I have said above of this early friendship between a lad of eleven
and a maid not half that age, that it endured five years. For at the
end of that period the comradeship indeed was broken, and a term was
set to the habit of community in all things that was to me at least
so comfortable. The day that took my companion to reside in the town
of Sherborne, there to attend the King's School, brought on my small
mind its first remembered sorrow; wherefore I wept greatly, and would
not for many days be comforted. At the time I did not understand (as
how should I, being but ten years of age?) the reasons of this so
sudden change in his mother's intention. But I have since learned
that two causes, of which I myself, poor maid, was one, determined
the Lady Mary Royston to take her son from the hands of the learned
and pious governor who should have led him in the path of learning
and conduct even up to the gates of the University of Oxford. Thus
her late husband had intended, but, the tutor growing lazy and
overeasy perhaps, while Ned would ever more frequently take the bit
of control fast between the teeth of stubbornness, she was minded to
subject him to sterner authority. She was moved, moreover, like many
another parent of an only son, by some measure of jealousy, directed,
in her case, toward "the wild little maid of Drayton," as she would
call me; for, with all his duty to his mother, no words or wishes of
hers could shake that notable and constant affection that Ned did
then, as ever, spend upon me. Knowing, too, by her late husband, of
the papistical bias (as she would say) of the Drayton family more
than others of those parts had learned, she was ever in dread
(pursuing Mr. Nathaniel Royston's policy of caution) lest our
acquaintance should lead her or her son into some seeming of
complicity with traitors. For we were then in the year 1678 and the
full tide of the Popish Plot. But I have always believed that I was
far more in this matter of sending Ned to Sherborne than Dr. Titus
Gates or the whole College of Cardinals.
By this and by that, certain it is that go to Sherborne he did, and
that my days had been from that hour very cheerless but for a notable
addition to our family, bringing some measure of solace to a mighty
sore little heart.
When he heard that Ned was gone, and that the tutor knew not where to
turn himself for a living after his dismission by the Lady Mary, my
good father mounted his horse and rode over to Royston, leaving me
marvelling greatly at the courage and hardihood of a man that dared
encounter a woman so formidable as I then held Ned's mother to be.
For only twice had I been with him to Royston Chase, and the second
time even happier to be gone than the first. So it was that I deemed
my father a very St. George that could face cheerfully this dragon.
He had along with him a mounted servant, leading a quiet pad-nag,
which returned after sundown sorely burdened with the great person of
the Rev. Joshua Telgrove. I stood on the steps for my father's
embrace (always my privilege on his return), and when the little
party was dismounted with no small difficulty to Mr. Telgrove and the
assistant groom, "Mistress Philippa," says Sir Michael, with
something of ceremony in his manner of speech, "this is Mr. Telgrove,
who hath taught your friend, Master Royston, these many years."
"That I know well, sir," I replied, trembling; for I feared the old
man greatly, having seen him but thrice, and ascribing great
austerity to him that had ruled a being so great as my friend and
idol.
"And now," he continued, with a little grim smile that was yet not
unkind, "Mr. Telgrove has a mind to teach my little half-broke filly"
(for so the dear and tender gentleman was wont to pun upon my name),
"and I have a mind he should at least make the endeavor."
At this I trembled yet more, and was abashed to a stubborn silence,
resolving with a mighty vow in my heart that from none but Ned would
I learn. And I finding in the days that followed that my tutor was
the mildest of men, and in face of childish wilfulness the most
indolent, it was like to have gone mighty hard with my advancement in
learning had he not discovered a rod to rule me as by some charm of
magic. For coming very soon, with the keen insight of childhood, to
fear him not at all, I would in no manner give him rest nor ease,
neither by learning my task nor by sitting mumchance, which at first,
mayhap, had pleased him near as well, unless he would be talking of
Ned. Now Mr. Telgrove had a great and tender affection to his late
pupil, and perceiving that I even surpassed him in this, he came, I
think, to some measure of love for his new one. With that rose in
him the wish that I should do him credit, even as Ned had done; and
he made an ordinance that the name, so dear alike to master and
scholar, should not be breathed until the task of the day was not
only conned but fairly committed and recited. To this rule he did so
constantly, for a nature of his softness, adhere, that before six
months were past I was much advanced in wisdom, and grown to love my
lessons only next in order to their reward--those long colloquies, to
wit, in which he would tell me every adventure, escapade, and other
act, good or bad, of Ned's childhood. These stories, indeed, soon
grew old, but to me and my tutor never trite nor stale. Then from
time to time he would read aloud to me, in part or at length, the
letters received from Sherborne. But to me Ned did not write.
