CHAPTER II.

THE

Draytons and the Davenants

_A STORY OF_

THE CIVIL WARS.

_By the Author of_

"CHRONICLES OF THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY,"

ETC., ETC.

New York:

_M. W. DODD, 506 BROADWAY._

1869.

CARD FROM THE AUTHOR.

"The Author of the 'Schonberg-Cotta Family' wishes it to be generally

known among the readers of her books in America, that the American

Editions issued by Mr. M. W. Dodd, of New York, alone have the

Author's sanction."

NOTICE.

_This Volume will be followed next year by

a supplementary Volume covering the

period of the Commonwealth and

the Restoration, and embracing

incidents connected with

the Early History

of this country._

_Works by the same Author._

CHRONICLES OF THE SCHONBERG-COTTA FAMILY.

THE EARLY DAWN.

DIARY OF KITTY TREVYLYAN.

WINIFRED BERTRAM.

THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS.

ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.

_Each of the above belongs to the "Cotta Family Series," and are

uniform in size and binding._

POEMS--"The Women of the Gospels," etc. _With

other Poems not before published. 1 Vol. 16mo._

MARY, THE HANDMAID OF THE LORD.

_One Vol. 16mo._

THE SONG WITHOUT WORDS.

_Dedicated to Children. Square 16mo_

PUBLISHED BY M. W. DODD,

_By arrangement with the Author._

Contents

Introductory

Chapter II.

Chapter III.

Chapter IV.

Chapter V.

Chapter VI.

Chapter VII.

Chapter VIII.

Chapter IX.

Chapter X.

Chapter XI.

Chapter XII.

THE

Draytons and the Davenants

INTRODUCTORY.

Yesterday at noon, when the house and all the land were still, and

the men, with the lads and lasses, were away at the harvesting, and I

sat alone, with barred doors, for fear of the Indians (who have of

late shown themselves unfriendly), I chanced to look up from my

spinning-wheel through the open window, across the creek on which our

house stands. And something, I scarce know what, carried me back

through the years and across the seas to the old house on the borders

of the Fen Country, in the days of my childhood. It may have been

the quiet rustling of the sleepy air in the long grasses by the

water-side that wafted my spirit back to where the English winds sigh

and sough among the reeds on the borders of the fens; it may have

been the shining of the smooth water, furrowed by the track of the

water-fowl, that set my memory down beside the broad Mere, whose

gleam we could see from my chamber window. It may have been the

smell of this year's hay, which came in in sweet, soft gusts through

the lattice, that floated me up to the top of the tiny haystack, made

of the waste grass in the orchard at old Netherby Manor, at the foot

of which Roger, my brother, used to stand while I turned up the hay,

assisted by our Cousin Placidia (when she was condescending), and by

our Aunt Gretel, my mother's sister, whenever we had need of her.

Most probably it was the hay. For, as the excellent Mr. Bunyan has

illustriously set forth in his work on the Holy War, the soul hath

five gates through which she holdeth parlance with the outer world.

And correspondent with these outer gates from the sensible world in

space, meseemeth, are as many inner gates into the inner, invisible

world of thought and time; which inner gates open simultaneously with

the outer, by the same spring. But of all the mystic springs which

unlock the wondrous inward world, none act with such swift, secret

magic as those of the Gate of Odors. There stealeth in unobserved

some delicate perfume of familiar field flower or garden herb, and

straightway, or ere she is aware, the soul is afar off in the world

of the past, gathering posies among the fields of childhood, or

culling herbs in the old corner of the old garden, to be laid, by

hands long since cold, in familiar chambers long since tenanted by

other owners.

Wherefore, I deem, it was the new, sweet smell of our New England hay

which more than anything carried me back to the old house in Old

England, and the days so long gone by.

With my heart in far-off days, I continued my spinning, as women are

wont, the hand moving the more swiftly for the speed wherewith the

thoughts travel, until my thoughts and my work came to a pause

together by the flax on my distaff being exhausted. I went to an

upper chamber for a fresh stock, and while there my eye lighted on an

old chest, in the depths whereof lay many little volumes of an old

journal written by my hand through a series of buried years.

An irresistible attraction drew me to them; and as I knelt before the

old chest, and turned over these yellow leaves, in some cases, eaten

with worms, and read the writing--the earlier portions of it in

large, laborious, childish characters, as if each letter were a

solemn symbol of weighty import--the later scrawled hastily in the

snatched intervals of a busy and tangled life--I seemed to be looking

through a series of stained windows into the halls of an ancient

palace. On the windows were the familiar portraits of a little eager

girl, and a young maiden familiar to me, yet strange. But the

paintings were also window-panes; and, after the first glance, the

painted panes seemed to vanish, and I saw only the palace chambers on

which they looked. Not empty chambers, or shadowy, or silent, but

solid, and fresh, and vivid, and full of the stir of much life; so

that, when I laid down those old pages, and looked out through the

declining light over these new shores, across this new sea, towards

the far-off England which still lives beyond, it seemed for a moment

as if the sun setting behind the wide western woods, the strip of

golden corn-fields, the reapers returning slowly over the hill, the

Indian burial-mounds beside the creek, the trim new house, my old

quiet self, were the shadows, and that Old World, in which my spirit

had been sojourning, still the living and the real.

