Chapter 6

About half-way onward, the glint and glitter of spears was seen amid a cloud of dust on the hill-path opposite. The troop drew together on their guard, though, as the Hospitalier observed, from the side of Tiberias an enemy could scarcely come. A scout was sent forward to reconnoitre; but, even before he came spurring joyously back, the golden crosses of Jerusalem had been recognised, and confirmed his tidings that it was the rearguard of the army, commanded by King Fulk himself, on the way to the relief of the Castle of Gebel-Aroun.

In a brief half-hour more, young Walter de Hundberg, with his sister by his side, was kneeling before an alert, slender, wiry figure in plain chamois leather, with a worn sunburnt face and keen blue eyes-- Fulk of Anjou--who had resigned his French county to lead the crusading cause in Palestine.

"Stand up, fair youth, and tell thy tale, and how thou hast forestalled our succour."

Walter told his tale of the blockaded castle, the underground passage, and the dexterous surprise of the besiegers, ending by presenting, not ungracefully, his captives to the pleasure of the King.

"Why, this is well done!" exclaimed Fulk. "Thou art a youth of promise, and wilt well be a prop to our grandson's English throne. Thou shalt take knighthood from mine own hand as thy prowess well deserveth. And thou, fair damsel, here is one whom we could scarce hold back from rushing with single hand to deliver his betrothed. Sir Raymond of Courtwood, you are balked of winning thy lady at the sword's point, but thou wilt scarce rejoice the less."

A dark-eyed, slender young knight, in bright armour, drew towards Mabel, and she let him take her hand; but she was intent on something else, and exclaimed--

"Oh, sir, Sir King, let me speak one word! The guerdon should not be only my brother's. The device that served us was--our squire's."

The Baron of Courtwood uttered a fierce exclamation. Walter muttered, "Mabel, do not be such a meddling fool"; but the King asked, "And who may this same squire be?"

"An old English churl," said Walter impatiently. "My father took him as his squire for want of a better."

"And he has been like a father to us," added Mabel

"Silence, sister! It is not for you to speak!" petulantly cried Walter. "Not that the Baron of Courtwood need be jealous," added he, laughing somewhat rudely. "Where is the fellow? Stand forth, Sigbert."

Travel and heat-soiled, sunburnt, gray, and ragged, armour rusted, leathern garment stained, the rugged figure came forward, footsore and lame, for he had given up his horse to an exhausted man-at-arms. A laugh went round at the bare idea of the young lady's preferring such a form to the splendid young knight, her destined bridegroom.

"Is this the esquire who hath done such good service, according to the young lady?" asked the King.

"Ay, sir," returned Walter; "he is true and faithful enough, though nothing to be proud of in looks; and he served us well in my sally and attack."

"It was his--" Mabel tried to say, but Sigbert hushed her.

"Let be, let be, my sweet lady; it was but my bounden duty."

"What's that? Speak out what passes there," demanded young Courtwood, half-jealously still.

"A mere English villein, little better than a valet of the camp!" were the exclamations around. "A noble damsel take note of him! Fie for shame!"

"He has been true and brave," said the King. "Dost ask a guerdon for him, young sir?" he added to Walter.

"What wouldst have, old Sigbert?" asked Walter, in a patronising voice.

"I ask nothing, sir," returned the old squire. "To have seen my lord's children in safety is all I wish. I have but done my duty."

King Fulk, who saw through the whole more clearly than some of those around, yet still had the true Angevin and Norman contempt for a Saxon, here said: "Old man, thou art trusty and shrewd, and mayst be useful. Wilt thou take service as one of my men-at-arms?"

"Thou mayst," said Walter; "thou art not bound to me. England hath enough of Saxon churls without thee, and I shall purvey myself an esquire of youthful grace and noble blood."

Mabel looked at her betrothed and began to speak.

"No, no, sweet lady, I will have none of that rough, old masterful sort about me."

