Chapter 2

And Jesse--what did he say to these, the first words of kindness that he had ever heard from human lips? or rather, what did he feel? for beyond a muttered "Thankye," speak he could not, But gratitude worked strongly in the poor boy's heart: gratitude!--so new, so overpowering, and inspired by one so sweet, so lovely, so gentle as his protectress, as far as he was concerned, all-powerful; and yet a mere infant whom he might protect as well as serve! It was a strange mixture of feelings, all good, and all delightful; a stirring of impulses, a quickening of affections, a striking of chords never touched before. Substitute the sacred innocence of childhood for the equally sacred power of virgin purity, and his feelings of affectionate reverence, of devoted service and submission, much resembled those entertained by the Satyr towards "the holy shepherdess," in Fletcher's exquisite drama.*

_Our_

"Rough thing, who never knew Manners nor smooth humanity,"

could not have spoken nor have thought such words as those of the satyr; but so far as our English climate and his unfruitful territory might permit, he put much of the poetry into action. Sluggish of intellect, and uncouth of demeanour, as the poor lad seemed, it was quite wonderful how quickly he discovered the several ways in which he might best please and gratify his youthful benefactress.

* That matchless Pastoral, "The Faithful Shepherdess," is so much less known than talked of, that subjoin the passage in question. One more beauti can hardly be found in the wide range of English poetry.

_Satyr_. Through yon same bending plain That flings his arms down to the main; And through these thick woods, have I run, Whose depths have never kiss'd the sun; Since the lusty Spring began, All to please my master, Pan, Have I trotted without rest To get him fruit; for at a feast He entertains, this coming night, His paramour, the Syrinx bright.

[_He sees Clorin and stands amazed_.

But behold a fairer sight! By that heavenly form of thine, Brightest fair, thou art divine, Sprung from great, immortal race Of the Gods; for in thy face Shines more awful majesty, Than dull, weak mortality Dare with misty eyes behold And live! Therefore on this mould Slowly do I bend my knee, In worship of thy deity. Deign it, goddess, from my hand To receive whate'er this land, From her fertile womb doth send Of her choice fruits; and but lend Belief to that the Satyr tells: Fairer by the famous wells To this present day ne'er grew, Never better nor more true. Here be grapes whose lusty blood Is the learned poet's good; Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown Than the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em. Deign, oh fairest fair, to take 'em! For these black-eyed Dryope Hath often times commanded me, With my clasped knee to climb; See how well the lusty time Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red, Such as on your lips is spread. Here be berries for a queen, Some be red, and some be green; These are of that luscious sweet, The great god Pan himself doth eat; All these, and what the woods can yield, The hanging mountain, or the field, I freely offer, and ere long Will bring you more, more sweet and strong; Till when, humbly leave I take, Lest the great Pan do awake, That sleeping lies in a deep glade, Under a broad beech's shade. I must go,--I must run Swifter than the fiery sun.

_Clorin_. And all my fears go with thee! What greatness or what private hidden power Is there in me to draw submission From this rude man and beast? sure I am mortal; The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal, And she that bore me mortal: Prick my hand And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink Makes me a-cold. My fear says I am mortal. Yet I hare heard (my mother told it me, And now I do believe it) if I keep My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend, Satyr, or other power, that haunts the groves, Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion Draw me to wander after idle fires, Or voices calling me in dead of night To make me follow, and so tempt me on Through mire and standing pools to find my swain Else why should this rough thing, who never knew Manners nor smooth humanity, whose herds Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen, Thus mildly kneel to me? &c. &c.

_Beaumont and Fletcher's Works_, (Seward's edition,) vol. iii. p. 117--121.

How we track Milton's exquisite Comus in this no less exquisite pastoral Drama! and the imitation is so beautiful, that the perception of the plagiarism rather increases than diminishes the pleasure with which we read either deathless work. Republican although he were, the great poet sits a throned king upon Parnassus, privileged to cull flowers where he listeth in right of his immortal laurel- crown.

