Part 5

When he was gone, quiet again reigned in the convent, and Hubert de Dreux resumed his occupation. But it did not attract him long. Suddenly he raised his head from the work and his eyes were lit up with a gleam in which joy and fear seemed equally blended. For the first time, for months, he was quite alone. What if he could obtain access to his master’s cell and penetrate the mystery in which his labours had been so long enveloped! He cautiously stole to the door of the laboratory, and peeped out into a long passage, at the further extremity of which a door opened into a small court where, detached from the main edifice and screened from all observation, was a small building which the Friar had recently caused to be constructed. He looked about him timorously, fearing lest he might be observed; but there was no cause for apprehension, scarcely any inducement could have prevailed with the superstitious Franciscans to turn their steps willingly in the direction of Roger Bacon’s solitary cell.

Reassured by the silence, Hubert stole noiselessly onward, and tremblingly approached the forbidden spot. His quick eye saw at a glance that the key was not in the door, and his countenance fell. The Friar’s treasure was locked up! He might see something, however, if he could not enter the chamber. He knelt down, therefore, at the door, and peered through the keyhole. As he pressed against the door, in doing so, it yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Hubert rose hastily to his feet, and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the crucibles and alembics, which bore witness to his master’s labours. But beyond a general impression of work in hand, there was nothing to be gleaned from this survey. An open parchment volume, in which the Friar had recently been writing, next caught his attention. If the secret should be there in any known language. Hubert knew something of the Hebrew, but nothing yet of Arabic. He was reassured; the characters were familiar to him; the language Latin. He seized the volume, and read the few lines which the Friar had just traced on the last page.

They ran thus:—

‘Videas tamen utrum loquar in ænigmate vel secundum veritatem.’ And, further (which we translate): ‘He that would see these things shall have the key that openeth and no man shutteth, and when he shall shut no man is able to open again.’

‘But the secret—the secret!’ cried Hubert, impatiently, ‘let me know what “these things” are!’

He hastily turned the leaf back and read again. The passage was that one in the ‘_Epistola de Secretis_’ which spoke of the artificial thunder and lightning, and beneath it was the full and precise recipe for its composition. This at once explained the strange noises and the flashes of light which he had so anxiously noticed. Surprising and gratifying as this discovery might be, there was, Hubert thought, something beyond. Roger Bacon, he reasoned, was not one to practise an experiment like this for mere amusement. It was, he felt certain, a new form of invocation, more potent, doubtless, over the beings of another world, than any charm yet recorded. Be it as it might, he would try whether, from the materials around him, it were not in his power to produce the same result.

‘Here are all the necessary ingredients,’ he exclaimed; ‘this yellowish powder is the well known sulphur, in which I daily bathe the argent-vive; this bitter, glistening substance is the salt of the rock, the _salis petræ_; and this black calcination, the third agent—But the proportions are given, and here stands a glass cucurbit in which they should be mingled. It is of the form my master mostly uses—round, with a small neck and a narrow mouth, to be luted closely, without doubt. He has often told me that the sole regenerating power of the universe is heat; yonder furnace shall supply it, and then Hubert de Dreux is his master’s equal!’

* * * * *

The short November day was drawing to a close, when, after carefully tending the wounded sheriff, and leaving such instructions with the Abingdon leech as he judged sufficient for his patient’s well-doing, Roger Bacon again mounted his palfrey, and turned its head in the direction of Oxford. He was unwilling to be a loiterer after dark, and his beast was equally desirous to be once more comfortably housed, so that his homeward journey was accomplished even more rapidly than his morning excursion; and barely an hour had elapsed when the Friar drew the rein at the foot of the last gentle eminence, close to which lay the walls of the cloistered city. To give the animal breathing-space, he rode quietly up the ascent, and then paused for a few moments before he proceeded, his mind intent on subjects foreign to the speculations of all his daily associations.

