Dame Beckley was one of the happiest women under the sun, for she had
scarcely a care. Her sole idea of home management was obedience, and
she obeyed her lord implicitly. Next to him she yielded no little show
of duty to her daughter, who ruled her with a rod of iron, which she
changed for one of steel when dealing with her father.
"Well, my dear," said the dame, "speaking as a woman of the world, I
must say I think it hardly becoming of us to keep Sir Mark here after
his behaviour to us before. See how he slighted us. Fancy a man who
calls himself a courtier telling a lady of title that her camomile tea
that she has made with her own hands--it was the number one, my dear,
flavoured with balm--was no better than poison."
"Never mind the camomile tea, mother. I tell you I wish Sir Mark to be
persuaded to stay."
"Ah, well, my dear, if you wish it, of course he shall be pressed. I'll
tell him that you insisted--"
"Mother!"
"La! my dear, what have I done now?" cried Dame Beckley. "You quite
startle me when you stamp your feet and look like that."
"How can you be so foolish, mother? Go--go, and tell Sir Mark--insist
upon his staying here."
"Well, my dear, and very proud he ought to be, I'm sure. Why, when I
was young, if a gentleman had--"
"Mother!"
"There, there, my dear, I've done. I'll try and persuade Sir Mark to
stay. I'm sure it would do him good, though I don't want him. It
always seems to me that that terrible explosion sent a regular jar
through what Master Furton, the Queen's chirurgeon, called the
absorbens. If he were my son, I should certainly make him take a
spoonful of my conserve of elder night and morning, and drink agrimony
tea three times a day. In cases where there is the slightest touch of
fever there is nothing--bless the girl, why she has gone, when did she
go out of the room?"
Mistress Anne had gone away directly after her last imperious utterance
of the word "mother," and walked straight to her father's room.
She had left Dame Beckley busy over her herbal, and she now found her
father also on study bent, his book being a kind of magistrates' _vade
mecum_ of those days on the subject of witchcraft, and the author his
Majesty the King.
"What are you reading, father?" she said, making him start as she came
suddenly behind him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
"His Majesty's book, my dear."
"Why?"
"Well, you see, my dear, it behoves me as a justice of the peace to be
well informed of his Majesty's views respecting the heinous sin of
witchcraft, and to know how I should comport myself and deal with so
foul a creature in case, at any future time--"
"Mother Goodhugh should be brought before you?"
"Yes, exactly," said the baronet. "My dear Anne, I'd give almost
everything I possess for your clear discerning head."
"Never mind my head, father," she said, with a half-laugh; "I want to
speak to you about more important things."
"Yes, my dear, certainly. But won't you sit down? You worry me when
you tower over me so, and threaten, and preach at me. Do sit down,
child, pray."
"Nay, father, you can hear what I have to say without my seating
myself."
"Yes, my dear," said Sir Thomas, humbly.
"Let Mother Goodhugh be, father."
"But, my child, she is a most pestiferous witch."
"For the present, father. For the present, let her be."
"Well, my dear, if you wish it, of course--"
"I do wish it, father."
"How odd, my dear, that you should come to say that, when I was studying
up the matter."
"I did not come to say that, father," said Anne; "but to speak to you
about our guest."
"Yes, my dear, he has been here now six weeks since that disaster."
"Seven weeks, father."
"Well, my child, seven weeks if you like; and he has sent back those
soldier fellows and his own attendants, and seems to have settled
himself down. I mean to tell him that he had better--"
"Stay here till his health is quite recovered, father."
"Nay, indeed, my child, after his grossly neglectful behaviour to us, I
feel ready at any time to send him away."
"But you will do no such thing, father. Sir Mark is your guest, and an
important officer of his Majesty."
"An' if he had not been I should very soon--"
"Your good treatment of so important a gentleman may mean something in
the future. It is always well, father, to have friends at Court."
"Yes, yes, my child, but to leave us in so scurvy a way, and take up his
abode with old Cobbe."
"That has nothing to do with the matter, father. Ask him to stay."
"But, Anne, my child."
"Father, I insist upon your forcing him to stay."
"Force," said Sir Thomas; "ah, there'll be no need of that. The job
will be to force him to go. But surely, child, thou'lt never think of
setting thy cap at him after his engagement with the founder's child?"
"I? Set my cap! Oh, father," she cried, with a weak giggle, "that is
too good. I absolutely hate him."
"Then I'll tell him we wish him--"
"To stay as long as he can, father. Go at once."
"But, my dear, he is going to-morrow. He told me so when he was on his
way to the moat to fish, and I told him I was glad to hear it."
