The Captive Bride (5 page)

“No, it will be quite all right.” She looked up at him and he thought that he had never seen such coloring! Her lips were like crimson petals against her pale skin, and the enormous eyes and arched brows were bewitching. She suddenly laughed and said, “Don't be so silly! You only stepped on my foot.”

He let out his breath in relief, then shook his head. “It's such a small foot, my lady, and mine are so large.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I'm all right—oh, here comes my aunt.” As she pronounced her words with a distinct French accent, Matthew turned to meet the woman who came to stand beside them.

“Are you all right, Lydia?”

“Yes. I just twisted my ankle, Aunt,” she said, turning her large dark eyes on Matthew, who quickly explained, “My fault completely. I'm so clumsy!”

Then John Bunyan appeared, saying, “Ah, have you met?”

“No.”

“This is Miss Smith and her niece, Lydia Carbonne. This is Matthew Winslow. I believe you are acquainted with his uncle, are you not?”

The mention of his uncle softened the rather severe look on Miss Smith's face, and she nodded. “Of course.” She gave Matthew a direct look and said, “You resemble him greatly.”

“Oh, all the Winslows look alike,” Matthew remarked with a shrug.

“There are refreshments outside,” Bunyan offered. “Will you join me?”

He led them all outside where tables were set up and soon filled with cold cuts and fresh bread. Bunyan and Miss Smith were soon in conversation, and Matthew found himself sitting by the niece, who was eating with a healthy appetite.

“You'd better fortify yourself, Mr. Winslow,” she said with an arch smile. “Pastor Bunyan hasn't really begun yet. We'll have the second half of the sermon after lunch.”

Matthew Winslow could have been eating sawdust instead of cold beef! He was gazing into the blackest eyes he'd ever seen, and it took all his powers to keep his mind on the conversation with Lydia.

Realizing he was staring at her like a fool, he took himself in hand and began asking her about her background. He learned that she was an orphan, her mother and father (French, of course!), having died in a plague. She had then been taken in by her spinster aunt, Martha Smith. The sermon interrupted the conversation, and he was forced to content himself with glimpses of her beautiful face and form as Bunyan preached.

All too soon it was over, but Bunyan might have preached on the gray beard of Daniel's Billy Goat for all Matthew knew!

One thing he
did
know, however—he was invited to tea the following week at Miss Smith's!

On his way back to Bedford, Matthew was like a drunk man. His jovial mood didn't entirely fool the tall preacher, who gave him a quiet smile as they arrived at the street where Matthew turned to go to the Goodmans'.

“It was a fine sermon, Mr. Bunyan,” Matthew said warmly, shaking his hand.

“What did you think of the second part?” Bunyan asked with a straight face. “Was it as interesting doctrinally as the first?”

“Why ...” Matthew saw the faint smile on Bunyan's lips, and returned it. “Why, as to that,” he said, “it was true enough—and the congregation was very fine.”

“Yes, she was, wasn't she?” Bunyan stated. Then he laughed. “You'd best sit on the front row next Sabbath, Brother Winslow. I can't compete with a beautiful woman like Miss Lydia Carbonne!”

Matthew flushed, but finally grinned. “You have sharp eyes, Mr. John Bunyan.”

Bunyan clapped him on the shoulder and said, “I was young myself once, you know!”

That night Matthew's journal recorded one line:

CHAPTER THREE

A YOUNG MAN'S FANCY

“Lydia, you must stop seeing this man at once!”

From where she sat in front of a small table brushing her hair, Lydia Carbonne looked up defiantly at the tall figure of her guardian. Her full lips compressed and a rebellious light smoldered in her dark eyes. She had heard this statement in one form or another for the past two months from Martha Smith. At first she had submitted with a sigh, but now she shook her head, causing the mass of raven-dark ringlets to sweep her shoulders.

“There's nothing wrong with seeing Matthew Winslow.”

“There's something wrong with a young girl making a spectacle of herself over a man in public!”

“That's not true! He walks me to the meetings, he comes here to tea, sometimes we walk together—is that what you call making a spectacle of myself?”

