Olympia. A romance

Prologue

. THE BLACK PRINCE, FIREFLY, AND THE DANCING BEAR. Julian. — How fresh, how cool, how bracing, comes the breeze ! 'Tis life again ! Victor. — True : it is life indeed — As fresh as sorrow, and as cold as hearts, And hungry as the winds of Liberty. I. sTIHE great gate closed behind him, and he was a free man. Though he stood on English soil, and though it was English air he drew, freedom was none the less a distinction in that especial corner of English soil, and in that especial quarter of sea-blown English air. There, men born in Africa or in Virginia might become free, but men born in Britain Vol. I. b OLYMPIA. 2 became slaves. It was a bleak and barren headland, almost but not quite an island, held to the mainland by a long and slender isth mus like a vast ship at her moorings. In olden times it might have been selected for the site of a monastery as appropriately as Mount Athos ; in these later days it so far re sembled the site of a monastery that the bulk of its inhabitants lived in a huge building of stone apart from their fellow creatures, wore a dis tinctive dress, submitted to a strict discipline, underwent frequent penance, continual mortifi cation and regular religious exercise, and prac tically observed the vows of obedience, poverty, and abstinence from all the pleasures of the world.

Only their ruler, instead of being called Abbot, was entitled Governor, and the rule they followed was neither of Bernard nor of Benedict, but of the statute law of England. The man behind whose back the great gate swung and clanged had just been released from his vows. He was no longer the slave of the State, and could call his hands his own. CLOTHO. 3 He no longer wore the hideous conventual garb of parti-coloured flannel — that sorriest of motley — but an old suit of grey cloth which, though ancient and worn, might once have fitted any man of any class whom choice or necessity had led to dress carelessly and with a view to comfort or convenience rather than fashion. The wearer of the clothes for some instants stood and looked round vaguely, as though he had forgotten how to use his eyes and feet except under the control of a prison warder.

To be suddenly discharged from gaol in the gloom of a chill and raw October morning may not always imply an elation of spirits any more than the sudden waking from a nightmare. The elasticity of youth is needed when a man has to take up life's story from a point where it left off years ago, and to throw off in a moment the feel of fetters and the corroding rust that such a parenthesis leaves far below the skin. And this man was no longer young — he looked almost as old as his clothes. B OLYMPIA. 4 He was thin and meagre, without an ounce of spare flesh on his bones, which, during his season of retirement from the world, appeared to have grown at the same time too small and too large. His wrists projected from the sleeves of his jacket, while his shoulders did not fill them. He was about the middle height, but lost stature by a stoop that might indeed be natural, but was more probably the result of some invisible weight, seeing that there was no farther evidence of original de formity.

At first sight, his meagre figure, his stoop, his grizzled hairs cut close to the scalp just showing themselves beneath the brim of his cap, the harsh outline of the thin, sallow, and clean-shaved face, and the stamp of the crow under the temples, suggested the burden of sixty years, if not of more. But a closer inspection might reduce the calculation by ten or twelve years, or even by fifteen. Though the dried skin was no longer fair, the grey eyes belonged to one of those fair complex ions that age easily and prematurely. More- CLOTHO. 5 over the thin lips spoke of habits of chronic reserve, which are as fatal to the endurance of youth as the hand of Time himself. No one expects to find anything amiable or agreeable in the features or expression of a convict, nor, in the present case, would such want of expectation be disappointed.

The face itself, with its irregular and strongly marked pro jections, its small and feebly coloured eyes, its cold mouth and its pervading pallor, was like a mere mask from which all expression had been studiously removed. It was not in deed the mask of a burglar or highwayman, but many a monk found his way into that convent by other paths than by the barred window or by the highway. The old gaol-bird whose cage had at last been set open — in one way or other, whether by years or by crime or by punishment, he certainly had earned the title of old — drew in the cold, damp sea-mist, and then looked round at the circle of rolling grey fog where the panorama should have been. Then, OLYMPIA. with another deep breath, he turned his back to the yet gloomier gate, and set out to descend the hill with the pace of a snail.

He passed through a small cluster of cot tages, avoiding the rough quarries where gangs of his late companions were doing as little as men can contrive to do under the controlling influence of chains and loaded muskets, until he arrived at the long bank of smooth pebbles, or natural breakwater, which keeps the headland from becoming a true island by drifting out to sea. He walked on as if instinctively, rather like an atom drawn back to the mainland by the natural force of attraction than like a man moving his feet by the exercise of his own free will. Had there been any other road he might have taken it by the preference of accident ; as it was, any other direction would have led him, not back towards the rocks and shoals of human life, but straight to those of the sea. As he descended, the salt mist thickened, until the rising sun CLOTHO. 7 hung like a crimson ball low down in the sky, and until the vanishing walls of the gaol that crowned the headland rose like a phantom castle of air out of a black cloud.