Neighbor Hartop's cheery voice roused me out of my dream, and I

hurried down to open the door, and to set out the harvest supper.

But as I look at the old crumpled papers again to-day, the past lives

again once more before me, and I will not let it die.

There is an hour in the day when the sun has set, and all the dazzle

of day is gone, and the dusk of night has not set in, when I think

the world looks larger and clearer than at any other time. The sky

seems higher and more heavenly than at other hours; and yet the

earth, tinted here and there on its high places with heavenly color,

seems more to belong to heaven. The little landscape within our

horizon becomes more manifestly a portion of a wider world. And is

there not such an hour in life? Before it passes let me use the

light, and fix in my mind the scenes which will so soon vanish into

dreams and silence.

The first entry in those old journals of mine is:

"_The twenty-eighth day of March, in the year of our Lord sixteen

hundred and thirty-seven._--On this day, twelve years since, King

Charles was proclaimed King at Whitehall Gate, and in Cheapside; the

while the rain fell in heavy showers. My father heard the herald;

and my Aunt Dorothy well remembers the rain, because it spoiled a

slashed satin doublet of my father's (the last he ever bought, having

since then been habited more soberly); also because many of the

people said the weather was of evil promise for the new reign. But

father saith that is a superstitious notion, unworthy of Christian

people.

"Also my father was present at the king's coronation, on the 5th of

February in the following year. Our French Queen would not enter the

Abbey on account of her Popish faith. When the king was presented

bareheaded to the people, all were silent, none crying God save the

King, until the Earl of Arundel bade them; which my father saith was

a worse omen than if the clouds poured down rivers."

These in large characters, each letter formed with conscientious

pains.

The second entry is diverse from the first. It runs thus:

"_April the tenth._--The brindled cow hath died, leaving an orphan

calf. Aunt Gretel saith I may bring up the calf for my own, with the

help of Tib the dairy-woman."

The diversity between these entries recalls many things to me. On

the day before the first entry, father brought to Roger my brother,

my Cousin Placidia, and me, three small books stitched neatly

together, and told us these were for us to use to note down any

remarkable events therein. "For," said he, "we live in strange and

notable times, and you children may see things before you are grown,

yea, and perchance do or suffer such things as history is made of."

The stipulation was, that we were each to write independently, and

not to borrow from the other; which was a hard covenant for me, who

seldom then meditated or did anything without the co-operation or

sanction of Roger.

After much solitary pondering, therefore, I arrived at the conclusion

that history especially concerns kings and queens, and lesser people

only as connected with them. That is, when there are kings and

queens. In the old Greek history I remembered there were heroes who

were not kings, but I supposed they did instead. But the English

history was all made up of what happened to the kings. One was shot

while hunting; another was murdered at Berkeley Castle; the little

princes were smothered in the Tower. King Edward III. gained a great

victory at Creçy in France; King Henry V. gained another at

Agincourt. Of course other people were concerned in these things.

Sir Walter Tyrrel shot the arrow by accident that killed King

William, and some wicked people must have murdered King Edward and

the little princes on purpose. And, of course, there were armies who

helped King Edward and King Henry to gain their victories; but none

of these people would have been in history, I thought, except as

connected with the kings. At the same time I thought it was of no

use to relate things which no one belonging to me had had anything to

do with, because any one else could have done that without my taking

the trouble to write a note-book at all. Therefore it seemed to me

that my father, and even my father's slashed satin doublet, fairly

became historical by having been present at the King's proclamation,

and Aunt Dorothy by having commented thereon.

The second entry was caused by an entirely different theory of

history, having its origin in a talk with Roger. Roger said that we

never can tell what things are historical until afterwards, and that

therefore the only way was to note down what honestly interests us.

If these things prove afterwards to be things which interest the

world, our story of them becomes part of the world's story, and, as

such, history to the people who care for us. But to note down feeble

echoes of far-off great events, in which we think we ought to be

interested, is no human speech at all, Roger thought, but mere

monkey's imitative chattering. Every one, Roger thinks, sees

everything just a little differently from any one else, and therefore

if every one would describe truly the little bit they do see, in that

way, by degrees, we might have a perfect picture. But to copy what

others have seen is simply to depart with every fresh copy a little

further from the original. If, for instance, said he, the nurse of

Julius Cæsar had told us nursery stories of what Julius Cæsar did

when he was a little boy, it would have been history; but the

opinions of Julius Cæsar's nurse on the politics of the Roman

republic would probably not have been history at all, but idle tattle.

