The Wayfarers

CHAPTER VI

CONTAINS A FEW TRITE UTTERANCES ON THE GENTLE PASSION

We had to wait a minute for the hot water and fresh towels which our host had had the forethought to order for us. These were presently brought by a strapping servant lass, whose ill-repressed grins proved that she had been a spectator of these incidents. While we waited, the good man's apologies for his wife were truly comic. He chivalrously made it clear to us that her defects sprang from the very excess of excellencies in her character.

"A notable good woman," says he, while her voice continued to shrill up the stairs. "A fine, honest, energetic woman – a woman in a thousand. Always strivin', savin', and cleanin' she is, the very model of what a housewife should be. If she's got a fault, it is her over-anxiousness. She will look on the dark side of things; and she's that dreadful suspicious, all in the interest of her household, that if a stranger is seen with his head over the fence, she can't sleep for a week after it, being so certain in her mind that the hayricks are going to be fired, the stock taken, the farmstead broken into, and our throats cut as we lie in bed. But I know you'll overlook it; she don't mean nothing by it, as you can see with half an eye. She's a rare good woman as ivver I see; it's only her worritin' frettishness for the welfare o' the farm; you do understand that, don't you?"

"Perfectly," we said together, an assurance that relieved the good man mightily.

"You know, what upsets her most," says he, "is that I can't put a name to ye. For myself, although I came by you promiscuous like at the onset, I likes you and I believes in you. I think you're the right sort, only a bit down in the world. But of course she don't know that. She's not seen you use your ten commandments, young man; and she don't know what pretty little ways your nice little wife 'ave." Cynthia blushed such a brilliant colour at this complimentary reference that the farmer paused to chuckle. "Begs your pardon, I'm sure, my dear," says he, "if I've put my big foot in it. Not his wife. Well, well, I thinks none the worse o' 'im for that, I don't; but if I was you I would not let the mistress know it. Her virtue makes her that disagreeable sometimes as you wouldn't believe. Now if you can give me a name by which I can introjuice you by, fair and square, as though you was friends o' mine, it'll make things easier, do you see, when we sits down to breakfast."

"Well," says I, "since you ask it of us, this lady is the Lady Cynthia Carew, daughter to the Duke of Salop, and you can call me the Earl of Tiverton."

Instead of betraying any surprise at finding us in the possession of dignities which, to say the least, he could not have expected us to enjoy, the farmer betrayed not a whit of it, but broke into a fit of laughter and clapped me upon the shoulder.

"Oh, if it comes to that," says he, "you can call me the Cham of Tartary and my old missis the Queen of Sheba."

Nor would he, in spite of the solemn assurances that I rather delighted to give him, be convinced of our true condition.

"No, my lad," says he, still laughing at the humour of it, "you may be pretty handy with your mauleys, and I would be the last to be denying that, but you're no more the pattern of a nobleman than I am. You should try this game on with a greener chap than me. You must not think because I'm a plain farmer that I can't recognize the real slap-up nobility when I meets them. Now if you allowed yourself to be some sturdy vagabond that's too idle to work for his livelihood, or a strolling actor that is a peddling along the country with his puppet-show, or an incorrigible rogue that's lately out of the stocks for robbing hen-roosts, and was lying last night in my cowhouse to take more than his lodging, I wouldn't disbelieve you. But an earl! – no, you've overshot the mark a bit, my lad. Say a bart now – be satisfied with just a blessed bart – and we'll let it pass at that."

"No, rat me if I will," says I, pretending to be angry. "I'll have my earldom, or I'll have nothing at all."

"But surely a bart's good enough for anybody," says the farmer, fully entering, as he supposed, into the humour of the thing. "Why, I wouldn't mind being a bart mysen. Come, let it go at a bart, my lad. Yes, I'll pass you at a bart out of respect for your fisticuffs, but between you and me I don't think my old mis'ess will."

"No," says I, "'od's blood! I will not be a bart as you call it. I will be the Right Honourable Anthony Gervas John Plowden-Pleydell, Fifth Earl of Tiverton, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, or I will be nothing at all."

