NATHAN BLYTH IS THE VICTIM OF A GUNPOWDER PLOT.
“As woods, when shaken by the breeze,
Take deeper, firmer root,
As winter’s frosts but make the trees
Abound in summer fruit;
So every bitter pang and throe
That Christian firmness tries,
But nerves us for our work below,
And forms us for the skies.”
_Henry Francis Lyte._
A few days after the evening when Lucy Blyth was rescued from the
unpleasant attentions of Black Morris by her own true knight, the
scapegrace in question once again met Lucy in the twilight; and,
though sufficiently sober now, he was inclined to force his imaginary
and unappreciated claims upon her notice. This time, however, Lucy,
whose patience had been fully tried, held her ground, and summoned all
her courage for resolute resistance and a final dismissal of her
persistent wooer.
“John Morris,” said she, “why will you not let me alone? Surely you
can see clearly enough that I don’t want you, that I won’t have you,
and that your conduct is downright persecution. I shall be compelled
to seek means to protect myself, if you have not manliness enough to
desist and leave me alone.”
In vain the hot-headed victim of a fruitless passion pleaded for “a
trial.” In vain he promised instant and absolute reformation in
conduct and character. In vain he told her that he should be ruined,
body and soul, if she turned him totally adrift.
Lucy felt that an uncompromising firmness was her only chance of
escape from him, and that she must not even seem to yield one jot.
“Once for all,” said she, “I will not--I never will! and, if you
follow me till I die, you’ll get no answer but that. I shall soon hate
you if you harass and annoy me any more.”
Then Black Morris lost command of his temper, if, indeed, he could be
said ever to have control of it, and said, with an oath,--
“I see how it is: that cursed young squire has played his cards too
well for me. He’s a sly beggar; but I’ll be even with him. I hate him,
as I hate his father. One robbed us of our farm, and the other has
robbed me of you! Let him look out, for I’ll be revenged on him either
with bullet or knife!”
Turning on his heel, and leaving Lucy as white as a sheet, he set off
at a rapid pace towards Midden Harbour. By and bye he turned back, and
overtaking her, glared in her face with a passion simply diabolical,
and said,--
“That proud fool of a father of yours thinks a precious deal about
you. I asked him, like a man, to let me court you, and he said he’d
rather see you dead and in your grave. Tell him he may live to do it.
Let him look out,” said he, stamping with rage. “Curse him! I’ll have
my revenge;” and again he dashed away, this time in the direction of
the Red Lion.
Lucy, more dead than alive, sped homeward on the wings of fear, and
on reaching her threshold fell into a dead swoon in her father’s arms.
When she had recovered she told Nathan Blyth all the events of the
night. He vainly wished he could recall his needlessly angry words to
Black Morris, for he saw to what danger and trouble he had exposed his
darling, from the hands of one who threatened to be such a reckless
and implacable enemy.
That self-willed and headstrong young fellow found at the village
alehouse a number of suspicious characters, with whom he had already
had too great an intimacy. Just now he was ripe and ready for any
extreme of lawlessness to which they could tempt him; so, after plying
him with strong liquors, they promised to aid him in his revenge. The
last remnant of his self-control was gone. He became the repository of
criminal confidences from which in many a sober moment afterwards he
found no way of escape. His descent was now rapid; his harsh and
ungenial father often quarrelled with him; even his mother--the only
being who had any moral control over him--was unable to exert any
restraining influence, and Black Morris was fairly launched on that
sea of depravity which, except for God’s miracles of mercy, will
engulf all who embark on its treacherous flood.
By and bye his name began to figure often and definitely as one of a
lawless gang. It was soon rumoured abroad that certain local deeds of
outrage and wrong had Black Morris for an aider and abettor, and it is
to be feared that there was, in some cases at least, sufficient ground
for the report.
Soon afterwards Nathan Blyth began to find that he was being made the
victim of a series of annoying and harmful persecutions. His
flower-beds were crushed and trampled on; his fruit-trees were hacked
and hewed; his limited store of live stock were stolen or poisoned.