Phoebe loved flowers; and from the earliest tuft of violets ensconced under the sunny southern hedge, to the last lingering sprig of woodbine shaded by some time-hallowed oak, the blossoms of the meadow and the coppice were laid under contribution for her posies.

Phoebe had her own little garden; and to fill that garden, Jesse was never weary of seeking after the roots of such wild plants as he himself thought pretty, or such as he found (one can hardly tell how) were considered by better judges to be worthy of a place in the parterre. The different orchises, for instance, the white and lilac primrose, the golden oxslip, the lily of the valley, the chequered fritillary, which blows so freely along the banks of the Kennett, and the purple campanula which covers with equal profusion the meadows of the Thames, all found their way to Phoebe's flower-plats. He brought her in summer evenings glow-worms enough to form a constellation on the grass; and would spend half a July day in chasing for her some glorious insect, dragon-fly, or bee-bird, or golden beetle, or gorgeous butterfly. He not only bestowed upon her sloes, and dew-berries, and hazel-nuts "brown as the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em," but caught for her the squirrel itself. He brought her a whole litter of dormice, and tamed for her diversion a young magpie, whose first effort at flattery was "Pretty Phoebe!"

But his greatest present of all, most prized both by donor and receiver, (albeit her tender heart smote her as she accepted it, and she made her faithful slave promise most faithfully to take nests no more,) was a grand string of birds' eggs, long enough to hang in festoons round, and round, and round her play-room, and sufficiently various and beautiful to gratify more fastidious eyes than those of our little heroine.

To collect this rope of variously-tinted beads--a natural rosary--he had sought the mossy and hair-lined nest of the hedge-sparrow for her turquoise-like rounds; had scrambled up the chimney-corner to bear away those pearls of the land, the small white eggs of the house-martin; had found deposited in an old magpie's nest the ovals of the sparrow-hawk, red and smooth as the finest coral; had dived into the ground-mansion of the skylark for her lilac-tinted shells, and groped amongst the bushes for the rosy-tinted ones of the woodlark; climbed the tallest trees for the sea-green eggs of the rooks; had pilfered the spotted treasures from the snug dwelling which the wren constructed in the eaves; and, worst of all--I hardly like to write it, I hardly care to think, that Jesse could have committed such an outrage,--saddest and worst of all, in the very midst of that varied garland might be seen the brown and dusky egg, as little showy as its quaker-like plumage, the dark brown egg, from which should have issued that "angel of the air," the songstress, famous in every land, the unparagoned nightingale. It is but just towards Jesse to add, that he took the nest in a mistake, and was quite unconscious of the mischief he had done until it was too late to repair it.

Of course these gifts were not only graciously accepted, but duly returned; cakes, apples, tarts, and gingerbread, halfpence in profusion, and now and then a new shilling, or a bright sixpence--all, in short, that poor Phoebe had to bestow, she showered upon her uncouth favourite, and she would fain have amended his condition by more substantial benefits: but authoritative as she was with her grandfather in other instances, in this alone her usual powers of persuasion utterly failed. Whether infected by old Daniel's dislike, (and be it observed, an unfounded prejudice, that sort of prejudice for which he who entertains it does not pretend to account even to himself is unluckily not only one of the most contagious feelings in the world, but one of the most invincible:) whether Farmer Cobham were inoculated with old Daniel's hatred of Jesse, or had taken that very virulent disease the natural way, nothing could exceed the bitterness of the aversion which gradually grew up in his mind towards the poor lad.

That Venus liked him, and Phoebe liked him, added strength to the feeling. He would have been ashamed to confess himself jealous of their good-will towards such an object, and yet most certainly jealous he was. He did not drive him from his shelter in the Moors, because he had unwarily passed his word--his word, which, with yeomanly pride, John Cobham held sacred as his bond--to let him remain until he committed some offence; but, for this offence, both he and Daniel watched and waited with an impatience and irritability which contrasted strangely with the honourable self-restraint that withheld him from direct abuse of his power.

