Trunco came to Aldersgate on the second night, and mighty glad I was to see her. She complimented me upon the decent furnishings of the house, and if she had misgivings upon how my husband and I would fadge together, she was good enough to conceal them from me. She shared a mattress in the garret with Jane Yates, whom she helped with the house-work. I asked my husband, should I not now take over the charge of the household? But he answered that there was no necessity, for it was yet but honey moon. This he said a little sourly, for the honey moon is a Londoner’s term for such as are newly married and who will not fall out because of the exceeding strength of their love; it is honey now, but it will change as the moon when their mutual desire begins to assuage and the taste of honey to cloy. “When your parents and your swarming brothers and sisters depart,” said he, “that will be time enough to look into the matter.”
Jane Yates had declared it to be beyond her power, even with the aid of Trunco and a young cook-wench (who came every day to us, in her father’s market-cart from Highgate), to prepare dinner and supper for so crowding a multitude of people. Then though Trunco offered, if my husband gave her leave, to undertake this impossible task under my direction, he would have her know her place, and discouraged her. He reckoned to put himself to less expense by sending daily over the street into Little Britain where there was a cook-shop for the sale of indifferent pies and dressed meats; and also a confectioner who made tarts, jellies and the like, though Trunco could have made far better at half the cost. He did not allow the presence of my parents to interrupt what he termed the curriculum of his little University; except that he devoted that part of the time after supper, which came between the religious instruction of his nephews and his own Hebrew studies, to music, dancing and general conversation.
The Powells were content to spend the whole day out of doors, for such soberness and regularity irked them; and the weather continuing fine, they found great pleasure in visiting friends and kinsfolk, some of whom they brought back with them to supper; as also in watching the sport at the bear-garden and the cockpits; in hiring boats to row up the river with the tide as far as Richmond and Twickenham, and then down again with the ebb; and seeing the principal sights of London and Westminster; and going to the play-houses, whereof there were five or six at this time on one side the river or the other. Trunco cheerfully minded the little children the while, and strove to subdue their wild spirits, for my husband would come roaring at her if Bess or Georgie raised their voices at each other or if they tormented Betty. He forbade me to attend any place of public amusement even in the company of my parents, declaring that he would not suffer my mind to be vitiated; and my mother was constrained to humour him. “But, Son,” said she, “I would have you remember that for fifteen years I have had the sole charge of my daughter and if her mind be not as yet vitiated, as you call it, one hour or two in the bear-garden or at the Phœnix play-house in Drury Lane will make little odds. Besides, I think it mighty hard that my daughters Zara and Ann should watch the sport, and Marie be prevented.”
To keep the peace I protested that indeed I had no great appetite for seeing poor Bruin’s ears torn, or how he took revenge upon the dogs by cracking their ribs against his breast or gutting them with his paw; and that, as for the play-house, I was content to wait until I could attend a play of Will Shakespeare’s or Ben Jonson’s in my husband’s company; for in a poem of his that he had shown me he had praised these two play-makers. This speech of mine my husband approved, nodding his head and saying: “In good time, all in good time!”
I shall not easily forget my first walk, in my mother’s company, down Cheapside, the first street in the world, that runs splendidly along its whole course from Paternoster Row to the Poultry. The first thing that I saw was Goldsmith’s Row, the most beautiful frame of houses imaginable, of ten dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all stuffed with treasure of gold and silver. These houses are four storeys high, and above each principal door is a statue, richly painted and gilt, of a woodman riding upon a monstrous beast. Then I saw the Standard in Cheap, a shaft of stone, carved with pictures and a trumpeter at top, a monument which the rebels Jack Cade and Wat Tyler made infamous; and a plenitude of noble inns; and the Conduit, a building like to a castle, with a huge leaden cistern into which flows sweet water, fetched from the little town of Paddington; and the ancient gilt Cross in Cheap (which same, being regarded as a Popish idol, was pulled down twelve months later by command of Parliament, with frantic shouts of joy); and a grand array of mercers’ shops with velvets of deep pile and rich silks (as striped soosies; figured culgees; fair, smooth atlasses; transparent, shining taffetas that made my mouth to water), displayed in diverse hues of scarlet, crimson, violet-colour, orange-colour, French green, purple, gingerline, snow-white, cream-colour, frost, sky-blue, tawny and crocus-yellow—with marvellous embroidery, and cloth of gold, and gold cuttanee, and silver tissue.
