Rodney Stone
Amongst the books to which I am indebted for my material in my
endeavour to draw various phases of life and character in England
at the beginning of the century, I would particularly mention
Ashton’s “Dawn of the Nineteenth Century;” Gronow’s
“Reminiscences;” Fitzgerald’s “Life and Times of George IV.;”
Jesse’s “Life of Brummell;” “Boxiana;” “Pugilistica;” Harper’s
“Brighton Road;” Robinson’s “Last Earl of Barrymore” and “Old Q.;”
Rice’s “History of the Turf;” Tristram’s “Coaching Days;” James’s
“Naval History;” Clark Russell’s “Collingwood” and “Nelson.”
I am also much indebted to my friends Mr. J. C. Parkinson and
Robert Barr for information upon the subject of the ring.
A. CONAN DOYLE.
HASLEMERE,
September 1, 1896.
Chapter 1 Friar's Oak
On this, the first of January of the year 1851, the nineteenth
century has reached its midway term, and many of us who shared its
youth have already warnings which tell us that it has outworn
us. We put our grizzled heads together, we older ones, and we
talk of the great days that we have known; but we find that when it
is with our children that we talk it is a hard matter to make them
understand. We and our fathers before us lived much the same
life, but they with their railway trains and their steamboats
belong to a different age. It is true that we can put
history-books into their hands, and they can read from them of our
weary struggle of two and twenty years with that great and evil
man. They can learn how Freedom fled from the whole broad
continent, and how Nelson’s blood was shed, and Pitt’s noble heart
was broken in striving that she should not pass us for ever to take
refuge with our brothers across the Atlantic. All this they
can read, with the date of this treaty or that battle, but I do not
know where they are to read of ourselves, of the folk we were, and
the lives we led, and how the world seemed to our eyes when they
were young as theirs are now.
If I take up my pen to tell you about this, you must not look for
any story at my hands, for I was only in my earliest manhood when
these things befell; and although I saw something of the stories of
other lives, I could scarce claim one of my own. It is the
love of a woman that makes the story of a man, and many a year was
to pass before I first looked into the eyes of the mother of my
children. To us it seems but an affair of yesterday, and yet
those children can now reach the plums in the garden whilst we are
seeking for a ladder, and where we once walked with their little
hands in ours, we are glad now to lean upon their arms. But I
shall speak of a time when the love of a mother was the only love I
knew, and if you seek for something more, then it is not for you
that I write. But if you would come out with me into that
forgotten world; if you would know Boy Jim and Champion Harrison;
if you would meet my father, one of Nelson’s own men; if you would
catch a glimpse of that great seaman himself, and of George,
afterwards the unworthy King of England; if, above all, you would
see my famous uncle, Sir Charles Tregellis, the King of the Bucks,
and the great fighting men whose names are still household words
amongst you, then give me your hand and let us start.
But I must warn you also that, if you think you will find much that
is of interest in your guide, you are destined to
disappointment. When I look over my bookshelves, I can see
that it is only the wise and witty and valiant who have ventured to
write down their experiences. For my own part, if I were only
assured that I was as clever and brave as the average man about me,
I should be well satisfied. Men of their hands have thought
well of my brains, and men of brains of my hands, and that is the
best that I can say of myself. Save in the one matter of
having an inborn readiness for music, so that the mastery of any
instrument comes very easily and naturally to me, I cannot recall
any single advantage which I can boast over my fellows. In
all things I have been a half-way man, for I am of middle height,
my eyes are neither blue nor grey, and my hair, before Nature
dusted it with her powder, was betwixt flaxen and brown. I
may, perhaps, claim this: that through life I have never felt a
touch of jealousy as I have admired a better man than myself, and
that I have always seen all things as they are, myself included,
which should count in my favour now that I sit down in my mature
age to write my memories. With your permission, then, we will
push my own personality as far as possible out of the
picture. If you can conceive me as a thin and colourless cord
upon which my would-be pearls are strung, you will be accepting me
upon the terms which I should wish.
Our family, the Stones, have for many generations belonged to the
navy, and it has been a custom among us for the eldest son to take
the name of his father’s favourite commander. Thus we can
trace our lineage back to old Vernon Stone, who commanded a
high-sterned, peak-nosed, fifty-gun ship against the Dutch.
Through Hawke Stone and Benbow Stone we came down to my father,
Anson Stone, who in his turn christened me Rodney, at the parish
church of St. Thomas at Portsmouth in the year of grace 1786.
Out of my window as I write I can see my own great lad in the
garden, and if I were to call out “Nelson!” you would see that I
have been true to the traditions of our family.
