This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips.
SHAKSPEARE.
As the grey and misty twilight brightened into the glowing and happy morn, there were two men prying about and around the otherwise deserted cavern of the Gull's Nest Crag.
Nothing is more dreary and lonely to look upon than a scene, where bustle and traffic have but lately been, changed, as if by magic, into a place of stillness--forsaken by those who gave to it animation and existence which before it knew not, and may never know again.
Solitude now covered it as with a pall. At the door of the once noisy and frequented hostelry, instead of the bent but busy figure of old Mother Hays, two sea-gulls stalked, and flapped their wings, and screamed, and thrust their bills into the rude cooking-pots that stood without.
The two persons, who appeared intent upon investigating the mysteries of the place, could not be seen without bending over the edge of the topmost cliff. It was then at once perceived that they were occupied in fulfilling no ordinary or every-day task. They moved in and out of the lower entrance like bees intent on forming new cells. For a considerable time no word was spoken by either: at length the object they had in view appeared accomplished, and, after climbing to the highest cliff, they sat down opposite each other, so as to command a full prospect of both sea and land.
"It was only a little farther on--about a quarter of a mile nearer Cecil Place--that I first set foot on the Isle of Shepey," said the younger, "and a precious fright I got--a fright that never was clear explained, nor ever will be now, I guess."
"I little thought matters would have had such an end," replied the other. "Gad, I'm hardly paid for the powder of the train by the few bits I've picked up inside. I couldn't believe, unless I'd seen it myself, that the place was so cleared out: except the furs and shawls belonging to the women, there wasn't the wrapping round my finger of anything worth having. Well, Hugh had many friends--I never thought he'd turn tail."
"Turn tail!" repeated the youth: "who dares to say he turned tail? If any one repeats that before me, I'll make free to give him a dose of cold lead without farther ceremony!"
"All our chickens are game-cocks now-a-days!" returned the elder one, half laughing: "but, Springall, could you swear that the Skipper and Robin Hays didn't concert it all together?"
"Let me alone, Jack, and don't put my back up. I'll lay my life, if there was any concerting in it, 'twas between Robin and the maid Barbara. Well, girls have queer fancies!--Who'd ha' thought she'd ha' fancied Robin?--though he's a brave sound-hearted little fellow; yet who'd ha' thought she'd have preferred him to--to----"
"To you, I suppose. Lord, Springall, there's no coming up to the women. Bless ye, I've seen those who loved apes, and parrots, and puppy-dogs, and took more pride and pleasure in them than in their own lawful husbands and born children! What d'ye think o' that? Why, would you believe it? a girl I loved better than my heart's blood took a fancy to an old man, and sent me adrift, though I was a likely fellow then--ah! different, very different to what I am now;" and Jack Roupall, leaning his elbows on his knees, that were wide apart, commenced drawing, with the butt end of his pistol, figures on the sand, which the wind, whether in anger or sportiveness, had flung upon the crag. After a lengthened pause, he looked suddenly up at the youth Springall, who still sat opposite to him, and said abruptly, "Are you sure you made no mistake?"
"Am I sure of the sight of my eyes, or the hearing of my ears?" returned the lad. "I was as close to the troopers as I am to you, though they saw me not, and their entire talk was of the Gull's Nest, and how they were all to be down here soon after sunrise; and a deal of jokes, in their own way, they passed upon it--stiff dry jokes, that were as hard to swallow as a poker."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the smuggler; "how they will pray when they see the crag dancing in the air! It would be ill done towards the secret stations of our friends on other parts of the coast, to let these fellows find the ins and outs of such a place as this; it would be holding a candle to the devil--giving them a guide to lead them on through all their plans henceforward and for ever. The Gull's Nest shall go after the Fire-fly. It gives me joy to mar their sport--their peeping and prying. But we will not let off the train until we see them pretty close upon us. The Roundhead rascals shall have the full benefit of our gay bonfire. 'Ods rot it! what else could we do, but make a gay ending of it at once. A gay ending!" he repeated--"a gay ending! No rock to mark the spot of so much merriment, so much joviality, so much spoil! Ah! in a hundred years, few can tell where the watchers of the Gull's Nest Crag lighted beacon and brand for the free rovers of the free sea!"
Another pause succeeded the rhapsody of Jack Roupall and then Springall inquired how it was that he could not open the strong room where the preacher had been left to his prayers.
"How it was? why, because I had not the key. And I am sure there's nothing in it. I was in with the skipper after the long-legged puritan was out, and I could see only squashed fruit, broken boxes, and old good-for-nothing rags. Whatever had been worth moving was moved; but that room will mount as high as any of them, I warrant me. I laid a good lot of combustibles to the door. Ah! there was the gleam of a spear, to my thinking." And he arose as he spoke, groaning out a curse against Springall the moment after. "My back--a murrain upon you and upon me too!--aches like the rheumatism from the weight of that old hag's coffin, which you would have me carry from the Gull's Nest out yonder, for fear it should be blown up with the crag. What did it signify if it was, I wonder?"
