The MS. in a Red Box Part 8

"Remember that our men are strangers in a strange land. They are plundered, hara.s.sed, threatened. Some of their comrades have been killed. The night attacks are so skilfully made as to lead them to think there must be a traitor within the camp. My father is in the habit of walking and watching late o' nights, and I have talked with one of the enemy. Most unhappily, Vermuijden is away, and it is uncertain when he will return. I was glad indeed to leave the settlement for a few days, and you will be wise not to come over at present."

"I have no inducement to visit the settlement while you are at the vicarage, which is a much more fitting abode for you than a hut at Sandtoft."

"So Mrs. Graves will have it, and in her kindness would detain me here I know not how long; but my place is with my father, and he is by agreement physician to the settlers. You are not to think that my father brought me thoughtlessly to Sandtoft."

How beautiful she looked as she bent forward, her face aglow with love and pride!

"He is not so much absorbed in science as to forget his care for his daughter. Oh no, indeed! He would have had me stay in Leyden, when he fled. He entreated, almost commanded me to go to the care of friends in Amsterdam, when he left Paris, and to remain there until he had a suitable home for me in England. But what is home? Do masons and carpenters make it? For me, it is where my father lives. My mother died in my seventh year, and my father did his utmost to make up my loss. His grief made him an old man before his time: his days were filled with labour, and the most learned and polished society in Europe made claim on his leisure, but nothing was allowed to interfere with his tender care of his little daughter. He continued his great love for his wife in his love for her motherless child. Pardon me that I say all this, but I could not bear that you should misconstrue my father."

I forgot to answer, looking up with pure delight into the beaming eyes.

Surely, she cared something for me, unworthy as I was, since she wished that I should respect her father as he deserved. At length I replied softly--

"I count it great honour that you have told me."

But my new reverence for Doctor Goel was instantly in danger, for he came up to us, a cabbage-leaf in one hand and his magnifying-gla.s.s in the other, and pointed out something to his daughter in great excitement. He turned to me while she looked, and plunged into English, of which I reproduce the sense, not the exact words--

"Your great Bacon thought that caterpillars were engendered of dew and leaves by putrefaction. But it is not so. They come from eggs, laid by the b.u.t.terfly. It is one more instance to confirm the theory that every living thing derives its being from a parent."

And the old gentleman rubbed his hands and smiled, as if he had found a diamond. 'Twas all I could do to refrain from laughing at this ado about some tiny caterpillars on a cabbage-leaf, but Mistress Goel seemed to enter into her father's pleasure, and, to my astonishment, said something to him in Latin, as if quoting a book, to which he replied by a long sentence in the same language. Then he returned to the harness-room, taking his precious cabbage-leaf with him.

Happily, the clang of the dinner-bell called us into the house, and saved me from uttering my opinion on the value of studying grubs.

After dinner, during which nothing was said which needs record here, the vicar withdrew to his study, the doctor to the harness-room, where he smoked his pipe, my aunt to her room for her customary nap, so Mistress Goel and I strolled round the garden. Somehow, I was led on to talk of myself, a topic on which I was fluent, not to say vapouring.

I confided to the lady the dubious state of the Vavasour fortunes, and spoke of retrieving them by the sword. I more than half hinted at my father's project for the relief of our estate, and of difference between him and me on that account. In fine, I was autobiographical, sentimental, braggart. The patient hearing, the gentle glance, the sweet smile on my companion's lips lured me on to talk as I had never talked before. Little did I dream that I was pouring out my boyish crudities to one of the most accomplished women of the Netherlands, the bosom friend of Tesselschade Visscher, a distinguished member of the brilliant circle who made the Visscher _salon_ famous throughout Europe. Happy in my ignorance, young b.u.mpkin that I was, I babbled on, and she listened and answered as simply as any rustic damsel. I longed to tell her how I loved her, but held myself in check, remembering that I might be disinherited to-morrow, and what a poor heritage at best mine was like to be. Longed! I ached with longing. And when I thought of Sheffield, it was as though my head and heart would burst, so full I was with jealousy and rage. What I might have said, if we had been left alone awhile longer, I do not know, but my aunt came out to join us, and she stuck like a leech. I sauntered to the harness-room, where the doctor sat, smoking his pipe, and fell into talk with him. His English improved as we conversed, and I got the notion that he had once used the tongue with freedom. He asked questions about our farming, the trees and herbs in the fenny soil, the birds and beasts of our woods and marshes. He told me curious things of the weeds spread upon a rough table before him--some too marvellous for belief, but I kept my countenance. He had been seeking glow-worms, and I told him where they were to be found. I asked him questions concerning some things which had puzzled me, and received answers full and plain. He grew very friendly, and our talk lasted until supper-time.

