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A Story

W >> William Makepeace Thackeray >> A Story




Oh, my dear madam! you thought we were going to tell you. Pooh!
nonsense!--no such thing! not for two or three and seventy pages or
so,--when, perhaps, you MAY know what Mrs. Catherine never would
have done.

The reader will remember, in the second chapter of these Memoirs,
the announcement that Mrs. Catherine had given to the world a child,
who might bear, if he chose, the arms of Galgenstein, with the
further adornment of a bar-sinister. This child had been put out to
nurse some time before its mother's elopement from the Count; and as
that nobleman was in funds at the time (having had that success at
play which we duly chronicled), he paid a sum of no less than twenty
guineas, which was to be the yearly reward of the nurse into whose
charge the boy was put. The woman grew fond of the brat; and when,
after the first year, she had no further news or remittances from
father or mother, she determined, for a while at least, to maintain
the infant at her own expense; for, when rebuked by her neighbours
on this score, she stoutly swore that no parents could ever desert
their children, and that some day or other she should not fail to be
rewarded for her trouble with this one.

Under this strange mental hallucination poor Goody Billings, who had
five children and a husband of her own, continued to give food and
shelter to little Tom for a period of no less than seven years; and
though it must be acknowledged that the young gentleman did not in
the slightest degree merit the kindnesses shown to him, Goody
Billings, who was of a very soft and pitiful disposition, continued
to bestow them upon him: because, she said, he was lonely and
unprotected, and deserved them more than other children who had
fathers and mothers to look after them. If, then, any difference
was made between Tom's treatment and that of her own brood, it was
considerably in favour of the former; to whom the largest
proportions of treacle were allotted for his bread, and the
handsomest supplies of hasty pudding. Besides, to do Mrs. Billings
justice, there WAS a party against him; and that consisted not only
of her husband and her five children, but of every single person in
the neighbourhood who had an opportunity of seeing and becoming
acquainted with Master Tom.

A celebrated philosopher--I think Miss Edgeworth--has broached the
consolatory doctrine, that in intellect and disposition all human
beings are entirely equal, and that circumstance and education are
the causes of the distinctions and divisions which afterwards
unhappily take place among them. Not to argue this question, which
places Jack Howard and Jack Thurtell on an exact level,--which would
have us to believe that Lord Melbourne is by natural gifts and
excellences a man as honest, brave, and far-sighted as the Duke of
Wellington,--which would make out that Lord Lyndhurst is, in point
of principle, eloquence, and political honesty, no better than Mr.
O'Connell,--not, I say, arguing this doctrine, let us simply state
that Master Thomas Billings (for, having no other, he took the name
of the worthy people who adopted him) was in his long-coats
fearfully passionate, screaming and roaring perpetually, and showing
all the ill that he COULD show. At the age of two, when his
strength enabled him to toddle abroad, his favourite resort was the
coal-hole or the dung-heap: his roarings had not diminished in the
least, and he had added to his former virtues two new ones,--a love
of fighting and stealing; both which amiable qualities he had many
opportunities of exercising every day. He fought his little
adoptive brothers and sisters; he kicked and cuffed his father and
mother; he fought the cat, stamped upon the kittens, was worsted in
a severe battle with the hen in the backyard; but, in revenge,
nearly beat a little sucking-pig to death, whom he caught alone and
rambling near his favourite haunt, the dung-hill. As for stealing,
he stole the eggs, which he perforated and emptied; the butter,
which he ate with or without bread, as he could find it; the sugar,
which he cunningly secreted in the leaves of a "Baker's Chronicle,"
that nobody in the establishment could read; and thus from the pages
of history he used to suck in all he knew--thieving and lying
namely; in which, for his years, he made wonderful progress. If any
followers of Miss Edgeworth and the philosophers are inclined to
disbelieve this statement, or to set it down as overcharged and
distorted, let them be assured that just this very picture was, of
all the pictures in the world, taken from nature. I, Ikey Solomons,
once had a dear little brother who could steal before he could walk
(and this not from encouragement,--for, if you know the world, you
must know that in families of our profession the point of honour is
sacred at home,--but from pure nature)--who could steal, I say,
before he could walk, and lie before he could speak; and who, at
four and a half years of age, having attacked my sister Rebecca on
some question of lollipops, had smitten her on the elbow with a
fire-shovel, apologising to us by saying simply, "---- her, I wish
it had been her head!" Dear, dear Aminadab! I think of you, and
laugh these philosophers to scorn. Nature made you for that career
which you fulfilled: you were from your birth to your dying a
scoundrel; you COULDN'T have been anything else, however your lot
was cast; and blessed it was that you were born among the prigs,-
-for had you been of any other profession, alas! alas! what ills
might you have done! As I have heard the author of "Richelieu,"
"Siamese Twins," etc. say "Poeta nascitur non fit," which means that
though he had tried ever so much to be a poet, it was all moonshine:
in the like manner, I say, "ROAGUS nascitur, non fit." We have it
from nature, and so a fig for Miss Edgeworth.

