III.—THE CATASTROPHE.
What the Psalmist said in sorrow, those who witnessed the career of the Honorable Ensign Spoonbill and his companions might have said, not in sorrow only but in anger: “One day told another, and one night certified another.”
When duty was to be performed—(for even under the command of such an officer as Colonel Tulip the routine of duty existed)—it was slurred over as hastily as possible, or got through as it best might be. When, on the other hand, pleasure was the order of the day,—and this was sought hourly,—no resource was left untried, no expedient unattempted; and strange things, in the shape of pleasure, were often the result.
The nominal duties were multifarious, and, had they been properly observed, would have left but a comparatively narrow margin for recreation,—for there was much in the old forms which took up time, without conveying any great amount of military instruction.
The orderly officer for the day—we speak of the subaltern—was supposed to go through a great deal. His duty it was to assist at inspections, superintend drills, examine the soldiers’ provisions, see their breakfasts and dinners served, and attend to any complaints, visit the regimental guards by day and night, be present at all parades and musters, and, finally, deliver in a written report of the proceedings of the four-and-twenty hours.
To go through this routine, required—as it received in some regiments—a few days’ training; but in the Hundredth there was none at all. Every officer in that distinguished corps was supposed to be “a Heaven-born genius,” and acquired his military education as pigeons pick up peas. The Hon. Ensign Spoonbill looked at his men after a fashion; could swear at them if they were excessively dirty, and perhaps awe them into silence by a portentous scowl, or an exaggerated loudness of voice; but with regard to the real purpose of inspection, he knew as little, and cared as much, as the valet who aired his noble father’s morning newspaper. His eye wandered over the men’s kits as they were exposed to his view; but to his mind they only conveyed the idea of a kaleidoscopic rag-fair, not that of an assortment of necessaries for the comfort and well-being of the soldier. He saw large masses of beef, exhibited in a raw state by the quartermaster, as the daily allowance for the men; but if any one had asked him if the meat was good, and of proper weight, how could he have answered, whose head was turned away in disgust, with his face buried in a scented cambric handkerchief, and his delicate nature loathing the whole scene? In the same spirit he saw the men’s breakfasts and dinners served; fortifying his opinion, at the first, that coffee could only be made in France, and wondering, at the second, what sort of potage it could be that contrived to smell so disagreeably. These things might be special affectations in the Hon. Ensign, and depended, probably, on his own peculiar organization; but if the rest of the officers of the Hundredth did not manifest as intense a dislike to this part of their duties, they were members of much too “crack” a regiment to give themselves any trouble about the matter. The drums beat, the messes were served, there was a hasty gallop through the barrack-rooms, scarcely looking right or left, and the orderly officer was only too happy to make his escape without being stopped by any impertinent complaint.
The “turning out” of the barrack guard was a thing to make an impression on a bystander. A loud shout, a sharp clatter of arms, a scurry of figures, a hasty formation, a brief inquiry if all was right, and a terse rejoinder that all was remarkably so, constituted the details of a visit to the body of men on whom devolved the task of extreme watchfulness, and the preservation of order. If the serjeant had replied “All wrong,” it would have equally enlightened Ensign Spoonbill, who went towards the guardhouse because his instructions told him to do so; but why he went there, and for what purpose he turned out the guard, never entered into his comprehension. Not even did a sense of responsibility awaken in him when, with much difficulty, he penned the report which gave, in a narrative form, the summary of the duties he had performed in so exemplary a manner. Performed, do we say? Yes, once or twice wholly, but for the most part with many gaps in the schedule. Sometimes the dinners were forgotten, now and then the tattoo, generally the afternoon parade, and not unfrequently the whole affair. For the latter omission, there was occasionally a nominal “wigging” administered, not by the commanding officer himself, but through the adjutant; and as that functionary was only looked upon by the youngsters in the light of a bore, without the slightest reverence for his office, his words—like those of Cassius—passed like the idle wind which none regarded. When Ensign Spoonbill “mounted guard” himself, his vigilance on his new post equalled the assiduity we have seen him exhibit in barracks. After the formality of trooping, marching down, and relieving, was over, the Honorable Ensign generally amused himself by a lounge in the vicinity of the guardhouse, until the field-officer’s “rounds” had been made; and that visitation at an end for the day, a neighboring billiard-room, with Captain Cushion for his antagonist or “a jolly pool” occupied him until dinner-time. It was the custom in the garrison where the Hundredth were quartered, as it was, indeed, in many others, for the officers on guard to dine with their mess, a couple of hours or so being granted for this indulgence. This relaxation was made up for, by their keeping close for the rest of the evening; but as there were generally two or three off duty sufficiently at leisure to find cigars and brandy-and-water attractive, even when consumed in a guard-room, the hardship of Ensign Spoonbill’s official imprisonment was not very great. With these friends, and these creature-comforts to solace, the time wore easily away till night fell, when the field-officer, if he was “a good-fellow,” came early, and Ensign Spoonbill, having given his friends their congé, was at liberty to “turn in” for the night, the onerous duty of visiting sentries and inspecting the reliefs every two hours, devolving upon the serjeant.