At last he reached the yet more barren bank of pebbles, and stood, in utter solitude, between the splashing waves of two seas, bounded with mist and edged with foam, on an isthmus that parted his gaol from the mainland of liberty; that divided punishment from the freedom of choice be tween right and wrong. He looked round again. No living creature but himself jarred with the solitude of this dismal border-land. He turned, and looked behind and before. Which looked the blacker, the prison or the road that led therefrom ? He sat down, and looked out into the mist that hung over the waves, and that blotted out the horizon. It was not till after a good half-hour that his eyes moved as if waking from sleep, and fell on a piece of plank, the sole relic, perhaps, of OLYMPIA. some ship that had gone to pieces on a shore fatal to ships and lives, now tossed and torn, played with and mocked at, by the smallest wavelet that curled.

Moved by some dreamy impulse, he took up a pebble, poised it for three instants, and threw it at the board. The pebble was well aimed, and struck the wood before it sank down. The man rose, turned round towards the phantom castle, took off his cap and bowed. Then he set his face to the mainland, and, while the mist thickened, walked on again. The mist still grew deeper as he approached the low downs to which one end of the isthmus is bound. Here he struck into a high road that led over a hill to the town, which sleeps, eats, and drinks as calmly and quietly on its little gulf as though no foundered ships and no wrecked souls were within three thousand miles — not to speak of three. From the gaol to the town is a walk of CLOTHO. 9 exactly three miles. To travel, it is more than three thousand.

The atmosphere of a Court still hung over the town — of a solid and comfortable Court, that treated the whole globe as if it were a scalene triangle drawn from Windsor to Cheltenham, from Cheltenham to Melmouth, and frohi Mel mouth back to Windsor again, these three points becoming in turn the social head quarters of the British Empire. The Court was of the past, but the town still lived upon the after-flavour. There was the red brick house, now converted into sea-side lodgings for all the world and his wife, wherein the good King had, with a sea-side appetite, eaten his boiled leg of mutton like any farmer of the surrounding chalk hills ; there, among the chalk hills them selves, on the far side of the gulf, lay a colossal figure of the good King on horse back — a landmark for leagues — cut out in white from the green turf, with a pig-tail twenty yards long, and the rest in pro- OLYMPIA. 10 portion.

There were the old and middle aged men and women who, those in their middle age, these in their childhood, had seen, nay, had even conversed with, the good King. No — that dim and distant headland was no appanage of Melmouth. Melmouth was once a main gate, and was still a postern, into the best and most re spectable of worlds. It was still early ; and, with the ex ception of him who had just entered this postern, no one was abroad. The bathing season was over, the shops had no cause to open, and the bleak and gloomy morn ing had seemingly proved too much even for the few early risers that Melmouth might contain. The old fellow from with out still plodded on slowly, with his eyes bent upon the ground, turned off from the broad and empty esplanade, as the natives called their sea-wall, and then, leaving the town behind as he had left the gaol, struck into a straight high road, that led up CLOTHO. 11 towards the chalk downs, at right angles with the shore.

He passed nothing remarkable but a church and a police-constable. The latter bade him a friendly good morning, as to one whom he might come to know better before long. The close-cropped hair and shaven face meant a great deal in that part of the world, and the now dusty boots, also, were of a make that was extremely well known. The man just touched his cap in an absent manner without bending his neck, but, as if suddenly remem bering himself, turned his slight salute into a low bow, and passed on. When he reached the first milestone, how ever, he saw a really glorious sight — nothing less than the sudden lifting of the veil of mist, and the transformation of the hanging ball of dull fire into the sun, the ruler of the day. The sea behind now rose up like a high silver wall : the grey hills grew green, and the sky broke out into patches of light blue.

The man turned his bent shoulders to the first real OLYMPIA. 12 sunbeam, and warmed them as if at a fire. Not even a felon could be expected to watch the lifting of an autumn sea-mist at morning without a conscious expansion of eye and heart. The no longer imprisoned breeze both fills the lungs and braces the soul. It also makes men ready for breakfast. Unhappily, however, it does not always make breakfast ready for men. The road still lay up hill, though gently ; and the higher the wanderer ascended, the higher and more brightly shone the sun out of that pale grey-blue which is dearer to most of us than the most cloudless turquoise of Italian skies. If there is anything in this varie gated world better than such an October forenoon in a spot where the sea's good morning kiss to the shore is not too far off to be echoed, then there is something better than best.

