Louis Becke - Rídan The Devil And Other Stories

‘Now, come, doctor,’ said my mother, placing her hand on the old officer’s arm and smiling into his face, ‘you must grant me this favour. The man is far too old to be flogged. And then he was a soldier himself once—he was a drummer boy, so he once told me, in the 4th Buffs.’

‘The most rascally regiment in the service, madam. Every one of them deserved hanging. But,’ and here his tone changed from good-humoured banter into sincerity, ‘I honour you, Mrs Egerton, for your humanity. The man is over sixty, and I promise you that he shall not be flogged. Why, he is scarce recovered yet from the punishment inflicted on him for stealing Major Innes’s goose. But yet he is a terrible old rascal.’

‘Never mind that,’ said my mother, laughing. ‘Major Innes should keep his geese from straying about at night-time. And then, doctor, you must remember that poor Callaghan said that he mistook the bird for a pelican—it being dark when he killed it.’

‘Ha, ha,’ laughed the doctor, ‘and no doubt Mr Patrick Callaghan only discovered his mistake when he was cooking his pelican, and noticed its remarkably short bill.’

My mother left, well pleased, but on the following morning, while we were at our mid-day meal, she was much distressed to hear that old Callaghan had received fifty lashes after all—the good doctor had been thrown from his horse and so much hurt that he was unable to attend the court, and another magistrate—a creature of Mr Sampson’s—had taken his place. The news was brought to us by Thomas King, and my mother’s pale face flushed with anger as, bidding King to go into the kitchen and get some dinner, she turned to my father (who took but little heed of such a simple thing as the flogging of a convict), and said hotly,—

‘’Tis shameful that such cruelty can be perpetrated! I shall write to the Governor himself—he is a just and humane man—oh, it is wicked, wicked,’ and then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed aloud.

My father was silent. He detested the parson most heartily, but was too cautious a man, in regard to his own interest, to give open expression to his opinions, so beyond muttering something to my brother Harry about Thomas King having no business to distress her, he was about to rise from the table, when a servant announced that the Reverend Mr Sampson wished to see him.

The mention of the clergyman’s name seemed to transform my mother into another woman. Quickly, but gently, putting aside my sister Frances, whose loving arms were clasped around her waist, she rose, and fire flashed in her eyes as she said to the servant,—

‘Denham, tell Mr Sampson that I desire to speak with him as soon as he has finished his business with Mr Egerton.’

My father went out to the drawing-room, where the clergyman awaited him, and for the next ten minutes or so my mother walked quickly to and fro in the dining-room, bidding us remain seated, and in a harsh, unnatural tone to one so sweet and gentle, she told the servants who waited to withdraw.

‘Mr Sampson is at your service, madam,’ said Denham, opening the door.

‘Show him in here,’ said my mother, sharply, and her always pale face grew paler still.

The clergyman entered, and extended his fat, white hand to her; she drew back and bowed coldly.

‘I do not desire to shake hands with you, sir.’

Mr Sampson’s red face flushed purple.

‘I do not understand you, madam. Is this a jest—or do you forget who I am?’

‘I shall try to make you understand me, Mr Sampson, in as few words as possible. I do not jest, and I do not forget who you are. I have a request to make.’

‘Indeed! I feel honoured, madam,’ and the corners of the clergyman’s thick lips turned contemptuously down—‘and that is—?’

‘That you will cease your visits to this house. It would be painful indeed to me to receive you as a guest from this time forth, for this very day it is my intention to write to the Governor and acquaint him with the shocking act of cruelty committed this morning—‘twas a shameful, cruel deed to flog an old man so cruelly.’

Mr Sampson’s face was now livid with the rage he could not suppress.

‘Beware, madam, of what you say or do. ‘Tis a pretty example you set your children to thus insult a clergyman.’

My mother’s answer cut like a whip-lash. ‘A clergyman such as you, Mr Sampson, can inspire naught in their childish minds but fear and abhorrence,’ and then she pulled the bell cord so violently that not only Denham but my father entered as well.

‘Show Mr Sampson out,’ she said in accents of mingled anger and scorn, and then turning to the window nearest, she seemed to be gazing unconcernedly upon the blue expanse of ocean before her; but her little hands were clasped tightly together, and her whole frame trembled with excitement.

As soon as the clergyman had mounted his horse and ridden off, my father returned to the dining-room.

‘You have made a bitter enemy of a man who can do me much harm,’ he began; but something in my mother’s face made him cease from further reproaches, and he added lightly, that he hoped ‘twould soon blow over.

‘Charles,’ said my mother, who was now herself again, ‘it must not blow over. The Governor shall know of this man’s doings. And never again shall I or my children enter the church when he preaches. To-night, I suppose, he will visit that wretched old man—the victim of his brutality—and administer “spiritual admonition.” Come, children, let us go to the beach and forget that that dreadful man has been here.’

It was, I think, this practice of ‘administering admonition’ to convicts after he had had them sentenced to a severe flogging that first gave my mother such an utter abhorrence of the man, together with his habit of confining his sermons to the prisoners to the one subject—their own criminal natures and the terrors of hell-fire everlasting. Then, too, his voice was appalling to hear, for he had a way of suddenly dropping his harsh, metallic tones, and raising his voice to a howl, like to that of a hungry dingo. 4 4 The native dog of Australia, whose long, accentuated howl is most distressing to hear.

Often did I, when sitting in our great square pew in that dreadful, horrible church, press close to my mother’s side and bury my face in her dress, as he lashed himself into a fury and called down the vengeance of a wrathful God upon the rows of silent, wretched beings clad in yellow, who were seated on long stools in the back of the church, guarded by soldiers, who, with loaded muskets, were stationed in the gallery above. Some of the convicts, it was said, had sworn to murder him if an opportunity served, and this no doubt made him the more merciless and vindictive to any one of them who was so unfortunate as to be charged before him in his capacity of magistrate. By the Regulations he could not sit alone to deal out punishment, and sometimes had difficulty in finding a colleague, especially among the military men, who nearly always protested against his fondness for the cat; but there were always to be found, in the end, magistrates who would do anything to please him, for it was known that he had great influence with the Home Government, and was not chary of using it on behalf of those who truckled to him, if he so inclined; and, indeed, both Major Trenton and Dr Parsons said that he was a man with many good points, and could be, to those who pleased him, a good friend, as well as a bitter enemy to those who in any way crossed him. But they asserted that he should never have been appointed a magistrate in a colony where the penal laws gave such latitude to his violent temper and arbitrary disposition.

Early one morning in December, and three months after the drawing of the picture by Lieutenant Moore, my two brothers and myself set off on a fishing excursion to a tidal lagoon whose waters debouched into the Pacific, about fifteen miles southward from the little township. Behind us followed a young man named Walter Trenfield, who was one of my father’s assigned servants, and an aboriginal named ‘King Billy’; these two carried our provisions, cooking utensils and blankets, for we intended to camp out for two or three days.