Books: Half Hours with Great Story Tellers
V >>
Various >> Half Hours with Great Story Tellers
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 Produced by Scott Pfenninger, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
HALF-HOURS
WITH
GREAT STORY TELLERS.
_ARTEMUS WARD, GEORGE MACDONALD,
MAX ADELER, SAMUEL LOVER,
AND OTHERS._
1891
CONTENTS.
GREY DOLPHIN _Richard Harris Barham_
MOSES, THE SASSY _Artemus Ward_
MR. COLUMBUS CORIANDER'S GORILLA
THE FATE OF YOUNG CHUBB _Max Adeler_
BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE INN _Charles Dickens_
THE ENTHUSIAST IN ANATOMY _John Oxenford_
"THE LIGHT PRINCESS" _George Macdonald_
LEGEND OF THE LITTLE WEAVER _Samuel Lover_
GREY DOLPHIN.
"He won't--won't he? Then bring me my boots," said the Baron.
Consternation was at its height in the castle of Shurland--a catiff had
dared to disobey the Baron; and--the Baron had called for his boots!
A thunderbolt in the great hall had been a _bagatelle_ to it.
A few days before, a notable miracle had been wrought in the
neighborhood; and in those times miracles were not so common as they
are now; no royal balloons, no steam, no railroads,--while the few
saints who took the trouble to walk with their heads under their arms,
or to pull the Devil by the nose, scarcely appeared above once in a
century:--so the affair made the greatest sensation.
The clock had done striking twelve, and the Clerk of Chatham was
untrussing his points preparatory to seeking his truckle-bed; a half-
emptied tankard of mild ale stood at his elbow, the roasted crab yet
floating on its surface. Midnight had surprised the worthy functionary
while occupied in discussing it, and with his task yet unaccomplished.
He meditated a mighty draft: one hand was fumbling with his tags, while
the other was extended in the act of grasping the jorum, when a knock
on the portal, solemn and sonorous, arrested his fingers. It was
repeated thrice ere Emmanuel Saddleton had presence of mind sufficient
to inquire who sought admittance at that untimeous hour.
"Open! open! good Clerk of St. Bridget's," said a female voice, small
yet distinct and sweet,--an excellent thing in woman.
The Clerk arose, crossed to the doorway, and undid the latchet.
On the threshold stood a lady of surpassing beauty: her robes were
rich, and large, and full; and a diadem, sparkling with gems that shed
a halo around, crowned her brow: she beckoned the Clerk as he stood in
astonishment before her.
"Emmanuel!" said the lady; and her tones sounded like those of a silver
flute. "Emmanuel Saddleton, truss up your points, and follow me!"
The worthy Clerk stated aghast at the vision; the purple robe, the
cymar, the coronet,--above all, the smile; no, there was no mistaking
her; it was the blessed St. Bridget herself!
And what could have brought the sainted lady out of her warm shrine at
such a time of night? and on such a night? for it was dark as pitch,
and metaphorically speaking, 'rained cats and dogs.'
Emmanuel could not speak, so he looked the question.
"No matter for that," said the saint, answering to his thought. "No
matter for that, Emmanuel Saddleton; only follow me, and you'll see!"
The Clerk turned a wistful eye at the corner cupboard.
"Oh! never mind the lantern, Emmanuel; you'll not want it; but you may
bring a mattock and a shovel." As she spoke, the beautiful apparition
held up her delicate hand. From the tip of each of her long taper
fingers issued a lambent flame of such surpassing brilliancy as would
have plunged a whole gas company into despair--it was a 'Hand of
Glory,' [Footnote: One of the uses to which this mystic chandelier was
put, was the protection of secreted treasure. Blow out all the fingers
at one puff, and you had the money.] such a one as tradition tells us
yet burns in Rochester Castle every St. Mark's Eve. Many are the daring
individuals who have watched in Gundulph's Tower, hoping to find it,
and the treasure it guards; but none of them ever did.
