Читать книгу: «Under the Storm», страница 13

"Oh, yes, no fear but that she will," said Emlyn, who perhaps had revolved in her mind, since her first impulse, what it would be to nurse Stead in that hovel, with two such displeased companions as Goody and Patience. More to pacify Steadfast's uneasy eyes than for her own sake, Patience gave her a drink of milk and a piece of bread, and Peter coming just then to ask if he could help Ben with the cattle, undertook to see her safely on her way, since twilight was coming on. Sobered and awestruck by the silence and evident condemnation of all around, she ended by flinging herself on her knees by the bed, and saying "Stead, Stead, you forgive me, though no one else does?"

"Poor child—I do—as I hope—"

"The blood again. You've done it now," exclaimed Goody Grace. "Away with you!"

Peter fairly dragged her out, while the women attended to Stead.

But he let her wait outside till they heard, "Not dead, but not far from it."

CHAPTER XXII. EMLYN'S TROTH

 
     "Woman's love is writ in water,
      Woman's faith is traced in sand."
 

                                     AYTOUN.

Day after day Steadfast Kenton lingered between life and death, and though the external wound healed, there was little relief to the deeper injury which could not be reached, and which the damps and chills of autumn and winter could only aggravate.

He could move little, and speak even less; and suffered much, both from pain and difficulty of breathing, as he lay against sacks and pillows on his bed, or sat up in an elbow chair which Mrs. Elmwood lent him. Everybody was very kind in those days of danger. Mrs. Elmwood let Rusha come on many an afternoon to help her sister, and always bringing some posset, or cordial, or dainty of some sort to tempt the invalid. Goody Grace, Mrs. Blane, Dame Oates, Nanny Pierce vied with each other in offers of sitting up with him; Andrew, the young miller, came out of his way to bring a loaf of white bread, and to fetch the corn to be ground. Peter Pierce, Rusha's lover, and more old comrades than Patience quite desired, offered their services in aiding Ben with the cattle and other necessary labours, but as the first excitement wore off, these volunteers became scantier, and when nothing was to be heard but "just the same," nothing to be seen but a weak, wan figure sitting wrapped by the fire, the interest waned, and the gulley was almost as little frequented as before. Poor Ben's schooling had, of course, to be given up, and it was well that he was nearly as old as Stead had been when they were first left to themselves. Happily his fifteen months of study had not made him outgrow his filial obedience and devotion to the less instructed elder brother and sister, who had taken the place of the parents he had never known. Benoni, child of sorrow, he had been named, and perhaps his sickly babyhood and the mournful times around had tended to make him a quiet boy, without the tearing spirits that would have made him eager to join the village lads in their games. Indeed they laughed at him for his poverty and scholarship, and called him Jack Presbyter, Puritan, bookworm, and all the opprobrious names they could think of, though no one ever less merited sectarian nicknames than he, as far as doctrine went. For, bred up on Dr. Eales' books, and obliged to look out on the unsettled state of religious matters, he was as staunch a churchman as his brother, and fairly understood the foundations of his faith. Poor boy, the check to his studies disappointed him, and he spent every leisure moment over his Latin accidence or in reading. Next to the stories in the Bible, he loved the Maccabees, because of the likeness to the persecuted state of the Church; and he knew the Morte d'Arthur almost by heart, and thought it part of the history of England. Especially he loved the part that tells of the Holy Grail, the Sacred Cup that was guarded by the maimed King Pelles, and only revealed to the pure in heart and life. Stead had fully confided to him the secret of the cave, in case he should be the one left to deliver up the charge; and, in some strange way, the boy connected the treasure with the Saint Grail, and his brother with the maimed king. So he worked very hard, and Patience was capable of a good deal more than in her earlier days. Stead, helpless as he was, did not require constant attendance, and knew too well how much was on his sister's hands to trouble her when he could possibly help doing so. Thus they rubbed on; though it was a terrible winter, and they often had to break in on the hoard which was to have built the house, sometimes for needments for the patient, sometimes to hire help when there was work beyond the strength of Patience and Ben, who indeed was too slender to do all that Stead had done.

