Part 8 (1/2)
The subject then dropped, and it was a considerable time afterwards, and under altogether altered circ.u.mstances, when the newly-married couple once more crossed my path in life.
It was about eight months after his marriage--though he had been profitably enough employed in the interim--that Henry Mason, in consequence of the welcome announcement that the new brig was at last ready for her captain and cargo, arrived in London to enter upon his new appointment.
”These lodgings, Esther,” said he, as he was preparing to go out, soon after breakfast, on the morning after his arrival, ”are scarcely the thing; and as I, like you, am a stranger in c.o.c.kney-land, I had better consult some of the firm upon the subject, before we decide upon permanent ones. In the meantime, you and w.i.l.l.y must mind and keep in doors when I am not with you, or I shall have one or other of you lost in this great wilderness of a city. I shall return in two or three hours. I will order something for dinner as I go along: I have your purse.
Good-by: G.o.d bless you both.”
Inquiring his way every two or three minutes, Mason presently found himself in the vicinity of Tower Stairs. A scuffle in front of a public-house attracted his attention; and his ready sympathies were in an instant enlisted in behalf of a young sailor, vainly struggling in the grasp of several athletic men, and crying l.u.s.tily on the gaping bystanders for help. Mason sprang forward, caught one of the a.s.sailants by the collar, and hurled him with some violence against the wall. A fierce outcry greeted this audacious interference with gentlemen who, in those good old times, were but executing the law in a remarkably good old manner. Lieutenant Donnagheu, a somewhat celebrated snapper-up of loose mariners, emerged upon the scene; and in a few minutes was enabled to exult in the secure possession of an additional prize in the unfortunate Henry Mason, who, too late, discovered that he had embroiled himself with a _pressgang_! Desperate, frenzied were the efforts he made to extricate himself from the peril in which he had rashly involved himself. In vain!
His protestations that he was a mate, a captain, in the merchant service, were unheeded or mocked at.
To all his remonstrances he only got the professional answer--”His majesty wants you, and that is enough; so come along, and no more about it.”
Bruised, exhausted, almost mad, he was borne off in triumph to a boat, into which he was thrust with several others, and swiftly rowed off to a receiving-s.h.i.+p in the river. Even there his a.s.sertions and protestations were of no avail. Nothing but an Admiralty order, the officer in command candidly told him, should effect his liberation. His majesty was in need of seamen; and he was evidently too smart a one to be deprived of the glory of serving his country. ”You must therefore,” concluded the officer, as he turned laughingly upon his heel, ”do as thousands of other fine fellows have been compelled to do--'grin and bear it.'” In about three weeks from the date of his impressment Mason found himself serving in the Mediterranean on board the ”Active” frigate, Captain Alexander Gordon, without having been permitted one opportunity of communicating with the sh.o.r.e. This was certainly very sharp, but it was not the less very _common_ practice in those great days of triumphant battles by land and sea.
Very drearily pa.s.sed the time with the bereaved wife. Her husband had promised to send home something for dinner, and various groceries; yet hour after hour went past, and nothing arrived. Morning flushed into noon, day faded to twilight, and still the well-known and always eager step sounded not upon the stairs! What could have detained him from his wife, shut up, imprisoned, as it were, in that hot, hurrying, stifling city? She feared to listen to the suggestions of her boding heart; and with feverish restlessness ran out upon the landing, and peered over the stairs every time a knock or ring was heard at the street-door. This strange behavior was, it seems, noticed by the landlady of the lodging-house, and injuriously interpreted. A knock came to the door, and that person entered to know at what time _Mrs_. ----, she had forgotten the young woman's name, expected the dinner, she, the landlady, had undertaken to cook.
Esther timidly replied that her husband had promised to return in two or three hours at latest; and that she did not comprehend his continued absence--was indeed quite alarmed about it--
”Your husband!” said the woman, glancing insolently at Esther's figure.
”Are you sure he _is_ your husband?”
The hot blood suffused the temples of the indignant wife as she said, ”This apartment, madam, I believe is mine?”
”Oh, certainly, as long as you can pay for it;” and rudely slamming the door, the landlady departed.
The long wretched night at last over, Esther rose with the light; and after giving her son his breakfast from the remains of that of the day before, set off with him to the place of business of the Messrs. Roberts.
It was early, and one clerk only had as yet arrived at the office. He informed her that Mr. Henry Mason had not been seen, and that the partners were greatly annoyed about it, as his immediate presence was absolutely necessary.
