Читать книгу Gallybird - Sheila Kaye-Smith - Страница 4

Table of Contents

§ 1

June was nearly over when Gervase and his daughters removed to Conster Manor. They could have stayed till August, for the suspension of the non-swearing clergy did not take effect till the first of that month, nor would they be deprived of their livings till the February of next year. But his fundamental vanity had resented the notion of being kicked out, as he called it, and he had tendered his resignation in a letter of six closely-written pages, a copy of which he sent to his Bishop.

Bishop Lake of Chichester, himself a non-juror, knew Parson Alard well enough to feel relieved that he was not to have his company in the noble army of martyrs. For this long-winded resignation, with its appeals to law and Scripture and its crowding quotations from Boehme, Paracelsus, Cirvelius, Alanus and other strange philosophers, struck him as no more than the decoration of a natural desire for retirement and leisure. He failed to understand that the writer regarded himself as a martyr and was preparing for an earthly as well as a heavenly reward.

When the actual day came for him to go Gervase felt sorry enough. The roses in the Parsonage garden were all in flower, and he trod sadly between them to where his brother's coach stood waiting. He was sorry to leave the brightness and independence of his little house. At Conster, instead of roses there were trees—great, solemn trees, nodding and scraping against the windows, giving shadow and shelter instead of colour and perfume. The Alard who had rebuilt Conster in 1571 had planted it handsomely with evergreen-pines and yews and cedars of Libanus, to stand inside its outer ring of oaks. He had planted them as so many plant trees, without ever thinking of their growing or realizing how much longer they would live than he. In his day they had been saplings, maintaining summer in winter with their green foliage: now they had grown higher than the roof and some leaned nodding over it, while others laced their boughs into a dense green wall. In front of the house a space had been cleared, but round the back and sides was darkness—heavy crests, branches thrust forward against windows, trunks pale and gnarled among bushy shadows. . . . Gervase was glad to hear the gallybird at work in them and to remember that it never attacks a sound tree. Some day he would persuade Charles to have them all cleared away.

His brother and sister received him warmly. Charles had always been sorry for Gervase, who he felt had suffered through his eccentricity and had never had a fair deal from life. It was difficult to say exactly where the difference between him and his brother lay. They had both grown to adolescence through the alarms and disruptions of the Civil War, they had both spent a racketing, penniless youth in France, they had both returned to England and re-established themselves in ways that had grown foreign to them from disuse. But Charles had fitted himself smoothly into these changes and had been mainly happy in them, while Gervase had been twisted into a suffering shape. It was not merely the difference between the Manor and the Parsonage, between the lots of the elder and the younger son, nor even the difference between Louise d'Aurey and Mary Ann Pye . . . it was a difference of fibre: Charles knew that Gervase was the stronger fibre—strong, but not strong enough; always struggling and resisting and finally warped.

He himself had invariably yielded, adapting himself with very little trouble to conditions that had violently swung between wealth and poverty, country and town, quiet and dissipation. He was now completely happy as a country Squire. He enjoyed hunting and hawking and managing his estate: he took pride and pleasure in his furnace, in the forging of balls and ordnance, gates, bars, bolts and palings. He was always quietly busy, and his domestic happiness was less a relaxation or a background than a glow suffusing the rest.

His only real grief had been the death of his heir. Charles Stephen Alard, his only child, had died of smallpox at the age of seven. Apart from his love for the boy, he sorrowed for the coming end of the family, the loss of the Alard name. He was sorry that Gervase had not had a son. It would have been better for him—better for them all.

Not that he didn't love his nieces. He had been sincere when he spoke of his pleasure in having them at Conster. On the day they arrived it had been a joy to see them tripping one after another up the terrace steps, having tumbled with squeals of laughter out of the coach—first Bess in blue, then Henny in yellow, Bride in green, Ann in crimson, and Madge in blue again. They had been like a procession of pretty birds marching up the steps.

"Welcome, my birds," he cried. "What a twitter! What a chatter! Here you all are."

"Nay, jackdaws," said their father—"jackdaws and pies."

They were not afraid of their uncle as they were of their aunt, and clustered round him, teasing and laughing till she appeared. Then their laughter stopped, and they picked up their skirts to bob curtseys.

"Good day, Aunt . . ." "Good day, Aunt."

"Bon jour, chères enfants."