"This way, Emmanuel!" and a flame of peculiar radiance streamed from
her little finger as it pointed to the pathway leading to the
churchyard.
Saddleton shouldered his tools and followed in silence.
The cemetery of St. Bridget's was some half-mile distant from the
Clerk's domicile, and adjoined a chapel dedicated to that illustrious
lady, who, after leading but a so-so life, had died in the odor of
sanctity. Emmanuel Saddleton was fat and scant of breath, the mattock
was heavy, and the Saint walked too fast for him: he paused to take
second wind at the end of the first furlong.
"Emmanuel," said the holy lady, good-humoredly, for she heard him
puffing: "rest awhile Emmanuel, and I'll tell you what I want with
you."
Her auditor wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and looked all
attention and obedience.
"Emmanuel," continued she "what did you and Father Fothergill, and the
rest of you, mean yesterday by burying that drowned man so close to me?
He died in mortal sin, Emmanuel; no shrift, no unction, no absolution:
why he might as well have been excommunicated. He plagues me with his
grinning, and I can't have any peace in my shrine. You must howk him up
again, Emmanuel."
"To be sure, madame,--my lady,--that is, your holiness," stammered
Saddleton, trembling at the thought of the task assigned him. "To be
sure, your ladyship; only--that is--"
"Emmanuel," said the saint, "you'll do my bidding; or it would be
better you had!" and her eye changed from a dove's eye to that of a
hawk, and a flash came from it as bright as the one from her little
finger. The Clerk shook in his shoes; and, again dashing the cold
perspiration from his brow, followed the footsteps of his mysterious
guide.
The next morning all Chatham was in an uproar. The Clerk of St.
Bridget's had found himself at home at daybreak, seated in his own
armchair, the fire out,--and--the tankard of ale out too! Who had drunk
it?--where had he been?--how had he got home?--all was mystery!--he
remembered "a mass of things, but nothing distinctly;" all was fog and
fantasy. What he could clearly recollect was, that he had dug up the
Grinning Sailor, and that the Saint had helped to throw him into the
river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were
sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald
had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at
their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas a Becket in the centre;
--Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy water. The Rood of
Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who
had a soul to be saved, flocked with his offering to St. Bridget's
shrine, and Emmanual Saddleton gathered more fees from the promiscuous
piety of that one week, than he had pocketed during the twelve
preceding months.
Meanwhile, the corpse of the ejected reprobate oscillated like a
pendulum between Sheerness and Gillingham Reach. Now borne by the
Medway into the Western Swale,--now carried by the refluent tide back
to the vicinity of its old quarters,--it seemed as though the River god
and Neptune were amusing themselves with a game of subaqueous
battledore, and had chosen this unfortunate carcass as a marine
shuttlecock. For some time the alternation was kept up with great
spirit, till Boreas, interfering in the shape of a stiffish "Nor'-
wester," drifted the bone (and flesh) of contention ashore on the
Shurland domain, where it lay in all the majesty of mud. It was soon
discovered by the retainers, and dragged from its oozy bed, grinning
worse than ever. Tidings of the godsend were of course carried
instantly to the castle; for the Baron was a very great man; and if a
dun cow had flown across his property unannounced by the warder, the
Baron would have pecked him, the said warder, from the topmost
battlement into the bottommost ditch,--a descent of peril, and one
which "Ludwig the Leaper," or the illustrious Trenck himself, might
well have shrunk from encountering.
"An't please your lordship--" said Peter Periwinkle.
"No, villain! it does not please!" roared the Baron.
His lordship was deeply engaged with a peck of Faversham oysters,--he
doted on shellfish, hated interruption at meals, and had not yet
despatched more than twenty dozen of the "natives."
"There's a body, my lord, washed ashore in the lower creek," said the
seneschal.
The Baron was going to throw the shells at his head; but paused in the
act, and said with much dignity,
"Turn out the fellow's pockets!"
