The MS. in a Red Box Part 29

Over that meal, which we had by our two selves, the vicar being away at a meeting of clergymen, my aunt told me the contents of a letter which she had received from my father, or part of the contents. The letter she did not show me. He wrote from Amsterdam, whence he purposed to go to Venice and the East, saying that a Dutch gentleman, with whom he had made acquaintance, and who had done him service with the Stadtholder, turned out to be Doctor Goel, and the doctor had informed him I was still alive, and of all he knew concerning my affairs, which did not go further than that I was in hiding. My father took shame to himself for having been so easily deceived as to my death, and wrote remorsefully of my mischance and suffering, and bade my aunt convey to me his forgiveness.

I thought his letter somewhat less than fatherly, even in my aunt's account, but I said nothing. She read my silence.

"Bear in mind, Frank, that your father has been hurt in the tenderest part of him--his pride. All his life he has been looked up to as the chief man in the Isle, barring the n.o.bility, and he was confident of carrying all before him against Vermuijden and the King himself. And he has utterly failed. To such a man as he is, that is tenfold more bitter than death. Doubtless, he thinks he would have won the day, if you had fallen in with his plans."

My aunt desired a full relation of my adventures, and asked many questions, so that it was late when I retired. (She sat up to wait the coming of her husband.) I found a cheerful fire in my bedroom, and some hot elderberry wine ready for my drinking, which was better stuff than some I have paid for as wine of Oporto. And then I crept to bed, a feather-bed, with abundant covering, such as I had not lain in for many weeks, and fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

My aunt made great outcry against my going soldiering in foreign service. She had a score of plans for me which she thought better than pursuit of fortune through cannon smoke and the perils of war; and, in her anxiety to keep me at home, declared I might become barrister, or physician, or clerk in holy orders; and when I showed some wonder at her new estimation of my talents, she was constrained to defend her opinion by disparaging the parts and learning necessary to lawyers, doctors, and divines. She dared to say one might become a sergeant by dint of brazen face and ready tongue; or win repute as doctor by saying little, and shaking one's head wisely. And she even made bold to say that, in her judgment, the less Greek and Latin a clergyman had the better. To such arguments I could find no answer, save that I knew I was fit for nothing but to be a plain country gentleman, and since that was denied me, to turn soldier.

We had plenty of leisure to discuss the matter, for it was not until after Christmas that John heard from his Swedish friends, a.s.suring us of welcome. In the meantime I had little to do. I wrote a long letter to my love, who replied, agreeing with me, though sorrowfully, that soldiership was my best occupation.

Mr. Ulceby's affairs were in so much confusion, as he told me, when I paid him a visit, that he knew not in the least how they would turn out; and all I could understand, from the account he gave me, was that two or three thousand pounds would straighten them. It was great comfort to him that no man doubted his integrity, or even much impugned his prudence; for many other merchants had fully trusted the man by whom he had been deceived. John Drury had given him no small consolation, finding where and when his son had died; learning from the labourer's wife, who nursed him, that the young man had spoken of his sin against his father with shame and penitence.

"So, I confidently trust," said the good old man, "that the Father in heaven is not less forgiving than the unworthy one on earth."

In this time of waiting, I took opportunity to see my friend d.i.c.k Portington, and found him at first somewhat dry and cold; but he came by degrees to a more cordial manner, and at last let me into the secret of the change which had come over him.

"Hast no grudge against me, Frank?"

"What grudge can I have against thee? It pa.s.ses my wit to guess."

"For one thing, I am to be master of thy inheritance."

"It comes to thee, I suppose, as the dower of thy bride? What offence can that be to me?"

"Thou might'st have had it, if the lady could have been brought to favour thy suit. Can'st be friendly with thy rival?"

"Can give thee joy of thy success, man, and dance at thy wedding, if I am invited, and not too far away to come to it."

After that we were on the old terms for the while, and had good sport together among the half-duck and mussel-duck which abounded at Tudworth. d.i.c.k did me the kindness to take Luke into his service for the time, who had come to me at the vicarage in hope to be employed; but there was no work for him, and I had no right to burden the vicar with another idler's maintenance.

When, at length, John received letters from Sweden, I went to take farewell of Bess, who remained with her father and grandmother in a cottage on the east of Belton; the rest of the tribe having gone, as was their custom at this time of the year, to Nottingham. When I entered the house, the grandmother, looking fearfully old and wrinkled, was cowering over the fire, and Bess sat opposite her, doing some kind of sewing. The aged crone turned her head, and, seeing me, began to laugh, jabbering in her gipsy tongue, as if to bid me welcome, and would have risen, but Bess gently forced her back into her seat. This mightily incensed the old woman, and she chattered and screamed in anger at Bess, beckoning me to come nearer. As I stood, unable to comprehend all this, Bess said to me--

"Go outside, and I will come to you when she is pacified."