She took each one by the hand and kissed her, for she wanted them to feel at home. She too had been sincere when she spoke of her joy in having them, though she had more reservations than her husband. She wanted them because he wanted them and his brother under his roof; also it was true that Conster Manor seemed to her sometimes very large and empty. But they were creatures apart from her—beings she could not understand. Their noise, their ignorance, their carelessness of good living—in the sense that she understood good living, as an affair of eating and drinking and dressing and thinking and reading and playing and singing—made them a constant threat to her patience. And though the threat never materialized into more than an occasional sharpness, she was afraid for her husband's sake. She would not humiliate him with a shrewd wife. Also, even while she greeted them, she knew that in spite of their talk and laughter Conster would still sometimes feel empty.

§ 2

She need never have been afraid of their not feeling at home. They were soon as much at their ease as at Leasan Parsonage, with their horses in the stables and their gallants in the drawing-room. Louise was glad for Charles's sake, for he took pleasure in the young life with its noisy intrigues and careless adventures. Besides, she sometimes found entertainment as a spectator. Her nieces' suitors both amused and amazed her. She liked young men, and of late years necessarily few had come her way. Charles had not many friends, for the neighbouring Squirearchy was gross and ignorant in comparison with the post-exile Alards. As for their French neighbours, till her nieces came to the house she had met them but little.

When Louise Alard, as a bride of sixteen, had first come to the district, she had been surprised to find so much of France in it. Her windows looked out across the valley to the homestead of La Petite Douce, and in places with more English-sounding names were the descendants of Poiles, Mouats and Espinettes that had crossed the Channel some eighty years ago. There were fewer of them than there used to be, said Charles, for the signing of the Edict of Nantes had ended the exile of several families, to the relief of the weavers, woolcarders, cloth-workers and iron-smelters of south-east Sussex, who had seen their livelihood being sneaked from them by better tradesmen. Many, however, were too long established to return—like the Douces, their French roots were torn up and they had married into the country of their adoption. They stayed and prospered, marking the district with their type, and even with their language, which gave some quaint corruptions to the local speech and some strange music to the local place-names.

But scarcely had these families become English and been absorbed than a fresh tide flowed in. The Revocation of the Edict brought a new set of exiles, and once more the French tongue was heard in the streets of Rye and the lanes round Vinehall and Leasan. These settlers were more interesting to Louise than those she had found on her arrival. They were from the France that she knew, and they were of her own class.

She viewed them, however, with mixed feelings. Socially and nationally they were her people, all she had of her people now that both her parents were dead and a distant cousin had inherited the Aurey estate. But they were of the Protestant religion, and to her a French Protestant was a low fellow, a traitor and an apostate. The religion of her husband and her husband's family she accepted as a natural growth. England one knew as a Protestant country. But France was Catholic, and Protestantism a disease of that fair body. In her heart she approved of the politics that had driven out the Huguenots and yet she lived in the country that had received them with open arms. She was in an ambiguous position, especially since her own religion was treasonable in strict law, and but for her husband's protection and the recent growth of tolerance in the country, would have involved her in penalties not unlike theirs. She felt that she could not meet them with the warmth and candour that their common blood demanded, so had avoided them as far as her situation allowed.

Now she could no longer avoid them, for two at least were frequent visitors to the house. Eustache de Champfort and Gilles de Périgault belonged to families that had lately settled at Eslede and Silvericke. They were handsome, well-born, well-mannered and well endowed with everything but money. De Champfort was a swarthy, dark-browed Southerner from the Condamine country near Nîmes. De Périgault was of a different type. Save that the modern fashion had shaved his chin he might have been one of the Protestant heroes of La Rochelle—those great, fair, blue-eyed, curly-bearded men that had sailed with Coligny. He wore his own hair in thick yellow curls and his eyes were blue and farseeing as a sailor's. They always looked beyond Gervase Alard's daughters, not one of whom could say he was looking at her, so that there were always teasings and squabblings about him.

With de Périgault and de Champfort sometimes came the latter's brother Etienne, also a changing group from Rye—Gasson, du Bois, Guiver, Mouat and others, less well-born than the young noblemen but more prosperous. As foils to these good-mannered, civilized foreigners came also at whiles the loutish son of the Squire of Redlonde and Bess's betrothed, Ned Oxenbrigge, with his old-fashioned doublet and breeches and his ceaseless talk of cock-fighting.

