Part 5

At this the old woman gave a shriek of passion, fitful as that of a thwarted child, and then, suddenly overcome by fear, fell upon her aged knees, and lifted and joined her withered hands, and implored Cuthbert, with wild earnestness, never to have her moved.

“Look you, young master, winter and summer, here I have watched and waked these many years. It’s a small matter of meal that makes my porridge;--some give it for pity, and some give it for fear. There’s no lack of rotten sticks to keep me warm: yonder spring is never dry; and it’s free I am to go and to come, and nothing here to flout or to fret me: the deer and the kine take no count of me--the pretty creatures don’t fear me; and it’s not all the world calling me witch that will make them. That place is best we think best. Oh, for the love of God, master, let me alone--let me rot where I am.”

Cuthbert’s mind was in an agony of prayer; but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He would have said much; but he could speak nothing. He gave her alms; and telling her that he would do nothing against her will--nothing to make her unhappy, but that he would come and see her again--he raised her from her knees, and went upon his way homewards.

“My father would not thus have left her,” was his first thought. “He would have found some way to break into her heart. Strange world--strange thing this human life! This old solitary miserable has been wrapped in swaddling clothes, even as others--has been suckled at a human breast--has grasped, with tiny hand, a father’s finger--and been kissed, and muched; and now, she has survived all kindred--lost all defence of strength or money--hath none of wisdom, and because her back is crooked, and nose and chin have come well nigh together, she has been hunted from her kind, and dwells apart. As God is love,--and that he is I cannot doubt and live,--this is a mystery! It’s a skein so much entangled that my poor wit can not unwind it.”

Muttering to himself these wayward fancies, he hurried back to Milverton as to his heart’s home. There he could see sunlight upon the earth, and feel warm in the comfort of it. Nor in his then mood was he sorry that the guest chambers would be full: he wished a day of cheerful cups, and pleasant voices, and music. Thus absorbed, he reached the mill, and passed it as swiftly as in the morning.

“There he goes,” said the old miller, speaking to his daughter, who was spreading out some linen to bleach--“There he goes, as shy as a hare, and as fast as if he were making for his form. I never gets a bit of chat with him. He’s not much for company.”

“Why, father,” replied the girl, coming upon the pathway, “he’s a scholar, you know, and that’s the fashion of them, you know.”

“Well, it’s a bad fashion to go poking about the woods as lonesome as a stray mule; no good comes of those crazy fashions. I like an open face, and an open hand, and a free tongue.”

“Eh! he can talk fast enough, I’ll warrant me, if he had a sweetheart to talk to.”

“He talk to a sweetheart! She must be a poor silly body that would listen. There are merry men and merry hearts enough in old England for the lasses to choose from, without giving ear to such as he.”

“Well, they give him kind words at the Hall,--and they say he’s always more for good than harm; and I find him pleasant spoken enough when he comes to angle in the mill-pool.”

“There it is! I can never make him say a dozen words, black or white; now Parson Mullins will chat free for an hour on, and tosses you off a pot of ale with good words and good will. Why, he and I have smoked many a pipe together; and he’s a clerk, and a rare scholar too. He doesn’t give you ignorant stuff o’ Sundays; but Latin, and Greek, and all the best that he has learned at college. That’s the man for my money.”

“Well, father, for the matter o’ that, I like to know what folk are saying; and it might be gipsy language for all you or I are the wiser.”

“I know where you got that lesson, Miss Pert; that’s what the old Puritan pedlar said the other day,--rot him! he shall take seat on the old wive’s ducking-stool if he comes this way again.”

“I am sure he was a quiet civil man; and you have not had a better piece of linen, or a cheaper, than he sold us, this many a year.”

“Hang his linen, and him too!” rejoined the sturdy old miller. “I didn’t like the cut of his black head;” and with that he passed into the mill, and the girl went towards the dwelling.