Ben did not shine in going to market. He was not big enough to hold his own against rude lads, and once came home crying with his donkey beaten and his eggs broken; moreover, he was apt to linger at stalls of books and broadsheets. As soon as Patience could venture to leave her brother, she was forced to go to market herself; and there was a staidness and sobriety about her demeanour that kept all impertinence at a distance. Poor Patience, she was not at all the laughing rustic beauty that Emlyn would have been at market. She would never have been handsome, and though she was only a few years over twenty, she was beginning to look weather-beaten and careworn, like the market women about her, mothers of half-a-dozen children.

Now and then she saw Emlyn in all her young, plump beauty, but looking much quieter, and always coming to her for news of Steadfast. There were even tears in those bright eyes when she heard how much he suffered. The girl had evidently been greatly sobered by the results of her indiscretion, and the treachery into which it had led her. She probably cared more for Steadfast than for anyone else except herself, and was shocked and grieved at his condition; and she had moreover discovered how her credulity had been played upon, and that she had had a narrow escape of being carried off by a buccaneer.

Her master too had been called to order by the authorities, fined and threatened for permitting Royalist plots to be hatched in his house. He had been angered by the younger Ayliffe's riotous doings, and his wife had been terrified. There had been a general reformation in which Emlyn had only escaped dismissal through her mistress's favour, pleading her orphanhood, her repentance, and her troth plight to the good young man who had been attacked by those dissolute fellows, though Mrs. Henshaw little knew how accountable was her favourite maid for the attack.

So good and discreet was Emlyn, so affectionate her messages to Stead, and so much brightness shone in his face on hearing them; there was so much pleasure when she sent him an orange and he returned the snowdrops he had made Rusha gather, that Patience began to believe that Stead was right—that the shock was all the maiden needed to steady her—and that all would end as he hoped, when he should be able to resume his labours, and add to the sadly reduced hoard.

It was not, however, till the March winds were over that Stead made any decided step towards recovery, and began to prefer the sun to the fire, and to move feebly and slowly about the farmyard, visiting the animals, too few in number, for his skilled attention had been missed. As summer came on he was able to do a little more, herd them with Growler's help, and gradually to undertake what required no exertion of strength or speed, and there he stopped short—all the sunny months of summer could do no more for him than make him fit to do such work as an old man of seventy might manage.

He was persuaded, much against his will, to ride the white horse into Bristol at a foot-pace to consult once more the barber surgeon. That worthy, who was unusually sagacious for his time and had had experience in the wars, told him that his recovery was a marvel, but that with the bullet where it was lodged, he could scarcely hope to enjoy much more health or comfort than at present. It could not be reached, but it might shift, when either it would prove fatal or become less troublesome; and as a friend and honest man, he counselled the poor youth not to waste his money nor torture himself by having recourse to remedies or doctors who could do no real good.

Stead thanked the barber, paid his crown, and slowly made his way to Mrs. Lightfoot's, where he was to rest, dine, and see Emlyn.

Kind Mrs. Lightfoot shed tears when she saw the sturdy, ruddy youth grown so thin and pale; and as to Emlyn, she actually stood silent for three minutes.

The two were left together in Mrs. Lightfoot's kitchen, for Patience was at market, and their hostess had to mind her trade.

Stead presently told Emlyn somewhat of the doctor's opinion, and then, producing his portion of the tester, and with lips that trembled in spite of himself, said that he had come to give Emlyn back her troth plight.

"Oh! Stead, Stead," she cried, bursting into tears. "I thought you had forgiven me."

"Forgiven you! Yea, truly, poor child, but—"

"But only when you were sick! You cast me off now you are whole."

"I shall never be whole again, Emlyn."

"I don't believe Master Willis. He is nought but a barber," she exclaimed passionately. "I know there are physicians at the Bath who would cure you; or there's the little Jew by the wharf; or the wise man on Durdham Down. But you always are so headstrong; when you have made up your mind no one can move you, and you don't care whose heart you break," she sobbed.

"Hearken, little sweet," said Stead. "'Tis nought but that I wot that it would be ill for you to be bound to a poor frail man that will never be able to keep you as you should be kept. All I had put by is well nigh gone, and I'm not like to make it up again for many a year, even if I were as strong as ever."

"And you won't go to the Jew, or the wise man, or the Bath?"

"I have not the money."