Suddenly, as he mused on his latest discovery, and calculated to what principal object it might be devoted, a stream of fiery light shot rapidly athwart the dark, drear sky, and before he had space to think what the meteor might portend, a roar as of thunder shook the air, and simultaneous with it, a shrill, piercing scream, mingled with the fearful sound; then burst forth a volume of flame, and on the wind came floating a sulphurous vapour which, to him alone, revealed the nature of the explosion he had just witnessed.

‘Gracious God!’ he exclaimed, while the cold sweat poured like rain-drops down his forehead, ‘the fire has caught the fulminating powder! But what meant that dreadful cry? Surely nothing of human life has suffered! The boy Hubert,—but, no,—he was at work at the further extremity of the building. But this is no time for vain conjecture,—let me learn the worst at once!’

And with these words he urged his affrighted steed to its best pace, and rode rapidly into the city.

All was consternation there: the tremendous noise had roused every inhabitant, and people were hurrying to and fro, some hastening towards the place from whence the sound had proceeded, others rushing wildly from it. It was but too evident that a dreadful catastrophe, worse even than Bacon dreaded, had happened. It was with difficulty he made his way through the crowd, and came upon the ruin which still blazed fiercely, appalling the stoutest of heart. There was a tumult of voices, but above the outcries of the affrighted monks, and of the scared multitude, rose the loud voice of the Friar, calling upon them to extinguish the flames. This appeal turned all eyes towards him, and then associating him with an evil, the cause of which they were unable to comprehend, the maledictions of the monks broke forth.

‘Seize the accursed magician,’ they shouted; ‘he has made a fiery compact with the demon! Already one victim is sacrificed,—our turn will come next! See, here are the mangled limbs of his pupil, Hubert de Dreux! The fiend has claimed his reward, and borne away his soul. Seize on the wicked sorcerer, and take him to a dungeon!’

Roger Bacon sate stupified by the unexpected blow; he had no power, if he had possessed the will, to offer the slightest resistance to the fury of the enraged Franciscans, who, in the true spirit of ignorance, had ever hated him for his acquirements. With a deep sigh for the fate of the young man, whose imprudence he now saw had been the cause of this dreadful event, he yielded himself up to his enemies; they tore him from his palfrey, and with many a curse, and many a buffet, dragged him to the castle, and lodged him in one of its deepest dungeons.

The flames from the ruined cell died out of themselves; but those which the envy and dread of Bacon’s genius had kindled, were never extinguished, but with his life.

In the long years of imprisonment which followed—the doom of the stake being averted only by powerful intercession with the Pope—Bacon had leisure to meditate on the value of all he had done to enlarge the understanding and extend the knowledge of his species. ‘The prelates and friars,’ he wrote in a letter which still remains, ‘have kept me starving in close prison, nor will they suffer anyone to come to me, fearing lest my writings should come to any other than the Pope and themselves.’

He reflected that of all living men he stood well nigh alone in the consciousness that in the greatest of his inventions he had produced a discovery of incalculable value, but one for which on every account the time was not ripe.

‘I will not die,’ he said, ‘without leaving to the world the evidence that the secret was known to me whose marvellous power future ages shall acknowledge. But not yet shall it be revealed. Generations must pass away and the minds of men become better able to endure the light of science, before they can profit by my discovery. Let him who already possesses knowledge, guess the truth these words convey.’

And in place of the directions by which Hubert de Dreux had been guided, he altered the sentence as follows:—

‘Sed tamen salis petræ, LURU MONE CAP UBRE et sulphuris.’

The learned have found that these mystical words conceal the anagram of _Carbonum pulvere_, the third ingredient in the composition of Gunpowder.

“A GOOD PLAIN COOK.”

‘WANTED, a good plain Cook,’ is hungrily echoed from the columns of the _Times_, by half the husbands and bachelors of Great Britain. According to the true meaning of the words ‘A good plain Cook’—to judge from the unskilful manner in which domestic cookery is carried on throughout the length and breadth of the land—is a very great rarity. But the conventional and the true meaning of the expression widely differ.