While this dialogue was passing, Cuthbert Noble was rapidly ascending the path, which rose gently over a swelling field of luxuriant grass, to Milverton. Certainly there was much about Cuthbert to excuse the prejudice of the miller. He was of low stature, with a long visage and grave aspect; and there was a peculiar expression of his eye, which disturbed or repelled those who saw him for a first time, or who saw him not at his ease; but to those whom, upon a nearer acquaintance, he liked, his dark eye beamed with light; the expression about his mouth was humane and gentle; his voice was low, and rather tremulous before strangers; he never laughed, and seldom smiled, save with his eyes, which gave quick and lively response to whatever pleased him. Though, in his first manhood, he was not without a knowledge of life and of the human heart, for his reading had been extensive; and he had that felicity of apprehension, by which the lessons of books are most happily caught, and most easily applied to the heart’s daily wants. Moreover, he had all those graces of persuasion by which a pupil is best won upon and encouraged to climb the steep hill of fame. More happily placed he could not have been than in the family of Sir Oliver Heywood, but for one circumstance--he was too happy. A fear lay beating in his bosom. He dared not confess to himself the strange, yet deep, sentiments of admiration with which he regarded the daughter of the worthy knight. He would fain persuade himself that it was nothing but an emotion of gratitude to Mistress Katharine for that generous courtesy which would not suffer a scholar of gentle birth to want such attention and respect as she might delicately pay to him. Here, however, his wisdom was at fault. In vain had books taught him the misery of misplaced affections. He was launching out upon an unknown sea that has no shore.

CHAP. VI.

Some snakes must hiss, because they’re born with stings.

The table in Milverton Hall was already surrounded by the hungry guests; and a substantial old English breakfast, well suited to the appetites and the digestion of active and manly hunters, was spread before them. They were so busied over the cold joints and the venison pasties, or with the amber ale that foamed in silver tankards, as scarcely to notice the entrance of a latecomer, and therefore Cuthbert slipped into a vacant place at the bottom of the table, without other greeting than the good-humoured nod of a ruddy-looking young parson seated opposite, as he raised a tankard to his lips. There was little talk, save a few words about the sport, until having fairly finished their meal, the chairs were backed a little from the huge oaken table; the serving men lifted off the large dishes, still weighty with good fare, removed the trenchers, and having carried round the basin and ewer, large silver cups, filled with canary wine, prepared, after the fashion of the time, with sugar and with certain herbs, so as to make a delicious beverage in warm weather, were placed upon the table. The short grace “Benedicto benedicatur” having been uttered by George Juxon, the youthful rector alluded to, Sir Oliver took the massive cup which stood before himself, and intimating to Juxon to follow his example with the other, he rose, and giving for a toast, “His most gracious Majesty King Charles,” took a small draught of it, and passed the cup to the noble looking gentleman who had been sitting on his right hand, and was then standing by his side. The toast passed round with an audible “God bless him!” from every guest, after the example of the loyal host.

“Ah, Sir Philip,” observed the worthy knight to the noble stranger near him, “we have fallen upon evil times; and it is grievous to think that there should be one house in all England where the health of his most sacred Majesty may no longer be duly drunk, as is becoming in all good and true subjects.”

“Yet, I fear,” replied Sir Philip Arundel, “there are many in which the King’s health is no longer a standing toast: unquestionably republican feelings and principles have made great progress among the burgher classes generally, and have infected not a few above them.”

“It is those sour-faced, canting rogues, the prick-eared, psalm-singing Puritans, that are doing all the mischief,” said Sir Charles Lambert: “we want their ears, after the Turkish fashion, cropped by sacksful.”

“But it is not calling them names, or cutting off their ears,” said George Juxon, “that will put them down; neither will all the water in your horse-ponds quench the fire in any of their bosoms.”

“Very likely; but there is nothing like trying what will stop them; and as sure as ever I catch any of the hypocritical rogues praying and singing near our parish they shall have a bellyful of muddy water, and a back-load of smart blows with whip or cudgel.”

