Chapter IX: Part 9

"I will tell you all I know, of the man about whom you ask," he said, "but first let me explain that my sorest hindrance on earth was unbelief. Once, when I might have believed, I would not, and my punishment is that now, when I would believe, I cannot, but am for ever torn by hideous apprehension and doubt. Moreover, there are many things which, clear and plain as they may be to the faithful of heart and to the believing, are to my doubting eyes wrapt around in mystery. Into these mysteries it has been ordained as part of my punishment that I shall ever desire to look, and of all these mysteries there is none which fills me with such horror and dread as the mystery of the dead who die."

"Of the dead who die!" I said. "What do you mean by those strange words? Surely all who die are dead."

"They are my words," he cried excitedly, and with a hysterical laugh. "The words I use to myself when I think of the mystery which they strove so carefully to conceal from me, but which for all their cunning I have discovered. When first I came here, I saw, either in hell or in heaven, the faces of most of the dead whom I had known on earth, but some faces there were--the man of whom you ask was one--which I missed, and from that time to this I have never seen. 'Where, then, are they?' I asked myself, 'since neither earth, hell, nor heaven knows them more? Has God some fearful fate in store for sinners, which may one day fall upon me as it has already fallen upon them?' And so I set myself to discover what had become of these missing faces, and you shall hear the result.

"When you and I were children, we were taught that every human being is born with an immortal soul. But they did not tell us that just as neglected diseases can kill the body, so unchecked sin can kill the soul. But it is so, and that is what I meant when I said that he of whom you asked was 'of the dead who die.'

"You shake your head, and mutter that I am mad. Well, perhaps I am mad--mad with the horror of my unbelief; but why should it not be as I say? When God made man He made a creature to whom it was given to choose for himself between good and evil. But God knew that some of those He had thus made would deliberately choose evil, that some few would indeed sin away all trace of their Divine origin. God did not _will_ it so, for He made us men, not machines, and the evil we do is of our own choosing; but God _fore-knew_ it, and, foreknowing that, God owed it to Himself not to call into being a creature the result of whose creation would be that creature's eternal misery. Hence it was that He decreed that those for whom there could be no hope of heaven should die out at their deaths like the brutes. Our life is from God, and may not God take His own again? And could anything better happen to many people whom you and I have known on earth than that they should be allowed to die out, and the very memory of them to pass away for ever?"

I was convinced that he was mad--mad, as he had himself hinted, with the horror of his unbelief.

"And I am one of them," he exclaimed. "I am of the dead who die! I have bartered away life, faith, and happiness for Dead Sea fruit; I, who once was young, and not altogether as I now am, a soulless creature of clay! For I can remember the time when flowers, pictures, beautiful faces, and music set stirring emotions within me, in which it seemed that I saw hidden away in the depths of my own heart the shining form of a white-robed soul-maiden, who cried out to me: 'Ah, cannot you make your life as pure and beautiful as the flowers and the music, that so you may set me free?'

"But I chose the ignoble part, and gave myself up, body and soul, to evil and unbelief. And often in the hour when I was tempted to some shameful action I seemed to see the white arms of the soul-maiden uplifted in piteous entreaty to heaven, but at last the time came when her voice was silent, and when I knew that I had thrust her down into a darkness whence she would never again come forth!

"And now the very soul of me is dead, and I know not but that at any moment I may flicker out like a spent taper, and become as one of the dead who die!"

_IV.--On the Brink of the Pit_

At last there came a time, even in hell, when the burden of my sin lay so heavily upon me that I felt, if succour there was none, the very soul of me must die.

Of myself, save for the continual crying out of my soul after its lost purity, I scarcely cared to think. It was for Dorothy that I never ceased to sorrow, and--sinner though I was--to pray. I saw then, pictured forth in all their horror, the inevitable consequences of the wrong I had done her. I saw her, with the sense of her sin as yet but fresh upon her, shrinking from every glance, and fancying that she read the knowledge of her guilt in every eye. I saw her not knowing where to turn for refuge from swiftly advancing shame and understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and farther in the nightfall.

And then--driven out from their midst by the very Christian women who should have been the first to have held out a hand to save--I saw her turn away with a heart hardened into indifference, and plunge headlong into a bottomless gulf of ignominy and sin. Nor did the vision pass until, out of that seething vortex of lust and infamy, I saw arise the black phantom of a lost soul crying out unto God and His Christ for judgment upon the betrayer.

As these hideous spectres of the past came before me, I fell to the ground, borne down by a burden of agony greater even than the very damned in hell can bear. But even as I fell, that burden was lifted and borne away from me, and then I saw, as in a vision, One kneeling in prayer. And I, who had cried out that I could bear the burden of my sin no longer, saw that upon Him was laid, not only my sin, but the sins of the whole world, and that He stooped of His own accord to receive them. And as I looked upon the Divine dignity of that agonised form--forsaken of His Father that we might never be forsaken--I saw great beads of blood break out like sweat upon His brow, and I heard wrung from Him a cry of such unutterable anguish as never before rose from human lips. And at that cry the vision passed, and I awoke to find myself in hell once more, but in my heart there was a stirring as of the wings of hope--the hope which I had deemed dead for ever.

