Part 3 (1/2)
”I know that Deforoes up and down like a gentle
Aht a tired and yet a troubled sleep; and his mother and Frank, as they bent over his pillow, could see that his brain was busy with many dreams
And no wonder; for over and above all the excitement of the day, the recollection of John Oxenhae possession of his , as he sat in the bay-ed roo to hiesture of the lost adventurer, and wondering at hi, till he retired to sleep, only to renew the fancy in his drea ard ever, up the wake of the setting sun, in chase of a tiny sail which was John Oxenham's Upon him was a painful sense that, unless he ca fearful would come to pass; but the shi+p would not sail All around floated the sargasso beds, clogging her boith their long snaky coils of weed; and still he tried to sail, and tried to fancy that he was sailing, till the sun went down and all was utter dark And then the moon arose, and in a moment John Oxenham's shi+p was close aboard; her sails were torn and fluttering; the pitch was strea to decay And as that line of dark objects dangling along the ed men! And, horror of horrors, from the yard-arrave-light eyes, and beckoned and pointed, as if to show him his way, and strove to speak, and could not, and pointed still, not forward, but back along their course And when Ae of the Andes glittering in the moon, and he knew that he was in the South Seas once more, and that all America was between hi back, and back, and looking at hied to tell so up, and ith a shout of terror, and found hih, with the gray autu in
Feverish and excited, he tried in vain to sleep again; and after an hour's tossing, rose and dressed, and started for a bathe on his beloved old pebble ridge As he passed his ht ofshowed hiht Hisat the other end of the chamber at her prie-dieu, absorbed in devotion Gently he slipped in without a word, and knelt down at her side She turned, smiled, passed her arm around him, and went on silently with her prayers Why not? They were for him, and he knew it, and prayed also; and his prayers were for her, and for poor lost John Oxenham, and all his vanished crew
At last she rose, and standing above hi and lovingly into his face There was nothing to be spoken, for there was nothing to be concealed between these two souls as clear as glass Each knew all which the other hts were known At last the aze was over; she stooped and kissed him on the brow, and was in the act to turn away, as a tear dropped on his forehead Her little bare feet were peeping out froain; and then looking up, as if to excuse himself,-- ”You have such pretty feet, mother!”
Instantly, with a woman's instinct, she had hidden theh her hair was gray, and her roses had faded long ago, she was beautiful still, in all eyes which saw deeper than the mere outward red and white
”Your dear father used to say so thirty years ago”
”And I say so still: you alere beautiful; you are beautiful now”
”What is that to you, silly boy? Will you play the lover with an old er ladies, if you can find any worthy of you”
And so the son went forth, and the mother returned to her prayers
He walked down to the pebble ridge, where the surges of the bay have defeated their own fury, by rolling up in the course of ages a raly curved, and smoothed, and fitted, as if the work had been done by hu and autu the keen salt air like a young sea-dog, he stripped and plunged into the breakers, and dived, and rolled, and tossed about the foam with stalwart arms, till he heard hi up, saw standing on the top of the raure of his cousin Eustace
A; for, love-lorn rascal, he had been drea all the way thither of Rose Salterne, and had no wish for a co of her all the way back Nevertheless, not having seen Eustace for three years, it was but civil to scramble out and dress, while his cousin walked up and down upon the turf inside
Eustace Leigh was the son of a younger brother of Leigh of Burrough, who had more or less cut himself off fro a Papist True, though born a Papist, he had not always been one; for, like entry, he had becoain under Mary But, to his honor be it said, at that point he had stopped, having too much honesty to turn Protestant a second time, as hundreds did, at Elizabeth's accession So a Papist he rereat, ra, dark house, still called ”Chapel,” on the Atlantic cliffs, in Moorwinstow parish, not far from Sir Richard Grenville's house of Stow The penal laws never troubled him; for, in the first place, they never troubled any one who did not ral doctrine of his religious creed; and next, they seldolory