The trail of the serpent
Marwood is to arrive this day. Slopperton must be at hand to bid him
welcome to his native town, to repair the wrong it has so long done him
in holding him up to universal detestation as the George Barnwell of
modern times.
Which train will he come by? There is a whisper of the three o’clock
express; and at three o’clock in the afternoon, therefore, the station
and station-yard are crowded.
The Slopperton station, like most other stations, is built at a little
distance from the town, so that the humble traveller who arrives by the
parliamentary train, with all his earthly possessions in a red cotton
pocket-handkerchief or a brown-paper parcel, and to whom such things
as cabs are unknown luxuries, is often disappointed to find that when
he gets to Slopperton station he is not in Slopperton proper. There
is a great Sahara of building-ground and incomplete brick-and-mortar,
very much to let, to be crossed before the traveller finds himself in
High Street, or South Street, or East Street, or any of the populous
neighbourhoods of this magnificent city.
Every disadvantage, however, is generally counterbalanced by some
advantage, and nothing could be more suitable than this grand Sahara
of broken ground and unfinished neighbourhood for the purposes of a
triumphal entry into Slopperton.
There is a great deal of animated conversation going on upon the
platform inside the station. It is a noticeable fact that everybody
present--and there are some hundreds--appears to have been intimately
acquainted with Richard from his very babyhood. This one remembers
many a game at cricket with him on those very fields yonder; another
would be a rich man if he had only a sovereign for every cigar he has
smoked in the society of Mr. Marwood. That old gentleman yonder taught
our hero his declensions, and always had a difficulty with him about
the ablative case. The elderly female with the dropsical umbrella had
nursed him as a baby; “and the finest baby he was as ever I saw,” she
adds enthusiastically. Those two gentlemen who came down to the station
in their own brougham are the kind doctors who carried him through that
terrible brain-fever of his early youth, and whose evidence was of some
service to him at his trial. Everywhere along the crowded platform
there are friends; noisy excited gesticulating friends, who have
started a hero on their own account, and who wouldn’t turn aside to-day
to get a bow from majesty itself.
Five minutes to three. From the doctor’s fifty-guinea chronometer,
by Benson, to the silver turnip from the wide buff waistcoat of the
farmer, everybody’s watch is out, and nobody will believe but that
his particular time is the right time, and every other watch, and the
station clock into the bargain, wrong.
Two minutes to three. Clang goes the great bell. The station-master
clears the line. Here it comes, only a speck of dull red fire as
yet, and a slender column of curling smoke; but the London express
for all that. Here it comes, wildly tearing up the tender green
country, rushing headlong through the smoky suburbs; it comes within
a few hundred yards of the station; and there, amidst a labyrinth of
straggling lines and a chaos of empty carriages and disabled engines,
it stops deliberately for the ticket-collectors to go their accustomed
round.
Good gracious me, how badly those ticket-collectors do their duty!--how
slow they are!--what a time the elderly females in the second-class
appear to be fumbling in their reticules before they produce the
required document!--what an age, in short, it is before the train
puffs lazily up to the platform; and yet, only two minutes by the
station-clock.
Which is he? There is a long line of carriages. The eager eyes look
into each. There is a fat dark man with large whiskers reading the
paper. Is that Richard? He may be altered, you know, they say; but
surely eight years could never have changed him into that. No! there he
is! There is no mistaking him this time. The handsome dark face, with
the thick black moustache, and the clustering frame of waving raven
hair, looks out of a first-class carriage. In another moment he is on
the platform, a lady by his side, young and pretty, who bursts into
tears as the crowd press around him, and hides her face on an elderly
lady’s shoulder. That elderly lady is his mother. How eagerly the
Sloppertonians gather round him! He does not speak, but stretches out
both his hands, which are nearly shaken off his wrists before he knows
where he is.
Why doesn’t he speak? Is it because he cannot? Is it because there is a
choking sensation in his throat, and his lips refuse to articulate the
words that are trembling upon them? Is it because he remembers the last
time he alighted on this very platform--the time when he wore handcuffs
on his wrists and walked guarded between two men; that bitter time
when the crowd held aloof from him, and pointed him out as a murderer
and a villain? There is a mist over his dark eyes as he looks round at
those eager friendly faces, and he is glad to slouch his hat over his
forehead, and to walk quickly through the crowd to the carriage waiting
for him in the station-yard. He has his mother on one arm and the young
lady on the other; his old friend Gus Darley is with him too; and the
four step into the carriage.
Then, how the cheers and the huzzas burst forth, in one great hoarse
shout! Three cheers for Richard, for his mother, for his faithful
friend Gus Darley, who assisted him to escape from the lunatic asylum,
for the young lady--but who is the young lady? Everybody is so anxious
to know who the young lady is, that when Richard introduces her to the
doctors, the crowd presses round, and putting aside ceremony, openly
and deliberately listens. Good Heavens! the young lady is his wife,
the sister of his friend Mr. Darley, “who wasn’t afraid to trust me,”
the crowd heard him say, “when the world was against me, and who in
adversity or prosperity alike was ready to bless me with her devoted
love.” Good gracious me! More cheers for the young lady. The young lady
is Mrs. Marwood. Three cheers for Mrs. Marwood! Three cheers for Mr.
and Mrs. Marwood! Three cheers for the happy pair!
