Kitabı oku: «The Pigeon Pie», sayfa 4
CHAPTER V
The vigils of the night had been as unwonted for Lucy as for her sister, and she slept soundly till Rose was already up and dressed. Her first reflection was on the strange sights she had seen, followed by a doubt whether they were real, or only a dream; but she was certain it was no such thing; she recollected too well the chill of the stone to her feet, and the sound of the blasts of wind. She wondered over it, wished to make out the cause, but decided that she should only be scolded for peeping, and she had better keep her own counsel.
That Lucy should keep silence when she thought she knew more than other people was, however, by no means to be expected; and though she would say not a word to her mother or Rose, of whom she was afraid, she was quite ready to make the most of her knowledge with Eleanor.
When she came down stairs she found Walter, with his elbows on the table and his book before him, learning the task which his mother required of him every day; Eleanor had just come in with her lapfull of the still lingering flowers, and called her to help to make them up into nosegays.
Lucy came and sat down by her on the floor, but paid little attention to the flowers, so intent was she on showing her knowledge.
“Ah! you don’t know what I have seen.”
“I dare say it is only some nonsense,” said Eleanor, gravely, for she was rather apt to plume herself on being steadier than her elder sister.
“It is no nonsense,” said Lucy. “I know what I know.”
Before Eleanor had time to answer this speech, the mystery of which was enhanced by a knowing little nod of the head, young Mr. Enderby made his appearance in the hall, with a civil good-morning to Walter, which the boy hardly deigned to acknowledge by a gruff reply and little nod, and then going on to the little girls, renewed with them yesterday’s war of words. “Weaving posies, little ladies?”
“Not for rebels,” replied Lucy, pertly.
“May I not have one poor daisy?”
“Not one; the daisy is a royal flower.”
“If I take one?”
“Rebels take what they can’t get fairly,” said Lucy, with the smartness of a forward child; and Sylvester, laughing heartily, continued, “What would General Cromwell say to such a nest of little malignants?”
“That is an ugly name,” said Eleanor.
“Quite as pretty as Roundhead.”
“Yes, but we don’t deserve it.”
“Not when you make that pretty face so sour?”
“Ah!” interposed Lucy, “she is sour because I won’t tell her my secret of the pie.”
“Oh, what?” said Eleanor.
“Now I have you!” cried Lucy, delighted. “I know what became of the pigeon pie.”
In extreme alarm and anger, Walter turned round as he caught these words. “Lucy, naughty child!” he began, in a voice of thunder; then, recollecting the danger of exciting further suspicion, he stammered, “what—what—what—are you doing here? Go along to mother.”
Lucy rubbed her fingers into her eyes, and answered sharply, in a pettish tone, that she was doing no harm. Eleanor, in amazement, asked what could be the matter.
“Intolerable!” exclaimed Walter. “So many girls always in the way?”
Sylvester Enderby could not help smiling, as he asked, “Is that all you have to complain of?”
“I could complain of something much worse,” muttered Walter. “Get away, Lucy?”
“I won’t at your bidding, sir.”
To Walter’s great relief, Rose entered at that moment, and all was smooth and quiet; Lucy became silent, and the conversation was kept up in safe terms between Rose and the young officer. The colonel, it appeared, was so much better that he intended to leave Forest Lea that very day; and it was not long before he came down, and presently afterwards Lady Woodley, looking very pale and exhausted, for her anxieties had kept her awake all night.
After a breakfast on bread, cheese, rashers of bacon, and beer, the horses were brought to the door, and the colonel took his leave of Lady Woodley, thanking her much for her hospitality.
“I wish it had been better worth accepting,” said she.
“I wish it had, though not for my own sake,” said the colonel. “I wish you would allow me to attempt something in your favour. One thing, perhaps, you will deign to accept. Every royalist house, especially those belonging to persons engaged at Worcester, is liable to be searched, and to have soldiers quartered on them, to prevent fugitives from being harboured there. I will send Sylvester at once to obtain a protection for you, which may prevent you from being thus disturbed.”
