XXVI
Mr. Pepys was a gentleman whose spirits were never dashed save when he was testy for want of food or plunged into some periodical ague fit of shivering religiosity. He was an excellent companion for the road, with his vivacity and his bustling determination to get the best that life could give. John Gore and the Secretary had agreed to take no servants with them, for, as Mr. Pepys declared, “the rogues only drank their masters’ purses dry, and ran away at the first click of a pistol”—though it is highly probable that Mr. Samuel preferred to ride alone upon his travels simply because he was minded to enjoy himself without some prying rascal of a groom carrying home all manner of scandalous lies as to what Mr. Samuel said and did and drank in his hours of ease and absence.
They slept the first night at The Checkers Inn at Tunbridge, a fine timber and plaster house whose great gables overhung the street. The next day they rode on to The Wells, where many fashionable folk still lingered, enjoying the autumn sunshine and the country air. Mr. Pepys contrived to hire one of the little wooden cottages upon The Common for the night, a step that saved them riding off to Speldhurst. The Secretary appeared chiefly delighted with the fair held near The Pantiles, where pretty country girls sold fruit and flowers and garden stuff, and robbed their customers coquettishly, being not so simple as they seemed. Mr. Pepys proved such a zealous marketeer that he came away with a boy carrying a big basket, in which were three cabbages, a gallon of apples, two pounds of butter, a chicken and a duck, some home-made cakes, several bunches of ribbons, and a bottle of gooseberry wine. “What the deuce to do with the stuff?” That was a problem that made him laugh most heartily. And being an ingenious wag he went down in the evening with the basket to a little pavilion where some of the quality were playing cards by candle-light, and, soon finding friends there, he sat down and played ombre till he had lost three guineas. Then came the jest of protesting that he must pay his debts “in kind,” and the duck and the cabbages and the butter were hauled forth out of the basket. The bottle of gooseberry cordial was the only thing they took back with them to the cottage on The Common, and they shared it between them, finding it far stronger and more fiery than they had expected.
Mr. Pepys had a religious fit next morning when they rode on toward Lamberhurst to condole with the ugly cousin over her losses. It proved to be a smoky village in a valley, with a little stream running through it and a good inn near the bridge. Mr. Pepys established himself at the inn, swearing that he would cause Cousin Jane no extra expense; for her cooking would have caused a second revolt in heaven—at least, so he told John Gore. He appeared in need of a comfortable cup of mulled wine when he returned from calling upon the relative, who lived in a dull little house up the hill. Mr. Pepys confessed that she had talked five gold pieces out of him, and he went to bed so surlily that the officious insects, if there were any in the place, remained at a discreet and respectful distance.
On the fourth day from crossing London Bridge they rode for the town of Battle, leaving the Rye road at Flimwell, and entering upon a track that made Mr. Pepys sore in spirit as well as in the saddle. The roughness and the quagmires of the so-called highway reduced him to one of those sad and pensive moods when a man beholds rottenness in every institution, and despairs of an age that can suffer so much mud. When Mr. Pepys felt gloomy he took to talking politics, and to inveighing against the venality of the times, and the dangers that threatened every man, however shrewd and honest he might be.
“Keep away from it, John,” he said, solemnly; “for I assure you there will be heads falling before you and I are a year older. We are passing through a pest of plots—ouch!—hold up, you beast, that is the fifth time you have bumped me on the same place! I trust, John, that you have not meddled with any of these intrigues.”
“I am just as wise as a child, Sam.”
“Be careful that you are not too simple. Now, in your ear, John, I have many fears for that fine gentleman, your father. He is dabbling his hands in dangerous dishes. God knows what will come of all this ferment. The Protestant pot is on the bubble, John; it will boil over and scald a good many people, or I know nothing.”
“How much of it is froth?”
“Perhaps on the top, sir; but there is a deuced lot of hot liquor underneath. I know more of these things than most men, John; I am in and out, here, there, and everywhere; I keep my ears open, my clacker quiet, and my opinions to myself. There are some people who must be forever meddling, and banking up secret bonfires under their own houses. The papists are just such folk, John. There will be a flare soon, I tell you, and a bigger flare, perhaps, than the Great Fire ever made. Keep your fingers to yourself, John, and let fools play with hot coals.”
John Gore listened to Mr. Pepys’s prophecies, and watched the autumn woods flow by, russet and green, and bronze and gold. They were riding now over the Sussex hills, with a gorgeous landscape flowing toward the sea. Blue distances, far, faint horizons, dim, winding valleys ablaze with the splendor of decay. Leaves falling with a flicker of amber in the autumn sunlight. Berries red upon the bryony and the brier. Bracken bronzing the woodlands and the hill-sides, vague mists ready to rise so soon as the sun had set.
It was late in the afternoon, and the west a sweep of cold clear gold, when they came to the town of Battle, riding over the hill where the windmills stood, the hill called Mountjoy in those parts, for there the knights of William the Norman had tossed their spears in triumph as the sun went down. Coming by Mill Street into King Street they saw the great gray gate of the Abbey facing the town green where the fairs were held and where they baited bulls. Looking about them for a good inn, they chose “The Half Moon,” on the eastern side of the green. Over the way stood the great beamed house where wayfarers had been lodged before the days of the Abbey’s death.