_Could_ it be--O God of mercy! was it possible that even now it might not be too late?--that there was indeed One Who could make my sin as though it had never been?

But to this hope there succeeded a moment when the agonised thought, "How if there be no Christ?" leapt out at me, like the darkness which looms but the blacker for the lightning-flash; a moment when hell got hold of me again, and a thousand gibbering devils arose to shriek in my ear: "And though there be a Christ, is it not now too late?"

I reeled at that cry, and the darkness once more closed in around. A horde of hideous thoughts, the very spawn of hell, swarmed like vermin in my mind; there was the breath as of a host of contending fiends upon my face; a hundred hungry hands seemed to lay hold on me, and to strive to drag me down and down to a bottomless pit that opened at my very feet, and into which I felt myself slipping. With a great cry to God I strove to rise, but my strength failed me, and I had fallen back into the abyss had not one, white-robed as the morning, come suddenly to succour me by stretching forth a hand of aid; and so--beating and battling like a drowning man for breath--I fought my way out, and fell sobbing and faint upon the pit's brink. And with a great cry of anguish I prayed aloud, "Lord Christ! I am foul and sinful! I do not know that I love Thee! I do not even know that I have repented of my sins! I only know that I cannot do the things I would do, and that I can never undo the evil I have done. But I come to Thee, Lord Jesus, I come to Thee as Thou biddest me. Send me not away, O Saviour of sinners."

As I made an end of praying, I looked up and saw standing beside me One, thorn-crowned and with wounded side, _Whose features were the features of a man, but Whose face was the face of God_.

And as I looked upon that face I shrank back dazed, and breathless, and blinded--shrank back with a cry like the cry of one smitten of the lightning; for beneath the wide white brows there shone out eyes, before the awful purity of which my sin-stained soul seemed to scorch and to shrivel like a scroll in a furnace. But as I lay, lo! there came a tender touch upon my head, and a voice in my ear that whispered, "Son."

And as the word died away into a silence like the hallowed hush of listening angels, and I stretched forth my arms with a cry of unutterable longing and love, I say that He held one by the hand--even the one who had plucked me out of the abyss into which I had fallen--and I saw that it was Dorothy--Dorothy whom He had sought out and saved from the shame to which my sin had driven her, and whom He had sent to succour me, that so He might set upon my soul the seal of His pardon and of His peace.

* * * * *

CHARLES KINGSLEY

Alton Locke

Charles Kingsley, English novelist, poet, and clergyman, was
born June 12, 1819, and died Jan. 23, 1875. The son of the
rector of Chelsea, London, Kingsley went from King's College,
London, to Cambridge, taking his B.A. degree in 1842, and
becoming rector of Eversley in 1844. He was made one of the
Queen's chaplains in 1859, and in 1873 was appointed canon of
Westminster. After publishing "Village Sermons" and "The
Saint's Tragedy," Kingsley took part with F.D. Maurice in the
Christian Socialist movement of 1848, attacking the horrible
sweating then rife in the tailoring trade, calling attention
to the miserable plight of the agricultural labourer, and the
need for sanitary reform in town and country. In "Alton Locke,
Tailor and Poet," first published in 1849, Kingsley writes
from the point of view of the earnest artisan of sixty years
ago, and the success of the book, following the author's
pamphlet on "Cheap Clothes and Nasty," did much to stimulate
social and philanthropic work in London and other great
industrial centres. Various editions of the novels of Kingsley
are obtainable.

_I.--A Sweating Shop_

I am a cockney among cockneys.

My earliest recollections are of a suburban street; of his jumble of little shops and little terraces.

My mother was a widow. My father, whom I cannot recollect, was a small retail tradesman in the city. He was unfortunate, and when he died, as many small tradesmen do, of bad debts and a broken heart, he left us beggars, and my mother came down and lived penuriously enough in that suburban street.

My mother moved by rule and method; by God's law, as she considered, and that only. She seldom smiled. She never commanded twice without punishing. And yet she kept the strictest watch over our morality.

Sometimes on a Sunday evening the ministers of the Baptist chapel would come in to supper after the meeting. The elder was a silver-haired old man, who loved me; and I loved him, too, for there were always lollipops in his pocket for me and for my only sister Susan. The other was a younger man, tall and dark. He preached a harsher doctrine than his gentler colleague, and was much the greater favourite at the chapel. I hated him; and years later he married my sister.

When I had turned thirteen, my father's brother, who had risen in wealth, and now was the owner of a first-rate grocery business in the City and a pleasant villa at Herne Hill, and had a son preparing for Cambridge, came to visit us. When he had gone my mother told me, very solemnly and slowly, that I was to be sent to a tailor's workrooms the next day.

What could my uncle make me but a tailor--or a shoemaker? A pale, consumptive boy, all forehead and no muscle.

With a beating heart I shambled along by my mother's side to Mr. Smith's shop, in a street off Piccadilly, and here Mr. Smith handed me over to Mr. Jones, the foreman, with instructions to "take the young man upstairs to the workroom."

