HOW SALVATION YEO SLEW THE KING OF THE GUBBINGS
“Ignorance and evil, even in full flight, deal terrible backhanded
strokes at their pursuers.”--HELPS.
Now I am sorry to say, for the honor of my country, that it was by no
means a safe thing in those days to travel from Plymouth to the north of
Devon; because, to get to your journey's end, unless you were minded to
make a circuit of many miles, you must needs pass through the territory
of a foreign and hostile potentate, who had many times ravaged the
dominions, and defeated the forces of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and
was named (behind his back at least) the King of the Gubbings. “So now
I dare call them,” says Fuller, “secured by distance, which one of more
valor durst not do to their face, for fear their fury fall upon him. Yet
hitherto have I met with none who could render a reason of their name.
We call the shavings of fish (which are little worth) gubbings; and sure
it is that they are sensible that the word importeth shame and disgrace.
“As for the suggestion of my worthy and learned friend, Mr. Joseph
Maynard, that such as did inhabitare montes gibberosos, were called
Gubbings, such will smile at the ingenuity who dissent from the truth of
the etymology.
“I have read of an England beyond Wales, but the Gubbings land is a
Scythia within England, and they pure heathens therein. It lieth nigh
Brent. For in the edge of Dartmoor it is reported that, some two hundred
years since, two bad women, being with child, fled thither to hide
themselves; to whom certain lewd fellows resorted, and this was their
first original. They are a peculiar of their own making, exempt from
bishop, archdeacon, and all authority, either ecclesiastical or civil.
They live in cots (rather holes than houses) like swine, having all in
common, multiplied without marriage into many hundreds. Their language
is the dross of the dregs of the vulgar Devonian; and the more learned
a man is, the worse he can understand them. During our civil wars no
soldiers were quartered upon them, for fear of being quartered amongst
them. Their wealth consisteth in other men's goods; they live by
stealing the sheep on the moors; and vain is it for any to search their
houses, being a work beneath the pains of any sheriff, and above the
power of any constable. Such is their fleetness, they will outrun many
horses; vivaciousness, they outlive most men; living in an ignorance of
luxury, the extinguisher of life. They hold together like bees; offend
one, and all will revenge his quarrel.
“But now I am informed that they begin to be civilized, and tender their
children to baptism, and return to be men, yea, Christians again. I hope
no CIVIL people amongst us will turn barbarians, now these barbarians
begin to be civilized.” *
* Fuller, p. 398.
With which quip against the Anabaptists of his day, Fuller ends his
story; and I leave him to set forth how Amyas, in fear of these same
Scythians and heathens, rode out of Plymouth on a right good horse, in
his full suit of armor, carrying lance and sword, and over and above two
great dags, or horse-pistols; and behind him Salvation Yeo, and five
or six north Devon men (who had served with him in Ireland, and were
returning on furlough), clad in head-pieces and quilted jerkins, each
man with his pike and sword, and Yeo with arquebuse and match, while two
sumpter ponies carried the baggage of this formidable troop.
They pushed on as fast as they could, through Tavistock, to reach before
nightfall Lydford, where they meant to sleep; but what with buying the
horses, and other delays, they had not been able to start before
noon; and night fell just as they reached the frontiers of the enemy's
country. A dreary place enough it was, by the wild glare of sunset. A
high tableland of heath, banked on the right by the crags and hills of
Dartmoor, and sloping away to the south and west toward the foot of the
great cone of Brent-Tor, which towered up like an extinct volcano (as
some say that it really is), crowned with the tiny church, the votive
offering of some Plymouth merchant of old times, who vowed in sore
distress to build a church to the Blessed Virgin on the first point of
English land which he should see. Far away, down those waste slopes,
they could see the tiny threads of blue smoke rising from the dens of
the Gubbings; and more than once they called a halt, to examine whether
distant furze-bushes and ponies might not be the patrols of an advancing
army. It is all very well to laugh at it now, in the nineteenth century,
but it was no laughing matter then; as they found before they had gone
two miles farther.
On the middle of the down stood a wayside inn; a desolate and
villainous-looking lump of lichen-spotted granite, with windows
paper-patched, and rotting thatch kept down by stones and straw-banks;
and at the back a rambling court-ledge of barns and walls, around which
pigs and barefoot children grunted in loving communion of dirt. At the
door, rapt apparently in the contemplation of the mountain peaks which
glowed rich orange in the last lingering sun-rays, but really watching
which way the sheep on the moor were taking, stood the innkeeper, a
brawny, sodden-visaged, blear-eyed six feet of brutishness, holding up
his hose with one hand, for want of points, and clawing with the other
his elf-locks, on which a fair sprinkling of feathers might denote:
first, that he was just out of bed, having been out sheep-stealing
all the night before; and secondly, that by natural genius he had
anticipated the opinion of that great apostle of sluttishness,
Fridericus Dedekind, and his faithful disciple Dekker, which last speaks
thus to all gulls and grobians: “Consider that as those trees of cobweb
lawn, woven by spinners in the fresh May mornings, do dress the curled
heads of the mountains, and adorn the swelling bosoms of the valleys; or
as those snowy fleeces, which the naked briar steals from the innocent
sheep to make himself a warm winter livery, are, to either of them
both, an excellent ornament; so make thou account, that to have feathers
sticking here and there on thy head will embellish thee, and set thy
crown out rarely. None dare upbraid thee, that like a beggar thou hast
lain on straw, or like a travelling pedlar upon musty flocks; for those
feathers will rise up as witnesses to choke him that says so, and to
prove thy bed to have been of the softest down.” Even so did those
feathers bear witness that the possessor of Rogues' Harbor Inn, on
Brent-Tor Down, whatever else he lacked, lacked not geese enough to keep
him in soft lying.
Presently he spies Amyas and his party coming slowly over the hill,
pricks up his ears, and counts them; sees Amyas's armor; shakes his head
and grunts; and then, being a man of few words, utters a sleepy howl--
“Mirooi!--Fushing pooale!”
