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Story
CHAPTER I--IN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER
Strictly speaking, there were only six Poor Travellers; but, being a
Traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I
hope to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of
explanation is due at once, for what says the inscription over the
quaint old door?
RICHARD WATTS, Esq.
by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,
founded this Charity
for Six poor Travellers,
who not being ROGUES, or PROCTORS,
May receive gratis for one Night,
Lodging, Entertainment,
and Fourpence each.
It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the
good days in the year upon a Christmas-eve, that I stood reading
this inscription over the quaint old door in question. I had been
wandering about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of
Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out
of it like a ship's figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no
less, as I gave the Verger his fee, than inquire the way to Watts's
Charity. The way being very short and very plain, I had come
prosperously to the inscription and the quaint old door.
"Now," said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, "I know I am
not a Proctor; I wonder whether I am a Rogue!"
Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced two or three pretty
faces which might have had smaller attraction for a moral Goliath
than they had had for me, who am but a Tom Thumb in that way, I came
to the conclusion that I was not a Rogue. So, beginning to regard
the establishment as in some sort my property, bequeathed to me and
divers co-legatees, share and share alike, by the Worshipful Master
Richard Watts, I stepped backward into the road to survey my
inheritance.
I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air,
with the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched
door), choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three
gables. The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with
old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly
garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out
of a grave red-brick building, as if Time carried on business there,
and hung out his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of
work in Rochester, in the old days of the Romans, and the Saxons,
and the Normans; and down to the times of King John, when the rugged
castle--I will not undertake to say how many hundreds of years old
then--was abandoned to the centuries of weather which have so
defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if
the rooks and daws had pecked its eyes out.
I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation.
While I was yet surveying it with growing content, I espied, at one
of the upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a
wholesome matronly appearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly
addressed to mine. They said so plainly, "Do you wish to see the
house?" that I answered aloud, "Yes, if you please." And within a
minute the old door opened, and I bent my head, and went down two
steps into the entry.
"This," said the matronly presence, ushering me into a low room on
the right, "is where the Travellers sit by the fire, and cook what
bits of suppers they buy with their fourpences."
"O! Then they have no Entertainment?" said I. For the inscription
over the outer door was still running in my head, and I was mentally
repeating, in a kind of tune, "Lodging, entertainment, and fourpence
each."
"They have a fire provided for 'em," returned the matron--a mighty
civil person, not, as I could make out, overpaid; "and these cooking
utensils. And this what's painted on a board is the rules for their
behaviour. They have their fourpences when they get their tickets
from the steward over the way,--for I don't admit 'em myself, they
must get their tickets first,--and sometimes one buys a rasher of
bacon, and another a herring, and another a pound of potatoes, or
what not. Sometimes two or three of 'em will club their fourpences
together, and make a supper that way. But not much of anything is
to be got for fourpence, at present, when provisions is so dear."
"True indeed," I remarked. I had been looking about the room,
admiring its snug fireside at the upper end, its glimpse of the
street through the low mullioned window, and its beams overhead.
"It is very comfortable," said I.
"Ill-conwenient," observed the matronly presence.
I liked to hear her say so; for it showed a commendable anxiety to
execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of Master Richard
Watts. But the room was really so well adapted to its purpose that
I protested, quite enthusiastically, against her disparagement.
"Nay, ma'am," said I, "I am sure it is warm in winter and cool in
summer. It has a look of homely welcome and soothing rest. It has
a remarkably cosey fireside, the very blink of which, gleaming out
into the street upon a winter night, is enough to warm all
Rochester's heart. And as to the convenience of the six Poor
Travellers--"
"I don't mean them," returned the presence. "I speak of its being
an ill-conwenience to myself and my daughter, having no other room
to sit in of a night."
This was true enough, but there was another quaint room of
corresponding dimensions on the opposite side of the entry: so I
stepped across to it, through the open doors of both rooms, and
asked what this chamber was for.
"This," returned the presence, "is the Board Room. Where the
gentlemen meet when they come here."
Let me see. I had counted from the street six upper windows besides
these on the ground-story. Making a perplexed calculation in my
mind, I rejoined, "Then the six Poor Travellers sleep upstairs?"
My new friend shook her head. "They sleep," she answered, "in two
little outer galleries at the back, where their beds has always
been, ever since the Charity was founded. It being so very ill-
conwenient to me as things is at present, the gentlemen are going to
take off a bit of the back-yard, and make a slip of a room for 'em
there, to sit in before they go to bed."
"And then the six Poor Travellers," said I, "will be entirely out of
the house?"
"Entirely out of the house," assented the presence, comfortably
smoothing her hands. "Which is considered much better for all
parties, and much more conwenient."
I had been a little startled, in the Cathedral, by the emphasis with
which the effigy of Master Richard Watts was bursting out of his
tomb; but I began to think, now, that it might be expected to come
across the High Street some stormy night, and make a disturbance
here.
Howbeit, I kept my thoughts to myself, and accompanied the presence
to the little galleries at the back. I found them on a tiny scale,
like the galleries in old inn-yards; and they were very clean.
While I was looking at them, the matron gave me to understand that
the prescribed number of Poor Travellers were forthcoming every
night from year's end to year's end; and that the beds were always
occupied. My questions upon this, and her replies, brought us back
to the Board Room so essential to the dignity of "the gentlemen,"
where she showed me the printed accounts of the Charity hanging up
by the window. From them I gathered that the greater part of the
property bequeathed by the Worshipful Master Richard Watts for the
maintenance of this foundation was, at the period of his death, mere
marsh-land; but that, in course of time, it had been reclaimed and
built upon, and was very considerably increased in value. I found,
too, that about a thirtieth part of the annual revenue was now
expended on the purposes commemorated in the inscription over the
door; the rest being handsomely laid out in Chancery, law expenses,
collectorship, receivership, poundage, and other appendages of
management, highly complimentary to the importance of the six Poor
Travellers. In short, I made the not entirely new discovery that it
may be said of an establishment like this, in dear old England, as
of the fat oyster in the American story, that it takes a good many
men to swallow it whole.
