Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (319 page)

The overgrown grace came at last to an end, when the company sat silently down, and proceeded without pause or ceremony to attack the great joints which smoked before them. Our young hostess led us to the end of the table, where a high carded chair with a black cushion upon it marked the position of the master of the house. Mistress Timewell seated herself upon the right of the Mayor’s place, with Sir Gervas beside her, while the post of honour upon the left was assigned to Saxon. On my left sat Lockarby, whose eyes I observed had been fixed in undisguised and all-absorbing admiration upon the Puritan maiden from the first moment that he had seen her. The table was of no great breadth, so that we could talk across in spite of the clatter of plates and dishes, the bustle of servants, and the deep murmur of voices.

‘This is my father’s household,’ said our hostess, addressing herself to Saxon. ‘There is not one of them who is not in his employ. He hath many apprentices in the wool trade. We sit down forty to meat every day in the year.’

‘And to right good fare, too,’ quoth Saxon, glancing down the table. ‘Salmon, ribs of beef, loin of mutton, veal, pasties — what could man wish for more? Plenty of good home-brewed, too, to wash it down. If worthy Master Timewell can arrange that the army be victualled after the same fashion, I for one shell be beholden to him. A cup of dirty water and a charred morsel cooked on a ramrod over the camp fire are like to take the place of these toothsome dainties.’

‘Is it not best to have faith?’ said the Puritan maiden. ‘Shall not the Almighty feed His soldiers even as Elisha was fed in the wilderness and Hagar in the desert?’

‘Aye,’ exclaimed a lanky-haired, swarthy young man who sat upon the right of Sir Gervas, ‘he will provide for us, even as the stream of water gushed forth out of dry places, even as the quails and the manna lay thick upon barren soil.’

‘So I trust, young sir,’ quoth Saxon, ‘but we must none the less arrange a victual-train, with a staff of wains, duly numbered, and an intendant over each, after the German fashion. Such things should not be left to chance.’

Pretty Mistress Timewell glanced up with a half startled look at this remark, as though shocked at the want of faith implied in it. Her thoughts might have taken the form of words had not her father entered the room at the moment, the whole company rising and bowing to him as he advanced to his seat.

‘Be seated, friends,’ said he, with a wave of his hand; ‘we are a homely folk, Colonel Saxon, and the old-time virtue of respect for our elders has not entirely forsaken us. I trust, Ruth,’ he continued, ‘that thou hast seen to the wants of our guests.’

We all protested that we had never received such attention and hospitality.

‘‘Tis well, ‘tis well,’ said the good wool-worker. ‘But your plates are clear and your glasses empty. William, look to it! A good workman is ever a good trencherman. If a ‘prentice of mine cannot clean his platter, I know that I shall get little from him with carder and teazel. Thew and sinew need building up. A slice from that round of beef, William! Touching that same battle of Ober-Graustock, Colonel, what part was played in the fray by that regiment of Pandour horse, in which, as I understand, thou didst hold a commission?’

This was a question on which, as may be imagined, Saxon had much to say, and the pair were soon involved in a heated discussion, in which the experiences of Roundway Down and Marston Moor were balanced against the results of a score of unpronounceable fights in the Styrian Alps and along the Danube. Stephen Timewell in his lusty youth had led first a troop and then a regiment through the wars of the Parliament, from Chalgrove Field to the final battle at Worcester, so that his warlike passages, though less varied and extensive than those of our companion, were enough to enable him to form and hold strong opinions. These were in the main the same as those of the soldier of fortune, but when their ideas differed upon any point, there arose forthwith such a cross-fire of military jargon, such speech of estacados and palisados, such comparisons of light horse and heavy, of pikemen and musqueteers, of Lanzknechte, Leaguers, and on-falls, that the unused ear became bewildered with the babble. At last, on some question of fortification, the Mayor drew his outworks with the spoons and knives, on which Saxon opened his parallels with lines of bread, and pushing them rapidly up with traverses and covered ways, he established himself upon the re-entering angle of the Mayor’s redoubt. This opened up a fresh question as to counter-mines, with the result that the dispute raged with renewed vigour.

