CHAPTER XXXI.
Marlow was soon on horseback, and riding on to the country town. But he had lingered longer with Emily than he imagined, and the day declined visibly as he rode along.
"The business hours are over," he thought; "bankers and lawyers will have abandoned the money-getting and mischief-making toils of the day; and I must stay at the inn till to-morrow."
He had been riding fast; but he now drew in his rein, and suffered his horse to walk. The sun was setting gloriously, and the rich, rosy light, diffused through the air, gave every thing an aspect of warmth, and richness, and cheerfulness. But Marlow's heart was any thing but gay. Whether it was that the scenes which he had passed through in London, his visits to a prison, his dealings with hard official men, the toiling, moiling crowds that had surrounded him; the wearisome, eternal, yet ever-changing struggle of life displayed in the streets and houses of a capital, the infinite varieties of selfishness, and folly, and vice, and crime, had depressed his spirits, or that his health had somewhat suffered in consequence of anxious waiting for events in the foul air of the metropolis, I cannot tell. But certain, he was sadder than was usual with him. His was a spirit strong and active, naturally disposed to bright views and happy hopes, too firm to be easily depressed, too elastic to be long kept down. But yet, as he rode along, there was a sort of feeling of apprehension upon his mind that oppressed him mightily. He revolved all that had lately passed. He compared the state of Mr. Hastings' family, as it actually was, with what it had been when he first knew it, and there seemed to be a strange mystery in the change. It had then been all happiness and prosperity with that household; a calm, grave, thoughtful, but happy father and husband; a bright, amiable, affectionate mother and wife; a daughter, to his mind the image of every thing that was sweet, and gentle, and tender--of every thing that was gay, and sparkling, and cheerful; full of light and life, and fancy, and hope. Now, there was a father in prison, deprived of his greatest share of worldly prosperity, cast down from his station in society, gloomy, desponding, suspicious, and, as it seemed to him, hardly sane: a mother, irritable, capricious, peevish, yielding to calamity, and lying on a bed of sickness, while the bright angel of his love remained to nurse, and tend, and soothe the one parent, with a heart torn and bleeding for the distresses of the other. "What have they done to merit all this?" he asked himself. "What fault, what crime have they committed to draw down such sorrows on their heads? None--none whatever. Their lives had been spent in kindly acts and good deeds; they had followed the precepts of the religion they professed; their lives had been spent in doing service to their fellow-creatures, and making all happy around them."
Then again, on the other hand, he saw the coarse, and the low, and the base, and the licentious prosperous and successful, rising on the ruins of the pure and the true. Wily schemes and villanous intrigues obtaining every advantage, and honesty of purpose and rectitude of action frustrated and cast down.
Marlow was no unbeliever--he was not even inclined to skepticism--but his mind labored, not without humility and reverence, to see how it could reconcile such facts with the goodness and providence of God.
"He makes the sun shine upon the just and the unjust, we are told," said Marlow to himself; "but here the sun seems to shine upon the unjust alone, and clouds and tempests hang about the just. It is very strange, and even discouraging; and yet, all that we see of these strange, unaccountable dispensations may teach us lessons for hereafter--may give us the grandest confirmation of the grandest truth. There must be another world, in which these things will be made equal--a world where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. We only see in part, and the part we do not see must be the part which will reconcile all the seeming contradictions between the justice and goodness of God and the course of this mortal life."
This train pursued him till he reached the town, and put up his horse at the inn. By that time it was quite dark, and he had tasted nothing since early in the morning. He therefore ordered supper, and the landlord, by whom he was now well known--a good, old, honest, country landlord of the olden time--brought in the meal himself, and waited on his guest at table. It was so much the custom of gentlemen, in those days, to order wine whenever they stopped at an inn--it was looked upon so much as a matter of course that this should be done for the good of the house--that the landlord, without any direct commands to that effect, brought in a bottle of his very best old sherry, always a favorite wine with the English people, though now hardly to be got, and placed it by the side of his guest. Marlow was by habit no drinker of much wine. He avoided, as much as in him lay, the deep potations then almost universal in England; but, not without an object, he that night gave in to a custom which was very common in England then, and for many years afterwards, and requested the landlord, after the meal was over, to sit down, and help him with his bottle.
"You'll need another bottle, if I once begin, Master Marlow," said the jolly landlord, who was a wag in his way.
Marlow nodded his head significantly, as if he were prepared for the infliction, replying quietly, "Under the influence of your good chat, Mr. Cherrydew, I can bear it, I think."
"Well, that's hearty," said the landlord, drawing a chair sideways to the table; for his vast rotundity prevented him from approaching it full front. "Here's to your very good health, sir, and may you never drink worse wine, sit in a colder room, or have a sadder companion."
Now I have said that Marlow did not invite the landlord to join him, without an object. That object was to obtain information, and it had struck him even while the trout, which formed the first dish at his supper, was being placed on the table, that he might be able, if willing, to afford it.
