The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863

by Henry Morford

Or was there, leaving the profession of the lawyer out of the question, something in the peculiar surroundings of this man—something in the relations of character and connection which he had allowed to grow around him, unfitting him for other amusements and researches in a city which he had never before visited, and one supplying such marvellous temptations to the sight-seer and the antiquarian? Or was he paying the penalty of the past in an unrest which left him no peace except he found it in continual motion and in the companionship and the study of those far more outlawed by statute but not more in social position than himself? Strange questions, again, and questions which cannot be answered, at this time, by any thing more than the mere suggestion.

Certain it is, whatever the motive, that Westminster Abbey, with its every stone sacred to the memory of the great dead, seemed to present no attractions to him, commensurate with those of Seven Dials, sacred to every phase of poverty and villany; that the Houses of Parliament were ignored in favor of St. Giles and Bermondsey, noted for debates of a very different character from those heard before the occupant of the Woolsack and the Speaker of the Commons; and that (this seeming so peculiarly strange in a lawyer of admitted character and power) even the Lord Chancellor, rendering one of those decisions calculated to affect not only the laws of property in England but the whole legal system wherever the English language was spoken, seemed to have far less attention paid to him or his dicta, than was given to some gownless libel on the practice of criminal law, who could point out the habits and haunts of Burly Bill, the noted burglar whom he had lately saved from transportation by proving that he was in three different places at once, and neither of them the spot where the crime was committed,—or Snivelling Sall, reputed to be in the near companionship of the most successful utterer of forged notes who had so far escaped the clutches of the detective birds of prey. Night and day, during all those two weeks, he seemed to eat hastily and to sleep only as if sleep was a secondary necessity of nature, to be thrown overboard whenever some all-absorbing thought should make continual wakefulness necessary.

Then the fancy (might it not be called madness?) seemed to change. He had either exhausted the crime of London or he had skimmed that compound until there was no novelty of rich villainy remaining. Without having examined one work of art or one antiquarian curiosity (so far as could be known), and certainly without having made one effort to find a footing in that society for which education and past associations would so well have fitted him,—he flitted away from London and the name of Carlton Brand was to be found inscribed on the books of one of the leading hotels at Manchester. And what did he there? Precisely what he had been doing in London, it appeared—nothing less and nothing more. Alternately in conversation with one of the detective force or with some one of the wretches whom the detective force was especially commissioned to bring to justice—the Manchester looms (not yet all stopped by the dearth of cotton and the "fratricidal war" in America) presented no more charm to him than had been afforded by the high-toned and rational attractions of the metropolis. At times dressed with what seemed a studied disregard of the graces of person, and scarcely ever so arraying himself that he would have dreamed of presenting himself in such a guise in the midst of any respectable circle at home—two or three days ran him through the criminal life of Manchester. Then away to Birmingham, and there—but why weary with repetition when a succeeding fact can be so well indicated by one that has preceded it? The same unsettled and apparently aimless life—if not aimless, certainly with tendencies the most singular and unaccountable. Thence to Bristol, and from Bristol to Liverpool. From Liverpool, with flying haste the whole length of the island and over the border to Edinburgh, paying no more attention, apparently, to the scenes of Scottish song and story by which he dashed, than might have been necessary to remember the cattle-rievers and free-booters who had long before furnished pattern for his late associates,—and seeing in the old closes and wynds frowned down upon by Calton Hill and the Castle, only retreats in which robbers could take refuge without serious risk of being unearthed. Then, strangely enough, away southward again to Dover, with a passage-ticket for Calais taken but countermanded before use, indicating that Paris had been in view but that some sudden circumstance had made a change in the all-the-while inexplicable calculation. What was all this—the question arises once more—the following out of some clue on which the whole welfare of a life was believed to depend, or merely the vague and purposeless pursuit of some melancholy fancy furnishing the very mockery of a clue through that labyrinth which borders the realm of declared madness?

The American had been something more than a month in England, and far away beyond his knowledge all the events before recorded as occurring to Margaret Hayley and her group of society in the White Mountains had already taken place,—when one afternoon, late in August, the train that dashed into Holyhead from Birmingham and Chester, by Anglesey and over the Menai, bore this exemplification of unrest as a passenger. Those who saw him emerge from the carriage upon the platform noticed the haste with which he appeared to step and the eagerness of his inquiry whether the train, which had been slightly delayed by an accident, was yet in time for the boat for Dublin. She had been gone for more than an hour, and the black smoke from her funnel was already fading away into a dim wreath driven rapidly northward before the sharp south-easter coming up the Channel. Night was fast falling, with indications that it would be any thing rather than a quiet one on that wild and turbulent bit of water lying between the two islands; and some of the old Welsh coastmen who yet lingered on the pier, when they saw the impatient man striding up and down and uttering imprecations on the delayed train, shrugged their shoulders with the remark, which he did not hear or did not choose to heed, that "they should be much obliged to any train that had kept them from taking a rocking in that cradle the night!"

Brow knit, head bent, tread nervous and almost angry, and manifesting all the symptoms of anxiety and disappointment, the American traversed the wharf, his tall form guarded against the slight chill of the summer evening on the coast by a coarse gray cloak which he drew closely around him as he walked, thus adding to the restless stateliness of his appearance. At one of his turns he was sufficiently disengaged to see a man of middle height, dressed in a somewhat dashing civilian costume, standing at a little distance up the pier and conversing with two or three of the coastmen. One of the latter was pointing towards himself; and the moment after the stranger approached with a bow. He was a young man of twenty-five or thereabouts, side-whiskered and moustached, decidedly good-looking, with quite as much of the Irishman as the Englishman in his face, and seemed at all points a gentleman—more, that much rarer combination, especially on the soil of the mother island, a frank, clever fellow!

"They tell me, sir," said the stranger, "that you were one of the passengers on that delayed train, and that you manifest some disappointment at missing the Dublin boat."

"They are entirely correct, sir," answered the American, returning the bow. "I was very anxious, for particular reasons, to be in Dublin to-morrow; and in fact the whole object of my visiting Ireland at all, just now, may very probably be defeated by the accident that brought in the train that half hour too late."

He spoke in a tone very earnest and not a little agitated. The other remarked the fact, but he thought himself too good a judge of character to suspect, as some other persons under similar circumstances might have done, that the anxious man was a hunted member of the swell-mob or a criminal of some other order, who thought it politic to get off English soil as soon as possible. He determined, at the second glance, that he had to do with a gentleman, and proceeded with the words that he had evidently intended to say on first accosting the delayed passenger.

"You have made no arrangements for getting over, I suppose?"

"None, whatever!" answered the American. "How can I, until the boat of to-morrow, when—when it may be too late altogether for my purpose? I was walking off my disappointment, a sort of thing that I have been more or less used to all my life!" and the other noticed that he seemed to sigh wearily—"walking it off before going to find a hotel and lying awake all night, thinking of where I ought to have been at each particular hour."