There was an expression of most irrepressible disgust on the countenance of Cuthbert Noble as Sir Charles uttered this brutal speech; which Sir Charles observing, he turned quickly to Sir Oliver, and added, “These are times in which we should look well to all our housemates, for fear we should be fostering some of these godly knaves, who cover their false hearts with closed lips and demure faces, and may corrupt our children and our servants.”

“You mean me,” said Cuthbert, starting on his feet with an energy which startled every one at table, and took Sir Charles so totally by surprise that he turned pale and livid, and seemed at a loss for words.

“Sir Oliver,” pursued the youthful tutor in a glow of indignation that overspread his cheeks, and made his eyes glance fire, “I have long and often endured the contemptuous and studied insults of your haughty kinsman on his visits here; and while they were only directed against me as a poor scholar and a dependant, it was well:--happy in your favour, and in the attachment and respect of the gentle young master, who is my pupil, I could afford to look down upon the dwarfish stature of so mean a mind; but when he would thus----”

Before it was possible to arrest him, Sir Charles, who sat upon the same side of the table, had run behind him, and, ere he could turn, inflicted a deep wound in his back with a large hunting-knife. The young student fell, bathed in his blood, upon the floor; and all the household, already brought near to the door by the loudness of the voices, rushed into the hall. Nothing was more affecting than to see the terrified agony and loud sobs of the noble boy Arthur, who stood over his fainting tutor with tears, and would neither be comforted nor removed.

George Juxon had instantly seized Sir Charles with an iron grasp. Sir Oliver was troubled, and scarce knew how to act; while Sir Philip Arundel, the most self-possessed of the party, desired the attendants to send swiftly to Warwick for a surgeon, and suggested to Sir Oliver that the aggressor should be committed to his charge, and that he would take him to his own home, and be responsible for his appearance to answer for the crime which he had just committed, when the charge should be preferred against him in due order. But George Juxon required that he should remain in custody at Milverton until it was ascertained whether the stab inflicted on Cuthbert might not prove fatal.

The ladies of Milverton, who were absent, walking in the grounds, were happily spared this painful scene. To the exclamations of wonder, regret, and even condolence, with which Sir Charles was addressed by some others of the party, he answered nothing, but stood with lips closely compressed in sullen scorn and in a dogged silence.

Juxon unhanded him, after Sir Philip promised that he should for the present be kept close guarded, and gave all his attention to Cuthbert, who was borne slowly and carefully up into his chamber, and his wound there bound up with a temporary dressing by Juxon himself, till proper assistance should arrive. This done, he left him for a while in the care of the servants, while he went down to aid in composing Sir Oliver and the ladies of the family.

This young clergyman, who was a distant connection of the good bishop of the same name, the treasurer at that time of the King, was a good specimen of a particular class of richly beneficed clergy, not uncommon in his day. He was a ripe scholar, a kind, orthodox churchman, and a manly country gentleman. His habits were those of his time: they grew out of the circumstances of that period and the state of society in all country places; and he had seen his own pious and dignified relative hunt his own pack of beagles, without a thought that he was doing any thing more than taking a vigorous exercise, beneficial alike to the health of his body and his mind.

Juxon was among, but above, sportsmen. He had a wealthy rectory, and lived hospitably with his equals, and charitably towards the poor. In the discharge of his parochial duties, he was sensible and serious: he valued books, and he had a due appreciation of genius.

He had been of the hunting party this morning, and was thus a guest at Milverton, where he had long occasionally visited, and where, upon a former day, he had chanced to have rather a long and free conversation with Cuthbert, and, albeit widely different in their habits, had found common ground of interest in the subjects on which they talked, and they had parted well pleased with each other. Had they touched on politics, indeed, they would have differed; for Juxon was a most stanch supporter of the court party: through evil report and good report he stuck close to the crown; he wrote for it, spoke for it, and was ready to lay down his life in the defence of it; but he was of too large a mind to wonder at the opinions of those opposed to the government of the King; nor was he blind either to those abuses of the prerogative which had first awakened a spirit of resistance in men of undoubted worth and patriotism, nor to the grievous folly of those deplorable counsels, whereby the King had been induced or encouraged to force upon the proud and resolute Scots the discipline of a church to which they disclaimed allegiance.