That supper would have been a right pleasant meal but for one thing.

The room was gay with vine-leaves, green boughs, and bunches of roses in jars and vases. Never had I seen it so gracefully decked, and I knew whose handiwork it was. My aunt had skill in providing, as the table bore witness, set out with well-cooked poultry, tench, salmon, plovers' eggs, dainty tarts, and amber-coloured ale and French and Spanish wine, but the adornment of the table and the room was new and strange. When the doctor and I entered the room, "my Lord Arrogance"

stood at the other end, bending reverentially to listen to the vicar's talk, He made his bow to the doctor, and we took our seats--Sheffield at Mrs. Graves' right hand, Mistress Goel next him, the doctor and I on the other side of the table.

Sheffield talked with the Goels of Brederoo's _Farce of the Cow_, and of some tragedy by Vondel. He applauded the genius and enterprise of Doctor Samuel Coster, and praised to the skies the Sisters Roemer Visscher. It was in listening to this conversation that I discovered how intimate Mistress Goel was with those learned and beautiful ladies.

The playwrights and poets of Amsterdam and Leyden were quite unknown to me, and to the vicar and my aunt; but Sheffield contrived to interest Mrs. Graves by condescending to explain to her, and appealing to her taste and judgment, and he pleased his host by a sentence now and then in which he implied that these topics were far beneath the alt.i.tude of his sacred learning. I imagined that Sheffield designed to expose my clownish ignorance in contrast with his knowledge of the literature of the Netherlands; but his evident anxiety to keep the direction of the conversation in his own hands, and an exchange of glances between father and daughter, as if some remark of his tickled them to the point of laughter, made me aware that his lordship did but repeat a lesson with which he had been stuffed for the occasion. In a little time he had taken a good deal of wine, and then he did me the honour to become aware of my presence.

"I' faith," said he, "'tis uncourteous to Vavasour to talk only of divine poesy. Does line fetch a good price this year?"

The inquiry was addressed to me, but before I could answer, Mistress Goel shot me a question--

"What did you say was the motto of Sir William Vavasour?"

I had said nothing of a motto peculiar to this ancestor of mine, and could not at once see the drift of the query. Then I perceived that it was meant to stay the anger which had sent the hot blood into my face, and I answered her with the first jingle I could remember.

Soon after sunset thick clouds gathered, cutting short the twilight, and candles were brought in. Then my aunt prayed Mistress Goel to sing, and I learned what ineffable delight may be in music, for the singer had the art-concealing art, and sang as the thrushes and nightingales do. The old spinet became another instrument under the touch of her fingers. I sat entranced, listening to song after song, watching the singing with devouring eyes. To my wonder the songs were chiefly English, and some of them the simple ballads dear to peasant-folk. By-and-by Mrs. Graves asked for "that Spanish duetto,"

which she had heard Sheffield sing with her guest, and he condescended to gratify her. 'Twas a concert of crow and nightingale, but the fellow tugged at his collar, and stuck up his chin, and wriggled about, as if his performance had been the finest in the world.

During the last hour the low rumble of distant thunder had been heard, and just as the Spanish song ended, there came a flash of lightning, and a tremendous peal of thunder immediately followed, loud enough to be the crack of doom. My aunt began a great fuss about having no bed to offer me, and the necessity of my going home before the storm grew worse, and I was in a manner forced out of the house. So I made my adieux, promising the doctor some glow-worms in a day or two. As I bade Mistress Goel good night I thought her little hand trembled, and there was a look in the brown eyes which I chose to interpret as concern for my safety.