In this manner, then, while his father, blessed with a wealthy wife,
was leading, in a fine house, the life of a galley-slave; while his
mother, married to Mr. Hayes, and made an honest women of, as the
saying is, was passing her time respectably in Warwickshire, Mr.
Thomas Billings was inhabiting the same county, not cared for by
either of them; but ordained by Fate to join them one day, and have
a mighty influence upon the fortunes of both. For, as it has often
happened to the traveller in the York or the Exeter coach to fall
snugly asleep in his corner, and on awaking suddenly to find himself
sixty or seventy miles from the place where Somnus first visited
him: as, we say, although you sit still, Time, poor wretch, keeps
perpetually running on, and so must run day and night, with never a
pause or a halt of five minutes to get a drink, until his dying day;
let the reader imagine that since he left Mrs. Hayes and all the
other worthy personages of this history, in the last chapter, seven
years have sped away; during which, all our heroes and heroines have
been accomplishing their destinies.

Seven years of country carpentering, or rather trading, on the part
of a husband, of ceaseless scolding, violence, and discontent on the
part of a wife, are not pleasant to describe: so we shall omit
altogether any account of the early married life of Mr. and Mrs.
John Hayes. The "Newgate Calendar" (to which excellent compilation
we and the OTHER popular novelists of the day can never be
sufficiently grateful) states that Hayes left his house three or
four times during this period, and, urged by the restless humours of
his wife, tried several professions: returning, however, as he grew
weary of each, to his wife and his paternal home. After a certain
time his parents died, and by their demise he succeeded to a small
property, and the carpentering business, which he for some time
followed.

What, then, in the meanwhile, had become of Captain Wood, or Brock,
and Ensign Macshane?--the only persons now to be accounted for in
our catalogue. For about six months after their capture and release
of Mr. Hayes, those noble gentlemen had followed, with much prudence
and success, that trade which the celebrated and polite Duval, the
ingenious Sheppard, the dauntless Turpin, and indeed many other
heroes of our most popular novels, had pursued,--or were pursuing,
in their time. And so considerable were said to be Captain Wood's
gains, that reports were abroad of his having somewhere a buried
treasure; to which he might have added more, had not Fate suddenly
cut short his career as a prig. He and the Ensign were--shame to
say--transported for stealing three pewter-pots off a railing at
Exeter; and not being known in the town, which they had only reached
that morning, they were detained by no further charges, but simply
condemned on this one. For this misdemeanour, Her Majesty's
Government vindictively sent them for seven years beyond the sea;
and, as the fashion then was, sold the use of their bodies to
Virginian planters during that space of time. It is thus, alas!
that the strong are always used to deal with the weak, and many an
honest fellow has been led to rue his unfortunate difference with
the law.

Thus, then, we have settled all scores. The Count is in Holland
with his wife; Mrs. Cat in Warwickshire along with her excellent
husband; Master Thomas Billings with his adoptive parents in the
same county; and the two military gentlemen watching the progress
and cultivation of the tobacco and cotton plant in the New World.
All these things having passed between the acts,
dingaring-a-dingaring-a-dingledingleding, the drop draws up, and the
next act begins. By the way, the play ENDS with a drop: but that
is neither here nor there.

* * *

(Here, as in a theatre, the orchestra is supposed to play something
melodious. The people get up, shake themselves, yawn, and settle
down in their seats again. "Porter, ale, ginger-beer, cider," comes
round, squeezing through the legs of the gentlemen in the pit.
Nobody takes anything, as usual; and lo! the curtain rises again.
"Sh, 'shsh, 'shshshhh! Hats off!" says everybody.)

