The Broken Font. Moyle Sherer
of the unfortunate patient.
His thoughts, however, were soon diverted from Milverton, and from himself, by the entrance of his old gardener, to say the May-crown, which was kept in the summer-house, had been taken away, and that he had found a written paper on the shelf where it stood. This the old man handed to his master, saying he could not read it, but guessed it boded no good for the coming holyday, and that he had been gathering flowers to dress out the old May-pole to little purpose. George Juxon took the paper, upon which, in a stiff, quaint hand, were written these lines:—
“This head in a crown, and that without ears,
Is the pleasure of prelates, of courtiers, and peers.
Dance, revel, and sing, ye butterflies gay;
The time is at hand you shall weep, fast, and pray.
One holdeth the war-dogs, all ready to slip;
Pleasure’s cup shall be spilled, and dashed from the lip.
To me is committed this message of woe:
The tears of the proud ones unpitied shall flow.”
He no sooner read it, than, quitting his supper, he went out into the village to ascertain if any copy of it had been left at any other place; and found, to his vexation, that one had been fastened to the May-pole, and had been taken down and read to half the people. Determined, however, that the customary sports should be neither hindered nor damped, he took home with him the village carpenter, set fairly to work, and in two hours, by the aid of lath, and pasteboard, and Dutch gilding, they finished off a crown far more splendid than the one stolen; and he wrote underneath it, with prompt good humour—
“The preacher hath said it—For all things a time—
For fasting, for feasting, for dancing, for rhyme:—
No rhymes without reason shall hinder our pleasure;
We’ll crown the old May-pole, and tread the old measure.”
This done, he again thought of Cuthbert’s bed of suffering, and remembered him in his prayers. This little cross occurrence in his parish neither drove away his own sleep for a second nor delayed on the morrow the sports of his parishioners. Here, as in many other places, the popular and wise course of the minister preserved a good and happy understanding among the people. There is no social state more truly desirable than that of a well-ordered village population, where the miseries of the lane and the alley cannot reach; labour is performed in the open air; festivals are days of thanksgiving, danced through upon a green sward, to the nodding heads of merry musicians; and they see no crowns but such as are woven with roses for their May-queen, and know no sceptre but a white wand wreathed about with fragrant flowers.
CHAP. VIII.
Though their voices lower be,
Streams have, too, their melody;
Night and day they warbling run,
Never pause, but still sing on.
George Hickes.
For three summer months Cuthbert Noble was confined to a couch; and though latterly he was led forth into the garden, and suffered to lie down on a bench in the shade, yet his confinement had been lonely as well as tedious. No kindness on the part of any of the family was wanting: whatever could be thought of for his convenience and comfort was provided. While he was obliged to keep his own chamber, he was visited daily by Sir Oliver; Mistress Alice and Katharine looked in upon him together, and inquired gently concerning his pain; the boy Arthur would often forego his play in the garden, or his practice in archery, to sit and read to him; and not a week passed without a friendly and cheerful visit from George Juxon. Nevertheless, he was evidently dejected; and while he was grateful for all these attentions, nothing, it was observed, could effectually rouse his spirits to cheerfulness, although he repaid, by anxious words and quiet smiles, the least service which was done him. About the trouble which he unavoidably gave the servants, who, for their parts, were ever ready to oblige him, he was scrupulous even to anxiety. He seemed to pine after liberty—and would sit, for hours together, lost in deep thought, or in vacant sadness. It so happened that the clergyman of Milverton, whose manners were coarse, and whose morals were low, did not visit at the Hall. Although originally appointed by Sir Oliver, at the request of a friend, who, acquainted with his family, had taken little care to inquire more particularly into his character, he had early quarrelled with his patron, and preferred the freedom of an ale bench to the restraints of good society. This was unfortunate for Cuthbert; as a learned and religious clergyman, residing in the village, and intimate at the hall, might have kept him straight in the plain path of the true churchman. Now, though Juxon, had he been aware of all that was passing in the mind of Cuthbert, might have been truly serviceable in disabusing him of some strong prejudices, yet, as he presumed him to be a true son of the church, the subject was seldom named.
He came to cheer and amuse him if he could; and the very atmosphere of Milverton Hall was that of purity and delight to George Juxon. His summer months presented a strange contrast to those of Cuthbert. He gave up his buck-hunting in the afternoons: he could not abide the rude and noisy companions of that sport of which he had been always so fond; and now he might be seen, day after day, in the guise of an angler, on the grassy margin of a silver stream, or, not unfrequently, stretched at his length beneath a shady tree near the bank, or sitting under a high honeysuckle hedge; and if he were not chewing his own sweet fancies, some book in his hand, of good old-fashioned poetry, to aid his pleasant meditations. George Juxon was now a lover—without melancholy, I do not say—but only with so much of it as is ever welcome to a lover’s mood, and gives a dignity to his passion. Nevertheless, his hope was unavowed; nor was he in haste: a long courtship was the fashion of those days; and a mistress seemed raised in the fancy of her admirer, by the thought that she must be slowly approached, and would be slowly won.
His family, his private fortune, his present provision in the church, and his future prospects from the favour of the bishop, were such, that Sir Oliver could not object to him as a suitor for his daughter, though he might give the preference to another; and certainly, with her father, the title of a baronet would have outweighed that of a dean. However, these circumstances could only encourage him in his more sanguine moments, for Juxon was a modest man; and when he called up the image of Katharine in his walks, and thought upon a certain majesty in her countenance, and how serene and unmoved she was, how unsuspicious of the admiration which she excited, he could not but fear that she might prove indifferent to the suit of one so plain and unvarnished as himself, and that she would never entertain his addresses. Therefore it was that he nursed his love in secret, and patiently restrained all expression of particular regard for Mistress Katharine in his present visits to Milverton. How pleasant, in the mean time, were all those visits; how swiftly he rode through lane and wood, across field or common, as he went from home on those permitted errands of friendship; and at what a slow and lingering pace would he return from the gracious presence of this lady of his love!
He had often heard it rumoured that Sir Charles Lambert was thought to be the accepted son-in-law of Sir Oliver; but this he had always doubted from the very first moment of his introduction at Milverton; and he felt that Katharine could never have endured his attentions. By these, however, she could now be troubled no farther; for Sir Charles, being deeply mortified and ashamed of the frantic violence which he had committed at his last visit, had left his home suddenly for London, and was solacing himself, for the contemptuous affront which he had received from Sir Philip Arundel, in the congenial atmosphere of bear gardens and cock pits. Nor had he forgotten how roughly he was handled by George Juxon, whom he at once feared for his courage, and hated for his virtues.
However, he was no longer a visiter at Milverton; his sisters, indeed, still rode over from the Grange occasionally to pass a day with Katharine, and twice Juxon was of the party at table.
To most eyes he would have appeared the admirer rather of these ladies than of Mistress Katharine; for