"We must beware, my friend," said Louise one day to Gervase, "lest the English visitors be given too poor a chance with my nieces. Already I think that Bess's eyes are wandering."

"Eh well, so long as it's but her eyes. Her hand is promised, and she can't deny it. Though, for that, I care not which of my troop he takes so long as he takes one of 'em."

"If I'm not mistaken, he would find it difficult to change to one of her sisters. They are all mad in the same way."

"I'm not sure that it's madness. Your countrymen make a better show than mine. All I'm surprised at is that my wenches have enough grace to see the difference."

"But from your view it is madness. None of these réfugiés has any money, whereas Oxenbrigge is rich, and that poor clumsy Deeck Austen's father has much land and much money."

"But if they marry a Frenchman they marry blood-noble blood."

"La petite noblesse. . . . I am not sure it is worth marrying, at least out of its own country. Even so, my friend, with Austen and Oxenbrigge having their rights, you still have three daughters left——"

"Aye, what a crowd of 'em!"

"It gives you a chance now. Three, if you will, shall marry French blood, and two shall marry English money. But I warn you that your English marriages must be made quickly or they will not be made at all."

"Who is Austen to marry?"

"Why, Henrietta. He sits by her and sighs and twists himself about while his spurs tear the gallons from her petticoat. And when they ride out he is always in her company though he speaks only to his horse. I tell you he is very much in love—à l'Angloise. Henrietta had better take him: and let her and Bess be married as soon as possible. The others can wait. They are younger and in less danger of throwing themselves away; besides, I do not think that my compatriots have yet all made up their minds."

It had occurred to her sometimes that de Périgault looked at her more than at her nieces.

§ 3

Gervase was not at ease in his brother's house, though he might well have been so. His uneasiness was not due to his position, since that had always been one of equality, nor to the mere shifting of his quarters, nor to his establishment in a household considerably more luxurious and imposing than he had known at Leasan. After all, he had been born and had lived the first fifteen years of his life in Conster Manor, he had returned to it after his exile, and on Charles's death it would be his. He was far from being a poor relation, even though his personal fortune at the moment was small. Charles gave him every consideration, every privacy, seemed anxious, too, to consult him on the working of the furnace and the Manor estate as if he already had his rights in them . . . . He might have started a new life as a student and a country gentleman. But he could not do it.

He could not settle down to write and study in the handsome room Charles had allotted him for his books. Indeed his books were mostly not yet on the shelves that the carpenter had set up, but were piled upon the floor and furniture. He paced among them, picked them up and set them down, tearing out scraps of knowledge which his mind seemed at once to cast off. He felt restless, unable to begin any course . . . sometimes he thought it was the breaking up of his habit that had done the harm. He no longer had to set out morning and evening for Leasan Church, to read prayers, nor were there any appointments with his clerk anent registers or fees or gravestones, nor meetings with his churchwardens to discuss repairs and boundaries. His days were mapped out only by meals, and he had always been indifferent to eating.

He spent most of his time out of doors, wandering over what had once been his parish and visiting those who had once been his parishioners. His successor, an amiable, pompous man, would have liked to be on good terms with him, but Gervase chose to regard him with contempt. Dr. Braceley was a fool and a pedant; he made mock of his Whiggish principles and formal learning. The parishioners, he declared, liked their old Parson best, and still considered him the rightful Vicar of the parish—in which he erred, for the majority of Leasan folk much preferred the kindly, bustling Doctor to the erratic shepherd who had not so much led them as wandered among them for the last twenty years. If only he had known it, his connexion with the Manor had been his chief recommendation; when they forgot it he was a "wagpasty," a "strutting old dawcock," a "Tory jack o'lantern." But he had no idea of this.

Yet with it all he knew that he did not want to be back again, as Vicar of Leasan. That part of his life was done with. After all, he had been nearly as long in France as he had been in Leasan, and no one had thought it strange that he should drop France behind him and forget all he had learned there, which was more than he had learned in Leasan. He still wore his gown, but that was partly because as a High Churchman he wished to proclaim that he was still in Holy Orders though he no longer exercised them, partly because he disliked the new fashions that had come into being he gave up wearing lay dress—the surcoats and cravats and ruffles and buckles that had supplanted the doublets, collars, cuffs and boots of the earlier mode.

