Kitabı oku: «Foxholme Hall, and Other Tales», sayfa 4
Herbert remained some time behind the Alwyn family, stalking about with his hand on the hilt of his sword, evidently longing for an encounter with some one; but as no person present seemed disposed just then to beard him, he at length mounted his horse and rode after his friends. Again and again he assured Master Alwyn, and his dame, and sweet Mistress Gertrude of his disbelief in the knowledge of the stone of the character of those who touched it, and that he would not credit a word against her fair fame should the cardinal, or bishop, or the Pope himself utter it. Gertrude thanked him with tears in her eyes, but begged him to return home and talk the matter over with Master Roger before he took any steps to vindicate her character, which he told her that he was resolved to do. His worthy guardian did not look on the matter in the light he did. He confessed that he did not believe that Mistress Gertrude was of light character, but that if the world did so, it was nearly as bad, and that she was not a fit bride for him. Herbert did not see the matter in this light, and argued the point with great vehemence, and declared that nothing should prevent him from vindicating her character by marrying her forthwith.
In this same year a claimant to the throne of England appeared in the person of a handsome youth, who pretended to be Richard Duke of York, second son of Edward the Fourth. He had married the Lady Catherine Gordon, a cousin of the King of Scotland, who espoused his cause. No sooner did he appear in arms than Herbert, faithful to the traditions of his family, prepared to join him. He had no retainers, no money, only his own good sword and ardent young heart. Roger was now too old to bear him company, much as he wished it. He would, indeed, have dissuaded his young master from the enterprise, on the ground that the Houses of York and Lancaster were already united, and that, after all, the new claimant to the crown might be only a pretender, as was asserted, and not the true prince; but then he thought that absence might cure him of his love for Gertrude, and that mixing in courtly society might make him desirous of wedding with the fair Lady Barbara Fitz Osbert. Roger was, however, far too wise to hint anything of the sort, and with inward satisfaction he saw him go to bid farewell to pretty Mistress Gertrude, hoping that the young people might never meet again. Herbert, however, had no such thoughts in his mind. Again and again he repeated his promise to Gertrude that he would remain faithful to her, and that, come weal or come woe, he would return, if alive, and marry her. The world might say what it dared – might traduce and scorn her, but he would believe her true. He spoke with so much earnestness that she believed him, and pledged her own word to be faithful to him in return.
Not till Herbert had paid this farewell visit to Mistress Gertrude did the wily Father Mathew attempt to cast any slur on her character, or to dissuade his pupil from his intended marriage. He left nothing unsaid which he thought could produce that result. Every insinuation he dared make he whispered into Herbert’s ear. Roger also was not slow to support the curate’s remarks, while at the same time he warmly praised the charms of the Lady Barbara Fitz Osbert, the heiress of the castle of Hardingham and its broad domains. Herbert listened, pained in mind, and moved, but not convinced. “Should she be fake, there is no virtue or faith in womankind, and I would as lief throw away my life in the first battle in which I am engaged as live.” Many young men have thought the same thing, and changed their mind.
No sooner had Herbert taken his departure than Father Mathew, who had got into the confidence of Master Thomas Fisher, urged him to press his suit. Old Master Fisher had become very much averse to it, on account of the reports which were current; but Thomas asserted that he disbelieved them, and that, in spite of all that might be said against Mistress Gertrude, he was resolved to marry her.
Years rolled on; news came of the expedition of the Scotch king and the supposed prince into England, and of its failure. After that nothing more was heard of the unfortunate husband of the Lady Catherine Gordon or of young Sir Herbert de Beauville, who had been knighted by the King of Scotland.
