by Betty Annand
“My God, man, have you not heard of mistresses?”
“I could never ask her to degrade herself with such a title.”
“Who is this woman who is causing you to act like a silly school boy?”
“It’s Gladys, and before you go blaming her, she has no idea how I feel.”
“Gladys! For God’s sake, Andrew. Are you completely out of your mind? I have known you for years, and I never thought you could be such an ass. Gladys must be some sort of temptress.”
“I tell you, she is completely innocent and may not even agree to marry me, but if she does, I want to be able to do it without delay.”
Cedric tried his utmost to convince Andrew to change his plans but had no success. Finally, throwing his arms in the air, he declared, “Well then, do as you will, but understand this, I shall not condone such actions.” Then, shaking his head, he added, “Because of our friendship, I shall do nothing to interfere, but I shall waste no time in evicting that scoundrel. And, Andrew, I warn you, do not count on my influence in the courts to support your case.” With that, he walked out the door with his head down and a disturbed expression on his face.
Andrew felt as though he had shrunk a few inches. He didn’t even know if Gladys would consider marrying him, and not only had he done something contrary to everything he stood for, but by doing it, he had lost the friendship of a man he had known and admired for years.
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On Dolly’s seventh birthday, Andrew gave her Tom’s collection of books, and among them was Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s longest poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” When she saw it, she begged him to read it to her, but he said it was too bleak a story for such a young girl, and far too lengthy. Dolly knew her grandfather was unable to say no to her for very long, and finally he gave in. From then on, every evening he visited, he read ten verses of what Dolly called “The Poor Old Sailor Story.” His voice rose like thunder when he read the lines, “The ship drove fast, Loud roared the Blast, The southward aye we fled,” then low and poignant with the words, “And now there came both mist and snow, and it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald.”
As she listened to the verses, Dolly could feel the cold wind touching her cheeks, and she felt as though she were part of that crew. Even Gladys waited eagerly for each verse.
He had nearly finished the poem one evening, when he announced that he had to go to Ireland the following morning and wouldn’t read the last ten verses until he returned. No matter how much they coaxed him to finish, he refused, saying they would want him to return even more if they had the verses to look forward to.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Before he left for Ireland, Andrew rode to Bob Hennessey’s to see if there was anything the blacksmith wanted to send his brother, Nolie. On the way he met Randolph Mansfield, his friend and solicitor, riding in the opposite direction. Nodding his head in greeting, Andrew was about to ride past when Randolph reined his horse to a stop and asked, “Are you going to be in your office this afternoon?”
“No, I am leaving for Ireland in a few hours. What was it you wanted?” Andrew replied.
“Well, I was wondering how things were progressing. Did you manage to find the right man?”
“Right man?” Then Andrew realized what Randolph was referring to. “Yes, yes, I did. It’s not something I am proud of though, and I fear I’ve lost a dear friend by doing it. I have no time to tell you about it now, Randy, but as soon as I return I shall be in touch. Hopefully it will all be taken care of by then.”
“Have a good trip.”
Andrew nodded and rode on. When he arrived at the blacksmith’s, Bob was working on the forge, and Andrew watched as the large, ruddy-faced Irishman pulled a red-hot horseshoe from the coals with a pair of tongs and plunged it into a bucket of water.
The sizzling noise the hot shoe made as it hit the water and the rising steam brought back pleasant memories for Andrew of the times he used to spend with his uncle, who had owned a blacksmith shop in Hastings. Every time Andrew saw a forge, his mouth watered for the taste of the kippers his uncle cooked for him over the hot coals. There were many good memories Andrew had of his childhood, but sitting on a bench eating kippers and listening to his uncle’s stories, some quite ribald for such young ears, was one of his favourites.
When Bob finished hammering the shoe into shape, he smiled and greeted Andrew warmly. Andrew informed him that he was leaving shortly for Ireland and asked if there was anything Bob would like to send to his brother. “Sure and that’s mighty good o’ you, Sir, but it’s too far out o’ your way. I hate to put you out.”