"And pray, ma'am," said I, sensible that the blankness of my face
began to brighten as the thought occurred to me, "could one see
these Travellers?"
"Well!" she returned dubiously, "no!"
"Not to-night, for instance!" said I.
"Well!" she returned more positively, "no. Nobody ever asked to see
them, and nobody ever did see them."
As I am not easily balked in a design when I am set upon it, I urged
to the good lady that this was Christmas-eve; that Christmas comes
but once a year,--which is unhappily too true, for when it begins to
stay with us the whole year round we shall make this earth a very
different place; that I was possessed by the desire to treat the
Travellers to a supper and a temperate glass of hot Wassail; that
the voice of Fame had been heard in that land, declaring my ability
to make hot Wassail; that if I were permitted to hold the feast, I
should be found conformable to reason, sobriety, and good hours; in
a word, that I could be merry and wise myself, and had been even
known at a pinch to keep others so, although I was decorated with no
badge or medal, and was not a Brother, Orator, Apostle, Saint, or
Prophet of any denomination whatever. In the end I prevailed, to my
great joy. It was settled that at nine o'clock that night a Turkey
and a piece of Roast Beef should smoke upon the board; and that I,
faint and unworthy minister for once of Master Richard Watts, should
preside as the Christmas-supper host of the six Poor Travellers.
I went back to my inn to give the necessary directions for the
Turkey and Roast Beef, and, during the remainder of the day, could
settle to nothing for thinking of the Poor Travellers. When the
wind blew hard against the windows,--it was a cold day, with dark
gusts of sleet alternating with periods of wild brightness, as if
the year were dying fitfully,--I pictured them advancing towards
their resting-place along various cold roads, and felt delighted to
think how little they foresaw the supper that awaited them. I
painted their portraits in my mind, and indulged in little
heightening touches. I made them footsore; I made them weary; I
made them carry packs and bundles; I made them stop by finger-posts
and milestones, leaning on their bent sticks, and looking wistfully
at what was written there; I made them lose their way; and filled
their five wits with apprehensions of lying out all night, and being
frozen to death. I took up my hat, and went out, climbed to the top
of the Old Castle, and looked over the windy hills that slope down
to the Medway, almost believing that I could descry some of my
Travellers in the distance. After it fell dark, and the Cathedral
bell was heard in the invisible steeple--quite a bower of frosty
rime when I had last seen it--striking five, six, seven, I became so
full of my Travellers that I could eat no dinner, and felt
constrained to watch them still in the red coals of my fire. They
were all arrived by this time, I thought, had got their tickets, and
were gone in.--There my pleasure was dashed by the reflection that
probably some Travellers had come too late and were shut out.
After the Cathedral bell had struck eight, I could smell a delicious
savour of Turkey and Roast Beef rising to the window of my adjoining
bedroom, which looked down into the inn-yard just where the lights
of the kitchen reddened a massive fragment of the Castle Wall. It
was high time to make the Wassail now; therefore I had up the
materials (which, together with their proportions and combinations,
I must decline to impart, as the only secret of my own I was ever
known to keep), and made a glorious jorum. Not in a bowl; for a
bowl anywhere but on a shelf is a low superstition, fraught with
cooling and slopping; but in a brown earthenware pitcher, tenderly
suffocated, when full, with a coarse cloth. It being now upon the
stroke of nine, I set out for Watts's Charity, carrying my brown
beauty in my arms. I would trust Ben, the waiter, with untold gold;
but there are strings in the human heart which must never be sounded
by another, and drinks that I make myself are those strings in mine.
The Travellers were all assembled, the cloth was laid, and Ben had
brought a great billet of wood, and had laid it artfully on the top
of the fire, so that a touch or two of the poker after supper should
make a roaring blaze. Having deposited my brown beauty in a red
nook of the hearth, inside the fender, where she soon began to sing
like an ethereal cricket, diffusing at the same time odours as of
ripe vineyards, spice forests, and orange groves,--I say, having
stationed my beauty in a place of security and improvement, I
introduced myself to my guests by shaking hands all round, and
giving them a hearty welcome.
I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, myself. Secondly,
a very decent man indeed, with his right arm in a sling, who had a
certain clean agreeable smell of wood about him, from which I judged
him to have something to do with shipbuilding. Thirdly, a little
sailor-boy, a mere child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair,
and deep womanly-looking eyes. Fourthly, a shabby-genteel personage
in a threadbare black suit, and apparently in very bad
circumstances, with a dry suspicious look; the absent buttons on his
waistcoat eked out with red tape; and a bundle of extraordinarily
tattered papers sticking out of an inner breast-pocket. Fifthly, a
foreigner by birth, but an Englishman in speech, who carried his
pipe in the band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an
easy, simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker from Geneva,
and travelled all about the Continent, mostly on foot, working as a
journeyman, and seeing new countries,--possibly (I thought) also
smuggling a watch or so, now and then. Sixthly, a little widow, who
had been very pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty had
been wrecked in some great misfortune, and whose manner was
remarkably timid, scared, and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a
Traveller of a kind familiar to my boyhood, but now almost
obsolete,--a Book-Pedler, who had a quantity of Pamphlets and
Numbers with him, and who presently boasted that he could repeat
more verses in an evening than he could sell in a twelvemonth.
