Idonia: A Romance of Old London

CHAPTER XXV

To tell all that befell me ere I set foot in England once more were scarce less tedious to the reader than it was to me in the happening, who counted each day for lost until I had got home; which was upon Christmas Eve; and should prosecute my search for Idonia Avenon.

But so strangely into peace did all my affairs seem to move, after my uncle's death (as though upon his removal who had every way troubled us so long, we were come into an unknown liberty and fulfilment of our hopes), that my search was ended as soon almost as begun, and Idonia restored to me within an hour of my landing at Wapping Stairs.

'Twas the simplest cause that led me to her, as it was the simplest act of mere gratitude that I should go at once to the kindly folk on the Bridge, I mean Gregory Nelson and his wife, to requite them for all they had done for me and to excuse myself in having gone away from them so without warning as I did; which must at that time have appeared very graceless in me and unhandsome. And being thus come to their house, as I say, who should be in the doorway, as if expressly to greet me (although she had heard nought of the arrival of the Happy Adventure), but Idonia herself, sweet lass! and blithe as a carol burden. 'Twas some while ere we got to relating our histories, but when Idonia did at length relate her own, I learnt how Nelson's brother, the yeoman, had found her that dreadful night, lurking about the precincts of the Fair Haven Inn, nigh distraught with weeping and the terror of loneliness. He had questioned her straitly of her purpose in being there, to whom she presently confessed she sought me, and told him where I was used to lodge, which was in this house upon London Bridge. And no sooner did the yeoman apprehend the matter, than he got permission of his captain to leave watching of the Inn, and so carried her home to his brother's wife, who tenderly cared for her, until I should return.

"As indeed I never doubted of your doing," said Idonia, her eyes shining for very pride of this ineffable thing we had entered into possession of; "though you have been gone a weary great while, dear heart, and no tidings have I had to comfort me."

"Ay, and mickle tidings you needed, housewife!" interposed the scolding voice of Madam Nelson, that (good soul) had no notion to leave us two by ourselves, but burst into whatever room we were in, upon the most impertinent excuse, as of a mislaid thimble, or a paper of pins, or else a "Lord! be you here still?" or a "Tell me, Denis, how do the ladies of Barbary wear their hair?" until I swear I was ready to pitch her out of the window for a second, but more virtuous, Jezebel.

"Small tidings you needed, I wis," said she, "that turned even silence to advantage, and the very winds of Heaven to your way of thinking! 'He will be safe in this weather,' would 'a say when 'twas calm; or if it blew fresh, 'Denis hath no fear of a tempest!' and with such a fulsome patience of belief, as I think, had she had positive news you were dead, she would have said you feigned it on purpose to have leisure to think upon her."

"Had it not been for your own good courage, mother," replied Idonia, with a run of laughter, "I had often enough desponded. And 'twas you went to Mr. Osborne for me, as Mr. Nelson did to the Council, to give account how matters had gone, and to exonerate this long lad of remissness."

"Tilly vally!" cried the lady. "I exonerate none of your lovers, not I, that steal away at midnight, to leave their sweethearts weeping by the shore!" And so, as if blown thence by the strong gust of her resentment, she was gone from us, ere I could mend her wilful misconstruction of the part I had been enforced to play.

But that part of captive I was now content enough to continue in for just so long as Idonia willed, who held me to her, and by a thousand links bound me, pronouncing my sentence in terms I shall neither ever forget nor shall I now repeat them. Such sweet words of a maid are not singular, I think, but rather be common as death; to which for the first time they give the only right meaning, as of a little ford that lies in a hollow of the highway of love....

I told her gently of her guardian's drowning, at which report she shuddered and turned away her face. But all she said was: "He was a kind man to me, but otherwise, I fear, very wicked."

We spoke of the Chinese jar, that had contained that great treasure of diamonds and precious stones my uncle had rent away and stolen from those he privily slew. Idonia said it had been seized upon by the party of soldiers that had searched the Inn, and that the Queen had confiscated it to her own use, as indeed she was accustomed to keep whatever prizes came into her hands, without scruple of lawful propriety. "Which was the occasion, I fear, of some sharp passages betwixt Madam Nelson and her husband," said Idonia, with a smile, "she being for his boldly demanding them of the Queen's Secretary, as pertaining to my dowry, but he stoutly dissenting from such a course, and, I hold, rightly. But in either case I would not have kept them, knowing as I do how they were come by; and although the loss of them leaveth us poor."

I was of her mind in that, and said so. However, we were not to be so poor as we then supposed; for besides the jewels which Her Grace had possessed herself of, with her slender and capable fingers, there was afterwards discovered a pretty big sum of money her guardian had laid up, together with his testament and general devise of all he had to Idonia Avenon, whom he named his sole heir. This we learned from the attorney in whose hands as well the money was, as the will, which himself had drawn; who, upon my solemn attestation, and the witness of Captain Tuchet, admitted, and procured it to be allowed by the magistrates, that Botolph Cleeve, the testator, was legally deceased, and Idonia Avenon, the beneficiary, incontestably alive. And upon our counting over the sum (we both being notable accountants, as is already sufficiently known), we found it more by nigh a thousand pounds than my father had formerly lost by this man whose death now allowed of the restitution of all. For Idonia would hear of nothing done until my father should be first paid, and of her own motion made proposal that we should immediately journey down into Somerset to pay him, in the which course I concurred with great contentment, for it was already near upon two years since I had set eyes upon him, and upon our old home of Combe.

