Idonia: A Romance of Old London

by Arthur Frederick Wallis

  CHAPTER XXV

  IW WHICH THE SHIPS OF WAR GO BY AND THE TALE ENDS

  To tell all that befell me ere I set foot in England once more werescarce less tedious to the reader than it was to me in the happening,who counted each day for lost until I had got home; which was uponChristmas Eve; and should prosecute my search for Idonia Avenon.

  But so strangely into peace did all my affairs seem to move, after myuncle's death (as though upon his removal who had every way troubled usso long, we were come into an unknown liberty and fulfilment of ourhopes), that my search was ended as soon almost as begun, and Idoniarestored to me within an hour of my landing at Wapping Stairs.

  'Twas the simplest cause that led me to her, as it was the simplest actof mere gratitude that I should go at once to the kindly folk on theBridge, I mean Gregory Nelson and his wife, to requite them for allthey had done for me and to excuse myself in having gone away from themso without warning as I did; which must at that time have appeared verygraceless in me and unhandsome. And being thus come to their house, asI say, who should be in the doorway, as if expressly to greet me(although she had heard nought of the arrival of the _HappyAdventure_), but Idonia herself, sweet lass! and blithe as a carolburden. 'Twas some while ere we got to relating our histories, butwhen Idonia did at length relate her own, I learnt how Nelson'sbrother, the yeoman, had found her that dreadful night, lurking aboutthe precincts of the _Fair Haven_ Inn, nigh distraught with weeping andthe terror of loneliness. He had questioned her straitly of herpurpose in being there, to whom she presently confessed she sought me,and told him where I was used to lodge, which was in this house uponLondon Bridge. And no sooner did the yeoman apprehend the matter, thanhe got permission of his captain to leave watching of the Inn, and socarried her home to his brother's wife, who tenderly cared for her,until I should return.

  "As indeed I never doubted of your doing," said Idonia, her eyesshining for very pride of this ineffable thing we had entered intopossession of; "though you have been gone a weary great while, dearheart, and no tidings have I had to comfort me."

  "Ay, and mickle tidings you needed, housewife!" interposed the scoldingvoice of Madam Nelson, that (good soul) had no notion to leave us twoby ourselves, but burst into whatever room we were in, upon the mostimpertinent excuse, as of a mislaid thimble, or a paper of pins, orelse a "Lord! be you here still?" or a "Tell me, Denis, how do theladies of Barbary wear their hair?" until I swear I was ready to pitchher out of the window for a second, but more virtuous, Jezebel.

  "Small tidings you needed, I wis," said she, "that turned even silenceto advantage, and the very winds of Heaven to your way of thinking!'He will be safe in this weather,' would 'a say when 'twas calm; or ifit blew fresh, 'Denis hath no fear of a tempest!' and with such afulsome patience of belief, as I think, had she had positive news youwere dead, she would have said you feigned it on purpose to haveleisure to think upon her."

  "Had it not been for your own good courage, mother," replied Idonia,with a run of laughter, "I had often enough desponded. And 'twas youwent to Mr. Osborne for me, as Mr. Nelson did to the Council, to giveaccount how matters had gone, and to exonerate this long lad ofremissness."

  "Tilly vally!" cried the lady. "I exonerate none of your lovers, notI, that steal away at midnight, to leave their sweethearts weeping bythe shore!" And so, as if blown thence by the strong gust of herresentment, she was gone from us, ere I could mend her wilfulmisconstruction of the part I had been enforced to play.

  But that part of captive I was now content enough to continue in forjust so long as Idonia willed, who held me to her, and by a thousandlinks bound me, pronouncing my sentence in terms I shall neither everforget nor shall I now repeat them. Such sweet words of a maid are notsingular, I think, but rather be common as death; to which for thefirst time they give the only right meaning, as of a little ford thatlies in a hollow of the highway of love....

  I told her gently of her guardian's drowning, at which report sheshuddered and turned away her face. But all she said was: "He was akind man to me, but otherwise, I fear, very wicked."

