Chapter Twelve.A Glimpse of the Hot Gospeller.“In service which Thy love appointsThere are no bonds for me;My secret heart has learned the truthWhich makes Thy children free:A life of self-renouncing loveIs a life of liberty.”Anna L. Waring.“I hold not with you there, Parson!”The suddenness of this appeal would have startled any one less calm and self-controlled than the Reverend Robert Tremayne, who was taking off his surplice in the vestry after morning prayers one Wednesday, when this unexpected announcement reached him through the partially open door. But it was not the Rector’s habit to show much emotion of any kind, whatever he might feel.“Pray you, come forward,” he said quietly, in answer to the challenge.The door, pushed wide open by the person without, revealed a handsome old man, lithe and upright still,—whose hair was pure white, and his brown eyes quick and radiant. He marched in and seated himself upon the settle, grasping a stout oaken stick in both hands, and gazing up into the Rector’s face. His dress, no less than his manners, showed that notwithstanding the blunt and eccentric nature of his greeting, he was by birth a gentleman.“And wherein hold you not with me, Sir, I pray you?” inquired Mr Tremayne with some amusement.“In your tolerating of evil opinion.”“I cry you mercy. What evil opinion have I tolerated?”“If you will tolerate men which hold evil opinions, you must needs tolerate evil opinion.”“I scantly see that.”“Maybe you see this?” demanded the stranger, pulling a well-worn Bible from a capacious pocket.“My sight is sharp enough for so much,” returned Mr Tremayne good-naturedly.“Well, and I tell you,” said the stranger, poising the open Bible between his hands, “there is no such word as toleration betwixt the two backs of this book!”The two backs of the book were brought together, by way of emphasising the assertion, with a bang which might almost have been heard to the parsonage.“There is no suchword, I grant you.”“No, Sir!—and there is no such thing.”“That hangeth, I take it, on what the word is held to signify.”“Shall I tell you what it signifieth?”“Pray you, so do.”“Faint-heartedness, Sir!—weakness—recreancy—cowardliness—shamedness of the truth!”“An ill-sounding list of names,” said Mr Tremayne quietly. “And one of none whereof I would by my good-will be guilty.—Pray you, whom have I the honour to discourse withal?”“A very pestilent heretic, that Queen Mary should have burned, and forgat.”“She did not that with many,” was the significant answer.“She did rare like to it with a lad that I knew in King Edward’s days, whose name was Robin Tremayne.”“Master Underhill, my dear old friend!” cried the Rector, grasping his visitor’s hand warmly. “I began these two minutes back to think I should know those brown eyes, but I might not set a name thereto all at once.”“Ha! the ‘pestilent heretic’ helped thee to it, I reckon!” replied the guest laughing. “Ay, Robin, this is he thou knewest of old time. We will fight out our duello another time, lad. I am rare glad to see thee so well-looking.”“From what star dropped you, Master Underhill? or what fair wind blew you hither?”“I am dropped out of Warwickshire, lad, if that be a star; and I came hither of a galloway’s back (but if he were the wind, ’twas on the stillest night of the year!) And how goes it with Mrs Thekla? I saw her last in her bride’s gear.”“She will be rarely glad to see you, old friend; and so, I warrant you, will our mother, Mistress Rose. Will you take the pain to go with me to mine house?—where I will ensure you of a good bed and a rare welcome.”“Wilt thou ensure me of twain, lad?” asked the old man, with a comic twinkle in his eyes.“Twain! What, which of all my small ancient friends be with you?—Ay, and that as hearty as to yourself.—Is it Hal or Ned?”“Thou art an ill guesser, Robin: ’tis neither Ned nor Hal. Thysmallfriends, old lad, be every man and woman of them higher than their father. Come, let us seek the child. I left her a-poring and posing over one of the tombs in the church.—What, Eunice!—I might as well have left my staff behind as leave her.”It was plainly to be perceived, by the loud call which resounded through the sacred edifice, that Mr Underhill was not fettered by any superstitious reverence for places. A comely woman answered the call,—in years about thirty-seven, in face particularly bright and pleasant. The last time that Mr Tremayne had seen her, Eunice Underhill was about as high as the table.“And doth Mistress Rose yet live?” said her father, as they went towards the parsonage. “She must be a mighty old grandame now. And all else be gone, as I have heard, that were of old time in the Lamb?”“All else, saving Barbara Polwhele,—you mind Barbara, the chamber—maiden?—and Walter’s daughter, Clare, which is now a maid of twenty years.”“Ah, I would fain see yon lass of little Walter’s. What manner of wife did the lad wed?”“See her—ask not me,” said the Rector smiling.“Now, how read I that? Which of the Seven Sciences hath she lost her way in?”“In no one of them all.”“Come, I will ask Mrs Thekla.”Mr Tremayne laughed.“You were best see her for yourself, as I cast no doubt you soon will. How long time may we hope to keep you?”“Shall you weary of us under a month?”Mr Underhill was warmly enough assured that there was no fear of any such calamity.Most prominent of his party—which was Puritan of the Puritans—was Edward Underhill of Honyngham, the Hot Gospeller. His history was a singular one. Left an heir and an orphan at a very early age, he had begun life as a riotous reveller. Soon after he reached manhood, God touched his heart—by what agency is not recorded. Then he “fell to reading the Scriptures and following the preachers,”—throwing his whole soul into the service of Christ, as he had done before into that of Satan. Had any person acquainted with the religious world of that day been asked, on the outbreak of Queen Mary’s persecution, to name the first ten men who would suffer, it is not improbable that Edward Underhill’s name would have been found somewhere on the list. But, to the astonishment of all who knew his decided views, and equally decided character, he had survived the persecution, with no worse suffering than a month spent in Newgate, and a tedious illness as the result. Nor was this because he had either hidden his colours, or had struck them. Rather he kept his standard flying to the breeze, and defied the foe. No reason can be given for his safety, save that still the God of Daniel could send His angel and shut the lions’ mouths, that they should do His prophets no hurt.On the accession of Elizabeth, Underhill returned for a short time to his London home in Wood Street, Cheapside; but die soon went back to the family seat in Warwickshire, where he had since lived as a country squire. (Note 1.)“Yet these last few months gone have I spent in London,” said he, “for my Hal (name true, character imaginary) would needs have me. Now, Robin, do thou guess what yon lad hath gat in his head. I will give thee ten shots.”“No easy task, seeing I ne’er had the good fortune to behold him. What manner of lad is he?”“Eunice?” said her father, referring the question to her.Eunice laughed. “Hal is mighty like his father, Master Tremayne. He hath a stout will of his own, nor should you quickly turn him thence.”“Lo you, now, what conditions doth this jade give me!” laughed Underhill. “A stubborn old brute, that will hear no reason!”“Hal will not hear o’ermuch, when he is set on aught,” said Eunice.“Well,” said Mr Tremayne thoughtfully, “so being, I would guess that he had set his heart, to be Archbishop of Canterbury, or else Lord Privy Seal.”“Ma foi!” interposed Mrs Rose, “but I would guess that no son of Mr Underhill should tarry short of a king. Mind you not,hermano, that I did once hear you to say that you would not trust your own self, had you the chance to make your Annette a queen?”“Dear heart, Mistress Rose! I would the lad had stayed him at nought worser. Nay, he is not for going up the ladder, but down. Conceive you, nought will serve him but a journey o’er seas, and to set him up a home in the Queen’s Majesty’s country of Virginia—yea, away in the plantations, amongst all the savages and wild beasts, and men worser than either, that have been of late carried thither from this land, for to be rid of them. ‘Come, lad,’ said I to him, ‘content thee with eating of batatas (the Spanish word of whichpotatois a corruption) and drinking of tobacco (smoking tobacco was originally termeddrinkingit), and leave alone this mad fantasy.’ But not he, in good sooth! Verily, for to go thither as a preacher and teacher, with hope to reform the ill men,—that had been matter of sore peril, and well to be thought on; yet would I not have said him nay, had the Lord called him to it;—but to make hishome!”And Mr Underhill stopped short, as if words were too weak adequately to convey his feelings.“Maybe the Lord hath called him to that, old friend,” said the Rector. “His eyes be on Virginia, no less than England.”“God forbid I should deny it! Yet there is such gear as tempting the Lord. For my part,—but la! I am an old man, and the old be less venturesome than the young,—yet for me, I see not what should move a man to dwell any whither out of his own country, without he must needs fly to save his life.”“Had all men been of your mind,” observed Mr Tremayne with a smile, “there had ne’er been any country inhabited save one, until men were fairly pushed thence by lack of room.”“Well!—and wherefore should any quit home until he be pushed out?”“Ask at Hal,” said the Rector laughing.“No have I so? Yea, twenty times twice told: but all I may win from the young ne’er-do-well is wise saws that the world must be peopled (why so, I marvel?),—and that there is pleasure in aventure (a deal more, I reckon, in keeping of one’s carcase safe and sound!)—and that some men must needs dwell in strange lands, and the like. Well-a-day! wherefore should they so? Tell me that, Robin Tremayne.”“I will, old friend, when mine amaze is o’er at hearing of such words from one Ned Underhill.”“Amaze!—what need, trow?”“But little need, when one doth call to mind that the most uncommon of all things is consistency. Only when one hath been used for forty years and more to see a man (I name him not) ever foremost in all perilous aventure, and thrusting him forward into whatsoever danger there were as into a bath of rosewater, ’tis some little surprise that taketh one to hear from the self-same party that ’tis never so much sweeter to keep safe and sound at home.”Mr Underhill threw his head back, and indulged in a hearty peal of laughter.“On my word, Robin, thou ticklest me sore! But what, lad!—may a man not grow prudent in his old age?”“By all manner of means, or in his youth no less; but this will I say, that the last prudent man I looked to set eyes on should bear the name of Underhill.”“Well-a-day! Here is Eunice made up of prudence.”“She taketh after her mother, trow,” replied the Rector dryly.“Come, I’ll give o’er, while I have some bones left whole.—And what thinkest, lad, of the outlook of matters public at this time?”“Nay, what think you, that have been of late in London?”“Robin,” said Mr Underhill gravely, “dost mind, long years gone, when King Edward his reign was well-nigh o’er, the ferment men’s minds gat in touching the succession?”“Eh, la belle journée!” said Mrs Rose waggishly. “I do well mind the fermentyouwere in, Mr Underhill, and how you did push your Queen Mary down all the throats of your friends: likewise how sweetly she did repay you, bidding you for a month’s visit to her palace of Newgate! Pray you, shall it be the same again,hermano?”“Dear heart! What a memory have you, Mistress Rose!” said Mr Underhill, with another hearty laugh. “It shall scantly be Newgate again, metrusteth: the rather, since there is no Queen Mary to thrust adown your throats—thank the Lord for that and all other His mercies. He that we may speak of is no Papist, whatso else; but I mistake greatly, Robin, if somewhat the same matter shall not come o’er again, should it please God to do a certain thing.”Mr Underhill spoke thus vaguely, having no wish to finish his days on the gallows; as men had done ere now, for little more than a hint that the reigning Sovereign might not live for ever.“And when the ferment come, under what flag must we look for you, Mr Underhill?” asked. Mrs Tremayne.“Well,” said he, “Harry Eighth left a lad and two lasses, and we have had them all. But Harry Seventh left likewise a lad and two lasses; and we have had the lad, but ne’er a one of the lasses.”“Both these lasses be dead,” responded the Rector.“They be so. But the first left a lad and a lass; and that lad left a lass, and that lass left a lad—which is alive and jolly.”This meant, that Queen Margaret of Scotland, elder sister of Henry the Eighth, had issue King James the Fifth, whose daughter was Mary Queen of Scots, and her son was James the Sixth, then living.“You count the right lieth there?” queried Mr Tremayne.Mr Underhill nodded his head decidedly.“And is—yonder party—well or ill affected unto the Gospellers?—how hear you?”“Lutheran to the back-bone—with no love for Puritans, as men do now begin to call us Hot Gospellers.”“Thus is the Queen, mecounteth: and we have thriven well under her, and have full good cause to thank God for her.”“Fifty years gone, Robin—when she was but a smatchet (a very young person)—I said that lass would do well. There is a touch of old Hal in her—not too much, but enough to put life and will into her.”“There shall scantly be that in him.”“Nay, I’ll not say so much. Meg had a touch of Hal, too. ’Twas ill turning her down one road an’ she took the bit betwixt her teeth, and had a mind to go the other. There was less of it in Mall, I grant you. And as to yon poor luckless loon, Mall’s heir,—if he wit his own mind, I reckon ’tis as much as a man may bargain for. England ne’er loveth such at her helm—mark you that, Robin. She may bear with them, but she layeth no affiance in them.”Mr Underhill’s hearers knew that by the poor luckless loon, he meant Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, the representative of the Princess Mary, younger sister of Henry the Eighth. He was heir of England under Henry’s will, and might, if he had chosen it, have been a very formidable opponent of King James.“There was trial made, in King Harry’s days,” said the Rector thoughtfully, “to join the two Crowns of England and Scotland, by marrying of King Edward, that then was Prince, with their young Queen Mary.”“Well-a-day!—what changes had been, had that matter come to perfection!”