How Master Peasegood preached Wisdom.Gil’s ship, with Father Brisdone on board, after waiting in vain for its freight, grounded as the tide went down. The old priest, who had been on deck, leaning over the bulwarks gazing up the river for the boat that did not come, had been startled by a great flash of light which suddenly shot up above the hills, and then by a heavy clap as of thunder, followed shortly by a fierce glow in the sky, all of which told him only too plainly of some terrible catastrophe at the powder-works.He was not surprised, then, that the boat did not arrive till the long, weary night had passed away, and the bright sun shone once more upon the dancing waters, but even then noon was fast approaching before there was the measured dip of oars, and the boat came round a wooded point.He looked earnestly for Mace, but, not seeing her, he sighed.“My eyes fail me a good deal now,” he said; and, shading them with his hand, he stood watching till, as the boat neared the ship, he could see that she had four men lying in the stern sheets, and he concluded that there had been an encounter.“A bad augur,” he said, sadly; “bloodshed on the eve of a wedding. Poor boy though, there seems no chance of a wedding, for he has not won his love.”His hands trembled as he stood at the gangway, while the boat was run up to the side and Gil painfully climbed on board.“Failed, my son?” cried Father Brisdone and here he stopped short as he saw the terrible look of anguish in the young man’s eyes.“Help my poor lads, father,” he said sadly. “They have been lying hurt these many hours.”One by one four injured men were hoisted on board, and laid beneath the shelter of a sail, while Gil and the father attended to their injuries with rough but sensible surgery. There was a severe sword-wound and plenty of terrible burns, but the worst sufferer was poor Wat Kilby, whose face was blackened by the explosion, hair and beard burned off, and his thigh-bone broken.He was in a high fever and wandering when slung on board, turning angrily upon those who had helped him.“Don’t I tell you the poor lass is burning?” he cried. “This is your doing, skipper,” he moaned. “You were always against it, and now you leave the poor lass to burn, and keep me here. Father, this is the boy I watched over and brought up, and taught. This be the way he treats me now I am in trouble.”It was with great difficulty that they could keep the poor old fellow sufficiently quiet to enable them to perform the necessary bandaging, but at last he sank into the heavy sleep of exhaustion; and Gil, having satisfied himself that his injured men were cared for, saw to his own burns, gave orders for the ship to be floated up to her old berth on the next tide, and then returned to the Pool.For the next seven days he was almost constantly at Roehurst, in company with the stricken father, whom affliction seemed to have turned back to him as his only friend; and together they hung about the ruins, which still smouldered slightly, and crumbled more and more into a shapeless heap, overhung by a few masses of tottering wall.Gil would have tried to persuade the old man to leave the spot, but that it had so terrible a fascination for him as well, and together they would sit hour after hour gazing at the ruins, and rebuilding the place mentally and occupying it as of old.The people of the sparsely inhabited district came to gaze at the wreck, and from far and near they gathered together two days after the fire, to see Gil’s men carry the flower-sprinkled bier from Croftly’s house to the little rustic churchyard two miles away, the men taking it in turns to bear her, four and four about. The place was densely crowded, thinly populated as was the country there, to see Gil Carr and the weak, broken founder, who seemed to have aged in one night to a venerable old man, walk hand in hand behind, and stand bareheaded while Master Peasegood read, and sobbed, and read, and finally letting fall his book, went down upon his knees in the soft earth, and prayed beside the grave.Sir Mark chafed more and more, but it was in vain. He was to have been chief actor in another scene; here he was completely set aside again, and Gil Carr had resumed his place.Fortunately for Sir Mark, his old acquaintance Sir Thomas Beckley came forward to offer his hospitality, and he took up his abode with him, feeling that he could not leave the place with his task undone, and in a bitter mood he received the attempts at consolation offered to him by Anne, who, however, always kept very much aloof, playing the part of the injured woman, but promising herself a sharp revenge, if ever the King’s messenger should again lay siege unto her heart.Up to the day of the funeral the founder had been almost childish from the effects of the shock; but after that he seemed to have recovered himself, though he looked aged and bent, and changed to a remarkable degree.“I was very hard upon you, Gil,” he said to him one evening, as they stood leaning against one of the posts that had helped to support the swing bridge now completely swept away, and whose place was occupied by a couple of stout planks laid across the race. “I was very hard upon you, my lad, but, though I made that affair of Abel Churr’s an excuse, I don’t think I believed at heart that you did away with the poor wandering wretch.”Gil looked at him sadly, and bowed his head without speaking.“What are you going to do now, my lad?” continued the founder, gazing at him with a yearning look as one his lost child had loved.“To do?” said Gil, in a low hopeless tone, “to do? What is there left to do, sir, but die?”“Hush, my lad,” said the founder, laying a trembling hand upon the young man’s arm; “that is for me to say. I am old and stricken: the storm has torn one great branch from the trunk, and the old tree will slowly wither and die. You are young yet, and hope will come to you again as time goes on.”“Hush, for God’s sake, hush!” cried Gil, turning upon him almost fiercely; then, gazing round him in the gathering gloom of the evening, he let himself sink, upon his knees lower and lower, with his hands covering his face, as for the first time in the solitude of that blasted home he gave full vent to the pent-up agony that for days and days he had striven to hide.“Hope,” he groaned, “hope?” as his broad shoulders heaved and the despairing sobs tore their way from his weary breast. “He does not know what she was to me—he cannot tell how I loved her. Mace, Mace, my darling, would to God I were lying by thy side!”It had grown quite dark now, and the founder sank upon his knees in the black ashes to lay his hands upon the young man’s head.“Gil, my son,” he whispered hoarsely, “forgive me, for I never knew your heart till now. In her name I ask you to forgive me for the wrong I would have done you both in tearing you apart. I thought I was doing right, but I am punished for my fault.”“Forgive you!” groaned Gil, who, for the first time in his life, was quite unmanned. “Yes, I forgive you, if there is aught to forgive.”He pressed the old man’s hand, as he rose after a time, weak and desolate, to sit down upon one of the stones cast from the main building by the blast. Some distance away a couple of windows shed their feeble light, as if they were signals to Mace to open her casement once again, and a groan rose to Gil’s lips as he thought of the past. Then, like a wandering spirit, a white, filmy-looking owl swept by them, turned and came back once more, as if attracted by the blackened ruins, glided to and fro for a few minutes, and it seemed to the two men that it shrieked faintly just over the very centre of the ruined house before it glided away.Gil sat watching the bird in a dreamy, hopeless way, and, as he gazed through the darkness, he felt that the place would become the home of such creatures.He was aroused from his reverie by the founder.“How did it happen, Gil?” he said.He spoke in a low, hoarse voice, but his Words sounded very plain in the silence of the autumn even.“How did it happen?” said Gil, repeating his words.“Yes, my boy, tell me all. I cannot believe that God would make that old woman with her curses his instrument to punish me.”“I have little to tell,” said Gil. “I saw our darling again and again, begging that she would go with me; but she refused till she found it hopeless to move you, and that the wedding was to be.”“Yes, yes—go on,” groaned the founder.“Then she consented, and I made my plans.”“Yes, I see,” replied the founder, “you were there with your men, and Sir Mark felt sure that you were coming. But yours was a mad revenge on him, and meant ruin and destruction to all.”“I do not understand you,” said Gil, quietly.“Did you think by blowing down part of the place to get her away in the confusion?”“Blow down? The place?” said Gil. “We had not a charge of powder with us. I left it all on board.”“Then it was the store below caught first,” said the founder, musingly; “but how—how?”“I cannot tell,” said Gil.“Wat Kilby,” exclaimed the founder, jumping at a cause for the terrible disaster; “he was smoking his tobacco by the entry, and must have thrown down the burning pipe.”“Nay, he did not smoke; he was by my side bearing a ladder.”“Are you speaking frankly to me, Gil?” said the founder. “I prithee keep nothing back.”“Can you speak to me like that?” replied Gil, in a grave, reproachful tone. “Master Cobbe, I have kept nothing back; I have added nothing to my story; I have only left out that there was the priest awaiting on board of my ship, to be our darling’s companion until we were made man and wife.”“Forgive me, Gil,” said the founder. “I know now that you are keeping nothing back. But how could it have happened?”“A shot from one of Sir Mark’s men’s pieces must have gone through to your store of powder,” said Gil. “They did fire, but my men struck their pieces aside.”The founder accepted this theory, and they sat in silence for a few moments, till they were interrupted by the approach of a great, dark figure, who seemed at last to make them out.“Ah! friend Cobbe,” it said, in the thick rich tones of Master Peasegood, “I was seeking thee. Come; the night-dew is falling, and it is time you were safely housed. Ah! Gil, my good lad, you here?”“Yes,” was the curt response. “Master Peasegood, hadst thou but done thy duty by her who was thy charge, these troubles might not have been.”“Reproach me not, good lad, I was taken away through Sir Mark’s scurvy tricks and carried up to London. And there I was, day after day, half prisoner, half free. Sometimes they’d let me fly a little bit, like a bird with a string at its leg. Other times they’d keep me in, and never a word could I get to know of my offence.”“Not a legal prisoner, then?”“Nay, lad, not at all. Though, had I tried to flee I had been tied fast enough, I’ll warrant. I took advantage of my freedom to see Saint Paul’s, and should be sorry to preach there. I bought me though, as I had my money with me and the chance was good, six yards of cloth in Paul’s churchyard to make me a goodly cloak—four pounds sixteen it cost me—and seven yards of calamanko for a cassock; one pound four and sixpence that, besides a pound for a new hat, and six shillings for a lutestring hood for Mistress Hilberry. I lightened my pocket, Gil, but I was heavy enough at heart.”Gil nodded.“I grew so hot of blood and angry at last with the way they kept me in, and the too free use I made of the most villainous ale, Master Cobbe, I ever put to my lips, that had I not been blooded freely by a chirurgeon, I should have been ill. It was not the proper time—the haemeroyal time, though close upon the full, but I let him take a good ten ounces from my veins, and felt a better man.”“It would have been better, Master Peasegood, had you been here.”“True, lad, but I was not my own ruler. That Sir Mark never trusted me. I had hard work to get free again, and hurried down to get to our darling’s side. You saw me when I came—that night? Sir Thomas Beckley overtook me, and he brought me on.”Gil bent his head, and held out his hand, which the other pressed.“When do you sail again?” said the parson.“I sail again? Maybe never,” said Gil. “Why should I sail?”“To give thyself occupation—work—toil-weary evening and restful night. Up, man, and work. Bear thy load bravely till Heaven send the soft touch of time to make it lighter. Thou art young; thy ship waits. Go across the sea and do thy work. This is no place for thee.”“Why do you interfere with me, Master Peasegood?” cried Gil, testily. “I am none of thy followers.”“Nay, my lad, thou art not; but I give thee good advice that my lips seemed urged to speak. Go and toil, and sit not down sobbing like a fretful child.”“Man, you would madden me if I listened,” cried Gil.“Nay, but thou shalt listen,” said Master Peasegood, “and I will quell thy madness. Thou hast received one terrible loss like a man; I would not have thee do it like a woman. Then, too, Master Cobbe, when are these fires to be relit, and the wreathing curls of smoke to rise from each furnace chimney?”“Never,” said the founder sadly, “my energy has gone, and I am spent.”“Tut, tut, man; fie!”“What have I to live for?” cried the founder, as angry now as Gil.“Not for thyself,” cried Master Peasegood. “Not both of ye to indulge a moping selfish regret, but for others—for the memory of one dead. Tut! man, those do not pay most respect to their dead who sit and sigh, and groan, and work themselves into fevers. Gil Carr, thy men call for thee to lead them in some seafaring adventure. Jeremiah Cobbe, thou hast got together here some fifty souls—workmen, their wives, and the children they have begotten. Thou didst bring them to do thy work, and now the furnaces are cold, the busy wheel has ceased to turn, and thy workmen lean against the doorposts, and idle, and get out of trim. Come, come! up, and be doing.”