take place on the morrow, July 4th, notwithstanding the opposition of Dr. Gwyther. 66 formed me that the wedding was to all you can prove is that he saw a gentleman tearing round a room like a fresh-caught wild cat, and swearing like a costermonger, and that he, the doctor, said such soothing words as did then occur to him. What Colney Hatch might have done afterwards we know not. I think, perhaps, when we have decided on the course we must pursue to bring the other three to justice, our best plan will be to subpoena Colney Hatch and see what evidence turns up. You, of course, will attend, as we have not one tittle of evidence excepting your oath." "And now," said Owain, "I want you to take out summonses for me against Hester Rhys for drugging and kidnapping, against Richard and Lizzie Benson for kidnapping, and against Dr. Colney Hatch for illegally and falsely certifying that I am insane." "Any more?" I asked. "No." "Well, then," said I, "let us take them in order. Firstly, a summons to Mrs. Rhys that she appear and answer a charge brought by you, in that she did illegally give you some deleterious substance with the intention of doing you bodily harm. Now what evidence have you? Did you see her put anything into the horn? No! You drank a certain amount of wine which overcame you. Don't be angry with me, Owain, but I fear that is the view outsiders will take of the drugging episode. "Now as regards the kidnapping, you wish for three summonses under this head. The legal definition of kidnapping is the offence either of stealing children, or illegally and against their will conveying any of her Majesty's subjects out of her realm. These three defendants do not appear to be guilty of kidnapping." "Do you pretend to tell me, Mr. Jordan, that I have no redress?" 6 "Not at all, Owain; every wrong has its remedy, but we must get at the right one, and your wrong is of such an extraordinary nature that I cannot undertake to say offhand what we should do. I believe we shall have them under false imprisonment,' but that seems to imply that the complainant has been illegally confined in a prison, for the remedy is by habeas corpus. You give me time to think it over, and we will have something done in time for the petty sessions on Monday week." So it was settled. Owain and Dorothy were duly married the next day. Dr. Gwyther refused to attend, but with his sanction I gave away the bride. When Owain and Dorothy had started on their travels, the major and myself had a long talk. He seemed hurt that I did not take up Owain's case more warmly, and asked if I disbelieved his story. Then I put the matter to him as I believed it would appear in court. "The question rests entirely on Owain's unsupported evidence. He is a young man of unblemished character, well known to the gentlemen who will sit on the bench, but, unfortunately, the magistrates are also aware that Owain is the scion of a mad stock, and drinking pledges out of that accursed Helgorn is invariably the first symptom of their insanity.. "Old Owain Rhys, our friend's grandfather, was the county member, He ratted from his party, taking with him several votes, and as a reward was made a lord of the admiralty by the then government. He gave a great dinner to celebrate his re-election, and publicly drank the toast of loyal and true to king and country out of the Helgorn. That night he cut his throat; the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of temporary insanity. "His son Lewis absolutely refused to have anything to do with the fateful "With regard to Colney Hatch there horn. Iltyd, the last squire, when can be no difficulty." "I don't see, Owain, that you have any evidence that he signed anything; quite a boy got himself into a scrape with a keeper's daughter. He denied all knowledge of the girl; her mother then dared him to pledge his honor" Then," said Mr. Roe, "the statement from the Helgorn. He did so. For you have just heard is not true?" eighteen months afterwards Iltyd Rhys was in confinement-in point of fact, he was never afterwards perfectly sane. Now, you see, Owain, a member of this family, tells us he pledged his honor to something or other from the Helgorn, and subsequently experienced some wonderful adventures, of which he can give not one fragment of proof. Will not the verdict be hallucination? "It is pure imagination." I failed to shake her in cross-examination. Richard Benson swore he had never seen Captain Rhys in his life before that day. He stuck to this. Eliza Benson said that she had often seen Captain Rhys when her mistress, then Miss L'estrange, was engaged to marry him, but not since that date. "On the other hand, the defendant, William Colney Hatch swore that