What could a young man say? Phil Marsham remembered well the one time he had himself seen them. Who knew what might have happened had he spoken? But the chance was gone, and for ever.
"There is no place for Philip Marsham in my servants' hall," said Sir John. "His father—but no! Let the dead lie. There is no place for Philip Marsham in my servants' hall. Under my roof he is my guest."
[CHAPTER XXIV]
AND AGAIN THE ROSE OF DEVON
The story of Philip Marsham and of Sir John Bristol, and of the fortune left by the good Doctor Marsham of Little Grimsby,—how it came to his grandson and was lost in the war that brought ruin to many a noble family,—is a tale that may some day be worth the telling. Of that, I make no promises.
The years that followed were wild and turbulent, but during their passage Phil chanced upon one reminder and another of his earlier days of adventuring. He saw once again the long, ranting madman who had carried the great book. He might not have known the fellow, who was in a company of Brownists or Anabaptists, or some such people, had he not heard him crying out in his voice like a cracked trumpet, to the great wonder and admiration of his fellows, "Never was a man beset with such diversity of thoughts." There was Jacob, too, who had sneaked away like a rat on the eve of the day when Tom Jordan's schemes fell about his ears: Phil once came upon him face to face, but when their eyes met Jacob slipped round a corner and was gone. He was a subtle man and wise, and of no intention to be reminded of his days as a pirate.
Philip Marsham went to the war with Sir John Bristol, and fought for the King, and rose to be a captain; and with the story of Philip Marsham is interwoven inseparably the story of Anne Bristol and of her father, Sir John. For Sir John Bristol died at the second battle of Newbury with his head on Philip Marsham's knees; and in his grief at losing the brave knight who had befriended him, the lad prayed God for vengeance on the Roundhead armies.
And yet, though his grief was bitter, he had too just a mind to see only one side of a great war. Once, when they sent him from the King's camp on a secret mission, the enemy ran him to cover, and he escaped them only by doubling back and hiding in the garret of a cottage where he lay high under the thatch and watched through a dusty little window the street from the Red Boar Inn down the hill to the distant meadows, without being himself seen. He heard far away a murmur as of droning bees. Minutes passed and he heard the drone settle into a hollow rumble, from which there emerged after a time the remote sound of rattling drums and the occasional voices of shouting men. Then, of a sudden, there broke on the air a sound as of distant thunder, in which he made out a chorus:—
"His staff and rod shall comfort me,
His mantle e'er shall be my shield;