LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF RATES AND TAXES, "Anthony was in the trenches when he heard of their marriage." PAGK 93. RATES AND TAXES AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. EDITED LONDON: G-BOOMBBIDGB AND SONS PATERNOSTER ROW. -HLKJCCLXVI. A/777 PBEEACE. ENCOUEAGED by the success of last year's venture, the authors of "The Bunch of Keys" once more make their bow to an indulgent public, and hope that an acquaint- ance of a year's standing will be held suffi- cient to warrant them in wishing their readers a seasonable "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !" Following the plan adopted in " The Bunch of Keys," they have not attempted 80S Vi PREFACE. to interweave the opening story too closely with its successors, believing that except in rare instances such attempts have ham- pered and weakened the interest of the individual tales. With regard to the choice of title, they are lead to imagine, even from their own modest experiences, that " Eates and Taxes" are, alas ! things that come home to every man. The writer of these lines, looking back to the introduction of " The Bunch of Keys," finds it there said that " this Christmas volume is the growth of friendly communion, of pleasant chats of an evening, of fellowship of taste and feeling." He is very grateful to know that those words may be prefixed to this volume also. Dis- PREFACE. Vll cord and a darker shade that may have been nearer to some of us have passed by the little circle of friends, who thus once again submit the result of their united labours to the public. T. H. CONTENTS. PAGE EATES AND TAXES: HOW THEY WERE COL- LECTED. By Thomas Archer. CHAPTEB I. ST. BAEABBAS, SQTTASHLEIGH 1 CHAPTEE II. THE NEW CUEATE 10 CHAPTEE III. THE TEIAL BY FIEE 38 LIKE TO LIKE, A STOEY TOLD BY THE WATEE- EATE IN NINE SMALL INSTALMENTS J3y W. J. Prowse. I. ANTHONY HAEDING, HEEO-WOESHIPPEE 63 ii. ANTHONY HABDING'S HEEO ., 66 X CONTENTS. PAGB III. MISS CAB011KE EDWAEDS 71 IV. THEEE STOEMT HEABTS IN CALM WEATHEE 75 V. AN EXPLOSION 79 VI. AFTEB THE STOBM , 84 VII. CLEAEING UP 90 VIII. A LETTEE 93 IX. IN THE GAEDEN BY THE SEA 93 THE DOG-TAX : THE TEUE STOEY OP C^SAE AND BEUTUS. By Tom Hood. CHAPTEE I. THE DOCTOE'S DOG 97 CHAPTEE II. THE CTTEATE'S DOG 115 CHAPTEE III. THE BANKEB'S DOG 129 CHAPTEE iv. NOBODY'S DOG .. 144 THE POOE-EATE UNFOLDS A TALE. By T. W. Rolertson. 157 CONTENTS. XI PAGE THE INCOME-TAX HEADS A STORY, FOUND IN A DEAWEE, AND CALLED "MAXWELL AND I." ty W. S. Gilbert. CHAPTER 1 ......................................................... 187 CHAPTEE II .......................................................... 201 CHAPTEB III ....................................................... 216 ANOTHEE PAEOCHIAL EEADS THEEE CHAPTERS OF A POLICEMAN'S MS. By Clement W. Scott. CHAPTEE 1 .......................................................... 233 CHAPTEE II .......................................................... 241 CHAPTEE III ....................................................... 260 UNITED SQUASELEIG-H y Thomas Archer. 269 RATES AND TAXES, AND HOW THEY WEEE COLLECTED. BY THOMAS ABCHEE. BATES AND TAXES, AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. CHAPTER I. SAINT BARABBAS, SQUASHLEIGH. IT was all very well to speak of them in the notices of Kates due on the last quarter-day,, as the united parishes of St. Barabbas and Ananias the Less ; but people no more believed in their unity than they did in the correctness of the Assessment, or the honesty of the Collectors, or the skill of the Doctors, or the orthodoxy of the Rector, or the piety of the Dissenting hierarch, or the liberality of the Lord of the Manor. There was, in fact, only one sort of unity in Squashleigh, and that was represented by the determination of each individual to bestow no con- fidence on anybody else. Suspicion was the principal element in the moral atmosphere of the parishioners, and as suspicion was only tempered by indifference, Squashleigh was a nice place to live in, and in some sort justified the expression of opinion communicated 4 KATES AND TAXES, by a sceptical cobbler in the tap-room of "The Retriever/' that "we was gone from bad to wuss, and we should soon go from wuss to nothink." Squashleigh lay under the disadvantage of being a part of London, with a sort of general affectation of the country ; and its two parishes extended from the neighbourhood of a crowded and poverty-stricken metropolitan district, to a suburb where a couple of very dingy swans disported in a pond, and in which the houses, once the abodes of great bankers and merchants, when the place was really " out of town," fell back behind gardens or forecourts full of trem- bling trees, or great gloomy masses of evergreen. The main street, which seemed to have borrowed some of the manners and customs of the wretched neighbourhood just referred to, swarmed on Saturday nights with hucksters' stalls, and then the trades- people of the shops forgot themselves so far as to imitate the driving of a ' ' roaring trade" by lighting extra gas, and making a great bustle outside their premises ; but on other days they all reverted to their original dignity, and lest anybody should sup- pose that they had so far forgotten themselves as to establish a precedent of civility and attention, devoted Monday to the making out of bills, and the utter disregard of such orders as were most urgent. The railway, which had cut and carved, and howled and shrieked most of the gentlefolks away from the town-end of the place, had also contributed its occa- sional nuisances in the shape of London roughs who landed there on their way to sporting taverns. AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 5 Although Squashleigh had been one of the strongholds of Nonconformity from the time when the Dissenters held their meeting with drawn swords in a disused gravel-pit, to the day when an aged and representative pastor of an Independent church re- tired with all his honours full upon him, and a thou- sand pounds in a purse knitted by the ladies of the congregation, and presented through his wife, who had added an ample fortune to his own very hand- some property, it was also notorious for a good old port wine and Conservative rector of St. Barabbas, and an incumbent of newly-developed High Church tendencies in the neighbouring parish. The rector, who gave expression to his Con- servative and true-blue sentiments by keeping a marvellous collection of sticks and riding-whips in a rack in the hall, confined himself to the intonation of the service as a means of conciliating what might be popular opinion ; but at the more distant church there were chantings, and robes, and bowings, and turnings, and genuflexions, and at length, to the indignation of the churchwardens, and the horror of the congregation who had subscribed to build the sacred edifice, a full choral service in which nobody could join but the paid performers. The result of this would have been to drive everybody to dissent, but for the marvellous number of churches and chapels where all shades and degrees of opinion could be accommodated. There were High, and Low, and Broad churches; Iron churches, Free churches. Congregational BATES AND TAXES, churches; Independents, Baptists, Wesleyans; Primitive Methodists, who listened to pastors preaching without their coats and in violent per- spirations; Plymouth Brethren, who advertised that the gospel was preached every Sabbath evening in a builder's workshop ; a Eoman Catholic chapel ; a Conventicle, built as a speculation by a resident land agent on his own front garden ; and private prayer meetings (to which the public were invited), held in the front parlour of one of the smallest houses in the parish. Then there was " a great door opened " for field preaching, since on Sunday afternoons a number of idle unwashed fanatics, who professed to be working men, and secularists guid- ing their conduct by rationalism, assembled in a muddy common, flanked by a pair of public-houses, and gave utterance to their views, which, although they individually differed on most points, generally agreed with wonderful unanimity in the desire to abolish the laws and to stone the prophets. It will scarcely be matter for surprise, therefore, that amidst all these varieties of religious denomina- tions there was a good deal of denunciation going on, and when the successor of the venerable gentle- man at the old-fashioned dissenting "place of worship" boldly advocated advanced views, and expressed a doubt of everlasting punishment, he became the centre of a moral persecution, which showed that Squashleigh held very firmly to the chief privilege of its creed, and that all sects could for once combine against a mutual danger. AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 7 When it is added that the sceptical cobbler before referred to, and who seemed to have formed his views on an objection to pay rent and a perusal of an abridged edition of Tom Paine' s works, opened a room in an empty house, under the title of the " 8enatorium " (with a dim sense of combining health and the republic in one concise expression), and there inveighed against things in general, it will be seen that the social, mental, and moral im- provement of the people was diligently cared for. As Squashleigh had the reputation of being a healthy suburb, it can scarcely be thought remark- able that it abounded in doctors, who were for the most part divided in opinion, and who, as they frequently found themselves called in to attend each other's patients (the instability of Squashleigh in the matter of Physic being perhaps a set off against its fixity in regard to Divinity), were accustomed to speak of each other with no little freedom. The parochial authorities, however, were the great representatives of the public spirit ; and though the vestry continued to agree, inasmuch as it was recognized that the longer each member of the board kept in office the more easily could the administration of subordinates be controlled, and an unquestioned influence established, those sub- ordinates quarrelled among themselves with an intensity which culminated in open warfare within the very doors of the Union, from which the medical officer was eventually excluded, much to the relief of some of the sick paupers, while a commission 8 from the Poor Law Board sat on the conduct of everybody, and made a report of which nothing particular ever came. It was at this juncture that the series of events happened which was destined to influence the future history of Squashleigh, and were, in fact, the causes which led indirectly to the publication of the present volume. It is not necessary to stay here to moralize on occurrences, small in themselves, which become the fulcrums on which the Archime- dean levers turn ; the thin ends of all sorts of upheav- ing wedges ; the hidden springs of perpetual motion; the casual seeds of future harvests ; the first rill of a leakage which ultimately becomes a mountain- torrent bearing all before it. Enough, that the foundation-stone of the new Town Hall was laid. That the Queen's Taxes and a Collector had absconded and taken the money with them. That the receipts and accounts were so garbled that a fresh levy was announced. That the parochial rates were to undergo a rigid investigation previous to being raised. That the common was to be enclosed and let for building. And that the Conservative rector having been promoted to a living in the country, a new curate was appointed to officiate at St. Barabbas. With respect to the Town Hall, that in itself was enough to set the united parishes by the ears ; and while a corpulent leatherseller, who had been an AND HOW THEY WEBE COLLECTED. unsuccessful candidate for churchwarden, was heard to speak of it as a dirty underhand job, brought about by the underhand influence of the architect's uncle, the cobbler took occasion to hold forth on three consecutive nights, at the Senatorium, on what he called "the erection of the new pie-mm-med, cemented with the blood of the people." In all these disputes the " Squashleigh Combat- ant " (published every Saturday, price one penny, and the best medium for advertisements) played the parfc of a free press, by inserting letters for which nobody was to be held responsible. There were terrible charges against " wolves in sheep clothing/* referring to the visitation of the sick by the ministers of the Establishment, and signed "No Popery/' and there were damaging questions asked by cor- respondents, who concealed their truculence under a bland request ' ' to be permitted to inquire," or a mild statement that it ee may be desirable to remind." The editorial department of the t( Combatant," which was supposed to be under the control of the printer, consisted of a feeble effort to conciliate everybody, which of course brought down upon it universal contempt, although its circulation was secured by the desire of each separate party to see what the other party had to say in reply to the last " scathing disclosure." 10 CHAPTER II. THE NEW CURATE. THE new Town Hall was planned and the site chosen before united Squashleigh was aware of it, and when it was suddenly announced in the columns of the " Combatant " that the united boards had forgotten smaller animosities to join in the completion of a work which would increase the importance of the whole neighbourhood, united Squashleigh also awoke to the fact that the parochial money had been voted to pay for it, and that the event was to be cele- brated by a remarkably snug and exclusive dinner on the following Wednesday, to which only a few of the most influential parishioners were to be invited to meet the Board. About this dinner, and various other snug gatherings which had been held in anticipation of the great occasion, some sharp words had passed already at the meeting convened by the leatherseller and a compact party of non-contents, led by a retired schoolmaster. The wine merchant and the butcher both required to know whether a number of gentle- men could be expected to give their time and talents to parochial business without having a dinner together now and then. The plumber, who had contrived to become the lessee of a good deal of house property in the neighbourhood, said he wasn't a-going to give all his trouble for nothing, AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 11 without having a bit of paltry lunch or a glass of paltry wine ; and when real gentlemen was on the Board it was shameful to expect 'em to do it. The schoolmaster shrugged his shoulders, and said, " Noblesse oblige/' which, nobody understanding, the poulterer declared that whether anybody was less obliged or not, them as didn't like it could lump it, for the Board had got the money and they meant to do what they liked with it. So they had, and so they did ; for the prepara- tions went on apace, and the estimates for the new building were passed as one of the Board said ( ' like winking ;" for by the following Wednesday morning the space on a scrubby patch of ground lying off the main street was all full of blocks of stone, and cranes, and scaffolding, and men in white jackets were dividing their time between putting up a tent and drinking beer from a two- gallon can; and a mob of boys surrounded the hoarding, and a human eye was stationed at every crevice and knot-hole through which a glimpse of the interior could be obtained; and the architect and contractor had each appeared in a white waist- coat to superintend the last of the preparations; and a special number of the ' ' Combatant " was advertised, but owing to a strike of the printing staff consisting of three men and a boy didn't come out ; and a long file of pastrycooks' men and waiters were seen going into the doors of the :c White Hart," where the dinner was to take place in the old Assembly Room. It was currently re- 12 BATES AND TAXES, ported that the Lord of the Manor, who was in Scotland, had sent no end of venison for the repast; and it became a subject for lively speculation, what would be done with the remnants of the feast to which nobody was invited but the Board and their intimate friends, except the architect, the contractor, and the clerk of the works, who sat at a side-table with the editor of the " Combatant," and supplied that gentleman with all the particulars of the in- tended structure for what he called his "next issue. " " The day broke gloomily," as the old historian remarks of the occasion when men met in Guildhall to listen to Richard III., and, as he further inti- mates, " the lowering of the people's faces" seemed to suit the aspect of the weather. Only the day before, the new notices of assess- ment had been left by the tax-collectors, and as it was close to quarter-day the calls had also been made for the parochial rates, most of which were levied in advance. Small householders, with in- comes barely sufficient to meet their expenses at the best of times, found a truculent individual in waiting in their front gardens, with a demand for immediate payment of a tax of which the last collector had omitted to leave any legal notice ; and as they had either to find the money at once, or receive another truculent gentleman as an inmate until the claim was settled and the man in possession paid out, the curses of united Squashleigh were both loud and deep. It seemed as though the tax- AND HOW THEY WEEE COLLECTED. 13 gatherers had determined to avenge their damaged reputation by a simultaneous onslaught ; and three brokers' men were about with light carts in several of the back thoroughfares, while the water was being cut off in all directions, and the gas com- pany's servants were taking inventories against auctioneers' clerks with a spirited animosity which was only equalled by that of the parishioners against the parochial officers, and of the tax-collectors_i against each other. The higher developments of friendship had seldom had much scope for their full growth in Squashleigh ; but had they been never so flourishing, the suspicions that were engendered in the three days preceding that memorable Wednes- day would have withered them root and branch. There was only one topic of conversation which occasionally relieved the gloomy oppression of the forthcoming ceremony. Had anybody seen the new parson ? Yes ; several people had seen him about yester- day, and nobody could make much of him. He seemed to have begun visiting in the parish before he'd been there above an hour or two; and what was more, he'd declined the offer of a holiday for the fortnight before the rector went away, and had come at once from Oxford, where he'd been visiting some friends. More than, that, he'd taken lodgings over the Circulating Library, and Miss M Truffles had heard him laughing as he looked round the shelves in her shop, because, as he said after- wards, he'd found out that her library was a good 14 deal like Squashleigh the third volumes were mostly missing, and everybody was waiting to be happy and to make it up all round. Mrs. Whifnn, who dealt in mourning, was sure that he would be a great acquisition to the neighbourhood if he had such a flow of spirits ; to which the chemist, who had come to the door for the purpose of seeing the effect of a new coloured bottle in his window, and now joined the group of neighbours assembled at the grocer's, where a good view was to be obtained of the tent inside the inclosure, replied that he had called on him the night before for a bottle of soda water, and seemed to be a capital fellow. The conjunction of these remarks not being immediately obvious, a diversion was made by an inquiry on the part of Mrs. Whiffin's assistant, which was silenced by a loud " hem \" on the part of the chemist, who became suddenly occupied in the examination of his own shop -window. In fact, the subject of their discourse was at that moment coming along the street at a good round pace, looking about him as he went with a somewhat humorous smile. He was a rather tall and well-built young man, of about eight-and-twenty, with brown earnest eyes, the darkened tint beneath which would have told more painfully in a pale face, but was almost lost amidst a tinge of sunburn, which seemed to have just browned his cheeks, and to have left the high white temples that it might crisp his closely cut hair. There was an active swing in his walk, that at once AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 15 revealed the practised pedestrian, and, though his dress was of dark cloth, and of clerical fashion, his neckerchief was loosely tied, and he held his black gloves in a hand which, though large, and with that sinewy look that shows a fair power of grip, had in its lines the signs of that finer nervous force which comes of high breeding, or one might almost say of high culture, and is a strength which is often too like weakness. With two or three glances he had taken in the whole group, and before they were well aware of it was standing talking to them with a frank ease and yet an unmistakable refinement which seemed to act like a charm. He seemed to have addressed him- self to each of them individually, and yet had scarcely spoken a dozen words to them all, then he had turned with a salute composed of bow and nod, and with the bright smile still upon his face was swinging down the street again before they had quite come out of their flutter of surprise. " He's what I should call a tidy sort for a parson/' said a sporting publican, who happened to be looking through his bar window, to a friend who understood " the fancy." c ' Hits out well from the shoulder I'll pound it," said Fancy, regarding the retreating figure with one eye, " and reg'lar good in the lines ; what ain't boatin' 's cricket, and what ain't cricket 'a gloves." (e Well, he's quite the gentleman at any rate, if I know what a gentleman is," said Mrs. Whiffin. 