A strapping lass--whose only covering (for country women at work in
those days dispensed with the ornament of a gown) is a green bodice and
red petticoat, neither of them over ample--brings out his fishing-rod
and basket, and the man, having tied up his hose with some ends of
string, examines the footlink.
“Don vlies' gone!”
“May be,” says Mary; “shouldn't hay' left mun out to coort. May be old
hen's ate mun off. I see her chocking about a while agone.”
The host receives this intelligence with an oath, and replies by a
violent blow at Mary's head, which she, accustomed to such slight
matters, dodges, and then returns the blow with good effect on the shock
head.
Whereon mine host, equally accustomed to such slight matters, quietly
shambles off, howling as he departs--
“Tell Patrico!”
Mary runs in, combs her hair, slips a pair of stockings and her best
gown over her dirt, and awaits the coming guests, who make a few long
faces at the “mucksy sort of a place,” but prefer to spend the night
there than to bivouac close to the enemy's camp.
So the old hen who has swallowed the dun fly is killed, plucked, and
roasted, and certain “black Dartmoor mutton” is put on the gridiron, and
being compelled to confess the truth by that fiery torment, proclaims
itself to all noses as red-deer venison. In the meanwhile Amyas has put
his horse and the ponies into a shed, to which he can find neither
lock nor key, and therefore returns grumbling, not without fear for his
steed's safety. The baggage is heaped in a corner of the room, and Amyas
stretches his legs before a turf fire; while Yeo, who has his notions
about the place, posts himself at the door, and the men are seized with
a desire to superintend the cooking, probably to be attributed to the
fact that Mary is cook.
Presently Yeo comes in again.
“There's a gentleman just coming up, sir, all alone.”
“Ask him to make one of our party, then, with my compliments.” Yeo goes
out, and returns in five minutes.
“Please, sir, he's gone in back ways, by the court.”
“Well, he has an odd taste, if he makes himself at home here.”
Out goes Yeo again, and comes back once more after five minutes, in high
excitement.
“Come out, sir; for goodness' sake come out. I've got him. Safe as a rat
in a trap, I have!”
“Who?”
“A Jesuit, sir.”
“Nonsense, man!”
“I tell you truth, sir. I went round the house, for I didn't like the
looks of him as he came up. I knew he was one of them villains the
minute he came up, by the way he turned in his toes, and put down his
feet so still and careful, like as if he was afraid of offending God at
every step. So I just put my eye between the wall and the dern of the
gate, and I saw him come up to the back door and knock, and call 'Mary!'
quite still, like any Jesuit; and the wench flies out to him ready to
eat him; and 'Go away,' I heard her say, 'there's a dear man;' and then
something about a 'queer cuffin' (that's a justice in these canters'
thieves' Latin); and with that he takes out a somewhat--I'll swear it
was one of those Popish Agnuses--and gives it her; and she kisses it,
and crosses herself, and asks him if that's the right way, and then puts
it into her bosom, and he says, 'Bless you, my daughter;' and then I was
sure of the dog: and he slips quite still to the stable, and peeps in,
and when he sees no one there, in he goes, and out I go, and shut to the
door, and back a cart that was there up against it, and call out one of
the men to watch the stable, and the girl's crying like mad.”
“What a fool's trick, man! How do you know that he is not some honest
gentleman, after all?”
“Fool or none, sir; honest gentlemen don't give maidens Agnuses. I've
put him in; and if you want him let out again, you must come and do it
yourself, for my conscience is against it, sir. If the Lord's enemies
are delivered into my hand, I'm answerable, sir,” went on Yeo as Amyas
hurried out with him. “'Tis written, 'If any let one of them go, his
life shall be for the life of him.'”
So Amyas ran out, pulled back the cart grumbling, opened the door, and
began a string of apologies to--his cousin Eustace.
Yes, here he was, with such a countenance, half foolish, half venomous,
as reynard wears when the last spadeful of earth is thrown back, and
he is revealed sitting disconsolately on his tail within a yard of the
terriers' noses.
Neither cousin spoke for a minute or two. At last Amyas--
“Well, cousin hide-and-seek, how long have you added horse-stealing to
your other trades?”
“My dear Amyas,” said Eustace, very meekly, “I may surely go into an inn
stable without intending to steal what is in it.”
“Of course, old fellow,” said Amyas, mollified, “I was only in jest. But
what brings you here? Not prudence, certainly.”
“I am bound to know no prudence save for the Lord's work.”
“That's giving away Agnus Deis, and deceiving poor heathen wenches, I
suppose,” said Yeo.
Eustace answered pretty roundly--
“Heathens? Yes, truly; you Protestants leave these poor wretches
heathens, and then insult and persecute those who, with a devotion
unknown to you, labor at the danger of their lives to make them
Christians. Mr. Amyas Leigh, you can give me up to be hanged at Exeter,
if it shall so please you to disgrace your own family; but from this
spot neither you, no, nor all the myrmidons of your queen, shall drive
me, while there is a soul here left unsaved.”
“Come out of the stable, at least,” said Amyas; “you don't want to make
the horses Papists, as well as the asses, do you? Come out, man, and go
to the devil your own way. I sha'n't inform against you; and Yeo here
will hold his tongue if I tell him, I know.”
“It goes sorely against my conscience, sir; but being that he is your
cousin, of course--”
“Of course; and now come in and eat with me; supper's just ready, and
bygones shall be bygones, if you will have them so.”