‘What is commonly self-called a plain cook,’ says a writer in the _Examiner_, ‘is a cook who spoils food for low wages. She is a cook, not because she knows anything about cookery, but because she prefers the kitchen-fire to scrubbing floors, polishing grates, or making beds. A cook who can boil a potato and dress a mutton-chop is one in a thousand.’

Such very plain cooks will always exist for dyspeptic purposes, while those who are in authority over them remain ignorant of an art which, however much it may be slighted, exercises a crowning influence over health and happiness. Eat we must; and it is literally a subject of vital importance whether what we eat be properly adapted for healthful digestion or not.

Medical statistics tell us that of all diseases with which the English are afflicted, those arising directly or indirectly from impaired digestive organs are the most prevalent. We are falsely accused in consequence of over-eating; but the true cause of our ailments is bad cooking. A Frenchman or a German devours much more at one of his own inexhaustible _tables-d’hôte_ than an Englishman consumes at his dining-table—and with impunity; for the foreigner’s food being properly prepared is easily digested. ‘The true difference,’ says a pleasant military writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, ‘between English and foreign cookery is just this: in preparing butcher’s meat for the table, the aim of foreign cookery is to make it tender, of English to make it hard. And both systems equally effect their object, in spite of difficulties on each side. The butcher’s meat, which you buy abroad, is tough, coarse-grained, and stringy; yet foreign cookery sends this meat to table tender. The butcher’s meat which you buy in England is tender enough when it comes home; but domestic cookery sends it up hard. Don’t tell me the hardness is in the meat itself. Nothing of the kind; it’s altogether an achievement of the English cuisine. I appeal to a leg of mutton, I appeal to a beef-steak, as they usually come to table; the beef half-broiled, the mutton half-roasted. Judge for yourself. The underdone portion of each is tender; the portion that’s dressed is hard. Argal, the hardness is due to the dressing, not to the meat: it is a triumph of domestic cookery. Engage a “good plain cook”—tell her to boil a neck of mutton, that will show you what I mean. All London necks of mutton come to table crescents, regularly curled.’

This is but too true: the real art of stewing is almost unknown in Great Britain, and even in Ireland, despite the fame of an ‘Irish stew.’

Everything that is not roasted or fried, is boiled, ‘a gallop,’ till the quality of tenderness is consolidated to the consistency of caoutchouc. Such a thing as a stewpan is almost unknown in houses supported by less than from three to five hundred a year.

These gastronomic grievances are solely due to neglected education. M. Alexis Soyer, with a touch of that quiet irony which imparts to satire its sharpest sting, dedicated his last Cookery-book ‘to the daughters of Albion.’ Having some acquaintance with their deficiencies, he laid his book slyly at their feet to drop such a hint as is conveyed when a dictionary is handed to damsels who blunder in orthography, or when watches are presented to correct unpunctuality. It is to be feared, however, that ‘the daughters of Albion’ were too busy with less useful—though to them scarcely less essential—accomplishments, to profit by his hint. Cookery is a subject they have never been taught to regard as worthy of their attention: rather, indeed, as one to be avoided; for it is never discussed otherwise than apologetically, with a simpering sort of jocularity, or as something which it is ‘low’ to know anything about. When a certain diplomatist was reminded that his mother had been a cook, he did not deny the fact; but assured the company, ‘upon his honour, that she was a very bad one.’ People in the best society do not hesitate to bore others with their ailments, and talk about cures and physic; but conversation respecting prevention—which is better than cure—and wholesomely prepared food is tabooed.