"You wouldn't like the body of your own mother to go heavenward after such a fashion, sinner as ye are, would ye, Jack?"
"They are coming," observed the rover, without heeding Springall's words, "they are coming."
It was a fine sight to see even a small number of such well-disciplined soldiers winding their way under the shadow of the hill nearest the scene of so many adventures.
Roupall and the youth crept stealthily down the cliff by a secret path; then, with the greatest deliberation, Jack struck a light, and prepared to fire the train they had connected with those within the nest, to which we alluded at the commencement of our narrative; while Springall proceeded to perform a similar task a little lower down the Crag, towards the window from whence the preacher, Fleetword, slung the packet which so fortunately arrived at the place of its destination.
The instant their purpose was effected by a signal agreed upon between them they quickly withdrew, and sheltered beneath the shade of a huge rock left bare by the receding tide, where no injury could befal them. It was well they did so, for in a moment the report as of a thousand cannon thundered through the air, and fragments of clay, rock, and shingle fell, thick as hail, and heavy as millstones, all around.
Immediately after a piercing cry for aid burst upon their ear, and spread over land and water.
"God of Heaven!" exclaimed Springall, "it is not possible that any human creature could have been within the place!" and he stretched himself forward, and looked up to where the cry was uttered.
The young man, whose locks were then light as the golden beams of the sun, and whose step was as free as that of the mountain roe, lived to be very old, and his hair grew white, and his free step crippled, before death claimed his subject; he was moreover one acquainted in after years with much strife and toil, and earned honour, and wealth, and distinction; but often has he declared that never had he witnessed any thing which so appalled his soul as the sight he beheld on that remembered morning. He seized Roupall's arm with convulsive energy, and dragged him forward, heedless of the storm of clay and stones that was still pelting around them. Wherever the train had fired, the crag had been thrown out; and as there were but few combustibles within its holes, and the gay sunlight had shorn the flames of their brightness, the objects that struck the gaze of the lookers on were the dark hollows vomiting forth columns of black and noisome smoke, streaked with a murky red.
As the fire made its way according to the direction of the meandering powder, which Dalton himself had laid in case of surprise, the earth above reeled, and shook, and sent forth groans, like those of troubled nature when a rude earthquake bursts asunder what the Almighty united with such matchless skill. The lower train that Springall fired had cast forth, amongst rocks and stones, the mass of clay in which was the loophole through which Fleetword had looked out upon the wide sea. Within the chasm thus created was the figure of a living man. He stood there with uplifted hands, lacking courage to advance; for beneath, the wreathed smoke and dim hot fume of the consuming fire told him of certain death; unable to retreat,--for the insidious flame had already destroyed the door which Roupall had failed to move, and danced, like a fiend at play with destruction, from rafter to rafter, and beam to beam, of the devoted place.
"Ha!" exclaimed the reckless rover, with a calmness which at the moment made his young companion upbraid him as the most merciless of human kind; "ha! I wonder how he got there? I heard that some how or other he was in limbo at Cecil Place; he wanted to make an escape, I suppose, and so took to the old earth. Ay, ay! look your last on the bright sun, that's laughing at man and man's doings--you'll never mount to where it shines, I trow."
Sir Willmott Burrell--for Roupall had not been deceived either as to the identity of the person, or the motive which led him to seek refuge in the Gull's Nest--had effected an almost miraculous escape, considering how closely he was guarded, a few hours before, and secreted himself in the very chamber where he had left poor Fleetword to starvation, little imagining that he was standing on the threshold of retributive justice. He had caught at flight, even so far, as a sort of reprieve; and was forming plans of future villany at the very moment the train was fired. God have mercy on all sinners! it is fearful to be cut off without time for repentance. Sir Willmott had none. In the flower of manhood, with a vigorous body and a skilful mind, he had delighted in evil, and panted for the destruction of his fellows. His face, upon which the glare of the garish fire danced in derision of his agony, was distorted, and terrible to look upon: brief as was the space allotted to him, each moment seemed a year of torture. As the flames rose and encircled their victim, his cries were so dreadful, that Springall pressed his hands to his ears, and buried his face in the sand; but Roupall looked on to the last, thinking aloud his own rude but energetic thoughts.
"Ah! you do not pray, as I have seen some do! Now, there come the Ironsides," he added, as those grave soldiers drew up on a projection of the opposite cliff, which, though lower than the ruined Gull's Nest, commanded a view of the cavern and its sole inmate; "there they come, and just in time to see your departure for your father the devil's land. You don't even die game! What an end one of those Ingy chiefs would ha' made of it on such a funeral pile; but some people have no feeling--no pride--no care for what looks well!"