16 RATES AND TAXES, ' e Bless me how fast lie walks ! whatever is his name,, Mr. Still?" " Left me a card last night with his address on it," said Mr. Still, fumbling in his waistcoat pocket. " Oh here it is Cyril Smith." " What ? " said Mrs. Whiffin, " Cyril what ? " " No, Smith/' replied the chemist. " Well I never ! I should ha' thought it would ha' been Harcourt, or something of that/' " Yes/' chimed in the assistant, plaintively, " or Mortimer at the very least." They were both subscribers to Miss Truffles' library, and the pieces of lining that were constantly found between the leaves of the volumes were evidence that they had gone through the entire stock of three-volume novels. Mr. Gollick, vestryman and poulterer, had passed a rather anxious morning, for not only had he been up ever since four o'clock endeavouring to prepare a speech, which when delivered at the dinner, in his capacity of vice-chairman, would prove beyond dispute what he had frequently asserted, that <( if the parish of Saint Barabbas was only true to itself it could hold up its head secure under the protection of that constitutional government," and there he stopped because it became necessary to use the words ( ' under which we live," and then there would be " under " twice in the same sentence, which, as Mr. Gollick justly explained to Mrs. Glollick, would be " toretollergy as was not allowable on an occasion like the present." AND HOW THEY WEKE COLLECTED. 17 This unfortunate sentence was the source of so much anxiety to the worthy vestryman, that he was at length induced to listen to the persuasions of the partner of his bosom, who advised him to adopt a more agreeable method of inspiration, by means of a good stiff glass of brandy and water, leaving the rest to " the spur of the moment." As this alternative was not presented before half-past eleven, and the ceremony of laying the stone was to take place at one, the orator yielded to the man, or rather to the woman, and Mr. Gollick went upstairs " to clean himself." But there was another cause for that gentleman's restlessness, and even when he reappeared with his somewhat portly person arrayed in a waistcoat got up to perfection, and across which his heavy gold watch-guard hung like a festoon on a bow window, his face shone with a free application of scented soap, but there was a world of disturbed speculation in his eyes. Five days ago he had heard of the arrival of the new curate, who after having called upon the rector, would, it was supposed, present himself before the churchwardens, or at all events ask them to call on him or meet him at the vestry of the church. Not a word, not a line had anybody that is, any paro- chially official body received, and even the rector, although he knew that Mr. Smith had declined to occupy a room in his house, and had taken lodgings at Miss Truffles', could only inform them that the gentleman would officiate in the pulpit on the 2 18 EATES AND TAXES, following Sunday week, and was at present sup- posed to be engaged in settling his own affairs. Now Mr. Gollick, who naturally thought that a new curate was likely to hold aloof from persons like himself men of influence and standing in the parish, and with a reputation for local legislation in consequence of praiseworthy but foolish timidity, had on the previous day been struck with the sudden reflection, that there could be no better method of encouraging a young beginner than by inviting him to the great ceremony which was on the point of consummation, and as there was no time to consult with his brother vestrymen, had ventured to take the duty upon himself, and after some elaborate pre- parations had written a note with only one imprint of a buttery forefinger, asking Mr. Smith to be good enough to step round to the shop on the following morning, as he had something particular to com- municate. That any curate should have been in Squashleigh on the morning in question and not have guessed to what the communication referred, was scarcely possible ; but that a new curate should have been contented to endure a state of uncertainty on the subject till going on half-past eleven, was altogether repugnant to reason. This much Mr. Gollick was confiding to Mrs. G., who was at the moment engaged in sticking a large amethyst into her husband's frill, when the clock struck the three quarters, and the gentleman in question strode into the shop, and lifting his hat to AND HOW THEY WEKE COLLECTED. 19 the lady included tlie vestryman in the same salutation. The calm ease as well as the frank face and the strong active figure of the curate, took Mr. Gollick a little aback, but he summoned the sense of parochial dignity to his aid, and said, " "What can I have the pleasure of doing for you, sir ? " with an air which said plainly, if you don't know your place you shall see that I know mine. No recognition for a curate who comes only a quarter of an hour before the time. Mr. Smith did not cower under the serious sarcasm of the poulterer; on the contrary, he looked up with a surprised smile, and said, " Well, that is my question, I think, Mr. Gollick ; I had a note from you last night and have called to see what you want me to do. I suppose it has some reference to the grand dinner to-day, but that is very little in my way, unless you particularly wish me to be present." " Well, sir," replied Mr. Gollick, turning a little red, " I thought you'd, in fact, be glad of the opportunity of meeting some of the leading men in the parish, sir ; it wasn't that you was wanted to take a prominence, but more because I thought you might look upon it as doo to you to be present with the Yestry and the Board, as the Rector's not able to come." ' ' And I'm very much obliged to you for thinking of me," said the curate, holding out his hand, which Mr. Gollick was constrained to take, although some- 20 how by this time he began to feel as though he had been talking to one of his best customers, " but as my time is at present rather taken up in visiting in the parish, you'll let me off the dinner I'm sure, and I'll look in quietly in the evening to hear the speeches." Mr. Gollick was indignant, and yet he felt some- what abashed. A curate and a perfect stranger to take an invitation so coolly, and then " to hear the speeches : " was he laughing at him ? Not a vestige of a smile except that which was habitual to it lurked in Mr. Smith's face. " Been a-visitin', have you ? " said Mr. Gollick, looking uneasily at the clock, " we've rather wondered that you ain't called on any of the vestry nor the parokeyal officers, Mr. What's-o'-name." " Smith," said the curate ; {{ not a very difficult name to remember." " I beg your pardon, sir," stammered Mr. Gollick, turning to a still ^deeper tint, " as I was a-sayin', you haven't given none of us a call." " Well, you see, I could quite count on seeing you and the rest of the gentlemen to whom I may come for help, when I had some notion of what wanted looking after in the parish, and I've been making a few calls amongst the people, and on some of the ministers of religion in the neighbourhood. I find you've a good many followers of the Eomish Church here." ' ' What, Catholics, Papists you mean ? Yes, sir, we have a few ; but would you mind walking on to AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 21 the Town Hall ? Time's nearly up now, if you're going that way," said Mr. Gollick, uneasily. They had reached the door when the poulterer stopped suddenly, looked up in the curate's face, and laying one shiny fat forefinger on his sleeve, said, solemnly, " There's Papist goin's on in the next subparish, sir ; I hope it ain't true what I've heard, that you're a little too high yourself?" He spoke as though the new curate had been sent to him as a consignment of game. Mr. Smith looked into his face with such a bright, quick searching glance, that he removed the warning finger from the coat sleeve. " You know, sir," he said, " there's doings and doctrines that no Evangelical Churchman could stand, or what's to become of the differences that makes us stick to our principles ?" ' ' As to the doctrines I shall do my best to teach you them when I think it necessary," said the curate j " but I've not paid much attention to the differences you mention at present, Mr. Gollick; we've much to do here before they need considering, and our principles will bear acting up to a little before we can be said to stick to them with any very good result. By the by, I had a very long talk with the Roman Catholic priest last night, and he told me a great deal about some of the new people in the neighbourhood just beyond here; they're mostly Irish, I understand." " You talked to the Popish priest, sir ! How could you ?" 22 BATES AND TAXES, (< How could I ? why you'd sell him a turkey, I suppose, if he wanted one, and would let him pay for it, I dare say. He's a very amiable, kind- hearted man, Mr. Gollick, and I wish there were a few more like him in that respect to influence the parish; but the minister at the chapel yonder is one of the right sort of fellows to call upon. I heard of him at Oxford, and was delighted when I found he had expected I should go to see him. I heard more while I was sitting in his study for a couple of hours last night than I should have learnt in a month of anybody else. He seems to know what Squashleigh is like pretty well." { ' You'll excuse me, sir," said Mr. Gollick, with rather an alarmed face, "but wasn't there great injudiciousness in you a-callin' on a Dissenter ; and not only so, but he ain't half orthodox. You really ought to ha' made some inquiry first among them as know'd." " Among those who knew what was orthodoxy, do you mean ?" "No, no, not that, but as might ha' warned you ; why, God bless your soul and body, I've heard that he says things as is downright profane don't believe in hell, he don't. I always thought that the Church was more against Dissent than they was even against the Papacy ; and even the other Dissenters don't hold with him." " Have you ever heard him preach, Mr. Gollick ?" " Gawd forbid, sir ; no more would you, I hope ?" AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 23 " I heard Mm last Sunday, and I believe lie's as orthodox as you are. But there's another man I don't much like ; a big, black- eyed man, who preaches in a little place there beyond the field ; he's in some old, or new, or middle-aged connection of Methodists, and whether he'd heard that I was the new curate or not, I can't make out ; at all events, when I dropped in at his week-day lecture the other night, he spoke at me pretty freely, and from the tenor of his remarks I am inclined to think that he believes in a hell -for other 'people, at all events." Mr. Gollick gasped, and as they had at that moment reached the spot where a sort of procession was formed of the architect and steward, the con- tractor and senior vestryman, the chairman of the Board, the beadle, the turncock carrying a pick and a silver trowel, and a general following of other officials, he begged to be excused. All eyes were turned on the new curate, who slightly raised his hat to the company, and posted off at a great rate. The procession had only just started, and the curate had hardly gone a dozen paces, when a private carriage drove up to the hoarding, behind which the great ceremony was to come off ; and a young man, rather bronzed by foreign travel, and looking with amused surprise at the preparations, pulled the check- string and looked out of the window. The Lord of the Manor, who had declined with thanks the honour of laying the foundation stone, 24 EATES AND TAXES, had in fact proffered the services of his nephew and heir for the occasion, and the stranger was no other than that gentleman, who had come from London for the purpose, and now awaited the arrival of the authorities. He was in no hurry, evidently, for he had already folded over a newspaper and begun to read, when the eye, which had not quite settled to the print, caught sight of the figure of the curate coming on at full swing ; another moment, and he was out of the carriage, and with his arm over the reverend gentleman's shoulder. ' f Why, Eil, old boy, what brings you here ?" he said, as the curate's grip settled on his hand and squeezed his fingers white ; " confound you, let me take my ring off, and then grip as hard as you like. I was at Oxford last week, and heard you'd gone off to a curacy. You'd better have gone in for the bar, old boy, except that you're a deal too good to waste time over it. I'm in chambers now, and bless you the practice my dear old uncle gives me over leases and copyholds, and all the rest of it would make the fortune of a country conveyancer ; and in fact they do put a good deal in the way of old Jenkin my clerk, for they're generally referred to him to set right. But where do you come from ?" "Well," said Mr. Smith, laughing, and still shaking his old friend's hands, " I'm just going to my quarters now, over there at Miss Truffles'." ' ' By Jove ! nonsense ! you haven't taken to mil- linery ?" ' ' No, I'm the curate of Saint Barabbas, and I've AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 25 taken to furnished lodgings for the present, till my traps come, then I shall settle down with my books and hire a housekeeper of the conventional age." " I say, Kil, you know what brings me down ; come to the dinner, that's a dear old boy." " Couldn't. I've ever so much to do ; I'll look in afterwards, if you'll keep a place for me. See, here comes the parish. Good-bye, old fellow ;" and away he went, leaving his old Oxford friend staring after him, and the churchwardens, with Mr. Gollick at their head, staring at them both. The steward having introduced the heir of the manor to the assembled officials, they were about to proceed to the tent when the plumber, who beside being a vestryman, was a person of some importance as a practical authority on the subject of building and foundation-laying in general, touched the poul- terer, with whom he had been in deep conversation^ on the elbow, and that gentleman at once sidled up to the new comer, with an anxious expression on his face, which for a moment stopped him outside the tent. " They've forgot something," said a boy, who having scrambled to the top of the hoarding, was conveying intelligence to the crowd outside. " Here, I can lend you a jack-knife as '11 set the mortar, and then you won't dirty your new trowel," said a grinning horsekeeper, who had perched him- self beside the driver of a return hansom. Mr. Gollick waved his hand in majestic scorn. ' ' What is it ?" asked the young gentleman, who was beginning to laugh. 26 EATES AND TAXES, ' ' The new curate, sir ; I see you a-speakin' to him, and would wish to ask whether you think he'll suit ?" " Suit ! suit what, and suit how ?" " Suit Saint Barabbas, sir. I was afraid that from what he said this morning he might be too high for us." ' ' Well, I should think he was too high for most of you, and me too, if you come to that ; but he'll never let you feel that ; he was at the top of the tree at Oxford, and how he ever came to take such a paltry thing as this curacy is a wonder to me. I'm glad you seem to appreciate him though, for all that." Mr. Gollick was at sea, but he made a desperate effort. " He's a friend of yours, sir, I see, and no doubt he's vastly clever, and all that, but I ain't clear, nor I don't quite see my way to it, what his doctrine is ; it seemed to me that if he wasn't high he was latinooditarian, though I hadn't the least idea that he was a friend of yours." "Now you look here," said the young man, flushing a little ; ' ' if you're a sensible man as of course, being a vestryman and all that, you are you'll just let Mr. Smith's doctrines alone, and I dare say he won't trouble you much on the subject of high or low ; you do as he does and you'll be all right, and then you can listen to what he says till you come round to his opinions. That's what a good many fellows did when he was at college, I can tell you." AND HOW THEY WEEE COLLECTED. 27 Mr. Gollick felt snubbed, but there was some comfort in being reassured by the heir of the manor at all events. The ceremony was over, and so was the dinner, which had cost (so the editor of the " Combatant" had ascertained) three pound fourteen a -head ; or, as "Vindex" said, in a letter on the following Saturday, " as much as would set up a soup kitchen for the relief of the poor who refuse the charity of the guardians, and feed over eight thousand hungry persons with a quart of soup each, at the liberal calculation of twopence three farthings for every quart." The chairman had just tapped with his knuckles upon the table, the waiter who officiated as toast- master had just tried to give quite a London Tavern emphasis to " Gentle-men, si-lencefaw the Chaor," when the curate walked quietly to a seat that had been kept at the head of the table. Such portions of Mr. Gollick's speech as he had been endeavouring to piece together became hopelessly confused again, and when at a subsequent stage of the proceedings he was called upon to propose the toast of " the rate- payers," he had so evidently acted up to the advice of Mrs. Gollick to take a good stiff glass of some- thing and trust to the spur of the moment, that, that spur caused his eloquence to make a sudden bolt and figuratively to throw the orator over its head. It was not till his confusion was drowned in acclamations, amidst which the plumber, who had a harder head, dragged him down by his coat tails, 28 KATES AND TAXES, that lie became dimly conscious of having proposed the health of the new curate, in utter forgetfulness of what he had actually been called upon to say. And yet there was a sort of triumph in it after all, for when everybody had got over their astonish- ment, the curate's college friend, who was also their most honoured guest, rose with a few hearty words to second the toast, and led off such a cheer, that the people outside responded, although they knew no more why they were shouting than did the poulterer himself, who had already broken all his wine glasses in his enthusiasm. There was a dead silence for the response to this toast, and yet it was spoken in a few words. Not much about himself, little more about those present, only a passing allusion to the occasion, but a rapid, earnest, telling review of what he had already dis- covered wanted doing in the parish. It was won- derful how he had learned so much, and one or two owners of house property in the neighbourhood hung their heads to hear what keen eyes had been noting their sanitary shortcomings. ' ' Where on earth did he learn it all ?" said the butcher, who owned a row of rotting tenements in a marshy lane. " Hush !" ' ' You will excuse me for having come late, and also for leaving you thus early, for I have an appointment with a man who has done very much towards pointing out many evils that we must remedy. Some of the gentlemen present may know AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 9 him. He is a shoemaker, or perhaps, to speak more correctly, a shoe-mender, and his name is Richard JK/ Yellop." ' e Bless my soul and body !" said the plumber, thoroughly roused, "you don't mean to say that you've been listening to what .that blackguard infidel Chartist has been a-sayin' of! Why, he's a holdin' forth twice a- week about Church and State, and downin' with property, and Lord knows what. You ought to be ashamed, sir, as a clergyman." The plumber paused, for from those two bright brown eyes there came a sudden gleam, accom- panied with a gesture of the hand, that said ' ' stop/' as plainly as if somebody had shouted the word. "Do you know, or does anybody here know., what first wrought his ruin, and drove him, as he says, from bad to worse, from idleness to drink ?" The plumber tried to brazen it out, but didn't succeed ; he had no words, and his looks belied his assumption of indifference. He knew very well who had built a dead wall across the footway that led by a short cut past the cobbler's house ; and so, to spite a rival landlord, had cut off the man's customers and his means of living together. He knew, too, that nothing but the cobbler's poverty and recklessness, and his own respectable position at the parochial Board, could have combined to permit so great a wrong. "I need not enter into that now," said the curate. "I see you do know it; but whether or not, he has shown me much that I should know,, 30 BATES AND TAXES, and I speak not from what he has said, but from what I have seen. It is to him, and such as him, that I am sent. When I have learnt from them the abuses that concern us all, I will come to you to help me to alter them; and may God make us of one mind." It was strange, but the earnest sincerity ex- pressed in the young man's every look and gesture seemed somehow to take away the sting from what he had said ; and as he sat down, several of the listeners said Amen, as though they had been at church. With a tact which did him credit, Mr. G-ollick got up immediately and proposed the toast that properly belonged to him, amidst the applause following which, the last speaker bade his friend good-bye, and went quietly away. " Please, sir, there's been a person here inquiring for you, and he's to be back in half-an-hour," said the small servant at Miss Truffles', when Mr. Smith knocked at the private door of the circulating library five minutes afterwards. " Oh, has there ? Well, send him up when he calls again ; and be good enough to fetch a quart of ale and a clean clay pipe, and bring them upstairs directly." " Please, sir, I don't think that you think it's the person that it was ; it was not a gentleman, sir." " Why, it wasn't a lady, surely ? " No, sir, it was a person as lives in the neigh- bourhood ; and I told him I didn't think there was any mending that I knew of." AND HOW THEY WEEE COLLECTED. 