For a long time, Daniel and his master waited in vain. Jesse, whom they had entertained some vague hope of chasing away by angry looks and scornful words, had been so much accustomed all his life long to taunts and contumely, that it was a great while before he became conscious of their unkindness; and when at last it forced itself upon his attention, he shrank away crouching and cowering, and buried himself in the closest recesses of the coppice, until the footstep of the reviler had passed by. One look at his sweet little friend repaid him twenty-fold; and although farmer Cobham had really worked himself into believing that there was danger in allowing the beautiful child to approach poor Jesse, and had therefore on different pretexts forbidden her visits to the Moors, she did yet happen in her various walks to encounter that devoted adherent oftener than would be believed possible by any one who has not been led to remark, how often in this best of all possible worlds, an earnest and innocent wish does as it were fulfil itself.

At last, however, a wish of a very different nature came to pass. Daniel Thorpe detected Jesse in an actual offence against that fertile source of crime and misery, the game laws.

Thus the affair happened.

During many weeks, the neighbourhood had been infested by a gang of bold, sturdy pilferers, roving vagabonds, begging by day, stealing and poaching by night--who had committed such extensive devastations amongst the poultry and linen of the village, as well as the game in the preserves, that the whole population was upon the alert; and the lonely coppices of the Moors rendering that spot one peculiarly likely to attract the attention of the gang, old Daniel, reinforced by a stout lad as a sort of extra-guard, kept a most jealous watch over his territory.

Perambulating the outside of the wood one evening at sunset, he heard the cry of a hare; and climbing over the fence, had the unexpected pleasure of seeing our friend Jesse in the act of taking a leveret still alive from the wire. "So, so, master Jesse! thou be'st turned poacher, be'st thou?" ejaculated Daniel, with a malicious chuckle, seizing, at one fell grip, the hare and the lad.

"Miss Phoebe!" ejaculated Jesse, submitting himself to the old man's grasp, but struggling to retain the leveret; "Miss Phoebe!"

"Miss Phoebe, indeed!" responded Daniel; "she saved thee once, my lad, but thy time's come now. What do'st thee want of the leveret, mon? Do'st not thee know that 'tis part of the evidence against thee? Well, he may carry that whilst I carry the snare. Master'll be main glad to see un. He always suspected the chap. And for the matter of that so did I. Miss Phoebe, indeed! Come along, my mon, I warrant thou hast seen thy last o' Miss Phoebe. Come on wi' thee."

And Jesse was hurried as fast as Daniel's legs would carry him to the presence of Farmer Cobham.

On entering the house (not the old deserted homestead of the Moors, but the comfortable dwelling-house at Aberleigh) Jesse delivered the panting, trembling leveret to the first person he met, with no other explanation than might be comprised in the words, "Miss Phoebe!" and followed Daniel quietly to the hall.

"Poaching, was he? Taking the hare from the wire? And you saw him? You can swear to the fact?" quoth John Cobham, rubbing his hands with unusual glee. "Well, now we shall be fairly rid of the fellow! Take him to the Chequers for the night, Daniel, and get another man beside yourself to sit up with him. It's too late to disturb Sir Robert this evening. To-morrow morning we'll take him to the Hall. See that the constable's ready by nine o'clock. No doubt but Sir Robert will commit him to the county bridewell."

"Oh, grandpapa!" exclaimed Phoebe, darting into the room with the leveret in her arms, and catching the last words. "Oh, grandpapa! poor Jesse!"

"Miss Phoebe!" ejaculated the culprit

"Oh, grandfather, it's all my fault," continued Phoebe; "and if anybody is to go to prison, you ought to send me. I had been reading about Cowper's hares, and I wanted a young hare to tame: I took a fancy for one, and told poor Jesse! And to think of his going to prison for that!"