He spent much of his time writing letters to other non-Jurors among the clergy. . . . That was, he told himself, one reason why he felt so much at a loss—the movement which he had trusted to provide for his activities was making a poor, lame start. Only four hundred parish priests had refused to swear—a sorry number, when he had promised Charles that two-thirds of the Establishment would go out. The vacancies would be as quickly and easily filled as the vacancy at Leasan, and the nine Bishoprics as well. Instead of facing a disruption that would bring it to terms and treaty, the Church of England would go on exactly as before. . . . There had been a far bigger stirabout at the Reformation, when most of the clergy and all the Bishops, save one, had refused to swear; he could no longer tread contemptuously over Nicholas Pecksall's grave.

Also, he soon became aware that the movement was largely going Jacobite. If any new Church were built up—and it was difficult to think of this small, scattered handful as the true Phoenix Church he had once dreamed of—it would be a political Church, a Jacobite Church, bound to recall King James. Gervase had no fancy for King James, though he knew that all the village took him for a Jacobite, and he thought that his fellow clergy lost what small hope they had of capturing the nation by thus dallying with the Irish menace—against which Conster Furnace worked by day as well as by night, forging pike and ordnance. He wrote long, illegible letters to a Mr. Wagstaffe at Oxford—the only prominent non-Juror that he knew—and once even travelled as far as London to meet him: but the meeting was not a success. Wagstaffe thought Alard merely obstinate because he would not see the difference between Jacobitism as a religious principle and as a political force, and Gervase thought Wagstaffe a hair-splitting enthusiast for insisting on what was, after all, not very unlike his own attitude to the movement before he grew disgusted with its small beginnings. He returned to Conster feeling sure that the day would be lost for want of his generalship, and almost—though not for long—wishing himself back at Leasan.

Charles had been at first surprised to find that his brother had so few personal links with the movement that had cost him his living, but on reflection he realized that it was like Gervase to enter alone, to work himself with the aid of a few books and pamphlets and many lonely thoughts, into a state of belief and action that most men achieve only in consultation and combination. No doubt, at the bottom of it all, his brother had grown weary of Leasan and had found an escape more exciting and vainglorious than a common resignation. But he was sorry for the way it had all turned out.

"Shouldn't you like to go to London again for a few weeks?" he asked him once, "or to Oxford? I understand that's where most of your fellow-thinkers are."

"Nay; I hate towns."

"You are no country bumpkin, and I should think would be glad to mix with scholars for a while."

"They're all Jacobites—I am no Jacobite, nor yet a Williamite."

"You're in a delicate position," said Charles, concealing a smile.

"I'm in no position at all," said Gervase. "I'm waiting to see which way affairs will go. I cannot believe that such men as Canterbury or Chichester will let 'em all run to politics and high treason."

"No, surely not."

"But we've yet to see what the hot-heads will do. I'm waiting here—and in weekly communication with Oxford," he added sonorously. "Brother, I tell you there may still be great things happening. If we can but drop these cursed politics and turn our eyes from other kings and countries to other Churches. There's a suggestion that we, the true clergy of the Church of England under our Bishops, may unite with the ancient Church of Greece and Thyratira, called by some the Orthodox Churches of the East."

"And that would be a fine thing for you?"

"I think it would. There are some who say that the East is as corrupt as the West, Thyratira as Rome . . . but I think not. If we could but converse with them we should doubtless find an uncorrupted primitive theology under later growths of superstition. Wagstaffe tells me there are some learned men in Cyprus and in Athens. He speaks of a work called 'Eironikon' . . . but I haven't much Greek."

"It's a lack you can supply now you've leisure here for study."

Charles was anxious to encourage Gervase along harmless paths of erudition.

"I've leisure indeed. Though I had meant to give the greater part of it to writing rather than reading. Brother" and his lean, black form towered importantly over Charles—"I've decided to write a treatise."

"For publication?"

"For what else? You remember my 'Sermons and Addresses on the Nature of God' that were published at Lewes, by Holt the bookseller?"

"I do not forget." Charles found himself automatically checking a yawn. "Did they bring you much money?"

"Money! Money! Why should they bring me money?" And Gervase cracked his fingers angrily. "I don't preach for money, nor write for money. I preach for fame, or rather for the praise of learned men."

"Which you've had, I trust."

