Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843

But as I had no wish to be a party to what, with all its gaiety and gallantry, I felt to be a rough infraction of the law; I now begged permission to make my way homewards. It was given at once, with even some expressions of gratitude for my having, as it was termed, stood by them to the last; and a guide was ordered for me as an additional civility. "You will have five miles to walk," said the captain, as he shook hands with me; "but Grapnel here will take you the shortest way and it will be light in an hour. You need say nothing of this business to Mordecai, who makes a point of being deaf and dumb when ever it suits him; though, between ourselves."—The captain's prudence here checked his overflow of confidence. "I merely mean to say, that if you drink any particularly fine claret, in a day or two, at his table, you will have to thank the lugger, La Belle Jeannette, for it. Au revoir."

My guide and I pushed on into the darkness. He was a bluff, open-hearted fellow, with all the smuggler's hatred of the magistracy, and taking great delight in telling how often they failed in their attempts to stop the "free trade," which he clearly regarded as the only trade worthy of a man. His account of the feats of his comrades; their escapes from the claws of the customs; their facetious tricks on the too vigilant among the magistrates; and the real luxury in which, with all their life of hardship, they found opportunities of indulging, would have edified a modern tour writer, and possibly relieved even the dreariness of a county historian. Among other matters too, he let out, that he paid me a prodigious compliment in accompanying me, as this night's smuggling was one of the grand exploits of the year; and casting a "longing, lingering look, behind," where a distant glimmer marked the scene of operations, he evidently halted between the two opinions, whether to go on, or return. "What a glorious night!" he exclaimed, as he turned his bald forehead to a sky black as Erebus, and roaring with whirlwind. "Talk of sunshine, or moonshine, compared with that!" Another burst of rain, or flash of lightning, would evidently have rendered the scene too captivating. Both came, and I must have lost my guide, when he stopped short, and in a half whisper, asked me, "whether I heard anything?" Before I could return a word, he had flung himself on the ground, with his ear to the sward, and after a moment's listening, said, "here they come!"

"Who come? There is neither sight nor sound between us and Brighton. Are you thinking of the custom-house officers?"

The look which I had the benefit of seeing by a blue blaze from the zenith, and the tone of infinite scorn, in which he slowly repeated the words, "custom-house officers," were incomparable. "Afraid of them!" said he, as he rose from the wet heather, "as much afraid as the cat is of the mice. No, those are the dragoons from Lewes."

"Well, what have we to care about them?"

"Care?" said he, with a mixture of frown and grin. "Only that you are the captain's friend, and I daresay, are going at this time of night to do a job for him in Brighton yourself—I should think, young gentleman, you were only laughing at Sam Grapnel. Better not! Why, you see, though the fellows with their pens behind their ears are no more than six-watered gin to us, the dragoons are another sort of thing. I must go back. So, young gentleman, I wish you a very good night."

The oddity of the wish in the midst of this elemental uproar, made me laugh, shivering as I was. Yet, to be left to find my own way at such a time, was startling. I offered him money.

"At another opportunity, sir," said he, rather pacified by the offer. "But, if they come upon the captain unawares, they will find every thing ready to their hands; all at sixes and sevens just now. It will take an hour or two before he can clear the cargo off the ground; and there goes the whole speculation. Don't you hear them? You have only to drop your ear to the ground, to know the whole affair. A lubber deserted from us a week ago, and no doubt he has laid the information."

I lay down, and clearly enough heard the trampling of horses, and in considerable numbers. My own situation was now somewhat embarrassing. They were evidently coming up in our direction; and, to be found past midnight, armed, (for my gun had been restored to me,) in company with an unquestionable smuggler, must have made appearances tell strongly against me. But my companion's mind was made up with the promptitude of a life which has no time to waste on thinking.

"I must go back this moment, or all our comrades will be taken in the fact. And, take my advice, you had better do the same; for go I will. The captain shan't have it to say that I let him be caught without warning."

I still hesitated, and he still urged.

"You can do no better, sir; for if you stand here five minutes longer, you will either be taken, or you will lose the number of your mess, by a carbine slug, or the slash of a sabre; while, if you turn back, you will have ten times the chance of escape along the shore."

