him to have found at the last moment some other woman to personate b. this was the case for a., put as strongly and as plainly as possible. i confess that when i read it i was staggered by the case--especially that of the last clause. certainly, as i had not delivered molly's letter, a. had no reason for supposing that b. would fail to keep her promise, and therefore no reason for suborning some other woman into a conspiracy. however, then followed molly's case. 1. she had accepted a.'s offer of marriage. 2. she had promised to meet a. at 6 a.m. 3. she had received the evening before this promise was to be kept information which represented a. in a light that made it impossible for a virtuous woman to marry him. 4. this information was embodied in three letters addressed respectively to the vicar, to the schoolmaster and to captain crowle. they can be produced on evidence. 5. on receipt of this information she wrote a letter to a. stating that she must have full explanation as to the charges brought against him before proceeding further in the business. 6. this letter was not delivered, the bearer having his mind full of other points connected with the affair. 7. at half-past five b. left her room and joined her mother in certain household work. nor did she leave her mother during the morning. this fact is attested by the mother and a certain black woman, b.'s servant. 8. the only way out of the house into the street is by the garden. captain crowle was walking in the garden from half-past five till seven and saw no one leave the house. 9. at seven or thereabouts the musicians, with the butchers, arrived to congratulate the bride, and were sent away by captain crowle. 10. later on, a.'s secretary arrived with a message from a. he was informed by b. that no marriage had taken place. 11. captain crowle then waited on a. and demanded explanation. he received answer that having married the lady, a. was not called upon to give any explanations. 12. in the evening, before the whole company at the assembly, the vicar charged a. with many acts unworthy of a man of honour, and, among other things, with having conspired with a woman unknown to personate b., and to set up the pretence of a marriage. opinion was asked as to the position of b. would she be considered in the eyes of the law as a married woman? had a. any rights over her or over her property? could she marry another man? what steps should she take to protect herself and her property? observe, that unless b. could be declared not to be the wife of a. she could not alienate, give away, or part with any of her property; she could not marry; she was doomed to be a wife at the mercy of a man more pitiless than a tiger, yet not a wife, for she would die rather than marry him. she must wait until heaven should take pity upon her and despatch this man. such men, it is observed, do never live long, but they may live long enough to inflict irreparable mischief upon their unfortunate victims. molly read the case thus drawn up very carefully. "my only trust," she said, "is in the evidence of mother and nigra. i confess that i cannot understand how, without knowing that i should fail, he could possibly procure that woman to personate me. has he the power of working miracles?" "there is no miracle here," i said, "except the miracle of wickedness greater than would be thought possible. patience, molly! sooner or later we shall find it out." "it will be later, i fear." "there are three at least in the plot. the clerk has been deceived; sam semple has not been consulted. these are the three--lord fylingdale, the parson, who is, doubtless, well paid for his villainy, and the woman, whoever she may be. we shall find out the truth through the woman." "since his marriage would give him the command of my property, jack, and since he was ruined, why does he make no sign?" this was a week or two after the event. i suppose that lord fylingdale was making himself assured as to the strength of his position and his rights. however, we were not to wait very long. "i am of opinion," said the vicar, after many discussions on the case thus drawn out, "that we should lay the facts before some counsel learned in the law, and ascertain our position. if we are to contest the claim in court, we have, at least, the money to spend upon it." "we will spend," said the captain, "our last penny upon it." he meant the last penny of his ward's fortune, in which, as you will hear, he was quite wrong, because he had now no power to spend any of it. it was, therefore, determined that the vicar should undertake the journey to london; that my father should accompany him; that they should not only obtain the advice and opinion of a lawyer, but that they should ascertain, through the bookseller, my father's cousin, or any other person, what they could concerning the private life of his lordship. "there is no saying what we may discover," said the vicar. "how, if there is another wife still living? even a noble lord cannot have two wives at the same time." it seems strange that one must make greater preparations for a journey to london by land than a voyage to lisbon by sea. as regards the latter, my kit is put together in an hour or two, and i am then ready to embark. but as regards the former, these two travellers first considered the easiest way; then the cost of the journey, and that of their stay in london; then the departure of others, so as to form a company against highway robbers; they then arranged for the halting and resting-places; hired their horses, for they were to ride all the way; engaged a servant; made their wills, and so at last were ready to begin the journey. their company consisted of two or three riders to merchants of london, who travel all over the country visiting the shop-keepers in the interests of their masters. they are excellent fellow-travellers, being accustomed to the road, having no fear of highwaymen, knowing the proper charges that should be made at the roadside inns, and knowing, as well, what each house can be best trusted to provide, the home brewed ale being good at one house, and the wine at another--and so forth. they reckoned five days for the journey if the weather continued fine--it was then july, and the height of summer. the vicar thought that perhaps a week or ten days would suffice for their business in town, and therefore we might expect them back in three weeks. captain crowle would have gone with them, but was fearful of losing his ward. for the first time in his life he barred and bolted his doors at night, and if he went abroad he left his house in the custody of his gardener, a stout country lad who would make a sturdy fight in case of any attempt at violence. but violence was not a weapon which was in favour with his lordship. and if it had been, the whole town would have risen in defence of molly. for three weeks, therefore, we waited. i, for my part, in greater anxiety than the rest, because my ship had now received her cargo, and i feared that we should have to weigh anchor and slip down the river before the return of our messengers. and at this time when we knew not what would happen or what we should do many wild schemes came into my head. we would carry the girl away; we would foreclose her mortgages, sell her lands, and carry her fortune with her; we would sail in one of her own ships across the atlantic and make a new home for her in the american colonies. however, in the end we had, as you shall learn, to accept misfortune and to resign ourselves to what promised to be a lifelong penalty inflicted for no sins of molly's--who was as free from sin as any woman, not a saint, can hope to be--but by the wickedness of a man whose life and ways were far removed from molly, and might have been supposed to be incapable of afflicting her in any way. our friends, therefore, started on their journey, arriving in due time at london, when they began their business without delay. briefly, they were recommended to a very learned counsel, old, and in great practice, whose opinions were more highly valued than those perhaps of any other lawyer. he was avaricious, and it was necessary to pay him a very handsome fee before he would consider the case. when he accepted the fee he gave it his most careful consideration. his opinion was as follows: "the fact that there was a marriage between a. and some woman--b. or another--is undoubted. the evidence of the parish clerk may be set aside except to prove this fact, because it does not appear that the bride removed her domino. it might, however, become a part of b.'s case that the clergyman did not witness the removal of the domino. what the clerk saw was a woman dressed in a pink silk cloak with a hood over her head, and a domino concealing her face, who signed the name of mary miller. for the same reason the evidence of john pentecrosse rests only on the dress of the bride, and may therefore be taken as worth that and no more. "at the same time the dress of the bride is important. a. had no intimation of b.'s refusal to keep her promise. at six o'clock, as is allowed, he presented himself. if b. was not there, how should he be able, at a moment's notice, to procure a woman to personate her, wearing a cloak of the same colour as b.'s, and ready to sign her name falsely? the theory is impossible, for it demands a whole chain of fortuitous occurrences and coincidences, as that a. should find a woman of abandoned character accidentally near the church, ready to commit this crime, dressed as b. was expected to dress, and considered worthy of trust with so great a secret. on the other hand we have evidences of an apparently conclusive kind. b.'s guardian, who was taking the morning air in his garden, says positively that no one left the house. b.'s mother and her black servant declare that b. was in the kitchen with them all the morning. this, i say, seems at first conclusive. but the court would probably hold that a mother's evidence is likely to be in the supposed interests of her child, while a negress would be expected, if she were attached to her mistress, to give any evidence that she thought likely to be of service or was directed to give. "the case is remarkable, and, so far as i know, without precedent. it is supported on either side by flat assertions which are either true or deliberate perjuries. as regards the bad character of a., i think it would have very little weight. setting aside, that is, his evil reputation, which might perhaps taint his evidence, and also setting aside the partiality of a mother, which might also, perhaps, taint her evidence, we have the broad and simple facts that a. had no warning of b.'s intention to keep away; that he presented himself according to arrangement; that he was met by a woman dressed exactly as had been arranged with b.; that they were married; and that the register was signed by the woman in the name of b. "i am of opinion, therefore, that if this case is brought into court there will be pleadings on either side of great interest, and that the court will decide in favour of a.; that if the case goes up for appeal it will again be decided in favour of a.; and that if the case were taken up to the lords that court would also decide in favour of a. "if action is taken it must be at the cost and charge of the guardian, because the lady's property, in default of settlements, would, in the event which i think probable, fall into the hands of a. thus adjudged to be her husband. "i advise, therefore, that submission be made to a.; that even though b. continues to deny the marriage, a. shall be invited to make her a suitable provision and shall undertake not to molest her or to compel her to leave her guardian and to live with him." with this opinion to guide him, the vicar wrote to lord fylingdale asking for an interview. he was received with a show of cold politeness. "you have given me reason, sir, to remember your face. however, i pass over the injuries which you allowed yourself to utter. you are come, i presume, in the name of my unfortunate wife, who, for some reason unknown to me, denies her own marriage. well, sir, your message?" "my message, my lord, is briefly this. we have taken counsel's opinion on this business." "so have i." "it is, on the whole, to the effect that if we dispute your lordship's claims we shall probably lose." "my own counsel is also of that opinion." "for my own part i shall advise my friends to accept what seems impossible to deny." "you will do well. i shall be pleased, i confess, to see the business settled without taking it into court." "i should like, if possible, to carry home with me some concessions of your lordship in response to this submission." "what concessions? it seems to me that the countess has no right to insist upon any concession. the whole of her property, as you know, is my own." "i fear that is the case." "i shall probably make certain changes in the administration of the property, now my property. i shall relieve the worthy captain of its control. as regards any other point you must acknowledge that you have treated me with insults intolerable; you are not in a position to make terms. but what do you ask?" "first, freedom from personal molestation." "that is granted at once. you may tell the countess that on no consideration will i see her, nor shall i exercise any marital rights. when she consents to confess her falsehood, and to ask pardon for her offences, i may perhaps extend my personal protection, not otherwise." "as for her allowance--her maintenance?" "your reverence is not serious. she says that she is not my wife. the law says, or, is prepared to say, that she is. by the law i am compelled to maintain her. let her, therefore, invoke the intervention of the law. to procure this she will have to confess her many perjuries. till then, nothing. do you understand, sir? nothing." chapter xxxix the fruits of submission "molly, my dear." the captain's voice was broken. "it is my doing--mine. i am an old fool. yet i thought i was doing the best for you." "nay," said molly. "it is no one's fault. it is my great misfortune." "must he take all?" asked the captain. "he will take all he can claim," the vicar answered. "revenge, as well as cupidity, is in his mind. i read it through the cold masque of pride with which he covers his face and tries to conceal himself. he will be revenged. he is like unto lucifer for pride, and unto belial for wickedness. molly, my dear, i fear thou wilt soon be poor indeed in worldly goods. the lord knoweth what is best. he leaveth thee, still, the friends who love thee." the mother resumed the lamentations which she never ceased. "molly is a widow who cannot marry again--molly is a wife without a husband. oh, molly! my poor molly!" "it grieves me sore," said the vicar, "to counsel submission. yet what could we do? how can we explain this great mystery that he who knew not your change of purpose should in a moment be able to substitute, in your place, at the hour fixed, a woman dressed and masked as had been arranged? there is no explanation possible, and i understand very clearly that this fact outweighs all the evidence on either side. there is nothing to be done. we must submit, saving only your personal freedom, molly. the man confesses that he has no wish to molest you, and nothing to gain by any molestation. to be sure, without it he can take what he pleases. your presence, indeed, would be a hindrance and a reproach to his mode of life." so we talked together, with sadness and heaviness. yet for one thing i was well pleased; that molly had not been forced into daily companionship with this man. for that would have killed her--body and soul, if a soul can be destroyed by despair and misery, and cruelty. "courage, molly!" we were on the point of weighing anchor--and we stood on the quay to say farewell. "things will get right, somehow. oh! i know they will. i cannot tell how i know. perhaps we shall find the woman. then we shall explain the mystery and expose the cheat. perhaps--but we know not what may happen. as for your fortune, molly, that is as good as gone; but you yourself remain, and you are far more precious than all the gold and silver in the land." [illustration: "you are far more precious than all the gold and silver in the land."] so we parted and for five months, until our return, i knew nothing of what was done. you may easily guess what was done. first of all, a letter came from london. it was addressed to captain crowle, and it called upon him to prepare the books and accounts connected with the estate of mary, countess of fylingdale, for the information of the right honourable the earl of fylingdale. it was written by an attorney, and it announced the intention of the writer to send down a person--one, stephen bisse, attorney-at-law--duly authorised to examine and to audit the accounts, and to make known his lordship's intentions as regards the administration of the estate. the captain, ignorant of the law, took the letter to the vicar for advice. "this," said the latter, "may be simply a first step to taking over the whole of the property, or it may be the first step towards a system of revenge and persecution. for if the attorney who comes here to investigate the accounts finds anything irregular, we may be trapped into legal expenses, and heaven knows, what to follow." the captain, however, had not commanded a ship in vain; for the commanding officer of a ship must keep the log and all the papers connected with the cargo, lading, and unlading, pay of the ship's company, port dues, and everything. he must, in a word, be as methodical in his accounts as any quill driver ashore. "he may examine my accounts as much as he pleases," he declared. "they are all right." "nevertheless, friend, be advised. place the whole business in the hands of one who knows the law. in the end it may be far cheaper." in every port there must be one or more persons skilled in that part of the law which concerns trade and commerce, imports and exports, customs, excise, and harbour dues. at lynn there was such an one, attorney and notary; a man of great probity and responsibility--mr. nathaniel redman by name. to him the captain entrusted the papers of the estate. these papers, which had been accumulating for eighteen years, and represented the increase and the administration of a very large estate, were now voluminous to the highest degree. the mere perusal of them would entail the labour of many attorneys for many weeks, while the audit of the whole, bit by bit, would engage the same persons many months, or even years. "the earl of fylingdale will have the accounts audited, will he?" said mr. redman. "then his lordship is in no immediate want of money." "why? cannot he take what he wants?" "sir, you are the lady's guardian; you have to be released from your trust before you hand over the property. without such a release you will keep the whole. that means, that his lordship must wait for the long and tedious business of a complete audit. i say long and tedious, because, if the examination of accounts is undertaken in a spirit of hostility, we can raise in our turn objection after objection by going back to the commencement of the trust. in other words, captain, if your papers are all preserved, which i doubt not, we shall be in a position to delay the acquisition of the estate by the earl almost indefinitely." "but at whose charge?" asked the vicar. "for the captain has no means of paying heavy expenses." "at the charge of the estate. oh! sir, do not think that an attorney of london, to say nothing of myself, would embark upon so large a business save at the charge of the estate itself." "it is, then, in your interest to prolong this examination into the accounts?" "it is, most certainly, in the interest of this gentleman from london and of myself; but," he sighed heavily, "if all reports are true, i do not believe that lord fylingdale will prolong the inquiry." the person who was promised presently arrived with his credentials. he was quite a young man, apparently about two or three and twenty; his letter to captain crowle described him as an attorney-at-law. he was quick of speech and of the greatest possible assurance in manner. in appearance he was small of stature, pasty-faced, and with a turned-up nose, the possession of which should be regarded by the owner as a misfortune and personal defect, like a round back. it is said, on the other hand, to be an indication of great self-conceit. he came, therefore, was set down at the "crown," and inquired for the residence of captain crowle, on whom he called without delay. the captain received him in his summerhouse. he read the letter, introducing and describing him. then he laid it down and looked at his visitor cursorily. "oh!" he said, "you are the attorney of lord fylingdale, are you, and you want to make an audit of my accounts? you've come all the way from london on purpose to make that audit, have you? well, sir, you will carry this letter to mr. nathaniel redman, and you will give it to him." "who is mr. redman? i know of no redman in this business." "he is an attorney-at-law, like yourself, young man, and he is a notary, and this job is turned over to him." "oh! i understood, captain crowle, that i should confer with you personally." "did you so? well, sir, if you will see mr. redman you can confer with him instead. the job is his." the captain, in fact, had been warned not to make any communications or to hold any conversation with the attorney. he felt himself only safe, therefore, in repeating that the job was mr. redman's. "we may, however, come to some preliminary, captain crowle. the estate now----" the captain waved his hand in the direction of the garden door. "the job, young man, is mr. redman's. there is your letter. take it to him." mr. bisse accordingly retired and repaired to the office and residence of mr. redman--to whom he gave his letter. "we shall have no difficulties, i presume," he said. "i hope not." "of course, i know the law in these matters--i can direct you----" "young gentleman"--mr. redman was well stricken in years--"i could direct your father. but go on. you will proceed in accordance with your powers. i shall take good care that you keep within your powers. now, sir, what do you propose?" mr. redman spoke from the commanding position of an armchair before a large table; he was also a large and imposing man to look at while mr. bisse stood before him, small and insignificant, his original impudence fast deserting him. as for mr. redman, his professional pride was aroused; this young skip jack dared to direct _him_ in matters of law, did he? "i am, i confess," said mr. bisse, "disappointed to find that my noble client's advances are received with suspicion. i hoped that captain crowle would have met me in a spirit of confidence." "come, sir, between ourselves what has your noble client to complain of? he sends an attorney here. captain crowle meets him in the person of an attorney." "well, it matters not. captain crowle has, no doubt, reasons of his own for his action. we must, however, since we are men of business as you say, demand an exact audit. the interests involved are, i understand, very considerable?" "they are very considerable." "i shall, however, ask for an advance of ten thousand pounds to be made to his lordship on account." "an advance? the guardian to advance money before you have audited the accounts? my dear sir, are you serious?" "you admit that there will be a great deal more than â£10,000." "i admit nothing that is not proved." "then you refuse to give my client anything?" his air of assurance began to desert him. in fact, he had been especially charged to open the proceedings by demanding such an advance. "we refuse to do anything illegal. the papers will show the extent and the nature of the estate. you can then claim the whole. but you must first send in your claim and be prepared with the release." mr. bisse hesitated. "my instructions are to demand a strict scrutiny of all the accounts." "they are waiting for you. would you like to see the papers?" mr. redman led him into an adjoining room where on shelves and on the tables the books and papers were laid out in order--tied up and labelled. "my clerk," said mr. redman, "will go through these papers with you. i shall look on." "all these papers?" mr. bisse gazed with dismay upon the piles before him. "you will have to peruse, to examine, to pass every scrap of paper in this room. captain crowle, sir, is the most methodical man in the world." "all these papers? but it will take months." "years, perhaps. you have your instructions." "sir," said mr. bisse, crestfallen, "i must write to my principals for further instructions." "that will probably be your best course. good-morning, sir." mr. bisse wrote accordingly. meanwhile he made another attempt to assert his authority. he went to the quay, looked about him with satisfaction at the proofs and evidences of brisk trade, and entered the counting-house where the clerks were at work. "my name," he said pompously, "is bisse, mr. stephen bisse, attorney-at-law. i am here as attorney for the right honourable the earl of fylingdale." "what do you want?" asked the chief clerk. "you will at once show me your ledgers, your day books, and the books used by you in your daily business." "you must go to mr. redman, sir. his office is beside the customhouse. without his permission we can do nothing for you." mr. redman had been before him, you see. "you refuse me, at your peril," said mr. bisse. "i am----" "you will go out of the counting-house, sir," said the chief clerk, "and you will leave the quay. we take our orders from mr. redman in place of captain crowle." so mr. bisse departed. he walked from the quay to the common stathe, and there, looking at the ships lying moored in the stream, he asked a waterman if by chance any of them belonged to captain crowle. the man pointed to one. "then," said mr. bisse, "take me to that ship." mr. redman had been before him here as well. he climbed up the ladder and was about to step on the deck when the mate accosted him. "what is your business, friend?" he asked. mr. bisse replied as he had done in the counting-house. "well, sir," said the mate, "you can't come aboard here. strangers are not allowed aboard this ship without an order from captain crowle or mr. redman." so, mr. bisse had to go ashore again. he found, i fear, the town of lynn inhospitable. in fact, everybody was in favour of molly, and the name of lord fylingdale stank. no one would speak to him. he wandered about waiting for a reply to his letter asking for further instructions in a disconsolate and crestfallen spirit, very different from the confident assurance which he had shown on his arrival. his new instructions reached him in about ten days. again he waited on mr. redman. "well, sir?" asked the latter. "you are come to direct me in matters of law?" "i have received new instructions," the young man put the question aside, "from my principals. they are to the effect that if you will draw up for me a schedule of the whole estate, i am to forward it to london, and to receive orders thereupon as to what part of the accounts i must specially examine." "sir, at the outset i refuse to accept anything but a general release. you will represent to your principals that every part of this complicated estate is involved with the whole transactions which precede it. that is to say, every purchase of a farm or a house has to be made by combined savings from every source of income, consequently, any special line of investigation will necessitate a wide and prolonged examination." "i perceive that you are determined to give us trouble." "not so, sir. we are determined to resist persecution. your instructions, if i understand them aright, were to fix upon captain crowle some difficulty, and, if possible, to accuse him of malversation." mr. bisse changed colour. that was, in fact, the secret instruction. "now, sir, we have all our papers in order, and you will find it impossible, while i stand at your elbow, to discover or to invent a loophole. at the same time, i shall prolong the investigation if you once enter upon it as much as possible. you may inform your principals of this, and you will return as soon as you have further instructions." "will you not, at least, prepare a schedule of the property?" "certainly. you shall have this prepared in readiness for your next visit, which will be, i suppose, in another ten days. i hope you find your stay pleasant." "no, sir, it is not pleasant. at the inn the people are barely civil, and i am treated everywhere as if i were a frenchman." "no; not a frenchman, but the attorney of lord fylingdale." mr. redman addressed himself, therefore, with the aid of the captain, to the schedule. the estate was far greater than he had anticipated. "why," he said, "you are surprised that a noble earl should marry this girl for her money. had the world suspected the truth, there would have been an abduction every week." he then proceeded to go through the long list of lands, houses, mortgages, money lying idle, jewels, and everything. "the only charge upon the estate seems to be an annuity of â£150 a year for the mother. what money have you taken for maintenance?" "why, none." "none? did the girl live on air? and what for your own services?" "nothing; we lived rent free. it is molly's own house; and her mother's money kept the household." "well, but--captain--the thing is incredible. you have conducted the whole business from the death of molly's father to the present day actually for nothing." "it was for the little maid." "captain, you have acted, i dare say, for the best. but with submission, you have acted like a fool. however, it is not too late to remedy. i shall charge the estate, which will now become lord fylingdale's, with â£300 a year, your salary for administering the estate and for managing the business. it will be impossible to refuse this claim, and i shall set down â£150 a year for maintenance of your ward." the captain stared. here was a turning of the tables, with a vengeance. "the claim is just, reasonable, and moderate. i shall not advance it as a thing to be objected to. you will, meantime, go through the accounts; take out â£450 a year; this for eighteen years, would be â£8,100; but the money must be considered as used for investments. you will therefore set apart â£450 a year, and as soon as that amounts to a sufficient sum to be represented by an investment, you will set apart that piece of property as your own. this will represent a much larger sum than â£8,100. your ward will not, after all, be left penniless, if you bequeath her your money. ha! the young man is going to direct _the lady of lynn_ in matters of law--me, is he?" in fact the captain was so simple that it had never occurred to him that he could take a salary for his conduct of the business; or that he could ask for an allowance for the maintenance of his ward, and this timely discovery by the attorney in the end saved molly from poverty and left her still, in comparison with most girls of the place or of the county, a very considerable heiress. when mr. bisse, a few days later, arrived with his instructions, he found drawn up for him a statement for the eighteen years of the captain's trusteeship. on the working side of the account was shown a charge of â£150 a year as provided by the will of molly's father for his widow for life; a similar sum for the maintenance of the ward, and a salary of â£300 to captain crowle for managing the business in the name of the firm as shippers and general merchants. mr. stephen bisse, by this time, had quite lost his assurance. he attempted no objections. "i suppose," he said, "you will allow me an inspection of the books." "certainly. you will, however, find them difficult to make out. are you acquainted with the routine work of a counting-house?" mr. bisse owned that he was not. "i shall be asked," he said, "if i have examined the books." "you shall examine what you please." mr. redman understood by this time the character of this young attorney. "the chief clerk of the counting-house shall be with you to answer any questions you please to ask." he had come to lynn, you see, by order of his principals, instructed that the guardian was an old addle-headed sailor, whose accounts would certainly prove liable to question and very likely open to dispute and to claims; he was aware that the noble client desired nothing so much as to ruin this old sailor; that he was also in great necessities for want of money; and that he was anxious, for some reason unknown to his attorney that the question of the validity of the marriage should not be raised or tried in open court. but he had been met by a man of law and by accounts of a most complicated kind, and by the direct refusal to part with any money until a final release had been obtained for the guardian. he, therefore, referred to his principals twice. on the second occasion he was told that his lordship could not wait; that he was to guard against fraud by such an examination of the books as was possible; that he was to get rid of the guardian, grant the release if the accounts allowed him to do so, lay hands on all the monies available, and report progress. this, in short, he did. the amended schedule reserved property amounting in value to â£450 a year as invested year after year, and therefore at something like compound interest, so that this deduction gave the captain personal and real property representing some â£12,000. the rest was acknowledged to be the property of the ward, and therefore, assuming the marriage to be valid, under the control of my lord fylingdale. the auditor went to the counting-house and called for the books. he opened one or two at random; he looked wise; he made a note or two, for show; he asked a question or two, for pretence, and he went away. this done, he repaired to mr. redman's office again and tendered a full release to captain crowle for his trusteeship. the document, in which molly was called by her maiden name, and not by that of the countess of fylingdale, when it was signed and sealed, rendered the old man free of any persecution; but it left the estate entirely in the hands of the pretended husband. "you are aware, sir, of course," said mr. bisse, "that this release accepted by captain crowle, also accepts the truth of my client's statements as regards his marriage." "we are not going to dispute the fact. we have our opinion, but the weight of evidence and presumption is against us. as his lordship only wants the fortune he can take it. may i ask what you are instructed to do about it?" "my instructions are first to receive all monies in hand, save what is wanted for current expenses in conducting the business." "you will see what captain crowle has in his strong room. you can take that money to-day if you please." "and next, all the jewels, gold chains, bracelets, etc., belonging to the countess." "you can have them also." "as regards the lands, houses, mortgages, and the business, my lord will consider what is best to be done. i am directed to find some person of integrity in the place who will receive the rents and carry on the business. i fear i cannot ask for your assistance." "you can, and may. it is still our interest that the affairs of the firm shall be well managed. the chief clerk in the counting-house is the best man you can appoint. he now receives â£90 a year. you can give him what the captain had, â£300." "i do not know how long the arrangement will last." "you mean that your client will probably waste and squander the whole." "i desire to speak of that nobleman with respect. he is, however, in expenditure even more profuse than becomes his high rank." molly shed no tears over the loss of her jewels. she brought the box down with her own hands; she opened it, took out the contents to be verified by the inventory, shut and locked it, and gave the attorney the key. the captain led him downstairs to the cellar, in a wall of which a cupboard had been constructed, which, with a stone in front, removable with a little trouble, formed a strong room. here were the boxes of guineas waiting to be invested or employed. i know not how many there were, but mr. bisse carried all away with him. when he departed the next day for london he was escorted by four stout fellows armed with cudgels and pistols riding beside his post-chaise. however, he reached london in safety and delivered his prize. "i wonder," said mr. redman, "how long it will be before instructions come for the foreclosing of the mortgages and the sale of the property." "i am doubtful after all," said the vicar, who always doubted because he always saw both sides of the question, "whether we have done rightly. we could have made a good fight, and we could have proved, at least, that lord fylingdale was in desperate straits for money." "jack was right," said molly. "nothing can be done until we find the other woman." chapter xl on my return these things happened soon after my departure. when six months later i returned home i found that many things had followed. first of all, the chief clerk, promoted to the management of the estate under orders from london, found himself in no enviable position. he was called upon to send up money week after week--my lord wanted a hundred--five hundred--one knows not what, and must have it without delay. if there was no money, then all outstanding accounts must be collected, mortgages must be foreclosed; but where credit has been allowed it is not possible to collect accounts suddenly, nor can mortgages be foreclosed without due notice given. then the houses must be sold; but in a place like lynn, which has more houses than it can fill, it is not easy to sell a house, and the price which can be obtained is small indeed compared with the value of houses in london. then farms and lands must be sold. but who was there to buy them? then came letters of rebuke, answered by letters of remonstrance. money must be raised somehow; money had been advanced on the security of molly's property; my lord was in difficulties. it is almost incredible that a man should be able in so short a time to waste and dissipate so large a sum of money. when we returned, and i went ashore, the first person i saw was the unfortunate chief clerk, promoted to be manager. "mr. pentecrosse," he said, "little did i think when i was put into this charge at a yearly salary of â£300--more than ever i hoped or dreamed of getting--what a peck of trouble was waiting for me. little did i understand, sir, how the great live; with what profusion, with what extravagance! as for that poor young lady--heaven help her, for her property is vanishing fast! soon there will be none. i have no right to talk of my employer's affairs; but you know what has happened." "in a word, lord fylingdale is getting through molly's property." "worse than that; he is throwing it away. sir, i wake in the night with dreams of terror. i think i see a man plunging his hands into a sack of gold and throwing it about with both hands. i have been ordered to foreclose mortgages, to sell houses, to sell farms, to sell everything. when i cannot find a purchaser there come letters from my lord's attorneys, bisse and son--the young man was here himself with peremptory orders to find a purchaser--any purchaser. money must be had." "well, there will be, i suppose, an end some time or other." "the end will come before we look for it. because, mr. pentecrosse, while the profusion goes on the estate grows less, and it becomes more difficult every day to answer their demands." "what is left?" "i hear that miss molly's jewels were carried away by the young man. i hope he was honest, and kept none for himself. i know that the captain had a large sum of money in his strong room waiting for a mortgage; that went away with the young man. since then i have sent up all the money as it came in. i have foreclosed the mortgages. some of the mortgagors could not pay, and are now bankrupt. the captain would never press his people so long as they paid the interest. i have been able to sell some of the farms; but you know this country, mr. pentecrosse; there is not much money among the gentry of these parts; they have been sold at a sacrifice; i have others in the market; there are houses, also, but no one will buy them. well, all will soon be gone. then there will remain but one asset out of all the magnificent property of the work of three generations. miss molly's grandfather, and her father, and herself by means of the captain--only one asset." "what is that?" "and soon that will go, too," he replied with a hollow groan. "sir, it is the noble fleet and the great business which belongs to the fleet. if the ships are sold----" suddenly i remembered my lord's question on board _the lady of lynn_. "can," he asked, "a ship be sold like an estate of land?" "they will be sold," i said, confidently. "you may look to have them sold as soon as the other assets are expended. the last thing to be sold will be the fleet of ships, and the business which belongs to the ships." "and what will become of me?" "why," i said, "somebody must manage the business. why not you, since you have been all your life in it, and know what it means and how it is conducted? but who will buy it?" "not all the merchants of lynn together could find the money to buy these ships and to carry on this business. no, sir, the whole must go to strangers." i left him, having given him the ship's papers, and went on to see the captain and molly. "jack," she said, ruefully, "you promised when you went away that there would be a change. none has come, except a change for the worse. but that we expected." "in other words, jack," the captain explained, "everything that happens must happen before very long, or there will be nothing left. my lord is spending at such a rate as no fortune could stand. what does he mean? when it is gone will he find another molly and marry her for her money? there is not in all the land another molly--not even for her good looks, let alone her fortune." as for good looks, her misfortunes had only improved poor molly's face which was now of a more pensive cast and had lost some of its youthful joyousness. to be sure she had little to make her joyous. i observed, and i understood, that she was dressed with the utmost simplicity, like a farmer's daughter. for, outside, the people spoke of her as the countess, even while they accepted her story and did not allow her to be married. she would, at least, present no external sign of the rank which she denied. "how does the man spend all this money?" i asked. "thank heaven, jack, a plain person, like you and me, cannot answer that question. how does he spend that money? who knows? he has had, since he began, six months ago, a great many thousands. if he has sold the jewels he has had i know not how many more, and still the same cry--'send more money--send more money, my lord wants more money without delay.' as for that poor man, lately my clerk, he is driven like a slave and bullied like a raw recruit. he wrings his hands. 'what shall i do, captain?' he asks. 'what shall i do? whither shall i turn?'" then there came into my head the thought that i might somehow, by going to london find out what manner of life was led by my lord and in what ways he wasted and scattered molly's substance. i could do nothing to stop or to hinder the waste; yet when one knows the truth it is generally more tolerable than the uncertainty--the truth is an open enemy which one can see and avoid, or submit to, or fight; the unknown is an unknown and an unseen enemy who may attack from any quarter and by any weapon. i thought over the plan for some days; it assumed clearer shape; it became a purpose. molly, for her part, neither approved nor disapproved. she was for letting the man, who pretended to be her husband, work his wicked will and do what he pleased, provided that he left her in peace. how was a simple sailor to find out the daily life of a great lord? the backstairs one would not choose; but what other way was there? i laid the matter before my father and the vicar. "i know not," said the latter, "that we can do much good by learning the truth, even if we ascertain all the particulars of the man's life from his very companions, but you might satisfy us on certain points. for instance, about that mysterious woman. i know not how you can find out anything, but you might possibly chance upon a clue." "go," said my father, "to my cousin, the bookseller. he found out something about lord fylingdale's character. he might find out more. you can at least explain what you want and why." the end of it was that i went to london, riding with a small company, and meeting with no adventures on the way; that i put up at one of the inns outside bishopsgate, and that i found out my cousin and put the whole case before him. he was a grave and responsible citizen, a churchwarden, and of good standing in the stationers' company. "you want to know how lord fylingdale spends his money. i suppose there are but two or three ways; of profligates, i take it, there are only a few varieties; one games; another rakes; a third surrounds himself with companions who flatter him and strip him. the first two are possessed of devils; the third is a fool. i do not imagine that my lord fylingdale is a fool, but you will probably find that he is possessed of both the other devils, and perhaps more." "but how am i to find out?" "why, cousin, i think i know a young fellow who can help you in this business." "who is he? how shall i approach him?" "he is a gentleman who lives by his wits; not one of the ragged poets who haunt our shops with offers and projects and entreat work at a guinea a sheet. no; he is a gentleman, and a wit; his father was a general in the army; his cousin is a noble lord; he is received into the houses of the great when he chooses to go. he works for the theatre, and has composed several pieces said to be ingenious. as for his acquaintance with me, i would have you to understand that with two or three other booksellers we bring out a weekly essay like those of the _spectator_ and _tatler_, which, of course, you know." "i never heard of them." the bookseller smiled with compassion. "to be sure; at sea there are no books. well, cousin, this young gentleman sometimes, when he is in the humour, will write me an essay in the true vein of an addison. i will speak with him. if any one can, he can do your business for you." it was by the kind offices of this gentleman, whom i found to be a person of quick wit and ready understanding, besides being of a most obliging disposition, that i was enabled to see, with my own eyes, an evening such as my lord loved. as for the details, you must, if you please, hold me excused. let it suffice that our observations began at a gaming house and ended at a tavern. at both places i kept in the background, because i would not be recognised by lord fylingdale. he came into the gaming table with the same lofty, cold carriage which he had shown at our humble assembly. he advanced to the table; he began to play; no one could tell from his lordship's face whether he lost or won; in half an hour or so my friend returned to my corner. "he has lost a cool five hundred. they are whispering round the table that he loses hundreds every evening. all the world are asking what gold mine he possesses that he can stand these losses?" "i know his gold mine," i replied, with a sigh. "but it is nearly exhausted." we stayed a little longer. it was about ten or eleven in the evening that his lordship left the table. "come," said my friend. "i know the tavern where he will spend the next three or four hours. i can take you there. the bowls of punch and the company and everything are provided at his lordship's expense. mr. pentecrosse, it must be not a gold mine, but a mine of golconda, to bear this profusion." "i tell you, sir, whatever it is, the mine is nearly run out." "it will not be bad for the morals of the town when it has quite run out." as regards the tavern and its company it is, indeed, astonishing to me that any man should find pleasure in such a company and in such discourse. at the head of the table sat my lord. he appeared to be neither pleased nor displeased; the drink flowed like a stream of running water; it seized on all and made their faces red, their voices thick; the noble leader sat unmoved, or, if moved at all, then by a kind of contempt. at two o'clock he rose and walked out into the street, where his chair awaited him. "this is his humour," said my guide. "play is his passion; it is the one thing that he lives for; he has wasted and ruined his own estate, which will be transmitted to his successor as bare as the back of my hand; and now he is wasting the wealth of potosi and the diamonds of golconda. he would waste the whole world if he could." "why does he entertain such a crew?" "it is his humour. he seems to delight in observing the wickedness of the world. he sits and looks on; he encourages and stimulates, and his face grows colder and his eyes harder. this man is not possessed of a devil. he is himself the great devil--the prince of iniquity." so i had learned all that i wanted to know. it was now quite certain that we were within a short distance from the end. the lands and houses in the market would find a purchaser; the fleet and the business would then be sold. what next? the day after this experience in the life of a rake i paid a visit for the first and only time to st. james park in the afternoon. it was, i remember, a cold but clear and bright day in january. at the gates stood a crowd of lacqueys and fellows waiting for their ladies, and stamping on the ground to keep off the cold. within, a goodly company walked briskly up and down. they were the great people of london whom i saw here. while i looked on admiring the dresses of the ladies and the extravagances of the gentlemen, who seemed to vie with each other in calling attention to themselves by their dress and by their gestures, there passed me, walking alone, a lady whom at first i did not recognise. she started, however, and smartly tapped my hand with her fan--she carried the fan although it was winter, just as the beaux dangled their canes from their wrists. "why," she cried, "it is my sailor! it is surely jack pentecrosse!" then i recognised the lady anastasia. "and what is jack pentecrosse doing in this wicked town? and how is molly--the countess? come, jack, to my house. it is not far from here. i should like a talk with you, and to hear the news. and i will give you a dish of tea. why, i left lynn in disgrace--did i not? on account of the grand jury of middlesex. it was that evening when lord fylingdale turned upon his enemies." her house was not very far from st. james's street. as we walked along, she discoursed pleasantly in her soft and charming manner, as if she was made happy just by meeting me, and as if she had always been thinking about me. she placed me in a chair before the fire; she sat opposite; she pulled her bell rope and called for tea; then she began to talk about lynn and its people. "tell me, jack, about your friend molly. is she reconciled to her rank and title yet? i believe that she does not live with her husband." "she denies that she was married." "ah! i have heard, in fact, that there is some sort of a story--a cock and a bull story--about the wedding." "another woman was substituted. molly was at home." "another woman? strange! why was she substituted? who was she?" "i know not. the matter is a mystery. certain it is, however, that lord fylingdale was married. i myself saw the wedding. i was in the church." "you were in the church?" she raised her fan for a moment. "you were in the church? and you saw the wedding. who was the bride?" "i do not know. at the time i thought it was molly." "jack," she leaned over, looking me full in the face. "have you no suspicion?" "none. i cannot understand how, all in a moment, and when he found that molly was not there, the bridegroom found means to substitute another woman dressed as molly should have been. i cannot understand it." "it is, as you say, strange. do you think you will ever find out?" "why not? there are three persons in the plot--lord fylingdale, mr. purdon, and the woman. one of the two last will perhaps reveal the truth." she was silent for a moment. "well, and what are you doing in town?" "i came to learn, if i could, something of lord fylingdale's private life." "have you succeeded?" "he is a gambler and a rake. he is rapidly wasting the whole of poor molly's fortune. in a few months, or weeks, it will all be gone." "yes," she replied; "all will be gone." "first he took the money and the jewels----" "what?" she sat up suddenly. "he took the jewels?" "he took them first. then he sold the lands." "oh, tell me no more! he is wasting and destroying. it is his nature. first he took the jewels. how long ago?" "six months ago." "he has had the jewels," she said. "he has had them for six months." her face became hard and drawn as with pain; her smiling mouth became hard; the light died out of her eyes; she became suddenly twenty years older. i wondered what this change might mean. you will think that i was a very simple person not to guess more from all these indications. she pushed back her chair and sprang to her feet; she walked over to the window and looked out upon the cold street, in which there were flying flakes of snow. then she came back and stood before the fire. "you can go," she said, harshly, not looking me in the face. "you can go," she repeated, forgetting her proffered hospitality of tea. "about that woman, jack, you may find her yet. many a wicked woman has been goaded by wrongs intolerable to confess her wickedness. i think you may find her. it will be too late to save molly's fortune; but when it is all spent there will be a chance for you, jack." she turned upon me a wan and sad smile. "happy molly!" she added, laying her hand upon my arm with the sweet graciousness that she could command. "jack," she added, "i think we may pity that poor wretch who personated molly. it was perhaps out of love for a worthless man. women are so. it is not worth, or virtue, or ability, or character that awakens love and keeps it alive. a woman, jack, loves a man. there is nothing more to be said. if he is a good man so much the better. if not--still she loves him." she sighed heavily. "what do you sailors know about women? virtue, fame, and fortune do not make love, nor--jack, which is a hard thing for you to believe--does all the wickedness in the world destroy love. a woman may be goaded into revenge, but it makes her all the more unhappy--because love remains." i went away, musing on this woman who sometimes seemed so true and earnest with all her fashion and affectations. for, as she spoke about love, the tears stood in her eyes as if she was speaking of her own case. but i never suspected her; i never had the least suspicion of her as the mysterious woman. i took cars into the city and went to my cousin's shop, where there were half-a-dozen gentlemen talking volubly about new books, among them my friend who had taken me to the gaming house and to the tavern. when he saw me he slipped aside. "mr. pentecrosse," he said, "your cousin reminds me that i once told him what i could learn concerning an unfortunate poet named semple. if you would like to see him i think i can take you to him." i thanked him, and said that i would willingly have speech of mr. semple. so he led me down little britain, and so by a maze of streets to a place called turnagain lane. he stopped at an open door. the street in the waning light looked squalid, and the house mean. "the darling of parnassus," he said, "lies in the top chamber. you will find him there, unless i mistake not, because he cannot conveniently go abroad." so saying, he left me, and i climbed up the dark and dirty staircase, some of the steps of which had been taken away for firewood, and presently found myself at the top of the last flight before a closed door. i knocked. a faint voice bade me come in. there was no fire in the fireplace; there was no candle; by the faint light which struggled through the window i perceived that i was in a garret; that all the furniture visible was a bed, and a man in the bed, a table and a chair. on the mantelshelf stood a candlestick without a candle and a tinder box. "who is it?" asked the man in bed. "i am in search of sam semple. are you sam semple?" "i know that voice." the man sat up. "is it the voice of jack pentecrosse?" "the same. what cheer, man?" for all answer, he burst out crying like a child. "oh! jack," he said, "i am starving. i made up my mind to starve. i have no longer any clothes. i have not even a candle. i have no money. i have not even a sheet of paper to write a letter, and i deserve it all--yes, i deserve it all." "why, this is bad. but let me first get you some food. then we will talk." i went downstairs and found a woman, who told me of a shop where i could get some necessaries, and i presently returned bearing food and a bottle of wine, some coals and candles, and a warm coat, which i thought would be useful. by the light of the candle and the fire i could perceive that the condition of the unhappy poet was miserable indeed. never was there a more wretched den of a garret. the plaster had fallen from the walls; the window was mostly stuffed with rags in place of glass; in a word, everything betokened the greatest extremity of poverty. as for the man himself, he had neither coat, waistcoat, nor shoes. he sat on the bed half-dressed, but the rest of his wardrobe had been pawned or sold. there were no books; there were no papers; there was nothing to show his calling; and there was no sign of food. at the sight of my basket and its contents the man fell to. with just such a rage have i seen a sailor picked up at sea from an open boat, fall upon food and devour it. nor did sam finish till he had devoured the whole of the cold beef and bread--a goodly ration--and swallowed the whole of the bottle of wine, a generous allowance. then he breathed a sigh of satisfaction, and put on the thick coat which i had bought for him. "well," i said, "can we now talk?" "jack, you have saved my life; but i shall be hungry again to-morrow. lend me a little money." "i will lend you a guinea or two. but tell me first how came you here? i thought you were in the confidence of a certain noble lord." "he is a villain, jack. he is the greatest villain unhung. oh! hanging is too good for him. after all i did for him! the lying villain!" "what you did for him, sam, was to give him the chance of ruining the property of an innocent and helpless girl." "i gave him the heiress. was it nothing to promote the daughter of a plain merchant and make her a countess?" "tell me more. what were you to get for it?" "it was i who invented an excuse for taking my lord and his friends to lynn." "yes, i understand. you invented the spa. the water in the well----" "the water is very good water. it could do no harm. i wrote to the doctor--i invented the analysis, applying it from another. i told him about the discovery and the things said by the newspapers. there was no discovery; nobody had heard of the water; no physician sent any of his patients there; the only visitors from london were my lord and his friends." "they were all his friends, then?" "all. his reverence is in the pay of beelzebub, i believe. the colonel is a bully and a gamester--sir harry is a well-known decoy--lady anastasia shares her bank with lord fylingdale. they were a nest of sharpers and villains, and their business and mine was to spread abroad reports of the shining virtue of his lordship." "all this, or part of it, we found out or guessed. the vicar publicly denounced you all at his assembly. but what were you to get by it for yourself?" "i was to have an appointment under government of â£200 a year at least." "well?" "i was to have it directly after the marriage. that was the promise. i have it in writing." "and you have not got it?" "no; and i shall not get it. when i claimed it his lordship asked me to read the promise. i showed it him. i had kept it carefully in my pocketbook. 'on the marriage of lord fylingdale with miss molly.' what do you think he said. oh, villain! villain!" "what did he say?" "he said, 'hold there, my friend! on the marriage. very well, although i say that i am married to that lady, very oddly the lady swears that she is not married to me. now, when that lady acknowledges the marriage i will fulfill my promise. that is fair, is it not?' then i lost my head and forgot his rank and my position, and the next moment i was kicked into the street by his lackeys without salary, without anything. oh, villain! villain!" it seemed as if there was here some opening--of what nature i knew not. however i spoke seriously to sam. i pointed out that in introducing a broken gamester--a profligate--a man of no honour or principle, the companion of profligates and gamesters, to the simple folk of lynn who were ready to believe anything, he had himself been guilty of an act more villainous even than the breaking of this contract. i gave him, however, a guinea for present necessities and i promised him five guineas more if he would write a history of the whole business so far as he was concerned. and i undertook to leave this money with my cousin the bookseller--to be paid over to him on receiving the manuscript. this business arranged, i had nothing more to do with london. i had been, however, as you shall presently learn, more successful than i myself understood, for i had learned by actual presence the daily life and conversation of this noble lord and i had laid the foundation for a proof of the conspiracy to disguise his true character, and, what was much more important, i had unwittingly fired the mind of the mysterious woman herself with resentment and jealousy. chapter xli the first and the second confederate we were now, indeed, although we knew it not, very near the end of these troubles. i returned with the satisfaction of bringing with me the confession of the conspiracy which we had long known. still, it is one thing to know of a conspiracy, and quite another thing to have a plain confession by one of the chief conspirators. you may imagine that the poet was not long in writing out a full and complete confession, and in claiming the five guineas of my cousin, who took the liberty of reading the document, and of witnessing his signature before he gave up the money. "take it, sir," he said, "if to be a villain is to earn a reward of five guineas, you have earned that reward. take it, judas iscariot. take it, and make a poem on the wages of sin if you can." "you trample on the weak. i am a worm who cannot turn. still, sir, if you can find honest employment for a pen which adorns all it touches----" "go, sir. for such as you i have no employment. my poets and authors may be poor, but they are honest. get thee out of my sight." i showed the document first to my father and the vicar. "so far, well," said the latter. "if proof were needed of a more wicked conspiracy here it is. but in the main thing we are no more forward than before, jack. we are not helped by this writing to the mystery of the strange woman and her intervention. a strange woman, indeed; she must be--one such as described by the wise king." "we shall find her yet. what hold can this spendthrift gamester have upon the woman--his partner in the crime? some time or other she will be tempted to reveal the truth." "we know not. women are not as men. they love the most worthless as well as the most noble." lady anastasia had said the same thing. "love is like the sunshine, my son. it falls upon good and evil alike, and, like the sunshine, it may be wasted, or it may be turned to help. we must not expect to find this woman; we must not count upon her revenge or her repentance." "we shall find her, sir, i am certain that we shall find her. the spendthrift wastes and scatters with a kind of madness. he will soon finish all, and will have nothing left for his confederates. you see what one confederate has confessed, having been betrayed by his master." said the vicar: "the sweet singer of israel ceases not to proclaim the lesson that all the generations must learn and lay to heart--'i have seen,' he says, 'the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree. yet he passed away, and, lo! he was not. yea, i sought him, and he could not be found.' patience, therefore, let us have patience." he fell into a meditation in which i disturbed him not. after a while he returned to the business of sam's written confession, which he held in his hands. "it is remarkable," he said, "how this young man, who from his boyhood was a self-deceiver, imagining himself to be somebody, endeavours to place his conduct in a light flattering to his self-deception. it is evident, abundantly, that he has been guided throughout by two motives, the one as base as the other. the first is revenge for the wholesome cudgelling which the captain bestowed upon him. it was administered, i doubt not, with judicial liberality--even erring on the side of liberality--and he left in the man's mind that longing for revenge which belongs to the weaker and the baser sort. see, he writes, 'since captain crowle was resolved to marry his ward above her station, i was quite sure that he would be grateful to me for the signal service which he could in no way effect by his own efforts of raising her from her humble condition to the rank of countess.' he thus betrays himself. and as to the second motive, he says, 'a poor man has the right to better himself if he can. it is his duty. i saw a way, an unexpected and an honourable way.' listen to the creature. 'i made the discovery that my patron, by gambling and raking, had become, as regards his affairs, nothing less than what in a merchant would be called a bankrupt. that is to say, he had spent all he had, sold all he could, raised all the money possible on his entailed estates, and but for his privilege as a peer would now be in a debtor's prison. yet he contrived to keep his head above water--i found out how, as well--and still maintained a brave show, though, by reason of his bad character, he was not countenanced except by profligates like himself. i therefore laid open to him a way of restoring his affairs. i offered to introduce him to a great heiress. at first he did not believe that there was in any country town an heiress with the fortune that i described to him. but i gave him some proofs and i promised him more. whereupon i made known my condition. as soon as he was married to this heiress he was to procure for me, by purchase or by influence, a post under government worth at least â£200 a year, with perquisites, or perhaps a benefice, if i could procure ordination, of which i had no doubt in thinking of my learning and my character for piety.'" "ho!" said my father, "his learning and his piety!" "'my patron is now master of that fortune and is wasting it as fast as he can in the old courses. he refuses to keep his promise. nay, he hath sold the last preferment in his gift to the highest bidder. it was a rectory of â£350 a year.'" "this fellow," said the vicar, "knows that his patron is at his last guinea. he knows him to be a loose liver and a gamester, and he has no hesitation in conspiring to place this innocent girl, by means of her simple guardian, in the hands of such a man. yet he whines and thinks himself ill-used, and a football of fate. formerly, he thought himself the favourite of the muses. the man is a cur, jack; he has the cunning and the cowardice and the treachery of a mongrel cur. take back his confession. it may, however, be useful." "what about the great discovery concerning the spa?" "why, jack, it seems as if he drew his bow and shot an arrow at a venture, yet hit the bull's eye. the doctor has a book, in which he inscribes cases of cures effected by the waters of the spa. the book is well-nigh filled. it is true that this prince of liars invented and pretended the discovery of a spa; it is also true, as we cannot but believe, that the waters have actually done all that he pretended. he, therefore, unconsciously, seems to have proclaimed the truth. let the thing remain as it is, then. time will show. the next season's cases and cures will perhaps establish the reputation of the spa on a more solid basis even than at present." time, as i have already told you, did show, for no one came at all. the spa was neglected in its second season; in the third it was forgotten; even the pump room was removed, and only the well remained. but the doctor, who was bitterly disappointed with the failure, was never informed concerning the true history of the grand discovery. it was the perfidy of the chief conspirator to every one who assisted him which brought about the full exposure of the truth. i have been careful to let you know at every step the whole truth as we discovered it afterwards. you have understood the conspiracy from the outset, and the villainy of all concerned. the woman in the pink silk cloak has been no mystery to you. perhaps you admire our simplicity in not guessing the truth. reader, you are young, perhaps; or you have been young. in either case, i am sure that you have experienced the ease with which a woman, lovely, sympathetic, winning, will, with the combined aid of her beauty, her voice, her witchcraft, so surround herself with an imaginary air of truth, sincerity and purity, as to exclude all possibility of treachery and falsehood. lady anastasia had allowed me to discover, whether by inadvertence or not, that she was jealous; but what did i know of feminine jealousy and its powers? i might have known, perhaps, that jealousy implies love, or, at least, the claim to exclusive possession; but what did i know of the strength and passion of woman's love? i was young; i was inexperienced; i was a sailor, ignorant of many common wiles; i was easily moved by a woman, and i had that universal respect for rank which makes us slow to believe that a lady of quality can be treated as if it were possible to suspect her. by the same rule i should, you will say, be equally unable to regard lord fylingdale with suspicion. but we are not always consistent with ourselves. besides, his lordship was a man and not a woman. rank or no rank, we know that a man is always a man. and, in addition, he stood between molly and me. i have said that we were near the end of our troubles. one after the other the victims of lord fylingdale's perfidy and of their own wickedness come over, so to speak, to the other side, impelled by rage and the desire for revenge, and made confession. there were five--i take them in order. the first was our old friend sam, whose confession you have heard; the second was colonel lanyon. like the poet, he also fell upon evil days; but, less lucky than sam, he lost his liberty, and became a prisoner for debt in the king's bench prison. when such an one is arrested and thrown into prison he is in grievous, if not in hopeless case; for, supposing his brothers or cousins to be in a responsible position, they are ashamed of one who has led the life of a gamester and a bully and a decoy. they will not help him to begin again his old life, and if they are like himself, they want all they have for their own pleasures--rakes being the most selfish of all men--and so they will not help him. he wrote, therefore, from his prison, addressing himself to captain crowle as the guardian of the lady for whose capture their snares were set. "sir," he said, "i am a prisoner for debt, lying in the king's bench, and likely to remain a prisoner for the rest of my life. i have cousins who are prosperous. they refuse to assist me. yet my detaining creditors are few and the whole amount is ridiculously small, considering my position and my reputation. that my own cousins should refuse to release me is, i own, a matter which surprises me, for i have conferred lustre upon a name hitherto obscure by my gallantry, my bravery, and my many adventures. it is a heartless world. there are many honest gentlemen in this place, besides myself, who have found the world heartless and ungrateful." "humph!" said the vicar, in whose presence the captain began to make out this surprising letter. "my misfortunes are due to no less a person than my lord fylingdale, a man whose treachery and ingratitude are not equalled, as far as i know, by the history of any villain that was ever hanged." "why," the captain interrupted, "here's a fellow catched in his own toils. do you read it, jack; your eyes are better than mine." so i took it. "when i consider not only his conduct towards myself, but his systematic deception towards you, sir, i am moved by indignation to write to you and to expose a plot in which i had a hand, but in ignorance. sir, i would have you know that for many years i have been in the employ of his lordship. it is not an uncommon thing, when an officer is broken and cannot find employment for his sword, to enter the service of some patron, whom he must oblige by all means in his power. in return, he is safe from arrest, and must take what wages are given him. my own services were those of a decoy to a gaming table, in which his lordship held a secret interest, and of a duellist when my sword would be of use. in the former capacity i served his lordship for four years faithfully, bringing young gamesters to the table, luring them on, playing high for their example, and winning pretended sums for their encouragement. this kind of service is perfectly well known and understood, so that those who knew that lord fylingdale was my patron, knew also that he had an interest in the bank. on three or four occasions, when my lord's honour was attacked, or his conduct resented, i went out for him, and in all such cases rendered it impossible for his adversary to continue the quarrel." "so," said the vicar, "the fellow confesses that he is a murderer, is he?" "in the pursuit of his lordship's service i have cheerfully incurred odium that was rightly his. but this kind of odium ends, as i found, by blasting the reputation for honour, even of a most honourable man, such as myself." "ha!" cried the vicar. "this odium now follows me everywhere--from bath to tunbridge, and from tunbridge to london, so that there are not many gaming-houses into which i am now suffered to enter, and my company has of late declined to the level of the 'prentice and the shopkeeper. i have also been driven off the heath at newmarket, charged with corrupting the trainers; and even at the cockpit i have incurred suspicion as to doctoring the birds. all--all was in the service of my patron." "villain! villain!" said the vicar. "in may last i was ordered by my lord to proceed to lynn regis, a town of which i had no knowledge. there was to be a gaming-table, in which, as usual, he was interested. my duty was again to act as decoy. i was also, at the same time, to lose no opportunity of representing his lordship as a miracle of virtue. the reason of these orders i did not ask. i obeyed, however, although it certainly seemed to me that any praise of virtue on the part of a gamester like myself would be received with suspicion. "as regards the performance of my duties at lynn i say nothing. the play was miserably low, in spite of my own example and encouragement. the company considered a guinea a monstrous sum to lose. the bank made nothing to speak of. as regards my own private concerns there was but one man with whom i transacted business worth naming. this, however, was highly satisfactory, for, from this one person, without raising the least suspicion, i won as much as â£1,200, which was to be raised upon his estate in the county. three-fourths of this would go to my lord. i had not made so successful a haul for many years. "now, one morning, after a debauch, much heavy drinking and more losses, this gentleman, tom rising by name, came to me, and confided to me under the oath of secrecy, his intention of carrying off that very night the heiress of lynn, as she was called. if he succeeded, he would pay the whole of his losses the very next day. if not, he must wait until the money could be raised. in order to effect this object he would have to go to norwich; the business would take time. but he was sure of success. he could not fail. he further described to me the plan he had formed, and the place whither he would carry the girl. "by this time i had formed a pretty good guess of my patron's intention in coming to lynn. accordingly i laid the matter before him." "after an oath of secrecy," said the vicar. "he considered a great while, then he said, 'colonel, this affair may turn out the most lucky thing that could possibly happen. be in the card room in readiness. we will let the fellow go off with the girl, then i shall follow and rescue her. do you understand?' "i understand that he desired the good grace of the lady, and that such a rescue could not fail to procure her favour unless he had already obtained it. 'but,' i said, 'this man is a bull for strength. he will fight for the girl, and he will be like a mad bull. it is dangerous.' "'i will myself,' he replied, 'undertake to tame this bull. man, do you suppose that a master of fence can fear the result of an encounter with a fellow always half drunk and on this occasion, which makes the thing more easy, more than half mad with rage and disappointment.' "sir, you know the rest. the abduction of the lady was known beforehand by my lord and myself. he might have stopped it, but that he wanted the honour and the glory of the rescue." "there is no end or limit to the villainy of the pair," said the vicar. "the next day, tom rising having a sword wound in the right shoulder, i waited upon his lordship. i pointed out that the serious wound inflicted on mr. rising had brought his life in danger; that even if he recovered, his old friends, who were very angry with him for the attempted abduction, would have no more to do with him; that, from all i had heard, he would with difficulty raise so much money as he owed me upon an estate already dipped; that he had other creditors; and that one result of the business was that we had possibly lost â£1,200 or a good part of it, of which one-fourth, or â£300, would have been my share, and i asked my lord, point blank, if he thought i could afford to lose â£300. "my lord laughed pleasantly. 'shall a trifle of â£300 part two old friends, colonel? not so; not so. when i marry this heiress, not â£300, but a thousand shall be yours. remember, write it down. it is a promise. after my marriage i will give you a clear thousand to repay your losses and expenses.' "this was a promise on which i relied. and you may imagine my satisfaction when i heard that my lord had been married privately at six in the morning. i waited on him at once for the money. 'patience, man,' he said, 'i must first touch it myself. i cannot get at the money without certain forms. there shall be no needless delay.' so i refrained. "i had been put to heavy expenses by going to lynn and living there. i had to keep up the outward appearance of substance; i threw money about; i ordered bowls of punch; i lost over a hundred pounds in establishing my credit on a firm basis; i won nothing to speak of, except from tom rising. in the end i was publicly insulted and exposed by a vulgar beast called gizzard, after his low trade. this was in the presence of tom rising himself, who thereupon swore that he would pay me nothing. the world is full of men always ready to repudiate their debts of honour." "it is, indeed," said the vicar, "and of men who do not act in accordance with the laws of honour." "sir, you will hardly believe me. my lord now refuses to pay even my expenses. he owes me a thousand pounds promised as my share in the business. i have spent one hundred pounds in establishing my credit and another hundred for my personal expenses--in all, â£1,200. "now, sir, i have a proposition to make. i know the dispute about the alleged marriage. i believe there was a personation and that i know the woman who personated your deeply-injured ward in the church. pay me â£1,200 and i will name her." "softly," said the vicar. "to name the lady is not to prove the personation." "you cannot hesitate," the letter went on. "already i am sure my lord has wasted ten times that sum. i hear from all sides that he is like one who squanders an inexhaustible treasure. send me this money and i will put you in the way of exposing him to the world as a conspirator and of putting a stop to further robbery. you shall at least be enabled to save what is left. "as you may require a few days to deliberate over this proposal i beg you to let me have by the first opportunity a few guineas in advance. otherwise i shall have to part with my clothes. in my line of life a good appearance is essential. should i be driven to that necessity i shall indeed be ruined for life, because i shall have to go over to the common side where my accomplishments and skill will be of no use whatever to me." "he means that you cannot get any profit by cheating at play those who have nothing. is that all, jack?" "that is all." i folded the letter and gave it to the captain. "to name the lady, i say," the vicar repeated, "is not to prove the crime. it might, however, suggest an explanation to the mystery. the letter proves that there is an explanation. still, captain, my opinion is that the writer of this letter should receive no answer. there is no hardship before him which he has not deserved. let him lie in his prison and repent. 'let the wicked be ashamed and let them be silent in the grave. let the lying lips be put to silence.' captain, let us have no traffic with this ungodly man. let him henceforth be silent in his grave." chapter xlii the third and the fourth confederate the voice of the third confederate followed. it was a voice from the tomb. sir harry malyns, the poor old butterfly who had lived for nigh upon eighty years in the world of fashion; who had spent his patrimony, and had, in the end, been reduced to the miserable work of a decoy, as you have heard, was at last summoned to render an account of his life. what an account to render! so many thousand nights at the gaming-table; so many thousand at suppers and after; so many debauches; so many days of idle talk; the whole of his long life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, as the people of fashion call pleasure. however, the old man was at last seized with a mortal illness; at the approach of death some of the scales fell from his eyes; his former ideas of honour came back to him. he repented of his degradation as the secret servant of lord fylingdale; he repented of his share in the deception which led to the promise, if not the performance, of marriage between his patron and miss molly. and he dictated to some one, who attended him in his last moments, a brief note which was accepted in the spirit of forgiveness, which he desired. the communication was addressed to captain crowle. "the following words," it was written, "were in substance dictated by the late sir harry malyns in his last illness, namely, the day before he became unconscious, in which condition he lingered for forty-eight hours, when he breathed his last." there was neither signature, nor was the place of the deceased gentleman's last illness indicated. the following were the words dictated: "i, sir harry malyns, baronet, being now, i believe, at the point of death, am greatly troubled in my conscience over the part i played in the deception of captain crowle, of king's lynn; his ward, miss molly; and the people of the place, as to the character and principles of the earl of fylingdale. i very soon discovered his design in going to the town, and his hopes of securing the fortune of the lady called the heiress of lynn. my own part, to deceive his friends in the way indicated, i performed with zeal, being but the creature and servant of his lordship, with no hope of help from any other quarter, should i lose his patronage. it was a most dishonourable part to play, unworthy of my name and of my family. i desire to convey to the young lady my humble request for her forgiveness, and my hope that a way may be found for her out of the toils spread for her by myself and others, his creatures and servants. "there is, i learn, a denial on the lady's part as to her marriage at all. of this i know nothing. but i am assured in my own mind that if this denial involves any act of treachery, perfidy, fraud, or conspiracy on the part of his lordship, on that account alone, and without considering the many virtues, the candour, truth, and innocence of the lady, i should accept her denial. but in this crowning act of treachery, i rejoice that i have had neither part nor lot." there was no signature, but there seemed no reason to entertain a doubt as to the genuine character of the communication. the old man on his deathbed returned to a late recognition of the laws of honour and a late repentance. "he was a poor creature," said the vicar. "he was entirely made up of stays and wig and powder. he ought to have been taken about the country in order to show the world the true meaning of a fribble and a beau. it is, however, something to his credit that in the end he remembered the old tradition, and saw himself as he was. pray heaven that his repentance was thorough!" "let us at least forgive him," said molly. "he seemed a harmless old gentleman. one would never have thought him capable of acting so dishonourable a part. but he repented. we must forgive him." "meantime, we are no nearer the mysterious woman who personated you, molly; nor do we understand why she did it; nor do we understand how it was done." a week later came another letter. this time it was from the rev. benjamin purdon, a.m. it was a truly impudent letter, worthy of the man and his character. "to captain crowle. "sir,--i have hesitated for some time whether to address you on the subject of your ward's pretended marriage with my late patron, lord fylingdale. i say pretended because i am in a position to expose the whole deception. i can place you in possession of the whole of the facts. they are simple; they cannot be denied or disproved. your ward was not in the church at all; she was not married; her place was taken by a woman who personated her, appearing in your ward's dress, namely, a pink silk cloak, the hood thrown over her head. i, who performed the ceremony, was deceived. that is to say, i was told the name of the bride and there was nothing to awaken any suspicions. at this point, and as a proof that part of this story is true, i would ask your ward to write her name in full, and i would then ask you to compare that writing with the signature in the registers." "are we stupid?" cried the vicar. "have we been struck with judicial stupidity? let us instantly, without any delay, proceed to this test. molly, my dear, get paper, pen and ink.... so--now sit at the table. write your name as you usually write it when you sign a letter." "but i never write any letters," said molly. "she writes the names on the pots of pickles and the preserved fruit," said the captain. "come, molly, you can sign your name." the girl blushed and seized the pen. it was not with the pen of a ready writer that she wrote, in a clumsy hand--a hand unaccustomed to such writing--her name "molly miller." "is this your best writing, molly?" "indeed, sir, i am ashamed that it is no better. at school i learned better, but i have so little occasion to write." "so long as it is the signature you would use in the church, it will serve," said the vicar. "come, let us to st. nicholas at once, and send for the clerk. we will examine these registers, and we will read the rest of the letter afterwards." the chest was unlocked; the registers were taken out; the books were opened at the right page. the vicar laid molly's writing beside that of the register. "you see," said the vicar, "the very signature proclaims the cheat. we have been, of a verity, seized with judicial blindness for our sins." the differences were not such as could be explained away, for the signature in the book was round and full and flowing--a bold signature for a woman--every letter well formed and of equal size, and in a straight line; the work of one who wrote many letters, and prided herself, apparently, on the clearness and beauty of her hand. molly's, on the other hand, showed letters awkwardly formed, not in line, of unequal height, and the evident work of one unaccustomed to writing. "what doubt have we now?" asked the vicar. "my friends, i see daylight. but let us return to complete my reverend brother's letter." the letter thus continued: "you have now, i take it, satisfied yourself that your ward could not possibly have penned that signature. you have no doubt, if you had any before, that your ward's denial was the truth. "at the same time you do not appear to have considered the matter worth fighting. it was not, for assuredly a court of justice, even with the handwriting as evidence, would have decided against you. so far, you were well advised. "you, therefore, withdrew opposition, and suffered the husband to take over, what he claimed, control of the estate. "from what i am informed, he is pursuing a course of mad riot, in which he alone sits cold and composed, as is his wont, for the contemplation of wickedness in action is more to his taste than becoming an actor himself; he is also playing and losing heavily. therefore, i have every reason to believe that he will before long get through the estate of his so-called wife. i hope he will, because he will then have nothing left at all, and the last state of that man will be as miserable as he deserves." "this man, too, has his revenge in sight," said the vicar. "i come now to the main point. i do not suppose that more than the third, or so, of your ward's fortune has yet been wasted. i will enable you to save the rest. "for a certain consideration, i need not write down its nature, my noble patron promised to pay me â£12,000 on his marriage with this heiress. it is a large sum of money, but the service i rendered was worth more." "it was his own confederacy, i suppose." "for the honour of the british aristocracy i regret to inform you that lord fylingdale repudiates the contract. he says that i may take any steps i please, but he refuses to pay. that the consideration--but i need not go on; in a word, he will give me nothing. "under these circumstances i will expose the whole affair, and put an end, at least, to his further depredations. if, therefore, you take over this obligation upon yourself i am prepared to draw up an account of the whole business; the personation of your ward, the reasons and the manner of it, and an explanation of the very remarkable coincidence--so remarkable as to seem impossible--of the substitution of one woman for another at a moment's notice. i further promise that this information will at once turn the tables; that you can refuse to let his lordship interfere further with your ward's estate; and that you can take steps to declare the so-called marriage null and void. nothing shall be left for explanation; all shall be quite simple and straightforward; and i can put evidence in your hands which you little suspect. "further, i promise and engage to ask for nothing until i have proved all that has to be proved and have established the fact that your ward was not married by me. "you can send me twenty-five guineas in advance. it can go to london to the coach office of the 'swan with four necks,' where i will call for it. "i am, naturally, after so great a disappointment, much in want of money, therefore i shall be obliged if you will make the advance fifty instead of twenty-five guineas. "(signed) benjamin purdon, "clerk in holy orders." we looked at each other in silence. "to procure thy freedom, molly," said the vicar, taking her hand, "there is nothing which we would not do--that honest men dare to do. but let us not be drawn away from our duty. we will have no part nor lot nor any traffic with rogues. this man is an arch rogue. this letter is the letter of a villain, who is, one would say--the lord forgive me for saying so of a fellow sinner!--beyond the power of repentance and beyond the hope of forgiveness. patience, molly, i think that we shall soon be rewarded--even with the loss of all thy worldly goods." chapter xliii the fifth and last confederate and then came the final revelation--the confession of the fifth and last confederate--which cleared up the whole mystery and explained that which, with one consent, we had all declared to be wholly unintelligible. the counsel learned in the law gave his written opinion that, considering that the marriage ceremony was fixed for 6 a.m., the bridegroom had no knowledge of the bride's intention not to present herself; that he left his lodgings a few minutes before six; that a few minutes after six, one pentecrosse, well known to the lady, witnessed the marriage ceremony and believed the bride to be the lady in question, dressed as she was accustomed to dress, although he did not see her face; that the parish clerk also recognised the lady; that the clergyman was ready to swear that the bride was the lady; and that the register showed her signature. there could be no change whatever of success in disputing or denying the marriage. the vicar, perceiving the weight of evidence, and adding to it the apparent impossibility of procuring at a moment's notice the personation of the bride, reluctantly advised submission, while being firmly persuaded that molly and her mother had spoken the truth, and that there was devilry somewhere. we submitted, with what results you have seen. it is, i believe, a rule that some playwriters, where they have a plot with a mystery or a secret in it, to keep the audience in ignorance, and so to heighten their interest, until the revelation in the last act clears up the mystery and relieves the spectators of their suspense. others, again, allow the audience to understand at the outset that their heroine or hero is the victim of villainy, but do not explain the full nature of that villainy until the end, when the plots of the wicked are brought to light. i have told this tale without the art of the playwright. i have shown you exactly how things happened, though we only discovered the truth long afterwards. for instance, you know already what was the full explanation of the marriage which i witnessed; you know the surprise with which the bridegroom discovered the truth, and you know besides the impudent use which, by the advice of the reverend benjamin purdon, was made of that discovery. also you know the reason of the personation and the person by whose indiscreet chattering it became possible. i have now to tell you how we ourselves discovered the truth. after the arrival of the letters already described, nothing new was learned for some months. that is to say, colonel lanyon wrote no more; the reverend mr. purdon, though he continued to write letters which threatened concealment and offered exposure, alternately; though his demand for money dropped with every letter until he had become a mere beggar, offering to reveal the whole in return for the relief of his present necessities; gave no hint of the nature of the exposure he desired to sell. but he had received, so far, no reply to any of his letters. between january and june my ship made another voyage to lisbon and back. when i landed, what i had to learn was the continual solicitation of mr. purdon, and the continual waste of the fortune. the demand for money never ceased. "send up more money--more money--more money. his lordship is in urgent want of more money." by this time a whole year had passed since the pretended marriage and our submission. never was a magnificent property so destroyed and diminished in so short a time. farms, lands, houses were sold for what they would fetch--at half their value--a quarter of their value. all the money out at mortgage had been called in--all the money received at the quay and the counting-house had been sent to his lordship's attorneys. in one short twelvemonth the destruction had been such that in june there was actually nothing left--nothing out of that princely fortune, except the fleet of ships and the general business. "and now, mr. pentecrosse," said the manager (lately clerk and accountant) "the end draweth nigh. a few more weeks or months and this great shipping firm, near a hundred years old, which hath sent its ships all about the world; the most important house outside london and bristol, will put up its shutters and close its door. alas! the pity of it! the pity of it!" "but," i said, "this spendthrift lord, this waster and devourer, surely will not destroy the very spring and fountain of this wealth." "i know not. he seems possessed with a devil." here the manager was wrong, because he was possessed of seven devils. "his waste is nothing short of madness. it seems as if he was unable to look before him, even in such a simple matter as the origin of the money, which he has obtained by marriage--if he is married--and is now wasting as fast as he can." it is in no way profitable, unless one is a divine, to search into the heart of the wicked man. the psalmist, who was continually troubled by considering the ways of the ungodly, supplies us with sufficient guidance as to his mind and his thoughts. in the case of lord fylingdale, i would compare him with the highwaymen and common thieves in one particular, namely, that they seem to have no power of thrift or of prudence, but must continually waste and devour what they acquire without honest labour. it is as if they understood that their way of life being uncertain, and the end at any time possible, their only chance of enjoyment is the present moment. now, lord fylingdale was using the proceeds of an enormous robbery obtained by a fraud of incredible audacity. i think he felt the uncertainty of his hold. it depended on the silence of two persons. should these two persons unite in revealing the conspiracy he would at least be able to rob no longer. now, he had already alienated both of them. the one he had filled with a passion for revenge; the other ... but you shall hear. i think, moreover, that he found a gambler's joy in the handling of large sums and playing with them; that he kept no account of the money he lost; and that, with his companions, he kept a kind of open house at certain taverns for the debauches over which he presided, without condescending in person to join the drunken orgy. did he find a strange enjoyment in the debauchery of others? men have been known--i cannot understand it--to delight in torturing other men and in witnessing their agonies; men might also--i know not how--take a delight in witnessing orgies and in listening to the discourses of drunken rakes. but it is not profitable, as i said, to dwell upon the mind of such a man. it was on the 15th of june--i remember the date well--and shall always remember it. _the lady of lynn_ had arrived two days before, and we were moored off the quay. at ten o'clock, or thereabouts, one of the stable boys from the house came aboard bringing a message for me. a lady, lodging at the "crown," desired to see me immediately. the lady had arrived in the evening in a post-chaise, having with her a maid. she had given no name, but in the morning had asked if my ship was in port, and on learning that it was she desired that a boy from the stables might carry this message to me. i landed at our own quay--i say our own, but it was no longer ours, that is, molly's quay. at the door of the counting-house stood the manager in conversation with the captain of one of our ships. he beckoned me to speak with him. when he had finished his discourse with the captain he turned to me. "mr. pentecrosse," he said, "the worst has now begun. tell captain crowle--i should choke if i had to tell him. alas! poor man! it seems as if the work of his life was ruined and destroyed." so saying he handed me a letter to read. it was from my lord's attorneys, messrs. bisse and son. "i suppose," said the manager, "that they are really acting for his lordship. their power of attorney cannot be denied, can it? mr. redman says that there is nothing for it but obedience." the letter was short: "we have noted your information conveyed in the last schedule. you are now instructed to proceed with the sale of one of the ships. let her be sold as she stands on arriving in port with so much of the cargo as belongs to your house. my lord is urgently pressed for money, and begs that there may be no delay. meantime send a draft by the usual channel for money in hand. "your obedient servants, "bisse and son." "a draft for monies in hand!" cried the manager. "there are no monies in hand! and i have to sell without delay a tall ship, cargo and all, as she stands. without delay! who is to buy that ship--without delay?" i returned him the letter and shook my head. my ship, perhaps, was the one to be sold. she was the latest arrival; she was filled with wine; the cargo belonged altogether to the house. so i should be turned adrift when just within hail, so to speak, of becoming a captain. i could say nothing in consolation or in hope. i walked away, my heart as heavy as lead. never before had i felt the true meaning of this ruin and waste. all around me the noble edifice built by molly's grandfather and her father, and continued by her guardian, had been pulled down bit by bit. but one felt the loss of a farm or a house very little. it was not until the ships, too, were threatened, that the full enormity of the thing--the incredible wickedness of the conspirators, was borne in upon my mind. it threatened to ruin me, you see, as well as molly. therefore, i walked across the market-place to the crown inn more gloomy in my mind than i can describe. hitherto, somehow, a ship seemed safe; no one would interfere with a ship; like lord fylingdale himself, i was ready to ask whether a ship could be bought and sold. that is to say, i knew that she was often bought and sold, but i never thought that any of molly's ships--any other ships as much as you please, but not molly's ship--could be brought to the hammer. the lady sent word that she would receive me. imagine my surprise! she was none other than the lady anastasia. she was greatly changed in six months. i had seen her last, you remember, in january, when i met her in the park. she was then finely dressed, and appeared in good case, what we call a buxom widow--in other words, a handsome woman, with a winning manner and a smiling face. this she was when i met her. when i left her on that occasion she was a handsome woman marred with a consuming wrath. now, i should hardly have known her. she was plainly attired, without patches or paint, wearing a grey silk dress. but the chief change was not in her dress, but in her face. she was pale, and her cheeks were haggard. she looked like a woman who had recently suffered a severe illness, and was, indeed, not yet fully recovered. "jack," she advanced, giving me her hand with her old graciousness, "you are very good to come when i call. it is the last time that you will obey any call from me." "why the last time, madam?" "because, jack, i am now going to make you my bitter enemy. yes, my enemy for life." she tried to smile, but her eyes grew humid. "i can never be regarded henceforth as anything else. you will despise me--you will curse me. yet i must needs speak." "madam, i protest--i know not what you mean." "and i, jack, i protest--know not how to begin. do you remember last january, when we talked together? let me begin there. yes; it will be best to begin there. i do not think i could begin at the other end. it would be like a bath of ice-cold water in january." "i remember our conversation, madam." "you told me--what was it you told me? something about a certain box, or case of jewels." "molly's jewels. yes, i told you how his lordship seized upon them at the first when he claimed control over molly's fortune." "you told me that. it was in january. he had seized upon them six months before. the thing surprised me. he had always told me that he could not get those jewels--and jack, you see, they were my own." "yours, madam? but--they were molly's." "not at all. molly, after her marriage, had nothing. all became my lord's property. the jewels were mine, jack--mine by promise and compact." i understood nothing. "i have seen in france, the women kneeling at the boxes where they confess to the priest. jack, will you be my priest? i can confess to you what i could never confess to molly--though i have wronged her--jack! oh! my priest----" here she fell on her knees and clasped her hands. "no--no," she cried. "i will not rise. on my knees, on my knees--not to ask your pardon, but for the shame and the disgrace and the villainy." "madam--i pray--i entreat." i took her by both hands. i half lifted her and half assisted her. she sank into an armchair sobbing and crying, and covered her face with her hands. she was not play acting. no--no--it was real sorrow--true shame. oh! there was revenge as well. no doubt there was revenge. if she had been wicked, she had also been wronged. presently she recovered a little. then she sat up and began to talk. "i am the most miserable woman in the world--and i deserve my misery. jack, when you go back to your ship, fall on your knees and thank god that you are poor and that molly has been robbed of her fortune and is also poor. oh! to be born rich--believe me--it is a thing most terrible. it makes men become like lord fylingdale, who have nothing to do but to follow pleasure--such pleasure! ah! merciful heaven! such pleasure! and it makes women, jack, like me. we, too, follow pleasure like the men--we become gamblers--there is no pleasure for me like the pleasure of gambling; we fall in love for the pleasure and whim of it--till we are slaves to men who treat us worse than they treat their dogs--worse than they treat their lackeys. then we forget honour and honesty; then we throw away reputation and good name; we accept recklessly shame and dishonour. my name has become a byword--but what of that? i have been a man's slave--i have done his bidding." "but how, madam"--still i understood very little of this talk, yet became suspicious when she spoke thus of the jewels--"how came molly's jewels to be your own?" "i tell you, jack. by promise and compact. i must go back to another discourse with you. it was on a certain evening a year ago. you had made the fine discovery that lord fylingdale was a gamester and the rest of it. you told me. you also told me that molly would not keep her promise, and would certainly not be at the church in the morning. do you remember?" "i remember that we talked about things." "we did. go back a month or two earlier. by a most monstrous deception i was brought here. i was told first that it was in order to further some political object, which i did not believe; next, to help him in getting the command of this money--some women, i said, easily lose their sense of honour and of truth when they want to please their lovers. as for marriage, he declared for the hundredth time that there was but one woman in all the world whom he would marry--myself. now do you understand? he had deceived me. very well, then i would deceive him. at first my purpose was to await in the church the coming of the bride and expose the character of the man. since she was not coming i would take her place." "what? it was you, then--you--you?" "yes, jack. i was the woman you saw at the rails. i had a pink silk cloak like that of molly; i am about the same height as molly. i wore a domino as had been arranged. you took me for molly." "but--if you were the bride----" "i was the bride. i am the countess of fylingdale--for my sins and sorrows--his wretched wife." "but you would be revenged, and yet you suffered this monstrous fraud." "i was revenged. yet--why did i say nothing? did i not say that you could never forgive me. well, i have no excuse, only i said that women, like me, with nothing to do, sometimes go mad after a man and for his sake cast away honour and care nothing for shame and ill-repute. i say, jack," she repeated, earnestly, "that i make no excuse--i tell you nothing but the plain truth. lord! how ugly it is!" i said nothing, i only stood still waiting for more. "when i took off my domino in the vestry, my lord, with the man purdon, only being present, he was like a madman. that i expected. after raging for a while and crying out that he was now ruined indeed, and after cursing mr. purdon for not destroying the registers, he listened to mr. purdon's advice that we should consider a way out of it. accordingly, in my lodgings, the man purdon, who is the greatest inventor and encourager of every evil thing that lives, set forth the ease with which this marriage could be claimed, unless there was any obstacle such as sudden illness which might be proved to have made molly's presence impossible. in other words, we were to assure the unfortunate molly that she was already married, and we were to act as if that was the fact. we ascertained without trouble that she had not left the house that morning. how? we sent the music to congratulate the bride, and the captain sallied forth in his wrath and drove them off." "and to this you consented, out of your passion for the man?" "partly. there is always more than one reason for a woman's action. in this case there was a bribe. i confess that i have always ardently desired jewels. i cannot have too many jewels. he promised, jack, that i should have them all. perhaps--i do not know--the promise of the jewels decided me. oh! jack, they were wonderful! no such bribe was ever offered to a woman before." i gazed upon her with amazement. truly, an explanation complete! yet, what a confession for a proud woman to make! love that made her trample on honour and truth and virtue, and a bribe to quicken her footsteps! "and now," i said, "you are willing to make this story public." "i have thought about the business a good deal. it has caused me more annoyance than you would believe." ("annoyance!" she spoke of "annoyance!") "besides, i have been cruelly abused. i have been the cause of that poor girl losing a great part--perhaps the whole--of her fortune. i have been robbed of the jewels. he swore to me, a dozen times, that he has never had them. i may by tardy confession save something from the wreck for that poor girl. he has wronged me in every way--in ways that no woman will, or can, forgive. i revenge my wrongs by making him a beggar a few weeks, or months, before he can come to the end of his money." so in this distracted way she talked till one could not tell whether she was most moved by the thought of revenge, or by pity for molly, or by a wholesome repentance of her sin. "jack," she said, "your honest face is pulled out as long as my arm. i could laugh if i were not so miserable. tell me what i should do next. mind, i will do exactly what you bid me do. i have lived so long among kites, hawks, crows, and birds of prey, with foul creatures and crawling reptiles, that merely to talk to an honest man softens and subdues me. take me in the humour, jack. to-morrow, or next day, should the idea of the man possess my soul again; if he should stand over me and take my hand, i know not--i know not what would happen. perhaps, even for molly's sake, i could not resist him. i am but a poor, weak, miserable woman. and he has led me hither, and sent me thither, and made me his slave so long, that he has become part of my life. quick, then, jack! tell me what to do." "come with me," i said. so she wrapped herself in a long cloak--not of pink silk--and she put on a domino and i led her to mr. redman's office. and here i begged her to let me set down in writing what she had told me but in fewer words, while mr. redman stood over me and read what i wrote and as i wrote it. "the story, your ladyship," he said, "is the most remarkable that i have ever heard. you will now, in the presence of witnesses--my clerk and one whom he will bring from the customhouse will serve. so--they will sign without knowing what the paper contains." so she signed in the same bold running hand that we had seen in the registers. "what next?" she asked. "why, madam, we have to consider the next step. it is obvious that the confession removes the whole of the difficulty, and explains what has hitherto seemed inexplicable. how, it was asked, could the place of the bride be filled at the last moment, and without previous knowledge that it would have to be filled? and who was the woman thus duly married and actually, though under a false name, made countess of fylingdale, who did not step forward and claim her rights? now, madam, the question is answered. you knew, but my lord did not know, that the bride could not come to the church. you were there, therefore, to take her place. you joined in this conspiracy, and kept silence for the reasons contained in this document." "quite so. and now, sir. what next? will you bring my lord to justice? shall i have to give evidence against him?" "madam, i know not. you have done your best, not so much to repair a great wrong as to stop further wrong. if i understand matters aright it will be impossible to recover anything that has been taken." "you might as well hope to recover a sack of coals that have been burned." "therefore, what we have to do first, is to stop further pillage. next, i apprehend, we must make it clear that your signature in the register was false." lady anastasia rose and put on her domino again. "i am going back to london, sir. mr. pentecrosse knows my house where i am to be heard of for the present. it was a bad day's work when i was married in that pink silk cloak. it may prove a worse day's work when i confessed." "nay, madam," i said quietly, "can it be a bad day's work to stop a cruel and unfeeling robbery?" "i have done my part, gentlemen, for good or for ill. in a few weeks or months the man would have beggared himself as well as that poor girl. now he is beggared already. i know not what he will do, nor whither he will turn." so i led her back to the crown and that same day she took her departure and i have never seen her since. one letter, it is true, i had from her of which i will tell you in due course. then i returned to mr. redman. "jack," he said, "i am going without further discussion to warn the manager not to send any more money to these attorneys and to disregard their orders. i shall write at once warning them that we have now in our hands clear proof that my client is not married to lord fylingdale, and that we are considering in what manner we should proceed with regard to the large sums that have been remitted to his orders. this, jack, is the way of lawyers. we write such a letter knowing that we shall not proceed further in this direction, for the scandal would be very great and the profit would be very small. besides, there is the awkward fact that we made no protest, but submitted. yet sure and certain i am that the other side will not dare to go into court, being conscious of guilt, yet not knowing how much we have learned." "it seems a tame ending that villainy should get off unpunished." "not unpunished, jack. you young men look to see the lightning strike the wicked man. that is not the way, believe me. he never goes unpunished, though he may be forgiven. i look not for the flash of lightning to strike this man dead, but i look for the vengeance of the lord--perhaps to-day, perhaps to-morrow." he read over again the paper signed by lady anastasia. "it is a strange confession," he said. "there is the wrath of a jealous woman in it. he might have beaten her and cuffed her; he might have robbed her; and she would have forgiven him. but he has followed after strange goddesses. she spoke about the jewels. i suppose that he has long since given them to these strange goddesses. hence her repentance. hence her revenge. jack, i think we ought to have the other confederate's confession--that of the man purdon. he wanted â£12,000 for it at first. he then came down to â£6,000; he now offers it for relief of his present necessities. i will send my attorney to see him. the vicar refuses to have any dealings with scoundrels. in this case, however, it might be politic to traffic with him. we will offer him â£100 for a full confession. i will instruct my attorney what particulars to expect." my story is nearly finished. molly recovered her freedom with the loss of by far the greater part of her fortune. she had, indeed, nothing left except her fleet and the trade carried on by the firm in which she was sole partner. still she remained the richest woman in the town. there was no difficulty in procuring from the reverend mr. purdon a full statement of the conspiracy. it was, of course, to be expected that he should represent lord fylingdale as the contriver and the proposer of the abominable design. however, he gave under safeguards of witness and signature a plain recital of what had happened, in which he was borne out by the other confession in our hands. and here follows the letter from the lady anastasia. "my dear jack," she said, "news reaches lynn slowly if it gets there at all. therefore i hasten to inform you that an end has come--perhaps the end that you would desire. my lord is no more. i am a widow. yet i mourn not. my husband in name during the last twelve months has acted as one no longer in command of himself. i cannot think, indeed, that he has been in his right mind since he entered upon that great crime of which you know. he would have gone from bad to worse, and i should have suffered more and still more. he killed himself. he placed the muzzle of a pistol within his mouth and so killed himself. "it was yesterday. i went to see him. i had to tell him what i had done. i expected he would kill me. perhaps it would have been better had he done so. "i found him with his attorney, a man named bisse, whom i have seen with him frequently. "'pray, madam, take a chair. i am your humble servant. you can go, mr. bisse,' said my lord. 