CHAPTER VI.

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.

"And ever at the loom of birth The mighty mother weaves and sings, She weaves fresh robes for mangled earth, She sings fresh hopes for desperate things." C. KINGSLEY.

Long after the light sound of Audrey's step had died away on the garden path, Richard Harrison sat and dreamed. Of late, exhausted by cold and fatigue, he had begun to lose control of his mind: he had sometimes found himself forgetting what dangers threatened him, and in what direction he had decided to turn his steps; and even when he could force himself to think, he had grown too desperate to care what peril might be in wait for him. It might be only the pestilential den men then called a jail; it might be the slave-ship, and the chain-gang in Barbadoes; it might be the gibbet, with the hand of the executioner scrabbling in his entrails. Well, let it be, if it must. His imagination seemed too dull to realize his danger, or work out any coherent scheme of escaping it. It could only brood over one horrible memory, till he felt he could have welcomed the pike thrust of a soldier or the lash of a slave-driver, if only they roused him from the dreams that bordered on insanity. Now, suddenly, he found himself awake. He was his sane self again. A girl's calm voice, a girl's clear eyes seemed to have exorcised the demon that had pursued him. He remembered with a surprise that was full of relief that he had talked to her for long that evening, and his words had been coherent--that he had actually jested! He was not mad! That horrible execution was true; it was no insane dream; but other things were real too. In what strange world had he been living? Had that sullen, desperate wretch been indeed Dick Harrison? He realized that he was alive; he could still enjoy the common comforts of food and fire; he could think; he could plan! His feet were once more treading solid earth; his brain began to spin anew the projects that had delighted him of yore; his heart began to stir with the hopes of old. Across the sea there were still battles to fight, new states to found. Liberty was not an idle word; love might still make life glorious. It seemed as if some healing touch had awakened him from a fevered dream, and recalled him to saner and earlier memories than those that tortured him; and when he stretched his weary limbs on the unwonted luxury of a bed, the old dreams awoke and bore him company all night long.

The sounds of a ballad carolled below, awoke him next morning to the knowledge that his hostess was already at the house, and about her morning tasks. He sprang refreshed from his pallet, and smiled as he recognized the voice.

"'Tis a miracle," he muttered; "'tis nothing short of a miracle to find her here. But how comes she to be alone in this ruined house, like an enchanted damosel of a fairy tale? 'Tis a strange plight for such a tenderly-nurtured maid, for old Sir Gyles guarded her as the very apple of his eye! And what state did not he keep, and Hunstanton Hall! And with what a retinue did he ride to visit us at Highgate! Yet here is his grandchild without man or maid to serve her, working with her hands like--was I about to say a farm wench? Fie, fie, like a nymph of Arcadia, rather! I cannot but call to mind the romances my master whipped me so soundly for wasting my lesson-hours over in Newcastle Grammar School! I wonder would she flout me, did she guess how like one of those enchanted princesses I deem her? But, in sad earnest, I must needs ask how this change of fortune is come about; 'tis unmannerly to ask questions, but she cannot look on me as all a stranger, even if she hold no memory of those old days at Highgate. Dare I ask her concerning them? That were a more perilous adventure; I must take more council with myself ere I can hold I am armed to dare it!"

He left his room, but such vehement sounds of sweeping and scrubbing sounded from the kitchen that, when Richard reached the foot of the stair, he held discretion the better part of valour, and strolled out of the door into the bright morning air. The little yard was so sheltered by walls and quaint outbuildings that the sunshine felt as warm as May, and the frost was gone from the cobble-stones. A clink of chains down the cart-track drew his attention, and in a minute more an old man hobbled into the yard carrying a couple of milk pails on a yoke.

"Sarvent, sir," said he, endeavouring to touch his forelock.

Harrison saw his own imprudence in standing about so recklessly, but put a good face on the matter, and answered the old man's greeting.

"Missis, her told us her'd got a visitor," continued the milkman, resting his pails on the top of a low wall, and straightening his shoulders; "her bides down at the cottage along o' we now--'tis too lonesome for a young maid here o' nights."

"Oh, then you are Mistress Perrient's cowman," answered Harrison with relief.

"Ees, sir, I be, and I was her grandfather's afore her. Ees--I minds her father's christening, and our young lady's christening; I minds a many things; but times is changed--changed terrible since then." He shook his old head solemnly.

