Simon Dale | Page 3

truth the Vicar loved the prophecy,
as a quiet student often loves a thing that echoes of the world which he
has shunned.
"You must write down for me what the King says to you, Simon," he
told me once.
"Suppose, sir," I suggested mischievously, "that it should not be fit for
your eye?"
"Then write it, Simon," he answered, pinching my ear, "for my
understanding."
It was well enough for the Vicar's whimsical fancy to busy itself with
Betty Nasroth's prophecy, half-believing, half-mocking, never
forgetting nor disregarding; but I, who am, after all, the most concerned,
doubt whether such a dark utterance be a wholesome thing to hang
round a young man's neck. The dreams of youth grow rank enough
without such watering. The prediction was always in my mind, alluring
and tantalising as a teasing girl who puts her pretty face near yours,
safe that you dare not kiss it. What it said I mused on, what it said not I
neglected. I dedicated my idle hours to it, and, not appeased, it invaded
my seasons of business. Rather than seek my own path, I left myself to
its will and hearkened for its whispered orders.
"It was the same," observed my mother sadly, "with a certain
cook-maid of my sister's. It was foretold that she should marry her
master."
"And did she not?" cried the Vicar, with ears all pricked-up.
"She changed her service every year," said my mother, "seeking the
likeliest man, until at last none would hire her."
"She should have stayed in her first service," said the Vicar, shaking his
head.
"But her first master had a wife," retorted my mother triumphantly.

"I had one once myself," said the Vicar.
The argument, with which his widowhood supplied the Vicar, was
sound and unanswerable, and it suited well with my humour to learn
from my aunt's cook-maid, and wait patiently on fate. But what avails
an argument, be it ever so sound, against an empty purse? It was
declared that I must seek my fortune; yet on the method of my search
some difference arose.
"You must work, Simon," said my sister Lucy, who was betrothed to
Justice Barnard, a young squire of good family and high repute, but
mighty hard on idle vagrants, and free with the stocks for revellers.
"You must pray for guidance," said my sister Mary, who was to wed a
saintly clergyman, a Prebend, too, of the Cathedral.
"There is," said I stoutly, "nothing of such matters in Betty Nasroth's
prophecy."
"They are taken for granted, dear boy," said my mother gently.
The Vicar rubbed his nose.
Yet not these excellent and zealous counsellors proved right, but the
Vicar and I. For had I gone to London, as they urged, instead of abiding
where I was, agreeably to the Vicar's argument and my own inclination,
it is a great question whether the plague would not have proved too
strong for Betty Nasroth, and her prediction gone to lie with me in a
death-pit. As things befell, I lived, hearing only dimly and, as it were,
from afar-off of that great calamity, and of the horrors that beset the
city. For the disease did not come our way, and we moralised on the
sins of the townsfolk with sound bodies and contented minds. We were
happy in our health and in our virtue, and not disinclined to applaud
God's judgment that smote our erring brethren; for too often the
chastisement of one sinner feeds another's pride. Yet the plague had a
hand, and no small one, in that destiny of mine, although it came not
near me; for it brought fresh tenants to those same rooms in the
gardener's cottage where the Vicar had dwelt till the loyal Parliament's

Act proved too hard for the conscience of our Independent minister,
and the Vicar, nothing loth, moved back to his parsonage.
Now I was walking one day, as I had full licence and leave to walk, in
the avenue of Quinton Manor, when I saw, first, what I had (if I am to
tell the truth) come to see, to wit, the figure of young Mistress Barbara,
daintily arrayed in a white summer gown. Barbara was pleased to hold
herself haughtily towards me, for she was an heiress, and of a house
that had not fallen in the world as mine had. Yet we were friends; for
we sparred and rallied, she giving offence and I taking it, she pardoning
my rudeness and I accepting forgiveness; while my lord and my lady,
perhaps thinking me too low for fear and yet high enough for favour,
showed me much kindness; my lord, indeed, would often jest with me
on the great fate foretold me in Betty Nasroth's prophecy.
"Yet," he would say, with a twinkle