But the defunct had before been subjected to the double scrutiny of
Father Fothergill and the Clerk of St. Bridget's. It was ill gleaning
after such hands; there was not a single maravedi.
We have already said that Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of the Isle of
Sheppey, and of many a fair manor on the main land, was a man of
worship. He had rights of free-warren, saccage and sockage, cuisage and
jambage, fosse and fork, infang theofe and outfang theofe; and all
waifs and strays belonged to him in fee simple.
"Turn out his pockets!" said the knight.
"An't please you, my lord, I must say as how they was turned afore, and
the devil a rap's left."
"Then bury the blackguard!"
"Please your lordship, he had been buried once."
"Then bury him again, and be--" The Baron bestowed a benediction.
The seneschal bowed low as he left the room and the Baron went on with
his oysters.
"Scarcely ten dozen more had vanished, when Periwinkle reappeared.
"An't please you, my lord, Father Fothergill says as how it's the
Grinning Sailor, and he won't bury him anyhow."
"Oh! he won't--won't he?" said the Baron. Can it be wondered at that he
called for his boots?
Sir Robert de Shurland, Lord of Shurland and Minster, Baron of Sheppey
in _comitatu_ Kent, was, as has been before hinted, a very great
man. He was also a very little man; that is, he was relatively great,
and relatively little--or physically little, and metaphorically great--
like Sir Sidney Smith and the late Mr. Buonaparte. To the frame of a
dwarf, he united the soul of a giant, and the valor of a gamecock.
Then, for so small a man, his strength was prodigious; his fist would
fell an ox, and his kick!--oh! his kick was tremendous, and, when he
had his boots on, would--to use an expression of his own, which he had
picked up in the holy wars--would "send a man from Jericho to June." He
was bull-necked and bandy-legged; his chest was broad and deep, his
head large and uncommonly thick, his eyes a little bloodshot, and his
nose _retrousse_ with a remarkably red tip. Strictly speaking, the
Baron could not be called handsome; but his _tout ensemble_ was
singularly impressive; and when he called for his boots, everybody
trembled and dreaded the worst.
"Periwinkle," said the Baron, as he encased his better leg, "let the
grave be twenty feet deep!"
"Your lordship's command is law."
"And, Perwinkle"--Sir Robert stamped his left heel into it's
receptacle--"and, Periwinkle, see that it be wide enough to hold not
exceeding two!"
"Ye--ye--yes, my lord."
"And, Periwinkle--tell Father Fothergill I would fain speak with his
Reverence."
"Ye--ye--yes, my lord."
The Baron's beard was peaked; and his mustache, stiff and stumpy,
projected horizontally like those of a Tom Cat; he twirled the one, he
stroked the other, he drew the buckle of his surcingle a thought
tighter, and strode down the great staircase three steps at a stride.
The vassals were assembled in the great hall of Shurland Castle; every
cheek was pale, every tongue was mute, expectation and perplexity were
visible on every brow. What would his lordship do? Were the recusant
anybody else, gyves to the heels and hemp to the throat were but too
good for him; but it was Father Fothergill who had said "I won't;" and
though the Baron was a very great man, the Pope was a greater, and the
Pope was Father Fothergill's great friend--some people said he was his
uncle.
Father Fothergill was busy in the refectory trying conclusions with a
venison pasty, when he received the summons of his patron to attend him
in the chapel cemetery. Of course he lost no time in obeying it, for
obedience was the general rule in Shurland Castle. If anybody ever said
"I won't" it was the exception; and, like all other exceptions, only
proved the rule the stronger. The Father was a friar of the Augustine
persuasion; a brotherhood which, having been planted in Kent some few
centuries earlier, had taken very kindly to the soil, and overspread
the county much as hops did some few centuries later. He was plump and
portly, a little thick-winded, especially after dinner, stood five feet
four in his sandals, and weighed hard upon eighteen stone. He was,
moreover, a personage of singular piety; and the iron girdle, which, he
said, he wore under his cassock to mortify withal, might have been well
mistaken for the tire of a cart-wheel. When he arrived, Sir Robert was
pacing up and down by the side of a newly opened grave.