Miss Smith stared at her niece in despair. “You're every bit as stubborn as your mother!” She shook her head and wondered for the thousandth time how her sister Mary could have been so foolish as to marry a Frenchman. Her mind flew back to another time, another place, when she had faced the mother of this fiery young woman in precisely the same way.

In this same room, less than a year after the death of their father, Mary Smith had met a dashing young foreigner, Andre Carbonne, had fallen in love with him, and agreed to marry him. Their mother had been a woman of no force, prostrated
by the death of her husband, so the lot fell to Martha to do her best to stop the match.

“He's not even of your faith,” she had said in horror to Mary. “Your children, God forbid, will be brought up as idol worshipers!”

“Not all Christians are outside the Catholic church!” her sister had shot back, and from that instant Martha Smith knew there would be no hope of changing the girl's mind. “We're going to be married and live in Dover, Martha. We love each other, and I must have him!”

Now, twenty years later, Martha Smith had the eerie feeling that her sister Mary, dead along with her husband and buried in the soil of France, somehow stood before her.
She's Mary come back again!
she thought helplessly.
The same beauty— and the same rebelliousness—like the sin of witchcraft!
The thought shocked her, and she said quickly, “You don't know this man. He's a stranger to us.”

“I
do
know him, Aunt Martha,” Lydia shot back at once. She gave one more pull through her luxurious hair with an ivory comb, rose and came to stand by the older woman. Placing a hand on her aunt's arm, she modified her voice and said quietly, “Don't be afraid. I know it broke your heart when mother married out of the faith. It—it was hard on her, too, you know—to be cut off from her family.”

“It was her choice, Lydia.”

“I know, I know, but she had to follow the man she loved. Can't you see that?”

“Oh, Lydia, it's just that I'm afraid for you!” Martha Smith had never married, and this girl had been the daughter she'd never had. Now she was losing her, and fear filled her at the thought that tragedy might strike her down. “Will Howard wants to marry you, and I'd hoped you'd make a match of it with him.”

“I don't love him, Aunt. I never could.”

The statement left no room for argument, and Martha Smith stood there looking at Lydia, and finally asked the
question she had not dared to ask before: “Are you going to marry this man?”

“If he asks me, I'll marry him.”

Yes, the same as Mary!
Martha Smith thought instantly.
Mary stood in this very room, and she looked me right in the eye and said the same thing. “I'll marry Andre if he asks me.”

“Will you talk with Pastor Gifford about this? Will you at least do that for me?”

Lydia smiled and suddenly pulled her aunt's head down and kissed her cheek. “Of course I will. And you may have nothing to worry about, Aunt Martha. He may never ask me.” A thought struck her, and she smiled, adding, “Matthew is spending so much time with John Bunyan these days, he may forget me entirely!”

The object of their conversation was, as a matter of fact, sitting in the Bunyan cottage at that very moment, engaged in conversation with the head of the house on the very subject of matrimony. It was not, however, Matthew's marriage that they spoke of, but Bunyan's.

A light rain was falling, so instead of sitting outside the front door on a stool as he worked, Bunyan was seated at the table putting a series of small rivets in a utensil made of pewter. He held it up to the light and then looked across the table at Matthew and asked, “Some tea, my boy?” He glanced across the room where his daughter Mary was seated on a stool sewing. “Mary, would you brew a little tea for Brother Winslow and me?”

“Yes, Father.” Matthew turned to watch as the girl rose, moved unerringly across the room to where the teapot sat on a table and began making the tea. Her blindness was a source of constant sorrow to Bunyan, Matthew knew, though the big man seldom mentioned it. But now there was a veiled grief in his eyes as he watched her.

“She's like her mother, Matthew. I wish you could have known her.” All four of Bunyan's children were by his first wife who had died in childbirth. “She was a godly woman,
indeed,” he went on, tapping the head of a rivet carefully, then holding it up again to the light.

“I suppose you had a hard time, as most newly married couples do,” Matthew remarked.