'you have my instructions. order the manager to proceed with the sale of the ships.' "'with submission, my lord. we can send him orders, but we can only make him obey by proceeding according to law. he finds excuses. he makes delays. he talks of sacrificing the ships to a forced sale.' "'you will not proceed according to law, my lord,' i told him. "'why, madam?' "'because i have been to lynn myself, and have explained certain points in connection with the marriage service in st. nicholas church.' "my lord looked at me in his cold way, as if neither surprised nor moved. "'mr. bisse,' he said, 'i will communicate again with you.' so the attorney left us. then he turned again to me. "'my lord,' i repeated, 'i have made a statement of all the facts.' "'i thank you, madam. i thank you with all my heart. let me not detain you.' "he said no more, and i rose. but the door was thrown open, and mr. purdon walked in without being announced. "'ha!' he said, seeing me, 'we are all three, then, together again. my lord, i will not waste your time. i have come to explain that since you have refused to perform your compact, you cannot complain if i have broken up the whole business.' "'i thought i had ordered you out of my presence, sir.' "'so you did. so you did. i have only come to say that i have this day drawn up a full confession of the conspiracy into which i was drawn by your lordship, deceived against my better judgment by the promise of a large sum of money.' "lord fylingdale pointed to the door. 'you can go, sir,' he said. so the man purdon obeyed and went away. "then he turned to me. 'anastasia, we were friends once. i treated you shamefully in the matter of the jewels. things have gone badly with me of late. i seem to have no luck. perhaps i have, somehow, lost my judgment. that money has done me no good. curse that scoundrel, sam semple! it is all over now. the game has been played. i have lost, i suppose. but every game comes to an end at last.' he talked unlike himself. 'you can go, anastasia. you had better leave me. you have had your revenge. let that consideration console you.' "i said no more, but left him. it was in the afternoon. an hour later his people heard an explosion--they ran to find the cause. lord fylingdale was lying dead on the floor. "so, jack, we are all punished, and none of us can complain. for my own part i am going into the country where i have a small dower house. the solitude and the dullness will, i dare say, kill me, but i do not care about living any longer.--anastasia." she did, however, pass into a better mind. for i heard some time after that she had married the dean of the neighbouring cathedral, not under the name of lady fylingdale, which she never assumed, but that of her first husband. as to the other confederates, the poet, the colonel, and the parson, i never heard anything more about them. nor do i expect now that i ever shall. the rest of molly's history, dear reader, belongs to me and not to the world. * * * * * transcriber's note: minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. dialect spellings, contractions and inconsistencies have been retained as printed. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 38938-h.htm or 38938-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38938/38938-h/38938-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38938/38938-h.zip) [illustration: ely at eventide] through east anglia in a motor car by j. e. vincent with sixteen illustrations in colour by frank southgate, r.b.a. new york: mcclure, phillips & co. london: methuen & co. 1907 contents chapter i page winter. [oxford] to cambridge, newmarket, and ipswich 1 chapter ii winter. ipswich to norwich via woodbridge, beccles, lowestoft, and yarmouth 30 chapter iii winter. norwich to london by roman road 56 chapter iv spring. through the heart of east anglia 70 chapter v spring. [in norwich] and to ely and cambridge 106 chapter vi london, felixstowe--dunwich, felixstowe 138 chapter vi--(_continued_) felixstowe, bawdsey, woodbridge, ipswich, dunmow, and london 167 chapter vii late summer. colchester and eastwards 181 chapter viii colchester and gainsborough's country 229 chapter ix from colchester westwards--coggeshall, braintree, witham, ingatestone, margaretting, danbury hill, maldon, tiptree, messing, and colchester 250 chapter ix--(_continued_) colchester to the extraordinary "dene-holes" at grays, essex 271 chapter x in spring. troubles made easy 292 chapter xi great ambitions cheerfully relinquished. harleston to cromer via bungay, beccles, lowestoft, great yarmouth, caister-by-yarmouth, and norwich 306 chapter xii a priory--great houses and the fens 335 chapter xiii from king's lynn as centre 360 list of illustrations ely at eventide _frontispiece_ page cambridge--king's college and the cam 5 woodbridge street 36 southwold harbour 40 fishing boats at lowestoft 44 norwich market place 54 ipswich port 70 dunwich and desolation 160 abbey gateway--bury st. edmunds 300 beccles from the waveney 314 yarmouth from breydon 320 church street, cromer 327 blakeney, a characteristic landscape 335 walsingham priory 342 heath, near sandringham 382 blickling hall 384 practical observations few practical suggestions are needed by the motorist in east anglia--a district not presenting many difficulties. those which are deemed necessary are here prefixed to the whole body of the text. abbreviations r. signifies that there is a garage capable of doing moderate repairs. r. a. signifies that the facilities for repair are abundant. p. signifies that petrol can be purchased, but it has not been considered needful to state this where the existence of a garage renders a supply of petrol certain. chapter i cambridge, newmarket, bury, and ipswich roads cambridge to newmarket, mostly flat--not good. newmarket to bury st. edmunds, fair. bury st. edmunds to ipswich, poor and very sinuous. hills a sharp rise to newmarket. some small ups and downs between newmarket and bury st. edmunds. some small ups and downs between ipswich and stowmarket. distances cambridge (r.a.)to newmarket (r.), 13-1/4. newmarket to bury st. edmunds (r.), 14. bury st. edmunds viâ stowmarket (r.), to ipswich (r.a.), 25-1/2. _n.b._--_great care is necessary in driving through ipswich, owing to narrow streets and fast tramcars._ chapter ii ipswich to norwich, via beccles, lowestoft, and yarmouth roads fair to blythburgh, poor thence to beccles, fair for rest of journey. hill a sharp ascent on leaving ipswich. distances ipswich to woodbridge (r.), 8. woodbridge to wickham market (r.), 4-3/4. wickham market to saxmundham (r.), 8. _détour_ to aldeburgh recommended. turn to right at farnham, 2 short of saxmundham. to aldeburgh (r.), 7. rejoin blythburgh road at yoxford. yoxford from aldeburgh, 9. from saxmundham, 3-1/2. saxmundham to yoxford, 3-1/2. yoxford, viâ darsham to blythburgh, 3-3/4. _détour_ to southwold (r.), 6 advised. return same route of going to beccles, or by reydon, wangford and blyford, and then to beccles road, thus adding 4-1/4 in all. blythburgh to beccles (r. a.), 9. beccles to lowestoft (r. a.), 10. lowestoft to great yarmouth (r. a.), 10. great yarmouth to norwich (r. a.), direct route 19-1/2. chapter iii norwich to london by roman road roads the surface is reasonably good, and the milestones are legible so long as the road is in norfolk. on entering suffolk the milestones are often found illegible, and the surface of the road becomes noticeably worse. the main road from colchester to london, viâ the east end of london, is of fairly good quality, but traffic is very troublesome during the later part. hills between norwich and ipswich are no hills of at all a serious character on this route, except when surface is very soft. at stratford st. mary, on crossing the river towards colchester, is a fairly stiff ascent, and the colchester vicinity is hilly, but not difficult for cars of moderate power. _n.b._--great care should always be observed in leaving norwich, the streets being narrow, crooked and full of risk, and the way difficult to find. distances norwich to london (marble arch), 114-3/4. norwich to long stratton, 10-1/4. long stratton to scole, 9-1/4. scole to thornton parva, 4-3/4. thornton parva to thwaite, 2-3/4. thwaite to claydon, 11-3/4. claydon to ipswich (r. a.), 4. ipswich to colchester (r. a.), 6-3/4. colchester to chelmsford (r. a.), 13-1/4. chelmsford to romford (r.), 14-3/4. romford to stratford, 8. stratford to marble arch, 6-3/4. chapter iv through the heart of east anglia roads main roads throughout. good in surface, for the most part very straight and free from cross-roads, so that high speeds may be enjoyed with safety. hills none worthy of mention. distances royston to newmarket (r.), 24. newmarket to thetford (r.), 20-1/4. thetford to attleborough (r.), 14. attleborough to wymondham (r.), 6. wymondham to norwich (r. a.), 9. _note._--this was merely an afternoon drive in east anglia, preceded by a morning spent in reaching it by car; but it is not the less likely to be suitable to other motorists for that reason. chapter v norwich to ely and cambridge roads fair at outset. worse on approaching ely. hills none of any moment, but no monotony of level until reaching fordham. distances norwich to watton (p.), 8. watton to brandon, 13. [n.b.--this is a by-way to find which turn sharply to left on reaching the lynn and thetford road. the distance is approximate.] brandon to mildenhall (p.), 9-1/4. mildenhall to fordham, 6-1/4. fordham to soham (r.), 3-1/4. soham to ely (r.), 5-1/4. ely to cambridge (r. a.), 16. cambridge to royston (r.), 13-1/2. _caution._--great care should be taken to ascertain the right exit from norwich. _note._--this is not a full day's drive, and in fact left me 70 miles to travel, but it is a convenient exit from east anglia westwards. from royston to london is 42-1/4. chapter vi london, felixstowe, and dunwich important note. _the route out of london eastwards given below under "distances" is believed to be incomparably the best in that direction. it is therefore given with great particularity of instruction, the distances having been mechanically recorded. without care it is easily missed on the inward journey._ roads vile, with crumbling surface of gravel, in epping forest. good from chelmsford to felixstowe. fair from felixstowe to saxmundham. farm tracks were tried beyond saxmundham. they were found soft, rough, but not injurious to tires. hills worthy of respect in epping forest, owing to bad surface, round colchester, on leaving ipswich, and on leaving dunwich. distances and special directions. oxford circus to epping, 22·7. proceed viâ regent street, langham place, portland place, park crescent, to euston road; turn to the right and go straight on past king's cross station; turn to left into york road, which follow to tramway lines in camden road; here turn to the right and follow tramway lines across holloway road into seven sisters road; continue to follow tramway lines to "manor house," and there, taking the right-hand fork of tram lines, go on to red brick structure in the centre of the road. here incline to the left and follow tram lines through tottenham high road to edmonton (9·9), and go straight on to ponder's end. here at "the two brewers" turn to the right, go over a level crossing at ponder's end. beyond the crossing the road passes through fields, but two gates less than 3/4 of a mile apart must be watched for. go straight on to chingford (13·8). look out for loughton and epping sign-post, which points to whitehall lane, and at the end of whitehall lane (15·4), turn to the left and proceed to buckhurst hill. then bear to the right at the next fork, where sign-post directs to loughton (17·6), and epping. _epping to felixstowe._--epping (r.) to ongar (r.), 7-1/2. ongar to chelmsford (r.), 11-3/4. chelmsford to colchester (r. a.), 23-1/4. colchester to ipswich (r. a.), 16-3/4. ipswich to felixstowe (r.), 11-1/2. _felixstowe to dunwich and back._--(distances approximate owing to use of byways and farm tracks.) felixstowe to woodbridge (r.), 10. woodbridge to saxmundham (r.), 12-3/4. saxmundham to dunwich, 13-1/2. dunwich to felixstowe, 31. chapter vi--(_continued_) felixstowe, bawdsey, woodbridge, ipswich, dunmow, and london roads high-roads fair throughout. byways between bawdsey and woodbridge very bad, rough, and soft. [n.b.--bawdsey ferry should not be attempted, especially at low tide, unless the car may be relied upon to climb from a standstill up a short but very sharp incline of quite loose gravel. the country beyond can hardly be called worth taking risks to see.] hills insignificant. distances felixstowe to woodbridge (r.), viâ bawdsey ferry and byways, approximately 15. woodbridge to ipswich (r. a.), 8. ipswich to braintree (r.), 35. braintree to great dunmow (r.), 8. great dunmow to takeley, 4. takeley to hatfield broad oak, 3. hatfield broad oak to high ongar, 4 (approximately). high ongar to epping (r.), 8. epping to london, distances as before, reversing order of places. chapter vii colchester and eastwards roads mostly of secondor third-rate quality, especially in wet weather. frequently sinuous, narrow, and overshadowed by trees, and therefore sometimes greasy in reasonably dry weather. hills between ardleigh and manningtree, 1 in 13. between mistley and bradfield (_en route_ for harwich), 1 in 13. between bradfield and dovercourt, 1 in 15. distances (1) colchester (r. a.) to clacton-on-sea (r.), 16. clacton to great holland, 4. great holland to st. osyth, 8. st. osyth to colchester, 11-3/4. (2) colchester to ardleigh, 5. ardleigh to manningtree (r.), 5-1/2. _détour_ suggested to east bergholt, viâ dedham, 5; back to manningtree, 5. manningtree to harwich (r. a.), viâ mistley, bradfield, and dovercourt (r.), 11-1/2. harwich to colchester, viâ dovercourt, little oakley, great oakley, weeley, and elmstead market, 24. chapter viii colchester and gainsborough's country roads mostly of second or third class and very sinuous, so distances are approximate. hills stoke-by-nayland, stiff, gradient unknown. between sudbury and long melford, 1 in 13. distances colchester to lexden, 2. lexden to stoke-by-nayland, 10. stoke-by-nayland to sudbury, alternative routes (1) viâ bures st. mary, marsh, and great cornard, 10. (2) viâ lavenheath, arrington, and newton, 11. the former recommended as gainsborough painted a picture of part of the wood at cornard. sudbury to long melford, 3-1/4. long melford, viâ cavendish and clare to stoke-by-clare, 8. stoke-by-clare, viâ ridgewell, tilbury-juxta-clare, to great yeldham, 4. great yeldham to halstead (p.), viâ castle hedingham and little maplestead, 7. _détour_ of 3-1/2 out and 3-1/2 back advised to little maplestead. halstead to colchester, viâ earl's colne, fordham, and lexden, 12-1/2. chapter ix colchester and westwards roads good to marks tey. fair to coggeshall, braintree, and witham. good from witham to ingatestone. second-rate from margaretting to tiptree. bad from tiptree to heckford bridge. thence good into colchester. hills to braintree, a steady rise of 100 feet in 2 miles. from margaretting to galleywood common, a small climb. from sandon up to danbury hill, nearly 300 feet in 2 miles. from maldon and heybridge, 200 feet in 3 miles. distances colchester to marks tey, 6-1/4. thence to coggeshall, 4-1/2. coggeshall to braintree (r.), 8. braintree to witham (r.), 8. witham to ingatestone, 14-3/4. ingatestone to margaretting, 2. margaretting to galleywood common, 2-1/2. galleywood common to danbury hill, 4-1/2. danbury hill to maldon, 5-1/2. maldon, viâ heybridge, to tiptree, 7. tiptree, viâ messing and heckford bridge, to colchester, 9-1/4. _alternative routes_ from braintree to london, suggested for persons occupied in london, but preferring country residence- (1) viâ bishop's stortford (10-1/4) to marble arch (43), viâ sawbridgeworth, harlow, epping, loughton, and woodford green. (2) viâ chelmsford, chipping ongar, epping and so to london, exactly reversing route given fully at the head of chapter vi. chapter ix--(_continued_) colchester to grays roads good to chelmsford; not bad to billericay; very bad beyond. hills galleywood common, a stiff rise; about 150 feet in 2 miles. billericay hill, 1 in 13. langdon hill, a stiff rise; 300 feet in 2-1/2 miles. distances colchester to chelmsford (r.a.), 23-1/4. chelmsford to great baddow, 1-3/4. great baddow to billericay (p.), 8. billericay to horndon, 8. horndon to chadwell, 4. chadwell to little thurrock and hangman's wood, 1-3/4. _suggestions._--(1) return to colchester by motor-boat from east tilbury to clacton-on-sea, about 54 land miles. thence by rail. (2) to london, viâ barking, 12; thence 7-1/4 to whitechapel. the worst entry into london. chapter x royston to harleston roads all good high-roads. hills none worthy of mention. distances royston (r.) to newmarket (r.), 24. newmarket to bury st. edmunds (r.), 14. bury st. edmunds to scole, 21-1/2. scole to harleston (r.), 7. chapter xi harleston to norwich roads all fair, some good, especially yarmouth to norwich and norwich to cromer. hills none of moment. distances harleston (r.) to bungay (r.), 7-1/2. bungay to beccles (r. a.), 6. beccles to lowestoft (r. a.), 10. lowestoft to yarmouth (r. a.), 10. yarmouth viâ caister to norwich (r. a.), 23. norwich to cromer (r.), 22-1/2. chapter xii cromer, wells, fakenham, lynn, ely, cambridge, and royston roads fair from cromer to wells; good from wells to lynn and from lynn to cambridge. hills none of moment, but no monotony of level except between lynn and cambridge. distances cromer (r.) to wells-next-sea (r.), 20-1/2. wells to fakenham (r.), 9-3/4. fakenham to lynn (r.), 21-3/4. lynn to ely (r.), 29. ely to cambridge (r. a.), 16. cambridge to royston (r.), 13-1/2. _n.b._--royston is 42-1/4 from london, and a good point of exit for the midlands. chapter xiii expeditions from king's lynn roads mostly high-roads and good. hills the early part of the projected drive is through undulating country not marked by very severe gradients. the later part, from fakenham to swaffham, is over ground higher in average elevation, but of similar character. distances lynn to castle rising, 4-1/4. castle rising to wolferton, 2. wolferton to dersingham, 3. dersingham to hunstanton (r.), 8. hunstanton to brancaster, 8. brancaster to burnham thorpe, 4-1/2. burnham thorpe to fakenham (r.), 12. fakenham to swaffham (r.), 15-1/2. swaffham to lynn (r. a.), 15-1/2. introduction this book, the first volume it is hoped of a series, was undertaken because the existing guide-books were, through no fault in their writers, by no means adequate to the needs of the traveller by motor-car. a new method of travel, in fact, brings in its train the need for a new species of guide-book, and the truth of this observation becomes clear when we consider an authoritative definition of the term "guide-book." it is "a book of directions for travellers and tourists as to the best routes, etc., and giving information about the places to be visited." all which needs to be added to this definition by way of explanation is that the information given may justly be of almost any kind so long as it is not tedious. substantially, all the existing guide-books, some of them of admirable quality, were written before the motor-car had entered into our social system. except a small number of accounts of tours by horse-drawn carriages, they were compiled by men who travelled by train from place to place, obtaining no view of the country often--for deep cuttings destroy all joy of the eye for the railway passenger--and at best only a partial view, for the use of men and women condemned to the like method of travel. in them it is vain to seek for any appreciation of the pleasure of the road, of the delight of travel itself. the motor-car has changed all that. the act of going from place to place is at least as essential a part of the enjoyment of a tour as the sojourn at the new place when it is reached, as the leisurely survey of its features of beauty or interest, or the inquiry into its history and its associations. many matters, too, are of moment to the motorist which are of none to the traveller by rail. he desires to know something in advance of the nature of the roads to be traversed, of the gradients to be climbed, of the facilities for housing his car when his destination of the day is accomplished, and last, but certainly not least, where he can submit it to a skilled artificer for repair if occasion should unhappily arise. does the motorist need, or desire, more than has been set forth in the preceding sentence? the anti-motorist will think not, will remain convinced that the motorist is a dust-raising, property-destroying, dog-killing, fowl-slaying, dangerous and ruthless speed maniac. but, of course, the anti-motorist is quite wrong. the rational motorist, who is in the overwhelming majority--but black sheep are sadly conspicuous amidst a white flock--passes through certain regular stages of evolution. at first he revels without thought, or without conscious thought, in the sheer ecstasy of motion. the road which seems to flow to meet him, white, tawny or grey as the case may be, and to open before him as if by magic, the pressure of the cool air on his face, even the tingling lash of the rain as he dashes against it, result in a feeling of undefinable, almost lyrical, exaltation. in the next stage he begins to take in broad impressions of great stretches of country, impressions similar in some respects to those obtained from a mountain top, but secured in rapid succession. soon--for the faculties of man adapt themselves rapidly to his needs--the man in the car begins to observe more rapidly and more minutely than in the early days. the man at the steering-wheel finds that he can watch the road up to the farthest visible point in advance, manipulate his throttle, use accelerator or decelerator, and, most important of all, be in vigilant sympathy with his engine, subconsciously. at the same time he can take an intelligent interest in the scenes through which he is passing, can carry on a conversation with her or with him who sits by his side, can tell a good story or listen to one, can impart information or receive it, without in the slightest degree neglecting his primary duty of driving and humouring the car. in this is nothing of novelty. the same state of doing instructively and without reflection the right thing at the right time is reached by every proficient in many crafts, by the driver of horses for example, and by the steersman of a sailing vessel. the motorist, therefore, even if he be driving, can think of things outside the car, can remain a rational and intelligent man, can (and in my experience usually does) desire to know those associations of the country-side which, when known, appeal to his imagination, or to his memory, and make the day's journey something better and more interesting than a progress through the air and over the ground. how much more then, after the first bewilderment of motoring has worn off, shall the mere passenger be able and desirous to travel with seeing eye and thinking brain? there is no need to labour the point. motorists are well aware, without argument, that they feel an intelligent interest in every part of "this amazing england," and that they would take that interest more fully if they were provided, so to speak, with the proper materials. such materials ought to be found in guide-books, written in the motorist's mood, which is wider and often less microscopical than that of the traveller in railway carriages, and from the point of view of those to whom county boundaries, which determine the scope of most guide-books, have no meaning, except that the roads are better, and the police are more sensible, in some counties than in others. it is the guide-book writer's business to give first practical facts and directions, and then to provide the information which, after sifting a vast mass of history, legend, folk-lore, literature, and gossip, appears to be most interesting and attractive. east anglia has been chosen as the first theme, and in many respects it lends itself exceptionally well to isolated treatment. the motorist, it is true, has no regard for county boundaries, but let him once venture in his car to the east of an imaginary line drawn from the tower bridge to the mouth of the welland, and he will never come outside east anglia on wheels, except to the westward. the wash, the north sea, and the estuary of the thames will block him effectually. let him follow the history of this tract of land, to which the fens were an effectual bulwark on the north-west, and he will find that history to be one of isolation also. east anglia has always gone on its own way, always worked out its own destinies, always indulged in self-satisfied but inspiring contempt for "the sheres"; and so, perhaps, it has suffered less at troublous periods of the national history than other parts of the country. its scenery is rarely, perhaps never, rugged, but it is marked in various parts by many kinds of peculiar characteristics not to be found elsewhere, some of them of quite exceptional charm. it has its ancient cities, its majestic cathedrals, time-worn edifices of many kinds. it is haunted by the ghosts of many great artists in colour and in words; and--a small matter this, but one adding greatly to the interest of a motoring tour--there is no other part of the country in which the lover of bird-life can see so much of bird-life from the passing car. one drawback, and one only, is there to east anglia as a topic for a motoring guide-book, and that affects only the maker of the book, not the motoring potentialities, so to speak, of the country. taken as a whole it is not at all a flat district, and it has enough ups and downs and variety of scenery to suit any taste, but it is practically barren of hills presenting any real difficulty to a car of moderate power. so, in this volume, it is not necessary or possible to indicate any very serious gradients to be encountered on this journey or on that. it remains only, after a word of thanks to the friends who have lent their company and their cars, to add that every chapter is a faithful narrative of tours undertaken or of journeys made, together with an account of the associations and memories appropriate to the places visited, and that, to save breaking the flow of the text, an analysis showing the route taken in each chapter, the distances from place to place, the points at which repairs may be effected, and the general character of the roads, appears at the very beginning of the volume. it must be understood, however, that these roads are judged by an east anglian standard, for, even in norfolk, where the road surface is far better as a rule than in any other east anglian county, the roads cannot honestly be said to be of the highest order of merit. in the case of all hotels the presence of garage accommodation may be assumed, and all have been tried. through east anglia in a motor-car chapter i winter. [oxford] to cambridge, newmarket, and ipswich elections delay start--rail to oxford--a treasure gained--rail to cambridge--bull hotel--english hotels criticized--motorists squeezed--morning at cambridge--king's chapel--trinity library--the panhard arrives--battered at elections--a start--load and equipment--undergraduates as pilots--a street blocked--dull road to newmarket--bottisham church excepted--delusions about swaffham prior and bulbeck--the devil's dyke--prosperous newmarket--the icenhilde way--a delusion in east anglia--kentford to bury st. edmunds--a switchback run--fine trees--arthur young quoted--bury st. edmunds--leland, dickens, arthur young--legends of st. edmund--past greatness of bury--parliaments held at--the abbey ruins--study with shakespeare--pickwick at the "angel"--at the boarding school--bury viâ bayton, woolpit, and stowmarket to ipswich--night travelling--a legend of woolpit--dull stowmarket--ipswich at last--narrow streets and fast tramcars--the "great white horse"--why did dickens speak so ill of it?--_quære_ why the white horse is an east anglian sign--the "crown and anchor"--ipswich oysters and gloves. the year 1905 had almost run out when this volume was finally decided upon, and then a good many things happened, according to expectation and otherwise. christmas came, surprising the railway companies as usual, but not the public, and the resignation of mr. balfour's government. the resignation of mr. balfour, with its corollary of a general election, involved some unavoidable delay in opening this campaign of pilgrimages in east anglia. for during that general election almost everybody who owned a motor-car and could drive it, or thought he could drive it, was stirred to lend his car and his energies to the service of his party by motives of double cogency. he desired, more or less keenly at the outset, but always vehemently, and even passionately after he had tasted the joy of battle, to lend his aid to the political party of his choice; and he knew further that the general election of 1906 had provided motorists with a priceless opportunity of doing missionary work among the electorate at a critical moment in the history of automobilism. he felt that the motor act of 1903, of limited duration in any event, needed to be supplanted by a measure treating him as a reasoning and responsible being, rather than as a dangerous beast, and, having some hope that the royal commission then sitting would report in his favour (as, on the whole, it has reported), he recognized that enlightened self-interest made it desirable to educate public opinion into the frame of mind suitable for the reception of an enabling measure. for these reasons, and some that are immaterial, it was not convenient to make the first raid into east anglia until nearly the end of january, 1906, and that was a period calculated to try the reality of man's or woman's sincerity as a devotee of motoring by a somewhat severe test. how that test was applied it shall be my endeavour to tell in a narrative form, and to that form a preference will be given throughout the book, digressions being made, as occasion serves or fancy calls, to mention matters of practical utility or of intelligent interest. let me, therefore, "cut the cackle and come"--not to "the 'osses" by any means--but to the country and to the motor-cars. on monday, january the 23rd, 1906, my daughter and i proceeded first to oxford, and then to cambridge by rail. both journeys were an object lesson in the inferiority of the railway train, as it is arranged in england, to the motor-car, for purposes of cross-country travel. our starting point being abingdon, distant six miles only from oxford, we were compelled to change trains at radley _en route_. a long wait at oxford would have been irritating if it had not been providential; as it was it furnished me with a private copy of mr. f. j. haverfield's _romano-british norfolk_, extracted from the "victoria county history," and the dreadfully tedious journey to cambridge allowed me to master that most accomplished and useful work. cambridge we reached--not for the first time by any means--well after dusk, and there we lay, as they used to say in old times, at the bull hotel on king's parade in reasonable comfort, an undergraduate kinsman of trinity college having cheered us by his company at dinner. here let me pause for a moment to speak of an all-important matter. it has been written that we were comfortably entertained at the "bull"; it might be added that the hotel seemed much cleaner and brighter than when i had last entered it, and that the charges were, for an english hotel, not unreasonable. unfortunately, it must be said also that the charges at the "bull" and throughout the united kingdom are far in excess of those for which at least equal accommodation and at least equally palatable fare can be obtained on most parts of the continent frequented by tourists, and that this fact is at once the most serious obstacle to tours by motor-cars at home, and the principal cause why englishmen go touring abroad to the neglect of their own country, the prejudice of british hotel-keepers, and the profit of the foreigner. they do not, i think, desire to ignore the beauties of their own country; they are even anxious to study it in detail; but the hotel-keepers of the provinces, without quite killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, have a suicidal habit of making nesting accommodation so expensive that the bird, being a wise bird really, becomes perforce migratory as the swallow. more unwise in relation to the motorist even than in relation to the ordinary traveller--it will be observed that there is no special reference to the "bull," and that we did not go there as motorists openly--hotel-keepers frequently behave as if they thought the owner of a motor-car must needs possess an endless supply of ready money, whereas the legitimate inference from his ownership of an expensive vehicle is that he has none to spare. motor-cars of real value--and no sensible man will have them of any other kind--cannot be obtained on credit, and hotel-keepers might have learned from experience that a banking account is reduced, unless it be an overdraft, not increased, by drawing a heavy cheque upon it. some day, perhaps, there will be an improvement in this respect. in the meanwhile the path is not altogether clear before him who would fain play the part of guide to his fellow-men. so long ago as 1799 a correspondent of the _norfolk chronicle_ wrote: "there is room for a most useful work in the form of an itinerary, which shall give an impartial account of the several inns of the kingdom under the heads of quality, cleanliness, beds," etc. there is still just as much room, but until the law of libel shall be changed the "most useful work" is not likely to be written. certainly i am not going to write it--not that i lack the inclination nor the desire to be of service; not that i have not a nice taste for comfort, nor an experience of british and irish hotels possessed by few men other than commercial travellers--simply because i cannot afford the time or the money to fight a series of actions, in which a verdict for the defendant would leave me still liable for the difference between my solicitor's bill of costs "as between solicitor and client," and the same bill taxed "as between party and party." the utmost that is possible, and at the same time prudent, is to point to examples of merit. demerit, dearness, and dirt must go unchastised. [illustration: cambridge--king's college and the cam] my arrangement with a friend, who had done as much electioneering as he and his car could endure, was that he should run down from london and pick us up at the "bull" on tuesday after luncheon. tuesday morning, therefore--a frosty, windless, somewhat misty morning--was spent in what in our domestic circle is called "abroading" in cambridge, that is to say, in visiting places of paramount interest. but let the reader take heart. some little knowledge of cambridge, the fruit of many sojourns and of considerable reading, is not going to be made an excuse for a topographical, archæological, and architectural chapter upon a subject worthy of a long book, already treated in many volumes, grave and gay. even if such a chapter could be legitimate here it would be wrong for a mere oxford man to write it, and i shall never forget how, when i was staying at cambridge a year or two ago, a cambridge friend who took me out sight-seeing closed my mouth before it was opened, so to speak, by saying, "you are absolutely forbidden to ask where our 'high' is." as matters stand, remembering always that this cambridge friend is not at my elbow, and firmly believing, with mr. ruskin, that "the high" at oxford is not to be matched in the world as a whole, i am inclined to think king's college, as seen from king's parade, leaves nothing to be desired, and that king's college chapel has a claim almost equal to that of st. george's chapel, windsor, to be recognized as the most exquisite example of perpendicular architecture to be found in england. of course, the best way to see all there is at cambridge, and to understand it, is to live at cambridge; and the next best is to go there often and to study it piecemeal. to try to absorb impressions of cambridge in one visit, even one of many days, is to submit the human brain to too severe an ordeal. on former occasions i had seen the backs in summer, had spent an hour or two in the senate house on a state occasion, had looked into the university library and had admired the delightfully free-and-easy way in which graduates are permitted to borrow its books, had seen cricket played and had played football on parker's piece, had stayed in college rooms at caius: and yet impressions remained a little confused in memory. this time we went to king's college, and to the chapel especially, again. if it falls behind st. george's at all, it is in point of lightness, in which st. george's is perfect. so to trinity college, where we admired unfeignedly the great court, nevile's court and the library, and spoke politely of the chapel, where the grinling gibbons' carvings are really good. but it was in the library that one would gladly have spent hours. a lecture was in progress in the hall, so that was closed to us; but the library is perfect. somewhere in the world there may be the equal of it, but, in a life of fairly extended wandering, i have not entered its match. one hundred and sixty feet long, forty feet wide, with its carved bookcases, its abundant busts of famous men, its portraits, its magnificent collection of coins, its rare books and manuscripts, its unbroken stillness, and, above all, its ample and all-pervading light, trinity college library is not merely a book-lover's paradise, but even a place to compel an air-loving man to be bookish. hence to st. john's, many-courted, with walls of ancient brick and stone dressings, the most architecturally individual of cambridge's colleges, and so, by the bridge of sighs, across the chilly, green, and exiguous cam to the backs. these, since there had been no white frost of the dainty kind that drapes a landscape in a fairy veil of silvered lace, were not at their best, but in summer they are of rare beauty. still this was winter. so the small remaining part of the morning was devoted to a pilgrimage to magdalene, the only college entirely situated on the left bank of the cam, famous mainly for the pepysian library (everybody knows how the six volumes of shrewd gossip in shorthand were discovered and interpreted) and itself a quiet and sequestered retreat in appearance, although the undergraduates are not always in the mood appropriate to their environment. by two o'clock the charioteer had come, his face bearing traces of the black fog through which he had forced his way out of london; the 15 h.p. panhard, with a short wheelbase, was in the yard. we must be tolerant, he said, of his panhard's shortcomings, after a fortnight of hard electioneering on the part of master, mechanic, and car; and he had come down from london on three cylinders. in due course the panhard came round to the door, dinted a little by the missiles of partisans, having lost some of the white paint of her rear number under the impact of voters' iron-shod toes, a little war-worn and dingy, in fact, to the eye. her carrying capacity was, however, soon tested severely, and she bore the trial unflinchingly. first luggage: a suit-case for the daughter, the same for my friend the charioteer, a small kit-bag for me, nothing visible for the mechanic--a stalwart ex-soldier of six feet and 14 stone, if he was an ounce. charioteer, in motor-coat, was about 13 stone. he and an undergraduate of some 9 stone sat in the front seats, the mechanic on the step. in the back seats were my daughter, say 10 stone, wraps included; myself, say 13 stone in the like condition; and on the back step a second undergraduate, say 11 stone 7 lb.--for the two young men were going to pilot us out of cambridge. but the little panhard made no account of these things, and started off as a greyhound from the slips. practical considerations make it desirable to say what my daughter and i wore. my friend and his mechanic wore a lot, precisely in what detail i cannot say. my daughter wore a thick tweed dress, a short fur coat, a mackintosh with sleeves gathered in at the wrists over that, a red connemara cloak sometimes--its colour proved to be of incidental advantage later in quite an unexpected way--a motor-cap and veil, fur-lined gloves, and a muff. i wore a vest, flannel shirt, lined corduroy waistcoat, ordinary tweed trousers, a rowing "sweater" over the waistcoat, thick norfolk jacket, thick ulster coat--without inner sleeves gathered, worse luck--and loose woollen gloves. i was never too warm, often much too cold, and the woollen gloves turned out a fraud. they were of no use as a protection against wind and cold combined, and a motor-car makes its own wind. in fact, there is nothing like leather, with or without fur or wool within. the undergraduates were useful as pilots to jesus lane, where we turned to the right, which brought us in fact, although not in name, into the direct road for newmarket; not that it is so difficult in cambridge, as in many other towns of east anglia, to solve correctly the all-important problem how to find the absolutely right exit having regard to the point sought in the distance. but the streets of the heart of cambridge are of an exceptional narrowness, and we were not through them without becoming witnesses of an incident, almost worthy of the title accident, which delayed us a little and might have delayed us more but for the camaraderie of motorists. we were proceeding slowly up a narrow street behind a motor omnibus, the roadway being wide enough to allow two vehicles to pass, but no more. on the off-side of the omnibus, facing it, were a motor-car, attended as the law directs, at rest by the kerb, and a tradesman's cart and horse behind the car, cart and horse being unattended, as is not unusual, law or no law. the horse, perceiving the motor omnibus, and being probably unaccustomed to the sight, proceeded at once to give one of those convincing exhibitions in equine intelligence which must be the constant joy of the thick-and-thin champions of that traditionally "noble animal." planting its forefeet on to the pavement, it backed the cart violently into the bonnet of the passing omnibus, of course blocking the route completely. somebody, possibly the man who ought to have been in charge, came up and pulled the stupid brute into line, but not before it had also contrived to injure a wing of the resting and innocent motor-car. the omnibus was disabled for a time at any rate; traffic accumulated rapidly behind us; it seemed likely that we might have to spend the rest of the afternoon in this street that might justly be called strait. but the injured motor-car was most courteously backed out of the way to make a passage for us, and we proceeded on our journey rejoicing and grateful. it would be a stretch of imagination--in fact, it would be what the late sir william harcourt once called "a good thumping lie"--to say that the exit from cambridge to the eastward has any features of interest, or that the dead level of the newmarket road for the first few miles is attractive on a cold and dull day, when ely, dominating the low-lying plain in decent weather, is not visible to the naked eye. this fen country has its charm of appearance no less than of history. its history, indeed, is an engineering epic, to which it will be possible to allude, hardly to do justice, at a later point. january 24, 1906, was not a day calculated to make the motorist feel in a romantic mood concerning the fens. the road, straight, level, muddy where it was not metalled, metalled where it was not muddy, was lost in grey vapour to the front of us. the prospect on either side was of flat ploughed land, and of land on which the steaming plough-horses were even then at work; there was no distant view at all. some five or six miles out of cambridge the undergraduates alighted to walk home through the mud, and we left them behind with many shoutings of farewell, reflecting to ourselves the while that one of them, who, with the true carelessness of a twentieth-century undergraduate of cambridge (or for that matter of oxford), was wearing tennis shoes, would find walking in the mud to be one of those carnal pleasures whereof satiety cometh soon rather than late. soon we passed a church close to the road on the left, a striking structure of brick and stone, and said to be the finest example of decorated architecture in east anglia. how that can be, having regard to the existence of ely and the rhapsodies that are penned concerning its decorated portion, it is not for me to say. at any rate bottisham church, commanding the landscape as it can only be commanded in a plain, is a stately and beautiful structure, leaving an abiding impression on the memory. it is, in fact, essentially a motorist's church--that is to say, one of which a passing view gives sincere pleasure. the afternoon had advanced more than was desirable. i did not like to ask my kindly charioteer to make a detour for swaffham, which i then believed to lie on our left. instead of that i regaled him with memories of swaffham, which have their proper place in another chapter. the conversation helped to pass the time; at any rate it did no harm, and it was only a month or two later, in the "maid's head" at norwich, that i learned where the real swaffham was, and that this detour, if it had been made, would have shown us nothing but the relics of two churches at swaffham prior and another church at swaffham bulbeck. now there is an end of the dead level whereof the most eager of motorists is apt to grow weary, if only because it gives his good car nothing to do. at bottisham, among the fens, in fact, but not in their heart, the road is but forty-six feet above the sea-level at king's lynn, but in the course of two miles to street way (surely roman by its name) the road rises rapidly and the panhard climbs cheerfully to a height of 170 feet, an upland having regard to its surroundings on the western side. the very air, eagerly as it bites the cheeks of those who are forced through it, seems more bracing, more exhilarating, more instinct with life than the stagnant atmosphere of the plain. here are wide spaces, pines and scotch firs; but the spaces are not wild, for innumerable white boards on posts, the marks of galloping grounds, tell us that we are on the confines of newmarket heath and near the metropolis of the turf. such it has been since the days of charles i, and such, having regard to the fact that it has been for upwards of a century and a half the head-quarters of the jockey club, it is likely to remain, even though the "going" be better at newbury in berks, which is a little nearer to london. but we are not at newmarket yet. there is the devil's dyke--irreverently called the ditch where it bisects the familiar course--to be crossed. why his satanic majesty should be credited with so many dykes it is not easy to see. devil's punchbowls, of which there are scores, if not hundreds, in the kingdom, are more natural and rational, for a being of satan's traditional environment might reasonably be credited with thirst upon a large scale and with a liking for cold punch equal to that which was all but the temporary ruin of mr. pickwick, and quite fatal for the time to his young friend upon another memorable drive to ipswich, for that was our destination too. the devil did not make this dyke, running from reach, north of the great eastern railway, to ditton green, near wood ditton, that is certain; yet nobody knows exactly who the builders were. what is known is that it has a rampart on the west side, and that the iceni, of whom all that is necessary will be told soon, held the land to the eastward, so far as land was held in those days. probably, like their successors in the same territory in mediæval times, during the stuart period, and now, they had a good conceit of themselves and a robust contempt for their western neighbours, and therefore, perhaps, they built them this rampart and digged this ditch, or made their captives dig it for them, as a bulwark against the outer world. it must be confessed, however, that thoughts and conversation ran not on the iceni, not on the violent deaths which came to most of them eighteen centuries and a half ago, but on the death of one man of our time whom newmarket heath had known as a familiar visitor. only a few days before sir james miller had died full of racing honours, but by no means of years. a tribute to the memory of this prince of racing men was surely due most appropriately at newmarket. of newmarket the story needs no telling. it is not, perhaps, so long as that of cambridge, but probably it is better known to a greater number of persons. equally well known are the seats of the mighty in the immediate vicinity. but perhaps the traveller through newmarket, and to it, by road, will not only notice the thoroughbreds, if there be any on view--we naturally saw none late on a winter's afternoon--but will not resent the fact that his attention is directed to an interesting feature of newmarket, as of other racing and training centres. newmarket may be, as lord chesterfield said in his will that it was, "an infamous seminary of iniquity and ill manners." men may back horses at newmarket, may gamble, may try every cunning device known to those who have to do with horses--not that some of those who are concerned with motors are much better--but newmarket, in appearance at least, is free from that worst of all evils, poverty, which is rarely absent from agricultural arcadia, and, as dr. jessopp has shown, very prevalent in east anglia. its houses are trim and weatherproof, the paint of doors and gates is clearly renewed often. the whole place has an air of prosperity which disarms curious investigation into the sources of its wealth. the children are rosy and plump, and that, at any rate, is a blessing; and, save perhaps for backing a horse with judgment now and again, which is a great deal less vicious than backing one without knowledge or judgment, i dare be sworn that their morality and their standard of life are much higher than those of the arcadian peasant. the weak light was growing quite dim as we passed through newmarket and out of cambridgeshire into suffolk--out of "the sheers" into east anglia, in the narrowest sense of the term. our course for bury st. edmunds lay along a road of astonishing straightness, having many fine oaks and other trees on either side; for the matter of levels it was, and of course is, a series of long ups and downs, of no very severe gradients, and the going on the newly-frozen road left nothing to be desired. at kentford, according to the ordnance map and the tradition of the antiquaries of yesterday, we crossed the icknield or icenhilde way. unfortunately, from the point of view of one who would like to conjure up visions of ancient britons, neatly painted with woad in summer, fur-clad in winter, sweeping down this road with scythe-chariots to meet an invader from the west, or to make a raid into the midlands themselves, the icenhilde way has to be numbered among the pretty traditions which cannot be cherished any longer. it has been called the warpath of the iceni, or a principal roman road. ickleton, in cambridgeshire, icklingham, in suffolk, ickleford, in herts, have been imagined to represent points upon its route from norwich to berkshire and the west. but probabilities, philology, and charters are separately fatal to the theory, and they are irresistible in combination. over philology i shall not delay longer than to say, on the best authority, that, according to well-known laws, if the places now known as icklingham and so on had been called after the iceni, they would have been written otherwise than they are. again, if the way had been the warpath of the iceni, it would certainly be more clearly traceable in the east, which was theirs, than in the west, which was not; whereas the contrary is the case. charters are even far more deadly to this romance than philology and probability. referring to the date of the norman conquest and to the icenhilde way, mr. haverfield says: "not till three centuries later do we find its name applied to roads in hertfordshire and cambridgeshire, while east of newmarket we never find it at all." this is conclusive, for it is the considered judgment of a man exceptionally learned and acute upon the subject to which he has devoted most of the leisure of an academical life, and so this avenue of romance and to romance is definitely and permanently closed. from kentford to bury st. edmunds was a fine, but cold, switchback run along a very straight road, just before lighting-up time, though it was not dark enough yet to prevent an impression of the landscape from being left on the mind. no very great houses were close to the road on either side, but the trees on the right were of remarkable stature, and on the left were many belts of scotch firs, evenly planted, almost like shaws in kent, which seemed, as did many similar belts seen on other tours, to indicate the existence of landowners, past or present, who had prepared the way for the continental method of driving partridges. for the first time, as our car coursed along with the subdued and yet lively melody of the true "panhard hum," one began to realize how vast an influence has been exercised over the face of nature in norfolk and suffolk, how many new features have been grafted on to that face, by men who have made good shooting the principal object of estate management in the part of england better suited to that purpose than to any other. arthur young thought, it is true, of the land between thetford and bury, and probably of this land also, that it would repay cultivation. it "lies for some miles over a wild heath, overrun with bushes, whins, and fern, the wild luxuriance of whose growth displays evidently enough how greatly it would answer to break it up and convert it into arable farms; for a soil that has strength enough to throw up such vigorously growing weeds would, if cultivated, produce corn in plenty." but arthur young, as we shall see in a minute or two, had no eye for the picturesque; he certainly could not have foreseen the present low prices of various grains; and still more certainly he could have had no idea of the length to which game preservation would go, or of the amount of employment to which it would give rise. his advice was followed in a number of cases, but it may be suspected that some of the famous warrens of norfolk and suffolk pay better in rabbits for the london market in these days than they would pay under crops. soon we glided "through the well-paved streets of a handsome little town," to quote the words of charles dickens, who was impressed, as leland had been three centuries before him, by the cheerful brightness of bury st. edmunds. arthur young's editor of 1772, "the author of the _farmer's letters_"--i see i have done young himself an injustice--tells us that "bury is a tolerably well-built town, in a dry and healthy situation; many of the streets cut each other at right angles; but a parcel of dirty thatched houses are found in some of them not far from the centre of the town, which has a very bad effect." we should probably hold a different view of the thatched houses now, and the motorist who passes through bury will certainly desire to know more of it than the author of the _farmer's letters_ deigned to tell. i had been to bury before january, 1906, and i have visited it since, though never in such discomfort as the confessor, who made the last mile of his pilgrimage to st. edmund's shrine unshod. yet, interesting as bury st. edmunds is, it is not as a pilgrimage to st. edmund's shrine that a visit to bury and a fairly long halt there are recommended. st. edmund is really rather a difficult saint concerning whom to wax rapturous, because our certain knowledge of him amounts to very little and yet gives him a date sufficiently modern to make the monkish legends about him even more completely absurd than such legends are wont to be. there is no doubt that he was a king of east anglia who was defeated by the danes in 870 a.d. hume, one of the most matter-of-fact of our historians, and surely the most unimaginative man who ever took it upon himself to tell an historical tale, says this and no more: "they broke into east anglia, defeated and took prisoner edmund, the king of that country, whom they afterwards murdered in cool blood." (this is quoted from the edition of 1823, containing adam smith's "appreciation" of his friend, written in 1776, and the "author's last corrections and improvements.") the _student's hume_ of my youth, mindful perhaps of the wisdom of appealing to the memory of the young through the imagination, gives the date of edmund's defeat as 871, for the sake of variety perhaps, and adds that, edmund having rejected with scorn and horror a proposal that he should abjure christianity and rule under the danish supremacy, "the danes bound him naked to a tree, scourged and shot at him with arrows, and finally beheaded him." that is not unlikely. a live target was, as the scandinavian mythology shows, quite to the taste of the northern barbarians. king edmund's body may very likely have been, as abbo says, "_velut asper hericius, aut spinis hirtus carduus, in passione similis sebastiano egregio martyri_"; "like a rough hedgehog or a thistle bristling with thorns, etc." (there need be no apology for giving the translation which caused a classical schoolmaster some trouble, because _hericius_ is not a word used in classical latin.) that was a martyrdom sufficient to justify canonization, an abbey in honour of the martyred king, and pilgrimages to his shrine, which were undertaken by quite a number of distinguished persons to the great profit of the institution preserving of it. but the monkish chroniclers had an unhappy habit of spoiling their stories by excessive and impossible embroidery. the romantic inventions that, when edmund's followers stole back to the scene of his torture, they heard a voice crying, "here, here, here," in a wood, and there found a wolf guarding the saint's head between its paws, and that the head, being replaced upon the trunk by human hands, was miraculously reunited to it, only spoil the story for us of the modern world; for 870 a.d. is fairly late in the history of england really. they suggest the vision of crafty ecclesiastics plotting how most effectively to advertise the shrine, for the glory of god of course, but also for the profit of the abbey; and that, to our minds, is repellent. that the ecclesiastics knew their public is clear, however, from the results here, as at walsingham. the wolf legend, palpably false as it was, passed into ecclesiastical heraldry throughout east anglia as generally as the story, probably true, of the manner of the martyrdom, and east anglian churches have many traces of it in stone and in painted glass. hence came the illustrious pilgrims and their offerings, and hence, in some measure at any rate, the fact that this little inland city of east anglia played in its time a very important part in the history of england. how great that part was it is exceedingly difficult to realize as one stands in the centre of that essentially peaceful town. yet it really has a genuine claim to its motto: _sacrarium regis, cunabula legis_. of the two great meetings of barons and clergy held before king john was forced to sign magna charta, one was held in london, at st. paul's, the other in the abbey church of bury st. edmunds, of all places in england, as we should be inclined to add now. in truth, nothing could be more natural, for the venue illustrates not only the paramount influence of ecclesiasticism in those days, but also the characteristic tendencies of the east anglian people. other ecclesiastical centres, of course, there were equal in importance and wealth, and other mitred abbeys. only in london, always jealous for its liberties, and in east anglia, could such meetings have been held with confident assurance of the support of the mass of the inhabitants. read the scattered history of eastern england, reflect upon the many democratic risings that it witnessed; remember the eastern counties association and the almost complete unanimity of east anglia for the parliament against charles--then the selection of bury st. edmunds for this memorable assembly becomes easily intelligible. parliaments were held there sometimes; royal visits were frequent. in fact, this quiet country town was one of the most influential places in the kingdom until the dissolution. then it suffered "a knok of a kynge," to quote piers plow-man's prophecy concerning the abbey of abingdon, and its glory departed for evermore. it remains a bright town, possessed of a famous old inn, "the angel," and of the ruins of the abbey, still of uncommon interest, which were laid out as a botanical garden before thomas carlyle wrote _past and present_. they are a garden and a playground still. a good deal of imagination is called for before the architectural glories of the abbey can be reconstructed in a mental picture, and the best help to be obtained in such an exercise of the imagination comes from reading once again words spoken of the abbey, words purporting to have been uttered within what carlyle called its "wide internal spaces," words conjuring up realities none the less for that they are themselves the product of an inspired imagination. need it be said that the reference here is to the second part of shakespeare's _king henry vi_? here suffolk and the queen dropped poison into the king's ears concerning absent gloucester; here gloucester pleaded his cause in vain in imperishable lines of despairing resignation and passionate patriotism:- i know their complot is to have my life; and if my death might make this island happy, and prove the period of their tyranny, i would expend it with all willingness. here, in some dark recess of a dungeon, suffolk's hireling villains "dispatched the duke." here was enacted the grim scene, very short, but infinitely pathetic, wherein suffolk goes to summon his victim to trial, knowing him dead already, and the queen, the very embodiment of cold-blooded hypocrisy, cries aloud to the king, the cardinal, and somerset:- god forbid any malice should prevail, that faultless may condemn a nobleman! pray god he may acquit him of suspicion! back came suffolk, trembling and pale, for fear of consequences, to announce the news that was known to him, for he had made it all too certain before he left the "room of state" upon his futile errand. we can almost hear the dull sound of the swooning king's fall, and his agonized lament:- for in the shade of death i shall find joy; in life but double death now gloucester's dead. and what comes next? surely it is essentially characteristic of the people of east anglia:- the commons, like an angry hive of bees, that want their leader, scatter up and down. here, again, the substratum of authentic fact is, as in the case of st. edmund, made the foundation of an imaginative structure; but see how vast is the difference between the effects produced by the paltry monkish embroiderer and the poet, the maker, the creator. the first tale almost raises a smile of incredulity; the second, written in characters of blood and tears, stirs the heart to its depths. bury has its lighter memories and associations too. many good englishmen who would not step far out of their way to make a pilgrimage to what was once st. edmund's shrine, who might even feel that the second part of _king henry vi_ was a little above their heads, may be relied upon to take a great deal of trouble for the sake of treading in the footsteps of the immortal mr. pickwick. it was at the "angel" in bury st. edmunds, still "a large inn standing in a wide open street, and nearly facing the old abbey," that mr. pickwick enjoyed "a very satisfactory dinner." this was, as we shall have occasion to see at ipswich, high praise indeed when uttered by the author of mr. pickwick's being, who, if displeased by the accommodation and fare offered to him, did not hesitate to express his opinion with remarkable force of language. in the tap-room of the said "angel," mr. weller, having been voted into the chair, cracked such jests and evoked such uproarious laughter that his master's rest was broken. the pump in the "angel" yard cooled sam's throbbing head next morning so effectually that, shortly afterwards, he was able to describe the stranger in the mulberry suit, stranger as he deemed him, as looking "as conwivial as a live trout in a lime basket." in the adjoining tap, again, sam, "the names of veller and gammon" having "come into contract" for the one and only time in that veracious history, cemented his alliance with the deceitful job trotter over gin and cloves. he took the doubtless fragrant and pungent beverage as a pick-me-up in the morning; it might have served us, perhaps well, as a warmth-restorer in the afternoon; but candour compels the confession that, for the moment, we forgot the _pickwick papers_, drew up in front of the "suffolk," not the "angel," and did our best to restore heat to our chilled bodies by gargantuan consumption of crumpets, tea, and jam. even this was mildly pickwickian (who can forget the story of the gentleman who demonstrated by devoted self-slaughter the proposition that crumpets _is_ wholesome?). but as we did not drink gin and cloves in honour of sam weller, so we did not blow out our brains to prove the wholesome character of crumpets. yet one more pickwickian association of bury st. edmunds must be set down. in a private room of the "angel" the artful mr. trotter, having "gammoned" sam, proceeded to "gammon" his innocent master also with the story of "the large, old, red-brick house just outside the town, sir," and the pretended revelation of his own master's nefarious intentions. hence came kindly mr. pickwick's ludicrously pathetic vigil in the garden, alarm of maids, hysterics of miss smithers, drenching of mr. pickwick, doubts whether he was burglar or lunatic, imprisonment in the clothes closet, rescue and explanation by mr. wardle, rheumatics of mr. pickwick, and, last of all, the parish clerk's tale. these things are not history of course, "which there never war no sich a person" as mr. pickwick, but they are imperishable and essential truths none the less, and the _pickwick papers_ are a possession of bury st. edmunds at least equal in commercial value to all the legends of st. edmund, king and martyr. so much for bury on this occasion. we shall see it again, and foregather this time at the "angel." we left the hotel, to find cold and windless darkness in full possession. it was my first experience of driving in a motor-car on a dark night for any considerable distance through an unknown country. the first few miles, through bayton and woolpit, were very difficult, the road sinuous as a corkscrew, the necessity for dismounting to study the sign-posts constantly occurring. in marked contrast, however, to experience in some of our southern counties, was the alert intelligence of the country-folk. from stowmarket the road to ipswich, our destination, was straight, but seemed endless. at first we tried to proceed with oil lamps only; then we were driven to acetylene; but, with air none too clear at any time and wreaths of denser mist now and again, even the acetylene rays did not penetrate very far. on the whole, cold apart, this kind of driving at night is not to be recommended. i remember nothing of that journey to ipswich, except the cold and the mild excitement of trying to guess the species of the splendid trees passed by their shadowy forms and general character. oaks i saw, and elms and beeches for certain--for the form of these may not easily be mistaken. in the matter of ashes i would not like to pledge my faith, for one might easily mix up an ash tree in winter, half seen by a light not thrown distinctly upon it, with some other tree. but the best thing i remember of that night, out of doors, was the sight of the lights of ipswich and of the tall tramcars, which told us that we were there at last. neither fate nor inclination has taken me down this same road by daylight since then, but something may be said of the places passed in the darkness, with due acknowledgment of the aid afforded by mr. w. a. butt's _suffolk_, in the "little guides series" (methuen). the acknowledgment is made the more gladly, and the aid is borrowed with the more confidence that it will not prove a broken reed, because "in another place" and at another time i have had the privilege of knowing mr. dutt in ms. as a careful and fascinating writer, equally learned in antiquities and in ornithology, and very much at home in east anglia. had it been light we might have seen at tostock a fine church, perpendicular in the main, but with an early decorated chancel. as motorists, however, we should hardly have been induced to descend and explore the interior even by the hope of seeing carved oak benches, one of them showing "the fabulous cockatrice" and another the unicorn scratching himself with his horn. at woolpit we might have seen a new tower to an old church, the tower built no later than 1854. but the tower is no outrage, for it had to be built to replace an older one destroyed by lightning. to woolpit, too, belongs one of william of newburgh's strange legends, thus summarized by mr. dutt: "one day, while some men were at work in a harvest field here, they saw a boy and a girl, whose bodies were green and their dresses of a strange material, appear out of the pits known as the 'wolfpittes.' they said they had come from a christian land, which had churches, but where there was no sun, 'only a faint twilight, but beyond a broad river there lay a land of light.' their country was called the land of st. martin; and, one day, while they were tending their father's sheep, they heard a noise like the ringing of the bells of bury abbey, 'and all at once they found themselves among the reapers in the harvest field at woolpit.' the boy, we are told, soon died, but the girl lived to marry a man of lynn." the name of the place in _domesday_ is "wlfpeta," which is simply "wolf-pit," but why this particular wolf-pit, out of the hundreds that there must have been, retained the name, there is nothing to show. at haughley, moved to alight by some of the guide-books in the hope of finding ruins, we should have discovered a mound only, its origin quite uncertain; and at stowmarket there would have been no temptation to halt. chemicals and cordite combine to give the ancient market town some prosperity, some calamities, and no beauty. here we began to follow the course of the railway and the river gipping, the eponymous river of ipswich until it is named anew. at great blakenham we passed a manor given by henry vi to eton college, and at claydon an elizabethan hall. but, sad truth to tell, we were in the mood of gallio that evening, so far as these things were concerned, and the vision of the lights of ipswich was unmixed pleasure. it was generally admitted that the last eight miles into the ancient city, from the point at which a native stated that they begun, must have been measured with a very elastic chain. nor was entry into ipswich easy. he who held the steering wheel was one who, for combined nicety, courage, and consideration in slipping through traffic, has few equals in this country; but his task was of more than common difficulty. the streets of ipswich, or most of them, are of an exceeding narrowness; the electric tramcars glide through them, swift, monumental, irresistible, in their usual juggernaut mood. hardly anywhere is there room for a vehicle to be drawn up to the kerb on the inside of the tramway lines. we, indeed, were not suffered by the police to draw up in front of the "great white horse" at all, even for the purpose of dismounting, but were motioned to a side street. moreover, although the immediately local election was over, the streets were grievously crowded for some reason or other--and surely there was never seen a population more serenely indifferent to the blast of a motor-horn! they were, perhaps, inured to peril by the tramcars, swifter in towns than any motor-car would dare to be, heavier by a long way, and exceptionally dangerous by reason of the length and height of the moving veil they draw across the view. at any rate they would not move out of the way. arriving, we were in a far more appreciative mood than that of mr. charles dickens when he became a guest at the "great white horse," and wrote the account of mr. pickwick's arrival on the coach of the elder weller. we found no labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, no mouldy ill-lighted rooms, no small dens for sleeping in, but rather a kindly welcome and attention, distinctly good rooms, a dining-room having plenty of space, fire and abundant cheer, and a reasonably moderate bill to discharge at the end of our stay. yet i doubt not that the edifice, built round a cobbled courtyard that is roofed over, the bar parlour on the far side of the yard from the door, where a good many of the citizens congregate of an evening, the office window at which mine hostess receives her guests, are precisely the same as when boz visited ipswich. in this view i differ from mr. dutt; but the probability is that the alterations to which he refers were made before, not after, dickens saw the house. dickens did not like the place at all, that is clear. if there be doubts whether ipswich was the original of eatanswill, as mr. percy fitzgerald suggests, there are none about the "great white horse," which is, of course, mentioned, and abused from floor to garret, nay, from cellar to garret: for is not "the worst possible port" mentioned--by name? we found things otherwise, but then it was not the misfortune of any of us to look out of bed and see "a middle-aged lady, in yellow curl-papers, busily engaged in brushing what ladies call their back-hair." it would be easy enough to miss the way in the recesses of the "great white horse"; in fact, to be frank, i did so myself, although i neither entered the wrong room nor got into the wrong bed. but the censure of dickens generally has no reference to the present state of affairs at this classic hostelry; nay, more, such is the irony of fate, the bad name given by dickens to this house is now its chiefest recommendation: prints of leech's pictures adorn every wall, and the telegraphic address of the hotel is "pickwick," ipswich. thus has railing been converted into blessing; thus is it proved more profitable to be abused by a great writer than to remain uncensured and ignored. perhaps mr. percy fitzgerald could oblige, as the saying goes, by explaining what the real meaning of his hero's attitude was. it must have had some deeper source than a stuffy bedroom and a bad dinner, or else the essential kindliness of the dickensian attitude towards everything except cruelty and injustice must be cast aside as an exploded belief. certainly no public writer would dare to write in 1906 of any hotel as dickens wrote of the "great white horse" in the thirties of the last century; and perhaps that is not entirely to be regretted, for hotel-keepers really are our fellow-creatures, unwilling as some advocates of the temperance cause may be to admit the truth. by the way, why is the "great white horse" an hotel sign in east anglia?--not that i can endorse the description of it as "a stone statue of some rampacious animal, with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane cart-horse." it seems to me quite reasonably like to a suffolk punch, except in colour, and one finds phidias never, although apelles sometimes, over inn doors. but why a white horse? one expects such signs in the parts about berks, where the classic vale is named after the gigantic symbol on the northward side of the downs, of which a simple explanation has become impossible, owing to the tiresome growth of knowledge. but why, despising all commonplace explanations, have we encountered a "white horse" in suffolk? well, one of the many explanations of the white horse _par excellence_ is that it was taken from the horse delineated on philip's stater, which was copied a good deal in britain, and an explanation of the "white horse"--i beg its pardon, the "great white horse"--of ipswich may be that it had its origin in the horse figured on some of the icenian coins that have been discovered in east anglia. or, again, it may be simply a survival of the ancient saxon totem. some such desultory speculation as this may serve to soothe the mind of an evening at ipswich--not that after motoring all day the mind needs much soothing. but i would counsel all male motorists to burn their last incense of tobacco, as my friend and i did, in the warm bar-parlour on the side of the courtyard over against the main door, for thus shall they see the native of ipswich in his natural state. the discovery of "this amazing england," as mr. kipling has said well, is the main joy of motoring; still in the evening one may do much worse things than pursue the proper study of mankind in easy-going mood, and a provincial bar-parlour is not a bad place in which to do it. to ipswich i have been more than once since that night of freezing cold in january, and to bury st. edmunds also, and more features of both will find a place in later narratives; but of each there are a few practical things to be said which must not be delayed. on a second visit to bury, made in the course of the most troubled and delightful tour of my existence so far, i lay at the ancient "angel" with mighty satisfaction and to the remarkably small minishing of my store of sovereigns. on a second visit to ipswich i was hospitably entertained by a local gentleman at the "crown and anchor," because he thought it was the best hotel in ipswich, and behold the fare was very good! by the same gentleman i was introduced to oysters, in a little shop near the butter market, the best i ever ate, and to hand-made gloves in a little shop hard by which have motored many a merry mile since then. there need be no hesitation in advertising them. they are made by a widow and her daughter out of soft and strong cape leather, and with them, it is to be feared, the industry will die, since apprentices will not come to them in these degenerate days. since then i have exhibited these gloves, during the scottish "reliability" trials, to a casual acquaintance, and her criticism, although strictly irrelevant, was too witty to be omitted. "mphm! they look as if you had made them yourself." ipswich gloves, then, are not for the dandy, but for the motorist they are hard to beat. chapter ii winter. ipswich to norwich viâ woodbridge, beccles, lowestoft, and yarmouth a walk in ipswich--sparrowe's house--with pickwick and the wellers--start at noon--the glittering car--another passenger--infantine pilotage--a loose clutch--mechanic's chagrin--a stitch in time--nuts screwed home--need to watch mechanics--woodbridge--edward fitzgerald--wickham market and saxmundham--abyssinian luncheon--détour to aldeburgh--aldeburgh described--the dilatory alde--birthplace of george crabbe--his views of aldeburgh--saxmundham to yoxford--peasenhall adjacent--yoxford to blythburgh--a motorist's church--détour to southwold--southwold described--battle of sole bay--did isaac newton hear guns at cambridge?--lord ossory's ride from euston--blythburgh to beccles--first view disappointing--better next time--unforeseen value of connemara cloak--beccles to lowestoft--_norfolk and norwich notes and queries_--their value--origin of lowestoft harbour--"norwich a port"--cubitt and telford--sir samuel peto--meaning of "lowestoft"--lowestoft to yarmouth--direct route to norwich--darkness and frozen haze--straining eyes--norwich at last--the "royal" formerly "angel"--an ancient hostelry--colossal window tax--norfolk election memories--corn law riot--"coke of norfolk" sheltered--always a whig house--stroll in norwich--multitude of churches--the walls and "murage" tax--a learned society's day--fraction of norwich only seen--wat tyler's rebellion--geoffrey lister and sir robert salle--st. peter's permountergate--memories of nelson--fascination of norwich--its great men and women--george borrow--"old crome"--the norwich school. truth to tell, ipswich on the gipping, which becomes the orwell and an estuary lower down, seemed to me then an ancient city showing, except in a few picturesque houses and the gateway of wolsey's college, few signs of antiquity. if it cannot be called happy in having had no history, for it was plundered by the danes in 991, it has had little cause for unhappiness of that kind since the conquest; it has produced no really famous man except wolsey, though gainsborough lived in it for some years; and its churches, although not quite devoid of interest, are not striking enough to delay a motorist. note, in passing, not the least advantage of an exploring tour by motor. you need neither spend time in examining that which is barely worth the process on the ground that there is nothing else to be done, nor hurry away from that which is interesting, in order to catch a train; but, staying so long as seems pleasant and no longer, you may be transported when you please, rapidly and pleasantly, to scenes you have reason to believe to be worthy of your regard. in these circumstances, after an admiring glance at the famous sparrowe's house in the butter market, close to the hotel, i frankly betook myself to an effort to follow the wellers, father and son, mr. pickwick and his followers, through an eventful day. this stable-yard round the corner to the left, where the panhard was now being furbished up, was the same on which mr. weller, senior, looked when, "in a small room in the vicinity," he discussed a pot of ale and the "gammoning" of sam, and drank to the toast, "may you soon vipe off the disgrace as you've inflicted on the family name." the office in the courtyard was doubtless that at which he got his "vaybill." walking about these very streets sam wormed himself into the confidence of the lachrymose job trotter. in this inn parlour mr. peter magnus, _alias_ jingle, splendidly attired, made a hollow pretence of breakfasting with mr. pickwick; here the latter gave his simple hints on courtship and proposal, and here were seen "the joyous face of mr. tupman, the serene countenance of mr. winkle, and the intellectual lineaments of mr. snodgrass." in this room was enacted that memorable scene when mr. magnus presented miss witherfield to mr. pickwick and miss witherfield screamed, but neither she nor mr. pickwick was indelicate enough to mention the cause--his unwitting invasion of her chamber overnight. rushing out of this room the lady, after bolting herself into her bedroom, went forth in search of mr. nupkins and apprised him of the forthcoming duel, which there was not really much reason to anticipate. where exactly miss witherfield saw mr. nupkins i am unhappily not able to say, nor yet, and for the same reason, whither grummer, with his myrmidon dubbley and his "division," each with a short truncheon and a brass crown, conducted mr. pickwick and mr. tupman in the old sedan-chair; but for all that it is easy to picture the whole of the never-to-be-forgotten scene, all the more memorable in that it never was enacted. in fact, it is no mean regret to me that, on that cold january morning, i was not able to find "the house with the green gate," with the "house-door guarded on either side by an american aloe in a tub." it has eluded me since also. perhaps it is gone, like a good deal of old ipswich; possibly some miscreant has had his gate painted white instead of green; perhaps i looked in the wrong place, in the vicinity of st. clement's church. it is even within the bounds of possibility that the house with the green gate never had any more real and substantial existence than mr. pickwick himself. all i know is that i could not find it. at noon or thereabouts--time does not worry one in a motor-car, unless one is seeking records--we boarded the panhard, now "bright as a birmingham button," and started off up a long and trying hill, in cold, dry, and windless weather, for a circuitous drive, its sinuosities determined by the desires of my friend. a new member was added to the party in the person of a resident at norwich, desirous of reaching that ancient city in due course, who was supposed to know, and probably did know, every considerable turning of every high road in the two counties of norfolk and suffolk. he had not, however, enjoyed much experience as the pilot of an automobile, and he found, as i had in years gone by when i was new to the pastime, that eye and memory were not equal to moving together at a speed proportioned to that of the car. "which road?" the charioteer would cry--the new passenger was riding astern--when we were from fifty to seventy yards from a fork or a turn, and hesitation would often be visible in the reply, so that it was necessary to slow down and sometimes, having invaded the wrong road, to back out again. this is not criticism, it is rather matter of observation and experience. only recently have the minds of driving and driven men been called upon to exercise their judgment, to choose a line, as a fox-hunter might say, while they are being carried through space much more rapidly than of yore, and the pace puzzles them at first. you are past a familiar turning in a car in less time than is consumed over approaching it in a dog-cart or on horseback, and the aspect of the turning itself has something strange about it; but you grow accustomed to the new conditions with experience. in fact, motor-cars sharpen the perceptions and spur the intelligence. to venture an audacious travesty, and some even more hardy doggerel:- _... urgendi didicisse fideliter artem exacuit mentem, nee sinit esse pigram._ he who has learned a car to drive sharpens his wits and looks alive. personally, i sat alongside the driver, a place of honour, if cold, and the mechanic sat at my feet. pity is wasted on a mechanic so placed at any time, for he likes the position, and it is not so comfortless as it looks by a long way, _experto crede_. in any case our ex-soldier was a proud man that morning, for his car was a joy to the eye. the day before owner and mechanic were hustings-worn, the car looked battered and dissipated as well as fog-dimmed. now the brass shone with a glow that would have satisfied the proud commander of a man-of-war, who is the most exacting person living. if that mechanic had read the greek tragedians he would have known that nemesis must needs come soon. brass glittered, varnish shone, all four cylinders worked nobly, but the engine would race from time to time. it became all too clear to him who had the control of the machine, or desired to have it, that he had it not in entirety, since the clutch kept slipping. hence came power wasted, miles per hour lost, and a definite feeling of discontent in the owner. so, after a hill or two had been climbed without satisfaction, a halt was called on the level. the mechanic did not like it a bit, and he had our sympathy. he had worked hard; he had turned out the car with a creditable appearance; it was crushing to be found out in a single fault. i knew his feelings from experience. to be blamed when you thoroughly deserve it is tolerable; to be blamed for no fault at all is to find consolation in private reflection upon the folly of him, or her, who administers reproof; to discover that one essential point has been forgotten when you have tried hard to remember everything is to be compelled to recognize that, after every willing effort, you only look a fool after all. the mechanic had our sympathy on another ground too. he vowed, of course, that the clutch could not be made tighter; he declared that, if it were, the consequences would be disastrous; for you shall note that your mechanic dearly loves "a bit o' play" in fittings, and abhors a nut screwed quite home. all these things were clear to us, but we were none the less inexorable. as, in starting on a heavy job in carpenter's work, minutes spent in putting a keen edge on to plane and chisel are hours saved in the end, so it is sheer idiocy to muddle on with a motor-car if, at the beginning of the journey, you are aware of something wrong that is capable of being set right on the road. it is, indeed, in detecting the first premonitory evidence of trouble, and in meeting difficulties more than half-way, that the genius of an inspired driver is shown. this little weakness of mechanics for a "bit o' play" is also worth remembering. so we were sorry for the mechanic, but the thing had got to be done whether he liked or no, and for half an hour he lay on his back under the car, straining, grunting, otherwise eloquently silent, while black and viscous oil made a little pool on the road alongside of his honest head, and while we, pacing up and down the frozen road, forbore even to remind him that, if the road had been muddy, his fate would have been worse. in cases where an angel would lose his temper under the gentlest persiflage it is only decent to leave a willing but disappointed man to himself. the half-hour ended; the job was done; overdone a little, as the mechanic well knew, yet not so much overdone but that a driver of rare skill could disappoint him by ignoring the inconvenience; and we took our seats again. the car sprang forward like a living creature, moving fast and smoothly. there was all the difference in the world between the motion as it was and the motion as it had been, and the chagrin of the mechanic yielded to time and to the proud feeling that all was right with "his car" through his handiwork. sooth to say, the scenery was not interesting on a frosty and somewhat misty day. the route was, to start with, viâ woodbridge, wickham market, and stratford st. andrew to saxmundham; that is to say, the road runs along the brow, the very much wrinkled brow, of the upland, which is high by comparison with the lowland, extending a long way in from the coast, running from felixstowe to aldeburgh and beyond. of that lowland we could see nothing. woodbridge, appearing to consist of one street, long, straggling, and narrow, was the first village of any consideration through which we passed. its chief claim to fame is that edward fitzgerald wrote letters at it, remarking in one, dated 1855, that woodbridge had not reached 1842 yet. but we shall see woodbridge again. next came wickham market, narrow, straggling, and long. it is quite commonplace. from wickham market we went on to saxmundham, and there committed a grave error. "hot dinner," it was stated, was due in three-quarters of an hour, but it could be hurried forward if we wished. we wished accordingly, and wished afterwards that we had not, for the meat, some forgotten joint half-boiled, was in a state in which, according to the traveller bruce, the abyssinians eat their meat from choice; and the accompanying parsnips, quite hard, may have been fit to place before sheep. as we were neither abyssinians nor sheep, but english travellers, the error was felt the more acutely because we had ourselves only to blame. given the same conditions another time, i should urge a detour to aldeburgh, a detour of some six miles to be begun about two miles short of saxmundham, for aldeburgh is worth seeing and man can feed there. [illustration: woodbridge-street] of aldeburgh an observation or two may be made on the basis of a sojourn a few years since. it is certainly one of the most bracing places in this world. it has a tolerable hotel, good golf-links, and a fine view of the sea; and the ancient moot-house is picturesque. the abiding impression left by aldeburgh is simply that it is the oddest place ever seen. the little river alde, starting somewhere near saxmundham, follows a more or less southerly course for a couple of miles; then an even smaller river joins it, and, flowing eastward for a mile or so, the combined streams seem to be heading for the sea, distant about six miles; but it takes them fifteen miles, even with the help of another so-called river, purposeless as themselves, to reach the sea; for first they are lost in a mecranking mere of sluggish water, which actually approaches within a hundred yards of the sea at aldeburgh, where it is stopped by a stony bank. the mere continues, and the rivers are merged in it, parallel to high-water mark, divided from it sometimes by a hundred yards or so, sometimes by half a mile, for nine miles from the point of turning, and soon the water is dubbed river ore in the map. by this time it is meandering, mainly under the influence of the tide most likely, behind and to the west of orford ness, and it is not until somewhere about the middle of hollesley bay that this utter absurdity of a river, this monstrous estuary for three trifling streams, finds its way into the sea. a year or two ago the good folks of aldeburgh celebrated their native poet, george crabbe, though why they chose the date, seeing that crabbe was born in 1754 and died in 1832, it is not quite easy to see. the celebration, indeed, was, like the use made of pickwick by the hotel at ipswich, an example of the truth that a community or an individual having a mind for advertisement will not be stopped by petty considerations of pride. george crabbe was born at aldeburgh, through no fault of his own. he left it in 1768, to be apprenticed to a surgeon at bury st. edmunds. he came back to it to practise as a surgeon, and failed miserably as a medical man, because his mind was on the making of verses all the time. then he tried his fortune in london and beat despairingly on the doors of fame until burke introduced him to dodsley, who brought out _the library_ with some success in 1781. at about the same time dr. johnson expressed a high opinion of his verse. next he was ordained and took up his residence as curate at aldeburgh, but he left it soon to become domestic chaplain to the duke of rutland; and he does not seem to have had much, if anything, to do with his native place during his subsequent career as prosperous poet and comfortable clergyman. he was a distinctly sound poet, with a queer vein of humour, although his admirer, edward fitzgerald, whom we meet to-day, valued him perhaps too highly, and byron, probably for his own purposes, overpraised him in the words:- nature's sternest painter, but her best. crabbe hated aldeburgh, or aldeburgh scenery at any rate; or, if he did not hate them, he took the stern view of them. lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor; from thence a length of burning sand appears, where the thin harvest waves its withered ears; rank weeds, that every art and care defy, reign o'er the land and rob the blighted rye. thus does he describe the vicinity and thus the so-called river and its marge:- here samphire banks and saltworth bind the flood, and stakes and seaweed withering in the mud; and higher up a ridge of all things base, which some strong tide has rolled upon the place. no, assuredly crabbe had no liking for aldeburgh, and to be perfectly candid, i agree with him that, save for golfers, it is a dreary and eye-afflicting place. in this view i confess to have believed myself to be singular and, for expressing it, have incurred scorn more than once. so crabbe is quoted in confirmation, yet with the hope that those who visit aldeburgh may agree with the general view and not with that of a minority of two, one of them something better than a minor poet. be it added, in justice to aldeburgh, that you can look for amber among the pebbles on the beach. so you can anywhere and find as much as i did. from saxmundham we laid a course due north for yoxford--peasenhall of murderous fame lies some three miles to the west--and passed by way of darsham to blythburgh. here, in a village named in _domesday_, is a really striking fifteenth-century church, in good perpendicular and with splendid clerestory, plainly visible from the road; and we are not far from southwold, now known of many as a summer resort, whereas in days not long past it was visited by few persons save those who knew of the existence of st. edmund's church with its really majestic tower and rare rood-loft. here, by the way, is buried agnes strickland, the historian. the very slight inward curve of the coastline here is dignified with the name of a bay, and as sole bay, which is simply southwold bay spoken short, it has a considerable place in history. on 28 may, 1672, "the combined fleets lay at sole bay in a very negligent posture." they were the fleets of england, under the command of the duke of york, with lord sandwich under him, and of france; and here de ruyter, the greatest sea-captain of his age, took his royal adversary quite by surprise. this was due not so much to the dashing merit of de ruyter as to the crass carelessness of the duke, for "sandwich, being an experienced officer, had given the duke warning of the danger; but received, they said, such an answer as intimated that there was more of caution than of courage in his apprehensions." what hasty words, i wonder, of the rude and haughty admiral were represented by this sonorous periphrasis? de ruyter came, with ninety-one ships of war and forty-four fireships, sailing "in quest of the english," and sandwich, after giving the warning in vain, saved the day by a display of gallantry to be ranked as extraordinary even in the annals of the english navy. sailing out to meet the dutchman, he engaged him at once and gave time to the duke and the french admiral. "he killed van ghent, a dutch admiral, and beat off his ship; he sunk another ship, which ventured to lay him aboard; he sunk three fireships, which endeavoured to grapple with him; and, though his vessel was torn to pieces with shot, and of a thousand men she contained near six hundred were laid dead upon the deck, he continued still to thunder with all his artillery in the midst of the enemy. but another fireship, more fortunate than the preceding, having laid hold of his vessel, her destruction was now inevitable. warned by sir edward haddock, his captain, he refused to make his escape, and bravely embraced death as a shelter from that ignominy which a rash expression of the duke's, he thought, had thrown upon him." admiral and flag-captain, in fact, perished when the fire reached the magazine, and this time at any rate the "price of admiralty" was paid in full. [illustration: southwold harbour] the english claimed a victory and embalmed it in a ballad, although the truth was that the duke's fleet was too much shattered for pursuit and the french fleet, under secret orders, perhaps, from louis xiv, did next to nothing; the dutch, probably, claimed one also, although the battle ended the hopes with which de ruyter's expedition started. all that matters nothing now. the moment that heartens a man is that at which he stands on this low-lying shore, as spectators stood all the long day in may, 1672, and remembers the gallant fight and the glorious death of sandwich. "sir isaac newton is also said to have heard it [the firing] at cambridge." so writes the accomplished author of murray's guide in 1875, and there is nothing incredible in the suggestion. the distance is but seventy miles, roughly; the cannon of old time with their black powder made a terrible sound; acoustics are full of mystery, and the noise of the big guns at portsmouth is often heard in the heart of the berkshire downs. from euston to the centre of sole bay is about half the distance over which sound is said to have reached newton, and it is on record that lord ossory, then a guest of the duke of grafton, heard the guns and rode half-way across east anglia to witness the battle. surely it was a majestic and awe-inspiring spectacle for those on the shore, and surely it is worth while to reconstruct it now in imagination. from blythburgh we went along a road of poor surface, and of no scenic attraction in winter save that the trees were fine, to beccles, one of the three principal towns of suffolk, possessed, i was content to believe, of a grand church, and boasting a view over the marshes of the waveney, once navigable. but we saw little of beccles, the name of which reminded edward fitzgerald of "hooks and eyes"; we were indeed quite glad to leave it after penetrating a quarter suggestive of a new and prosperous midland town, for election fever was running high, and car and its occupants were cheered or hooted by eager crowds; cheered most, perhaps, for the crowds were mostly "red," and the connemara cloak seemed to express a sympathy which, in truth, was not felt. we had all had enough electioneering and to spare and were glad to turn our faces for lowestoft. as will be seen later, beccles made a far more pleasant impression on a subsequent visit. at lowestoft too--it is a short and easy run--election fever was running high, and the political excitement of a seething mob does not make for an individual appreciation of the picturesque. but old lowestoft is picturesque, hanging, as it were, over the sea, and south lowestoft has a peculiar origin worth knowing. among the pleasant enterprises incident to the writing of this book has been the making of notes from _norfolk and norwich notes and queries_, reprinted from the _norfolk chronicle_, to which i have added in my note-book _o si sic omnes!