“It were a mighty great book, friend, that should be writ, were all set down that might have happened if things had run other than they have done. But I pray you, what outlook is now for the Gospellers—or Puritans, if they be so called—these next few years? Apart from the Court—be they in good odour in London, or how?”“Be they in good odour in Heaven, you were better to ask. What is any great town but a sink of wickedness? And when did ill men hold good men in esteem?”“Ah, Mr Underhill, but there is difficulty beside that,” said Mrs Rose, shaking her head. “Wherefore, will you tell me, cannot the good men be content to think all the same thing, and not go quarrel, quarrel, like the little boys at play?”“So they should, Mistress Rose!—so they should!” said Mr Underhill uncompromisingly. “What with these fantasies and sectaries and follies—well-a-day! were I at the helm, there should be ne’er an opinion save one.”“That is the very thing Queen Mary thought,” said Mr Tremayne, looking amused.“Dear heart! what will the lad say next?” demanded Mr Underhill in a surprised tone.“’Tis truth, old friend. See you not that to keep men of one opinion, the only way is to slay them that be of the contrary? Living men must differ. Only the dead ne’er wrangle touching aught.”“Eh, Robin, man! ‘Live peaceably with all men.’”“‘As much as lieth in you.’ Paul was wiser than you, saving your presence.”“But, Robin, my son,” said Mrs Rose, “I would not say only, for such matters as men may differ in good reason. They cannot agree on the greater things,mon chéri,—nay, nor on the little, littles no more.—Look you, Mr Underhill, we have in this parish a man that call himself a Brownist—I count he think the brown the only colour that is right; if he had made the world, all the flowers should be brown, and the leaves black: eh,ma foi! what of a beautiful world to live in!—Bien! this last May Day, Sir Thomas Enville set up the maypole on the green. ‘Come, Master,’ he said to the Brownist, ‘you dance round the maypole?’—‘Nay, nay,’ saith he, ‘it savoureth of Popery.’ ‘Well,’ quoth he, ‘then you come to prayer in the church! There is nothing against that, I trow?’—‘Good lack, nay!’ saith he, ‘’tis an idle form. I cannot pray without the Spirit aid me; and the Spirit will not be bounden down unto dead forms.’ And so, Mr Underhill, they fall to wrangling. Now, is it not sad? Not only they will not take their pleasure together, but they will not say their prayers together no more. Yet they all look to meet in Heaven. They will not wrangle and quarrel there, I trow? Then why can they not be at peace these few days the sooner?”This was a long speech for Mrs Rose.“Well, to speak truth,” said Mr Underhill, “I could find in mine heart to cry ‘Hail, fellow!’ to your Brownist over the maypole: though I see not wherein it savoureth of Popery, but rather of Paganism. Howbeit, as I well know, Popery and Paganism be sisters, and dwell but over the way the one from the other. But as to the Common Prayer being but a form, and that dead,—why, I pray you, what maketh it a dead form save the dead heart of him that useth the same? The very Word of God is but a dead thing, if the soul of him that readeth it be dead.”A certain section of the laity are earnestly petitioning the clergy for “a hearty service.” Could they make a more absurd request? The heart is in the worshipper, not in the service. And who can bring his heart to it but himself?“Ma foi!” said Mrs Rose, with a comical little grimace, “but indeed I did think, when we were set at rest from the Queen Mary and her burnings, that we could have lived at peace the ones with the others.”“Then which counted you to be rid of, Mistress Rose—the childre of God or the childre of the devil?. So long as both be in the world, I reckon there’ll not be o’er much peace,” bluntly replied Underhill.“Mind you what my dear father was used to say,” asked Mr Tremayne,—“‘Afore the kingdom must come the King’? Ah, dear friends, we have all too little of Christ. ‘We shall be satisfied,’ and we shall be of one mind in all things, only when we wake up ‘after His likeness.’”Clare Avery and Eunice Underhill struck up a warm friendship. Eunice (name and dates true, character imaginary) was one of the few women who keep “the dew of their youth,” and in freshness, innocence, and ignorance of this evil world, she was younger than many girls not half her age. Her simplicity put Clare at ease, while her experience of life awoke respect. Clare seized her opportunity one day, while taking a long walk with Eunice, to obtain the opinion of the latter on the point which still interested her, and compare it with that of Mrs Tremayne. Why it was easier to talk to Eunice than to those at home, Clare could not decide. Perhaps, had she discovered the reason, she might not have found it very flattering to her self-love.“Mistress Eunice, think you it easy to be content with small gear?”“You would say with lack of goods?” asked Eunice.“Nay; but with the having to deal with petty, passing matter, in the stead of some noble deed that should be worthy the doing.”“I take you now, Mistress Clare. And I can feel for your perplexity, seeing I have known the same myself.”“Oh, you have so?” responded Clare eagerly.“Ay, I have felt as though the work set me to do were sheer waste of such power and knowledge as God had given unto me; and have marvelled (I would speak it with reverence) what the Lord would be at, that He thus dealt with me. Petty things—mean things—little passing matter, as you said, that none shall be the better for to-morrow; wherefore must I do these? I have made a pudding, maybe; I have shaken up a bed; I have cut an old gown into a kirtle. And to-morrow the pudding shall be eaten, and the bed shall lack fresh straw, and ere long the gown shall be worn to rags. But I shall live for ever. Wherefore should a soul be set to such work which shall live for ever?”“Ay,—you know!” said Clare, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction. “Now tell me, Mistress Eunice, what answer find you to this question? Shall it be with you, as with other, that these be my tasks at school?”“That is verily sooth, Mistress Clare; yet there is another light wherein I love the better to look thereat. And it is this: that in this world be no little things.”“What would you say, Mistress Eunice? In good sooth, it seemeth me the rather, there be few great.”“I cry you mercy,” said Eunice, with her bright smile. “Lo’ you,—’tis after this fashion. The pudding I have made a man shall eat, and thereby be kept alive. This man shall drop a word to another, which one passing by shall o’erhear,—on the goodness and desirableness of learning, I will say. Well, this last shall turn it o’er in his mind, and shall determine to send his lad to school, and have him well learned. Time being gone, this lad shall write a book, or shall preach a sermon, whereby, through the working of God’s Spirit, many men’s hearts shall be touched, and led to consider the things that belong unto their peace. Look you, here is a chain; and in this great chain one little link is the pudding which I made, twenty years gone.”“But the man could have eaten somewhat else.”“Soothly; but he did not, you see.”“Or another than you could have made the pudding.”“Soothly, again: but I was to make it.”Clare considered this view of the case.“All things in this world, Mistress Clare, be links in some chain. In Dutchland (Germany), many years gone now, a young man that studied in an university there was caught in an heavy thunderstorm. He grew sore affrighted; all his sins came to his mind: and he prayed Saint Anne to dispel the storm, promising that he would straightway become a monk. The storm rolled away, and he suffered no harm. But he was mindful of his vow, and he became a monk. Well, some time after, having a spare half-hour, he went to the library to get him a book. As God would have it, he reached down a Latin Bible, the like whereof he had ne’er seen aforetime. Through the reading of this book—for I am well assured you know that I speak of Luther—came about the full Reformation of religion which, thanks be to God! is now spread abroad. And all this cometh—to speak after the manner of men—in that one Martin was at one time affrighted with the thunder; and, at another time, reached him down a book. Nay, Mistress Clare—in God’s world be no little things!”“Mistress Eunice, in so saying, you make life to look a mighty terrible thing, and full of care.”“And is life not a most terrible thing to them that use it not aright? But for them that do trust them unto God’s guidance, and search His Word to see what He would have them do, and seek alway and above all things but to do His will,—it may be life is matter for meditation, yea, and watchfulness; but methinks none for care. God will see to the chain: ’tis He, not we, that is weaver thereof. We need but to be careful, each of his little link.”“My links be wearyful ones!” said Clare with a little sigh. “’Tis to cut, and snip, and fit, and sew, and guard, and mend. My cousin Lysken dealeth with men and women, I with linen and woollen. Think you it strange that her work should seem to me not only the nobler, but the sweeter belike?”“Methinks I have seen Mistress Lysken to deal pretty closely with linen and woollen, sithence Father and I came hither,” said Eunice smiling. “But in very deed, Mistress Clare, ’tis but nature that it so should seem unto you. Yet did it ever come into your mind, I pray you, that we be poor judges of that which is high and noble? I marvel if any save Christ and Gabriel e’er called John Baptist a great man. Yet he was great in the sight of the Lord. Yea, that word, ‘more than a prophet’ was the very accolade of the King of the whole world. You know, Mistress Clare, that if the Queen’s Majesty should call a man ‘Sir Robert,’ though it were but a mistake, and he no knight, that very word from her should make him one. And the King of Heaven can make no mistake; His great men be great men indeed. Now whether would you rather, to be great with men, or with God?”“Oh, with God, undoubtedly!” said Clare shyly.“It seemeth me,” said Eunice, knitting her brows a little, “there be three questions the which your heart may ask himself touching your work.Whereforedo I this? You will very like say, Because you be bidden. Good. But then—Howdo I this?—is it in the most excellent way I can? And yet again,For whomdo I this? That last lieth deepest of all.”“Why, I do it for my mother and Aunt Rachel,” said Clare innocently.“Good. But wherefore not, henceforward, do it for God?”“For God, Mistress Eunice!”“’Tis the true touchstone of greatness. Nought can be little that a man doth for God; like as nought can be great that a man doth but for himself.”“Lysken can work for God,” said Clare thoughtfully; “but I, who do but draw needles in and out—”“Cannot draw them for God? Nay, but Paul thought not so. He biddeth you ‘whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, doallto the glory of God.’ But mind you, only the very best work is to His glory: that is to say, onlyyourvery best. He measures not Mall’s work by Jane’s, but he looketh at the power of both, and judgeth if they have wrought their best or no. Jane may have finished the better piece of work, but if Mall have wrought to her utmost, and Jane not so, then Mall’s work shall take first rank, and Jane’s must fall behind.”“That is a new thought unto me, Mistress Eunice—that I can do such work for God. I did indeed account that I could be patient under the same, for to please Him: and I could have thought that the saving of a child from drowning, or the leading of a ship to battle, and so forth, might be done as unto God: but to cut and sew and measure!”“I would ’twere not a new thought to many another,” answered Eunice. “But I guess we can sew well or ill; and we can cut carefully or carelessly; and we can measure truly or untruly. Truth is no little matter, Mistress Clare; neither is diligence; nor yet a real, honest, hearty endeavouring of one’s self to please the Lord, who hath given us our work, in every little thing. Moreover, give me leave to tell you,—you may be set a great work, and you may fail to see the greatness thereof. I mind me, when I was something younger than you be, and my brother Hal was but a little child, he fell into sore danger, and should belike have been killed, had none stretched out hand to save him. Well, as the Lord in His mercy would have it, I saw his peril, and I ran and snatched up the child in the very nick of time. There was but an half-minute to do it. And at afterward, men praised me, and said I had done a great thing. But think you it bare the face of a great thing to me, as I was in the doing thereof? Never a whit. I ne’er tarried to think if it were a great thing or a small: I thought neither of me nor of my doing, but alonely of our Hal, and how to set him in safety. They said it was a great matter, sith I had risked mine own life. But, dear heart! I knew not that I risked aught—I ne’er thought once thereon. Had I known it, I would have done the same, God helping me: but I knew it not. Now, whether was this a great thing or a small?”“I have no doubt to say, a great.”“Maybe, Mistress Clare, when you and I shall stand—as I pray God we may!—among the sheep at the right hand of Christ our Saviour,—when the books be opened, and the dead judged according to that which is written of them,—He may pick out some little petty deed (to our eyes), and may say thereof, This was a great thing in My sight. And it may be, too, that the deeds we counted great He shall pass by without any mention. Dear heart, let us do the small deeds to our utmost, and the great are sure to follow. ‘He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.’ And you know what He saith touching that poor cup of cold water, which assuredly is but a right small thing to give. Think you, if the Queen’s Highness were passing here but now, and should drop her glove, and you picked up the same and offered it to Her Grace,—should you e’er forget it? I trow not. Yet what a petty matter—to pick up a dropped glove! ‘Ah, but,’ say you, ‘It was the Queen’s glove—that wrought the difference.’ Verily so. Then set the like gilding upon your petty deeds. It is the King’s work. You have wrought for the King. Your guerdon is His smile—is it not enough?—and your home shall be within His house for ever.”“Ay!” said Clare, drawing a long sigh—not of care: “it is enough, Mistress Eunice.”“And He hath no lack of our work,” added Eunice softly. “It isgivento us to do, like as it was given unto Peter and John to suffer. Methinks he were neither a good child nor a thankful, that should refuse to stretch forth hand for his Father’s gift.”Note 1. I have not been able to ascertain the true date of Underhill’s death, but he was living on the 6th of March 1568. (Rot. Pat., 10 Elizabeth, Part Two.)
