Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (287 page)

“Edward Colman,” she answered, “what you do, or how, in these things temporal matters nothing. If the arrow that is aimed in the dark shall strike you, it shall strike you; if your doom is said, it is said. But I may tell you how to avoid the sweating image of Anne Jeal.”

He answered —

“Why, come to me to-morrow with those devices; to-night I fear more the soldiers of the King that is than the powers of the Prince of the Netherworld.”

She answered —

“Sir, if you will escape a sad death, put your knife to the heart of Anne Jeal and go across the seas. That you will go across the seas I know from the stars, but what your end shall be I have not seen, for the maps I have made show not all the water you shall traverse.”

“Why,” he said, “it is true I have had some thoughts of seeing this New World. But that you may have heard from my housekeeper and nurse.”

“Edward Colman,” she said again, “put a knife to the heart of Anne Jeal; for, for sure, otherwise she shall have your life.”

“Old beldam,” he said, “doubtless Anne Jeal hath maltreated thee; I believe it well; she hath maltreated many of the poor. But use thine own knife or make a waxen image of her; it is not I that traffic in these things.”

He reflected again for a moment, and then he spoke —

“If it is very certain that no untrue men be in the Council, I will get me there; I have my plan. For it is certain that they shall not say I be in the town. And I do think you will not say so, and Anne Jeal—”

He broke off to say —

“I marvel Anne Jeal should pursue me so with death.”

She laughed shrilly.

“Man,” she said, “have you ever known a woman? There is no woman that shall not hate the man she may not have. Women are not of the lymphatic blood of men.”

“Aye,” he answered gravely; “but if she loves me, wherefore doth she not pursue me, to win me, rather with sweetness?”

“Man,” she said, “no women pursue with sweetness; they fly and would be followed. Women do not love; women’s love is not like men’s love. If a woman would have a man to love her she wounds him in play with gibes, and little pouts and mockeries; but if he should avoid and go in preference to another, then she will not tire till he be dead.”

“It is a foolish way!” he answered. “Whom doth it profit?”

“Edward Colman,” she answered him, “what a woman asks is not, ‘Whom shall it profit?’ but rather, ‘How may I find ease?’”

He was leaning back against the bottom of the buttress to pull off his shoes, or he would not have talked this folly. But now that he had his shoes in his hand he uttered —

“Why, I am wedded to Magdalena, for all that folly. Here — here is money for thee; pouf! how cold these stones be.”

The old woman watched him creep soundlessly beneath the buttresses to the church corner.

“Now I wonder,” she said to herself, “how much he trembles beneath his calm.” She spat upon his coin in her hand and crept after him — to the corner. He went tiptoeing noiselessly out of the black shadow of the church until he stood upon the wet grass of the bank; he held his breath, and kept his hand upon the chain he had round his neck, so that its chinking should not reach to the ears of Anne Jeal. He was very close to her, and had his hand out to catch her wrist when he observed that, pale and gleaming, her eyes were upon him.

She leaned her ear against the little square hole where a pane was missing in the window of the Court Hall; all her body was in shadow, and her face outlined against the red of the robes that filled the hall. The sound of voices reached Edward Colman’s ear, and she had the hood that should have covered her head cast back nearly on to her shoulders, so that she might the better listen, and she had one hand to the side of her face; only her eyes and mouth were turned outward towards him. She waited for a long time, listening to the voices within, and neglected his presence, as if he were of no avail.

Eventually she spoke, but monotonously, because she still listened.

“Aye, Edward Colman, I hear your mind say that you will take me by the wrist and draw me before these Council men.” And she held up her hand to him to be silent, that she might hear better what they said within.

At last she moved up and back from the window, saying —

“There is no end to their prating of shall they resist or not resist them that shall come to take thee. They have talked five hours, and come to no resolution.”

She drew the hood forward over her head, so that looking at her face was like looking into a cavern, and then he saw, in the shadow, that she was holding out to him her wrist.

