No. 25.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1884.
{385}
NATURE ON THE ROOF.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
A NORMAN SEASCAPE.
ARE OUR COINS WEARING AWAY?
SILAS MONK.
THE RATIONALE OF HAUNTED HOUSES.
UMPIRES AT CRICKET.
PARTED.
No. 25.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, JUNE 21, 1884.
BY RICHARD JEFFERIES,
AUTHOR OF THE ‘GAMEKEEPER AT HOME,’ ETC.
Increased activity on the housetop marks the approach of spring and summer exactly as in the woods and hedges, for the roof has its migrants, its semi-migrants, and its residents. When the first dandelion is opening on a sheltered bank, and the pale-blue field veronica flowers in the waste corner, the whistle of the starling comes from his favourite ledge. Day by day it is heard more and more, till, when the first green spray appears on the hawthorn, he visits the roof continually. Besides the roof-tree and the chimney-top, he has his own special place, sometimes under an eave, sometimes between two gables; and as I sit writing, I can see a pair who have a ledge which slightly projects from the wall between the eave and the highest window. This was made by the builder for an ornament; but my two starlings consider it their own particular possession. They alight with a sort of half-scream half-whistle just over the window, flap their wings, and whistle again, run along the ledge to a spot where there is a gable, and with another note, rise up and enter an aperture between the slates and the wall. There their nest will be in a little time, and busy indeed they will be when the young require to be fed, to and fro the fields and the gable the whole day through, the busiest and the most useful of birds, for they destroy thousands upon thousands of insects, and if farmers were wise, they would never have one shot, no matter how the thatch was pulled about.
My pair of starlings were frequently at this ledge last autumn, very late in autumn, and I suspect they had a winter brood there. The starling does rear a brood sometimes in the midst of the winter, contrary as that may seem to our general ideas of natural history. They may be called roof-residents, as they visit it all the year round; they nest in the roof, rearing two and sometimes three broods; and use it as their club and place of meeting. Towards July, the young starlings and those that have for the time at least finished nesting, flock together, and pass the day in the fields, returning now and then to their old home. These flocks gradually increase; the starling is so prolific that the flocks become immense, till in the latter part of the autumn in southern fields it is common to see a great elm-tree black with them, from the highest bough downwards, and the noise of their chattering can be heard a long distance. They roost in firs or in osier-beds. But in the blackest days of winter, when frost binds the ground hard as iron, the starlings return to the roof almost every day; they do not whistle much, but have a peculiar chuckling whistle at the instant of alighting. In very hard weather, especially snow, the starlings find it difficult to obtain a living, and at such times will come to the premises at the rear, and at farmhouses where cattle are in the yards, search about among them for insects.
The whole history of the starling is interesting, but I must here only mention it as a roof-bird. They are very handsome in their full plumage, which gleams bronze and green among the darker shades; quick in their motions and full of spirit; loaded to the muzzle with energy, and never still. I hope none of those who are so good as to read what I have written will ever keep a starling in a cage; the cruelty is extreme. As for shooting pigeons at a trap, it is mercy in comparison.
Even before the starling whistles much, the sparrows begin to chirp; in the dead of winter they are silent; but so soon as the warmer winds blow, if only for a day, they begin to chirp. In January this year I used to listen to the sparrows chirping, the starlings whistling, and the chaffinches’ ‘chink, chink’ about eight o’clock, or earlier, in the morning; the first two on the roof, the latter, which is not a roof-bird, in some garden shrubs. As the spring advances, the sparrows sing—it is a short song, it is true, but still it is singing—perched at the edge of a sunny wall. There is not a place about the house where they will not build—under{386} the eaves, on the roof, anywhere where there is a projection or shelter, deep in the thatch, under the tiles, in old eave-swallows’ nests. The last place I noticed as a favourite one in towns is on the half-bricks left projecting in perpendicular rows at the sides of unfinished houses. Half-a-dozen nests may be counted at the side of a house on these bricks; and like the starlings, they rear several broods, and some are nesting late in the autumn. By degrees as the summer advances they leave the houses for the corn, and gather in vast flocks, rivalling those of the starlings. At this time they desert the roofs, except those who still have nesting duties. In winter and in the beginning of the new year, they gradually return; migration thus goes on under the eyes of those who care to notice it. In London, some who fed sparrows on the roof found that rooks also came for the crumbs placed out. I sometimes see a sparrow chasing a rook, as if angry, and trying to drive it away over the roofs where I live. The thief does not retaliate, but, like a thief, flees from the scene of his guilt. This is not only in the breeding season, when the rook steals eggs, but in winter. Town residents are apt to despise the sparrow, seeing him always black; but in the country the sparrows are as clean as a pink; and in themselves they are the most animated, clever little creatures. They are easily tamed. The Parisians are fond of taming them. At a certain hour in the Tuileries Gardens, you may see a man perfectly surrounded with a crowd of sparrows—some perching on his shoulder; some fluttering in the air immediately before his face; some on the ground like a tribe of followers; and others on the marble seats. He jerks a crumb of bread into the air—a sparrow dexterously seizes it as he would a flying insect; he puts a crumb between his lips—a sparrow takes it out and feeds from his mouth. Meantime they keep up a constant chirping; those that are satisfied still stay by and adjust their feathers. He walks on, giving a little chirp with his mouth, and they follow him along the path—a cloud about his shoulders, and the rest flying from shrub to shrub, perching, and then following again. They are all perfectly clean—a contrast to the London sparrow. I came across one of these sparrow-tamers by chance, and was much amused at the scene, which, to any one not acquainted with birds, appears marvellous; but it is really as simple as possible, and you can repeat it for yourself if you have patience, for they are so sharp they soon understand you. They seem to play at nest-making before they really begin; taking up straws in their beaks, and carrying them half-way to the roof, then letting the straws float away; and the same with stray feathers. Neither of these, starlings nor sparrows, seem to like the dark. Under the roof, between it and the first ceiling, there is a large open space; if the slates or tiles are kept in good order, very little light enters, and this space is nearly dark in daylight. Even if chinks admit a beam of light, they do not like it; they seldom enter or fly about there, though quite accessible to them. But if the roof is in bad order, and this space light, they enter freely. Though nesting in holes, yet they like light. The swallows could easily go in and make nests upon the beams, but they will not, unless the place is well lit. They do not like darkness in the daytime.
The swallows bring us the sunbeams on their wings from Africa to fill the fields with flowers. From the time of the arrival of the first swallow the flowers take heart; the few and scanty plants that had braved the earlier cold are succeeded by a constantly enlarging list, till the banks and lanes are full of them. The chimney-swallow is usually the forerunner of the three house-swallows; and perhaps no fact in natural history has been so much studied as the migration of these tender birds. The commonest things are always the most interesting. In summer there is no bird so common everywhere as the swallow, and for that reason, many overlook it, though they rush to see a ‘white’ elephant. But the deepest thinkers have spent hours and hours in considering the problem of the swallow—its migrations, its flight, its habits; great poets have loved it; great artists and art-writers have curiously studied it. The idea that it is necessary to seek the wilderness or the thickest woods for nature is a total mistake; nature is at home, on the roof, close to every one. Eave-swallows, or house-martins (easily distinguished by the white bar across the tail), build sometimes in the shelter of the porches of old houses. As you go in or out, the swallows visiting or leaving their nests fly so closely as almost to brush the face. Swallow means porch-bird, and for centuries and centuries their nests have been placed in the closest proximity to man. They might be called man’s birds, so attached are they to the human race. I think the greatest ornament a house can have is the nest of an eave-swallow under the eaves—far superior to the most elaborate carving, colouring, or arrangement the architect can devise. There is no ornament like the swallow’s nest; the home of a messenger between man and the blue heavens, between us and the sunlight, and all the promise of the sky. The joy of life, the highest and tenderest feelings, thoughts that soar on the swallow’s wings, come to the round nest under the roof. Not only to-day, not only the hopes of future years, but all the past dwells there. Year after year the generations and descent of the swallow have been associated with our homes, and all the events of successive lives have taken place under their guardianship. The swallow is the genius of good to a house. Let its nest, then, stay; to me it seems the extremity of barbarism, or rather stupidity, to knock it down. I wish I could induce them to build under the eaves of this house; I would if I could discover some means of communicating with them. It is a peculiarity of the swallow that you cannot make it afraid of you; just the reverse of other birds. The swallow does not understand being repulsed, but comes back again. Even knocking the nest down will not drive it away, until the stupid process has been repeated several years. The robin must be coaxed; the sparrow is suspicious, and though easy to tame, quick to notice the least alarming movement. The swallow will not be driven away. He has not the slightest fear of man; he flies to his nest close to the window, under the low eave, or on the beams in the outhouses, no matter if you are looking on or not. Bold as the starlings are, they will seldom do this. But in the swallow, the instinct of suspicion is{387} reversed; an instinct of confidence occupies its place. In addition to the eave-swallow, to which I have chiefly alluded, and the chimney-swallow, there is the swift, also a roof-bird, and making its nest in the slates of houses in the midst of towns. These three are migrants, in the fullest sense, and come to our houses over thousands of miles of land and sea.
