HOW MASTER RUMBOLD TOLD LAWRENCE LEE
WHAT THE VERY AIR MIGHT NOT HEAR.
This recollection of the morning, troubles Ruth strangely now, as she
sits in the broad window-seat of her own room, her eyes fixed indeed
on the fair moon-lit scene before her, but for once seeing nothing of
its beauty. Vague fears and suspicions and dread of coming evil
weigh down her heart, as one by one she threads together the
incidents of this May-day, which was to have been such a golden one.
It is all in vain that she laughingly tells herself her father has
every right to perambulate his own premises. All in vain she argues
that Lawrence Lee may be as sulky as a bear with a sore head, if it
gives him any pleasure; and no concern of hers. Certainly not. All
the same too, of course, it is to her if a legion of coal-barges come
their way, so long as it is not she who stands in Master Sheppard's
shoes.
For her part, however, Ruth could not consider the landlady of the
"King's Arms" at all a bad sort. On the contrary, she entertained a
great liking for her. Folks were fond of saying that Mistress
Sheppard had a shrewish tongue; but Ruth had never felt its edge.
The good woman was as foolish as everybody else in the matter of
spoiling the little mistress of the Rye House; and though she would
as soon tell a prince of the blood a piece of her mind, as she would
the stable-boy of her own establishment, if she saw fit, she would
have vowed the old dun-cow to be white as milk, if it could have
afforded Ruth any satisfaction; or declared that Master Richard
Rumbold was the most urbane and delightful gentleman in all the
country, though no love, to put it mildly, was lost between her and
her opposite neighbour.
[Sidenote: The hostess of the "King's Arms."]
One reason for this among divers others, was their difference of
opinion concerning the sign of her hostelry. What easier, the
maltster always insisted, than to change it from the "King's Arms" to
the "Commonwealth Arms?" or some such reasonable name? There could
be no offence, he argued, to anybody in that. But Mistress Sheppard
maintained there was, and much offence too. She would stand by and
see no such senseless choppings and changings. There had never been
anything common about the place, since place it was; and shouldn't be
while she was above ground. And what did the man want of such
notions? And Master Sheppard, if he could have answered that
question, as perhaps he might, maintained a discreet silence, as
indeed is the only safe course when one finds one's self betwixt two
stools, as his lot in life placed him; for he was never certain
whether he stood more in awe of his wife or of Master Rumbold. Once,
it is true, he ventured so far as to hint to her, that for the good
of the house, and the sake of peace, it might be well to think over
Master Rumbold's suggestion, and that he, Sheppard, was agreeable, if
so be--but having got thus far he was pulled up by Mistress Sheppard,
who said she "was not agreeable; that those who didn't like the sign
might spare their custom, and the good o' the house'd be none the
worse for lack o' their company." And so the sign remained true to
its colours, and an eyesore and a thorn in the flesh to roundhead
Master Rumbold.
[Sidenote: Smouldering fires.]
Differences between neighbours were, however, unfortunately common
enough in those troubled times; for troubled they were. It is true
that the old quarrel between the king and the parliament, which had
brought Charles the First to his sad death at Whitehall, had been
patched up very neatly more than twenty years ago now, when his son,
King Charles the Second, had been restored to the throne; but the
feelings of the people were like smouldering fires, and ready as ever
to break out in discontent. The country, moreover, was divided, not
now, as then, into those who did approve of its being governed by a
king and those who did not; but there were many loyal enough
sober-minded folks, and holding quite varying forms of religious
belief, who were sorely disappointed with the manner in which the
king, whom they had helped to restore with so much expense of
precious lives and of money, governed; or, more properly, neglected
to govern. Yes, a careless "Merry Monarch"--all very well to call
him so--but your merry men and women are frequently cruelly selfish
ones, and contrive to bring tears into other people's eyes every time
they are pleased to laugh.
Then, too, there were many who dreaded the day when Charles's
brother, the Duke of York, should succeed him on the throne. There
seemed hardly any doubt that he had adopted the Roman Catholic form
of belief; and a strong impression prevailed that Charles was also
greatly inclined to do the same.
[Sidenote: The Merry Monarch.]
How far this was true can, perhaps, never be fairly determined. The
king's pleasures always interested him vastly more than religious
questions of any kind, and the fears of those who dreaded to see
England fall back under popish rule were probably exaggerated. It is
very certain that these ideas were fed by dangerous men, who for
their own selfish ends spread alarms of popish plots and conspiracies
which existed nowhere but in their own mischievous brains; and many
harmless peace-abiding Roman Catholics were hunted to prison and
death, solely for the crime of being faithful to the creed they had
been reared in. These did not, however, remain entirely unavenged,
for the love of fair play and of justice triumphed in the end; and
the wretches who had persecuted their fellow-men under the pretence
of religion were many of them severely punished, and few pitied them.