“Take hold of it, Edward Colman,” she said, “and hale me before the magistrates. I have done treason to the town of Rye.” And when she saw that he withdrew his hand into the little cape he wore, that came just down to his elbow, she laughed. “Well, you cannot lay hands upon a woman, or take me to disgrace before many men! I hear your thoughts thinking themselves.”

“It is certain that you must be mewed up,” he answered resolutely.

“Aye,” she cried out, “you would not lay hands upon me or publicly disgrace me; but I shall go into a closet or a strong room, because I am the only one that will betray you or the deliberations of this town of Rye. See you how well I do read your thoughts! I hear them thinking themselves.”

“I do not believe that you can read my thoughts,” he said; “but it is very certain that you must be mewed up for a space, for you are the only one here that would betray my being in this town, and it is very certain that no man will break in upon this sanctuary if he be not assured that I am here.”

“Why,” she said, “I know you like little to pin me thus against a stone wall, like a bully. I read your thoughts, and I will walk beside you to where you will to be mewed up.” She took a step on the grass beside him, and uttered then, with a high laugh, “Are the kisses of your fat wife sweet, Edward Colman? I warrant you have had none ere marriage from that Puritan. Whereas from me —— —”

She took another step, when he uttered, marching at her side —

“God help you, you have had no kisses from me save in the way of courtesy!”

“God help me!” she said, with a hating sneer. “It is you that God should help. Such a pair of doltish lovers; tee-hee! Side by side upon a bench they sit, mum, still, silent, tongue-tied; she casting him ox-eyes to the smell of oranges; he wooing to the tune of drawings on a slate! And she! Clambering over roof-tops; a Dutch, Puritan dollop with a world of men at gaze upon her. Tee-hee! Here’s Puritanism; here’s maiden modesty; here’s wifely perspicacity and matron’s reserve upon the thatch. She will clamber on roof-tops like a great boy at the playhouse. I — I will kill thee! Tell me, Edward Colman, thou great villain, which of us loves thee best!”

They had come to the edge of the grass, and a pebbly path ran down from the high-door of the church.

“God knows,” he said, “I am no villain. I have never loved thee, nor toyed with thee, nor looked lovingly upon thee.”

She faced him on the grassy edge; his bare feet were cold with the wet of the dew.

“Edward Colman,” she said, and her voice dropped, “what is that collop of a woman beside me? I am so little, and so quaint, and so limber, I could creep through a ring. Have I not a thousand tricks wherewith I could beguile thee?

Can she play upon the lute? Tune virginals? Wear a farthingale gown and not look like a playhouse? Can she tickle thine ear with her voice? Can she distil waters, talk medicine, turn a verse, or do aught but polish, and cleanse, and scour, and sand, and wet your floors all day, to cleanse them till you sneeze? What can she for your entertainment when you are melancholy?”

“Why, I am never melancholy,” he said.

“Aye,” she answered; “thou art of the complexion of the Medes and Persians: thou alterest not.... But, oh! heavy shall the days hang upon thy hands—” and he shrank back the distance of a hair’s breadth.

“Oh, coxcomb!” she cried out heinously; “dolt! sot! He believes I am set to turn his allegiance from his new-worn wife!” She paused to draw breath. “Love thee!” she said; “love thee! Curse thee! Would I take thee after another? I! I!” She came close up to him and hissed in his face. “Shall I take another’s leavings? Before God, I will eat in my own trencher. You shall die — miserably, unshriven, of a sudden, in your sins. Thou art a villain, Edward Colman!” She imitated his voice, with a frenzy of soft lisping. “Thou hast never kissed me save in the manner of courtesy! Thou hast never loved me, nor toyed with me, nor looked lovingly upon me! I tell thee thou wast born a villain! Thou wast a villain in thy playing childish games with me! Thou hast always had a ready smile, a long patience, a gentle wit! All villainy! For what do men be born, for what do they live, and smile, and be pleasant, and cause poor women to love them unlovingly? But, before God, Edward Colman, your sins have found you out. You have no more attraction in my eyes. I do not love you; no, I do not love you. Preen not your feathers at that thought. Shall I love a dolt and a sot that will link himself to that — ?”

