Chapter XXVI: Canto II (9)

His curiosity was not long at fault; the sunbeam glanced partially upon some object ruddier even than itself--it was a scarlet waistcoat, the wearer of which, overcome perchance by Christmas compotation, seemed to have selected for his "thrice driven bed of down," the thickest clump of the tallest and most-imposing nettles, thereon to doze away the narcotic effects of superabundant juniper.

This, at least, was Mr. Moneypenny's belief, or he would scarcely have uttered, at the highest pitch of his _contralto_, "What are you doing there, you drunken rascal? frightening my horse!"--We have already hinted, if not absolutely asserted, that Peggy was a mare; but this was no time for verbal criticism.--"Get up, I say,--get up, and go home, you scoundrel!"--But the "scoundrel" and "drunken rascal" answered not; he moved not, nor could the prolonged shouting of the appellant, aided by significant explosions from a double-thonged whip, succeed in eliciting a reply. No motion indicated that the recumbent figure, whose outline alone was visible, was a living and a breathing man!

The clear, shrill tones of a ploughboy's whistle sounded at this moment from the bottom of the hill, where the broad and green expanse of Romney Marsh stretches away from its foot for many a mile, and now gleamed through the mists of morning, dotted and enamelled with its thousand flocks. In a few minutes his tiny figure was seen "slouching" up the ascent, casting a most disproportionate and ogre-like shadow before him.

"Come here, Jack," quoth the doctor,--"come here, boy, lay hold of this bridle, and mind that my horse does not run away."

Peggy threw up her head, and snorted disdain of the insinuation,--she had not the slightest intention of doing any such thing.

Mr. Moneypenny meanwhile, disencumbered of his restive nag, proceeded by manual application to arouse the sleeper. Alas! the Seven of Ephesus might sooner have been awakened from their century of somnolency. His was that "dreamless sleep that knows no walking;" his cares in this world were over. Vainly did Moneypenny practise his own constant precept, "To be well shaken!"--there lay before him the lifeless body of a MURDERED MAN!

The corpse lay stretched upon its back, partially concealed, as we have before said, by the nettles which had sprung up among the stumps of the half-grubbed underwood; the throat was fearfully lacerated, and the dark, deep, arterial dye of the coagulated blood shewed that the carotid had been severed. There was little to denote the existence of any struggle; but as the day brightened, the sandy soil of the road exhibited an impression as of a body that had fallen on its plastic surface, and had been dragged to its present position, while fresh horse-shoe prints seemed to intimate that either the assassin or his victim had been mounted. The pockets of the deceased were turned out, and empty; a hat and heavy-loaded whip lay at no great distance from the body.

"But what have we here?" quoth Doctor Moneypenny; "what is it that the poor fellow holds so tightly in his hand?"

That hand had manifestly clutched some article with all the spasmodic energy of a dying grasp--IT WAS AN OLD WIG!!

* * * * *

Those who are fortunate enough to have seen a Cinque Port court-house may possibly divine what that useful and most necessary edifice was some eighty years ago. Many of them seem to have undergone little alteration, and are in general of a composite order of architecture, a fanciful arrangement of brick and timber, with what Johnson would have styled "interstices, reticulated, and decussated between intersections" of lath and plaster. Its less euphonious designation in the "Weald" is a "noggin." One half the basement story is usually of the more solid material, the other, open to the street,--from which it is separated only by a row of dingy columns, supporting a portion of the superstructure,--is paved with tiles, and sometimes does duty as a market-place, while, in its centre, flanking the broad staircase that leads to the sessions-house above, stands an ominous-looking machine, of heavy perforated wood, clasped within whose stern embrace "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep" off occasionally the drowsiness produced by convivial excess, in a most undignified position, an inconvenience much increased at times by some mischievous urchin, who, after abstracting the shoes of the helpless _detenu_, amuses himself by tickling the soles of his feet.

It was in such a place, or rather in the Court-room above, that in the year 1761 a hale, robust man, somewhat past the middle age, with a very bald pate, save where a continued tuft of coarse, wiry hair, stretching from above each ear, swelled out into a greyish-looking bush upon the occiput, held up his hand before a grave and enlightened assemblage of Dymchurch jurymen. He stood arraigned for that offence most heinous in the sight of God and man, the deliberate and cold-blooded butchery of an unoffending, unprepared fellow-creature,--_homicidium quod nullo vidente, nullo auscultante, clam perpetratur_.

The victim was one Humphry Bourne, a reputable grazier of Ivychurch, worthy and well to do, though, perchance, a thought too apt to indulge on a market-day, when "a score of ewes" had brought in a reasonable profit. Some such cause had detained him longer than usual at an Ashford cattle-show; he had left the town late and alone; early in the following morning his horse was found standing at his own stable-door, the saddle turned round beneath its belly, and much about the time that the corpse of its unfortunate master was discovered some four miles off, by our friend the pharmacopolist.

That poor Bourne had been robbed and murdered there could be no question.