The father of Lawrence Lee had died, fighting for King Charles the
First on Worcester field; while Richard Rumbold had lost his eye in
the selfsame struggle, serving the Parliamentary forces.
[Sidenote: A dark desire.]
Rumbold hated the Stuart race; and when he used to hear Madam Lee
teaching her little Lawrence to flourish his chubby hands and cry,
"God save the king!" an ugly sneer would begin to gather about his
lips, though he would hold them fast shut, for the Nether Hall folks
were prosperous and well-to-do; and the maltster, if he could avoid
it, never quarrelled with money. It was, besides, no easy matter to
pick a dispute with this young Lee, who troubled his head so vastly
little about the affairs of the nation, and whose whole mind was
taken up in the management of his farm.
As to his heart, it was divided between his mother and his old
playmate and constant friend Ruth; and though Ruth's play-days were
fast ebbing away, and the old games were now frowned upon by her as
silly and rompish, Lawrence cared for her every whit as much as ever;
and Rumbold perceiving this, thought he saw in it a turn for the
serving of his own purposes. And when one day, about the time of
this story's opening, the maltster being in one of his gloomier
moods, which, indeed, had grown so strangely frequent that he was
rarely out of them, chanced to launch forth into one of his tirades
against the king and his government, and said that "sooner than see
daughter of his, wife of a man who loved a Stuart, be that Stuart
Charles or James, or Tom, Dick, or Hal, he would see her in her
coffin."
[Sidenote: An angry altercation.]
"Love!" replied Lee, turning a little pale as the maltster spoke, "is
a strong word, Master Rumbold."
"Your father loved the first Charles Stuart," said Rumbold with
knitted brows.
"Ay, to the death!" sighed the young man; "but I'll warrant 'tis
little enough his present majesty remembers that."
Rumbold looked up quickly, and the dull glitter of his eye brightened
into a glance of searching scrutiny as he fixed it on Lawrence. "An
ungrateful race always, these Stuarts," he said with a shrug.
"Nay, I say not that," rejoined Lee. "Your poor bedesman may know
every scratch and mark upon his little scraped-up hoard; but can your
rich trader tell you one from another of his coffered guineas? And
king's friends are so. Countless as the grain I sow in my fields."
"To be as soon scattered to the winds, and trod under foot," growled
Rumbold. "Put not your trust in princes."
"I'd as lief trust one," smiled Lawrence, who knew his Bible too, "as
any other child of man."
"You speak idly, as a parrot chatters," said Rumbold in displeased
tones; "and, in truth, I have long taken you for a--"
He paused with a jerk. The word on his lips was scarcely one
calculated to win over the young man to his ideas, and he substituted
the milder epithet of "featherbrain."
"I thank you for your compliment, Master Rumbold," said Lawrence
swelling a little, and glancing silently, but proudly, round on his
neat barns and ricks, among which they chanced to be standing. "I
flattered myself my brains were none so empty."
"Psha!" returned Rumbold; "a man may be a Mr. Worldly Wise, and still
a fool and a beggar touching the treasure that waxeth not old. Think
you that the storing of barns and the breeding of fat oxen will bring
a man peace at the last?"
"It may help to it, I doubt," answered the young proprietor, "if it
so be that that man uses bounteously the wealth his barns and his
cattle bring him. Not hoarding it greedily, but sharing it with
those who need it. Then heaven, I take it, is like to bless our
store."
The maltster wagged his head impatiently.
[Sidenote: Lawrence speaks out.]
"Though in sooth," went on Lawrence, "I require not you to remind me,
Master Rumbold, that though a man bestow all his goods to feed the
poor, and hath not real charity, he is sounding brass indeed; and
Heaven, that seeks pure gold only, will have none of him. I know, of
course, as well as you do, that a clear conscience--"
"And what," interrupted Rumbold, wincing involuntarily as Lee uttered
these last words, and gazing gloomily into the muddy duck-pool at his
feet, "what may be your notion of that?"
"Of a clear conscience?" lightly laughed Lawrence. "Why, first and
last, at all events, that its owner never do his neighbour any wrong."
[Sidenote: A wrangle.]
"And who is my neighbour?" muttered Rumbold, as if speaking to
himself, and still keeping his eye moodily fixed on the turgid water.
"Answer me that, Lawrence Lee."
"Who is not?" replied Lee, repressing a yawn, but with a cheery
smile. "I take it, we're neighbours all. Everything that breathes;
from old Shock here"--and he bestowed a friendly pull on the grizzled
ears of the sheep dog, who stood poking his cold nose into his
master's hand--"up to the king himself. What's the matter, Master
Rumbold?" for the maltster started and bit his nether lip, as if in
some sudden pain.
"Nothing, boy," he said. "What should be?"
