POOR, BUT WEALTHY
Right life for me is life that wends
By lowly ways to lofty ends.
“WHAT now, good dame? Is the master in? I have come over from Bunyan' s End to have a crack with him; but they tell me strange tales, and say that he will no more play at tip cat, than he will dance with the maidens. 'Tis a pity, for a prettier man never trod shoe leather than my gossip, John Bunyan.”
The speaker was a young man with long hanging ringlets, surmounted by a broad Flemish beaver hat, with a costly hat band and a plume of feathers, set or cocked, as it is termed, on one side of his head, a coat of prune-colored velvet embroidered with gold lace, his sword hanging from a broad silk sash that was tied in a bow. The place was the quiet village of Elstow, some three miles to the south-west of Bedford town, about the year 1651. The woman to whom he addressed this, for him, unusually long speech was a slim dark, girlish figure, her braided locks pressed closely to her face, as she stood in the small doorway of the tinker's cottage. Her gentle features were clouded as she answered her visitor.
“Nay, good sir; he has but gone to Bedford to take Master Audley his big iron pot and best kettle home, and maybe to buy himself a matter of solder for his mending. Will your honor leave any commands for him?”
“Commands, good dame, eh, it is good! Hast thou never heard honest John speak of John Rogers, that was born in the house next the Bunyans' cottage? Many a merry time I had with him before I went to learn the physicing!”
“Yes, I have oft heard of you, Master Rogers. Will ye come in and rest awhile? I look for him soon.”
“Marry, that I will; for 'tis hot walking on the dusty road.”
The apartment into which they entered was a little room paved with flagstones that were strewn with a carpet of green rushes, the low ceiling being supported by huge beams of black oak, darkened by the wood smoke from the only fireplace the cottage boasted. A rude chair, seated with rush-work, and a wooden bench, both of them apparently homemade, with a small deal table, formed the sole furniture of the room; except, perhaps, two shelves, on one of which two rude plates and a dish hid a small part of the uncolored plaster wall, while two small books possessed the other shelf in undisputed grandeur.
On the one side of the fireplace was a broadsheet on which in rude printing one might read, "A posie from that stout Father in God and Holie Confessor, Master Latimer, to be pasted on a chamber door." Opposite to it was another folio sheet of paper containing, "Cordials for fainting; distilled and stored from the writings of that choice man of God, Master Castlemaine"; while over the mantelpiece was a third paper which bore the double title of "The quainte and merrie jest of the Miller and a Mass Priest, to which is joined the odde taile of the Chapman and the Ringe.”
“Well, dame," said Rogers, "I have been far, but I am fain to see Elstow once more. I started to come, but my father's kine had strayed; and though he called upon Saint Catherine and every saint he knew, it had gone badly had not a chapman from Scotland met them and turned them back on our road. The saints, saith my father, seem not to mind men, as our fathers say they did in their day.”
“I know not of what is past, but I fear, Master Rogers, it is ill work calling upon those who are as much in need of mercy as we ourselves. Were it not better to ask the saints' Master when we are in need?”
“That may be, but don't preach, good wife; they do say at Elstow market cross that 'twas thou that didst turn my playfellow from his sports.”
“And wherefore not when they are such follies?" interposed a tall man who had entered by the back door unnoticed by either speaker. "I am proud to see thee, John, my old friend; sit thee down and mayhap the good wife can give thee of our best, though that be poor enough.”
“Yet it is welcome, and is given with all our heart," said Mary Bunyan, as she put the black loaf, with a piece of hard cheese, on the board.
“Now, neighbor, tell me what has befallen thee; why, man, thy face is as sad as a Jew's when he has to pay his reckoning— what has befallen thee? I can recall thee when thou didst play at toss penny on the green, and a sturdy rogue thou wast in those days. Ever the first in mischief and fun many a merrie sport we had together in those times. And ye remember that the parson used to say to thee, 'Ay, lad, thou art no white rook, but as black as smoke can make thee?'”
“What meant he?" asked Mary timidly; "why should he call thee a rook, John?”
“Why, sweet' and, it seems that some three years before I was born (mayhap about 1625), my father, climbing for rooks' nests in Berry Wood, found one nest in which were three young rooks, all milk white like doves, and with not a black feather in them; so they did call my brother and I, in mock, the white rooks.”
“But thou wast never white livered, John," said Rogers, "but as ready for a daring deed as any along the countryside; what ails thee now? When thy mother died, and not three months after her burial, thy father married a new wife, thou wast hot and angry at the dishonor to her, but thou didst not mope and pine like a chicken like to die.”
“Why neighbor, ye know what I was in my youth. The learning I gathered when at the school in Bedford I speedily lost, and when my father brought a stranger to sit in my mother's chair, I was not sorry that I was called upon to go with the Parliament army. Though I was but sixteen, I had heard enough to make me eager to strike against the tyrants that had trodden us down. My mother's sister, Rose, had her house stripped from cellar to garret because she went to the funeral of a man excommunicated for not paying church rate; and her sister, a poor widow, while carrying a skillet full of milk, given her for her sick children, had the milk thrown away and the skillet taken from her by the bishop's men!