Landlords in England at that time--I mean, of course, in country towns--were very different in many respects, and of a different class from what they are at present. In the first place, they were not fine gentlemen: in the next place, they were not discharged valets de chambre, or butlers, who, having cheated their masters handsomely, and perhaps laid them under contribution in many ways, retire to enjoy the fat things at their ease in their native town. Then, again, they were on terms of familiar intercourse with two or three classes, completely separate and distinct from each other--a sort of connecting link between them. At their door the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the great man of the neighborhood, dismounted from his horse, and had his chat with mine host. There came the village lawyer when he had gained a cause, or won a large fee, or had been paid a long bill, to indulge in his pint of sherry, and gossipped, as he drank it, of all the affairs of his clients. There sneaked in the Doctor to get his glass of eau de vie, or plague water, or aqua mirabilis, or strong spirits, in short of any other denomination, and tell little dirty anecdotes of his cases, and his patients. There the alderman, the wealthy shop-keeper, and the small proprietor, or the large farmer, came to take his cheerful cup on Saturdays or on market-day. But, besides these, the inn was the resort, though approached by another door, of a lower and a poorer class, with whom the landlord was still upon as good terms as with the others. The wagoner, the carter, the lawyer's and the banker's clerk, the shopman, the porter even, all came there; and it mattered not to Mr. Cherrydew or his confraternity, whether it was a bowl of punch, a draught of ale, a glass of spirits, or a bottle of old wine that his guests demanded; he was civil, and familiar, and chatty with them all.
Thus under the rosy and radiant face of Mr. Cherrydew, and in that good, round, fat head, was probably accumulated a greater mass of information, regarding the neighborhood in which he lived, and all that went on therein, than in any other head, in the whole town, and the only difficulty was to extract that part of the store which was wanted.
Marlow knew that it would not do to approach the principal subject of inquiry rashly; for Mr. Cherrydew, like most of his craft, was somewhat cautious, and would have shut himself up in silent reserve, or enveloped himself in intangible ambiguities, if he had known that his guest had any distinct and important object in his questions--having a notion that a landlord should be perfectly cosmopolitan in all his feelings and his actions, and should never commit himself in such a manner as to offend any one who was, had been, or might be his guest. He was fond of gossip, it is true, loved a jest, and was not at all blind to the ridiculous in the actions of his neighbors; but habitual caution was in continual struggle with his merry, tattling disposition, and he was generally considered a very safe man.
Marlow, therefore, began at a great distance, saying, "I have just come down from London, Mr. Cherrydew, and rode over, thinking that I should arrive in time to catch my lawyer in his office."
"That is all over now, sir, for the night," replied the landlord. "In this, two-legged foxes differ from others: they go to their holes at sunset, just when other foxes go out to walk. They divide the world between them, Master Marlow; the one preys by day, the other by night.--Well, I should like to see Lunnun. It must be a grand place, sir, though somewhat of a bad one. Why, what a number of executions I have read of there lately, and then, this Sir John Fenwick's business. Why, he changed horses here, going to dine with Sir Philip, as I shall call him to the end of my days. Ah, poor gentleman, he has been in great trouble! But I suppose, from what I hear, he'll get clear now?"
"Beyond all doubt," said Marlow; "the Government have no case against him. But you say very true, Mr. Cherrydew, there has been a sad number of executions in London--seven and twenty people hanged, at different times, while I was there."
"And the town no better," said Mr. Cherrydew.
"By the way," said Marlow, "were you not one of the jury at the trial of that fellow, Tom Cutter?--Fill your glass, Mr. Cherrydew."
"Thank you, sir.--Yes I was, to be sure," answered the landlord; "and I'll tell you the funniest thing in the world that happened the second day. Lord bless you, sir, I was foreman,--and on the first day the judge suffered the case to go on till his dinner was quite cold, and we were all half starved; but he saw that he could not hang him that night, at all events--here's to your health, sir!--so he adjourned the Court, and called for a constable, and ordered all of us, poor devils, to be locked up tight in Jones's public-house till the next day; for the jury room is so small, that there is not standing-room for more than three such as me. Well, the other men did not much like it, though I did not care,--for I had my boots full of ham, and a brandy-bottle in my breeches-pocket. One of them asked the judge, for all his great black eyebrows, if he could'nt go on that night; but his lordship answered, with a snort like a cart horse, and told us to hold our tongues, and mind our own business, and only to take care and keep ourselves together. Well, sir, we had to walk up the hill, you know, and there was the constable following us with his staff in his hand; so I had compassion on my poor fellow-sufferers, and I whispered, first to one, then to another, that this sort of jog would never do, but I would manage to tell them how to have a good night's rest. You see, says I, here's but one constable to thirteen people, so when you get to the cross-roads, let every man take up his legs and run, each his own way. He can but catch one, and the slowest runner will have the chance. Now, I was the fattest of them all, you see, so that every one of them thought that I should be the man. Well, sir, they followed my advice; but it's a different thing to give advice, and take it. No sooner did we get to the cross-roads, than they scattered like a heap of dust in the wind, some down the roads and lanes, some over the styles and gates, some through the hedges. Little Sninkum, the tailor, stuck in the hedge by the way, and was the man caught, for he was afraid of his broadcloth; but I stood stock still, with a look of marvellous astonishment, crying out, 'For God's sake catch them, constable, or what will my lord say to you and me?' Off the poor devil set in a moment, one man to catch twelve, all over the face of the country. He thought he was sure enough of me; but what did I do I why, as soon as he was gone, I waddled home to my own house, and got my wife to put me to bed up-stairs, and pass me for my grandfather. Well, sir, that's not the best of it yet. We were all in Court next day at the right hour, and snug in the jury-box before the judge came in; but I have a notion he had heard something of the matter. He looked mighty hard at Sninkum, whose face was all scratched to pieces, and opening his mouth with a pop, like the drawing of a cork, he said, 'Why, man, you look as if you and your brethren had been fighting!' and then he looked as hard at me, and roared, 'I hope, gentlemen, you have kept yourselves together?' Thereupon, I laid my two hands upon my stomach, sir,--it weighs a hundred and a half, if it were cut off to-morrow, as I know to my cost, who carry it--and I answered quite, respectful, 'I can't answer for the other gentlemen, my lord, but I'll swear I've kept myself together.' You should have heard how the Court rang with the people laughing, while I remained as grave as a judge, and much graver than the one who was there; for I thought he would have burst before he was done, and a fine mess that would have made."