“That will be a kindness, indeed,” said Lady Woodley, hardly able to restrain the eagerness with which she heard the offer made, that gave the best hope of saving her son. She was not certain that the colonel had not some suspicion of the true state of the case, and would not take notice, unwilling to ruin the son of his friend, and at the same time reluctant to fail in his duty to his employers.
He soon departed; Mistress Lucy’s farewell to Sylvester being thus: “Good-bye, Mr. Roundhead, rebel, crop-eared traitor.” At which Sylvester and his father turned and laughed, and their two soldiers looked very much astonished.
Lady Woodley called Lucy at once, and spoke to her seriously on her forwardness and impertinence. “I could tell you, Lucy, that it is not like a young lady, but I must tell you more, it is not like a young Christian maiden. Do you remember the text that I gave you to learn a little while ago—the ornament fit for a woman?”
Lucy hung her head, and with tears filling her eyes, as her mother prompted her continually, repeated the text in a low mumbling voice, half crying: “Whose adorning, let it not be the putting on of gold, or the plaiting of hair, or the putting on of apparel, but let it be the hidden man of the heart, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”
“And does my little Lucy think she showed that ornament when she pushed herself forward to talk idle nonsense, and make herself be looked at and taken notice of?”
Lucy put her finger in her mouth; she did not like to be scolded, as she called it, gentle as her mother was, and she would not open her mind to take in the kind reproof.
Lady Woodley took the old black-covered Bible, and finding two of the verses in S. James about the government of the tongue, desired Lucy to learn them by heart before she went out of the house; and the little girl sat down with them in the window-seat, in a cross impatient mood, very unfit for learning those sacred words. “She had done no harm,” she thought; “she could not help it if the young gentleman would talk to her!”
So there she sat, with the Bible in her lap, alone, for Lady Woodley was so harassed and unwell, in consequence of her anxieties, that Rose had persuaded her to go and lie down on her bed, since it would be better for her not to try to see Edmund till the promised protection had arrived, lest suspicion should be excited. Rose was busy about her household affairs; Eleanor, a handy little person, was helping her; and Walter and Charles were gone out to gather apples for a pudding which she had promised them.
Lucy much wished to be with them; and after a long brooding over her ill-temper, it began to wear out, not to be conquered, but to depart of itself; she thought she might as well learn her lesson and have done with it; so by way of getting rid of the task, not of profiting by the warning it conveyed, she hurried through the two verses ending with—“Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth!”
As soon as she could say them perfectly, she raced upstairs, and into her mother’s room, gave her the book, and repeated them at her fastest pace. Poor Lady Woodley was too weary and languid to exert herself to speak to the little girl about her unsuitable manner, or to try to bring the lesson home to her; she dismissed her, only saying, “I hope, my dear, you will remember this,” and away ran Lucy, first to the orchard in search of her brothers, and not finding them there, round and round the garden and pleasance. Edmund, in his hiding-place, heard the voice calling “Walter! Charlie!” and peeping out, caught a glimpse of a little figure, her long frock tucked over her arm, and long locks of dark hair blowing out from under her small, round, white cap. What a pleasure it was to him to have that one view of his little sister!
At last, tired with her search, Lucy returned to the house, and there found Deborah ironing at the long table in the hall, and crooning away her one dismal song of “Barbara Allen’s cruelty.”
“So you can sing again, Deb,” she began, “now the Roundheads are gone and Diggory come back?”
“Little girls should not meddle with what does not concern them,” answered Deborah.
“You need not call me a little girl,” said Lucy. “I am almost eleven years old; and I know a secret, a real secret.”
“A secret, Mistress Lucy? Who would tell their secrets to the like of you?” said Deborah, contemptuously.
“No one told me; I found it out for myself!” cried Lucy, in high exultation. “I know what became of the pigeon pie that we thought Rose ate up!”
“Eh? Mistress Lucy!” exclaimed Deborah, pausing in her ironing, full of curiosity.