“For whom?” cried the founder angrily, “for whom should I toil?”“Not for thyself, but for thy people. Nay, nay! don’t take it ill, and think me unfeeling. To both of you I say it is your duty, and, in the name of yon sweet girl whom we all so dearly loved, I say keep her memory green in your heart of hearts, but cease unmanly repinings against fate.”“Ah! Master Peasegood,” said the founder more gently, “thou hast never been a father.”“Had I been sweet Mace’s father could I have loved her better, Jeremiah Cobbe? Have not mine eyes oft filled with tears at the memory of her sweet face; has not my voice choked, and have not my words failed when I have tried to speak, Gil Carr? Tut, man, give me credit for loving her as well. Thou hast felt sore against me because I tried to keep you two apart; but why was it, Gil, why was it? Had I not seen that which made me think thou would’st prove a faithless lover to her, poor child. Give me your hand, man, my love for her was different to thine, but it was quite as deep.”Gil’s hand was laid in the heavy palm of the parson of Roehurst, and they joined in a close firm grip without another word.“When shall these fires be going again, Master Cobbe,” continued the parson; “when shall the busy wheel turn plashing round? Come, come, promise me that thy mourning shall not be quite out of bounds.”The founder had turned his back, and remained gazing away from them at the blackened heap.“You will be up and doing, will you not, Master Cobbe?” continued the parson, urging him on. “Come: for thy child’s sake. Would’st have this place left a ruin? Come, promise me thou wilt.”A deep sigh seemed to tear itself from the founder’s breast, and he turned to gaze in the direction of his works.“Thou art right, parson,” he said; “it is not fair that the workmen I brought here to feed and furnish with hard labour should suffer for my sake. The fires shall be lit again.”“Ay, that’s well,” said Master Peasegood earnestly. “It will be glad news for many a heart. Then I shall see the axe busy again as the leaves fall, and the glow of the charcoal fire in the woods; and meantime thy men will delve for iron, and the furnaces go roaring on. Is it not so?”“Yes.”“Bravely spoken, brave heart,” said Master Peasegood; “and thou, Gil Carr, off to thy ship once more, and bear away her freight. Come back to us laden with the pale yellow brimstone and the grey-white salt. Tut, tut, tut, of what am I speaking?” he muttered, as Gil shuddered. “You will go, my brave lad, eh?”“I suppose so: yes,” said Gil slowly; and the parson laid his hand upon the founder’s shoulder once more.“And the dear old house, Master Cobbe? There is sandstone waiting in the quarry to be borne here, and thou hast oaken timber enough cut to build it up. When wilt begin to repair thy loss?”“Never,” cried the founder fiercely. “Parson Peasegood, I’ll work and toil and invent and strive day and night to keep things going here, but it is for others’ sake, not mine.”“Nay, nay, but the house must be restored.”“Never,” cried the founder; “never, Master Peasegood; never, Gil Carr. I care nothing for the words of that reviling old woman and her curses. Punishments come from Heaven, not from Hell, and, if she be a witch, ’tis devil’s work she does; but no hand shall touch yon heap, neither stone nor ash shall be disturbed. The flowers may spring up again, and the grass will grow, but to touch it would be to me like disturbing my poor child’s grave. Our dear old home died with my darling. Let them rest.”He turned away and walked firmly across the planks towards the lane where Tom Croftly’s cottage stood, followed by the parson and Gil, who stepped back as the founder rapped upon the cottage door.“Tom,” he said, as the door was opened, and the light of a rush-candle shone upon his deeply-lined face, “go round to the men and bid them light the big furnace in the morning, and you see about the mixing up of another batch of powder.”“Hurray, master,” cried the man. “Give me my hat, wife. Dal me! but that’s good news again.”“Thou’lt go on making powder again—so soon?” said Master Peasegood, as the founder joined them, and they went down the lane.“Yes,” said the founder firmly. “Gil, when thou com’st back, my lad, there will be some score barrels of the best and strongest make. I want to show people that an old hag’s curses are as light as wind.”“Ay, and that a bad mishap is not to be taken as a judgment, because a would-be soothsayer says ’tis so,” cried Master Peasegood. “Thou’rt right, Master Cobbe. I thank Heaven I spoke to you both as bravely as I did, for my heart misgave me all the while.”The next morning the smoke rolled up once more from the furnace chimney. The great wheel turned and plashed as it shed showers of silver from its broad paddles and spokes; blackened men bore baskets of soft dogwood charcoal to be ground, and others shovelled up the pale yellow sulphur and the crystals of potash for mixing into powder once again. Two heavy tumbrils jolted and blundered down the cinder-made lane to fetch great loads of ironstone from the pits in the woods whence it was dug, and then fierce furnaces were charged with layers of ore and charcoal ready for smelting, while the horses tugged at their loads in answer to the uncouth cries of the men. It was as if the people of Roehurst had awakened from sleep, and all were rejoicing in the gladsome feeling of being once more at work after their enforced idleness, the change acting like a spur. There was shouting over the various works, and now and then some one burst forth into a song, some doleful love-ditty about a sweet young maiden, sung in a minor key.Tom Croftly was in his element once more, and after seeing the furnaces started and the men preparing the next batch of powder, he anxiously set his colliers to work to get him more coal.It was no sending down a set of blackened miners with their Davy lamps crowding a cage that dropped slowly into the gas and choke-damp charged bowels of the earth, but the superintending of couples of men who attacked some cords of wood—long, low stackings of the loppings of the trees cut down the previous winter—and, clearing out a circular space, throwing out the earth all round, they set up a pole in the centre. Then picking the branches that were some four feet long, they carefully began to build them round the centre pole, standing all on end, and going on round and round till a low circular stack was built, when the stout central pole was taken away, the space it occupied being filled with light brushwood, which was then set alight ready to communicate with the wood around, while the air running in through spaces left at the sides soon made a swift fire. This, however, was not allowed to burn fiercely, for old charcoal powder mixed with dry earth lay ready, and, after the stack had been covered with a litter of weeds, dry grass, and thin twigs from the fallen trees sufficient to keep it from falling through, the earth was shovelled on all over the stack wherever there was a sign of flame or thin smoke breaking forth, till at last the flames were stifled and the thick smoke rose only from the centre.“More loam on,” cried Tom Croftly, who, spade in hand, danced excitedly round the charcoal pile like a grim black demon busy over some fiery task, and the men worked and watched, smothering the flames with more earth and water till not a gleam was seen, though all the while the fire was glowing fiercely and burning out the watery gases of the wood.And this went on night and day, the colliers having a shelter rigged up to keep off the night-air when they needed rest, this being called turn and turn, for, should there be no one ready to throw on shovels-full of loam when the fire began to work a way through, the burning would be spoiled.But there were no burnings spoiled with Tom Croftly, who, had the men been disposed to fail, would have been there to catch them lapsing and take the shovel in hand himself. So the charcoal burned its time, glowing slowly in the well-closed heat till by gentle testing here and there it was declared to be quite fit, when the earth was cleared away, water used liberally for quenching, and the erst flaming heap allowed to cool, the effect being that the branches of rough wood were turned into black clinking metallic-sounding charcoal, hard and brittle to the touch, and ready to fuse the ironstone or turn into potent powder in the mill.Then by slow degrees the traces of the explosion were softened down, and a new bridge took the place of that which had been swept away. A fresh fence, too, was made of riven oak, and surrounded the ruined garden, so that Master Peasegood had hopes that the founder had re-considered his words.But he had not. The fence was there to protect the ruins from the feet of straying cattle. It was not needed to keep off the people of the little place, for they gazed upon it with awe, and whispered that it was haunted by the dead. And, when Master Peasegood asked thereof, the founder said his words stood firm. But this was when weeks had glided by, and Gil Carr’s ship was tossing far away upon the sea.
Gil’s ship, with Father Brisdone on board, after waiting in vain for its freight, grounded as the tide went down. The old priest, who had been on deck, leaning over the bulwarks gazing up the river for the boat that did not come, had been startled by a great flash of light which suddenly shot up above the hills, and then by a heavy clap as of thunder, followed shortly by a fierce glow in the sky, all of which told him only too plainly of some terrible catastrophe at the powder-works.
He was not surprised, then, that the boat did not arrive till the long, weary night had passed away, and the bright sun shone once more upon the dancing waters, but even then noon was fast approaching before there was the measured dip of oars, and the boat came round a wooded point.
He looked earnestly for Mace, but, not seeing her, he sighed.
“My eyes fail me a good deal now,” he said; and, shading them with his hand, he stood watching till, as the boat neared the ship, he could see that she had four men lying in the stern sheets, and he concluded that there had been an encounter.
“A bad augur,” he said, sadly; “bloodshed on the eve of a wedding. Poor boy though, there seems no chance of a wedding, for he has not won his love.”
His hands trembled as he stood at the gangway, while the boat was run up to the side and Gil painfully climbed on board.
“Failed, my son?” cried Father Brisdone and here he stopped short as he saw the terrible look of anguish in the young man’s eyes.
“Help my poor lads, father,” he said sadly. “They have been lying hurt these many hours.”
One by one four injured men were hoisted on board, and laid beneath the shelter of a sail, while Gil and the father attended to their injuries with rough but sensible surgery. There was a severe sword-wound and plenty of terrible burns, but the worst sufferer was poor Wat Kilby, whose face was blackened by the explosion, hair and beard burned off, and his thigh-bone broken.
He was in a high fever and wandering when slung on board, turning angrily upon those who had helped him.
“Don’t I tell you the poor lass is burning?” he cried. “This is your doing, skipper,” he moaned. “You were always against it, and now you leave the poor lass to burn, and keep me here. Father, this is the boy I watched over and brought up, and taught. This be the way he treats me now I am in trouble.”
It was with great difficulty that they could keep the poor old fellow sufficiently quiet to enable them to perform the necessary bandaging, but at last he sank into the heavy sleep of exhaustion; and Gil, having satisfied himself that his injured men were cared for, saw to his own burns, gave orders for the ship to be floated up to her old berth on the next tide, and then returned to the Pool.
For the next seven days he was almost constantly at Roehurst, in company with the stricken father, whom affliction seemed to have turned back to him as his only friend; and together they hung about the ruins, which still smouldered slightly, and crumbled more and more into a shapeless heap, overhung by a few masses of tottering wall.
Gil would have tried to persuade the old man to leave the spot, but that it had so terrible a fascination for him as well, and together they would sit hour after hour gazing at the ruins, and rebuilding the place mentally and occupying it as of old.
The people of the sparsely inhabited district came to gaze at the wreck, and from far and near they gathered together two days after the fire, to see Gil’s men carry the flower-sprinkled bier from Croftly’s house to the little rustic churchyard two miles away, the men taking it in turns to bear her, four and four about. The place was densely crowded, thinly populated as was the country there, to see Gil Carr and the weak, broken founder, who seemed to have aged in one night to a venerable old man, walk hand in hand behind, and stand bareheaded while Master Peasegood read, and sobbed, and read, and finally letting fall his book, went down upon his knees in the soft earth, and prayed beside the grave.
Sir Mark chafed more and more, but it was in vain. He was to have been chief actor in another scene; here he was completely set aside again, and Gil Carr had resumed his place.
