Jesse Cliffe

by Mary Russell Mitford

To collect this rope of variously-tinted beads—a natural rosary—he had sought the mossy and hair-lined nest of the hedge-sparrow for her turquoise-like rounds; had scrambled up the chimney-corner to bear away those pearls of the land, the small white eggs of the house-martin; had found deposited in an old magpie's nest the ovals of the sparrow-hawk, red and smooth as the finest coral; had dived into the ground-mansion of the skylark for her lilac-tinted shells, and groped amongst the bushes for the rosy-tinted ones of the woodlark; climbed the tallest trees for the sea-green eggs of the rooks; had pilfered the spotted treasures from the snug dwelling which the wren constructed in the eaves; and, worst of all—I hardly like to write it, I hardly care to think, that Jesse could have committed such an outrage,—saddest and worst of all, in the very midst of that varied garland might be seen the brown and dusky egg, as little showy as its quaker-like plumage, the dark brown egg, from which should have issued that "angel of the air," the songstress, famous in every land, the unparagoned nightingale. It is but just towards Jesse to add, that he took the nest in a mistake, and was quite unconscious of the mischief he had done until it was too late to repair it.

Of course these gifts were not only graciously accepted, but duly returned; cakes, apples, tarts, and gingerbread, halfpence in profusion, and now and then a new shilling, or a bright sixpence—all, in short, that poor Phoebe had to bestow, she showered upon her uncouth favourite, and she would fain have amended his condition by more substantial benefits: but authoritative as she was with her grandfather in other instances, in this alone her usual powers of persuasion utterly failed. Whether infected by old Daniel's dislike, (and be it observed, an unfounded prejudice, that sort of prejudice for which he who entertains it does not pretend to account even to himself is unluckily not only one of the most contagious feelings in the world, but one of the most invincible:) whether Farmer Cobham were inoculated with old Daniel's hatred of Jesse, or had taken that very virulent disease the natural way, nothing could exceed the bitterness of the aversion which gradually grew up in his mind towards the poor lad.

That Venus liked him, and Phoebe liked him, added strength to the feeling. He would have been ashamed to confess himself jealous of their good-will towards such an object, and yet most certainly jealous he was. He did not drive him from his shelter in the Moors, because he had unwarily passed his word—his word, which, with yeomanly pride, John Cobham held sacred as his bond—to let him remain until he committed some offence; but, for this offence, both he and Daniel watched and waited with an impatience and irritability which contrasted strangely with the honourable self-restraint that withheld him from direct abuse of his power.

For a long time, Daniel and his master waited in vain. Jesse, whom they had entertained some vague hope of chasing away by angry looks and scornful words, had been so much accustomed all his life long to taunts and contumely, that it was a great while before he became conscious of their unkindness; and when at last it forced itself upon his attention, he shrank away crouching and cowering, and buried himself in the closest recesses of the coppice, until the footstep of the reviler had passed by. One look at his sweet little friend repaid him twenty-fold; and although farmer Cobham had really worked himself into believing that there was danger in allowing the beautiful child to approach poor Jesse, and had therefore on different pretexts forbidden her visits to the Moors, she did yet happen in her various walks to encounter that devoted adherent oftener than would be believed possible by any one who has not been led to remark, how often in this best of all possible worlds, an earnest and innocent wish does as it were fulfil itself.

At last, however, a wish of a very different nature came to pass. Daniel Thorpe detected Jesse in an actual offence against that fertile source of crime and misery, the game laws.

Thus the affair happened.

During many weeks, the neighbourhood had been infested by a gang of bold, sturdy pilferers, roving vagabonds, begging by day, stealing and poaching by night—who had committed such extensive devastations amongst the poultry and linen of the village, as well as the game in the preserves, that the whole population was upon the alert; and the lonely coppices of the Moors rendering that spot one peculiarly likely to attract the attention of the gang, old Daniel, reinforced by a stout lad as a sort of extra-guard, kept a most jealous watch over his territory.

Perambulating the outside of the wood one evening at sunset, he heard the cry of a hare; and climbing over the fence, had the unexpected pleasure of seeing our friend Jesse in the act of taking a leveret still alive from the wire. "So, so, master Jesse! thou be'st turned poacher, be'st thou?" ejaculated Daniel, with a malicious chuckle, seizing, at one fell grip, the hare and the lad.

"Miss Phoebe!" ejaculated Jesse, submitting himself to the old man's grasp, but struggling to retain the leveret; "Miss Phoebe!"

"Miss Phoebe, indeed!" responded Daniel; "she saved thee once, my lad, but thy time's come now. What do'st thee want of the leveret, mon? Do'st not thee know that 'tis part of the evidence against thee? Well, he may carry that whilst I carry the snare. Master'll be main glad to see un. He always suspected the chap. And for the matter of that so did I. Miss Phoebe, indeed! Come along, my mon, I warrant thou hast seen thy last o' Miss Phoebe. Come on wi' thee."