Katerfelto, A Story of Exmoor

George J. Whyte-Melville

Katerfelto, A Story of Exmoor

Published by Good Press, 2022

[email protected]

EAN 4066338100399

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I. — DEADMAN'S ALLEY.

CHAPTER II. — PORLOCK BAY.

CHAPTER III. — WAIF.

CHAPTER IV. — THE OLD STORY.

CHAPTER V. — A CHARLATAN.

CHAPTER VI. — MY LORD AND MY LADY.

CHAPTER VII. — READY AND WILLING.

CHAPTER VIII. — A HEAVY STAKE.

CHAPTER IX. — STRONG AS DEATH.

CHAPTER X. — MARLBOROUGH DOWNS.

CHAPTER XI. — A PECULIAR PEOPLE.

CHAPTER XII. — MARY LEE.

CHAPTER XIII. — ON THE SCENT.

CHAPTER XIV. — LESS THAN KIN.

CHAPTER XV. — MORE THAN KIND.

CHAPTER XVI. — THE HARBOURER.

CHAPTER XVII. — LISTEN AND LEARN IT.

CHAPTER XVIII. — DUKE MICHAEL OF EGYPT.

CHAPTER XIX. — TEMPTED SORE.

CHAPTER XX. — THE COLD SHOULDER.

CHAPTER XXI. — DULVERTON REVEL.

CHAPTER XXII. — A WARRANTABLE DEER.

CHAPTER XXIII. — AT FAULT.

CHAPTER XXIV. — AT BAY.

CHAPTER XXV. — A BROAD HINT.

CHAPTER XXVI. — A HARD BARGAIN.

CHAPTER XXVII. — SELF-SACRIFICE.

CHAPTER XXVIII. — SELF-DEFENCE.

CHAPTER XXIX. — REMORSE.

CHAPTER XXX. — REPARATION.

THE END

At Gaze - Frontispiece

CHAPTER I. — DEADMAN'S ALLEY.

Table of Contents

On the last day of April, 1763, John Wilkes, refusing to enter into his recognisances to appear before the Court of Queen's Bench, was committed to the Tower by warrant of my Lords Egremont and Halifax, His Majesty's two principal Secretaries of State.

Defiance of constituted authority has never wanted sympathy from that British public which entertains, nevertheless, a profound respect for law. Mr. Wilkes became a hero in consequence; and while many a jug of beer was thereafter emptied, and many a bottle of wine cracked to his health, diverse street songs, more or less execrable, were composed in honour of the so-called patriot, whose personal popularity was incontestable, notwithstanding the unprepossessing exterior, that has passed into a proverb.

Of these, none were perhaps so absurd as the following ditty, chanted by a chairman more than half drunk, under the windows of a tavern in Covent Garden, notwithstanding the protestations of some half-dozen gentlemen, who, seated at supper in an upper chamber, held that their tastes and opinions were equally outraged by the persistency of the singer below.

King Nabuchodonosor, whined the chairman.

Hold that cursed noise! exclaimed one of the gentlemen from the window.

King Nabuchodonosor, repeated the chairman in all the aggravating monotony of a minor key.

You knave! roared a second voice—I'll come down and beat you to a jelly, if you speak another syllable!

A volley of oaths succeeded this threat, but their object stood fire manfully under the discharge, and fixing his eyes on vacancy, proceeded with his song—

"'King Nabuchodonosor

Lived in a golden palace;

He fed from a golden dish, and drank

His swipes from a golden chalice.

But John Wilkes he was for Middlesex,

And they chose him for knight of the shire;

For he made a fool of Alderman Bull,

And called Parson Tooke a liar!'

Hurrah! continued the vocalist, who had lost his hat, waving a scratch wig round his bare scalp with an abortive attempt to cheer. King Nabu—Nabu—cho—donosor was a mighty man—shaking his head with unimpaired solemnity—"a mighty man, no doubt,

'But John Wilkes he was for Middlesex, And they chose him for knight of the shire.'

Hip, hip—Hurrah!"

A burst of laughter rang from the party in the tavern, and a gentleman in a laced waistcoat shut down the window after throwing out a crown-piece to the singer in the street.

Night was falling, the air felt chilly, though it was summer, and the party, who had drank several bottles of port, gathered round the fire over a steaming bowl of punch.

