Читать книгу Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself - Robert Montgomery Bird - Страница 23
ОглавлениеSOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF JOHN H. HIGGINSON, ESQ., THE HAPPY SPORTSMAN; WITH A SURPRISING AFFLICTION THAT BEFELL THE AUTHOR.
I went off in a towering rage, to think of the reception I had met, and that too after an absence of a whole night. I had been bitten by my own dog, and driven from my own doors by my own servants! But there was something in these circumstances to admonish me of the change that had come over me. They reminded me of a fact that was not always present to my thoughts—to wit, that I was no longer Sheppard Lee, but Mr. John Hazlewood Higginson, a very different sort of personage altogether.
To account for my forgetfulness of this important transformation, I must relate that, although I had acquired along with his body all the peculiarities of feeling, propensity, conversation, and conduct of Squire Higginson, I had not entirely lost those that belonged to Sheppard Lee. In fact, I may be said to have possessed, at that time, two different characters, one of which now governed me, and now the other; though the squire's, it must be confessed, was greatly predominant. Thus, the moment after the transformation, I found myself endowed with a passion for shooting, as if I had had it all my life long, a buoyant tone of mind, and, in addition, as I by-and-by discovered, with somewhat a hot temper; none of which had ever been known to me before. The difficulty was, that I could not immediately shake off my old Sheppard Lee habits; and the influence of these, perhaps (if one must scrutinize into the matter), more than the absolute retention of any other native peculiarities, drove me into the inconsistencies of which I was for a short time guilty. But I will not trouble the reader with philosophizing.
I perceived, from the repulse I had received from Jim Jumble, that it now became me to sink his old master altogether, which I was very well content to do, and resolved accordingly; although I could not help thinking, as I strode over the forty-acre farm, how much satisfaction I should have, now that I was a rich man, in putting it into fine order. But these thoughts were soon driven from my mind by Ponto making a set at some game, and in a moment I was banging away, right and left, and slaughtering the birds in the finest style imaginable.
Oh, the delights of shooting woodcock! It is rather hot work, though, of a midsummer day; and notwithstanding the prodigious satisfaction I had in pursuing the sport, I felt that my satisfaction would have been still greater, had I been a few stone lighter. I began to think Squire Higginson's fat rather inconvenient; and I had the same opinion of a touch of asthma, or something of that nature, which I found in his lungs; and, besides, there was a sort of whizzing, and humming, and spinning in my head, where they had been all the morning which were not altogether agreeable.
In consequence of these infirmities of my new body, I began, after a while, to weary of the sport; and was just on the point of setting off to the village to get my dinner, when a crowd of men made their appearance in the marsh, and setting up a great shout at sight of me, began to run towards me. I could not conceive the cause of such a concourse, nor could I imagine for what reason they directed their steps towards me; but hearing them utter the most furious cries, and perceiving that a multitude of dogs they had with them were rushing against me, as if to devour me, I was seized with alarm, and began to retreat towards a wood that was not far off.
This evidence of terror on my part only caused the people to utter louder and more savage cries, besides setting the dogs to running faster; and these ferocious animals gaining upon me, and being on the point of tearing me to pieces, I was obliged to let fly my piece among them, whereby I shot one dead, and disabled two or three others. I then defended myself with the breech of my gun, until the men came up; one of whom tripped up my heels, while the others seized and disarmed me, crying out "that I was a murderer; that I was found out, and should be hanged, if there was any law in the county."
I was confounded at this charge; but how much greater was my amazement, when I understood, as they haled me along towards the village, which they did very roughly, that I was accused of having murdered Sheppard Lee—that is, my own identical self!
This accusation appeared to me so preposterous, that in spite of my indignation (for my fears had now subsided), I burst into a laugh; which only made them rail at me more furiously than I can express. "Hear him!" said they; "he laughs! He thinks, because he is a rich man, he can shoot any poor man he pleases, and buy himself off. But we will show him there's law in Jersey for aristocrats as well as poor men, and that we can hang a purse-proud man as soon as a beggar."
And so they went on reviling me as if I had been the greatest criminal in the land, and dragging me, as they said, to a squire, who would soon show me what law was.
I tried to reason with them, but it was all in vain; I then fell into a passion, and cursed and swore at them in a way which I am certain I never did before at any human being; having always had, while Sheppard Lee, a great horror of profanity; but this was just as fruitless an expedient as the other. They dragged me on until we reached the village, where we found all in a hubbub, men, women, and children running about as if mad, and exclaiming that "Squire Higginson had murdered Sheppard Lee, and hid the body in the Owl-roost Swamp." As soon as they saw me they set up a shout, and some low fellows among them raged in such a degree that I thought they would have massacred me in the street. They crowded round me, hustled me, seized me by the collar, shook their fists in my face, and, in general, testified such a vindictive concern for the murder of poor Sheppard Lee, as they called him, that I might have supposed there was never a man more widely beloved than myself, had I not known otherwise—or, rather, had I not been too closely occupied to suppose any thing about it.
In a word, they carried me before Squire Andrew Parkins, who was a fat man that I heartily despised; and here they called upon him for justice, while I did the same thing, swearing that I would prosecute every rascal of them for assault and battery, conspiracy, defamation, and the Lord knows what beside; all of which, it seems, only inflamed the mob against me the more. They charged me with the murder, and the evidence they brought to support the charge appeared to Justice Parkins sufficient to authorize his issuing a mittimus. There were twenty persons to swear I had, two or three days before, acknowledged having had a quarrel with Sheppard Lee on his farm—that is, the forty-acre—and that he had ordered me off; and there were twenty more to swear I was a man of such a hot and furious temper, that it was a wonder I had not shot the poor man down on the spot. Then came old Turnbuckle and his son, who swore that the ghost of Sheppard Lee had come to them in the gray of the morning, calling for help, and assuring them that he (or his body) lay murdered under the beech-tree in the hollow; that as soon as the phantom had vanished, and they recovered from their fears, they roused the neighbours, and sending some to my house, who learned I had not been at home all night, the others proceeded to the hollow, where they found a freshly-dug grave, with spade and mattock in it, and near it they lit upon my hat and one of my shoes, which latter was bloody, as well as the grass on which it lay; that then, looking round them, they discovered me (that is, John Higginson), sneaking away through the reeds on the marsh in a suspicious way; that at that moment old Jim Jumble was brought forward, who said I (John Hazlewood Higginson) had come to the house, shot his bulldog, threatened to blow his brains out, and bragged that I had just finished, or, in other words, murdered his master, Sheppard Lee; and, finally, that this confirming the suspicions they all had against me, they pursued me (I retreating and shooting their dogs, like a man conscious of guilt, and anxious to escape), and captured me, not without a furious resistance on my part.
On the strength of this testimony I was committed to jail, whither I was conducted amid the shouts of the mob. Squire Parkins (doubtless to beg off as well as he could) afterward privately assured me, that he had committed me to prison, not from any belief that I was guilty, or that the testimony really warranted such a step, but because he was afraid the people would otherwise murder me, and considered that the only way to protect me from their violence.
Meanwhile, there was a great search made for my—that is, Sheppard Lee's—body; the general belief being that I—that is, John H. Higginson—had cast it into the swamp, after having been at the pains to dig a grave, wherein I at first designed to hide it; and I do verily believe that, had my unfortunate old casing been found, I should have begun my new existence in the body of the man I had so much envied by being hanged for the murder. Its sudden disappearance was therefore not more extraordinary than it was really fortunate.