Fortunately for Sir Mark, his old acquaintance Sir Thomas Beckley came forward to offer his hospitality, and he took up his abode with him, feeling that he could not leave the place with his task undone, and in a bitter mood he received the attempts at consolation offered to him by Anne, who, however, always kept very much aloof, playing the part of the injured woman, but promising herself a sharp revenge, if ever the King’s messenger should again lay siege unto her heart.
Up to the day of the funeral the founder had been almost childish from the effects of the shock; but after that he seemed to have recovered himself, though he looked aged and bent, and changed to a remarkable degree.
“I was very hard upon you, Gil,” he said to him one evening, as they stood leaning against one of the posts that had helped to support the swing bridge now completely swept away, and whose place was occupied by a couple of stout planks laid across the race. “I was very hard upon you, my lad, but, though I made that affair of Abel Churr’s an excuse, I don’t think I believed at heart that you did away with the poor wandering wretch.”
Gil looked at him sadly, and bowed his head without speaking.
“What are you going to do now, my lad?” continued the founder, gazing at him with a yearning look as one his lost child had loved.
“To do?” said Gil, in a low hopeless tone, “to do? What is there left to do, sir, but die?”
“Hush, my lad,” said the founder, laying a trembling hand upon the young man’s arm; “that is for me to say. I am old and stricken: the storm has torn one great branch from the trunk, and the old tree will slowly wither and die. You are young yet, and hope will come to you again as time goes on.”
“Hush, for God’s sake, hush!” cried Gil, turning upon him almost fiercely; then, gazing round him in the gathering gloom of the evening, he let himself sink, upon his knees lower and lower, with his hands covering his face, as for the first time in the solitude of that blasted home he gave full vent to the pent-up agony that for days and days he had striven to hide.
“Hope,” he groaned, “hope?” as his broad shoulders heaved and the despairing sobs tore their way from his weary breast. “He does not know what she was to me—he cannot tell how I loved her. Mace, Mace, my darling, would to God I were lying by thy side!”
It had grown quite dark now, and the founder sank upon his knees in the black ashes to lay his hands upon the young man’s head.
“Gil, my son,” he whispered hoarsely, “forgive me, for I never knew your heart till now. In her name I ask you to forgive me for the wrong I would have done you both in tearing you apart. I thought I was doing right, but I am punished for my fault.”
“Forgive you!” groaned Gil, who, for the first time in his life, was quite unmanned. “Yes, I forgive you, if there is aught to forgive.”
He pressed the old man’s hand, as he rose after a time, weak and desolate, to sit down upon one of the stones cast from the main building by the blast. Some distance away a couple of windows shed their feeble light, as if they were signals to Mace to open her casement once again, and a groan rose to Gil’s lips as he thought of the past. Then, like a wandering spirit, a white, filmy-looking owl swept by them, turned and came back once more, as if attracted by the blackened ruins, glided to and fro for a few minutes, and it seemed to the two men that it shrieked faintly just over the very centre of the ruined house before it glided away.
Gil sat watching the bird in a dreamy, hopeless way, and, as he gazed through the darkness, he felt that the place would become the home of such creatures.
He was aroused from his reverie by the founder.
“How did it happen, Gil?” he said.
He spoke in a low, hoarse voice, but his Words sounded very plain in the silence of the autumn even.
“How did it happen?” said Gil, repeating his words.
“Yes, my boy, tell me all. I cannot believe that God would make that old woman with her curses his instrument to punish me.”
“I have little to tell,” said Gil. “I saw our darling again and again, begging that she would go with me; but she refused till she found it hopeless to move you, and that the wedding was to be.”
“Yes, yes—go on,” groaned the founder.
“Then she consented, and I made my plans.”
“Yes, I see,” replied the founder, “you were there with your men, and Sir Mark felt sure that you were coming. But yours was a mad revenge on him, and meant ruin and destruction to all.”
“I do not understand you,” said Gil, quietly.
“Did you think by blowing down part of the place to get her away in the confusion?”
“Blow down? The place?” said Gil. “We had not a charge of powder with us. I left it all on board.”
“Then it was the store below caught first,” said the founder, musingly; “but how—how?”
“I cannot tell,” said Gil.
“Wat Kilby,” exclaimed the founder, jumping at a cause for the terrible disaster; “he was smoking his tobacco by the entry, and must have thrown down the burning pipe.”
“Nay, he did not smoke; he was by my side bearing a ladder.”
“Are you speaking frankly to me, Gil?” said the founder. “I prithee keep nothing back.”
“Can you speak to me like that?” replied Gil, in a grave, reproachful tone. “Master Cobbe, I have kept nothing back; I have added nothing to my story; I have only left out that there was the priest awaiting on board of my ship, to be our darling’s companion until we were made man and wife.”
“Forgive me, Gil,” said the founder. “I know now that you are keeping nothing back. But how could it have happened?”
“A shot from one of Sir Mark’s men’s pieces must have gone through to your store of powder,” said Gil. “They did fire, but my men struck their pieces aside.”
The founder accepted this theory, and they sat in silence for a few moments, till they were interrupted by the approach of a great, dark figure, who seemed at last to make them out.
“Ah! friend Cobbe,” it said, in the thick rich tones of Master Peasegood, “I was seeking thee. Come; the night-dew is falling, and it is time you were safely housed. Ah! Gil, my good lad, you here?”
“Yes,” was the curt response. “Master Peasegood, hadst thou but done thy duty by her who was thy charge, these troubles might not have been.”
“Reproach me not, good lad, I was taken away through Sir Mark’s scurvy tricks and carried up to London. And there I was, day after day, half prisoner, half free. Sometimes they’d let me fly a little bit, like a bird with a string at its leg. Other times they’d keep me in, and never a word could I get to know of my offence.”
“Not a legal prisoner, then?”
“Nay, lad, not at all. Though, had I tried to flee I had been tied fast enough, I’ll warrant. I took advantage of my freedom to see Saint Paul’s, and should be sorry to preach there. I bought me though, as I had my money with me and the chance was good, six yards of cloth in Paul’s churchyard to make me a goodly cloak—four pounds sixteen it cost me—and seven yards of calamanko for a cassock; one pound four and sixpence that, besides a pound for a new hat, and six shillings for a lutestring hood for Mistress Hilberry. I lightened my pocket, Gil, but I was heavy enough at heart.”
Gil nodded.
“I grew so hot of blood and angry at last with the way they kept me in, and the too free use I made of the most villainous ale, Master Cobbe, I ever put to my lips, that had I not been blooded freely by a chirurgeon, I should have been ill. It was not the proper time—the haemeroyal time, though close upon the full, but I let him take a good ten ounces from my veins, and felt a better man.”
“It would have been better, Master Peasegood, had you been here.”
“True, lad, but I was not my own ruler. That Sir Mark never trusted me. I had hard work to get free again, and hurried down to get to our darling’s side. You saw me when I came—that night? Sir Thomas Beckley overtook me, and he brought me on.”
Gil bent his head, and held out his hand, which the other pressed.
“When do you sail again?” said the parson.
“I sail again? Maybe never,” said Gil. “Why should I sail?”
“To give thyself occupation—work—toil-weary evening and restful night. Up, man, and work. Bear thy load bravely till Heaven send the soft touch of time to make it lighter. Thou art young; thy ship waits. Go across the sea and do thy work. This is no place for thee.”
“Why do you interfere with me, Master Peasegood?” cried Gil, testily. “I am none of thy followers.”
“Nay, my lad, thou art not; but I give thee good advice that my lips seemed urged to speak. Go and toil, and sit not down sobbing like a fretful child.”
“Man, you would madden me if I listened,” cried Gil.
“Nay, but thou shalt listen,” said Master Peasegood, “and I will quell thy madness. Thou hast received one terrible loss like a man; I would not have thee do it like a woman. Then, too, Master Cobbe, when are these fires to be relit, and the wreathing curls of smoke to rise from each furnace chimney?”
“Never,” said the founder sadly, “my energy has gone, and I am spent.”
“Tut, tut, man; fie!”
“What have I to live for?” cried the founder, as angry now as Gil.
“Not for thyself,” cried Master Peasegood. “Not both of ye to indulge a moping selfish regret, but for others—for the memory of one dead. Tut! man, those do not pay most respect to their dead who sit and sigh, and groan, and work themselves into fevers. Gil Carr, thy men call for thee to lead them in some seafaring adventure. Jeremiah Cobbe, thou hast got together here some fifty souls—workmen, their wives, and the children they have begotten. Thou didst bring them to do thy work, and now the furnaces are cold, the busy wheel has ceased to turn, and thy workmen lean against the doorposts, and idle, and get out of trim. Come, come! up, and be doing.”
“For whom?” cried the founder angrily, “for whom should I toil?”
“Not for thyself, but for thy people. Nay, nay! don’t take it ill, and think me unfeeling. To both of you I say it is your duty, and, in the name of yon sweet girl whom we all so dearly loved, I say keep her memory green in your heart of hearts, but cease unmanly repinings against fate.”
“Ah! Master Peasegood,” said the founder more gently, “thou hast never been a father.”
“Had I been sweet Mace’s father could I have loved her better, Jeremiah Cobbe? Have not mine eyes oft filled with tears at the memory of her sweet face; has not my voice choked, and have not my words failed when I have tried to speak, Gil Carr? Tut, man, give me credit for loving her as well. Thou hast felt sore against me because I tried to keep you two apart; but why was it, Gil, why was it? Had I not seen that which made me think thou would’st prove a faithless lover to her, poor child. Give me your hand, man, my love for her was different to thine, but it was quite as deep.”
Gil’s hand was laid in the heavy palm of the parson of Roehurst, and they joined in a close firm grip without another word.
“When shall these fires be going again, Master Cobbe,” continued the parson; “when shall the busy wheel turn plashing round? Come, come, promise me that thy mourning shall not be quite out of bounds.”
The founder had turned his back, and remained gazing away from them at the blackened heap.
“You will be up and doing, will you not, Master Cobbe?” continued the parson, urging him on. “Come: for thy child’s sake. Would’st have this place left a ruin? Come, promise me thou wilt.”
A deep sigh seemed to tear itself from the founder’s breast, and he turned to gaze in the direction of his works.
“Thou art right, parson,” he said; “it is not fair that the workmen I brought here to feed and furnish with hard labour should suffer for my sake. The fires shall be lit again.”
“Ay, that’s well,” said Master Peasegood earnestly. “It will be glad news for many a heart. Then I shall see the axe busy again as the leaves fall, and the glow of the charcoal fire in the woods; and meantime thy men will delve for iron, and the furnaces go roaring on. Is it not so?”
“Yes.”
“Bravely spoken, brave heart,” said Master Peasegood; “and thou, Gil Carr, off to thy ship once more, and bear away her freight. Come back to us laden with the pale yellow brimstone and the grey-white salt. Tut, tut, tut, of what am I speaking?” he muttered, as Gil shuddered. “You will go, my brave lad, eh?”
“I suppose so: yes,” said Gil slowly; and the parson laid his hand upon the founder’s shoulder once more.
“And the dear old house, Master Cobbe? There is sandstone waiting in the quarry to be borne here, and thou hast oaken timber enough cut to build it up. When wilt begin to repair thy loss?”
“Never,” cried the founder fiercely. “Parson Peasegood, I’ll work and toil and invent and strive day and night to keep things going here, but it is for others’ sake, not mine.”
“Nay, nay, but the house must be restored.”