The first piece of news Mr. Pepys had from the hostler as he dismounted was that my Lord Montague was not at the Abbey, but was expected from Cowdray some day that week. Mr. Pepys swore by way of protest, being stiff and hungry, and inclined to be choleric and testy over trifles. He was walking to and fro in the yard to stretch his legs, and throwing caustic brevities toward John Gore, when a neat and comely woman of forty came stepping over the stones, and desired to know how she could make the gentlemen welcome.
Mr. Pepys looked at her bland, brown face, with plaits of dark hair drawn over the forehead, and recovered some of his urbanity.
“Your best bedroom, ma’am, the best supper you can serve, and the best bottle of wine you have. You may not know Mr. Pepys of the Admiralty in these parts.”
The landlady spread her apron and curtesied very prettily, her brown eyes and the red handkerchief over her bosom making Mr. Pepys approve of her manners.
“The great Mr. Samuel Pepys, sir?”
“Some people would question the adjective, ma’am.”
“I have a boy in one of the King’s ships, sir, and Mr. Pepys, sir, is mighty popular in the navy. I am proud to serve you, sir.” And she dropped him another curtesy that made the great man think her a mighty fine woman. “Tom, carry up the gentlemen’s valises to the big front room. I can give you a little parlor to yourselves, sirs. And what may it please you to take for supper?”
They became quite coy and coquettish over pasties and spitted woodcock, duck and apple sauce, and Mr. Pepys’s favorite pudding. The Secretary appeared to forget the stiffness in his legs. He walked in with the genial air of a man who feels that his dignity is sure of its deserts, whispering to John Gore, with a wink, that it is useful at times to be somebody in this world, even for the sake of a clean bed.
The hostess of “The Half Moon” reconciled Mr. Pepys so thoroughly to his quarters by the polish of her pewter, the warmth of the wood fire, and by the supper she sent him by the hands of her daughter, that he lost his spite against my Lord Montague for being on the other side of Sussex. Lolling in a chair before the fire, his shoes off and his stockinged feet enjoying the blaze, he made as comfortable a picture as a philosopher could wish to praise.
“I could stomach a day or two here, John, with great contentment,” he said; “for the thought of those Sussex roads at night make me bless God for the burning logs, although it is October. My Lord Montague can come to me while we enjoy ourselves. Let us consider what there is to be seen in this part of Sussex. Ha, so—let us call up mine hostess’s daughter and hear what she has to say.”
There was no bell in the parlor, but Mr. Pepys improvised a gong with the bottom of a big brass candlestick and the poker. But since this most martial clashing did not bring the damsel, he went to the stairs-head and called over the balusters:
“Betty—Betty, my dear.”
Petticoats bustled up the stairs, and the daughter of the house appeared with a tray held like a buckler across her bosom. Mr. Pepys made her a polite little bow.
“We shall be beholden to you, my dear, if you will tell us how we may be amused to-morrow. Are there any gentlemen’s houses worth a ride in the neighborhood?”
Mr. Pepys retreated backward into the room as though desirous of drawing the girl after him.
“There is the Abbey, sir.”
“The Abbey!” And Mr. Pepys tossed the suggestion aside as superfluous. “I shall see enough of it, Betty, when my Lord Montague reaches us. Are there any houses hereabouts where murder has been committed, or a plot hatched, or a king been entertained. We like to see the shows.”
The girl leaned against the door-post with the tray lodged jauntily upon one hip, and her green stays with their red laces showing off a very embraceable figure.
“There is Bodjam Castle, sir.”
“Bodjam—Bodjam. What a name, my dear, for a cobbler! It likes me little.” And he admired the red petticoat and the green stays.
“Hastings Town—and Castle, sir.”
“Fish and old stones! No, John, eh; no Betty. Try me again.”
“Perhaps Rye Town would please you, sir.”
“A wry road, no doubt, which is more than your figure is, my dear; not wry, I mean, but trim as—well—just what you please.”
The girl laughed, perked up her chin, and glanced at John Gore as though he looked a sturdy fellow, and as though she expected him to wink.
“There is Pevensey, sir, where the King landed, and Thorn House, and Hurstmonceux.”
“Ah, Hurstmonceux, and Thorn, did you say? Thorn belongs to the Purcells, John, surely?”
“Yes, Mr. Pepys—”
“Pat off the tongue—Patrick Pepys shall be patted!”
“No one ever goes to Thorn, sir; there is nothing to see but ravens.”
“Hurstmonceux is a pretty word, my dear. Say it again; I like to see your lips pout out. What! giggling? Now, dear soul, what is there to laugh at? I am an old bachelor, as this gentleman will tell you. And, Betty, don’t forget the warming-pan, will you, my dear?”
John Gore and Mr. Pepys shared the same room that night, and the Secretary’s bed-going was as lengthy as his tongue. He had a habit of undressing by degrees, and of sitting down and roasting his toes at the fire between each act. He would even draw off his small-clothes from one leg and sit with the other still breeched, while he chatted and fondled his chin. Even when he had undressed, the toilet for the night was nearly as thorough as the toilet for the day. Mr. Pepys aired the contents of his travelling valise before the fire, and donned in succession a pair of lamb’s-wool bed-boots, a thick undervest, a blue cloth sleeping-coat, and a great nightcap, which he drew down over his ears. Then he shut the lattice tight, pushed a table against the door, put his money under his pillow, warmed his feet for the last time at the fire, and then clambered into bed.