ofof Elizabeth and her council into giving them their deserts, and, like poor Father Southwell in after years, insisted on being hanged, whether Burleigh liked or not Moreover, in such a no-man's-land and end-of-all-the-earth was that old house at Moorwinstow, that a dozen conspiraciesof it; and Jesuits and seminary priests skulked in and out all the year round, unquestioned though unblest; and found a sort of piquant pleasure, like naughty boys who have crept into the store-closet, in living in h a trap-door to celebrate mass in a secret chamber in the roof, where they were allowed by the powers that were to play as much as they chose at persecuted saints, and preach about hiding in dens and caves of the earth For once, when the zealous parson of Moorwinstow, having discovered (what everybody knew already) the existence of ”mass priests and their idolatry” at Chapel House, made formal complaint thereof to Sir Richard, and called on him, as the nearest justice of the peace, to put in force the act of the fourteenth of Elizabeth, that worthy knight only rated him soundly for a fantastical Puritan, and bade him mind his own business, if he wished not to make the place too hot for him; whereon (for the teland, kept in those days a soht hand upon the spiritual ones) the worthy parson subsided,--for, after all, Mr Thoh,--and was content, as he expressed it, to bow his head in the house of Rih's dinners as often as he was invited, and ignoring the vocation of old Father Francis, who sat opposite to hientleue
But the said birds of ill-omen had a very considerable lien on the conscience of poor Mr Thoh, the father of Eustace, in the for to the Abbey of Hartland Hethose lands; but he did not believe it wholly, and, therefore, he did not give them up; which was the case, as poor Mary Tudor found to her sorroith most of her ”Catholic” subjects, whose consciences, while they compelled them to return to the only safe fold of Mother Church (extra quae the wealth of which they had plundered that only hope of their salvation Most of theh, felt the abbey rents burn in their purses; and, as John Bull generally does in a difficulty, cos n priests, and listened, or pretended not to listen, to their plottings and their practisings; and gave up a son here, and a son there, as a sort of a sin-offering and scapegoat, to be carried off to Douay, or Rheilish, to be taught the science of villainy, on the oats, and children who had been cast into the fire to Moloch, was Eustace Leigh, who the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul, to be made a liar of at Rheims
And a very fair liar he had become Not that the lad was a bad fellow at heart; but he had been chosen by the harpies at holish, because the wily priests had seen in hiue hysterical fear of the unseen (the religious sentiment, we call it now-a- days), and with theue, which superstitious ht- coht forehead, a very small mouth, and a dry and set expression of face, which was always trying to get free, or rather to seee in sht to have Christian love, and if one had love one ought to be cheerful, and when people were cheerful they smiled; and therefore he would smile, and tried to do so; but his charity prepense looked nothan malice prepense would have done; and, had he not been really a handsome fellow, many a woman who raved about his sweetness would have likened his frankness to that of a skeleton dancing in fetters, and his sland about a month before, in obedience to the proclamation which had been set forth for that purpose (and certainly not before it was needed), that, ”whosoever had children, wards, etc, in the parts beyond the seas, should send in their naain” So Eustace was now staying with his father at Chapel, having, nevertheless, his private matters to transact on behalf of the virtuous society by whoht up; one of which private ht before
So he sat down beside Amyas on the pebbles, and looked at hiently, as if he did not wish to hurt hiht round, and looked him full in the face with the heartiest of smiles, and held out a lion's pahich Eustace took rapturously, and a great shaking of hands ensued; Areat round fist, and a quiet quiver thereof, ashard hite, straight fingers, and sawing the air violently up and down, as lad I a from the former
”Hold hard, old lad,” said Amyas, ”before you breakto and fro in the earth, and fro up and down in it,” said he, with a little smile and nod of mysterious self- importance
”Like the devil, eh? Well, every man has his pattern How is my uncle?”
