CHAP. XVIII.
With that the mighty thunder dropt away
From God’s unwary arm, now milder grown,
And melted into tears.
Giles Fletcher.
In such a spirit Noble endured the pelting of the storm, and listened to the rolling of the thunder, and gazed upon the dread illumination which flashed at intervals on the desolate and dreary rocks around him. The fury of this summer tempest was soon exhausted:—the exceeding blackness of the clouds gave place to a lighter, though a sunless, sky; the claps of thunder were few and distant, and the lightning became a faint and harmless coruscation. The rain was thin and transparent; and Noble continued his way on foot, followed by his old mare, whose docility was that of an aged dog. They had not proceeded above two hundred yards when the mare gave a sudden start, and ran up a heap of loose stones on the right of the road. On the left of it, at the foot of a tremendous precipice, Noble descried the object which had alarmed her, and which, but for her fright, he should have passed without notice. A man lay upon the ground bleeding. Noble immediately crossed to the spot, and stooping down, he recognised the person of the stern fanatic, whose conduct at Wells has been related in the foregoing chapter. He was insensible, but did not, upon examination, appear to have sustained any injury more serious than a severe and stunning bruise; as well as a cut on the forehead from a sharp flint. From the prints of his horse’s feet, it seemed evident, at first, that he had been thrown where he then lay, and had fainted; but on looking again, Noble observed that his pockets were turned inside out, and that his sword and cartridge belt were gone; for he remembered in the morning to have remarked his arms very particularly, and to have been struck by the circumstance of a man of his rigid ungraceful figure sitting so admirably on horseback, and managing the young animal which he rode with such a light and easy hand. Moreover, he now saw that the impressions of the horse’s hoofs had been made before the rain had fallen. His first care was to endeavour to restore the sufferer from his swoon. This he soon effected by chafing the body to restore circulation, and by applying to the nostrils a pungent preparation, which he always carried about with him, as a preservative from infection, when his duties called him to visit the sick beds of those who were afflicted with any disease considered pestilential. When Noble had satisfied himself that the unfortunate man was a little recovered by the returning consciousness in his eyes, and the regularity of his breathing, he went after his mare. She had not strayed far, and he soon brought her back, and after a while he had the satisfaction to observe that the wounded traveller was able to move and sit up. He now persuaded and assisted him to get upon the patient beast, and supporting him in the saddle with his hand, moved off slowly towards Cheddar. Half a mile on they met plain Peter, who had come out to look for his master, and was wondering and uncomfortable at the unusual lateness of his return.
The sight explained itself; and the honest domestic expressing some sorrow for the sufferer, but more for his master, took his place on the other side of the mare, and aided Noble in the task of supporting the stranger, who was so weak and exhausted that he could hardly be held upon the saddle by their joint exertions for the rest of the road.
Although not a syllable had been uttered by the object of their care, that was intelligible to either, and although Noble had not mentioned a word about having seen him at Wells, still Peter had an instinctive dislike to the man’s features and his dress—from both of which he pronounced him a Puritan. He went so far as to provoke an angry rebuke from his master for opposing the benevolent resolution of the latter to take him to his own house.
“Surely,” said Peter, “a pallet at the Jolly Woodman will serve his turn:—he’ll be well enough taken care of by Dame Crowther: why bring him home to trouble and frighten my good mistress, and to make a fuss, and a dirt, and a sick house of the parsonage?”
“Peter,” said Noble, “how would you like to be dealt by if you had fallen among thieves, and lay bruised and bleeding, and without a friend or a penny?”
“Why, I should think an inn good enough for me; and so it is writ in the Bible.”
“Peter you are hard—and know not what spirit you are of—and speak foolishly.”
“Ah! well I mind what you said once about that parable, and how you told us that had the good Samaritan’s house been over against the inn he would have taken him in at his own gate;—but somehow I don’t like this fancy of yours—it will be a bad job:—when his saintship is warmed by your fire, mayhap he will turn out a serpent.”