There are all manner of other shops in Cheapside and the streets leading off it, with men in aprons standing before the open doors, crying “What do you lack, what do you lack?” who sometimes hustle prosperous-seeming passers-by into their shops and press goods upon them in a blustering tone. My head grew giddy from watching the passers-by, of whom I remarked a great many foreigners; and I was glad to be back in my husband’s house, where all was quiet, the distance at which it lay from Aldersgate Street being a great protection against the crying and shouting and noise.
One early morning I went out with my husband, Trunco following behind, to the Artillery Garden where he performed his military exercises in a company of volunteers from his Ward banded together by their common religious interest. He told me, as we went, that he was a pikeman, not a musketeer, and that pikes are more honourable arms than muskets, in respect not only of their antiquity, but also of the colours flying upon their heads; and because with them is the Captain’s proper station, the musketeers being posted at the flanks. He himself, he said, stood in the most honourable post of any Gentlemen of the Pike, namely in the hindmost rank, of bringers-up or Tergiductores, upon the right hand; which also had the advantage of security. Then with his sixteen-foot pike, which he carried with him, he showed me, as he went, the several postures of the pike—the trail, the port, the shoulder, the advance, the cheek—and discoursed upon the use of each posture, heedless of the jests of the citizens and the winks of their wives whom we passed in the street.
In the Artillery Garden, Trunco and I watched the exercises, which were very exactly performed; Serjeant-Major Robert Skippon, Captain of the Artillery Society, himself being present. The companies, which were drawn up abreast, with the files six deep, were all distinguished by the colour of their scarves—black, or grey, or russet; my husband’s being the grey. Serjeant-Major Skippon wore a blue coat and white breeches. He was of middle age, swarthy, sedate, with a little beard and a stout nose and a scar, upon his right cheek, earned in the Dutch Wars in which he had begun as a simple waggoner; no scholar, but a devout Christian; a simpleton in affairs, but reputedly a Hon upon the field of battle; and beloved of his soldiers.
The command from the Captain of my husband’s company, after a few simple movements had been performed, was: “Files, double your depth to the right, every man placing himself behind his bringer-up.” The Captain, made uneasy by Serjeant-Major Skippon’s presence, gave this order to “double the depth to the right,” yet pointed with his sword in the contrary direction; which brought a great confusion upon the ranks and one or two men were pricked by the pikes of the men behind them.
Trunco laughed aloud at the sight, and Major Skippon cried out: “As you were, As you were!” and then addressed the company thus: “Shame on you, Gentlemen of the Grey Company! Are you children that you cannot distinguish your right hand from your left? What think you will come to pass on the Day of Judgement when the word goes out: ‘Sheep to the right, double! Goats to the left, double!’ and when the Angels are your bright sergeants? Will not some of you by a repeatal of this morning’s error, find yourselves trailing your pikes like slovens down the slippery slope of Hell?”
He spoke in no dry, mocking manner, but heartily and earnestly; and the gentlemen with the grey scarves appeared abashed, but murmured among themselves at their Captain. This was the last time that they fell into any disorder, and we watched the musketeers fire off their pieces; but these were false-fires only, each man putting a pinch of powder in the pan of his musket and popping it off, thus inuring his eyes to the flash, and learning not to shut them when he fired. After all the companies together had been made to exercise in a single body, with “Battle, wheel to the left,” “Battle, wheel to the right about,” and the like, the muster was dismissed.
