The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories, page 22
She looked at me as she spoke, and I went straight up to her and took her by the shoulders, regardless of the other woman.
‘My little love,’ I said, ‘do not deny me any more. Have you ever thought of death? We might be dead and cold—think how cold, these hearts of ours—before the spring is in flower——’
‘Dead,’ she laughed—‘dead!’
‘Dead and love frustrate.’
Mrs. Briscoe drew her away from me.
‘God save us from these foreign manners,’ she shrilled. ‘You are nothing but a North Sea rover——’
I laughed very heartily at this, for I was one of the richest timber merchants in Kristiansund, and I swaggered away, fingering the sword on my hip.
As I walked through the streets of Wapping I was making plans to abduct the girl and marry her by force.
First I went to Nightingale Lane, looking for lodgings, and found them at the house of Mrs. Porter. Then I went to the Black Bull in Holborn and picked up with some town bullies of my acquaintance, and arranged matters with them over a bottle of Tokay.
Two sham bailiffs were to arrest her for an imaginary debt on her way to church—to bring her to me at the Black Bull, where we should be married, I having my clergyman ready, and then I would take her to Nightingale Lane, near the church she so loved.
Here I cannot very well remember sequences—all is blurred, as by the haste and excitement of violent action.
I knew that for several hours I was moving about hastily in great agitation and temper from one place to another, chiefly between Wapping, the Black Bull, and Nightingale Lane.
Always was the cold, the rain, the scatters of snow, the iron-coloured river, the lead-coloured sky.
My schemes succeeded perfectly.
The sham bailiffs stopped the coach and forced out Ann Mellor, leaving Mrs. Briscoe shrieking vainly in the grey silence of the wet Sunday morning, and brought her to me where I waited in the private room at the Black Bull.
My darling was brought in, not without indignity. I did not wish to spare her; I felt all the cruelty that passionate love will often show towards the beloved object.
‘I knew that it was you,’ she said.
‘Of course you knew it was I,’ I replied—what other man was there who would so dare to mishandle her?
I thought that she would appeal to my rascal clergyman or my ruffian witnesses, but she did not.
And we were married and left alone.
‘Take me away from here,’ she said; ‘anywhere from this vile tavern.’
‘I’ve lodgings,’ I said, ‘in Nightingale Lane.’
She turned her head away when I came near her, only repeating, ‘Take me away.’
‘You must watch your temper now, madam,’ I smiled. ‘You are my wife.’
At that she broke into violent weeping, like a little child, and gave me a deal of trouble to get her away into the coach.
When we reached our lodgings, which seemed the dearest place in the world to me, my wife fell from tears to abuse and railed incoherently. I tried to humour her.
‘Why, Ann,’ I said, ‘you know this is the best manner in which to deal with your tiresome relatives—come, look up and kiss me. You know that you love me.’
‘And if I do,’ she answered, with the foolish inconsistency of women, ‘does not that make it worse?’
So we quarrelled, she tragic, I smiling, till the landlady brought up the supper.
I asked her for some of the wine I had had sent in from the Black Bull yesterday, and she, grumbling, said it was in the cellar and had no mind to go there in the dark. So I took the key and the candle and went myself.
One of the buckles was loose and slipped on my shoe. I smiled to see it, thinking of Ann sewing it on for me, and laughing over the thread.
I stood awhile in the cellar, forgetful of my errand, thinking that this was my wedding night and how I loved my darling.
I thought of my own home, and how I would take her there, and the great joy and contentment we should have together.
When I had selected my wine, I noticed, in stooping, that the loose buckle was lost. As I searched for it, a draught blew my candle out, and being in the dark I gave up the business and went upstairs.
I found the house full of strangers; Mrs. Briscoe was there with two of my wife’s uncles and four constables. I understood amid the noise and confusion (I could not understand the English so very well) that I was to be arrested on a charge of abduction.
I laughed in their faces. I was so sure of Ann.
‘The lady will tell you herself,’ I said, ‘that she is very willingly my wife.’
‘Swagger away, my fine young man,’ sneered Mrs. Briscoe; ‘you are nowt but a foreign bully.’
‘Ann will tell you what she thinks of me,’ I answered.
We all went into the little room where she was. She must have heard us coming, for she stood ready, against the table. She still wore her hat with the black lace under it round her chin, and her dark cape over her white dress.