“Never,” cried the founder; “never, Master Peasegood; never, Gil Carr. I care nothing for the words of that reviling old woman and her curses. Punishments come from Heaven, not from Hell, and, if she be a witch, ’tis devil’s work she does; but no hand shall touch yon heap, neither stone nor ash shall be disturbed. The flowers may spring up again, and the grass will grow, but to touch it would be to me like disturbing my poor child’s grave. Our dear old home died with my darling. Let them rest.”
He turned away and walked firmly across the planks towards the lane where Tom Croftly’s cottage stood, followed by the parson and Gil, who stepped back as the founder rapped upon the cottage door.
“Tom,” he said, as the door was opened, and the light of a rush-candle shone upon his deeply-lined face, “go round to the men and bid them light the big furnace in the morning, and you see about the mixing up of another batch of powder.”
“Hurray, master,” cried the man. “Give me my hat, wife. Dal me! but that’s good news again.”
“Thou’lt go on making powder again—so soon?” said Master Peasegood, as the founder joined them, and they went down the lane.
“Yes,” said the founder firmly. “Gil, when thou com’st back, my lad, there will be some score barrels of the best and strongest make. I want to show people that an old hag’s curses are as light as wind.”
“Ay, and that a bad mishap is not to be taken as a judgment, because a would-be soothsayer says ’tis so,” cried Master Peasegood. “Thou’rt right, Master Cobbe. I thank Heaven I spoke to you both as bravely as I did, for my heart misgave me all the while.”
The next morning the smoke rolled up once more from the furnace chimney. The great wheel turned and plashed as it shed showers of silver from its broad paddles and spokes; blackened men bore baskets of soft dogwood charcoal to be ground, and others shovelled up the pale yellow sulphur and the crystals of potash for mixing into powder once again. Two heavy tumbrils jolted and blundered down the cinder-made lane to fetch great loads of ironstone from the pits in the woods whence it was dug, and then fierce furnaces were charged with layers of ore and charcoal ready for smelting, while the horses tugged at their loads in answer to the uncouth cries of the men. It was as if the people of Roehurst had awakened from sleep, and all were rejoicing in the gladsome feeling of being once more at work after their enforced idleness, the change acting like a spur. There was shouting over the various works, and now and then some one burst forth into a song, some doleful love-ditty about a sweet young maiden, sung in a minor key.
Tom Croftly was in his element once more, and after seeing the furnaces started and the men preparing the next batch of powder, he anxiously set his colliers to work to get him more coal.
It was no sending down a set of blackened miners with their Davy lamps crowding a cage that dropped slowly into the gas and choke-damp charged bowels of the earth, but the superintending of couples of men who attacked some cords of wood—long, low stackings of the loppings of the trees cut down the previous winter—and, clearing out a circular space, throwing out the earth all round, they set up a pole in the centre. Then picking the branches that were some four feet long, they carefully began to build them round the centre pole, standing all on end, and going on round and round till a low circular stack was built, when the stout central pole was taken away, the space it occupied being filled with light brushwood, which was then set alight ready to communicate with the wood around, while the air running in through spaces left at the sides soon made a swift fire. This, however, was not allowed to burn fiercely, for old charcoal powder mixed with dry earth lay ready, and, after the stack had been covered with a litter of weeds, dry grass, and thin twigs from the fallen trees sufficient to keep it from falling through, the earth was shovelled on all over the stack wherever there was a sign of flame or thin smoke breaking forth, till at last the flames were stifled and the thick smoke rose only from the centre.
“More loam on,” cried Tom Croftly, who, spade in hand, danced excitedly round the charcoal pile like a grim black demon busy over some fiery task, and the men worked and watched, smothering the flames with more earth and water till not a gleam was seen, though all the while the fire was glowing fiercely and burning out the watery gases of the wood.
And this went on night and day, the colliers having a shelter rigged up to keep off the night-air when they needed rest, this being called turn and turn, for, should there be no one ready to throw on shovels-full of loam when the fire began to work a way through, the burning would be spoiled.
But there were no burnings spoiled with Tom Croftly, who, had the men been disposed to fail, would have been there to catch them lapsing and take the shovel in hand himself. So the charcoal burned its time, glowing slowly in the well-closed heat till by gentle testing here and there it was declared to be quite fit, when the earth was cleared away, water used liberally for quenching, and the erst flaming heap allowed to cool, the effect being that the branches of rough wood were turned into black clinking metallic-sounding charcoal, hard and brittle to the touch, and ready to fuse the ironstone or turn into potent powder in the mill.
Then by slow degrees the traces of the explosion were softened down, and a new bridge took the place of that which had been swept away. A fresh fence, too, was made of riven oak, and surrounded the ruined garden, so that Master Peasegood had hopes that the founder had re-considered his words.
But he had not. The fence was there to protect the ruins from the feet of straying cattle. It was not needed to keep off the people of the little place, for they gazed upon it with awe, and whispered that it was haunted by the dead. And, when Master Peasegood asked thereof, the founder said his words stood firm. But this was when weeks had glided by, and Gil Carr’s ship was tossing far away upon the sea.
How the Beckley Pullet ruled the Roost.Dame Beckley was one of the happiest women under the sun, for she had scarcely a care. Her sole idea of home management was obedience, and she obeyed her lord implicitly. Next to him she yielded no little show of duty to her daughter, who ruled her with a rod of iron, which she changed for one of steel when dealing with her father.“Well, my dear,” said the dame, “speaking as a woman of the world, I must say I think it hardly becoming of us to keep Sir Mark here after his behaviour to us before. See how he slighted us. Fancy a man who calls himself a courtier telling a lady of title that her camomile tea that she has made with her own hands—it was the number one, my dear, flavoured with balm—was no better than poison.”“Never mind the camomile tea, mother. I tell you I wish Sir Mark to be persuaded to stay.”“Ah, well, my dear, if you wish it, of course he shall be pressed. I’ll tell him that you insisted—”“Mother!”“La! my dear, what have I done now?” cried Dame Beckley. “You quite startle me when you stamp your feet and look like that.”“How can you be so foolish, mother? Go—go, and tell Sir Mark—insist upon his staying here.”“Well, my dear, and very proud he ought to be, I’m sure. Why, when I was young, if a gentleman had—”“Mother!”“There, there, my dear, I’ve done. I’ll try and persuade Sir Mark to stay. I’m sure it would do him good, though I don’t want him. It always seems to me that that terrible explosion sent a regular jar through what Master Furton, the Queen’s chirurgeon, called the absorbens. If he were my son, I should certainly make him take a spoonful of my conserve of elder night and morning, and drink agrimony tea three times a day. In cases where there is the slightest touch of fever there is nothing—bless the girl, why she has gone, when did she go out of the room?”Mistress Anne had gone away directly after her last imperious utterance of the word “mother,” and walked straight to her father’s room.She had left Dame Beckley busy over her herbal, and she now found her father also on study bent, his book being a kind of magistrates’vade mecumof those days on the subject of witchcraft, and the author his Majesty the King.“What are you reading, father?” she said, making him start as she came suddenly behind him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.“His Majesty’s book, my dear.”“Why?”“Well, you see, my dear, it behoves me as a justice of the peace to be well informed of his Majesty’s views respecting the heinous sin of witchcraft, and to know how I should comport myself and deal with so foul a creature in case, at any future time—”“Mother Goodhugh should be brought before you?”“Yes, exactly,” said the baronet. “My dear Anne, I’d give almost everything I possess for your clear discerning head.”“Never mind my head, father,” she said, with a half-laugh; “I want to speak to you about more important things.”“Yes, my dear, certainly. But won’t you sit down? You worry me when you tower over me so, and threaten, and preach at me. Do sit down, child, pray.”“Nay, father, you can hear what I have to say without my seating myself.”“Yes, my dear,” said Sir Thomas, humbly.“Let Mother Goodhugh be, father.”“But, my child, she is a most pestiferous witch.”“For the present, father. For the present, let her be.”“Well, my dear, if you wish it, of course—”“I do wish it, father.”“How odd, my dear, that you should come to say that, when I was studying up the matter.”“I did not come to say that, father,” said Anne; “but to speak to you about our guest.”“Yes, my dear, he has been here now six weeks since that disaster.”“Seven weeks, father.”“Well, my child, seven weeks if you like; and he has sent back those soldier fellows and his own attendants, and seems to have settled himself down. I mean to tell him that he had better—”“Stay here till his health is quite recovered, father.”“Nay, indeed, my child, after his grossly neglectful behaviour to us, I feel ready at any time to send him away.”“But you will do no such thing, father. Sir Mark is your guest, and an important officer of his Majesty.”“An’ if he had not been I should very soon—”“Your good treatment of so important a gentleman may mean something in the future. It is always well, father, to have friends at Court.”“Yes, yes, my child, but to leave us in so scurvy a way, and take up his abode with old Cobbe.”“That has nothing to do with the matter, father. Ask him to stay.”“But, Anne, my child.”“Father, I insist upon your forcing him to stay.”“Force,” said Sir Thomas; “ah, there’ll be no need of that. The job will be to force him to go. But surely, child, thou’lt never think of setting thy cap at him after his engagement with the founder’s child?”“I? Set my cap! Oh, father,” she cried, with a weak giggle, “that is too good. I absolutely hate him.”“Then I’ll tell him we wish him—”“To stay as long as he can, father. Go at once.”“But, my dear, he is going to-morrow. He told me so when he was on his way to the moat to fish, and I told him I was glad to hear it.”“You told him that, father?” cried Anne, with flashing eyes.“Indeed I did,” said Sir Thomas.“Then go at once,” cried Anne, imperiously, “and bid him stay.”“But it will be like eating my words, my child.”“Go eat them, then,” cried the girl; “and quickly. Say that you were but jesting.”“And that you specially wished—”“No, father. Are you mad? Say what thou wilt, and canst; but mind this—Sir Mark must stay.”Sir Thomas grumbled, but he had to go, and he went, and very easily persuaded Sir Mark to give up his project of leaving the Moat next day, and so it came about that about an hour later, when Mistress Anne was wandering, book in hand, in the pleasaunce, beneath the sun-pleached trees, where the soft turf was dappled with sunshine and shade, she accidentally came upon Sir Mark, moody and thoughtful, busy over his favourite occupation of trying to persuade one of the ancient carp in the moat to swallow a hook concealed in a lump of paste, a lure of which the said carp fought exceedingly shy.If Sir Mark had been told a month before that he would become an angler—one of those patient beings who go and seat themselves on the banks of a piece of water and wait till a fish chooses to touch their bait—he would have laughed them to scorn.All the same, though, he had gone to Sir Thomas Beckley’s, very much shocked at the sudden termination of his matrimonial project, and had taken to his bed, where he stayed some days.He told himself that he was heart-broken; that he would never look upon woman’s face again; that he would pay a pilgrimage yearly to Mace’s grave, and live and die a heart-broken anchorite.On the sixth day he arose and wrote a despatch concerning the state of Jeremiah Cobbe’s manufactures, retiring certain proposals that he had made concerning the supply of guns and powder to his Majesty’s forces. Later on he found that it would not be necessary to seize on Captain Carr, and later still followed the news that Gil had left those parts.On the hearing of this he told himself that he could give full vent to his sorrow, which he did, taking at the same time a good deal of nutriment to counterbalance his sighs and tears.Then, being a satisfactory moping pursuit for one so cut to the heart, he took to fishing week after week for the carp in the great moat; and after, on this particular day, trying in vain for one particularly heavy monster, he sighed very loudly—so loudly that it seemed to be echoed, and, looking sadly up, his eyes fell upon Mistress Anne, reading as she walked beneath the trees.It was but a momentary glance, for she turned away directly after, and he sighed again, for he foresaw an interview with another lady as Dame Beckley came bustling to his side.It was one way of showing his grief: A curious way of showing it; but every one has his peculiarities, and Sir Mark elected to dress himself more gorgeously than of old.Sable had a prominent place in his costume, but it was largely relieved with gold lace and white linen, so that the angler who rose from his seat on the green bank of the old moat seemed, from the elegantly plumed hat to the shining rosetted shoes, more like one dressed for a ball or Court gathering than a man prepared to land the slippery carp or wriggling eel.Dame Beckley was very nervous over her task, but she managed to acquit herself pretty well, and Sir Mark received her request that he should stay with a saddened smile that seemed to say all things were alike to him now.