The snow lay somewhat less thickly upon the downs, as we rode over them past Marlborough and Devizes, than it had done when I set out in the company of that very warlike scholar, Mr. Jordan, whose campaign I had seen to be diverted against the books and featherbeds of Baynards Castle, with so singular a valour and so remote a prospect to be ever determined.

Idonia was delighted with these great fields, all white and shining, that we passed over, they being like nothing she had ever seen, she said, except once, when she had gone with her guardian into Kent, where he lay one whole winter in hiding, though she did not know wherefore.

By nights it was my custom to request a lodging for Idonia of the clergyman of the town we rested at, while I myself would lie at the inn; and by this means I was enabled to renew my pleasant acquaintance with the Curate of Newbury; who (it will be remembered) had preached that Philippic sermon against the Papists, and had moreover so earnestly desired me that I should tell the Archbishop of his adding a rood of ground to his churchyard. He seemed, methought, a little dejected when I said I had had none occasion to His Grace, who therefore remained yet in ignorance of the progress the Church made in Newbury; but he soon so far forgot his disappointment as to tell me of an improvement of his tithes-rents, by which he was left with seventeen shillings to the good at Michaelmas; and with a part of this surplus he had, he confessed, been tempted to purchase of a pedlar a certain book in the French tongue called Pantagruel, from which he had derived no inconsiderable entertainment, albeit joined to some scruples upon the matters therein treated of, whether they were altogether such as he should be known to read them.

"However, since none here hath any French but I," said he, "I bethought me that no public scandal was to be feared, and so read on."

We rode into the little town of Glastonbury, where it lieth under its strange and conical steep hill, about four o'clock in the afternoon; it being then, I think, toward the end of January, and clear still weather. And because it was already dusk I would not proceed further that day; but in the morning, before daybreak, we proceeded again forward, going by the ridgeway that, as a viaduct, standeth high above the levels, then all veiled in chill grey mists. We got into Taunton a little ere noon, and there baited our horses, being determined to end our journey before nightfall, which we could not have done except by this respite. The name of Simon Powell had been so oft upon my lips, and I had with so many and lively strokes depainted him in conversation with Idonia, that she had come to know him almost as well as I, and thus I was hardly astonished when she turned about in her saddle to gaze after a young man that walked in a meadow a little apart from the highway as we were entering the hamlet of Tolland, and asked me whether he were not, as in truth he was, my old companion.

Marvellous glad to meet with Simon after this long interval, I drew rein and beckoned to him, who, running forward almost at the same instant, took my hand, gloved as it was, and covered it with kisses.

"How doth my father?" I demanded eagerly, and ere he had concluded his salutation.

"His worship may mend when he sees you come home," said he gravely, and by that I saw I was not to indulge too large a hope of his mending.

"I would we were indeed arrived home, Simon," I replied; "but at all events, this lodging shall soon be exchanged for a better; that is, if he may yet bear to be moved."

We walked our horses along very slowly, Simon between us as we went, to whom Idonia addressed herself so kindly that the lad, falling instantly in love with her, had nearly forgot the principal thing of all he had to say, which was that Sir Matthew Juke had but at the Christmas quarter-day past renounced his tenancy of the Court and gone to Bristol, where he had formed the acquaintance of a merchant-adventurer that was about to attempt the Northwest passage (as it is named, although none hath yet found it); and upon this voyage the knight also was set to go.

"His head is full of the design," said Simon, "so that those about him fear his wits unsettled, and indeed he spends the better part of every day poring upon books of navigation, treatises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the like, while his speech is ever of victualling and charts and ships' logs, but of other things, and even in the Justices' room at the Sessions, never a word."

"Say you he hath resigned his lease of our house at Combe?" cried I, interrupting him for the very impatience of my joy; and when I knew he certainly had so done, struck the spurs into my tired beast and galloped forward to the Inn.

Of the interval I say nothing, nor of the mutual delight with which my father and I embraced each other; and afterwards of the bestowal of his welcome upon Idonia, which he did with that accustomed courtly grace of his, and bound the maid to him in love by the simple manner of his doing it.

Within a week, or perhaps a little over, we were all returned to the Court, where Idonia was at once proclaimed mistress; and a week after Easter we were married. My father was for giving up to us the great room, hung about with tapestries, he had always used, but neither Idonia nor I would allow of it, preferring for our own chamber that high narrow attic in the tower that had been mine before, and was, moreover, as wholesome and sweet a place as any man could lead a wife to, with a rare prospect of meadow and moorland from the window; too, and away up the deep valley to where it is closed in ascending ranks of pines.

Here yet we live, Idonia and I: "Idonia of Petty Wales" I have named her, and Simon is therefore wondrous pleased to suppose some affinity in her to his wild ancestors, of whom he now tells her, as he formerly did me, incredible long legends; yet none so out of all compass of belief as is the story we might have told him, had we chosen, of that ruinous secret house over against the Galley Quay, where she dwelt so long, pure and brave, amidst desperate evil men.

