Chapter VI: Part 6

With some difficulty Viracocha read the name, which was traced faintly, in a delicate female hand—“Doña Rosa de Merçedes y Guevara.”

“Yes, that was her name—Rosa. It is the name of a fragrant flower that grows beyond the Mother Sea,—they say nothing like it was ever seen in our country till the Spaniards brought it over. The book was made by a good man—a great speaker, who used to tell the people to be good, as the Dominicans do in the great church on saints’ days. Mamallay loved his words; she says no one else ever spoke to her heart as he did. But afterwards he did something wicked: I know not what, I only know they put him in prison. Yet the book is very good, and full of words about our Lord. His name comes often. I cannot read the hard words; but I can read _that_, and it does me good.” She paused to take breath, then resumed—“But you are wise, Viracocha. You know the white man’s learning. So I wish you, when I go away, to have my book for your own. My other things (they are not many) my grandfather will have, and Coyllur. But my book shall be yours, because you can read it, and because I love you, brother.”

“I thank you, dear nũsta. But I hope you will live a long time yet.”

“It is not best for me to live. The Lord Christ knows that. How good He is! He saw me standing, all this time, outside the gate. He knew I longed—oh, how sorely!—to go in. But I would not until He called; no, I would not! Now He has called. Mamallay said so the last day I saw her. She told me His words,—‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ His own words, Viracocha!”

But Viracocha cared not for them just then. He did not labour, nor was he heavy laden.

Sumac presently resumed—“My brother, since I have grown too weak to walk to the convent garden, I have much time for thinking. And as I think, things grow clear to me. Best it seems to me now that you should wed my sister.”

“That is my dearest hope—one day.”

“But, Viracocha, life is too short to be waiting for ‘one day.’ Why not ask my grandfather to give her to you now?”

Viracocha’s black eyes became coals of fire, and his cheek burned through its olive hue;—but he was silent.

“Well?”—Sumac whispered.

“Ask him to give me Chasca, the evening star, from the sky! No, nũsta,—no! Not till I shall have done that which may give me right to claim a boon so priceless.”

“What is it you want to do?” the dying girl asked wistfully.

“Nũsta, you know.”

“I am not sure I do, you talk of so many strange things. Yet I can guess. You want to cross the Mother Sea, Viracocha.”

“_Arri! arri!_[41] And to come back with an English army, sent by the great King, to restore the Inca. And then, as the deliverer of my people, to kneel and claim Coyllur nũsta.”

“Viracocha! Viracocha!” said the dying girl, raising herself upon her couch, and looking with imploring earnestness into his face,—“I know where that will end. And I know, too, how the Spanish steel wounds—not the flesh it falls on—_that_ pang was short, thank God!—but the heart that loves. One of us is enough to bear that, Viracocha; do not lay it upon Coyllur.”

“God knows I would not cause her a pang for all that earth contains.”

“I see great sorrows, like great clouds, hanging over you,” Sumac went on sadly. “That Spaniard wants to have Coyllur.”

“_Aucca!_ I will fight him some day, and with his own weapons. The Spaniards shall see for once how an Inca can use them. The first time I met him, he would fain have struck me with his whip.” (For the young cavalier whom José had encountered the day of his arrival in Cuzco, proved to be no other than Don Francisco Solis de Toledo; a circumstance which intensified their mutual distrust and dislike.) “It was—that, however, does not matter now,” said José, checking himself suddenly as he remembered _what_ had taken place that very day.

“But he will not fight you, Viracocha. He knows better He will have you killed. The Spaniards do what they please. They are strong.”

“God is stronger, Sumac nũsta.”

“He is,” Sumac answered quietly. “But He did not bid you fight Don Francisco; nor go in search of the English.”

“That I question. I believe He calls me to seek the great King who will deliver the poor when he crieth.”

Here the conversation was brought to a close by the entrance of Coyllur, who had been visiting her aunt, and brought to her sister delicious Spanish sweetmeats flavoured with orange-flower water, the gift of that kind-hearted lady.

Never again had Viracocha opportunity for quiet talk with Sumac. From that time she grew rapidly worse. Pain and weakness claimed her for their own. She bore them very patiently, and faced the quickly-approaching end with a calmness more gentle and tender than the usual stoicism of her race.

Almost to the last the frail wasted fingers sought the familiar work, and feebly twisted the threads of golden wire. If Coyllur or her attendants remonstrated, she would say, “You know they are for the Lord Christ. They must be ready for Easter.”

They were ready for Easter. They filled a place among the glittering decorations of the high altar in the Church of Santa Clara. But ere the Easter bells began to ring, the gentle Inca girl had closed her eyes upon a world she was little loath to leave.

Every rite of the creed she professed had been duly afforded her. She confessed, communicated, and had extreme unction with all the proper forms, but with a very misty and imperfect apprehension of what was being done for her. If these things cannot help, neither may they hinder, the soul that trusts in God’s mercy through Christ. As the dew ascends from earth to heaven, unbidden, uncontrolled by man, so poor Sumac’s simple prayer ascended straight to the throne of God—“Good Lord Christ, take me to Thyself.”

Old Yupanqui, who hid a broken heart beneath a coldly impassive exterior, could not refuse his beloved grand-daughter’s last request—that he would receive Christian baptism. Accordingly he submitted to the rite on Whitsunday—though with little comprehension of its significance.