Robins frequently visit the roof for insects, especially when it is thatched; so do wrens; and the latter, after they have peered along, have a habit of perching at the extreme angle of a gable, or the extreme edge of a corner, and uttering their song. Finches occasionally fly up to the roofs of country-houses if shrubberies are near, also in pursuit of insects; but they are not truly roof-birds. Wagtails perch on roofs; they often have their nests in the ivy, or creepers trained against walls; they are quite at home, and are frequently seen on the ridges of farmhouses. Tits of several species, particularly the great titmouse and the blue tit, come to thatch for insects both in summer and winter. In some districts where they are common, it is not unusual to see a goatsucker or fern-owl hawk along close to the eaves in the dusk of the evening for moths. The white owl is a roof-bird (though not often of the house), building inside the roof, and sitting there all day in some shaded corner. They do sometimes take up their residence in the roofs of outhouses attached to dwellings, but not often nowadays, though still residing in the roofs of old castles. Jackdaws, again, are roof-birds, building in the roofs of towers. Bats live in roofs, and hang there wrapped up in their membraneous wings till the evening calls them forth. They are residents in the full sense, remaining all the year round, though principally seen in the warmer months; but they are there in the colder, hidden away, and if the temperature rises, will venture out and hawk to and fro in the midst of the winter. Tame pigeons and doves hardly come into this paper, but still it is their habit to use roofs as tree-tops. Rats and mice creep through the crevices of roofs, and in old country-houses hold a sort of nightly carnival, racing to and fro under the roof. Weasels sometimes follow them indoors and up to their roof strongholds.
When the first warm rays of spring sunshine strike against the southern side of the chimney, sparrows perch there and enjoy it; and again in autumn, when the general warmth of the atmosphere is declining, they still find a little pleasant heat there. They make use of the radiation of heat, as the gardener does who trains his fruit-trees to a wall. Before the autumn has thinned the leaves, the swallows gather on the highest ridge of the roof in a row and twitter to each other; they know the time is approaching when they must depart for another climate. In winter, many birds seek the thatched roofs to roost. Wrens, tits, and even blackbirds roost in the holes left by sparrows or starlings.
Every crevice is the home of insects, or used by them for the deposit of their eggs—under the tiles or slates, where mortar has dropped out between the bricks, in the holes of thatch, and on the straws. The number of insects that frequent a large roof must be very great—all the robins, wrens, bats, and so on, can scarcely affect them; nor the spiders, though these, too, are numerous. Then there are the moths, and those creeping creatures that work out of sight, boring their way through the rafters and beams. Sometimes a sparrow may be seen clinging to the bare wall of the house; tits do the same thing—it is surprising how they manage to hold on—they are taking insects from the apertures of the mortar. Where the slates slope to the south, the sunshine soon heats them, and passing butterflies alight on the warm surface, and spread out their wings, as if hovering over the heat. Flies are attracted in crowds sometimes to heated slates and tiles, and wasps will occasionally pause there. Wasps are addicted to haunting houses, and in the autumn, feed on the flies. Floating germs carried by the air must necessarily lodge in numbers against roofs; so do dust and invisible particles; and together, these make the rain-water collected in water-butts after a storm turbid and dark; and it soon becomes full of living organisms.
Lichen and moss grow on the mortar wherever it has become slightly disintegrated; and if any mould, however minute, by any means accumulates between the slates, there, too, they spring up, and even on the slates themselves. Tiles are often coloured yellow by such growths. On some old roofs, which have decayed, and upon which detritus has accumulated, wallflowers may be found; and the house-leek takes capricious root where it fancies. The stonecrop is the finest of roof-plants, sometimes forming a broad patch of brilliant yellow. Birds carry up seeds and grains, and these germinate in moist thatch. Groundsel, for instance, and stray stalks of wheat, thin and drooping for lack of soil, are sometimes seen there, besides grasses. Ivy is familiar as a roof-creeper. Some ferns and the pennywort will grow on the wall close to the roof. Where will not ferns grow? We saw one attached to the under-side of a glass coal-hole cover; its green could be seen through the thick glass on which people stepped daily.
Recently, much attention has been paid to the dust which is found on roofs and ledges at great heights. This meteoric dust, as it is called, consists of minute particles of iron, which are thought to fall from the highest part of the atmosphere, or possibly to be attracted to the earth from space. Lightning usually strikes the roof. The whole subject of lightning-conductors has been re-opened of late years, there being reason to think that mistakes have been made in the manner of their erection. The reason English roofs are high-pitched is not only because of the rain, that it may shoot off quickly, but on account of snow. Once now and then there comes a snow-year, and those who live in houses with flat surfaces anywhere on the roof soon discover how inconvenient they are. The snow is sure to find its way through, damaging ceilings, and doing other mischief. Sometimes, in fine summer weather, people remark how pleasant it would be if the roof were flat, so that it could be used as a terrace, as it is in warmer climates. But the fact is the English roof, although now merely copied and repeated without a thought of the reason of its shape, grew up from experience of severe winters. Of old, great care and ingenuity—what we should now call artistic skill—were employed in constructing the roof. It was not{388} only pleasant to the eye with its gables, but the woodwork was wonderfully well done. Such roofs may still be seen on ancient mansions, having endured for centuries. They are splendid pieces of workmanship, and seen from afar among foliage, are admired by every one who has the least taste. Draughtsmen and painters value them highly. No matter whether reproduced on a large canvas or in a little woodcut, their proportions please. The roof is much neglected in modern houses; it is either conventional, or it is full indeed of gables, but gables that do not agree, as it were, with each other—that are obviously put there on purpose to look artistic, and fail altogether. Now, the ancient roofs were true works of art, consistent, and yet each varied to its particular circumstances, and each impressed with the individuality of the place and of the designer. The finest old roofs were built of oak or chestnut; the beams are black with age, and in that condition, oak is scarcely distinguishable from chestnut.
So the roof has its natural history, its science, and art; it has its seasons, its migrants and residents, of whom a housetop calendar might be made. The fine old roofs which have just been mentioned are often associated with historic events and the rise of families; and the roof-tree, like the hearth, has a range of proverbs or sayings and ancient lore to itself. More than one great monarch has been slain by a tile thrown from the housetop, and numerous other incidents have occurred in connection with it. The most interesting is the story of the Grecian mother, who with her infant was on the roof, when, in a moment of inattention, the child crept to the edge, and was balanced on the very verge. To call to it, to touch it, would have insured its destruction; but the mother, without a second’s thought, bared her breast, and the child eagerly turning to it, was saved!
Mr Beecham had spoken the words, ‘You must know it all,’ as if they contained a threat, but impulse directed tone and words. He became instantly conscious of his excitement, when he saw the startled expression with which Madge regarded him. His emotion was checked. Mechanically, he gripped the bridle of his passion, and held it down as a strong man restrains a restive horse.
‘Shall I go on?’ he said with almost perfect self-control, although his voice had not yet quite regained its usual softness. ‘I know that you will be pained. I do not like that, and so you see me hesitating, and weakly trying to shift the responsibility from my own shoulders. Shall I go on?’
‘I am not afraid of pain,’ she answered quietly, but with a distant tremor in her voice; ‘and if you think that I should hear what you have to say, say it.’
‘Then I will speak as gently as it is in my power to do; but this subject always stirs the most evil passions that are in me. I want to win your confidence, and that impels me to tell you why I doubt Philip—it is because I know his father to be false.’
‘Oh, you are mistaken!’ she exclaimed, rising at once to the defence of a friend; ‘you do not know how much good he has done!’
‘No; but I do know some of the harm he has done.’ There was a sort of grim humour in voice and look, as if he were trying to subdue his bitterness of heart by smiling at the girl’s innocent trustfulness.
‘Harm!—Mr Hadleigh harm anybody! You judge him wrongly: he may look hard and—and unpleasant; but he has a kind nature, and suffers a great deal.’
‘He should suffer’ (this more gently now—more like himself, and as if he spoke in sorrow rather than in anger). ‘But, all the same he has done harm—cruel, wicked harm.’
‘To whom—to whom?’
‘To me and to your mother.’ A long pause, as if he were drawing breath for the words which at length he uttered in a faltering whisper: ‘His lies separated us.’
Madge stood mute and pale. She remembered what Aunt Hessy had told her: how there had come the rumour first, and then the confident assertion of the treachery of the absent lover—no one able to tell who brought the news which the loss of his letter in the wreck, and consequently apparent silence, seemed to confirm. Then all the sad days of hoping—of faith in the absent, whilst the heart was sickening and growing faint, as the weeks, the months passed, and the unbroken silence of the loved one slowly forced the horrible conviction upon her that the news must be true. He—Austin, whom she had prayed not to go away—had gone without answering that pathetic cry, and had broken his troth.
Poor mother, poor mother! Oh, the agony of it all! Madge could see it—feel it. She could see the woman in her great sorrow dumbly looking across the sea, hoping, still hoping that he would come back, until despair became her master. And now to know that all this misery had been brought about by a Lie! ... and the speaker of the lie had been Philip’s father! Two lives wrecked, two hearts broken by a lie. Was it not the cruelest kind of murder?—the two lives lingering along their weary way, each believing the other faithless.
She sprang into the present again—it was too horrible. She would not believe that any man could be so wicked, and least of all Philip’s father.
‘I will not believe it!’ she exclaimed with a sudden movement of the hands, as if sweeping the sad visions away from her.
Beecham’s brows lowered, but not frowningly, as he looked long at her flushed face, and saw that the bright eyes had become brighter still in the excitement of her indignant repudiation of the charge he made.
‘Do you like the man?’ he asked in a low tone.
The question had never occurred to her before, and in the quick self-survey which it provoked, she was not prepared to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ In the moment, too, she remembered Uncle Dick’s unexplained quarrel with Mr Hadleigh on the market-day, and also that Uncle Dick, who wore his heart upon his sleeve, never much favoured the Master of Ringsford.
‘He is Philip’s father,’ she answered simply;{389} and in giving the answer, she felt that it was enough for her. She must like everybody who belonged to Philip.
‘Is that all?’
‘It is enough,’ she said impatiently.
‘Do not be angry with me; but try to see a little with my eyes. You will do so when you learn how guilty he is.’
‘I will not hear it!’ and she moved.
‘For Philip’s sake,’ he said softly but firmly, ‘if not for that of another, who would tell you it was right that you should hear me.’
Madge stood still, her face towards the wall, so that he could not see her agitation. The bright fire cast the shadow of his profile on the same wall, and the silhouette, grotesquely exaggerated as the outlines were, still suggested suffering rather than anger.