"_Benedecite!_ fair son"--(the Baron was brown as a cigar)--
"_Benedecite!_" said the Chaplain.
The Baron was too angry to stand upon compliment. "Bury me that
grinning caitiff there!" he, pointing to the defunct.
"It may not be, fair son," said the friar, "he hath perished without
absolution."
"Bury the body!" roared Sir Robert.
"Water and earth alike reject him," returned the Chaplain; "holy St.
Bridget herself--"
"Bridget me no Bridgets!--do me thine office quickly, Sir Shaveling! or
by the Piper that played before Moses--" The oath was a fearful one;
and whenever the Baron swore to do mischief, he was never known to
perjure himself. He was playing with the hilt of his sword. "Do me
thine office, I say. Give him his passport to heaven."
"He is already gone to Hell!" stammered the Friar.
"Then do you go after him!" thundered the Lord of Shurland.
His sword half leaped from its scabbard. No!--the trenchant blade, that
had cut Suleiman Ben Malek Ben Buckskin from helmet to chin, disdained
to daub itself with the cerebellum of a miserable monk;--it leaped back
again;--and as the Chaplain, scared at its flash, turned him in terror,
the Baron gave him a kick!--one kick!--it was but one!--but such a one!
Despite its obesity, up flew his holy body in an angle of forty-five
degrees; then having reached its highest point of elevation, sunk
headlong into the open grave that yawned to receive it. If the reverend
gentleman had possessed such a thing as a neck, he had infallibly
broken it! as he did not, he only dislocated his vertebrae--but that
did quite as well. He was as dead as ditch-water!
"In with the other rascal!" said the baron--and he was obeyed; for
there he stood in his boots. Mattock and shovel made short work of it;
twenty feet of superincumbent mould pressed down alike the saint and
the sinner. "Now sing a requiem who list!" said the Baron, and his
lordship went back to his oysters.
The vassals at Castle Shurland were astounded, or, as the Seneschal
Hugh better expressed it, "perfectly conglomerated," by this event.
What! murder a monk in the odor of sanctity--and on consecrated ground
too! They trembled for the health of the Baron's soul. To the
unsophisticated many, it seemed that matters could not have been much
worse had he shot a bishop's coach-horse--all looked for some signal
judgment. The melancholy catastrophe of their neighbors at Canterbury
was yet rife in their memories; no two centuries had elapsed since
those miserable sinners had cut off the tail of the blessed St.
Thomas's mule. The tail of the mule, it was well known, had been
forthwith affixed to that of the Mayor; and rumor said it had since
been hereditary in the corporation. The least that could be expected
was, that Sir Robert should have a friar tacked on to his for the term
of his natural life! Some bolder spirits there were, 'tis true, who
viewed the matter in various lights, according to their different
temperaments and dispositions; for perfect unanimity existed not even
in the good old time. The verderer, roistering Hob Roebuck, swore
roundly, "'Twere as good a deed as to eat, to kick down the chapel as
well as the monk." Hob had stood there in a white sheet for kissing
Giles Miller's daughter. On the other hand, Simpkin Agnew, the bell-
ringer, doubted if the devil's cellar, which runs under the bottomless
abyss, were quite deep enough for the delinquent, and speculated on the
probability of a hole being dug in it for his especial accommodation.
The philosophers and economists thought, with Saunders McBullock, the
Baron's bagpiper, that a 'feckless monk more or less was nae great
subject for a clamjamphrey,' especially as 'the supply exceeded the
demand;' while Malthouse, the tapster, was arguing to Dame Martin that
a murder now and then was a seasonable check to population, without
which the isle of Sheppey would in time be devoured, like a mouldy
cheese, by inhabitants of its own producing. Meanwhile the Baron ate
his oysters and thought no more of the matter.
