Martha: a sketch from life

Front matter

MARTHA : A SKETCH FROM LIFE. BY ANTHONY SMITH THE ELDEE, OF ALLESLEY, IX THE COUNTY OF WARWICK, LATE ATTORNEY- \T-LAW, LONDON : HOPE & CO., 10, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1855. EOrE <fc CO., PRINTERS, 16, GREAT MAULDOROUGH-STREET. CONTENTS. Page Chapter I. — " A Merry Christmas." 1 II. — Retrospective '.) ,, III. — Worse and Worse 29 „ IV. — Terrible News 42 „ V. — The Blue Butcher lil ,, VI. — An Unwelcome Guest 84 „ VII. — The Burglary 07 „ VIII.— An Escape 110 „ IX. — Martha and her Father 143 „ X. — Sunshine 102 XL — Clouded Again 180 ,, XII. — Chumley Alone 204 „ XIII.— The Strange Lady 21li ,, XIV. — The Betrayal 232 „ XV.— The Last Sin 244 „ XVI— The Trial 2oK ,, XVII. — Crumley's Death 27K ,, XVIII. — The Last Interview 300 ,, XIX. — Containing the Conclusion, Introduction, Preface, and many other Important Matters 31S MARTHA; A SKETCH FEOM LIFE.

Chapter I

"a. merry christmas." " Andrew, Andrew, look at your children, look at your wife, and see what you have brought us to !" Andrew takes his head from off his huge, bony fist, on which it is resting, and mechanically gazes in the direction of the speaker. Andrew sees a thin and emaciated but handsome M'oman, with dark brown eyes and delicate expres sive features, bghted up by that concentrated, disdainful passion which nothing but long years of wrong can arouse in a loving heart ; with small, hard-looking, red hands, tbat seem proud, in their dainty cleanliness, of the rough work to which they have been accustomed ; with thick black hair B MARTHA ; combed in a neat band on each side of the face, and done up smoothly under a plain old faded white cap ; with a slender, graceful shape, clad in the humblest of attire, that is patched m many places, but without a rag.

Andrew sees in her arms a pining, weakly infant wrapped closely in a shawl and shrinking up against its mother's breast. Andrew sees two boys near to her, and he sees their wretched, pinched-up faces, and their chilly hands, and their shivering bodies, as they stand there hungry and desolate, clamorous for food, in their room without a fire on this bitter cold Christ mas evening. Andrew sees ad this; but he has seen the sight so often before that it does not strike him at ad as a novelty, and he only mutters, Mdth a half-inquiring, half-dogged stare, — "Wed?" " Well ! Well !" the woman exclaims with an impatient gesture. "Your 'wed' has brought us ad to ruin. Your boys are starving, and you get them no bread. They are cold aud hun gry ; they are miserable ; they are Oh, my poor, poor boys !"

And the woman stoops down, pulbng her children towards her and nestling their heads with the infant in her own thin bosom. There is a moment's sdence, which is followed by the man's saying, sudenly, and as if to him self, " I can't help it ; I can't help it ;" but the mother seems not to hear him, and she presses the A SKETCH FROM LIFE. 3 children stid closer to her, murmuring tenderly, " My poor, poor boys !" Listen ! Outside, at a street's length, the voices of children are audible, and the sweet sounds of a merry carol float into the room through the clear frosty air. For an instant or two the music comes sooth ingly upon the senses of the mother and lulls her into a forgetfulness of her own and her children's unhappiness ; but a low moaning cry from her eldest child — a boy who looks about seven years old, but who is scarcely higher than his mother's knee — causes her features to become suddenly overspread with a rush of fury and her eyes to gleam with uncontrollable anger.

