THE vigils of the night had been as unwonted for Lucy as for her sister,
and she slept soundly till Rose was already up and dressed. Her first
reflection was on the strange sights she had seen, followed by a doubt
whether they were real, or only a dream; but she was certain it was no
such thing; she recollected too well the chill of the stone to her feet,
and the sound of the blasts of wind. She wondered over it, wished to
make out the cause, but decided that she should only be scolded for
peeping, and she had better keep her own counsel.
That Lucy should keep silence when she thought she knew more than other
people was, however, by no means to be expected; and though she would say
not a word to her mother or Rose, of whom she was afraid, she was quite
ready to make the most of her knowledge with Eleanor.
When she came down stairs she found Walter, with his elbows on the table
and his book before him, learning the task which his mother required of
him every day; Eleanor had just come in with her lapfull of the still
lingering flowers, and called her to help to make them up into nosegays.
Lucy came and sat down by her on the floor, but paid little attention to
the flowers, so intent was she on showing her knowledge.
“Ah! you don’t know what I have seen.”
“I dare say it is only some nonsense,” said Eleanor, gravely, for she was
rather apt to plume herself on being steadier than her elder sister.
“It is no nonsense,” said Lucy. “I know what I know.”
Before Eleanor had time to answer this speech, the mystery of which was
enhanced by a knowing little nod of the head, young Mr. Enderby made his
appearance in the hall, with a civil good-morning to Walter, which the
boy hardly deigned to acknowledge by a gruff reply and little nod, and
then going on to the little girls, renewed with them yesterday’s war of
words. “Weaving posies, little ladies?”
“Not for rebels,” replied Lucy, pertly.
“May I not have one poor daisy?”
“Not one; the daisy is a royal flower.”
“If I take one?”
“Rebels take what they can’t get fairly,” said Lucy, with the smartness
of a forward child; and Sylvester, laughing heartily, continued, “What
would General Cromwell say to such a nest of little malignants?”
“That is an ugly name,” said Eleanor.
“Quite as pretty as Roundhead.”
“Yes, but we don’t deserve it.”
“Not when you make that pretty face so sour?”
“Ah!” interposed Lucy, “she is sour because I won’t tell her my secret of
the pie.”
“Oh, what?” said Eleanor.
“Now I have you!” cried Lucy, delighted. “I know what became of the
pigeon pie.”
In extreme alarm and anger, Walter turned round as he caught these words.
“Lucy, naughty child!” he began, in a voice of thunder; then,
recollecting the danger of exciting further suspicion, he stammered,
“what—what—what—are you doing here? Go along to mother.”
Lucy rubbed her fingers into her eyes, and answered sharply, in a pettish
tone, that she was doing no harm. Eleanor, in amazement, asked what
could be the matter.
“Intolerable!” exclaimed Walter. “So many girls always in the way?”
Sylvester Enderby could not help smiling, as he asked, “Is that all you
have to complain of?”
“I could complain of something much worse,” muttered Walter. “Get away,
Lucy?”
“I won’t at your bidding, sir.”
To Walter’s great relief, Rose entered at that moment, and all was smooth
and quiet; Lucy became silent, and the conversation was kept up in safe
terms between Rose and the young officer. The colonel, it appeared, was
so much better that he intended to leave Forest Lea that very day; and it
was not long before he came down, and presently afterwards Lady Woodley,
looking very pale and exhausted, for her anxieties had kept her awake all
night.
After a breakfast on bread, cheese, rashers of bacon, and beer, the
horses were brought to the door, and the colonel took his leave of Lady
Woodley, thanking her much for her hospitality.
“I wish it had been better worth accepting,” said she.
“I wish it had, though not for my own sake,” said the colonel. “I wish
you would allow me to attempt something in your favour. One thing,
perhaps, you will deign to accept. Every royalist house, especially
those belonging to persons engaged at Worcester, is liable to be
searched, and to have soldiers quartered on them, to prevent fugitives
from being harboured there. I will send Sylvester at once to obtain a
protection for you, which may prevent you from being thus disturbed.”
“That will be a kindness, indeed,” said Lady Woodley, hardly able to
restrain the eagerness with which she heard the offer made, that gave the
best hope of saving her son. She was not certain that the colonel had
not some suspicion of the true state of the case, and would not take
notice, unwilling to ruin the son of his friend, and at the same time
reluctant to fail in his duty to his employers.
He soon departed; Mistress Lucy’s farewell to Sylvester being thus:
“Good-bye, Mr. Roundhead, rebel, crop-eared traitor.” At which Sylvester
and his father turned and laughed, and their two soldiers looked very
much astonished.
Lady Woodley called Lucy at once, and spoke to her seriously on her
forwardness and impertinence. “I could tell you, Lucy, that it is not
like a young lady, but I must tell you more, it is not like a young
Christian maiden. Do you remember the text that I gave you to learn a
little while ago—the ornament fit for a woman?”