_ would indeed that all county papers laid themselves out, as this one does, to collect notes from those interested in the antiquities of their county. here as to lowestoft are found two notes, one entertaining and suggestive, the other distinctly taking. it appears that in 1558 one thomas north published a fantastic explanation of the origin of herring curing, in which lowestoft has always rivalled yarmouth. without giving it in detail, it may be stated that in essential spirit, if on a different topic, it exactly anticipates charles lamb's divine theory of roast pig; but thomas north has none of that grace of expression which compels quotation when one encounters lamb, and one only regrets that lamb did not think of describing the origin of herring curing as well as of roast pork. the second lowestoft note deserves a paragraph to itself, for it is full of moral lessons, and a curious illustration of the way in which the overweening ambition of one community and the churlishness of a second has ended in loss to the first and in the profit of a third community to the prejudice of the second. in the records of st. peter's church, at norwich (st. peter's, permountergate, if memory serves accurately, which is st. peter's, parmentersgate, or tailors' street), is an entry of 27 march, 1814: "ringing the bells for norwich a port. 10/6." early in the last century, it appears, norwich was a very important centre of the wool trade. now norwich thrives on mustard and boots, but let that pass; at the time in question wool was the staple trade, and it was exported by way of yarmouth. in 1812 or thereabouts, like manchester later, norwich determined, if possible, to have direct communication with the sea. enterprising men consulted william cubitt, afterwards sir william cubitt, and a very distinguished engineer in matters relating to canals and docks. they probably consulted him mainly because he was a norfolk man, for he was not yet thirty years old, and his fame, which was to be considerable, was yet to come. they sought the advice also of that consummate scottish engineer, thomas telford, then well advanced in middle age and almost at the pinnacle of his fame. alternative routes for the proposed canal were suggested, one by way of yarmouth, the other by way of lowestoft. yarmouth, its safe trade threatened, opposed from the beginning, and eventually the lowestoft route was adopted; the mouth of lowestoft harbour was cleared from the sands that blocked it, a cut was made connecting it with the waveney through oulton broad, another cut from haddiscoe to reedham, and in 1814 the bells rang gaily to celebrate "norwich a port." for norwich it was a short-lived triumph, since the scheme did not pay its way, and in 1844 it was practically, possibly indeed formally, bankrupt. at any rate, the lowestoft part of the works was bought outright by sir samuel peto, who in that year--but whether before he acquired the harbour or not i cannot say--bought somerleyton hard by, some time the seat of the fitz-osberts and the jernigans, from lord sidney godolphin osborne. _sic vos, non vobis._ the norwich folk lost their money, or some of it; sir samuel peto took lowestoft in hand, "developed" it, as the saying goes, so that south lowestoft became a flourishing seaside place; and finally lowestoft as a port became a serious rival to yarmouth. as a seaside place lowestoft is pleasing to some tastes now, even as it was in the days when edward fitzgerald would betake himself thither from woodbridge to spend his days in sailing and in writing letters which are a treasure to posterity; and his evenings in reading shakespeare or _don quixote_ with his close friends, cowell and aldis wright, who often lodged at lowestoft for a short time in summer. it would have been good to have their opinion upon the derivation of lowestoft, appearing in _domesday_ as lothu-wis-toft, which is said to be "the enclosure by the water of loth," who in his turn is said to have been a norse invader; but nothing is to be discovered of loth, or loo, save that lake lothing, now the inner harbour, is named after him, as was the hundred of lothingland or ludingaland; and edward fitzgerald is really much more interesting than a nebulous norse pirate. [illustration: fishing boats at lowestoft] election fever and its ravings, a short glance at picturesque features, and the inestimable blessings of tea and warmth are the principal memories left by this particular visit to lowestoft. thence we ran along the easy coast road in the darkness to great yarmouth, which, on this occasion, left no vivid impression on the memory. no such language, however, can be employed with regard to the remainder of that evening's drive. doubts had arisen whether it would be wiser to make for norwich by the more circuitous route which fetches a compass round caister castle, or by the "new road" running in a direct line for acle first, across a salt marsh, and from acle fairly straight for norwich. the new road was much the shorter and, being across a salt marsh, a dead-level, but our local pilot was doubtful as to the state of its surface. however, it was decided to make inquiry at the toll-gate, a mile or so out of yarmouth, and to abide by the answer, which was satisfactory. so was the road, so far as its surface went. it ran first for five miles straight as an arrow; the straightness was apparent at the time, but the five miles seemed like twenty. a fine mist was frozen over the watery land, nothing was visible on one side except, at stated intervals, a towering telegraph pole, and on both sides, at shorter intervals, were puny and poor trees which may have been poplars or willows. it became my duty, seated beside the man at the wheel, to peer into the darkness, trying to distinguish any possible obstacle or turn, to make out the character of any light that might be seen, and to watch for the bend, which, after another straight run of some three miles, would take us to acle. as a rule i could just see the outline of one telegraph post as we passed its predecessor; there was, in all probability, a deep dyke on either side, and it was an ideal night for running into a country vehicle travelling without a tail light; but happily we encountered none. indeed, although motorists complain much, late years have seen a great improvement in this respect. of lights on approaching vehicles we saw one or two, appearing at first to be distant and stationary as a planet on a clear night, and then to be close to us in an instant. it was, in short, a trying experience to the nerves and to the eyes, and we resolved to avoid night journeys as much as might be in the future. the resolution was renewed when we looked at our strained and bloodshot eyes the next morning, and broken perforce the next evening; but night travelling by motor-car in winter is not to be recommended unless the moon is strong. it is a process to be resolved upon when circumstances suit, not to be planned in advance. from acle to norwich was ten miles more or less of up-and-down travelling, the hills not serious enough to try a good motor high, and it was an unfeigned relief to reach the shelter and food of the royal hotel. here, practically, ends the account of the second day of this excursion, for the royal hotel is comfortable, not expensive as english hotels go, and new; but mere comfort is fortunately commonplace, its novelty is rather more of an outrage than usual in this case, and the novelty of the hotel's name is an offence not to be pardoned. here, where the modern "royal" stands, in the very centre of the city, stood the famous "angel" from the fifteenth century at least to the middle of the nineteenth. local antiquaries, many and eager, rejoice in tracing the history of this celebrated hostelry, finding frequent allusions to it in the records of the master of the revels, for here mountebanks performed, and theatrical performances were given, and strange monsters were shown. it had the glory of paying £115 tax for thirty windows in the eighteenth century--this makes one understand the blocked windows in old houses more sympathetically than a bare mention of window tax does--and it was the great whig house in the days when norfolk elections were, as mr. walter rye tells us, half of the history of norfolk, the other half being concerned with trade. it is true that mr. walter rye, speaking of the election of 1675, says that sir nevill cattyn's party "used the 'royal,' (then the 'king's head,') and the other side, using a stratagem--singularly enough repeated at the same house last election, two or three years ago--ordered a great dinner there on the pretence that they might 'friendly meet and dine' with the other party, and ultimately secured the whole house as their election quarters; cattyn, who was brought into town by four thousand horsemen, having to put up with the 'white swan' 'at the back side of the butchers' shambles'" (_a history of norfolk_, by walter rye. elliot stock, 1885). i prefer to pin my faith to _norfolk and norwich notes and queries_, not only because its elaborate article on the topic is evidently based on careful research, but also because its statements are not contradicted in subsequent issues, and these bear eloquent testimony to the fact that the local antiquaries of east anglia have at least one trait in common with the antiquaries of the wider world--they contradict with freedom and dispute with endless pertinacity. here there is no contradiction (and mr. rye's accuracy is by no means equal to his industry or to his love of antiquity), so it may be taken as reasonably certain that the "royal" is on the site of the "angel," and that the "angel" first appeared by that name in 1578, when it was leased to one peterson; but the property has been traced back to mistress katharine dysse in the rolls of the mayoralty court of norwich, and she lived early in the fifteenth century. here, in october, 1677, joseph argent had "fourteen days allowed to him to make show of such tricks as are mentioned in his patent at the 'angel.'" in 1683 "robert austine at ye angel hath leave given him for a week from ys daie to make show of the storie of edward the 4th and iane shore, and noe longer." in several later years peter dolman clearly made a great success with punchinello or puntionella--both forms are used. there are a score of similar entries, also of displays at the "angel," of freaks and monstrosities, waxworks and the like. hither fled mr. thomas coke, of holkham, father of the agriculture of norfolk, during a corn law riot of 1815, escaping through the back of the house with the then earl of albemarle; in the "angel" in 1794 the duke of york stayed when on his way to yarmouth to meet the exiled family of the prince of orange, and here the duke of wellington changed horses on his way to gunton in 1820, receiving a hearty welcome from the citizens. from the "angel" the whigs sallied forth during the election of 1832, and enjoyed a glorious fight in quite the old style with the tories in the market-place. an inn-name of such antiquity and so many associations should not have been changed. apparently, however, the house has not changed its political colour, for it is a curious coincidence that, on the evening of 24 january, lord kimberley was a guest at the "royal," and next day his son, lord wodehouse, won the mid-norfolk election. now the wodehouses have been whigs ever since whigs were, and it need not be doubted that sir philip wodehouse, m.p. for castle rising, who died in 1623, was of much the same political temper as those of the name who came after him. next morning i walked about norwich, and i have done the like many times, but, short of writing a book on the subject, which is certainly not necessary, it is by no means easy to decide how to treat it. norfolk has more parishes and churches in proportion to its area than any other county (730 to 2024 square miles, whereas yorkshire to 5836 square miles has but 613, according to mr. rye), and of these, besides a remarkably striking cathedral, there are no less than thirty-five in norwich alone. norwich has a castle, its history and nature far from free of doubt; some relics of walls built by the citizens for their own safety in the time of edward i, when they were empowered to levy a "murage" tax; an ancient guildhall of smooth, black flint (which interested me, although it is said to have "no regularity or beauty of architecture to recommend it"); st. andrew's hall; the nave of an ancient dominican church; a school partially domiciled in what is left of a dominican convent; a fine museum containing some rare treasures of antiquity; the curious part known as tombland; and great store of ancient houses, each one of them possessed of a history. also, in the "maid's head," to be described later, it has the most alluring old inn known to me anywhere. true it is that a mayor of norwich, conducting a royal personage on a tour of inspection, is reported to have said "this was an ancient city, your royal highness, before several of the old houses were pulled down," but, while there can never be too many old houses left to be an endless delight to the antiquary, there are far too many to be noticed in a work of this kind. one learns without surprise, but not without satisfaction, that a society of persons interested in antiquities meets periodically for "walks in norwich," and it is pleasant to follow their wanderings. now they are studying the stately cathedral, with its three magnificent gateways, and its beautiful fourteenth-century spire, and listening to its story from the lips, it may be, of dr. jessopp. (all i need say at this moment is that i have never known the grand simplicity of the prevailing norman style to strike the imagination so quickly and so completely as when i first entered it at a time, as it happened, when the exceptionally perfect organ was being played in the empty church.) at another time they are investigating the butter hills, and learning that they take their name from john le boteler, who gave them to carrow abbey; at another finding traces in a malt-house of the house of that stout sir robert de salle who opposed wat tyler's rebellion in these parts, and was celebrated by froissart. here the temptation to quote a little is overpowering. the insurgents, it should be said, were led by sir roger bacon and geoffrey lister, a dyer. "the reason that they stopped near norwich was that the governor of the town was a knight called sir robert salle: he was not a gentleman by birth, but having acquired great renown for his ability and courage king edward had created him a knight: he was the handsomest and strongest man in england. lister and his companions took it into their heads they would make this knight their commander and carry him with them in order to be the more feared. they sent orders to him to come out into the fields to speak with them, or they would attack and burn the city. the knight, considering that it was much better for him to go to them than that they should commit such outrages, mounted his horse and went out of the town alone to hear what they had to say. when they perceived him coming they showed him every mark of respect, and courteously entreated him to dismount and talk with them. he did dismount, and committed a great folly, for when he had so done, having surrounded him, they conversed at first in a friendly way, saying, 'robert, you are a knight, and a man of great weight in this country, renowned for your valour; yet notwithstanding all this we know who you are; you are not a gentleman, but the son of a poor mason, just such as ourselves. do you come with us as our commander, and we will make so great a lord of you that one-quarter of england shall be under your command.' the knight, on hearing them thus speak, was exceedingly angry; he would never have consented to such a proposal; and, eyeing them with inflamed looks, answered, 'begone, wicked scoundrels and false traitors as you are; would you have me desert my natural lord for such blackguards as you are? i had rather you were all hanged, for that must be your end.' on saying this he attempted to mount his horse, but, his foot slipping from the stirrup, his horse took fright. they then shouted out and cried, 'put him to death.' when he heard this he let his horse go, and drawing a handsome bordeaux sword, he began to skirmish, and soon cleared the crowd from about him, that it was a pleasure to see. some attempted to close with him; but with each stroke he gave he cut off heads, arms, feet or legs. there were none so bold but they were afraid, and sir robert performed that day marvellous feats of arms. these wretches were upwards of forty thousand; they shot and flung at him such things that, had he been clothed in steel instead of being unarmed, he must have been overpowered; however, he killed twelve of them, besides many whom he wounded. at last he was overthrown, when they cut off his legs and arms, and rent his body in piecemeal. thus ended sir robert salle, which was a great pity, and when the knights and squires in england heard of it they were much enraged." on the very same day the party of explorers--i find they were not the norwich society, but the yarmouth branch of the norfolk archæological society on a pilgrimage--had visited the old foundry bridge, heard the story of the loss of a yarmouth packet hard by in 1817, learned that a neighbouring yard, once known as spring gardens, was a resort of fashion in the eighteenth century, seen the remains of the austin friars' watergate, visited the devil's tower, heard the history of the city walls and st. peter's, southgate. dr. bensly had read a paper at robert de salle's house aforesaid. then st. etheldreda's church was visited, the plate was examined, and dr. bensly read another paper in the crypt of the house of isaac the jew, a norman domestic cellar, clearly to be traced from the days of william rufus, to a house subsequently occupied by sir john paston and lord chief justice coke. next at st. peter's, permountergate, attention was called to all manner of details--personal, historical, and architectural; st. andrew's and blackfriar's halls were visited and explained; a paper was read on sundry discoveries made in excavating under the guildhall; king edward vi's middle school (the one in the ancient convent) was seen; a paper was read on st. andrew's church; and, after dinner at the "maid's head," the vicar of st. peter's, permountergate, read a paper on the parish records. just a few of the entries it is impossible to resist, for they are of imperishable interest. "1798. october 19th. form of prayer on the victory obtained by admiral sir horatio nelson over the french fleet off the nile, 1st august /6." "nov. 12th. form of prayer for general thanksgiving on 29 november 1/". "1805. december 5th. paid for a form of prayer and proclamation on account of the late glorious victory over the combined fleets of france and spain by lord viscount nelson off cape trafalgar on 21st october, 1/". no bells were rung in norfolk that day, for the calamity of nelson's heroic death saddened the heart of every man in his native county. but they were rung at st. peter's, permountergate, merrily enough, no doubt, in 1814, when there was the entry: "april 12. putting flag upon the steeple on buonaparte's overthrow; beer ditto 7/6." does this multiplicity of topics take away the breath, as is intended? not without set purpose has this very full day in the life of an archæological association been set forth with some little of particularity. it is an illustration, deliberately chosen, of the truth that a learned party, or a party desirous of becoming learned, can spend a day comfortably in a single quarter of norwich under expert guidance and without wasting any time, and yet leave a vast number of the most interesting places and remains altogether unvisited. we have no mention here of the city walls, of tombland, the meaning of which is still in doubt, of the castle, of the guildhall and its treasures, of the strangers' hall and a score of matters besides. this is not criticism, but a preliminary to an excuse in the nature of confession and avoidance. the yarmouth archæologists were wise in their generation in contenting themselves with a single section of the city on a single day. they had come, perhaps, before; they could come, no doubt, again. what they saw and heard in a single day is an explanation, combined with cursory mention of some of the things not seen, at once of the extraordinary fascination norwich must exercise over a man or woman of intelligence, of the immense variety of its attractions, and of the sheer absurdity of attempting to deal with them in a part of a book with any completeness. it is better, surely, to give something of detail, if not a tenth of what is due, to a part, than to attempt the vain task of stretching the complex whole in outline. to him or her who has time i would say, "spend a great deal of it in norwich, and you will find no hour hang heavily." also it is as well to know a little of norwich as an historical city and of its associations, of which indeed the latter are so much the more interesting that the history may almost be cast on one side. first of all the idea that norwich was venta icenorum may be dismissed, with mr. haverfield's authority, as untenable for lack of evidence. no considerable roman remains of clear authenticity have been found to warrant the theory. the castle is a complete puzzle. the city was ravaged by the danes, of course, under sweyn in 1003, and it became a diocesan centre in 1094, and has remained such ever since. it was walled, as has been stated, by the citizens; it flourished in the wool trade early. "worsted" owes its name to an adjacent village, and sir john paston wrote: "i would have my doublet all worsted for worship of norfolk." it suffered grievously in the time of the black death. it had its share, as we have seen, of trouble from wat tyler's rebellion and from kett's rebellion in the sixteenth century, mousehold heath being the place of encampment on both occasions. elizabeth, also visited it in state in 1578, and it contributed its quota towards the repulse of the armada. from the troubles of the civil war it escaped almost scot free, mainly because east anglia, the home of the eastern counties association, was exclusively parliamentarian, except in the case of lynn, whereof more later. after that it is true to write of norwich, as mr. walter rye has written of norfolk, that the history of the last three centuries is really one of elections and of trade, neither of them very alluring from our present point of view. [illustration: norwich market place] all these things, however, are but history in the primitive sense. there is far more pleasure, and perhaps as much profit, in remembering that the editor of the _paston letters_, a mine of information and of interest, was sir john fenn, a man of norwich; that dean hook, mrs. opie, hooker the botanist, and harriet martineau were born in norwich. these names, except perhaps that of fenn, do not stir the imagination much in these days. we are spared from study of miss martineau's _political economy_, or of her history; and sir john fenn was really, as his comments in the _paston letters_ and his omissions from them prove, a dull dog; but what man or woman of literary taste can see, as i did the first day i was in norwich, the name rackham on a solicitor's brass plate without remembering that the wayward genius, george borrow, was clerk to messrs. simpson and rackham, solicitors, or perhaps they were attorneys then, of norwich, or will omit a pilgrimage to the house, still unchanged, in which he lived in willow lane? then, chiefest jewel of all in the crown of norwich is the norwich school of painting that rose in her midst, whereof "old crome"--his portrait is in the guildhall--was the father and the founder. his pictures you may study in the national gallery, but only in norwich, where he was born and apprenticed to a coach and sign-painter, can you realize his gradual progress, see him in imagination producing signs for the "lamb" and the "maid's head," teaching the gurney children at earlham, having george vincent and james stark as apprentices, founding, with ladbroke, r. dixon, c. hodgson, and john thirtle, the first provincial art society, holding in 1805, and subsequent years, considerable exhibitions, joined in 1807 by john tell cotman. only here can one realize the depth and justice of the pride taken by norwich and norwich men in their most honourable school of painting, and the eagerness with which the merchant princes of norwich collect the examples of the school. but there are some in the guildhall, too, as is but right. chapter iii winter. norwich to london by roman road crooked streets of norwich--an appropriate epitaph--to the county surveyor of norfolk many thanks--the london road (roman)--roman roads in east anglia--mr. haverfield, the greatest authority on--some history necessary to understand paucity of roman remains in east anglia--the country of the iceni--rebellion, brief triumph, and defeat of iceni under boadicea--the iceni wiped out--their territory minor part of an unimportant province--no military stations--frontier far to the north--caistor-by-norwich not a roman fortress--roman roads of east anglia enumerated--_en route_--tempting declivities and annoying cross-roads--long stratton--the first round flint tower--explanation--scole and county boundary--the "white hart"--worse roads in suffolk--a church with good parvise--difficulty of identifying villages--ipswich to colchester and london--towns and scenery of route postponed--reasons--puzzling darkness--familiar villages not recognized--futile demand for tea--romford discovered--lights to left front--had we lost our way?--"stratford empire" a sign of hope--ichthyophagous whitechapel--skill in traffic--journey ended--observations on winter motoring--on general character of east anglian scenery. norwich was left behind in mingled sorrow and regret the next morning, for, on the one hand, it seemed a sin to leave so fascinating a city practically unexplored, and, on the other, frost had given place to rain, and the rain having abated, the air was mild and warm, so that motoring promised to be entirely pleasant. however, other visits to norwich were a certainty in the future, so off we went gaily. but, lord!--to copy mr. pepys--were ever streets so strait or so prodigal of angles as these where some folk were hastening to their business at the assizes, while others, on cars garlanded with significant ribbons, were clearly bound for election work in mid-norfolk, where it was the polling day. of a surety a pilot was needed, and we had one; undoubtedly, although tilney all saints is far away in marshland, the epitaph appearing there, and here quoted, must have been written by a norwich man, and by no other. this world's a city, full of crooked streets, death is the market-place where all men meet; if life was merchandise, then men could buy, rich men would always live, and poor men die. so hey for ipswich and london, for at last we are on a straight road, which hardly curves before ipswich is reached. the air seems soft and balmy after the frost of the day before, and, crowning blessing of all, the surface is good and even. this fact completed and rounded off by plainly legible milestones, seeming to follow one another at intervals satisfactorily short, induce us to pass an informal vote of thanks to the county surveyor of norfolk, and the heaps of repairing material at regular intervals along the roadside call for observation on more than one ground. they are alternate heaps of blue stone, granite probably, broken into commendably small pieces, and of some whitish matter, probably chalk, doubtless used for binding. this may not be ideal road-making--in fact, it is not, for the smaller the stones are broken, and the less the use of any kind of binding material, the better the road will be in all weathers--but it must be admitted that this road was remarkably good on a morning when fairly heavy rain--it turned out that there had been much more of it further south--had followed shrewdly sharp frost. for the good surface we had to thank modern times; for a straightness of direction, having the double advantage of saving labour and sometimes rendering a really exhilarating speed prudent, we had to thank the roman invasion of britain. it was the first time on this tour when passage through the air gave one that almost undefinable feeling of thrusting through liquid and cool purity--for cold is horrid but coolness is bliss--which is one of the chief pleasures of automobilism. it was also, after we had passed caistor-by-norwich, the first time we had been on a road that was once undoubtedly roman. here, since in the course of our wanderings we shall be upon roman roads fairly often, and upon reputed roman roads much more often, i am going to take the bull frankly by the horns and to dispose at once of a problem which, taken in detail, might be tedious. nor shall any apology be offered for saying here once and for all, on the authority of mr. haverfield, almost all that needs to be said concerning the roman occupation of east anglia and of its roman roads in the course of this volume. the digression shall be made as brief as may be. it can, of course, be omitted by those who know the subject and by those who do not desire to learn. both will have the consolation of knowing that there is next to nothing of the same kind afterwards. those who do desire to learn may be informed of that which is a commonplace to everybody who has given any attention to the story of the romans in britain, that mr. haverfield knows all that is ascertainable on the subject, and at least as much as any other living man. as for the dead, none of them, since the fifth century at any rate, have had the chances we have of ascertaining the truth, although posterity may learn more, for our sources of knowledge will be available for it, and there is, or may be, a vast amount of information to be obtained still by the intelligent use of the homely spade. the antiquary, no less than the politician, appeals for spade work, especially in east anglia. one or two principal facts must be borne in mind. county divisions are, of course, long post-roman; they have no meaning in relation to roman britain, which was simply a remote and not very important province of the empire. by the end of the year a.d. 46 the romans had overrun the south and the midlands of england, annexing part entirely, leaving the rest to "protected" native princes. such were the princes of the iceni, who occupied norfolk, most of suffolk, and part of cambridgeshire, and, for inter-tribal reasons, took the side of the conquerors at the outset. the iceni rebelled twice. the first effort was puny; they were defeated, and they returned to their native princes. then, in a.d. 61, came the affair of boudicca, better known as boadicea, "the british warrior queen," and so forth. it is quite an interesting little story, of which our poetic dramatists might easily have made use, and it is told shortly because, judging from personal experience, the details may not be generally familiar. besides they are essential to an understanding of east anglia as a field for the "prospector," so to speak, on the look-out for roman "finds," and to know of how little account east anglia was under the romans is to understand the more easily why many so-called roman remains are really not roman at all. the icenian "prince prasutagus, dying, had bequeathed his private wealth to his two daughters and the emperor nero. such was the fashion of the time--to satiate a greedy emperor with a heavy legacy lest he should confiscate the whole fortune. prasutagus hoped thus to save his kingdom for his family as well as a part of his private wealth. he did not succeed: the roman government stepped in and annexed his kingdom, while its officials emphasized the loss of freedom by acts of avarice, bad faith, and brutality against boudicca (boadicea), the widow of prasutagus, her daughters, and the icenian nobles." all this happened when the roman governor was away fighting in north wales, and his absence enabled the rebellion, which boadicea immediately headed, to gain temporary and very substantial success. her icenian warriors destroyed a whole roman army, three roman towns, and seventy thousand lives. then suetonius came with his trained legionaries; a single great battle destroyed the icenian power for ever, and their whole country was laid waste. we hear no more of the iceni in history. their sometime territory, of little agricultural value in those days, simply became a part of the province, thinly populated, having a few country towns and villas, centres of large estates. in it we have no reason to look for traces of large military stations of early roman date for, as we have seen, the iceni were wiped out of existence in a.d. 61; and, after hadrian built his wall from carlisle to newcastle in a.d. 124, the frontier, on which rome always kept her soldiery, was never to the south of that wall. some military stations there are of later date, fourth century, which were erected for the specific purpose of beating off the saxon pirates (hence, and hence only, the phrase "the saxon shore") who began to raid the southern and eastern coasts of england, running up the rivers in their vessels of shallow draft. such were brancaster, guarding the mouth of the wash, and burgh castle defending the outlets of the waveney and the yare, and with them we shall deal later, in their place. as for the roads they all radiated from london, as indeed they do still in large measure. one passed direct from london to colchester and thence, viâ stratford st. mary and long stratton and scole, to caistor-by-norwich. such names as stratford and stratton, unless shown to be of modern origin, are strong evidence of roman occupation, and at scole, where the road crosses the waveney and enters norfolk, have been found some roman remains and, perhaps, traces of a paved ford. that is the road on which we are now travelling. caistor-by-norwich, where we should not have seen much if we had halted--that is the worst of these roman remains--is in all human probability _venta icenorum_, concerning the situation of which debate used to be carried on vehemently. what we might have seen is a rectangular enclosure of earthen mounds covering massive walls, having bonding tiles and flint facing to a concrete core, the walls themselves being visible on the north and west, and a great fosse surrounding the whole. its area is about thirty-four acres, and there were towers at each corner. a careful analysis of the evidence leads to the sure conclusion that this was a small country town and not a great military fortress. this particular road crossed the ipswich river a few miles to the north-west of ipswich, and a branch from it ran by way of goodenham to peasenhall. thence it can be traced due east to yoxford, where it ends, so far as our certain knowledge goes. from peasenhall another direct road can be traced as far as the waveney, near weybread, and no further. other roads there are of uncertain roman origin, but the most important of them was the peddar's (or pedlar's) way, which can be traced with certainty from barningham, in suffolk, to fring, about seven miles from brancaster, and perhaps even to holme, which is nearer, and is, indeed, one of the supports for the theory concerning the nature and origin of brancaster, but the modern roads seldom follow its course. a roman road was supposed to run from caistor viâ downham market, and across the cambridgeshire fens to peterborough, but its existence is hardly proved in norfolk, and its origin is hardly clear to demonstration in cambridgeshire. these are all the roman roads which need concern us, and the references to roman roads in guide-books and on ordnance and other maps may be disregarded. this is written not at all by way of disparaging the ordinary guide-books, some of which are monuments of learning and industry, and by no means in any mood of conscious superiority. there is no credit at all in knowing that which mr. haverfield has made easy, and, until he co-ordinated the facts and sifted the evidence, it was practically impossible for anybody but a specialist to know the truth. he is a specialist of the true scientific temperament, eager to acquire knowledge, cautious in inference, and it is to be feared that he and his like knock a good deal of romance out of travel in england. what they leave, however, is real; and it is worth stating once and for all. at any rate, we were on a roman road with a sound british surface on this genial january day, for genial it was by contrast with those which had gone before; and we sped along gaily, regretting not so much that a great deal of norfolk is hilly, as that when there came a tempting downhill stretch there was generally a village or a cross-road at the bottom to counteract the temptation. such were the circumstances as we passed down into long stratton, where our eyes were delighted by the first specimen on the roadside of the round church towers of flint for which east anglia is famous. many theories there have been as to the origin of this peculiar form of tower, but the best of them, because the most obvious and simple, is that of mr. j. h. parker: "they are built round to suit the material, and to save the expense of stone quoins for the corners, which are necessary for square towers, and which often may not have been easy to procure in districts where building stone has all to be imported." now we bade leave to hills for a while, and at dickleburgh the floods were out in some force. scole came next, a pleasing many-gabled village with a fair share of scotch firs, and once a great coaching centre. it also contains the white hart inn, of which mr. rye writes: "of course the best known inn in the county was that at scole, built by james peck, a norwich merchant, in 1655, the sign costing £1057, and being ornamented with twenty-five strange figures and devices, one of which was a movable one of an astronomer pointing to the quarter whence the rain was expected. there was also an enormous reproduction of the great 'bed of ware,' which held thirty or forty people. the inn itself is a fine red-brick building, with walls twenty-seven inches thick, and with a good oak staircase." scole, by the way, is only just in the county of norfolk, and there is room for doubt whether the "white hart" was ever so famous as the "maid's head" at norwich. mr. rye, however, is entitled to be modest in this matter, even if modesty lead him into inaccuracy, for he saved the "maid's head" from being modernized by buying it out and out and restoring it in perfect taste. may the motor-car bring back prosperity to the "white hart," and may the "white hart" merit it. it is well situated at the crossing of two trunk roads, that on which we were travelling and the bury and yarmouth road. in our case it was not convenient to halt. here we entered suffolk, crossing the waveney, and a country of road surfaces far worse than those traversed up to that point. the rain had apparently fallen more heavily than it had near norwich; but it had not rained gravel, an infamous material for roadmaking, nor could it account for the weary attitude of the tumble-down and illegible milestones. as it was, when hills were encountered the panhard was hard tried, and the driving wheels, although they wore antiskid gaiters, revolved many times more than the distance covered by them warranted. there was simply no hold for the wheels in the dirty, porridge-like mud, concealing a crumbling sub-surface, and, now and again, although no great height above the sea had to be climbed, the gradients were almost trying, owing to the bad surface. shocking bad roads, luncheon sadly deferred in consequence, and the certainty of much travelling after dark if london were to be reached that evening, may be accountable for the fact that, between scole and ipswich, the only point that seemed worthy of a passing note was a church on the left-hand side, i think at yaxley, clearly visible from the road and having a good parvise over the porch. it has been written, "i think at yaxley," in all honesty, for it is not always possible to identify on a map the village through which the car is passing, nor always easy to consult the map even when travelling at moderate speed. blessed be the villages that proclaim their titles, even by modest boards on the post-offices, as many do in east anglia; for by such boards is the traveller saved from the scorn poured upon him who asks of the rustic the name of his native village. this is an almost universal phenomenon, so frequent in occurrence that one is tempted to speculate as to its origin; and that may be that the normal rustic, painfully conscious of the narrow limits of his own knowledge, feels that he has encountered a fool indeed when he meets anybody who is more ignorant than himself, although it be but as to a single and quite trivial point. the one important thing about luncheon at the "great white horse," thrice welcome as it was to us, was the sad fact that it did not begin until three o'clock. of the places passed through between ipswich and london, or of their appearance and their story at any rate, little shall be said here for two reasons, or even three. the first is that having once stayed at colchester for ten days and more, going out motoring every day, and studying colchester itself, full of interest, at many odd times, i deal with colchester and excursions from it in another chapter. the second is that, after it grew dark, that is to say not long after we left colchester behind, our journey seemed to become exciting and mysterious in a degree hardly conceivable, of which it is hoped to reproduce an impression; and the third, last, and most cogent is that this chapter grows full long already for the small portion of road of which it really treats. we passed then to colchester viâ copdock, capel st. mary, and stratford st. mary--here we entered essex, and the name of the village reminded us again of the antiquity of the road--and so passing, especially after capel st. mary, we encountered some hills which would not have seemed despicable to a weak car. through colchester, its outlines rendered picturesque by the fading light, we hastened, setting our course for chelmsford; but we were hardly a mile outside colchester before the lamps had to be lit, and the darkness came down upon us like a curtain. now it was my turn to fail as a pilot and a guide. it has been said that i had motored round colchester every day for ten days at least, and that not long before. i had, in fact, followed the essex manoeuvres of 1904 in a lanchester on business, and had stayed on for pleasure afterwards; but on that occasion, except in a futile effort to see a night attack on colchester during pitch darkness, there had never been occasion to use the lamps, and it was astonishing to find how vast a difference the darkness made. we halted at kelvedon to procure water; we would have taken tea there, at a roomy inn of old time, if the mere mention of tea had not seemed to paralyse those who were in charge of the house. i had been through kelvedon at least a score of times before, yet i had to ask its title. in witham, the long and straggling congregation of houses three miles beyond, i had been interrupted at luncheon in an inn by a sharp fight between the armies of sir john french and general wynne; yet i could not recognize the place at all in the gloom. chelmsford revealed itself by process of inference; there was no other considerable community to be expected at this point, and chelmsford it must be, and was. after this all was fresh and mysterious. ingatestone i had visited before, and passing lovely some of its environment, which we shall see by daylight some day, had been found to be. to brentwood there had never been occasion to go, so there was no shame in failing to recognize it. on we sped a dozen miles which, what with feeling our way in the darkness and the impossibility of calculating distance accomplished,--here was one of the cases in which a recording instrument would have been useful,--seemed to be at least a score. surely we must be approaching the environs of london, for there was a glow of light ahead, and there were railway lights to the left, and beyond them more lights still. not a bit of it; the lights ahead turned out to be merely romford; those on the left beforehand must have been hornchurch. even romford was at last detected only by virtue of a fortunate glance at some public office. again we were out in the open country, as it seemed in the dark, although, no doubt, the rural illusion would have vanished by daylight. after that in a short time lamps began to appear regularly, but the mystery and ignorance of us who were travellers was not less than before. the pride-destroying fact must be admitted that a glimpse of seven kings station only set me thinking of the two kings of brentford, with whom the "seven" can have no reasonable connection, that ilford was new to me save by name, and that i began half to think it possible that (like the turkish admiral who, having been sent on a voyage to malta, came back to say that the island had disappeared) we might have missed our course by many miles, and might be skirting london to the north. multitudinous lights stretching far away over the left front, aided the illusion. then came a reassuring advertisement, that of the "stratford empire," a distinct presage of the east end of london, and before very long on our left was a row of houses quite respectably old among many that were horribly modern. the old houses were, at a guess, not earlier than queen anne, but the mind went back further to reflect that stratford had been stratford-attè-bowe in chaucer's time, and that there his prioress had learned to speak french "ful faire and fetisly" at the benedictine nunnery. to my friend, at any rate, the environment of the mile end road was familiar, for he and his car had been busy electioneering there; as for me, the pangs of hunger notwithstanding, i was fascinated by the deft way in which he slipped through the traffic. truly the motor-car is capable of marvellous dirigibility in skilful hands. eftsoons were we in whitechapel, breathing a murky atmosphere of naptha and fried fish, so all-pervading that, at the moment, the very thought of food seemed nauseous. it is surely one of the standing mysteries of creation where all this multitude of fishes can have their origin. so, at precisely nine o'clock in the evening we passed up holborn out of the city of london, and, for the purposes of this book, our subsequent proceedings were of no interest. let us, before closing the chapter, see what had been gained by this tour in mid-winter. well, first it was a conviction that, although motoring in winter is a cold occupation, productive of some absolute pain, for it hurts to be really cold, and of a compensating increase of appreciation for familiar comforts, it is distinctly better than not motoring at all. this conviction i should probably retain, in spite of a constitutional dislike to cold, in all circumstances except those of heavy snow when falling, which, i am content to believe, without trying it, is all but an absolute bar to motoring. if you have a screen the snow destroys its transparency; if you have not a screen it blocks your vision and covers up your eyes or your goggles. moreover, on high and fenceless roads, where the motorist is most liable to be overtaken by snow, the white mantle obliterates the track and renders movement full of perils. but something more substantial than this conviction was gained during these three days. they were days, be it remembered, when the face of nature, in what may be called a tamed country, is at its worst; they had been spent in traversing districts up to that time, for the most part, unknown to me; but there remained much of east anglia, familiar to me in summer and in winter dress, which have been purposely omitted in this effort to gain a general impression of the country. i pictured to myself the breezy uplands of the sandringham district, the pines, the heather, and the bracken, as i had seen them many a time in summer sunshine and in stormy winter; fancy filled the brown ploughland we had passed a sea of yellow corn; i remembered the beautifully umbrageous lanes and roads of eastern essex, where they rarely "shroud" the elms in the barbarous fashion prevailing in berkshire and other counties; the strange crops, whole fields of dahlias for example, which i had seen in the seed-growing districts; the heavy-laden orchards upon which, it must be admitted, mr. thomas atkins levied heavy toll in 1904. so remembering i concluded, there and then, that i should find ample satisfaction in my task. but at that time i had not seen a tithe of the characteristic scenery of east anglia. ely, rising majestic from the plain; the very singular and impressive run along the sandy coast from cromer to wells-next-sea; the road on thence to hunstanton and lynn; the glorious expanses of heath in many parts of norfolk and suffolk; the extraordinary hedges of fir along the roadside near elvedon and in many another place--all these things, and a score besides--were as a sealed book to me. the book has been opened now, and its prodigal variety of infinite charm appals me, even though a substantial part of my pleasant duty has been accomplished. chapter iv spring. through the heart of east anglia some books consulted--"murray" useless to motorists: proceeds by rail and observes county boundaries--arthur young's _six weeks' tour_ dull--leland's _itinerary_ a mass of undigested notes--_the paston letters_ full of excellence--start from abingdon--the six-cylinder rolls-royce--freedom from trouble--hopes and nemesis--abingdon to thame, a bad cross-country route--thame to royston direct--the gate of east anglia--the "cave"--royston's broad hint to james i--to newmarket--straight road and abundant game--the mystery of the hoodie crow--wild creatures and motor-cars--weather heath--appropriate name--value of tree "belts"--scotch fir hedges--elvedon hall and its game--best use for such land--enter norfolk--warrens and heaths--thetford--its story--its mound--mr. rye's theory dissipated by the learned--windmills in east anglia--thomas paine a thetford man--euston unvisited--attleborough--wymondham's twin towers--their origin--religious houses and popular risings--kett's rebellion--curious legend on a house--stanfield hall--its grim tragedy--a monograph quoted--wholesale murders and a famous trial--extraordinary cunning of the criminal--to norwich and the "maid's head." [illustration: ipswich port] during the interval between the first and second tours in east anglia many books, more or less promising of material, were read. of these books it will be prudent to say a little before recording an expedition in which east anglia was attacked, so to speak, amidships. many of them it is needless to mention, though some will come in for passing reference. the first was murray's handbook to essex, suffolk, norfolk, and cambridgeshire, which is well-planned, having regard to the needs of its age, and well, no less than learnedly, written; but it was published more than thirty years ago, and is therefore rather out of date as to some of its facts, and for motorists absolutely obsolete in its method. it proceeds, for the most part, county by county; its routes are railway routes; it almost ignores roadside scenery, and it enlarges, very usefully sometimes, upon the internal details of churches and of other edifices, with which the motorist can rarely be concerned; for, as it is not intelligent to hurry through the country always, so it is not motoring to "potter" at every place. the good "murray" is really rather embarrassing to the motorist. let me illustrate. scole, mentioned in the last chapter, is a little more than two miles from yaxley, on the roman road. a brief account of scole is found on p. 183. if yaxley were mentioned at all (and it is worth mentioning, for the sake of its church, in a guide-book pure and simple) it would find a place in some suffolk route, for only very occasionally does the guide-book writer allow even a railway to transport him across a county boundary. amongst other books studied were leland's _itinerary_, the _paston letters_, in five stately quarto volumes, and arthur young's _six weeks' tour_. these studies were not quite in vain, for they will at least show a reader what to avoid. young's _six weeks' tour_ is most consumedly dull, reeking of turnips, sticky with marl, and the accounts of "the seats of the nobility and gentry, and other objects worthy of notice, by the author of the _farmers' letters_," are very rarely interesting. some of them which are to our purpose--for of course the tour was not confined to east anglia--shall be quoted in due season. to reading leland, stimulated by many quaint quotations in later works, i had looked forward for years, but the second edition in nine volumes of "the itinerary of john leland the antiquary, oxford; printed at the theatre, for james fletcher, bookseller in the turl, and joseph pott, bookseller at eton. 1745," was a grievous disappointment. the plums seem all to have been picked out by guide-book writers; few of them, if any, relate to east anglia. the only things worthy of note were an account, perfectly straightforward, and to be quoted in its place, of the dunmow flitch, and some doggerel concerning the "properties of the counties of england." the material ones for us are:- essex, ful of good hoswyves, *....*....*....* northfolk, ful of wyles, southfolk, ful of styles, huntingdoneshyre corne ful goode, *....*....*....* cambridgeshire full of pykes. leland, in fact, cannot be commended, but that is only because he planned his _magnum opus_, like many a good man before him and after, without regard to the allotted span of human life, not to speak of its uncertainty. in his "newe yeare's gyft to king henry the viii in the xxxvii yeare of his raygne," leland talks of his studies, of his six years of travel, and then sketches his plan. it is "to write an history, to the which i entende to adscribe this title, _de antiquitate britannica_ or els _civilis historia_. and this worke i entende to divide yn to so many bookes as there be shires yn england and sheres and greate dominions in wales. so that i esteme that this volume will include a fiftie bookes, wherof each one severally shaul conteyne the beginninges encreaces, and memorable actes of the chief tounes and castelles of the province allottid to hit." leland died when he was forty-six, but if he had lived another century he could hardly have achieved his self-imposed task, even if he had been miraculously endowed with a mercédès; and he cherished divers other projects. as it is, his so-called _itinerary_ is, at best, but a collection of rough notes, having frequently no sort of coherence, often corrected or added to later in a distant geographical connection. in spite of a taste for antiquity it may be put down as stiff and heavy to read, and not sufficiently abounding in quaintness to repay the trouble of the reader. the _paston letters_ on the other hand, are the best of reading, giving a wonderfully vivid idea of life in east anglia at a singularly troublous period, and there will be occasion to quote them more than once. the edition by the worthy sir john fenn, stately as it is, and a joy to handle, is far from being the best. posterity owes to him a deep debt for rescuing the letters from oblivion, but he omitted as uninteresting precisely the little fragments upon private and domestic affairs which we value most now in later editions. his notes, too, prove him to have been a rather dull dog and lacking in a sense of humour. sometimes he scents impropriety where there is clearly none, at others he misconstrues the most obvious badinage. thus, where john paston is addressed in the phrase, "wishing you joy of all your ladies," fenn suggests a reference to the virgin mary, heaven knows why. still, fenn rescued the letters, and the latest edition--far more complete than his--is at once one of the most entertaining and valuable of historical documents and essential to the right understanding of life in old norfolk. in fact, the _paston letters_ is one of the few really old books which a man not too studiously inclined may not prudently be contented to take as read. it is vastly entertaining, but, it must be said, it is not for the young person. a spade was not called a horticultural implement in those days, and there are many spades, and some knaves of spades too, in the _paston letters_. fortified with this literary foundation, and a good deal more of minor importance, i left my berkshire home near abingdon on 9 march in a 30-h.p. rolls-royce car, six-cylindered and equipped with every luxury in the shape of glass-screens and a cape hood, and driven by mr. claude johnson. for companions we had my two daughters, and for assistance, if it were needed, a mechanic. as it happened there was not a particle of trouble with tires, engine, or apparatus of any kind during the 300 miles and more of this expedition, and we might have dispensed quite well with the mechanic, and with his weight. indeed, at the end of the little tour, and for that matter after the next on another car, arose a feeling that the days of the uncertainty of motor-cars were over. need it be said that nemesis was in waiting for this sanguine feeling, and that, before my "travelling days were o'er" in east anglia, one of those extraordinary runs of misfortune came, which, in motoring more than in any other pastime, justify the sayings that troubles never come singly, that it never rains but it pours? it is perhaps wise to make this statement now, for a record of motoring wherein all was plain sailing--the metaphor is hardly mixed, for there is kinship between the motion of a sailing craft running free and that of a car in good tune--might run the risk of being dull. how our troubles were turned into a positive pleasure, at the time as well as in retrospect, by the skill, patience, and good humour of this same mr. claude johnson, shall be told in its proper place in another chapter. one thing, however, may be said by way of preliminary to the account of this particular tour. there was much controversy at the beginning of 1905 upon the question whether the movement of a six-cylinder petrol car is, or is not, more luxurious than that of a four-cylinder car of first-rate design and construction. a prolonged match, not entirely free from flukes, the bane of motoring trials, has been held by way of attempt to decide the issue; and it has ended in favour of six cylinders, as illustrated by the identical car in which this tour was taken. the controversy will probably go on for ever, none the less, for it is the old case of _de gustibus_ which can never be settled, and it is all but impossible to compare memories of kindred sensations felt at different times. who can say, for example, which cigar, glass of old wine, sail on a strong breeze, gallop over the downs, run in a first-rate motor-car, dive into cool water, which--almost what you will, so long as it be one of the pleasures classified by old aristotle as coming into being through the touch--was absolutely the best of his life? without scientific certainty, however, there may be strong conviction, and mine is that a good six-cylinder, whether rolls-royce or napier, runs more smoothly than any four-cylinder car, and i have tried nearly all the best of them. in fact, there is very little to choose in point of smooth running, if indeed there be anything to choose at all, between it and a white steam car, used on another east anglian tour. tried by the, to me, infallible touchstone of my own spine, a six-cylinder is a very little, but still distinctly, more luxurious than the best four-cylinder car; but this is not to say that there are not a round dozen of four-cylinder cars on the market which make their passengers as comfortable as any man, or even delicate woman, can reasonably wish to be in this world. we started just after ten, on a windy and rainless morning, in an atmosphere giving beautifully clear views of distant objects, and thereby raising some reasonable apprehensions for the morrow among the weather-wise. our route lay outside my present manor until royston was reached, for it was through dorchester, thame, aylesbury, ivinghoe, dunstable, luton, hitchin, and baldock; and the temptation to describe some of it, especially the run along the chilterns, is strong, but it must be resisted. one observation, however, must be made. from thame onwards, in spite of the tendency of our road system to radiate from london obstinately as in roman times, much as our railways do, and as if cross-country travelling were not a thing to be encouraged, there was little reason to complain of want of directness in the road. but to journey from abingdon to thame it is necessary to go round two sides of a rough but large triangle, whether the route chosen be through oxford, distant six miles, or through dorchester and shillingford, which is rather longer. in either case the traveller has been compelled to go a long way out of his true course, and from the turning point to thame is about the same distance in both cases. to royston the distance is, as nearly as may be, seventy miles, and the last part of the run, where we followed the north-west edge of the chilterns, cutting in and out of hertfordshire, bedfordshire, and cambridgeshire in bewildering succession, was very exhilarating. a pretty sight too were the chilterns, with their swelling undulations of down turf, marked out near royston for galloping grounds and showing here and there, in the form of a flag and a carefully tended green, that the golfer has found his way to royston. indeed, this close down turf, this "skin" of grass catching the full force of northerly and westerly gales, is suitable to the golfer's needs as any save that of seaside links. at royston we found an ancient and interesting inn, actually bisected by the ancient boundary line of hertfordshire and cambridgeshire, a kindly welcome, most benign bulldogs, and last, but by no means least, a glorious pie. the inn is there still no doubt; so probably are the bulldogs; so no doubt is the kindly welcome; but the pie vanished in a manner almost miraculous. it came in an ample dish, steaming, succulent, the crust browned to a nicety. in a surprisingly short time the dish went out, empty, almost clean as jack sprat's and his spouse's platter, and its exit was accomplished by a gurgle of suppressed laughter from without. was there something of a rueful tone in that laughter? perhaps there was. he who would feed after march motorists have eaten their fill had best send in to them a gigantic pasty, else will he go hungry. at royston, the gate of east anglia, we strolled about a little, finding it to be just a quiet town of the country--there is no sufficient reason to believe it to be really ancient according to the standard of antiquity in these islands--and the intersecting point of two great roads, that followed by us, which went on to the eastward, and the road between hertford and cambridge. here, according to the antiquaries of yesterday, icenhilde way and erming street crossed one another. the antiquaries of to-day question the icenhilde way so far east as this, laugh at the philology which would make ickleton evidence of its existence, and make nothing of the authority of the learned dr. guest. perhaps they would treat with more respect erming street, said to have led from royston to huntingdon, and to cross the ouse at arrington, for there appears to be sound evidence that edgar granted to the monks of ely the earmingaford, or ford of the earmings, or fenmen. walking eastward along the spacious street we found first the turning for newmarket, which was of present interest, and, quite by accident, a notice "to the cave," leading us into a back yard and to a locked gate, and provoking a little later research. we couldn't get in, of course. the custodian, if there be one, was at his sacred dinner, as everybody in royston seemed to be; but royston struck us as the kind of place in which an obsolete notice might hang unmoved so long as the fibre of wood would support its covering of paint. investigation in books showed the "cave" to have been discovered by a fluke in 1472, but the "cave," like a good many others here and elsewhere, seems to have been merely an ancient boneshaft or rubbish pit, afterwards excavated sufficiently to be used as a subterranean chapel. hence the sketches of saints carved on the chalk walls which, candidly, i should like to have seen close at hand. royston is quiet enough in all conscience now, and it is doubtful whether the motor-car, rapidly as it increases in the land, will bring much prosperity to it, although it is placed at important cross-roads. cambridge is but 12-1/2 miles distant, and cambridge is a good deal more interesting than royston, as well as a more certain find for refreshment, for pies may not always be to the fore. being at the cross-roads, however, royston is likely to see as much life passing through its midst and to like it as little as it did in the days of james i. nay, it may even like the bustle less, for more dust will go with it. james, who really was an ardent, if not a mighty, hunter, planted a hunting-box near royston, his particular object being probably to course the chiltern hares--for this is a first-rate coursing country, possessed, as is most down-land, of remarkably stout hares; and, when hares are stout, the open prospect of the downs makes coursing a very pretty sport. deer, of course, there may have been; but the country does not look like them; and as for the fox, of whom the moderns have written and sung, "although we would kill him we love him," he was vermin in the days of king james. to hunt the hare either with greyhound or harier, on the other hand, was a sport much loved of our kings even in saxon times, and in downland of berkshire, not dissimilar to the chilterns, there are examples of manors held on the condition that the tenant should keep a pack of hariers for the king's hunting. whether the royston folk had to keep hounds for the king is not clear, but "murray" has unearthed a lovely story of their catching his favourite hound and attaching to his collar a scroll bearing the words "good mr. jowler, we pray you speak to the king, for he hears you every day and so doth he not us, that it will please his majesty to go back to london, for else the country will be undone; all our provision is spent already, and we are not able to entertain him longer." here was a new way of conveying a broad hint. "baby charles" visited royston twice, immediately before his standard was raised at nottingham, and later as a prisoner. the distinguishing feature of the road from royston to newmarket, which crosses over the south-eastern end of the gog magog hills, is its undeviating straightness. it is plain from the map that it curves gently here and there, having indeed almost a sharp turn to the left before it ascends the gog magog hills--which would be of little account as hills elsewhere than near a fenny country--but the general impression left was of wide prospects, scotch firs, belts planted for partridge driving, and abundant game birds. the feeling that this is an ideal shooting country, and not half a bad one for motoring, was at its strongest when six-mile bottom, famous in the history of sport with the gun, was reached. it was a day, as luck would have it, on which a bird-lover could take rapid observations of bird-life as he swept along, for there were no vehicles to distract him on the empty road, and there was no chance of his coming upon them unawares. partridges we saw galore, cock-pheasants strutting on the ploughland, confident that they were safe from the gun by law till the next october, and probably knowing quite well--for there are few things a wily old cock-pheasant does not know--that there would be no serious danger, away from boundary hedges, until the leaf was clear in november. less handsome than the cock-pheasants, but more interesting, because less familiar to my eyes, were the hooded crows, in their sober suits of drab-grey and glossy black, walking about in perfect amity with the pheasants. this bird is a grey mystery. in shape and dimensions he is identical with the carrion crow; carrion crows and hoodies (or royston crows) will interbreed on occasion; their nests and eggs are of identical situation, structure, colour, and shape. their common habits include a partiality for young birds and young rabbits as well as for carrion--i have heard a rabbit scream, looked in the direction of the noise, shot a carrion crow which rose, and found it lying within a couple of yards of a half-grown rabbit, quite warm, and with its skull split--and yet nobody knows for certain whether the two species are distinct or not. the black crows may be migrants; the grey crows certainly are. they come over to the east coast in hordes in the autumn, mostly from russia, where they also interbreed with the carrion crow. they come inland a little, and i have seen one or two in berkshire, but west of berkshire they are certainly very exceptional in england and wales, though they are quite common and even breed in scotland and ireland. in fact, they are birds, of whom one would like to know more, attired in a quakerish habit according ill with their disposition. still, when you have no game coverts of your own in the vicinity, it is good to see them circling about over these wide spaces near royston, and to remember that they used to be called royston crows. the marshmen call them danish crows also, and it is a great pity when ornithologists omit to specify these local names of birds. hoodie, danish crow, royston crow are identical, and each of them at least as interesting as _corone cornix_. they are all, as mr. rowdler sharpe says, ravens in miniature, but it is open to doubt whether, as pets, they would be equally amusing in their tricks. we saw them in great numbers as we swept along, and, like many wild things, they took no notice of the car. it is strictly irrelevant, of course, but it may be interesting to say that, since these words were written, i have found that even a highland stag is not afraid of a motor-car, which shows a highland stag to have far more sense than some reasoning men. newmarket we have seen before, and since this time also it was passed without a halt, whereas on a later visit we stopped for a while, it need not detain us now. our road, which kept to the high ground to the south-east of mildenhall fen, took us first through characteristic environs of newmarket not seen on the former tour, past endless training grounds, trim houses and carefully-built stables, and later through the wild heaths known as icklingham and weather heath, the latter actually 182 feet above the sea-level. right well, no doubt, that last-named heath has earned its name, for it is easy to imagine, and much more comfortable to imagine than to feel, how a gale from the north or west would have swept across the fens over that heath. for that matter there is not a single eminence of more than 200 feet between weather heath and the gales from the north sea, so the east wind swept it too. here the hand of man has wrought a great and beneficial alteration in the features of nature. mention has been made before of the belts, clearly planted for partridge driving, to be seen in some parts of east anglia, and they must be noticed more particularly a few miles farther on, when we pass elvedon. the landowners who planted them, and the pheasant coverts, have improved the scenery and their own shooting at the same time. they cannot, perhaps, be credited with absolute and unalloyed altruism. and soon, on this naturally bleak upland, the road was sheltered on either side by close hedges of fir, trimmed to a height of ten feet or so, such as i never saw before, nor have seen since, out of norfolk. they cannot be meant for screens to conceal the guns from the driven birds, for the british public has to stand a good deal of shooting in illegal proximity to high roads, but it would hardly tolerate permanent arrangements to that end, even in norfolk or suffolk, where game is sacrosanct. there can be nothing of this kind here, nor, if there were, would it have been necessary to plant both sides of the road. no--these hedges, charming because of their quaintness, can have been planted in no other spirit than that of humanity, in the widest sense of the word. they break the monotony of the landscape, and that is something; close and impervious, they must break also the force of the wind and must form an effectual barrier to the slashing rain that the wind sends with terrible force before its breath. they are an unmixed blessing, a wonderful improvement to the conditions of wayfaring, and it only remains to be hoped that there may arise no county surveyor who, using the arbitrary discretion given to him by law, shall decree that these merciful shelters be laid low in the season of the year when his word is law. on we glided with supreme ease--the whole distance from newmarket to thetford being eighteen miles, but the "going so good," as foxhunters would say, that distance counts for little--and the evidence of the cult of st. pheasant was more and more conspicuous. were we not drawing near to elvedon hall--an italian house built in 1876 for the maharajah dhuleep singh, now the property of lord iveagh--and have not fabulous "bags" been long a tradition of elvedon hall estate? let it not be supposed for a moment that this fact is mentioned by way of pandering to the prejudice of protesting radicals, or of joining in the chorus of ignorant invective against game-preservation, now happily seldom heard in the land. looking at this bleak upland, having regard to the recent and the probable future history of british agriculture, and, if a personal allusion be permissible, to the well-known character of the present owner of elvedon hall, it is plain that this ground could not be better employed than as a game preserve, that as such it probably produces more food and gives more employment than if it were in the hands of farmers, and that, if this were not so, lord iveagh would not be the man to preserve game. there is no east anglian grievance here, and east anglia certainly feels none. if there be any grievance at all it is that some of the money primarily made on the banks of the liffey is spent in east anglia; but, no doubt, much of it comes indirectly from east anglia also, and there is no sort of doubt that lord iveagh does his duty, and much more than his duty, by ireland as well as by england, more completely than most men. leaving elvedon behind we sped to thetford, passing, a mile or so beyond the gates of elvedon, across the county boundary and out of suffolk into norfolk. the character of the scenery remained unchanged. we were in a land of heaths, barren and pleasing, and of rabbit warrens, some of them very ancient and famed for the quality of the skins and fur of the rabbits reared among them. arthur young found this country from northwold to thetford, and again from thetford to ingham, "an uncultivated sheep-walk," and as he made no suggestion for its improvement generally (in spite of the success achieved in the neighbourhood by "one of the best farmers in england [mr. wright]," through the use of marl, which was not even "the fat soapy kind)," it may be taken that the case is a fairly hopeless one. the rabbits probably pay as well as anything else would, and we have to thank them, and the sterility of the soil, for the preservation of a fine tract of wild and open land, and for the sense of freedom in passing through it. as for thetford, its motto certainly ought to be "ichabod." there are few places in england, possessed in their time of a substantial reputation, whose glory has departed more completely. it was the scene of a fierce battle between dane and saxon; it was the second city in norfolk in point of importance; it had a mint so late as the days of henry ii; its priory was founded by roger bigod, but is now an uninteresting ruin; it had twenty churches, five market-places, and twenty-four main streets in the time of edward iii; it was the diocesan centre of east anglia for nineteen glorious years, from 1075 to 1094. also it has always had its vast earthwork, commonly known as the "mound," commonly believed also to be of enormous antiquity, roman at the latest, and by virtue of it thetford has been identified with the roman sitomagus. it is a little hard that, when all the rest of the glory of thetford is gone, even the mound, which without excavation is totally devoid of interest, should have the glamour taken away from it and that investigators on scientific principles have exploded the sitomagus bubble. mr. rye says:-"it has been guessed to be sitomagus, and certainly many signs of roman occupation have been found here. but the great 'castle mound,' steep and high, with its grass-grown sides, so difficult even in times of peace to climb up, is the chief object of interest in the town. there are no traces of buildings on it, and the platform at the top is so small that the generally received theory that it was thrown up as a refuge against the danes is obviously untenable. the labour and energy necessary to create such a mound would have been enormous, and surely would have been expended in comparatively recent times, such as those in which the pirate danes harried our country, to more practical use. that the mound is mainly artificial i have little doubt; but whether it was a burial mound or not cannot now be discovered without deeper excavations than are likely to be allowed." considering that the earthwork is a hundred feet high and a thousand feet in compass it would certainly be rather a large-sized burial mound. let us look at what mr. haverfield says. he relegates thetford to an index of the "principal places where roman remains have been found, or supposed, in norfolk," but does not dignify it by a position in the text, which is confined to "places where vestiges of permanent occupation have been found." the "finds" at thetford have been first roman coins, according to sir thomas browne and blomefield. but coins alone do not carry us far. "hoards of coins have their own value for the students of political economy, since they often reveal secrets in the history of the roman currency. but they do not so often illustrate the occupation or character of the districts in which they are found. sometimes they occur in the vicinity of dwellings, buried--for instance--in a back garden, which the owner had constantly under his eye. but they occur no less often in places remote from any known romano-british habitation; they have been lost or purposely hidden in a secluded and unfrequented spot." this is a general remark on the test applicable to "sporadic finds," such as those at thetford, which are banished to the index. there another sporadic "find," which if it had been real would have conveyed more meaning, receives very short shrift. "a lamp is said by dawson turner to have been found at thetford in 1827 under the red mound, and the lamp he figures is now in norwich museum." that sounds promising, does it not? men might bury hoards of money in odd places and forget them, or meet their deaths before they unearthed them. they would hardly be likely so to conceal their household lamps. alas for this pretty piece of foundation for an imaginative structure, "the curator tells me it was brought from carthage, and presented by edward stanley, bishop of norwich, and it certainly has the look of a foreign object." finally, "thetford has been called sitomagus by camden and others, and also iciani; but it does not seem to be a roman site at all; its earthworks are post-roman. camden's 'river sit or thet' is a piece of characteristically bad etymologising." the learned scholar deigns to write no more than this of thetford, and, being concerned only with romano-british norfolk, sets up no positive theory. but why was the mound built? exit mr. rye's _à priori_ view, that it could not have been built in such comparatively recent times as those of the danish invasions, because the energy and labour would have been expended to better purpose in those times, for the mound is post-roman. it may have been raised between the date of the roman "departure," in 410, and that at which the kingdom of east anglia was established. this is one of the most delightful chapters of history, to a persistently boyish mind, because next to nothing is known about it. there is no reason to suppose that the romanized britons remaining in east anglia, as it was to be, welcomed the saxons with open arms, and every reason to believe that the saxons were a thoroughly barbarous crew. the britons may have raised it against them. or again, it may have been raised by the saxons against the danes, as, in the opinion of dr. jessopp, were castle rising, castle acre, mileham, elmham, and the norwich mound. the works at some of these places are certainly post-roman, and at none of them is there clear evidence of roman occupation; in fact, the chances are that they were all of later date; and the chances are also that there was a great deal more fighting in these parts between 410 and 800 a.d. than the muse of history has chosen to reveal. but this problem is glanced at later. as for mr. rye's _à priori_ view that the exertion would have been better employed in those days, why, bless the man, offa's dyke was made, from the mouth of the dee to that of the wye, late in the eighth century, and it is a cyclopean work. the mound is "wrop in mystery," that is all about it, and a heap of earth whereof the meaning is not known to the learned is a precious dull spectacle. so, to tell the plain truth, is thetford. to us the most interesting facts it provided were a substantial tea at the "bell," itself quite old enough to please. while tea was in preparation we saw quite as much of thetford as any reasonable man could wish to see; when tea came it was marked by the appearance of weird things in the nature of tea-cakes, combining something of the toughness of the muffin and the texture of dry toast, not very new dry toast, with the shape of the crumpet. the other memory of thetford is of a strange old man, having toy windmills for sale and attached to every part of his person, after the fashion of those street musicians who, by dint of ingenious contrivances in string, can play, or at any rate make a noise with, some half-dozen rude instruments at the same time. this wandering toy seller was a blessing in disguise. he was, and is, a providential reminder that windmills, here, there, and everywhere, are striking objects in the east anglian landscape. travelling eastward from the midlands one sees them as far west as buckinghamshire, and there not in the chilterns only, and in east anglia proper their name is legion. in or out of working order--and in a country of much wind travelling fast, of water moving, as a rule, very slowly, they are mostly in working order--they add picturesque character to the landscape. moreover, in beauty they have a distinct advantage over the watermill. the latter may be, often is, exquisite at close quarters; its foaming stream, its dripping and moss covered wheel, its gleaming pond with willow-shadowed or elder-girt bank, are among the loveliest objects in england when seen at close quarters. your windmill, on the other hand, must in the nature of things be placed either on an eminence or in a wide and open space. not so beautiful, perhaps, only perhaps, at close quarters, as the watermill, it is still more than pleasing, and it can be seen for miles. it is as a beacon on the coast which the mariner can see for many leagues before he passes it, as the motor-car passes the windmill, at a safe distance. constable, it is worth while to remember, learned some of his skill in an east anglian watermill. it was only afterwards that, consulting the faithful "murray," i learned that thetford had been the birthplace of thomas paine, "the infamous author of _the age of reason_," and that the house in which he was born was standing thirty years ago. it would not, perhaps, have been very interesting to discover whether it was still standing; but it was decidedly quaint to learn that tom paine was the son of a quaker staymaker. could there be anything more incongruous? that a quaker should be the father of thomas paine was bad enough; that a quaker should make stays--let us hope he never measured his fair customers for them, but made them in stock sizes--was monstrous. yet on investigation in other books it turned out to be a true story, and from the investigation came an awakened memory, which others may need also, that thomas paine was a really influential personage among the founders of american independence. during tea and the consumption of the strange tea-cakes (which may, after all, have been slices of the traditional norfolk dumpling, more or less toasted) rose a suggestion that we might turn southward for three or four miles, cross the waveney, enter suffolk again, and take a motorist's view of euston park. it would be the same euston park, planted with many of the same trees, grown bigger, which surrounded the house, when lord ossory heard the thunder of guns from the east and rode off, as has been recounted before this, to be a spectator of the great sea-fight in sole bay. it would be the same house, too, for it was acquired by the first duke of grafton, with the property, by marrying lord arlington's daughter in the days of charles ii, and the dukes of grafton from time to time hold it still. the decision not to make a detour was reached partly because, as we meant to make norwich by way of attleborough and wymondham, it would have involved a return by the same road as that taken on the outward journey, and partly because the descriptions were unpromising. the reference here is distinctly not to the description in "murray." "it is a large, good, red-brick house, with stone quoins, built by lord arlington in the reign of charles ii, and without any pretensions to beauty, except from its position in a well-timbered and well-watered park." that description, such is the perversity of human nature, raised a suspicion that the house might, if it were visible from the road, turn out to be a very satisfying structure, conveying that idea of spacious comfort and substance which is completely lacking in many a more imposing "mansion." nor was i moved by the fact that walpole wrote "the house is large and bad," for it might have been possible to disagree with walpole, of strawberry hill, on a question of taste. but walpole went beyond matters of mere opinion. "it was built by lord arlington, and stands, as all old houses do, for convenience of water and shelter in a hole; so it neither sees nor is seen." that settled the question. euston might, or might not, be one of the stately homes of england, whose owners permit them to be inspected by strangers on stated days; this march day might have been such a day; but not even the prospect of seeing "euston's watered vale and sloping plains," or some fairly interesting portraits, or verrio's frescoes, would have induced me to avail myself of the privilege, if indeed it had existed. i know what the legitimate inmates of a great house feel on those occasions. besides, motorists are unpopular in ducal parks, and with good reason. it is absolutely true that a duke, riding a bicycle in his own park, has been abused, coarsely, violently, and recently, by a motorist who was enjoying that park by the duke's grace. that park is now closed to motorists, and no wonder; and the case is not exceptional in character. so we glided onward--gliding is the true word for the onward movement of a good car--over the open ground of croxton heath first, then past sundry villages, not lying close up to the high road, between the houses of attleborough, and noticed, without halting, attleborough's fine church. after this, for quite a long while, there were no more villages, and then, in front of us and dominating the view, rose a huge church, having two towers, one at the west end. it stirred memory of pleasant browsings in _norfolk and norwich notes and queries_. this could be, and in fact was, none other than wymondham, pronounced windham, where the benedictine monks and the parishioners quarrelled over the parish church, which had been appropriated to the abbey. so bitterly did they quarrel that the east end, transepts, and part of the nave were walled off for the monks--they certainly took the lion's share--in 1410, the parishioners being relegated to a portion of the nave; and there, at the west end, they built them a tower and hung bells in 1476. a mighty religious house was this of wymondham, entitled to all wrecks between eccles, happisburgh, and tunstead, and to a tribute of two thousand eels every year from elingley. this tribute, we may be sure, was paid in lent, for it is pretty clear from the _paston letters_ that, while herrings were the stock food of the days of fasting, eels were the luxury that made them tolerable. mistress agnes paston writes to her husband in london that she has secured the herrings--from yarmouth, no doubt, as she lived hard by at caister-by-yarmouth--but that the eels are delayed, which appears to be accounted very sad. just because this was a mighty religious house at wymondham it is not surprising to find that kett, of the famous rebellion, was a wymondham man. here, unfortunately, it is necessary to be at partial variance with mr. walter rye. he writes: "lingard, as of late professor rogers, has said that kett's rebellion had a religious origin; the former so writing from religious bias, the latter from ignorance." that is rather a brusque way of putting things, for, although lingard, as a roman catholic, was a little apt to think too ill of the effects of henry viii's policy towards the religious houses, professor rogers deserved to be spoken of with more respect. enclosures were, of course, the main cause for kett's rebellion in 1549, and kett had a private grudge to avenge against one sergeant flowerdew at the outset. but, as a wiltshire labourer once said to me, "where there's stoans there's carn," so, where there have been great religious houses in england, the rebellious spirit manifests itself in the pages of history before and after those houses came to an end. at abingdon and at bury st. edmunds--i quote the two places of which the story happens to be fresh in my memory--conflicts were incessant, and there is no reason to doubt that the state of things was the same at wymondham. the religious houses had become, with exceptions of course, corrupt within and extortionate without the gates. they were oppressors of the poor, whose best friends they had once been; there was no limit to the variety of the tolls they demanded. they were by far the largest landowners in the country. all this had ceased but a very few years before kett's rebellion, but the spirit which it had created, the very men in whom that spirit had been raised by extortion and injustice, were very much alive. if kett's rebellion had not such a directly religious origin as lingard supposed, it is more than likely that it was indirectly due to the spirit of unrest and discontent which always arose in the vicinities of religious houses. indeed, the very success of henry viii's stern treatment of the monasteries is proof positive that he was supported by popular opinion. as for the enclosures, some may have been made by the new lords of manors; others, and probably the vast majority, had been made by the grasping "religious." moreover, the petition sent up to the king when the rebellion was at its height contained express allusions to religious grievances. it asked "that parsons shall be resident, and all having a benefice worth more than £10 a year shall, by himself or deputy, teach the poor parish children the catechism and the primer." not a very outrageous demand surely; and if we scan the material grievances complained against--establishment of numerous dovecots, and claims to exclusive rights of fishing, for example--we see that they are essentially the grievances which the religious houses had originated. how kett and his men marched in due course to mousehold heath, on the outskirts of norwich, the grievous fighting which followed in and about norwich, how they killed lord sheffield by the palace gates at a spot marked to this day by a stone with an s on it, how warwick, after many reverses, finally defeated kett, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered, shall not be told at length in this volume. these things are an essential part of the history of england; they are far and away the most exciting events in the history of norwich, and, since they cannot be dealt with fully here, they are best passed over with this slight mention. at wymondham is, or was, an old house having a very curious inscription, "_nec mihi glis servus, nec hospes hirudo_," which is not quite free from difficulty even as it stands, for a verb is left to be understood, and it may be "_sit_" or "_est_." in the one case the guest hopes, in the other the house boasts, the servant to be no dormouse and the host no leech. things were worse when somebody read _hirudo_ as _hirundo_, though one might make attractive translations of that too. but we cannot linger over that when we are close to the scene of a tragedy far more recent, and therefore a good deal more affecting, than that of kett's rebellion. stanfield hall is close to wymondham. it is the reputed birthplace of amy robsart, who may or may not have been murdered at cumner--lady warwick says she was not--and stanfield hall was certainly the scene of a series of remarkably cold-blooded murders in times which may still be counted recent. prefacing a frank confession that my personal interest in murders is small, which seems to be a misfortune judging by the enraptured attention they attract from many intelligent and cultivated persons, i endeavour to give some account of these murders partly because i desire to please, partly because a very old friend, now dead, devoted a vast amount of attention to them. his meticulous care in studying the _locus in quo_ may serve to compensate for my lukewarmness as a student of homicide; nay more, his interest in the subject seems to have been infectious, for, having read his monograph of some five-and-twenty octavo pages on the subject since the foregoing sentence was penned, i am now distinctly conscious of being keen on the subject and of finding interest in it. truth to tell, it was not the first time of reading. the late sir llewelyn turner, of carnarvon, was one of those rare men who, inhabiting remote corners of the provinces, escape provincialism and retain intelligent appreciation of public affairs and a sympathetic interest in all sorts of events. in the year 1902, having committed to paper his memories and opinions upon a large number of subjects, and being all but eighty years old, he entrusted me with the task of preparing his ms. for the printers; and he had the satisfaction of seeing himself in print, to the extent of some five hundred pages with illustrations, before he died. among the miscellaneous chapters of the book is one entitled "stanfield hall and its terrible tragedies." it is, of course, far too long for quotation, but it is also a treasure-house of nice points, some of them perhaps new even to precise students of the history of crime. "in the year 18-i accepted an invitation from my valued friend, connection, and old schoolfellow, colonel boileau, to pay him a visit in this interesting old moated house, the scene of fearful murders and bloodshed, viz., the murders of mr. isaac jermy, the recorder of norwich, of his son mr. isaac jermy jermy, and the shooting of mrs. jermy jermy, the son's wife, and her maid, by probably one of the greatest scoundrels that ever disgraced humanity, james bloomfield rush." the quotation will serve to show that my old friend's literary method is too leisurely and minute to justify the repetition of the story in his own words. truth to tell he rambled somewhat and was not unduly particular about the sequence of events. still it may be possible after study of his monograph, to produce a narrative of this crime having something more of freshness than would follow from reference to the text-books of crime; for these murders, it must be remembered, were on a colossal scale, and the case, although simple enough in its legal aspect, has a place among the celebrated crimes by virtue of its wholesale character, its beginnings in long-planned roguery, and its culmination in thorough-paced brutality. the foundations of the programme of crime which was finished on the 28th of november, 1848, were laid many years before, and it is a curious study in the wickedness of which human nature is capable to trace the evolution of the scheme. in the second half of the eighteenth century the then head of the jermy family held stanfield hall and its estate as, probably, his predecessors of the same name had held it for centuries. jermiin is one of the norfolk names of early date for which mr. walter rye claims a danish origin, and he was probably a jermy (or letters to that effect) who, in tudor times, built stanfield hall, and moated it round and about. at any rate a jermy held it when our story opens. a poor relation of the name sold his reversionary interest in the estate to a mr. preston, and mr. preston came into the estate, "in the shoes of" the poor relation, and was able to settle down in stanfield hall. outside the lodge gates lay the home farm, having james rush for its tenant, a plausible fellow, it would seem, but a whole-souled rascal at heart. ascertaining that his landlord was going to london by coach on a given day, rush engaged the three remaining inside places for himself, and so agreeable did he contrive to make himself to the old man on the journey that he returned to stanfield not merely as tenant of the home farm, but also as accredited agent of the estate. as such he had access to mr. preston's title-deeds, which he stole before mr. preston died. so mr. preston the elder slept with his fathers, if he had any, and mr. isaac preston his son reigned in his stead, rush remaining agent and tenant of the home farm; and, as mr. isaac preston was recorder of norwich, the beautiful old house within easy access of the great town suited his needs admirably. he settled down in it at once, and later, as we shall see, he began to think of adding to the estate. when exactly the recorder discovered that the title-deeds were missing my authority does not relate, but probabilities seem to point to an early discovery, coupled with a suspicion, which was perhaps difficult to bring home, that rush had annexed them. that would give rush a hold over the recorder, and it is only on that hypothesis that the recorder's subsequent conduct in relation to rush can be explained. at one and the same time we find rush practically bankrupt, and the heirs of the original jermys egged on by rush into an attempt to recover the family estate in the court of chancery. the recorder really was in rather a tight place, for the simple reason that he could not have proved his title without the deeds, and that he could not bring the theft of them home to rush. still he was recorder of norwich and a person of consideration, and when the claimants, weary of the delays of the court of chancery, organized a small army of emergency men in norwich, took possession of the house by force and held it, barricading the windows and the bridge over the moat, the dragoons then quartered in norwich soon restored the peace. in so acting the claimants were but following an ancient precedent of the county of norfolk, for, early in the fifteenth century, the duke of norfolk besieged caister castle, built by "that renowned knight and valiant soldier" sir john falstolf, then deceased, and occupied, on what ground does not appear clearly from the _paston letters_, by sir john paston's family. there were, however, material differences between the two cases: the first of them being that the duke had apparently at least a show of title to caister castle through the courts, while in this case the claimants were anticipating the judgment of the court, and the next being a trifle of four centuries, for it was so recently as april, 1839, that john larner, daniel wingfield, and eighty others, the emergency army in fact, were indicted for riot at stanfield hall. still it is not easy to understand how, after so lawless a proceeding at so recent a date, the presiding judge could have passed, as he did, a series of sentences of from three months' to one week's imprisonment. true it is that the recorder recommended them to mercy as ignorant persons "actuated by a mistaken notion of property"; but the sentences are still hard to understand. so, for that matter, are many sentences in these days. at about the same time the recorder brought a suit (preston _v._ rush) against rush for breach of covenant, no doubt in relation to the home farm, and it was clearly after this that the recorder went through the process, expensive in those days, of taking the name of jermy because he "found that it was necessary by the old settlements of the estate that the owner should bear the name of jermy." a year earlier than the riot, so far as i can make out the dates, some land called the potash farm came into the market, and it is clear from the recorder's conduct over this matter that he felt himself to be very much at the mercy of rush. he must have known rush to be practically insolvent, he knew that the title-deeds were missing, and he probably suspected rush; yet he sent out rush as his agent to bid for the potash farm, which adjoined stanfield park. rush came back from the auction, having bought the farm, not for his master, but for himself, at a price greater than that to which his master had limited him; and the recorder actually lent him £5000, repayable in ten years and secured by mortgage, wherewith to complete the purchase. of course the price may have been considerably more than £5000, and the bargain may have seemed on the face of it as promising as that which the original preston made with the "poor relation"; but it all sounds as if rush had a stronger hold of the recorder than even the possession of the title-deeds would give him, or as if the recorder were a strangely nervous and foolish man. eight years passed away, one knows not how so far as these persons are concerned, and the end of them found rush a widower, with several children, occupying the potash farm and holding another at felmingham, fourteen miles off, also from the recorder, now mr. isaac jermy, by due form of law. at the end of those eight years rush advertised for a governess, engaged one emily sandford, who replied to the advertisement, and betrayed her; but she continued to live with him. then came november of 1848, on the last day of which the £5000 was payable, and the recorder, often entreated, would not give rush time. it does not appear that the chancery suit had failed utterly and hopelessly, but it is clear from the sequel that the original jermys had fallen very low in the world, and the recorder, recognizing that they were no longer dangerous, may have found courage. if so, it cost him his life. the day of fate and blood was the 28th of november. on the evening of that day mr. jermy, according to his usual custom, one no doubt familiar to rush, went to the hall door at half-past eight to look at the prospects of the weather; and the night was fine for the time of year, for five persons, servant girls and their sweethearts, were, as the evidence at the trial showed, gossiping by the gate beyond the moat, only thirty-five yards from the hall door. no sooner did mr. jermy come out than rush, who was disguised, shot him dead with a pistol, the muzzle of which must almost have touched his body. "the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs were shattered, the entire body of the heart was carried away." the loiterers on the bridge ran away in terror. mr. jermy the younger, rushing from the drawing-room to see what was the matter, was met, and shot dead on the spot, by rush in the corridor. mrs. jermy the younger, hurrying into the hall, saw her husband's body, ran to call the butler, watson, and was met by her maid eliza chastney. rush encountered them both in a passage, shot mrs. jermy in the arm and the maid in the thigh and groin. mrs. jermy's daughter and the cook ran out by the back door and took refuge in the coach-house; the coachman jumped into the moat, swam across, and rode to wymondham for help. as for the butler, he heard the first shot, went into the passage, "saw an armed man with a cloak and mask who motioned him to keep off," and--well, he kept off. rush was arrested at potash farm before three o'clock the next morning; his trial, at which emily sandford was a most valuable witness for the crown and a most deadly one to him, attracted immense attention. sir llewelyn says: "the excitement throughout the nation exceeded anything of the kind ever known, and _the times_ actually sent down a printing press to norwich to report daily the incidents of the magisterial and coroner's inquiries." perhaps it need hardly be said that inquiry has shown the statement about _the times_ and the printing press to be entirely without foundation: for, since _the times_ as a whole has always been printed in london, and london has always been its place of publication, nothing could have been gained by sending a printing press to norwich. it would have been just as wise to send a piano, a plough, or a pump. but it does not follow that sir llewelyn turner is to be distrusted in other matters because he knew nothing of the mechanical technicalities of journalism. what happened, no doubt, was that _the times_ secured and published a very full report, and good folks, wondering how the miracle was performed, hit upon the idea of a special dispatch of a printing press, and were satisfied because an explanation which they could not understand had been set up. suggestions quite as impossible are made in these days. a correspondent, who very likely cannot write shorthand, is frequently asked whether he hands his shorthand notes directly to the printers or to the telegraphists, neither of whom would be able to cope with the notes if he were capable of making them. huge crowds attended the funeral of the victims at wymondham. immense excitement also was caused by the trial of rush at norwich assizes, although the issue cannot have been in doubt for a moment after the evidence of emily sandford. indeed, the report of the trial is only interesting now as showing, by comparison with discoveries made later, how little the police had found out, and as bearing, especially with reference to the violence of rush at the trial, upon the kinship of homicidal crime and madness. the attraction of the case consisted then, and consists now, in its sheer brutality and prodigality of bloodshed and in the long series of cunning plots, to be outlined shortly, by which it was preceded. within the space of a very few minutes rush had murdered two persons and had grievously wounded two others; he had shown himself to be quite an exceptional paragon of villainy, and public curiosity to see so hardened a ruffian was natural. nor need it be matter for surprise that the public execution of rush at norwich, where the remains of the norman castle on the mound in the heart of the city were then the gaol and the place of execution, was attended by a vast concourse of people. if ever there was a good excuse for gloating over a wretch ignominiously done to death it was present in the case of james rush the wholesale murderer. in all these thoughts stirred by the sight of stanfield hall there is, it may be, little of novelty to students of crimes and criminals, even though many of the details may have been forgotten. but my old friend's monograph has a peculiar interest and value because, although he wrote with the failing memory of one well-stricken in years, it is possible to follow in it an elaborate development of criminal cunning almost, if not quite, without parallel in the history of crime. also it enables one to see a long string of earlier crimes, probably committed by rush, which, while they could not have been mentioned at his trial, would have well qualified him for admission to the roll of "unmitigated miscreants," disgracefully distinguished by "pre-eminence in