Idonia: A Romance of Old London

by Arthur Frederick Wallis

"Small tidings you needed, I wis," said she, "that turned even silence to advantage, and the very winds of Heaven to your way of thinking! 'He will be safe in this weather,' would 'a say when 'twas calm; or if it blew fresh, 'Denis hath no fear of a tempest!' and with such a fulsome patience of belief, as I think, had she had positive news you were dead, she would have said you feigned it on purpose to have leisure to think upon her."

"Had it not been for your own good courage, mother," replied Idonia, with a run of laughter, "I had often enough desponded. And 'twas you went to Mr. Osborne for me, as Mr. Nelson did to the Council, to give account how matters had gone, and to exonerate this long lad of remissness."

"Tilly vally!" cried the lady. "I exonerate none of your lovers, not I, that steal away at midnight, to leave their sweethearts weeping by the shore!" And so, as if blown thence by the strong gust of her resentment, she was gone from us, ere I could mend her wilful misconstruction of the part I had been enforced to play.

But that part of captive I was now content enough to continue in for just so long as Idonia willed, who held me to her, and by a thousand links bound me, pronouncing my sentence in terms I shall neither ever forget nor shall I now repeat them. Such sweet words of a maid are not singular, I think, but rather be common as death; to which for the first time they give the only right meaning, as of a little ford that lies in a hollow of the highway of love....

I told her gently of her guardian's drowning, at which report she shuddered and turned away her face. But all she said was: "He was a kind man to me, but otherwise, I fear, very wicked."

We spoke of the Chinese jar, that had contained that great treasure of diamonds and precious stones my uncle had rent away and stolen from those he privily slew. Idonia said it had been seized upon by the party of soldiers that had searched the Inn, and that the Queen had confiscated it to her own use, as indeed she was accustomed to keep whatever prizes came into her hands, without scruple of lawful propriety. "Which was the occasion, I fear, of some sharp passages betwixt Madam Nelson and her husband," said Idonia, with a smile, "she being for his boldly demanding them of the Queen's Secretary, as pertaining to my dowry, but he stoutly dissenting from such a course, and, I hold, rightly. But in either case I would not have kept them, knowing as I do how they were come by; and although the loss of them leaveth us poor."

I was of her mind in that, and said so. However, we were not to be so poor as we then supposed; for besides the jewels which Her Grace had possessed herself of, with her slender and capable fingers, there was afterwards discovered a pretty big sum of money her guardian had laid up, together with his testament and general devise of all he had to Idonia Avenon, whom he named his sole heir. This we learned from the attorney in whose hands as well the money was, as the will, which himself had drawn; who, upon my solemn attestation, and the witness of Captain Tuchet, admitted, and procured it to be allowed by the magistrates, that Botolph Cleeve, the testator, was legally deceased, and Idonia Avenon, the beneficiary, incontestably alive. And upon our counting over the sum (we both being notable accountants, as is already sufficiently known), we found it more by nigh a thousand pounds than my father had formerly lost by this man whose death now allowed of the restitution of all. For Idonia would hear of nothing done until my father should be first paid, and of her own motion made proposal that we should immediately journey down into Somerset to pay him, in the which course I concurred with great contentment, for it was already near upon two years since I had set eyes upon him, and upon our old home of Combe.

The snow lay somewhat less thickly upon the downs, as we rode over them past Marlborough and Devizes, than it had done when I set out in the company of that very warlike scholar, Mr. Jordan, whose campaign I had seen to be diverted against the books and featherbeds of Baynards Castle, with so singular a valour and so remote a prospect to be ever determined.

Idonia was delighted with these great fields, all white and shining, that we passed over, they being like nothing she had ever seen, she said, except once, when she had gone with her guardian into Kent, where he lay one whole winter in hiding, though she did not know wherefore.

By nights it was my custom to request a lodging for Idonia of the clergyman of the town we rested at, while I myself would lie at the inn; and by this means I was enabled to renew my pleasant acquaintance with the Curate of Newbury; who (it will be remembered) had preached that Philippic sermon against the Papists, and had moreover so earnestly desired me that I should tell the Archbishop of his adding a rood of ground to his churchyard. He seemed, methought, a little dejected when I said I had had none occasion to His Grace, who therefore remained yet in ignorance of the progress the Church made in Newbury; but he soon so far forgot his disappointment as to tell me of an improvement of his tithes-rents, by which he was left with seventeen shillings to the good at Michaelmas; and with a part of this surplus he had, he confessed, been tempted to purchase of a pedlar a certain book in the French tongue called Pantagruel, from which he had derived no inconsiderable entertainment, albeit joined to some scruples upon the matters therein treated of, whether they were altogether such as he should be known to read them.