SIGNIOR CRAB-APPLE.
There was much ado in the house all that day, in view of the home-coming
on the morrow, and it was not till pretty late in the evening that
Judith was free to steal out for a gossip with her friend and chief
companion, Prudence Shawe. She had not far to go--but a couple of doors
off, in fact; and her coming was observed by Prudence herself, who
happened to be sitting at the casemented window for the better
prosecution of her needle-work, there being still a clear glow of
twilight in the sky. A minute or so thereafter the two friends were in
Prudence's own chamber, which was on the first floor, and looking out to
the back over barns and orchards; and they had gone to the window, to
the bench there, to have their secrets together. This Prudence Shawe was
some two years Judith's junior--though she really played the part of
elder sister to her; she was of a pale complexion, with light
straw-colored hair; not very pretty, perhaps, but she had a restful kind
of face that invited friendliness and sympathy, of which she had a large
abundance to give in return. Her custom was of a Puritanical plainness
and primness, both in the fashion of it and in its severe avoidance of
color; and that was not the only point on which she formed a marked
contrast to this dear cousin and wilful gossip of hers, who had a way of
pleasing herself (more especially if she thought she might thereby catch
her father's eye) in apparel as in most other things. And on this
occasion--at the outset at all events--Judith would not have a word said
about the assignation of the morning. The wizard was dismissed from her
mind altogether. It was about the home-coming of the next day that she
was all eagerness and excitement; and her chief prayer and entreaty was
that her friend Prudence should go with her to welcome the travellers
home.
"Nay, but you must and shall, dear Prue; sweet mouse, I beg it of you!"
she was urging. "Every one at New Place is so busy that they have fixed
upon Signior Crab-apple to ride with me; and you know I cannot suffer
him; and I shall not have a word of my father all the way back, not a
word; there will be nothing but a discourse about fools, and idle jests,
and wiseman Matthew the hero of the day--"
"Dear Judith, I cannot understand how you dislike the old man so," her
companion said, in that smooth voice of hers. "I see no garden that is
better tended than yours."
"I would I could let slip the mastiff at his unmannerly throat!" was the
quick reply--and indeed for a second she looked as if she would fain
have seen that wish fulfilled. "The vanity of him!--the puffed-up pride
of him.--he thinks there be none in Warwickshire but himself wise
enough to talk to my father; and the way he dogs his steps if he be
walking in the garden--no one else may have a word with him!--sure my
father is sufficiently driven forth by the preachers and the
psalm-singing within-doors that out-of-doors, in his own garden, he
might have some freedom of speech with his own daughter--"
"Judith, Judith," her friend said, and she put her hand on her arm, "you
have such wilful thoughts, and wild words too. I am sure your father is
free of speech with every one--gentle and simple, old and young, it
matters not who it is that approaches him."
"This Signior Crab-apple truly!" the other exclaimed, in the impetuosity
of her scorn. "If his heart be as big as a crab-apple, I greatly doubt;
but that it is of like quality I'll be sworn. And the bitterness of his
railing tongue! All women are fools--vools he calls them, rather--first
and foremost; and most men are fools; but of all fools there be none
like the fools of Warwickshire--that is because my worshipful goodman
gardener comes all the way from Bewdley. 'Tis meat and drink to him, he
says, to discover a fool, though how he should have any difficulty in
the discovering, seeing that we are all of us fools, passes my
understanding. Nay, but I know what set him after that quarry; 'twas one
day in the garden, and my father was just come home from London, and he
was talking to my uncle Gilbert, and was laughing at what his friend
Benjamin Jonson had said, or had written, I know not which. 'Of all
beasts in the world,' says he, 'I love most the serious ass.' Then up
steps goodman Matthew. 'There be plenty of 'em about 'ere, zur,' says
he, with a grin on his face like that on a cat when a dog has her by the
tail. And my father, who will talk to any one, as you say truly, and
about anything, and always with the same attention, must needs begin to
challenge goodman Crab-apple to declare the greatest fools that ever he
had met with; and from that day to this the ancient sour-face hath been
on the watch--and it suits well with his opinion of other people and his
opinion of himself as the only wise man in the world--I say ever since
he hath been on the watch for fools; and the greater the fool the
greater his wisdom, I reckon, that can find him out. A purveyor of
fools!--a goodly trade! I doubt not but that it likes him better than
the tending of apricots when he has the free range of the ale-houses to
work on. He will bring a couple of them into the garden when my father
is in the summer-house. ''Ere, zur, please you come out and look 'ere,
zur; 'ere be a brace of rare vools.' And the poor clowns are proud of
it; they stand and look at each other and laugh. 'We be, zur--we be.'
And then my father will say no, and will talk with them, and cheer them
with assurance of their wisdom; then must they have spiced bread and ale
ere they depart; and this is a triumph for Master Matthew--the withered,
shrivelled, dried-up, cankered nutshell that he is!"
"Dear Judith, pray have patience--indeed you are merely jealous."
"Jealous!" she exclaimed, as if her scorn of this ill-conditioned old
man put that well out of the question.
"You think he has too much of your father's company, and you like it
not; but consider of it, Judith, he being in the garden, and your father
in the summer-house, and when your father is tired for the moment of his
occupation, whatever that may be, then can he step out and speak to this
goodman Matthew, that amuses him with his biting tongue, and with the
self-sufficiency of his wisdom--nay, I suspect your father holds him to
be a greater fool than any that he makes sport of, and that he loves to
lead him on."