With respect to kings and queens being the only true subjects for

history, also, Roger was very scornful. He had lately been paying a

visit to Mr. John Hampden, Mr. Oliver Cromwell, and others of my

father's friends, and he had returned full of indignation against the

tyranny of the court and the prelates. The nation, he said wise men

thought, was not made for the king, but the king for the nation.

And, to say nothing of the Greek history, the Bible history was

certainly not filled up with kings and queens, but with shepherds,

herdsmen, preachers, and soldiers; or if with kings, with kings who

had been shepherds and soldiers, and who were saints and heroes as

well as kings.

All which reasoning decided me to make my next entry concerning the

calf of the brindled cow, which at that time was the subject in the

world which honestly interested me the most. If my father, or Roger,

or Cousin Placidia, or Aunt Gretel, ever became historical personages

(and, as Roger said, who could tell?), then anecdotes concerning the

calf of the cow which my father owned and Aunt Gretel cherished, and

which Cousin Placidia thought it childish to care so much about,

might become, in a secondary sense, historical also. At all events,

I resolved I would not be like Julius Cæsar's nurse, babbling of

politics.

The next entry was:

"_August_ 4, 1637.--Dr. Antony has spent the evening with us, and is

to remain some days, at father's entreaty, to recruit his strength;

Aunt Dorothy having knowledge of medicinal herbs, and Aunt Gretel of

savory dishes, which may be of use to him. He hath narrowly escaped

the jail-sickness, having of late visited many afflicted good people

in the prisons through the country, as is his custom. 'Sick and in

prison,' Dr. Antony saith, 'and ye visited me,' is plain enough to

read by the dimmest light, whatever else is hard to understand. He

told us of two strange things which happened lately. At least they

seem very strange to me.

"In the Palace Yard at Westminster, on the 30th of last June (while

Roger and I were making hay in the pleasant sunshine of the orchard),

Dr. Antony saw three gentlemen stand in the pillory. The pillory is

a wooden frame set up on a platform, where wicked people are fastened

helplessly like savage dogs, with their heads and hands coming

through holes, to make them look ridiculous, that people may mock and

jeer at them. But father and Dr. Anthony did not think these

gentlemen wicked, only at worst a little hasty in speech. And the

people did not think them ridiculous; they did not mock and jeer at

them, but kept very still, or wept. Their names were Mr. Prynne, a

gentleman at the bar, Dr. John Bastwick, a physician; and Mr. Burton,

a clergyman of a parish in London. There they stood many hours while

the hangman came to each of them in turn and sawed off their ears

with a rough knife, and then burnt in two cruel letters on their

cheeks, S.L., for seditious libeler. Dr. Anthony did not say the

three gentlemen made one cry or complaint, but bore themselves like

brave men. But the bravest of all, I think, was Mrs. Bastwick, the

doctor's wife. She stayed on the scaffold, and bore to see all her

husband's pain without a word or moan, lest she should make him

flinch, and then received his ears in her lap, and kissed his poor

wounded face before all the people. Sweet, brave heart! I would

fain have her home amongst us here, and kiss her faithful hands like

a queen's, and lay my head on her brave heart, as if it were my

mother's! The sufferers made no moan; but the people broke their

pitiful silence once with an angry shout, and many times with low,

hushed groans, as if the pain and shame were theirs (Dr. Anthony

said), and they would remember it. And Mr. Prynne, when the irons

were burning his face, said to the executioner, 'Cut me, tear me, I

fear not thee; I fear the fire of hell.' Mr. Burton spoke to the

people of God and his truth, and how it was worth while to suffer

rather than give up that. And at last he nearly fainted, but when he

was borne away into a house near, he said, with good cheer, 'It is

too hot to last.' (He meant the persecution.) But the three

gentlemen are now shut up in three prisons--in Launceston, Lancaster,

and Caernarvon. And father and Dr. Antony say it is Archbishop Laud

who ordered it all to be done. But could not the king have stopped

it if he liked?

"But will Roger and I ever turn over the hay again in the pleasant

June sunshine, without thinking how it burned down on those poor,

maimed and wounded gentlemen? And one day I do hope I may see brave

Mistress Bastwick and tell her how I love and honor her, and how the

thought of her will help me to be brave and patient more than a

hundred sermons.

"Dr. Antony's other story was of one Jenny or Janet Geddes, not a

gentlewoman, for she kept an apple stall in Edinburgh streets, and,

moreover, does not appear to have used good language at all. The

Scotch, it seems, do not like bishops, and, indeed, will not have

bishops. But Archbishop Laud and the king will make them. On

Sunday, the 23d of last July, a month since, one of Archbishop Laud's

bishops began the collect for the day in St. Giles's Cathedral,

Edinburgh. Jenny Geddes had brought her folding stool (on which she

sat by her apple stall, I suppose) into the church, and when the

bishop came out in his robes (which Archbishop Laud likes of many

colors, while the Scotch, it seems, will have nothing but black), she

took up her stool and flung it at the bishop's head, calling the

service, the mass and the bishop a thief, and wishing him very ill

wishes in a curious Scottish dialect, which, I suppose, I do not

quite understand; for it sounded like swearing, and if Jenny Geddes

was a good woman (although not a gentlewoman) she would scarcely, I

should think, swear, at least not in church. Whether the bishop was

hurt or not, no one seems to know or care. I suppose the stool did

not reach his head. But it stopped the service. For all the people

rose in great fury, not against Jenny Geddes, but against the bishop,

and the archbishop, and the prayer-book, and against all bishops and

all prayers in books, not in Edinburgh only, but throughout the land.