ill-doing," whom mr. thomas seccombe and his associates gibbeted in _twelve bad men_ (fisher unwin, 1894). his preparations for the crime were of the most elaborate character; his plans for taking the most complete advantage of it when it had been committed, and for so perpetrating it that suspicion might fall upon others, were of an absolutely diabolical ingenuity. let some of the details of those plans be enumerated. he had provided numerous disguises, some of which were not discovered until long after he had been hanged. he had covered with straw, as if for cattle, his most convenient path to the hall, and his footsteps could not be traced on the straw. he had made emily stanford drive with him towards the hall, so that she might be seen with him by a turnpike-keeper and the lodge-keeper, on the 10th of october, 1848, and the 21st of november, 1848. he had forged documents of both those dates, which were afterwards found under the floor of a cupboard in potash farm. the first was an agreement between the recorder and himself whereby the recorder gave him three more years for the payment of the £5000; the next was an agreement between the same parties that, if rush gave up the missing title-deeds, the recorder would burn the mortgage deed of potash farm and give rush a lease of the felmingham estate. it was further agreed that rush should do all he could to assist the recorder in retaining possession. there was also a forged lease of felmingham to rush. to all these emily sandford had signed her name as witness without knowing the contents. to the efficacy of them all the death of the recorder was indispensable, for of course he would have denounced the forgery at once, and the death of mr. jermy the younger, who knew his father's affairs intimately, would be a decided help. but rush, although he had no scruples at all about taking life, as he proved very conclusively, had a very considerable regard for the skin of his own neck. the new jermys were to be ruthlessly exterminated; the old jermys, or some of them (he did not care how many), were to be hanged, and rush was to become a rich man. he inveigled some of the old jermys into the vicinity of stanfield hall on the day of the murders; he left on the floor of one of the passages in the hall a warning in printed letters:- "there are seven of us here, three of us outside and four inside the hall, all armed as you see us here. if any of you servants offer to leave the premises or to folloo (_sic_) you will be shot dead. therefore all of you keep in the servants' hall, and you nor anybody else will take any arme (_sic_), for we are only come to take possession of the stanfield hall property. "thomas jermy, the owner." the very illiteracy of this document may have been designed, for the original jermys, having come down in the world, had, as rush well knew, come down with a run to the very bottom. indeed, one of them, probably this thomas, swore at the trial that he did not know how to write. if he had been in the dock, instead of in the witness-box, as rush had planned, his mouth would have been closed and, with the recorder and his son dead, with the memory of the riot of 1839 fresh in the minds of the jury, things might have been very awkward for thomas and others of the true jermy family. they had been seen about the hall on the day of the murders; the murderer had disguised himself, most likely so that he might be taken for one of the true jermys; he had not been careful to go unseen, though he had avoided observation in leaving potash farm; the rude warning, printed on the cover of a book, was just the kind of missive an illiterate person might be expected to produce; and thomas jermy would have stood in quite measurable peril of that last interview with calcraft which rush went through with callous effrontery. of the penmanship of the other forged documents it is not possible to speak, but their phraseology is sufficiently clear, and they might have passed muster. the question whether they would have done so or not has, however, no bearing on the character of rush. he had laid his plan with devilish ingenuity; he had made all things ready in such fashion as to satisfy his knowledge of what legal documents ought to be. it was a plan as complete, cunning, and merciless as it was possible for man to devise. sir llewelyn turner had little doubt that, if rush had escaped scot-free, and the forged documents, or either of them, had been effectual, rush would have murdered emily sandford also; and, in the circumstances, the view can hardly be stigmatized as uncharitable. she would have had rush at her mercy; she would have been in his way; and rush had no scruples in dealing with those who were in his way. it was believed locally that he got rid of his mother and forged a codicil in his own favour to her will. that forgery at any rate succeeded, for he obtained £1500 by it; and the circumstantial story of his stepfather's death, by which the money came to the mother, raises a strong suspicion that rush murdered his stepfather also. it shall be told in sir llewelyn turner's words:-"his stepfather was shot in 1844. he had gone to sleep after dinner, which, i believe, was his custom, and from that sleep he was not allowed to wake. his mother was ill upstairs, and rush's account was that he (rush) had gone upstairs, leaving his gun on a table; that, hearing a shot, he went downstairs and found the gun and his stepfather on the floor, the gun having exploded and killed the latter." rush himself gave the intelligence to the coroner, and he was the only witness. his story was believed and a verdict of accidental death was returned, but the subsequent career of rush leaves little doubt that the guilt of this murder also lay upon so much of conscience as he possessed. stanfield hall, then, a very beautiful building still, although full of tragic memories, may justly claim to have been the scene of crimes as brutal, planned by a brain as devilish and ruthless, as ever were committed in england or found in man. from wymondham we swung on to norwich easily, and without difficulty or incident of any kind, and at half-past six or thereabouts passed under an archway into the court of the "maid's head"; and the "maid's head" is an absolute reason for ending one chapter and beginning another. chapter v spring. [in norwich] and to ely and cambridge the entry into norwich--the "maid's head"--preserved from modernity by mr. walter rye--a car in the yard quite incongruous--queen elizabeth's chamber--the duke of norfolk--macaulay's description of his predecessors in the seventeenth century--their pomp and hospitality--the contrast--norwich trade, past and present--the pastons and the "maid's head"--a cavalier house--surprised freemasons--meaning of "maid's head"--the cathedral at night--blocked by houses--cathedral society--trollope--a vision of the east end of the cathedral--the cattle market--local breeds prevail--a wise practice--but jerseys best for private houses--cleanliness of the general market--in the cathedral--start--make sure of exits--the earlham road--the gurneys of earlham--norfolk dialect--the breath of spring--chaucer and norfolk--lynn's idle claim--kimberley hall--the wodehouse crest--hingham church--hingham, massachusetts--scoulton mere--black-headed gulls--gastronomic advice--a land of heaths--fast running--another car overtaken--dust realized--watton and wayland wood--not "the babes'" wood--brandon--gunflints and rabbits--mildenhall--fordham--soham--first view of ely--glorious but delayed--better from railway--later view less satisfying--beauty of bishop's palace--distressing verger causes retreat from cathedral--home viâ cambridge and royston--a thorough wetting. we had crawled through the narrow and crooked streets of norwich to its central market place under the castle mound; swinging to the left on entering it. turning to the left again we were soon in tombland, a wide and open space opposite the west end of the cathedral, the meaning of the name of which is uncertain. we had seen the cathedral spire rising against the clear sky, had glanced through two great archways leading to the cathedral church itself, had passed on our left the "stranger's house" already mentioned, though the quaint fact that the faces of the figures of hercules and samson supporting the arch of its door are adorned with "imperial" beardlets was forgotten then. at the end of tombland we were in wensum street, and the "maid's head" was the first house on the right. we entered it by an archway some way down the street, and forthwith, in the covered courtyard, there was such a contrast between the old and the new as has never been matched in my experience. the surroundings, thanks to mr. walter rye, who bought the ancient house and saved it from destruction, and thereby won the gratitude of every traveller of taste, were as nearly identical with those of the fifteenth century (when the pastons used the "mayde's hedde" and spoke well of its accommodation) as was possible consistently with some modernisms which are indispensable. the bar parlour on the left, from which an attentive hostess issued to take our commands--one felt she ought to have a chatelaine and a wimple--seemed to be, and was, of almost immemorial age. so did the surroundings generally. yet in the centre was the most modern thing in this world, the very incarnation of novelty, a motor-car, and a six-cylinder motor-car at that, and staring us in the face was a notice requesting motorists, in effect, to make no unnecessary noise, but to deposit their passengers or pick them up, as the case might be, rapidly as possible and then depart. in such surroundings, surely, no motorist possessed of even decent feeling could stand in need of this request; but, since it was there, it must be assumed that it came into existence because misconduct had shown it to be needed. for ourselves, we almost felt inclined to push the car, instead of compelling it to propel itself, onwards through the covered court and into the carriage yard and garage beyond. it was, and it is, a beautiful car--for cars can be beautiful, and half the assertions that they are ugly are due to the fact that the generation has not been sufficiently educated in relation to cars, has not grown familiar enough with them, to know what the lines of beauty in them are. still, in the court of the "maid's head," the car was an anachronism, a jarring note, not in the picture, and the sooner it was moved out of sight the better. so moved it was and the original picture remained. the white cap of a _chef_, having a countenance that might pass for french beneath it, did not spoil the picture in the least. it was easy, and very likely correct, to imagine that the costume of male cooks and scullions has changed little with the progress of time, and the material reflections called up by that white cap were comforting. the man or woman who will not confess to enjoying a good dinner is usually either a hypocrite or one who, exiled from a real and innocent pleasure of life by a contemptible digestion, assumes airs of superiority on the ground of an abstinence due to fear and not to asceticism. meanwhile the daughters had gone up a very ancient and charming staircase, of real oak, really black, with real age, not through the application of quick lime and water, and had been shown into "queen elizabeth's chamber"; but a message that i must visit them there met me in the jacobean bar parlour, and the visit was more than worth paying. it was a spacious room, if its floor area alone was considered; but of course the ceiling was very low, and the dark beams supporting it were still lower. it would have suited hannah more, who loved ceilings you could touch as you stood, but it lacked the bishops she required as an accompaniment. at least it lacked them then. one great bed was of carved oak, relieved with gilding; another made no impression on my memory. but the long and low windows, the shining planks of the ancient floor, which boasted its own hills and valleys, slopes and hollows, and the cleanliness and brightness of everything made a very vivid and pleasant impression. queen elizabeth may not have slept in that chamber or in the "maid's head" at all when she visited norwich in 1578 and weird pageants were displayed in her honour; i can find no evidence that she did, which is not to say that there is none; but the "maid's head" was an old inn even then, and it is reasonably certain that the chamber called after queen elizabeth was there also. it is an ideal room for those who hanker after the old world, but do not yearn for that dirt which, the more we think of it, seems to have been an all-pervading characteristic of the lives of our forefathers. the "maid's head" is spotlessly clean. i prepared to saunter forth into the city for half an hour before dinner; but at the foot of the stairs was a person, almost, perhaps, quite a personage, whose presence was a happy coincidence. it has been noted earlier that on a first visit to the "royal," the ancient "whig house" of norwich, lord kimberley was found to be a guest; and, by all that was wonderful, here, at the foot of the stairs of the "maid's head," was none other than the duke of norfolk with the duchess, and both were about to become guests of the ancient hotel. heavens! what a contrast was this to the scene which would have been presented on a similar visit some two centuries ago! in that wonderful chapter on the state of england in 1685, macaulay has a passage which must needs be quoted, although it has been cited very often before, and although it has the incidental disadvantage, which i feel rather acutely, of showing the grand style side by side with mine:-"norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province. it was the residence of a bishop and of a chapter. it was the chief seat of the chief manufacture of the realm" (clothing, of course). "some men distinguished by learning and science had recently dwelt there; and no place in the kingdom, except the capital and the universities, had more attractions for the curious. the library, the museum, the aviary, and the botanical garden of sir thomas browne, were thought by fellows of the royal society well worthy of a long pilgrimage. norwich had also a court in miniature. in the heart of the city stood an old palace of the dukes of norfolk, said to be the largest town house in the kingdom out of london. in this mansion, to which were annexed a tennis court, a bowling-green and a wilderness, stretching along the banks of the wensum, the noble family of howard frequently resided, and kept a state resembling that of petty sovereigns. drink was served to guests in goblets of pure gold. the very tongs and shovels were of silver. pictures by italian masters adorned the walls. the cabinets were filled with a fine collection of gems purchased by that earl of arundel whose marbles are now among the ornaments of oxford. here, in the year 1671, charles and his court were sumptuously entertained. here, too, all comers were annually welcomed, from christmas to twelfth night. ale flowed in oceans for the populace. three coaches, one of which had been built at a cost of five hundred pounds to contain fourteen persons, were sent every afternoon to bring ladies to the festivities; and the dances were always followed by a luxurious banquet. when the duke of norfolk came to norwich he was greeted like a king returning to his capital. the bells of the cathedral and of st. peter mancroft were rung; the guns of the castle were fired; and the mayor and aldermen waited on their illustrious fellow citizen with complimentary addresses. in the year 1693 the population of norwich was found, by actual enumeration, to be between twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand souls." what a contrast! on the 9th of march, 1906, the duke of norfolk entered a city of between one hundred and twelve and one hundred and thirteen thousand souls; the bells of the cathedral and st. peter's mancroft were not rung. (the latter, by the way, is the crowning ecclesiastical glory of norwich apart from the cathedral, and not to be confounded with st. peter's permountergate, often quoted because its records are curious.) no guns were fired. no mayor and aldermen waited upon the duke in his palace, because there was no palace any more. all that happened was that a quiet, bearded english gentleman walked, limping slightly (the reward of service to his country in south africa), with a lady into the courtyard of the maid's head hotel and, after a parley with the hostess, vanished up the stairs and was no more seen. it was mere luck that i saw him, and that i happened to be able to recognize, in this unostentatious figure, the premier duke and earl, the hereditary earl marshal and chief butler of england. he was received with precisely the same courtesy of attention that had been shown to us, but without servility, received in fact as he desired, and in a manner which really did credit to him, for it was what he wished, and to the quiet dignity of the old hostelry; and the city of norwich at large knew not who was within its gates. no more was left of the pomp and dignity of the seventeenth-century palace and reception than of the clothing trade. the duke of norfolk had become, in the interval, an englishman first and a great power in sussex next, and the clothing trade had vanished. the city of 112,000 souls odd subsisted, as i had been told, on the proceeds of boots and mustard, the latter industry founded by one of whom a correspondent of the _norfolk and norwich notes and queries_ wrote: "the original colman [the name means "free man"] was a jolly old fellow who used to give me sixpence and direct me to the house for refreshment"; it subsisted also, as i learned for myself next morning, and i venture to say it prospered also, as one of the largest agricultural and pastoral centres it has ever been my good fortune to witness. times were indeed changed; but he would be a rash man who should say that they were changed for the worse in all respects. dinner in the coffee-room at the "maid's head" was pleasant by virtue of its surroundings, for the room has an air of antiquity, and its deep fireplace charmed the eye, because the cookery was distinctly good, and the attendance was quiet and prompt as that in a well-ordered private house. the final bill next morning too, to introduce a most important consideration at the earliest possible moment, was quite moderate--for england. dinner was the time also for gentle allusion to some of the famous associations of the inn. the pastons had used and commended it. that their words of praise should be blazoned on the outer door seemed right and proper; but it was a pity to have placed near them the raptures of modern and not very prominent newspapers. sitting in this same inn on the morning of his last fight with kett and his rebels, warwick had breakfasted, and had then led his men, who were camped on the market-place, to victory. here, in the time of the rebellion, the royalists resorted, says mr. rye, and it is certain that dame paston's horses were seized here; but it is to be feared that mine host of the time had but a scantily-filled till, for royalists were scarce in the eastern counties. freemasons held their lodges in the "maid's head" so early as 1724, and it is stated that on one occasion a mrs. beatson hid behind the wainscot of the lodge-room and heard all the mysteries. whether such there be, myself innocent of masonry but closely attached to friends who would certainly have advised me to take steps to enter the brotherhood if it were likely to be to my advantage, i have often doubted and still doubt. my pleasure was decidedly enhanced by the fact that i knew these things in advance, and perhaps a little increased by being able to mention them. it was a pride to be able to say that the house was built on the site of an ancient palace of the bishops of norwich; that it stood on gothic arches; that the assembly room had a minstrel's gallery; that a carving in the smoking-room represented a fish, possibly a ray, and that, if so, it probably accounted for the title of the house; for the house was once undoubtedly called either the "myrtle fish" or the "molde fish"--readings vary--and, if either of them be a ray, a difficulty vanishes, for the sea-fishermen of norfolk call, or called, the ray "old maid." certainly the house did not take its new title on the occasion of queen elizabeth's visit, for it was the "mayde's hedde" in 1472, and it is mentioned in a curious petition to wolsey, unearthed by mr. rye. bless him again for having bought and saved the inn! after dinner, and the necessary interval for rest and burnt sacrifice, two facts became manifest. it was a glorious moonlight night, mild for the time of year, and through all the long day we had hardly walked so many yards as we had traversed miles. so we started forth, and soon came to the firm conclusion that the "pale moonlight" is every whit as conducive to a soul-satisfying view of norwich cathedral as of "fair melrose." our first view of the west end, after passing under the great archway giving on tombland, pleased not a little; but we had read something of the glories of the cathedral, of the apse and the apsidal chapels, of jesus and st. luke, abutting on the apse at either side of the east end, and the desire to see them was strong. it was not, however, very easily satisfied; for norwich cathedral, like far too many of the stateliest and best-proportioned edifices in our congested islands, is so hedged around with houses that it is difficult to look upon it as a whole from a sufficient distance. they are interesting houses in their way, venerable some of them, suggestive of peaceful lives spent in scholarly research; but they exasperate by impeding the view, and exasperations provoke memories of trollope's studies of cathedral society, studies suggesting that its tone is not invariably peaceful nor high-minded; that petty jealousies and scandal can invade the most outwardly tranquil precincts and closes. nay, more, we all know--there is no direct reference here to norwich, and i cannot remember to have met or to have heard any evil of any inhabitant, male or female, of its ecclesiastical dwellings--that of some cathedral society trollope's studies are still essentially true. on this occasion it is the plain and unvarnished truth that the houses blocked the view, and this not too kindly thought came to mind. the chances are that it would not have thrust itself forward if the houses had not done likewise; and that, in point of narrowness of view or breadth of it, nothing distinguishes dwellers in deaneries and canons' houses, huddled round the walls of a cathedral, from those in others which, having been placed at a respectful distance, allow the outline of the majestic structure to be seen in its pure beauty. at norwich, too, there is more excuse for the huddling than in many a cathedral city, for space was valuable in norwich from very early times. citizens who taxed themselves, as those of norwich did, to protect their city by walls, were not likely to encourage open spaces, "lungs," as it is the fashion to call them now, within the walled space, and the crowding of the precincts of the cathedral by buildings mean and insignificant compared to it--the reference is to inhabited houses only--is explained by the same cause as the narrow streets of the city itself, streets wherein the tramcars render life full of peril. by fetching a compass, however, to the south, and without asking directions of any man, we contrived to penetrate to a narrow walk beyond the east end of the cathedral and past the cloisters, where, after finding a point of view giving the eye shelter from the glare of incandescent lamps, we looked upon a spectacle of indescribable beauty. at the bottom were the swelling curves of the apse and the chapels, above them, in orderly succession, the sloping roof and the wondrously graceful and lofty spire, outlined--for the moon was behind it--with strange clearness and yet softened in the most mysterious fashion, for in the borrowed light of the moon is no suspicion of glare to dazzle the eyes. how long we gazed, spellbound and silent, cannot be said; time passed out of our thoughts; but as we looked, i remember, a gossamer wreath of detached cloud, lying all alone and at quite a low elevation, drifted slowly across the face of the heaven and behind the steeple that pointed towards it. that was all. to describe the scene is utterly beyond my power, and, probably, to convey a complete impression of it is not within the compass of human words; for they must proceed step by step, idea by idea; but the vision was seen long, yet the first upward glance revealed the whole of it, and the last lingering look showed as much, and no more. it reduced us to silence then, to that silence which is always the unconscious tribute to unspeakable beauty. even now no more can be said than that the memory of the vision remains, clear and pure, as of the most perfect combination of man's work and nature's background it has ever been my privilege to behold in any part of the world. "what meaneth this bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen which i hear?" such was the familiar question that occurred to me when, early the next morning, i woke to find the light streaming in at my window in the "maid's head." then i remembered that this was saturday morning, and probably market-day, and i went forth quickly, and, unlike samuel of old, gladly, for of all beasts which minister to men's needs the patient kine are to me the most interesting (except dogs); and, besides that, if one desires to know something of people, as well as of places, there are few more profitable fields for easy-going study than a large market. for there the inhabitants of the country-side are assembled from far and near, with the products of their farms, and one may study both man and beast at leisure. it was fully quarter to eight before i left the "maid's head," and five minutes more had passed before i was in the heart of the market. already droves of cattle were being driven away--to the station probably--but hundreds, yes literally hundreds and hundreds, remained behind, and among them circulated drovers, dealers, and butchers, feeling their backs and loins with intelligent hands, and less rough in their usage of the beasts, it was a pleasure to see, than is usual in some other counties. sheep there were also, and pigs doubtless, perhaps in another market. it seemed to me, not by any means innocent of cattle markets, that by some unforeseen piece of luck i must have happened on the occasion of a customary fair. inquiry proved that this was not so; that, as a matter of fact, this was but such a gathering of cattle as is customary at the season of the year, and that i had not reached the scene until the bulk of the business had been transacted. it was clear at once that boots and mustard--in the former i gathered that cut-throat competition had reduced profits to a _minimum_ and almost to a _minus_ quantity--were not by any means the only industries by which norwich stood. it was, and is, an immense cattle market; and the stock, the general average of quality in which was distinctly high, was worth a tremendous lot of money. yet, as i saw it first, it was a market which had more than begun to dwindle away, a colossal and altogether gratifying sight notwithstanding. it was pleasing to observe that, although here and there a black beast or a mongrel might be seen, and a considerable number of shorthorns, the norfolk farmers as a body cling to the old east anglian breed of red polls. they could not do better. the red polls mature early, make a lot of beef, and are hardy; the cows of the breed are admirable milkers, and celebrated for remaining long in profit; and the absence of horns is a distinct gain when it comes to a matter of transport by train. far be it from me to compare the merits of breeds of cattle apart from environment, for that is often rather a foolish thing to do. environment matters a great deal and, nobly as shorthorns thrive in many parts of the country, and at sandringham in norfolk particularly, there remains in me a strong conviction that the local breeds, red polls in east anglia, herefords in the marches and borderland of wales, devons in the county from which they take their name, castle martins in south wales, and welsh black cattle in north wales, thrive best in their appointed districts under the conditions to which the normal farmer is more or less bound to expose them. they fill in the picture better, too, than do cattle of a "foreign" stamp. your white-faced hereford seems out of place in berkshire, a kerry looks like a toy in hertfordshire; only for the gentle jersey cattle--mr. cobbold has a herd of them at felixstowe, but that is a story to come later--would i make an exception. they, however, are not farmers' cattle, for they are worth little to kill, and their rich milk, sold at ordinary prices, as it must be, is too small in quantity to be profitable. they are for private owners and butter-makers only, and, as such, they cannot be surpassed. let this headstrong hobby be curbed; but let it be added that these burly, fair-complexioned farmers of norfolk, whose very faces, seen in considerable numbers, convinced one more than much reading of the presence of abundant danish blood in the county, looked and acted as if they understood their business thoroughly. if they go on breeding gentle red polls--the red polls are really quiet of disposition, perhaps because inherited instinct tells them it is poor sport to fight without horns--it is because the process pays. let me add, in opposition to a statement seen elsewhere, that i saw nothing of that brutal treatment of the animals which is far too usual an accompaniment of the cattle trade. so to the general market near the guildhall, a grateful sight because more flowers were for sale on the stalls than is usual in provincial markets, and the wares, particularly the butter and the fowls, the latter neatly trussed and wrapped in coarse muslin of spotless cleanliness, were so nicely exposed for sale. leland observed that "northfolk" were said to be "ful of wyles"; a barber, from hants, told me that morning, when i said i found the people very intelligent, that he thought they knew far too much. my own view is that of the "wyles" which consist in cleanly neatness in exposing food for sale it is not possible to find too much, and not often easy to find enough, in this england of ours. of the guildhall, really a very interesting example, dating from the beginning of the fifteenth century, of ingenious work in flint, and its contents, some mention has been made before, and of the interior of the cathedral also. but we entered the cathedral once more, walking on tiptoes in the grand and empty nave, and certainly not disturbing the worshippers in the chancel, for service was going on. the organ, as on a former visit, was remarkably impressive, and, as quite a minor detail, i noted part of an almost illegible inscription to one ingloit on the south pillar of the chancel arch. "in descant most, in voluntary all, he past." what was, or is, "descant"? none of us knew. the necessary if rather humiliating process of reference to a dictionary, which it is more honest to confess than it would be to profess to have understood the legend at first sight, showed that descant was the first stage in the development of counterpoint. so, mounting once more to the norman tower on the castle mound, to look at the entrance to the museum, but not entering, for time pressed and our enterprise lay in the open air, we repaired to the "maid's head," discharged the reckoning, and were off again to the westward, on a windless and rainless day; but that wisp of cloud no bigger than a man's hand, which we had seen behind the cathedral spire against the pure blue overnight, had been the precursor of a grey veil of cloud which overspread the whole face of the sky. always to make sure of your exits is one of the golden rules of successful motoring. entrances do not matter so much. if, having followed unknown roads over strange country for many miles, you eventually strike the town of your desires, that is enough for all practical purposes. you are sure to be as near your actual destination as makes no difference to a motor-car worthy of mention in almost any town or city in england except london. but a wrong exit is fatal. our instructions from john ostler of the "maid's head," who took to a motor kindly as if he had never seen curry-comb or dandy-brush, were elaborate; but the leading feature of them was that, when we reached the market-place near the guildhall, we should ask for what, on its spelling, we called "earlham road." "ask for the 'arlam' road," said john ostler; and forthwith sprang into memory the fact that at norwich we were in the heart of that part of east anglia in which the gurneys and their kin were never weary of well-doing and, as is the custom of quakers, throve amazingly in their business. of them, of their good deeds, of their family life, a full account may be found in one of the very best books of what, for lack of a better description, may be called earnest family gossip. need it be added that the book is _the gurneys of earlham_, by augustus j. c. hare (london: george allen)? well, perhaps it is necessary to give the information, for the two volumes contain little or nothing which is sensational, they saw the light of day in 1895, and all but the very best of books, to say nothing of a good many of them also, pass out of the mind of a hurrying generation in less than that time, and in much less. of the gurneys, of their manifold relatives and connections, of their abundant and honourable commerce, of their share in the making of norwich, of their sober and intimate family life, it would be a sheer delight to write at length; but this is hardly the place in which to attempt again that which has been done remarkably well already. suffice it therefore to commend the book, and to quote an unrivalled description of it by a masterly hand. that it happens to be found in the first three pages of the first volume is mere coincidence. those who are so disposed may, if it pleases them, imagine that they are quoted simply because they come first, and refuse to believe that the volumes are among the familiar acquaintance of one who finds a wholesome and hearty appreciation of the joys of the open air to be entirely consistent with a rational pleasure in books. "after leaving the hollow where the beautiful crochetted spire of norwich cathedral and the square masses of its castle rise above the dingy red roofs and blue smoke of the town, the road to lynn ascends what, generally called an incline, is in norfolk a long hill. after passing its brow, at about three miles from the city, the horizon is fringed by woods--grey in winter, radiant with many tints in summer--which belong to earlham. this delightful old place has for centuries been the property of the bacon family, and they have never consented to sell it; but since 1786 it has been rented by the gurneys, a period of a hundred and nine years--perhaps one of the oldest tenancies known for a mansion of the size, though very frequent in the case of farmhouses. thus, to the gurney family, it has become the beloved home of five generations; to them its old chambers are filled with the very odour of holiness; its ancient gardens and green glades and sparkling river bring thoughts of domestic peace and happiness, which cannot be given in words; its very name is a refrain of family unity and love. "the little park of earlham is scarcely more than a paddock, with its fine groups of trees and remains of avenues, in one of which a bacon of old time is still supposed to wander, with the hatchet in his hand which he was using on the day of his death. where the trees thicken beyond the green slopes, above an oval drive familiarly called 'the world,' stands the house, white-washed towards the road by the colour-hating quaker, second wife of joseph john gurney, but infinitely beautiful towards the garden in the pink hues of its brick with grey stone ornaments, and the masses of vine and rose which festoon its two large projecting windows and white central porch. hence the wide lawn, to which the place owes its chief dignity, spreads away on either side to belts of pine trees, fringed by terraces, where masses of snowdrops and aconites gleam amongst the mossy grass in early spring. the west side of the house is perhaps the oldest part, and bears a date of james first's time on its two narrow gables. hence the river is seen gleaming and glancing in the hollows, where it is crossed by the single arch of a bridge. from the low hall, with its old-fashioned furniture and pictures, a very short staircase leads to an ante-room opening on the drawing-room, where richmond's striking full-length portrait of mrs. fry, now occupies a prominent place among the likenesses of her brothers and sisters. another sitting-room leads to what was the sitting-room of the seven gurney sisters of the beginning of the nineteenth century, with an old bacon portrait let into the panelling over the fireplace. the dining-room is downstairs, and was the latest addition to the house, a handsome, long and lofty room, built by mr. edward bacon, long m.p. for norwich, that he might entertain his constituents. close by is the humble little study occupied by the father of the numerous gurney family of three generations ago. but the pleasantest room at earlham is 'mrs. catherine's chamber,' always occupied by the eldest daughter, mother and sister in one, and in which in her old age, with her beautiful intonation and delicate sense of fitting emphasis, she would assemble the young norwich clergy to teach them how the scriptures should be read in church." surely mr. hare, who wrote many a vivid description, was often entertaining, and sometimes a little spiteful, never penned a passage better calculated than this to bring home the characters of a home and of the dwellers in it. the single trace of the old adam, or the old augustus, is the gently sarcastic antithesis of richmond's "portrait" and the "likenesses." earlham's peace and goodwill bewitched augustus hare, and those who had been entertained by his bitterness, no less than those who have writhed under it, will recognize the strength of earlham's tranquil witchery. somewhere i have read of late that the gurneys are of earlham no more. that is sad indeed. "ask for the arlham road when you are near the guildhall," was what john ostler said, and we, full of map and guide-book pride, translated it into earlham; but we were reduced to arlham at last. even in england it is wise to adopt local pronunciations of place-names when you know them, unless you have plenty of leisure; and it is easy to do so. (in wales it is equally wise, indeed wiser, for collocations of apparently english characters have totally distinct values in welsh words, but english lips have, i am given to understand, some difficulty in expressing those values.) apart from place-names it seemed to me, talking often and freely with the natives, that the spread of education has banished not a little of the norfolk dialect, and that the country folk of norfolk pronounce in a more clean-cut fashion, use more ordinary english words, and are easier to understand, than their contemporaries in berks, sussex, devon, cornwall, or, infinitely most difficult of all, durham. among sundry quaint books lent to me by way of preparation for this are several containing terrific examples of norfolk dialect, which it would be a real pleasure to transcribe, but it must be confessed frankly that, at the moment of writing, i have no more excuse in experience for copying them out than for introducing a sentence or two of welsh, gaelic, or erse. yet i am, in the matter of tours to be described, many hundreds of miles ahead of the point which my lagging pen has reached. suffice it to say that the norfolk dialect may survive, that i have heard it from the lips of cultivated folk of norfolk, whose normal talk is the same as that of any educated english folk, but that it has not come my way as an every day phenomenon. is that matter for regret? sentimentally, perhaps, it is; but practically it is a decided convenience and, combined with the exceptional intelligence of the east anglian people, it seems to argue that the schoolmaster has been abroad among them to good purpose. dialects may be picturesque; the words in them may have philological interest, especially when they are good and old words like "largesse" (much used in east anglia, but by no means peculiar to it), but persistence in sheer mispronunciation, which is the main ingredient of most dialects, is really a sign of ignorance or of affectation, and neither is to be encouraged. for example, i can talk, and can approach fairly near to writing, english "as she is spoke" by the more ignorant welsh, without any difficulty; and that is as much a dialect, really, as that of devon or of yorkshire; but it would be a very foolish and inconvenient thing to do. nothing could have been more delightful, for the time of year, than the travelling, for the air was not too cold, hedges had the unmistakable air of verdure on the point of coming, tree-twigs seemed to have thickened as the buds upon them swelled, spring was in the air, and the steaming horses we passed now and again in adjacent fields, straining at plough or harrow, added to the pleasing effect of a landscape undulating a little, but rich in tall trees. looking on them from time to time i remembered the lines in the freer's tale- the carter smote and cried as he were wode heit scot! heit brock. this may sound like affectation, but it is nothing of the kind. although most travellers in spring are apt to quote, more or less correctly, the first few lines of the _canterbury tales_, because they are familiar and because, for simplicity, sweetness, and truth, they are not to be surpassed in the english language, one does not, at least the ordinary man does not, go about the country with all chaucer on the tip of his tongue; and that, on the whole, is a blessing. on this occasion, however, there was an express reason for having these lines in mind--there were even two reasons--and for looking for a farm horse as an excuse for letting them fly. the first reason was that east anglian antiquaries have long cherished the tradition that chaucer was born in norfolk. there is even a jingling rhyme- lynn had the honour to present the world with geoffrey chaucer and the curled pate alanus de lenna. the rhyme may be true of alanus de lenna; it does not matter much whether it be true or false; but it is undoubtedly false about chaucer, who was the son of a london vintner and was born at charing cross, and at charing cross, london, not charing cross in norwich, as the learned have now discovered for certain. still it is a peculiar fact that it is, or is reported to be, the custom of norfolk farms to apply the name scot to a very large proportion of their farm horses, and it is true that chaucer's poetry shows a very intimate knowledge of rural life in norfolk. the explanation may be found on family tradition, for dr. skeat says "it is probable that the chaucer family came originally from norfolk." the second reason was soon to come on the left-hand side of the road in the form of a park, boasting superb trees and ensconcing kimberley hall, the seat of the wodehouse family, who are of far more ancient standing in norfolk than is the present hall. it was built on italian lines in the reign of good queen anne, but the wodehouses, of whom lord kimberley is the head, had been in the land long before philip wodehouse, member of parliament for castle rising, was created a baronet by james i. not that the honour attached the family to the stuart cause, for sir thomas, the second baronet, sat in the long parliament and, i think, fought for it against charles. clearly they were a fighting family. "agincourt" is inscribed under their coat of arms; their crest is "a dexter arm couped below the elbow, vested argent, and grasping a club or, and over it the motto frappe fort." the quotation comes appositely, or at any rate one striking word in it does, because the "supporters" are "two wild (wode) men, wreathed about the loins, and holding in the exterior hand a club, raised in the attitude of striking, sable." yet with this explanation always before them, staring them hard in the face whensoever a head of the house of kimberley has been summoned to sleep with his fathers, some good folk of norfolk have, as the _notes and queries_ show, been content to puzzle their brains and to seek far for an explanation of the wild man as a tavern sign. they have even gone so far as to drag in the historic peter the wild man, quite unnecessarily, for he is modern by comparison with the "wode" men who support the wodehouse crest now, as they supported it no doubt in the spacious days of queen elizabeth, when she visited in 1571 a kimberley hall which modern taste would probably prefer to the present italian edifice. almost immediately after passing kimberley hall we came into full view of hingham church, which is exactly what a church should be, and stands exactly as a church ought to stand, for the purposes of the motorist. that is to say, it is a very commanding edifice, which has the appearance, at any rate, of standing with its length at right angles to the road, and both tower and clerestory--surely there are more clerestories as well as more churches to be found in norfolk than in any county--are visible, and very imposing, from a great distance. it was built for the most part by remigius of hethersett, who was rector for forty years from 1319, and is of most remarkable height. inside, most motorists will be content to believe, are some interesting tombs and much stained glass of admirable quality, presented by lord wodehouse in 1813. in fact, hingham is emphatically one of the places at which a halt ought to be made, for old stained glass of high merit is, unhappily, very rare in this england of ours. this secluded village of hingham ought to be--perhaps is--one of the places in england to which americans make pilgrimages, for far away in massachusetts is another hingham owing its origin to an emigration, early in the seventeenth century, of one robert peck, vicar of hingham, and many of his parishioners. apparently, parson and parishioners were puritans of the violent order, who pulled down the altar rails and lowered the altar, insomuch that they incurred the wrath of the reigning bishop. parson peck deemed it wise to flee from the wrath to come, and many of his parishioners went with him. settling down in massachusetts, they gave the name of the old village in norfolk to the new home, and although the parson returned to his cure when puritanism got the upper hand, parishioners stayed in the new world. at any rate, hingham, massachusetts, exists to this day, not, indeed, as one of america's mammoth cities, but with a population (in 1900) of 5059, of whom oddly enough more than 900 were foreigners. in fact, in its minor way, it is as much more important than hingham in norfolk, as boston, massachusetts, is greater than boston, lincolnshire. but it is not likely to be more pleasing to the eye, and it is very safe to conjecture that, in fact, it is not a tenth so pleasing as the norfolk village. before long we reach scoulton mere, a silent sheet of gleaming grey, with not a bird to be seen on or over it, a fine expanse of sedge-girt water. "here," says "murray," "the black-headed gull breeds in enormous numbers, and their eggs are collected, to be sold as plovers' eggs, by thousands for the london market." this may readily be believed, for the eggs of _larus ridibundus_, although they vary a good deal in marking, are often practically indistinguishable from those of the green plover, or grey plover, except that they are not so sharply pointed at the small end. the imposture does not matter a straw so long as the two kinds of eggs remain, as they are at present, identical in point of flavour. indeed, the subject prompts a digression, flagrantly irrelevant, but certainly pardonable for its practical value. ten or twelve years ago the owner of hanmer mere, which is situate at about the point where shropshire and flintshire are so inextricably mixed that an ordinary atlas will not tell you which is which, desiring to reduce the number of the coots, spent an afternoon with a friend in taking some two hundred eggs. it seemed a pity to destroy them without trying them cold, and hardboiled, like plovers' eggs. they were every whit as good to eat, and they were distinctly the _clou_ of luncheon at chester races next day. this is certainly worth knowing, for, if plovers be more numerous than coots, there are enough coots and to spare, and their nests are as easy to find as those of plovers are difficult. but "murray" proceeds: "there are only three breeding places of this gull in britain." this must be quite wrong. the late mr. henry seebohm, whose _eggs of british birds_ (paunson & brailsford, sheffield) is both admirably produced and of the highest authority, wrote, and dr. bowdler sharpe left the passage in editing the book after mr. seebohm's death: "the black-headed gull is one of our commonest species. its colonies are not so large as those of the kittiwake, but they are much more numerous. it is a resident in the british isles, frequenting the coasts during winter, but retiring inland in summer to breed in colonies in swamps." now mr. henry seebohm was a mighty ornithologist, and the most indefatigable birds-nester at home and abroad who ever lived, and, having read often before, and now again, all he has to say of the nesting places of all kinds of gulls claimable by great britain, i am convinced that this claim set up by "murray," perhaps on the word of some local fowler, cannot be maintained either in relation to the black-headed gull or any other kind of gull or tern that breeds in england. leaving scoulton mere behind we were again in a land of flat heaths of wide extent, and of sheltering hedges of dense scotch fir. it was a country of the most pleasing face but, apart from that, no use for any purposes save those of the motorist and the rabbit-breeder. that it had been well used by the latter evidence was soon apparent on the roadside in the form of a gang of men, with nets, dogs, and ferrets, pursuing their operations on such a scale, and so completely in the open, that they must surely have been authorized rabbit-catchers and not poachers. still the thought occurred to me that, in bygone days and in far-distant north wales, we always found from the advertisements that ferrets, who are the poachers' best friends, were to be obtained more easily from norfolk than from any other part of the country, and that they knew their work very well when they arrived. in fact, there is a huge head of game in norfolk, and where that state of things exists, there poachers will be. theirs is a lawless pursuit of course, but lord! as mr. pepys would have said, what good sport it must be "on a shiny night in the season of the year," and what a vast and intimate knowledge of animal and bird life these poachers must possess. if it was a rabbit-catcher's paradise it was a motorist's paradise also. there was no possible danger to human beings, for, after the rabbit-catchers, there were none; after the fir hedges had been passed the road became an unfenced ribbon of tawny grey running through the bare heath, with no other roads debouching into it, and no cover of any sort for a police trap. there was no reason in life against a good spin at top speed except that superstitious regard for the letter of the law which not one man in a thousand really has. the car simply flew forward; the speed indicator marked 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and even 50 miles an hour; the road seemed to open wide to our advent, to stretch out its arms, so to speak, to embrace us; the motion, smooth, swifter and swifter still, even as the flight of the albatross that stirreth not his wings, and absolutely free from vibration, was, in a single word, divine. suddenly, a few miles in front of us, a dusty cloud hove in sight over the road. "there," said my friend, half in jest, but only half--for a motorist's paradise is at its best when solitary--"is one of those beastly motor-cars. what a foul dust it is raising!" so it turned out, on rising and looking back over the cape hood, were we; not that it mattered, for no wayfarers had been passed or, therefore, powdered, for many a short mile--i had written "a long mile" from force of habit, but it would have been inappropriate. was the other car meeting us or going in the same direction? in the same direction surely, for though the cloud of dust was coming nearer to us, it was not approaching very fast. so we determined to pass as soon as might be, and "giving her a little more gas," we were very soon "on terms," as a racing man would say, with a two-seated car going along the middle of the road at a fair pace. once, twice, thrice our horn sounded, but the occupants of that car never heard us. at last, keeping well to the off-side of the road, and when our bonnet was level with their rear off-wheel, mr. johnson and i gave a simultaneous and stentorian yell; and the two pairs of goggles that were turned upon us, who were then, as nearly always, un-goggled, clearly covered four eyes starting with surprise. it was a lesson to them and to us of the very poor penetrative power of a motor-horn in relation to motor-cars in front, and of the necessity of looking behind you now and again, especially if you be in a noisy car. so that two-seated car was passed as if it had been standing still, and the lot of the dust-recipient, which one or other must needs endure for a while, was transferred from us to them; but they were not called upon to endure it, nor could they have kept it if they had so desired, for any length of time. so hey for watton, near which lies weyland wood, fondly famous in local story as being the identical wood in which the ill-fated babes in the wood were lost. that is a tradition as to the origin and true locality of which, so far as i know, even the most ardent folk-lorists have not concerned themselves very seriously, and certainly the likeness of sound between "weyland" and "wailing" may have caused it to be localized here. as it happens, however, there is a very much simpler explanation of the name of the wood and of the hundred in which it is situated. weyland is simply the modern representation of the "wanelunt" of _domesday_, and that again is simply descriptive, like blacklands in berks, and the names of scores of hundreds besides. for "wanelunt" is just "wan land," and a more wan land than this, from the agricultural point of view, it would be hard to find. islington in norfolk may be, in all probability was, the place in which the bailiff's daughter lived and was beloved by the squire's son, but weyland wood cannot detain us. it has no more claim to this particular honour than a hundred other woods in other parts of the kingdom have, except upon an etymological basis, and that has the trifling disadvantage of being quite wrong. nor did watton detain us, any more than it need detain anybody else. brandon, the next place passed, was renowed in ancient times for its rabbits and its quarries of gunflints, and the "grime's graves" in the vicinity are said to be interesting earthworks. the glory of the rabbits remains, but the gunflint trade was, of course, vanished. "murray," it is true, says that flints "are still (1875) exported to arab tribes round the mediterranean," but that was more than thirty years ago, and mr. rye is, no doubt, correct in saying that the old industry has, naturally enough, died out of late years. but those desert tribes on the african coast of the mediterranean still use some charmingly antique pieces, and it may be that brandon flints are still fitted to some of them. they were the same kind of flints which the ancient briton, or perhaps neolithic man, used to dig out at brandon, for excavations some time since revealed a stag's antler, says "murray," in what was clearly a "working" of a prehistoric flint quarry. thus much the writer tells us and no more. it would really have been much more interesting to know something of the nature of the antler; but on that point he is silent. if one were in a hurry, and a train happened to be convenient, it would, for once, be simpler to reach ely from brandon by train than by car: for the railway follows the course of the brandon river across mow fen and then cuts straight across burnt fen and middle fen to ely. on the other hand the road, dating very likely to a period long before the reclamation of the fens, and keeping to the high ground, turns south-west by south to mildenhall and then, skirting mildenhall fen, nearly due west to fordham and soham, and from soham north-west to ely: and this is a long way round. here there would be a first rate opportunity for saying something of the romantic history of the fens, for it is truly romantic, and of the real glamour which they exercise upon a traveller through their midst. the opportunity is deliberately reserved to a later point for three reasons. first, there is much to be said on other matters; secondly, you really do not see very much of the fens by this line of route; thirdly, it was found later that the drive from lynn to ely is _par excellence_ the occasion upon which the peculiar character of the fens, their limitless extent, their rich and black soil, and the reflection that all this wealth has been reclaimed from the wasting waters by the industry and the enterprise of man, the very spirit of the fens in fact, enter into the traveller's soul. fordham and even soham, with its remarkable church and its legends of canute's passage over the long-vanished mere upon the ice, were passed almost unnoticed, for our eyes were fixed upon the horizon in front in longing for the vision, often seen from a train, of ely cathedral rising in beautiful majesty from the centre of the plain-girt isle, once fen-girt, in which the saxon made almost his last heroic stand against the all-conquering norman. truth to tell, for this once only, the train has the advantage of the motor-car in providing a splendid and memorable spectacle. approaching ely from cambridge by rail one sees the cathedral, and the cathedral is the only object that catches the eye, for miles, and miles, and then miles. it is a divine sight, stirring up memories of canute and of emma his queen, of ravaging william the conqueror (concerning whom the saxon chroniclers probably wrote without exaggerated regard for truth) and of the heroic figure of hereward the wake. memories of this vision, often seen, never to be forgotten, had prepared us for something really great and for prolonged enjoyment of it. as a fact, and it was one which intelligent study of a contour map might have prepared us for, the vision did not break upon our eyes until we were through soham, and speeding along the causeway built by hervé le breton early in the twelfth century across the mere which stood where the golden corn is reaped and tied and carried every autumn now. when it came it was, be it stated with the more warmth now in that what is to be written shortly is not entirely the conventional view, supremely lovely. the air was of that pellucid transparency which is the sure prelude of rain. at a distance of four miles or thereabouts the eye could distinguish shades of colour, could follow all the delicate tracery of the central octagon and of the huge western tower; and it was natural, remembering that ely is one of the largest cathedrals in europe, to observe that, so excellent are its proportions, it does not impress the spectator from a distance by its length. this very excellent effect is due doubtless to alan of walsingham's fourteenth-century design for a grandly broad basis to the octagon tower under which he lies. and here rhapsody must cease at the command of candour. i had visited ely before as quite a young man; i had read much of the history of the cathedral, much concerning its architecture. yet this time it failed to please as a whole, within or without, when viewed at close quarters. the octagon, regarded from a distance of not many hundred feet, looked to be wanting in substance rather than possessed of airy grace. somehow or other, in the perverse fashion which is at once irresistible and fatal to cordial admiration, it suggested to my mind a ludicrous comparison. resist as i might, i continued to think of wedding cakes. the western tower, so far as it was built by bishop riddell in the twelfth century, that is to say up to the level of the clerestory of the nave, seemed, and was, and is, proud, substantial, massive, impressive; but the decorated superstructure, an octagon with turrets alongside, did not satisfy at all; nor do i believe that it would have been more satisfying even if the slender spire of wood, long vanished from its top, had survived. on me it produced, and i found that it has produced on other and more highly cultivated men, an impression of flimsy and jarring incongruity. far other was the effect of looking at the honest red brick of the bishop's palace near the west door, for the gently warm tone of the bricks builded as our forefathers loved in the reign of the first tudor king, was a joy and a rest to the eye. before entering the cathedral itself we took luncheon at the "lamb," for a hungry man is an impatient sight-seer. but even after that, to one returning in contented mood, the outside of the western tower satisfied only up to the level of the clerestory. in fact, the original impression, whether it argued crass ineptitude or no, remained; and it is better to write oneself down a boor than to invent raptures which would be untrue. inside our experiences were unfortunate. the ladies had gone before, had seen and enjoyed a good deal. my friend and i entered with due reverence. the vastness of the nave took seisin of us at once; but the charm was rudely broken. to us approached a verger of immemorial age--he had informed the ladies that he had been attached to the cathedral for half a century--wearing a velvet skull-cap and saying in strident tones, "it is a fine cathedral, gentlemen; have you seen it before?" "yes," said i, shortly, and hoping to be rid of him, for to have a babbling guide at one's elbow on occasions of this kind is fatal to intelligent enjoyment. but the hope was vain. he joined himself to us and went on talking. in despair we divided forces, and walked briskly away in opposite directions. nothing daunted he stood in the middle and talked louder than ever. so, after admiring the inside of the octagon, which is very fine, and failing to admire the roof of the nave, we left in despair without having studied the architecture in detail, without seeing the hammer beams of the transept roofs, without lingering over the original norman work in the transepts. to us it was a loss and a bitter disappointment; but there are some inflictions that are beyond bearing, and this doubtless worthy old gentleman was one of them. still, there are compensations in things, and nothing is made quite in vain. one of the objects for which this verger was created was that of saving the reader from the infliction of an essay on the architecture of ely cathedral by one who has, by his unashamed candour, demonstrated himself unworthy to indite such an essay. the rest of this expedition may be condensed into a paragraph, and that not unduly long. leaving ely we reached cambridge easily by a flat, straight, excellent, and perfectly uninteresting road, marked in the maps as roman; but the wise man, for reasons already given, calls no road roman until he knows for certain that it is such. there is, however, some evidence for this "roman" road. passing quickly through cambridge and over the gog magog hills without noticing them, we were soon at royston, and from that point--to oxford as it happened--we were beyond my manor. two things happened, though, which may occur any day or night. it began to rain hard just after royston, and went on raining, and we had trouble in lighting the acetylene lamps after aylesbury. neither mattered. it was something to have an opportunity of testing the cape hood, and the acetylene lamps were, after all, only a reminder that everything does not always go absolutely smoothly even in the best-regulated motor-cars. we got wet, of course, on the driving seat; but that was of no moment, for we were homeward bound; and as for the appetite that was carried home, the face glowing with clean rain, the feeling of overflowing health, and the dreamless sleep of that night, they were well worth a king's ransom. chapter vi london, felixstowe--dunwich, felixstowe in an 18 white steam car--best exit from london eastwards--general ignorance of the white steam cars--some interested prejudice against them--an account of them--independent testimony to them--woodford and chingford--popularity of epping forest--pepys on the roads--little improvement--a haunting cyclist--impression of the forest--"seeing's believing"--true woodland unkempt--thorn trees as evidence of antiquity--motor-cyclist's rivalry--epping--ongar--chelmsford--rich country--colchester--the "red lion"--memories of the civil war--deaths of lucas and lisle--through ipswich--trimley's two churches--felixstowe--a hotel half awake--felix the burgundian--rainy morning--glance at felixstowe--mr. felix cobbold, m.p.--his perfect home--rock-gardens and pergolas--the walled garden--a jersey herd--an afternoon drive--nature's garden of suffolk--the motorist's independence--machine feels no pain--a circuit to woodbridge--wickham market and saxmundham--hey for dunwich!--course laid over farm tracks--desolate dunwich--irresistible coast erosion--skeletons "all awash"--the lost forest--dunwich in the past--steady loss of land--back to felixstowe through byways and by road. at precisely ten minutes past three in the afternoon of the 17th of march an 18-h.p. white steam car glided out of kingly street, regent street. at ten minutes to four, without any undue haste in driving, it was out in the open country at ponder's end, the route taken being by way of york road (hard by king's cross station) and seven sisters road. this route, which involves but three turns, if the right ones be chosen, is at once the quickest way out of london to the eastward; far less unpleasant to eye, nostrils, and ears than the drive through whitechapel; far less difficult in the matter of traffic; and it has the further advantage of leading the traveller almost at once into scenes of sylvan beauty more often raved about to the sceptical than seen by the eyes of the wise. for these reasons it is given with pharmaceutical detail in the "practical observations." the occupants of the car were mr. frederick coleman, london manager of the white steam car company of the united states; mrs. coleman, a lady possessing the rare gift of a remarkably exact topographical memory; their child, my wife and myself, and a mechanic who sat contentedly, after the manner of his kind, at my feet. the car was fitted with cape hood for use if necessary, and, in the way of luggage, it carried two fair-sized suit-cases upon a platform astern, containing all the impedimenta which could reasonably be required by folks who intended to travel by day and to rest comfortably at hotels in the evening. it may be added that we had no absolutely fixed plan, for we meant to drift whither we pleased, allowing fancy or inclination to dictate to us the time for halting and the resting-place for the night. the expedition had been anticipated with considerably more than ordinary interest, because, although it had been my lot to be much in motors since motors invaded england, it had not been my fortune ever before to take a long drive in a white steam car. a very large number of motorists must be--as in fact i know that they are--without personal experience of a white steam car, although it may well be that they are familiar with reports to its prejudice, or silent shrugging of the shoulders and raising of the eyebrows when it is mentioned, which are perfectly natural and excusable. i can readily imagine that if i had a pecuniary interest in any of the leading types of petrol-driven cars, between which there is next to no room for choice, i might show no headlong desire to testify in favour of a car moving more smoothly than any petrol-car, free from the nuisance of a starting-handle (it is a danger too sometimes, as the broken arm of a friend's careless chauffeur has shown recently), absolved from the necessity of change-speed gear, capable of an astonishing turn of speed, singularly strong in hill-climbing and--considerably less expensive than any petrol-driven car of equal power--by power i do not mean horse-power. the best plan, perhaps, of avoiding the temptation to give such testimony would be to avoid the preliminary experience, and not to try a white steam car at all. having no financial interest in any kind of car, being well aware that even among motorists crass ignorance on the subject of this type of car prevails, having heard from private friends, complete strangers to the motor-car industry, that white cars have given them complete satisfaction, and that, in their opinion, the public needs enlightenment on the subject, i deem it right to give some account of the 1906 model of the white steam cars. now this is an age of advertisement and, therefore, of necessity, an age given to suspect latent advertisement. it is therefore prudent to state that no consideration of any kind has passed or will pass from the white steam car company or anybody connected with it to me, or to the publishers, that nobody connected with the company has even a suspicion that i am going to attempt to describe the car, that anybody connected with the company could do it more accurately, and that there is no other motive in writing than a desire to make known a good thing to those who may be fortunate enough to be able to obtain it. every motorist, and many a man and woman not fairly to be described as such, is familiar with the general principles underlying every petrol-driven car; and the distinctions between types of petrol cars are due entirely to little differences of detail in the application of those principles. that is why no description of a petrol-driven car is necessary in these pages or could be tolerated in them. very few motorists really know anything about white steam cars, and that is why they are described in short and popular language. perhaps the best justification for it is to be found in a personal explanation. a week or so after this expedition ended i met in piccadilly a friend, high in the service of the crown and of large private means, whose name it would be a breach of faith to publish; but, as a guarantee of good faith, i here state that, in the margin of the manuscript, i have written the name for the private information of the publishers. it is one which would carry a great deal of weight if it were printed. i had left my friend's house in may, 1905, after trying with him a french and english car, both of well-known makes, of which he was very proud. after our first greeting in march, 1906, i remarked that i had been trying a white steam car exhaustively, and that i was simply astonished by its capabilities. it turned out that, in the interval, he had acquired one, and he was entirely at one with me. "i am delighted with it; so is my man; the public ought to know about it." those were the _ipsissima verba_ of an absolutely independent man, whose mechanical and engineering knowledge is far above the average, whom, as an exacting judge of sheer comfort, his friends believe to have no superior in this world. after that, let him who pleases suspect latent advertisement. in fact, _honi soit qui mal y pense_, and let the truth be told. a white steam car is, in general outline and appearance, very like a petrol-driven car, and the cautious mr. worley beaumont, who is honorary consulting engineer to the automobile club and consulting engineer to the commissioner of metropolitan police, has written thus: "the makers of these cars are to be congratulated upon the possession and development of a type of steam generator which, in combination with a cleverly designed engine and well devised and constructed auxiliary gear and parts, has made it possible to produce a car capable of continuing to compare favourably with those propelled by the petrol engine." the essential points are the steam generator, which it is simpler to call the boiler, and the burner, or fire. the generator is an ingenious arrangement of coiled tubes, fed with water from the top, always containing, when the fire has been kindled, some water as well as a sufficient supply of superheated steam. the burner is, to quote mr. beaumont, "in form a shallow drum, the upper face of which is annularly ridged. the ridges are sawn or slit through at close intervals, and provide openings through which the combustible gas and air mixture combines with additional air flowing upwards through the numerous openings in the tubes." in other words the fuel, petrol, or benzolene ingeniously vaporized, is forced into the annular ridges, there mixes with air, and the mixture burns fiercely. the steam temperature is most cleverly controlled by the "thermostat," which may be described sufficiently for popular purposes by stating that it regulates the force of the fire automatically by the temperature of the steam, the automatic regulation being founded on the different expansions of brass and steel under varying degrees of heat. there are great opportunities, too, for humouring the engine, through the burner and generator of course, by the adroit use of the throttle. these are the essentials. the drawbacks, if such they be, to this kind of steam car are that it needs to have its burner lighted for a period varying from three to five minutes in the morning before starting, and that it requires a fresh supply of water for every 150 miles or so. the second requirement is really of no moment in this country; the first, it has been argued with all appearance of seriousness, renders this steam car inferior to a petrol car in "efficiency." now this, unless "efficiency" has merely technical signification, is absurd. substantially, even if the hour of setting forth has not been fixed beforehand, one can always afford to wait three minutes before starting on a drive; if it comes to that so much time is usually occupied in wrapping oneself up and in bestowing passengers; and, in any ordinary acceptation of the word, the starting-handle, which must be applied after every substantial halt, is the most inefficient device conceivable. other drawbacks, candidly, i found none, except that, on our first day, some new asbestos packing made itself perceptible to the nostrils; and there was no question that the absence of change-speed gear, and the absolute smoothness with which more power could be applied when necessary on hills, were a genuine pleasure. that, however, was the lesson learned in the course of several days. so far as the narrative went we had only passed out of london to ponder's end, which was of no interest. then we were at chingford, on an absolutely lovely day, and the beauty of the forest of epping, its popularity among londoners, and the villainous quality of its roads became simultaneously apparent. concerning the roads, "murray" says "the forest roads are no longer as in pepys's days--when he complained that riding in the main way was like 'riding in a kennel.'" on verifying the quotation it appears possible that mr. pepys has been misunderstood, but not too clear what he really meant. he had reached epping overnight, after a visit to audley end house, "where we drank a most admirable drink," and his entry of 28 february runs: "up in the morning. then to london through the forest, where we found the way good, but only in one path, which we kept as though we had rode through a kennel all the way." the meaning of the last clause is perhaps a little obscure; but it is at least clear that mr. pepys, following the road by which we travelled in 1906 in all probability, found it tolerable when all the rest were bad. he was more fortunate than we were, for all the way from chingford past buckhurst hill to epping the road was atrocious. it was the sort of road, too, which promised to remain scandalously bad, until such time as it should be taken thoroughly in hand on some new principle, since it appeared to be made of gravel and dirt, fairly firm in the middle, but shockingly ploughed up at the sides. on this fine day it was crowded with holiday traffic, with persons walking on the footpath by the side, with bicyclists innumerable struggling over the broken surface, with hired carriages carrying family parties for a drive in the sun through the heart of the forest. if popularity of resort be a reason why a road should be good rather than bad, as surely it ought to be, then some authority has a good deal to answer for. this was, shameful to relate, my first visit to epping forest, but, before giving a first impression of it, there is a ghost to be exorcised. so often as my mind recurs to this passage through the heart of the forest it is haunted by the memory of one particular cyclist. he was thin, pale to the point of haggardness, anything than robust to look at. he crouched forward over his handle bars, in the manner beloved of the "scorcher" and depriving the exercise of any health-giving effects it might produce, until his back was parallel to the road. we were travelling, designedly as a test of the car, and accurately as the speedometer bore witness, at a steady and unvarying pace of twenty miles an hour, on the level, on downward gradients, and up hills which, while they offered no sort of trouble to a powerful car, would have made me grunt and grumble and go slowly if i had been on a bicycle. yet this apparent weakling clung to us, being in fact never more than twenty yards behind us for many miles, without showing any signs of severe effort save in the tense features of his pallid face. it was really a great achievement, greater probably than the bicyclist was aware; it exemplified the effect of an air-shield and the value of a pace-maker in races; but it was a relief when, at last, the pale-faced bicyclist relinquished the pursuit. is it wrong to give an impression of epping forest in early spring, an impression resulting from a single passage through it? surely not. did not james anthony froude say, or did not somebody say in defence of james anthony froude--it really does not matter which--something to the effect that a man may write a tolerable description of a country from a single visit, or a thorough account of it after prolonged study, but that in the intervening period he cannot describe it at all? whosoever said it, or even if it was never said until now, it is a true saying, for in the period between first impression and thorough knowledge the mind is so much hampered with details that it cannot survey the whole in proportion. it cannot see the wood for the trees. of this epping forest i knew, as most men do, something from hearsay and from desultory reading. i had read of the ancient rights, apparently rather problematical as a matter of history, of the city in the forest, of the epping hunt, of the saving of seven thousand wild acres, lying cheek by jowl with london, by the epping forest act of 1871; had read also countless articles, wherein the sylvan beauties of epping forest, its ornithological and entomological treasures, were proclaimed with emphatic sincerity. yet the place itself was a revelation. segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem quam quæ sunt oculis submissa fidelibus. so wrote horace long ago, and "seeing's believing," is a blunt but adequate translation of his verses. epping forest was and is a sheer delight. apart from the roads that traverse it, it is as distinctly genuine and unkempt a piece of english woodland as is to be found on these islands. the reference here is not to fine timber or to monumental trees, but to the tangled thickets of ancient hawthorn, rising from beds of bracken--they were the brown relics of the last year's glory as we saw them--with here and there a natural alley through their midst, which stretched far on either side. nothing of the tree kind gives such convincing testimony of antiquity as obviously old hawthorns, which have been left to the care of nature. your huge and venerable oak may be, and very often is, historic; its story may be, and often is, traced back over several centuries. men mourned over the fairlop oak, in hainault forest hard by, when it was blown down in 1820, because it had been forty-five feet in girth "and its boughs shadowed an area of 300 ft."--the passage is quoted because its meaning is not too clear--and it is said that the pulpit and lectern of st. pancras church were made of the timber. your historic oaks are the aristocracy of trees; their annals are chronicled by the debretts and burkes of forestry. but as there are ancient families of english peasants, their simple pedigrees never kept because they seemed to be of no moment, which are probably far older in the land than any noble family, so there are, in all human probability, thorn trees more ancient by far than the oldest oak. they have survived, or at any rate they give the impression that they have survived, which is what really matters, longer than the oaks for the same reasons which have led to the survival of the rustic families of men. as peasants were left alone when peers went to tower hill, so thorn trees have been passed unscathed by storms which have torn off the limbs of oaks or laid them prostrate on the ground, have been spared by the woodcutter in search of his raw material for england's wooden walls. they were insignificant, very tough, of no particular value as timber. they have lived on, unnoticed, growing into impenetrable thickets, bearded with time-honoured lichen, garlanded with fragrant blossom in the season of the year, haunted by nightingales which find in them nesting places defying even the most hardy boy. a few of them have been famous in story, the glastonbury thorn, for example, and the _unica spinosa arbor_, round which the battle of saxon and dane raged fiercest at ashdown; but most of the old thorns in the country are, like most of the old peasant families, simply of immemorial antiquity and, when once they have attained maturity, particularly in an exposed spot, they seem to change little from year to year, or in ten years, or twenty, or thirty. that is why, to my mind, a thicket of gnarled and lichened hawthorns, such as you may see by the acre in epping forest, and to a greater extent there than in any other forest known to me, is the strongest testimony of genuine antiquity; and it is the thorn brakes, therefore, which charm me more than any other feature of the famous forest of epping. they embody the very spirit of wild and untended woodland. so we passed on through the long and rather pleasing street of epping, and here the cyclist elected to remain behind, being succeeded by a motor-cyclist, a cheerful wretch who, since the road to ongar is one of many angles, had us somewhat at his mercy. his pace was nearly equal to the best speed it was prudent for us to achieve; he could catch us and go ahead at severe gradients, especially if there were a corner in front, and he never failed to do so with a triumphant grin on his face. when he was behind he knew that the way by which we passed would be clear to him; when he was in front of us we could entertain no such confidence for ourselves in relation to him. barring accidents he could probably have clung to us all day--that is to say, unless he had jolted his heart out through his mouth. motor-cyclists say, of course, that they feel no jolting. they may say the thing which is true, but motor-cycling looks so vibratory that their assertion produces no sort of effect on my mind. however, this particular motor-cyclist grew weary of haunting us before we reached ongar, and he was not regretted. ongar, though it owns a mound and an entrenchment, made no deep impression on us, and we passed on quickly to chelmsford, trim, neat, ancient, and modern, for the county town of essex bulks fairly large in far-away history, and, as for the modern appearance of its environs, especially those through which we passed _en route_ for colchester, it has been written: "the colchester road, through the northern suburb of springfield, is enlivened by an avenue of villas and gardens." comment, as the newspapers used to say, would be superfluous. this colchester road, through the northern suburb of springfield, was the old roman road of our first tour, through boreham and witham and so far as marks tey, at any rate; but we travelled it in more genial conditions this time, and could see all there was to be seen. the villages and towns--for witham is quite a town, and an ancient one at that--did not seduce us into a halt, although those of more leisurely mind may make one for the sake of examining witham church, in the walls of which are many roman bricks. but the country, which pleased arthur young by its fertility and by virtue of the intelligent pains with which it was treated by the essex farmers, is, in its peaceful way, one of the most fascinating and characteristic to be found in all england. i shall not attempt to do justice to it at this point, partly because our journey was taken too early in the spring for a landscape, of which the trees are the chief glory to be seen at its best, but principally because, as i think has been explained before, some account of the scenic beauties of essex can be given more suitably in an attempt, to be made later, to record some of the experiences acquired, during a more than commonly golden september, in the course of ten days spent in motoring about essex from colchester as a centre. let no more be said here than that the essex elms, or most of them, are not "shrouded," as is the custom of many southern counties--that is to say, their side branches are not lopped off periodically, to supply fuel and pea-stocks, a mere tuft being left at the top--and the result of leaving the trees in their natural state is to make the roads shady and delightful, although road surveyors might take a different view of them. reaching colchester, whereof any description is postponed for the reason already given, in the late afternoon of a market-day, we betook ourselves to my old head-quarters, the "red lion," for afternoon tea. it is a delightfully old-fashioned house, having much oak timber, carved and black, on the front, and the motor enters under an overhanging archway into a courtyard shaded by an immemorial creeper. here, usually, are military officers to be found, and the house has military traditions, for it is at least said that in the "old red lion" were gathered together the ill-fated sir charles lucas and sir george lisle and their officers, after the surrender of the city to fairfax and ireton had become inevitable, and, if tradition be true, as there is no reason to believe that it is not, it was from the "red lion" that they went forth gallantly and cheerfully to meet their deaths. it was a fine episode, and a sad one. "lucas was first shot, and he himself gave the orders to fire, with the same alacrity as if he had commanded a platoon of his own soldiers. lisle instantly ran and kissed the dead body, then cheerfully presented himself to a like fate. thinking that the soldiers, destined for his execution, stood at too great a distance, he called to them to come nearer. one of them replied, 'i'll warrant you, sir, we'll hit you'; he answered smiling, 'friends, i have been nearer you when you have missed me.' thus perished this generous spirit." darkness was beginning to threaten before we left colchester for ipswich, and it had fallen before ipswich was reached by the same road used in leaving it heretofore. so we passed through the streets of ipswich, still crooked, of course, still infested with giant tramcars, and still crowded, into the open country beyond, the light of the acetylene lamps piercing the gloom for fully a quarter of a mile ahead. we pushed on partly because our minds had been half made up to spend the night at felixstowe, partly because, on the whole, it seemed that felixstowe would be a more pleasant resting-place than ipswich. the drawback was that we saw nothing more of the country than that, apparently, we crossed a good deal of heathland, and that at trimley the towers of two churches appeared in quick succession. they were in fact in the same churchyard, as was seen another day, and one was and is trimley st. mary and the other trimley st. martin. why they stand cheek by jowl in this wasteful fashion i am unhappily not able to say, not for lack of inquiry or curiosity, but because inquiry has not been addressed to the right authorities and curiosity has therefore been vain. of felixstowe that night we saw nothing much. we gathered an impression of streets of new villas, detached and semi-detached, leading at last to a large hotel which, albeit in a state of semi-hibernation, was welcome. semi-hibernation means that the dining-room proper was not in use, and that only the first floor bedrooms were ready for the reception of visitors. still, there was dinner ready, and its readiness quite made up for cramped quarters. need it be added that the hotel is named after felix the burgundian, as is the town? felix, every schoolboy knows, but a good many grown men and women may have forgotten, was the first bishop of east anglia, imported by king sigeberht in 630 a.d., and had his see at dunwich, perhaps the most weirdly forlorn place in all england, which we visited next day. that next day opened ill, with abundance of warm rain which, at first at any rate, showed no signs of abating. that rain was really a blessing in disguise, for when it abated sullenly, mr. coleman proposed a morning call on mr. felix cobbold, m.p., whom in fact he had been helping in the election, which ought to be known for all time as the motor-car election, and mr. cobbold was hospitality personified. he kept us willing prisoners, taking us with him as hostages while he went in search of the ladies, and hence comes it that, without stepping outside my rule never to inspect another man's house save as his guest, i can at least attempt to describe a very perfect gem of an earthly paradise. you must know first that felixstowe is fitly, one must not write "happily," named, in that, being situate on the east coast of england, where the air has been known to exceed its duties in the way of bracing the constitution of man, it has a little aspect of its own nearly due south. along the front of this for some distance runs a parade, esplanade, promenade, or whatsoever they may choose to call it, and from this, unless memory is playing a trick, the usual pier of the modern watering-place runs into the sea in the usual way. it would appear then that felixstowe itself made no abiding impression, exercised no strong fascination, on my mind. that is so. it is just a seaside town, with lots of new houses, which lays itself out to attract sojourning visitors in summer, and such places differ little. some, clacton-on-sea for example, which is also within my manor, are a little worse than others by reason of the multitudes and quality of the company; some are a little better, and have golf-links. felixstowe is of the latter kind, and the golf-links, which we saw next day, look distinctly good. but for seaside places, as such, i have frankly no use, and it is the rarest thing in the world for them to be possessed of any architectural interest. such were the feelings with which i walked with mr. coleman, having first seen that the car was feeling well, to the end of the sea-walk, whatsoever its proper title may be. edward fitzgerald, i felt, would not visit felixstowe now if he were still in the flesh, and the author of "murray" would not recognize "the pleasant village of felixstowe, frequented in summer by a few visitors for sea-bathing," and apparently accessible only by coach from ipswich even in 1875. at the east end of the walk we reached a barrier of oak palings, delightfully weathered, and in the palings in due course a gate, which led us to the haven where we would be. imagine a long escarpment of land, facing the midday sun and the sea, and raised above the sea some forty or fifty feet. on it stands a long, many-windowed house with spacious verandas, from which, as from the windows, man may look down on the vast highway of the sea, sometimes smooth, sometimes grandly rough, and at the wayfarers upon it. he may enjoy all the advantages of being at sea without what some regard as its disadvantages, may look at the regular sailings of the harwich boats, may speculate upon the destination of this or that "tramp" of the ocean. between him and the sea are terraced walks, wonders in the way of rock and wall-gardens, glorious with plants which revel in the soft sea air and will live in no other. away to the right, on the slope towards felixstowe, is a sheltered yet sunny rose-garden, and above it a glorious pergola of the substantial kind beloved of miss jekyll. off to the left, past tamarisks and fuchsias, is a cunning mixture of trees and grass and flower-borders, of sheltered rock-gardens and ingenious intricacies of light and shade, with glasshouses far away, not obtruding themselves on the eye, but glorious when entered. to a garden lover there could be no more unalloyed pleasure than a tour round the outside of this house, especially under the guidance of the owner and maker of the garden, who possesses not merely learning, but also that sympathy with plants which is of more value than all the horticultural books ever written by man or woman. of the inside of the house it is not fitting to speak in detail. suffice it to say that it is, in every respect, the fitting environment of a man of advanced middle age, sometime scholar of eton, still a fellow of king's college, cambridge, much travelled, able to indulge a refined and catholic taste in literature and art, of whose inner life books, pictures and plants are the most familiar friends. but surely something may be written of the great walled garden, behind all this and across the public road. it is emphatically the most perfect "kitchen" garden i have ever seen, and on this particular i may almost venture to claim to speak with some authority--the authority, that is to say, which belongs to one who is a natural lover of gardens, even of those which are useful, and who has had the good fortune to see many of the finest gardens in england. how great the space is 'tis hard to guess; it is ample. it is girt on all sides by high brick walls, and these walls, although by no means ancient, have already taken a glorious colour. against them is trained all manner of wall-fruit, the best aspects being chosen, of course, for the apricots, the peaches and the nectarines, which delight to "drink the splendour of the sun." the spacious area within the walls is divided into four parts by pergolas converging upon a central circle of green turf. those pergolas, covering a wide avenue, are delightfully solid, their pillars united at the top by stout timbers of cambered oak, sound enough to stand for centuries. the life they support is that of cordon apples and pears, set close together, and trained to absolute perfection. both when the blossom is out, especially when the pink of apple-blossom is at its best in may, and when the fruit, ruddy, russet and golden, has taken its colour from the sun, these pergolas must be a sight simply lovely. the central oasis of green has, if memory serves accurately, a fountain in its midst, and round it certainly are pillars clad with rambling roses, their tops united not, as is customary, by drooping chains, but by stout hawsers, two inches or more in diameter, for which it is claimed that they suit the roses as supports better than metal, which is subject to rapid changes of temperature and also to electrical influence. this last consideration was new to me, but doubtless it rests on substantial ground, and the whole idea is an illustration of what may be achieved in gardening by sympathy, which we can all try to give--and by an expenditure which men of moderate means may well shudder to contemplate. to round off the picture of this ideal home by the sea, be it added that mr. cobbold farms, and that his dairy cattle are of the gentle channel islands breeds, some jerseys, all of ascertained pedigree, to which a little guernsey blood has been added. at norwich, seeing the red polls in great numbers, i ventured an expression of opinion that, on the whole, the native breed of a district is usually "most in the picture" and most profitable in that district, and the opinion remains unshaken, so far as wayside pastures and the ordinary stock on farms are concerned. but for the home farm no cattle are so pleasing to the eye, none are so gentle in their manners, and none give such eminently satisfactory milk as the channel islands cattle; and mr. cobbold's herd is most decidedly a thing in place. in answer to a leading question, based on personal experience, he writes: "one of the bulls (imported) was a guernsey one; and his progeny are in some instances still to be distinguished by their whitish noses and lighter-coloured shins. this, of course, would make the cows larger; but apart from this, i have noticed a decided tendency in all the pure bred jerseys to grow larger on our pastures and subject to the conditions they find here." as a matter of fact the same tendency is visible on pastures less favoured than those of felixstowe. it may be said that this is not motoring; but it was a glorious episode on a motor tour, and those who pass these modest oak palings on the way to bawdsey, as we did next day, may like to know how complete is the paradise that is close to them. still we did go a-motoring that afternoon, on the principle, perhaps, that although true hospitality may have no limits, nature has supplied one, a fairly high one it is true, to the absorbent capacities of the sponge. our expedition of the afternoon, by this time soft and rainless, was merely half a sabbath day's journey, from the point of view of the motorist, for there is no revolutionary pursuit of our age to which the greek author's saying concerning the mutability of the meaning of words is more applicable than it is to motoring. the saying, by the way, is that in revolutionary times the signification of words as applied to things is always changed. a sabbath day's journey, for example, was to the hebrew of old seven miles. in the course of that afternoon, merely _pour passer le temps_, without overstraining ourselves or the car, we travelled at least eighty miles, starting well after three o'clock, taking our afternoon tea at a supremely interesting spot, and returning to the pleasing shelter of the hotel more or less in time for a rather late dinner. our policy, after the first few miles, which were to take us through nature's wild garden of suffolk, was a policy of drifting, determined by circumstances. there is a greek word [greek: autarkeia], which exactly describes one of the chief fascinations of the motor-car for those who have the strength of mind--for it is really strength and not weakness--to allow happy chance to determine their course in some measure. it means "sufficiency in oneself," or "independence," and i am emboldened to refer to it because it is much beloved by plato, and because plato, i am given to understand, is quite a popular author among the ladies of our day. here let a suggestion be offered to the learned gentleman who delivers lectures to note-taking ladies on plato in the sympathetic atmosphere of one of our huge modern hotels. there is nothing like a concrete example for bringing home to the modern mind the truth of these expressions used by the wise men of the old world, and two illustrations of [greek: autarkeia] are offered freely. "good horse between my knees" was the very embodiment of the feeling of independence before motor-cars were in the land. subject to sundry risks, not numerous or probable enough to stop a man of courage from setting forth, the mounted man can go pretty much whither his fancy leads him and change his mind as often as he pleases, within certain obvious limits. the motorist is even more happily situated. for the horseman the risks and the limits remain practically unchanged throughout the ages; for the motorist the risks, save those of tire trouble, are always being reduced and the limits are always being extended. there is now practically no limit, save that of his personal choice and his physical endurance, to the distance he may go, and he need never be troubled, as the horseman must be from time to time, by doubts whether his pleasure may not be causing pain to the organism which carries him willingly from place to place. it is of course just conceivable that the metals may feel, but it is not in the least likely that they do. everybody has heard of mysterious movements inside apparently solid steel--did not mr. ruskin speak beautifully of the "anarchy of steel"?