Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (book club reads txt) 📖

your eloquence be persuasive enough; for as sure as I am an Englishman, and he none, if the Gubbings attack us, the first bullet that I shall fire at them will have gone through his scoundrelly brains.”

Parsons still kicked.

“Very well, then, my merry men all. Tie this gentleman’s hands behind his back, get the horses out, and we’ll right away up into Dartmoor, find a good high tor, stand our ground there till morning, and then carry him into Okehampton to the nearest justice. If he chooses to delay me in my journey, it is fair that I should make him pay for it.”

Whereon Parsons gave in, and being fast tied by his arm to Amyas’s saddle, trudged alongside his horse for several weary miles, while Yeo walked by his side, like a friar by a condemned criminal; and in order to keep up his spirits, told him the woful end of Nicholas Saunders the Legate, and how he was found starved to death in a bog.

“And if you wish, sir, to follow in his blessed steps, which I heartily hope you will do, you have only to go over that big cow-backed hill there on your right hand, and down again the other side to Crawmere pool, and there you’ll find as pretty a bog to die in as ever Jesuit needed; and your ghost may sit there on a grass tummock, and tell your beads without any one asking for you till the day of judgment; and much good may it do you!”

At which imagination Yeo was actually heard, for the first and last time in this history, to laugh most heartily.

His ho-ho’s had scarcely died away when they saw shining under the moon the old tower of Lydford castle.

“Cast the fellow off now,” said Amyas.

“Ay, ay, sir!” and Yeo and Simon Evans stopped behind, and did not come up for ten minutes after.

“What have you been about so long?”

“Why, sir,” said Evans, “you see the man had a very fair pair of hose on, and a bran-new kersey doublet, very warm-lined; and so, thinking it a pity good clothes should be wasted on such noxious trade, we’ve just brought them along with us.”

“Spoiling the Egyptians,” said Yeo as comment.

“And what have you done with the man?”

“Hove him over the bank, sir; he pitched into a big furze-bush, and for aught I know, there he’ll bide.”

“You rascal, have you killed him?

“Never fear, sir,” said Yeo, in his cool fashion. “A Jesuit has as many lives as a cat, and, I believe, rides broomsticks post, like a witch. He would be at Lydford now before us, if his master Satan had any business for him there.”

Leaving on their left Lydford and its ill-omened castle (which, a century after, was one of the principal scenes of Judge Jeffreys’s cruelty), Amyas and his party trudged on through the mire toward Okehampton till sunrise; and ere the vapors had lifted from the mountain tops, they were descending the long slopes from Sourton down, while Yestor and Amicombe slept steep and black beneath their misty pall; and roaring far below unseen,

 

“Ockment leapt from crag and cloud Down her cataracts, laughing loud.”

 

The voice of the stream recalled these words to Amyas’s mind. The nymph of Torridge had spoken them upon the day of his triumph. He recollected, too, his vexation on that day at not seeing Rose Salterne. Why, he had never seen her since. Never seen her now for six years and more! Of her ripened beauty he knew only by hearsay; she was still to him the lovely fifteen years’ girl for whose sake he had smitten the Barnstaple draper over the quay. What a chain of petty accidents had kept them from meeting, though so often within a mile of each other! “And what a lucky one!” said practical old Amyas to himself. “If I had seen her as she is now, I might have loved her as Frank does—poor Frank! what will he say? What does he say, for he must know it already? And what ought I to say—to do rather, for talking is no use on this side the grave, nor on the other either, I expect!” And then he asked himself whether his old oath meant nothing or something; whether it was a mere tavern frolic, or a sacred duty. And he held, the more that he looked at it, that it meant the latter.

But what could he do? He had nothing on earth but his sword, so he could not travel to find her. After all, she might not be gone far. Perhaps not gone at all. It might be a mistake, an exaggerated scandal. He would hope so. And yet it was evident that there had been some passages between her and Don Guzman. Eustace’s mysterious words about the promise at Lundy proved that. The villain! He had felt all along that he was a villain; but just the one to win a woman’s heart, too. Frank had been away—all the Brotherhood away. What a fool he had been, to turn the wolf loose into the sheepfold! And yet who would have dreamed of it? …

“At all events,” said Amyas, trying to comfort himself, “I need not complain. I have lost nothing. I stood no more chance of her against Frank than I should have stood against the Don. So there is no use for me to cry about the matter.” And he tried to hum a tune concerning the general frailty of women, but nevertheless, like Sir Hugh, felt that “he had a great disposition to cry.”

He never had expected to win her, and yet it seemed bitter to know that she was lost to him forever. It was not so easy for a heart of his make to toss away the image of a first love; and all the less easy because that image was stained and ruined.

“Curses on the man who had done that deed! I will yet have his heart’s blood somehow, if I go round the world again to find him. If there’s no law for it on earth, there’s law in heaven, or I’m much mistaken.”

