CHAPTER XXIII
How good it was to be free! How beautiful the country was! Never before had I seen how graceful is the tracery of bare boughs against the sky, or what loveliness there is in a snowdrift, or what grandeur in a wide white prospect. To swing my legs, and to hear the crunch of the snow under my feet, were pure delight, and I turned off the causey again and again, to try the strength of the ice on the marsh, like an urchin just let out of school. In sheer wantonness, I threw a snowball at a solemn heron, who stood in a place where the ice had been broken, and laughed to see him start and flap sulkily away. I shouted greeting to every reed-cutter I passed within hail, and the men looked up from their work and stared as at some wandering madman.
By the time I reached Belshaw I had sobered down a little, but sang lustily as I walked, and the noise brought John out in no small amazement.
"What hallooing and what stir is this to-day?" he cried, as he came to meet me. "Why, man alive! what is the meaning of this? Here are we scribbling petitions to this and that great one of the earth, sending post-haste to Lincoln and London, and Lord knows where, and making such pitiful dole over the pining captive as never was, and behold him as merry as a cricket! Hast broken prison? Burned down Castle Mulgrave? The answer, quick, before I burst with curiosity."
By this he had both my hands in his.
"'Tis very simple; the young earl gave me my liberty."
"And not too much for him to give thee for his earldom; though whether he be wise to pay his debt so quickly—well, that's no matter to us."
"What is your news?" I asked.
"That you shall hear over a turf fire with a cup of mulled claret at your lips or in your fist; not here, where we are like to freeze."
Within an hour I had heard of my friends and their efforts on my behalf, while I had been in durance, which I need not here set down.
John dashed my spirits no little by his account of Mr. Ulceby's affairs, who had trusted overmuch in the honour and prosperity of one with whom he had large dealings, now become bankrupt, so that there was fear his own business might be ruined.
"Whatever be the upshot," said he, "there can be no present question of your entering his service, and, so far as you are concerned, I am content it should be so. As well cage a swallow, or try to keep salmon in a pond, as to pen you in a counting-house. We must cast about for some likelier means to push your fortune. What say you to offering our swords to the King of Sweden in his war against the Poles? I have acquaintance with some of his officers, who would be more than willing to take two such soldiers of fortune."
"You would go?"
"That would I gladly. And we are comrades, not to be parted, until you are Benedick, the married man."
I took a little time to think before I gave answer, for I doubted whether my small store of valuables would sell for as much as would provide a soldier's outfit and pay my passage to Sweden. Then I had my horse's keep to think on. He had been stabled, fed, and exercised at Belshaw this long time.
"That cloudy brow says you lack the wherewithal, I suppose. Surely, I need not say 'my purse, my person, my extremest means, lie open to your occasions.' And while I have lain here, my money has grown to a heap that will take some spending. 'Tis a kindness to help me, for a sort of miserliness has been creeping on me of late."
I laughed at this, but John would have it that 'twas no laughing matter.
"As soon as a heap of gold is big enough to hide one of Satan's imps, there he lurks like a wood-louse under a stone, and whenever you go to take a piece, he whispers, 'Don't minish the pile, but make it bigger; dear brother devil, do.' And he can find fifty diabolical reasons why you should."
After more talk of this kind, we fell into serious debate, of which the conclusion was, that we should enter the Swedish army with what speed we might; so, leaving John to do what was necessary, I rode to Crowle, rejoicing to be again astride my gallant Trueboy, who gave every sign a horse can make that he was as well pleased as I.
How my good aunt received me, I lack words to describe. She threw herself into my arms, clasped my neck, and then held me off to look at my face, and wept and laughed and wept again, and in spite of her sobbing and choking, spoke faster than I ever heard her do before or since.