‘Do you know that Hadleigh has good reason for enmity towards me?’
‘No; I never knew or thought that he could have reason for enmity towards any one.’
‘He had towards me.’
‘I believe you are wrong. I am sure of it;’ and she thought that here might be her opportunity to further Philip’s desire to reconcile them.
‘Should you desire to test what I am about to tell you, say to Hadleigh that you have been told George Laurence was a friend of Philip’s mother. He was my friend too. My poor sister was passionate and, like all passionate people, weak. Hadleigh took her from my friend for her money—a pitiful few hundred pounds. I never liked the man; but I hated him then, and hated him still more when Laurence, becoming reckless alike of fortune and life, ruined himself and ... killed himself. But the crime was Hadleigh’s, and it lies heavy on his soul.’
‘Oh, why should you speak so bitterly of what he could neither foresee nor prevent.’
‘I charged him with the murder,’ Beecham continued, without heeding the interruption, ‘and he could not answer me like a man. He spoke soft words, as if I were a boy in a passion; he even attempted to condole with me for the loss of my friend, until I fled from him, lest my hands should obey my wish and not my will. But he had his revenge. He made my sister’s life a torture. She tried to hide it in her letters to me; but I could read her misery in every line. And then, when he discovered that I had gone into the wilds of Africa, without any likelihood of being able to send a message home for many months, he told the lie which destroyed our hopes.’
‘How do you know that it was he who told it?’ she asked, without moving and with some fear of the answer.
‘The man he employed to spread the false report confessed to me what had been done and by whom.’
Madge’s head drooped; there seemed to be no refutation of this proof of Mr Hadleigh’s guilt possible.
Beecham partly understood that slight movement of the head, and his voice had become soft again when he resumed:
‘I did not seek to retaliate. She was lost to me, and it did not much matter what evil influence came between us. I am not seeking to retaliate now. I would have forgotten the man and the evil he had wrought, if it had not been for the cry my sister sent to me from her deathbed. She asked me for some sign that in the future I would try to help and guide her favourite child, Philip. I gave the pledge, and she was only able to answer that I had made her happy. I am here to fulfil that pledge, and it might have been easily done, but for you.’
‘For me!’—Startled, but not looking at him yet.
‘Ay, for you, because I wish to be sure that you will be safe in his keeping; and to be sure of that, I wish him to prove that he has none of his father’s nature in him.’
‘Do you still hate his father so much?’ she said distressfully.
‘I have long ceased to feel hatred; but I still distrust him and all that belongs to him. Now that you know why I stand aside to watch how Philip bears himself, do you still ask me to release you from your promise?’
‘I will not betray your confidence,’ she answered mechanically; ‘but what I ought to do I will do.’
‘I would not desire you to do anything else, my child,’ and all his gentleness of manner had returned. ‘I will not ask you to say at this moment whether or not you think I am acting rightly. I ask only that you will remember whose child you are, and what she was to me, as you have learned what I was to her. Then you will understand and judge me.’
‘I cannot judge, but I will try to understand.’
Then she turned towards him, and he saw that although she had been speaking so quietly, her pain had been great.
‘Forgive me, my poor child, for bringing this sorrow to you; but it may be the means of saving you from a life of misery, or of leading you to one of happiness.’
There was a subdued element of solemnity in this—it was so calm, so earnest, that she remained silent. He imagined that he understood; but he was mistaken. She did not herself yet understand the complicated emotions which had been stirred within her. She had tried to put away those sad visions, but could not: the sorrowful face of the mother was always looking wistfully at her out of the mists. She ought to have been filled with bitterness by the account of the crime—for crime it surely was—which had wrought so much mischief, and the proof of which appeared to be so strong. Instead of that, she felt sorry for Mr Hadleigh. Here was the reason for the gloom in which he lived—remorse lay heavily upon him. Here, too, was the reason for all his kindliness to her, when he was so cold to others. She was sorry for him.
Hope came to her relief, dim at first, but growing brighter as she reflected. Might there not be some error in the counts against him? She saw that in thinking of the misfortunes of his friend Laurence, passion had caused Austin Shield to exaggerate the share Mr Hadleigh had in bringing them about. Might it not be that in a similar way he had exaggerated and misapprehended what he had been told by the man who denounced Mr Hadleigh as the person who had employed him to spread the fatal lie? Whether or not this should prove to be the case, it was clear that until{390} Mr Shield’s mind was disabused of the belief that Philip’s father had been the cause of his sorrow and her mother’s, there was no possibility of effecting a reconciliation between the two men. But if all his charges were well founded—what then?... She was afraid to think of what might be to come after.
Still holding her hand, he made a movement towards the door. Then she spoke:
‘I want you to say again that whilst I keep your secret, you leave me free to speak to Mr Hadleigh about ... about the things you have told me.’
‘Yes, if you still doubt me.’
‘I will speak,’ she said deliberately, ‘not because I doubt you, but because I believe you are mistaken.’
Again that long look of reverent admiration of her trustfulness, and then:
‘Act as your own heart tells you will be wisest and kindest.’
As he passed down the frozen gravel-path, he met Philip. He was in no mood for conversation, and saying only ‘Good-evening,’ passed on. Philip was surprised; although, being wearied himself, he was not sorry to escape a conversation with one who was a comparative stranger.
‘What is the matter with Mr Beecham?’ he inquired carelessly, when he entered the oak parlour and, to his delight, found Madge alone.
‘He is distressed about some family affairs,’ she answered after a little hesitation.
Philip observed the hesitation and, slight as it was, the confusion of her manner.
‘Oh, something more about that affair in which you are his confidant, I suppose, and came to you for comfort. Well, I come upon the same errand—fagged and worried to death. Will you give me a glass of wine?—Stay, I should prefer a little brandy-and-water.—Thank you.’
He had dropped into an armchair, as if physically tired out. She seated herself beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder.
‘You have been disturbed again at the works,’ she said soothingly.
‘Disturbed!—driven to my wits’ end would be more like my present state. Everything is going wrong. The capital has nearly all disappeared, without any sign of a return for it, so that it looks as if I should speedily have to ask Uncle Shield for more.—What has frightened you?’
‘Nothing—it was only a chill—don’t mind it. Have you seen—him?’
‘Came straight from him here. He was rather out of humour, I thought; and as usual, referred me to his lawyers on almost every point. As to more capital, he said there would be no difficulty about that, if he was satisfied that the first money had been prudently invested.’
‘I understood that he was pleased with what you were attempting.’
‘So did I; but it seems to me now as if he was anything but satisfied. However, he would give me no definite answer or advice. He would think about it—he would make inquiries, and then see what was to be done. He is right, of course; and queer as his ways are, he has been kind and generous. But if he pulls up now, the whole thing will go to smash, and—to fail, Madge, to fail, when it only requires another strong effort to make a success!’
‘But you are not to fail, Philip.’
‘At present, things look rather like it. Oh, it will be rare fun for them all!’ he added bitterly.
‘All?’
‘Yes, everybody who predicted that my scheme was a piece of madness and must come to grief. That does not matter so much, though, as finding myself to be a fool. I wish uncle would talk over the matter quietly with me. I am sure he could help me.... Why, you are shivering. Come nearer to the fire.’
She moved her chair as he suggested.
‘But how is it that the money is all gone?’
‘It is not exactly gone, but sunk in the buildings and the machinery; and the disputes with the men have caused a lot of waste. The men are the real trouble; they can’t get the idea into their heads, somehow; and even Caleb is turning rusty now. But that is because he is bothered about Pansy.... Ah, Madge’ (his whole manner changing suddenly as he grasped her hand and gazed fondly into her eyes); ‘although it will be a bitter pill to swallow if this scheme falls through—I was so proud of it, so hopeful of it at the start, and saw such a bright future for it, and believed it would be such a mighty social lever—although that would be bitter, I should get over it. I could never get over any trouble about you, such as that poor chap is in about Pansy.... But that can never be,’ he concluded impulsively.
For the next few minutes he forgot all about the works, the men, and the peril in which his Utopia stood, threatening every day to tumble all to pieces. Madge was glad that his thoughts should be withdrawn for a space from his worry, and was glad to be able to breathe more freely herself in thinking only of their love, for those references to his Uncle Shield troubled her.
‘You are not losing courage altogether, then?’ she said smiling.
‘I shall never lose it altogether so long as you are beside me, although I may halt at times,’ he answered. ‘There; I am better now. Don’t let us talk any more to-night about disagreeable things—they don’t seem half so disagreeable to me as they did when I came in.’
So, as they were not to talk about disagreeable things, they talked about themselves. They did remember Caleb and Pansy, however; and Madge promised to see the latter soon, and endeavour to persuade her to be kind to her swain.
It was on our way from Paris to the sea that we found out Dives; a little town, forgotten now, but once, long ago, holding for four short weeks an urgent place in the foreground of the world’s history. It is a day’s journey distant from Paris, a long summer day’s journey through fair France, fairest of all when one reaches green Normandy, rich in sober old farmhouses, quaint churches, orchards laden with russet fruit ripening to fill the cider-barrels.
The little station near Dives is set in a desert of sand; one white road leads this way, another that. Of the modest town itself you see nothing.{391} Your eye is caught for a moment as you look round you by the gentle undulation of the hills that rise behind it. On these slopes, a nameless battle was once fought and won; but the story of that struggle belongs to the past, and it is the present you have to do with. At this moment your most urgent need is to secure a seat in omnibus or supplement; all the world is going seawards, and even French politeness yields a little before the pressure of necessity; for the crowd is great and the carriages are small. There is infection in the gaiety of our fellow holiday-seekers, whose costumes are devised to hint delicately or more broadly their destination. Their pleasure is expressed with all the naïveté of childhood; so we too, easily enough, catch something of their spirit, and watch eagerly for the first hint of blue on the horizon, for the first crisp, salt breath in the air. Dives, after its spasmodic revival, falls back into silence, and is forgotten. We forget it too, and for the next few days the problem of life at Beuzeval-Houlgate occupies us wholly.
