Part 13

“None but George, mother. Do you not mind the year you had the great fever, and my aunt came here to tend you? How she brought George, a ten years’ bairn, with her; for she said he was so masterful, and of such high stomach, none of the maids durst attempt to keep him under? And a proper life we led each other, he and I. The very night he came we fought together. He called me an outlandish imp, and no true Englishman, because I was born at Geneva; and I for answer fetched him a buffet on the cheek.”

“Ill-conditioned boy! Even at seven years old, you should have known better than to strike your little guest.”

“Marry, mother, he paid me, and with usury,” laughed Walter. “But if I had had the wit, I might have given him a better answer. I might have said he would have been born at Geneva too, an his father had not thought more of his silks and satins than of his conscience.”

“Therein thou wouldst have shown thine unwisdom as well as thy discourtesy. In Queen Mary’s days thine Uncle Noble did not yet know the gospel; how then could he go into exile for it? In truth, it was what he saw, in those evil times, of the faith and patience of the saints that, with God’s blessing, won him to a better mind. I have heard him say so myself. And as for thy comrade George,” she added more lightly, “I daresay his love of fighting stands him in good stead now, when he meets the Dons upon the high seas.”

Walter’s face, naturally fair and pale, was overspread in an instant by a crimson flush, telling of some strong hidden feeling suddenly awakened. But it passed as quickly as it came; and he said, in his ordinary tone, “Mother, I pray you, tell me the names of all my cousins. ’Twere as well I knew them, at least after a fashion, ere I saw them.”

“Willingly, my boy. Thine aunt hath said so much of them in her letters, that I almost think I can see the six stalwart lads gathered round her, with the one fair girl they are all so fond and proud of. First, then, there is Thomas, good steady lad, as for old times’ sake they call him still, though he must be near his thirtieth year now. He is his father’s right hand and faithful helper. Next comes Harry, the soldier; he has volunteered, I told you, in aid of the persecuted Protestants in the Low Countries. Your uncle can send him thither better furnished forth than many a peer’s son. Will, the third in age, is ’prentice to Master Nevet, the jeweller.”

“’Prentice!” cried Walter in high disdain. “O mother! Only think of one of our blood standing at the door of a shop, and crying ‘What do ye lack; what do ye lack, my masters?’ as Sir John Carr says the London ’prentices are wont to do.”

Mrs. Grey looked steadily at her son with her clear, soft blue eyes, and said, flushing faintly, “Then what think you, Walter, of one of our blood sitting up whole nights to work English broidery on the robes of a Geneva citizen’s dame, carrying them to her with her own hands afterwards, and taking thankfully the silver she gave in payment?”

“And did you do that, mother?” asked Walter, with softened look. “What dreadful times they must have been!”

“Not dreadful _then_, for God sent them, and each day had but one day’s burden to bear. But sometimes now they seem dreadful to look back upon.—Of whom was I speaking? Of Will? George the sailor comes next in age. And I suspect Master James will never rest till he follows the same way of life,—for all his father’s talk of needing his help himself.”

“Has James then told his father that he wants to go to sea?” asked Walter abruptly, and in a tone more blunt and eager than that in which he usually addressed his mother.

“He has spoken of his wishes more than once, I believe; but he obeys his father, as in duty bound.—Take care, Walter; you will spoil my book. Pity lads are not taught to sew, since it is hard to keep idle hands out of mischief.—After James comes the fair maiden Lilias, the pet and pride of all her brave brothers; she will be about thy age, I reckon. Lastly, there is little Ned, the scholar of the family; he was thirteen at Christmas. Be kind to Ned, Walter, and let him look to you as to an elder brother; for I wot his father means to send him to Oxford, and you may be a good friend to him there, being the elder by three years. There,—that is finished, and makes the eighth of your new shirts.—Be very careful, Walter, whom you trust for the washing of them; for cambric and Holland are light to rend and ill to mend.”

“Yes, mother,” said Walter, with a sigh.

