The reader has doubtless remarked, that amongst the lawless and the rash, there is a certain fondness for figures of speech, and that tropes and metaphors, simile and synecdoche, are far more prevalent amongst them than amongst the more orderly classes of society. Whether it is or not, that they wish to get rid of a precise apprehension of their own acts, I cannot say; but certain it is, that they do indulge in such flowers of rhetoric, and sometimes, in the midst of humour, quaintness, and even absurdity, reach the point of wit, and at times soar into the sublime. Galley Ray had, as we have seen, one daughter, whose fate has been related; and that daughter left one son, who, after his reputed father, one Mark Nightingale, was baptized Nightingale Ray. His mother, and after her death his grandmother, used to call him Little Nighty and Little Night; but following their fanciful habits, the smugglers who used to frequent the house found out an association between "Night Ray" and the beams of the bright and mystical orbs that shine upon us from afar; and some one gave him the name of Little Starlight, which remained with him, as that of Galley had adhered to his grandmother. The cottage or hut of the latter, then, beamed with an unwonted blaze upon the night I have spoken of, till long after the hour when Mowle had left the inn where his conference with the young officer had taken place. But let not the reader suppose that this illumination proceeded from any great expense of wax or oil. Only one small tallow candle, stuck into a long-necked, square-sided Dutch bottle, spread its rays through the interior of the hovel, and that was a luxury; but in the fireplace blazed an immense pile of mingled wood and driftcoal; and over it hung a large hissing pot, as huge and capacious as that of the witches in Macbeth, or of the no less famous Meg Merrilies. Galley Ray, however, was a very different person in appearance from the heroine of "Guy Mannering;" and we must endeavour to call up her image as she stood by the fire-side, watching the cauldron and a kettle which stood close to it.
The red and fitful light flashed upon no tall, gaunt form, and lighted up no wild and commanding features. There was nothing at all poetical in her aspect: it was such as may be seen every day in the haunts of misery and vice. Originally of the middle height, though once strong and upright, she had somewhat sunk down under the hand of Time, and was now rather short than otherwise. About fifty she had grown fat and heavy; but fifteen years more had robbed her flesh of firmness and her skin of its plumped out smoothness; and though she had not yet reached the period when emaciation accompanies decrepitude, her muscles were loose and hanging, her face withered and sallow. Her hair, once as black as jet, was now quite grey, not silver--but with the white greatly predominating over the black. Yet, strange to say, her eyes were still clear and bright, though small, and somewhat red round the lids; and, stranger still, her front teeth were white as ivory, offering a strange contrast to the wrinkled and yellow skin. Her look was keen; but there was that sort of habitual jocularity about it, which in people of her caste is often partly assumed--as an ever ready excuse for evading a close question, or covering a dangerous suggestion by a jest--and partly natural, or at least springing from a fearful kind of philosophy, gained by the exhaustion of all sorts of criminal pleasures, which leaves behind, too surely, the impression that everything is but a mockery on earth. Those who have adopted that philosophy never give a thought beyond this world. Her figure was somewhat bowed, and over her shoulders she had the fragments of a coarse woollen shawl, from beneath which appeared, as she stirred the pot, her sharp yellow elbows and long arms. On her head she wore a cap, which had remained there, night and day, for months; and, thrust back from her forehead, which was low and heavy, appeared the dishevelled grey hair, while beneath the thick and beetling brows came the keen eyes, and a nose somewhat aquiline and depressed at the point.
Near her, on the opposite side of the hearth, was the boy whom the reader has already seen, and who has been called little Starlight; and, even at that late hour, for it was near midnight, he seemed as brisk and active as ever. Night and day, indeed, appeared to him the same; for he had none of the habits of childhood. The setting sun brought no drowsiness to his eyelids: mid-day often found him sleeping after a night of watchfulness and activity. The whole course of his existence and his thoughts had been tainted: there was nothing of youth either in his mind or his ways. The old beldam called him, and thought him, the shrewdest boy that ever lived; but, in truth, she had left him no longer a boy, in aught but size and looks. Often--indeed generally--he would assume the tone of his years, for he found it served his purpose best; but he only laughed at those who thought him a child, and prided himself on the cunning of the artifice.
