"Ha, ha! the witch and her lover! Foul is fair! foul is fair! Shadow to goblin, goblin to shadow,--and the devil will have his own!"
"And what mischance, my poor girl," asked the Nevile, soothingly, "brought thee into such evil company?"
"I know not, fair sir," said the girl, slowly recovering her self; "but my father is poor, and I had heard that on these holiday occasions one who had some slight skill on the gittern might win a few groats from the courtesy of the bystanders. So I stole out with my serving-woman, and had already got more than I dared hope, when those wicked timbrel-players came round me, and accused me of taking the money from them. And then they called an officer of the ground, who asked me my name and holding; so when I answered, they called my father a wizard, and the man broke my poor gittern,--see!"--and she held it up, with innocent sorrow in her eyes, yet a half-smile on her lips,--"and they soon drove poor old Madge from my side, and I knew no more till you, worshipful sir, took pity on me."
"But why," asked the Nevile, "did they give to your father so unholy a name?"
"Alas, sir! he is a great scholar, who has spent his means in studying what he says will one day be of good to the people."
"Humph!" said Marmaduke, who had all the superstitions of his time, who looked upon a scholar, unless in the Church, with mingled awe and abhorrence, and who, therefore, was but ill-satisfied with the girl's artless answer,
"Humph! your father--but--" checking what he was about, perhaps harshly, to say, as he caught the bright eyes and arch, intelligent face lifted to his own--"but it is hard to punish the child for the father's errors."
"Errors, sir!" repeated the damsel, proudly, and with a slight disdain in her face and voice. "But yes, wisdom is ever, perhaps, the saddest error!"
This remark was of an order superior in intellect to those which had preceded it: it contrasted with the sternness of experience the simplicity of the child; and of such contrasts, indeed, was that character made up. For with a sweet, an infantine change of tone and countenance, she added, after a short pause, "They took the money! The gittern--see, they left that, when they had made it useless."
"I cannot mend the gittern, but I can refill the gipsire," said Marmaduke.
The girl coloured deeply. "Nay, sir, to earn is not to beg." Marmaduke did not heed this answer; for as they were now passing by the stunted trees, under which sat several revellers, who looked up at him from their cups and tankards, some with sneering, some with grave looks, he began, more seriously than in his kindly impulse he had hitherto done, to consider the appearance it must have to be thus seen walking in public with a girl of inferior degree, and perhaps doubtful repute. Even in our own day such an exhibition would be, to say the least, suspicious; and in that day, when ranks and classes were divided with iron demarcations, a young gallant, whose dress bespoke him of gentle quality, with one of opposite sex, and belonging to the humbler orders, in broad day too, was far more open to censure. The blood mounted to his brow, and halting abruptly, he said, in a dry and altered voice: "My good damsel, you are now, I think, out of danger; it would ill beseem you, so young and so comely, to go farther with one not old enough to be your protector; so, in God's name, depart quickly, and remember me when you buy your new gittern, poor child!" So saying, he attempted to place a piece of money in her hand. She put it back, and the coin fell on the ground. "Nay, this is foolish," said he.
"Alas, sir!" said the girl, gravely, "I see well that you are ashamed of your goodness. But my father begs not. And once--but that matters not."
"Once what?" persisted Marmaduke, interested in her manner, in spite of himself.
"Once," said the girl, drawing herself up, and with an expression that altered the whole character of her face--"the beggar ate at my father's gate. He is a born gentleman and a knight's son."
"And what reduced him thus?"
"I have said," answered the girl, simply, yet with the same half-scorn on her lip that it had before betrayed; "he is a scholar, and thought more of others than himself."
"I never saw any good come to a gentleman from those accursed books," said the Nevile,--"fit only for monks and shavelings. But still, for your father's sake, though I am ashamed of the poorness of the gift--"
"No; God be with you, sir, and reward you." She stopped short, drew her wimple round her face, and was gone. Nevile felt an uncomfortable sensation of remorse and disapproval at having suffered her to quit him while there was yet any chance of molestation or annoyance, and his eye followed her till a group of trees veiled her from his view.
The young maiden slackened her pace as she found herself alone under the leafless boughs of the dreary pollards,--a desolate spot, made melancholy by dull swamps, half overgrown with rank verdure, through which forced its clogged way the shallow brook that now gives its name (though its waves are seen no more) to one of the main streets in the most polished quarters of the metropolis.