“It’s no trouble; I usually have time on my hands before I return, and if you give me directions, I can borrow a horse and rig and it will give me something to do.”
“Well, then, I’d be much obliged if you’d give him a letter I was goin’ to post. I’ve put a little in it for him and God knows the poor sot needs it, and I’ve a bottle in the house that I’ll go fetch. Sure and a nip o’ whiskey will do him more good than a basket o’ taters.”
“Save your bottle, Bob. I have one packed in my bag, and I shall even stop and have a drink with him.”
“God bless you! Sure an’ you’re a proper saint you are.”
“Ha, I only wish I was. Well I shall miss my boat if I don’t get along.” Because he wanted it to be a surprise, Andrew didn’t tell his friend that the real reason he wanted his brother Nolie’s address was because he had made arrangements to bring him and his family back to Dover with him.
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The Duc de Artois was becoming exceedingly frustrated. His debtors were bound to catch up to him any day, and he had yet to bed Andrew’s wife, Rose. Mildred and Peter made certain they were present each time he came to call, and he was hardly allowed to sit beside Rose, let alone make advances. Then, one day, Peter announced that he had to go to London and was hoping to return with good news. The evening after his departure, Richard came to visit, bringing along two bottles of sherry. His plan was to see that Mildred become so inebriated she would fall asleep, allowing him the opportunity to seduce her mother. Mildred, however, was not the epitome of innocence that Richard mistook her for and handled her liquor far better than either he or her mother.
He woke the next morning with a throbbing headache, but when he rolled over in bed and his nose came in contact with a soft white shoulder, he silently congratulated himself. Then the owner of the shoulder turned over and smiled at him. It was Mildred. Before he could utter a sound, she pulled his head down between her breasts.
“Oh, my lord,” he mumbled between the two soft delights. Then lifting his head, he looked at the buxom young lady, and meekly inquired, “Your mother?”
“Don’t concern yourself, dear Richard; she shan’t be any the wiser. I doubt she’ll be awake for hours yet, so you have plenty of time to seduce me again, and even again.”
“What a dear girl you are!” Richard replied, and did just that.
Two days later, Peter returned. He practically spat out his news with excitement as he told them that, after an extensive search, and a good deal of expense, the private investigator had finally, earned his money. “It is just as I thought! She is not who she professes to be. She married Thomas under a false name. She is nothing but a gutter-snipe.”
“Is he certain?” Rose asked.
“Almost, but it is up to me to find the last bit of proof we need.”
“Oh dear, and how are you going to manage that?” Rose asked.
“A little visit to your step-daughter-in-law, Mother, that is all that is necessary,” Peter replied with a smug look on his face, and keeping them in suspense, he refused to say more.
Mildred began to chuckle, then remarked, “When Andrew finds out he has an imposter for a daughter-in-law, it should not take him long to begin wondering who th
e father of her child really is,” as Peter and Rose broke out in laughter.
No one noticed that Richard wasn’t as happy with the news as they were. He was worried that when Andrew learned that his daughter-in-law was not who she professed to be, he might not want a divorce, and would cancel their arrangement. Then he reasoned that he may still have a chance to seduce Rose before Andrew found out, and because Andrew was known to be a man of his word, a bargain was a bargain. Peter interrupted his thoughts and solved his problem, saying “Now I think we should be very careful how we handle this. We should probably ask the advice of our solicitor before we begin. However, he always goes to London on the weekends, so I suppose we shall just have to wait until Monday. Mildred, what do you say to a night on the town? I should think we deserve to have a little celebration; don’t you agree?”
“Why, I think that is a magnificent idea,” Mildred answered, and with a devious smile and a cheeky wink at Richard, she added, “I should not think you and mother would object to having an evening to yourselves now, would you, Richard love?”
