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The Broken Font: A Story of the Civil War, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Moyle Sherer · English · Gutenberg #43261 · 402,948 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Broken Font: A Story of the Civil War, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Author: Moyle Sherer


        
Release date: July 20, 2013 [eBook #43261]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BROKEN FONT: A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, VOL. 1 (OF 2) ***

  THE BROKEN FONT.

  A STORY OF THE CIVIL WAR.

  BY THE AUTHOR OF “TALES OF THE WARS OF OUR TIMES,”
  “RECOLLECTIONS OF THE PENINSULA,” &c. &c. &c.


  IN TWO VOLUMES.

  VOL. I.

  LONDON:

  PRINTED FOR
  LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMAN,
  PATERNOSTER-ROW.

  1836.


  LONDON:
  Printed by A. SPOTTISWOODE,
  New-Street-Square.





PREFACE.


It is impossible to read or meditate concerning that period of history
in which the scene and action of my tale are laid without partaking of
the feelings of both parties in that great quarrel, and “being (in an
innocent sense) on both sides.”


In such a spirit has my story been conceived and written. Until the
sword was drawn, the more generous and constitutional Royalists were
separated by but a faint line from the best and most patriotic men of
the Parliament party.


I have, however, confined myself more particularly to the
contemplation of those miseries and violent acts of persecution which
the appeal to arms brought upon many private families, and especially
upon those of the clergy.


In the contrivance of such a fiction, it became necessary to introduce
pictures of fanaticism and hypocrisy, and to describe scenes of
cruelty and of low interested persecution; but such parts of the story
must not be considered separately from the rest. The general tenor of
my volumes will, I trust, be found in strict consistency with that
charity that “thinketh no evil,” but “hopeth all things.”




THE BROKEN FONT.




CHAPTER I.

    Thus till man end, his vanities goe round,
    In credit here, and there discredited;
    Striving to binde, and never to be bound;
    To governe God, and not bee governed:
      Which is the cause his life is thus confused,
      In his corruption, by these arts abused.
                                   LORD BROOKE.


It was the early afternoon of a fine open day in the last week of
April, in the year 1640. The sun shone warm; not a breath of wind was
stirring the tender foliage of the tall trees, or the delicate flower
of the lowly harebell beneath the hedge-rows. All was still, save that
at intervals the voice of the cuckoo was heard--loud, but yet
mellow--from the bosom of a neighbouring wood. The swains in the
field lay stretched in the shade, as though summer were already come:
in gardens and court-yards not a sound of labour or a clatter of life
disturbed the silence of the hour.

In a shady alcove, which looked out on the bowling alley of Milverton
House, sate the worthy old master of the mansion, with one leg crossed
over the other, a book upon his knee, and a kindly smile playing
across his manly features. Not far distant, upon the steps which led
up to the near end of a stately terrace, was seated a fair little
girl, about six years of age. A thick laurel protected her with its
shadow; and it might be seen by the paper in her hand, by the motion
of her lips, and by the sway of her little head and neck, that she was
committing some task to memory, with that pleasure that makes a
pastime even out of a lesson. Out on the smooth green an old
flap-mouthed hound, whose hunting days were long past, lay basking in
the sun, among the dispersed bowls, which the last players had idly
neglected to put away; and with them a boy’s bow and arrow had been
left, or forgotten, on the ground. The child’s murmur was lower than
the soft coo from the dove-cote, or the gentle music of the fountain;
and there was a hush of quiet about all these whispers of created life
that was in harmony with the general silence.

The shadow of the dial had crept on nearly half an hour before this
repose was broken. It was so at last, by a hot boy of fourteen, with
vest unbuttoned, and without a hat, who came to seek his bow and
arrow. The glad cry of “I have found them!” dispelled the silence: the
little girl thrust her paper into her bosom, and jumped up at the
sound of the welcome voice; and the old man looked up, and, putting
his book down on the seat beside him, scolded the noble boy for having
left the bowls out to be scorched and injured by the sun.

With no abatement of good humour, the cheerful boy, eagerly helped by
the little girl, gathered them up, and carried them into the
bowl-house. The old hound was too much accustomed to the thing even to
stir for it, though one of the bowls almost touched his nose.

This duty done, the boy, upon whose mind one thing lay uppermost, with
that abruptness which belongs to nature and to boyhood, propounded to
his great-uncle, Sir Oliver Heywood, the following most startling
question:--

“Was it not, sir, a very wicked thing to cut off Mr. Prynne’s ears?”

Had it suddenly thundered the old knight could not have been more
surprised; and, if a wasp had stung him in a tender place, he could
not have been less pleased.

“Master Prynne! what do you know about Master Prynne, you foolish
boy?”

“O, I know--I know very well! they cut off his ears because he didn’t
like plays; and that was very cruel! What a shame it would be to cut
off the ears of old Josh. Cross, that takes care of your hawks,
because he didn’t like to hear Stephen play upon the fiddle!”

“Why, Arthur, what has come to you, boy? who has been teaching you
this nonsense? If Master Prynne had lost his head, instead of his
ears, it would be no more than he deserved, and I hope he may live to
own it.”

At this rebuke the boy coloured, and hung his head; but added, as if
pleading for his fault,--

“It was Master Noble said so; and you know, sir, you have told us all
to mind what he says, for he is always in the right.”

Sir Oliver bade him hastily go play; and the boy, taking his little
niece by the hand, they ran out of the bowling-green at one angle,
while the good old knight, not a little discomposed by the incident,
ascended slowly to the terrace. Here he found old Philip, the keeper
of the buttery, seated at the far end, in the shade, in the calm
enjoyment of a pipe. Instead of the wonted word of pleasant greeting,
Sir Oliver told him, in a rough tone, to go and seek instantly for
Master Noble, and send him thither.

While the kind old serving man went away with his message in no
comfortable mood--for the young tutor was as great a favourite in
kitchen as in hall--the old gentleman paced the terrace with a
leisurely and thoughtful step; and made frequent stops and soliloquies
on the strange and unexpected words and sentiments which he had just
heard from the lips of his open and artless boy. While thus engaged,
we will leave him for a few moments to place before our reader the
state of the family at the time of which we write.

At the village of Milverton, in Warwickshire, upon a sweet spot above
the valley of the Avon, Sir Oliver Heywood, the descendant of a
successful and honoured merchant, occupied a fair and pleasant mansion
erected in the reign of Elizabeth by his wealthy father.

The family at Milverton House consisted of the worthy knight, a maiden
sister, his daughter--an only child--and a boy who was the son of a
favourite nephew slain in the German wars, in which he had been led to
engage as a diversion of his grief on the loss of a beloved wife.

In addition to these regular members of the family there was a little
orphan girl, whom his benevolent sister had adopted. This sister,
Mistress Alice, was two years the junior of Sir Oliver, and had
attained the age of sixty-one. She had taken up her abode with him at
the death of Lady Heywood, about four years before the period of
which we now speak.

Katharine, his daughter, was in her twentieth year, and his nephew’s
son was about fourteen years of age.

Master Noble, of whom mention has been made, was tutor to the boy
Arthur, and resided with the family.

This young scholar was the son of an old school-fellow and friend of
Sir Oliver’s, who held the benefice of Cheddar, in Somersetshire.
Cuthbert Noble, like his father before him, had been educated at
William of Wykeham’s school of Winchester; but not succeeding so far
as to obtain a fellowship at New College, Oxford, which is the usual
aim and reward of the scholars upon the Winchester foundation, he had
proceeded to Cambridge, and there graduated with good report. He had
been now six months at Milverton.

Sir Oliver’s birthday was ever a high festival at the manor-house.
This year it was the pleasure of his daughter to celebrate it by a
masque; and all the arrangements for this masque were referred by
Mistress Katharine to Cuthbert Noble. He cheerfully undertook them;
and having gained some experience in these matters at college, and
having some skill in painting, set himself to prepare scenes--then a
very recent invention. As, with a painting brush in his hand, he was
standing before a scene, nearly finished, and dashing in the white and
foamy water upon canvass, that was fast changing into a torrent,
falling from rocks, and rushing through a lonely glen,--and as he
stood back surveying the effect, and humming the fragment of a song,
Philip came slowly up the gallery, and said gravely,--

“Master Cuthbert, Sir Oliver wants to speak with you directly.”

“Where is he?”

“In the garden, on the lower terrace; and I wish he was looking more
pleasant:--it’s my thought, Master, there’s something wrong; for it is
not a small matter that can vex him.”

Cuthbert put down his brush and palette, and proceeded slowly towards
the terrace. As he was descending the wide steps which led to it, he
could not but observe that the good knight was serious, if not angry.

“Master Cuthbert,” said Sir Oliver with an air of gravity and
displeasure, “I have sent for you to hear from your own lips some
little explanation or defence of a matter that hath come to my
knowledge by the accident of a child’s artless utterance. It may be
that it was only a word lightly dropped by you--a passing levity--a
lapsus of the tongue, not of the judgment--such an indiscretion as I
may pass over in one of your unripe age and little experience, without
further correction than a faithful reproof, and a timely warning of
the danger of such vain observations, and of their unsuitableness and
impropriety in one who fills so important an office in my family, and
hath so far enjoyed my confidence as to have doubtless a great
influence for evil or for good.”

This long preface Sir Oliver delivered, pacing slowly on the terrace
with his eyes bent upon the ground. Cuthbert walked by his side,
anxious for the direct charge, now too plainly whispered from within
by his own swift thoughts.

Sir Oliver paused, and, looking full and steadily upon the serious
countenance of the youthful tutor, demanded of him whether it were
true that he had said publicly before any of his family or household,
that it was a barbarous and cruel thing to cut off Master Prynne’s
ears?

“I certainly so expressed myself,” was the calm answer of Cuthbert.

“Where and to whom did you thus speak?”

“It was in the library--the lady Alice was present, and Master Arthur
was there at his lesson.”

“And are these the lessons that you teach in my house and to my
children?--know you, sir, that Master Prynne is a traitor--that he
speaketh evil of dignities, and soweth disloyalty--that he is a
hypocrite and a fanatic?”

“Sir Oliver,” said Cuthbert, “there was no discourse upon this matter,
save only the one remark of which you question me:--this fell from my
heart when your good sister read out some news of him--and thereupon
the lady Alice went forth without a word; for I presume not to
intrude my poor thoughts of court affairs upon any one in this house.
I know my place better.”

“Life of me! Thou dost not confess thy fault--thou dost not say thy
pænitet for teaching this false lesson to my child!”

“I would not be slow to speak out my sorrow and shame if I felt them,
but I am conscience-whole in this thing,--and my few words did give no
other lesson than one of plain humanity.”

“Master Cuthbert, I do believe thee a true and gentle youth, of best
intentions, and thou comest of a good stock. Thy father is my good
friend from the gladsome days when we were school-fellows together at
St. Mary, Winton; and where hath church or state a better parson or
better subject than he? therefore, I would for his sake, as for thine
own, entreat thee mildly. Youth is warm and tender, and wanting a far
sight to the great end of punishment--the axe might rust and the
scourge gather cobwebs before hearts like thine would give rogues
their due.”

“I am of sterner stuff, Sir Oliver, than to wish a rogue safe from
the beadle, or a traitor from the headsman; but I am not so taught as
to think the mistakes of a severe piety treasons deserving of
torture.”

“Odd’s life! I see how it is--thou art bitten by these gloomy
fanatics--the venom is in thy veins:--well for me that I have seen its
first workings. By my fathers! these new papists, these worse
Carthusians, would drive sunshine from the earth, and kill the
flowers, and stop the singing of birds, and give us a world of rock
and clouds--hard as their stony hearts, and gloomy as their cold
minds! Master Cuthbert, we must part. I’ll not have the path of my boy
shadowed over before it be God’s will. The earth is green and goodly,
and pleasant to the eyes; and long may his heart rejoice in it, as
mine has before him. Look you, we must part.”

“At your pleasure I came, Sir Oliver, and I am ready, at your
pleasure, to return to my father’s. My stay with you has been short,
and I would fain hope that I have not failed in my duty to you. May
you be more fortunate in your choice of a tutor for Master Arthur
than you have been in me!”

Cuthbert spoke these words with so much self-command that not one
syllable trembled in the utterance; yet the tone was at once mournful
and resolved.

The better feelings of Sir Oliver were touched: the expression of his
eye showed plainly that he was repenting of his hastiness, relenting
in his decision. What his reply might have been, may, in its spirit,
be easily imagined; but a sudden interruption checked the words that
were rising to his lips; and a sounder and more prudential reason for
desiring the departure of Cuthbert was presented to his judgment than
any objection which could have been urged at that time, with any
semblance of fairness, against his errors as a churchman, or his sins
as a subject.

“Master Noble,” called a rich clear voice from above them,--“Master
Noble, we poor players do wait your pleasure, and are ready with our
parts; but we cannot go on with our rehearsal till the manager doth
come to us.” Looking up, Sir Oliver saw his daughter leaning over the
balustrade, with a paper in one hand, and a tall wand wreathed with
flowers in the other; and, as he turned his eyes upon Cuthbert Noble,
the strong emotions with which Cuthbert was evidently struggling did
not escape his observation.

“I have business with him just now, Kate,” said her father: “go thy
way. He shall come to thee in the hall anon.” But as he spoke, the boy
Arthur came down the steps, leading in his hand the little girl; and,
running up to Cuthbert with joyous eagerness, cried out, “Kitten can
do her part--she can say every word quite perfect--you must hear her.”
With that, the little girl letting go his hand, and putting back her
sunny curls, which had fallen over her blue eyes, repeated, with an
air of sweet intelligence and pretty innocence, these lines:--

    “I do childhood represent,
    Listen to my argument:
    Mine the magic power to bring
    Pleasure out of every thing;
    Sunbeams, flowers, and summer air,
    Music, wonders, visions fair,
    All my happy steps attend;
    Mine is peace without an end;--
    All things are at peace with me,
    Beast in field, and bird on tree;
    The sheep that lie upon the grass
    Never stir as I do pass;
    If by the singing bird I stray,
    He never quits his chosen spray;
    If to the squirrel’s haunt I go,
    He comes with curious eye below;
    Earth and I are full of love,
    I fear no harm from Heav’n above,
    For there, as here, all things do tell
    A Father God doth surely dwell:--
    O! could I be a child alway,
    How happy were life’s holyday!”

The countenance of Sir Oliver recovered all its wonted expression of
good humour, as the child prettily recited these lines; and patting
her on the head, as she concluded, he turned to Cuthbert and said, in
his usual kind tone, “We will talk our matter over another time: I see
that you are no joy-killer, and would never mar an innocent
pleasure-making--I was ever fond of a good play--a pox on these
prick-eared knaves that would forbid them!

    “‘Why kings and emperors have taen delight
    To make experience of their wits in plays,’

as Master Kyd hath it, in his Spanish tragedy.”

Cuthbert said nothing; but having a recollection of the passage from
which Sir Oliver had quoted, thought he might have found a more
comfortable sanction and a much better authority.

“But, prithee,” continued Sir Oliver, “whose rhymes be these that the
child has just spoken?”

“They are my poor doggerel,” answered Cuthbert; “for this dear child
would give me no rest till I made a part for her in the Birthday
Masque.”

“Marry,” rejoined the knight, “the fancy of them pleaseth me, and for
the verse I care not.”

They all now turned to ascend the steps; and as they did so, apparent
at the same instant to both Sir Oliver and Cuthbert was Mistress
Katharine, leaning over the balustrade of the upper terrace, with an
air of grave and perplexed curiosity.

As soon as they reached the top, which was level with the lawn in
front of the mansion, Katharine caught Kitten in her arms, kissed her
fair brow, and ran with her towards the house; the happy child calling
out the while, “Come along, Master Noble, pray, come,” and at the same
time clapping together her two little hands at thought of the coming
pleasure.




CHAP. II.

    “White, I dare not say good, witches (for woe be to him
    that calleth evil good!) heal those that are hurt, and help them
    to lost goods.

    “Methinks she should bewitch to herself a golden mine, at
    least good meat, and whole clothes.”
                                  FULLER’_s_ _Profane State_.


While a select few among the maidens and the serving men, who were, to
their great contentment, to figure beneath strange dresses and uncouth
vizards in the antimasque, and while some neighbouring gentles of
quality, who were to take part in the masque itself, were rehearsing
in the hall, old Philip, the butler, betook himself to the outer gate,
and there sitting down on the porter’s stone, replenished his pipe,
and fell a-thinking about Sir Oliver and Master Noble. But the more he
thought, the more he was puzzled; and so he opened his vest to catch
the breeze from the valley, and smoked with half-closed eyes, too
much accustomed to the glorious scene before him to be always moved by
its beauties. Below him, in the rich bottom of the vale, flowed the
shining Avon. The white foam of the water at Guy’s mill might be seen,
and the rush of it might be almost heard.

The cliff of the renowned Guy presented a fine scarp of stone, the
summit of which was overhung with knotted and rude shrubs of a
fantastic growth; and far away to the left, at a distance of two
miles, might be seen the lordly towers, and the tall and ivied wall of
Warwick Castle. Such were the objects, which might, we say, have been
discerned from the spot where old Philip sate, together with broad and
pleasant meadows, well stocked with kine and sheep, and many goodly
trees of a stately size, and many a distant coppice of rich underwood.
Doubtless the old man had often felt the glad influence of that
scene,--but now, overcome with heat, tobacco, and the labour of
perplexed guesses about the grave mood of his master, he fell fast
asleep. Philip was one of those good faithful old creatures whose
world was his master’s, and whose greatest sin was the love of
victual. This sin was duly punished by black dreams; and now, as he
lay snoring against the wall, his indulgence over a rich mutton pie at
dinner was visited with the terrors of one of those nightmare visions
with which he was deservedly familiar. He dreamed that it was the
statute fair, and that they were roasting an ox whole in the
market-place of Warwick. The frontlet of the poor beast was gaily
gilded, and the horns were painted blue, and gilt at the tips. The
mighty spit turned slowly round. On one side stood a fat cook basting
the brown loins that the beast might not burn, and on the other a
stout and expert carver occasionally stopped the rude spit, and with a
long broad knife detached savoury portions for the greedy by-standers,
who, on receiving the same, dropped their penny of thanks into the cap
of the carver, and, slipping out of the crowd, made way for others.
Dreams are to the dreamer realities. Philip’s mouth watered: he
thought he had never before seen beef so delicious; fat and lean in
their exact proportions; the meat of the finest grain, juicy, and full
of gravy; but then his suit, his badge, his pride of place, forbade
his wishes: partake of the dainty he could not, but he might go near,
just out of curiosity, and for mere amusement. Lo and behold! with an
angry bellow forth leaped the furious beast, his eyes all fire, the
spit point issuing from his foaming mouth, his carcass smoking and
dripping, and half the sirloins cut away. He singled old Philip from
the crowd; he lowered his blue and gilded horns; he shook the spit
between his grinning teeth; and as he made his rush, old Philip died a
thousand deaths in one, and woke into another world,--that other he
had so shortly quitted. Nor was the object on which his waking eyes
first rested exactly calculated to compose his terrors. A crowd of
noisy clowns was standing round him; and in the midst of them, upon a
hurdle, they bore an old withered and bony woman, crooked and
blear-eyed, who was counted the witch of that neighbourhood, and well
known by the name of yellow Margery of the Sand Pit.

They set down the hurdle close at Philip’s feet, and called loudly for
justice and Sir Oliver. “Hag!”--“Crone!”--“Beldame!”--“To the
faggot!”--“To the river,”--“Justice in the King’s name!”--were the
various cries by which the impatient rustics frighted all the
household of Milverton from their propriety and their pleasures, and
brought most of them forth to the gate, and the rest to the hall
steps, or the casements. Sir Oliver himself came forth, among the
first, loudly rating them. “Why, how now, ye rude varlets; is
Milverton a pot-house, and the seat of justice an ale bench?
Speak--what would you?--speak, you, Morton,--you should know better
than to head a rabble rout of this fashion.”

“Why then, troth, Sir Oliver, as thou art a worshipful knight, and a
king’s justice, not man, woman, nor child in the whole parish can sup
their porridge in peace or sleep o’ nights for this old witch Margery:
we’ve crown witness enough to hang, drown, and burn her twenty times
over.”

“Not so fast, not so fast, neighbour,” said Sir Oliver, seating
himself on the stone from which old Philip had retired melting with
fear. “Where are the witnesses, and what have they to say? Let them
stand forth.”

“First, here’s Master Crumble, the clerk; then, afore him, here’s
Master Screw, the great witch-finder from Coventry; and here’s Jock,
my carter; and old Blow, the blacksmith, and Pollard, your worship’s
woodman.”

“Stop, stop, I can’t hear all at once,--say thy say, Crumble.”