They were of all ages between twenty and fifty. One of them wore a wig, another powder, a third had brushed his luxuriant hair to the poll of his neck and tied it in a plain black bow. Their long-waisted coats were cut to an ample width at skirt and sleeves; their waistcoats heavily bound with lace. Knots of ribbon adorned the knees of their breeches, their shoes were fastened with buckles, and each man carried sword and snuff-box. To drink, to fence, to lug out as it was called, on slight provocation, to sing a good song, tell a broad story, and spill a deal of snuff in its recital, were, at this period, the necessary accomplishments of a gentleman.

The room in which these worthies had assembled seemed more comfortable than luxurious. Its bare floor was sanded, and the chairs, long-legged, high-backed and narrow-seated, were little suggestive of repose, but the mahogany table had been rubbed till it shone like glass, the wood-fire blazed and crackled, lighting up the crimson hangings that festooned the windows, and though the candles were but tallow, there flared enough of them to bring into relief a few pictures with which the unpapered walls were hung. These works of art, being without exception of a sporting tendency, were treated in a realistic style, and seemed indeed to have been painted by the same master:—A fighting-cock, spurred, trimmed, and prepared for battle, standing on the very tip-toe of defiance. A horse with a preternaturally small head, and the shortest possible tail, galloping over Newmarket Heath, to win, as set forth in large print below, a match or plate of the value of fifty guineas. The portrait of a celebrated prize-fighter, armed with a broadsword, of a noted boxer in position, stripped to the waist. Lastly, an ambitious composition, consisting of scarlet frocks, jack-boots, cocked hats, tired horses and baying hounds, grouped round a central figure brandishing a dead fox, and labelled The Victory of obtaining the Brush.

One of the party had taken on himself to ladle out the punch. Its effects soon became apparent in the heightened colour and increased volubility of the company. Voices rose, two or three at once. A song was demanded, a glass broken. In the natural course of events, somebody called a toast.

Blue-Eyes! shouted a handsome young fellow flushed with drink, waving his glass above his head.

A fine! objected the punch-ladler, judicially. By the laws of our society, no member has leave to pledge a female toast. It leads to mischief. Gentlemen, we have decided to draw the line, and we draw it at beauty. Call something else!

Then here's John Wilkes! laughed the first speaker. He's ugly enough in all conscience. John Wilkes! His good health and deliverance—with three!

Hold! exclaimed a beetle-browed, square-shouldered man of forty or more, turning down his glass; I protest against the toast. John Wilkes ought still to be fast by the heels in the Tower of London. If he had his deserts John Wilkes would never have come out again, alive or dead, and nobody but a d—d Jacobite, and traitor to His Majesty King George, would venture to call such a toast in this worshipful company. I stand to what I say, John Garnet. It's you to play next!

Each man looked at his neighbour. The punch-ladler half rose to interfere, but shortly plumped into his seat again, finding himself, it may be, not quite steady on his legs, while the young gentleman, thus offensively addressed, clenched his glass, as if to hurl it in the last speaker's face. Controlling himself, however, with obvious effort, he broke into a forced laugh, glanced at his rapier, standing in a corner of the room, and observed quietly, If you desire to fasten a quarrel on me, Mr. Gale, this is neither a fitting time nor place.

Quarrel! exclaimed the man behind the punch-bowl; no gentleman, drunk or sober, would be fain to quarrel on John Wilkes' behalf. Sure, he can take his own part with the best or worst of us, and Mr. Gale was only playing the ball back to your service, John Garnet. You began the jest, bad or good. Be reasonable, gentlemen. Fill your glasses, and let us wash away all unkindness. Here's to you both!

Mr. Gale, though something of a bully, was not, in the main, an ill-natured man. He squared his shoulders, filled his glass, and pledged the person he had insulted with an indifference that almost amounted to additional provocation. Confident in his personal strength and skill with his weapon, Mr. Gale, to use his own phraseology, was accustomed to consider himself Cock of the Walk in every society he frequented. Nine men out of ten are willing to accept bluster for courage, and give the wall readily enough to him who assumes it as a right. The tenth is made of sterner stuff, resists the pretension, and exposes too often a white feather lurking under the fowl's wing, that crowed so lustily and strutted with so defiant a gait.

All this passed through the mind of John Garnet, completely sobered by his wrangle, while he sipped punch in silence, meditating reprisals before the night was past.

