The MS. in a Red Box Part 30

"How?"

"By using voice and influence to protect a persecuted people."

"I never heard of your folk being persecuted in the Isle."

"No; the cruel laws do not trouble us in this corner of the land, but this very year, twenty of our men were burned in Haddington, and as many women hanged."

"Had they been sheep-stealing?"

"Their only crime was their gipsy blood. They were condemned 'for being Egyptians.' And just now we are being harried in Durham and in Yorks.h.i.+re. You don't know your law, justice of the peace that you would have been, if you had come to be squire of Temple."

"In truth, I don't, if this be law. Are you sure on't?"

"I have seen a woman of our own tribe flogged along the streets, half naked, with her baby at her breast, sheltering its little body from the lash of the scourge with her bare and bleeding arms, and, after the flogging, she was branded in the cheek with a hot iron 'for being an Egyptian.'"

"Why do your people abide in England, then?"

"Because it is worse for them elsewhere."

"If ever I come to be in any kind of authority, things shall be so far better in England as one man can make them, that I swear."

"G.o.d be with you, your s.h.i.+eld and Preserver, and bring you home again to your own country, able and willing to keep your vow."

So we clasped hands and parted.

CHAPTER XXIV

A letter from Anna awaited me on my return to the vicarage, from which I copy as much as it is fit for other eyes than mine to see.

"An armourer in Amsterdam has made himself a name and great gain by a s.h.i.+rt of mail, which is said to be verily pistol proof, and, at the same time, more light and flexible than any heretofore made. I have sent one for you, and one for your friend, and trust they will come to hand in time, and prove as useful as our military friends say they are.

It will be great joy to me, if the idle gew-gaws with which they were bought have been converted into stout and serviceable covering for the breast of my reckless soldier and his comrade. I try to persuade myself that danger flees from those who court it, for well I know you will ever be in the forefront of battle, when you anywise may. But for my sake, pray remember that there is a soldierly prudence.

"We have been here at the Hague for some weeks, my father having been called in to consult with the Stadtholder's physician; but in a few days we go to Leyden, where a professors.h.i.+p has been found for my father. Strangely enough, my father has made acquaintance with yours, who had some business with the Stadtholder, and they fell into a mutual liking, before either knew the other's name. If they had but met in Axholme, how many evils might have been averted! Mr. Vavasour is about to go on some secret emba.s.sy to the East, at the instance of friends, who are in authority at Venice. Doubtless you know more of these Italian gentlemen. He spent more than an hour with us in our lodging, and made me think him a great and magnanimous man, who might have done the state much service, if he had been more highly placed. But he has sorely lacked woman's counsel to remind him of the near duty and the plain, homely wisdom which women have by instinct. Be you warned in time, my Frank. Your father has ruined his estate for want of a housewife's wit!

"You will be pleased to know that his leave-taking with me had a touch of fatherliness....

"There is high dispute among the natural philosophers at Leyden whether it be true that some trees produce flowers but no fruit, and others fruit without flowers. My father bids me ask your answer to these questions following: Do oaks and beeches bear no flowers? Do the elm, poplar, and box bear neither flower nor fruit? He is reconciled to having you as a son-in-law, partly by the quickness and sureness with which you see and observe! Said he to me but yesterday, 'If Frank were here, I believe I could prove that fruit is preceded by blossom far more often than has been supposed.' Yes; he called you 'Frank.' How I wish you were here, instead of preparing for Sweden and all the chances and horrors of the battlefield! Is it utterly impossible for you to come here before you join the army of King Gustavus?"

When I had read and re-read my letter, and while I was giving my aunt the news it contained, and the messages for herself, d.i.c.k Portington came in to bid me to a supper the next evening at the White Hart, where a number of old friends would meet, to wish me a good voyage, and drink to our next merry meeting. Although I had no great inclining to a banquet on the last evening before my departure, I could not bring my mind to offend my well-wishers by a refusal.

Dame Hind outdid herself in the provision she made for the feast, which was spread in the "court-room," the same in which Commissioner Tunstall had trouble with the wasps. Squire Stovin presided, whose ancestor was chief of the bowmen in the army of the Conqueror at Senlac Field. He was accounted one of the wisest and boldest gentlemen of the Isle.

With him was his son George, a little older than I, and a good comrade.

There were present also Squire Mell of Belton, and his son, who had stood by me at Belshaw, and d.i.c.k Portington and his father, the Squire of Tudworth, and some other gentlemen (twelve or more) whose names have not appeared in my pages, besides a few men of humbler condition, among them being Daft Jack and my man Luke.

