Unvarnished Tales - Audiolibro Gratis

IV.
“ONE WAS RENT AND LEFT TO DIE.”

After the traveller passes the City of Oxford the Thames greatly changes its aspect.  Locks are deserted by their keepers.  One has to open these waterways for oneself, and there is usually a difficulty in finding the bolts rust-eaten and honey-combed into a very corrugated species of small-pox.  For traffic has ceased a great way below, and the gentle dwellers by the banks are a dull and slow race of men given greatly to the consumption of beer.  You may proceed to great distances without seeing a human being.  It is a narrow Thames hereabouts and a shallow.  Yet it is infinitely pleasant in the early spring, when the birds sing against each other in what to us appear songs of unaffected gladness, but which are really cries of baffled envy—of angry jealousy.  For even the note of the nightingale is now relegated by the advance of knowledge to a place among our shattered illusions.

Innocent lambs, sweetly unconscious of the rapidly growing mint, bleat feebly at the unexpected apparition of a boat containing a human being in flannels, and the great kine slaking their thirst gaze with meek contemptuous eyes at the intruder.  How cool the rushes show standing by the water’s edge, unheeding as yet the earlier efforts of a sun rehearsing for his summer effects.  And above all, the deep cerulean with its white clouds, motionless as those of the painted canvas in the theatre—seeming more intensely white as the black wings of the rook pass beneath with lazy sweep.

Twenty miles above Oxford—more than twenty or less than twenty, for I do not wish the place identified—is the village of —.  It is situated about a mile and a half from the banks of the Thames, and is a place which was at one time of some consideration, but now is half asleep.  It has done its business and retired.  Some wealthy men live in the place and its vicinity.  The labourers look fat on a wage of a shilling or so a day, and once a year there is a fair, which is greatly deplored by the godly as calculated to undermine the morals of the simple villagers, whom to my own knowledge stand in need of no such temptation, being by nature somewhat prone to forget that part of the moral law which inculcates advice regarding the regulation of a man’s desires.

The prettiest girl in — was Jessie Bracebridge.  She had long golden hair rigidly suppressed under her garden hat, and soft blue eyes and a figure lithe but rounded.  Her dress was plain to a fault.  For she was the only daughter of William Bracebridge, cobbler and Methodist local preacher, a pious enthusiast of great original power and extraordinary will; but a pious enthusiast whose notions of Duty if carried out to their fullest by mankind generally, would render the world a very uncomfortable place to live in.  In the year 1741 the Rev. John Wesley had visited —, and, as appears from his “Journal,” being greatly scandalised by the fact that the Vicar hunted three days a week in the season, and that every second name inserted in the registry of birth was that of an illegitimate infant, established a conventicle in the village and set apart a local or lay preacher to look after his converts until such time as he could send a regularly ordained minister to supply their spiritual wants.  The lay preacher was named Bracebridge, and the Bracebridge whose name appears in this unvarnished tale was grandson of the friend of John Wesley.  Bracebridge was indeed in a sort of Apostolical Succession.

In the glorious spring weather of 18–, Jessie Bracebridge had wandered down to the river and stood among the reeds looking across the great expanse of meadow beyond the other shore, and wishing that her mother were alive again, and wondering if people might be really good and relatively happy without being so strict and stern as her father, or so instant as he was in season and out of season.  Perhaps, too, she was indulging in day dreams of the great world outside, for she was in her seventeenth year, and had read of the wonders of cities, and, notwithstanding her father’s denunciation of the wickedness in them, longed perhaps to see and judge for herself.  Suddenly her thoughts were diverted.  A lamb more silly than its companions—if indeed one lamb can be more silly than another—had approached too near the edge of the stream, and the bank giving way under its small weight it fell into the stream and wakened the echoes with piteous bleating.  At that catastrophe Jessie shrieked aloud, regarding the quadruped’s as a life only less precious than that of a human being.

