CHAPTER XXXV

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THE BOATMAN'S REFUSAL.

"So, for us no world? Let throngs press thee to me! Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we! Welcome squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful face! God is soul, souls I and thou: with souls should souls have place." --ROBERT BROWNING.

Old Jack the boatman bore his grief at his daughter's death in resolute silence, although his rapidly whitening hair and the new furrows of pain on his weather-beaten face showed plainly the inward suffering he endured. As before her death he had steadily refused to allow himself to be publicly made known as her father, so now he obstinately adhered to his resolution in spite of the earl's efforts to move him.

"Nay, my lord," he said, "the village wept with me over her supposed death when I was a young man and alone in my misery, and I was glad of their comfort; but now that I am old and near to my own grave I have no craving for their sympathy, and as I told her many a time ere she passed hence, I can better bear alone at my years either joy or sorrow than brook their strife of tongues, and perchance the words of blame they might cast upon her. My heart is grown too aged to bear the ceaseless chatter, from which it were vain to try and escape, were it known that my daughter had wedded an Earl of Bryn Afon; and moreover I will ne'er suffer your noble name to be miscalled, as it would surely be, were it known that you had chosen for your bride one of your own villagers. I can keep my secret, my lord, and though I thank you for the honour you would fain do me in making known my relation to your noble house, I do still refuse it with as steadfast a will as when first my daughter made herself known to me. Let me but look from time to time upon my grand-daughter's sweet face, and come and go in your castle as her humble foster-father and your devoted servant, and I will die more content with my secret within mine own breast than blazoned forth among all the curious folk of the country-side. Verily, my lord, they would in a few short hours wear out my poor heart with their gossiping tongues whatever!"

"So be it, Jack," answered the earl; "but as my true father-in-law, it seemed to me the only reparation I could make for the past, to acknowledge you as such. Think how in past days, with her, whom you believed long since dead, dwelling, unknown to you, here at my side within these walls, I could come and go with you on yon river, and talk lightly of my marriage and my wife! Yet, Jack, my love for her was my excuse, for fain would I have confessed our marriage many a time, and did but keep silence because of her pleadings, which I was verily wont at times to look upon as strange and unnatural, but which now, in the light of that mother's love, burning secretly like a fierce fire in her poor breast, do fully explain themselves to my mind. You were her child's best guardian, and since that fair little being, to whom my heart was ever strangely drawn, must needs be hidden from my knowledge, if not wholly from my sight, she was unable to reveal herself to you without betraying to me her cherished secret. And so--well, Jack--my sin in luring her from your side to a secret marriage has been bitterly punished by its own fruits! And to my dying day the pale sweet face of our child, innocent victim of the sins of her forefathers, must haunt me, as I first looked upon it, now nearly a year ago, with all a father's pride in its wondrous beauty, and beheld in it those terrible marks of suffering which the sacrifice of her love had wrought! Never shall I forget that day of our first meeting as father and daughter, nor the anguish with which I received those first sweet caresses from her whom the curse of my house had bereaved of her heart's love, and from whom it demanded so bitter a sacrifice! Jack, I would give my life to restore the light to her eyes, and the radiancy of youthful health and spirits to her countenance! Yet I am chained beneath the curse--powerless to free myself from its weight--doomed through its toils to die at last a horrible death, and in my miserable lifetime to wound again and again the tender spirit of my only child by the helplessness of my struggles."

"Nay, my lord, say not so!" exclaimed the boatman earnestly. "Remember the last prayer of your dying wife for you, and trust that, although your name must needs perish with your fair daughter, you may at least, in God's mercy, leave it to her unstained with the horrors of past years, to wear it after you, till she shall be called hence, in a dignity and unblemished honour unknown to your forefathers for many long generations."

"I would to God it might be so!" said the earl, his restless blue eyes dimmed with sudden tears. "Perchance," and he smiled sadly, "my young chaplain, your vicar, may yet make a convert of me. I hear his tongue is never silent on the subject of this evil, which has been the ruin of my house, and of how many more God knows! Yet I fear me he is before his time, and, like many another prophet, may fall a victim to his own intrepidity; for nowhere else do I hear his doctrines get publicly unfolded, and be they true they are likely to fall on unwilling ears, and reap but a tardy harvest, which he is not like to gather. I hear he hath already a band of trusty followers in the village, who form a league or what not, pledged to do deadly battle against the drinking customs of the country. Ah me, I trow he speaks more truly of the evil than the world will yet choose to believe, and hath a knowledge and insight into the matter which I warrant me no bishop on the bench can boast! Were I a trustworthy member of his solemn covenant, I could verily back up his preaching with experiences of which I have alas but too many at command; but I fear me my membership is yet far distant, for his old ancestor Ap Gryffyth cursed too well! Poor youth! He would fain undo the bitter consequences of those hideous words, but after all the old Bryn Afon, poor fool, brought them on himself, and well deserved them for his treachery! Jack, when I am presently summoned to the king, you will watch over our sweet Primrose tenderly? The Lady Rosamond has promised me to stay awhile with her here during my absence, her lord being also chosen to follow our king's fallen fortunes. I have bidden my chaplain remain here in his cure, rather than accompany me in my wanderings, seeing that my faithful Rhiwallon will e'en give me all the care I can desire, and that I would fain leave to my child the comfort of his continual presence, and to the valley the benefit of his preachings. He and my child have indeed forsworn all earthly love, but their hearts are knit in a bond which would make separation but a living death! And since I can trust Percival Vere as I would a saint in heaven, I can depart, leaving my darling safely to enjoy the shelter of his friendship and counsel. Fain would I bid her accompany me, as she hath oft entreated me, fearing lest her mother's spirit should chide her for suffering me out of her sight; but these are troublous times, and I dare not risk her safety. Every fighting man is being summoned to the banner of the king or parliament, and I carry with me, when I depart hence in some three days' time, many stout youths, who will, I trow, show Charles of what bravery our little Wales is capable. Poor youths, the Royal Commission of Array spares none whom Providence hath gifted with a sturdy arm and a brave heart, and I doubt not, good Jack, an you were now a fiery youth as of yore, you would be the first to follow me to the field! Ah, well, fain would I die on the battlefield, and so outwit the curse! Who knows?"