“In service which Thy love appointsThere are no bonds for me;My secret heart has learned the truthWhich makes Thy children free:A life of self-renouncing loveIs a life of liberty.”Anna L. Waring.
“In service which Thy love appointsThere are no bonds for me;My secret heart has learned the truthWhich makes Thy children free:A life of self-renouncing loveIs a life of liberty.”Anna L. Waring.
“I hold not with you there, Parson!”
The suddenness of this appeal would have startled any one less calm and self-controlled than the Reverend Robert Tremayne, who was taking off his surplice in the vestry after morning prayers one Wednesday, when this unexpected announcement reached him through the partially open door. But it was not the Rector’s habit to show much emotion of any kind, whatever he might feel.
“Pray you, come forward,” he said quietly, in answer to the challenge.
The door, pushed wide open by the person without, revealed a handsome old man, lithe and upright still,—whose hair was pure white, and his brown eyes quick and radiant. He marched in and seated himself upon the settle, grasping a stout oaken stick in both hands, and gazing up into the Rector’s face. His dress, no less than his manners, showed that notwithstanding the blunt and eccentric nature of his greeting, he was by birth a gentleman.
“And wherein hold you not with me, Sir, I pray you?” inquired Mr Tremayne with some amusement.
“In your tolerating of evil opinion.”
“I cry you mercy. What evil opinion have I tolerated?”
“If you will tolerate men which hold evil opinions, you must needs tolerate evil opinion.”
“I scantly see that.”
“Maybe you see this?” demanded the stranger, pulling a well-worn Bible from a capacious pocket.
“My sight is sharp enough for so much,” returned Mr Tremayne good-naturedly.
“Well, and I tell you,” said the stranger, poising the open Bible between his hands, “there is no such word as toleration betwixt the two backs of this book!”
The two backs of the book were brought together, by way of emphasising the assertion, with a bang which might almost have been heard to the parsonage.
“There is no suchword, I grant you.”
“No, Sir!—and there is no such thing.”
“That hangeth, I take it, on what the word is held to signify.”
“Shall I tell you what it signifieth?”
“Pray you, so do.”
“Faint-heartedness, Sir!—weakness—recreancy—cowardliness—shamedness of the truth!”
“An ill-sounding list of names,” said Mr Tremayne quietly. “And one of none whereof I would by my good-will be guilty.—Pray you, whom have I the honour to discourse withal?”
“A very pestilent heretic, that Queen Mary should have burned, and forgat.”
“She did not that with many,” was the significant answer.
“She did rare like to it with a lad that I knew in King Edward’s days, whose name was Robin Tremayne.”
“Master Underhill, my dear old friend!” cried the Rector, grasping his visitor’s hand warmly. “I began these two minutes back to think I should know those brown eyes, but I might not set a name thereto all at once.”
“Ha! the ‘pestilent heretic’ helped thee to it, I reckon!” replied the guest laughing. “Ay, Robin, this is he thou knewest of old time. We will fight out our duello another time, lad. I am rare glad to see thee so well-looking.”
“From what star dropped you, Master Underhill? or what fair wind blew you hither?”
“I am dropped out of Warwickshire, lad, if that be a star; and I came hither of a galloway’s back (but if he were the wind, ’twas on the stillest night of the year!) And how goes it with Mrs Thekla? I saw her last in her bride’s gear.”
“She will be rarely glad to see you, old friend; and so, I warrant you, will our mother, Mistress Rose. Will you take the pain to go with me to mine house?—where I will ensure you of a good bed and a rare welcome.”
“Wilt thou ensure me of twain, lad?” asked the old man, with a comic twinkle in his eyes.
“Twain! What, which of all my small ancient friends be with you?—Ay, and that as hearty as to yourself.—Is it Hal or Ned?”
“Thou art an ill guesser, Robin: ’tis neither Ned nor Hal. Thysmallfriends, old lad, be every man and woman of them higher than their father. Come, let us seek the child. I left her a-poring and posing over one of the tombs in the church.—What, Eunice!—I might as well have left my staff behind as leave her.”
It was plainly to be perceived, by the loud call which resounded through the sacred edifice, that Mr Underhill was not fettered by any superstitious reverence for places. A comely woman answered the call,—in years about thirty-seven, in face particularly bright and pleasant. The last time that Mr Tremayne had seen her, Eunice Underhill was about as high as the table.
“And doth Mistress Rose yet live?” said her father, as they went towards the parsonage. “She must be a mighty old grandame now. And all else be gone, as I have heard, that were of old time in the Lamb?”
“All else, saving Barbara Polwhele,—you mind Barbara, the chamber—maiden?—and Walter’s daughter, Clare, which is now a maid of twenty years.”
“Ah, I would fain see yon lass of little Walter’s. What manner of wife did the lad wed?”
“See her—ask not me,” said the Rector smiling.
“Now, how read I that? Which of the Seven Sciences hath she lost her way in?”
“In no one of them all.”
“Come, I will ask Mrs Thekla.”
Mr Tremayne laughed.
“You were best see her for yourself, as I cast no doubt you soon will. How long time may we hope to keep you?”
“Shall you weary of us under a month?”
Mr Underhill was warmly enough assured that there was no fear of any such calamity.
Most prominent of his party—which was Puritan of the Puritans—was Edward Underhill of Honyngham, the Hot Gospeller. His history was a singular one. Left an heir and an orphan at a very early age, he had begun life as a riotous reveller. Soon after he reached manhood, God touched his heart—by what agency is not recorded. Then he “fell to reading the Scriptures and following the preachers,”—throwing his whole soul into the service of Christ, as he had done before into that of Satan. Had any person acquainted with the religious world of that day been asked, on the outbreak of Queen Mary’s persecution, to name the first ten men who would suffer, it is not improbable that Edward Underhill’s name would have been found somewhere on the list. But, to the astonishment of all who knew his decided views, and equally decided character, he had survived the persecution, with no worse suffering than a month spent in Newgate, and a tedious illness as the result. Nor was this because he had either hidden his colours, or had struck them. Rather he kept his standard flying to the breeze, and defied the foe. No reason can be given for his safety, save that still the God of Daniel could send His angel and shut the lions’ mouths, that they should do His prophets no hurt.
On the accession of Elizabeth, Underhill returned for a short time to his London home in Wood Street, Cheapside; but die soon went back to the family seat in Warwickshire, where he had since lived as a country squire. (Note 1.)
“Yet these last few months gone have I spent in London,” said he, “for my Hal (name true, character imaginary) would needs have me. Now, Robin, do thou guess what yon lad hath gat in his head. I will give thee ten shots.”
“No easy task, seeing I ne’er had the good fortune to behold him. What manner of lad is he?”
“Eunice?” said her father, referring the question to her.
Eunice laughed. “Hal is mighty like his father, Master Tremayne. He hath a stout will of his own, nor should you quickly turn him thence.”
“Lo you, now, what conditions doth this jade give me!” laughed Underhill. “A stubborn old brute, that will hear no reason!”
“Hal will not hear o’ermuch, when he is set on aught,” said Eunice.
“Well,” said Mr Tremayne thoughtfully, “so being, I would guess that he had set his heart, to be Archbishop of Canterbury, or else Lord Privy Seal.”
“Ma foi!” interposed Mrs Rose, “but I would guess that no son of Mr Underhill should tarry short of a king. Mind you not,hermano, that I did once hear you to say that you would not trust your own self, had you the chance to make your Annette a queen?”
“Dear heart, Mistress Rose! I would the lad had stayed him at nought worser. Nay, he is not for going up the ladder, but down. Conceive you, nought will serve him but a journey o’er seas, and to set him up a home in the Queen’s Majesty’s country of Virginia—yea, away in the plantations, amongst all the savages and wild beasts, and men worser than either, that have been of late carried thither from this land, for to be rid of them. ‘Come, lad,’ said I to him, ‘content thee with eating of batatas (the Spanish word of whichpotatois a corruption) and drinking of tobacco (smoking tobacco was originally termeddrinkingit), and leave alone this mad fantasy.’ But not he, in good sooth! Verily, for to go thither as a preacher and teacher, with hope to reform the ill men,—that had been matter of sore peril, and well to be thought on; yet would I not have said him nay, had the Lord called him to it;—but to make hishome!”
And Mr Underhill stopped short, as if words were too weak adequately to convey his feelings.
“Maybe the Lord hath called him to that, old friend,” said the Rector. “His eyes be on Virginia, no less than England.”
“God forbid I should deny it! Yet there is such gear as tempting the Lord. For my part,—but la! I am an old man, and the old be less venturesome than the young,—yet for me, I see not what should move a man to dwell any whither out of his own country, without he must needs fly to save his life.”
“Had all men been of your mind,” observed Mr Tremayne with a smile, “there had ne’er been any country inhabited save one, until men were fairly pushed thence by lack of room.”
“Well!—and wherefore should any quit home until he be pushed out?”
“Ask at Hal,” said the Rector laughing.
“No have I so? Yea, twenty times twice told: but all I may win from the young ne’er-do-well is wise saws that the world must be peopled (why so, I marvel?),—and that there is pleasure in aventure (a deal more, I reckon, in keeping of one’s carcase safe and sound!)—and that some men must needs dwell in strange lands, and the like. Well-a-day! wherefore should they so? Tell me that, Robin Tremayne.”
“I will, old friend, when mine amaze is o’er at hearing of such words from one Ned Underhill.”
“Amaze!—what need, trow?”
“But little need, when one doth call to mind that the most uncommon of all things is consistency. Only when one hath been used for forty years and more to see a man (I name him not) ever foremost in all perilous aventure, and thrusting him forward into whatsoever danger there were as into a bath of rosewater, ’tis some little surprise that taketh one to hear from the self-same party that ’tis never so much sweeter to keep safe and sound at home.”
Mr Underhill threw his head back, and indulged in a hearty peal of laughter.
“On my word, Robin, thou ticklest me sore! But what, lad!—may a man not grow prudent in his old age?”