“Why, your worship, my sow--your worship, my sow is dead: all of a
sudden, this blessed morn, as I poured out her wash, down she lay all
in the shivers; and if the poor dumb creature had been her own flesh
and blood, my old woman could not ha’ taken on more. Says I, directly,
‘This is a bit of Margery’s work; for I see her brush the old sow with
her black petticoat at the lane end, Sunday was a week.’ It’s quite a
plain case you see, Sir Oliver.”

“Stand back, you silly man.”

“Silly, forsooth. I am thirty-seven year clerk of the parish, come
next Lammas, and I say it’s writ on the Bible, ‘Thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live.’”

“That is true enough--it is so; but how do you know a witch?”

“Why, I know that a man’s not a witch.”

“That is true, thou art a man and no witch. But how dost thou know
one?”

“Why, it is an old woman, not to say any one, but a crook back, with a
hooked nose, and a peaked chin like Margery.”

“Master Crumble, I have done with thee, and in the matter of thy sow’s
death do acquit Margery.”

“That’s not crown law, nor Gospel charity,” said the old clerk, as he
stepped back into the crowd, who muttered and whispered among each
other till the next witness spoke out. This was the witch-finder.

“Please your worship, I am ready to make oath that she hath a
familiar, always about her in the shape of a brown mouse; for I have
seen it crawling about her neck, and playing and feeding in her hand.”

Here there was a mixed utterance of triumph and horror in the crowd,
and Sir Oliver himself looked grave.

“What dost thou answer to this, Margery?”

“They say true in that they say I have a tame mouse; and haven’t court
ladies their monkeys, and their parrots, and their squirrels, and
their white mice,--and why mayn’t an old lone woman have her pet as
well as they?” As thus she spoke, she held out her open hand, and a
lively brown mouse sat up quietly on the palm seemingly quite tame.
There was a slight shudder ran through the veins of all present; and
Cuthbert Noble, fearing lest this mode of defence might rather hinder
than help her, went up to advise her better.

“A warm blessing on you, Master Noble,--the blessing of one whom you
have saved before, and are trying to save again.”

Here Cuthbert stopped her, and observed to Sir Oliver aloud, that this
mouse was but such a pet as a shepherd’s boy might play with, and that
the old woman, whose ways were odd, had once told him that when she
was a child and her little brother died, she had taken to a field
mouse which he had petted, and that she had ever since as one died
procured another.

The worthy knight was now for discharging Margery; but Farmer Morton
insisted that they should hear his carter’s story. Accordingly Jock
stepped forward, and smoothing down his hair said,--“Please your
worship, I lost my best startups (high shoes) the day before last
cattle fair, and precious mad I was; and Sukey Sly told me if I went
to old Margery, and took her a wheaten loaf, and crossed her palm with
a silver penny, she’d tell me where to find ’em. Well, I went, and the
old woman said she didn’t want to have aught to say to me. ‘Look ye,’
says I, ‘Margery, here I be, here’s the bread and here’s the money: I
ha’ lost my startups, and you must tell me where to find them; and I
wo’n’t budge till you do.’ So with that she puts her mouse down
against the loaf, and finely he nibbled away, and she set of a brown
stud for a bit, and then told me to wait for the first full moon, and
then, exactly at midnight, to walk backwards from the yard gate to the
dung mixen, with my eyes fixed on the moon, and that I should find
them on the mixen; but if it were before or after twelve o’clock, and
if I looked behind me, or took my eyes off the moon, the charm would
be broke, and I should never see my startups again; and sure enough I
never have seen ’em.”

There was a little titter among the women; and Sukey Sly, whose legs
were set off in a pair of new red stockings, could not suppress a
laugh at Jock’s story: but the clowns called out for justice, and Sir
Oliver had much ado to pacify them. He did so at last, by assuring the
old woman, that, on condition she told what was the great charm by
which she was said to cure diseases, she should be set free.

“Cure diseases! God bless you, Master! why I’m a poor helpless old
body, that can’t cure myself, and should starve but for pity,” said
Margery. “However, may be, once or so in a quarter there comes some
wilful body like Jock, with a tied-up face, and makes a witch of me,
whether or no, and will have the charm. Then I take his loaf and his
money, and I say,--

    “‘My loaf in my lap,
      My penny in my purse;
    Thou art never the better;
      I’m never the worse.’”

This confession was followed by laughter, in which most joined; and,
except the clerk of the parish and the balked witch-finder, all
dispersed in such good humour, that the poor old crone was released
from her hurdle and her troublesome attendants, and, with a basket of
broken meat and a bottle of ale, was suffered to hobble back to her
hovel in the sand pit, without let or hinderance. It is true that
Margery was most justly liable to the charge of imposture in the
matter of Jock; and certain that, but for the easy and kind temper of
the knight, and the good humour which her own quaint and jocular
confession suddenly struck out of the wayward crowd, she might have
been committed by Sir Oliver, or half drowned by the brutal and
superstitious rustics on her road back to her miserable hovel. But as
she lived at a lone spot on the far side of the Avon, and was not
often seen in the parish of Milverton, and as the good knight (though
by no means free from the prevalent belief in witchcraft, and still
doubting whether under the form of a mouse she was not attended by an
imp, as the witch-finder had averred,) was a timid magistrate, hated
trouble, and sincerely feared doing what was either wrong in law or
severe in punishment, he rejoiced to be well quit of the troublesome
appeal. Nevertheless, he was not a little secretly disturbed, when,
late in the evening, old Philip--in a fear which had not even yielded
to the comforting warmth of a cup of spiced ale--related to him his
comical dream, with manifold exaggerations, and expressed his stout
belief that he had been possessed during his sleep by the evil
influence of old Margery.

Truth to say, at the period of which we write such was the fear and
hatred of those forlorn and miserable old women, whose unsightly
features, infirm gait, and cross tempers, excited among their
neighbours any suspicion that they held intercourse with evil spirits,
and exercised the powers of witchcraft, as drove forth the unhappy
beings to lonely abodes in solitary places. Here again, in the
vicinity of some village, remote from the scene of their persecution,
their very loneliness, all compelled and oppressive as it was, did
most naturally subject them anew to the suspicions of fresh
oppressors. So bloody, too, were the laws which at that time disgraced
the statute book, having for their end the punishment of witchcraft,
so cruel were the modes of trial among the mean and malignant persons
who drove a lucrative trade as witch-finders, and so credulous was the
ignorant and easily abused multitude, that, upon evidence far less
colourable with guilt than that adduced against Margery, unfortunate
persons of both sexes were publicly executed without shame and without
pity. In numberless instances false confessions were extorted from the
hopeless sufferers by torture, and adduced upon the day of trial, or
proclaimed at the place of execution. Thus a rooted persuasion of the
existence of sorcery and the practices of witchcraft was fixed in the
minds of the vulgar, and even infected those of the better and the
educated classes. As a natural consequence of this terrible
superstition, some of the poor creatures suspected of witchcraft, who
found themselves thrust out of the pale of human sympathy--avoided and
shunned by some, beaten and set upon by others--did madden, and
mumble curses in their gloomy solitude, and at last began to suspect
themselves as the servants of unseen spirits, and the partakers of a
supernatural power.

In the breast of Cuthbert Noble the vulgar and cruel prejudice
concerning witchcraft had no place. His humane and enlightened father
had very early instilled into his mind clear notions of the love and
care of the great Father of the human families; of the sacredness of
human life, indeed of all life, and of the holiness of creation;--and
he had, moreover, taught him to regard all particular cases of severe
and inexplicable suffering as parts only of one vast and mysterious
whole, and subserving, in the great end and issue, some wise, holy,
wonderful purpose of divine and universal love. He had taught him,
too, that ours was a marred and fallen nature; and how and by what
means, and in whose divine person, it actually was restored; and how
all the sons of Adam had become capable, through divine mercy, of
partaking all the benefits of that restoration of man’s nature--in
some degree even in this troubled and probationary state--in full and
satisfying perfection in that state which is future and eternal.
Hence, to the eye of Cuthbert, every one of human form was an object,
though not perhaps of personal interest and affection, yet of wonder
and of reverence, as a creature of God, born for immortality--an
imperishable, an indestructible being; and, when the crimes and errors
of his fellow-creatures stirred up his angry passions to punish and
withstand them, the sense of his own weakness and his own sinfulness
was ever waiting for him in his heart’s closet, to rebuke and humble
him in the calmness of solitude. But Cuthbert as yet had been little
tried; he knew not what spirit he was of. He thought that his placid
and firm father was the model which he surely followed; but the
settled and peaceful joy of that amiable and benevolent and subdued
father was as yet unknown to him.

However, the character and the life of Parson Noble will be the better
understood and conceived of by transporting our reader to the village
in Somersetshire where he dwelt, and where, had it been her good
fortune to have been a parishioner of his, old Margery, in spite of
her wild and withered aspect, might have lived unmolested and in peace
with her neighbours, and would not have lacked such acquaintance with
the mercy of the great Redeemer, as it is in the power of a mere human
instrument to impart.




CHAP. III.

    A branch of May we have brought you,
      And at your door it stands;
        It is but a sprout,
        But it’s well budded out,
      By the work of our Lord’s hands.

      The hedges and trees they are so green,
        As green as any leek;
      Our heavenly Father he watereth them,
        With his heavenly dew so sweet.
                     _From the Mayer’s Song._


The morning star glittered brightly above the fine old tower of
Cheddar church, and the low parsonage lay still and asleep amid the
flowers and the dewy grass plots of its pleasant garden, as advancing,
from beneath the ancient yew in the churchyard, to the wicket opposite
the good vicar’s porch, a party of hale young rustics with coloured
ribands in their hats and on their loose white sleeves, planted, on
either side the entrance, a fine branch of white thorn in full
blossom, and struck up, with full and cheerful voices, the very
ancient medley from which the stanzas at the head of our present
chapter are taken. They had not sung two verses before the door of the
parsonage was opened by a merry looking old serving man--two lasses’
heads were thrust from a window over the kitchen--the mistress’s good
humoured eyes were seen over a white chamber blind,--and the parson
himself, with a face as expressive of joy as a child’s, though marked
with the furrows of seven-and-sixty years, came forth to the wicket in
a loose morning gown, with a black scull-cap on his silvery hairs, and
listened, with a motion of the lips, that showed his voice, though not
audible, and his kind heart were attuned to theirs, and to the coming
holyday. When their song was done, he dismissed them with his
blessing, with the customary gift of silver, and with a caution to
keep their festival with gladness and innocence, and with the love of
brothers; letting the poor and aged fare the better for it.

“And let us have no brawls on the ale bench,” said the old
parson,--“let our May-pole be the rod of peace; so that none may rail
at our sports and dances, but rather take note of us as merry folk and
honest neighbours.”

With loud thanks, and lively promises, and rude invocations of
Heaven’s best gifts on him, and his lady, and his absent sons, the
party now faced about, and with the accompaniment of pipe and tabor,
and a couple of fiddles, moved off at a dancing pace to pay the like
honours at the door of the chief franklin, and to deck the village
street as they passed along.

Parson Noble now passed round to his favourite terrace walk, that
overlooked a rich and extensive level, and taking up his lute, which
lay in a little alcove at one end of it, he breathed out his morning
hymn of thanksgiving, as was his wont, and thus composed, went into
his study, and secluded himself for an hour from all interruption. At
the close he again came into his garden, where he commonly laboured
both for pleasure and health, every day of his life, in company with
the attached old servant, who, for his quaint words and ways, had
been long known to the village by the name of plain Peter,--an
epithet, which, as it gave him credit for blunt honesty, as well as
for a cast in his eye, he readily pardoned,--nay, some said he was
proud of it;--for what manner of man is it that hath not a pride in
something?

“Master,” said Peter, putting down his rake as the parson came up the
walk, “I have won a silver groat on your words this day.”

“How so? what dost thou mean, Peter?”

“Why, last market day, when I was in the kitchen at the old Pack Horse
at Axbridge, that vinegar-faced old hypocrite, Master Pynche, the
staymaker, comes in, and asks me to bring out Betsy Blount’s new
stays.

“Says I, ‘That I’ll do for Betsy’s sake,--a lass that hasn’t her
better for a good heart, or a pretty face, in all Somersetshire.’

“‘Verily, Master Peter, I think,’ said he, ‘thy speech might have more
respect to me, and more decency to the damsel, but thou savourest not
of the things that be from above:--thou art of the earth, earthy.’

“‘Why, for the matter of things above,’ said I, ‘Master Pynche, I
don’t pretend to any skill in moonshine; and as to being of the earth,
that I don’t deny, and thirsty earth too; with that I put to my lips
the cup of ale that I had in hand, and drank it down.’

“‘Is it not written,’ he replied in a snuffling tone, ‘that favour is
deceitful, and beauty is vain?--but thou art a servant of Beelzebub,
and thou speakest the words of thy master, and his works wilt thou
do.’

“‘In the name of plain Peter,’ I added, ‘herewith I proclaim you
Prince of Fools, and I will send you a coloured coat, and a hood and
bells, and thou shalt have a bauble, and a bladder of pease, and a
licence to preach next April.’

“With that he lifted up his eyes and hands, and muttering something
about pearls and swine, glided off like a ghost at cock crow.”

“Peter,” interrupted Noble, “thou shouldst not have said such things.”

“Marry, did he not call me a servant of Beelzebub? the peevish old
puritan!--Well, but to go on with my story. The folk in Dame Wattle’s
kitchen fell a discoursing after Pynche was gone; and some spake up
after a fashion that made my hair stand up. Says a sturdy pedlar in
the corner,--‘Ay, they’ll soon be uppermost, and the sooner the
better; rot ’em, I don’t like ’em, the godly rogues; but they are
better than parsons, any way.’

“So with that I felt my blood come up, and I was going to speak, when
old Hardy, the cobbler, took up his words, and says he, ‘That’s true
of some, and it’s true of our old Tosspot; but there’s Peter’s master,
of Cheddar,--you may search the country far and near before you will
find his like. I remember when my niece Sally lay dying, night and
day, fair weather and foul, he would trudge through mire or snow to
give her medicine for body as well as soul, and that’s what I call a
good parson.’”

“‘A good puritan,’ said Dame Wattle. ‘I have heard of his sayings and
doings, and trust me, he’ll go with your parliament men, your
down-church men: you’ll never have any more May-games and Christmas
gambols at Cheddar.’

“‘There you’re out, Dame,’ said I, ‘and don’t know any more about
Master Noble than a child unborn.’

“‘A silver crown to a silver groat he’ll give a long preachment
against the May-pole next May-morning.’

“‘Done with you, Dame,’ said I.

“‘You may lay a golden angel to a penny there will be no May-poles at
all, if you make it May twelvemonth,’ said the pedlar, ‘without,
indeed, there be such as have pikes at the end of them;’ and with that
he pulled out a printed paper, that he brought from London, and read
out a long matter about the king and the bishops, and about church
organs, and tithes, and play actors, and ship money, and Master
Hampden; and made out, as plain as a pike staff, that there would be
many a good buff coat and iron head piece taken down from the wall
before long. ‘We shall have a civil war soon, and God defend the
right,’ said he, as he folded up the paper and took up his pack.

“Civil,” thought I, “that’s a queer word. I have heard talk of civil
people and civil speeches, but a civil blow from a battle-axe is a
new thing. I’ll tell master all about it when I get home, and axe what
it means;--but as I was on the path in Nine Acres, whom should I meet
but Master Blount, the young one, and he made me promise not to say a
word to you before May-day was come, for fear the old sports might be
hindered; and he told me that civil war meant war at home; for which I
didn’t think him much of a conjuror, as my guess had reached that far:
and now, Master, prithee tell me what civil means.”

“Peter, thou art an honest fellow, and as good a citizen as if thou
knewest what it was called in Latin, and that a civil war was a war of
citizens, but of a truth this is no matter for smiles; however,
‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ This is no morning for
a cloudy face.”

“Well, then, here comes one, and the worst that darkens our doors. For
my part, I can’t bide the sight of it, ’t would turn all the milk in
the dairy.”

The vicar looked over his hedge, and saw the curate of a parish with
whom he was but slightly acquainted, walking across the last close,
which led by a footway into his orchard. The apple-trees concealed
Noble from his approaching visiter, who, just as he reached the gate
of the orchard, overtook a little boy, about nine years of age,
carrying in his hand a cluster of cowslips half as big as himself, and
having a thick crown of field flowers round his straw hat.

With a severe scowl, he snatched the cowslips from the frightened
child, and threw them away, and then made a gripe at his little hat;
but, the boy drawing back with a blubbering cry, the zealous and tall
curate, who had a little over-reached himself, slipped and fell prone
upon the grass. This, however, was the lightest part of his
misfortune; for it so chanced that his face came in full contact with
a new-made rain-puddle, and he arose with his eyes half blinded, and
his face covered and besmeared with mud. With the tears yet rolling
down his red cheeks, the little fellow, as he saw himself avenged in
a measure so contenting, and a manner so ridiculous, ran out of his
reach, literally shrieking with laughter; and a hearty roar from old
Peter at once completed his mortification, and determined his retreat.
This soon became a maddened flight: for a sleeping dog roused by the
noise of the laughter pursued him with angry barkings, from which, as
he had no staff, and the grassy close could furnish no stone, there
was no escape till the wearied animal paused and turned.

The whole of this scene was so very swiftly enacted, that Noble had no
opportunity to say or do any thing in the matter; and charity itself
could not suppress a smile at a punishment so well suited to the
morosity which had led to it. Neither was he at all sorry to be
relieved upon this festal day from the intrusive visit of a sour,
ill-instructed fanatic, whose opinions he could not value, and for
whose character he felt no respect. He looked, therefore, with unmixed
satisfaction at the laughing urchin, as he gathered up his scattered
wealth, and departed.

Now merrily rang out the lively bells of Cheddar Tower; and already
was every street a green alley, freshened by thick boughs, and made
fragrant by small branches of white thorn neatly interwoven.

The house of the chief franklin, Mr. Blount, was more especially
honoured. Before his door was planted the largest and fairest branch
of May that could be found in a circuit of five good miles, and his
hospitable porch was made a rich bower of shrubs and flowers. Beneath
the tall trees in front of it was a little crowd of youths and
maidens, in holyday trim, wearing garlands, with green rushes and
strewing herbs in their arms, or aprons: full they were of smiles and
glee; and, out on the road, all the village was assembled, save the
infirm old and the cradled young; though, of these last, not a few
were borne in their mothers’ arms, or lifted up with honest pride in
those of their brown fathers, whose burning toils a field were, for
this joyous day, forgotten.

From the words passing in these expectant groups, a stranger might
soon have gathered that something more than the common sport of
May-day was engaging the honest and buzzing mob of men, women, and
children, that blocked the street opposite this goodly mansion, and
what that something was. “Better day better luck.”--“A bonny bride is
soon dressed.”--“Honest men marry soon,” said a black-eyed, nut-brown
wife, with a lively babe in her arms, and two curly-headed little ones
holding her apron,--and “Wise men not at all,” added a gruff old
blacksmith, with a seamed visage.--“Ah, it’s no good kicking in
fetters, Roger,” rejoined the laughing wife, at the same time giving
her infant into the horny hands of a stout young woodman, with a green
doublet and a clean white collar, who held it up, kicking and
shrieking with delight, as though it would spring out of his arms, and
chimed in with “Ah, Master Roger, it’s an ill house where the hen
crows loudest.”--“Ah, thou’lt find that some day, Stephen;” for this
he got a heavy slap on his shoulder from the young wife, whose coming
words were checked by the sound of fiddles, as the bridal procession
came forth. “Dear heart,” said she, “how pretty Bessy does look in
that lilac gown with brave red guardings and the golden cawl on her
fair hair, and what a beautiful lace rochet she has.”--“Ah, fine
feathers make fine birds,” said a spinster standing near.--“He’s a
proper man is young Hargood, and should have known better than choose
a wife by the eye.”--“She had rather kiss than spin, I’ll
warrant.”--“Better be half hanged than ill wed.”--“You may know a fool
by her finery.”--“A precious stone should be well set,” said the young
wife, sharply, “and Bessy’s blue eyes and her blushing cheeks are
small matters to her ways and words.” But envy and ill will were
low-voiced, and confined to few, for old Blount and all his house were
well loved by the people; and with many a word of cheerful greeting
they made way for the party, and the most of them followed it to the
church.

