Chapter Ten.
Trying experiments.
Old Grandfather Hall had got a lift in a cart from Frittenden, and came to spend the day with Roger and Christabel. It was a holy-day, for which cause Roger was at home, for in those times a holy-day was always a holiday, and the natural result was that holiday-making soon took the place of keeping holy. Roger’s leisure days were usually spent by the side of his little Christie.
“Eh, Hodge, my lad!” said Grandfather Hall, shaking his white head, as he sat leaning his hands upon his silver-headed staff, “but ’tis a strange dispensation this! Surely I never looked for such as this in mine old age. But ’tis my blame—I do right freely confess ’tis my blame. I reckoned I wrought for the best; I meant nought save my maid’s happiness: but I see now I had better have been content with fewer of the good things of this life for the child, and have taken more thought for an husband that feared God. Surely I meant well,—yet I did evil; I see it now.”
“Father,” said Roger, with respectful affection, “I pray you, remember that God’s strange dispensations be at times the best things He hath to give us, and that of our very blunders He can make ladders to lift us nearer to Himself.”
“Ay, lad, thou hast the right; yet must I needs be sorry for my poor child, that suffereth for my blunder. Hodge, I would thou wouldst visit her.”
“That will I, Father, no further than Saint Edmund’s Day, the which you wot is next Tuesday. Shall I bear her any message from you?”
Old Mr Hall considered an instant; then he put his hand into his purse, and with trembling fingers pulled out a new shilling.
“Bear her this,” said he; “and therewithal my blessing, and do her to wit that I am rarely troubled for her trouble. I cannot say more, lest it should seem to reflect upon her husband: but I would with all mine heart—”
“Well, Nell!” said a voice in the passage outside which everybody knew. “Your master’s at home, I count, being a holy-day? The old master here likewise?—that’s well. There, take my pattens, that’s a good maid. I’ll tarry a bit to cheer up the little mistress.”
“Oh dear!” said Christabel in a whisper, “Aunt Tabitha won’t cheer me a bit; she’ll make me boil over. And I’m very near it now; I’m sure I must be singing! If she’d take me off and put me on the hob! Aunt Alice would, if it were she.”
“Good-morrow!” said Aunt Tabitha’s treble tones, which allowed no one else’s voice to be heard at the same time. “Give you good-morrow, Father, and the like to thee, Christie. Well, Roger, I trust you’re in a forgiving mood this morrow? You’ll have to hammer at it a while, I reckon, afore you can make out that Edward Benden’s an innocent cherub. I’d as lief wring that man’s neck as eat my dinner!—and I mean to tell him so, too, afore I do it.”
Aunt Tabitha left her sentence grammatically ambiguous, but practically lucid enough to convey a decided impression that a rod for Mr Benden was lying in tolerably sharp pickle.
“Daughter,” said old Mr Hall, “methinks you have but a strange notion of forgiveness, if you count that it lieth in a man’s persuading himself that the offender hath done him no wrong. To forgive as God forgiveth, is to feel and know the wrong to the full, and yet, notwithstanding the same, to pardon the offender.”
“And in no wise to visit his wrong upon him? Nay, Father; that’d not a-pay me, I warrant you.”
“That a man should escape the natural and temporal consequences of his evil doing, daughter, is not the way that God forgives. He rarely remits that penalty: more often he visits it to the full. But he loveth the offender through all, and seeks to purge away his iniquity and cleanse his soul.”
“Well-a-day! I can fashion to love Edward Benden that way,” said Tabitha, perversely misinterpreting her father-in-law’s words. “I’ll mix him a potion ’ll help to cleanse his disorder, you’ll see. Bitters be good for sick folks; and he’s grievous sick. I met Mall a-coming; she saith he snapped her head right off yester-even.”
“Oh dear!” said literal Christie. “Did she get it put on again, Aunt Tabitha, before you saw her?”
“It was there, same as common,” replied Tabitha grimly.
“He’s not a happy man, or I mistake greatly,” remarked Roger Hall.
“He’ll not be long, if I can win at him,” announced Tabitha, more grimly still. “Good lack! there he is, this minute, crossing the Second Acre Close—see you him not? Nell, my pattens—quick! I’ll have at him while I may!”
