Osborne still meditated with a grave brow for some time. "I will write," he said, at length. "It will be better--it will be only just and honourable. I will write instead of going to-morrow, Mr. Mowle; and if this affair should not take place to-morrow night, as you suppose, I will make such arrangements for the following day--on which I must go over to Woodchurch--as will enable you to communicate with me without delay, should you have any message to send. At all events, I will return to Hythe before night. Now good evening;" and while Mowle made his bow and retired, the young officer turned to the letter again, and read it over with glistening eyes.
CHAPTER III.
I wonder if the reader ever wandered from Saltwood Castle back to the good old town of Hythe, on a fine summer"s day, with a fair companion, as full of thought and mind as grace and beauty, and with a dear child just at the age when all the world is fresh and lovely--and then missed his way, and strayed--far from the track--towards Sandgate, till dinner was kept waiting at the inn, and the party who would not plod on foot, were all tired and wondering at their friend"s delay!--I wonder if the reader ever did all this. I have--and a very pleasant thing it is to do. Yes, all of it, reader. For, surely, to go from waving wood to green field, and from green field to hill-side and wood again, and to trace along the brook which we know must lead to the sea-sh.o.r.e, with one companion of high soul, who can answer thought for thought, and another in life"s early morning, who can bring back before your eyes the picture of young enjoyment--ay, and to know that those you love most dearly and esteem most highly, are looking for your coming, with a little anxiety, not even approaching the bounds of apprehension, is all very pleasant indeed.
You, dear and excellent lady, who were one of my companions on the way, may perhaps recollect a little cottage--near the spot where we sprung a solitary partridge--whither I went to inquire the shortest road to Hythe. That cottage was standing there at the period of which I now write; and at the bottom of that hill, amongst the wood, and close by the little stream nearly where the foot-bridge now carries the traveller over dryshod, was another hut, half concealed by the trees, and covered over with well nigh as much moss and houseleek as actual thatch.
It has been long swept away, as well as its tenants; and certainly a wretched and ill-constructed place it was. Would to Heaven that all such were gone from our rich and productive land, and that every labourer, in a country which owes so much to the industry of her children, had a dwelling better fitted to a human being! But, alas, many such still exist! and it is not always, as it was in this case, that vice is the companion of misery. This is no book of idle twaddle, to represent all the wealthy as cold, hard, and vicious, and the poor all good, forbearing, and laborious; for evil is pretty equally distributed through all cla.s.ses--though, G.o.d knows, the rich, with all their opportunities, ought to shew a smaller proportion of wickedness, and the poor might perhaps be expected, from their temptations, to be worse than they are! Still it is hard to think that many as honest a man as ever lived--ay, and as industrious a man, too--returns, after his hard day"s toil, to find his wife and children, well nigh in starvation, in such a place as I am about to describe--and none to help them.
The hut--for it did not deserve the name of cottage--was but of one floor, which was formed of beaten clay, but a little elevated above the surrounding soil. It contained two rooms. The one opened into what had been a garden before it, running down nearly to the brookside; and the other communicated with the first, but had a door which gave exit into the wood behind. Windows the hut had two, one on either side; but neither contained more than two complete panes of gla.s.s. The s.p.a.ces, where gla.s.s had once been, were now filled up in a strange variety of ways. Here was a piece of board nailed in; there a coa.r.s.e piece of cloth kept out the wind; another broken pane was filled up with paper; and another, where some fragments of the original substance remained, was stopped with an old stocking stuffed with straw. In the garden, as it was still called, appeared a few cabbages and onions, with more cabbage-stalks than either, and a small patch of miserable potatoes.
But weeds were the most plentiful of all, and chickweed and groundsel enough appeared there to have supplied a whole forest of singing birds. It had been once fenced in, that miserable garden; but the wood had been pulled down and burned for firing by its present tenants, or others as wretched in circ.u.mstances as themselves; and nought remained but a strong post here and there, with sometimes a many-coloured rag of coa.r.s.e cotton fluttering upon some long, rusty nail, which had s.n.a.t.c.hed a shred from pa.s.sing poverty. Three or four stunted gooseberry bushes, however, marked out the limit on one side; a path ran in front between the garden and the brook; and on the other side there was a constant petty warfare between the farmer and the inhabitant of the hovel as to the possession of the border-land; and like a great and small state contending, the more powerful always gained some advantage in despite of right, but lost perhaps as much by the spiteful incursions of the foe, as if he had yielded the contested territory.
