CHAP. XIV.
These black clouds will overblowe;
Sunshine shall have his returning;
And my grief-wrung heart I know,
Into mirth shall change his mourning.
Psalm xiii.—Davison.
Martin Noble and his guide did not reach old Glastonbury till after sunset. Crossing one of the lower streets of the town, they passed into a suburb of scattered cottages; and turning up a narrow lane by one of those large stone barns that formerly belonged to the abbey, they stopped at the garden wicket of a small lone cottage. Martin stood without while his guide stepped gently forward, that the good parson and his lady might not be overcome by too sudden a surprise.
A light shone through the narrow casement: all objects around were shaded in the soft obscurity of a summer night: the air was perfume; and all things seemed hushed into a stillness at once sweet and solemn. Martin passed the wicket with a trembling step and a throbbing heart; and ere he reached the door he was met in the path and folded to a father’s heart. Another moment, and he was pressed again to that bosom on which he had hung in helpless infancy. Now the lamp was held up by his father, and his hair was parted from his forehead by his mother’s hand, and her eyes rested upon his face and scanned his form; and he felt the unutterable bliss of being the child of such parents. They took him by the hand, and made him kneel with them before God, while they fervently thanked him for his mercy, “which endureth for ever.” After a brief pause, they rose; and as Martin looked round on the mean and scanty accommodations of the poor hovel which they inhabited, and then remarked the calm and contented expression of countenance which they both wore, he was lost in astonishment.
“Is it possible,” he exclaimed, “father, that you have no better dwelling than this? Alas! how much must my dear mother undergo.”
“Your mother, Martin, never had more equal spirits or more regular health than in this humble and obscure cottage. She makes me and herself as happy as, under the painful circumstances of the land, any persons can or ought to be.” Here the old couple looked in each other’s eyes, with that calm fondness which is the fruit of love long tried, and lately quickened by the rude storms of persecution and poverty. But it is to be borne in mind, that in such and all like cases, in times of trouble and confusion, there may be suffering, but there cannot be shame. That which is commonly the most bitter ingredient of an indigent condition is altogether wanting: there cannot be shame: neither the sense of it, in those who are reduced to the extremities of need, nor one thought of it in the minds of those who look upon the necessities of their fallen fortunes. Their rags are honest: they can tread the clay floor of a common straw-roofed hut with as much pride as though it were a marble hall. Therefore, where there is health, and the physical capability of endurance, and where no habits of softness, sensuality, and self-indulgence, have previously enslaved the spirit, and left it tied and bound as a despised victim to be tormented by discontent and peevishness, there will be found a cheerful resignation in the poorest circumstances. Here there was the grace of contentment in daily exercise. Old Noble and his wife were not only resigned but thankful for the blessings of food, shelter, and raiment, and they hopefully made the best of every thing around them.
“Martin,” said his father as he heard the wicket swing, “here is one of your oldest friends coming: you have not forgot Peter.”
“Lord love you, Master Martin,” said the old man as he entered, “I have heard of you:” here he took the offered hand, and bowed his head on it; then again looking up, resumed, “Well if it is not—yes,—no, well, I can’t make you out; why, how you are grown and altered! One thing’s right, I see,—you have not got your head clipped and shaved like a mule’s rump.” Here Peter caught a grave look on the face of his master, and added, “Well, truth’s best spoken out: I don’t like ’em, the knaves, and I’ve reasons as plenty as blackberries. Didn’t they come a horseback into the church at the christening, and throw over the Font; and has not that prick-eared, tallow-faced rogue, and no parson, stuck it into the ground in our poultry yard, near the muck-heap, for the ducks to dabble in? and didn’t they drive you out of house and home, and throw your furniture out of window, and offer it for sale in the street? and didn’t they burn your favourite old books, and break the old lute, and make you and mistress trudge half a winter’s night in the mire? and worse than all, haven’t they bewitched Master Cuthbert, and changed his nature like, and made him against his own kin and his own king? Rot’em! No rogue like your godly rogue, my old mother was wont to say:—all saint without, all devil within. There, love you, dear master, don’t scold with your eyes in that fashion: ’an old dog cannot alter his way of barking.’ Come, I’ve coughed it all out, and it has done me good, and now for salt and trenchers. I’ll warrant Master Martin has got hunger sauce for his supper.”
