The Broken Font: A Story of the Civil War, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Moyle Sherer

  CHAP. VIII.

  Though their voices lower be, Streams have, too, their melody; Night and day they warbling run, Never pause, but still sing on. GEORGE HICKES.

  For three summer months Cuthbert Noble was confined to a couch; andthough latterly he was led forth into the garden, and suffered to liedown on a bench in the shade, yet his confinement had been lonely aswell as tedious. No kindness on the part of any of the family waswanting: whatever could be thought of for his convenience and comfortwas provided. While he was obliged to keep his own chamber, he wasvisited daily by Sir Oliver; Mistress Alice and Katharine looked inupon him together, and inquired gently concerning his pain; the boyArthur would often forego his play in the garden, or his practice inarchery, to sit and read to him; and not a week passed without afriendly and cheerful visit from George Juxon. Nevertheless, he wasevidently dejected; and while he was grateful for all theseattentions, nothing, it was observed, could effectually rouse hisspirits to cheerfulness, although he repaid, by anxious words andquiet smiles, the least service which was done him. About the troublewhich he unavoidably gave the servants, who, for their parts, wereever ready to oblige him, he was scrupulous even to anxiety. He seemedto pine after liberty--and would sit, for hours together, lost in deepthought, or in vacant sadness. It so happened that the clergyman ofMilverton, whose manners were coarse, and whose morals were low, didnot visit at the Hall. Although originally appointed by Sir Oliver, atthe request of a friend, who, acquainted with his family, had takenlittle care to inquire more particularly into his character, he hadearly quarrelled with his patron, and preferred the freedom of an alebench to the restraints of good society. This was unfortunate forCuthbert; as a learned and religious clergyman, residing in thevillage, and intimate at the hall, might have kept him straight inthe plain path of the true churchman. Now, though Juxon, had he beenaware of all that was passing in the mind of Cuthbert, might have beentruly serviceable in disabusing him of some strong prejudices, yet, ashe presumed him to be a true son of the church, the subject was seldomnamed.

  He came to cheer and amuse him if he could; and the very atmosphere ofMilverton Hall was that of purity and delight to George Juxon. Hissummer months presented a strange contrast to those of Cuthbert. Hegave up his buck-hunting in the afternoons: he could not abide therude and noisy companions of that sport of which he had been always sofond; and now he might be seen, day after day, in the guise of anangler, on the grassy margin of a silver stream, or, not unfrequently,stretched at his length beneath a shady tree near the bank, or sittingunder a high honeysuckle hedge; and if he were not chewing his ownsweet fancies, some book in his hand, of good old-fashioned poetry, toaid his pleasant meditations. George Juxon was now a lover--withoutmelancholy, I do not say,--but only with so much of it as is everwelcome to a lover's mood, and gives a dignity to his passion.Nevertheless, his hope was unavowed; nor was he in haste: a longcourtship was the fashion of those days; and a mistress seemed raisedin the fancy of her admirer, by the thought that she must be slowlyapproached, and would be slowly won.

  His family, his private fortune, his present provision in the church,and his future prospects from the favour of the bishop, were such,that Sir Oliver could not object to him as a suitor for his daughter,though he might give the preference to another; and certainly, withher father, the title of a baronet would have outweighed that of adean. However, these circumstances could only encourage him in hismore sanguine moments, for Juxon was a modest man; and when he calledup the image of Katharine in his walks, and thought upon a certainmajesty in her countenance, and how serene and unmoved she was, howunsuspicious of the admiration which she excited, he could not butfear that she might prove indifferent to the suit of one so plain andunvarnished as himself, and that she would never entertain hisaddresses. Therefore it was that he nursed his love in secret, andpatiently restrained all expression of particular regard for MistressKatharine in his present visits to Milverton. How pleasant, in themean time, were all those visits; how swiftly he rode through lane andwood, across field or common, as he went from home on those permittederrands of friendship; and at what a slow and lingering pace would hereturn from the gracious presence of this lady of his love!

  He had often heard it rumoured that Sir Charles Lambert was thought tobe the accepted son-in-law of Sir Oliver; but this he had alwaysdoubted from the very first moment of his introduction at Milverton;and he felt that Katharine could never have endured his attentions. Bythese, however, she could now be troubled no farther; for Sir Charles,being deeply mortified and ashamed of the frantic violence which hehad committed at his last visit, had left his home suddenly forLondon, and was solacing himself, for the contemptuous affront whichhe had received from Sir Philip Arundel, in the congenial atmosphereof bear gardens and cock pits. Nor had he forgotten how roughly he washandled by George Juxon, whom he at once feared for his courage, andhated for his virtues.