Meantime a visitor had come to Donington. He was evidently a man of superior birth. He was frequently seen in the company of Mistress Gertrude, and various were the surmises about him. Both Master Alwyn and his dame paid him the greatest respect. He was somewhat advanced in life, though still strong and active. His bronzed complexion, and more than one scar visible on his cheek, showed that he had been engaged in war in southern climes. He did not appear to seek concealment, but at the same time not a word did he let drop which could allow people to guess who he was. At length one day a dozen men-at-arms and several knights, with two led horses, appeared at Donington, and the stranger and Mistress Gertrude were seen to mount and ride away after an affectionate farewell of Master Alwyn and his dame. No people were more puzzled than Roger Bertram and Father Mathew. They remained at Beauville, holding the castle for Sir Herbert, though it seemed very doubtful whether he would ever return. One day a wandering minstrel came to the neighbouring hamlet. He approached a house, the bush hung over the door of which showed that entertainment for man and beast was to be obtained in the establishment. The minstrel took his seat in the public room, and quickly entered into conversation with those around him. His object seemed to be to obtain information about the persons in the neighbourhood. Among others he asked after Master Alwyn and his dame. They were living as before in the old house, and enjoying good health and strength.
“They had a daughter,” observed the minstrel, in a calm voice.
“Oh, the hussy! – she long since went away with a gay knight, who came with a band to carry her off, and no one knows what has become of her,” answered his loquacious informant.
“It is false!” exclaimed the minstrel, starting up. Then, suddenly checking himself, he added: “I mean, such reports as these often get about without due foundation.”
However, he could not calm the agitation this information caused him, and, having paid his reckoning and slung the harp he carried over his shoulder, he left the house. He took his way towards Beauville. Father Mathew was standing at the entrance as he approached the old castle.
“Go thy way – go thy way; we want no vagrants here. We have enough of our own starving poor to feed without yielding to the rapacity of strangers,” cried the father, eyeing him askance.
The minstrel humbly turned aside, and, not far off, met old Roger Bertram. He was about to avoid him, when Roger, eyeing him narrowly, hobbled forward, for he could not run, and, taking him in his arms, exclaimed:
“My son – my own boy – my young master – and art thou really come back sound in limb and health? Thrice happy is this day.”
The minstrel was no other than Sir Herbert de Beauville. He seemed too much broken in spirits even to laugh at the way Father Mathew had treated him. He had escaped, not without difficulty, after the defeat of the pretended Richard of York, who, acknowledging himself as Perkin Warbeck, had surrendered to the King. Herbert had now only one object on earth for which he desired to live – to establish the fair fame of Mistress Gertrude Alwyn; and he had resolved, he said, to trace out the author of the calumnies he had heard against her, or, if he could not do that, to punish every one who had been known to utter them.
It appeared that her disappointed suitor, Master Thomas Fisher, had been heard to repeat the evil reports concerning her. Here, then, was an object on whom he could wreak his vengeance. Master Fisher had, by means of the wealth which had fallen to him, been able to purchase a title and honours of the mercenary king, and he now gave himself all the airs of an old noble. When, therefore, Sir Herbert challenged him to mortal combat on account of words uttered against the fair fame of a damsel undeserving of such reproach, he was compelled to accept the challenge. Space does not permit a description of the combat. The newly-made baron was overthrown, and as Sir Herbert stood over him with his drawn sword, he confessed that he had himself, in revenge, inserted a small pebble in a hole under the rocking-stone, by which it became fixed and incapable of moving. On this Sir Herbert granted him his life, on condition that he should repeat the statement whenever he should so require him to do. He had it also made out in writing and duly attested, and, with this document in his hand, he set out to visit Master Alwyn and his dame. His heart sank within him when he learned from them that Mistress Gertrude was not their daughter, but the only child of the Earl of Fitz-Stephen, who had, by the sacrifice of a portion of his patrimony, which had gone into the king’s coffers, lately regained the remainder. His spirits, however, rose again when they encouraged him to hasten forthwith to, the earl’s castle and to try his fortune with the lady, showing her the document he had brought with him. He followed their advice; the Lady Gertrude received him in a way to satisfy his utmost hopes, and presented him to her father as the only person she would ever marry. They were accordingly wedded, and by living in privacy till the death of Henry, Sir Herbert escaped being implicated in the attempts made by the pretended Richard of York to gain the English crown.