At that instant the Preacher Fleetword, who had accompanied the troops, stood a little in advance of the Protector himself. Cromwell had a curiosity to inspect the resort of the Buccaneers; and, perfectly unconscious of Sir Willmott's escape, was petrified with horror and astonishment on seeing him under such appalling circumstances; the tumbling crags--the blazing fire--the dense smoke mounting like pillars of blackness into the clear and happy morning sky--and, above all, the agonised scorching figure of the wretched knight, writhing in the last throes of mortal agony!
"The Lord have mercy on his soul!" exclaimed Fleetword: "Pray, pray!" he continued, elevating his voice, and hoping, with a kindliness of feeling which Sir Willmott had little right to expect, that he might be instrumental in directing the wretched man's attention to a future state. "Pray! death is before you, and you cannot wrestle with it! Pray! even at the eleventh hour! Pray!--and we will pray with you!"
The Preacher uncovered: the Protector and his soldiers stood also bareheaded on the cliff. But not upon the prayers of brave and honest soldiers was the spirit of active villany and cowardly vice to ascend to the judgment seat of the Almighty--before one word of supplication was spoken, a column of flame enwreathed the remaining portion of the crag: it was of such exceeding brightness that the soldiers blinked thereat; and, when its glare was past, they looked upon a smouldering heap at the foot of the cliffs: it was the only monument of "The Gull's Nest Crag;" and the half-consumed body of Sir Willmott Burrell was crushed beneath it.
While the attention of Cromwell and his friends was fixed upon the desperate end of the miserable man, Roupall was crawling under a ledge of black rock, that stretched to a considerable distance into the sea, where he calculated on remaining safe until high tide drove him to another burrow. Not so Springall: the moment he saw the Protector on the cliff, he appeared to have forgotten every thing connected with disguise or flight; he no longer sought concealment, but hastened to present himself in front of the soldiers, who still remained uncovered, expecting, doubtless, that such an event would be followed by exposition or prayer.
Nothing daunted, he advanced with a steady and determined step, without so much as removing his hat, until he stood directly opposite to Cromwell, whose countenance, under the influence of awe and horror, had something in it more than usually terrific. The clear blue eye of the young intrepid boy encountered the grey, worn, and bloodshot orb of the great and extraordinary man.
For an instant, a most brief instant, eye rested upon eye--then the young seaman's dropped, and it would seem that his gay and lofty head bent of itself, the hat was respectfully removed, and he confessed to himself that he trembled in the presence of the mysterious being.
"We would not quench the spirit," said the Protector, addressing Fleetword, "but let your prayer be short--a word in season is better than a sermon out of season. We have somewhat to investigate touching the incendiaries by land as well as sea."
For the first time in his life Springall considered that a prayer might not be of wearisome length. There he stood, as if nailed to the same spot, while the smoke of the Gull's Nest ascended, and the soldiers remained with their helmets in their hands.
Cromwell manifested an occasional impatience, but only by moving first on one leg, then on the other; which, however, escaped the observation of Fleetword, who most certainly became a more dignified and self-important person ever after the hour when he was "permitted to speak in the presence of the ruler in the New Jerusalem."
His address was brief and emphatic; and upon its conclusion the Protector commanded Springall to advance.
"It appears to us that you had something to communicate."
"I believe I made a mistake," replied the boy, "I took you--your Highness, I should say--for one Major Wellmore."
"We know you to be a faithful watchman, but it remains to be proved if you are an honest witness. Canst tell how came about this business, and how Sir Willmott Burrell escaped, and took refuge there?"
"It was always settled, please your Highness, that, if any thing happened, whoever could was to fire off the trains, which were always ready laid, to make an ending when needed: we little thought that there was any living being within the nest; but Sir Willmott had access to many of the cells, being as deep in their secrets as other resorters to this place--only he never had the bravery of the free trade about him, seeing he was far from honest."
Springall observed not the warning finger of Robin Hays, nor heard the murmured sentence of caution that fell upon his ear from the lips of Walter Cecil. Although he had assumed an attitude of daring, his whole thoughts were fixed on the Protector. He was proceeding in the same strain, when Cromwell interrupted him.
"Peace, youngster! it is ill from one who has committed evil, like yourself, to speak evil of the living, much less the dead;--it was you, we take it, who reduced this place to destruction?"
"Please your Highness, I did."
"You and another?"
"Well, sir, there was another: but he's gone--no use in trying to find him, he's away. If," added the young man, with his usual recklessness, "there should be punishment for destroying a wasp's nest, your Highness shall see that I will bear it as well as----"
The Protector again interrupted the youth's eloquence by adding, "As well as you did the hanging over yonder bay? No, no--we can discriminate, by God's blessing, between the young of the plundering fox and the cub of a lion: both are destructive, but the one is mean and cowardly: the other--it shall be our care to train the other to nobler purposes."
Springall raised his eyes, almost for the first time, from the ground, and started at seeing his friends standing on a level with the Protector. Robin's cheek was blanched, and his ken wandered over the blazing gulf which had swallowed up the dwelling of his early years.
