WILD WORDS.
Her light-heartedness did not last long. In the wide clear landscape a
human figure suddenly appeared, and the briefest turn of her head showed
her that Tom Quiney was rapidly coming toward her across the fields. For
a second her heart stood still. Had he been riding home from Ludington?
Or from Bidford? Was it possible that he had come over Bardon Hill, and
from that height espied the two down by the river? She could not even
tell whether that was possible, or what he had done with his horse, or
why he had not interfered sooner, if he was bent on interfering. But she
had an alarmed impression that this rapid approach of his boded trouble,
and she had not long to wait before that fear was confirmed.
"Judith, who is that man?" he demanded, with a fury that was but half
held in.
She turned and faced him.
"I knew not," she said, coldly and slowly, "that we were on a speaking
platform."
"'Tis no time to bandy words," said he; and his face was pale, for he
was evidently striving to control the passion with which his whole
figure seemed to quiver from head to heel. "Who is that man? I ask. Who
is he, that you come here to seek him, and alone?"
"I know not by what right you put such questions to me," she said; but
she was somewhat frightened.
"By what right? And you have no regard, then, for your good name?"
There was a flash in her eyes. She had been afraid; she was no longer
afraid.
"My good name?" she repeated. "I thank God 'tis in none of your
keeping!"
In his madness he caught her by the wrist.
"You shall tell me----"
"Unhand me, sir!" she exclaimed; and she threw off his grasp, while her
cheeks burned with humiliation.
"Nay, I quarrel not with women," said he. "I crave your pardon. But, by
God, I will get to know that man's name and purpose here if I rive it
from his body!"
So he strode off in the direction that Leofric Hope had taken; and for a
moment she stood quite terror-stricken and helpless, scarcely daring to
think of what might happen. A murder on this fair morning? This young
fellow, that was quite beside himself in his passion of jealous anger,
was famed throughout the length and breadth of Warwickshire for his
wrestling prowess. And the other--would he brook high words? These
things flashed across her mind in one bewildering instant; and in her
alarm she forgot all about her pride. She called to him,
"I pray you--stay!"
He turned and regarded her.
"Stay," said she, with her face afire. "I--I will tell you what I know
of him--if you will have it so."
He approached her with seeming reluctance, and with anger and suspicion
in his lowering look. He was silent, too.
"Indeed, there is no harm," said she (and still with her face showing
her mortification that she was thus forced to defend herself). "'Tis a
young gentleman that is in some trouble--his lodging near Bidford is
also a hiding, as it were--and--and I know but little of him beyond his
name, and that he is familiar with many of my father's friends in
London."
"And how comes it that you seek him out here alone?" said he. "That is a
becoming and maidenly thing!"
"I promised you I would tell you what I know of the young gentleman,"
said she, with scornful lips. "I did not promise to stand still and
suffer your insolence."
"Insolence!" he exclaimed, as if her audacity bewildered him.
"How know you that I sought him out?" she said, indignantly. "May not
one walk forth of a summer morning without being followed by suspicious
eyes--I warrant me, eyes that are only too glad to suspect! To think
evil is an easy thing, it seems, with many; I wonder, sir, you are not
ashamed."
"You brave it out well," said he, sullenly; but it was evident that her
courage had impressed him, if it still left him angered and suspicious.
And then he asked:
"How comes it that none of your friends or your family know aught of
this stranger?"
"I marvel you should speak of my family," she retorted. "I had thought
you were inclined to remain in ignorance of them of late. But had you
asked of Prudence Shawe she might have told you something of this young
gentleman; or had you thought fit to call in at my grandmother's
cottage, you might perchance have found him seated there, and a welcome
guest at her board. Marry, 'tis easier far to keep aloof and to think
evil, as one may see."
And then she added:
"Well, sir, are you satisfied? May I go home without farther threats?"
"I threatened you not, Judith," said he, rather more humbly. "I would
have my threats kept for those that would harm you."
"I know of none such," she said, distinctly. "And as for this young
gentleman--that is in misfortune--such as might happen to any one--and
not only in hiding, but having intrusted his secret to one or two of us
that pity him and see no harm in him--I say it were a cruel and unmanly
thing to spy out his concealment, or to spread the rumor of his being in
the neighborhood."