31 "All right, Jane; it's Yellop the cobbler, I know. Show him up, and go and get the beer." The beer arrived before Yellop ; and when that renowned leveller and blatant politician found him- self on the door-mat, and in answer to a rather uncertain tap, was desired to "come in," he felt inclined to creep quietly downstairs again and go away. As the ' ' come in " was repeated in a louder tone, however, he opened the door, and saw the parson sitting in a loose coat at a little writing- table, around which piles of books, which had just been taken out of boxes, were arranged as well as might be on the floor. It was evident that some of the parson's effects had come from Oxford, for there were two or three quaint carved wood chairs, and a reading- easel, and there was a desk at which he could stand to write; while the room itself was half lighted and half in shadow from a shaded lamp that stood on a bracket. " Come in, Yellop," said the curate. I'm glad you've returned my visit to the Senatorium the other night ; though I suppose you won't object to give it a name with some meaning in it after a little talk." ( c No, sir, no ; leastways, I don't know as I shall keep it open. You was good enough to say that you wanted to see me about something else ; is it to have another walk round the parish ? if so, it's rather latish." The cobbler looked thoughtful, and spoke in a lower key than was usual with him, and his eyes 32 RATES AND TAXES, wandered furtively over the strange furniture, and amongst the piles of books lying on the floor. " Oh no, no ; I wanted a little talk with you, that's all. Sit down, there, in that chair; you'll find it a comfortable one. Would you like a little more light ? because if you would, I'll take off this shade. Come, draw up to the fire." The cobbler, who kept his hat in his hand, made a half unconscious motion towards his face, and began mechanically to smooth his hair. He was cleaner than usual, and yet, somehow, he secretly wished that he had washed himself better. He sat down, but only on the very edge of the chair. The parson wheeled his own seat round, and leaned back for a minute, thoughtfully regarding him from the other side of the fire-place. " So you're going to change the name, eh, Yellop ? Well, I'm glad of that. Now, what shall we call it ? We'd better agree about the name, because you know our bargain Mondays for you, and Fridays for me. You understood that, didn't you?" The cobbler's face relaxed into a grin, in which there was something plaintive and sad, and then his hard, swarthy, black, bristled mouth set into an expression half puzzled, half defiant. "I don't know what led to it, but such was the bargain, if you must have it so ; but we've had a sight o' talk since then, and I've changed my views concernnr 5 of keepin' the room open. Not, mind yer, as I give way to you or any man, mark AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 83 that ; but still, Fve thought it over, and at present I ain't made up niy mind." " Of course you won't give way to me; I haven't asked you to do that. We've been about together here and there, and I've learnt something by it ; it's no shame to you if you've learnt a little too, is it ? Would you like to smoke a pipe, Yellop ? I've a clean clay here ; and I'm going to have a glass of ale, if you'll join me." " Well, sir, I've had nothing to-day to drink and that's a bit strange, too and I don't feel that a glass of ale would hurt me; but not to smoke here, I I'd rather not take the liberty ;" and the cobbler paused before he put the glass to his lips. te Here's my duty to you, sir," he said. The parson looked him full in the face and bowed his head without moving an eyelash. ' c You owe me no duty, you know, Yellop, that was all done away with when the rights of nmu were discovered and we entered upon the age of reason ; that's your theory, isn't it ? Well, I do owe you a duty, because I'm a parson, and I don't believe in your theory, and so I say again if you like to smoke a pipe there's the tobacco; and I should suggest that you lean well back in that chair if you want to make yourself comfortable, so that we may talk about two or three little matters that were in dispute the other night." " Now look here, mister," said the cobbler, up- setting his glass as he rose, and then kneeling down to wipe the ale from the carpet with a ragged cotton 3 34 BATES AND TAXES, handkerchief ; ' ' we've been together, as you say, more than once, a-goin'* here and there, and you've preached to ine perhaps more'n I've ever heard before what Fve agreed with and what I haven't, that's neither here nor there but I don't see no call for you to go and rake up what I may ha' said at fust about rights o' man, an equality, an' all that, just to jeer at me. If yer don't want me, say so, an' I'll go." ' ( Now, just see what an unreasonable fellow you are," replied the curate, without the vestige of a smile, "you commence trying to convince me of our equality by ordering me out of your Senatorium the other night, after I'd paid twopence to come in, and then, when I tried to ask a question or two about what you'd been saying, two of your sup- porters would have beaten me if I hadn't knocked .^' one of them down. Well, we grow better friends, and I ask you to give me some information about the parish and people, and now I invite you to come and see me to talk over some other matters that have come up while we were going about here and there, and you repudiate equality altogether. I say again, Eichard Yellop (and you may see that I'm serious), if you believe in equality light your pipe and let us consider that very question." "Now, lookee here, Mr. Smith, you ain't one that would take a mean advantage of a man that owns to givin' way; if I thought you was I'm damned " "Hold!" AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 35 The parson's voice rung out so loud that the very glasses clinked. " No swearing, Yellop; I don't allow it in my rooms. Why don't you light your pipe ? " "'Cause you know da precious well that it 'ud be a liberty, da blow it ! I wasn't always what I am, but you know well enough that you're a gentleman and a scholar for all you're a parson, and that I ain't ; and come, if you must know it" and here the cobbler sat down again and drew his hand across his eyes "you've talked to me like a man, and that's better than parson, and gentle- man, and scholar, and if you've made me feel that I've still got a man's heart in me, I don't perhaps ought to be ashamed to say as my views is greatly altered, though God knows what they was or what they are." If this conversation is a little tedious, it may be excused, as showing that the new curate had about him some of that subtle power which comes of earnestness and faith. The talk lasted far into the night, and when the rabid leveller told the parson how his wife had died and left him an only daughter, who, living in neglect and poverty, had fallen into sin, but was now the inmate of an asylum in that very parish, where such as she were kept in a sort of bondage, and yet were fed and cared for, he learned something of the true equality which binds men to each other. " Look here," said the curate, when he had got up to go ; " you say I've done you some good by 36 KATES AND TAXES, the exercise of my calling ; now, I want you to do something for me by following yours ; you've been a good workman in your time I warrant, and I want a new pair of boots to do all the walking that lies before me in Squashleigh. I advance the money for the materials and you make me a couple of pair while you're about it. Come now, that's a bargain." Of the work of the next fortnight, little need be said; enough that the new curate became as well known as the postman, and in some cases as trouble- some as the tax-collectors. He called on everybody who had any sort of authority, and contrived to learn just what they had made up their minds not to tell him ; he got a list of all the little snug peddling charities for which Squashleigh had some reputation ; he looked up the directors and managers of private benevolent institutions, supported by subscription and theoretically regulated by lady visitors who were never permitted to exercise the least control at the committee meetings; he dissectedthe reports of secre- taries, who were also treasurers, auditors, and resident governors; he penetrated even to the Kefuge, the mysterious establishment where the cobbler's erring daughterwas confined in a sort of charitable penal ser- vitude, in bare rooms, behind high walls and barred windows ; he studied all the details of the last reports that could be obtained of " the dwelling for Super- annuated Saints/' ' ' the Eetreat for Penitential Sin- ners " and many good and well-meaning people, who had, as they thought, laid down a sort of little private footpath to heaven, sighed when they thought AND HOW THEY WEEE COLLECTED. 37 that their property might be taken for improvements and merged in the great highroad. The next few days were days of hard work for the new curate, and yet his labours began to bear some fruit or rather, he saw that there was pre- paration for the sowing of better seed than that which had borne fruit already. Squashleigh was stirred out of its sluggishness, and there were symp- toms here and there of some sort of c ' upheaving of the very foundations of things/'' as the plumber remarked to a select circle of admirers at the " Grey- hound." The leaven of the parson's earnestness and courage began to work. On the Sunday when he was expected in the pulpit, people who had been amongst the most indifferent gave each other a sly nod, and a great congregation assembled to hear some strange expressions of faith. They were dis- appointed. A plain sermon, but with something about it keen and incisive as well as solemn. Not a doctrine expounded, not a creed explained. The subject, " Personal duties," the application quite >ji***>, mutual as regarded the duties of pastor and people. Everybody went away conscious that they had been impressed, and yet scarcely knowing how. In the evening, " Our duties to ourselves/' But there was one incident sufficient to make this Sunday's service memorable. Not only did the new curate make no attempt to intone, but from some unexplained cause the organist was absent. Mr. Smith was equal to the occasion. He led the singing himself, in a mellow voice that could be 38 RATES AND TAXES, heard to the remotest corner of the gallery, and when the school children began to squeak out of time, he turned to the organ-loft, and beat the measure of the tune with his hand. CHAPTER III. \ THE TRIAL BY FIRE. LYING on the confines of Squashleigh was a long straggling village reaching to the edge of the flat open country, and presenting that half-rural, half- dissipated appearance which generally belongs to all such places when they are easily accessible from the Metropolis, and yet are such distant extremities that they miss the true vitality of the great city. There was an old church, tributary to St. Barabbas, two or three schools, a few faded private houses vainly attempting rejuvenility in dresses of stucco, and such a number of taverns and beershops that the place must either have belonged to the brewers V* or to one or more of the licensing magistrates. In one of the lowest of these houses of enter- tainment, on the very same night as the event occurred which concludes the last chapter, there sat a rough-looking fellow in the coarse dusty dress of a brickmaker. The small tap-room provided for the customers had at the time no other visitor, and as he got up now and then to look impatiently out at AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 39 the door into the bar, sat down again and scraped the sand upon the floor into little heaps with his foot, and finally leaned back and begun to swear to himself in a low growling tone, it may be inferred that he was for some reason or other growing im- patient. He had just fallen into a doze, when the entrance of a stout-built, bull-necked man, in long boots, and with his rough coat all glistening with the wet, woke him up again with a fresh oath. " Here's a pretty time to keep a fellow," he said, as the new comer threw off his wet garment and put his head out at the door to order some drink ; ff didn't you think as I was tired of waitin' ?" ' ' Well, I've had to come right across from the river; and look what a night it is. You could ha' made yourself comfortable here, I s'pose, couldn't yer ?" responded the other. " However, that's not the p'int now I am here ; you've found out how the job's to be done, I s'pose ?" As the job referred to the commission of a burglary, which the two worthies had planned some time before as a relief from the usual occupations of the last comer, who was known amongst his inti- mate acquaintance as Barley Bill, and was generally engaged either in poaching fish or stealing fowls, dogs, the lead from empty or unfinished houses, and other disposable articles, we need give no further report of their conversation, but bestow a little attention on the house on which the attempt was to be made, and its rather remarkable inmate. Mr. Eufiey, then or, as he was usually though 40 BATES AND TAXES, not very respectfully designated,, Old Euffey lived in a large and rather dilapidated tenement, at the end of a muddy lane leading from the High Street of Squashleigh, but leading to nowhere, inasmuch as it was closed by a ruinous brick wall overlooking a pond. The front windows of this mansion (which was detached from the neighbouring houses by a side- way) were always closed, and many of them had been broken by the boys, who regarded the place as one of ill omen, and Old Ruffey himself as a miser ; so that the only relief from the dirty brickwork was the yellow painted shutters, upon which the dust and grime of ages seemed to have settled. Whether the windows at the back of the house presented a similar appearance few people knew, for its aspect was concealed by out-buildings, of which no use seemed to be made ; and Mr. Euffey kept so little company that the very few who did know from having seen the inside of his house said nothing about it. How they got in and out was a sort of mystery, for the street door was nailed up ; the front steps were piled with paving-stones ; the knocker had been padlocked ; and the bell was broken. No trades- people were ever allowed to call, the woman servant doing all the errands herself; and as both she and Mr. Ruffey's niece went in and out by the side- way, it may fairly be concluded that the real entrance to the house lay in that direction. Old Ruffey himself was never seen to come or go not that he never went abroad, for he was as AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 41 well known in Squashleigh as the beadle himself but he had some artful way of entering and depart- ing at secret times, so that people who had thought to waylay him, and had for that purpose waited outside his gate for hours, came upon him after- wards in the High Street, mumbling and munch- ing, and shaking his head, as was his habit when he was pleased, which was but seldom. He was, perhaps, one of the very last men who wore pigtails and hessian boots, and therefore it is scarcely necessary to say that he was a little queerly- shaped old fellow, dressed in rusty black, with a whity-yellow wisp of neckcloth, and such legs as are now seen nowhere but in the comic father characters on the -stage. When all his hair dropped off, including the pigtail, he took to a silk cap ; and when his hessian boots wore out he fell back on gaiters. Kurnour confirmed by the few who knew any- thing of his earlier life said that he had been a prothonotary; and some knowing people winked when they pronounced the word, and slapping their pockets at the same time, intimated by such panto- mime that to be a prothonotary was to occupy a very snug and lucrative position indeed. Those who were so much less knowing that they were unacquainted with what a prothonotary meant, winked also, and slapped their pockets, after which both parties usually separated mutually satisfied with themselves and with each other. Mrs. Buffey had died while her husband was 42 EATES AND TAXES, still in Doctors' Commons, and had left no children. She had, as it were, slipped off unexpectedly to another world one evening when she was taking her tea by the fire-side, and when he came home he found her sitting with the morning paper folded down at the births, marriages, and deaths, with the last of which she had so suddenly become associated. There were no children, but there was a niece at school, the orphan daughter of a deceased brother of Old Kuffey, who having gone out to India to a judgeship, left his child as a ward to his brother, together with a small sum of money, of which her uncle was made trustee, as having thenceforth the sole control of her future conduct till she came of age. This was the young lady, now some twenty years old, who came and went in that dull old house, and after whom some of the best intentioned people of Squashleigh looked with a sort of respectful pity as she went to her pew in church on Sunday mornings, or walked daily along the High Street for an hour before dinner, and an hour after tea in summer, or an hour before tea in winter. She had no acquaintances, except such casual ones as the shopkeepers where she dealt for materials for her needle-work, and Miss Truffles, ol the library, who never spoke of her without tears in her eyes for to Miss Truffles she was a sort of heroine, approaching nearer than any one that lady had ever known to the leading characters in two or three of her favourite novels. AND HOW THEY WEKE COLLECTED. 