He who first invented Beuzeval must have had a vivid imagination, a creative genius. What possibilities did he see in that sad reach of endless sand, in that sadder expanse of sea, as we first saw it under a gray summer sky? Yet here, almost with the wave of an Aladdin’s wand, a gay little town sprung into existence—fantastic houses, pseudo-Swiss châlets, very un-English ‘Cottages Anglais;’ ‘Beach’ hotels, ‘Sea’ hotels, ‘Beautiful Sojourn’ hotels lined the shore, and Paris came down and took possession. Houlgate and we are really one, though some barrier, undefinable and not to be grasped by us, divides us. But Houlgate holds itself proudly aloof from us; Houlgate leads the fashions; it is dominated by ‘that ogre, gentility;’ its houses are more fantastic, its costumes more magnificent, its ways more mysterious. At Beuzeval, one is not genteel, one is natural; it is a family-life of simplicity and tranquillity, as the guide-book sets forth in glowing terms. We live in a little house that faces, and is indeed set low upon the beach. There is a strip of garden which produces a gay crop of marigolds and sunflowers growing in a sandy waste—gold against gold. We belong to Mère Jeanne, an ancient lady, who wears a white cotton night-cap of the tasselled order, and who is oftenest seen drawing water at the well. Her vessel is of an antique shape; and she, too, is old. Tradition whispers that she has seen ninety winters come and go, yet her cheeks are rosy as one of her Normandy apples. One feels that life moves slowly and death comes tardily to this sea-village, where the outer world intrudes but once a year, and then but for one brief autumn month alone.
Bathing is the chief occupation of the day, and it is undertaken with a seriousness that is less French than British. Nothing can be funnier than to watch this matter of taking le bain. From early morning till noon, all the world is on the beach. Rows of chairs are brought down from the bath-house—all gay at this hour with wind-tossed flags—and are planted firmly in the soft loose sand; here those of us who are spectators sit and watch the show. A paternal government arranges everything for its children. Here one goes by rule. So many hours of the morning and so many hours of the evening must alone be devoted to the salt bath; such and such a space of the wide beach, carefully marked off with fluttering standards, must alone be occupied. Thus bathing is a very social affair; the strip of blue water is for the moment converted into a salon, where all the courtesies of life are duly observed. On the other side of the silver streak, business of the same nature is no doubt going on; but French imagination alone could evolve, French genius devise, the strange and wonderful costumes appropriate to the occasion.
Here is a lady habited in scarlet, dainty shoes and stockings to match, and a bewitching cap (none of your hideous oilskin) with falling lace and telling little bows of ribbon. Here another, clad in pale blue, with a becoming hat tied under her chin, and many bangles on her wrists. The shoes alone are a marvel. How do all these intricate knots and lacings, these glancing buckles, survive the rough and sportive usage of the waves? Who but our Gallic sisters could imagine those delicate blendings of dark blue and silver, crimson and brown, those strange stripes and æsthetic olives and drabs? The costume of the gentlemen is necessarily less varied, though here and there one notices an eccentric harlequin, easily distinguishable among the crowd; and again, what Englishman would dream of taking his morning dip with a ruff round his neck, a silken girdle, and a hat to save his complexion from the sun? Two amiable persons dressed in imitation of the British tar, obligingly spend the greater part of the day in the sea. Their business it is to conduct timid ladies from the beach and to assist them in their bath. The braver spirits allow themselves to be plunged under the brine, the more fearful are content to be sprinkled delicately from a tin basin. There is also a rower, whose little boat, furnished with life-saving appliances, plies up and down among the crowd, lest one more venturesome than his neighbours should pass beyond his depth; an almost impossible event, as one might say, seeing with what fondness even the boldest swimmer clings to the shore.
Danger on these summer waters seems a remote contingency. Here is neither ‘bar that thunders’ nor ‘shale that rings.’ It is for the most part a lazy sea, infinitely blue, that comes softly, almost caressingly, shorewards. At first, one is struck with the absence of life which it presents—the human element uncounted. There is no pier, and boating as a pastime is unknown. Occasionally, a fleet of brown-sheeted fishing-smacks rides out from the little port of Dives, each sail slowly unfurled, making a spot of warm colour when the sun shines on the canvas; now and then there is a gleam of white wings on the far horizon. But the glory of the place is its limitless, uninterrupted sea, shore, and sky—endless reaches of golden sand, endless plains of blue water. With so liberal a space of heaven and of ocean, you have naturally room for many subtle effects, countless shades and blendings of colour, most evanescent coming and going of light and shadow. To the left, gay little Cabourg, all big hotels and Parisian finery, runs out to meet the sea; farther still, Luc is outlined against the sky. To the right are the cliffs at Havre, pink{392} at sunset; their position marked when dusk has fallen by the glow of the revolving light. Beyond, là bas—that ‘indifferent, supercilious’ French là bas—an ‘elsewhere’ of little importance, lies unseen England. When the sun has set, dipping its fireball in haste to cool itself in the waters, there comes sometimes an illusive effect as of land, dim, far off, indistinct; but it is cloud-land, not our sea-island.
The sunsets are a thing to marvel at, never two nights alike. ‘C’est adorable!’ as our old Norman waiting-woman said, with a fervent pressure of the hands, as she looked with us on ‘the crimson splendour when the day had waned.’ Sometimes it is a lingering glory, the rose-light on the pools fading slowly, as if loath to go; sometimes the spectacle is more quickly over, and almost ‘with one stride comes the dark;’ then swiftly in their appointed order the familiar stars. Now and again, it is a great storm—a blue-black sea and an inky sky, rent too frequently by the zigzags of the lightning. There is always the charm of change and novelty; the piquancy of the unexpected.
After the serious business of the bath is over, the lunch-hour has arrived. Being as it were one family, we all take our meals at the same time. Later in the afternoon, Houlgate rides and drives, elegant landaus, carriages with linen umbrellas suspended over them, donkey-carts driven by beautiful young ladies in beautiful Paris gowns. Beuzeval braves the dust, and looks on respectfully at the show; but Beuzeval does not drive much. It takes its little folks to the beach and helps them to build sand-castles. It goes off in bands armed with forks to the exciting chase of the équilles. These little fish of the eel tribe, which are savoury eating, burrow in the sand at low tide, and it requires some skill to capture them. Whole families go out shrimping too, looking not unpicturesque as, set against the light on the far sea-margin, they push their nets before them. One afternoon we watched two bearded men amuse themselves for hours with flying a pink kite. Their gesticulations were lively, and their excitement great, when at last it sailed bravely before the breeze. We are very easily amused here; for the most part, we are content to look about us, hospitable to all stray impressions. At such times, one is tempted to the idlest speculations. Why, for instance, are all the draught-horses white? Is it that the blue sheep-skin collar may have the advantage of contrast? Why, in a land of green pastures, where kine abound, is milk at a ransom price, and butter not always eatable? Why, again, in spite of our simplicity, our vie de famille, is it necessary to one’s well-being here to have an inexhaustible Fortunatus’s purse? But these things are mysteries; let us cease to meddle with them, and follow Houlgate wider afield, on foot, if you will, to little Dives, too long neglected—Dives, which sends its placid river to swell the sea, but lingers inland itself, hardly on the roughest day within sound of the waves.
It was at Dives that Duke William of Normandy and his host waited for the south wind, that fair wind that was to carry them to England. The harbour, choked now with the shifting sand, and sheltering nothing larger than a fishing-smack—held the fleet which some have numbered in thousands; gallant ships for which Normandy’s noblest forest trees were sacrificed during that long summer of preparation. Finest of them all, riding most proudly on the waves, was William’s own Mora, the gift of his Matilda. At its prow there was carved in gold the image of a boy ‘blowing on an ivory horn pointing towards England.’ ‘Stark’ Duke William thus symbolised his conquest before ever he set foot on that alien shore. On the gentle slopes above the little town, where the cattle feed, the great army encamped itself, waiting for that fair wind that never came. Four weeks they lingered, long enough to associate the seaport inseparably with the Conqueror’s name; and brave stories are chronicled of the order he kept among his fierce Gauls, and how the worthy people of Dives learned to look on the strangers without distrust—almost with indifference; to till their fields, to tend their flocks, to gather in the harvest, as if no nation’s fate hung on the caprice of a breeze. Four weeks of this, and then that great company melted away almost with the suddenness of a certain Assyrian host of old—a west wind blew gently—not the longed-for south; but the ships, weary of inaction, spread their wings, and flew away to St Valery, where a narrower band of blue separated them from the desired English haven. And the village folks were left once more to the vast quietude of their country life.
There is an old church, rebuilt since English Edward destroyed it, a noble specimen of Norman architecture, and there they keep recorded on marble the names of the knights who sailed on that famous expedition from the port hard by. The church has its legend, too, of a wondrous effigy of our Lord found by the fishermen who launched their nets in these waters. It bore the print of nails in the hands and feet; but the cross to which it had been fastened was awanting. The village folks gave it reverent sanctuary, and devout hands busied themselves in fashioning a crucifix; but no crucifix—let the workman be ever so skilful—could be made to fit the carven Christ. This one was too short, that too long. Clearly the miracle had been but half wrought; the cross must be sought where the image had already been found. In faith, the fishermen cast their nets again and again into the deep. At last, after long patience on their part, the sea gave up what it had previously denied. The long-lost cross was found; and with the figure nailed to it once more, the sacred symbol was borne to its resting-place. A great feast-day that, for Dives; but only the memory of it lingers. The treasure has vanished, and nothing save a curious picture representing the miracle remains to witness to the event. It hangs in the transept, and there are many who linger to look at it. The outside of this grand building pleased us well; it stands secure and free, with open spaces about it, green woods behind, and the blue sky of France above. A stone’s-throw off there is the market, which is nothing but a wide and deep overhanging roof, supported on pillars of carved wood. Here the sturdy peasants of this white-cotton-night-cap country sell the cheeses that smell so evilly and taste so well.
