The Golden Galleon Read online

  CHAPTER VII.

  THE INSTINCT OF A BRUTE DOG.

  Jasper Oglander and his son were up betimes on the following morning,and had come down to the lower rooms while yet the housemaids weresweeping up the rushes from the floors and dusting the furniture. Seeingone of the serving-men coming from the buttery Jasper called out to him,commanding him to bring two stoups of small ale. The man was waiting totake the emptied vessels, when the sound of a loud bell clanged throughthe house. At this Philip Oglander bowed his head and crossed himself;whereupon his father trod upon his toe and frowned at him.

  "Thou fool!" said Jasper when the man had left them. "Dost want tobetray us so soon? Did I not warn thee an hundred times that thesepeople are all of the Protestant faith--heretics and Lutherans who wouldbut despise us and regard us as enemies did they know that we are of theHoly Church? By the Rood, boy, thy forgetfulness hath nearly cost usdearly, for look at who cometh behind thee--thy cousin Drusilla, a saucymaid, by her favour, and it may be a dangerous."

  Drusilla was at the moment descending the broad staircase, carrying alittle basket of apples in her one hand, and with the other drawing thehood of her mulberry-coloured cloak over her fair hair. She curtsied lowand bade them a good-morrow when she came before them into the fronthall.

  "Art going abroad so early?" asked her uncle, returning her greeting,and taking up his wide-brimmed hat from the bench where he had droppedit when drinking his cup of small ale. "If so, we would go with thee,for I am fain to show thy cousin what manner of home he hath come to. Tohave such escort as thine will make our inspection doubly agreeable."

  "I was but going to the stables to give these apples to my brother'sfavourite horse," answered Drusilla. "But if ye would see the grounds Iwill willingly bear you company."

  "And how fares Master Gilbert, prithee?" inquired Jasper, leading theway out into the porchway, and standing there a moment looking outacross the terrace and the wide expanse of lawn to the misty woodlandsbeyond.

  "The wound in his arm hath troubled him but little," she answered, "buthis sprained ankle hath swollen greatly and is very painful. I fear meit will be many days ere he can leave his bed."

  "'Tis a pity the rascals who thus assailed him cannot be caught andbrought to a speedy justice," remarked Philip with seeming sympathy inhis tone, albeit with an unkindly curl of his upper lip. "Was yourbrother unarmed that he thus allowed a vagabond gypsy to overcome him?"he added.

  "Nay, for who would go unarmed in these days?" returned Drusilla. "Buteven the skilfullest swordsman may sometimes be taken at a disadvantage.Gilbert's foot slipped upon the snow, and his adversary did thrust athim even as he fell. Timothy Trollope knew not of the matter until thethree robbers had fled, or else I am very sure they should not have gotaway so easily."

  "And, prithee, who may be this Timothy of whom you speak, cousin?"pursued Philip.

  Drusilla answered:

  "He is Gilbert's good and faithful servant--the same who brought him inyesternight. He is the son of Master Peter Trollope, the barber-surgeonof Plymouth town."

  "Ah! methought I had seen him once before," observed Jasper. "He waseven in his father's shop whilst I was there having my beard trimmed.And now--let us to the stables first, Mistress Drusilla, and then whenwe have made the round of the mansion and had a peep at the hawks in themews and the deer in the chase, we shall haply go within again andintroduce ourselves to your brother. Fortunate Gilbert, to be the heirto such vast and valuable estates as these!" he added covetously, as,standing at the end of the terrace where a spacious flight of stonesteps led down to the lawn, he glanced towards the avenues of tall oldtrees that opened out before him. "Were I their owner, however, I shouldhew down those unsightly trees; they do but interrupt the view, and somuch stout oak is but wasted while there be battle-ships to be built--tosay naught of the price one might get in exchange for the timberwithal."

  Drusilla conducted her new-found relatives over the stables. They had adistant sight of the farm buildings, where the cows, having been newlymilked, were wandering out through the gates in slow and irregularprocession towards the pasture lands. Then they went round to thekennels and looked at the hounds, and to the mews, where Hawksworth andhis fellows were feeding the falcons. Thence through the orchard, nowbare of fruit, and the kitchen-garden, where Lord Champernoun, at theinstance of his friend Sir Walter Raleigh, had in the last season growna wondrous crop of potatoes and other vegetable products of the NewWorld. Then round into the park to where a herd of deer, browsing in thewet grass, started off, alarmed at their approach, and ran with greatfleetness to a misty hollow among the trees.