"I suppose it was at Hunstanton you were in Sir Gyles' household?" asked Harrison, idly.

"Ees, sir; but you understand I was not rightly in his household, so to say; I was allers an outside man, and about the pigs and cows--but lawk! a man can see a lot if a man is only about the pigs and cows--beautiful cows they was too, beautiful! but they be all gone."

Richard made a movement to pass on, but the old man had no mind to miss his chance of a gossip.

"Seems to me as if I had seen 'ee afore, sir. You were a-visiting at Hunstanton, warn't 'ee, in the old squire's time? I reckoned I knowed 'ee--fine young gentleman you was then, but not so lusty as you be growed now. That was a fine house, now, warn't it? _And_ kept as gentlefolks' houses should be."

"Yes, I suppose Sir Gyles was a very rich man."

"That he was--and respected. Why he might 'a been a king an' more than a king the way he was thought on in the country. And our young lady--she was always known by the name o' the Queen o' Hunstanton, even when queens was in no great favour in the country; but there--our parish clerk says, says he, there's a Scripture warrant for it--with Queen Esther and a sight more on 'em. So why not Queen o' Hunstanton!"

"You made an excellent choice of a queen," said Harrison, willing to humour the old man's desire for a talk.

"Ees, that us did; but things was mighty different then. A round dozen serving-men with blue coats there was, not to speak of the butler and the steward, and twenty or more in the stables; and where be 'un all gone--gone like the leaves!" And he spread out his wrinkled hands with a gesture that had a touch of pathos in it.

"Times are indeed changed. I suppose the wars brought troubles everywhere."

"'Twarn't the wars, 'twarn't the wars," broke in the old man, eagerly. "Squire was as big a man when the wars was done as when they begun--only older--older, you understand. And no one 'ud ha' laid a finger on ought belonging to him, not for gold untold; they had that respect for him, and they bore fear on him too. A very plain-speaking gentleman he was when he was pleased. But no--'twarn't the wars. He was a great man, and a rich man to the day of his death. He was took sudden, you understand--in some sort of fit like; and young master--that's Passon Perrient as they calls him, our young missis' father--and missis, they was away at Ipswich, and come back all of a scuffle and finds him dead; and by all I hear, not the value of a penny-piece in the house in money--plenty of silver and pewter you understand, but no money whatsumever. And when all come to be settled, why then Passon Perrient he was on the windy side of the hedge, and he just sold the horses and cows and the old house and went across seas, and our young missis, she come to her aunt, old Madam Isham, and Molly, that's my wife, and I, we come along on her; but 'twas a change--that it was."

"It was well that some of her old servants were so faithful as to stay by her," said Harrison.

"Ees, ees we'd surely stay by her; but 'tis no fitting place here for a young lady; why, there's no company--no coming and going; and the coaches as used to come to the old Squires's; and the quality; and they fare to have clean forgotten our young lady, dang 'em! And Squire's great house turned into an inn! You think o' that! If so be as you goo into Hun'ston, you'll see the name o' it, The Royal Oak, and a great oak tree drawed for a sign over the front door. How's that for impudence!"

"John, John!" called a clear voice from the door, "is that milk coming in to-day? Good morrow, Captain Harrison; methinks you look as though you had rested well."

No change of circumstances seemed to have saddened the bright creature who stood on the doorstep, her pretty head rising like a flower from a wide white collar, her coarse black gown pinned back under a great white apron.

"'Tis many a long week since I have rested so well, madam," answered Harrison, coming forward to greet her. "Methinks you have some spell by which you strew pleasant dreams on the pillows you make ready for your guests."

She laughed. "Well said; you pass compliments as nimbly as a courtier! And, now, if you will but help me empty John's milk-pails into the dairy-pans you shall taste farmhouse bread and butter for your wages."

"But have you no help in this work?" asked Harrison, as he lifted the heavy pails from the doorstep.

"Why, no! I was a fine lady till two years ago, but when fortune changes one is like to change with it. And so you find me a dairywoman!"

"But, pardon me, surely your father cannot know it? He cannot know you are working thus, and enduring the life of a peasant?"