The year is never so fresh and young as when he is just thinking of growing old — it is the aroma of happiness past, indeed, but imperishable — the breath CLOTHO. 13 of strength outliving all foolish Aprils of half tears and half smiles, and no melan choly presage of unreal decay, that lies in the majestic pathos of falling leaves. It is the season of the chase, of the vintage, of the safe and gathered harvest, of free breath, of pure air, of well-ordered nights and days, of empty hopes forgotten, of fertile hopes fulfilled and renewed. It is ploughing time — the beginning of new hope and new work, as well as the fulfilment of the old : the continuance of strength after success, and the renewal of courage after failure. He was a foolish poet, whoever he was, that first called autumn sad because, forsooth, the east winds of spring have left off biting, the dog days have left off scorching, and the frosts of winter have not yet come.

Was life made for roses and nightingales ? or was it made for men to grow serene of heart andstrong of limb ? But what has this to do with a discharged felon who paid reverence to a chance police- OLYMPIA. 14 man ? He had been in his true place on the headland : he would have been a blot on the whitewash of Melmouth had he thought fit to stay there ; he must, with equal reason, be held an out-of-place stain upon the chalk downs : a greater eye-sore even than the straggling equestrian portrait of royalty. He was prematurely old, he was ugly, he was penniless, he was presumably ignorant, and he must be taken to be in soul as well as in body out of harmony with all things fresh and clean and pure. He passed a second mile-stone, a third, and a fourth, always plodding on at the same slow but steady pace, looking askance at the carters and labourers whom he passed less frequently than the mile-stones, until he reached a white five-barred gate that opened into a neat farmyard.

He leaned his arms and chin on the topmost bar, and breakfasted at leisure on a comfortable, homely smell of malt and straw. For it was brewing time also — and for that reason, CLOTHO. 15 too, it is unfair to call mid-autumn a season of sadness. After such satisfaction as this light and easily digested meal might afford, and with some hesitation, he pushed open the gate, entered the yard, skirted a duck pond, crossed a kitchen garden, and reached the open green door of a red-brick house — one of those creeperless farmhouses that seem to live in a perpetual stare at their own neatness. He was about to tap, when — " What's your business, here, my good man ? " asked a stout and florid dame, who left her potato-peeling in the kitchen and came to the door. " Is this Farmer Holt's, madam ? " he asked humbly, cap in hand.

"Farmer Holt's? Bless me, Farmer Holt is dead and gone this ever so many year. 'Tis Mr. Holmes's farm ; we've been here this four Mickle's mass. You won't find Farmer Holt far out of Gressford Churchyard." " Pardon my ignorance, madam. I have OLYMPIA. 16 fallen a little behind the times. I am speak ing to Mrs. Holmes ? " Something in the stranger's unprovincial accent must have struck her, and she looked him over curiously. "I'm Miss Holmes. Do you want any thing ? If it's about the brewing, you'll find my brother in the Up-Field." "The Up-Field? Thank you, ma'am. I remember the way. I used to be hereabout in Farmer Holt's time. Yes, I will see Mr. Holmes, if you please. Good morning, ma'am." He put on his cap, raised it again, and walked from the door, while Miss Holmes stood and watched him till he was clear of the garden wicket.

Then she shook her head. "Just do off the chain from Jowler, Betty," she called out, " and give him the run of the yard. I'm half-minded that old tramp knows the place a bit too well, and I don't hold with them Frenchified ways. And I'll just count over the chicken before I go on with the paring." CLOTHO. 17 Farmer Holmes, on his way back for some bread and cheese from the Up-Field, was a farmer of the thin and wiry breed, which is, in fact, far more common than the conven tional John Bull pattern. He looked about sixty years old, was grey-haired, hard and withered, but as strong as whale-bone. He wore a large brown over-coat with huge flap pockets and enormous white buttons, gaiters, and an old white hat, and he carried a green switch from the hedge under his arm. The old tramp took off his cap again.