--and it is a frequent experience that an engine will seem to grow tired and to require to be driven with consideration for a while, for no apparent reason. but at any rate, even the wildest fancy can hardly picture steel in pain in the same sense as the overdriven horse or the patient ricksha coolie whose short cough is a reminder that the race is short-lived. no, in motoring, so far as the use of the machine is concerned, there can be no inhumanity. it was in this spirit that we set forth on that soft afternoon, with a half-formed intention of taking tea with friends near saxmundham and of going no farther on our outward journey. as it happened we went a great deal farther, taking a predetermined course at first along roads clearly marked on every map, and then, having found a new objective, and having ascertained the direction in which it lay, we made for it by such roads as seemed, on the face of them, and without any regard to their quality or surface, most likely to lead towards it. it took a little longer perhaps, but it was interesting; it gave some exercise to the topographical intelligence, and it led us out of the beaten track. the first part of the route was simplicity itself. we simply retraced our tracks from felixstowe to trimley of the twin churches along the ipswich road, and a mile or two beyond. then we turned at an obtuse angle to the right and found ourselves in what has been called the wild garden of suffolk, not in any classical work perhaps, but by word of mouth. a wide stretch it was of gorse and heather, with trees here and there, singly and in groups, the greater part of it some eighty or ninety feet above the level of the adjoining north sea and, roughly speaking, forty feet above that of the plain, ten miles in width or thereabouts, following the coast northwards for ever so many miles from the left bank of the demure and rather dull river deben. the "garden" was hardly at its best for, whether kissing was out of fashion or not, the gorse was very certainly and completely out of blossom; and of course there was no glory of bracken; but no strong effort of imagination was called for, no very intimate knowledge of wild nature, to perceive that, later in the year, this must be a divinely attractive run. as it was, the memory left is of clear air and wide prospect, of russets and sombre greens, of two villages--their names turn out to be brightwell and martlesham--of no particular note, and of a nameless brook, a tributary of the deben, forded near the former. the surface of the roads, perhaps, left something to be desired by the fastidious, but that is a matter to which experience and intelligent curiosity lead one to pay less and ever less attention. through such a country, growing a little more disciplined as our route, nearly due north, took us away from the sea and on to higher ground, we passed to woodbridge, whereof enough has been said before, and through wickham market to our old acquaintance saxmundham, the original objective of this easy-going drive. but, as it happened, my charioteer's friends at whose house we called had also been tempted abroad that afternoon, and it appeared to be considered probable that they had gone to dunwich. in came [greek: autarkeia], independence, and the happy thought, why not go to dunwich too? a hasty glance at a map showed that if we pushed on along the high road not quite so far as yoxford, and then began to think of turning eastward, we must in due course find a road leading us to dunwich. this was really hardly a case of "taking chances," as our american friends have it, for on that desolate coast the dreary remains of dunwich are the only point between southwold and aldeburgh at which roads converge. towards yoxford was some three or four miles through eminently english scenery, undulations of land, which the auctioneer's catalogue would describe not ineptly as "park-like," showing a remarkable succession of well-grown oaks. so "park-like," indeed, was it that, no doubt, much of it was the real thing. as it turned out a general sense of direction suggested the wisdom of bearing to the right, not much more than half-way to yoxford, and the suggestion was obeyed. it led us by roads no better than farm tracks, and probably never intended to be any better, through middleton and westleton, neither of them a village of any note, to a winding road adorned by a sign-post with the legend, "to dunwich and the sea." the latter piece of information was not necessary to anybody who had learned to note, by the evidence of the trees, the effects of salt-bearing winds. wheresoever near any of our coasts you see single trees all sloping in one direction, or coverts almost penthouse-shaped, rising gradually from a puny height of a few feet on one side, to a wall of respectable elevation on the other, there you may be sure that you are quite near to the sea, and that the salt-bearing winds have beaten first on the low side of the covert. so the sign-post was hardly needed on this narrow road of many rectangles, at one of which my charioteer's friends were happily met. a few more turns, a sharp descent under the almost overhanging walls of a long deserted priory, and we were in dunwich. [illustration: dunwich and desolation] this same dunwich is without exception the most depressing scene on which the eye could rest. down the hill we swept into a bleak hamlet of some twenty houses and to an inn, where tea was ordered. what time the ladies thawed themselves over a new-lit fire it seemed good to the men to restore circulation, and perhaps stimulate the mind a little, by a tour of inspection, and to ask for guidance beforehand. it was given in grim language. "if you want only to see the ruins you can go by the road; if you want to see the bones you must follow the cliff." so desiring to see everything as quickly as might be, we took the path to the cliff, through a sandy cutting, and soon were close to the evidence of a recent fall into the sea of land, rising perhaps a hundred feet above high-water mark, of which the most reckless speculator would hardly buy the fee simple for any tangible sum. it has been falling--sometimes in large pieces, sometimes in small--since the reign of edward iii; it is falling still, and it will continue to fall. it is of the kind of substance that has no more cohesion, or very little more, than a child's castle of sand, which, having been a broad-based cone in the beginning, has been cut till it opposes a sheer and perpendicular and crumbling obstacle to the advancing tides. waves and rains--the latter far more destructive than is commonly imagined--are destroying this part of england, even while others are being added to, with remarkable celerity, nor is it easy to see how any protecting works could, even if the enterprise were worth undertaking, be constructed with any reasonable hope of success. the last fall--of part of the churchyard of the derelict all saint's--was clearly quite recent. the bones, mixed with crumbling débris of the rotten cliff, were being washed by muddy wavelets a hundred feet below the perilous verge of the cliff, a grisly and a saddening sight. the church itself--its west end still standing--hung on the edge of the cliff; it cannot last long. "murray" writes in 1875: "it might have served till the present day, but was abandoned in the middle of the last century that the townsfolk might sell the bells and lead." he would be a bold man who should say now that the townsfolk were not justly prudent, for it is as plain as a pikestaff that all saint's is liable at any moment, hurtling down into the insatiable sea, to join st. peter's and the other five churches, once the glory of dunwich; it has already sent down half its burial ground, and the rest, although burials continued after the church was abandoned, is sure to follow soon. opposite my seat of a sunday in winchester cathedral when i was a boy, was a sepulchral chest on top of a screen bearing the legend "in hâc et alterâ e regione cistâ reliquiæ sunt ossium," and then a handful of kings beginning with canute were mentioned. it used to seem reasonably grim. but this shallow and relentless sea round the last relics of dunwich, with its bottom strewn by the contents of six churchyards and a half, is to the chest at winchester as the earthquakes at san francisco and valparaiso are to the slipping of an irish bog. the scene is depressing, unspeakably sad; but it is necessary to visit it in order to realize that dunwich was once great and to understand its fall, for it is falling still, and it will go on falling; and you cannot help seeing how it all happened. hardly anywhere else, perhaps nowhere, is it possible at once to localize and to realize so long and unvarying a story of progressive ruin. felix, whom we have met before on these wanderings, landed at dunwich (another legend lands him shipwrecked at hunstanton) in the seventh century, on his evangelizing mission; doubtless because king sigeberht of east anglia prescribed a landing at the principal port of his kingdom. he found there a flourishing community, a port which, for the seventh century, was large, and, says "murray," remains of a considerable roman settlement. (but, for reasons already given and of universal application in east anglia, i am shy of accepting roman remains unless they be supported by definite and satisfactory evidence.) at any rate the king built himself a palace, and the saint built a church, the cathedral church of the new diocese of east anglia; and whether both or either used the roman ruins no man may tell with certainty, for the sea has devoured palace and cathedral church alike. perhaps, after all, it does not much matter now of what material they were constructed, or what its origin was. fifteen successive bishops, at any rate, ruled east anglia ecclesiastically from dunwich. so early as _domesday_ there are records of falls; there is even a legend of an extensive forest, flourishing east of the town that way, covering miles of land over which now the "waves wap and the waters wan." still dunwich found forty ships for henry iii, and though "rage and surgies of the sea" ravaged it in the time of edward iii, it occurs in a quaint list of east anglia's contribution to the fleet raised against the armada, a list which may be given here once and for all: colchester, 1 shippe. ipswich and harwich, 2 shippes, 1 pinnace. alborough, orforth, and dunwich, 1 shippe. yearmouth and leistocke (lowestoft), 1 shippe, 1 pinnace. lynne and blackney, 2 shippes, 1 pinnace. in the time of leland the bitter cry of the people of dunwich was heard in the land and the legend of the submerged forest of eastwood is found on his pages: "_george ferras_ told me that the men of dunewich desiring sucour for their town againe rages of the se, adfirme that a great peace of a foreste sumtyme therby ys devourid up and turnid to the use of the se." who george ferras was, this deponent knoweth not, but by way of exemplifying the difficulty of reading leland, it may be mentioned that other places named on the same folio are new-windelesore (windsor), saresbyri (salisbury), dovar, to say nothing of edward iii, egidius, walterus de la ville, nicholas de s. quintius, and "mr. balthazar," all in the space of twenty-five lines of print. leland's volumes, through no fault of his, as has been pointed out before, are like conglomerate or puddingstone, with here and there a gem, which takes a great deal of finding. indeed that this particular gem was found may be attributed to fortune. it shows us dunwich, before the untiring sea had reduced the inhabitants to absolute despair, crying out for help, and crying to deaf ears. its destruction, in truth, was very gradual, very certain; and, while the nation would not help, it was not worth while for the people to show the indomitable spirit of those in san francisco to-day, or to set about the task of rebuilding, for in destroying dunwich the sea wiped out its excuse for existence, making the land that was left unapproachable by reason of its girdle of shallow water. so there is nothing left but memories, a handful of mean houses of no interest by the sea, the ruins of the grey friars monastery on the hill, and the church of all saints tottering on the crumbling verge of the disappearing cliff. how any man or woman can consent to live in this environment of desolation is a thing difficult to understand; but there they are, apparently quite cheerful, a living testimony to the elasticity of human spirits. a stranger, having seen the sights, having mused a little as his eyes wander over that dreary expanse of monotonous sea, leaves dunwich gladly, without the slightest intention of returning, and convinced that a not very prolonged residence there would assuredly produce melancholia in one not to the manner born. the opinion has been expressed already that it is not worth while at this time of day, and it would probably be hopeless to endeavour, to cope against the untiring sea in its work of demolishing the glacial cliffs south of dunwich. as they are demolished they go, by virtue of the southerly drift given to the débris, to alter the coastline southward. attention has been called, for example, to the childish course pursued by the river alde. the fault does not lie with the river but with the crumbling cliffs of the north, and they are responsible for closing up the natural mouth it once had at slaugden, barely half a mile from aldeburgh. at southwold and lowestoft defensive works are praiseworthy, because they are feasible and the land is worth protecting, and this is even more true of the vicinity of felixstowe. here much land was lost early in the last century, owing to the fact that huge quantities of stones, forming a natural protection, were removed for manufacture into cement, with the result that the shore was denuded, and the loose pebbles were heaped up by the drift into a totally undesirable shingle bank at landguard fort. this bank in its turn threatened harwich harbour, and a groyne of concrete had to be set up to arrest its progress. these facts, in detail, came to my knowledge through the _engineer_ in 1906, together with the somewhat appalling estimate of land lost in east anglia to the extent of 160 square miles in ten centuries. land has been gained elsewhere, at bawdsey, where we shall find ourselves very shortly, for example. at bawdsey it has been gained through human agency to the advantage of humanity, but on the whole the sea, left to its own devices, works destruction at both ends of its operation. it removes the earth from places where it is needed, as at dunwich for example, and so wipes one flourishing port out of existence: it does its best to deposit that which it has taken away where it is not needed, and to block up one port with the ruins of another. at harwich it has, we all hope, been stopped, but all the world knows the mischief which has been wrought south of the estuary of the thames by the gradual process of accretion converting thriving ports into meaningless inland places. what all the world does not realize, and what our most practised engineers in this kind apprehend, without pretending to comprehend fully, is the unforetellable character of the results that will follow from every attempt to interfere with these mysterious processes of nature which takes the form of opposing an obstacle to the sweep of the tide. thus to build a groyne or a sea wall, to say to the sea in effect, "thou hast taken so much, but thou shalt take no more," is hardly likely to produce any injurious result. on the other hand, to stretch a solid pier across the drift, and to divert a current, may be to affect the coast line for hundreds of miles along the coast affected by the drift. as an engineer versed in these matters once said to me, "when you interfere with the tides you must wait for the effect; you cannot predict it." so back to felixstowe, varying the cross-country route to the main road a little by following the sense of direction without consulting any maps, and seeing nothing worthy of notice except a belated heron, its long legs stretched behind its slow-flapping wings, making its way from the sea to some distant heronry and croaking sadly as it went, as though to say, "the moon will give no light to-night, so i must perforce go fasting." that is a welsh version of the heron's melancholy call--please note that the heron always wears half mourning--but the marsh men doubtless express the same thought in some way, for it is sound ornithology, and they know their birds passing well. chapter vi--(_continued_) felixstowe, bawdsey, woodbridge, ipswich, dunmow and london a stormy morning--past golf-links to bawdsey ferry--sir cuthbert quilter's work of reclamation--a short climb but very stiff--some remote byways to woodbridge--heavy rain--value of cape hood--drawbacks of transparent screens--ipswich again--more cobbolds, more hospitality--ipswich oysters and gloves--the "crown and anchor"--an architect and antiquary--jingling prophecy--an abbot's bones and "extra dry"--another car arrives for us--off for dunmow--a frightened horse and an awkward rider--rules of conduct in such cases--through braintree (remarks postponed) to great dunmow--little dunmow the true _locus classicus_--leland and the flitch--far-fetched theories and an obvious explanation--the heart of the forest country--the old forest included epping, hainault, and hatfield forests--hainault restored--hardships of old forest law--dunmow to takeley--hatfield broad oak and heath--a view of hounds--high ongar, epping, and london, reversing original order--the drive reviewed. next morning, in a tearing wind, full of the promise of rain, we took a road running as nearly n.n.e. as might be, making for the steam ferry which crosses the mouth of the river deben, a river whose banks are rich in memories of the late mr. c. j. cornish, one of the brightest open-air writers of our generation. golf-links we passed, having plenty of natural bunkers and hazards, having also that close turf, whereon the ball "carries" well, which appears to be in better harmony than any inland turf with the spirit of the royal and ancient game. martello towers there were too, on the flat and lonely beach, towers probably more useful now as affording shelter and concealment to the wild fowler than for any purpose of defence; and beyond them the shallow sea whipped by the wind into angry little wavelets. then the ferry hove in sight, the boat, or floating bridge, being on the far side of a fretting strath from a quarter to half a mile in width. on the far side also was the curious house of sir cuthbert quilter, and around it a considerable area of cultivated land, doing infinite credit to the enterprise of that most ardent agriculturist; for has he not converted a wilderness into fairly fruitful land, and is not the man who does that a benefactor of humanity? crossing seemed at first likely to be no easy matter. the boat was on the far side, out of hearing in such a wind as was blowing; a witless boy of the district, himself desirous of crossing apparently, thought it came at fixed times, and had no idea when those times were. it seemed that we might wait for hours; but prowling round i found a signal post, and thereon directions how to raise the signal for the ferry, and soon the boat was making for us. entering it with the car was no trouble; avernus has always been easy of descent; but when the craft had creaked to the far side we were faced with the stiffest task i have ever seen offered to any motor-car in the shape of a sharply sloping bank of soft gravel to be ascended without any preliminary run of any kind. the steam car, however, ploughed slowly through the gravel and up the hill, and i look back upon those ten or twelve yards of hill-climbing as the finest exhibition of sheer strength in a motor-car it has ever been my fortune to witness. so we went by devious and very bad roads, through alderton and hollesley to woodbridge, through a country not particularly interesting, i imagine, at the best of times, and rendered less interesting than ever by the angry curtain of clouds which hung over our path. rain had been an open question when we started; it was certainly coming now with a will; and it was a case of up cape hood and down with the front screen, in which a large piece of transparent talc, or celluloid, gave something of a view to him who drove. it was better than getting wet through, that is all that can be said. the rain for a short time was simply torrential, and as it poured in waving streams down the transparent surface, one could see as much as, but not very much more than, one can see with eyes opened six or eight feet down in fairly clear river water. outlines of objects were blurred in the same fashion as they are to the diver (without a diving dress of course), and one felt as doubtful of the distance of this or that as one has often felt under water when catching sight of the saucer, the white stone, or what you will, thrown in beforehand that it might be searched for afterwards. so there is nothing to be said of this run from woodbridge to ipswich, along the road followed in my first journey but in the opposite direction, save that it was taken in "demmed, moist, unpleasant weather," to quote mr. mantalini. however, the rain abated before we reached ipswich and halted, by previous arrangement, at mr. cobbold's bank, as a preliminary to receiving open-handed hospitality from yet another member of that most hospitable of suffolk families. it is not suggested that all motorists should do likewise, although, upon my word, judging by mr. cobbold's kindness to a party upon two of whom he had never set eyes until that day, it seems probable that a call at the bank would be a promising venture for any strangers. but into the secrets of comfort in ipswich which he revealed to us others may be admitted without his personal guidance. he showed the old-world glove shop already mentioned. the oyster shop he showed us also, almost next door to the glovers, both in a narrow street running parallel to the main street on the far side from the "crown and anchor," and the "great white horse," and better oysters were never eaten by man or woman. then he took us to luncheon at the "crown and anchor" which, sooth to say, was more to my taste than the "great white horse"--of its charges it is manifestly impossible for me to speak, but its fare was of the simplest and best. last, but not least of the kindnesses shown to me by mr. cobbold was to invite to meet me mr. corder, architect and antiquarian--would that the combination were universal--profoundly versed in the old-time legends of the district. mr. corder it was who gave me a most fascinating print of the back of the "crown and anchor" when it was the "rampant horse," and quoted a jingled prophecy of days gone by, concerning the fate of the various inns of ipswich, which appears to have come true- the rampant horse shall kick the bear, and make the griffin fly, and turn the bell upside down, and drink the three tuns dry. again, as our talk wandered over matters ancient and men of the past, the name of the famous abbot sampson, much noted in his day as a preacher, was mentioned, and mr. corder had a humorous story of his disinterment in modern times. with the bones of the clarion-voiced preacher, in the same coffin, was found the skull of a woman, a grim jest perhaps of those who were left behind him in this world. the bones, pending reinterment in decent form, were placed in the first convenient receptacle and, only some time later was it observed, the relics of the preacher had, by the irony of fate, been placed in a champagne case labelled "extra dry." chance, very likely, supplied an epitaph more truthful than is usual. at ipswich too my host and friend had prepared a surprise. not entirely satisfied with the behaviour of the car which had covered us, as well as carried us, hitherto, he had telegraphed to london for another, and it awaited us in the inn yard. it was uncovered, but the sky was now clear, so we sped in it merrily along the already familiar route to colchester, entering essex, "ful of good hoswyves," as leland quotes, as we crossed the river at stratford st. mary. had we turned to the right a little before this point we should have made ourselves familiar with the beautiful and very characteristic scenery of those stourside places stoke-by-nayland, sudbury, and long melford--all interesting places concerning which something is said later. but all these matters and places come more fittingly into the chapter describing a series of short day's drives from colchester as head-quarters. so do marks tey and braintree through which, as a matter of fact, we passed that day to dunmow. in fact the only fact about this little run which can be mentioned without impoverishing the mine to be dug from later is an incident. we had the misfortune to meet a man who was no horseman mounted on a half-broken colt which had the strongest apparent objection to a motor-car. the man held up his hand. we stopped. the horse, more frightened than ever, turned and bolted in the other direction; but then the rider turning on to the grass beside the road, dismounted hurriedly and we passed on. it was almost a solitary instance in which, during much motoring of late, i have seen a horse thoroughly frightened by a car, all the more alarmed probably because, by that curious intuition which horses possess, it knew its rider to be incompetent. the incident exemplified the folly of the existing law requiring a car to be stopped completely whenever a person in charge of a horse, or with a horse in charge of him, holds up his hand. almost every petrol-car brought suddenly to a stop makes far more noise and is far more alarming to a horse than when it moves at a reasonable pace, and the car-driver, in a voice at once audible and soothing, cries "woa, my lad," or something of that kind, thus convincing the animal that motor-cars are connected with human beings, with whom he is familiar. in nine cases out of ten, however, the man is more frightened than the horse, so that, tugging suddenly at the reins, after being half asleep before, he compels the animal to start. in any event the complete stopping is an error from the point of view of horseman and motorist. it annoys the latter without being of the slightest use to the former. moreover, it gives irascible squires an opportunity of exasperating the motorist, whom they detest. "my horses don't mind a car at all," said one such to me not long since, "but i always hold up my hand when i meet the beastly things; i hear they hate stopping." these are the _ipsissima verba_ of one who, in every other relation of life, is exceptionally kind and genial. passing through pleasant braintree, and going at a spanking pace along an open road, we left little dunmow, which is the real dunmow of story, unnoticed on the left through sheer ignorance, and went on to great dunmow. our ignorance was in some measure to be excused, because the custom of dunmow, although in old times it was established in connection with the priory of little dunmow, was revived in connection with great dunmow. and, after all, in this case it would probably have been folly to be wise. we should have found little, if anything, remaining of the priory of little dunmow, and we were quite happy, in our ignorance, over our tea in a picturesque inn at great dunmow, believing all the time that we were at the classic spot itself. of the various accounts of a quaint custom, mentioned in _piers plowman_ and by chaucer, i prefer that given by leland, for its brevity. writing of "the bacon at dunmow," and referring to "robert fitzwalter, lord of woodham and famous in the time of king henry the thyrd," he continues, "in which priory arose a custome, begun or instituted either by him or some of his successors, that he that repenteth him not of his marriage sleeping or waking in a yeere and a day may lawfully goe to dunmow and fetch a gammon of bacon." the quotations from chaucer and _piers plowman_ have been used too often in "seasonable articles" to be repeated here. it is easy to agree with the curiously learned dr. samuel brewer that "the attempt to revive this 'premium for humbug' is a mere get up for the benefit of the town"; but his quotation from prior is distinctly apt and unfamiliar: ah, madam! cease to be mistaken; few married fowl peck dunmow bacon. also we may hope that the eight successful pairs of claimants from 1445 to 1772, essex folk all, took the matter more seriously than those of later time. one pair, thomas shakeshaft, woolcomber of weathersfield, and his wife, are said to have made their successful claim in 1751 in the presence of hogarth. the most recent fame of dunmow arises from its violent resistance to uninvited socialist propagandists. it is just the sort of quiet place in which one would expect a rustic to describe the socialist ranters as "a passel o' fools"; and this is precisely what occurred. perhaps after all it is well to repeat the oath in verse as preserved by fuller, since to do so may save the trouble of reference for the curious: you shall swear by the custom of our confession that you never made any nuptial transgression, since you were married man and wife, by household brawls or contentious strife; or otherwise, in bed or at board offended each other in deed or word; or, since the parish clerk said amen, wished yourselves unmarried again; or, in a twelvemonth and a day, repented not in thought any way; but continued true and in desire, as when you joined hands in holy quire. if to these conditions, without all fear, of your own accord you will freely swear, a gammon of bacon you shall receive, and bear it hence with love and good leave; for this is our custom at dunmow well known, though the sport be ours the bacon's your own. there is a like custom of wicknor in staffordshire, but the ultra-learned seem to me to have overstrained their fancies in imagining a common origin for these flitches of bacon, and the "sow and pigs" which, according to "murray," are frequently seen on the carved bosses of church roofs in devonshire, and in suggesting a connection between the dunmow flitch, which after all was but a gammon, and the flitch which according to dion halicarnassus, was kept at the temple of alba longa until the time of augustus, because æneas found there the white sow and pigs. it may be true that it was the custom of the prussians of old time to offer a flitch of bacon to the thunder-god whenever a thunderstorm came. as for the sow and pigs on the roofs of devonshire churches, they seem to me to have no more direct connection with the dunmow flitch than "the sow and pigs" as an inn sign (which may be seen in oxfordshire and perhaps elsewhere), or than the gadarene swine. surely, when there is an obvious and historical explanation there is no sort of need for plunging into the troubled waters of comparative folk-lore. robert fitz-walter desired to establish a reward for conjugal fidelity. that is plain, and there was nothing out of the way about such a desire in times when foundations similar in character, rewards for constancy in servants and the like, were by no means uncommon. it probably never occurred to him that the claimants would be other than peasants. the recorded claimants in fact were in 1445, a labourer and his wife; in 1510, a fuller; in 1701, a butcher; in 1751, a woolcomber; the three last with their wives of course; and in the other cases the callings of the claimants are not recorded. fitz-walter's domain was situate in the heart of the forest country, a land of innumerable oak trees, whereon herds of swine were fed upon the acorns in autumn, under the care of the successors in title of gurth the swineherd. to the peasantry the pig was, economically speaking, everything; for that matter he is a great deal to them still since, take him for all in all, he is the most profitable of domestic animals. what could be more natural than that the great landowner should establish as the reward of fidelity among peasants a part of the familiar beast whom they knew best, and whom, to this day, they like best on the table. those who have seen the excitement of pig-killing at a cottage home, who know how it spells plenty of fresh meat for a while, and how large a part fat bacon plays in the meals which the agricultural labourer eats under the lee of a hedge, will not desire to go to alba longa for an explanation of the dunmow flitch; nor, in a country where "chaw-bacon" was once synonymous with farm labourer--unhappily they now consume tinned meat instead--need we think in their connection of the sacrifices of the ancient prussians. robert fitz-walter could not have devised a benefaction more to the taste of the intended recipients. yes, we were some way from the spot truly sacred to the custom at great dunmow; but we were uncommonly near to relics of the ancient forest, in which the swine, the dunmow flitches in process of formation, grew fat upon the abundant acorns. we were, indeed, in the very heart of the forest land, its principal products timber, game, which was sacred to the king, and swine growing fat, as obesity of pigs was reckoned in early days, on the acorns of autumn. hard by in hertfordshire the country folk to this day collect acorns in great quantity, feeding thereon the swine which, cribbed, cabined, and confined, no doubt grow fatter than their predecessors roaming in the woods. a perambulation was made in the twelfth year of henry iii (1228 and fitz-walter's time), which showed nearly the whole of the county to be part of a royal forest. from the thames on the south to stane street, the road between colchester and bishop stortford, to the north, was a great forest running right up to the walls of london. it was known as the forest of waltham; it included epping forest, part of which has happily been preserved, to the enduring credit of the city of london, hainault forest, the relics of which have been reafforested of late, and hatfield forest, along the margin of which we were shortly to pass on our way to london. hainault forest once lay, and now again lies, south of epping forest, being to the south of the river roding. it once consisted of four thousand acres, but was disafforested by act of parliament in 1851, the crown receiving an allotment of two thousand acres which, at an expenditure of more than £40,000, were converted into arable farms. of the whole six thousand acres only a small tract retained its character of primitive woodland. this, through the exertions of the commons preservation society and of mr. e. n. buxton, has now again been dedicated to the public, being vested in the london county council. in addition, thanks to mr. buxton and also to the commissioners of woods and forests, five hundred acres of tilled land, formerly known as the "king's woods" and later as fox burrows farm, have been reafforested after being forty years under the plough. for three years mr. buxton, with the aid of the county council, has been engaged in the effort to make the tame land wild again. grass has been sown, acorn and beechmast have been inserted, seeds of bramble, briar, holly, blackthorn and whitethorn have been introduced, and some saplings have been planted. bracken, perhaps the most essential feature of wild woodland, has come of itself. so the tame is on its way to become wild and natural again. it will be a long process which few living men can hope to see fully accomplished; but that the experiment was well worth trying cannot be doubted. nothing, perhaps, illustrates more forcibly the difference between the conditions of modern life and those of the thirteenth or even the seventeenth century than our present attitude towards forests by comparison with that of our forefathers. when, in the time of charles i, an attempt was made to declare the boundaries of the forest of waltham to be identical with those prescribed in the perambulation of henry iii, it was regarded as, and in fact it was, an outrage. it meant the effort to revive the harsh forest law and to expropriate private owners who had acquired rights by a prescription more than adequate from our modern standpoint. it meant a determination to extend the rights of the crown, to deny the rights of the public. in the days of edward vii all men rejoice over the patches of forest which have been preserved, all england congratulates itself when that which has been disafforested, as hainault was in 1851, becomes forest again. this is because the meaning of words as applied to things is changed when the country passes from an unsettled to a settled state, just as, according to one of the greeks, it is changed in revolutionary times. "forest" in old times denoted a district and, in respect of that district, connoted a wicked restriction of public rights, or of rights which, to our mind, ought to have been public. "forest" now means a district in which the public have abundant liberty, limited only by consideration for the rights of all, and the rights of the crown in relation to it hardly come into account. every remaining forest, whatsoever its governance may be, is a treasure-house for the naturalist, a sanctuary for wild birds and beasts, a place to be prized above measure since, in it, the dwellers in our congested islands may walk face to face with wild nature in pure air. of the relics of such a forest we were soon to have a pleasing view. from dunmow to bishop stortford, as one of the guide-books has it, there is nothing of interest. we followed this high road along the railway, which did not make for beauty, for some four miles until, climbing a slight acclivity, we were at takeley, where the church is said to possess a very fine perpendicular font-cover. such minutiæ, however, are not for the motorist. there we turned sharply to the left and, passing along the brow of a gentle hill for three miles, we were at hatfield broad oak, amid true forest scenery of wide stretches of turf bordered by wild woodland. whether the storied oak, carefully fenced around, still stands, this deponent is not absolutely prepared to avouch; but his eye was arrested by a tree which would certainly serve well to represent it. it was good going hence, among charming sylvan scenery, through hatfield heath to harlow, for five miles, and at harlow, as at hatfield heath or at takeley for that matter, we might have run to the right a little and so have struck the most eastern of the two main roads from cambridge to london. but we were out to see the country; so we stuck to the byways, well worthy of following for their own sakes and for ours, and we had our reward in a pretty picture. passing along an unfenced road, having broad stretches of turf backed by woodlands on either side, we saw in the distance the pink coats of three or four riders, and soon we were going slowly and gingerly past a staunch pack of hounds returning to kennel under the charge of huntsman and whips after their day's sport. they were good horses, workmanlike hounds, a thoroughly characteristic english sight and one which, somehow or other, one never sees from a train, partly perhaps because masters of hounds are prone, for obvious reasons, to avoid the vicinity of railways as much as possible. this little spectacle was secured by making a detour from harlow almost to chipping ongar, and high ongar and thence back to epping, from which we returned to london as nearly as might be by the route taken on our outward journey. this involved a few more miles of travelling than by the main road, but it produced a very good general impression of the character of the forest country. it is an impression well worth treasuring in remembrance. it also produced an abiding respect for mrs. coleman's topographical memory. not once or twice but many times was this lady able to point out the right turning and to save us from going astray. once only did she fail, and that was after we had entered the continuous houses of london. the failure was but the exception proving the rule; indeed it may not even have been that; for the din of the streets may have drowned her warning voice. be that as it may the return to london was not quite so artistic in point of route as the exit had been. how far had we travelled that day? an estimate is given in the practical observations earlier, but in truth distance really hardly counts within limits which grow wider every year, when one is motoring for pleasure. the essential things were that we took breakfast at a reasonable time and at leisure in felixstowe, went by characteristic cross-country routes to woodbridge and to ipswich, strolled through ipswich and shopped and lingered over luncheon, took tea at ease in great dunmow, explored many pleasant byways between it and london, and were back in london in plenty of time to dine and to go to a first night at the theatre, and not in the least too tired to do both with enjoyment. that is the new kind of pleasure which the motor-car has rendered possible, and it is a very real and genuine one. chapter vii late summer. colchester and eastwards modern motoring and lack of sensational events--colchester and district seen during military manoeuvres--farcical operations and abundant leisure--study of colchester--interesting back streets--the roman walls--cæsar comes, sees, conquers, and departs--king cunobelin--claudius at colchester--was his victory a "put up thing"?--the roman colony--boadicea--the building of the walls--abundant roman remains--legend of king cole--not necessarily all false--a playful theory--was the empress helena a colchester inn-keeper's daughter?--the civil war--siege of colchester--ireton's cruel revenge--grief of charles i--concerning oysters--colchester to clacton-on-sea--sharp hillocks and shady elms--chasing a balloon--wivenhoe to clacton--a wonderful society seen from a veranda--great holland--walton-le-soken, meaning of--st. osyth--between estuaries of colne and stour--some hills and many windings--a lanchester as hill-climber--ardleigh and seed grounds--a dialogue--manningtree--"manningtree ox" and thomas tusser--matthew hopkins the witchfinder--east bergholt--constable's birthplace--his struggles and career--to dovercourt and harwich--fascinations of seaports--old-time stories of harwich regatta--landguard fort--lord avebury on coast erosion and accretion--site of yarmouth--back to colchester. this little book has been absolutely candid and truthful so far, if it had not been it might have been more fertile in accidents and incidents; but the truth of the matter is that the modern motor-car in good hands goes so well that accidents and incidents are rare. one reads of accidents in the papers of course, because it is unnecessary to chronicle safe journeys; but it would be a libel on the motor-car to invent mishaps for the sake of literary variety. after motoring some tens of thousands of miles, i can lay my hand on my heart, metaphorically, and say that of the many cars in which i have driven none has ever touched a human being on the road, or a horse, or a carriage, or vehicle of any kind. my entire butcher's bill, extending over a good many years, amounts to one cat (which jumped from a wall in front of the car), three fowls, and ten sparrows. therefore, since i am devotedly attached to automobilism, and at the same time convinced that, for many years to come, it will be the pastime of the minority and will only exist on sufferance, fancy and imagination are ridden strictly on the curb, throttled down, if the phrase pleases better, and truth is encouraged to prevail. in this chapter, and those which follow next, i am going to describe a number of journeys taken by motor-car from colchester as a centre, and one which might have been made from colchester by car, but was in fact made from london by train for the sake of its destination. that destination was very well worth reaching, even by train; how to reach it by car from colchester, and what there is to be seen when it is reached shall be told in due course. this particular chapter involves very little travelling, and has been written because it is felt that the motorists, liking to take a holiday on occasion, will like to hear of the antiquities of colchester, the social peculiarities of clacton, some old-time stories of harwich, and something from lord avebury about coast changes. three or four years ago, it will be remembered, an expeditionary force of horse and foot and artillery, representing imaginary invaders of this country, embarked in transports at southampton, under sir john french, with orders to carry out the operation of invading the east coast of england, the point of dis-embarkation being clacton-on-sea, supposed to have been left unwatched. in the course of the business of a special correspondent, i saw the tall ships--they were not a bit tall really, but the old phrase clings--steam out of southampton, and then hurried across country to colchester to await events. at colchester, i found myself a welcome passenger on an official motor-car, a lanchester, driven by an army service corps driver, and i found myself also, by happy chance, in the company of many soldier friends at the "old red lion," concerning the antiquities and traditions of which it has been found impossible not to make some observations at an earlier stage. there could have been no more delightful task for a conscientious correspondent, for it was his duty to see all he could, and it was sheer pleasure to scour the country to that end; and on the other hand, if he were also an honourable man, his task of writing was of the easiest. there was no censor; but the special correspondents were placed on their honour not to publish anything which could, by any chance, help the other side. theoretically, i was attached to sir john french's invading army; in fact, i perambulated the ground occupied by both armies with perfect freedom; and, since it soon became plain that my illuminating remarks would be capable of reaching general wynne, who was defending england, at the same time as "the rolls and bohea"--to quote the old _spectator_--it became manifest at the same time that the less said about military matters the better. recognition of this fact and of its consequences gave me much leisure, and the farcical character of the manoeuvres on land--for farcical they were universally allowed to be by competent military observers--gave me more. for example, general french, unopposed by previous arrangement, spent some hours of an afternoon in landing his troops, but not much of his stores and baggage, at clacton, amidst a crowd of trippers and bathers. after resting them for a brief space, and as darkness began to fall, he began a march upon the fat city of colchester, over ground not too flat, the distance being some seventeen miles. i, not anticipating anything of the sort, since there was no moon, had gone back to colchester and dinner. enter, about ten o'clock at night, a breathless comrade to announce that sharp fighting was in progress. out started a car, not the lanchester, carrying us both; and within a few miles, but heaven only knew where, we were in the thick of it. we could see flashes; we could hear the explosion of cordite in all directions; we could hear the tramp of men and horses, and many voices. but, speaking as no warrior at all, i am absolutely convinced that during this engagement, which was one of many, it was beyond the capacity of any man to distinguish friend from foe, to aim his rifle at anything, or even to set his sights. so i went back to bed at the "red lion." with the dawn i was back again, to find the invaders, or some of them, lying close to the city of colchester, their guns in positions from which they commanded the city and from which, in the meanwhile, they poured imaginary death and destruction upon the flying defenders. theoretically, general french had captured the rich city of colchester. if our mimic war had been real, the main difficulty of sir john french and his officers would have been to check their fierce and hungry soldiery from sacking the town, looting the provision shops, gorging themselves with colchester "natives"--for it was september and the oysters were very good--and drinking enormous quantities of liquor. but mimic war is sometimes a stern business, for the conquerors. the theoretical victors had to rest, as best they could, in an open field in the rain and, for a long time, without tents. provisions, sufficient but not sumptuous, were supplied to them by the army service corps, and the high authorities, whosoever they were, agreed that an armistice of thirty-six hours was called for by the exhausted condition of both sides. during those thirty-six hours, which begun about two o'clock in the afternoon, if memory serves accurately, a correspondent had no duties to perform. so, keeping the "red lion" for head-quarters, i was free to ramble over one of the most interesting cities in england, architecturally and historically. the "cups," a hotel more celebrated, was not available, being occupied by the umpiring staff, military grandees generally, and military and naval attachés of many nations. but there was no cause to regret the necessity for abiding at the ancient "red lion"; and it was an admirable centre from which to study the city and its characteristic features. to the front, in the high street, there is much that is distressingly modern. the town hall, for example, is the kind of building men accounted "handsome" in 1841, when it took the place of a moot hall which had been standing since the conquest. most of the buildings near it on the far side of the road from the "red lion," including the "cups," are modern and the epithet "handsome" has doubtless been applied to them also a hundred times and more. no doubt they serve their purposes adequately, but in the full light of day they offend the eye of him who deems himself cultivated. only when the light grows dim above and a red sunset lends enchantment to the outlines of buildings seen against it, casting details and crude colouring into shade, does the high street of colchester look really picturesque; and that effect is the more impressive if one enters the town by the easternmost of the three bridges across the colne. then as the car climbs the sharp hill, the picture is unfolded gradually, and one great block of buildings at the end of the street (it is really, i fancy, something connected with the waterworks, but that is of no moment if it be pleasing) looks distinctly romantic and imposing. in full sun the principal street of colchester fails to please any eye save that which is satisfied by the evidence of an abundant prosperity. once inside the "red lion," however, the traveller is in an atmosphere of the old world and, if he pleases to humour his fancy, he may preserve that fancy for quite a long time and over quite a considerable distance. the hotel has a courtyard, as of course. the coffee-room and the bar-parlour, wherein an interesting and characteristic gathering may be found on market days, are on the left hand as one enters from the high street, and so is the principal entrance. it follows that to reach the main street on emerging from the hotel door, to find commerce, shops, bustle, and activity, a man must turn to the right. if he have no immediate inclination for these things, necessary and valuable as they are in themselves, let him turn to the left instead and pass through the long stable-yard, threading his way among a series of vehicles, ancient and modern, until he reaches the back gate of the yard. once through that he will soon find himself in old colchester, among quiet rows of modest houses, in alleys whose names speak of the middle ages, face to face with walls which are manifestly and essentially of roman construction. such will inevitably be his environment. in such an environment, if in any, will he be willing to hear something of the story of colchester, that most ancient city standing on the hill that is girt to the north, the north-east, and the east by the sluggish waters of the colne. if he be unwilling, he had better skip the few pages following. a little of that story has been told before what time it became necessary, or so seemed, to define early in this volume our sceptical attitude towards so-called roman remains and roman roads. these are very often of doubtful authenticity, and this very scepticism, this proved scarcity of roman remains in east anglia, render the certain truth concerning colchester the more valuable. the situation, the commanding hill, half-girt by the river, renders it more than probable that our rude forefathers (who really knew a good deal more than the world gave them credit for having known) had a settlement in pre-roman times on the spot now known as colchester. no time has been spent in research into that matter for the purposes of this book, for the simple reason that at least enough must needs be said concerning the place after the romans first knew it. cæsar came, saw, and conquered as usual; and having conquered he went away. for nearly a century after that the romans were too much engaged over those troubles at home, about which every schoolboy really knows a good deal, to concern themselves over an outlying and unimportant province, and almost everything is uncertain concerning the british history of the period. this is really a pity, because it is clear that king cunobelin, who then ruled at colchester, already apparently named as camulodunum, was a progressive prince, and the coins of his period show positively that the britons under him were by no means ignorant of the peaceful arts. that, very likely, was why they became poor warriors. in a.d. 43 came the second and most effectual roman invasion. that extraordinary person the emperor claudius, persuaded by a british exile named berre, who had got the worst of one of the petty quarrels in which the britons then, like the welsh later, were constantly engaged, dispatched aulus plautius with four legions and some gallic auxiliaries to reconquer britain. so much is certain, and there is no doubt that a year sufficed to quell the resistance of south-eastern britain, although caradoc, cunobelin's son, held out in the west for a long time. in the next year claudius himself crossed the channel--one authority says he brought elephants in his train--and joined plautius on the north of the thames. shortly afterwards he entered camulodunum, or colchester. did he enter it as having himself conquered, or as an emperor taking the credit of his general's victories? it is really almost impossible to say. merivale, having previously mentioned the elephants, says, "at gessoriacum he embarked for the opposite shores of cantium (kent), and speedily reached the legions in their encampment beyond the thames. the soldiers, long held in leash in expectation of his arrival, were eager to spring upon the foe. with the emperor himself at their head, a spectacle not beheld since the days of the valiant julius, they traversed the level plains of the trinobantes, which afforded no defensible position, till the natives were compelled to stand at bay before the stockades which encircled their capital, camulodunum. it is not perhaps too bold a conjecture that the lines which can still be traced from the colne to a little wooded stream called the roman river, drawn across the approach to a tract of twenty or thirty square miles, surrounded on every other side by water, indicate the ramparts of this british _oppidum_. within this enclosed space there was ample room, not only for the palace of the chief and the cabins of her people, but for the grazing ground of their flocks and herds in seasons of foreign attack; while, resting on the sea in its rear, it commanded the means of reinforcement and, if necessary, of flight. but the fate of the capital was decided by the issue of the encounter which took place before it. the trinobantes were routed. they surrendered their city and, with it, their national freedom and independence. the victory was complete; the subjection of the enemy assured. within sixteen days from his landing in britain, claudius had broken a powerful kingdom and accomplished a substantial conquest." exactly so, but is not the story a little too complete to gain absolute credit? is not the historian, justly indignant at the injustice done by suetonius and others to claudius, inclined to press down the balance too heavily in his favour? after all, suetonius says there was no resistance or bloodshed, and that really is much the more probable story. we all know that claudius, the deformed child who was regarded as an imbecile, the coward who hardly dared to accept power when it was thrust upon him by the prætorians, showed a remarkable genius for administration, and had the ambition to imitate augustus. he might easily have been a great general in spite of his gluttony, his vice, and his cruelty. for all that, this rapid entry into colchester, combined with what we know of his delight in shows, and with the suspicious fact that he brought his elephants with him, gives the whole affair an air of pre-arrangement the chances are that aulus plautius did the work and that claudius took the credit. certainly he returned to rome and celebrated a triumph in great style; and on his arch of triumph is an inscription (largely conjectural now) which, says merivale, shows the estimation in which his exploits were held. it is much more likely to show the view which claudius wished to be taken, for the incestuous, gluttonous, cowardly, and yet politically sagacious emperor, had a pretty style in prose. of course it is just possible that plautius was doing but ill over his campaign, and that the emperor with his elephants--tradition says that the britons were very much afraid of them--turned the scale; but the probability is that the whole affair was what they call a "put-up thing" on the far side of the atlantic, and that the elephants were brought over simply for the sake of pomp and circumstance. now comes a confusing passage in the usually sinless "murray," wherein the author is himself quoting in part from the _quarterly review, no. 108_: "sixteen years later, 'to overawe the disaffected, and to show to the more submissive an image of roman civilization,' a roman colony was founded in the capital of the conquered trinobantes. 'it was dignified with the name of claudian, from the emperor himself, or victricensis, from the conquest of which it was the symbol, which was also typified by a statue of victory, erected in its principal place.' the place received indiscriminately the name of colonia, camulodunum,--or sometimes colonia camulodunum. it was the first roman colony founded in britain. 'claudius determined to inform the minds of his remotest subjects on the article of his own divinity--and accordingly directed the colonists of camulodunum to consecrate to him a temple, and appoint from among themselves an order of priests to minister therein.'" nothing could be more in this picture, nothing more thoroughly in harmony with the character of claudius; but the words "sixteen years later" give pause. sixteen years would bring us to a.d. 60, when nero wore the purple and misbehaved himself generally; and six years before that agrippina, who was already more than wife to claudius, since she was his niece also, became his murderess by the aid of the physician xenophon. but it is only the date that is wrong. it was in the year 50, six years later, not sixteen, that the successor of plautius, having been many times worsted by the hard-fighting silures of south wales, was ordered to found a colony at camulodunum. if claudius had a political hobby it was the foundation of colonies, which he usually permitted to be known as _colonia_, "the colony," simply. such was colchester; such was cologne, founded by him a year later at the asking of agrippina, who had been born there. but the english colonia did not quite come up to expectations, for the image of roman civilization shown by it was not attractive, and its military organization was non-existent. the worn-out veterans, who were the colonists, did not build for themselves a concentrated city, a sort of stationary camp. on the contrary, they settled themselves in the scattered houses of the britons. "the houses even of the britons," says merivale, "were to the rude inmates of the tent not inconvenient." the dean of ely, as he afterwards became, wrote these words somewhere between 1850 and 1860, and had not the chances open to us of knowing that the families of the britons of this epoch, the period of cunobelin's coinage be it remarked, most likely enjoyed quite comfortable houses. a theatre, too, these colonists constructed, for their own amusement. to the question of defences they gave no heed. caradoc and his fighting welshmen were far away in south wales. the trinobantes around them were quite subdued. the iceni, to the eastward, owed and paid tribute to rome through their prince prasutagus. the luxury of neronian rome was repeated no doubt, on a small scale, in the distant and careless colony. in a.d. 61 came the ill-treatment of boadicea, the widow of prasutagus, already recorded, and the revolt of the iceni under her leadership. then, the moment being well chosen, for the governor was away as before stated, the colonists had bitter cause to rue their previous indolence, for the colony was quite defenceless. as we have seen before, boadicea and her britons enjoyed a short-lived but very complete revenge. dion, indeed, goes into details, making out the britons to have been, if possible, rather worse than bashi bazouks, as painted by the atrocity-monger. the ultimate result, of course, was that the iceni were wiped out of existence, and the chances are that the trinobantes also felt the strong wrath of suetonius. the steed having been stolen and recaptured, the stable door was locked, so to speak, once and for ever. that is to say, the walls of colchester were built with such strength that no rising of the kind was likely to succeed again; and that is why in colchester we have the finest and most complete roman walls to be found in the kingdom. colchester is rich in roman relics also, to be found stored in museums, and in the form of roman bricks and tiles built into the walls of the norman keep to the north of the high street, and into the ruined walls of st. botolph's priory church, to the south-east of the town. this same keep, the largest in england, was probably built by eudo, high steward to william the conqueror, possibly on the site of the temple of claudius, but as to that there can be no assurance. what is certain is that much roman material was incorporated in the rubble of which the very solid walls are made; and this is natural enough when we reflect that colchester was a real roman colony for nearly 350 years. the most interesting objects in the museum, which is housed in the ancient chapel of the castle, are a curious sphinx, two feet high, with the wings of a bird, the breasts of a bitch, the head of a woman, and the paws of a lion, squatting over the lacerated carcase of its human prey; the famous colchester vase and a bust of caligula, and there have been a number of smaller "finds." colchester is no doubt derived from _colonia_ and _castrum_, but it has a legendary connection with king cole of happy memory, and the principal bastion in balcon lane is still known as colking's castle. the theory of the britons, to summarize first and to quote later a _quarterly_ reviewer, was that the descendants of cunobelin continued in colchester under the romans, and that one of them was coilus, _alias_ cole, the same music and liquor-loving potentate who called for his pipe a good many centuries before the uses of the soothing herb were known in this country; of course, his pipe may have been an instrument of so-called music. after the usurpation of carausius and his successor, cole or coel, duke of kaer-coloin (colchester), surrendered the island to the romans, "in return for which service he was allowed to retain the nominal sovereignty in britain, and has become renowned as the 'old king cole' of popular song. on his dying soon afterwards, the british legends went on to declare that constantius the senator, the representative of the roman power on the island, received the crown of coel, but only in virtue of marriage with his daughter helena; and colchester has hence enjoyed the reputation of giving birth to constantine, the first christian emperor. there is no trace, however, of constantius having been in britain at all before the year 296, at which time his son was twenty-four years old; and the most credible writers assert that his consort was not a briton, but a bithynian. we leave the good citizens of colchester in possession of their arms 'a cross intagled between four crowns,' in token of helena's invention of the cross of christ; but we cannot allow that they have any historical title to them." how others may feel in a matter of this kind it is not for me to say, but in me the serene air of superiority with which the ultra-learned brush away a tradition usually excites a suspicion, not wholly dissociated from a desire, that they may be wrong. "the most credible writers" of the _quarterly_ reviewer produce no impression on me. it is the kind of expression one would expect of a writer who did not feel inclined to be at the pains of research. equally, when a presumably learned writer in the _encyclopædia britannica_ says, under the heading "constantine," "a later tradition, adopted with characteristic credulity by geoffrey of monmouth, that helena was the daughter of a british king, is a pure invention," i reflect that assertion is not argument, although it often passes for such. after all, this same contemptuous writer can but tell us that constantine was born in 274 to constantius and helena, "the wife of obscure origin (daughter of a _stabularia_, or innkeeper, according to st. ambrose), whom her husband was compelled to repudiate on attaining the dignity of cæsar." and when "helena" is referred to, we find another learned author saying that of her nationality nothing certain is known. again, the statement that there is no trace of constantius ever having been in britain before 296 (at which time, by the way, constantine was twenty-two, not twenty-four), does not satisfy the court. in 273, the year in which the wanderings of the father of constantine would be material, constantius flavius valerius was but a young soldier, of dalmatian origin, in whom nobody yet recognized the future emperor. he was twenty-three years of age, or thereabouts, for so little is known of his early life that the exact year even of his birth is unknown. it was not until nearly twenty years later that, having distinguished himself in dalmatia, he was adopted and appointed cæsar by maximian. there was no reason in life why he should not have gone to britain without attracting notice at the age of twenty-three, every reason why, if he did so, he should visit the flourishing, comfortable, and very accessible colony on the banks of the colne. there he certainly did not find coel, or cole, a reigning sovereign, but he might very possibly have found a "merry old soul" of an innkeeper, who vowed that he was descended from cunobelin, and possessed a charming daughter. it is not suggested that these things actually happened, but it is most distinctly suggested that, unless the learned can trace the wanderings of the father of constantine all through 273 and show that he was not in britain, to say there is no trace of his having been in britain before 296 is entirely beside the question. here we have an example of a frequent kind of historical incapacity, that of failing to realize the life of the past. the dashing young officer might, in fact, have been in colchester very easily, and if he succumbed to the charms of the inn-keeper's daughter, the event was not of a kind contrary to human experience. it is for the sceptic to prove an alibi if he desires to upset tradition. helena may, then, have been the daughter of a colchester innkeeper, she was certainly the mother of constantine. equally certainly, when her son became emperor, she took a great interest in britain, which tends to show that she may have been british by birth. it is true that cities in syria and bithynia were named helenopolis after her, and this might be cited in favour of her bithynian origin, only it could not be more in favour of one than the other, since she could not have been born in two places. here let a little confession and explanation be made. the _quarterly_ reviewer's statement that the arms of colchester might be left to it "in token of helena's invention of the cross of christ," left me quite in the dark; and the darkness was dispelled in the most commonplace way by reference to books. helena did not invent the cross of christ, in one sense of the word, because the romans had done so before her time. but, according to tradition, she made a pilgrimage to the holy land, and found there the holy sepulchre and the true cross of christ. that is a tradition which i do not attempt to justify, or to criticize beyond saying that the pilgrimage would really be an easy one for the mother of a powerful emperor who was absolute in jerusalem, and that the fabric might easily have been sound in helena's time. of the siege of colchester during the rebellion, and of the cruel vengeance exacted by fairfax, under the relentless influence of ireton, on lucas and lisle, mention has been made at an earlier point, but at the moment of mention i was not aware that the populace of colchester, like that of most of east anglia, was essentially in sympathy with the parliament, and had helped its cause over and over again. it was the necessity of war that drove the royalists--"undaunted capel" was of their number too--into colchester, and it may well be that through familiarity with the place lucas was enabled to make exceptionally capable use of the outlines of the town for purposes of defence. for the lucases were tenants in fee of the abbey of st. john, the gate of which still remains, restored it is true. "the last abbot," says murray, "was hanged at his own gate for contumacy in refusing to acknowledge the royal supremacy." the last owner, whose ancestors had come in by purchase and not by force, faced death hard by with equal resolution and cheerfulness for the cause which he held dear. the defence had been a gallant but a hopeless enterprise. reduced to the last extremity for lack of provisions, "after feeding on the vilest aliment," worn out by hunger and desperate sallies, surrounded by a hostile population, the leaders must indeed have been weary of life. how they lost it we know; but ireton was not satisfied with the blood of the leaders. the common soldiers were dispatched to the american plantations, were in fact converted into white slaves by the champions of freedom and of religion; and the unhappy townsfolk, who certainly had no wish to take the royalist side, although it is probable that many of them felt personal regard for lucas and his family, were mulcted in the sum of £12,000, a very large sum in those days. "soon after, a gentleman appearing in the king's presence, clothed in mourning for sir charles lucas; that humane prince, suddenly recollecting the hard fate of his friends, paid them a tribute, which none of his own unparalleled misfortunes ever extorted from him; he dissolved into a flood of tears." these words, with their peculiar punctuation and their copious capitals, are those not of the stately and partisan clarendon but of david hume, whom adam smith considered "as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit." _leviore plectro._ no wise man will go to colchester without sampling the oysters, for which colchester has been famous since it was camulodunum. they are traditionally the best in the world, although perhaps something may be urged in favour of the marennes of france (but the green colour is somewhat against them), or of the giant oysters of new zealand, which were unknown, as new zealand was, when the tradition of colchester natives was already ancient. our ipswich oysters most likely came from the celebrated layings in the colne, so there was no heresy in singing their praises. many another place, and whitstable above all others, is famous for its oysters, but only at colchester are the layings the property of the corporate body, only on the colne is the development of our old friend the "succulent bivalve" officially watched from the time when it is no bigger than "a drop from a tallow candle" to that at which it conforms to the dimensions of the municipal model in silver. only at colchester is it eaten, or are they eaten, with a just combination of civic ceremony and appreciative abandon. colchester oysters, indeed, have but one drawback. they are not, in these days of rapid transport, so cheap as some epicures of scanty purse might desire. for that matter good oysters are seldom to be found at a moderate price in the old world. australia is the oyster-lover's paradise. there, in any little bay, rock-oysters may be broken off in blocks, opened, and eaten out of hand; and one orders them not by the dozen, but by the plate, which holds eighteen or twenty, at the modest price of one shilling. oysters were a distinct consolation during these manoeuvres--be it hoped the military character of the starting point has not passed out of mind--to those officers who mourned the futility and the cost of the operations by land: they were a sheer joy to those who were indifferent on the military question. but there were manoeuvres all the same, and they involved many journeys by motor-car and by bicycle to all parts of the surrounding district. the first journey i took by bicycle, fairly early in the morning, to clacton. a broiling sun poured down upon roads of yielding surface, soaked by a night's rain, and one gained a respect for the little hills which was completely lost in the lanchester later. they are hills, though, without doubt, and a car of low power would feel them. the descent from the centre of colchester is sharp, the ascent in returning necessarily the same, and the termination of wivenhoe spells hill as plainly as plymouth "hoe" does, and for the same etymological reason. it is, in fact, a country of pretty little hills, abundantly wooded, until the flat land by the sea-coast is reached. it is to be feared that no halt was made on this or any other occasion to notice the roman tiles built into the wall of the church at wivenhoe. in the roadside scenery, however, an eye fresh from berkshire observed one pleasing characteristic appearing to be singular. the hedgerow trees were, for the most part, elms, not very tall, for no tree grows to a stately height near the sea in our islands, but very much more beautiful than the loftier elms of berkshire, save those planted for ornament, in windsor park for example. these low elms spread their welcome shade--true, it keeps the surface damp and renders road-preservation difficult--well over the way from either side. there was no doubt they looked better than the ordinary berkshire elm that, newly mutilated, is bare as a ship's mast for thirty or forty or fifty feet, and has a mere tuft at the top like birch broom, or, clipped a year or two ago, supports the same birch broom upon an apparently solid and most disproportionately thick column of opaque green. the patulous elms, too, exercised their little influence on the manoeuvres, but before explaining it, let the word "patulous," suggested by memory of the first line of virgil, and incontinently looked for in a dictionary, be justified. it is not merely a botanical term, nor of my coinage. no less a poet than p. robinson, in no less famous a poem than "under the sun," wrote, "the patulous teak, with its great leathern leaves." perhaps p. robinson was not famous; it may be noticed that courage is wanting to dub him peter, paul, or even percival; and "under the sun" may have been a very minor poem by a quite insignificant writer; but p. robinson at least knew where to go for a word expressing his exact meaning, and mine, better than any other in the english language. the patulous elms, then, exercised their influence on the manoeuvres. how? some days later, when general french, not having burned his ships, was in full retreat for them his enemy, general wynne, sent up a balloon to spy out his movements and those of his troops. espying that balloon at a distance of some ten miles, we gave chase in the lanchester and came up to it, just after it had been brought down to earth in the centre of one of the strange crops to be found in this part of essex. (it was a crop, as it turned out, of bird-seed, and marked as out of bounds, but balloons as they descend know no law.) the officer of royal engineers had been up 1000 feet or more in the balloon; he had scanned the whole country with field-glasses from a bird's-eye point of view. the country between him and the sea, layer de la haye, layer breton and the vicinity--he was at tiptree of jam fame--was full of french's soldiery. they were marching in column of route within half a mile of him. yet, by reason of the patulous elms, he had seen nothing of them. we had; but we were non-combatants and neutral, and therefore silent. after wivenhoe, the route to clacton-on-sea chosen that day, through thorrington and great clacton, seemed dull and was very flat. but clacton-on-sea was a remarkable sight then, and is always, during the season, a sight quite _sui generis_. some of the things witnessed that day will probably never be seen again. the long line of transports and cruisers lying a couple of miles out and extending from great holland to clacton, the horse-boats being towed ashore, were both quite exceptional. indeed, the horse-boats will certainly never reappear at clacton or anywhere else, for a storm broke most of them up a day or two later, and the wreckage was sold by auction on the spot. nor again, most likely, shall we see the duke of connaught and his general staff, and a brilliant group of foreign attachés, naval and military, standing on clacton beach amidst a seething crowd of east end trippers, and mountebanks, and nigger minstrels, and shell-fish vendors. but clacton-on-sea and its casual visitors were true to themselves none the less, and between them they made a quite wonderful spectacle, needing to be seen by the uninitiated before it could be realized, and certainly worth realizing by any easy-going student of human nature. my expeditions to clacton-on-sea were not taken by me in the capacity of motorist simply; indeed, the first of them was made on a bicycle, and the others, for there were several more to follow, in a car, when my knowledge of motoring was embryonic. yet i found in clacton-on-sea one of that peculiar class of places which he who follows what may be called public motoring learns to know through the motor-car, and would certainly not have learned to know in any other way. blackpool is another such place, visited because in several successive years it has broken out into "speed trials," and douglas in the isle of man is another, to which motorists go by reason of the tourist trophy race. blackpool and douglas are grander in their kind than clacton. they have more winter gardens--i am not sure that clacton boasts any at all--huge dancing-rooms, constructed and conducted by municipal enterprise, in which the dancing is marked by a punctilious decorum and, it may be added, by an excellence of execution, which would put the most famous ball-rooms in london to shame. but all three have two points in common. every prospect, except that of the houses and public buildings, pleases. at each the sea gleams in the sun or crashes on the beach as the case may be. each has its parade, esplanade, promenade, call it what you will; and this is crowded, as the beach is also, in the season of the year. at clacton-on-sea a few of the buildings are tolerable to the eye, and there is one hotel, not the most pretentious of them, which is more than endurable to look at, and quite reasonably comfortable. it stands facing the sea, and its broad veranda is screened by a dense fig-tree carefully trained. a better vantage ground for a weary wayfarer need not be desired. from that cool veranda, reflecting that it is every whit as comfortable to sit under somebody else's fig-tree as under one's own, i looked on the passing and re-passing crowd on the parade, like dido gazing from her watch-tower at the departing ships of æneas, but in a very different mood. in truth the spectacle was both amusing and perplexing. at first sight it seemed for all the world as if hundreds, and even thousands, of smart ladies, of the kind one sees at ascot or even at goodwood, had cast aside all prejudices of position, and were consorting with men whom the conventions of society assign to a lower rank. dresses and sunshades and hats were all spotlessly clean, colours were subdued and delicate. closer inspection would no doubt have revealed to the trained eye of a woman that the frocks were ill-made and badly "hung," that the materials were cheap, which is bad, and that they looked cheap, which is worse. to a man it revealed nothing of this, nothing more at first than a vast number of girls, walking well, and some of them quite pretty, in the company of young fellows who, worthy representatives of an excellent class as they may have been, were clearly not gentlemen. their dress alone betrayed that, not by dint of shabbiness, but rather by its excessive and ill-judged smartness. then voices became clear; the twang of the male and female cockney filled the air as the so-called music of a jew's-harp, or of an orchestra of jew's-harps; and finally a closer view revealed the gruesome fact that these dainty creatures were consuming periwinkles, with the aid of a pin, as they walked, were crunching shrimps between their pearly teeth, and getting rid of the superfluous integument by--well, by the usual process of the east end of london, without any help from the hand; in fact, by pure propulsion from pouting lips. half of the mystery was solved. the elegant nymphs of clacton-on-sea were simply east end girls who had made the cheap trip by sea. but the mystery of their attire remained, was indeed doubled. where were the "fevvers," the flowing ostrich plumes of many hues, without which the traditional girl of the east end reckons herself disgraced? whence had the far more pleasing dresses come? inquiry made, not of those who wore them, since their powers of repartee are proverbial, elicited the suggestion that all this pretty finery was hired for the day from one or other of the many big drapers at the east end. if so, it can only be said that the taste shown was, on the whole, excellent, and the general effect very good and pleasing. so really was the spectacle. laughing and talking, eating endless shell-fish, and consuming really very little alcoholic liquor, these young folks strutted and preened themselves in the sun all the livelong day. they even found pennies, hard earned no doubt, to bestow upon the pierrots and the nigger-minstrels who assaulted the ear on all sides. of noise and jesting there was no end, of disorder no beginning. even when, on a later occasion, i slept at clacton for a night or two to watch the work of re-embarkation, which was as interesting as the manoeuvres were silly, the sounds of revelry by night were few and far between. in fact, clacton serves its patrons well, and they conduct themselves merrily and yet decently in it. it is a sight well worth seeing, as blackpool and douglas are also, once in a while. it might even serve to soothe some of the sympathetic anguish of those who mourn over the monotonous lives of the poor. but this is not to say that, for quiet folk who do not wish to take their pleasure in the east end way, clacton-on-sea is a desirable place in which to spend a summer holiday. it is worth while to drive there from colchester for luncheon, and that is all. fortune and the good nature of a newly made friend favoured me. the transports were discharging horse and foot simultaneously in a long line extending from clacton, indeed almost from st. osyth, to a point beyond great holland to the north-east. the very idea of a bicycle was repugnant to me when, as luck would have it, i encountered another correspondent who had a napier at his disposal. off we whirred, along conventional seaside roads, and up, from the flat ground whereon clacton-on-sea stands, climbing a sensible but not difficult acclivity until we had almost reached great holland. a little farther on, but unvisited, was walton-on-the-naze, another of those parts of the east coast which have suffered from the relentless greed of the sea. nay, in times past, the sea had gone very near to sacrilege, for it has devoured the lands with which a prebend of st. paul's was endowed. but save for him who desires fossils, and coprolites especially, the most uninteresting of all fossils, which may be found in abundance in the cliff, a visit to walton is not recommended. walton may be styled walton-le-soken, and kirkby and thorpe hard by are also finished off by "le-soken." the expression has its legal and historical interest, for it shows that the lords of each possessed the power of "sac and soc," and, in fact, a power of holding special courts. but this does not serve to make the places themselves at all interesting and, to put it bluntly, this country by the sea in these parts is not attractive. the rest of our day's drive, before we returned to colchester--the bicycle, i may say, remained at clacton unmourned until the time came for leaving the district--took us near to a series of bivouacs, of no permanent interest, and as far as st. osyth, which lies on the opposite side to brightlingsea of a little tributary of the colne, crossed by a ferry. time was abundant, and it has been matter for frequent regret since that, merely through ignorance of that which was close at hand, i missed seeing the obviously interesting remains of the priory, in its restored form, and the church, said to date back to st. osyth herself, who was the wife of suthred, king of the east angles. when suthred flourished i know no more than i do any reason why others should miss that which i, having then no project of this kind formed, omitted. brightlingsea over the ferry is, by all accounts, not worth a visit, although it was one of the cinque ports. so, as a matter of strict narrative, back i fared that evening to the temporary home at the "red lion" and, as has been stated previously, i saw something of the country in the immediate vicinity of colchester to the south-east by east, and of our soldiery, early the next morning. later in the day--for a day beginning at 4 a.m. is not short--there was abundant opportunity for making preliminary study of colchester, and during my stay an immense number of places were seen and many routes were traversed at one time or another. the places were seen and the routes were taken as the tide of battle rolled, or as it was expected to roll, which did not always come to the same thing; but that was an order of visitation dictated by outside circumstances, and not to be recommended to those who are quite at liberty to follow their own fancy. so, during a leisurely drive of a morning and an afternoon, we will go in the spirit to a number of places, every one of which has been inspected from a motor-car, although not necessarily in the order named. between the estuaries of the colne and the stour lies a peninsula, part of which has already been treated, and the rest of it is now our subject. it is by no means a mountainous tract. according to a coloured contour map lying before me no single eminence in it is more than two hundred and fifty feet above the sea-level; but it would be a grave mistake to put down this part of essex as a flat country. it is, in fact, undulating, and if, to carry on the metaphor, none of the waves are atlantic rollers, a good many of them are in the nature of short and choppy seas. the lanchester, which there need be the less hesitation in praising in that the makers in all probability would not construct or deliver its sister machine now, made merry with most of these hills, but of the other cars, of which the name was legion in those days of sham-fighting, we passed many crawling up steep little ascents and many others at a standstill. one such hill, at least, we encounter in this drive, between ardleigh and manningtree, where the gradient is 1 in 13; hardly a mere nothing even from the standpoint of 1906, but not long since quite worthy to be regarded as a serious obstacle. moreover the trees are abundant, the hedges thick and well kept, the land highly cultivated, and the whole is entertaining and restful to the eye, although the curvatures of the roads and the screening hedges call for the exercise of exact care in driving. we start then from colchester at such time in the morning as may seem good, and ask for the ardleigh road. five miles take us to ardleigh, and here we come at once upon the industry which has the indirect effect of giving to the scenery of essex peculiar characteristics of detail. between ardleigh and dedham--constable's dedham--lies the ground cultivated for special purposes by messrs. carter, of holborn, of whom it is but plain truth to say that they are among the most prominent seed-growers of this country. many of my little tours in essex were made in company with an officer whose duty it had been to mark with flags fields which the foot of the soldier must not trample upon, whose duty it would be afterwards to assess the compensation to be given to farmers for damage done. one of our early conversations ran somewhat to this effect: _author._ "it seems to me you might save a lot of expense next time by placing flags where the troops may go, not in the forbidden ground. you would not need nearly so many flags. how on earth are troops marching along this road to learn anything? no sooner have they thrown out men to feel their way for them and to protect them from being taken in flank, than the men must come back to the road to avoid a patch of common swedes or mangels." _compensation officer._ "yes, it looks like that; but you must remember these are not ordinary swedes or mangles." _author._ "what do you mean? they look pretty commonplace. we should think nothing of walking through roots as good, or better, after partridges at home." _compensation officer._ "of course we should; but i tell you these are not ordinary roots. they are all being grown for seed; they may be choice kinds produced, for all i know, as the result of years of experiment. you never know what you may come upon next in this seed-growing country. you will find whole fields of delphinium, dahlia, penstemon, lupin, almost any flowering plant, to say nothing of crops of strange plants, whose very appearance is unknown to you." _author._ "did the great men of the war office know all this when they decided to hold manoeuvres here? if so, it seems to me, they made a foolish choice of their ground, because, while the value of the training is reduced by the necessary cramping of movement, the compensation payable is sure to be out of all reason." and the compensation officer answered never a word, for the purposes of this book, but probably he thought the more. his description of the country was justified abundantly. the very grass might be, very likely was, being grown for special lawn seed, and, over and over again, one passed acres of early autumnal flowers in full bloom, which set an eager gardener (for man may be gardener and motorist) thinking of additions to be made to his own distant plot. on we fared, breasting that hill of 1 in 13, and in 2-3/4 miles we are at manningtree. now, manningtree is ancient, and it has a history. "why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted _manningtree_ ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years?" thus, in the first part of _king henry iv_ (act ii. scene 4), does harry of monmouth, speaking of falstaff, but himself in the character of his own father, address himself. argal, the cattle sold at manningtree fair had a great name even in shakespeare's day. manningtree also was, as may be seen from a memorial slab in the church, connected with thomas tusser, the agricultural poet of the sixteenth century, who, after being educated at king's college and trinity hall, cambridge, rejected music, for which he had been trained, for farming on the banks of the stour. this was "an employment," says a superior person, "which he seems to have regarded as combining the chief essentials of human felicity." well, there are worse occupations than farming, and the production of indifferent music is one of them. it is pleasant to muse over tusser's tablet at manningtree, to reflect that he probably was a practical and improving farmer, else a tablet would hardly have been erected at manningtree in memory of a man who was buried at st. paul's, and to hope that to him, at least in part, was due that fame of the manningtree oxen which made shakespeare select them as typical. that shakespeare and tusser ever met in the flesh is unlikely, for tusser died in 1580, and even that strange tribe the baconians admit that shakespeare was born in 1564 and remained at stratford grammar school until he was fifteen. less creditably connected with manningtree was matthew hopkins, the "witchfinder," appointed as such by parliament in 1644--by the parliament of westminster presumably, not by that of oxford, for charles held a parliament at oxford in that year--and celebrated in _hudibras_. his was the fate of phalaris, for at last, having "hanged three-score of them in a shire," he was tried in the same brutal fashion which he had applied to others, and perished in like fashion. we have no right, after quite modern experience in ireland, to be very contemptuous towards our forefathers in respect of their belief in witches; but still it is a little startling to be compelled to realize that they set hopkins and his fellow-commissioners to their task in a year so full of grim realities as that of marston moor, of cropredy bridge, and of the duke of newcastle's departure in despair from the kingdom. it has been well to reach manningtree by the fairly good road from colchester; but we must go to the westward a little, and cross the stour, leaving essex and our peninsula for a while if we would not miss perhaps the most precious association of the valley of the stour. it is east bergholt, the birthplace of john constable, the miller's son, and here we are in the country which he once had the pleasure of hearing described in his presence by a complete stranger as "constable's country." this was the more strange in that, like many another artist before him and since his day--the word "artist" is used in its widest sense--he was not appreciated at his full worth while he lived among men. a few days or a week spent in constable's country, by painters or by those who aspire to know something of the spirit of landscape painting, are now to be regarded as time spent pleasantly, profitably, and naturally by men and women of cultivated taste; but the stranger on the ipswich coach who said in his hearing, "this is constable's country," was in advance of the average taste of his generation, for, although constable was appreciated in france before those of his own race were awake to his merits, it is one of the cruel ironies of fate that, when the great landscape painter died, his studio was full of unsold pictures. his case, unlike that of thomas gainsborough, whom we shall meet soon, was one in which a stolid parent did his best to choke the spring of artistic spirit in its efforts to express itself in form and colour. it was also one compelling the quotation, "god fulfils himself in many ways." he showed his leanings in early boy-hood, doubtless in the usual manner, when he was a pupil in the grammar school at dedham, in essex and close by--the tower of dedham church is a prominent object in many of his landscapes. again, what country-bred man does not remember how, when the plumber was called in (he was usually painter and glazier too), undiluted joy was to be obtained from watching him at work, from working his divine putty into fantastic shapes, from unlicensed meddling with his brushes and paints? john constable, too, watched his father's plumber, one dunthune, to some purpose, and dunthune was no ordinary plumber. he knew something of landscape painting, and is said to have inspired the boy to that habit of studying in the open air which, in all probability, stood in little need of inspiration. in this is nothing of unnatural novelty. was not john crome, of norwich, apprenticed to a coach and sign-painter, or, as some have it, to a house-painter? the wonder is rather that more house-painters do not develop some measure of artistic proficiency. constable's father, however, had no sympathy for his son's budding genius. the boy, leaving school early, as we reckon now, was set to the task of watching a windmill, and here was one of the many ways in which god fulfilled himself. compelled to study the face of the sky with minutest care, the boy acquired that intimate familiarity with it, that joy "in gleaming showers, and breezy sunshine after rain, and grey mists of summer showers" (to quote mr. h. w. nevinson's words in an article he has most likely forgotten), which was the basis of his fame. fuseli might sneer at the painter of "great-coat weather," but fuseli had the reputation of a cynical wit to keep up. englishmen will hail constable for all time now as the faithful translator and revealer of the inner spirit of landscape. still excuses may be made for the father. parents have a pardonable habit of considering ways and means, of preferring the certain to the problematic, in planning careers for their sons. the apprehensions of constable the elder were so far justified by results that constable the younger was by no means immediately successful. he went to london in 1795, being then not twenty years of age. he came back, beaten, to the windmill and the counting house in 1797. from 1799 to 1816, married, struggling, unappreciated, he fought the desperate battle against poverty in london once more. only in the latter year, when he was forty years of age, and his father died leaving him £4000, was he able to live in any approach to comfortable circumstances. perhaps the deliverance from _res angusta domi_ helped him to paint better. few men are so cheerfully constituted that, like mr. shandon in the fleet and in _pendennis_--in a novel, of course, but mr. shandon is a living reality--can produce good imaginative work amid squalid surroundings and domestic anxieties--perhaps he was really late in development. certain it is that, except _a lock on the stour_ and _dedham vale_, few of constable's better known pictures were painted before he was forty; and it is equally certain that, to the very end, he was never properly valued by his generation. for us he is the inspired revealer of the tranquil beauties of a district beloved and studied by him dearly and closely as the most ardent of scots ever loved and studied caledonia stern and wild, or the "banks and braes o' bonny doon," and he has expressed his affection for his birthplace in words, not perhaps of fire, but of placid truth, which exactly express the character of the scenery. of east bergholt he writes: "the beauty of the surrounding scenery, its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well-cultivated uplands, its woods and rivers, with numerous scattered villages and churches, farms and picturesque cottages, all impart to this particular spot an amenity and elegance hardly anywhere else to be found." reflecting thus we return to manningtree and our peninsula. manningtree lies at the very easternmost part of the estuary of the stour--all these estuaries would be fjord-like if they had but higher banks--and is really quite close to our pretty stratford st. mary, on the roman road between ipswich and colchester, as well as to dedham and east bergholt. from it we turn due east, and, the road following the estuary, proceed through lawford, mistley, and bradfield, seven miles to dovercourt and harwich. there is a fairly sharp hill of 1 in 13 between mistley and bradfield, and another of 1 in 15 between bradfield and dovercourt. mistley is part of the port of manningtree, and its park, praised by walpole, still survives sufficiently for the district to be most pleasantly clothed with trees. dovercourt bulks large in the history of superstition, its church having possessed a peculiarly holy rood, to which pilgrimages used to be made. now it is a suburb of harwich, and harwich, after many ups and downs, and in spite of the inroads of the sea, is doing fairly well. it was certainly a roman station, it is, like sole bay, one of the few places on land from which naval battles of importance have been seen--one between alfred and the danes, and another against de ruyter; it was the starting point of frobisher on his voyage to find the north west passage, and of dr. johnson for leyden. all this, to render unto cæsar the things which are his, i learn from "murray." from the same source, too, it is gathered that the introduction of steamboats lost the port much of its trade, and that railways revived it. but this particular "murray" is old (1875). its views of commerce need bringing up to date; its views of the aspect of a seaport are not mine. one does not expect "sweetness and light," concerning the absence of which complaint is made, in a seaport devoted to fishing-boats and passenger traffic. i can see more of the picturesque in the narrow and struggling streets, in spite of some dirt, than the writer of 1875; but on me a port or a dock exercises a special and peculiar fascination, and that all the more when, as in the case of harwich, its waters are the head-quarters of a yacht club. to the annals of this yacht club (the royal harwich) i am able to contribute some little crumbs, probably not generally known, from the _memories of sir llewelyn turner_, a book already mentioned in another connection. would that he were alive to give permission, as he would have given it with eager kindness, to reproduce a passage out of his genial work which gives a vivid impression of a harwich regatta of 1846, throws in one or two useful observations, and recalls some valuable associations, and leaves a very vivid impression of the manner in which the yachtsmen of those days enjoyed themselves when the day's sport was over. for preliminary, it need only be said that the owner of the _ranger_, a fast racing yacht, had asked mr. turner (as he was then), a resident in north wales, and mr. parker smith, an irish barrister, to race the _ranger_ for him at harwich during his illness. the rest may be told in sir llewelyn's own words, only, beforehand, it must be noted that the yachtsman from wales, new to the water as he was, taught the east coast men a useful lesson. sir llewelyn turner's remarks concerning ignorant interference with tidal action, too, deserve serious attention. "we joined the yacht at gravesend late in the evening, and at once set sail for harwich, where we arrived next morning after a rapid run. a more agreeable and satisfactory companion than smith i could not have desired, and we both agreed that we felt as if we had known each other for years. soon after our arrival we took up our quarters at the three cups hotel, as the cabin would be required for the spare top-sails and jibs to be ready for shifting canvas in the race. "there was a fine display of racing yachts and others whose owners came to enjoy the sport. several of them had come over from the ostend regatta, one of them bringing an enormous silver cup, by far the largest i ever saw in the numerous regattas in which i was a participator. most of the yachts' cabins were given up for the sails to be ready for shifting, and the three cups hotel was crammed with yachtsmen. taking it all together, it was one of the pleasantest yachting proceedings i ever enjoyed. like too many harbours on our coast, harwich had been a terrible sufferer by the lamentable interference with tidal laws by men entirely ignorant of the science, and interested workers. the harbour is, or rather was, entered in a straight line, and then diverges inside up the bed of the river stour to the left, and to the right of that river the tide ascends the river orwell to ipswich. above the right bank of the orwell is the residence of the man whose memory every lover of his country should adore--_philip bowes vere broke_--the gallant captain of the _shannon_, who, in less than fifteen minutes captured by boarding a frigate of superior force. there were on the orwell two schooner yachts belonging to sir hyde parker, whose ancestor commanded the _tenedos_ frigate which was sent away by broke that he might fight the _chesapeake_ on equal terms. "dredging for personal gain was permitted to the westward outside the harbour, with the result that the deep-water channel was diverted no less than two thousand feet from the east to the west side, a large sand-bank forming on the east side below landguard fort, and a corresponding destruction of beacon's cliff ensued on the opposite side. "four yachts in our class started from a point on the harbour between the town and walton marsh. we had a soldier's wind (side). a brand new yacht, the name of which i forget, was on our weather-side, and the two others to leeward; and we three leeward-most vessels headed rather towards the projecting bank before landguard point, the weathermost yacht pressing us to leeward as much as possible; i kept my eye most of the time on the weather yacht, the master of which kept his eye on us, taking advantage of every opportunity of pressing us to leeward. so near was he that i could see his eyes most distinctly, but he outwitted himself, as he got the whole four yachts so far to leeward that unless we could cross the bank a tack would be inevitable. "i asked the pilot if we could venture to cross the bank, the limits of which were plainly seen by the broken water. he replied, 'if you don't mind two or three bumps i will guarantee her crossing,' and smith agreeing to my proposal, i said, 'we are an iron vessel, let her go.' we passed safely over with about three bumps, and our weather companion having gone too far to leeward in pressing us down, and drawing more water, had to tack. the two others to leeward funked the bank, and tacked also; we were then safe out of the harbour into the 'rolling ground' outside, and spanking before a very strong wind towards the cork lightships some miles dead to leeward. my plan of crossing the bank, which we were not prohibited from doing, gave us an enormous advantage, as in tacking with a side wind the three yachts had a smooth dead beat to get to windward of the bank. when we rounded the cork lightships the other three were, i fancy, about a mile or more astern of us. we had then to beat up to windward, passed the mouth of harwich harbour, and up to a flag-vessel under the lee of walton-on-the-naze, a long low promontory which gave us the full force of the wind, but lessened what would have been, i fancy, too heavy a sea for us. when we had got about half a mile to windward of the cork lightships, some one called out 'look at the----' (name forgotten). and there, far astern of us, was our weathermost competitor (at starting) dismasted, with the water rolling in and out of her scuppers. the lower mast had broken about ten or twelve feet above the decks, as far as we could judge, and we had the satisfaction of seeing her taken in tow of a large sailing-yacht that was not racing. in a few minutes we saw another of our competitors in the same state, her lower mast having gone apparently about the same distance from the deck. this left us with only one to compete with in the dead beat up against a very strong breeze, but, as stated, the sea was mitigated by the walton projection, and the more so as we approached it. we rounded that mark, and after a long run before the wind round the flagship in the harbour whence we had started, and as our single competitor was good four miles astern, the rear-commodore hailed that he would not trouble us any further, and he stopped the race; the course was twice round, with power to shorten, which we were glad was done. i was less surprised to see the first yacht dismantled, as, being a new vessel, her rigging probably stretched, and left the strain of the sails upon the mast, but in the other case it was rather odd. i have been at vast numbers of regattas and have seen many topmasts carried away in races, and in one case a lower mast _head_ with the topmast, but two lower masts out of four in a class was a unique experience." as to the next extract some doubts are felt, on the ground of relevancy only, but still the "battle of harwich," as my old friend liked to call it, was fought there, and the manner of fighting was eminently characteristic of the age, after all only sixty years ago; and, if relevance be granted, the little yarn is, at any rate, entertaining. "the battle of harwich. "there was a fine show of yachts at harwich at this time, and there was a great assemblage of yachtsmen in the prime of life, many, like myself, young fellows of about twenty-three. as there was time before the next port we were to visit, yarmouth, we had an idle day at harwich, and, as dr. watts says, 'satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.' as the yachts' cabins had the sails, etc., in them ready for changing jibs, top-sails, etc., we were almost all living ashore at the three cups hotel, and there this memorable battle was fought under these circumstances. my pleasant companion, michael parker smith, and i went for a long walk up country, and on our return were met in front of the hotel by some of our brother yachtsmen, who said they had been in search of us to see if we would join and make a party of eleven, and they had ordered dinner for that number, calculating that we would join, which we gladly did. another lot of nine had just sat down to dinner in an adjoining room, and the windows of both rooms, which were upstairs, looked over a lower part of the hotel, so that any one going out of the window of one room could go along the roof of the lower building to the window of the other room. it was somewhat curious that not only were we numerically superior, but we were all the biggest men. while we were at dinner, one of the nine going out of their window crept under ours, and threw a squib right along our table. he was a man with a curious head of hair, and was known amongst us as 'old frizzlewig,' _alias_ 'door-mat.' frizzlewig beat a retreat after delivering his shot, two of us lay in wait for him on each side of our window, and while he was launching another squib we got hold of him; a detachment of the other army got out on the lower roof, and it was soon a case of 'pull devil, pull baker.' we had his upper half inside the room, and his party the lower end outside. as the other side were being reinforced, the cry on our side was, 'shut the window,' the result being that to avoid the guillotining of poor frizzlewig in the centre, the other side had to let go his legs. we took him prisoner, and fastened the window, and the other army going back through their room came to the rescue through our door. then arose the din of this memorable engagement, recorded in humorous lines soon after, but now lost by me. my chum smith was very neatly dressed, so much so that i had a light suit made afterwards like it for myself. when the battle commenced the puddings and pies were on the table. the blood was apparently pouring down the neat shirt front, pretty waistcoat and white trousers with the blue stripes of smith, the ball with which he was struck in the chest and which called the scarlet overflow being nothing less in size than a thirty-two pounder. this ball had a minute before graced the head of our table in the form of a fine red-currant pudding, which one of the attacking force had seized with both hands, and hurled it into smith's bosom, and the red-currant juice gave smith the bloody look that crimsoned his attire. in a few minutes the crockeryware and glass had all left the table for the floor, or been smashed, excepting one big jug. not to harrow the minds of the readers by a further account of so sanguinary an engagement, i conclude by saying that the mortality was _nil_, and the whole of the enemy had to surrender, the eleven being too much for the nine. our principal prisoner was rear-commodore knight, who was not very big, one of the smallest of his army. we treated our captives with all consideration and humanity, and did not hang any of them. we then rang the bell for the landlord, and told him to estimate the damage, and as luckily the crockery, etc., was not of a costly kind, the whole cost of this great battle only came to 3s. 8d. or 3s. 10d. per head. as far as i saw, the whole thing was conducted with the greatest good humour, and i heard not a cross word; but my friend smith told me afterwards, when i spoke of everybody's good humour, that he and a namesake of his very nearly got to blows. those were days when rough jokes were practised more, i fancy, than now. every one of us had squibs and crackers _ad lib._; but a better-humoured lot i never met, the great battle notwithstanding. after the racing the yachtsmen all dined pleasantly together at the three cups, after a hard day's racing, and some one said there was a ball to which we could go, and off we went, finding to our amazement that we had got into a low-class place, where there were a lot of most disreputable men and women, and on our attempting to beat a retreat we found the door we had entered by was barricaded. we then burst open another, and going down stairs found the bottom of that barricaded. sir richard marion wilson, who was with his yacht at harwich, but not racing, vaulted over the banisters into the middle of a lot of fellows who vowed we should not go out without paying our footing as they called it. i immediately vaulted over, and stood by sir richard wilson, and was followed by the adjutant of the flintshire militia. sir r. wilson ordered the ruffians to open the door, saying, 'any man who touches me will have reason to repent it.' there was little room for reinforcements from our side as the place we had jumped into was small, but as there were a lot more yachtsmen on the stairs, the bargees showed some desire for a compromise, and said if we would order some liquor the door should be opened. sir r. wilson said, 'not one drop of anything will we give you, or do anything else, excepting on our own terms. bring a flat wash tub, if there is one at hand,' and they at once found a large shallow wooden one, the place being, it seems, used for washing. he then told them to bring him a gallon of beer, which they quickly did. 