"My dear daddy! He knows more of St. Augustine than of how many cows feed in the five-acre meadow. But he knows very well I have few pennies to jingle in my pocket, for he has fewer yet. But such matters never trouble him; he only desired money to buy books, and give him but a book and he would forget if he had eat his dinner or no."

She chatted away as she tripped from dairy to larder; it was a rare holiday for the lonely girl to find a companion, and a companion of her own age. Two long years of poverty and seclusion had not dulled Audrey's gay spirits, which only waited a chance to bubble forth. Old Madam Isham had sheltered her great niece out of family pride, not out of family affection; and Audrey had left the love and luxury of her grandfather's house to enter a life as dull and as cold as that of a nunnery. Madam Isham considered most of her country neighbours to be either parvenus or white-washed rebels, while she was too proud to show her poverty to the few gentlefolk she considered worthy of her acquaintance.

Old, sad, and sour, Audrey found the old lady's maundering lamentations over the good times of King James a sad contrast to her grandfather's discussions of public matters, or her father's learned conversation. Morning prayers in the chilly little church, an occasional airing in the shabby coach, with its moth-eaten cushions and patched harness, were the only varieties in Audrey's life. She became better skilled in the making of pickles and preserves than ever she could have been in the masculine household at Hunstanton, where the old servants would have broken their hearts if their little mistress had ever set her dainty finger to anything rougher than gathering rose-leaves and lavender to scent the best parlour. But the dull external life had no real effect on Audrey's spirits; she bore her great-aunt's peevishness and the monotony of her days with cheerful equanimity, for this all was but a parenthesis; soon she would join the beloved father whom she tended and petted and scolded and revered, and they would begin a new life in a wonderful country, where she should see live savages with painted faces and feather head-dresses, and valiant soldiers and frontiersmen, whose adventures were as romantic as those of Robin Hood, and saintly ministers who had fled from persecution, like the people in Fox's Book of Martyrs; her brilliant fancy painted the Western land with all the hues of the sunset. Full of healthful energy, it was a relief to her to help the solitary maid in her household work; that was the least dull part of her new life; and, in the kitchen, the Queen of Hunstanton could still rule imperiously over the old cowman, and make the dairywoman tremble before her royal displeasure.

But through the long dull hours of sewing in Aunt Isham's dressing-room, her unfailing treasure of consolation was in repeating to herself all the teachings she had received from her grandfather--words that could never be breathed aloud in Madam Isham's house; of liberty, and the rights of the people to representation and civil justice, teachings that were drawn from writings as far asunder as Bishop Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying," and Mr. Milton's "Areopagitica." The narrow formalism of Madam Isham's creed drove Audrey more and more to dwell on the lessons she had loved, but hardly comprehended, and in her solitude she rediscovered for herself the reasonings which had led Sir Gyles Perrient to stand with Eliot and Pym against the encroachments of the Crown. Sir Gyles' own memories ran back to the time of Elizabeth, and he had taught his grand-daughter to reverence those golden days when a wise Queen and a loyal Parliament worked together for the good of the people. He loved the Church of England as he loved the Queen and the Parliament; and Audrey had wondered and admired as she realized how he had endured to see the downfall of one cherished institution after another, still full of hope in the future of England, and of faith that the Divine Providence would bring good out of evil.

As she told one story after another of her old life, Harrison could restrain himself no longer, and chimed in.

"I wonder," he cried, "if you can remember how, a many years ago, Sir Gyles carried you up to London, and you lay for a week at our house at Highgate? I had never seen his like! He seemed to me the very model of the old courtier of the Queen in the ballad; he was so worshipful an old gentleman, and carried such a train of old servants riding with him. And if he was like the old lord in the ballad, there was a little maid with him who seemed to me to have come straight from one of the fairy tales my nurse used to tell me away in Staffordshire, when I was a child."

"I trust the little maid behaved herself fittingly," laughed Audrey.

"Right royally did she bear herself, and rated me soundly for an overgrown boy with no manners," answered Harrison. "I have endeavoured ever since to lay the schooling to heart."

"Oh, this is past bearing!" cried Audrey, turning on him. "'Tis not fair to make up such tales."

"Indeed, 'tis true," he protested, "and--and I liked the rating."

"I am afraid I was a pert poppet," she confessed; "my dear grandfather spoilt me sadly, but I knew not that I had carried my bad manners up to London town."