All these I have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table.
I presided, and the matronly presence faced me. We were not long in
taking our places, for the supper had arrived with me, in the
following procession:
Myself with the pitcher.
Ben with Beer.
Inattentive Boy with hot plates. Inattentive Boy with hot plates.
THE TURKEY.
Female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot.
THE BEEF.
Man with Tray on his head, containing Vegetables and Sundries.
Volunteer Hostler from Hotel, grinning,
And rendering no assistance.
As we passed along the High Street, comet-like, we left a long tail
of fragrance behind us which caused the public to stop, sniffing in
wonder. We had previously left at the corner of the inn-yard a
wall-eyed young man connected with the Fly department, and well
accustomed to the sound of a railway whistle which Ben always
carries in his pocket, whose instructions were, so soon as he should
hear the whistle blown, to dash into the kitchen, seize the hot
plum-pudding and mince-pies, and speed with them to Watts's Charity,
where they would be received (he was further instructed) by the
sauce-female, who would be provided with brandy in a blue state of
combustion.
All these arrangements were executed in the most exact and punctual
manner. I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef, or greater
prodigality of sauce and gravy;--and my Travellers did wonderful
justice to everything set before them. It made my heart rejoice to
observe how their wind and frost hardened faces softened in the
clatter of plates and knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and
supper heat. While their hats and caps and wrappers, hanging up, a
few small bundles on the ground in a corner, and in another corner
three or four old walking-sticks, worn down at the end to mere
fringe, linked this smug interior with the bleak outside in a golden
chain.
When supper was done, and my brown beauty had been elevated on the
table, there was a general requisition to me to "take the corner;"
which suggested to me comfortably enough how much my friends here
made of a fire,--for when had I ever thought so highly of the
corner, since the days when I connected it with Jack Horner?
However, as I declined, Ben, whose touch on all convivial
instruments is perfect, drew the table apart, and instructing my
Travellers to open right and left on either side of me, and form
round the fire, closed up the centre with myself and my chair, and
preserved the order we had kept at table. He had already, in a
tranquil manner, boxed the ears of the inattentive boys until they
had been by imperceptible degrees boxed out of the room; and he now
rapidly skirmished the sauce-female into the High Street,
disappeared, and softly closed the door.
This was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the billet of
wood. I tapped it three times, like an enchanted talisman, and a
brilliant host of merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by
the chimney,--rushing up the middle in a fiery country dance, and
never coming down again. Meanwhile, by their sparkling light, which
threw our lamp into the shade, I filled the glasses, and gave my
Travellers, CHRISTMAS!--CHRISTMAS-EVE, my friends, when the
shepherds, who were Poor Travellers, too, in their way, heard the
Angels sing, "On earth, peace. Good-will towards men!"
I don't know who was the first among us to think that we ought to
take hands as we sat, in deference to the toast, or whether any one
of us anticipated the others, but at any rate we all did it. We
then drank to the memory of the good Master Richard Watts. And I
wish his Ghost may never have had worse usage under that roof than
it had from us.
It was the witching time for Story-telling. "Our whole life,
Travellers," said I, "is a story more or less intelligible,--
generally less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is
ended. I, for one, am so divided this night between fact and
fiction, that I scarce know which is which. Shall I beguile the
time by telling you a story as we sit here?"
They all answered, yes. I had little to tell them, but I was bound
by my own proposal. Therefore, after looking for awhile at the
spiral column of smoke wreathing up from my brown beauty, through
which I could have almost sworn I saw the effigy of Master Richard
Watts less startled than usual, I fired away.
CHAPTER II--THE STORY OF RICHARD DOUBLEDICK
In the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, a relative
of mine came limping down, on foot, to this town of Chatham. I call
it this town, because if anybody present knows to a nicety where
Rochester ends and Chatham begins, it is more than I do. He was a
poor traveller, with not a farthing in his pocket. He sat by the
fire in this very room, and he slept one night in a bed that will be
occupied tonight by some one here.
My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cavalry regiment, if
a cavalry regiment would have him; if not, to take King George's
shilling from any corporal or sergeant who would put a bunch of
ribbons in his hat. His object was to get shot; but he thought he
might as well ride to death as be at the trouble of walking.
My relative's Christian name was Richard, but he was better known as
Dick. He dropped his own surname on the road down, and took up that
of Doubledick. He was passed as Richard Doubledick; age, twenty-
two; height, five foot ten; native place, Exmouth, which he had
never been near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chatham when
he limped over the bridge here with half a shoe to his dusty feet,
so he enlisted into a regiment of the line, and was glad to get
drunk and forget all about it.
You are to know that this relative of mine had gone wrong, and run
wild. His heart was in the right place, but it was sealed up. He
had been betrothed to a good and beautiful girl, whom he had loved
better than she--or perhaps even he--believed; but in an evil hour
he had given her cause to say to him solemnly, "Richard, I will
never marry another man. I will live single for your sake, but Mary
Marshall's lips"--her name was Mary Marshall--"never address another
word to you on earth. Go, Richard! Heaven forgive you!" This
finished him. This brought him down to Chatham. This made him
Private Richard Doubledick, with a determination to be shot.
There was not a more dissipated and reckless soldier in Chatham
barracks, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine,
than Private Richard Doubledick. He associated with the dregs of
every regiment; he was as seldom sober as he could be, and was
constantly under punishment. It became clear to the whole barracks
that Private Richard Doubledick would very soon be flogged.