'now,' he said, 'pour it into the tub.' he paid for the ale, and the door was opened, and he said, 'now let the pigs drink'; and while they were all struggling for the liquor we all walked into the street, having been completely sold by whoever gave out that there was a ball. i never was in such another blackguard assembly in my life." i am tempted to proceed because sir llewelyn gives us a new view of the suffolk coast. "we sailed from harwich to yarmouth in company with two of the fastest 25-tonners afloat, viz., the _ino_, and the _prima donna_; the third, the _seiont_, though she went to yarmouth, did not sail in our company. i have seen every one of the three beat the others at east coast regattas, and i fancy yachting men will appreciate the following curious statement. "the _seiont_ and _ino_ were singularly well matched in beating to windward, and up to the turning-point of a race they were always close together, but the _seiont_ had an ugly trick in running before a strong breeze of cocking up her stern, and the _ino_ would pass and leave her far behind in a long run. "the _prima donna_ was not nearly equal on the wind to either of the two others, but if (which is not often the case) she had a long run without being close-hauled she beat both, and thus i saw each of the three successful over the others. "our trip from harwich to yarmouth was delightful; the land is so low that farm-carts in the fields looked as if we were higher than they, the gentle wind was on the land, and the sea was as smooth as a pond with only the gentlest ripple. we laid a plot to seize the _ino_ and navigate her into yarmouth, we being the largest party; and we thought if we could get aboard when they were at lunch, and the bulk of the crew at dinner, we could do it. the wind fell to a dead calm two or three times; but luckily for us--as will be seen--before we could get our boat ready to board a gentle breeze arose, and we were all soon doing seven or eight knots. i often think our beating up the narrow entrance of the river at yarmouth at low water against a dead head wind was a masterpiece in sailing, the space being exceedingly confined to tack in. all the yachtsmen had agreed at harwich to dine together at the star hotel at yarmouth, where dinner had been ordered by letter beforehand, and a most pleasant evening we had. now my readers will learn why it was lucky for us that we could not board the _ino_. i told them at dinner of our piratical design at sea that day, and they soon had the laugh against us: they had a powerful machine for wetting the sails at regattas, that would send water up to the topsail; and the owner said, 'do you think after the experience we had of you fellows at harwich that we would have let a lot of you aboard of us? we had a careful watch kept upon you, and whenever you were seen to be getting a boat ready the machine was ready for you, and we would have filled your boat with water in a short time.' what a pickle we should have been in! we were again successful at yarmouth, coming in first and winning a cup. "it was painful to witness the large number of people in deep mourning at this curious old town, with its quaint narrow lanes the names of which i forget ('wynds,' i think). the cause of all this mourning was a most extraordinary one. a short time previous to our advent some large travelling show had visited the town, and the clown gave out that at a particular hour on a day named he would go down the river yare (a fresh-water river running from norwich) in a tub drawn by two geese. a very large concourse of people assembled on both banks of the river, which is very narrow, and was spanned by a light iron suspension bridge. the bridge collapsed, and more than seventy lives were lost. i looked at the place in absolute amazement, and wondered had anything like a tithe of the loss have taken place; one lot must have suffocated the others." no apology is offered for having conveyed some information concerning harwich and its yachting memories of the past in the words of a pleasant gossip who has passed away. but my old friend was not terse, and he had a rooted objection while he lived, which shall be respected still, to curtailment by another hand, and so, if we want to proceed with our little cruise upon wheels of a single day and to finish it, let us take luncheon at harwich, without throwing raspberry tarts at one another, and go on our way. luncheon over, not being of the type of motorists who cannot endure to stand on their own feet or to be at rest for a moment, let us look across the estuary to landguard point and, with the aid of the books, think a little over the astonishing metamorphosis brought about, partly by the sweep of the tides, partly perhaps by the hand of man, not thoughtless so much as too confident of knowledge, in the outlines of this part of the coast during historical times. "murray" sets one thinking and no more. "landguard fort (mounting 36 guns), on a spit of land now joined to the suffolk coast (it is said that the stour once passed on the north side of it), was built in the reign of james i." to say thus much and no more is merely to excite curiosity without sating it. to consult lord avebury (_the scenery of england_) is to obtain satisfaction on the general problem and to learn that details are of quite minor significance. he who has once realized the character, the untiring and irresistible, but in some respects irregular force, of the influences at work, will soon see how the outline of the coast may vary from year to year, even from day to day, in the future as in the past. "one of the finest spreads of shingle in the united kingdom is on the left side of the ore or alde in suffolk, reaching north-eastward to aldeburgh, and which is still increasing by the deposit of shingle at its south-western end. a chart of the time of henry viii shows distinctly that the mouth of orford haven was then opposite orford castle, whilst a chart of the time of elizabeth shows a considerable south-westerly progression. when the ordnance map was made (published 1838), north weir point, as the end of the spit is called, was about east of hollesley. it" (the spread of shingle, of course) "consists of a series of curved concentric ridges, or 'fulls,' sweeping round and forming a projecting cape or 'ness' in advance of the general coastline." seen in diagram, from a bird's-eye point of view, these "fulls" closely resemble a vastly long and narrow field ridged up for the reception of cyclopean potatoes. (in passing, the bird's-eye view, involving an effort of the imagination, is out of date, and there is every prospect that very soon not one man or woman in a thousand, but a large percentage, will be in a position to speak without affectation of tracts of country as seen from a balloon.) this particular bird's-eye prospect, however, is that of a bird perched on the high lighthouse and looking south-west over hollesley bay and the adjacent land to the naze, and it gives a very vivid idea of the struggles of the sluggish suffolk streams before they reach the sea. "the triangular projection encloses salt marshes, and extends from aldeburgh to landguard point. successive ridges or waves of shingle are, indeed, a marked characteristic of such headlands. under ordinary circumstances, and when the shore line is stationary, each succeeding tide obliterates the ridge made by the last; but when the shore is encroaching on the sea, some great storm will throw up the shingle in the form of a ridge, after which another accumulation commences, and eventually forms another ridge. the development of this beach, however, has not been invariably progressive, breaches made by storms having sometimes given a temporary exit for the waters of the ore and of the butley river at the upper narrows, where the part of the channel to the south would be partially closed. the ordnance map of 1831 shows separate knolls of shingle for a mile southwards from north weir point. the point no longer exists as there shown, the knolls having been united into a continuous bank, as marked on the geological survey map, which has been corrected from a later survey." one more short passage is quoted here, as tending to round off the subject under discussion, although, perhaps, it might have been quoted when we were at yarmouth. still, the shifting shore did not thrust itself upon our attention then, and now it is pushing itself forward as steadily as north weir point has made its progress on the maps. "the sands of yarmouth, like those of lowestoft, have, in recent years, been comparatively stationary. the town of yarmouth stands on a spot of sea-driven sand, thrown up in 1008 a.d."--it is no use therefore to look for roman remains at yarmouth itself--"and which crosses the outfalls of the waveney and the yare, enclosing a large mere--breydon water--the outlet of which, like that of other suffolk rivers, is being constantly forced southwards by the accumulating sand from the north." all this is due to the steady trend of the beach from the north to the south, tending to form a barrier across all harbours and estuaries, to denude outlying capes, to fill up hollows in the coastline; and less calculable than the influence of the tide is the spasmodic influence of storms. what, then, is the moral? of a truth there are many morals. he who buys a promontory may become a landless man. his neighbour in a hollow of the coast to the south may find himself endowed with salt marshes, whereon the sheep of his posterity will attain a flavour of supreme excellence. a port may become an inland community. river beds, the boundary of many an inland county and of many an estate out of reach of the sea, because they are accepted as eternal and immutable, are the most unstable of metes and bounds in the low ground by the side of the north sea. lastly, when we find the old maps failing to tally with the configuration of the land to-day, we shall only be exposing ourselves to ridicule if we laugh at those who made them. so we have mused, looking at landguard point; and the indulgence has been taken without hesitation, since travel without thought is mere waste of time and of the opportunities of amusement. the motorist is not an infatuated adjunct of a hurtling machine; rather is he one who, passing through scenes rapidly, learns to observe and to think more quickly than others, storing, as on a photographic film, memories to be unfolded and developed later, and by no means averse to linger in here and there a spot promoting easy reflection. only he is a motorist still, and, until the rudimentary device of the starting handle has been improved upon, he will make his long halts for looking round at leisure simultaneously with luncheon or tea, or some other reason for stopping the engine. home then to colchester we will go through dovercourt again, little oakley, great oakley, weeley, and elmstead. it is no great distance, and there is no reason why we should not pause for tea on the way in a village inn; for the inns of these parts are not half bad, the silvan scenery and the hedges are delightful, and there is no occasion to hurry. besides, the roads are exceeding curly, apt to be greasy under the trees also, and altogether the peninsula between the stour and the colne is no place for fast travelling. it cannot honestly be said that, apart from the tranquil scenery of the country, combining abundant leafage with plenty of little ups and downs and a freshness of atmosphere due to the adjacent sea, which is in view frequently, this drive of the afternoon is worth taking for the sake of any antiquities or associations which may be taken into account. that is not to say that there are none such. personally, perhaps, i should never have explored this peninsula but for the soldiery, who, i remember, had a great camp at one time in a park near great bentley, and a fierce battle at another time in the same district. it was rather an interesting battle, since it exhibited the difficulties of hedgerow fighting, and, still more, those of umpires compelled to adjudicate upon its results when cartridges were blank. but to me the most amusing part of it was to come at one point upon scouts of both armies, theoretically foes to the death, stealing green apples in brotherly amity from the same orchard. still, i think, if the opportunity came without much trouble, i would explore that peninsula again in early autumn, for, apart from associations in literature or history, apart from architecture, about which it is far easier to rhapsodize in print sometimes than it is to spend many interested minutes over it in practice, there is an undying charm in these green lanes, in the oaks and elms, in the heavy laden orchards, and in the luxuriant blackberries of the wayside. they are just england, or one of the features of england, at its best; and those who have travelled most of this world of ours will agree that any feature of england, at its best, takes a very great deal of beating. chapter viii colchester and gainsborough's country an afternoon's drive--lexden--close to colchester--earlier visit assumed--probable site of cunobelin's city--position described by the _quarterly_--boadicea's revenge--stoke by nayland--a commanding hill--the church--constable's praise--gainsborough at sudbury--"damn your nose, madam!"--gainsborough at school--"tom peartree"--gainsborough's suffolk landscapes--long melford--a halt for an exceptional church--seventeenth-century monograph on--inscriptions in flint--long melford a centre of the cloth trade--the martins, or martyns, and the church--its past glories--its splendid treasures--ancient customs--the cordells--cavendish, the home of the cavendish family--clare and "the illustrious family of clare"--strongbow--the valley of the colne--the de veres and castle hedingham--macaulay on their fame--their end--little maplestead--a round church--back to colchester. a nice little drive, with a pause for tea and antiquarianism, of forty or fifty miles may be taken from colchester any fine summer's afternoon by following something like the route here laid down. thirty years ago this sentence would have been held to be proof positive of lunacy in the writer; now it is a conspicuous illustration of his willingness to be contented with moderately long journeys. it is a willingness, save the mark, which grows on the motorist with experience and familiarity with the new locomotion. we will start by way of lexden, but we will not halt there, full of interest as it is; for lexden is but two miles from the heart of colchester, and it shall be assumed that, at some time or other, the motorist will walk these two miles for the sake of his health and of his figure, and spend a little time in examining a spot of real interest. still he shall be told its story now. not many pages back there was occasion to mention the colony planted near colchester, as it now is, by claudius, and of the lethargy of the veterans who were the first colonists. they ought to have settled themselves as a community ready for defence at once. historians agree that, instead of doing this, they found the dwellings hitherto occupied by the british sufficiently comfortable for their purpose, and never troubled themselves upon the question of defensive position. those ancient british dwellings, due to cunobelin's migration from st. albans (which is historical, whereas much concerning cunobelin is mystery), probably stood where lexden stands now. such, at any rate, was the opinion of a _quarterly_ reviewer, who thought the surroundings fitted in well with his theory, as in fact they do. "to the north of it flows the colne in a deep, and what must have been in those days a marshy valley, while on the south it is flanked by a smaller stream still called the roman river, which probably made its way through dense forests. these two streams, meeting in the estuary of the colne, enclose on three sides the peninsula on which lexden stands, and across this neck of land, or such part of it as was not occupied by marsh or wood, two or perhaps three parallel lines of ramparts may now be traced for two or more miles, supposed to be british, from the flint celts which have been found about them." (this last sentence would certainly not be permitted in the _quarterly review_ of these days, but its meaning is quite clear.) "... near the centre of these lines a conspicuous mound still exists, which we would gladly believe to be the sepulchre of the great cunobelin. a small roman camp, or more properly a _castellum_, is still well preserved at no great distance from the south-west angle of this british fortification." the comment of "murray," probably in this instance the late mr. augustus hare, is "whatever may be thought of these arguments, the suggestion is interesting and gives a certain importance to lexden." as to cunobelin, obviously there is no attempt at argument, nothing more than a pious aspiration; the rest of the argument is, on the whole, rather better than the english in which it is expressed, and perhaps as little of it rests on mere supposition as we have a right to expect in a case of this kind. the only weak part of the hypothesis appears to be that the august _quarterly_ reviewer assumes marsh or forest where he does not find the lines of the ancient rampart. it would be safer, it is suggested, to assume marsh only or, where the elevation of the ground is against marsh and there is no rampart, vanished rampart, rather than vanished forest. the "celts," to one who does not profess to have made a profound study of british antiquities, seem to be neither here nor there in the argument. south-eastern britons had some civilization even before cæsar came. they were tillers of the soil and, apparently, had commerce with the continent, even in metals. they resisted cæsar by force, and their scythe-chariots (afterwards the model for the roman travelling carriages) were not without their effect upon the legions. a people who could make these scythe-chariots, who severed the mistletoe with a golden sickle, were hardly likely to use flint knives in daily life. it follows, or at any rate seems to follow, that the "celts," if they are evidence of any period at all, as of course they must be, are evidence of men who lived near lexden long before cunobelin. still, on the whole, the argument that lexden represents the camulodunum of the britons (i wonder what they really called it, for camulodunum is about as unbritish as it well can be) is fairly strong. it is strong enough at any rate to warrant the belief that here "the british warrior queen," letting her barbarian troops loose on the panic-stricken and defenceless colonists, avenged her wrongs ruthlessly and in a wild abandon of cruelty. sluggish colne and the roman river really did, we may take it for almost certain, run with the blood of romans; and this is no figure of speech, as it usually is when battles are so described. camulodunum was not a battle but a massacre; boadicea was _furens femina_ with a vengeance, and with good cause. she really had bled from the roman rods, her daughters had been outraged, her just possessions had been stolen; the iceni were, clearly, in a wild ecstasy of murderous madness. if ever there was slaughter grim and great in this world, lexden saw it in the year of grace 61. another place, some say messing, not far off and near kelvedon, saw the tables turned a little later. then, said the romans, eighty thousand british fell, and boadicea anticipated the vengeance of her foes by taking poison before they reached her. still, if she in any way resembled her sisters of to-day, she had enjoyed at least some measure of satisfaction. from lexden, a roman road runs all the way to haverhill, at the south-west corner of suffolk; but haverhill is just beyond our route of to-day, and is certainly not worth a detour. we are going now almost due north, through wake's colne and bures st. mary to stoke by nayland, in suffolk and across the stour. wake's colne is reserved for the return journey to which, since that journey follows the downward course of the colne for some considerable distance, it belongs more properly. bures st. mary appears to be far more probably than bury st. edmunds the place of the coronation of king edmund of east anglia; but that and his canonization, as we noted in connection with bury st. edmunds, were long ago, so long indeed, that if bures st. mary fails to attract otherwise, the legend does not matter. for us, at any rate, bures st. mary is but a place passed on one side in entering the valley of the stour and gainsborough's country. whether any of the views "near sudbury" included the remarkably striking hill on which stoke by nayland stands ignorance prevents me from stating, but certainly, that house-crowned hill, rising as it does from the very flat land below and the leisurely stour, makes, as a valued picture in my possession proves to demonstration, an ideal subject for a modern artist. its value is due to abruptness of contrast. at bridgnorth from the severn, and at durham, the hills with their clusters of old roofs, rise more abruptly and to a greater height, are more rugged, not necessarily therefore more truly picturesque. at durham, however, and at bridgnorth, we are in country where hills are many; at stoke by nayland a commanding hill seems all the more commanding in that it is unlike anything in the neighbourhood. no wonder artists love this quiet riverside scene. of that scene, apart from the hill and the ancient houses, the grand perpendicular church is the conspicuous glory. it "ranks with the great churches of the eastern counties." these are constable's words, and they may be trusted the more in that he was not merely a mighty artist in landscape, a native of these parts, and devotedly attached to his native county (which, indeed, might make for prejudice), but also, as his "salisbury cathedral" shows, thoroughly and appreciatively versed in ecclesiastical architecture. to me, however, gainsborough has greater charm than constable, partly, perhaps, because of the extraordinary fascination of his portraits of persons. the reference here is not to the fashionable portrait painter of bath, but to the later days wherein he limned the features of georgiana, duchess of devonshire (heaven forbid that i should enter into the obvious pitfall of discussion which yawns for the unwary here), of maria linley and her brother (it is at knole and a proud possession of lord sackville), of mrs. sheridan, of mrs. siddons, and of the blue boy. the model for the blue boy, i learn from mr. walter armstrong's monograph, was the son of a wholesale ironmonger named buttall in greek street, soho. an excellent reproduction of the mrs. siddons, in the same monograph (seeley 1894), lies under my eye now, and as i look at those wonderfully clean-cut and strong features, i can almost hear the painter saying, in his comic wrath, "damn your nose, madam, there is no end to it." the story, retailed by mr. armstrong, makes one feel that thomas gainsborough was a man and a brother, and here at sudbury it is a delight to follow the story of his early days. "he was the youngest of a family of nine, all brought up reputably and well by his father, a thrifty tradesman variously described as a milliner, a crape manufacturer and a shroud maker, who, no doubt, combined all these avocations and, said scandal, occasionally helped them out with a little quiet smuggling." the shroud-making industry was introduced by gainsborough the elder, from coventry, and he seems to have enjoyed a monopoly of it; "crape manufacture," as mr. armstrong explains, simply meant dealer in the woollen trade introduced with the flemish weavers by edward iii into sudbury. the house of gainsborough's birth, once the "black horse," is gone. stories of his odd but clever brothers and of his pranksome youth survive and give delight. john was an inventor in many kinds, all but a genius, never practical. humphrey began as an inventor, but degenerated or rose to be a dissenting minister. still, he invented a novel sundial, preserved in the british museum, and a tide-mill for which the society of arts awarded him a prize of £50. thomas, england's gainsborough, went to the sudbury grammar school, cut his name in the woodwork like other boys, covered his books with sketches. art was bubbling in him and would not be denied. his holidays were all spent in sketching, and it is related that he once took in his schoolmaster, who was also his uncle, with an exact imitation of his father's familiar request "give tom a holiday." at sudbury it was, too, that he drew a lightning portrait, afterwards known as "tom peartree," of a peasant whom he saw gazing wistfully at his father's pear trees, which had been sadly lightened of their burden in the preceding days, and that portrait led at once to the identification of the thief who, confronted with it, confessed. thomas gainsborough was not a thwarted genius. he was sent to london at fourteen to study under hayman, an indifferent artist and a hard liver. from fourteen to eighteen he was loose about london, under a bad influence to start with, and that he sowed a fine lot of wild oats was no wonder. but at eighteen he returned to sudbury and to landscape, and worked very hard at it. here again let mr. armstrong be quoted, because his authority is real: "in his early years gainsborough painted landscape with the minutest care. i know pictures dating probably from about 1748 which excel any dutchman in the elaboration with which such things as the ruts in a country road, and the grasses beside it, or the gnarled trunk and rough bark of some ancient willow, are made out. in the national gallery of ireland we have one such picture. it represents just such a characteristic bit of suffolk scenery as wynants would have chosen had he carried his batavian patience over the north sea. across a sand-pit in the foreground a deep country road winds away into the distance, where the roofs of a village suggest its objective. an old horse, a silvery sky with a fine _arabesque_ of windy clouds, and a few old weather-stunted trees complete the picture. the execution is so elaborate that the surface is fused into one unbroken breadth of enamel. the _great cornard wood_," (suffolk of course) "in the national gallery, cannot have been painted very much later than this. its colour has the same gray coolness, its tone is as high, and its execution almost as elaborate." gainsborough may or may not have been, as reynolds said, the greatest living landscape painter. reynolds probably said it to annoy wilson, who was present. but horace walpole pronounced one of his pictures to be "in the style of rubens, and by far the best landscape ever painted in england, and equal to the great masters." for us the truly interesting point is that this was said of sudbury's greatest man, and that the valley of the stour gave to this man, thomas gainsborough, all his early inspiration, all his early subjects in landscape. by the way, in stating that thomas gainsborough was sudbury's greatest man i had forgotten simon of sudbury, who probably never uttered a coarse oath, nor drank too much wine, nor was, to quote gainsborough of himself, "deeply read in petticoats." but let any reader who has persevered thus far lay his hand on his heart and reflect honestly whether he can say offhand who simon of sudbury was. well, he was an archbishop of canterbury who was hanged during wat tyler's rebellion. his fate leaves me, and probably the reader also, quite unmoved. now let us hie, climbing a hill of 1 in 14, to long melford, and tea, and really fine architecture, for long melford is grand and, when one halts for any long time a-motoring, a good cause must needs be offered. assuredly after the 3-1/4 miles to long melford, so called from the length of its street, have been accomplished the excuse needs no making. the village on one side of the green, the spreading trees of melford hall, itself a typical elizabethan mansion, the exceptionally stately church and, last of all, the hill which lends dignity and variety to the whole, combined to make an ideal halting-place. by all means order tea at one of the village inns and, after it, make a thorough inspection of the church, for the interesting particulars concerning which acknowledgment is due to a monograph, undated and probably published for private circulation, apparently by the rev. r. francis, some time rector. the author, whosoever he may have been, transcribes much from certain mss. of 1688 onwards concerning the former state of the church, and from this we may borrow a little. "much about the middle of the parish of melford, al's long melford, in suffolk, upon an hill, most pleasant for air and prospect, there standeth a large and beautiful church called trinity church, because dedicated to the holy and undivided trinity.... part of it was an old erection, viz. the whole north ile, the steeple, a great part of the porch and p'haps the east end of the south ile. all the other parts are of a much later erection, as by the different sort of building, and the several inscriptions still extant round and about the said church may most evidently appear.... the middle ile, from the steeple, exclusive, to the east end of the chancell, hath one entire advanced roof, in length 152 ft. and 6 inches, distant from the pavement beneath 41 feet and 6 inches, supported on each side with ten arched pillars, separating the said middle ile from the 2 other iles, which are in height 24 feet, and in length 135 feet and 4 inches.... the pious benefactors concerned in the building the advanced ile may be known, and let their memories never perish, by the inscriptions under the battlements, without the church, and by like inscriptions in the windows, undemolished, within the church." of this last sentence an antiquary no doubt could give an exact translation into modern english, but i must be content to follow the general sense, which is indeed pretty clear. the reference is to very curious inscriptions, in flints let into the walls, which, notwithstanding restoration and because it has been carried out with taste and reverence, still remain in part. the names of the benefactors follow, amongst them being many martins, or martyns, who are here mentioned to the exclusion of others partly because, when the church was restored in 1869, the rev. c. j. martyn, their patron, bore much of the expense and their clothmark, a token of the former greatness of long melford and its cause, is frequently mentioned; but most of all because the monograph, like many another treasure, has been lent to me out of sheer goodwill by mr. paulin martin, of abingdon, my neighbour, antiquary and healer of men. long melford "stood by clothing," as the saying went in the fifteenth century. so did its people, and this majestic perpendicular church, built of flint and stone, is an abiding monument of their wealth and of their piety. the beautiful church suffered during the reformation. roger martin, of that date, speaks of many ornaments in the past tense. "there was a goodly mount, made of one great tree, and set up at the foot of the window there" (behind the high altar), "carved very artificially, with _the story of christ's passion_.... there was also in my ile, called jesus ile, at the back of the altar, a table with a crucifix on it, with the two thieves hanging, on every side one, which is in my house decayed, and the same i hope my heires will repaire, and restore again, one day." other vanished ornaments good roger enumerates, and then sundry ceremonies in the church and customary celebrations of the village, whereof some examples may be given. "upon palm sunday, the blessed sacrament was carried in procession about the church-yard, under a fair canopy, borne by four yeomen; the procession coming to the church gate, went westward, and they with the blessed sacrament, went eastward; and when the procession came against the door of mr. clopton's ile" (the cloptons were large benefactors), "they, with the blessed sacrament, and with a little bell and singing, approached at the east end of our ladie's chappell, at which time a boy, with a thing in his hand, pointed to it, signifying a prophet, as i think, sang, standing upon the tyrret that is on the said mr. clopton's ile doore, _ecce rex tuus venit_, &c.; and then all did kneel down, and then, rising up, went and met the sacrament, and so then, went singing together, into the church, and coming near the porch, a boy, or one of the clerks, did cast over among the boys flowers, and singing cakes, &c." some there be, doubtless, whose gorge will rise at this account of ancient usage in and about the church, but surely none can object to the next extract, pointing as it does to a feeling of real friendship between rich and poor. "_memorand._ on st. james's even, there was bonefire, and a tub of ale, and bread then given to the poor, and, before my doore, there were made, three other bonefires, viz. on midsummer even, on the even of st. peter and st. paul, when they had the like drinkings, and on st. thomas's even, on which, if it fell not on the fish day, they had some long pyes of mutton, and peasecods, set out upon boards, with the aforesaid quantity of bread, and ale; and, in all these bonefires, some of the friends and more civil poor neighbours were called in, and sat at the board, with my grandfather, who had, at the lighting of the bonefires, wax tapers, with balls of wax, red and green, set up, all the breadth of the hall, lighted then, and burning there, before the image of _st. john the baptist_; and after they were put out, a watch candle was lighted, and set in the midst of the said hall, upon the pavement, burning all night." a list of utensils, furniture, jewels, ornaments and relics follows that would make a collector's mouth water, but it may not all be quoted. thirteen chalices there were, "the best chalice, gilt," weighing 133-1/2 ounces. amongst other objects were "a relique of the pillar that our saviour christ was bound to," several examples of the pax (a piece of metal with the picture of christ on it, to be kissed by all after mass, typical of the kiss of peace), several silver ships, many rings and jewels, gorgeous coats for "our lady," copes and vestments belonging to the church and like articles in great number, but the list is of immense length. celebrated in the church were many cloptons and martins, and "sir william cordell, knt. of melford hall, speaker of the house of commons and master of the rolls, in the time of philip and mary, and queen elizabeth," who married mary, the daughter of richard clopton, esq., of fore hall. his epitaph contained the lines- _pauperibus largus, victum, vestemque ministrans insuper hospitii condidit ille domum._ here, to avoid insult to those who have latin, and to afford them an opportunity of laughing at me, while at the same time the unlearned may follow the meaning, let me attempt the rare venture of a translation into english elegiacs: good to the poor was sir william, a giver of food and of raiment, and of his own good will founded an hospital home. of the foundation referred to a full account may be found in sir william cordell's will (a.d. 1580) recorded in extracts from the _visitation of suffolk_, edited by joseph jackson howard, ll.d. (printed by s. tymms, lowestoft, 1867). it included a building, a warden, and twelve almsmen, and it was to be continued--for it had been founded in good sir william's lifetime--after his death. it was, in effect, the kind of foundation which anthony trollope took and gave pleasure in describing; nor, as the long will shows plainly enough, was the benefaction made at his expense of leaving the testator's relations at all pinched for money. in fact, his widow, dame mary cordell, in 1584, "being sikelye in body, and nevertheless of good and p'fecte remembrance," made a will in which she disposed of much property, devoting some of it to this very hospital, and some, almost as a matter of course, to long melford church. dame mary was prescient. the will made in 1584 was proved in october 1585. so thoroughly comfortable were the people of long melford in the days of old that the temptation to mention the fact that a "long melford" was once a name for a purse is irresistible, because the conjunction is so appropriate. the temptation ought, perhaps, to be resisted because, although the fact has been read and remembered, it appears to be unfamiliar to suffolk natives, and the source of information cannot be traced. it has eluded fairly diligent search; but the fact has certainly been noticed since this book was undertaken. i can remember no more than that it was a purse of some peculiar make; and it would seem fairly safe to imply that it was of capacious dimensions. still, as the inscriptions already mentioned show, those long purses were always laid under contribution for the adornment of the church which was long melford's pride, and among the most prosperous and the most generous benefactors of it were the martins or martyns. the first of them came from dorsetshire to melford and was buried there in 1438. how the family made its money the "clothmark" proves; and the _visitation_ shows how they spread over the county and made their mark in the country. roger, who died in 1543, was a bencher of lincoln's inn; sir roger, who died in 1573, had been lord mayor of london; roger, born 1639, was created a baronet; daughters married into good families all over east anglia. but it was a tradition of the family that all should be brought back to long melford for burial; and it was also a tradition to do something for the church. it was a tradition which lasted till 1851 at any rate, and it may very likely still be held in honour; for we read in "murray" that there was, at that time, very large expenditure on the chantries chancel by sir william parker and the rev. c. j. martyn, the patron of the living. sir william parker, it may be added, was the owner of melford hall, which formerly belonged to the cordells and, being elizabethan, was no doubt built by the sir william cordell already named, who flourished in the reign of elizabeth. at cavendish, a few miles to the westward, we are at the original home of a family better known than the cordells or the martins, and of real note in history. "in the chancel of the church was buried chief justice sir john cavendish, beheaded by wat tyler's mob. his younger son, john, and esquire to richard ii is said to have slain this sturdy rebel." so "murray," but the last statement, standing alone, is merely irritating. what is the sense of saying this, and no more, to a generation taught by painstaking historians to believe that walworth, the lord mayor, struck wat tyler to the ground "where he was instantly dispatched by others of the king's attendants"? of course young john cavendish may have been one of these attendants; but in any case walworth was the protagonist, and should have been mentioned at least. according to the just custom of indian sport the credit belongs to him who gets in the first spear, and in the highlands the sportsman who lays the stag low, not the gillie who grallochs him, possesses the honour of the day. the story of the cavendish family shall not be told here, for it is long, and not free from controversial points, and, of course, they are still in the land and of far greater consequence now than they ever were when cavendish was their chief home. the glory of the village has waned and theirs has waxed. of both the next village, clare, and of the family who gave it their name or took theirs from it, ichabod may be written without reserve. the earls of clare flourished from the days of the conquest to those of bannockburn, where the last of the race lost his life, and during that period of nearly two hundred and fifty years they clearly held high sway in these parts of east anglia. their great seat was at clare, in a castle long desecrated by a railway station, the castle itself being built in connection with one of those great and mysterious mounds, like that of thetford, concerning which the ancients were far more willing than the moderns are to write with assurance. the names of several adjacent places, stoke by clare, for example, serve at once to show how wide was the area of the clare influence and to raise the suspicion that the place was named after them and not they after the place. not, perhaps, the greatest of them, but certainly the one whose memory has lasted longest, was "richard, surnamed strongbow, earl of strigul," who came to the assistance of dermot macmorrogh, king of leinster, in 1172. dermot, it may be remembered, had carried off the wife of a brother prince, named ororic of breffny, who, with the assistance of the king of connaught, roderic, had invaded leinster and had expelled dermot. dermot then laid his case before our henry ii, offering to hold his kingdom in vassalage for henry, if help to recover it were forthcoming, and henry, being busy in guienne, but having an eye for the main chance, gave him letters patent authorizing subjects of the crown of england to assist him in his efforts. at bristol dermot met strongbow, and hume, citing the not unduly truthful giraldus cambrensis as his authority, proceeds: "this nobleman, who was of the illustrious house of clare, had impaired his fortune by expensive pleasures, and being ready for any desperate undertaking, he promised assistance to dermot, on condition that he should espouse eva, daughter of that prince, and be declared heir to all his dominions." how strongbow eventually conquered the irish princes in one great battle, how henry, jealous of strongbow's power, crossed to ireland and made a royal progress, and how the island was not fully subdued until elizabeth's time, are more or less matters of history, so far as the history of those days in ireland can really be ascertained. but the most striking part of the passage quoted is, in these days, the simple confidence with which the historian speaks of "the illustrious family of clare." how little that confidence would be justified now is plain to me from inquiries addressed in apparently artless curiosity to more than one highly cultivated man and woman about the time of writing. macaulay's schoolboy, the omnipresent paragon of marvellous memory, would no doubt have known all about this famous family; but it flourished, and perished, so long ago that the "man on the road" is not likely to be hurt by a reminder of the associations properly belonging to that valley of the stour which was beloved of gainsborough and of constable. on we go through stoke by clare, ridgewell, and tilbury-juxta-clare (how these old place-names serve to stimulate historical curiosity!) to another valley, that of the colne, full of memories of another family, bulking fully as large in the annals of england as the clares, and lasting far longer. the valley of the colne, which we follow on our return journey to colchester, was the de vere country. they were the earls of oxford of course, and in this case there is no affectation of confidence in the standard of average knowledge in the use of the words "of course." rather are they employed in regret, for a good long stretch of my course might be accomplished at a comfortable canter (or "on my highest gear" over the open road, if this metaphor be preferred), by mentioning only a few of the great occasions between the conquest and the eighteenth century in which this magnificent house played its part in shaping the destinies of england. still, by way of kindly relief to the reader, macaulay's sonorous passage summarizing the grandeur of the de veres must needs be quoted. it was written by him as the first comment on the list of lords lieutenant, who "peremptorily refused to stoop to the odious service which was required of them" by james ii, that is to say, the service of revising the commission of the peace with the view to retaining upon it only those gentlemen who were prepared to support the king's policy of packing a parliament in 1687. "the noblest subject in england, and indeed, as englishmen loved to say, the noblest subject in europe, was aubrey de vere, twentieth and last of the old earls of oxford. he derived his title through an uninterrupted male descent, from a time when the families of howard and seymour were still obscure, when the nevilles and the percies enjoyed only a provincial celebrity, and when even the great name of plantagenet had not yet been heard in england. one chief of the house of de vere had held high command at hastings; another had marched, with godfrey and tancred, over heaps of slaughtered moslem, to the sepulchre of christ. the first earl of oxford had been minister of henry beauclerc. the third earl had been conspicuous among the lords who extorted the great charter from john. the seventh earl had fought bravely at cressy and poictiers. the thirteenth earl had, through many vicissitudes of fortune, been chief of the party of the red rose, and had led the van on the decisive day of bosworth. the seventeenth earl had shone at the court of elizabeth, and had won for himself an honourable place among the early masters of english poetry. the nineteenth earl had fallen in arms for the protestant religion and for the liberties of europe under the walls of maestricht. his son aubrey, in whom closed the longest and most illustrious line of nobles that england has seen, a man of loose morals, but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was lord lieutenant of essex and colonel of the blues. his nature was not factious; and his interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the court; for his estate was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. he was summoned to the royal closet; and an explicit declaration of his intentions was demanded from him. 'sir,' answered the earl of oxford, 'i will stand by your majesty against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. but this is a matter of conscience and i cannot comply.' he was instantly deprived of his lieutenancy and of his regiment." a parenthesis forces itself forward here. the line of the true de veres, of the house that earned the motto, _vero nil verius_, from the virgin queen in recognition of its steadfast loyalty, of the family concerning whom it was said, "let the name and dignity of de vere stand so long as it pleaseth god," came to an absolute end in 1703. yet the last century saw an aubrey de vere of distinguished family and of no mean distinction as a poet. it will probably occur to others, as it has occurred to me, to wonder whether the nineteenth-century poet de vere was a descendant or a kinsman of the elizabethan peer and poet. a rapid reference would seem to show that he may have been--the cautious phrase is used by one who does not aspire to be a genealogist. the first of the irish de veres was, it is true, the son of the first sir vere hunt, baronet, and assumed the name of de vere by royal license in 1832. but the irish de veres have the same motto--_vero nil verius_--as the essex de veres of old; their crest is the boar of the essex de veres; the mullet of the essex de veres appears in their arms. heaven forbid that i should venture into the thickets of genealogy, that i should attempt to conceal an absolute ignorance of heraldry. but surely, after all this, it may be assumed to be probably more than a happy coincidence that aubrey thomas de vere, bearing the christian name of him who came with the conqueror and the surname of the elizabethan poet, was a poet of exceptional sincerity and sweetness, albeit little known to "the general reader." no doubt the whole truth is known to genealogists and to students of heraldry; but a stranger to their mysteries is too well aware of the disputatious quality of their temper, and of the existence of doubts concerning the title to arms of this or that family, to assume that because crest and motto and arms are described and illustrated in burke or in debrett there is therefore any historical connection between the arms and those who bear them. what the de veres of essex did for england and for europe we have seen in some measure, and this penultimate part of our afternoon's drive takes us through the country in which they were really at home. castle hedingham, passed on the left a few miles south of great yeldham of the famous oak, was their principal seat. it had been the seat of a saxon magnate before the conqueror granted it and wide lands to his follower, alberic de vere. it was built on "an high hill," which, like most of the knolls in east anglia, had probably felt the tramp of martial feet long before the beginning of authentic history. it was moated, and the moat was crossed by a bridge, still visible; the norman keep, of extraordinary solidity and strength, still looks out, to use the words of white, the topographer of eastern england, on "rural beauty of the quiet order, a beauty produced by centuries of planting and tillage." in many a neighbouring church, at earl's colne and cole eugaine, for example, but only for example, the mullet of the de veres may be found shaped in enduring stone. south of castle hedingham the wise man will turn some three or four miles out of his direct route, which runs through halstead, to see the church of little maplestead, and will even make a halt when he is there, for good reason. the motorist will, perhaps almost must, be content with a passing glance at many a church rich in ancient brasses or in the carved bench heads for which the churches of east anglia are celebrated; but he can hardly play the part of the levite towards one of the very small number of round churches, similar in design and origin to the temple church, to be found in all the length and breadth of england. after this he will probably be best advised to wend his way to colchester viâ halstead, earl's colne, fordham and lexden. his road will follow the course of the colne pretty closely all the way, and between fordham and lexden he will pass quite close to west bergholt, which he saw as he went forth for his afternoon's drive. if, after travelling by road through so much of these two valleys of the stour and the colne he is not satisfied with this restful beauty of smiling and undulating country, if he does not feel some measure of interest when he knows that he has traversed the places which were familiar to strongbow and gainsborough, to constable and to a splendid series of earls of oxford, then is he no true motorist, but rather the "road hog" before whom it is futile to cast pearls of any kind. such "road hogs" are, in truth, few and far between. it is in the belief, based upon very wide experience, that the average motorist is interested in antiquities no less than in ascents, in scenery more than in sprockets, in castles at least equally with carburettors, that these attempts are made to save him from the labour of research. chapter ix from colchester westwards--coggeshall, braintree, witham, ingatestone, margaretting, danbury hill, maldon, tiptree, messing, and colchester coggeshall--pleasant site occupied by romans first and cistercians later--braintree--general wynne as cunctator--braintree for motorists having daily work in london--the plan discussed--middleton hub makes journeys certain--routes considered--witham--ingatestone--scene of desolation in 1897--ingatestone hall the grange of a nunnery--how it came to the petre family--"murray" shows malice--courageous farmers--margaretting--a church tower of wood--danbury hill and camp--theories concerning--the wolf hypothesis--edward the elder "puts a bridle on east anglia"--maldon fortified--battle at maldon--tiptree and its jams--strange crops--mr. mechi of _profitable farming_--messing--_quære_ whether site of boadicea's defeat--mr. jenkins describes position--compare jenkins, merivale and tacitus--merivale fanciful--tacitus merely a literary gentleman at rome--battle may have been anywhere, but amusing to localize here--the fight described--heckford bridge--lovely country and bad roads--good run to colchester. it has, be it hoped, been made sufficiently clear that colchester and its immediate environs, lexden and the roman river for example, will amply repay many mornings or afternoons spent away from the car, or with the car used as an auxiliary only; and so the next drive suggested is one of some sixty miles only, leaving a morning free. it is a circuitous drive like the last, beginning and ending at the inn yard at colchester. our first objective is coggeshall, by way of marks tey, which we reach by taking the left fork at lexden. it is a straight road and good, but marks tey, said to mean mark's enclosure, does not tempt a halt by its appearance. it is, in fact, a commonplace village, noteworthy only for fine timber in the vicinity. coggeshall would be a prettier village if it were less prosperous, but it possesses ancient interest as well as some modern prosperity, and it has not lacked its _vates sacer_ in the shape of the rev. e. l. cutts, who once discoursed upon it to the essex archæological society. here, where a farmhouse now stands, was a cistercian abbey reached, as the farmhouse is now, by a thirteenth-century brick bridge across the blackwater. at the top of a hill is a little and very ancient chapel, once desecrated as a barn, but restored during the last century to sacred uses. nor were the monks the first men possessing discernment enough to see the amenities of coggeshall as a place of settlement. situate as it was on the high road between camulodunum and verulamium, otherwise colchester and st. albans, it was the settlement of romans, _post_ claudian romans no doubt, of whom the customary traces have been found in sufficient abundance to leave no doubt of permanent occupation. in truth, with its river, its grove and its hill, coggeshall is still so pleasant a place that its early occupation occasions no surprise. on we go to braintree, accomplishing a rise of all but a hundred feet in a couple of miles, a considerable ascent for essex. i climbed this hill, or rather my car did, at least a dozen times during my stay at colchester, for it happened that general wynne, upon whom, it may be remembered, the duty of resisting the invader fell, made the vicinity of braintree his head-quarters. indeed, following the classical example of fabius, the gentleman who _cunctando restituit rem_, he abode so long in the neighbourhood of braintree that he was laughingly described as the marquis of braintree. his tactics were no doubt correct, for his army held a strong line in the face of a superior force, and, if his inaction made the manoeuvres somewhat dull and sterile of incident, he might perhaps be heard to plead that manoeuvres are not carried on solely for purposes of entertainment. be that as it may, i went to braintree very often, and found it always wearing an appearance of respectable and middle-aged prosperity. no building in it made any very definite impression on the memory, but the air of place and people seemed to me to be one of vigorous contentment, a result due very likely to the considerable elevation at which the town stands, relatively to the surrounding country. it is a very old town, indeed it is the raines of domesday, and it is not too densely populated. it has a fair provision of apparently comfortable houses, well provided with gardens and the like appurtenances; it is fairly accessible from london by rail, and there are several good routes from it to london by road. on the whole it is somewhat strange that, in days of travelling facilities increased beyond the wildest dreams of our forefathers, more persons have not followed the example of those bygone bishops of london who had in braintree a palace which has long vanished. let us pause for a minute or two to follow the roads by which one living in braintree might travel by car to london, every day if need be, remembering that this mode of living and travelling up and down to business is working a gradual revolution in the social habits of englishmen. that revolution will cease to be gradual and will become rapid when the danger of a burst or punctured tire becomes, as it surely will become soon, a thing of the past. it has become more rapid of quite recent years owing to the marked increase of the trustworthiness of cars. and here, even at the risk of giving a free advertisement, nothing shall deter me from specific recommendation of a device which unquestionably has solved the tire problem, if the users of motor-cars for ordinary purposes, that is to say the persons who are content with thirty miles an hour or so, had but the sense to adopt it generally. that device is the middleton pneumatic hub, in which i have no interest direct or indirect, the owners of which are merely acquaintances, no more. i have tried it, and sundry other mechanical devices over very rough roads. of it alone among substitutes is the statement possible that, if one had not known beforehand, the absence of pneumatic tires would not have been noticed. it passed through a four-thousand-mile club trial at an expense of ten shillings and sixpence in repairs. the judges made also sundry observations, more or less critical, of no interest to me because i had made my own trial on the question of comfort, and my impressions were clear. finally i write thus boldly because i know the difficulties which the middleton hub has to fight to be entirely distinct from its structure or from any defects which it may possess. so long as persons who sell motor-cars are interested in pneumatic tires, or persons who sell the latter are possessed of substantial influence over those who sell or make the former, it is simply idle to hope that the seller of a car will always give disinterested advice to the buyer who, in these still infant days of motoring, is more often than not a mere novice, if even that. again let me say, _honi soit qui mal y pense_; the advice to adopt the middleton hub and to acquire a mind free from apprehension of puncture or burst, without any loss of personal comfort, is given because it is needed. an alternative is the stepney wheel, which is capable of being adjusted in a very short time in case of tire trouble. of this i cannot speak from personal trial, but amateur friends testify that it adds immensely to the traveller's peace of mind. one thing, at least, is certain. he who trusts to pneumatic tires when he is on an important journey must always allow a margin of time unless he is to be liable to sudden disappointment and, perhaps, to grave inconvenience and loss of time. let us look then for the routes open to our hypothetical slave of london in the day who hates trains and would fain breathe country air at night. ten miles and a quarter will take him to bishop's stortford and to the easternmost of the great trunk roads out of london, cutting through part of herts, of which the chief constable of hertfordshire spoke with so much feeling in his evidence before the royal commission. there he will be 32-3/4 miles from marble arch viâ sawbridgeworth, harlow, epping, loughton, and woodford green, and 4-1/2 miles less from shoreditch, and he will have but a few miles to travel in herts. that, in the present state of the law, is a consideration, for the account given by colonel daniell of his picketed zone is rather alarming. it goes a long way indeed to explain that apparent instinct of motorists which leads them to avoid hertfordshire and its magnificent roads as much as possible, even when they are northward bound. another, and the more obvious route is along the great high-road through chelmsford, which is about the same distance; but it has the disadvantage of entering london through romford, ilford, stratford, and whitechapel, and the last ten miles from ilford to marble arch, or 3-1/2 miles less if the city be the destination, are unpleasant and difficult. it would be a better plan to turn off at shenfield, ten miles nearer to london than chelmsford, to the right and to proceed viâ bentley and chigwell, or even to turn off at chelmsford and go on viâ chipping ongar and epping. both routes are a little longer, but both are through exquisite scenery, and both involve an easier access to the heart of london. from braintree on our present expedition we proceed to witham, a long and straggling place, half village and half town, which was fortified, and perhaps saw fighting, in the days of edward the elder, that is to say early in the tenth century, and heard the crackling of musketry during the last essex manoeuvres. witham, however, strikes me as a place of no special interest, but the drive should most certainly be extended to ingatestone. nearly ten years have passed since my first visit to ingatestone, which needless to say was not made in a motor-car, and i have traversed its high-road many a time since. it charmed me the first time i saw it, its charm still survives for me, and, never having seen it in pre-railway days, i am totally at a loss to understand what the author of "murray" can mean by the sentence "the town is small, and has been much injured by the railway." improved, in the sense of beautified, by a railway no town could ever be expected to be. still ingatestone and its surrounding district made a very favourable impression on me, and that in circumstances which produced a very high opinion of the english courage of the inhabitants of the district. the occasion was, i venture to think, really interesting, even pathetic, and for that reason, as well as because it gave me an opportunity of seeing more than the traveller can see in the ordinary way, the experience gained in a day shall be narrated. after all, to arouse healthy interest should be the first aim of every sensible writer, since only thus can he hope to secure attention, and people are, or may be, quite as interesting as places. it may be remembered generally, it is certainly not likely to be forgotten at ingatestone for many a long year, that a day or two after the diamond jubilee celebrations of 1897 a veritable tornado swept across essex, working havoc to which this happy country is usually a complete stranger. in my capacity of correspondent to a great newspaper i was sent to describe the path of the storm, in the centre of which ingatestone lay, with such fidelity as i might be able to compass. sheer good fortune caused me to travel in the same carriage with lord petre on the great eastern railway, and the kindly nature of this landowner, who was himself travelling to ingatestone, with the object of surveying the details of a disaster affecting him personally in a serious manner, enabled me to see ingatestone and its surroundings in a very intimate way without any preliminary trouble. first we went to the agent's house. it was a dream of ancient architecture and of splendid trees. one could almost have guessed from the high walls, the fish-ponds, and a cool green walk shaded by dense green trees, limes unless memory plays a trick, that this had been once the home of an ecclesiastical community. to learn that the walk under the close limes, if limes they indeed were, was known as the nun's walk, was no surprise. the sequestered character of the whole quite prepared the mind for the intelligence that ingatestone hall occupied the site of a subsidiary establishment attached to the greater nunnery of barking, and it was clear that much of its original environment remained. this manor, with many others, was acquired at the dissolution by sir william petre, the father of the first lord petre, and the old grange of the nuns, with very slight changes to all appearance, remained the seat of the great roman catholic family until they migrated to thorndon hall, near brentwood, which, apart from its view and its contents, does not sound nearly so attractive as ingatestone. "murray," by the way, has a passage in this connection which, by dint of its tone, raises more than a suspicion of the roman hand of the late mr. augustus hare. in reference to the church we read: "between the chancel and the south chapel is the monument of the well-known sir william petre (the father of the first lord petre) who, 'made of the willow and not of the oak,' managed to accommodate his loyalty and his religion to the various changes under henry viii, edward vi, mary and elizabeth." this, it is suggested, was a needlessly spiteful reference to the direct ancestor of the roman catholic peer who at that time (1875) was domestic prelate at the vatican; and it may well be that uncalled-for malice of this kind has had the effect of making owners of historic houses less willing than they might have been to receive and to aid those upon whom the duty of writing about places is cast in these later days. there was work to be done on the day of my visit more melancholy than that of inspecting beautiful houses, more serious than that of speculating upon the identity and lamenting the ill-nature of a bygone writer of guide-books. forth we fared--drawn by a cob whose nose had been scarred to a depth of half an inch by a hailstone during the tornado--to inspect the desolation. here i am going for the first time in my life to quote some of my own words, words which i am proud to believe were not without influence in bringing some substantial measure of aid to a stricken country-side. "all down the street at ingatestone the windows on one side were smashed to atoms, and the only cheerful men were the glaziers. the backs of the houses on the other side were in like condition. an odour, familiar enough later in the year, when the hedges are clipped, pervaded the air. it was the scent of green leaves of elm and hawthorn shrivelling in the sun. soon we reached a great elm uprooted, and another broken off sharp in the middle. the elms, with their surface roots, had suffered most. but they were not alone, for oaks and ash trees had fallen also. from the trees that were not overthrown hung here, there, and everywhere, great boughs with their tough fibres twisted like straw ropes at the point of fracture, and repeatedly one came across cases in which immemorial elms had been hurled across the road and had blocked it until it was cleared. others that had survived were often stripped of leaves by the hail as if it had been mid-winter and the scorching sun of june had not been beating on our heads. it was a sickening sight to those who love woodland beauties. but soon the wreck of trees became of no account, for we were nearing the centre of the storm area. hitherto broken windows and chipped tiles had saluted the eye, though it was noticeable that slates had, for the most part, escaped damage. now we reached the house of mr. milbank, or what was once his house ... the tiled roof looked as if it were that of a house which had been subjected to a heavy fire of musketry for several hours; and this was the story all along our long drive." so, i remember, we went on noting shattered roofs, and chimneys collapsed, seeing bare earth where the oats had waved in green promise, fields which had contained crops of mangels, turnips, and potatoes, converted into an expanse of sun-baked mud. we fared from farm to farm, meeting farmer after farmer who had lost his all, after years of patient struggling against depression, and was settling down with true english pluck to make the best of the situation and to begin life again. all that country smiles again now, although that terrible storm has left an indelible scar on its fair face, or rather a scar which will not be quite healed over for a hundred years to come. but, without claiming to be more full of sympathy than any other man, i protest that the memory of that sad day makes me eager now to pass through ingatestone as often as may be, that because of it the beautifully timbered country seems to me perhaps more attractive than it really is, and that i never see it without an eager hope that the farmers encountered in june, 1897, saddened by disaster but dauntless in the resolve to go on fighting against fate, have had, so many of them as survive, the reward of renewed prosperity. we ought to have stopped at margaretting on our way to ingatestone, with the special object of inspecting the church, with its tower and spire composed entirely of timber, the kind of structure which can be seen in east anglia only; but after all our next objective after ingatestone is maldon, and the best way of reaching it is to go back on our own wheelmarks so far as margaretting, halt there for a few minutes, and then turn to the right for galleywood common and maldon. on this piece of road the motorist will find a variation of levels and a frequent stiffness of gradients which will disabuse his mind for ever of the notion that essex is a flat county. entering galleywood common he is just over the 200 feet contour; towering above him to the right will be west manningfield, which actually over-tops the 300 feet contour. between sandon and danbury he will be down as low as 75 feet, and at danbury he will be up again almost as high as 350 feet. the hill itself is 380 feet, and has a camp at the top, commonly called danish. danish in one sense it probably was. that is to say the danes, who had a sagacious eye for military positions and a particular predilection for heights from which the sea was visible, in all probability made use of it. they came by sea, they might have to flee by their boats, and in some other parts of our islands, in carnarvonshire for example, one can identify cases where they had and used one inland camp on an eminence commanding a wide prospect and much coastline, and another close to the coast. danbury commands such a prospect eastward, westward and northward, and it is no less pleasing to the peaceful pilgrim than it may have been valuable to the fierce freebooter. who made these camps on eminences all over the country, or made the eminences themselves when nature had not provided them, is a question men grow more and more shy in answering. time was when, drawing inferences from outline only, they said confidently this or that camp was british, roman, saxon, or danish. now the tendency is to go farther back still into prehistoric times, and even to doubt whether the origin of these camps is military at all. learned men, who somehow or other contrive to excite respect and admiration without compelling conviction, argue that many, perhaps most, of the huge earthworks with which the face of england and wales is studded, were piled up by primeval man as a defence against the wild beasts, and most of all against the ravening wolves which overran the land and threatened his flocks and herds. to the unlearned it appears that a mound without a crowning palisade would have been quite ineffectual against the nimble wolves, and that a palisade without the mound would have been quite as effectual as mound and palisade. these are amusing speculations, but they cannot reach a certain conclusion. what is beyond doubt is that, if an invading foe, roman, saxon, or dane, found these works ready to his hand, he would use them for military purposes. if the compilers of _domesday book_ called danbury hill danengeberia it was because the natives, as they doubtless called them, used this title, having in mind the last warriors who had availed themselves of the commanding position. native memory, indeed, had not to tax itself severely in this case, nor to go back very far. the average man, not the historian steeped in the study of a period, is apt to allow his memories of histories read to settle down on broad and accurate lines. for him, as for me, until this book suggested refreshment of memory, alfred was the man who conquered the danes and secured the freedom of saxon england. the fact that they made head again in the time of his son edward the elder, that they were indeed never expelled from east anglia by alfred, had passed out of memory. edward succeeded to the throne, such as it was, in 901 only--dates are repellent to eye and mind, but it is worth while to remember how shortly before the conquest this was--and edward spent a good deal of his time in "bridling" the danes of east anglia, who had made common cause with his rival ethelwald. edward, indeed, "conducted his forces into east anglia and retaliated the injuries which the inhabitants had committed by spreading the like devastation among them. satiated with revenge and loaded with booty, he gave the order to retire." in fact his orders were disobeyed by his kentish followers, who settled themselves at bury and were attacked and defeated by the danes. but in this battle ethelwald, edward's saxon cousin and rival, was killed, so the danish victory was pyrrhic, for ethelwald's cause was theirs. for all the rest of his reign of twenty-four years edward continued to fight the danes. it was not a long period, then, over which the "natives" had to look back, when in 1080 or thereabouts, they gave evidence before the royal commissioners, so to speak, who compiled _domesday book_, and probably most of those "natives" were danes themselves. our next point is maldon, situate at the inmost end of the estuary of the blackwater, and itself standing on a hill. it is a sleepy little place now, but it has played no small part in the story of england. it has been stated that edward the elder merely made it his head-quarters while he superintended the fortification of witham, but it is much more likely, as stated by hume, that it was one of the towns which he fortified with a view to making the country secure. seven of the others--hume takes the list from the saxon chronicle--were outside our purview; maldon and colchester were selected for putting a bridle on east anglia. and maldon was well chosen. it was the place where edward himself fought and won a signal battle. it was also the place where the northmen landed again, in the days of ethelred the unready, "and having defeated and slain at maldon brithnot, duke of that county, (essex), who ventured with a small force to attack them, they spread their devastations over all the neighbouring province." in fact it was precisely the place open to raiders from over sea, and therefore the right place to fortify against them also. here, crossing at heybridge, we may say good-bye to history for a while and devote ourselves to things more mundane. at heybridge we are about as near the sea-level as we can be. in two miles and a half we climb two hundred feet or more, and then we follow the top of a ridge for four miles to tiptree. for me, before the essex manoeuvres, tiptree simply spelled "jam" in seven letters, none of them appearing in that familiar word. to be plain, tiptree jam is far better than any "home-made" comestible of the kind it has been my fortune to encounter, because it has all the purity of the domestic product, while it is made with all care and knowledge that science and experience can furnish. a cook or a careful housewife has many distractions of puddings, entrées, sauces, savouries, and what you will. tiptree devotes all its energy and intelligence to jam, and the result is a divine confection, pure ambrosia. tiptree will not thank me for this advertisement because the name of tiptree is established. to many it will appear as superfluous to praise the jams of tiptree as it would be to state that two and two make four, or that '47 port is excellently good. still, experience has shown the existence of a benighted but considerable minority who will infallibly be grateful for the knowledge, if they use it. if they do not, so much the worse for them. without doubt the fame of the tiptree jams must involve prosperity also, and the district, with its trim orchards, a sea of bloom in late spring and loaded with rosy fruit in the autumn, is full of encouragement to one who believes that where land is not made to pay something is rotten in the state. it is a pretty sight too, and one recalling sundry speeches of the late mr. gladstone which were not taken very seriously when they were uttered. other crops you will find hereabouts--it was at tiptree, as told elsewhere, that the military balloon came down in the middle of a crop of bird-seed--and the whole district gives one the impression of being in the hands of persons, courageous and competent, who refuse to meet the difficulties of farming with mere lamentation but, like the farmers of ingatestone at the time of the 1897 disaster, are resolved to make the best of things. that spirit is traditional at tiptree. was it not there that the great mr. mechi, who flourished in the middle of the last century, produced wondrous results by plentiful use of liquid manure, and proved the profitable quality of beans in such fashion as to astonish his contemporaries? to men of his quality, who made two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, i for one insist upon giving all praise and honour, and, when one thinks upon their good work, there is a disposition to feel that, in its proper place, a trim hedge is not without its attraction, what though it be not nearly so beautiful as one that is a straggling thicket of hawthorn, honeysuckle and wild rose. but a doubting afterthought rises. mr. mechi farmed from 1840 to 1870, perhaps longer. his _profitable farming_, with its striking figures, was published during that period, and those were piping times for agriculture. could he have shown accounts even half or a quarter as good for the thirty years from 1875 to 1905? we have reached tiptree in imagination from maldon, and there is no difficulty in doing so by road from the same place. as a matter of fact, my first visit to tiptree was made from braintree, whither a morning expedition had been taken to see if general wynne was at his accustomed post, and the _ignis fatuus_ which lured me and a companion in that direction was the balloon, seen in the air from a long distance, which we found afterwards in the bird-seed field. (in passing, as the officer in the car of the balloon had seen nothing at all of the troops shrouded from his view, the inference that balloons are of precious little use in a wooded country would seem to be fairly obvious.) leaving the balloon to its fate--although the officer would have liked to commandeer our car for the transport of his mass of collapsed silk--we proceeded by way of messing to heckford bridge. of these the first-named has been suggested by a learned antiquary, the reverend h. jenkins, as a possible site for the stark battle in which suetonius wiped the army of boadicea out of existence and avenged the massacre of camulodunum: "whoever visits the camp at haynes green, near the village of messing, will be struck with the resemblance it bears to the position taken up by suetonius. two large woods, pod's wood and layer marney wood, seem to form the narrow gorge in front of the camp which tacitus mentions." merivale, who says that the speculations of mr. jenkins were useful to him, although he could not go all the way with them, describes the position of suetonius thus: "in a valley between undulating hills, with woods in the rear, and the ramparts of the british oppidum" (lexden) "not far perhaps on his right, he had every advantage for marshalling his slender forces.... ten thousand resolute men drew their swords for the roman empire in britain. the natives, many times their number, spread far and wide over the plain; but they could assault the narrow front of the romans with only few battalions at once, and their wagons, which conveyed their accumulated booty and bore their wives and children, thronged the rear, and cut off almost the possibility of retreat." now there is no doubt that places become manifold more interesting if one can fill the scene, so to speak, with action and actors of long ago. westminster hall would be majestic if it had no associations, but few men enter it for the first time without recalling the trial of charles the first. a well-known tract near brussels would attract no pilgrims if the freedom of europe had not been won on its fields. the case is the same with messing. if there be cause for saluting it as the place where briton and roman met in a conflict to the death every fold in the ground stirs the imagination. but when an antiquary talks of two large woods as seeming to form a narrow gorge, and a clerical historian writes of a "valley between undulating hills," of a wood in the rear, of a plain in front over which the natives "spread far and wide," and locates the wagons in the rear, only one course is open to me. it is to forget the six and twenty years which have passed since last i faced the "small but well-armed tribe" of the examiners, during which there has been neither occasion nor desire to read latin prose works, to ignore the terrors of the historic present and of what i believe used to be called _oratio obliqua_, and to refer to tacitus, upon whom both these clerical gentlemen relied for information. one sentence disposes of the question of position. tacitus tells us that suetonius had ten thousand armed men when he made up his mind to give battle, "and he picks a place with narrow jaws and closed in by a wood at the rear, well assured that there was no part of the enemy save in the front, and that the plain was open, without fear of ambushes." there is nothing to suggest that the sides of the defile were wooded, as mr. jenkins thought they might have been, or that there was any wood at all except in the rear. indeed, the probability is the other way. still less is there any word to explain why dean merivale invented "a valley between undulating hills." indeed, the description of the defile by the word _fauces_ (which has been translated literally) conveys a sharper and more rugged idea than our word "valley," which, of course, comes directly from _vallis_ and carries the same meaning. in fact, the "gorge" of mr. jenkins is the better translation, and undulating hills would have given boadicea a chance of taking suetonius in flank. the wagons apparently were drawn up in a crescent behind the british so that their occupants might see the fight. that is all concerning the position, and it is really mere guess-work on the part of dean merivale to suggest that the great battle was fought anywhere near colchester. all we know is that suetonius determined to leave london to its fate, and st. albans also, and that merivale thought "the situation of camulodunum, enclosed in its old british lines, and backed by the sea, would offer him a secure retreat where he might defy attack and await reinforcements; and the insurgents, after their recent triumphs, had abandoned their first conquests to wreak their fury on other seats of roman civilization. while, therefore, the iceni sacked and burnt first verulamium (st. albans) and then london suetonius made, as i conceive, a flank march toward camulodunum, and kept ahead of their pursuit, till he could choose his own position to await their attack." all this is pure fancy. all we know for certain is that suetonius left london, then not a _colonia_ but already a great centre of commerce and business, and st. albans to their fate. there is not a particle of evidence whither he went; and there was less reason to go to camulodunum than to any place; for it had recently been sacked by the iceni under boadicea, and resistance had been hopeless because the colonists had taken no steps in the way of preparing defences. the "old british lines" of camulodunum had seemed to the veteran colonists of so little use when they were attacked that they made their only stand, and that to no avail, in the temple of claudius. in fact there is no evidence to show which way suetonius marched, or where the defile was, with the wood in rear, in which he induced boadicea to attack him. tacitus most likely did not know himself. he was not present. he was merely a roman gentleman and an ex-official, of literary proclivities, writing a picturesque military history, partly from hearsay, partly from official records. he probably knew very little of the geography of britain--not a very important province, be it remembered--and his desire, presumably, was to interest roman readers and to give gratification to great men whom he liked, or from whom he might look for favour. he described the military position and showed suetonius in the character of a capable general. to have done more, to have gone into geographical detail, would have puzzled his readers as english readers might be puzzled to-day by detailed allusions to unheard-of places in an unfamiliar part of the globe. so there is no limit to the number of places--a gorge, with a wood behind and an open plain in front--capable of being accepted as the field of this particular battle. it may have been anywhere in southern england. still if, like the trojans when they were hoodwinked by the greeks into opening the gates of troy too soon, men would like to localize the field of battle somewhere, so that they may conjure up the scene anew, there is no reason in life why they should not amuse themselves thus at messing. they can look at the camp at haynes green and conjure up in imagination the fourteenth legion in close ranks in the centre, with the cavalry massed on either flank. they can think they hear the general heartening them for the combat and telling them not to mind the yells of the savages--for that is what a high-sounding latin paragraph comes to in effect. they can see in fancy boadicea making the circuit of her warriors in a chariot, her outraged daughters in front of her, inciting her hearers to frenzy. they can gaze in imagination on the neronian legionaries when, having exhausted their javelins on the attacking mobs ("battalions," which merivale uses, is far too orderly a word), they charged the britons _en masse_, and the cavalry joining them at the gallop with out-stretched lances. they can imagine the tangle of wagons, warriors, women and children into which the roman soldiers plunged, sparing no living thing. _clara et antiquis victoriis par eâ die laus parta_, says tacitus. "the glory of that day was quite like the old victories. men say that rather less than eighty thousand britons fell as against four hundred soldiers killed and not many more wounded." they can believe that boast of a military historian who was away at rome, if they like; and there is really no harm in their fancying that all this happened at messing if they please. to do so will make messing interesting, and nobody will ever be able to locate the battle anywhere else with any more certainty. during the mimic warfare of a few years ago, as has been stated, i travelled from tiptree to messing on a lanchester, and from messing to heckford bridge. my recollection is of a pretty country, with many little ups and downs, of rich orchards, of oaks overshadowing the roads, and of green acorns which the soldiery seemed to enjoy, of abundant orchards and, last but not least, of abominable roads. but let me not be too hard on the roads. they were equal, no doubt, as byways go, to "the ordinary traffic of the district"; they were subjected to an extraordinary strain by long trains of transport wagons, which encumbered my course in such a manner as to make me full of sympathy now for the britons who fell among their own wagons under roman sword and spear. even among those endless vehicles one could not fail to observe the beauty of spreading trees and innumerable variations of level, especially at heckford bridge. somewhere thereabouts it was, i remember, that a privileged motor-car came upon companies of invaders and of defenders, within two hundred yards of one another, and each totally ignorant of the propinquity of the other. bored as the manoeuvring troops were--for men and officers will be bored by continuous marching during which they have not the slightest idea what is going on--this ignorance was not their fault. most of the fields were out of bounds, and although military imagination might go so far as to imagine scouts--it imagined one hundred thousand men in support of general wynne that day--it can hardly supply the warnings which those imaginary scouts would give if they were real. but the most cogent reason of this blind manoeuvring was to be found in the rapid variations of contour, the patulous trees, and the abundant leafage. this gave to the scenery singular charm, even while it made the roads such as the merely rushing motorist would eschew. not only were they narrow and exceeding crooked, they were also very wet and greasy, so that a moderate pace would have been compulsory in any circumstances. still, if any rational motorists will take this little drive in a leisurely way, they will agree, as they bowl along the few miles of good high-road between heckford bridge and colchester, that it is exceeding pleasant and well worthy to be taken. chapter ix--(_continued_) colchester to the extraordinary "dene-holes" at grays, essex early rising a mistake--fine weather and misty mornings--bound for grays, near tilbury--to chelmsford--great baddow and clare college, cambridge--galleywood common--a wide prospect--billericay--origin of name an enigma--arthur young on the country and roads--same roads to-day--effect of heavy motors--a plea for overhanging trees--horndon on the hill--langdon hill a fine view--arthur young rhapsodizes--defoe at chadwell--little thurrock--hangman's wood or hairyman's wood?--if the latter, possible connection with peter the wild man--his story--defoe's interest in him--the "dene-holes"--an antiquary who gave no help--enigmas not solved by designatory titles--the shafts--the groups of chambers--dimensions--uniformity of shape--groups all separate--absence of orientation--known to camden--neglected till 1884 and 1887, then again--no suggestive remains found--cannot be chalk wells--hardly flint mines as at brandon--legend of "king cunobelin's gold mines"--conceivably granaries--not very likely--why not refuges from the danes, small at first and enlarged later?--harmless speculation at any rate--suggestion for return to colchester--to clacton by motor-boat, thence by train--take glance at burnham on crouch--quaint and hospitable. now doubts arise, and i hover between two opinions. dinner and rest are supposed to have intervened before we carry on our little tour or series of tours. that is a small thing to demand. a playwright thinks nothing of an interval of years between two acts. the difficulty is that our imaginary tour of to-day is one of fully one hundred miles, and is much more likely to stretch out into one hundred and twenty, for few motorists will take the advice, honestly given, to retrace their wheelmarks for some fifty miles. that, really, is not half so bad as it sounds, for the eye of the most practised motorist does not observe so quickly while passing in one direction that nothing remains to be noticed about the same objects when passed from another direction. still there are at least a hundred miles to go, some of them over familiar roads about which no further observations are necessary, to see a sight of mysterious interest which has, to all appearances, not obtained a tenth of the notice it richly deserves. shall we, then, rise early in the morning, so that we may have leisure to proceed quietly and to enjoy "the clear morning air"? the suggestion is declined without thanks by the wise woman or man. the pleasures of early-rising and of the cool morning air are a fond delusion of the ancients; just as the idea that it is virtuous to get up early belongs to a state of opinion in which actions were believed to be virtuous if they were decidedly unpleasant. now that this state of opinion has vanished the one consolation of rising early has disappeared also. early-rising, especially in hotels, is a hollow fraud. it means reluctant relinquishment of the comfort of bed, futile attempts to eat breakfast served by sulky and half-awakened waiters, at a time when the body is not ready for that breakfast. men quarry their food and crush it at these ghastly hours, but they do not really feed, and they are none the better for their effort so to do. motoring loses half its joy when it is done at the cost of sleep, for it certainly may be held truth with a nameless poet, who sung that he had tried all the pleasures of this world, and love it was the best of them, but sleep worth all the rest of them. besides, even when the glass is set fair, and the day proper is going to be all that the heart can desire, the cool, clear, and beautiful air of the morning by no means always comes up to expectation. the prelude to a really fine day is very often a dense mist, sure forerunner of heat, from dawn until seven or eight o'clock; and in a dense mist no man can travel at a reasonable pace or with any pleasure at all. moreover, the days when one gets up early for pleasure, especially in august, september, and october, are precisely the days on which the tricksy spirit of the mist chooses to make herself manifest. our destination is grays, a squalid little town near tilbury, on the estuary of the thames, to which no sane person would think of going on pleasure for its own sake. there is a ferry from tilbury across the thames estuary, forgotten when i wrote earlier of the isolation of east anglia, but little used by motorists. grays is about fifty miles off by our route, which seems the best, and it will be time enough to explain why grays has been chosen when we foregather round the luncheon table there. better still, for although i secured a good luncheon in a house of public entertainment at grays once the circumstances were exceptional, will it be to take a well-stocked luncheon basket and to lunch, not at grays, but at hangman's wood, a mile or two to the east of grays. we will not start before 9.30 a.m. and it will be bad luck indeed if we cannot reach it by 1.30 p.m. it is to be feared, however, that there may be some difficulty in inducing intelligent members of the party to leave hangman's wood so early as 3.30. so, having roused curiosity in the manner familiar to writers of serial stories, that is to say by breaking off at a critical moment, let us proceed in a leisurely way. and first we spin along the familiar roman road to chelmsford, enjoying, be it hoped, the kind of weather invoked for "poor tom bowline," and making the most of good and straight going. the chances are that before the day ends we shall have to "put up with" something worse in the way of surface, and it is certain that we shall not have to lament monotonous straightness later on. in the heart of chelmsford we ask for the great baddow road, and a short couple of miles takes us to a big essex village, attractive to the eye, but not calling imperatively for a halt. the fact that this village was the birthplace of richard de badow, chancellor of the university of cambridge, in the time of edward ii, may be assimilated _en voyage_. university hall, cambridge, was founded by de badow and the university conjointly. the hall exists no longer, had indeed a very brief existence, for it was one thing to found it, and quite another to keep it going; and some time before 1360, when elizabeth de clare (who was granddaughter to edward i) died after founding clare college, university hall had been merged in the college founded by this wealthy heiress of that "illustrious family of clare" which has come to the fore in an earlier drive from colchester. great baddow, therefore, has a connection, and that a distinct connection, with the college which was nursing mother to latimer, whose most celebrated sermon is still part of the literary groundwork of every cultivated englishman's style; to cudworth, whose words used to be read by aspirants for honours in greats at oxford, and may still be so read; to tillotson, whose sermons are familiar by name in the literature of the past; and lastly, if one among the moderns may be named, to mr. owen seaman, editor of _punch_ and genial castigator of the weaknesses of all sorts and conditions of men. at great baddow we turn to the right and then climb to the upland known as galleywood common, and already seen; and after that we climb again, a hundred feet as nearly as may be in a mile, to a nameless point of the road two miles west of west manningfield. the air grows fresher, more invigorating, and if there be a suspicion of easterly direction in the breeze the breath of the sea will be recognized. prospect, to use the expressive word beloved of the ancient topographer, is wider and more comprehensive than that to which we have been accustomed of late, for most of the country between us and the estuary of the thames is very flat indeed, and in such a country a hill of 314 feet gives a very wide survey. nine miles or thereabouts, mostly on a downward gradient, takes us to billericay, but this ancient town itself stands on a hill. why billericay? of a truth it is not possible to say, for the etymologies suggested are purely conjectural and not at all convincing, and all we know is that it was known as billerica in the latter part of the fourteenth century. this is rather annoying, for most place-names are either susceptible of some explanation or of such a simple character that there seems to be no particular reason why they should not exist. "billericay," on the other hand, is an etymological puzzle, and, at the same time, much too odd a title to have come into existence casually. billericay was one of the places visited by arthur young on his six weeks' tour, and his description of the country is quoted both for the sake of variety and because it contains a useful reference to our destination of the day. he had been to chelmsford, which he considered a pretty, neat, and well-built town, and he had remarked that all the cart-horses he saw from sudbury to chelmsford were of a remarkably large size. "from the latter town i proceeded to _billericay_; the country very rich, woody, and pleasant, with abundance of exceeding fine landscapes over extensive valleys. the husbandry, i apprehend, not equal to that in use about chelmsford; for their principal course is fallowing for wheat, then sowing oats and laying down with clover and ray-grass, which is a very faulty custom on land which, like this, lets in general from 15s. to 20s. an acre; nor did i see many good crops. the principal manure they use about _billericay_ is chalk, which they fetch in waggons from _grays_, and costs them generally by the time they get it home 5-1/2d. or 6d. a bushel. they seldom use it alone, but mix it with turf, fresh dug, and farmyard dung, and then lay it on for wheat, now and then for turnips, which are however seldom sown in this neighbourhood. all this manure is sometimes spread at the expense of £10 an acre." from billericay to tilbury, pretty much our route, arthur young was principally interested by the "prodigious size of the farms," a matter of no present concern. but he has something to say later which is very much to our purpose. "of all the roads that ever disgraced our kingdom, in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from _billericay_ to the _king's head_ at _tilbury_. it is for near twelve miles so narrow that a mouse may not pass by any carriage. i saw a fellow creep under his waggon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. the ruts are of an incredible depth, and a pavement of diamonds might as well be fought for as a quarter" [_sic_, meaning?]