“Never use that word lightly, Peter. I have often forbade you to trifle with it—duties are ours, events are God’s. I shall certainly take this man in.” Having thus decided, they went forward to the parsonage in silence. Mistress Noble came out eagerly as soon as they appeared. Her mind was soon quieted on the surprise which the sight of the wounded stranger caused her, and her kind and hospitable heart acquiesced instantly to the proposal of her good husband.
The sufferer was at once carefully put to bed; and Noble, as by his own bright fire he put on the warm dry vestments which he found ready for him in his study, revolved the singular incidents of the eventful day with wonder, gratitude, and a calm confiding faith.
He could not but reflect thankfully on his own escape from the misfortune which had befallen the temporary inmate of his dwelling. For want of a better booty, doubtless he would have been assaulted himself by the robbers who had fallen upon the Puritan; and, had he not been preceded by this traveller on the road, or had he left Wells at an earlier hour, he might have suffered in his room, or shared his fate.
Again, how strange that a daring enthusiast, who had that very morning violated the sanctity of the cathedral, and had insulted the ministers of the church in their decent performance of public and solemn worship, should, before the setting of the sun which had witnessed his impiety, be laid in the dust, and left dependent upon one who had been revolted by his fierce conduct for the mercies of help and protection.
“To-morrow,” said Noble to his wife, as he related to her all the circumstances which had taken place at Wells, “when our guest is in a reasonable and repenting mood, I may, perhaps, speak a word in season that shall serve to deliver him from the chains of that cruel and bigoted spirit of persecution by which he is held. God preserve our Cuthbert from the hateful errors of men like these! It has been well observed, that though the fanatic cannot be seduced by the love of any sinful pleasures, yet that he can be readily persuaded to walk in blood by the lust of a power which he deceives himself in thinking he should assuredly use to the glory of the King of heaven, and the benefit of the faithful people of God. When will Christians learn that the kingdom of the Messiah is not of this world?”
They had not retired for the night, when their worthy neighbour Blount, the franklin, who had but just returned from Glastonbury, came in to learn the particulars of what had occurred at Wells, and to tell the bad news which he had heard at Glastonbury that morning.
“The devil is busy enough, Master Noble,” said the old man as he entered: “there is a little party of vinegar-faced rogues coming to the Bald Raven at Axbridge to-morrow, who call themselves ‘a Corresponding Committee for informing and aiding the Grand Committee of Religion and that for scandalous Ministers;’ and they tell me that that sour hypocrite Daws is as busy as a bee among them already. But what is this I hear about one of these godly rogues having been half murdered under the cliff and lying in your house?”
Noble told him all the circumstances; and Peter, who had lingered a little at the parlour door, said, “Ay, I can see by Master Blount’s eyebrows he don’t think it were a wise job to take this round-headed madman in here. Why he’s talking a pack of wild stuff enough to frighten the maidens out of their wits.”
On hearing this, Noble, accompanied by Blount, went up stairs to the chamber of their inmate, and found him sitting upright in his bed, and parleying with some visionary appearance, after a wild but most earnest manner.
As soon as they entered the room, he turned towards them and sniffed repeatedly, then gravely said, “Two good spirits and one bad—verily I am not forsaken—two to one against thee, Beelzebub—look gentle spirits—look upon the wall—there goes a coach drawn by lions and tigers—there goes Everard the conjurer in boots and spurs—here is the great fiery dragon—who hath taken away my trusty sword?—where is my horse?—a horse is a vain thing to save a man—see how it grows—the dragon—the great red dragon—taller—taller—it fills the room—save Lord, or I perish.”
To these wild, incoherent expressions, produced by the strange images which flitted before his troubled fancy, succeeded a profuse perspiration, and they persuaded him to lie down under the blankets, that he might obtain the full benefit of such a relief.
He did so, and they could now only hear whispered murmurs, and humble tones, as of a person praying with tears. Noble himself was not unaffected by this scene; and even Blount admitted, that, if it were not for the mischief they did, some of these enthusiasts were rather to be pitied than punished. “Now here,” said he, “is a case, where they should shave the head and lock up the poor creature in an hospital; but the worst matter is, they go about like mad dogs, biting all the folk they meet—and so they must e’en be dealt with in like manner.”