Young ladies of the leisure classes are educated to become uncommonly acute critics of all that pertains to personal blandishment. They keep an uncompromisingly tight hand over their milliners and ladies’ maids. They can tell to a thread when a flounce is too narrow or a tuck too deep. They are taught to a shade what colours suit their respective complexions, and to a hair how their _coiffure_ ought to be arranged. Woe unto the seamstress or handmaiden who sins in these matters! But her ‘good plain cook’—when a damsel is promoted to wedlock, and owns one—passes unreproached for the most heinous offences. Badly seasoned and ill assimilated soup; fish, without any fault of the fishmonger, soft and flabby; meat rapidly roasted before fierce fires—burnt outside and raw within; poultry rendered by the same process tempting to the eye, till dissection reveals red and uncooked joints! These crimes, from their frequency and the ignorance of ‘the lady of the house,’ remain unpunished. Whereupon, husbands, tired of their Barmecide feasts—which disappoint the taste more because they have often a promising look to the eye—prefer better fare at their clubs; and escape the Scylla of bad digestion, to be wrecked on the Charybdis of domestic discord. All this is owing to the wife’s culinary ignorance, and to your ‘Good Plain Cooks.’

We do not say that the daughters of the wealthy and well to do should be submitted to regular kitchen apprenticeships, and taught the details of cookery, any more than that they should learn to make shoes or to fit and sew dresses. But it is desirable that they should acquire _principles_—such principles as would enable them to apply prompt correction to the errors of their hired cooks. It is no very bold assertion that were such a knowing and judicious supervision generally exercised, the stomach diseases, under which half our nation is said to groan, would be materially abated.

Let us take a step or two lower in the ladder of English life, where circumstances oblige the Good Plain Cook and the wife to be one and the same person. Many a respectable clerk, and many a small farmer, is doomed from one year’s end to another to a wearying disproportion of cold, dry, uncomfortable dinners, because his wife’s knowledge of cookery takes no wider range than that which pertains to the roasted, boiled, and fried. Thousands of artisans and labourers are deprived of half the actual nutriment of food, and of all the legitimate pleasures of the table, because their better halves—though good plain cooks, in the ordinary acceptation of the term—are in utter darkness as to economising, and rendering palatable the daily sustenance of their families. ‘If we could see,’ says a writer before quoted, ‘by the help of an Asmodeus what is going on at the dinner-hour of the humbler of the middle class, what a spectacle of discomfort, waste, ill-temper, and consequent ill-conduct, it would be! The man quarrels with his wife because there is nothing he can eat, and he generally makes up in drink for the deficiencies in the article of food. Gin is the consolation to the spirits and the resource to the baulked appetite. There is thus not only the direct waste of food and detriment to health, but the farther consequent waste of the use of spirits, with its injury to the habits and the health. On the other hand, people who eat well drink moderately; the satisfaction of appetite with relish dispensing with recourse to stimulants. Good-humour, too, and good health follow a good meal, and by a good meal we mean anything, however simple, well dressed in its way. A rich man may live very expensively and very ill, and a poor one very frugally but very well, if it be his good fortune to have a good cook in his wife or his servant; and a ministering angel a good cook is, either in the one capacity or the other, not only to those in humble circumstances, but to many above them of the class served by what are self-termed professed cooks, which is too frequently an affair of profession purely, and who are to be distinguished from plain cooks only in this, that they require larger wages for spoiling food, and spoil much more in quantity, and many other articles to boot.’

Great would be the advantage to the community, if cookery were made a branch of female education. To the poor, the gain would be incalculable. ‘Amongst the prizes which the Bountifuls of both sexes are fond of bestowing in the country,’ we again quote the _Examiner_, ‘we should like to see some offered for the best-boiled potato, the best-grilled mutton-chop, and the best-seasoned hotch-potch soup or broth. In writing of a well-boiled potato, we are aware that we shall incur the contempt of many for attaching importance to a thing they suppose to be so common; but the fact is, that their contempt arises, as is often the origin of contempt, from their ignorance, there not being one person in ten thousand who has ever seen and tasted that great rarity—a well-boiled potato.’

This is scarcely an exaggeration. The importance attached to the point by the highest gastronomic authorities, is shown by what took place, some years since, at the meeting of a Pall Mall Club Committee specially called for the selection of a cook. The candidates were an Englishman, from the Albion Tavern, and a Frenchman recommended by Ude. The eminent divine who presided in right of distinguished connoisseurship put the first question to the candidates. It was this:—‘Can you boil a potato?’