Over supper the talk at our table ran on the affairs of the nation; the seizure of our s.h.i.+ps by the Duke of Epernon, and the coming war with France; the mystery of the policy of the King, or rather of the Duke of Buckingham. Some one voiced the opinion that the favourite had deep designs, incomprehensible to the vulgar. Squire Stovin laughed in contempt.

"Say 'contradictory to all the adages of common folk' and I am with you. 'You cannot have your cake and eat your cake,' runs the saw; Buckingham thinks he can. He believes the sky will rain potatoes, if he wishes it. He rules England just as much as the weatherc.o.c.k on my barn rules the wind."

"We may hope for better days, think you not," asked Squire Mell, "since the judges have at last taken a stand, and declared the new loan illegal?"

"I see not much promise in that, since the King's answer is to dismiss Sir Randal Carew from his Chief Justices.h.i.+p," replied Stovin. "That is as high-handed a piece of tyranny as the sale of our land over our heads to the Dutchman; and the country takes it as tamely as we have ta'en the loss of our property and our rights."

"There are more than fifty gentlemen of the county committed to prison for refusing to pay the money demanded," said one.

"Ten of them had been appointed commissioners to collect the loan,"

said another.

"I heard a rumour the other day," said a third, "that the Earl of Lincoln is to be sent to the Tower."

"These are not times for our young men to be enlisting for foreign service; there will be civil war in England before we are much older,"

declared Squire Portington.

"There's not much sign of it yet," growled Stovin. "We are too white-livered for 't. But 'tis no bad thing some of our lads should learn how to win battles under a master of the art."

"Vavasour and Drury will be apt pupils, I warrant," said the younger Mell. "He is a good captain who knows how to get the victory when he is outnumbered three to one, and the enemy has hors.e.m.e.n and he footmen only. How the Mulgrave men fled at Belshaw!"

"Nay, the chief credit for that must be put down to thee," I replied.

"The Mulgrave men are not likely to be the tools of oppression in future," remarked Squire Mell. "The young earl is reducing the number of his train. And I have it on good authority that he has put the case of the Isle Commoners to my Lord Scrope in a new light. He is a just young man, and judicious beyond his years."

"The guest of the evening has reason to think so," some one said.

"Owes Frank for his coronet," another shouted.

"His earldom came to him by the judgment of the Almighty," answered Mell, gravely. "We know Vavasour had no intent to kill Lord Sheffield on the best of testimony--that of Frank himself, who would not lie to save his neck."

"'A speaks as straight as 'a hits and shoots," cried a voice from the other table.

"For my part," continued Mell, "I applaud the earl's courage in despising misconstruction."

"What is the meaning of the uproar below?" asked Portington, as we all listened to a noise of voices in anger and alarm, which came through the side door, just opened for the carrying out of the remnants of supper.

At the same moment, a servant rushed into the room, almost breathless.

"Would your honour condescend to come to give order what's to be done with a murthering villain?" she panted toward Squire Stovin.

A dozen men hurried forward, but the squire called out--

"Order, gentlemen. Be so good as to remain until I have seen what's the matter. Portington, Drury, Vavasour, follow me."

At first we could scarcely see, the change being great from the light of many wax candles to the dimness of the few tallow dips in tin sconces of the common room of the inn; but shortly we discerned a fellow held down on a chair by two men, Host Hind standing over him with a stout cudgel in his hand, and a group of labourers and the like, who had been disturbed at their potations, as was plain by an overturned table, and a quant.i.ty of liquor spilled on the floor, and the shards of a broken jug. Briefly told, the matter stood thus: the man now on the chair had come, wrapped in a horseman's long cloak, and wearing a big beard; had called for Schiedam, and sat drinking by himself. A wandering cripple who played a pipe had entertained the company with the tricks of a Barbary ape, which made the round of the room after the performance, holding out a box for the gifts of the liberal. When the man in the cloak took no heed of him, the animal had pulled at his beard, which came off in his paw, whereupon the man had struck the beast, and the beast had instantly fastened his teeth in the man's hand. A scuffle followed, the stranger beating and trying to shake off the ape, its owner endeavouring to save the animal from the heavy blows which the stranger dealt on its head, and the company making confusion worse by crowding on the queer combatants. As soon as the ape had been struck down, the stranger had kicked it furiously, and also its owner the cripple, which stirred the ire of the spectators, who seized him, calling him a brutish villain. In struggling with them, the man had lost his cloak, revealing pistols in his belt, one of which he had pulled out, threatening to shoot. Host Hind had rapped him over the knuckles with his cudgel, called on two stout fellows to hold him, and sent a servant to Justice Stovin.

"Hold up your head, and let me have a closer sight of you; you and I have met before, or I am grossly mistaken."

So saying, the Squire took a candle from the wall, and pa.s.sed it before the man's face, and I saw it was Vliet.