Springall, with the quickness of feeling that passes from kind heart to kind heart, without the aid of words, sprang towards him, and catching his arm, exclaimed,
"Your mother's body! it is safe, safe, Robin, under the dark tree, by the cairn stones. Surely I would not let it be so destroyed."
Cromwell's veneration for his own mother was one of the most beautiful traits in his character; from that instant the Protector of England took the boy Springall unto his heart: there was something in common between them--out of such slight events are destinies moulded.
"Your Highness," said Walter, whom we must now distinguish as WALTER CECIL, "will pardon one who is indebted to you, not only for a restored fortune, but for his hopes of happiness. Your Highness will, I trust, pardon me for so soon becoming a suitor:--that boy----"
"Shall be cared for--it pleased the Almighty that Major Wellmore encountered more than one brave heart and trusty hand in this same Isle of Shepey. After a time we trust to show you and your cousin-bride, when she visits her god-mother, how highly we esteem your friendship; and we trust, moreover, that the awful lesson of retributive justice, it has graciously pleased the Lord to write in palpable letters of fire, will be remembered by all those who hear of Hugh Dalton and the Fire-fly. Great as is the power given into our keeping, we would not have dared to execute such awful judgment as that which has fallen upon the man of many sins. And behold, also, by the hands of the ungodly righteous punishment has been dealt unto the sticks and stones that have long given to rapine most unworthy shelter. The wheat, too, mark ye, young sir!--the wheat has been divided--glory be to God! for it is his doing. The wheat has been divided from the tares--and from amid the lawless and the guilty have come forth some who may yet take seats among the faithful in Israel."
CONCLUDING CHAPTER.
Twelve years--twelve eventful years--had passed, and, ere our work is done, we must entreat our readers to visit with us, once again, the old Isle of Shepey. The thoughtless, good-tempered, dissipated, extravagant, ungrateful, unprincipled Charles, had been called by the sedate, thinking, and moral people of England to reign over them. But with English whim, or English wisdom, we have at present nought to do; we leave abler and stronger heads to determine, when reviewing the page of history, whether we are or are not a most change-loving people--lovers of change for the sake of change.
Our business is with an aged man, seated, on a pleasant evening of the year 1668, under a noble oak, whose spreading branches shadowed a brook that babbled at his feet.
The beams of the setting sun were deepening the yellow tints of yet early autumn, and many of the trees looked as if steeped in liquid gold. In the distance, the ocean, quiet, calm, unruffled, was sleeping beneath the sober sky, and not a breeze wafted its murmurs to the little streamlet by the side of which that old man sat. He was but one of a group; four healthy and handsome children crowded around him, watching, with all the intense hope and anxiety of that happy age, the progress of his work. He was occupied, as grandfathers often are, in constructing a toy for his grandchildren. The prettiest of the party was a dark-eyed rosy girl of about four, perhaps five--for her countenance had more intelligence than generally belongs to either age, while her figure was slight and small, small enough for a child not numbering more than three years: she, too, was employed--stitching, with a long awkward needle, something which looked very like the sail of a baby-boat. A boy, somewhat older than herself, was twisting tow into cordage, while the eldest, the man of the family, issued his directions, or rather his commands, to both, in the customary style of lads when overlooking their juniors. The next to him was probably grandpapa's especial pet, for he knelt at the old man's knee, watching patiently, and taking good note, how he secured the principal mast steadily in the centre of the mimic vessel, it had been his kind task to frame for the youngsters' amusement.
It must not be forgotten that a very pretty spaniel crouched at the little maid's feet, and ever and anon lifted its mild gentle eyes to the countenance of its mistress.
"Con," said the eldest boy, "you are making those stitches as long as your own little fingers; and you must remember, that if the work is not done neatly, the wind may get into the turnings and throw the ship on her beam-ends."
"Grandfather!" exclaimed the child, holding up her work with an imploring look, "be those stitches too long? If you say so, grandfather, I will take them all out, because you know."
"They will do very nicely indeed, Conny," replied the old man, with an approving smile; "and as for you, Master Walter, I wish that your work was always done as well as your sister's. Bless her! how like her mother she is!"
"I wish I was like my mother too," said Walter, "for then you would love me."
"Boys and girl, I love you all, and thank God that, in these bad times, you are as good as you are! But, Watty, you must never think of the sea; you were not intended for a sailor, or you would not talk of wind getting into the stitchings of a topsail, and throwing the ship on her beam-ends--ha, ha!"
The proud boy turned blushingly away, and began playing with, or rather teazing, a very old nondescript dog, who was lying comfortably coiled up on the youngest lad's pinafore, under shelter of the grey stone which the grandfather used as his seat.
"Wat will be a soldier," said the second boy, whose name was Hugh; "his godpapa, Sir Walter, says he shall. But you will teach me to be a sailor before you die, and then I may live to be as great as the great man you and father talk about, the brave Blake. Oh! how proud I should be if you could live to see that day," he continued, his bright eyes dancing at the anticipation of future glory. "And you may, dear grandfather, for mother says that Crisp is older now for a dog than you are for a man. Watty, you had better not teaze Crisp, for he has three teeth left."