My dear mother, the best that ever a man had, was the second
daughter of the Reverend John Tregellis, Vicar of Milton, which is
a small parish upon the borders of the marshes of Langstone.
She came of a poor family, but one of some position, for her elder
brother was the famous Sir Charles Tregellis, who, having inherited
the money of a wealthy East Indian merchant, became in time the
talk of the town and the very particular friend of the Prince of
Wales. Of him I shall have more to say hereafter; but you
will note now that he was my own uncle, and brother to my
mother.
I can remember her all through her beautiful life for she was but a
girl when she married, and little more when I can first recall her
busy fingers and her gentle voice. I see her as a lovely
woman with kind, dove’s eyes, somewhat short of stature it is true,
but carrying herself very bravely. In my memories of those
days she is clad always in some purple shimmering stuff, with a
white kerchief round her long white neck, and I see her fingers
turning and darting as she works at her knitting. I see her
again in her middle years, sweet and loving, planning, contriving,
achieving, with the few shillings a day of a lieutenant’s pay on
which to support the cottage at Friar’s Oak, and to keep a fair
face to the world. And now, if I do but step into the
parlour, I can see her once more, with over eighty years of saintly
life behind her, silver-haired, placid-faced, with her dainty
ribboned cap, her gold-rimmed glasses, and her woolly shawl with
the blue border. I loved her young and I love her old, and
when she goes she will take something with her which nothing in the
world can ever make good to me again. You may have many
friends, you who read this, and you may chance to marry more than
once, but your mother is your first and your last. Cherish
her, then, whilst you may, for the day will come when every hasty
deed or heedless word will come back with its sting to hive in your
own heart.
Such, then, was my mother; and as to my father, I can describe him
best when I come to the time when he returned to us from the
Mediterranean. During all my childhood he was only a name to
me, and a face in a miniature hung round my mother’s neck. At
first they told me he was fighting the French, and then after some
years one heard less about the French and more about General
Buonaparte. I remember the awe with which one day in Thomas
Street, Portsmouth, I saw a print of the great Corsican in a
bookseller’s window. This, then, was the arch enemy with whom
my father spent his life in terrible and ceaseless contest.
To my childish imagination it was a personal affair, and I for ever
saw my father and this clean-shaven, thin-lipped man swaying and
reeling in a deadly, year-long grapple. It was not until I
went to the Grammar School that I understood how many other little
boys there were whose fathers were in the same case.
Only once in those long years did my father return home, which will
show you what it meant to be the wife of a sailor in those
days. It was just after we had moved from Portsmouth to
Friar’s Oak, whither he came for a week before he set sail with
Admiral Jervis to help him to turn his name into Lord St.
Vincent. I remember that he frightened as well as fascinated
me with his talk of battles, and I can recall as if it were
yesterday the horror with which I gazed upon a spot of blood upon
his shirt ruffle, which had come, as I have no doubt, from a
mischance in shaving. At the time I never questioned that it
had spurted from some stricken Frenchman or Spaniard, and I shrank
from him in terror when he laid his horny hand upon my head.
My mother wept bitterly when he was gone, but for my own part I was
not sorry to see his blue back and white shorts going down the
garden walk, for I felt, with the heedless selfishness of a child,
that we were closer together, she and I, when we were alone.
I was in my eleventh year when we moved from Portsmouth to Friar’s
Oak, a little Sussex village to the north of Brighton, which was
recommended to us by my uncle, Sir Charles Tregellis, one of whose
grand friends, Lord Avon, had had his seat near there. The
reason of our moving was that living was cheaper in the country,
and that it was easier for my mother to keep up the appearance of a
gentlewoman when away from the circle of those to whom she could
not refuse hospitality. They were trying times those to all
save the farmers, who made such profits that they could, as I have
heard, afford to let half their land lie fallow, while living like
gentlemen upon the rest. Wheat was at a hundred and ten
shillings a quarter, and the quartern loaf at one and
ninepence. Even in the quiet of the cottage of Friar’s Oak we
could scarce have lived, were it not that in the blockading
squadron in which my father was stationed there was the occasional
chance of a little prize-money. The line-of-battle ships
themselves, tacking on and off outside Brest, could earn nothing
save honour; but the frigates in attendance made prizes of many
coasters, and these, as is the rule of the service, were counted as
belonging to the fleet, and their produce divided into
head-money. In this manner my father was able to send home
enough to keep the cottage and to pay for me at the day school of
Mr. Joshua Allen, where for four years I learned all that he had to
teach. It was at Allen’s school that I first knew Jim
Harrison, Boy Jim as he has always been called, the nephew of
Champion Harrison of the village smithy. I can see him as he
was in those days with great, floundering, half-formed limbs like a
Newfoundland puppy, and a face that set every woman’s head round as
he passed her. It was in those days that we began our
lifelong friendship, a friendship which still in our waning years
binds us closely as two brothers. I taught him his exercises,
for he never loved the sight of a book, and he in turn made me box
and wrestle, tickle trout on the Adur, and snare rabbits on
Ditching Down, for his hands were as active as his brain was
slow. He was two years my elder, however, so that, long
before I had finished my schooling, he had gone to help his uncle
at the smithy.