" Mr. Holmes, sir ? " he asked politely. " That be my name, sure enough — Isaac Holmes, farmer and maister; all the parish knows I. What do you want with me ? " " I want to ask you, sir, to grant me, as the greatest favour, what every man — so they say — has a right to claim. You are a farmer and maister, and therefore have capital. I am a labourer, and have hands, as you see. I want you to allow me to use my hands in easing you of some of your capital." Vol. I. c OLYMPIA. Mr. Holmes thrust his hands to the bottom of his pockets, and stood with his legs slightly astride. " You want to ease I ? ' " In plain English, Mr. Holmes, I am out of work— I want work — I'm looking for work ; and as you are the first employer of labour I have met with in my day's journey, so you — that I may not lose a chance — are the first to whom I apply.

You might do worse. I am something of a jack-of-all-trades, without, I trust, being master of none. I will be content with the current rate of wages — I think they were something like eight shillings a week for a single man in Farmer Holt's time — and will put my hand to anything you please, from keeping accounts to carting manure. If you have nothing else for me to do, you can't deny that I'm exceptionally qualified for a scarecrow. Mr. Holmes gave a bewildered stare " A labourer! You be a rum sort of a labourer, you be." CLOTHO. 19 " I own it, sir. I am a rum sort of labourer. That shall be considered in my hire. You shall only give me seven and sixpence every Saturday night instead of eight shillings, in consideration of my being rum." " Hold out they hands o' yourn," said the farmer, sharply.

The tramp held out both his hands. They showed ample signs of rough work with pick and spade, it is true, but were otherwise a little too long and fine for one whose ambition was to guide Farmer Holmes's plough. " There, sir ; I am waiting to have my fortune told," he said ; " which is it to be, oakum or the spade ? " All at once the farmer gave a long, low whistle, and slapped his thigh. " Hoy ! Will'am ! " he shouted out to a labourer who was burning weeds hard by. " Hoy ! Will'am ! Come hither with thy flail. I knows thee, Master Jack-of-all-trades, and master o' one, anyway — I knows thee ; I ben't going to have no fine gentlemen rick-burners c OLYMPIA. 20 on my place, nor no Captain Swings. I knows thee, Master Jack Gaol-Crow ; they be marks o' Weyport picks, they be, on thy pickers and stealers.

I knows thee ; thee'rt the chap I and eleven other men found guilty at 'sizes for writing names as weren't theirn. I won't have Isaac Holmes written, as is good for five hundred pound ; nor my ricks burnt, as is worth five hundred to the back o' they. Thee'lt burn me out for spite, wilt thee, Master Jack? Be off ; and if thee'rt skulking round about here again I'll warn the constable. Find thy danged heels ; and Will'am, take thy flail and loose Jowler at 'n." The felon smiled, sadly but grimly. " Pray do not trouble Mr. Jowler, Mr. William. I am gone. But may I ask who is your landlord, Mr. Holmes ? " " My landlord ? One as could hang thee as soon as look at thee, if I have thee up to ses sions. 'Tis the Earl of Wendale, if theewan'st to know. Will'am, loose Jowler, and take thy flail." The felon bowed again, and returned to the CLOTHO. 21 high road.

The days were still freshly remembered when the mysterious name of the ever invisible Captain Swing, the omnipresent and Briarean arch-rick-burner, used to rob hard working farmers of their ease by day and of their repose by night and to turn day-labourers into patrols of night watchmen. To be a stranger in a country parish was still to be regarded with suspicion ; and it cannot be denied that Farmer Holmes's suspicion was justified, combined as it was with private reason for fear. What could be more natural than that a criminal whom he himself had been instrumental in sending to gaol should make early use of his liberty by taking the then most fashionable method of revenge ? " I know'd 'twere Swing by the looks of 'n," he said to Miss Holmes over his bread and cheese. " I'll be about the place wi' my gun to-night, and if there's a blaze by Gressford it shan't be in yard of mine."

Meanwhile, a man who is used to the regularity of prison diet is apt to feel the OLYMPIA. 22 pangs of hunger both soon and sorely. The hour of the mid-day meal was now long past, and his fasting march in the sea-breeze and hill-wind had proved ex hausting to this gaol-bird who had been suddenly turned out of a cage where seed and water, if bitter, were at least plentiful. But, though rapidly growing faint with the craving pains of excessive emptiness and fatigue, there was nothing to be done but plod on out of the reach of Jowler and the flail. He had not even the sustenance of a light heart : and even if he had, that is not for long consistent with heavy limbs. Noon was well over, and the surround ing world of labourers, paupers, and pri soners had for an hour or two completed their digestion, when the double conviction orced itself upon this ex-prisoner, would-be labourer, and very possible pauper, that food was absolutely necessary to enable him to reach some region where he might find work, and that to find work within a CLOTHO. 23 very considerable radius of Farmer Holmes was out of the question.