The procession was led by a few youths and maidens, with whom were all
the musicians of the village; while others, walking immediately before
the bride and her two bride maidens, strewed the ground, as they went,
with rushes and herbs. The bridegroom, in a suit of violet-coloured
cloth, guarded with velvet of the deepest crimson, and with a falling
collar of worked linen, followed, supported by his bridesmen, in fit
bravery of apparel; next came a group of relations, male and female,
led by the old franklin himself, with his grave and comely wife, and
the men and maids of his household brought up the rear of the
procession. It was met at the churchyard gate by Parson Noble and his
wife,--she joining old Mrs. Blount, and the good vicar, in his snowy
surplice, taking place at the head of it, immediately between the
herb-strewers and the bridal party; and now a gravity and silence
succeeded, and in decency and order all entered the church, and
proceeded with quiet steps to the altar. There, the sweet and solemn
service, which binds together for “better for worse, for richer for
poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do part,” was reverently
and impressively performed by Noble, his own deep and mellow tones
being only interrupted by the manly voice of the bridegroom, and the
faltering accents of the shy and trembling bride, as they gave
utterance to their heart’s true and hallowed responses. No sooner was
the ceremony ended than the bells, which had, for a while, been
silent, struck out with the wedding peal; and as the new married
couple came forth into the churchyard the air was rent with the joyous
acclamations of the crowd without; and the procession returned in
nearly the same order as it had left the house of the worthy franklin,
only, according to the good custom of the time, the parson made one of
the wedding party, and partook of the marriage feast.

Such of the old as could not walk abroad, stood leaning on staves, or
sat dim-eyed on the stones before their doors, to see or hear the
bridal train pass down; for each of these Parson Noble and the
franklin had a kind word as they went by, returned by the benison and
good wishes for the bride, who had herself no voice for any one, and,
supported on her husband’s arm, scarce saw her path through eyes that
were filling from a happy bosom’s overflow.

We shall not detain our reader by describing the dinner at Master
Blount’s; right plentiful was the cheer. Parson Noble said a grace in
rhyme, out of old Tom Tusser’s book of Husbandry, to the great
contentment of his hospitable host, that being the one book by which,
after his Bible, Blount squared his honest life.

    “God sendeth and giveth both mouth and the meat,
    And blesseth us all with his benefits great;
    Then serve we the God, who so richly doth give,
    Show love to our neighbours, and lay for to live.”

This being the franklin’s rule,--while his guests were feasted in the
old oak parlour, at the back of the house; in the pleasant orchard,
all his labourers were regaled with a hearty meal of meat and
plum-porridge; and huge jacks of ale were emptied and replenished, to
the health of bride and bridegroom and good master.

After due carvings of veal and bacon, unlacing of fat capons, and
untrussing of great pies of fruit and other dainties, in the parlour,
and after some mantling cups of wine drank to the happy pair, the old
people yielded to the impatience of the young, and all adjourned to
Robin’s Meadow, not, however, before they had sung, as the grace after
meat, a short psalm of praise.

The meadow, in which from generations before the May-pole was raised,
had a fine level sward, which Blount kept smooth as a bowling-ground
for the dancers, while a part of it rose in swelling banks, shaded by
trees. These, though, as yet, but in early leaf, were gaily green, and
contrasted well with the many-coloured and blushing wreaths of
field-flowers that wound about the May-pole, at the top of which
glittered a small crown, newly gilded in honour of the wedding, and
further adorned with a few of the rarest plants which the gardens of
Cheddar could produce.

A pleasure it was, as they passed into the meadow, to see the happy
children rolling and tumbling and racing down the steep bank, from
which they now scrambled away, to make room for the franklin’s party,
and for the elders of the village, who, from this grassy knoll, were
wont to preside over the pastimes of this holyday. We give not this
scene in detail:--the dances of the young, as, with light and elastic
steps, they bounded to lively measures round the May-pole, and the
nodding heads of the musicians keeping time with the dancers, and the
races and gambols of the ruddy children, each reader may figure forth
to his own fancy. Neither tell we of the pretty ceremonies with which
the milk maids brought their cows, with horns all garlanded, into the
adjoining close, and prepared and offered the delicious syllabub: our
aim is only to give an outline of a village May-day of the times of
which we write, and to show the good parson of the best school of that
period mingling in mirth among his people. Leaving, therefore, the
happy villagers to continue their sports till set of sun, we shall
confine ourselves to the steps of the pastor, and complete the journal
of his day.

As the chimes struck six o’clock, he quietly withdrew, and passed from
the scenes of pleasure and feasting to those of sickness and of
mourning. If he had regarded the former with complacent joy, he was
not the less willing, nor the less prepared, to cheer the latter with
those high contemplations and those tender sympathies to which, by
faith, as a Christian, he could point, and which, in charity, as a
man, he truly felt. Of the old, who were confined to their own
thresholds, he found two or three cross and short, but most of them
garrulous, and in good humour. They had got pleasant portions from the
franklin, and they could tell of old May-days, and heard, with
thankful nods and ready “ayes,” and strong fetchings of the breath,
that were not sighs of grief, the grave good words with which he
taught them how only they could die in peace.

Of his flock only one lay at the point of death, and her he visited
last.

She was the miller’s daughter, and had been the May-queen of the
bygone year. Sacred be such visit, in its most solemn communings! but
we may paint the scene of it, and the trifles which belong to those
sympathies of our humanity, that often survive the resigned hope of
life.

In a tall chair, against the back of which she leaned her head, sate a
pale maiden, warmly wrapped in a robe of white woollen, close to the
small window of an upper chamber, on which the evening sun shone warm:
curling honey-suckles did make a frame to it; and one rose, with an
opening bud, peeped from the trained bush beneath. Upon a little table
near her stood a fragrant branch of May in a cup of water. There were
faint flushes in her transparent cheeks, and there was an unearthly
brightness in her eyes--not fitful--but a calm, steady, serene ray,
that, as the declining sun poured over the damsel its yellow glories,
presented her to the thoughtful gazer such as she might be when
treading the celestial courts above.

“And have you any other wish, my child?” said Noble, as he rose to go.

“Yes, if it be not too foolish.”

“Tell it, my dear.”

“I would like some flowers from the May-pole strewn on my
winding-sheet, and a bit of rosemary from your own garden put in my
hands.”

“And you shall have them,” said Noble, pressing her wan hand in his,
and turning quick away.




CHAP. IV.

    And if physitians in their art did see
    In each disease there was some sparke divine,
      Much more let us the hand of God confesse
      In all these sufferings of our guiltinesse.
                           _A Treatie of Warres._


Night closed on Cheddar, without any other disturbance than a
quarrel--loud and short as a thunder-storm--between the blacksmith and
his old termagant wife, which, Roger being potent in liquor,
terminated in a complete victory on his part; and thus silence, if not
peace, was restored to the quarter in which he dwelt.

Moreover, at the door of the Jolly Woodcutter, the most decent
ale-house in the townlet, an old soldier with one leg, who tramped the
country as a ballad-singer, with a fiddle and a dancing dog, became so
very uproarious that it was found absolutely necessary by the parish
constable to secure his one sturdy limb in the village stocks, where,
after venting a few loud and angry curses at this dignitary, and
abusing the village fiddlers for not playing the grand march of the
king’s beef-eaters to the right tune, he addressed himself to making
as easy a sleeping posture as his wooden fetter would allow; and,
being apparently very familiar with such a resting-place, soon
grumbled off into snoring forgetfulness: his little four-footed
companion and guard did meanwhile drag up the cloak, which he had
dropped some yards from the place of his confinement, and, arranging
it in a soft heap, curled itself thereon with an evident sense of
comfort.

But May-day festivals--though certainly in towns, and in those
parishes in the rural districts where not conducted by discreet
persons, they were often fruitful in scenes of riot and
licentiousness--were not, in the present instance, chargeable with
either of the noisy incidents which had for a half hour frighted the
village from its propriety; seeing that the disputes of Roger and his
rib were of every-day occurrence, and his potations also; and as for
the old soldier, his drinking bouts were regulated by the state of
that narrow poke in which he deposited his uncertain gains; and his
sobriety was never secure while one coin remained in it.

Our parson came forth at the first glimpse of day on the morrow, to
inquire at the mill how the poor sufferer had passed the night. She
was in a profound and calm sleep, and he returned thankfully home,
taking the street which led by the market cross. Nobody was yet
abroad; but, under the great tree in the market place, he saw the old
soldier sitting up in the stocks, and looking about him very forlorn
and penitential. No sooner did he perceive the good vicar approaching,
than he began to plead for his freedom.

“May it please your good reverence, make them loose me. I am not a
pig, that I should be thus pounded:--never said or did harm to man or
Christian, save only in the way of duty, your reverence. I am but a
poor old toss-pike, done up in the wars; and gain an honest livelihood
with this old kit and scraper, and this dumb creature, that shall
dance you jig or coranto with any city madam of them all.”

“Why, I’ll see what I can do; but you would not have been put here for
nothing, friend.”

“Nothing in life, your reverence, but drinking the health of King
Charles in a brimmer, last evening, that was May-day, and a court
holyday all the world over; and then the wound in my old head always
aches, Parson, and I say more nor I mean, and, may be, louder than
your gentles talk.”

“Well, but this is a sorry way of life for an old soldier,--to go
about like a vagabond. Have you no home?”

“Home, bless you! none but this old bit of a cloak.”

“What parish were you born in?”

“Ah! there it is! I was born i’ the camp, in the Low Countries. That
same day that the most noble Sir Philip Sidney was killed, my mother
had a fright from a shot striking the sutler’s waggon, and I came into
the world a month before time.”

“And have you no friends living?”

“None in the wide world that care a split straw whether I am above
ground or under, this blessed day, save, may be, this little dumb
thing that’s used to me.”

“Where did you lose your leg?”

“In the lines before St. Martin, your reverence: it will be thirteen
years agone, come next September; and the right-worshipful knight, Sir
Joseph Burroughs, was killed by the same shot. We used to say in
hospital (you know, your reverence, we were vexed, and it was some of
the officers, in their cups, spoke it out of a play-book,)--

    “‘Off with his head!--So much for Buckingham.’

“Well, they had their wish, in a manner, a year after; and I always
minded after, that Master Felton was one of them.--Poor fellow! He
gave me four-pence in silver, when I hadn’t a halfpenny to buy bread
in London; and that same morning I saw his Grace of Buckingham in a
sedan chair in Whitehall, and I would have tossed my staff before him,
in hope of a largess; but his running footmen, with their fine silver
badges, shouldered me into the gutter, crying, ‘Room for his Grace!
room for my Lord’s Grace!’ Well, it was little room he took or wanted
that day was a month! I was very sorry for Master Felton,--and I went
to see him hanged.”

“You know he was _a murderer_.”

“O yes, I know that; but he gave me four-pence when I was starving;
and, though he was only a lieutenant, he was a better officer than
Buckingham, who was all lace and velvet, satin and feathers:--a likely
man to look upon, and did not want courage; but he knew no more about
commanding an army than the court fool.”

“Don’t you know, friend, that you must one day die yourself; and that
it is a terrible thing to die and go before God without preparation?”

The veteran gave his buff jerkin a twitch, and said, “Why, for the
matter of that, Parson, you see, I am no scholar, and cannot tell a B
from a bull’s foot.”

“You believe in God?”

“Why, Master, haven’t I lain half my life abroad in the open fields,
with the stars shining over my head? Ah, you don’t know what grand
things come into a poor fellow’s mind when he wakes in the night and
sees them bright things above him.”

“Yes, but I do,” said Noble with emotion; “and it is because I do,
that I ask you these things. Do you ever pray to God?”

“Why, bless you, Master, I wouldn’t trouble him about a poor chopstick
like myself.”

“You know the name of Christ, friend?”

“Yes,” said the homeless wanderer, and bowed his grey head.

“And what are your thoughts of him?”

“Why that he’ll be so good as to speak a word to God Almighty for me,”
was the man’s strange yet pregnant answer. It is this mixture of
recklessness, ignorance, and the mysterious worship of that inner
spirit, which struggles upwards after something to which the heart may
reach, and where it may finally rest, that makes every human being a
subject of sad yet of sublime contemplation;--a fellow, a brother, an
immortal spirit, passing here below his brief time of sojourning, but
born for eternity.

Our good vicar was a true messenger of peace:--we need not say more
than that this and all such opportunities were gladly improved by him.
He sowed beside all waters. In the present instance the old soldier
was speedily released, and taken up to the parsonage, and there, in
the shady porch, he had a hearty breakfast; and when the little
household assembled for prayer the wondering wayfarer was brought into
the hall, and heard the more excellent way very plainly set before
him,--and was then suffered to depart with bread in his wallet, and a
parting word of solemn warning and brotherly kindness, as he set
forward on his path, carrying with him the new thought and feeling,
that, though he was a ballad singer and a sot, accustomed only to
revilings, he had found a man of God, who had not passed him by, but
had served him, and soothed him, and cared for his soul.

Such a man and such a minister was our parson of Cheddar: he had been
now resident in the parish for fifteen years. Hither he had then
brought a sensible wife,--of many rare accomplishments, and of a solid
piety. Three fine children then played in their garden: of these,
their girl had been taken from them in her twelfth year; and their two
boys, who had both attained the age of manhood, had quitted the
paternal roof, and taken their respective paths in life. Cuthbert, the
eldest, had been educated at Winchester College, had afterwards passed
through his university course at Cambridge, and was now domiciled, as
has been already seen, in the house of Sir Oliver Heywood, as a tutor.

Martin, the youngest, had been five years at Westminster School as a
day scholar, under the care, during that period, of one Mr. Philips, a
worshipful and wealthy gentleman, of the most honourable company of
Goldsmiths, and brother to the late Sir John Philips, knight, a very
eminent merchant in the Levant trade, who, having made an unsuccessful
speculation, and losing his whole venture, had taken the failure of
his fortunes so much to heart, that he sickened and died soon after,
leaving behind him one portionless daughter. This girl, while under
the roof of her uncle, who was very considerably the junior of her
father in age, was seen and admired by Noble, and had soon become his
welcome prize.

With this maternal uncle, Martin, at his own request, was placed, as
soon as he quitted school, that he might be brought up in the same
thriving business. He quickly became remarkable for his taste and
skill in the art of design, and as a fine judge of precious stones, so
that his uncle predicted for him great eminence and wealth in the line
which he had chosen; but Martin chancing one day to wait upon Vandyck
with an ornamental piece of plate which a nobleman presented to that
great genius, and being questioned about the design, confessed, with
some hesitation, that it was his own. Hereupon the painter broke out
into praise so warm, and took such notice of the youth, that, to
Martin, a painter did soon seem the highest style of man;--to be of
this bright company was now the highest object of his ambition. He
had a strong will; for this he rose early, and late took rest: and the
bent of his inclination became so decided, and his promise of
excellence so great, that his uncle, at the recommendation of Vandyck,
determined to afford him the opportunity and advantage of visiting
Italy, and pursuing his studies in the city of Rome. There, surrounded
by the great models of the divine art to which he was devoted, daily
extending his knowledge, and increasing his delight, Martin lived at
once to labour and to enjoy.

But the absence of these dear boys, though necessary, was severely
felt by Noble and his wife; nor, in those days, were communications by
letter of regular or frequent occurrence, even at home,--and of
course, from abroad, very rare and most uncertain.

The good vicar, though anxious about Martin’s residence at Rome, was
not wanting in true sympathy for his pursuits; having himself a taste
for the arts, which he had improved by a leisure tour through Italy
(before his marriage) as tutor and guardian to a young gentleman of
large possessions in Oxfordshire.

Nothing could be more retired than the life led by these childless
parents at Cheddar.

It is a large village, or townlet, situate at the foot of the Mendip
Hills, in Somersetshire, and lying pleasantly sheltered on the
south-west side of that bleak and naked chain. The noble tower of its
fine old church is richly adorned with double buttresses, pinnacles,
and pierced parapets, and in the open space, which forms the centre of
its few irregular streets, is an ancient hexagonal market cross, where
the wayfarer may find a shelter from the hot suns of July, or from the
heavy rains of winter. The neighbourhood of Cheddar is romantic: it
commands a fine view, in one direction, over a rich and extensive
level; and it is immediately surrounded by rich, well-watered
pastures, always verdant. Within a mile of the market cross before
mentioned, on the road to Wells, there is a narrow, but a stupendous
pass, or chasm, by which the chain of the lofty hills of Mendip is
cleft, as it were, in sunder. The road winds through the bottom of
this strange defile; the cliffs rise on either side--ragged, scarped,
and terrific in their aspect--presenting, in many places, a sheer fall
of four hundred feet. Nothing can more sublimely impress the spirit of
a lonely traveller than the passage of this wild ravine, on a day of
cloud, and gloom, and rushing winds. In the sunny calm of summer, when
the wild pink, springing from the crevices of the rocks, adorns the
scene with something of gentleness, it is still of uncommon grandeur.
Black yews project from the larger fissures: here is a narrow ledge
covered with verdure; there a thick mantle of ivy clothes the summit:
here the mountain ash slants forward in its fantastic growth; while
yet, in many places, the craggy front is naked and dazzling as a wall
of stone.

By this road, once a week, the quiet parson ambled on an old grey
horse to the fair city of Wells to refresh and recreate his spirit at
a private music meeting in the Close; nor did he ever omit on these
occasions to pass one hour of joy and praise in its magnificent
cathedral. Upon the breezy summits of the Mendip hills, which
bordered this road, he spent many serene and healthful hours. His life
was most even in its tenour; and the scenes around him, though daily
before his eyes, were as dear to him, or more so, than when, first
entering on residence, he had surveyed them with grateful rapture.

Villages, however, like kingdoms, have their revolutions; and the
chronicles of them are preserved in chimney-corners with more or less
of fidelity, according to the interest of the events and the worth of
the characters who figured in them.

These rustic historians have a mode of reckoning very different from
citizens. With prime ministers they have nought to do. Their
government is nearer to them, and they have never wanted wit enough to
know when that was good or evil. Over these rural communities the
ruler has, from time immemorial, been the lord of the manor, or the
chief franklin, or the parson of the parish. According as these
personages were disposed to promote religion and happiness, or to look
with indifference on vice and misery, the rustic population was
contented and cheerful, (because industrious in their callings, and
peaceable in their lives,) or they were sullen and profligate. Under
the joint reign of Franklin Blount and Parson Noble the inhabitants of
Cheddar had long dwelt together in comfort and harmony; but this is a
world of change,--and many things in the aspect of public affairs, of
which the villagers heard and heeded little, gave serious warning to
the prescient mind of Noble, that trouble was near.

He was so beloved and respected by his people, and so regarded and
confided in by the worthy franklin, that he had hitherto been able to
evade, counteract, or over-rule, for the good of his flock, those
strange enactments which had been from time to time so inconsiderately
imposed. That which enjoined him to _publish_ the Book of Sports on
the Sabbath-day he totally disregarded. On this point he would have
consented to deprivation rather than obey. Hence he became suspected,
by some parsons of a very different stamp, for a puritan; and there
were not wanting uncharitable surmises among these concerning the
course which Master Noble would take in the hour of trial; not that
those who really knew him well ever doubted of that course at all.

But while these surmises were, as regarded himself, utterly devoid of
foundation, it was asserted by some of his friends at Wells, the
correctness of whose judgments and the charity of whose sentiments
well accorded with his own, that his son Cuthbert had imbibed, from
his late associates at Cambridge, a spirit of a very dangerous nature.
Cuthbert had a large philanthropy, and a resolute courage to sustain
and act out those promptings of benevolence which his love of freedom
was continually urging upon his mind. Virtuous in his character,
sanguine in his hopes, present evils he saw, and for present remedies
he panted--but he looked not far on to consequences. A notion of his
state of mind may be found in the letter which follows:--

    “Most dear Father,

     “You tell me in your last letter, which I have read over many
     times with serious thought, that my mother wishes me to send
     her a more particular account of this place and family, that
     she may the better see my present courses with the eye of her
     mind.--I will make a trial of my pen to set these matters in
     some order before her--and, first, of this mansion: it is a
     goodly fabric of stone, built by the father of the present
     knight in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He, as you know,
     exchanged some of his full money-bags for a fair estate in
     land, and closed all his great and prosperous ventures in
     commerce by a wise retirement to the noble pleasures of a
     country life. A situation more pleasant than this of Milverton
     you may not see in all the journey through these parts. The
     house standeth on a fine swelling slope of verdant ground, and
     is well sheltered by stately trees on three sides, but to the
     front the prospect is open, and maketh the heart dance with
     gladness, it is so full of delight. Looking to the south, you
     see the towers of that famous castle of Guy of Warwick. This
     castle is seated on a rock, very high, upon the river Avon, and
     hath a look of strength and of great majesty; as seen against
     the light of the distant sky--nothing can be more grand and
     commanding;--also, from the middle of the good city of Warwick,
     the fair pinnacles of the lofty tower of St. Mary’s Church do
     pierce the heaven, and she standeth like a crowned queen. I do
     fear for her diadem, for they say that the embattled keep of
     ancient Guy frowneth on our lady: but, turning the eyes from
     these stately objects, which the intervening woods may not
     conceal, directly below Milverton the river flows through a
     fair valley of green pastures; and there cannot be, in all
     England, a mill more pleasant to look upon and listen to than
     Guy’s mill: it standeth upon the farther bank of the Avon, over
     which there is a foot-bridge of wood, very narrow, and long
     enough to reach across a small meadow, which, when the waters
     are out, is always flooded. Not far from this mill, to the
     left, and upon the same bank, is an old decayed chapel, where I
     have seen a rude statue of the renowned Guy, more than eight
     feet in length; and near to this spot, close by the side of the
     water, there is a cave in the rock, where, as a hermit, he
     ended his days. But I will say no more of these places, of
     which report may have reached you through the discourse of
     others.