"And why should my father have to be in the summer-house but that
in-doors the wool-spinning is hardly more constant than the lecturing
and the singing of psalms and hymns?"
"Judith! Judith!" said her gentle friend, with real trouble on her face,
"you grieve me when you talk like that--indeed you do, sweetheart! There
is not a morning nor a night passes that I do not pray the Lord that
your heart may be softened and led to our ways--nay, far from that, but
to the Lord's own ways--and the answer will come; I have faith; I know
it; and God send it speedily, for you are like an own sister to me, and
my heart yearns over you!"
The other sat silent for a second. She could not fail to be touched by
the obvious sincerity, the longing kindness of her friend, but she would
not confess as much in words.
"As yet, sweet Prue," said she, lightly, "I suppose I am of the
unregenerate, and if it is wicked to cherish evil thoughts of your
neighbor, then am I not of the elect, for I heartily wish that Tom
Quiney and some of the youths would give Matthew gardener a sound
ducking in a horse-pond, to tame his arrogance withal. But no matter.
What say you, dear Prue? Will you go with me to-morrow, so that we may
have the lad Tookey in charge of us, and Signior Crab-apple be left to
his weeding and grafting and railing at human kind? Do, sweet mouse--"
"The maids are busy now, Judith," said she, doubtfully.
"But a single day, dear mouse!" she urged. "And if we go early we may
get as far as Shipston, and await them there. Have you no desire to meet
your brother, Prudence--to be the first of all to welcome him home? Nay,
that is because you can have him in your company as often as you wish;
there is no goodman-wiseman-fool to come between you."
"Dear heart," said Prudence Shawe, with a smile, "I know not what is the
witchery of you, but there is none I wot of that can say you nay."
"You will, then?" said the other, joyfully. "Ah, look, now, the long
ride home we shall have with my father, and all the news I shall have to
tell him! And all good news, Prue; scarcely a whit or bit that is not
good news: the roan that he bought at Evesham is well of her
lameness--good; and the King's mulberry is thriving bravely (I wonder
that wiseman Matthew has not done it a mischief in the night-time, for
the King, being above him in station, must needs have nothing from him
but sour and envious words); and then the twenty acres that my father so
set his heart upon he is to have--I hear that the Combes have said as
much--and my father will be right well pleased; and the vicar is talking
no longer of building the new piggery over against the garden--at least
for the present there is nothing to be done: all good news; but there is
better still, as you know; for what will he say when he discovers that I
have taught Bess Hall to ride the mastiff?"
"Pray you have a care, dear Judith," said her friend, with some
apprehension on her face. "'Tis a dangerous-looking beast."
"A lamb, a very lamb!" was the confident answer. "Well, now, and as we
are riding home he will tell me of all the things he has brought from
London; and you know he has always something pretty for you, sweet
Puritan, though you regard such adornment as snares and pitfalls. And
this time I hope it will be a silver brooch for you, dear mouse, that so
you must needs wear it and show it, or he will mark its absence; and for
the others let us guess; let us see. There may be some more of that
strange-fashioned Murano glass for Susan, for as difficult as it is to
carry; and some silk hangings or the like for my mother, or store of
napery, perchance, which she prizeth more; and be sure there is the
newest book of sermons from Paul's Churchyard for the Doctor; a
greyhound, should he hear of a famous one on the way, for Thomas Combe;
toys for the little Harts, that is certain; for my aunt Joan--what?--a
silver-topped jug, or some perfumes of musk and civet?--and what
else--and for whom else--well--"
"But what for yourself, dear Judith?" her friend said, with a smile.
"Will he forget you? Has Matthew gardener driven you out even from his
recollection? Will he not have for you a pretty pair of rose
shoe-strings, or one of the new tasselled French hoods they are speaking
of, or something of the kind, that will turn the heads of all the lads
in Stratford twice further round? You are a temptress surely,
sweetheart; I half forget that such vanities should displease me when I
see the way you wear them; and that I think you must take from your
father, Judith; for no matter how plain his apparel is--and it is plain
indeed for one that owns the New Place--he wears it with such an ease,
and with such a grace and simplicity, that you would say a prince should
wear it even so."
"You put me off, Prue," her friend said with a sort of good-natured
impatience. "Why, I was showing you what nicelings and delicates my
father was bringing, and what I had thought to say was this: that he may
have this for one, and that for the other, and many a one proud to be
remembered (as I shall be if he thinks of me), but this that I know he
is bringing for little Bess Hall is something worth all of these, for it
is nothing less than the whole love of his heart. Nay, but I swear it;
there is not a human creature in the world to compare with her in his
eyes; she is the pearl that he wears in his heart of hearts. If it were
London town she wanted, and he could give it to her, that is what he
would bring for her."
"What! are you jealous of her too?" said Prudence, with her placid
smile.
"By yea and nay, sweet Puritan, if that will content you, I declare it
is not so," was the quick answer. "Why, Bess is my ally! We are in
league, I tell you; we will have a tussle with the enemy ere long; and,
by my life, I think I know that that will put goodman-wiseman's nose
awry!"
At this moment the secret confabulation of these two friends was
suddenly and unexpectedly broken in upon by a message from without.
Something white came fluttering through the open casement, and fell, not
quite into Judith's lap, which was probably its intended destination,
but down toward her feet. She stooped and picked it up; it was a letter,
addressed to her, and tied round with a bit of rose-red silk ribbon that
was neatly formed into a true-lover's knot.