Leaving her children, she walks quickly towards where the man is sitting and places her fingers with such a stern gripe upon his broad, sinewy arm, that he looks into her face with a stare of astonishment. He does not understand this. He has seen her in a passion so often that he hardly heeds it. He has slunk from her indignant glances tdl he is regardless of their meaning. But never yet has her little hand grasped his arm tid he — strong man that he is — felt the compression as painfully as though it had been fixed in a rice. Never yet has he seen such a tempest of fury in her features. Never yet has his vrife stood before him thus possessed with the terrible feelings which MARTHA ; his evil conduct has aroused in her. So Andrew looks up, staring, with his mouth open, into his wife's face ; but when his eyes meet her glance, his cowardly heart on the instant dies away within him, and, despite of all his man's strength, with which he might crush that fragde creature like a flower, he cowers and shrinks before the passion of the mother and the wife tdl be becomes as power less as the infant in her arms.

"What's the matter, Martha?" he says in a low tone, without daring to meet a second time the glance of her eyes. "What's the matter!" repeats the wife, in a tone of the bitterest scorn, " Look what's the mat ter ! Here, boys, come and tell your dear father what's the matter ! Come here, boys, come here!" The chddren advance slowly and hesitatingly; for there is something dreadful, even to them, in her manner. When they reach her, she pushes them towards the man, exclaiming, " Kiss him ! Kiss him ! Kiss your beloved, kind father, who provides bread for you and clothes you so bounti fully, and keeps you so warm and comfortable." As she speaks she continues pushing them closer to him, while he moves round in his seat and averts his face. She looks at him with withering contempt, and for a time there is an unbroken silence in the place.

The infant in Martha's arms wakes M'ith a A SKETCH FE0M LIFE. 5 smile and raises its tiny hand playfully to her face. At the same moment the words uttered by the young carol singers, who have gradually got nearer to the house, burst amid the sdence distinctly into the room — " For angels no such love have known As o'er this world is shed ; Goodwill to sinful man is shown. And peace on earth is spread." The fresh tones of the children's happy voices, and the unconscious playfulness of the infant, add a still deeper intensity to the intense feeling of the mother. Pushing aside the children, she ap proaches her husband. With a gesture, she com pels him to lift up his eyes to hers, and, as it were by a species of fascination, he keeps them fixed there without flinching from her gaze. " Andrew," she commences, in sloMr and appa rently calm accents, "Andrew, you enticed me, by the persuasion that you loved me, to leave a happy home and join my lot with yours.

I say nothing of the position from which you took me as compared with that to which I was reduced by becoming your wife. That degradation, if it was one, I voluntarily accepted. I do not complain that you have not provided for me the luxuries to which I had been accustomed. Those I never looked for. I do not upbraid you for Mrasting the little wealth which I brought to you with our MARTHA ; marriage. I gave it into your hands as your own, of right ; and you have done with it as you bsted. But I do complain, before Heaven, that you have not used your hands to procure bread for your wife and children. I do declare you to be a base and pitiful scoundrel for squandering your time, and ruining your health, and destroying yourself, body and soul, when you ought to have been labouring for your offspring.

I do denounce you to your Maker, as a traitor to your own flesh and blood ; and here, cading upon the great God, I implore Him to pour out " " For angels no such love have known As o'er this world is shed ; Goodwill to sinful man is shown, And peace on earth is spread" — ring out the sweet voices of the children as they get nearer to the house. " Peace on earth !" exclaims Martha, wildly, " peace on earth while men bke him live, and my poor, poor, poor children are starving through his wickedness. Poor children ! " she exclaims, pressing the whimpering baby to her bosom, and stroking the fair hair of her youngest boy, who is sobbing with ad his might. " Martha ! " mutters the man, in a deprecating tone. " Sdence, wretch ! " she exclaims, " how dare you use my name ? how dare you look at me, or at these children you have wronged so foudy?