Now the Captain of Richard Doubledick's company was a young
gentleman not above five years his senior, whose eyes had an
expression in them which affected Private Richard Doubledick in a
very remarkable way. They were bright, handsome, dark eyes,--what
are called laughing eyes generally, and, when serious, rather steady
than severe,--but they were the only eyes now left in his narrowed
world that Private Richard Doubledick could not stand. Unabashed by
evil report and punishment, defiant of everything else and everybody
else, he had but to know that those eyes looked at him for a moment,
and he felt ashamed. He could not so much as salute Captain Taunton
in the street like any other officer. He was reproached and
confused,--troubled by the mere possibility of the captain's looking
at him. In his worst moments, he would rather turn back, and go any
distance out of his way, than encounter those two handsome, dark,
bright eyes.
One day, when Private Richard Doubledick came out of the Black hole,
where he had been passing the last eight-and-forty hours, and in
which retreat he spent a good deal of his time, he was ordered to
betake himself to Captain Taunton's quarters. In the stale and
squalid state of a man just out of the Black hole, he had less fancy
than ever for being seen by the captain; but he was not so mad yet
as to disobey orders, and consequently went up to the terrace
overlooking the parade-ground, where the officers' quarters were;
twisting and breaking in his hands, as he went along, a bit of the
straw that had formed the decorative furniture of the Black hole.
"Come in!" cried the Captain, when he had knocked with his knuckles
at the door. Private Richard Doubledick pulled off his cap, took a
stride forward, and felt very conscious that he stood in the light
of the dark, bright eyes.
There was a silent pause. Private Richard Doubledick had put the
straw in his mouth, and was gradually doubling it up into his
windpipe and choking himself.
"Doubledick," said the Captain, "do you know where you are going
to?"
"To the Devil, sir?" faltered Doubledick.
"Yes," returned the Captain. "And very fast."
Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the Black hole in his
month, and made a miserable salute of acquiescence.
"Doubledick," said the Captain, "since I entered his Majesty's
service, a boy of seventeen, I have been pained to see many men of
promise going that road; but I have never been so pained to see a
man make the shameful journey as I have been, ever since you joined
the regiment, to see you."
Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film stealing over the
floor at which he looked; also to find the legs of the Captain's
breakfast-table turning crooked, as if he saw them through water.
"I am only a common soldier, sir," said he. "It signifies very
little what such a poor brute comes to."
"You are a man," returned the Captain, with grave indignation, "of
education and superior advantages; and if you say that, meaning what
you say, you have sunk lower than I had believed. How low that must
be, I leave you to consider, knowing what I know of your disgrace,
and seeing what I see."
"I hope to get shot soon, sir," said Private Richard Doubledick;
"and then the regiment and the world together will be rid of me."
The legs of the table were becoming very crooked. Doubledick,
looking up to steady his vision, met the eyes that had so strong an
influence over him. He put his hand before his own eyes, and the
breast of his disgrace-jacket swelled as if it would fly asunder.
"I would rather," said the young Captain, "see this in you,
Doubledick, than I would see five thousand guineas counted out upon
this table for a gift to my good mother. Have you a mother?"
"I am thankful to say she is dead, sir."
"If your praises," returned the Captain, "were sounded from mouth to
mouth through the whole regiment, through the whole army, through
the whole country, you would wish she had lived to say, with pride
and joy, 'He is my son!'"
"Spare me, sir," said Doubledick. "She would never have heard any
good of me. She would never have had any pride and joy in owning
herself my mother. Love and compassion she might have had, and
would have always had, I know but not--Spare me, sir! I am a broken
wretch, quite at your mercy!" And he turned his face to the wall,
and stretched out his imploring hand.
"My friend--" began the Captain.
"God bless you, sir!" sobbed Private Richard Doubledick.
"You are at the crisis of your fate. Hold your course unchanged a
little longer, and you know what must happen. I know even better
than you can imagine, that, after that has happened, you are lost.
No man who could shed those tears could bear those marks."
"I fully believe it, sir," in a low, shivering voice said Private
Richard Doubledick.
"But a man in any station can do his duty," said the young Captain,
"and, in doing it, can earn his own respect, even if his case should
be so very unfortunate and so very rare that he can earn no other
man's. A common soldier, poor brute though you called him just now,
has this advantage in the stormy times we live in, that he always
does his duty before a host of sympathising witnesses. Do you doubt
that he may so do it as to be extolled through a whole regiment,
through a whole army, through a whole country? Turn while you may
yet retrieve the past, and try."
"I will! I ask for only one witness, sir," cried Richard, with a
bursting heart.
"I understand you. I will be a watchful and a faithful one."
I have heard from Private Richard Doubledick's own lips, that he
dropped down upon his knee, kissed that officer's hand, arose, and
went out of the light of the dark, bright eyes, an altered man.
In that year, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, the French
were in Egypt, in Italy, in Germany, where not? Napoleon Bonaparte
had likewise begun to stir against us in India, and most men could
read the signs of the great troubles that were coming on. In the
very next year, when we formed an alliance with Austria against him,
Captain Taunton's regiment was on service in India. And there was
not a finer non-commissioned officer in it,--no, nor in the whole
line--than Corporal Richard Doubledick.
In eighteen hundred and one, the Indian army were on the coast of
Egypt. Next year was the year of the proclamation of the short
peace, and they were recalled. It had then become well known to
thousands of men, that wherever Captain Taunton, with the dark,
bright eyes, led, there, close to him, ever at his side, firm as a
rock, true as the sun, and brave as Mars, would be certain to be
found, while life beat in their hearts, that famous soldier,
Sergeant Richard Doubledick.