“Lord Montague can stay at Jericho,” he said, as he wallowed down into a feathered mattress. “The weather should be steady, Jack—my corns are quiet. What do you say to Hurstmonceux for to-morrow. I wager that we can get inside.”
“The girl spoke of Thorn.”
“That was an allegory, John; ask her if her name is Rose. Now I dare you to keep me awake with your talking, sir; I know you sailors, all yarn to the rope’s-end. Good wench, she has warmed the bed well just where my feet go, God bless her! Did you applaud the color of those stays, John? Red and green are rare colors on a dark woman. Ah—ho!—if I tie not my clacker up, you will never let me sleep till midnight.”
John Gore still remembered Mr. Pepys’s snoring when they ordered their horses out next morning for a jaunt over the Sussex hills. Mistress Green Stays brought Mr. Pepys a mug of sack into the court-yard as he sat in the saddle, for which favor he thanked her gallantly, and told her she had pretty dimples at the elbow. They took a track that ran out of the western end of the town past the old Watch Oak, and soon toward Ashburnham and Penhurst.
Now, to put the matter frankly, these two gentlemen got wickedly lost that day, largely through a fit of friskiness on Mr. Pepys’s part in chasing a stray donkey down a side road. He had been lusting for a gallop, so he said, and the moke gave it him, to land him quizzically in a stout thorn-hedge. John Gore extricated the Secretary, condoled with him over the scratches, and prevailed upon him to return toward the road. But Mr. Pepys boasted a great belief in his own bump of locality, and, taking to a bridle-path, lost himself with complete success. And then he swore roundly at the Sussex roads, as though it was their duty to fly up in his face and not go crawling and sneaking like a lot of thieves behind a wood.
John Gore laughed, for it was Mr. Pepys’s outing and not his, and he suffered his friend to follow his own nose, being amused to know what would be the end of it. They were following a grass track that curled hither and thither through thickets and over scrubby meadows, not a house to be seen anywhere, with the sun at noon, and no dinner threatening.
The track proved kind to them, however, for the woods gave back suddenly, and they saw a red farm-house shelving its thatch under the shelter of a few beech-trees against the clear blue of an October sky. The beeches themselves were a-glitter with ruddy gold. And from the low brick chimney blew a wisp of smoke, as though flying a signal to Mr. Pepys’s inner man.
The Secretary bumped his heels into his horse and went forward at a canter. John Gore saw him rein in clumsily as he skirted a hedge that closed the orchard and yard, rolling forward in the saddle as though he was in danger of going over his horse’s head. He waved an arm over the hedge toward a great pond that lay on the farther side thereof, between the farm-yard and the orchard.
It seemed that the farmer’s child of seven had something of the Columbus in him, for while the men were in the fields and his mother in the kitchen he had rolled a big tub down from the yard, floated the craft, and embarked boldly, with a couple of thatching-pegs for oars. Whether the child paddled his way too daringly or no, the tub overturned in the middle of the pond, and, righting itself, lay there water-logged, while a flaxen head and a pair of frightened hands went bobbing and clawing and gulping amid ripples of scared water. And on the far bank, with the drake at their head, a company of white ducks were quacking in chorus, shaking their tails, and making a mighty pother.
John Gore saw that the boy was likely to drown, and, vaulting out of the saddle, he broke through the hedge and reached the pond. The pool looked too dark and deep for wading, and probably had two feet of mud at the bottom; so, pulling off his horseman’s coat and his heavy riding-boots, he went in, made a breast plunge for it, and struck out for the child. The white head was going under again when John Gore snatched at the curls. He held the boy at arm’s-length, and, swimming till his feet touched mud, stood up and lifted the youngster in his arms.
Mr. Pepys, who had run into the farm-house, appeared at the hedge with a round of rope and a big, raw-boned woman in a blue petticoat and a kind of linen smock. She pushed through, not sparing her brown forearms or her face, and would have taken the child out of John Gore’s arms.
But he put her aside kindly, and, laying the boy on the grass under the hedge, unfastened his little doublet, and then held him up by the legs to empty the windpipe and lungs of water.
“Have you a good fire burning?”
“Lord bless you, sir, yes.”
“Go and get your blankets ready. We shall soon have him alive and roaring.”
John Gore carried the child into the farm kitchen, and, laying him in a blanket almost upon the hearth-stone, rubbed and kneaded him till the skin began to redden. A loud sneeze was the first greeting that he gave them. His mother went down on her knees instantly and huddled him to her bosom, the blanket trailing across the brick floor.
“You be for terrifying me, you God-forsaken little rascal! Playing these tricks on us, with the good gentleman here wet to the skin and his stockings all mud! Won’t I smack ye when ye can bear a hand on a spot where a hand can’t do much harm!”