With which determination he rode into the ugly, dirty, and stupid town of Okehampton, with which fallen man (by some strange perversity) has chosen to defile one of the loveliest sites in the pleasant land of Devon. And heartily did Amyas abuse the old town that day; for he was detained there, as he expected, full three hours, while the Justice Shallow of the place was sent for from his farm (whither he had gone at sunrise, after the early-rising fashion of those days) to take Yeo’s deposition concerning last night’s affray. Moreover, when Shallow came, he refused to take the depositions, because they ought to have been made before a brother Shallow at Lydford; and in the wrangling which ensued, was very near finding out what Amyas (fearing fresh loss of time and worse evils beside) had commanded to be concealed, namely, the presence of Jesuits in that Moorland Utopia. Then, in broadest Devon—

“And do you call this Christian conduct, sir, to set a quiet man like me upon they Gubbings, as if I was going to risk my precious life—no, nor ever a constable to Okehampton neither? Let Lydfor’ men mind Lydfor’ roogs, and by Lydfor’ law if they will, hang first and try after; but as for me, I’ve rade my Bible, and ‘He that meddleth with strife is like him that taketh a dog by the ears.’ So if you choose to sit down and ate your breakfast with me, well and good: but depositions I’ll have none. If your man is enquired for, you’ll be answerable for his appearing, in course; but I expect mortally” (with a wink), “you wain’t hear much more of the matter from any hand. ‘Leave well alone is a good rule, but leave ill alone is a better.’—So we says round about here; and so you’ll say, captain, when you be so old as I.”

So Amyas sat down and ate his breakfast, and went on afterwards a long and weary day’s journey, till he saw at last beneath him the broad shining river, and the long bridge, and the white houses piled up the hillside; and beyond, over Raleigh downs, the dear old tower of Northam Church.

Alas! Northam was altogether a desert to him then; and Bideford, as it turned out, hardly less so. For when he rode up to Sir Richard’s door, he found that the good knight was still in Ireland, and Lady Grenville at Stow. Whereupon he rode back again down the High Street to that same bow-windowed Ship Tavern where the Brotherhood of the Rose made their vow, and settled himself in the very room where they had supped.

“Ah! Mr. Leigh—Captain Leigh now, I beg pardon,” quoth mine host. “Bideford is an empty place now-a-days, and nothing stirring, sir. What with Sir Richard to Ireland, and Sir John to London, and all the young gentlemen to the wars, there’s no one to buy good liquor, and no one to court the young ladies, neither. Sack, sir? I hope so. I haven’t brewed a gallon of it this fortnight, if you’ll believe me; ale, sir, and aqua vitae, and such low-bred trade, is all I draw now-a-days. Try a pint of sherry, sir, now, to give you an appetite. You mind my sherry of old? Jane! Sherry and sugar, quick, while I pull off the captain’s boots.”

Amyas sat weary and sad, while the innkeeper chattered on.

“Ah, sir! two or three like you would set the young ladies all alive again. By-the-by, there’s been strange doings among them since you were here last. You mind Mistress Salterne!”

“For God’s sake, don’t let us have that story, man! I heard enough of it at Plymouth!” said Amyas, in so disturbed a tone that mine host looked up, and said to himself—

“Ah, poor young gentleman, he’s one of the hard-hit ones.”

“How is the old man?” asked Amyas, after a pause.

“Bears it well enough, sir; but a changed man. Never speaks to a soul, if he can help it. Some folk say he’s not right in his head; or turned miser, or somewhat, and takes naught but bread and water, and sits up all night in the room as was hers, turning over her garments. Heaven knows what’s on his mind—they do say he was over hard on her, and that drove her to it. All I know is, he has never been in here for a drop of liquor (and he came as regular every evening as the town clock, sir) since she went, except a ten days ago, and then he met young Mr. Cary at the door, and I heard him ask Mr. Cary when you would be home, sir.”

“Put on my boots again. I’ll go and see him.”

“Bless you, sir! What, without your sack?”

“Drink it yourself, man.”

“But you wouldn’t go out again this time o’ night on an empty stomach, now?”

“Fill my men’s stomachs for them, and never mind mine. It’s market-day, is it not? Send out, and see whether Mr. Cary is still in town;” and Amyas strode out, and along the quay to Bridgeland Street, and knocked at Mr. Salterne’s door.

Salterne himself opened it, with his usual stern courtesy.

“I saw you coming up the street, sir. I have been expecting this honor from you for some time past. I dreamt of you only last night, and many a night before that too. Welcome, sir, into a lonely house. I trust the good knight your general is well.”

“The good knight my general is with God who made him, Mr. Salterne.”

“Dead, sir?”

“Foundered at sea on our way