what are you about? Be you going to spoil your luck and waste your fine fortune? Is there an evil spirit in you? No man born will long stand the treatment you are giving he. I have seed a man take a stick or a poker to his wife, and break her head or go nigh to brain her, for a deal less." "Never mind, father, Sir William will not break my head or brain me. I can take care of myself, and I'll do what I like. Maybe there is a devil in me leastways I'll not stand his cold looks and sour fault-findings. Who axed him to leave the fine cattle he consorted with? Let him go back to them, if he will have them and their ways." The crisis could not be long deferred, when a house only built the other day was already shaking to its sandy foundation. CHAPTER XXIV. THE BEAST WALLOWS IN THE MIRE. LADY THWAITE's last transgression had been to walk over to Hawley Scrub, before the wintry daybreak, to meet and warn a brother of the dead Hughie Guild, whom even the shuffling Abe did not countenance, and whom Sir William had been roused to threaten he would hunt out of his plantations and bring before the justices. Hughie Guild had perished in his comparatively innocent youth, or he might have been the best of his race-anyhow the remaining Guilds were well known to be the worst livers in the parish, women as well as men of them were abandoned to shameless vice. It was only lately that Lady Thwaite had renewed her acquaintance with the Guilds, and Sir William had sworn she should not enter their house, or he would know what to do. Lady Thwaite, after she had got Zachary Guild out of danger, denied that she had been near the Guilds' house, and announced her intention of visiting her most intimate friend at the quarries, where Sir William no longer offered to accompany her. When there she was plied with jeers and sneers at Sir William as a patterncard, a great, hulking, reformed water drinker, and she was taunted with her subjection to him. She defended him hotly for a time: "You are not to say ill of my man Sir William. He's a deal too good for you and the likes of you. You are not fit, the best of you, to hold a candle to him. He have come of gentlefolks, and he was hand and glove with gentlefolks so long as he chose, but he liked his freedom and he liked me." She did not care that anybody should blame him save herself; she only changed her tone when some persons hinted broadly that he must have altered his mind, and could not think very much of her after all. She was to be pitied, with a husband at once a squire, and not a roystering squire, but a nonsuch. Whatever their men were - poor quarrymen, never out of the alehouse at least they were no better than their wives, and could not indulge in despising them. Honor cried out she was as good as Will Thwaite any day, she was no man's slave, and she began to drink and shout, gossip and sing snatches of songs. When she returned to Whitehills it was with an unsteady step, a blazing face, and clouded eyes. Sir William sat waiting for her in the comfortless room, without the vestige of a woman's presence in it—not a bit of darning, or an ironing blanket, or a screen hung over with white clothes, such as had marked his sister Jen's home. He had discovered by this time that though Honor had not been at the Guilds' house, she had gone out at break of day to keep an appointment with the scoundrel Zachary Guild. But The husband was at his post in a white heat of fury, meaning to charge her with a violation of all duty to him, an utter disregard of his credit and her own. the sight of her, as she stumbled into the room, gazed at him with half-blank eyes, and broke into senseless laughter, stopped him. He stared at her in return with such a look of wild despair as to penetrate even her dazed faculties, then she made some foolish excuse and left him. When Sir William Thwaite was by himself he clenched his fists and rose to his feet, quivering with passion. "It is all over," he said aloud, "peace and credit are both done for. I did not mean it when I said I would return to the ranks of working men, and when I married that woman I thought she was true as steel, and would help to keep me true to myself and her. But I have seen it coming, and now there is not a grain of hope left. If you were here, Jen, you would release me from my word, and pray to God to forgive me; for now, as I am a sinner and mated to a sinner, there is nought remaining to me but to drown care, and drink myself blind and deaf and dead to what I have made of my life." He staggered to the door as if he were | desisted from all further expostulation drunk already, went out into the darkness, with him. Nay, in place of seeking to walked to the nearest alehouse, which reclaim and restrain him, it appeared as if was shut up for the night, thundered at she were thenceforth set on goading him the door there till the amazed and alarmed on and exasperating him to the utmost landlord granted him admittance. Then, pitch. She pursued her own course not against law and gospel and Will Thwaite's only without hesitation, she threw herself word to his dead sister, he sat pouring in his way, crossed his path, and defied out and emptying glass after glass of fiery him when he was more like a mad animal spirits faster than he had ever done in his than a sane human creature. wild youth, till he was past thinking, past feeling. But Sir William was not left altogether undefended and uncared for. Go when and where he liked, to alehouse or tavern, when he stumbled out of it, he never failed to find one faithful friend, whether the miserable fellow knew it or not. Bill Rogers was a sober lad, though