  We spoke of the Chinese jar, that had contained that great treasure ofdiamonds and precious stones my uncle had rent away and stolen fromthose he privily slew. Idonia said it had been seized upon by theparty of soldiers that had searched the Inn, and that the Queen hadconfiscated it to her own use, as indeed she was accustomed to keepwhatever prizes came into her hands, without scruple of lawfulpropriety. "Which was the occasion, I fear, of some sharp passagesbetwixt Madam Nelson and her husband," said Idonia, with a smile, "shebeing for his boldly demanding them of the Queen's Secretary, aspertaining to my dowry, but he stoutly dissenting from such a course,and, I hold, rightly. But in either case I would not have kept them,knowing as I do how they were come by; and although the loss of themleaveth us poor."

  I was of her mind in that, and said so. However, we were not to be sopoor as we then supposed; for besides the jewels which Her Grace hadpossessed herself of, with her slender and capable fingers, there wasafterwards discovered a pretty big sum of money her guardian had laidup, together with his testament and general devise of all he had toIdonia Avenon, whom he named his sole heir. This we learned from theattorney in whose hands as well the money was, as the will, whichhimself had drawn; who, upon my solemn attestation, and the witness ofCaptain Tuchet, admitted, and procured it to be allowed by themagistrates, that Botolph Cleeve, the testator, was legally deceased,and Idonia Avenon, the beneficiary, incontestably alive. And upon ourcounting over the sum (we both being notable accountants, as is alreadysufficiently known), we found it more by nigh a thousand pounds than myfather had formerly lost by this man whose death now allowed of therestitution of all. For Idonia would hear of nothing done until myfather should be first paid, and of her own motion made proposal thatwe should immediately journey down into Somerset to pay him, in thewhich course I concurred with great contentment, for it was alreadynear upon two years since I had set eyes upon him, and upon our oldhome of Combe.

  The snow lay somewhat less thickly upon the downs, as we rode over thempast Marlborough and Devizes, than it had done when I set out in thecompany of that very warlike scholar, Mr. Jordan, whose campaign I hadseen to be diverted against the books and featherbeds of BaynardsCastle, with so singular a valour and so remote a prospect to be everdetermined.

  Idonia was delighted with these great fields, all white and shining,that we passed over, they being like nothing she had ever seen, shesaid, except once, when she had gone with her guardian into Kent, wherehe lay one whole winter in hiding, though she did not know wherefore.

  By nights it was my custom to request a lodging for Idonia of theclergyman of the town we rested at, while I myself would lie at theinn; and by this means I was enabled to renew my pleasant acquaintancewith the Curate of Newbury; who (it will be remembered) had preachedthat Philippic sermon against the Papists, and had moreover soearnestly desired me that I should tell the Archbishop of his adding arood of ground to his churchyard. He seemed, methought, a littledejected when I said I had had none occasion to His Grace, whotherefore remained yet in ignorance of the progress the Church made inNewbury; but he soon so far forgot his disappointment as to tell me ofan improvement of his tithes-rents, by which he was left with seventeenshillings to the good at Michaelmas; and with a part of this surplus hehad, he confessed, been tempted to purchase of a pedlar a certain bookin the French tongue called _Pantagruel_, from which he had derived noinconsiderable entertainment, albeit joined to some scruples upon thematters therein treated of, whether they were altogether such as heshould be known to read them.

  "However, since none here hath any French but I," said he, "I bethoughtme that no public scandal was to be feared, and so read on."

  We rode into the little town of Glastonbury, where it lieth under itsstrange and conical steep hill, about four o'clock in the afternoon; itbeing then, I think, toward the end of January, and clear stillweather. And because it was already dusk I wou
ld not proceed furtherthat day; but in the morning, before daybreak, we proceeded againforward, going by the ridgeway that, as a viaduct, standeth high abovethe levels, then all veiled in chill grey mists. We got into Taunton alittle ere noon, and there baited our horses, being determined to endour journey before nightfall, which we could not have done except bythis respite. The name of Simon Powell had been so oft upon my lips,and I had with so many and lively strokes depainted him in conversationwith Idonia, that she had come to know him almost as well as I, andthus I was hardly astonished when she turned about in her saddle togaze after a young man that walked in a meadow a little apart from thehighway as we were entering the hamlet of Tolland, and asked me whetherhe were not, as in truth he was, my old companion.