Serious as his thoughts were, Marlow could not refrain from smiling; but he did not forget his object, and remarked, "There were efforts made to save that scoundrel, and the present Sir John Hastings certainly did his best for his friend."
"Call him John Ayliffe, sir, call him John Ayliffe," said the host. "Here's to you, sir,--he's never called any thing else here."
"I wonder," said Marlow, musingly, "if there was any relationship between this Tom Cutter and John Ayliffe's mother?"
"Not a pin's point of it, sir," replied the landlord. "They were just two bad fellows together; that was the connection between them, and nothing else."
"Well, John stood by his friend, at all events," said Marlow; "though where he got the money to pay the lawyers in that case, or in his suit against Sir Philip, is a marvel to me."
Mine host winked his eye knowingly, and gave a short laugh.
That did not entirely suit Marlow's purpose, and he added in a musing tone, "I know that he wanted to borrow ten pounds two or three months before, but was refused, because he had not repaid what he had borrowed of the same party, previously."
"Ay, ay, sir," said the landlord; "there are secrets in all things. He got money, and money enough, somehow, just about that time. He has not repaid it yet, either, but he has given a mortgage, I hear, for the amount; and if he don't mortgage his own carcase for it too, I am very much mistaken, before he has done."
"Mortgage his own carcase! I do not understand what you mean," replied Marlow. "I am sure I would not give a shilling for that piece of earth."
"A pretty widow lady, not a hundred miles off, may think differently," replied the landlord, grinning again, and filling his glass once more.
"Ah, ha," said Marlow, trying to laugh likewise; "so you think she advanced the money, do you?"
"I am quite sure of it, sir," said Mr. Cherrydew, nodding his head profoundly. "I did not witness the mortgage, but I know one who did."
"What! Shanks' clerk, I suppose," said Marlow.
"No, sir, no," replied the landlord; "Shanks did not draw the mortgage, either; for he was lawyer to both parties, and Mrs. Hazleton didn't like that;--O, she's cute enough!"
"I think you must be mistaken," said Marlow, in a decided tone; "for Mrs. Hazleton assured me, when there was a question between herself and me, that she was not nearly as rich as she was supposed, and that if the law should award me back rents, it would ruin her."
"Gammon, sir!" replied the landlord, who had now imbibed a sufficient quantity of wine, in addition to sundry potations during the day. "I should not have thought you a man to be so easily hooked, Mr. Marlow; but if you will ask the clerk of Doubledoo and Kay, who was down here, staying three or four days about business, you'll find that she advanced every penny, and got a mortgage for upwards of five thousand pounds;--but I think we had better have that other bottle, sir?"
"By all means," said Marlow, and Mr. Cherrydew rolled away to fetch it.
"By the way, what was that clerk's name you mentioned?"
"Sims, sir, Sims," said the landlord, drawing the cork; and then setting down the bottle on the table, he added, with a look of great contempt, "he's the leetlest little man you ever saw, sir, not so tall as my girl Dolly, and with no more stomach than a currycomb, a sort of cross breed between a monkey and a penknife. He's as full of fun as the one, too, and as sharp as the other. He will hold a prodigious quantity of punch, though, small as he is. I could not fancy where he put it all, it must have gone into his shoes."
"Come, come, Mr. Cherrydew," said Marlow, laughing, "do not speak disrespectfully of thin people--I am not very fat myself."
"Lord bless you, sir, you are quite a fine, personable man; and in time, with a few butts, you would be as fine a man as I am."
Marlow devoutly hoped not, but he begged Mr. Cherrydew to sit down again, and do his best to help him through the wine he had brought; and out of that bottle came a great many things which Marlow wanted much more than the good sherry which it contained.