Prentice Hugh

by Frances Mary Peard

The kind-hearted sailor stood watching the pair when they had started, Stephen riding, Hugh stepping manfully through the bracken, and both turning back and waving their hands until they were lost in the thicket of underwood through which they had to pass before reaching the road.

Road, indeed, it could scarce be called, for at this season the best were in some places nigh impassable, and Devonshire mud when it is left to follow its own will cannot easily be beaten. In sortie parts the road was little more than a channel worn by constant running of water, and leaving banks on either side; and, owing to the rain of the day before, the water flowed down these banks in little runnels, and rushed cheerfully along the course at the foot. Hugh, however, found it amusing enough to splash through these streams, or to leap from bank to bank, and clamber along through ivy and long grasses and briars and nut-bushes; such a thicket of greenery as he had never seen before. When he was tired he would scramble up behind his father, the stout grey making light of his double burden; and he was untroubled by Stephen’s anxiety lest these narrow lanes should offer opportunity for thieves and outlaws.

They met no such dangerous folk. A ploughman passed and looked curiously at them, and a priest carrying a staff, and on his way to a sick parishioner, stopped and inquired whither they were bound. Bassett’s evident illness made the good man uneasy, and he would have had him rest at his house until better able to go on; indeed, pressed it on him. The carver shook his head.

“I thank you heartily, sir priest, but I must push on, having, as you may judge, but little time before me. If, of your courtesy, you will point out the shortest and safest road, you will be doing us a kindness.”

The old man, who had a very pleasant and earnest face, assured him that, so far as he could tell, the country for some miles round was tolerably free from rogues, though he could not answer for the neighbourhood of Exeter. He himself went a little way with them, and directed them the shortest path along the rocks, where the sea stretched on one side, softly grey, and only a little stirred with remembrance of yesterday’s gale, and pointed out Exmouth, which he said had an ill character for pirates, and then showed them the Exe stretching away, and told them how they should leave it on their right and take the inland road, and so left them with his blessing.

It was all that Stephen could do to hide his increasing weakness from Hugh. There were times when he felt that he must give it all up, drop from the horse, and let himself die by the road-side. Only a will strong for his boy’s sake could have given him strength to sit upright. When they paused at a little hostelry for some food he did not dare get off his horse, fearing that he might lack the resolution to mount again. His suffering became so acute that he could not hide it from Hugh, and though the boy dreaded nothing worse than one of those sharp fits of illness which his father had weathered before, he did his best to induce him to seek a night’s lodging on the road. But Stephen refused almost irritably.

Nor could he bear to follow where Hugh’s remorse would have led him—into talk of Jakes. It seemed as if he would put aside all that was harsh and painful, and he was either silent or—as the boy afterwards remembered—let fall words which showed that his thoughts were with the wife he had lost, or dwelling upon some of the talks he had had with Friar Luke. Once or twice Hugh was sorely perplexed by what he said, fancying that he could not have heard rightly; but Stephen seemed unable or unwilling to repeat the sentence, and murmured something else. Once they fell in with a gay party going to a neighbouring castle; there was a minstrel, and two or three glee maidens were of the company. When they overtook Stephen and Hugh they were making a great noise and merriment, and the boy wondered why, on seeing them, all their jests died away and they looked almost frightened. They made haste, too, to part company, saying they had no time to spare; and Hugh saw them looking back and pointing as at some strange sight.

He was beginning to be alarmed himself, though not knowing why, perhaps chiefly because his father seemed to heed him so little, no longer asking if he were not tired, or noticing Agrippa’s merry pranks, but riding bent upon the horse’s neck, and seeming only to keep his seat with difficulty. Hugh called gladly to him when he saw before him a town which he guessed to be Exeter, lying on a hill above the river, with the fair cathedral standing in a very beautiful position about half-way up, and Stephen so far roused himself as to clasp his hands and to murmur, “God be thanked!” but with that fell back into silence.

It was well that the road was plain enough to need no consultation; and poor little Hugh, wearied out, for he had ridden but little of late, thinking it oppressed his father, struggled manfully on, hoping to get in before sunset. It was well, too, that the last mile or two was of a tolerable flatness, and the road wider and less heavy, though always bad; for Stephen grew more and more bowed, and Hugh became so fearful lest he should fall that he had to steady him as he walked by his side.

Thankful he felt when he came upon a few scattered hovels while the sun was yet some quarter of an hour from setting, at which time the town gates would be shut, and presently he saw the river running swiftly, swelled by the autumn rains, and spanning it a brave new bridge of stone, with houses and a chapel upon it.