As Meat Loves Salt. Maria McCann

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       SIX Prince Rupert

      Some days later I emerged from the wood on the northern side, having torn every garment and twisted my shoes almost off my feet, but that weighed little against the inner torment that rent me. I would almost have been glad to be taken by Biggin and be done with it, yet the miserable cowardice of the flesh made me still listen for the sound of men and shrink down in the bushes if I heard any. On coming out of the trees and seeing the highway fair and open before me, I felt a deliverance of body if not of soul. The morning was soft and my road lay between fair green hills, so evenly balanced that I seemed walking in a picture.

      Behold, said the Voice, earthly beauty. It is nothing but seeming, for to the uninstructed eye the world appears fruitful and sweet, yet in it is nothing but a pile of skulls, showing where others were lost as they went before.

      ‘I am lost,’ I answered, ‘and can never be found again.’

      Not one of us merits salvation. We are too feeble and corrupt to attain to it or form the most childish conception thereof. Yet God shows His mercy in saving some, and His justice in condemning others. Father told this to Izzy and me, and spoke to us of the Elect: he tried to explain these things to Zeb also, more than once, but the boy was too young and foolish, and began to cry. The Elect are chosen from before the beginning of time, and are known by their inner light and godly conversation. Within me all was darkness, and neither my conversation nor my conduct godly. I must look, then, to have Hell as my portion. God cuts out our path, makes a groove in the clay with His finger, and we poor blind ants slide down into it.

      I was not long out from the trees when I fell prey to savage thirst. Like a fool, I had not thought to drink deep from the stream before quitting it, I was come across no other water in the wood, and now I sweated much in the sun. Men are wont to think of our England as a soft green land, nourished at the breast of many rivers; yet I can prove by bitter experience that it is possible to walk for miles along the King’s highway and find no more than a puddle. On coming to the first village I dared not stop, lest word of our flight had reached there, and methought the wedding garments were like to become the mark by which all might know me and put me to death. There was a well, however, by the church, and winding up the bucket I put my head in it like a horse. Pulling out I saw a woman draw back from a high window as if she thought I would leap up to her.

      Just after the last house in the village I found a sign which told me I could turn left onto the Devizes road. I had some crazed idea of walking to Bristol, now that the city was fallen. Any kind of work requiring strength was mine for the asking; in such a large place I might surely earn my bread in safety.

      It came to me that if Caro and Zeb were not gone home they might also fix on Bristol as being a place where they could offload the rings and necklaces. Should I find her there, I would throw myself on my knees and beg pardon. I trudged along rehearsing a vow that all the rest of her life I should never lift a hand save in her defence. At other times I blamed her for leaving me so utterly destitute of the means to live: her loud honesty, I reflected bitterly, had not stopped her taking all the gold. Then I recalled their plight, a beautiful young woman in a low-cut gown, the only man who might protect her broken and feverish. Some kite would have the jewels away from them as easily as I had possessed myself of Walshe’s knife, and perhaps do evil on them as I had upon him. But if they scaped – and here the Devil put it in my mind that they lay together at an inn. The bed was soft; she dressed his wounds and passed her hands over the rest of him. Again I saw the shirt slide up over his chest; she gazed, and gazed – she fastened the gold chains round his neck – at that I shook my head like a baited bull, to clear it, and felt her put the betrothal ring in my hand. I had searched for it on discovering their flight, but it was lost in the leaves. The memory of her flinging it away was a knife to me. I prayed that I might learn of their safety, might be delivered from my misery, might be revenged – I knew not what to pray for, and all for nothing anyway. God is not moved from His great designs by the prayers of the righteous, how much less does He care for the whinings of the damned!

      The Devizes road was straight enough, but I made slow progress as my feet pained me sadly by now. After an hour of walking I took off my shoes and found a fat blister on the back of each toe, and my right heel split like a plum. Yet it was better than going barefoot and even limping along I could surely manage fourteen miles before dark. As I went along my conscience wrangled within me, and my sense, also turbulent, worked me to such a pitch that I passed along the road without seeing it, thus saying to myself:

      She is my wife. Espoused de praesenti, and the – act – in the wood does consummate.

      Aye, but spiritually it is clean different. Tears do not argue consent—

      I AM HER HUSBAND.

      Zeb will lie with her. She will be as Patience – she put her hands on him that way in the wood, they have made their game of me I perceive—

      CHRIST let me think no more of this.

      My thirst returned upon me most cruelly.

      Once, when I was a growing boy, the three of us were allowed back to Mother’s cottage for a saint’s day, and while in the village I stole some walnuts from a neighbour’s СКАЧАТЬ