Lucy hung her head, and with tears filling her eyes, as her mother
prompted her continually, repeated the text in a low mumbling voice, half
crying: “Whose adorning, let it not be the putting on of gold, or the
plaiting of hair, or the putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden
man of the heart, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is
in the sight of GOD of great price.”
“And does my little Lucy think she showed that ornament when she pushed
herself forward to talk idle nonsense, and make herself be looked at and
taken notice of?”
Lucy put her finger in her mouth; she did not like to be scolded, as she
called it, gentle as her mother was, and she would not open her mind to
take in the kind reproof.
Lady Woodley took the old black-covered Bible, and finding two of the
verses in S. James about the government of the tongue, desired Lucy to
learn them by heart before she went out of the house; and the little girl
sat down with them in the window-seat, in a cross impatient mood, very
unfit for learning those sacred words. “She had done no harm,” she
thought; “she could not help it if the young gentleman would talk to
her!”
So there she sat, with the Bible in her lap, alone, for Lady Woodley was
so harassed and unwell, in consequence of her anxieties, that Rose had
persuaded her to go and lie down on her bed, since it would be better for
her not to try to see Edmund till the promised protection had arrived,
lest suspicion should be excited. Rose was busy about her household
affairs; Eleanor, a handy little person, was helping her; and Walter and
Charles were gone out to gather apples for a pudding which she had
promised them.
Lucy much wished to be with them; and after a long brooding over her
ill-temper, it began to wear out, not to be conquered, but to depart of
itself; she thought she might as well learn her lesson and have done with
it; so by way of getting rid of the task, not of profiting by the warning
it conveyed, she hurried through the two verses ending with—“Behold how
great a matter a little fire kindleth!”
As soon as she could say them perfectly, she raced upstairs, and into her
mother’s room, gave her the book, and repeated them at her fastest pace.
Poor Lady Woodley was too weary and languid to exert herself to speak to
the little girl about her unsuitable manner, or to try to bring the
lesson home to her; she dismissed her, only saying, “I hope, my dear, you
will remember this,” and away ran Lucy, first to the orchard in search of
her brothers, and not finding them there, round and round the garden and
pleasance. Edmund, in his hiding-place, heard the voice calling “Walter!
Charlie!” and peeping out, caught a glimpse of a little figure, her long
frock tucked over her arm, and long locks of dark hair blowing out from
under her small, round, white cap. What a pleasure it was to him to have
that one view of his little sister!
At last, tired with her search, Lucy returned to the house, and there
found Deborah ironing at the long table in the hall, and crooning away
her one dismal song of “Barbara Allen’s cruelty.”
“So you can sing again, Deb,” she began, “now the Roundheads are gone and
Diggory come back?”
“Little girls should not meddle with what does not concern them,”
answered Deborah.
“You need not call me a little girl,” said Lucy. “I am almost eleven
years old; and I know a secret, a real secret.”
“A secret, Mistress Lucy? Who would tell their secrets to the like of
you?” said Deborah, contemptuously.
“No one told me; I found it out for myself!” cried Lucy, in high
exultation. “I know what became of the pigeon pie that we thought Rose
ate up!”
“Eh? Mistress Lucy!” exclaimed Deborah, pausing in her ironing, full of
curiosity.
Lucy was delighted to detail the whole of what she had observed.
“Well!” cried Deborah, “if ever I heard tell the like! That slip of a
thing out in all the blackness of the night! I should be afraid of my
life of the ghosts and hobgoblins. Oh! I had rather be set up for a
mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army, than set one foot out
of doors after dark!”
As Deborah spoke, Walter came into the hall. He saw that Lucy had
observed something, and was anxious every time she opened her lips. This
made him rough and sharp with her, and he instantly exclaimed, “How now,
Lucy, still gossipping?”
“You are so cross, I can’t speak a word for you,” said Lucy, fretfully,
walking out of the room, while Walter, in his usual imperious way, began
to shout for Diggory and his boots. “Diggory, knave!”
“Anon, sir!” answered the dogged voice.
“Bring them, I say, you laggard!”
“Coming, sir, coming.”
“Coming, are you, you snail?” cried Walter, impatiently. “Your heels are
tardier now than they were at Worcester!”
“A man can’t do more nor he can do, sir,” said Diggory, sullenly, as he
plodded into the hall.
“Answering again, lubber?” said Walter. “Is this what you call cleaned?
You are not fit for your own shoe-blacking trade! Get along with you!”
and he threw the boots at Diggory in a passion. “I must wear them,
though, as they are, or wait all day. Bring them to me again.”
Walter had some idle notion in his head that it was Puritanical to speak
courteously to servants, and despising Diggory for his cowardice and
stupidity, he was especially overbearing with him, and went on rating him
all the time he was putting on his boots, to go out and try to catch some
fish for the morrow’s dinner, which was likely to be but scanty. As soon
as he was gone, Diggory, who had listened in sulky silence, began to
utter his complaints.
