THE SUPERNATURAL OMNIBUS (93 page)

Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis was indignant; he liked not that his benefits should be ill appreciated by the recipient. 'Hark ye, Joseph Washford,' said he, 'either wear my wig, or let me have it again!'

There was no mistaking the meaning of his tones; they were resonant of indignation and disgust, of mingled grief and anger, the amalgamation of sentiment naturally produced by

'Friendship unreturn'd,

And unrequited love.'

Washford's heart smote him: be felt all that was implied in his master's appeal. 'It's here, your Honour,' said he; 'I had only taken it off because we have had a smartish shower; but the sky is brightening now.' The wig was replaced, and the little tortuous pigtail wriggled itself into its accustomed position.

At this moment neighbour Jenkinson peeped over the hedge.

'Joe Washford!' said neighbour Jenkinson.

'Sir, to you,' was the reply.

'How beautiful your tulips look after the rain!'

'Ah! sir, master sets no great store by them flowers;' returned the gardener.

'Indeed! Then perhaps he would have no objection to part with a few?'

'Why, no!-- I don't think master would like to give them,-- or anything else,-- away, sir;' and Washford scratched his ear.

'Joe!!' said Mr. Jenkinson --'Joe!!'

The Sublime, observes Longinus, is often embodied in a monosyllable -'Joe!!!'-- Mr. Jenkinson said no more; but a half-crown shone from between his upraised fingers, and its 'poor, poor dumb mouth' spoke for him.

How Joseph Washford's left ear did itch! He looked to the ground-floor back -Mr. Jarvis had left the window.

Mr. Jenkinson's ground-plot boasted, at daybreak next morning, a splendid Semper Augustus, 'which was not so before,' and Joseph Washford was led home, much about the same time, in a most extraordinary state of 'civilation,' from 'The Three Jolly Potboys.'

From that hour he was the Fiend's!

'Facilis descensus Averni! says Virgil. 'It is only the first step that is attended with any difficulty, says -- somebody else,-- when speaking of the decollated martyr St. Dennis's walk with his head under his arm. 'The First Step!'-- Joseph Washford had taken that step! -- he had taken two -- three -- four steps; and now, from a hesitating, creeping, cat-like mode of progression, he had got into a firmer tread -- an amble -- a positive trot! He took the family linen 'to the wash:' one of Madame Witherspoon's best Holland chemises was never seen after.

'Lost?-- impossible! How could it be lost?-- where could it be gone to?-- who could have got it? It was her best -- her very best!-- she should know it among a hundred -- among a thousand! -- it was marked with a great W in the corner!-- Lost?-- impossible -- She would see!-- Alas! she never did see -- the chemise -- abiit, erupit, evasit! -- it was

'Like the lost Pleiad, seen on earth no more;'

-- but Joseph Washford's Sunday shirt was seen, finer and fairer than ever, the pride and dulce decus of the Meeting.

The Meeting?-- aye, the Meeting. Joe Washford never missed the Appledore Independent Meeting House, whether the service were in the morning or afternoon,-- whether the Rev. Mr. Slyandry exhorted or made way for the Rev. Mr. Tearbrain. Let who would officiate, there was Joe. As I have said before, be never missed;-- but other people missed -- one missed an umbrella,-- one a pair of clogs. Farmer Johnson missed his tobacco-box,-- Farmer Jackson his greatcoat,-- Miss Jackson missed her hymn-book,-- a diamond edition, bound in maroon-coloured velvet, with gilt corners and clasps. Everything, in short, was missed -- but Joe Washford; there he sat, grave, sedate, and motionless -- all save that restless, troublesome, fidgetty little Pigtail attached to his wig, which nothing could keep quiet, or prevent from tickling and interfering with Miss Thompson's curls, as she sat back to back with Joe, in the adjoining pew. After the third Sunday, Nancy Thompson eloped with the tall recruiting sergeant of the Connaught Rangers.

The summer passed away,-- autumn came and went,-- and Christmas, jolly Christmas, that period of which we are accustomed to utter the mournful truism, it 'comes but once a-year,' was at hand. It was a fine bracing morning; the sun was just beginning to throw a brighter tint upon the Quaker-coloured ravine of Orlestone Hill, when a medical gentleman, returning to the quiet little village of Ham Street, that lies at its foot, from a farm-house at Kingsnorth, rode briskly down the declivity.