This young gentleman, whom nature and fortune seemed to have intended for better things, was at present wasting health and energy in a life of pleasure that failed egregiously to please, but that succeeded in draining the resources of a slender purse to their lowest ebb. He came of an old family, and indeed, but for the attainder that deprived his father of lands and title, would have been the owner of large estates in the North, and addressed by tenantry or neighbours as Sir John—that father, devoted body and soul to the Stuarts, died at Rome, beggared and broken-hearted, leaving his son little besides his blessing, and an injunction never to abandon the good cause, but bequeathing to him the personal beauty and well-knit frame that Acts of Parliament were powerless to alienate. The young man's laughing eyes, rich colour, dark hair, and handsome features were in keeping with a light muscular figure, a stature slightly above the average, and an easy jaunty bearing, set off by a rich dress, particularly pleasing to feminine taste. Hence, while he repudiated the title of which he had been deprived, it became a jest among his intimates to call him plain John Garnet, a jest of which the point was perhaps more appreciated by the other sex, than by his own.

Plain John Garnet looked somewhat preoccupied now, sitting moodily over his punch, and the influence of his demeanour seemed to steal upon the company in general. Mr. Gale, indeed, held forth loudly on horse-racing, cock-fighting, and such congenial topics, but spent his breath for an inattentive audience, not to be interested even by a dissertation on West-country wrestling in all its branches—the Cornish hug, the Devonshire shoulder-grip, and the West Somerset rough-and-tumble catch where you can.

At an earlier hour than usual the reckoning was called, and the guests, not very steady, assumed their swords and hats to pass downstairs into the street. Mr. Gale by accident, John Garnet by design, were the last to leave the room.

The latter placed himself before the door, observing in a quiet tone, that the other's reckoning was not yet wholly paid up. How so? asked Gale, in his loud, authoritative voice. The oldest member has taken my half-guinea, and entered it in due course. Will you satisfy yourself, my young friend, by calling the landlord to produce his club-books? Pooh, pooh! young sir: the punch is strong, and you have drunk too much! Stand aside, I say, and let me pass!

He did not like the set look of John Garnet's mouth; he liked less the low firm tones in which that gentleman repeated his assertion.

You may or may not be in debt to the club—it is their affair. You owe an apology to one of the members—that is mine.

Apology! stormed the other. "Apology! what do you mean, sir? This is insolence. Don't attempt to bully me, sir! Again I say, at your peril, let me pass!"

Do you refuse it? asked John Garnet, in a low voice, setting his lips tighter while he spoke.

I do! was the angry reply. And what then?

Nothing unusual, said the other, while he moved out of the way.

Drawer! Please to show us an empty room.

A frightened waiter, with a face as white as his napkin, opened the door of an adjoining chamber, set a candle on the chimney-piece, and motioned the gentlemen in.

Garnet bowed profoundly, making way for his senior to pass. The other looked about him in uncertainty, and felt his heart sink, while he heard the voices of their departing companions, already in the street.

He had little inclination to his task. For one moment the burly, square-shouldered man wished himself safe at home; the next, that intermittent courage which comes to most of us, in proportion as it is wanted, braced his nerves for the inevitable encounter and its result. He grasped his rapier, ready to draw at a moment's notice, while the other coolly locked the door.

The waiter, fresh on the town, and unused to such brawls, ran down to summon his master, who was busy over the house accounts in a small parlour below. Till the landlord had added up one column and carried its balance to the next, he paid no attention, though his astonished servant stood pale and trembling before him, with a corkscrew in his mouth and a bottle under his arm. Then both rushed upstairs in a prodigious hurry, just too late to prevent mischief.

While yet in the passage they could hear a scuffle of feet, a clink of steel, a smothered oath, and a groan; but as they reached the door it was opened from inside, and John Garnet stood before them, panting, excited, his waistcoat torn, his dress awry, with the candle in his hand.

There is a gentleman badly hurt in that room, said he. Better send for a surgeon at once, and get a coach to take him home. Then he blew out the candle, slipped downstairs in the dark, and so into the street.

The gentleman was indeed so badly hurt that all the energies of the household were concentrated on the sufferer. Nobody had a thought to spare for the assailant till long after pursuit would have been too late. Mr. Gale was wounded in the fore-arm, and had received a sword-thrust through the lungs. With the landlord's assistance he made shift to walk into a bedchamber, where they undressed and laid him carefully down; but before a surgeon could arrive there was obviously no hope, and he only lived long enough to assure the doctor, in the presence of two witnesses, that the quarrel had been of his own making, and was fought out according to the usual rules of fair-play.

I was a fool not to close with him, murmured the dying man, reflecting ruefully on the personal strength he had misapplied. But the rogue is a pretty swordsman; quick, well-taught, supple as an eel, and—I forgive him!