Lucy was delighted to detail the whole of what she had observed.
“Well!” cried Deborah, “if ever I heard tell the like! That slip of a thing out in all the blackness of the night! I should be afraid of my life of the ghosts and hobgoblins. Oh! I had rather be set up for a mark for all the musketeers in the Parliament army, than set one foot out of doors after dark!”
As Deborah spoke, Walter came into the hall. He saw that Lucy had observed something, and was anxious every time she opened her lips. This made him rough and sharp with her, and he instantly exclaimed, “How now, Lucy, still gossipping?”
“You are so cross, I can’t speak a word for you,” said Lucy, fretfully, walking out of the room, while Walter, in his usual imperious way, began to shout for Diggory and his boots. “Diggory, knave!”
“Anon, sir!” answered the dogged voice.
“Bring them, I say, you laggard!”
“Coming, sir, coming.”
“Coming, are you, you snail?” cried Walter, impatiently. “Your heels are tardier now than they were at Worcester!”
“A man can’t do more nor he can do, sir,” said Diggory, sullenly, as he plodded into the hall.
“Answering again, lubber?” said Walter. “Is this what you call cleaned? You are not fit for your own shoe-blacking trade! Get along with you!” and he threw the boots at Diggory in a passion. “I must wear them, though, as they are, or wait all day. Bring them to me again.”
Walter had some idle notion in his head that it was Puritanical to speak courteously to servants, and despising Diggory for his cowardice and stupidity, he was especially overbearing with him, and went on rating him all the time he was putting on his boots, to go out and try to catch some fish for the morrow’s dinner, which was likely to be but scanty. As soon as he was gone, Diggory, who had listened in sulky silence, began to utter his complaints.
“Chicken-heart, moon-calf, awkward lubber, those be the best words a poor fellow gets. I can tell Master Walter that these are no times for gentlefolks to be hectoring, especially when they haven’t a penny to pay wages with.”
“You learnt that in the wars, Diggory,” said Deborah, turning round, for, grumble as she might herself, she could not bear to have a word said by anyone else against her lady’s family, and loved to scold her sweetheart, Diggory. “Never mind Master Walter. If he has not a penny in his pocket, and the very green coat to his back is cut out of his grandmother’s farthingale, more’s the pity. How should he show he is a gentleman but by hectoring a bit now and then, ’specially to such a rogue as thou, coming back when thy betters are lost. That is always the way, as I found when I lost my real silver crown, and kept my trumpery Parliament bit.”
“Ah, Deb!” pleaded Diggory, “thou knowst not what danger is! I thought thou wouldst never have set eyes on poor Diggory again.”
“Much harm would that have been,” retorted Mrs. Deb, tossing her head. “D’ye think I’d have broke my heart? That I’ll never do for a runaway.”
“’Twas time to run when poor Farmer Ewins was cut down, holloaing for quarter, and Master Edmund’s brains lying strewn about on the ground, for all the world like a calf’s.”
“’Tis your own brains be like a calf’s,” said Deborah. “I’d bargain to eat all of Master Edmund’s brains you ever saw.”
“He’s as dead as a red herring.”
“I say he is as life-like as you or I.”
“I say I saw him stretched out, covered with blood, and a sword-cut on his head big enough to be the death of twenty men.”
“Didn’t that colonel man, as they call him, see him alive and merry long after? It’s my belief that Master Edmund is not a dozen miles off.”
“Master Edmund! hey, Deb? I’ll never believe that, after what I’ve seen at Worcester.”
“Then pray why does Mistress Rose save a whole pigeon out of the pie, hide it in her lap, and steal out of the house with it at midnight? Either Master Edmund is in hiding, or some other poor gentleman from the wars, and I verily believe it is Master Edmund himself; so a fig for his brains or yours, and there’s for you, for a false-tongued runaway! Coming, mistress, coming!” and away ran Deborah at a call from Rose.