It may be inferred from these two examples of Ensign Spoonbill’s ideas of discipline and the service, what was the course he generally adopted on duty, without our being under the necessity of going into further details. What he did when off duty helped him on still more effectually.
Lord Pelican’s outfit having “mounted” the young gentleman, and the credit he obtained on the strength of being Lord Pelican’s son, keeping his stud in order, he was enabled to vie with the crackest of the crack Hundredth; subject, however, to all the accidents which horseflesh is heir to—especially when allied to a judgment of which green was the prevailing color. A “swap” to a disadvantage; an indiscreet purchase; a mistake as to the soundness of an animal; and such other errors of opinion, entailed certain losses, which might, after all, have been borne, without rendering the applications for money at home more frequent than agreeable; but when under the influence of a natural obstinacy, or the advice of some very “knowing ones,” Ensign Spoonbill proceeded to back his opinion in private matches, handicaps, and steeple-chases, the privy purse of Lady Pelican collapsed in a most unmistakable manner. Nor was this description of amusement the only rock-a-head in the course of the Honorable Ensign. The art or science of betting embraces the widest field, and the odds, given or taken, are equally fatal, whether the subject that elicits them be a match at billiards or a horse-race. Nor are the stakes at blind-hookey or unlimited loo less harmless, when you hav’n’t got luck and have such opponents as Captain Cushion.
In spite of the belief in his own powers, which Ensign Spoonbill encouraged, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that he was every day a loser; but wiser gamblers than he—if any there be—place reliance on a “turn of luck,” and all he wanted to enable him to take advantage of it, was a command of cash; for even one’s best friends prefer the coin of the realm to the most unimpeachable I. O. U.
The want of money is a common dilemma,—not the less disagreeable, however, because it is common—but in certain situations this want is more apparent than real. The Hon. Ensign Spoonbill was in the predicament of impecuniosity; but there were—as a celebrated statesman is in the habit of saying—three courses open to him. He might leave off play, and do without the money; he might “throw himself” on Lord Pelican’s paternal feelings; or he might somehow contrive to raise a supply on his own account. To leave off just at the moment when he was sure to win back all he had lost, would have been ridiculous; besides, every man of spirit in the regiment would have cut him. To throw himself upon the generosity of his sire was a good poetical idea; but, practically, it would have been of no value: for, in the first place, Lord Pelican had no money to give—in the next, there was an elder brother, whose wants were more imperative than his own; and lastly, he had already tried the experiment, and failed in the most signal manner. There remained, therefore, only the last expedient; and being advised, moreover, to have recourse to it, he went into the project tête baissée. The “advice” was tendered in this form.
“Well, Spooney, my boy, how are you, this morning?” kindly inquired Captain Cushion, one day on his return from parade, from which the Honorable Ensign had been absent on the plea of indisposition.
“Deuced queer,” was the reply; “that Roman punch always gives me the splittingest headaches!”
“Ah! you’re not used to it. I’m as fresh as a four-year-old. Well, what did you do last night, Spooney?”
“Do! why, I lost, of course; you ought to know that.”
“I—my dear fellow! Give you my honor I got up a loser!”
“Not to me, though,” grumbled the Ensign.
“Can’t say as to that,” replied the Captain; “all I know is, that I’m devilishly minus.”
“Who won, then?” inquired Spoonbill.
“Oh!” returned the Captain, after a slight pause, “I suspect—Chowser—he has somebody’s luck and his own too!”
