Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Charles Kingsley
of all your swearing and bullying, you know you are now shaking in your shoes for fear. So you had much better hold your tongue, give me a drink of cider, and leave ill alone, lest you make it worse.”
Not that Lucy ever proceeded to any such fearful extremities. On the contrary, her boast, and her belief too, was, that she was sent into the world to make poor souls as happy as she could, by lawful means, of course, if possible, but if not—why, unlawful ones were better than none; for she “couldn’t a-bear to see the poor creatures taking on; she was too, too tender-hearted.” And so she was, to every one but her husband, a tall, simple-hearted rabbit-faced man, a good deal older than herself. Fully agreeing with Sir Richard Grenville’s great axiom, that he who cannot obey cannot rule, Lucy had been for the last five-and-twenty years training him pretty smartly to obey her, with the intention, it is to be charitably hoped, of letting him rule her in turn when his lesson was perfected. He bore his honors, however, meekly enough, having a boundless respect for his wife’s wisdom, and a firm belief in her supernatural powers, and let her go her own way and earn her own money, while he got a little more in a truly pastoral method (not extinct yet along those lonely cliffs), by feeding a herd of some dozen donkeys and twenty goats. The donkeys fetched, at each low-tide, white shell-sand which was to be sold for manure to the neighboring farmers; the goats furnished milk and “kiddy-pies;” and when there was neither milking nor sand-carrying to be done, old Will Passmore just sat under a sunny rock and watched the buck-goats rattle their horns together, thinking about nothing at all, and taking very good care all the while neither to inquire nor to see who came in and out of his little cottage in the glen.
The prophetess, when Rose approached her oracular cave, was seated on a tripod in front of the fire, distilling strong waters out of penny-royal. But no sooner did her distinguished visitor appear at the hatch, than the still was left to take care of itself, and a clean apron and mutch having been slipt on, Lucy welcomed Rose with endless courtesies, and—“Bless my dear soul alive, who ever would have thought to see the Rose of Torridge to my poor little place!”
Rose sat down: and then? How to begin was more than she knew, and she stayed silent a full five minutes, looking earnestly at the point of her shoe, till Lucy, who was an adept in such cases, thought it best to proceed to business at once, and save Rose the delicate operation of opening the ball herself; and so, in her own way, half fawning, half familiar—
“Well, my dear young lady, and what is it I can do for ye? For I guess you want a bit of old Lucy’s help, eh? Though I’m most mazed to see ye here, surely. I should have supposed that pretty face could manage they sort of matters for itself. Eh?”
Rose, thus bluntly charged, confessed at once, and with many blushes and hesitations, made her soon understand that what she wanted was “To have her fortune told.”
“Eh? Oh! I see. The pretty face has managed it a bit too well already, eh? Tu many o’ mun, pure fellows? Well, ‘tain’t every mayden has her pick and choose, like some I know of, as be blest in love by stars above. So you hain’t made up your mind, then?”
Rose shook her head.
“Ah—well,” she went on, in a half-bantering tone. “Not so asy, is it, then? One’s gude for one thing, and one for another, eh? One has the blood, and another the money.”
And so the “cunning woman” (as she truly was), talking half to herself, ran over all the names which she thought likely, peering at Rose all the while out of the corners of her foxy bright eyes, while Rose stirred the peat ashes steadfastly with the point of her little shoe, half angry, half ashamed, half frightened, to find that “the cunning woman” had guessed so well both her suitors and her thoughts about them, and tried to look unconcerned at each name as it came out.
“Well, well,” said Lucy, who took nothing by her move, simply because there was nothing to take; “think over it—think over it, my dear life; and if you did set your mind on any one—why, then—then maybe I might help you to a sight of him.”
“A sight of him?”
“His sperrit, dear life, his sperrit only, I mane. I ‘udn’t have no keeping company in my house, no, not for gowld untowld, I ‘udn’t; but the sperrit of mun—to see whether mun would be true or not, you’d like to know that, now, ‘udn’t you, my darling?”
Rose sighed, and stirred the ashes about vehemently.
“I must first know who it is to be. If you could show me that—now—”
“Oh, I can show ye that, tu, I can. Ben there’s a way to ‘t, a sure way; but ‘tis mortal cold for the time o’ year, you zee.”
“But what is it, then?” said Rose, who had in her heart been longing for something of that very kind, and had half made up her mind to ask for a charm.
“Why, you’m not afraid to goo into the say by night for a minute, are you? And to-morrow night would serve, too; ‘t will be just low tide to midnight.”
“If you would come with me perhaps—”
“I’ll come, I’ll come, and stand within call, to be sure. Only do ye mind this, dear soul alive, not to goo telling a crumb about mun, noo, not for the world, or yu’ll see naught at all, indeed, now. And beside, there’s a noxious business grow’d up against me up to Chapel there; and I hear tell how Mr. Leigh saith I shall to Exeter gaol for a witch—did ye ever hear the likes?—because his groom Jan saith I overlooked mun—the Papist dog! And now never he nor th’ owld Father Francis goo by me without a spetting, and saying of their Ayes and Malificas—I do know what their Rooman Latin do mane, zo well as ever they, I du!—and a making o’ their charms and incantations to their saints and idols! They be mortal feared of witches, they Papists, and mortal hard on ‘em, even on a pure body like me, that doth a bit in the white way; ‘case why you see, dear life,” said she, with one of her humorous twinkles, “tu to a trade do never agree. Do ye try my bit of a charm, now; do ye!”
Rose could not resist the temptation; and between them both the charm was agreed on, and the next night was fixed for its trial, on the payment of certain current coins of the realm (for Lucy, of course, must live by her trade); and slipping a tester into the dame’s hand as earnest, Rose went away home, and got there in safety.
But in the meanwhile, at the very hour that Eustace had been prosecuting his suit in the lane at Moorwinstow, a very different scene was being enacted in Mrs. Leigh’s room at Burrough.
For the night before, Amyas, as he was going to bed, heard his brother Frank in the next room tune his lute, and then begin to sing. And both their windows being open, and only a thin partition between the chambers, Amyas’s admiring ears came in for every word of the following canzonet, sung in that delicate and mellow tenor voice for which Frank was famed among all fair ladies:—
“Ah, tyrant Love, Megaera’s serpents bearing,
Why thus requite my sighs with venom’d smart?
Ah, ruthless dove, the vulture’s talons wearing,
Why flesh them, traitress, in this faithful heart?
Is this my meed? Must dragons’ teeth alone
In Venus’ lawns by lovers’ hands be sown?
“Nay, gentlest Cupid; ‘twas my pride undid me.
Nay, guiltless dove; by mine own wound I fell.
To worship, not to wed, Celestials bid me:
I dreamt to mate in heaven, and wake in hell;
Forever doom’d, Ixion-like, to reel
On mine own passions’ ever-burning wheel.”
At which the simple sailor sighed, and longed that he could write such neat verses, and sing them so sweetly. How he would besiege the ear of Rose Salterne with amorous ditties! But still, he could not be everything; and if he had the bone and muscle of the family, it was but fair that Frank should have the brains and voice;