The panting heart which seeks repose Till, breaking as a wave, It seeks a silent grave. XIV. How many angels like to you, Lighting the censer of the Soul In many a quiet spot Where sunshine cometh not! XV. But Starlight comes, when black trade sleeps; And, standing under heaven, each keeps His own sweet star in view: Some very blessed memory, Some hint of glory yet to be, Some sorrow nobly true; The stars shine down on leafless ways, Our sorrows shine above! 444 MY UNCLE'S FIRST AND LAST APPEARANCE AT THE COUNTY ASSIZES OF EASTMINSTER: Being an Extract from the Unpublished Journals of the Reverend Silas Umpleby, D.D., sometime Rector of St. Peter ad Vincula, in that City. IT had been one of those wet, cold, and depressing days which are not uncommon in an English spring. The wind had blown at intervals and in sheet-laden gusts from the north-east. The tall, black chimneys of the manufactories with which our city abounds had filled the sky with a dull, heavy smoke, which was rather circulated than driven away by the wind; and the lofty spire of the ancient cathedral (the grandmother of all the chimneys, as it was sometimes irreverently termed), for want of the play of light and shade on its crocketed pinnacles and columnar arcades, loomed dim in the distance, as though it felt and participated in the universal gloom. It was, moreover, Monday, and on the previous day I had been exhausted by preaching three sermons; so that I retired early to my Study, wheeled the easy chair to the coziest corner of the room, ensconced my feet in my slippers, and my whole man in the ample folds of a mandarin's robe, which my sailor nephew had sent me from Canton as a dressing-gown, and which I suspect had been looted from some yamun in the flowery land; told Margaret, the housekeeper, that she might go early to bed, and sat down to read the last new number of my favourite periodical, hoping that, by the help of a glass of hot toddy, I should be warmed, body and soul, and gradually brought into that healthy condition in which a man feels at peace with himself and with all the world. I had read two lively stories, and was just dozing over a transcendental disquisition on the philosophy of Kant, when I was aroused by a long, low, wailing ring at the bell of the front-door. It was not the vivacious ring of a friend or equal; nor the short, rapid, decisive pull of a postman hurrying through his last evening delivery; nor did the sound imply confidence in the ringer-it was mournful, and the more so because prolonged. I suspect that Dame Margaret was making a comfortable toilet-table of the kitchen dresser―at any rate, she had not retired; and with startled confusion, which I observed in the fact that she had put on her cap wrong side before and displayed a huge gap in her usually wellfastened gown behind, she "answered the door." Then I heard my faithful domestic, in cold and curt tones, protecting me against intrusion at such an unseasonable hour: "Master could not be seen." "Master was poorly, and had retired for the night.” She was too conscientious, and had too strong a sense of the proprieties of a clergyman's household, to say, with the flippant falsehood of the fashionable footman-NOT AT HOME! A soft, womanly voice was heard mingling expostulations with sobs. My curiosity and interest were excited. Gentle, pleading tones have always had a subtle charm with ne sinceSince when? Never mind. Forgetting that I was still enveloped in the rich robe of the mandarin-a top-button man, I doubt not-I entered the hall of my old Rectory-house, and found myself face to face with a pleasing young woman, neatly dressed in the garb of a mechanic's wife, and weeping bitterly. "What's the matter? What's the matter, my good woman?" said I— calling her a good woman, because that is a sort of euphemism which clergymen are apt to use when they are in doubt about the quality of the person addressed. And then my busy brain speculated on the reason why she had called at so late an hour. The baby is ill; or dead, and there is no money in the house to pay the undertaker for the funeral. Or "my sick husband wants the parson to read to him,"-a request which I generally interpret to mean, "and to bring a bottle of port-wine and some nice pudding and jelly," for I am not unmindful of some stirring words in the catholic Epistle of St. James, good for all time and all places, and, therefore, not inapplicable to the parish of St. Peter ad Vincula, in Eastminster. But my swift speculations were all at fault. Thus she replied, and thus begins the first chapter of the narrative of my appearance at the Assizes, which had opened a few days before, in the once lordly Keep of Eastminster Castle : 'Oh, Sir, thank you for coming to speak to me. I am in great trouble. My husband, Sir, is 'took.' You may, perhaps, remember him, Sir,— John Virtue, married to me, at Thorn, by banns, two years since last Martinmas. Well, Sir, he has worked for Wilton and Kidderminster, the carpet manufacturers, for ten years since, man and boy. Mr. Wilton, Sir, will speak to his character, Sir, and has promised me that he will take him on again, any day, if he only gets out of that dreadful Castle. He has been a good husband to me, Sir, has John Virtue; but you see, Sir, he's 'took.' You mind, Sir, the great fire at the Government stores about a fortnight ago. He worked at the fire like a young horse-or rather, I should say, like a young ass, as he was, Sir. He had better been at home, lying quietly in bed. He saved, Sir, hundreds of pounds' worth of property. He ventured into the very midst of the flames. He pulled out the desk of Mr. Jones, containing thousands of pounds, and took it straight to the police, when the commissariat warehouse was all in flames. He brought Mrs. Browne's baby in his own arms, out of her blazing lodgings -and he now, Sir, is 'took.' And the Government people say there was ever so much robbery at that fire, and they are determined to make an example. And they found a telescope in an old red cap belonging to my husband, in a barge on the Avon, where he kept his traps, and in which Mr. Wilton's carpets were towed down to the port at Barmouth; and they declare that John stole the telescope, which he didn't, and he is to be tried to-morrow; and my neighbours