he could indulge at a time in a single glass or a couple of glasses, but nothing on earth would induce him to drink with his master. He turned away his eyes from Sir William's debasement. He never spoke Before the week was over the hue and cry rose that Sir William Thwaite, who had disappeared from church and market, | was never out of one alehouse or another; that he was drinking himself into a lunatic asylum or the grave, in the lowest company; that he had become a common brawler, with whom the police would soon be compelled to interfere. This was what had come of his not being able to drink his glass of port like a Christian gentle- of it voluntarily. When assailed with man and squire. Many people had pointed out what such unbecoming, extravagant abstinence portended, what had been its origin and what would be its end. It was but an interlude between a drunken scamp's fits of debauchery. After the low marriage he had tumbled into, what further chance was there of his keeping his pledge, or promise, or whatever it might be? Lady Thwaite was subdued for a time. "What's come over you, Will?" she asked almost timidly, "you who would not taste drink, to take to it all of a suddent, and like a fish? But you needn't go to them alehouses and taverns where you are a marked man. Have your liquor here, where nobody has any right to forbid you, and you'll have nobody to quarrel with in your cups." 66 "What! you don't think I should quarrel with you, my lady, not though we were two at a trade?" he said savagely. Ah, you don't know me yet. Besides, I prefer taking my sprees on my own account, and not at home. We have not pulled so well together of late that we should risk keeping company when wit is out. I am not come to the lowest pass that I should sit in my own house of Whitehills-the old Thwaites' house, confound them, and drink in company with my wife till we quarrel, and fight, and agree again like the vilest wretches in the barracks." "It was only once, Will," she said, with strange humility for her. "Did you ever hear of me or know me as a drunken drab - am I like it?" But he broke away from her, and she gibes and mockery, he said stoutly and loyally all that could be urged in defence of a lapsed sinner. Bill was constantly hovering shamefacedly in Sir William's neighborhood, ready to offer him his servant's arm if the squire would accept it; wary to follow and keep him in sight, if he waxed furious at being what he called tracked and spied upon, to prevent his slipping into pond or ditch, or lying down in the frost or the wet, on the withered or sodden grass, and dying a dog's death. It was in vain that Sir William stormed and threatened: "Do you think I wish you to be ruined as fast and sure as myself, Bill? Ain't you a precious sight better chap than your master? Don't he know it to his cost? But he ain't such a selfish brute as to wish you to pay the piper, and to have your destruction to answer for, in addition to his own and that of a few more fools. Come along, Bill Rogers, and I'll stand you a treat. We'll swallow something hot and strong. I'll tip you an old soldier's song, and we'll have a rare blow out, and make a night of it. No, you won't? Then I'll be hanged if you shall play the flying scout at my expense. I give you your leave, lad, from this day, with a month's wages. Who sends you on your dashed prying errands at my heels? Not Honor? Much right she has to meddle. Or is it somebody else whose name I'll never speak again with my polluted lips? She was an angel, Bill; but she wrought my undoing. No, no. That is false as the place I'm bound for. She was as innocent as the babe unborn, only she could ་ not touch pitch and be defiled. It was I and went on to admit that, in fact, he was who was the beast I have always been.' One day about this time, Sir William was walking down the middle of Knotley High street, as if challenging any man to say his gait was disorderly, and his dress slovenly, when he felt a clap on his shoulder. "Hallo! Thwaite," cried the insolent voice of Major Pollock. "I hear you have come out of your shell, slipped your cable or your moorings, or what shall we call it? since I saw you last. My dear fellow, I like you a thousand times better for it. I have only one crow to pluck with you. Why will you descend to the gutter, and not go to the bad in good company that of gentlemen like your—ahem! forefathers? I assure you that you will find it more agreeable, if you would only try us, and we should make you heartily welcome. Come to my den and have a game at billiards and a glass of beer or grog, if wine don't suit your stomach." But Sir William shook him off. "I'll see you far enough first, Major Pollock. If I'm going to destruction, and I ain't the one to deny it, it shall be with humble folk, who are as low as I ever was; it shan't be for the entertainment and profit of them that calls themselves gentlemen. Whatever I am or may sink to, me and my mates don't care to earn a penny, with our tongues in our cheeks, from our neighbor's sin and shame." There was another incident in Sir William Thwaite's history which belonged to this period. Parliament was dissolved, and a general election ensued, bringing political agents and men from a distance, to town and burgh, to contest interests keenly, and canvass hotly for votes in houses which the visitors would not otherwise have entered. By one of those sin gular chances, which happen at least as frequently in real life as in novels, Will Thwaite's old commanding officer, Colonel Bell, who had returned from India, was nearly related to one of the candidates for the favor of this section of