But the chief interest of Dives centres itself in the Hôtellerie de Guillaume le Conquérant.{393} Heart could not desire a quainter, more out-of-the-world spot in which to pass a summer day. One may take a hundred or two of years from the reputed date—they boast that Duke William was housed here, and they show you the chain by which the Mora was fastened to the shore!—and yet leave the place ancient enough. The famous reception-rooms may have been, and have been, redecorated and renewed after an old pattern; but they contain treasures that can boast a very respectable past. Such black carved oak is seldom to be seen; and there are tattered hangings, brasses, bits of china enough to fill a virtuoso’s heart with envy; a wonderful medley of all tastes and periods.
Of deepest interest to some of us is the Louis XIV. chair with gilded arms and seat of faded, silken brocade, from which the most brilliant correspondent of her day wrote some of the letters that are models yet of what letters ought to be. Madame de Sévigné came here once and again on her way to Les Rochers. Once, at least, she came with ‘an immense retinue,’ that must have taxed the resources of the modest inn, smaller then than now. The ‘good and amiable’ Duchess de Chaulnes is of the company. Madame de Carmen makes the third in the trio. The ladies travel ‘in the best carriage’ with ‘the best horses,’ and that large following behind them. Madame de Chaulnes, who is all activity, is up with the dawn. ‘You remember how, in going to Bourbon, I found it easier to accommodate myself to her ways than to try and mend them.’ They make quite a royal progress, halting here and there. At Chaulnes the good duchess is taken ill, seized with sore throat. The kindest lady in the world nurses her friend and undertakes the cure. ‘At Paris she would have been bled; but here she was only rubbed for some time with our famous balsam, which produced quite a miracle. Will you believe, my dearest, that in one night this precious balsam completely cured her?’ While the patient slept, the kind nurse wandered in the noble alleys and the neglected gardens. ‘I call this rehearsing for Les Rochers,’ she writes gaily; but there is little heat, ‘not one nightingale to be heard—it is winter on the 17th of April.’
Soon, however, the southern warmth floods the land, and they set off, a gay trio, and one of them at least with eyes for every quick-passing beauty as they drive through green Normandy. From Caen she writes: ‘We were three days upon the road from Rouen to this place. We met with no adventures; but fine weather and spring in all its charm accompanied us. We ate the best things in the world, went to bed early, and did not suffer any inconvenience. We were on the sea-coast at Dives, where we slept.’ (She loves the sea, and elsewhere tells how she sat at her chamber window and looked out on it.) ‘The country is beautiful.’ Later, she exclaims: ‘I have seen the most beautiful country in the world. I did not know Normandy at all; I had seen it when too young. Alas! perhaps not one of those I saw here before is left alive—that is sad!’ This is the shadow in the bright picture; she, too, is growing old, and her spring will not return. It is the last journey she is making to the well-loved country home.
Somehow, as we turn away from the quaint hostelry, it is this gracious and beautiful lady who goes with us, and not ‘stark’ hero William. At Beuzeval, as we reach it, the sun is already dipping towards the sea, and all the bathers—a fantastic crowd set against the red light—are hurrying homewards across the sands.
After the recent speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in which he showed that our gold coins are much lighter than they ought to be, we shall have to answer the above question in the affirmative. Our coins are wearing away, and although not at any very alarming rate, yet at a perceptible one. Every sovereign, half-sovereign, half-crown, florin, shilling, or sixpence, &c., which has been out of the Mint any length of time, weighs less now than it did when brand new. Indeed, in some old coins this is quite evident upon a casual inspection, for the image may be worn flat and unrecognisable, and the superscription may be illegible. Now, the difference in value between this old coin and the same coin when turned out new may be very trifling; but when we consider that there are probably millions in circulation which have similarly suffered depreciation to a greater or less extent, and that this loss will at some time or other have to be made good, this question of the wear of our coins becomes of sufficient importance for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to seek to cope with it. We shall here only offer a few observations on the mechanical aspects of the subject.
The office youth fetching a bag of gold from the bank to pay wages with—the workman putting his small share into his pocket after the lot has been shot on to a desk and his money has been duly apportioned to him—the shopman banging it on his counter to see whether it is sound when it is tendered in payment for groceries, &c., are all participators in a gigantic system of unintentional ‘sweating.’ Under this usage—quite inseparable, by the way, from the functions the coinage has to subserve—it would appear that in the United Kingdom alone there is something like seven hundred and ten thousand pounds-worth of gold-dust floating about, widely distributed, and in microscopic particles, lost to the nation—dust which has been abraded from the gold coins now in circulation. There are similarly thousands of pounds-worth of silver particles from our silver coinage worn off in the same way.
It has been estimated from exact data that a hundred-year-old sovereign has lost weight equivalent to a depreciation of eightpence; in other words, that such a sovereign is only of the intrinsic value of nineteen shillings and fourpence. There has been a hundred years of wear for eightpence—as cheap, one would think, as one could possibly get so much use out of a coin for; but as we shall now see, we have, comparatively speaking, to pay more for the use of other coins. Thus, for a hundred years of use of a half-sovereign we pay a small fraction under eightpence; in other words, the half-sovereign has lost nearly as much weight as the sovereign; and considering its value, it has therefore cost the nation nearly twice as much for its use, two half-sovereigns costing us nearly one shilling and fourpence. It appears from Mr Childers’s statement that at the present time, taking old and new coins, there are in the United{394} Kingdom ninety million sovereigns in circulation; and of these, fifty millions are on the average worth nineteen shillings and ninepence-halfpenny each. Of the forty million half-sovereigns in circulation, some twenty-two millions are of the intrinsic value of nine shillings and ninepence three-farthings each. Hence the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to issue, instead of half-sovereigns, ten-shilling pieces, or tokens, containing only nine shillings-worth of gold, with the idea of making up for the loss by waste of the gold coins now in circulation.
Now, if we inquire into the reason why the half-sovereign wastes so much faster than the sovereign, we can only come to the conclusion that, being of half the value, it is a more convenient coin than the sovereign, and consequently has a much busier life. This applies with greater force still to coins like the half-crown, shilling, and sixpence, which are only one-eighth, one-twentieth, and one-fortieth respectively of the value of a sovereign. And we find upon examination, what one would naturally expect, that the silver coinage is even more costly than the gold coinage. The depreciation of the half-crown, reckoned in terms of itself, is more than double that of the half-sovereign; that is, if a half-sovereign wastes in the course of a century to the extent of one-fifteenth of its value, the half-crown will waste more than two-fifteenths of its value. The depreciation of shilling-pieces is not far off three times as much as that of half-crowns; and sixpences waste faster than shillings, though by no means twice so fast. There is thus an immense waste of our silver coinage taking place, and it proceeds at such a rate in the case of sixpences, that the intrinsic value of one a hundred years old would be only threepence, a century of use having worn away half the silver.
It is evident from these facts that the relative amounts of wear of coins are not so much owing to the nature of the metal they are made of as to the activity of the life they have to lead. The less the value of the coin, the greater is the use to which it is put; and consequently, the greater is the depreciation in its value from wear in a given time. The sovereign being of greatest value, is used least, and depreciates the least—a circumstance quite in accordance with the fitness of things when we reflect that it is ‘really an international coin, largely used in exchange operations, known to the whole commercial world,’ and that any heavy depreciation of it would lead to much embarrassment.
A TALE OF LONDON OLD CITY.
Unless Rachel had reflected, in the midst of her alarm at the absence of her grandfather, that Walter Tiltcroft would be at the counting-house of Armytage and Company at an early hour, there is no saying what steps she might have taken with the hope of gaining some tidings of the old man. If anything had happened, Walter must be the first to bear the news to her. Towards nine o’clock, therefore, her anxiety began to take a different form; she ceased to expect her grandfather’s return, and dreaded the appearance of her lover.
The house was soon put in order; everything about the poor home of Silas Monk looked as neat and clean as usual. Rachel was on the point of taking up her needlework, when a quick step on the pavement under the window attracted her attention. It was Walter Tiltcroft. He followed her into the sitting-room. He was somewhat out of breath; and when Rachel caught sight of his face, she thought she had never seen it so pale. ‘Sit down, Walter,’ said the girl, placing a chair. ‘You have come to tell me something. You have come to tell me’—and here her voice almost failed her—‘you have come to tell me that he is dead.’
‘No. I thought that I should find your grandfather here.’
‘Why, he has not been here the whole night long!’
The young man passed his hand confusedly across his brow. ‘What did I tell you I saw at the office last night?’
‘You told me,’ answered Rachel, ‘that you saw grandfather, through a hole in the shutter, counting handfuls of sovereigns on his desk.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Walter, ‘then I cannot have dreamt it. I was the first to enter the office this morning. His room was empty. His ledgers were lying on his desk; the key was in the lock of the large safe, and the door of the safe stood open. But there were no signs of Silas Monk.’
The girl looked at the young man with a scared face. ‘What shall we do, if he is lost?’
Walter rose quickly from his seat. ‘Wait!’ cried he. ‘We shall find him. Mr Armytage has sent for a detective—one, as they say, who can see through a stone wall.’
‘Oh!’ cried the girl, ‘they cannot suspect my grandfather! I shall not rest until you bring him back to me, here, in our old home.’
The young man promised, with earnest looks and words, to do his best; and then hurried away with all possible despatch.