Again, he was of a generous spirit, detested persecution in any thing, especially in religion and matters of conscience, and had felt, with the Lord Falkland, in all the earlier stages of the present quarrel. Nevertheless, a decided and sincere attachment to the monarchy, an unshaken respect for the personal qualities of the King, and a devotion to the forms and to the spirit of that church in which he was baptized, suckled, and educated,--a devotion quite distinct from, and independent of, any feeling of self-interest, as an incumbent,--caused him to resolve upon his own course in the coming troubles with a cheerful firmness.

These sentiments, if the conversation in the hall had not been so suddenly put an end to, would there have been elicited. He had not approved the outbreak and burst of indignation with which the sensitive and excited Cuthbert had so energetically appropriated the indirect, but mischievous, speech with which Sir Charles Lambert had sought to sow a suspicion of his tutor’s integrity in the bosom of Sir Oliver; but he with his whole soul detested and abhorred the cowardly and bloody ferocity with which the haughty and maddened barbarian had resented the contemptuous expression of Cuthbert. There sprung up in his heart at that moment a warmth of interest for the youth, which never afterwards, in fortunes the most dark and divided, entirely died away. But to return to the actual present. He saw the ladies, who had but just returned from a walk to the vineyard, in company with Sir Oliver, in a remote corner of the garden, and immediately joined them.

They were, as might be expected, very greatly troubled at the cruel occurrence, and pale with natural anxiety. Indeed there was an expression of concern upon the countenance of Mistress Katharine, so very deep, so profoundly sad, that even amid the sorrowful perplexities of the moment it glanced across the mind of Juxon, that, in one or other of the parties in this business, her own heart was most closely interested, and he thought that he had never before seen human beauty with such a divine aspect. At the readily adopted suggestion of Katharine, her aunt Alice would have proceeded instantly to the chamber of the sufferer, to render him any service in her power; but Juxon requested of her not to do so, and recommended that the ladies should keep themselves quiet and apart until the surgeon arrived, and the gentlemen now in the mansion should have departed. Observing, too, the extreme perplexity of Sir Oliver, who had been and still was exceedingly agitated by this strange event, he entreated him to remain with them, and to keep himself calm and quiet for the present; assuring him that every thing which he could suppose him to wish in the present distress should be properly done, and that he would certainly not leave Milverton himself while he could hope to render the slightest service to Sir Oliver in this difficulty. There was an earnestness of manner about Juxon, and at the same time such a quiet tone of internal confidence in the resources of his own judgment, that they all submitted to his guidance; and Sir Oliver was greatly comforted and strengthened by the thought that so wise and judicious a friend was near him in his necessity.

The boy Arthur was watching and walking forwards on the Warwick road, as if his doing so could hasten the coming of assistance, and was in all that confusion of the troubled spirits which keeps the young heart throbbing with fear.

In the library Sir Charles Lambert sat with folded arms and a lowering brow, while Sir Philip Arundel stood, looking from the window with a countenance simply expressive of cold annoyance.

Of the half dozen gentlemen, who were still grouped in the hall, one, after observing, that “All’s well that ends well,--and, perhaps, after all, the young man’s hurt might not prove dangerous, and that he always hoped for the best,”--stole his hand across quietly to the wine cup, and took a very copious draught; another remarked, that he must say “the young man was very irritating;” a third wanted to know what was the use of their remaining there, and said he wanted to go home; while a fourth said, “One was a brute, and the other a fool: that he cared nothing for one, and knew nothing of the other.”