I stumbled after Mr. Jones up a dark, narrow, iron staircase till we emerged through a trap-door into a garret at the top of the house. I recoiled with disgust at the scene before me; and here I was to work--perhaps through life! A low room, stifling me with the combined odours of human breath and perspiration, stale beer, the sweet sickly smell of gin, and the sour and hardly less disgusting one of new cloth. On the floor, thick with dust and dirt, scraps of stuff and ends of thread, sat some dozen haggard, untidy, shoeless men, with a mingled look of care and recklessness that made me shudder. The windows were tight-closed to keep out the cold winter air, and the condensed breath ran in streams down the panes.

The foreman turned to one of the men, and said, "Here, Crossthwaite, take this younker and make a tailor of him. Keep him next you, and prick him with your needle if he shirks."

Mechanically, as if in a dream, I sat down, and as the foreman vanished a burst of chatter rose. A tall, sharp-nosed young man bawled in my ear, "I say, young 'un, do you know why we're nearer heaven here than our neighbours?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Acause we're the top of the house in the first place, and next place yer'll die here six months sooner nor if yer worked in the room below. Concentrated essence of man's flesh is this here as you're a-breathing. Cellar workroom we calls Rheumatic Ward, acause of the damp. Ground floor's Fever Ward--your nose'd tell yer why if you opened the back windy. First floor's Ashmy Ward--don't you hear 'um now through the cracks in the boards, apuffing away like a nest of young locomotives? And this here most august and uppercrust cock-loft is the Consumptive Hospital. First you begins to cough, then you proceeds to expectorate, and then when you've sufficiently covered the poor dear shivering backs of the hairystocracy--

Die, die, die,
Away you fly,
Your soul is in the sky!

as the hinspired Shakespeare wittily remarks."

And the ribald lay down on his back, stretched himself out, and pretended to die in a fit of coughing, which last was, alas! no counterfeit, while poor I, shocked and bewildered, let my tears fall fast upon my knees.

I never told my mother into what pandemonium I had fallen, but from that time my great desire was to get knowledge. I fancied that getting knowledge I should surely get wisdom, and books, I thought, would tell me all I needed.

That was how it was I came to know Sandy Mackaye, whose old book-shop I used to pass on my walk homeward. One evening, as I was reading one of the books on his stall, the old man called me in and asked me abruptly my name, and trade, and family.

I told him all, and confessed my love of books. And Mackaye encouraged me, and taught me Latin, and soon had me to lodge in his old shop, for my mother in her stern religion would not have me at home because I could not believe in the Christianity which I heard preached in the Baptist chapel.

_II.--I Move Among the Gentlefolks_

The death of our employer threw many of us out of work, for the son who succeeded to the business determined to go ahead with the times, and to that end decided to go in for the "show-trade"; which meant an alteration in the premises, the demolition of the work-rooms, and the giving out of the work to be made up at the men's own homes.

Mackaye would have me stay with him.

"Ye'll just mind the shop, and dust the books whiles," he said.

But this I would not do, for I thought the old man could not afford to keep me in addition to himself. Then he suggested that I should go to Cambridge and see my cousin, with a view to getting the poems published which I had been writing ever since I started tailoring.

"He's bound to it by blude," said Sandy; "and I'm thinking ye'd better try to get a list o' subscribers."

So to Cambridge I went.

It was some time since I had seen my cousin George, and at our last meeting he had taken me to the Dulwich Gallery. It was there that two young ladies, one so beautiful that I was dazzled, and an elderly clergyman, whom my cousin told me was a dean, had spoken to me about the pictures, and that interview marked a turning point in my life. When I got to Cambridge, and had found my cousin's rooms, I was received kindly enough.

"You couldn't have got on at tailoring--much too sharp a fellow for that," he said, on hearing my story. "You ought to be at college, if one could only get you there. Those poems of yours--you must let me have them and look over them, and I dare say I shall be able to persuade the governor to do something with them."

Lord Lynedale came to my cousin's rooms next day--George told me plainly that he made friends with those who would advance him when he was a clergyman--and taking an interest in a self-educated author, bade me bring my poems to the Eagle and ask for Dean Winnstay. Lord Lynedale was to marry Dean Winnstay's niece. When I arrived at the Eagle, the first person I saw was Lillian--for so her father, the dean, called her--the younger lady, my heroine of the Dulwich Gallery, looking more beautiful than ever. I could have fallen down--fool that I was!--and worshipped-- what? I could not tell you, for I cannot tell even now.

The dean smiled recognition, bade me sit down, and disposed my papers on his knee. I obeyed him, trembling, my eyes devouring my idol, forgetting why I had come, seeing nothing but her, listening for nothing but the opening of those lips.

"I think I may tell you at once that I am very much surprised and gratified with your poems," said the old gentleman.

"How very fond of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke," said Lillian, "to be able to describe so passionately the longing after them!"

I stammered out something about working-men having very few opportunities of indulging the taste for--I forget what.

"Ah, yes! I dare say it must be a very stupid life. So little opportunity, as he says. What a pity he is a tailor, papa! Such an unimaginative employment! How delightful it would be to send him to college and make him a clergyman!"

