by Silverpen [Eliza Meteyard].
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.1 #6 (06 Feb 1847).
Baron Thrashem was one of the very wisest and profoundest lawyers on the judicial bench; to say nothing of his extraordinary research amidst such ethic doctrines as relate to the origin of evil; to say nothing that these doctrines were always stated by him so precisely and logically, that the minutest link in his chain of causation never showed a flaw; to say nothing that he had espied the very topmost bough of the goodly tree of sin, and dug down (in his own opinion) nearer to its far hidden and obscure root than any other man; to say nothing of these things, he so viewed all reformatory law for crime as twaddle from the humane school of philosophy, that had he had his own stern will, every statute and every law against the criminal should have been burnt, and replaced by those two very tangible and summary processes for curing evil—the halter and the gibbet.
Thirteen years ago this very next Lent term, the baron had gone circuit to the north. His old clerk Rednot had gone circuit too, and old Joe Bottle, who prided himself upon having been the judge's servant forty-two years, had taken coach that very morning to visit some country relatives. None were left in the old dull house in the old dull square, but the maid of all-work, and the cook, and the housekeeper, summed up in the person of Becky; for the judge had neither a grand house, a grand equipage (for an old jobbing coach had taken him down to Westminster, and on circuit, for the last twenty years), nor many servants; but simply a very grand library, every book in which—according to the fully united opinions of Rednot, Bottle, and Becky—he knew by heart, from its first letter to its colophon; excepting certain books on a certain right-hand shelf of the large bookcase, at which he had been seen to smile so satirically and so often, that they were supposed to contain opinions not worth a farthing to the great mintage of the judge's mind, but were doubtless simple, irreverent, and untrue. Be this as it may—upon this certain morning, Becky, whose simple heart knew no bounds in its reverence and duty to her stern master, was busy in the library, when her ear was caught by the low voice of a child outside the area-rails. She had at that moment lifted up from the library-table an old-fashioned massive silver inkstand, and turning round saw that it was a wretched, sharp-faced child, who probably attracted by her cap, as seen above the window-blinds, had stopped to beg. Her kindly thoughts in a moment were travelling fast between the twopence in her pocket and the hot roll left in the oven from Joe's breakfast, when the postman's quick rap was heard at the hall-door. It was a letter from her master Becky was sure, and all in an anxious tremor—for Thrashem wrote but seldom when from home, and then only on some urgent point—she hurried breathlessly to answer the door, with the duster and inkstand yet in her hand. Recognising her master's stiff, straight characters on the letter, and as the postage was to pay, she, in the anxious absence of the moment, set down the duster and the inkstand on the step, while she dived down for her purse into the hidden mysteries of her capacious pocket. The postman was leaning carelessly on the area railings looking down the street; and when she had stepped to him, given him the money, and come back again, the inkstand was gone, the silver inkstand that the judge prized so highly! In the first moment of doubt and astonishment, she knew not what to think; but recollecting the keen-faced child, who but the instant before had been in sight, she hurried from the door, and looking down the street, and calling upon the postman to follow her, saw the child running onward with breathless speed. The postman's quick step was, however, a match; he seized upon the thief just as she had thrust the inkstand beneath the ragged strip of shawl that hung about a girl some year or two older than herself. To half cry with joy was Becky's first impulse when the inkstand was again safe; to tremble at the bare thought of the judge's stern displeasure, had it been lost; to almost sink in heart at the idea of one doubt upon her long-tried honesty: all these for the instant were paramount; but all sunk into mere nothingness, or rather, were merged into one feeling of womanly and simple mercy, when she glanced down upon the child's upturned face of terror, hunger, and pain.
"You—" commenced the postman.
"Had no wittles," spoke the child, sullenly.
These words robbed the heart of the judge's honest servant of its last touch of anger. She said something about letting the child go; but too late. A crowd had collected, a policeman stepped in, and the thief in a few minutes was locked safe in the station-house.
It was a sorrowful night, that, to the compassionate heart of Becky; though her fire was bright, her tea good, and even the barber from a little street hard by had stepped in to talk the matter over with her. And she was still more sad next day, when in her best gown she curtseyed to the magistrate of the police court, and saw the child in the dock, more haggard and pale. The case was fully proved. "My good woman," spoke the magistrate, in his kindest voice, "I know your master would prosecute this case to the fullest extent of the law, but to what end? Here is a child seven years old or thereabouts, without home, without one human friend, and, great God! apparently without a name; the scum and refuse of this city streets whilst yet a baby. If I send her to prison, she will probably come out only more confirmed in precocious wickedness; or if sent back into the streets, but to starvation or something still more horrible—incipient prostitution. But were there some one to save by teaching, and—"
Becky, the great judge's poor servant, looked here at the magistrate, and then at the criminal child. "Please sir," and the sympathy of our divinest nature justified itself, "I've fifty-seven pounds sixteen and sixpence in the Savings' Bank, that Mr. Rednot has the receipt of, and just two sovereigns more in the spice-box—so if a little schooling might—"
"Might do more than the prison or the law can do—turn guiltless sin into good, and if with work—"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Becky, pleased with the magistrate's manner, and interpreting the matter in her own way; "if she were to turn out tidy, and I could keep the thing from master's ears, why I could teach her to roast, and bake, and set his room to rights, and--."