"Very well, then," says the farmer perfunctorily, "since that is your humour, we'll have it at that. But wait till I announce your title to my old mis'ess, and hear what she's got to say about it. And this little wench – pretty little wench, I'll allow – she's daughter to my lord the Duke of who?"

"To my lord the Duke of Salop," says I, importantly, dwelling on each syllable of her title for the jest's sake, "and you can call her my Lady Cynthia Mary Jane Carew."

"Dom'd if I don't then," says he. "And here come the clean clouts and the warm water. Here, Jenny, put them down there for his lordship and her ladyship. And we'll leave his lordship and her ladyship to do their dressing, and then they'll please condescend to honour our humble meal. Now, then, my girl, off with you below; and how dare you have the impertinence to stand grinning there like a Cheshire cat, before my lord and my lady, too!"

With a great guffaw for the honour of his own wit, the farmer left us to our much-needed toilets. The reflections with which we made them would have served a philosopher of the kidney of my grandfather, for instance, for a monstrous fine homily on the true value of rank and title. What were they worth when enclosed in a suit of homespun? They required all the appurtenances with which they are hedged about in the public mind to be of any value whatever. It seemed that a lord derived the consideration of the world from his silk stockings and the congees of his servants – not from any intrinsic merits within himself; and it was with this trite reflection that I looked in the hand-glass, and smiled in something of a cynical manner at the unredeemed villainy of the countenance that I found there. A lively scrubbing did a little for it, it is true, but that could not obliterate the traces of my recent bout with the farmer, nor the growth of beard upon my chin, nor enhance the rude, ill-fitting clothes in which my friend the Jew had, as it seemed, so effectually disguised me. Cynthia, however, who had the true feminine ingenuity in these matters, having washed her face and trimmed up her curls a little – Lord knows how! – contrived to make a very much better appearance in the role of the duke's daughter than ever I was like to do in that of the noble wearer of the Order of the Garter. When we were sufficiently furbished to think of going down to that delicious meal, in which the greater part of our thoughts were centred, says I as we descended:

"Remember now, we are under no alias whatever. I am my lord, and you are my lady."

"But surely," says Cynthia, who in so many ways had the true feminine imperviousness to the whimsicality of things, "is this not the very height of imprudency? If we leave evidences behind us at every place at which we tarry we shall be certainly taken in three days."

"Rest content," says I, "they will never inquire in out-of-the-way places of this sort. In dangerous places we can still be incognito. But do you not see the cream of this affair is that our real names are the best disguises we can wish to have? We are far less likely to be recognized by them than any we might adopt."

It was with this conviction that we came in to breakfast, and confronted the farmer and his wife. Determined to play up to my part, I bowed to the farmer's wife with a most sweeping air, as though she were a woman of the first fashion, and I made her as gracious a speech as I could possibly make. There were a thousand apologies in it, and a great many compliments to her, her husband, her kitchen, and more sincerely, the hot meal we were dying to partake of. I did it with all the breeding I could summon, and to see such ceremony issuing from so common not to say low a person, dumbfounded the good wife so completely, that even her powers of speech forsook her. She blinked, and nodded her head, and fidgeted this way and that; and when little Cynthia, taking her cue from me, curtsied to her with the best grace of a lady-in-waiting to her most gracious Majesty, as indeed the naughty miss was destined to be, the poor goodwife was so taken by confusion that she trod on the cat, and the cat I doubt not would have knocked over the dish of bacon on the hearth in its fright, had not I, in anticipation of some such disaster, very gallantly interposed between them.

The farmer himself, although equally at a loss to reconcile our manners with our appearance and presence in that place, was evidently too much of a lover of his joke to let the occasion pass.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, wife," says he, "that these are a lady and gentleman of the first nobility. You would run on so when they first came in that you gave me no chance of saying who they were. Just tell the mis'ess, my lord, who your lordship and her ladyship may be, for I domm'd if I don't forget."

