CHAPTER V.

HOW MASTER RUMBOLD TOLD LAWRENCE LEE WHAT THE VERY AIR MIGHT NOT HEAR.

This recollection of the morning, troubles Ruth strangely now, as she sits in the broad window-seat of her own room, her eyes fixed indeed on the fair moon-lit scene before her, but for once seeing nothing of its beauty. Vague fears and suspicions and dread of coming evil weigh down her heart, as one by one she threads together the incidents of this May-day, which was to have been such a golden one. It is all in vain that she laughingly tells herself her father has every right to perambulate his own premises. All in vain she argues that Lawrence Lee may be as sulky as a bear with a sore head, if it gives him any pleasure; and no concern of hers. Certainly not. All the same too, of course, it is to her if a legion of coal-barges come their way, so long as it is not she who stands in Master Sheppard's shoes.

For her part, however, Ruth could not consider the landlady of the "King's Arms" at all a bad sort. On the contrary, she entertained a great liking for her. Folks were fond of saying that Mistress Sheppard had a shrewish tongue; but Ruth had never felt its edge. The good woman was as foolish as everybody else in the matter of spoiling the little mistress of the Rye House; and though she would as soon tell a prince of the blood a piece of her mind, as she would the stable-boy of her own establishment, if she saw fit, she would have vowed the old dun-cow to be white as milk, if it could have afforded Ruth any satisfaction; or declared that Master Richard Rumbold was the most urbane and delightful gentleman in all the country, though no love, to put it mildly, was lost between her and her opposite neighbour.

[Sidenote: The hostess of the "King's Arms."]

One reason for this among divers others, was their difference of opinion concerning the sign of her hostelry. What easier, the maltster always insisted, than to change it from the "King's Arms" to the "Commonwealth Arms?" or some such reasonable name? There could be no offence, he argued, to anybody in that. But Mistress Sheppard maintained there was, and much offence too. She would stand by and see no such senseless choppings and changings. There had never been anything common about the place, since place it was; and shouldn't be while she was above ground. And what did the man want of such notions? And Master Sheppard, if he could have answered that question, as perhaps he might, maintained a discreet silence, as indeed is the only safe course when one finds one's self betwixt two stools, as his lot in life placed him; for he was never certain whether he stood more in awe of his wife or of Master Rumbold. Once, it is true, he ventured so far as to hint to her, that for the good of the house, and the sake of peace, it might be well to think over Master Rumbold's suggestion, and that he, Sheppard, was agreeable, if so be--but having got thus far he was pulled up by Mistress Sheppard, who said she "was not agreeable; that those who didn't like the sign might spare their custom, and the good o' the house'd be none the worse for lack o' their company." And so the sign remained true to its colours, and an eyesore and a thorn in the flesh to roundhead Master Rumbold.

[Sidenote: Smouldering fires.]

Differences between neighbours were, however, unfortunately common enough in those troubled times; for troubled they were. It is true that the old quarrel between the king and the parliament, which had brought Charles the First to his sad death at Whitehall, had been patched up very neatly more than twenty years ago now, when his son, King Charles the Second, had been restored to the throne; but the feelings of the people were like smouldering fires, and ready as ever to break out in discontent. The country, moreover, was divided, not now, as then, into those who did approve of its being governed by a king and those who did not; but there were many loyal enough sober-minded folks, and holding quite varying forms of religious belief, who were sorely disappointed with the manner in which the king, whom they had helped to restore with so much expense of precious lives and of money, governed; or, more properly, neglected to govern. Yes, a careless "Merry Monarch"--all very well to call him so--but your merry men and women are frequently cruelly selfish ones, and contrive to bring tears into other people's eyes every time they are pleased to laugh.

Then, too, there were many who dreaded the day when Charles's brother, the Duke of York, should succeed him on the throne. There seemed hardly any doubt that he had adopted the Roman Catholic form of belief; and a strong impression prevailed that Charles was also greatly inclined to do the same.

[Sidenote: The Merry Monarch.]

How far this was true can, perhaps, never be fairly determined. The king's pleasures always interested him vastly more than religious questions of any kind, and the fears of those who dreaded to see England fall back under popish rule were probably exaggerated. It is very certain that these ideas were fed by dangerous men, who for their own selfish ends spread alarms of popish plots and conspiracies which existed nowhere but in their own mischievous brains; and many harmless peace-abiding Roman Catholics were hunted to prison and death, solely for the crime of being faithful to the creed they had been reared in. These did not, however, remain entirely unavenged, for the love of fair play and of justice triumphed in the end; and the wretches who had persecuted their fellow-men under the pretence of religion were many of them severely punished, and few pitied them.