How much forgiveness Eustace felt in his heart, I know not: but he knew,
of course, that he ought to forgive; and to go in and eat with Amyas was
to perform an act of forgiveness, and for the best of motives, too, for
by it the cause of the Church might be furthered; and acts and motives
being correct, what more was needed? So in he went; and yet he never
forgot that scar upon his cheek; and Amyas could not look him in the
face but Eustace must fancy that his eyes were on the scar, and peep
up from under his lids to see if there was any smile of triumph on that
honest visage. They talked away over the venison, guardedly enough at
first; but as they went on, Amyas's straightforward kindliness warmed
poor Eustace's frozen heart; and ere they were aware, they found
themselves talking over old haunts and old passages of their
boyhood--uncles, aunts, and cousins; and Eustace, without any sinister
intention, asked Amyas why he was going to Bideford, while Frank and his
mother were in London.
“To tell you the truth, I cannot rest till I have heard the whole story
about poor Rose Salterne.”
“What about her?” cried Eustace.
“Do you not know?”
“How should I know anything here? For heaven's sake, what has happened?”
Amyas told him, wondering at his eagerness, for he had never had the
least suspicion of Eustace's love.
Eustace shrieked aloud.
“Fool, fool that I have been! Caught in my own trap! Villain, villain
that he is! After all he promised me at Lundy!”
And springing up, Eustace stamped up and down the room, gnashing
his teeth, tossing his head from side to side, and clutching with
outstretched hands at the empty air, with the horrible gesture (Heaven
grant that no reader has ever witnessed it!) of that despair which still
seeks blindly for the object which it knows is lost forever.
Amyas sat thunderstruck. His first impulse was to ask, “Lundy? What
knew you of him? What had he or you to do at Lundy?” but pity conquered
curiosity.
“Oh, Eustace! And you then loved her too?”
“Don't speak to me! Loved her? Yes, sir, and had as good a right to love
her as any one of your precious Brotherhood of the Rose. Don't speak to
me, I say, or I shall do you a mischief!”
So Eustace knew of the brotherhood too! Amyas longed to ask him how; but
what use in that? If he knew it, he knew it; and what harm? So he only
answered:
“My good cousin, why be wroth with me? If you really love her, now is
the time to take counsel with me how best we shall--”
Eustace did not let him finish his sentence. Conscious that he had
betrayed himself upon more points than one, he stopped short in his
walk, suddenly collected himself by one great effort, and eyed Amyas
from underneath his brows with the old down look.
“How best we shall do what, my valiant cousin?” said he, in a meaning
and half-scornful voice. “What does your most chivalrous Brotherhood of
the Rose purpose in such a case?”
Amyas, a little nettled, stood on his guard in return, and answered
bluntly--
“What the Brotherhood of the Rose will do, I can't yet say. What it
ought to do, I have a pretty sure guess.”
“So have I. To hunt her down as you would an outlaw, because forsooth
she has dared to love a Catholic; to murder her lover in her arms, and
drag her home again stained with his blood, to be forced by threats and
persecution to renounce that Church into whose maternal bosom she has
doubtless long since found rest and holiness!”
“If she has found holiness, it matters little to me where she has found
it, Master Eustace, but that is the very point that I should be glad to
know for certain.”
“And you will go and discover for yourself?”
“Have you no wish to discover it also?”
“And if I had, what would that be to you?”
“Only,” said Amyas, trying hard to keep his temper, “that, if we had the
same purpose, we might sail in the same ship.”
“You intend to sail, then?”
“I mean simply, that we might work together.”
“Our paths lie on very different roads, sir!”
“I am afraid you never spoke a truer word, sir. In the meanwhile, ere we
part, be so kind as to tell me what you meant by saying that you had met
this Spaniard at Lundy?”
“I shall refuse to answer that.”
“You will please to recollect, Eustace, that however good friends we
have been for the last half-hour, you are in my power. I have a right to
know the bottom of this matter; and, by heaven, I will know it.”
“In your power? See that you are not in mine! Remember, sir, that you
are within a--within a few miles, at least, of those who will obey me,
their Catholic benefactor, but who owe no allegiance to those Protestant
authorities who have left them to the lot of the beasts which perish.”
Amyas was very angry. He wanted but little more to make him catch
Eustace by the shoulders, shake the life out of him, and deliver him
into the tender guardianship of Yeo; but he knew that to take him at
all was to bring certain death on him, and disgrace on the family; and
remembering Frank's conduct on that memorable night at Clovelly, he kept
himself down.
“Take me,” said Eustace, “if you will, sir. You, who complain of us that
we keep no faith with heretics, will perhaps recollect that you asked me
into this room as your guest, and that in your good faith I trusted when
I entered it.”
The argument was a worthless one in law; for Eustace had been a prisoner
before he was a guest, and Amyas was guilty of something very like
misprision of treason in not handing him over to the nearest justice.
However, all he did was, to go to the door, open it, and bowing to his
cousin, bid him walk out and go to the devil, since he seemed to have
set his mind on ending his days in the company of that personage.
Whereon Eustace vanished.
“Pooh!” said Amyas to himself, “I can find out enough, and too much, I
fear, without the help of such crooked vermin. I must see Cary; I must
see Salterne; and I suppose, if I am ready to do my duty, I shall learn
somehow what it is. Now to sleep; to-morrow up and away to what God
sends.”
“Come in hither, men,” shouted he down the passage, “and sleep here.
Haven't you had enough of this villainous sour cider?”
The men came in yawning, and settled themselves to sleep on the floor.
“Where's Yeo?”
No one knew; he had gone out to say his prayers, and had not returned.
“Never mind,” said Amyas, who suspected some plot on the old man's part.
“He'll take care of himself, I'll warrant him.”
“No fear of that, sir;” and the four tars were soon snoring in concert
round the fire, while Amyas laid himself on the settle, with his saddle
for a pillow.
* * * * *
It was about midnight, when Amyas leaped to his feet, or rather fell
upon his back, upsetting saddle, settle, and finally, table, under the
notion that ten thousand flying dragons were bursting in the window
close to his ear, with howls most fierce and fell. The flying dragons
past, however, being only a flock of terror-stricken geese, which flew
flapping and screaming round the corner of the house; but the noise
which had startled them did not pass; and another minute made it evident
that a sharp fight was going on in the courtyard, and that Yeo was
hallooing lustily for help.
