The children cl.u.s.tered round in ecstasies of admiration and wonder as they heard of the dark brown atives, the curious expedients by which barter was carried on; also of cruel Spaniards, and of savage fishes, with all the marvels of flying-fish, corals, palm-trees, humming birds-all that is lesson work to our modern youth, but was the most brilliant of living fairy tales at this Elizabethan period. Humfrey and Diccon were ready to rush off to voyage that instant, and even little Ned cried imitatively in his imperfect language that he would be "a tailor."

Then their father came home, and joyfully welcomed and clasped hands with his faithful mate, declaring that the sight did him good; and they sat down to supper and talked of voyages, till the boys' eyes glowed, and they beat upon their own knees with the enthusiasm that their strict manners bade them repress; while their mother kept back her sighs as she saw them becoming infected with that sea fever so dreaded by parents. Nay, she saw it in her husband himself. She knew him to be grievously weary of a charge most monotonously dull, and only varied by suspicions and petty detections; and that he was hungering and thirsting for his good ship and to be facing winds and waves. She could hear his longing in the very sound of the "Ays?" and brief inquiries by which he encouraged Goatley to proceed in the story of voyages and adventures, and she could not wonder when Goatley said, "Your heart is in it still, sir. Not one of us all but says it is a pity such a n.o.ble captain should be lost as a landsman, with nothing to do but to lock the door on a lady."

"Speak not of it, my good Goatley," said Richard, hastily, "or you will set me dreaming and make me mad."

"Then it is indeed so," returned Goatley. "Wherefore then come you not, sir, where a crew is waiting for you of as good fellows as ever stepped on a deck, and who, one and all, are longing after such a captain as you are, sir? Wherefore hold back while still in your prime?"

"Ask the mistress, there," said Richard, as he saw his Susan's white face and trembling fingers, though she kept her eyes on her work to prevent them from betraying their tears and their wistfulness.

"O sweet father," burst forth Humfrey, "do but go, and take me. I am quite old enough."

"Nay, Humfrey, 'tis no matter of liking," said his father, not wishing to prolong his wife's suspense. "Look you here, boy, my Lord Earl is captain of all of his name by right of birth, and so long as he needs my services, I have no right to take them from him. Dost see, my boy?"

Humfrey reluctantly did see. It was a great favour to be thus argued with, and admitted of no reply.

Mrs. Talbot's heart rejoiced, but she was not sorry that it was time for her to carry off Diccon and Ned to their beds, away from the fascinating narrative, and she would give no respite, though Diccon pleaded hard. In fact, the danger might be the greatest to him, since Humfrey, though born within the smell of the sea, might be retained by the call of duty like his father. To Cis, at least, she thought the sailor's conversation could do no harm, little foreboding the words that presently ensued. "And, sir, what befell the babe we found in our last voyage off the Spurn? It would methinks be about the age of this pretty mistress."

Richard Talbot endeavoured to telegraph a look both of a.s.sent and warning, but though Master Goatley would have been sharp to detect the least token of a Spanish galleon on the most distant horizon, the signal fell utterly short. "Ay, sir. What, is it so? Bless me! The very maiden! And you have bred her up for your own."

"Sir! Father!" cried Cis, looking from one to the other, with eyes and mouth wide open.

"Soh!" cried the sailor, "what have I done? I beg your pardon, sir, if I have overhauled what should have been let alone. But," continued the honest, but tactless man, "who could have thought of the like of that, and that the pretty maid never knew it? Ay, ay, dear heart. Never fear but that the captain will be good father to you all the same."

For Richard Talbot had held out his arm, and, as Cis ran up to him, he had seated her on his knee, and held her close to him. Humfrey likewise started up with an impulse to contradict, which was suddenly cut short by a strange flash of memory, so all he did was to come up to his father, and grasp one of the girl's hands as fast as he could. She trembled and shivered, but there was something in the presence of this strange man which choked back all inquiry, and the silence, the vehement grasp, and the shuddering, alarmed the captain, lest she might suddenly go off into a fit upon his hands.