43 With all this, it is little wonder that Old Euffey was regarded as a sordid tyrant, and that the pale, quiet, dark-eyed girl, who dressed so plainly and spoke so gently, should have had a good deal of sympathy even in Squashleigh. Not that she was quite conscious of it, and it may be doubted whether she was absolutely miser- able, for Old Kuffey, with all his miserly propen- sities and his crazy attempts at seclusion, was never actively unkind to her. The interior of the tumble- down old house was tolerably comfortable, and not badly furnished she had her books, her work, her piano, and the run of the rooms. It was a dull, depressing, almost deadening life for a young woman with the thoughts and hopes common to womankind ; but it wore slowly and surely there was no keen pain, no acute suffering. At least, there was nothing of the sort until the time of which the present story treats; but just before that period something had happened which changed all the current of the girl's inner life, turned it back upon itself, and with the shock broke up all the even daily routine which she had learned to regard as a part of her existence, without looking to any probable change for the future. There is little need to say that Old Kuffey's niece was in love, and that she had never suspected the fact until she had learned that somebody and that the right somebody was in love with her. The organist at the church of St. Barabbas, Squashleigh, was a young fellow who had only been RATES AND TAXES, chosen to succeed the old professor of Psalmody, because his obvious superiority to half a dozen competitors was held to counterbalance the damag- ing fact of his having lived all his life in the parish. When he was a quiet, thoughtful boy, secretly following the art he loved, he had spent many a half holiday in the organ-loft blowing the bellows for the old preceptor, who soon found himself equalled by his pupil, whose school studies were at last almost neglected, until his parents, small shop- keepers of Squashleigh, made the best of it, and instead of apprenticing him to the tailor, spent the premium in lessons from an eminent musician, and made their son happy by the purchase of a piano. How it came about that Eichard Merton should ever have spoken to Harriet Stow, we will leave to those who are acquainted with the operation of subtle influences and psychological affinities to answer. It was natural enough that when the greater part of the congregation had left the church she should remain in her pew listening to the glorious peal of the old organ played with a master's hand, and should feel in that brief half-hour of pure enjoyment lifted altogether above the sordid influ- ences of every-day life. It was natural that the young man meeting her once or twice at the porch so late, and afterwards watching her from the gallery, should play lovingly and tenderly, finding one who was so rapt in appreciation of his art. And soy and so, they met, and spoke, and loved, and AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 45 suffered the first mutual thrill of that most exquisite torture. The end of it seemed very hopeless,, and yet they met often, and Old Euffey knew nothing of it till this had been going on for a year or more, and Harriet had come of age. Then he said nothing at first, but coming home one night he heard voices at the gate in the side-way, and waiting there in the dark till one of the talkers came out, let Eichard Merton stumble into his arms, where he held him, and clung to him with the tenacity of a cuttlefish., calling out " thieves " and c( police/' till Harriet came out with a candle, and the lovers explained themselves. Old Euffey waved Eichard away with- out a word, then went in and told his niece, that if she ever saw that young jackanapes again she should go out of his house without a penny, and might go to law if she liked, for even though she was of age, he had thirteen years' schooling, as well as board, lodging, and clothes, to deduct from the two thousand pounds that her father had left her. They did meet, however, met even at that house, where her uncle, who grew blinder and more obstinate, and seedier and rustier, every week he lived, never noticed that the girl grew pale, and looked at him sometimes with scared, anxious eyes; was restless, listless, eager, indifferent, varying in mood from day to day, and evidently drooped beneath a weighty sorrow or a corroding secret which he would never guess. Thus matters had been going on for a year, ai 46 RATES AND TAXES, the time when our story commences, or rather on the night when the brickmaker and Bill Barley met by agreement behind the dead wall at the edge of the pond, with the intention of breaking into Old E/uffey's house, and sharing the store of plate and other valuables, which they firmly believed were stowed away somewhere in an old-fashioned chest, or within the recesses of a deep closet on the first floor landing, which the brickmaker remembered having seen when he was a boy, and his mother went out charing. Eleven, twelve, one o'clock, and still there was a glimmering light coming through a chink in 'the window shutter, though nobody seemed to be stirring in the house. " I'll tell you what," said Barley Bill, at last, taking out a lantern and peering over the wall, " that there glim 'a a-waitin' for the old cove, and we'd best begin work at once, and chance it. Ten to one if he ain't out o' the way, and if he should come in arter us, one on us is enough for him. Here goes ! " and he swung himself over the wall and disappeared down the sideway, followed by the brickmaker, and both keeping in the shadow of the house. Had Barley Bill kept his lantern open he would have seen two men crouching down in the fore- court, with their faces close to the broken iron railings as though they were on the look out for somebody not going into but coming out of the house. There were two men there, at all events. One of them was Old Kufiey himself, and the other a Police constable, AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 47 for the old man had been in the evening to the Inspector, and stated that he knew of a visit which would be made to his house that night by a thief, a friend of the servant, who must be taken in custody with the stolen property upon him. How he had learned that Richard Merton would be there that night, only he himself knew; but the organist had managed to convey a note to Harriet to say that he was coming, and that " if she was ready, all had been prepared;" that the contents of this note had come to the knowledge of Old Euffey was as certain as that he at once hit upon a plan to crush his niece and degrade her lover at the same time. Before the pair of housebreakers had gone half way to the side door, they heard it closed softly, and two people came towards them, speaking in a low voice ; they had only just time to stand close under the wall before the others were close upon them, and at that moment the brickmaker, who was an awkward fellow, contrived to -stumble, and fell against one of the advancing passengers, who caught him in a tolerably strong pair of hands, and demanded to know who he was and what he was doing there. As feet were heard coming up the path, the brickmaker never stopped to answer the question, but wrenching himself away from his assailant, and not even returning a smashing blow that he re- ceived just behind the ear, followed Bill Barley, who had just disappeared behind one of the outhouses 48 RATES AND TAXES, beyond the garden wall, and so got away into some patches of waste building land before the policeman had time to turn on his bull's-eye to look after them. Not that Old EufFey had given him much opportunity, for that ex-prothonotary no sooner caught a glimpse of Richard, than he began to execute a sort of wild war dance in front of him, shouting, " Here ! help ! officer ! this is the one, never mind the others, I give this villain in custody.-" Richard was too much amazed to think of flight, and when the constable came leisurely forward to examine his prisoner he was almost equally sur- prised. " Why you don't mean to say that you charge Master Merton with robbing of the house ? " lie said, gravely. " This is a mistake sure ly/" " I do, I do charge him, and you will please to take him off at once, I'll come with you now* now ! " screamed the old man, almost beside himself with rage and spite ; " charge him I do, and take him you shall, or you shall suffer for it." And so Richard Merton was locked up, Old Ruffey charging him before the inspector ; and that was the reason of there being no organ in the church- service on the Sunday. But Harriet Stow was not at church that morn- ing. Only two people in Squashleigh knew what had become of her, and they held her peace. Her guardian went back to his house to find the servant in a fainting fit in the back kitchen; he left AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 49 her to come out of it how she could, and went up and down shouting for his niece ; then he felt frightened, and his blind rage turned to awful misgiving. He was afraid to go into any room lest he should see her there dead, and every time he screwed up courage to open another door, he stood first gasping at the threshold, the dim chamber- candle that he carried trembling in his hand. Her bed-room last, and still no sign of her, except a dress hanging behind the door, which filled him with a fresh terror, and a pair of little shoes beside the empty bed shoes which he lifted that he might look at the soles. He scarcely knew why, but he had a vague, horrible fancy that they might have been trodden in blood. He sat down on the foot of the bed, and wept tears of impotent rage and self-reproach, and unap- peased anger. A little note left sticking on the white pincushion. She had gone, that was all, thanking him for all he had ever done for her, and leaving her inherit- ance that he might do with it as he pleased. She could not sacrifice her life to him. She had tried to be dutiful, but the trial had been too hard for her; she had gone never to return except at his request, and as the wife of Richard Merton. So the old man shut himself up in his house night and day, and sent for his doctor. That doctor's certificate was the means of remanding Richard Merton till his accuser could give evidence against him, and his accuser was still battling with 4 50 BATES AND TAXES, his rage and selfish fury and remorse till the follow- ing Saturday, and had heard no tidings of Harriet. Then he sent for the new curate, who had heard the story from Miss Truffles, who was one of the two people who knew where the girl was hiding, but had told nobody, not even f( the parson/' " Only let her come back/' said Old Ruffey, after an interview in which he had implored the curate to seek her, " and we'll see what can be done ; if she doesn't come now, I don't know what I won't do to that young man, but let her return, and I promise to think the matter over, even to her marrying him. Will you try to find her ? " cc I'll inquire about her," said Mr. Smith, as he rose to go, " but I hope it may not be too late to undo the evil you have done ;" and he left Old Euffey's half-penitence to ripen. This was on Saturday night, and the High Street of Squashleigh was busy with hucksters calling their wares at the edge of the pavement, while above the murmurs of many voices a shout rose now and then, like a singer's voice heard amidst an orchestra all out of tune. There was a great crowd round the butcher's shop, where the gas flared and hissed, making the roadway, in front, quite bright, and one or two vehicles that were out could scarcely make way amidst the throng in the streets. Suddenly the hum and murmur were hushed; the shouts died away ; and there came a silence like that which precedes the outburst of a storm. Then a roar of wheels that seemed to shake the very stones AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 51 of the footway; and a great cry as the crowd parted and hustled backward to the pavement, leaving the road clear. Fire! Fire! A pair of horses tore along with the engine, on the shining poles and panels of which the lights shone blood-red, and gleamed in the firemen's helmets, the harness buckles, and on the brazen fittings of the hose, as it flashed past. Mr. Smith changed his brisk walk into a brisker run, and as he ran, called out to know where the fire was. Not a hundred yards oif. It had broken out suddenly at the baker's, and the new Town Hall would soon be all ablaze. He was on the spot almost as soon as the engine, and before the firemen had got out the hose, and the turncock had found the plug, had picked out a gang of men from amongst the crowd, and had them ready to pump ; he himself with his coat and waistcoat off, and his loins girt with the braces that he had thrown from his shoulders. The men worked with a will, and took their time from their leader, who sang out a steady measure as he laid himself out to the stroke. The fire was raging at the baker's, and the men of the brigade were devoting their attention to saving the new building, when there was a shout from the crowD that now filled all the street, and stood a heaving mass to watch the progress of the flames that shone with a lurid light upon their white, upturned faces. Two more engines had come up but they might be 52 EATES AND TAXES, too late for the house next door to the baker's had caught from behind, and in a front window four children stood screaming for help; while the cries of their mother the saddler's wife, who had been out to market and left them locked in a bed-room could be heard above all the uproar of the streets. A. hundred people stood between her and the door ; when the parson heard that cry and clove through the crowd to the place where she stood. "Give me the key, quick/' he said, and without waiting for an answer snatched it from her hand the people parting right and left to let him pass. But there was somebody there before him, for by the time he reached the door, it had been burst open, and Dick Yellop the cobbler was coming down the stairs with a child under each arm, closely fol- lowed by the " Poor-rate" with a couple more. Such a cheer as that which rang out from the crowd had never been heard in Squashleigh within living memory, especially when the cobbler went back and brought out a bird that was hanging in a cage on an upper landing. There was enough to do, unless half the parish were to be burat down, and it was wonderful what strange meetings took place under this common danger ; how men forgot their past differences for the time at least ; and how, in the heat and excite- ment of a true human interest, old grudges were half forgotten, and men who had been estranged called each other by their Christian names and worked at the pumps, fresh gangs being always AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 53 ready to come forvfard ; the parson sticking to his post and cheering the others on. But still the fire raged, and was only subdued in one place to break out afresh in another. The tax-collectors had all congregated round the Town Hall, whence they had removed the books and accounts relating to the parish money; they had gone together to help the poor people in a back lane to get their poor sticks of furniture out of harm's way; and then had been present at the celebration of a treaty of friendship between Dick Yellop and the plumber, who having seen the cobbler come out with the saddler's children, had his heart melted like solder A and swore that it was beautiful, and that he'd order two pair of boots of Kichard on Monday morning and make a man of him. They were all standing in a group now these collectors talking together and watching the flames, for they had pretty well tired themselves out, and the parson wouldn't hear of their taking a turn at the pumps. He had just let another man take to his place for a minute, that he might give himself breathing time, and had come up to speak to them, when there was a fresh commotion at the outer edge of the crowd where it was darkest a moment before, but where some new flame seemed now to have shot a sudden glare. Another moment and Richard Yellop came bursting through, and with a wild cry seized the curate by the arm. t( For God's sake, sir, get somebody to help us, BATES AND TAXES, and come with me. The firemen are all about the Hall, and the Refuge is in flames. Oh, my daugh- ter ! my daughter V 3 cc Gentlemen, will two of you bring the fire- escape round directly, and will the others come with us ?" said Mr. Smith. " Quick I" The crowd had seen the new danger, and had gathered in front of the building known as the ' ' Refuge " but the front garden was protected by high iron railings, and within these some of the poor girls and women who had been the inmates of the place were standing, half dressed as they had escaped from the dormitories, where some of their companions were still screaming and rushing hither and thither. As the cobbler came up he peered amongst them to discover his daughter, but she was not there. The iron gate had been closed, and he . had seized it to force it open, when the great heavy door of the home opened, and, amidst a great cloud of smoke which was now oozing from the upper windows also, the matron was carried down by a man whose hair was all singed, and who staggered blindly out into the air, followed by a fresh troop of trembling girls. The curate caught him as he almost fell across the doorway with his burden. " Are there any more V he said. ( ' God bless you, old boy ! I thought you would be about some- where ; it's my turn now." He had recognized the " heterodox" Dissenter, who now stood panting and choked with smoke. " Fm afraid there are/' he gasped ; " but God AND HOW THEY WEKE COLLECTED. 55 help them, the staircase is all on fire, and they are in an upper room. Don't go ! Don't go I" But he spoke to air. The girls had been taken away by the matron to a neighbouring house, and through the open gate the curate sprang into the road, where a firemen had come up with his axe in his hand, but now stood undecided what to do, motioning the fire-escape that was endeavouring almost in vain to make way through the crowd. At that upper window, amidst the smoke, two women stood and screamed, and wrung their hands. There was no time to think. The parson snatched the axe out of the fireman's hand, and leaped through the gate again. " I'm with you/' said a deep voice, at his elbow ; " you shan't go alone." ' c Quick, then, if you must, but hold your head down and don't turn back." Then they went in, and as he stopped a moment to look around for the cobbler who had disappeared, he saw that his companion was the Methodist who had been so ready to damn him. There was no time for explanation amidst all that flame and smoke ; but they reached the first landing together and took breath; there a new difficulty awaited them; the cobbler lay upon the stairs senseless ; he had tried to get to the room above and the smoke had beaten him. " Listen !" said the curate, laying an awful grip on his companion's arm; " take him down and let me go alone." 56 EATES AND TAXES, " Stop a moment, then, take this ;" and the Methodist tossed him a woollen " comforter " satu- rated with water ; " keep it over your mouth, and the Lord be with you." " Amen," said the curate, as he leaped through the smoke. It was well for him that he had taken the woollen wrap, for the staircase higher up was aflame, and he had to spring across it to the room door, which he burst open with his shoulder; his hair and woollen shirt were singed, and he could feel the heat through his boots ; but the fire had not yet reached the room to which he was guided by the shrieks of those within. They came clinging to him, but he gently pushed them off, and swinging the axe round with all his strength, hewed away at the iron bars where they were fastened to the wall. A great shout from the crowd without, and then he saw some dark object come up to the top of the sill ; it was the fire-escape at last, and as he plied the axe with redoubled vigour, the iron bars gave way just as the head and shoulders of a fireman came above a sort of little parapet below. He drew both the women half-fainting to the window, and bade them stand there a moment, then crawled through, and planting his feet upon this projection, clung with one hand to an iron pipe that stood out a little from the wall, and cut away the two remaining bars, the blows of his axe ringing out above the shouts of the crowd below, who wavered to and fro in the excitement of watching him ; every muscle upon his AND HOW THEY WERE COLLECTED. 