* * * * * * *

Not many days after this conversation between the earl and his faithful servant, the Royal Standard was uplifted at Nottingham, and ere many months had passed the Battle of Edgehill had begun the war, and Primrose and Lady Rosamond, dwelling together, in the absence of father and husband, in the lonely fastness of Bryn Afon, were daily watching with keen anxiety for the news which reached but tardily the solitary Welsh hamlet, wherein, nevertheless, a fierce strife reigned, and ever increased in bitterness, between the loyal followers of the king and the zealous partisans, led by Master Jones, of the opposing party. A mimic warfare raged likewise perpetually between Cavaliers and Roundheads of tender years, who, arrayed in lines on either side of the river, aimed harmless missiles across the foaming stream, and oft made the old boatman tremble for the fate of his bridge, which was stormed and taken by each party in turn till the rush of young feet made its light weight to quiver, and its timbers to creak ominously, and threaten to plunge the youthful armies into the swiftly-flowing current below.

And while the war waged ever more fiercely, and England was convulsed with a struggle hitherto unknown, the young chaplain fought a gallant fight in his troubled parish, and was the innocent cause of almost as much discussion in the neighbourhood as was the king himself; for Master Jones, finding that he could make no headway against the powerful eloquence of the new vicar, nor stem the tide of popular opinion in his favour, stirred up continual strife against him among his own few devoted adherents, and threatened to burn, plunder, and destroy on the first opportunity the church on the hillside, where a new offence in the shape of a beautiful stained window, given by the earl to his wife's memory, together with some other fresh adornments added to the hitherto plain little building, served as fuel to the fire of Puritanical opposition. Not least among these standing offences was the beautiful organ presented by Lady Shanno, and played Sunday after Sunday by her own hand, despite the din which often throughout a great part of the service was wont to be made outside the walls by certain youths, who with pipe and tabor strove, with the authority of Master Jones, to drown the Popish sounds within. Moreover, it was not in the hamlet alone that the worthy preacher's ears were set a-tingling with jealousy, but that go where he might over hill and dale, whether to sell his wares on a week-day or to discourse on the Sabbath upon his favourite text--"Put not your trust in princes"--he ever found that the fame of Lord Bryn Afon's chaplain had already eclipsed his own; for Master Vere, in the enthusiasm of his crusade against the frightful intemperance reigning in the country villages, lost no opportunity of preaching and lecturing against this crying evil, whether in the open air at fairs, or in the pulpits of such among his brother clergy who would countenance his new doctrines. And in the town of Caer Cynau he gained no small notoriety by a certain course of lectures there delivered upon the "Testimony of the renowned Master Shakespeare upon the evils of strong drink," wherein his masterly learning and acquaintance with the works of the great poet and also his marvellous eloquence drew men and women from far and wide to hear him, and by means of which not a few of his brother clergy were brought to look more closely into a matter as yet but little considered by them. And although there were perhaps but few among them who did not regard him as a mad enthusiast, yet so powerful were his words, and so irresistible the sweetness of his voice and the purity of his countenance, that all were fain to love him heartily, and to think upon his discourses when his presence was withdrawn from them as upon the words of some prophet of God. And the chaplain, knowing that "one man must sow and another reap," was content to deliver his message, leaving others to see its results; but that results would surely follow he doubted not for a moment, nor that one day, it might be in the far distant future, his message would ring throughout England and find an echo in thousands of noble hearts, filled, like his own, with the spirit of self-sacrifice and love for their weak brethren--a love which should make some strong ones ready to renounce for themselves even the good creatures of God, might they by so doing remove a stumbling-block from some erring brother's path.

Meanwhile, whether his message were received in love or in derision, he continued to utter it faithfully, ever cheered by the growing support of a chosen few among his parishioners, his "League of the Holy Cross," who were ready to labour with him to the death, and above all, by the loving friendship and faithful love of the fair young mistress of the doomed castle, who, in her anxious solitude, cheered only by the companionship of Lady Rosamond and her little son Elidore, and by the devotion of her aged foster-father, followed his every footstep with her prayers, and entered into his labours with a zeal and devotion which ever inspired him to fresh effort. And ever and anon some shepherd on the solitary hillside would tell how he had seen the faithful lovers wandering over hill and dale together on their mutual errands of mercy, and the tale of many a hidden deed of charity would be whispered from one lonely cot to another, wherein the footsteps of the beautiful Lady Shanno, whose golden locks were so strangely strewn with silver, and those of her holy knight, Sir Galahad, were blessed as the footsteps of angels, and their faces welcomed as those of bright visitants from another world. And there were some who said, that as these holy friends crossed the lonely hilltops together, the shadow of the cross might at times be seen falling athwart their path as they walked, and more than one honest countryman would vouch for the truth of this tale, and testify that his own eyes had witnessed the strange sight.

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