Out of the house ! Out of the house ! or I shall kill you where you sit ! " " Goodwill to sinful man is shown, And peace on earth is spread." The carol party have reached the outer door of the house, and just as the man seems preparing to escape from the room his wife opens the door and calls in the little band of singers. "Come in, come in," she exclaims, " come in, all of you ;" and at her commanding words the happy, well clad chddren come trooping with wondering eyes into the room. " Look ! " she says, pointing at her husband, " Look ! there he is ! that's the man that starves his chddren — little children like you. That's the man ! hiss him, hoot him, boys ! He'd starve you if you were his children. Drive him out ! Drive him out !" The man, who has grown very pale while his wife has been uttering these mad words, suddenly lays hold of his hat, and, with a furious look at his wife, which, however, expresses not one tithe of the passion which animates her own features, utters from between his clenched teeth a deep imprecation as he rushes out at the door.

When he is gone, the carol singers see the woman sit down and cover her face in the shawl MARTHA ; that surrounds her infant, who, frightened at its mother's passion, is screaming loudly. They stare at one another, awe-stricken ; and soon they glide noiselessly from the room. As they go homewards they converse about what they have seen, almost in whispers ; but they sing no more carols that night.

Chapter II. Retrospective

At seventeen, Miss Metcalfe was a dear, fascinating girl. Without being perfectly beautiful, her face formed such a delightful reflex of the varying feelings of her mind, that no one could behold it without emotions of pleasure ; and there was a delicious freshness in ad she said and did that perpetuated the admiration which a first knowledge of her created. She had lived ad her bfe with her parents, and her two brothers, and her maiden aunt, Martha, after whom she was named, and M'ith whom she was a great favourite, from a resemblance which this ancient lady fancied to exist between the features of her niece and those of her own former self. The Rev. Henry Metcalfe, young Miss Martha's father, was vicar of Allesley, a small village near Coventry; and in this secluded spot she had spent the whole of that part of her life of which she had any recollection.

MARTHA ; Her father was a devout but cold, austere man, who had a profound and conscientious faith in some of those severe, gloomy dogmas that have been educed from the mild religion of the Saviour, and M'ho, consequently, had no proper consider ation for the gaieties and pastimes of youth, even when they were perfectly innocent ; while her mother was a well-meaning but weak woman, who bowed before the rigid gravity of her husband, but, in his absence, loved to indulge her chddren by adowing them to do very much as they pleased. Thus, even from her chddish days, Martha, escap ing from the stern cognizance of her father, who took little account of the management of the household, had the opportunity to cherish many wayward fancies M'hich his wid might have crushed, and to fodow some pursuits which, though in themselves harmless under due direction, his mea sure of morality would never have permitted him to sanction.

Of the great world of mankind she practically knew nothing. Nearly the whole of her information on this subject was derived from her father's sermons and severe moral home teachings; from occasional conversations with her mother; from an oracular sentence or two uttered by her aunt, to whom she looked up with much awe ; and, most of all, from a few novels which, braving the terrors of paternal anger, she perused — somewhat after the fashion of the ancient martyrs in the enjoyment of the newly-translated Bible — stealthily and in obscure places : to wit, in her father's hay loft, in a ruined barn at some short distance from the house, in her OM'n bed-room at night, in the pantry, in the housemaid's garret, once in the coal-cellar, and in other recondite spots too nume rous to detail.

From the first of these sources, namely, her father's sermons, she obtained a lively idea that the whole of the human race are thoroughly base and depraved, with the exception of a minute portion who are destined to be made perfect and happy ; from the second — her mother's lips — that these vieMrs of her father's were quite true, but, as a natural result of their truth, that it was of no use troubling one's head about the matter, because, to sum it all up in Mrs. Met calfe's very womanly phrase, " Whatever is to be, is to be ;" from the third, she derived the impres sion, inculcated in the elderly Miss Metcalfe's terse and graphic language, without comment or expla nation of any kind, that the world of humanity is divided simply into two portions — men, deceivers — women, victims ; and from the remaining source, which no doubt was the most prolific and the most abiding in its results of all. the four, she imbibed the pleasing notion that life is, for the most part, an extensive series of love-scenes, in which there are a great number of perfect young men, and maidens angelicady sweet, whose chief business is MARTHA ; to adore each other and pass through a variety of pleasantly-exciting and gently-terrible events tdl they are married, after which nothing more ever disturbs the blissful monotony of their matrimonial joys.