"You told him that, father?" cried Anne, with flashing eyes.
"Indeed I did," said Sir Thomas.
"Then go at once," cried Anne, imperiously, "and bid him stay."
"But it will be like eating my words, my child."
"Go eat them, then," cried the girl; "and quickly. Say that you were
but jesting."
"And that you specially wished--"
"No, father. Are you mad? Say what thou wilt, and canst; but mind
this--Sir Mark must stay."
Sir Thomas grumbled, but he had to go, and he went, and very easily
persuaded Sir Mark to give up his project of leaving the Moat next day,
and so it came about that about an hour later, when Mistress Anne was
wandering, book in hand, in the pleasaunce, beneath the sun-pleached
trees, where the soft turf was dappled with sunshine and shade, she
accidentally came upon Sir Mark, moody and thoughtful, busy over his
favourite occupation of trying to persuade one of the ancient carp in
the moat to swallow a hook concealed in a lump of paste, a lure of which
the said carp fought exceedingly shy.
If Sir Mark had been told a month before that he would become an
angler--one of those patient beings who go and seat themselves on the
banks of a piece of water and wait till a fish chooses to touch their
bait--he would have laughed them to scorn.
All the same, though, he had gone to Sir Thomas Beckley's, very much
shocked at the sudden termination of his matrimonial project, and had
taken to his bed, where he stayed some days.
He told himself that he was heart-broken; that he would never look upon
woman's face again; that he would pay a pilgrimage yearly to Mace's
grave, and live and die a heart-broken anchorite.
On the sixth day he arose and wrote a despatch concerning the state of
Jeremiah Cobbe's manufactures, retiring certain proposals that he had
made concerning the supply of guns and powder to his Majesty's forces.
Later on he found that it would not be necessary to seize on Captain
Carr, and later still followed the news that Gil had left those parts.
On the hearing of this he told himself that he could give full vent to
his sorrow, which he did, taking at the same time a good deal of
nutriment to counterbalance his sighs and tears.
Then, being a satisfactory moping pursuit for one so cut to the heart,
he took to fishing week after week for the carp in the great moat; and
after, on this particular day, trying in vain for one particularly heavy
monster, he sighed very loudly--so loudly that it seemed to be echoed,
and, looking sadly up, his eyes fell upon Mistress Anne, reading as she
walked beneath the trees.
It was but a momentary glance, for she turned away directly after, and
he sighed again, for he foresaw an interview with another lady as Dame
Beckley came bustling to his side.
It was one way of showing his grief: A curious way of showing it; but
every one has his peculiarities, and Sir Mark elected to dress himself
more gorgeously than of old.
Sable had a prominent place in his costume, but it was largely relieved
with gold lace and white linen, so that the angler who rose from his
seat on the green bank of the old moat seemed, from the elegantly plumed
hat to the shining rosetted shoes, more like one dressed for a ball or
Court gathering than a man prepared to land the slippery carp or
wriggling eel.
Dame Beckley was very nervous over her task, but she managed to acquit
herself pretty well, and Sir Mark received her request that he should
stay with a saddened smile that seemed to say all things were alike to
him now.
"If my presence will give you pleasure, madam," he said with a sigh, "I
will stay, though you will find me sorry company, I fear."
Sir Mark applied a delicate lace handkerchief to his eyes, and spread
around a faint odour of musk, before applying a fresh lump of paste to
his great hook, and casting it once more between the water-lilies.
"Plague on the man," said Dame Beckley to herself; "it is not a pleasure
to me. I wish, though," she added musingly, "he would let me administer
some of my simples. I could make him hearty and well."
Sir Mark sighed again when he was left alone, and began to pity himself
for his sufferings. Somehow he did not feel much sorrow for the young
life that had been so suddenly cut off. His sorrow was for him who was
to have been a bridegroom, and who would have succeeded to a goodly
property with his handsome wife. This was the more important to him, as
his little patrimony had been pretty well squandered, and his tailor was
an extensive creditor who was eager to be paid.
"Yes," he said, "I'll stay. Poor woman, she wishes it, and, until my
brain recovers from this dreadful shock, I am as well here as anywhere.
Besides, I cannot well go back till I see my way to obtain some money."
Just then a great carp came slowly sailing along through the deep clear
water, and rose amongst the stems of the water-lilies, as if to get a
better glance with its big round eyes at the gorgeous object in black
velvet, puffed with white satin and laced with gold, seated so patiently
upon the bank.
"I begin to think now," said Sir Mark, as he gazed back at the carp,
whose great round golden scales suggested coins, "that I have made a
mistake. I might have had fair Mistress Anne."
