Birds of Prey, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [ebooks online reader txt] 📗

both shining examples of goodness and piety, do attend Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and are to be seen there frequent, to the delight of their subjects. On which I told him that, much as I esteemed my sovereign and his respectable consort, I would compleat my existence without having seen them rather than I would seek to encounter them in a place of vain and frivolous diversion. He listen'd to my discoorse in a kind and sober temper, but he was not convinc'd; for by and by he falls of a sudden to sighing and groaning, and cries out, 'O, I went to Vauxhall once when ye garden was not many years made, and O, how bright ye lamps shone, like ye stars of heaven fallen among bushes! and O, how sweet ye music sounded, like ye hymns of angels in ye dewy evening! but that was nigh upon twenty years gone by, and all ye world is changed since then.'

"You will conceive, Reverend Sir, that I was scandalised by such a foolish rapsodie, and in plain words admonish'd my husband of his folly. Whereupon he speedily became sober, and asked my pardon; but for all that night continued of a gloomy countenance, ever and anon falling to sighing and groning as before. Indeed, honour'd Sir, I have good need of a patient sperrit in my dealings with him; for altho' at times I think he is in a fair way to become a Christian, there are other times when I doubt Satan has still a hold upon him, and that all my prayers and admonitions have been in vaine.

"You, who know the wildness and wickedness of his past life--so far as that life was ever known to any but himself, who was ever of a secret and silent disposition concerning his own doings in this city, tho' free-spoken and frank in all common matters--you, honour'd sir, know with how serious an intention I have taken upon myself the burden of matrimony, hoping thereby to secure the compleat conversion of this waywarde soul. You are aware how it was ye earnest desire of my late respected father that Mathew Haygarth and I shou'd be man and wife, his father and my father haveing bin friends and companions in ye days of her most gracious majesty Queen Anne. You know how, after being lost to all decent company for many years, Mathew came back after his father's death, and lived a sober and serious life, attending amongst our community, and being seen to shed tears on more than one occasion while listening to the discourse of our revered and inspired founder. And you, my dear and honour'd pastor, will feel for me when I tell you how I am tormented by ye fear of backsliding in this soul which I have promised to restore to ye fold. It was but yesterday, when walking with him near St. John's Gate at Clerkenwell, he came to a standstill all of a sudden, and he cried in that impetuous manner which is even yet natural to him, 'Look ye now, Becky, wouldst like to see the house in which the happiest years of my life was spent?' And I making no answer, as thinking it was but some sudden freak, he points out a black dirty-looking dwelling-place, with overhanging windows and a wide gabled roof. 'Yonder it stands, Becky,' he cries; 'number seven John-street, Clerkenwell; a queer dingy box of four walls, my wench--a tumble-down kennel, with a staircase that 'twould break your neck to mount, being strange to it--and half a day's journey from the court-end of town. But that house was once paradise to me; and to look at it even now, though 'tis over eighteen years since I saw the inside of it, will bring the tears into these poor old eyes of mine'. And then he walk'd on so fast that I could scarce keep pace with him, till we came to Smithfield; and then he began to tell me about Bartholomew-fair and the brave sights he had seen; and must needs show me where had stood the booth of one Fielding--since infamously notorious as the writer of some trashy novels, the dulness whereof is only surpassed by their profligacy: and then he talks of Fawkes the conjurer, who made a great fortune, and of some humble person called 'Tiddy Doll,' a dealer in gingerbread and such foolish wares. But he could tell me nothing of those early preachings of our revered founder in Moorfields, which would have been more pleasant to me than all this vain babble about drolls and jesters, gingerbread bakers and showmen.

"When we had walked the round of the place, and it was time to take coach for our lodging at Chelsea--he having brought me thus far to see St. Paul's and the prison of Newgate, the Mint and Tower--the gloomy fit came on him again, and all that evening he was dull and sorrowful, though I read aloud to him from the printed sermons of a rising member of our community. So you will see, honour'd sir, how difficult it is for these children of Satan to withdraw themselves from that master they have once served; since at the sober age of fifty-three yeares my husband's weak heart yet yearns after profligate faires and foolish gardens lighted by color'd lampes.

"And now no more, reverend friend, my paper being gone and it being full time to reflect that y'r patience must be gone also. Service to Mrs. Goodge. I have no more room but to assure you that y'r gayeties of this foolish and erring citty have no power to withdraw y'r heart of her whose chief privilege it is to subscribe herself,

"Your humble follower and servant."

"Rebecca Haygarth."