"Three!" interrupted little Con, whose fine name of Constantia had been diminished to the familiar appellation--"three! he has four and a half and a little piece, for I opened his mout and counted them myself."
"When do you mean to speak plain, and be a lady, Miss Con?"
The child looked into her brother's face, and laughed a gleesome laugh, one of those burstings of a joyous heart that come, we know not how, but never come after the dancing pulse of youth changes into a measured time, when we look upon the dial's hand, and note that hours are passing.
"Grandfather," said Hugh, when the mast was fairly established, and the rigging properly arranged, "may I call my vessel the 'Firefly?'"
From whence came the rich warm blood that in a moment suffused the old man's cheek, as his unconscious grandchild pronounced the name of his darling, his long-lost, but not forgotten ship? He grasped the boy's arm with the energy of former times, and shook him as he never thought to have shaken the child of his own Barbara.
"Where heard you those words--where, I say?" he demanded of his namesake, while the boy cowered, and the other children stood aghast.
"I heard that wild old man who died in our barn last week, although mother made him so comfortable, and you and father were so kind to him, say that was the name of a ship you once had," sobbed little Hugh: "and I only thought I should like to call mine after it."
"And was that indeed all?" inquired the aged Buccaneer, relaxing his grasp, but still looking into the boy's ingenuous countenance, as if he expected some evil tidings.
"It was all that I understood," replied the child, now weeping from pain and terror, "except that I remember he asked to be buried at East-Church, because that was nearer what he called the Gull's Nest Crag than the old church of Minster."
"Poor Jack!--poor Jack Roupall!" exclaimed Dalton, forgetting his momentary displeasure, and musing aloud upon the end of his ever reckless follower--"Poor Jack! The nut had been good, fresh, sweet, wholesome, though the rind was rough and bitter; it was the canker that destroyed it: and I should have been as bad--as blighted--lost--but for my own sweet child." And then Hugh Dalton's eye fell upon the pouting boy, whose arm he had, in the anguish of his remembrance, pressed too roughly, and he caught him to his bosom, and blessed him with all his heart and soul.
Little Con crept round, and, seeing where her brother's arm was still red, held it to her grandfather's lip, saying,
"Kiss, kiss it, and make it well."
The old man did as that child in her simplicity directed; and, when she again looked upon it, there was more than one tear glistening on the fair firm flesh.
"Let us call her 'King Charles,'" exclaimed the eldest boy, as the gallant little vessel moved down the stream; while the children, who not ten minutes before were trembling with alarm at their grandfather's displeasure, now, with the happy versatility of youthful spirits, shouted gaily at the ship's progress over the unrippled waters.
"You will call it by no such name," said Dalton gravely. "Yonder comes your mother, and she or your father can best christen your little ship."
The old man, who had launched their fairy boat, turned towards where once Cecil Place had stood. From some peculiar feeling in the bosoms of Sir Walter and Lady Cecil, for which it would not be difficult to account, only a portion of the old structure remained--sufficient, and just sufficient, to lodge Robin, and Robin's wife, and Robin's father-in-law, and Robin's children. The fine old gateway was fast crumbling to decay, and, indeed, it was well known that a kindly sentiment towards the Buccaneer decided Sir Walter on keeping even so much of the place standing, as the old man's only wish now was to die in the Isle of Shepey; and it will be readily believed that Hugh Dalton's wishes were laws to the family of Cecil. The trees had in many places been levelled, and the only spot which remained perfectly untouched in the gardens was one called "The Fairy Ring." The neighbouring peasantry believed that it was hallowed by some remembrance of which both Lady Cecil and Barbara partook; for the latter tended every herb and flower therein with more than common care--with perfect devotion. Did we say there was but one spot cherished? faithless historians that we are! there was another--a rustic temple; and, about ten years before the period of which we now treat, something resembling an altar had been erected therein, with a quaint device carved in white stone, a braid of hair encircling two hearts, and a rhyme, or, as it was then called, a posy, the words of which are not recorded, but were said to have been written by Lucy Hutchinson, as a compliment to her friend Constantia Cecil.