Story 3-Chapter I
STORY THREE – Reginald Warrender; or, Early Days at Eton
“Reginald, my boy, I was at Eton myself, and, in spite of some drawbacks, I loved the old place right dearly, and so I intend to go with you, and to introduce you to all the spots I remember so well; but I don’t suppose any of my old acquaintance and chums are still to be found there. However, the very sight of the walls and towers of the school, the meadows, the river, and the Castle in the distance, will make me young again. You will find a good deal of difference between it and where you have been before. The discipline there is apt to take a good deal of pride and self-sufficiency out of a fellow – not that you have much of them, I hope. The tutor I have chosen for you, Mr Lindsay, is a first-rate man. You are to live in his house. I was at a dame’s – a real dame – a very good, old lady, though some are men you will find. There is much the same discipline and order kept in both. We will have our portmanteaus packed by Friday, so that we will sleep in London, and go down there on Saturday morning, that you may have the best part of that day and Sunday to look about you.”
These remarks were made by Squire Warrender to his son, who had hitherto been at a boarding-school, where he had received the first rudiments of his education.
Reginald thanked his father for his intentions.
“It will be very delightful to have you with me, papa,” he exclaimed; “it will not feel at all as if I were going to school; and, besides, Eton is the place of all others I wished to go to. I don’t much fear the fagging or the bullying, and I can take pretty good care of myself now.”
In truth Reginald had no longer any dread about going to school. He had accepted schooling as a necessity of boyish existence, and had made up his mind to endure all its ups and downs with equanimity. The day for their departure arrived. Mary, his sister, did not fail to promise to write as usual, and John assured his young master that he would take good care of Polly, his pony, and Carlo and the other dogs, and the ferrets, and all his other animate or inanimate treasures. Reginald had been disinclined to accept Mrs Dawson’s offer to fill a hamper with her stores; but the Squire recollected that in his time, at all events, such things were not looked on at all with contempt by the youngsters at Eton; so a hamper even better supplied than before was provided for him. The Squire and he started away in very good spirits, cutting jokes to the last as they drove off. They had no time to see sights in London, and early the next morning, after breakfast, they started off with all Reginald’s property for the Great Western station, and within an hour the latter found himself in the long-thought-of and often-pictured town of Eton. He looked out eagerly on either side as they drove along towards his tutor’s. So did the Squire, especially when they reached the High Street. Many a place did he seem to recognise.
“Ah! there it is just as it was,” he was continually exclaiming. “There’s my old sock-shop —soake, a local term for baking, is the better spelling. I spent money enough there, so perhaps they will remember me; so we will have a look in there by-and-by. Ah! there’s the Christopher too, where we will go and dine. I dare say Lindsay will ask us; but I must be back in town to-night, and it would delay me to accept his invitation, and perhaps we may fall in with some acquaintance whom you may like to ask to dine with us.” The Christopher was an hotel, Reginald found, much patronised by the boys and their friends. Mr Lindsay was in school, but Mrs Lindsay was at home, and received them very kindly. Reginald thought her a very nice person, and so she was, and contributed much, as a lady always can if she sets the right way about it, to make the house thoroughly comfortable and pleasant to its inmates. She told Reginald that his room was ready for him. How proud he felt to find that he was to have one entirely to himself! His things were at once taken up to it, and he begged the Squire to come up and have a look at it. It was not very large; but the walls were neatly papered, and it looked perfectly clean. Neither was the furniture of a grand description. There was a bedstead, which, when turned up, looked like a cupboard, and a sideboard of painted deal, a small oak chest of drawers, or rather a bureau, in the upper part of which cups and saucers, and plates, and a metal teapot, and a few knives and forks and a muffin-dish, were arranged, and there was a deal table covered with a red cloth, and two rather hard horsehair-bottomed chairs.
“Here we are, sir,” said Reginald, as the maidservant with considerable discretion retired, that the young gentleman might look about him. “Sit down and make yourself at home; I feel so already. The place has capabilities, and I hope that the next time you pay me a visit, you will find that I have taken advantage of them. I will get some pictures, and hang them up, and some pegs for my hats find fishing-rods, and hooks for my bats, and then a Dutch oven, and a frying-pan, and a better kettle than that will be useful in winter.”
“Perhaps you will not object to an arm-chair or a sofa,” observed the Squire.
