Chapter Thirteen.
Which is full of Surprises.
“Ah, who am I, that God hath saved
Me from the doom I did desire,
And crossed the lot myself had craved,
To set me higher?”
Jean Ingelow.
As Mr Marshall approached the White Bear that evening, he was unexpectedly pounced upon by Silence Abbott.
“Eh, Parson, I declare it’s you! How fares Mrs Agnes this cold even? Marry, I do believe we shall have snow ere the day break again. The White Bear’ll be a bit whiter, I reckon, if he be well snowed o’er. Are you going in there? You’ll have some work to peace Mrs Louvaine; she’s lamenting and weeping, you never heard!—and all for her son as cometh not home, and she is fair sure he’ll be hung, because she saith he was in with those rogues yonder.”
“He was nothing of the sort,” said Mr Marshall, breaking in sternly on the flow of Silence’s tide of words: “and let me tell you, Mrs Abbott, if you spread such a lie, you may have a death at your door, as like as not. Mr Louvaine, I have no doubt, is safe and well, and had no more ado with the Gunpowder Plot than you had: and I saw you with mine own eyes talking with Fawkes, that rascal that called himself Johnson.”
“Eh deary, Parson, but you’d never go to tell on a poor woman, and as honest as any in Westminster, if I did pass the time o’ day to a fellow, that I never guessed to be a villain? I do assure you, on my truth as—”
“I hope you are an honest woman, Mrs Abbott; and so is Mr Louvaine an honest man; and if you would have me keep my tongue off your doings, see that you keep yours off his. Now I have given you warning: that is a bargain.”
“Eh deary, deary! but I never heard Parson i’ such a way afore!” lamented Mrs Abbott to her daughter Mary, the only listener she had left, for Mr Marshall had walked straight into the White Bear. “I’ll say the lad’s a Prince of the Blood, or an angel, or anything he’s a mind, if he’ll but let me be. Me talk to Guy Fawkes, indeed! I never said no worser to him than ‘Fine morning,’ or ‘Wet, isn’t it?’ as it might be: and to think o’ me being had up afore the Lords of the Council for just passing a word like that—and the parson, too! Eh, deary me! whatever must I say to content him, now?”