     “Milverton House lacks nothing of furniture that money and good
     taste may command. There is a profusion of very fine carved oak
     in the hall and in the winter-parlour. In the latter, over the
     fire-place, is a curious representation of the meeting of Jacob
     and Esau; and inscribed above are the words, ‘With my staff I
     passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands.’ And in
     the private chamber of Sir Oliver is another piece, in three
     compartments, Jacob lying down alone in the Wilderness--the
     Vision of the Ladder of Angels--and Jacob setting up his Pillar
     of Remembrance.

     “I name these things rather than the rich hangings and the
     handsome carpets which cover some of the tables, and the ebony
     cabinets, and the massy plate, because I know that they would
     give more contentment to my pious mother than all the
     costliness and bravery in the king’s palace.

     “In the small room appointed for me, there is a posy worked
     upon a sampler, hung against the wall, that runneth thus:--

    “What better bed than conscience good, to pass the night with sleep;
    What better work than daily care, from sin thyself to keep.”

     And there is an engraved portrait of Luther, with the words ‘In
     silentio et in spe erit fortitudo vestra.’ I cannot look upon
     these things without being deeply reminded of those feeling
     lectures of piety which the lips of my dear mother have read to
     me from my very childhood; but, truth to say, my dear parents,
     I feel an angel plucking me by the sleeve, and whispering in my
     ear that my stay in this sweet abode will not be long. Sir
     Oliver and Mistress Alice and Mistress Katharine entreat me
     with that kind civility and favourable respect, which make my
     days happy, and I find Master Arthur so docile and of such
     lively parts that my office is never irksome.

     “Nothing can be more orderly than the manner of life here; and
     although the good knight is most hospitable, yet, as he doth
     not use the exercise of hunting, and has no park, the visiters
     are not many. He rides daily in the forenoon, and will
     sometimes go to see the stag-hounds of Stoneleigh Abbey throw
     off, with which pack he hunted for twenty years; but his chief
     delight now is in the culture of his garden and orchards, and
     of a vineyard, which he has laid out, at a great cost, on a
     favourable site, one mile from the mansion. All the farms in
     the village of Milverton are his, and his tenants are the sons
     of those who held the land under his father; so that the hamlet
     is but one large family, of which Sir Oliver is the head.

     “Mistress Katharine, his daughter, rides constantly with her
     father, except when she takes the diversion of hawking, or goes
     out after the beagles with her young cousin, Arthur, who is as
     high-spirited and active a youth in the field, as he is earnest
     and persevering in the study. To see Mistress Katharine fly a
     hawk is gladsome; and although I have, from boyhood, accounted
     that sport cruel and unfeminine, yet, when I look on that
     inspiring sight, I deem it so no longer; certain I am that her
     mind did never once connect the thought of cruelty with a usage
     so common. She, too, seems as eager to learn what my poor
     scholarship can teach her as my own pupil; and if a tutor can
     be happy, I am, in the privilege of reading with this noble
     maiden, and seeing her fine countenance lighted up with the
     love of wisdom and of truth.

     “But this state of things is far too bright to last. When a man
     dareth to think differently from those around him, he will soon
     become an object of suspicion and prejudice. I feel that my
     trial in this kind will assuredly come; for Sir Oliver, with
     all his kindness, has so rooted a dislike to all change in the
     established order of things, that a word against the undue
     stretch of the king’s authority, against the tyranny of the
     starchamber, or those abuses in the state, which are manifest
     to her best friends, would be enough to make his countenance
     change towards me past recovery.

     “Upon these subjects, you, my dear father, have written to me
     with more earnestness and fear than I should have looked for.
     You tell me that I see not the inevitable consequences which
     must follow from the acting out of those opinions and
     sentiments with which I am so captivated. I confess that I am
     an ardent friend to civil and religious liberty. I desire to
     see the laws administered without fear or favour; to see
     taxation imposed by the Commons alone, and to see purity and
     charity preaching from our pulpits and ministering at our
     altars. You must not blame me: these were the desires that you
     implanted, when you taught me the immutable and eternal
     principles of justice, and when, both by lip and in your life,
     you showed me how sacred was the character, and how hallowed
     were the duties, of an ambassador for Christ. I look for
     reformation in the state, and purification of the church. You,
     perhaps, despair of either; and therefore you dread an ill
     result to the patriotic and pure efforts which so many great
     and good men are now making. Some of the best and wisest of my
     college friends think with them. Of that number are my late
     tutor and my late chamber-fellow, with both of whom you
     expressed yourself so much delighted, when, during my last year
     of residence, you visited Cambridge. I confess, frankly, that I
     hold their sentiments, and entertain hopes of ultimate good to
     my country as sanguine as theirs. The cause of liberty must
     triumph.

     “Your last letter gave but little hope of poor Fanny at the
     mill: what a fair, cheerful, good girl she was. Martin will be
     very sorry when he hears about her: if you remember, he was
     always for dancing with Fanny on May-day.

     “I am glad to hear that Bessy Blount is going to be married.
     She will make Tom Hargood’s farm as happy a home as any in
     England. However, I will not talk about weddings,--the very
     word makes me melancholy. I am just now preparing a short
     masque, which we are to perform next week, in honour of Sir
     Oliver’s birth-day. I suppose Martin, as well as myself, has
     very different notions of female beauty now to any we gathered
     at Cheddar; though, I doubt, if we shall either of us become
     the happier for our knowledge. Rosy cheeks and laughing eyes
     are joyous and pleasant to look upon, but they seldom beget
     cureless heart-aches, or plant the long-lived sorrow:--all this
     is very idle. The love of country is the next best love to that
     of God, and, after that, the most rewarding.

     “I suppose that you will soon have a letter from Rome: no doubt
     Martin is very happy among the galleries and studios of that
     ancient city. I often wish that I could be transported there
     for an hour, and see him, as he stands alone, before a
     master-piece of Raphael, and sighs for the very fulness of his
     admiration. Forget not to let me hear the earliest news of
     Martin. I shall think of you all on May-day at old Blount’s;
     but, as the good old country customs are kept up here with
     great spirit, shall have no leisure to grieve over my absence
     from Cheddar, till night restores me to the solitude of my
     chamber, and to that sacred companionship with you in prayer,
     which I ever maintain.

     “Your dutiful and loving son,
     “CUTHBERT NOBLE.
     “_Milverton, April 20, 1640._”




CHAP. V.

    Now winde they a recheat, the roused deer’s knell,
      And through the forrest all the beasts are aw’d;
    Alarm’d by Eccho, Nature’s sentinel,
      Which shows that murd’rous man is come abroad.
                                          _Gondibert._


Early in the morning of the day after that on which the rehearsal at
Milverton House was interrupted by the humiliating scene already
recorded, Cuthbert sallied forth, while the first rays of the level
sun were reflected back by glittering dewdrops; and brushing them with
swift steps from his path, crossed the foot-bridge near Guy’s mill,
and was soon lost to view in the woods upon the far side of the Avon.
The mill was already at work, but he lingered not to gaze upon the
rushing waters. His eye glanced at the glad scene, and his ear drank
in the living sound; but the prosy old miller was at his door, and his
daughter stood on the stepping stones below, watching the white
breasted ducks that played in the back current, therefore, with a
short “good morrow,” that waited for no reply, he passed onwards, for
he was bound on an errand of mercy. Although the old body, Margery,
had escaped the persecution of yesterday, there was good ground for
fearing that it would be soon and more cruelly repeated, if she
continued to dwell in her lonely and exposed hovel; and Cuthbert had
found a poor bricklayer from Coventry, who was then employed in
repairing the roof of an outhouse at Milverton, and who had witnessed
the scene of the day before with a true Christian feeling, quite
willing to give the old woman a lodging in the small house in the mean
alley in which he dwelt, for such consideration as Cuthbert was
willing to pay. With this proposal of shelter and security he sought
the wood, in the bosom of which, beneath a sand-stone rock, in a
forsaken pit, was poor Margery’s desolate abode. From the rude clay
chimney, in the blackened thatch, curled a blue wreath of smoke: he
leaned against the rock above, and called to Margery, but there was
no reply. He went down and entered the hut. Upon a low stretcher on a
coarsely plaited mat of straw, dressed in the same rags in which she
walked abroad, she lay fast asleep, and her breathing sounded soft as
that of a child,--a raven with a clipped wing and club-foot hopped
upon the floor, and croaked at the intrusion; but the sound, though
loud, did not awaken her. “I will not fright away a sleep so
friendly,” thought Cuthbert: he went forth again, and seated himself
beneath a stately oak at no great distance. In an open grassy glade
not far off, in front, a few deer were feeding,--the scene around was
peace and beauty,--trees, herbs, beasts of the field and fowls of the
air were declaring the glory and praising the goodness of a present
God. In silent rapture Cuthbert mused his praise; but adoration was
succeeded by a sense of pain,--another scene, another image,
interposed between the sunny objects before him and his mental vision.
The stony desolation of Mount Calvary, and the black sky above, and
the pale and holy forehead with its crown of thorns, came up startling
and apparent, and reminded him that he was the inhabitant of a fallen
world. This solemn turn being given to his thoughts, his mind
reverted, with serious consideration, to the views of that party in
the state which was already designated by the name of Puritans, and
which had been hitherto, and but for the questions of civil liberty
now widely agitated would still have been, a by-word and a reproach
among the people. “It is true,” said he, “a Christian must be a
mourner--he cannot be other than a mourner; but yet, are we not
graciously commanded to serve the Lord with gladness? is the
countenance always to be sad? is there to be no rejoicing in the light
of the sun? Where is the middle ground between these two great parties
in church and state? Why is not a great and overwhelming majority of
moderate men found there to defend the best interests of all?” The
thoughts to which he thus gave utterance would have found a response
in the bosoms of thousands--indeed they were the very sentiments of
his own father; only that good man knew, what Cuthbert was as yet
ignorant of,--a knowledge which he was soon to purchase at the heavy
price of a most bitter and heart-breaking experience. He had yet to
learn that, in times of public commotion, there is no middle path, and
that a party does too often take the colour of the very worst persons
among those who compose it. The cant of the fanatic and the curses of
the cavaliers alike disgusted him. But yet he was of an age when men
will be sanguine about having the world mended according to their
desired pattern; and his heart glowed with the hope that the best men
of the parliament side would in the end triumph over the cold and
severe intolerance of the high church party, would control the power
of the crown, and would effect great and glorious things for the
liberty and the happiness of England. With these sentiments he had a
very difficult card to play at Milverton, for Sir Oliver was a decided
enemy to the party which he secretly approved; and some of the
neighbouring gentlemen, holding the same opinions with the knight,
gave a much coarser expression to them. He had to hold his mouth as
with a bridle in their presence. Among these persons by far the most
obnoxious was Sir Charles Lambert, a gentleman of about
five-and-thirty, related to Sir Oliver, and residing within a few
miles, at Bolton Grange, upon a fine property, with two younger
sisters left dependent on him.

He had been a great deal about the court formerly, and in his youth
had been attached, for a few years, to the retinue of the late Duke of
Buckingham. Not proving of a capacity for public affairs, he had been
thrown back upon country life, without the true refinements of a
courtier, but with all those vices and fopperies, which, in the train
of Buckingham, it was not difficult to acquire. He covered with satin
and musk a heart as brutal and savage as one of his own
hounds,--resembling in nothing that generous and warm race of men the
country gentlemen of England but in a fine person and in a passion for
the chase. Nevertheless he did so conceal from Sir Oliver his true
character, that he was always made welcome at Milverton. In such
thoughts the mind of Cuthbert was tossed about as on a troubled sea;
and from mere weariness he fell into a contemplation of the sweetness
of nature, and the soft manner of her nursing, when we lie still and
passive in her lap, and look upon her face. So long a time had he
lingered in this green haunt, that the sun was three hours high; and
the great clock of Warwick, striking seven, warned him to return home.
Of the small herd in the open glade a few were still grazing,--others,
and a noble hart among them, lay in perfect repose: but, suddenly,
every neck was raised and turned--the ears stood erect--the nostrils
distended and closed--the eyes dilated--and then, as by accord, they
all stole slowly off to the rocky and difficult ground above them. He
looked around, and could see nothing to alarm them; but, in the same
instant, the blast of a distant hunting horn came up faint on the
wind: the sound was again heard nearer; and the loud voice of dogs in
concert, shrill yet deep, made the woods echo with notes that silenced
every bird, and drove away all the panting creatures from their lairs.
Yet was it a gallant sight--a sight to stir the blood--as within some
twenty yards of the tree under which Cuthbert stood, the chase in
full career swept by:--with antlers well thrown back, in its last
staggering speed, came a blown stag, with a stanch hound so close upon
its flank, you looked to see the fine creature torn down instantly;
not far behind, two leash of dogs were hanging on its track, their
mouths loud opening for prey:--with shouts of joy, and pace
precipitate, the huntsmen followed,--a small but eager band on gallant
steeds all foaming at the mouth, and stained with sweat. Swift as a
vision of the night they passed, and from beyond a swell of ground in
front a winding horn sent forth the well known mort. Cuthbert,
naturally excited, ran to a knoll before him, which might command the
country beyond. On the side of an open slope, at some considerable
distance, he saw the last act of the death. The lifted knife, all red
and reeking, was in the hand of a stranger of noble presence, by whose
side stood Sir Charles Lambert. The lordly game lay stretched upon the
ground, and near, with lolling tongues and panting sides, the hounds
lay gasping as for life. The riders were all dismounted, and their
horses, with drooping heads and their hind quarters sunk and
contracted, stood stiff and motionless beside them. By the loud and
exulting voices of the sportsmen you might know that the run had been
severe; two or three lagging horsemen were seen coming up in their
track; and by a cross path, just above the spot where the stag was
killed, two foresters on foot burst down at the top of their speed,
and joined the group that now more closely surrounded the noble game.
The sound had brought out all the household at Milverton, from whence
the slope was plainly to be seen. The boy Arthur, with some of the
serving-men, ran down the pathway towards Guy’s mill, while Cuthbert
could discern Sir Oliver standing out on the terrace, and Mistress
Katharine by his side, with a loose white kerchief thrown over her
head, to keep off the rays of the sun, which were already powerful.

The hunters now sounded the relief, and waved their caps towards
Milverton; intimating, by that note and action, that they would claim
the hospitality of the mansion; and then, leading their tired horses
by the bridle, they proceeded thither by the mill. Cuthbert, unseen
himself, watched all their motions; and when they had disappeared
within the gates of Milverton, and all below and around him was again
still, he turned, with a dead and jaded interest, towards the
sand-pit. Upon the edge of it, near the rock, he saw the bent figure
of Margery, as if in the act of listening; and as she raised her head,
and observed him walking to the spot, she hastily disappeared below.

He stepped quickly after her; but the door was already barred; and
when he knocked and called to her, the hoarse croak of the raven was
the sole reply. He rapped more loudly,--still the same voice of ill
omen replied; but as he persisted, and said words to re-assure her,
the door was slowly opened, and the withered tenant of the pit
appeared.

“Is it you, young master?” said Margery; “and are you alone, and is
there no hunter with you?”

“There is no one with me,” he replied: “the hunters have gone over the
river.”

“That’s well, that’s well, master: a hunting day, if the game takes
this way, is ever an ill day with me. They that be cowards alone, are
bold in merry company; and I have had a whip on my old shoulders, and
the dogs hounded on me before now, if any thing crossed their sport.
Three years ago, last fall, when his best hound, Bevis, was killed in
the hollow yonder, nothing would serve the turn of Sir Charles but to
float my poor old carcass across the river, and to weigh me against
the church Bible! But he hath had many a sleepless night for that; and
bold as he looks by day, the ticking of a death-watch will keep him
shivering in his bed.”

“What do you mean, Margery? The folk may well think you a witch for
words such as these.”

“Why, I mean,” said the old woman wilfully and spitefully, “that I
never wished ill to any one, but ill came upon ’em.”

“Had I thought this of you yesterday, I should have been slow to ask
any one to give you house room; but you are God’s creature, and have
been crossed with ill usage; and when you find yourself beneath the
roof of a Christian, safe from all enemies, your heart will melt, and
you will taste God’s peace yourself, and wish it to others. I have
found a good man, that lives in Croft’s Alley in Coventry, and he will
give you a chamber and a chimney corner, and kind words, and a stout
arm to protect you; and when we get you safe there your thoughts will
be quiet.”

“Hout-tout! what talk ye about Alley and a chimney corner? haven’t I
my own ingle, and my own ways, and my own company? What voice more
pleasant to me than those I heard when I was young, and hear still?
What’ll take better care of me than that old bird? Few there be that
don’t shun to pass close by this hut; and they that come to it step
swiftly back again. I was told, with a curse, that I might not live
any where else, many years ago; and here I shall stop till my old
bones crumble.”

“Why, mother, why, you might starve here if you were taken ill, and
none to help you.”

“Well, death is but death, let it come how it will.”

“But hunger is a bad death; and besides, are you not in constant
danger of being taken up, and losing your life for a witch? Why, this
bird that you keep, and your words and ways, will surely bring you to
the stake one of these days.”

“Let the day come, if it is to come; and as to dying of hunger, where,
think you, do the foxes die? and where do the birds of the air die?
Why, they that escape the hounds die in their holes; and they that the
bird-bolt misses find a dying place in some nest or corner. Go your
way, young master! I am no tame rabbit, to be kept in a town hutch,
and tormented by children. I don’t want to be led to church, and hear
the parson’s jabber about my old soul.”

“Do not utter such wickedness, unhappy woman. It were charity to think
you crazed, and take you into safe keeping against your will.”

At this the old woman gave a shriek of passion, fitful as that of a
thwarted child, and then, suddenly overcome by fear, fell upon her
aged knees, and lifted and joined her withered hands, and implored
Cuthbert, with wild earnestness, never to have her moved.

“Look you, young master, winter and summer, here I have watched and
waked these many years. It’s a small matter of meal that makes my
porridge;--some give it for pity, and some give it for fear. There’s
no lack of rotten sticks to keep me warm: yonder spring is never dry;
and it’s free I am to go and to come, and nothing here to flout or to
fret me: the deer and the kine take no count of me--the pretty
creatures don’t fear me; and it’s not all the world calling me witch
that will make them. That place is best we think best. Oh, for the
love of God, master, let me alone--let me rot where I am.”

Cuthbert’s mind was in an agony of prayer; but his tongue clave to the
roof of his mouth. He would have said much; but he could speak
nothing. He gave her alms; and telling her that he would do nothing
against her will--nothing to make her unhappy, but that he would come
and see her again--he raised her from her knees, and went upon his way
homewards.

“My father would not thus have left her,” was his first thought. “He
would have found some way to break into her heart. Strange
world--strange thing this human life! This old solitary miserable has
been wrapped in swaddling clothes, even as others--has been suckled at
a human breast--has grasped, with tiny hand, a father’s finger--and
been kissed, and muched; and now, she has survived all kindred--lost
all defence of strength or money--hath none of wisdom, and because her
back is crooked, and nose and chin have come well nigh together, she
has been hunted from her kind, and dwells apart. As God is love,--and
that he is I cannot doubt and live,--this is a mystery! It’s a skein
so much entangled that my poor wit can not unwind it.”

Muttering to himself these wayward fancies, he hurried back to
Milverton as to his heart’s home. There he could see sunlight upon the
earth, and feel warm in the comfort of it. Nor in his then mood was he
sorry that the guest chambers would be full: he wished a day of
cheerful cups, and pleasant voices, and music. Thus absorbed, he
reached the mill, and passed it as swiftly as in the morning.

“There he goes,” said the old miller, speaking to his daughter, who
was spreading out some linen to bleach--“There he goes, as shy as a
hare, and as fast as if he were making for his form. I never gets a
bit of chat with him. He’s not much for company.”

“Why, father,” replied the girl, coming upon the pathway, “he’s a
scholar, you know, and that’s the fashion of them, you know.”

“Well, it’s a bad fashion to go poking about the woods as lonesome as
a stray mule; no good comes of those crazy fashions. I like an open
face, and an open hand, and a free tongue.”

“Eh! he can talk fast enough, I’ll warrant me, if he had a sweetheart
to talk to.”