Stunned, terrified, bewildered by the frightful calamity which she believed had befallen her, she felt convinced that her husband had been entrapped and murdered for the sake of the money he had about him: the wretched woman tottered back to her lodgings, and threw herself on the bed in wild despair. What was to be done for food even for her boy? Her husband had not only his pocket-book with him containing his larger money, but had taken her purse! She was alone and penniless in a strange city! The hungry wailings of her witless child towards evening at length aroused her from the stupor of despair into which she had fallen. The miserable resource of p.a.w.ning occurred to her: she could at least, by pledging a part of her wardrobe, procure sustenance for her child till she could hear from her sister; and with trembling hands she began arranging a bundle of such things as she could best spare, when the landlady abruptly entered the room, with a peremptory demand--as her husband was not returned, and did not appear likely to do so--for a month's rent in advance, that being the term the apartments were engaged for. The tears, entreaties, expostulations of the miserable wife were of no avail. Not one article, the woman declared, should leave her house till her claim was settled. She affected to doubt, perhaps really did so, that Esther was married; and hinted coa.r.s.ely at an enforcement of the laws against persons who had no visible means of subsistence. In a paroxysm of despair, the unhappy woman rushed out of the house; and accompanied by her hungry child, again sought the counting-house of the Messrs. Roberts. She was now as much too late as she had been too early in the morning: the partners and clerks had gone, and she appears to have been treated with some rudeness by the porter, who was closing the premises when she arrived. Possibly the wildness of her looks, and the incoherence of her speech and manner, produced an impression unfavorable to her. Retracing her steps--penniless, hungry, sick at heart--she thought, as she afterwards declared, that she recognized my wife in one of the numerous ladies seated before the counters of a fas.h.i.+onable shop in one of the busiest thoroughfares. She entered, and not till she approached close to the lady discovered her mistake. She turned despairingly away; when a piece of rich lace, lying apparently unheeded on the counter, met her eye, and a dreadful suggestion crossed her fevered brain; here at least was the means of procuring food for her wailing child. She glanced hastily and fearfully round. No eye, she thought, observed her; and, horror of horrors! a moment afterwards she had concealed the lace beneath her shawl, and with tottering feet was hastily leaving the shop. She had not taken half-a-dozen steps when a heavy hand was laid upon her shoulder, and a voice, as of a serpent hissing in her ear, commanded her to restore the lace she had stolen.
Transfixed with shame and terror, she stood rooted to the spot, and the lace fell on the floor.
”Fetch an officer,” said the harsh voice, addressing one of the shopmen.
”No--no--no!” screamed the wretched woman, falling on her knees in wild supplication. ”For my child's sake--in mercy of the innocent babe as yet unborn--pity and forgive me!”
The harsh order was iterated; and Esther Mason, fainting with shame and agony, was conveyed to the prison in Giltspur Street. The next day she was fully committed to Newgate on the capital charge of privately stealing in a shop to the value of five pounds. A few hours after her incarceration within those terrible walls, she was prematurely delivered of a female child.
I have no moral doubt whatever, I never have had, that at the time of the committal of the felonious act, the intellect of Esther Mason was disordered. Any other supposition is inconsistent with the whole tenor of her previous life and character ”Lead us not into temptation” is indeed the holiest, because the humblest prayer.
Three weeks had elapsed before the first intimation of these events reached me, in a note from the chaplain of Newgate, an excellent, kind-hearted man, to whom Mrs. Mason had confided her sad story. I immediately hastened to the prison; and in a long interview with her, elicited the foregoing statement. I readily a.s.sured her that all which legal skill could do to extricate her from the awful position in which she stood, the gravity of which I did not affect to conceal, should be done. The offence with which she was charged had supplied the scaffold with numberless victims; and tradesmen were more than ever clamorous for the stern execution of a law which, spite of experience, they still regarded as the only safeguard of their property. My wife was overwhelmed with grief; and in her anxiety to save her unhappy foster-sister, sought, without my knowledge, an interview with the prosecutor, in the hope of inducing him not to press the charge. Her efforts were unavailing. He had suffered much, he said, from such practices, and was ”upon principle”
determined to make an example of every offender he could catch. As to the plea that the husband had been forcibly carried off by a pressgang, it was absurd; for what would become of the property of tradesmen if the wife of every sailor so entrapped were to be allowed to plunder shops with impunity? This magnificent reasoning was of course unanswerable; and the rebuked pet.i.tioner abandoned her bootless errand in despair. Messrs.
Roberts, I should have mentioned, had by some accident discovered the nature of the misfortune which had befallen their officer, and had already made urgent application to the Admiralty for his release.
The Old Bailey sessions did not come on for some time: I, however, took care to secure at once, as I did not myself practice in that court, the highest talent which its bar afforded. w.i.l.l.y, who had been placed in a workhouse by the authorities, we had properly taken care of till he could be restored to his mother; or, in the event of her conviction, to his relatives in Devons.h.i.+re.
The sessions were at last on: a ”true bill” against Esther Mason for shoplifting, as it was popularly termed, was unhesitatingly found, and with a heavy heart I wended my way to the court to watch the proceedings.
A few minutes after I entered, Mr. Justice Le Blanc and Mr. Baron Wood, who had a.s.sisted at an important case of stockjobbing conspiracy, just over, left the bench: the learned recorder being doubtless considered quite equal to the trial of a mere capital charge of theft.