He must go farther, not to fare worse, but to fare at all : and he must fare first before he could go farther. It was a true dilemma, for the two necessities seemed inconsistent things, while it was impossible to think to good purpose while hunger gnawed. Many a strong man has gone serenely without meat and drink, even for sport's or pleasure's sake, for a longer time than he : but it has been with that certainty of finding food at the end of his march which makes appetite a spur and an excitement; and then he was not a strong man, and could see no prospect of finding a crust within eight-and-forty or two-and-seventy hours ; and not even then unless he could find at least half a crust to carry him on. The clock of his body, set to regular prison time, was pointing to the hour at which the waking wolf that lurks in every man must either beg or steal, if it cannot earn.

OLYMPIA. 24 The first collection of cottages through which the high road passes is a small hamlet called Stackworth — a sort of pa rochial suburb to the large and rambling village of Gressford St. Mary. The wolf naturally grew more ravenous as it ap proached the habitations of men. At the edge of Stackworth, hard by the chapel of ease, he came upon a savour of new bread, a divine perfume that pro ceeded from a small baker's and chandler's shop. The door stood wide open, like welcome, and the entrance was protected by a hatch, knee-high, and a bell. The smell and the sight were as lamb to the wolf, and, though he passed on for a few yards, he soon turned back again, linger ingly, and with his nose in the air. " A man who can dig ought not to be ashamed to beg when the country-side has no digging for him to do," he said to him self, as he opened the hatch and made the bell tinkle.

" I can't get on till to-morrow CLOTHO. 25 without bread — and this is the only way, it seems, in Farmer Holmes's country." This was unjust to Farmer Holmes, who, if his visitor had acted under the one instinct of hunger, had but acted under the other instinct of self-preservation. But, then, on the other hand, justice is no in stinct, especially in a felon. The dusty, white-faced baker, whose name, according to the legend over his door, was Morse, stood behind the counter tying up tallow candles. The felon made his habitual bow, but this" time did not remove his cap. His cropped scalp, he was beginning to find, could not afford courtesy. " I want to ask you, sir," he said, " to grant me, as the greatest favour, what every man — so they say — has a right to claim. You are a merchant, and have goods : I am a consumer, and have hunger.

In a word, I am very hungry indeed." " Well, Mister — here's plenty, for them as can pay." OLYMPIA. " True. But the transaction, in this case, is unfortunately complicated. I am not only very, very hungry, but am with out either cash or credit. I cannot even offer you a bill. Nevertheless, one must live — within the last few hours I have found out that the philosopher who could not see the necessity was exceedingly near sighted. One of those rolls will be nothing to you : it will be everything to me." The baker was not a bright-looking man, and stared at him with a more puzzled air than that of Farmer Holmes before the latter had discovered his visitor's quality. He could only say — " You be a beggar, Mister ? ' " Pray understand me, Mr. Morse. I am a beggar. I own it. I cannot even de posit security for the pennyworth I shall owe you, it may be, for years.

I tremble to think of the amount of compound in terest that will be due by me to you one of these days. But you doubtless know — CLOTHO. 27 seeing how near you are to the church — Who repays those who give to the poor. I am only a hungry fellow-creature, out of work — nay, I am one who may become a burden to your parish, and therefore to yourself, unless he can get out of it : who may even become a burden to the nation by being driven to crime. Burglars, Mr. Morse, have been made by the chance refusal of a penny roll. You see that I am old, weak, and in all respects an object for a penn'orth of charity. I see that you are a charitable as well as a reasonable man. I have appealed to your intellect and to your heart. — I may take the roll ?" So bewildered was the baker by such a new and unheard-of kind of customer that he would probably have let the roll go with out a word of protest, and have stood staring till it was too late to rebel against the trans action, had he not happily been blessed with a wife, and had not she been blessed with ready presence of mind.

OLYMPIA. " Here, you there !" she cried out, bringing down her fist hard on the counter to startle the beggar out of his impudence and her husband out of his gaping stare. " We don't give naught for naught here — they does that at Beckfield Workus, and that's the place for them as is hungry and can't pay. We don't keep no sturdy beggars, and don't want no thieves. So just you leave my loaves alone — my man don't bake to give away." " Ma'am," said the beggar, " Mungo Park once wrote some touching lines on the kind ness and charity of your charming sex as compared with that to which Mr. Morse and myself have the misfortune to belong. It is true he drew his experiences from Central Africa, and not from the parish of Gressford St. Mary, in which corner of civilisation I believe I have the privilege of standing.