Now, if there was one h stood in dread, it was his cousin Amyas In the first place, he knew Amyas could have killed him with a blow; and there are natures, who, instead of rejoicing in the strength of reater prowess than themselves, look at such with irritation, dread, at last, spite; expecting, perhaps, that the stronger will do to theht have done in his place Every one, perhaps, has the sa about his heart; but the brave h they be very sparrows, kick him out; the cowards keep hih
Next, he could not help feeling that Amyas despised him They had not met for three years; but before Aue with hiuh; but the wholethe unseen world, which the priests had stius crop, were to Amyas simply, as he expressed it, ”wind and moonshi+ne;” and he treated his cousin as a sort of harmless lunatic, and, as they say in Devon, ”half-baked” And Eustace knew it; and knew, too, that his cousin did him an injustice ”He used to undervalue me,” said he to himself; ”let us see whether he does not find ony of secret contrition for his self-seeking and his forgetting that ”the glory of God, and not his own exaltation,” was the object of his existence
There, dear readers, Ex pede Herculem; I cannot tire myself or you (especially in this book) with any wire-drawn soul-dissections I have tried to hint to you two opposite sorts of ht andto certain approved ot by heart, and like a weak oars his spiritual ; the other not even knohether he is good or not, but just doing the right thing without thinking about it, as simply as a little child, because the Spirit of God is with hiulf fixed between the two, I trust that you will discover it some day
But in justice be it said, all this came upon Eustace, not because he was a Romanist, but because he was educated by the Jesuits Had he been saved froentlelishreat Ar at that very er in Ireland, and as brave and loyal a soldier as those Roman Catholics whose noble blood has stained every Crimean battlefield; but his fate was appointed otherwise; and the Upas-shadohich has blighted the whole Rohted him also
”Ah, my dearest cousin!” said Eustace, ”how disappointed I was thisI had arrived just a day too late to witness your triumph! But I hastened to your ho from your mother that I should find you here, hurried down to bid you welcoain to Devon”
”Well, old lad, it does look very natural to see you I often used to think of you walking the deck o' nights Uncle and the girls are all right, then? But is the old pony dead yet? And how's dick the smith, and Nancy? Grown a fine maid by noarrant 'Slid, it seems half a life that I've been away
”And you really thought of your poor cousin? Be sure that he, too, thought of you, and offered up nightly his weak prayers for your safety (doubtless, not without avail) to those saints, to ould that you--”
”Halt there, coz If they are half as good fellows as you and I take the”
”They have helped you, Amyas”
”Maybe; I'd have done as much, I'm sure, for them, if I 'd been in their place”
”And do you not feel, then, that you owe a debt of gratitude to them; and, above all, to her, whose intercessions have, I doubt not, availed for your preservation? Her, the star of the sea, the all-couide of the mariner?”
”Humph!” said Amyas ”Here's Frank; let him answer”
And, as he spoke, up cas, sat down beside the already to convert in's prayers for me
”It may be so,” said Frank; ”at least you owe it to the prayers of that in by whose coone up for you daily, and for whose sake you were preserved froht spread the fame and advance the power of the spotless chaht, and freedom,--Elizabeth, your queen”
Amyas answered this rhapsody, which would have been then both fashi+onable and sincere, by a loyal chuckle Eustace smiled meekly, but answered somewhat venomously nevertheless-- ”I, at least, am certain that I speak the truth, when I call in undefiled”
Both the brothers' brows clouded at once Amyas, as he lay on his back on the pebbles, said quietly to the gulls over his head--”I wonder what the Frenchman whose head I cut off at the Azores, thinks by now about all that”
”Cut off a Frenchman's head?” said Frank
”Yes, faith; and so fleshed my maiden sword I'll tell you It was in soone in, and there sat this Frenchman, with his sword on the table, ready for a quarrel (I found afterwards he was a noted bully), and begins with us loudly enough about this and that; but, after awhile, by the instigation of the devil, what does he vent but a dozen slanders against her majesty's honor, one atop of the other? I was ashamed to hear them, and I should be h of such,” said Frank ”They coh lewd rascals about the French a the filthy vices of that Medicean Court in which the Queen of Scots had her schooling; and can only perceive in a virtuous freedom a cloak for licentiousness like their own Let the curs bark; Honi soit qui mal y pense is our motto, and shall be forever”
”But I didn't let the cur bark; for I took hiot to his sword, and I toon the pebble ridge e and buckler, like a Christian, but had so with his point, ha'ing and sta at me, that I expected to be full of eyelet holes ere I could close with him”
”Thank God that you are safe, then!” said Frank ”I know that play well enough, and dangerous enough it is”
”Of course you know it; but I didn't, more's the pity”
”Well, I'll teach it thee, lad, as well as Rowland Yorke himself, 'Thy fincture, carricade, and sly passata, Thy stra e mystery'”