Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (christmas read aloud .txt) 📕

So the old hen who has swallowed the dun fly is killed, plucked, and roasted, and certain “black Dartmoor mutton” is put on the gridiron, and being compelled to confess the truth by that fiery torment, proclaims itself to all noses as reddeer venison. In the meanwhile Amyas has put his horse and the ponies into a shed, to which he can find neither lock nor key, and therefore returns grumbling, not without fear for his steed’s safety. The baggage is heaped in a corner of the room, and Amyas stretches his legs before a turf fire; while Yeo, who has his notions about the place, posts himself at the door, and the men are seized with a desire to superintend the cooking, probably to be attributed to the fact that Mary is cook.

Presently Yeo comes in again.

“There’s a gentleman just coming up, sir, all alone.”

“Ask him to make one of our party, then, with my compliments.” Yeo goes out, and returns in five minutes.

“Please, sir, he’s gone in back ways, by the court.”

“Well, he has an odd taste, if he makes himself at home here.”

Out goes Yeo again, and comes back once more after five minutes, in high excitement.

“Come out, sir; for goodness’ sake come out. I’ve got him. Safe as a rat in a trap, I have!”

“Who?”

“A Jesuit, sir.”

“Nonsense, man!”

“I tell you truth, sir. I went round the house, for I didn’t like the looks of him as he came up. I knew he was one of them villains the minute he came up, by the way he turned in his toes, and put down his feet so still and careful, like as if he was afraid of offending God at every step. So I just put my eye between the wall and the dern of the gate, and I saw him come up to the back door and knock, and call ‘Mary!’ quite still, like any Jesuit; and the wench flies out to him ready to eat him; and ‘Go away,’ I heard her say, ‘there’s a dear man;’ and then something about a ‘queer cuffin’ (that’s a justice in these canters’ thieves’ Latin); and with that he takes out a somewhat—I’ll swear it was one of those Popish Agnuses—and gives it her; and she kisses it, and crosses herself, and asks him if that’s the right way, and then puts it into her bosom, and he says, ‘Bless you, my daughter;’ and then I was sure of the dog: and he slips quite still to the stable, and peeps in, and when he sees no one there, in he goes, and out I go, and shut to the door, and back a cart that was there up against it, and call out one of the men to watch the stable, and the girl’s crying like mad.”

“What a fool’s trick, man! How do you know that he is not some honest gentleman, after all?”

“Fool or none, sir; honest gentlemen don’t give maidens Agnuses. I’ve put him in; and if you want him let out again, you must come and do it yourself, for my conscience is against it, sir. If the Lord’s enemies are delivered into my hand, I’m answerable, sir,” went on Yeo as Amyas hurried out with him. “‘Tis written, ‘If any let one of them go, his life shall be for the life of him.’”

So Amyas ran out, pulled back the cart grumbling, opened the door, and began a string of apologies to—his cousin Eustace.

Yes, here he was, with such a countenance, half foolish, half venomous, as reynard wears when the last spadeful of earth is thrown back, and he is revealed sitting disconsolately on his tail within a yard of the terriers’ noses.

Neither cousin spoke for a minute or two. At last Amyas—

“Well, cousin hide-and-seek, how long have you added horse-stealing to your other trades?”

“My dear Amyas,” said Eustace, very meekly, “I may surely go into an inn stable without intending to steal what is in it.”

“Of course, old fellow,” said Amyas, mollified, I was only in jest. But what brings you here? Not prudence, certainly.”

“I am bound to know no prudence save for the Lord’s work.”

“That’s giving away Agnus Deis, and deceiving poor heathen wenches, I suppose,” said Yeo.

Eustace answered pretty roundly—

“Heathens? Yes, truly; you Protestants leave these poor wretches heathens, and then insult and persecute those who, with a devotion unknown to you, labor at the danger of their lives to make them Christians. Mr. Amyas Leigh, you can give me up to be hanged at Exeter, if it shall so please you to disgrace your own family; but from this spot neither you, no, nor all the myrmidons of your queen, shall drive me, while there is a soul here left unsaved.”

“Come out of the stable, at least,” said Amyas; “you don’t want to make the horses Papists, as well as the asses, do you? Come out, man, and go to the devil your own way. I sha’n’t inform against you; and Yeo here will hold his tongue if I tell him, I know.”

“It goes sorely against my conscience, sir; but being that he is your cousin, of course—”

“Of course; and now come in and eat with me; supper’s just ready, and bygones shall be bygones, if you will have them so.”

