My sister Zara, who was there, asked him: “Why do you call him Marie’s Mr. Milton, Brother?”
Between Richard and Zara there was the same amity as prevailed between my brother James and myself; and he answered that I, being a girl, had warmly defended a pamphlet of Mr. Milton’s against the ill opinions of three gentlemen, and this was the reason. As yet Zara did not know that Mr. Tiresias and Mr. Milton were one and the same person; but now I told her, I know not why.
She opened her eyes at that and, “Aha, Marie,” she said, “so you are back again worshipping at the old shrine! In truth, I never believed that your heart was set on any other than him, despite the talk in the town.” Then putting herself behind Richard, for protection, she said: “No, no, that you went out like a cat to company with Captain Verney, that night when pebbles were cast at our window, I have always believed incredible. He is far too gentlemanly and nice a man ever to cast his eye upon such a fliperous coquette as yourself.”
I mastered my anger very well, and answered her in an off-hand manner. “Why, my dear, I never claimed to be so fortunate. I suppose, forsooth, that observing the great eyes and lewd writhings that you offered him at supper that night, he was overtaken by an amorous itch, and that it was for you that he cast his pebbles, not for me. As for my devotion to Mr. Tiresias, or Mr. Milton, you may make of it what you will, you pert, snotty, snivelly, snaggle-toothed, unkempt little jade.” With that I went out and left them standing.
Now, some believe that coincidence of thought or event comes about by blind chance, that if (for example) two persons seated at ends of the same long table both begin speaking at once (they know not why) of Cousin Tom, of whom perhaps they have not spoken nor even thought for a twelvemonth, there is no more to say than “So it chanced!” Yet I believe that there is design in this coincidence, that invariably it presages news, within a week or two at least, of this same Cousin Tom. I felt the like superstition presage in the case of John Milton, who because of the singleness of his heart and mind and because of his evident jealousy to be John Milton and no other, though he died for it, was a man who threw a long shadow before him. I concluded that since now I knew him by his own name and not by his alias, “Tiresias”, I should soon meet and become acquainted with him.
In the meantime I had Mun perpetually in my thoughts, and every morning between sleeping and waking I ran over our discourse together in my mind; yet one day, when I took my vellum book and began to write down in it our words as I remembered them, they faded altogether from my mind. It was as when the features of a corpse found in an ancient leaden coffin suddenly crumble into dust, so that nothing is left to behold but a grinning death’s head. Only a phrase or two I could catch and record; and thereafter, even in half-sleep, all clear sound and vision of Mun was denied me, and when I tried to conjure up his image by resolute thought, I could contrive but a blotched and partial image of him. Sometimes as I went about my work, or rode with my brothers, I had sweats and confused visions of horror, which I knew were from across the sea from Ireland, and oftentimes felt hungry and thirsty even when I had dined well. Once, when we had a Friday’s dish of herrings, I could not eat of them and cried: “In God’s name, herrings again! Is there no meat to be had but herrings?” Now this was the first time for a fortnight that we had eaten herrings, and my mother gazed at me as though I were mad. As I afterwards learned, it was Mun whose mouth was cloyed with the taste of herrings, which, with salt beef, was all the provision procurable in his camp. Who will deny this to be marvellous?
Sir Thomas Gardiner knew nothing of the scandalous tale that had been put about concerning Mun and me, for he was at his house in Covent Garden when the tale was new; but one day he came to Forest Hall upon some matter of business, and told us in passing that he had news of Mun in Ireland. Mun had written to him that the rebels, though outnumbering the English by ten to one, dared not give them battle, but fled to the protection of strong castles, of which they had many fit to withstand a long siege, and came out again to do mischief when our people retired. Mun asked in this letter, why did not Parliament send soldiers to Ireland? If ten thousand had been sent in the New Year, the rebels would be already vanquished; but the longer the delay, the more head they would get. Moreover, Parliament, Mun said, was the worst paymaster in the world. The soldiers were murmuring very loudly for want of pay and necessaries, for they were not bred to live upon air alone, like chameleons; and the message was passing from mouth to mouth, “No longer pipe, no longer dance.” Which notwithstanding, the common soldier fought with great resolution against an enemy who showed a degree of barbarousness hardly known even among heathen.