Now Deborah was faithful to the backbone, and would have given all she had in the world, almost her life itself, for her lady and the children; she was a good and honest woman in the main, but tongue and temper were two things that she had never learnt to restrain, and she had given her love to the first person by whom it was sought, without consideration whether he was worthy of affection or not. That Diggory was a sullen, ill-conditioned, selfish fellow, was evident to everyone else; but he had paid court to Deborah, and therefore the foolish woman had allowed herself to be taken with him, see perfections in him, promise to become his wife, and confide in him.
When Deborah left the hall, Diggory returned to his former employment of chopping wood, and began to consider very intently for him.
He had really believed, at the moment of his panic-terror, that he saw Edmund Woodley fall, and had at once taken flight, without attempting to afford him any assistance. The story of the brains had, of course, been invented on the spur of the moment, by way of excusing his flight, and he was obliged to persist in the falsehood he had once uttered, though he was not by any means certain that it had been his master whom he saw killed, especially after hearing Colonel Enderby’s testimony. And now there came alluringly before him the promise of the reward offered for the discovery of the fugitive cavaliers, the idea of being able to rent and stock poor Ewins’s farm, and setting up there with Deborah. It was money easily come by, he thought, and he would like to be revenged on Master Walter, and show him that the lubber and moon-calf could do some harm, after all. A relenting came across him as he thought of his lady and Mistress Rose, though he had no personal regard for Edmund, who had never lived at Forest Lea; and his stolid mind was too much enclosed in selfishness to admit much feeling for anyone. Besides, it might not be Master Edmund; he was probably killed; it might be one of the lords in the battle, or even the King himself, and that would be worth £1,000. Master Cantwell called them all tyrants and sons of Belial, and what not; and though Dr. Bathurst said differently, who was to know what was right? Dr. Bathurst had had his day, and this was Cantwell’s turn. There was a comedown now of feathered hats, and point collars, and curled hair; and leathern jerkin should have its day. And as for being an informer, he would keep his own counsel; at any rate, the reward he would have. It was scarcely likely to be a hanging matter, after all; and if the gentleman, whoever he might be, did chance to be taken, he would get off scot free, no harm done to him. “Diggory Stokes, you’re a made man!” he finished, throwing his bill-hook from him.
Ah! Lucy, Lucy, you little thought of the harm your curiosity and chattering had done, as you saw Diggory stealing along the side of the wood, in the direction leading to Chichester!
CHAPTER VI
In the afternoon Lady Woodley was so much better as to be able to come downstairs, and all the party sat round the fire in the twilight. Walter was just come in from his fishing, bringing a basket of fine trout; Eleanor and Charles were admiring their beautiful red spots, Lucy wondering what made him so late, while he cast a significant look at his eldest sister, showing her that he had been making a visit to Edmund.
At that moment a loud authoritative knocking was heard at the door; Walter shouted to Diggory to open it, and was answered by Deborah’s shrill scream from the kitchen, “He’s not here, sir; I’ve not seen him since you threw your boots at him, sir.”
Another thundering knock brought Deborah to open the door; and what was the dismay of the mother and children as there entered six tall men, their buff coats, steeple-crowned hats, plain collars, and thick calf-skin boots, marking them as Parliamentary soldiers. With a shriek of terror the little ones clung round their mother, while he who, by his orange scarf, was evidently the commanding officer, standing in the middle of the hall, with his hat on, announced, in a Puritanical tone, “We are here by order of his Excellency, General Cromwell, to search for and apprehend the body of the desperate malignant Edmund Woodley, last seen in arms against the Most High Court of Parliament. Likewise to arrest the person of Dame Mary Woodley, widow, suspected of harbouring and concealing traitors:” and he advanced to lay his hand upon her. Walter, in an impulse of passion, rushed forward, and aimed a blow at him with the butt-end of the fishing-rod; but it was the work of a moment to seize the boy and tie his hands, while his mother earnestly implored the soldier to have pity on him, and excuse his thoughtless haste to protect her.