“If my presence will give you pleasure, madam,” he said with a sigh, “I will stay, though you will find me sorry company, I fear.”Sir Mark applied a delicate lace handkerchief to his eyes, and spread around a faint odour of musk, before applying a fresh lump of paste to his great hook, and casting it once more between the water-lilies.“Plague on the man,” said Dame Beckley to herself; “it is not a pleasure to me. I wish, though,” she added musingly, “he would let me administer some of my simples. I could make him hearty and well.”Sir Mark sighed again when he was left alone, and began to pity himself for his sufferings. Somehow he did not feel much sorrow for the young life that had been so suddenly cut off. His sorrow was for him who was to have been a bridegroom, and who would have succeeded to a goodly property with his handsome wife. This was the more important to him, as his little patrimony had been pretty well squandered, and his tailor was an extensive creditor who was eager to be paid.“Yes,” he said, “I’ll stay. Poor woman, she wishes it, and, until my brain recovers from this dreadful shock, I am as well here as anywhere. Besides, I cannot well go back till I see my way to obtain some money.”Just then a great carp came slowly sailing along through the deep clear water, and rose amongst the stems of the water-lilies, as if to get a better glance with its big round eyes at the gorgeous object in black velvet, puffed with white satin and laced with gold, seated so patiently upon the bank.“I begin to think now,” said Sir Mark, as he gazed back at the carp, whose great round golden scales suggested coins, “that I have made a mistake. I might have had fair Mistress Anne.”The carp glanced down for a moment at the lump of paste, and shook its tail at it, its head being too rigid. The bait was not to its taste, so it rose higher and stared with its great round expressionless eyes, while it gasped with its big thick lips.“Two hundred pounds for wedding garments of my own,” he said, gazing back at the carp. “Twenty-five pounds for that new sword with the silver ornaments to the hilt, and five pounds for those white crane’s plumes for my hat; and now they are useless. I cannot have them altered to wear now without spoiling them, and unless I marry soon that money is all thrown away.”He sighed again very softly, for he was exceedingly sorry for himself, as he thought of the founder’s thousands.“You are a lucky fellow,” he continued, addressing the carp; “you always swim about clad in golden armour, and pay nothing for the show. True, I have not paid for mine, but I suppose that some day I shall be obliged.”Just then the carp smacked its lips as it thrust its nose above the water, gave its tail a lazy flap, and turned itself endwise so as to face Sir Mark, who gazed full at its fat gasping mouth, puffy eyes, and generally inane expression.“What becomes of the old Beckleys?” said Sir Mark. “One might fancy that they all went to animate the bodies of the carp in this moat, for yon fish bears a wondrous resemblance to the baronet. I wonder whether he is as well clothed in golden scales. By all that’s holy, here he is.”For, unnoticed on the soft velvety grass, Sir Thomas Beckley had come slowly up, looking in effect much more like the great carp than might have been considered possible, for his head was so charged with his daughter’s mission that it seemed to force his mouth open, and his eyes from his head, while, as he came close up, he gasped two or three times, opening and shutting his lips without making a sound.“Fishing, Sir Mark?” he said at last, for want of something better to say. “You have captured one, I suppose?”“No, Sir Thomas,” said his guest with a sigh. “Faith, an’ I do not care to catch the poor things. I find in angling a change from dwelling on my sad thoughts. You never catch them, I suppose?”“No,” was the reply, “I never do. My father once caught one.”“Indeed!” said Sir Mark, yawning, for it was a peculiarity of Sir Thomas Beckley that he made everyone with whom he came into contact yawn.“Yes,” continued Sir Thomas. “It was during a very hot summer, and the moat was nearly dry. I remember it well.”“You seem to have an excellent recollection, Sir Thomas.”“I have, Sir Mark, I have,” said the baronet pompously. “The great carp had somehow been left in a tiny pool whence he could not escape, so my father caught him.”“But not with a hook, Sir Thomas—he did not angle.”“Marry, sir, but he did. He’d have gone in after it but for the mud, which would have sullied his trunk hose and velvet breeches of murrey colour, so he had a kitchen meat hook tied to a long pole, and caught the big fish fairly.”“Indeed, Sir Thomas? It must have been an exciting scene.”“My father was a great man, Sir Mark.”“Great and rich, Sir Thomas?”“Very, Sir Mark.”“Then I have been doing wrong,” thought Sir Mark. “This old idiot here must have inherited all the old man’s money, unless—. Did your brothers much resemble him, Sir Thomas?” he said aloud.“Brothers, sir? I never had a brother. I was an only child.”“Indeed! But I might have known. Sir Thomas, this is a fitting time to thank you for your hospitality. I may not have another chance before I go.”“But you will not go yet, Sir Mark. I was about to press you to stay with us yet a while—till your health is more restored. You look pale and ill as yet, Sir Mark.”“Really, Sir Thomas? Thanks for your kindly concern, but I must go and try to recover elsewhere. Your good lady, Dame Beckley, has been trying to persuade me to stay, but I think my visit here has been too long already.”“Nay, nay,” cried Sir Thomas, “we cannot spare you yet. You must think us very unfeeling if, after your terrible loss, you are not almost forced to stay here and recover. Not a word more, Sir Mark, not a word.”Sir Mark, however, endeavoured to put in several words, but was checked by his host, who left him afterwards, strutting away with a fat smile upon his countenance, and a belief in his heart that he had been doing some very hospitable act, Mistress Anne’s commands being for the time entirely forgotten.“That is settled then,” said Sir Mark, as he kneaded a fresh piece of paste for the carp. “Perhaps in a few weeks I may find out some way of raising money, that is, when my heart has grown less sore.”He threw out his bait, and then settled himself with his back against a tree, to take a quiet nap, when, in a sheltered nook, where four huge hawthorns formed a kind of bower, he once more saw Mistress Anne busily reading, and, thinking that he ought to tell her of his intention to stay, he rose to saunter to her side.
Dame Beckley was one of the happiest women under the sun, for she had scarcely a care. Her sole idea of home management was obedience, and she obeyed her lord implicitly. Next to him she yielded no little show of duty to her daughter, who ruled her with a rod of iron, which she changed for one of steel when dealing with her father.
“Well, my dear,” said the dame, “speaking as a woman of the world, I must say I think it hardly becoming of us to keep Sir Mark here after his behaviour to us before. See how he slighted us. Fancy a man who calls himself a courtier telling a lady of title that her camomile tea that she has made with her own hands—it was the number one, my dear, flavoured with balm—was no better than poison.”
“Never mind the camomile tea, mother. I tell you I wish Sir Mark to be persuaded to stay.”
“Ah, well, my dear, if you wish it, of course he shall be pressed. I’ll tell him that you insisted—”
“Mother!”
“La! my dear, what have I done now?” cried Dame Beckley. “You quite startle me when you stamp your feet and look like that.”
“How can you be so foolish, mother? Go—go, and tell Sir Mark—insist upon his staying here.”
“Well, my dear, and very proud he ought to be, I’m sure. Why, when I was young, if a gentleman had—”
“Mother!”
“There, there, my dear, I’ve done. I’ll try and persuade Sir Mark to stay. I’m sure it would do him good, though I don’t want him. It always seems to me that that terrible explosion sent a regular jar through what Master Furton, the Queen’s chirurgeon, called the absorbens. If he were my son, I should certainly make him take a spoonful of my conserve of elder night and morning, and drink agrimony tea three times a day. In cases where there is the slightest touch of fever there is nothing—bless the girl, why she has gone, when did she go out of the room?”
Mistress Anne had gone away directly after her last imperious utterance of the word “mother,” and walked straight to her father’s room.
She had left Dame Beckley busy over her herbal, and she now found her father also on study bent, his book being a kind of magistrates’vade mecumof those days on the subject of witchcraft, and the author his Majesty the King.
“What are you reading, father?” she said, making him start as she came suddenly behind him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“His Majesty’s book, my dear.”
“Why?”
“Well, you see, my dear, it behoves me as a justice of the peace to be well informed of his Majesty’s views respecting the heinous sin of witchcraft, and to know how I should comport myself and deal with so foul a creature in case, at any future time—”
“Mother Goodhugh should be brought before you?”
“Yes, exactly,” said the baronet. “My dear Anne, I’d give almost everything I possess for your clear discerning head.”
“Never mind my head, father,” she said, with a half-laugh; “I want to speak to you about more important things.”
“Yes, my dear, certainly. But won’t you sit down? You worry me when you tower over me so, and threaten, and preach at me. Do sit down, child, pray.”
“Nay, father, you can hear what I have to say without my seating myself.”
“Yes, my dear,” said Sir Thomas, humbly.
“Let Mother Goodhugh be, father.”
“But, my child, she is a most pestiferous witch.”
“For the present, father. For the present, let her be.”
“Well, my dear, if you wish it, of course—”
“I do wish it, father.”
“How odd, my dear, that you should come to say that, when I was studying up the matter.”
“I did not come to say that, father,” said Anne; “but to speak to you about our guest.”
“Yes, my dear, he has been here now six weeks since that disaster.”
“Seven weeks, father.”
“Well, my child, seven weeks if you like; and he has sent back those soldier fellows and his own attendants, and seems to have settled himself down. I mean to tell him that he had better—”
“Stay here till his health is quite recovered, father.”
“Nay, indeed, my child, after his grossly neglectful behaviour to us, I feel ready at any time to send him away.”
“But you will do no such thing, father. Sir Mark is your guest, and an important officer of his Majesty.”
“An’ if he had not been I should very soon—”
“Your good treatment of so important a gentleman may mean something in the future. It is always well, father, to have friends at Court.”
“Yes, yes, my child, but to leave us in so scurvy a way, and take up his abode with old Cobbe.”
“That has nothing to do with the matter, father. Ask him to stay.”
“But, Anne, my child.”
“Father, I insist upon your forcing him to stay.”
“Force,” said Sir Thomas; “ah, there’ll be no need of that. The job will be to force him to go. But surely, child, thou’lt never think of setting thy cap at him after his engagement with the founder’s child?”
“I? Set my cap! Oh, father,” she cried, with a weak giggle, “that is too good. I absolutely hate him.”
“Then I’ll tell him we wish him—”
“To stay as long as he can, father. Go at once.”
“But, my dear, he is going to-morrow. He told me so when he was on his way to the moat to fish, and I told him I was glad to hear it.”
“You told him that, father?” cried Anne, with flashing eyes.
“Indeed I did,” said Sir Thomas.
“Then go at once,” cried Anne, imperiously, “and bid him stay.”
“But it will be like eating my words, my child.”
“Go eat them, then,” cried the girl; “and quickly. Say that you were but jesting.”
“And that you specially wished—”
“No, father. Are you mad? Say what thou wilt, and canst; but mind this—Sir Mark must stay.”