Sir Thomas appeared grieved by this letter, for, said he, it was by no fault of his father’s faction in Parliament that the troops in Ireland were so scurvily treated: it was John Pym and his damnable confederacy who would not pay the King’s officers in Ireland, nor vote money for the levying of more troops to send over, unless the King yielded to Parliament his ancient power over the Militia of England. For it was pretended by Pym and his junto that if a Militia were raised to be sent to Ireland, it would first be employed by the King against the liberties of the English people; and Sir Thomas said that there were not wanting members who charged that the horrible rebellion and massacre had been plotted by the Queen with a view to this very thing. To the Earl of Pembroke, who was sent to the King, where he lay at Newmarket, to persuade him if possible to yield the power of Militia to Parliament, His Majesty had very properly replied: “No, by God, not for an hour!”
Sir Thomas, having made this recital, told us in a light manner: “I warrant there are many pretty ladies in England who grieve for Captain Mun in his present plight, to a multiplicity of whom, I believe, he writes by every packet; and I heard from my dearest Cary that her cousin Doll Leke, to whom he writes the most lovingly, looks to marry him upon his return, whether he be a beggar or no. Cary told me somewhat of a ring of Mun’s hair that he had given as a keepsake, which Doll said made her heart quail a little (though it were a fault to be superstitious), for it seemed a legacy rather than a keepsake.”
It can be imagined in what a sadness of heart this cast me. I knew not what to think. I could not doubt but that Mun loved me, as he had said, above every woman living; and I knew that he was speaking to the point when he declared that he and I had no need of keepsakes. I reassured myself that he and I, lying side by side together in the Church that night, had been bound by the highest of love of all, which is called Platonical, that is a communion of two souls in a love of beauty without thought of carnal fruition; yet (I asked) were we not also man and woman? Could we not expect in fairness to our mortal natures to love, one day, in a more homely and ordinary manner than the highest? Or must we admit between us only a love so ethereal and transcendent that it set Mun free to write letters to numerous young gentlewomen, yet not to me, and (if Sir Thomas were to be believed, who evidently spoke not in guile) even to give rings of his hair to a she-cousin?
This was a very troublesome and knotty point which I could not resolve, nor yet ask Mun to resolve, since I had no safe means of sending him a letter; nor would I have known how to compose one in suitable words. For the singularity of our case was that the more absolutely I prized his love for me, and he mine for him, the more abstracted it seemed from all practical and natural consequences. To be married to Mun by the Reverend Luke Proctor,” I thought, “or by any priest of the Church would be perfectly absurd—it is a paradox that I should feel that the holiness of our love was smutched by his blessing of our union. Yet can I live a maiden all my life because forsooth a man loves me too well to marry me?”
I wept all night, secretly, in a peck of puzzling doubts; yet the morning brought me neither comfort nor intelligence.
CHAPTER TEN
I Agree to Marriage
My presage, or presentiment (of which I wrote in the last chapter), that since the long shadow of Mr. Milton had fallen across my path he would soon appear himself in pers
on, was justified, and in a startling manner. One morning in the first week of May, as I was going up the stairs to my chamber after breakfast, my father came up behind me, two steps at a time, and putting his arm through mine, drew me towards his study; there he put on a merry countenance and shut the door behind him and said to me: “Dear child, I believe that I have agreeable news for you.”
“That would be a novelty, sir,” I said, “for since some weeks past I have heard little news from yourself or from anyone else but what is extreme bad.”
“That is very true,” said he, sighing. “Now that His Majesty is removed to York and there defies Parliament, and draws his leading Lords and Councillors away to him from all the country over, and the Queen is sailed, as it is said, to purchase arms abroad—why, the set-to cannot be long delayed. Alas! for our poor country! Soon blood-brothers will be charging pikes and lunging with naked swords at one another so heartily that one might mistake them for Germans. Moreover, the contending parties being so evenly matched and resolute, I cannot conclude but that the war will be long and remorselessly fought. In Oxford they promise the King victory in three weeks’ time, once he takes the field, but I say no! The South and the East, which are the richest and strongest parts of this Kingdom, are united against His Majesty, who cannot there command the loyalty even of the nobility; and the Scots, though they profess themselves satisfied with the accommodation lately given them by His Majesty, are treacherous dogs and study no interest but their own. I foresee that which side soever gains the mastery will govern a ruined country: as the wars of religion in Europe have made deserts of prosperous duchies and ruined whole kingdoms.”
