“A church, sir? In a forest?”
“Aye. For it’s not that sort of forest--not a place where trees have been since time began. It’s the other sort of forest, the hunting demesne. Have you heard of one in the south, below Winchester?”
“The one called New, though it’s old?”
“That one. And after that manner is Pendle, though it’s wilder and it’s rougher. It was the hunting forest of the Lacys up at Clitheroe yonder. They came with Norman William, and for four hundred years they held it and they hunted it. Therefore the hamlets--booths, we call them. They were for the foresters and verderers. Therefore also the church. The monks at Whalley saw to that. But the monks are gone now, and the Lacys, too, and we who stay put the place to what use we can. But it’s still a wild uncomely place where it’s better to be wise than seemly.”
The steep road swung to the left and grew narrower and steeper. At its top it turned sharply, and soon they were dropping down a gradient that set the horses stumbling and scraping. It brought them to a narrow stream which splashed noisily in a stony bed.
“Sabden brook,” said Roger. “You’ll come to know it better.”
The horses toiled up the killing slope beyond, and when at last they gained its summit there was rolling parkland to their right. Roger halted at a simple gate.
“We’ll save a mile and ride in here,” he said.
Margery heard him with relief. She had had more than enough of the saddle for one day. But this day was not yet done, and her cousin had yet a surprise for her. Now, at journey’s end, he showed her yet another of his moods. He turned his back on the gate, and deliberately walked his horse up the slope on the other side of the road. Margery followed, wondering what this portended; and when she came up with him he was sitting his horse in silence and staring across a steep valley to Pendle Hill beyond.
Neither of them spoke, and Margery, catching his mood, stared also at the scene. The sun was just sinking, and to her left the western sky was a blaze of gold, streaked with silver cloud. Before her, the great hill, green no longer, was a soft smoking blue, deeper where the gullies were; at its foot the trees were black. And as she watched, while the sun slipped lower and the silver clouds turned red, a deep purple crept out of the gullies and spread itself over all. It crept up to meet the sky. It crept down to engulf the trees. It spread, and it deepened, till all the hill was one vast brooding thing.
Roger spoke softly.
“Our country folk have at times a happy trick of speech. Daylight Gate, they call this hour. And surely it is a thing from God.”
Then his horse stamped and whinnied, and at once he was on earth again.
“Come!” he said. “The mist’s rising. We’ll be better within doors.”
Margery came down the stair in some trepidation. She had made what haste she could. There had been a country girl waiting in her bedchamber, a girl who had named herself Anne Sowerbutts and professed herself at Mistress Whitaker’s service. There had been, too, another proof of somebody’s thought--a great tub of steaming water, a rare luxury, and a welcome one after three such weeks of travelling. And now Margery, refreshed and refurbished, was coming down the stair, very trim and neat in her new kirtle of saye and her flowered sarcenet gown. Yet she had a doubt. She remembered her cousin’s homely clothes, his leather jerkin and his serge breeches, and she was asking herself anxiously whether he wore such homespun of an evening. She had heard that many country gentlemen did, and if so she would feel overdressed and out of place; but there was no help for it, and certainly she had nothing else that she could fittingly wear. So she tilted her chin, steadied her breath, and marched boldly into the room he had called his parlour.
Her fear of being overdressed ended at the first glance. At the end of the long oak-panelled room a fire sizzled on a stone hearth. Above the hearth, on the wide shelf of stone, candles burned, two at either end; between them, clear in their warm light, was a slowly ticking clock, done in black with the base of it set in silver; and leaning against the chimney-breast, gazing pensively at the clock, was Roger Nowell--but a different Roger Nowell. He was in wine-red velvet, with arabesques of gold on his doublet-front; cloth-of-gold made his girdle and shone in the slashings of his sleeves. He wore no gown, but stood slim and strong in the glow of the candles and the flicker of the fire. In his hand was a tall-stemmed glass, deep and sparkling, and the red wine matched his velvet.