“Right glad I was to serve at Newport Pagnell, under stout Sir Samuel Luke, a man who could fight and pray too. Into his father's service my uncle, Edward Bunyan, who also married my mother's sister Rose, entered, and is with him still. Through mercy I was delivered when once in marching I fell into an arm of the sea; and once on my return from a march into the West I found one that had taken my place had been slain by the enemy. In 1646 I came home; then it was my hope to work at my calling for some time. But once it came to pass, as I went through the country, I came to a village nigh to Leicester. There it was my mercy to light upon my wife. It fell out thus: Her father was a preacher in the north country, and suffered much from the late Archbishop Laud. His goods were taken from him, poor man; his soul vexed with grievous persecutions; and all because he would not put up altar rails in his church, or wear vestments that he accounted Popish. At length he published a little book called The Mask Torn Off; or Popery Unveiled; a Plain Testimony against Human Inventions in Religion, by a humble servant of Jesus Christ; and for so doing they cut off his ears and slit his nose, and then cast him bleeding into jail. And when they gave this sentence the Archbishop lifted his eyes to Heaven and thanked God for the suffering and shame that were to come! He died in prison of the jail fever, and his daughter was thrust out to starve by those who were kin to her father. She was penniless, and her kin would not be burdened with her. She was sheltered in a godly Quaker's house some years, and had lain there long may be, but friend Thomas had a testimony laid upon him to go and anoint Lord Henry Vane as a champion of the truth; and so my damsel was homeless. It was my hap to pass that way, and I met her as she sat weary and faint on a bank by the roadside. I gave her of my food, and when I heard her tale we went to the justices, and were wed.
“When we came here she had naught but you two books; indeed we had naught between us both, not so much as a dish or a spoon.”
“Well, for that, I love not books, give me a merrie ballad like Sir Bevis or Chevy Chase, and you may keep your books," said Rogers. "We have enough of them, and I don't doctor from books.”
“I thought so too, once, but my wife would talk to me of her father, and what he said, until I saw how bad and foolish I was and had been, and longed to be like him, good man. And then she would read to me, and I, reading with her, got back my book learning. They are brave books, too, The Practice of Piety and the Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven.”
"As to piety, I leave that to parsons," replied Rogers. "But come, gossip, you and I were well enough when we used to play on the green, Sunday night-and what harm either? Methinks if one does what one can, we shall get to Heaven as well as the rest.”
“So I thought once, John, but though the Book led me to go to a church twice a day, I felt none the better. Parson Hall I reverenced, so that I could have kissed the hem of his garment, but good lack! I knew not what to do to be saved. But so it was that last Sunday is the twelfth month since when I struck the cat a blow from the hole. I was about to deliver a second blow, when lo! a voice fell from Heaven which said plainly, `Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or have thy sins and go to Hell?' I stood like one in a maze, and looking up I saw clearly the Lord Jesus Himself looking down upon me, and as one displeased at my folly.
“There I stood, as one in a dream, yet in my mind I said soon, 'I am lost, and I may as well take my fill of sin now,' and with that I returned to my play once more, and wrought at it with all my might.
“I soon shook off all feeling, and hastened to eat and drink all the delicates I could have lest I should die soon.
“But ere a month had gone by, as I stood in the street, cursing by Dame Webb's shop, she spoke to me, bidding me desist lest I should corrupt all the youths, saying I made her shudder, and ye know she is none of the best. I was struck dumb, and have not blasphemed since; nor will if I can help it. Then when I went to the ringing in the brave church tower that stands apart from the church, I would consider, what if the lightning should come and strike me dead, as it did once a man who was ringing the church bells at Hawarden? Or what if the bell should fall? Then I would stand under the wood beam; but it seemed as if through the holes in the window shutter, high up in the tower, I could see the eye of God flaming upon me, and it sometimes appeared as if the rope was transformed into the angel's sword stretched out to smite me. Here I stood in the doorway and longed to be within, but I durst not for fear I should die.”
“But wherefore? Bell ringing can be no sin, and thy religion is worth little if it makes thee fear to do what can't be wrong," said Rogers.
“But I felt that it was sin for me, and the voices within me forbad it, and the visions I saw terrified me too much for me to do it with a quiet mind," replied John. "My good dame, it is true, believes not in voices, nor over much in visions; she says they may not be from God. But, though I count her wise in all else, I think in this she is wrong; eh, my heart?”
Mary merely smiled, and said, "Ye know my mind, but you should know best, husband.”
“Spoken like a wise woman as ye are. Tinker though I be, I am rich in such a wife as thou, Mary; but thy babe is crying in the chamber above. Poor thing!" he said as his wife left the room; "'tis a fair child, Rogers, but blind, alas!”
“God help it, then," replied Rogers; "but who is that smiting the doorway?”
“One that should not be kept waiting," replied a tall man who now entered the apartment.