Thus the months went by, and grew into years less heavily than I had
thought. Mr. Telgrove was well content, having found, as he would
say, a refuge for his old age. For the Act of Uniformity and the
Oath of Non-resistance being against his conscience, had deprived him
of his living, while the Five-Mile Act had well-nigh forbidden him to
find another. Mr. N. Royston, in the performance of one of his
politic acts of charity, his house of Royston Chase being neither
near Mr. Telgrove's former incumbency, nor within the proscribed
distance of a corporate town, had obtained a good teacher for his
son; but I think the good man's power of struggling with a
persecuting world was exhausted in his one act of renunciation, and
he was left with little desire for aught but a peaceful abode and the
leisure to study the great writers of antiquity in a cloud of smoke
from his tobacco pipe. His opinions in matters theological and
ecclesiastical had, with the passage of time, so softened, that Sir
Michael would playfully attack him for a Latitudinarian, an Arminian,
or what not, while I on winter evenings would search among my tutor's
books that I might plague him with accusation of strange heresies.
But this was after Mr. Telgrove had resided with us some four years,
and young Mr. Royston had proceeded from Sherborne to Corpus Christi
College, in the University of Oxford, having in the meantime but once
visited Royston--one happy summer for me, in my fourteenth year,
during two months of which he would ride over to us, not indeed with
the frequency of the past, but often twice, and sometimes even three
times, in the seven days. Yet, though I say I was happy, it was not
as it had been. Something of the distance that had grown between him
and me would force itself upon the mind, now of one, now of the
other. Pondering the matter from the watch-tower of my present
content, I hold that the child in Mistress Phil was ever crying out
for the older terms of alliance, with their reckless mirth and
unchecked license of jollity, while the woman, unheeded, but waxing
ever stronger within, would as often clap stern hand upon the
clamorous lips of youth, and so produce that outward show of
petulance which is as baffling to the youth in his twentieth as it is
alluring to the man in his thirtieth year. Then, too, it was that I
first gave thought to the manner of my appearance in the eyes of
others, and would ask my glass, I knew not why, for evidence of grace
and beauty in person and countenance. And the mirror was a stern
arbiter, showing only gaunt length of limb and sunbrowned uncouthness
of feature, overhung by heavy brows, and supported, when mirth would
display them, by a regiment of very white teeth.
"Dear Ned," I would say, "I would I were fair!"
"Some day you will be so," he would answer.
"But you have grown to the stature of a man, while I----"
"Be content, sweetheart," he would answer. "You are like a yearling
colt--nay, 't is filly I mean. How dost spell that same word _filly_
now, Mistress Scholar? With the 'P' and the 'h' it should be, in the
Grecian manner. But indeed you will overtake my growth soon enough.
When I did first know you, my age to yours was as two to one and
more. When I have done with Oxford, it will be but as four to three,
and thou older for a woman than I for a man."
"Tell me, then," I said to him one day, after some such talk, "when,
last summer, you were at the Court with madam your mother, and I saw
you not at all, did you not see many fine ladies and women of great
beauty?"
"Ay, many," quoth he, "but none such as you will be. Do but give the
colt time."
And when he was gone I would marvel why I cared for the beauty I had
not. And since I found no clear answer to the question in my own
mind, and ventured to seek it from no other, it was well, maybe, that
Ned's long absence at Oxford and in London with the Lady Mary,
extending as it did over the better part of four years, put the
matter in time clean out of my head. Indeed, even in our quiet
corner, we had other matter to consider in those days than the vanity
of a half-grown maid.
Now it is only in later times that I have come even to the most
partial understanding of the many twists and turns in the fate of our
perturbed island, that were then succeeding each other with so
bewildering rapidity. This is no public history, or my ignorance
would make of it a worse book yet than it promises, and I shall but
recall the memory of those unquiet events that affected at this time
our quiet life.
