PART II.
Cuthbert the Foundling.
O fair Devonia!
Land of the brave and leal, how bright thy skies!
How fresh do show thy rich and verdant meads!
How clear the streams! which from thy hills do run:
How grim the tors! which granite rocks do crown:
How sweet the glens! whose depths the forest hides:
How blue the seas! which ruddy rocks do bound:
Fain would I seek amidst such beauty—rest:
And bid the world—Adieu.
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD MANOR HOUSE.
There are few districts in England more picturesque than the southern slopes of Dartmoor; the deeply wooded glens, the brawling mountain torrents, the huge tors with their rock-crowned summits and the mists curling around them, the fertile plains beneath with their deep red soil, the blue ocean girdling all with its azure belt; all these unite to form a picture, which once seen, recurs again and again to the memory, while life lingers.
A few years after the scenes recorded in the first part of this tragical history, a young traveller left the inn of the “Rose and Crown,” Bovey Tracey, late one September evening, bound for the moorland. The sun was sinking towards the western heights which bounded the plain, the giant bulwarks of the moorland—Hey Tor, with its fantastic crown of gigantic rocks, Rippon Tor, with its cairn of stones,—were already tinged with the glorious hues of sunset, and the purple heather which covered their slopes, looked its best in the tints of the departing luminary.
Our traveller was a youth who had perhaps seen some twenty summers, but whose smooth face was yet undignified by the beard of manhood; his attire was of the picturesque style made familiar to us by the pencil of Holbein: over a close-fitting doublet and nether garments hung a mantle, flowing open and sumptuously embroidered; his velvet cap was bound round with a golden band, and adorned with a bright feather and a jewelled clasp, a silver-hilted sword hung by his side.
“You must ride quickly, Master Trevannion, or you will hardly climb the pass before dark, and it is a bad road by the side of the Becky, especially opposite the fall,” said the landlord, kindly.
“I know every foot of it, my Boniface, and so does my steed; never fear for us.”
“It will be dark early, and perhaps wet; look at that cap of mist upon Hey Tor.”
The youth glanced at the little cloud. “I shall be home before it descends,” he said; “Good night, landlord,” and he rode quickly away.
“Who is yonder stripling?” said a dark-browed stranger, as the landlord re-entered the inn.
“The son and heir of Sir Walter Trevannion,” replied the landlord respectfully, for the stranger had announced himself as “travelling on the King’s business,” and was evidently a “man of worship.”
“And how do you name him?”
“Cuthbert Trevannion, some day to be Sir Cuthbert, when Sir Walter, now past his fiftieth year, is gathered to his fathers.”
“And this Sir Walter, what was he doing in his father’s life-time?”
“That is hardly known—some say that he was a monk before bluff King Hal pulled down the rookeries, and that he keeps up the old cloister life with a few brethren in the old hall, which he seldom leaves; but that can hardly have been the case, for then how could he have been married and become possessed of so goodly a son?”
“And the son—does he confine himself much to the hall?”
“Oh, he hunts and hawks like other young men, only he keeps somewhat to the home preserves, and seldom shows abroad.”
“Are there any other children?”
“No, this is the only child.”
“And the mother?”
“Died before Sir Walter came home.”
“What year was that?”
“I cannot remember—but——”
“Go to, refresh thy memory with a cup of thine own best sack at my expense, it is before thee on the table.”
“Well, I think it was in forty.”
“And this youngster seems about twenty years old; he would have been a boy of fourteen then.”
“Your worship has some interest in him?”
“Nay, only a passing recollection.”
We will leave the worthies to their talk, and follow the traveller.
He had now ridden about three miles from Bovey, when he entered a long pass between two ridges of hills; by his side a trout stream, called the Becky, tumbled along, larch trees grew on the banks, and the heights above were crowded with dwarf oaks, beeches, and other forest trees.
Whistling to himself he rode along, hastening to get home ere it was quite dark, for the roads were both difficult and dangerous, save to those who knew them well.
Soon the valley contracted, and there was only room for the torrent and the road, while the craggy wooded heights rose yet more lofty above: sometimes, over their summits could be seen the rounded heights of the moorland.
The tumbling of a cascade to the left, was heard as the road parted from the river, and began to ascend a dark pass, where the faint decaying light was almost excluded by the foliage.
In devious zig-zags the road ascended to the upper plateau, and our rider, the summit attained, looked back at the valley. It was a mass of foliage, which hid the depth; the upper branches glimmered in the rays of the departing sun which was just disappearing behind a wild-looking hill, whereon appeared a mass of rocks, so closely resembling the ruins of a castle, that it needed a keen eye to discover the deception at a glance.