Sir Thomas grumbled, but he had to go, and he went, and very easily persuaded Sir Mark to give up his project of leaving the Moat next day, and so it came about that about an hour later, when Mistress Anne was wandering, book in hand, in the pleasaunce, beneath the sun-pleached trees, where the soft turf was dappled with sunshine and shade, she accidentally came upon Sir Mark, moody and thoughtful, busy over his favourite occupation of trying to persuade one of the ancient carp in the moat to swallow a hook concealed in a lump of paste, a lure of which the said carp fought exceedingly shy.
If Sir Mark had been told a month before that he would become an angler—one of those patient beings who go and seat themselves on the banks of a piece of water and wait till a fish chooses to touch their bait—he would have laughed them to scorn.
All the same, though, he had gone to Sir Thomas Beckley’s, very much shocked at the sudden termination of his matrimonial project, and had taken to his bed, where he stayed some days.
He told himself that he was heart-broken; that he would never look upon woman’s face again; that he would pay a pilgrimage yearly to Mace’s grave, and live and die a heart-broken anchorite.
On the sixth day he arose and wrote a despatch concerning the state of Jeremiah Cobbe’s manufactures, retiring certain proposals that he had made concerning the supply of guns and powder to his Majesty’s forces. Later on he found that it would not be necessary to seize on Captain Carr, and later still followed the news that Gil had left those parts.
On the hearing of this he told himself that he could give full vent to his sorrow, which he did, taking at the same time a good deal of nutriment to counterbalance his sighs and tears.
Then, being a satisfactory moping pursuit for one so cut to the heart, he took to fishing week after week for the carp in the great moat; and after, on this particular day, trying in vain for one particularly heavy monster, he sighed very loudly—so loudly that it seemed to be echoed, and, looking sadly up, his eyes fell upon Mistress Anne, reading as she walked beneath the trees.
It was but a momentary glance, for she turned away directly after, and he sighed again, for he foresaw an interview with another lady as Dame Beckley came bustling to his side.
It was one way of showing his grief: A curious way of showing it; but every one has his peculiarities, and Sir Mark elected to dress himself more gorgeously than of old.
Sable had a prominent place in his costume, but it was largely relieved with gold lace and white linen, so that the angler who rose from his seat on the green bank of the old moat seemed, from the elegantly plumed hat to the shining rosetted shoes, more like one dressed for a ball or Court gathering than a man prepared to land the slippery carp or wriggling eel.
Dame Beckley was very nervous over her task, but she managed to acquit herself pretty well, and Sir Mark received her request that he should stay with a saddened smile that seemed to say all things were alike to him now.
“If my presence will give you pleasure, madam,” he said with a sigh, “I will stay, though you will find me sorry company, I fear.”
Sir Mark applied a delicate lace handkerchief to his eyes, and spread around a faint odour of musk, before applying a fresh lump of paste to his great hook, and casting it once more between the water-lilies.
“Plague on the man,” said Dame Beckley to herself; “it is not a pleasure to me. I wish, though,” she added musingly, “he would let me administer some of my simples. I could make him hearty and well.”
Sir Mark sighed again when he was left alone, and began to pity himself for his sufferings. Somehow he did not feel much sorrow for the young life that had been so suddenly cut off. His sorrow was for him who was to have been a bridegroom, and who would have succeeded to a goodly property with his handsome wife. This was the more important to him, as his little patrimony had been pretty well squandered, and his tailor was an extensive creditor who was eager to be paid.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll stay. Poor woman, she wishes it, and, until my brain recovers from this dreadful shock, I am as well here as anywhere. Besides, I cannot well go back till I see my way to obtain some money.”
Just then a great carp came slowly sailing along through the deep clear water, and rose amongst the stems of the water-lilies, as if to get a better glance with its big round eyes at the gorgeous object in black velvet, puffed with white satin and laced with gold, seated so patiently upon the bank.
“I begin to think now,” said Sir Mark, as he gazed back at the carp, whose great round golden scales suggested coins, “that I have made a mistake. I might have had fair Mistress Anne.”
The carp glanced down for a moment at the lump of paste, and shook its tail at it, its head being too rigid. The bait was not to its taste, so it rose higher and stared with its great round expressionless eyes, while it gasped with its big thick lips.
“Two hundred pounds for wedding garments of my own,” he said, gazing back at the carp. “Twenty-five pounds for that new sword with the silver ornaments to the hilt, and five pounds for those white crane’s plumes for my hat; and now they are useless. I cannot have them altered to wear now without spoiling them, and unless I marry soon that money is all thrown away.”
He sighed again very softly, for he was exceedingly sorry for himself, as he thought of the founder’s thousands.
“You are a lucky fellow,” he continued, addressing the carp; “you always swim about clad in golden armour, and pay nothing for the show. True, I have not paid for mine, but I suppose that some day I shall be obliged.”
Just then the carp smacked its lips as it thrust its nose above the water, gave its tail a lazy flap, and turned itself endwise so as to face Sir Mark, who gazed full at its fat gasping mouth, puffy eyes, and generally inane expression.
“What becomes of the old Beckleys?” said Sir Mark. “One might fancy that they all went to animate the bodies of the carp in this moat, for yon fish bears a wondrous resemblance to the baronet. I wonder whether he is as well clothed in golden scales. By all that’s holy, here he is.”
For, unnoticed on the soft velvety grass, Sir Thomas Beckley had come slowly up, looking in effect much more like the great carp than might have been considered possible, for his head was so charged with his daughter’s mission that it seemed to force his mouth open, and his eyes from his head, while, as he came close up, he gasped two or three times, opening and shutting his lips without making a sound.
“Fishing, Sir Mark?” he said at last, for want of something better to say. “You have captured one, I suppose?”
“No, Sir Thomas,” said his guest with a sigh. “Faith, an’ I do not care to catch the poor things. I find in angling a change from dwelling on my sad thoughts. You never catch them, I suppose?”
“No,” was the reply, “I never do. My father once caught one.”
“Indeed!” said Sir Mark, yawning, for it was a peculiarity of Sir Thomas Beckley that he made everyone with whom he came into contact yawn.
“Yes,” continued Sir Thomas. “It was during a very hot summer, and the moat was nearly dry. I remember it well.”
“You seem to have an excellent recollection, Sir Thomas.”
“I have, Sir Mark, I have,” said the baronet pompously. “The great carp had somehow been left in a tiny pool whence he could not escape, so my father caught him.”
“But not with a hook, Sir Thomas—he did not angle.”
“Marry, sir, but he did. He’d have gone in after it but for the mud, which would have sullied his trunk hose and velvet breeches of murrey colour, so he had a kitchen meat hook tied to a long pole, and caught the big fish fairly.”
“Indeed, Sir Thomas? It must have been an exciting scene.”
“My father was a great man, Sir Mark.”
“Great and rich, Sir Thomas?”
“Very, Sir Mark.”
“Then I have been doing wrong,” thought Sir Mark. “This old idiot here must have inherited all the old man’s money, unless—. Did your brothers much resemble him, Sir Thomas?” he said aloud.
“Brothers, sir? I never had a brother. I was an only child.”
“Indeed! But I might have known. Sir Thomas, this is a fitting time to thank you for your hospitality. I may not have another chance before I go.”
“But you will not go yet, Sir Mark. I was about to press you to stay with us yet a while—till your health is more restored. You look pale and ill as yet, Sir Mark.”
“Really, Sir Thomas? Thanks for your kindly concern, but I must go and try to recover elsewhere. Your good lady, Dame Beckley, has been trying to persuade me to stay, but I think my visit here has been too long already.”
“Nay, nay,” cried Sir Thomas, “we cannot spare you yet. You must think us very unfeeling if, after your terrible loss, you are not almost forced to stay here and recover. Not a word more, Sir Mark, not a word.”
Sir Mark, however, endeavoured to put in several words, but was checked by his host, who left him afterwards, strutting away with a fat smile upon his countenance, and a belief in his heart that he had been doing some very hospitable act, Mistress Anne’s commands being for the time entirely forgotten.
“That is settled then,” said Sir Mark, as he kneaded a fresh piece of paste for the carp. “Perhaps in a few weeks I may find out some way of raising money, that is, when my heart has grown less sore.”
He threw out his bait, and then settled himself with his back against a tree, to take a quiet nap, when, in a sheltered nook, where four huge hawthorns formed a kind of bower, he once more saw Mistress Anne busily reading, and, thinking that he ought to tell her of his intention to stay, he rose to saunter to her side.
