THE INSTINCT OF A BRUTE DOG.
Jasper Oglander and his son were up betimes on the following morning,
and had come down to the lower rooms while yet the housemaids were
sweeping up the rushes from the floors and dusting the furniture. Seeing
one of the serving-men coming from the buttery Jasper called out to him,
commanding him to bring two stoups of small ale. The man was waiting to
take the emptied vessels, when the sound of a loud bell clanged through
the house. At this Philip Oglander bowed his head and crossed himself;
whereupon his father trod upon his toe and frowned at him.
"Thou fool!" said Jasper when the man had left them. "Dost want to
betray us so soon? Did I not warn thee an hundred times that these
people are all of the Protestant faith--heretics and Lutherans who would
but despise us and regard us as enemies did they know that we are of the
Holy Church? By the Rood, boy, thy forgetfulness hath nearly cost us
dearly, for look at who cometh behind thee--thy cousin Drusilla, a saucy
maid, by her favour, and it may be a dangerous."
Drusilla was at the moment descending the broad staircase, carrying a
little basket of apples in her one hand, and with the other drawing the
hood of her mulberry-coloured cloak over her fair hair. She curtsied low
and bade them a good-morrow when she came before them into the front
hall.
"Art going abroad so early?" asked her uncle, returning her greeting,
and taking up his wide-brimmed hat from the bench where he had dropped
it when drinking his cup of small ale. "If so, we would go with thee,
for I am fain to show thy cousin what manner of home he hath come to. To
have such escort as thine will make our inspection doubly agreeable."
"I was but going to the stables to give these apples to my brother's
favourite horse," answered Drusilla. "But if ye would see the grounds I
will willingly bear you company."
"And how fares Master Gilbert, prithee?" inquired Jasper, leading the
way out into the porchway, and standing there a moment looking out
across the terrace and the wide expanse of lawn to the misty woodlands
beyond.
"The wound in his arm hath troubled him but little," she answered, "but
his sprained ankle hath swollen greatly and is very painful. I fear me
it will be many days ere he can leave his bed."
"'Tis a pity the rascals who thus assailed him cannot be caught and
brought to a speedy justice," remarked Philip with seeming sympathy in
his tone, albeit with an unkindly curl of his upper lip. "Was your
brother unarmed that he thus allowed a vagabond gypsy to overcome him?"
he added.
"Nay, for who would go unarmed in these days?" returned Drusilla. "But
even the skilfullest swordsman may sometimes be taken at a disadvantage.
Gilbert's foot slipped upon the snow, and his adversary did thrust at
him even as he fell. Timothy Trollope knew not of the matter until the
three robbers had fled, or else I am very sure they should not have got
away so easily."
"And, prithee, who may be this Timothy of whom you speak, cousin?"
pursued Philip.
Drusilla answered:
"He is Gilbert's good and faithful servant--the same who brought him in
yesternight. He is the son of Master Peter Trollope, the barber-surgeon
of Plymouth town."
"Ah! methought I had seen him once before," observed Jasper. "He was
even in his father's shop whilst I was there having my beard trimmed.
And now--let us to the stables first, Mistress Drusilla, and then when
we have made the round of the mansion and had a peep at the hawks in the
mews and the deer in the chase, we shall haply go within again and
introduce ourselves to your brother. Fortunate Gilbert, to be the heir
to such vast and valuable estates as these!" he added covetously, as,
standing at the end of the terrace where a spacious flight of stone
steps led down to the lawn, he glanced towards the avenues of tall old
trees that opened out before him. "Were I their owner, however, I should
hew down those unsightly trees; they do but interrupt the view, and so
much stout oak is but wasted while there be battle-ships to be built--to
say naught of the price one might get in exchange for the timber
withal."
Drusilla conducted her new-found relatives over the stables. They had a
distant sight of the farm buildings, where the cows, having been newly
milked, were wandering out through the gates in slow and irregular
procession towards the pasture lands. Then they went round to the
kennels and looked at the hounds, and to the mews, where Hawksworth and
his fellows were feeding the falcons. Thence through the orchard, now
bare of fruit, and the kitchen-garden, where Lord Champernoun, at the
instance of his friend Sir Walter Raleigh, had in the last season grown
a wondrous crop of potatoes and other vegetable products of the New
World. Then round into the park to where a herd of deer, browsing in the
wet grass, started off, alarmed at their approach, and ran with great
fleetness to a misty hollow among the trees.
At first Drusilla had been strangely shy with her two companions; but
they showed such interest in the home of her childhood and treated her
with such graceful courtesy that she soon became familiar with them, and
answered their many questions freely and eagerly. She pointed out the
old oak-tree in the middle of the park under whose spreading branches
the village children had crowned her as Queen of the May in the last
spring-time. She took them to the side of the lake where Gilbert and she
had been wont to sail their boats, and where Gilbert only a week ago had
caught a pike. And then, coming back by the front of the house, she
pointed out the little latticed window of her chamber, half-hidden among
the clambering ivy. From where they were they could see the full extent
of the great baronial mansion, with its abutting wings end many gables
flanking the tall central turret,--on which the gilt weather-vane shone
bright in the morning sunlight,--its stone-shafted oriel windows, and
its curiously-twisted chimneys. It was all very magnificent, albeit
Drusilla thought less of it for this fact than for the reason that it
was sanctified as the residence of so many of her ancestors.
"Ah, 'tis in truth a palace fit for a king!" declared Jasper Oglander
aside to his son. "I marvel that I ever had the foolishness to leave it.
What wouldst thou say, Phil, an thy father were the owner and master of
the place? Nay, do not smile, boy; less likely things than this have
come to pass; and remember there be but two frail lives between me and
it--your grandfather, poor addle-pated pantaloon, and this stripling
Gilbert as they call him, touching whom I should have been by no means
sorry had his assailant of yesternight done his work more completely.
Mark you, Phil," he reiterated with emphasis, "I had not been
sorry--nay, why boggle the matter?--I had in truth been exceeding glad
had the wound you wot of been a span nearer to his heart."
Whatever Philip might have said in reply to this cruel remark was cut
short by the return of Drusilla, who had but ran forward a few paces to
greet Nero, the bloodhound, at the entrance of the courtyard. The dog as
it approached the father and son hung down his furrowed head and growled
ominously--which was a habit quite unusual with him, in spite of his
aspect of ferocity.
"Come, Brutus--Hector--Pompey--what is thy name? Come, good dog," said
Jasper Oglander caressingly, snapping his finger and thumb together in
invitation to the dog. But Nero still hung his head, and growlingly
sniffed about the man's feet, coming finally to Philip and growling yet
again. "Ah! he doth well discern that we are strangers to him,"
continued Jasper, "or else he doth smell the brine about our clothes.
Such dogs, I have observed, have a natural aversion to seamen."
"Indeed, uncle, it can scarce be so with Nero," remarked Drusilla, "for
he hath a marvellous fondness for Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Francis is
a seaman in all conscience."
"Ay, plague on the man," muttered Jasper to himself. And presently he
followed Drusilla across the courtyard and into the house.
Timothy Trollope had been for the longer half of the night in his young
master's room--a small chamber in the west wing of the house, with very
simple furniture, but being crowded with a variety of toy ships, bows
and arrows, kites, whips, spurs, morions, corselets, rapiers, foreign
shells, snakes bottled in oil, skins of rare animals and birds, and
other curious and boyish gear. In front of the fireplace there was a
large Polar bear skin, with the head still attached, given to Gilbert by
his friend Sir Martin Frobisher. A small casement window in a corner of
the room was fitted like a ship's port-hole, with a demi-culverin made
of brass pointing outward towards a strip of blue sea that could be
discerned far away in the distance beyond the promontory of Rame Head.
Gilbert had once fired this cannon from this same place, loading it
with stone-shot and aiming at a certain chestnut-tree in the park. The
cannon had rebounded even to the farther end of the room, smashing into
a cupboard, much to the damage thereof. The report had alarmed the
household, nay, even the whole country-side for a mile round; it had
come nigh to the deafening of Gilbert himself, for his ears tingled for
many days. Fortunately no one had suffered any hurt; fortunately, also,
the splendid mansion was too well built to suffer from so unwonted a
shock. The lad had fallen into disgrace for a week afterwards and was
forbidden to bring gunpowder into the house again. He regretted the
foolish freak, but in his regret, and despite of the chastisement he
received by order of his stern and offended grandfather, there was still
a sort of boyish satisfaction in his heart--a satisfaction which arose
from the fact that his shot had hit its intended mark.
Lady Betty smiled as, sitting by her son's bedside in view of the
cannon, she remembered this long-past incident. She had come into the
room in the early morning, and had dismissed Timothy Trollope, bidding
him go and get some sleep and return when the household had risen.
Gilbert had slumbered during the whole time that she had been present
with him, but at the sound of the opening of the door he had awakened,
to find Timothy again at his side and his mother silently retreating on
tiptoe.
"Ah, she hath gone, and I had hardly known she was here!" sighed
Gilbert. "Go, summon her back, Tim--yet, no; let her not know that I am
awake. 'Twill comfort her to think that I am still asleep. But I am
sorry that she hath gone. I had meant to question her concerning this
Uncle Jasper and his son. For what my mother doth say of them and think
of them is certain to be true and just, whether her judgment be
favourable or the reverse. Didst mark her demeanour towards them
yesternight, Tim? Didst mark if she greeted them in friendly wise?"
"I marked little of anything, so much was I concerned as to your hurts,
dear master," returned Timothy; "but in so far as I could see, her
ladyship seemed to regard your uncle rather with annoyance than
friendship, and to avoid his near presence as if she misliked his
intrusion."
"And yet, if I mind aright, my mother hath ofttimes spoken of him as
though she had known him passing well," observed Gilbert, as he
half-raised himself upon his uninjured arm.
Timothy strode slowly towards the window and looked out into the park.
"She knew him ere yet she was wedded," he said in a quiet decisive tone,
"so at least my father hath told me. But peradventure 'twas only idle
gossip."
"Gossip?" repeated Gilbert reprovingly. "Gossip about my mother?
Prithee, what said your father? Come, tell me, Tim."
"Nay, be not alarmed," said Timothy, turning for amoment from the
window and looking his young master in the face. "'Twas only this, that
when my lady was at Her Majesty's court in Richmond as one of Her
Majesty's ladies-in-waiting, Jasper Oglander did woo her in the hope
that she would wed him, and so cut out his brother, of whom, as thou
knowest, he was bitterly jealous. My lady chose the better man to be her
husband, and Master Jasper departed across the seas to forget his
disappointment in foreign lands."
"Tut! There is naught in that," rejoined Gilbert with a light laugh.
"'Tis in no wise surprising that Jasper Oglander or any other man should
admire my mother. Doth not all England admire her? Have not a full score
of our best poets penned sonnets in her praise? Out upon thee, Timothy,
out upon thee!"
"Well, howsoever it be," said Timothy as he gave his head a careless
toss and stood with his thumbs in his belt at the window; "howsoever it
be, I like not the man myself. He is a braggart, of that I am sure, and
there is a look in his eyes that doth betoken deceitfulness."
"Thy opinion in the matter of people's characters is seldom to be
depended upon, Tim," remarked Gilbert, assuming the gravity of worldly
wisdom. "Thou dost trust overmuch to instinct and too little to a
knowledge of the world. 'Tis a brute dog's method."
Timothy strode to the bedside and sat down on the chair that Lady Betty
had lately left. He crossed his legs and was silent for a few moments.
"'Tis true I have not travelled as thou hast done, Master Gilbert, nor
been to a great public school to learn Latin and Greek as thou hast
been. But methinks a brute dog's instinct may yet sometimes be trusted;
and I have even known the dog Nero to be right in his discernment of men
when thou and I have failed. Howbeit, 'tis not for me, who am but a
servant, to say ought in disparagement of your worshipful uncle, who
may, after all, be a very proper gentleman; and I do humbly beseech your
pardon, sir, for having said so much as I have already done."
There was a light knock at the door. Tim started to his feet.
"Wilt let us enter, Gilbert?" asked Drusilla in a half-whisper as though
she feared to disturb her brother. "Uncle Jasper and Cousin Philip are
here, and they would be better known to thee."
Timothy opened the door and they entered.
"I fear that we disturb thee, Master Gilbert," began Jasper Oglander in
a soft, tender voice, when the greetings had been exchanged. "But we
were anxious, as thou mayest be sure, to make thy good acquaintance, as
we have already made that of thy sweet sister."
"Thou art right welcome, Uncle Jasper; and thou too, Cousin Philip,"
said Gilbert with hearty candour. "Ay, sit you upon the bed, Drusilla,"
he added, turning to Drusilla. "But see you come not too near to my lame
foot, for 'tis easily hurt. I am like our grandfather now, when he is
troubled with his gout."
"Ah! doth the old gentleman suffer much with that complaint, then?" said
Jasper in a tone of sympathetic interest; and, without pausing for an
answer, he went on: "'Tis old age creeping upon him, I doubt. Let me
see--ay--he must be well upon threescore years and ten. But he hath led
a busy life, what with wars, and parliaments, and missions of state, and
religious controversy; 'tis little wonder that his hairs are silvered.
But I thank God and the saints that I find him looking so hale and
well."
"_The saints_, Uncle Jasper?" cried Drusilla, noticing this slip of the
tongue. "Is it not enough to thank God alone?"
"Nay, I meant not that, of course," said Jasper, growing very red in the
face, yet passing the matter off with a careless laugh. "You see, in my
travels in foreign countries I have come so much in contact with
Spaniards and others of the Romish faith that I have, as it were,
acquired insensibly their habit of mentioning the saints, to whom they
do so constantly appeal."
"Yes, I have heard them oftentimes," said Gilbert; "for there be many
Spanish Papists at this present time in Plymouth. Prisoners of war they
are--although it seemeth vain to call them prisoners, for they do go
about the streets with freedom, and are little different from other men
saving that they are not permitted to carry arms."
"They would speedily find that they were prisoners indeed, if they did
but attempt to escape from our shores, however," interposed Timothy
Trollope.
Jasper Oglander seemed to take a lively interest in this particular
subject.
"Prithee, what is their number, and how came they to be prisoners in
England?" he asked of his nephew.
"I know not truly how many there be," answered Gilbert; "a good two
score, I should say. They were taken on board of the Spanish galleon
_Nuestra Señora del Rosario_, the flagship of Don Pedro de Valdes, who
surrendered to Francis Drake at the time of the Armada fight. Many of
their companions were sent back to Spain, but these remain in Plymouth,
for I know not what reason other than that Queen Elizabeth hath not
chosen to liberate them."
Having learned so much, Jasper hastened to change the subject.
"I have been told," he said, "that you received your injuries
yesternight in rescuing one Jacob Hartop, an aged mariner who, as it
chanceth, came home with us from the Indies. Was he, too, wounded in
this encounter?"
Gilbert turned to Timothy, and Timothy answered:
"No, your worship; he was but robbed."
"H'm! the thieves can have gained but sorry booty from so impoverished a
prey," remarked Jasper, with a derisive sneer. "Poor crazed creature, he
was scarce worth the room he occupied aboard our ship! And, indeed, we
should never have consented to bring him but that we were short-handed,
and he so earnestly craved for his passage back to England, and so we
gave him a berth out of mere compassionate charity."
"Haply, too, you had been acquainted with the man in former years?"
suggested Gilbert.
Jasper glanced in quick apprehension at his nephew, as if questioning
whether the lad spoke from knowledge or only at random.
"No, faith, no," he answered, with seeming indifference. "I have but
known him during our late voyage."
Then Timothy Trollope--remembering how Philip had made inquiry of him
concerning Hartop; remembering, too, how speedily the attack upon the
old seafarer had followed upon his own meeting with Philip Oglander in
the town--ventured to address the two visitors thus:
"I have been thinking," said he, looking from Jasper to Philip and back
again to Jasper, "that 'tis passing strange you neither saw nor heard
aught of this encounter. You set out from Plymouth at close upon five
o'clock, or only a brief time before my master and I started for home.
You could scarce have arrived at the manor-house very much in advance of
us. 'Tis plain, therefore, that you were at no great distance from
Beddington Dingle at the moment when this thing befell. And yet it
seemeth that you knew naught of the matter until Master Gilbert was
carried wounded into the dining-hall."
While Timothy spoke Jasper's fingers were idly playing with the fringe
of Gilbert's counterpane. He glanced upward with a composure which at
once dispelled all Timothy's doubts, and remarked with so much seeming
candour that there was no gainsaying the truth of his statement:
"That same question hath already occurred to me," said he; "and, indeed,
had we chanced to come by that same road I doubt not that we should
certainly have passed your robbers by the way. Peradventure we might
even have been near enough at hand to render you some timely aid in
overcoming the rascals. But it so happened that we journeyed by the
longer way of the main road instead of taking the short cut by the
Beddington Lane."
"Would that you had indeed been near, uncle!" said Drusilla, as she sat
at the foot of the bed, her two hands stretched out clasping the carved
oak rail against which her back was resting. "For apart from yourself,
who are, as it seemeth, a man of war, I am well assured that Cousin
Philip is a master of fence. I saw his long rapier yesternight. 'Tis
such a weapon as surely none but the skilfullest swordsman could
handle."
"Ay, 'tis a pretty enough blade," returned Jasper carelessly; "but more
for ornament, I do assure you, than for use, Mistress Drusilla. As for
Philip, he is a sorry hand at such matters. In fencing, as in many other
arts that I have wished him to exercise, he is in truth a very dullard
and bungler."
Philip Oglander smiled, with his tongue in his cheek.
"Marry, father, but thou art giving me an over-true character," said he,
modestly hanging his head. "My cousins will think me a dunce indeed if
you herald me thus. But when Cousin Gilbert hath recovered from his
injuries, as I do pray that he speedily may, I will ask him to give me a
few lessons in the use of the rapier."
"That will I most gladly do," returned Gilbert. "Although, for the
matter of that, Timothy Trollope here would prove a likelier and a
skilfuller teacher than I, for I am still but his pupil."
"I thank you," said Philip, with a curious lift of his eyebrows as he
glanced across at Timothy. "But so please you, I had rather take my
lessons from a gentleman."
Timothy winced under the reproach to his lowly birth, and moved away,
busying himself by putting aside some books that his young master had
left lying on the window-shelf.
"Was not I right, Tim?" remarked Gilbert, some few minutes afterwards,
when Drusilla with her uncle and cousin had departed. "Are not they good
worthy folk, these relatives of mine?"
"It would ill become me to differ from you, Master Gilbert," answered
Timothy. "My instincts may be at fault."