Judith Shakespeare: Her love affairs and other adventures

CHAPTER XVII.

WILD WORDS

Her light-heartedness did not last long. In the wide clear landscape a human figure suddenly appeared, and the briefest turn of her head showed her that Tom Quiney was rapidly coming toward her across the fields. For a second her heart stood still. Had he been riding home from Ludington? Or from Bidford? Was it possible that he had come over Bardon Hill, and from that height espied the two down by the river? She could not even tell whether that was possible, or what he had done with his horse, or why he had not interfered sooner, if he was bent on interfering. But she had an alarmed impression that this rapid approach of his boded trouble, and she had not long to wait before that fear was confirmed.

"Judith, who is that man?" he demanded, with a fury that was but half held in.

She turned and faced him.

"I knew not," she said, coldly and slowly, "that we were on a speaking platform."

"'Tis no time to bandy words," said he; and his face was pale, for he was evidently striving to control the passion with which his whole figure seemed to quiver from head to heel. "Who is that man? I ask. Who is he, that you come here to seek him, and alone?"

"I know not by what right you put such questions to me," she said; but she was somewhat frightened.

"By what right? And you have no regard, then, for your good name?"

There was a flash in her eyes. She had been afraid; she was no longer afraid.

"My good name?" she repeated. "I thank God 'tis in none of your keeping!"

In his madness he caught her by the wrist.

"You shall tell me – "

"Unhand me, sir!" she exclaimed; and she threw off his grasp, while her cheeks burned with humiliation.

"Nay, I quarrel not with women," said he. "I crave your pardon. But, by God, I will get to know that man's name and purpose here if I rive it from his body!"

So he strode off in the direction that Leofric Hope had taken; and for a moment she stood quite terror-stricken and helpless, scarcely daring to think of what might happen. A murder on this fair morning? This young fellow, that was quite beside himself in his passion of jealous anger, was famed throughout the length and breadth of Warwickshire for his wrestling prowess. And the other – would he brook high words? These things flashed across her mind in one bewildering instant; and in her alarm she forgot all about her pride. She called to him,

"I pray you – stay!"

He turned and regarded her.

"Stay," said she, with her face afire. "I – I will tell you what I know of him – if you will have it so."

He approached her with seeming reluctance, and with anger and suspicion in his lowering look. He was silent, too.

"Indeed, there is no harm," said she (and still with her face showing her mortification that she was thus forced to defend herself). "'Tis a young gentleman that is in some trouble – his lodging near Bidford is also a hiding, as it were – and – and I know but little of him beyond his name, and that he is familiar with many of my father's friends in London."

"And how comes it that you seek him out here alone?" said he. "That is a becoming and maidenly thing!"

"I promised you I would tell you what I know of the young gentleman," said she, with scornful lips. "I did not promise to stand still and suffer your insolence."

"Insolence!" he exclaimed, as if her audacity bewildered him.

"How know you that I sought him out?" she said, indignantly. "May not one walk forth of a summer morning without being followed by suspicious eyes – I warrant me, eyes that are only too glad to suspect! To think evil is an easy thing, it seems, with many; I wonder, sir, you are not ashamed."

"You brave it out well," said he, sullenly; but it was evident that her courage had impressed him, if it still left him angered and suspicious.

And then he asked:

"How comes it that none of your friends or your family know aught of this stranger?"

"I marvel you should speak of my family," she retorted. "I had thought you were inclined to remain in ignorance of them of late. But had you asked of Prudence Shawe she might have told you something of this young gentleman; or had you thought fit to call in at my grandmother's cottage, you might perchance have found him seated there, and a welcome guest at her board. Marry, 'tis easier far to keep aloof and to think evil, as one may see."

And then she added:

"Well, sir, are you satisfied? May I go home without farther threats?"

"I threatened you not, Judith," said he, rather more humbly. "I would have my threats kept for those that would harm you."

"I know of none such," she said, distinctly. "And as for this young gentleman – that is in misfortune – such as might happen to any one – and not only in hiding, but having intrusted his secret to one or two of us that pity him and see no harm in him – I say it were a cruel and unmanly thing to spy out his concealment, or to spread the rumor of his being in the neighborhood."