“By all manner of means, or in his youth no less; but this will I say, that the last prudent man I looked to set eyes on should bear the name of Underhill.”
“Well-a-day! Here is Eunice made up of prudence.”
“She taketh after her mother, trow,” replied the Rector dryly.
“Come, I’ll give o’er, while I have some bones left whole.—And what thinkest, lad, of the outlook of matters public at this time?”
“Nay, what think you, that have been of late in London?”
“Robin,” said Mr Underhill gravely, “dost mind, long years gone, when King Edward his reign was well-nigh o’er, the ferment men’s minds gat in touching the succession?”
“Eh, la belle journée!” said Mrs Rose waggishly. “I do well mind the fermentyouwere in, Mr Underhill, and how you did push your Queen Mary down all the throats of your friends: likewise how sweetly she did repay you, bidding you for a month’s visit to her palace of Newgate! Pray you, shall it be the same again,hermano?”
“Dear heart! What a memory have you, Mistress Rose!” said Mr Underhill, with another hearty laugh. “It shall scantly be Newgate again, metrusteth: the rather, since there is no Queen Mary to thrust adown your throats—thank the Lord for that and all other His mercies. He that we may speak of is no Papist, whatso else; but I mistake greatly, Robin, if somewhat the same matter shall not come o’er again, should it please God to do a certain thing.”
Mr Underhill spoke thus vaguely, having no wish to finish his days on the gallows; as men had done ere now, for little more than a hint that the reigning Sovereign might not live for ever.
“And when the ferment come, under what flag must we look for you, Mr Underhill?” asked. Mrs Tremayne.
“Well,” said he, “Harry Eighth left a lad and two lasses, and we have had them all. But Harry Seventh left likewise a lad and two lasses; and we have had the lad, but ne’er a one of the lasses.”
“Both these lasses be dead,” responded the Rector.
“They be so. But the first left a lad and a lass; and that lad left a lass, and that lass left a lad—which is alive and jolly.”
This meant, that Queen Margaret of Scotland, elder sister of Henry the Eighth, had issue King James the Fifth, whose daughter was Mary Queen of Scots, and her son was James the Sixth, then living.
“You count the right lieth there?” queried Mr Tremayne.
Mr Underhill nodded his head decidedly.
“And is—yonder party—well or ill affected unto the Gospellers?—how hear you?”
“Lutheran to the back-bone—with no love for Puritans, as men do now begin to call us Hot Gospellers.”
“Thus is the Queen, mecounteth: and we have thriven well under her, and have full good cause to thank God for her.”
“Fifty years gone, Robin—when she was but a smatchet (a very young person)—I said that lass would do well. There is a touch of old Hal in her—not too much, but enough to put life and will into her.”
“There shall scantly be that in him.”
“Nay, I’ll not say so much. Meg had a touch of Hal, too. ’Twas ill turning her down one road an’ she took the bit betwixt her teeth, and had a mind to go the other. There was less of it in Mall, I grant you. And as to yon poor luckless loon, Mall’s heir,—if he wit his own mind, I reckon ’tis as much as a man may bargain for. England ne’er loveth such at her helm—mark you that, Robin. She may bear with them, but she layeth no affiance in them.”
Mr Underhill’s hearers knew that by the poor luckless loon, he meant Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, the representative of the Princess Mary, younger sister of Henry the Eighth. He was heir of England under Henry’s will, and might, if he had chosen it, have been a very formidable opponent of King James.
“There was trial made, in King Harry’s days,” said the Rector thoughtfully, “to join the two Crowns of England and Scotland, by marrying of King Edward, that then was Prince, with their young Queen Mary.”
“Well-a-day!—what changes had been, had that matter come to perfection!”
“It were a mighty great book, friend, that should be writ, were all set down that might have happened if things had run other than they have done. But I pray you, what outlook is now for the Gospellers—or Puritans, if they be so called—these next few years? Apart from the Court—be they in good odour in London, or how?”
“Be they in good odour in Heaven, you were better to ask. What is any great town but a sink of wickedness? And when did ill men hold good men in esteem?”
“Ah, Mr Underhill, but there is difficulty beside that,” said Mrs Rose, shaking her head. “Wherefore, will you tell me, cannot the good men be content to think all the same thing, and not go quarrel, quarrel, like the little boys at play?”
“So they should, Mistress Rose!—so they should!” said Mr Underhill uncompromisingly. “What with these fantasies and sectaries and follies—well-a-day! were I at the helm, there should be ne’er an opinion save one.”
“That is the very thing Queen Mary thought,” said Mr Tremayne, looking amused.
“Dear heart! what will the lad say next?” demanded Mr Underhill in a surprised tone.
“’Tis truth, old friend. See you not that to keep men of one opinion, the only way is to slay them that be of the contrary? Living men must differ. Only the dead ne’er wrangle touching aught.”
“Eh, Robin, man! ‘Live peaceably with all men.’”
“‘As much as lieth in you.’ Paul was wiser than you, saving your presence.”
“But, Robin, my son,” said Mrs Rose, “I would not say only, for such matters as men may differ in good reason. They cannot agree on the greater things,mon chéri,—nay, nor on the little, littles no more.—Look you, Mr Underhill, we have in this parish a man that call himself a Brownist—I count he think the brown the only colour that is right; if he had made the world, all the flowers should be brown, and the leaves black: eh,ma foi! what of a beautiful world to live in!—Bien! this last May Day, Sir Thomas Enville set up the maypole on the green. ‘Come, Master,’ he said to the Brownist, ‘you dance round the maypole?’—‘Nay, nay,’ saith he, ‘it savoureth of Popery.’ ‘Well,’ quoth he, ‘then you come to prayer in the church! There is nothing against that, I trow?’—‘Good lack, nay!’ saith he, ‘’tis an idle form. I cannot pray without the Spirit aid me; and the Spirit will not be bounden down unto dead forms.’ And so, Mr Underhill, they fall to wrangling. Now, is it not sad? Not only they will not take their pleasure together, but they will not say their prayers together no more. Yet they all look to meet in Heaven. They will not wrangle and quarrel there, I trow? Then why can they not be at peace these few days the sooner?”
This was a long speech for Mrs Rose.
“Well, to speak truth,” said Mr Underhill, “I could find in mine heart to cry ‘Hail, fellow!’ to your Brownist over the maypole: though I see not wherein it savoureth of Popery, but rather of Paganism. Howbeit, as I well know, Popery and Paganism be sisters, and dwell but over the way the one from the other. But as to the Common Prayer being but a form, and that dead,—why, I pray you, what maketh it a dead form save the dead heart of him that useth the same? The very Word of God is but a dead thing, if the soul of him that readeth it be dead.”
A certain section of the laity are earnestly petitioning the clergy for “a hearty service.” Could they make a more absurd request? The heart is in the worshipper, not in the service. And who can bring his heart to it but himself?
“Ma foi!” said Mrs Rose, with a comical little grimace, “but indeed I did think, when we were set at rest from the Queen Mary and her burnings, that we could have lived at peace the ones with the others.”
“Then which counted you to be rid of, Mistress Rose—the childre of God or the childre of the devil?. So long as both be in the world, I reckon there’ll not be o’er much peace,” bluntly replied Underhill.
“Mind you what my dear father was used to say,” asked Mr Tremayne,—“‘Afore the kingdom must come the King’? Ah, dear friends, we have all too little of Christ. ‘We shall be satisfied,’ and we shall be of one mind in all things, only when we wake up ‘after His likeness.’”
Clare Avery and Eunice Underhill struck up a warm friendship. Eunice (name and dates true, character imaginary) was one of the few women who keep “the dew of their youth,” and in freshness, innocence, and ignorance of this evil world, she was younger than many girls not half her age. Her simplicity put Clare at ease, while her experience of life awoke respect. Clare seized her opportunity one day, while taking a long walk with Eunice, to obtain the opinion of the latter on the point which still interested her, and compare it with that of Mrs Tremayne. Why it was easier to talk to Eunice than to those at home, Clare could not decide. Perhaps, had she discovered the reason, she might not have found it very flattering to her self-love.
“Mistress Eunice, think you it easy to be content with small gear?”
“You would say with lack of goods?” asked Eunice.
“Nay; but with the having to deal with petty, passing matter, in the stead of some noble deed that should be worthy the doing.”
“I take you now, Mistress Clare. And I can feel for your perplexity, seeing I have known the same myself.”
“Oh, you have so?” responded Clare eagerly.
“Ay, I have felt as though the work set me to do were sheer waste of such power and knowledge as God had given unto me; and have marvelled (I would speak it with reverence) what the Lord would be at, that He thus dealt with me. Petty things—mean things—little passing matter, as you said, that none shall be the better for to-morrow; wherefore must I do these? I have made a pudding, maybe; I have shaken up a bed; I have cut an old gown into a kirtle. And to-morrow the pudding shall be eaten, and the bed shall lack fresh straw, and ere long the gown shall be worn to rags. But I shall live for ever. Wherefore should a soul be set to such work which shall live for ever?”
“Ay,—you know!” said Clare, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction. “Now tell me, Mistress Eunice, what answer find you to this question? Shall it be with you, as with other, that these be my tasks at school?”
“That is verily sooth, Mistress Clare; yet there is another light wherein I love the better to look thereat. And it is this: that in this world be no little things.”
“What would you say, Mistress Eunice? In good sooth, it seemeth me the rather, there be few great.”
“I cry you mercy,” said Eunice, with her bright smile. “Lo’ you,—’tis after this fashion. The pudding I have made a man shall eat, and thereby be kept alive. This man shall drop a word to another, which one passing by shall o’erhear,—on the goodness and desirableness of learning, I will say. Well, this last shall turn it o’er in his mind, and shall determine to send his lad to school, and have him well learned. Time being gone, this lad shall write a book, or shall preach a sermon, whereby, through the working of God’s Spirit, many men’s hearts shall be touched, and led to consider the things that belong unto their peace. Look you, here is a chain; and in this great chain one little link is the pudding which I made, twenty years gone.”
“But the man could have eaten somewhat else.”
“Soothly; but he did not, you see.”
“Or another than you could have made the pudding.”
“Soothly, again: but I was to make it.”
Clare considered this view of the case.
“All things in this world, Mistress Clare, be links in some chain. In Dutchland (Germany), many years gone now, a young man that studied in an university there was caught in an heavy thunderstorm. He grew sore affrighted; all his sins came to his mind: and he prayed Saint Anne to dispel the storm, promising that he would straightway become a monk. The storm rolled away, and he suffered no harm. But he was mindful of his vow, and he became a monk. Well, some time after, having a spare half-hour, he went to the library to get him a book. As God would have it, he reached down a Latin Bible, the like whereof he had ne’er seen aforetime. Through the reading of this book—for I am well assured you know that I speak of Luther—came about the full Reformation of religion which, thanks be to God! is now spread abroad. And all this cometh—to speak after the manner of men—in that one Martin was at one time affrighted with the thunder; and, at another time, reached him down a book. Nay, Mistress Clare—in God’s world be no little things!”
“Mistress Eunice, in so saying, you make life to look a mighty terrible thing, and full of care.”
“And is life not a most terrible thing to them that use it not aright? But for them that do trust them unto God’s guidance, and search His Word to see what He would have them do, and seek alway and above all things but to do His will,—it may be life is matter for meditation, yea, and watchfulness; but methinks none for care. God will see to the chain: ’tis He, not we, that is weaver thereof. We need but to be careful, each of his little link.”
“My links be wearyful ones!” said Clare with a little sigh. “’Tis to cut, and snip, and fit, and sew, and guard, and mend. My cousin Lysken dealeth with men and women, I with linen and woollen. Think you it strange that her work should seem to me not only the nobler, but the sweeter belike?”