__________
Andrew arrived in Dublin on the 5th of March 1852. He managed to settle his business the following day, and because he had to wait for two days before returning to Dover, he had plenty of time to rent a horse and buggy and take his time driving out to the countryside to see Bob Hennessey’s brother. He was excited about his plans to surprise the family with the news that he intended to take them along when he returned to Dover. Before he left, he bought a large amount of food to give to the needy he might chance to meet on the road, and a few sandwiches for himself.
Although he was warned that there were gangs of desperate men in the area, and was advised to take along a companion, Andrew, who was very naïve about the dangers involved, preferred to travel alone. Because a great many of the poor had left the country, he looked forward to seeing an improvement over the impoverishment he had witnessed in the past. During the previous year, the census commissioners had stated that they thought Ireland would benefit by the magnitude of starvations, deaths, and immigrations.
As cruel as the statement was, Andrew thought there might be some truth to it, since the immigration to other countries had risen significantly between 1845 to 1851. He surmised that there must now be more food available for those who were left, even though he had heard predictions that the number leaving Ireland was likely to reach 2,000,000 more in the next two or three years, and that was just those leaving for Australia and America. Another 750,000 were expected in England.
He began to believe those predictions as he rode through one village after another and witnessed what seemed to be as many poor souls as he had seen before. Dirty hands reached out from what appeared to be bundles of rags, instead of bodies. Most were too weak to utter a plea. It didn’t take long before all the food was dispersed, and he was forced to avoid the towns.
The picturesque scenery with green rolling hills dotted with tidy, whitewashed, thatched-roof cottages and grazing animals was no more. Not a cow or woolly sheep could be seen. Some of the cottages remained, but they were dirty and vacant—occupants having been evicted by their landlords. Bob’s brother, Nolie, was fortunate since his landlord had kept him on to help with the work, but he and his family were only given a one room hovel to live in and a small amount of food every day as a wage. It meant that they still had a roof over their heads and were starving to death much slower than most.
Around noon, Andrew came to an inviting stand of small trees beside a little brook. He reined his horse down a little trail to an open spot on the water’s edge just a short distance off the road that allowed him plenty of privacy. He managed to find a grassy area for the horse to graze and a shady spot to enjoy his sandwiches along with a drink of clean, cold brook water. Spreading a lap throw onto the grass, he ate his lunch and settled down to enjoy the setting and the peaceful gurgling sound of the brook.
The sordid sights he had just witnessed soon faded as he remembered the Ireland he had visited with his first wife, Dorothy, when Tom was a just a child. They often visited Dorothy’s mother, Miriam O’Neill, who lived in a cottage not far from Dublin on an estate owned by Lord Wiltshire. Dorothy’s father, Thomas O’Neill, had been the Lord’s gamekeeper since he was a young man, and the two had become good friends. Although they joked with each other and enjoyed a drink or two together now and then, Thomas always knew his place and never took advantage of their friendship. He treated his Lordship with as much reverence as did the other servants.
Dorothy was seven when her father went out in the woods one day and caught a poacher taking a rabbit out of a snare. Although Thomas was small in stature, he was a dedicated man and made the fatal mistake of trying to apprehend the thief—a man at least twice his size. The poacher could easily have knocked him down and run off, but he was a bully with a nasty disposition and in a fit of temper, he drew the knife he used to slit the throats of his prey and used it on Thomas. He was caught a few days later and took his last breath with a rope around his neck.
Lord Wiltshire took Thomas’s death almost as hard as Dorothy’s mother, and he gave her permission to remain in the little cottage for as long as she lived. He also met all her needs, and when Dorothy was fourteen, he was kind enough to send her to a school in England.
By the age of eighteen, she had found employment as the governess for two young girls, children of a wealthy family who treated her as though she was one of their own, even including her in some of their social outings. It was on one of these occasions that she met Andrew Pickwick, heir to one of Dover’s shipping magnates. A year later they were married. Tom was their only child, and because Dorothy’s mother refused to leave her beloved homeland, they took him to visit her at least twice a year. Although the old lady died when Tom was only six, Andrew knew the boy could describe every detail of the cottage she lived in. They would have gone back to visit Lord Wiltshire, but due to religious prejudice, he had moved to Northern Ireland shortly after Dorothy’s mother passed away.
