"STAR" TALES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10300, 3 November 1911, Page 4

"STAR" TALES.

TWO LIVES, (By PHILIP GIBBS.) Author of " 01)! What a Plague is Love," etc. [All Rights Reserved.] The end of this story took place in the year 1793, when English people, forgetting King Charles's head, heard with horror that "the mad beasts" of Prance, as they called them, had taken Louis XVI. to the scaffold, and were shouting obscene words under the prison window of Marie Antoinette. That has nothing to do with this story, except to giro a date to it. The beginning was just thirty-five years before--that is to say, in 1758, and it was in 'April of that year that the childless Lady Lavington announced to her 'friends that she had a son. i The announcement was received in ■ high oiroles (where the young widow ! was much in favour, not only on account of her beauty, which was considerable, but of her wealth, which was oven, moro alluring to young men who ■were looking about for a handsome marriage) with incredulity, with la\ighjter, and with indignation. An English jdulce, who had written., or caused his Secretary to write,_ a very passablo soniii et to Lady Lavington's eyes, _ now swore with an oath, not to be printed, jthat it would be a poor father who took •ready-mado sons, and. that the woman iwas bringing disgrace upon her class ;iiy such a scandalous precedent. Of course, when a duke gives tongue to euch things about a woman of beauty -and quality, the lesser fry are quick ,to follow with their yapping, and in the " London Chronicle" there appeared some lines from an attic blackmailer j\vith a poisoned pen that Lady L—v—n :]iad not told all she knew about the child. "Perhaps," said this literary 'ruffian, "the natural instincts of a mother were stronger than her ladyship's sense of caution, or fear of scan'dal.'' ! Well, there is no need to rake up the muck-heap of the eighteenth century letter-writers. Let us get to Lady Lavington and the strange story of two lives beginning and ending in a pitiful way. It was quite simple how her ladyship obtained her son, though a childless widow. And her reason for doing go needs no obscure searching or base (suspicions. She was just a lonely woman hungering for something to call her own, and something better than a lap-dog, on which to lavish love. In spite of her beauty, also, she was pious (the two qualities did not always join in that age), and desired to do service to God with her wealth. Whether m choosing her plan she wns rightly guided is another matter. The experiment was a risky one. Her idea was this: Having no child of her own, she would adopt one of those deserted infants who were called " Nobody's Children," and sometimes worse names. It was eighteen years since old Captain Coram had built the Foundling Hospital, and nearly every day during all those years the basket hanging outside by his great bell had received its dole of living flesh. Wretched mothers had ■ crept there, generally in the darkness, and with a moan or,two, or sometimes with a chuckle of witch-like laughter, had left their babies to Fate, the fos-ter-mother. Ladies of quality were among those mothers, and many times the "tokens" left with the infants were of gold, and their baby-linen v w*as verv fine. To this day one ma,» see some of those tokens—a ring with <two hearts in farnets, broken m halt and then tied together, a gold locket, a little verso written in delicate script on scented paper. I have seen them ■ and sighed over them. To this mace, then, in Hatton Garden, came Lady Lavington one morning, in her great coach, with two footmen in blue plush behind, and the Lavington arms emblazoned in gold on the panels, and the high wheels' very brilliant in red paint. Tho beadle's face was almost as red when he saw this noble equip'ngo draw up. Ho bowed very low when her ladyship—so young looking, aud so beautiful in her white wig, and hooped gown of silk—stepped down with her hand on tho arm of one of her footmen. 'ln the governor's room she stated her .'wish very simply. "I wish to adopt a little baby—a bov child." she said. The governor was quite amazed. It is said that he tried to dissuade her ladyship, until she tapped her foot very haughtily, and said she was old enough to know her mind. Then he took her into one of the rooms—full of " Nobody's children " —and so _ close and evil-smelling that Lady Lavington had to' use her salts,_ and swayed a little with her hand oh the governor's arm. j "Poor little creatures!" she said, very pitifully, though she was not told howmany of them went into a common grave. Then she stood a little while before -two cradles, and in each cradle lay a boy-child asleep. They were twins, a year old, according to the doctor, who was a drunken old man, but knew something of the children, and they were so much alike in every tiny feature aud in their curling gold hair that no woman, even, could detect any difference. My Lady Lavington bent over them, and a mother's heart stirred in her. " I will take one of these," she said, and her eyelashes were wot with tears. "But they are both adorable! How shall I choose P" : At last she decided to choose tho little one which should open its eyes first. Almost as she spoke one of the babies opened its eyes—eyes as blue 13 a little piece of Heaven—and her ladyship gave a little cry and said '1 will have this one!" There had beon no mark or token left with these twins. ,No sign to say .who their father was, or mother. But by their fine-spun linen 'and costly lace it seemed that they . .were of good birth, whatever their mother might be, poor soul, in sorrow and misfortune. When my Lady Lavington drove back in her coach she had the babe held tight to her breast, and its ilittle hand seemed to clutch at her heart. One cradle in the foundling ihospital was empty. In the other close by still slept the child that had lost its i twin brother. Two lives that had come into the world together had been cut apart by the band of Fate, and by her ladyship's peculiar notion.