Herewith he set about covering the low table with a white napkin and clean trenchers, and produced from the basket a small mutton ham and some fine heads of sweet lettuce, and a loaf of the best wheaten bread; and setting on one side a small keg of ale, stood up with a look of pride and joy at his master’s back, and said, “To God’s gift, God send a good appetite.”
“How is this, Peter, whence is this?” asked old Noble.
“Why, master, it is from old Mrs. Blount. Wasn’t her good man—‘peace to his soul!’—wasn’t he a church-tenant, and his father’s father before him? and was there a day of your life that you hadn’t a kind word for him? and does not she know that you have got a stout young trencher-man come to you and nothing to set before him?”
“Well, well,—she is a warm-hearted woman, and always was. God reward her! but sit down, Peter: you and I are only fellow-labourers now; and if you did not handle the spade better than I do, we should not have fared half so well as we have hitherto:—make him sit down, wife.”
“No,” said Peter, “’t was well enough sometimes o’ the long winter nights, when madam worked her needle-work and you were making nets, for old Peter to have a seat in the chimney-corner, and to hear your blessed voices, and take food from your own hands, and eat it by the same fire; but now, with Master Martin at home, we’ll soon have things right again.”
These few words of the honest and faithful Peter gave Martin a rude but strong outline of all that had been lately passing at home; and it was easy for him to fill in, from the fancy, a picture of the present state of England, by considering the evils to which his own parents had been exposed. As he saw in the person of his own father a pious son of the church, a true patriot, and a loyal subject, trampled under foot by a tyrannous parliament, degraded from his holy office, and ejected from his own house, he felt a deep thankfulness for the providential ordering that had kept him away from England at a moment of excitement when, unsuspicious of the real aim and tendency of many of the measures of Parliament, he should probably have joined their banners. He was now plainly called to a very different course; and, as there he sat in the presence of his parents, his resolution was silently taken to share the fortunes of the royal army. These things swept across his mind swiftly, and gave no interruption to the glad flow of his spirits, as, sitting once again at table with a father and a mother, he took his cheerful meal, replying to all the questions they asked, and relating to them such passages of his travels and adventures as he thought might gratify or divert them.
When, however, his mother had retired, Martin questioned his father, with not a little anxiety, about the part which his brother had taken, and about the present condition of some of those families and friends whom he had hoped to have met again in happy intercourse. The answers to these inquiries did for the most part convey pain. His brother, it seemed, was among those devout but sincere enthusiasts, who, offended with certain faults in the government of the church, and certain scandals in unworthy individuals among the clergy, desired a severe purification of the Establishment, and in their zeal for rooting out the tares, were destroying the wheat with them. Upon this subject old Noble was very mournful. He had been himself an epistle known and read of all men:—his life was so pure and exemplary—his habits so quiet—his pursuits so innocent—his teaching so plain and faithful—and his attention to the spiritual wants and the temporal necessities of his flock so constant and tender—that such of the neighbouring clergy as led less creditable lives had long regarded him as a Puritan. The worldly, to whom all tests were indifferent, and who were ready to embrace any profession of faith, and submit to any novelties, whether of doctrine or of discipline, necessary, by present law, to preserve their incomes in peace, had fully reckoned on the sheltering support of his name. But, to the surprize of all, save the few who knew him intimately, he was found, in the hour of trial, in that humble and hallowed band which took cheerfully the spoiling of their goods for conscience-sake. It was past midnight before Martin and his father parted. In a small upper room, which took the shape of the sloping roof, Martin passed the night upon a clean pallet. He could sleep but little: through the open window came the grateful scent of the honeysuckle, and his eyes rested upon the stars. His broken slumbers were full of strange visions, that crowded on and away in such quick succession as to leave no connected impressions. Of some dear familiar face a sudden glimpse was caught, and lost so immediately as to be a grief; and a familiar voice heard soft and melodious, but the straining ear could catch no word; and then music exquisitely faint and plaintive; and then the stern trumpet, and darkness, and a crash, louder than any thunder, and so sleep frighted from the eyes, and a troubled awakening. But towards morning the blessing came:—a drowsiness stole upon him, and with it a delicious sense of fading consciousness. A sleep deep, dreamless, and refreshing, was gently and pleasantly chased from his eyes by the play of the cheerful sunbeams; and through the open casement was poured the varied melody of little birds, that with clear sweet notes were sending up to heaven, with the white incense of the morning dew, their early song.