"Aye, indeed. I had a letter from every Bishop, Dean and Doctor to whom I sent a copy. Even Canterbury wrote me through his chaplain that he was indebted to me—indebted, mind ye. I shall certainly, now I've the leisure, write another learned work. I shall write on the union of the English and Eastern Churches. But, brother"—his tone suddenly changing—"I like not my present room for writing in. It will do well enough to keep my books, but for writing and studying I would be more private—away from the trees."

"Away from the trees?" repeated Charles in some bewilderment.

"Aye," said Gervase, "I like not the trees looking in through the window at me whiles I work."

They had been walking in the Park, and had now come out on the Tillingham marshes. The trees stood in a wide belt between them and the house, but the valley itself was clear save for a small scrub of thorn. The river ran between steep banks through clumps of reeds and sedges. At one spot the windings of the stream brought forward a cape or promontory rising steeply above it.

"This is where I should like to be," said Gervase. "If I might have some arbour here away from the house, facing clear to the river. Some day we might build one—some stone belvedere or templum."

"You would be troubled with the noise of the furnace."

"Nay, that wouldn't trouble me. But I like not the trees—not when I write. Some day, maybe, we can build such a house."

"Yes, surely, some day," said Charles, thinking that his brother had grown more rather than less eccentric during his few months at Conster.

§ 4

Summer passed over in a warm breath. From the trees hung heavy, listless leaves, that held the brown threat of autumn in their darkness. Under their shadow round Conster the dusk fell earlier than in the fields, but it was a dusk full of flickering, wandering colours—gay colours of gowns and coats and cloaks that touched and swam together, while sounds of speech and laughter passed up from under the trees into the lighted house. It was many years since the place had known such youth and mirth, such singing and laughing and lute-playing. The rose arbours and summerhouses became bowers for courting lovers, and the long alleys of the woods were sped with the running feet of shepherds pursuing nymphs in a chase as dim as any lingering in faded wools on Conster's tapestries. By the end of the summer Bess was married to Oxenbrigge, Madge was betrothed to Eustache de Champfort, and Henrietta to Dick Austen, who had somehow at last contrived to catch more than the trimmings of her petticoat.

Old Gervase watched October come with a sinking heart. It was not that he felt sorry to see his daughters go, but he knew that youth was going—going like summer from the house. When Henny and Madge were married as well as Bess, then Bride and Ann would be mostly away too, for they would always be staying with one sister or another. No one would be in the house save those with their lives behind them, those who, like the woods, looked back on summer, but unlike the woods could not look forward to another spring.

His daughters, foolish, ignorant, noisy girls, had all that quality of youth which seemed as necessary to him now as Charles's kindness of heart, or Louise's elegance of mind. It was new for him to feel this hunger for spring-time. He wondered what had come over him. Was it only that his girls were leaving him, that the house would at last be quiet, that conversation at table would be rational, that he would no longer be put to shame by bad manners and barbarous talk, nor hear screechings and hullooings for ever under his windows? . . . Or was there something in him that was new—something old that was new? . . . Looking up to the boughs of oak and sallow and wild cherry lacing their colours over the lane, he saw himself touched like the trees, he felt the hand of winter upon him, though less tenderly than on the trees. In him were no soft burnishings, no glowing, mingling colours of decadence. Man was not as the trees in his decay. He did not go down glowing, but groaning, into his grave. And yet religion and the Scriptures said that in his body, even as in the bodies of the trees, were the new buds and promises of another life, the signs of another spring.

He could see no such signs; the buddings of immortality were for him invisible . . . a wild protest against death filled his heart. He did not feel old. Yet he was old, or if not old, growing old. Fifty-six was only fourteen years from the allotted span, and how many men had he seen live beyond that or even to it? If they were so fortunate as to escape the poxes, plagues and fevers of youth, there were the agues, palsies and rheums of age awaiting them. He hurried his pace along the lane, as if his vigorous striding legs would show the dead leaves he walked on how far he was yet from being as they.

He came to a bend and beyond it saw a figure moving. It was a strange figure, for in the golden tricky light of the autumn noon, it looked like a large bundle of wood crawling along on human feet. Between the faggots and the feet was just visible the hem of a russet petticoat. It was a woman who went so laden—doubtless some thrifty wise old woman carrying home her fuel for the winter. His pace naturally gained on hers, and he was curious to see who she was—he enjoyed a crack with a goody, and maybe she was one of those old folk who wished him back at Leasan.