And Tabitha flew.
Christabel, who had lifted her head to watch the meeting, laid it down again upon her cushions with a sigh. “Aunt Tabitha wearies me, Father,” she said, answering Roger’s look of sympathetic concern, “She’s like a blowy wind, that takes such a deal out of you. I wish she’d come at me a bit quieter. Father, don’t you think the angels are very quiet folks? I couldn’t think they’d come at me like Aunt Tabby.”
“The angels obey the Lord, my Christie, and the Lord is very gentle. He ‘knoweth our frame,’ and ‘remembereth that we are but dust.’”
“I don’t feel much like dust,” said Christie meditatively. “I feel more like strings that somebody had pulled tight till it hurt. But I do wish Aunt Tabitha would obey the Lord too, Father. I can’t think she knows our frame, unless hers is vastly unlike mine.”
“I rather count it is, Christie,” said Roger.
Mr Benden had come out for his airing in an unhappy frame of mind, and his interview with Tabitha sent him home in a worse. Could he by an effort of will have obliterated the whole of his recent performances, he would gladly have done it; but as this was impossible, he refused to confess himself in the wrong. He was not going to humble himself, he said gruffly—though there was nobody to hear him—to that spiteful cat Tabitha. As to Alice, he was at once very angry with her, and very much put out by her absence. It was all her fault, he said again. Why could she not behave herself at first, and come to church like a reasonable woman, and as everybody else did? If she had stood out for a new dress, or a velvet hood, he could have understood it; but these new-fangled nonsensical fancies nobody could understand. Who could by any possibility expect a sensible man to give in to such rubbish?
So Mr Benden reasoned himself into the belief that he was an ill-used martyr, Alice a most unreasonable woman, and Tabitha a wicked fury. Having no principles himself, that any one else should have them was both unnecessary and absurd in his eyes. He simply could not imagine the possibility of a woman caring so much for the precepts or the glory of God, that she was ready for their sakes to brave imprisonment, torture, or death.
Meanwhile Alice and her fellow-prisoner, Rachel Potkin, were engaged in trying their scheme of living on next to nothing. We must not forget that even poor people, at that time, lived much better than now, so far as eating is concerned. The Spanish noblemen who came over with Queen Mary’s husband were greatly astonished to find the English peasants, as they said, “living in hovels, and faring like princes.” The poorest then never contented themselves with plain fare, such as we think tea and bread, which are now nearly all that many poor people see from one year’s end to another. Meat, eggs, butter, and much else were too cheap to make it necessary.
So Alice and Rachel arranged their provisions thus: every two days they sent for two pounds of mutton, which cost some days a farthing, and some a halfpenny; twelve little loaves of bread, at 2 pence; a pint and a half of claret, or a quart of ale, cost 2 pence more. The halfpenny, which was at times to spare, they spent on four eggs, a few rashers of bacon, or a roll of butter, the price of which was fourpence-halfpenny the gallon. Sometimes it went for salt, an expensive article at that time. Now and then they varied their diet from mutton to beef; but of this they could get only half the quantity for their halfpenny. On fish-days, then rigidly observed, of course they bought fish instead of meat. For a fortnight they kept up this practice, which to them seemed far more of a hardship than it would to us; they were accustomed to a number of elaborate dishes, with rich sauces, in most of which wine was used; and mere bread and meat, or even bread and butter, seemed very poor, rough eating. Perhaps, if our ancestors had been content with simpler cookery, their children in the present day would have had less trouble with doctors’ bills.
Roger Hall visited his sister, as he had said, on Saint Edmund’s Day, the sixteenth of November. He found her calm, and even cheerful, very much pleased with her father’s message and gift, and concerned that Mary should follow her directions to make Mr Benden comfortable. That she forgave him she never said in words, but all her actions said it strongly. Roger had to curb his own feelings as he promised to take the message to this effect which Alice sent to Mary. But Alice could pretty well see through his face into his heart, and into Mary’s too; and she looked up with a smile as she added a few words:—
“Tell Mall,” she said, “that if she love me, and would have me yet again at home, methinks this were her wisest plan.”
Roger nodded, and said no more.