"And if you should succeed in half," chimed in the magistrate, "you'd show yourself to be a profounder lawyer than either I who sit upon this Bench, or your master, a Baron of the Exchequer. He who cures vice is greater than he who punishes it."
Becky did not understand half this, only this much, that nobody could be so great as the judge her master; so, curtseying less respectfully than she otherwise would have done, she waited for the child to be released from the dock, threw a large silk handkerchief from her pocket across its shoulders, that it might look less like a vagrant, and then reverting back to the due disposal of the two pounds in the spice-box, she took the child's hand, and made her way to the cab outside the door, followed by the wondering and ejaculating barber.
To wash the child well by the kitchen fire, to bake a cake for tea, to invite the barber thereunto, to reach the child a little pictured cup from the closet's topmost shelf, were matters of course with Becky; and much did she ejaculate, and more did the barber, as, between the ravenously eaten cake and the sweetened tea, the precocious, witful, neglected intellect of crime told of its narrow hell of human life, which it believed was heaven! Long was the talk of the barber and Becky whilst the babyhood of crime, not disowned by nature, nestled to its rest; and as Mr. Bottle was of a nervous temperament, and much given to count his spoons and forks, and make particular inquiries after his master's gold spectacles, it was judged wise to keep the real truth from him, at least for the present; and moreover, as the police report would be sure to appear in the Times of the morrow, it would be advisable (though a sad sin in the eyes of Becky) not to post that paper, so that some chance might lie of the matter escaping Thrashem's keen notice. It fortunately did, beyond a mere report by word; but in her strongest trunk Becky hoarded up that paper.
It was necessary to give the child a name before Mr. Bottle came back. The barber suggested many good ones; none, however, pleasant to the ear of Becky. But when in some few days the child's young face began to look gratefully up into her own, the thought struck Becky, that the great oil painting over the library fire-place was the portrait of the judge's mother, and that her Christian name had been Alice. "And might it not be beautiful," said Becky to herself, "if she should turn out a good child, and come up to such grand things as to mend the dear master's shirt, or cook him an omelet as brown as I do? Might it not be beautiful to hear that name he loves so well, called softly up and down the house?" So giving her own question an affirmative answer, Becky called the child Alice.
To say that the seven years' teaching of sin was absolved all at once, would be an injustice to my great teacher—nature. But peculations from closets, and drawers, and jars, grew less and less before the continual ministry of good; the memory of vice faded like a shadow in the broadening sun; and Alice, the unknown spawn of the beggars' lodging-house, became a favourite with old Joe, took and thrived by honest Becky's teachings, and even at last becoming noticed by Mr. Rednot, drew upon his learning many ways.
Years passed on, and Alice was seventeen. Never had the judge seen her: never heard of her. He had lived forty years in that house, yet never trod his own kitchen floor. Becky grew feeble; and the stern old man at last noticing it, rung her up, one night, into the library. He spoke kindly, placed her-a chair, and said she must have help. Becky's heart faltered—the secret of years was on her tongue.
"I was afraid you would be angry, but I've long been obliged to have—"
"Whom?"
"One who can cook your omelet beautifully; set a frill on your shirt, and almost place your room as well as I do,—Alice."
The old man looked up at that picture; his heart grew merciful at that name. He rung again the bell; he said a word or two; and Alice—the bud, the spawn of iniquity—the atom of the foulest city streets that society crushes, and that he in his great wisdom disowned all regeneration for, save the gallows—stood before him in her beauty and her usefulness. The magistrate said right—"Nobler is it to teach good to crime, than to tread it under foot." The heart of the poor servant had solved the great enigma of social wrong and social progress, in a more practical way than the wisdom of the scholar and the judge,—for teach but ignorance and we evil diminish! That night the old man smiled less upon those books; he took them down; he read them; and Alice from that hour flitted round him in her useful, humble duties, and surpassed poor Becky, because she had been better taught. Becky soon after this fell ill, and on her dying bed told the old man of that theft; how the pity of her heart had made her save—and Alice was the fruit!
"She, sir, who is so very good, and waits so gently on you. Be good to her—be good to her."
"I will—and take a lesson from you, Becky, that shall make not only the law, but my own heart better."
Those great books of the great jurist are no longer smiled upon. The retired judge will bequeath his great wealth to put their spirit into action; and with Alice in her humble duties flitting round him, devises plans for the better bearing out the great progress question of reformatory law; and no longer ending his chain of ethic causatives by the gallows, sets his hand to these great principles—that crime is ignorance, and that to save and lead this ignorance towards good, is a service that approximates the human actor towards his Divine Creator.