Walter Besant - The Orange Girl

'If we go forth in that procession', murmured the Bishop with lowering face, 'there are other people quite as deserving, who will sit there beside us.'

'Go,' she said. 'I have talked enough and more than enough with such as you. Go.'

They bowed again and walked away.

Now I heard this interview, half of which I did not understand, with amazement unspeakable. The lady was going to release this pair of villains – Why? Out of the boundless charity of her benevolent heart?

She looked after the precious pair, standing for a moment with her hand shading her eyes. The light went out of her face: a cloud fell upon it: she sighed again: her lips parted: she caught her breath. Ah! Poor lady! Thy face was made for joy and not for sorrow. What thought, what memory, was it that compelled the cloud and chased away the sunshine?

She turned her head – she moved away. I was still standing at my window looking on: as she passed she started and stopped short, her face expressing the greatest possible bewilderment and amazement.

'It is not …' she cried – 'Surely – No – Yet the resemblance is so great. Sir, I thought – at first – you were a gentleman of my acquaintance. You are so much like him that I venture to ask you who you are?'

'A prison bird, Madam. Nothing more,'

'Yes, but you are so like that gentleman. May I ask your name?'

'My name, at your service, Madam, is Halliday. My friends call me Will Halliday.'

'Will Halliday. Are you a brother – but that cannot be – of Mr. Matthew Halliday?'

'I am his first cousin.'

'Matthew Halliday's first cousin? But he is rich. Does he allow you to remain in this place?'

'It is not only by the sufferance of my cousin Matthew but by his desire that I am here.'

'By his desire! Yes – I know something of your cousin, sir. It is by his desire. I discover new virtues in your cousin the more I learn of him. I suppose, then, that you are not on friendly terms with your cousin?'

'I am not indeed. Quite the contrary,'

'Can you tell me the reason why?'

'Because he desires my death. Therefore he has caused my arrest – he and an attorney of the devil – named Probus.'

'Oh! Probus! I have heard of that Probus. Sir, I would willingly hear more concerning this matter and your cousin and Mr. Probus, if you will kindly tell me. I must now go, but with your permission I will come again. It is not I assure you, out of idle curiosity that I ask these questions.'

The next day, or the day after, the Captain and the Bishop walked out of the Prison. When they were gone open talk went round the Prison, perhaps started by the Poet, that one was a highwayman and the other a sharper – perhaps a forger – a contriver of plots and plans to deceive the unwary. I marvelled that they should have received the bounty of so fine a lady, for indeed, whether highwayman or sharper or honest men, they were as foul-mouthed a pair of reprobates – drunken withal – as we had in the prison.

And then I remembered, suddenly, the reason why I recognised the lady's voice and why there was something in the face also that I seemed to know. I had been but once in my life to the Theatre. On that occasion there was an actress whose beauty and vivacity gave me the greatest possible delight. One may perhaps forget the face of an actress playing a part, because she alters her face with every part: but her voice, when it is a sweet voice, one remembers. The lady was that actress. I remembered her – and her name. She was Miss Jenny Wilmot of Drury Lane.

In the year 1760 or thereabouts, everybody knew the name of Sir Peter Halliday, Merchant. The House in which Sir Peter was the Senior Partner possessed a fleet of West Indiamen which traded between the Port of London and Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the other English Islands, taking out all kinds of stuffs, weapons, implements, clothing, wine, silks, gloves, and everything else that the planters could want, and returning laden with sugar in bags, mahogany, arrack, and whatever else the islands produce. Our wharf was that which stands next to the Tower stairs: the counting-house was on the wharf: there the clerks worked daily from seven in the morning till eight at night. As a boy it was my delight to go on board the ships when they arrived. There I ran up and down the companion: into the dark lower deck where the midshipmen messed and slept among the flying cockroaches, which buzzed into their faces and the rats which ran over them and the creatures which infest a ship in hot latitudes and come on board with the gunny-bags, such as centipedes, scorpions, and great spiders. And I would stand and watch the barges when they came alongside to receive the cargo. Then with a yeo-heave-oh! and a chantey of the sailors, mostly meaningless, yet pleasant to hear, they tossed the bags of sugar into the barge as if they were loaves of bread, and the casks of rum as if they had been pint pots. Or I would talk to the sailors and hear stories of maroon niggers and how the planters engaged the sailors to go ashore in search of these fierce runaways and shoot them down in the mountains: and stories of shark and barra coota: of hurricanos and islands where men had been put ashore to starve and die miserably: of pirates, of whom there have always been plenty in the Caribbean Sea since that ocean was first discovered. Strange things these sailors brought home with them: coral, pink and white: preserved flying-fish: creatures put in spirits: carved cocoanuts: everybody knows the treasures of the sailor arrived in port.

This, I say, was my delight as a boy: thus I learned to think of things outside the narrow bounds of the counting-house and the City walls. Marvellous it is to mark how while the Pool is crammed with ships from all parts of the world, the Londoner will go on in ignorance of any world beyond the walls of the City or the boundaries of his parish. Therefore, I say, it was better for me than the study of Moll's Geography to converse with these sailors and to listen to their adventures.

Another thing they taught me. It is well known that on board every ship there is one, at least, who can play the fiddle. A ship without a fiddler is robbed of the sailors' chief joy. Now, ever since I remember anything I was always making music: out of the whistle pipe: the twanging Jews' harp: the comb and paper: but above all out of the fiddle. I had a fiddle: I found it in a garret of our house in Great College Street. I made a sailor tell me how to practise upon it: whenever one of our ships put into port I made friends with the fiddler on board and got more lessons; so that I was under instruction, in this rude manner for the greater part of the year, and before I was twelve I could play anything readily and after the fashion, rough and vigorous, of the sailors with whom strength of arm reckons before style.

I belong to a family which for nearly two hundred years have been Puritans. Some of them were preachers and divines under Cromwell. Their descendants retained the strict observance of opinions which forbid mirth and merriment, even among young people. Although they conformed to the Church of England, they held that music of all kinds: the theatre: dancing at the Assembly: reading poetry and tales: and wearing of fine dress must be sinful, because they call attention from the salvation of the soul, the only thing about which the sinner ought to think. Why it was worse to let the mind dwell upon music than upon money-getting I know not, nor have I ever been able to discover. It will be understood, however, that ours was a strict household. It consisted of my father, myself, a housekeeper and five servants, all godly. We had long prayers, morning and evening; we attended the Church of St. Stephen Walbrook, instead of our own parish church of St. Michael Paternoster, because there was no organ in it: we went to church on Sundays twice: and twice in the week to the Gift Lectures, of which there were two. My father was a stern man, of great dignity. When he was Lord Mayor he was greatly feared by malefactors. He was of a full habit of body, with a large red face, his neck swollen into rolls. Like all merchants in his position he drank a great deal of port, of which he possessed a noble cellar.