How the Beckley Pullet ruled the Roost.
Dame Beckley was one of the happiest women under the sun, for she had scarcely a care. Her sole idea of home management was obedience, and she obeyed her lord implicitly. Next to him she yielded no little show of duty to her daughter, who ruled her with a rod of iron, which she changed for one of steel when dealing with her father.
“Well, my dear,” said the dame, “speaking as a woman of the world, I must say I think it hardly becoming of us to keep Sir Mark here after his behaviour to us before. See how he slighted us. Fancy a man who calls himself a courtier telling a lady of title that her camomile tea that she has made with her own hands—it was the number one, my dear, flavoured with balm—was no better than poison.”
“Never mind the camomile tea, mother. I tell you I wish Sir Mark to be persuaded to stay.”
“Ah, well, my dear, if you wish it, of course he shall be pressed. I’ll tell him that you insisted—”
“Mother!”
“La! my dear, what have I done now?” cried Dame Beckley. “You quite startle me when you stamp your feet and look like that.”
“How can you be so foolish, mother? Go—go, and tell Sir Mark—insist upon his staying here.”
“Well, my dear, and very proud he ought to be, I’m sure. Why, when I was young, if a gentleman had—”
“Mother!”
“There, there, my dear, I’ve done. I’ll try and persuade Sir Mark to stay. I’m sure it would do him good, though I don’t want him. It always seems to me that that terrible explosion sent a regular jar through what Master Furton, the Queen’s chirurgeon, called the absorbens. If he were my son, I should certainly make him take a spoonful of my conserve of elder night and morning, and drink agrimony tea three times a day. In cases where there is the slightest touch of fever there is nothing—bless the girl, why she has gone, when did she go out of the room?”
Mistress Anne had gone away directly after her last imperious utterance of the word “mother,” and walked straight to her father’s room.
She had left Dame Beckley busy over her herbal, and she now found her father also on study bent, his book being a kind of magistrates’ vade mecum of those days on the subject of witchcraft, and the author his Majesty the King.
“What are you reading, father?” she said, making him start as she came suddenly behind him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“His Majesty’s book, my dear.”
“Why?”
“Well, you see, my dear, it behoves me as a justice of the peace to be well informed of his Majesty’s views respecting the heinous sin of witchcraft, and to know how I should comport myself and deal with so foul a creature in case, at any future time—”
“Mother Goodhugh should be brought before you?”
“Yes, exactly,” said the baronet. “My dear Anne, I’d give almost everything I possess for your clear discerning head.”
“Never mind my head, father,” she said, with a half-laugh; “I want to speak to you about more important things.”
“Yes, my dear, certainly. But won’t you sit down? You worry me when you tower over me so, and threaten, and preach at me. Do sit down, child, pray.”
“Nay, father, you can hear what I have to say without my seating myself.”
“Yes, my dear,” said Sir Thomas, humbly.
“Let Mother Goodhugh be, father.”
“But, my child, she is a most pestiferous witch.”
“For the present, father. For the present, let her be.”
“Well, my dear, if you wish it, of course—”
“I do wish it, father.”
“How odd, my dear, that you should come to say that, when I was studying up the matter.”
“I did not come to say that, father,” said Anne; “but to speak to you about our guest.”
“Yes, my dear, he has been here now six weeks since that disaster.”
“Seven weeks, father.”
“Well, my child, seven weeks if you like; and he has sent back those soldier fellows and his own attendants, and seems to have settled himself down. I mean to tell him that he had better—”
“Stay here till his health is quite recovered, father.”
“Nay, indeed, my child, after his grossly neglectful behaviour to us, I feel ready at any time to send him away.”
“But you will do no such thing, father. Sir Mark is your guest, and an important officer of his Majesty.”
“An’ if he had not been I should very soon—”
“Your good treatment of so important a gentleman may mean something in the future. It is always well, father, to have friends at Court.”
“Yes, yes, my child, but to leave us in so scurvy a way, and take up his abode with old Cobbe.”
“That has nothing to do with the matter, father. Ask him to stay.”
“But, Anne, my child.”
“Father, I insist upon your forcing him to stay.”
“Force,” said Sir Thomas; “ah, there’ll be no need of that. The job will be to force him to go. But surely, child, thou’lt never think of setting thy cap at him after his engagement with the founder’s child?”
“I? Set my cap! Oh, father,” she cried, with a weak giggle, “that is too good. I absolutely hate him.”
“Then I’ll tell him we wish him—”
“To stay as long as he can, father. Go at once.”