We saw my husband coming towards us, expostulating very sternly to his Captain that he was unfit for his rank and should yield up his office to some better man. The Captain excused himself, holding that his words were clear enough, and that his pointing with his sword in the contrary direction had merely been a sign to the men posted upon the left flank (who were those worst trained in their exercises) to mark his command well. Yet my husband would have none of this and said sternly: “Have a good care, Worshipful Sir, or one day we shall choose ourselves another Captain.”
Having thus set the saddle squarely upon the right horse, as he said, he came towards us again and asked us which of the companies had performed its exercises in the most martial manner; and we pleased him by extolling the Greys. He said: “We keep a sort of Presbyterial discipline among ourselves, with a synod called every Wednesday morning, and therefore we excel at our exercises, being united in a common religious spirit and agreed to tolerate no disobedience and no awkwardness.” Then he turned to Trunco and said: “Woman, you laughed very ill-mannerly when our Captain made an error.”
“Nay, sir, I did not laugh,” said Trunco. “Or at least not at the company or their drill. I chanced to remember an old jest about a fish-porter and a goat.”
“Out with your jest,” says my husband in the stern manner of the practised pedagogue.
“If your Honour will give me leave, it would not have made fit hearing for my innocent Mistress,” answers Trunco, “wherefore, I have forgotten it in haste.”
“If you are saucy,” he mutters with compressed lips, “you may expect a beating from me when we are home; and I warn you that I lay on hard.”
“The Lord have mercy on us all!” cried Trunco.
That day before we sat down to dinner my brother William came creeping up to me and asked in a whisper: “Sister Milton, won’t you give me the broken string from your guitar and lend me your little scissors?”
“Why, yes,” I answered absently, “if you give me the scissors again.”
He took the string and snipped it into a score or two of little pieces, which he caught carefully in a paper. Then he said to me: “Sister, I think Brother Milton is very unkind. I overheard him when he forbade you that song of Beggars All in a Row. You are better at singing songs than all the Miltons and Phillipses in London.”
“That is no business of yours, William, I thank you,” said I. Yet I could not find it in my heart to be angry with him, neither then nor when at dinner-time he played a scurvy and revengeful prank, privily casting the snippers from his paper upon my husband’s mess of hot veal pie. But, Oh Lord, into what an affright he put me; for presently the warmth of the meat made the little pieces of gut to curl and wriggle, as though the mess were alive with maggots. Yet I could do nothing without making the matter worse.
Besides myself, only my mother saw him do what he did. She laughed silently until her shoulders shook up and down like coach wheels on a bad road. My husband, who was holding forth upon some learned topic, thrust his spoon into the meat on his plate and began eating and discoursing with his mouth full, but remarked not that anything was amiss. My mother near burst her midriff in restraining her laughter and at last feigned to be choking and ran from the table; whereupon my father espied the maggots and began to laugh too, but aloud and without restraint, as if at a jest that my husband had chanced to make in the very nick; so that the whole table was soon in a roar. My husband continued to eat and at last wiped his trencher clean with a lump of bread. He smiled with satisfaction, saying: “Sportive fooleries I hate, but a smart salty jest, now and then, gives relish to the most learned conversation.” Alas, for William’s poor prank, that bounced off from my husband like a tennis-ball struck against a church wall!
On the morning of the Sunday following, my husband told my parents that they might worship where they pleased, but that, for his part, he would not attend the service at St. Botolph’s Church, where the minister was a calumniator and rank Prelatist, namely the Reverend George Hall (a son of the Bishop of Exeter who had written against him). Instead, he would go to hear the Reverend John Goodwin, M.A., preach at St. Stephen’s, in Coleman Street, and I should go with him.
My father asked: “Is that not the same Goodwin who made a public protest two years ago, against Archbishop Laud’s canons?”
“That is the man,” answered my husband, “who is also learned in Hebrew antiquities and esteemed the best preacher in the City. Alderman Pennington, Member of Parliament and Colonel of the White Regiment, is his parishioner and friend, and another is the mother of Mr. John Hampden, M.P.”