57 powerful frame looking gigantic in that lurid light. Another minute, seeming like half an hour to those beneath, and he had helped both women out. One went down the escape alone ; it was Dick Yellop's daughter ; the other fainted in the fireman's arms, and was carried down. As the curate saw her face for a moment by the flame he almost lost his hold ; it was Harriet Stow. Saw her face by the glare of the fire. Yes ; and saw, too, that his own descent by the fire-escape was hopeless. Before the fireman reached the ground with his burden the flames from that lower window had roared out in great forked tongues that had singed the canvas, and now the ladder itself was alight, and as the blaze caught it, began to crackle and splinter. A low cry like a moan went up from the crowd, succeeding the ringing cheer that had greeted the rescue of the two girls; men shouted to him to wait for a ladder that was now coming; women knelt down in the roadway and prayed, and in answer to it all he waved his hand, and looked upward for some means of escape. The flames were lapping the very coping on which he stood, but there was another projection just above his head, and the fire had not yet caught the roof. First throwing up the axe, he grasped the iron pipe with both his hands, and shook it to test its strength. It held firm, and with a tremendous effort he drew himself up till his arm rested on that upper ledge ; even while he hung there the floor of the room below fell in, 58 and amidst the cry of that great crowd and a volume of smoke and sparks, he knelt upon the roof. The people saw him gain his feet, and with his hand to his face go slowly but surely along between the ridges of the tiles ; then he disappeared at an angle, and amidst a strange silence a number of men made their way to the back of the building where he might be brought down if only there were the means to reach him. Such a shout as came from them presently; such a roar of exultation mingled with the crying of women, and the yells of all the boys of Squash- leigh. He had got to the back, where the great elm- tree stood, and there had slid down the slope of the roof until he caught its topmost branch, which, yielding with his weight, had yet given him time to scramble from bough to bough, and come crashing down in their very midst. And now they had him, and were carrying him, singed, and scratched, and half-naked, to his home. " Thank you ! thank you \" he said, a little faintly. " Please put me down. Pve broken my arm." But he waved his sound arm cheerily to the peo- ple, who shouted as they made way for him to pass, and supported by the Water-rate and a surgeon, went home to bed. When the Water-rate joined his fellow- collectors afterwards at the " Greyhound," he reported that the arm was injured but not broken, and that AND HOW THEY WEKE COLLECTED. 59 in spite of his severe exertion, the curate was doing well ; had, in fact, gone to sleep from ex- haustion. For the tax-collectors had agreed to meet and refresh themselves when the fire was out ; and if ever men required refreshing, they did, for they had been amongst the busiest all that night. Was it strange that they should each and all of them begin to speak of fires at which they had been present, and so going from one topic to another, relate some of their personal experiences ? It was a strange thing to happen in Squashleigh, certainly ; but a stranger thing than that happened there ; for this fire, which had come upon them so suddenly, seemed to help on the work that the new curate had begun, and to have burnt away a great deal of that moral plague of selfishness and distrust, by rousing men and women to mutual help and to mutual loving-kindness. How this grew and grew until the people seemed to change altogether, and Squashleigh became one united parish under the name of Saint Faith, it would take a volume to tell ; but when Cyril Smith appeared in the pulpit on that memorable Sunday morning after the fire, with his hair all cut short and his left hand on his breast, there ran a sob through the congregation that may be | ,;J(Xv said to have been the first pulse in that new life. Asj \uvjf ^ to the tax-collectors, their meeting at the ' c Grey- hound " became a weekly one, and was thereafter organized into a social club, where every member had something to tell. What they told during the 60 RATES AND TAXES. first fortnight of their newly- acquired freedom is set forth in the following pages, which the parson him- self was asked to edit, but preferred to assign the duty to what he was pleased to call an abler hand. There was something quite natural in the desire of the collected Kates and Taxes to elect a chair- man, and it was no less natural that the " Water- rate/' who had borne a conspicuous part in the calamity which had ended so happily, should be called by acclamation to that office. He was a quiet, ruddy-cheeked, silver-haired old gentleman, to whom to cut off the supply from a defaulter must have given a real pang, and as his clear blue eye beamed over the united company, there was a touch of melancholy in his face that spoke of a life not always free from some heavy sorrow. " If I understand our agreement, gentlemen/'' he said, " the experiences we have to relate need not be professional, and therefore I shall ask you to listen to a very simple story of a personal charac- ter, in which I was more of an observer than an actor." THE WATER-RATE, BY W. J. PKOWSE. LIKE TO LIKE. f \t fckt-rafe's I. ANTHONY HARDING., HEEO-WOESHIPPEE. ANTHONY HAEDING, an entliusiastic young English gentleman of twenty- three, had, amongst many ideals or possibly illusions common in that period of life and that kind of person, these two : number one, an ideal of friendship ; number two, an ideal of love. He believed, with regard to the first of those, that he had realized it already ; he was certain, with regard to the second, that he had not. There is more hero-worship amongst our young- men than we are wont to imagine. They are apt to take their tone from their elders, in itself an act of hero-worship in the wrong direction, aud to ape that slang of listless cynicism which, to the shame and sore detriment of the age, is so common amongst us. In their heart of hearts, however, they are glad when they see a better man than themselves, and are only too ready to follow him. Failing any hero, they will even fall back upon a humbug; on some rickety Rochefoucauld minus the epigrams, some tenth- rate Don Juan minus Julia, Haidee, and her frolic grace, Fitz Fulke. It is in the nature of all young animals to imitate and admire. 64 RATES AND TAXES. Anthony Harding, luckily for himself, knew a humbug when he saw one, and had a friend who was worth his enthusiasm. To the post of hero, vacated by the discovery that the captain of the Oxford eleven during Anthony's chief cricket year was, in private life, rather a fool than not, succeeded a remarkable soldier, who was a man of honour. The lad was supposed to be studying for the bar, and in accordance with a weak-minded custom that is still very prevalent, he had chambers in the Temple chambers as dreary as any inhabited by a full-blown Q.C. But he did not read hard; he had an ample fortune in right of his mother ; he was the eldest son of a rich father; and he was merely qualifying himself for horsehair in order that he might have somethign to do. Matrimonially, all is fish that comes to the net, especially gold fish, and Anthony had been angled for two or three times. He was a handsome fellow, and looked very unlikely to make a good lawyer as he lounged in the morning on his sofa, petting his Skye terrier, {C Rough," a pipe in his mouth., fresh from his tub, six feet of good flesh : as to his cheeks, brown ; as to his eyes, blue and bright ; as to his upper-lip, lightly moustached ; as to his arms, long ; as to his shoulders, broad, with a slight stoop ; as to his legs, rather of the greyhound build ; as to his costume, red smoking- cap, due to a female angler, shooting-coat, no waistcoat, no braces, flan- nel shirt, and tweed trousers. The tobacco was Cavendish ; the pipe was clay. As to the ornaments of the chamber, there was a clock which had long ceased to go, and there were several portraits indicative of a remarkably in- clusive hero-worship. Mr. Tennyson, Abd-el-Kader, Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Sayers, General Garibaldi, Eobert Browning, Signor Mazzini, Mr. Thomas Hughes, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, Bob Chambers, Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand, Tom Lockyer, and the late Mr. Robson all these were amongst the objects of Anthony's idolatry ; a,nd I don't see that his portrait- gallery, oddly assorted though it was, included the likeness of a single humbug. On the whole, it was better than a collection of French prints, or a set of the judges. Whether it was calculated to inspire professional confidence in the bosom of an attorney,, I can't state. You see, Tony wasn't <{ called" as yet. No lady was represented on his walls. The Three (female) Fishers had gone sailing away to the West End away to the West as the son went down ; and one of them had caught a capitalist, and the other two were still floating, forlornly beau- tiful, upon the shoals of London. For, when Man won't propose, why, Woman must weep ; and in their case, it was " Good-bye to the Bar (as represented by A. Harding, Esquire) and its moaning !" Anthony had no sisters ; and then, although you must not imagine him to be a bit better than many of his neighbours, he was a great deal too healthy to be thoroughly vicious. Bad health is very frequently the consequence of vice, no doubt; but quite as frequently it is the cause. 5 DO BATES AXD TAXES. Thus was Anthony a London lounger, idling his time, enjoying it, bat vaguely restless and dimly anxious for what he would have called he had not yet passed that period when men think it fine to talk in capital letters a Purpose and an Object. And a very pretty Object he found in Miss Caro- line Edwards ! But with many apologies for keep- ing that young lady waiting, I must introduce you first to Anthony's hero-in-chief, whose portrait occu- pied a place of honour beside those that I have duly catalogued. " Sir," said a clever and genial writer, lately gone to his rest, when addressing one of the nouvea/ux riclies, " Sir, I am a poor gentleman, but I am a Ciidet of the honourable house of Duiibar I" Ralph Dacre was for a long while a very poor man indeed ; but he too was a cadet of a good house ; and after the exemplary fashion of the English, leav- ing his eldest brother he had two older than him- self to the tranquil enjoyment of the family revenue and domain, he had wandered on the earth, at first a merry vagabond, at last a knight-errant of revolution. In his school clays he was a hot Royalist, and like some few other young Englishmen, he foolishly drew sword for Don Carlos, until De Lacy Evans :in honourable soldier, at the head of a dreadful gang of volunteers took service with the Christines. Then, refusing to fight against his countrymen, he LIKE TO LIKE : THE WATER-RATERS STORY. 67 came away ; but lie brought witli him from Spain a grand memory. He had known a great man one of the many " forgotten worthies " of our century a silent, sallow Spaniard of the Basque provinces, in a slouch hat, who was fond of cigarettes I beg pardon, cigaritos ; one who foiled Mina, the gueril- Icro, at his own game, and who did all that could be done, by courage, tenacity, and genius, to save a bad and hopeless cause. The name of this man was Zumalacarregui a name so difficult to spell and to pronounce, that I do not wonder it has remained rather obscure. Boaming about, seeing many places and people, always using his eyes which were naturally keen, Ealph crowded a good deal of life into a few years. Terribly fond of fighting, he became involved in some of those South American brawls, in com- parison with which the Schleswig-Holstein question was intelligible and plain. But he had also one long-, blessed interval of peace. This was in the Mar- quesas Islands ; and he grew so fond of swimming through the* surf at Nukaheva, so fond of basking in those lovely island- valleys of the Pacific, that at times he was tempted to stay there for ever. What would it avail him, after all, to go back to Europe ? to mix again in its trouble and turmoil ? Might it not be better to live out his life in the island, simply a healthy animal, nothing more ? Resisting this ignoble temptation, like an honest Englishman, as he was, he came back; and then occurred a curious change in his character. Fresh 68 BATES AND TAXES. from a country wliere everybody had enough to eat, if the meal were only of bread-fruit,, pauperism horrified him; the inevitable evils of an advanced civilization were, in his eyes, intolerable and iniqui- tous. In Paris he met with leeches, who had won- derful nostrums for the cure of almost every disease that can by possibility affect the body politic. He was impressionable, emotional; a man not of thought, but of passion and action; easily led by intellects weaker than his own, so that they had but the appearance of a profundity which he did not himself possess. In the camp of the Eepublicans the Eepublicans before the Republic he met with many gallant gen- tlemen and worthy friends. He took his chance on the barricades ; had a long term of imprisonment in St. Pelagie; and found, on coming out, that he was a rich man. His stay-at-home brothers both died in the same year; he, rover, Red Republican, reckless adventurer, had only two or three scars on his skin, and was in ruddy health. If you ha,ve money and if you have also Repub- lican principles, you will find that the possession of the latter involves the expenditure of the former. Ralph Dacre dipped rather deeply into his financial client; but he cared nothing about Homburg or l>aden; he was a man of extreme purity, temper- since, and simplicity of life ; and he preferred cam- paigning to the pleasures of the city. I presume that this is a prosaic age; we are perpetually being told so by our public instructors ; LIKE TO LIKE : THE WATER-HATERS STORY. 69 but I know that this man, still in his prime when our story opens, had served with Zumalacarregui in Spain, with Schamyl in the Caucasus, with Abd-el- Kader in Africa, with Joseph Bern in Hungary and Transylvania, with Guiseppe Garibaldi on the walls of Rome ; and I don't see that any preux chevalier of the middle ages could have served under more " chivalric " leaders, or in more " romantic " wars. When the game was up in Italy, for the time being, and the noblest of modern Italians, hunted like a wolf, had buried his wife in the woods, Ralph Dacre came home. He had lived enough he needed rest ; and he was somewhat soured by the apparent ruin of the cause which he had most at heart. As I said, he was not a logician ; but, in a confused way, he had a horror of oppression, and was enamoured of freedom as a lover of his mistress. For the rest, his English life was very happy. London, after all, has its charms, even for a knight- errant of revolution ; and when London palled upon him, he could amuse himself very effectually with his gun and his yacht. A dim idea, also, that, as a Dacre, he was bound to be a "personage," kept him at home. He got over his horror of a black coat and a tall hat; and when you met him in the club smoking-room. a large man, with a scar on his cheek, and a slightly grizzled moustache you would set him down simply as a quiet and clubable soldier. As for Nukaheva, the Metidja, the Cau- casus you would never have dreamt of that part of his life. 70 BATES AND TAXES. Tlie Dacres and the Hardings " knew each other at home," as schoolboys say ; and Ralph's heart which was wonderfully warm for a man of forty-five had young Anthony in one of its cosiest corners. The lad amused him, to begin with. There was a pleasantly frank dogmatism about the young gen- tleman,, which the old campaigner relished; and when he heard the boy rhapsodize concerning Mr. Tennyson, he thought of his own feelings with regard to the late Lord Byron, and seemed, by an inverse process, to go back through the years until he had almost attained his minority. To hear Anthony's hearty " By Jove ! sir," rolling musically from the chest, was in its way a real pleasure to men who had long adopted the fashion I am not at all sure that it is a good one, by the by of being extremely reticent in their utterance of emotion. Tony's splendid capacities for enjoyment, his bright young enthusiasm, the fervour with which he admired, and the intensity with which he despised, were all inexpressibly charming to the soldier. He saw the making of a man in Tony, and helped in the process of manu- facture. With him he was almost garrulous ; and he entered into all his hopes, aspirations, desires, enjoyments, as much as a man of forty-five can with a youngster of twenty-three. There came a time when Anthony, instead of caring for long rides with. Ralph through the plea- sant country lanes, took to showing himself in the park when he began to be rather assiduous in the 71 process of " dressing " wlien lie cared less for long yarns about Achulko, Guipuscoa, Paraguay when he became discreet in the use of tobacco when he was to be seen in Covent Garden Market of a morning, buying flowers when he developed a strong taste for the divine art of music as inter- preted upon the operatic stage. We all know what has occurred when these symptoms offer themselves to our notice; and Ralph knew, as quickly as anybody, that Anthony had met withlet us put it mildly, and say a Bright and Beauteous Dream of Joy in point of fact, a young lady ! What he did not know was, that for him also Miss Caroline Edwards was lying in wait ! III. MISS CAROLINE EDWAED3. It may be quite as well to mention at once that she never committed bigamy, and had not been endowed by nature with yellow hair ; also, that she was already twenty-six. His ideal of friendship satisfied in Ralph Dacro, it remained for Anthony to see whether his ideal of love, which had most decidedly not been realized with either or all of the Three Fishers, would be fulfilled by this young lady. Both in face and figure Caroline sinned a good deal against the ordinary canons of female beauty ; and many amiable critics of her own sex would 1 ( take her to pieces" almost as coolly as a certain operator was wont to do with the waxen model of a 72 RATES AND TAXES. "Verms. These feminine sticklers for orthodoxy in preifciness, however, could not reclaim the men from the pestilent heresy of falling in love with the decried maiden ; and the flirt for she was a flirt had generally half-a-dozen admirers dangling about her. An oval face, with a gipsyish warmth in the complexion; glossy black hair, banded back and clubbed over the neck; hazel eyes, that contrasted strangely and piquantly with the hair; a Greek nose, rather full in the nostrils, especially when the girl got interested; rather voluptuous lips, and a firm chin she had all these, so that you have some notion of her faults as perceived by the spinster- critics; but not of her attractions as acknowledged by bachelor-believers. She was tall, with a large bust and a noble waist that wasp-like beauties anathematized, for it was indeed exceedingly unlike their own. It was not any one special feature that charmed a man; it was the general look, the aggregate expression, the life and meaning of the face, and the swift, copious variety of all these. When indolent, there was an air of listless dis- dainful pride about her which irritated you into love and provoked you by its announcement of an obsta- cle to subdue ; but she mastered you altogether if you ever succeeded in interesting her if her eyes^ opening more than usual, met yours, as she looked up and uttered a prettily interrogative little " Yes ?" Her people were in the first generation from tlie City, and she was therefore a little haughtier in her manner, perhaps, than men like Harding or Dacre, who took their position for granted, as their fathers had done before them for some centuries ; her family was rich she would be a good match ; and offers were not lacking. She flirted and refused. She was a born coquette, but it would be wrong to say she had no heart. Heart ? She had heart enough for a dozen ordinary British maidens but few men had yet touched it, and a strong hand was needed to play upon it with much effect, to draw forth much melody from its strings, that jarred unmusically in answer to clumsiness or conceit in the player. There was the making of a noble woman in her ; but there were materials also for the manufacture of a very bad one cynical and cruel, callous and cold. She moved Anthony first by a rather audacious contempt for some of his idols, of whom she spoke with a cynicism peculiar to the over-educated young- ladies of the present day. I say " over-educated," because the culture which in a man is but the prelude to action, often results, in ladies, in nothing better than a sterile cleverness. Tony wished to convert her; it is a common weakness with young men at twenty-three, and generally results in an addition to the Kegistrar's .Return of Marriages, to begin with ! They were thrown a good deal together in society ; she cared little for him, but rather liked him than not ; in 74 RATES AND TAXES. brief, allowed him to believe what lie cliose and lie