“He talk to a sweetheart! She must be a poor silly body that would
listen. There are merry men and merry hearts enough in old England for
the lasses to choose from, without giving ear to such as he.”

“Well, they give him kind words at the Hall,--and they say he’s always
more for good than harm; and I find him pleasant spoken enough when he
comes to angle in the mill-pool.”

“There it is! I can never make him say a dozen words, black or white;
now Parson Mullins will chat free for an hour on, and tosses you off a
pot of ale with good words and good will. Why, he and I have smoked
many a pipe together; and he’s a clerk, and a rare scholar too. He
doesn’t give you ignorant stuff o’ Sundays; but Latin, and Greek, and
all the best that he has learned at college. That’s the man for my
money.”

“Well, father, for the matter o’ that, I like to know what folk are
saying; and it might be gipsy language for all you or I are the
wiser.”

“I know where you got that lesson, Miss Pert; that’s what the old
Puritan pedlar said the other day,--rot him! he shall take seat on the
old wive’s ducking-stool if he comes this way again.”

“I am sure he was a quiet civil man; and you have not had a better
piece of linen, or a cheaper, than he sold us, this many a year.”

“Hang his linen, and him too!” rejoined the sturdy old miller. “I
didn’t like the cut of his black head;” and with that he passed into
the mill, and the girl went towards the dwelling.

While this dialogue was passing, Cuthbert Noble was rapidly ascending
the path, which rose gently over a swelling field of luxuriant grass,
to Milverton. Certainly there was much about Cuthbert to excuse the
prejudice of the miller. He was of low stature, with a long visage and
grave aspect; and there was a peculiar expression of his eye, which
disturbed or repelled those who saw him for a first time, or who saw
him not at his ease; but to those whom, upon a nearer acquaintance,
he liked, his dark eye beamed with light; the expression about his
mouth was humane and gentle; his voice was low, and rather tremulous
before strangers; he never laughed, and seldom smiled, save with his
eyes, which gave quick and lively response to whatever pleased him.
Though, in his first manhood, he was not without a knowledge of life
and of the human heart, for his reading had been extensive; and he had
that felicity of apprehension, by which the lessons of books are most
happily caught, and most easily applied to the heart’s daily wants.
Moreover, he had all those graces of persuasion by which a pupil is
best won upon and encouraged to climb the steep hill of fame. More
happily placed he could not have been than in the family of Sir Oliver
Heywood, but for one circumstance--he was too happy. A fear lay
beating in his bosom. He dared not confess to himself the strange, yet
deep, sentiments of admiration with which he regarded the daughter of
the worthy knight. He would fain persuade himself that it was nothing
but an emotion of gratitude to Mistress Katharine for that generous
courtesy which would not suffer a scholar of gentle birth to want such
attention and respect as she might delicately pay to him. Here,
however, his wisdom was at fault. In vain had books taught him the
misery of misplaced affections. He was launching out upon an unknown
sea that has no shore.




CHAP. VI.

    Some snakes must hiss, because they’re born with stings.


The table in Milverton Hall was already surrounded by the hungry
guests; and a substantial old English breakfast, well suited to the
appetites and the digestion of active and manly hunters, was spread
before them. They were so busied over the cold joints and the venison
pasties, or with the amber ale that foamed in silver tankards, as
scarcely to notice the entrance of a latecomer, and therefore Cuthbert
slipped into a vacant place at the bottom of the table, without other
greeting than the good-humoured nod of a ruddy-looking young parson
seated opposite, as he raised a tankard to his lips. There was little
talk, save a few words about the sport, until having fairly finished
their meal, the chairs were backed a little from the huge oaken table;
the serving men lifted off the large dishes, still weighty with good
fare, removed the trenchers, and having carried round the basin and
ewer, large silver cups, filled with canary wine, prepared, after the
fashion of the time, with sugar and with certain herbs, so as to make
a delicious beverage in warm weather, were placed upon the table. The
short grace “Benedicto benedicatur” having been uttered by George
Juxon, the youthful rector alluded to, Sir Oliver took the massive cup
which stood before himself, and intimating to Juxon to follow his
example with the other, he rose, and giving for a toast, “His most
gracious Majesty King Charles,” took a small draught of it, and passed
the cup to the noble looking gentleman who had been sitting on his
right hand, and was then standing by his side. The toast passed round
with an audible “God bless him!” from every guest, after the example
of the loyal host.

“Ah, Sir Philip,” observed the worthy knight to the noble stranger
near him, “we have fallen upon evil times; and it is grievous to think
that there should be one house in all England where the health of his
most sacred Majesty may no longer be duly drunk, as is becoming in
all good and true subjects.”

“Yet, I fear,” replied Sir Philip Arundel, “there are many in which
the King’s health is no longer a standing toast: unquestionably
republican feelings and principles have made great progress among the
burgher classes generally, and have infected not a few above them.”

“It is those sour-faced, canting rogues, the prick-eared,
psalm-singing Puritans, that are doing all the mischief,” said Sir
Charles Lambert: “we want their ears, after the Turkish fashion,
cropped by sacksful.”

“But it is not calling them names, or cutting off their ears,” said
George Juxon, “that will put them down; neither will all the water in
your horse-ponds quench the fire in any of their bosoms.”

“Very likely; but there is nothing like trying what will stop them;
and as sure as ever I catch any of the hypocritical rogues praying and
singing near our parish they shall have a bellyful of muddy water, and
a back-load of smart blows with whip or cudgel.”

There was an expression of most irrepressible disgust on the
countenance of Cuthbert Noble as Sir Charles uttered this brutal
speech; which Sir Charles observing, he turned quickly to Sir Oliver,
and added, “These are times in which we should look well to all our
housemates, for fear we should be fostering some of these godly
knaves, who cover their false hearts with closed lips and demure
faces, and may corrupt our children and our servants.”

“You mean me,” said Cuthbert, starting on his feet with an energy
which startled every one at table, and took Sir Charles so totally by
surprise that he turned pale and livid, and seemed at a loss for
words.

“Sir Oliver,” pursued the youthful tutor in a glow of indignation that
overspread his cheeks, and made his eyes glance fire, “I have long and
often endured the contemptuous and studied insults of your haughty
kinsman on his visits here; and while they were only directed against
me as a poor scholar and a dependant, it was well:--happy in your
favour, and in the attachment and respect of the gentle young master,
who is my pupil, I could afford to look down upon the dwarfish stature
of so mean a mind; but when he would thus----”

Before it was possible to arrest him, Sir Charles, who sat upon the
same side of the table, had run behind him, and, ere he could turn,
inflicted a deep wound in his back with a large hunting-knife. The
young student fell, bathed in his blood, upon the floor; and all the
household, already brought near to the door by the loudness of the
voices, rushed into the hall. Nothing was more affecting than to see
the terrified agony and loud sobs of the noble boy Arthur, who stood
over his fainting tutor with tears, and would neither be comforted nor
removed.

George Juxon had instantly seized Sir Charles with an iron grasp. Sir
Oliver was troubled, and scarce knew how to act; while Sir Philip
Arundel, the most self-possessed of the party, desired the attendants
to send swiftly to Warwick for a surgeon, and suggested to Sir Oliver
that the aggressor should be committed to his charge, and that he
would take him to his own home, and be responsible for his appearance
to answer for the crime which he had just committed, when the charge
should be preferred against him in due order. But George Juxon
required that he should remain in custody at Milverton until it was
ascertained whether the stab inflicted on Cuthbert might not prove
fatal.

The ladies of Milverton, who were absent, walking in the grounds, were
happily spared this painful scene. To the exclamations of wonder,
regret, and even condolence, with which Sir Charles was addressed by
some others of the party, he answered nothing, but stood with lips
closely compressed in sullen scorn and in a dogged silence.

Juxon unhanded him, after Sir Philip promised that he should for the
present be kept close guarded, and gave all his attention to Cuthbert,
who was borne slowly and carefully up into his chamber, and his wound
there bound up with a temporary dressing by Juxon himself, till proper
assistance should arrive. This done, he left him for a while in the
care of the servants, while he went down to aid in composing Sir
Oliver and the ladies of the family.

This young clergyman, who was a distant connection of the good bishop
of the same name, the treasurer at that time of the King, was a good
specimen of a particular class of richly beneficed clergy, not
uncommon in his day. He was a ripe scholar, a kind, orthodox
churchman, and a manly country gentleman. His habits were those of his
time: they grew out of the circumstances of that period and the state
of society in all country places; and he had seen his own pious and
dignified relative hunt his own pack of beagles, without a thought
that he was doing any thing more than taking a vigorous exercise,
beneficial alike to the health of his body and his mind.

Juxon was among, but above, sportsmen. He had a wealthy rectory, and
lived hospitably with his equals, and charitably towards the poor. In
the discharge of his parochial duties, he was sensible and serious: he
valued books, and he had a due appreciation of genius.

He had been of the hunting party this morning, and was thus a guest
at Milverton, where he had long occasionally visited, and where, upon
a former day, he had chanced to have rather a long and free
conversation with Cuthbert, and, albeit widely different in their
habits, had found common ground of interest in the subjects on which
they talked, and they had parted well pleased with each other. Had
they touched on politics, indeed, they would have differed; for Juxon
was a most stanch supporter of the court party: through evil report
and good report he stuck close to the crown; he wrote for it, spoke
for it, and was ready to lay down his life in the defence of it; but
he was of too large a mind to wonder at the opinions of those opposed
to the government of the King; nor was he blind either to those abuses
of the prerogative which had first awakened a spirit of resistance in
men of undoubted worth and patriotism, nor to the grievous folly of
those deplorable counsels, whereby the King had been induced or
encouraged to force upon the proud and resolute Scots the discipline
of a church to which they disclaimed allegiance.

Again, he was of a generous spirit, detested persecution in any thing,
especially in religion and matters of conscience, and had felt, with
the Lord Falkland, in all the earlier stages of the present quarrel.
Nevertheless, a decided and sincere attachment to the monarchy, an
unshaken respect for the personal qualities of the King, and a
devotion to the forms and to the spirit of that church in which he was
baptized, suckled, and educated,--a devotion quite distinct from, and
independent of, any feeling of self-interest, as an incumbent,--caused
him to resolve upon his own course in the coming troubles with a
cheerful firmness.

These sentiments, if the conversation in the hall had not been so
suddenly put an end to, would there have been elicited. He had not
approved the outbreak and burst of indignation with which the
sensitive and excited Cuthbert had so energetically appropriated the
indirect, but mischievous, speech with which Sir Charles Lambert had
sought to sow a suspicion of his tutor’s integrity in the bosom of Sir
Oliver; but he with his whole soul detested and abhorred the cowardly
and bloody ferocity with which the haughty and maddened barbarian had
resented the contemptuous expression of Cuthbert. There sprung up in
his heart at that moment a warmth of interest for the youth, which
never afterwards, in fortunes the most dark and divided, entirely died
away. But to return to the actual present. He saw the ladies, who had
but just returned from a walk to the vineyard, in company with Sir
Oliver, in a remote corner of the garden, and immediately joined them.

They were, as might be expected, very greatly troubled at the cruel
occurrence, and pale with natural anxiety. Indeed there was an
expression of concern upon the countenance of Mistress Katharine, so
very deep, so profoundly sad, that even amid the sorrowful
perplexities of the moment it glanced across the mind of Juxon, that,
in one or other of the parties in this business, her own heart was
most closely interested, and he thought that he had never before seen
human beauty with such a divine aspect. At the readily adopted
suggestion of Katharine, her aunt Alice would have proceeded
instantly to the chamber of the sufferer, to render him any service in
her power; but Juxon requested of her not to do so, and recommended
that the ladies should keep themselves quiet and apart until the
surgeon arrived, and the gentlemen now in the mansion should have
departed. Observing, too, the extreme perplexity of Sir Oliver, who
had been and still was exceedingly agitated by this strange event, he
entreated him to remain with them, and to keep himself calm and quiet
for the present; assuring him that every thing which he could suppose
him to wish in the present distress should be properly done, and that
he would certainly not leave Milverton himself while he could hope to
render the slightest service to Sir Oliver in this difficulty. There
was an earnestness of manner about Juxon, and at the same time such a
quiet tone of internal confidence in the resources of his own
judgment, that they all submitted to his guidance; and Sir Oliver was
greatly comforted and strengthened by the thought that so wise and
judicious a friend was near him in his necessity.

The boy Arthur was watching and walking forwards on the Warwick road,
as if his doing so could hasten the coming of assistance, and was in
all that confusion of the troubled spirits which keeps the young heart
throbbing with fear.

In the library Sir Charles Lambert sat with folded arms and a lowering
brow, while Sir Philip Arundel stood, looking from the window with a
countenance simply expressive of cold annoyance.

Of the half dozen gentlemen, who were still grouped in the hall, one,
after observing, that “All’s well that ends well,--and, perhaps, after
all, the young man’s hurt might not prove dangerous, and that he
always hoped for the best,”--stole his hand across quietly to the wine
cup, and took a very copious draught; another remarked, that he must
say “the young man was very irritating;” a third wanted to know what
was the use of their remaining there, and said he wanted to go home;
while a fourth said, “One was a brute, and the other a fool: that he
cared nothing for one, and knew nothing of the other.”

But two gentlemen of a more thoughtful cast walked the hall in low and
serious discourse, apprehensive by their words that the injury would
prove fatal to Cuthbert; and resolving that so fierce an action as
that of Sir Charles should not pass unpunished. These were friends and
neighbours of George Juxon; and expressed themselves well pleased
that, for the sake of Sir Oliver and his family, so useful and kind a
person chanced to be at Milverton under the present circumstances.

At last the long expected surgeon arrived with the messenger who had
been sent for him, both having used all diligent expedition. He was
introduced into the chamber of the patient by Juxon, and immediately
proceeded to examine the wound. At the first sight he shook his head,
and said to himself, in a very quick, low tone of voice, “The wonder
is, that he is yet alive;” but on questioning Cuthbert as to his
feelings, and finding some of the expected symptoms absent, and on
very carefully applying the probe, he cheerfully exclaimed, “There is
good hope of you, young master: there is no man living could pass a
sword where this blade has passed without injuring a vital part, if he
were to try; but a good angel hath had the guiding of this one. If it
please God to bless my skill, you shall do well; but it will be a slow
case, and a tedious time before you will be fairly on your legs
again.”

“God’s will be done,” said Cuthbert, “for life or for death.”

“If that is your mind,” rejoined the surgeon, “my care will be well
helped, and your cure the easier.”

After cleaning and dressing the wound, and giving particular
directions as to diet broths, and writing a prescription for the
necessary medicines to produce composure and sleep, he took his
departure, promising an early visit on the morrow.

The favourable opinion thus given of Cuthbert’s wound was quickly made
known throughout the mansion, and received as welcome by all;
operating upon each according to their personal characters, and to the
interest which they had felt in the issue of the violent deed which
had stained the hospitable hall of Milverton. Sir Charles Lambert,
indeed, but for the inconvenience and danger to himself, would have
preferred the more tragical event. As it was, when Sir Philip Arundel
returned from the gallery to the library, to announce to him that
Cuthbert was considered in no present danger, he uttered no word
beyond his wish instantly to return home.

“You are surely thankful,” said Sir Philip, “that this unpleasant
affair has ended so much better than was feared. If you will not go
and say so to the bleeding youth, which perhaps might just now too
much disturb him, you will at least offer some words of atonement to
your elderly relative, Sir Oliver, for the outrage done under his
roof, and to a youth under his protection; a deed to be only excused
by pleading that your anger transported you into a paroxysm of
madness.”

“I shall go home,” said Sir Charles: “are you ready?”

“I will never, sir, again cross your threshold: you are no English
knight--you are not even a man. I shall send orders to my grooms to
follow me on my road home.”

These words were swallowed by the same man who would have taken a life
that same morning for a look of contempt; and with a white cheek, on
which passion literally trembled, Sir Charles hurried to the
court-yard, called for his horse, mounted, and dashing spurs into his
sides, rode violently away--hatred in his own heart, and contempt
pursuing him. In succession all the guests took their departure,
except George Juxon, whom Sir Oliver requested to continue with him
till the morrow; and who, more for the sake of the patient than of the
family, assented. He was not sorry that Sir Charles had departed in
the manner and in the temper described, nor did he care now to have
his person secured; for his offence, though grave as it yet stood, was
not of a nature that in those days subjected to imprisonment any one
who could find bail for his future appearance: and in the present case
it was clear that Cuthbert would never prosecute a relation (albeit
base and unworthy), yet a relation of Sir Oliver Heywood.

The good knight, though a kind man, a fond father, and an easy master,
having walked through life upon a path of velvet as smooth as his own
lawn, was sadly discomposed by this visitation of care; and the very
trouble and irregularity that was caused by it was felt by the old
gentleman in many ways that he dared not confess to others, and was
ashamed to acknowledge to himself. A great weight, indeed, was taken
from his mind by the assurance of Cuthbert’s safety; for he was
humane, and he liked the youth: but he had private reasons for a deep
regret at the conduct of Sir Charles Lambert, and the interruption to
their intercourse which would of necessity ensue, and almost wished
that he had parted with his young tutor immediately after that
discovery of his political leanings which he had himself not many
days ago so frankly made.

However, what had now befallen Cuthbert beneath Sir Oliver’s own roof,
and by the hand of his own relative, gave him new and increased claims
upon the knight’s protection and kindness, and there could be no
further thought of their separating now till a distant period. The day
wore rapidly away, and by the hour of supper some appearance of order
was again restored to a mansion, in which every thing usually
proceeded with the regularity of clockwork.

An intermitted dinner was an occurrence of which there was no previous
memory or record in the recollection of the oldest servant on the
establishment. Among the minor circumstances, and not the least
affecting to the manly mind of Juxon, was a little dialogue which he
overheard between the little girl Lily and the boy Arthur, the child
being unable to comprehend the fact of one man cutting another man
with a knife on purpose to hurt him. The true nature of the atrocious
action of course no one cared to explain to the little innocent: but
she had learned from the servants that Master Cuthbert was run through
with a knife by Sir Charles Lambert; and she had come to cousin
Arthur, in a grave and pretty wonder, to know what they could mean.

The next day, being the birthday of Sir Oliver, was that on which the
masque in preparation was to have been represented before a party of
the neighbouring gentry, who had been specially invited to celebrate
that annual feast in the good old hall of Milverton. Of so pleasant a
holyday there could now be no further thought; and the May-day
festival which was to follow the day after, though of course the
villagers would have their dance according to the immemorial custom,
would lose half its gaiety and spirit by the absence of the family
from the manor house, and especially of the gentle and sweet Mistress
Katharine, whose words and ways had won for her all the hearts in
Milverton, and for miles round.

It was an evening memorable in the life of Juxon, that in which he
first sat down at table with the small family circle of the
Heywoods;--in which he looked upon the majestic forehead of
Katharine,--marked the gentle fire of her dark eyes, and the
expression of all that is sweet and engaging in humanity about a mouth
where her noble qualities were most fairly written.

After the grave and laudable custom of those good old times, the
evening service from the Book of Common Prayer was invariably read to
the assembled households of the country gentlemen. The office of
reading prayers was usually in the absence of a clergyman performed by
Sir Oliver himself as the priest of his own family, or at times he
deputed Cuthbert to supply his place. The duty this evening was
performed by Juxon in a solemn, feeling, impressive manner; and when
it was concluded, and the family retired, he hastened to the chamber
of Cuthbert, and finding that the composing draught had taken kind
effect, and that he was dropping off into a comforting sleep, withdrew
again with as soft a step as he had entered, and, exhausted with the
fatigues and the painful excitements of the day’s adventures, he
repaired to his own room, and thankfully lay down to rest. As he was
extinguishing the lamp, his eye read the posy on the wall; and he
could not but feel a sweet pleasure to be reposing in such a mansion,
and with such a family:--

    “Would’st have a friend, would’st know what friend is best?
    Have God thy friend, who passeth all the rest.”




CHAP. VII.

    Love is a kind of superstition,
    Which fears the idol which itself hath framed.
                              SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.


Cuthbert was awakened at midnight by pain:--the glimmer of the night
lamp in the little room adjoining cast a dim light into the chamber
where he lay; and the breathing of the aged female servant, who sat
there in watch, told him that she had been overcome by sleep. He cared
not to disturb her, and made an effort to reach the cup of water on
the little table by his side, but he found that he was no longer equal
to the slightest exertion--he could not even change his posture. He
endured his thirst, and tried to collect his thoughts, and gather up
all that had passed in the hall, but he could not: he was dizzy with
the sense of having been pushed to the very brink of eternity, and
snatched back again. A gleam shone upon the portrait of Luther which
hung opposite. “Though he slay me yet will I trust him,” was now his
own whispered act of confidence in God, and he lay passive, silent,
and hopeful. Not only was he heavily oppressed with bodily anguish,
but his mind, after undue excitement, and proportionate depression and
exhaustion, had sunk into a state of torpor. At the moment when Sir
Charles Lambert made the insidious speech to Sir Oliver, which
Cuthbert truly discerned to be aimed at his suspected principles, and
still more basely at a supposed line of conduct which he had far too
high a sense of integrity to pursue.