  Marvellous glad to meet with Simon after this long interval, I drewrein and beckoned to him, who, running forward almost at the sameinstant, took my hand, gloved as it was, and covered it with kisses.

  "How doth my father?" I demanded eagerly, and ere he had concluded hissalutation.

  "His worship may mend when he sees you come home," said he gravely, andby that I saw I was not to indulge too large a hope of his mending.

  "I would we were indeed arrived home, Simon," I replied; "but at allevents, this lodging shall soon be exchanged for a better; that is, ifhe may yet bear to be moved."

  We walked our horses along very slowly, Simon between us as we went, towhom Idonia addressed herself so kindly that the lad, falling instantlyin love with her, had nearly forgot the principal thing of all he hadto say, which was that Sir Matthew Juke had but at the Christmasquarter-day past renounced his tenancy of the Court and gone toBristol, where he had formed the acquaintance of a merchant-adventurerthat was about to attempt the Northwest passage (as it is named,although none hath yet found it); and upon this voyage the knight alsowas set to go.

  "His head is full of the design," said Simon, "so that those about himfear his wits unsettled, and indeed he spends the better part of everyday poring upon books of navigation, treatises of Sir Humphrey Gilbertand the like, while his speech is ever of victualling and charts andships' logs, but of other things, and even in the Justices' room at theSessions, never a word."

  "Say you he hath resigned his lease of our house at Combe?" cried I,interrupting him for the very impatience of my joy; and when I knew hecertainly had so done, struck the spurs into my tired beast andgalloped forward to the Inn.

  Of the interval I say nothing, nor of the mutual delight with which myfather and I embraced each other; and afterwards of the bestowal of hiswelcome upon Idonia, which he did with that accustomed courtly grace ofhis, and bound the maid to him in love by the simple manner of hisdoing it.

  Within a week, or perhaps a little over, we were all returned to theCourt, where Idonia was at once proclaimed mistress; and a week afterEaster we were married. My father was for giving up to us the greatroom, hung about with tapestries, he had always used, but neitherIdonia nor I would allow of it, preferring for our own chamber thathigh narrow attic in the tower that had been mine before, and was,moreover, as wholesome and sweet a place as any man could lead a wifeto, with a rare prospect of meadow and moorland from the window; too,and away up the deep valley to where it is closed in ascending ranks ofpines.

  Here yet we live, Idonia and I: "Idonia of Petty Wales" I have namedher, and Simon is therefore wondrous pleased to suppose some affinityin her to his wild ancestors, of whom he now tells her, as he formerlydid me, incredible long legends; yet none so out of all compass ofbelief as is the story we might have told him, had we chosen, of thatruinous secret house over against the Galley Quay, where she dwelt solong, pure and brave, amidst desperate evil men.

  Here we live, as I say, Idonia and I, but no longer my father, whoafter we had been married but a year, died. Worn out by that lingeringmalady of which I have spoken, and having been for so long a whileconfined to that poor shelter where, I learned, was to be had themerest necessaries but nothing to foster his strength, he soon gavemanifest signs that the betterment of his fortune had come too late toadvantage him. To himself it had of necessity been well known, but theknowledge neither discouraged him at all, nor caused him to exchangehis habitual discourse for those particular sentences that men in suchcase will sometimes burden their speech withal.

  In Idonia's company he seemed to take an extraordinary quiet pleasure,and indeed spoke with her (as she afterwards told me) of matters he hadseldom enlarged upon with me, but to which she opened so ready anapprehension as drew him on from familiar chat to reveal to her themost cherished speculations of his mind. To me he continued as Ialways remember him, using that gentle satire that was a sauce to allhis sayings. He would oftenwhiles question me of the difficulties anddangers of my sojourn in London, but although he would hear meattentively, I knew he took small pleasure in tales of tumult andstrife. There was in his nature that touch of woman that, however, isnot womanliness but rather is responsive to the best a woman hath; andthus it was, in the perfect sympathy that marked his converse withIdonia, I read, more clearly than I had done in all the years we hadlived together, the measure of his loss in losing his wife, and thepitiful great need which he endeavoured so continuously, in hisreading, to fill.

