The Wayfarers

by J. C. Snaith

I COME A PRISONER TO A FAMILIAR HOUSE, AND FIND STRANGE COMPANY

We had marched along for what seemed to me in my unhappy state an intolerable period, although I suppose actually the time was less than an hour, when we passed through the gates of a great house. When the porter came out of his lodge to let us through, and held his lantern against the iron-work, I observed that the device of the family wrought therein had a strangely familiar appearance. There was something about the porter too that awoke all sorts of remote recollections in my mind. As we went along the paths, even the situation of the trees that skirted them added to this impression. And when we came at last on to the lawn, and the house itself was clearly exposed in the moonlight, a cry of surprise almost escaped my lips, for the place had once been my own.

It was a house in which a great part of my boyhood had been spent, and one that I had inherited at my father's death. It was but a little while that it remained in my hands, however, for one night, having lost much more than I cared about over a game of piquet, I think it was, in a desperate attempt to retrieve my fortunes, I staked this precious house upon the cards and lost it also, to a fellow as reckless as myself. It is impossible to say, therefore, what my emotions were at this my strange return to the home of my childhood, and the seat for many a generation of those whose name I bore. But I think that the first moment of recognition over, my tendency was towards laughter, for could anything have been more comical than that I should be brought in such a company, and on such a charge, to this of all the places in the world?

Even the fellow who replied to the summons on the great hall-door, I remembered nearly as well as my own father, for I ought to tell you that servants, furniture and plate had passed over with the property. We were kept waiting without whilst the head-constable or chief officer among our captors went in to confer with the magistrate. In the end it was decided that we should be brought before the justice in person. He was said to have been a prime mover in the matter from the first, and was highly incensed against the unfortunate gypsies.

"We could not have come to a worse place," said my friend the flute-player, who stood beside me. "This is the house of Sir Thomas Wheatley, a hard man, and the biggest enemy to us poor folk of any one about. If his name and interest count for anything, we shall all of us infallibly be hanged."

There were eight of us prisoners, and we were presently led into Sir Thomas's presence. When we were brought into the fine dining-room that I knew so well, every inch of which was so familiar to me, in which every object of vertu and article of furniture was a thing so well recollected that even in this predicament I could not refrain from regarding them with pride and affection, how can I indicate the flood of emotions that surged in my head? After all, a man in the depths of his abandonment is something more than a piece of wood.

The justice was a common type of person enough; a man in middle life, who doubtless lived well and drank much, to judge by his purple cheeks and the somewhat puffed appearance of his body. He was a middling sort of man in every way; middling in his stature, in his mind and in his character, and more especially so, as we were to discover, in his thoughts and ideas. He affected the very nicest style of the squire in his dress, was highly formal in his deportment; and he sat playing cards with another fellow, apparently not so much for the amusement of himself or the entertainment of his friend, but rather as one who followed a dignified occupation in a dignified way. In his every word, gesture and motion he had an indescribable air of one sitting for his picture. He was in a towering rage, it is true, but it was a rage that appeared not to spring from the heat of his blood, for he was of that lethargic habit, which does not rise to heats of any sort. He was in a towering rage, because it was expected of one of his position and sentiments to be in one at such a time. Therefore, when we poor prisoners had been ranged along the wall, he put down his cards with great deliberation, slowly wheeled his chair round towards us, put together his thumbs, and looked us all over with a noble indignation.

"Soh!" says the justice, counting us carefully. "One, two, three—eight of you fairly taken; eight cut-throat rogues that most richly merit a hanging. And a hanging you shall get if there is any law left in the country. I will commit you at once, so help me I will! Fetch me pen and ink somebody, and I'll fill in the mittimus. I hope you are mightily ashamed of yourselves, you wicked, blackamoor villains."

"Can you not see that they are, good Tommie?" says the man with whom he was playing at cards. "They are as ashamed as the devil was when he singed the hairs on his tail through overheating his parlour."

The solemn justice was somewhat shocked at this piece of levity. He frowned at his companion, and coughed to cover his annoyance. The man who had spoken to this disconcerting tenor appeared rather a singular fellow. It was difficult to say who or what he might be. Of a rather massive frame, he had a countenance that recommended him to the curious. His features were large and bold, with an aquiline nose, a devil of a chin, and a short upper lip. His face shone with wassail and intemperate excess; there was a deal of sensuality in it, and more than a suggestion of coarseness, but it was for none of these things that it was remarkable. There was something besides that was baffling and indescribable to a degree, that drew one's attention to it again and again. It was a face of marvellous humorous animation, with the mockery of a devil and the candour of a saint. It was as prodigal of wit as it was of appetite; of majesty and mischief; of impudence and nobility. It was the face of a poet and a sot. Here, apparently, was a great heart, a humane spirit overlaid with flesh and infirmities. I think I was never so arrested by a countenance before, and certainly never more puzzled by one.