Fool that I was! I fancied--what did I not fancy?--never seeing how that very "_he_" bespoke the indifference--the gulf between us. I was not a man, an equal, but a thing--a subject, who was to be talked over and examined, and made into something like themselves, of their supreme and undeserved benevolence.

"Gently! Gently, fair lady!" said the dean. "We must not be as headlong as some people would kindly wish to be. If this young man really has a proper desire to rise to a higher station, and I find him a fit object to be assisted in that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to go to some training college. Now attend to me, sir! Recollect, if it should be in our power to assist your prospects in life, you must give up, once and for all, the bitter tone against the higher classes which I am sorry to see in your MSS. Next, I think of showing these MSS. to my publisher, to get opinion as to whether they are worth printing just now. Not that it is necessary that you should be a poet. Most active minds write poetry at a certain age. I wrote a good deal, I recollect, myself. But that is no reason for publishing."

At this point Lillian fled the room, to my extreme disgust. But still the old man prosed.

"I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your cousin for the next week. I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious, moral, rising young man, and I only hope that you will follow his good example. At the end of the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to see more of you at my house at D----. Good-morning!"

My cousin and I stayed at D---- long enough for the dean to get a reply from the publishers concerning my poems. They thought that the sale of the book might be greatly facilitated if certain passages of a strong political tendency were omitted; they were somewhat too strong for the present state of the public taste.

On the dean's advice, I weakly consented to have the book emasculated. Next day I returned to town, for Sandy Mackaye had written me a characteristic note telling me that he could deposit any trash I had written in a paper called the "Weekly Warwhoop."

Before I went from D----, my cousin George warned me not to pay so much attention to Miss Lillian if I wished to stand well with Eleanor, the dean's niece, who was to marry Lord Lynedale. He left me suspecting that he had remarked Eleanor's wish to cool my admiration for Lillian, and was willing, for his own purposes, to further it.

_III.--Riot and Imprisonment_

At last my poems were printed and published, and I enjoyed the sensation of being a real live author. What was more, my book "took" and sold, and was reviewed favourably in journals and newspapers.

It struck me that it would be right to call upon the dean, and so I went to his house off Harley Street. The good old man congratulated me on my success, and I saw Lillian, and sat in a delirium of silent joy. Lord Lynedale had become Lord Ellerton, and I listened to the praises that were sung of the newly married couple--for Eleanor had become Lady Ellerton, and had entered fully into all her husband's magnificent philanthropic schemes--a helpmeet, if not an oracular guide.

After this, I had an invitation to tea in Lillian's own hand, and then came terrible news that Lord Ellerton had been killed by a fall from his horse, and that the dean and Miss Winnstay had left London; and for three years I saw them no more.

What happened in those three years?

Mackaye had warned me not to follow after vanity. He was a Chartist, and with him and Crossthwaite, my old fellow-workman, I was vowed to the Good Cause of the Charter. Now I found that I had fallen under suspicion.

"Can you wonder if our friends suspect you?" said Crossthwaite. "Can you deny that you've been off and on lately between flunkeydom and the Cause, like a donkey between two bundles of hay? Have you not neglected our meetings? Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems? Though Sandy is too kind-hearted to tell you, you have disappointed us both miserably, and there's the long and short of it."

I hid my face in my hands. My conscience told me that I had nothing to answer.

Mackaye, to spare me, went on to talk of the agricultural distress, and Crossthwaite explained that he wanted to send a deputation down to the country to spread the principles of the Charter.

"I will go," I said, starting up. "They shall see I do care for the Cause. Where is the place?"

"About ten miles from D----."

"D----!" My heart sank. If it had been any other spot! But it was too late to retract.

With many instructions from our friends and warnings from Mackaye, I started next day on my journey. I arrived in the midst of a dreary, treeless country, and a little pert, snub-nosed shoemaker met me, and we walked together across the open down towards a circular camp, the earthwork, probably, of some old British town.

Inside it, some thousand or so of labouring people, all wan and haggard, with many women among them, were swarming restlessly round a single large block of stone.

I made my way to the stone, and listened as speaker after speaker poured out a string of incoherent complaints. Only the intense earnestness gave any force to the speeches.

I noticed that many of the crowd carried heavy sticks, and pitchforks, and other tools which might be used as fearful weapons; and when a fierce man with a squint asked who would be willing to come "and pull the farm about the folks' ears," I felt that now or never was the time for me to speak. If once the spirit of mad, aimless riot broke loose, I had not only no chance of a hearing, but every likelihood of being implicated in deeds which I abhorred.

I sprang on the stone, assured them of the sympathy of the London working-men, and explained the idea of the Charter.

To all which they answered surlily that they did not know anything about politics--that what they wanted was bread.

In vain I went on, more vehement than ever; the only answer was that they wanted bread. "And bread we will have!"

"Go, then!" I cried, losing my self-possession. "Go, and get bread! After all, you have a right to it. There are rights above all laws, and the right to live is one."

I had no time to finish. The murmur swelled into a roar for "Bread! Bread!" And amid yells and execrations, the whole mass poured down the hill, sweeping me away with them. I was shocked and terrified at their threats. I shouted myself hoarse about the duty of honesty; warned them against pillage and violence; but my voice was drowned in the uproar. I felt I had helped to excite them, and dare not, in honour, desert them; and trembling, I went on, prepared to see the worst.