"But I will—I will save it for you!" cried Emlyn, who never had saved in her life. "Or look here. Master Henshaw might give you a place in his office, and then there would be no need to dwell in that nasty, damp gulley, but we could be in the town. I'll ask my mistress to crave it from him."

Stead could not but smile at her eagerness, but he shook his head.

"It would be bootless, sweetheart, I cannot carry weights."

"No, but you can write."

"Very scurvily, and I cannot cypher."

For Stead, like everyone else at Elmwood, kept his accounts by tally and in his head, and the mysteries of the nine Arabic figures were perfectly unknown to him. However, Emlyn stuck to the hope, and he was so far inspired by it that he ceased to insist on giving up the pledges of the betrothal, and he lay on the settle in quiet enjoyment of Emlyn's castle building, as she sat on a stool by his side, his hand on her shoulder, somewhat as it was wont to lie on Growler's head. And in spite of Master Willis's opinion, he rode home to the gulley a new man, assuring Patience, on the donkey by his side, that there was more staunchness and kindness in little Emlyn than ever they had thought for. Even the ferryman who put them over the river declared that the doctor must have done Master Kenton a power of good, and Stead smiled and did not contradict him.

Stead actually consulted Mr. Woodley how to learn cyphering beyond what Ben had acquired at school; and the minister lent him a treatise, over which he pored with a board and a burnt stick for many an hour when he was out on the common with the cattle, or on the darkening evenings in the hut. Ben saw his way into those puzzles with no more difficulty than whetted his appetite, worked out sum after sum, and explained them to his brother, to the admiration of both his elders, till frowns of despair and long sighs from Stead brought Patience to declare he was mazing himself, and insist on putting out the light.

Stead had more time for his studies than he could wish, for the cold of winter soon affected the injured lungs; and, moreover, the being no longer able to move about rapidly caused the damp and cold of the ravine to produce rheumatism and attendant ills, of which, in his former healthy, out-of-door life, he had been utterly ignorant, and he had to spend many an hour breathless, or racked with pain in the poor little hovel, sometimes trying to give his mind to the abstruse mysteries of multiplication of money, but generally in vain, and at others whiling away the time with his books, for though there were only seven of them, including Bible and Prayer-book, a very little reading could be the text of so much musing, that these few perfectly sufficed him. And then he was the nurse of any orphaned lamb or sick chicken that Patience was anxious about, and his care certainly saved many of those small lives.

The spring, when he came forth again, found him on a lower level, less strong and needing a stick to aid his rheumatic knee.

Not much was heard of Emlyn that spring. She did not come to market with her mistress, and Patience was not inclined to go in quest of her, having a secret feeling that no news might be better for Stead than anything she was likely to hear; while as to any chance of their coming together, the Kentons had barely kept themselves through this winter, and Steadfast's arithmetic was not making such progress as would give him a place at a merchant's desk.

Patience, however, was considerably startled when, one fine June day, she saw Mrs. Henshaw's servant point her out to two tall soldierly-looking men, apparently father and son.

"Good morrow to you, honest woman," said the elder. "I am told it is you who have been at charges for many years for my brother's daughter, Emlyn Gaythorn."

Patience assented.

"You have been right good to her, I hear; and I thank you for that same, and will bear what we may of the expense," he added, taking out a heavy bag from his pouch.

He went on to explain that he and his son having gone abroad with his master had been serving with the Dutch, and had made some prize money. Learning on the peace that a small inheritance in Worcestershire had fallen to the family, they had returned, and found from Lady Blythedale that the brother's daughter was supposed to be alive somewhere near Bristol. She had a right to half, and being honourable men, they had set out in search of her, bringing letters from the lady to Mr. Henshaw, whose house was still a centre of inquiry for persons in the Cavalier interest. There, of course, they had discovered Emlyn; and Master Gaythorn proceeded to say that it had been decided that the estate should not be broken up, but that his son should at once wed her and unite their claims.

"But, sir," exclaimed Patience, "she is troth plight to my brother."

"So she told me, but likewise that he is a broken man and sickly, and had offered to restore her pledge."

Patience could not deny it, though she felt hotly indignant.