But as he drew even with her he saw that he had mistaken May for November. The bundle of wood, which he now saw to be bigger even than he had first thought, was on the shoulders of Harman's foundling, young Condemnation. Her face was nearly lost in the penthouse of it that reached far over her head, but he saw the white gleam of her skin and the dark gleam of her eyes between the paleness of her bare arms lifted on each side of the load.

Gervase greeted her kindly.

"Good day, child. Where art thou for, so laden?"

"Höame," she said, and he saw that she stopped short on the word because she was breathless. She could scarcely breathe under the weight of the faggots.

A gust of anger seized him. This was how she was treated by the Harmans—made a beast of burden. He had not seen her for some time, and it seemed to him that her looks were fading. Her face was strangely white for a country girl's and her eyes seemed too big for it, and they smouldered as if they were eating it away like hot coals in snow.

"Come," he said shortly—"this burden is too heavy for 'ee. Let me take some of it."

"Nay, say, Sir."

But he would not be denied. He clutched at the ends of the faggots, striving to lift them from her shoulders to his own. The result was that, suddenly tilting, her load forced her down on her knees in the lane.

"La! La! Forgive me. There, I've hurt thee, pigsnie—once again"—he remembered how he had buffeted her at Newhouse six months ago—"I'm a clumsy friend, and I must remember besides that you're a woman grown and not to be thee'd and thou'd any more. There, stand up and let me brush your gown. You're not much hurt?"

While he was speaking he had helped her to her feet, and she stood before him, not looking so pale as she had seemed in the shadows, but ripely tanned, her arms and face the same colour as the leaves on the sallows that bordered the lane.

"You're not hurt?" he repeated anxiously.

"Nay, Sir."

"Eh well, dust thy gown—your gown, Mrs. Condemnation."

He tried to make her smile, but her little face was scared and grim. While she was brushing the mud off her skirt, he tried to lift the bundle of wood to his shoulders, but to his surprise and secret humiliation and open indignation he found that he could not do so.

"It's a rank iniquitous load. Surely thy father doesn't know thou'rt carrying anything so heavy?"

"Pray let me täake it, Sir?"

"No, that I will not. We must carry it together if I can't carry it all."

With her help he managed to hoist it from the lane, and though she would have taken it from him entirely he insisted that the heavier part should lie on his shoulders. But she must be strong as a Flanders mare, he thought, for all she looked so slight and small.

They walked on together for a half a mile, he going first and she following. It was not a good position for talking, since not only were they in single file but they were bent almost double, with their heads half lost among twigs and branches. None the less Gervase tried to make her talk to him. He had always liked her and pitied her, and now he felt a little guilty about her, for since his retirement from the Parsonage he had not once been to Newhouse. He disliked Exalted Harman and he suspected that the feeling was mutual, so he preferred to visit those who, he thought, regretted his departure. The pleasure of capping texts would easily be outweighed by any hypocritical praise of Dr. Braceley . . . . But he ought to have gone, if only to keep an eye on the poor little bud. . . . Not that she had any claims on him . . . but she was helpless and abused, and that should be claim enough for any man. Now they were putting disgraceful burdens upon her and working her to death. He must go to see Exalted Harman and rate him for it. He might no longer seem to have any pastoral authority, but he came from the Manor, he was heir of Conster—that should carry weight with a mere yeoman of two hundred acres.

Meanwhile he tried in vain to talk to Condemnation. She would scarcely open her lips except to answer: "Aye, Sir," or "Nay, Sir." Sometimes she would not answer at all. But all the time he could hear her quick, short breath behind him, and the shuffle of her feet on the dry leaves. A great pity and tenderness welled up for her in his heart. He would break down her shyness, which was no doubt a part of her general fear of life; his kindness at last should make her his friend, and she should be to him as the daughters he had lost—as the youth that was departing from the house. . . . He felt her suddenly as youth, moving with him down the autumn lane, bearing on her strong young shoulders the burden that was too much for his. At that moment it seemed as if it were she who helped him with his burden instead of he who helped her. Then he remembered how she had staggered under it alone and his indignation came swinging back.