The old man, as we have said, turned towards Cecil Place, which then presented only the appearance of a small and picturesque dwelling. Issuing thence were two persons whom we may at once introduce as the manikin, Robin Hays, and the little Puritan, Barbara Iverk, of our story. Manikin, indeed! He of the gay pink doublet, silken hose, and plume hat, would little thank us for the term! He was rather over than under-dressed, more fine than might be expected in a country gentleman in so lonely an island; but it was evident he loved finery, and loved to deck his own person: his long black hair curled naturally and gracefully over his shoulders; his eyes had more to do, during latter years, with love and home, than with hate and adventure; consequently they sparkled with pure and kindly feeling; and if sometimes sarcasm lighted its beacon within their lids, it was quickly extinguished by the devoted affection and gratitude of his right excellent heart. His figure appeared much less disproportioned than when first we saw him taunted into fury in his mother's hostelry by poor Jack Roupall's ill-timed jests on his deformity: he was much stouter; and the full cavalier dress was better calculated to hide any defects of person, than the tight fitting vests of the bygone Roundheads, who looked to every inch of cloth with a carefulness altogether scouted by their more heedless successors. He had a free and open air, and a smile of dazzling brightness. What can we say of Barbara? Female beauty is seldom stationary; there is no use in disguising the fact, that after twenty--dear, sweet, fascinating twenty! the freshness of the rose is gone. We have said freshness--not fragrance. Fragrance to the rose, is what the soul is to the body--an imperishable essence, that lasts after the petals have meekly dropped, one by one, upon their mother-earth. A blessing upon the fragrance of sweet flowers! and a thousand blessings upon the power that gifted their leaves with such a dowry! Oh, it partakes of heaven to walk into the pastures and inhale the goodness of the Lord, from the myriad field-flowers that gem the earth with beauty! And then in sickness! What, what is so refreshing as the perfume of sweet plants? We speak not of the glazed and costly things that come from foreign lands, but of the English nosegay--(how we love the homely word!)--the sweet briar, lavender, cowslip, violet, lily of the valley, or a sprig of meadow sweet, a branch of myrtle, a tuft of primroses, or handful of wild thyme! Such near the couch of sickness are worth a host of powdered doctors! Again we say, a blessing on sweet flowers! And now for one who loved them well, and learnt much wisdom "from every leaf that clothed her native hills." Barbara was no longer the slight, delicate girl, tripping with an orderly but light step to do the behests of those she loved; but a sober, diligent, affectionate matron, zealous in the discharge of her duty, patient in supporting pain, whether of mind or body; a sincere Christian, a kind mistress, a gentle daughter, a wise mother, but, above all, a devoted, trusting wife, still looking upon Robin--her Robin, as the English Solomon,--a system we advise all wives to follow--when they can. The manner in which this truly pious woman yielded to all her husband's whims was almost marvellous--one of the miracles of that miracle-worker--LOVE! With the simple, yet discriminating tact, of itself a gift from nature, which no earthly power can either bestow or teach, she understood the wishes of Robin almost before he was himself acquainted with his own thoughts. And had she been on her death-bed, that excellent creature could have declared before Him, to whom all things are known, that "God and her husband" had been her true heart's motto.
Even Robin's weaknesses were hallowed, if not cherished things--she innocently catered to his personal vanity, for she really loved to see him well appointed; and she avoided every thing bordering on gaiety of dress, manner, or society, because she felt that jealousy was one of his infirmities; thus by never arousing his evil passions, their very existence was forgotten, and the violent, capricious Ranger would have been hardly recognized (except by his very intimates), as the self-satisfied, and somewhat important manager of Sir Walter Cecil's estates.
As Robin and Barbara drew near their father and the children, they perceived a Cavalier well mounted, and attended by two serving men, also on horseback, winding along the hill path, or road, as it was called; and the younger dog--by the way a daughter of our old acquaintance Blanche--gave notice to the little mariners of the approach, by bristling her silken hair and rounding her flapping ears, while she barked long and loudly at the unusual arrival.
The Buccaneer shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out. Robin jerked his hat a little more on one side, while Barbara drew the Flanders lace of her silken hood more closely round her face.
"It is a Court Cavalier," exclaimed Master Hays, as he was respectfully termed by his associates, "with two attendants and a dog; beshrew me! but a noble dog from foreign parts; some friend of our kind master is that gentleman. One would think he was reconnoitring, so earnestly does he look out from place to place. Father," he continued, drawing towards Dalton, "do you note how he peers out yonder, towards where once--you understand me----"
"I do," replied the old man, "I do note it; and I note also that yon same Cavalier is no other than one we both knew well. There! he sees us--his hat is off--he hails us right joyfully. Know you not the bold brow, and the bright eye--blue, blue as the waters and the heavens he has so long looked upon? Off with ye'r hats, my boys," he added to the children; "and, Robin, is yours nailed to your head, that it answers not his signal?--it is the young sea captain of whom, even here, we have heard and read so much. It is Springall!"
And so it was; distinguished by the Protector at the very moment when to be so distinguished makes a man's fortune, the bold intrepid boy quickly ripened into the able and experienced seaman. His promotion was rapid, because his talents were appreciated--and, after the death of Cromwell, he had been too much occupied with England's enemies at sea, to suffer from the moral blight of Charles's court on shore.
"Now, Springall--I love to call you by that name," said the Buccaneer, "though you have taken your old one, and made it even more honoured than it was before,--the evening has closed in--the children a-bed--God bless them! We will draw nearer round our cheerful hearth, and talk of days long gone. Barbara, let's have some fresh logs on the fire; and now, for past and present times."