* * *

Mrs. Hayes had now been for six years the adored wife of Mr. Hayes,
and no offspring had arisen to bless their loves and perpetuate
their name. She had obtained a complete mastery over her lord and
master; and having had, as far as was in that gentleman's power,
every single wish gratified that she could demand, in the way of
dress, treats to Coventry and Birmingham, drink, and what not--for,
though a hard man, John Hayes had learned to spend his money pretty
freely on himself and her--having had all her wishes gratified, it
was natural that she should begin to find out some more; and the
next whim she hit upon was to be restored to her child. It may be
as well to state that she had never informed her husband of the
existence of that phenomenon, although he was aware of his wife's
former connection with the Count,--Mrs. Hayes, in their matrimonial
quarrels, invariably taunting him with accounts of her former
splendour and happiness, and with his own meanness of taste in
condescending to take up with his Excellency's leavings.

She determined, then (but as yet had not confided her determination
to her husband), she would have her boy; although in her seven
years' residence within twenty miles of him she had never once
thought of seeing him: and the kind reader knows that when his
excellent lady determines on a thing--a shawl, or an opera-box, or a
new carriage, or twenty-four singing-lessons from Tamburini, or a
night at the "Eagle Tavern," City Road, or a ride in a 'bus to
Richmond and tea and brandy-and-water at "Rose Cottage Hotel"--the
reader, high or low, knows that when Mrs. Reader desires a thing
have it she will; you may just as well talk of avoiding her as of
avoiding gout, bills, or grey hairs--and that, you know, is
impossible. I, for my part, have had all three--ay, and a wife too.

I say that when a woman is resolved on a thing, happen it will; if
husbands refuse, Fate will interfere (flectere si nequeo, etc.; but
quotations are odious). And some hidden power was working in the
case of Mrs. Hayes, and, for its own awful purposes, lending her its
aid.

Who has not felt how he works--the dreadful conquering Spirit of
Ill? Who cannot see, in the circle of his own society, the fated
and foredoomed to woe and evil? Some call the doctrine of destiny a
dark creed; but, for me, I would fain try and think it a consolatory
one. It is better, with all one's sins upon one's head, to deem
oneself in the hands of Fate, than to think--with our fierce
passions and weak repentances; with our resolves so loud, so vain,
so ludicrously, despicably weak and frail; with our dim, wavering,
wretched conceits about virtue, and our irresistible propensity to
wrong,--that we are the workers of our future sorrow or happiness.
If we depend on our strength, what is it against mighty
circumstance? If we look to ourselves, what hope have we? Look
back at the whole of your life, and see how Fate has mastered you
and it. Think of your disappointments and your successes. Has YOUR
striving influenced one or the other? A fit of indigestion puts
itself between you and honours and reputation; an apple plops on
your nose and makes you a world's wonder and glory; a fit of poverty
makes a rascal of you, who were, and are still, an honest man;
clubs, trumps, or six lucky mains at dice, make an honest man for
life of you, who ever were, will be, and are a rascal. Who sends
the illness? who causes the apple to fall? who deprives you of your
worldly goods? or who shuffles the cards, and brings trumps, honour,
virtue, and prosperity back again? You call it chance; ay, and so
it is chance that when the floor gives way, and the rope stretches
tight, the poor wretch before St. Sepulchre's clock dies. Only with
us, clear-sighted mortals as we are, we can't SEE the rope by which
we hang, and know not when or how the drop may fall.

But revenons a nos moutons: let us return to that sweet lamb Master
Thomas, and the milk-white ewe Mrs. Cat. Seven years had passed
away, and she began to think that she should very much like to see
her child once more. It was written that she should; and you shall
hear how, soon after, without any great exertions of hers, back he
came to her.

In the month of July, in the year 1715, there came down a road about
ten miles from the city of Worcester, two gentlemen; not mounted,
Templar-like, upon one horse, but having a horse between them--a
sorry bay, with a sorry saddle, and a large pack behind it; on which
each by turn took a ride. Of the two, one was a man of excessive
stature, with red hair, a very prominent nose, and a faded military
dress; while the other, an old weather-beaten, sober-looking
personage, wore the costume of a civilian--both man and dress
appearing to have reached the autumnal, or seedy state. However,
the pair seemed, in spite of their apparent poverty, to be passably
merry. The old gentleman rode the horse; and had, in the course of
their journey, ridden him two miles at least in every three. The
tall one walked with immense strides by his side; and seemed,
indeed, as if he could have quickly outstripped the four-footed
animal, had he chosen to exert his speed, or had not affection for
his comrade retained him at his stirrup.