A large mass of farm buildings lay before us, and the mob rushed tumultuously into the yard--just in time to see an old man on horseback gallop hatless away.

"The old rascal's gone! And he'll call up the yeomanry! We must be quick, boys!" shouted one.

The invaders entered the house, and returned, cramming their mouths with bread, and chopping asunder flitches of bacon. The granary doors were broken open, and the contents were scrambled for, amid immense waste, by the starving wretches.

Soon the yard was a pandemonium, as the more ruffianly part of the mob hurled furniture out of windows, or ran off with anything they could carry. The ricks had been fired, and the food of man, the labour of years, devoured in aimless ruin, when some one shouted: "The yeomanry!" And at that sound a general panic ensued.

I did not care to run. I was utterly disgusted, disappointed, with myself--the people. I just recollect the tramp of the yeomanry horses, and a clear blade gleaming in the air, and after that I recollect nothing--till I awoke and found myself lying on a truckle-bed in D---- gaol, and a warder wrapping my head with wet towels.

Mackaye engaged an old compatriot as attorney at the trial, and I was congratulated on "only getting three years."

The weary time went by. Week after week, month after month, summer after summer, I scored the days off, like a lonely schoolboy, on the pages of a calendar.

Not till I was released did I learn from Sandy Mackaye that my cousin George was the vicar of his church, and that he was about to marry Lillian Winnstay.

_IV.--In Exile_

Brave old Sandy Mackaye died on the morning of the tenth of April, 1848, the day of the great Chartist demonstration at Kennington Common. Mackaye had predicted failure, and every one of his predictions came true. The people did not rise. Whatever sympathy they had with us, they did not care to show it. The meeting broke up pitiably piecemeal, drenched and cowed, body and soul, by pouring rain.

That same night, after wandering dispiritedly in the streets by the river, I was sick with typhus fever.

I know not for how long my dreams and delirium lasted, but I know that at last I sank into a soft, weary, happy sleep.

Then the spell was snapped. My fever and my dreams faded away together, and I woke to the twittering of the sparrows and the scent of the poplars, and found Eleanor, Lady Ellerton, and her uncle sitting by my bed, and with them Crossthwaite's little wife.

I would have spoken, but Eleanor laid her finger on her lips, and taking her uncle's arm, glided from the room.

Slowly, and with relapses into insensibility, I passed, like one who recovers from drowning, through the painful gate of birth into another life.

Crossthwaite and his wife, as they sat by me, tender and careful nurses both, told me in time that to Eleanor I owed all my comforts. "She's an angel out of heaven," he said. "Ah, Alton, she was your true friend all the time, and not that other one, if you had but known it."

I could not rest till I had heard more of Lady Ellerton.

"Why, then, she lives not far off. When her husband died, she came, my wife Katie tells me, and lived for one year down somewhere in the East End, among the needlewomen. And now she's got a large house hereby, with fifty or more in it, all at work together, sharing the earnings among themselves, and putting into their own pockets the profits which would have gone to their tyrants; and she keeps the accounts for them, and gets the goods sold, and manages everything, and reads to them while they work, and teaches them every day."

Crossthwaite went on to speak of Mackaye.

"When old Mackaye's will was read, he had left £400 he'd saved, to be parted between you and me, on condition that we'd go and cool down across the Atlantic, and if it hadn't been for your illness, I'd have been in Texas now."

Often did I see Eleanor in those days of convalescence, but it was not till a month had gone by that I summoned courage to ask after my cousin. Eleanor looked solemnly at me.

"Did you not know it? He is dead--of typhus fever. He died three weeks ago; and not only he, but the servant who brushed his clothes, and the shopman who had a few days before brought him a new coat home."

"How did you learn all this?"

"From Mr. Crossthwaite, who found out that you most probably caught your fever from a house near Blackfriars, and in that house this very coat had been turned out, and had covered a body dead of typhus."

Half unconscious, I stammered Lillian's name inquiringly.

"She is much changed; sorrow and sickness--for she, too, has had the fever--have worn her down. Little remains now of that loveliness----"

"Which I idolised in my folly."

"I tried to turn you from your dream. I knew there was nothing there for your heart to rest upon. I was even angry with you for being the _protégé_ of anyone but myself."

* * * * *

Eleanor bade me go, and I obeyed her, and sailed--and here I am. And she bade me write faithfully the story of my life, and I have done so.

Yes, I have seen the land! Like a purple fringe upon the golden sea. But I shall never reach the land. Weaker and weaker, day by day, with bleeding lungs and failing limbs, I have travelled the ocean paths. The iron has entered too deeply into my soul.

* * * * *

This is an extract from a letter by John Crossthwaite.

"Galveston, Texas, October, 1848.

"And now for my poor friend, whose papers, according to my promise to him, I transmit to you. On the very night on which he seems to have concluded them--an hour after we had made the land--we found him in his cabin, dead, resting peacefully as if he had slumbered."