Out turned the men, sword in hand, burst the back door open, stumbling
over pails and pitchers, and into the courtyard, where Yeo, his back
against the stable-door, was holding his own manfully with sword and
buckler against a dozen men.
Dire and manifold was the screaming; geese screamed, chickens screamed,
pigs screamed, donkeys screamed, Mary screamed from an upper window;
and to complete the chorus, a flock of plovers, attracted by the noise,
wheeled round and round overhead, and added their screams also to that
Dutch concert.
The screaming went on, but the fight ceased; for, as Amyas rushed into
the yard, the whole party of ruffians took to their heels, and vanished
over a low hedge at the other end of the yard.
“Are you hurt, Yeo?”
“Not a scratch, thank Heaven! But I've got two of them, the ringleaders,
I have. One of them's against the wall. Your horse did for t'other.”
The wounded man was lifted up; a huge ruffian, nearly as big as Amyas
himself. Yeo's sword had passed through his body. He groaned and choked
for breath.
“Carry him indoors. Where is the other?”
“Dead as a herring, in the straw. Have a care, men, have a care how you
go in! the horses are near mad!”
However, the man was brought out after a while. With him all was over.
They could feel neither pulse nor breath.
“Carry him in too, poor wretch. And now, Yeo, what is the meaning of all
this?”
Yeo's story was soon told. He could not get out of his Puritan head the
notion (quite unfounded, of course) that Eustace had meant to steal
the horses. He had seen the inn-keeper sneak off at their approach; and
expecting some night-attack, he had taken up his lodging for the night
in the stable.
As he expected, an attempt was made. The door was opened (how, he could
not guess, for he had fastened it inside), and two fellows came in, and
began to loose the beasts. Yeo's account was, that he seized the big
fellow, who drew a knife on him, and broke loose; the horses, terrified
at the scuffle, kicked right and left; one man fell, and the other
ran out, calling for help, with Yeo at his heels; “Whereon,” said
Yeo, “seeing a dozen more on me with clubs and bows, I thought best to
shorten the number while I could, ran the rascal through, and stood on
my ward; and only just in time I was, what's more; there's two arrows in
the house wall, and two or three more in my buckler, which I caught up
as I went out, for I had hung it close by the door, you see, sir, to be
all ready in case,” said the cunning old Philistine-slayer, as they went
in after the wounded man.
But hardly had they stumbled through the low doorway into the
back-kitchen when a fresh hubbub arose inside--more shouts for help.
Amyas ran forward breaking his head against the doorway, and beheld, as
soon as he could see for the flashes in his eyes, an old acquaintance,
held on each side by a sturdy sailor.
With one arm in the sleeve of his doublet, and the other in a not over
spotless shirt; holding up his hose with one hand, and with the other
a candle, whereby he had lighted himself to his own confusion; foaming
with rage, stood Mr. Evan Morgans, alias Father Parsons, looking,
between his confused habiliments and his fiery visage (as Yeo told him
to his face), “the very moral of a half-plucked turkey-cock.” And behind
him, dressed, stood Eustace Leigh.
“We found the maid letting these here two out by the front door,” said
one of the captors.
“Well, Mr. Parsons,” said Amyas; “and what are you about here? A pretty
nest of thieves and Jesuits we seem to have routed out this evening.”
“About my calling, sir,” said Parsons, stoutly. “By your leave, I
shall prepare this my wounded lamb for that account to which your man's
cruelty has untimely sent him.”
The wounded man, who lay upon the floor, heard Parsons' voice, and
moaned for the “Patrico.”
“You see, sir,” said he, pompously, “the sheep know their shepherd's
voice.”
“The wolves you mean, you hypocritical scoundrel!” said Amyas, who could
not contain his disgust. “Let the fellow truss up his points, lads, and
do his work. After all, the man is dying.”
“The requisite matters, sir, are not at hand,” said Parsons, unabashed.
“Eustace, go and fetch his matters for him; you seem to be in all his
plots.”
Eustace went silently and sullenly.
“What's that fresh noise at the back, now?”
“The maid, sir, a wailing over her uncle; the fellow that we saw sneak
away when we came up. It was him the horse killed.”
It was true. The wretched host had slipped off on their approach, simply
to call the neighboring outlaws to the spoil; and he had been filled
with the fruit of his own devices.
“His blood be on his own head,” said Amyas.
“I question, sir,” said Yeo, in a low voice, “whether some of it will
not be on the heads of those proud prelates who go clothed in purple
and fine linen, instead of going forth to convert such as he, and then
wonder how these Jesuits get hold of them. If they give place to the
devil in their sheepfolds, sure he'll come in and lodge there. Look,
sir, there's a sight in a gospel land!”
And, indeed, the sight was curious enough. For Parsons was kneeling by
the side of the dying man, listening earnestly to the confession which
the man sobbed out in his gibberish, between the spasms of his wounded
chest. Now and then Parsons shook his head; and when Eustace returned
with the holy wafer, and the oil for extreme unction, he asked him, in a
low voice, “Ballard, interpret for me.”
And Eustace knelt down on the other side of the sufferer, and
interpreted his thieves' dialect into Latin; and the dying man held
a hand of each, and turned first to one and then to the other stupid
eyes,--not without affection, though, and gratitude.
“I can't stand this mummery any longer,” said Yeo. “Here's a soul
perishing before my eyes, and it's on my conscience to speak a word in
season.”
“Silence!” whispered Amyas, holding him back by the arm; “he knows them,
and he don't know you; they are the first who ever spoke to him as if
he had a soul to be saved, and first come, first served; you can do no
good. See, the man's face is brightening already.”
“But, sir, 'tis a false peace.”
“At all events he is confessing his sins, Yeo; and if that's not good
for him, and you, and me, what is?”
“Yea, Amen! sir; but this is not to the right person.”