“Methinks I have seen Mistress Lysken to deal pretty closely with linen and woollen, sithence Father and I came hither,” said Eunice smiling. “But in very deed, Mistress Clare, ’tis but nature that it so should seem unto you. Yet did it ever come into your mind, I pray you, that we be poor judges of that which is high and noble? I marvel if any save Christ and Gabriel e’er called John Baptist a great man. Yet he was great in the sight of the Lord. Yea, that word, ‘more than a prophet’ was the very accolade of the King of the whole world. You know, Mistress Clare, that if the Queen’s Majesty should call a man ‘Sir Robert,’ though it were but a mistake, and he no knight, that very word from her should make him one. And the King of Heaven can make no mistake; His great men be great men indeed. Now whether would you rather, to be great with men, or with God?”
“Oh, with God, undoubtedly!” said Clare shyly.
“It seemeth me,” said Eunice, knitting her brows a little, “there be three questions the which your heart may ask himself touching your work.Whereforedo I this? You will very like say, Because you be bidden. Good. But then—Howdo I this?—is it in the most excellent way I can? And yet again,For whomdo I this? That last lieth deepest of all.”
“Why, I do it for my mother and Aunt Rachel,” said Clare innocently.
“Good. But wherefore not, henceforward, do it for God?”
“For God, Mistress Eunice!”
“’Tis the true touchstone of greatness. Nought can be little that a man doth for God; like as nought can be great that a man doth but for himself.”
“Lysken can work for God,” said Clare thoughtfully; “but I, who do but draw needles in and out—”
“Cannot draw them for God? Nay, but Paul thought not so. He biddeth you ‘whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, doallto the glory of God.’ But mind you, only the very best work is to His glory: that is to say, onlyyourvery best. He measures not Mall’s work by Jane’s, but he looketh at the power of both, and judgeth if they have wrought their best or no. Jane may have finished the better piece of work, but if Mall have wrought to her utmost, and Jane not so, then Mall’s work shall take first rank, and Jane’s must fall behind.”
“That is a new thought unto me, Mistress Eunice—that I can do such work for God. I did indeed account that I could be patient under the same, for to please Him: and I could have thought that the saving of a child from drowning, or the leading of a ship to battle, and so forth, might be done as unto God: but to cut and sew and measure!”
“I would ’twere not a new thought to many another,” answered Eunice. “But I guess we can sew well or ill; and we can cut carefully or carelessly; and we can measure truly or untruly. Truth is no little matter, Mistress Clare; neither is diligence; nor yet a real, honest, hearty endeavouring of one’s self to please the Lord, who hath given us our work, in every little thing. Moreover, give me leave to tell you,—you may be set a great work, and you may fail to see the greatness thereof. I mind me, when I was something younger than you be, and my brother Hal was but a little child, he fell into sore danger, and should belike have been killed, had none stretched out hand to save him. Well, as the Lord in His mercy would have it, I saw his peril, and I ran and snatched up the child in the very nick of time. There was but an half-minute to do it. And at afterward, men praised me, and said I had done a great thing. But think you it bare the face of a great thing to me, as I was in the doing thereof? Never a whit. I ne’er tarried to think if it were a great thing or a small: I thought neither of me nor of my doing, but alonely of our Hal, and how to set him in safety. They said it was a great matter, sith I had risked mine own life. But, dear heart! I knew not that I risked aught—I ne’er thought once thereon. Had I known it, I would have done the same, God helping me: but I knew it not. Now, whether was this a great thing or a small?”
“I have no doubt to say, a great.”
“Maybe, Mistress Clare, when you and I shall stand—as I pray God we may!—among the sheep at the right hand of Christ our Saviour,—when the books be opened, and the dead judged according to that which is written of them,—He may pick out some little petty deed (to our eyes), and may say thereof, This was a great thing in My sight. And it may be, too, that the deeds we counted great He shall pass by without any mention. Dear heart, let us do the small deeds to our utmost, and the great are sure to follow. ‘He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.’ And you know what He saith touching that poor cup of cold water, which assuredly is but a right small thing to give. Think you, if the Queen’s Highness were passing here but now, and should drop her glove, and you picked up the same and offered it to Her Grace,—should you e’er forget it? I trow not. Yet what a petty matter—to pick up a dropped glove! ‘Ah, but,’ say you, ‘It was the Queen’s glove—that wrought the difference.’ Verily so. Then set the like gilding upon your petty deeds. It is the King’s work. You have wrought for the King. Your guerdon is His smile—is it not enough?—and your home shall be within His house for ever.”
“Ay!” said Clare, drawing a long sigh—not of care: “it is enough, Mistress Eunice.”
“And He hath no lack of our work,” added Eunice softly. “It isgivento us to do, like as it was given unto Peter and John to suffer. Methinks he were neither a good child nor a thankful, that should refuse to stretch forth hand for his Father’s gift.”
Note 1. I have not been able to ascertain the true date of Underhill’s death, but he was living on the 6th of March 1568. (Rot. Pat., 10 Elizabeth, Part Two.)
Chapter Thirteen.Gentleman Jack.“He is transformed, And grown a gallant of the last edition.”Massinger.Jack’s letters from London were exuberant. He was delighted with his new phase of existence. He had made some most advantageous friendships, and was in hopes of obtaining a monopoly, which would bring him in about a hundred a year. In the meantime, he begged that his father would remember that life at Court was a very costly affair; and perhaps he would be so good as to send him a little more money. Half-a-dozen letters of this description passed, and Jack was liberally supplied with such an amount as his father anticipated that he might reasonably want. But at the end of about two years came a much more urgent epistle. Jack was sorry to say that he had been unavoidably compelled to go into debt. No blame was to be attached to him in the matter. He had not incurred the obligation of a penny for anything beyond the barest necessaries; he hoped his father would not imagine that he had been living extravagantly. But he wished Sir Thomas to understand that he really had not a suspicion of the inevitable expenses of Court life. The sums which he had been so good as to remit were a mere drop in the ocean of Jack’s necessities.Sir Thomas replied, without any expression of displeasure, that if his son could get leave of absence sufficient to pay a visit to Lancashire, he would be glad to see him at home, and he desired that he would bring all his bills with him.The answer to this letter was Jack himself, who came home on an autumn evening, most elaborately attired, and brimful of news.A fresh punishment had been devised for felony—transportation to the colonies among the savages. The Spaniards were finally and completely expelled from the Dutch provinces. A Dutchman had made the extraordinary discovery that by an ingenious arrangement of pieces of glass, of certain shapes, at particular distances, objects far off could be made to seem nearer and larger. The Queen was about to send out a commercial expedition to India—the first—from which great things were expected. There was a new proclamation against Jesuits and “seminary priests.” All these matters naturally enough, with Jack’s personal adventures, occupied the first evening.The next morning, Sir Thomas asked to see the bills. Jack brought out a tolerably large package of documents, which he presented to his father with a graceful reverence.“I do ensure you, Sir, that I have involved me for nought beyond the barest necessities of a gentleman.”His father opened and perused the first bill.“‘One dozen of shirts at four pound the piece.’ Be those, my lad, among the barest necessities?”“Of a gentleman, Sir,” said Jack.“Four pound, Brother! Thou must mean four shillings,” cried Rachel.“’Tis writ four pound,” calmly returned Sir Thomas.“Good lack Jack!” said Rachel, turning to her nephew. “Were there angels for buttons all the way down?”“The broidery, Aunt—the broidery!” returned Jack. “Four pound is a reasonable charge enough. Marry, I do ensure you, my sometime Lord of Leicester was wont to pay ten pound the piece for his shirts.”“I would I had been his shirt-maker!” said Rachel. “’Twould have built up my fortune.”“What wist thou touching broidery, Jack?” demanded Lady Enville, with her silvery laugh.“Go to!” said Sir Thomas, taking up the next bill. “‘Five score of silk stockings, broidered, with golden clocks (Note 1), twenty-six and eight-pence the pair.’—Those be necessaries, belike, Jack?”“Assuredly, Sir. White, look you—a pair the day, or maybe two.”“Ha!” said his father. “‘Item, one short coat, guarded with budge (lambskin), and broidered in gold thread, 45 pounds.—Item, one long gown of tawny velvet, furred with pampilion (an unknown species of fur), and guarded with white lace, 66 pounds, 13 shillings, 4 pence.’—Necessaries, Jack?”“Mercy preserve us!” ejaculated Rachel.“Good lack, Sir Thomas!—the lad must have gear!” urged his step-mother.Sir Thomas laid down the bills.“Be so good, Jack, as to tell me the full figures of these counts?”“Good sooth, Sir! I have not added them,” replied Jack in a contemptuous tone. “A gentleman is ne’er good at reckoning.”“He seems to be reasonable good at spending,” said his father. “But how much, Jack, dost guess they may all come to?”“Really, Sir, I cannot say.”“Go to—give a guess.”“Marry—somewhere about five thousand pound, it may be.”According to the equivalent value of money in the present day, Jack’s debts amounted to about seventy-five thousand pounds. His father’s yearly income was equal to about six thousand.“How lookest thou to pay this money, Jack?” asked Sir Thomas, in a tone of preternatural calmness which argued rather despair than lack of annoyance.“Well, Sir, there be two or three fashions of payment,” returned Jack, airily. “If you cannot find the money—”“I cannot, in very deed, lad.”“Good,” answered Jack quite complacently. “Then—if I win not the monopoly—”“The monopoly would not pay thy debts under fifty years, Jack; not if thou gavest every penny thereof thereto, and hadst none fresh to pay. How about that, lad?”“Of course I must live like a gentleman, Sir,” said Jack loftily. “Then the next way is to win the grant of a wardship.”This way of acquiring money is so entirely obsolete that it needs explanation. The grant of a wardship meant that some orphan heir of a large inheritance was placed in the care of the grantee, who was obliged to defray out of the heir’s estate the necessary expenses of his sustenance and education, but was free to apply all the surplus to his own use until the heir was of age. When the inheritance was large, therefore, the grant was a considerable boon to the guardian.“And supposing that fail thee?”“Well, then—if the worst come to the worst—I can but wed an heir,” remarked Jack with serenity.“Wed an estate, thou meanest, Jack.”“Of course, Sir. The woman must come with it, I reckon. That I cannot help.”“Marry come up!” exclaimed Rachel. “Thou art a very man. Those be right the man’s ways. ‘The woman must come with it,’ forsooth! Jack, my fingers be itching to thrash thee.”“Such matters be done every day, Aunt,” observed Jack, smiling graciously,—not with reference to the suggested reward of his misdeeds.“Black sin is done every day, lad. I wis that without thy telling. But that is no cause why thou shouldst be the doer of it.”“Nay, Aunt Rachel!” retorted Jack, in the same manner. “’Tis no sin to wed an heir.”“It was a sin, when I was a child, to tell lies. Maybe that is altered now,” said Rachel dryly.“What lies, Aunt Rachel?” asked Jack laughing.“Is it no lie, Jack, to lead a woman into believing that thou lovesther, when, if she plucked her purse out of her pocket and gave it thee, thou wert fully content, and shouldst ask no more?”“You have old-fashioned notions, Aunt Rachel,” said Jack, still laughing.“Jack! I do trust thou wilt not wed with any but one of good degree. Let her be a knight’s daughter, at the least—a lord’s were all the better,” said his step-mother.“But touching these debts, Jack,” resumed his father. “Suppose thou shouldst fail to wed thine heir,—how then?”“Then, Sir, I shall trust to redeem the money at play.”Every man of substance—not a Puritan—was at that time a gamester.“And how, if that fail?”“They can’t all fail, Sir!” said Jack lightly.“My lad!” replied His father earnestly, “I did an ill deed when I sent thee to London.”“Dear heart, Sir!” exclaimed Jack, just suppressing a much stronger ejaculation, “I do ensure you, you never did a wiser thing.”“Then my life hath been one of sore folly,” answered his father.“I alway told thee thou shouldst come to wrack,” added his aunt.“Nay, now, what wrack have I come to?” returned Jack with a graceful flourish of his hands. “Call you it wrack to have a good post in the Queen’s Majesty’s house, with hope of a better, maybe, when it please God?—or, to be well (stand well, be on good terms) with many honourable gentlemen, and heirs of good houses, throughout all England?—or, to have the pick of their sisters and cousins, when it liketh me to wed?”“They shall have a jolly picking that pick out thee!” growled Aunt Rachel.“Or to have open door of full many honourable houses,—and good credit, that there is not a craftsman in London that should not count it honour to serve me with such goods as I might choose?” pursued Jack.“A mighty barren honour, Jack, on thine own showing.”“Jack!” interposed Sir Thomas, who had seemed deep in thought for a minute, “tell me honestly,—of this five thousand pound, if so be, how much was lost at the dice?”“Why, Sir!—you did not count I should reckon my debts of honour?”Sir Thomas groaned within himself.“Debts of honour!” cried Rachel. “What, be there a parcel more?”“These be trade-debts, Aunt!” said Jack, with an injured air,—“debts that I can defray or leave, as it may stand with conveniency. My debts of honour must be paid, of course!