"Sir King," said Sigbert, "I thank thee heartily. I would still serve the Cross; but my vow has been, when my young lord and lady should need me no more, to take the Cross of St. John with the Hospitaliers."

"As a lay brother? Bethink thee," said Fulk of Anjou. "Noble blood is needed for a Knight of the Order."

Sigbert smiled slightly, in spite of all the sadness of his face, and the Knight Commander who had ridden with them, a Fleming by birth, said--

"For that matter, Sir King, we are satisfied. Sigbert, the son of Sigfrid, hath proved his descent from the old English kings of the East Saxons, and the Order will rejoice to enrol in the novitiate so experienced a warrior."

"Is this indeed so?" asked Fulk. "A good lineage, even if English!"

"But rebel," muttered Courtwood.

"It is so, Sir King," said Sigbert. "My father was disseised of the lands of Hundberg, and died in the fens fighting under Hereward le Wake. My mother dwelt under the protection of the Abbey of Colchester, and, by and by, I served under our Atheling, and, when King Henry's wars in Normandy were over, I followed the Lord of Hundberg's banner, because the men-at-arms were mine own neighbours, and his lady my kinswoman. Roger can testify to my birth and lineage."

"So, thou art true heir of Hundberg, if that be the name of thine English castle?"

"Ay, sir, save for the Norman! But I would not, if I could, meddle with thee, my young lord, though thou dost look at me askance, spite of having learnt of me to ride and use thy lance. I am the last of the English line of old Sigfrid the Wormbane, and a childless man, and I trust the land and the serfs will be well with thee, who art English born, and son to Wulfrida of Lexden. And I trust that thou, my sweet Lady Mabel, will be a happy bride and wife. All I look for is to end my days under the Cross, in the cause of the Holy Sepulchre, whether as warrior or lay brother. Yes, dear lady, that is enough for old Sigbert."

And Mabel had to acquiesce and believe that her old friend found peace and gladness beneath the eight-pointed Cross, when she and her brother sailed for England, where she would behold the green fields and purple heather of which he had told her amid the rocks of Palestine.

Moreover, she thought of him when on her way through France, she heard the young monk Bernard, then rising into fame, preach on the beleaguered city, saved by the poor wise man; and tell how, when the city was safe, none remembered the poor man. True, the preacher gave it a mystic meaning, and interpreted it as meaning the emphatically Poor Man by Whom Salvation came, and Whom too few bear in mind. Yet such a higher meaning did not exclude the thought of one whose deserts surpassed his honours here on earth.

THE BEGGAR'S LEGACY

An Alderman bold, Henry Smith was enrolled, Of the Silversmiths' Company; Highly praised was his name, his skill had high fame, And a prosperous man was he.

Knights drank to his health, and lauded his wealth; Sailors came from the Western Main, Their prizes they sold, of ingots of gold, Or plate from the galleys of Spain.

Then beakers full fine, to hold the red wine, Were cast in his furnace's mould, Or tankards rich chased, in intricate taste, Gimmal rings of the purest gold.

On each New Year's morn, no man thought it scorn-- Whether statesman, or warrior brave-- The choicest device, of costliest price, For a royal off'ring to crave.

"Bring here such a toy as the most may joy The eyes of our gracious Queen, Rows of orient pearls, gold pins for her curls, Silver network, all glistening sheen."

Each buyer who came--lord, squire, or dame-- Behaved in most courteous guise, Showing honour due, as to one they knew To be at once wealthy and wise.

In London Guild Hall, the citizens all, Esteemed him their future Lord Mayor; Not one did he meet, in market or street, But made him a reverence fair.

"Ho," said Master Smith, "I will try the pith Of this smooth-faced courtesy; Do they prize myself, do they prize my pelf, Do they value what's mine or me?"

His gold chain of pride he hath laid aside, And furred gown of the scarlet red; He set on his back a fardel and pack, And a hood on his grizzled head.

His 'prentices all he hath left in stall, But running right close by his side, In spite of his rags, guarding well his bags, His small Messan dog would abide.