But the rocks of Hound Tor were too familiar to our youthful friend to detain him a moment, and riding through a few meadows, he drew up at the gate of an ancient manor house, beneath the slope of a rock-clad hill, which was crowned by a mass of granite resembling the human form, and from the protuberance of what represented the nasal organ, called “Bowerman’s Nose.”
The reader will search in vain for that manor house now; the park in which it stood has been disafforested, and subdivided into numerous farm holdings; the stones which formed that mighty wall which encircled the pleasaunce or garden, or which composed the stately pile within, may yet exist amidst the materials of many cottages, where beside poverty and squalor one beholds a carved architrave, or shattered column; but we are writing of days long gone by.
Cuthbert Trevannion, to give him the name by which mine host of the “Rose and Crown” distinguished him, rode up an avenue, and throwing the bridle of his horse to a groom who stood ready to receive it, asked—
“Is my father at leisure?”
“The supper bell has just sounded.”
Retiring for one moment to wipe off the sweat and dust of the road, our youth entered the “refectory,” as they called it at that house.
It was indeed to all appearance a monastic house—within a room, wainscotted with dark oak, nine or ten grave old men sat on each side of the board, and at the head sat Sir Walter Trevannion; all present wore the dress of the Benedictine order, which, banished from the stately abbeys founded for the exercise of its splendid worship, lingered on by the charity of a few worthy knights or nobles in many a similar asylum, where, until death the poor brethren still kept up the exercise of their self-discipline.
To this, Henry had no objection, now that he had their money; for had not the statute of the six articles just declared that vows of celibacy were binding until death; a piece of cruel sarcasm, when everything which could render them tolerable, had been taken away, so far as the power of the crown extended.
During the supper, all were silent, while one of the brethren read a homily of S. Augustine; but the meal ended, Sir Walter beckoned to his son to follow him into the study.
But it is time that we drop the mask, and explain ourselves.
Cuthbert Trevannion, now so called, was our Cuthbert; Sir Walter was that Ambrose, the bearer of the ring, who had received him into his care, as related at the conclusion of the former part of this tale; where he had passed six eventful years: years which had witnessed the dastardly end of the life of the “malleus monachorum,” Cromwell;[28] the divorce of one queen, the execution of another, and had seen the tyrant pass into the last stage of his sanguinary reign—burning the Reformers, and butchering the Romanists who would not acknowledge his supremacy; the only tyrant upon record, who had the privilege of persecuting both sides at once.
The inn-keeper’s account of Sir Walter was true so far as it went; we will supply the necessary details.
He was the second son of Sir Arthur Trevannion, the head of an old Devonian family, but against the will of his father he had assumed the Benedictine habit, and become the Prior of the famous Abbey of Furness, in the far north, under the name of Ambrose, so that his father and he did not meet for many many years.
Under that name he became implicated in the rising called the Pilgrimage of Grace, and when his Abbey was dissolved found refuge abroad, where the news of his elder brother’s death reached him. It was then thought expedient that he should return home in the guise of a layman, where owing to the fact that he had taken the monastic vows under an assumed name, his identity with the Father Ambrose of Furness, proscribed by the government, was not suspected, and he was received by his father as a returned prodigal, fresh from abroad.
The old knight only survived his return a few months, and for the sake of offering a home to the poor houseless Benedictines whom he gathered round him, Father Ambrose accepted the facts of his position, and became, without question, Sir Walter Trevannion of Becky Hall, and the protector of Cuthbert, to whom he had conceived so great an attachment (which the lad well deserved) that he adopted him as his son, whereas his first intention had been to place him in a more subordinate position until he should shew himself worthy of higher promotion.
Thus to the outward world he was the country knight, but when the gates were shut and he was alone with his brethren, he was Prior Ambrose.
Thus six uneventful years—uneventful, that is, to them—had passed away, in the quietude of their moorland home, beneath the shade of the mighty hills, far from the scenes of political strife.
And there Cuthbert’s education had been completed; when we reintroduced him to our readers he was already in the bloom of early manhood.
“Happy the people, who have no history,” says an old well-worn proverb; for history is only interesting when it deals with those days of war and excitement which were miserable to contemporaries, but lend a charm to tradition: “nothing in the papers to-day,” say we moderns, almost vexed that no train has run off the lines, no steam-boat exploded, no murderer exercised his art, to fill the columns.
Similarly those six years of Cuthbert’s past life would have no interest for the reader, but they had been happy ones to him—
“The torrent’s smoothness ere it dash below.”
And often in later years did he recall them with regret.
And although he and his adopted father knew it not, another period of deep excitement and great trial lay before them, upon the eve of which we draw up our curtain and arrange our dramatis personæ.