There might be, it is true, some lingering of the faults of youth, but that was all. He was greedy and voracious, loved sweet things as well as strong drink, and could not always curb the truant and erratic spirit of childhood; but still, even in his wanderings there was a purpose, and often a malevolence. He would go to see what one person was about; he would stay away because another wanted him. It may be asked, was this natural wickedness?--was his heart so formed originally? Oh no, reader; never believe such things. There are certainly infinite varieties of human character; and I admit that the mind of man is not the blank sheet of paper on which we can write what we please, as has been vainly represented. Or, if it be, the experience of every man must have shown him, that that paper is of every different kind and quality--some that will retain the finest line, some that will scarce receive the broadest trace. But still education has immense power for good or evil. By education I do not mean teaching. I mean that great and wonderful process by which, commencing at the earliest period of infancy--ay, at the mother's breast--the raw material of the mind is manufactured into all the varieties that we see. I mean the sum of every line with which the paper is written as it passes from hand to hand. That is education; and most careful should we be that, at an early period, nought should be written but good, for every word once impressed is well nigh indelible.
Now what education had that poor boy received? The people of the neighbouring village would have said a very good one; for there was what is called a charity school in the neighbourhood, where he had been taught to read and write, and cast accounts. But this was teaching, not education. Oh, fatal mistake! when will Englishmen learn to discriminate between the two? His education had been at home--in that miserable hut--by that wretched woman--by her companions in vice and crime! What had all the teaching he had received at the school done for him, but placed weapons in the hand of wickedness? Had education formed any part of the system of the school where he was instructed--had he been taught how best to use the gifts that were imparted--had he been inured to regulate the mind that was stored--had he been habituated to draw just conclusions from all he read, instead of merely being taught to read, that would have been in some degree education, and it might have corrected, to a certain point, the darker schooling he received at home. Well might the great philosopher, who in some things most grossly misused the knowledge he himself possessed, pronounce that "Knowledge is power;" but, alas, he forgot to add, that it is power for good or evil! That poor child had been taught that which to him might have been either a blessing or a bane; but all his real education had been for evil; and there he stood, corrupted to the heart's core.
"I say, Mother Ray," he exclaimed, "that smells cursed nice--can't you give us a drop before the coves come?"
"No, no, you young devil," replied the old woman with a grin, "one can't tell when they'll show their mugs at the door; and it wouldn't do for them to find you gobbling up their stuff. But bring me that big porringer, and we'll put by enough for you and me. I've nimmed one half of the yellow-boy they sent, so we'll have a quart of moonshine to-morrow to help it down."
"I could get it very well down without," answered little Starlight, bringing her a large earthen pot, with a cracked cover, into which she ladled out about half a gallon of the soup.
"There, take and put that far under the bed in t'other room," said the old woman, adding several expletives of so peculiar and unpleasant a character, that I must omit them; and, indeed, trusting to the reader's imagination, I shall beg leave to soften, as far as possible, the terms of both the boy and his grandmother for the future, merely premising, that when conversing alone together, hardly a sentence escaped their lips without an oath or a blasphemy.
Little Starlight soon received the pot from the hands of his worthy ancestress, and conveyed it into the other room, where he stayed so long that she called him to come forth, in what, to ordinary ears, would have seemed the most abusive language, but which, on her lips, was merely the tone of endearment. He had waited, indeed, to cool the soup, in order to steal a portion of the stolen food; but finding that he should be detected if he remained longer, he ventured to put his finger in to taste it. The result was that he scalded his hand; but he was sufficiently Spartan to utter no cry or indication of pain; and he escaped all inquiry; for the moment after he had returned, the door burst violently open, and some ten or twelve men came pouring in, nearly filling the little room.