1 Lady Lavington lived down the ritli-

eule and the scorn and the malicious whisperings of those who called themselves her friends. It was, at least, only now and then that the origin of the tall and handsome led she called her son, was told between one bottle of port and another over polished oak boards, where some of lior old. lovers sat, and in .the saloons of ladies who had a great memory for slander. She called the boy Richard, after her dead husband, and there were times when she half forgot that he did not belong to her in the flesh, as he belonged to her in love. Of his love she was sure. He clung to her more than a boy should, perhaps, being less rough in his nature, more finely sensitive than most boys of hia years and time. That, no doubt, _ was because her ladyship .had kept him as a very close treasure until he was at least fourteen. Her town house was shut most of that time, and she stayed, through the summers and winters, at Lavington Hall in Sussex, with Richard, first as the baby-boy beloved of all the women on her estate, and then as the young master to whom the gardeners, grooms, ' game-keepers and other serving men were able to teach all they knew of bird and beast and sport an horsemanshio. He was very excellent with the rapier when no more than twelve, having a quick eye and a lithe body, and of no horse was he afraid, however spirited. But being more lonely than most bovs, having no brothers and few comrades of his age, he developed more than a usual, and perhaps more than a healthy, taste for books, and had no liking for the rougher frames of youth. His tutor was a student of the old school, and together they read Greek and Latin, and went, on great adventures into realms of knowledge beyond the reach of ordinary lads. My Lady LaVington was sometimes a little anxious about this, seeing her boy become dreamy-eyed, and not folio fling him so far in learning'. Yet these two were good comrades, and it wrs the prettiest thing to see her ladyship, who, even after fifteen year.? or more, preserved her delicate" beauty, leaning with ono hand on the shoulder of the tall young man. as they walked the terrace talking of many "tilings which need not hero be printod. It was a great grief when at last he left her to go to Cambridge. That sacrifice plie made knowing it was not for his good to live solitary any more. But it tore at her heartstrings. He too, suffered, yet there- was gladness and pride at Lavington Hall when Richard came down with a desrree-. and indeed with more than that, having a letter from the ClianceUor prophesying a great. future for so brilliant a scholar. My Lady Lavington had destined him for the Xrmv, but he said. "I haveno thirst for blood, lady mother: I "tliirik I could do something in the Law." >so the Law it was; but before he_ had enten all hi 1 ' dinners in the Middle Temple love stepped in. Richard conceived a very ardent passion. for the daughter of a certain nob!oman vrho, in spite of having three traitors, one murderer, and many deep romw* on his ancestral tree was mitrhty proud of his blood and family. It was this which caused the tragedy—for it was no leas. The young woman .was quick to give her affections to so fine a gentleman, in whose eyes there was not only the student licrht but a sweet and high soul, but her father cut the matter short bv some brutal words spoken to her lover. He swore with a frightful oath that he would see himself _ eternally condemned (I forbear to give his true words) before he saw his daughter —the daughter of the oldest and proud, est family in England—mated to a man who did not know his own father, anrl who had no right toany name. This was a stab in the brain to Richard. IT« answered fiercely to protect his honour and her ladyship, whom he believed to be his mother, but a story told to liim coarsely by the old earl sent him whitefaced nnd very much afraid to Lavington Hall. An hour later he was on both knees weeping very piteously with his heml in her ladyship's lap. after she had told him of that visit long asro to the Foundling Hospital, of the two cradles, and of the twins. No doubt—indeed, there is no doubt at all to my mind— Ladv Lavington was much to blame in having kept the truth so long from her adonted son. A hundred times she had made uo her mind to tell him of his doubtful origin, yet had staved silent—■ putting off the time of telling. Because as you must understand the stigma of illegitimacy was more terrible in those days than now, when we are more merciful to-women, and do not visit the sins of the parents upon their children, at I hope so. Richard was quite overwhelmed as though stunned bv a crushing blow. Afterwards ho put from him all thought of marriage and settled down to the most serious and ardent sturlv of the law, and as a member of the English Bar—always justly celebrated for its brilliant men— so high and ranidlv that he was in danger of beino- hated by men older than himself and less successful. But so sweet and courteous was his disposition that few men could find it in their heart to hate him, though now and again some malice-loving tongue protested ajrainst the advancement of a, man who had been a " foundling brat." One thing haunted Ladv Lavington's adopted son in a stranrje manner. It was the thought of what fate had made of the child who had been # horn wi+h him, who had lain by his side in tho Foundling Hospital, and who now was lost in the great wc-Hd. Often he spoke about this to her ladyship. " Great heaven, ma'am." he would say, " why should I be furroundwl by every luxury and bv all the advantages of wealth and culture when perhaps my twin brother is Htrngprlincr in the abyss of misorv? Tt is unnatural and abominable. My blood cries ouj for my lost brother, and reproaches me," He paid a visit, to the Foundling Hospital. and was received with great .deference at the ola.ea where he had lain as a helpless child of povertv. But tbev had keot no record of his twin. Any ono of the children, to whom fancy names had been riven, and who had passed out as small hoys into the rough world, m'Ciht have h«on the babe who had slept when the other had opened its eyes at Lady Lavington, No doubt it was the fer frit.