"Nay, you need not fear that of me, Judith," said he. "Man to man is my
way, when there is occasion. But can you marvel if I would have you for
your own sake avoid any farther meetings with this stranger? If he be in
hiding, let him remain there, in God's name; I for one will set no
beagles to hunt him out. But as for you, I would have you meddle with no
such dangerous traps."
"Good sir," said she, "I have my conduct in my own keeping, and can
answer to those that have the guardianship of me."
He did not reply to this rebuke. He said:
"May I walk back to the town with you, Judith?"
"You forget," she said, coldly, "that if we were seen together the
gossips might say I had come out hither to seek you, and alone."
But he paid no heed to this taunt.
"I care not," said he, with an affectation of indifference, "what the
gossips in Stratford have to talk over. Stratford and I are soon to
part."
"What say you?" said she, quickly--and they were walking on together
now, the Don leisurely following at their heels.
"Nay, 'tis nothing," said he, carelessly; "there are wider lands beyond
the seas, where a man can fight for his own and hold it."
"And you?" she said. "You have it in your mind to leave the country?"
"Marry, that have I!" said he, gayly. "My good friend Daniel Hutt hath
gotten together a rare regiment, and I doubt not I shall be one of the
captains of them ere many years be over."
Her eyes were downcast, and he could not see what impression this piece
of news had made upon her--if, indeed, he cared to look. They walked for
some time in silence.
"It is no light matter," said she at length, and in rather a low voice,
"to leave one's native land."
"As for that," said he, "the land will soon be not worth the living in.
Why, in former times, men spoke of the merry world of England. A merry
world? I trow the canting rogues of preachers have left but little
merriment in it; and now they would seek to have all in their power, and
to flood the land with their whining and psalm-singing, till we shall
have no England left us, but only a vast conventicle. Think you that
your father hath any sympathy with these? I tell you no; I take it he is
an Englishman, and not a conventicle-man. 'Tis no longer the England of
our forefathers when men may neither hawk nor hunt, and women are doomed
to perdition for worshipping the false idol starch, and the very
children be called in from their games of a Sunday afternoon.
God-a-mercy, I have had enough of Brother Patience-in-suffering, and his
dominion of grace!"
This seemed to Judith a strange reason for his going away, for he had
never professed any strong bias one way or the other in these religious
dissensions; his chief concern, like that of most of the young men in
Stratford, lying rather in the direction of butt-shooting, or wrestling,
or having a romp with some of the wenches to the tune of "Packington's
Pound."
"Nay, as I hear," said he, "there be some of them in such discontent
with the King and the Parliament that they even talk of transplanting
themselves beyond seas, like those that went to Holland: 'twere a goodly
riddance if the whole gang of the sour-faced hypocrites went, and left
to us our own England. And a fair beginning for the new country across
the Atlantic--half of them these Puritanical rogues, with their fastings
and preachments; and the other half the constable's brats and broken men
that such as Hutt are drifting out: a right good beginning, if they but
keep from seizing each other by the throat in the end! No matter: we
should have our England purged of the double scum!"
"But," said Judith, timidly, "methought you said you were going out with
these same desperate men?"
"I can take my life in my hand as well as another," said he gloomily.
And then he added: "They be none so desperate, after all. Broken men
there may be amongst them, and many against whom fortune would seem to
have a spite; perchance their affairs may mend in the new country."
"But your affairs are prosperous," Judith said--though she never once
regarded him. "Why should you link yourself with such men as these?"
"One must forth to see the world," said he; and he went on to speak in
a gay and reckless fashion of the life that lay before him, and of its
possible adventures and hazards and prizes. "And what," said he, "if one
were to have good fortune in that far country, and become rich in land,
and have good store of corn and fields of tobacco; what if one were to
come back in twenty years' time to this same town of Stratford, and set
up for the trade of gentleman?"
"Twenty years?" said she, rather breathlessly. "'Tis a long time; you
will find changes."
"None that would matter much, methinks," said he, indifferently.
"There be those that will be sorry for your going away," she ventured to
say--and she forced herself to think only of Prudence Shawe.
"Not one that will care a cracked three-farthings!" was the answer.
"You do ill to say so--indeed you do!" said she, with just a touch of
warmth in her tone. "You have many friends; you serve them ill to say
they would not heed your going."
"Friends?" said he. "Yes, they will miss me at the shovel-board, or when
there is one short at the catches."
"There be others than those," said she with some little hesitation.
"Who, then?" said he.