"Nay, you need not fear that of me, Judith," said he. "Man to man is my way, when there is occasion. But can you marvel if I would have you for your own sake avoid any farther meetings with this stranger? If he be in hiding, let him remain there, in God's name; I for one will set no beagles to hunt him out. But as for you, I would have you meddle with no such dangerous traps."

"Good sir," said she, "I have my conduct in my own keeping, and can answer to those that have the guardianship of me."

He did not reply to this rebuke. He said:

"May I walk back to the town with you, Judith?"

"You forget," she said, coldly, "that if we were seen together the gossips might say I had come out hither to seek you, and alone."

But he paid no heed to this taunt.

"I care not," said he, with an affectation of indifference, "what the gossips in Stratford have to talk over. Stratford and I are soon to part."

"What say you?" said she, quickly – and they were walking on together now, the Don leisurely following at their heels.

"Nay, 'tis nothing," said he, carelessly; "there are wider lands beyond the seas, where a man can fight for his own and hold it."

"And you?" she said. "You have it in your mind to leave the country?"

"Marry, that have I!" said he, gayly. "My good friend Daniel Hutt hath gotten together a rare regiment, and I doubt not I shall be one of the captains of them ere many years be over."

Her eyes were downcast, and he could not see what impression this piece of news had made upon her – if, indeed, he cared to look. They walked for some time in silence.

"It is no light matter," said she at length, and in rather a low voice, "to leave one's native land."

"As for that," said he, "the land will soon be not worth the living in. Why, in former times, men spoke of the merry world of England. A merry world? I trow the canting rogues of preachers have left but little merriment in it; and now they would seek to have all in their power, and to flood the land with their whining and psalm-singing, till we shall have no England left us, but only a vast conventicle. Think you that your father hath any sympathy with these? I tell you no; I take it he is an Englishman, and not a conventicle-man. 'Tis no longer the England of our forefathers when men may neither hawk nor hunt, and women are doomed to perdition for worshipping the false idol starch, and the very children be called in from their games of a Sunday afternoon. God-a-mercy, I have had enough of Brother Patience-in-suffering, and his dominion of grace!"

This seemed to Judith a strange reason for his going away, for he had never professed any strong bias one way or the other in these religious dissensions; his chief concern, like that of most of the young men in Stratford, lying rather in the direction of butt-shooting, or wrestling, or having a romp with some of the wenches to the tune of "Packington's Pound."

"Nay, as I hear," said he, "there be some of them in such discontent with the King and the Parliament that they even talk of transplanting themselves beyond seas, like those that went to Holland: 'twere a goodly riddance if the whole gang of the sour-faced hypocrites went, and left to us our own England. And a fair beginning for the new country across the Atlantic – half of them these Puritanical rogues, with their fastings and preachments; and the other half the constable's brats and broken men that such as Hutt are drifting out: a right good beginning, if they but keep from seizing each other by the throat in the end! No matter: we should have our England purged of the double scum!"

"But," said Judith, timidly, "methought you said you were going out with these same desperate men?"

"I can take my life in my hand as well as another," said he gloomily. And then he added: "They be none so desperate, after all. Broken men there may be amongst them, and many against whom fortune would seem to have a spite; perchance their affairs may mend in the new country."

"But your affairs are prosperous," Judith said – though she never once regarded him. "Why should you link yourself with such men as these?"

"One must forth to see the world," said he; and he went on to speak in a gay and reckless fashion of the life that lay before him, and of its possible adventures and hazards and prizes. "And what," said he, "if one were to have good fortune in that far country, and become rich in land, and have good store of corn and fields of tobacco; what if one were to come back in twenty years' time to this same town of Stratford, and set up for the trade of gentleman?"

"Twenty years?" said she, rather breathlessly. "'Tis a long time; you will find changes."

"None that would matter much, methinks," said he, indifferently.

"There be those that will be sorry for your going away," she ventured to say – and she forced herself to think only of Prudence Shawe.

"Not one that will care a cracked three-farthings!" was the answer.

"You do ill to say so – indeed you do!" said she, with just a touch of warmth in her tone. "You have many friends; you serve them ill to say they would not heed your going."