A short time previously the horse had cast a shoe; and this the tall
man on foot had gathered up, and was holding in his hand: it having
been voted that the first blacksmith to whose shop they should come
should be called upon to fit it again upon the bay horse.

"Do you remimber this counthry, Meejor?" said the tall man, who was
looking about him very much pleased, and sucking a flower. "I think
thim green cornfields is prettier looking at than the d----- tobacky
out yondther, and bad lack to it!"

"I recollect the place right well, and some queer pranks we played
here seven years agone," responded the gentleman addressed as Major.
"You remember that man and his wife, whom we took in pawn at the
'Three Rooks'?"

"And the landlady only hung last Michaelmas?" said the tall man,
parenthetically.

"Hang the landlady!--we've got all we ever would out of HER, you
know. But about the man and woman. You went after the chap's
mother, and, like a jackass, as you are, let him loose. Well, the
woman was that Catherine that you've often heard me talk about. I
like the wench, ---- her, for I almost brought her up; and she was
for a year or two along with that scoundrel Galgenstein, who has
been the cause of my ruin."

"The inferrnal blackguard and ruffian!" said the tall man; who, with
his companion, has no doubt been recognised by the reader.

"Well, this Catherine had a child by Galgenstein; and somewhere here
hard by the woman lived to whom we carried the brat to nurse. She
was the wife of a blacksmith, one Billings: it won't be out of the
way to get our horse shod at his house, if he is alive still, and we
may learn something about the little beast. I should be glad to see
the mother well enough."

"Do I remimber her?" said the Ensign. "Do I remimber whisky? Sure
I do, and the snivelling sneak her husband, and the stout old lady
her mother-in-law, and the dirty one-eyed ruffian who sold me the
parson's hat that had so nearly brought me into trouble. Oh but it
was a rare rise we got out of them chaps, and the old landlady
that's hanged too!" And here both Ensign Macshane and Major Brock,
or Wood, grinned, and showed much satisfaction.

It will be necessary to explain the reason of it. We gave the
British public to understand that the landlady of the "Three Rooks,"
at Worcester, was a notorious fence, or banker of thieves; that is,
a purchaser of their merchandise. In her hands Mr. Brock and his
companion had left property to the amount of sixty or seventy
pounds, which was secreted in a cunning recess in a chamber of the
"Three Rooks" known only to the landlady and the gentlemen who
banked with her; and in this place, Mr. Sicklop, the one-eyed man
who had joined in the Hayes adventure, his comrade, and one or two
of the topping prigs of the county, were free. Mr. Sicklop had been
shot dead in a night attack near Bath: the landlady had been
suddenly hanged, as an accomplice in another case of robbery; and
when, on their return from Virginia, our two heroes, whose hopes of
livelihood depended upon it, had bent their steps towards Worcester,
they were not a little frightened to hear of the cruel fate of the
hostess and many of the amiable frequenters of the "Three Rooks."
All the goodly company were separated; the house was no longer an
inn. Was the money gone too? At least it was worth while to look--
which Messrs. Brock and Macshane determined to do.

The house being now a private one, Mr. Brock, with a genius that was
above his station, visited its owner, with a huge portfolio under
his arm, and, in the character of a painter, requested permission to
take a particular sketch from a particular window. The Ensign
followed with the artist's materials (consisting simply of a
screwdriver and a crowbar); and it is hardly necessary to say that,
when admission was granted to them, they opened the well-known door,
and to their inexpressible satisfaction discovered, not their own
peculiar savings exactly, for these had been appropriated instantly,
on hearing of their transportation, but stores of money and goods to
the amount of near three hundred pounds: to which Mr. Macshane said
they had as just and honourable a right as anybody else. And so
they had as just a right as anybody--except the original owners:
but who was to discover them?

With this booty they set out on their journey--anywhere, for they
knew not whither; and it so chanced that when their horse's shoe
came off, they were within a few furlongs of the cottage of Mr.
Billings, the blacksmith. As they came near, they were saluted by
tremendous roars issuing from the smithy. A small boy was held
across the bellows, two or three children of smaller and larger
growth were holding him down, and many others of the village were
gazing in at the window, while a man, half-naked, was lashing the
little boy with a whip, and occasioning the cries heard by the
travellers. As the horse drew up, the operator looked at the new-
comers for a moment, and then proceeded incontinently with his work;
belabouring the child more fiercely than ever.