—I looked to your bounty, Sir, for that. They be not much—but a light thousand or twelve hundred pound, I take it.”That is to say, about 15,000 pounds to 18,000 pounds.“Jack!” said his father, “dost remember thou hast two sisters yet unwed?”“One, Sir, under your good pleasure,” replied Jack suavely.“Two,” gravely repeated Sir Thomas. “I will set no difference betwixt Blanche and Clare. And they be to portion, lad; and we have all to live. I cannot pay thy debts of honour and see to these likewise. And, Jack, the trade-debts, as thou callest them, must come first.”“Sir!” exclaimed Jack aghast.“I say, the trade-debts must stand first,” repeated his father firmly.“A gentleman never puts his trade-debts before his debts of honour, Sir!” cried Jack in a tone of intense disgust mixed with amazement.“I know not what you gentlemen of the Court may account honour nor honesty, Sir,” replied Sir Thomas, now sternly; “but I am a plain honest man, that knows nought of Court fashions, for the which His good providence I thank God. And if it be honest to heap up debt that thou hast no means of paying to thy certain knowledge, then I know not the signification of honesty.”“But I must play, Sir!” replied Jack—in the tone with which he might have said, “I must breathe.”“Then thou must pay,” said Sir Thomas shortly.“Must play, quotha!” interjected Rachel. “Thou must be a decent lad,—that is all the must I see.”“Come, be not too hard on the lad!” pleaded Lady Enville, fanning herself elegantly. “Of course he must live as other young men.”“That is it, Madam!” responded Jack eagerly, turning to his welcome ally. “I cannot affect singularity—’tis not possible.”“Of course not,” said Lady Enville, who quite agreed with Jack’s sentiments, as women of her type generally do.“Thou canst affect honesty, trow,” retorted Rachel.“Sir,” said Jack, earnestly addressing his father, “I do entreat you, look on this matter in a reasonable fashion.”“That is it which I would fain do, Jack.”“Well, Sir,—were I to put my trade-debts before my debts of honour, all whom I know should stamp me as no gentleman. They should reckon me some craftsman’s son that had crept in amongst them peradventure.”“Good lack!” said his step-mother and aunt together,—the former in dismay, the latter in satire.“I am willing that any should count me no gentleman, if he find me not one,” answered his father; “but one thing will I never do, and that is, give cause to any man to reckon me a knave.”“But, Sir, these be nought save a parcel of beggarly craftsmen.”“Which thou shouldst have been, had it so pleased God,” put in Aunt Rachel.“Aunt,” said Jack loftily, “I was born a gentleman; and under your good leaves, a gentleman I do mean to live and die.”“Thou hast my full good leave to live and die a gentleman, my lad,” said his father; “and that is, a man of honour, truth, and probity.”“And ’tis no true man, nor an honourable, that payeth not his just debts,” added Rachel.“I cry thee mercy, Rachel; a gentleman never troubleth him touching debts,” observed Lady Enville.“In especial unto such like low companions as these,” echoed Jack.“Well!—honesty is gone out of fashion, I reckon,” said Rachel.“Only this will I say, Sir,” resumed Jack with an air of settling matters: “that if you will needs have my trade-debts defrayed before my debts of honour, you must, an’t like you, take them on yourself. I will be no party to such base infringement of the laws of honour.”“Good lack, lad! Thou talkest as though thy father had run into debt, and was looking unto thee to defray the charges! ’Tis tother way about, Jack. Call thy wits together!” exclaimed his aunt.“Well, Aunt Rachel, you seem determined to use me hardly,” said Jack, with an air of reluctant martyrdom; “but you will find I harbour no malice for your evil conception of mine intents.”To see this Jack, who had done all the mischief and made everybody uncomfortable, mount on his pedestal and magnanimously forgive them, was too much for Rachel’s equanimity.“Of all the born fools that e’er gat me in a passion, Jack, thou art very king and captain! I would give my best gown this minute thou wert six in the stead of six-and-twenty—my word, but I would leather thee! I would whip thee till I was dog-weary, whatever thou shouldst be. The born patch (fool)!—the dolt (dunce)!—the lither loon (idle, good-for-nothing fellow)!—that shall harbour no malice against me because—he is both a fool and a knave! If thou e’er hadst any sense, Jack (the which I doubt), thou forgattest to pack it up when thou earnest from London. Of all the long-eared asses ever I saw—”Mistress Rachel’s diatribe came to a sudden close, certainly not from the exhaustion of her feelings, but from the want of suitable words wherein to express them.“Aunt!” said Jack, still in an injured tone, “would you have me to govern myself by rule and measure, like a craftsman?”“Words be cast away on thee, Jack: I will hold my peace. When thy brains be come home from the journey they be now gone, thou canst give me to wit, an’ it like thee.”“I marvel,” murmured Sir Thomas absently, “what Master Tremayne should say to all this.”“He!” returned Jack with sovereign scorn. “He is a Puritan!”“He is a good man, Jack. And I doubt—so he keep out of ill company—whether Arthur shall give him the like care,” said his father sighing.“Arthur! A sely milksop, Sir, that cannot look a goose in the face!”“Good lack! how shall he ever win through this world, that is choke-full of geese?” asked Rachel cuttingly.“Suffer me to say, Sir, that Puritans be of no account in the Court.”“Of earth, or Heaven?” dryly inquired Sir Thomas.“The Court of England, I mean, Sir. They be universally derided and held of low esteem. All these Sectaries—Puritans, Gospellers, Anabaptists, and what not—no gentleman would be seen in their company.”“Dear heart!” growled the still acetic Rachel. “The angels must be mighty busy a-building chambers for the gentry, that they mix not in Heaven with the poor common saints.”“’Tis the general thought, Aunt, among men of account.—and doth commend itself for truth,—that ’t will take more ill-doing to damn a gentleman than a common man.” (Note 2.)“Good lack! I had thought it should be the other way about,” said Rachel satirically.“No doubt,” echoed Lady Enville—in approbation of Jack’s sentiment, not Rachel’s.“Why, Aunt!—think you no account is taken of birth and blood in Heaven?”“Nay, I’ll e’en let it be,” said Rachel, rising and opening the door. “Only look thou, Jack,—there is another place than Heaven; and I don’t reckon there be separate chambers there. Do but think what it were, if itshouldchance to a gentleman to be shut up yonder along with the poor sinners of the peasantry!”And leaving this Parthian dart, Rachel went her way.“I will talk with thee again, Jack: in the mean while, I will, keep these,” said his father, taking up the bills.“As it like you, Sir,” responded Jack airily. “I care not though I never see them again.”“What ado is here!” said Lady Enville, as her husband departed. “I am sore afeared thou wilt have some trouble hereabout, Jack. Both thy father and aunt be of such ancient notions.”Jack bent low, with a courtier’s grace, to kiss his step-mother’s hand.“Trouble, Madam,” he said—and spoke truly—“trouble bideth no longer on me than water on a duck’s back.”“And now tell me, Tremayne, what shall I do with this lad?”“I am afeared, Sir Thomas, you shall find it hard matter to deal with him.”“Good lack, these lads and lasses!” groaned poor Sir Thomas. “They do wear a man’s purse—ay, and his heart. Marry, but I do trust I gave no such thought and sorrow to my father! Yet in very deed my care for the future passeth it for the past. If Jack go on thus, what shall the end be?”Mr Tremayne shook his head.“Can you help me to any argument that shall touch the lad’s heart?”“Argument ne’er touched a man’s heart yet,” said the Rector. “That is but for the head. There is but one thing that will touch the heart to any lasting purpose; and that is, the quickening grace of God the Holy Ghost.”“Nay, all they seem to drift further away from Him,” sighed the father sadly.“My good friend, it may seem so to you, mainly because yourself are coming nearer.”Sir Thomas shook his head sorrowfully.“Nay, for I ne’er saw me to be such a sinner as of late I have. You call not that coming nearer God?”“Ay, but it is!” said Mr Tremayne. “Think you, friend; youweresuch a sinner all your life long, though it be only now that, thanks to God, you see it. And I do in very deed hope and trust that you have this true sight of yourself because the Lord hath touched your eyes with the ointment of His grace. Maybe you are somewhat like as yet unto him whose eyen Christ touched, that at first he could not tell betwixt men and trees. The Lord is not like to leave His miracle but half wrought. He will perfect that which He hath begun.”“God grant it!” said Sir Thomas feelingly. “But tell me, what can I do for Jack? I would I had listed you and Rachel, and had not sent him to London. Sir Piers, and Orige, and the lad himself, o’er-persuaded me. I rue it bitterly; but howbeit, what is done is done. The matter is, what to do now?”“The better way, methinks, should be that you left him to smart for it himself, an’ you so could.”“Jack will ne’er smart for aught,” said his father. “Were I to stay his allowance, he should but run into further debt, ne’er doubting to pay the same somewhen and somehow. The way and the time he should leave to chance. I see nought but ruin before the lad. He hath learned over ill lessons in the Court,—of honour which is clean contrary to common honesty, and courtesy which standeth not with plain truth.”“Ay, the Devil can well glose,” (flatter, deceive) said Mr Tremayne sadly.“The lad hath no conscience!” added Sir Thomas. “With all this, he laugheth and singeth as though nought were on his mind. Good lack! but if I had done as he, I had been miserable thereafter. I conceive not such conditions.”“I conceive them, for I have seen them aforetime. But I would not have such a conscience for the worth of the Queen’s Mint.”Indeed, Jack did seem perfectly happy. His appetite, sleep, and spirits, were totally unaffected by his circumstances. Clare, to whom this anomaly seemed preposterous, one day asked him if he were happy.“Happy?” repeated Jack. “For sure! Wherefore no?”Clare did not tell him.One evening in the week of Jack’s return, to the surprise of all, in walked Mr John Feversham. He did not seem to have much to say, except that Uncle Piers and Aunt Lucrece were well. In fact, he never had much to say. Nor did he think it necessary to state what had brought him to Lancashire. He was asked to remain, of course, to which he assented, and slipped into his place with a quiet ponderosity which seemed to belong to him.“An oaken yule-log had as much sense, and were quicker!” (livelier) said Jack aside to Blanche.“Nay, he wanteth not for sense, I take it,” returned his sister, “but of a truth he is solid matter.”“I marvel if he ever gat into debt,” observed Clare quietly from the other side of Jack.“He!” sneered that young gentleman. “He is the fashion of man that should pay all his trade-debts and ne’er ask for a rebate.”“Well! methinks that were no very ill deed,” said Clare.“A deed whereof no gentleman of spirit should be guilty!”“There be divers sorts of spirits, Jack.”“There is but one manner of spirit,” returned Jack sharply, “and I ne’er saw a spark thereof in yon bale of woollen goods labelled Jack Feversham.”“May be thou wilt, some day,” answered Clare.“That will be when the Ribble runneth up instead of down. He is a coward,—mine head to yon apple thereon.”“Be not so sure thereof.”“But I am sure thereof—as sure as a culverin shot.”Clare dropped the subject.Rather late on the following evening, with his usual quiet, business-like air, John Feversham asked for a few words with Sir Thomas. Then—to the astonishment of that gentleman—the purport of his visit came out. He wanted Blanche.Sir Thomas was quite taken by surprise. It had never occurred to him that silent John Feversham had the faintest design upon any one. And what could this calm, undemonstrative man have seen in the butterfly Blanche, which had captivated him, of all people? He promised an answer the next day; and, feeling as if another straw had been added to his burden, he went to consult the ladies.Lady Enville disapproved of the proposal. So unlike Don Juan!—so totally inferior, in every respect! And would it not be desirable to wait and see whether John were really likely to succeed to his uncle’s inheritance within any reasonable time? she calmly urged. Sir Piers might live twenty years yet, or he might have a family of his own, and then where would John Feversham be? In present circumstances, concluded her Ladyship, enjoying the scent of her pomander, she thought this a most undesirable match for Blanche, who could not do much worse, and might do much better.Rachel, as might be expected, took the contrary view. Unlike Don Juan!—yes, she hoped so, indeed! This was a sensible young man, who, it might be trusted, would keep Blanche in order, which she was likely enough to need as long as she lived. How should the girl do better? By all means take advantage of the offer.“Well, should Blanche know? That is, before acceptance.”“Oh, ay!” said Lady Enville.“Oh, no!” said Rachel.In Rachel’s eyes, the new-fangled plan of giving the young lady a voice in the question was fraught with danger. But Lady Enville prevailed. Blanche was summoned, and asked what she thought of John Feversham.It did not appear that Blanche had thought much about him at all. She was rather inclined to laugh at and despise him.Well, had she any disposition to marry him?Blanche’s shrinking—“Oh no, an’ it liked you, Father!”—decided the matter.To all outward appearance, John Feversham took his rejection very quietly. Sir Thomas couched it in language as kind as possible. John said little in answer, and exhibited no sign of vexation. But Rachel, who was still pursuing her career of amateur detective, thought that he felt more distress than he showed.Note 1. The embroidery about the heel and ankle, which showed above the low shoes then fashionable.Note 2. Lest the reader should think this idea too preposterous to have been seriously entertained, I refer him to words actually uttered (and approved by the hearers) on the death of Philippe, Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis the Fourteenth:—“I can assure you, God thinks twice before He damns a person of the Prince’s quality.”—(Mémoires de Dangeau).