“But, my dear, he is going to-morrow. He told me so when he was on his way to the moat to fish, and I told him I was glad to hear it.”
“You told him that, father?” cried Anne, with flashing eyes.
“Indeed I did,” said Sir Thomas.
“Then go at once,” cried Anne, imperiously, “and bid him stay.”
“But it will be like eating my words, my child.”
“Go eat them, then,” cried the girl; “and quickly. Say that you were but jesting.”
“And that you specially wished—”
“No, father. Are you mad? Say what thou wilt, and canst; but mind this—Sir Mark must stay.”
Sir Thomas grumbled, but he had to go, and he went, and very easily persuaded Sir Mark to give up his project of leaving the Moat next day, and so it came about that about an hour later, when Mistress Anne was wandering, book in hand, in the pleasaunce, beneath the sun-pleached trees, where the soft turf was dappled with sunshine and shade, she accidentally came upon Sir Mark, moody and thoughtful, busy over his favourite occupation of trying to persuade one of the ancient carp in the moat to swallow a hook concealed in a lump of paste, a lure of which the said carp fought exceedingly shy.
If Sir Mark had been told a month before that he would become an angler—one of those patient beings who go and seat themselves on the banks of a piece of water and wait till a fish chooses to touch their bait—he would have laughed them to scorn.
All the same, though, he had gone to Sir Thomas Beckley’s, very much shocked at the sudden termination of his matrimonial project, and had taken to his bed, where he stayed some days.
He told himself that he was heart-broken; that he would never look upon woman’s face again; that he would pay a pilgrimage yearly to Mace’s grave, and live and die a heart-broken anchorite.
On the sixth day he arose and wrote a despatch concerning the state of Jeremiah Cobbe’s manufactures, retiring certain proposals that he had made concerning the supply of guns and powder to his Majesty’s forces. Later on he found that it would not be necessary to seize on Captain Carr, and later still followed the news that Gil had left those parts.
On the hearing of this he told himself that he could give full vent to his sorrow, which he did, taking at the same time a good deal of nutriment to counterbalance his sighs and tears.
Then, being a satisfactory moping pursuit for one so cut to the heart, he took to fishing week after week for the carp in the great moat; and after, on this particular day, trying in vain for one particularly heavy monster, he sighed very loudly—so loudly that it seemed to be echoed, and, looking sadly up, his eyes fell upon Mistress Anne, reading as she walked beneath the trees.
It was but a momentary glance, for she turned away directly after, and he sighed again, for he foresaw an interview with another lady as Dame Beckley came bustling to his side.
It was one way of showing his grief: A curious way of showing it; but every one has his peculiarities, and Sir Mark elected to dress himself more gorgeously than of old.
Sable had a prominent place in his costume, but it was largely relieved with gold lace and white linen, so that the angler who rose from his seat on the green bank of the old moat seemed, from the elegantly plumed hat to the shining rosetted shoes, more like one dressed for a ball or Court gathering than a man prepared to land the slippery carp or wriggling eel.
Dame Beckley was very nervous over her task, but she managed to acquit herself pretty well, and Sir Mark received her request that he should stay with a saddened smile that seemed to say all things were alike to him now.
“If my presence will give you pleasure, madam,” he said with a sigh, “I will stay, though you will find me sorry company, I fear.”
Sir Mark applied a delicate lace handkerchief to his eyes, and spread around a faint odour of musk, before applying a fresh lump of paste to his great hook, and casting it once more between the water-lilies.
“Plague on the man,” said Dame Beckley to herself; “it is not a pleasure to me. I wish, though,” she added musingly, “he would let me administer some of my simples. I could make him hearty and well.”
Sir Mark sighed again when he was left alone, and began to pity himself for his sufferings. Somehow he did not feel much sorrow for the young life that had been so suddenly cut off. His sorrow was for him who was to have been a bridegroom, and who would have succeeded to a goodly property with his handsome wife. This was the more important to him, as his little patrimony had been pretty well squandered, and his tailor was an extensive creditor who was eager to be paid.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll stay. Poor woman, she wishes it, and, until my brain recovers from this dreadful shock, I am as well here as anywhere. Besides, I cannot well go back till I see my way to obtain some money.”
Just then a great carp came slowly sailing along through the deep clear water, and rose amongst the stems of the water-lilies, as if to get a better glance with its big round eyes at the gorgeous object in black velvet, puffed with white satin and laced with gold, seated so patiently upon the bank.
“I begin to think now,” said Sir Mark, as he gazed back at the carp, whose great round golden scales suggested coins, “that I have made a mistake. I might have had fair Mistress Anne.”