The quarter-boys above the church porch made a wheezing and groaning of iron and wheels; it startled him, and he looked upwards, whilst he was thinking that it was a patent folly to listen to this raving, and dropped his shoes from his hand to the turf, intending to shuffle his feet into them. As he looked back she cried out —

“I do not love thee, Edward Colman, but rather, as the cold sea, the keen winds, or the grey hairs of old age — so... She struck him suddenly in the face as he looked back, and crying out,” I abhor thee!” she sprang into the path and turned and ran.

He was very quick, so that she must leave her woollen cloak in his hands; but he could not run, so much his stockinged feet hurt him upon the pebbles of the path, and she laughed, from a distance —

“Aye, thou wouldst fain pursue me now, Edward Colman,” and was gone amidst the shadows and housefronts of the descending street.

CHAPTER VII
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WHILST he was shuffling his feet into his shoes he was aware of the old woman from the church end, who wept near him like a terrified cat in the deep shadows.

“Woe!” she said. “You are a bleeding reed for the poor to trust to. You have let Anne Jeal go free. Anne Jeal that knows everything and hateth me. Shall she not now oppress and grind my face for ever! Woe to you, woe to you!”

“Why,” Edward Colman said, pulling up one flap of his shoe, “if I live to be a thousand I may live to understand of women. A man would have stood and stayed, being as it were upon parole!”

“Oh man,” she answered, “I begin to believe that you are so calm only because you are a fool.” He answered coolly —

“Fair words, old beldame! I am calm that I may think the better. But because I have let her ‘scape I will speak of thy case to the Council that she oppress thee not. I think the Council will not much favour her in time to come.”

He pulled on his shoe.

“Jove!” he said. “This is a difficult world. I have been too easy — but I will amend.”

The Court Hall was a building of two storeys in front where it was but of one behind, because it was built against the bank. The lower range, in the street, was open, with wooden pillars, between which the market people set up their stalls; up above, the Council Hall showed a range of lighted, painted windows with criss-cross leadings, but below it was all dark and damp. Only at the foot of the stairway the Town Chamberlain slept beside his iron lanthorn that sent a few dancing rays through pierced holes in the metal. His robes were all black, his sword of office and his sword of State leant against the wall behind him; but he slept so soundly that Edward Colman could take from his waist his bunch of keys and could unlock the door without his ever stirring. In Edward Colman’s disfavourable humour this too seemed to him to be out of order and antiquated. He went up the dark stairs jangling the keys in his hand.

“A pretty imbroglio,” he said, selecting three greybeards to address from the mass of scarlet robes, chains and faces that confronted him—”a pretty imbroglio you have made. I am tired of this ancient town.”

He stood in his short black cloak, with his wide knee breeches and the little black hat with its tuft of feathers in the brim, in the midst of a whole galaxy of red-cloaked figures. Some were asleep with their heads cast back, some were asleep with their heads on the tables, round three sides of the panelled hall that had dark oak rafters and cross beams above the head. There were vessels of silver, in the shape of ships and of lions and cocks, along the board and glistening in the lamplight. But behind the cross table, where lay the mayoral mace and where stood the big seats of panel gilt, there was a black wood canopy, and upon it, all in silver, a round plaque with the arms of the Five Ports — three half ships from which protruded the heads, legs and claws of three small lions. In the seat sat the Mayor of Rye, an old man with a bluish-white beard, beside him leaned the Mayor of Winchelsea, an oldish, seafaring-looking man, with a heavy moustache of grey as long as a Moor’s beard. Each of these men was sober, and beside the one was a young man, only middling drunk, but too drunk to speak intelligibly, and a man without beard or hair to speak of, very brown and wizened, who was called Solomon Keymer and was a goldsmith.