“You are not far wrong, neighbour, in judging many of them crazy; but there are cunning men behind to urge them on: and there certainly are many excellent and pious persons, who, as they stand on the same side in this sad quarrel, give a credit to the cause of these levellers in church and state which they otherwise would want; and, notwithstanding the actions and utterances of the unknown individual before us, I cannot look upon him without interest and pity.”
An umph from old Peter, with a request that his master would go to bed himself, and leave him to take care of the stranger, ended the conversation: Blount went away,—and Noble to his own chamber.
At an early hour on the following morning two odd-looking servants, in sad-coloured suits, mounted and armed, presented themselves at the gate of the vicarage, and inquired “if their master was not there, as from what they had heard at the blacksmith’s shed they thought that the gentleman, who had been robbed and wounded beneath the rocks, and was now lying sick in that house, could be no other.”
“I don’t think you are far wrong,” said Peter, as he cocked his eye askew at their long lean faces and their plain liveries of a colour like the cinders in the ash heap. “Like master like man, they say; though it’s little I thought that the poor crazy body up stairs had a serving-man to truss up his points for him.—What do ye call your master?”
“The right worshipful and godly Sir Roger Zouch, an approved voice, a faithful witness, a preacher of the truth, a trier of spirits, a man of war—bold as a lion for his God.”
“Why, then, by my troth,” said Peter, “thy master is here for a certainty, and lieth with a cracked skull in our blue room; and is now telling my good master how he fought last night with beasts from Ephesus, who is listening to him, poor simple kind soul as he is, with as much patience as if it was all sense and gospel.”
“Out upon thee, thou vile churl! talkest thou so of one of Zion’s champions? None of thy gibes and jeers, or it may be thine own crown will feel the weight of my cudgel.” So saying, the elder of the two domestics alighted, and not waiting to be conducted, strode past Peter with a rude thrust, and entered the house.
“A plague o’ thee!” grumbled Peter: “two can play at quarter staff, as I’ll show thee;” and following him into the passage, he slammed the door behind him, and left the other servant alone with the two horses before the wicket. This last, however, tarrying for no invitation, proceeded deliberately to the stable, and finding it open, introduced his tired beasts to the astonished old mare; took off bridles and saddles; and, plentifully supplying the rack and manger with hay and oats, entered the parson’s kitchen, and taking a seat by the dresser demanded of the frightened maids the creature comforts of breakfast.
Old Peter, who had just been witnessing the meeting of master and man above stairs, and whose cross temper had given way to a humour that had been tickled by the quaint scene and the ludicrous speeches, came shaking with laughter into the kitchen; but the tired and hungry groom was in no laughing mood, and soon upset this grinning philosophy by a smart stroke of his whip across his shoulders.
In a moment the old man caught up a broomstick to return the blow; and, though very unequal, either in strength or youth, was standing up manfully against the assault, when the cook, whose spirit was roused by Peter’s danger, dipped her mop in a pail of foul water, and thrusting it into the groom’s face, drove him into the yard with dirty cheeks and blinded eyes. The cry of “murder” having been in the mean time screamed forth at the top of her voice by the other maiden, the kitchen was instantly filled with every person in the house; for even Sir Roger Zouch himself, albeit in no seemly garb for appearing in public, descended close after Noble, and stood up in the midst of them rather like a ghost newly risen from the grave than true flesh and blood,—though the stain of the last was indeed sufficiently visible beneath the folds of the bandage about his head.
“How now!” said Sir Roger, in a voice rather more stentorian than might have been expected from the plight in which he had been put to bed the night before, and in a tone of authority as if he had been in his own mansion and with only his own household—“How now! brawlings and fightings: who is the striker, Gabriel Goldworthy?” but before this slow elder had screwed his mouth up to reply, Peter answered in his own blunt fashion, and the cook, in a shrill voice, chanted an echo to his complaint. Meantime the culprit groom, with a foul face, stood at the yard door as white as a stone with passion, while Sir Roger thus rejoined:—
“Verily, thou art a trouble to me, Abel, and makest me a reproach among the people wheresoever I go: it was only last week, at the hostel of the Pied Bull in Tewksbury, thou didst raise a brawl about thy victuals at the buttery hatch: thou makest a god of thy belly. Remember that man liveth not by bread alone:—a good soldier must endure hardness, and never strike but in battle, and then home. I fear that thou art sensual, and it were not for thy godly grand-mother, and this, thy God-fearing uncle Gabriel, the man of my right hand, I would send thee back to thy ditching and delving.”