“I think he must have mine,” said the Ensign, with a faint smile, as the alternations of the last night’s Blind Hookey came more vividly to his remembrance. “What did I lose to you, Cushion?” he continued, in the hope that his memory had deceived him.
The Captain’s pocket-book was out in an instant.
“Sixty-five, my dear fellow; that was all. By-the-bye, Spooney, I’m regularly hard up; can you let me have the tin? I wouldn’t trouble you, upon my soul, if I could possibly do without it, but I’ve got a heavy bill coming due to-morrow, and I can’t renew.”
The Honorable Ensign sank back on his pillow, and groaned impotently. Rallying, however, from this momentary weakness, he raised his head, and, after apostrophising the spirit of darkness as his best friend, exclaimed, “I’ll tell you what it is, Cushion, I’m thoroughly cleaned out. I haven’t got a dump!”
“Then you must fly a kite,” observed the Captain, coolly. “No difficulty about that.”
This was merely the repetition of counsel of the same friendly nature previously urged. The shock was not greater, therefore, than the young man’s nerves could bear.
“How is it to be done?” asked the neophyte.
“Oh, I think I can manage that for you. Yes,” pursued the Captain, musing, “Lazarus would let you have as much as you want, I dare say. His terms are rather high, to be sure; but then the cash is the thing. He’ll take your acceptance at once. Who will you get to draw the bill?”
“Draw!” said the Ensign, in a state of some bewilderment. “I don’t understand these things—couldn’t you do it?”
“Why,” replied the Captain, with an air of intense sincerity, “I’d do it for you with pleasure—nothing would delight me more; but I promised my grandmother when first I entered the service, that I never would draw a bill as long as I lived; and as a man of honor, you know, and a soldier, I can’t break my word.”
“But I thought you said you had a bill of your own coming due to-morrow,” observed the astute Spoonbill.
“So I did,” said the Captain, taken rather aback in the midst of his protestations, “but then it isn’t—exactly—a thing of this sort; it’s a kind of a bond—as it were—old family matters—the estate down in Lincolnshire—that I’m clearing off. Besides,” he added hurriedly, “there are plenty of fellows who’ll do it for you. There’s young Brittles—the Manchester man, who joined just after you. I never saw anybody screw into baulk better than he does, except yourself—he’s the one. Lazarus, I know, always prefers a young customer to an old one; knowing chaps, these Jews, arn’t they?”
Captain Cushion’s last remark was, no doubt, a just one—but he might have applied the term to himself with little dread of disparagement; and the end of the conversation was, that it was agreed a bill should be drawn as proposed, “say for three hundred pounds,” the Captain undertaking to get the affair arranged, and relieving Spoonbill of all trouble, save that of “merely” writing his name across a bit of stamped paper. These points being settled, the Captain left him, and the unprotected subaltern called for brandy and soda-water, by the aid of which stimulus he was enabled to rise and perform his toilette.
Messrs. Lazarus and Sons were merchants who perfectly understood their business, and, though they started difficulties, were only too happy to get fresh birds into their net. They knew to a certainty that the sum they were asked to advance would not be repaid at the end of the prescribed three months: it would scarcely have been worth their while to enter into the matter if it had; the profit on the hundred pounds’ worth of jewelry, which Ensign Spoonbill was required to take as part of the amount, would not have remunerated them sufficiently. Guessing pretty accurately which way the money would go, they foresaw renewed applications, and a long perspective of accumulating acceptances. Lord Pelican might be a needy nobleman; but he was Lord Pelican, and the Honorable George Spoonbill was his son; and if the latter did not succeed to the title and family estates, which was by no means improbable, there was Lady Pelican’s settlement for division amongst the younger children. So they advanced the money; that is to say, they produced a hundred and eighty pounds in cash, twenty they took for the accommodation (half of which found its way into the pocket of—never mind, we won’t say anything about Captain Cushion’s private affairs), and the value of the remaining hundred was made up with a series of pins and rings of the most stunning magnificence.