"I am a bad hand at a long yarn--you know I always was so, captain,"--said the naval officer, smiling, "and the news of poor Jack's death has damped my canvass. I always thought he'd make a queer end of it--so fond of plunder--so careless--so unprincipled--but brave, brave to the backbone."
"Do you remember what he dared, by way of adventure, not a hundred miles from this; when Major Wellmore and Walter De Guerre were masquing it here so gaily?" inquired Robin.
"Ay, ay! But he and Grimstone were both half-seas over, or they'd have hardly ventured it:--poor Grim paid the penalty."
"And deserved it too," added Robin. "He whom they assaulted was a wonder--a being that will serve future ages to talk about, when the rulers of the present day are either execrated or forgotten. Marry! but it makes one's head swim to think of the warm blood and true that has been spilled and wasted to raise up a throne for obscenity and folly! Chambering and wantonness walk together as twin-born, along the very halls where Cromwell, and Ireton, and Milton, and--my head's too hot to recollect their names; but they are graven on my heart, as men who made England a Queen among the nations."
"Then their Popery plots!" chimed in the Buccaneer; "the innocent blood that has flooded the scaffold, as if the earth was thirsty for it--and upon what grounds? the evidence, I hear, of one villain, supported by the evidence of another! I grieve for one thing, truly--that I was ever instrumental in forwarding the King's views. Robin said a true word in jest the other day, that men as well as puppies were born blind, only it takes a much longer period to open our eyes, than those of our four-footed friends."
"So it does," said Springall, laughing; "that was one of Robin's wise sayings. Barbara!--I beg your pardon,--Mistress Hays--do you think him as wise as ever?"
"I always thought him wise; but I know it now," she replied, smiling.
"Sit ye down, Barbara," said Robin, "and our friend here will tell you how much he admires our children; they are fine, healthy, and, though I say it, handsome--straight withal--straight as Robin Hood's own arrow; and I do bless God for that--for that especially! I would rather have seen them dead at my feet than----"
"Now, God forgive you, Rob! so would not I. I should have loved them as well, had they been crooked as--" interrupted his wife.
"Their father!"
"For shame, Robin!"
Robin looked at Barbara and laughed, but turned away his head; and then he looked a second time, and saw that a deep red hue had mounted to his wife's cheek, while a tear stood in her eye; and he forgot the stranger's presence, and converted the tear to a gentle satisfied smile, by a kind and affectionate kiss. How little tenderness, how little, how very little, does it take to constitute the happiness of a simple mind!
"There was a strange long preacher here, ages ago," inquired Springall, filling his silver cup with sherris; "he surely did not migrate with the higher powers?"
"No!" replied Dalton, whose eyes had been fixed upon the burning logs, as if recapitulating the events of former days; "he was a staunch and true-hearted Puritan, apt to take wrong notions in tow, and desperately bitter against Papistry, which same bitterness is a log I never could read, seeing that the best all sects can accomplish is to act up to the belief they have. But, as I have said, he was true-hearted, and never recovered the tale we heard, as to the way in which the new directors insulted the remains of one whom they trembled even to look at in his lifetime. He died off, sir, like an autumn breeze, chilly and weak, but praying, and thankful that God was so good as to remove him from the blight of the Philistines, who covered the earth as thickly as the locusts overspread the land of Egypt."
"I never did, nor ever can believe," said Robin, "it was permitted that such cravens should insult the body of so great a soul. The Protector wished to be buried on the field of Naseby, and something tells me he had his wish."
"Your politics changed as well as mine!" replied the sea-captain; "what cavaliers we were in the days of our youth--heh, Commandant!"
"It is very odd, Springall," replied the old Skipper; "but somehow, my heart is too full for words; I seem to be living my life over again; and but now could have sworn I saw poor Sir Robert, as I saw him last, clutching those dreaded papers. What a night that was, and what a day the next!"
"And the poor Lady Zillah, when she heard of Sir Willmott's end!" said Barbara. "She spoke no word, she made no scream; but her trouble came quickly, and hard and bitter it was; and the child her hope rested on breathed no breath--there was no heir to the house of Burrell; and she and her father passed from the land, and were seen no more."
"Seen no more, certainly; but many were the jewels and costly the tirings she sent from foreign parts to my lady's firstborn," continued Robin.
"And to me she sent baubles,--not baubles either," added Barbara, "but things too costly for one in my state. Her last gift was the most precious in my sight--a gold cross, and along the top these words--'Thy God shall be my God;' and down the centre--'Thy people my people!' It gave me great consolation; it was like a token of resignation and peace, and a wonderful working of God's providence." And after she had so said, she went out of the room, to conceal the emotion she always felt when speaking of the Jewish lady.
"So it was undoubtedly," rejoined Robin, who had not noted Barbara's departure.
"Despite your bravery, Master," said the seaman, "I think you have got a touch of the past times yourself; I have not heard the breath of an oath from either?"
