"Mater intemerata! Eripe me e--Ugh! I am down! Adhaesit pavimento venter!--No! I am not! El dilectum tuum e potestate canis--Ah! Audisti me inter cornua unicornium! Put this, too, down in--ugh!--thy account in favor of my poor--oh, sharpness of this saddle! Oh, whither, barbarous islanders!"Now riding on his quarter, not in the rough track-way like a cockney, but through the soft heather like a sportsman, was a very gallant knight whom we all know well by this time, Richard Grenville by name; who had made Mr.Cary and the rest his guests the night before, and then ridden out with them at five o'clock that morning, after the wholesome early ways of the time, to rouse a well-known stag in the glens at Buckish, by help of Mr.Coffin's hounds from Portledge.Who being as good a Latiner as Campian's self, and overhearing both the scraps of psalm and the "barbarous islanders," pushed his horse alongside of Mr.Eustace Leigh, and at the first check said, with two low bows towards the two strangers--"I hope Mr.Leigh will do me the honor of introducing me to his guests.I should be sorry, and Mr.Cary also, that any gentle strangers should become neighbors of ours, even for a day, without our knowing who they are who honor our western Thule with a visit;and showing them ourselves all due requital for the compliment of their presence."After which, the only thing which poor Eustace could do (especially as it was spoken loud enough for all bystanders), was to introduce in due form Mr.Evan Morgans and Mr.Morgan Evans, who, hearing the name, and, what was worse, seeing the terrible face with its quiet searching eye, felt like a brace of partridge-poults cowering in the stubble, with a hawk hanging ten feet over their heads.
"Gentlemen," said Sir Richard blandly, cap in hand, "I fear that your mails must have been somewhat in your way in this unexpected gallop.If you will permit my groom, who is behind, to disencumber you of them and carry them to Chapel, you will both confer an honor on me, and be enabled yourselves to see the mort more pleasantly."A twinkle of fun, in spite of all his efforts, played about good Sir Richard's eye as he gave this searching hint.The two Welsh gentlemen stammered out clumsy thanks; and pleading great haste and fatigue from a long journey, contrived to fall to the rear and vanish with their guides, as soon as the slot had been recovered.
"Will!" said Sir Richard, pushing alongside of young Cary.
"Your worship?"
"Jesuits, Will!"
"May the father of lies fly away with them over the nearest cliff!""He will not do that while this Irish trouble is about.Those fellows are come to practise here for Saunders and Desmond.""Perhaps they have a consecrated banner in their bag, the scoundrels! Shall I and young Coffin on and stop them? Hard if the honest men may not rob the thieves once in a way.""No; give the devil rope, and he will hang himself.Keep thy tongue at home, and thine eyes too, Will.""How then?"
"Let Clovelly beach be watched night and day like any mousehole.
No one can land round Harty Point with these south-westers.Stop every fellow who has the ghost of an Irish brogue, come he in or go he out, and send him over to me.""Some one should guard Bude-haven, sir."
"Leave that to me.Now then, forward, gentlemen all, or the stag will take the sea at the Abbey."And on they crashed down the Hartland glens, through the oak-scrub and the great crown-ferns; and the baying of the slow-hound and the tantaras of the horn died away farther and fainter toward the blue Atlantic, while the conspirators, with lightened hearts, pricked fast across Bursdon upon their evil errand.But Eustace Leigh had other thoughts and other cares than the safety of his father's two mysterious guests, important as that was in his eyes; for he was one of the many who had drunk in sweet poison (though in his case it could hardly be called sweet) from the magic glances of the Rose of Torridge.He had seen her in the town, and for the first time in his life fallen utterly in love; and now that she had come down close to his father's house, he looked on her as a lamb fallen unawares into the jaws of the greedy wolf, which he felt himself to be.For Eustace's love had little or nothing of chivalry, self-sacrifice, or purity in it; those were virtues which were not taught at Rheims.Careful as the Jesuits were over the practical morality of their pupils, this severe restraint had little effect in producing real habits of self-control.What little Eustace had learnt of women from them, was as base and vulgar as the rest of their teaching.What could it be else, if instilled by men educated in the schools of Italy and France, in the age which produced the foul novels of Cinthio and Bandello, and compelled Rabelais in order to escape the rack and stake, to hide the light of his great wisdom, not beneath a bushel, but beneath a dunghill;the age in which the Romish Church had made marriage a legalized tyranny, and the laity, by a natural and pardonable revulsion, had exalted adultery into a virtue and a science? That all love was lust; that all women had their price; that profligacy, though an ecclesiastical sin, was so pardonable, if not necessary, as to be hardly a moral sin, were notions which Eustace must needs have gathered from the hints of his preceptors; for their written works bear to this day fullest and foulest testimony that such was their opinion; and that their conception of the relation of the sexes was really not a whit higher than that of the profligate laity who confessed to them.He longed to marry Rose Salterne, with a wild selfish fury; but only that he might be able to claim her as his own property, and keep all others from her.Of her as a co-equal and ennobling helpmate; as one in whose honor, glory, growth of heart and soul, his own were inextricably wrapt up, he had never dreamed.Marriage would prevent God from being angry with that, with which otherwise He might be angry; and therefore the sanction of the Church was the more "probable and safe" course.But as yet his suit was in very embryo.He could not even tell whether Rose knew of his love; and he wasted miserable hours in maddening thoughts, and tost all night upon his sleepless bed, and rose next morning fierce and pale, to invent fresh excuses for going over to her uncle's house, and lingering about the fruit which he dared not snatch.