“I will do what she wished,” he said to Viracocha. “And after all, if I were now to go and dwell with my fathers in the Mansions of the Sun, they might not know me, or they might look upon me with scorn, because we are not what we were, in the old days when they ruled the land.”

“At least, my father,” Viracocha answered, “you cannot doubt it would be well for all of us to follow whither she is gone.”

XIX.

The Star Shines.

“From the beautiful face of my love,
They call her Coyllur.
It was by reason of her beauty
A harmonious name.
Like the moon in its splendour
Is her bright forehead,
When it shines in brilliancy
In the highest heaven.”

_From “Ollantā,” an Ancient Inca Drama._

Coyllur’s grief for her sister was poignant. The girls were tenderly attached to each other, and had never since infancy been separated for a single day. Sumac’s sorrow bound them only more closely together; and during her long illness Coyllur had waited on her with the most assiduous affection. She was in consequence little able to bear the severe fasts and strict seclusion which the Peruvian customs imposed upon mourners; and erelong old Yupanqui began to look with keen apprehension on her drooping form—dreading, not without reason, lest the last joy and solace of his declining years should be taken from him. Viracocha’s alarm was not less than his.

Both welcomed the gentle authority with which Doña Beatriz Coya insisted on removing her niece to her own more cheerful dwelling. For the Inca buildings, admirable as they were for “simplicity, symmetry, solidity,”[42] and wonderfully fitted to resist the ravages of time and the shocks of earthquakes, were rather dull places of abode for ladies.

It was new life to Coyllur to welcome the flood of sunshine through the strange luxury of windows; or, seated in the pleasant balcony, to contemplate at her ease the never-ending marvels of the square below. There the stately church processions wound along with all their glittering show; there the Spanish soldiers mustered in shining armour; and, best of all, there rode the splendid, haughty Spanish cavaliers, managing their noble steeds with consummate ease and grace, not quite unconscious of the dark eyes that were watching them with interest. Moreover, Coyllur nũsta had a pretty sleeping-chamber in her aunt’s house, which boasted a window also. It was pleasant, in the delicious tropical nights, to lie waking on a couch draped with dainty stuffs from Spain, and to listen the while to sweet music—more scientific and harmonious than that of the ruder instruments of her native land—from the guitar attuned by a skilful hand to the melodies of Spain.

Had such reached the ear of Viracocha, they would have moved him to indignant sorrow. Better far for both had he laid Sumac’s warning to heart and acted upon it; but sentiments of honour, which ruled his soul as absolutely as that of any “preux chevalier” of the Old World, utterly forbade his claiming the prize he longed for until he had won it by some deed of signal merit. Nor would Yupanqui, in all probability, much as he loved him, have allowed his suit if preferred too soon.

While awaiting the opportunity for this, he bent all his energies to the task of making himself worthy of Coyllur. The grand-daughter of the great Huayna Capac stood very near that golden throne, which, though it existed in imagination only, was about the most real thing in earth or heaven to José Viracocha.

He studied diligently, learning “the Humanities,” as taught in Europe, from a Dominican monk, and the more mysterious and difficult science of the Quipus from an aged Indian, who had been a Quipu-comayoc[43] in the days of the Incas. He procured one of the rare and costly maps of the period, which, full of blunders as it was, yet gave him a better idea of the world he lived in than he had before. Lastly, he became a more accomplished marksman with the Spaniards’ own formidable weapon than many of the Spaniards themselves, and learned to compete successfully with the best of them in fencing and cane-playing.

All this time he had not forgotten Fray Fernando. Not a day passed in which the man who for more than seven years had been to him as a father was not present to his thoughts. Warm and grateful affection, not unmixed with reverential compassion for sorrows vaguely guessed, gathered around his image. Yet not the less did Viracocha belong to his own people and to Coyllur. His place and his work were with these, not with the Spaniards.

It may seem strange that he did not try to communicate with Fray Fernando by letter, since he could write very well; but the idea of writing a letter was so foreign to all his habits and associations, that it never occurred to him. And had he thought of it, whither was he to send the letter when written? Even if the monk’s present address had been known to him, only half of the difficulty would have been obviated; for under the Spanish government no regular system of posts had replaced the admirable and efficient chasquis of the Incas.

Shortly after Coyllur’s departure to the house of her aunt, Viracocha left Cuzco on a mysterious errand. The Spaniards were informed he was going to visit his friends and kinsfolk at Nasca. And not even amongst themselves did the Indians speak freely of his objects or destination. Only the initiated knew that he was to pass in disguise up and down the country, to ascertain the real state of the minds of his people, and to reawaken slumbering hopes of the restoration of the Incas. He had also to give signs and pass-words, to collect and transmit tidings, and to arrange secret meetings; but all these things were shrouded in the greatest possible mystery.

He may have had something both to ascertain and to command on the subject of the hoards of gold and silver which were buried by the Indians at the conquest, to be disinterred whenever a prince of their own race should require them, and not till then. But whatever might be doubtful about Viracocha’s mission, one thing at least was certain,—the young envoy went forth taking his life in his hand.

Ere he left Cuzco, he paid a farewell visit at the mansion of Doña Beatriz Coya. And here, on entering the low and sloping doorway which formed part of the original Inca building—the ground-floor of the present mansion—he encountered his rival, Don Francisco Solis, who was just passing out. They exchanged a cold and haughty salutation; each regarding the other with cordial hatred. Viracocha saw the Spanish knight vault lightly into the saddle of his noble steed, held for him at the door by a mulatto page, and for the hundredth time envied him his mastery over the proud and beautiful creature. Then turning, he sought the apartment where Coyllur was to be found; and as fortune favoured him, she was alone.