chose to believe a good deal. The boy made love, after the fashion of his age, awkwardly with a great deal of honest passion, which a weaker woman would have found irresistible but which, to tell the plain and honest truth, occasionally tired Miss Edwards not a little. After all, his conversation was limited ; and it is not what a man has learned from books, it is what he has himself done in the world amongst his fellows which really interests a clever woman. Now, beyond making a good score in a match against Cambridge, Tony had done very little, and Miss Edwards did not particularly care for the noble game of cricket. She was rather proud of his admiration, liked his inanly bearing, his good looks, would not have wilfully pained him as a mere pastime ; but the warmth of her interest in him never rose beyond this tepid pitch whilst, on his part, he was at boiling-point already. In his talk, Dacre figured a good deal; and the girl liked to hear Tony speak on that theme. Hen' at least was a reality; a man who had lived, probably loved who livedstill, and might love again. Whom ? Why not Miss Edwards ? At any rate to conquer him to bring him within the little circle of her admirers would be a noble sport ; and she had the patience of an " old Shekarry'' for the "big game." And so they met, all three, and saw a good deal of one another. IV. THREE STORMY HEARTS JN CALM WEATHER. The lures, tlie prettiness, tlie graces, tlie spiritual affectations which reduced Anthony to a state of hopelessly-enamoured servitude, did not produce a similar effect upon the soldier possibly because ho had met with them before. Caroline was very French, and Ealph Dacro had lived a good deal in Paris. He loved his friend so thoroughly, and was so anxious for his welfare, that he looked upon this passion as a real danger to be warded off, in 0110 way or another, cost what it might. He questioned himself jealously more sternly than ever a judge questioned a criminal at the bar. Was it not a certain selfishness that made him view the lady with dislike, as one who had ousted him from his chief place in Anthony's heart, and made him rank there as number two instead of number one ? Was he not angry because their friendship, strong and firm still, was not quite what it had been ? To these interrogations his heart and his conscience emphati- cally answered " No I" and it was from pure love for the boy himself that ho felt uneasy as to the future. For supposing her won, which was not probable what wife would she make, after all ? Not a good one, thought the campaigner ; not one who would be a help-meet for Anthony. He saw plainly for on this point his eyes were open enough, though closed on others that she did not really love him ; and Tony's was a nature that stood desperately in 70 KATES AND TAXES. need of affection needed it as a flower needs summer and the dew. He pointed this out to Anthony, who heard him at first with a feeling of blank surprise by and by, with a certain uneasiness, which was not yet distrust but might grow to it. It was in the pleasantest time of the year that the boy's passion came to its height. Both men were fond of yachting : Anthony was to sail with Ralph ; and the latter, much to his secret irritation, had to admit Miss Edwards and her mother as two of the party. Tony asked him ; the mother nearly asked him, with views regarding Tony ; the young lady herself was an accomplice, though with views perhaps of a different kind; and the honest campaigner had to surrender at discretion with the best grace he could. And a delightful time most of them had of it ! the boy basking in the sham sunshine of his mis- tress's looks, the mother taking a true matron's joy in the prospect of a match, the other guests luxuriating after the manner of our people on the sea. But, more and more, Caroline grew weary in her heart of her somewhat insipid adorer ; whilst it was impossible to see much of .Ralph without falling under the peculiar spell of his manner and character. He was so unlike the idlers she had known was so free from their petty vanities had lived and seen so much that, day by day, as her deeper nature grew, as she became sincerer, she was drawn towards him, as irresistibly as a moth towards a light, and as blindly. LIKE TO LIKE : THE WATER-KATE's STORY. 77 And he ? His exceeding modesty hindered him from perceiving all this, but he saw enough to be sure that her regard for Anthony was of the lightest. A real trouble came upon him ; he could not sec his friend make shipwreck so utterly just as he entered on the voyage of life ; but his own duty in the matter was not clear to him. Pacing the deck at night,, with a heavy monotonous tramp, he got no counsel or comfort from tobacco or the stars; and he woke in the morning with the old uneasiness at his heart, to see Anthony blushing like a school- girl if he had but to hand the lady her parasol. She didn't care for Anthony, that at least was plain enough ; did she care for anybody else ? He couldn't think it. He became unfair to her. She was bad enough; but she was not so bad as he fancied her. He felt that it was hopeless to try to preach Anthony out of his dream ; indeed, his few timid tentatives in that line were received with such marked disfavour that he did not deem it prudent to renew them ; and, oil the whole, he found that the only way to make Tony believe that she was unworthy of him was to prove her so. It was with a feeling of much bitterness and disgust that he deliberately set himself to his task, which, after all, seemed rather a treacherous way of showing his friendship. He reasoned that he could, to put it vulgarly, ' ' cut Tony out " and he resolved to do it, not by any means with the view of winning the girl for himself, but simply to convince his friend that she was light and unstable. 78 KATES AND TAXES. As lie smoked liis pipe at night, and meditated on Iris plan,, lie was often stung by a sudden sense of pain. He knew that he was about to play with a couple of souls, and he didn't like the game. Whatever Caroline's faults might be, it was scarcely lair for him to woo her ; and he had his misgivings as to the manner in which Tony might stand the shock. As the honest boy talked to him with the fervid loquacity of a young lover, Ealph felt rather ashamed of his purpose ; but 110 other way seemed open. The plain fisher-folks out at sea, who watched the yacht pleasantly sailing along, perhaps envied the <: gentlefolks who had nothing* to do, and no troubles/' " No troubles ?" Well, they might envy Tony with some reason, though even on him the clouds were darkening ; but ' ( 110 troubles ?" It is hard work to catch herrings, but there are worse employments ! They need not have envied, for all their poverty and toil, the girl who turned restlessly in bed, her black hair hanging loosely round her, her large eyes open and burning with a strange fire ; they need not have envied the soldier as he paced to and fro, too restless to go below, and struggling with a hundred thoughts, fears, and anxieties. He opened the campaign, nevertheless, and found that the enemy was only too ready to capi- tulate. She gave up her whole heart to him ; her eyes followed him wherever he moved ; and bright- ened the instant that he turned towards her. Very LIKE TO LIKE : THE WATER-RATERS STORY. 79 little love- making was needed; just a sliade more nrdour in his ordinary politeness and the thing was done. How she triumphed, this girl, when she thought that she had won him ! What a love it was to win ! To have him by her side always ; to be bucklered against the whole world by his broad breast ; to hear men praise him as he passed ; to see women fix their eyes on him, envying her ; nay, to urge him on ; to make him crown his youth of adventure by a ripe manhood of achievement as the thought of all this thrilled through her, she blossomed out from, a pretty coquette into a glorious woman. With the light of love in her eyes, with the flush of love on her cheeks, she grew so radiantly beau- tiful that Anthony felt she must either be his or he must die. And Ralph Dacre found that this playing with souls was already a dangerous game; that, trying to prove this woman's worthlessness, he had centupled her worth ; and that now she only lived for him and by him. Pygmalion, he had warmed his statue into life, though only by simulated love ; was he to shatter liis workmanship and destroy the splendid vitality he had given ? It was a time of much trial for the old cam- paigner ! V. AN EXPLOSION. The cruise was over. In. a pretty little place in the West of England most of the party settled down 80 RATES AND TAXES. to pass a quiet month before the men were sum- moned northward by the grouse. There were a good many respirators about, for the town was in high flavour with fashionable phy- sicians, and the wearer of one of these respirators was a pretty little girl of nineteen, known to Ralph Dacre, and called Lucy Coplestone. It was a sad sight to see her wheeled along in her invalid chair, with her mother by her side, dressed in deep mourning for the father, whose last hours had been clouded by the thought of Lucy's illness ; a sad sight, and one that moved the pity of all our three ; and when Lucy's face began to brighten up as she heard the merry ring of Tony's voice, the soldier would have given ten years of his life to see the girl well, and Tony's wife ! But the ring of that voice was not so merry after a week or two. The boy saw a change in the manner of Caroline ; her languor had disappeared ; but the poor youth owned to himself that he was not the magician who had chased it away. It was his first great sorrow when he came to believe that his friend, his hero, had treacherously supplanted him. When the thought first struck him, he repelled it crushed it down as miserably unworthy of them both ; but it rose again, it came back. Gallantly he tried for awhile to frame excuses for Ralph Dacre. She was so beautiful, so perfect, that it was only natural he should love her ; a man of his stamp could not have helped doing so ; and yet and yet Tony felt that he would rather have cut off his own right LIKE TO LIKE : THE WATER- EATERS STORY. 81 liand than so have robbed a friend of his mistress. It was a mean, a dastardly thing ; it was a shame and a sin ; and all the world was a lie, and there was no truth in woman, and 110 faith in man. . . . Could he win her back? Could he pit himself against Dacre with a hope of victory ? Thy honest fellow felt that he had no chance; that he, with his boyish, beardless face, his ignorance of the world, was no match for such a man in the contest where the hand of an ambitious woman was the prize. Ambitious ? Yes, he thought, that was it. She saw how people deferred to Dacre ; how, without any visible effort on his part, he gave the tone and was recognized as master in whatever society he moved ; was it not natural that she should love him ? Nay, was it not even inevitable ? He had been a fool to introduce them ; and yet, he could not help feeling that his friend should have been honest and loyal. It is a horrible thing when the whole of a young man's life seems to go bankrupt at once, as Anthony's did. He was hitio the heart. A couple of months ago, how bright was his outlook, with such a woman to win and such a friend to rejoice in his happiness ; and now well, what was there left to live for ? The hope of a wife ? He could never meet with one whom he should love as he had loved her. The hope of a friend? He could never meet with one whom he should love as he had loved him. Miserable as was Tony, Dacre was not much happier ; and at times he could almost have found it in his heart to run away. For mark G 82 BATES AND TAXES. this : that lie didn't love her, even yet ; couldn't in fact. Had she not cost him his dearest friend already ? There had been no open quarrel between them, but he saw that Anthony was changed ; he saw also and this cut him to the quick that the lad not merely hated him as a rival, but despised him as a traitor. The denoument of the little drama did not seem likely to be that which he had planned. He had endeavoured almost to play the part of Providence ; but there were moments when he felt uncommonly like a sneak ! And then, as to running away, why, whatever the girl might have been before he knew her, she was what she was now simply through his handiwork ; and after having played with her heart in his own mere wisdom, he had no right to skulk off as soon as the game grew dangerous. The atmosphere, you see, was getting very lurid, and it could not be long before the storm would burst. Lucy Coplestone and all other invalids had gone to their rest early one night at the beginning of August. It was a singularly calm and beautiful night the moon was nearly at the full ; the lights of the little town trembled on the waters in the bay and there was a great stillness in the air. Anthony was at Mr. Edwards' Chouse ; Ralph had not yet returned from fishing, though they could already see his boat as she rounded the headland, and came lazily along over the smooth, oily swell, leaving a bright track behind her, like the slimy trail of a serpent, thought Anthony. The old look was strong on Caroline that night, and there was a sadness in it that was less painful for the boy to see than the flush which so often suffused her face as she met Kalph. And at last, as all the old love stirred in his heart, and his yearning grew so great that he must needs speak, he stammered out you fancy what wild passionate incoherences, despair- ing and yet imploring, forlorn and yet almost imperious, as though he would even make this woman love him in her own despite ! And she for by this time she had learned what it was to love, to desire, and to be slighted felt an awful pang of pity for the poor boy who was babbling his whole heart out at her knees ; and her hot tears fell upon his upturned face, and for one divine moment of delirium he mistook their meaning, did not know that they were tears of pity, and clasped her almost brutally in his arms. He felt his brain burn madly with joy. She put aside his hands, not angrily she was past that now but very, very gravely ; and then with a grand courage, for in the great silence she could hear the two hearts beating like one, and his breath was still hot upon her cheeks, she told him the whole truth. She heard a footstep on the gravel of the garden-path. As she spoke, there was a shadow in the room from the open window, as Kalph paused to say good night ; " Curse you I" cried the boy, rushing forth, and menacing him with his clenched fist, as ho dashed away; and with the sound of that curse 84 KATES AND TAXES. came tlie cry of a woman, as Caroline fell senseless on the floor. . . . She looked up, waking, into Kalph's face; and/ MS she knew it, and the sense of her misery came back, gave a low, pitiful wail ; " Pardon, pardon! You don't know you can't know it was my love that Cruelly he answered : " Your love has cost me the one friend " but there broke down, and could only say, " You have driven him mad." And at that cowardly speech the woman, braver than the soldier, turned upon him, fiercely at bay. " Himl What do I care for him ? What wrong have I done to YOU ?" It was a singularly calm and beautiful night; the moon was nearly at the full ; the lights of the little town trembled on the waters in the bay ; and there was a great stillness in the air. VI. AFTER THE STORM. It would have been extremely romantic if Anthony had forthwith proceeded to the nearest cliff, and flung himself over, making an end of his troubles with one splash in the water. But he did not. He- wandered by the cliffs, indeed, scarcely knowing whither he strayed ; for there was a dumb pain in him that seemed to beat against his brain as a blind wild beast in extreme agony might fling itself against the bars of its cage. The singular beauty of the night was not unfelt by him ; and even in this time of supreme misery, he was interested LIKE TO LIKE : THE WATER-KATE S STORY. o> vaguely in the veriest trifles,, and listened with a strange sense of pleasure to the faint halloo that was heard now and then from the harbour, as a fishing- boat, furling her sail, came slowly in round the little pier, and was obscured by its shadow. Or, watching the houses on the hill, he wondered who it was that sat so late yonder where the light still gleamed from the window ; and for nearly an hour he went the rounds with a coast-guardsman, smoking and quietly listening to his stories of service in China and the North. Anything was welcome that kept off, for a time, the sense of his misery, the remembrance of his utter wreck. At length, when the night was waning, he set forth on a longer walk, and pushed steadily along the main-road instead of rambling aimlessly amongst the paths by the sea. Through a couple of villages he passed, where there was not a soul to be seen ; and he noticed with how pure a lustre the moon seemed to clothe them in their sleep, shining down upon a little steeple and upon the thatched roofs ; and caught himself pausing on the little wooden bridge, to listen to the brawling of the stream that came running down noisily amongst the boulders, from the moorland to the sea. These things he could feel and think about; his own sorrow he could gnly dimly understand could not so control his faculties as to think about it with any concen- tration or set purpose, By daybreak he was in the town he sought to reach ; and still unwashed and unshaven he started 86 KATES AND TAXES. by the first train to London. The noise of the journey,, the horrible rattle and roar of the wheels, nearly drove him mad. He went to his chambers,, which never before seemed so desolate; he tore down the portrait of Ralph Dacre, and crushed it under his heel, and then, exhausted and faint, sank back upon the sofa. It was night when he woke. He made ready to go out. He had scarcely tasted food that day. He went to a late supper-house, but the very first morsel that he touched seemed to choke him. He swal- lowed a glass of brandy instead and then another. As the drink revived him, he thought of the little place in the West, and figured the two, arm- in-arm, looking out upon the sea. There was a different night in store for him ! And day after day passed. Now and then he tried to arrest himself 011 the fatal path that ho had chosen ; but in vain. Truly, his efforts were not very earnest. The poor boy's nature was crushed ; he had been wounded, mortally as he thought, where he could least bear pain; and the penalty that attached to becoming sober was that his memory returned. To such a course there could only be one result. Strong as he was, he broke down at last, after a fortnight that would have killed nine men out of ten. For many days he had not been to his chambers, whither Ralph Dacre had proceeded more than once, feeling tliat to be his duty for the present; lie had slept in low dens and in infamous company ; but one evening a strange shudder passed through him, and with a sudden sense of fear he rose and walked nervously homeward. It was with difficulty that he could get so far. The noise of the cabs seemed to terrify him : he would wait at a crossing for minutes, afraid to proceed, and then dart across the street with a rush, continuing his speed even after he had reached the other side; and then, again, pausing idly in front of a glaring gin-shop till a woman pushed him, passing by, and roused him from a stupor which was yet alive with pain. It had come the penalty for his excess. That night he was down upon his bed, raving in delirium tremeus ; and Kough, his one nurse and watcher, crouched beside the bed, and gave from time to time a long melancholy howl that seemed to the sick man like the yell of a thousand fiends. There was brandy on a chair beside the bed, and he kept pouring fresh fuel on the fire that raged within him. That magnificent constitution of his still kept up the battle ; he got so far over the fit as to crawl out of bed, to mix water with the brandy for the first time, and to eat a few biscuits. But in the after- noon he was worse; and he was senseless when Ralph, again calling, heard a moaning in the room r.nd forced his way in. There was only a solitary candle burning in the place, and the long wick was drooping. The dog flew at Ralph and worried him fiercely before he 88 RATES AND TAXES. knew his voice. It was a strange welcome from old Rough. The boy's eyes were wide open, and he was talking volubly, evidently unconscious of his state, for he laughed often, and it was only at intervals that he cowered and shivered in the corner of the bed and twitched the clothes nervously towards him. Ralph had seen a good many horrors in his time, but he had never seen anything much worse than this ; and as he stepped towards the sufferer his foot caught in something on the floor. He stooped down to examine it Rough, still distrustful, growl- ing angrily the while and found that it was his own portrait which Tony had trampled under foot. He tended the boy as well as he could, bathed his temples in water, tied a towel round his head ; and for all these services Tony smiled his thanks, but still recognized him not, and went on garru- lously as before. So far as his story had any coherence at all, it treated of the man who now sat beside him. "Yes, by Jove! sir; and he met the same Frenchman with whom he had quarrelled on the barricade, you know met him in Algeria but they never got near to each other, and he thought, old Ralph, you know, that they would never be able to fight it fairly out ; and then at last he saw him again '49 it was siege of Rome, you know awful work, for the fellows got close to each other on the walls Ralph was with Medici and some other splendid jjh'aps, and up comes my Frenchman as : LIKE TO LIKE : THE WATER-RITE'S STORY. 