On the night of which I speak--the same on which Mowle visited the commanding officer of the dragoons at Hythe--the cottage itself, the garden, and all the squalid-looking things about the place, were hidden in the deep darkness which had again fallen over the earth as soon as night had fallen. The morning, it may be remembered--it was the same on which Sir Edward Digby had been fired at by the smugglers--had been somewhat cold and foggy; but about eleven, the day had brightened, and the evening had been sultry. No sooner, however, did the sun reach the horizon than mists began to rise, and before seven o"clock the whole sky was under cloud and the air filled with fog. He must have been well acquainted with every step of the country who could find his way from town to town. Nevertheless, any one who approached Galley Ray"s cottage, as it was called, would, at the distance of at least a hundred yards, have perceived something to lead him on; for a light, red as that of a baleful meteor, was streaming through the two glazed squares of the window into the misty air, making them look like the eyes of some wild animal in a dark forest.
We must pause here, however, for a moment, to explain to the reader who Galley Ray was, and how she acquired the first of her two appellations, which certainly was not that which she had received at her baptism. Galley Ray, then, was the old woman of whom Mr. Mowle had given that favourable account, which may be seen in the last chapter; and, to say the truth, he had but done her justice. Her name was originally Gillian Ray; but, amongst a number of corrupt a.s.sociates, with whom her early life was spent, the first of the two appellations was speedily transformed to Gilly or Gill. Some time afterwards--when youth began to wane, and whatever youthful graces she possessed were deviating into the virago qualities of the middle age--while watching one night the approach of a party of smugglers, with whom she had some intimacy, she perceived three or four Custom-House officers coming down to launch a galley, which they had upon the beach, for the purpose of cutting off the free-traders. But Gilly Ray instantly sprang in, and with the boat-hook set them all at defiance, till they threatened to launch her into the sea, boat and all.
It is true, she was reported to have been drunk at the time; but her daring saved the smugglers, and conveyed her for two months to jail, whence, as may be supposed, she returned not much improved in her morals. One of those whom she had befriended in the time of need, bestowed on her the name of Galley, by an easy transition from her original praenomen; and it remained by her to the last day of her life.
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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sumed--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 coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sume 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 pa.s.ses 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, p.r.o.nounce 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.
Various were their garbs, and strangely different from each other were they in demeanour as well as dress. Some were clad in smock-frocks, and some in sailors" jackets; some looked like respectable tradesmen, some were clothed in a sort of fanciful costume of their own, smacking a little of the brigand; and one appeared in the ordinary riding-dress of a gentleman of that period; but all were well armed, without much concealment of the pistols, which they carried about them in addition to the sword that was not uncommonly borne by more than one cla.s.s in England at that time. They were all young men except one or two; and three of the number bore evident marks of some recent affray. One had a broad strip of plaster all the way down his forehead, another had his upper lip terribly cut, and a third--the gentleman, as I am bound to call him, as he a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Major--had a patch over his eye, from beneath which appeared several rings of various colours, which showed that the aforesaid patch was not merely a means of disguise.
They were all quite familiar with Galley Ray and her grandson; some slapped her on the shoulder; some pulled her ear; some abused her horribly in jocular tones; and all called upon her eagerly to set their supper before them, vowing that they had come twenty miles since seven o"clock that night, and were as hungry as fox-hunters.
To each and all Galley Ray had something to say in their own particular way. To some she was civil and coaxing, addressed them as "gentlemen," and to others slang and abusive, though quite in good humour, calling them, "you blackguards," and "you varmint," with sundry other delectable epithets, which I shall forbear to transcribe.
To give value to her entertainment, she of course started every objection and difficulty in the world against receiving them, asking how, in the name of the fiend, they could expect her to take in so many? where she was to get porringers or plates for them all? and hoping heartily that such a troop weren"t going to stay above half an hour.
"Till to-morrow night, Galley, my chicken," replied the Major. "Come, don"t make a fuss. It must be so, and you shall be well paid. We shall stay in here to-night; and to-morrow we shall take to cover in the wood; but young Radford will come down some time in the day, and then you must send up little Starlight to us, to let me know."
The matter of the supper was soon arranged to their contentment. Some had tea-cups, and some saucers; some had earthen pans, some wooden platters. Two were honoured with china plates; and the large pot being taken off the fire, and set on the ground in the midst of them, each helped himself, and went on with his meal. A grand brewing of smuggled spirits and water then commenced; and a number of horn cups were handed round, not enough, indeed, for all the guests; but each vessel was made to serve two or three; and the first silence of hunger being over, a wild, rambling, and desultory conversation ensued, to which both Galley Ray and her grandson lent an attentive ear.
The Major said something to the man with the cut upon his brow, to which the other replied, by condemning his own soul, if he did not blow Harding"s brains out--if it were true. "But, I don"t believe it,"
he continued. "He"s no friend of mine; but he"s not such a blackguard as to peach."
"So I think; but d.i.c.k Radford says he is sure he did," answered the Major; "d.i.c.k fancies that he"s jealous of not having had yesterday"s job too, and that"s why he spoiled it. We know he was up about that part of the country on the pretence of his seeing his Dolly; but Radford says he went to inform, and that he"ll wring his liver out, as soon as this job of his father"s is over."