The next day he was to leave the home of his childhood and to begin a new life amongst strangers. Yet dearly as he loved his mother (and good right he had to love her dearly), it was not the thought of parting that wrung that sigh from the boy’s heart. He was thinking of what had just been said about his cousin, James Noble.

Walter Grey’s life hitherto had been rather a singular one for a boy. He was born at Geneva, during his parents’ exile for conscience’ sake; and he barely remembered their departure from that friendly city, and his father’s death on the homeward journey. The young widow and her orphan boy were most kindly received in London by the worthy merchant to whom her sister had been induced to give her hand, at a time when every one thought she sorely disgraced her family by so doing. But now the wheel of Fortune had turned so far that good Master Noble, mercer and warden of his craft, had more to spend on the education of any one of his six sons than sufficed Mistress Marion Grey to maintain the state of a gentlewoman in the home of her husband’s ancestors.

It was well that she was not obliged to delegate the important task of her only son’s education to any hands but her own. Like many noble women of the sixteenth century, Marion Markham and her sister Lilias had received from their father an excellent classical education. So good a teacher was she, and so apt a pupil did Walter prove, that when at length, distrusting her own powers, she sent him to the vicar of the parish, Sir John Carr, to be examined in Greek and Latin, that worthy gentleman, whose store of learning was not ample, found the scholar of fifteen quite too much for him. He prudently sent him back to his mother with a highly complimentary letter, in which he compared her to Minerva, to Cornelia, and, what was more to the purpose, to the sainted “twelve days’ queen,” her husband’s distant relative.

Nor were studies yet more important than Greek and Latin forgotten. Walter was made familiar from his earliest childhood with the Book that his mother held dearer than life, and constant were her prayers that its holy lessons might be written on his heart.

Walter had another teacher, moreover, a stern but very efficient one. In the school of poverty he learned self-denial; and well has it been remarked that “the worst education that teaches self-denial is better than the best that teaches everything else, and leaves that out.”

And yet, in spite of all, there was one defect—only one, but that a great one—in Walter’s education. The boy had no boyhood. A truly healthful, happy childhood he had enjoyed in its season; for the child dwells in his own little world, safe as the fairy in her crystal globe from the cares and sorrows and most of the dangers of maturity. Almost all the little child really needs is love. Give him _that_, and no matter how poor and bare and narrow his surroundings may be, imagination will make them a kingdom. But it is otherwise when

“Shades of the prison-house begin to close Around the growing boy.”

Then, in proportion as his wants increase, his dangers multiply. His animal nature grows and expands, while imagination pales and fades, leaving him very dependent on the common world that surrounds him, often very curious about it, asking a great deal from it, and influenced by it in ten thousand ways. Through this stage he must needs pass, if he is to prove hereafter a complete and well-developed man.

Walter Grey, however, was expected to grow at once, and without any interval, from the thoughtful child into the thoughtful man. Boyhood, with “its unchecked, unbidden joy, its dread of books and love of fun,” was not for him. Instead of sharing the sports of merry schoolmates, this boy shared his mother’s cares and anxieties as her friend and confidant, sometimes even already her counsellor. Instead of planning victories at prisoner’s base and trap ball, and raids upon orchards and nut-woods, he planned how to find bread and beer enough for their household, and still to have somewhat over to give to him that needed. Virgil and Plato were to him what “The Seven Champions of Christendom” were to other boys. It is true that he was taught to ride, and to shoot with the bow and arrow, and he could do these as well as any lad of his years; but he did them, as he did everything else, gravely and with a purpose. They were part of his education.

It is not easy to defraud Nature of her due. Often, for the time, she seems to acquiesce,—at least she takes it patiently, and makes no sign. But she silently keeps account of every debt; and it is well if some day she does not suddenly present a bill for the sum total, and demand an acquittance, admitting of no denial.

Late that night Walter sat in thoughtful mood upon his tresseled bed. His chest, packed by his mother’s careful hand in readiness for the morrow’s journey, lay so near, that his feet, as he swung them back and forwards, sometimes touched it. His doublet was off; his fair hair, tumbled by his restless hands, fell in disorder over his neat Holland shirt. There was no light in the room, save what the moonbeams shed through the narrow, unglazed slit that served for a window.