A skiff came round the bend of the stream, and its occupant was soon pulling toward the shrieking maiden.  In her distress she pointed to the drowning lamb, and he, not without difficulty, rescued the woolly unfortunate, and then returned to receive the thanks which he considered were his due—for although we are all agreed that virtue is its own reward, few of us are satisfied with that intangible recompense.  He was a frank-looking, bronzed, and brown-haired English youth, and she blushed as, with the candid impulse of his nature, he expressed his sorrow for her distress and his unfeigned delight that he had been in a position to render a service which had given her pleasure.

It was a short interview but it was a fatal one.  She had looked and loved.  He had looked and loved.  They met again.  And again.  And for the first time in her life she had a secret from the father whom she feared.

But ah! for her what unthought of bliss in these meetings.  How she listened as her lover, her hero, talked of the world of wealth and fashion—of the grand mansions of London, of the historic colleges of Oxford.  He sang to her songs of the world, and even taught her, who heretofore regarded as morally wrong anything in the way of a musical exercise not contained in the compilation of John and Charles Wesley, to warble such ditties.  Of these it gave him a dreamy pleasure to hear her sing to him a composition—which commenced or ended—for I forget which—with the words—

“We threw two leaflets you and I,
   To the river as it wandered on,
One was rent and left to die,
   The other floated onward all alone.”

An ominous quatrain.

Tom was the name of this sweet-voiced young lover.  And Tom was the son of an eminent judge, who has since exchanged the ermine for a crown of glory.  Tom was at that time a student of Magdalen College, Oxford.  And Jessie, as you know, was the daughter of a Methodist cobbler.  Yet they loved all the spring till he went away to the Continent and forgot all about that pleasant spooning.

* * * * *

On the following spring Judge —, his revered parent, went the Oxford Circuit.  One day after the Court had risen, he called at his son’s chambers in Magdalen College.  There was an affectionate greeting between father and son, and the latter, whom as we have seen, was a most impulsive and kind-hearted young fellow, saw that his father was not looking well.

“You look ill,” he said, in his sweet musical tones.  “The pestilential atmosphere of those infernal courts.”

“No.  I have been engaged in trying a very sad case.”

Tom smiled incredulously.

“The idea of a judge of your experience affected by anything that transpires in a Court of Justice.”

“And yet so it is.”

“The story must be an exceptionally terrible one.”

“No.  It is only exceptionally sad.  I will tell it to you briefly.  A young woman was charged with the murder of her infant.  The young woman was unmarried.  So far the story is unfortunately an ordinary one.  She refused to make any defence or divulge anything with regard to the parentage of the child.  A plea of not guilty was entered, and I assigned counsel to defend her.  But the facts were too strong.  The legal guilt of the unfortunate, and, I may say, very beautiful victim was clearly established by the witnesses for the Crown.  But one witness appeared for the defence, and he volunteered his evidence.  He was a tall, gaunt man, with a highly intelligent face.  He was dressed in broadcloth.  He entered the box, and said, in slow tones—the tones of a man suffering an unutterable agony—‘My lord, I wish to speak to the character of my daughter.’  He had no sooner spoken the words than the prisoner uttered a shriek, which, to my dying day, I shall remember.  She shrieked the word ‘Father,’ and fell to the floor of the dock.  There was great confusion in court for some minutes.  A medical man was sent for.  When he arrived he pronounced the prisoner dead.  The prosecuting counsel rose and announced the fact to the court.  The father still stood in the witness-box.  His face was ghastly pale, his hands clenched before him, his eyes were cast towards the roof of the building and looked bright, as though he could see through that obstacle to something above.  Amid a dead silence, in deep and infinitely pathetic tones he repeated the words, ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.’  I’m not ashamed to tell you that tears fell on my note-book from these old eyes of mine.”

“And the man’s name?” asked Tom, casually.

“William Bracebridge, of —.”

For one moment a deadly paleness spread over the face of the son.  But in an instant he regained his self-possession, and with his characteristic, frank, engaging manner, said,—

“Dear old dad, no wonder the scene upset you.  It is, indeed, a sad story.  Try a Laranaga, and let us talk of something else.”