“An arm-chair, certainly,” answered Reginald, “thank you; but with regard to a sofa, they are all very well for women. I think, however, that if a fellow’s legs ache, he may put them up on another chair, and if he has got an arm-chair to lean back in, he will do very well.”
“You are right, Reginald; I hate luxurious habits,” said the Squire. “Do not give way to them. They are not so bad in themselves as in consequence of what they lead to – self-indulgence and indolence: this is the vice of the present day. But come along, we have plenty to do.”
The Squire, leaving word that he would call again, took Reginald back into the town. They were getting hungry, so very naturally they proceeded in the first place to the well-remembered sock-shop, known by the world at large as a pastry-cook’s. A supply of ices and strawberry messes was at once ordered and discussed with great gusto, buns and other cakes giving some consistency to the repast. Who would have expected to see Squire Warrender, of Blessingham, who had not perhaps for years taken any other than a solid meat luncheon, with bottled stout, or a biscuit and a glass of wine, lunching off sweet cakes and strawberries and cream? But the truth was, that he did not feel just then a bit like Squire Warrender, of Blessingham; he was once more little Reginald Warrender, somewhat of a pickle, and very fond of those said luscious articles. To be sure another Reginald Warrender stood by his side; but he was, as it were, a part of himself, or it might he himself, or a younger companion. At all events he felt a great deal too young just then to be anybody’s father, and was quite surprised that the young women behind the counter did not recognise him. Surely they were the very same he must have known. While they were eating away, an old lady with spectacles on her nose, and a high white cap on her head, came into the shop.
“I have come with this youngster here to show him about the place,” said the Squire. “This is a shop I used to know well once upon a time; but the young ladies here don’t seem to recognise me.”
“I should think not,” said the old lady, laughing, as did the young ones. “Perhaps I might though, if I knew your name. What years were you here?”
The Squire told her.
“I was about their age then, and stood where they now stand,” she observed, as she went into an inner room, and brought down a longish parchment-covered volume. “Oh, I now remember you perfectly well, Master Warrender,” said she, turning over the pages, and evidently also forgetting how many years had rolled away since the Squire was Master Warrender. “You were a very good customer of ours, that you were, indeed. You had a good healthy appetite: six dozen oranges, three dozen queencakes, a couple of dozen hot-cross buns for breakfast on one occasion. I suppose you didn’t eat them all yourself though. And now I see you left owing us a little account. It was no great matter; only fifteen and sixpence for cherries and strawberries.”
“Sold, papa!” whispered Reginald, aside, and highly amused. “It is pleasant, however, to be able to pay off old scores.”
“I fear that the account is too correct,” said the Squire. “Let me see, how was it? Ah, I recollect – a wager, I am afraid. Cleveland and I. We tried to see which could eat the most in a given time. Don’t you go and do such a silly thing though, Reginald, or I’ll disinherit you. He ought to have paid, for I beat him; but I ordered them. Well, I will pay you now with interest.”
“Oh no, no, sir, thank you; I could not think of it,” said the old lady.
However, as she said the words in a tone which evidently did not mean that she positively would not receive the amount, the Squire pulled out a sovereign, and handed it to her.
“There is the sum with interest – very small interest though,” he observed. “I wish that I could pay all the debts of my younger days as easily.”
The old lady was highly pleased, and promised to stand Reginald’s friend, and to give him good advice whenever he would come to her.
“And I wish, sir,” said she, “that I could as easily get in all the debts owing to me.”
Thereon the Squire took occasion to impress very strongly on his son the importance of not running into debt. “If you cannot pay for a thing, you should not get it,” he remarked. “Never mind how much you may want it. You may fancy that you can pay some day; but before that day comes you will have wanted several other things, all of which have to be paid for out of this sum in prospect, which may possibly never come at all. Then one person will press for payment, and then another, and then you will think that there can be no harm in borrowing, and the chances are that you become the slave of the person from whom you borrow. Take my advice, Reginald, keep out of debt and be free. I have spoken only of worldly-wise motives for keeping out of debt, but it is morally wrong – it is dishonest. The Bible says, ‘Owe no man anything.’ That is right, depend on it. Some fellows fancy that it is fine and gentlemanly to run into debt, and that it is a spirited thing to bilk a tradesman. I think, and I am sure you will, that it is one of the most ungentlemanly and blackguardly things to deprive any man of his just rights, not to say unchristianlike and despicable.”