“Why, then,” my father replied, “I think that I shall take my family to St. Botolph’s, for I confess that I am myself a rank Prelatist.”
The service at St. Stephen’s differed in many points from that to which I was wont; but what struck me with the most force was the demeanour of the congregation. At Forest Hill our people bustled into the Church with as little ceremony as into an inn, calling cheerful greetings across the nave and eating bread and butter; some women knitted stockings and some men had dogs at their feet, and bottles of beer went thick from mouth to mouth; and all this was done in the eye of my father and the curate. Once in poor Fulker’s time there was a rat chased in sermon-time, which was done to death in the corner by the font; and even Woodman Luke had not altogether subdued the people’s boisterous ways. But here the congregation entered the Church with fear and trembling and trod delicately down the alley between the pews and sat stock still until the preacher entered; yet I marvelled that the men kept their hats upon their heads during the singing of the psalms, and afterwards the sacrament was taken sitting, not kneeling.
The Reverend Goodwin was a vigorous yet calm person with a cannon-ball head bound in a tight skull cap, and a scornful nose. In his sermon he did not rant and rage or strive to excite his congregation by pounding and drumming on his pulpit-ledge, as (I believe) did most of his fellow preachers; nor did he split his text like Woodman Luke, but, as he himself confessed to us, he held that the care of a true orator should not be to cajole his listeners to believe him by any artifice or ornament, but simply to convey to them those arguments by which they would be persuaded.
He preached upon the text: “Oh, what a joyful thing it is, Brethren, to dwell together in unity!” and enlarged upon the word “unity.” Unity, said he, could not be brought about unless the whole congregation took thought together as one man, rejecting from among them any who was of a heterodox or schismatic mind. He made a comparison between a congregation and a company of soldiers; showing how needful a thing it was for each soldier to observe his exact station in the ranks and to keep his due distance, and to be distinguished by the same badge or coat as his fellows and, when the Captain gave an order to move to the right, for none perversely to turn about to the left. He praised the behaviour of the Scots in the Bishops’ War, whose discipline had proved what power the English soldiers too could achieve upon the field of battle if they wished, being (man against man) the equals of the Scots in any enterprise. Yet such a unity, he held, must be a willing and natural unity, not a uniformity forced upon his flock by fear of punishment. He would punish no man because he could not stretch his conscience to worship in this parish church or that; but, if reason and kindness failed to restore him, then the man should be given leave to depart and mend his conscience in another. And he would be so bold as to suggest that within the Church of England, toleration of small, though very-very small, differences of opinion might wisely be allowed between the several congregations; as in an Army some regiments wore blue favours, some white, some red, some purple, but all fought together as brothers under the same Captain-General and agreed in the same general Covenant.
This was a very daring speech for those Presbyterial days; and my husband was not altogether pleased with it, arguing that Toleration might become so great an evil as Tyranny, and give licence to the Devil to spawn an innumerable of sects, each presumptuously hugging to itself some trivial and absurd article of difference. However, he changed his mind a year or two later, as will appear, when the boot of uniformity had galled his heel.
Place had been found for us to sit close under the pulpit and, hearing a stir behind me so soon as the text was named, and glancing over my shoulder, I could not but think it ludicrous how the whole congregation leaned forward and, every man and woman, cupped their hands behind their ears under pretence of hearing the better; which, since most of the men wore their hair short and the women confined theirs under plain hats, gave them a ridiculous bat-like appearance, the ears showing so large that it put me in mind of the Island Arucetto (written of by Purchas in his Pilgrim) where there are men and women having ears of such extraordinary bigness that they lie upon one as upon a bed and cover themselves with the other as with a blanket.