"Friends?" said he. "Yes, they will miss me at the shovel-board, or when there is one short at the catches."

"There be others than those," said she with some little hesitation.

"Who, then?" said he.

"You should know yourself," she answered. "Think you that Prudence, for one, will be careless as to your leaving the country?"

"Prudence?" said he, and he darted a quick glance at her. "Nay, I confess me wrong, then; for there is one that hath a gentle heart, and is full of kindness."

"Right well I know that – for who should know better than I?" said Judith. "As true a heart as any in Christendom, and a prize for him that wins it, I warrant you. If it be not won already," she added, quickly. "As to that, I know not."

They were now nearing the town – they could hear the dull sound of the mill, and before them was the church spire among the trees, and beyond that the gray and red huddled mass of houses, barns, and orchards.

"And when think you of going?" she said, after a while.

"I know not, and I care not," said he, absently. "When I spoke of my acquaintances being indifferent as to what might befall me, I did them wrong, for in truth there be none of them as indifferent as I am myself."

"'Tis not a hopeful mood," said she, "to begin the making of one's fortunes in a new country withal. I pray you, what ails this town of Stratford, that you are not content?"

"It boots not to say, since I am leaving it," he answered. "Perchance in times to come, when I am able to return to it, I shall be better content. And you?"

"And I?" she repeated, with some surprise.

"Nay, you will be content enough," said he, somewhat bitterly. "Mother Church will have a care of you. You will be in the fold by then. The faithful shepherd will have a charge over you, to keep you from communication with the children of anger and the devil, that rage without like lions seeking to destroy."

"I know not what you mean," said she, with a hot face.

"Right well you know," said he, coolly; but there was an angry resentment running through his affected disdain as he went on: "There be those that protest, and go forth from the Church. And there be those that protest, and remain within, eating the fat things, and well content with the milk and the honey, and their stores of corn and oil. Marry, you will be well provided for – the riches of the next world laid up in waiting for you, and a goodly share of the things of this world to beguile the time withal. Nay, I marvel not; 'tis the wisdom of the serpent along with the innocence of the dove. What matters the surplice, the cross in baptism, and the other relics of popery, if conformity will keep the larder full? Better that than starvation in Holland, or seeking a home beyond the Atlantic, where, belike, the children of the devil might prove overrude companions. I marvel not, I; 'tis a foolish bird that forsakes a warm nest."

And now she well knew against whom his bitter speech was levelled; and some recollection of the slight he had put upon her in the church-yard came into her mind, with the memory that it had never been atoned for. And she was astounded that he had the audacity to walk with her now and here, talking as if he were the injured one. The sudden qualm that had filled her heart when he spoke of leaving the country was put aside; the kindly reference to Prudence was forgotten; she only knew that this sarcasm of his was very much out of place, and that this was far from being the tone in which he had any right to address her.

"I know not," said she, stiffly, "what quarrel you may have with this or that section of the Church; but it concerns me not. I pray you attack those who are better able to defend themselves than I am, or care to be. Methinks your studies in that line have come somewhat late."

"'Tis no greater marvel," said he, "than that you should have joined yourself to the assembly of the saints; it was not always so with you."

"I?" she said; but her cheeks were burning; for well she knew that he referred to his having seen her with the parson on that Sunday morning, and she was far too proud to defend herself. "Heaven help me now, but I thought I was mistress of my own actions!"

"In truth you are, Mistress Judith," said he, humbly (and this was the first time that he had ever addressed her so, and it startled her, for it seemed to suggest a final separation between them – something as wide and irrevocable as that twenty years of absence beyond the seas). And then he said, "I crave your pardon if I have said aught to offend you; and would take my leave."

"God be wi' you," said she, civilly; and then he left, striking across the meadows toward the Bidford road, and, as she guessed, probably going to seek his horse from whomsoever he had left it with.

And as she went on, and into the town, she was wondering what Prudence had said to him that should so suddenly drive him to think of quitting the country. All had seemed going well. As for Master Leofric Hope, his secret was safe; this late companion of hers seemed to have forgotten him altogether in his anger against the good parson. And then she grew to think of the far land across the ocean, that she had heard vaguely of from time to time; to think how twenty years could be spent there: and what Stratford would be like when that long space was over.