"My poor, dear Frank, to think you were alive and well, or at least alive, while I was breaking my heart over your death! And the money I wasted in mourning! Not that I grudge it, now you are safe and sound. And Graves spoke so beautifully of you in his sermon, so much more hopeful you were in heaven than one expected from him, that I cried like a child in church! And all the time you were in the hands of tormentors! And of all men in the world, that addle-pated Canon Fell must be here, when you came, seeking a friend in need! Never again does the man cross the threshold of my house. And you were thrust into a vile prison among thieves and murderers. Well, we must be thankful you didn't die of gaol-fever. 'Reckon every misery you miss as a mercy,' Graves often says; but you have missed few, I am sure. How I want to see the dear, good man who delivered you! And now, they tell me, he is likely to come to want; truly the ways of Providence are strange, and not all the sermons in the world will convince me they are not. And Lord Sheffield had a hand in the mangling of your dear face. I shall never believe in man again. But, Frank, how did you escape? I had clean forgotten in the joy of seeing you. How have you got out of Castle Mulgrave? Perhaps they are pursuing you, while I am gabbling like the foolish old woman I am."
"Not so, auntie. The young earl set me free this morning."
"God bless him! This morning, did you say? And now it is near supper-time. You must be starving."
The kind soul did not stay to listen to my protestations, but flew to her kitchen to hasten supper.
Over that meal, which we had by our two selves, the vicar being away at a meeting of clergymen, my aunt told me the contents of a letter which she had received from my father, or part of the contents. The letter she did not show me. He wrote from Amsterdam, whence he purposed to go to Venice and the East, saying that a Dutch gentleman, with whom he had made acquaintance, and who had done him service with the Stadtholder, turned out to be Doctor Goel, and the doctor had informed him I was still alive, and of all he knew concerning my affairs, which did not go further than that I was in hiding. My father took shame to himself for having been so easily deceived as to my death, and wrote remorsefully of my mischance and suffering, and bade my aunt convey to me his forgiveness.
I thought his letter somewhat less than fatherly, even in my aunt's account, but I said nothing. She read my silence.
"Bear in mind, Frank, that your father has been hurt in the tenderest part of him—his pride. All his life he has been looked up to as the chief man in the Isle, barring the nobility, and he was confident of carrying all before him against Vermuijden and the King himself. And he has utterly failed. To such a man as he is, that is tenfold more bitter than death. Doubtless, he thinks he would have won the day, if you had fallen in with his plans."
My aunt desired a full relation of my adventures, and asked many questions, so that it was late when I retired. (She sat up to wait the coming of her husband.) I found a cheerful fire in my bedroom, and some hot elderberry wine ready for my drinking, which was better stuff than some I have paid for as wine of Oporto. And then I crept to bed, a feather-bed, with abundant covering, such as I had not lain in for many weeks, and fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.
My aunt made great outcry against my going soldiering in foreign service. She had a score of plans for me which she thought better than pursuit of fortune through cannon smoke and the perils of war; and, in her anxiety to keep me at home, declared I might become barrister, or physician, or clerk in holy orders; and when I showed some wonder at her new estimation of my talents, she was constrained to defend her opinion by disparaging the parts and learning necessary to lawyers, doctors, and divines. She dared to say one might become a sergeant by dint of brazen face and ready tongue; or win repute as doctor by saying little, and shaking one's head wisely. And she even made bold to say that, in her judgment, the less Greek and Latin a clergyman had the better. To such arguments I could find no answer, save that I knew I was fit for nothing but to be a plain country gentleman, and since that was denied me, to turn soldier.
We had plenty of leisure to discuss the matter, for it was not until after Christmas that John heard from his Swedish friends, assuring us of welcome. In the meantime I had little to do. I wrote a long letter to my love, who replied, agreeing with me, though sorrowfully, that soldiership was my best occupation.