The boy was asking himself a question, often well-nigh the most important a boy can ask, “Shall I tell my mother?” He asked it the more sincerely and earnestly because he had just been repeating the evening prayer his mother taught him, and not without some simple additions, the promptings of his own heart. And now he had a great mind to delay no longer, but to step softly to the door of his mother’s room (where he well knew the light would still be burning), to seek admittance, to kneel down beside her chair—just as he knelt when he learned his first prayer—and to tell her all.

But _what_ was that “all”? What had he to tell?—As well to find that out first. And really it was difficult to find out;—it perplexed him. There he sat, feeling as though some weighty, half-guilty secret lay upon his heart, something that he was almost acting a traitor’s part in keeping hidden there, and carrying away with him unconfessed. Yet, when he sought for words in which to tell it, _what_ had he to say? Only that upon every excuse (and often indeed without excuse), he used to loiter about the stall of the village blacksmith—once a seaman, and sharer in some of old John Hawkins’ most desperate enterprises;—that he was never tired of listening to his wonderful tales of daring deeds wrought by English hearts and hands upon the high seas, where the small, slight vessels of English merchantmen so often measured their strength against the stately caraques of the Don;—that he cared little to ride anywhere save to the crest of the hill, whence he could see the far-off waters sparkle in the sunlight, and sometimes watch a white sail gliding slowly by, wondering if it was bound for that great mysterious West, the land of his romance and enchantment. That was all he could find to say; and what was there in that to trouble his mother with at midnight?

But beneath there was a blind, dumb instinct, a great passionate longing, for which he had no words. Perhaps it was a heritage from some far-off Viking ancestor, whose slender, snake-like galley had pushed its prow into unknown seas in search of fame and plunder. Walter had no names for the thoughts and feelings that for more than a year had been troubling him so strangely, growing every day more frequent and more keen. He only knew that he would have given all the world to change his fine cloth and velvet for a pea-jacket, his Holland shirt for a Jersey, his scholar’s pen for a stout cutlass. But what use in crying for the moon? Work of a different sort was cut out for him. To-morrow he must go to London, to visit his kinsfolk in the city; and after that to Oxford, to study hard (he liked study well enough, when ships were not sailing away westward before his mind’s eye), to win honour, fame, and wealth, and at last—perhaps—if God willed and made him worthy—to take holy orders and preach, like Sir John Carr.

What folly he had been thinking! He felt quite ashamed of himself. He would go to bed, sleep, and forget it all. The sooner the better, for the nights were cold (it was early March); he should freeze if he sat there much longer. He must rise before daybreak; but he was sure old Dickon would call him in good time; _he_ was never late.

So Walter Grey paid the tribute of a sigh to his boyish dreams; then he went to bed and to sleep, nevertheless he did not forget them all.

XXII.

His Own Way.

“It is bound up in the heart of man, that longing for the West. I complain of no one for fleeing away thither, beyond the utmost sea, as David wished to flee and be at peace.”

_Westward Ho!_

Walter had not been long asleep, when loud knocking at the great door awaked him. Saying to himself, “They might knock till Doomsday for old Dickon—early to bed and early to rise is his motto,” he rose, and putting on his clothes hastily, went to see who was there.

It was Sir John Carr, who good-naturedly had ridden two or three miles out of his way from the neighbouring town to bring Mrs. Grey a letter, left there for her by means of that as yet rude and primitive institution, “Her Majesty’s Post.” It would seem, indeed, that common humanity demanded this service, since the letter bore the following quaint addition to the ordinary superscription:—“Haste! Haste! Haste! Post, haste for thy life! See thou tarry not!”

Walter, reading this, and not being aware that such exhortations were quite customary, “by reason that the posts be so slow nowadays,” brought the letter in some alarm to his mother, who, late as the hour was, had not yet retired to rest. “I fear there is something wrong with my uncle’s folk,” he said.

