Andrew Golding Part 5

CHAPTER V.

HOW ANDREW MADE ONE ENEMY, AND WAS LIKE TO HAVE ANOTHER.

And now my happy time was over; its story is all told so far; and I must write of darker days that came after.

The living of West Fazeby, left vacant because of Mr. Truelocke's st.u.r.diness in his opinion, did not wait long for an inc.u.mbent, but was quickly bestowed on a Mr. Lambert; a man not troubled with awkward scruples, for he had been a strong Presbyterian under the Commonwealth, and now was become as strong a Churchman; but an honest man as the world goes now, and not hard-hearted. He had another better living where he resided; so our parish was served by his curate, a Mr. Poole, a young man of shallow capacity and but little learning. Mr. Truelocke, however, went to hear him preach;--a strange sight it was to see so reverend, saintly, and able a minister sitting humbly as a listener, while that weak-headed lad spoke from the pulpit;--and he said the youth preached true doctrine; so he continued going to hear him, and encouraged our household to do the like, which they all did, except Andrew. That Mr. Truelocke himself did not join in the new formal prayers was not noticed, his presence at sermon-time seeming to give mighty satisfaction to Mr. Poole, who would often walk up to the Grange of a Lord's Day evening, to ask Mr. Truelocke's opinion of his handling of a text, and would even beg to hear his exposition of the same; when several of our neighbours would also come in and listen thankfully to their old pastor's words; neither we nor they dreaming that such practices could be deemed unlawful, as they soon were, being stigmatized as conventicles, and heavily punished. But this did not happen in Mr.

Poole's time.

There were other things much less agreeable to us under the new order of things. A monstrous new Maypole was set up on the village green, by command of a gentleman very powerful in the parish, whom I shall soon have to name, and we were told the old heathen May-games would be observed at the right season,--as indeed they were when the time came; meantime the one or two taverns in West Fazeby began to stand open on a Sunday, and were much more frequented than they used to be, men who had formerly been very careful to shun them now going to them boldly in open day; which plainly discovered their former decent carriage to have been a hollow show. Althea and I chanced one day to be pa.s.sing the Royal Oak, as the chief inn of the village had been new christened, just as there reeled out of it a young gentleman whom every one had deemed a most hopeful pious youth, Mr. Truelocke in particular having a great opinion of him, though I never liked his demure looks for my part, nor his stiff way of dressing himself. He was called Ralph Lacy, and was son and heir to old Mr. Lacy of Lacy Manor, a worthy old gentleman, though somewhat austere, who was lately dead; which I suppose partly accounted for the mighty change in his son, who was now clad in silk and velvet, scarlet and gold; and, as I have said, could not walk too straight at that moment.

He stood still, leering foolishly on us, just in our way; I could not bear to look at him, and would have slipt on one side; but Althea looked sternly at him, and said bitterly,--

'Shame on you, Ralph Lacy! You mourn for your father in a very vile manner; a swine could do no worse.'

'Ah, sweet Mistress Dacre,' said he, 'do you think then the grim, sour-visaged saints are reigning still? Nay, their day is over! we have a right good fellow for a king now, and this shall be Merry England again, I can tell thee.' (He was growing more familiar at every word.) 'I will soon show thee what the ways are at Whitehall now;' and he was coming much nearer to her than was pleasant, when Andrew, who came up with us at that moment, flung him out of our path with such goodwill that Master Lacy measured his length on the ground; and there we left him lying. Althea thanked Andrew warmly and cordially; but Andrew, who had been all glowing with just wrath at first, seemed to shrink into himself at her praise.

'It was a temptation,' he said, 'and I have fallen. I could have taken you out of yon fool's way without laying a finger on him.'

'It's something of a disgrace indeed to have touched the beast--an oaken staff had been fitter than your hand,' she replied. 'Merry England, quotha! drunken England, I suppose he meant.'

'There is too much indeed of the unclean spirit of riot abroad now,'

answered Andrew; 'but it is not with violent hands that we can cast it out. I sinfully forgot our Lord's word, "Resist not evil;"' and nothing could brighten him, though Althea did her best all the way home.

There came the day when I rued Andrew's angry action as much as he did, though not for the same reason. Ralph Lacy was not too drunk to be unaware who had flung him aside into the dust; he never forgave it; and his hand was plainly seen afterwards in the troubles that came upon us.

Another man also contributed something to them, though more innocently.

Mr. Poole now came very much about us, and would often talk about the good family he belonged to and his hopes of speedy preferment; and another favourite topic of his was the gay suits he had worn in his secular days; he would dwell very fondly on the cut and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of these clothes. I think nothing misliked him in his profession but the gravity of dress required from a clerical person; and I was often tempted to ask, had his father been a tailor? He made the most of his sober apparel, and loved to show a white, smooth, fat hand, with a fine diamond on one finger; but he was unhappy in an insignificant person and a foolish face, both of them something fatter than is graceful.