He turned to greet her, correct, elegant, and very sure of himself. Then, when she was come half way down the room, he grew very straight and erect; and lifting his glass almost to his eyes, he smiled at her across the wine. At that she stopped, and sensing a salutation she sank into a full curtsey.
He sipped his wine. But as she rose he looked very searchingly at her, from her head to her feet; and she stood very still, knowing that he was appraising her clothes.
The smile flickered across his face again, and he nodded as though pleased.
“Of a puritan severity,” was his comment. “But within that, good.”
It was Margery’s turn to smile, as much from relief as from pleasure.
“Of your own choice?” he asked. “Not wholly. My sister....“
“I guessed as much. But the habit you wore today?” She nodded.
“That was----” She stopped; then coloured a little as she changed the word she had meant to use.
“That was ours,” she amended it. “It is of my choice and of your kindness. For which, sir, my grateful thanks.”
“Say not so. I’ve had daughters. But let’s not linger on this. It’s more than time we supped.”
He led her from the parlour and thence to a room much larger, and this was a pool of shadow with only the centre bright; but here was candle light on oak, and set on the oak was silver of a sort she had never seen. The candles and the flowers were set in silver; the salt and the spices were in silver; the spoons and skewers were of silver; and every piece was so wrought and chased that even she, all unversed in such matters, knew it to be the work of no common craftsman. Servants in blue and white placed their chairs, and when she was seated she looked again across the gleaming oak to the wonderful silver and to her cousin in his red and gold; and seeing all this, she found herself wondering at the contrast from the rough simplicity of his riding-clothes. Then he caught her thought and smiled.
“In these days,” he explained, “I’m so much among the country folk by day that by nightfall I’m almost rustic. Which is why, for an hour or two, I make it my business to be otherwise. There are gentlemen enough who forget the need for that.”
A roast of mutton appeared, and the plates were set before them. There was nothing rustic in his eating, she noted; for he used only knife and skewer, and never set fingers to his meat. Then, while she was attentive to match his manners, he spoke again.
“You chose your riding-habit with a pretty taste,” he told her. “It will serve you excellent well to the church on Sundays. Indeed, little cousin....“
He stopped to look across at her, his forehead crinkling with amusement.
“Indeed, sir?”
“It may bring some green faces among the proud wives of Whalley--and I’ll not promise they’ll like you the better for that.”
But her smile was as mischievous as his.
“I’ll not forgo it for that, sir, since it seems that you approve it.”
“I approve it well--for Whalley. Not so well for the Forest. You’ll be safer there in rustics.”
They finished with the mutton, and the plates were taken. Margery looked next for the usual beans and cabbage, but instead she found a thing like a great misshapen egg with a pale brown skin. She stared blankly at it, and Roger burst out laughing.
“Never fear, little cousin! It’s no more than a vegetable. Try eating it!”
“But how? And what is it?”
“As to how, with knife and skewer. As to what, it’s from a plant of Virginia, this being the root of it. The name of it, potato. I brought the seed home myself, and it grows tolerably in the garden here.”
Margery prodded the thing doubtfully, then cut it and dutifully tasted the queer stuff. Roger watched with amusement. But later, when the tarts and cheesecakes had come and gone, he took her back to the parlour and poured wine for her; then, taking from the ingle shelf a thick brown book, he handed it to her without comment. She opened it and found it to be called a Herbal, being a book that told curious things of curious plants; and while Roger busied himself further at the ingle shelf, she turned to its title-page and learned that it had been written by one John Gerard a dozen years before; and on this page, besides his name, there was a portrait engraved of this Master Gerard holding out a plant that had flowers above and these potato things below.
She looked up from the book, and at once her interest was transferred to her cousin; for he had taken from the shelf a tiny bowl of white clay with a long curving tube leaving it at one side; and now, with this tube put in his mouth, he had taken a flaming brand from the fire and was holding it to the bowl. Smoke rose, and a strange fragrance; and Margery, watching intently, remembered that her brothers had spoken much against a habit called the drinking of tobacco. They had said that it was spreading in the town; and no doubt this was it.