This was the Honorable Ensign Spoonbill’s first bill-transaction, but, the ice once broken, the second and third soon followed. He found it the pleasantest way in the world of raising money, and in a short time his affairs took a turn so decidedly commercial, that he applied the system to all his mercantile transactions. He paid his tailors after this fashion, satisfied Messrs. Mildew and his upholsterers with negotiable paper, and did “bits of stiff” with Galloper, the horse-dealer, to a very considerable figure. He even became facetious, not to say inspired, by this great discovery; for, amongst his papers, when they were afterwards overhauled by the official assignee—or some such fiscal dignitary,—a bacchanalian song in manuscript was found, supposed to have been written about this period, the refrain of which ran as follows:—
“When creditors clamor, and cash fails the till,
There is nothing so easy as giving a bill.”
It needs no ghost to rise from the grave to prophesy the sequel to this mode of “raising the wind.” It is recorded twenty times a month in the daily papers—now in the Bankruptcy Court, now in that for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors. Ensign Spoonbill’s career lasted about eighteen months, at the end of which period—not having prospered by the means of gaming to the extent he anticipated—he found himself under the necessity of selling out and retiring to a continental residence, leaving behind him debts, which were eventually paid, to the tune of seven thousand, two hundred and fourteen pounds, seventeen shillings, and tenpence three farthings, the vulgar fractions having their origin in the hair-splitting occasioned by reduplication of interest. He chose for his abode the pleasant town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he cultivated his moustaches, acquired a smattering of French, and an insight into the mystery of pigeon-shooting. For one or other of these qualifications—we cannot exactly say which—he was subsequently appointed attaché to a foreign embassy, and at the present moment, we believe, is considered one of those promising young men whose diplomatic skill will probably declare itself one of these days, by some stroke of finesse, which shall set all Europe by the ears.
With respect to Colonel Tulip’s “crack” regiment, it went, as the saying is, “to the Devil.” The exposure caused by the affair of Ensign Spoonbill—the smash of Ensign Brittles, which shortly followed—the duel between Lieutenant Wadding and Captain Cushion, the result of which was a ball (neither “spot” nor “plain,” but a bullet) through the head of the last-named gentleman, and a few other trifles of a similar description, at length attracted the “serious notice” of his Grace the Commander-in-Chief. It was significantly hinted to Colonel Tulip that it would be for the benefit of the service in general, and that of the Hundredth in particular, if he exchanged to half-pay, as the regiment required re-modelling. A smart Lieutenant-Colonel who had learnt something, not only of drill, but of discipline, under the hero of “Young Egypt,” in which country he had shared that general’s laurels, was sent down from the Horse Guards. “Weeding” to a considerable extent took place; the Majors and the Adjutant were replaced by more efficient men, and, to sum up all, the Duke’s “Circular” came out, laying down a principle of practical military education, while on service, which, if acted up to,—and there seems every reason to hope it will now be,—bids fair to make good officers of those who heretofore were merely idlers. It will also diminish the opportunities for gambling, drinking, and bill discounting, and substitute, for the written words on the Queen’s Commission, the real character of a soldier and a gentleman.
VII.
Father and Son.
ONE evening in the month of March, 1798,—that dark time in Ireland’s annals whose memory (overlooking all minor subsequent emeutes) is still preserved among us, as “the year of the rebellion”—a lady and gentleman were seated near a blazing fire in the old-fashioned dining-room of a large lonely mansion. They had just dined; wine and fruit were on the table, both untouched, while Mr. Hewson and his wife sat silently gazing at the fire, watching its flickering light becoming gradually more vivid as the short Spring twilight faded into darkness.
At length the husband poured out a glass of wine, drank it off, and then broke silence, by saying—
“Well, well, Charlotte, these are awful times; there were ten men taken up to-day for burning Cotter’s house at Knockane; and Tom Dycer says that every magistrate in the country is a marked man.”
Mrs. Hewson cast a frightened glance towards the windows, which opened nearly to the ground, and gave a view of the wide tree-besprinkled lawn, through whose centre a long straight avenue led to the high-road. There was also a footpath at either side of the house, branching off through close thickets of trees, and reaching the road by a circuitous route.
“Listen, James!” she said, after a pause; “what noise is that?”
“Nothing but the sighing of the wind among the trees. Come, wife, you must not give way to imaginary fears.”
“But really I heard something like footsteps on the gravel, round the gable-end—I wish”—
A knock at the parlor door interrupted her.
“Come in.”
The door opened, and Tim Gahan, Mr. Hewson’s confidential steward and right-hand man, entered, followed by a fair-haired delicate-looking boy of six years’ old, dressed in deep mourning.
“Well, Gahan, what do you want?”