The commotion at the office, which had been going on ever since nine o’clock that morning, was showing no signs of abatement when Walter walked in. The entrance was guarded by two stalwart police-officers, who assisted the young clerk to make his way through a gaping crowd. Rumours had already spread about the city: Silas Monk had ‘gone off,’ some said, with the contents of the great iron safe in the strong-room of Armytage and Company; and the value of the documents which he had purloined was estimated at sums varying from one to ten thousand pounds. Other reports went even further, and declared that Silas, when entering as a clerk into the firm of Armytage and Company, years and years ago, had sold himself to the Evil One; that last night, while the old city clocks were striking twelve, he had received a visit—as did Faust from Mephistopheles—and had been whisked away in the dark.
Walter Tiltcroft found another constable near the stairs. ‘You’re wanted,’ said the officer in a snappish manner. ‘This way.’ The man conducted Walter to the private office of Mr Armytage, the senior partner. Here he left him.
Walter stepped into the room boldly, but with a fast-beating heart. A gentleman with a head{395} as white as snow and with a very stiff manner, was standing on the rug before the fire, as he entered. ‘Do you want me, Mr Armytage?’
The senior partner turned his eyes upon the clerk. ‘Yes, Tiltcroft; I want you.’
Looking round, Walter noticed for the first time that they were not alone. Seated at a table, with his back to the window, so that his face was in shade, was a gentleman, writing quickly with a quill-pen. This gentleman had jet-black hair, cut somewhat short; and there was a tuft of black whisker on a level with each ear. His hat was on the table, and beside the hat was lying a thick oaken stick.
Walter had made this observation in a rapid glance, when Mr Armytage added: ‘What news have you brought from Silas Monk’s house?—Has Silas been there?’
‘No, sir; not for twenty-four hours.’
‘Ah! Now, tell me, were you not the last to leave the office yesterday?’
When Mr Armytage put this question, the noise of the pen suddenly ceased. Was the gentleman with the jet-black hair listening? Walter could not look round, because the senior partner’s eyes were fixed upon him. But he felt inclined to think that the gentleman was listening very attentively, being anxious to record the answer. ‘I was the last, sir, except Silas Monk,’ was Walter’s reply.
The pen gave a short scratch, and stopped.
‘Except Silas, of course,’ said Mr Armytage. ‘Did you, after leaving Silas, go straight home?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Tell me where you did go, will you?’
‘First of all, under the scaffold outside, where I called out, in order to ascertain if the workmen had gone. As I found no one there, I closed the front-door. Then I came back, and sat down in a dark place on the staircase.’
Scratch, scratch, scratch from the quill.
‘On the staircase!’ exclaimed Mr Armytage, with surprise.
‘I wanted to know why Silas Monk never went home when the rest did, because his granddaughter was uneasy about him,’ continued Walter. ‘She told me that it was often close upon midnight before he got home.’
‘Well?’
‘I found out what kept him at the office.’
The senior partner raised his chin, and said encouragingly: ‘Tell us all about it.’
Walter remained silent for a moment, as though collecting his thoughts; then he said: ‘What happened that night at the office, Mr Armytage, is simply this. I had hardly sat down on the staircase when, to my surprise, a workman came out of the yard from his work on the scaffold. I stopped him and questioned him. He told me that he had remained to finish some repairs on the roof, and had not heard me call. I let the man out, and then returned to my place.’
The scratching of the quill began and finished while Walter was speaking. He was about to resume, when the gentleman at the table held up the pen to enforce silence.
‘Mr Armytage,’ said the stranger, ‘ask your clerk if he can tell us, from previous knowledge, anything about this workman.’
The senior partner looked inquiringly at Walter.
‘I’ve known him for years,’ said the young clerk. ‘When a man is wanted to repair anything in the office, we always send for Joe Grimrood.’ While the quill was scratching, the head gave a nod, and the voice exclaimed: ‘Go on!’
Walter then mentioned briefly by what accident he had discovered Silas Monk at his desk with the pile of sovereigns before him; and how, not daring to disturb him, he had gone away convinced that the head-cashier was nothing better than an ‘old miser,’ as he expressed it.
As soon as Walter Tiltcroft had finished his recital, the pen gave a final scratch; then the stranger rose from the table, folded some papers together, placed them in his breast-pocket, and taking up his hat and stick, went out.
When he was gone, the senior partner, still standing on the rug, turned to Walter, and said: ‘Go back to your desk. Do not quit the counting-house to-day; you may be wanted at any moment.’
All day long, Walter sat at his desk waiting, with his eyes constantly bent upon the iron-bound door of the strong-room. Within it, he pictured to himself Silas Monk wrapped in a white shroud lying stretched in death, with his hands crossed, and his head raised upon huge antique ledgers. Presently, Walter even fancied that he heard the sovereigns chinking as they dropped out of the old man’s hands, followed by the sound of shuffling feet; and once, while he was listening, there seemed to issue from this chamber a stifled cry, which filled him with such terror and dismay, that he found it no easy matter to hide his agitation from his fellow-clerks, who would have laughed at him, if they had had the slightest suspicion that he was occupying his time in such an unprofitable manner, while they were as busily engaged with the affairs of Armytage and Company as if Silas Monk had never been born.
While these fancies were still troubling Walter Tiltcroft’s brain, he was sent for by the senior partner. ‘Read that,’ said Mr Armytage, pointing to a paper on his table as the young man entered the room. ‘It is a telegram from Fenwick the detective.’ It ran as follows:
‘Send Tiltcroft alone to Limehouse Police Station.’
Walter looked at the senior partner for instructions. ‘Go!’ cried Mr Armytage with promptness—‘go, without a moment’s delay!’
The young man started off as quickly as his legs would carry him for the railway terminus near Fenchurch Street. What an inexpressible relief to escape from his ghostly fantasy regarding the old strong-room, and to feel that he was at last beginning to take an active and important part in the search for Silas Monk!
The train presently arrived at Limehouse. Walter leaped out and made his way with all speed to the police station. He inquired for the detective of the first constable he saw, standing, as though on guard, at the open doorway.
‘What name?’
‘Tiltcroft.’
The constable gave a short comprehensive nod; then he looked into the office, and jerked his head significantly at another constable who was seated at a desk. This man quickly disappeared into an inner room.
{396}
‘Walk in,’ said the custodian at the doorway, ‘and wait.’
Walter walked in, and waited for what seemed an interminable time. But Fenwick made his appearance at last, walking briskly up to the young clerk and touching him on the shoulder with the knob of his stick. ‘It’s a matter of identification,’ said he mysteriously; ‘come along.’ He settled his hat on with the brim touching his black eyebrows, and led the way into the street. Walter followed. They walked along through well-lighted thoroughfares, up narrow passages and down dark lanes, until they came suddenly upon a timber-yard with the river flowing beyond. At this point the detective stopped and gave a low whistle. This signal was immediately followed by the sound of oars; and the dark outline of a boat gliding forward, grew dimly visible out of the obscurity, below the spot where Fenwick and the young clerk stood. Some one in the boat directed the rays of a lantern mainly upon their feet, revealing steep wooden steps.
‘Follow me!’ cried the detective.
As they went down step by step to the water’s edge, the rays of the lantern descended, dropping always a few inches in advance to guide them, until they were safely shipped, when the lantern was suddenly suppressed, and the boat was jerked cautiously out into the river by a figure near the bow, handling shadowy oars.
Towards what seemed the centre of the stream there was a light shining so high above them that it appeared, until they drew nearer, like a solitary star in the dark sky. But the black bulk of a ship’s stern presently coming in sight, it was apparent that the light belonged to a large vessel lying at anchor in the river. Under the shadow of this vessel—if further shadow were possible in this deep darkness—the boat pulled up, and the lantern was again produced. ‘I’ll go first, my lad,’ said Fenwick, touching Walter on the shoulder again with his stick. ‘Keep close.’
This time the rays from the lantern ascended, rising on a level with the men’s heads as they went up the ship’s side. As soon as they reached the deck, the rays again vanished.
‘We will now proceed to business,’ said the detective.
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ cried a sailor who had stepped forward to receive the visitors. ‘Your men are waiting below.’
‘Then lead the way.’
Walter, wondering what this mystification meant, followed close upon the heels of Fenwick and the sailor. A few steps brought them to what was obviously the entrance to the steerage, for it had the dingy appearance common to that part of a passenger-ship.
‘Are the emigrants below?’ asked the detective.
‘Ay, ay,’ replied the sailor—‘fast asleep.’
‘So much the better,’ remarked Fenwick. Then he added, with a glance at Walter: ‘Now for the identification.’
The sailor led the way down to heaps of human beings lying huddled together not unlike sheep, with their heads against boxes, or upon canvas bags, or packages covered with tarpaulin. The air was warm and oppressive; and the men, women, and children who were packed in this place had a uniform expression of weariness on their faces, as though they were resigned to all the perils and dangers that could be encountered upon a long voyage.
‘When do you weigh anchor?’ asked the detective.
‘At daybreak,’ answered the sailor.
‘Ah! a little sea-air won’t be amiss,’ remarked Fenwick, looking about him thoughtfully.—‘Now, let me see.’ He peered into the faces with his quick keen eyes, leaning his chin the while upon the knob of his stick. Presently he cocked an eye at Tiltcroft, and said: ‘See any one you recognise?’
Walter threw a swift glance around him. Most of the faces were thin and pale, and there were several eyes staring at him and his companion; but many eyes were closed in sleep; among these he saw a half-hidden face which he seemed to know, yet for the moment could not recall; but the recollection quickly flashed upon him.
The detective, watching his expression, saw the change; and following the direction in which Walter was staring in blank surprise, perceived that the object in which he appeared to take such a sudden interest was a large, muscular person, wrapped in a thick pea-jacket, with his head upon his arm, and his arm resting upon a sea-chest, which was corded with a thick rope. The man was fast asleep, and on his head was a mangy-looking skin-cap, pulled down to his eyebrows.
‘Well,’ said the detective, glancing from this man into Walter’s face; ‘who is he?’
‘Joe Grimrood!’ cried Walter.
It would seem as though the man had heard the mention of his name; for, as Walter pronounced it, he frowned, and opening his eyes slowly, looked up askance, like an angry dog.