Eighteen hundred and five, besides being the great year of
Trafalgar, was a year of hard fighting in India. That year saw such
wonders done by a Sergeant-Major, who cut his way single-handed
through a solid mass of men, recovered the colours of his regiment,
which had been seized from the hand of a poor boy shot through the
heart, and rescued his wounded Captain, who was down, and in a very
jungle of horses' hoofs and sabres,--saw such wonders done, I say,
by this brave Sergeant-Major, that he was specially made the bearer
of the colours he had won; and Ensign Richard Doubledick had risen
from the ranks.
Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by the bravest
of men,--for the fame of following the old colours, shot through and
through, which Ensign Richard Doubledick had saved, inspired all
breasts,--this regiment fought its way through the Peninsular war,
up to the investment of Badajos in eighteen hundred and twelve.
Again and again it had been cheered through the British ranks until
the tears had sprung into men's eyes at the mere hearing of the
mighty British voice, so exultant in their valour; and there was not
a drummer-boy but knew the legend, that wherever the two friends,
Major Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, and Ensign Richard
Doubledick, who was devoted to him, were seen to go, there the
boldest spirits in the English army became wild to follow.
One day, at Badajos,--not in the great storming, but in repelling a
hot sally of the besieged upon our men at work in the trenches, who
had given way,--the two officers found themselves hurrying forward,
face to face, against a party of French infantry, who made a stand.
There was an officer at their head, encouraging his men,--a
courageous, handsome, gallant officer of five-and-thirty, whom
Doubledick saw hurriedly, almost momentarily, but saw well. He
particularly noticed this officer waving his sword, and rallying his
men with an eager and excited cry, when they fired in obedience to
his gesture, and Major Taunton dropped.
It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick returned to the spot
where he had laid the best friend man ever had on a coat spread upon
the wet clay. Major Taunton's uniform was opened at the breast, and
on his shirt were three little spots of blood.
"Dear Doubledick," said he, "I am dying."
"For the love of Heaven, no!" exclaimed the other, kneeling down
beside him, and passing his arm round his neck to raise his head.
"Taunton! My preserver, my guardian angel, my witness! Dearest,
truest, kindest of human beings! Taunton! For God's sake!"
The bright, dark eyes--so very, very dark now, in the pale face--
smiled upon him; and the hand he had kissed thirteen years ago laid
itself fondly on his breast.
"Write to my mother. You will see Home again. Tell her how we
became friends. It will comfort her, as it comforts me."
He spoke no more, but faintly signed for a moment towards his hair
as it fluttered in the wind. The Ensign understood him. He smiled
again when he saw that, and, gently turning his face over on the
supporting arm as if for rest, died, with his hand upon the breast
in which he had revived a soul.
No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard Doubledick that melancholy day.
He buried his friend on the field, and became a lone, bereaved man.
Beyond his duty he appeared to have but two remaining cares in
life,--one, to preserve the little packet of hair he was to give to
Taunton's mother; the other, to encounter that French officer who
had rallied the men under whose fire Taunton fell. A new legend now
began to circulate among our troops; and it was, that when he and
the French officer came face to face once more, there would be
weeping in France.
The war went on--and through it went the exact picture of the French
officer on the one side, and the bodily reality upon the other--
until the Battle of Toulouse was fought. In the returns sent home
appeared these words: "Severely wounded, but not dangerously,
Lieutenant Richard Doubledick."
At Midsummer-time, in the year eighteen hundred and fourteen,
Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, now a browned soldier, seven-and-
thirty years of age, came home to England invalided. He brought the
hair with him, near his heart. Many a French officer had he seen
since that day; many a dreadful night, in searching with men and
lanterns for his wounded, had he relieved French officers lying
disabled; but the mental picture and the reality had never come
together.
Though he was weak and suffered pain, he lost not an hour in getting
down to Frome in Somersetshire, where Taunton's mother lived. In
the sweet, compassionate words that naturally present themselves to
the mind to-night, "he was the only son of his mother, and she was a
widow."
It was a Sunday evening, and the lady sat at her quiet garden-
window, reading the Bible; reading to herself, in a trembling voice,
that very passage in it, as I have heard him tell. He heard the
words: "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!"
He had to pass the window; and the bright, dark eyes of his debased
time seemed to look at him. Her heart told her who he was; she came
to the door quickly, and fell upon his neck.
"He saved me from ruin, made me a human creature, won me from infamy
and shame. O, God for ever bless him! As He will, He Will!"
"He will!" the lady answered. "I know he is in heaven!" Then she
piteously cried, "But O, my darling boy, my darling boy!"
Never from the hour when Private Richard Doubledick enlisted at
Chatham had the Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Sergeant-Major, Ensign,
or Lieutenant breathed his right name, or the name of Mary Marshall,
or a word of the story of his life, into any ear except his
reclaimer's. That previous scene in his existence was closed. He
had firmly resolved that his expiation should be to live unknown; to
disturb no more the peace that had long grown over his old offences;
to let it be revealed, when he was dead, that he had striven and
suffered, and had never forgotten; and then, if they could forgive
him and believe him--well, it would be time enough--time enough!
But that night, remembering the words he had cherished for two
years, "Tell her how we became friends. It will comfort her, as it
comforts me," he related everything. It gradually seemed to him as
if in his maturity he had recovered a mother; it gradually seemed to
her as if in her bereavement she had found a son. During his stay
in England, the quiet garden into which he had slowly and painfully
crept, a stranger, became the boundary of his home; when he was able
to rejoin his regiment in the spring, he left the garden, thinking
was this indeed the first time he had ever turned his face towards
the old colours with a woman's blessing!
He followed them--so ragged, so scarred and pierced now, that they
would scarcely hold together--to Quatre Bras and Ligny. He stood
beside them, in an awful stillness of many men, shadowy through the
mist and drizzle of a wet June forenoon, on the field of Waterloo.