“I ask your Honor’s pardon for disturbing you and the mistress; but I thought it right to come tell you the bad news I heard.”
“Something about the rebels, I suppose?”
“Yes, Sir; I got a whisper just now that there’s going to be a great rising intirely, to-morrow; thousands are to gather before daybreak at Kilcrean bog, where I’m told they have a power of pikes hiding; and then they’re to march on and sack every house in the country. I’ll engage, when I heard it, I didn’t let the grass grow under my feet, but came off straight to your Honor, thinking maybe you’d like to walk over this fine evening to Mr. Warren’s, and settle with him what’s best to be done.”
“Oh, James! I beseech you, don’t think of going.”
“Make your mind easy, Charlotte; I don’t intend it: not that I suppose there would be much risk; but, all things considered, I think I’m just as comfortable at home.”
The steward’s brow darkened, as he glanced nervously towards the end window, which, jutting out in the gable, formed a deep angle in the outer wall.
“Of course ’tis just as your honor plases, but I’ll warrant you there would be no harm in going. Come, Billy,” he added, addressing the child, who by this time was standing close to Mrs. Hewson, “make your bow, and bid good night to master and mistress.”
The boy did not stir, and Mrs. Hewson, taking his little hand in hers, said—
“You need not go home for half-an-hour, Gahan; stay and have a chat with the servants in the kitchen, and leave little Billy with me—and with the apples and nuts”—she added, smiling as she filled the child’s hands with fruit.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” said the steward hastily. “I can’t stop—I’m in a hurry home, where I wanted to leave this brat to-night; but he would follow me. Come, Billy; come this minute, you young rogue.”
Still the child looked reluctant, and Mr. Hewson said peremptorily.
“Don’t go yet, Gahan; I want to speak to you by-and-bye; and you know the mistress always likes to pet little Billy.”
Without replying, the steward left the room; and the next moment his hasty footsteps resounded through the long flagged passage that led to the offices.
“There’s something strange about Gahan, since his wife died,” remarked Mrs. Hewson. “I suppose ’tis grief for her that makes him look so darkly, and seem almost jealous when any one speaks to his child. Poor little Billy! your mother was a sore loss to you.”
The child’s blue eyes filled with tears, and pressing closer to the lady’s side, he said:—
“Old Peggy doesn’t wash and dress me as nicely as mammy used.”
“But your father is good to you?”
“Oh, yes, Ma’am, but he’s out all day busy, and I’ve no one to talk to me as mammy used; for Peggy is quite deaf, and besides she’s always busy with the pigs and chickens.”
“I wish I had you, Billy, to take care of, and to teach, for your poor mother’s sake.”
“And so you may, Charlotte,” said her husband. “I’m sure Gahan, with all his odd ways, is too sensible a fellow not to know how much it would be for his child’s benefit to be brought up and educated by us, and the boy would be an amusement to us in this lonely house. I’ll speak to him about it before he goes home. Billy, my fine fellow, come here,” he continued, “jump up on my knee, and tell me if you’d like to live here always, and learn to read and write.”
“I would, Sir, if I could be with father too.”
“So you shall;—and what about old Peggy?”
The child paused—
“I’d like to give her a pen’north of snuff and a piece of tobacco every week, for she said the other day that that would make her quite happy.”
Mr. Hewson laughed, and Billy prattled on, still seated on his knee; when a noise of footsteps on the ground, mingled with low suppressed talking, was heard outside.
“James, listen! there’s the noise again.”
It was now nearly dark, but Mr. Hewson, still holding the boy in his arms, walked towards the window and looked out.
“I can see nothing,” he said—“stay—there are figures moving off among the trees, and a man running round to the back of the house—very like Gahan he is too!”
Seizing the bell-rope he rang it loudly, and said to the servant who answered his summons:—
“Fasten the shutters and put up the bars, Connell; and then tell Gahan I want to see him.”
The man obeyed; candles were brought, and Gahan entered the room.
Mr. Hewson remarked that, though his cheeks were flushed, his lips were very white, and his bold dark eyes were cast on the ground.
“What took you round the house just now, Tim?” asked his master, in a careless manner.