Here we live, as I say, Idonia and I, but no longer my father, who after we had been married but a year, died. Worn out by that lingering malady of which I have spoken, and having been for so long a while confined to that poor shelter where, I learned, was to be had the merest necessaries but nothing to foster his strength, he soon gave manifest signs that the betterment of his fortune had come too late to advantage him. To himself it had of necessity been well known, but the knowledge neither discouraged him at all, nor caused him to exchange his habitual discourse for those particular sentences that men in such case will sometimes burden their speech withal.

In Idonia's company he seemed to take an extraordinary quiet pleasure, and indeed spoke with her (as she afterwards told me) of matters he had seldom enlarged upon with me, but to which she opened so ready an apprehension as drew him on from familiar chat to reveal to her the most cherished speculations of his mind. To me he continued as I always remember him, using that gentle satire that was a sauce to all his sayings. He would oftenwhiles question me of the difficulties and dangers of my sojourn in London, but although he would hear me attentively, I knew he took small pleasure in tales of tumult and strife. There was in his nature that touch of woman that, however, is not womanliness but rather is responsive to the best a woman hath; and thus it was, in the perfect sympathy that marked his converse with Idonia, I read, more clearly than I had done in all the years we had lived together, the measure of his loss in losing his wife, and the pitiful great need which he endeavoured so continuously, in his reading, to fill.

I had supposed him to be a complete Stoick, and to have embraced without reservation the teaching of that famous school; but Idonia, to whom I spoke of it, told me that it was not altogether so.

"For," she said, "it was but a week since, as we sat together on the side of the moor yonder, that he repeated to me a sentence of the Roman Emperor's, whose works he ever carrieth about with him, in which he bids a wise man expect each day to meet with idle men and fools and busybodies and arrogant men. But that, your father said, was to bid a man shut himself up alone in a high tower, whence he should look down upon his fellows instead of mixing with them and trying to understand them. Expect rather, he said, to meet each day with honest, kindly men; in which expectation if you be disappointed, then consider whether the cause of offence lieth not in you; the other man being full as likely to be inoffensive as yourself."

Of time he was wont to say, "When one says to you: There is no time like the present, reply to him that indeed there is no time but the present: future and past being but as graven figures on a milestone which a man readeth and passeth upon his road."

"In order to the greatest happiness in this life," he said, "it is well freely to give to others all they shall require at your hands, being well assured that they will readily leave you in the enjoyment of that the only real possession of yours, which is your thoughts."

To Idonia, who once asked him why he had never written down the rules he lived by, he answered with his grave smile that rules were the false scent, subtle or obvious, with which the escaping outlaw, thought, deludes its pursuers, sworn of the law.

But the speech that hath struck the deepest in me was spoken when he gave Idonia, as he did, that picture of my mother, of whom he said (but not of himself) that she had known a world of sorrow, and after awhile added that "he believed ere she died she had found her sorrow fashioned to a splendid gift."

I accurately remember the last day he lived, in every least accident of it: the sense of beauty that all things seemed to have above the ordinary, and the stillness that clung about the Combe.

We had gone up, all three, and old Peter Sprot with us, to a little coppice of firs upon the moor side, to see a squadron of the Queen's ships, that went down the Channel under the command of Sir Richard Grenville, who was lately appointed to survey the defences of the West, and to marshal the trained bands that had been put into readiness against the expected, but long delayed, invasion of the Spanish.

Our talk was naturally of war, and the chances we had to withstand so notable an army as was gathering against us, upon which my father said, very quiet, that the principal thing was never victory, but the not being afraid. Later on, as if pursuing a train of thought that this observation had set him on, he said—

"That which we are accustomed to call the future hath been by the elder men of all ages generally despaired of, or at the least feared; and I think it always will be so, for an old man's courage naturally turneth backward to the past and occupieth itself in enlarging the obstacles himself hath overcome, which no young man again might do; and this maketh him fearful, and oftentimes angry too."

He paused there upon Idonia's pointing with her finger to the Admiral that just then shook out her standard from the mast-head, but presently proceeded, smiling: "Had England not already a motto to her shield I would petition the Heralds to subscribe these words beneath it, that in what estate so ever we be found, we be neither angry nor afraid."

He sat silent after that, and I thought seemed to fetch his breath something uneasily. However, he lay back against the bole of a fir awhile as resting himself.

"Of ourselves too," he went on at length, "I would have it written when we die, not that we did no wrong, for of none may that be said, but that as we entered into life without knowledge, so we departed from it without shame. For to be ashamed is to deny."

He closed his eyes then, and we thought slept. But when the ships had gone by, Peter Sprot touched my arm and pointed to him. He was already dead.

We bore him down through the golden sunlight, strangely troubled, but I think, too, filled with the thought of the majesty of such a dying. And I was glad his end was upon the hills, rather than in the valley; for life is ever an ascending, or should be, and to its consummation reacheth with face upturned toward the vehicle of light.