Friar’s Oak is in a dip of the Downs, and the forty-third milestone
between London and Brighton lies on the skirt of the village.
It is but a small place, with an ivied church, a fine vicarage, and
a row of red-brick cottages each in its own little garden. At
one end was the forge of Champion Harrison, with his house behind
it, and at the other was Mr. Allen’s school. The yellow
cottage, standing back a little from the road, with its upper story
bulging forward and a crisscross of black woodwork let into the
plaster, is the one in which we lived. I do not know if it is
still standing, but I should think it likely, for it was not a
place much given to change.
Just opposite to us, at the other side of the broad, white road,
was the Friar’s Oak Inn, which was kept in my day by John Cummings,
a man of excellent repute at home, but liable to strange outbreaks
when he travelled, as will afterwards become apparent. Though
there was a stream of traffic upon the road, the coaches from
Brighton were too fresh to stop, and those from London too eager to
reach their journey’s end, so that if it had not been for an
occasional broken trace or loosened wheel, the landlord would have
had only the thirsty throats of the village to trust to.
Those were the days when the Prince of Wales had just built his
singular palace by the sea, and so from May to September, which was
the Brighton season, there was never a day that from one to two
hundred curricles, chaises, and phaetons did not rattle past our
doors. Many a summer evening have Boy Jim and I lain upon the
grass, watching all these grand folk, and cheering the London
coaches as they came roaring through the dust clouds, leaders and
wheelers stretched to their work, the bugles screaming and the
coachmen with their low-crowned, curly-brimmed hats, and their
faces as scarlet as their coats. The passengers used to laugh
when Boy Jim shouted at them, but if they could have read his big,
half-set limbs and his loose shoulders aright, they would have
looked a little harder at him, perhaps, and given him back his
cheer.
Boy Jim had never known a father or a mother, and his whole life
had been spent with his uncle, Champion Harrison. Harrison
was the Friar’s Oak blacksmith, and he had his nickname because he
fought Tom Johnson when he held the English belt, and would most
certainly have beaten him had the Bedfordshire magistrates not
appeared to break up the fight. For years there was no such
glutton to take punishment and no more finishing hitter than
Harrison, though he was always, as I understand, a slow one upon
his feet. At last, in a fight with Black Baruk the Jew, he
finished the battle with such a lashing hit that he not only
knocked his opponent over the inner ropes, but he left him betwixt
life and death for long three weeks. During all this time
Harrison lived half demented, expecting every hour to feel the hand
of a Bow Street runner upon his collar, and to be tried for his
life. This experience, with the prayers of his wife, made him
forswear the ring for ever, and carry his great muscles into the
one trade in which they seemed to give him an advantage.
There was a good business to be done at Friar’s Oak from the
passing traffic and the Sussex farmers, so that he soon became the
richest of the villagers; and he came to church on a Sunday with
his wife and his nephew, looking as respectable a family man as one
would wish to see.
He was not a tall man, not more than five feet seven inches, and it
was often said that if he had had an extra inch of reach he would
have been a match for Jackson or Belcher at their best. His
chest was like a barrel, and his forearms were the most powerful
that I have ever seen, with deep groves between the smooth-swelling
muscles like a piece of water-worn rock. In spite of his
strength, however, he was of a slow, orderly, and kindly
disposition, so that there was no man more beloved over the whole
country side. His heavy, placid, clean-shaven face could set
very sternly, as I have seen upon occasion; but for me and every
child in the village there was ever a smile upon his lips and a
greeting in his eyes. There was not a beggar upon the country
side who did not know that his heart was as soft as his muscles
were hard.