  I had supposed him to be a complete Stoick, and to have embracedwithout reservation the teaching of that famous school; but Idonia, towhom I spoke of it, told me that it was not altogether so.

  "For," she said, "it was but a week since, as we sat together on theside of the moor yonder, that he repeated to me a sentence of the RomanEmperor's, whose works he ever carrieth about with him, in which hebids a wise man expect each day to meet with idle men and fools andbusybodies and arrogant men. But that, your father said, was to bid aman shut himself up alone in a high tower, whence he should look downupon his fellows instead of mixing with them and trying to understandthem. Expect rather, he said, to meet each day with honest, kindlymen; in which expectation if you be disappointed, then consider whetherthe cause of offence lieth not in you; the other man being full aslikely to be inoffensive as yourself."

  Of time he was wont to say, "When one says to you: There is no timelike the present, reply to him that indeed there is no time but thepresent: future and past being but as graven figures on a milestonewhich a man readeth and passeth upon his road."

  "In order to the greatest happiness in this life," he said, "it is wellfreely to give to others all they shall require at your hands, beingwell assured that they will readily leave you in the enjoyment of thatthe only real possession of yours, which is your thoughts."

  To Idonia, who once asked him why he had never written down the ruleshe lived by, he answered with his grave smile that rules were the falsescent, subtle or obvious, with which the escaping outlaw, thought,deludes its pursuers, sworn of the law.

  But the speech that hath struck the deepest in me was spoken when hegave Idonia, as he did, that picture of my mother, of whom he said (butnot of himself) that she had known a world of sorrow, and after awhileadded that "he believed ere she died she had found her sorrow fashionedto a splendid gift."

  I accurately remember the last day he lived, in every least accident ofit: the sense of beauty that all things seemed to have above theordinary, and the stillness that clung about the Combe.

  We had gone up, all three, and old Peter Sprot with us, to a littlecoppice of firs upon the moor side, to see a squadron of the Queen'sships, that went down the Channel under the command of Sir RichardGrenville, who was lately appointed to survey the defences of the West,and to marshal the trained bands that had been put into readinessagainst the expected, but long delayed, invasion of the Spanish.

  Our talk was naturally of war, and the chances we had to withstand sonotable an army as was gathering against us, upon which my father said,very quiet, that the principal thing was never victory, but the notbeing afraid. Later on, as if pursuing a train of thought that thisobservation had set him on, he said--

  "That which we are accustomed to call the future hath bee
n by the eldermen of all ages generally despaired of, or at the least feared; and Ithink it always will be so, for an old man's courage naturally turnethbackward to the past and occupieth itself in enlarging the obstacleshimself hath overcome, which no young man again might do; and thismaketh him fearful, and oftentimes angry too."

  He paused there upon Idonia's pointing with her finger to the Admiralthat just then shook out her standard from the mast-head, but presentlyproceeded, smiling: "Had England not already a motto to her shield Iwould petition the Heralds to subscribe these words beneath it, that inwhat estate so ever we be found, we be neither angry nor afraid."

  He sat silent after that, and I thought seemed to fetch his breathsomething uneasily. However, he lay back against the bole of a firawhile as resting himself.

  "Of ourselves too," he went on at length, "I would have it written whenwe die, not that we did no wrong, for of none may that be said, butthat as we entered into life without knowledge, so we departed from itwithout shame. For to be ashamed is to deny."

  He closed his eyes then, and we thought slept. But when the ships hadgone by, Peter Sprot touched my arm and pointed to him. He was alreadydead.

  We bore him down through the golden sunlight, strangely troubled, but Ithink, too, filled with the thought of the majesty of such a dying.And I was glad his end was upon the hills, rather than in the valley;for life is ever an ascending, or should be, and to its consummationreacheth with face upturned toward the vehicle of light.

  THE END.