That same year of Ned's coming again to Royston, between his leaving
Sherborne and going to Oxford, was the time of the late Duke of
Monmouth's progress through England, wherein he did take upon himself
so much of the state of his royal ancestry as to encourage greatly
the fond belief of the common people, particularly in the west
country, in that vain story of a certain Black Box, where should be
found (did one credit these mystery-mongers) proof indisputable of
the marriage of the Duke's mother, Mistress Lucy Walters, with his
acknowledged father, King Charles II., then upon the throne. Of the
merits of the matter I know nothing, but remember well how Sir
Michael would say the wish was father to the thought in the minds of
such as dreaded most the coming to the throne of the Papist Duke of
York. He had no patience, he said, with those that went after these
idle tales; yet he showed much in exhorting, threatening, and
persuading those of his own people that seemed most in peril of
misleading by these errors. In especial, I do recall something of a
disputation between him and Simon Emmet, our steward. This good man
was in a measure privileged in his intercourse with Sir Michael,
being an old trooper of the first force my father had raised and led
for King Charles the Martyr. He was, though Cavalier and Royalist to
the marrow, a Protestant of an earnestness well-nigh fanatical.
Simon stood beneath the open window of my bedchamber, on the sward
that there sweeps up right to the walls of the house from the park,
so that I have often dropped bread to the deer grown bold in their
feeding. My father leaned from the window beneath me, smoking a pipe
of Virginia tobacco, while I sat gazing over the trees and busied,
till my ear was caught by their words, with thought of Oxford and the
Court at London. And this is what I heard:
Said Sir Michael Drayton: "Ill will come of this madness, Simon. To
uphold the claim of a bastard to the throne you and I have fought for
is not the work of a wise man nor a good."
"'T is not so sure the Duke is that," answered Emmet. "I, for one,
hold him as well born as the other Duke" (meaning the Duke of York),
"and, at any rate, my lord of Monmouth is no Papist."
"I had not voted for the Exclusion Bill had I been at Westminster,"
said my father, yet as if he had a doubt in the matter; "for I do
think a Catholic may be no bad king--if he will but uphold the law."
"If--ay, if! I do not say a Papist must needs be a bad man nor a bad
king. Not but what they all are so--for the most part," said Simon
as in fear of overmuch concession. "But this is a Papist for sure,
and as surely a bad man. 'T is pretty work he has had the doing of
in Scotland, sir; and that not for his own superstition, but for a
faith he doth not hold. Give him power and the time to use it, and
what will he not attempt for the Scarlet Woman? Moreover, if the
Duke of Monmouth be the King's son, born in lawful wedlock, as this
same story of the Black Box would show----"
"No more, Simon," interrupted my father angrily. "Say not another
word of that. It is rank blasphemy and treason, and I, being a
faithful subject of His Majesty, and on his commission of the peace,
and holding command in the train-bands, may not hear repeated what
His Majesty has denied. And most of all, Simon," he continued more
kindly, "I do fear this sort of wild talk will get thee into trouble.
Leave it to Republicans and Fifth Monarchy Men, old friend. I fear
you have been running after sectaries in your old age, Simon." He
knew it well, for the old steward, like the poor land that had asked
and taken many years and much blood of his youth, had passed through
many contrarious fits of thought and sentiment. In religion his
politic fear of Rome had well-nigh driven him out of the back door of
the Church into the arms of the Puritans. As he hovered between
respect of his ancient captain and present master, and the
enticements of controversy, "Go, Simon!" cried Sir Michael; "bid
Parson Greenlow pray with you, and read you a lecture on Passive
Obedience and the Duty of Non-resistance."
"Humph!" muttered the old malcontent, as he walked toward the stable;
"the parsons will be mighty ready to eat their sermons when the
Duke's Scottish boot is on their leg. They 'll resist then, Sir
Michael, even as we resisted Old Noll."
And so three further years went by, and Ned came not, but did spend
such time as he was not in Oxford with Madam Royston in his father's
noble house in Basinghall Street in the City of London. Twice did he
send me a letter in those days, with no word, indeed, of love in
them, but so breathing the constancy of our old terms of alliance,
and bringing me so much joy, that I cannot endure they should run the
risk of the cold monument of print, and so will not here set down
their words.
And I grew in length and thickness, and, I hope, in other things
beside, and had almost forgot my mirror but for the kinder and more
pleasing glance it would now and again, toward the latter part of my
seventeenth year, begin to throw back upon me, as I would pin a
collar, or struggle to twist into some show of order the stubborn and
difficult blackness of my hair.