ing thought of this strange freak of fate which had chosen him for wealth and fame and left the other for poverty and strugglo which caused Richard Lavington, Iv.C.. and be more merciful, more eloquent on behalf of poor clients, more passionate in his appeals against the cruel ruthlessness of the law, than any man at the English Bar in the latter half of the eighteenth centurv, with the noble exception of Sir Samuel Romilly.

Of that other child I must now write, for the babe that wns left next to the omptv cradle in the foundling hospital, also lived and had a history. That ho lived was cither by the special providence o' God or by one of the blind freaks of that chance which men call Fate. At least.""* can give no reason why Robin Goldie (that was the name the matron gave him, suggested doubtless by tho child's gold-spun locks) should have been preserved from the ravages of disease which in the early days of the Foundling Hospital caused a veritable massacre of the innocents. But he grew into a sturdy boy with fine limbs, and with a- dauntless and unbreakable spirit. God knows they tried to break his'spirit by floggings in numerable, by starvation diet on thin gruel and husks of bread, by a brutality of lowbred follows who were put to teach —the word is good I —those motherless boys. Then one dav, at ten years of ago, the gates of his prison-house (for the old Foundling Hospital was little better than tha.t) were opened to him and Robin Goldie was free to the world. So it seemed to him when he stood on an April morning with the sun shining, in Hatton Garden, where flowers were blooming then, listening to the cries of tho milk women and to the singing of tlio birds in the bushes. His heart leapt up with life. Hardened and coarsened in a cruel school, he 'lid not tremble with fears of the unknown world. Yet by the next day he knew that he had changed one slavery for another, and that the big beautiful world was also very cruel. IJc was apprenticed by the Governors of the Hospital to a chimney sweep, a coarsemouthed, brutal man, with a vixen wife. It was in the days when sweep's boys had to climb the chimneys, rung after rung, forcing their way through the sooty hars. choked and blinded by soot, until their black heads poked out beyond the chimney pot. It was halfway up his first chimney that Robin Goldie faced the horrible demon of fear, and was possessed with terror. That night he lay in a filthy hole on a sack of soot, blistered with the stripes of a flogging from a man mad with drink. For a year he suffered that life, and from other chimney-sweeps he learnt all their knowledge of the bestial underworld. aud how to trick brutality by lies, and how to get mirth out of misery. Yet there was something in his spirit which made him different from the small devils around him, who were called boys. The song of a blackbird in a London bush seemed to call to him, and promise him better things if he oould only find Ahem. One day he set off in search of them. Leaving his broom, and stealing sixpence from the master chimney-sweep, he crept out of his hovel in Red Lion Court, and ran by alleys and byeways until he came to the Thames at Westminster, and then crossed the bridge aud walked on all day long until the sun set and London was far behind him, and he was alone in country lanes. With the stolen sixpence he had bought a loaf, some sugar candy, and strange as me, a penny -whistle at a wayside booth. When night came, he lay down behind a haystack, covered himself with an old sack, and after playing strange tunes to himself very softly ,_ fell askep—happy. The sun was high in tho heavens when he awoke next morning. He set up and rubbed his eyes, and thought ho was dreaming, when he Raw, sitting opposite to h m. with watchful eyes, a girl of his own age, with a brown face, naked aims and legs as brown as her lace, and a ragged frock. " Hullo," he said, " What d'ye want?" She grinned at him, spolcß in a strange tongue, and pointed to a littlo house on wheels standing in the field twenty yards away. It was a gipsy's caravan, although Robin Goldie had never seen or heard of such a marvellous moving house. The girl took his hand in her grubby brown paw, and across to the caravan, behind the shelter of which a tall, dark man, stripped to tho waist, was washing at a wooden tub, Avhere a dark young woman was nursing a baby, and where a lad of eighteen was kissing the nose of a rough-haired colt. This was how Robin Goldie first took up with the Romany Chi, as they called themselves, and became for ton years one of them, until he drifted into more perilous company. They were rough years, and then England was a rough country. Yet in spite of many hardships, some starvation, heaps of kicks, and fights, with fists, knives, clubs, and kettles, Robin drank deep of the joys of life, of a life of adventure beneath the sky and on the heath, and in the village fairs, and on the race-course, where he saw tho Quality. He became an expert in the arts of thimble-rigging, duck-stealing, poaching, and backyard pilferings. Later he established a fair fame in a more honest way through the' countryside, as a champion with the quarter-staff, and single-stick, and as a middle-weight boxer. Ho had the honour of thrash-