“He is transformed, And grown a gallant of the last edition.”Massinger.
“He is transformed, And grown a gallant of the last edition.”
Massinger.
Jack’s letters from London were exuberant. He was delighted with his new phase of existence. He had made some most advantageous friendships, and was in hopes of obtaining a monopoly, which would bring him in about a hundred a year. In the meantime, he begged that his father would remember that life at Court was a very costly affair; and perhaps he would be so good as to send him a little more money. Half-a-dozen letters of this description passed, and Jack was liberally supplied with such an amount as his father anticipated that he might reasonably want. But at the end of about two years came a much more urgent epistle. Jack was sorry to say that he had been unavoidably compelled to go into debt. No blame was to be attached to him in the matter. He had not incurred the obligation of a penny for anything beyond the barest necessaries; he hoped his father would not imagine that he had been living extravagantly. But he wished Sir Thomas to understand that he really had not a suspicion of the inevitable expenses of Court life. The sums which he had been so good as to remit were a mere drop in the ocean of Jack’s necessities.
Sir Thomas replied, without any expression of displeasure, that if his son could get leave of absence sufficient to pay a visit to Lancashire, he would be glad to see him at home, and he desired that he would bring all his bills with him.
The answer to this letter was Jack himself, who came home on an autumn evening, most elaborately attired, and brimful of news.
A fresh punishment had been devised for felony—transportation to the colonies among the savages. The Spaniards were finally and completely expelled from the Dutch provinces. A Dutchman had made the extraordinary discovery that by an ingenious arrangement of pieces of glass, of certain shapes, at particular distances, objects far off could be made to seem nearer and larger. The Queen was about to send out a commercial expedition to India—the first—from which great things were expected. There was a new proclamation against Jesuits and “seminary priests.” All these matters naturally enough, with Jack’s personal adventures, occupied the first evening.
The next morning, Sir Thomas asked to see the bills. Jack brought out a tolerably large package of documents, which he presented to his father with a graceful reverence.
“I do ensure you, Sir, that I have involved me for nought beyond the barest necessities of a gentleman.”
His father opened and perused the first bill.
“‘One dozen of shirts at four pound the piece.’ Be those, my lad, among the barest necessities?”
“Of a gentleman, Sir,” said Jack.
“Four pound, Brother! Thou must mean four shillings,” cried Rachel.
“’Tis writ four pound,” calmly returned Sir Thomas.
“Good lack Jack!” said Rachel, turning to her nephew. “Were there angels for buttons all the way down?”
“The broidery, Aunt—the broidery!” returned Jack. “Four pound is a reasonable charge enough. Marry, I do ensure you, my sometime Lord of Leicester was wont to pay ten pound the piece for his shirts.”
“I would I had been his shirt-maker!” said Rachel. “’Twould have built up my fortune.”
“What wist thou touching broidery, Jack?” demanded Lady Enville, with her silvery laugh.
“Go to!” said Sir Thomas, taking up the next bill. “‘Five score of silk stockings, broidered, with golden clocks (Note 1), twenty-six and eight-pence the pair.’—Those be necessaries, belike, Jack?”
“Assuredly, Sir. White, look you—a pair the day, or maybe two.”
“Ha!” said his father. “‘Item, one short coat, guarded with budge (lambskin), and broidered in gold thread, 45 pounds.—Item, one long gown of tawny velvet, furred with pampilion (an unknown species of fur), and guarded with white lace, 66 pounds, 13 shillings, 4 pence.’—Necessaries, Jack?”
“Mercy preserve us!” ejaculated Rachel.
“Good lack, Sir Thomas!—the lad must have gear!” urged his step-mother.
Sir Thomas laid down the bills.
“Be so good, Jack, as to tell me the full figures of these counts?”
“Good sooth, Sir! I have not added them,” replied Jack in a contemptuous tone. “A gentleman is ne’er good at reckoning.”
“He seems to be reasonable good at spending,” said his father. “But how much, Jack, dost guess they may all come to?”
“Really, Sir, I cannot say.”
“Go to—give a guess.”
“Marry—somewhere about five thousand pound, it may be.”
According to the equivalent value of money in the present day, Jack’s debts amounted to about seventy-five thousand pounds. His father’s yearly income was equal to about six thousand.
“How lookest thou to pay this money, Jack?” asked Sir Thomas, in a tone of preternatural calmness which argued rather despair than lack of annoyance.
“Well, Sir, there be two or three fashions of payment,” returned Jack, airily. “If you cannot find the money—”
“I cannot, in very deed, lad.”
“Good,” answered Jack quite complacently. “Then—if I win not the monopoly—”
“The monopoly would not pay thy debts under fifty years, Jack; not if thou gavest every penny thereof thereto, and hadst none fresh to pay. How about that, lad?”
“Of course I must live like a gentleman, Sir,” said Jack loftily. “Then the next way is to win the grant of a wardship.”
This way of acquiring money is so entirely obsolete that it needs explanation. The grant of a wardship meant that some orphan heir of a large inheritance was placed in the care of the grantee, who was obliged to defray out of the heir’s estate the necessary expenses of his sustenance and education, but was free to apply all the surplus to his own use until the heir was of age. When the inheritance was large, therefore, the grant was a considerable boon to the guardian.
“And supposing that fail thee?”
“Well, then—if the worst come to the worst—I can but wed an heir,” remarked Jack with serenity.
“Wed an estate, thou meanest, Jack.”
“Of course, Sir. The woman must come with it, I reckon. That I cannot help.”
“Marry come up!” exclaimed Rachel. “Thou art a very man. Those be right the man’s ways. ‘The woman must come with it,’ forsooth! Jack, my fingers be itching to thrash thee.”
“Such matters be done every day, Aunt,” observed Jack, smiling graciously,—not with reference to the suggested reward of his misdeeds.
“Black sin is done every day, lad. I wis that without thy telling. But that is no cause why thou shouldst be the doer of it.”
“Nay, Aunt Rachel!” retorted Jack, in the same manner. “’Tis no sin to wed an heir.”
“It was a sin, when I was a child, to tell lies. Maybe that is altered now,” said Rachel dryly.
“What lies, Aunt Rachel?” asked Jack laughing.
“Is it no lie, Jack, to lead a woman into believing that thou lovesther, when, if she plucked her purse out of her pocket and gave it thee, thou wert fully content, and shouldst ask no more?”
“You have old-fashioned notions, Aunt Rachel,” said Jack, still laughing.
“Jack! I do trust thou wilt not wed with any but one of good degree. Let her be a knight’s daughter, at the least—a lord’s were all the better,” said his step-mother.
“But touching these debts, Jack,” resumed his father. “Suppose thou shouldst fail to wed thine heir,—how then?”
“Then, Sir, I shall trust to redeem the money at play.”
Every man of substance—not a Puritan—was at that time a gamester.
“And how, if that fail?”
“They can’t all fail, Sir!” said Jack lightly.
“My lad!” replied His father earnestly, “I did an ill deed when I sent thee to London.”
“Dear heart, Sir!” exclaimed Jack, just suppressing a much stronger ejaculation, “I do ensure you, you never did a wiser thing.”
“Then my life hath been one of sore folly,” answered his father.
“I alway told thee thou shouldst come to wrack,” added his aunt.
“Nay, now, what wrack have I come to?” returned Jack with a graceful flourish of his hands. “Call you it wrack to have a good post in the Queen’s Majesty’s house, with hope of a better, maybe, when it please God?—or, to be well (stand well, be on good terms) with many honourable gentlemen, and heirs of good houses, throughout all England?—or, to have the pick of their sisters and cousins, when it liketh me to wed?”
“They shall have a jolly picking that pick out thee!” growled Aunt Rachel.
“Or to have open door of full many honourable houses,—and good credit, that there is not a craftsman in London that should not count it honour to serve me with such goods as I might choose?” pursued Jack.
“A mighty barren honour, Jack, on thine own showing.”
“Jack!” interposed Sir Thomas, who had seemed deep in thought for a minute, “tell me honestly,—of this five thousand pound, if so be, how much was lost at the dice?”
“Why, Sir!—you did not count I should reckon my debts of honour?”
Sir Thomas groaned within himself.
“Debts of honour!” cried Rachel. “What, be there a parcel more?”
“These be trade-debts, Aunt!” said Jack, with an injured air,—“debts that I can defray or leave, as it may stand with conveniency. My debts of honour must be paid, of course!—I looked to your bounty, Sir, for that. They be not much—but a light thousand or twelve hundred pound, I take it.”
That is to say, about 15,000 pounds to 18,000 pounds.
“Jack!” said his father, “dost remember thou hast two sisters yet unwed?”
“One, Sir, under your good pleasure,” replied Jack suavely.
“Two,” gravely repeated Sir Thomas. “I will set no difference betwixt Blanche and Clare. And they be to portion, lad; and we have all to live. I cannot pay thy debts of honour and see to these likewise. And, Jack, the trade-debts, as thou callest them, must come first.”
“Sir!” exclaimed Jack aghast.
“I say, the trade-debts must stand first,” repeated his father firmly.
“A gentleman never puts his trade-debts before his debts of honour, Sir!” cried Jack in a tone of intense disgust mixed with amazement.
“I know not what you gentlemen of the Court may account honour nor honesty, Sir,” replied Sir Thomas, now sternly; “but I am a plain honest man, that knows nought of Court fashions, for the which His good providence I thank God. And if it be honest to heap up debt that thou hast no means of paying to thy certain knowledge, then I know not the signification of honesty.”
“But I must play, Sir!” replied Jack—in the tone with which he might have said, “I must breathe.”
“Then thou must pay,” said Sir Thomas shortly.
“Must play, quotha!” interjected Rachel. “Thou must be a decent lad,—that is all the must I see.”
“Come, be not too hard on the lad!” pleaded Lady Enville, fanning herself elegantly. “Of course he must live as other young men.”
“That is it, Madam!” responded Jack eagerly, turning to his welcome ally. “I cannot affect singularity—’tis not possible.”