XXVII
Mr. Christopher Jennifer came to the kitchen in the middle of all this fussing over the child, with his bill and his hedging-gloves and his boots caked with muck. He was a short, round-headed man with bowed legs and a broad chest, and, after hearing the truth of it all from his wife, he laid the child solemnly and deliberately across his knee. “Come now, Chris, man, he ben’t fit for ye yet.”
“Oh, ben’t he? I reckon it will make him livelier nor cakes.”
And he began in the same stolid and unflurried fashion to lay one of his hedging-gloves across the child, till the sound of his roaring sent Death out with ignominy by the back door.
The chastening of youth attended to, Mr. Jennifer and his woman began to make a great to-do over John Gore and Mr. Pepys. The farmer took John Gore upstairs to the best bedroom, fetched out his Sabbath suit of gray cloth with the silver buttons, and gave his guest a change of stockings and of underwear. Then he went and mixed him a glass of hot toddy, remarking, with grave solemnity:
“That water be powerful wet!”
His wife Winnie bustled about the kitchen, banking up the fire with fagots till it roared in the black throat of the chimney, pulling out her best table linen from the press, and talking to Mr. Pepys all the time as though she had known him all her life. The Secretary was just the genial soul for such an adventure. He turned to very gallantly, and pressed himself into Mrs. Winnie’s service, tramping to and fro to the larder with her—a larder that smelled of herbs and ale, carrying mugs and platters of hollywood, a chine of bacon, and a round of beef. He even filled the big, black jack for her from the barrel in the dark corner, taking a good pull to his own content, and declaring that he pledged Mrs. Jennifer’s health.
The farmer came down-stairs carrying John Gore’s wet clothes, followed by that gentleman himself in Chris Jennifer’s Sabbath suit. Mr. Pepys looked at him quizzically, and bunched out his own vest with a significant wink. The farmer’s shoes were inches too big for the sea-captain, so that the heels clacked upon the bricks of the kitchen floor.
Mrs. Winnie hung the wet clothes before the fire, while her man stared at the table with the critical eyes of a host whose gratitude meant to prove its warmth by persuading his guests to overeat themselves.
“Turn your chairs to, my masters. Ye’ll be welcome to Furze Farm so long as my boots leave their muck upon t’ floor. Be it for me to tell ye for why, sir?” And he looked at John Gore steadily, and jerked a thumb in the supposed direction of the pond.
These good people of Furze Farm were so hospitable and so full of honest gratitude that what with the hot liquor, the drying of John Gore’s clothes, and Mr. Pepys’s happy torpor after a big meal, the afternoon was nearly gone before they remembered the homeward road. Farmer Jennifer would have had them stay the night, but Mr. Pepys roused himself to refuse, remembering the comforts of “The Half Moon” and the dimples of Mistress Green Stays. John Gore changed again into his own clothes (though Chris Jennifer would have made him a present of the undergear), and went above to say good-bye to little Will Jennifer, who had been put to bed and left to meditate over this Tale of a Tub. The boy seemed a little shy of John Gore, who dropped a sixpence on the pillow; for when a child has been smacked before strangers, some allowance must be made for outraged pride.
“I be sure thee had better bide the night,” said Mrs. Winnie, as they moved out from the kitchen. “Battle be a good nine miles, and in an hour will come sundown.”
Mr. Pepys thanked her very heartily, and declined her kindness with proper grace. They would be grateful, however, if Mr. Jennifer would put them upon the road.
“Get thee up on Whitefoot, Chris, and ride with the gentlemen to the Three Ashes.”
Mr. Jennifer brought a big brown filly from the stable, and set out with no more harness than a halter, and a sack for a saddle. Mrs. Jennifer held the farm-gate open for them, looking up at John Gore very kindly with just a glimmer of tears in her eyes, for though Winnie Jennifer had a strong arm and a rough, brown face, she was as warm-hearted a creature as ever creamed the milk.
“If ever it should be that we can serve ye, sir, God see to it, we will not forget.”
And John Gore gave her a sweep of his hat, never dreaming for the moment that Winnie Jennifer might one day prove a right dear friend.
Mr. Christopher rode with them a mile or more, saying very little, for he was a silent man, and accustomed to leave the talking to his wife. He looked sincerely puzzled by Mr. Pepys’s jokes, tickling his chin with a stumpy forefinger, and grinning occasionally as though wishing to be polite. They reached the Three Ashes, and Mr. Jennifer would have ridden farther with them, but Mr. Pepys, still obstinately sure of his own powers, refused to carry the farmer another furlong. Chris Jennifer gave them some very rambling directions, and after a long, dog-like stare at John Gore—a look that betrayed that he wished to say something graceful and could not—he wished them God-speed, and rode off on the brown filly.
Mr. Pepys professed himself wholly enlightened by the farmer’s rigmarole of “keep to t’ beech hanger on thy left”—“get ye down into t’ bottom”—“second lane ye come by afore t’ brook, and t’ second yonder along under t’ brow wid a turnip-field under t’ hedge.” John Gore had the seaman’s sense of direction, nothing more. Mr. Pepys was accustomed to strange documentary ambiguities, and persisted cheerfully that he knew just how to go.