But two gentlemen of a more thoughtful cast walked the hall in low and serious discourse, apprehensive by their words that the injury would prove fatal to Cuthbert; and resolving that so fierce an action as that of Sir Charles should not pass unpunished. These were friends and neighbours of George Juxon; and expressed themselves well pleased that, for the sake of Sir Oliver and his family, so useful and kind a person chanced to be at Milverton under the present circumstances.

At last the long expected surgeon arrived with the messenger who had been sent for him, both having used all diligent expedition. He was introduced into the chamber of the patient by Juxon, and immediately proceeded to examine the wound. At the first sight he shook his head, and said to himself, in a very quick, low tone of voice, “The wonder is, that he is yet alive;” but on questioning Cuthbert as to his feelings, and finding some of the expected symptoms absent, and on very carefully applying the probe, he cheerfully exclaimed, “There is good hope of you, young master: there is no man living could pass a sword where this blade has passed without injuring a vital part, if he were to try; but a good angel hath had the guiding of this one. If it please God to bless my skill, you shall do well; but it will be a slow case, and a tedious time before you will be fairly on your legs again.”

“God’s will be done,” said Cuthbert, “for life or for death.”

“If that is your mind,” rejoined the surgeon, “my care will be well helped, and your cure the easier.”

After cleaning and dressing the wound, and giving particular directions as to diet broths, and writing a prescription for the necessary medicines to produce composure and sleep, he took his departure, promising an early visit on the morrow.

The favourable opinion thus given of Cuthbert’s wound was quickly made known throughout the mansion, and received as welcome by all; operating upon each according to their personal characters, and to the interest which they had felt in the issue of the violent deed which had stained the hospitable hall of Milverton. Sir Charles Lambert, indeed, but for the inconvenience and danger to himself, would have preferred the more tragical event. As it was, when Sir Philip Arundel returned from the gallery to the library, to announce to him that Cuthbert was considered in no present danger, he uttered no word beyond his wish instantly to return home.

“You are surely thankful,” said Sir Philip, “that this unpleasant affair has ended so much better than was feared. If you will not go and say so to the bleeding youth, which perhaps might just now too much disturb him, you will at least offer some words of atonement to your elderly relative, Sir Oliver, for the outrage done under his roof, and to a youth under his protection; a deed to be only excused by pleading that your anger transported you into a paroxysm of madness.”

“I shall go home,” said Sir Charles: “are you ready?”

“I will never, sir, again cross your threshold: you are no English knight--you are not even a man. I shall send orders to my grooms to follow me on my road home.”

These words were swallowed by the same man who would have taken a life that same morning for a look of contempt; and with a white cheek, on which passion literally trembled, Sir Charles hurried to the court-yard, called for his horse, mounted, and dashing spurs into his sides, rode violently away--hatred in his own heart, and contempt pursuing him. In succession all the guests took their departure, except George Juxon, whom Sir Oliver requested to continue with him till the morrow; and who, more for the sake of the patient than of the family, assented. He was not sorry that Sir Charles had departed in the manner and in the temper described, nor did he care now to have his person secured; for his offence, though grave as it yet stood, was not of a nature that in those days subjected to imprisonment any one who could find bail for his future appearance: and in the present case it was clear that Cuthbert would never prosecute a relation (albeit base and unworthy), yet a relation of Sir Oliver Heywood.

The good knight, though a kind man, a fond father, and an easy master, having walked through life upon a path of velvet as smooth as his own lawn, was sadly discomposed by this visitation of care; and the very trouble and irregularity that was caused by it was felt by the old gentleman in many ways that he dared not confess to others, and was ashamed to acknowledge to himself. A great weight, indeed, was taken from his mind by the assurance of Cuthbert’s safety; for he was humane, and he liked the youth: but he had private reasons for a deep regret at the conduct of Sir Charles Lambert, and the interruption to their intercourse which would of necessity ensue, and almost wished that he had parted with his young tutor immediately after that discovery of his political leanings which he had himself not many days ago so frankly made.