This conversation took place as the Squire and his son were walking towards the school-house. They walked about the noble edifice, under the fine arched gateway, and beneath its venerable walls. Then they looked out upon the rich green meadows, and the avenue of lofty elms, and Reginald thought it a remarkably fine place, and began already to feel proud at being able to call himself an Eton boy. As the boys were still “up,” that is, in school, the Squire proposed walking down the town to have a look at the Castle, and some of the old places on the way. As they were leaving the building, they met an old man with a vehicle loaded with tarts and buns, and cakes of all sorts. As they passed close to him, he looked hard at the Squire, and said, “Beg pardon, sir, but I think I know you, sir, though it is a good many years since you ate any of my buns.”
“And I am very certain that I know you, old fellow,” answered the Squire, highly delighted. “You are Spankie himself, or I am very much mistaken.”
“You are right, sir, the same, and that young gentleman is your son just come up here; I should have known him in a moment from his likeness to you,” said old Spankie. “Never forget anybody I have once known. Now I think of it, were not you one of those young gentlemen who played the trick to Mr Fowler, I think it was, or one of the masters of his time? What a good joke it was! Ha, ha, ha!”
“What joke do you mean?” asked the Squire. “I remember no good joke that I ever played. I am afraid that I had not wits enough.”
“I’ll tell you, sir; if you were not one of them, it was somebody else,” answered old Spankie, who probably knew that well enough, but wanted to tell a good story to gain time that he might find out, if possible, who the old Etonian was – a fact of which he was in reality perfectly ignorant. “Two of the young gentlemen, tall big lads for their ages, took it into their heads to dress up as foreigners of distinction, with moustaches and beards, and corked eyebrows, and spectacles, and large shirt-collars, with no end of gold chains, and such flash waistcoats, all of satin, and covered over with green and yellow and pink flowers. One was a Greek prince, and the other a Polish count, travelling for the improvement of their own mind, and with the intention of establishing a great public school like Eton in Greece or Turkey, or some outlandish place or other. Well, there they were walking arm in arm through the High Street, looking into the shops and around them on every side, and stopping to admire the prospect whenever there was a prospect to admire, just for all the world like strangers who had never seen the place before. They caught sight of Mr Fowler coming along; so says one to the other, ‘Let’s sell him, and make him show us over the place.’ ‘Agreed,’ answers the other. They had been keeping up all their airs, and they knew that he had seen them, so they marched boldly up to him, and making him a polite bow, says one of them, ‘Saire, I see dat you are one academic gentleman, and if you will be kind to two strangers vill you have de great goodness to show us over dis grand, dis magnificent town?’ Mr Fowler, who was born and bred in Eton, and was very proud of it, was highly delighted, and said that he would have the greatest pleasure in doing what they wished. They knew that, and so they knew when to lay it on the thickest. And so didn’t they just praise the place and the masters, and everything they saw, and a great deal they said that they had heard, till he was quite beside himself. Then they began talking Greek and Latin to him, and if he hadn’t been so pleased he would have found them out. Then they asked all sorts of questions about the school, and he promised to write out all the rules and regulations, and the whole plan on which it was conducted, and a good deal of its history, and all his own ideas about founding a school. The more inclined they found him to write, the more questions requiring answers they plied him with; and ever after they boasted of the long imposition they had set him. They gave him an address of a friend of theirs in London, and begged him to send what he had written there. He did send it, and they got it too, and they used to show his lucubrations with no little pride, and all he had said about the school. He would have been in a rage had he found them out. They asked to see one of the houses just as they were passing their own tutor’s, with whom they knew he was intimate, and they actually made him show them their own rooms. It was a wonder they were not discovered, for there on the table in one of the rooms was a wig and a false pair of moustaches. They hurried out in a great fright, saying that they did not think it was right to intrude on the privacy of any young students. At last, when they had pretty well walked Mr Fowler off his legs, and got tired themselves, they wished him good-bye, with a profusion of thanks, and betook themselves to the Christopher. They had invited him to dine with them at an hour they knew he could not come – not but what they would have been very happy to see him, but they thought the risk was too great – he might have found them out eating. They had a jolly good dinner at the Christopher, and then they paid their bill and waited till dark, when they pulled off their moustaches and beards, and put on pea-coats, slipping out unobserved, and so got back safe to their rooms. One of them told me all about it afterwards, and I couldn’t help thinking you was him, sir.”