Eastwich, and came down with him to Knotley to help his cause. In examining the lists of voters, the name of Sir William Thwaite, of Whitehills, soon turned up. Colonel Bell immediately recognized it, and, upon a few inquiries, found that the later career of the young man had been very much what might have been expected from certain early passages in his life. The officer hinted his acquaintance with the baronet in his chrysalis condition; the colonel who had given Sir William Thwaite his discharge from her Majesty's service. But being the soul of honor, and a man who did not care to present himself in an undignified light, the gentleman kept to himself the offence and the impending punishment which had immediately preceded the discharge. The inevitable re-. sult of his reticence was that he found himself pressed to accompany the candi. date, and use the officer's supposed influence with Sir William, who was understood to be indifferent to politics, to vote for the right man. Colonel Bell yielded against his judg ment to the pressure put upon him, and drove in a carriage full of ardent electors, who would take no refusal, to Whitehills. The visitors experienced more regret for the deterioration of the fine old place than for the degradation of the new squire. There were traces of changed days as the party drew near the house. Of course, Sir William's dissipation had been of a cheap and mean order compared with that of some of his predecessors. He had still an ample supply of ready money to squander and work mischief with; none of the grand old trees had been felled, the park had not been used for grazing purposes, and sufficient time had not elapsed for very conspicuous signs of downfall in other respects. No gate was off its hinges, no fence was full of holes, no path posi tively overgrown. But the exquisite dainty trimness of an English gentleman's place, which had been conspicuous in the late Sir John's day, was wanting. Weeds were cropping up, borders left ragged, branches broken and untrimmed. Some cottages which the young squire had begun to build, in which he had taken an interest, stood half built, as the masons had left them on the first of the winter frosts. In the mean time the builder had come to grief, and failed to fulfil his coutract. But no fresh contract had been entered into, and the uncompleted houses, like unfulfilled promises, appealed mournfully to the passer-by. There had been an old-fashioned lamp, since the days of links and their extinguishers, which, though seldom used, was left to hang in its place above the principal gate it was supposed to grace. Its thick, dim glass had been smashed recently, and remained in a few jagged fragments in the metal framework. A baker's van, which ought to have been taken round to the back of the house, had boldly driven up to the front entrance and stopped the way, as if there were no chance of a dispute with a vehicle of higher estate. The thin wedge of neglect and aggression was introduced, and the rest would follow, until the house became as great a wreck as its master. Lady Thwaite was abroad, as usual, and if she returned in time, did not show her face amidst the tawdry splendor of her drawing-room. Colonel Bell did not think the haggardfaced man in the rumpled, mud-bespattered clothes, in which he might have slept for a week, who reluctantly came in answer to their summons, was an improvement on his young sergeant. The latter, in spite of his fits of excess, had been wont to turn out on parade scrupulously neat and smart, as became a gallant soldier. "How are you, Thwaite? You see I have looked you up when I am in the country," stammered Colonel Bell a little nervously. "I have come to ask a favor from you in renewing our acquaintance. Will you, if you have no objection, lend your support to my friend on the hustings and at the polling-booth next week?" Sir William did not take the hand held out. He stood still, and glared with his blood-shot eyes at the speaker. "It wasn't I who ever asked any favor of you, Colonel Bell, that you should seek a return from me," he said in a thick, altered voice. "You have forgotten, sir, or your wits are wool-gathering. It was my poor sister Jen. Do you remember her, or was she too humble a lot to stick in your memory? I was told that she went down on her marrow-bones to you, though she was a proud woman in her way, was Jen, if you had knowed it; but you pushed her away, and said discipline could not be set aside, not though a woman's heart were to break- -as hers was broken by that date- or a young rascal be doomed to the gallows, since there was nothing else he could hope for after that morning's work." He stopped speaking to a dumbfounded company, while Colonel Bell, with a face as red as fire, or his old mufti, muttered, "I thought it had been made up, and the past forgotten,” and began to back to the door. But Sir William arrested him. "When it comes to that, you did your duty, old Bell we're meeting as equals to-day, ain't we? which is more than I ever did. I can't ask you or your friends to eat or drink with me, for though we're social equals, you and I know that would not be fitting. But you're welcome to my vote, though, bless you! my presence on the hustings would be no credit to your man. I can slink up with the ruck to the booth, and give you what Jen herself, had she been here and a voter, would have given you freely, man. For though you were hard we always held you honest, and though you helped to do for me- that's neither here nor there, I was going to the dogs anyway, and would have reached them in the long run without your aid, I take it. I have that faith in you and your choice that I believe it will be the country's own fault- -as it was mine if it don't do as well as it deserves under the rule of the likes of you, old Bell!" "Who "What a strange character!" was Jen?" "What on earth had you to do with him besides giving him his discharge, colonel?" "At least we've got his vote, which was what we wanted," was chorused round the officer when the party had reached their carriage. 