Amidst the jumble of ideas which was thus huddled together in the brain of Martha, it would be difficult to say what was her bebef, or, indeed, whether she had any distinct belief at all ; but as the youthful mind, which possesses no actual know ledge of the realities of human existence, usually takes its hue from those teachings which are most pleasant, it is more than probable that the captiv ating pictures she had extracted from her scanty store of novel reading occupied a prominent place in her thoughts. . And this is ad the more likely, because, addicted though Martha was to crying herself poorly over the imaginary troubles of these darling lovers while they were separated by their hard-hearted uncles, and to rejoicing herself into rosiness again when they were happily married in the last leaf of the concluding volume, it is a singular fact that this ingenuous young lady never mentioned to any living soul the thoughts which 'these writings aroused in her heart, chatterbox as she was on every other subject.

Nor could she ever hear the mere word "love" or "marriage" mentioned, ever so cursorily, without blushing in a manner which it was very delightful to behold. She almost cried — but she took care that nobody saw it — M'hen her brother Harry joked her, which he did sometimes, about being fond of Stephen Halford, the squire's youngest son. Stephen Halford was rather hand some it was true, but he was a whole year younger than herself and looked quite a lad ; and she hated her brother for teazing her about so serious a matter as being in love. Martha was a good hater — that is, whde the feeling lasted ; but when her resentment departed, which it did on the least show of genuine affection, she was the most loving creature alive, and could not do enough to atone for anything unkind that she might have said or done.

Both her brothers dearly loved their fra gde, delicate-looking, passionate sister, who, little as she was, forced them to bend before the haughty toss of her head, and the proud wave of her hand, and the imperious stamp of her foot, and the beautiful swelling of her whole body. Martha was never so handsome as when she was in a passion ; but it was a melancholy sort of beauty, which wanted subduing by what Martha did not enjoy — the firm but gentle hand of a judiciously-loving parent. There was one person in the household, and one only, who could have subdued her spirit and disciplined it into a wholesome subjection ; but he did not take the means which were in his power to effect this object. Martha always ex perienced a yearning affection towards her father, MARTHA ; who, had he tried the magic power of love, might have vanquished her into submission by a mere gesture.

But there was a peculiar feeling of con straint in their intercourse. She never dared to show her love : there was a marked coldness in her father's manner towards her which chilled all her warm longings back into the recesses of her heart. He never caressed her, never spoke an en dearing word, but, as Martha thought, entertained a settled dislike for her. Once only did an abso lute contest of temper take place between Martha and her father. She was disobedient, and he frigidly severe. From eleven in the morning until sunset on a summer's day Martha remained in a dark room without food; but at the end of that time she was still stubborn and unbending. Her father did not utter the single word that would have brought the sweet termagant to his feet. He yielded ; and from that time, as by tacit consent, the matter was compromised, and there were no more disputes between them.

Over everybody else in the house she ruled omnipotent. But if Martha was not fond of Stephen Hal ford, she came in time to have likings in another quarter, and one which her brother would have little suspected. In the depths of her own heart, many of the desires and emotions of which M'ere as yet but dimly revealed even to herself, Martha — and what womanly woman is not? — was an ardent admirer of manly beauty. Timidly and in secret, she loved to picture to herself a broad, athletic shape, symmetricady formed after the model of the Hercules; never fading, moreover, to invest this fancied being with all those im possible virtues that were so lavishly bestowed upon the heroes of the tales she had read. Now it so happened that amongst the occasional frequenters at the vdlage church was one Andrew Jackson — a dashing, wild young fellow, the only son of a very poor farmer ; so poor, indeed, that the perplexity of the local gossips as to how he made both ends meet, was only equalled by their astonishment at his son maintaining so long as he had done, an almost idle, and, for one in his position, extravagant career of dissipation.