"She charged me to give it back to you," added the uncle; "and to bid you tell the young man that we are beholden to you both; but that since the young folk are to be wedded to-morrow morn, and then to set forth for Worcestershire, there is no time for leave-takings."

"I do not wonder!" exclaimed Patience, "that she has no face to see us. She that has been like a child or a sister to us, to leave us thus! O my brother!"

"Come, come, my good woman, best not make a pother." Poor Patience's homely garb and hard-worked looks shewed little of the yeoman class to which she belonged. "You've done your duty by the maid and here's the best I have to make it up."

Patience could not bring herself to take the bag, and he dropped it into her basket "I am sorry for the young man, your brother, but he knew better than to think to wed her as he is. And 'tis better for all there should be no women's tears and foolishness over it."

"Is she willing?" Patience could not but ask.

"Willing?" Both men laughed. "Aye, what lass is not willing to take a fine, strapping husband, and be a landed dame? She gave the token back of her own free will, eh, Humfrey; and what did she bid us say?"

"Her loving greetings to—What were their Puritanical names?" said the son contemptuously. "Aye, and that she pitied the poor clown down there, but knew he would be glad of what was best for her."

"So farewell, good mistress," said Master Gaythorn, and off they clanked together; and Patience, looking after them, could entirely believe that the handsome buff coat, fringed belt, high boots, and jauntily cocked hat would have driven out the thought of Stead in his best days. And now that he was bent, crippled, weak, helpless,—"and all through her, what hope was then," thought Patience, "yet if she had loved him, or there had been any truth in her, she could have wedded him now, and he would have been at ease through life! A little adder at our hearth! We are well quit of her, if he will but think so, but how shall I ever tell him?"

She did not rush in with the tidings but came home slowly, drearily, so that Stead, who was sitting outside by the door, peeling rushes, gathered that something was amiss, and soon wormed it out of her, while her tears dropped fast for him. Still, as ever, he spoke little. He said her uncle was right in sparing tears and farewells, no doubt reserving to himself the belief that it was against her will. And when Patience could not help declaring that the girl might have made him share her prosperity, he said, "I'm past looking after her lands. Her uncle would say so. 'Tis his doing; I am glad of what is best for my darling as was. There's an end of it, Patience—joy and grief. And I thank God that the child is safely cared for at last."

He tried to be as usual, but he was very ill that night.

Patience found the money in her basket. She hated it and put it aside, and it was only some time after that she was constrained to use it, only then telling Stead whence it came, when he could endure to hear that the uncle had done his best to be just.

CHAPTER XXIII. FULFILMENT

 
     "My spirit heats her mortal bars,
      As down dark tides the glory glides,
      And mingles with the stars."
 

TENNYSON.

The year 1660 had come, and in the autumn, just as harvest was over, and the trees on the slopes were taking tints of red, yellow, and brown, an elderly clergyman, staff in hand, came slowly up the long lane leading to Elmwood, whence he had been carried, bound to his horse, seventeen years before.

He had not suffered as much as some of his fellow priests. After a term of imprisonment in London, he had been transported to the plantations, namely, the American settlements, and had fallen in with friends, who took him to Virginia. This was chiefly colonized by people attached to the Church, who made him welcome, and he had ministered among them till the news arrived of the Restoration of Charles II, and likewise that the lawful incumbents of benefices, who had been driven out, were reinstated by Act of Parliament. Mr. Holworth's Virginian friends would gladly have kept him with them, but he felt that his duty was to his original flock, and set out at once for England, landing at Bristol. There, however, he waited, like the courteous man he was, to hold communication with his people, till he had written to Mr. Elmwood, and made arrangements with him and Master Woodley.

They were grieved, but they were both men who had a great respect for law and parliament, so they made no difficulties. Mr. and Mrs. Woodley retired to the hall and left the parsonage vacant, after the minister had preached a farewell sermon in the church which made everyone cry, for he was a good man and had made himself loved, and there were very few in the parish who could understand that difference between the true Church and a body without bishops. Mr. Holworth had in the meantime gone to Wells to see his own Bishop Piers, an old man of eighty-six, and it was from thence that he was now returning. He had not chosen to enter his parish till the intruded minister had resigned the charge, but he had been somewhat disappointed that none of his old flock, not even any Kentons, who had so much in charge, had come in to see him. He now arrived in this quiet way, thinking that it would not be delicate to the feelings of the squire and ex-minister to let the people get up any signs of joy or ring the bells, if they were so inclined. Indeed, he was much afraid from what he had been able to learn that it would be only the rougher sort, who hated Puritan strictness and wanted sport and revelry, who would give him an eager welcome.