"And did you tell him to set a wire for the hare, Phoebe?"

"A wire! what does that mean?" said the bewildered child. "But I dare say," added she, upon Farmer Cobham's explaining the nature of the snare, "I dare say that the poachers set the wire, and that he only took up the hare for me, to please my foolish fancy! Oh, grandpapa! Poor Jesse!" and Phoebe cried as if her heart would break.

"God bless you, Miss Phoebe!" said Jesse.

"All this is nonsense!" exclaimed the unrelenting fanner. "Take the prisoner to the Chequers, Daniel, and get another man to keep you company in sitting up with him. Have as much strong beer as you like, and be sure to bring him and the constable here by nine o'clock to-morrow morning."

"Oh, grandfather, you'll be sorry for this! I did not think you had been so hard-hearted!" sobbed Phoebe. "You'll be very sorry for this."

"Yes, very sorry, that he will. God bless you, Miss Phoebe," said Jesse.

"What! does he threaten? Take him off, Daniel. And you, Phoebe, go to bed and compose yourself. Heaven bless you, my darling!" said the fond grandfather, smoothing her hair, as, the tears still chasing each other down her cheeks, she stood leaning against his knee. "Go to bed and to sleep, my precious! and you, Sally, bring me my pipe:" and wondering why the fulfilment of a strong desire should not make him happier, the honest farmer endeavoured to smoke away his cares.

In the meanwhile, old Daniel conducted Jesse to the Chequers, and having lodged him safely in an upper room, sought out "an ancient, trusty, drouthy crony," with whom he sate down to carouse in the same apartment with his prisoner. It was a dark, cold, windy, October night, and the two warders sate cosily by the fire, enjoying their gossip and their ale, while the unlucky delinquent placed himself pensively by the window. About midnight the two old men were startled by his flinging open the casement.

"Miss Phoebe! look! look!"

"What? where?" inquired Daniel.

"Miss Phoebe!" repeated the prisoner; and, looking in the direction to which Jesse pointed, they saw the flames bursting from Farmer Cob-ham's house.

In a very few seconds they had alarmed the family, and sprung forth in the direction of the fire; the prisoner accompanying them, unnoticed in the confusion.

"Luckily, master's always insured to the value of all he's worth, stock and goods," quoth the prudent Daniel.

"Miss Phoebe!" exclaimed Jesse: and even as he spoke he burst in the door, darted up the staircase, and returned with the trembling child in his arms, followed by aunt Dorothy and the frightened servants.

"Grandpapa! dear grandpapa! where is grandpapa? Will no one save my dear grand-papa?" cried Phoebe.

And placing the little girl at the side of her aunt, Jesse again mounted the blazing staircase. For a few moments all gave him up for lost But he returned, tottering under the weight of a man scarcely yet aroused from heavy sleep, and half suffocated by the smoke and flames.

"Miss Phoebe! he's safe, Miss Phoebe!--Down, Venus, down--He's safe, Miss Phoebe! And now, I sha'n't mind going to prison, 'cause when I come back you'll be living at the _Moors_. Sha'n't you, Miss Phoebe? And I shall see you every day!"

One part of this speech turned out true and another part false--no uncommon fate, by the way, of prophetic speeches, even when uttered by wiser persons than poor Jesse. Phoebe did come to live at the Moors, and he did not go to prison.

On the contrary, so violent was the revulsion of feeling in the honest hearts of the good yeoman, John Cobham, and his faithful servant, old Daniel, and so deep the remorse which they both felt for their injustice and unkindness towards the friendless lad, that there was considerable danger of their falling into the opposite extreme, and ruining him by sudden and excessive indulgence. Jesse, however, was not of a temperament to be easily spoilt. He had been so long an outcast from human society that he had become as wild and shy as his old companions of the fields and the coppice, the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air. The hare which he had himself given to Phoebe was easier to tame than Jesse Cliffe.