"Courage, bud," he comforted, "we're nearly home." They passed a pair of cottages at Farthingland, and the woman outside them gaped and giggled to see the old Parson—as they called him to distinguish him from Dr. Braceley—go by with Harman's bastard, carrying a load of wood together. They could see it was the Parson, though his face was hidden, because of his cassock trailing in the mud from his bent knees. Now and then he trod on it and stumbled, and they laughed louder. A waggoner laughed too as he drew his horses to the side of the road to let the strange couple go by.

Gervase did not notice the laughter. It was a hard plod up the hill and his shoulders were sore and aching under his unaccustomed load. The more they ached the more furious he felt with Exalted Harman. His heart sank with a sense of angry disappointment when, at last reaching Newhouse he heard from sundry loafing and sniggering young Harmans that their mother was abroad and Dr. Braceley closeted with their father upstairs.

"Eh well, I shall call again to-morrow, and then we shall see . . . so Saul, so Sam, so David, you stand by and watch your sister carry a double load of firewood to the barn? Pick it up and carry it there, you mannerless hobs."

The boys obeyed him, grimacing and guffawing among themselves. They were inordinately amused to see the old Parson squiring their sister in so grotesque a fashion.

§ 5

As soon as he was gone, their merriment broke out. "Eh, what a gallant thou'st gotten, Con. I reckon thou'dst a valiant walk wud 'un's backside stuck in thy face."

"He helped me along well enough. He's a kind-feeling man."

"Kinder than thy sweetheart?"

"Who's my sweetheart? I've no sweetheart."

"Aye, but thou'st Lambert Relph. He'd never carry wood for thee."

"'At that he wouldn't; but he an't my sweetheart."

"My father says thou art to marry 'un."

"And I say I never will. And if he wur my sweetheart, why didn't he come wud me to fetch yon wood? The Parson said rightly 'twas too much for me. One o' you should ha' come along to help me carry 'un."

Condemnation was no longer the silent little mouse who had crept behind Gervase Alard down the lane. He would have been surprised could he have come back and heard her voice, which ran on swift and husky as a brook.

"So I should have come wud 'ee?" said Sam. "Nay, shouldn't I have brung a pack horse and set 'ee on it wud the wood?"

"Na, but I say the old Parson's been kinder than any of you."

"Why should we be kind?"

"One of you should ha' come along of me to Udgeham. My mother meant it."

"Thy mother! Nay, my mother. Thy mother was a harlot at a fair."

"'T'an't true. Thou durstn't say it."

"At that I durst, and I'll say it agäun. Thy mother was a harlot at a fair and thou'rt but a bastard bred of my mother's charity, so's my father can savour and smack his sins."

At that Condemnation ran at him with her nails uplifted, but before she could reach his face he had seized her and pushed her head under his arm.

"Filthy cat, I'll larn 'ee," and he began to beat her with the flat of his hand.

She screamed like a cat, while the other two boys standing by laughed loudly.

At the noise the Harman girls, Naomi and Michal, came running up, with Relph the ploughman and Nanny Stook the milkmaid.

"Woa, then—woa, then, Sam," cried Relph. "Why shud'ee wallop my doxy?"

"She would have scratched my face. I'll larn her."

"And she says she an't your doxy," said Saul.

"She's my doxy for sure, and to marry me in the spring. The goodman said so."

"I'll let her go," grinned Sam, "if she'll kiss thee now."

But Condemnation only kicked and screamed more frantically.

"Nay, let her go," said Naomi, "or Mr. Braceley 'ull hear her screeching in my father's chamber."

"Let 'un hear. She shan't take on airs and talk of her mother when she means mine."

"So she's been talking of her mother, hath she? The filthy trot! How dare she talk of her mother? I'll scratch her face for't when thou'st done."

"Nay," bellowed Relph as loud as one of his own oxen, "'a done wud your towzing, all of 'ee. I'm the man to towze her."

They tumbled round Condemnation like steers. She fought them, kicking and scratching and spitting, but they were too many for her, and she was flung from one to another. Even Nanny Stook joined in the game, cackling like a hen, and tumbling into the arms of Relph whenever she had the chance. Then suddenly the whole air crashed and roared.

For a moment they all stood still. Then Relph cried. "'Tis the ordnance! Hooray! They mun be testing cannon at Petty Dows."

He had been holding Condemnation, the moment's victor in their game of grab, but in his excitement he let her go. David seized her, just as she would have run away from this new terror.

"Come—off we go!" cried Saul, "to watch the firing. Leave hold of her, Dave."