* * * * *

Hereward the Wake

With, the appearance of "Hereward the Wake," sometimes called
"Hereward, the Last of the English," Kingsley brought to a
close a remarkable series of works of fiction. Although the
story was not published until 1866, the germ of it came to
Kingsley, according to Mrs. Kingsley's "Memoirs" of her
husband, during the summer of 1848, while on a visit to
Crowland Abbey, near Peterborough, with the Rev. F.D. Maurice.
As its title implies, the romance is suggested by the life and
adventures of Hereward, a Saxon yeoman who flourished about
1070. The story itself perhaps does not move along with the
same spirit and vigour that characterise Kingsley's earlier
works; it shows, nevertheless, that he had lost none of his
cunningness for dramatic situations, nor his vivid powers of
visualising scenes and events of the past.

_I.--Hereward Seeks His Fortune_

In the year of Canute's death was born Hereward, second son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and Godiva. At the age of eighteen he was a wild, headstrong, passionate lad, short in stature, but very broad, and his eyes were one blue and one grey. Always in trouble with authority, the climax came when he robbed Herluin, steward of Peterborough, of a sum of sixteen silver pennies collected for the use of the monastery, and for this exploit he was outlawed.

Accordingly, he left his home and went north, to Siward, who was engaged in war with Macbeth, and for aught we know he may have helped to bring great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill. However that may be, he stayed in Scotland with one Gilbert of Ghent, at whose house, among other doughty deeds, single-handed he slew a mighty white bear that escaped from captivity, incidentally saving the life of a pretty little maiden named Alftruda, and earning the hatred of the other men, who had not dared to face the bear.

Finding Scotland a little uncomfortable in consequence, he went to Cornwall, taking with him only his faithful servant Martin, and there at the court of Alef, a Danish kinglet, he had cause to kill a local celebrity, a giant named Ironhook, who was betrothed to Alef's daughter, though much against her will, she being in love with Sigtryg, son of Ranald, king of Waterford.

So Hereward went to Waterford with a ring and a message from the princess, returning later with Sigtryg, only to find that Alef had betrothed his daughter afresh to Hannibal of Marazion, and the wedding ceremony was actually proceeding when they arrived. An ambush was laid for the returning bridal party, Hannibal duly accounted for, and the princess carried off to Waterford, where they

Prepared another wedding
With all their hearts so full of glee.

Earl Leofric dead, Hereward determined to take the risk of returning home, to which end he begged two ships from Ranald and set sail. Thrown by a storm on the Flanders coast, he and all his men were like to have been knocked on the head, after the friendly custom of the times, but for the intervention of Arnoul, grandson of Baldwin of Flanders.

Entering his service, Hereward assisted Baldwin in an argument with Eustace of Guisnes, who differed with his lord on the question of payment of certain dues, and so keenly did he reason that the difference of opinion was satisfactorily composed--from Baldwin's point of view.

Anon a war with Holland claimed attention, but in the meantime Hereward had fallen in love with a most beautiful damsel named Torfrida, niece of the Abbot of St. Berlin, reputed a sorceress. Her favour he won in the lists from Sir Ascelin, to whom she had committed it, and upon him she bestowed it, together with her love and a suit of magic armour, through which no sword could pierce.

Then Hereward went off to Holland, and there he encountered Dirk Hammerhand, from whom to take a buffet was never to need another, and bought from him his famous mare Swallow, the price agreed on being the half of what Hereward had offered and a box on the ear.

"Villain!" groaned Dirk as he lay on the ground. "It was I who was to give the buffet, not thou!"

"Art mad?" said Hereward, as he coolly picked up the coins which Dirk had scattered in his fall. "It is the seller's business to take, and the buyer's to give."

In Holland Hereward remained a year, but as, under the terms of a wager made in a boastful mood, he went through the campaign without any armour and without changing his clothes, it was a disreputable looking man with many a wound who returned to Bruges, where, at the court of Adela, a jest was played on Torfrida by the countess, not without the privity of Hereward.

For before all her ladies Adela took her to task for having so long remained unmarried. Then, forming the assembly into a court of love, she asked the ladies what punishment should be meted out. One said one thing, one another.

"Marry her to a fool," said Richilda.

"Too common a misfortune," said the Lady of France. "No," said she. "We will marry her to the first man who enters the castle."

And from her sentence there was no appeal. Married poor Torfrida must be, and to the first man who happened in, be he who he might. And the first man was a ragged beggarman, with whom, when he was introduced into the presence, Torfrida was preparing to deal in her own way with a little knife, be the cost what it might, when she recognised the eye of grey and the eye of blue.

_II.--Hereward Encounters Some Old Friends_

In the spring it was hey for the war again, whence Hereward returned in November to find himself the father of a daughter and the recipient of letters from Harold of England and William of Normandy, both asking his assistance. Regarding Harold as a usurper, Hereward bluntly told him so. To William his reply was equally decisive, but less uncompromising. "When William is King of all England, Hereward will put his hands between his and be his man."

Whereat William laughed. "It is a fair challenge from a valiant man," he said to the messenger. "The day shall come when I shall claim it."