“How do you know his words will not go to the right person, after all,
though he may not send them there? By heaven! the man is dead!”
It was so. The dark catalogue of brutal deeds had been gasped out; but
ere the words of absolution could follow, the head had fallen back, and
all was over.
“Confession in extremis is sufficient,” said Parsons to Eustace
(“Ballard,” as Parsons called him, to Amyas's surprise), as he rose. “As
for the rest, the intention will be accepted instead of the act.”
“The Lord have mercy on his soul!” said Eustace.
“His soul is lost before our very eyes,” said Yeo.
“Mind your own business,” said Amyas.
“Humph; but I'll tell you, sir, what our business is, if you'll step
aside with me. I find that poor fellow that lies dead is none other than
the leader of the Gubbings; the king of them, as they dare to call him.”
“Well, what of that?”
“Mark my words, sir, if we have not a hundred stout rogues upon us
before two hours are out; forgive us they never will; and if we get off
with our lives, which I don't much expect, we shall leave our horses
behind; for we can hold the house, sir, well enough till morning, but
the courtyard we can't, that's certain!”
“We had better march at once, then.”
“Think, sir; if they catch us up--as they are sure to do, knowing the
country better than we--how will our shot stand their arrows?”
“True, old wisdom; we must keep the road; and we must keep together; and
so be a mark for them, while they will be behind every rock and bank;
and two or three flights of arrows will do our business for us. Humph!
stay, I have a plan.” And stepping forward he spoke--
“Eustace, you will be so kind as to go back to your lambs; and tell
them, that if they meddle with us cruel wolves again to-night, we are
ready and willing to fight to the death, and have plenty of shot and
powder at their service. Father Parsons, you will be so kind as to
accompany us; it is but fitting that the shepherd should be hostage for
his sheep.”
“If you carry me off this spot, sir, you carry my corpse only,” said
Parsons. “I may as well die here as be hanged elsewhere, like my
martyred brother Campian.”
“If you take him, you must take me too,” said Eustace.
“What if we won't?”
“How will you gain by that? you can only leave me here. You cannot make
me go to the Gubbings, if I do not choose.”
Amyas uttered sotto voce an anathema on Jesuits, Gubbings, and things in
general. He was in a great hurry to get to Bideford, and he feared that
this business would delay him, as it was, a day or two. He wanted to
hang Parsons, he did not want to hang Eustace; and Eustace, he knew,
was well aware of that latter fact, and played his game accordingly; but
time ran on, and he had to answer sulkily enough:
“Well then; if you, Eustace, will go and give my message to your
converts, I will promise to set Mr. Parsons free again before we come to
Lydford town; and I advise you, if you have any regard for his life,
to see that your eloquence be persuasive enough; for as sure as I am
an Englishman, and he none, if the Gubbings attack us, the first
bullet that I shall fire at them will have gone through his scoundrelly
brains.”
Parsons still kicked.
“Very well, then, my merry men all. Tie this gentleman's hands behind
his back, get the horses out, and we'll right away up into Dartmoor,
find a good high tor, stand our ground there till morning, and then
carry him into Okehampton to the nearest justice. If he chooses to delay
me in my journey, it is fair that I should make him pay for it.”
Whereon Parsons gave in, and being fast tied by his arm to Amyas's
saddle, trudged alongside his horse for several weary miles, while Yeo
walked by his side, like a friar by a condemned criminal; and in order
to keep up his spirits, told him the woful end of Nicholas Saunders the
Legate, and how he was found starved to death in a bog.
“And if you wish, sir, to follow in his blessed steps, which I heartily
hope you will do, you have only to go over that big cow-backed hill
there on your right hand, and down again the other side to Crawmere
pool, and there you'll find as pretty a bog to die in as ever Jesuit
needed; and your ghost may sit there on a grass tummock, and tell your
beads without any one asking for you till the day of judgment; and much
good may it do you!”
At which imagination Yeo was actually heard, for the first and last time
in this history, to laugh most heartily.
His ho-ho's had scarcely died away when they saw shining under the moon
the old tower of Lydford castle.
“Cast the fellow off now,” said Amyas.
“Ay, ay, sir!” and Yeo and Simon Evans stopped behind, and did not come
up for ten minutes after.
“What have you been about so long?”
“Why, sir,” said Evans, “you see the man had a very fair pair of hose
on, and a bran-new kersey doublet, very warm-lined; and so, thinking it
a pity good clothes should be wasted on such noxious trade, we've just
brought them along with us.”
“Spoiling the Egyptians,” said Yeo as comment.
“And what have you done with the man?”
“Hove him over the bank, sir; he pitched into a big furze-bush, and for
aught I know, there he'll bide.”
“You rascal, have you killed him?
“Never fear, sir,” said Yeo, in his cool fashion. “A Jesuit has as many
lives as a cat, and, I believe, rides broomsticks post, like a witch. He
would be at Lydford now before us, if his master Satan had any business
for him there.”
Leaving on their left Lydford and its ill-omened castle (which, a
century after, was one of the principal scenes of Judge Jeffreys's
cruelty), Amyas and his party trudged on through the mire toward
Okehampton till sunrise; and ere the vapors had lifted from the mountain
tops, they were descending the long slopes from Sourton down, while
Yestor and Amicombe slept steep and black beneath their misty pall; and
roaring far below unseen,
“Ockment leapt from crag and cloud
Down her cataracts, laughing loud.”
The voice of the stream recalled these words to Amyas's mind. The nymph
of Torridge had spoken them upon the day of his triumph. He recollected,
too, his vexation on that day at not seeing Rose Salterne. Why, he had
never seen her since. Never seen her now for six years and more! Of her
ripened beauty he knew only by hearsay; she was still to him the lovely
fifteen years' girl for whose sake he had smitten the Barnstaple draper
over the quay. What a chain of petty accidents had kept them from
meeting, though so often within a mile of each other! “And what a lucky
one!” said practical old Amyas to himself. “If I had seen her as she is
now, I might have loved her as Frank does--poor Frank! what will he
say? What does he say, for he must know it already? And what ought I to
say--to do rather, for talking is no use on this side the grave, nor on
the other either, I expect!” And then he asked himself whether his old
oath meant nothing or something; whether it was a mere tavern frolic, or
a sacred duty. And he held, the more that he looked at it, that it meant
the latter.