And thus it befell that the Secretary lost himself valiantly a second time that day, and meeting not so much as a ploughboy to put him right, he lumbered on stubbornly, trusting to good-fortune. The dusk came down and caught them as they followed a rough “ride” that pretended to run in the direction of Battle Town. But it led them ungenerously into the heart of a wood, and then disappeared amid impassable undergrowth that was black with the coming night.
Mr. Pepys could face it out no longer. They were lost, and he accepted the blame of it, ruefully wishing that he had bottles in lieu of pistols in his holsters.
“What’s to be done, Jack? No ‘Half Moon’ for us to-night.”
A wind had risen and was beating through the underwood, making a dismal moan and setting the brown leaves shivering. The horses’ hoofs sucked at the spongy soil. Woodland and sky would soon be one great black void.
“We had better pick our way back and trust to luck.”
“And to think, John, that we left that warm corner of a kitchen! I would give a guinea for the smell of the smoked bacon, and a glimpse of the wood fire licking the chimney.”
They began to pick their way back again, the woodland “ride” growing black as the gallery of a mine. Their horses drooped their heads and went mopingly as though feeling as hungry and dismal as their masters. The hazel twigs kept stinging Mr. Pepys’s face, and though he swore peevishly at the first flick across the cheek, he pulled his hat down over his nose and took his punishment with the grim silence of a man who has only himself to blame.
A word from John Gore, who rode a little ahead, made Mr. Pepys perk up in the saddle.
“What—John—what?”
“A light over yonder.”
“God bless the smallest candle, John, that strives with this infernal darkness.”
They had come out from the wood, and could see far below them in a valley a faint glimmer of light. The ground seemed to fall away into a long sweep of vague gloom. The sky had become dark with clouds, and though they could see nothing but that faint spark of fire, they could hear the trees whispering and muttering not ten yards away.
“We had better make for the light.”
Mr. Pepys acquiesced fervently, the night growing raw and cold, and full of eerie sounds.
“I begin to think great things of Mr. Bunyan,” quoth he; “there is a sermon in yonder candle that makes me remember the responsibilities of my immortal soul.”
They rode down through the night, going very slowly, with the heavy sound of tired horses plodding over wet grass, and the wind blowing about them in restless gusts. They could see nothing but the glimmer of the light, nor could they even tell from what place it came, save that it most probably burned behind a casement because of its steadiness against the night.
They passed a few spectral trees that spread out into flat tops from short, knotted trunks. Then a vague, black mass seemed to rise against the opaque sky. Mr. Pepys, who had pushed on a few feet ahead, leaned forward in the saddle, straining his eyes to see what was before him. They had passed the trees by scarcely twenty paces when there was a sharp, scuffling sound, and the ring of something metallic against stone. John Gore saw the shadowy outline of horse and man swerve violently, and back past him over the grass. His beast carried Mr. Pepys into the boughs of a thorn-tree, yet, though tangled up with his periwig in his mouth, he managed to shout and warn John Gore.
“Hold back, John, for the love of God! There’s a wall in front of us, and water beyond it.”
John Gore dismounted and ran to help his friend, whose scared horse was raking him through the thorn boughs. He caught the animal’s bridle and quieted him, so that Mr. Pepys was able to slip out of the saddle.
“Where the devil are we now, John? Heaven help my poor face! I feel as though I had married fifteen wives, and all of them with finger-nails and tempers.”
“Hold the horses and I’ll reconnoitre.”
“Do, good John; but first let me find my hat.”
Outlined dimly by the light were two massive pillars that looked as though they flanked a gate. Moving very cautiously, John Gore found a bridge of tree-trunks across a moat, and a heavy gate at the end thereof. Peering through the crevice between the hinge-edge and the pillar, he could see the light burning behind a window near the ground.
“Where are you, John?”
“Here, over the bridge. There is a gate here, barred. The place must be of some size to have such a moat round it. I will try a shout.”
He gave a seaman’s hail, while Mr. Pepys, who was a man of many tricks, put two fingers in his mouth and blew a shrill whistle.
The light did not move, but they heard the deep baying of a dog, and then footsteps coming out into the yard. The steps paused, as though some one was listening, and a voice growled out an order to the dog.
“Halloo, there!”
The footsteps approached the gate. A man’s voice called to them from the other side, and they could hear the dog rubbing his snout along the lower edge and sniffing.
“Who’s there?”
“We have lost our way, and want a night’s lodging.”
“Who’s who?”
“Two gentlemen travelling alone. Open the gate, my good fellow, and take us in—”
“Deuce take you, that I shall not.”
Mr. Pepys, who had led the horses forward, put in a bland appeal.
“My good soul, why so surly? We are honest men and have the wherewithal to pay. What is more, we are hungry and dead tired.”
“How many are you?” asked the voice, while the dog kept sniffing at the gate.
“Two of us, and our horses.”
“What will you pay?”
Mr. Pepys gave John Gore a shocked and indignant nudge.
“The foul clod, bargaining with our starvation! A gold carolus, my friend.”
“Say five,” quoth the voice, laconically.
“Five! Why it’s sheer robbery!”
“Stay outside, then; it’s no business of mine.”
“Five be it, then,” said Mr. Pepys, in disgust.