“Come, sir,” said I, “now that you have given me this sad prolusion to your agreeable news, pray let me have the news itself.”
He appeared uneasy when I made this request and rambled a little in his discourse, complaining again of the uncertainties of the times. Said he: “My dear, though your mother and I hold up our heads very well here among the gentry of the neighbourhood, it is hard indeed to make ends meet with so large a family, such heavy taxes, so chargeable an estate, and so little money in hand. Let me open the case to you, now that you are of a ripe age to understand and pity my vexations. The truth is, I know not to-day where to turn for money. This Manor-house and all its appurtenances, which I took from the Bromes upon a long lease, I mortgaged soon after to Mr. George Fursman (whom you know) for a loan of £1,000, to be repaid by the midsummer of two years ago; which sum I could not rake together in good time, and, Mr. Fursman growing importunate—as one would expect from a man of his quality—in my distress I turned to good Sir Robert Pye, the Elder, to whom I already owed £300, and he comforted me. He paid Mr. Fursman on my behalf in full; and thus I owe Sir Robert £1,300, with £100 more which he asked as a consideration; and he became the mortgagee instead of Mr. Fursman. I would rather, by far, owe £10 to a knight or a gentleman than £5 to a boor.”
“So would I the same,” I told him, “if I had no prospect of paying either of them.”
My father continued: “Some years ago, also, I borrowed £400 from Mr. Edward Ashworth of Wheatley and, for his security, made over to him our freehold land there; but I fell in arrear with the interest, and just before Christmas, to prevent his entering into possession of the land and cottages, as was his right, I sold a little parcel of poor land in Wales, which was left me as a legacy and which brought me £100; and I borrowed another £300 from my cousin, Sir Edward Powell, to whom in return I assigned an under-lease of my leased land in Wheatley, for twenty-one years. So I paid Mr. Ashworth this last January, and defeated the demise; but the arrears, alas, are still unpaid.”
“All this is news indeed, sir,” said I, “but news that has a far from agreeable sound.”
“Hear me with patience, Child,” he said. “With good luck and diligence your mother and I hope to keep swimming yet, and your brothers are good boys and run me into less expense than many sons do their poor fathers, who have pinched and scraped to send them to the University and equip them for the world. However, I have not yet told you the whole tale; and while you listen to the rest of it, here is a rose-peppermint comfit to suck. Well, there was an old, old under-ranger of Shotover Forest, living in Stanton St. John, about thirty years ago; he was a Papist and a man too proud (as he said) to bow his knee in the House of Rimmon. He dared to tell the parson in his church that it was a merrier world when ministers might not marry, and that the parson’s children were bastards before God; and, having said his say, he did his do. For he absented himself from the Church for three months and was fined in a sum of £60 for his recusancy; but would not make submission even then and was fined in a sum of like amount a few months later, which was a heavy loss for a yeoman worth not more than £20 a year. This man, whose name was Dick Melton, had a son whom he sent to study at Christ Church, but who was there inclined to the new religion—which was the very cause of disagreement between my own father and myself—and whom he thereupon disinherited. The son went to London and became at first, as I have heard, a clerk to a goldsmith, and then a broker and scrivener, and grew rich and lived carefully. He was something of a musician, and composed a madrigal that was sung before Queen Elizabeth, in the same year that his recusant father paid his second fine.”
“Well, sir,” said I, “what has this fine or this madrigal to do with you or with me?”