The father of Lawrence Lee had died, fighting for King Charles the First on Worcester field; while Richard Rumbold had lost his eye in the selfsame struggle, serving the Parliamentary forces.

[Sidenote: A dark desire.]

Rumbold hated the Stuart race; and when he used to hear Madam Lee teaching her little Lawrence to flourish his chubby hands and cry, "God save the king!" an ugly sneer would begin to gather about his lips, though he would hold them fast shut, for the Nether Hall folks were prosperous and well-to-do; and the maltster, if he could avoid it, never quarrelled with money. It was, besides, no easy matter to pick a dispute with this young Lee, who troubled his head so vastly little about the affairs of the nation, and whose whole mind was taken up in the management of his farm.

As to his heart, it was divided between his mother and his old playmate and constant friend Ruth; and though Ruth's play-days were fast ebbing away, and the old games were now frowned upon by her as silly and rompish, Lawrence cared for her every whit as much as ever; and Rumbold perceiving this, thought he saw in it a turn for the serving of his own purposes. And when one day, about the time of this story's opening, the maltster being in one of his gloomier moods, which, indeed, had grown so strangely frequent that he was rarely out of them, chanced to launch forth into one of his tirades against the king and his government, and said that "sooner than see daughter of his, wife of a man who loved a Stuart, be that Stuart Charles or James, or Tom, Dick, or Hal, he would see her in her coffin."

[Sidenote: An angry altercation.]

"Love!" replied Lee, turning a little pale as the maltster spoke, "is a strong word, Master Rumbold."

"Your father loved the first Charles Stuart," said Rumbold with knitted brows.

"Ay, to the death!" sighed the young man; "but I'll warrant 'tis little enough his present majesty remembers that."

Rumbold looked up quickly, and the dull glitter of his eye brightened into a glance of searching scrutiny as he fixed it on Lawrence. "An ungrateful race always, these Stuarts," he said with a shrug.

"Nay, I say not that," rejoined Lee. "Your poor bedesman may know every scratch and mark upon his little scraped-up hoard; but can your rich trader tell you one from another of his coffered guineas? And king's friends are so. Countless as the grain I sow in my fields."

"To be as soon scattered to the winds, and trod under foot," growled Rumbold. "Put not your trust in princes."

"I'd as lief trust one," smiled Lawrence, who knew his Bible too, "as any other child of man."

"You speak idly, as a parrot chatters," said Rumbold in displeased tones; "and, in truth, I have long taken you for a--"

He paused with a jerk. The word on his lips was scarcely one calculated to win over the young man to his ideas, and he substituted the milder epithet of "featherbrain."

"I thank you for your compliment, Master Rumbold," said Lawrence swelling a little, and glancing silently, but proudly, round on his neat barns and ricks, among which they chanced to be standing. "I flattered myself my brains were none so empty."

"Psha!" returned Rumbold; "a man may be a Mr. Worldly Wise, and still a fool and a beggar touching the treasure that waxeth not old. Think you that the storing of barns and the breeding of fat oxen will bring a man peace at the last?"

"It may help to it, I doubt," answered the young proprietor, "if it so be that that man uses bounteously the wealth his barns and his cattle bring him. Not hoarding it greedily, but sharing it with those who need it. Then heaven, I take it, is like to bless our store."

The maltster wagged his head impatiently.

[Sidenote: Lawrence speaks out.]

"Though in sooth," went on Lawrence, "I require not you to remind me, Master Rumbold, that though a man bestow all his goods to feed the poor, and hath not real charity, he is sounding brass indeed; and Heaven, that seeks pure gold only, will have none of him. I know, of course, as well as you do, that a clear conscience--"

"And what," interrupted Rumbold, wincing involuntarily as Lee uttered these last words, and gazing gloomily into the muddy duck-pool at his feet, "what may be your notion of that?"

"Of a clear conscience?" lightly laughed Lawrence. "Why, first and last, at all events, that its owner never do his neighbour any wrong."

[Sidenote: A wrangle.]

"And who is my neighbour?" muttered Rumbold, as if speaking to himself, and still keeping his eye moodily fixed on the turgid water. "Answer me that, Lawrence Lee."

"Who is not?" replied Lee, repressing a yawn, but with a cheery smile. "I take it, we're neighbours all. Everything that breathes; from old Shock here"--and he bestowed a friendly pull on the grizzled ears of the sheep dog, who stood poking his cold nose into his master's hand--"up to the king himself. What's the matter, Master Rumbold?" for the maltster started and bit his nether lip, as if in some sudden pain.

"Nothing, boy," he said. "What should be?"