In Bruges one day Hereward found Gilbert of Ghent, who for reasons of his own had come thither with his ward Alftruda, and mightily disappointed was Gilbert to find him married; for he had a scheme whereby Hereward should marry Alftruda, and he should share her dowry, which was great. Alftruda, too, was mightily displeased, as she seemed one whom Hereward thought the most beautiful he had ever beheld; indeed, for one moment he even forgot Torfrida, and gazed at her spellbound. The only remark she vouchsafed to her former preserver was a whispered "So you could not wait for me," and then passed on to marry Dolfin, Gospatric's eldest son; and Gilbert pursued his way to France to join the Norman.

After that news came thick and fast.

News of Harold Hardraada sailing to England with a mighty host, of how the Gonfanon of St. Peter had come to Rouen, of William of Normandy's preparations at St. Pierre sur Dive, of the Norsemen landing in the Humber. Anon the news of Stamford Bridge and Hardraada's death, and lastly news of Senlac, and the death of the other Harold.

For well-nigh three years after these great happenings Hereward stayed in Flanders, grieving for the woes that had come upon his native land. Not that he sat moping all the time, for some deed of arms was ever on hand to afford distraction; but in the main his thoughts all turned on schemes for freeing England from the French tyrant. But not till Gyda, Harold's widowed mother, came to Baldwin for sanctuary did he take any overt action.

By skilful flattery, not unmixed with truth, she persuaded him that he was the man destined to free England once more; and so one morning he set out alone, accompanied only by Martin Lightfoot and a dozen house-carles, to spy out the land and see what might be done. Within a week he landed at Boston, only to find that Bourne, his home, had been bestowed upon the cook of Gilbert of Ghent, and that at that moment his younger brother's head was decorating the gable of the hall.

And so to Bourne went Hereward by night, and burst in upon the Frenchmen during a drunken carouse: in the morning there were fifteen heads upon the gable to replace the one that he had taken down overnight. Forthwith he returned to Flanders, having bestowed his mother in safety at Crowland Abbey, with a promise to his countrymen of the Fens that he would return to aid them shortly.

_III.--Hereward in England_

Having settled his affairs in Flanders, in due time he landed once more in the Wash with Torfrida and the child and two shiploads of stout fighters, with whom he went through Fenland raising an army. In the spring came Sweyn with his Danes, all eager for plunder; and Hereward had much ado to prevent them from plundering Crowland Abbey, only succeeding by promising them a richer booty in Peterborough.

So Peterborough they took and sacked, but at Peterborough Hereward found Alftruda, who had left her husband, and rescued her from the Danes during the sack of the minster. And, looking upon her extraordinary beauty, for the second time he forgot Torfrida; but for all that he sent her for safety to old Gilbert of Ghent, who had thrown in his lot with William, and was now at Lincoln. Having done with Peterborough, and later with Stamford, the army marched to Ely and there encamped.

And in Ely a great council was held, after which Sweyn and all his Danes returned home. For as Sweyn truly said, "While William the Frenchman is king by the sword, and Edgar the Englishman king by proclamation of earls and thanes, there seems no room here for Sweyn, nephew of Canute, king of kings." To which Hereward could advance no good reason to prove that there was. Anon came William of Ely, and built a floating bridge a full half-mile in length across the black abyss of mud and reeds that yawned between the island and the mainland. But the bridge was unable to bear the weight of all the French who crowded on to it; the fastenings at the shore-end broke, and the bridge itself overturned, so that all upon it were thrown into the mud and miserably drowned.

Whereon William withdrew his forces to Brandon for a space, and Hereward, being minded to find out for himself what next was purposed against the island, followed him thither, with shorn hair and beard, and disguised as a travelling potter. Anon he came to William's palace with his good mare Swallow, bearing on her back a load of crockery. At the palace he narrowly escaped recognition, being sent to the kitchen, where he got into a quarrel with the scullions. In consequence of which he was haled before William himself, who quickly detected that he was other than he pretended.

"Look you," said William, "you are no common churl--you have fought too well for that; show me your arm."

Hereward drew up his sleeve.

"Potters do not carry sword-scars like these, nor are they tattooed like English thanes. Hold up thy head, man, and let me see thy throat.

"Aha! so I suspected. There is fair ladies' work there. Is not this he who was said to be so like Hereward? Very good. Put him in ward till I come back from hunting, but do him no harm. For were he Hereward himself, I should be right glad to see Hereward safe and sound; my man at last, and earl of all between Humber and the Fens." Whereupon Hereward was clapped into an outhouse, whence he escaped forthwith by the simple device of cutting off the head of the man sent to fetter him, and the good mare Swallow bore him back to Ely in safety.

A little later William came again to Ely and built a stronger bridge, but this the English destroyed by fire, with many of the French on it, setting the reeds aflame on the windward side of it.

Some other scheme must now be thought out, and the one that pleased William most was to send to the monks a proclamation that, unless they submitted within a week, all their lands and manors outside the island would be confiscated. Furthermore, that if Hereward would submit he should have his lands in Bourne, and a free pardon for himself and all his comrades.

To which message Sir Ascelin and Ivo Taillebois, not being over desirous of having Hereward as a neighbour, saw fit to add a clause exempting Torfrida from the amnesty, but that she should be burnt on account of her abominable and notorious sorceries.

