The Broken Font (Historical Novel). Moyle Sherer
she hastily disappeared below.
He stepped quickly after her; but the door was already barred; and when he knocked and called to her, the hoarse croak of the raven was the sole reply. He rapped more loudly—still the same voice of ill omen replied; but as he persisted, and said words to re-assure her, the door was slowly opened, and the withered tenant of the pit appeared.
“Is it you, young master?” said Margery; “and are you alone, and is there no hunter with you?”
“There is no one with me,” he replied: “the hunters have gone over the river.”
“That’s well, that’s well, master: a hunting day, if the game takes this way, is ever an ill day with me. They that be cowards alone, are bold in merry company; and I have had a whip on my old shoulders, and the dogs hounded on me before now, if any thing crossed their sport. Three years ago, last fall, when his best hound, Bevis, was killed in the hollow yonder, nothing would serve the turn of Sir Charles but to float my poor old carcass across the river, and to weigh me against the church Bible! But he hath had many a sleepless night for that; and bold as he looks by day, the ticking of a death-watch will keep him shivering in his bed.”
“What do you mean, Margery? The folk may well think you a witch for words such as these.”
“Why, I mean,” said the old woman wilfully and spitefully, “that I never wished ill to any one, but ill came upon ’em.”
“Had I thought this of you yesterday, I should have been slow to ask any one to give you house room; but you are God’s creature, and have been crossed with ill usage; and when you find yourself beneath the roof of a Christian, safe from all enemies, your heart will melt, and you will taste God’s peace yourself, and wish it to others. I have found a good man, that lives in Croft’s Alley in Coventry, and he will give you a chamber and a chimney corner, and kind words, and a stout arm to protect you; and when we get you safe there your thoughts will be quiet.”
“Hout-tout! what talk ye about Alley and a chimney corner? haven’t I my own ingle, and my own ways, and my own company? What voice more pleasant to me than those I heard when I was young, and hear still? What’ll take better care of me than that old bird? Few there be that don’t shun to pass close by this hut; and they that come to it step swiftly back again. I was told, with a curse, that I might not live any where else, many years ago; and here I shall stop till my old bones crumble.”
“Why, mother, why, you might starve here if you were taken ill, and none to help you.”
“Well, death is but death, let it come how it will.”
“But hunger is a bad death; and besides, are you not in constant danger of being taken up, and losing your life for a witch? Why, this bird that you keep, and your words and ways, will surely bring you to the stake one of these days.”
“Let the day come, if it is to come; and as to dying of hunger, where, think you, do the foxes die? and where do the birds of the air die? Why, they that escape the hounds die in their holes; and they that the bird-bolt misses find a dying place in some nest or corner. Go your way, young master! I am no tame rabbit, to be kept in a town hutch, and tormented by children. I don’t want to be led to church, and hear the parson’s jabber about my old soul.”
“Do not utter such wickedness, unhappy woman. It were charity to think you crazed, and take you into safe keeping against your will.”
At this the old woman gave a shriek of passion, fitful as that of a thwarted child, and then, suddenly overcome by fear, fell upon her aged knees, and lifted and joined her withered hands, and implored Cuthbert, with wild earnestness, never to have her moved.
“Look you, young master, winter and summer, here I have watched and waked these many years. It’s a small matter of meal that makes my porridge;—some give it for pity, and some give it for fear. There’s no lack of rotten sticks to keep me warm: yonder spring is never dry; and it’s free I am to go and to come, and nothing here to flout or to fret me: the deer and the kine take no count of me—the pretty creatures don’t fear me; and it’s not all the world calling me witch that will make them. That place is best we think best. Oh, for the love of God, master, let me alone—let me rot where I am.”
Cuthbert’s mind was in an agony of prayer; but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. He would have said much; but he could speak nothing. He gave her alms; and telling her that he would do nothing against her will—nothing to make her unhappy, but that he would come and see her again—he raised her from her knees, and went upon his way homewards.
“My father would not thus have left her,” was his first thought. “He would have found some way to break into her heart. Strange world—strange thing this human life! This old solitary miserable has been wrapped in swaddling clothes, even as others—has been suckled at a human breast—has grasped, with tiny hand, a father’s finger—and been kissed, and muched; and now, she has survived all kindred—lost all defence of strength or money—hath none of wisdom, and because her back is crooked, and nose and chin have come well nigh together, she has been hunted from her kind, and dwells apart. As God is love—and that he is I cannot doubt and live—this is a mystery! It’s a skein so much entangled that my poor wit can not unwind it.”
Muttering to himself these wayward fancies, he hurried back to Milverton as to his heart’s home. There he could see sunlight upon the earth, and feel warm in the comfort of it. Nor in his then mood was he sorry that the guest chambers would be full: he wished a day of cheerful cups, and pleasant voices, and music. Thus absorbed, he reached the mill, and passed it as swiftly as in the morning.
“There he goes,” said the old miller, speaking to his daughter, who was spreading out some linen to bleach—“There he goes, as shy as a hare, and as fast as if he were making for his form. I never gets a bit of chat with him. He’s not much for company.”
“Why, father,” replied the girl, coming upon the pathway, “he’s a scholar, you know, and that’s the fashion of them, you know.”
“Well, it’s a bad fashion to go poking about the woods as lonesome as a stray mule; no good comes of those crazy fashions. I like an open face, and an open hand, and a free tongue.”
“Eh! he can talk fast enough, I’ll warrant me, if he had a sweetheart to talk to.”
“He talk to a sweetheart! She must be a poor silly body that would listen. There are merry men and merry hearts enough in old England for the lasses to choose from, without giving ear to such as he.”
“Well, they give him kind words at the Hall—and they say he’s always more for good than harm; and I find him pleasant spoken enough when he comes to angle in the mill-pool.”
“There it is! I can never make him say a dozen words, black or white; now Parson Mullins will chat free for an hour on, and tosses you off a pot of ale with good words and good will. Why, he and I have smoked many a pipe together; and he’s a clerk, and a rare scholar too. He doesn’t give you ignorant stuff o’ Sundays; but Latin, and Greek, and all the best that he has learned at college. That’s the man for my money.”
“Well, father, for the matter o’ that, I like to know what folk are saying; and it might be gipsy language for all you or I are the wiser.”
“I know where you got that lesson, Miss Pert; that’s what the old Puritan pedlar said the other day—rot him! he shall take seat on the old wive’s ducking-stool if he comes this way again.”
“I am sure he was a quiet civil man; and you have not had a better piece of linen, or a cheaper, than he sold us, this many a year.”
“Hang his linen, and him too!” rejoined the sturdy old miller. “I didn’t like the cut of his black head;” and with that he passed into the mill, and the girl went towards the dwelling.
While this dialogue was passing, Cuthbert Noble was rapidly ascending the path, which rose gently over a swelling field of luxuriant grass, to Milverton. Certainly there was much about Cuthbert to excuse the prejudice of the miller. He