The constructive reader will by this time have got ready his interpretation about the whole cock-and-bull story, and a very sensible one it is. The legend is surely what mythologists call ætiological. There was—he can see it—an old strip of parchment signed by Colin Stanier, and this, in view of the incredible prosperity of the family, coupled with the almost incredible history of their dark deeds, would be quite sufficient to give rise to the legend. In mediæval times, apparently, such Satanic bargains were, if not common, at any rate not unknown, and the legend was, no doubt, invented in order to account for these phenomena, instead of being responsible for them.
Of legendary significance, too, must be the story of Philip Stanier, third Earl, who is said to have renounced his part in the bargain, and thereupon fell from one misfortune into another, was branded with an incurable and disfiguring disease, and met his death on the dagger of an injured woman. Ronald Stanier, a nephew of the above, was another such recusant; he married a shrew, lost a fortune in the South Sea bubble, and had a singularly inglorious career.
But such instances as these (in all the long history there are no more of them, until credence in the legend faded altogether), even if we could rely on their authenticity, would only seem to prove that those who renounced the devil and all his works necessarily met with misfortune in this life, which is happily not the case, and thus they tend to disprove rather than confirm the whole affair.
Finally, when we come to more modern times, and examine the records of the Stanier family from, let us say, the advent of the Hanoverian dynasty, though their splendour and distinction is ever a crescent, not a waning moon, there can be no reason to assign a diabolical origin to such prosperity. There were black sheep among them, of course, but when will you not find, in records so public as theirs, dark shadows thrown by the searchlight of history? Bargains with the powers of hell, in any case, belong to the romantic dusk of the Middle Ages, and cannot find any serious place in modern chronicles.
But to quit these quagmires of superstition for the warranted and scarcely less fascinating solidity of fact, Colin Stanier next day obediently craved audience with the Queen at the Manor of Brede. By a stroke of intuition which does much to account for his prosperous fortune, he did not make himself endimanché, but, with his shepherd’s crook in his hand and a new-born lamb in his bosom, he presented himself at the house where the Queen lodged. He would have been contemptuously turned back with buffets by the halberdiers and yeomen who guarded the entrance, but the mention of his name sufficed to admit him with a reluctant alacrity.
He wore but the breeches and jerkin in which he pursued his work among the beasts, his shapely legs were bare from knee to ankle, and as he entered the porch, he kicked off the shoes in which he had walked from Rye. His crook he insisted on retaining, and the lamb which, obedient to the spell that he exercised over young living things, lay quiet in his arms.
Some fussy Controller of the Queen’s household would have ejected him and chanced the consequences, but, said Colin very quietly, “It is by her Majesty’s orders that I present myself, and whether you buffet me or not, prithee tell the Queen’s Grace that I am here.”
There was something surprising in the dignity of the boy; and in the sweet-toned, clear-cut speech, so unlike the utterance of the mumbling rustic, and the Controller, bidding him wait where he was, shuffled upstairs, and came back with extraordinary expedition.
“The Queen’s Grace awaits you, Mr.——”