The Broken Font. Moyle Sherer
a fond father, and an easy master, having walked through life upon a path of velvet as smooth as his own lawn, was sadly discomposed by this visitation of care; and the very trouble and irregularity that was caused by it was felt by the old gentleman in many ways that he dared not confess to others, and was ashamed to acknowledge to himself. A great weight, indeed, was taken from his mind by the assurance of Cuthbert’s safety; for he was humane, and he liked the youth: but he had private reasons for a deep regret at the conduct of Sir Charles Lambert, and the interruption to their intercourse which would of necessity ensue, and almost wished that he had parted with his young tutor immediately after that discovery of his political leanings which he had himself not many days ago so frankly made.
However, what had now befallen Cuthbert beneath Sir Oliver’s own roof, and by the hand of his own relative, gave him new and increased claims upon the knight’s protection and kindness, and there could be no further thought of their separating now till a distant period. The day wore rapidly away, and by the hour of supper some appearance of order was again restored to a mansion, in which every thing usually proceeded with the regularity of clockwork.
An intermitted dinner was an occurrence of which there was no previous memory or record in the recollection of the oldest servant on the establishment. Among the minor circumstances, and not the least affecting to the manly mind of Juxon, was a little dialogue which he overheard between the little girl Lily and the boy Arthur, the child being unable to comprehend the fact of one man cutting another man with a knife on purpose to hurt him. The true nature of the atrocious action of course no one cared to explain to the little innocent: but she had learned from the servants that Master Cuthbert was run through with a knife by Sir Charles Lambert; and she had come to cousin Arthur, in a grave and pretty wonder, to know what they could mean.
The next day, being the birthday of Sir Oliver, was that on which the masque in preparation was to have been represented before a party of the neighbouring gentry, who had been specially invited to celebrate that annual feast in the good old hall of Milverton. Of so pleasant a holyday there could now be no further thought; and the May-day festival which was to follow the day after, though of course the villagers would have their dance according to the immemorial custom, would lose half its gaiety and spirit by the absence of the family from the manor house, and especially of the gentle and sweet Mistress Katharine, whose words and ways had won for her all the hearts in Milverton, and for miles round.
It was an evening memorable in the life of Juxon, that in which he first sat down at table with the small family circle of the Heywoods;—in which he looked upon the majestic forehead of Katharine—marked the gentle fire of her dark eyes, and the expression of all that is sweet and engaging in humanity about a mouth where her noble qualities were most fairly written.
After the grave and laudable custom of those good old times, the evening service from the Book of Common Prayer was invariably read to the assembled households of the country gentlemen. The office of reading prayers was usually in the absence of a clergyman performed by Sir Oliver himself as the priest of his own family, or at times he deputed Cuthbert to supply his place. The duty this evening was performed by Juxon in a solemn, feeling, impressive manner; and when it was concluded, and the family retired, he hastened to the chamber of Cuthbert, and finding that the composing draught had taken kind effect, and that he was dropping off into a comforting sleep, withdrew again with as soft a step as he had entered, and, exhausted with the fatigues and the painful excitements of the day’s adventures, he repaired to his own room, and thankfully lay down to rest. As he was extinguishing the lamp, his eye read the posy on the wall; and he could not but feel a sweet pleasure to be reposing in such a mansion, and with such a family:—
“Would’st have a friend, would’st know what friend is best?
Have God thy friend, who passeth all the rest.”
CHAP. VII.
Love is a kind of superstition,
Which fears the idol which itself hath framed.
Sir Thomas Overbury.
Cuthbert was awakened at midnight by pain:—the glimmer of the night lamp in the little room adjoining cast a dim light into the chamber where he lay; and the breathing of the aged female servant, who sat there in watch, told him that she had been overcome by sleep. He cared not to disturb her, and made an effort to reach the cup of water on the little table by his side, but he found that he was no longer equal to the slightest exertion—he could not even change his posture. He endured his thirst, and tried to collect his thoughts, and gather up all that had passed in the hall, but he could not: he was dizzy with the sense of having been pushed to the very brink of eternity, and snatched back again. A gleam shone upon the portrait of Luther which hung opposite. “Though he slay me yet will I trust him,” was now his own whispered act of confidence in God, and he lay passive, silent, and hopeful. Not only was he heavily oppressed with bodily anguish, but his mind, after undue excitement, and proportionate depression and exhaustion, had sunk into a state of torpor. At the moment when Sir Charles Lambert made the insidious speech to Sir Oliver, which Cuthbert truly discerned to be aimed at his suspected principles, and still more basely at a supposed line of conduct which he had far too high a sense of integrity to pursue.
At that moment it seemed to him as if it was but fair and honourable to make open avowal of his true sentiments; but in the same quick glance of the mind he saw the first bitter and inevitable consequence. He must quit Milverton immediately, and for ever. Sir Oliver could no longer have retained in his family a man openly admiring the cause and the course of that party in the kingdom which opposed the crown.
The collision in his mind of this fear of separation from so much that he loved, and of the honest impulse to do what was right, begat a momentary desperation; and thus it was, that he rose upon that occasion with so unbecoming a want of calmness, and that he was about to preface his statement by exhibiting his unmeasured scorn for the base assailant of his character, but the too sure destroyer of his present happiness.
By the strange and bloody interruption of his purpose, the avowal of his political opinions was checked: his expression of contempt for Sir Charles had found utterance, and had been followed by a consequence, carrying with it, indeed, a severe rod of rebuke to himself for his rashness, but punishment in a tenfold degree more insupportable to his proud and brutal enemy; and, as a crowning consolation to Cuthbert, his sojourn beneath the blessed roof of Milverton was at least, for very many weeks to come, perfectly secure. He had felt no sorrow when he heard the surgeon pronounce his case as one that would be tedious—and that it must be long before he could be safely moved.
He would have had a stronger reason for joy and thankfulness, could he have known that he had been the cause of producing such a developement of the fierce and cruel temper of Sir Charles Lambert as saved Katharine Heywood, if not from actually accepting him as a husband, to which she would never have consented, at least from all the present persecution of his attentions, as well as from all expression of the blind but yet obstinate wishes of her otherwise indulgent father.
As Katharine lay wakeful on her pillow, believing and hoping that the life of Cuthbert would be spared, and no permanent injury would affect his future health or usefulness, she could not regret the occurrence of the morning.
Certainly she would have died rather than have gone to the altar with Sir Charles, but she would have remained continually exposed to his selfish addresses; and this match having been the favourite plan of her father from her earliest girlhood would have been perpetually urged upon her by him in those many indirect and distressing ways in which affectionate and obedient children are sometimes long and ungenerously tormented by covetous or ambitious parents.
One thing, when she first heard of the catastrophe, found a brief admission into her mind, and till she was made fully acquainted both by her father and by Juxon of all that had passed, and of the words which had been uttered at the time, was not entirely dismissed. This was no less than a fear, faint, indeed, and most reluctantly viewed as possible, that the quarrel might have arisen out of some feelings