“This ancient town,” Colman spoke again, “can neither keep its secrets nor yet shield its townsmen. Its barons go before a Lord Lieutenant and, beneath their noses, a half-baked girl swears away the life of a brother baron. Sirs, I tell you that, but for the wit of an old Dutchman whom ye despise because he was not born in this antique nest, I had never stood here now.”

Solomon Keymer, with the wrinkled brown skin, spoke croakingly —

“Put on your robes, Edward Colman. It is appointed in the Customals of this Port Town that no baron do speak before brother barons save in his robes under a penalty of forty shillings.” Edward Colman addressed himself to Jeal and to the Mayor of Winchelsea —

“There you have the town of Rye,” he said, “there you have to what this realm of the Cinque Ports is descended. It can talk of its fusty rules; it cannot shield its citizens. It can oppress old women; it cannot keep its hoydens to order.”

The Mayor Jeal spoke with a grieved and heavy solemnity —

“Ill it becomes you, Edward Colman,” he said, “you that descend from more barons than any of us here can boast of, thus to deride our ancient dignities because to-day we be oppressed by great force and august powers.”

Edward Colman, if he had spoken harsh words, had kept his good humour, and the never-failing smile was round the ends of his foxy and little moustache. Now he laughed.

“There you have it,” he said. “We have broken the laws of the realm in these ports for many centuries. We have harboured Jews, we have fought with the Frenchmen in days of peace; there are scarce two men here that have not plied the owling trade immune by dint of prating of our privileges. Now we prate of oppression because we are little and weak, and our trade is gone and our harbours choked up—”

“It is oppression,” the Mayor Jeal answered him, “if the Lord Lieutenant should come to take you on our lands and in our liberties.”

“Oh, Godfather Jeal,” Edward Colman laughed, “we have laughed at the King and the laws in ages past. We have overborne and been burdensome; if now the King and the laws be too strong for us that is not oppression — it is tit for tat. Let us put aside these foibles; this is a newer age.” Solomon Keymer, who had studied the ancient customals till he had each word by heart, groaned that the Mayor did not stop Edward Colman’s mouth; the Mayor of Winchelsea, who congratulated himself that he had no daughter, spoke —

“Nevertheless it behoves us to maintain—” at the same time as Jeal said —

“The Corporation of the Cinque Ports is a great and glorious—” And each stopped speaking at the same moment.

“Sirs,” Edward Colman said, “we are a great and glorious corporation, nevertheless our daughters, for lack of beating, twist us by the beards.

And it is all of a piece—”

He paused, and explained to the men that did not follow him but looked puzzled, “It was good harbours and good discipline that made us powerful; now our harbours are stopped up and we have grown so indulgent that no man here hath chidden our Mayor for letting his daughter grow saucy. Let us fling aside our talk of privilege, and see to getting back our old trade, or we are lost for ever.”

“Were you ever beaten that you speak so saucy?” Solomon Keymer asked.

“Aye, Solomon Keymer,” Colman answered, “I was so swinged as a boy that I have marked my books and know how the world wags.”

The young, drunken baron, that had been staring at Colman with amazed eyes, uttered now some indistinguishable babble about a sack of malt — and when he was silent again Edward Colman asked —

“What have ye devised to do to save me?” and waited for an answer.

“Why,” the Mayor answered, “we have debated this five hours of whether we shall resist if the Lieutenant send to take you.”

“Aye,” Edward Colman answered, “you have debated for five hours—”

“Sir,” the Mayor of Winchelsea interrupted him, “it is a matter for debate; for, firstly, we may well and of good conscience resist, that being our right. But secondly, should we resist with wisdom? For if we resist and our powers be overcome — as well they may be — there go our rights for ever. But, if we lie very low now — if you escape to foreign parts — if, in short, our rights remain till we be stronger again—”

“Why — you speak a peck of sense,” Edward Colman said. “I shall get me across the seas!”