But what could he do? He had nothing on earth but his sword, so he could
not travel to find her. After all, she might not be gone far. Perhaps
not gone at all. It might be a mistake, an exaggerated scandal. He
would hope so. And yet it was evident that there had been some passages
between her and Don Guzman. Eustace's mysterious words about the promise
at Lundy proved that. The villain! He had felt all along that he was a
villain; but just the one to win a woman's heart, too. Frank had been
away--all the Brotherhood away. What a fool he had been, to turn the
wolf loose into the sheepfold! And yet who would have dreamed of
it? . . .
“At all events,” said Amyas, trying to comfort himself, “I need not
complain. I have lost nothing. I stood no more chance of her against
Frank than I should have stood against the Don. So there is no use for
me to cry about the matter.” And he tried to hum a tune concerning the
general frailty of women, but nevertheless, like Sir Hugh, felt that “he
had a great disposition to cry.”
He never had expected to win her, and yet it seemed bitter to know that
she was lost to him forever. It was not so easy for a heart of his make
to toss away the image of a first love; and all the less easy because
that image was stained and ruined.
“Curses on the man who had done that deed! I will yet have his heart's
blood somehow, if I go round the world again to find him. If there's no
law for it on earth, there's law in heaven, or I'm much mistaken.”
With which determination he rode into the ugly, dirty, and stupid town
of Okehampton, with which fallen man (by some strange perversity) has
chosen to defile one of the loveliest sites in the pleasant land of
Devon. And heartily did Amyas abuse the old town that day; for he was
detained there, as he expected, full three hours, while the Justice
Shallow of the place was sent for from his farm (whither he had gone
at sunrise, after the early-rising fashion of those days) to take Yeo's
deposition concerning last night's affray. Moreover, when Shallow came,
he refused to take the depositions, because they ought to have been made
before a brother Shallow at Lydford; and in the wrangling which ensued,
was very near finding out what Amyas (fearing fresh loss of time and
worse evils beside) had commanded to be concealed, namely, the presence
of Jesuits in that Moorland Utopia. Then, in broadest Devon--
“And do you call this Christian conduct, sir, to set a quiet man like me
upon they Gubbings, as if I was going to risk my precious life--no, nor
ever a constable to Okehampton neither? Let Lydfor' men mind Lydfor'
roogs, and by Lydfor' law if they will, hang first and try after; but
as for me, I've rade my Bible, and 'He that meddleth with strife is like
him that taketh a dog by the ears.' So if you choose to sit down and ate
your breakfast with me, well and good: but depositions I'll have none.
If your man is enquired for, you'll be answerable for his appearing, in
course; but I expect mortally” (with a wink), “you wain't hear much more
of the matter from any hand. 'Leave well alone is a good rule, but leave
ill alone is a better.'--So we says round about here; and so you'll say,
captain, when you be so old as I.”
So Amyas sat down and ate his breakfast, and went on afterwards a long
and weary day's journey, till he saw at last beneath him the broad
shining river, and the long bridge, and the white houses piled up the
hill-side; and beyond, over Raleigh downs, the dear old tower of Northam
Church.
Alas! Northam was altogether a desert to him then; and Bideford, as it
turned out, hardly less so. For when he rode up to Sir Richard's door,
he found that the good knight was still in Ireland, and Lady Grenville
at Stow. Whereupon he rode back again down the High Street to that same
bow-windowed Ship Tavern where the Brotherhood of the Rose made their
vow, and settled himself in the very room where they had supped.
“Ah! Mr. Leigh--Captain Leigh now, I beg pardon,” quoth mine host.
“Bideford is an empty place now-a-days, and nothing stirring, sir. What
with Sir Richard to Ireland, and Sir John to London, and all the young
gentlemen to the wars, there's no one to buy good liquor, and no one to
court the young ladies, neither. Sack, sir? I hope so. I haven't brewed
a gallon of it this fortnight, if you'll believe me; ale, sir, and aqua
vitae, and such low-bred trade, is all I draw now-a-days. Try a pint of
sherry, sir, now, to give you an appetite. You mind my sherry of old?
Jane! Sherry and sugar, quick, while I pull off the captain's boots.”
Amyas sat weary and sad, while the innkeeper chattered on.
“Ah, sir! two or three like you would set the young ladies all alive
again. By-the-by, there's been strange doings among them since you were
here last. You mind Mistress Salterne!”
“For God's sake, don't let us have that story, man! I heard enough of it
at Plymouth!” said Amyas, in so disturbed a tone that mine host looked
up, and said to himself--
“Ah, poor young gentleman, he's one of the hard-hit ones.”
“How is the old man?” asked Amyas, after a pause.
“Bears it well enough, sir; but a changed man. Never speaks to a soul,
if he can help it. Some folk say he's not right in his head; or turned
miser, or somewhat, and takes naught but bread and water, and sits up
all night in the room as was hers, turning over her garments. Heaven
knows what's on his mind--they do say he was over hard on her, and that
drove her to it. All I know is, he has never been in here for a drop
of liquor (and he came as regular every evening as the town clock, sir)
since she went, except a ten days ago, and then he met young Mr. Cary at
the door, and I heard him ask Mr. Cary when you would be home, sir.”
“Put on my boots again. I'll go and see him.”
“Bless you, sir! What, without your sack?”
“Drink it yourself, man.”
“But you wouldn't go out again this time o' night on an empty stomach,
now?”