"Don't you mind the garden?" he urged. "There were stone figures in it, of men blowing horns, and between them a little stone basin with lilies in it."

"I do remember!" she cried. "And I tumbled in! And who pulled me out? I do protest it was you! and right generous was it of you to risk a wetting for such a peevish brat!"

"You were not peevish; it was all of your grace and favour that you chid me, for you would say no word to any one else in the house at all! And when you had done with chiding I was as proud and happy as a king. I have never forgotten my little playfellow. But now, madam," cried he, rising with a sudden change of tone, "I pray you set me some task to do; I cannot lounge here in idleness and see you serving."

"Good lack," said she, "I know not what labours to set you to; for you must surely not go outside the house lest you should be noted."

"But I thought no one ever came here save the crows and the gulls," he answered.

"Human folk come not often, indeed; but of them one were too many. Also, latterly, there have been more strangers on the road, tramping from Lynn--pedlars, and fiddlers, and such like--and small pity have they on our hen-roosts. And if any such wandered hither and saw you, they might tattle."

"You are right," he answered gravely, "I will put you to no needless risks, yet somewhat I must do to keep----" He broke off suddenly. "Your pistols are in sorry case, Mistress Perrient," he went on in a gayer tone. "I pray you let me clean them."

"'Tis five long years since they were touched," she answered; "not since the day of the blue-coated serving-men you saw come riding out of a ballad. Take them, sir, the pretty toys may serve to while away a dull day."

The laughter faded from Harrison's face as he sat in his chamber oiling the pistols. The smooth touch of the trigger under his finger, and the click of the lock, brought back the memory of many a past fight when hope was high and blood was warm. "Truly we fought our best," he murmured, "and no man counted the cost or grudged his blood to the cause. Was it indeed in vain? What does this people care for liberty, when they are even now holding festival over the forging of their new chains!"

He was roused from his brooding by steps under the window. From the shelter of the curtain Harrison saw a swaggering figure in tawdry finery lurch into the yard where Audrey was scouring her milk-cans by the pump. It was a figure he remembered only too well. What cursed chance had brought that knave Astbury begging at Inglethorpe? And was it chance? The rascal might have dogged him. Richard pressed close to the window and listened.

"Good mistress," began the whining voice, "here is a poor soldier, come home after his blessed majesty, and hath ne'er a groat to carry him up to London to seek the king's grace."

Audrey's first words in answer were inaudible; but then her voice rose higher.

"I tell you I have nought here for you. Go down to the cottage yonder, and perchance the good wife may find you some broken meat."

The fellow persisted in his demands. His actual words were inaudible to the listener behind the curtain, but there was no mistaking the canting professional tone, the whine which presently grew to a bullying roar, when the ruffian found that no one else appeared about the place or came to support the girl. The sound of that threatening voice was too much for Harrison's prudence. Still holding the empty pistol in his hand, he darted downstairs and reached the door just in time to see the ruffian dash forward to seize the terrified girl, as he roared with coarse jocularity--

"As ye'll give me no meat, I'll e'en take the sweet."

Audrey sprang back with a shriek, but with one bound Harrison was out of the door and beside her, and his strong hand sent the ruffian staggering against the wall.

For a moment the bully stopped, uncertain whether to fight or fly, but then, discovering who his assailant was, he shouted--

"You cowardly Roundhead, you played me a scurvy trick t'other day, now I'll be even with you," and pulling out a long sailor's knife, he rushed on Dick; but as he raised his arm, Dick's hand went up too, and Astbury found himself looking into the black muzzle of a great horse pistol.

"Back, cur!" roared Dick, "or I'll shoot you like a dog."

Astbury staggered back, stared a moment, and then with an actual howl of dismay the bold buccaneer turned and fled. He did not fly so fast, however, as to escape a kick from Harrison's boot that sent him blundering half across the yard.

"Be off, rascal," he shouted, "you are not worth powder and shot, but an' you stop before you have put ten miles between yourself and this door, the constable's whip and your back shall be the better acquainted."

The last words seemed to revive such vivid recollections in the pirate's mind, that he picked himself up and vanished down the lane at his best speed, without waiting for further parley, while Harrison lowered his empty pistol and turned to the girl.