This I did with a good deal of unction, for seeing what a comic effect our manners had had on the good woman, our names in all probability would have one still more singular. This proved to be the case, for no sooner had I, with much apologetic modesty for the circumstances which had impelled me to it, played the herald to my fair companion and myself, than our hostess became the victim of an even more remarkable nervousness, and grew as apologetic on her part as she had been cross-grained before.

"La," says she, "I can never forgive my husband for not having told me. To think you should honour us by sitting down in our humble farm-kitchen to our humble fare, and you should be treated so unseemly! But it is so like my husband not to have told me. La, will your lordship have ale, or does your lordship prefer to take a little claret-wine of a morning? We have it, although it is not on the table. Jenny, go this minute and fetch the claret-wine for his lordship."

It seemed that our hostess having got over the first shock of our identity, proposed to match our breeding with some of her own. She began to use a high clipping tone that she evidently kept for company, and became so assiduous in the attentions she paid us, and so heedful of our wants, that we profited vastly by her credulity, if that is the right name to apply to it. Her husband, however, was not so lightly to be imposed upon, as he was at pains to show. At every polite effort put forward by his wife, he counteracted it by a wink or a cough, or a chuckle, or a snigger. And he put the handles to our names in such a voice of banter as greatly distressed his wife, who continued to overpower us with her civilities. At last, says she:

"Your lordship and your ladyship must really excuse my husband. He is a very good honest man to be sure," here she sank her voice to a mysterious whisper, "but he is a little vulgar and low-bred in these things, although," with a still lower voice and more mystery, "I would not have him hear me say it for the world. You see he is not come of so good a family as I am. His folk were a little vulgar and low-bred too, and people said at the time that for all his farm and his prize heifers it was the last thing to be expected that a person like me would ever marry him. Ah, well, I suppose it is always a mistake to marry out of one's station, although to be sure no one could have a kinder, better husband. But your lordship and your ladyship follow me, do you not? He almost makes me blush for his manners, that he do."

"My dear madam," says I, "I am sure we both feel for you from the bottom of our hearts, and understand the occasion perfectly."

And could there have been a prettier comedy? First we had had the husband apologizing for the wife, and now we had the wife apologizing for the husband. Lord knows whether she allowed us to be what we were or not, but she certainly entertained us to a royal breakfast. Two famished people never sat down to a finer meal in this world than the one we partook of. And when we left our honest but wonderfully ill-assorted host and hostess, about nine of the clock in the morning to continue on our way, we were most handsomely fortified in mind and body.

As we passed from the farmyard and struck into the fields the sun was showing handsomely, and the thrushes were singing their lusty notes. It was as fine a spring morning as the heart could desire. The virginal airs played on our faces; the birds called to one another from hedge to tree; the little lambs frisked among the white daisies in the meads, as hand-in-hand we took our way again. We still had no clear idea as to whither we were going. But we were mightily content wherever our way might lead. The sense we had of our liberty was a something we had never tasted before. Had we not cast off the trammels of the world? We could begin life again; and be whom we chose. We were a pair of unknown persons, moving among unknown people in unknown places. Every hour we passed in these solitudes of nature had something of the glamour of romance invested in it. For we did not know how our next meal would be come by, or what would be the next shelter for our weary heads when nightfall overtook us. But we cared not. We were in the crisp, free, open air, snuffing the sunshine, and trampling across a carpet of flowers over hill and dale, while the spring birds sang.

I think we were too desperately happy to talk much. Cynthia was radiant, and as light of foot and heart as the birds that called to us from the green hedges. The words of an appropriate ballad were on her lips:

When Strephon wooed his Chloe dear,All in the springtime of the year.

And I took the infection of her spirits also, I was sensible, ere we had walked a mile, of a frank, jovial, devil-may-care lightheartedness, not so fresh and buoyant as my little one's perhaps, since I had lived a little longer, had therefore had the brightness of my youth more overlaid with the rust of the world, and had a greater weight of responsibility, more particularly for her, upon my shoulders. It was little I felt it, however. For suddenly as we walked in these sweet fields, an idea was born in my mind that banished everything except the thrill of joy it brought.