“Fill my men's stomachs for them, and never mind mine. It's market-day,
is it not? Send out, and see whether Mr. Cary is still in town;” and
Amyas strode out, and along the quay to Bridgeland Street, and knocked
at Mr. Salterne's door.
Salterne himself opened it, with his usual stern courtesy.
“I saw you coming up the street, sir. I have been expecting this honor
from you for some time past. I dreamt of you only last night, and many
a night before that too. Welcome, sir, into a lonely house. I trust the
good knight your general is well.”
“The good knight my general is with God who made him, Mr. Salterne.”
“Dead, sir?”
“Foundered at sea on our way home; and the Delight lost too.”
“Humph!” growled Salterne, after a minute's silence. “I had a venture in
her. I suppose it's gone. No matter--I can afford it, sir, and more,
I trust. And he was three years younger than I! And Draper Heard was
buried yesterday, five years younger.--How is it that every one can die,
except me? Come in, sir, come in; I have forgotten my manners.”
And he led Amyas into his parlor, and called to the apprentices to run
one way, and to the cook to run another.
“You must not trouble yourself to get me supper, indeed.”
“I must though, sir, and the best of wine too; and old Salterne had a
good tap of Alicant in old time, old time, old time, sir! and you must
drink it now, whether he does or not!” and out he bustled.
Amyas sat still, wondering what was coming next, and puzzled at the
sudden hilarity of the man, as well as his hospitality, so different
from what the innkeeper had led him to expect.
In a minute more one of the apprentices came in to lay the cloth, and
Amyas questioned him about his master.
“Thank the Lord that you are come, sir,” said the lad.
“Why, then?”
“Because there'll be a chance of us poor fellows getting a little broken
meat. We'm half-starved this three months--bread and dripping, bread and
dripping, oh dear, sir! And now he's sent out to the inn for chickens,
and game, and salads, and all that money can buy, and down in the cellar
haling out the best of wine.”--And the lad smacked his lips audibly at
the thought.
“Is he out of his mind?”
“I can't tell; he saith as how he must save mun's money now-a-days; for
he've a got a great venture on hand: but what a be he tell'th no man.
They call'th mun 'bread and dripping' now, sir, all town over,” said the
prentice, confidentially, to Amyas.
“They do, do they, sirrah! Then they will call me bread and no dripping
to-morrow!” and old Salterne, entering from behind, made a dash at the
poor fellow's ears: but luckily thought better of it, having a couple of
bottles in each hand.
“My dear sir,” said Amyas, “you don't mean us to drink all that wine?”
“Why not, sir?” answered Salterne, in a grim, half-sneering tone,
thrusting out his square-grizzled beard and chin. “Why not, sir? why
should I not make merry when I have the honor of a noble captain in my
house? one who has sailed the seas, sir, and cut Spaniards' throats; and
may cut them again too; eh, sir? Boy, where's the kettle and the sugar?”
“What on earth is the man at?” quoth Amyas to himself--“flattering me,
or laughing at me?”
“Yes,” he ran on, half to himself, in a deliberate tone, evidently
intending to hint more than he said, as he began brewing the sack--in
plain English, hot negus; “Yes, bread and dripping for those who can't
fight Spaniards; but the best that money can buy for those who can. I
heard of you at Smerwick, sir--Yes, bread and dripping for me too--I
can't fight Spaniards: but for such as you. Look here, sir; I should
like to feed a crew of such up, as you'd feed a main of fighting-cocks,
and then start them with a pair of Sheffield spurs a-piece--you've a
good one there to your side, sir: but don't you think a man might carry
two now, and fight as they say those Chineses do, a sword to each hand?
You could kill more that way, Captain Leigh, I reckon?”
Amyas half laughed.
“One will do, Mr. Salterne, if one is quick enough with it.”
“Humph!--Ah--No use being in a hurry. I haven't been in a hurry. No--I
waited for you; and here you are and welcome, sir! Here comes supper, a
light matter, sir, you see. A capon and a brace of partridges. I had no
time to feast you as you deserve.”
And so he ran on all supper-time, hardly allowing Amyas to get a word
in edge-ways; but heaping him with coarse flattery, and urging him to
drink, till after the cloth was drawn, and the two left alone, he grew
so outrageous that Amyas was forced to take him to task good-humoredly.
“Now, my dear sir, you have feasted me royally, and better far than I
deserve, but why will you go about to make me drunk twice over, first
with vainglory and then with wine?”
Salterne looked at him a while fixedly, and then, sticking out his
chin--“Because, Captain Leigh, I am a man who has all his life tried the
crooked road first, and found the straight one the safer after all.”
“Eh, sir? That is a strange speech for one who bears the character of
the most upright man in Bideford.”
“Humph. So I thought myself once, sir; and well I have proved it. But
I'll be plain with you, sir. You've heard how--how I've fared since you
saw me last?”
Amyas nodded his head.
“I thought so. Shame rides post. Now then, Captain Leigh, listen to me.
I, being a plain man and a burgher, and one that never drew iron in my
life except to mend a pen, ask you, being a gentleman and a captain
and a man of honor, with a weapon to your side, and harness to your
back--what would you do in my place?”
“Humph!” said Amyas, “that would very much depend on whether 'my place'
was my own fault or not.”
“And what if it were, sir? What if all that the charitable folks of
Bideford--(Heaven reward them for their tender mercies!)--have been
telling you in the last hour be true, sir,--true! and yet not half the
truth?”
Amyas gave a start.
“Ah, you shrink from me! Of course a man is too righteous to forgive
those who repent, though God is not.”
“God knows, sir--”
“Yes, sir, God does know--all; and you shall know a little--as much as I
can tell--or you understand. Come upstairs with me, sir, as you'll drink
no more; I have a liking for you. I have watched you from your boyhood,
and I can trust you, and I'll show you what I never showed to mortal man
but one.”
And, taking up a candle, he led the way upstairs, while Amyas followed
wondering.