“Chicken-heart, moon-calf, awkward lubber, those be the best words a poor
fellow gets. I can tell Master Walter that these are no times for
gentlefolks to be hectoring, especially when they haven’t a penny to pay
wages with.”
“You learnt that in the wars, Diggory,” said Deborah, turning round, for,
grumble as she might herself, she could not bear to have a word said by
anyone else against her lady’s family, and loved to scold her sweetheart,
Diggory. “Never mind Master Walter. If he has not a penny in his
pocket, and the very green coat to his back is cut out of his
grandmother’s farthingale, more’s the pity. How should he show he is a
gentleman but by hectoring a bit now and then, ’specially to such a rogue
as thou, coming back when thy betters are lost. That is always the way,
as I found when I lost my real silver crown, and kept my trumpery
Parliament bit.”
“Ah, Deb!” pleaded Diggory, “thou knowst not what danger is! I thought
thou wouldst never have set eyes on poor Diggory again.”
“Much harm would that have been,” retorted Mrs. Deb, tossing her head.
“D’ye think I’d have broke my heart? That I’ll never do for a runaway.”
“’Twas time to run when poor Farmer Ewins was cut down, holloaing for
quarter, and Master Edmund’s brains lying strewn about on the ground, for
all the world like a calf’s.”
“’Tis your own brains be like a calf’s,” said Deborah. “I’d bargain to
eat all of Master Edmund’s brains you ever saw.”
“He’s as dead as a red herring.”
“I say he is as life-like as you or I.”
“I say I saw him stretched out, covered with blood, and a sword-cut on
his head big enough to be the death of twenty men.”
“Didn’t that colonel man, as they call him, see him alive and merry long
after? It’s my belief that Master Edmund is not a dozen miles off.”
“Master Edmund! hey, Deb? I’ll never believe that, after what I’ve seen
at Worcester.”
“Then pray why does Mistress Rose save a whole pigeon out of the pie,
hide it in her lap, and steal out of the house with it at midnight?
Either Master Edmund is in hiding, or some other poor gentleman from the
wars, and I verily believe it is Master Edmund himself; so a fig for his
brains or yours, and there’s for you, for a false-tongued runaway!
Coming, mistress, coming!” and away ran Deborah at a call from Rose.
Now Deborah was faithful to the backbone, and would have given all she
had in the world, almost her life itself, for her lady and the children;
she was a good and honest woman in the main, but tongue and temper were
two things that she had never learnt to restrain, and she had given her
love to the first person by whom it was sought, without consideration
whether he was worthy of affection or not. That Diggory was a sullen,
ill-conditioned, selfish fellow, was evident to everyone else; but he had
paid court to Deborah, and therefore the foolish woman had allowed
herself to be taken with him, see perfections in him, promise to become
his wife, and confide in him.
When Deborah left the hall, Diggory returned to his former employment of
chopping wood, and began to consider very intently for him.
He had really believed, at the moment of his panic-terror, that he saw
Edmund Woodley fall, and had at once taken flight, without attempting to
afford him any assistance. The story of the brains had, of course, been
invented on the spur of the moment, by way of excusing his flight, and he
was obliged to persist in the falsehood he had once uttered, though he
was not by any means certain that it had been his master whom he saw
killed, especially after hearing Colonel Enderby’s testimony. And now
there came alluringly before him the promise of the reward offered for
the discovery of the fugitive cavaliers, the idea of being able to rent
and stock poor Ewins’s farm, and setting up there with Deborah. It was
money easily come by, he thought, and he would like to be revenged on
Master Walter, and show him that the lubber and moon-calf could do some
harm, after all. A relenting came across him as he thought of his lady
and Mistress Rose, though he had no personal regard for Edmund, who had
never lived at Forest Lea; and his stolid mind was too much enclosed in
selfishness to admit much feeling for anyone. Besides, it might not be
Master Edmund; he was probably killed; it might be one of the lords in
the battle, or even the King himself, and that would be worth £1,000.
Master Cantwell called them all tyrants and sons of Belial, and what not;
and though Dr. Bathurst said differently, who was to know what was right?
Dr. Bathurst had had his day, and this was Cantwell’s turn. There was a
comedown now of feathered hats, and point collars, and curled hair; and
leathern jerkin should have its day. And as for being an informer, he
would keep his own counsel; at any rate, the reward he would have. It
was scarcely likely to be a hanging matter, after all; and if the
gentleman, whoever he might be, did chance to be taken, he would get off
scot free, no harm done to him. “Diggory Stokes, you’re a made man!” he
finished, throwing his bill-hook from him.
Ah! Lucy, Lucy, you little thought of the harm your curiosity and
chattering had done, as you saw Diggory stealing along the side of the
wood, in the direction leading to Chichester!