80 gaily as if lie were going to a ball, you know saw each other at once, they did, and whilst their fellows were hot at it, crossed swords and old Ralph, he twisted the Frenchman's sword clean out of his hand and then, sir, by Jove it wasn't fair you know, but he says he couldn't help it, for the Frenchman hit at him, and the counter would come ! he knocked him clean out of time, sir, and gripped him round the body and was back on the wall again in a second, whilst Medici stared at him as if he had gone mad, and the Zouaves were swearing at him like a gang of tiger-cats. By Jove, sir, I should like to have seen old Ralph hit out." The boy clenched his fist, smilingly, and would have thrust forth his arm from the shoulder; but it was heavy, heavy as lead, and it fell again to his side, whilst the trembling feverish fingers also re- laxed, and went idly twitching at the blankets as before. " Best of it all was that they did have it out, in Rome and preciously Garibaldi swore when he heard of it, by Jove ! and old Ralph again dis- armed him, and didn't kill him found him no end of a nice fellow, with a jolly old mother living at Angouleme, and they got to be the best friends in the world. Ah, you should know old Ralph ! Why, sir, when he was riding one day . . ." And so on, and so on, and so on. It was the saddest day of all Ralph Dacre's life, and the maddest of Anthony's ; for Dacre summoned the doctor, summoned also Tony's father, told him 00 RATES AND TAXES. the whole truth, and found to his infinite comfort that his old comrade did not bear harshly upon him ; and then, when the boy was safe, went down again to the village in the West cured, one would fancy, of trying to play Providence ! VII. CLEARING UP. He went, after all, only from one sick-room to another. The crisis which had crushed Anthony had only stimulated Caroline into a fretful, impatient anxiety for work. She must do something, or go mad. A very sweet and gentle comforter she found in Lucy Coplestone, whose health was mending, though still very frail. If she outlived the winter, so the doctor said, she might recover altogether. Lucy was a pious girl, and one whose piety took the form, not of morbid self- analysis, but of a generous zeal to do good ; and the proud Caroline saw very quickly that, so far from, life being empty and a show, there was plenty of real work close at hand, only waiting for the labourers. To and fro in the narrow streets of the old place she wandered, always on some errand of charity ; and when in this ill-drained village, after a summer of intense heat, the fever showed itself, this girl was amongst the bravest of those ladies angelic aides-de-camp, so to speak who, under the direction of two or three brave and thoughtful men, assisted in the battle with disease, and carried comfort to those who were stricken down. In tliat fair service, also, Ralph Dacre, be sure, was a volunteer; and though, he was sad enough when alone, yet he had the art to be cheerful with the girls ; the sound of his hearty voice, breathing its manly encouragements, was as sweet in its way as that of the Sisters of Charity who spoke of con- solation ; and both were as valuable as any drugs. And when Caroline herself succumbed, and yet was patient, and brave, and calm, at last he loved her ; and she knew it, and grew well. But, by a tacit understanding honourable to them both, not a word was said of marriage whilst Ealph and Anthony were still unreconciled. Happily had the time passed in London, both for father and son, as Tony recovered. The old passion, somehow, was not so strong when he got better ; he recollected all Ralph's earlier warnings, and now, judging them, calmly, confessed that his ideal love had been but a delusion -, but found, in that fact, no excuse for his friend, whose real motive he never even dreamt of. So fiercely did he still recall Caere's supposed treachery, that his father ceased to discuss the subject, and waited for- tune to heal the wound. Strong and well, Tony resumed his reading, much to the resentment of Rough, who had been exceptionally indulged during the illness, and who was now wont to make a rush at Blackstone's Com- mentaries whenever Tony addressed himself to the study of that learned writer, and in default of worrying the volume, which he much desired to do, .'- KATES AND TAXES. to bark at it as though, it were the great- grand- father of all inimical Tom cats. The grand time which did so much for all England did as much for young Tony as any. The moment a cloud of war arose in the East, he kicked Blackstone aside to the infinite delight of Rough, who had a magnificent ten minutes with that com- mentator went down to his father's place, and was soon gazetted. On the night that his regiment received its marching orders months afterwards, for we didn't go to war in a hurry he felt in perfect peace and charity with all men, save and except Russians and Ralph Dacre. That evening his father, who had also heard the great news, came to his quarters, and it was inevitable that, at such a time, they should speak much of Ralph. Said Tony : " Mind you, I only blame him for not telling me at once. He is better than I ani, ever so much stronger, and I'd have borne it in the best way I could, and gone away. What I complain of is that he wasn't frank; I didn't blame him for loving Carry Miss Edwards, I mean." When "Oh, my boy, my boy," cries papa, "and you are still goose enough to think that he did love her ? Don't you know, even yet, you absurd Tony, you, that the one thought in Ralph Dacre' s grand heart was how to save you ? how to prove to you that, whatever good gifts the girl might have, she was not the wife for you ? that to do this he perilled even his own honour for you ? LIKE TO LIKE : THE WATER- RATE* 8 STORY. 93 Then it all burst in upon him, like a storm of sunshine, and he was not a bit too old or too young to cry like a man; and his father, also, had a slightly choking sensation in the region of the throat. After a long pause, said Tony: "I wish to heaven I hadn't smashed his picture ! I tell you what, sir, by Jove, Fll write to him to-night \" " I think it is the least you can do, my boy," said papa, with a smile. VIII. A LETTEE. Anthony was in the trenches when he heard of their marriage, in a long letter from Ralph. He had a twinge, perhaps, as he heard the news ; but it wasn't a severe one if he had ; for as he walked back, smoking his pipe, to his hut through the snow and darkness, the chief female figure that was visible to his imagination was not that of Caroline Dacre, but the one briefly sketched as follows by his correspondent : " Lucy Coplestone adds her good wishes to curs. She got capitally through the last winter, is now quite strong again, and as fond of croquet and archery as any young lady in the county, where, as you remember, they are all fond of archery and croquet." IX. IN THE GAEDEN BY THE SEA. The Crimean War is a matter of history; De Bazancourt and William Russell have already 94 RATES AND TAXES. written; Todleben and Kinglako arc about to write. In the old west- country village, there is a garden-group which we are not sorry to gaze at. There is a stately gentleman of middle age, with as stately a lady, much younger than himself. Beside them, looking also out to soa where the last splendours of the sunset are dying away, 'is a tall and tawny swell, and his arm is round the neck of a little flaxen-haired lady, who laughs with a pleasant laughter as a rather fat and remarkably wheezy old Skye-terrier, answering to the name of * f Rough," interrupts their meditations by a con- fidential, not to say an egotistical and conceited bark, and worries Captain Harding's boots. He was a Crimean veteran himself, was Rough ! It is almost supper-time, and all good young- people are, of course, in bed ; bat if you peeped over the fence in the morning you would see a splendid boy black-haired, erect of bearing, ready of speech holding up a golden-curled young rascal, whilst the inevitable Rough described mathematical problems round them in the grass. Bravo, Master Anthony Harding Dacre, and bravo, Master Ralph Dacre Harding ! Yes, the garden scene is still prettier in the morning; but, meanwhile, it is a singularly calm and beautiful night ; the moon is nearly at the full ; the lights of the little town are trembling on the waters in the bay : . and there is a great stillness in the air. THE DOG-TAX. Br TOM HOOD. THE TRUE STORY OF CJ1SAB AND BRUTUS. CHAPTER I. THE DOCTOR'S DOG. " You don't happen to want a dog, I suppose ? " " Well, I don't know that I do." " Because if you do, there's the article." The first speaker was Dr. Valentine, the chief medical practitioner in Muddlesfield, a large manu- facturing town. The person he addressed was the Reverend Meyrick Mountford, the curate of Beech- worth. The animal about which he spoke but no ! he is worthy of a fresh paragraph, not to say two. The doctor was mounting his horse at the gate of his stable-yard. The curate was passing on his road to visit a former parishioner of his, now resident at Muddlesfield. The dog was sitting in the sun outside a kennel. It was a large kennel a very large kennel for a dog of his size. In fact it was not his kennel. You will observe that I was careful to use the indefinite article. I said distinctly, " out- side a kennel," and I will tell you why. We are apt to measure a man's greatness by the size of his 7 98 RATES AND TAXES. residence. I myself tower somewhere about six feet, more or less, but when I see a very little man indeed coming out of one of those big houses in some of those " gardens" in Kensington which are so-called because they have not a square foot of mould belonging to them, back or front and when I see that he comes out of one of those big houses with the air of a man to whom that house belongs, by lease or otherwise, I must confess I feel considerable awe for him, and cannot help looking on him as a great man. Which he probably either is or is not, but that does not affect my assertion, that we judge a man's greatness by the size of his residence. I may be told, probably shall be told critics I believe do not average more than four foot five and three quarters (I have a bad memory for figures, but Pm sure of the three quarters) that this is a sneer. But it is not. I am only anxious that my readers should not imagine from the extent of the kennel in question, which, to be precise, was about the size of n sugar barrel, that Brutus, the dog who was lying in the sun before it, was its rightful owner, and a great dog in his way. He was a representative dog certainly. He would have suited, supposing the franchise were extended to the canine population, almost any con- stituency ; for every individual dog in the largest borough could have found some point common to himself and Brutus. Not to put it too finely, Brutus was a mongrel. He had the head of a bull, the hair of a skye, the THE TRUE STORY OF C.ESAR AND BRUTUS. 99 legs of a turnspit,, the tail of a spaniel, the body of a Dandie Dinmont, and the colour of that celebrated dog at the French restaurant, who had to be sent to the wash every week with the tablecloths,, because he was very friendly, and all the customers wiped their fingers on him, no napkins being supplied. That colour I take it was about the colour of the kitchen jack-towel, when it is taken off the roller at the end of the week a decided neutral tint. But how, you will ask, did Dr. Valentine become possessed of such a cur ? Dr. Valentine was the very best judge of a dog in the whole county. Indeed, for horseflesh or dog- flesh there was no such knowing customer as the Doctor in the whole country-side. Don't you know the sort of man he was ? The terror of all the neighbourhood of the hospital he elected " to walk/' but yet an ardent student, as a young man; he became, when he settled down at Muddlesfield, the most popular medico in the district, working off his superfluous vitality in field sports, instead of ex- perimenting on the forces of the lever, as applied to door-knockers, or demonstrating the power of metal as a conductor of sound, by pulling off bell-handles. He knew every point of a horse, and the most audacious " chanter " in the neighbourhood never attempted to pass a screw off on him. And as for dogs, Whacky Stinger, the great local authority on matters canine, until the Doctor appeared, died in Swaffham jail, where he was waiting his trial for some little affair connected with pheasants, and 100 RATES AND TAXES. rather damaged keepers all the happier because he felt that his mantle, if I may so describe a velveteen jacket with a great many pockets and with brass buttons representing sporting objects, descended upon worthy shoulders. I don't want to be senti- mental, but I may mention that Whacky Stinger, whose only intimate acquaintance with the Doctor was one of five minutes' duration, when the latter thrashed him for ill-using a donkey, left him a legacy, which in Whacky 'a eyes was a considerable one. It was, indeed, all he had to leave. It was a bull-terrier called, ' ' Lady " a splendid animal ! The only thing I can compare her to is a machine of polished steel in a velvet skin. It was a treat to see her bound along by her master's side, every muscle and sinew working under her coat like the beams and bands of a steam-engine. The Doctor had to part with her, eventually, but not without con- siderable reluctance. The fact was, she would slip out at night and join her master's old companions who must have respected Whacky's last wishes, or they would have stolen her. She used to come home fagged out early next morning, sometimes with a shot corn or two in her flanks. And she knew a net at a glance, and would follow the Doctor into the garden, when he was going to cover the fruit-trees, with every expression of delight, as if she was glad to think he had at last discovered the object of life was catching hares. He had to part with her for fear of scandal, for she was a poacher born and bred. I only mentioned the incident THE TRUE STORY OF CAESAR AKD BRUTUS. 101 about Lady to show you that the Doctor was a judge of dogs. " But how/' I once more hear you ask, (C did Dr. Valentine, being such a judge of dogs, become possessed of such a cur as Brutus ?" If you will only give me time I will explain. The Doctor had a large black Newfoundland dog, whom he had brought with him from London, and who was his chief favourite and closest friend of all the four-footed creatures canine in his stable-yard. This dog, for no better reason than that other people had called their dogs so, he named Csesar. And Csesar was a noble animal, which Brutus was not, though called Brutus for an excellent reason. At the end of the Doctor's garden was a field, and at the bottom of the field was a pond. In this pond Cassar was wont to take his daily bath, for he tubbed as regularly as a Christian. One evening as the Doctor was smoking his pipe under his mulberry while Cassar was mumbling a very dry old bone indeed, as if, in fact, he were cutting the teeth of his memory on the recollection of a past feast, there came a handful of boys to the pond, some half dozen or so, evidently intent on some aquatic sport. The Doctor lazily wondered to himself what their object was. It was hardly the time for fishing, though, to be sure, there is 110 close season for stickleback as there is for salmon. Perhaps they were going to swim a boat. There was no wind up, which was a fact adverse to one's general ideas of sailing ; but then as they didn't want their boat, as a rule, to go 302 RATES AND TAXES. out of the reacli of their sticks, and least of all wished them to be blown across to the opposite side of the pond, which was in farmer Bagley's pasture, where the bull was, that might not matter. Or they might be going to bathe : an amusement which in this case would not entail a notion of cleanliness which is a fatal objection with boys. The pond was a stagnant one, very inky, and inhabited by very lively and tenacious leeches, all of which were reasons why the boys should bathe with additional zeal. So thought the Doctor to himself, idly exco- gitating, as he puffed out blue rings of smoke that rose quietly among the broad green leaves of the mulberry over his head, making the caterpillars unwell, and rousing one spider in particular, who was just in the way to get the biggest share of the smoke, into a paroxysm of fury, so that he shook his web furiously as if he were shaking a carpet. So thought the Doctor, I repeat. But so did not think Caesar. When first he heard the noise of the boys he connected it at once with the notion of annoyance, so he muttered a subdued grumble and stuck the tighter to his bone as much as to say, " they shan't get that." But presently, as the boys lingered round the pond, he cocked one ear in their direction, still keeping memory's coral in his mouth. But his attention was rapidly being weaned from the bone. He looked out of the corner of his eye a little while then lifted his head, letting the gnawed relic fall unnoticed on the grass. Then he sat up/ and putting his head on one side, looked very long THE TJSUE STORY OP C^SAE AND BKUTUS. 103 and earnestly towards the nrchins. At last he got up and taking a long contemplative stretch with his eyes still fixed in the same direction he walked to the edge of the terrace, where a sunk fence divided the garden from the field. But once there, he did not stop long. He said, " By Jove ! " and in another minute was bounding down the meadow. At this portion of my story an incredulous reader gives a whistle. Well, sir, what is it ? (C Why, you know come, I say hang it all, a dog can't say, ' By Jove !' it's quite ridiculous, you know." All I can say, sir, in reply to your statement is that if you never heard a dog say " By Jove \" you have not been in the habit of associating with the nobler animal. I have a dog at this present moment who is an accomplished conversationalist, and who, if she does not say "By Jove/' because it would not be ladylike, speaks English excellently, though with a slight Pomeranian accent. Why, I know a cat connected with a periodical in the City, who stands at the door of the publishing office every morning waiting for the gentleman who sells cat's meat and supplies her with her breakfast; and when he comes and holds out the matutinal skewer, she says, with the purest accent, "Mou!" which everybody knows is the Greek for " mine." And if a cat can talk Greek, pray why should not a dog invoke a Roman deity more especially when you remember there is such a thing as dog Latin ? 104 KATES AND TAXES. I repeat, therefore, that Csesar, having ex- claimed " By Jove !" leapt into the field and bounded down to the pond. The boys were too intent on their employment, whatever it might be, to notice him. But the Doctor, looking at them to see what had drawn so strong a remark from Caesar, saw them fling something into the water. It was a small dark object, apparently not inanimate, for it seemed to give a struggle as it flew through the air. Splash ! went the small object into the water. Almost at the same moment, Csesar, bounding through the group of boys, upsetting two on the muddy margin, and sending one over-shoes into the pond, arrived on the scene. There was another splash, and the big dog "leaped at the spot where the small object had vanished. He disappeared for a short second, and then came up carrying something in his mouth. Holding it up clear of the water he turned round and, with two rapid strokes, touched ground, and walked ashore. Then giving himself one good shake that sprinkled the dirty water contemptuously over the urchins, who wisely kept aloof, and did not attempt to interfere with him, Caesar trotted up the field, jumped into the garden, and coming up to his master, laid at his feet an ugly, half- drowned, muddy, mongrel puppy, with about half a brickbat attached to its neck. This half brickbat evidently not having been attached to the poor foundling's neck by its parent with a view to possible future identification, the- THE TRUE STORY OP OZBSAR AND BRUTUS. 