At that moment it seemed to him as if it was but fair and honourable
to make open avowal of his true sentiments; but in the same quick
glance of the mind he saw the first bitter and inevitable consequence.
He must quit Milverton immediately, and for ever. Sir Oliver could no
longer have retained in his family a man openly admiring the cause
and the course of that party in the kingdom which opposed the crown.

The collision in his mind of this fear of separation from so much that
he loved, and of the honest impulse to do what was right, begat a
momentary desperation; and thus it was, that he rose upon that
occasion with so unbecoming a want of calmness, and that he was about
to preface his statement by exhibiting his unmeasured scorn for the
base assailant of his character, but the too sure destroyer of his
present happiness.

By the strange and bloody interruption of his purpose, the avowal of
his political opinions was checked: his expression of contempt for Sir
Charles had found utterance, and had been followed by a consequence,
carrying with it, indeed, a severe rod of rebuke to himself for his
rashness, but punishment in a tenfold degree more insupportable to his
proud and brutal enemy; and, as a crowning consolation to Cuthbert,
his sojourn beneath the blessed roof of Milverton was at least, for
very many weeks to come, perfectly secure. He had felt no sorrow when
he heard the surgeon pronounce his case as one that would be
tedious--and that it must be long before he could be safely moved.

He would have had a stronger reason for joy and thankfulness, could he
have known that he had been the cause of producing such a developement
of the fierce and cruel temper of Sir Charles Lambert as saved
Katharine Heywood, if not from actually accepting him as a husband, to
which she would never have consented, at least from all the present
persecution of his attentions, as well as from all expression of the
blind but yet obstinate wishes of her otherwise indulgent father.

As Katharine lay wakeful on her pillow, believing and hoping that the
life of Cuthbert would be spared, and no permanent injury would affect
his future health or usefulness, she could not regret the occurrence
of the morning.

Certainly she would have died rather than have gone to the altar with
Sir Charles, but she would have remained continually exposed to his
selfish addresses; and this match having been the favourite plan of
her father from her earliest girlhood would have been perpetually
urged upon her by him in those many indirect and distressing ways in
which affectionate and obedient children are sometimes long and
ungenerously tormented by covetous or ambitious parents.

One thing, when she first heard of the catastrophe, found a brief
admission into her mind, and till she was made fully acquainted both
by her father and by Juxon of all that had passed, and of the words
which had been uttered at the time, was not entirely dismissed. This
was no less than a fear, faint, indeed, and most reluctantly viewed as
possible, that the quarrel might have arisen out of some feelings on
both sides connected with herself. Nothing was farther removed from
the true dignity of her noble character than the desire of making an
impression upon any one; and it would have very seriously pained her,
if those kind attentions, by which she had sought to make Cuthbert at
home in the family, should have given birth in his breast to any
warmer sentiment than that of respectful friendship.

Her humility and her modesty were so genuine that she was quite
unconscious of her own personal attractions, and, though alive to the
beauty of many of her female friends, she regarded it as a quality so
inferior, and secondary in its power of interesting the heart, or
winning the homage of the mind, as to give little advantage to its
possessor in the daily intercourse of society. This opinion being in
her sincere and rooted, her charms were worn with a grace and ease so
natural, that her influence over all who came within their sweet and
magic circle was irresistible.

This being her character, it was a great relief to her to be persuaded
that there was not the slightest ground for the apprehensions, which
she had slowly admitted. She was now surprised at herself for having
entertained them even for a moment. She saw in the conduct of Cuthbert
nothing more than a burst of human pride irritated into violence by
the haughty insults of a worthless superior. Thus all her suspicions
of the truth were lulled to sleep; and to alleviate the sufferings of
Cuthbert during his confinement, and to cheer his convalescence when
the hour of it should arrive, was to her plain judgment a simple and a
pleasing duty.

Sir Oliver himself passed a weary and feverish night,--all things
seemed out of joint: one of his most favourite schemes was
broken,--and his prospects of a peaceful and indolent old age, under
the shadow of his own trees, were somewhat shaken. The trumpet of war
had not, indeed, as yet sounded in the heart of England, though
English blood had been already spilled freely on the borders. The few
tall yeomen, with their goodly steeds, sent by himself to join the
King’s forces in the north, had marched fast and far only to meet an
early end, and to swell the loss and the discredit of the ridiculous
expedition against the Scots. With Sir Charles Lambert for a
son-in-law, he would have felt better able to meet and take share in
the coming troubles; and he reflected on the difficulties before him
with dismay. Of battle or of death he had no fear,--though at his time
of life, and with his habits, it was small service beyond that of a
ready example of devotion which he could render in a camp; but when he
thought of Katharine, and of Arthur in his boyhood, and of his aged
sister, his household presented but a defenceless aspect. However,
after the scene of yesterday, he could not ever directly encourage any
future addresses of Sir Charles to his daughter; and it could not but
suggest itself plainly to his own mind, as a gentlemen of a true
English spirit, as far as personal bravery was concerned, that little
dependence could be placed upon the courage or firmness of a man
capable of the cruel and dastardly assault which he had yesterday
witnessed. He had yet to learn the moral energies and the latent
heroism of his noble daughter, and to discover the strength and the
wisdom of a woman’s mind, when the love of father and of country guide
it in the path of duty and of honour. Some time was to elapse before
the days of trial; and, indulging that love of ease which was habitual
to him, he strove to stifle or put away from him the unwelcome
conviction that come they must, and could not be averted. Therefore
it was with no common sense of comfort, that, when he came forth into
the gallery the next morning, he found Katharine, and his sister, and
Arthur, already there, waiting to receive him with the kisses of fond
congratulation, and saw his own portrait and that of his departed
wife, who had been to him as an angel gently leading him for good, and
ever watchful to guard him from error, framed, as it were, with choice
and dewy flowers. He gazed at the portrait of his wife and then at
Katharine, alternately, and was melted into a gush of grateful
tenderness. All fears, difficulties, and troubles seemed to vanish in
a present feeling of thankfulness and delight. He went instantly on to
the chamber of Cuthbert: Juxon had been there from an early hour, and
the surgeon was engaged at the moment in dressing his wound.

The sight of the amiable young man, lying pale and helpless, bandaged
and in pain, greatly moved Sir Oliver. He took Cuthbert by the hand,
and spoke to him in that warm and feeling language of condolence which
is balm to a sufferer’s mind. The benevolent surgeon took a lively
interest in his patient, and spoke most confidently of effecting a
complete cure,--although he repeated, that the case would prove very
tedious, and many weeks must elapse before he could be permitted, or
indeed be able, to quit the recumbent posture. He gave directions that
he should be kept particularly quiet in his actual state, and not be
spoken with or disturbed throughout the day, except to give him
necessary refreshment or medicine.

At the earnest invitation of Sir Oliver, Juxon consented to remain at
Milverton till the evening. The day passed pleasantly away. The worthy
knight recovered his usual spirits; Mistress Alice her composure; and
Katharine Heywood, having much secret content and thankfulness at
heart, looked like some gracious angel of peace and goodness.

It was a day of bliss to Juxon:--one never forgotten, but marked white
for ever. He was one of those men who felt a reverence and tenderness
for woman; and, whenever he addressed them, his eyes, his voice, his
whole manner plainly manifested respect. He expected in the female
character gentleness, purity, and charity; and yet, by some strange
inconsistency, he shunned the society of women, was seldom to be seen
in those gay and glittering circles where they shone, and where he
might have been soon disenchanted of his cherished illusions.

His residence in a sequestered parish in the country afforded him few
opportunities of visiting where ladies were to be met; and being fond
of all sports and manly exercises, and so ripe a scholar as to find
study and the chase a pleasant relief to each other, he had not as yet
been careful to seek opportunities of increasing his female
acquaintance.

Whatever there was of silent and maidenly reserve in sweet Katharine
herself towards common strangers, and upon ordinary occasions,
vanished at a time like this, in the presence of so manly, so modest,
and so frank a man as George Juxon. As the family sat that day at
table, not a shade of embarrassment was visible in any of the
party:--Sir Oliver was in high good humour; the boy Arthur looked at
their guest with those honest eyes which, in boyhood, fear not to
show either like or dislike; and the little girl Lily, permitted that
day to dine in the hall, sat without shyness opposite to Juxon, and
shunned not his smile or his word of notice.

The day wore on:--he walked with the ladies upon the verdant and
velvet paths in the flower garden,--he paced the terrace with Sir
Oliver,--and his presence was felt by them all as a strength and a
comfort.

The shade upon the dial had stole silently, but swiftly, forwards, and
touched upon seven in the evening, when he ran up to the chamber of
Cuthbert to press his hand at parting; and having afterwards said his
farewell to the ladies on the lawn, he descended to the court-yard,
accompanied by Sir Oliver and the boy Arthur, mounted the gallant roan
gelding upon which he had hunted his way down on the morning of
yesterday, and again shaking the hand of his host, and accepting a
warm invitation to repeat his visit soon and often, George Juxon rode
out of the gates at Milverton with a very new and strange feeling.

The free animal, on which he rode, was impatiently checked as often as
it broke from the measured walk at which it was now the pleasure of
his master to travel homewards; and, whatever might be the cause, he
was not allowed to perform in less than two hours a distance to be
very easily accomplished within one. The reverie of Juxon was unbroken
during the whole ride. The evening was mild, and the hedgerows were
green, and the air was perfumed here with the scent of violets, there
with the fragrance of cottage gardens or blushing orchards, and upon
the woody or open parts of the road with the rich incense of the
fresh-blown May.

The news of Sir Charles Lambert’s violence had reached his parsonage
before him; and in the stone porch his old housekeeper met him as soon
as he had dismounted, with as much anxiety as if he had narrowly
escaped murder himself. The good old body, with that genuine
philanthropy of feeling which is as natural as their breathing to
kindly natures, learned the safety of Cuthbert, whom she had never
seen or heard of before, with a lively expression of motherly joy;
and Juxon was roused to remember how very narrowly the youth had
missed an early and melancholy fate. Truth to say, so much of pleasure
had grown up within these two days from the very circumstances arising
out of the assault on Cuthbert, for her young master now to dwell on,
and there seemed to open before him so pleasant a prospect in future
intercourse with the family at Milverton, that, perhaps, he hardly
felt enough for the present sufferings of the unfortunate patient.

His thoughts, however, were soon diverted from Milverton, and from
himself, by the entrance of his old gardener, to say the May-crown,
which was kept in the summer-house, had been taken away, and that he
had found a written paper on the shelf where it stood. This the old
man handed to his master, saying he could not read it, but guessed it
boded no good for the coming holyday, and that he had been gathering
flowers to dress out the old May-pole to little purpose. George Juxon
took the paper, upon which, in a stiff, quaint hand, were written
these lines:--

    “This head in a crown, and that without ears,
    Is the pleasure of prelates, of courtiers, and peers.
    Dance, revel, and sing, ye butterflies gay;
    The time is at hand you shall weep, fast, and pray.
    One holdeth the war-dogs, all ready to slip;
    Pleasure’s cup shall be spilled, and dashed from the lip.
    To me is committed this message of woe:
    The tears of the proud ones unpitied shall flow.”

He no sooner read it, than, quitting his supper, he went out into the
village to ascertain if any copy of it had been left at any other
place; and found, to his vexation, that one had been fastened to the
May-pole, and had been taken down and read to half the people.
Determined, however, that the customary sports should be neither
hindered nor damped, he took home with him the village carpenter, set
fairly to work, and in two hours, by the aid of lath, and pasteboard,
and Dutch gilding, they finished off a crown far more splendid than
the one stolen; and he wrote underneath it, with prompt good humour,--

    “The preacher hath said it--For all things a time--
    For fasting, for feasting, for dancing, for rhyme:--
    No rhymes without reason shall hinder our pleasure;
    We’ll crown the old May-pole, and tread the old measure.”

This done, he again thought of Cuthbert’s bed of suffering, and
remembered him in his prayers. This little cross occurrence in his
parish neither drove away his own sleep for a second nor delayed on
the morrow the sports of his parishioners. Here, as in many other
places, the popular and wise course of the minister preserved a good
and happy understanding among the people. There is no social state
more truly desirable than that of a well-ordered village population,
where the miseries of the lane and the alley cannot reach; labour is
performed in the open air; festivals are days of thanksgiving, danced
through upon a green sward, to the nodding heads of merry musicians;
and they see no crowns but such as are woven with roses for their
May-queen, and know no sceptre but a white wand wreathed about with
fragrant flowers.




CHAP. VIII.

    Though their voices lower be,
    Streams have, too, their melody;
    Night and day they warbling run,
    Never pause, but still sing on.
                      GEORGE HICKES.


For three summer months Cuthbert Noble was confined to a couch; and
though latterly he was led forth into the garden, and suffered to lie
down on a bench in the shade, yet his confinement had been lonely as
well as tedious. No kindness on the part of any of the family was
wanting: whatever could be thought of for his convenience and comfort
was provided. While he was obliged to keep his own chamber, he was
visited daily by Sir Oliver; Mistress Alice and Katharine looked in
upon him together, and inquired gently concerning his pain; the boy
Arthur would often forego his play in the garden, or his practice in
archery, to sit and read to him; and not a week passed without a
friendly and cheerful visit from George Juxon. Nevertheless, he was
evidently dejected; and while he was grateful for all these
attentions, nothing, it was observed, could effectually rouse his
spirits to cheerfulness, although he repaid, by anxious words and
quiet smiles, the least service which was done him. About the trouble
which he unavoidably gave the servants, who, for their parts, were
ever ready to oblige him, he was scrupulous even to anxiety. He seemed
to pine after liberty--and would sit, for hours together, lost in deep
thought, or in vacant sadness. It so happened that the clergyman of
Milverton, whose manners were coarse, and whose morals were low, did
not visit at the Hall. Although originally appointed by Sir Oliver, at
the request of a friend, who, acquainted with his family, had taken
little care to inquire more particularly into his character, he had
early quarrelled with his patron, and preferred the freedom of an ale
bench to the restraints of good society. This was unfortunate for
Cuthbert; as a learned and religious clergyman, residing in the
village, and intimate at the hall, might have kept him straight in
the plain path of the true churchman. Now, though Juxon, had he been
aware of all that was passing in the mind of Cuthbert, might have been
truly serviceable in disabusing him of some strong prejudices, yet, as
he presumed him to be a true son of the church, the subject was seldom
named.

He came to cheer and amuse him if he could; and the very atmosphere of
Milverton Hall was that of purity and delight to George Juxon. His
summer months presented a strange contrast to those of Cuthbert. He
gave up his buck-hunting in the afternoons: he could not abide the
rude and noisy companions of that sport of which he had been always so
fond; and now he might be seen, day after day, in the guise of an
angler, on the grassy margin of a silver stream, or, not unfrequently,
stretched at his length beneath a shady tree near the bank, or sitting
under a high honeysuckle hedge; and if he were not chewing his own
sweet fancies, some book in his hand, of good old-fashioned poetry, to
aid his pleasant meditations. George Juxon was now a lover--without
melancholy, I do not say,--but only with so much of it as is ever
welcome to a lover’s mood, and gives a dignity to his passion.
Nevertheless, his hope was unavowed; nor was he in haste: a long
courtship was the fashion of those days; and a mistress seemed raised
in the fancy of her admirer, by the thought that she must be slowly
approached, and would be slowly won.

His family, his private fortune, his present provision in the church,
and his future prospects from the favour of the bishop, were such,
that Sir Oliver could not object to him as a suitor for his daughter,
though he might give the preference to another; and certainly, with
her father, the title of a baronet would have outweighed that of a
dean. However, these circumstances could only encourage him in his
more sanguine moments, for Juxon was a modest man; and when he called
up the image of Katharine in his walks, and thought upon a certain
majesty in her countenance, and how serene and unmoved she was, how
unsuspicious of the admiration which she excited, he could not but
fear that she might prove indifferent to the suit of one so plain and
unvarnished as himself, and that she would never entertain his
addresses. Therefore it was that he nursed his love in secret, and
patiently restrained all expression of particular regard for Mistress
Katharine in his present visits to Milverton. How pleasant, in the
mean time, were all those visits; how swiftly he rode through lane and
wood, across field or common, as he went from home on those permitted
errands of friendship; and at what a slow and lingering pace would he
return from the gracious presence of this lady of his love!

He had often heard it rumoured that Sir Charles Lambert was thought to
be the accepted son-in-law of Sir Oliver; but this he had always
doubted from the very first moment of his introduction at Milverton;
and he felt that Katharine could never have endured his attentions. By
these, however, she could now be troubled no farther; for Sir Charles,
being deeply mortified and ashamed of the frantic violence which he
had committed at his last visit, had left his home suddenly for
London, and was solacing himself, for the contemptuous affront which
he had received from Sir Philip Arundel, in the congenial atmosphere
of bear gardens and cock pits. Nor had he forgotten how roughly he was
handled by George Juxon, whom he at once feared for his courage, and
hated for his virtues.

However, he was no longer a visiter at Milverton; his sisters, indeed,
still rode over from the Grange occasionally to pass a day with
Katharine, and twice Juxon was of the party at table.

To most eyes he would have appeared the admirer rather of these ladies
than of Mistress Katharine; for Old Beech rectory was only four miles
from Bolton Grange: and though he seldom accepted the invitations of
Sir Charles, yet he met them often in hunting or hawking parties, and
was apparently a very great favourite with them both. Sophy and Jane
Lambert were both pretty: the one, with the rosy cheeks of health and
laughing blue eyes; the other, brown and freckled, with an arch look
that seemed to detect those secrets which men, and women too, most
anxiously conceal, with a provoking and unerring sagacity.

These good-tempered and warm-hearted girls had been at first sadly
afflicted about their brother’s conduct; but this last care concerning
him was now six weeks old, and had been dismissed from their minds. He
was, to their great contentment, now absent, and their tongues were
again loosened to playfulness.

As the party sat at dinner in Milverton Hall one day, about the middle
of June, and as Juxon was carving a capon, that he might help Mistress
Alice to a delicate wing,--

“Prithee, Master Juxon,” said Jane Lambert with a very roguish
expression of the eye, “did you not hear our merry voices on Wednesday
evening as we killed a buck under Walton coppice? and did you not see
us lift our velvet caps to you? and did you shut your ears to the
pleasant horn? or were you charmed to sleep by the fairies under that
broad beech tree in the Bird Meadow? or were you saying your prayers?
or were you reading Master Ford’s Lover’s Melancholy? or were you
thinking of our Lady St. Katharine here at Milverton?”

Juxon was so confused at this last question that he put the wing of
the capon into the sauce boat instead of on the trencher of Mistress
Alice, and said, with a stammer and a blush,--

“Really, Mistress Jane, you are too bad; but I know that you dearly
love a joke upon anglers: you are always jeering poor Moxon.”

“O do not mind her,” said Katharine Heywood, coming to his relief:
“she is privileged to say what she pleases, without meaning what she
says; and my poor name always serves to point a fancy, if she wants
one: if she were not so young and so pretty, she might be taken up for
a false fortune-teller, and a dealer in witchcraft.”

“Cousin Kate, if I am a fortune-teller, I am a true one; and if a
witch, you know I am a white one, and work marvellous cures. Shall I
tell your fortune? and shall I name the name of a true knight in a far
country?”

A glance from the noble eyes of Katharine, which no one perceived but
Jane Lambert, rebuked her into silence; and trying, though awkwardly,
to laugh off the liberty which she had evidently taken with the
feelings of Katharine, she sent her trencher for some venison, and
said no more.

Sir Oliver, too, fastening upon the simple fact of Juxon having turned
a fisherman, began rallying him for having made so bad an exchange, as
to leave the merry and social sport of hunting for the dull and
solitary exercise of angling.

“It is true,” said the knight, “I have myself been forced to give up
the jolly buck hunt; but, life of me, I could never take up with a rod
and line in the place of it. I do wonder, when I see a man mope about
the meadows, and stand, it may be, for hours, under the same willow,
by the broken bank of a sluggish river, that it doth not end in his
hanging himself for very weariness of the flat world.”

“And yet,” quoth Juxon, “fishing hath its pleasures, ay, and its sport
too; but if the angler catch nothing, still he hath a wholesome walk
in the pure air; and if he go abroad early, and listeneth to the
matins of the heaven-loving lark, he shall not want sweeter music
than the cry of hounds, and the blasts of hunting horns.”

“By my faith, Master Juxon, you are bewitched; but whether by old
Margery or by the sparkling eyes of Jane I say not; by Margery,
methinks; for the faint heart of an angler will never win such a
sprightly lady of the woods as our Jane.”