Who, then, was the perpetrator of the atrocious deed?--The unwilling hand almost refuses to trace the name of--Joseph Washford.

Yet so it was. Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis was himself the coroner for that division of the county of Kent known by the name of "The Lath of Scraye." He had not sat two minutes on the body before he recognised his _quondam_ property, and started at beholding in the grasp of the victim, as torn in the death-struggle from the murderer's head, his own OLD WIG,--his own perky little pigtail, tied up with a piece of shabby shalloon, now wriggling and quivering, as in salutation of its ancient master. The silver buckles of the murdered man were found in Joe Washford's shoes,--broad pieces were found in Joe Washford's pockets,--Joe Washford had himself been found, when the hue-and-cry was up, hid in a corn-rig at no great distance from the scene of slaughter, his pruning-knife red with the evidence of his crime--"the grey hairs yet stuck to the heft!"

For their humane administration of the laws, the lieges of this portion of the realm have long been celebrated. Here it was that merciful verdict was recorded in the case of the old lady accused of larceny, "We find her Not Guilty, and hope she will never do so any more!" Here it was that the more experienced culprit, when called upon to plead with the customary, though somewhat superfluous, inquiry, as to "how he would be tried?" substituted for the usual reply, "By God and my country," that of "By your worship and a Dymchurch Jury." Here it was--but enough!--not even a Dymchurch jury could resist such evidence, even though the gallows (_i.e._ the expense of erecting one) stared them, as well as the criminal, in the face. The very pig-tail alone!--ever at his ear!--a clearer case of _suadente Diabolo_ never was made out. Had there been a doubt, its very conduct in the Court-house would have settled the question. The Rev. Joel Ingoldsby, umquhile chaplain to the Romney Bench, has left upon record that, when exhibited in evidence, together with the blood-stained knife, its twistings, its caperings, its gleeful evolutions quite "flabbergasted" the jury, and threw all beholders into a consternation. It was remarked, too, by many in the Court, that the Forensic Wig of the Recorder himself was, on that trying occasion, palpably agitated, and that its three depending, learned-looking tails lost curl at once, and slunk beneath the obscurity of the powdered collar, just as the boldest dog recoils from a rabid animal of its own species, however small and insignificant.

Why prolong the painful scene?--Joe Washford was tried--Joe Washford was convicted--Joe Washford was hanged!!

The fearful black gibbet, on which his body clanked in its chains to the midnight winds, frowns no more upon Orlestone Hill; it has sunk beneath the encroaching hand of civilization; but there it might be seen late in the last century, an awful warning to all bald-pated gentlemen how they wear, or accept, the old wig of a Special Attorney,

_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!_

Such gifts, as we have seen, may lead to a "Morbid Delusion, the climax of which is Murder!"

The fate of the Wig itself is somewhat doubtful: nobody seems to have recollected, with any degree of precision, what became of it. Mr. Ingoldsby "had heard" that, when thrown into the fire by the Court-keeper, after whizzing, and fizzling, and performing all sorts of supernatural antics and contortions, it at length whirled up the chimney with a bang that was taken for the explosion of one of the Feversham powder-mills, twenty miles off; while others insinuate that in the "Great Storm" which took place on the night when Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis went to his "long home,"--wherever that may happen to be,--and the whole of "The Marsh" appeared as one broad sheet of flame, something that looked very like a Fiery Wig--perhaps a miniature Comet--it had unquestionably a tail--was seen careering in the blaze,--and seeming to "ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm."

UNSOPHISTICATED WISHES.

BY MISS JEMIMA INGOLDSBY, AGED 15.

(_Communicated by her Cousin Tom._)

Oh! how I should like in a Coach to ride,
Like the Sheriffs I saw upon Lord Mayor's day,
With a Coachman and little Postilion astride
On the back of the leader, a prancing bay.

And then behind it, oh! I should glory
To see the tall serving men standing upright,
Like the two who attend Mister Montefiore,
(Sir Moses I should say) for now he's a Knight.

And then the liveries, I know it is rude to
Find fault--but I'll hint as he can't see me blush,
That I'd not have the things I can only allude to
Either orange in hue or constructed of plush;

But their coats and their waistcoats and hats are delightful,
Their charming silk stockings--I vow and declare
Our John's ginger gaiters so wrinkled and frightful,
I never again shall be able to bear.

Oh! how I should like to have diamonds and rubies,
And large plume of feathers and flowers in my hair,
My gracious! to think how our Tom and those boobies,
Jack Smith and his friend Mister Thompson, would stare.

Then how I should like to drive to Guildhall,
And to see the nobility flocking in shoals,
With their two guinea tickets to dance at the ball
Which the Lord Mayor gives for relief of the Poles.

And to look at the gas so uncommonly pretty,
And the stars and the armour all just as they were,
The day that the Queen came in state to the city
To dine with the whole Corporation and Mayor.