An drew was undisputed lord of the youthful vd lagers. The maidens loved him, and sighed for him, and hated one another for him : the young men, while they envied and disliked him, never theless, like other mortals, humbly imitated those qualities the existence of which in him caused their id-wdl. In truth, Andrew was ex tremely handsome, both as regarded his face and his person. His limbs were, perhaps, a shade too large; but this the eye forgot, in observing the al most perfect mould in which they were formed ; M'hile there was a natural unpolished grace in his bearing, and a bold, good-looking rakishness in his face, which gave quite a charm to his general appearance. Young as he was, Andrew was quite MARTHA ; a lady-killer ; and there were few women, even outside the world of Allesley, who could have re sisted his efforts, when he was bent upon conquest, had Andrew fortunately, or unfortunately, received such an education as would have fitted him to fill a higher sphere in life.

In the course of his whole limited experience, there was only one woman whom, while feeling an inclination towards, Andrew had shrunk from gazing upon boldly. The lady to whose charms and virtues this in voluntary homage was paid was Miss Metcalfe : there was in her face and manner something which, apart from her superior station — for An drew was conscious that if she had been a vdlage companion the feebng would have been almost the same — completely abashed his native impu dence, and compelled him to indulge his admiration only by stealthy glances which he imagined she never could observe. But what woman, old or young, ever failed to detect the flattering in cense offered to her beauty in the shape of admiring glances? Should such a phenomenon ever have existed, certainly, of all the women in the world, it was not in the person of the quick-witted Miss Metcalfe ; and the very furtiveness with which the feelings of her humble admirer Mere indulged, in itself greatly tended to heighten the pleasure she derived from her observation of them.

Still no great impression had been made on Martha's susceptible heart, tdl a certain Sunday on which Andrew returned to church after an absence of three or four months from the vdlage. One of the most remarkable circumstances in connection with life, is the extraordinary influence which minute and apparently insignificant events occasionally exercise upon the whole after existence of the individuals to whom they occur. Rome was saved by the cackbng of a goose ; and — though the dlustration is not by any means so striking — Martha Metcalfe's whole life from a par ticular point was made supremely wretched, and this narrative was consequently written, owing to events arising out of the seemingly unimportant facts, that her father's cook was sister to Mr. Cor nebus Fox, that Mr. Cornelius Fox was the keeper of a circulating library at Coventry, and that, his sister the cook having a taste for bght literature, that gentleman was in the habit of lending her for perusal a selection from the excellent works of fiction contained in his estabbshment.

It chanced that, on the evening previous to the Sunday ad verted to, Miss Martha had been wasting her father's candles, and her own precious moments that ought to have been devoted to slumber, in perusing, slowly and with deep fervour, the last half of the last volume — just finished by cook — of a tbrdling romance, entitled, "Percival the Peasant and Farnida the Fair One; or, Love's c MARTHA ; Atonement." This portion of the tale glow ingly described several terrific conflicts of the passions, in which all the tremendous doubts, mysteries, fears, and jealousies of the preceding volumes are satisfactorily cleared up. Far ndla the Fair One turns out to be a princess in disguise. Percival the Peasant does not love Judilla, who proves to be his cousin in difficulties. Farnilla the Fair One ascends the throne of her fathers, all bedecked with pearls and diamonds, and with a gold crown several pounds weight on her head.

Farnida the Fair One raises Percival the Peasant — her tried and faithful lover — to the position of her kingly husband. Judilla is created her principal maid of honour. The wicked Prime Minister, who is the cause of ad the past mischief, dies in an apoplectic fit, brought on by stewed haddocks and despair. All the minor characters have their proper degrees of happiness and misery meted out to them, in strict accordance with the unalterable canons of poetical justice. Vice is punished, and virtue is triumphant. Everybody is happy. Even the wicked Prime Minister dies with a rush of rapture, because he is conscious that he deserves his fate. The lesser vdlains deeply enjoy the respective degrees of misery to which they are doomed as an expiation of their past crimes. The royal lovers are left in a state of celestial happiness; and the last page closes with a dash of mental eau-de-cologne, sky-blue, white muslin, and bliss.