That evening my father conversed with my husband, enquiring of him what course of instruction in Latin he gave Johnny and Ned, for he doubted whether the Reverend Proctor, under whose instruction his own boys were now, had chosen their authors well. My husband answered that, so soon as the boys had gone through Lilly’s Grammar and could read a little Latin, they should be set to study the four great ancient writers upon Agriculture, namely Cato, Varro, Palladius and Columella; and then the use of globes and maps; and presently they might read Vitruvius upon Architecture, Mela upon Geography, Geminus (Latinized) upon Astrology, Celsus upon Medicine, Pliny upon Natural History—
“Hold hard, Son,” cried my father. “Cato, Varro and Columella were well enough in their own time and place; but England is not Italy, being of a climate more chill and moist by far. If my sons were to follow such antique directions as these authors give, I could not expect that the annual yield of my Oxfordshire lands would be large. If they must read writers upon agriculture, I would have them read such modern English writers as Gervase Markham and Leonard Mascall, and then they would have the less to unlearn. As for Mela, the New World would have been news indeed to him; and were Geminus living he would call Galileo a mad paradoxist or pitiful jester; and Celsus would shudder to hear from our Dr. Harvey so monstrous a truth as that the blood circulates in the body against the fixed laws that the ancients assigned to it. Why should my sons not study Cicero and Sallust and Livy, even as I did?”
To which my husband replied only: “What you term Dr. Harvey’s truth is but a wild speculation, unconfirmed as yet by experimental proof; and though I would not forbid enlightened modern comment upon Columella, where Columella nods, yet I would not call in such lewd drummers as Markham and Mascall to awaken him; and though the excellent Galileo, lately deceased, whose acquaintance I enjoyed in my visit to Italy, made notable discoveries with optic glasses of his own contrivance, yet he spoke wildly when, forgetting the scripture (how the foundations of the Earth are planted so sure that they cannot be moved), he asserted the Earth to be a mere satellite of the Sun. But enough: I cannot permit myself to argue a case with a disputant who knits together so wretched a tissue of error and half-truth; only, this I will say, that if you know better than either your curate or myself what Latin authors are proper for your boys to study, why then, go your own way about it, for it is no concern of mine!”
My father asked his pardon, and would have redargued the question; but my husband took a book from the shelf and studied it with so bold an ostentation of interest that he forbore. Then, to cast a bridge over an awkward piece of water, my father-in-law went to a cabinet and unlocked it with ceremony and pulled out a gold medal and chain which he asked us to admire, and which we passed from hand to hand. They were presented to him by a Polander, a Prince, at whose desire he had composed a great piece of sacred music, an In Nomine, in forty parts. “This is but an ostentatious trifle, though of fine gold,” said he. “I am happier by far in the thought that when my frame corrupts, the music that I have made will sing on for a great while longer.”
There were many other skirmishes between my husband and my family, yet neither side wished for open battle, and old Mr. Milton usually mediated with a laugh or a worn homely jest. Thus my father and mother were able to take their leave, when the week was over, with professions of gratitude and good-will. My mother called me to her before she went away, and “Dear Child,” said she, “from the bottom of my heart I pity you that you have so ungracious a husband. But do not let him crush your spirit; stand up for yourself boldly, and give him nothing in return for nothing, and mighty little for his pennyworth. Certain it is that he dotes upon your beauty, which if you use prudently, I believe that you can make him almost your toad-eater. Doubtless in our company he is ashamed to show his fawning affection for you; but when we are gone I warrant you he will go on his belly along the ground to win the smallest favour from you that you choose to withhold.”
However, I knew better than to believe this, and it was with a heavy heart that I said good-bye to her and to the rest of my family.
Now that the household could resume its customary course, with old Mr. Milton back in his own bed-chamber, of which my parents had dispossessed him, the diet altered. Bread, cheese, butter, honey and garden stuff, with small beer or water, and a flesh-meal but every second day, and neither pastries nor pies, neither jellies nor junkets, nor any tasty fricassees—such was the rule in Aldersgate Street. My husband was not a small eater, but he ate whatever was set before him, indiscriminately, without seeming to taste of it, and never stayed long at a table unless to dispute or discourse. Jane Yates, though she swept and scrubbed with almost a religious fury, was a wretched kitchen manager. She spoilt the peas and cabbages and cauliflowers by her cooking of them and brought home lean, stringy meat from the butcher’s stall, which some days stank so ill that neither Trunco nor I could stomach her stew. However, my husband swallowed the mess down voraciously, having a book propped before him as he ate, which he annotated with a pencil of black lead; and the two boys and the old gentleman stood too deep in awe of him and of Jane Yates to question that it was not the choicest meat that Smithfield could provide.