Roused to the utmost pitch of indignation, the stalwart blacksmith sat
up o’ nights to watch his premises and guard his property; but in
vain, as far as the discovery of the perpetrators was concerned,
though it broadened the intervals between the visits of his unknown
and malicious foes. Then he found that the most cruel rumours were
afloat affecting the character of his darling, coupling her name with
that of the young squire in a way that was utterly unwarrantable and
untrue; rumours which were innocuous as far as her friends were
concerned, but which were greedily seized on by a godless and
unprincipled few, who were glad to seize any occasion to bespatter the
“Methodies.”
Poor Lucy had to drink of the bitterest cup that can be lifted to the
lips of virtuous and sensitive modesty. The roses left her cheek and
the light forsook her eye, and Nathan sorrowed because he knew not how
to shield his girl from the poisoned arrows shot by an unseen hand.
At length, however, “the wicked that rose up against them” overshot
the mark, and an event transpired that opened the eyes of the
villagers to the fierce and vindictive plot which had gathered round
Nathan and his darling child, and turned the full flood-tide of their
sympathies toward those who had been so cruelly aspersed.
One morning, when Nathan went into his shop, he began to make the
smithy fire, but had scarcely applied the match when a loud explosion
followed, his face was scorched by the blinding flame, and his eyes
were filled with fine, sharp particles of dust from the smithy hearth.
Groping in darkness and pain, he found his way to the slake-trough and
plunged his head into the water. The sense of relief was brief, and
Natty, still unable to see, was compelled to feel his way indoors, and
present his scorched locks, blackened face, and fiery eyes, to his
distressed and startled daughter.
In a case like this, however, Lucy showed her remarkable tact and
skill--characteristics which made her presence and assistance
invaluable by every sick-bed in Nestleton. Calm, firm, and skilful,
she applied oil and flour and cotton wool to the burns, and then
dispatched her little maid to Farmer Houston’s. In a few moments a
messenger had ridden off post-haste to Kesterton to fetch Dr. Jephson,
the most noted medico in all the country-side. Lucy’s resources,
meanwhile, were tested to the utmost, for her father was suffering the
severest pain, especially in the eyes. At length the doctor arrived,
made careful examination of his injuries, and cheered them and Mrs.
Houston and Judith Olliver, who had come to render what help they
could, with the gratifying announcement that his eyesight was
uninjured, and that no permanent harm was done. A few days of
bandaging and darkness, of embrocation and patience, would put him to
rights, the doctor said, especially with such a nurse as Lucy by his
side. It was a narrow escape, however, and the wonder was that he had
not been blinded for life.
“Thank God,” said Blithe Natty, who was blind Natty too for a season,
“thank God for sparing us that sorrow. Things are never so bad but
they might be worse!” and even in his pain Blithe Natty could joke
about Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot, for we may depend upon it he
was not called Blithe Natty for nought.
Tenderly, lovingly, patiently, Lucy nursed her father night and day.
Tenderly, lovingly, patiently, Nathan bore his pain and enforced
blindness for her sake, and went so far as to say, though it must be
taken _cum grano salis_, that it would be worth while for Guy Fawkes
to come again, that he might have another course of nursing and
syllabubs from the same gentle hands.
When Nathan appeared again in public, with his scars not yet healed,
and a large green shade over both eyes, he was met with universal
congratulations on his escape, and universal anathemas on the
dastardly villains who had done the shameful deed.
Now, Nathan Blyth and his daughter were quite persuaded that the
rough and cruel treatment which they had received was the result of
the malice and jealousy of Black Morris. So far they were right; at
the same time it is fair to him to say that he was innocent of this
crowning outrage. The fact is, that in his first fierce and
unrestrained paroxysm of vexation he had enlisted his alehouse chums
in his wicked crusade of vengeance; and in the hope of more fully
winning him over to their bad confederacy, and partly out of sheer
love of mischief, they had espoused his cause with an energy that
surpassed all that in his cooler moments he desired to inflict. His
disreputable cronies enjoyed the surreptitious “fun” of “taking a
rise” out of “Parson Blyth,” as they called him; their horse-play grew
on what it fed on, and hence the shameful extremes I have had to
chronicle. The gunpowder was secreted by Bill Buckley, a beetle-browed
rascal, with whom we shall have to make a closer acquaintance by and
bye. He inserted it in the nozzle of the smithy bellows not only
without Black Morris’s permission, but utterly without his knowledge,
and so far, although it grew out of his conduct, he must be acquitted
of so vile and cowardly a deed. It is far easier to set the ball
rolling down hill than to stop it on its course; and spirits like
those which he had called from the vasty deep to serve his purpose,
were not to be laid again, without doing a little extra devilry on
their own account.