I do not know what first made me guess that all his boastings and paradings were intended to advance him in Althea's good graces; but she refused to believe me when I said so.

'Poor harmless wretch!' said she; 'he is but practising with me; he would fain perfect himself in the airs and graces of a thriving wooer, before laying siege in earnest to some fair lady, with the heavy purse, that I lack, at her girdle.'

'That's a far-fetched fancy indeed,' said I. 'Why should he single you out alone for such practisings?'

'Well,' quoth Althea idly, 'he may deem me the fittest person to rehea.r.s.e with, seeing I have at least the breeding of a gentlewoman, and am contracted to no one else. He will think that if his ways and words please me, they may answer with richer women of my sort as well.'

'But sure they do not please you!' I cried; 'nor should you let him think they do; 'tis not fair usage.'

'Nay, he diverts me hugely,' said she; 'and I need diversion, for my heart is heavy as lead, Lucy;'--all at once there were tears in her eyes;--'if I can forget my griefs while I watch a mannikin bowing and grimacing before me, don't grudge me the poor pastime. I a.s.sure thee, child, there's nothing more in it;' and with that she left me hastily.

I was used to think Althea much wiser than myself, but the evening of the very day when we had this talk proved that in this matter her judgment was more at fault than mine. For about sunset Mr. Poole came up to the Grange, which was a rare thing for him to do, seeing he did not love to be abroad when it was dark. He seemed mightily puffed up about something; and, not being one of those who can keep their own counsel long, he soon imparted to Althea and me, whom he found sitting by the parlour fire, how his promotion now seemed very near. There was a living of which he had long had hopes to get the reversion; and the actual inc.u.mbent was fallen sick of a strange fever, with little prospect of recovery.

'And you are troubled because of the poor man's grievous case,' says Althea demurely. 'I guessed something was disturbing you. It's melancholy news indeed, Mr. Poole, for one would guess by it that the place must be unhealthy, so it may be your luck to sicken in like manner when it is your turn to live there.'

I thought Althea cruel thus to tease the poor man, imputing to him a tender concern for the sufferer of which he had never dreamed; besides, he was chicken-hearted about contagious disorders, and that she knew. I pitied him then, but found it hard to forbear laughing, his aspect was so comical; therefore I feigned an errand out of the room, and, having stayed away long enough to compose my countenance, I returned to the parlour, where I found poor Mr. Poole on his knees to Althea, urging his suit for her hand with a great deal more pa.s.sion than one could have expected in him. 'Twas in vain she spoke of her orphanhood and poverty, and told him he should look higher; and at last she had to speak sharply, and say, however she might esteem the honour he would do her, wife of his she would never be; 'so quit that unbecoming posture at my feet,' she added; on which he rose indeed, but said half-frantically,--

'Give me at least, madam; the comfort of hearing you say you are heart-free, that you love none other better than you do me;' on which first her eyes flashed angry fire, and then changed and softened, her whole face and even her neck going rosy-red, and she said almost kindly,--

'I will give you no such a.s.surance, sir, to hold you in vain hopes; but I wish you a happier fate than marriage with me might prove.' With that she was gone from the room, like a shadow; and Mr. Poole and I were left foolishly staring at each other. Presently he said hoa.r.s.ely,--

'Who is it that your sister loves, madam? for whom does she disdain me?

Sure,' he went on, with growing heat, 'it cannot be your cousin--he that is infected with the Quaker heresy! say it is not he, madam.'

Well, I was tempted to lie, and say it was not our cousin; for Andrew was nothing akin to us; but I resisted the tempter, and said I could say nothing, but that I was heartily sorry,--'and I am sure, so is my sister,' I said, 'that you should have fixed your affections so unluckily.' Then I told him Andrew had no thoughts of marriage with Althea or any one; and I reminded him of the many rich and fair women who would be sure to look kindly on him; at which he smiled again, and presently went away in no unfriendly mood. So I acquit him of meaning the harm which he afterwards did us, poor youth, with his prattling tongue. He did not wait long for his promotion, the poor man whom he hoped to succeed dying indeed of the fever that had seized him; so we lost our curate. But it seems he prated to his patron about the fair young lady he had hoped should share his preferment, lamenting her silliness in preferring a moonstruck Quaker youth; also he complained of Mrs. Golding for not discouraging such follies, and he even deplored Mr.

Truelocke's obstinate heresies as to church discipline.