Mr. Ulceby's affairs were in so much confusion, as he told me, when I paid him a visit, that he knew not in the least how they would turn out; and all I could understand, from the account he gave me, was that two or three thousand pounds would straighten them. It was great comfort to him that no man doubted his integrity, or even much impugned his prudence; for many other merchants had fully trusted the man by whom he had been deceived. John Drury had given him no small consolation, finding where and when his son had died; learning from the labourer's wife, who nursed him, that the young man had spoken of his sin against his father with shame and penitence.
"So, I confidently trust," said the good old man, "that the Father in heaven is not less forgiving than the unworthy one on earth."
In this time of waiting, I took opportunity to see my friend Dick Portington, and found him at first somewhat dry and cold; but he came by degrees to a more cordial manner, and at last let me into the secret of the change which had come over him.
"Hast no grudge against me, Frank?"
"What grudge can I have against thee? It passes my wit to guess."
"For one thing, I am to be master of thy inheritance."
"It comes to thee, I suppose, as the dower of thy bride? What offence can that be to me?"
"Thou might'st have had it, if the lady could have been brought to favour thy suit. Can'st be friendly with thy rival?"
"Can give thee joy of thy success, man, and dance at thy wedding, if I am invited, and not too far away to come to it."
After that we were on the old terms for the while, and had good sport together among the half-duck and mussel-duck which abounded at Tudworth. Dick did me the kindness to take Luke into his service for the time, who had come to me at the vicarage in hope to be employed; but there was no work for him, and I had no right to burden the vicar with another idler's maintenance.
When, at length, John received letters from Sweden, I went to take farewell of Bess, who remained with her father and grandmother in a cottage on the east of Belton; the rest of the tribe having gone, as was their custom at this time of the year, to Nottingham. When I entered the house, the grandmother, looking fearfully old and wrinkled, was cowering over the fire, and Bess sat opposite her, doing some kind of sewing. The aged crone turned her head, and, seeing me, began to laugh, jabbering in her gipsy tongue, as if to bid me welcome, and would have risen, but Bess gently forced her back into her seat. This mightily incensed the old woman, and she chattered and screamed in anger at Bess, beckoning me to come nearer. As I stood, unable to comprehend all this, Bess said to me—
"Go outside, and I will come to you when she is pacified."
In a little time she appeared.
"Poor Grannie takes you for her husband, who left her in her youth, and went back to his own people."
"His own people?" I echoed.
"He was a gentile who joined our tribe and took the name of Boswell. What his name was, or whence he came, I know not, for Grannie had grown feeble in mind with age, before I heard anything of the story; but my father has brooded on it for years, and persuaded himself that his father was some one of note and wealth, and the marriage lawful, and he himself the heir by right to an estate. He has some papers and trinkets by which he sets great store, as proofs of his notion. 'Tis his belief that if he had money wherewith to fee lawyers, he might oust some man now in wrongful possession of his place and property."
"Is this all you know, Bess?"
"All, except Grannie's name for her faithless husband. She calls him 'Harry.'"
While Bess was speaking I recalled to mind a tale of my grandfather Henry Vavasour, which Mr. Butharwick had told me; how he had left home to wander with the gipsies for some years, a very mad-cap, full of pranks, and returned to his proper station on his father's death. Could it be that the gipsy-girl and I were cousins, and she, perchance, by right the mistress of Temple Belwood? I knew that my likeness to my grandfather had struck some who knew him. Was the old woman not altogether crazy, but only forgetful of the lapse of time?
"Suppose your father's fancy should be true, Bess, and you the heiress of some rich man, or noble of the land."
Bess laughed. "I give no credent ear to the dream; and if it should come true, the gentile might remain undisturbed for me. I love the tent—even now I choke for air inside cottage walls."
"But a mansion, Bess, a house like Temple, say."
"So much the more a prison, room within room, and the life a slavery to bells and striking clocks, a dull round of doing the same thing at the same hour. I suffocate to think of it."
"There are comforts and conveniencies, Bess."