Oh! how I should like to see Jane and Letitia,
Miss Jones and the two Misses Frump sitting still,
While dear Ensign Brown, of the West Kent Militia,
Solicits my hand for the "Supper" Quadrille.

With his fine white teeth and his cheek like a rose,
And his black cravat and his diamond pin,
And the nice little mustache under his nose,
And the dear _little_ tuft on the tip of his chin.

And how I should like some fine morning to ride
In my coach, and my white satin shoes and gown,
To St. James's Church, with a Beau by my side,
And I shouldn't much care if his name was Brown.

Miscellaneous Poems.

HERMANN; OR, THE BROKEN SPEAR.

An Emperor famous in council and camp,
Has a son who turns out a remarkable scamp;
Takes to dicing and drinking And d--mning and sinking,
And carries off maids, wives, and widows, like winking!
Since the days of Arminius, his namesake, than Hermann
There never was seen a more profligate German.
He escapes from the City; And joins some banditti
Insensible quite to remorse, fear, and pity;
Joins in all their carousals, and revels, and robberies,
And in kicking up all sorts of shindies and bobberies.
Well, hearing one day His associates say
That a bridal procession was coming their way,
Inflamed with desire, he Breaks into a priory,
And kicking out every man Jack of a friar, he
Upsets in a twinkling the mass-books and hassocks,
And dresses his rogues in the clergymen's cassocks.
The new married folks Taken in by this hoax,
Mister Hermann grows frisky and full of his jokes:
To the serious chagrin of her late happy suitor,
Catching hold of the Bride, he attempts to salute her.

Now Heaven knows what Had become of the lot,
It's Turtle to Tripe they'd have all gone to pot--
If a dumb Lady, one Of her friends, had not run
To her aid, and, quite scandalized, stopp'd all his fun!
Just conceive what a caper He cut, when her taper
Long fingers scrawled this upon whitey-brown paper,
(At the instant he seized, and before he had kissed her)--
"Ha' done, Mister Hermann! for shame! it's your sister!"
His hair stands on end,--he desists from his tricks,
And remains in "a pretty particular fix."
As he knows Sir John Nicholl Still keeps rods in pickle,
Offences of this kind severely to tickle,
At so near an escape from his court and its sentence
His eyes fill with tears, and his breast with repentance:
So, picking and stealing, And unrighteous dealing,
Of all sorts, he cuts, from this laudable feeling:
Of wickedness weary, With many a tear, he
Now takes a French leave of the vile _Condottieri_:
And the next thing we hear of this penitent villain,
He is begging in rags in the suburbs of Milan.

Half starv'd, meagre, and pale, His energies fail,
When his sister comes in with a pot of mild ale;
But though tatter'd his jerkins,
His heart is whole,--workings
Of conscience debar him from "Barclay and Perkins."
"I'll drink," exclaims he, "Nothing stronger than tea,
And that but the worst and the weakest Bohea,
Till I've done--from my past scenes of folly a far actor--
Some feat shall redeem both my wardrobe and character."
At signs of remorse so decided and visible
Nought can equal the joy of his fair sister Isabel,
And the Dumb Lady too, Who runs off to a Jew,
And buys him a coat of mail spick and span new,
In the hope that his prowess and deeds as a Knight
Will keep his late larcenies quite out of sight.
By the greatest good luck, his old friends the banditti
Choose this moment to make an attack on the city!
Now you all know the way Heroes hack, hew, and slay,
When once they get fairly mixed up in a fray:
Hermann joins in the _mêlée_, Pounds this to a jelly,
Runs that through the back, and a third through the belly.
Till many a broken bone, bruised rib, and flat head,
Make his _ci-devant_ friends curse the hour that he ratted.
Amid so many blows, Of course you'll suppose
He must get a black eye, or, at least, bloody nose:
"Take that!" cried a bandit, and struck, while he spoke it,
His spear in his breast, and, in pulling out, broke it.
Hermann fainted away When, as breathless he lay,
A rascal claimed all the renown of the day;
A recreant, cowardly, white-livered knight,
Who had skulked in a furze-bush the whole of the fight.
But the Dumb Lady soon Put some gin in a spoon,
And half strangles poor Hermann, who wakes from his swoon,
And exhibits his wound, when the head of the spear
Fits its handle, and makes its identity clear.
The murder thus out, Hermann's _fêted_ and thanked,
While his rascally rival gets tossed in a blanket:
And to finish the play-- As reformed rakes, they say,
Make the best of all husbands--the very same day
Hermann sends for a priest, as he must wed with some--lady,
Buys a ring and a licence, and marries the Dumb Lady.

MORAL.

Take warning, young people of every degree,
From Hermann's example, and don't live too free!
If you get in bad company, fly from it soon!
If you chance to get thrash'd, take some gin in a spoon;
And remember, since wedlock's not _all_ sugar-candy,
If you wish to 'scape "wigging," a dumb wife's the dandy!

HINTS FOR AN HISTORICAL PLAY;

TO BE CALLED

WILLIAM RUFUS; OR, THE RED ROVER.