The officer sat down in the arm-chair, and without replying to Lady Woodley, ordered a soldier to bring the boy before him, and spoke thus:—“Hear me, son of an ungodly seed. So merciful are the lessons of the light that thou contemnest, that I will even yet overlook and forgive the violence wherewith thou didst threaten my life, so thou wilt turn again, and confess where thou hast hidden the bloody-minded traitor.”
“This house harbours no traitor,” answered Walter, undauntedly.
“If thou art too hardened to confess,” continued the officer, frowning, and speaking slowly and sternly, as he kept his eyes steadily fixed on Walter, “if thou wilt not reveal his hiding-place, I lead thee hence to abide the penalty of attempted murder.”
“I am quite ready,” answered Walter, returning frown for frown, and not betraying how his heart throbbed.
The officer signed to the soldier, who roughly dragged him aside by the cord that tied his hands, cutting them severely, though he disdained to show any sign of pain.
“Young maiden,” continued the rebel, turning to Rose, “what sayest thou? Wilt thou see thy brother led away to death, when the breath of thy mouth might save him?”
Poor Rose turned as pale as death, but her answer was steady: “I will say nothing.”
“Little ones, then,” said the officer, fiercely, “speak, or you shall taste the rod. Do you know where your brother is?”
“No—no,” sobbed Lucy; and her mother added, “They know nothing, sir.”
“It is loss of time to stand parleying with women and children,” said the officer, rising. “Here,” to one of his men, “keep the door. Let none quit the chamber, and mark the children’s talk. The rest with me. Where is the fellow that brought the tidings?”
Diggory, who had slunk out of sight, was pushed forward by two of the soldiers, and at the same time there was a loud scream from Deborah. “Oh! Diggory, is it you? Oh! my Lady, my Lady, forgive me! I meant no harm! Oh! who would have thought it?” And in an agony of distress, she threw her apron over her face, and, sinking on the bench, rocked herself to and fro, sobbing violently.
In the meantime, the officer and his men, all but the sentinel, had left the room to search for the fugitive, leaving Lady Woodley sitting exhausted and terrified in her chair, the little ones clinging around her, Walter standing opposite, with his hands bound; Rose stood by him, her arm round his neck, proud of his firmness, but in dreadful terror for him, and in such suspense for Edmund, that her whole being seemed absorbed in agonised prayer. Deborah’s sobs, and the children’s frightened weeping, were all the sounds that could be heard; Rose was obliged to attempt to soothe them, but her first kind word to Deborah produced a fresh burst of violent weeping, and then a loud lamentation: “Oh! the rogue—the rogue. If I could have dreamt it!”
“What has she done?” exclaimed Walter, impatiently. “Come, stop your crying. What have you done, Deb?”
“I thought—Oh! if I had known what was in the villain!” continued Deborah, “I’d sooner have bit out my tongue than have said one word to him about the pigeon pie.”
“Pigeon pie!” repeated Rose.
Lucy now gave a cry, for she was, with all her faults, a truth-telling child. “Mother! mother! I told Deb about the pigeon pie! Oh, what have I done? Was it for Edmund? Is Edmund here?”
And to increase the danger and perplexity, the other two children exclaimed together, “Is Edmund here?”
“Hush, hush, my dears, be quiet; I cannot answer you now,” whispered Lady Woodley, trying to silence them by caresses, and looking with terror at the rigid, stern guard, who, instead of remaining at the door where he had been posted, had come close up to them, and sat himself down at the end of the table, as if to catch every word they uttered.