"You think them so because custom makes them necessary. You shut yourselves in a stuffy chamber and heap blankets and sheets on you, for it is bedtime, whether you are drowsy or not; whether the night be dull, or more splendid than the day. To rest, when you are weary, on sweet smelling heather, lulled by the still noises of the night, the wind in the grass, the cries of night-birds, the faint sound of moving water—is not to your liking. How should it be, when you have not tried it? Or to roam, the night through, under a sky shining with stars, when the trees have donned their robes of lovely mist, and the creatures which are afraid of man are abroad, the beasts and birds and creeping and flying things that love the dark, hold stillness of the night; what do you know of this, you who are never out in the dusk, except to kill, or to hurry from this house to that?"
"Not so delightsome in midwinter, methinks."
"If there is anything on earth more gay and glorious than a ramble by night, when there is a moon, and a nor'west wind blows, bringing snow showers, followed by calm spells, during which the heaven is clear, and the world is wrapped in whiteness and light, I don't know of it."
"But do you never wish for some better shelter than the tent on these same winter nights, when the frost bites shrewdly? You cannot always be wandering by moonlight."
"Better shelter there is none. You gentiles have coddled yourselves in hot, close rooms, so that the wholesome cold, which should strengthen you, gives you wheezy lungs and rheumatic diseases."
"'Tis good hearing that a tent is so healthy, for I shall soon have no better dwelling. Am going for a soldier."
"To France?"
"No; such war as Buckingham may make will be no schooling in the military art, or give promotion to those who deserve it. Drury and I are bound for Sweden the day after to-morrow, and I came to say good-bye."
Bess's face took on its look of musing, her eyes gazing into the distance. Then with perplexity in her face, she said—
"It is strange I have had no forewarning of this."
"What mean you? You don't in sober truth believe in the gift of prophecy, which your tribe pretend to!"
"I don't believe in it: I have it. We who live in Nature's bosom, and do not corrupt soul or body, hear and see what you house-dwellers cannot. Perhaps the spirits of the dead whisper to us, I know not; but we see pictures, and hear voices, and dream dreams, that warn us of things to come. Why should it be incredible to you? Did not your lady see you in peril? By that token I knew her heart and nature."
"And you deal in all honesty when you promise rich husbands to farmers' daughters, and astound them by knowing what the kitchen wench told you?"
Bess laughed merrily.
"What harm is done by giving them pleasant dreams? But of your affairs now? Are you taking no steps against my father?"
"I have taken none."
"Then in kindness to me, do not. He is a broken man, and has not recovered the full use of his limbs, since he was racked by the old earl. He was overcome by your giving up yourself to save me, for he loves me in his fashion, and he made a clean breast to the young lord of all the practice against you."
"If I bore him malice never so much, it should be thrown to the wind for your sake, Bess, to whom I owe more than can be repaid."
"When you come back from the wars with honour and riches, you may repay any service the gipsy girl has done you a thousandfold."
"How?"
"By using voice and influence to protect a persecuted people."
"I never heard of your folk being persecuted in the Isle."
"No; the cruel laws do not trouble us in this corner of the land, but this very year, twenty of our men were burned in Haddington, and as many women hanged."
"Had they been sheep-stealing?"
"Their only crime was their gipsy blood. They were condemned 'for being Egyptians.' And just now we are being harried in Durham and in Yorkshire. You don't know your law, justice of the peace that you would have been, if you had come to be squire of Temple."
"In truth, I don't, if this be law. Are you sure on't?"
"I have seen a woman of our own tribe flogged along the streets, half naked, with her baby at her breast, sheltering its little body from the lash of the scourge with her bare and bleeding arms, and, after the flogging, she was branded in the cheek with a hot iron 'for being an Egyptian.'"
"Why do your people abide in England, then?"
"Because it is worse for them elsewhere."
"If ever I come to be in any kind of authority, things shall be so far better in England as one man can make them, that I swear."
"God be with you, your Shield and Preserver, and bring you home again to your own country, able and willing to keep your vow."
So we clasped hands and parted.