‘Get up!’ said the detective, giving the man a playful thrust in the ribs; ‘you’re wanted.’
Joe Grimrood showed his teeth, and started, as though about to spring upon Fenwick. But on reflection, he appeared to think better of it, and simply growled.
Fenwick turned to the sailor, and said, pointing to the chest against which Joe Grimrood still leaned, ‘Uncord that box. And if,’ he added—‘if that man moves or utters a word, bind him down hands and feet with the rope. Do you understand?’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ cried the sailor, with a grin on his honest-looking face. With all the dexterity of a practised ‘tar,’ the sailor removed the cord from the chest; then he glanced at the detective for further instructions.
‘Open it!’ cried Fenwick.
At these words, Joe Grimrood, who sat with his back against the iron pillar and his arms crossed defiantly, showed signs of rebellion in his small glittering eyes. But a glance from Fenwick quelled him.
When the chest was opened, a quantity of old clothes was discovered. ‘Make a careful search,’ said the detective. ‘If you find nothing more valuable than old clothes in that box, I shall be greatly surprised.’
Something far more valuable, sure enough, soon came to light. One after another the sailor brought out fat little bags, which, being shaken, gave forth a pleasant ring not unlike the chink of gold.
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Fenwick presently, after opening one of these bags, held it up before Joe Grimrood’s eyes, tauntingly. ‘You’re a nice emigrant, ain’t you? Why, a man of your wealth ought to be a first-class passenger, not a steerage. How did you manage to accumulate such a heap of gold?’
Joe Grimrood gave another growl, and replied: ‘Let me alone. I’m an honest workman. Mr Tiltcroft there will tell you if I’m not; asking his pardon.’
‘That’s no answer. How do you come by all this gold?’
‘By the sweat of my brow,’ answered the man, with the perspiration rolling down his face. ‘So help me. By the sweat of my brow.’
‘That will do,’ continued the detective. ‘Take my advice, and don’t say another word.—Come, Tiltcroft. The sooner we get back to the city the better. There is work to be done there to-night.’ With these words, Fenwick beckoned to two constables. These men, at a sign from the detective, seized Joe Grimrood and handcuffed him before he had time to suspect their intention. Meanwhile, the sailor had packed up the box, gold and all, and had corded it down as quickly as he had uncorded it.
The constables went first, with Joe Grimrood between them. The man showed no resistance. Behind him followed the sailor with the valuable chest. The detective and Tiltcroft brought up the rear. The boat which had brought Walter and his companions alongside the emigrant ship was still waiting under the bow when they came on deck. In a few minutes, without noise or confusion, they were once more in their places, with the chest and Joe Grimrood—still between the two constables—by way of additional freight. Once more the boat moved across the dark river and carried them to the shore.
Having deposited Joe Grimrood and his luggage at the police station, the detective turned to Walter and said: ‘Now, my lad, let us be off. This business in the city is pressing. Every moment is precious; it’s a matter of life and death.’
That a very old house should gain the reputation of being haunted is not surprising, especially if it has been neglected and allowed to fall out of repair. The woodwork shrinks, the plaster crumbles away; and through minute slits and chasms in window-frames and door-cases there come weird and uncanny noises. The wind sighs and whispers through unseen fissures, suggesting to the superstitious the wailings of disembodied spirits. A whole household was thrown into consternation, and had its repose disturbed, one stormy winter, by a series of lamentable howls and shrieks that rang through the rooms. The sounds were harrowing, and as they rose fitfully and at intervals, breaking the silence of the night, the stoutest nerves among the listeners were shaken. For a long time the visitation continued to harass the family, recurring by day as well as night, and especially in rough weather. When there was a storm, piercing yells and shrieks would come, sudden and startling, changing anon into low melancholy wails. It was unaccountable. At length the mystery was solved. Complaints had been made of draughts through the house, and as a remedy, strips of gutta-percha had at some former time been nailed along the window-frames, while its owners were at the seaside. This, for some reason explainable upon acoustic principles, had caused the disturbance. Even after the gutta-percha had been torn away, a sudden blast of wind striking near some spot to which a fragment still adhered, would bring a shriek or moan, to remind the family of the annoyance they had so long endured.
Meantime, the house got a bad reputation, and servants were shy of engaging with its owners. A maid more strong-minded than the others, and who had hitherto laughed at their fears, came fleeing to her mistress on one occasion, saying she must leave instantly, and that nothing would induce her to pass another night under the roof. There was a long corridor at the top of the house, and the girl’s story was, that in passing along it, she heard footsteps behind her. Stopping and looking back, she saw no one; but as soon as she went on, the invisible pursuer did so too, following close behind. Two or three times she stood still suddenly, hoping the footsteps would pass on and give her the go-by; instead of which, they pulled up when she did. And when at last, wild with terror, she took to her heels and ran, they came clattering along after her to the end of the passage!
The mistress suspected that some one was trying to frighten the girl, and she urged her to come up-stairs and endeavour to find out the trick. This the terrified damsel refused to do, so the lady went off alone. On reaching the corridor and proceeding along it, she was startled to find that, as the maid had described, some one seemed to be following her. Tap, tap, clack, clack—as of one walking slipshod with shoes down at heel—came the steps, keeping pace with her own; stopping when she stopped, and moving on when she did. In vain the lady peered around and beside her; nothing was to be seen. It could be no trick, for there was nobody in that part of the house to play a practical joke.
Ere long the cause was discovered in the shape of a loose board in the flooring of the corridor. The plank springing when pressed by the foot in walking along, gave an echoing sound that had precisely the effect of a step following; and this, in the supposed haunted house, was sufficient to raise alarm.
It happened to us once to be a temporary dweller in a mansion that had a ghostly reputation. We were on our way to Paris, travelling with an invalid; and the latter becoming suddenly too ill to proceed on the journey, we were forced to stop in the first town we came to. The hotel being found too noisy, a house in a quiet street was engaged by the week. It was a grand old mansion, that had once belonged to a magnate of the land; fallen now from its high estate, and but indifferently kept up. Wide stone staircases with balusters of carved oak led to rooms lofty and spacious, whose walls and ceilings were decorated with gilded enrichments and paintings in the style of Louis XIV. At the side of the house was a covered-way leading to the stables and offices. This was entered through a tall porte cochère; and at either side of the great gates, fixed to the iron railings, were a couple of those huge{398} metal extinguishers—still sometimes to be seen in quaint old houses—used in former times to put out the torches or links carried at night by running footmen beside the carriages of the great. The stables and offices of the place were now falling into decay, and the porte cochère generally stood open until nightfall, when the gates were locked.
We had been in the house for some little time before we heard the stories of supernatural sights and sounds connected with it—of figures flitting through halls and passages—the ghosts of former occupants; of strange whisperings and uncanny noises. There certainly were curious sounds about the house, especially in the upper part, where lumber-closets were locked and sealed up, through whose shrunken and ill-fitting doors the wind howled with unearthly wails. In the dining-hall was a row of old family pictures, faded and grim; and the popular belief was that, at the ‘witching hour,’ these worthies descended from their frames and held high festival in the scene of former banquetings. No servant would go at night into this room alone or in the dark.
We had with us a young footman called Carroll, the son of an Irish tenant; devoted to his masters, under whom he had been brought up. He was a fine young fellow, bold as a lion, and ready to face flesh and blood in any shape; but a very craven as regarded spirits, fairies, and supernatural beings, in whom he believed implicitly. One night, after seeing the invalid settled to rest and committed to the care of the appointed watcher, I came down to the drawing-room to write letters. It was an immense saloon, with—doubling and prolonging its dimensions—wide folding-doors of looking-glass at the end. I had been writing for some time; far, indeed, into the ‘small-hours.’ The fire was nearly out; and the candles, which at their best had only served to make darkness visible in that great place, had burnt low. The room was getting chilly, dark shadows gathering in the corners. Who has not known the creepy, shivering feeling that will come over us at such times, when in the dead silence of the sleeping house we alone are wakeful? The furniture around begins to crack; the falling of a cinder with a clink upon the hearth makes us start. And if at such a time the door should slowly and solemnly open wide, as doors sometimes will, ‘spontaneous,’ we look up with quickening pulse, half expecting to see some ghastly spectral shape glide in, admitted by invisible hands. Should sickness be in the house, and the angel of death—who knows?—be brooding with dark wing over our dwelling, the nerves, strained by anxiety, are more than usually susceptible of impressions. I was gathering my papers together and preparing to steal up-stairs past the sick-room, glad to escape from the pervading chilliness and gloom, when the door opened. Not, this time, of itself; for there—the picture of abject terror—stood Carroll the footman. He was as pale as ashes, shaking all over; his hair dishevelled, and clothes apparently thrown on in haste. To my alarmed exclamation, ‘What is the matter?’ he was unable, for a minute, to make any reply, so violently his lips were trembling, parched with fear. At last I made out, among half-articulate sounds, the words ‘Ghost, groans.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what nonsense! You have been having a bad dream. You ought to know better, you who’——
My homily was cut short by a groan so fearful, so unlike anything I had ever heard or imagined, that I was dumb with horror.
‘Ah-h-h!—there it is again!’ whispered Carroll, dropping on his knees and crossing himself; while vehemently thumping his breast, he, as a good Catholic, began to mumble with white lips the prayers for the dead. Up the stairs through the open door the sounds had come; and after a few minutes, they were repeated, this time more faintly than before.
‘Let us go down and try to find out what it is,’ I said at last. And in spite of poor Carroll’s misery and entreaties, making a strong effort, I took the lamp from his trembling hands and began to descend the wide staircase. Nothing was stirring. In the great dining-room, where I went in, while the unhappy footman kept safely at the door, casting frightened glances at the portraits on the walls, all was as usual. As we went lower down, the groans grew louder and more appalling. Hoarse, unnatural, long-drawn—such as could not be imagined to proceed from human throat, they seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth, and to be re-echoed by the walls of the great dark lofty kitchens. Beyond these kitchens were long stone passages, leading to cellars and pantries and servants’ halls, all unused and shut up since the mansion’s palmy days; and into these we penetrated, led by the fearful sounds.