“Hard? Why, I suppose it was,” Bunyan remarked. “I had nothing, but she had a marvelous dowry which she brought to our marriage.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, Matthew. I became a wealthy man with that dowry.” His lively eyes twinkled and he rose to go to a bookcase nailed to the wall. Taking down two books, he returned to the table and placed them carefully before his guest. “There it is.”

Matthew picked up the worn volumes and read the titles aloud:
“The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven
by Arthur Dent and
The Practice of Piety
by Lewis Bayly. I don't know these books, John.”

“Well, they're solid gold, my boy, solid gold!” Bunyan smiled. “You know I found the Lord in a most unusual way.” He touched Matthew's arm, adding with a smile, “Perhaps I've told you the story before—but
I
want to hear it again.”

“How was it, John?”

“Why, I was in the army, you know, and we were about as holy as soldiers ever get. You can thank Cromwell for that! Sermons every day, and God help the poor devil who cursed and used the name of the Good Lord in vain! He'd be tied over a cannon and whipped until he was raw! But it paid off, my boy.” His eyes grew dreamy as he leaned on his hands across the table, thinking of the past. “We went into battle singing hymns of praise to God. I think that frightened the enemy as much as our guns! Well, anyway, I was mustered out and went home to Elstow. There I found Sarah, married her and we set up housekeeping. But I was a wild fellow, Matthew, aye, a very wild fellow!”

“What form did this devilment take, John?”

“Oh, playing stupid games like tip-cat on the Sabbath, ringing the church bell at odd times, midnight and such, and
the worst was my filthy tongue. Oh, I was one for cursing in those days! But then one day I was walking along the street in Elstow and there were three or four poor women sitting beside a door into a room, talking about the things of God. I thought they spoke as if joy did make them speak; they spoke with such a pleasantness of Scripture language and with such appearance of grace in all they said that they were to me as if they had found a new world!”

“A new world, John?”

“Aye, nothing less than that!” Bunyan shook his head, marveling at it all, then went on in a low voice. “I knew nothing of Jesus Christ—except what little I'd heard in sermons. They spoke of Him as a dear friend whose company they shared. Well, I had to have that, Matthew, I had to! So I was drawn to their company, these poor women, into the fellowhship of which they were a part. It was like a voyage to a new world, indeed, and when I met Mr. Gifford a few months later, I was so hungry to find God that I moved my family here to Bedford, just to sit at his feet. And I've never regretted it.”

“He's a fine preacher.”

“A man of God indeed.” They spoke of the preacher until Mary brought them two large cups, filled them with tea, and allowed herself to be drawn into Bunyan's lap as he drank the steaming beverage. “Good to your poor old father, you are, sweetheart!” he exclaimed, giving her a hug. “And what a helper to her mother—I tell you, she's a marvel, Master Winslow!”

“I know.” Matthew watched as the two sat there, Bunyan holding the child close, her blind eyes turned up to his seeing ones.

The two of them sat there listening to Bunyan's talk until Elizabeth came in carrying an empty basket on her arm. “Still preaching at the poor boy, Husband?” she said with a smile. Elizabeth Bunyan was a tall full-bodied woman of twenty-three with the rosy cheeks and clear eyes of the Saxon blood. Her hands were roughened with work, but she had a natural
winsomeness which Matthew admired. She had married Bunyan, taking on the care of his four small children, when she could have made a much better match.

Bunyan rose at once, embraced her and said, “Now you sit down here and let me spoil you!” She smiled and obeyed. He brought cakes and tea to her, leaving a trail as he went. Matthew was amused to see that the tinker, so exact and careful in his work with metal, was so careless in his service.

She told him of the poor people she'd seen that afternoon, and he shook his head sadly over each case. It was a pleasant scene, and Matthew, for all his desire to wade into action in the wide world, thoroughly enjoyed soaking in the atmosphere of the family group. The smaller children came in, clinging to either the father or the mother, and Matthew reached out and pulled Mary to his lap, laughing at her protests that she was too big.

Finally, the children left to play, except for Mary, who helped her mother prepare the evening meal. “Looks like the rain has stopped,” Bunyan observed. “Let's take a walk before supper.”