ing many sporting young gentlemen who went to the fairs for a frolic, and ft mono; them the Honourable Peregrino Castlswoml, who put up a. purse of twenty pounds in a boxing contest without gloves. It was then that .Robin Goldie took more dangerous path. On account of his liartdsome> face, his high spirits, and his love of adventure, he was made tha boon companion of a set of men who lived handsomely on their wits and other people's wealth. Among tlieni was the son of a country clergyman, an unsuccessful actor, an Irish soldier, and a gipsy vagabond. They wore fine clothes (a little frayed and weather-beaten), they rattled good gold in their pockets, and had a great gift of laughter. Scoundrels without conscience, yet with gay manners, they seemed to Robin Goldie the best of good company, and of a higher rank than any with whom he had yet consorted. It was not long before ho knew, by the freemasonry of rogues, that highway robbery was their game, fijid when they asked him to join tha in. he clasped hands and said, "I'm your man." Ho not only became their man, but in two years their leader, for in rash courage, in quick wit, in cunning, and in desperate devilment, not one of them v.as a match for him. In eighteenth century broadsheets there are still the stories of his adventures to bo read—of how ho held up the coach on Barne-t Heath, and the night-mail at Hounslow, and took all the jewels of tlu? old Countess Rigola within a milo of Charing Cross. Of the women's lives he ruined and of blackguardism deeper than highway robbery (though it was punishable by death) I need not tell. The highwayman was not so romantic and genteel as storytellers have described him. Warrants were out for him all- over the country and £SO for him dead or alive. Ho was taken at last in an inn at Little Manden in Hertfordshire, where ho lay on® night in a drunken sleep. They put a sack over his head, hut even then ho fought like a fiend. His progress to London, heavily fettered and manacled in an open cart, was a kind of triumph. The country folk crowded to see him., and roguo though he was, made a hero of him. Women wept to see him go on his way to the gallows, and one pretty girl wafted him kisses which ho returned in spite of his chains. Some people walked all the way to London by the side of his cart. "We shall be at your hanging, Robin!" they shouted to him, and he laughed and said ho was always fond of good company. " I shall be sorry to eee you swing, dear Robin!" said a gipsy woman, and he answered, " All right, old mother. Wo shall meet again in the devil's kitchen." In London there was a riot of people to see him on his way to the Old Bailey. The trial of Robin Goldie, highwayman, took place on November 18, 1793. The judge was Mr Justice Blackburn, the counsel for the Crown was Mr Binns, K.C., and for the defence (though there was no defence, for tho facts were not to be disproved) Mr Richard Lavington, K.C. The Courtroom was crowded to suffocation, and outside there was a great clamorous mob of tho roughest character; many ladies and gentlemen of quality had obtained seats. The public galleries were overcrowded, i.nd many counsel in their wigs and gowns dropped In to hear the trial of so famous a rogue, while they picked their teeth and made eyes at the ladies, among whom was the beautiful Duchess of 11—rn—d. Tho heat and stench were quite unbearable, so that several ladies had the vapours and were carried out. Rut the excitement was very great when Robin Goldie was brought into tho dock. His handsome face and his gallant bearing (for ho had not lost his gaiety or his impudence) made a marked effect upon the general public and especially upon the women, of high rank or low. Many of them sobbed loudly at the thought of so proper a man being hanged by the neck, and others nodded and smiled to him in a friendly way. It was only a few people who remarked the extreme pallor of the distingushod counsel, Mr Lavington. I think it was Her Grace the Duchess of R—m —d who first called attention to it and spoke to Lady Betty Maimvaring. And it was Lady Betty who startled the court by giving a sharp cry of "Good Lud!" and going off into a dead swoon. She too was earned out, and no more was seen of her, though she had lots to say for many a week afterwards. Tho trial took the whole of the day, and it was dusk, and candles were brought in when Mr Lavington rose to make his plea on behalf of the prisoner. He was still most deadly pale—as all witnesses were —and all through the day ho had been very silent except when cross-examining the witnesses rather sharply, with his eyes fixed steadily upon his unfortunate client.