I could now distinctly hear the clatter of hoofs, and the jingling of bridles. There was no time to deliberate; I certainly felt no inclination to be the means of the captain's ruin or death, and I followed my guide, who set off with the swiftness of a deer.

We soon reached the shore, where our intelligence struck considerable alarm. "I thought that it would be so," said the captain; "I had notice from a friend in the customs itself, that a spy was at work, and it was to this that we owed the chase of the lugger. For the revenue officers I care not a straw, but the dragoons are to be avoided when we can. We may fight upon occasion, it is true, but we choose our time for it. We have now only to get out of the way; and clever as they are, they may find us not so easily laid hold of."

Turning to me, he said, "I am sorry, Mr Marston, that you have been brought into all this bustle; but time and chance happen to us all. At all events, it will show you something of life, which you would scarcely have seen in the Jew's villa, though he, too, could show you a good deal. We shall see each other again, but let this night be forgotten, and now, good by once more." Then turning to my guide, he said, "This young gentleman must be seen safe along the cliff; stay with him until he sends you back again.

"Come, lads, all hands to work!" he now shouted to a group who stood at a little distance; "are the tar-barrels ready?" "Ay, ay," was the answer. They trundled three or four barrels along the shore, dragged them up the face of the cliff, and I had scarcely left them a hundred yards behind, when they were in a blaze. The trampling of the dragoons was now heard coming on at full speed.

"There," said Grapnel, "I'll engage that he tricks them at last; while they are moving up to the fire, the cargo is moving up to the store. He will leave half a dozen kegs for them to make prize of, while he is carrying away clear and clean as much silk as would make gowns for all the corporation of London, and as much claret as would give the gout to"–the gust choked the remainder of the comparison.

He had probably been accustomed to performances of this order, for his conjecture was exactly verified. From the spot where we stood, to get, as he called it, a last peep at "the free-traders bamboozling the dragoons," we could see cavalry rushing up to the blaze, evidently sure of having made a capture. A few carts in the ravine below next caught their eye. Another beacon on another hill soon threw up its flame, and a party galloped off to examine the new phenomenon. Two or thee more blazed in succession, and increased their perplexity.

"I must have one shot at them before I go," said Grapnel, "if I die for it;" and, before I could utter a word to prevent him, he discharged his pistol. This was an unlucky shot, as it drew the attention of a party of dragoons, whom we had not before seen, in the hollow beneath. After returning a shot or two, they darted down upon the rear of the last convoy, which was silently moving under the shadow of the cliffs, with the captain and some of its stoutest followers at its head. The business now began to be serious. The captain and his men, determined not to lose their venture, made a bold resistance. The dragoons came riding in from all quarters, but the ground was unfavourable for them, hemmed in as it was on all sides by the sea, and on the other by the cliff, besides the encumbrance of the carts and waggons, behind which the cutlasses of the smugglers were fully a match for the sabre.

If I could have thought of any thing but the hazard of those unfortunate fellows, the scene from the spot where I stood was sufficiently striking. The blaze from the tar-barrels showed a long extent of the Downs, with the troops scattered and galloping among them on all sides. Long ridges of light were thrown over the waters, while, immediately below me, the flashes of the smugglers' muskets and the soldiers' pistols were incessant. It was a battle on a minor scale.

But it is dangerous to be in the way of bullets even as an amateur; for, as I stood gazing down, I felt a sudden stroke like a shock of electricity. I staggered, and was on the point of rolling over the cliff, when Grapnel darted towards me. I just felt myself grasped by him, and lost all recollection.