On first setting off, Trueboy was uneasy, the lightning becoming frequent and the thunder almost continuous, but a firm rein and a little soothing brought him to composure.

I have never seen lightning more splendid. At every flash a fire seemed to run along the ground before me, and the water on either side glared redly, while quite distant trees showed, or appeared to show, their every leaf. Near Hirst Priory, some cattle and horses, which had leaped the fences in their panic, were scampering to and fro on the causey like mad creatures, running great risk of bogging themselves in the swampy margins of the road. It would have been unneighbourly to pa.s.s on and leave Farmer Brewer's b.e.s.t.i.a.l to their fate, so I opened the gate of the drift, and then gathered and drove all I could see into their owner's grounds. It was slow and difficult work, the beasts being so wild with fear, and the only light that of the flashes which followed one another for some seconds without intermission, the succeeding darkness bringing me to a stand; but at length it was done.

Then I battered and bawled at the door of the hind's cottage. He opened after some minutes, and stood quaking and shaking like a man in an ague-fit.

"O Lord! Be it you, Master Frank? I thought it was the devil come to fetch me. The Almighty's terrible angry, for sure."

I bade the man stick some bushes on the gate and the fences near, remaining to see that he obeyed, bantering him the while on his ridiculous fear that his sins had put the elements into such commotion.

When he had finished the job, I rode slowly on, pondering a fact which I had noted in collecting the cattle, namely, that the waters of the marsh had risen, and encroached on the causeway here and there, although no rain had yet fallen. All at once, Trueboy started off at a great pace, and I became aware of hoof-beats behind me. I pulled him up, and he capered about a bit, for he was never willing to be pa.s.sed on the road.

"Out of the way, there," shouted a voice, which I recognised as Sheffield's.

I turned in the saddle, and asked, "Is my lord so drunk as to need all the breadth of the causey?"

"Oh, it is you!" answered Sheffield. "You might as well have staid to see my leman give me the parting kiss, hanging on my neck, pressing her sweet lips to mine."

By this time we were riding side by side.

"Liar!" said I, and dealt him a blow across the face with my whip.

I drew rein, expecting that he would take instant revenge with sword or pistol, and ready enough for the encounter, though I had no weapon but the one I had used. But he did not strike. He said something which I could not understand, and I felt a crashing blow on the head. I remember thinking I had been struck by lightning. The next thing I knew was that I lay on the causey, dizzy and sick. By degrees, I found that my clothing was drenched, and supposed that the rain had come and soaked me while I lay unconscious. Then I perceived that Brewer's hind was stooping over me, and that he was dripping wet. Shortly afterwards, I came fully to myself, and heard the man's account of what had befallen me. Briefly, it was this: he had lingered at the gate a minute or two after I rode away, and saw two hors.e.m.e.n follow me.

Thinking they might be highwaymen, he had plucked up courage to run after them, and came near enough to recognise by a flash that one of the men was Sheffield's gigantic black servant. Supposing me to be in no danger from him or his master, the man had turned toward his cottage again, when he heard a great splash, and a succession of lightning gleams showed him two men riding off, and my horse riderless. He hurried up, and found Trueboy, up to the chest in the water, trembling.

The fellow had the wit to guess that the horse was trying to reach his master, so he waded cautiously forward, and found me lying two feet below the surface. My enemy had shown readiness and cleverness, a.s.suredly. But for the presence of the one spectator, I should have drowned quietly, and it would have been supposed that the death was accidental.

"Now, Stubbs," said I, "you have made me your friend and debtor for life; but you must remember that if you say a word of this matter, you will make another sort of debtor, who will pay you quickly."

Stubbs vowed perpetual silence, and we parted, I to ride home, feeling extremely queer. The lightning still flashed, but at longer intervals, and before I had gone a hundred yards, there came a gust which tossed upward the tree branches and beat down the reeds, and the rain fell in streams. That was no matter to me, for I was as wet as man could be, but Trueboy misliked it, so the rest of our way we flew.