105 Doctor whipped a lancet out of his pocket, and cut the string. Cassar was evidently quite delighted at the notice his master bestowed upon his protege. He was clearly very proud of his feat, though, probably, he never dreamt of such, a thing as a medal from the Humane Society. What was the Doctor to do with the little wretch? After the first impulse which led him to free it from the brickbat, he was quite at a loss what to do with it. Not so Csesar. Caesar, I have told you, was a dog who took his tub regularly, though in no purer element than the pond afforded. But as dogs turn up their noses at Eau de Cologne, and would probably delight in the odour of the gutters of that ill- savoured town, it is probable that Caesar after his bath believed himself not only washed but per- fumed which he undoubtedly was ; and so his desire for cleanliness remains unimpeached. He looked at the muddy, draggled puppy, and at once proceeded to clean him. Now, though Cassar could say " By Jove !" quite intelligibly, he did not carry a pocket-handkerchief, so he was obliged to have recourse to the red rag which nature had supplied him with, having placed it in the only pocket she provided him with a pocket, moreover, which, if you had put a pat of butter in it, you would have found had a hole in it. Well, Ca3sar set to work cleansing the puppy in what, considering his powers of language, I must call a primitive fashion. He licked him in the most amicable manner, and as he was large and strong, 106 BATES AND TAXES. and the puppy small and weak, and the process necessarily rather rough, he licked him half across the grass plot, and would probably have licked him all across it, and across the stable-yard into the road, if he had not brought up against the stem of the mulberry- tree. Having got him well against that, he contrived in time to get him comparatively clean. The process I have described as rough ; but you would, I daresay, say the same of the Humane Society's method of reviving the drowned. I am bound to say it did not much resemble the rules laid down by the Society in question, for in the course of the operation the puppy got stood on his head and rolled over and over. But it certainly did him good, for by the time he was clean of the mud, he was able to stand up and toddle about upon his odd legs always going straight forward with an air as if his head was so heavy it kept pulling him forward in spite of the efforts of his tail to balance it. He went straight forward until he ran up against something, when he would sit down on his hind quarters and regard the world with an injured and bewildered air, until he took it into his head to get up again, when his head would take him, in turn, and lead him in a fresh direction. All this CaBsar watched with the most affectionate interest, every now and then uttering such remarks as "hooray I" (he did not say "hurrah \" nobody ever does) and (C go it \" whenever the puppy did anything very clever, or the reverse. In a word, Caesar displayed such an evident THE TRUE STORY OF CAESAR AND BRUTUS. 107 attacliment to his waif, that the Doctor could not iind it in his heart to deprive him of the pup. So Caesar from that day forth took the youngster under his wing if a dog may be said to have a wing giving him a corner of his kennel and a share of his dinner. The next puzzle for the Doctor was how to christen the cur. At first he meditated calling him "" Comment aria/' in joking allusion to the Commen- taries which Caesar carried in his mouth when ho swam for his life in the bay of Alexandria. But the Doctor felt that the vulgar might mispronounce the name cc common tarrier" which, whatever else he might be, the puppy decidedly was not and that this might damage his reputation for a know- ledge of canine breeding, and that was a point he was sensitive upon, and perhaps all the more that he felt it due to the memory of Whacky Stinger to maintain his dignity in this respect. Finally, having a certain touch of a contrary spirit, just a mental cast in his eye and there is no really good fellow who has not some crotchet of the sort in his brain he determined to call the puppy Brutus. If you stand on your head you will see clearly the reason of his doing so. Indeed, the reason is obvious to the meanest capacity, so if you can't discover it, yours is not the meanest capacity, you will say. Of course I take it for granted that you know Brutus assassinated Caesar in the Capitol at Eome. He might if he had possessed a prophetic 108 RATES AND TAXES. spirit have called the puppy Brutus, because he was a brute. It would not have been a classical rendering, but I don't think the puppy would have discovered it. He certainly was a brute. In return for Caesar's unvarying kindness and consideration he displayed the most selfish and petty spite. In fact, he tyran- nized over the big dog, who, never having had children of his own to bring up, had spoilt him, and did not know how to correct the errors of his education as he grew older. The cur snapped and snarled at his preserver perpetually, and at last actually turned him out of his own kennel. Csesar had to sleep where he could, while Brutus stretched his limbs in the barrel full length and even then did not reach across it. As for bones, if Caesar wanted to enjoy his dinner he was obliged to take it on the roof of the pig- stye, which he could jump upon with ease, but which was beyond Brue's reach altogether. Even there, the peace of his meal must have been disturbed by the reflection that the moment he got down, the cur, who was waiting for him with unwearying malig- nity, would bite his legs and hang on his ears. Caesar bore all this persecution with wonderful serenity. But his master could not bear to see it. He gave Brue away several times ; but where his want of amiability did not lead to his return, his instinct did. He had given him to Tomkins, the grocer, who wanted a dog for a cheese warehouse, that was THE TRUE STORY OF OESAR AND BRUTUS. 109 overrun with rats. But Brutus, after eating half a Dutch cheese, and tearing Mrs. Tomkins' apron to ribbons when she went to chastise him, finished off by keeping Tomkins out of his own cheese store while Squire Gamble was at the door with his carriage waiting for some Stilton to take home for dinner. The Squire, learning the cause of the delay, had the weakness to praise Brue's spirit, whereupon the delighted Tomkins implored him to accept the beast as a peace-offering. The Squire, it so happened, was in want of a dog to guard his hen-house, so he accepted him ; and Brue, having been enticed out of the warehouse by a plate of meat, was snatched up and conveyed to the carriage, leaving a mark of his regard and esteem in the shape of a distinct impression of his canine teeth on the back of Tomkiiis* hand. But Brutus was not to stay long with Mr. Gamble. He certainly guarded the hen-house effect- ually so effectually that the servants could not get the eggs. But soon it was discovered that he had taken a liking to poultry, so he was removed from his post, for which deposition he avenged himself by tasting the calves of the little Gambles all round, topping up with the baby : whereupon he was pre- sented by the Squire to a neighbouring farmer. But Brutus suddenly developed a taste for milk, and was not to be kept out of the dairy, so he was transferred to Grimes, the gamekeeper first of all because Grimes did not keep cows, and therefore had no dairy , and secondly, because it was believed 110 RATES AND TAXES. that if Brutus ever was to be trained, here was the man to train him. But Brutus had not been in Grimes* possession a week before he turned his attention to sheep. Having hunted two or three into ditches,, and killed and half eaten a lamb, he was pronounced by Grimes to be incorrigible. So Grimes handed him back to the farmer, and the farmer returned him to the Squire, and the Squire took him to Tomkins again, and Tomkins brought him to the Doctor, with a long face and a longer tale of his misdeeds. "Why the deuce didn't some of 'em shoot him ?" thought the Doctor. But Cassar, poor, fool- ish, affectionate Cresar, was delighted to see his friend again. Brutus, however, had not been schooled by adversity, and did not appreciate the kindness he met. He resumed his old system of annoyance, and continued it until ono day exasperated beyond measure by some act of cruelty towards Caasar, the Doctor took him down to the canal and presented him to the proprietor of a barge, who promised to keep him tied up until he was miles away from Muddle sfield. And so he did. But the first use Brue made of his liberty was to bolt straight off home, finding his way by his most wonderful instinct, and arriving so thin, and hungry, and tired, that he did not even turn Cassar out of his own kennel, but lay down be- side him to sleep. The Doctor could not but admire him for his pluck and cleverness in finding his way ; and if Brue had only learnt experience from the THE TRUE STORY OP CAESAR AND BKUTUS. Ill past, all might have been well. But, alas, in a few days, as soon as lie had recovered the effects of his journey, Brue was in possession of the kennel, and Caesar was limping off with torn ears to sleep in the cart-shed. There sat Brue in front of the barrel, very cheeky and self-satisfied, snapping at the flies, and occasionally, when he thought the Doctor was look- ing at him, sweeping a little semicircle on the pebbles quite free from dust with his odd stump of a tail. He certainly did, in a sort of way, respect the Doctor there was so much grace in Brutus that he recognized his master, not in the sense of proprie- torship, but of power. There are people whom dogs understand at a glance, and respect as being their superiors. The Doctor was one of them. By some canine Freemasonry, he was quite at home with dogs. The most ferocious beasts at the farms, whe- ther he was called professionally, recognized him. It was not a familiar recognition such as one accords to an acquaintance, but that sort of acknowledg- ment of something in common which the stiffest Englishman is betrayed into when he meets another Englishman, quite a stranger to him, abroad. I can explain what I mean geometrically ; at least, I suppose I may call it geometrically. Every circle being divisible into a hundred and eighty degrees, you will understand what I mean when I say that a dog, recognizing his master from the ownership point of view, describes by the wag of his tail an arc of about forty-five degrees. If he adds to this sense 112 RATES AND TAXES. of ownership a feeling of affectionate attachment, he will extend the arc to ninety degrees ; perhaps, if he is very demonstrative and impulsive, going so far as even to touch one hundred and thirty-five degrees. (I defy a dog of the most active and affectionate nature to manage a hundred and eighty, and would not recommend any enterprising dog, Tinder whose notice these pages may chance to come, to try it, for fear of dislocation.) Well, the way in which a strange dog owned the Doctor was by describing with his index, very slowly and distinctly, an arc not exceeding twenty degrees and only once. This is a good deal too much about a dog's tail, perhaps. But the digression will be pardoned by those who know what an important feature it is. It is the kynometer : if you watch it, you will know what doggy is thinking about, which, if you are foolish enough to have been alarmed by the late absurd panic about dogs, is a matter you will pro- bably think important. To be sure, I have known a dog who wagged his tail when he bit you. But he was the victim of over civilization, having mixed too much with some human beings, whom no Act of Parliament has ordered to be muzzled, and nobody thinks of shooting or drowning. But to return to Brutus. He sat, as I have described, in front of his kennel, describing an are of forty-five degrees I must be precise after my illustration with his stump of a tail, and winking as the sun fell full upon him. THE TRUE STOEY OF O3ESAR AND BRUTUS. 113 " You don't happen to want a dog, I suppose ?" said the Doctor. "Well, I don't know that I do/' said the curate. " Because/' said the Doctor, not noticing the reply, " if you do, there's the article \" " He's a sharp-looking customer." " He is, indeed. You want a dog better have him." " Do you really propose giving him to me ?" " My dear Mountford, I shall be delighted !" And that was the truth too, for the Doctor had determined to get rid of Brutus somehow that very day, and he didn't want to shoot him, for amongst other cranks, he was very scrupulous about taking life. He shot and he fished, it is true, but he con- sumed what he killed or caught, and had a horror of battues " shooting for the papers," as some one has very properly named such " sport." As for fox- hunting, I suppose he defended it on the ground that Keynard was vermin, though he would hardly have liked to apply so hard a name to a fellow he had such a sneaking kindness for. He was very glad, therefore, when the Reverend Meyrick Mountford, curate of Beechworth, showed an inclination to accept Brutus. "But how am I to get him home ?" asked Mountford. " Oh, I'll lend you a chain and collar. Keep him chained up for a day or two, feed him yourself, and he'll soon get fond of you, and follow you." 8 114 BATES AND TAXES. ' f Well, thank you, I will accept your offer." " Here, Mark \ }) shouted the Doctor. A shock-head made its appearance at the stable - door. " Mark, just get that collar and chain out of the surgery, and put it round Brue's neck for Mr. Mountford." Mark obeyed with alacrity, not unmixed with alarm when it came to the buckling of the collar round Brue's neck. I must confess the Doctor felt a little anxiety at that stage too. Mark expected to have the brute's fangs in his wrist, and his mas- ter dreaded some revelation of his evil disposition that would lead to Mountford's declining the pre- ferred gift. For a wonder, however, Brutus took the treatment quietly. "Ye durned ugly beggar," Mark confided to him, in a whisper, as he fastened the strap, ' c I'm mighty glad you're off; and I hope and trust the parson'll feed you on nowt but old sarmons and the rough end of a pea-stick. Ugh, ye beast !" Brutus quite understood all this, and replied with a brief exhibition of his back-teeth in a defiant grin. The man took the hint, and did not resume his address, but led Brue to where the curate was standing. " Just get a biscuit, Mark. You can put it in your pocket, Mountford, and give him a bit now and then, if he does not seem inclined to follow well." Armed with the biscuit and these directions, the confiding curate took a grateful farewell of the THE TEUE STOKY OP CLESAE AND BEUTUS. 115 Doctor, and set off homeward leading his precious charge. The Doctor looked after him until he turned the corner of the lane. Then he gave a sigh of relief. ' ' Well, I'm glad I've got rid of that ' ornary cuss/ I only hope he wont turn upon Mount- ford on his way across the fields, and rend him. However, Mountford's a bachelor, and I suppose was accustomed to a dog when he was at college. The beast can't do much harm with him. I trust, too, he wont take him into the school-room with him, for after his experience with the little Gambles he'll never be able to resist a nip at the bare legs. I wonder how long he'll keep him, or what will become of him." With these words, the Doctor gave the reins a shake, and set out on his rounds. CHAPTER II. THE CUEATE'S DOG. MEYEICK MOUNTFOED was one of those quiet, inoffen- sive men who follow everybody's inclinations but their own. I doubt whether he ever really had an inclination of his own from mere force of the habit of letting others direct him. "I suppose you would like to go to college," said his uncle. Meyrick had been left an orphan 116 BATES AND TAXES. when lie was very young, and his uncle was his guardian. (f I suppose you would like to go to college ?" said his uncle ; and Meyrick, who had never given the matter a moment's thought, said " Yes," at once ; not because the idea, so suddenly suggested, seemed to open up a pleasant prospect, but simply because he had not the courage to say, " No." If his guardian had put the question in another form ; if he had said, " You wouldn't like to go to col- lege?" Meyrick would have promptly disclaimed any desire for academic honours. But as his uncle framed the question in the way he did, it was determined that Meyrick should go to college " as he wished." When asked to decide, between Oxford and Cambridge, he was quite at a loss which to choose, until his uncle began to say that "he himself was an Oxford man, but " whereupon Meyrick selected Oxford on the spot. He went up to Oxford accordingly, and entered at Balliol, where the tutors expected great things of him. He was very studious and steady, and the dons talked of him among themselves as one of their promising colts. In due time he went in for his " little go." Through his paper work he came triumphantly, for the questions, being carefully framed so as to be vague, were all so worded that he was not tempted by his acquiescing disposition to yield a point, as he would have considered, to the examiners. But at last came the fatal hour of -viva voce exa- THE TEUE STORY OF C^SAR AND BRUTUS. 117 mination. By ill luck it fell to Meyrick's lot to be examined by old Pragmatt of Oriel. There was at this time a tacit contest going on between the two colleges as to the number of classmen they could turn out, and old Pragmatt was a warm partizan of his own college, and carried his animosity so far, being an examiner in the schools, as to give very severe handling to all Balliol candidates, even when they were only in for a pass. His first question to Meyrick was so artfully con- trived, that it suggested the wrong answer. And Meyrick, with the internal consciousness of what was right, answered wrong. Old Pragmatt was de- lighted. He chuckled inwardly till his jolly red gills became almost purple, thinking that he had led the Balliol man into a trap. He tried again, and again. And still poor Meyrick allowed himself to be misled, in spite of his knowledge that he was going wrong. At last, the hopeless state of complication into which he was carried became too fearful even for him to bear. The men who were in the schools were tittering, and the other examiners could hardly help smiling. Meyrick even could not stand this any longer. " If if you would allow me if if you were to to give it me to do on on paper/' he stam- mered. That was enough ! He had given old Pragmatt his opportunity. Tearing off from the corner of a sheet of paper that was lying before him a fragment about the size of his thumb-nail, old P. gravely handed it to Meyrick, with these words 118 KATES AND TAXES. " Go to your seat, sir,, and write clown, all you know on that I" You may guess after this there was no testamur for Gulielmus Meyrick Mountford, e, Coll. Ball./* when the clerk of the schools distributed his shilling slips of paper that afternoon. Meyrick was plucked. They were very strict at Balliol in such matters, so he had to migrate to the Hall. He went to St. Mary Hall, better known as Skimmery, probably on account of the superficial nature of the learning acquired there. From St. Mary Hall poor Meyrick managed to pass all his examinations, not without a few failures. And then he took his degree. " What do you mean to do now ?" asked his guardian, "Do you think of taking orders ?" Of course, the immediate answer was, " Yes /' and, as a consequence, in a few months he was appointed to the curacy of Beechworth. And curate of Beechworth he was likely to be till the day of his death, though I believe, if it had suddenly occurred to Lord Russell (or Lord Shaftesbury, perhaps I should say,) to go down and say to him, "Meyrick Mountford, you would like to be Archbishop of Canterbury/- 7 he would not have hesitated one single instant to say, tf Yes, my lord." As such a course, however, did not suggest itself to the Prime- Minister, Meyrick still remained curate of Beech- worth, and owing to that fact, became owner of that remarkable dog, Brutus. Meyrick did not want a dog. When Valentine THE TEUE STOBY OF GESAR AND BEUTUS. 119 said to him,