So he first went quietly up to the church, which he found full of benches and pews, with the Altar table in the middle of the nave, and the squire's comfortable cushioned seat at the east end. He knelt on the step for a long time, then made a brief visit to his own house, where the garden was in beautiful order, but only a room or two were furnished with goods he had bought from the Woodleys, and these were in charge of a servant he had hired at Bristol.

Thence the old man went out into the village, and his first halt was at the forge, where Blane, who had grown a great deal stouter and more grizzled, started at sight of his square cap.

"Eh! but 'tis the old minister! You have come in quietly, sir! I am afraid your reverence has but a sorry welcome."

"I do not wonder you are grieved to part with Master Woodley."

"Well, sir, he be a good man and a powerful preacher, though no doubt your reverence has the best right, and for one, I'm right glad to see an old face again. We would have rung the bells if we had known you were coming."

"That would have been hard on Master Woodley. I am only glad they are not melted. But how is it with all my old friends, Harry? Poor Sir George writ me that old clerk North died of grief of the rifling of the church; and that John Kenton had been killed by some stragglers. What became of his children?"

"That eldest lad went off to the Parliament army, and came swaggering here in his buff coat and boots like my Lord Protector himself, they say he has got a castle and lands in Ireland. Men must be scarce, say I, if they have had to make a gentleman of Jeph Kenton."

"And the rest?"

"Well, sir, I'm afraid that poor lad, Stead, is in poor plight. You mind, he was always a still, steady, hard-working lad, and when his father was killed, and his house burnt, and his brother ran away, the way he and his sister turned to was just wonderful. They went to live in an old hut in the gulley down there, and they have made the place so tidy as it does your heart good to look at it. They bred up the young ones, and the younger girl is well married to one of the Squire's folks, and everyone respected them. But, as ill-luck would have it, some robbers from Bristol seem to have got scent of their savings. Some said that the Communion Cup was hid somewhere there."

Mr. Holworth made an anxious sound of interrogation.

"Well, I did see the corporal, when the Parliament soldiers were at Bristol, flog Stead shamefully to know where it was, and never get a word out of him, whether or no; and as he was a boy who would never tell a lie, it stands to reason he knew where they were."

"But how did anyone guess at his knowing?" asked Mr. Holworth.

"His brother might have thought it likely, poor John being thick with your reverence," said Blane. "After that I thought, myself, that he ought to give them up to Master Woodley, if so be he had them; but I could never get a hint from him. The talk went that old Dr. Eales, you mind him, sir, before he died, came out and held a prelatist service, begging your pardon, sir, and that the things were used. Stead got into trouble with Squire about it."

"But the robbers, how was that? You said he was hurt!"

"Sore hurt, sir; and he has never got the better of it, though 'tis nigh upon four years ago. There was a slip of a wench he picked up as a child after the fight by Luck's mill, and bred up; a fair lass she grew up to look on, but a light-headed one. She went to service at Bristol, and poor Stead was troth plight to her, hoped to save and build up the house again, never knowing, not he, poor rogue, of her goings on with the sailors and all the roistering lads about her master's house. 'Tis my belief she put those rascals on the track, whether she meant it or not. Stead made what defence he could, stood up like a man against the odds, three to one, and got a shot in the side, so that he was like to die then. Better for him, mayhap, if he had at once, for it has been nought but a lingering ever since, never able to do a day's work, though that wench, Patience, and the young lad, Ben, have fought it out wonderfully. That I will say."

Mr. Holworth had tears in his eyes, and trembled with emotion.

"The dear lad," he said. "Where is he? I must go and see him."

"He bides in the gulley, sir; he has been there ever since the farm-house was burnt."