At length the cheering is over--or, at least, over for the moment.
Slopperton is in such an excited state that it is easy to see it
will break out again by-and-by. The coachman gives a preliminary
flourish of his whip as a signal to his fiery steeds. Fiery steeds,
indeed! “Nothing so common as a horse shall carry Richard Marwood
into Slopperton,” cry the excited townspeople. We ourselves will draw
the carriage--we, the respectable tradespeople--we, the tag-rag and
bob-tail, anybody and everybody--will make ourselves for the nonce
beasts of burden, and think it no disgrace to draw the triumphal car of
this our townsman. In vain Richard remonstrates. His handsome face--his
radiant smiles, only rekindle the citizens’ enthusiasm. They think of
the bright young scapegrace whom they all knew years ago. They think of
his very faults--which were virtues in the eyes of the populace. They
remember the day he caned a policeman who had laid violent hands on a
helpless little boy for begging in the streets--the night he wrenched
off the knocker of an unpopular magistrate who had been hard upon a
poacher. They recalled a hundred escapades for which those even who
reproved him had admired him; and they gather round the carriage in
which he stands with his hat off, the May sunlight in his bright hazel
eyes, his dark hair waving in the spring breeze around his wide candid
brow, and one slender hand stretched out to restrain, if he can, this
tempest of enthusiasm. Restrain it?--No! that is not to be done. You
can go and stand upon the shore and address yourselves to the waves of
the sea; you can mildly remonstrate with the wolf as to his intentions
with regard to the innocent lamb; but you _cannot_ check the
enthusiasm of a hearty British crowd when its feelings are excited in a
good cause.
Away the carriage goes! with the noisy populace about the wheels.
What is this?--music? Yes; two opposition bands. One is playing “See,
the conquering hero comes!” while the other exhausts itself; and gets
black in the face, with the exertion necessary in doing justice to
“Rule Britannia.” At last, however, the hotel is reached. But the
triumph of Richard is not yet finished. He must make a speech. He
does, ultimately, consent to say a few words in answer to the earnest
entreaties of that clamorous crowd. He tells his friends, in a very few
simple sentences, how this hour, of all others, is the hour for which
he has prayed for nearly nine long years; and how he sees, in the most
trifling circumstances which have aided, however remotely, in bringing
this hour to pass, the hand of an all-powerful Providence. He tells
them how he sees in these years of sorrow through which he has passed
a punishment for the careless sins of his youth, for the unhappiness
he has caused his devoted mother, and for his indifference to the
blessings Heaven has bestowed on him; how he now prays to be more
worthy of the bright future which lies so fair before him; how he means
the rest of his life to be an earnest and a useful one; and how, to the
last hour of that life, he will retain the memory of their generous and
enthusiastic reception of him this day. It is doubtful how much more
he might have said; but just at this point his eyes became peculiarly
affected--perhaps by the dust, perhaps by the sunshine--and he was
forced once more to have recourse to his hat, which he pulled fairly
over those optics prior to springing out of the carriage and hurrying
into the hotel, amidst the frantic cheers of the sterner sex, and the
audible sobs of the fairer portion of the community.
His visit was but a flying one. The night train was to take him across
country to Liverpool, whence he was to start the following day for
South America. This was kept, however, a profound secret from the
crowd, which might else have insisted on giving him a second ovation.
It was not very quickly dispersed, this enthusiastic throng. It
lingered for a long time under the windows of the hotel. It drank a
great deal of bottled ale and London porter in the bar round the corner
by the stable-yard; and it steadfastly refused to go away until it
had had Richard out upon the balcony several times, and had given him
a great many more tumultuous greetings. When it had quite exhausted
Richard (our hero looking pale from over-excitement) it took to Mr.
Darley as vice-hero, and would have carried him round the town with
one of the bands of music, had he not prudently declined that offer.
It was so bent on doing something, that at last, when it did consent
to go away, it went into the Market-place and had a fight--not from
any pugilistic or vindictive feeling, but from the simple necessity of
finishing the evening somehow.
There is no possibility of sitting down to dinner till after dark.
But at last the shutters are closed and the curtains are drawn by the
obsequious waiters; the dinner-table is spread with glittering plate
and snowy linen; the landlord himself brings in the soup and uncorks
the sherry, and the little party draws round the social board. Why
should we break in upon that happy group? With the wife he loves, the
mother whose devotion has survived every trial, the friend whose aid
has brought about his restoration to freedom and society, with ample
wealth wherefrom to reward all who have served him in his adversity,
what more has Richard to wish for?
A close carriage conveys the little party to the station; and by the
twelve o’clock train they leave Slopperton, some of them perhaps never
to visit it again.
The next day a much larger party is assembled on board the