  At first Drusilla had been strangely shy with her two companions; butthey showed such interest in the home of her childhood and treated herwith such graceful courtesy that she soon became familiar with them, andanswered their many questions freely and eagerly. She pointed out theold oak-tree in the middle of the park under whose spreading branchesthe village children had crowned her as Queen of the May in the lastspring-time. She took them to the side of the lake where Gilbert and shehad been wont to sail their boats, and where Gilbert only a week ago hadcaught a pike. And then, coming back by the front of the house, shepointed out the little latticed window of her chamber, half-hidden amongthe clambering ivy. From where they were they could see the full extentof the great baronial mansion, with its abutting wings end many gablesflanking the tall central turret,--on which the gilt weather-vane shonebright in the morning sunlight,--its stone-shafted oriel windows, andits curiously-twisted chimneys. It was all very magnificent, albeitDrusilla thought less of it for this fact than for the reason that itwas sanctified as the residence of so many of her ancestors.

  "Ah, 'tis in truth a palace fit for a king!" declared Jasper Oglanderaside to his son. "I marvel that I ever had the foolishness to leave it.What wouldst thou say, Phil, an thy father were the owner and master ofthe place? Nay, do not smile, boy; less likely things than this havecome to pass; and remember there be but two frail lives between me andit--your grandfather, poor addle-pated pantaloon, and this striplingGilbert as they call him, touching whom I should have been by no meanssorry had his assailant of yesternight done his work more completely.Mark you, Phil," he reiterated with emphasis, "I had not beensorry--nay, why boggle the matter?--I had in truth been exceeding gladhad the wound you wot of been a span nearer to his heart."

  Whatever Philip might have said in reply to this cruel remark was cutshort by the return of Drusilla, who had but ran forward a few paces togreet Nero, the bloodhound, at the entrance of the courtyard. The dog asit approached the father and son hung down his furrowed head and growledominously--which was a habit quite unusual with him, in spite of hisaspect of ferocity.

  "Come, Brutus--Hector--Pompey--what is thy name? Come, good dog," saidJasper Oglander caressingly, snapping his finger and thumb together ininvitation to the dog. But Nero still hung his head, and growlinglysniffed about the man's feet, coming finally to Philip and growling yetagain. "Ah! he doth well discern that we are strangers to him,"continued Jasper, "or else he doth smell the brine about our clothes.Such dogs, I have observed, have a natural aversion to seamen."

  "Indeed, uncle, it can scarce be so with Nero," remarked Drusilla, "forhe hath a marvellous fondness for Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Francis isa seaman in all conscience."

  "Ay, plague on the man," muttered Jasper to himself. And presently hefollowed Drusilla across the courtyard and into the house.

  Timothy Trollope had been for the longer half of the night in his youngmaster's room--a small chamber in the west wing of the house, with verysimple furniture, but being crowded with a variety of toy ships, bowsand arrows, kites, whips, spurs, morions, corselets, rapiers, foreignshells, snakes bottled in oil, skins of rare animals and birds, andother curious and boyish gear. In front of the fireplace there was alarge Polar bear skin, with the head still attached, given to Gilbert byhis friend Sir Martin Frobisher. A small casement window in a
corner ofthe room was fitted like a ship's port-hole, with a demi-culverin madeof brass pointing outward towards a strip of blue sea that could bediscerned far away in the distance beyond the promontory of Rame Head.Gilbert had once fired this cannon from this same place, loading itwith stone-shot and aiming at a certain chestnut-tree in the park. Thecannon had rebounded even to the farther end of the room, smashing intoa cupboard, much to the damage thereof. The report had alarmed thehousehold, nay, even the whole country-side for a mile round; it hadcome nigh to the deafening of Gilbert himself, for his ears tingled formany days. Fortunately no one had suffered any hurt; fortunately, also,the splendid mansion was too well built to suffer from so unwonted ashock. The lad had fallen into disgrace for a week afterwards and wasforbidden to bring gunpowder into the house again. He regretted thefoolish freak, but in his regret, and despite of the chastisement hereceived by order of his stern and offended grandfather, there was stilla sort of boyish satisfaction in his heart--a satisfaction which arosefrom the fact that his shot had hit its intended mark.

  Lady Betty smiled as, sitting by her son's bedside in view of thecannon, she remembered this long-past incident. She had come into theroom in the early morning, and had dismissed Timothy Trollope, biddinghim go and get some sleep and return when the household had risen.Gilbert had slumbered during the whole time that she had been presentwith him, but at the sound of the opening of the door he had awakened,to find Timothy again at his side and his mother silently retreating ontiptoe.

  "Ah, she hath gone, and I had hardly known she was here!" sighedGilbert. "Go, summon her back, Tim--yet, no; let her not know that I amawake. 'Twill comfort her to think that I am still asleep. But I amsorry that she hath gone. I had meant to question her concerning thisUncle Jasper and his son. For what my mother doth say of them and thinkof them is certain to be true and just, whether her judgment befavourable or the reverse. Didst mark her demeanour towards themyesternight, Tim? Didst mark if she greeted them in friendly wise?"

