Foxholme Hall, and Other Tales. Kingston William Henry Giles

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СКАЧАТЬ in the neighbourhood. Among others he asked after Master Alwyn and his dame. They were living as before in the old house, and enjoying good health and strength.

      “They had a daughter,” observed the minstrel, in a calm voice.

      “Oh, the hussy! – she long since went away with a gay knight, who came with a band to carry her off, and no one knows what has become of her,” answered his loquacious informant.

      “It is false!” exclaimed the minstrel, starting up. Then, suddenly checking himself, he added: “I mean, such reports as these often get about without due foundation.”

      However, he could not calm the agitation this information caused him, and, having paid his reckoning and slung the harp he carried over his shoulder, he left the house. He took his way towards Beauville. Father Mathew was standing at the entrance as he approached the old castle.

      “Go thy way – go thy way; we want no vagrants here. We have enough of our own starving poor to feed without yielding to the rapacity of strangers,” cried the father, eyeing him askance.

      The minstrel humbly turned aside, and, not far off, met old Roger Bertram. He was about to avoid him, when Roger, eyeing him narrowly, hobbled forward, for he could not run, and, taking him in his arms, exclaimed:

      “My son – my own boy – my young master – and art thou really come back sound in limb and health? Thrice happy is this day.”

      The minstrel was no other than Sir Herbert de Beauville. He seemed too much broken in spirits even to laugh at the way Father Mathew had treated him. He had escaped, not without difficulty, after the defeat of the pretended Richard of York, who, acknowledging himself as Perkin Warbeck, had surrendered to the King. Herbert had now only one object on earth for which he desired to live – to establish the fair fame of Mistress Gertrude Alwyn; and he had resolved, he said, to trace out the author of the calumnies he had heard against her, or, if he could not do that, to punish every one who had been known to utter them.

      It appeared that her disappointed suitor, Master Thomas Fisher, had been heard to repeat the evil reports concerning her. Here, then, was an object on whom he could wreak his vengeance. Master Fisher had, by means of the wealth which had fallen to him, been able to purchase a title and honours of the mercenary king, and he now gave himself all the airs of an old noble. When, therefore, Sir Herbert challenged him to mortal combat on account of words uttered against the fair fame of a damsel undeserving of such reproach, he was compelled to accept the challenge. Space does not permit a description of the combat. The newly-made baron was overthrown, and as Sir Herbert stood over him with his drawn sword, he confessed that he had himself, in revenge, inserted a small pebble in a hole under the rocking-stone, by which it became fixed and incapable of moving. On this Sir Herbert granted him his life, on condition that he should repeat the statement whenever he should so require him to do. He had it also made out in writing and duly attested, and, with this document in his hand, he set out to visit Master Alwyn and his dame. His heart sank within him when he learned from them that Mistress Gertrude was not their daughter, but the only child of the Earl of Fitz-Stephen, who had, by the sacrifice of a portion of his patrimony, which had gone into the king’s coffers, lately regained the remainder. His spirits, however, rose again when they encouraged him to hasten forthwith to, the earl’s castle and to try his fortune with the lady, showing her the document he had brought with him. He followed their advice; the Lady Gertrude received him in a way to satisfy his utmost hopes, and presented him to her father as the only person she would ever marry. They were accordingly wedded, and by living in privacy till the death of Henry, Sir Herbert escaped being implicated in the attempts made by the pretended Richard of York to gain the English crown.

      Story 3-Chapter I

      STORY THREE – Reginald Warrender; or, Early Days at Eton

      “Reginald, my boy, I was at Eton myself, and, in spite of some drawbacks, I loved the old place right dearly, and so I intend to go with you, and to introduce you to all the spots I remember so well; but I don’t suppose any of my old acquaintance and chums are still to be found there. However, the very sight of the walls and towers of the school, the meadows, the river, and the Castle in the distance, will make me young again. You will find a good deal of difference between it and where you have been before. The discipline there is apt to take a good deal of pride and self-sufficiency out of a fellow – not that you have much of them, I hope. The tutor I have chosen for you, Mr Lindsay, is a first-rate man. You are to live in his house. I was at a dame’s – a real dame – a very good, old lady, though some are men you will find. There is much the same discipline and order kept in both. We will have our portmanteaus packed by Friday, so that we will sleep in London, and go down there on Saturday morning, that you may have the best part of that day and Sunday to look about you.”

      These remarks were made by Squire Warrender to his son, who had hitherto been at a boarding-school, where he had received the first rudiments of his education.

      Reginald thanked his father for his intentions.

      “It will be very delightful to have you with me, papa,” he exclaimed; “it will not feel at all as if I were going to school; and, besides, Eton is the place of all others I wished to go to. I don’t much fear the fagging or the bullying, and I can take pretty good care of myself now.”

      In truth Reginald had no longer any dread about going to school. He had accepted schooling as a necessity of boyish existence, and had made up his mind to endure all its ups and downs with equanimity. The day for their departure arrived. Mary, his sister, did not fail to promise to write as usual, and John assured his young master that he would take good care of Polly, his pony, and Carlo and the other dogs, and the ferrets, and all his other animate or inanimate treasures. Reginald had been disinclined to accept Mrs Dawson’s offer to fill a hamper with her stores; but the Squire recollected that in his time, at all events, such things were not looked on at all with contempt by the youngsters at Eton; so a hamper even better supplied than before was provided for him. The Squire and he started away in very good spirits, cutting jokes to the last as they drove off. They had no time to see sights in London, and early the next morning, after breakfast, they started off with all Reginald’s property for the Great Western station, and within an hour the latter found himself in the long-thought-of and often-pictured town of Eton. He looked out eagerly on either side as they drove along towards his tutor’s. So did the Squire, especially when they reached the High Street. Many a place did he seem to recognise.

      “Ah! there it is just as it was,” he was continually exclaiming. “There’s my old sock-shop —soake, a local term for baking, is the better spelling. I spent money enough there, so perhaps they will remember me; so we will have a look in there by-and-by. Ah! there’s the Christopher too, where we will go and dine. I dare say Lindsay will ask us; but I must be back in town to-night, and it would delay me to accept his invitation, and perhaps we may fall in with some acquaintance whom you may like to ask to dine with us.” The Christopher was an hotel, Reginald found, much patronised by the boys and their friends. Mr Lindsay was in school, but Mrs Lindsay was at home, and received them very kindly. Reginald thought her a very nice person, and so she was, and contributed much, as a lady always can if she sets the right way about it, to make the house thoroughly comfortable and pleasant to its inmates. She told Reginald that his room was ready for him. How proud he felt to find that he was to have one entirely to himself! His things were at once taken up to it, and he begged the Squire to come up and have a look at it. It was not very large; but the walls were neatly papered, and it looked perfectly clean. Neither was the furniture of a grand description. There was a bedstead, which, when turned up, looked like a cupboard, and a sideboard of painted deal, a small oak chest of drawers, or rather a bureau, in the upper part of which cups and saucers, and plates, and a metal teapot, and a few knives and forks and a muffin-dish, were arranged, and there was a deal table covered with a red cloth, and two rather hard horsehair-bottomed chairs.

      “Here СКАЧАТЬ