His lips at last unsealed by the approaching separation, and the consciousness that he was about to hazard all for the cause dearest to the hearts of both, he said a thousand things in the soft musical “lengua del Inca,” which would not bear translation. The hour was rapturous, but all too brief, and bounded by that terrible parting. Already he had risen from his place at her feet, and received the pretty Spanish “Vaya con Dios,” which she added to the Quichua “Paccaricama,” when his eye rested on a pair of perfumed Spanish leather gloves, embroidered with seedling pearls, lying beside the guitar, her aunt’s recent gift. Instinct revealed the donor: he saw in them the homage of his rival, and the countenance of Viracocha fell.

Coyllur noticed the change, and said, not without confusion, “They are pretty, Viracocha. He would leave them;—but I do not value them.”

“They are not worthy to touch the pure hands of my nũsta,” said Viracocha, with a scornful glance at the dainty trifles. “No Child of the Sun is ever adorned with pearls, since they cannot be obtained without risk of life.” (A beautiful trait, recorded by Garçilasso de la Vega of his Inca forefathers.)

But Coyllur thought not of the old Incas, her forefathers—she thought only of the young Inca standing before her, whose looks were far more eloquent than words.

“I care nothing for such Spanish trumpery,” she said, as, taking the gloves, she flung them from the open window, over the balcony, down into the square beneath.

Viracocha’s countenance softened—brightened into restful assurance. “It is well,” he answered. “Now I go. Will my nũsta give me a token—a flower to keep for her sake?”

And selecting, from a vase which lay before her on the table, a rich crimson tintin, or passion-flower, Coyllur placed it in the hand of Viracocha, who kissed it and laid it in his bosom. So they parted.

XX.

The Star Sets.

“Untrue! untrue! O morning star—O mine!
That sitteth secret in a veil of light
Far up the starry spaces—say untrue!
Speak but so loud as doth a Tyrrhene moon
To wasted waters.”

E. B. BROWNING.

About ten months afterwards, Viracocha came back. He bent his steps, in the first instance, to the dwelling of Yupanqui. But there all was changed, except the familiar walls,—those adamantine Inca walls, which still defy the hand of time, and the far less gentle touch of man. Even these, however, were hardly visible through the heaps of stones, of timber, and of mortar that lay around them. With these materials, a second story, after the Spanish fashion, was being added to the Inca’s house. A Spanish master-builder was overlooking the work, and directing the labours of a crowd of Indians and negroes. But no one could give Viracocha any information about the former occupants of the dwelling.

Turning away from them, he crossed the square towards the mansion of Doña Beatriz Coya. On one of the stone footbridges he encountered Sumac’s old attendant, Amancaes. The poor woman threw herself at his feet, and kissed his dress. He raised her, spoke a few kindly words of greeting, and asked for news of the household.

Soon all was told. Less than a month after Viracocha’s departure, old Yupanqui was found one morning, lying dead on the blanket of biscache wool that served him for a couch. But his death was opportune, and saved him much sorrow. Almost immediately afterwards, the storm that had been gathering over the Inca family since the apprehension of Tupac Amaru, broke at last. The suspicion of the Spaniards and the tyranny of the Viceroy found expression in a severe decree, banishing nearly all the Children of the Sun from the beloved city of their fathers. Doña Beatriz Coya took the dejected and sorrowful Coyllur to her own home. Her grief for her grandfather was wild; but her aunt comforted her as best she could, promising to supply the place of a parent to her. From that day forward, the orphan girl was of necessity thrown entirely upon the protection and guidance of Doña Beatriz, and of the Spaniards, or Spaniardized Indians, who surrounded her. So the end could not be wondered at. The next day, in the Church of Santa Aña, Coyllur was to give her hand to the Spanish cavalier, Don Francisco Solis de Toledo.

Don José Viracocha Inca did honour to the memory of his ancestors by his manner of receiving this intelligence. A Spaniard would at least have sworn by all the saints in heaven to have his rival’s blood. But the Inca’s son had trained himself “the fierce extremes of good and ill to brook impassive.” Therefore he spoke no word; he gave no sign. He silently emptied his coca-bag into the withered hands of the poor woman; then he walked quietly on to the door of the stately mansion of Don Marcio Serra de Leguisano.

The door-keeper was an Indian; which is equivalent to saying that he was the humble servant of Viracocha. From him he learned that the nũsta was at that moment in the courtyard. “I would go thither, my brother,” said Viracocha; and the Indian of course admitted him.

The taste of Doña Beatriz had transformed the courtyard into a pretty garden, rich with tropical glories, and having in the centre a fountain of limpid water. Coyllur, who was gathering flowers, still wore her graceful national costume; but a Spanish head-dress of black silk and lace hung down over her pure white mantle of vicuña wool. On seeing Viracocha, she allowed the flowers to fall from her hands, and, trembling from head to foot, cried out in Spanish, “Santa Maria!”

Viracocha approached, knelt before her, and kissed her passive hand. Then he rose, and quietly withdrew a few paces. “Coyllur nũsta,” he said, of course in his native tongue, “I know all.—But will you, for the sake of the past, answer me one question this day? That done, I shall trouble you no more.”