  However, he was no longer a visiter at Milverton; his sisters, indeed,still rode over from the Grange occasionally to pass a day withKatharine, and twice Juxon was of the party at table.

  To most eyes he would have appeared the admirer rather of these ladiesthan of Mistress Katharine; for Old Beech rectory was only four milesfrom Bolton Grange: and though he seldom accepted the invitations ofSir Charles, yet he met them often in hunting or hawking parties, andwas apparently a very great favourite with them both. Sophy and JaneLambert were both pretty: the one, with the rosy cheeks of health andlaughing blue eyes; the other, brown and freckled, with an arch lookthat seemed to detect those secrets which men, and women too, mostanxiously conceal, with a provoking and unerring sagacity.

  These good-tempered and warm-hearted girls had been at first sadlyafflicted about their brother's conduct; but this last care concerninghim was now six weeks old, and had been dismissed from their minds. Hewas, to their great contentment, now absent, and their tongues wereagain loosened to playfulness.

  As the party sat at dinner in Milverton Hall one day, about the middleof June, and as Juxon was carving a capon, that he might help MistressAlice to a delicate wing,--

  "Prithee, Master Juxon," said Jane Lambert with a very roguishexpression of the eye, "did you not hear our merry voices on Wednesdayevening as we killed a buck under Walton coppice? and did you not seeus lift our velvet caps to you? and did you shut your ears to thepleasant horn? or were you charmed to sleep by the fairies under thatbroad beech tree in the Bird Meadow? or were you saying your prayers?or were you reading Master Ford's Lover's Melancholy? or were youthinking of our Lady St. Katharine here at Milverton?"

  Juxon was so confused at this last question that he put the wing ofthe capon into the sauce boat instead of on the trencher of MistressAlice, and said, with a stammer and a blush,--

  "Really, Mistress Jane, you are too bad; but I know that you dearlylove a joke upon anglers: you are always jeering poor Moxon."

  "O do not mind her," said Katharine Heywood, coming to his relief:"she is privileged to say what she pleases, without meaning what shesays; and my poor name always serves to point a fancy, if she wantsone: if she were not so young and so pretty, she might be taken up fora false fortune-teller, and a dealer in witchcraft."

  "Cousin Kate, if I am a fortune-teller, I am a true one; and if awitch, you know I am a white one, and work marvellous cures. Shall Itell your fortune? and shall I name the name of a true knight in a farcountry?"

  A glance from the noble eyes of Katharine, which no one perceived butJane Lambert, rebuked her into silence; and trying, though awkwardly,to laugh off the liberty which she had evidently taken with thefeelings of Katharine, she sent her trencher for some venison, andsaid no more.

  Sir Oliver, too, fastening upon the simple fact of Juxon having turneda fisherman, began rallying him for having made so bad an exchange, asto leave the merry and social sport of hunting for the dull andsolitary exercise of angling.

  "It is true," said the knight, "I have myself been forced to give upthe jolly
buck hunt; but, life of me, I could never take up with a rodand line in the place of it. I do wonder, when I see a man mope aboutthe meadows, and stand, it may be, for hours, under the same willow,by the broken bank of a sluggish river, that it doth not end in hishanging himself for very weariness of the flat world."

  "And yet," quoth Juxon, "fishing hath its pleasures, ay, and its sporttoo; but if the angler catch nothing, still he hath a wholesome walkin the pure air; and if he go abroad early, and listeneth to thematins of the heaven-loving lark, he shall not want sweeter musicthan the cry of hounds, and the blasts of hunting horns."

  "By my faith, Master Juxon, you are bewitched; but whether by oldMargery or by the sparkling eyes of Jane I say not; by Margery,methinks; for the faint heart of an angler will never win such asprightly lady of the woods as our Jane."

  "Nay, nay, Sir Oliver, when a man is bewitched, and by love, too, asMistress Jane will have it, his thoughts must be too roving andunquiet to sit still upon a mossy bank watching for the trembling of aquill."

  "Ay, ay; but he may sit quiet enough, and not watch any thing but hisown fancies. I do verily think that thou must be touched with somestrange care, to let thy brave gelding race it round his pasture forthe madness of his desire to follow the chase, at sound of which heneigheth for his rider, and thou sitting the while like some poorscholar alone upon a tree stump."

  "At the least I find one blessing rests on anglers--where they walk,the grace of humility doth grow, lowly as the daisy, and plentiful asthe meadow sweet."

  "I think," said Katharine, "that Master Juxon has good right to walkthe valley with his rod, without being thus rated for his pleasure;and if he useth to find good thoughts in all he meeteth by the riverside in summer evenings it is more than hunters do in the forest."