Which shows, father said, that a great deal of angry talk had been

going on beforehand in the streets around Jenny Geddes' apple stall.

There must always be some angry person, father said, to throw the

folding stool, but no one heeds the angry person unless there is

something to be angry about."

A very long entry, which lost me many hours and many pages.

And about the passages in my own history which it led to, not a word.

Indeed, throughout these journals I notice that it is more what they

recall than what they say which brings back the past to me. I wonder

if it is not thus with most diaries. For to keep to Roger's rule of

writing the things which really interest us at the time seems to me

scarcely possible; because at the time we scarcely know what things

are most deeply interesting us, and if we do, they are the very

things we cannot write about. Underneath the things we see and think

and speak about are the great, dim, silent places out of which we

ourselves are growing into being, and where God is at work. The

things we are beginning to see we can not see, the things we are

feeling without knowing what we feel, the dim, struggling thoughts we

cannot utter or even think. Without form and void is the state of a

world being created. When the world is created, the creation is a

history, and can be written. While it is being created, it is chaos,

and from without can only be described as without form and void--from

within, in the chaos, not at all. The Creator only understands

chaos, and knows the chaos before the new creation from the mere

waste and ruin of the old.

To understand the past is only partly possible for the wisest men.

To understand the present is only possible to God.

Because to understand the present would be to foresee the future. To

see through the chaos would be to foresee the new creation.

Wherefore it seems to me all diaries are of value not as records, but

as suggestions. And all self-examination resolves itself at last

into prayer, saying, "What I see not, teach Thou me."

"Search me and try me, and see Thou, and lead Thou me."

The passages in my history that this story of Dr. Antony led to,

arise before me as clearly as if they happened yesterday, although in

the Journal not a hint of them is given.

The Sunday after Dr. Antony had told us those terrible things about

the sufferings in the pillory, Roger and I had gone to our usual

Sunday afternoon perch in an apple-tree in the corner of the orchard

furthest from the house. We had taken with us for our contemplation

a very terrible delineation, which was the nearest approach to a

picture Aunt Dorothy would let us have on the Sabbath-day. This she

permitted us, partly, I believe, because it was not the likeness of

anything in heaven or earth (nor, I hope, under the earth), and

partly on account of the very awful thoughts it was calculated to

inspire.

It was a huge branching thing like our old family tree. But at the

root of the tree, where would be the name of Adam or Noah, or Æneas

of Troy, or Cassibelaun, or whoever else was recognized as the head

of the family, stood the sacred name of the Holy Trinity. From this

trunk forked off two leading branches, one representing the wicked

and the other the just, with the words written along them to show

that the very same mercies and means of grace which produce

repentance and faith and love in the hearts of the just, produce

bitterness and false security and hatred of God in the hearts of the

wicked. Further and further the branches diverged until one ended in

an angel with wings, and the other in a mouth of a horrible hobgoblin

with a whale's mouth, a dragon's claws, and a lion's teeth, and both

were united by the lines,--

"Whether to heaven or hell you bend,

God will have glory in the end."*

* A similar tree is to be seen in the beginning of Bunyan'a Pilgrim's

Progress, in the edition of 1698.

Most terrible was this delineation to me, sitting that sunny autumn

day in the apple-tree, especially because if you were once on the

wrong branch, it was not at all pointed out how you were ever to get

on the right. All seemed as irrevocable and inevitable as that point

in our own pedigree where Edwy, the eldest son, became a Benedictine

monk and vanished into a thin flourish, and Walter, the second son,

married Adalgiva, heiress of Netherby Manor, and branched off into

us. And it looked so terribly (with unutterable terror I felt it) as

if it mattered as little to the Holy Trinity what became of any one

of us, as to Cassibelaun or Noah what became of his descendants, Edwy

or Walter.

So it happened that Roger and I sat very awe-stricken and still in

our perch in the apple-tree, while the wind fluttered the green

leaves around us, and the sunbeams ripened the rosy apples for their

work, and then danced in and out on the grass below for their play.

And I remember as if it were yesterday how the thought shuddered

through my heart, that the same sun which was shining on Roger and

me, on that last 30th of June, making hay in the orchard, was at that

very same moment scorching those poor wounded gentlemen in the

pillory in the Palace Yard, and not losing a whit of its glory to us

by all the anguish it was inflicting, like a blazing furnace, on

them. And if this fearful tree were true, did it not seem as if it

were the same with God?