The Mayor of Rye leaned back; the Mayor of Winchelsea forward; Solomon Keymer scratched his chin disfavourably. It had seemed to all three of them so incredible that a Baron of Rye should not wish to assert the privileges of his estate though all the world crumbled; it had seemed to all the rest of the Corporation so incredible that a man could wish to leave the town of Rye, which for them was not only the centre of the world but the utmost horizon of it, that though each of them in the enthusiasm of his cups had mooted this idea, there was not one of them that, whilst he was sober, had done more than debate upon whether or no they should resist the Lieutenant’s soldiers or where or how they should hide him in the town till the search was given over.

But to Edward Colman a privilege that you could not maintain against all the world was a privilege not worth the maintaining by hook or crook. He would have said, had he not been humorously set to irritate these old men, that he loved the town of Rye enough to have had it long enough in his mind that he should in some way seek to restore the falling fortunes of the town; as it was he only harped upon that decline.

“We have been losing our shipping this hundred years,” he said. “Where my fathers had a hundred ships I have but a few; we have much of gold hoarded up, but what is the use of gold if it be not employed in merchandise to increase and fructify? and each day the cost of livelihood increases with the wealth of the age. Yeomen and small squires live as formerly lords did when Henry was King. And are we not a mock and a laughing-stock if we call ourselves barons and have not wealth increasing to set us up above the small tillers of the soil or the merchants of Bristol and Fowey?”

Solomon Keymer shook a thin finger at him.

“Aye,” he croaked, “there the shoe pinches. He would eat off silver where his father ate off wooden trenchers. God forbid that I should see the day when a man of Rye should say that Rye is not enough for his pleasuring. Get you to London, young sir, with its foul ways and loose living. That is the place meet for you.” But he cackled incredulously, for it was a thing beyond belief; no man there having been to London, save when they went as barons for the Coronation feast of the new King, the Barons of the Cinque Ports sitting upon the King’s right hand at the Coronation feast, so high had their status always been in England till that day.

The Mayor Jeal, however, was too eager to grasp at Edward Colman’s offer to heed any more whether he prized Rye, high or low.

“You will get across the seas?” he asked. Edward Colman answered —

“I take you all three to witness that I have this day lawfully wedded the daughter of the Pastor Koop. I bind you all to witness and set down in the minutes of this town that you shall cherish my properties here, encroaching upon none of them, unless they be attaindered by the law of the realm, which they cannot well be by the law unless I be taken and brought to trial—”

“That we will do, Edward Colman,” the Mayor said.

“Aye,” Edward Colman answered him; “but see that you attend very diligently to the safety and property of my wife Magdalena and any of her offspring. And see that you look very carefully to my coming away. For I trow, Mayor Jeal, that you have one in your house that shall strive to strike at my wife and my gear. But be careful.” Jeal looked at him with an astonished air of resentment.

“Would you threat us?” he asked. “Would you doubt our honesty?”

“Why,” Edward Colman answered, “I would not doubt your honesty, godfather — nor the honesty of them that slumber around me. But I doubt your capacities, unless you be threatened. And I do threat you for fear of your daughter, the Mayoress of this town.”

Old Jeal drew himself up; but Edward Colman interrupted his speech before he could bring out more than half a word.

“Oh, I know the matter. But I tell you this: that if my wife be injured or molested, or if my house be touched or despoiled by the common law, I must come back to England; and if I come back to England I may be taken; and if I be taken as like as not I may be tortured, and if I be tortured I may disclose such things about the illicit trading of wool as shall forfeit half the goods and half the gear and half the houses — nay, and half the lives — of all the Barons of Rye.”

The tipsy baron, who had continued to gaze upon him, brought out suddenly —

“What, Edward Colman turn traitor? Edward Colman play informer? Never! I’ll not believe it.”

Edward Colman turned upon him a sunny glance.

“Why, I would not turn traitor,” he said, “save upon the compulsion of torture, and I will not come under the compulsion of torture save after Rye town have betrayed me. I will not come back till I be pardoned or till the town of Rye fail to protect my goods and my wife with its best endeavours.”