"You should know yourself," she answered. "Think you that Prudence, for
one, will be careless as to your leaving the country?"
"Prudence?" said he, and he darted a quick glance at her. "Nay, I
confess me wrong, then; for there is one that hath a gentle heart, and
is full of kindness."
"Right well I know that--for who should know better than I?" said
Judith. "As true a heart as any in Christendom, and a prize for him that
wins it, I warrant you. If it be not won already," she added, quickly.
"As to that, I know not."
They were now nearing the town--they could hear the dull sound of the
mill, and before them was the church spire among the trees, and beyond
that the gray and red huddled mass of houses, barns, and orchards.
"And when think you of going?" she said, after a while.
"I know not, and I care not," said he, absently. "When I spoke of my
acquaintances being indifferent as to what might befall me, I did them
wrong, for in truth there be none of them as indifferent as I am
myself."
"'Tis not a hopeful mood," said she, "to begin the making of one's
fortunes in a new country withal. I pray you, what ails this town of
Stratford, that you are not content?"
"It boots not to say, since I am leaving it," he answered. "Perchance in
times to come, when I am able to return to it, I shall be better
content. And you?"
"And I?" she repeated, with some surprise.
"Nay, you will be content enough," said he, somewhat bitterly. "Mother
Church will have a care of you. You will be in the fold by then. The
faithful shepherd will have a charge over you, to keep you from
communication with the children of anger and the devil, that rage
without like lions seeking to destroy."
"I know not what you mean," said she, with a hot face.
"Right well you know," said he, coolly; but there was an angry
resentment running through his affected disdain as he went on: "There be
those that protest, and go forth from the Church. And there be those
that protest, and remain within, eating the fat things, and well content
with the milk and the honey, and their stores of corn and oil. Marry,
you will be well provided for--the riches of the next world laid up in
waiting for you, and a goodly share of the things of this world to
beguile the time withal. Nay, I marvel not; 'tis the wisdom of the
serpent along with the innocence of the dove. What matters the surplice,
the cross in baptism, and the other relics of popery, if conformity will
keep the larder full? Better that than starvation in Holland, or seeking
a home beyond the Atlantic, where, belike, the children of the devil
might prove overrude companions. I marvel not, I; 'tis a foolish bird
that forsakes a warm nest."
And now she well knew against whom his bitter speech was levelled; and
some recollection of the slight he had put upon her in the church-yard
came into her mind, with the memory that it had never been atoned for.
And she was astounded that he had the audacity to walk with her now and
here, talking as if he were the injured one. The sudden qualm that had
filled her heart when he spoke of leaving the country was put aside; the
kindly reference to Prudence was forgotten; she only knew that this
sarcasm of his was very much out of place, and that this was far from
being the tone in which he had any right to address her.
"I know not," said she, stiffly, "what quarrel you may have with this
or that section of the Church; but it concerns me not. I pray you attack
those who are better able to defend themselves than I am, or care to be.
Methinks your studies in that line have come somewhat late."
"'Tis no greater marvel," said he, "than that you should have joined
yourself to the assembly of the saints; it was not always so with you."
"I?" she said; but her cheeks were burning; for well she knew that he
referred to his having seen her with the parson on that Sunday morning,
and she was far too proud to defend herself. "Heaven help me now, but I
thought I was mistress of my own actions!"
"In truth you are, Mistress Judith," said he, humbly (and this was the
first time that he had ever addressed her so, and it startled her, for
it seemed to suggest a final separation between them--something as wide
and irrevocable as that twenty years of absence beyond the seas). And
then he said, "I crave your pardon if I have said aught to offend you;
and would take my leave."
"God be wi' you," said she, civilly; and then he left, striking across
the meadows toward the Bidford road, and, as she guessed, probably going
to seek his horse from whomsoever he had left it with.
And as she went on, and into the town, she was wondering what Prudence
had said to him that should so suddenly drive him to think of quitting
the country. All had seemed going well. As for Master Leofric Hope, his
secret was safe; this late companion of hers seemed to have forgotten
him altogether in his anger against the good parson. And then she grew
to think of the far land across the ocean, that she had heard vaguely of
from time to time; to think how twenty years could be spent there: and
what Stratford would be like when that long space was over.
"Twenty years," she said to herself, with a kind of sigh. "There are
many things will be settled, ere that time be passed, for good or ill."