Rookwood Part 63

But curse me if I give it in. I'll follow him to the world's end first."

"Right, sir--right," said the attorney. "A very proper spirit, Mr.

Constable. You would be guilty of neglecting your duty were you to act otherwise. You must recollect my father, Mr. Paterson--Christopher, or Kit Coates; a name as well known at the Old Bailey as Jonathan Wild's.

You recollect him--eh?"

"Perfectly well, sir," replied the chief constable.

"The greatest thief-taker, though I say it," continued Coates, "on record. I inherit all his zeal--all his ardor. Come along, sir. We shall have a fine moon in an hour--bright as day. To the post-house! to the post-house!"

Accordingly to the post-house they went; and, with as little delay as circ.u.mstances admitted, fresh hacks being procured, accompanied by a postilion, the party again pursued their onward course, encouraged to believe they were still in the right scent.

Night had now spread her mantle over the earth; still it was not wholly dark. A few stars were twinkling in the deep, cloudless heavens, and a pearly radiance in the eastern horizon heralded the rising of the orb of night. A gentle breeze was stirring; the dews of evening had already fallen; and the air felt bland and dry. It was just the night one would have chosen for a ride, if one ever rode by choice at such an hour; and to Turpin, whose chief excursions were conducted by night, it appeared little less than heavenly.

Full of ardor and excitement, determined to execute what he had mentally undertaken, Turpin held on his solitary course. Everything was favorable to his project; the roads were in admirable condition, his mare was in like order; she was inured to hard work, had rested sufficiently in town to recover from the fatigue of her recent journey, and had never been in more perfect training. "She has now got her wind in her," said d.i.c.k; "I'll see what she can do--hark away, la.s.s--hark away! I wish they could see her now," added he, as he felt her almost fly away with him.

Encouraged by her master's voice and hand, Black Bess started forward at a pace which few horses could have equalled, and scarcely any have sustained so long. Even d.i.c.k, accustomed as he was to her magnificent action, felt electrified at the speed with which he was borne along.

"Bravo! bravo!" shouted he, "hark away, Bess!"

The deep and solemn woods through which they were rus.h.i.+ng rang with his shouts, and the sharp rattle of Bess's hoofs; and thus he held his way, while, in the words of the ballad,

Fled past, on right and left, how fast, Each forest, grove, and bower; On right and left, fled past, how fast, Each city, town, and tower.

_CHAPTER VI_

_BLACK BESS_

_Dauphin._ I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. _Ca, ha!_ He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hairs; _le cheval volant_, the Pegasus _qui a les narines de feu_! When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.

SHAKESPEARE: _Henry V., Act III._

Black Bess being undoubtedly the heroine of the Fourth Book of this Romance, we may, perhaps, be pardoned for expatiating a little in this place upon her birth, parentage, breeding, appearance, and attractions.

And first as to her pedigree; for in the horse, unlike the human species, nature has strongly impressed the n.o.ble or ign.o.ble caste. He is the real aristocrat, and the pure blood that flows in the veins of the gallant steed will infallibly be transmitted, if his mate be suitable, throughout all his line. Bess was no _c.o.c.k-tail_. She was thorough-bred; she boasted blood in every bright and branching vein:

If blood can give n.o.bility, A n.o.ble steed was she; Her sire was blood, and blood her dam, And all her pedigree.

As to her pedigree. Her sire was a desert Arab, renowned in his day, and brought to this country by a wealthy traveller; her dam was an English racer, coal-black as her child. Bess united all the fire and gentleness, the strength and hardihood, the abstinence and endurance of fatigue of the one, with the spirit and extraordinary fleetness of the other. How Turpin became possessed of her is of little consequence. We never heard that he paid a heavy price for her; though we doubt if any sum would have induced him to part with her. In color, she was perfectly black, with a skin smooth on the surface as polished jet; not a single white hair could be detected in her satin coat. In make she was magnificent.

Every point was perfect, beautiful, compact; modelled, in little, for strength and speed. Arched was her neck, as that of the swan; clean and fine were her lower limbs, as those of the gazelle; round and sound as a drum was her carcase, and as broad as a cloth-yard shaft her width of chest. Hers were the "_pulchrae clunes, breve caput, arduaque cervix_,"

of the Roman bard. There was no redundancy of flesh, 'tis true; her flanks might, to please some tastes, have been rounder, and her shoulders fuller; but look at the nerve and sinew, palpable through the veined limbs! She was built more for strength than beauty, and yet she _was_ beautiful. Look at that elegant little head; those thin, tapering ears, closely placed together; that broad, snorting nostril, which seems to snuff the gale with disdain; that eye, glowing and large as the diamond of Giamschid! Is she not beautiful? Behold her paces! how gracefully she moves! She is off!--no eagle on the wing could skim the air more swiftly. Is she not superb? As to her temper, the lamb is not more gentle. A child might guide her.