Coyllur hung her head; and clutched nervously at the graceful bells of a tall fuchsia, near which they were standing. A spray came off in her hand, and she tore it to fragments.

Viracocha stood motionless, patiently awaiting her reply. It came at last:—“Ask what you will of me,” she murmured.

“Is this thing your own free choice, Coyllur nũsta?” Viracocha asked, with almost as much outward calmness as if merely inquiring what she meant to do with the flowers that lay neglected at her feet.

“Why ask that?” she faltered, in a very different tone from his.

“Because—if _Yes_—I go home, never more to see your face. If _No_”—his dark eyes kindled, and unconsciously he advanced one step nearer,—“I fling this mantle round you, and thus I bear you safe to the dwellings of my people, let who will bar my way. Coyllur, star of Heaven, trust me—I will save you.”

She shrank a little, as if frightened by his vehemence; and José, instantly recollecting himself, recoiled also.

“I am afraid for you,” she faltered. “If _he_ should come and find you here, he would kill you.”

“Let him try,” said José with a haughty smile. “But fear not. In your presence there shall be no bloodshed. Nũsta, I await your answer.”

Coyllur wrung her hands, as one in pain. “O Viracocha, Viracocha!” she cried at last, “why have you come to torture me? Why do you bring the old times back again to me? And yet—and yet—”

José took from his bosom Sumac’s little book. Carefully preserved and pressed between its leaves lay the crimson passion-flower. This he gently removed, and placed in the trembling hand of Coyllur. “If you think the heart next which it has lain ever since worth your keeping, keep it,” he said. “But if indeed you have given yours to the Spaniard, then give it back to me, for it will be all that I have left on earth.”

Minute after minute passed away, and still the shadows chased each other over the agitated face of the Indian girl, whose heart was torn by contending emotions. But at last the fight was over; the day was won. It was the proud Castilian knight who proved the conqueror;—with his fair face and splendid courtesy, and the masterful ways wherewith he seemed to rule man’s will and woman’s heart as easily as he controlled his noble steed. Pity, esteem, and old familiar kindness Coyllur still felt for the son of her people;—but she loved the Spaniard. Silently, tremblingly, with bowed head and sorrowful heart, she gave the withered flower back again to Viracocha.

Without a word he replaced it in his bosom. Then he said, calmly enough, “God bless you, nũstallay,” and turned to go. But, turning again for a moment, he added, “I shall see your face no more. Unless, indeed, you or yours ever need the help of the children of your people. Then I will know it, and be near you.”

Coyllur watched him until he disappeared in the long dark passage that led to the outer door. Then she fled for refuge to her aunt, whom she actually terrified by an outburst of passionate weeping.

Doña Beatriz Coya, who had laboured much to bring about this Spanish match, soothed and comforted her niece by every tender art in her power. “You have no idea, my child,” she said, “with how many sad misgivings of heart I gave my hand, in my day, to the stranger. Nor was I quite so fortunate as you are. Every one knows Don Francisco Solis is of the best blood in Spain—blue blood, as they say;—while Don Marcio Serra (whom the saints preserve!), you know, was—was not—well, no matter now; he is as good as the best of them, and better. But was it not told you how I braved the anger of Paullu, and of all my kindred, because I could not endure the thought of him? And at last, all that Paullu could wring from me, by prayers and threats and promises, was just this, ‘Perhaps I will have him, and perhaps I will not.’” And the good lady indulged in a laugh at the recollection of her own girlish wilfulness. “But there was no perhaps with my Uncle Paullu,” she continued. “At that time he dared not, for his head, disoblige one of the conquistadors. So I was married, in spite of myself, to the best of husbands. And I have had, since then, everything my heart could desire; besides the power to help my people, which I have not failed to use, God and the saints enabling me.”

Whilst Coyllur was thus receiving from her kind-hearted aunt the time-honoured conventional consolation,

“She herself was not exempt,
Doubtless she herself had suffered,”

Viracocha was wandering, with his broken heart, amongst the ruins of his ancestors’ fortress on the Sachsahuaman hill.

At length he threw himself down amongst the tumbled stones, on a patch of emerald grass variegated with blue and golden wild-flowers. Then came his hour of weakness. All his proud stoicism gone, he bowed his head and wept—such tears as a man may weep unblamed who has just lost everything that made life precious.

What dried his tears at last was not any thought of comfort, but the fierce and passionate hatred that like a bitter flood rushed over his heart, leaving no room for softer feelings there. How he hated these enemies of his race—these cruel Spaniards! His own gentler language supplied no words fit for his rage: he was fain to curse them, and that aloud, in the tongue they had taught him to speak. The crushing sense of their all-conquering power, and his and his nation’s impotence, only intensified his hatred a thousandfold.

Now for the first time he thoroughly recognized and acknowledged to himself the strength that God had given to the white man. It was not their fire-breathing clubs, not their horses, not their iron tools, it was their strength that won them the victory—strength not of limb and muscle alone, but of heart and brain. They were not better than his own people,—not braver, truer, kinder,—far otherwise,—but they were stronger. And before this terrible strength, this force and weight of manhood in the pale-faced stranger, had perished, or was perishing, all the gentle grace and beauty of the old time; so fair even in its ruins, yet powerless to touch the hearts of the destroyers.