But this tranquillity of his lordship was not to last. A couple of
Saints had been seriously offended; and we have all of us read at
school that celestial minds are by no means insensible to the
provocations of anger. There were those who expected that St. Bridget
would come in person, and have the friar up again, as she did the
sailor; but perhaps her ladyship did not care to trust herself within
the walls of Shurland Castle. To say the truth, it was scarcely a
decent house for a female saint to be seen in. The Baron's gallantries,
since he became a widower had been but too notorious; and her own
reputation was a little blown upon in the earlier days of her earthly
pilgrimage; then things were so apt to be misrepresented--in short, she
would leave the whole affair to St. Austin, who being a gentleman,
could interfere with propriety, avenge her affront as well as his own,
and leave no loop-hole for scandal. St. Austin himself seems to have
had his scruples, though of their precise nature it would be difficult
to determine, for it were idle to suppose him at all afraid of the
Baron's boots. Be this as it may, the mode which he adopted was at once
prudent and efficacious. As an ecclesiastic, he could not well call the
Baron out--had his boots been out of the question; so he resolved to
have recourse to the law. Instead of Shurland Castle, therefore, he
repaired forthwith to his own magnificent monastery, situate just
without the walls of Canterbury, and presented himself in a vision to
its abbot. No one who has ever visited that ancient city can fail to
recollect the splendid gateway which terminates the vista of St. Paul's
street, and stands there yet in all its pristine beauty. The tiny train
of miniature artillery which now adorns its battlements is, it is true,
an ornament of a later date; and is said to have been added some
centuries after by a learned but jealous proprietor, for the purpose of
shooting any wiser man than himself, who might chance to come that way.
Tradition is silent as to any discharge having taken place, nor can the
oldest inhabitant of modern days recollect any such occurrence.
[Footnote: Since the appearance of the first edition of this Legend
"the guns" have been dismounted. Rumor hints at some alarm on the part
of the Town Council.] Here it was, in a handsome chamber, immediately
over the lofty archway, that the Superior of the monastery lay buried
in a brief slumber, snatched from his accustomed vigils. His mitre--for
he was a mitred Abbot, and had a seat in parliament--rested on a table
beside him: near it stood a silver flagon of Gascony wine, ready, no
doubt, for the pious uses of the morrow. Fasting and watching had made
him more than usually somnolent, than which nothing could have been
better for the purpose of the Saint, who now appeared to him radiant in
all the colors of the rainbow.
"Anselm!" said the beatific vision,--"Anselm! are you not a pretty
fellow to lie snoring there when your brethren are being knocked at
head, and Mother Church herself is menaced?--It is a sin and a shame,
Anselm!"
"What's the matter?--Who are you?" cried the Abbot, rubbing his eyes,
which the celestial splendour of his visitor had set a-winking. "Ave
Maria! St. Austin himself! Speak, _Beatissime!_ what would you with the
humblest of your votaries?"
"Anselm!" said the saint, a "brother of our order, whose soul Heaven
assoilzie! hath been foully murdered. He had been ignominiously kicked
to the death, Anselm; and there he lieth check-by-jowl with a wretched
carcass, which our sister Bridget has turned out of her cemetery for
unseemly grinning. Arouse thee, Anselm!"
"Ay, so please you, _Sanctssime!_" said the Abbot. "I will order
forthwith that thirty masses be said, thirty _Paters,_ and thirty
_Aves."_
"Thirty fools' heads!" interrupted his patron, who was a little
peppery.
"I will send for bell, book, and candle--"
"Send for an inkhorn, Anselm. Write me now a letter to his Holiness the
Pope in good round terms, and another to the Sheriff, and seize me the
never-enough-to-be anathematized villain who hath done this deed! Hang
him as high as Haman, Anselm!--up with him!--down with his dwelling
place, root and branch, hearth-stone and roof-tree,--down with it all,
and sow the site with salt and sawdust."