There was nothing that he liked to talk of more than his old
battles, but he would stop if he saw his little wife coming, for
the one great shadow in her life was the ever-present fear that
some day he would throw down sledge and rasp and be off to the ring
once more. And you must be reminded here once for all that
that former calling of his was by no means at that time in the
debased condition to which it afterwards fell. Public opinion
has gradually become opposed to it, for the reason that it came
largely into the hands of rogues, and because it fostered ringside
ruffianism. Even the honest and brave pugilist was found to
draw villainy round him, just as the pure and noble racehorse
does. For this reason the Ring is dying in England, and we
may hope that when Caunt and Bendigo have passed away, they may
have none to succeed them. But it was different in the days
of which I speak. Public opinion was then largely in its
favour, and there were good reasons why it should be so. It
was a time of war, when England with an army and navy composed only
of those who volunteered to fight because they had fighting blood
in them, had to encounter, as they would now have to encounter, a
power which could by despotic law turn every citizen into a
soldier. If the people had not been full of this lust for
combat, it is certain that England must have been overborne.
And it was thought, and is, on the face of it, reasonable, that a
struggle between two indomitable men, with thirty thousand to view
it and three million to discuss it, did help to set a standard of
hardihood and endurance. Brutal it was, no doubt, and its
brutality is the end of it; but it is not so brutal as war, which
will survive it. Whether it is logical now to teach the
people to be peaceful in an age when their very existence may come
to depend upon their being warlike, is a question for wiser heads
than mine. But that was what we thought of it in the days of
your grandfathers, and that is why you might find statesmen and
philanthropists like Windham, Fox, and Althorp at the side of the
Ring.
The mere fact that solid men should patronize it was enough in
itself to prevent the villainy which afterwards crept in. For
over twenty years, in the days of Jackson, Brain, Cribb, the
Belchers, Pearce, Gully, and the rest, the leaders of the Ring were
men whose honesty was above suspicion; and those were just the
twenty years when the Ring may, as I have said, have served a
national purpose. You have heard how Pearce saved the Bristol
girl from the burning house, how Jackson won the respect and
friendship of the best men of his age, and how Gully rose to a seat
in the first Reformed Parliament. These were the men who set
the standard, and their trade carried with it this obvious
recommendation, that it is one in which no drunken or foul-living
man could long succeed. There were exceptions among them, no
doubt - bullies like Hickman and brutes like Berks; in the main, I
say again that they were honest men, brave and enduring to an
incredible degree, and a credit to the country which produced
them. It was, as you will see, my fate to see something of
them, and I speak of what I know.
In our own village, I can assure you that we were very proud of the
presence of such a man as Champion Harrison, and if folks stayed at
the inn, they would walk down as far as the smithy just to have the
sight of him. And he was worth seeing, too, especially on a
winter’s night when the red glare of the forge would beat upon his
great muscles and upon the proud, hawk-face of Boy Jim as they
heaved and swayed over some glowing plough coulter, framing
themselves in sparks with every blow. He would strike once
with his thirty-pound swing sledge, and Jim twice with his hand
hammer; and the “Clunk - clink, clink! clunk - clink, clink!” would
bring me flying down the village street, on the chance that, since
they were both at the anvil, there might be a place for me at the
bellows.
Only once during those village years can I remember Champion
Harrison showing me for an instant the sort of man that he had
been. It chanced one summer morning, when Boy Jim and I were
standing by the smithy door, that there came a private coach from
Brighton, with its four fresh horses, and its brass-work shining,
flying along with such a merry rattle and jingling, that the
Champion came running out with a hall-fullered shoe in his tongs to
have a look at it. A gentleman in a white coachman’s cape - a
Corinthian, as we would call him in those days - was driving, and
half a dozen of his fellows, laughing and shouting, were on the top
behind him. It may have been that the bulk of the smith
caught his eye, and that he acted in pure wantonness, or it may
possibly have been an accident, but, as he swung past, the
twenty-foot thong of the driver’s whip hissed round, and we heard
the sharp snap of it across Harrison’s leather apron.
“Halloa, master!” shouted the smith, looking after him.
“You’re not to be trusted on the box until you can handle your whip
better’n that.”
“What’s that?” cried the driver, pulling up his team.
“I bid you have a care, master, or there will be some one-eyed folk
along the road you drive.”
“Oh, you say that, do you?” said the driver, putting his whip into
its socket and pulling off his driving-gloves. “I’ll have a
little talk with you, my fine fellow.”
The sporting gentlemen of those days were very fine boxers for the
most part, for it was the mode to take a course of Mendoza, just as
a few years afterwards there was no man about town who had not had
the mufflers on with Jackson. Knowing their own prowess, they
never refused the chance of a wayside adventure, and it was seldom
indeed that the bargee or the navigator had much to boast of after
a young blood had taken off his coat to him.
This one swung himself off the box-seat with the alacrity of a man
who has no doubts about the upshot of the quarrel, and after
hanging his caped coat upon the swingle-bar, he daintily turned up
the ruffled cuffs of his white cambric shirt.
“I’ll pay you for your advice, my man,” said he.