he though a woman with a story, is young, was a doctor of medicine; that he had pretty, goes to church, and pays her never seen or heard of Captain Rhys debts. What she will say it is impos- until he was summoned to this court. sible to guess; but, mark my words, He had never been in Abergloyne bethe bench will believe her. The Ben-fore that day. He had paid great atsons can if they please decline to an- tention to toxicology, more especially swer any questions lest they should to that branch of the study which dealt incriminate themselves. Now, major, you must admit that it is a difficult case to fight." with narcotic poisoning, but he knew of no drug which would immediately stupefy a man and induce sleep lasting for more than twelve hours. He had listened with great interest to Captain Rhys's statements, and had no hesitation in saying that the gentleman was of unsound mind. Difficult or not, it had to be done, and on the Monday week all the persons interested in our story were assembled in the courthouse of Abergloyne. I had obtained summonses against Hester Rhys, Richard Benson, Dr. Colney Hatch, a venerable, beand Eliza Benson for false imprison- nevolent-looking old gentleman with ment. I appeared for the plaintiff. Dr. Colney Hatch was subpoenaed by the defendants, who were represented by Mr. Roe, of the great London firm of Doe and Roe. They pleaded not guilty. Three magistrates sat Colonel Sheldrake in the chair, supported by Messrs. Scolton and Charrington-Lane a good bench, all men endowed with sound common sense. I put Owain in the box. He told his story much as he has since written it down. Then Mr. Roe cross-examined. He asked how long it was before the potion took effect. Owain answered, "In not more than three minutes." Mr. Roe said that his clients had elected to be tried separately, in order that the matter might be thoroughly sifted, and they were prepared to answer any questions put to them. long white hair and a flowing beard, gave his evidence very well indeed, and if the bench had any doubts before, this witness cleared them away. The case was dismissed. In sheer despair I asked Dr. Gwyther, Major Steinkirk, and Owain Rhys to write out very fully, exactly what they could remember concerning this mysterious case. For until we could prove where Owain spent the time between 11 P.M. on Monday, June 29th, and the morning of Friday, July 3rd, he was branded either as rogue or lunatic. Hours and hours I spent poring over these narratives, with no result. Abergloyne was odious to Owain, who had taken his young wife to London. Months passed by. Then one morning society in west Wales was horrified to hear that Mrs. Rhys had been found The defendant, Hester Rhys, was dead in her bed. In due course, as sworn, and declared she had not coroner, I held an inquest on the body. seen Captain Owain Rhys since she The principal witness was Eliza Benhad married his late brother Iltyd. son, who proved that for years past SIR, New York. her mistress had been in the habit of | ceived a letter, which is transcribed dosing herself with narcotics of all below: kinds — opium, morphia, chloral, paraldehyd, and all the other abominations with which foolish men and women tempt fate. There was no reason to suspect that this was a case either of suicide or foul play. The jury very properly brought in a verdict of "death from misadventure." So Hester Rhys was buried, and we all wondered who was heir to Abergloyne. These doubts were settled by a letter which I received from Messrs. Doe and Roe, informing me that the executors nominated by the late Mrs. Rhys were myself and their Mr. Roe, who had drawn up the will the day after the testatrix had been acquitted by the Abergloyne bench. She had left everything absolutely absolutely to her brother-in-law, Captain Owain Rhys, with the exception of a legacy of four thousand pounds to be divided between her faithful servants, Richard and Eliza Benson. On receipt of the legacy left to us by the late Mrs. Rhys, my husband, Richard Benson, and myself, travelled to this place. To-morrow we pass on elsewhere, change our names, and begin a new life, which we trust may be a better one. Before doing so we wish, as far as may be, to atone for the past. The late Hester Rhys and I were sisters, daughters of a widow by the name of Tompkinson, formerly employed in the Eleusinian Theatre, which, as you know, has long ceased to exist. Our mother was not an actress, but employed in various capacities behind the scenes. We, as little children, appeared in pantomimes, and such like. Then a gentleman (who I have often thought was the father said to have been dead) took Hester away and sent her to school for five years; but