On recovering my senses again, I was in Mordecai's villa, where I had been brought by some fishermen on the morning of the skirmish; and who, asking no questions, and being asked none, had deposited me, bandaged and bruised as I was, at the door of the villa. If I was not sensible of this service, it was, at least, a vast relief to the Jew, who had begun to think that his violence had urged me on some desperate course. As hasty in his repentance as in his wrath, he had no sooner become rational enough to hear his daughter's story, than he was eager to make me the amende by all the means in his power. Perhaps he would have even lent me money, if I had met him in the penitential mood; but I was not to be found. The sight of my corded trunk convinced him that I had taken mortal offence, and he grew more uneasy still. As the night fell, a general enquiry was made amongst the fisherman's cabins; and as, on those occasions, no one ever desires to send away the enquirer without giving himself, at least, credit for an answer, every one gave an answer according to his fashion. Some thought that they had seen me in a skiff on the shore; where I was, of course, blown out to sea, and, by that time, probably carried to the chops of the Channel. Others were sure, that they had seen me on the outside of the London mail—an equally embarrassing conjecture; for it happened that the horses, startled by the lightening, had dashed the carriage to pieces a few miles off. Mordecai's own conception was, that the extravagance of his rage had driven me to the extravagance of despair; and that I was by this time making my bed below the surges which roared and thundered through the dusk; and some scraps of verse which had been found in my apartment—"Sonnets to an eyebrow," and reveries on subjects of which my host had as much knowledge as his own ledger, were set down by him for palpable proofs of that frenzy to which he assigned my demise. Thus, his night was a disturbed one, passed alternately in watching over his daughter's feeble signs of recovery, and hurrying to the window at every sound of every footstep which seemed to give a hope of my return. The sight of me in the morning, laid at his hall door, relieved his heart of a burden; and, though the silence and rapid retreat of my bearers gave him but too much the suspicion that I had somehow or other been involved in the desperate business of the last twelve hours; of whose particulars he had, by some means or other, become already acquainted; he determined to watch over, and, if need be, protect me, until I could leave his house in safety.

My recovery was slow. A ball had struck me on the forehead; and, though it had luckily glanced off, it had produced a contusion which long threatened dangerous consequences. For a month, I remained nearly insensible. At length I began to move, health returned, the sea-breeze gave me new sensations of life; and, but for one circumstance, I should have felt all the enjoyment of that most delightful of all contrasts—between the languor of a sick bed, and the renewed pouring of vitality through the frame.

On my first awaking, I found an accumulation of letters on my table. Some were the mere common-places of correspondence; some were from sporting friends in the neighbourhood of the castle, detailing with due exactness the achievements of their dogs and horses; three were from the Horse Guards at successive intervals of a week—the first announcing that my commission in the Guards had received the signatures of the proper authorities; the second, giving me a peremptory order to join immediately; and the third, formally announcing, that, as I had neither joined, nor assigned any reason for my absence, my commission had been cancelled!

This was an unexpected blow, and, in my state of weakness might have been a fatal one, but for my having found, at the bottom of the heap, a letter in the handwriting of Vincent. This excellent man, as if he had anticipated my vexations, wrote in a style singularly adapted to meet them at the moment. After slight and almost gay remarks on country occurrences, and some queries relative to my ideas of London; he touched on the difficulties which beset the commencement of every career, and the supreme necessity of patience, and a determination to be cheerful under all.

"One rule is absolutely essential," wrote he, "never to mourn over the past, or mope over the future. 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,' is a maxim of incomparable wisdom. Never think of the failures of yesterday, but to avoid them to-morrow, and never speculate on the failures of to-morrow, but to remember that you have outlived the failures of to-day. The French philosophers are now preaching around the world, that knowledge is power, and so it is, but only as gunpowder is power; a dangerous invention which blew up the inventor. It requires to be wisely managed. English experience will tell you, more to the purpose, that 'perseverance is power;' for with it, all things can be done, without it nothing. I remember, in the history of Tamerlane, an incident which, to me, has always had the force of an apothegm.

"In early life, and when reduced to the utmost distress, defeated in battle, and without a follower, he one day threw himself into the ruins of a Tartar caravansera, where he resolved to give up all further effort, and die. As he lay on the ground, sunk in despair, his eye was caught by the attempts of an ant to drag a grain of corn up to its nest in the wall. The load was too great for it, and the ant and the grain fell to the ground together. The trial was renewed, and both fell again. It was renewed ninety and nine times, and on the hundredth it succeeded, and the grain was carried into the nest. The thought instantly struck the prostrate chieftain, 'Shall an insect struggle ninety and nine times until it succeeds, while I, a man, and the descendant of heroes, give up all hope after a single battle?' He sprang from the ground, and found a troop of his followers outside, who had been looking for him through the wilderness. Scimitar in hand, he threw himself on his pursuers, swelled his troop into an army, his army into myriads, and finished by being the terror of Europe, the conqueror of Asia, and the wonder of the world." The letter finished with general enquiries into the things of the day, and all good wishes for my career.