To my mind there seems just a shadowy hint of some bygone romance in this letter. Why did the dingy house in John-street bring the tears into Matthew's eyes? and why did the memory of Vauxhall and Bartholomew fair seem so sweet to him? And then that sighing and groaning and dolefulness of visage whenever the thought of the past came back to him?

What did it all mean, I wonder? Was it only his vanished youth, which poor, sobered, converted, Wesleyanised Matthew regretted? or were there pensive memories of something even sweeter than youth associated with the coloured lamps of Vauxhall and the dinginess of Clerkenwell? Who shall sound the heart of a man who lived a hundred years ago? and where is the fathom-line which shall plumb its mysteries? I should need a stack of old letters before I could arrive at the secret of that man's life.

The two other letters, which I have selected after some deliberation, relate to the last few weeks of Matthew's existence; and in these again I fancy I see the trace of some domestic mystery, some sorrowful secret which this sober citizen kept hidden from his wife, but which he was on several occasions half inclined to reveal to her.

Perhaps if the lady's piety--which seems to have been thoroughly sincere and praiseworthy, by the bye--had been a little less cold and pragmatical in its mode of expression, poor Matthew might have taken heart of grace and made a clean breast of it.

That there was a secret in the man's life I feel convinced; but that conviction goes very little way towards proving any one point of the smallest value to George Sheldon.

I transcribe an extract from each of the two important letters; the first written a month before Matthew's death, the second a fortnight after that event.

"And indeed, honour'd sir, I have of late suffered much uneasinesse of speritt concerning my husband. Those fits of ye mopes of w'h I informed you some time back have again come upon him. For awhile I did hope that these melancholic affections were ye fruit put forth by a regenerate soul; but within this month last past it has been my sorrow to discover that these gloomy disorders arise rather from ye promptings of the Evil One. It has pleased Mr. Haygarthe of late to declare that his life is nigh at an end; and indeed he affects a conviction that his days are number'd. This profane and impertinent notion I take to be a direct inspiration of Satan, of a like character to ye sudden and unaccountable fitts of laughter which have seized upon many pious Christians in the midst of earnest congregations; whereby much shame and discomfiture has been brought upon our sect. Nor is there any justification for this presumptuous certainty entertained by my husband, inasmuch as his health is much as it has ordinarily been for ye last ten years. He does acknowledge this with his own lips, and immediately after cries out that his race is run, and ye hand of death is upon him; which I cannot but take as ye voice of ye enemy speaking through that weak mouth of ye flesh.

"On Sunday night last past, ye gloomy fitt being come upon him after prayers, Mr. Haygarthe began all on a sudden, as it is his habit to do:

"'There is something I would fain tell ye, wench,' he cries out, 'something about those roistering days in London, which it might be well for thee to know.'

"But I answered him directly, that I had no desire to hear of profane roisterings, and that it would be better for him to keep his peace, and listen reverently to the expounding of the Scriptures, which Humphrey Bagot, our worthy pastor and friend, had promised to explain and exemplify after supper. We was seated at ye time in ye blue parlour, the table being spread for supper, and were awaiting our friend from the village, a man of humble station, being but a poor chapman and huckster, but of exalted mind and a most holy temper, and sells me the same growth of Bohea as that drunk by our gracious queen at Windsor. After I had thus reproved him--in no unkind speritt--" Mr. Haygarthe fell to sighing; and then cries out all at once:

"'When I am on my death-bed, wife, I will tell thee something: be sure thou askest me for it; or if death come upon me unawares, thou wouldst do well to search in the old tulip-leaf bureau for a letter, since I may tell thee that in a letter which I would not tell with these lips.'

"Before there was time to answer him in comes Mr. Bagot, and we to supper; after which he did read the sixth chapter of Hebrews and expound it at much length for our edifying; at the end whereof Satan had obtained fast hold of Mr. Haygarthe, who was fallen asleep and snoring heavily."

Here is plain allusion to some secret, which that pragmatical idiot, Mrs. Rebecca, studiously endeavoured not to hear. The next extract is from a letter written when the lips that had been fain to speak were stilled for ever. Ah, Mistress Rebecca, you were but mortal woman, although you were also a shining light amongst the followers of John Wesley; and I wonder what you would have given for poor Matthew's secret _then_.

"Some days being gone after this melancholic event, I bethought me of that which my husband had said to me before I left Dewsdale for that excursion to the love-feasts at Kemberton and Kesfield, Broppindean and Dawnfold, from which I returned but two short weeks before my poor Matthew's demise. I called to remembrance that discourse about approaching death which in my poor human judgment I did esteem a pestilent error of mind, but which I do now recognise as a spiritual premonition; and I set myself earnestly to look for that letter which Matthew told me he would