'Yes, yes, you've got his vote, and I really believe you've me to thank for it,” said the colonel, wiping his forehead; "but I'll be shot if I undertake such another encounter on your account, Charlie. That fellow Thwaite must have been as mad as a hatter from the beginning. Scrapes? oh! of course; a fellow like him was safe to be in a thousand scrapes." Some of the stories with which the country was ringing reached Lady Fermor. Then she assailed her granddaughter in the privacy of the old lady's dressing room. "Have you heard the news, Iris? Sir William Thwaite has broken out, and sits drinking himself to death with carters and quarrymen, and tramps, for anything I can tell." The speaker fixed her hollow, gleaming eyes on Iris's face, and spoke with deliberate calmness. and his beggar-wife are at daggers-drawing, so it is feared murder may be committed and somebody hung for it. What do you think of that for your work, girl? We have all got our sins to answer for, but I should say that was something to have on one's conscience." "He "It is not my work, and it need not lie heavy on my conscience," protested Iris, with her whitening face. But though she knew she spoke the truth, and would not be silent, because she was not afraid to maintain her innocence in such hearing, when she got to her room she shed bitter tears. "Grandmamma accuses me, and Lucy bids me rejoice in having escaped such a miserable fate; and I what can I do but cry to God to have mercy on his lost sheep, his lost children?" From The National Review. ROMAN LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY. I. Colosseum and Forum, and the Arch of Constantine was half buried in the earth. Justice was administered with circumIN 1837 there died in Rome a poor and stances of barbaric ferocity. It was a comneglected octogenarian, the Abate Lucan- mon sight to see unlucky coachmen pubtonio Benedetti. Born during the pontifi- licly tortured in the Corso for no worse cate of Clement XIII., he had witnessed guilt than that of driving through the the accession of six popes,* and had streets during the hours reserved for minutely chronicled the sights and events Carnival frolics; and the erection of the of at least five of their reigns. Such a gallows on the Piazza del Popolo, the first record, even if made by a blockhead, could Saturday in Carnival, was in fact the sig not fail to be interesting; and Abate Be-nal of the opening of the season for public nedetti was no blockhead, but a man of sports. excellent parts and great keenness of ob- despatched, the hangman's assistants servation. His voluminous diaries have would presently join the gay crowd in the never been published, but they have fallen. Corso disguised as clowns and pantainto good hands, and recently furnished loons. Down to the first year of the presan accomplished writer, Signor David ent century malefactors were quartered Silvagni, with the materials for the first and burned on the Campo dei Fiori, and part of the remarkably interesting work for many years later the pillory and the on "Roman Life in the XVIII. and XIX. wooden horse remained familiar objects Centuries," from which this sketch has in other parts of Rome, although both been compiled. were temporarily abolished during the Napoleonic rule. And the condemned criminals And the patient diarist who wrote for his own pleasure, and without thought of Those were the days of unbridled luxpublicity, may be said to be the hero of ury and corruption among the higher the book. For he had an eventful career, classes, of brute ferocity among the was a courtier, conspirator, prisoner, and masses at the base of the social pyramid. exile, and throughout all vicissitudes pre- Yet, violence, bloodthirstiness, and ignoserved an unblemished integrity and firm-rance notwithstanding, the Roman poponess of character. Circumstances brought lani had a certain rough nobility of their him in contact with most of the prominent own. They were earnest patriots and personages on the political and social intensely proud of their race. stage, and the modest abate is no ignoble figure in the motley scene. As page to Donna Marianna d'Este, wife of Prince Lorenzo Colonna, he was an eye-witness, in his fourteenth year, of the splendid pageant celebrating the accession of Clement XIV. This was the last pope who rode through the streets of Rome on horseback to take possession of the Lateran with the old mediæval pomp and ceremonial. The pontifical prestige was already beginning to be shaken, and Clement's courageous decree for the suppression of the Jesuits was soon to raise him a host of enemies throughout Catholic Europe. In the days of Benedetti's youth Rome still wore the aspect of a city of the Middle Ages. It was a labyrinth of winding streets, unlighted, unnamed, and unnumbered. Every trade kept to its own special locality, and, in lack of shop-fronts, advertised its wares by painted signs and emblems. Cattle were herded in the Namely, Clement XIV., Pius VI., Pius VII., Leo XII., Pius VIII., Gregory XVI. † La Corte e la Società Romana nei Secoli XVIII. e XIX., per David Silvagni. Vols. i. and ii. Florence: 1881 and 1883. "Semo sangue d' Enea"(We are sons of Eneas) |