How much forgiveness Eustace felt in his heart, I know not: but he knew, of course, that he ought to forgive; and to go in and eat with Amyas was to perform an act of forgiveness, and for the best of motives, too, for by it the cause of the Church might be furthered; and acts and motives being correct, what more was needed? So in he went; and yet he never forgot that scar upon his cheek; and Amyas could not look him in the face but Eustace must fancy that his eyes were on the scar, and peep up from under his lids to see if there was any smile of triumph on that honest visage. They talked away over the venison, guardedly enough at first; but as they went on, Amyas’s straightforward kindliness warmed poor Eustace’s frozen heart; and ere they were aware, they found themselves talking over old haunts and old passages of their boyhood—uncles, aunts, and cousins; and Eustace, without any sinister intention, asked Amyas why he was going to Bideford, while Frank and his mother were in London.

“To tell you the truth, I cannot rest till I have heard the whole story about poor Rose Salterne.”

“What about her?” cried Eustace.

“Do you not know?”

“How should I know anything here? For heaven’s sake, what has happened?”

Amyas told him, wondering at his eagerness, for he had never had the least suspicion of Eustace’s love.

Eustace shrieked aloud.

“Fool, fool that I have been! Caught in my own trap! Villain, villain that he is! After all he promised me at Lundy!”

And springing up, Eustace stamped up and down the room, gnashing his teeth, tossing his head from side to side, and clutching with outstretched hands at the empty air, with the horrible gesture (Heaven grant that no reader has ever witnessed it!) of that despair which still seeks blindly for the object which it knows is lost forever.

Amyas sat thunderstruck. His first impulse was to ask, “Lundy? What knew you of him? What had he or you to do at Lundy?” but pity conquered curiosity.

“Oh, Eustace! And you then loved her too?”

“Don’t speak to me! Loved her? Yes, sir, and had as good a right to love her as any one of your precious Brotherhood of the Rose. Don’t speak to me, I say, or I shall do you a mischief!”

So Eustace knew of the brotherhood too! Amyas longed to ask him how; but what use in that? If he knew it, he knew it; and what harm? So he only answered:

“My good cousin, why be wroth with me? If you really love her, now is the time to take counsel with me how best we shall—”

Eustace did not let him finish his sentence. Conscious that he had betrayed himself upon more points than one, he stopped short in his walk, suddenly collected himself by one great effort, and eyed Amyas from underneath his brows with the old down look.

“How best we shall do what, my valiant cousin?” said he, in a meaning and half-scornful voice. “What does your most chivalrous Brotherhood of the Rose purpose in such a case?”

Amyas, a little nettled, stood on his guard in return, and answered bluntly—

“What the Brotherhood of the Rose will do, I can’t yet say. What it ought to do, I have a pretty sure guess.”

“So have I. To hunt her down as you would an outlaw, because forsooth she has dared to love a Catholic; to murder her lover in her arms, and drag her home again stained with his blood, to be forced by threats and persecution to renounce that Church into whose maternal bosom she has doubtless long since found rest and holiness!”

“If she has found holiness, it matters little to me where she has found it, Master Eustace, but that is the very point that I should be glad to know for certain.”

“And you will go and discover for yourself?”

“Have you no wish to discover it also?”

“And if I had, what would that be to you?”

“Only,” said Amyas, trying hard to keep his temper, “that, if we had the same purpose, we might sail in the same ship.”

“You intend to sail, then?”

“I mean simply, that we might work together.”

“Our paths lie on very different roads, sir!”

“I am afraid you never spoke a truer word, sir. In the meanwhile, ere we part, be so kind as to tell me what you meant by saying that you had met this Spaniard at Lundy?”

“I shall refuse to answer that.”

“You will please to recollect, Eustace, that however good friends we have been for the last half-hour, you are in my power. I have a right to know the bottom of this matter; and, by heaven, I will know it.”

“In your power? See that you are not in mine! Remember, sir, that you are within a—within a few miles, at least, of those who will obey me, their Catholic benefactor, but who owe no allegiance to those Protestant authorities who have left them to the lot of the beasts which perish.”

Amyas was very angry. He wanted but little more to make him catch Eustace by the shoulders, shake the life out of him, and deliver him into the tender guardianship of Yeo; but he knew that to take him at all was to bring certain death on him, and disgrace on the family; and remembering Frank’s conduct on that memorable night at Clovelly, he kept himself down.

“Take me,” said Eustace, “if you will, sir. You, who complain of us that we keep no faith with heretics, will perhaps recollect that you asked me into this room as your guest, and that in your good faith I trusted when I entered it.”

The argument was a worthless one in law; for Eustace had been a prisoner before he was a guest, and Amyas was guilty of something very like misprision of treason in not handing him over to the nearest justice. However, all he did was, to go to the door, open it, and bowing to his cousin, bid him walk out and go to the devil, since he seemed to have set his mind on ending his days in the company of that personage.

Whereon