Chapter Six.
Peppered broth.
“Father! O Father! Must I forgive Uncle Edward? I don’t see how I can.”
“I’m afraid you must, Christie, if you look to follow Christ.”
“But how can I? To use dear Aunt Alice so cruelly!”
“How can God forgive thee and me, Christie, that have used His blessed Son far, far worser than Uncle Edward hath used Aunt Alice, or ever could use her?”
“Father, have you forgiven him?”
It was a hard question. Next after his little Christie herself, the dearest thing in the world to Roger Hall was his sister Alice. He hesitated an instant.
“No, you haven’t,” said Christie, in a tone of satisfaction. “Then I’m sure I don’t need if you haven’t.”
“Dost thou mean, then, to follow Roger Hall, instead of the Lord Jesus?”
Christie parried that difficult query by another.
“Father, love you Uncle Edward?”
“I am trying, Christie.”
“I should think you’d have to try about a hundred million years!” said Christie. “I feel as if I should be as glad as could be, if a big bear would just come and eat him up!—or a great lion, I would not mind which it was, if it wouldn’t leave the least bit of him.”
“But if Christ died for Uncle Edward, my child?”
“I don’t see how He could. I wouldn’t.”
“No, dear heart, I can well believe that. ‘Scarce will any man die for a righteous man... But God setteth out His love toward us, seeing that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ And He left us ‘an ensample,’ my Christie, ‘that we should follow His steps.’”
“I can’t, Father; I can’t!”
“Surely thou canst not, without the Lord make thee able. Thou canst never follow Christ in thine own strength. But ‘His strength is made perfect through weakness.’ I know well, my dear heart, ’tis vastly harder to forgive them that inflict suffering on them we love dearly—far harder than when we be the sufferers ourselves. But God can enable us to do even that, Christie.”
Christie’s long sigh, as she turned on her cushion, said that it was almost too hard for her to believe. But before she had found an answer, the door opened, and Mrs Tabitha Hall appeared behind it.
“Well, Roger Hall, how love you your good brother-in-law this morrow?” was her greeting. “I love not his action in no wise, sister.”
“What mean you by that? Can you set a man’s action in one basket, and himself in another? It’s a strain beyond E-la, that is.” (See note.)
“We’re trying to forgive Uncle Edward, Aunt,” said Christie from her couch, in a rather lugubrious tone.
“Pleasant work, isn’t it?” was Aunt Tabitha’s answer. “I haven’t forgiven him, nor tried neither; nor I amn’t going.”
“But Father says we must.”
“Very good; let him set us the ensample.”
Aunt Tabitha made herself comfortable in Mr Hall’s big chair, which he vacated for her convenience. By her side she set down her large market-basket, covered with a clean cloth, from which at one end protruded the legs of two geese, and at the other the handle of a new frying-pan.
“I’ve been up to see him this morrow; I thought he’d best not come short o’ bitters. But he’s off to Cranbrook with his bay horse—at the least so saith Mall—and I shall need to tarry while he comes back. It’ll not hurt: bitters never lose strength by standing. I’ll have it out with him again, come this even.”
“Best not, Tabitha. It should maybe turn to more bitters for poor Alice, if you anger him yet further. And we have no right to interfere.”
“What mean you by that, Roger Hall?” demanded Mistress Tabitha, in warlike tones. “No right, quotha! If that isn’t a man, all o’er! I’ve a right to tell my brother-in-law he’s an infamous rascal, and I’ll do it, whether I have or no! No right, marry come up! Where else is he to hear it, prithee? You talk of forgiving him, forsooth, and Alice never stands up to him an inch, and as for that Tom o’ mine, why, he can scarce look his own cat in the face. Deary weary me! where would you all be, I’d like to know, without I looked after you? You’d let yourselves be trod on and ground down into the dust, afore you’d do so much as squeal. That’s not my way o’ going on, and you’d best know it.”
“Thank you, Sister Tabitha; I think I knew it before,” said Mr Hall quietly.
“Please, Aunt Tabitha—” Christie stopped and flushed.
“Well, child, what’s ado?”
“Please, Aunt, if you wouldn’t!” suggested Christie lucidly. “You see, I’ve got to forgive Uncle Edward, and when you talk like that, it makes me boil up, and I can’t.”
“Boil up, then, and boil o’er,” said Aunt Tabitha, half-amused. “I’ll tarry to forgive him, at any rate, till he says he’s sorry.”
“But Father says God didn’t wait till we were sorry, before the Lord Jesus died for us, Aunt Tabitha.”