  "I marked little of anything, so much was I concerned as to your hurts,dear master," returned Timothy; "but in so far as I could see, herladyship seemed to regard your uncle rather with annoyance thanfriendship, and to avoid his near presence as if she misliked hisintrusion."

  "And yet, if I mind aright, my mother hath ofttimes spoken of him asthough she had known him passing well," observed Gilbert, as hehalf-raised himself upon his uninjured arm.

  Timothy strode slowly towards the window and looked out into the park.

  "She knew him ere yet she was wedded," he said in a quiet decisive tone,"so at least my father hath told me. But peradventure 'twas only idlegossip."

  "Gossip?" repeated Gilbert reprovingly. "Gossip about my mother?Prithee, what said your father? Come, tell me, Tim."

  "Nay, be not alarmed," said Timothy, turning for amoment from thewindow and looking his young master in the face. "'Twas only this, thatwhen my lady was at Her Majesty's court in Richmond as one of HerMajesty's ladies-in-waiting, Jasper Oglander did woo her in the hopethat she would wed him, and so cut out his brother, of whom, as thouknowest, he was bitterly jealous. My lady chose the better man to be herhusband, and Master Jasper departed across the seas to forget hisdisappointment in foreign lands."

  "Tut! There is naught in that," rejoined Gilbert with a light laugh."'Tis in no wise surprising that Jasper Oglander or any other man shouldadmire my mother. Doth not all England admire her? Have not a full scoreof our best poets penned sonnets in her praise? Out upon thee, Timothy,out upon thee!"

  "Well, howsoever it be," said Timothy as he gave his head a carelesstoss and stood with his thumbs in his belt at the window; "howsoever itbe, I like not the man myself. He is a braggart, of that I am sure, andthere is a look in his eyes that doth betoken deceitfulness."

  "Thy opinion in the matter of people's characters is seldom to bedepended upon, Tim," remarked Gilbert, assuming the gravity of worldlywisdom. "Thou dost trust overmuch to instinct and too little to aknowledge of the world. 'Tis a brute dog's method."

  Timothy strode to the bedside and sat down on the chair that Lady Bettyhad lately left. He crossed his legs and was silent for a few moments.

  "'Tis true I have not travelled as thou hast done, Master Gilbert, norbeen to a great public school to learn Latin and Greek as thou hastbeen. But methinks a brute dog's instinct may yet sometimes be trusted;and I have even known the dog Nero to be right in his discernment of menwhen thou and I have failed. Howbeit, 'tis not for me, who am but aservant, to say ought in disparagement of your worshipful uncle, whomay, after all, be a very proper gentleman; and I do humbly beseech yourpardon, sir, for having said so much as I have already done."

  There was a light knock at the door. Tim started to his feet.

  "Wilt let us enter, Gilbert?" asked Drusilla in a half-whisper as thoughshe feared to disturb her brother. "Uncle Jasper and Cousin Philip arehere, and they would be better known to thee."

  Timothy opened the door and they entered.

  "I fear that we disturb thee, Master Gilbert," began Jasper Oglander ina soft, tender voice, when the greetings had been exchanged. "But wewere anxious, as thou mayest be sure, to make thy good acquaintance, aswe have already made that of thy sweet sister."

  "Thou art right welcome, Uncle Jasper; and thou too, Cousin Philip,"said Gilbert with hearty candour. "Ay, sit you upon the bed, Drusilla,"he added, turning to Drusilla. "But see you come not too near to my lamefoot, for 'tis easily hurt. I am like our grandfather now, when he istroubled with his gout."

  "Ah! doth the old gentleman suffer much with that complaint, then?" saidJasper in a tone of sympathetic interest; and, without pausing for ananswer, he went on: "'Tis old age creeping upon him, I doubt. Let mesee--ay--he must be well upon threescore years and ten. But he hath leda busy life, what with wars, and parliaments, and missions of state, andreligious controversy; 'tis little wonder that his hairs are silvered.But I thank God and the saints that I find him looking so hale andwell."

  "_The saints_, Uncle Jasper?" cried Drusilla, noticing this slip of thetongue. "Is it not enough to thank God alone?"

  "Nay, I meant not that, of course," said Jasper, growing very red in theface, yet passing the matter off with a careless laugh. "You see, in mytravels in foreign countries I have come so much in contact withSpaniards and others of the Romish faith that I have, as it were,acquired insensibly their habit of mentioning the saints, to whom theydo so constantly appeal."

  "Yes, I have heard them oftentimes," said Gilbert; "for there be manySpanish Papists at this present time in Plymouth. Prisoners of war theyare--although it seemeth vain to call them prisoners, for they do goabout the streets with freedom, and are little different from other mensaving that they are not permitted to carry arms."