Martin sprang up with a grateful heart, and looked from the window. The mantling honeysuckle did half conceal him. Beneath the shade of an aged mulberry tree, by a cistern of water which flowed over at a rude lip of stone, and ran away to irrigate the plot of ground in which the cottage stood, sat his mother at her spinning-wheel. In a corner of the garden his father and old Peter were digging. This little bit of land, with a small orchard by its side, was the principal, though not the sole, support of his parents. In addition to the produce of his mother’s spinning, her skill in needle-work brought in something; and old Noble had long ago taught himself to make cabbage nets, twist fishing lines, and turn hackle into flies, with little thought that such pastime should one day help him to buy bread. However, so many persons of ingenuity had fallen into poverty in these times, that a far walk might be taken, and a long stand might be made in a dull market-place, or at the corner of an inn yard, before a purchaser for such trifles could be found; indeed a sale for any thing beyond necessaries could not be reckoned on.
As Martin looked down upon this scene of repose, as he saw his parents safe, in health, and not subdued by circumstances, he could not but feel that the wind of adversity had been tempered to them by that God whose terrible blasts were abroad; that a plank was thrown to them in the storm; that the Father of all mercies was their refuge, and the shadow of his almighty wings was over them for comfort and for good. A pang came across him, as he thought upon his brother. A vista of calamity and war now opened before his startled fancy; but genuine philanthropy, and the love of true freedom, no less than his attachment to the altar and the throne, gave a call to his spirit to which he could not be deaf, and which he would not disobey. However, he turned from all vain and dark forebodings to the contemplation of present happiness. It was a hallowed bliss to be again near those dear parents who had from his cradle loved and cherished him. Deep-felt pleasure is ever akin to melancholy; and thus it was, that, from excess of happiness, Martin could almost have wept, as he went down stairs, and freely did so as he felt his mother’s arms about his neck, and her kiss upon his cheek; but such tears are dried as soon as shed.
The morning rites were performed by his father with the same impressive tones, and the same hallowed composure, that he could remember as having often soothed the little troubles of his boyhood, and which did now again the like office, and calmed the strong but natural emotions of the man.
After their plain wholesome breakfast of milk and bread, Martin took his father aside, and made known to him the resolution which he had last night formed of immediately joining some division of the royal army as a volunteer. He entreated him not to utter one syllable of objection or remonstrance, and not to feel any apprehension of his ever being brought into a distressing situation, as regarded Cuthbert. They should never meet, nor in any way be personally opposed to each other; and the circumstance of his having one son in arms against the King made it necessary that another should more truly represent his father, by being enrolled among the royal forces. He stated both his intentions and his means of carrying them into effect,—at the same time inviting the best advice which his father could offer as to the manner of his proceeding, and the leader whom he should join.
It was not without grief and reluctance that old Noble consented to be so immediately deprived of his gallant boy; and the mother was almost inconsolable at the thought of so early and sad a separation: but that same evening Martin took his departure for Bristol, that he might secure such baggage as he had brought with him from Italy, and equip himself for the camp.