"My prettiness," says I, "we could not wish for a perfecter wedding morning."

"That we could not," says she, so promptly that it struck me she had been expecting some such suggestion from me. Her blushes were adorable, it is true, but I believe they were more a matter of instinct than the offspring of any particular commotion in her bosom.

"Wilt marry me, pretty one," says I, "at the first church we come to, that hath a snug parsonage sitting in honeysuckle beside it?"

"Ay, that I will," says she, cocking up her thin with an archness of invitation that was not to be denied.

I suppose it was that the adventures we had already had together had given us the most perfect understanding of one another. There was a feeling of proprietorship between us; and had not each given up everything in life for the other's sake?

"My dear," says I, feeling that a little sentiment would not come amiss this rare spring morning, "I hope you have realized what I have to offer you. I have but my blasted reputation, my destitute condition, my debts, my crimes, my prostituted name. This is all the estate that a very humble, constant heart is endowed with."

"They will serve," says Cynthia simply. "If you were the wickedest man in England, and by your own account you are not far removed from that state, it would be the same. It is not for what you be that I like you; it is for what I think you to be."

"If it comes to that," says I, "I don't suppose it is me at all you care for. It is not myself you are in love with, nor my virtues, nor my vices, nor my hair, my eyes, my clothes, my understanding, nor anything that is mine. You are at that romantical instant of your womanhood when you have fallen in love with the name of love. If instead of a man I were a tame white mouse, or a bob-tailed rabbit, or a bull-calf you would invest me with all the pretty fancies that are running in your head, so that the reflection in your mind would yet be the one that you most wished to see. But a truce to philosophy, let us to church."

Cynthia was so evidently of my mind in this last particular that she laughed, and resumed the singing of her ballad, as we strode out the brisker for our intercourse.

CHAPTER VII

AN INSTRUCTIVE CHAPTER; IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF A LITTLE LEARNING IS DANGEROUS, MUCH MAY BE CALAMITOUS

As we took our way through the grass of a most charming flower-coated country, there was a kind of rivalry between us as to who should be the first to spy a church. The honour of doing so had not fallen to either of us, when Cynthia suddenly darted from the path to pick some white violets out of a hedge.

"Why," says she, in the delight of finding them, "we will make ourselves a posy apiece to carry with us to church, as it is our wedding morning. Oh, look at the marsh-marigolds at the side of the brook there!"

She gave me the violets to hold, with some injunction as to the correct manner of holding them, for my handling of them was much too crude to please her, and ran away again to fetch the pretty yellow flowers. All sorts of things she gathered for our nosegays, lady-smocks all silver white from the meadow, and daisies pied and violets blue, cowslips and even a blue-bell. Nothing would content her but that we should make them up into posies there and then; which we did, and bound them round with grasses. But hardly had we finished this pastoral employment and continued on our way, when we became the victims of a singular diversion. We passed out of one meadow over a stile into another of a similar kind. But in the second a few cows were browsing. To these we paid no heed, but walked jauntily enough through the pasture, apprehending no danger; but by the time we had come perhaps to the middle of the field we were startled by a commotion behind us. Turning round to discover whence it arose, we were horrified to find what the source of it was. A young bull with its head grounded and its tail in the air was charging down upon us. A single exclamation and a frightened instant of hesitation in which to take our bearings, and evolve a mode of escape, was all we had time for. The bull was coming so furiously that it was almost upon us, yet we were stranded full in the middle of the field, with no chance whatever of taking refuge in flight. But happily my eye lit on a tree, a sturdy young sapling a yard or two off. Thither I pushed the terrified Cynthia, and literally lifted her into one of the lower branches, whilst she, with an admirable conception of the case and how to act in it, scrambled with a mighty rending of her garments into the boughs above. I clambered after her madly, not a second too soon. The vigorous snorting young bull crashed his horns against the tree with great force. He was so near to my leg that I instinctively felt it to be gashed wide open; whilst such a mighty shake did its impact give to our place of refuge that it was indeed a mercy we were not both of us thrown on to the ground to be gored and trampled on. But despite our fright we were able to cling to the branches; and when at last I was able to get a glimpse of my leg, I found to my relief that I had been the victim of my imagination.