I am sure that the men upon the coach knew who the burly smith was,
and looked upon it as a prime joke to see their companion walk into
such a trap. They roared with delight, and bellowed out
scraps of advice to him.
“Knock some of the soot off him, Lord Frederick!” they
shouted. “Give the Johnny Raw his breakfast. Chuck him
in among his own cinders! Sharp’s the word, or you’ll see the
back of him.”
Encouraged by these cries, the young aristocrat advanced upon his
man. The smith never moved, but his mouth set grim and hard,
while his tufted brows came down over his keen, grey eyes.
The tongs had fallen, and his hands were hanging free.
“Have a care, master,” said he. “You’ll get pepper if you
don’t.”
Something in the assured voice, and something also in the quiet
pose, warned the young lord of his danger. I saw him look
hard at his antagonist, and as he did so, his hands and his jaw
dropped together.
“By Gad!” he cried, “it’s Jack Harrison!”
“My name, master!”
“And I thought you were some Essex chaw-bacon! Why, man, I
haven’t seen you since the day you nearly killed Black Baruk, and
cost me a cool hundred by doing it.”
How they roared on the coach.
“Smoked! Smoked, by Gad!” they yelled. “It’s Jack
Harrison the bruiser! Lord Frederick was going to take on the
ex-champion. Give him one on the apron, Fred, and see what
happens.”
But the driver had already climbed back into his perch, laughing as
loudly as any of his companions.
“We’ll let you off this time, Harrison,” said he. “Are those
your sons down there?”
“This is my nephew, master.”
“Here’s a guinea for him! He shall never say I robbed him of
his uncle.” And so, having turned the laugh in his favour by
his merry way of taking it, he cracked his whip, and away they flew
to make London under the five hours; while Jack Harrison, with his
half-fullered shoe in his hand, went whistling back to the
forge.
Chapter 2 The Walker of Cliffe Royal
So much for Champion Harrison! Now, I wish to say
something more about Boy Jim, not only because he was the comrade
of my youth, but because you will find as you go on that this book
is his story rather than mine, and that there came a time when his
name and his fame were in the mouths of all England. You will
bear with me, therefore, while I tell you of his character as it
was in those days, and especially of one very singular adventure
which neither of us are likely to forget.
It was strange to see Jim with his uncle and his aunt, for he
seemed to be of another race and breed to them. Often I have
watched them come up the aisle upon a Sunday, first the square,
thick-set man, and then the little, worn, anxious-eyed woman, and
last this glorious lad with his clear-cut face, his black curls,
and his step so springy and light that it seemed as if he were
bound to earth by some lesser tie than the heavy-footed villagers
round him. He had not yet attained his full six foot of
stature, but no judge of a man (and every woman, at least, is one)
could look at his perfect shoulders, his narrow loins, and his
proud head that sat upon his neck like an eagle upon its perch,
without feeling that sober joy which all that is beautiful in
Nature gives to us - a vague self-content, as though in some way we
also had a hand in the making of it.
But we are used to associate beauty with softness in a man. I
do not know why they should be so coupled, and they never were with
Jim. Of all men that I have known, he was the most iron-hard
in body and in mind. Who was there among us who could walk
with him, or run with him, or swim with him? Who on all the
country side, save only Boy Jim, would have swung himself over
Wolstonbury Cliff, and clambered down a hundred feet with the
mother hawk flapping at his ears in the vain struggle to hold him
from her nest? He was but sixteen, with his gristle not yet
all set into bone, when he fought and beat Gipsy Lee, of Burgess
Hill, who called himself the “Cock of the South Downs.” It
was after this that Champion Harrison took his training as a boxer
in hand.
“I’d rather you left millin’ alone, Boy Jim,” said he, “and so had
the missus; but if mill you must, it will not be my fault if you
cannot hold up your hands to anything in the south country.”
And it was not long before he made good his promise.
I have said already that Boy Jim had no love for his books, but by
that I meant school-books, for when it came to the reading of
romances or of anything which had a touch of gallantry or
adventure, there was no tearing him away from it until it was
finished. When such a book came into his hands, Friar’s Oak
and the smithy became a dream to him, and his life was spent out
upon the ocean or wandering over the broad continents with his
heroes. And he would draw me into his enthusiasms also, so
that I was glad to play Friday to his Crusoe when he proclaimed
that the Clump at Clayton was a desert island, and that we were
cast upon it for a week. But when I found that we were
actually to sleep out there without covering every night, and that
he proposed that our food should be the sheep of the Downs (wild
goats he called them) cooked upon a fire, which was to be made by
the rubbing together of two sticks, my heart failed me, and on the
very first night I crept away to my mother. But Jim stayed
out there for the whole weary week - a wet week it was, too! - and
came back at the end of it looking a deal wilder and dirtier than
his hero does in the picture-books. It is well that he had
only promised to stay a week, for, if it had been a month, he would
have died of cold and hunger before his pride would have let him
come home.
