Sweet Mace: A Sussex Legend of the Iron Times. Fenn George Manville
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said the founder. “Thank you, Gil – thank you – God bless you for those words,” he continued, with his voice trembling; and he seized and wrung the young man’s hand, which warmly pressed his in return.
“Mace was a child of four then, Master Cobbe,” said Gil, “and we have been like brother and sister ever since.”
“Yes, yes, quite true,” said the founder.
“Then why do you say that I am growing too intimate with your child?”
“Because,” said the founder, laying his hand upon the young man’s arm, “you are growing now less like brother and sister, and it is time it was stopped.”
“Why?” said Gil, gravely.
“Because, Gil Carr, the intimacy of two people like you might lead to feelings that end in marriage, and that could never be.”
“I do not see why not,” said Gil, quietly.
“No,” said the founder, “but I do! And now listen. I like you, Gil, and I’m going to give you a bit of advice, both about this matter and your ship, for we are old friends, and I should not like you and yours to come to harm.”
“Friends in home matters, but in business you always drove the hardest bargains with me that you could; and now you talk of locking Mace away.”
“Friends enough, all the same, my lad; and as to locking up my daughter from you, as you term it, if I in the future bid her always keep her room when you are home from sea and come up here, shall I not do right? Would you have me bring her out to listen to the gallant words of every buccaneering captain who comes to my place, swaggering and swearing and drinking, till he wants a man on each side to see him safe away, lest he get into the mill-race or the dam. Nay, Captain Gil Carr – Culverin Carr, if you like! – times are altered now, for Mace is a woman grown, and a girl no longer. So in the future I’ll trade with you and be the best of friends, but there we’ll stop.”
“Now, Master Cobbe,” said Gil, with a quiet, grave smile, “when did you see me overcome by strong waters, or swaggering, or using oaths? Fie! you make me worse than I am.”
Jeremiah Cobbe chuckled, and laid his finger good-humouredly upon the young man’s breast.
“It will not do, Gil lad, so we need not argue. You are as good as most men; but see here, I have Mace’s future welfare to provide for, and, above all, her happiness. I’ve been weak and neglectful, perhaps, so far, but now I’m going to be hard as the iron in those guns. There’s no harm done as yet, so let us stop in time, for we both wish the poor girl to be happy.”
“No harm?” said Gil.
“No: so we’ll stop at once. Think you I’m going to let a man like you fool the girl with fine words? You journey here, and you journey there, and you see saucy Frenchwomen, bright-eyed Spaniards, and dark-haired Portingallo dames, and those of Italy, and no one knows where beside. Court them, my lad, and marry as many of them as you like. May be you have now a wife in every port, but you must e’en leave my little white moth alone. Let her flitter and flutter about and be satisfied with the soft light of the moon and stars; I don’t want her pretty wings singed in the fierce light of a thoughtless man’s love.”
“Amen!” said Gil, softly.
“Amen, eh? Why, Gil, you are a fine fellow to give forth such a churchman’s word as that so glibly and so pat. Master Peasegood would look fierce enough if he heard such an ungodly follower of Belial as you beginning to preach.”
“In the name of all that’s strange, Master Cobbe, what does this mean?” exclaimed Gil. “I have been free of your house all these years, and now this sudden change has come over you, and you treat me thus scurvily. In the name of all the saints, speak out. What have I done?”
“Been hooked by Father Bonchurch, seemingly, and gone over to see the Scarlet Lady on the Seven Hills, to hear you swearing by the saints.”
“It is enough to make a man swear by anything, Master Cobbe, to meet with such treatment. Come, speak out; how have I affronted you?”
“Well, if you will know, Master Gil, I looked out across the Pool some little time back, and I saw a certain young man out there in my boat fishing. All at once he thrust his hand into a bucket of water, and seized a feckless gudgeon, which he deftly hooked, and then threw overboard for the pike to seize. And, as I looked, I saw a little hand taken and kissed, and I knew then that one Captain Culverin had hooked a second gudgeon as well, and that he might play with her for a time, as he watched her helpless struggles in his hot hands, and then he might throw her overboard too. Then the scales fell from my eyes, and I saw that I had been a fool – one who had been so wrapped-up in his cannon-making that he had forgotten to watch what went on in his own house. Gilbert Carr, you have ceased to be a brother to my child, and have made hot love to her. Come, confess.”
“Confess!” cried Gil, with his face lighting up; “I have nothing, sir, to confess. If you wish me to avow that I dearly love our little Mace, I do with all my soul; and, God giving me strength, I will never do aught that shall make her shame that I love her. Yes, Master Cobbe, love has grown stronger year by year; man’s love – hot love if you will, and she has been to me my one hope – the hope that has kept me a better man than I should have been. Come, be not hard upon me, Master Cobbe. You cannot mean that you disapprove of our love?”
“I do disapprove of your love!” cried the founder angrily; “and I’ll have no more of such childish babble.”
“But Master Cobbe – ”
“I’ll hear no more, I say.”
“Nay, Master Cobbe, this is unreasonable.”
“Call it what you will; I say I’ll have no more of it. You are not the man to make my child happy, and now we understand one another. Mind, I forbid it.”
“You may forbid it, Master Cobbe,” said Gil quietly; “but I tell you frankly I cannot listen to your commands. Matters have gone too far.”
“But they shall not have gone too far,” cried the founder, flushing up, and stamping his foot with rage, “I’ll hear no more. Look ye here, Captain Gil, you’re in a passion now, so let me see no more of you for seven days. Then, perhaps, we can meet and talk calmly. Meantime, go and think.”
As he said these words Jeremiah Cobbe, the founder of Roehurst, went into his empty furnace-house, and Gil Carr walked slowly away to think of his dismissal – now, when a man whom he already looked upon as an enemy was in the place; and the young man’s face darkened as imagination began to be busy, filling his mind full of strange fancies, strongly opposed to the words he had spoken but a short time since to Mace as they parted at the house.
How the Founder set a Trap to catch a Lover
Nature seems to have ordained that the stricken ones should seek solitude to find solace for their wounds. The deer injured by the shot of the hunter plunges into the depths of the forest, and the human being cut to the heart hides away from his kind to brood and think and wait until time shall soften the pain.
So it was now with Gil Carr, for his steps led him slowly into the forest depths of the old weald, where, coming at length, by means of a cart-track, to an opening where the woodman’s axe had been at work and a hollow blackened with dust and dotted with curious little fungi, showed where the charcoal burners had been busy, he seated himself upon a stump, and began to think over the past – of the days when a boy he had been his father’s companion on shipboard, when he used to be shut down in the cabin below water-line when some attack was to be made upon a Spanish ship or fort in the Carib sea; of the love the stern, sun-browned, grizzled man bore him, and how he had been the rough sailors’ plaything. Then of that dreadful day when lying below half wandering with fever, when the air that came through the little cabin window seemed burning hot, he had felt his head throb, and listened to the noise of cannons, wondering whether they were real or only the fancies of his aching brain. Of how he had at last with swimming head crawled from his berth and painfully climbed on deck, where his feet slid from under him, and he fell in a pool of blood, after which he crawled to