The man went off, saying that he would chain the dog up, because the beast was fierce. They heard him call to some one, and then the sound of voices haggling together and the rattle of a chain. Presently the slow and heavy footsteps came back across the court-yard, with the lighter, quicker tread of a woman following. She had brought a lantern with her, and the light from it played under the gate.
“You can sleep in the barn,” said the man’s voice. “My woman won’t take strangers into the kitchen.”
Mr. Pepys expostulated.
“Five gold pieces, you rogue, for a night in an out-house?”
“Warm hay is better than wet grass. We can send you in a jug of beer and some bread and bacon.”
“Thank Heaven, John, there is such a place as hell! Open the gate, my man.”
“Throw the money over first.”
“Deuce take me, I am no such fool. Open the gate, and you shall have the money.”
They heard the lifting of the bar and the shooting of the bolts. It was a woman who met them—a cloak over her head and a lantern swinging in her hand. The man stood in a deep shadow behind the gate, and they could see the glint of a gun-barrel and the grayness of his face.
“Money down, gentlemen.”
Mr. Pepys felt very much like being held up by a footpad. He glanced over his shoulder for John Gore, who led the horses, and then threw five gold pieces down on the court-yard stones. The woman picked them up, one by one, examining each in turn by the light of the lantern.
“Come this way, sirs.”
Mr. Pepys did not like the gleam of the gun-barrel, nor the mystery of the place; but he felt more at ease, now that he had something in petticoats to deal with.
“I must make my apologies, ma’am,” he said, intending to try civility, “for disturbing you at such an hour. We have lost ourselves twice to-day on the road. Seeing us to be such quiet gentlemen, you might be persuaded—”
The woman cut him short without great ceremony, and they heard the grinding of hinges as the man closed the court-yard gate.
“You had better walk more this way or the dog will have a bite at your leg.”
“Obliged, ma’am, I swear,” and he took the hint promptly. “If you happen to have a warm corner in your kitchen—”
“I don’t keep a tavern, sir,” she said, quietly. “This is my man’s business, not mine. If you can’t sleep on clean hay, the more’s the pity.”
Mr. Pepys felt frost-bitten. Here was a lady who meant what she said, and was not to be argued with. Mr. Pepys had studied the sex. “Barn” she had said, and “barn” it would be.
The woman pulled open a door that sagged on its hinges and scraped the stones with its lower edge, and going in she hung the lantern to a nail in the wall. Mr. Pepys saw a litter of hay in one corner, a pile of broken bricks in another, and a few old garden tools and remnants of furniture in a third. He could not refrain from making a cynical grimace.
“This is the dearest and the dirtiest lodging, ma’am, I ever paid for in advance.”
“That’s as you please, sir; be grateful for what you can get.”
She left them and crossed the yard, while John Gore fastened the two horses to a couple of iron brackets in the wall. Mr. Pepys took the lantern down and turned the hay over critically with his boot. Then he went and stood in the doorway, sniffing the night air hungrily, and attempting to decipher his surroundings in the dark.
“I do not stomach this greatly, John. Where the deuce are we? That is what I should like to discover.”
John Gore was unsaddling the horses.
“As queer a place as ever I saw—and queer people in it, too. Listen here, John”—and he came in with an air of mystery—“those voices were never trained in Sussex.”
“Oh!”
“You hear such sweet strains in London City, John. What the deuce has brought such folk down here into Sussex?”
John Gore laid one of the saddles on the ground. Mr. Pepys stooped over it and pulled a pistol from a holster.
“Look to your powder-pans, John; my hair feels stiff under my wig. They would cut our throats for a shilling.”
He smuggled the pistol suddenly under his coat as he heard footsteps crossing the court. The woman came in with a big jug, and bread and cold bacon upon a plate. Mr. Pepys made one more attempt to melt her churlishness.
“Would you be so gracious as to tell us, ma’am, where we happen to be passing the night?”
She kept her eyes to herself as she set the jug on an old stool.
“In Sussex, sir.”
Mr. Pepys shrugged his shoulders.
“There is such a thing as a house, my dear madam.”
“So I have heard, sir; but there is no house here.”
“There is also a commandment, ma’am, that tells us not to prevaricate.”
“So I have heard, sir. My man will call you in the morning.”
She left them without another word, though John Gore called after her, bidding her to send her man with water for the horses. She came back herself anon, and left them a single bucketful, going out again as silently and sullenly as before. John Gore was holding the bucket under his horse’s nose when he heard the barn door grate over the stones, and close on them with a final heave from a heavy shoulder.
Mr. Pepys’s face looked blankly scared.
“Halloo, there, what are you shutting us in for?”
“To keep the wind out,” said the man’s voice. “Good-night, gentlemen,” and they heard something thud and grind against the door, as though the fellow had jammed a piece of timber against it.
Mr. Pepys put his shoulder to the door, but could not move it.
“The scoundrel has wedged us in, John!”
Slow, solid footsteps died away across the court-yard. They heard the rattle of a falling chain and the whimpering of a dog. And presently they heard the beast come sniffing at the door.
Mr. Pepys looked at his companion, and then glanced with no appetite at their supper.