Mrs. Grey broke the seal and read in silence. “All is well, thank God,” she answered. “But your uncle feared the letter might not come till after you had gone. There is a ship, in which he hath a venture, lying at Sheerness, and now ready to go up to London. And he thinks it will save expense and trouble for you to ride thither, and take advantage of the ship.”

“I have no objection,” cried the delighted Walter. “And indeed, mother, for that matter—,” he continued, with a flushed face and nervous air.

But just at that moment Mrs. Grey’s little oil lamp went out suddenly, so she did not see the boy’s face. And she knew it was past midnight, that Walter ought to be in the saddle by five in the morning, and that young eyes need long sleep. So she kissed him, and bade him go to bed at once.

Walter’s happiness may be guessed when, in due course, he found himself at last on board a real ship. The _Royal Tudor_ was a Turkey-merchantman, just returned from the Levant, well laden with the rich silks and cashmeres of the East. But she was something more. Great guns showed their black muzzles from her port-holes, and stem and stern were garnished with what, to Walter’s inexperienced eye, looked like fortresses, small but strong. Every man on board was a soldier, prepared to do and die in defence of the ship and the ship’s freight. The “_Noli me tangere_” of the Scottish thistle would have been an apt motto for the English ship; though the converse, “I will not touch you,” would have been far from applicable. Woe to the trader or man-of-war—whether Spanish, Flemish, or Portuguese—which should dare to interfere with her, or, even without interfering, should cross her path by accident! Already she had given a good account of more than one “caraque” or “caravel,” over which the yellow flag of Spain should never float again. And every one on board, from the captain to the cabin-boy, considered such “spoiling of the Egyptians” not only perfectly lawful, but a highly meritorious and satisfactory doing of their duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call them.

All this and much more Walter learned, before he had been four-and-twenty hours on board, from his cousin George. The light-hearted, good-natured sailor-lad did the honours of the ship, his pride and joy, in first-rate style to his gentlemanly cousin; nor was he by any means insensible to the profound admiration with which the young scholar regarded him. This admiration might have become mutual, not without advantage to both, had not Walter’s evil genius prompted him to show off the fragments of nautical knowledge he had picked up from his friend the blacksmith. In his enthusiasm he ventured upon some ill-advised observations about “cobridge-heads,” “sky-scrapers,” and “mizzen-masts,” which provoked George to peals of laughter, and unnecessarily loud assertions that “Master Walter might be a fine scholar on shore, but he did not know a main-mast from a marlin-spike on board ship.”

Walter ought to have joined in the laugh, or found a good-humoured retort. But it is hard to be taunted with ignorance of what we love. So he changed colour, and, with some irritation of manner, vowed that he would soon know everything on board as well as George himself. And he was as good as his word.

When the ship arrived in London, the welcome he received from his uncle and aunt and their family was all that could be desired. Thomas Noble was a good specimen of a fine class, the merchantmen of England, who were then beginning to be what they have been ever since, “the honourable men of the earth.” Like so many of their brethren in the Low Countries and elsewhere, they had espoused, almost universally, the cause of religious truth and freedom, and they maintained it often with great courage and liberality. There was not amongst them all a more zealous “Gospeller” than Master Noble, Warden of the Mercers’ Company, and some time Sheriff of London Town. He dwelt on London Bridge,—like the well-known cloth merchant, Master Hewit, whose young daughter the apprentice, Edward Osborne, saved by his celebrated leap from the kitchen window into the river below. All things had gone prosperously with Master Noble. He had the blessing that makes rich, and no sorrow added with it. His six brave sons were doing well, each in his own way. Gentle Lilias was a flower scarcely opened, fair and pure as a spring lily. At the time of Walter’s visit, it happened that all were at home, or within easy reach of it, and often gathered around the cheerful, plentiful board where their father presided.