Abel muttered out that the children of Belial were making a mock of his master, and that he struck Peter in pure zeal for Sir Roger’s honour; this Gabriel affirmed of his own knowledge to be true, and Sir Roger was pacified: but an opportunity of preaching, so favourable as it seemed to his weak judgment, was not to be neglected; he therefore proceeded to deliver a long rambling discourse on prophecy; and directed his looks and words with all the persuasive expression that he could possibly command towards the distressed parson and his good wife. He flattered himself that he had brought salvation to that house, and that all which had befallen him was in the order of Providence to that end. He had taken for his text, “Come out of her, my people;” and these words were repeated at the close of every passage, with all the varieties of intonation that his voice admitted. All efforts to induce him to stop or return up stairs till he had finished this wearisome preachment were vain. He stood half an hour with naked feet upon the kitchen stones, and was listened to even by Peter with a wonder so great, and with so painful a sense of his craziness, as forbade even a smile. He closed by so earnestly invoking peace on that house, and enjoining the exhibition of a quiet and an orderly spirit so forcibly upon the offending Abel, that during the rest of the day nothing disturbed the household.
The hardy old Puritan nothing the worse for this exercise of his lungs, and very little so for the bruise and cut in his encounter with the robbers the evening before, took his seat at Noble’s dinner table at noon, and seemed very sensible of the truly Christian hospitality of his host.
As arguments or any appeals to reason would so evidently be thrown away upon a man under the prejudices and delusions of Sir Roger Zouch, Noble dexterously avoided inflaming the mind of his guest with a discussion on grave matters, and led him to speak on other topics. He found that he had travelled a great deal, and had in his youth served in the Low Countries. Upon these subjects he conversed rationally and pleasantly enough; and, as they walked after their meal into the garden, he showed an acquaintance with plants and flowers, and a knowledge of the various methods of laying out a garden, which in so stern a fanatic would seem strange; but what is there so variable, so inconstant, as man?—he is “some twenty several men in every hour;” not that either the dinner or the walk in the garden passed over without sundry efforts to spiritualise and improve the subjects which those occasions offered. In the garden especially, after talking a while like any other rational and well informed gentleman, he suddenly broke out in a rhapsody about the approaching millennium, and the personal reign of the Messiah upon this earth. His politics were violent; but in this they differed not from many able and patriotic men of the time. Against the church, however, his wrath evidently burned, and he affected to disbelieve the possibility of so pious a minister, as Noble plainly was, being sincerely resolved to remain in her communion. Upon this point, however, Noble was too bold and too honest to conceal his resolutions.
It so happened that the next morning, before Sir Roger Zouch left the parsonage of Cheddar, there came to Noble a summons to attend the Committee of Inquiry into Church Matters, of which old Blount had warned the worthy parson on the evening of his return from Wells. Of this Noble informed his guest, and asked him if, as he saw the name of Zouch among the commissioners, it was any relation of his? The knight replied in the affirmative, and told Noble not to trouble himself to attend; for that as he was himself going to Axbridge he would make known to the committee his wish that no molestation might be given him. To this Noble would by no means consent, till he had received a solemn promise from Sir Roger that he would not represent him as less opposed to their proceedings against the church than he truly was, or less attached to that sacred institution which they sought to destroy.
Thus was the trial of Noble for another brief season deferred, and the malicious designs and interested hopes of the meddling and hypocritical Daws were for the present disappointed. However, the gold was yet to be put into the fire at the appointed time.
All these circumstances were related by Noble in a letter to his son Cuthbert, exactly as they occurred, with very little comment, and thus, as he rightly judged, they would make a forcible impression on his mind. They did so: a due consideration of them delivered him from some of his own delusions, and opened his eyes to those of a few of his companions; and though he was not at all more separated from the Non-conformists, yet he attached himself to the most sober among them.