His pride! - that was the deepest thing in all Jim’s nature.
It is a mixed quality to my mind, half a virtue and half a vice: a
virtue in holding a man out of the dirt; a vice in making it hard
for him to rise when once he has fallen. Jim was proud down
to the very marrow of his bones. You remember the guinea that
the young lord had thrown him from the box of the coach? Two
days later somebody picked it from the roadside mud. Jim only
had seen where it had fallen, and he would not deign even to point
it out to a beggar. Nor would he stoop to give a reason in
such a case, but would answer all remonstrances with a curl of his
lip and a flash of his dark eyes. Even at school he was the
same, with such a sense of his own dignity, that other folk had to
think of it too. He might say, as he did say, that a right
angle was a proper sort of angle, or put Panama in Sicily, but old
Joshua Allen would as soon have thought of raising his cane against
him as he would of letting me off if I had said as much. And
so it was that, although Jim was the son of nobody, and I of a
King’s officer, it always seemed to me to have been a condescension
on his part that he should have chosen me as his friend.
It was this pride of Boy Jim’s which led to an adventure which
makes me shiver now when I think of it.
It happened in the August of ‘99, or it may have been in the early
days of September; but I remember that we heard the cuckoo in
Patcham Wood, and that Jim said that perhaps it was the last of
him. I was still at school, but Jim had left, he being nigh
sixteen and I thirteen. It was my Saturday half-holiday, and
we spent it, as we often did, out upon the Downs. Our
favourite place was beyond Wolstonbury, where we could stretch
ourselves upon the soft, springy, chalk grass among the plump
little Southdown sheep, chatting with the shepherds, as they leaned
upon their queer old Pyecombe crooks, made in the days when Sussex
turned out more iron than all the counties of England.
It was there that we lay upon that glorious afternoon. If we
chose to roll upon our right sides, the whole weald lay in front of
us, with the North Downs curving away in olive-green folds, with
here and there the snow-white rift of a chalk-pit; if we turned
upon our left, we overlooked the huge blue stretch of the
Channel. A convoy, as I can well remember, was coming up it
that day, the timid flock of merchantmen in front; the frigates,
like well-trained dogs, upon the skirts; and two burly drover
line-of-battle ships rolling along behind them. My fancy was
soaring out to my father upon the waters, when a word from Jim
brought it back on to the grass like a broken-winged gull.
“Roddy,” said he, “have you heard that Cliffe Royal is
haunted?”
Had I heard it? Of course I had heard it. Who was there
in all the Down country who had not heard of the Walker of Cliffe
Royal?
“Do you know the story of it, Roddy?”
“Why,” said I, with some pride, “I ought to know it, seeing that my
mother’s brother, Sir Charles Tregellis, was the nearest friend of
Lord Avon, and was at this card-party when the thing
happened. I heard the vicar and my mother talking about it
last week, and it was all so clear to me that I might have been
there when the murder was done.”
“It is a strange story,” said Jim, thoughtfully; “but when I asked
my aunt about it, she would give me no answer; and as to my uncle,
he cut me short at the very mention of it.”
“There is a good reason for that,” said I, “for Lord Avon was, as I
have heard, your uncle’s best friend; and it is but natural that he
would not wish to speak of his disgrace.”
“Tell me the story, Roddy.”
“It is an old one now - fourteen years old - and yet they have not
got to the end of it. There were four of them who had come
down from London to spend a few days in Lord Avon’s old
house. One was his own young brother, Captain Barrington;
another was his cousin, Sir Lothian Hume; Sir Charles Tregellis, my
uncle, was the third; and Lord Avon the fourth. They are fond
of playing cards for money, these great people, and they played and
played for two days and a night. Lord Avon lost, and Sir
Lothian lost, and my uncle lost, and Captain Barrington won until
he could win no more. He won their money, but above all he
won papers from his elder brother which meant a great deal to
him. It was late on a Monday night that they stopped
playing. On the Tuesday morning Captain Barrington was found
dead beside his bed with his throat cut.
“And Lord Avon did it?”
“His papers were found burned in the grate, his wristband was
clutched in the dead man’s hand, and his knife lay beside the
body.”
“Did they hang him, then?”
“They were too slow in laying hands upon him. He waited until
he saw that they had brought it home to him, and then he
fled. He has never been seen since, but it is said that he
reached America.”