“You learn your gram’mer to suck eggs!” was the reply. “Well, if you’re both in that mind, I’d best be off; I shall do no good with you.” And Aunt Tabitha swung the heavy market-basket on her strong arm as lightly as if it were only a feather’s weight. “Good-morrow; I trust you’ll hear reason, Roger Hall, next time I see you. Did you sup your herbs, Christie, that I steeped for you?”
“Yes, Aunt, I thank you,” said Christabel meekly, a vivid recollection of the unsavoury flavour of the dose coming over her, and creating a fervent hope that Aunt Tabitha would be satisfied without repeating it.
“Wormwood, and betony, and dandelion, and comfrey,” said Aunt Tabitha. “Maybe, now, you’d best have a change; I’ll lay some camomile and ginger to steep for you, with a pinch of balm—that’ll be pleasant enough to sup.”
Christabel devoutly hoped it would be better than the last, but she wisely refrained from saying so.
“As for Edward Benden, I’ll mix him some wormwood and rue,” resumed Aunt Tabitha grimly: “and I’ll not put honey in it neither. Good-morrow. You’ve got to forgive him, you know: much good may it do you! It’ll not do him much, without I mistake.”
And Aunt Tabitha and her basket marched away. Looking from the window, Mr Hall descried Mr Benden coming up a side road on the bay horse, which he had evidently not succeeded in selling. He laughed to himself as he saw that Tabitha perceived the enemy approaching, and evidently prepared for combat. Mr Benden, apparently, did not see her till he was nearly close to her, when he at once spurred forward to get away, pursued by the vindictive Tabitha, whose shrill voice was audible as she ran, though the words could not be heard. They were not, however, difficult to imagine. Of course the horse soon distanced the woman. Aunt Tabitha, with a shake of her head and another of her clenched fist at the retreating culprit, turned back for her basket, which she had set down on the bank to be rid of its weight in the pursuit.
Mr Benden’s reflections were not so pleasant as they might have been, and they were no pleasanter for having received curt and cold welcome that morning from several of his acquaintances in Cranbrook. People manifestly disapproved of his recent action. There were many who sympathised but little with Alice Benden’s opinions, and would even have been gratified by the detection and punishment of a heretic, who were notwithstanding disgusted and annoyed that a quiet, gentle, and generally respected gentlewoman should be denounced to the authorities by her own husband. He, of all men, should have shielded and screened her. Even Justice Roberts had nearly as much as told him so. Mr Benden felt himself a semi-martyr. The world was hard on disinterested virtue, and had no sympathy with self-denial. It is true, the world did not know his sufferings at the hands of Mary, who could not send up a decent hash—and who was privately of opinion that an improper hash, or no hash at all, was quite good enough for the man who had accused her dear mistress to the authorities. Mr Benden was growing tired of disinterested virtue, which was its own reward, and a very poor one.
“I can’t stand this much longer; I must have Alice back!” was his reflection as he alighted from the bay horse.
But Nemesis had no intention of letting him off thus easily. Mistress Tabitha Hall had carried home her geese and frying-pan, and after roasting and eating the former with chestnut sauce, churning the week’s supply of butter, setting the bread to rise, and indicating to Friswith and Joan, her elder daughters, what would be likely to happen to them if the last-named article were either over or under-baked, she changed her gown from a working woollen to an afternoon camlet, and took her way to Briton’s Mead. Mr Benden had supped as best he might on a very tough chicken pie, with a crust not much softer than crockery, and neither his digestion nor his temper was in a happy condition, when Mary rapped at the door, and much to her own satisfaction informed her master that Mistress Hall would fain have speech of him. Mr Benden groaned almost audibly. Could he by an act of will have transported Tabitha to the further side of the Mountains of the Moon, nobody in Staplehurst would have seen much more of her that year. But, alas! he had to run the gauntlet of her comments on himself and his proceedings, which he well knew would not be complimentary. For a full hour they were closeted together. Mary, in the kitchen, could faintly hear their voices, and rejoiced to gather from the sound that, to use her own expression, “the master was supping his broth right well peppered.” At last Mistress Tabitha marched forth, casting a Parthian dart behind her.
“See you do, Edward Benden, without you want another basin o’ hot water; and I’ll set the kettle on to boil this time, I promise you!”
“Good even, Mary,” she added, as she came through the kitchen. “He (without any antecedent) has promised he’ll do all he can to fetch her forth; and if he doesn’t, and metely soon too, he’ll wish he had, that’s all!”
So saying, Mistress Tabitha marched home to inspect her bread, and if need were, to “set the kettle on” there also.
Note: E-la is the highest note in the musical system of Guido d’Aretino, which was popular in the sixteenth century. “A strain beyond E-la,” therefore, signified something impossible or unreasonable.