When he had done, he turned round to the new-comers and asked how he
could serve them? whereupon Mr. Wood (for such was the name he
adopted, and by such we shall call him to the end) wittily remarked
that however he might wish to serve THEM, he seemed mightily
inclined to serve that young gentleman first.

"It's no joking matter," said the blacksmith: "if I don't serve him
so now, he'll be worse off in his old age. He'll come to the
gallows, as sure as his name is Bill---never mind what his name is."
And so saying, he gave the urchin another cut; which elicited, of
course, another scream.

"Oh! his name is Bill?" said Captain Wood.

"His name's NOT Bill!" said the blacksmith, sulkily. "He's no name;
and no heart, neither. My wife took the brat in, seven years ago,
from a beggarly French chap to nurse, and she kept him, for she was
a good soul" (here his eyes began to wink), "and she's--she's gone
now" (here he began fairly to blubber). "And d--- him, out of love
for her, I kept him too, and the scoundrel is a liar and a thief.
This blessed day, merely to vex me and my boys here, he spoke ill of
her, he did, and I'll--cut--his--life--out--I--will!" and with each
word honest Mulciber applied a whack on the body of little Tom
Billings; who, by shrill shrieks, and oaths in treble, acknowledged
the receipt of the blows.

"Come, come," said Mr. Wood, "set the boy down, and the bellows
a-going; my horse wants shoeing, and the poor lad has had strapping
enough."

The blacksmith obeyed, and cast poor Master Thomas loose. As he
staggered away and looked back at his tormentor, his countenance
assumed an expression which made Mr. Wood say, grasping hold of
Macshane's arm, "It's the boy, it's the boy! When his mother gave
Galgenstein the laudanum, she had the self-same look with her!"

"Had she really now?" said Mr. Macshane. "And pree, Meejor, who WAS
his mother?"

"Mrs. Cat, you fool!" answered Wood.

"Then, upon my secred word of honour, she has a mighty fine KITTEN
anyhow, my dear. Aha!"

"They don't DROWN such kittens," said Mr. Wood, archly; and
Macshane, taking the allusion, clapped his finger to his nose in
token of perfect approbation of his commander's sentiment.

While the blacksmith was shoeing the horse, Mr. Wood asked him many
questions concerning the lad whom he had just been chastising, and
succeeded, beyond a doubt, in establishing his identity with the
child whom Catherine Hall had brought into the world seven years
since. Billings told him of all the virtues of his wife, and the
manifold crimes of the lad: how he stole, and fought, and lied, and
swore; and though the youngest under his roof, exercised the most
baneful influence over all the rest of his family. He was
determined at last, he said, to put him to the parish, for he did
not dare to keep him.

"He's a fine whelp, and would fetch ten pieces in Virginny," sighed
the Ensign.

"Crimp, of Bristol, would give five for him," said Mr. Wood,
ruminating.

"Why not take him?" said the Ensign.

"Faith, why not?" said Mr. Wood. "His keep, meanwhile, will not be
sixpence a day." Then turning round to the blacksmith, "Mr.
Billings," said he, "you will be surprised, perhaps, to hear that I
know everything regarding that poor lad's history. His mother was
an unfortunate lady of high family, now no more; his father a German
nobleman, Count de Galgenstein by name."

"The very man!" said Billings: "a young, fair-haired man, who came
here with the child, and a dragoon sergeant."

"Count de Galgenstein by name, who, on the point of death,
recommended the infant to me."

"And did he pay you seven years' boarding?" said Mr. Billings, who
was quite alive at the very idea.

"Alas, sir, not a jot! He died, sir, six hundred pounds in my debt;
didn't he, Ensign?"

"Six hundred, upon my secred honour! I remember when he got into
the house along with the poli--"

"Psha! what matters it?" here broke out Mr. Wood, looking fiercely
at the Ensign. "Six hundred pounds he owes me: how was he to pay
you? But he told me to take charge of this boy, if I found him; and
found him I have, and WILL take charge of him, if you will hand him
over."

"Send our Tom!" cried Billings. And when that youth appeared,
scowling, and yet trembling, and prepared, as it seemed, for another
castigation, his father, to his surprise, asked him if he was
willing to go along with those gentlemen, or whether he would be a
good lad and stay with him.

Mr. Tom replied immediately, "I won't be a good lad, and I'd rather
go to ---- than stay with you!"

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