The carp glanced down for a moment at the lump of paste, and shook its tail at it, its head being too rigid. The bait was not to its taste, so it rose higher and stared with its great round expressionless eyes, while it gasped with its big thick lips.
“Two hundred pounds for wedding garments of my own,” he said, gazing back at the carp. “Twenty-five pounds for that new sword with the silver ornaments to the hilt, and five pounds for those white crane’s plumes for my hat; and now they are useless. I cannot have them altered to wear now without spoiling them, and unless I marry soon that money is all thrown away.”
He sighed again very softly, for he was exceedingly sorry for himself, as he thought of the founder’s thousands.
“You are a lucky fellow,” he continued, addressing the carp; “you always swim about clad in golden armour, and pay nothing for the show. True, I have not paid for mine, but I suppose that some day I shall be obliged.”
Just then the carp smacked its lips as it thrust its nose above the water, gave its tail a lazy flap, and turned itself endwise so as to face Sir Mark, who gazed full at its fat gasping mouth, puffy eyes, and generally inane expression.
“What becomes of the old Beckleys?” said Sir Mark. “One might fancy that they all went to animate the bodies of the carp in this moat, for yon fish bears a wondrous resemblance to the baronet. I wonder whether he is as well clothed in golden scales. By all that’s holy, here he is.”
For, unnoticed on the soft velvety grass, Sir Thomas Beckley had come slowly up, looking in effect much more like the great carp than might have been considered possible, for his head was so charged with his daughter’s mission that it seemed to force his mouth open, and his eyes from his head, while, as he came close up, he gasped two or three times, opening and shutting his lips without making a sound.
“Fishing, Sir Mark?” he said at last, for want of something better to say. “You have captured one, I suppose?”
“No, Sir Thomas,” said his guest with a sigh. “Faith, an’ I do not care to catch the poor things. I find in angling a change from dwelling on my sad thoughts. You never catch them, I suppose?”
“No,” was the reply, “I never do. My father once caught one.”
“Indeed!” said Sir Mark, yawning, for it was a peculiarity of Sir Thomas Beckley that he made everyone with whom he came into contact yawn.
“Yes,” continued Sir Thomas. “It was during a very hot summer, and the moat was nearly dry. I remember it well.”
“You seem to have an excellent recollection, Sir Thomas.”
“I have, Sir Mark, I have,” said the baronet pompously. “The great carp had somehow been left in a tiny pool whence he could not escape, so my father caught him.”
“But not with a hook, Sir Thomas—he did not angle.”
“Marry, sir, but he did. He’d have gone in after it but for the mud, which would have sullied his trunk hose and velvet breeches of murrey colour, so he had a kitchen meat hook tied to a long pole, and caught the big fish fairly.”
“Indeed, Sir Thomas? It must have been an exciting scene.”
“My father was a great man, Sir Mark.”
“Great and rich, Sir Thomas?”
“Very, Sir Mark.”
“Then I have been doing wrong,” thought Sir Mark. “This old idiot here must have inherited all the old man’s money, unless—. Did your brothers much resemble him, Sir Thomas?” he said aloud.
“Brothers, sir? I never had a brother. I was an only child.”
“Indeed! But I might have known. Sir Thomas, this is a fitting time to thank you for your hospitality. I may not have another chance before I go.”
“But you will not go yet, Sir Mark. I was about to press you to stay with us yet a while—till your health is more restored. You look pale and ill as yet, Sir Mark.”
“Really, Sir Thomas? Thanks for your kindly concern, but I must go and try to recover elsewhere. Your good lady, Dame Beckley, has been trying to persuade me to stay, but I think my visit here has been too long already.”
“Nay, nay,” cried Sir Thomas, “we cannot spare you yet. You must think us very unfeeling if, after your terrible loss, you are not almost forced to stay here and recover. Not a word more, Sir Mark, not a word.”
Sir Mark, however, endeavoured to put in several words, but was checked by his host, who left him afterwards, strutting away with a fat smile upon his countenance, and a belief in his heart that he had been doing some very hospitable act, Mistress Anne’s commands being for the time entirely forgotten.
“That is settled then,” said Sir Mark, as he kneaded a fresh piece of paste for the carp. “Perhaps in a few weeks I may find out some way of raising money, that is, when my heart has grown less sore.”
He threw out his bait, and then settled himself with his back against a tree, to take a quiet nap, when, in a sheltered nook, where four huge hawthorns formed a kind of bower, he once more saw Mistress Anne busily reading, and, thinking that he ought to tell her of his intention to stay, he rose to saunter to her side.