Viracocha’s outburst of agony ended in a dumb, crushed hopelessness, worse than agony. Wherefore contend with this resistless might? It was the vicuña in the paw of the jaguar, the gentle dove in the talons of the mighty condor of the Andes.

Then came softer thoughts. Had all men united to tell him Coyllur could have proved untrue, he would have flung back a scornful denial. Even now, scarcely her own lips could convince him—lips that had spoken the soft musical “Vaya con Dios!” that haunted his memory still—that would haunt him for ever. O Coyllur, Coyllur! Star of his life, set for ever! And again his tears fell like rain, as over and over he murmured the beloved name.

Yet those tears relieved him; they did him good. They gradually recalled him to himself. He remembered his promise that she should see his face no more. This was the last service he could render her. He would leave Cuzco—and depart—whither? He knew not—he cared not. But ere he went, it behoved him to render account of his stewardship, and make full report of all he had seen and heard during the last ten months. Amancaes had informed him that Maricancha, in spite of the decree of banishment, contrived still to linger in Cuzco, under cover of a disguise, and she had told him where to find him. To him therefore he must go, and at once.

He rose and retraced his steps to the city. He was successful in finding Maricancha; but when his interview with him was over, he wandered once more towards what had been Yupanqui’s house, feeling utterly desolate and alone. But near the door he met a young son of Doña Beatriz Coya’s Indian porter, who had evidently been sent in search of him.

The boy brought him a sealed letter, which he said had been left for him some time ago at his master’s, by a messenger from the house of the gray monks.

It was addressed, “A Don José Viracocha Inca, à Cuzco.” José cut the silk that secured it with his useless Spanish sword, and read these words:—

“MY SON,—I am sick in body and sick at heart. Come to me if
thou canst. I need thee. Ask for me here at the Franciscan
monastery.

“Thy unworthy father in God,

“Fernando, Brother of the First Order of St. Francis.

“Given at Ciudad de los Reyes, on the vigil of San Antonio, in
the year of grace 1573.”

Nearly a year ago! Late in the day as it was already, José Viracocha had put three good leagues between himself and the Golden City ere he saw the sun drop in flame behind the snowy peak of Vilcañota.

XXI.

Old England.

“That mother’s face,
Its grave sweet smile yet wearing in the place
Where so it ever smiled.”

HEMANS.

It now becomes necessary for us to pass, with the rapidity of thought, from one side of the globe to the other, that we may visit for a little while the shores of “Merrie England”—the England of Queen Elizabeth and the Reformation.

It was a glorious hour in England’s day—the hour that followed the sunrise. Everywhere life was awakening—life of the intellect and imagination, and, through God’s blessing, that yet higher life which is his best and purest gift. Therefore living works were wrought, of which the memory shall last as long as this earth endures.

But our concern is not now with the brilliant workers of that busy age. We shall not visit the starry court of the maiden Queen, nor allow ourselves to linger fondly over names—such as Raleigh, Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare—which have become “music more than any song” to every English ear. Rather shall we glance at the interior of a modest home, where dwelt in those days an English matron, who, though unknown to fame, was truly one of the noble band without whom the England of Elizabeth and the Reformation never could have been.

In the weald of Kent, where the trim hop-gardens flourish now, there stood at that time a half-ruined keep, built in the stormy age of the Wars of the Roses. It was much out of repair, and quite destitute of what were then accounted modern improvements. Its principal apartment was still the great hall, which was heated by a fire on the hearth, strewn with rushes, and furnished with massive, quaintly-carved oaken benches, cupboards, and tables.

But some women have the faculty of transforming any place, however dreary, formal, or comfortless, into a home. Of such was Marion Grey, widow of Walter Grey, a gentleman of Kent, of ancient lineage and good repute.

It is evening; and Marion Grey sits at the centre table, an oil lamp illuminating the space around her, but leaving the greater part of the gloomy hall in twilight. She is busy adorning the sleeve of a cambric shirt with very fine “pearling;” her deft fingers moving rapidly, while her eyes are seldom raised from her work, save for a hasty glance at the lamp, which scarcely affords the amount of light needful for such delicate embroidery.

“Shall I trim it, mother?” asks her companion, a fair boy, who does not seem equally loath to look up from the pages of a great book he has been reading aloud. The volume, “imprinted at London, by John Day and William Seres,” consists of the collected theological writings of the Reformer Thomas Becon, and certainly is not just what an ordinary boy would have chosen for his private enjoyment. But Walter Grey is not an ordinary boy; and if he had been, those were days in which young people did the pleasure of their elders, not their own.

“I think it needs not,” the mother answered. Then, perhaps surmising that the boy was tired of reading, she asked him, “Dost remember any of thy cousins, Walter?”

“None but George, mother. Do you not mind the year you had the great fever, and my aunt came here to tend you? How she brought George, a ten years’ bairn, with her; for she said he was so masterful, and of such high stomach, none of the maids durst attempt to keep him under? And a proper life we led each other, he and I. The very night he came we fought together. He called me an outlandish imp, and no true Englishman, because I was born at Geneva; and I for answer fetched him a buffet on the cheek.”

“Ill-conditioned boy! Even at seven years old, you should have known better than to strike your little guest.”

“Marry, mother, he paid me, and with usury,” laughed Walter. “But if I had had the wit, I might have given him a better answer. I might have said he would have been born at Geneva too, an his father had not thought more of his silks and satins than of his conscience.”