All here was dust and desolation. The smell of age and mould was everywhere; the air was chill; and the rusty hinges of the doors shrieked as they were pushed open, scaring away the spiders, whose webs hung in festoons across the passages, and brushed against our faces as we went along. Doubtless, for years no foot had invaded this dank and dreary region, given over to mildew and decay; or disturbed the rats, which ran scampering off at our approach. The groans seemed very near us now, and came more frequently. It was terrible, in that gruesome place, to hearken to the unearthly sounds. I could hear my agonised companion calling upon every saint in the calendar to take pity upon the soul in pain. At length there came a groan more fearful than any that had been before. It rooted us to the spot. And then was utter silence!
After a long breathless pause, broken only by the gasps of poor Carroll in his paroxysm of fear, we turned, and retraced our steps towards the kitchens. The groans had ceased altogether.
‘It is over now, whatever it was,’ I said. ‘All is quiet; you had better go to bed.’
He staggered off to his room; while, chilled to the marrow, I crept up-stairs, not a little shaken, I must confess, by the night’s doings.
Next day was bright and fine. My bedroom looked to the street; and soon after rising, I threw open the window, to admit the fresh morning air. There was a little stir outside. The porte cochère gates were wide open, and a large cart was drawn up before them. Men with ropes in their hands were bustling about, talking and gesticulating; passers-by stopped to look; and boys were peering down the archway at something{399} going on within. Soon the object of their curiosity was brought to light. A dead horse was dragged up the passage, and after much tugging and pulling, was hauled up on the cart and driven away.
It appeared that at nightfall of the previous day the wretched animal was being driven to the knacker’s; and straying down into our archway, while the man who had him in charge was talking to a friend, he fell over some machinery that stood inside, breaking a limb, and otherwise frightfully injuring himself. Instead of putting the poor animal out of pain at once, his inhuman owner left him to die a lingering death in agonies; and his miserable groans, magnified by the reverberation of the hollow archway and echoing kitchens, had been the cause of our nocturnal alarm.
Carroll shook his head and looked incredulous at this solution of the mystery, refusing, with the love of his class for the supernatural, to accept it. Though years have since then passed over his head, tinging his locks with gray, and developing the brisk, agile footman into the portly, white-chokered, pompous butler, he will still cleave to his first belief, and stoutly affirm that flesh and blood had nought to do with the disturbance that night in the haunted house.
Cricket has undergone many changes during its history, but, as far as we can tell, one thing has remained unaltered—the umpires are sole judges of fair and unfair play. The laws of 1774, which are the oldest in existence, say: ‘They (the umpires) are the sole judges of fair and unfair play, and all disputes shall be determined by them.’ Various directions have been given to them from time to time, but nothing has been done to lessen their responsibility or destroy their authority. An umpire must not bet on the match at which he is employed, and only for a breach of that law can he be changed without the consent of both parties. It is probable that the reason why an ordinary side in a cricket-match consists of eleven players is that originally a ‘round dozen’ took part in it, and that one on each side was told off to be umpire. An old writer on cricket says that in his district the players were umpires in turn; so, though there might be twelve of them present, only eleven were actually playing at once. This may have been a remnant of a universal custom; and it would explain why the peculiar number eleven is taken to designate a side in a cricket-match.
It is not always possible for an umpire to give satisfaction to both parties in a dispute, and very hard things have sometimes been said by those against whom a decision has been given. Mobbing an umpire is not so common in cricket as in football, but it is not unknown. Nervous men have sometimes been influenced by the outcries of spectators, and have given decisions contrary to their judgment. But occasionally the opposite effect has been produced by interference. A bowler who has been unpopular has been clamoured against when bowling fairly; and the umpire has not interfered even when he has bowled unfairly, lest it should look as if he was being coerced by the mob.
For some years there has been a growing demand for what may be called umpire reform. It has been said that in county matches umpires favoured their own sides. A few years ago, a Manchester paper commenced an account of a match between Lancashire and Yorkshire with these words: ‘The weather was hot, the players were hotter, but the umpiring was hottest of all.’ This kind of danger was sought to be obviated last year by the appointment of neutral umpires. The Marylebone Cricket Club appointed the umpires in all county matches; but this did not remove the dissatisfaction which had previously existed, as it was said that the umpires were afraid to enforce the strict laws of the game.
Some people who think there will not be fair-play as long as professional umpires are employed, would have amateurs in this position, and they predict that with the alteration there would be an end to all unfairness and dispute. But Lord Harris, who is the chief advocate for greater strictness on the part of umpires, says he believes they would never be successful in first-class matches; he has seen a good many amateur umpires in Australia, and, without impugning their integrity, he would be sorry to find umpires in England acting with so little experience and knowledge of the game.
Dr W. G. Grace has told two anecdotes of umpires whom he met in Australia. He says: ‘In an up-country match, our wicket-keeper stumped a man; but much to our astonishment the umpire gave him not out, and excused himself in the following terms: “Ah, ah! I was just watching you, Mr Bush; you had the tip of your nose just over the wicket.” In a match at Warrnambool, a man snicked a ball, and was caught by the wicket-keeper. The umpire at the bowler’s wicket being asked for a decision, replied: “This is a case where I can consult my colleague.” But of course the other umpire could not see a catch at the wicket such as this, and said so; whereupon our friend, being pressed for a decision, remarked: “Well, I suppose he is not out.”’
The Australians have frequently said that English professional umpires are afraid of giving gentlemen out, but this cannot be said of those who are chosen to stand in the chief matches. A well-known cricketer tells about a country match in which he was playing. A friend of his was tempting the fieldsmen to throw at his wicket, until at length one did throw, and hit it. ‘Not out,’ cried the umpire; and coming up to the batsman, said: ‘You really must be more careful, sir; you were clean out that time.’ This reminds us of the umpire who, in answer to an appeal, said: ‘Not out; but if he does it again, he will be.’ Caldecourt was a famous umpire—‘Honest Will Caldecourt,’ as he was called. The author of Cricketana had a high opinion of him, and said he could give a reason for everything. That is a great virtue in an umpire. Some men in that position will give decisions readily enough, but they either cannot or will not explain on what grounds their decisions are formed.
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John Lillywhite was a very honest umpire. It was his opinion that bowling was being tolerated which was contrary to the laws of cricket as they were then framed. In a match at Kennington Oval in 1862, he acted according to his opinion, for he was umpire. Lillywhite would not give way, and another umpire was employed in his place on the third day of the match. Lillywhite was right, and it was unfortunate that he was superseded. That was not the way to make umpires conscientious.
When the old All England Eleven were in their prime, and were playing matches in country places against eighteens and twenty-twos, the players did not always pay that deference to umpires which was customary on the best grounds, and advantage was sometimes taken of an umpire’s nervousness and inexperience. It seemed to be an axiom with some players, ‘To appeal is always safe.’ If several famous cricketers cried ‘How’s that?’ it is not to be wondered at that an umpire would occasionally say ‘Out’ on the spur of the moment, without knowing why. But a very fair retort was once made to a player who was fond of making appeals, on the chance of getting a lucky decision. ‘How’s that, umpire?’ he cried. The reply was: ‘Sir, you know it is not out; so why ask me, if you mean fair-play?’
The umpire has not an easy post to fill, even if he have all the assistance which can be rendered by the players. Points are constantly arising which are not provided for in the laws, and he must be guided by the practice of his predecessors in the best matches. There is such a thing as common law in cricket, as well as what may be called statute law. It is undecided whether the umpire should be considered part of the earth or part of the air. If a ball hit him, and be caught before it touch the ground, is the batsman out? Some umpires say Yes, and others say No. Severe accidents have sometimes happened to umpires who have been struck with the ball, and there is on record that at least one has met his death in this way.
When matches were played for money, and when cricket was subject to open gambling, it was more difficult for umpires to give satisfactory decisions than it is now. In the account of a match played about sixty years ago between Sheffield and Nottingham, the Sheffield scorer wrote, that every time a straight ball was bowled by a Sheffield bowler the Nottingham umpire called: ‘No ball.’ Many stories arose at that time about umpires who were supposed to favour their sides. One town was said to possess a champion umpire, and with his help the Club was prepared to meet all comers. Only twenty years ago, the following statement appeared in a respectable magazine: ‘Far north, there is an idea that a Yorkshire Eleven should have an umpire of their own, as a kind of Old Bailey witness to swear for Yorkshire through thick and thin.’
But Yorkshiremen themselves have told some racy stories about some of their umpires. One was appealed to for a catch, and he replied: ‘Not out; and I’ll bet you two to one you will not win.’ Another at the close of a match threw up his hat, and exclaimed: ‘Hurrah! I have won five shillings.’
It is well known that when Dr E. M. Grace made his first appearance at Canterbury, Fuller Pilch was umpire. The doctor was out immediately, but the umpire gave him in. When he was afterwards expostulated with, he said he wanted to see if that Mr Grace could bat; so, to satisfy his curiosity, he inflicted an injustice on his own side. If the same thing had been done in favour of his own county, it would not have offended a gentleman whom Mr Bolland refers to in his book on Cricket. This gentleman, referring to an umpire’s decision on one occasion, said: ‘He must be either drunk or a fool, to give one of his own side out in that manner.’
At Ecclesall, near Sheffield, there was formerly a parish clerk called Lingard, who was also a notable umpire. One hot Sunday he was asleep in his desk, and was dreaming about a match to be played the next day. After the sermon, when the time came for him to utter his customary ‘Amen,’ he surprised the preacher, and delighted the rustics who were present, by shouting in a loud voice the word ‘Over.’
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