The Wiltshires were Protestant but managed to live in harmony with their Catholic neighbours even after the Act of Union was passed in 1800, abolishing the independent Irish Parliament in Dublin. This brought the Irish administration under the British Parliament along with the ruling that only Irish Protestants were allowed to be members. For eight years, Lord Wiltshire and his family enjoyed neighbourly gatherings, but then a few new people moved into the neighbourhood, and when they learned that there was a wealthy Protestant and his family living in the area, they let their feelings of animosity and bitterness be known.
Before long, the newcomers even convinced many of the local folks that the Wiltshires were the enemy, even though his Lordship had always argued that the Act of Union was a bigoted act and should be abolished. Soon, his past good deeds were forgotten, and when he realized that even some of his own staff had begun showing signs of resentment toward him and his family, he was deeply hurt. The bigoted hatred toward them finally became so apparent that he feared for their lives, and although it broke his heart to do so, he sold his estate and moved to Belfast.
Now, as Andrew laid back and listened to the murmur of the creek, he daydreamed of bringing Gladys and Dolly to Ireland, and perhaps building a holiday house on a bit of Irish land with a view of the ocean. He could picture them sitting on a bench outside a thatched-roof cottage watching the boats sail by. Thinking of the two he loved so dearly, he took the little pin Dolly had given him from his ascot and kissed it. Then with a full stomach, and his pleasant reminisces of a better time in his mind, he held it tightly in his hand and dozed off.
__________
There were four of them, one carrying a pitchfork and another with an empty burlap sack tied to his belt. All were barefoot and where the bank of the brook was too steep, they walked in the water.
“Here, Mick! Bring the fork. This here’s one, I think.”
“Naw, Da. See the lea
ves don’t look near like what Ma said. They’s far too pointy.”
“Tell him to dig it up anyhow, Da,” the man called Rory said, “Might be the roots are good as the ones Ma was talking about. We have to bring somethin’ home to put in the pot.”
“Your Ma said she recalled finding them in the bank along here somewhere; just keep lookin’. We’ll find them.”
They continued with their hunt until the man called Sean turned and waved at the rest while holding his finger up to his lips. The old man they called “Pa” motioned for the other two to remain where they were while he moved silently forward to see what had drawn Sean’s attention.
Andrew was snoring lightly, but as the two men crept closer, a pleasant dream caused him to chuckle. Startled, the men crouched down out of sight and waited. When Andrew began to snore again, they inched forward until Sean stopped, picked up a large boulder and motioned to his father who nodded his consent and waited until his son was standing over his prey. As though sensing danger, Andrew brought a hand up to his face, but the lad brought the boulder down hard before Andrew could open his eyes.
“I hope you didn’t do him in, son. Call Mick and Rory while I look to see what he’s got in the buggy.” With that he walked over to where Andrew had tethered the horse and climbed up into the buggy. “Not much there we can use,” he said as he was making his way back. Suddenly he started to run. “God no, don’t!” he screamed, but he was too late. Andrew had been impaled with the pitchfork.
“May the saints forgive you, Mick! Ye’ve gone and murdered the bloke.”
“An’ ye’ve put some bloody big holes in that fine shirt he has on,” Sean remarked.
__________
Andrew woke to the sound of men arguing. He had the oddest feeling that there was an enormous weight pushing his entire body down into the earth. He tried to focus on his surroundings, but all he could see was some blurry shapes that appeared to be more like spirits than humans. Then, for a split second his vision cleared, and the scene before him caused his heart to ache with sympathy. A naked man, who looked more like a skeleton with nothing but a filthy layer of flesh stretched over his bones, his head, and most of his face, covered in a tangle of dirt-blackened, matted hair, was standing at his feet pulling on a pair of britches—britches that looked vaguely familiar.