I think even he had held his peace, if he had known into how greedy an ear he poured these tales. This patron of his, one Sir Edward Fane, had much land and not a little power in our parish, though he resided in another neighbourhood; he was a bitter hater of all Nonconformists, and in especial of the Quakers; men said this was because of some encounter he had had with Fox himself, by whose sharp tongue and ready wit our gentleman was put to open shame, where he had hoped to make himself sport out of Quaker enthusiasm. However that might be, it was commonly said this Sir Edward loved Quaker-baiting, as it was called, beyond all other of the cruel, inhuman sports, the bull-baitings and bear-baitings, in which too many men of condition now take pleasure; and it was not long before we found a powerful enemy was raised up against our harmless friends.

'Twas a wonder to me that any would lift a hand against them; Mr.

Truelocke being so venerable and so peaceable a man, and Andrew of life so irreproachable. Also, since the youth had cast in his lot with the Friends, he had shown a singular zeal in good works. He sought out those who were in distress or necessity, and laboured to make their hard lot easy, not merely giving them alms, but comforting them as a loving brother might do; and such as had fallen into want through folly or sin he toiled hard to lift up again, and to put them into an honest way of living. By this means some few were led to embrace his way of religion, it is true; and what wonder? My wonder was that so many were vilely ungrateful to him, at which _he_ never showed any vexation. 'We are bidden,' he said, 'to do good to the unthankful and the evil,' which seemed enough for him.

But it being contrary to his conscience to attend the church, I suppose all his other graces did but lay him more open to injury, and we were soon warned of mischief hatching against us and him, and that by one from whom we never expected it.

CHAPTER VI.

HOW MR. TRUELOCKE AND MRS. GOLDING LEFT US.

Mr. Poole being gone, there came in his place as curate an oldish man, grey-haired and meagre; a great adorer of Archbishop Laud and of King Charles the First, 'the Royal Martyr,' as he would say; but for all his half Popish notions, he was blameless, nay, austere in his life; and he had thriven so ill in the gay new world of London, that he deemed it great good luck to have the curate's place at West Fazeby.

We had half feared that this poor Mr. Stokes would feel bound in conscience to torment and hara.s.s Mr. Truelocke into conformity; so when he came to the Grange one day, very earnest to see Aunt Golding and the former Vicar, and that in private, we were on thorns while he stayed; and when we heard the door shut after him, we hurried to our aunt, asking what his errand had been.

She answered us not directly, but, gazing after Mr. Stokes, whom Mr.

Truelocke was conducting out through the garden, 'Well, my girls,' said she, 'if the tree may be known by its fruits, yon is a right honest man and a true Christian;' and she went on to say how he had only come to warn her and hers of evil that was designed against them. 'I fear,' she said, smiling, 'the good man's conscience pulled him two ways; yet his heart has proved wiser than his head. I am right glad now that Andrew is away, though I was vexed before; yet I knew his was a charitable journey.'

Then she told us of new crueller devices intended against the Friends, and, indeed, against all Nonconforming folks. 'And there be some,' she said, 'who have spoken very evil things of us here at the Grange. I warrant you it will not be long that we shall be suffered to have family wors.h.i.+p if our labouring men share in it as they are used to do; nor can Mr. Truelocke so much as expound a Psalm to us and them, but it shall straight be said we hold a conventicle here.'

'Surely,' says Althea, very pale, 'the gentlemen who now rule the country are too proud-spirited, too n.o.ble, to intermeddle with such matters; what is it to them how we say our prayers in our own houses?

Abroad, there may be need of a decent face of uniformity, and some open outrageous follies may require to be put down strongly'--She stopped, and Aunt Golding said,--

'Ah, child, thou little knowest. I have not yet heard of any outrageous follies that our poor Andrew has run into; yet I am told, and I fear it's true, that if he were to show his face openly in West Fazeby to-morrow, his next lodging might be in York Castle, where he should lie in the foulest den they could find for him, and have the worst company to boot. Nor will it be very safe here for our good Mr. Truelocke, who now talks of taking his journey to certain worthy kinsfolk of his that are farmers in the Dale country, there he may live in a peaceful obscurity; but his chief aim is to avoid bringing troubles on our house.'

It struck me cruelly to think of Harry's father leaving us, but I had no time to dwell on the thought, for now Althea sank down at my feet, helpless and senseless like one who was dead indeed; and much ado we had to bring her out of her swoon, which was very long, and she very feeble when she was recovered from it. We got her to her room, and persuaded her to lie down and sleep; and when we came away, Aunt Golding turns to me with a puzzled look, saying,--

'What means this, Lucy? I never thought your sister one of those fine ladies who swoon for every trifle;--what is it, think you?'

'Andrew,' says I, 'and the image of his danger; you made a frightful picture of it, dear madam, do you know?'

'Ah, set a thief to catch a thief!' says Aunt Golding, and I felt glad to hear her laugh once more; 'my love-pa.s.sages are of too ancient a date to serve me, it seems, but yours are fresh and new, my Lucy. But what of Andrew? is Althea dear to him?'

'More dear than he knows, or she guesses,' quoth I; at which our good aunt laughed again, but then said,--