After several hours of patient attention, Mr. Moneypenny had succeeded in introducing to the notice of seven little expectant brothers and sisters a 'remarkably fine child,' and was now hurrying home in the sweet hope of a comfortable 'snooze' for a couple of hours before the announcement of tea and muffins should arouse him to fresh exertion. The road at this particular spot had, even then, been cut deep below the surface of the soil, for the purpose of diminishing the abruptness of the descent, and, as either side of the superincumbent banks was clothed with a thick mantle of tangled copsewood, the passage, even by day, was sufficiently obscure, the level beams of the rising or setting sun, as they happened to enifiade the gorge, alone illuminating its recesses. A long stream of rosy light was just beginning to make its way through the vista, and Mr. Moneypenny's nose had scarcely caught and reflected its kindred ray, when the sturdiest and most active cob that ever rejoiced in the appellation of a 'Suffolk Punch,' brought herself up in mid career upon her haunches, and that with a suddenness which had almost induced her rider to describe that beautiful mathematical figure, the parabola, between her ears. Peggy -- her name was Peggy -- stood stock-still, snorting like a stranded grampus, and alike insensible to the gentle hints afforded her by band and heel.

'Tch! -- tch! -- get along, Peggy!' half exclaimed, half whistled the equestrian. If ever steed said in its heart, 'I'll be shot if I do!' it was Peggy at that moment. She planted her forelegs deep in the sandy soil, raised her stump of a tail to an elevation approaching the horizontal, protruded her nose like a pointer at a covey, and with expanded nostril continued to snuffle most egregiously.

Mr. Geoffrey Gambado, the illustrious 'Master of the Horse to the Doge of Venice,' tells us, in his far-famed treatise on the Art Equestrian, that the most embarrassing position in which a rider can be placed is, when he wishes to go one way, and his horse is determined to go another. There is, to be sure, a tertium quid, which, though it 'splits the difference,' scarcely obviates the inconvenience; this is when the parties compromise the matter by not going any way at all -- to this compromise Peggy and her (soi-disant) master were now reduced; they had fairly joined issue. 'Budge!' quoth the doctor.--'Budge not!' quoth the fiend,-- for nothing short of a fiend could, of a surety, inspire Peggy at such a time with such unwonted obstinacy.-- Moneypenny whipped and spurred -- Peggy plunged, and reared, and kicked, and for several minutes to a superficial observer the termination of the contest might have appeared uncertain; but your profound thinker sees at a glance that, however the scales may appear to vibrate, when the question between the sexes is one of perseverance, it is quite a lost case for the masculine gender. Peggy beat the doctor 'all to sticks,' and when he was fairly tired of goading and thumping, maintained her position as firmly as ever.

It is of no great use, and not particularly agreeable, to sit still, on a cold frosty morning in January, upon the outside of a brute that will neither go forwards nor backwards -- so Mr. Moneypenny got off, and muttering curses both 'loud' and 'deep' between his chattering teeth, 'progressed' as near as the utmost extremity of the extended bridle would allow him, to peep among the weeds and brushwood that flanked the road, in order to discover, if possible, what it was that so exclusively attracted the instinctive attention of his Bucephalus.

His curiosity was not long at fault; the sunbeam glanced partially upon some object ruddier even than itself -- it was a scarlet waisteoat, the wearer of which, overcome perchance by Christmas compotation. seemed to have selected for his 'thrice driven bed of down,' the thickest clump of the tallest and most imposing nettles, thereon to doze away the narcotic effects of superabundant juniper.

This, at least, was Mr. Moneypenny's belief, or he wonld scarcely have uttered, at the highest pitch of his contralto, 'What are you doing there, you drunken rascal? frightening my horse!'-- We have already hinted, if not absolutely asserted, that Peggy was a mare; but this was no time for verbal criticism. --'Get up, I say,-- get up, and go home, you scoundrel!'-- But the 'scoundrel' and 'drunken rascal' snswered not; he moved not, nor could the prolonged shouting of the appellant. aided by significant explosions from a double-thonged whip, succeed in eliciting a reply. No motion indicated that the recumbent figure, whose outline alone was visible, was a living and a breathing man!

The clear, shrill tones of a plougbboy's whistle sounded at this moment from the bottom of the hill, where the broad and green expanse of Romncy Marsh stretches away from its foot for many a mile, and now gleamed through the mists of morning, dotted and enamelled with its thousand flocks. In a few minutes his tiny figure was seen 'slouching' up the ascent, casting a most disproportionate and ogre-like shadow before him.