When she saw her relatives and the constables crowding in, she crossed instantly over to me and put her hand in mine.
I felt as if I should suffocate with the glad leap my heart gave. I placed my bottle of wine on the table.
‘You see,’ I said, ‘my wife stands by me.’
Ann took her hand away. They asked her formally if she was a willing party to her elopement and marriage.
‘Cannot you see,’ she cried, ‘by the way you find me that I am here by outrage and deceit?’
‘Girl,’ I asked aghast, ‘do you deny your husband?’
‘Had I had my will you would have been no husband of mine,’ she said bitterly.
I could afford to laugh at this, knowing how she loved me, but the others seized on her statement and made her swear to it, which the passionate girl did.
‘I’ll hurt you as you hurt me,’ she cried. ‘This shall be a black day’s work for you.’
I let them disarm and arrest me; I did not know much of the English laws, and I asked what my punishment would be.
One of the uncles answered me. ‘The girl’s an heiress. In stealing her you’ve stolen property.’
‘Twenty pounds a year and a thousand in the Government!’ I answered. ‘What is that to me? I am a rich man.’
‘No matter. You’ve committed a felony. We look after property in this country. If you are found guilty, it is the gallows.’
Ann and I looked at each other. ‘See how you frustrate love,’ I said.
‘I did not mean what I said,’ she stammered; ‘I married him willingly——’
‘The girl speaks in pity,’ said Mrs. Briscoe; ‘I can prove how she was forced away——’
The girl tried to get at me now, but was forced back.
‘This is a bitter marriage night,’ I said. As they took me away, I heard her laughing like a maniac.
So I last saw her, down on her knees, holding them all at bay, laughing like a maniac.
I woke up in my little bedroom above the bookshop, and took from under the pillow the pencil sketch I had made so long ago, the book Ann was reading that day, and the buckle I had lost on my marriage day in the cellar in Nightingale Lane. It was all absolutely clear now; I remembered the trial, the walk to Tyburn, that devastating vision of my own land that had come upon me as I reached the fatal spot.
Two sentences of my dying speech stuck in my mind.
I said, ‘I die for transgressing a law I knew not of; and again, ‘I am so much in charity with my wife that I believe she had no hand in this.’
I was rather curious to see what history had said of my case, so, that day being a Saturday, I went to the British Museum as soon as the shop was shut and looked up the trials for the year 1750. I could not find any full report here, nor did I trouble to search for it. The brief record was sufficient.
At Tyburn, in December 1750, was hanged Eric Ericson, a wealthy young Norwegian of good family, for the abduction and marriage of Ann Mellor, heiress of the late William Mellor, a merchant, of Wapping. He pleaded the complicity of the girl, but she denied him at first, retracting too late. Her relatives obtained permission to annul the marriage and for the girl to retain the name of Mellor.
I felt very exultant and triumphant.
‘She died of it,’ I said, as I closed the book, ‘in Christmas week my darling died. She went back to the lodgings I had taken for her. They could not do anything with her. She turned away from them all and died.’
I hurried home through the iron December twilight as I had hurried before to Nightingale Lane. At last I was going to be happy with Ann Mellor.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marjorie Bowen was one of several pen names used by Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long, née Campbell, born in Hampshire, England in 1885. She is credited with some 150 volumes, written under her own name and the pseudonyms Joseph Shearing, George Preedy, Robert Paye, and Marjorie Bowen; these works include historical romances, mystery novels, and Gothic and supernatural works.
Bowen had a difficult childhood, growing up in poverty with her unaffectionate mother after the departure of her father, an alcoholic who was later found dead in the street after he abandoned his family. Her first work, written at age 16, was The Viper of Milan, a violent historical romance, published in 1906. The book went on to be a bestseller, and for the rest of her life Bowen primarily supported her family through her writing. She married twice: a short-lived marriage to a Sicilian, who died of tuberculosis in 1916, and then to Arthur Long, with whom she had two children, joining one surviving son from her first marriage.
Bowen’s Gothic and supernatural works are highly sought after by aficionados, and her books have received considerable critical praise, with Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Graham Greene, Fritz Leiber, and Jessica Amanda Salmonson among her many professed admirers. She died from the consequences of a fall in 1952, at age 67.
Marjorie Bowen, The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories
