“Rupert’s Folly,” he answered viciously. “Old Lousy’s spy-house.”
“What’s he?” I asked.
He gave a rude laugh.
“He’s an itch on the skin of my lord that he can’t scratch away;” and,
with these coarse, enigmatic words, he motioned me to fall behind.
The tower sprouted clean from the grass. Reaching and skirting it, I
had occasion barely to notice a figure seated under a low door against
its farther angle, before the liveliest prospect below engaged all my
attention. The hill went down on this side into a wide valley, in the
midst of whose trees and pastures, dominating a tiny village with
forge and tavern, stood a great old house of grey stone. On the green
before, as we could see, was a merry-making: sports, and dancing, and
long tables spread, and a vast broaching of casks. And the villagers
in their ribbons were all there, so that my eyes and my heart danced
to see them.
But my companion stood looking down with a most venomous expression.
“Fah! A nest of heretics!” he muttered. “What golden calf are they met
to worship?”
“The red herring’s spawn, good sir,” said the voice of the creature
behind us. I turned and stared at him for the first time. He sat
sucking at a long pipe at the open door of the tower--the filthiest
little scrub you could imagine. His face was like old crumpled
parchment, his crafty eyes floated in rheum, and he scratched a dusty
tag of beard down upon his breast as he leered at us.
“What! Lousy John,” said the priest. “Is it our heir of all the
Herrings come of age?”
“Ay,” said the old wretch. “Nephew Salted. You know him? Ay, ay. You
should be the man Pope, of course, by your rudeness? Go down to your
whore of Babylon, sir. She mingles with yonder company.”
“You’d have me into the range of your burning-glass, hey?” said the
priest, with a snort between laughter and contempt.
The other smoked on unperturbed.
“All in good time, priest,” he said. “I’m not for anticipatin’ the
devil. Is that his scriptures you’re a-carryin’ to propagate?”
My companion uttered a furious exclamation, and, hugging his book,
shuffled out of range. Most like a woman, he could not bear to have
his spiteful humour returned upon him.
I understood nothing of all this, of course, and was standing
bewildered, when the old obscenity beckoned me.
“See,” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth and pointing with the
scarlet tongue of it: “a beautiful landscape, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” I faltered.
“Ah!” said he. “I’ll tell you--just you, mind. I don’t take a-many
into my confidence. It’s the beauty of pain, child; a local
inflammation in the system.”