  "Marry, Kate, it is to get rid of thought that men go a-hunting. Itell thee that cares and sorrows, and wrongs and vexations, cannotkeep pace with a bold hunter; self is forgotten; all is life, and joy,and wild delight. Troth I have lost mind and heart since the merrydays when I hunted."

  "I am of thy mind, Sir Oliver," said Juxon, "and the falling leaf ofOctober, and the chill gloom of November skies, can never cloud theheart of a hunter; but when woods are green, and sunbeams warm, andbirds are singing, methinks the yelp of a hound is unseasonablemusic."

  "Well," said Jane, "all I know is, that you seldom missed anafternoon last summer; and if it was an early hunting day and a stagturned out in the morning, in spite of the green trees and thewarbling larks, Master Juxon was never last in the field; but I willrate you no more: for, may-be, you are afraid of the Puritans, and dostudy _Master Stubbes's Anatomie of Abuses_, and will give up thewicked ways of Esau, and turn shepherd--gentle shepherd, shall it be,or good?"

  "Lady," said Juxon, gravely, "there are good men among the Puritans;"and seeing her colour a little at his tone, he added, with a smile,"and good anglers too; but, in truth, you have hit me hard: for thereare good men, who are no Puritans, who think that the sport of huntingis not seemly in a parson, especially in times like these."

  "Puritans or no Puritans," said Sir Oliver, "I hope you don't mind themuddy race that croak these black lessons of duty. I do not knowwhether they be fools or knaves; but they would preach us into walkingtomb-stones, each showing its _memento mori_."

  "Beyond all question," replied Juxon, "they are wrong in many things;and push their severity against things innocent and pernicious withlittle or no distinction, with a strained application of Scriptureprohibitions, and with a profound ignorance of human nature; and theyseem only to discern God in clouds, and to hear him in the thunder.But there are men of great and stern virtues among them; and, it maybe, of gentler hearts and gentler views than we give them credit for."

  "I don't believe a word of it. They are fanatics in religion, andknavish traitors in their politics: you think of them with morecharity than I do, and it is a false charity, Master Juxon. There wasone of my own name and kin among them: he turned republican, forsooth;old England, forsooth, had no liberty; our good church was a harlot,and all the rest of it; and he would seek true freedom in the forestsand swamps of New England; and away he went with wife and daughters,and a son, whom he had made as great a fool as himself. A youth, sir,that bearded me with his treason at my own table. I sent him packingat midnight, sir, and would not let him sleep the night under my roof;and, in good truth, he was as ready to go as I to bid him; and now heand his father are felling trees in America for aught I know, or care,indeed."

  Katharine Heywood proposed to her aunt and the Lamberts that theyshould go into the Lime Walk, and Juxon would have turned theconversation; but Sir Oliver, with the images of his absent cousinsbefore him, went on venting his feelings, as if in soliloquy. "The sonof a clergyman, too, sir, a younger brother of mine, long dead, and hehimself having been the faithful servant of a king, well accounted offor valour and discretion in the camp of the great Gustavus, where hecommanded a regiment of musketeers. He to turn against kings and goodorder! He that punished a fault against discipline like a sin againstHeaven, and taught his son that obedience was the first duty of asoldier, to come home, with his brave boy to his own country, andteach him to flout at the majesty of the crown! Troth, sir, the kingwas quit of bad subjects, and I of troublesome relations, when theytook ship for the Plantations. I wish all that are as fantastic intheir notions would follow them." At the close of this burst, the oldgentleman took a cup of wine with an eagerness that sought relief, anda trembling hand, that betrayed how deeply he was agitated by angryfeelings.

  Juxon, very unwilling to hear him further on so painful a subject,asked permission of the knight to go and visit Cuthbert Noble for halfan hour, and promised to join him afterwards in the bowling green fortheir customary rubber. As he passed out of the hall, a serving manwas coming in with Sir Oliver's pipe and tobacco-box; and leaving thestrange weed to perform its calming office, Juxon, happy to escape,ran up stairs to the chamber of Cuthbert.

  The surgeon was seated by his side; and from the conversation, which,although they concealed not the subject or the tenour of it at theentrance of Juxon, they soon dropped, it was evident to him that theyhad a mutual understanding in matters of religion and politics, andwere both of them friendly to the cause of the parliament. It had sochanced that, during the whole of his confinement, Cuthbert had, inthe person of the surgeon who attended him, been daily in contact witha mind very deeply imbued with serious and severe principles. By thisman Cuthbert's heart had been probed to the quick; and, under hisinfluence, combining with a strong predisposition in itself, was madesad and heavy.