I sat some time silent under the weight of this dread. It made me

shiver with cold in the sunshine, and at length I could keep it in no

longer, and said to Roger, in a whisper, for I was half afraid to

hear my own words,--

"Oh, Roger, why did not God kill the devil?"

At that moment something shook the tree, and I clung to Roger in

terror. I could not see what it was from among the thick leaves

where we were sitting. I trembled at the echo of my own voice. The

dark thoughts within seemed to have brought night with its nameless

terrors into the heart of day. But Roger leant down from the branch,

and said,--

"Cousin Placidia! For shame! You shook the tree on purpose. I

heard the apples fall on the ground, and you are picking them up.

That is cheating."

For the fallen fruit was the right of us, children.

Said Placidia in a smooth, unmoved voice,--

"I came against the stem of the tree by accident, and perhaps I did

shake it a little more than I need, when I heard what Olive said.

They were very wicked words, and I shall tell Aunt Dorothy."

"You may tell any one you like," said Roger indignantly. "Olive did

not mean to say anything wrong. You are cruel enough to sit in the

Star-chamber, Placidia."

"She is exactly like our gray cat," he continued to me, as she glided

away, "with her soft, noiseless ways, and her stealthy, steady

following of her own interests. When the fowl-house was burnt down

last year, and the turkeys were screaming, and the hens cackling, and

every one flying hither and thither trying to save somebody or

something, I saw the gray cat quietly licking her lips in a corner

over a poor singed chicken. I believe she thought the whole thing

had been set on foot to roast her supper. And Placidia would have

done precisely the same. If London were on fire, and she in it, I

believe she would contrive to get her supper roasted on the cinders.

And the provoking thing is, she thinks no one sees."

Roger was not often vehement in speech, but Placidia was our standing

grievance, his and mine. There were certain little unfairnesses, not

quite cheating, certain little meannesses, not quite dishonesties,

and certain little prevarications, not quite lies, which always

excited his greatest wrath, especially when, as often happened, I was

the loser or the sufferer by them.

"Do you think she will tell Aunt Dorothy?" I said, for that very

morning Placidia and I had had a quarrel, she having pinched my arm

where it could not be seen, and I having to my shame bitten her

finger where it could be seen.

"I don't know, and I don't care," said Roger loftily. "What is the

good of minding? I suppose we must all go through a certain quantity

of punishment, Olive, and it is to be hoped it will do us good for

the future, if we did not deserve it by the past. At least Aunt

Dorothy says so. Go on with what you were saying."

So I recurred to my question.

"Oh, Roger, I wish I knew why God did not destroy the devil in the

beginning, or at least not let him come into the garden. Because,

then, nothing would have gone wrong, would it? Eve would not have

eaten the fruit, Mr. Prynne and Dr. Bastwick would not have been set

in the pillory. And I should not, most likely, have quarrelled with

Placidia, because, I suppose, Placidia would not have been provoking."

"I wish I knew why my Father lets Cousin Placidia live with us, and

always be making us do wrong," said Roger.

"She is an orphan, and some one must take care of her, you know," I

said. "Besides, surely, Father has reasons, only we don't always

know."

"And I suppose God has reasons," said Roger reverently, "only we

don't always know."

"But the devil is all bad," said I, "and will never be better; and

Cousin Placidia may. It could not be for the devil's own sake God

did not kill him, for he only gets worse; and I do not see how it

could be for ours."

"The devil was not always the devil, Olive," said Roger, after

thinking a little while. "He was an angel at first."

"Then, O Roger," said I eagerly, for the perplexity lay heavy on my

heart, "why did not God stop the devil from ever being the devil?

That would have been better than anything."

Roger made no reply.

"It cannot be because God could not," I pursued, "because Aunt

Dorothy says He can do everything. And it cannot be because He would

not, because Aunt Gretel says He hates to see any one do wrong or be

unhappy. But there must be some reason; and if we only knew it, I

think everything else would become quite plain."

"I do not see the reason, Olive," said Roger, after a long pause. "I

cannot see it in the least. I remember hearing two or three people

discuss it once with Father and Aunt Dorothy; and I think they all

thought they explained it. But no one thought any one else did. And

they used exceedingly long and learned words, longer and more learned

the further they went on. But they could not agree at all, and at

last they became angry, so that I never heard the end. But in two or

three years, you know, I am going to Oxford, and then I will try and

find out the reason. And when I have found it out, Olive, I will be

sure to tell you."

"But that is not at all the most perplexing thing to me, Olive," he

began, after a little silence; "because, after all, if we or the

angels were to be persons and not things, I don't see how it could be

helped that we might do wrong if we liked. The great puzzle to me

is, why we do anything, or if we can help doing anything we do; that

is, if we are really persons at all, and not a kind of puppets."

