Читать книгу A Bush Bayard: Being A Romance of the Reign of Macquarie - John Sandes - Страница 4

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The emigrants' last night in England was a dark and stormy one.

Yonder in Plymouth Sound the emigrant ship Amphitrite rocked at her moorings. She was to sail next morning.

In the cottage on the moor that God-fearing young farmer, Tom Trevithick sat reading his Bible, which lay on the table in front of him. Beside him sat his wife knitting. The three children, two boys and a girl, were sleeping quietly in their cots, undisturbed by the rain that beat gustily upon the window. As the wind howled round the cottage, searching every cranny, the flame of the candle flickered, and the tallow dripped in an ever increasing pyramid that formed on the candlestick.

Tom Trevithick, following the line of print with his guiding forefinger, read slowly and aloud, "They that go down to the sea in ships, and have their business in the great waters, these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep."

Lucy Trevithick, his wife, got up and went over to the cot where the smallest boy was sleeping. She raised the chubby head, smoothed the pillow, and laid the child down again, tucking in the bedclothes. The child smiled in his sleep, and the mother bent her head and kissed him. Then she sat down again beside her husband.

"For He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to heaven, they go down to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble."

"Tom, dear," said the woman, "hadn't we better go to bed now and get some sleep? It must be nearly 12 o'clock."

"Aye, aye, my lass. Just wait a minute until I finish the Psalm, and then we will go to rest for the last time in old England."

He began to read again, "Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness," but stopped abruptly in the middle of the verse. "Did ye hear someone calling, Lucy, or was it only the wind?"

They both listened intently, and sure enough they heard a faint "Hallo!" through the storm outside. Then there came a sound of wheels and trotting hoofs that stopped suddenly outside the cottage door.

"Who can it be at this time of night?" said the woman, in a scared tone of voice. There were grim tales of hearses drawn by headless steeds, and preceded by phantom riders in Devonshire in those days. Lucy Trevithick was wrought up by the excitement of the approaching departure, and, like all the other dwellings on the moor, she readily became a prey to superstitious fears.

"There's nothing can hurt us, lass, with the Word in front of us," said Tom, with simple piety. He rose from the chair and went to the door and opened it. As he did so the wind and rain drove in, making the candle flicker and nearly extinguishing it.

"Tom, Tom," said Lucy almost in a scream, "there is a tall man on the threshold. I saw him plain. Now may the Lord preserve us from all harm."

Next moment, a huge figure, heavily cloaked, stood in the cottage. "Why, Tom Trevithick, don't you know me?" said the intruder, stepping into the little circle of light that the candle threw out, while the rain dripped from his cloak and made a puddle on the floor.

"Why, bless me if it ain't the squire," said honest Tom. "Come right in out of the rain, master. And Lucy, lass, do ye set a chair for squire and take his cloak. Ye gave us a surprise, master, and no mistake."

But the squire still remained standing. He labored under some strong excitement, and he made no attempt to remove his heavy driving cloak. He was a burly man of 50 or thereabouts, and his face was very pale.

"Is anything amiss up at the hall?" enquired honest Tom Trevithick, looking anxiously at Squire Granger, for whom he had worked since he was a boy, and to whom he was sincerely devoted with the unquestioning fidelity, that bound the tiller of the soil to his feudal lord in the days when George III, was king.

"Aye, Tom, there is much amiss," said the squire, with something like a sob in his voice. "Trouble and sorrow and shame have entered my house, and I have come to you to help me." The squire had a small bundle under his heavy driving cloak. He drew it forth, and a feeble wail came from the bundle.

"It's a child!" said Mrs. Trevithick wonderingly. She started forward and took the bundle from the squire, and unwound the outer wrapping with practised motherly fingers. "Aye, but the poor little body must be nigh killed with the cold." She took the child in her arms, and busied herself warming some milk in a pot upon the embers of the fire.

Tom Trevithick looked up at the squire in sheer astonishment. His slow-moving mind could not grasp the meaning of this midnight visit of the great landowner, who came to him bearing an unknown infant in his arms. He waited for the squire to speak.

"Tom," said the squire, speaking under an emotional tension, which he was unable to conceal. "I have come to you tonight because I want you to help me—you and your good wife. I am a broken-hearted man Tom, but I must save the honor of my house and the good name of my family, the oldest family in these parts, and one which a sorrow like this has never touched till now."

The squire sat down on the chair, and laid his arms on the table in front of him, and buried his face in his hands. In a little while he looked up. Mrs. Trevithick was feeding the infant with spoonfuls of warm milk out of a cup, and Tom Trevithick was still listening respectfully, but with undisguised amazement.

"My daughter," said the squire, gulping down a sob. "My daughter, who was the pride of my eyes and the joy of my life, has brought shame on my house. This is her child. It was born two months ago. There is no need for you to know who is the father. She loved him, and she has paid the price. The woman always pays. She left her home and fled with her old nurse to a lonely hut far away on the edge of the moor. It was there that the child was born. The scoundrel who deceived her has gone."