as he died without making any provision for her, she returned to mother and me. Hester, as you know, was very pretty, Mr. Roe, whom I found a very pleas- so, with mother's knowledge of the ant gentleman, could give no informa-manager, she got on the stage in small tion on the subject. When Mrs. Rhys parts, and, though never much of an gave him instructions as to her will, actress, was popular with the public. she stated she had always entertained She lived with mother and me, and, kindly feelings towards Owain, who when mother died, I became her was in her opinion of unsound mind dresser. Then I married Benson, who on certain subjects, but still capable of had been a gentleman's servant, but managing his affairs with more or less tried acting with some success. The success. She informed her solicitor next thing in the story is that the that she had several times offered to Lanark Regiment, who were going to share the property with him, but he play Robinson's "Caste," wanted a refused to agree to any arrangement. Polly Eccles. Hester got the job. "I suppose," she added, "in the ordi- Captain Rhys played Old Eccles. Hetnary course of events I shall outlive tie took me with her, saying it would my brother-in-law; but, in case of acci- be fun for me. There we saw Captain dents, I will bequeath him that which Rhys for the first time, and, as you is really his own." know, she got engaged to him. Then she married Mr. Iltyd, and when he died Benson and I went to live with her, for she was the kindest, best sister that could be, whatever she may have been to other people. Was this a tardy reparation? Mr. Roe and I administered the estate; but Owain declined to return to Abergloyne until he was in a position to clear himself. The Bensons took their money and left the neighborhood, as was natural, for neither of them was Welsh. She never cared for her husband, but was mad after the captain, although she threw him over, and was always saying she would marry him after all One morning I re- - which was, of course, absurd. When So matters rested until the anniversary of Owain's wedding day had very nearly arrived. was first published four years earlier. Since then many a book of the same type has appeared and disappeared, but White still keeps his hold upon the English mind. Though many may talk of his book without having read it it through without discerning its quality, the fact remains that the demand for it is steadily on the increase, and that it is finding its way into the village library and the home of the working man. The name of Gilbert White is a household word with every one who loves his own incomparable country, with its thousands of villages as homely and as sheltered as Selborne. Hettie heard he was going to marry Miss Gwyther she got in a terrible taking, and declared she would kill him first. Then she vowed she would lock him up in the padded chambers. Benson and I laughed at her, but she kept to the point, and offered us a thousand through, and still more may have read pounds if we would help her. I gave way. I don't think it was so much the thousand pounds, but you could not refuse Hettie anything she had set her heart on; any way, I promised to persuade Benson, and that I did after a while, he bargaining that there should be no violence. How Doctor Colney Hatch could say there is no poison that can overcome a man in three minutes and keep him asleep for twelve hours, I don't know, for with my own eyes I saw Hettie put a paper of white powder into the horn, and I helped Benson to carry the captain up-stairs within five minutes at the most. That reminds me about Dr. Colney Hatch. Now I was always considered a good makerup, but that was the very best piece of work I ever did. All the material I had was the " Old Eccles" wig, which Captain Rhys himself had worn, and a beard. I don't know what was the history of that, but with these I made up Benson, who had just been talking to the captain, so well that he didn't know him. I worked from a photo of the doctor's Hettie had got. That, I think, sir, tells the story of the captain's disappearance. In court we all perjured ourselves; but, as Hettie said, having gone so far we were bound to go on. I don't think the poor dear poisoned herself on purpose, but I am not quite sure. Now, sir, I have confessed the whole truth, and my husband joins me; so we are your obedient and repentant servants, - ELIZA AND RICHARD BENSON. 