But hark back to d.i.c.k Turpin. We left him rattling along in superb style, and in the highest possible glee. He could not, in fact, be otherwise than exhilarated; nothing being so wildly intoxicating as a mad gallop. We seem to start out of ourselves--to be endued, for the time, with new energies. Our thoughts take wings rapid as our steed. We feel as if his fleetness and boundless impulses were for the moment our own. We laugh; we exult; we shout for very joy. We cry out with Mephistopheles, but in anything but a sardonic mood, "What I enjoy with spirit, is it the less my own on that account? If I can pay for six horses, are not their powers mine! I drive along, and am a proper man, as if I had four-and-twenty legs!" These were Turpin's sentiments precisely. Give him four legs and a wide plain, and he needed no Mephistopheles to bid him ride to perdition as fast as his nag could carry him. Away, away!--the road is level, the path is clear. Press on, thou gallant steed, no obstacle is in thy way!--and, lo! the moon breaks forth! Her silvery light is thrown over the woody landscape. Dark shadows are cast athwart the road, and the flying figures of thy rider and thyself are traced, like giant phantoms, in the dust!

Away, away! our breath is gone in keeping up with this tremendous run.

Yet d.i.c.k Turpin has not lost his wind, for we hear his cheering cry--hark! he sings. The reader will bear in mind that Oliver means the moon--to "whiddle" is to blab.

OLIVER WHIDDLES!

Oliver whiddles--the tattler old!

Telling what best had been left untold.

Oliver ne'er was a friend of mine; All glims I hate that so brightly s.h.i.+ne.

Give me a night black as h.e.l.l, and then See what I'll show to you, my merry men.

Oliver whiddles!--who cares--who cares, If down upon us he peers and stares?

Mind him who will, with his great white face, Boldly _I'll_ ride by his glim to the chase; Give him a Rowland, and loudly as ever Shout, as I show myself, "Stand and deliver!"

"Egad," soliloquized d.i.c.k, as he concluded his song, looking up at the moon. "Old Noll's no bad fellow, either. I wouldn't be without his white face to-night for a trifle. He's as good as a lamp to guide one, and let Bess only hold on as she goes now, and I'll do it with ease. Softly, wench, softly--dost not see it's a hill we're rising. The devil's in the mare, she cares for nothing." And as they ascended the hill, d.i.c.k's voice once more awoke the echoes of night.

WILL DAVIES AND d.i.c.k TURPIN

Hodie mihi, cras tibi.--SAINT AUGUSTIN.

One night, when mounted on my mare, To Bagshot Heath I did repair, And saw Will Davies hanging there, Upon the gibbet bleak and bare, _With a rustified, fustified, mustified air!_

Within his chains bold Will looked blue, Gone were his sword and snappers too, Which served their master well and true; Says I, "Will Davies, how are you?

_With your rustified, fustified, mustified air!_"

Says he, "d.i.c.k Turpin, here I be, Upon the gibbet, as you see; I take the matter easily; _You'll_ have your turn as well as me, _With your whistle-me, pistol-me, cut-my-throat air!_"

Says I, "That's very true, my lad; Meantime, with pistol and with prad, I'm quite contented as I am, And heed the gibbet not a d--n!

_With its rustified, fustified, mustified air!_"

"Poor Will Davies!" sighed d.i.c.k; "Bagshot ought never to forget him."[110]

For never more shall Bagshot see A highwayman of such degree, Appearance, and gentility, As Will, who hangs upon the tree, _With his rustified, fustified, mustified air!_

"Well," mused Turpin, "I suppose one day it will be with me like all the rest of 'em, and that I shall dance a long lavolta to the music of the four whistling winds, as my betters have done before me; but I trust, whenever the chanter-culls and last-speech scribblers get hold of me, they'll at least put no cursed nonsense into my mouth, but make me speak, as I have ever felt, like a man who never either feared death, or turned his back upon his friend. In the mean time I'll give them something to talk about. This ride of mine shall ring in their ears long after I'm done for--put to bed with a mattock, and tucked up with a spade.

And when I am gone, boys, each huntsman shall say, None rode like d.i.c.k Turpin, so far in a day.

And thou, too, brave Bess!--thy name shall be linked with mine, and we'll go down to posterity together; and what," added he, despondingly, "if it should be too much for thee? what if----but no matter! Better die now, while I am with thee, than fall into the knacker's hands. Better die with all thy honors upon thy head, than drag out thy old age at the sand-cart. Hark forward, la.s.s--hark forward!"

By what peculiar instinct is it that this n.o.ble animal, the horse, will at once perceive the slightest change in his rider's physical temperament, and allow himself so to be influenced by it, that, according as his master's spirits fluctuate, will his own energies rise and fall, wavering

From walk to trot, from canter to full speed?

How is it, we ask of those more intimately acquainted with the metaphysics of the Houyhnhnm than we pretend to be? Do the saddle or the rein convey, like metallic tractors, vibrations of the spirit betwixt the two? We know not, but this much is certain, that no servant partakes so much of the character of his master as the horse. The steed we are wont to ride becomes a portion of ourselves. He thinks and feels with us. As we are lively, he is sprightly; as we are depressed, his courage droops. In proof of this, let the reader see what horses some men make--_make_, we say, because in such hands their character is wholly altered. Partaking, in a measure, of the courage and the firmness of the hand that guides them, and of the resolution of the frame that sways them--what their rider wills, they do, or strive to do. When that governing power is relaxed, their energies are relaxed likewise; and their fine sensibilities supply them with an instant knowledge of the disposition and capacity of the rider. A gift of the G.o.ds is the gallant steed, which, like any other faculty we possess, to use or to abuse--to command or to neglect--rests with ourselves; he is the best general test of our own self-government.

Black Bess's action amply verified what we have just a.s.serted; for during Turpin's momentary despondency, her pace was perceptibly diminished and her force r.e.t.a.r.ded; but as he revived, she rallied instantly, and, seized apparently with a kindred enthusiasm, snorted joyously as she recovered her speed. Now was it that the child of the desert showed herself the undoubted offspring of the hardy loins from whence she sprung. Full fifty miles had she sped, yet she showed no symptoms of distress. If possible, she appeared fresher than when she started. She had breathed; her limbs were suppler; her action was freer, easier, lighter. Her sire, who, upon his trackless wilds, could have outstripped the pestilent simoom; and with throat unslaked, and hunger unappeased, could thrice have seen the scorching sun go down, had not greater powers of endurance. His vigor was her heritage. Her dam, who upon the velvet sod was of almost unapproachable swiftness, and who had often brought her owner golden a.s.surances of her worth, could scarce have kept pace with her, and would have sunk under a third of her fatigue. But Bess was a paragon. We ne'er shall look upon her like again, unless we can prevail upon some Bedouin chief to present us with a brood mare, and then the racing world shall see what a breed we will introduce into this country. Eclipse, Childers, or Hambletonian, shall be nothing to our colts, and even the railroad slow travelling, compared with the speed of our new nags!

But to return to Bess, or rather to go along with her, for there is no halting now; we are going at the rate of twenty knots an hour--sailing before the wind; and the reader must either keep pace with us, or drop astern. Bess is now in her speed, and d.i.c.k happy. Happy! he is enraptured--maddened--furious--intoxicated as with wine. Pshaw! wine could never throw him into such a burning delirium. Its choicest juices have no inspiration like this. Its fumes are slow and heady. This is ethereal, transporting. His blood spins through his veins; winds round his heart; mounts to his brain. Away! away! He is wild with joy. Hall, cot, tree, tower, glade, mead, waste, or woodland, are seen, pa.s.sed, left behind, and vanish as in a dream. Motion is scarcely perceptible--it is impetus! volition! The horse and her rider are driven forward, as it were, by self-accelerated speed. A hamlet is visible in the moonlight. It is scarcely discovered ere the flints sparkle beneath the mare's hoofs. A moment's clatter upon the stones, and it is left behind. Again it is the silent, smiling country. Now they are buried in the darkness of woods; now sweeping along on the wide plain; now clearing the unopened toll-bar; now trampling over the hollow-sounding bridge, their shadows momently reflected in the placid mirror of the stream; now scaling the hill-side a thought more slowly; now plunging, as the horses of Phbus into the ocean, down its precipitous sides.

The limits of two s.h.i.+res are already past. They are within the confines of a third. They have entered the merry county of Huntingdon; they have surmounted the gentle hill that slips into G.o.dmanchester. They are by the banks of the rapid Ouse. The bridge is past; and as Turpin rode through the deserted streets of Huntingdon, he heard the eleventh hour given from the iron tongue of St. Mary's spire. In four hours--it was about seven when he started--d.i.c.k had accomplished full sixty miles!

A few reeling topers in the streets saw the horseman flit past, and one or two windows were thrown open; but Peeping Tom of Coventry would have had small chance of beholding the unveiled beauties of Queen G.o.diva had she ridden at the rate of d.i.c.k Turpin. He was gone, like a meteor, almost as soon as he appeared.