And down to that hour the picture in his mind of the French officer
had never been compared with the reality.
The famous regiment was in action early in the battle, and received
its first check in many an eventful year, when he was seen to fall.
But it swept on to avenge him, and left behind it no such creature
in the world of consciousness as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.
Through pits of mire, and pools of rain; along deep ditches, once
roads, that were pounded and ploughed to pieces by artillery, heavy
waggons, tramp of men and horses, and the struggle of every wheeled
thing that could carry wounded soldiers; jolted among the dying and
the dead, so disfigured by blood and mud as to be hardly
recognisable for humanity; undisturbed by the moaning of men and the
shrieking of horses, which, newly taken from the peaceful pursuits
of life, could not endure the sight of the stragglers lying by the
wayside, never to resume their toilsome journey; dead, as to any
sentient life that was in it, and yet alive,--the form that had been
Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, with whose praises England rang, was
conveyed to Brussels. There it was tenderly laid down in hospital;
and there it lay, week after week, through the long bright summer
days, until the harvest, spared by war, had ripened and was gathered
in.
Over and over again the sun rose and set upon the crowded city; over
and over again the moonlight nights were quiet on the plains of
Waterloo: and all that time was a blank to what had been Lieutenant
Richard Doubledick. Rejoicing troops marched into Brussels, and
marched out; brothers and fathers, sisters, mothers, and wives, came
thronging thither, drew their lots of joy or agony, and departed; so
many times a day the bells rang; so many times the shadows of the
great buildings changed; so many lights sprang up at dusk; so many
feet passed here and there upon the pavements; so many hours of
sleep and cooler air of night succeeded: indifferent to all, a
marble face lay on a bed, like the face of a recumbent statue on the
tomb of Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.
Slowly labouring, at last, through a long heavy dream of confused
time and place, presenting faint glimpses of army surgeons whom he
knew, and of faces that had been familiar to his youth,--dearest and
kindest among them, Mary Marshall's, with a solicitude upon it more
like reality than anything he could discern,--Lieutenant Richard
Doubledick came back to life. To the beautiful life of a calm
autumn evening sunset, to the peaceful life of a fresh quiet room
with a large window standing open; a balcony beyond, in which were
moving leaves and sweet-smelling flowers; beyond, again, the clear
sky, with the sun full in his sight, pouring its golden radiance on
his bed.
It was so tranquil and so lovely that he thought he had passed into
another world. And he said in a faint voice, "Taunton, are you near
me?"
A face bent over him. Not his, his mother's.
"I came to nurse you. We have nursed you many weeks. You were
moved here long ago. Do you remember nothing?"
"Nothing."
The lady kissed his cheek, and held his hand, soothing him.
"Where is the regiment? What has happened? Let me call you mother.
What has happened, mother?"
"A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regiment was the
bravest in the field."
His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the tears ran
down his face. He was very weak, too weak to move his hand.
"Was it dark just now?" he asked presently.
"No."
"It was only dark to me? Something passed away, like a black
shadow. But as it went, and the sun--O the blessed sun, how
beautiful it is!--touched my face, I thought I saw a light white
cloud pass out at the door. Was there nothing that went out?"
She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, she still
holding his hand, and soothing him.
From that time, he recovered. Slowly, for he had been desperately
wounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but making some
little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strength to
converse as he lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton
always brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled his
preserver's dying words, and thought, "It comforts her."
One day he awoke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked her to read to
him. But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which she
always drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from her
table at the bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn; and a
woman's voice spoke, which was not hers.
"Can you bear to see a stranger?" it said softly. "Will you like to
see a stranger?"
"Stranger!" he repeated. The voice awoke old memories, before the
days of Private Richard Doubledick.
"A stranger now, but not a stranger once," it said in tones that
thrilled him. "Richard, dear Richard, lost through so many years,
my name--"
He cried out her name, "Mary," and she held him in her arms, and his
head lay on her bosom.
"I am not breaking a rash vow, Richard. These are not Mary
Marshall's lips that speak. I have another name."
She was married.
"I have another name, Richard. Did you ever hear it?"
"Never!"
He looked into her face, so pensively beautiful, and wondered at the
smile upon it through her tears.
"Think again, Richard. Are you sure you never heard my altered
name?"
"Never!"
"Don't move your head to look at me, dear Richard. Let it lie here,
while I tell my story. I loved a generous, noble man; loved him
with my whole heart; loved him for years and years; loved him
faithfully, devotedly; loved him without hope of return; loved him,
knowing nothing of his highest qualities--not even knowing that he
was alive. He was a brave soldier. He was honoured and beloved by
thousands of thousands, when the mother of his dear friend found me,
and showed me that in all his triumphs he had never forgotten me.
He was wounded in a great battle. He was brought, dying, here, into
Brussels. I came to watch and tend him, as I would have joyfully
gone, with such a purpose, to the dreariest ends of the earth. When
he knew no one else, he knew me. When he suffered most, he bore his
sufferings barely murmuring, content to rest his head where your
rests now. When he lay at the point of death, he married me, that
he might call me Wife before he died. And the name, my dear love,
that I took on that forgotten night--"
"I know it now!" he sobbed. "The shadowy remembrance strengthens.
It is come back. I thank Heaven that my mind is quite restored! My
Mary, kiss me; lull this weary head to rest, or I shall die of
gratitude. His parting words were fulfilled. I see Home again!"
Well! They were happy. It was a long recovery, but they were happy
through it all. The snow had melted on the ground, and the birds
were singing in the leafless thickets of the early spring, when
those three were first able to ride out together, and when people
flocked about the open carriage to cheer and congratulate Captain
Richard Doubledick.