It is astonishing what an effect is sometimes produced by advice, given at the exact moment when we want it. This letter was the "word in season" of which the "wisest of men" speaks; and I felt all its influence in my rescue from despondency. Its simplicity reached my heart more than the most laboured language, and its manliness seemed a direct summons to whatever was manly in my nature. I determined thenceforth, to try fortune to the utmost, to task my powers to the last, to regard difficulties as only the exercise that was intended to give me strength, and to render every success only a step to success higher still. That letter had pushed me another stage towards manhood.

With the Horse Guards' papers in my hand, and the letter of my old friend placed in a kind of boyish romance, in my bosom, I went to meet Mordecai and his daughter. The Jew shook his bushy brows over the rescript which seemed to put a perpetual extinguisher on my military hopes. But Mariamne was the gayest of the gay, on what she termed my "fortunate ill-fortune." She had now completely recovered; said she remembered nothing of her accident but "the heroism," as she expressed it, "on my part which had saved her to thank me;" and between her gratitude and her vivacity, might have given a spectator the idea that M. Lafontaine was rapidly losing ground with that creature of open lips and incessant smiles. Her harp was brought, she was an accomplished performer, and she surprised me by the taste and tenderness with which she sung a succession of native melodies, collected in her rambles from Hungary to the Hartz; and from the Mediterranean to the Alps and Pyrenees. One air struck me as so beautiful that I still remember the words. They were Garcilasso's:—

"De las casualidadesY las quimeras,Nacen felicidadesQue no se esperano.Siempre se advienteQue donde esta la vida,Se halla la muerte."

Then with that quick turn of thought which forms so touching a feature of the love-poetry of Spain—

"Tus ojos a mis ojos,Miran atentos,Y callando se dicenSus sentimientos.Cosa es bien rara,Que sin hablar se entiendenNuestras dos almas."

The Spaniard, in his own language, is inimitable. I cannot come nearer the soft Southern than these ballad lines—

"Alas,—how sweet, yet strange!Joy in the lap of woe!Love, all a change!Like roses laid on snow,Nipt by the cruel wind;Love, all unkind!"Yet, close those eyes of thine,Else, though no accents fall,These stealing tears from mineWill tell thee all!Strange, that what lips deny,Is spoken by the telltale eye."

Whether the little seguidilla meant any thing in the lips of the songstress, I do not presume to say. But the hearts of women, perhaps I should say of all pretty women, expect admiration as naturally as an idol receives incense; and as a part of the incense now and then descends upon the worshippers themselves, the sentiment becomes in some degree mutual. However, with all my perceptions alive to her merits, and she had many; the cause of my gallant French friend was perfectly safe in my hands. I never had much vanity in these matters, and even if I had, the impression already made by another had made me impregnable, for the time, to the whole artillery of eyes.

Yet the evening which I thus spent, gave me the first genuine idea of domestic happiness which I had ever received. I had certainly seen but little of it at home. There all was either crowds, or solitude; the effort to seem delighted, or palpable discontent; extravagant festivity, or bitterness and frowns. My haughty father was scarcely approachable, unless when some lucky job shed a few drops of honey into his natural gall; and my gentle mother habitually took refuge in her chamber, with a feebleness of mind which only embittered her vexations. In short, the "family fireside" had become with me a name for every thing dull and discomforting; and a tête-à-tête little less than an absolute terror.