"Of course we are not puppets, Roger," said I. "Of course we can

help doing things if we like. I do not think that is any puzzle at

all. I could have helped biting Placidia's finger if I had

liked--that is, if I had tried. And that is what makes it wrong."

"But you did not like it," said Roger, "and so you did not help it.

And what was to make you like to help it, if you did not?"

"If I had been good, I should not have liked to hurt Placidia,

however provoking she was," I said.

"And what is to be good?" said he.

"To like to do right," I said. "I think that is to be good."

"But what is to make you like to do right?"

"Being good, to be sure," said I, feeling myself helplessly drawn

into the whirlpool.

"That is going round and round, and coming to nothing," said Roger.

"But leaving alone about right and wrong, what is to make you do

anything?"

"Because I choose," said I, "or some one else chooses."

"But what makes you choose?" said he. "What made you choose, for

instance, to come here this afternoon?"

"Because you wished it, and because it was a fine afternoon; and we

always do when it is," said I.

"Then you chose it because of something in you which makes you like

to please me, and because the sun was shining. Neither of which you

could help; therefore you did not really choose at all."

"I _did_ choose, Roger," said I. "I might have felt cross, and

chosen to disappoint you, if I had liked."

"But you are not cross; you are good-tempered, on the whole, so you

could not help liking to please me."

"But I am cross sometimes with Placidia," I said.

"That is because, as Aunt Gretel says, your temper is like what our

mother's was, quick but sweet," said he; "and that is a deeper puzzle

still, because it goes further back than you and your character, to

our mother's character, that is to say; and if to hers, no one can

say how much further, probably as far as Eve."

"But sometimes," said I, "for instance, when you talk like this, my

temper is tempted to be cross even with you, Roger. But I choose to

keep my temper, and it must be I myself that choose, and not my

temper or my mother's."

"That is because of the two motives, the one which inclines you to

keep your temper is stronger than the one which inclines you to lose

it," said he. "But there is always something before your choice to

make you choose, so that really you must choose what you do, and

therefore you do not really choose at all."

"But I do choose, Roger," said I. "I choose this instant to jump

down from this tree--so--and go home."

"That proves nothing," said he, following me down from the tree with

provoking coolness; "you chose to jump down, because there is a

wilful feeling in you which made you choose it, and that is part of

your character, and probably can be traced back to Eve, and proves

exactly what I say."

"I am not free to do right or wrong, or anything, Roger!" I said.

"Then I might as well be a cat, or a tree, or a stone."

"I suppose you might, if you were," said Roger drily.

"Is there no way out of the puzzle, Roger?" I said.

"I do not see any," he said; "at least not by thinking. But there

seems to me no end to the puzzles, if one begins to think."

He did not seem to mind it at all, but rather to enjoy it, as if it

were a mere tossing of mental balls and catching them.

But I, on the other hand, was in great bewilderment and heaviness,

for I felt like being a ball myself, tossed helplessly round and

round, without seeing any beginning or end to it, and it made me very

unhappy.

We came back to the house at supper-time with a vague sense of some

judgment hanging over our heads. Aunt Dorothy met us in the porch

with a switch in her hand.

"Naughty children," said she, "Placidia says she heard you using

profane language in the apple-tree, taking God's holy name in vain."

"I was not speaking so much of God, Aunt Dorothy," said I in

confusion, "as of the devil."

"Worse again," said Aunt Dorothy, "that is swearing downright. It is

as bad as the cavaliers at the Court. Hold out your hand, Roger;

and, Olive, go to bed without supper."

Roger scorned any self-defence. He held out his hand, and received

three sharp switches without flinching. Only at the end he said,--

"Now I shall tell my father how Placidia stole the apples and get

justice done to Olive."

"You will tell your father nothing, sir," said Aunt Dorothy. "I have

sent Placidia to bed three hours ago for tale-bearing, and given her

the chapter in the Proverbs to learn. And you will sit down and

learn the same, and both of you say it to me to-morrow morning before

breakfast."

This was what Aunt Dorothy considered even-handed justice. Time, she

said, was too precious to spend in searching out the rights of

children's quarrels, and human nature being depraved as it is, all

accusations had probably some ground of truth, and all accusers some

wrong motive. And in all quarrels there is always, said she, fault

on both sides. She therefore punished accused and accuser alike,

without further investigation. I have observed something of the same

plan pursued since by some persons who aspire to the character of

impartial historians. But it never struck me as quite fair in the

historians or in Aunt Dorothy. However, I must say, in Aunt

Dorothy's case, this mode of administering justice had a tendency to

check accusations. It must have been an unusually strong desire of

vengeance, or sense of wrong, which induced us to draw up an

indictment which was sure to be visited with equal severity on

plaintiff and defendant. And although our sense of justice was not

satisfied, and Roger and I in consequence formed ourselves into a

permanent Committee of Grievances, the peace of the household was

perhaps on the whole promoted by the system. The embittering effects

were, moreover, softened in our case by the presence of other

counteracting elements.