“Therein thou wouldst have shown thine unwisdom as well as thy discourtesy. In Queen Mary’s days thine Uncle Noble did not yet know the gospel; how then could he go into exile for it? In truth, it was what he saw, in those evil times, of the faith and patience of the saints that, with God’s blessing, won him to a better mind. I have heard him say so myself. And as for thy comrade George,” she added more lightly, “I daresay his love of fighting stands him in good stead now, when he meets the Dons upon the high seas.”

Walter’s face, naturally fair and pale, was overspread in an instant by a crimson flush, telling of some strong hidden feeling suddenly awakened. But it passed as quickly as it came; and he said, in his ordinary tone, “Mother, I pray you, tell me the names of all my cousins. ’Twere as well I knew them, at least after a fashion, ere I saw them.”

“Willingly, my boy. Thine aunt hath said so much of them in her letters, that I almost think I can see the six stalwart lads gathered round her, with the one fair girl they are all so fond and proud of. First, then, there is Thomas, good steady lad, as for old times’ sake they call him still, though he must be near his thirtieth year now. He is his father’s right hand and faithful helper. Next comes Harry, the soldier; he has volunteered, I told you, in aid of the persecuted Protestants in the Low Countries. Your uncle can send him thither better furnished forth than many a peer’s son. Will, the third in age, is ’prentice to Master Nevet, the jeweller.”

“’Prentice!” cried Walter in high disdain. “O mother! Only think of one of our blood standing at the door of a shop, and crying ‘What do ye lack; what do ye lack, my masters?’ as Sir John Carr says the London ’prentices are wont to do.”

Mrs. Grey looked steadily at her son with her clear, soft blue eyes, and said, flushing faintly, “Then what think you, Walter, of one of our blood sitting up whole nights to work English broidery on the robes of a Geneva citizen’s dame, carrying them to her with her own hands afterwards, and taking thankfully the silver she gave in payment?”

“And did you do that, mother?” asked Walter, with softened look. “What dreadful times they must have been!”

“Not dreadful _then_, for God sent them, and each day had but one day’s burden to bear. But sometimes now they seem dreadful to look back upon.—Of whom was I speaking? Of Will? George the sailor comes next in age. And I suspect Master James will never rest till he follows the same way of life,—for all his father’s talk of needing his help himself.”

“Has James then told his father that he wants to go to sea?” asked Walter abruptly, and in a tone more blunt and eager than that in which he usually addressed his mother.

“He has spoken of his wishes more than once, I believe; but he obeys his father, as in duty bound.—Take care, Walter; you will spoil my book. Pity lads are not taught to sew, since it is hard to keep idle hands out of mischief.—After James comes the fair maiden Lilias, the pet and pride of all her brave brothers; she will be about thy age, I reckon. Lastly, there is little Ned, the scholar of the family; he was thirteen at Christmas. Be kind to Ned, Walter, and let him look to you as to an elder brother; for I wot his father means to send him to Oxford, and you may be a good friend to him there, being the elder by three years. There,—that is finished, and makes the eighth of your new shirts.—Be very careful, Walter, whom you trust for the washing of them; for cambric and Holland are light to rend and ill to mend.”

“Yes, mother,” said Walter, with a sigh.

The next day he was to leave the home of his childhood and to begin a new life amongst strangers. Yet dearly as he loved his mother (and good right he had to love her dearly), it was not the thought of parting that wrung that sigh from the boy’s heart. He was thinking of what had just been said about his cousin, James Noble.

Walter Grey’s life hitherto had been rather a singular one for a boy. He was born at Geneva, during his parents’ exile for conscience’ sake; and he barely remembered their departure from that friendly city, and his father’s death on the homeward journey. The young widow and her orphan boy were most kindly received in London by the worthy merchant to whom her sister had been induced to give her hand, at a time when every one thought she sorely disgraced her family by so doing. But now the wheel of Fortune had turned so far that good Master Noble, mercer and warden of his craft, had more to spend on the education of any one of his six sons than sufficed Mistress Marion Grey to maintain the state of a gentlewoman in the home of her husband’s ancestors.

It was well that she was not obliged to delegate the important task of her only son’s education to any hands but her own. Like many noble women of the sixteenth century, Marion Markham and her sister Lilias had received from their father an excellent classical education. So good a teacher was she, and so apt a pupil did Walter prove, that when at length, distrusting her own powers, she sent him to the vicar of the parish, Sir John Carr, to be examined in Greek and Latin, that worthy gentleman, whose store of learning was not ample, found the scholar of fifteen quite too much for him. He prudently sent him back to his mother with a highly complimentary letter, in which he compared her to Minerva, to Cornelia, and, what was more to the purpose, to the sainted “twelve days’ queen,” her husband’s distant relative.

Nor were studies yet more important than Greek and Latin forgotten. Walter was made familiar from his earliest childhood with the Book that his mother held dearer than life, and constant were her prayers that its holy lessons might be written on his heart.

Walter had another teacher, moreover, a stern but very efficient one. In the school of poverty he learned self-denial; and well has it been remarked that “the worst education that teaches self-denial is better than the best that teaches everything else, and leaves that out.”