But even then it became necessary for the Captain, instead of
returning to England, to complete his recovery in the climate of
Southern France. They found a spot upon the Rhone, within a ride of
the old town of Avignon, and within view of its broken bridge, which
was all they could desire; they lived there, together, six months;
then returned to England. Mrs. Taunton, growing old after three
years--though not so old as that her bright, dark eyes were dimmed--
and remembering that her strength had been benefited by the change
resolved to go back for a year to those parts. So she went with a
faithful servant, who had often carried her son in his arms; and she
was to be rejoined and escorted home, at the year's end, by Captain
Richard Doubledick.
She wrote regularly to her children (as she called them now), and
they to her. She went to the neighbourhood of Aix; and there, in
their own chateau near the farmer's house she rented, she grew into
intimacy with a family belonging to that part of France. The
intimacy began in her often meeting among the vineyards a pretty
child, a girl with a most compassionate heart, who was never tired
of listening to the solitary English lady's stories of her poor son
and the cruel wars. The family were as gentle as the child, and at
length she came to know them so well that she accepted their
invitation to pass the last month of her residence abroad under
their roof. All this intelligence she wrote home, piecemeal as it
came about, from time to time; and at last enclosed a polite note,
from the head of the chateau, soliciting, on the occasion of his
approaching mission to that neighbourhood, the honour of the company
of cet homme si justement celebre, Monsieur le Capitaine Richard
Doubledick.
Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in the full vigour of
life, broader across the chest and shoulders than he had ever been
before, dispatched a courteous reply, and followed it in person.
Travelling through all that extent of country after three years of
Peace, he blessed the better days on which the world had fallen.
The corn was golden, not drenched in unnatural red; was bound in
sheaves for food, not trodden underfoot by men in mortal fight. The
smoke rose up from peaceful hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts
were laden with the fair fruits of the earth, not with wounds and
death. To him who had so often seen the terrible reverse, these
things were beautiful indeed; and they brought him in a softened
spirit to the old chateau near Aix upon a deep blue evening.
It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, with round
towers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden roof, and more windows
than Aladdin's Palace. The lattice blinds were all thrown open
after the heat of the day, and there were glimpses of rambling walls
and corridors within. Then there were immense out-buildings fallen
into partial decay, masses of dark trees, terrace-gardens,
balustrades; tanks of water, too weak to play and too dirty to work;
statues, weeds, and thickets of iron railing that seemed to have
overgrown themselves like the shrubberies, and to have branched out
in all manner of wild shapes. The entrance doors stood open, as
doors often do in that country when the heat of the day is past; and
the Captain saw no bell or knocker, and walked in.
He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool and gloomy
after the glare of a Southern day's travel. Extending along the
four sides of this hall was a gallery, leading to suites of rooms;
and it was lighted from the top. Still no bell was to be seen.
"Faith," said the Captain halting, ashamed of the clanking of his
boots, "this is a ghostly beginning!"
He started back, and felt his face turn white. In the gallery,
looking down at him, stood the French officer--the officer whose
picture he had carried in his mind so long and so far. Compared
with the original, at last--in every lineament how like it was!
He moved, and disappeared, and Captain Richard Doubledick heard his
steps coming quickly down own into the hall. He entered through an
archway. There was a bright, sudden look upon his face, much such a
look as it had worn in that fatal moment.
Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick? Enchanted to receive him!
A thousand apologies! The servants were all out in the air. There
was a little fete among them in the garden. In effect, it was the
fete day of my daughter, the little cherished and protected of
Madame Taunton.
He was so gracious and so frank that Monsieur le Capitaine Richard
Doubledick could not withhold his hand. "It is the hand of a brave
Englishman," said the French officer, retaining it while he spoke.
"I could respect a brave Englishman, even as my foe, how much more
as my friend! I also am a soldier."
"He has not remembered me, as I have remembered him; he did not take
such note of my face, that day, as I took of his," thought Captain
Richard Doubledick. "How shall I tell him?"
The French officer conducted his guest into a garden and presented
him to his wife, an engaging and beautiful woman, sitting with Mrs.
Taunton in a whimsical old-fashioned pavilion. His daughter, her
fair young face beaming with joy, came running to embrace him; and
there was a boy-baby to tumble down among the orange trees on the
broad steps, in making for his father's legs. A multitude of
children visitors were dancing to sprightly music; and all the
servants and peasants about the chateau were dancing too. It was a
scene of innocent happiness that might have been invented for the
climax of the scenes of peace which had soothed the Captain's
journey.
He looked on, greatly troubled in his mind, until a resounding bell
rang, and the French officer begged to show him his rooms. They
went upstairs into the gallery from which the officer had looked
down; and Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick was cordially
welcomed to a grand outer chamber, and a smaller one within, all
clocks and draperies, and hearths, and brazen dogs, and tiles, and
cool devices, and elegance, and vastness.
"You were at Waterloo," said the French officer.
"I was," said Captain Richard Doubledick. "And at Badajos."
Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his ears, he sat
down to consider, What shall I do, and how shall I tell him? At
that time, unhappily, many deplorable duels had been fought between
English and French officers, arising out of the recent war; and
these duels, and how to avoid this officer's hospitality, were the
uppermost thought in Captain Richard Doubledick's mind.
He was thinking, and letting the time run out in which he should
have dressed for dinner, when Mrs. Taunton spoke to him outside the
door, asking if he could give her the letter he had brought from
Mary. "His mother, above all," the Captain thought. "How shall I
tell her?"
"You will form a friendship with your host, I hope," said Mrs.
Taunton, whom he hurriedly admitted, "that will last for life. He
is so true-hearted and so generous, Richard, that you can hardly
fail to esteem one another. If He had been spared," she kissed (not
without tears) the locket in which she wore his hair, "he would have
appreciated him with his own magnanimity, and would have been truly
happy that the evil days were past which made such a man his enemy."