The bellowing beast made divers onslaughts against the bark of the tree, whilst we very fearfully hurried up higher and higher, dreading at each stroke of our enemy to feel ourselves flying through the air. Providentially, however, by clinging with rare tenacity to our vantage place we were able to maintain ourselves in the security of the highest branches of all. And presently our adversary having wreaked a good deal of his fury on the offending tree, desisted from an occupation that brought him so little profit, and having walked off a yard or two, proceeded to regard us morosely. He seemed prepared to stay in that employment too for an indefinite period. But feeling our position, snug as it was and safe for the time being, to be yet highly precarious, since the very boughs on which we sat swayed and cracked and creaked in a truly alarming fashion, I determined to play a coup, ere any melancholy thing should happen which would put it out of my power to play one.

Divesting myself with much difficulty of my cloak, although Cynthia rather audaciously, considering her own position at the time, lent me a hand, I committed that garment to her charge, and proceeded to select the most favourable moment for a speedy flight to the nearest hedge. Keeping perfectly motionless in our unhappy posture, we presently contrived to lull the unsuspecting bull into a state of quiescence which I am sure he would have been the first to admit, had he but known, the circumstances hardly warranted. For suddenly taking an advantage of his sleeping vigilance, I made a leap off the tree as far as possible from the spot on which he stood watching. It was then a case of run devil, run baker. I'm sure no poor devil ever ran more fleetly than I did then; whilst I am equally sure that there never was a baker in this world that ran more swiftly than that roaring, rampageous bullock. Luckily for my precious bones I had a fair good start of the fellow, and the distance to the hedge was less than a hundred yards. Had it been otherwise this history had never been written else, for not for a moment do I think Cynthia would ever have troubled to write it; nor between ourselves, do I think she would ever have been capable of doing so, even had her ambition jumped in that direction. Running pell-mell, my heart beating holes in my ribs, and the clear tones of Mrs. Cynthia issuing from the topmost branches of the tree in words of lusty encouragement such as: "Bravo, lad, bravo! Mightily done!" I panted to the hedge with the bull ever at my heels, and had just the strength to take a second leap at the green brambles, and half jump, half scramble through their tenacious barriers, and so into the neighbouring field, while the bull, foiled for the second time, raged and vented his disappointment from the other side.

Meanwhile little Cynthia, with a delightful intrepidity, also took advantage of our enemy. While Mr. Bull continued to thrust his head at the hedge in his mighty rage, and roared forth his threats, high-couraged little Cynthia, if you please, very simply and dexterously dropped down my cloak out of the tree, neatly dropped down after it, and then with the most gallant coolness gathered herself up again, the cloak too, and even stayed to recover our late discarded posies, which the bull had evidently thought too mean to be worthy of his regard. With these articles tucked away in one hand, she gathered her skirts in the other, and away scudded her dainty ankles through the grass to the opposite fence. All this time the bull, foiled and nonplussed as he was, continued to fume and rush at the fence that kept him from me, but never for an instant did he guess that Cynthia was in the act of cheating him too.

Convinced by this that my little one had made good her escape, I could not restrain my joy. I began to jump and clap my hands, and bellow out hearty encouragements and applause to her across the field. This behaviour so surprised the bull, that he whisked angrily round to discover the cause of it. He beheld Cynthia in the very height of her rapid victorious transit. Away he dashed, head down, in pursuit of her, but she was much too well advanced in her flight to have any fear of him whatever. By the time he had come level with the tree, Cynthia was calmly climbing into security over the stile; and when the outwitted animal rushed up and thrust his nose over it, she tauntingly, if a trifle vain-gloriously, shook the cloak and the posies at him. Never, I think, did I see an act more neatly or more bravely performed.

When we came presently together again in the middle of an adjoining field, a sort of half-way house from where the bull had respectively left us, we were both in high feather and mightily pleased with ourselves and one another.