"Oh, poor Miss Sybil." It was Mrs. Trevithick who spoke. She was crooning to the infant that was now sleeping in her arms, and the tears were pouring down her cheeks.

"I went to the hut to-night," went on the squire, in low and passionate tones. "My daughter was not there. Nobody was there except her old nurse, Martha, who was watching over the child. I took the child out of its cot in spite of the woman's entreaties, and I have brought it here to you. My daughter must not keep it. Only four people know of its existence, at present besides yourselves, namely, its unhappy mother, the old nurse Martha, the smuggler who brought the French spy to this country in his lugger, and myself. If the secret goes no further my daughter's good name may yet be saved, and her whole life shall not be ruined if I can help it."

"But, squire, what do you want us to do?" asked Tom Trevithick, in utter perplexity. This midnight revelation was too much for him. His dull wit could not see the bearings of it, nor guess the nature of the request that was to come.

"I want you and your wife to take this infant—it is a healthy boy—with you to Australia in the ship that sails tomorrow." said the squire, speaking with swift determination. "I want you to treat the child as one of your own family, and I desire that my daughter shall never see him again."

"Squire!" said Mrs. Trevithick, in accents of horror. "Oh! think of the suffering of the mother robbed of her son."

"I have thought of it." said the squire, grimly, "and I feel that though her sorrow will be grievous, it will be healed in time. It is better for her to feel agony now than to live with shame for her whole life."

The wind whistled mournfully round the cottage, and the rain beat heavily on the window pane. The squire threw one quick glance out into the night. "My gig is outside," he said, "and I must soon go, or the servants at the hall will suspect something. Trevithick, I have always been a good master to you, will you do this thing for me?"

Trevithick was bound to the squire by every sentiment of feudal fealty. He looked at his wife and she nodded her head. "Aye! I will," said the farmer, holding out his hand, which the squire shook warmly.

"I have not come to you empty handed," said the squire, drawing out a small canvas bag, and placing it on the table. "Here are a hundred guineas as provision for the child. When he grows up if I am still alive write to me and let me know. You will be given land out there in Australia, and you may count on me to provide a sum of money to start the boy suitably as a farmer when he reaches manhood. And now, good-bye, I shall not forget you."

Squire Granger shook hands again with Trevithick and also with his wife. He opened the door and the wind and rain drove in fiercely. He closed it behind him, and they heard the wheels of the gig as he journeyed away through the storm.

Trevithick looked blankly at his wife. The big Bible still lay open on the table. The embers of the fire still glowed redly.

Nothing was changed in the cottage, except that there was a new life there which had not been there half an hour before. "Poor little motherless body," crooned Lucy Trevithick, looking at her own three children sleeping in their cot, and then at this new arrival that had come to her out of the stormy night—the night that was her last in the land of her birth. And then she said quite softly, "Well, I will be your mother now, my lad," and laid him in her own bed.

In the forenoon of the next day the cottage on the cliff was empty, and the Amphitrite stood out to sea from Plymouth Sound, bound for New South Wales with a full complement of free emigrants, who were being sent by direction of my Lord Sydney, at the request of Governor Phillip, who desired to put a colony of free farmers on the rich agricultural lands that he had discovered on the Hawkesbury River.

As the Amphitrite hauled off the head with all her canvas set and drawing, a strange and tragic scene was enacted in the lonely hut at the farm end of the same moor on which Trevithick's cottage stood.

"Father, tell, me what you have done with my son." A tall and very lovely girl faced Squire Granger with flashing eyes and heaving bosom as she reiterated once more the demand which had already been made many times without eliciting any other answer than a determined "No."

The big burly man listened to her unmoved. His face was deathly pale. His lips were tightly compressed. At last he spoke again. "I tell you once more that you have no son now. I have placed him where you will never see him again. He is well. He will be cared for properly. I have provided for him. He will grow to manhood, but, for the sake of your own good name and the honor of our House, you must never—"

"But father, you do not know all."

"You must never look upon his face again. I tell you. Forget, forget, for—"

"Ha! What now?" The squire's feet seemed nailed to the floor. Something crashed in his brain under the stress of his terrible emotion. Then he fell forward on his face, and the little hut shook with the concussion.

His daughter and old Martha, the nurse, laid him on a bed. The squire's groom rode off to fetch a doctor, but before the doctor could reach the hut, Squire Granger, who had never rallied from the stroke, passed out into the darkness, taking his secret with him—and yet, for all his vigilance, knowing only half the truth.

Not a soul in England knew that his daughter's child lay sleeping in the arms of the simple-hearted peasant woman on the deck of the ship that was already hull down below the horizon.

Separated from her infant son beyond retrieving, the beautiful woman threw herself upon the bare earth outside the hut, and all her body shivered with the anguish of that parting, which is the little death.