"Hush!" replied Robin, looking round the room, and right pleased to find that Barbara was absent: "were it only to avoid giving her pain, it would ill become either of us to blaspheme Him in whom we trust."
"And so you say," commenced Dalton, uniting the thread of the discourse, which had been broken, "that Sir Walter and Lady Cecil are seldom seen at court? I heard this before, but not for certain."
"Seldom, you may well say," returned Springall; "the king presented Lady Castlemaine to the Lady Constantia, at one of the drawing-rooms; and our right noble dame declared it was the last she would ever attend. It was said that the king spoke to Sir Walter about it; and I think it likely, as he knew him abroad so well. And Sir Walter was even more high on the matter than his lady had been; and the king jested, and said it was only the court fashion; to which Sir Walter returned for answer, that, however it might be the court fashion, it was scarce courtly to present an immodest to a modest woman. With that the king chafed, and said he supposed Lady Constantia's friendship for Dame Frances Russell was stronger than her loyalty, for she regarded Cromwell's daughter, both as RICH and RUSSELL, more than she did his favour. And Sir Walter, making a low bow, replied that Lady Constantia had little thought to displease her king by her attachment to a lady who had once been honoured by the offer of his hand. Upon which the king bit his lip, turned upon his heel, and spoke no farther word to Sir Walter Cecil."
"Good! good! good!" exclaimed Robin with manifest delight, chuckling and rubbing his hands, "that was good! How it warms my heart when an honest subject speaks to a king as man to man, feeling he has no cause to dread his frown or court his smile. Brave! brave, Sir Walter! There is a moral dignity, a fearlessness in truth, that makes one not tread--not tread, mind ye, but spurn the earth he walks upon. If we would not be of the earth, earthy, but of the heavens, heavenly, we must be independent in thought and action! Brave, brave Sir Walter!"
"Master Robin," said the captain, looking earnestly in his countenance, and half-inclined to smile at his enthusiasm--"Master Robin, that's not the court fashion."
"D--n the court!" shouted the Ranger; then suddenly checking himself, he added, turning to his wife, whose return he had not heeded,--"I beg your pardon, my dear Barbara,--it was his fault, not mine. Nay, I have said nothing half so wicked this long, long time. Come, tell me, did you see Sir Walter's children, Captain? Oliver, he is the first-born, a noble boy? Then,--I forget their names; but I know there is neither a Herbert nor a Robert among them. Alas! there are good reasons why it should so be. I think Richard Cromwell stood godfather to the eldest."
"Richard Cromwell!" repeated Springall, in a tone of contempt.
"He was wise, though; he felt that he had not his father's talents, consequently could not maintain his father's power," observed Robin.
"Master Hays," inquired Springall, wisely avoiding any topic likely to excite political difference, "you are an oracle, and can tell me what has become of my worthy friend, that most excellent compounder of confections, Solomon Grundy?"
"Poor Solomon!" replied Robin, "he accompanied the family after Sir Robert's death,--which was lingering enough, to set forth more brightly the virtues of both daughter and nephew,--to London, and was choked by devouring too hastily a French prawn! Poor Solomon! it was as natural for him so to die as for a soldier to fall on the field of battle."
"So it was," replied the seaman; "but having discussed the events and the persons with whom we had most to do in past years, let us, before entering on other subjects, fill a bumper to the health of my long cherished, and, despite his faults, my trusty beloved friend--the OLD BUCCANEER! Much has he occupied my thoughts, and it joys me to find him, and leave him, where an old man ought to be--in the bosom of his true and beautiful family. We have all faults," continued the officer, somewhat moved by the good sherris and his own good feeling--"for it's a well-written log that has no blots; but hang it, as I said before, I never could spin a yarn like my friend Robin here, either from the wheel, which I mean to typify the head--or the distaff, which, be it understood, signifies the heart: So here goes--" and, with a trembling hand, and a sparkling eye, the generous Springall drained the deep tankard, to the health of his first sea friend.
"It is not seemly in woman to drink of strong waters or glowing wine," said Barbara, whose tearful eyes rested upon the time-worn features of her father: "but, God knows, my heart is often so full of grateful thanks, that I lack words to speak my happiness; and I have need of constant watchfulness to prevent the creature from occupying the place of the Creator. My father has sometimes hours of bitterness, yet I bless God he is not as a brand consumed in the burning, but rather as gold purified and cleansed by that which devoureth our impurities, but maketh great that which deserveth greatness. As to Robin----"
"Don't turn me into a fable, wife!" exclaimed Robin, playfully interrupting her:--"I am, in my own proper person, an AEsop as it is. There has been enough of all this for to-night: we will but pledge another cup to the health of Sir Walter, the Lady Constance, and their children--and then to bed; and may all sleep well whose hearts are innocent as yours, Barbara! and I hope I may add without presumption, purified as mine. You see, Springall, the earth that nourishes the rose may in time partake of its fragrance."