And yet, in spite of all, there was one defect—only one, but that a great one—in Walter’s education. The boy had no boyhood. A truly healthful, happy childhood he had enjoyed in its season; for the child dwells in his own little world, safe as the fairy in her crystal globe from the cares and sorrows and most of the dangers of maturity. Almost all the little child really needs is love. Give him _that_, and no matter how poor and bare and narrow his surroundings may be, imagination will make them a kingdom. But it is otherwise when

“Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Around the growing boy.”

Then, in proportion as his wants increase, his dangers multiply. His animal nature grows and expands, while imagination pales and fades, leaving him very dependent on the common world that surrounds him, often very curious about it, asking a great deal from it, and influenced by it in ten thousand ways. Through this stage he must needs pass, if he is to prove hereafter a complete and well-developed man.

Walter Grey, however, was expected to grow at once, and without any interval, from the thoughtful child into the thoughtful man. Boyhood, with “its unchecked, unbidden joy, its dread of books and love of fun,” was not for him. Instead of sharing the sports of merry schoolmates, this boy shared his mother’s cares and anxieties as her friend and confidant, sometimes even already her counsellor. Instead of planning victories at prisoner’s base and trap ball, and raids upon orchards and nut-woods, he planned how to find bread and beer enough for their household, and still to have somewhat over to give to him that needed. Virgil and Plato were to him what “The Seven Champions of Christendom” were to other boys. It is true that he was taught to ride, and to shoot with the bow and arrow, and he could do these as well as any lad of his years; but he did them, as he did everything else, gravely and with a purpose. They were part of his education.

It is not easy to defraud Nature of her due. Often, for the time, she seems to acquiesce,—at least she takes it patiently, and makes no sign. But she silently keeps account of every debt; and it is well if some day she does not suddenly present a bill for the sum total, and demand an acquittance, admitting of no denial.

Late that night Walter sat in thoughtful mood upon his tresseled bed. His chest, packed by his mother’s careful hand in readiness for the morrow’s journey, lay so near, that his feet, as he swung them back and forwards, sometimes touched it. His doublet was off; his fair hair, tumbled by his restless hands, fell in disorder over his neat Holland shirt. There was no light in the room, save what the moonbeams shed through the narrow, unglazed slit that served for a window.

The boy was asking himself a question, often well-nigh the most important a boy can ask, “Shall I tell my mother?” He asked it the more sincerely and earnestly because he had just been repeating the evening prayer his mother taught him, and not without some simple additions, the promptings of his own heart. And now he had a great mind to delay no longer, but to step softly to the door of his mother’s room (where he well knew the light would still be burning), to seek admittance, to kneel down beside her chair—just as he knelt when he learned his first prayer—and to tell her all.

But _what_ was that “all”? What had he to tell?—As well to find that out first. And really it was difficult to find out;—it perplexed him. There he sat, feeling as though some weighty, half-guilty secret lay upon his heart, something that he was almost acting a traitor’s part in keeping hidden there, and carrying away with him unconfessed. Yet, when he sought for words in which to tell it, _what_ had he to say? Only that upon every excuse (and often indeed without excuse), he used to loiter about the stall of the village blacksmith—once a seaman, and sharer in some of old John Hawkins’ most desperate enterprises;—that he was never tired of listening to his wonderful tales of daring deeds wrought by English hearts and hands upon the high seas, where the small, slight vessels of English merchantmen so often measured their strength against the stately caraques of the Don;—that he cared little to ride anywhere save to the crest of the hill, whence he could see the far-off waters sparkle in the sunlight, and sometimes watch a white sail gliding slowly by, wondering if it was bound for that great mysterious West, the land of his romance and enchantment. That was all he could find to say; and what was there in that to trouble his mother with at midnight?

But beneath there was a blind, dumb instinct, a great passionate longing, for which he had no words. Perhaps it was a heritage from some far-off Viking ancestor, whose slender, snake-like galley had pushed its prow into unknown seas in search of fame and plunder. Walter had no names for the thoughts and feelings that for more than a year had been troubling him so strangely, growing every day more frequent and more keen. He only knew that he would have given all the world to change his fine cloth and velvet for a pea-jacket, his Holland shirt for a Jersey, his scholar’s pen for a stout cutlass. But what use in crying for the moon? Work of a different sort was cut out for him. To-morrow he must go to London, to visit his kinsfolk in the city; and after that to Oxford, to study hard (he liked study well enough, when ships were not sailing away westward before his mind’s eye), to win honour, fame, and wealth, and at last—perhaps—if God willed and made him worthy—to take holy orders and preach, like Sir John Carr.

What folly he had been thinking! He felt quite ashamed of himself. He would go to bed, sleep, and forget it all. The sooner the better, for the nights were cold (it was early March); he should freeze if he sat there much longer. He must rise before daybreak; but he was sure old Dickon would call him in good time; _he_ was never late.

So Walter Grey paid the tribute of a sigh to his boyish dreams; then he went to bed and to sleep, nevertheless he did not forget them all.

XXII.

His Own Way.

“It is bound up in the heart of man, that longing for the West.
I complain of no one for fleeing away thither, beyond the
utmost sea, as David wished to flee and be at peace.”

_Westward Ho!_

Walter had not been long asleep, when loud knocking at the great door awaked him. Saying to himself, “They might knock till Doomsday for old Dickon—early to bed and early to rise is his motto,” he rose, and putting on his clothes hastily, went to see who was there.