say, Sir, that I shouldn't leave a stone unturned to get my own dear husband off; but how am I to turn stones-and if I did, can I turn stones into sovereigns? And they say that I should get a good lawyer to plead for him, and I have not a shilling in the world! The precious baby, Sir, is, thank God, fast asleep in bed, and I am at my wit's end; and I thought that in my extremity I would come to you. Oh, Doctor Umpleby, have pity on a poor woman, who was one of your own St. Peter's scholars, though I dare say you have forgotten it." Then she burst into hysterical tears. Here was a pretty appeal made to a tired clergyman-on a Monday night, of all others in the week! My first impulse was to assume the attitude of outraged propriety; to decline any interference with the course of public justice; to preach a short homily on the Eighth Commandment, and to be off to bed! But just then there crossed my brain a purer suggestion, like a breeze wafted from the heavenly hills of charity and self-denial, and it prompted me to reply:-" Mrs. Virtue, I will do my best for your husband, but I sadly suspect that he is guilty of stealing that telescope." I was about to add some caustic remarks about the lax morality of the poor in dealing with property that was likely to be lost; but I remembered that dishonesty is sometimes found in other orders and conditions of men. Besides, there was no necessity to tear open and probe more deeply the terrible wound already burning in that faithful, loving heart. So I contented myself with saying -"Come to me at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, and I will see what can be done." The poor woman, from her large, tearful eyes, looked rather than spoke her thanks as she curtsied and withdrew. That look filled me with new interest and anxiety. It was a look of profound anguish on the one hand, and on the other of indescribable faith in me. During the next three minutes I stood hesitating-expecting, I confess, a good trouncing from Margaret, in the subtle subdued manner which none but a long-tried and confidential woman-servant can inflict. To my agreeable surprise I was disappointed. Margaret highly approved of my determination to help Mrs. Virtue. "I did not like that she should disturb you when you were so tired, on a Monday night, but I have known her," said my accurate chronicler, " ever since she was no higher than that table. She grew the nicest, best-spoken girl in the parish; but she's sadly fallen off since she was wed to THAT Virtue. Do you mind, Sir, when she was examined for confirmation? She was the only lass in the school who knew who her ghostly enemy was. She's found that out now by deep experience she has, as well as by book-learning, poor thing. She went to service to Squire Broadacre's, at Thorn. There she was a kind of nursery-helper. She was the pet of the family, with her big eyes and little white hands. My brother, Sir, was mightily fond of Alice." "Alice!-Alice who ?" cried I. "Why, Alice Fenton, to be sure," added Margaret, "the daughter of him as kept the branch post-office at Riverdale. Surely you mind little Alice Fenton, who sang the carols so sweetly at Christmas-tide! My brother, Sir, would never have gone off to Australy in the sudden, mysterious manner he did, Sir, if it hadn't been that Alice would never consent to be his wife. Oh! my precious Jim, you'd have made her a much better partner than that handsome Virtue, with his great black whiskers and his showy waistcoat. My Jim never told me a word about his great trouble, but I felt it all, with a sister's heart. 'Jim,' says I, when he came to wish me good by- Jim,' says I, it's all along of a woman, and that woman's Alice.'-He did not wait to hear the well-known name. He bolted out of the kitchen, Sir, slammed the front door behind him, and I have never seen him since. Well, it was soon reported that Alice was going to marry Virtue. Do you remember the picture that used to hang in Sagnew's printshop, of a foreign gentleman called Clovis? Well, Sir, that picture might be a portrait of Virtue, dressed in robes like a king, and we all called him Clovis Virtue. The young couple were married at last, at Thorn, Sir; and they say that the beautiful Miss Broadacres paid for the bride's bonnet and dress, and the Squire furnished their lodgings. at his own expense." How long Margaret might have continued her garrulous narrative I know not. I cut it short by taking off Commissioner Lin's splendid robe, ensconcing myself in a great coat, and a Mackintosh over it; putting on my antigropeloi, and, enjoining on Margaret that she must on no account go to bed, nor open the door to anyone except with the chain on, I sallied forth into the dark, on the errand of helping the naughty husband of little Alice Fenton. Into the dark! What a night that was! Darkness that might be felt was around, above, and beneath me. At last, after floundering in mud-pools innumerable, I reached the gas-lighted portion of the city. The sleety rain fell in torrents. Not a passenger did I meet-not even a drowsy watchman crying the hour. They had all retired into their boxes, by way of setting an example of quiet, like good citizens, to thieves and loiterers. At last I reached the base of the hill on which stands our Castleonce a centre of feudal pomp and revelry, now a grim county gaol. I thought of what it had been in past times, when the Montacutes, Counts of Eastminster, had bearded the Plantagenets from this very stronghold; of the great Duke of Eastminster in Queen Anne's reign, who never started from it for London without a retinue of a hundred mounted tenantry; of the adventurous Duchess, who used to boast that she had danced with the first Napoleon after the peace of Amiens, and driven a coach and six at full gallop down that precipitous descent. I thought of the change of the building to its present ignominious use, and of the remark of the facetious Judge Balderson, complaining of the defective ventilation of the hall where the Assizes were held, "that because culprits were hung at the top of the Keep, he saw no reason why judge and jury, barristers and attorneys, and the public generally, were to be asphyxiated inside." Let no critic blame me for these wandering thoughts. At no time is the imagination more |