“Stars and garters, John! I don’t like this at all. Keep away from that beer—the rogues may have poisoned it; I would rather share the water with the nags. Get your pistols out, John. Just listen to that brute of a dog sniffing and scraping to get at us. If you catch me asleep to-night, sir, you may call me a fat fool!”
XXVIII
Nevertheless, Mr. Pepys fell fast asleep on the hay that night, for the Sussex air and the ale at Furze Farm triumphed over his presentiments of violence and murder. The sea-captain, who was of harder fibre than the Secretary, sat in the hay with his pistols beside him and his ears on the alert for any sound that the night might send.
The candle in the lantern guttered about midnight, and John Gore was left in the dark to listen to Mr. Pepys’s snoring and the heavy breathing of the tired horses. He could hear rats scrambling and squeaking in the walls, the harsh creaking of a rusty vane over one gable-end of the barn, and the occasional sniffing of the dog’s nose at the door. The barn was warm enough, and full of a musty fragrance, what with the heat of the horses and the hay, and John Gore might have followed Mr. Pepys’s example had he not come by the habit of keeping watch at sea. And worthy man though Mr. Pepys was, John Gore commended him for falling asleep, being desirous of thinking his own thoughts without the distraction of his companion’s tongue.
The place and its people puzzled John Gore, and he trusted them even less than did Mr. Pepys. There might be priests in hiding, or some secret to be guarded, for John Gore guessed that only the couple’s greed had persuaded them to give casual strangers shelter in the barn for the night. Their surly aloofness, as though they were risking something for five gold pieces, had set the sea-captain’s curiosity at work. The place had a moat and a gate that suggested a manor-house or a grange of some size. Nor did the folk themselves smell of the country. John Gore determined to reconnoitre the place at dawn if he were able to force the door.
Matters shaped otherwise, however, for it was still pitch-dark on an autumn morning when he heard the sound of a door opening and a heavy tread upon the court-yard stones. The man’s voice called to the dog, and by the rattle of a chain John Gore guessed that the beast was being fastened. The footsteps crossed the court and paused outside the barn, with the glow from a lantern sending fingers of light through the chinks in the door.
“Halloo, gentlemen—halloo there!”
He hammered at the door, the sound making such a thunder in the barn that Mr. Pepys woke up with a gurgle, as though he were being throttled, and sat up, striking out with his fists into the dark.
“Soul of me, what is it? John! Where are you?”
“Here, watching over you like a father.”
“And I have been asleep! My conscience! Call me a fat fool, John, out loud!”
“Time to start, gentlemen.”
“Start!” said Mr. Pepys, rubbing his eyes, “why, it can’t be much after midnight!”
“Five of the clock it is, sirs.”
“Call us again at seven, Solomon; the hay is sweeter than I thought.”
The man pulled the prop away, dragged the door open a foot or so, and pushed the lantern inside. But he did not show them his face.
“I go to work in half an hour,” he said, stubbornly, “and my woman wants you away before I go.”
“Dear soul alive, we shall not eat her, nor even salute her tenderly! And there is breakfast to be considered.”
“You can get your breakfast on the road. Up with you, or, by Old Noll, I’ll let the mastiff off the chain!”
The fellow’s bullying tone roused John Gore’s grimness, but he felt that nothing was to be gained by a squabble. Mr. Pepys dragged himself up from the hay, and helped himself to some of the bread and bacon that had been left over from the night. John Gore was already at work saddling the horses, not sorry to remember the warm parlor of The Half Moon Inn at Battle.
The man had moved off, and they heard him opening the court-yard gate. It was still dark when they sallied from the barn, and found the woman waiting for them with a cloak over her head. John Gore loitered and looked about him, but could see nothing but low, dilapidated, thatched roofs, and a vague, shadowy mass looming up against the northern sky. The woman seemed to have no wish to let them linger, and the growling of the dog typified the temper of the humans who owned him. The man had disappeared, but what with the darkness and the raw cold of an autumn morning, Mr. Pepys had no desire to wish him good-bye. He remembered the glint of a gun-barrel as he climbed into the saddle.
“You can at least tell us, my good woman, how to find the road to Battle Town?”
“I never was at Battle in my life, sir.”
“Oh, cheering Aurora, how helpful thou art! Can you give us just one point of the compass, ma’am?”
“Ride east, sir; you must come somewhere.”
“I agree with that statement, heartily,” quoth Mr. Samuel, with a philosophical grimace.
They rode out through the gate and over the bridge of tree-trunks with a vague, black gleam of water on either side. They had hardly crossed when the gate was slammed on them, and they heard the woman laughing, and calling with coarse words to her man.
“The pope deliver us, John, but I congratulate my throat on being sound.”
“Did you get a glimpse of the man’s face?”
“No.”
“Nor did I. He seemed shy of showing it.”
“The surly scoundrel! As I said before, John, thank Heaven there is a hell.”
They pushed on slowly in the dim light, riding over spongy grass-land that sloped upward toward the west. Everywhere the silence of the night still held, save for the fluttering call of an awakened bird. They had gone little more than a furlong when they came to the outstanding thickets of a wood, the trees rising black and strange against the heaviness of the sky. John Gore drew rein suddenly, and swung out of the saddle.
“What’s your whim, John?”
For he was leading his horse by the bridle toward a clump of beech-trees whose boughs swept close to the ground.