When I told my husband, a few days after my parents’ departure, that I was willing to take over the management of the household from Jane, and would try to please him by a variation of our diet, he told me that he was content with things as they were. He was no belly-slave, he said, and I must neither waste time unprofitably nor put him to unnecessary charges, nor yet pervert the taste of his pupils, by introducing into the house a greater luxuriousness of living than had hitherto sufficed to keep them in health and well-being. He told me at the same time that Jane Yates had complained to him of Trunco, that she was a loose-mouthed, ill-natured, idle, contentious, ignorant country woman, not worthy of her hire; and warned me to wean myself of Trunco’s company, since he had the same opinion of her as Jane Yates, and to remember that Trunco was a servant and without breeding. He said that, because of the undertaking made to my parents, he would not turn her away yet, if she would accept the place and wage of the little cook-wench (whom he had that day dismissed) and he at night on straw in the kitchen.
I grew indignant, declaring that Trunco was almost more a friend than a servant, that she wanted not breeding and was a skilled stilling-room maid, and that though, for the love she bore me, she would not herself make any complaint if she were degraded to be a cook-wench and lie upon straw, yet I felt in honour bound to speak up and demand more honourable treatment for her.
“We have no stilling-room here,” he said, “in this modest suburban home of ours, and therefore your Trunco cannot be a stilling-room maid. You are neither so rich and curious in your dress nor (I hope) so idle in your ways as to need the services of a tire-woman; wherefore, since I abhor idle hands, either she must be cook-wench or else she must depart. I am master here.”
I remembered my mother’s advice and answered: “Aye, husband, you are Jane Yates’s master, but I am Trunco’s mistress and I am resolved on her honourable treatment.”
He laughed at me with a show of pleasantness. “That would be a generous and laudable sentiment,” he said, “were it you who found her in victuals and paid her wages.”
“I would rather sell my few brooches and rings,” said I, “than make Trunco subservient to your old woman, who must herself be of a nasty, contentious nature to go with tales to you against her.”
“Jane Yates,” said he composedly, “is a very faithful and devoted servant to me. When I was a schoolboy, going every day to St. Paul’s School, and sat up with my books until past midnight, it was Jane who sat up for me and had a cup of warm milk ready against I went to bed, and a warming-pan for the cold sheets. I will not suffer her to be abused.”
“Your faithful Jane has abused my dear Trunco, whom I love,” said I stubbornly. “If one of the two must rule the other and sleep on a flock mattress in the garret, then Trunco is the more proper woman. At least she is not buffle-head enough to go to market and bring back a fore-rib of abominationly stinking beef; or to spoil a pair of good cauliflowers by leaving them too long in the water and stinting the salt. And she would have been at pains to pick out the fat, green caterpillars—”
He smiled at me, being resolved that day not to let me force him out of his good humour. “You take too much upon yourself, my dear,” he said, “and so forget yourself.”
“I must ask your pardon,” said I, “if I have spoken hastily; but this I will say, without fear of contradiction, that at Forest Hill, if ever a meal had been served as to-day’s was, my mother would have cast it at the cook’s head.”
“I do not doubt it,” he said. “Your mother is a very conceited and passionate woman.”
At this I burst out weeping, and ran up the dark stairs to our chamber. My husband did not follow, either to comfort or chide me, but sent for Trunco at once and told her of the choice before her; whereupon the good-natured woman vowed that it was all one to her whether she sewed cushions or beat hemp, so long as she might continue in the same house with me. She undertook to yield her fellow-servant perfect obedience. “And as for sleeping on straw,” said she, “with a good conscience one woman sleeps as sweetly upon straw as another upon down; and as for the wages, Master, you may pay me what you please.”