But in this apartment I saw how perfectly possible it might be to make one's way through life, even with so small a share of that world as the woman before me. I had now spent some hours without a care, without a wish, or even a thought beyond the room in which we sat. My imagination had not flagged, no sense of weariness had touched me, our conversation had never wanted a topic; yet the Jew was one certainly of no peculiar charm of manner, though a man of an originally vigorous mind, and well acquainted with general life; and even his daughter was too foreign and fantastic to realize my beau idéal. Still with the one being of my choice, I felt that it would be possible to be happy on a desert island.

Our supper was as animated as our evening. My remarks on the passing world—a world of which I then knew not much more than the astronomer does of the inhabitants of the moon, by inspecting it

"With his glazed optic tube,At midnight from the top of Fesolé,Or in Val d'Arno, to descry new seas,Rivers, and mountains on her spotty globe"—

were received with an acquiescence, which showed that I had already gained some ground, even in the rough, though undoubtedly subtle and powerful mind of the Jew: as for Mariamne, she was all delight, and until she took her leave of us for the night, all smiles.

As she closed the door Mordecai laid his muscular hand on my shoulder. "A word with you, Mr Marston; you have rendered me the highest of services in saving that girl from a dreadful death. You have been of use to me in other matters also, unconsciously I aver—but we shall talk of that another time. To come to the point at once. If you can make yourself my daughter's choice, for I shall never control her, I shall not throw any obstacles in the way. What say you?"

I never felt more difficulty in an answer. My voice actually died within my lips. I experienced a feverish sensation which must have mounted to my face, and given me the look of a clown or a criminal, if the Jew had but looked at me: but he was waiting my reply with his eyes fixed on the ground. But the hesitation was soon over; I was almost pledged to Lafontaine, as a man of honour; I knew that Mariamne, however she might play the coquette for the day, was already bound in heart to the gallant Frenchman; and if neither impediment had existed, there was a chain, cold as ice, but strong as adamant—a chain of which she who had bound it was altogether ignorant, but which I had neither the power nor the will to sever. Still it was not for me to divulge Mariamne's secret, and I could not even touch upon my own. I escaped from the dilemma under cover of another reason, and also a true one.

Thanking him for his kindness and candour, I observed, "that I was nothing and had nothing, that to offer myself to the acceptance of one entitled to wed so opulently as his daughter, would be to pain my feelings, and place me in a humiliating point of view, in the presence of one whose respect I ought to deserve." Our conversation extended far into the night; and I freely entered into the disappointment which I had sustained in the unfortunate loss of my commission. I added, that I was determined not to lead a life of idleness, even if I had possessed the means; and that as the army was the profession which gave the fairest prospect of being known to the world, I must pursue it if possible.

The idea was fully approved of by my energetic hearer. "Right!" said he. "It is exactly the thing which I should have expected from you. You have been ill-treated, I own, but there is no use in kicking at power, unless you can kick it before you. The machinery of government is too huge for any one of us to resist, and unless we run along with it, our only wisdom is, to get out of its way. But you shall have a commission, ay, even if it cost a thousand guineas. Never refuse; I am not in the habit of throwing away my money; but you saved Mariamne's life, and I would not have lost my child for all the bullion in the Bank of England, or on the globe."

I was surprised by this burst of generosity, but it was real; and the Jew, as if to put his sincerity beyond all doubt, had torn a leaf out of his pocket-book, and was writing an order for the sum on his banker: he laid it on the table. I returned it to him at once, perhaps not less to his surprise than his offer had been to mine. But I reminded him, that I had still a balance at my banker's; and I told him besides that I had made up my mind to enter the regiment from which I had been so unceremoniously dismissed, or none. He stared. "If," said I, "I shall not be commissioned in the Coldstream, it will be utterly beyond my power to persuade even my own relatives, much less the world, that I have not been dismissed for some act of impropriety. Or, if men will not hazard saying this to my face, they will only be more likely to say it where I cannot defend myself."

"True!" said Mordecai, as if the opinion had cast a new light on him. "Perfectly to the point. This is a world of scandal; and, like the wolves, the whole pack fall on the wounded. You must recover your commission in the Coldstream; or be ready to tell your story every day of your life, and be only half believed after all. Yes, you must enter that very corps, or be sneered at as long as you live; and if you have a heart to be stung, it will be stung. Our people know that well."