Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/440

19, 1859.] Master Harris bent his eyes on the ground, and asked his judgment, was this little lass so giddy or so unprepared for offences, or was she bold? In verity it mattered not: she could in neither case comprehend his anxiety lest the prohibitions on their sales and the penalties on their licence should crush all free opinion, and quench the expression of that pure and mighty intellect which he wotted of, working in darkness and surrounding corruption, or stifle the ripe experience of yonder humble, but passionate dreamer lying in Bedford gaol. Only Master Evelyn and Master Walton, of all good men who wrote, and would neither be blasphemous nor ribald, nor false to the rights of the people, were held in any esteem by a lewd and persecuting court.

Of a sudden, as the staid young vendor of knowledge mused, the sorrows and sins of the time reached nearer home, inasmuch as on a portion of the company of which he constituted a I fraction, approaching the gate in order to return 1 to their houses when the bells gave them warning, they were met by a sudden outcry in the streets, — a loud and riotous uproar which it was scarcely possible for quiet women to face, and which even composed, courageous men might have been excused for shrinking from at that particular date. All who heard the tumult stood still,— excited, incensed, appalled. Mrs. Lucy shook dolorously, and no longer admired the divine beauty of the evening-star, but she called her young companions round her and generously strove, while helpless herself, save for her few peaceful but strong, stern men, to impress them with a sense of her protection; but Patience Chiswell gripped Harris’s arm I and shrieked outright.

“It is the Scourers,” she groaned through her chattering teeth, “and they spare neither man, woman, nor child in their frolics. The good Lord have mercy on us!“

Harris had some difficulty in convincing her what his cool judgment and better view enabled him to decide, that the band streaming past the entrance without attempting to invade the precincts was not one of those dissolute troops of squires and noblemen who once or twice a- week at least beat and bruised members of the resisting middle class, overcoming them by sheer force of numbers (for did not the train-bands of London defeat and rout these young gentlemen’s fathers in the open field when yon grinning head that had rotted off the bridge, held the brains and the will of a man?) and frightening honest women into fits by their fierce, unholy caresses.

“You should not have boasted of your confi- dence before it had been tried, Mrs. Patience,” said Harris, reproving her, bluntly but gently, for the shuddering girl touched his manhood.

Patience hung her head. “I meant to defy them in broad day, and plenty of people by, and they only after their morning draughts. Indeed I could not choose but be mightily afraid when the Scourers are abroad in the dusk, and the greater part of the world safe under their own roofs.”

“Nay, I have no objection to your horror within bounds. I love not that women should be rash and forward,” observed Harris, without de- laying to ascertain whether or no he had a right to offer an opinion. “I can decipher from where I stand that the whole brawl is about a woman, — a -wretched orange-woman, whom Dr. Bates, or Dugdale, or Turberville, may suspect of dealings with the Pope and the French and the devil, and whom they thus hound along the kennel to prison and to judgment:” and young Harris, though he might have been thankful on his politics’ account, looked gloomy and oppressed.

Patience Chiswell, taking comfort for her own safety, honour, and happiness, glanced up in his face to be still more fully reassured, and had her sympa- thies immediately drawn away in a new channel.

“Will no one save her?” she whispered. “She may not be guilty. She may not be so bad as she seemeth. I doubt me she is a light creature, by reason of her pursuing such a trade; yet she may have poor, honest friends, who care for her. Alas! the miserable wench to be ducked, to be branded, to be hung! Dear, good sir, for the sake of God, whom I am certain you fear, because Mrs. Lucy told us you were a dutiful fellow as ever lived, in the name of other women who are not undone, wilt thou not speak a word in this sinner’s cause?“

In proportion as Harris hated and waged war with sin, he had a soft, tender heart, and he was powerfully affected by this instance of a foolish young girl’s trembling, spontaneous, earnest mercy, the more so that he could not act upon it, as she would have demanded of him, at a risk she little guessed. He was forced to explain to her that he could not abandon her, no light creature, but a modest inexperienced girl, to traverse the disturbed streets, in order that he might carry aid to any other person, whatever their strait; that his single voice and arm would avail nothing against the authorities with whom a mean orange - woman, after Stafford and Plunkett, was nothing. Since he saw the culprit pinioned by some of the town’s servants and the mayor’s own men, she would certainly have law in her sentence, and what more could she ask, unless she were so unreasonable as to expect justice? Mistress Patience was only half satisfied, and cried a little, so shaken had her nerves been, behind her kerchief and her decried fan, so that Master Harris had to repeat all his arguments more and more earnestly and civilly, like a man of benevolence as he was, while he got her with the rest conveyed as far as Mrs. Lucy Soule’s.

Mrs. Lucy’s old mother was regaling herself upon her favourite slice of the larded capon, and drinking her humming ale (sack was not for tradesmen’s wives and widows), and conning the scold she would give her simple, heedless Luce for keeping her awake till the bat’s flight. And Mrs. Lucy would listen to those fond, querulous, maundering tones more sweetly than to any lover's brusque speeches, and lay down her comely head in her peaked nightcap, and sleep like a child on the same pillow with that hoary crown of glory which she cherished so reverently.

Long before, Benjamin Harris, of Gracechurch Street carried his point of putting agitated Patience Chiswell into a hackney -chair, and walking most considerately and good humouredly by the bearers as far as her father’s door in Lombard