“And the ghost walks?”
“There are many who have seen it.”
“Why is the house still empty?”
“Because it is in the keeping of the law. Lord Avon had no
children, and Sir Lothian Hume - the same who was at the card-party
- is his nephew and heir. But he can touch nothing until he
can prove Lord Avon to be dead.”
Jim lay silent for a bit, plucking at the short grass with his
fingers.
“Roddy,” said he at last, “will you come with me to-night and look
for the ghost?”
It turned me cold, the very thought of it.
“My mother would not let me.”
“Slip out when she’s abed. I’ll wait for you at the
smithy.”
“Cliffe Royal is locked.”
“I’ll open a window easy enough.”
“I’m afraid, Jim.”
“But you are not afraid if you are with me, Roddy. I’ll
promise you that no ghost shall hurt you.”
So I gave him my word that I would come, and then all the rest of
the day I went about the most sad-faced lad in Sussex. It was
all very well for Boy Jim! It was that pride of his which was
taking him there. He would go because there was no one else
on the country side that would dare. But I had no pride of
that sort. I was quite of the same way of thinking as the
others, and would as soon have thought of passing my night at
Jacob’s gibbet on Ditchling Common as in the haunted house of
Cliffe Royal. Still, I could not bring myself to desert Jim;
and so, as I say, I slunk about the house with so pale and peaky a
face that my dear mother would have it that I had been at the green
apples, and sent me to bed early with a dish of camomile tea for my
supper.
England went to rest betimes in those days, for there were few who
could afford the price of candles. When I looked out of my
window just after the clock had gone ten, there was not a light in
the village save only at the inn. It was but a few feet from
the ground, so I slipped out, and there was Jim waiting for me at
the smithy corner. We crossed John’s Common together, and so
past Ridden’s Farm, meeting only one or two riding officers upon
the way. There was a brisk wind blowing, and the moon kept
peeping through the rifts of the scud, so that our road was
sometimes silver-clear, and sometimes so black that we found
ourselves among the brambles and gorse-bushes which lined it.
We came at last to the wooden gate with the high stone pillars by
the roadside, and, looking through between the rails, we saw the
long avenue of oaks, and at the end of this ill-boding tunnel, the
pale face of the house glimmered in the moonshine.
That would have been enough for me, that one glimpse of it, and the
sound of the night wind sighing and groaning among the
branches. But Jim swung the gate open, and up we went, the
gravel squeaking beneath our tread. It towered high, the old
house, with many little windows in which the moon glinted, and with
a strip of water running round three sides of it. The arched
door stood right in the face of us, and on one side a lattice hung
open upon its hinges.
“We’re in luck, Roddy,” whispered Jim. “Here’s one of the
windows open.”
“Don’t you think we’ve gone far enough, Jim?” said I, with my teeth
chattering.
“I’ll lift you in first.”
“No, no, I’ll not go first.”
“Then I will.” He gripped the sill, and had his knee on it in
an instant. “Now, Roddy, give me your hands.” With a
pull he had me up beside him, and a moment later we were both in
the haunted house.
How hollow it sounded when we jumped down on to the wooden
floor! There was such a sudden boom and reverberation that we
both stood silent for a moment. Then Jim burst out
laughing.
“What an old drum of a place it is!” he cried; “we’ll strike a
light, Roddy, and see where we are.”
He had brought a candle and a tinder-box in his pocket. When
the flame burned up, we saw an arched stone roof above our heads,
and broad deal shelves all round us covered with dusty
dishes. It was the pantry.
“I’ll show you round,” said Jim, merrily; and, pushing the door
open, he led the way into the hall. I remember the high,
oak-panelled walls, with the heads of deer jutting out, and a
single white bust, which sent my heart into my mouth, in the
corner. Many rooms opened out of this, and we wandered from
one to the other - the kitchens, the still-room, the morning-room,
the dining-room, all filled with the same choking smell of dust and
of mildew.
“This is where they played the cards, Jim,” said I, in a hushed
voice. “It was on that very table.”
“Why, here are the cards themselves!” cried he; and he pulled a
brown towel from something in the centre of the sideboard.
Sure enough it was a pile of playing-cards - forty packs, I should
think, at the least - which had lain there ever since that tragic
game which was played before I was born.
“I wonder whence that stair leads?” said Jim.
“Don’t go up there, Jim!” I cried, clutching at his arm.
“That must lead to the room of the murder.”
“How do you know that?”
“The vicar said that they saw on the ceiling - Oh, Jim, you can see
it even now!”
He held up his candle, and there was a great, dark smudge upon the
white plaster above us.