“Nothing,” he answered. “Yet hear me out. This scrivener-musician, John Melton, lives yet, and is a harmless, sober dust-box, who has not yet lost his ears for fraudulent dealing. His old father, the recusant, claimed to be of gentle birth, alleging the worn plea that his family was undone by the wars of York and Lancaster; and the son therefore made application for a coat-of-arms to the Garter King-at-Arms, who carelessly granted it—namely, argent, a double-headed eagle displayed gules. Now, these are the arms of Mitton, a family well known in Shropshire and elsewhere; and certain it is, for the last six generations at least, that the Meltons were never Mittons, though they wrote themselves Mylton as often as not. However, the Company of Scriveners, in London, have a double-headed eagle as the chief device in their arms, which this John Melton had long displayed as a sign over his shop in Bread Street; and therefore, I suppose, he considered that he had a hen upon it. This I tell you in all fairness, for I would not connive at an heraldic fraud; but the fact is that the Garter King-at-Arms duly granted, or confirmed, the Mitton arms to the son of Old Dick Melton; and the grandson (of whom I intend to speak to you to-day) is therefore a gentleman of one descent at least, and of honest stock. There are Meltons at Stanton and Beckley, all sturdy men, though mere abecedarians in learning; and of good repute, though of lean purse.”
I asked my father a question which startled him into confessing what I believe he had intended to hide from me: “Sir, are you under any great obligations to the Melton, or Mylton, or Mitton family, that you recommend it to me so heartily? Do you owe one of them money, perhaps?”
He sighed very heavily and, said he: “Dear Child, you draw it from me—I do indeed. When old Dick Melton died he bequeathed certain cottages at Wheatley to his grandson, passing the scrivener son by, to show his continued displeasure at his religious change of coat. The grandson, another John, who had been sent to Cambridge University, but otherwise dwelt at Horton in Buckinghamshire, sold these cottages to me together with a parcel of land that marched with mine; which combinded estate I afterwards mortgaged to Mr. Ashworth as I have told you, but he rented it to me again. The price that this grandson asked for his cottages and land was £312, which I told him plainly I could not pay him at once. Well, Child, since I see you have swallowed down your comfit, I will not weary you with a more particular account of the transaction; but the plain black and white of it is that, since I never paid this grandson his £312, I now owe him £500, which is a great sum, and upon statute-staple, too; this is to say, his claim overrides all other claims upon my lands and goods, so that he can at any time enter into possession of my houses or l
ands until the payment be made to him in coin of the realm. This dormant bond has long lain asleep in his pocket, but at any time it may awake and begin to yawl.”
“That was an extremely awkward bargain,” said I with a gasp, “especially as it seems that all your other lands are already mortgaged to other gentlemen.”
He bowed his head and mumbled: “What is more, I confess that I did not think to acquaint Sir Robert Pye with this transaction when I went to him for help; for, if I had, I think he would not have been so willing to grant it.”
“I hope, sir,” I said somewhat tartly, “that the agreeable and acceptable news will presently come hopping out, like Hope from the box of Pandora in the tale, when all the winged Spites had already buzzed out and bitten and stung her to distraction.”
I was sorry for him when I had said this, because I perceived how near to weeping he was. I took his hand and stroked it and “Come, my dear father,” said I, “out with it—tell me the worst! I presume that you have a desperate notion to marry me to Mr. John Melton the Younger, as in Muscovy a father will toss his child out of the sledge to delay the pack of wolves pursuing him. Is the agreeable news merely that my mother will not oppose the match if Mr. Milton can be lured into it?”
“He is a very proper gentleman,” said my poor father, speaking quickly in a low voice, as though he were a schoolboy saying his lesson by rote, “of a small but sufficient estate, and he was an ornament to his University for his eloquence; and now he is well spoken of in London as an author. I have myself read a masque which he wrote for my Lord the Earl of Bridgewater, the President of Wales, which was enacted at Ludlow Castle and commended by all the nobility of Shropshire as a wonderful fine performance. As for his prose-writings, which are four or five pamphlets upon the question of Prelaty—I confess I am not of his way of thinking, but they are shrewd pieces and well Englished. Your Uncle Jones thinks the world of them. By the by, never address him or speak of him in his hearing as Mr. Melton, for in that point he is very tender and touchy.”
Wife to Mr. Milton Page 16