  "They would speedily find that they were prisoners indeed, if they didbut attempt to escape from our shores, however," interposed TimothyTrollope.

  Jasper Oglander seemed to take a lively interest in this particularsubject.

  "Prithee, what is their number, and how came they to be prisoners inEngland?" he asked of his nephew.

  "I know not truly how many there be," answered Gilbert; "a good twoscore, I should say. They were taken on board of the Spanish galleon_Nuestra Senora del Rosario_, the flagship of Don Pedro de Valdes, whosurrendered to Francis Drake at the time of the Armada fight. Many oftheir companions were sent back to Spain, but these remain in Plymouth,for I know not what reason other than that Queen Elizabeth hath notchosen to liberate them."

  Having learned so much, Jasper hastened to change the subject.

  "I have been told," he said, "that you received your injuriesyesternight in rescuing one Jacob Hartop, an aged mariner who, as itchanceth, came home with us from the Indies. Was he, too, wounded inthis encounter?"

  Gilbert turned to Timothy, and Timothy answered:

  "No, your worship; he was but robbed."

  "H'm! the thieves can have gained but sorry booty from so impoverished aprey," remarked Jasper, with a derisi
ve sneer. "Poor crazed creature, hewas scarce worth the room he occupied aboard our ship! And, indeed, weshould never have consented to bring him but that we were short-handed,and he so earnestly craved for his passage back to England, and so wegave him a berth out of mere compassionate charity."

  "Haply, too, you had been acquainted with the man in former years?"suggested Gilbert.

  Jasper glanced in quick apprehension at his nephew, as if questioningwhether the lad spoke from knowledge or only at random.

  "No, faith, no," he answered, with seeming indifference. "I have butknown him during our late voyage."

  Then Timothy Trollope--remembering how Philip had made inquiry of himconcerning Hartop; remembering, too, how speedily the attack upon theold seafarer had followed upon his own meeting with Philip Oglander inthe town--ventured to address the two visitors thus:

  "I have been thinking," said he, looking from Jasper to Philip and backagain to Jasper, "that 'tis passing strange you neither saw nor heardaught of this encounter. You set out from Plymouth at close upon fiveo'clock, or only a brief time before my master and I started for home.You could scarce have arrived at the manor-house very much in advance ofus. 'Tis plain, therefore, that you were at no great distance fromBeddington Dingle at the moment when this thing befell. And yet itseemeth that you knew naught of the matter until Master Gilbert wascarried wounded into the dining-hall."

  While Timothy spoke Jasper's fingers were idly playing with the fringeof Gilbert's counterpane. He glanced upward with a composure which atonce dispelled all Timothy's doubts, and remarked with so much seemingcandour that there was no gainsaying the truth of his statement:

  "That same question hath already occurred to me," said he; "and, indeed,had we chanced to come by that same road I doubt not that we shouldcertainly have passed your robbers by the way. Peradventure we mighteven have been near enough at hand to render you some timely aid inovercoming the rascals. But it so happened that we journeyed by thelonger way of the main road instead of taking the short cut by theBeddington Lane."

  "Would that you had indeed been near, uncle!" said Drusilla, as she satat the foot of the bed, her two hands stretched out clasping the carvedoak rail against which her back was resting. "For apart from yourself,who are, as it seemeth, a man of war, I am well assured that CousinPhilip is a master of fence. I saw his long rapier yesternight. 'Tissuch a weapon as surely none but the skilfullest swordsman couldhandle."

  "Ay, 'tis a pretty enough blade," returned Jasper carelessly; "but morefor ornament, I do assure you, than for use, Mistress Drusilla. As forPhilip, he is a sorry hand at such matters. In fencing, as in many otherarts that I have wished him to exercise, he is in truth a very dullardand bungler."

  Philip Oglander smiled, with his tongue in his cheek.

  "Marry, father, but thou art giving me an over-true character," said he,modestly hanging his head. "My cousins will think me a dunce indeed ifyou herald me thus. But when Cousin Gilbert hath recovered from hisinjuries, as I do pray that he speedily may, I will ask him to give me afew lessons in the use of the rapier."

  "That will I most gladly do," returned Gilbert. "Although, for thematter of that, Timothy Trollope here would prove a likelier and askilfuller teacher than I, for I am still but his pupil."

  "I thank you," said Philip, with a curious lift of his eyebrows as heglanced across at Timothy. "But so please you, I had rather take mylessons from a gentleman."

  Timothy winced under the reproach to his lowly birth, and moved away,busying himself by putting aside some books that his young master hadleft lying on the window-shelf.

  "Was not I right, Tim?" remarked Gilbert, some few minutes afterwards,when Drusilla with her uncle and cousin had departed. "Are not they goodworthy folk, these relatives of mine?"

  "It would ill become me to differ from you, Master Gilbert," answeredTimothy. "My instincts may be at fault."