Idonia: A Romance of Old London

by Arthur Frederick Wallis

Up the hill towards Mr. Jordan's house I climbed therefore to beg his blessing upon me, and to thank him for all he had done for me in times past. It was near dinner-time by this, and I conceived the kindness of cooking the old scholar's meal for him as he lay in bed; for I doubted not to find him so, as I had rarely found him otherwise than on his pallet with a great folio or two by way of counterpane, and a Plato's "Republick" to his pillow. There had been a little snow fallen in the night which still clung upon the uplands, and when I had ascended to his dwelling I found a drift about the door and the thatched eaves considerably laden upon the weather side of them with snow. But what surprised me mightily was certain vestiges before the threshold, and regularly iterated, as by a sentinel's marchings to and fro. My bewilderment increased moreover, or rather gave place to alarm when I chanced to observe beside the window of that I knew for his study (to wit the room he slept in), a great halberd resting, and a military steel cap. Then did I painfully call to mind those former pursuits of my poor old preceptor when (as was reported) he had been a novice in the old Abbey of Cleeve, and knowing the present ill estimation in which the Papists everywhere were held, I understood that Mr. Jordan had not escaped the vigilance of the Commission, but was now under arrest, or at least that his liberty was so encroached on as made it mere confinement within his own house. Greatly distressed for this opinion, I approached near to the little window, of which the shutter (there being no glass) hung on the jar, and timorously gazed within. The bed stood empty, and no one that I could see was in the chamber. This confirmed me in my suspicion, and at the same time emboldened me to demand admittance. Some hope that my witness (or rather the weight of our authority) would bestead him, moved me to this course, and I knocked loudly on the door. Hardly had I done so, when I heard from within a horrid clatter of arms upon the flags as of a man falling in a scuffle, and so without more ado I lifted the latch and sprang into the house. Mr. Jordan lay at full length along the floor.

"Who hath done this, Master?" I cried out in a sudden gust of wrath, for he was an old man and a reverend. He lifted himself painfully, regarding me as he did so with an inscrutable mildness which I took to be of despair. His assailant was evidently fled in the meanwhile, or perhaps went to summon a posse comitatus for my tutor's apprehension.

"I will undertake your enlargement," said I, and indeed felt myself strong enough to dispose of a whole sergeant's guard unaided.

"I am beholden to you, young master," replied Mr. Jordan, "and now that I look more closely, I take you to be that degenerate young Denis Cleeve, to whom Syntax and Accidence were wont to be as felloes in the wheel of Ixion, and Prosody a very stone of Sisyphus. Art thou not he, my son?"

"I am Denis Cleeve," I answered impatiently, "but I think my lack of Latin concerns us not now, when we are in danger of the law."

"Ah! thou hast come into some scrape," he said, sitting up on the stones, and gathering up his knees. "Such as thou art, was the Telamonian Ajax, whom Homer represents as brave enough, though in learning but a fool. Why, what hast thou done, little Ajax, that thou hast wantonly forfeited the protection of the laws? But be brief in the telling, since I sit here in some discomfort, having entangled a great sword in my legs and fallen something heavily, which in a man of my years and weight is as if Troy herself fell; a catastrophe lamentable even to the gods."

At this I could not contain my laughter, partly for the mistake into which he had been led that I feared a danger which was in truth his own, and partly for the accident of the sword which had tripped him up thus headlong; but more than either for the tragi-comick simile he had used in comparing himself in his downfall with the ancient city of Troy.

"To return to my first question," I said as soon as I had settled my countenance. "Who hath set upon you? and whither has he fled?"

"None hath set upon me, young sir," he replied sadly, "and ergo, we need search for no fugitive. I had armed myself, and the harness encumbering me (as indeed I have had little occasion for its use these forty years), I fell, in the manner you saw. And had not nature folded me in certain kindly wrappages of flesh above the common, my frame had been all broken and disjointed by this lapsus, which even now hath left me monstrous sore."

I lifted him to his feet, though with some difficulty, for it was true that nature had dealt liberally with him in the matter of flesh; and having set him in a chair, I asked him how it was he came thus accoutred, since it was not (as he affirmed) to withstand any molestation.