Eleanor and Charles obeyed their mother’s command that they should be silent; Rose took Lucy on her lap, let her rest her head on her shoulder, and whispered to her that she should hear and tell all another time, but she must be quiet now, and listen. Deborah kept her apron over her face, and Walter, leaning his shoulder against the wall, stood gazing at them all; and while he was intently watching for every sound that could enable him to judge whether the search was successful or not, at the same time his heart was beating and his head swimming at the threat of the rebel. Was he to die? To be taken away from that bright world, from sunshine, youth, and health, from his mother, and all of them, and be laid, a stiff mangled corpse, in some cold, dark, unregarded grave; his pulses, that beat so fast, all still and silent—senseless, motionless, like the birds he had killed? And that was not all: that other world! To enter on what would last for ever and ever and ever, on a state which he had never dwelt on or realised to himself, filled him with a blank, shuddering awe; and next came a worse, a sickening thought: if his feeling for the bliss of heaven was almost distaste, could he be fit for it? could he dare to hope for it? It was his Judge Whom he was about to meet, and he had been impatient and weary of Bible and Catechism, and Dr. Bathurst’s teaching; he had been inattentive and careless at his prayers; he had been disobedient and unruly, violent, and unkind! Such a horror and agony came over the poor boy, so exceeding a dread of death, that he was ready at that moment to struggle to do anything to save himself; but there came the recollection that the price of his rescue must be the betrayal of Edmund. He would almost have spoken at that instant; the next he sickened at the thought. Never, never—he could not, would not; better not live at all than be a traitor! He was too confused and anxious to pray, for he had not taught himself to fix his attention in quiet moments. He would not speak before the rebel soldier; but only looked with an earnest gaze at his sister, who, as their eyes met, understood all it conveyed.
His mother, after the first moment’s fright, had reassured herself somewhat on his account; he was so mere a boy that it was not likely that Algernon Sydney, who then commanded at Chichester, would put him to death; a short imprisonment was the worst that was likely to befall him; and though that was enough to fill her with terror and anxiety, it could at that moment be scarcely regarded in comparison with her fears for her eldest son.
A long time passed away, so long, that they began to hope that the enemies might be baffled in their search, in spite of Diggory’s intimate knowledge of every nook and corner. They had been once to the shrubbery, and had been heard tramping back to the stable, where they were welcome to search as long as they chose, then to the barn-yard, all over the house from garret to cellar. Was it over? Joy! joy! But the feet were heard turning back to the pleasance, as though to recommence the search, and ten minutes after the steps came nearer. The rebel officer entered the hall first, but, alas! behind him came, guarded by two soldiers, Edmund Woodley himself, his step firm, his head erect, and his hands unbound. His mother sank back in her chair, and he, going straight up to her, knelt on one knee before her, saying, “Mother, dear mother, your blessing. Let me see your face again.”
She threw her arms round his neck, “My son! and is it thus we meet?”
“We only meet as we parted,” he answered firmly and cheerfully. “Still sufferers in the same good cause; still, I trust, with the same willing hearts.”
“Come, sir,” said the officer, “I must see you safely bestowed for the night.”
“One moment, gentlemen,” entreated Lady Woodley. “It is six years since I saw my son, and this may be our last meeting.” She led him to the light, and looked earnestly up into his face, saying, with a smile, which had in it much of pride and pleasure, as well as sadness, “How you are altered, Edmund! See, Rose, how brown he is, and how much darker his hair has grown; and does not his moustache make him just like your father?”
“And my little sisters,” said Edmund. “Ha! Lucy, I know your little round face.”
“Oh,” sobbed Lucy, “is it my fault? Can you pardon me? The pigeon pie!”
“What does she mean?” asked Edmund, turning to Rose.
“I saw you take it out at night, Rose,” said poor Lucy. “I told Deb!”
“And poor Deborah,” added Rose, “from the same thoughtlessness repeated her chatter to Diggory, who has betrayed us.”
“The cowardly villain,” cried Walter, who had come forward to the group round his brother.
“Hush, Walter,” said Edmund. “But what do I see? Your hands bound? You a prisoner?”
“Poor Walter was rash enough to attempt resistance,” said his mother.
“So, sir,” said Edmund, turning to the rebel captain, “you attach great importance to the struggles of a boy of thirteen!”
“A blow with the butt-end of a fishing-rod is no joke from boy or man,” answered the officer.
“When last I served in England,” continued the cavalier, “Cromwell’s Ironsides did not take notice of children with fishing-rods. You can have no warrant, no order, or whatever you pretend to act by, against him.”