When I came downstairs again, having, in the dark, washed my eyes and composed my spirit, I found my husband reading a treatise on Divinity. I did not disturb him, but took up another book and began to read it; it was Britannia’s Pastorals, by William Browne, which choice he noddingly approved. My husband had some time before written notes in the margins of this book, and I laughed to myself when I saw what verses of old Browne’s had caught his fancy. He had written in one place “A beautiful virgin undressing herself.” This was set against the verses:
And as a lovely maiden, pure and chaste,
With naked ivory neck and gown unlaced,
Within her chamber, when the day is fled,
Makes poor her garments to enrich her bed:
First puts she off her lily-silken gown,
That shrieks for sorrow as she lays it down, etc., etc.
(“Heigh-ho!” I sighed). And against other verses stood such pithy sentiments as these: “Poets live for ever,” and “Good Poets are envied, yet in spite of envy get immortal praise,” and “Men strive to get fair Mistresses,” and “The Miseries of those that marry for beauty,” and “All are born for love.” But the clearest mirror of his mind was his “Very beautiful” written over against the lines concerning a shepherd asleep:
His arms a cross, his sheep-hook lay beside him;
Had Venus passed this way and chanced to have spied him,
With open breast, locks on his shoulders spread,
She would have sworn (had she not seen him dead)
It was Adonis. Or, if e’er there was
Held transmigration, by Pythagoras,
Of souls, that certain then her lost love’s spirit,
A fairer body never could inherit.
(Heigh-ho, again, for his fruitless journey to Italy! Had he thought to meet there with Venus herself?)
When he had read to the end of a chapter in his book, he addressed me, telling me that Trunco had consented to serve as his cook-wench at a yearly wage of £15s., but hoped that she would not make trouble in the house. “And,” says he, “if she prove to be an honest and capable woman I undertake, when your father shall have paid the marriage portion promised me, to give her as much as £115s. per annum.”
I cried: “Was there indeed a marriage portion promised? It was not a large one, I hope, for my father is not of a great fortune and has many charges upon his estate.”
“Nay,” said he, “not so handsome as I had expected; indeed, no more than £1,000. Your father will pay me at Michaelmas, when a large sum falls due to him on account of his lands in the Dominion of Wales; and at the same time he will repay me certain other moneys long due to me, but unaccountably overlooked.”
I was amazed at this news: for I could have taken my oath that my father owned not an inch of land in Wales. And if he had lands there, why had he cozened me into this marriage by his plea of absolute poverty? Could it be that he had also cozened my husband by a promise of money that he knew well was not to be found?
I thanked my husband for his undertaking in respect of Trunco, and returned to my reading, but with my mind still puzzling over this riddle of my portion.
Presently he closed his book and came behind my chair and ran his fingers combingly through my hair and parting two tresses of it with his hands (as one might draw apart a pair of curtains), he printed a kiss upon the nape of my neck. I knew not what to say, and continued my pretence of reading; but he sportively took the book from me and clapped it shut, and having locked and bolted the doors of the house, bade me come upstairs, where a surprise awaited me.
I faltered when I saw that the bed-chamber was draped with curious Indian silks and ribbons and the bed decorated with spangles of silver and gold, and that a little love-feast had been prepared, with wine in a silver beaker and choice fruits and little caraway cakes again. “Oh, husband,” said I, “why have you hit upon this night for such bravery? For you cannot company with me now, as you might have done on any of the twelve nights that I have been with you.”
“And why may I not, pray?” he asked, going as wan as the gills of a sick turkey-cock.
“Because,” said I, “the flowers have come upon me to-night.”
“The flowers!” he cried. “The flowers again!”
“Roll out that truckle-bed,” said I, not knowing whether to laugh or weep.
“But did you not tell me—?” he began.
“And did you not interruptingly command me to silence?” I asked.