. "the trees everywhere overgrow the road, so that it is totally impervious to the sun, except at a few places. and to add to all the infamous circumstances which concur to plague a traveller, i must not forget eternally meeting with chalk-waggons; themselves frequently stuck fast, till a collection of them are in the same situation, that twenty or thirty horses may be tacked to each, to draw them out one by one. after this description, will you--can you believe me when i tell you, that a turnpike was much solicited by some gentlemen to lead from _chelmsford_ to the ferry at tilbury fort, but opposed by the bruins of this country--whose horses are worried to death while bringing chalk through these vile roads? i do not imagine that the kingdom produces such an instance of vile stupidity; and yet in this district are found numbers of farmers who cultivate above £1000 a year. besides those already mentioned we find a _skinner_ and a _tower_, who each rent near £1500 a year, and a _read_ almost equal; but who are all perfectly well contented with their roads." essex byways--and yet the road from chelmsford to tilbury ferry was hardly a byway in those days--are not quite so bad as this to-day, but emphatically they are not good, and in this particular district they are clearly not likely to improve. arthur young's long series of chalk-laden wagons, stuck fast in the mire and clay until such time as the combined teams were strong enough to extricate them one by one, are a thing of the past. but the joint evidence of mr. sidney stallard and of mr. seymour williams, who were chosen to represent the rural district councils association before the recent royal commission, contains an interesting piece of information on this point, and on one general point of great importance. these gentlemen, engineers of considerable experience and officially familiar with the road question, do not think that light motors cause any considerable damage to roads, but they hold a very different opinion as to heavy motors. "at billericay, which is an agricultural district, steam motors are used, and they cause damage there to the extent of £700." obviously this is a very large annual expense for a district like that of billericay, where the great farms of arthur young's day do not, in modern conditions and with modern prices, produce anything approaching to the profits of days gone by. it seems to follow that, at present at any rate, it would be unreasonable to hope for any great improvement in the byways of essex, and more prudent to expect deterioration. one word i would fain say of arthur young's complaint, because it is one often made now and, receiving a great deal of attention, is a menace to one of the most precious and characteristic beauties of england. he complains of the trees that overshadow the road, "so that it is totally impervious to the sun, except at a few places." so do county surveyors complain and, since they have certain legal rights in this matter, they insist from time to time that trees overshadowing the road and hedges by the side of the road shall be cut down. to this process, within reasonable limits, those who value the silvan greenery of england would be unreasonable to object. high hedges near cross roads or at sharp turns of the road are a source of danger; the surface of roads much overshadowed by trees is far more difficult to preserve than that of roads in the open, because the shaded surfaces are seldom thoroughly dried. the drip and the shade combined are too much for the sun and the wind. on the other hand such stretches of road are rarely dusty, and that is assuredly something gained. it would be easy, if somewhat invidious, to point out instances in which county surveyors, without exceeding their authority, have caused roadside trees to be hewn down and roadside hedges to be levelled to the ground, without sufficient justification, from the standpoint of a regard for the public safety, and with no justification at all, if the value of beautiful landscapes is to be taken into account. let us beware lest, in making travel over the face of our england easy, we deprive it of half its charm. after billericay our next point is horndon on the hill, concerning the view from which "over the rich land of essex and along the thames" "murray" speaks. the view from horndon is not, however, to be compared with that from langdon hill, climbed six miles to the south of billericay, which is 385 ft. high against the 128 of horndon. it was of this hill, doubtless, that arthur young raved in the annexed passage: "i forgot to tell you," he wrote from the "king's head," tilbury, on 24 june, 1767, "that near _horndon_, on the summit of a vast hill, one of the most astonishing prospects to be beheld, breaks almost at once upon one of the dark lanes. such a prodigious valley, everywhere painted with the finest verdure, and intersected with numberless hedges and woods, appears beneath you, that it is past description; the _thames_ winding through it, full of ships, and bounded by the hills of _kent_. nothing can exceed it, unless that which _hannibal_ exhibited to his disconsolate troops, when he bade them behold the glories of the _italian_ plains! if ever a turnpike should lead through this country, i beg you will go and view this enchanting scene, though a journey of forty miles is necessary first. i never beheld anything equal to it in the west of _england_, that region of landscape." some hyperbole there is here, perhaps, but not much of it, for the view of land and sea is very fine and, best of all, it is hardly necessary to have the car in order to secure it. the difference between the aspect of the river, as it presents itself to us, and that which it presented to arthur young is all to our disadvantage. for him an out-going ship was always a sailing vessel; for us the sailing vessels are few and far between, and those of large size which still use the thames must needs rely on a fussy, black-smoked tug to tow them down the tortuous channel. our many steamers are not so picturesque in themselves as the tall ships making for the open sea of his day were, when the wind was favourable. our steamers, too, belch forth clouds of smoke, befouling the air and obscuring the landscape. still, as j. m. w. turner and others, but turner most of all, have proved to us, there is a weird beauty of smoke if we will but open our eyes to see it, and the rochester barges, floating low on the water and carrying their delicious brown sails, were of young's days no less than they are of ours. father thames from a height is still a sight for appreciative eyes. two ways to grays are open from horndon. by the first, turning to the right at horndon, orsett is reached, and then a left turn brings one to chadwell. for the second, one keeps on straight through horndon and, turning to the right just before reaching stanford-le-hope, and then turning to left a couple of miles on, one also reaches chadwell. there is nothing to choose between the routes. one is dreary as the other. we go to chadwell simply in order to attain little thurrock, a mile or so from grays to the eastward, and just behind tilbury docks. in either case we pass through chadwell, which has a certain interest in connection with the past, if none in the present, for here daniel defoe lived for some years, as secretary of brick and pantile works, became prosperous a second time, kept his coach, and even launched out into a pleasure boat. during this period, too, he lived at tilbury, in "a house near the water's edge," but house and brickworks are alike gone. we are now close to the object of our quest, "hangman's wood" or "hairy man's" wood. "murray" says the latter; the local gentlemen who called my attention to its strange contents certainly said the former. if the former be the correct name the explanation is obvious. our ancestors used the noose freely, for all kinds of offenders, and displayed a partiality for hanging offenders, especially highwaymen, in a conspicuous place, which was often called in accordance with its gruesome use. many examples might be found; the first that comes to mind is gallows point on the menai straits, about a mile on the menai bridge side of beaumari. this wood, clothing a gentle eminence between grays and tilbury, having a road on either side of it, would have suited admirably the accomplishment of the highwayman's designs on the public in the first place, and the public's punishment of the highwayman later. he would be hanged, like a rook over sprouting wheat, conspicuously at the place of his misdeeds, to serve as an example to evildoers. still, information obtained by word of mouth may always be misheard, and it seemed worth while to think who could the hairy man be? surely none other than "peter the wild boy," who afterwards became "peter the wild man," for he was, to all appearances, twelve or thirteen when he was found in 1724, and he lived until 1785. peter was found in a field near hamelin, the pied piper's hamelin, naked, brownish, and very hairy, in the act of sucking a cow; and quite unable to speak. he was brought to england--as the time was that of our first hanoverian king this was quite in the natural course of things--and the princess of wales, afterwards queen caroline, took an interest in him. he was placed in a hospital, very possibly in the neighbourhood of tilbury, for safety; the name peter was given to him, and after the efforts of many teachers had proved futile, he was handed over to the care of a farmer living near berkhampsted, where, wearing a collar with an inscription to the effect that any person bringing him back would be rewarded, he lived to the end of his life. that he was of a roaming disposition the inscription on his collar proves, but i have no evidence to suggest that he ever wandered into this particular wood. on the other hand there is a faint suspicion that he may have done so, for defoe, who doubtless knew the wood intimately, was interested in peter, visited him, and made him the peg upon which to hang a pamphlet on education, including much satire on the men and manners of his time, and a savage attack on his old enemy swift. hangman's wood, or hairy man's wood, call it which you will, contains something very much more interesting than peter the wild man is to us now, in the shape of what are called locally the "dene holes," or sometimes "king cunobelin's gold mines"; for peter is dead long since, his enigma perished with him, and when all is said and done the chances are that he was neither more nor less than an idiot boy, who grew into an idiot man. on the other hand, these dene holes are with us still, and nobody has succeeded in reading their enigma. i obtained an entry to them two or three years ago, having journeyed to grays for the purpose, simply because the proprietor of the principal hotel in grays was anxious that some writing person should see and describe these very peculiar excavations, which certainly have not secured anything approaching to adequate notice in recent years from the learned. the hotel-keeper's motives may not have been purely altruistic; altruism, indeed, is not the most conspicuous quality of the average hotel-keeper. he may have suspected that, if the existence of this curiosity were more generally known, visitors would come to grays, and to his hotel, requiring refreshment and conveyance to hangman's wood, both of which he might provide to his profit. to the philosophical mind that makes no difference. the things are either worth seeing, at the expense of some trouble, or they are not. my firm conviction is that they are very well worth seeing indeed, and an attempt shall be made to justify it by describing that which i saw and that which, no doubt, anybody else may see upon applying at this hotel, the name of which has escaped memory. that again does not matter, for once at grays, there will be no difficulty in finding the hotel that is interested in the dene holes. let a word of preliminary warning be given. not long after this expedition to grays, and before its results had appeared in print, it was my fortune to meet as a fellow-guest an eminent member of the society of antiquaries, an official, i fancy, of that august body, to whom it seemed right that i should mention these holes in the ground of hangman's wood (of which, indeed, my mind was very full) and describe them to the best of my ability. he listened patiently, with an appearance of interest, and then observed that the holes were "dene-holes," and that there were similar cavities in many other parts of england. the answer was really rather disappointing, not because it seemed to prick my little bubble of interest, but because it was what i had found in a good many books, written by persons who were in no way to blame, because the chance of seeing these particular holes had not been open to them, and because, judging by descriptions, the other dene-holes were not in the least identical with those of hangman's wood. i felt very much in the position of the questioner who, on asking what the duties of an archdeacon might be, received the sterile and stereotyped reply that an archdeacon performs archidiaconal functions. an enigma is not explained by giving a name to it. it is worth while to read an account at first hand of the dene-holes of hangman's wood, even though you are under the impression that you know all about dene-holes, unless indeed you have seen these particular holes. if so you cannot have failed to be deeply interested in them. on the occasion under notice we drove about a mile or a mile and a half from grays to the nearest corner of this wood, where the road forks to orsett and to chadwell. from an article written when the scene was fresh in memory it appears that this wood left the impression on me that it was not a recent and artificial plantation, that it might even be primeval. in this wood are some fifty shafts, some of which had been opened at the time of my visit, while others remained overgrown with brushwood but easily traceable. attention had, indeed, been directed towards these shafts not long before by the horrid discovery of the decaying body of a man at the bottom of one of them. it was, indeed, a singular thing that traces of more such catastrophes were not discovered when examination was made of the holes. it was a consequence, perhaps, of the very unpleasant way upon which the holes had forced themselves upon public attention that a windlass and cage had been rigged up over the mouth of one of them--the apparatus was clearly meant to be permanent--for the purposes of descent and ascent. the cage was but small--big enough to accommodate one passenger only--for though the mouths of the shafts are funnel-shaped, because if they were not the gravel sides would fall in, the shafts become cylindrical so soon as they enter the coherent thanet sand, and are of such a width that a man of middle height may place his back against one side and ascend, or descend, without much difficulty by the aid of footholes cut on the other side. after the gravel the shaft passes through the thanet sand for some twenty feet more and for a very short space, after the thanet sand ends, through the chalk. then at last the cage feels the bottom of the shaft. the passenger emerges, and can see dimly that he is in a vaulted chamber of chalk. the ascending cage, entering the cylinder of the shaft, leaves him in total darkness, but soon, as one passenger comes down after another, a sufficient exploring party is formed, lanterns are lit, and examination begins. it reveals the fact that each shaft communicates with a group of chambers, all similar in design, all originally distinct from one another. imagine an ash leaf pressed between the pages of a book, but having its middle rib cut off short at the base of the lowest leaflets, and that middle rib seven or eight times broader, in proportion to the leaflets, than in nature. in that you have the ground plan of the chambers, in principle at least, but no object in nature, so far as i am aware, corresponds exactly with the design. so far we have ground plan only. let us proceed to dimensions. the extreme length of each group of chambers is about 80 ft. each chamber is vaulted, about 20 ft. high, from 10 to 15 ft. wide, and somewhat wider a few feet above the floor than at the floor level. the whole is beautifully and symmetrically hewn out, the marks of the implements used for the purpose are plainly visible. of such groups of chambers, all originally distinct, all hewn with the same exact precision, but directed to all sorts of points of the compass, so that there is no suspicion of orientation, there are a large number. if it be asked why learned writers have been so sparing of allusion to subterranean works of such manifest interest, the answer is that until the years 1884 and 1887, when the essex field club made a fairly thorough examination, the materials for learned discussion were not available. camden knew the "dane holes," or knew of their existence, and figured one of them with tolerable accuracy in his _britannia_. dr. plot (_history of oxfordshire, 1705_) talks of "king cunobeline's gold mines in essex," and a cambrian register of "gold mines at orsett." for a long time before 1884 the matter does not seem to have attracted the serious attention of the learned, and it has been neglected since. of the writers who dealt with it at all before 1884 the writer of murray's guide, using for basis mr. roach smith's _collectanea antiqua_, vol. vi, gives perhaps as clear an account as any other; and it is quoted for purposes of criticism. "excavations called _dane-pits_ are numerous in the chalk near east tilbury. a passage is said to have led from these caverns to others resembling them at chadwell near little thurrock." (note in passing that no passage could possibly have led to these pits as a whole, because each group is entirely separate and distinct, except where the ancient divisions have been broken through by explorers.) "the entrances are from above, by narrow circular passages, which widen below and communicate with numerous apartments, all of regular forms." (our passages, or shafts, are wide at the top, narrow as soon as they reach the thanet sand, an important factor which "murray" does not seem to have observed, and never grow any wider while they remain shafts.) "the size and depth vary. it is uncertain for what purpose these pits (which occur in various localities throughout the chalk districts on either side of the thames) were originally excavated, although it is now generally believed that they were made for the sake of the chalk itself which was largely exported at an early period." let us dispose of this hypothesis at once. it is impossible. chalk wells, of course, have been known since the time of pliny, who explains in his _natural history_ (xvii 8) that the fine white chalk used by silversmiths is won out of "pits sunk like wells, with narrow mouths, to a depth of 100 ft. where they branch out like the veins of mines." he adds "_hoc maxime britannia utitur_" (murray). that may have been, and it still is, the custom, because the deep-lying chalk is found to be closer and finer in texture. but the value of the depth of a chalk well is that it reaches the deep-lying chalk, whereas in hangman's wood the shaft ceases and the excavated chambers begin practically so soon as the chalk has been penetrated far enough to leave room for the chambers under an adequate roof. what our unknown ancestors dug out here was surface chalk, not deep-lying chalk at all, and if surface chalk was good enough to export there was plenty of it available without being at the pains to dig through a mass of gravel and thanet sand. no unprejudiced man, and i was assuredly such a one when i descended into these holes, can possibly explore the excavations in hangman's wood and go away capable of believing that they were originally chalk wells. apart from the question of quality of chalk, the neatness of the chambers, their precise symmetry, and above all the fact that they were a distinct and separate group belonging to each shaft, although the partitions, when broken through by explorers were often only a foot or two thick, disposes of the theory absolutely. the explorers of 1884 and 1887 did their work in a most praiseworthy manner. at the bottoms of shafts that had remained open there was naturally a good deal of débris, by sifting which they secured sundry bones and pieces of pottery. but the potsherds, examined by experts, told no story, and the bones, submitted to naturalists of high authority, were shown to be such that they might have belonged to animals of the last century. there are no marks of fire. there are no niches to point to a use for storing sepulchral urns; the chalk is singularly sterile of flints, so there is no likelihood that here, as at brandon, the shafts were sunk for flints. in any case the symmetrical shape and the unity of design would negative that theory. the case is one for pure, but not therefore of necessity unprofitable, speculation. king cunobelin's gold mines, as gold mines, may be discarded. neither he or anybody else has yet found, in chalk and placed there by the process of nature, gold, or anything more like gold than pyrites, although a press-man, greatly daring, "interviewed" sir william ramsay not long since on the presence of gold in sea-water. the putative ancestor of "old king cole" may have stored some of his gold there, for our rude forefathers had considerable store of gold; and the tradition may have crystallized into the phrase "king cunobelin's gold mines." it is not likely that any men in the twentieth century will spend money in searching for gold in chalk. still, in the days of the south sea bubble they were foolish enough for that, and the legend of king cunobelin induced them to try these very excavations. the suggestion has also been made that these were granaries, similar to some used on the continent in days gone by; but again the elaborate shape is a difficulty although the separation of the groups is not. we are therefore, as before stated, reduced to pure conjecture, and the expression "dene-holes" helps us not at all; for _denn_ is simply anglo-saxon for a cave, and a dene-hole is a "cave-hole," bilingual tautology and nothing more. ruminating over the known facts on many occasions during recent years, for it is impossible to see these strange burrowings and to banish them from the mind, it has occurred to me, often enough to have become almost a firm theory, that the traditional name of "dane holes" may supply the complete explanation. in the absence of evidence to the contrary tradition is entitled to more respect than it commonly gains from the antiquary; and here there is no evidence at all against tradition. "murray" speaks of british coins found in dene-holes; certainly none such have been found in the holes in hangman's wood. the terror of the danes was frequent and very real; and the men who lived on the banks of the estuary of the thames were more exposed to danish raids, more familiar with their ruthless mood, than most of the inhabitants of our island. it is not difficult to imagine that the heads of families in these parts selected hangman's wood as a suitable spot in which to dig out hiding places, separate ones for each family. from its eminence, like rabbits sitting over their burrow, they could strain their eyes down the estuary of the thames to watch for the incoming fleet of warrior-bearing keels; and, when they saw it, they could scuttle into their holes at once. fires, of course, they dare not kindle within, while the invaders were at hand, for the smoke would have betrayed them; and when the invaders were gone away they could come above ground again and live their ordinary lives. they did not, according to this theory, begin by making these groups of chambers in their full and careful detail. they began by digging a shaft, the mouth of which they masked with brushwood, and a hole at the bottom in which they could cower with their families until the tyranny was overpast. but the danger came again and again for years and hundreds of years. the refuge of the pits was used many times; quarters were crowded; it was not easy to pass the weary hours of captivity. the refugees wiled away the time, and added to their own comfort by gradually quarrying away more and more rooms round the original hole, some for storage of food, some for sleeping, and so on; and they showed their true national spirit by keeping all the groups of chambers absolutely separate. the fancy is at least harmless. these speculations, it is to be feared, will be apt to weary some of those who do not see the dane-pits of grays, but if they induce any persons to visit them, those persons will assuredly be rewarded, for the burrowings are of mysterious and compelling interest. but we are at grays, where none except a native would dream of spending the night, so we must go. colchester is our imaginary home, and the best way of returning to it by car is by the roads which brought us here. an alternative is to send the car back with the man and, if we have prudently made arrangements beforehand, and the sea be smooth, to run from tilbury to clacton by motor-launch, and at clacton to take the train for colchester. except rayleigh there is nothing left of essex to the eastward worth visiting by land, and the whole of the peninsula between the estuaries of the blackwater and the thames, permeated as it is by the estuaries of the crouch and the roach, is almost impassable by land, and of a most dreary flatness into the bargain. it is this part of the county which gives essex so undeservedly bad a name. still it looks well enough from the water, and the distance by sea to clacton, for a motor-boat of light draught, cannot be much more than forty-five or fifty miles. in the estuary of the crouch, too, if the tide be full, may be seen a very charming congregation of white-winged yachts. moreover, motor-boats congregate there on occasion--they had a regatta there in 1906. the yacht clubs are very hospitable, and there is one capital inn. in fact, if the little journey be made in a motor-boat, it will be quite a wise thing to put in at burnham, which is a place not wanting in picturesque quality and as completely _sui generis_ as may be imagined. but by no means choose the sea unless it be fairly smooth. a staunch motor-yacht will stand a lot of weather without suffering much herself, but for her passengers, no matter how hardy seamen or seawomen they may be, rough water in a motor-yacht spells sheer misery. she is worse than a torpedo-boat destroyer, and that is very bad indeed. chapter x in spring. troubles made easy paucity of incidents so far--they often mean bad driving--good driving and bad--the grey ghost in berks--a burst tire--a warning--a puncture at thame--treasure trove--meet mechanic at aylesbury--unready hitchin--royston--advancing vegetation--partridges paired--tire blown off rim--an ancient dyke discovered--plans changed by delays, but the motorist needs no plans--to newmarket--exit mechanic--to bury st. edmunds--a race with a train--bury st. edmunds and the "angel"--moderate charges--spacious rooms--memories of pickwick--mr. weller's pump gone--two hotel bills compared--morning in bury--the abbey garden--norman tower--st. mary's church--the square--defoe at bury--start at noon--to wortham--fourth tire trouble--pleasant children and a bye-election--scole--harleston--fifth tire trouble--end of tire troubles and chapter. hitherto it may have been some cause for dissatisfaction to others, it has certainly been none to me, that with regard to the portion of this book which may be considered strictly narrative, there has been a monotonous immunity from accident of any kind. yet so it was, and although, unlike george washington, i do not profess that i cannot tell a lie, there would have been no point in telling one, and it would have been unfair. to touch a human being, another vehicle, or even a dog, with a motor-car, even in circumstances involving no culpability or legal responsibility in the driver of the motor-car, is in the vast majority of cases still not to his credit. the best drivers know it to be their duty never to expect that any other user of the road except a motorist has himself or his vehicle under absolute control. the good driver looks out for the signs of alarm in horses, realizes that cyclists, especially those of the female sex, "wobble" in their course when they hear the horn, knows that dogs will try to commit hari-kari, is aware that some men are blind, some deaf, some obstinate, and some drunk, feels that it is always best and safest to take stupidity for granted, and to give as wide a berth as possible to every living object on the high road. it is wiser to miss a horseless cart by half an inch than to try to pass a carriage and pair with a yard to spare. if these principles be borne in mind it is astonishing, at least it would be to the anti-motorist, to see how many thousands of miles may be travelled without harm done. how many thousands of miles i have travelled in motors of many kinds in england alone, to say nothing of scotland and ireland, i do not know; certainly a good many. in england, although i have sat beside some inconsiderate drivers, have i ever been at all near to hurting a human being; but i have sat beside considerate drivers in circumstances which, if one of the inconsiderate though skilful ones had been at the wheel, would have made it worse than a near thing for careless or frightened wayfarers. up to this time in the narrative, although at no period was any superstitious regard paid to the speed limit, i had not been caught in a police ambuscade (not that "ambuscade," except for its length, is a word in the least degree more dignified than "trap") during my travels in east anglia; nor need i hesitate to write thus, for, in the first place, i am touching wood in the shape of a cork penholder, and, in the next, the narrative being but part accomplished, the travelling days which were its preliminary are, as the hymn says, o'er. in the journeys by motor-car from colchester, which have been pressed into service during the preceding chapter, i was exempt from the speed limit. again, so far as the narrative has gone, i can lay my hand on my heart and say that never, save once during the essex manoeuvres, through a burst tire, and then not in the lanchester car, did i meet with tire trouble or suffer an involuntary stop through any failing of machinery. on the expedition now to be recorded, in itself one of the most interesting and delightful ever taken by me, we had a whole series of troubles of different kinds--misfortunes of this kind never occur singly. but i hope to be able to show that these troubles were, some of them, providential, in other ways than that of supplying me with topics, which were abundant in any case, and that skill of hand and knowledge, combined with perfect imperturbability of temper in a gentleman who drives, and has all the trouble on his own hands, may convert trouble into sheer pleasure for the other persons delayed on the road. early in the morning of 6 april, a sunny morning worthy of the spring, mr. claude johnson arrived at my berkshire cottage with the rolls-royce owning the _sobriquet_ of the grey ghost. i had ridden in the car first in paris, outside the _salon_ during the exhibition of 1904, and had been fascinated by its silence and controllability as mr. rolls at the wheel threaded the traffic in the champs élysées. mr. johnson had been expected overnight; the chamber in the wall had been prepared; but "he came not, for the ships were broken in ezion-geber." in other words, the back near tire came to grief on the oxford road. taking it off with his own hands and substituting another, he had elected to sleep at a favourite inn and to come on to my house in the morning. this particular burst was simply the act of giving up the ghost accomplished by canvas which had reached the end of its natural life; and this, since the term of the natural life of canvas varies, is the kind of mishap which may occur at any time. knowing that the tendency of troubles to come in groups is not mere matter of proverbial superstition, or, perhaps, being not entirely free from superstition, mr. johnson said, "you must be prepared for plenty more of these pleasant little interruptions. but, however, i have wired for a mechanic to meet us at aylesbury, with more inner tubes and covers, and with luck we may last till then." so at 9.35 we started in one of the first rolls-royces ever made, four cylinder and, i think, a 20-h.p. (but horse-power is a mere figure of speech, and the folks who prattle of it as a basis of taxation talk more nonsense than they realize). it had a cape hood, glass screens in front of the driving-seat and between it and the tonneau, and it carried my wife and younger daughter, with two suit-cases of fair size, in the tonneau, mr. johnson being at the wheel, and i by his side. we did not last so far as aylesbury without trouble. on the contrary, just as we were leaving thame a sharp whistle of escaping air gave notice that something was amiss, and the back off-side tire was found to be flabby. so we crawled back to a garage in that ancient town and wandered in the sun through its empty streets what time the defect was being made good. the process took the best part of an hour, and the delay proved to be providential in a small way for, in an old curiosity shop, we discovered an ancient "bible box," of oak, curiously carved, and reputed to have belonged to the great duke of marlborough. it was acquired at no great price, and, whether it belonged to the great duke of marlborough or no, it was in the nature of a treasure, for these bible boxes, made to contain family bibles of large size, are rare, and little known because they are rare, and likely to become expensive when they are known because, besides rarity, they can boast substantial beauty. from thame we bowled on to aylesbury without incident, and the scenery must not be touched upon now. at aylesbury we had to wait again some time for the mechanic, whose train had not arrived; however, it came at last, and, with him on the step, and tire covers strapped on to all sorts of places, we fared onwards. but our arrangements for luncheon were marred. mindful of the pie that vanished at royston (_ubi supra_ as the pedants would say), we had planned to take our luncheon there. at hitchin nature vowed that she would no longer be denied. still nature was very nearly compelled to take denial, for the hotel--it looked the best--professed itself destitute of cold meat; time did not permit of waiting for hot meat; and only after pressure did the waitress consent to produce some hacked fragments of discarded joints from which, with bread and butter and cheese, hungry motorists made a sufficient meal. true the process of finding the fragments that went to make it called to memory the supper in _tom brown's school-days_, and the wonderful deeds wrought by east with his pocket-knife. that was no matter. _fames est optimum condimentum_, as the old latin grammar used to say, and no doubt it was good of the unready hotel-keeper to give us anything. but why, o why, are hotel-keepers so often found unready? reaching royston without further mishap we entered our manor, for the purposes of this book, and glided on at a fine speed along the road, already traversed, towards newmarket. vegetation was more alive, hedges were growing green, partridges, a heavy stock of them, were paired; that was all the difference, or seemed to be all. but two miles short of six mile bottom, or thereabouts, there was not merely a whistle from below but a loud report. the front off-side dunlop tire had been blown out of the rim, the cause being that it was a "retreaded" tire which had stretched until it was no longer held in its place. this burst also turned out to be providential. while the mechanic, who was a blessing, was engaged in attending to the off front wheel, i wandered up and down the road, thinking at first that this was a dull piece of country. then my eye was caught by a bank running from the road on the more southerly side up a gentle slope until it was lost on the horizon. the bank was several feet above the level of the ground to the eastward; on the western side was a deep ditch. both were clearly visible, were indeed large and unmistakable on the southern side of the road, which seemed to be old pasture. on the north side they were traceable, and no more, having been obscured on the east side by trees and brushwood, and having yielded on the western side to the plough. if trouble we were to have it was surely lucky to meet it here for, beyond question, we were at one of those ancient ramparts piled up in the days of long ago to enable the warriors of eastern britain to keep out their foes of the west. in all probability it was haydon ditch, which runs from melbourn to haydon. it really does not matter what its particular name was, or is. to give it a name teaches one no more than my friend the antiquary taught me by calling the excavations at grays "dene-holes." some race, at some time long ago, piled up this vast mound with immense labour. it was an eastern race, that is certain from the relation of mound and ditch, making provision against enemies from the west, whom they might harry with stones and javelins as they strove to climb from the ditch, whose shock heads they might hammer, with stone axes or clubs perhaps, from above, as they swarmed up from below. so much is certain inference; the rest is absolute mystery, and to delay at the rampart for a day would not solve the outermost wrapper of it. indeed, so much as a halt is not advised, unless an involuntary one should occur conveniently, or an excuse for prudent adjustment to avoid future trouble be desired. slow down to five miles an hour, or even to ten, and look towards the off-side when you are approaching six mile bottom. then shall you see as much as is necessary, or indeed possible, of this ancient rampart and its fosse, and understand all that can be understood about it, to wit that is there, and has been there since prehistoric times. those who worked over the substitution of a new tire and cover were skilful and expeditious; but it is a task which even in the most competent hands is tiresome and must not be hurried over unduly. at the best it means dirt and perspiration; before it reaches the worst it is very likely to involve broken nails and barked knuckles; and the least excess of haste is likely to bring in its train a subsequent nip as nemesis, when all the dusty labour becomes vain. so, by this time, our plans as to a resting-place for the night were receding into the distance, or rather our place of abode was coming nearer to us, if we were not getting appreciably nearer to it. that is to say the plans of other people in the like circumstances would have been suffering thus, but ours were not quite definite. we had debated in an easy-going way the question whether we should dine and sleep at lowestoft or at yarmouth; whether perhaps we might not even push on to norwich whither the memories of the "maid's head" beckoned us. this was out of the question now, but the beauty of motoring is that, unless one has made a definite arrangement to meet friends, nothing of this kind matters. as a matter of fact we took our tea at newmarket--we have travelled the intervening piece of road in print before--and, then deciding where to sleep, went no farther than bury st. edmunds that night and, greatly daring, having regard to our run of ill-luck up to that time, we shed the mechanic, as a snake sheds his skin, instructing him to telegraph for yet another tire and cover to be sent to bury that night if possible, but at any rate by the earliest train in the morning. so on to bury by the same road as we had followed on the panhard in january; but phoebus! how marked was the difference between the late afternoon of a mild day in april and the fading light of a frosty evening in january! few of the trees were yet showing much green, but the buds were swelling and we could enjoy the stateliness of the trunks. "joy runs high, between english earth and sky" on such afternoons as this. the road was clear and good, it invited speed, and for a space we raced a train which, it must be admitted, beat us in the long run pretty handsomely. so a second time we entered bury, and this time made no mistake in the selection of our inn. let there be no misunderstanding here. lord montagu's road book, which is good as any other, and strongly bound to stand the hardships of travelling (with a flap to fold over the front edges of the pages, which reminds one of archbold's _criminal pleadings_ armed against the rough usage of circuit), specifies the "suffolk"; and the "suffolk" may be a very good hotel, but to the pilgrim who has a spark of sentiment in his composition, the "angel" addresses a more compelling invitation. one line of german poetry do i know--no more--and the luxury of quoting it (candidly confessing that it was got by heart by way of punishment for inattention, with some others now passed out of mind), shall not be denied to me- es lächelt der see, er ladet züm bade. as the sea laughed and said, "bathe in my sun-warmed waters," so the "angel" smiles, broadly and hospitably, saying, "if you are spending the night in bury, spend it in the house full of the cheerful memories of pickwick and the faithful weller." that invitation was assumed, for the "angel" is most decorously modest, but it was also accepted and never regretted for a moment, least of all when the time came for discharging the reckoning. we reached the "angel" sufficiently early to be able to order dinner and to stroll about in the darkening town while it was in preparation. they set our feet in large rooms. bedrooms, coffee-room, and sitting-room were spacious and comfortable. dinner was plain but excellent in the old-fashioned coffee-room, and i will almost, but not quite, pledge my word that the wall-paper was of that mellow and ruby red beloved of our forefathers, probably because it suggested port wine. a pilgrimage through the hotel, and the yard too, showed that it had altered little, if at all, since it was described by dickens, except that the pump was gone. assuredly there ought to be a pump, for the sake of appearances, if for no other reason, although a tap, fed from the corporation waterworks, may serve equally well to cool heads throbbing of a morning from overnight unwisdom in the still-existing tap-room. the "angel," in fact, is a thoroughly good hotel of the old-fashioned type, which it is a rare pleasure to enter and to praise. more than that, and to complete the well-earned panegyric, one leaves the "angel" in a satisfied mood. it is plain truth that we dined there, slept, had tea in our bedrooms, breakfasted well, and paid for the car's lodging in a coach-house, and that the bill for three of us was precisely one shilling less than was paid one day later for the same accommodation less dinner, and less the storage of the car for the night. that is why praise is gladly given and those who have suffered from heavy charges elsewhere will be the first to protest that it ought to be given out of a grateful heart. [illustration: abbey gateway, bury st. edmunds] in the morning there was more delay. the same wheel which had given trouble by the mysterious dyke on the preceding afternoon was found to be standing on a flat tire again. messages to the station brought back no substantial answer in the form of a cover. a local garage had none that fitted in stock, and had to send a special messenger to fetch one from a distance of ten or twelve miles on a motor-cycle. as a matter of fact, we found later, the tire-cover had been at the station all the time, but it had been addressed to the mechanic, and our messenger had made inquiries for one addressed to his master. the delay was really welcome. who could desire a better fate than to spend a perfect spring morning in sauntering through a town which was historic not only in fact but also in appearance? my own case was the more happy in that, during the interval, i had not only refreshed my memory of bury and of its associations, but had also learned a good many things in connection with it which were new to me. of course, we entered the abbey gateway, to find the botanical garden, noted by carlyle, less conspicuous than we had feared it might be. in fact, there was no demonstration of labels, helpful to the student but distressing to the idle eye, and it may be that the garden is no longer botanical, except in the sense in which every garden is such. it is a garden in any case, a garden with such broad stretches of close green turf as england alone can show; and on this turf little boys were playing games in the morning. a notice at the gate implied that the ground was not absolutely open to the public for games; if it were the turf would soon perish; but the price of play seemed to be very moderate; and perhaps the ground within those ancient walls serves as useful a purpose by encouraging the young men and maidens of bury to take healthy exercise in the open air as it did when it permitted the student to realize that _cheiranthus_ is another way of saying "wallflower," or that the weed best beloved of canaries may be called _jacobea_. of the shakesperian associations of the abbey we spoke last time we were at bury; they came to mind none the less pleasantly for the fact that sturdy little boys were kicking a football about on the ground often trodden by kings and abbots. of course, too, we went to see the norman tower, to the southward of the abbey gate and close to it, and st. mary's church. most pleasant of all, however, was it to linger in the sun about the spacious square, having the "angel" on one side and the abbey gate on the other, to rejoice in the abundance of old-world houses, to reflect that the square, and most of the houses, if not all, looked much the same as they did when "in order to avoid the public gaze, and also to recuperate, defoe repaired in august, 1704, to bury st. edmunds, where he took up his abode in a handsome residence called cupola house." defoe was then fresh from eighteen months in "that horrid place," as moll flanders called it, newgate prison. he had stood in the pillory more than once, but, as his biographer of 1894, mr. thomas wright, observes, we must not pity him too much. he suffered, after all, as others did in a brutal age. moreover, newgate was not all misery. he was allowed to exercise his pen freely while in prison, and he published one of the products of his incarceration, "an elegy on the author of the true-born englishman," while he was living at bury. that he did not come out penniless will be very plain to every pilgrim who is at the pains to look at cupola house, which is still standing and, from the outside at any rate, very inviting. such are some of the memories of bury, "the montpelier of suffolk, and perhaps of england," as defoe called it, and we were not in any hurry to leave it or them. still the sun shone, the roads were in good order, and when the car was ready about midday, we also were ready for the pleasures of the road. our road, good and fairly flat, through what may best be described as comfortable and rich country, lay by farnham st. mary, ixworth, where euston park was five miles to the north along the ipswich and thetford road, stanton, wattisfield, and richinghall to wortham. that is only seven miles in all, and we bowled along merrily, in no mood to stop if we could avoid it, observing the spacious area of many village greens, thwarting to the best of our ability the efforts of the geese (which accounted for the close shorn turf of those greens) to immolate themselves under our wheels. a fussy turkey-hen, too, courted the same fate, but so far as our chariot was concerned, the geese and their offspring may have been eaten with apple-sauce at michaelmas, and the turkey-hen's poults may have been hatched and reared, and fattened in the fashion best understood in east anglia for the london market. at wortham came more trouble. once more there was the ominous shriek. the rear off-side inner tube had been blown into a rent in the inner canvas of the outer cover; it was clean gone, and so, unfortunately, was the mechanic. cheerfully philosophical as ever, mr. johnson, with such help as the bystanders and i could give him, addressed himself to the task of fitting the wheel for the road again and, apart from the trouble and inconvenience to him, of which he made light for our sake, the experience was even positively pleasant in its incidents. bystanders were many. our little disaster had come to us half-way on the road passing through a village green, very spacious, fringed on the left with stray cottages, of which one turned out to be the post office. village children thronged round the disabled car in great numbers, light-haired and rosy-faced children, all of them wearing the yellow favours of the liberal candidate. were we not in the middle of the eye constituency, the bye-election in which, coming shortly after the general election, was regarded with exceptional interest by the public? was not this the election of elections in which, to judge from the public press, the issue lay not between two mere men, but between lady mary hamilton and another lady. and the result was due that day. the district was at least warmly interested as the general public--it is not always so--and the children were in a fever of childish excitement. they were "yellow" down to the very babies in arms; they hooted in shrill and childish derision whenever a carriage passed with blue favours, as some did, the occupants themselves looking blue in another sense. the most hardened tory found it as impossible to be annoyed at their enthusiasm as to regard their opinions seriously. they were too eager, too delightful, too healthy. nobody could have been angry with them. further than that, they struck us all as being exceptionally bright and intelligent, and the keen interest with which they listened to a boy in his shirt-sleeves, not much older than some of them, but emancipated from school and now a wage-earning creature, who had attended some village meeting, was entirely charming. a man or two came up and proffered help, which was accepted. a suffolk constable arrived on a bicycle and, seeming to have plenty of time to spare, remained to talk and to help me in expelling the air from the discarded tube, and in packing it into its bag for future treatment; and the children were round us all the time. suddenly there was a shout, "the talleygram's come!" and a stampede across the green to the post office. in a minute or two they were all back, yelling in glee, "pearson's in!" and at least one stubborn tory was not half so sorry as he ought to have been. the tory cause in the then parliament was past praying for in any event; a liberal vote more or less really seemed hardly to matter; the disappointment of those children at the failure of the liberal candidate, if it had been announced, would have been far more distressing to me then than was the defeat of him for whom i should have voted if a vote in the eye division had been mine. on at last we went, merrily enough at first, and in 3-1/4 miles crossed the waveney and the boundary of norfolk and suffolk simultaneously at scole; scole of the true roman road, scole of the ancient hostelry, of both of which full notice has been taken in an earlier chapter. four miles more we carried on gaily, 4-1/4 miles perhaps, for we were almost free from the long townlet of harleston when more trouble came. it was precisely the same trouble in the same tire and cover that had been met with at wortham. this time there was a garage, where the rent in the canvas was effectually repaired, while we took a hearty luncheon at the "magpie"; and that was the end of tire-trouble for this expedition. we had certainly had at least enough of it. and here, since the road immediately in front of us positively teems with wayside subjects, let a pause be made and a short chapter ended. chapter xi great ambitions cheerfully relinquished. harleston to cromer viâ bungay, beccles, lowestoft, great yarmouth, caister-by-yarmouth, and norwich harleston--the "magpie"--typical east anglian village--flixton park--bungay--mr. rider haggard as _vates sacer_--antiquities of bungay--spa projected in eighteenth century--the vineyard--derivations of bungay--chateaubriand at bungay--a thatched church?--beccles from the west--a vision--towards lowestoft--glance at oulton broad--lowestoft fails to please--towards yarmouth--ambitious plans--moonlight drive projected--yarmouth pleases--honest sea-faring industry--an acrostic and some ancient verse--caister-by-yarmouth--sir john falstolf--a precocious fifteenth-century etonian--to norwich and onwards--a moonlight drive--a sudden check--grit in the petrol tank--an insoluble problem at night--cheerful philosophy--to cromer for refuge--the links hotel--poppyland--cromer no place for strangers--the haunt of a famous circle--quotation from the gurneys of earlham--seaside places are one-sided motoring centres--scenery to westward strange rather than charming--a start in the morning--the grit still present--labour of locating and removing--a stroll and survey of the country--commonplace runton--a taste of petrol--i break into jingle--moral. the "magpie" at harleston--you can hardly miss it, for the sign hangs well out--entertained us quite abundantly, if humbly, and it was agreed on all hands that this inconsiderable village of norfolk responded better to a surprise visit than had the town of hitchin. harleston is not in itself an attractive village. indeed candour compels the admission that few east anglian villages can fairly be described as attractive by comparison with those of the southern midlands. berks, bucks, gloucestershire, and oxfordshire certainly can each show half a dozen delightful villages where east anglia can show but one. in them the pretty village is normal, the plain hamlet exceptional; in east anglia the contrary rule prevails. the typical east anglian village, or collection of houses somewhere between a town and a village in point of size, is a long and double line of unpretentious dwellings running along either side of a main road for a mile or more. harleston is just such a gathering of houses and little shops, and there are dozens of harlestons under other names scattered about east anglia. this may be the reason why some of the best of gossiping writers about this part of the country, dr. jessopp and mr. rider haggard for example (and, may i add, the little-known miss wilson, author of the _friends of yesterday_, who is now working with her brother in the orange river colony?), tell us more of the ways of the people, and of the conditions of their lives, than they do of the aspects of the hamlets. when they talk to us of places it is, as a rule, either of great houses, or of towns, such as bungay, possessed of a curious history. from harleston, then, we started nothing loth, having accomplished so far only some thirty miles in 3-1/2 hours, of which, however, only 1-1/2 had been spent in travelling. plans we gave up for a bad job; we determined simply to go on as long as we could and, if trouble came, to grin and bear it. the first scene noted after harleston was flixton park, a very noble deer park over which the eye can range from the car, for it is divided from the road only by thin but very high iron railings. the hall was built by sir nicholas de tasburgh in the time of bluff king hal, and the church tower is said to be saxon. but we were all for travel. such was the mood in which we passed through bungay, leaving ditchingham a mile or two to the left. the reader, it is hoped, will not travel through bungay quite so quickly, will not, be it hoped also, have suffered quite so many punctures and bursts, and will be in the mood to hear something of it and of ditchingham. this district has its _vates sacer_ in mr. rider haggard, whose book, _a farmer's year_ (longmans, 1899), is, in its rare passages of topography and of old-time talk, exquisitely attractive to man or woman of taste. it appeals also, in its agricultural record, with infinite sadness and with much force to all who have been brought face to face with the realities of life in rural england. let there be no shiver of apprehension here. there is no intention of raising here that question of the unnatural war between the cities and the country as part of the propaganda relating to which this book was written. mr. haggard, indeed, avows openly his desire to convert as many persons as possible to his way of thinking, and this, to put it shortly, is that to permit the cities to starve out rural england is a hideously mistaken policy. the subject is fertile; but it is not for me. what is of enthralling interest to all is that in mr. rider haggard we have a gentleman of estate who, after much travel, after serving his country in diplomacy and in other ways in south africa, and after being called to the bar (which after all happens to a good many men without making much difference to them), retired to farm his own acres of heavy land, and some others in norfolk, during the very worst period of agricultural depression. he had done, and he did, much more than this. when he settled down at ditchingham to farm, and to do his duty as a country gentleman, he had written a round score of books of which the graphic power was, and is, universally admitted. men have laughed at the impossibilities of _she_ and of _king solomon's mines_, but very few have laid them down unfinished; they have spoiled many a hundred beauty sleeps; their absorbing interest and their skill of words is beyond question. all that power of words mr. haggard devoted to his propaganda and, perhaps, by way of make-weight for passages on "blown" cattle, bush drains, and the preparation of land for barley--things which interest me deeply, but are not alluring to those not to the manner born--he goes off from time to time into talk about places. it is talk which cannot be improved upon, certainly not by me. first mr. haggard quotes a curious tract of 1738 by one john king, an apothecary of bungay, and a letter by way of appendix, saying: "those lovely hills which include the flowery plain are variegated with all that can ravish the astonish'd sight; they arise from the winding mazes of the river waveney, enrich'd with the utmost variety the watr'y element is capable of producing. upon the neck of this peninsula the castle and town of bungay (now startled at its approaching grandeur) is situated on a pleasing ascent to view the pride of nature on the other side, which the goddesses have chose for their earthly paradise, where the sun at its first appearance makes a kindly visit to a steep and fertile vineyard, richly stored with the choicest plants from _burgundy_, _champaigne_, _provence_ and whatever the east can furnish us with. near the bottom of this is placed the grotto or bath itself, beautified on one side with oziers, groves and meadows, on the other with gardens, fruits, shady walks and all the decorations of a rural innocence. "the building is designedly plain and neat, because the least attempt of artful magnificence would by alluring the eyes of strangers, deprive them of those profuse pleasures which nature has already provided. "as to the bathing there is a mixture of all that _england_, _paris_ or _rome_ could ever boast of; no one's refused a kind reception, honour and generosity reign throughout the whole, the trophies of the poor invite the rich, and their more dazzling assemblies compel the former." since the spring was found by mr. king, the apothecary, on his own land, the tract, although mr. haggard also suggests a more romantic alternative, was probably merely an advertisement. mr. haggard, who states that the spring still exists and is peculiarly delicious to drink (in which quality it is unlike any other medicinal water known to me), says also, "was this vineyard, furnished with the fruits of the 'east,' an effort of the imagination suggested by the original name of the place (now oddly enough superseded by a new name taken from the tradition of mr. king's bath), or did it, as the picture suggests, really exist in the year 1738? _quien sabe?_ as they say in mexico. there have, in my time, been several old men in ditchingham whose grandfathers may have been living in 1738, yet i never heard from them any tale of a vineyard on the bath hills. but this proves nothing." of course it proves nothing. rural tradition commemorates the oddest things and omits the oddest things. it is past all calculation. the picture, a very quaint print, may suggest the vines. i should be sorry to say for certain to which part of it mr. haggard refers; it suggests swans and a wherry on the waveney, a sportsman shooting at four-footed game, presumably stags (or perhaps it is a shepherd with a crook), a coach-and-four, and, i think, a quintain in the foreground; but mr. haggard says, "pray observe the double gallows," as to which i say that there are riders close by, one of whom looks as if he had just run a course, and that the artist, if he desired to suggest double gallows, would probably have supplied them with their appropriate pendants. a little earlier mr. haggard cites clear evidence that a vineyard existed in bungay in the time of the bigods, who dominated bungay, and continues: "often have i wondered what kind of wine they made at this vineyard and who was bold enough to drink it; but since i have heard that some enterprising person has taken to the cultivation of the grape in wales with such success that--so says the wondrous tale--he sells his home-made champagne at 84s. the dozen, it has occurred to me that the bigods knew more than we imagine about the possibilities of viticulture in england. or it may chance that the climate was more genial in those days, although this is very doubtful." is mr. haggard poking fun, or is it possible that he does not know the facts? the "enterprising person in wales" was the late marquess of bute. the vineyard was, and is, at castell coch in south wales, and, although the price was hardly a market price, and the position of the grower was not without its influence upon it, the wine was, and i expect still is, sound wine. grapes good enough to make fair wine can be grown in the open in england, were grown, certainly until quite recently, in swan walk, chelsea, and doubtless would grow, quite well, on a slope in southern norfolk, having such an aspect as the good mr. king described. there is no reason to assume a deteriorated climate, no reason to doubt (in the absence of evidence to the contrary in individual cases) that all the "vineyards" to be found in southern england, for the most part, as at abingdon, in the vicinity of bygone abbeys, once grew grapes good enough to be trodden in the wine-press. this, however, is not to say that vine-growing, albeit possible, would be profitable in england to-day. it is a great deal cheaper and easier to grow rhubarb, and the wits who are sarcastic at the expense of "gooseberry champagne" would be a great deal nearer to the mark if they followed to their ultimate destination some of the huge crops of rhubarb grown a little further north than east anglia. "bungay has bygone glories of its own. its name has been supposed to be derived from bon gué or good ford, but as the town was called bungay before ever a norman set foot in england, this interpretation will not hold. more probable is that suggested to me by the rev. j. denny gedge, that the origin of the name may be bourne-gay or boundary ford. or the prefix 'bun' may, as he hazards, have been translated from 'placenta,' 'a sacred cake,' indicating, perhaps--but this is my suggestion--that in old times bungay was the town that pre-eminently 'took the cake.' mayhap, for in philology anything might chance; but if so, alas! it takes it no longer." for my part, if the reason against bon gué be conclusive, it seems to me equally conclusive against bun (_placenta_) gué; and bun gué is not merely an anachronism, but very far-fetched at that. if we are to come to funning, the derivation "bung-ay" may be timidly submitted. "ay" is just a termination, danish if you will, as in billericay, perhaps, and it seems from mr. haggard's own showing that "mr. bung the brewer" rules in bungay. he records (p. 110) that on a certain day in february, 1898, the last two "free houses" in the town were put up to auction, and he records elsewhere that there is a liquor-shop for every hundred of the population. bungay castle, the castle of the bigods, is quite gone; so is the benedictine nunnery; so is the industry of giving copper sheathing to the bottoms of ships. but the bath hills are still there, and behind them, protected by barbed wire and the natural kindness of mr. haggard's heart, is a sanctuary for all wild things. he records also that chateaubriand, a refugee from the terror, drifted down to bungay, where he taught french, was known as m. shatterbrain, and made love to a sentimental young lady, to whose mother, when she took pity on him and offered to look over his poverty, he was compelled to reply, "hélas! madame, je suis désolé; mais je suis marié." in fact, bungay is really a very interesting place to linger at in the spirit; but here we must go on to barsham and beccles, as, in the flesh, we did immediately and agreeably. spirits rose as we drew near to beccles, noting on the way a curiously attractive church and parsonage on the left, and that, seen by the light of a strong sun sinking low in the west, the church seemed to have a thatched roof. that light, however, is exceeding deceptive. so, since thatched churches are unusual, to say the least of it, and i can find no allusion to thatched churches in norfolk, i am content to believe this was a case of optical illusion. the two structures were of a rare charm in that golden glow, notwithstanding, and the probability is that they were at barsham. is this word "probability" too audacious? at least, it is candid and prudent. motorists know full well that too many halts--and goodness knows we had stopped often enough that day--are a weariness of the flesh; that it is not practicable to consult a large scale map _en voyage_; that one must often be contented to think and to say, "that is a sweetly pretty place" (or a fine hall, or a striking church, as the case may be); "i wonder what it is," and to try to locate it afterwards. one must often be in the position of a visitor to a garden of roses, yet uncertain, rosarian although he may be, as to the exact name of this or that rose. it does not really matter. the rose is beautiful. the fatal error is to give it a name when one is in doubt. in the same way it would be suicidal to say that this pretty place was barsham, because it may not have been, though barsham is quite close in any case; and it has a round tower to its church, which seems to be imprinted on my memory in this instance. if barsham it was, then the parsonage is a rectory, and it was the birthplace of nelson's mother, caroline suckling, a daughter of a very famous norfolk house. now the wide valley of the waveney came again into full view on the left, a glorious prospect, and beccles faced us. approached from the westward on a glorious april afternoon, beccles produced an impression absolutely and completely opposite to that which it left in january when we came to it from the southward in dull and chilly air. shall an apology be tendered for the first mention of beccles in these pages? shall it be made needless by ruthless excision? of a surety neither is the right course to take. the first impression was faithful, and it has been found impossible to convince those who shared it that a good word can be said truthfully for beccles. the second is faithful also, and both are true. fortunately it is possible to quote the opinion and the words of one who is a master of descriptive english. first of the view from the bungay vineyard mr. rider haggard says: "i have travelled a great way about the world in my time and studied much scenery, but i do not remember anything more quietly and consistently beautiful than this view over bungay common seen from the earl's vineyard, or, indeed, from any point of vantage on its encircling hills. for the most part of the year the plain below is golden with gorse, but it is not on this alone that the sight depends for beauty, or on the green of the meadows and the winding river edged with lush marshes that in spring are spotted with yellow marigolds and purple with myriads of cuckoo flowers. they all contribute to it, as do the grazing cattle, the gabled distant roofs, and the church spires, but i think that the prospect owes its peculiar charm to the constant changes of light which sweep across its depths. at every season of the year, at every hour of the day, it is beautiful, but always with a different beauty. of that view i do not think that any lover of nature could tire, because it is never quite the same." [illustration: beccles from the waveney] mr. haggard, therefore, is clearly not afraid to match norfolk scenery against any of the restful kind on the face of the globe; but we see soon that even this view of bungay common and waveney is not to his mind the best. "had the builders of this house where i write (ditchingham house), for instance, chosen to place it four hundred yards further back, as they might very easily have done, it would have commanded what i believe to be the finest view in norfolk, since from that spot the eye travels not only over the expanse of bungay common and its opposing slopes, but down the valley of the waveney to beccles town and tower. but it would seem that in the time of the georges the people who troubled their heads about beautiful prospects were not many. the country was lonely then, and the neighbourhood of the norwich road had more attractions than any view. along that road passed the coaches, bringing a breath of the outer world into the quiet village, and the last news of the wars; also, did any member of the household propose to travel by them, it was easy for the men-servants to wheel his luggage in a barrow to the gate." for my own part i deprecate comparisons of scenery, for which there appears to be no true basis, believing that the real secret of its enjoyment is to possess a catholic taste and a receptive mind in these matters. it is enough to say, and to feel, that the scenery of these parts is exceeding lovely, that the distant view of beccles and its church, on that proud brow dominating the placid plain of marsh and meadow and river is, in a single word, divine, and that mr. haggard has analysed the charms of all this landscape with pre-raphaelite accuracy. to admire, to be compelled to understand why one admires, are pleasant and profitable. to institute comparisons is unsatisfying and unnecessary. from beccles to lowestoft is any easy run which we have taken before. this time we saw the eastern end of oulton broad more plainly than the last. it seemed tripper-haunted and bar-tainted, and it had the effect of rather setting us against the broads. the preliminary prejudice was strengthened somewhat by reference to mr. walter rye. "it is painful for one who has known and loved the broads as long as i have, in common honesty, to say that their charms have been grossly exaggerated of late. to read some of the word-painting about them you would think that you had only to leave yarmouth and sail up the north river to get at once into a paradise of ferns, flowers and fish, where you could not fail to fill your basket or bag; or to see, at all events, myriads of wild birds of the rarest sorts in the air, shoals of fishes in the water, and any quantity of rare water plants on the bank. the first few miles will effectually disillusionize any stranger who has been taking in the _swiss family robinson_ sort of rubbish referred to above, for he will be disgusted with the very muddy flint walls of a tediously winding river dragging itself along through a flat uninteresting marshy country, varied only by drainage mills in various stages of dilapidation, and by telegraph poles. even when at last yarmouth church finally disappears, after having come into view about a dozen times through the windings, and the river wall with its rats and dirt changes into the regular river scenery, he will see nothing particularly pretty." now mr. rye is a norfolk man _pur sang_. the name has been known in east anglia since eudo de rye came over with the conqueror--he was the same eudo dapifer, or high steward, whom we met at colchester. mr. rye has norfolk lore and antiquities at his fingers' ends; he is most clearly and unquestionably a true lover of his native county. this douche of cold water coming so unexpectedly from him, quenched effectually for the moment the flickering flame of a desire to stretch a point by including a run or two on the broads in a motor-boat among the little adventures legitimately within the scope of my title. but the flame of desire rose again later, especially when the car hove in sight of a better broad than at oulton, and with the view of that sheet of water came the thought that, luckily, the tastes of men are not identical--else every pleasure would be so crowded as to be deprived of most of its joy, and that many men have waxed exceeding rapturous over the very broads of which mr. rye has not a good word to say. so later a little--not so much as i could wish--is said about this strange and peculiar district. now we were in lowestoft a second time, in beautiful weather too, and we went slowly up all sorts of streets and a parade, and even on to some sand hills in order to see lowestoft from a good many points of view. the result, it must be confessed, was the very opposite to a desire to revisit lowestoft, especially south lowestoft. true it was before the season, and lowestoft, which lives on herrings and holiday-keepers, exporting the first and importing the second, doubtless presents a scene more gay when the esplanade is crowded with girls in pretty frocks and men in clean flannels, when the really splendid sands are thronged with happy children. still most of the houses are so painfully modern and, so to speak, raw, most of them also built for so manifest a purpose that the legends "furnished lodgings," or "apartments," or "board and residence," are surely superfluous, that it fails to attract a person of only moderately fastidious taste. there were scores of houses there recalling my one and only experience of a boarding-house. in each of these houses i could conjure up the replica of that terrible evening meal of many years ago; could see the housewife, obese but anxious, cringing to the guests, but with the eye of a dragon for the delinquencies of the harassed handmaid; the daughters, in crushed white frocks and cheap bangles, pertly and persistently garrulous; the all too affable and white-bearded father of the family, assuming the airs of an open-handed host when all the time his wife was wondering secretly whether the flabby fish would "go round," and i, equally secretly, was trying to guess whether the white-bearded old loafer with the generous air, but the niggardly carving-knife, had ever tried to do any honest work in his life. leaving lowestoft for yarmouth by the same road as before, we felt a sense of relief and with it a glorious consciousness of well-being. an hour or two of daylight still remained; we had been so long without stopping, otherwise than by our own will, that we felt as if we could go on for ever; the sky was clear, and we had not had enough, nor half enough, of travelling. a moon was due early that evening. it was even visible in the sky already, giving faint white promise of silvern glory to come. we had not ordered beds for the night anywhere. how would it be to skip afternoon tea, push on through yarmouth for norwich, dine there at the "maid's head," and consult our inclination as to proceeding by moonlight, perhaps to wells, perhaps even to lynn? it would, indeed, be very well, and in this mood we glided easily on to yarmouth. this ancient capital of the herring-trade pleased us more, as we poked our noses and the bonnet of our car into various byways, than we had been pleased at lowestoft. (these "we's," by the way, represent no editorial assumption, no false modesty about speaking in the first person, but simply a fourfold consensus of opinion.) yarmouth pleased the more because it was and is manifestly a port. the smell of the herring is there, of course; the serried rows of steam-trawlers along the quay suggest that this herring fishery is a long way from being so picturesque a business as it was. still yarmouth strikes one as an honest, workaday place doing a good trade, and not at all ashamed of it. yarmouth combined with "leistocke"--lowestoft probably--to contribute "1 shippe and one pinnace" to the fleet which defeated the armada; and surely there is something of an elizabethan ring about an early acrostic of unknown date, addressed by somebody--the nymph of yarmouth, perhaps--to its people: y-ou, the inhabitants of mee, [faire towne] a-dorned with riches both from sea and land, r-eason you have on knees for to fall downe m-agnifying god, for all comes from his hand, o-ver you all his works and mercies are, u-nto his children doth he give to eate t-he fyshe in sea, whatever the land doth beare, h-ym therefore do yee praise as is right meete. this is culled from the invaluable _norfolk and norwich notes and queries_, as is the following string of verses by taylor, "the water poet"--the description is given just shortly like this, as one might say "shakespere, the dramatist"--who visited the town in 1622 and found it: a towne well fortifide well-governed, with all nature's wants supplied; the situation in a wholesome ayre, the building (for the most part) sumptuous and fayre, the people content, and industrious, and with labour makes the sea enrich the land. a sound account of yarmouth this is, and, by the quality of the versification, an ample justification for those persons who hear now for the first time of "taylor, the water poet," and feel no inclination to ransack the british museum for further examples of his poesy. hard by is caister-by-yarmouth, formerly supposed to have been a roman fortress, but on quite insufficient evidence. at best, according to mr. haverfield, it was never more than a roman village; and mr. haverfield knows. that red-brick tower of caister castle, however, reminds us of the _paston letters_, already mentioned and one of the most ancient collections of private letters ever given to the public to be a mirror of life in the days of long ago. the castle was built by "that renowned knight and valiant soldier" sir john falstolf, who died in 1459. sir john was not only a hard fighter, but also clearly a man of extended property. he had land so far off as dedham, close to the suffolk boundary of essex, the dedham that constable painted, and we find him complaining once, "_item_, sir john buck parson of stratford fished my stanks at dedham and helped to break my dam, destroyed my new mill and was always against me at dedham." this complaint was made to john paston, afterwards sir john paston, then sir john falstolf's steward, agent as we should say now, and residing in his employer's castle. the employer died; the agent, upon what title the letters do not make it quite clear, continued to hold the castle, on which his wife dame paston lived while he followed the practice of the law in london even to the judicial bench. something has been said of these letters before, but there are points to be added. [illustration: yarmouth from breydon] the early-printed volumes, stately and calf-bound, are a luxury to read, and in spite of sir john fenn's omissions they contain all manner of curiosities, the best of them perhaps being a letter written by one of the young pastons in 1467, from eton, where he was at school. in it he shows anxiety about a consignment of figs and raisins, promised but not arrived, discusses the fortune of a young lady recently met whom he thinks of marrying, and says to his brother: "and as for hyr bewte juge you that when ye see hyr yf so be that ye take y'e laubore and specialy beolde hyr handys for and if it be as is tolde me sche is dysposyd to be thyke." (here, by the way, is an example of sir john fenn's weakness as an editor, since, the original sentence being innocent of stops save at the end, he places a comma after "hands," and after "be" and another after "me," thus making his own unnecessary translation far more obscure than the original.) it is worth while to remember that eton college had at this time been open for twenty-five years only, was in fact quite a new school, and that the headmaster was william barber. it was during this run by a circuitous route from caister-by-yarmouth to acle and norwich, and when the wide sheet of filby broad smiled on either hand, that the feeling of opposition to mr. rye's view of the broads grew strong. that magnificent stretch of water appealed with a strength almost irresistible to one for whom sailing was, before motoring came into existence, the most perfect of pleasures; and although circumstances, and circumstances only, tendered resistance possible, it seems but right to glance at the broads, to say what they and the country around them are like, and how, in the opinion of one fairly well versed in watermanship, they might best be enjoyed. there is a stock delimitation of the broad district. draw a line from happisburgh to norwich, another line from lowestoft to norwich, and the rough triangle formed by those lines and the sea shall be the broads district. really the southern side of the triangle is drawn much too low on the map. except oulton broad and lake lothing, which are close to lowestoft, and also a long way from the other broads, all the broads, including breydon water, would be included in a triangle having a line from norwich to gorleston for its southern boundary. they are filby, ormsby, burgh, and rollesby, all connected and covering no less than six hundred acres between them; hickling, heigham, horsey, and marlham broads, hickling the finest of them all; and irstead and barton; and each group is approached by its own river. now, travel by motor-car is not recommended in this district, for it is much too flat to be enjoyable. since that is not recommended, nothing is said about the churches, although they are of some interest; for so long as men and women remain what they are, they will not stop to study relics of antiquity, unless they are very exceptional indeed, when travelling by boat. nor are they in the least more likely to linger in this way when voyaging by motor-boat than when using a sailing-boat. but shall we, voyaging in the spirit, use either sailing-boat or motor-boat, in the ordinary acceptation of the latter term. in truth, neither is suggested, but rather a compromise. candour compels the admission that, knowing by sight, and in some cases from personal experience, most of the types of motor-boat built in great britain, i cannot recall one of them which, being roomy enough for comfort, would not draw too much water to be serviceable. in fact, if one could rely on the wind, a sailing vessel of one of the types which have been evolved in the district to meet its needs would really be preferable. elsewhere than in these pages i should certainly take it, and enjoy it vastly. but what i might take in these pages, and what would be much better than either, would be one of those big flat-bottomed sailing craft with auxiliary motor-engines, of which one may see some at english exhibitions, but many more at the annual exhibition in paris. with them you can really sail, when there is a wind; and, without a breeze, you are independent. as for the joy of it, so long as there is wind to fill the sails, the mere act of dashing through the water and gliding over it, the very sound of the water, the sense of absolute control that comes to him who holds the tiller and trims the sails to meet every need, are enough, without worrying over scenery. moreover, the wide flatness of the broads district, the rare buildings rising as from a lake, have a special charm of their own. as for the sport, from all that i can learn it is largely a thing of the past so far as duck and wildfowl are concerned. all the same, it is a bad mistake to omit the broads, and one which, _experto crede_, the tourist in east anglia regrets deeply when it is irretrievable. however, there is no doubt i made it, but happily hardly less doubt that, if i had not made it, the results could hardly have been relevant. on, then, we went to norwich by way of caister, not as before through acle, and dined at the "maid's head," as on our last visit, and admired the ancient hotel and the red waistcoat of the head waiter as much as ever; but afterwards, instead of seeing something of the famous city by night, we pushed on towards cromer on the high road by moonlight. that is not the best way to see the country of course, and it would be sheer hypocrisy (which happens to be unnecessary) to say anything in detail of the normal aspect of the places passed, or of their associations if they had any. still, of all kinds of travelling yet tried by me, it was emphatically the most delightful. the air was very transparent and not too cool, the moon bathed the landscape, which was fairly free from hills, there was little traffic on the roads save here and there a farmer jogging home in his dog-cart from norwich market, the acetylene lamps were doing their duty nobly (which is by no means always their custom), we felt as if we should like to go on all night. at cromer certainly we would not stop. we would make the coast there and skirt the sea by moonlight, certainly so far as wells-next-sea, possibly so far as hunstanton. all things went merrily as marriage bells, the car sped smoothly as a soaring albatross, silently as death itself. but stay, what was that? a sharp little report, like the crack of a miniature rifle, was heard from below. it was not a tire again; that was sure; we knew by heart every noise that a failing tire could make. a little farther the car went quite well--cromer was now some five miles distant--and then the noises began again in quick and _staccato_ succession. in another environment they might have reminded us of a _feu de joie_; to our present predicament no words could have been more completely inappropriate. what was the trouble? was it something wrong with the ignition? "no," said our philosophic friend at the wheel, "it is not ignition. there is one of the blessings of experience. a little time ago i should have wasted time in fiddling with the ignition; now i know it is not that; and i know there is nothing to be done to-night. there is no strainer fixed to the tank in this car; the good man who refilled for us at norwich used no strainer; and some grit has got into the petrol. to find it i must first put out all lights and then go right back, piece by piece, from the carburettor backwards, until i can discover the obstacle. that is impossible in the dark. we must bear the noise and push on, if we can, to the hotel at cromer. possibly the foreign matter, whatever it is, may have dissolved by the morning." so, seeing from excellent example, that misfortune faced with a smile loses three-quarters of its annoyance, we went on, at quite a good pace too, sometimes silently for a hundred yards, sometimes with loud reports as of a gun at the covert side, sometimes with spluttering as of boys' crackers on the 5th of november. but we laughed at them all and won our way to cromer, won our way too up the steep and sinuous hill that leads to the links hotel. there we had good fortune indeed. the hotel had been opened that day only after the winter of sleep and desolation; a huge fire roared in the ample hall; belated guests were none the less welcome in that, so far as we could see, there were but two other guests, golfers both, in that vast hotel. had we come a night earlier our fate had been bad indeed. the hotel, judged by bed and breakfast, seemed to me of the first order of merit. the charges, compared with those of the "angel" at bury, seemed high. still, it was more "replete with every modern luxury" than the "angel"; it possessed bathrooms, for example, which are indispensable to the motorist, and it was a very present help in trouble. such was our view the next morning, when the inevitable bill, not a very big one after all, having regard to the class of the hotel, was presented. other things also came to mind that following morning, a morning of gauzy mist not obscuring the view, even lending enchantment to some of it, and promising a fine day. some of them were obvious. the position of the hotel, looking down from a commanding height on town and sea, was perfect for prospect and for bracing air; the golf-links, close by, were an undeniable attraction to the large army of men and women who have yielded to the seductions of that most fascinating game. it would have been unreasonable to expect low charges; but all the same, the contrast between this bill and that paid at bury was a little stronger than it ought to be in a well-regulated country. other things were not so immediately obvious, since for some it was the wrong season, and others were hidden in pleasant and well-remembered books. we were in the heart of poppyland, concerning which mr. clement scott and others raved, but it was too soon for the poppies--poor dan leno's "red, red, poppies," now to be heard only on the gramophone--to be on view. it was, however, not difficult to conjure them up in imagination, having seen them before all over those sandy uplands in the runton direction. they are very pretty beyond doubt; they add glorious lakes of colour to a rather monotonous landscape, but they mean poor and sandy land, and that (although it does not matter to the motorist, unless he happens to own some of it, and to be unable to let it for building) spells dust in dry weather, and lots of it too. [illustration: church street, cromer] is cromer a choiceworthy place in which to spend a summer holiday? the answer, not perhaps the answer which appears at first to be given, lies in or under this extract from _the gurneys of earlham_. mr. hare began by saying, "a picture of the summer family life at cromer, much like that of the present day, is given in the following letter." it is one from richenda gurney to elizabeth fry--the elizabeth fry, good angel of gloomy newgate prison, of course. "_cromer, september 8, 1803._--our party is now complete, as john continues with us, and the buxtons arrived yesterday; it was extremely pleasant to us, seeing them both again, particularly fowell; their being here will add very much to our pleasure, as there is a suitability between us and the buxtons which always makes it pleasant for us to be together. our time here is spent in a way that exactly suits the place and the people. all are left in perfect liberty to do as they like all day, or to form any engagement. yet the party is so connected that hardly a day passes but some plan is fixed for us all to meet. when all are met it is an uncommonly pretty sight, such a number of young women, and so many, if not pretty, very nice-looking. i wish thee could have seen us the other afternoon. sally gave a grand entertainment at the hall, where everybody met--the ladies almost all dressed in white gowns and blue sashes, with nothing on their heads. after dinner we all stood on a wall, eighteen of us, and it was really one of the prettiest sights i ever saw. "to give thee an idea how we are going on, i will tell thee how we generally pass the day. the weather since we came has on the whole been very fine; so imagine us before breakfast, with our troutbecks [hats] on and coloured gowns, running in all directions on the sands, jetty, etc. after breakfast we receive callers from the other houses, and fix with them the plans for the day; after this, we now and then get an hour's quiet for reading and writing, though my mind has been so much taken up with other things, that i have found it almost impossible to apply to anything seriously. at eleven we go down in numbers to bathe and enjoy the sands, which about that time look beautiful: most of our party and the rest of the cromer party come down, and bring a number of different carriages, which have a very pretty effect. after bathing, we either ride on horseback or take some pleasant excursion or other. i never remember enjoying the sea so much, and never liked cromer a quarter so well. some of us continually dine out, whilst the others receive company at home.... john has been a great addition to our party. i hope he has enjoyed himself; we have had two or three most merry days since he came. the day before yesterday we spent at sherringham, wandering about the woods and sketching all the morning. every one met at a beautiful spot for dinner, with three knives and forks and two or three plates between twenty-six people. all manner of games took place after dinner, which john completely entered into and seemed to enjoy as much as any of the party. we completed our day by a delightful musical evening. miss gordon, our old cromer friend, came to tea: she played and sang to us all the evening in a wonderful style. john goes away on sunday; he stays over to-night to be at a dance which some very agreeable people who are at cromer--mr. and mrs. windham--are going to give, and which, i think, must be very pleasant." "could anything be more simply delightful? what can the man mean by hinting that the answer to the question whether cromer is a choiceworthy place for a summer holiday is not plainly to be read on the face of this artless letter?" such, it is easy to imagine, would be the question asked if the early victorian practice continued, if somebody read these pages aloud, with pauses for comment and criticism, while ladies of various ages embroidered or contrived trousers for unwilling heathens to wear as a cover for their natural nakedness and as a testimony of recently acquired christianity. my dear madam, as thackeray might have said, pause for a moment and reflect. are you a gurney, a fry, a buxton? do you bear any of the other names, perfectly well known, which are a password to this most admirable and worthy society? read also what mr. walter rye has to say on the same topic. pray note that the letter is of 1803, but that mr. hare's book, published in 1895, says that the picture of 1803 would serve very well for a picture of the present day. have you ever tried, as a stranger, a summer holiday at a seaside place which has been frequented by the same families for a few years, let alone a place to which the same families have resorted for generations, as is the case at cromer and in its vicinity? or, again, have you ever, being a member of such a society, known what it is to see new families discover the oasis which seemed your very own, and what have been your feelings towards those new families? have you not in the first case felt uncomfortable, a goat among sheep, in the second case perceived at once that the new-comers were of goat-like nature? in all this vivid letter there are but two allusions to persons outside the charmed circle, miss gordon and the windhams. miss gordon was clearly a cromer institution, and it is probable to the verge of certainty, if only from the name, that the windhams were a norfolk family. less than ten years before "william windham, the statesman and darling of the county" had distinguished himself, when stoned during an election at norwich, by jumping out of his carriage and collaring his assailant. he was the same william windham who quelled a mutiny in the local militia by "seizing the leader and thrashing two of his followers." such conduct was not, perhaps, entirely to the mind of the gurneys and their friends, but, for all that, the chances are that this mr. and mrs. windham were kinsfolk of one who was no man of peace at any price. cromer seems to me on a priori grounds and, if the truth may be told, "from information received" also, to be entirely the place for the members of a justly respected circle, whose title to it is clear and not to be begrudged, but a place in which a stranger to that circle is, as the common saying goes, "out of it." it is emphatically a good place for a golfer; but otherwise, all along this piece of the coast, there is precious little for the ordinary man or woman to do. there is the sea of course, but the coastline is too regular and the sea too open to provide that variety of scenery which gives to little pleasure cruises their chief pleasure. also, of course, there are the roads, upon which the motorist may take his pleasure, and some of them pass through or near places attractive in the present as they were in the past, nay, even more attractive, since to see them stir up the memories of the past. but two things must be said. a seaside place, as a centre for motoring, walking or bicycling, is by its very essence one-sided or even less. lay a pen across the map horizontally at cromer, and it is plain that there is no way for the motorist towards more than half the points of the compass. as for the coast scenery, of which we shall shortly take a considerable sample, it is full of individual character, the kind of scenery one may visit with pleasure once or twice or even three times, but, to a man not of norfolk blood, it seems no more than that. such, certainly, is the final impression left by the coast drive to the west of cromer, and in cromer itself are far too many new houses. to the eastward, especially if the coast be left behind, the scenery is better, possessed of, if it may be so put, more abiding charm. to the westward it is more strange, weird and individual than beautiful, and its weirdness is of the kind inspiring to melancholy, not to awe. this summary of opinion, however, is in the nature of an anticipation. it shall be justified piecemeal so soon as we are fairly under way so that a new chapter can be begun. let this chapter close with the last unhappy episode in a supremely happy tour, with which episode it would be discordant to mix the undiluted pleasure of the next chapter. we started, for us, rather early; that is to say we breakfasted at half-past seven and left the hotel door slightly after eight. all down the zigzag hill into the town the machinery said nothing at all. there was no reason why it should make any demonstration, since it had no work to do. once called upon to work, however, the car soon began to crackle and to splutter again. there was no room for doubt what was the matter. foreign matter had found its way into the petrol tank and beyond; and it was hard stuff, genuine grit, undissolved by a night's soaking. whether the ostler at the "maid's head" or he of bury st. edmunds was to blame, and in justice to the former it must be said that it might have been either, the nuisance was beyond question. it was sunday morning, too; it was hardly likely that the repair shops would be of any assistance, at any rate so early in the morning, and, empty as the streets were then, it would not have been seemly to begin in them, at about the hour of the earliest service, an operation which might very likely consume an hour or more. so up the hill on the far side of the town we crawled--for cromer lies in the hollow of a cup--snorting and grunting not a little, in sickly fashion and with much trouble, as the latin exercises used to put it, and out on to the sandy road, leading between sandy and wind-swept fields, towards runton. there, thanking our stars that few wayfarers were astir, we stopped, and mr. johnson, cheerfully remarking that those who could be of no help, because there is only room for one big man face upwards under a car, had better go for a little walk and see some of the country, addressed himself with a smile and a half-groan to his odious task with its infinite possibilities in the way of black and viscous lubricant dropping into his hair or on to his face. in this posture i left him, his legs alone visible, for a little tour of inspection; but there was no temptation to prolong it. a walk of a hundred yards or two along a bank, covered sparsely with harsh and wiry grass, and dividing two fields, both equally poverty-stricken, brought me to the crumbling edge of a sandy cliff, not high enough to impose by its grandeur, not rugged enough to please by its outline. below was a beach of sand, beyond that the smooth, grey, hazy sea with not a vessel of any kind visible on its sluggish surface. to the westward was runton, a conglomeration of commonplace brick houses, glaringly new, obviously intended for lodgings. a windmill and its house were the only buildings in any way calculated to give satisfaction to the eye. from there it roved on to undulating hills, probably of sand, as indeed was everything else except the raw houses of runton. rambling, in this poppy land _sans_ poppies, seemed weary, flat, stale and unprofitable. a return to the car revealed mr. johnson still in the back position, as riflemen say, and sundry stray bits of the car and tools lying on the road by his side. a glance at him, obtained by crouching, showed him to be much hotter, much dirtier than before, more smilingly determined than ever, if possible, to make nothing of his personal trouble. he was not so much a good man fighting against adversity as a master of science wrestling with a problem he knew that he could solve in time: and solve it with triumph he did. a few minutes more and he half wriggled half rolled into the open road, dusty, but jubilant, holding a little piece of pipe some five inches long and of infinitesimal bore in his hand. "here is the little brute," he said, with a gentle smile--and then made his one mistake of the day, and it cost him dear. just touching one end of the pipe with his lips, and holding his hollowed palm by the other end, he blew one breath. out came the obstruction, hardly bigger than a snapdragon seed, surely the tiniest little imp of a particle that ever hampered the circulation of a mighty machine. the mechanical trouble was over for ever, or at any rate for that expedition. a very few minutes sufficed to prepare the car for the road again, and she accomplished over two hundred miles more that day without, so to speak, turning a hair. so did the man who cured her, because he knew her complaint to a nicety; but he was in my company all that day until seven or eight in the evening and the thoroughly abominable taste of petrol was in his mouth to the end. in fact you may rinse with raw brandy your mouth if you will, but the reek of the petrol will cling to it still. such is a valuable little piece of experience gained by proxy. the morals are three and obvious. first, every tank or funnel should be fitted with an irremovable strainer. secondly, if this be not so, superintend refilling yourself and see that a temporary strainer is used. thirdly, if grit does get into the petrol through omission of these precautions, and blowing a pipe becomes necessary, wrap up the mouth of that pipe with care, or preferably get somebody else, and best of all an idle bystander, to do the blowing for you. for this service, if rendered by a boy, a shilling is a sufficient recompense, and you may depart at your leisure; but if it be done by a man, especially if he be large and rough, give him half a crown, and stand not on the order of your going. [illustration: blakeney--a characteristic landscape] chapter xii a priory--great houses and the fens troubles over--road viâ lower sheringham, salthouse, cley-next-sea, blakeney, stiffkey and wells-next-sea--impressive desolation--wells--binham--the building and making of holkham--"coke of norfolk"--the cokes--walsingham--remains and history--the shrine--ecclesiastical trickery and temporal gain--froude quoted--ceremonial at the shrine--its miraculous transportation--houghton--the walpoles--sir robert's pictures--horace walpole and strawberry hill--the mad lord orford--his ruling passion--stag "four-in-hand"--the hounds pursue--motor-cars many in these parts--fakenham--lynn--glanced at in the rain--the fens--kinship of the useful and the romantic--the beauty of the fens actually, and enhanced by imagination--the great reclaimers--resistance of the old fenmen--charles kingsley quoted--"the inspiration of god"--to ely and cambridge--the "bull" unready--homeward bound and a narrow escape--motor-cyclist towing a girl on a bicycle--a wicked practice--value of care in motorist. from this point we never looked back, as the saying goes, mechanically. our troubles were over, and we looked forward to our drive along the north coast of norfolk with intense eagerness. it is a pleasure in retrospect now, but it was not quite the same sort of pleasure as had been anticipated in previous topographical innocence. the road we had taken designedly on leaving cromer, when it was determined to follow the sea as closely as possible, left felbrigg and sheringham, justly beloved of artists, on one side, passed through lower sheringham, weybourne, salthouse, cley-next-sea, blakeney, and stiffkey to wells-next-sea. they were not in themselves particularly interesting villages, although i remember that at one of them--i think it was weybourne--to which the road winds inwards from the sea a little, and where there is some shelter of a hill from the salt winds, there were fine trees about the church, and another little church, on the left-hand side of the road at blakeney, had one full-sized tower at the west end and another funny little tower at the east end. the prevailing impression left by the whole drive is of impressive desolation. the road, dead flat for the most part, but not half bad in point of surface, runs as close to the sea as its makers dared to lay it. on the right, as one journeys westward, are wide stretches, half sea and half marsh; on the left is a range of low hills. sometimes it is close at hand, at others it recedes a little, and the space between the road and the hills is again a species of half marsh. the streams, running parallel to the road often, have a look of being partly tidal. the sides of the road are guarded by a fence, the bottom part of which clearly shows that at spring tides, especially if they be aggravated by the wind, the sea must flow over the road also; else whence came that fringe of withered seaweed hanging round the bottom of the fence? small wonder that the folk in these parts have preserved, in cley-next-sea and in wells-next-sea, the reminder that the sea is close at hand. it is with them always, threatening them, devouring their land, strewing their flat shore with wreckage. from cley for some miles to the westward extends a bill of sandy land, not very high, enclosing a long lagoon, apparently very shallow, and the outlook over this lagoon, with the dreary ridge of land broken, if memory serves correctly, only by a lighthouse, is intensely and absolutely characteristic. one feels no sort of desire to see it again unless indeed it is, as by its appearance it well might be, a haunt of wildfowl worth shooting; but at the same time it is good to have seen it once in order to know what this scenery of the most remote and northerly district of norfolk is like, and to realize the kind of life which its scanty population must lead. they live face to face with nature in her sourest mood, nature never majestic, except when the storms come from the northward, smiling but a hard smile when the sun shines. in fact, this is a stretch of land, when it is worthy of the name, dismal as the mind of man can conceive. when you get to wells-next-sea, where the houses are plain but of some age, and there is a little port on a winding creek, the aspect of the country changes for the better; or rather it so changed for us, because we determined to give the coast up and to take the inland road viâ fakenham and flitcham for king's lynn. for this route there was ample reason close at hand, in holkham hall, walsingham, binham abbey, and houghton, about all of which a good deal must needs be said with as little tedium, be it hoped, as possible. before saying it, however, it may be as well to state that in another chapter, and that the last, king's lynn will be treated as an imaginary centre for many little drives. imagination, since it has happened to me often to stay at lynn for many days together and to explore the surrounding country and roads, will not be severely taxed, and the method is adopted for the convenience of writer and reader. in this chapter we have before us the historic houses just named and, after them, the fens from lynn to cambridge. these last we drive through in the early afternoon, taking in the character of them better than on any previous occasion. so the material for this chapter is at least ample. if we added to it castle rising, the birthplace of nelson, the sandringham country, divine in its kind, hunstanton, brancaster, and king's lynn last of all, the chapter must run to unwieldly and intolerable length. at binham we have part of the benedictine abbey, enveloped in ivy and part still used as a church, a very fine piece of unspoiled norman work. for holkham, _abbeys, castles and ancient halls_, by mr. john timbs and mr. alexander gunn, is a treasure-house of information. holkham is hoeligham, "holy home," and it was the work of the famous kent under the direction of thomas coke, lord leicester, who himself spent many years in italy studying the works of palladio. "coke of norfolk," as the lord leicester of george ii's time was called, was emphatically a landowner who deserved to be magnificently housed. an inscription over the entrance to the great hall records the fact that "this seat, on an open, barren estate, was planned, planted, built, decorated and inhabited in the middle of the eighteenth century by thomas coke, earl of leicester." it naturally does not record the fact that the barren estate, for such it was, is now, mainly by virtue of coke of norfolk's sagacity in planting, one of the most nobly timbered to be found anywhere in the kingdom and a perfect paradise for game first and for those who shoot game later. in one respect the great lord coke's plans were changed, one might almost write providentially. it had been intended to build the outside of the hall of bath stone, but an earth was found in a neighbouring parish which produced bricks of much the same colour as bath stone, but heavier and closer in texture. that was as it should be. coke of norfolk had bought much of the land and, by enclosing, cultivating and planting, had practically made it. it was part of the fitness of things that a "mansion of almost peerless magnificence, as far as its noble proportions, its gorgeous decorations, and its art and literary treasures" were concerned, should be built out of bricks baked out of norfolk earth. the hall stands in a spacious but level park, and a glimpse of it may be had from the road. in the middle is a great quadrangular block having, at each angle, a wing, 70 ft. by 60 ft., connected with the central block by a corridor. the wings are: the stranger's wing, the family wing, the chapel wing, and the kitchen wing. the library and the mss. rooms are in the family wing; the gallery of statues and the state apartments are in the central block. this is 114 ft. by 62 ft., its most noble feature being the hall, suggested to lord leicester by palladio's plan for a court of justice, and having a gallery round three sides of it. of the pictures the most notable are claude's apollo and marsyas in a landscape, and other landscapes, vandykes, poussins, a raphael, and a rubens. there is also a group of nineteen figures by michael angelo. the manuscripts are of great value and curiosity, and contain, amongst other things, the papers of the great chief justice. in fact, holkham is, in itself, for its contents, and for the story of its creation, one of the most wonderful places in this marvellous england of ours; and that is why so much is here written concerning it in a book whose author is not at all eager to pry into the houses of other and greater men. who were these cokes who attained so much magnificence? that is a natural question. the name is first traceable in a deed of 1206, referring to a coke of didlington. from him descended edward coke, the commentator on littleton, who was attorney-general, speaker of the house of commons, and chief justice of the king's bench in 1613. oddly enough, from our modern point of view, it was after this that he was elected member for buckinghamshire, and drafted and moved the petition of rights. no doubt he made a great deal of money himself; he acquired more by marrying first one of the pastons, and after her death, the lady elizabeth cecil, daughter of the first earl of exeter. such was the real founder of the family, who bought, or acquired by inheritance, much of the existing holkham estate. his grandson died unmarried, and the estate fell to a kinsman, henry coke, of thorington. from him sprung sir thomas coke, the first earl of leicester, whose son died in 1739, when the peerage became extinct. but the estate went to sir thomas coke's nephew, wenham roberts, who naturally took the name of coke, and also naturally called his son thomas; and this son was "coke of norfolk," "the handsome englishman," as he was called at rome, in whose favour the peerage was most justly revived. it was due not so much to his magnificence as to his service to agriculture. "all the country from _holkham_ to _houghton_ was a wild sheep-walk," writes arthur young, "before the spirit of improvement seized the inhabitants; and this spirit has wrought amazing effects; for instead of boundless wilds and uncultivated wastes, inhabited by scarcely anything but sheep, the country is all cut up into enclosures, cultivated in a most husbandlike manner, richly manured, well-peopled, and yielding an hundred times the produce that it did in its former state. what has wrought these great works is the marling; for under the whole country run veins of a very rich kind, which they dig up, and spread upon the old sheep-walks, and then by means of inclosing they throw their farms into a regular course of crops, and gain immensely by the improvement." for this coke of norfolk was principally responsible, and for this his name deserves all honour. at walsingham the remains of the priory are interesting: a magnificent door, a gateway, the walls, windows and arches of the refectory, a norman arch with zigzag mouldings--the rest of the remains are later, decorated and perpendicular. but the record of the foundation and of the pilgrimages to the shrine, which was second only to canterbury in importance, is much more entertaining. first the chapel of the virgin was founded by the widow of richoldie, the mother of geoffrey de favraches. (of course everybody knows all about them!) then geoffrey himself started on a pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre, having previously executed a deed in which granted "to god and st. mary, and to edwy, his clerk," the chapel which his mother richoldie had built at walsingham, and other real property, to the intent that edwy should establish a priory there. the supreme treasure was a relic, the alleged milk of the virgin, purchased, as an inscription seen by erasmus high upon a wall stated, from an old woman at constantinople with an assurance that it was far superior to any other relic of the same kind, as it alone had been taken from the breast, the other having fallen to the ground first. it was enclosed in crystal and set in a crucifix. this, says the matter-of-fact erasmus, occasionally looked like chalk, mixed with the white of eggs, and was quite solid. that the more pilgrims, the richer the better, might be attracted to visit this relic and to lay down their offerings, often very costly, it was stated by the monks that the milky way in the firmament pointed to walsingham. so it did no doubt, so it does on occasion now, and to a lot of other places besides. "the virgin and her son, as they made their salute, also appeared to erasmus and his friend, to give them a nod of approbation." the sentence last quoted, wherein the meaning is a great deal clearer than the construction, comes from messrs. timbs and gunn. let me place side by side with it another quotation from froude's lecture on "times of erasmus and luther." "the rule of the church was, nothing for nothing. at a chapel in saxony there was an image of a virgin and child. if a worshipper came in with a good handsome offering, the child bowed and was gracious; if the present was unsatisfactory it turned away its head, and withheld its favours till the purse-strings were untied again. there was a great rood or crucifix of the same kind at boxley, in kent, where the pilgrims went in thousands. this figure used to bow, too, when it was pleased; and a good sum of money was sure to secure its good will. when the reformation came, and the police looked into the matter, the images were found to be worked with wires and pulleys. the german lady was kept as a curiosity in the cabinet of the elector of saxony. our boxley rood was brought up and exhibited in cheapside, and was afterwards torn to pieces by the people." no sort of disrespect towards the roman catholic religion is involved in recording this absolutely true statement of historical fact. the trick described was undoubtedly played upon pilgrims in saxony and in kent; whether it was justifiable from some points of view matters not at all. the roman catholic religion is a great truth, may conceivably be the most exact and precise truth, behind all this kind of thing. it is considerably more than likely that similar devices were employed at walsingham. they may even have been employed by ecclesiastics otherwise blameless, for the rules of professional practice still occasionally justify strange conduct, or seem to justify it. but the evidence, if there was any, was destroyed at the dissolution, when thomas cromwell took the sacred image away to chelsea, and burned it. henry viii on this occasion, by the way, got some of his own back. he, too, like other kings and queens, native and foreign, had made the pilgrimage to walsingham before his quarrel with rome, and had walked the last four miles or so, from barsham, barefooted. _quære_, whether, when a king was on pilgrimage bent, the roads were spread with soft sand as they are now, with sand and gravel, when king edward is going to make a progress in london. henry gave an offering in the shape of a priceless necklace; but he secured it again in later life, and may even have given it to one of the wives, of whom, it may be remembered, he had several. [illustration: walsingham priory] an account of the ceremonies used, quoted again from messrs. timbs and gunn, is not without interest. "the pilgrim who arrived at walsingham entered the sacred precinct by a narrow wicket. it was purposely made difficult to pass, as a precaution against the robberies which were frequently committed at the shrine. on the gate in which the wicket opened was nailed a copper image of a knight on horseback, whose miraculous preservation by the virgin formed the subject of one of the numerous legendary stories with which the place abounded. to the east of the gate, within, stood a small chapel, where the pilgrim was allowed, for money, to kiss a gigantic bone, said to have been the finger-bone of st. peter. after this he was conducted to a building thatched with reeds and straw, inclosing two wells in high repute for indigestion and headaches; and also for the rare virtue of ensuring to the votary, within certain limits, whatever he might wish for at the time of drinking their water. the building itself was said to have been transported through the air many centuries before, in a deep snow; and as a proof of it, the visitor's attention was gravely pointed to an old bearskin attached to one of the beams. the 'tweyne wells,' called also 'the wishing wells,' an anonymous ballad speaks of:- a chappel of saynt laurence standeth now there fast by, tweyne wallys, experience do thus and lore; there she (the widow) thought to have sette this chappel, which was begun by our ladie's counsel. all night the wedowe permayning in this prayer, our blessed ladie with blessed minystrys, herself being her chief artificer, arrered this sayde house with angells handys, and not only rered it but sette in there it is, that is twyne hundred feet more in distance from the first place folk make remembraince." of a very truth, as froude said, "the world is so changed that we can hardly recognize it as the same." imagination retires baffled from the effort to picture kings and queens walking barefoot over primitive norfolk roads, passing through a wild waste too, for coke of norfolk was not yet born, to go through these ceremonies and to present their gifts. erasmus, with his tongue in his cheek, is easily conjured up; so are the robbers whom the shrine attracted. but why were there not any number of pilgrims in the sceptical mood of erasmus? there seem to have been plenty of robbers. we pass (the roads hereabout are flat as the sands of the sea, the land about them richly timbered, and there is nothing else to be said of them) from the ruins of a religious house to one indissolubly associated with the names of two men, each exceptionally worldly, each in his own singular way, and with that of one remarkably eccentric. houghton hall was built by sir robert walpole from the designs of colin campbell, while the former was prime minister, and ripley, say messrs. timbs and gunn (who speak with authority), undoubtedly improved on colin campbell. pope, it is true, wrote:- heaven visits with a taste the wealthy fool, and needs no rod but ripley with a rule. *...*...*...* so ripley, till his destined space is filled, heaps bricks on bricks and fancies 'tis to build. pope, always bitter and not a little of a snob, was hardly likely to have a good word to say for an architect who had been a working carpenter. it is true, too, that lady hervey wrote in 1765: "i saw houghton, which is the most triste, melancholy, fine place i ever beheld. 