“Nay, nay, Sir Oliver, when a man is bewitched, and by love, too, as
Mistress Jane will have it, his thoughts must be too roving and
unquiet to sit still upon a mossy bank watching for the trembling of a
quill.”

“Ay, ay; but he may sit quiet enough, and not watch any thing but his
own fancies. I do verily think that thou must be touched with some
strange care, to let thy brave gelding race it round his pasture for
the madness of his desire to follow the chase, at sound of which he
neigheth for his rider, and thou sitting the while like some poor
scholar alone upon a tree stump.”

“At the least I find one blessing rests on anglers--where they walk,
the grace of humility doth grow, lowly as the daisy, and plentiful as
the meadow sweet.”

“I think,” said Katharine, “that Master Juxon has good right to walk
the valley with his rod, without being thus rated for his pleasure;
and if he useth to find good thoughts in all he meeteth by the river
side in summer evenings it is more than hunters do in the forest.”

“Marry, Kate, it is to get rid of thought that men go a-hunting. I
tell thee that cares and sorrows, and wrongs and vexations, cannot
keep pace with a bold hunter; self is forgotten; all is life, and joy,
and wild delight. Troth I have lost mind and heart since the merry
days when I hunted.”

“I am of thy mind, Sir Oliver,” said Juxon, “and the falling leaf of
October, and the chill gloom of November skies, can never cloud the
heart of a hunter; but when woods are green, and sunbeams warm, and
birds are singing, methinks the yelp of a hound is unseasonable
music.”

“Well,” said Jane, “all I know is, that you seldom missed an
afternoon last summer; and if it was an early hunting day and a stag
turned out in the morning, in spite of the green trees and the
warbling larks, Master Juxon was never last in the field; but I will
rate you no more: for, may-be, you are afraid of the Puritans, and do
study _Master Stubbes’s Anatomie of Abuses_, and will give up the
wicked ways of Esau, and turn shepherd--gentle shepherd, shall it be,
or good?”

“Lady,” said Juxon, gravely, “there are good men among the Puritans;”
and seeing her colour a little at his tone, he added, with a smile,
“and good anglers too; but, in truth, you have hit me hard: for there
are good men, who are no Puritans, who think that the sport of hunting
is not seemly in a parson, especially in times like these.”

“Puritans or no Puritans,” said Sir Oliver, “I hope you don’t mind the
muddy race that croak these black lessons of duty. I do not know
whether they be fools or knaves; but they would preach us into walking
tomb-stones, each showing its _memento mori_.”

“Beyond all question,” replied Juxon, “they are wrong in many things;
and push their severity against things innocent and pernicious with
little or no distinction, with a strained application of Scripture
prohibitions, and with a profound ignorance of human nature; and they
seem only to discern God in clouds, and to hear him in the thunder.
But there are men of great and stern virtues among them; and, it may
be, of gentler hearts and gentler views than we give them credit for.”

“I don’t believe a word of it. They are fanatics in religion, and
knavish traitors in their politics: you think of them with more
charity than I do, and it is a false charity, Master Juxon. There was
one of my own name and kin among them: he turned republican, forsooth;
old England, forsooth, had no liberty; our good church was a harlot,
and all the rest of it; and he would seek true freedom in the forests
and swamps of New England; and away he went with wife and daughters,
and a son, whom he had made as great a fool as himself. A youth, sir,
that bearded me with his treason at my own table. I sent him packing
at midnight, sir, and would not let him sleep the night under my roof;
and, in good truth, he was as ready to go as I to bid him; and now he
and his father are felling trees in America for aught I know, or care,
indeed.”

Katharine Heywood proposed to her aunt and the Lamberts that they
should go into the Lime Walk, and Juxon would have turned the
conversation; but Sir Oliver, with the images of his absent cousins
before him, went on venting his feelings, as if in soliloquy. “The son
of a clergyman, too, sir, a younger brother of mine, long dead, and he
himself having been the faithful servant of a king, well accounted of
for valour and discretion in the camp of the great Gustavus, where he
commanded a regiment of musketeers. He to turn against kings and good
order! He that punished a fault against discipline like a sin against
Heaven, and taught his son that obedience was the first duty of a
soldier, to come home, with his brave boy to his own country, and
teach him to flout at the majesty of the crown! Troth, sir, the king
was quit of bad subjects, and I of troublesome relations, when they
took ship for the Plantations. I wish all that are as fantastic in
their notions would follow them.” At the close of this burst, the old
gentleman took a cup of wine with an eagerness that sought relief, and
a trembling hand, that betrayed how deeply he was agitated by angry
feelings.

Juxon, very unwilling to hear him further on so painful a subject,
asked permission of the knight to go and visit Cuthbert Noble for half
an hour, and promised to join him afterwards in the bowling green for
their customary rubber. As he passed out of the hall, a serving man
was coming in with Sir Oliver’s pipe and tobacco-box; and leaving the
strange weed to perform its calming office, Juxon, happy to escape,
ran up stairs to the chamber of Cuthbert.

The surgeon was seated by his side; and from the conversation, which,
although they concealed not the subject or the tenour of it at the
entrance of Juxon, they soon dropped, it was evident to him that they
had a mutual understanding in matters of religion and politics, and
were both of them friendly to the cause of the parliament. It had so
chanced that, during the whole of his confinement, Cuthbert had, in
the person of the surgeon who attended him, been daily in contact with
a mind very deeply imbued with serious and severe principles. By this
man Cuthbert’s heart had been probed to the quick; and, under his
influence, combining with a strong predisposition in itself, was made
sad and heavy.




CHAP. IX.

    Passions are likened best to floods and streames;
    The shallow murmur, but the deepe are dumb.
                                             RALEIGH.


When, at the proposal of Mistress Katharine, the ladies left the hall,
they proceeded to the Lime Walk: here they separated, Aunt Alice
taking Sophia Lambert aside to show her a late addition to her aviary,
and Katharine leading forward Jane towards the fish-pond, where, upon
a low bench, placed under the broad arm of a noble cedar, they sat
down quietly in the shade.

Under all the disadvantages of a most neglected education, and a
rusticity of manner very near to rudeness, Jane Lambert had some rare
and valuable qualities, which greatly endeared her to those who took
the pains to discover them. This Katharine had done. As for the last
three years she had been thrown much into the society of the
Lamberts, owing to their residence at Bolton Grange, and the frequent,
but yet unavoidable, visits of Sir Charles, she had studied all their
characters thoroughly; and the result of her observation satisfied
her, that in Jane there was at the bottom a fund of sterling worth,
high courage, and genuine affection. Her attainments were few and very
imperfect; but she had a vigorous and a healthy intellect, which
digested well the best and most generous sentiments of the few books
which she was careful to read. Not a tenant or cotter upon the estate
of her brother but had a look of honest love for Mistress Jane; and
the falconers and foresters were proud of a bright lady who knew their
craft so well, and had so true an eye for the slot of a deer or for
the dim-seen quarry. If any poor man had a favour to ask of Sir
Charles, it was through her, as the ready advocate of all who needed
help or implored mercy, that the petition was preferred. Her
admiration and love for Katharine Heywood were unbounded: she looked
up to her as a model of exalted excellence, and with that affection
which partakes of reverence; not that this was of a nature to check
or chill the natural display of fondness in their ordinary
intercourse; but at times the power of the loftier sentiment over her
was so great, that her exuberant and unguarded levity would be in a
moment abashed and driven away by one look from Katharine. Thus it had
been to-day at table; and now, as they sat, she pressed her hand upon
the shoulder of Katharine, and leaned her cheek upon it, and said
feelingly,--

“Dearest cousin Kate, why did you look so very sad and so very grave
to-day? I was only joking; do not be angry with me, my sweet coz: I
shall fret if I think you have been really angry.” Katherine bent her
face and kissed the presented cheek.

“Was I ever angry with you, Jane?” she asked. “You know that I never
was; but it is true that you often make me very anxious for you, and
sometimes quite sad, by your ill-timed and thoughtless gaiety.
Consider a little more the consequences of idle words, and their
effect on strangers.”

“Well, my dear, I will: but there is no harm done, for I do not look
upon Juxon as a stranger; and he is so sensible, and so good-tempered,
that he will never take any speech by the wrong handle, and so honest
and straightforward, that he will never look under it for a hidden
meaning.”

“But yet, Jane, even Juxon will think it odd, that while the victim of
your brother’s passionate frenzy still lies on a couch helpless with
his wound, and while your brother, who has narrowly escaped committing
the heaviest of crimes, has absented himself for very shame, his
sister should sport, as if nothing had happened, and be as playful in
her words as a girl without care.”

“Do you think so? I should be sorry for that: but you know that I do
not love my brother; and Cuthbert is safe from all danger, and out of
all pain; and you are well, cousin, and not the sadder for this
accident, if I know your heart as well as I love your happiness; and
why then should I not appear cheerful, when, in truth, I am so. I
should be vexed, indeed, if Juxon thought the worse of me; for he is
one whose good opinion is worth having; but as for that of the world,
I care not a jot about it.”

“There you are wrong, dear Jane: the opinion of the world may, and
must be, in some things, despised, but the rule of its established
proprieties and gentle observances can never be transgressed, without
bringing some heavy penalty on the offender.”

“I do not love the world so well, dear Katharine, as to care for
either its frowns or its favours; and I looked not for an advocate of
its cold maxims and its deceitful forms in you--let it see me as I
am.”

“There is your error, Jane: it cannot, it will not, it cares not to
take the trouble to see you as you are; it looks only at your
_seeming_; and though to be is better than to seem, and many seem fine
gold that are but base metal, yet no one can despise the judgment of
the world without rashness and without danger. They who place
themselves above the opinion of the world, and the best rules of
society, cast off a useful and an appointed restraint in the
discipline of life.”

“Sweet coz, I love to hear you lecture, but you will never make me
wise: I was born under a common star, and reared with foresters:--look
as I like, and speak as I think.”

“Ah, dear Jane, you will some day learn to govern your bright looks,
and to keep your sweetest thoughts locked closely in your heart.
Wisdom herself, and, perhaps, though God forbid, sorrow will be your
teacher.”

The serene eyes of the majestic Katharine were clouded, for a passing
moment, with such a sadness as a compassionate angel might have worn;
and she pressed Jane tenderly to her breast.

“Promise me,” she said, “dearest cousin, promise me faithfully that
you never again hint even to any human being, the idle fancy that hung
this morning on your lips, or the name you would have connected with
it.”

“The promise has been already made in my own mind: your look was
enough to make me wish the light word unspoken, and the tongue that
uttered it blistered for a month to come. You are the only one at
table who could have understood my allusion. I am certain that the
most distant thought of my meaning could not enter the mind of your
father or your aunt.”

“This, I believe, and it is well it should not: the bare suspicion,
harboured in his mind, would make him miserable for life, and embitter
his last moments with unworthy fears. I know his nature well: much as
he loves me, and confides in me, to pacify his anger, and quiet his
jealous apprehensions, would be, even for me, an impossible
achievement; and yet he knows, or should know, that I am an English
daughter.”

“How is it, Katharine, that you command all hearts? that not a man
approaches you but he is at once, as by some sweet force, compelled to
love you? and yet it is no wonder: there cannot be on earth another
Katharine.”

“Cousin, this is idle and wicked talk; you must not use such vain and
sinful words: would you could see me as I see myself, when, prostrate
in weakness, I implore and find strength where alone it is to be
obtained; but you cannot understand me yet.”

“Nay, Katharine, do not rebuke me so sharply for simple truths: why
Charles himself is so tamed and altered for the day whenever he
returns from Milverton, that I have sometimes been selfish enough to
wish to see you his, in the hope that I might find a brother changed
in nature; but no, dear Kate, I love you too well ever seriously to
dwell on such a desire.”

“Jane, do not, prithee, do not pursue this foolish fancy further.”

“It is not fancy: can I not see? have I not eyes, and the perceptions
and sympathies of woman? I tell you, the poor woe-begone scholar, that
lies lonely on his couch above there, did look upon you as good men
look up to the blue heavens.”

“Cousin, I will not stay another moment with you if your discourse is
not changed to some better tone than these weak and unwomanly
delusions of your idle brain do give it.”

“As you will, blessed coz, I say no more; but one need not be very
deeply read in love-craft to prophesy that one of these fine days the
worthy young rector of Old Beech will tell you that himself which I
may not tell you for him.”

“Jane,” said Katharine, as she slowly rose, and they moved back
towards the Lime Walk, “you are not, my dear girl, serious, I hope, in
this last surmise: you are not in earnest: it would greatly perplex
and trouble me if I thought you were, and had good reason: about
Cuthbert I am sure that you are altogether mistaken.”

“No, Katharine; I am a poor unfashioned creature, with little
knowledge of the world, and little skill in books, or fair
accomplishments: but this one gift I have,--I can read the human
countenance, and see written thereon the thoughts of the heart, the
play of the secret passions, the inclinations of the inner will, in
characters plain to my faithful eye, and plainly I repeat my
conviction that both these men do love you. The one will give you no
trouble: his flame will burn within his melancholy heart, like a lamp
glimmering in a tomb; but the other will make open avowal of what he
is proud to feel, and will surely be courageous enough to confess: now
do not look so pale and grave, but thank me for the timely caution.
Kiss me, sweet coz; my sister is calling for me, and we must go.” The
tall and queen-like Katharine folded her young cousin to her heart;
and Jane felt a tear fall heavy on her cheek as they embraced and
parted.

Katharine had one of those fine and stately forms which the sculptor
of ancient times would have chosen to copy with his happiest skill, as
the incarnation of wisdom. Her features were Roman; her dark hazel
eyes were long and even, and there shone in them a soft, chaste fire;
her mouth was pensive; but though the expression of her countenance
was ever serious, yet was it human, gentle, and she would more fitly
have represented the melancholy vestal, than the calm, passionless
Minerva. She returned leisurely to her favourite cedar, and seated
herself in that sad repose of the mind into which even the strongest
and most virtuous will sometimes allow themselves to sink, as a short
relief from the internal conflict. It was clear to her that Jane had
penetrated that one secret, which she would hardly confess to herself,
and which she could have wished had been altogether confined to her
own bosom, and that one other, from which she felt resolutely and for
ever divided. It was strange that the open-hearted girl had never
mentioned it before; it was well that she had only now hinted it so
vaguely as to leave it impenetrably veiled to others; it was well,
too, that she had thus early arrested the danger of all further
discovery, and obtained from the fond and faithful Jane that promise
of secrecy, on which she could safely rely. Still it was disturbing to
her pure and noble spirit, that even this sweet girl should be privy
to her heart’s great trial. However, Jane would understand her future
silence on the subject, and well knew that those confidences, which
the weaker order of women are ever ready to pour into the ear of the
female friend, would never pass her lips. She held them too sacred,
and she had that dignity of soul which in a sorrow of that peculiar
nature is all-sufficient to itself. Could Cuthbert from his couch of
patient suffering, or George Juxon from his solitary rides and walks,
have looked in upon the heart of Katharine, and seen the image, which
often rose before her mind’s eye, and as often as it did so was felt
to be a cherished one, the former would have striven against his weak
idolatry yet more resolutely than he already did, and the manly Juxon
would have given to the wind his vain hopes, and would have forborne
to distress her with the language of a suitor.

Katharine did not return to the mansion till long after all the guests
had departed.

It was the hour of supper; but she pleaded headache, retired to her
chamber, and seated herself at the window to watch the dying day.
There was a universal calm in nature; every leaf was still: there was
a holy hush around; colours of a blessed hue streaked the far western
sky; they grew faint, they faded, and the grey gloom of a summer’s
night rested upon all things. She was roused from a long reverie of
sweet though solemn fancies by the entrance of her maid with a lamp,
and in a few minutes afterwards she was joined by her aunt Alice.

There was never in any nature more of the milk of human kindness than
in Mistress Alice:--her own disappointments had subdued her vivacity,
without souring her temper, or freezing her manners. Forgetful of
herself, she lived for and in the happiness of others, and her niece
Katharine was to her as a daughter;--not that she exercised any thing
like a mother’s control; Katharine had so ripe an understanding, and
so mature a judgment, that Mistress Alice leaned upon her mind as
though it were that of a sister or a bosom friend, to whose opinion
she was pleased to defer her own.

She loved Sir Oliver with a true affection, but she was not blind to
the faults of his character. She knew him to be impatient of
contradiction, full of strong prejudices, easy and indolent--the being
of habit and of custom--but violent when thwarted, and selfish when
opposed. Nevertheless a kind brother, a fond father, a liberal master,
and a most loyal subject. It always deeply grieved her when she heard
him speak harshly of her nephew Edward Heywood, and his son Francis,
for they were the offspring of an unfortunate brother, to whom she had
been very closely attached from her childhood.

“This has been a trying day to me as well as to you, Katharine,” she
said when they were left together. “I think my poor brother allows
himself to be more troubled about public matters than is good for him;
and I wish that he would avoid the mention of your unhappy cousins in
connection with those subjects--however wrong they may be, they have
cares and troubles enough for pity, rather than hard words and ill
wishes.”

Katharine looked steadily at her aunt when she began to speak, and was
rather startled at her opening words; but as she proceeded, discerning
clearly it was only a sympathy in common with her own that she
invited, replied, quietly, that “it was indeed very painful to see the
good temper of her dear father giving way so early in times like
these, which were only the beginning of troubles; but consider,
dearest aunt, he has passed all his life in pleasure and ease--my
blessed mother made his peace her study; and, though she could never
win him to her own happiest views of the only bliss, her whole life
was a transcript of those gentle and charitable sentiments which were
the secret springs of all her actions. He reposed upon her character,
and found a tranquillity, of which he shared the comfort, but which
lived not within his own breast.”

“Well, Katharine, I am sure you follow in your mother’s path, and as
far as daughter may, you supply her vacant place in his esteem and
reverence. He loves you not as parent loves a child. You are his
daughter, but you are also, in all seemly matters, his cherished
adviser:--I have often noted it, my dear, with joy.”

“Do not humble me so sadly--my mother’s path!--alas! I am far from
it--far out of the way, when I think of her exalted hopes, her
self-denying life, and her settled peace; and when I look within, I am
ashamed, and may well tremble at the comparison:--but yet I cherish
the memory of her bright example; and the words you have just spoken
shall rouse me to do all by my father, which if her sainted spirit
could look down upon us she would herself approve. I know the duty of
a daughter, and I know how much the happiness and the honour of a
father may be promoted by her due performance of it. You have well
shown me the better way. For my father, and to my father, I will
devote my life, and cast self and all softer wishes behind me. When
the first rough steps of difficulty are passed, the noble qualities of
my father will all be seen:--bless you, Aunt Alice, for your sweet
counsel.”

“My dear Katharine, you are not wont to be thus excited: your calmness
and your even dignity have ever been beyond your age: I meant simply
what I said, and designed not, by any hint, to stimulate you to any
course of conduct beyond that which I have always observed you to
pursue:--you are not well--you think too much of what may
happen--troubles are fast travellers, and need not be met half
way--you are not well.”

“I believe you are right--I cannot be well--the day has been
oppressively hot--and my temples throb with pain.”

Mistress Alice taking from the dressing table a curious shaped bottle
of eastern porcelain, which contained elder-flower water, sat down
tenderly by Katharine, and bathed her temples with gentle care. The
noble girl leaned back upon her chair, silent, passive, grateful:--no
sob escaped her; no nervous tears were allowed to fall; but to a
keener eye than that of her benevolent aunt a slight quiver on the
lip, and a heaving of the folds above her bosom, quicker than the
wont, might have told that very deep and painful emotions were
struggling in her full heart.

Mistress Alice would not leave her till she saw her quietly put to
bed, when, giving her the kiss of peace and good night as her pale
cheek lay upon the pillow, she took her lamp, and went softly out of
the chamber.

Restored to solitude and silence, Katharine sent her sweet thoughts
and prayerful wishes to that distant land, where, upon the narrow
clearing of some tall and ancient forest, in their canvass booth or
rude hut, after a day of new and unaccustomed toils, her self-exiled
but heroic cousins reposed: the picture of their labours was to her
mind primitive and sacred--and all the images presented to her fancy
were peaceful.




CHAP. X.

    Can warres, and jarres, and fierce contention,
    Swoln hatred, and consuming envie, spring
    From piety?
                                       HENRY MORE.


The good parson of Cheddar was never informed of the severe misfortune
of his son till all danger was long past, and his convalescence was
advanced to such a point that he could assure his parents he should
soon be perfectly restored to health and to his wonted activity and
strength.

Noble and his wife were both deeply affected at the thought of all
which Cuthbert must have suffered, and at the considerate care which
he had manifested for their feelings. His letter was brief, and his
relation of the conduct of Sir Charles Lambert was given in such a
calm and quiet tone that it was plain he had learned the hard lesson
to forgive an enemy. Yet it contained some expressions which troubled
his father with the too sure presage of that course which Cuthbert was
about to follow.