It was Sir John Carr, who good-naturedly had ridden two or three miles out of his way from the neighbouring town to bring Mrs. Grey a letter, left there for her by means of that as yet rude and primitive institution, “Her Majesty’s Post.” It would seem, indeed, that common humanity demanded this service, since the letter bore the following quaint addition to the ordinary superscription:—“Haste! Haste! Haste! Post, haste for thy life! See thou tarry not!”

Walter, reading this, and not being aware that such exhortations were quite customary, “by reason that the posts be so slow nowadays,” brought the letter in some alarm to his mother, who, late as the hour was, had not yet retired to rest. “I fear there is something wrong with my uncle’s folk,” he said.

Mrs. Grey broke the seal and read in silence. “All is well, thank God,” she answered. “But your uncle feared the letter might not come till after you had gone. There is a ship, in which he hath a venture, lying at Sheerness, and now ready to go up to London. And he thinks it will save expense and trouble for you to ride thither, and take advantage of the ship.”

“I have no objection,” cried the delighted Walter. “And indeed, mother, for that matter—,” he continued, with a flushed face and nervous air.

But just at that moment Mrs. Grey’s little oil lamp went out suddenly, so she did not see the boy’s face. And she knew it was past midnight, that Walter ought to be in the saddle by five in the morning, and that young eyes need long sleep. So she kissed him, and bade him go to bed at once.

Walter’s happiness may be guessed when, in due course, he found himself at last on board a real ship. The _Royal Tudor_ was a Turkey-merchantman, just returned from the Levant, well laden with the rich silks and cashmeres of the East. But she was something more. Great guns showed their black muzzles from her port-holes, and stem and stern were garnished with what, to Walter’s inexperienced eye, looked like fortresses, small but strong. Every man on board was a soldier, prepared to do and die in defence of the ship and the ship’s freight. The “_Noli me tangere_” of the Scottish thistle would have been an apt motto for the English ship; though the converse, “I will not touch you,” would have been far from applicable. Woe to the trader or man-of-war—whether Spanish, Flemish, or Portuguese—which should dare to interfere with her, or, even without interfering, should cross her path by accident! Already she had given a good account of more than one “caraque” or “caravel,” over which the yellow flag of Spain should never float again. And every one on board, from the captain to the cabin-boy, considered such “spoiling of the Egyptians” not only perfectly lawful, but a highly meritorious and satisfactory doing of their duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call them.

All this and much more Walter learned, before he had been four-and-twenty hours on board, from his cousin George. The light-hearted, good-natured sailor-lad did the honours of the ship, his pride and joy, in first-rate style to his gentlemanly cousin; nor was he by any means insensible to the profound admiration with which the young scholar regarded him. This admiration might have become mutual, not without advantage to both, had not Walter’s evil genius prompted him to show off the fragments of nautical knowledge he had picked up from his friend the blacksmith. In his enthusiasm he ventured upon some ill-advised observations about “cobridge-heads,” “sky-scrapers,” and “mizzen-masts,” which provoked George to peals of laughter, and unnecessarily loud assertions that “Master Walter might be a fine scholar on shore, but he did not know a main-mast from a marlin-spike on board ship.”

Walter ought to have joined in the laugh, or found a good-humoured retort. But it is hard to be taunted with ignorance of what we love. So he changed colour, and, with some irritation of manner, vowed that he would soon know everything on board as well as George himself. And he was as good as his word.

When the ship arrived in London, the welcome he received from his uncle and aunt and their family was all that could be desired. Thomas Noble was a good specimen of a fine class, the merchantmen of England, who were then beginning to be what they have been ever since, “the honourable men of the earth.” Like so many of their brethren in the Low Countries and elsewhere, they had espoused, almost universally, the cause of religious truth and freedom, and they maintained it often with great courage and liberality. There was not amongst them all a more zealous “Gospeller” than Master Noble, Warden of the Mercers’ Company, and some time Sheriff of London Town. He dwelt on London Bridge,—like the well-known cloth merchant, Master Hewit, whose young daughter the apprentice, Edward Osborne, saved by his celebrated leap from the kitchen window into the river below. All things had gone prosperously with Master Noble. He had the blessing that makes rich, and no sorrow added with it. His six brave sons were doing well, each in his own way. Gentle Lilias was a flower scarcely opened, fair and pure as a spring lily. At the time of Walter’s visit, it happened that all were at home, or within easy reach of it, and often gathered around the cheerful, plentiful board where their father presided.

Walter was very happy amongst them. His days and weeks glided rapidly by amidst novel sights and exciting occupations. He saw the Queen ride in state to old St. Paul’s, amidst transports of the loyal ardour that was such a characteristic feature of the times. He saw St. Paul’s itself, and Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, and the shops, and the fields where the young men and apprentices played games, and practised archery; and he sent out his own cloth-yard arrow very creditably amongst the rest. What was better than all, he bore part in a healthy, kindly family life, where peace, order, and plenty reigned.

It was strange enough that his most intimate friend amongst his cousins should be the one that he had come prepared almost to despise—“’prentice Will,” in his plain blue gown and close-cropped hair. One evening at supper George was vaunting the glories of the _Royal Tudor_, when Will (who was frequently permitted to join the family meal, his master being an old and valued friend of his father’s) looked up quietly from his trencher of powdered beef, and remarked, “She’s well enough, brother George; but call me knave and Papist if the _English Merchantman_ does not beat her as clean as Harry beat that great lubberly lout of a draper’s lad last Saturday at the butts in Finsbury fields.”