'Come here, Jack,' quoth the doctor,--'come here, boy, lay hold of this bridle, and mind that my horse does not run away.'

Peggy threw up her head, and snorted disdain of the insinuation,-- she had not the slightest intention of doing any such thing.

Mr. Moneypenny meanwhile, disencumbered of his restive nag, proceeded by manual application to arouse the sleeper.

Alas! the Seven of Ephesus might sooner have been awakened from their century of somnolency. His was that 'dreamless sleep that knows no waking;' his cares in this world were over. Vainly did Moneypenny practise his own constant precept,

'To be well shaken!'-- there lay before him the lifeless body of a MURDERED MAN!

The corpse lay stretched upon its back, partially concealed, as we have before said, by the nettles which had sprung up among the stumps of the half-grubbed underwood; the throat was fearfully lacerated, and the dark, deep, arterial dye of the coagulated blood showed that the carotid had been severed. There was little to denote the existence of any struggle; but as the day brightened, the sandy soil of the road exhibited an impression as of a body that had fallen on its plastic surface, and had been dragged to its present position, while fresh horse-shoe prints seemed to intimate that either the assassin or his victim had been mounted. The pockets of the deceased were turned out, and empty; a hat and heavy-loaded whip lay at no great distance from the body.

'But what have we here?' quoth Doctor Moneypenny; 'what is it that the poor fellow holds so tightly in his hand?'

That hand had manifestly clutched some article with all the spasmodic energy of a dying grasp -- IT WAS AN OLD WIG!

Those who are fqrtunate enough to have seen a Cinque Port Court-house may possibly divine what that useful and most necessary edifice was some eighty years ago. Many of them seem to have undergone little alteration, and are in general of a composite order of architecture, a fanciful arrangement of brick and timber, with what Johnson would have styled 'interstices, reticulated, and decussated between intersections' of lath and plaster. Its less euphonious designation in the 'Weald' is a 'noggin.' One half the basement story usually of the more solid material, the other, open to the street,-- from which it is separated only by a row of dingy columns, supporting a portion of the superstructure,-- is paved with tiles, and sometimes does duty as a market-place, while, in its centre, flanking the board staircase that leads to the sessions-house above, stands an ominous-looking machine, of heavy perforated wood, clasped within whose stern embrace 'the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep' oil occasionally the drowsiness produced by convivial excess, in a most undignified positions an inconvenience much increased at times by some mischievous urchin, who, after abstracting the shoes of the helpless detenu, amuses himself by tickling the soles of his feet.

It was in such a place, or rather in the Court-room above, that in the year 1761 a hale, robust man, somewhat past the middle age, with a very bald pate, save where a continued tuft of coarse, wiry hair, stretching from above each ear, swelled out into a greyish-looking bush upon the occiput, held up his hand before a grave and enlightened assemblage of Dymchurch jurymen. He stood arraigned for that offence most heinous in the sight of God and man, the deliberate and cold-blooded butchery of an unoffending, unprepared fellow-creature,-- homicidium quod nullo vidente, nullo auscultante, clam perpetratur.

The victim was one Humphry Bourne, a reputable grazier of Ivychurch, worthy and well-to-do, though, perchance, a thought too apt to indulge on a market- day, when 'a score of ewes' had brought in a reasonable profit. Some such cause had detained him longer than usual at an Ashford cattle-show; he had left the town late, and alone; early in the following morning his horse was found standing at his own stable-door, the saddle turned round beneath its belly, and much about the time that the corpse of its unfortunate master was discovered some four miles off, by our friend the pharmacopolist.

That poor Bourne had been robbed and murdered there could be no question.

Who, then, was the perpetrator of the atrocious deed?-- The unwilling hand almost refuses to trace the name of -- Joseph Washford.

Yet so it was. Mr. Jeremiah Jarvis was himself the coroner for that division of the county of Kent known by the name of 'The Lath of Scraye.' He had not sat two minutes on the body before he recognized his quondam property, and started at beholding in the grasp of the victim, as torn in the death-struggle from the murderer's head, his own OLD WIG,-- his own perky little pigtail, tied up with a piece of shabby shalloon, now wriggling and quivering, as in salutation of its ancient master. The silver buckles of the murdered man were found in Joe Washford's shoes,-- broad pieces were found in Joe Washford's pockets,-- Joe Washford had himself been found, when the hue-and-cry was up, hid in a corn-rig at no great distance from the