The carp glanced down for a moment at the lump of paste, and shook its
tail at it, its head being too rigid. The bait was not to its taste, so
it rose higher and stared with its great round expressionless eyes,
while it gasped with its big thick lips.
"Two hundred pounds for wedding garments of my own," he said, gazing
back at the carp. "Twenty-five pounds for that new sword with the
silver ornaments to the hilt, and five pounds for those white crane's
plumes for my hat; and now they are useless. I cannot have them altered
to wear now without spoiling them, and unless I marry soon that money is
all thrown away."
He sighed again very softly, for he was exceedingly sorry for himself,
as he thought of the founder's thousands.
"You are a lucky fellow," he continued, addressing the carp; "you always
swim about clad in golden armour, and pay nothing for the show. True, I
have not paid for mine, but I suppose that some day I shall be obliged."
Just then the carp smacked its lips as it thrust its nose above the
water, gave its tail a lazy flap, and turned itself endwise so as to
face Sir Mark, who gazed full at its fat gasping mouth, puffy eyes, and
generally inane expression.
"What becomes of the old Beckleys?" said Sir Mark. "One might fancy
that they all went to animate the bodies of the carp in this moat, for
yon fish bears a wondrous resemblance to the baronet. I wonder whether
he is as well clothed in golden scales. By all that's holy, here he
is."
For, unnoticed on the soft velvety grass, Sir Thomas Beckley had come
slowly up, looking in effect much more like the great carp than might
have been considered possible, for his head was so charged with his
daughter's mission that it seemed to force his mouth open, and his eyes
from his head, while, as he came close up, he gasped two or three times,
opening and shutting his lips without making a sound.
"Fishing, Sir Mark?" he said at last, for want of something better to
say. "You have captured one, I suppose?"
"No, Sir Thomas," said his guest with a sigh. "Faith, an' I do not care
to catch the poor things. I find in angling a change from dwelling on
my sad thoughts. You never catch them, I suppose?"
"No," was the reply, "I never do. My father once caught one."
"Indeed!" said Sir Mark, yawning, for it was a peculiarity of Sir Thomas
Beckley that he made everyone with whom he came into contact yawn.
"Yes," continued Sir Thomas. "It was during a very hot summer, and the
moat was nearly dry. I remember it well."
"You seem to have an excellent recollection, Sir Thomas."
"I have, Sir Mark, I have," said the baronet pompously. "The great carp
had somehow been left in a tiny pool whence he could not escape, so my
father caught him."
"But not with a hook, Sir Thomas--he did not angle."
"Marry, sir, but he did. He'd have gone in after it but for the mud,
which would have sullied his trunk hose and velvet breeches of murrey
colour, so he had a kitchen meat hook tied to a long pole, and caught
the big fish fairly."
"Indeed, Sir Thomas? It must have been an exciting scene."
"My father was a great man, Sir Mark."
"Great and rich, Sir Thomas?"
"Very, Sir Mark."
"Then I have been doing wrong," thought Sir Mark. "This old idiot here
must have inherited all the old man's money, unless--. Did your
brothers much resemble him, Sir Thomas?" he said aloud.
"Brothers, sir? I never had a brother. I was an only child."
"Indeed! But I might have known. Sir Thomas, this is a fitting time to
thank you for your hospitality. I may not have another chance before I
go."
"But you will not go yet, Sir Mark. I was about to press you to stay
with us yet a while--till your health is more restored. You look pale
and ill as yet, Sir Mark."
"Really, Sir Thomas? Thanks for your kindly concern, but I must go and
try to recover elsewhere. Your good lady, Dame Beckley, has been trying
to persuade me to stay, but I think my visit here has been too long
already."
"Nay, nay," cried Sir Thomas, "we cannot spare you yet. You must think
us very unfeeling if, after your terrible loss, you are not almost
forced to stay here and recover. Not a word more, Sir Mark, not a
word."
Sir Mark, however, endeavoured to put in several words, but was checked
by his host, who left him afterwards, strutting away with a fat smile
upon his countenance, and a belief in his heart that he had been doing
some very hospitable act, Mistress Anne's commands being for the time
entirely forgotten.
"That is settled then," said Sir Mark, as he kneaded a fresh piece of
paste for the carp. "Perhaps in a few weeks I may find out some way of
raising money, that is, when my heart has grown less sore."
He threw out his bait, and then settled himself with his back against a
tree, to take a quiet nap, when, in a sheltered nook, where four huge
hawthorns formed a kind of bower, he once more saw Mistress Anne busily
reading, and, thinking that he ought to tell her of his intention to
stay, he rose to saunter to her side.
Volume 3, Chapter IX.