When the proclamation arrived, Hereward was away foraging. He came back in hot haste when he heard of it, but not fast enough; for ere they were in sight of the minster tower they were aware of a horse galloping violently towards them through the dusk, and on its back were Torfrida and her daughter. The monks had surrendered the island rather than lose their lands.

The French were already in Ely.

And now is Hereward to the greenwood gone, to be a bold outlaw, and the father of all outlaws, who held those forests for two hundred years from the Fens to the Scottish border, and with some four hundred men he ranged up the Bruneswald, dashing out to the war cry of "A Wake! A Wake!" and laying waste with fire and sword; that is, such towns as were in the hands of Frenchmen.

Now, Hereward had been faithful to Torfrida, a virtue most rare in those days, and he loved her with an overwhelming adoration--as all true men love. And for that very reason he was the more aware that his feeling for Alftruda was strangely like his feeling for Torfrida; and yet strangely different. Wherefore, when it befell that once on a day there came riding to Hereward in the Bruneswald a horseman who handed to him a letter, the sight of Alftruda's signature at the end sent a strange thrill through him. There was naught in it that he should not have read--it was but to tell him that the French were upon him, the _posse comitatus_ of seven counties were rising, and so forth. Continuing, the letter told him that Dolfin had been slain on the Border, and William and Gilbert of Ghent were going to marry her to Ascelin, and that, having saved her twice, she feared that Hereward could not save her a third time; concluding with an entreaty to submit to William, hinting that an opportunity presented itself now which might never recur.

The messenger took back the answer. "Tell your lady that I kiss her hands and feet; that I cannot write, for outlaws carry no pen or ink. But that what she has commanded, that will I perform." Having showed the letter to Torfrida, they agreed that it were well to take precautions, and withdrew into the heart of the forest.

Alftruda's warning was both timely and true, for anon came Ivo Taillebois, who had taken to wife Hereward's niece Lucia, and Abbot Thorold, of Peterborough, who had an old score to wipe off in connection with Hereward's last visit to his abbey, and Sir Ascelin, his nephew, and many another. And they rode gaily through the greenwood, where presently they found Hereward, to their sorrow, for of their number some returned home only after payment of ransom, and others never returned at all. And of the former were Abbot Thorold and Ascelin; and the ransom that Hereward exacted for those two was thirty thousand silver marks. Whereby Hereward was enabled to put a spoke in Ascelin's wheel.

"Eh? How, most courteous victor?" said Sir Ascelin.

"Sir Ascelin is not a very wealthy gentleman?"

Ascelin laughed assent.

"_Nudus intravi, nudus exeo_--England; and I fear now this mortal life likewise."

"But he looked to his rich uncle the abbot to further a certain marriage project of his. And, of course, neither my friend, Gilbert of Ghent, nor my enemy, William of Normandy, are likely to give away so rich an heiress without some gratification in return."

_IV.--The Last of the English_

Thereafter they lived for two years in the forest, and neither Torfrida nor Hereward was the better for them. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, and a sick heart is but too apt to be a peevish one. So there were fits of despondency, jars, mutual recriminations. Furthermore, that first daughter was Torfrida's only child, and she knew almost as well as he how hard that weighed on Hereward. In him the race of Leofric, of Godiva, of Earl Oslac, would become extinct, and the girl would marry--whom? Who but some French conqueror, or at best some English outlaw? What wonder if he longed for a son to pass his name down to future generations?

And one day Martin Lightfoot came with another letter to Hereward, which he delivered to Torfrida, who learned from him that it came from Alftruda. She bade him deliver it to Hereward, to whom it was addressed, the which he did; but she noticed that this letter Hereward never mentioned to her, as he had done the former.

A month later Martin came again.

"There is another letter come; it came last night," said he.

"What is that to thee or me? My lord has his state secrets. Is it for us to pry into them? Go."

"I thought--I thought--"

"Go, I say!"

There was a noise of trampling horses outside. The men were arming and saddling, and Hereward went with them, saying that he would be back in three days.

After he had gone she found, close to where his armour had hung, a letter from Alftruda. It congratulated Hereward on having shaken himself free from the fascinations of "that sorceress." It said that all was settled with King William; Hereward was to come to Winchester. She had the king's writ for his safety ready to send to him; the king would receive him as his liegeman. Alftruda would receive him as her husband. Archbishop Lanfranc had made difficulties about the dissolution of his marriage with Torfrida, but gold would do all things at Rome; and so forth.

When this was read, after a night of frenzy, to Crowland Torfrida went under the guidance of Martin, and laid her head upon the knees of the Lady Godiva.

"I am come, as you always told me I should do. But it has been a long way hither, and I am very tired."

And at Crowland remained Martin, donning a lay brother's frock that he might the better serve his mistress. And to Crowland, after three days, came Leofric, the renegade priest, who had been with Hereward in the greenwood, and with him the child.

And so it came that when Hereward returned, as he had said, after three days, he found neither wife nor child, and to Crowland he too went, but came away even as he had gone. But with Torfrida he had no word, nor with Godiva, for both refused him audience.

So Hereward went to Winchester, and with him forty of his knights, and placed his hands between the hands of William, and swore to be his man.