THE GENTLEMAN COMMONER.

Otago Witness, Issue 1916, 30 October 1890, Page 30

THE GENTLEMAN COMMONER.

It was late on an autumn evening in 1660, the year of the Restoration. There came riding up to the inn of one of the most straggling of Oxfordshire villages a wellmounted young gentleman of somewhat distinguished appearance. Calling to the ostler, he gave him particular instructions as to the treatment of his horse, and, ordering the best bed and supper the landlady could provide, retired for a time to his room, desiring to be called when the meal was ready. In about an hour the supper was on the table, and the stranger sat down to it. He had evidently come from a distance — the Btate of his horse showed that — and the way n which be did justice to the landlady's cookery proved that he must have been remarkably hungry. The good woman was in truth rather alarmed at the rapidity with which he disposed of what she set before him.

He was a well-built young fellow of about 18 or 19, with a broad brow, and strangely piercing eyes that seemed to follow her about the room, and look through her to the wall each time she caught their gaze. For about half an hour he was silent — too busy, in fact, to speak— but he was pleasant and likeable ; aud when she left him to himself the dame had taken rather a fancy to him.

Had she known how he was situated her thoughts might have gone another road. For the distinguished stranger was a gentleman commoner of Oriel, who with his choice companions had been trying a little amateur highway robbery, and failing to find a victim had come on here alone without a penny in his pocket, trusting to what might turn up to furnish him with the means of paying his bill.

As 3omi as he was alone he left the table and took his chair to the fire. He bpgan to think over his position. His thoughts were not enoomatring. He had been living what was a wild college life even in those wild days ; and his family had almost given him

up. His father, a bencher of Grey's Inn, and a county magnate of influence, was an eccentric man of strong will, never known to go back on his word ; and in his last letter he had given the son clearly to understand that his patience was exhausted. As to money, he had sent him enough for some time ; and as to " accompts," he would be responsible for none " after the date of this my last letter unless ye amend." He had not amended; he had" gone further, and failed. No wonder, then, that his meditations were unsatisfactory. He knew that he was not a fool— his experiences with his fellow students had taught him that— and fortunately on this occasion his self-conceit came to his rescue.

"My father and mother," he said to himself—at least he said years afterwards that he said to himself, for he was not an unknown man — " my father and mother are better gifted than those they meet, and I am very like them. I have the old man's voice and 'my mother's eyes I see things as quickly as they do, and mind them as well. And here have I been for two years with the chance of getting what would give me a living if the old people were to throw me over, and what have I done 1 "

What had be done, indeed? He had acquired a thin coat of university varnish.

This is not a work of imagination, and we will not enlarge on the student's recognition of his folly. The conclusion he came to was the ordinary one, quite the ordinary one: " Let me get out of this trouble, and I will never get into another."

But how was he to get out of this trouble ? He could not help liking the cherry, brisk little woman whom he had come— disguise it as he might, to swindle. He had eaten his supper ; that did not trouble him so much, for it was obvious that if he was to be honest he must live. But how was he to pay for it? The horse was not his; to leave it would be to rob Peter to pay Paul. He was in the same fix with his clothes. The idea of doing a little wrong to do a great right, on the Bassanio principle, occurred to him, and was rejected. " No ; I'll be honest, and I'll be thorough I" he said ; and resolving to be very good and very superior to everything and everyone he met, he strode up and down the room.

" I'll go and see mine hostess," said he ; maybe something will happen to me."

And something did happen which played sad havoc with his good resolutions.

Entering the kitchen, he found seated hy the fire a frail, weary-looking girl of 13, whom the landlady introduced to him as her daughter.

" Sick of a bad ague ; waiting for the fit, which will come to her to-night."

" Has she been thus for long 1 " asked the student.

" A year this Michaelmas," said the landlady ; " and never a leech can cure her. I have tried them all the country round, and paid them well, but there sits the poor child, growing worse and worse, and surely shaking into her grave."

"What does her father say? Is there none in London that could tell you what to do?"

"Her father, sir, has been dead these three years. lam a poor widow, and have spent all he left me in trying to cure the child. But it is of no avail. Poor Jess I poor Jess !

The stranger looked troubled — as he was. To ride away from an inn without paying his bill was bad enough ; but to cheat a poor widow in distress, for whose sick child she had sacrificed her means of living, was — well, the act of a scoundrel.

The Oxonian wished he had never left Oriel ; he felt, thoroughly ashamed of himself. So genuine was his shame that it might be thought he was fairly on the path of reformation, and would thenceforward keep to it. But it was not so with him ; and there are very many like him.

He was all right until be took another sip at the wine which the hostess had temptingly placed within his reach, and wt>ich, at the moment he had resolved to rcb the poor woman no more, he,"in pure absent-minded-ness, lifted to his lips and unconsciously drank. As he put down the empty flagon he caught sight of the new moon through the window, and as his gaze was returning to the fire it rested for a moment on the patient, pallid-faced girl.

She was undoubtedly ill, and he sympathised with her. She was pretty, and he admired her. But the low type of face, with the narrow, sloping forehead, the furtive eyes, and the weak-willed mouth and chin, told her character so unmistakeably that an idea suggested itself to him which he welcomed with delight. A fig for his resolves ! Here was a way out of his difficulties !

"What is the time of your daughter's attack ? " " The fit will come to her at 11." " I will cure her ! "

Art thou a physician 1 "

"I have studied with the wisest where wisdom dwells. Let your daughter do as I direct, and the ague will depart from her." 11 Art thou willing Jess ? " asked the mother.