'tis a heavy, ugly, black building, with an ugly black stone. the hall, saloon, and gallery very fine; the rest not in the least so." time, it may be, has given the stone mellowness; certain it is that houghton now, in spite of a certain pretentiousness of ionic columns, is really pleasing. of houghton's most noted masters, the walpoles, a few words must be said, but of two of them not many, for they are well known to all. the first lord orford was sir robert walpole, the great prime minister who believed in letting well alone, in corruption as a method of government, in the venality of all men, and in the collection of pictures. it is curious, but true, that this most sagacious statesman was, in a scholarly age, no scholar, and that this fastidious connoisseur of art was, in a coarse age, exceptionally plain spoken and free-living. when the then lord townshend heard that lord orford was at houghton he made a rule of leaving rainham and norfolk himself. the second lord orford was of no account. of the third i shall write a little more here than of the fourth, because the eccentricities of the third are not so well known as are many of the details, whimsical rather than eccentric, of horace walpole, the fourth and last lord orford. sir robert walpole collected pictures by guido, vandyke, claude, rubens, rembrandt, salvator rosa, teniers, paul veronese, wouvermans, titian, poussin, snyders--in a word, by most of the best of the old masters, and housed them in his majestic norfolk home, girt by a park whose trees testify to this day to his skill in planting. horace walpole, who had loved houghton in his youth, himself wrote in after life a catalogue of these pictures and a description of the apartments in which they hung. the first lord orford slept with his fathers--they had been walpoles of walpole in marshland since the time of richard i--and his son reigned in his stead. meanwhile his youngest son horace, of whom it has been suspected on good grounds that he was not truly the son of the prime minister, lived that curious life in that curious house, strawberry hill, details of which are known to many because they have passed into english literature. he was the best letter-writer of modern times, or of nearly modern times, and his eccentricities are easily forgiven. he could afford them by virtue of two sinecures for life which his all-powerful father had secured for him; and he appears to have been perfectly happy building and altering his toy palace, collecting all sorts of curios, writing the most charming letters to his lady friends, writing for the press also (and childishly vain of his work), and hardly dreaming that he might succeed to the estate and the title. even when, after the death of the second earl, the property fell to his eccentric son, horace walpole hardly seems to me to have realized that he might some day succeed to the title and the estate. he was growing to be an old man. his grief over the sale of the celebrated gallery was not that of an expectant heir. what of the third earl, who died without issue, and so left horace walpole to be the fourth and last lord orford? the world at large knows him as the madman who sold the first lord orford's unparalleled collection of pictures to catherine of russia. but he did many madder things than that for, commercially speaking, he did not make a bad bargain over the sale of the pictures, for which he received more than his father had given. in him the english love of sport ran to insane excess. indeed it even brought him to his death. at a time when he was under restraint the date came when his greyhound czarina was matched to run a course. devoted to coursing as he had always been, he determined to be present and, with the cunning of a madman, he jumped out of a window while his attendant was out of the room, ran to the stable, saddled his favourite pony, a piebald, galloped to the scene of the match, refused to go home in spite of all entreaties, saw czarina win, fell from his saddle, and died there and then. george, third earl, could not have died more appropriately, nor, from his own point of view, more happily. he was mad, of course, very mad indeed; but he was a thorough sportsman. perhaps the maddest and at the same time most sporting thing he did was to train four stags to go four-in-hand. "he had reduced the deer to perfect discipline and, as he sat in his phaeton and drove the handsome animals, he, no doubt, fancied he was performing no inconsiderable achievement." if the writer of that pompous sentence tried to break four stags, or even a pair, to harness with his own hands, he would not have much doubt of the quality of the achievement; that is assuming he survived the effort. but the stag four-in-hand almost brought lord orford to a sporting death before his time. he was driving his strange team to newmarket, where he was a familiar figure, when a pack of hounds came across the scent and gave chase in full cry. the sequel, except for lord orford, must have been simply paralysingly funny. picture it for a moment. think of the stags, thoroughly panic-stricken, no longer trotting, but tearing along the road with huge bounds; of lord orford helpless on the box as the phaeton leapt and swayed; of the hounds racing behind and of the savage music of their cry. it was, it must have been, a sight for gods and men; and many men saw it; for the run ended in the yard of the "ram" at newmarket, where phaeton, stags, and noble driver disappeared into a barn and the doors were shut in the face of the clamouring pack. surely this is the maddest, funniest true story that ever was told, and the oddest part about it is that lord orford was not then and there clapped into a madhouse. yet one cannot help feeling a lurking regard for this mad sportsman. his foibles are more to the taste of some of us than the affectations of horace walpole. by the road over which the mad earl of orford used to career with his extraordinary team, over which horace walpole doubtless drove when he left his beloved london and "strawberry"--for so he called it "all short"--to fight an election at lynn, we also drove in a chariot which, to the eighteenth-century norfolkian, would have seemed just as strange as the phaeton and four stags would appear to us in the twentieth. the motor-car, however, attracts less attention in north-western norfolk, perhaps, than in any other part of the kingdom; for at sandringham are many motor-cars of many makes, and some there are at the cottage also. this part of the country learned before others did the elementary truth that there is no essential connection between speed and peril, and it was good for automobolism that an object-lesson should have been given in this respect by the magnificent cars, daimlers for the most part, of him whom the law regards as incapable of offence, because he is the spring and source of the law itself. of this country of heather, bracken, fir and oak, of glorious gorse and of glowing rhododendrons, of the numerous acclivities and declivities, sufficient to give variety to the scene without trying the powers of any competent car, of its air, an incomparably sweet mixture of the breaths of the sea and of the moorland, little will be said at this moment, for the simple reason that, in the next and final chapter, i hope to be able to give an impression of its beauties at many times of the year, from the point of view of a frequent eye-witness. the whole distance from wells to king's lynn, by way of fakenham, which was our way, is a generous thirty miles; but the going was so good and the roads were so clear that we entered the great square of the old-fashioned lynn a little too early for luncheon, having regard to the fact that engagements in the world which we had put out of sight began to bulk rather large in the near future. the single town of any interest we passed through before reaching lynn was fakenham; and we agreed with mr. rye that it is "a particularly clean and pleasant market town, with several good old-fashioned inns, especially the 'crown.'" that is to say the first statement is endorsed from experience; as to the second the responsibility rests with mr. rye. here also, for those who care to halt, is a singularly fine church showing many a crowned "l" in stone to testify that fakenham was once the head-quarters in norfolk of the duchy of lancaster. as for lynn, some of us had visited it before, one had sojourned in it long (but his tale is postponed), and time, as has been mentioned, began to press a little. drifting on the roads, careless of where you shall eat or where sleep, is delightful, but for most of us it cannot go on indefinitely, and therein, probably, consists its chief charm. it is of the essence of a "treat," to use the good old word of childhood, that it should be more or less exceptional. so, at king's lynn, we did but halt for a space at the "globe" in the corner of the wide and cobbled square and, although a little rain began to fall, compel the new-comers to walk about a little, and look at the narrow streets, the estuary of the ouse, and the custom-house. the compulsion had better have been omitted, for lynn with its streets empty of people, with the rain falling, and with the tide out, assuredly does not allure, and that was the state of things on this sunday morning in april. in other circumstances, as it is hoped to prove ere long, lynn and its people are much more attractive. so the halt was not prolonged and, the rain abating, we started on the drive of forty-five miles roughly for ely and cambridge. it took us through the heart of the east anglian fens, and the day was one in which the spirit of them entered into me, or perhaps i, having set my mind thereto, entered into their spirit. of a truth the task was one presenting little difficulty, so far as the general mood was concerned. for me, at any rate, there has never been any real gulf between the useful and the romantic. to one nurtured at the foot of the mighty amphitheatre of the penrhyn slate quarries, scooped out from the heart of a mountain, rising in purple tiers of cyclopean scale, the work of man, so long as it be grand in outline and in purpose, has always seemed to possess an entrancing beauty of its own. men live who find the fens flat and uninteresting. they demand our compassion, by no means our censure or our scorn. one does not despise a blind man because he cannot see; and these men simply suffer from partial blindness, physical and mental. there is, beyond all question, a beauty of the fens as they are, appealing to the eye alone; they had another beauty for the eye in their original state, original that is to say so far as human history reaches, and of the nature of that original beauty a miniature presentment may be seen still at wicken fen, which lies between the isle of ely and newmarket heath. happy is the man or woman who can rejoice in both of these aspects of the fenland. happier still, because more intelligently charmed, are those who, while they travel through the rich cornland, following the banks of rivers whose waters run at a level higher than those of the surrounding fields, can picture to themselves the scene as it was before the skill and the courage of man made the good wheat grow where the reeds once waved, made firm pasture for sleek cattle out of the quagmire, caused domestic fowls to thrive in the sometime domain of the bittern and the heron. men never tire of singing the praises of the dutch who, by dogged courage and centuries of unrelaxing effort, made a country for themselves, a country to which they cling with a love passing the love of women. the conquest of the fens, begun, so far as we know, by the romans, was, in its way, an enterprise of equal nobility and courage, and vermuyden, francis, duke of bedford, and rennie deserve credit great as any given to any dutch engineer. the details are perhaps dull; they would certainly be out of place here; the result is grand, a colossal gain for humanity which can best be realized and valued, be admired most cordially and warmly, as one rolls along solid roads where the fenman of old stalked gingerly on stilts. who will not remember the last words of kingsley's _hereward the wake_, when they are quoted? "let us send over to normandy for a fair white stone of caen, and let us carve a tomb worthy of thy grand-parents." "and what shall we write thereon?" "what but that which is there already? 'here lies the last of the english.'" "not so. we will write, 'here lies the last of the old english.' but upon thy tomb, when thy time comes, the monks of crowland shall write, 'here lies the first of the new english; who, by the inspiration of god, began to drain the fens.'" here is absolute truth of sentiment, and to say this is by no means to deny sympathetic appreciation of the dogged resistance offered by the fenmen of many generations to those who rescued the fens from the condition of a watery wilderness. of course the fenmen hated the very idea of the subjugation of the marshland. their feeling towards those who began the long and arduous work differed only in degree from that with which the savage inhabitants of a new country--new to us, that is to say--regard the advance of civilization. they were not savages, but they were hard men and hardy, for only the fittest survived the agues and the fevers, accustomed to a free out-door life, having its pleasures no less than its trials. let me quote kingsley:-"overhead the arch of heaven spread more ample than elsewhere, as over the open sea; and that vastness gave, and still gives, such cloudlands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be seen nowhere else within these isles. they might well have been star worshippers, those gervii, had their sky been clear as that of the east; but they were like to have worshipped the clouds rather than the stars, according to the too universal law, that mankind worship the powers which do them harm, rather than the powers which do them good. their priestly teachers, too, had darkened still further their notion of the world around, as accursed by sin and swarming with evil spirits. the gods and fairies of their old mythology had been transformed by the church into fiends, alluring or loathsome, but all alike destructive to man, against whom the soldier of god, the celibate monk, fought day and night with relics, agnus dei, and sign of holy cross. and therefore the danelagh men, who feared not mortal sword or axe, feared witches, ghosts, pucks, wills-o'-the-wisp, werewolves, spirits of the wells and the trees, and all dark, capricious and harmful beings whom their fancy called up out of the wild, wet, and unwholesome marshes, or the dark, wolf-haunted woods. for that fair land, like all things on earth, had its dark aspect. the foul exhalations of the autumn called up fever and ague, crippling and enervating, and tempting, almost compelling, to that wild and desperate drinking which was the scandinavian's special sin. dark and sad were those short autumn days, when all the distances were shut off, and the air reeked with foul brown fog and drenching rains from the eastern sea; and pleasant the bursting forth of the keen north-east wind, with all its whirling snowstorms. for though it sent men hurrying into the storm, to drive the cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snow-wreaths, and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice and snow; yet all knew that after the snow would come the keen frost and bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and the fenman's yearly holiday, when, work being impossible, all gave themselves up to play, and swarmed upon the ice on skates and sledges, to run races, township against township, or visit old friends forty miles away; and met everywhere faces as bright and ruddy as their own, cheered by the keen wind of that dry and bracing frost." tumultuously eloquent kingsley gives here an impression which, as an overture to the stirring story of _hereward the wake_ may not have been guiltless of anachronism; but it suits our purpose the better. he is too severe, in this case as in others, on the roman catholic clergy. most likely the gervii were not immigrants from oversea, not historical immigrants at any rate. their traditions, it may well be, were of that druidism which the romans understood so little. outlaws and desperate men, saxon and dane, naturally drifted to the fens, bringing in their own traditions, and became one people with them. sledges the denizens of the fens doubtless used, and snowshoes perhaps, in the days of hereward, when the fens were indeed the last stronghold of the english; but one would like to see some kind of evidence for skates. as for the merrymaking on the ice, the friendly visits and the like, the chances are that they were as much the products of a happy imagination as the ancient fenman's joy in the wild north-easter. life really was hard and lonely for him. he probably cursed the north-easter as heartily as a rheumatic man does now, and if he welcomed the frost it was because it enabled him to approach and kill the more easily the wild birds with which the fens teemed. in the main he was hunter, fisher, fowler, and that was why he resisted civilization. junketings on the ice belonged to a later period altogether. oliver cromwell resisted the reclamation of the fens because he thought he saw in it a subtle device of the great to enrich themselves. the fenman resisted it because he was a fowler and a fisher, and the draining reduced the area of his happy hunting grounds and of the waters of which he was free and out of which he could make a scanty living. men might call him "slodger," "yellow-belly"--the first word sounds like the very quintessence of churned mud, the second is eloquent of sickness--and he might grumble at the hardships of his lot. still he knew no other way of living. he could snare the myriad wildfowl, many of them no longer known in england, which haunted the fastnesses of the reeds as no other man could. he knew the flight of each kind at every hour of the day and at every season of the year. no man so cunningly as he could capture the mighty luce or pike, noosing him sometimes, at others, and especially in winter, catching him with baits, craftily let down through a hole in the ice, or could so artfully trap the fat eels wherewith the clergy of ely or of crowland might turn a fast in the letter into a feast in the spirit. with his stilts and his leaping pole he could travel over the marshes with the most astonishing celerity; but that he enjoyed his life so keenly as kingsley would have us believe is in the last degree unlikely. still the fenman knew the life, and he knew his powers. he had no ambition to drive the slow oxen, to turn the fertile furrow, to garner the golden grain. indifferent to questions of national welfare he was, as of course. the rustic of to-day is absolutely indifferent to considerations of the kind. he likes to see the straw so heavy that it cannot be cut by machines, laid by storms so that the sickle must needs be employed, because that means more work for men. time was, and that not so very long ago, when, following the example of the artisans and weavers of manufacturing england, hodge rioted and broke up the thrashing machines and the like, which did the work of twenty men and more. "it stands to reason," he used to say, "that such newfangled notions are bad for the likes of us." it stood to reason, from the fenman's point of view, that to drain the fens would be to leave him without the only occupation for which he was fit; it probably never occurred to him that he might adapt himself to altered circumstances and become a regular worker, tied to fixed hours, instead of an amphibious wanderer, fowling and fishing when he pleased, or when necessity drove him to exertion. who shall blame him? certainly not the sportsman, the naturalist, or the botanist, who have felt a pang of regret as they have watched, elsewhere than in the fens it may be, the marsh that always held snipe, from which the bittern has been known to rise, in the recesses of which some almost extinct herb survived, converted into a fruitful field. yet what man familiar with the life of the country has not felt these regrets, even while he knew all the time that the change was for the public good and that his own livelihood would not be directly affected? is it possible, then, not to sympathize with the resistance of the fenmen, who knew nothing of "the public good" and saw their livelihood, or the chance of obtaining it, destroyed before their helpless eyes. it was the old story. one man's meat is another man's poison all the world over and for all time; and there can be no progress, no wholesale and beneficial change in the ways of life, without much incidental tribulation. nevertheless, when all things are weighed in the balance, not a scintilla of doubt remains that the draining of the fens was begun and continued, as the old knight in _hereward the wake_ said, "by the inspiration of god." it banished a few birds; but we could better spare a few kinds of birds than preserve them with the fevers and the agues which were the inseparable accident of their haunts. it was the end of the "slodgers" and the "yellow-bellies," who were but a handful of men; but in their place are thousands of human beings who, in spite of agricultural troubles which the drainers of the fens could not by any means have foreseen, are at least sufficiently clad and fed, and decently housed. it is not always, it is not indeed often, that the reflections appropriate to a scene throng into one's mind when that scene is visited. sometimes, at the foot of niagara, for example, thoughts refuse to come into the mind at all; it is only afterwards that with dickens one reflects, it was surely only afterwards he reflected, that the one abiding impression left by niagara is the remembrance from time to time that a like mass of water is still falling, and falling, and falling, yesterday to-day and for ever. but, in relation to the fens, i can truthfully say that most of these thoughts ran through my mind as we rolled along the road. details of course did not. i had forgotten about sir cornelius vermuyden and rennie, but i remembered the great deeds of the house of bedford and boyhood's delight in hereward. as the road followed the sinuous bank of cabined ouse, as i looked at the flat fields of rich black soil in which the corn showed green or of pasture springing into life, i felt to realize that on these very places the reeds had whispered and, as sir bedivere said to king arthur, so man might have reported, to hereward if you will, "nought heard i, save the waves wap and the waters wan." each church with its hamlet rose a little above the general level of the plain, making it the easier to understand that each stood on firm ground, once an island among the marshes, upon which the church had set her beacon light. if downham church, which we passed, might be taken as a sample--and it may be with safety--then the more leisurely topographers who have gone before are abundantly justified in saying that the churches of the fen country are of an uncommon stateliness and beauty. this place, by the way, shares with north walsham the honour of having taken a share in the education of nelson. with such thoughts flooding into the mind we were quickly, or seemed to be quickly, at ely, of which something has been written before, and no more shall be written. the road thence to cambridge needs no fresh description, and at cambridge, for our purposes, the account of this expedition might end but for one small incident of a doubly instructive character. first, however, let it be said, since the "bull" has been praised before, that on this occasion it turned out to have been unhappily chosen as a place at which to take luncheon. appetites were ravenous, but the meal was not a success. perhaps because it was vacation time, the house was not prepared for guests. at any rate, the stair-carpets were "up"; but cambridge is a big place, on an important highway, and, in fact, the guests were many and the mutton was tough. so, somewhat dissatisfied, to royston and home, quite a long way but, so far as royston, familiar already, and beyond that outside the present manor. still, an incident occurring in the next manor must be recorded, because it was an incident, because it was germane to the motor-car and its little brother the motor-cycle, and because it had a double moral. it so fell out that somewhere, between luton and dunstable, if memory serves accurately, we were proceeding at a fittingly careful pace, and keeping scrupulously to the proper side of a not too wide and very meandering road. suddenly, round the corner in front of us, appeared a motor-cycle, on its proper side of the road too, but proceeding at a good pace, the motor-cyclist having a young woman on a bicycle in tow. if she had kept her head all would have been well. as it was she lost it, fell head over heels into the ditch on her near side of the road, and suffered nothing worse than a shaking, which, indeed, she deserved. in due course she was picked up, placed in the tonneau, and taken back to her mother, while i held her bicycle as it rested on our near foot-board. it appeared to be the first time this very penitent damsel had tried this suicidal method of progression; let us hope it was also the last; for that it is suicidal, potentially at any rate, there is no kind of doubt. she was really in some danger, for she was just as likely to tumble into the road as into the ditch. mr. johnson could have stopped in time to avoid her if she had, because he was going carefully, and with a due regard to the potential dangers of the road. but i know a good many other drivers with regard to whom i should be sorry to say confidently that they could be relied upon to have been driving with equal care in the same circumstances. it was the kind of incident which made one think. chapter xiii from king's lynn as centre part i king's lynn--the globe hotel--english hotels--reform necessary but difficult--centre of exploration in adjacent country--early history of lynn--little known--not roman--important in the eleventh century--formerly lynn episcopi--lynn regis since henry viii--chapel of red mount--stopping-place for pilgrims--"king john's" cup and sword--possibly that of king john of france--early prosperity of lynn--contribution against the armada--lynn during the civil war--sir hamon le strange--cromwell at siege of lynn--custom-house and guildhall--a city of merchants--lynn and eugene aram--bulwer's novel and the facts--was aram guilty?--the theatre--sea-faring men--to peterborough viâ wisbech--its association with the fens--the cathedral--cathedrals as books in stone--crowland. part ii to castle rising--once a port--once a borough--the keep and surroundings--the mystery of the earthworks--not roman probably--a suggestion--robert de montault's feud with lynn--rising and the she wolf of france--not so harshly imprisoned after all--wolferton--sandringham--always beautiful country--the house--sports and pastimes of royalty--dersingham--snettisham--the hunstantons and the le stranges--"twthill"--a suggested derivation--brancaster--the peddars way--the saxon pirates--brancaster described by mr. haverfield--excavation needed--burnham deepdale--burnham thorpe--the birthplace of nelson--to fakenham--rainham hall--the early townshends--elmhan--once seat of bishopric--earthworks--east dereham and george borrow--his description--cowper--swaffham--the first coursing club--castle acre--the castle's story clear--that of the earthworks all darkness. for the purposes of this chapter we will sleep, if it please you, and take our meals occasionally, at the globe hotel, standing in the south-west corner of the spacious square at king's lynn, where, in fact, i have often stayed for many days together. that is why the "globe" is recommended, not with any extremity of warmth, but just as an ordinary and rather old-fashioned hotel, such as one may expect to find--sometimes the expectation is vain--in a really old-fashioned town like lynn. it is no sumptuous palace, but it provides plain and wholesome food, fair liquor, and clean bedrooms at about the normal english price. that is much too high, of course, judged by the continental standard, and some day one may hope that the mysterious reason why english hotel-keepers, having to pay less than the generality of their contemporaries abroad for that raw material of dinners, of which they too often forget to change the original condition, charge more highly for the results and certainly, to all appearance, do not thrive so consistently. they would answer, most likely, that the hotel-keepers of provincial france and of parts of switzerland can afford to charge their very modest prices because they can safely rely on a regular influx of travellers, principally english, german, and american. "i can never tell," says boniface, "how many will want dinner on any day. whether five come or fifty, all expect dinner; i must always be prepared for them"--very often he is sadly unprepared--"and my prices do not do much more than cover my expenses. many a beautiful joint have i provided, for i never buy anything but the very best, that has had to be thrown away." quote to him hotels abroad, such as we all know, where guests are taken in _en pension_, and fed fairly well, at from six to nine francs a day, or put it at 5s. to 7s. 6d. to simplify matters, and, while it is plain that he does not really believe you, he will bring up again the same old argument. nor can you persuade him that a large part of the annual exodus to the continent is due to knowledge that touring in england is, so far as food and accommodation go, so very dear, and often so remarkably nasty by comparison with touring on the continent that men are driven abroad. individually, however, boniface is in rather a difficult position. our beautiful islands, for they are very lovely in many kinds of loveliness, and our roads (which, if not equal to those of france, seem to an american to have attained an almost ideal perfection) will never attract their due share of voluntary travellers until the general average of hotels shall be improved, and the general average of charges shall be reduced. even then some years must elapse before the reform would be realized as well as known, and the set habits of the travelling public, the public which travels of its own free-will and for its own pleasure, might be slow to change. they also, like the hotel-keepers, are english men and english women, scots and irish of both sexes, not easy to move out of a fixed groove. in any case the pioneer, the paragon among hotel-keepers, who should attempt to gain custom by setting an example of prices really moderate, not moderate according to english standards, would almost certainly court bankruptcy. one swallow does not make a summer; the certainty of finding one cheap and comfortable hotel on a tour would not suffice to turn the stream of tourists into the route on which that hotel lay. so, perhaps, the complaints of motorists and others concerning the charges of english hotels (and irish and scotch hotels too) may be regarded as being rather in the nature of letting off steam than in that of using it in the hope of effecting any real result. the fault lies in the system; the system cannot be reformed without concerted action of hotel-keepers, of which there is no present evidence; and, if reform came, the actual reformers would probably be losers, although the next generation of hotel-keepers would reap a rich harvest. the process of reform would be, indeed, something like making pasture out of arable land, a costly enterprise, the profits of which are so long in coming that it is rarely undertaken by tenants for a short term. since that is so we must take our hotels as we find them, praising some as being a little better than others when all might be vastly improved. on these principles the "globe" at lynn is recommended, although the "crown" or the "duke's head" may, for all i know, be equally good. it may be added, too, that it used to be, perhaps still is, the hotel used by mr. thomas gibson bowles, whose parliamentary connection with king's lynn was long. his presence in it, however, argued nothing. it may have been the conservative or unionist hotel traditionally, as the "royal" at norwich is the liberal house; or again, mr. bowles may have been no less independent in the choice of a hotel, even in his own constituency, than he was in selecting his lobby on a division in the house of commons. at any rate the "globe" will serve as a resting-place. from it we will examine king's lynn, thinking a little of its history and associations, and take a drive of a single day in the first part of the chapter; and in the second we will take, for purposes of writing, a considerably longer drive which, for those who desire to see a great number of interesting places at leisure, would be much better divided into two parts, or even three, than taken in a single piece. only, having visited all the places named, by road too, but not expressly for the purpose of this book, i am disposed to recommend a return to lynn for the night, if a day seems to be growing too long, rather than a sojourn at some outlying place in which the inn or hotel, where there is one, has not been tested on my vile body. for example, in this second drive, if my advice be taken, the traveller may find himself at brancaster at about the time of afternoon tea. even on a summer's day he will hardly be disposed to complete the programme suggested. he can easily run back to lynn, in time to dress for dinner comfortably, along a different road from that which he took in coming, and if he likes to start again at the next point in the drive on the following morning, he can reach that again by a new series of roads. he is never likely to regret his return to lynn, because it is really an exceedingly interesting and characteristic place. "it was an old wild fancy that catus decianus," boadicea's roman contemporary in this country, "founded lynn," says mr. haverfield; on the other hand, according to the _encyclopædia britannica_, it is supposed to have been a british settlement. its origin is, in fact, "wrop up in mystery" rather more completely than is usual with old english towns. we know that the earliest entry in the red book of lynn is 1309, and the last east anglian bishop who occupied thetford as his diocesan capital is believed to have built a church where st. margaret's now stands. presumably, therefore, lynn was a place of some importance in his day, which was at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries. there is an odd tradition concerning the original church, of which not much is left, for in the eighteenth century the spire collapsed on to the nave in a gale of wind. the tradition, mentioned by mr. rye, is that the foundation was laid on woolpacks; "but i fancy this only came from some donation of wool, or of a wool subsidy, in aid of a partial rebuilding. whatever it was built on its foundations certainly settled very much directly, for the tower leans over in such a pisa-like way that it makes a nervous spectator quite uncomfortable to go inside it and look up, though the protecting piers have been there in their present places a trifle over seven hundred years or so." how to reconcile this with the fact that the spire was blown down on to the nave in 1741 is mr. rye's business, not mine. besides that, the fragments of history connected with lynn are so interesting that they will leave little, if any, space for those discourses on ecclesiastical architecture which are the principal parts of the generality of guide-books. of the early history, the really early history of lynn, little is known. it had strong walls, relics of which remain, of uncertain date, save that they were not roman. it belonged to the east anglian bishops, or at any rate was in their temporal jurisdiction, until henry viii dissolved the monasteries, when it became lynn regis, no longer lynn episcopi. it was a stopping place for pilgrims on the way to the shrine of our lady of walsingham, who were encouraged to lay their offerings in the chapel of the red mount, to which chapel, very small and very beautiful within, an ancient avenue still leads. observe the distinct entrance and exit, testifying alike to the business aptitude of those who were in charge, and to the popularity of the shrine of our lady of walsingham. lynn has a charter of 1216, given by king john, and preserves a sword and a cup alleged to have been given by him. here "murray" is "too clever by half," and himself supplies, if it had but occurred to him, a key which it was left to a local antiquary to apply to this historical problem. "the cup itself, in elegance of shape, might have come from the hand of cellini. the figures in enamel of men and women hunting and hawking are extremely curious. judging, however, from the costume and workmanship this cup cannot be older than the period of edward iii--the period of the greatest prosperity of lynn. the sword also, although an inscription on one side of the hilt records that john took it from his side and gave it to the town, is really no older than the sixteenth century. both articles seem to be substitutes for the original donations." that is not so certain. on the opposite page the same writer mentions a brass in st. margaret's commemorating a mayor of edward iii's time, and a representation below of the "peacock's feast" given by this same mayor to edward iii, who is represented at table, having before him a cup very like the one in question. now edward iii not only visited lynn, but also kept king john of france as an honoured prisoner for many years. he was as likely as not to take john with him to lynn, and the chances are that the cup, as a local antiquary has suggested to mr. rye, was the gift of a king of france. as for the inscription on the sword, it is nothing. it was in the nature of things that whosoever gave the sword, the inscription should be placed upon it afterwards, and, as to a date suggested by workmanship, it would be very unsafe to rely upon it. "probably it was in the time of edward iii that, speaking relatively, lynn was most prosperous." it is assumed that the statement was not made without evidence of some kind. otherwise probabilities would seem to point in the opposite direction, and it would be natural to expect that, as the fens were gradually subjugated, producing some things worth exporting and supporting men capable of buying things imported, the port provided for them by nature would grow in respect of trade. still there is abundant evidence of its importance later than edward iii and long before the great and good work of reclaiming the fens had been take seriously in hand. in the time of elizabeth, lynn and blakeney (!), the latter now no longer worthy of mention as a port, furnished "2 shippes and 1 pinnace," a contribution equal to that of ipswich and harwich, to resist the armada. then, as we have seen, oliver cromwell resisted the first scheme of fen-reclamation formed by the illustrious house of bedford--the protector of later years was then a resident at ely and member for cambridge in the house of commons. yet the value of lynn was quickly made manifest during the rebellion. moved thereto by stout sir hamon le strange of hunstanton, lynn showed itself to be veritably lynn regis, almost the only part of east anglia that adhered to charles. it was a matter of no small moment. even afterwards, when the restoration was being planned the projected seizure of lynn was regarded by the planners and by clarendon as an enterprise of exceptional value because lynn was "a maritime town, of great importance in respect of the situation, and likewise of the good affection of the gentlemen of the parts adjacent." to the first charles it would have been of priceless value could he but have held it, for through it he could have secured from the continent that supply of ammunition of which, almost from the beginning of the war, he was in sore need. with sir hamon le strange for governor, 50 pieces of ordnance, 1200 muskets, and 500 barrels of powder, lynn was held in a manner plainly showing how much value the king set upon it. the parliamentary generals, however, were equally alive to the use that might be made of lynn as a port from which to obtain supplies. first manchester, and later cromwell, took part in the siege; it is even said the "virgin troop" of norwich, puritan amazons, took the field on this occasion. at any rate, in 1643 lynn surrendered, to the grievous loss of charles and the corresponding gain of the parliament. lynn's commercial history may be described roughly as the dogged and not entirely fruitless struggle of a town once really great and prosperous to fight the new conditions of modern trade, conditions tending to make remote and out of the way a port which was once accessible and almost central. the glory has not all departed, but a great deal of it has gone, leaving its traces plainly to be seen in architecture. the custom-house, dutch in appearance (for the trade with holland was considerable), and the guildhall speak of the days gone by; the central market square is far too spacious for the present needs of the place. the main streets are narrow, but that was the way of old cities, and their lights, carried on elegant iron arches across the streets, give it a distinctly foreign air. drive away from the main street towards the custom-house, and you will find another, running parallel to it, of substantial queen anne houses compelling reflection. they speak of a bygone prosperity. i have found no trace that lynn ever was, as ipswich and norwich were in the pre-railway days, and as for that matter nearly every county town in england was, a centre of county society, in which the county families kept their town houses, occupying them for a gay season in each year. these houses seem to speak rather of rich lynn merchants of the past, trading with the low countries on a scale very large for those days. again, with the sea to the northward, after a few miles of navigable river, and the fens on every side nearly, living on its trade by sea, lynn seems to have been placed in a species of natural isolation, which perhaps goes some way to account for the fact that it is not quite like any other town in england. probably the lynn "character" of the past most of us would best like to meet, not for very long perhaps, was miss mary breeze, who died, aged seventy-eight, in 1789. it is recorded of her that "she took out her shooting license, kept as good greyhounds, and was as sure a shot as any in the county." but a corporation minute beginning, "guildhall, lynn. at a congregation there holden on the 14th day of february, 1758," points to a contemporary of miss mary breeze, in whom the wider world was once keenly interested. on that day eugene aram was approved as usher to the grammar school, on the appointment of mr. knox, in the place of john birkes, "dismissed." like, probably, most middle-aged men, i remember reading _eugene aram_ with eager interest as a boy; in these later years the task has been achieved only after heroic efforts and in obedience to a sense of duty. the noble author, who could describe a chair in front of a public-house as "cathedrarian accommodation," is not for this age. by the help, however, of a paper read by mr. e. m. beloe to a county society, and preserved in _norfolk and norwich notes and queries_, i am able to see something of this celebrated case, once much discussed, as it must have appeared to the inhabitants of lynn. aram was appointed usher of the ancient grammar school, now vanished (but lynn has recently acquired a far more important grammar school, named after king edward vii), in february, 1758. he lived in the headmaster's house, spent his holidays with the vicar of heacham, and most of his sundays with archdeacon steadman, who was rector of gaywood. he was gloomy of aspect, given to solitary walks, in the habit of looking back over his shoulder, as if some one were following him; but he was also obviously a man of remarkable attainments. bulwer gives him all these traits, except (i think) that of looking over his shoulder, which is local tradition. bulwer also makes aram the impassioned suitor of a local lady; but mr. beloe says nothing on that head. if aram was such, then his intentions must have been dishonourable and may have been bigamous: on that point, however, lynn could have known nothing. imagine, then, the surprise of the good people of lynn when, in august or september of the year 1758, after aram had been among them seven months only, two knaresborough constables came to sir john turner, the most important magistrate of lynn, and one of those who had sanctioned the appointment of aram, with a warrant against the usher. the warrant, being issued in yorkshire, required to be backed. sir john turner backed it, accompanied the constables to the grammar school, and was present while aram, having been summoned to an inner room, was duly arrested. next, according to hood's _dream of eugene aram_- two stern-faced men set out from lynn, through the cold and heavy mist, and eugene aram walked between, with gyves upon his wrist. this was poetic licence; as a matter of fact, aram started for knaresborough in a post-chaise. that was all the people of lynn saw or knew of eugene aram, save that they learned, through the meagre channels of information then existing, that he was eventually convicted at knaresborough, after lying untried for nearly a year in york gaol, on a charge of murder fourteen years old. small wonder, then, that mr. beloe wrote and read aloud "his name has been, from my youth upwards, a kind of fascination for me"; small wonder that lynn was and remained deeply interested to find it had harboured a criminal, whose guilt was doubted by some, whose career was the theme of a stirring poem, nobly recited by sir henry irving, and of a novel which was at one time much to the taste of the age. eugene aram's story is really so full of interest that it is worth summarizing, very briefly and without introduction of the "love interest" (as his literary agents have it) with which bulwer strove to give it human reality. of quite humble parentage and meagre education, he early showed a passion for learning. born in 1704, he was a married schoolmaster at netherdale long before he was thirty, and when he migrated to knaresborough, still as a schoolmaster, in 1734, he had acquired considerable knowledge of latin and greek. at knaresborough he remained ten years. then his intimate daniel clarke disappeared, having previously been supplied with a large quantity of goods on credit. nothing worse than a common swindle seems to have been suspected at the time. suspicion of having been concerned in it fell upon aram; proceedings were taken against him; his garden was searched; but no evidence was forthcoming and he was discharged. however, he left knaresborough shortly afterwards, deserting his wife at the same time, and for the next ten years he appears to have wandered about england, acting as usher in all sorts of schools, and studying comparative philology. the definite story finds him next an usher at lynn, peculiar in manner but, by reason of his attainments probably, an acceptable associate to the cultivated gentlemen of the district. it would have been well for aram if, when he left knaresborough, he had taken away his wife also. the deserted woman, whom the noble novelist found it convenient to forget, had doubtless a feeling of resentment against her husband, and had certainly a long tongue. talking over her grievances, which really were quite considerable, she had been heard to suggest that her husband and houseman, "the scoundrel houseman" of bulwer, were jointly responsible for the disappearance of clarke, but her talk was clearly regarded as the scurrilous spite of an angry woman. then a skeleton was found near knaresborough, in a place where no recent skeleton had a right to be, and folks began to say that there was some method in mrs. aram's madness. there was an inquest, at which she gave evidence; houseman was arrested and "confronted with the bones." he vowed that they were not the bones of "dan clarke," confessed that he had been present while aram and another man murdered clarke, and that clarke's bones had been buried in a well-known cave hard by. in that cave bones were found. where was aram? a clue (this is from mr. beloe and does not appear in most accounts) was supplied by a yorkshire horse-dealer, who had seen aram at lynn during his travels. so aram was arrested, as we have seen, tried, convicted and executed, making full confession after conviction, and suggesting, by way of motive, that clarke had made too successful love to his wife. was eugene aram guilty or not? to his confession, probably, no serious attention need be paid. the man was highly strung clearly, he had been a penniless prisoner for nearly a year at a time when our prisons were hells upon earth, he had conducted his own defence during an arduous and, from our modern point of view, very unfairly conducted trial, he attempted suicide by opening a vein on the night before his execution, he was desperate, probably not master of himself, and last, perhaps not least, confessions were the custom of the criminals of the age. it has been urged on his behalf that the trial was unfair, from our point of view, since counsel might not be retained for the defence of prisoners in those days nor wives called in defence of their husbands. as to the wife's evidence, if it had been admissible, the story makes it plain that it would have been more likely to be damning than favourable. she had been deserted, she had been left to shift for herself for many years, she had said that aram knew all about the disappearance of clarke. it was a distinct advantage to aram that she could not be called. that he suffered from having to defend himself is in the last degree unlikely. paley, who travelled all the way from cambridge to hear his defence, said he had secured his conviction by his own cleverness. the original defence, preserved by bulwer, is indeed marked by singular ability; but it is not in the very least convincing. i can imagine the jury saying to one another: "if this obviously clever man can think of nothing better than this to say, he is guilty sure enough." houseman, it might very fairly be said, was not a credible witness. he was, indeed, on his own showing, a most mean and despicable villain; but the strength of the circumstantial evidence, the fact that aram ran away, that he did not cross-examine houseman or attempt to overthrow his evidence, and that his defence really amounted to an essay on the fallibility of circumstantial evidence, were quite enough to secure his conviction then, or now. the sympathy felt for eugene aram has sprung from the fact that the villain houseman escaped, and that aram was an able and a brilliantly learned man. hume, i believe, said he was a century ahead of his age in celtic research; but neither the one fact nor the other is inconsistent with a belief that clarke was murdered, and that aram was present at the murder. such are the reflections one may carry about the narrow streets of lynn, and sometimes, of an evening, one may go to the theatre, but my one experience of that was not inviting. the maxim _ne coram populo_ was more flagrantly trodden underfoot surely than ever before, when, in a play called (i think) _slaves of the harem_, a full-blooded and genuine african went through with a bowstring the gestures of executing an erring lady on the stage (who in her turn made appropriate grimaces) to the uproarious delight of an audience which insisted on encoring the scene. on the other hand, time spent in talking with the people in warm bar-parlours of an evening, or among the mariners who idle on the quay by day, as mariners always have and always will, is apt to be rewarded by no means ill. among the sea-faring men, at any rate, hardy fishermen for the most part, the feeling that one may be talking to lineal descendants of vikings soon deepens into conviction. they are fine seamen, too, these men of the east coast, and the navy depends upon them not a little; but very prudently, and without saying anything about it, it is arranged that the same ship's company shall never be part east and part west countrymen. it was fore-ordained that this portion of a chapter should end with a drive. it is a drive to be taken very shortly in print, and quite easily by road over fen country, not needing to be described anew, to a cathedral city situate geographically in the midlands--that is to say, to peterborough. now peterborough is in northamptonshire, and northamptonshire sounds midland as midland can be. on what pretext is peterborough introduced? really none is needed; our brief detour is but an illustration of the truth that county boundaries, apart from the matters of police and road-making, have no more meaning for the motorist than they had for the romans. peterborough is easily accessible from lynn, viâ wisbech, by thirty-five miles of flat road. its cathedral dominates the fens from the west as ely dominates their southern and central parts; it has been intimately associated with their troubled history in the past. the cathedral too, although by no means to be reckoned amongst the most majestic to be found in england, is very fine in itself, and exceptionally interesting and suggestive. i had written "instructive," but that is usually a word raising expectation of tedious discourse. as a matter of fact, little shall be written about peterborough cathedral, although many personal impressions might be moulded into one. go to see peterborough cathedral. remember that it is one of the three norman cathedrals of england; that the first church on this site was built in the closing years of the seventh century, and rased to the ground by the danes; that the second was burned in the twelfth century; that the greater part of the present structure was 120 years in the building before it was consecrated in the thirteenth century; that the central tower was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and that the nineteenth century saw a great deal of necessary work done. remembering this, you will surely depart reluctantly, convinced that of all our english books in stone none contains more chapters than that entitled peterborough cathedral, that in no edifice can the student of architecture who inspects with the advantage of special knowledge, or the fairly cultivated man who lacks that special knowledge, find more details of genuine charm and interest. here you can trace developments, early norman vaulting in the aisles, exquisite fan-vaulting--it is peculiar to england--in the choir, clustered piers to columns. here you may follow the differences in character and arrangement between a monastic cathedral, such as peterborough was, served by regular clergy and monks, and one of the old foundation, like st. paul's, which, being served by secular clergy, was not affected by the reforms of henry viii. you may see, too, traces of the iconoclastic zeal of cromwell's followers, often credited with the misdeeds of others. in spite of them, too, you may realize, not more forcibly than elsewhere perhaps, but still in full force, that which has been remarkably well put by professor banister fletcher and mr. banister f. fletcher in their _comparative architecture_. "the place in the national life which the mediæval cathedrals occupied was an important one, and must be realized if we would understand how they were regarded. in the absence of books, and of people able to read them, cathedrals were erected and decorated partly as a means of popular education, the sculpture and the painted glass reflecting the incidents of bible history from the creation to the redemption of mankind, the sculptured forms and brilliant colouring rendering them easily understood by the people. the virtues and vices, with their symbols, were also displayed, either in glass or statuary, along with their reward or punishment. saints and angels told of the better life, and the various handicrafts, both of peace and war, were mirrored in imperishable stone or coloured glass. they, to a large extent, took the place in our social state since occupied by such modern institutions as the board school, free library, museum, picture gallery, and concert hall. they were the history books of the period. architecture then as now was also the grand chronicle of secular history, past and present, in which kings, nobles, and knights were represented." nothing conduces more to appreciation of the full meaning of a passage than the laborious process of copying, and having now performed that process i am moved to protest that these few lines, while they leave to the understanding the purely ecclesiastical significance of mediæval architecture, and are absolutely free from rhetorical artifice, are more pregnant with meaning than many pages of moving eloquence. so we leave peterborough and, if the mood seizes us, make a detour of eight miles to crowland before returning to peterborough. this, personally i cannot speak for; but there are some remains of the historic abbey. part ii the end of these wanderings is now close in sight, and the thought fills him who writes with feelings in which regret predominates over relief. he would be a cold-blooded person indeed who, after much travel in east anglia had revealed to him many beauties new to him, besides refreshing acquaintance with those seen before, after steeping himself, to the best of his ability and opportunities, in the history and legends of the district, should not have developed a very warm appreciation of the variety and character of both. but it is needless to say this over and over again, in various forms of words, in vain imitation of matthew arnold's method of compelling attention, and there is the less excuse for anything of the kind in that our last drive, or drives, take us through an exceptionally large number of storied places, and through some of the most breezy and fascinating of norfolk scenery. we will begin, if you please, by going to castle rising, lying 3-1/2 miles n.n.e. of lynn, and there we must stop for quite a long time. despite the local saying "rising was a seaport town when lynn was but a marsh," there is a good deal of doubt about its early history. concerning its later history there is none at all. the sand just silted up the harbour, the port became a mere memory, and of all the "rotten boroughs" disfranchised by the reform act of 1832 none perished more deservedly than castle rising, where the voters were reduced to two. was it of castle rising (it was certainly of some "rotten borough" in east anglia) that i read how the nobleman who kept it in his pocket mockingly caused a waiter to represent it in parliament? it was in days at any rate when a waiter, as a member of the "best club in the world," would have seemed a great deal more out of place than he would in these days of sectional representation. let us consider first what there is to see. over a bridge and through a norman gate-house one enters an almost circular space surrounded by a very high earth bank and a deep ditch. inside the commanding object is the keep, its norman windows full of character, its walls nine feet thick; the chapel and part of the constable's lodgings also remain. the hall and gallery remain in part; everything else is utterly perished. still, rising is an impressive monument of the olden time. how long have the earthworks occupied their present position? at one period antiquaries of repute placed a roman "camp" here, calling some of the earthworks roman. "but," writes mr. haverfield, "this is most unlikely and no roman remains have ever been found here." it is true a coin of constantine the great was once dug up in the neighbourhood; but this would be vague at best, and one coin goes no further as an argument of a roman camp than a sixpence dropped by an explorer does to prove a british settlement in the heart of thibet. mound and ditch may have been british, but there is no suggestion of evidence to prove it. they are not in the least likely to have been roman; for the romans had little, if any, fighting in these parts, and the defence of this portion of the "saxon shore" was, as we shall see shortly, provided for by the fortification of brancaster. after all, why should not william d'albini, first earl of arundel, who at any rate began the building of the castle, have caused the mound to be heaped up and the ditch scooped out in the closing years of the twelfth century? it was a period when norman nobles were not unduly particular as to the manner in which they extorted work, and it may well have seemed to him desirable to make a position, naturally strong, all but impregnable. the most interesting of the early lords was robert de montalt, who had a feud and a lawsuit with the people of lynn. lynn, it is pretty clear, had ceased to be a marsh by that time, and the two communities were far too adjacent to one another for friendly feeling to subsist. de montalt, too, claimed certain rights in connection with the tolbooth and tolls of lynn, which were not to the taste of the free and independent burghers of lynn. it so fell out that one day de montalt and his followers were in lynn when they were espied by the burghers. thereupon nicholas de northampton and others raised the town against them, chased them to "his dwelling-house"--surely hardly castle rising--besieged it, broke open the doors, beat him and his men, stripped them of weapons, money and jewels to the value of £40, kept him in durance for two days, and released him only upon his solemn promise in the market-place to relinquish all actions against the mayor and all claims against the corporation. de montalt made his promise and departed; but he certainly did not keep the spirit of the compact extorted from him by duress, for he had the law of the corporation of lynn, secured judgment for £6000, a huge sum in those days, and, more than that, he actually got £4000, for which he compromised, and lynn was taxed for years to pay the money by instalments. of a surety robert de montalt laughed best over that quarrel. in the case of the next, and for our purposes, the last inmate of castle rising, we have an illustration of the troublesome manner in which industrious diggers after facts destroy established and easily assimilated statements by historians. in the case of isabella, the she-wolf of france, whose paramour mortimer had caused her husband, edward ii, to be murdered with unexampled barbarity in berkeley castle, it was nice and easy to learn that, after the accession of edward iii and the fall and execution of mortimer, "the queen mother was deprived of her enormous jointure, and shut up in the castle of rising, where she spent the remaining twenty-seven years of her life in obscurity." if ever there was a thoroughly bad woman, that woman was isabella; and to dispose of her in a single sentence was nice and simple. unhappily it seems, like the story of alfred's cakes and other cherished traditions, to be entirely wrong. while isabella was at rising edward allowed her £3000 a year first, and £4000 a year later; letters patent under her hand were issued from her "castle of hertford" in the twentieth year of edward iii; edward iii visited her often at castle rising; she was allowed to make a pilgrimage to walsingham (which after all was quite near); she visited norwich with edward iii and his queen in 1344; and she died at hertford castle, having been there since 1357. in fact neither the sufferings nor the obscurity of the she-wolf of france were of a striking character. inland from castle rising you may see a ridge of upland, pine and heather-clad, with here and there some woodland and some agricultural land, following the line of the coast, but three or four miles from it. your best route will be to travel some three miles to wolferton, along a level and excellent road. the roads of norfolk are, indeed, good throughout in my experience. at wolferton you can hardly fail to notice the peculiar stone, of a dark reddish-brown colour, of which the church is built. it is called "carr" stone locally, a great deal of it is used in cottages, houses and churches, and if it seems a trifle redder to you at wolferton than elsewhere--it never so struck me--the redness is attributable to a fire of 1486, after which a licence to collect alms for rebuilding was issued! if such licences were a condition precedent to similar collections now the post office would be much the poorer, and some of us might be richer. what must also strike the spectator from the road is the very stately tower, and, by entering, you will see a fine specimen of the not too common hammer-beam roof. from wolferton to sandringham, or to its gates, i have walked and driven at almost every season of the year, always to find fresh beauties in that gentle slope. in winter, with snow upon the ground, when the fresh green is on the larches in spring, when bracken is pushing out its fronds in embryo knots, when the heather is in its glory, and, best of all, when the rhododendrons are in bloom, it is as beautiful a sight as any upon which the eye of man need desire to rest. moreover, this stretch of the heath-lands of east anglia looks the very place for any roving bird to haunt, and it is a real bond of union between me and the artist, who gives to these pages more than half their brightness, to learn from him that the sheldrake nests here habitually. at the top of the hill on the right you obtain a glimpse of the parish church of sandringham, modern, and regularly attended by the king and queen, and of the park across which the king walks to service, for all the world like any other country gentleman. a hundred yards or so farther on you are opposite the principal gates. these are of exquisite ironwork, and were presented to the then prince of wales in 1864 by the county of norfolk, justly proud of its newly acquired landowner, and entitled to be proud too of the workmanship which turned these gates out at norwich. now sandringham is not a place that is shown on stated days, as many houses are. it is too small for that; it is indeed one of the few places where the king and queen can enjoy real privacy, but, as luck will have it, i have seen sandringham inside, and a brief impression of it is given, partly, perhaps, because it may be welcome from a careful witness, but mainly because mr. walter rye has done it injustice. "sandringham itself," he wrote in 1885, "is nothing much to see. it was bought vastly dear, and has had a tremendous lot of money spent on it. gunton or blickling would have been much more suited to him, and with the same amount of money spent on them would by this time have been little palaces." very likely, but the prince of wales, as he was then, desired not a palace but a home, in which he could live during his all too rare holidays from public duty the life of a country gentleman with his family; in which he could interest himself in farming, and could enjoy really good shooting; in which his princess could indulge her taste for gardening, and for keeping dogs of many kinds; in which, last and best of all, his children could lead simple lives and be much in the open air. all that he found in sandringham. the situation is pretty and remarkably healthy, the shooting is of the best and full of variety, the gardens reveal the taste of their royal mistress, the house is full of dear memories and of rare possessions. it may not be very beautiful architecturally, but it is essentially a house to be lived in, and it is something in its favour that, in an age which believes in the health-giving power of the sun, it is absolutely suffused with all the light there is. of a truth mr. rye's sympathy is quite uncalled for, and even rather needlessly offensive. by the way, as you pass you may chance to hear a sandringham clock strike twelve and find that your impeccable watch only admits half-past eleven; and you may remember to have seen in some of the papers at various times that it is the king's hobby to have all his clocks half an hour fast so that he may never be late. it is his hobby, but its object is not to secure punctuality so much as to cheat the morning out of an extra half-hour. the evening hours can be prolonged at pleasure, but to start shooting at 9.30 instead of ten on a winter's day is a great gain. [illustration: heath near sandringham] blickling, it should be added, is near aylsham. it was owned once by harold, then by the bishops of norwich, and then by sir thomas boleyn, father of anne boleyn. "a sheet of water about a mile long, in the middle of a beautiful and well-wooded park, is a fitting adjunct to the noble red house, built in the reign of james i, with its fine ceiled galleries and carvings, and its grand staircase." so mr. rye, and then he passes off to heraldry. gunton is, or was, in the same neighbourhood. "murray" says that the house "of white brick, enlarged by wyatt 1785,"--neither statement sounds alluring--"is without interest." mr. rye says elsewhere "the hall was burnt out not long ago" (he writes in 1885) "and is not yet rebuilt, and very picturesque it looks with its great gaunt shell pierced by rows of empty windows. it would make a capital ruin, and might just as well be left as it is, and a smaller house, more suitable to the fortunes of the harbords, built elsewhere in the park." shooting and motoring are the great out-door occupations of sandringham. if the king be at home the chances of seeing a royal car on these roads are many, and in late november you may often hear the guns popping like a _feu de joie_. nay, on the road, which turns sharply to the left for dersingham by the gate, proceeding through fine trees on both sides, and on the level for a while, and then down a steep hill, i have had the good fortune to see the prince of wales and the german emperor bringing pheasants down in a manner more than workmanlike. so to dersingham, a sunny village lying in a cup of the modest little hills. here again you will be struck by the all-pervading use of the local carr stone, very neatly dressed in minute blocks, apparently impervious to weather and incapable of taking any tone from rain and wind and sun. picturesque to the eye of a stranger it certainly is not; but the walls and houses built of it are trim to a dutch point of neatness, and, to accustomed eyes, it no doubt seems to be part of the established order of things. it is no harm suggesting again that in relation to the appearance of things, the product of man's hand, of the operations of nature, or of the two combined, first impressions are not to be trusted in all cases. custom makes a world of difference. a chinaman, or a hottentot, has, for example, ideas completely opposite to ours concerning female beauty. without yielding to either in the matter of opinion, even in these extreme instances, we may possibly concede that standards of beauty are not to be defined with scientific precision. "carr" stone buildings to some of us may look a trifle grim and formal, although their ferruginous tone is not cold; at worst they represent the resolve to use local material, which is usually consonant with art and sense, and no doubt their appearance excites no feeling of distaste in the people of norfolk who, after all, are the persons principally concerned. of this same stone the church is built. here the passers by will be struck by the stately proportions of the lofty tower, and, if he enters, he will notice the orderly condition of all things, as well as a piscina and a hagioscope. to the neat condition of things, which should be normal, attention is called in this case because, apparently, it is the complete opposite of the state of things prevailing in the early seventies, when everything capable of suffering from neglect had so suffered. dersingham is a pleasantly tidy village, but not "model" in the artificial sense. it boasts a hotel, "the feathers," where i stayed for a week a good many years ago. it was then one of the worst in england, but, in new hands, it is understood to be better. on the whole, however, dersingham is not recommended for a sojourn, nor has it, in all probability, been encouraged to lay itself out to attract visitors. [illustration: blickling hall] from dersingham to the hunstantons is a pleasant drive of some six miles, calling for no particular comment at any point save snettisham, where the position of the church, embowered in trees, fascinates the eye. "the hunstantons" has been written because there are two communities, the old and the new, whereof the latter, according to mr. rye, peremptorily refuses to be dubbed st. edmund's, in spite of the tradition that a ruined chapel near the lighthouse on the cliff commemorates the landing-place of st. edmund. it is rather an even question whether the hunstantons owe most to the cliff, which is their chief glory, or to the le stranges, who have done all that was possible for their prosperity. how long they have been in the land, being no genealogist, i do not profess to say. they are not included in mr. rye's list of grantees from william the conqueror, but the monument of henry le strange and his wife, dated 1485, to be found in the church, is ancient enough to be at least respectable, and his epitaph is worth quoting at once, although we shall soon refer to earlier members of the race. in heaven at home, o blessed change, who, while i was on earth, was strange. never were a country-side and a great family connected more consistently to the benefit of the first and to the honour of the second. hard by the church is the ancient "twthill," according to one of the authorities, "the place of assembly." since the survival of this expression is by no means frequent, it may perhaps be permissible to remark that, if the eye will travel across the map of england, due west from hunstanton and as far as it can go, it will come to another "twthill" at carnarvon. the spelling looks british, and the ancient british borrowed a good many words direct from the latin, _ffenstr_ for example, from _fenestra_, for window, doubtless a new idea to them. so, being expert neither in philology nor anglo-saxon, but well aware that the saxons never penetrated to carnarvon, and that both "twthills" are remarkably good places of observation, i hazard the suggestion that "twt" is a british equivalent of _tuitus_, from _tueor_, of which the proper meaning is "to gaze"; that they were, in fact, "look-outs." a coincidence in the history of the church of st. mary, probably unique, is that it was built by sir hamon le strange and his son early in the fourteenth century, and restored in good taste by a le strange of the twentieth century. whether the places owe most to the family or the family to the places is not easy to decide, but certainly no family ever did its duty more consistently by any country-side. on the other hand, but for the curious cliff, itself remarkably attractive for its outlines and colouring, the hunstantons could not have existed to be cherished by the le stranges, for there is still abundant evidence of a submerged forest between old hunstanton and brancaster. the cliff it was to the sea, "thus far shalt thou go and no further." the cliff it is that allows the le stranges to live in the ancient hall, fifteenth-century and moated, and to play the part of a human providence in this most remote corner of norfolk. of the part they played for charles i mention has been made before. eight miles along the coast take us to brancaster and to history, lately made far less obscure than it used to be. here it is clearly the best course to quote mr. haverfield's description, because it is far and away the best, having first summarized a little of the information leading up to it. mention has been made of the peddar's or pedlar's way, traceable, not very distinctly for the first six miles, but quite plainly afterwards, from holme, midway between brancaster and old hunstanton, through fring, castle acre, swaffham and other places to the boundary of suffolk and beyond. the difficulty that it did not lead to brancaster, further complicated by the fact that there was no obvious reason why it should not, was the origin of a theory that it might have led to a ferry from holme to skegness; but the passage would involve some twenty miles of nasty navigation. "even an antiquary, when it came to the test of trial, would shrink from such a _trajectus_." there must have been a road to brancaster, there is no trace of any other. it was certainly roman, it was probably military: that is mr. haverfield's conclusion; and as a slayer of mere fancies he is so just and relentless that, when at all positive, he is the more convincing. garrisons in roman times were on the north and west, beyond the severn and humber, where they were needed; but by about 300 a.d. "saxon" pirates began to harry the eastern and southern coasts, as they continued to do almost up to the norman conquest. so a series of nine forts, of which branodunum (brancaster) was one, was constructed to defend the threatened coast from this point to pevensey, in far sussex. at brancaster lay the dalmatian cavalry, keeping an eye on the wash and the little harbours and creeks to the westward. "the site of branodunum is at the 'wreck' or 'rack' hill, a short distance to the east of brancaster village, between the high road and the creek which forms the western arm of brancaster harbour. it is still distinguishable by the fragments of brick and pottery which lie about it, and by the slight but perceptible elevation of its area; but its walls and buildings have long ago vanished, and little of them seems to have been visible even in camden's days. in size and outline the fort is stated to have been a square of 570 feet, that is 7-1/2 acres, with gateways on the eastern and western sides; but no precise measurements have ever been secured, and i am inclined to consider these figures as somewhat too small. excavations made in 1846 showed that the north-east angle of the fort was rounded, and had within it a small rectangular guard-chamber or turret, and presumably the three other angles were similar. at the same time it was found that the walls were 11 feet thick, constructed of concrete, and built with facing and bonding-courses of a local white sandstone. at the eastern gate, which apparently had flanking bastions, a road 33 feet wide was found to enter the fort and run 360 feet across it westwards. some slight indications of structures within the fort were also noted, _but much yet remains to be explored_." this is mr. haverfield's constant plea in relation to east anglian remains, and there is much to be said in favour of it. there is neither sense nor reason in standing outside earth mounds, or in trying to guess their contents, when the spade would reveal them if they existed, and a nation which expends so much as ours does in digging up ruins abroad, might very well do much more work of the same kind at home. the spade, for example, might resolve the question whether caister-by-yarmouth and reedham were forts or not, but at present their character is quite uncertain, and the nearest fort to brancaster we know is burgh castle by yarmouth. so much, at least, we know definitely of brancaster, and it can hardly fail to grasp the imagination. here, at this extreme north-east point of norfolk, the dalmatian cavalry, men of the same blood as constantine the great, watched the sea against the enemies of rome. taking the comparative conditions of travel into account, it was almost as it would be if we placed a regiment of sikhs in new zealand to guard it against possible raids from the islands of the pacific. beyond brancaster we follow the coast as far as burnham deepdale--the brook in these parts is responsible for many a place-name and for one of undying fame--and then leave the coast willingly enough, for the sandy waste of the "meols" soon ceases, if indeed it ever begins, to attract. then the aspect of the country soon loses its bleak and wind-swept character; we are in a peaceful land of little hills and many woods, of brooks and verdure. at burnham thorpe in particular we are in the village to one of whose sons england and the world owe at least as much as they do to any other hero of history. here nelson was born. those four words imply volumes, but they are volumes which positively must not be so much as begun, because they would never end, and they would be familiar from the first page to the last. here, son of a father who was but a country clergyman, and of a mother of the pure and ancient blood of norfolk, lived the boy who grew into the man whose every virtue and every failing are known of all men. he did not live here long. he was at school at north walsham and at downham, and he joined the _raisonnable_ at chatham when he was but twelve and a half years of age. but he never forgot his birthplace, and it was named conjointly with the nile when he was most justly raised to the peerage. one of the most tranquil spots in the world, and very lovely, is burnham thorpe--and it is holy ground. not long since, on a pleasure voyage round the extreme north of scotland, a perfervid scot was heard to proclaim the glorious deeds done for the empire by scotland's sons. a west-countryman retorted, "but for devon you would all have been spaniards." an east anglian might have chimed in with burnham thorpe; an irishman with the birthplace of the duke of wellington; and it would all go simply to show how futile it is to institute comparisons. possibly at brancaster, possibly at burnham thorpe, the suggestion of a return to lynn for the night may have been taken. in that case it is advised that the return journey of the morning be made to fakenham only, taking rainham park by the way. here, in print, we merely drive to fakenham through pleasantly undulating and well-wooded country, on the west side of walsingham and houghton which we know. of fakenham, too, something has been said before; but a remark, worth making in passing because it happens to be true, is that "fakenham, norfolk," was an address often used by me as a boy desirous of acquiring ferrets or spaniels of miraculous quality, according to the advertisement. the explanation is plain on the face of the land to him who travels this country. it is very largely and successfully devoted to game; but whether the vendors of these animals, all paragons in their kind, were entitled to use the ground on and under which they had trained them may be an open question. my recollections of rainham hall are so ancient, the circumstances in which they were acquired were so peculiar, and my ignorance is so complete upon the questions whether the famous pictures are still there and whether the hall is ever open to visitors, that i am not in a position to say whether it is worth while to go 3-1/4 miles out of the way to it. it may be taken that it is, if it be possible only to see the park and the outside of the house; for the latter is by inigo jones, and vastly fine; and the park, containing a magnificent sheet of water famous for its pike, is delightful. of the modern representatives of this ancient and once distinguished family it were unkind to speak. some of the earlier stock were distinguished. one took a prominent part for the king in the rebellion and in the restoration. to another the famous belisarius was given by frederick the great. a third introduced the turnip into norfolk and was jested at by pope; but pope is not so quotable as a more enthusiastic and less known verse-maker of norfolk:- thus townshend gave the master-key t' unlock the store of husbandry; who, like triptolemus of old, from clods made rustics gather gold. friend patriarchal to our county! still, as we taste, we own thy bounty. one of the great main roads of norfolk starts from cromer and runs through sheringham and several other places to elmham and east dereham. whether you start from fakenham or rainham you join it by a cross-road just north of twyford, and a norfolk main road is always worth joining, because it is so good to travel upon. to elmham it is positively necessary to go. it was, in all probability, the seat of east anglian bishops before they deserted it for thetford, and then for norwich; certainly they had their palace there, and the earthworks are the more rather than the less interesting in that they are, according to the authority more than once quoted, probably post-roman. it is worth while to enter the church too, not merely to see the carved bench-heads, which are quite common in norfolk, but because one of them, of a roman in a helmet, is said to represent pontius pilate. a short five miles takes us to east dereham, and it has been described by a master's hand. "i have already said that it was a beautiful little town--at least it was at the time of which i am speaking--what it is at present i know not, for thirty years and more have elapsed since i last trod its streets." (of a truth it seems to have changed very little.) "it will scarcely have improved, for how would it be better than it then was? i love to think on thee, pretty quiet d----, thou pattern of an english country town, with thy clean but narrow streets branching out from thy modest market-place, with thine old-fashioned houses, with here and there a roof of venerable thatch, with thy one half-aristocratic mansion, where resided lady bountiful--she, the generous and kind, who loved to visit the sick, leaning on her gold-headed cane, whilst the sleek old footman walked at a respectful distance behind. pretty quiet d----, with thy venerable church in which moulder the remains of england's sweetest and most pious bard." the bard of course was cowper, who lived at east dereham in his affliction, died and was buried there. to be perfectly candid, it is in the nature of a relief to one who has found the works of cowper, always excepting _john gilpin_, sweet and pious, but also a trifle tiresome, to convert to his own use--the usual word for taking a loan is clearly barred--some panegyric of cowper from george borrow, who was unlike to cowper as one man can be to another, and not from some more modern writer making a business of admiration. borrow indeed proceeds in a tone of heartfelt sympathy which none of the professional eulogists can touch. "it was within thee that the long-oppressed bosom heaved its last sigh, and the crushed and gentle spirit escaped from a world in which it had known nought but sorrow. sorrow! do i say? how faint a word to express the misery of that bruised reed; misery so dark that a blind worm like myself is occasionally tempted to exclaim, better had the world never been created than that one so kind, so harmless, and so mild, should have undergone such intolerable woe! but it is over now, for, as there is an end of joy, so has affliction its termination. doubtless the all-wise did not afflict him without a cause! who knows but within that unhappy frame lurked vicious seeds which the sunbeams of joy and prosperity might have called into life and vigour? perhaps the withering blasts of misery nipped that which otherwise might have terminated in fruit noxious and lamentable. but peace to the unhappy one, he is gone to his rest; the death-like face is no longer occasionally seen timidly and mournfully looking for a moment through the window-pane upon thy market-place, quiet and pretty d----; the hind in thy neighbourhood no longer at evening-fall views, and starts as he views, the dark lathy figure moving beneath the hazels and the elders of shadowy lanes, or by the side of murmuring trout-streams, and no longer at early dawn does the sexton of the old church reverently doff his hat, as, supported by some kind friend, the death-stricken creature totters along the church-path to that mouldering edifice with the low roof, enclosing a spring of sanatory waters, built and devoted to some saint, if the legend over the door be true, by the daughter of an east anglian king." well, the daughter of the east anglian king was withburga, and the name of her father, who reigned in the seventh century, appears to have been anna [_sic_]. she was a sister of st. ethelreda too. but the pilgrimage to east dereham is better worth taking for the love of george borrow than for the sake of any saint, female or male, seventh or seventeenth century. george borrow was assuredly no saint; but a wanderer, an adventurer, a wayward genius, a very human and fallible man, with "a true english heart," to quote mr. augustine birrell. at east dereham he was born, from east dereham he drew philo the clerk to the life, on the east anglian heaths he met and studied the gipsies whom he knew as no other englishman amongst us has ever known them. he belongs to east dereham, he is its veritable _vates sacer_. east dereham is the intersecting point of two great roads, the one we came by, which goes on to thetford and bury, and the road crossing the county from norwich to lynn. that will give us a straight run home, for lynn is home for the nonce, by way of swaffham, where we must make a detour for castle acre. swaffham itself is of little apparent interest, although its church is worth more than a passing glance, since it is a good type of norfolk church, and can boast a double hammer-beam roof. but swaffham interests me, and is likely to interest a good many other persons, in a connection with matters more mundane. so early as the first chapter, when we were passing near to another swaffham--multiplicity of identical place-names exceeds the limits of convenience in east anglia--a casual observation was made to another swaffham, the one at which we now are, where george, earl of orford, founded the first coursing club ever started in england, and i thought as i wrote of an ancient ms. commonplace book in which a young welsh parson, breeder of greyhounds and runner of them, commemorated the mighty achievements of greyhounds in east anglia. since then we have encountered george, earl of orford, have felt, perhaps, a little more sympathy with him than the world which knows him only as a seller of priceless pictures. since then, too, i have laid my hand on the book, and in it is a long note headed, "october 1792. swaffham coursing society. a cup value 25 guineas subscribed for in honour to the memory of the founder george, earl of orford, to be run for in november annually upon the following terms and conditions." to give these in full might try patience too hard, but the foundation of the cup in itself shows that the eccentric peer was not ill-liked in his county, and some of the rules are so quaint that the whole may be condensed. if entries are more than sixteen, or less than sixteen in number, they are to be reduced to sixteen or eight as the case may be, by lot. if "any of the matched dogs should be so disabled as to pay forfeit to his antagonist, that antagonist shall be deemed the winner of the heat in question, but the person paying forfeit shall produce another dog to run a course against him, which substituted dog shall have no chance for the cup even if he wins his heat. it is provided also that no owner may enter more than one dog, that entries shall be a guinea, and that each owner shall back his dog for a guinea in each heat." venues are then laid down, westacre for the first dog, smeefield for the second, narborough for the third, and westacre for the final. the club, a later note informs us, was limited to the number of letters in the alphabet, applicants for vacancies as they occurred to be balloted for. it is interesting to think of the scenes on westacre and the other manors, some certainly retaining their ancient names still, in 1792, when coursing, now fallen on evil days, was fashionable. to recall the names of those who were present is not possible, for 1792 was the date of the birth of the writer of the commonplace book, and his copy of the rules was apparently made in a mood of research into the antiquities of his favourite sport. but i find a list of "coursers at swaffham 1825," clearly showing by the letters appended to the names that the old limitation to the letters of the alphabet survived, and the names themselves may stir east anglian memories. they are, "mr. keppel, k, mr. tysser (?) f, mr. h. hammond, q, mr. gurney, a, mr. denn, d, mr. redhead, l, mr. ayton, p, mr. carter, g, lord dunwich, m, lord stradbroke, e, mr. buckworth, b, mr. young, v, mr. gurdon, s." members of the yorkshire, wiltshire and berkshire coursing clubs were also at liberty to enter for the orford cup. from swaffham we make a detour of 4-1/2 miles to castleacre and to the mystery of earthworks. it is the last place we visit in east anglia, and, having visited it, it will be just as well to return to the good high road for our return journey to lynn. what one sees, after a drive across a gorse-clad common, is simple, what it means is another matter. one sees the ruins of the priory, a great mound, and beyond it a village showing what has become of the ruins of the castle and the priory. the story of the castle is easily traced with the help of messrs. timbs and gunn. the site was granted by the conqueror to william de warrenne; he or his son built a castle, and it remained the property of the family until the fifteenth century. edward i went there several times as a visitor, but early in the fourteenth century the castle was a ruin. now we can see only two earthworks, one horseshoe-shaped, the other circular, a faint remnant of the great gateway, and bare traces of foundations of inner parts of the castle. "there is no doubt of the fortress having been erected by the warrennes, but did they construct the enormous earthworks? mr. harrod considers they are not norman, but roman, the occupation of the site by the romans being established, and roman pottery and coins of vespasian, constantine, etc., having been found there. evidence is then quoted to show that the walls and earthworks were the works of different people, and that the normans availed themselves of these sites in consequence of their strength. 'and here,' says mr. harrod, 'we see the variety of interest afforded by the study of archæology. here is a castle, of which all interesting architectural features have been destroyed. but probably from that very cause our attention is drawn to the remarkable character of the earthworks, and a view of this subject is presented to our notice, which may hereafter be of great use in the investigation of other remains of a similar kind.'" "murray," again, supports mr. harrod, adding on his own behalf "the position of castle acre, on the line of a very ancient road, known as the 'peddar's way,' must always have been one of very great importance." of this argument we may dispose at once. it has been seen that, if the peddar's way was a military road, its importance was due only to the fact that it led to brancaster, or towards brancaster; brancaster was a fortress and watch-tower, seawards against the saxon pirates, and nothing more. now let us apply the cold learning and scientific tests of mr. haverfield. "the imperfect rectangular earthwork between the church and the ruins of the saxon and norman castle has generally been taken to represent a roman earthen camp of 10 or 12 or (according to others) 22 acres in size, and various finds of roman objects have been adduced to support the idea. but the camp, so far as i can judge without excavation, is not definitely roman in character, and hardly any of the objects seem to have been found in or near it." he then goes through the "finds" systematically, and concludes: "i cannot regard this meagre and scattered evidence as adequate to prove the camp roman, still less to prove it roman of the first century, as mr. fox suggests. it indicates at the utmost a cottage or two, standing perhaps by the peddar's way (which runs through castleacre parish, and earthworks) somewhere about a.d. 300. this may very likely have been to the north of the parish and not in the vicinity of the 'camp.' in truth the best and best authenticated 'find,' an intaglio with an emperor's head, was made two miles north of the 'camp.'" where are we then? merely in a state of knowing that, according to the best authority, there is no adequate evidence for believing the earthworks to be roman. the problem presented by these earthworks and others is a legitimate subject for conjecture. dr. jessopp, in a paper on "the saxon burghs of norfolk," appears to think that castle rising, castleacre, mileham, elmham, and norwich represent a line of saxon fortresses, some of them occupying sites which were roman before, erected to resist the danes in the ninth century. the roman hypothesis he would probably drop in the light of present knowledge, and, looking at the positions of these places on the map, it is not quite apparent, to say the least of it, why they should have been chosen for points of resistance to invaders from the sea. were they, then, pre-roman? that is possible; and it is quite consistent with the absence of roman remains, for until the saxon shore became a reality, the romans had no occasion to fight in east anglia after they had wiped the iceni off the face of the earth, and so they had no need for fortresses in it. or is it just conceivable that here, as has been suggested in the case of castle rising, the haughty norman grandees compelled the subjugated country-folk, by scourge and every brutal method, to pile up these huge mounds? we can never tell for certain unless the spade be set to work in earnest, perhaps not then even; but in the meanwhile, as we make the run of some twenty miles to lynn, it is amusing, if somewhat unscientific, to speculate, nor is speculation any the less entertaining in that much of the basis upon which previous theories have rested has been proved to be unsound. let us, then, think of these mysterious works as we roll home to lynn; and, having reached it, we have also reached the end. index acle, 45, 46 agrippina, 190 alde river, 225 aldeburgh, 36 _et seq._, 225 aram, eugene, 369 _et seq._ ardleigh, 207 armada, the, east anglia's contribution of ships, 163 attleborough, 91 avebury, lord, on changing coastline, 182, 224 babes in the wood, the, 132 badow, richard de, 274 barsham, 313 bawdsey, 165 ---ferry, 168 beccles, 41, 314 _et seq._ bigods, the, 311, 312 billericay, 275, 277, 278 birds seen from car, 80 blackpool, 203 blakeney, 336 blickling, 382, 383 blythburgh, 39 boadicea, 59 _et seq._, 191, 192, 231, 232, 264, 268 borrow, george, 55, 307 _et seq._, 393 _et seq._ bottisham church, 10 bowes, mr. t. g., 363 bradfield, 213 braintree, 251 ---as home for london men of business, 252, 253 brancaster, 61, 387 _et seq._, 397 brandon, 132 ---flints, 133 breeze, mary, 368, 369 breydon water, 226, 313 broads, the, mr. rye on, 316 ---fascination of, 321 _et seq._ bungay, 307 _et seq._ ---common, mr. rider haggard upon, 315 ---derivation, 312 ---as a spa, 309 ---vineyard at, 310 bures st. mary, 232 burnham deepdale, 389 ---on crouch, 291 ---thorpe, 389 bury st. edmunds, 16 _et seq._, 21, 261, 299 _et seq._ ---------abbey, 19, 301, 302 ---------"angel," the, 21, 299 _et seq._ ---------carlyle at, 301 ---------defoe at, 302, 303 ---------pickwick at, 302 butcher's bill, a motorist's, 182 cæsar, julius, 187 caister-by-yarmouth, 45, 97, 320 caistor-by-norwich, 58-61 cambridge, bull hotel, 3, 358 ---king's college chapel, 6 ---magdalene college, 7 ---st. john's college, 7 ---trinity college library, 6 ---university library, 6 camps, ancient theories about, 260, 261 camden, 286 camulodunum, 187 _et seq._ caradoc, 191 carlyle, thomas, 19 carr stone, 380, 381, 384 castle acre, 396 _et seq._ ---hedingham, 248 castle rising, 377 _et seq._ cavendish, village, 242, 243 chadwell, defoe at, 280 charles i, 197 chateaubriand at bungay, 313 chaucer, 125 chelmsford, 148 chesterfield, lord, on newmarket, 13 chingford, 143 chipping ongar, 179 civil war, the, 367 clacton-on-sea, 182, 183, 201 clare college, cambridge, 274 clare, elizabeth de, 274 ---family and village, 243 claudius, emperor, 187 _et seq._ cley-next-sea, 336 coast changes, 164 _et seq._, 224 _et seq._ cobbold, mr. felix, m.p., 151, 152 coggeshall, 250, 251 coke of norfolk, 48, 338 _et seq._ cokes, the, 338 colchester, 65, 182 _et seq._ ---abbey of st. john, 196 ---arms of, 193 ---"cups," the, 185 ---"red lion," the, 149, 183 ---roman colony, 190 ------times in, 186 _et seq._ ------relics at, 192 ---siege of, 196 ---town hall, 185 cole, old king, 193 colman, the original, 112 constable, john, 88, 207-10 _et seq._, 233, 320 constantine, the great, 193 _et seq._ coot's eggs, a delicacy, 129 cornish, late mr. c. j., 167 cotman, j. t., 55 cordell, sir w., 240, 241 coursing club, the first, 394, 395 cowper, thomas, 392, 393 crabbe, george, 37 _et seq._ crome, "old," 55, 211 cromer, 324 _et seq._ ---the link's hotel, 325 ---society, 327 _et seq._ cromwell, oliver, 366, 367 cromwell, thomas, 342 crowland, 377 cubitt, sir w., 43 cudworth, 274 cunobelin, king, 187, 230, 231 cunobelin's gold mine, 282, 288 danbury hill, 259 darkness, driving in, 23, 45, 46, 65 dedham, 207, 211, 320 defoe at bury st. edmunds, 302, 303 ------at chadwell, 280 _et seq._ dene holes, 282 _et seq._ de ruyter, 39, 40, 214 dersingham, 384, 385 de salle, sir robert, 50, 51 de veres, the, 245 _et seq._ devil's dyke, the, 12 dhuleep singh, maharajah, 83 dickens, charles, 16 ditchingham, 307 _et seq._ douglas, isle of man, 204 dovercourt, 213 downham, 357 driving, stray hints on, 293 dukes of norfolk, their grandeur in the past, 109 _et seq._ dunmow custom, 172 _et seq._ dunmow, great, 172 _et seq._ ---little, 172 dunthune, john, 211 dunwich, 159 _et seq._ dutt, mr. w. a., 24 dyke, a mysterious, 297 earlham, 120 _et seq._ east anglia, definition, xviii ---bergholt, 210, 213 ---dereham, 392 _et seq._ eastern counties association, 19 erming street, 77 edmund, st., 16, _et seq._, 385 edward the elder, 261 ---ii, 380 ---iii, 366, 380 elections, motor-cars at, 2 elephants, roman, at colchester, 190 elizabeth, queen, 54, 108 elmham, 391, 392 elvedon hall, 83 ely cathedral, 134 _et seq._ epping, 148, 179 ---forest, 143 _et seq._, 176 erasmus, 341, 342, 344 essex byways, 269, 270 ---military manoeuvres, 182 _et seq._ ---roads, effect of heavy motor traffic on, 277 ------arthur young upon, 276 ---scenery, 68, 69 euston park, 89 _et seq._ exits, importance of, 8 fakenham, 349, 390 fairfax, 150, 196 fairlop oak, the, 146 falstaff, 209 falstolf, sir john, 97, 320 _farmer's year, a_, 308 felix the burgundian, 162, 151 felixstowe, 151 _et seq._ fenn, sir john, 54, 55 fens, fascination of, 350 _et seq._ ---reclamation of, 350 _et seq._ fir hedges, 82, 130 fitzgerald, edward, 36, 41, 44 flixton park, 307 fordham, 134 forest law, 177 forest of waltham, 176 freemasons watched, 113 french, general sir john, 182, 200 froude, j. a., 145, 342 fry, elizabeth, 122, 327 game preservation, influence on landscape, 15, 81 galleywood common, 259 garden of suffolk, the, 159 gainsborough, thomas, 211, 233 _et seq._ ---horace walpole on, 236 ---on suffolk scenery, 235 ---reynolds on, 236 gog magog hills, 79, 137 grays, 273, 282 great baddow, 274 ---bentley, 228 ---holland, 204 grit in petrol, 324 _et seq._, 332 gulls, black-headed, 128 _et seq._ gunton, 383 gurneys of earlham, the, 55, 120 _et seq._, 326 _et seq._ hainault forest, 176, 177 hairy man's wood. _see_ hangman's hangman's wood, 280 _et seq._, 287 hare, late mr. augustus, 120, 256, 257, 326 harleston, 305, 306 harlow, 179 harrod, mr., 397 harwich, 182, 213 _et seq._ ---yacht club memories, 214 _et seq._ hatfield broad oak, 178 ---forest, 176 ---heath, 179 haverfield, mr. f. j. (on roman britain), 3, 15, 54, 58, 85, 320, 364, 378, 387, 397, 398 haydon ditch, 297 helena, empress, 193 _et seq._ henry viii, 342, 343 herons, 166 heybridge, 262 high ongar, 179 hingham, norfolk and massachusetts, 127, 128 hitchin, 296 holkham hall, 338 _et seq._ hollesley, 225 hoodie crows, 80, 81 hopkins, matthew, witchfinder, 209, 210 horndon and hill, 270 horses and cars, 171, 172 hotels, english, 3, 361 houghton hall, 344 _et seq._ hunstantons, the, 385 _et seq._ iceni, 12, 59 _et seq._, 191, 267, 398 icenhilde way. _see_ icknield icknield way, 14 _et seq._, 77 ingatestone, 255 _et seq._ ---tornado at, 257 _et seq._ ipswich, 23, 30 _et seq._, 150, 169 ---"crown and anchor," 29, 170 ---gloves at, 29 ---"great white horse," 25-8, 65 ipswich oysters, 29 ireton, 150, 197 isabella of france, 380 iveagh, lord, 83 james i, 78 jermy, mr. isaac, 95 _et seq._ jersey cattle, 155 jessopp, dr., 13, 49, 307 johnson, dr., 214 kett's rebellion, 54, 91-93 kimberley hall, 126, 127 kingsley, c., on the fens, 352 _et seq._ king's lynn, 350, 360 _et seq._, 379 ------"the globe," 350, 360 lanchester car, 183 landguard point, 224, 227 langdon hill, 279 latimer, 274 leland, 16, 163, 71 leland's _itinerary_ described, 71 _et seq._ le soken, meaning of, 205 le strange, sir hamon, 367 ------family, the, 385 lexden, 229 _et seq._, 265 lisle, sir george, 150 little maplestead, 249 long melford, 236 _et seq._ ------church, 237 _et seq._ long stratton, 62, 63 ------"white hart," 63 lowestoft, 42, 43, 313 lucas family at colchester, 196 lucas, sir charles, 150, 197 "maid's head," the, norwich, 105 _et seq._, 323 maldon, 261, 262 mannerless motorists, 90 manningtree, 207-209 margaretting, 259 martineau, miss, 55 martins of long melford, 241, 242 mechanics, ways of, 34, 35 mechi, mr., 263, 264 melford hall, 237 merivale, dean, 188 _et seq._, 265, 266 messing, 264 _et seq._, 269 middleton hub, 253 mildenhall, 133 mistley, 213 montalt, robert de, 379 moonlight driving, 324 morning mists, 273 motor-boats criticized, 323 motor-car sufficient in itself, 156 motor-cars as mental tonic, 33 ---in norfolk, 348, 349 motor-cycles, a peril of, 358 murray's guide, 70 _et seq._, 88, 128, 190 napier car, 204 nelson, 313, 357, 389, 390 ---prayer for thanksgiving, 52 _norfolk chronicle_, 4 norfolk dialect, 124 norfolk, duke of, 97 ---dukes of. _see_ dukes of norfolk north weir point, 225 nero, 190 nevinson, mr. h. w., 212 newton, sir isaac, 41 newbury, 12 newmarket, 11-13, 81 norwich, 43, 106 _et seq._ ---"a port," 43 ---butter hills, 50 ---castle, 49 ---cathedral, 49, 119 ------by moonlight, 113 ---cattle market, 116 ---general market, 118 ---guildhall, 49, 119 ---in history, 54 ---"maid's head," 49, 52, 63 ---many churches of, 51 ---objects of interest in, 51 ---royal hotel, 46-48 ---st. peter's permountergate, 52 ---school of painting, 55 ---tombland, 53 ---walls, 49, 115 ongar, 148 ore river, 225 orford haven, 225 orford, third lord, 347, 394 ossory, lord, 41 oulton broad, 316, 322 oxford, earl of, 246 oysters, 29, 170, 184, 197 paine, thomas, 89 panhard car, 7, 8, 34 _paston letters_, 54, 55, 71 _et seq._, 97, 320, 321 pastons, the, 112 peddars way, the, 61, 387, 398 pepys, samuel, 7, 143 peterborough cathedral, 374 _et seq._ peto, sir s., 43, 44 petre, lord, 256 ---sir w., 256 pickwick at bury, 21, 300 ---at ipswich, 26 _et seq._ plautius, aulus, 187 _et seq._ pope, a., on houghton, 345 prasutagus, 191 _quarterly review_ on colchester, 190, 192 _et seq._ ------on lexden, 230, 231 quilter, sir cuthbert, 168 rabbit warrens, famous, 83 rainham hall, 391 rider haggard, mr., 307 _et seq._ ripley, architect, 344, 345 robinson, p., 200 robsart, amy, 94 rolls-royce car, 74, 294 romans in britain, 59 roman river, the, 230 ---roads, 58 _et seq._ round church towers, 62 royal motorists, 348 royston, 76 _et seq._ runton, 326, 332 rush, james, murderer, 95 _et seq._ ruskin, mr. john, 157 rye, mr. walter, 54, 63, 85-7, 92, 316, 349, 364, 382, 383 st. osyth, 204 salthouse, 335 sampson, abbot, 170 sandon, 259 sandford, emily, 99 sandringham, 381-3 sandringham time, 382, 383 sandwich, lord, 39, 40 saxmundham, 36, 158, 159 saxon shore, the, 60, 398 scole, 63, 305 scoulton mere, 128 seaman, mr. owen, 274 seedfarms of essex, 207, 208 shakespeare, _henry iv_, 209, _henry vi_, 20 sheffield, lord, 93 sheringham, 335 sitomagus, 86 six cylinders, merits of, 75 six mile bottom, 296, 298 soham, 134 sole bay, battle of, 39, 40 southwold, 39 stags, a team of, 347, 348 stanfield hall murders, 95 _et seq._ stepney wheel, 253 stour river, 209 _et seq._, 245 stratford, 67 ---st. mary, 213 street way, 11 strickland, agnes, 39 strongbow, 244 suckling, caroline, 314 sudbury, 233, 236 suetonius, 265 _et seq._ suffolk, bad roads, 63 swaffham, 11, 394 tacitus, 265-268 takeley, 179 telford, thomas, 43 thetford, 84 _et seq._ thorn trees, their age, 147 tillotson, 274 _times, the_, 100 tiptree, 200, 262 _et seq._ tire troubles, 294 _et seq._ "tom peartree," 235 tostock, 24 townshend, lord, 345 townshends, the, 391 trees over roads, 278 trimley's twin churches, 151 trinobantes, 188, 189 trollope on cathedral society, 114 turner, j. m. w., 280 turner, sir john, 370 ---sir ll., 94 _et seq._, 214 _et seq._ tusser, thomas, 209 twthill, 386 tyler, wat, 50, 243 villages, character in east anglia, 306, 307 vineyards, english, 31 walpole, horace, 90, 346, 348 ---sir robert, 344 _et seq._ walsingham priory, 340 _et seq._ walton-on-the-naze, 204 warwick, lord, 93 watton, 132 weather heath, 81 weeley, 227 wellington, duke of, 48 wells-next-sea, 336, 337 west manningfield, 259 weyland wood, 132 white steam car, 138 _et seq._ wild boy, peter the, 281 _et seq._ wilson, miss, 307 windhams, the, 329 windmills, 88 witham, 149, 255 wivenhoe, 199 wodehouses, the, 48, 126, 127 wolferton, 380 woodbridge, 36 woolpit, legend of, 24 worby beaumont, mr., 141 worsted, origin of, 54 wortham, 303, 304 wymondham, 91 _et seq._ wynne, general, 183, 200, 251 xenophon, physician, 190 yarmouth, 43, 44, 226, 319, 320 yaxley, 63 young, arthur, 15, 71, 275, 276, 279 