66 EDWARD LAWS. It is strange at first sight that this should be so at a time when we seem passing from a period of poetry and romance into one of stern reality, when the rural population is being drained into the towns, when the squire and the parson are going down in the world, when leisure such as White enjoyed is a rarity and almost a crime, and when the study of economic problems should be driving out of our heads the delights of wild nature or of sport. But the Englishman has always been a strange and self-contradictory creature. With all his commercial instincts and his town-bred vulgarity, his phases of stern Puritanism and political excitement, he has never yet lost that love of the country which is rooted in the life of the manor and the village. Even with the American the same passion still lives; he took it with him to New England in the seventeenth century, and the books of Mr. John Burroughs and Miss Mary Wilkins have lately made us aware how strongly it survives in him in the nineteenth. Surely the spread of the factory system, and the consequent growth of huge towns, has rather strengthened than weakened this love of all things rural. We pine for pure air, for the sight of growing grass, for the footpath across the meadow, for the stile that invites you to rest before you drop into GILBERT WHITE died a hundred the deep lane under the hazels. But years ago, June 26, 1793; the "Natural in the last century there was no need History and Antiquities of Selborne "to pine, when there was hardly a town From Macmillan's Magazine. from which a man could not escape into | possession of the English mind as sethe fields when he would, without toil-curely as the "Complete Angler," or ing through grimy suburbs where the even as "Robinson Crusoe." At the problems of economic science force distance of a century one may well ask themselves at every turn on his mind. why this is so, and what has given the In those days men loved the country book its enduring quality. This I will simply as their home, not because they try to do; but first I must say a word were shut away from it; they took it of the man himself, for I think it is in as a matter of course, and seldom wrote one characteristic of his, and one that about it. Now we mingle a touch of in these days some might call a weakself-consciousness in our passion for it, ness, that the secret of his fame is to which finds its expression in a multi- be found. tude of books. He was born in 1720 at the village What a literature of the fields has which will always be associated with sprung up, since the "Natural History his name, and in which he spent almost of Selborne " was first published! Not the whole of his long life. The conto mention the poets, from our novel-nection of his family with Selborne ists we seem almost to demand the was, however, an accidental one. His familiar descriptive background, care- grandfather, after whom he was named less too often whether they are mere Gilbert, was a fellow of Magdalen Coldaubs, or the work of a master such as lege, Oxford, and was presented by the Mr. Blackmore or Mr. Hardy. And college to the living of Selborne in then again there is an ever-increasing 1681. This Gilbert White was apparcall for books whose whole intention is ently a well-to-do man, for he left conto open our wayward eyes to country siderable bequests to the village, and sights and sounds. Since the days of doubtless inherited wealth from his White we have had Knapp, Howitt, father, who had been an eminent citiJesse, Knox, Wood, and others who are still readable and still read; and later, and in a higher region of literature, we have had Kingsley, Jefferies, and Mr. Hamerton. To-day a score of books of the same type are published every year; and good and bad alike seem to find abundant readers. The Selborne Society has spread all over the land; most of our public schools boast of a natural history society, which has taken root in the very citadel of athleticism, and effectually holds its own, issuing its report yearly. Neither athletics nor examinations can kill the old instinct of Englishmen; it is as strong as ever, and the scientific spirit of the age has given it a useful turn. All this literature of the country, all this youthful endeavor, may be traced back not only to the natural instincts of the English country gentleman, like so many other institutions of ours, but to the work of the first country gentleman who could shake himself free from the tyranny of books, and describe what he saw around him in simple and engaging English. White's book has taken zen of Oxford in the time of Crom- But Apparently the love of village life was strong in the family; for John, son 1 I am indebted for these particulars to my friend the Rev. Andrew Clark, who has allowed me to consult the third volume (as yet unpublished) of his edition of Wood's "Life and Times." Stamford's note on the White pedigree in "Nature Since this paper was written I have seen Lord Notes." |