I had not been long in bed according to the decrees of Justice in the

person of Aunt Dorothy, when Mercy, in the person of Aunt Gretel,

came to bind up my wounds.

"Olive, my little one," said she, sitting down on the side of my bed,

"what hast thou been saying? Thou wouldst not surely say anything

ungrateful against the dear Lord and Saviour?"

Whereupon I buried my face in the bed-clothes, and sobbed so that the

bed shook under me.

She took my hand, and bending over me, said tenderly,--

"Poor little one! Thou must not break thy heart. The good Lord will

forgive, Olive, will forgive all. Tell me what it is, darling, and

don't be afraid."

Still I sobbed on, when she said,--

"If thou canst not tell me, tell the dear Saviour. He is gentler

than poor Aunt Gretel, and knows thee better. Only do not be afraid

of Him, nothing grieves Him like that, sweet heart; anything but

that."

Then I grew a little calmer, and moaned out,--

"Indeed, Aunt Gretel, I did not mean anything wicked. But it is so

hard to understand. There are so many things I cannot make out. And

oh, if I should be on the wrong side of the tree after all! If I

should be on the wrong side of the tree!"

And at the thought my sobs burst forth afresh.

Aunt Gretel was sorely perplexed. She said--

"What tree, little one? Where is thy poor brain wandering?"

"The tree with God at the beginning," said I, "and with heaven at one

end and hell at the other, and no way to cross over if once you get

wrong, and God never seeming to mind."

"A very wicked tree," said Aunt Gretel. "I never heard of it. The

only tree in the Bible is the Tree of Life. And of that the Blessed

Lord will give freely to every one who comes--the fruit for life and

the leaves for healing. Never mind the other, sweet heart."

"If there were only a way across!" said I, "and if I could be sure

God did care!"

"There is a way across, my lamb," said she. "Only it is not a way.

It is but a step. It is a look. It is a touch. For the way across

is the blessed Saviour Himself. And He is always nearer than I am

now, if you could only see."

"And God does care," said I, "whether we are lost or saved?"

"Care! little Olive," said she. "Hast thou forgotten the manner and

the cross? That comes of trying to see back to the beginning. _He_

was in the beginning, sweet heart, but not thou or I! He is the

beginning every day and for ever to us. Look to Him. His face is

shining on you now, watching you tenderly as if it were your

mother's, my poor motherless lamb. Whatever else is dark, that is

plain. And you never meant to grieve or question Him! You did not

mean to say the darkness was in Him, Olive! You never meant that.

Put the darkness anywhere but there, sweet heart--anywhere but there.

There is darkness enough, in good sooth. But in Him is no darkness

at all." And then she murmured, half to herself, "It is very

strange, Dr. Luther made it all so plain, more than a hundred years

ago. And it seems as if it all had to be done over again."

"Didst thou say thy prayers, my lamb?" she added.

I had. But it was sweet to kneel down with Aunt Gretel again, with

her arms and her warm dress folded around me, and say the words after

her, the Our Father, and the prayer for father and Roger and all.

But when I came to ask a blessing on Cousin Placidia, my lips seemed

unable to frame the words.

"Thou didst not pray for thy cousin, Olive," said Aunt Gretel.

"She is so very difficult to love, Aunt Gretel," said I; "she often

makes me do wrong. And I bit her finger this morning."

Aunt Gretel shook her head.

"Poor little one," said she, "ah, yes! It is always hardest to

forgive those we have hurt."

"But she pinched my arm where no one could see," said I.

"It will not help thee to think of that, poor lamb," said Aunt

Gretel, "what thou hast to do is to forgive. Think of what will help

thee to do that."

"I can't think of anything that helps me," said I.

"Dost thou wish anything bad to happen to thy cousin?" said Aunt

Gretel, after a pause. "If thou couldst bring trouble on her by

praying for it, wouldst thou do it?"

"No, not from God," said I. "Of course I could not ask anything bad

from God."

"Then wouldst thou ask thy father to send her away, poor neglected

orphan child that she was?"

"No, no, Aunt Gretel," I said, "not that. But I should like to see

her punished by Aunt Dorothy."

"How much?" said Aunt Gretel.

"I am not sure. Only as much as she quite deserves."

"That would be a good deal for us all," said she; "perhaps even for

thee a little more than going to bed one night without supper."

"Then until she was good," said I.

"Thou wishest thy cousin to be good, then?" said Aunt Gretel. "Then

thou canst at least pray for that."

"It would make the house like the Garden of Eden, I think," I said,

"before the tempter came, if Placidia were only not so provoking."

"Would it?" said she, gravely. "Art thou then always so good? Then,

perhaps, thou canst ask that thy cousin's trespasses may be forgiven,

even if _thou_ canst not forgive her, and hast _none of thine own_ to

be forgiven!"