“Another plant from Virginia,” said Roger, as he saw her interest. “You’ll get to know it if you stay by me. But have you read all in the book that touches the potato plant?”
She had not, and she applied herself to the Herbal again. There was more about the potato than the engraving, for she found some pages where were set out the nature and habits of this odd plant, which, it seemed, Master Gerard had made shift to grow for himself in his garden at Holborn. Margery read with interest.
“Little cousin!”
She looked up with a start, and found Roger watching her with a smile and crinkle that in herself would have presaged mischief. She put the book down on her knee and faced him.
“This potato has an odd taste. Myself, I find it pleasing, but others do not. That may be true of more out of Holborn than potato.”
She coloured a little as she caught the double meaning. She had just come from Holborn. But at once he reassured her.
“I’ve said I find the taste pleasing. It’s the others who do not, and it’s with them I’m concerned just now.”
He took some sheets of paper from the press behind his chair.
“All in all, I’d three letters concerning you,” he said. “The first, from a brother Alexander, announced your--being of this world. That was when I desired to see you. The second, from a brother Richard, announced your coming. It spoke somewhat in your praise, but more in the praise of a sister Prudence who was to oversee your buyings. That was when I supposed you’d be glad to buy without her if I sent you the means.”
He put down the two letters and flicked the sheets of a third. Margery sat tense and alert. She had not known there had been a third.
“Both of those spoke in your praise. But this last does not.” He held it up. “It’s again from this brother Richard. It was written after you had left, and it passed you on the road. He thought, no doubt, that when you were away and beyond knowledge, he might more safely speak his mind. So you’d best know what his mind is.”
Margery looked at him, flushed and unhappy. This was mean of Richard.
“He writes that you are wilful and of a great conceit, that you are impatient of counsel, disobedient and insolent to your elders. He adds that you stand in much need of a round curbing, and he hopes that I’ll supply it. And for that work he gives me the approval and authority of your brothers--which I’m no doubt to suppose kind of him.”
Margery sat silent, hating Richard. Nothing in this letter could be wholly denied; everything in it could poison her cousin’s esteem of her. She had thought that Richard could be paltry; she had known he could be vicious. But this exceeded anything she had supposed of him.
“The little rat!”
Roger’s low mutter burst into her thoughts like a thunderclap; and then this unbelievable cousin of hers rose from his chair, swept up all the sheets, and deliberately thrust them into the fire. He stood in silence, watching as they burned; and when nothing remained of them but some grey flakes, he turned and looked her in the eye.
“To have written such a tale at the outset would have been honest,” he said. “Not to have written it at all would have been generous. But to write it when you had started....“
He shrugged in disgust.
“You’ll note that I’ve not questioned its truth,” he went on. “I verily believe you have all those faults. Is it not so?”
Margery hung her head in embarrassment.
“It ... it may be so,” she said slowly.
“It is surely so,” came the swift answer. “Because, little cousin....“
An incisive ring had come into his voice, and Margery looked up nervously.
“Because, little cousin, it’s the exact tale, word by word and fault by fault, that has ever been told of me.”
“Oh!” She gasped with relief.
“So we’ll not quarrel over that. It’s others that are like to do the quarrelling, and it’s for us to stand together. And indeed I think we’re too much akin to quarrel. You, too, may perhaps find odd tastes pleasing.”
Margery gaped at him. Then she laughed a little wildly, and suddenly burst into tears.
He showed some wisdom at that. He left her alone, and sat at his ease with his wine and tobacco. But when she had recovered herself and was able to smile ruefully at him, he put down his glass and pipe and came across to her chair. He took both her hands and drew her to her feet.
“You’ve had a deal of travelling,” he said. “And this has been a day both long and trying. Sleep’s your best medicine. So get you to bed and seek it.”
He pulled at a bell-cord.
“I have an ill repute with some,” he told her, “and I foresee that you will have the same. But that’s no matter so long as you have esteem of those you do esteem.”
He put down her hands and spoke more lightly.