Let us hope that these hints will fructify and be improved upon, and that the first principles of cooking will become, in some way, a part of female education. In schools, however, this will be difficult. It can only be a branch of household education; and until it does so become, we shall continue to be afflicted with ‘Good Plain Cooks.’

TWO-HANDED DICK THE STOCKMAN. AN ADVENTURE IN THE BUSH.

Travelling in the Bush one rainy season, I put up for the night at a small weatherbound inn, perched half way up a mountain range, where several Bush servants on the tramp had also taken refuge from the downpouring torrents. I had had a long and fatiguing ride over a very bad country, so, after supper, retired into the furthest corner of the one room that served for ‘kitchen, and parlour, and all,’ and there, curled up in my blanket, in preference to the bed offered by our host, which was none of the cleanest; with half-shut eyes, I glumly puffed at my pipe in silence, allowing the hubble-bubble of the Bushmen’s gossip to flow through my unnoting ears.

Fortunately for my peace, the publican’s stock of rum had been some time exhausted, and as I was the latest comer, all the broiling and frying had ceased, but a party sat round the fire, evidently set in for a spell at ‘yarning.’ At first the conversation ran in ordinary channels, such as short reminiscences of old world rascality, perils in the Bush. Till at length a topic arose which seemed to have a paramount interest for all. This was the prowess of a certain Two-Handed Dick the Stockman.

‘Yes, yes; I’ll tell you what it is, mates,’ said one; ‘this confounded reading and writing, that don’t give plain fellows like you and me a chance;—now, if it were to come to fighting for a living, I don’t care whether it was half-minute time and London rules, rough and tumble, or single stick, or swords and bayonets, or tomahawks,—I’m dashed if you and me, and Two-Handed Dick, wouldn’t take the whole Legislative Council, the Governor and Judges—one down ’tother come on. Though, to be sure, Dick could thrash any two of us.’

I was too tired to keep awake, and dozed off, to be again and again disturbed with cries of ‘Bravo, Dick!’ ‘That’s your sort!’ ‘Houray, Dick!’ all signifying approval of that individual’s conduct in some desperate encounter, which formed the subject of a stirring narrative.

For months after that night this idea of Two-Handed Dick haunted me, but the bustle of establishing a new station at length drove it out of my head.

I suppose a year had elapsed from the night when the fame of the double-fisted stockman first reached me. I had to take a three days’ journey to buy a score of fine-woolled rams, through a country quite new to me, which I chose because it was a short cut recently discovered. I got over, the first day, forty-five miles comfortably. The second day, in the evening, I met an ill-looking fellow walking with a broken musket, and his arm in a sling. He seemed sulky, and I kept my hand on my double-barrelled pistol all the time I was talking to him; he begged a little tea and sugar, which I could not spare, but I threw him a fig of tobacco. In answer to my questions about his arm, he told me, with a string of oaths, that a bull, down in some mimosa flats, a day’s journey a-head, had charged him, flung him into a water-hole, broken his arm, and made him lose his sugar and tea bag. Bulls in Australia are generally quiet, but this reminded me that some of the Highland black cattle imported by the Australian Company, after being driven off by a party of Gully Rakees (cattle stealers), had escaped into the mountains and turned quite wild. Out of this herd, which was of a breed quite unsuited to the country, a bull sometimes, when driven off by a stronger rival, would descend to the mimosa flats, and wander about, solitary and dangerously fierce.

It struck me as I rode off, that it was quite as well my friend’s arm and musket had been disabled, for he did not look the sort of man it would be pleasant to meet in a thicket of scrub, if he fancied the horse you rode. So, keeping one eye over my shoulder, and a sharp look-out for any other traveller of the same breed, I rode off at a brisk pace. I made out afterwards that my foot friend was Jerry Jonson, hung for shooting a bullock-driver, the following year.

At sun-down, when I reached the hut where I had intended to sleep, I found it deserted, and so full of fleas, I thought it better to camp out; so I hobbled out old Grey-tail on the best piece of grass I could find which was very poor indeed.