He intended, it said, to leave Milverton at Michaelmas, and should
recommend that Arthur, who was sufficiently forward in his studies,
should be then entered at the University. “I shall not,” it added,
“accompany the dear boy to Oxford; indeed, with my sentiments, it
would be alike unjust to Sir Oliver and to the youth himself to retain
my present office in this family. Where a tutor is called upon to
conceal his opinions and suppress his feelings (on the most important
and the most sublime subjects which affect the present interests of
society and the everlasting happiness of man), in his daily
intercourse with his pupil, both parties are very seriously injured.”

It was particularly remarked by his mother that, in this letter, while
Cuthbert acknowledged, in general terms of warmth, the kindness with
which he had been treated throughout his illness by the whole family
at Milverton, and while he mentioned the friendliness of Juxon, of
whom they had never previously heard, and dwelt still more on his deep
obligations to Master Randal, the surgeon, he never even named
Mistress Katharine, of whom he had spoken with such a romantic warmth
in his former correspondence.

“My dear,” said Noble, “Cuthbert has been on the brink of the grave,
and his mind is full of all that has been solemn and awakening in that
awful experience; but it is not a good sign that he has avoided all
detail of that experience to us. I doubt not that his piety has been
deepened, but I am not without a fear that his head is taken up with
new notions, both of doctrine and of duty, and that he was unwilling
to open them out to us. However, if by any path he has advanced to a
nearer and more affecting view of his Redeemer than that to which he
has hitherto attained, let us rejoice and thank God. He has all along
been deficient in that simplicity of view which begets humility,
peace, and joy:--he refines too much on every subject which is
presented to his mind; muses when he should act; speculates when he
should pray; and is lost in the cold and unsubstantial clouds which
veil the mountain, when he might stand upon the serene summit in the
warm light of the Sun of righteousness.

“It was ever thus with him. In childhood we neglected to subdue his
will, and we shall suffer, and he himself will suffer for our fond but
mistaken indulgence.”

“I am sure, dear, that he was always affectionate and dutiful, and
always will be.”

“Nay, Constance, that does not follow. He will always love us, I am
well persuaded; but whether he will remain obedient to our wishes in
those trying scenes which may sooner or later be presented to our eyes
is very doubtful.”

“Well, Noble, it will be time enough to think of that when the trial
comes:--happen what may, I feel certain that all will be safe and
happy where you are. God ever takes good care of his own; and I always
feel that there is a blessing and a guard round about our dwelling,
for your dear sake.”

“Wife, how can you talk so weakly. What is there in two worms of the
earth, like you and me, that should procure for us an exemption from
calamity?--but this is unprofitable talking--sufficient unto the day
is the evil thereof--to enjoy is to obey--and the voice of
thanksgiving is melody. Let us bless God for past mercies, and bless
him by trust for all future goodness.”

Their conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Peter, to
say that Master Daws, the sour precisian, who, it may be remembered,
would have before prevented the customary sports and pleasures on the
festival of the Mayday, was at the gate, and wanted to see Parson
Noble, for a few minutes, on very urgent business.

To rise and go out and ask him into his study with all courtesy was,
of course, the duty of Noble, both as a brother minister and a
Christian gentleman; but it was with no doubt as to the nature and
object of his visit that he did so, and with a desire to bring their
interview to as early a close as might consist with common civility.

The contrast of the two parsons as they entered the study, and as
Master Daws seated himself in the tall chair which Noble drew forward
for him with a quick and rather, indeed, an impatient motion, was
comic in the extreme, and would have greatly diverted any of Noble’s
old college cronies, as it would, of a truth, the good vicar himself,
could he have looked on, and been spared the vexation of playing as a
principal in the dull performance.

Master Daws was a tall, gaunt, bony personage, of a stature exceeding
six feet by nearly two inches: he presented a rigid outline of sharp
angles from his cheek bones to his pointed and protuberant ankles. His
features were coarse; his complexion muddy; his eyes round and dull;
his forehead low; and there was an expression of bad temper about the
corners of his mouth. His black hair was cut close, and he had thin
weak eye-brows.

He seated himself with a slow solemnity of manner; placed his tall
greasy cane erect between his knees, and folded his clumsy hands upon
the top of it; turned up the whites of his eyes in a pretended
ejaculation; and in a drawling tone delivered himself of his
hypocritical errand as follows:--

“My dear brother in the Lord--thou art esteemed a master in
Israel--thou hast a name to live. I would fain hope that thou art not
a willing partaker of the sins of thy people; but verily they stink in
the nostrils of all true Christians, who are thy neighbours. We have
conferred together--we are sore grieved--we are ashamed for thy
sake--and I am come to reason with thee alone concerning the
abominations which are daily committed in thy parish, lest thou perish
and thy people with thee.”

The good parson listened to this strange address without anger,
without wonder, and without reply. The graceful ease of his composed
attitude of attention,--the clear light of his kind intelligent
eyes,--his high pale intellectual forehead,--his frame slender, and a
little bent with the weight of advancing years, and the thin white
hairs scattered on his temples,--would have made the sincere but
deluded fanatic hesitate to proceed, or would have melted his
remonstrance into all that was gentle and affectionate in expression.
On the conscious, the interested, and the incensed hypocrite, however,
his calmness had the opposite effect; and Master Daws, with a most
stern tyranny of tongue, in language clumsily misquoted from the
sacred books of the prophets, and grossly misapplied, went forward to
denounce the wrath of Heaven against the poor rustics of Cheddar and
their aged pastor. This speech we would rather leave to the
imagination of such readers as may be familiar with the incongruous
and disgusting jargon in which the sour zealots and the gloomy
sectarians, who were then daily extending their severe notions,
uttered their iron anathemas against the innocent gaieties of life. At
the close of his very offensive harangue, he drew forth from his
pocket a small volume in black letter, and presented it to the good
vicar with these words:--

“Brother, I have been perhaps too warm; but the fire burned within me,
and it is accounted the first duty of a servant to be faithful. It is
my zeal for the Lord;--and herewith, in love and compassion to thy
poor blinded people, and in pity to thy soul, I do present to thee for
thy private reading, and for the instruction of thy benighted mind,
this book, which is _The Anatomie of Abuses: containing a Discoverie
or briefe Summarie of such notable Vices and Corruptions as now raigne
in many Christian Countreyes of the Worlde: but especially in the
Countrey of Ailgna: together with most fearfull Examples of God’s
Judgements executed upon the Wicked for the same, as well in Ailgna of
late, as in other Places elsewhere. Very godly, to be read of all true
Christians every where; but most chiefly to be regarded in England.
Made Dialogue-wise by Phillip Stubbes._ This wordy title-page, placing
his spectacles upon his nose, he read slowly with a nasal whine, which
the compression of the ill constructed spectacles he wore not a little
assisted.”

“Neighbour Daws,” said Noble patiently, “I do not need thy service in
this matter, seeing I have on my own shelves the book of Master
Phillip Stubbes; and I deny not that it contains some godly maxims and
sound precepts, and it may have done some good by its ridicule of
many vanities, and its condemnation of many sins and abuses: but I
think he distinguishes not between things innocent and hurtful, and
tears up many pleasant flowers of God’s giving, under the dark fancy
that they are poisonous weeds;--for the rest that thou hast spoken
thyself concerning the little flock and fold over which the providence
of God hath made me the humble and willing shepherd, I will not call
thee unmannerly and uncharitable. I have heard thee with pain, though
with patience; and, while I give thee full credit for sincerity in thy
opinions, desire not to hear them further, now or ever again.”

As thus he spoke, he rose, and indicated by that action his wish that
the interview should not be prolonged. Daws also, with a horrible
smile upon his hideous face, in which was to be discerned all the mad
irritation of a mean person, who felt himself despised, and for the
moment baffled in producing alarm, raised himself slowly from his
seat, and answered,--“Satan, the prince of hell, is lord over thy
village and thy people--and he has blinded thy aged eyes, and sealed
thy dumb mouth:--verily the Lord shall visit for these things, and
that speedily;”--so saying, he stalked out with uplifted eyes, and as
he passed the threshold stamped the dust from his feet with a
vindictive action, and departed. “I wish that Cuthbert could have
witnessed this scene,” said Noble, as he saw the ruthless and envious
bigot pass forth out of the wicket, and stride angrily across the
church-yard; “but the wish is vain.”

Upon inquiring of Peter, he learned that, on the preceding evening,
this morose personage had found a dozen children playing round a small
bonfire, in a glen about half a mile from the village, and
celebrating, as a game of play, the festival of St. John’s eve,--the
observance of which had in the present reign been discontinued. The
joyous urchins, alike innocent of pagan or popish idolatry, were
dancing about the flames, and tossing flowers into the rivulet, which
flowed past the spot where they had kindled them, when Daws, who had
his secret designs in many a walk which he took to the neighbourhood
of Cheddar, came suddenly upon them, and driving them off with
execrations and blows, kicked the half burned sticks into the
water:--the little fearless sinners, however, making a swift and
active retreat up a rock, where they felt secure from pursuit,
revenged themselves by shouts and laughter; and in this the little
fellow who had witnessed the ludicrous fall and flight of this same
Daws on May morning, and who had been again recognised by him this
evening, led the merry chorus of impudent little rebels with
conspicuous glee.

Although Noble listened to this news with a smile, the severe and
mischievous spirit evinced during his interview with Daws, both in
language, tone, and manner, gave him more uneasiness than he chose to
impart to his wife, to whom he related much of what had passed between
them in a light and jocular vein. But, alone, he could not but be
impressed with the conviction, that a curate of this harsh and
malevolent character was a very uncomfortable and unsafe neighbour,
and might hereafter prove dangerous.

However, he had now plainly paid his last visit in the quality of
brother clergyman; and, if he was ever to come in that of enemy and
accuser, he could only do so under the restraining guidance of that
mighty, merciful, and mysterious Providence, which ordereth all things
wisely and well.

The good pastor was ill qualified to counteract the intrigues, or to
contend with the violence, of parties. He was a quietist, an optimist,
a dweller at home, enjoying to-day, and taking little anxious thought
for the morrow. His hours were divided between his parish, his study,
and his garden.

Old Blount, the most honest and hospitable of English franklins, was
the only neighbour with whom he could associate upon a footing of
mutual intercourse: but there was not a threshold in the village which
he did not often cross with some friendly inquiry or cheerful words
upon his lip; not a child, that would not rather run to than from him;
and the cottage curs were too familiar with his step and voice to do
more than raise and turn their heads as they lay watching at the
doors, when Noble passed by.

His chief recreation was the weekly visit to Wells. As regularly as
the appointed day came round, the worthy parson mounted his old white
mare, with her well stuffed saddle, rejoicing, in a seat covered with
cloth of a pale sky blue, much faded, and he was carried at a
meditative jogtrot to the fair and ancient city.

Here, at the house of his friend, he would refresh his spirits by
listening to (and sometimes joining in the rich performance of) the
best madrigals of the never surpassed composers of that day, and
taking his part in most pleasant and tuneful exercises on the viol and
the lute.

The troublous aspect of the times had of late somewhat altered the
character of these meetings; and the two holyday hours were now for
the most part, if not entirely, consumed in grave and anxious
consultations on public affairs. The severe spirit of the church
reformers of that period frowned upon every semblance of pleasure: to
them the song of harvest, the dance of the village green, and the
merry catch round the winter hearth, were things sinful and forbidden,
and the peal of the solemn organ in the house of prayer and praise
was hated as an abomination.

Yet they might have read in Scripture, in the very words of holy men
of God, that “the ear of the Lord listeneth to the song of the reaper,
and the joy of harvest; and that he delights not to turn the dance of
the vintage into mourning, nor to make the young cease from their
music:” but because the good provisions of God are daily abused by the
many, who consider not the gracious Giver of them, therefore they
would have the bread of all steeped in tears, and eaten with the
bitter herbs of mourning. Of a truth, in some degree every Christian
man, and minister more especially, must be a mourner, and is: but the
spirit would fail and faint if it might not also taste the rich
consolations of a hallowed joy; and if, amid the labours, the toils,
and the mean cares of the daily pilgrimage, man might not stoop to
gather the flower at his feet, or pause to listen to the feathered
choristers of God’s own temple, it would be to refuse and put away,
with a sullen unthankfulness, the comforts which the Father of mercies
has provided.

Of such enjoyments Noble was most fearlessly fond. To him the world of
nature was a vast and richly illuminated volume; on the various
pictures of which he could pore for ever, with all the wonder, and
with all the rapture, of childhood:--“his Father made them all”--that
was his feeling. The arrows of trouble and disappointment fell blunted
from a bosom, the shield of which was a God seen, acknowledged, and
felt, in all things visible, as the very essence of love.




CHAP. XI.

    He makes the infirmity of his temper pass for revelations.
                                                       BUTLER.


The summer months at Milverton rolled swiftly on, Cuthbert slowly, but
perfectly, regained his strength; and, early in August, he was once
more able to walk abroad and to take exercise on horseback; but his
vivacity and animation did not return with his health: he was no
longer the cheerful and entertaining companion at table, or in the
intervals of leisure. Sir Oliver found him a dull restraint, and
wearied of his presence: even his pupil, who was truly attached to
him, and was still, in the hours of study, delighted with his
preceptor, felt the sad and depressing change; and if it had not been
for the frequent visits of George Juxon, would have been disappointed
of many of those joyous and manly exercises which Juxon delighted to
encourage, and in which he excelled. The only diversions by which
Cuthbert could now be attracted were fencing, and the use of the broad
sword: but he practised them without a smile; and there was an
earnestness of attention and a seriousness of effort about him,
whenever he took a lesson from Juxon, which drove away smiles and
jokes. His stamp was angry; the glance of his eye rapid and piercing;
and after six weeks of occasional practice, when Juxon told him he
would soon be a strong and complete swordsman, the grave scholar, so
quiet and gentle in all his ways and words on common occasions,
hastily and vehemently exclaimed, “Thank God.”

“For what?” asked his good-tempered instructor, “for what do you thank
God so warmly?”

“It matters not, it matters not,” replied Cuthbert, hastily; “time
will show.”

Juxon put down his sword, and, looking him earnestly in the face,
asked him if he was well?

“What a strange question! quite well.”

“No, Master Cuthbert, it is not always that a man is well who calls
himself so, or even who thinks himself to be so. We are alone; we are
friends; tell me what has thus moved you; tell me what it is that has
so changed and saddened you; what are the dark purposes which lie hid
in your bosom?”

“Methinks this question is yet more strange. I have no purposes that
be not honest; none that will not bear the light of open day; but,
yet, I may not care to trouble others or myself by babbling of them.”

“Does the blow still rankle in your bosom, Cuthbert? Have you
retracted the pardon uttered on your bed? And do you mean to seek out
Sir Charles, and make him do battle for your revenge?”

“Master Juxon, that is not well asked: such purpose would be dark,
indeed: was not my pardon spoken before God, and at the grave’s mouth?
No; I forgave him as I hope to be forgiven; nay, in that it was a stab
which sought my life I forgave it more readily than I could have done
a blow; that, indeed, such slaves we are of pride, that might have
rankled still.”

“True--I had forgotten--and my words have wronged you; but, Cuthbert,
whatever are your purposes, they do not make you happy. I met you the
other day riding much faster than is your wont, and your countenance
was clouded, and your teeth were set, as if in hottest anger, and you
would not stop, but only muttered a good morrow as you passed swiftly
by. What do all these things mean?”

“They mean that I am sick at heart for England; sick for the meek
man’s wrongs. I had just then met an aged countryman, his furrowed
cheek newly branded, for a churchyard brawl: I questioned him closely,
and found him a sufferer for conscience’ sake, falsely accused and
persecuted by a godless parson of his parish.”

“Cuthbert, did the countryman tell truth? Did he name the parish and
the parson?”

“He did; I know them well: in Oxfordshire was this outrage done, and
the crime is not three months old.”

“Well, here is a case of wrong to be made known and to be redressed.
Scandals there must be, even in the most sacred offices, when they are
held by mere men. Some are cruel, and some are wanton by nature, and
to punish these we have our judges and our bishops.”

“Yes we have--and the same who ruled the decisions of the
Star-chamber. The wrong redressed! it would be smiled at; and if it
were punished, what then? There’s nothing but the grave-worm can take
away the brand from the old man’s cheek: his grandchildren will put
their little fingers on the mark and ask the story of it, and he will
tell them what he told me, and more. It is a hard world, Juxon.”

“And always was, and always will be. Legislation is a coarse thing:
some innocent will always suffer with the guilty.”

“The guilty! is liberty of conscience guilt? Look you, Master Juxon,
there are good men and true ready to stand up for that liberty.”

“And for a little more, perhaps: your secret is out; so, instead of
our sword-play being mere exercise for pastime, after college fashion,
I have been teaching the noble science of defence to a stout
Parliamentarian, to an enemy of mother church.”

“Nay; no enemy to any persons or any institutions, but to the
oppressor every where, and to oppression every where, by whatever
titles or names they may be disguised.”

“You confess, then, that you wish an appeal to the sword.”

“I say not so; but if it come, as it may, and as in my present
judgment it surely will, I shall be well pleased that my fingers have
been taught to fight; for I would not be wanting in the day of
battle.”

“I have heard you, Cuthbert, speak words of Christ’s religion since
your late illness, which I have thought of so sweet and heavenly a
temper, as might well engage all men to follow the truth in love.
Surely the weapons of a Christian’s warfare are not carnal.”

“I tell you, the fat heart of the oppressor is proof against all
other, and they that govern with the headsman’s axe must look to be
wounded by the patriot’s sword.”

“Stop, Cuthbert, we’ll say no more on this subject--you are standing
upon a precipice--the gulf beneath is treason.”

“Not against Heaven, Juxon; and it is a poor thing to me to be judged
by my fellow man.”

“Yes, Cuthbert, against Heaven. Your father will say so.”

“Never; though it is true that my father is old and timid, and he
would bear the errors of the crown in charity and in hope, rather than
see them openly opposed by arms.”

“And you would punish them in the field of battle?”

“And gain a victory over the crown for the greater honour and more
golden purity of the crown itself!”

“Are you so weak, Cuthbert, as to think that a crown, beaten from a
king’s head by the sword, and lying soiled by the dust of a fall, can
ever be replaced on the same brows with honour?--No! but among the
successful rebels, some stern spirit would be found to wipe it and put
it on; whose sceptre would have no peaceful globe surmounted by a
dove; but would rather be a naked sword crimsoned to the hilt with
blood.”

“Never, never:--you, like many good and generous persons, are the
creature of prejudice and of circumstance; you do not see, and you
will not believe, that the temple of true freedom needs only to be
opened, and all the virtuous and the holy will flock there to worship
in peace, and they will guard it alike from the rude tyrant and from
the slavish rabble.”

“Cuthbert, you dream, and will awake some day in bitterness of soul.
But if these be your sentiments--if thoughts like these fill your mind
and colour your gloomy fancies--no wonder that your looks are sad.”

“My fancies are not gloomy. They are solemn. I am not sad, but I am
serious. In visions of the night, I have seen this earth
regenerate--its people walking in peace--holiness on the bells of the
horses. I have heard the voice of thanksgiving and the song of praise.
I have listened for sighs, and looked for tears, but there were none.
I have asked about their happiness, and they have told me, ‘In this
region there is no one to hurt or to destroy:--we do not teach every
man his neighbour, for from the least to the greatest we all know
God.’ Such have been my revelations; and I have been called, and
chosen by name, to join that sacred band, which is to awaken a
slumbering and captive people, and lead them forward to prepare the
way for that monarchy of truth and universal love which is even now
about to descend and bless mankind. The spear shall be broken, the
sword turned into a ploughshare, and the sovereign Lord of all shall
stand a second time upon the earth, and proclaim his promised reign of
holiness and peace.”

Juxon listened to this rhapsody with awe and pain; and not without an
effort to shake the strong delusion, which was evidently taking a fast
hold upon the mind of Cuthbert.

“My dear friend,” he said, laying his hand gently upon his arm, “I
confess that you greatly alarm me. Consider that, for the first two
months after your wound, you were very weak in body; you were often
obliged to have recourse to opiates to procure rest; and you was not
in a state to examine the impressions made on your mind, and to
separate illusion from reality. There is nothing wonderful in these
phantasma having floated past your mind’s eye: it is with sounds as
with sights; the music of a dream is often clear and ravishing to the
mind’s ear; and our name may be thus, to our sleeping fancy, very
distinctly called and connected with some message or charge of solemn
import spoken as by a voice from Heaven. Or, it may be, Cuthbert, that
the enemy of your soul, knowing that you can only be led aside from
the path

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