The girl turned her head, but the stranger's eyes were on her, and she whiepered "Yes." " Then I will be back in a brief spacp. I go to seek some potent herbs under the rays of the young moon."

The student went out laughing to himself at his new device, and thinking over the part he was to play. He walked down the earden, jumped the pailings, crossed the meadow, and followed for a time the bank of the stream, whose ripples gleamed with the silver sprinkles from the moon.

A leaf of herb-robert he took, then a sprig of dog's mercury, then a small coltsfoot and jack-sauce-by-the-hedge, then some scorpion crass, then a four-leafed paris, and a twig of broom. Then he returned to the kitchen, " looking unutterable things," and laid his leaves on the table, the coltsfoot at one end, the herb-robert at the other, the scorpion gras^ and dog's mercury in the middle, with the broom next to the paris. Then he put the leaves in a cup and rubbed them'together for a time, whispering to himself so' as to be heard by the invalid.

"Eta, zeta, theta, phi; kappa, delta, lambda, pi ; sigma, gamma, beta, mv ; alpha, tan, epsilon, nu ; psi, chi, upsilon, rho ; kyklopedfia may the ague go." Then he opened the window that the moon might shine in the cup, and he took out some

of the leaves and rolled them in a strip of parchment about the size of a cigarette paper, which he cut from his pocket-book. Then he tied the roll with a silken string and sealed it, but he did not use his own seal, for he pressed on the wax a leaf of scorpion grass which he had accidentally dropped on the floor.

" A piece of ribbon," he said to his hostess — the first words he had addressed to her since he entered with the leaves — " and pen and ink," and while she was gone he emptied the cup on to the fire.

To each end of his tiny cylinder he tied a piece of ribbon, and with the pen acd ink he scrawled on the parchment the Greek letters in his remarkable charm, repeating the words as he did so.

" Now give me thy wrist," he said to the girl ; and as he knotted the ribbon his eyes searched into hers and seemed to look through them down every nerve in her body.

"Wear that," he said as he finished the knot, " and the sickness will never return to to you. Rest and fear not. Farewell till the dawn 1 "

And in great grandeur he stalked off to bed. A thing is not worth doing at all if it is not worth doing well, and this our student knew. To have stayed and watched for the result of his audacious piece of foolery would have been too severe a trial for him. So he went to bed and laughed ; and then somehow the laughter thinned away. And he was just beginning to reproach himself when he dropped off to sleep.

In the morning there came a knocking at his door. " Who's there ? " " It's long pa<?t dawn," said the hostess. " What do you want 7 "

" My daughter had never a fit last night."

"Nor will she have again. 'Tis well," said the stranger as impressively as he could manage.

When he came down he found the breakfast ready. " I desire no breakfast," he said, " I can-

not pay you."

" Pay me ! " said the hostess. " You have given me my daughter's life, and it is I should pay you. You are welcome to all you have had, and all you can take now."

The charm had had its effect. The girl's nervous nature had yielded to the man's stronger will, and the ague had been defeated. And what is more, the sickness did not return to her

The student miracle - worker therefore finished his breakfast, and with profuse thanks from the mother and child rode away. He never saw the widow again. But from

the moment he caught the last glimpse of her out in the road at the end of the avenue of elms, whose limply hanging leaves were trembling to fall, he dated a new life. He returned to college to work. In February 1663 he was called to the bar, and rose quickly into notice as a first-rate lawyer and advocate. He became Recorder of London, to be removed from his office by James II for his opposition to the court measures; and when William 111 sought the fittest man to purify the bench, and make the law respected, he choße for the Lord Chief Justiceship of England the curer of the landlady's daughter —Sir John Holt.

How he fulfilled his duties during the 21 years he held bis position we can leave to Macaulay and the other historians to tell. He stood np for the law against the encroachments of monarch and Parliament, and he it was who set the example of that spirit and temper which has distinguished our judges ever since. When Lord Somers left the Chancellorship, it was offered to Sir John, but he declined it. He felt that he had found the post for which he was most fitted.

This year 1700 was a memorable one for him for another reason. As he sat trying prisoners at the assizes a woman was brought before him charged with witchcraft. Old and haggard and miserable she stood in the dock, literally hunted down. The charges against her of curing cows and horses and women and men by throwing a spell over them seemed to be clearly proved. The evidence could not be shaken, and the woman herself admitted that she had exercised an influence as described. She was found guilty, but before the Lord Chief Justice passed sentence he asked her if she had anything to say for herself.

" Only that it is true, your Lordship. They asked me to lend them my charm, and T lent it to them ; and now they have turned against me."

"What is this charm?"

"It is this, my Lord 1 " said she, slipping off her wrist a tiny roll of parchment. "It was given to me 40 years ago by a stranger, who cured me of the ague. He told me it would thenceforth cure everything, and so it has done!"

And up to the judge, who was about to sentence her to death, was given the packet he himself had made in the inn kitchen. This was the end of his adventure. There was the eta, zeta, <fee, that he had scrawled ; and he was the tempter and the originator of the charm for using which he was to hand over this poor truster in his honesty to the executioner. For 40 years his thoughtless folly had been working round, and now it had reached him as he sat on the judgment seat.

"We will make inquiry into this. The sentence is deterred."

That was all he said The woman was removed. As speedily as possible she was pardoned. The student's freak in the little Oxfordshire "villnge had important consequences. Sir John had had enough of trials for witchcraft, and henceforth he discouraged them in every way. Where he went there .were no convictions. When he died, in 1710, the laws had practically become obsolete, and soon afterwards they were repealed. — W. J. Gordon, in the Leisure Hour.

—First Fisherman : " What luck ? " Second Fisherman : " None at all ; can'fc get the cork out."

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