She left the room; and the Captain walked, first to one window,
whence he could see the dancing in the garden, then to another
window, whence he could see the smiling prospect and the peaceful
vineyards.
"Spirit of my departed friend," said he, "is it through thee these
better thoughts are rising in my mind? Is it thou who hast shown
me, all the way I have been drawn to meet this man, the blessings of
the altered time? Is it thou who hast sent thy stricken mother to
me, to stay my angry hand? Is it from thee the whisper comes, that
this man did his duty as thou didst,--and as I did, through thy
guidance, which has wholly saved me here on earth,--and that he did
no more?"
He sat down, with his head buried in his hands, and, when he rose
up, made the second strong resolution of his life,--that neither to
the French officer, nor to the mother of his departed friend, nor to
any soul, while either of the two was living, would he breathe what
only he knew. And when he touched that French officer's glass with
his own, that day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in the name of
the Divine Forgiver of injuries.
Here I ended my story as the first Poor Traveller. But, if I had
told it now, I could have added that the time has since come when
the son of Major Richard Doubledick, and the son of that French
officer, friends as their fathers were before them, fought side by
side in one cause, with their respective nations, like long-divided
brothers whom the better times have brought together, fast united.
CHAPTER III--THE ROAD
My story being finished, and the Wassail too, we broke up as the
Cathedral bell struck Twelve. I did not take leave of my travellers
that night; for it had come into my head to reappear, in conjunction
with some hot coffee, at seven in the morning.
As I passed along the High Street, I heard the Waits at a distance,
and struck off to find them. They were playing near one of the old
gates of the City, at the corner of a wonderfully quaint row of red-
brick tenements, which the clarionet obligingly informed me were
inhabited by the Minor-Canons. They had odd little porches over the
doors, like sounding-boards over old pulpits; and I thought I should
like to see one of the Minor-Canons come out upon his top stop, and
favour us with a little Christmas discourse about the poor scholars
of Rochester; taking for his text the words of his Master relative
to the devouring of Widows' houses.
The clarionet was so communicative, and my inclinations were (as
they generally are) of so vagabond a tendency, that I accompanied
the Waits across an open green called the Vines, and assisted--in
the French sense--at the performance of two waltzes, two polkas, and
three Irish melodies, before I thought of my inn any more. However,
I returned to it then, and found a fiddle in the kitchen, and Ben,
the wall-eyed young man, and two chambermaids, circling round the
great deal table with the utmost animation.
I had a very bad night. It cannot have been owing to the turkey or
the beef,--and the Wassail is out of the question--but in every
endeavour that I made to get to sleep I failed most dismally. I was
never asleep; and in whatsoever unreasonable direction my mind
rambled, the effigy of Master Richard Watts perpetually embarrassed
it.
In a word, I only got out of the Worshipful Master Richard Watts's
way by getting out of bed in the dark at six o'clock, and tumbling,
as my custom is, into all the cold water that could be accumulated
for the purpose. The outer air was dull and cold enough in the
street, when I came down there; and the one candle in our supper-
room at Watts's Charity looked as pale in the burning as if it had
had a bad night too. But my Travellers had all slept soundly, and
they took to the hot coffee, and the piles of bread-and-butter,
which Ben had arranged like deals in a timber-yard, as kindly as I
could desire.
While it was yet scarcely daylight, we all came out into the street
together, and there shook hands. The widow took the little sailor
towards Chatham, where he was to find a steamboat for Sheerness; the
lawyer, with an extremely knowing look, went his own way, without
committing himself by announcing his intentions; two more struck off
by the cathedral and old castle for Maidstone; and the book-pedler
accompanied me over the bridge. As for me, I was going to walk by
Cobham Woods, as far upon my way to London as I fancied.
When I came to the stile and footpath by which I was to diverge from
the main road, I bade farewell to my last remaining Poor Traveller,
and pursued my way alone. And now the mists began to rise in the
most beautiful manner, and the sun to shine; and as I went on
through the bracing air, seeing the hoarfrost sparkle everywhere, I
felt as if all Nature shared in the joy of the great Birthday.
Going through the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossy
ground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christmas sacredness
by which I felt surrounded. As the whitened stems environed me, I
thought how the Founder of the time had never raised his benignant
hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of one unconscious
tree. By Cobham Hall, I came to the village, and the churchyard
where the dead had been quietly buried, "in the sure and certain
hope" which Christmas time inspired. What children could I see at
play, and not be loving of, recalling who had loved them! No garden
that I passed was out of unison with the day, for I remembered that
the tomb was in a garden, and that "she, supposing him to be the
gardener," had said, "Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me
where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away." In time, the
distant river with the ships came full in view, and with it pictures
of the poor fishermen, mending their nets, who arose and followed
him,--of the teaching of the people from a ship pushed off a little
way from shore, by reason of the multitude,--of a majestic figure
walking on the water, in the loneliness of night. My very shadow on
the ground was eloquent of Christmas; for did not the people lay
their sick where the more shadows of the men who had heard and seen
him might fall as they passed along?
Thus Christmas begirt me, far and near, until I had come to
Blackheath, and had walked down the long vista of gnarled old trees
in Greenwich Park, and was being steam-rattled through the mists now
closing in once more, towards the lights of London. Brightly they
shone, but not so brightly as my own fire, and the brighter faces
around it, when we came together to celebrate the day. And there I
told of worthy Master Richard Watts, and of my supper with the Six
Poor Travellers who were neither Rogues nor Proctors, and from that
hour to this I have never seen one of them again.
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