Then he turned on his side, as the landlord subsequently stated, and thereafter spoke never a word more, good or bad.

Under the Guard.

John Garnet, meanwhile, made the best of his way into the street, with the intention of proceeding straight to his lodgings, and riding out of London next morning at break of day. Duels, though of no rare occurrence, were serious matters even in a time when every man carried a small-sword by his breeches-pocket; and to be taken red-handed, as it were, from the slaughter of an adversary, would have entailed unpleasant consequences to liberty, if not to life. While it had been established that a gentleman was bound to defend his honour with cold steel, it seemed also understood that in such encounters even victory might be purchased at too dear a price. Nevertheless, so riotous were the habits of the day, encouraging to the utmost card-playing and the free use of wine, so lax was the administration of the law, and so stringent the code of public opinion, that scarcely a week passed without an encounter, more or less bloody, between men of education and intellect, who would have considered themselves dishonoured had they not been ready at any moment to support a jest, an argument, or an insult, with naked steel. John Garnet, therefore, observing an ancient watchman pacing his sluggish rounds, turned aside into a bye-street rather than confront this guardian of the peace; and hastening on as he became less certain of the locality, was aware that his strength began to fail, and felt his shirt clinging to his body, wet and clammy with something that must be blood.

For an instant he thought of turning back into the more frequented thoroughfare; but the hum of voices, and increasing tread of feet, seemed too suggestive of discovery, and he stumbled onwards, in faint hope of reaching the dwelling of some obscure barber-surgeon who might staunch his wounds, and send for a coach to take him home.

Twice he reeled against the wall of a certain dark passage, called Deadman's Alley, down which he staggered with uneven steps, and had almost decided that he must sink into the gutter, and lie where he fell till a passer-by should pick him up, when he descried a red lamp in a window ahead, and summoned all his strength to make for it as his last hope. Half blind, half stupefied, he groped and blundered on, with a dull, strange fancy that he was on the deck of a ship, labouring in a heavy sea while she made for a harbour-light, that seemed continually to dip and disappear behind the waves. The illusion, though not so vivid, was similar to a dream, and the languor that accompanied it something akin to sleep; till in a moment, while through his brain there came a whirr as in the works of a watch when it runs down, the light widened, broke into a hundred shafts of fire, went out and all was dark.

CHAPTER II. — PORLOCK BAY.

Table of Contents

High-water in Porlock Bay. The tide upon the turn—sand-pipers, great and small, dipping, nodding, stalking to and fro, or flitting along its margin waiting for the ebb; a gull riding smoothly outside on an untroubled surface, calm as the soft sky overhead, that smiled lovingly down on the Severn Sea. Landward, a strip of green and level meadows, fringed by luxuriant woodlands, fair with the gorgeous hues of summer; stalwart oak, towering elm, spreading walnut, stately Spanish chestnut, hardy mountain ash, and scattered high on the steep, above dotted thorns and spreading hazels, outposts, as it were, of delicate feathering birches, to guard the borders of the forest and the waste; fairyland brought here to upper earth, with all its changing phases, and variety of splendour. The wild-bird from her nest in Horner Woods needed but a dozen strokes of her wing to reach the open moorland that stretched and widened ridge by ridge, and shoulder by shoulder, till its rich carpet of heather was lost in the warm haze that came down on Dunkerry Beacon, like a veil from the sky.

Far away towards Devon lay a land of freedom and solitude, haunt of the bittern and the red deer, intersected by many a silent coombe and brawling river, to expand at last on the purple slopes of Brendon, or the wet grassy plains of Exmoor. Travelling over that interminable distance, the sense of sight could not but weary for very gladness, and turned well pleased to rest itself on the white cliffs of the Welsh coast opposite, and the faint blue of the intervening waters, calm and still, like the eyes of a girl, whose being has never yet been stirred into passion by the storm.

Above, below, around, Porlock Bay was decked in her fairest garb. Earth, air, and water seemed holding jubilee; but the loveliest object in earth, air, or water was a maiden seated on a point of rock, washed by the drowsy lap and murmur of the tide, who seemed pondering deeply yet in simple happy thought—a maiden of comely features and gracious presence, the sweetest lass from Bossington Point to Bideford Bay, nimble with needle, tongue and finger, courteous, quick-witted, brave, tender-hearted, the light of a household, the darling of a hamlet, the toast of three counties,—and her name was Nelly Carew.