“I believe you’re right,” said he; “but anyhow I’m going to have a
look at it.”
“Don’t, Jim, don’t!” I cried.
“Tut, Roddy! you can stay here if you are afraid. I won’t be
more than a minute. There’s no use going on a ghost hunt
unless - Great Lord, there’s something coming down the
stairs!”
I heard it too - a shuffling footstep in the room above, and then a
creak from the steps, and then another creak, and another. I
saw Jim’s face as if it had been carved out of ivory, with his
parted lips and his staring eyes fixed upon the black square of the
stair opening. He still held the light, but his fingers
twitched, and with every twitch the shadows sprang from the walls
to the ceiling. As to myself, my knees gave way under me, and
I found myself on the floor crouching down behind Jim, with a
scream frozen in my throat. And still the step came slowly
from stair to stair.
Then, hardly daring to look and yet unable to turn away my eyes, I
saw a figure dimly outlined in the corner upon which the stair
opened. There was a silence in which I could hear my poor
heart thumping, and then when I looked again the figure was gone,
and the low creak, creak was heard once more upon the stairs.
Jim sprang after it, and I was left half-fainting in the
moonlight.
But it was not for long. He was down again in a minute, and,
passing his hand under my arm, he half led and half carried me out
of the house. It was not until we were in the fresh night air
again that he opened his mouth.
“Can you stand, Roddy?”
“Yes, but I’m shaking.”
“So am I,” said he, passing his hand over his forehead. “I
ask your pardon, Roddy. I was a fool to bring you on such an
errand. But I never believed in such things. I know
better now.”
“Could it have been a man, Jim?” I asked, plucking up my courage
now that I could hear the dogs barking on the farms.
“It was a spirit, Rodney.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I followed it and saw it vanish into a wall, as easily as
an eel into sand. Why, Roddy, what’s amiss now?”
My fears were all back upon me, and every nerve creeping with
horror.
“Take me away, Jim! Take me away!” I cried.
I was glaring down the avenue, and his eyes followed mine.
Amid the gloom of the oak trees something was coming towards
us.
“Quiet, Roddy!” whispered Jim. “By heavens, come what may, my
arms are going round it this time.”
We crouched as motionless as the trunks behind us. Heavy
steps ploughed their way through the soft gravel, and a broad
figure loomed upon us in the darkness.
Jim sprang upon it like a tiger.
“You’re not a spirit, anyway!” he cried.
The man gave a shout of surprise, and then a growl of rage.
“What the deuce!” he roared, and then, “I’ll break your neck if you
don’t let go.”
The threat might not have loosened Jim’s grip, but the voice
did.
“Why, uncle!” he cried.
“Well, I’m blessed if it isn’t Boy Jim! And what’s
this? Why, it’s young Master Rodney Stone, as I’m a living
sinner! What in the world are you two doing up at Cliffe
Royal at this time of night?”
We had all moved out into the moonlight, and there was Champion
Harrison with a big bundle on his arm, - and such a look of
amazement upon his face as would have brought a smile back on to
mine had my heart not still been cramped with fear.
“We’re exploring,” said Jim.
“Exploring, are you? Well, I don’t think you were meant to be
Captain Cooks, either of you, for I never saw such a pair of
peeled-turnip faces. Why, Jim, what are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid, uncle. I never was afraid; but spirits are
new to me, and - ”
“Spirits?”
“I’ve been in Cliffe Royal, and we’ve seen the ghost.”
The Champion gave a whistle.
“That’s the game, is it?” said he. “Did you have speech with
it?”
“It vanished first.”
The Champion whistled once more.
“I’ve heard there is something of the sort up yonder,” said he;
“but it’s not a thing as I would advise you to meddle with.
There’s enough trouble with the folk of this world, Boy Jim,
without going out of your way to mix up with those of
another. As to young Master Rodney Stone, if his good mother
saw that white face of his, she’d never let him come to the smithy
more. Walk slowly on, and I’ll see you back to Friar’s
Oak.”
We had gone half a mile, perhaps, when the Champion overtook us,
and I could not but observe that the bundle was no longer under his
arm. We were nearly at the smithy before Jim asked the
question which was already in my mind.
“What took you up to Cliffe Royal, uncle?”
“Well, as a man gets on in years,” said the Champion, “there’s many
a duty turns up that the likes of you have no idea of. When
you’re near forty yourself, you’ll maybe know the truth of what I
say.”
So that was all we could draw from him; but, young as I was, I had
heard of coast smuggling and of packages carried to lonely places
at night, so that from that time on, if I had heard that the
preventives had made a capture, I was never easy until I saw the
jolly face of Champion Harrison looking out of his smithy door.