Ere long Mr. Holworth was on his way to the gulley. What had been only a glade reaching from rock to stream, hidden in copsewood, was now an open space trodden by cattle, with the actual straw-yard more in the rear, but with a goat tethered on it and poultry running about. It was a sunny afternoon, and in a wooden chair placed so as to catch the warmth, with feet on a stool, sat, knitting, a figure that Mr. Holworth at first thought was that of an aged man; but as he emerged from the wood, and the big dog sprang up and barked, there was a looking up, an instant silencing of the dog, a rising with manifest effort, a doffing of the broad-brimmed hat, and the clergyman beheld what seemed to him his old Churchwarden's face, only in the deadly pallor of long-continued illness, and with the most intense, unspeakable look of happiness and welcome afterwards irradiating it, a look that in after years always came before Mr. Holworth with the "Nunc dimittis."

Dropping the knitting, and holding by the chair, he stood trembling and quivering with gladness, while, summoned by the dog's bark, Patience, pail in hand, appeared on one side, and Ben, tall and slight, with his flail, on the other.

"My dear lad," was all Mr. Holworth could say, as he took the thin, blanched hand, put his arm round the shoulders, and reseated Stead, still speechless with joy. Patience, curtseying low, came up anxiously, showing the same honest face as of old, though work and anxiety had traced their lines on the sun-burnt complexion, and Ben stood blushing, and showing his keener, more cultivated face, as the stranger turned to greet them so as to give Steadfast time to recover himself.

"Oh! sir, but we are glad to see your reverence," cried Patience. "Will you go in, or sit by Stead? Ben, fetch a chair."

"And is this fine strapping fellow, the sickly babe that you were never to rear, Patience?"

"God has been very good to us, sir," said Patience.

"And this is best of all," said Stead, recovering breath and speech. "I thank Him that I have lived to see this day! It is all safe, sir."

"And you, you faithful guardian, you have suffered for it."

If it had not been for Blane's partial revelations, Mr. Holworth never would have extracted the full story of how for that sacred trust, Steadfast Kenton had endured threats and pain, and had foregone ease, prosperity, latterly happiness, and how finally it had cost him health, nay life itself, for he was as surely dying of the buccaneer's pistol shot, as though he had been slain on the spot.

Long illness, with all the thought and reflection it had brought, had so far changed and refined Stead that his awkward bashfulness and lack of words had passed from him, and when he saw the clergyman overcome with emotion at the thought of all he had undergone he said,

"Never heed it, your reverence, it has come to be all joy to me to have had a little to bear for the Master! 'Tis hard on Patience and Ben, but they are very good to me; and being sick gives time for such comforts as God sends me. It is more than all I could have had here."

"I am sure of that, my dear boy. I was not grieving that I gave you the trust, but thinking what a blessed thing it is to have kept it thus faithfully."

Two Sundays later, the Feast was again meetly spread in Elmwood Church, the Altar restored to its place, and all as reverently arranged as it could yet be among the broken carved work.

In some respects it was a mournful service, few there were who after the lapse of seventeen years even remembered the outlines of the old forms; and the younger people knew not when to kneel or stand. There were few who could read, and even for those who could there were only four Prayer-books in the church, the clergyman's, the clerk's, the Kentons', and one discovered by an old Elmwood servant. The Squire's family came not; Goody Grace was dead, and though Rusha tried to instruct her husband and her little girl, she herself was much at a loss.

To Mr. Holworth it was almost like that rededication of the Temple when the old men wept at the thought of the glory of the former house, but there were some on whom his eye rested with joy and peace. There were Blane and his wife, good and faithful though ignorant; there were the old miller and his son, who had come all that distance since there had as yet been no restoration in their church, and the goings on of Original-Sin Hopkins and his friends had thoroughly disgusted them, and made the old man yearn towards the church of his youth, and there was the little group of three, the toil-worn but sweet-faced sister, calm and restful, though watchful; the tall youth with thoughtful, earnest, awe-struck face, come for his first Communion, for which through those many years he had been taught to pray and long, and between them the wasted form and wan features lighted up with that wonderful radiance that had come on them with the sense that the trust was fulfilled, only it was brighter, calmer, higher, than even at the greeting of the vicar. Did Steadfast see only the burnished gold of the Chalice and paten he had guarded for seventeen years at the cost of toil, danger, suffering, love, and life itself? Did he not see and feel far beyond those outward visible signs in which others, who had not yet endured to the end, could only as yet put their trust by faith?