“What took me round the house is it? Why, then, nothing in life, Sir, but that just as I went outside the kitchen door to take a smoke, I saw the pigs that Shaneen forgot to put up in their stye, making right for the mistress’ flower-garden; so I just put my dudheen, lighting as it was, into my pocket, and ran after them. I caught them on the grand walk under the end window, and indeed, Ma’am, I had my own share of work turning them back to their proper spear.”
Gahan spoke with unusual volubility, but without raising his eyes from the ground.
“Who were the people,” asked his master, “whom I saw moving through the western grove?”
“People! your Honor—not a sign of any people moving there, I’ll be bound, barring the pigs.”
“Then,” said Mr. Hewson, smiling, to his wife, “the miracle of Circe must have been reversed and swine turned into men; for, undoubtedly, the dark figures I saw were human beings.”
“Come, Billy,” said Gahan, anxious to turn the conversation, “will you come home with me now? I am sure ’twas very good of the mistress to give you all them fine apples.”
Mrs. Hewson was going to propose Billy’s remaining, but her husband whispered:—“Wait till to-morrow.” So Gahan and his child were allowed to depart.
Next morning the magistrates of the district were on the alert, and several suspicious-looking men found lurking about, were taken up. A hat which fitted one of them was picked up in Mr. Hewson’s grove; the gravel under the end window bore many signs of trampling feet; and there were marks on the wall as if guns had rested against it. Gahan’s information touching the intended meeting at Kilcrean bog proved to be totally without foundation; and after a careful search not a single pike or weapon of any description could be found there. All these circumstances combined certainly looked suspicious; but, after a long investigation, as no guilt could be actually brought home to Gahan, he was dismissed. One of his examiners, however, said privately, “I advise you take care of that fellow, Hewson. If I were in your place, I’d just trust him as far as I could throw him, and not an inch beyond.”
An indolent hospitable Irish country gentleman, such as Mr. Hewson, is never without an always shrewd and often roguish prime minister, who saves his master the trouble of looking after his own affairs, and manages everything that is to be done in both the home and foreign departments,—from putting a new door to the pig-stye, to letting a farm of an hundred acres on lease. Now in this, or rather these capacities, Gahan had long served Mr. Hewson; and some seven years previous to the evening on which our story commences, he had strengthened the tie and increased his influence considerably by marrying Mrs. Hewson’s favorite and faithful maid. One child was the result of this union; and Mrs. Hewson, who had no family of her own, took much interest in little Billy,—more especially after the death of his mother, who, poor thing! the neighbors said, was not very happy, and would gladly, if she dared, have exchanged her lonely cottage for the easy service of her former mistress.
Thus, though for a time Mr. and Mrs. Hewson regarded Gahan with some doubt, the feeling gradually wore away, and the steward regained his former influence.
After the lapse of a few stormy months the rebellion was quelled: all the prisoners taken up were severally disposed of by hanging, transportation or acquittal, according to the nature and amount of the evidence brought against them; and the country became as peaceful as it is in the volcanic nature of our Irish soil ever to be.
The Hewsons’ kindness towards Gahan’s child was steady and unchanged. They took him into their house, and gave him a plain but solid education; so that William, while yet a boy, was enabled to be of some use to his patron, and daily enjoyed more and more of his confidence.
Another Evening, the twentieth anniversary of that with which this narrative commenced, came round. Mr. and Mrs. Hewson were still hale and active, dwelling in their hospitable home. About eight o’clock at night, Tim Gahan, now a stooping, gray-haired man, entered Mr. Hewson’s kitchen, and took his seat on the corner of the settle, near the fire.
The cook directing a silent significant glance of compassion towards her fellow-servants, said:
“Would you like a drink of cider, Tim, or will you wait and take a cup of tay with myself and Kitty?”
The old man’s eyes were fixed on the fire, and a wrinkled hand was planted firmly on each knee, as if to check their involuntary trembling. “I’ll not drink anything this night, thank you kindly, Nelly,” he said, in a slow musing manner, dwelling long on each word.
“Where’s Billy?” he asked, after a pause, in a quick hurried tone, looking up suddenly at the cook, with an expression in his eyes, which, as she afterwards said, “took away her breath.”
“Oh, never heed Billy! I suppose he’s busy with the master.”
“Where’s the use, Nelly,” said the coachman, “in hiding it from him? Sure, sooner or later he must know it. Tim,” he continued, “God knows ’tis sorrow to my heart this blessed night to make yours sore,—but the truth is, that William has done what he oughtn’t to do to the man that was all one as a father to him.”