Whilst this friendly strife was proceeding between the elders, Sir Gervas Jerome and Mistress Ruth had fallen into conversation at the other side of the table. I have seldom seen, my dear children, so beautiful a face as that of this Puritan damsel; and it was beautiful with that sort of modest and maidenly comeliness where the features derive their sweetness from the sweet soul which shines through them. The perfectly-moulded body appeared to be but the outer expression of the perfect spirit within. Her dark-brown hair swept back from a broad and white forehead, which surmounted a pair of well-marked eyebrows and large blue thoughtful eyes. The whole cast of her features was gentle and dove-like, yet there was a firmness in the mouth and delicate prominence of the chin which might indicate that in times of trouble and danger the little maid would prove to be no unworthy descendant of the Roundhead soldier and Puritan magistrate. I doubt not that where more loud-tongued and assertive dames might be cowed, the Mayor’s soft-voiced daughter would begin to cast off her gentler disposition, and to show the stronger nature which underlay it. It amused me much to listen to the efforts which Sir Gervas made to converse with her, for the damsel and he lived so entirely in two different worlds, that it took all his gallantry and ready wit to keep on ground which would be intelligible to her.

‘No doubt you spend much of your time in reading, Mistress Ruth,’ he remarked. ‘It puzzles me to think what else you can do so far from town?’

‘Town!’ said she in surprise. ‘What is Taunton but a town?’

‘Heaven forbid that I should deny it,’ replied Sir Gervas, ‘more especially in the presence of so many worthy burghers, who have the name of being somewhat jealous of the honour of their native city. Yet the fact remains, fair mistress, that the town of London so far transcends all other towns that it is called, even as I called it just now,
the
town.’

‘Is it so very large, then?’ she cried, with pretty wonder. ‘But new louses are building in Taunton, outside the old walls, and beyond Shuttern, and some even at the other side of the river. Perhaps in time it may be as large.’

‘If all the folks in Taunton were to be added to London,’ said Sir Gervas, ‘no one there would observe that there had been any increase.’

‘Nay, there you are laughing at me. That is against all reason,’ cried the country maiden.

‘Your grandfather will bear out my words,’ said Sir Gervas. ‘But to return to your reading, I’ll warrant that there is not a page of Scudery and her “Grand Cyrus” which you have not read. You are familiar, doubtless, with every sentiment in Cowley, or Waller, or Dryden?’

‘Who are these?’ she asked. ‘At what church do they preach?’

‘Faith!’ cried the baronet, with a laugh, ‘honest John preaches at the church of Will Unwin, commonly known as Will’s, where many a time it is two in the morning before he comes to the end of his sermon. But why this question? Do you think that no one may put pen to paper unless they have also a right to wear a gown and climb up to a pulpit? I had thought that all of your sex had read Dryden. Pray, what are your own favourite books?’

‘There is Alleine’s “Alarm to the Unconverted,”’ said she. ‘It is a stirring work, and one which hath wrought much good. Hast thou not found it to fructify within thee?’

‘I have not read the book you name,’ Sir Gervas confessed.

‘Not read it?’ she cried, with raised eyebrows. ‘Truly I had thought that every one had read the “Alarm.” What dost thou think, then, of “Faithful Contendings”?’

‘I have not read it.’

‘Or of Baxter’s Sermons?’ she asked.

‘I have not read them.’

‘Of Bull’s “Spirit Cordial,” then?’

‘I have not read it.’

Mistress Ruth Timewell stared at him in undisguised wonder. ‘You may think me ill-bred to say it, sir,’ she remarked, ‘but I cannot but marvel where you have been, or what you have done all your life. Why, the very children in the street have read these books.’