"Nay, take her along of us. She's scared of ordnance."

"Nay, let her be," said Relph, but he was in too great a hurry to be in john Douce's field to see what they did about her. He and Saul ran off together down the hill. The others decided to bring Condemnation with them—it seemed a fine, comical idea to them, much better than pinching or beating. She was so much afraid of the big guns that her eyes were bolting out of her head, and instead of screaming she only choked and gasped. So Sam and Dave each seized her round the waist, and hauled her along between them; she would not or could not walk, but hung on their arms with her legs trailing out behind her. The boys dragged her along, while the girls followed with squeals and hulloos; her head had fallen back and they laughed loudly to see it rolling and bobbing between her shoulders. Every now and then she would suddenly stiffen and stick her heels into the ground, and they would all have some fine sport getting her on again.

§ 6

Charles Alard stood with John Douce in his field. Close to them were Jack Pyper and other artificers and craftsmen from the furnace, cleaning out the demy-cannon that had just been fired. Over them hung a cloud and reek of gunpowder and all their eyes were smarting. Conster Forge had just turned out six pieces of ordnance which were to go to Ireland for the wars. Two teams had dragged them up the hill to the field by La Petite Douce where the testing was usually done.

They were fine-looking pieces, florid and important with their scrolled hoops—two demy-cannon, a maske, two culverin and a great basiliske. They were mounted on iron carriages embellished with more scroll work and calculated to withstand the violence of their discharge. Already little knots of people were beginning to collect, straying from the farms: soon all the village would be there, for the sound of the first gun would tell them that ordnance was being tried, and everyone would flock to that.

Charles saw the Harmans arrive, but he was too busy to notice the struggle among them, and as for their whooping it was, he knew, part of the fun. He went up to the demy-cannon that had been fired and looked at it closely. The iron was almost red-hot.

"Come here, John Douce."

The two men inspected and consulted together.

"She takes her firing too hard."

"Aye . . . 'tis in the bore . . . Simeon Parnell was the artificer here. Sim, come up."

They parleyed round the gun. Charles Alard knew as much about the casting of ordnance as any of his men. Twenty-five years ago he had known nothing. He had come over from France quite ignorant of iron-smelting and iron-casting, and if John Douce had resented the loss of his proprietorship and taken himself off, he would probably know nothing still. But Douce loved iron as some men love gold, and rather than leave Conster Furnace he would stay as an underling, an indispensable underling. At first he had not meant to show anything to his employer, but he was won over by Alard's interest in the work. Here was another man who loved iron; and between them they had kept the furnace in prosperity, with the help of the Dutch wars. Now prosperity was threatened by the failure of the timber supply; but they worked on, knowing that though the end was certain, they themselves would not live to see it.

"Now fire the maske. Have you gotten her charged?"

"Aye, Master, she's ready."

A long gun, with a bore as slim as an ash-pole, was fired next. She made a great bark, and at the same time loud screams went up from the spectators. There was a crowd watching now. The slope of Starvencrow Hill was dark with folk, run up from the cottages of Farthingland and Udgeham, while all the household of La Petite Douce stood at the orchard gate.

Another demy-cannon was fired and then a culverin, and soon the Leasan villagers were there, for a test of ordnance was almost as good to watch as a hanging. Every now and then either Douce or Alard had to drive the people back; they came pressing round, to their own danger and that of the gunners. The young Harmans who still had hold of Condemnation tried to bring her right up to the gun-carriage.

"Nay, stand back there!" cried Charles, suddenly catching sight of a girl's face shrivelled with terror. He knew who she was, though he saw less of the Harman family than his brother Gervase; and he saw that she was in an extremity of fear. Those louts were holding her and making sport of her.

"Stand back there!" he cried, "and let your sister go. For shame to hold her."

All his quiet, fastidious nature recoiled in disgust from their stupid cruelty, their bumpkin violence, and at the same time an indignant pity for their victim filled his heart.

That pity was his last earthly emotion. His heart had scarcely begun to beat faster with it than his head was torn from his body by a great, flying shard of iron. The basiliske, while being rammed with the charge, had burst and flown asunder with a roar like an earthquake. Another great splinter tore the head off a tree and sent it whirling with all its branches among the onlookers. The noise seemed to hold the earth imprisoned, rocking fields and woods together in a dungeon of sound. The windows of La Petite Douce shivered apart like notes of music.