In a little time she appeared.

"Poor Grannie takes you for her husband, who left her in her youth, and went back to his own people."

"His own people?" I echoed.

"He was a gentile who joined our tribe and took the name of Boswell.

What his name was, or whence he came, I know not, for Grannie had grown feeble in mind with age, before I heard anything of the story; but my father has brooded on it for years, and persuaded himself that his father was some one of note and wealth, and the marriage lawful, and he himself the heir by right to an estate. He has some papers and trinkets by which he sets great store, as proofs of his notion. 'Tis his belief that if he had money wherewith to fee lawyers, he might oust some man now in wrongful possession of his place and property."

"Is this all you know, Bess?"

"All, except Grannie's name for her faithless husband. She calls him 'Harry.'"

While Bess was speaking I recalled to mind a tale of my grandfather Henry Vavasour, which Mr. Butharwick had told me; how he had left home to wander with the gipsies for some years, a very mad-cap, full of pranks, and returned to his proper station on his father's death.

Could it be that the gipsy-girl and I were cousins, and she, perchance, by right the mistress of Temple Belwood? I knew that my likeness to my grandfather had struck some who knew him. Was the old woman not altogether crazy, but only forgetful of the lapse of time?

"Suppose your father's fancy should be true, Bess, and you the heiress of some rich man, or n.o.ble of the land."

Bess laughed. "I give no credent ear to the dream; and if it should come true, the gentile might remain undisturbed for me. I love the tent--even now I choke for air inside cottage walls."

"But a mansion, Bess, a house like Temple, say."

"So much the more a prison, room within room, and the life a slavery to bells and striking clocks, a dull round of doing the same thing at the same hour. I suffocate to think of it."

"There are comforts and conveniencies, Bess."

"You think them so because custom makes them necessary. You shut yourselves in a stuffy chamber and heap blankets and sheets on you, for it is bedtime, whether you are drowsy or not; whether the night be dull, or more splendid than the day. To rest, when you are weary, on sweet smelling heather, lulled by the still noises of the night, the wind in the gra.s.s, the cries of night-birds, the faint sound of moving water--is not to your liking. How should it be, when you have not tried it? Or to roam, the night through, under a sky shining with stars, when the trees have donned their robes of lovely mist, and the creatures which are afraid of man are abroad, the beasts and birds and creeping and flying things that love the dark, hold stillness of the night; what do you know of this, you who are never out in the dusk, except to kill, or to hurry from this house to that?"

"Not so delightsome in midwinter, methinks."

"If there is anything on earth more gay and glorious than a ramble by night, when there is a moon, and a nor'west wind blows, bringing snow showers, followed by calm spells, during which the heaven is clear, and the world is wrapped in whiteness and light, I don't know of it."

"But do you never wish for some better shelter than the tent on these same winter nights, when the frost bites shrewdly? You cannot always be wandering by moonlight."

"Better shelter there is none. You gentiles have coddled yourselves in hot, close rooms, so that the wholesome cold, which should strengthen you, gives you wheezy lungs and rheumatic diseases."

"'Tis good hearing that a tent is so healthy, for I shall soon have no better dwelling. Am going for a soldier."

"To France?"

"No; such war as Buckingham may make will be no schooling in the military art, or give promotion to those who deserve it. Drury and I are bound for Sweden the day after to-morrow, and I came to say good-bye."

Bess's face took on its look of musing, her eyes gazing into the distance. Then with perplexity in her face, she said--

"It is strange I have had no forewarning of this."

"What mean you? You don't in sober truth believe in the gift of prophecy, which your tribe pretend to!"

"I don't believe in it: I have it. We who live in Nature's bosom, and do not corrupt soul or body, hear and see what you house-dwellers cannot. Perhaps the spirits of the dead whisper to us, I know not; but we see pictures, and hear voices, and dream dreams, that warn us of things to come. Why should it be incredible to you? Did not your lady see you in peril? By that token I knew her heart and nature."

"And you deal in all honesty when you promise rich husbands to farmers'

daughters, and astound them by knowing what the kitchen wench told you?"

Bess laughed merrily.

"What harm is done by giving them pleasant dreams? But of your affairs now? Are you taking no steps against my father?"

"I have taken none."

"Then in kindness to me, do not. He is a broken man, and has not recovered the full use of his limbs, since he was racked by the old earl. He was overcome by your giving up yourself to save me, for he loves me in his fashion, and he made a clean breast to the young lord of all the practice against you."

"If I bore him malice never so much, it should be thrown to the wind for your sake, Bess, to whom I owe more than can be repaid."

"When you come back from the wars with honour and riches, you may repay any service the gipsy girl has done you a thousandfold."