How Master Peasegood said his Prayers and paid a Visit.There was a deep, singular humming sound coming from the open window of Master Peasegood’s cottage, and, as this noise passed through the big cherry-tree, it seemed to be broken up like a wind through a hedge, and to be somewhat softened. A stranger would not have known what it was, unless he had listened very attentively; and then he would have found that it was Master Peasegood saying his prayers.“Sum—sum—sum—sum—sum—sum—sum—sum.” It sounded like a gigantic bumble-bee. Then a few distinct words. Then “sum—sum—sum—sum—sum,” again; and you would hear, “Lead us not into temptation’—sum—sum—sum—especially with strong ales—sum—sum—sum—sum—sum—oh! Lord, I am so fleshly and so fat—sum—sum—sum—sum—I cannot do as I preach—sum—sum—sum—sum—I am a sadly hardened and weak man, oh! Lord—sum—sum—sum—sum; but I try to live at peace, and do to others as I would they should do unto me—sum—sum—sum—sum—Amen. Mistress Hilberry, I’m going out. Bring me my ale.”Master Peasegood was refreshed in mind, and proceeded to refresh himself in body, feeling at peace with the whole world, including Mother Goodhugh and all her works.Mistress Hilberry came in, looking sour, but, as her eyes lit on the jovial face before her, some of its amiability was reflected back upon her own; and, finally, as the stout parson drank up his great jug of ale with the heartiest of enjoyment, she almost smiled.“How thou dost take to thy ale!” she said.“Ay, how naturally we do take to all bad habits, Mistress Hilberry; but a man cannot be perfect, and the possession of one wicked little devil may keep out seven devils, all much worse. I don’t think it would be right to be quite good, Mistress Hilberry, so I take my ale.”“If thou never take nothing worse, master,” said Mistress Hilberry—who was in a good temper—“thou wilt do;” and she seized the empty vessel and went out.“Hah!” sighed Master Peasegood, taking his pipe off the mantel-piece, and looking at it ruefully, “I talked to her about one little devil, and, lo! here is another. That makes two who possess me, if King Jamie’s right. I’ll just have a little of the devilish weed before I go out. Nay, resist the devil, and he will flee from thee. Go, little devil, back to thy place, and let’s see what our good Protestant King does say.”He put back the pipe, and took from his scantily-furnished shelves a copy of his Majesty’s Counterblast against Tobacco, seated himself comfortably, and began to read.Master Peasegood’s countenance was a study: for what he read did not seem to agree with him. He frowned, he pursed up his lips, he nodded, he shook his head; and at last, after half-an-hour’s study, he dashed the book down upon the floor, doubled his fist, and brought it heavily upon the table.“If this book had not been written by our sovereign lord, James the First, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, as it says in the dedication to my Bible—and what a thumping lie it is—I should say that it was the work of one of the silliest, most dunder-headed, and bumble-brained fools who ever walked God’s earth. Tchah, tchah, tchah, tchah. I don’t believe the pipe’s a little devil after all.“Here! I must be off,” he said, with a sigh. “There’s work to be done. I’ll go see my poor old friend Cobbe, and try and comfort him in his trouble.“Nay, I will not; it will be like running right into temptation. He’ll bring out pipes and ale.“But he is in trouble sore, and I have not been of late. I must go—“‘Into temptation.’“Nay, it cannot be into temptation, for it is to do good works. The ale is not a devil of possession, after all.“Mistress Hilberry, I’m going down to Jeremiah Cobbe, if any one should call.”“All right, master,” she said; and the stout parson rolled out, and sauntered down to the cottage the founder occupied now.“Ah! Master Cobbe,” he cried, “I’ve been remiss in visiting you these last few weeks, but I’m glad to see thee look so well.”“Well? Master Peasegood,” said the founder, sadly. “Nay, I am not well. Perhaps I am, though—perhaps I am. I have been busy lately, very busy. A goodly store of cannon and ammunition has been sent off to his Majesty this past week.”“Ay, so I hear,” said the parson.“But sit down, man. Hey, Mrs Croftly, bring a flagon of ale and the pipes and tobacco. Master Peasegood will sit down here in the garden with me this evening.”“That I will,” was the hearty response.A table was placed on one side, and the two friends sat down, drank heartily to one another, and then filled, lit their pipes, and smoked in silence for awhile.“There’s a nice view from here, Master Cobbe,” said the parson at last.“Ay, there is,” said the founder; and a longing painful look came upon his deeply-lined face, as he thrust back his rough, white hair and sighed.“A very pretty view. You like this spot?”“Yes,” said the founder, slowly, as he pointed with the stem of his little pipe to an opening in the forest beyond the ruins of the Pool-house. “Do you see yon patch of rock where the martins have made their nests?”“Surely, surely,” said Master Peasegood.“There is a good-sized hole there, friend Peasegood.”“Yes, I see,” said Master Peasegood, nodding, “though my eyes are not what they were.”“That place was made by the shell fired from my big howitzer when my poor girl applied the match.”“Poor child!” said Master Peasegood, sadly, and for some time the two men sat and smoked in silence.“Shall you ever build up the house again, Master Cobbe?” said the parson at last.The founder turned upon him almost fiercely, and seemed about to utter some angry word; but he calmed down, took the parson’s fat hand in his, shook it, and released it.“Nay,” he said, “let it rest; let it rest.”“I did not want to hurt your feelings, Master Cobbe,” said the parson; “but I thought it would be better for it and for thee. You must be growing richer than before.”“Yes; and what good is it?” said the founder, bitterly. “Of what use is money to me? I only work and toil to keep my mind at rest. Nay, nay, I cannot build the old place up; let it be. Besides,” he added dryly, “Mother Goodhugh says it is cursed.”“Hang Mother Goodhugh—or burn her,” cried the parson impetuously. “A wicked, cursing, old hag. She had better mend her ways, or Sir Thomas will be laying her by the heels. He swore he would months ago, but I persuaded him not. She had been following and abusing Mistress Anne.”“Ay, poor soul—poor soul, she is mad from her grief, and it makes her curse. Ah! parson, many’s the time I could have gone about cursing too. Poor soul—poor soul! let her rest.”“I see you have been very busy with the garden again.”“Ay; it is getting to be what it was. The trees have shot forth once more, and the flowers bloom. She loved that garden, parson—dearly.”“Ay; and the old house too, Master Cobbe. Build it up, man; build it up.”“Nay, not a stone. It is cursed—cursed.”“Bah! Stuff, man. Away with such folly. It is no more cursed than it is haunted, as the people say.”The founder started, and gazed strangely at his friend.“Do they say it is haunted?”“Yes; such folly. Two or three people have sworn to me that they have heard shrieks.”“Parson,” said the founder hoarsely, as he laid his hand on the other’s sleeve; “they are right; I once heard them too.”“What?” said Master Peasegood, laughing, “the owls?”“Nay, I should know the cry of an owl, man. It is not that. Time after time I’ve stood there in the forest, and heard the wild cry just at dark when everything is still.”“Nay, nay,” said Master Peasegood, “the dead don’t cry for help, neither do the angels in heaven; and if there’s truth in all we believe, man, our little Mace’s looking down upon us, an angel among God’s best and dearest ones.”The old man’s head went down upon his hand at this, and he sat in silence for some time, while, with his eyes misty and dim, Master Peasegood leaned back in his chair, and smoked with all his might.The silence was broken by the founder holding out his hand to his visitor, and shaking it warmly.“Thankye, parson, thankye,” he said. “What you say ought to be true; and I hope she forgives me for my vanity and pride.”“Poor child! It was a mistake, Master Cobbe, but let it rest. They say our gay spark, Sir Mark, is going to comfort himself by wedding Mistress Anne.”“Ay? Indeed?” said the founder. “I did hear something of the kind, but I paid little heed.”“I hear it as a fact, Master Cobbe.”“Well, let him,” said the founder. “He should be a rich man, too, by this time, for he has made money from me as well as I have from the King. Don’t talk of it, though; it makes me dwell upon the past.”They smoked on for a time without speaking, and then, with a patient, piteous aspect in his face, the founder turned to his visitor.“I’ve been a wicked man, parson,” he said.“So we all are,” said Master Peasegood, bluffly. “I always sinned from a desire for the good things of this life. I love goodly food, and good ale, and good tobacco now; and I shall go on sinning to the end,” he added, taking a hearty draught.“I have been harsh and hard, and I’ve not done my duty here, Master Peasegood; and these punishments have come upon me for my sins.”“Stuff, stuff!” cried Master Peasegood. “I won’t sit and hear it. Don’t talk of your Maker as if he were some petty, revengeful man like us, ready to visit every little weakness upon our heads with a misfortune, or to pay us for being good boys with a slice of bread and honey. Out on such religious ideas as that, Master Cobbe, and think of your God as one who is great and good. Bah! It aggravates me to hear and see people fall down and worship the ugly image they have set up in their hearts, one that every work of the Creator gives the lie to for its falsity and cruel wrong. Bear your burden, Jeremiah Cobbe, like a man. It is not in us to know the ins and outs of God’s ways; and it is a wicked and impious sin for people to say this is a judgment, or that is a judgment, and to pretend to know what the All-Seeing thinks and does. You say you’ve been a wicked man, Master Cobbe.”“Yes, yes,” said the founder sadly; “and I have but one hope now, and that is that I may see my darling once again.”“Amen to that,” said Master Peasegood; “but, as to your wickedness, I wish every man was as wicked, and hot-tempered, and true-hearted, and generous, and frank, and industrious, and forgiving as thou art, Jeremiah Cobbe; and—Will you have that ale flagon filled again? Much talking makes me dry.”The founder smiled, and called for Croftly’s wife, who replenished the flagon, bobbed a curtsey to the parson, and re-entered the cottage.“I like you, Jeremiah Cobbe,” continued Master Peasegood, after setting down the flagon with a satisfied sigh; “but don’t be superstitious, man, like our sovereign master the King, who has written a book to hand down his wisdom to posterity.”“Indeed!” said the founder, whose thoughts were evidently far away.“Yes, indeed,” said Master Peasegood; “and it’s all about witches and warlocks and the like. That piece of idiot spawn has gotten itself down here into Sir Thomas’s hands; and, as I told thee, he was very near laying that foolish old woman Mother Goodhugh by the heels. Now she hates me like poison, because I laugh at her and tell the people she is a half-crazed old crone. Last time I saw her we quarrelled, for I told her she was a wretched old impostor, for cheating the poor people as she did. Ha! ha! ha! and then she defied and cursed me, and said she’d go to Father Brisdone and turn Roman Catholic. I told her to go, and he’d curse her for cursing, for it is his trade, and she has no right to handle such tools at all.”“Poor weak woman,” said the founder. “She is more to be pitied than blamed. I suppose she thinks in her heart that I am the cause of all her woes.”“Ay, poor soul, but it’s partly vanity, friend Cobbe. She likes to set up for a prophetess, a sort of diluted Deborah, and to make the people believe in her. There, you must go and see her. If I go to her, being the good man of the parish, she will have naught to say to me. Now, you being a wicked man, may have more influence than I.”“I influence? Nay, man; she’ll fall a cursing if I go nigh her cot.”“Let her curse. Her words won’t hurt thee, man. Go to her, and give her money—thou hast enough—bid her get away far enough from this place to somewhere safe; and when there, tell her to live a decent life and forget her silly trickstering and stuff. It’s a fine opportunity for thee, Jeremiah Cobbe. It’s just the sort of revenge thou lik’st to take on an enemy. Go and pour coals of fire on her head, for I’m sure this place isn’t safe for such as she.”“Would Sir Thomas imprison her?” said the founder.“Sir Thomas is so good and honest a justice of the peace, and so great a lover of the words of his Majesty the King, who made him the baronet he is, that he would set up a stake, scatter Dame Beckley’s dried simples and herbs around it, heap it with goodly faggots, and burn Mother Goodhugh for a witch while the Roehurst people would look on.”“Thinkest thou this, Master Peasegood?”“I’m sure of it,” said the parson, dashing down his pipe in his anger. “Jeremiah Cobbe, it makes me as mad as Moses to see what fools the people are. We have just got rid of the superstitions of Rome, sir, and we go at once and set up the golden calf of witchcraft, and worship it, from our ruler to the humblest peasant in his realm. By my word, Master Cobbe, an’ I had had the two tables in my hands like the old prophet, I’d not have broken them on the rocks, but upon the thick-boned skulls of my erring folk.”“Not worship the idol—condemn it, Master Peasegood,” said the founder, smiling.“Well, but we believe it,” cried the other. “Out upon us all, but we are sorry-fools.”“I’ll go and do this thing, Master Peasegood,” said the founder, after musing for a few minutes.“That’s right; I knew thou would’st.”“But maybe she will not go.”“Then take her, like the angels did Lot of old, and thrust her out of the place. Tell her Roehurst will prove a Sodom to her if she does not go, for i’ faith she’ll go to the flames, in spite of all I can do or say.”“I’ll go to her this very evening, Master Peasegood.”“Then I will go my way,” cried the parson; and, paying one more attention to the flagon, he rose, shook hands, and left.
There was a deep, singular humming sound coming from the open window of Master Peasegood’s cottage, and, as this noise passed through the big cherry-tree, it seemed to be broken up like a wind through a hedge, and to be somewhat softened. A stranger would not have known what it was, unless he had listened very attentively; and then he would have found that it was Master Peasegood saying his prayers.
“Sum—sum—sum—sum—sum—sum—sum—sum.” It sounded like a gigantic bumble-bee. Then a few distinct words. Then “sum—sum—sum—sum—sum,” again; and you would hear, “Lead us not into temptation’—sum—sum—sum—especially with strong ales—sum—sum—sum—sum—sum—oh! Lord, I am so fleshly and so fat—sum—sum—sum—sum—I cannot do as I preach—sum—sum—sum—sum—I am a sadly hardened and weak man, oh! Lord—sum—sum—sum—sum; but I try to live at peace, and do to others as I would they should do unto me—sum—sum—sum—sum—Amen. Mistress Hilberry, I’m going out. Bring me my ale.”
Master Peasegood was refreshed in mind, and proceeded to refresh himself in body, feeling at peace with the whole world, including Mother Goodhugh and all her works.
Mistress Hilberry came in, looking sour, but, as her eyes lit on the jovial face before her, some of its amiability was reflected back upon her own; and, finally, as the stout parson drank up his great jug of ale with the heartiest of enjoyment, she almost smiled.
“How thou dost take to thy ale!” she said.
“Ay, how naturally we do take to all bad habits, Mistress Hilberry; but a man cannot be perfect, and the possession of one wicked little devil may keep out seven devils, all much worse. I don’t think it would be right to be quite good, Mistress Hilberry, so I take my ale.”