St. Austin, it will perceived, was a radical reformer.
"Marry will I," quoth the Abbot, warming with the Saint's eloquence:
"ay, marry will I, and that _instanter_. But there is one thing you have
forgotten most Beatified--the name of the culprit."
"Robert de Shurland."
"The Lord of Sheppey! Bless me!" said the Abbot, crossing himself,
"won't that be rather inconvenient? Sir Robert is a bold baron, and a
powerful: blows will come and go, and crowns will be cracked and--"
"What is that to you, since yours will not be of the number?"
"Very true, _Beatissime!_--I will don me with speed and do your
bidding."
"Do so, Anselm!--fail not to hang the Baron, burn his castle,
confiscate his estate, and buy me two large wax candles for my own
particular shrine out of your share of the property."
With this solemn injunction, the vision began to fade.
"One thing more!" cried the Abbot, grasping his rosary.
"What is that?" asked the Saint.
"_O Beate Augustine, ora pro nobis!_"
"Of course I shall," said St. Austin. _"Pax vo-biscum!"_--and Abbot
Anselm was left alone.
Within an hour all Canterbury was in commotion. A friar had been
murdered,--two friars--ten, twenty; a whole convent had been
assaulted, sacked, burnt,--all the monks had been killed, and all the
nuns had been kissed! Murder! fire! sacrilege! Never was city in such
an uproar. From St. George's gate to St. Dunstan's suburb, from the
Donjon to the borough of Staplegate, it was noise and hubbub. "Where
was it?"--"When was it?"--"How was it?" The Mayor caught up his chain,
the Aldermen donned their furred gowns, the Town Clerk put on his
spectacles. "Who was he?"--"What was he?"--"Where was he?"--He should
be hanged,--he should be burned,--he should be broiled,--he should be
fried,--he should be scraped to death with red-hot-oyster-shells! "Who
was he?"--"What was his name?"
The Abbot's Apparitor drew forth his roll and read aloud:--'Sir Robert
de Shurland, Knight banneret, Baron of Shurland and Minster, and Lord
of Sheppey.
The Mayor put his chain in his pocket, the Aldermen took off their
gowns, the Town Clerk put his pen behind his ear. It was a county
business altogether;--the Sheriff had better call out the _posse
comitatus_.
While saints and sinners were thus leaning against him, the Baron de
Shurland was quietly eating his breakfast. He had passed a tranquil
night, undisturbed by dreams of cowl or capuchin; nor was his appetite
more affected than his conscience. On the contrary, he sat rather
longer over his meal than usual; luncheon-time came, and he was ready
as ever for his oysters: but scarcely had Dame Martin opened his first
half-dozen when the warder's horn was heard from the barbican.
"Who the devil's that?" said Sir Robert. "I'm not at home, Periwinkle.
I hate to be disturbed at meals, and I won't be at home to anybody."
"An't please your lordship," answered the Seneschal, "Paul Prior hath
given notice that there is a body--"
"Another body!" roared the Baron. "Am I to be everlastingly plagued
with bodies? No time allowed me to swallow a morsel. Throw it into the
moat!"
"So please you my lord, it is a body of horse,--and--and Paul says
there is a still large body of foot behind it; and he thinks, my lord--
that is, he does not know, but he thinks--and we all think, my lord,
that they are coming to--to besiege the castle!"
"Besiege the castle! Who? What? What for?"
"Paul says, my lord, that he can see the banner of St. Austin, and the
bleeding heart of Hamo de Crevecoeur, the Abbot's chief vassal; and
there is John de Northwood, the sheriff, with his red cross engrailed;
and Hever, and Leybourne, and Heaven knows how many more: and they are
all coming on as fast as ever they can."
"Periwinkle," said the Baron, "up with the draw-bridge; down with the
portcullis; bring me a cup of canary, and my nightcap. I won't be
bothered with them. I shall go to bed."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9