So thus, up and down, through village and town, In rain or in sunny weather, Through Surrey's fair land, his staff in his hand, Went he and the dog together.

"Good folk, hear my prayer, of your bounty spare, Help a wanderer in his need; Better days I have seen, a rich man I have been, Esteemed both in word and deed."

In the first long street, certain forms he did meet, But scarce might behold their faces; From matted elf-locks eyes stared like an ox, And shambling were their paces!

Not one gave him cheer, nor would one come near, As he turned him away to go, Then a heavy stone at the dog was thrown, To deal a right cowardly blow.

In Mitcham's fair vale, the men 'gan to rail, "Not a vagabond may come near;" Each mother's son ran, each boy and each man, To summon the constable here.

The cart's tail behind, the beggar they bind, They flogged him full long and full sore; They hunted him out, did that rabble rout, And bade him come thither no more!

All weary and bruised, and scurvily used, He went trudging along his track; The lesson was stern he had come to learn, And yet he disdained to turn back.

Where Walton-on-Thames gleams fair through the stems Of its tufted willow palms, There were loitering folk who most vilely spoke, Nor would give him one groat in alms.

"Dog Smith," was the cry, "behold him go by, The fool who hath lost all he had!" For only to tease can delight and can please The ill-nurtured village lad.

Behold, in Betchworth was a blazing hearth With a hospitable door. "Thou art tired and lame," quoth a kindly dame, "Come taste of our humble store.

"Though scant be our fare, thou art welcome to share; We rejoice to give thee our best; Come sit by our fire, thou weary old sire, Come in, little doggie, and rest."

And where Mole the slow doth by Cobham go, He beheld a small village maiden; Of loose flocks of wool her lap was quite full, With a bundle her arms were laden.

"What seekest thou, child, 'mid the bushes wild, Thy face and thine arms that thus tear?" "The wool the sheep leave, to spin and to weave; It makes us our clothes to wear."

Then she led him in, where her mother did spin, And make barley bannocks to eat; They gave him enough, though the food was rough-- The kindliness made it most sweet.

Many years had past, report ran at last, The rich Alderman Smith was dead. Then each knight and dame, and each merchant came, To hear his last testament read.

I, Harry Smith, found of mind clear and sound, Thus make and devise my last will: While England shall stand, I bequeath my land, My last legacies to fulfil.

"To the muddy spot, where they cleaned them not, When amongst their fields I did roam; To every one there with the unkempt hair I bequeath a small-toothed comb.

"Next, to Mitcham proud, and the gaping crowd, Who for nobody's sorrows grieve; With a lash double-thong, plaited firm and strong, A horsewhip full stout do I leave.

"To Walton-on-Thames, where, 'mid willow stems, The lads and the lasses idle; To restrain their tongues, and breath of their lungs, I bequeath a bit and a bridle.

"To Betchworth so fair, and the households there Who so well did the stranger cheer, I leave as my doles to the pious souls, Full seventy pounds by the year.

"To Cobham the thrifty I leave a good fifty, To be laid out in cloth dyed dark; On Sabbath-day to be given away, And known by Smith's badge and mark.

"To Leatherhead too my gratitude's due, For a welcome most freely given; Let my bounty remain, for each village to gain, Whence the poor man was never driven."

So in each sweet dale, and bright sunny vale, In the garden of England blest; Those have found a friend, whose gifts do not end, Who gave to that stranger a rest!