"This is gear for mother," said he, and taking her up like a baby, carried her off, followed closely by Humfrey. He met Susan coming down, asking anxiously, "Is she sick?"

"I hope not, mother," he said, "but honest Goatley, thinking no harm, hath blurted out that which we had never meant her to know, at least not yet awhile, and it hath wrought strangely with her."

"Then it is true, father?" said Humfrey, in rather an awe-stricken voice, while Cis still buried her face on the captain's breast.

"Yes," he said, "yea, my children, it is true that G.o.d sent us a daughter from the sea and the wreck when He had taken our own little maid to His rest. But we have ever loved our Cis as well, and hope ever to do so while she is our good child. Take her, mother, and tell the children how it befell; if I go not down, the fellow will spread it all over the house, and happily none were present save Humfrey and the little maiden."

Susan put the child down on her own bed, and there, with Humfrey standing by, told the history of the father carrying in the little shipwrecked babe. They both listened with eyes devouring her, but they were as yet too young to ask questions about evidences, and Susan did not volunteer these, only when the girl asked, "Then, have I no name?" she answered, "A G.o.dly minister, Master Heatherthwayte, gave thee the name of Cicely when he christened thee."

"I marvel who I am?" said Cis, gazing round her, as if the world were all new to her.

"It does not matter," said Humfrey, "you are just the same to us, is she not, mother?"

"She is our dear Heaven-sent child," said the mother tenderly.

"But thou art not my true mother, nor Humfrey nor Diccon my brethren," she said, stretching out her hands like one in the dark.

"If I'm not your brother, Cis, I'll be your husband, and then you will have a real right to be called Talbot. That's better than if you were my sister, for then you would go away, I don't know where, and now you will always be mine-mine-mine very own."

And as he gave Cis a hug in a.s.surance of his intentions, his father, who was uneasy about the matter, looked in again, and as Susan, with tears in her eyes, pointed to the children, the good man said, "By my faith, the boy has found the way to cut the knot-or rather to tie it. What say you, dame? If we do not get a portion for him, we do not have to give one with her, so it is as broad as it is long, and she remains our dear child. Only listen, children, you are both old enough to keep a secret. Not one word of all this matter is to be breathed to any soul till I bid you."

"Not to Diccon," said Humfrey decidedly.

"Nor to Antony?" asked Cis wistfully.

"To Antony? No, indeed! What has he to do with it? Now, to your beds, children, and forget all about this tale."

"There, Humfrey," broke out Cis, as soon as they were alone together, "Huckstress Tibbott is a wise woman, whatever thou mayest say."

"How?" said Humfrey.

"Mindst thou not the day when I crossed her hand with the tester father gave me?"

"When mother whipped thee for listening to fortune-tellers and wasting thy substance. Ay, I mind it well," said Humfrey, "and how thou didst stand simpering at her pack of lies, ere mother made thee sing another tune."

"Nay, Humfrey, they were no lies, though I thought them so then. She said I was not what I seemed, and that the Talbots' kennel would not always hold one of the n.o.ble northern eagles. So Humfrey, sweet Humfrey, thou must not make too sure of wedding me."

"I'll wed thee though all the lying old gipsy-wives in England wore their false throats out in screeching out that I shall not," cried Humfrey.

"But she must have known," said Cis, in an awestruck voice; "the spirits must have spoken with her, and said that I am none of the Talbots."

"Hath mother heard this?" asked Humfrey, recoiling a little, but never thinking of the more plausible explanation.

"Oh no, no! tell her not, Humfrey, tell her not. She said she would whip me again if ever I talked again of the follies that the fortune-telling woman had gulled me with, for if they were not deceits, they were worse. And, thou seest, they are worse, Humfrey!"

With which awe-stricken conclusion the children went off to bed.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BEWITCHED WHISTLE.