Walter was very happy amongst them. His days and weeks glided rapidly by amidst novel sights and exciting occupations. He saw the Queen ride in state to old St. Paul’s, amidst transports of the loyal ardour that was such a characteristic feature of the times. He saw St. Paul’s itself, and Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, and the shops, and the fields where the young men and apprentices played games, and practised archery; and he sent out his own cloth-yard arrow very creditably amongst the rest. What was better than all, he bore part in a healthy, kindly family life, where peace, order, and plenty reigned.

It was strange enough that his most intimate friend amongst his cousins should be the one that he had come prepared almost to despise—“’prentice Will,” in his plain blue gown and close-cropped hair. One evening at supper George was vaunting the glories of the _Royal Tudor_, when Will (who was frequently permitted to join the family meal, his master being an old and valued friend of his father’s) looked up quietly from his trencher of powdered beef, and remarked, “She’s well enough, brother George; but call me knave and Papist if the _English Merchantman_ does not beat her as clean as Harry beat that great lubberly lout of a draper’s lad last Saturday at the butts in Finsbury fields.”

“Speak of what you understand, my lad of watches and finger-rings,” George retorted contemptuously. “Would you wish a craft built for running to and fro in the Mediterranean to look like a cruiser for the Spanish main?”

“Is the _Royal Merchantman_ to sail the Spanish main?” asked Walter in an eager, nervous whisper.

“The _English Merchantman_, an it please you, cousin,” Will corrected aloud; “though, indeed,” he added mysteriously, “if all were known, the other name might not come so much amiss. My master more than hints there be high and mighty personages with him in his venture.”

“Will,” said his father, “don’t speak evil of dignities.”

“Where’s the evil, father?” Will asked briskly, yet respectfully. “Every one knows my master’s good conditions; and that which, in the way of gain or profit, would not soil _his_ fingers, is clean enough to be touched by the Queen’s gracious Majesty herself, God bless her.”

“Amen!” said Harry the soldier. “Will, my lad, ne’er fash thyself with scruples about the _English Merchantman_. Let her cleave the waves as merrily as she lists. Ay, and let her crew seize Spanish treasure,—what is that but robbing the robber, and spoiling the spoiler? And if they cut the throats of the men—say rather of the fiends—that guard it, they will serve them better than—”

“Harry! Harry!” It was his mother who spoke, and in a tone of grieved surprise. “Are these fit words for a Christian man to speak?”

“No fit words for you to hear, at all events; so I crave your pardon, mother,” he answered. “Yet, if you knew what I know of deeds done by the hands of Spanish men, I think that you—even _you_, could not weigh and measure out your words when you spoke of them.”

“Will,” whispered Walter, “will you take me to see the _English Merchantman_?”

“With all my heart,” Will answered.

He was quite ready to fulfil his promise. The next Saturday afternoon, the holiday of London ’prentices, was the time fixed upon. Will asked his cousin’s leave to bring with them his fellow-apprentice, and Walter somewhat reluctantly consented. He found Eustace Jenkyns, however, a notable addition to their party. He was a bold, merry scapegrace, who, to Walter’s surprise, seemed quite an authority upon nautical matters; but, as Will privately informed him, was “nowhere” in the business, and just now in disgrace with his master for sundry acts of gross inattention and carelessness. Naturally idle and restless, he had fallen in with some of the wild speculations current at the time, and these had filled his head with visions of money-getting, far more rapid than any the workshop or the counter could realize. He talked of the gold to be won in the far West by brave hearts and ready hands, even alluding to the legend, already well known to Walter, of the lake of Parima and the golden city of Manoa or El Dorado. Walter believed, for his part, that the Incas who had been dispossessed by the Spaniards were still reigning there in barbaric splendour; and many and many a time, as he sat in the window of the old hall in his childhood’s home with some early narrative of travel borrowed from the vicar before him, had he dreamed of finding and restoring them. Eustace Jenkyns did not care in the least for the lost Incas, but he cared for gold and for glory. Of these he talked, while Walter listened—and the poison shot through his veins like fire. Gold would be welcome, of course, to one who knew so well the pains and privations of poverty. But glory!—that was the bait that drew him irresistibly on.