She had sat the best part of an hour without moving from her place, therefore she could not be waiting for an expected arrival. She swung her straw hat backwards and forwards by its broad blue ribbon, with the regularity of a pendulum; therefore her meditations could have been of no agitating kind, and she looked straight into the horizon, neither upward like those who live in the future, nor downwards like those who ponder on the past. Nevertheless, her reflections must have been of an engrossing nature, for she started at a man's footstep on the shingle, and the healthy colour mantled in her cheek, while she rose and put out her hand to be grasped in that of a square-shouldered, rough-looking personage, whose greeting, though perfectly respectful, seemed more cordial than polite.

Good even, Mistress Nelly, said the new comer, in a deep sonorous voice; and a penny for your thoughts, if I may be so bold; for thinking you were, my pretty lass, I'll wager a bodkin, of something very nigh your heart.

She turned her blue eyes—and Nelly Carew's blue eyes made fools of the opposite sex at short notice—full in the speaker's face.

Indeed, Parson, she answered, you never spoke a truer word in the pulpit, nor out of it. I've turned it over in my mind till I'm dazed with thinking, and I can't get her to sit, do what I will.

Sit! exclaimed the other. Where and how?

Why, the speckled hen to be sure! answered Nelly, rather impatiently. If she addles all these as she addled the last hatch, I'll forswear keeping fowls, that I will—it puts me past my patience. How do you contrive with yours, Mr. Gale? though to be sure, if I was a parson, like you, I wouldn't keep game-cocks. I couldn't have the heart to see the poor things fight!

Parson Gale made no attempt to justify this secular amusement. He was one of those ecclesiastics, too common a hundred years ago, who looked upon his preferment and his parish as a layman of the present day looks on a sporting manor and a hunting-box. Burly, middle-aged, and athletic, there were few men between Bodmin and Barnstaple who could vie with the parson in tying a fly, setting a trimmer, tailing an otter, handling a game-cock, using fists and cudgel, wrestling a fall, and on occasion emptying a gallon of cider or a jack of double ale. Nay, he knew how to harbour a stag, and ride the moor after him when the pack were laid on, with the keenest sportsman of the West, and if to these accomplishments are added no little skill in cattle doctoring, and some practical knowledge of natural history, it is not to be supposed that the Reverend Abner Gale found much leisure for those classical and theological studies, to which he had never shown the slightest inclination.

It is but their nature, said the Parson, reverting to the game-cocks, of which he owned a choice and undefeated breed. It comes as natural for them to fight, as for me to drink when I'm dry, or for your old grandfather to sit and nod over the fire. Or for yourself, Mistress Nelly,—here the parson hesitated and tapped his heavy riding boots with his heavier whip,—to bloom here in the fresh air of the Channel, like a rose in a bow-pot. There's a many would fain gather the rose, only they dursn't ask for fear of being denied.

The latter part of the sentence was spoken low enough for Nelly, even if she heard it, to ignore.

And what brought you here this afternoon? she inquired in her frankest tones. "It's a long ride across the moor, Parson, even for you, and not much of a place when you get to it. If it had been Bridgewater now, or Barnstaple, sure you would have seen a score of neighbours, men and women, to tell you the news, and wind up the night with a junket or may be a dance. But here, and Nelly burst into a merry laugh, our only news is that the speckled hen seems as obstinate as a mule, and Farmer Veal brought a roan nag horse home this morning from Exeter. I daresay you've seen it already. As to dancing, if you must needs dance, Parson Gale, it will have to be with grandfather or me!"

And I'd dance all night with both, he answered, to be sure of a kind word from one of them in the morning. Do you really care to know what brought me here to-day, Mistress Nelly, and will you promise not to be hard on me if I tell you the truth?

There was something ludicrous in the contrast of his rough exterior and timid manner while he spoke. He was a thick, square-made man, built for strength rather than activity, with a coarse though comely face, bearing the traces of a hard out-of-door life, not without occasional excesses in feasting and conviviality. His short grizzled hair made him look more than his age, but in spite of his clumsy figure, there was a lightness in his step, an activity in his gestures, such as seldom outlasts the turning point of forty. He was dressed in a full-skirted riding coat, an ample waistcoat that had once been black, soiled leather breeches, and rusty boots, garnished with a pair of well-cleaned spurs. Even on foot and up to his ankles in shingle, the man looked like a good rider, and a daring resolute fellow in all matters of bodily effort or peril, not without a certain reckless good