Henry Smith's history is literally true. He was a silversmith of immense wealth in London in the latter part of the sixteenth century, but in his later years he chose to perambulate the county of Surrey as a beggar, and was known as 'Dog Smith.' He met with various fortune in different parishes, and at Mitcham was flogged at the cart's tail. On his death, apparently in 1627, he was found to have left bequests to almost every place in Surrey, according to the manners of the inhabitants--to Mitcham a horsewhip, to Walton-on- Thames a bridle, to Betchworth, Leatherhead, and many more, endowments which produce from 50 to 75 pounds a year, and to Cobham a sum to be spent annually in woollen cloth of a uniform colour, bearing Smith's badge, to be given away in church to the poor and impotent, as the following tablet still records:--

1627

ITEM--That the Gift to the impotent and aged poor people, shall be bestowed in Apparell of one Coulour, with some Badge or other Mark, that it may be known to be the Gift of the said Henry Smith, or else in Bread, flesh, or fish on the Sabbath-day publickly in the Church. In Witness whereof the said Henry Smith did put to his Hand and seal the Twenty-first day of January in the Second Year of the Reign of our most gracious Sovereign Lord King Charles the First.

A REVIEW OF NIECES

GENERAL SIR EDWARD FULFORD, K.G.C., TO HIS SISTER MISS FULFORD UNITED SERVICE CLUB, 29TH JUNE.

My Dear Charlotte,--I find I shall need at least a month to get through the necessary business; so that I shall only have a week at last for my dear mother and the party collected at New Cove. You will have ample time to decide which of the nieces shall be asked to accompany us, but you had better give no hint of the plan till you have studied them thoroughly. After all the years that you have accompanied me on all my stations, you know how much depends on the young lady of our house being one able to make things pleasant to the strange varieties who will claim our hospitality in a place like Malta, yet not likely to flag if left in solitude with you. She must be used enough to society to do the honours genially and gracefully, and not have her head turned by being the chief young lady in the place. She ought to be well bred, if not high bred, enough to give a tone to the society of her contemporaries, and above all she must not flirt. If I found flirtation going on with the officers, I should send her home on the spot. Of course, all this means that she must have the only real spring of good breeding, and be a thoroughly good, religious, unselfish, right-minded girl; otherwise we should have to rue our scheme. In spite of all you would do towards moulding and training a young maiden, there will be so many distractions and unavoidable counter-influences that the experiment would be too hazardous, unless there were a character and manners ready formed. There ought likewise to be cultivation and intelligence to profit by the opportunities she will have. I should not like Greece and Italy, to say nothing of Egypt and Palestine, to be only so much gape seed. You must have an eye likewise to good temper, equal to cope with the various emergencies of travelling. N.B. You should have more than one in your eye, for probably the first choice will be of some one too precious to be attainable.-- Your affectionate brother,

EDWARD FULFORD.

MISS FULFORD TO SIR EDWARD FULFORD 1 SHINGLE COTTAGES, NEW COVE, S. CLEMENTS, 30TH JUNE.

My Dear Edward,--When Sydney Smith led Perfection to the Pea because the Pea would not come to Perfection, he could hardly have had such an ideal as yours. Your intended niece is much like the 'not impossible she' of a youth under twenty. One comfort is that such is the blindness of your kind that you will imagine all these charms in whatever good, ladylike, simple-hearted girl I pitch upon, and such I am sure I shall find all my nieces. The only difficulty will be in deciding, and that will be fixed by details of style, and the parents' willingness to spare their child.

This is an excellent plan of yours for bringing the whole family together round our dear old mother and her home daughter. This is the end house of three on a little promontory, and has a charming view--of the sea in the first place, and then on the one side of what is called by courtesy the parade, on the top of the sea wall where there is a broad walk leading to S. Clements, nearly two miles off. There are not above a dozen houses altogether, and the hotel is taken for the two families from London and Oxford, while the Druces are to be in the house but one next to us, the middle one being unluckily let off to various inhabitants. We have one bedroom free where we may lodge some of the overflowings, and I believe the whole party are to take their chief meals together in the large room at the hotel. The houses are mostly scattered, being such as fortunate skippers build as an investment, and that their wives may amuse themselves with lodgers in their absence. The church is the weakest point in this otherwise charming place. The nearest, and actually the parish church, is a hideous compo structure, built in the worst of times as a chapel of ease to S. Clements. I am afraid my mother's loyalty to the parochial system will make her secure a pew there, though at the farther end of the town there is a new church which is all that can be wished, and about a mile and a half inland there is a village church called Hollyford, held, I believe, by a former fellow-curate of Horace Druce. Perhaps they will exchange duties, if Horace can be persuaded to take a longer holiday than merely for the three weeks he has provided for at Bourne Parva. They cannot come till Monday week, but our Oxford professor and his party come on Thursday, and Edith will bring her girls the next day. Her husband, our Q.C., cannot come till his circuit is over, but of course you know more about his movements than I do. I wonder you have never said anything about those girls of his, but I suppose you class them as unattainable. I have said nothing to my mother or Emily of our plans, as I wish to be perfectly unbiased, and as I have seen none of the nieces for five years, and am prepared to delight in them all, I may be reckoned as a blank sheet as to their merits.--Your affectionate sister,