‘In truth, such works come little in our way in London,’ Sir Gervas answered. ‘A play of George Etherege’s, or a jingle of Sir John Suckling’s is lighter, though mayhap less wholesome food for the mind. A man in London may keep pace with the world of letters without much reading, for what with the gossip of the coffee-houses and the news-letters that fall in his way, and the babble of poets or wits at the assemblies, with mayhap an evening or two in the week at the playhouse, with Vanbrugh or Farquhar, one can never part company for long with the muses. Then, after the play, if a man is in no humour for a turn of luck at the green table at the Groom Porter’s, he may stroll down to the Coca Tree if he be a Tory, or to St. James’s if he be a Whig, and it is ten to one if the talk turn not upon the turning of alcaics, or the contest between blank verse or rhyme. Then one may, after an arriere supper, drop into Will’s or Slaughter’s and find Old John, with Tickell and Congreve and the rest of them, hard at work on the dramatic unities, or poetical justice, or some such matter. I confess that my own tastes lay little in that line, for about that hour I was likely to be worse employed with wine-flask, dice-box, or—’

‘Hem! hem!’ cried I warningly, for several of the Puritans were listening with faces which expressed anything but approval.

‘What you say of London is of much interest to me,’ said the Puritan maiden, ‘though these names and places have little meaning to my ignorant ears. You did speak, however, of the playhouse. Surely no worthy man goes near those sinks of iniquity, the baited traps of the Evil One? Has not the good and sanctified Master Bull declared from the pulpit that they are the gathering-place of the froward, the chosen haunts of the perverse Assyrians, as dangerous to the soul as any of those Papal steeple-houses wherein the creature is sacrilegiously confounded with the Creator?’

‘Well and truly spoken, Mistress Timewell,’ cried the lean young Puritan upon the right, who had been an attentive listener to the whole conversation. ‘There is more evil in such houses than even in the cities of the plain. I doubt not that the wrath of the Lord will descend upon them, and destroy them, and wreck them utterly, together with the dissolute men and abandoned women who frequent them.’

‘Your strong opinions, friend,’ said Sir Gervas quietly, ‘are borne out doubtless by your full knowledge of the subject. How often, prythee, have you been in these playhouses which you are so ready to decry?’

‘I thank the Lord that I have never been so far tempted from the straight path as to set foot within one,’ the Puritan answered, ‘nor have I ever been in that great sewer which is called London. I trust, however, that I with others of the faithful may find our way thither with our tucks at our sides ere this business is finished, when we shall not be content, I’ll warrant, with shutting these homes of vice, as Cromwell did, but we shall not leave one stone upon another, and shall sow the spot with salt, that it may be a hissing and a byword amongst the people.’

‘You are right, John Derrick,’ said the Mayor, who had overheard the latter part of his remarks. ‘Yet methinks that a lower tone and a more backward manner would become you better when you are speaking with your master’s guests. Touching these same playhouses, Colonel, when we have carried the upper hand this time, we shall not allow the old tares to check the new wheat. We know what fruit these places have borne in the days of Charles, the Gwynnes, the Palmers, and the whole base crew of foul lecherous parasites. Have you ever been in London, Captain Clarke?’

‘Nay, sir; I am country born and bred.’

‘The better man you,’ said our host. ‘I have been there twice. The first time was in the days of the Rump, when Lambert brought in his division to overawe the Commons. I was then quartered at the sign of the Four Crosses in Southwark, then kept by a worthy man, one John Dolman, with whom I had much edifying speech concerning predestination. All was quiet and sober then, I promise you, and you might have walked from Westminster to the Tower in the dead of the night without hearing aught save the murmur of prayer and the chanting of hymns. Not a ruffler or a wench was in the streets after dark, nor any one save staid citizens upon their business, or the halberdiers of the watch. The second visit which I made was over this business of the levelling of the ramparts, when I and neighbour Foster, the glover, were sent at the head of a deputation from this town to the Privy Council of Charles. Who could have credited that a few years would have made such a change? Every evil thing that had been stamped underground had spawned and festered until its vermin brood flooded the streets, and the godly wore themselves driven to shun the light of day. Apollyon had indeed triumphed for a while. A quiet man could not walk the highways without being elbowed into the kennel by swaggering swashbucklers, or accosted by painted hussies. Padders and michers, laced cloaks, jingling spurs, slashed boots, tall plumes, bullies and pimps, oaths and blasphemies — I promise you hell was waxing fat. Even in the solitude of one’s coach one was not free from the robber.’