He stopped at a door, and unlocked it.
“There, come in. Those shutters have not been opened since she--” and
the old man was silent.
Amyas looked round the room. It was a low wainscoted room, such as one
sees in old houses: everything was in the most perfect neatness.
The snow-white sheets on the bed were turned down as if ready for an
occupant. There were books arranged on the shelves, fresh flowers on the
table; the dressing-table had all its woman's mundus of pins, and rings,
and brushes; even the dressing-gown lay over the chair-back. Everything
was evidently just as it had been left.
“This was her room, sir,” whispered the old man.
Amyas nodded silently, and half drew back.
“You need not be modest about entering it now, sir,” whispered he, with
a sort of sneer. “There has been no frail flesh and blood in it for many
a day.”
Amyas sighed.
“I sweep it out myself every morning, and keep all tidy. See here!”
and he pulled open a drawer. “Here are all her gowns, and there are her
hoods; and there--I know 'em all by heart now, and the place of every
one. And there, sir--”
And he opened a cupboard, where lay in rows all Rose's dolls, and the
worn-out playthings of her childhood.
“That's the pleasantest place of all in the room to me,” said he,
whispering still, “for it minds me of when--and maybe, she may become a
little child once more, sir; it's written in the Scripture, you know--”
“Amen!” said Amyas, who felt, to his own wonder, a big tear stealing
down each cheek.
“And now,” he whispered, “one thing more. Look here!”--and pulling out a
key, he unlocked a chest, and lifted up tray after tray of necklaces
and jewels, furs, lawns, cloth of gold. “Look there! Two thousand pound
won't buy that chest. Twenty years have I been getting those things
together. That's the cream of many a Levant voyage, and East Indian
voyage, and West Indian voyage. My Lady Bath can't match those pearls in
her grand house at Tawstock; I got 'em from a Genoese, though, and paid
for 'em. Look at that embroidered lawn! There's not such a piece in
London; no, nor in Alexandria, I'll warrant; nor short of Calicut, where
it came from. . . . Look here again, there's a golden cup! I bought that
of one that was out with Pizarro in Peru. And look here, again!”--and
the old man gloated over the treasure.
“And whom do you think I kept all these for? These were for her
wedding-day--for her wedding-day. For your wedding-day, if you'd been
minded, sir! Yes, yours, sir! And yet, I believe, I was so ambitious
that I would not have let her marry under an earl, all the while I was
pretending to be too proud to throw her at the head of a squire's son.
Ah, well! There was my idol, sir. I made her mad, I pampered her up with
gewgaws and vanity; and then, because my idol was just what I had made
her, I turned again and rent her.
“And now,” said he, pointing to the open chest, “that was what I meant;
and that” (pointing to the empty bed) “was what God meant. Never mind.
Come downstairs and finish your wine. I see you don't care about it all.
Why should you! you are not her father, and you may thank God you are
not. Go, and be merry while you can, young sir! . . . And yet, all this
might have been yours. And--but I don't suppose you are one to be won
by money--but all this may be yours still, and twenty thousand pounds to
boot.”
“I want no money, sir, but what I can earn with my own sword.”
“Earn my money, then!”
“What on earth do you want of me!”
“To keep your oath,” said Salterne, clutching his arm, and looking up
into his face with searching eyes.
“My oath! How did you know that I had one?”
“Ah! you were well ashamed of it, I suppose, next day! A drunken frolic
all about a poor merchant's daughter! But there is nothing hidden that
shall not be revealed, nor done in the closet that is not proclaimed on
the house-tops.”
“Ashamed of it, sir, I never was: but I have a right to ask how you came
to know it?”
“What if a poor fat squinny rogue, a low-born fellow even as I am,
whom you had baffled and made a laughing-stock, had come to me in my
loneliness and sworn before God that if you honorable gentlemen would
not keep your words, he the clown would?”
“John Brimblecombe?”
“And what if I had brought him where I have brought you, and shown
him what I have shown you, and, instead of standing as stiff as any
Spaniard, as you do, he had thrown himself on his knees by that bedside,
and wept and prayed, sir, till he opened my hard heart for the first
and last time, and I fell down on my sinful knees and wept and prayed by
him?”
“I am not given to weeping, Mr. Salterne,” said Amyas; “and as for
praying, I don't know yet what I have to pray for, on her account: my
business is to work. Show me what I can do; and when you have done that,
it will be full time to upbraid me with not doing it.”
“You can cut that fellow's throat.”
“It will take a long arm to reach him.”
“I suppose it is as easy to sail to the Spanish Main as it was to sail
round the world.”
“My good sir,” said Amyas, “I have at this moment no more worldly goods
than my clothes and my sword, so how to sail to the Spanish Main, I
don't quite see.”
“And do you suppose, sir, that I should hint to you of such a voyage if
I meant you to be at the charge of it? No, sir; if you want two thousand
pounds, or five, to fit a ship, take it! Take it, sir! I hoarded money
for my child: and now I will spend it to avenge her.”
Amyas was silent for a while; the old man still held his arm, still
looked up steadfastly and fiercely in his face.
“Bring me home that man's head, and take ship, prizes--all! Keep the
gain, sir, and give me the revenge!”
“Gain? Do you think I need bribing, sir? What kept me silent was the
thought of my mother. I dare not go without her leave.”
Salterne made a gesture of impatience.
“I dare not, sir; I must obey my parent, whatever else I do.”
“Humph!” said he. “If others had obeyed theirs as well!--But you are
right, Captain Leigh, right. You will prosper, whoever else does not.
Now, sir, good-night, if you will let me be the first to say so. My old
eyes grow heavy early now-a-days. Perhaps it's old age, perhaps it's
sorrow.”
So Amyas departed to the inn, and there, to his great joy, found Cary
waiting for him, from whom he learnt details, which must be kept for
another chapter, and which I shall tell, for convenience' sake, in my
own words and not in his.