No doubt the reading public arc wed acquainted with this powerful production of genius ; and they M-ill readily understand the effect which the perusal of its very truthful portrayals of human life had upon the simple soul of Martha. All that Sunday morning her mind was lost in a maze of love and romance, in which unhappy princesses, valiant and handsome peasants, wicked prime ministers, perilous escapes, declarations of devoted attachment, misery, delight, and marriage, were mingled together in an incoherent whirl. Her father's sermon, it must be confessed, might as wed have remained unpreached, at least so far as Martha was concerned. She heard not a sentence of it. Indeed, she was obliged to confess at dinner, to her father's astonishment, that she did not knoM7 the text : such obliviousness could not be recollected of Martha since she was a little chdd.

The good clergyman's surprise would have deepened into incipient horror, could he have divined the nature of the train of meditation which prevented his daughter from remembering the text on which was founded that morning's impressive discourse. The truth is, that the only tangible shape which her thoughts took during the brief hour and a half she passed in the church was, that the stalwart Andrew impersonated Per- MARTHA ; cival the Peasant, and that she herself, in a very humble way, was a sort of Farndla the Fair One ; that Andrew, at the imminent hazard of his life, was to rescue her from some terrible peril ; that her stern father was thereupon to relax from his severity, join their hands, and invoke the blessing of Heaven upon them ; that they were then to be married ; and that their lives were, after that charming event, to pass away in the state of dreamy bliss described in the memoirs she had just finished perusing.

Not that Martha, during this stage of feebng, ever had the remotest idea of ready being wooed, and loving, and being married to, Andrew. Far from such a conception entering her head, her thoughts consisted only of a species of ethereal imaginings, which took a more delici ous hue from having a real, handsome-looking human being as their basis. Martha would at that time have shunned the slightest touch, or even gesture, from her ideal but living hero. In voluntarily, however, these emotions grew upon her, becoming a source of extremest debght ; and ever as the delight grew, the shape of Andrew became more closely interwoven with her thoughts, more intimately blended with all her objects and pursuits. In a word, Martha had, unconsciously, with the whole depth of her passionate nature, fallen in love with a comely face and figure : the mental and moral qualities of her idol she had amply supplied from her own brain.

And all this came of Mr. Metcalfe's cook being sister to Mr. Cornelius Fox, and enjoying a taste for novel reading. Although Miss Metcalfe had been in the same village with Andrew almost all her life, she had never once spoken to him, and never even been nearer to him than his distant seat at church, ex cept on one occasion when in company with her mother she visited his father's house. Without, however, in any instance being gudty to the sbghtest extent of an immodest action, Martha, as a woman — and, though only seventeen, a woman she was in every sense of the word — soon found means to let her nowise insensible though rustic lover understand that his admiration was not dis agreeable to her. The result, which would probably have been different had Martha possessed a parent who had won from her the right of becom ing the confidant of her secret and most precious thoughts, may be very briefly summed up.

From glances and sighs, these inflammable young per sons proceeded to words ; as the words grew more tender, they naturady got to vows ; and ultimately, as an unavoidable sequence, where one party had everything to win and nothing to lose, while the other, ignorant of the world, was all trusting con fidence and love, they were married. To do Andrew justice, it is only fair to say that, MARTHA ; to a certain degree, he did love the infatuated girl. When, wed knowing that her father's consent to their marriage would never be obtained, he urged her to a secret wedding, he was influenced by the double motive of becoming possessed of the clergy man's beautiful daughter as a wife, and of obtain ing the Morldly wealth which would probably accrue to him (for, by the will of a deceased cousin, Martha had years before come into the possession of two thousand pounds in her own right, but which, never having had need of, she had adowed to remain in her father's hands; and there was every prospect of her rich old aunt leaving her the bulk of her property) .