"The king himself--God bless him!" continued Lee, waxing unusually eloquent, for ordinarily he was not a man of many words. "And that if we do--"

"Do, do!" cried Rumbold, wincing again. "The old story. Always with your sort. And faith may go to the wall. Well, if we do what forsooth?" he added, not without curiosity.

"Nay, if it please you better," answered Lawrence good-humouredly, "for it is all one;--if we _don't_ do harm, and work no evil against any man:"--

"Upon him who doeth evil, evil must be done," said Rumbold in deep melancholy tones.

"That," returned Lawrence, recoiling a pace and gazing in perplexity at his companion, "that was not the teaching, Master Rumbold, of Him who died for all men. I doubt 'tis the same as if one should say, Evil must be done that good may come."

"Ay," muttered Rumbold, folding his arms upon his breast and setting his lips firmly, "it must."

"Why? Fie, now, fie!" laughed Lawrence, fixing his eyes with something of uneasy curiosity in their clear, dark depths, on Rumbold's face. "That, they say, is the Jesuits' watchword. Who would have thought to hear it from the lips of godly Master Rumbold?"

"You mock me," returned Rumbold; "I am the worst of sinners."

"Nay, nay, but I trust not," said Lee, getting really uncomfortable.

"You mock me, I say," reiterated Rumbold.

"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Lee. "It is rather that you mock me; for by my faith I do not understand you to-night, Master Rumbold."

[Sidenote: The whisper of a conspirator.]

"Listen," hoarsely said Rumbold, turning suddenly on Lee, and gripping him by the elbow; "you shall understand. I will explain, but not here," he went on, dropping his voice to a whisper, and casting a far-seeing, cautious glance round. "Not here: there may be eavesdroppers. Hark! what's that?"

"Only the beasts munching their supper in the stables," said Lee. "They will tell no tales."

"The very air must not hear," said Rumbold.

"Why, if it is so particular as all that, then," rejoined Lawrence, still half jestingly, but growing less and less light about his heart, "come this way." And pushing open a wicket, he conducted his companion along a rather miry slip of by-road towards the apple orchard, which stretched behind and around the ruined gatehouse, whose jagged outlines were beginning to stand out grim and gaunt in the sickly rays of the moon. Wading through the long grass so thickly carpeting the ground up to the tower, that its base was completely hidden, Lee conducted Rumbold to the top of a small flight of broken stone steps, so lost in an overgrowth of ivy trails and brambles as to be invisible to stranger eyes; but Lee, with a thrust of his hand, parted the leafy screen, and signed to Rumbold to follow him down the steps, which led to a low, iron-clamped and heavily padlocked door deeply sunken in the wall of the tower's foundations.

[Sidenote: A secret vault.]

"'Tis a well-screened spot, is it not?" said Lee, answering Rumbold's inquiring glances.

"Well secured," said the cautious Rumbold, who had not much opinion of mere unaided twigs as safeguards, and seemed more disposed to admire the huge iron padlock adorning its latch. "What do you store here?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"The place--except for a few bones, which may have been man's or sheep's for aught I know, or ever gave a thought to--is full of emptiness."

"Yet you keep it as sealed as if it shut in untold riches."

"As for the matter of that, it does, too, in a roundabout sort of way," said Lawrence smiling and colouring a little. "Or it may do so; for 'tis said--though I will not answer for the truth of it, that if you follow your nose far enough, the way it leads, you will find yourself in the vaults under your own gatehouse. Our houses--yours and mine--Master Rumbold, were built in queer times; when a man could not call his life his own. And when he dared not show his face above ground, slipped away as he could under it."

[Sidenote: In darkness.]

"And a fig then for his pursuers," said Rumbold, as he stepped into the vault, whose darkness was only lightened by the moon-rays feebly struggling in through the grating of a loophole high up in its walls. "A fig for them, hey?"

"As you say," said Lawrence, faintly echoing the low laugh of his companion, which reverberated far away, in mocking unearthly discords, as though challenging the pair to explore the place's long-forgotten intricacies. "I doubt they must have been as successful as if they sought needles in a bottle of hay."

"Shut the door!" said Rumbold.

Lawrence obeyed, and what further Richard Rumbold had to say was heard by no eavesdroppers save the slug and reptile creatures who had long made the place their own.

[Sidenote: A change for the worse.]

Some hours later the door opened again, and one of the two men reappeared. Peering first cautiously right and left, he locked the door behind him and stole hurriedly up the steps. The figure of this man is assuredly that of Lawrence Lee, but strangely unlike his light bright step is that stumbling, swaying gait; and can that ashen white face, those eyes startled and staring, as if they had met some fearful thing, indeed be his? And where is Rumbold?