When Black Morris heard of Nathan Blyth’s misfortune he was not only
genuinely sorry, but, suspecting it was some of his set who had done
it, he went off straightway into a frenzy of rage against them,
altogether as hot as that which had been directed against Nathan Blyth
himself. This man was an oddity, and it took all the power and
subtlety of the devil to spoil him--whether he succeeded remains to be
seen.
After Nathan’s recovery he had returned to his old post at the anvil,
and had tuned up again as merrily as ever, for the gunpowder wasn’t
manufactured which could blow his “sing” out of him, without
dislodging either his tongue or his life. In fact he was one of the
Mark Tapley genius with a higher inspiration, and his spirits always
seemed to rise towards boiling point as his surroundings sank towards
zero. Nathan was fashioning harrow teeth, and the quick rap-tap of his
hammer on the heated iron bar kept capital time to his song:
Oh, Love is a clever magician;
His rod is a conjuror’s wand;
And this is his heavenly mission--
To bind in his magical band
The hearts of all men to each other
In amity, friendship, and peace,
That each may to each be a brother,
And hatred and envy may cease.
This, this was the way of the Saviour,
His enemies eager to bless:
Repaying their evil behaviour
With pardon and gift and caress.
Like Him on all hate will I trample,
And every foe I’ll forgive;
And copy His holy example
As long as on earth I may live.
If my enemy hunger I’ll feed him,
If he thirst I will give him to drink;
With a smile and a blessing I’ll speed him,
Nor leave him in trouble to sink.
Here’s my hand and my heart for each comer,
Be he stranger or foeman or friend;
For love brings a genial summer,
A summer that never shall end.
Oh, Love is a clever magician,
His rod is a conjuror’s wand;
Good speed to his heavenly mission,
Alike on the sea and the land.
He binds human hearts to each other,
That hatred and envy may cease,
That each may to each be a brother,
And the earth be an Eden of peace.
In this strain of high philanthropy, Blithe Natty was merrily singing
away, when who should darken the smithy door but Black Morris, whom
the honest blacksmith had rarely seen since the night when his hasty
and wrathful speech anent his daughter, sowed dragons’ teeth, whose
painful harvest he had already partly reaped.
“Good mornin’, Nathan Blyth; I reckon you are blamin’ me for that
gunpowder business?”
“Yes, I am,” said Nathan, candidly. “Can you look at my scarred face
and say you didn’t do it?”
“I did _not_” said Black Morris, with much emphasis; “I never knew of
it till my sister Mary told me. Nathan Blyth, believe me, I not only
could not do so beastly a thing, but I could and would fell to the
ground the man who did.”
Nathan had kept his eyes on him, “looking him through and through.”
“Morris!” said he, “give me your hand. I believe you didn’t. I am
sorry I spoke to you that day as I did. Let bygones be bygones”----
“Nay,” said Black Morris, as his head dropped to his bosom, “I don’t
say I haven’t brought you mischief, an’ if you knew all I’d said and
done against you, I don’t suppose you would be so free with your hand;
but I never was brute enough for that last business, an’ now that you
believe it, I’ll bid you good-morning.”
“Stop,” said Nathan, “stop a minute. I’ve been singing this morning
about love and forgiveness, and I mean to do as I sing. Whatever
you’ve done against me or mine, I forgive freely and fully, and now or
then, here or yonder, you’ll never hear any more of it from me--give
us your hand.”
Black Morris stood awhile looking hard at the man he had injured, then
holding out his hand, permitted Natty to shake it, and then suddenly
and without a word shot through the doorway and disappeared.
That’s right, Nathan Blyth! Sing your song over again as the anvil
rings, and the bright sparks fly, for though there is still a cloud on
the horizon whose sombre shadows shall gloom your hearthstone, your
kindly deed and Christly spirit done and evinced to-day, will largely
help to lift the shadow, and bring back the sunshine of abiding
peace!