“What has he done? what will you dar say again my boy?”
“Taken money, then,” replied the coachman, “that the master had marked and put by in his desk; for he suspected this some time past that gold was missing. This morning ’twas gone; a search was made, and the marked guineas were found with your son William.”
The old man covered his face with his hands, and rocked himself to and fro.
“Where is he now?” at length he asked, in a hoarse voice.
“Locked up safe in the inner store-room; the master intends sending him to gaol early to-morrow morning.”
“He will not,” said Gahan slowly, “kill the boy that saved his life!—no, no.”
“Poor fellow! the grief is setting his mind astray—and sure no wonder!” said the cook, compassionately.
“I’m not astray!” cried the old man, fiercely.
“Where’s the master?—take me to him.”
“Come with me,” said the butler, “and I’ll ask him will he see you?”
With faltering steps the father complied; and when they reached the parlor, he trembled exceedingly, and leant against the wall for support, while the butler opened the door, and said:
“Gahan is here, Sir, and wants to know will you let him speak to you for a minute?”
“Tell him to come in,” said Mr. Hewson, in a solemn tone of sorrow, very different from his ordinary cheerful voice.
“Sir,” said the steward, advancing, “they tell me you are going to send my boy to prison,—is it true?”
“Too true, indeed, Gahan. The lad who was reared in my house, whom my wife watched over in health, and nursed in sickness—whom we loved almost as if he were our own, has robbed us, and that not once or twice, but many times. He is silent, and sullen, too, and refuses to tell why he stole the money, which was never withheld from him when he wanted it. I can make nothing of him, and must only give him up to justice in the morning.”
“No, Sir, no. The boy saved your life; you can’t take his.”
“You’re raving, Gahan.”
“Listen to me, Sir, and you won’t say so. You remember this night twenty years? I came here with my motherless child, and yourself and the mistress pitied us, and spoke loving words to him. Well for us all you did so! That night—little you thought it!—I was banded with them that were sworn to take your life. They were watching you outside the window, and I was sent to inveigle you out, that they might shoot you. A faint heart I had for the bloody business, for you were ever and always a good master to me; but I was under an oath to them that I darn’t break, supposing they ordered me to shoot my own mother. Well! the hand of God was over you, and you wouldn’t come with me. I ran out to them, and I said—“Boys, if you want to shoot him, you must do it through the window,” thinking they’d be afeard of that; but they weren’t—they were daring fellows, and one of them, sheltered by the angle of the window, took deadly aim at you. That very moment you took Billy on your knee, and I saw his fair head on a line with the musket. I don’t know exactly then what I said or did, but I remember I caught the man’s hand, threw it up, and pointed to the child. Knowing I was a determined man, I believe they didn’t wish to provoke me; so they watched you for awhile, and when you didn’t put him down they got daunted, hearing the sound of soldiers riding by the road, and they stole away through the grove. Most of that gang swung on the gallows, but the last of them died this morning quietly in his bed. Up to yesterday he used to make me give him money,—sums of money to buy his silence—and it was for that I made my boy a thief. It was wearing out his very life. Often he went down on his knees to me, and said: ‘Father, I’d die myself sooner than rob my master, but I can’t see you disgraced. Oh, let us fly the country!’ Now, Sir, I have told you all—do what you like with me—send me to gaol, I deserve it—but spare my poor, deluded, innocent boy!”
It would be difficult to describe Mr. Hewson’s feelings, but his wife’s first impulse was to hasten to liberate the prisoner. With a few incoherent words of explanation she led him into the presence of his master, who, looking at him sorrowfully but kindly, said:
“William, you have erred deeply, but not so deeply as I supposed. Your father has told me everything. I forgive him freely and you also.”
The young man covered his face with his hands, and wept tears more bitter and abundant than he had ever shed since the day when he followed his mother to the grave. He could say but little, but he knelt on the ground, and clasping the kind hand of her who had supplied to him that mother’s place, he murmured:
“Will you tell him I would rather die than sin again.”
Old Gahan died two years afterwards, truly penitent, invoking blessings on his son and on his benefactors; and the young man’s conduct, now no longer under evil influence, was so steady and so upright, that his adopted parents felt that their pious work was rewarded, and that, in William Gahan, they had indeed a son.