“If thou never take nothing worse, master,” said Mistress Hilberry—who was in a good temper—“thou wilt do;” and she seized the empty vessel and went out.
“Hah!” sighed Master Peasegood, taking his pipe off the mantel-piece, and looking at it ruefully, “I talked to her about one little devil, and, lo! here is another. That makes two who possess me, if King Jamie’s right. I’ll just have a little of the devilish weed before I go out. Nay, resist the devil, and he will flee from thee. Go, little devil, back to thy place, and let’s see what our good Protestant King does say.”
He put back the pipe, and took from his scantily-furnished shelves a copy of his Majesty’s Counterblast against Tobacco, seated himself comfortably, and began to read.
Master Peasegood’s countenance was a study: for what he read did not seem to agree with him. He frowned, he pursed up his lips, he nodded, he shook his head; and at last, after half-an-hour’s study, he dashed the book down upon the floor, doubled his fist, and brought it heavily upon the table.
“If this book had not been written by our sovereign lord, James the First, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, as it says in the dedication to my Bible—and what a thumping lie it is—I should say that it was the work of one of the silliest, most dunder-headed, and bumble-brained fools who ever walked God’s earth. Tchah, tchah, tchah, tchah. I don’t believe the pipe’s a little devil after all.
“Here! I must be off,” he said, with a sigh. “There’s work to be done. I’ll go see my poor old friend Cobbe, and try and comfort him in his trouble.
“Nay, I will not; it will be like running right into temptation. He’ll bring out pipes and ale.
“But he is in trouble sore, and I have not been of late. I must go—
“‘Into temptation.’
“Nay, it cannot be into temptation, for it is to do good works. The ale is not a devil of possession, after all.
“Mistress Hilberry, I’m going down to Jeremiah Cobbe, if any one should call.”
“All right, master,” she said; and the stout parson rolled out, and sauntered down to the cottage the founder occupied now.
“Ah! Master Cobbe,” he cried, “I’ve been remiss in visiting you these last few weeks, but I’m glad to see thee look so well.”
“Well? Master Peasegood,” said the founder, sadly. “Nay, I am not well. Perhaps I am, though—perhaps I am. I have been busy lately, very busy. A goodly store of cannon and ammunition has been sent off to his Majesty this past week.”
“Ay, so I hear,” said the parson.
“But sit down, man. Hey, Mrs Croftly, bring a flagon of ale and the pipes and tobacco. Master Peasegood will sit down here in the garden with me this evening.”
“That I will,” was the hearty response.
A table was placed on one side, and the two friends sat down, drank heartily to one another, and then filled, lit their pipes, and smoked in silence for awhile.
“There’s a nice view from here, Master Cobbe,” said the parson at last.
“Ay, there is,” said the founder; and a longing painful look came upon his deeply-lined face, as he thrust back his rough, white hair and sighed.
“A very pretty view. You like this spot?”
“Yes,” said the founder, slowly, as he pointed with the stem of his little pipe to an opening in the forest beyond the ruins of the Pool-house. “Do you see yon patch of rock where the martins have made their nests?”
“Surely, surely,” said Master Peasegood.
“There is a good-sized hole there, friend Peasegood.”
“Yes, I see,” said Master Peasegood, nodding, “though my eyes are not what they were.”
“That place was made by the shell fired from my big howitzer when my poor girl applied the match.”
“Poor child!” said Master Peasegood, sadly, and for some time the two men sat and smoked in silence.
“Shall you ever build up the house again, Master Cobbe?” said the parson at last.
The founder turned upon him almost fiercely, and seemed about to utter some angry word; but he calmed down, took the parson’s fat hand in his, shook it, and released it.
“Nay,” he said, “let it rest; let it rest.”
“I did not want to hurt your feelings, Master Cobbe,” said the parson; “but I thought it would be better for it and for thee. You must be growing richer than before.”
“Yes; and what good is it?” said the founder, bitterly. “Of what use is money to me? I only work and toil to keep my mind at rest. Nay, nay, I cannot build the old place up; let it be. Besides,” he added dryly, “Mother Goodhugh says it is cursed.”
“Hang Mother Goodhugh—or burn her,” cried the parson impetuously. “A wicked, cursing, old hag. She had better mend her ways, or Sir Thomas will be laying her by the heels. He swore he would months ago, but I persuaded him not. She had been following and abusing Mistress Anne.”
“Ay, poor soul—poor soul, she is mad from her grief, and it makes her curse. Ah! parson, many’s the time I could have gone about cursing too. Poor soul—poor soul! let her rest.”
“I see you have been very busy with the garden again.”
“Ay; it is getting to be what it was. The trees have shot forth once more, and the flowers bloom. She loved that garden, parson—dearly.”
“Ay; and the old house too, Master Cobbe. Build it up, man; build it up.”
“Nay, not a stone. It is cursed—cursed.”
“Bah! Stuff, man. Away with such folly. It is no more cursed than it is haunted, as the people say.”
The founder started, and gazed strangely at his friend.
“Do they say it is haunted?”
“Yes; such folly. Two or three people have sworn to me that they have heard shrieks.”
“Parson,” said the founder hoarsely, as he laid his hand on the other’s sleeve; “they are right; I once heard them too.”
“What?” said Master Peasegood, laughing, “the owls?”
“Nay, I should know the cry of an owl, man. It is not that. Time after time I’ve stood there in the forest, and heard the wild cry just at dark when everything is still.”
“Nay, nay,” said Master Peasegood, “the dead don’t cry for help, neither do the angels in heaven; and if there’s truth in all we believe, man, our little Mace’s looking down upon us, an angel among God’s best and dearest ones.”
The old man’s head went down upon his hand at this, and he sat in silence for some time, while, with his eyes misty and dim, Master Peasegood leaned back in his chair, and smoked with all his might.
The silence was broken by the founder holding out his hand to his visitor, and shaking it warmly.
“Thankye, parson, thankye,” he said. “What you say ought to be true; and I hope she forgives me for my vanity and pride.”
“Poor child! It was a mistake, Master Cobbe, but let it rest. They say our gay spark, Sir Mark, is going to comfort himself by wedding Mistress Anne.”
“Ay? Indeed?” said the founder. “I did hear something of the kind, but I paid little heed.”
“I hear it as a fact, Master Cobbe.”
“Well, let him,” said the founder. “He should be a rich man, too, by this time, for he has made money from me as well as I have from the King. Don’t talk of it, though; it makes me dwell upon the past.”
They smoked on for a time without speaking, and then, with a patient, piteous aspect in his face, the founder turned to his visitor.
“I’ve been a wicked man, parson,” he said.
“So we all are,” said Master Peasegood, bluffly. “I always sinned from a desire for the good things of this life. I love goodly food, and good ale, and good tobacco now; and I shall go on sinning to the end,” he added, taking a hearty draught.
“I have been harsh and hard, and I’ve not done my duty here, Master Peasegood; and these punishments have come upon me for my sins.”
“Stuff, stuff!” cried Master Peasegood. “I won’t sit and hear it. Don’t talk of your Maker as if he were some petty, revengeful man like us, ready to visit every little weakness upon our heads with a misfortune, or to pay us for being good boys with a slice of bread and honey. Out on such religious ideas as that, Master Cobbe, and think of your God as one who is great and good. Bah! It aggravates me to hear and see people fall down and worship the ugly image they have set up in their hearts, one that every work of the Creator gives the lie to for its falsity and cruel wrong. Bear your burden, Jeremiah Cobbe, like a man. It is not in us to know the ins and outs of God’s ways; and it is a wicked and impious sin for people to say this is a judgment, or that is a judgment, and to pretend to know what the All-Seeing thinks and does. You say you’ve been a wicked man, Master Cobbe.”
“Yes, yes,” said the founder sadly; “and I have but one hope now, and that is that I may see my darling once again.”
“Amen to that,” said Master Peasegood; “but, as to your wickedness, I wish every man was as wicked, and hot-tempered, and true-hearted, and generous, and frank, and industrious, and forgiving as thou art, Jeremiah Cobbe; and—Will you have that ale flagon filled again? Much talking makes me dry.”
The founder smiled, and called for Croftly’s wife, who replenished the flagon, bobbed a curtsey to the parson, and re-entered the cottage.
“I like you, Jeremiah Cobbe,” continued Master Peasegood, after setting down the flagon with a satisfied sigh; “but don’t be superstitious, man, like our sovereign master the King, who has written a book to hand down his wisdom to posterity.”
“Indeed!” said the founder, whose thoughts were evidently far away.
“Yes, indeed,” said Master Peasegood; “and it’s all about witches and warlocks and the like. That piece of idiot spawn has gotten itself down here into Sir Thomas’s hands; and, as I told thee, he was very near laying that foolish old woman Mother Goodhugh by the heels. Now she hates me like poison, because I laugh at her and tell the people she is a half-crazed old crone. Last time I saw her we quarrelled, for I told her she was a wretched old impostor, for cheating the poor people as she did. Ha! ha! ha! and then she defied and cursed me, and said she’d go to Father Brisdone and turn Roman Catholic. I told her to go, and he’d curse her for cursing, for it is his trade, and she has no right to handle such tools at all.”
“Poor weak woman,” said the founder. “She is more to be pitied than blamed. I suppose she thinks in her heart that I am the cause of all her woes.”
“Ay, poor soul, but it’s partly vanity, friend Cobbe. She likes to set up for a prophetess, a sort of diluted Deborah, and to make the people believe in her. There, you must go and see her. If I go to her, being the good man of the parish, she will have naught to say to me. Now, you being a wicked man, may have more influence than I.”
“I influence? Nay, man; she’ll fall a cursing if I go nigh her cot.”
“Let her curse. Her words won’t hurt thee, man. Go to her, and give her money—thou hast enough—bid her get away far enough from this place to somewhere safe; and when there, tell her to live a decent life and forget her silly trickstering and stuff. It’s a fine opportunity for thee, Jeremiah Cobbe. It’s just the sort of revenge thou lik’st to take on an enemy. Go and pour coals of fire on her head, for I’m sure this place isn’t safe for such as she.”
“Would Sir Thomas imprison her?” said the founder.
“Sir Thomas is so good and honest a justice of the peace, and so great a lover of the words of his Majesty the King, who made him the baronet he is, that he would set up a stake, scatter Dame Beckley’s dried simples and herbs around it, heap it with goodly faggots, and burn Mother Goodhugh for a witch while the Roehurst people would look on.”
“Thinkest thou this, Master Peasegood?”
“I’m sure of it,” said the parson, dashing down his pipe in his anger. “Jeremiah Cobbe, it makes me as mad as Moses to see what fools the people are. We have just got rid of the superstitions of Rome, sir, and we go at once and set up the golden calf of witchcraft, and worship it, from our ruler to the humblest peasant in his realm. By my word, Master Cobbe, an’ I had had the two tables in my hands like the old prophet, I’d not have broken them on the rocks, but upon the thick-boned skulls of my erring folk.”
“Not worship the idol—condemn it, Master Peasegood,” said the founder, smiling.
“Well, but we believe it,” cried the other. “Out upon us all, but we are sorry-fools.”
“I’ll go and do this thing, Master Peasegood,” said the founder, after musing for a few minutes.
“That’s right; I knew thou would’st.”
“But maybe she will not go.”
“Then take her, like the angels did Lot of old, and thrust her out of the place. Tell her Roehurst will prove a Sodom to her if she does not go, for i’ faith she’ll go to the flames, in spite of all I can do or say.”
“I’ll go to her this very evening, Master Peasegood.”
“Then I will go my way,” cried the parson; and, paying one more attention to the flagon, he rose, shook hands, and left.