CHARLOTTE FULFORD.

JULY 4.--By noon to-day arrived Martyn, {127} with Mary his wife, Margaret and Avice their daughters, Uchtred their second son, and poor Harry Fulford's orphan, Isabel, who has had a home with them ever since she left school. Though she is only a cousin once removed, she seems to fall into the category of eligible nieces, and indeed she seems the obvious companion for us, as she has no home, and seems to me rather set aside among the others. I hope there is no jealousy, for she is much better looking than her cousins, with gentle, liquid eyes, a pretty complexion, and a wistful expression. Moreover, she is dressed in a quiet ladylike way, whereas grandmamma looked out just now in the twilight and said, "My dear Martyn, have you brought three boys down?" It was a showery, chilly evening, and they were all out admiring the waves. Ulsters and sailor hats were appropriate enough then, but the genders were not easy to distinguish, especially as the elder girl wears her hair short--no improvement to a keen face which needs softening. She is much too like a callow undergraduate altogether, and her sister follows suit, though perhaps with more refinement of feature--indeed she looks delicate, and was soon called in. They are in slight mourning, and appear in gray serges. They left a strap of books on the sofa, of somewhat alarming light literature for the seaside. Bacon's ESSAYS AND ELEMENTS OF LOGIC were the first Emily beheld, and while she stood regarding them with mingled horror and respect, in ran Avice to fetch them, as the two sisters are reading up for the Oxford exam--'ination' she added when she saw her two feeble-minded aunts looking for the rest of the word. However, she says it is only Pica who is going up for it this time. She herself was not considered strong enough. Yet there have those two set themselves down with their books under the rocks, blind to all the glory of sea and shore, deaf to the dash and ripple of the waves! I long to go and shout Wordsworth's warning about 'growing double' to them. I am glad to say that Uchtred has come and fetched Avice away. I can hardly believe Martyn and Mary parents to this grown-up family. They look as youthful as ever, and are as active and vigorous, and full of their jokes with one another and their children. They are now gone out to the point of the rocks at the end of our promontory, fishing for microscopical monsters, and comporting themselves boy and girl fashion.

Isabel has meantime been chatting very pleasantly with grandmamma, and trying to extricate us from our bewilderment as to names and nicknames. My poor mother, after strenuously preventing abbreviations in her own family, has to endure them in her descendants, and as every one names a daughter after her, there is some excuse! This Oxford Margaret goes by the name of Pie or Pica, apparently because it is the remotest portion of Magpie, and her London cousin is universally known as Metelill--the Danish form, I believe; but in the Bourne Parva family the young Margaret Druce is nothing worse than Meg, and her elder sister remains Jane. "Nobody would dare to call her anything else," says Isa. Avice cannot but be sometimes translated into the Bird; while my poor name, in my second London niece, has become the masculine Charley. "I shall know why when I see her," says Isa laughing. This good-natured damsel is coming out walking with us old folks, and will walk on with me, when grandmamma turns back with Emily. Her great desire is to find the whereabouts of a convalescent home in which she and her cousins have subscribed to place a poor young dressmaker for a six weeks' rest; but I am afraid it is on the opposite side of S. Clements, too far for a walk.