The Squire was milch amused, and encouraged old Spankie to continue his narrations.
“Well, sir, if it wasn’t you sold Mr Fowler so cleverly, it surely was you who got up the great donkey race on the Slough road, just outside Eton.”
“Suppose it was me, or suppose it was not, just do you tell my boy here all about it. I like to hear you speak of old times,” answered the Squire.
“Well, sir, the young gentlemen got hold of two fine donkeys, and turned out in regular jockey costume, – caps, silk jackets, top boots, and all. Great swells they looked, and there was no end of boys went out to see them. The whole road was full for a mile or more. A course was formed, and off they set; but donkeys never will run when you want them, or, rather, they always will run when you don’t want them. As ill-luck would have it, who should come by but the Doctor. He wasn’t a man a bit less than the present to play a joke with. What should one of the racers do but run right against his carriage, and make the horses kick and rear, and, in spite of all the unhappy jockey could do, he couldn’t get him away. The Doctor just saw who they were, and though it may be supposed he was in a towering rage, says he quietly enough, ‘Go to your tutors and report yourselves, and come to me this evening.’ Of course they knew that they would get flogged, and so one of them provided himself with a pair of wicket-keeping gloves, and went in quite boldly. ‘It’s my duty to flog you,’ says the Doctor – ‘strip.’ ‘It’s my duty to save my skin,’ says the young gentleman, putting on his gloves quite deliberately; and when the Doctor began, he warded off all the cuts till the master grew weary. Then he handed them to his friend, who put them on and saved himself in the same way. Of course they got all the credit of being flogged, and were laughed at for their pains, till they told how they had saved themselves with their cricketing gloves.”
“Tell that story to the marines,” said the Squire. “However, I dare say some of it is true enough; but I wasn’t one of the jockeys, and I wouldn’t advise my son to imitate them either. However, old friend, I like to hear you talk of bygone days, and here’s a five shilling piece. Let my son take it out in buns and tarts when he has a mind to do so.”
“Thank ye, sir, thank ye,” said old Spankie, and the Squire walked on, knowing that he had secured another friend for Reginald. They hurried on to Windsor Castle, which had been much altered and beautified since the Squire had seen it, and certainly, rising up as it does from its richly-green forest, with its terraces and towers, it has a peculiarly handsome and regal appearance. When they got back, the boys were just coming out from two o’clock absence, and were running off to their dames’ and tutors’ houses. The Squire looked narrowly at them as they passed, to try and find the sons of any of his acquaintance who might be there. Had he written to ascertain the houses they belonged to, he would easily have discovered them. Suddenly Reginald left his father’s side, and ran after a boy whose hand he seized and wrung warmly.
“What, Warrender, are you come here?” asked his friend.
“Indeed I am,” answered Reginald; “but I had no notion that you were here, Power. How very fortunate I am to find you! But come along, I’ll introduce you to my father. He’ll want you to dine with us.”
Of course Power was nothing loth to accept the invitation. He had come up just in time, before he was too old, and had at once taken a fair standing in the school, being in the upper division of the Fourth Form, and about to go into the lower remove. He was, too, in Reginald’s own house, which was a very great satisfaction. The Squire at length found out the son of a friend of his – young Anson, and invited him to join his dinner-party at the Christopher. As he wanted to see the cricketing and boating in the afternoon, he had ordered dinner early; and, saying he might not exactly know what Eton boys of the present day liked, he had left the selection of the dishes to the landlord. A very merry party they were seated round the dinner-table at the Christopher, and ample justice did they all do to the dinner provided. The Squire wished to give the boys the best of everything, so he ordered champagne and claret.