“I am going to wait for the dawn.”
“There is some wisdom in that,” said Mr. Pepys.
“What is more, I want to have a look at the place where we have spent the night. And the folk yonder will not get a glimpse of us in the thick of these trees.”
A slow grayness gathered in the east with little crevices of silvering light opening across the sky. The silver turned betimes to gold, with tawny edges to the clouds, and here and there the faintest flush of rose. The grayness rolled back gradually, with a glimmer here and a glimmer there of a hill-top catching the first gleams. In lieu of the ghastly twilight the landscape began to take on color, and to glow, as though touched by fire, with all the wild tints of an autumn dawn.
As the day came John Gore saw a great house rise in the valley, with water about it, and grass-land and woods on every side. The walls were smothered with ivy, and through some of the empty windows shone the dawn. Above the roofless rooms a square tower rose, showing a few feet of red brick above its mantling of ivy. There were rotting out-buildings beyond the court-yard, and a green space that looked like a wild garden, while in the meadows about the place grew a number of old thorns.
Now there flashed suddenly across John Gore’s mind the picture of Donna Gloria in the Purcells’s house at Westminster. And he knew as he gazed upon it that this place in the valley was their ruined house of Thorn.
Mr. Pepys was too short-sighted to distinguish the place distinctly.
“Well, John, what do you make of it?”
His companion jerked a look at him as though he had forgotten Mr. Pepys’s existence.
“Strange chance, Sam! We have spent the night, without knowing it, at the Purcells’s house of Thorn.”
“Thorn!”
“I have seen a picture of it before the Parliament men made it a ruin. The windows are out, the roof in, and the walls shaggy with ivy. I wonder that they did not batter down the tower.”
Mr. Pepys was screwing up his eyes and shading them with his hand, but things run into a blur at a distance, and much straining made the tears come.
“We had better be mounting, John.”
“Wait! Bide quiet a moment.”
John Gore’s face had a keen, hawk-like look as he leaned forward a little, drawing a beech bough down to shade his eyes. He had seen several white pigeons flutter up from the circular brick dove-cote that still stood in one corner of the court, and beat their wings about a narrow window high up in the tower. The dark ivy seemed to give distinctness to the fluttering specks. Two of the birds had perched upon the sill, and it was then that John Gore’s far-sighted eyes had seen something that made him wonder. For two faint, white things had appeared at the window, like hands thrust out, and the pigeons had fluttered to them as though to be fed.
“What is it, John?”
The sea-captain ignored the question, and Mr. Pepys began to yawn and fidget.
The white birds had fluttered away again, and the faint hands and wrists showed in the dark framing of the narrow window. They looked like hands thrust up in supplication, the hands of a prisoner who could only see the white birds and the sky.
John Gore turned sharply, and climbed into the saddle with the air of a man gripped and held by some inspired suspicion. He rode off slowly, Mr. Pepys following him, and they began to pick their way through the autumn woods. And fortune was kind to them that morning, for they struck a track that led them to the Battle road.
John Gore fell into a deep silence, a slight frown on his forehead and his mouth firmly set. Mr. Pepys’s sallies lighted upon a stubborn and irresponsive surface, for his companion seemed grimly set upon reflection.
“It puzzles me to know,” the Secretary had said, “what that man and his woman are doing down at Thorn. Has my Lady Purcell established them there as her retainers, and if so—why? Or have they taken up their lodging there like rats in a ruin?”
Mr. Pepys did not suspect how sudden a significance that same question had gathered for John Gore. The sea-captain kept his own counsel on certain matters, nor did he tell his companion of the hands he had seen at the tower window. They might have belonged to the woman, but John Gore did not imagine her to be a creature who would climb a tower in order to feed pigeons.
And yet the suspicion that had seized him seemed wild and incredible when he thought of the people who were responsible for such a thing. Even in an age when the mad were treated more like caged beasts, no man with manhood in him could have given a mere girl such a prison and such keepers.
John Gore gave his horse the spur suddenly, and took Mr. Pepys into Battle at a canter, the Secretary bumping fiercely in the saddle, much to the delight of certain rude children who watched them come riding into the town.
But at Thorn, Barbara, cold and very quiet, sat on the bed under the window, with the red book in her lap and her eyes full of vague musings. For though those four walls let life in only by the window overhead, her thoughts flew out into the wide world—sad and poignant thoughts that bled at the bosom like a bird that has been wounded by a bolt.
She had heard strangers come and go, and with them the echo of a voice that made her heart hurry and her white face flush, and her eyes grow full of desire and mystery. It had seemed but an echo to her from far away, no dear reality—yet there had been tears upon the page when she read the book that morning.
For many things had changed in Barbara’s heart that autumn, with the cold and the loneliness, the wretched food, and the wind in the tower at night. She had grown gentler, more wistful, less sure of her own soul. It was as though suffering were softening her, even ripening the heart in her, despite the raw nights and the shivering dawns. What the future had in store she could not tell, but she fed the birds at the window, and the mouse that now crept out to her in the daytime and not only when dusk fell. And with these childish things some new impulse seemed to quicken and take fire within her, like the life of a child that is reborn in those who suffer.