A child's point of view is so different from that of a grown person, that the discovery did not make half so much difference to Cis as her adopted parents expected. In fact it was like a dream to her. She found her daily life and her surroundings the same, and her chief interest was-at least apparently-how soon she could escape from psalter and seam, to play with little Ned, and look out for the elder boys returning, or watch for the Scottish Queen taking her daily ride. Once, prompted by Antony, Cis had made a beautiful nosegay of lilies and held it up to the Queen when she rode in at the gate on her return from Buxton. She had been rewarded by the sweetest of smiles, but Captain Talbot had said it must never happen again, or he should be accused of letting billets pa.s.s in posies. The whole place was pervaded, in fact, by an atmosphere of suspicion, and the vigilance, which might have been endurable for a few months, was wearing the spirits and temper of all concerned, now that it had already lasted for seven or eight years, and there seemed no end to it. Moreover, in spite of all care, it every now and then became apparent that Queen Mary had some communication with the outer world which no one could trace, though the effects endangered the life of Queen Elizabeth, the peace of the kingdom, and the existence of the English Church. The blame always fell upon Lord Shrewsbury; and who could wonder that he was becoming captiously suspicious, and soured in temper, so that even such faithful kinsmen as Richard Talbot could sometimes hardly bear with him, and became punctiliously anxious that there should not be the smallest loophole for censure of the conduct of himself and his family?

The person on whom Master Goatley's visit had left the most impression seemed to be Humfrey. On the one hand, his father's words had made him enter into his situation of trust and loyalty, and perceive something of the constant sacrifice of self to duty that it required, and, on the other hand, he had a.s.sumed a position towards Cis of which he in some degree felt the force. There was nothing in the opinions of the time to render their semi-betrothal ridiculous. At the Manor house itself, Gilbert Talbot and Mary Cavendish had been married when no older than he was; half their contemporaries were already plighted, and the only difference was that in the present hara.s.sing state of surveillance in which every one lived, the parents thought that to avow the secret so long kept might bring about inquiry and suspicion, and they therefore wished it to be guarded till the marriage could be contracted. As Cis developed, she had looks and tones which so curiously harmonised, now with the Scotch, now with the French element in the royal captive's suite, and which made Captain Richard believe that she must belong to some of the families who seemed amphibious between the two courts; and her identification as a Seaton, a Flemyng, a Beatoun, or as a member of any of the families attached to the losing cause, would only involve her in exile and disgrace. Besides, there was every reason to think her an orphan, and a distant kinsman was scarcely likely to give her such a home as she had at Bridgefield, where she had always been looked on as a daughter, and was now regarded as doubly their own in right of their son. So Humfrey was permitted to consider her as peculiarly his own, and he exerted this right of property by a certain jealousy of Antony Babington which amused his parents, and teased the young lady. Nor was he wholly actuated by the jealousy of proprietorship, for he knew the devotion with which Antony regarded Queen Mary, and did not wholly trust him. His sense of honour and duty to his father's trust was one thing, Antony's knight-errantry to the beautiful captive was another; each boy thought himself strictly honourable, while they moved in parallel lines and could not understand one another; yet, with the reserve of childhood, all that pa.s.sed between them was a secret, till one afternoon when loud angry sounds and suppressed sobs attracted Mistress Susan to the garden, where she found Cis crying bitterly, and little Diccon staring eagerly, while a pitched battle was going on between her eldest son and young Antony Babington, who were pommelling each other too furiously to perceive her approach.

"Boys! boys! fie for shame," she cried, with a hand on the shoulder of each, and they stood apart at her touch, though still fiercely looking at one another.

"See what spectacles you have made of yourselves!" she continued. "Is this your treatment of your guest, Humfrey? How is my Lord's page to show himself at Chatsworth to-morrow with such an eye? What is it all about?"

Both combatants eyed each other in sullen silence.

"Tell me, Cis. Tell me, Diccon. I will know, or you shall have the rod as well as Humfrey."

Diccon, who was still in the era of timidity, instead of secretiveness, spoke out. "He," indicating his brother, "wanted the packet."

"What packet?" exclaimed the mother, alarmed.

"The packet that he (another nod towards Antony) wanted Cis to give that witch in case she came while he is at Chatsworth."

"It was the dog-whistle," said Cis. "It hath no sound in it, and Antony would have me change it for him, because Huckster Tibbott may not come within the gates. I did not want to do so; I fear Tibbott, and when Humfrey found me crying he fell on Antony. So blame him not, mother."