That speech for the defence is, of course, historic. It caused almost; as great a sensation in England (for about a week) as the execution of King Louis. Mr Lavington departed from all precedents by asking the judge's permission to outline a story, which was entirely relevant to the case, before his lordship. Knowing the great ability and exporienco of Mr Lavington, Mr Justice Blackburn nodded, though reminding him that the day was drawing to a close and that justice must be done. With his white face and burning eyes (strangely impressive in that dim flickering light) Mr Lavington then told his tale with a swift and extraordinary eloquence. It was the story which has hero been narrated of the two babes in tho Foundling Hospital, and of two lives starting from that plaeo and meeting again in the Old Bailey. "My lord, and gentlemen of the jury," said Mr Lavington. " I have abaoluto proof before God that that mail in the dock is my own bloodbrother. Ho and I were the twins in the two cradles, and I plead to you for my brother's life."

For what seemed like five minutes thrro was an absolute silence in Court. All eyes turned from the counsel for i!i:j defence to the prisoner in tho dock, and all eyss could see that those two faces, the handsome faces of those two young men, bore to each other the most rem a ridable likeness, though one face was stamped with a life of sin, and tho other with the delicacy of refinement and culture.

It was Robin Goldie who first broke silence. He was very pale, but gave a hoarso laugh. " Get on with it," he said, " and send me to the gallows-tree 1 The only brother I have is Tom Trounce, the tinker, with whom I have lived and starved and drunk."

The judge plucked at his scarlet robe. " The prisoner is right," ho said. I am here only to administer justice, without fep.r or favour. Have you any. thing further to sav Mr Lavington, on the prisoner's behalf?"

\ es, my lord, said Mr Lavington. And then for an hour he pleaded "that mercy might be shown to this man. In a speech which made many weep, he drew a vivid picture of life, and pointed the moral of his own career and of that highwayman's. Surroundings, society, opportunity, force,3 greater than natural character, greater than law, greater than anything but the band of God. had mode each man what he was. Because one babe in a cradle had opened his eyes first to a woman's face, hp was now respectable, well-to-do. and worthy in his profession. Because the other had slept he had become, by i'orco of circumstance, bv corrupt companions, by evil fate, a criminal standing his trio' for life.

"Gentlemen of tV, jury," said Mr Lavingtc-n. turning to thmn. "If you condemn thin man you condemn human societv. as it is around »p„ von punish the injustice ot fate l>y the final cruelty. But for the accident of a moment that man in the dock would be in my place, and I who lay beside him in the cradle should be as guilty as he is now."

The judge summed up in a cold voice, though a little shaken bv an emotion which he tried to conceal. The jury found the prisoner guilty with extenuating circumstances, but Mr Justice could, funl m aw cuinsfcaucea

that mitigated the dark crimes of tho prisoner's career, and Robin Goldie was sentence/;! to death. Ho heard the sentence with a laugh, and called out some coarse words to a friend in court. But Mr Richard Lavington was with him on the scaffold when ho died at Tyburn, and the two brothers embraced before one of them swung above the heads of the crowd. Richard Lavington never practised again at the bar, and. with Samuel Romilly, lie gave the remainder of his lifo to the repeal of the old penal laws whereby men, women and children wero hanged for crimes of a kind more trivial than that of highway robbery. It is a strange ease, and the moral o'f it is still being pointed by social reformers.