“Of course not,” said Lady Enville, who quite agreed with Jack’s sentiments, as women of her type generally do.
“Thou canst affect honesty, trow,” retorted Rachel.
“Sir,” said Jack, earnestly addressing his father, “I do entreat you, look on this matter in a reasonable fashion.”
“That is it which I would fain do, Jack.”
“Well, Sir,—were I to put my trade-debts before my debts of honour, all whom I know should stamp me as no gentleman. They should reckon me some craftsman’s son that had crept in amongst them peradventure.”
“Good lack!” said his step-mother and aunt together,—the former in dismay, the latter in satire.
“I am willing that any should count me no gentleman, if he find me not one,” answered his father; “but one thing will I never do, and that is, give cause to any man to reckon me a knave.”
“But, Sir, these be nought save a parcel of beggarly craftsmen.”
“Which thou shouldst have been, had it so pleased God,” put in Aunt Rachel.
“Aunt,” said Jack loftily, “I was born a gentleman; and under your good leaves, a gentleman I do mean to live and die.”
“Thou hast my full good leave to live and die a gentleman, my lad,” said his father; “and that is, a man of honour, truth, and probity.”
“And ’tis no true man, nor an honourable, that payeth not his just debts,” added Rachel.
“I cry thee mercy, Rachel; a gentleman never troubleth him touching debts,” observed Lady Enville.
“In especial unto such like low companions as these,” echoed Jack.
“Well!—honesty is gone out of fashion, I reckon,” said Rachel.
“Only this will I say, Sir,” resumed Jack with an air of settling matters: “that if you will needs have my trade-debts defrayed before my debts of honour, you must, an’t like you, take them on yourself. I will be no party to such base infringement of the laws of honour.”
“Good lack, lad! Thou talkest as though thy father had run into debt, and was looking unto thee to defray the charges! ’Tis tother way about, Jack. Call thy wits together!” exclaimed his aunt.
“Well, Aunt Rachel, you seem determined to use me hardly,” said Jack, with an air of reluctant martyrdom; “but you will find I harbour no malice for your evil conception of mine intents.”
To see this Jack, who had done all the mischief and made everybody uncomfortable, mount on his pedestal and magnanimously forgive them, was too much for Rachel’s equanimity.
“Of all the born fools that e’er gat me in a passion, Jack, thou art very king and captain! I would give my best gown this minute thou wert six in the stead of six-and-twenty—my word, but I would leather thee! I would whip thee till I was dog-weary, whatever thou shouldst be. The born patch (fool)!—the dolt (dunce)!—the lither loon (idle, good-for-nothing fellow)!—that shall harbour no malice against me because—he is both a fool and a knave! If thou e’er hadst any sense, Jack (the which I doubt), thou forgattest to pack it up when thou earnest from London. Of all the long-eared asses ever I saw—”
Mistress Rachel’s diatribe came to a sudden close, certainly not from the exhaustion of her feelings, but from the want of suitable words wherein to express them.
“Aunt!” said Jack, still in an injured tone, “would you have me to govern myself by rule and measure, like a craftsman?”
“Words be cast away on thee, Jack: I will hold my peace. When thy brains be come home from the journey they be now gone, thou canst give me to wit, an’ it like thee.”
“I marvel,” murmured Sir Thomas absently, “what Master Tremayne should say to all this.”
“He!” returned Jack with sovereign scorn. “He is a Puritan!”
“He is a good man, Jack. And I doubt—so he keep out of ill company—whether Arthur shall give him the like care,” said his father sighing.
“Arthur! A sely milksop, Sir, that cannot look a goose in the face!”
“Good lack! how shall he ever win through this world, that is choke-full of geese?” asked Rachel cuttingly.
“Suffer me to say, Sir, that Puritans be of no account in the Court.”
“Of earth, or Heaven?” dryly inquired Sir Thomas.
“The Court of England, I mean, Sir. They be universally derided and held of low esteem. All these Sectaries—Puritans, Gospellers, Anabaptists, and what not—no gentleman would be seen in their company.”
“Dear heart!” growled the still acetic Rachel. “The angels must be mighty busy a-building chambers for the gentry, that they mix not in Heaven with the poor common saints.”
“’Tis the general thought, Aunt, among men of account.—and doth commend itself for truth,—that ’t will take more ill-doing to damn a gentleman than a common man.” (Note 2.)
“Good lack! I had thought it should be the other way about,” said Rachel satirically.
“No doubt,” echoed Lady Enville—in approbation of Jack’s sentiment, not Rachel’s.
“Why, Aunt!—think you no account is taken of birth and blood in Heaven?”
“Nay, I’ll e’en let it be,” said Rachel, rising and opening the door. “Only look thou, Jack,—there is another place than Heaven; and I don’t reckon there be separate chambers there. Do but think what it were, if itshouldchance to a gentleman to be shut up yonder along with the poor sinners of the peasantry!”
And leaving this Parthian dart, Rachel went her way.
“I will talk with thee again, Jack: in the mean while, I will, keep these,” said his father, taking up the bills.
“As it like you, Sir,” responded Jack airily. “I care not though I never see them again.”
“What ado is here!” said Lady Enville, as her husband departed. “I am sore afeared thou wilt have some trouble hereabout, Jack. Both thy father and aunt be of such ancient notions.”
Jack bent low, with a courtier’s grace, to kiss his step-mother’s hand.
“Trouble, Madam,” he said—and spoke truly—“trouble bideth no longer on me than water on a duck’s back.”
“And now tell me, Tremayne, what shall I do with this lad?”
“I am afeared, Sir Thomas, you shall find it hard matter to deal with him.”
“Good lack, these lads and lasses!” groaned poor Sir Thomas. “They do wear a man’s purse—ay, and his heart. Marry, but I do trust I gave no such thought and sorrow to my father! Yet in very deed my care for the future passeth it for the past. If Jack go on thus, what shall the end be?”
Mr Tremayne shook his head.
“Can you help me to any argument that shall touch the lad’s heart?”
“Argument ne’er touched a man’s heart yet,” said the Rector. “That is but for the head. There is but one thing that will touch the heart to any lasting purpose; and that is, the quickening grace of God the Holy Ghost.”
“Nay, all they seem to drift further away from Him,” sighed the father sadly.
“My good friend, it may seem so to you, mainly because yourself are coming nearer.”
Sir Thomas shook his head sorrowfully.
“Nay, for I ne’er saw me to be such a sinner as of late I have. You call not that coming nearer God?”
“Ay, but it is!” said Mr Tremayne. “Think you, friend; youweresuch a sinner all your life long, though it be only now that, thanks to God, you see it. And I do in very deed hope and trust that you have this true sight of yourself because the Lord hath touched your eyes with the ointment of His grace. Maybe you are somewhat like as yet unto him whose eyen Christ touched, that at first he could not tell betwixt men and trees. The Lord is not like to leave His miracle but half wrought. He will perfect that which He hath begun.”
“God grant it!” said Sir Thomas feelingly. “But tell me, what can I do for Jack? I would I had listed you and Rachel, and had not sent him to London. Sir Piers, and Orige, and the lad himself, o’er-persuaded me. I rue it bitterly; but howbeit, what is done is done. The matter is, what to do now?”
“The better way, methinks, should be that you left him to smart for it himself, an’ you so could.”
“Jack will ne’er smart for aught,” said his father. “Were I to stay his allowance, he should but run into further debt, ne’er doubting to pay the same somewhen and somehow. The way and the time he should leave to chance. I see nought but ruin before the lad. He hath learned over ill lessons in the Court,—of honour which is clean contrary to common honesty, and courtesy which standeth not with plain truth.”
“Ay, the Devil can well glose,” (flatter, deceive) said Mr Tremayne sadly.
“The lad hath no conscience!” added Sir Thomas. “With all this, he laugheth and singeth as though nought were on his mind. Good lack! but if I had done as he, I had been miserable thereafter. I conceive not such conditions.”
“I conceive them, for I have seen them aforetime. But I would not have such a conscience for the worth of the Queen’s Mint.”
Indeed, Jack did seem perfectly happy. His appetite, sleep, and spirits, were totally unaffected by his circumstances. Clare, to whom this anomaly seemed preposterous, one day asked him if he were happy.
“Happy?” repeated Jack. “For sure! Wherefore no?”
Clare did not tell him.
One evening in the week of Jack’s return, to the surprise of all, in walked Mr John Feversham. He did not seem to have much to say, except that Uncle Piers and Aunt Lucrece were well. In fact, he never had much to say. Nor did he think it necessary to state what had brought him to Lancashire. He was asked to remain, of course, to which he assented, and slipped into his place with a quiet ponderosity which seemed to belong to him.
“An oaken yule-log had as much sense, and were quicker!” (livelier) said Jack aside to Blanche.
“Nay, he wanteth not for sense, I take it,” returned his sister, “but of a truth he is solid matter.”
“I marvel if he ever gat into debt,” observed Clare quietly from the other side of Jack.
“He!” sneered that young gentleman. “He is the fashion of man that should pay all his trade-debts and ne’er ask for a rebate.”
“Well! methinks that were no very ill deed,” said Clare.
“A deed whereof no gentleman of spirit should be guilty!”
“There be divers sorts of spirits, Jack.”
“There is but one manner of spirit,” returned Jack sharply, “and I ne’er saw a spark thereof in yon bale of woollen goods labelled Jack Feversham.”
“May be thou wilt, some day,” answered Clare.
“That will be when the Ribble runneth up instead of down. He is a coward,—mine head to yon apple thereon.”
“Be not so sure thereof.”
“But I am sure thereof—as sure as a culverin shot.”
Clare dropped the subject.
Rather late on the following evening, with his usual quiet, business-like air, John Feversham asked for a few words with Sir Thomas. Then—to the astonishment of that gentleman—the purport of his visit came out. He wanted Blanche.
Sir Thomas was quite taken by surprise. It had never occurred to him that silent John Feversham had the faintest design upon any one. And what could this calm, undemonstrative man have seen in the butterfly Blanche, which had captivated him, of all people? He promised an answer the next day; and, feeling as if another straw had been added to his burden, he went to consult the ladies.
Lady Enville disapproved of the proposal. So unlike Don Juan!—so totally inferior, in every respect! And would it not be desirable to wait and see whether John were really likely to succeed to his uncle’s inheritance within any reasonable time? she calmly urged. Sir Piers might live twenty years yet, or he might have a family of his own, and then where would John Feversham be? In present circumstances, concluded her Ladyship, enjoying the scent of her pomander, she thought this a most undesirable match for Blanche, who could not do much worse, and might do much better.
Rachel, as might be expected, took the contrary view. Unlike Don Juan!—yes, she hoped so, indeed! This was a sensible young man, who, it might be trusted, would keep Blanche in order, which she was likely enough to need as long as she lived. How should the girl do better? By all means take advantage of the offer.
“Well, should Blanche know? That is, before acceptance.”
“Oh, ay!” said Lady Enville.
“Oh, no!” said Rachel.
In Rachel’s eyes, the new-fangled plan of giving the young lady a voice in the question was fraught with danger. But Lady Enville prevailed. Blanche was summoned, and asked what she thought of John Feversham.
It did not appear that Blanche had thought much about him at all. She was rather inclined to laugh at and despise him.
Well, had she any disposition to marry him?
Blanche’s shrinking—“Oh no, an’ it liked you, Father!”—decided the matter.
To all outward appearance, John Feversham took his rejection very quietly. Sir Thomas couched it in language as kind as possible. John said little in answer, and exhibited no sign of vexation. But Rachel, who was still pursuing her career of amateur detective, thought that he felt more distress than he showed.
Note 1. The embroidery about the heel and ankle, which showed above the low shoes then fashionable.
Note 2. Lest the reader should think this idea too preposterous to have been seriously entertained, I refer him to words actually uttered (and approved by the hearers) on the death of Philippe, Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis the Fourteenth:—“I can assure you, God thinks twice before He damns a person of the Prince’s quality.”—(Mémoires de Dangeau).