"The king himself--God bless him!" continued Lee, waxing unusually
eloquent, for ordinarily he was not a man of many words. "And that
if we do--"
"Do, do!" cried Rumbold, wincing again. "The old story. Always with
your sort. And faith may go to the wall. Well, if we do what
forsooth?" he added, not without curiosity.
"Nay, if it please you better," answered Lawrence good-humouredly,
"for it is all one;--if we _don't_ do harm, and work no evil against
any man:"--
"Upon him who doeth evil, evil must be done," said Rumbold in deep
melancholy tones.
"That," returned Lawrence, recoiling a pace and gazing in perplexity
at his companion, "that was not the teaching, Master Rumbold, of Him
who died for all men. I doubt 'tis the same as if one should say,
Evil must be done that good may come."
"Ay," muttered Rumbold, folding his arms upon his breast and setting
his lips firmly, "it must."
"Why? Fie, now, fie!" laughed Lawrence, fixing his eyes with
something of uneasy curiosity in their clear, dark depths, on
Rumbold's face. "That, they say, is the Jesuits' watchword. Who
would have thought to hear it from the lips of godly Master Rumbold?"
"You mock me," returned Rumbold; "I am the worst of sinners."
"Nay, nay, but I trust not," said Lee, getting really uncomfortable.
"You mock me, I say," reiterated Rumbold.
"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Lee. "It is rather that you mock me; for
by my faith I do not understand you to-night, Master Rumbold."
[Sidenote: The whisper of a conspirator.]
"Listen," hoarsely said Rumbold, turning suddenly on Lee, and
gripping him by the elbow; "you shall understand. I will explain,
but not here," he went on, dropping his voice to a whisper, and
casting a far-seeing, cautious glance round. "Not here: there may be
eavesdroppers. Hark! what's that?"
"Only the beasts munching their supper in the stables," said Lee.
"They will tell no tales."
"The very air must not hear," said Rumbold.
"Why, if it is so particular as all that, then," rejoined Lawrence,
still half jestingly, but growing less and less light about his
heart, "come this way." And pushing open a wicket, he conducted his
companion along a rather miry slip of by-road towards the apple
orchard, which stretched behind and around the ruined gatehouse,
whose jagged outlines were beginning to stand out grim and gaunt in
the sickly rays of the moon. Wading through the long grass so
thickly carpeting the ground up to the tower, that its base was
completely hidden, Lee conducted Rumbold to the top of a small flight
of broken stone steps, so lost in an overgrowth of ivy trails and
brambles as to be invisible to stranger eyes; but Lee, with a thrust
of his hand, parted the leafy screen, and signed to Rumbold to follow
him down the steps, which led to a low, iron-clamped and heavily
padlocked door deeply sunken in the wall of the tower's foundations.
[Sidenote: A secret vault.]
"'Tis a well-screened spot, is it not?" said Lee, answering Rumbold's
inquiring glances.
"Well secured," said the cautious Rumbold, who had not much opinion
of mere unaided twigs as safeguards, and seemed more disposed to
admire the huge iron padlock adorning its latch. "What do you store
here?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"The place--except for a few bones, which may have been man's or
sheep's for aught I know, or ever gave a thought to--is full of
emptiness."
"Yet you keep it as sealed as if it shut in untold riches."
"As for the matter of that, it does, too, in a roundabout sort of
way," said Lawrence smiling and colouring a little. "Or it may do
so; for 'tis said--though I will not answer for the truth of it, that
if you follow your nose far enough, the way it leads, you will find
yourself in the vaults under your own gatehouse. Our houses--yours
and mine--Master Rumbold, were built in queer times; when a man could
not call his life his own. And when he dared not show his face above
ground, slipped away as he could under it."
[Sidenote: In darkness.]
"And a fig then for his pursuers," said Rumbold, as he stepped into
the vault, whose darkness was only lightened by the moon-rays feebly
struggling in through the grating of a loophole high up in its walls.
"A fig for them, hey?"
"As you say," said Lawrence, faintly echoing the low laugh of his
companion, which reverberated far away, in mocking unearthly
discords, as though challenging the pair to explore the place's
long-forgotten intricacies. "I doubt they must have been as
successful as if they sought needles in a bottle of hay."
"Shut the door!" said Rumbold.
Lawrence obeyed, and what further Richard Rumbold had to say was
heard by no eavesdroppers save the slug and reptile creatures who had
long made the place their own.
[Sidenote: A change for the worse.]
Some hours later the door opened again, and one of the two men
reappeared. Peering first cautiously right and left, he locked the
door behind him and stole hurriedly up the steps. The figure of this
man is assuredly that of Lawrence Lee, but strangely unlike his light
bright step is that stumbling, swaying gait; and can that ashen white
face, those eyes startled and staring, as if they had met some
fearful thing, indeed be his? And where is Rumbold?