"Twenty years," she said to herself, with a kind of sigh. "There are many things will be settled, ere that time be passed, for good or ill."

CHAPTER XVIII.

A CONJECTURE

When she got back to New Place she found the house in considerable commotion. It appeared that the famous divine, Master Elihu Izod, had just come into the town, being on his way toward Leicestershire, and that he had been brought by the gentleman whose guest he was to pay a visit to Judith's mother. Judith had remarked ere now that the preachers and other godly persons who thus honored the New Place generally made their appearance a trifling time before the hour of dinner; and now, as she reached the house, she was not surprised to find that Prudence had been called in to entertain the two visitors – who were at present in the garden – while within doors her mother and the maids were hastily making such preparations as were possible. To this latter work she quickly lent a helping hand; and in due course of time the board was spread with a copious and substantial repast, not forgetting an ample supply of wine and ale for those that were that way inclined. Then the two gentlemen were called in, Prudence was easily persuaded to stay, and, after a lengthened grace, the good preacher fell to, seasoning his food with much pious conversation.

At such times Judith had abundant opportunities for reverie, and for a general review of the situation of her own affairs. In fact, on this occasion she seemed in a manner to be debarred from participation in these informal services at the very outset. Master Izod, who was a tall, thin, dark, melancholy-visaged man – unlike his companion, Godfrey Buller, of the Leas, near to Hinckley, who, on the contrary, was a stout, yeoman-like person, whose small gray absent eyes remained motionless and vacant in the great breadth of his rubicund face – had taken for his text, as it were, a list he had found somewhere or other of those characters that were entitled to command the admiration and respect of all good people. These were: a young saint; an old martyr; a religious soldier; a conscionable statesman; a great man courteous; a learned man humble; a silent woman; a merry companion without vanity; a friend not changed with honor; a sick man cheerful; a soul departing with comfort and assurance. And as Judith did not make bold to claim to be any one of these – nor, indeed, to have any such merits or excellences as would extort the approval of the membership of the saints – she gradually fell away from listening; and her mind was busy with other things; and her imagination, which was vivid enough, intent upon other scenes. One thing that had struck her the moment she had returned was that Prudence seemed in an unusually cheerful mood. Of course the arrival of two visitors was an event in that quiet life of theirs; and no doubt Prudence was glad to be appointed to entertain the strangers – one of them, moreover, being of such great fame. But so pleased was she, and so cheerful in her manner, that Judith was straightway convinced there had been no quarrel between her and Tom Quiney. Nay, when was there time for that? He could scarcely have seen her that morning; while the night before there had certainly been no mention of his projected migration to America, else Prudence would have said as much. What, then, had so suddenly driven him to the conclusion that England was no longer a land fit to live in? And why had he paid Prudence such marked attention – why had he presented her with the spaniel-gentle and offered her the emblazoned missal – one evening, only to resolve the next morning that he must needs leave the country? Nay, why had he so unexpectedly broken the scornful silence with which he had recently treated herself? He had given her to understand that, as far as he was concerned, she did not exist. He seemed determined to ignore her presence. And yet she could not but remember that, if this contemptuous silence on his part was broken by the amazement of his seeing her in the company of a stranger, his suspicions in that direction were very speedily disarmed. A few words and they fled. It was his far more deadly jealousy of the parson that remained; and was like to remain, for she certainly would not stoop to explain that the meeting in the church-yard was quite accidental. But why should he trouble his head about either her or the parson? Had he not betaken himself elsewhere – and that with her right good-will? Nay, on his own confession he had discovered how kind and gentle Prudence was: there was a fit mate for him – one to temper the wildness and hot-headedness of his youth. Judith had never seen the sea, and therefore had never seen moonlight on the sea; but the nearest to that she could go, in thinking of what Prudence's nature was like, in its restful and sweet and serious beauty, was the moonlight she had seen on the river Avon in the calm of a summer's night, the water unbroken by a ripple, and not a whisper among the reeds. Could he not perceive that too, and understand?