A torrent of blasphemies poured forth by almost every person present followed, and they all called down the most horrid condemnation on their own heads, if they did not each lend a hand to punish the informer. In the midst of this storm of big words, Galley Ray put her mouth to the Major"s ear, saying, "I could tell young Radford how he could wring his heart out, and that"s better than his liver. There"s no use of trying to kill him, for he doesn"t care two straws about that. Sharp steel and round lead are what he looks for every day. But I could show you how to plague him worse."
"Why, you old brute," replied the Major, "you"re a friend of his!--But you may tell him, if you like. We have all sworn it, and we"ll do it; only hold your tongue till after to-morrow night, or I"ll cure your bacon for you."
"I"m no friend of his," cried Galley Ray. "The infernal devil, wasn"t it he that shot my girl, Meg? Ay, ay, I know he says he didn"t, and that he didn"t fire a pistol that day, but kept all to the cutlash; but he did, I"m sure, and a-purpose too; for didn"t he turn to, that morning, and abuse her like the very dirt under his feet, because she came, a little in liquor, down to his boat-side?--Ay, I"ll have my revenge--I"ve been looking for it long, but now it"s a-coming--it"s a-coming very fast; and afore I"ve done with him, I"ll wring him out like a wet cloth, till he"s not got one pleasure left in his whole carcase, nor one thing to look to, for as long as he may live!--Ay, ay, he thinks an old woman nothing; but he shall see--he shall see;"
and the beldam wagged her frightful head backwards and forwards with a look of well-contented malice that made it more horrible than ever.
"What an old devil!" cried the Major, glancing round the table with a look of mock surprise; and then they all burst into a roar of laughter which shook the miserable hovel in which they sat.
"Come, granny, give us some more lush, and leave off preaching," cried Ned Ramley, the man with the cut upon his brow. "You can tell it all to d.i.c.k Radford, to-morrow; for he"s fond of cutting up people"s hearts."
"But how is it--how is it?" asked the Major. "I should like to hear."
"Ay, but you shan"t hear all," answered Galley Ray. "Let d.i.c.k do his part, and I"ll do mine, so we"ll both have our revenge; but I know one thing, if I were a gentleman, and wanted a twist at Jack Harding, I"d get his Kate away from him. She"s a light-hearted la.s.s, and would listen to a gentleman, I dare say; but, however, I"ll have her away some way, and then kick her out into Folkestone streets, to get her bread like many a better woman than herself."
"Pooh, nonsense!" said Ned Ramley--"that"s all stuff. Harding is going to marry her; and she knows better than to play the fool."
"Ay," answered the old woman, with a look of spite, "I shouldn"t wonder if Harding spoiled this job for old Radford, too."
"Not he!" cried Ramley, "he would pinch himself there, old tiger; for his own pay depends upon it."
"Ay, upon landing the stuff safely," answered the old woman, with a grin, "but not upon getting it clear up into the Weald. He may have both, Neddy, my dear--he may have both pays; first for landing and then for peaching. Play booty for ever!--that"s the way to make money; and who knows but you may get another crack of your own pretty skull, or have your brains sent flying out, like the inside of an egg against the pillory."
"By the fiend, he had better not," said Ned Ramley, "for there will be some of us left, at all events, to pay him."
"Come, speak out, old woman," cried another of the men; "have you or your imp there got any inkling that the Custom House blackguards have nosed the job. If we find they have, and you don"t tell, I"ll send you into as much thick loam as will cover you well, I can tell you;" and he added a horrible oath to give force to his words.
"Not they, as yet," answered the beldam, "of that I am quite sure; for as soon as the guinea and the message came, I went down to buy the beef, and mutton, and the onions; and there I saw Mowle talking to Gurney the grocer, and heard him say that he had spoiled Mr. Radford"s venture this morning, for one turn at least; and after that, I sent down little Nighty there, to watch him and his cronies; and they all seemed very jolly, he said, when he came back half an hour ago, and crowing like so many young c.o.c.ks, as if they had done a mighty deal.
Didn"t they, my dear?"
"Ay, that they did, Granny," replied the boy, with a look of simplicity; "and when I went to the tap of the Dragon to get twopennorth, I heard the landlord say that Mowle was up with the dragoon Colonel, telling him all about the fine morning"s work they had made."
"Devilish fine, indeed!" cried Ned Ramley. "Why they did not get one quarter of the things; and if we can save a third, that"s enough to pay very well, I can tell them."
"No, no! they know nothing as yet," continued the old woman, with a sapient shake of the head; "I can"t say what they may hear before to-morrow night; but, if they do hear anything, I know where it will come from--that"s all. People may be blind if they like; but I"m not, that"s one thing."
"No, no! you see sharp enough, Galley Ray," answered the Major. "But hark, is not that the sound of a horse coming down?"
All the men started up; and some one exclaimed, "I shouldn"t wonder if it were Mowle himself.--He"s always spying about."