CHAPTER VII

Luke burst into my room early next morning, to tell me that the waters were out to a height such as no one remembered. The Don, which had been turned by the Dutchmen into a channel connecting it with the Aire, had taken its old course with fury, flooding the western side of Crowle as with a second deluge. I jumped out of bed, almost forgetting the aching and soreness of my head and the stiffness of my limbs, for, if this account were true, the inhabitants of the Crowle vicarage were in jeopardy. Luke a.s.sured me that "'twas no manner of use to try to reach Crowle by riding, for t' causey was under water;" so after I had broken fast with a crust and a cup of small ale, I had out my boat, and taking Luke with me, set sail northward. The marsh had become a deep lake, and the low-lying fields in our neighbourhood were flooded, and here and there we came on the carcase of a sheep or a pig; but when we drew near to Crowle there was a sorry sight indeed. The cornfields on the slopes of Totlets had disappeared under muddy water, and several clay-built cottages had crumbled and fallen in. Some of the recent tenants were about in punts, gathering up what they could of their bits of furniture. From them we learned that no life had been lost there.

The folk had been aroused by the barking and whining of a dog, and had taken refuge on higher ground, before the old walls fell in. As we came nearer to the town, the water was so c.u.mbered with wreckage, that we let down the sail, and took to the oars, lest we should foul among the bundles of reeds, straw-stooks, empty casks, dead sheep and swine, hay rakes, pails, and other things innumerable, which were strewn on the surface of the water. Some of the more westerly houses were surrounded with water up to the lower windows, and at sight of us, the inhabitants, who were at the upper windows, set up a great cry for help. We shouted that we would come, or send to them, as soon as might be, our first concern being the vicarage. Pa.s.sing Farmer Dowson's on our right, we saw him and his men, waist-deep in the water, staggering under bags of corn, carrying pigs in their arms, struggling with frightened horses, leading them to the higher ground behind the farmstead. The farmer hailed us, but only to relieve his soul by shouting a malediction on the Dutch. The water became shallower as we neared the church, for (as we discovered later) the first rush of the river had brought down an immense quant.i.ty of silt, which had been deposited in a bed sloping from the wall of the churchyard. To our surprise we found the depth at the gate of the vicarage not more than two feet. We moored our boat to the old oak, and with some difficulty, for the bottom was soft, made our way to the house, where we found the inmates in safety on the upper floor. My aunt was loud in lamentation over her goods and chattels and store of food. The vicar's most pressing care seemed to be a funeral, which had been arranged for this day. Doctor Goel was poring over a plan of the drainage, going again through calculations, which proved to his satisfaction that the channel cut for the Don was deep and wide enough to carry off its water into the Aire in any possible event, and that the embankment raised must infallibly resist whatever pressure could be brought against it. He was so perfectly certain that what had happened could not by any chance occur, that I was obliged to laugh in his face--and mightily offended him.

"You cannot suppose, doctor," said I, "that the Islonians have broken down the embankment for the pleasure of drowning themselves."

"I do not know that," he snapped. "They are stupid enough."

Remembering how the water had gradually acc.u.mulated before the coming of the great rain, I believed that neither the drain for the turning of the Don, nor that for the conveyance of the surface water had been large enough for its purpose, but I did not offer my wisdom to the doctor just then.

Mistress Goel asked many questions, and wept and wrung her hands to hear of the distress of the people, but she was quickly her calm self again, entering into talk of what had best be done for them. My first notion had been to collect as many boats as were to be had, and to go to bring the folk from the outlying farms and cottages to Crowle.

"But you need not do that," said she, "unless there is danger of a house giving way. The water is subsiding."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"By a mark I made on the staircase wall at five o'clock this morning.

The water has sunk three inches since then."

I said something in praise of her self-possession in a time of alarm, but she urged me to the present work.

"The poor people out in the flood," said she, "will have little or nothing to eat. Their food will be spoiled, and they will have no means of procuring fresh supplies. That is the first thing to be thought of. And the mere sight of a friendly face will do them much good. Will it not be best to load your boat with a stock of such provisions as are to be had, and to send some one of influence round the town to urge others to follow you?"