Gradually, very gradually, under the gentle influence of the gentle child, this great feat was accomplished, almost as effectually, although by no means so suddenly, as in the well-known case of Cymon and Iphigenia, the most noted precedent upon record of the process of reaching the head through the heart. Venus, and a beautiful Welsh pony called Taffy, which her grandfather had recently purchased for her riding, had their share in the good deed; these two favourites being placed by Phoebe's desire under Jesse's sole charge and management; a measure which not only brought him necessarily into something like intercourse with the other lads about the yard, but ended in his conceiving so strong an attachment to the animals of whom he had the care, that before the winter set in he had deserted his old lair in the wood, and actually passed his nights in a vacant stall of the small stable appropriated to their use.

From the moment that John Cobham detected such an approach to the habits of civilised life as sleeping under a roof, he looked upon the wild son of the Moors as virtually reclaimed, and so it proved. Every day he became more and more like his fellow-men. He abandoned his primitive oven, and bought his bread at the baker's. He accepted thankfully the decent clothing necessary to his attending Miss Phoebe in her rides round the country. He worked regularly and steadily at whatever labour was assigned to him, receiving wages like the other farm servants; and finally it was discovered that one of the first uses he made of these wages was to purchase spelling-books and copy-books, and enter himself at an evening school, where the opening difficulties being surmounted, his progress astonished every body.

His chief fancy was for gardening. The love, and, to a certain point, the knowledge of flowers which he had always evinced increased upon him every day;--and happening to accompany Phoebe on one of her visits to the young ladies at the Hall, who were much attached to the lovely little girl, he saw Lady Mordaunt's French garden, and imitated it the next year for his young mistress in wild flowers, after such a fashion as to excite the wonder and admiration of all beholders.

From that moment Jesse's destiny was decided. Sir Robert's gardener, a clever Scotchman, took great notice of him and offered to employ him at the Hall; but the Moors had to poor Jesse a fascination which he could not surmount. He felt that it would be easier to tear himself from the place altogether, than to live in the neighbourhood and not there. Accordingly he lingered on for a year or two, and then took a grateful leave of his benefactors, and set forth to London with the avowed intention of seeking employment in a great nursery-ground, to the proprietor of which he was furnished with letters, not merely from his friend the gardener, but from Sir Robert himself.

N. B. It is recorded that on the night of Jesse's departure, Venus refused her supper and Phoebe cried herself to sleep.

Time wore on. Occasional tidings had reached the Moors of the prosperous fortunes of the adventurer. He had been immediately engaged by the great nurseryman to whom he was recommended, and so highly approved, that in little more than two years he became foreman of the flower department; another two years saw him chief manager of the garden; and now, at the end of a somewhat longer period, there was a rumour of his having been taken into the concern as acting partner; a rumour which received full confirmation in a letter from himself, accompanying a magnificent present of shrubs, plants, and flower-roots, amongst which were two Dahlias, ticketed 'the Moors' and 'the Phoebe,' and announcing his intention of visiting his best and earliest friends in the course of the ensuing summer.

Still time wore on. It was full six months after this intimation, that on a bright morning in October, John Cobham, with two or three visiters from Belford, and his granddaughter Phoebe, now a lovely young woman, were coursing on the Moors. The townspeople had boasted of their greyhounds, and the old sportsman was in high spirits from having beaten them out of the field.

"If that's your best dog," quoth John, "why, I'll be bound that our Snowball would beat him with one of his legs tied up. Talk of running such a cur as that against Snowball! Why there's Phoebe's pet Venus, Snowball's great grandam, who was twelve years old last May, and has not seen a hare these three seasons, shall give him the go-by in the first hundred yards. Go and fetch Venus, Daniel! It will do her heart good to see a hare again," added he, answering the looks rather than the words of his granddaughter, for she had not spoken, "and I'll be bound to say she'll beat him out of sight He won't come in for a turn."