"O, Aunt Gretel." said I, suddenly perceiving her meaning, "I see it

all now! It is the bit of ice in my own heart that made everything

dark and cold to me. It is the bit of ice in my own heart!"

She smiled and folded me to her heart.

And then she prayed once more for Placidia the orphan, and for me,

and Roger, "that God in His great pity would bless us and forgive us,

and make us good and loving, and like Himself and His dear Son who

suffered for us and bore our sins."

And after that I did not so much care even whether Roger brought the

answer he promised from Oxford or not.

And it flashed on me for an instant, as if the answer to Roger's

other puzzle might come somehow from the same point; as if it

answered everything to the heart to think that light and not

darkness, love and not necessity, are at the innermost heart of all.

For love is at once perfect freedom and inevitable necessity.

But before I fell asleep, while Aunt Gretel was still sitting on the

bedside with her knitting, I heard her say to herself--

"Not so very strange--not so strange after all, although Dr. Luther

did make it all clear as sunshine more than a hundred years ago. It

is that bit of ice in the heart, that bit of ice that is always

freezing afresh in the heart."

But Aunt Dorothy, on a night's consideration, thought the affair of

the apple-tree too important to be passed over, as most of our

childish quarrels were, without troubling my father about them.

Accordingly the next morning we were summoned into my father's

private room, where he received his rents as a landlord, and

sentenced offenders as a magistrate, and kept his law-books, and many

other great hereditary folios on divinity, philosophy, and things in

general. A very solemn proceeding for me that morning, my conscience

oppressed with a sense of having done some wrong intentionally, and I

knew not how much more without intending it.

Gradually, Roger and I standing on the other side of the table, with

the law-books and the mathematical instruments my father was so fond

of between us, he drew from us what had been the subject of our

conversation.

Then, to my surprise, as we stood awaiting our sentence, he called me

gently to him, and, seating me on his knee, pointed out a paper

spread on a huge folio volume, which lay open before him. It was a

diagram of the sun and the planets, with the four moons of Jupiter,

the earth and the moon, complicated by circles and lines mysteriously

intersecting each other.

"Olive," said he, "be so good as to explain that to me. It is made

by a gentleman who learned about it from the great astronomer

Galileo, and is meant to explain how the earth and the sun are kept

in their places." I looked at the complication of figures and lines

and magical-looking signs, and then in his face to see what he could

mean.

"You do not understand it?" he said, as if he were surprised.

"Father," said I, "a little child like me!"

"And yet this is only a drawing of a little corner of the world,

Olive--the sun and the earth and a few of the planets in the nook of

the world in which we live. The whole universe is a good deal harder

to understand than this."

"Father," said I, ashamed and blushing, "indeed I never thought I

could understand these things--at least not yet; I only thought you

might, or some wise people somewhere."

"Olive," said he, in a low voice, tenderly and reverently, stroking

my head while he spoke, "before the great mysteries you and Roger

have fallen on, I can only wonder, and wait, and say like you,

'_Father, a little child like me!_' And I do not think the great

Galileo himself could do much more."

But to Roger he said, rising and laying his hand on his shoulder--

"Exercise your wits as much as you can, my boy; but there are two

kinds of roads I advise you for the most part to eschew. One kind

are the roads that lead to the edge of the great darkness which

skirts our little patch of light on every side. The other are the

roads that go in a circle, leading you round and round with much toil

to the point from which you started. I do not say, never travel on

these--you cannot always help it. But for the most part exercise

yourself on the roads which lead somewhere. The exercise is as good,

and the result better." And he was about to send us away.

But Aunt Dorothy was not at all satisfied. "That Signor Galileo was

a very dangerous person," she said. "He said the sun went round, and

the earth stood still, which was contrary at once to common sense,

the five senses, and Scripture; and if chits like Roger and me were

allowed to enter on such false philosophy at our age, where should we

have wandered at hers?"

"Not much further, Sister Dorothy," said my Father, "if they reached

the age of Methuselah. Not much further into the question, and not

much nearer the answer."

"I see no difficulty in the question at all," said Aunt Dorothy.

"The Almighty does everything because it is His will to do it. And

we can do nothing except He wills us to do it. Which answers Olive

and Roger at once. All doubts are sins, and ought to be crushed at

the beginning."

"How would you do this, Sister Dorothy?" asked my Father; "a good

many persons have tried it before and failed."

"How! The simplest thing in the world," said Aunt Dorothy. "In the

first place, set people to work, so that they have no time for such

foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions."

"A wholesome plan, which seems to be very generally pursued with

regard to the whole human race," said Father. "It is mercifully

provided that those who have leisure for such questions are few. But

what else would you do?"

"For the children there is the switch," said Aunt Dorothy. "They

would be thankful enough for it when they grew wiser."

"So think the Pope and Archbishop Laud," replied my Father; "and so

they set up the Inquisition and the Star Chamber."

"I have no fault to find with the Inquisition and the Star Chamber,"

said Aunt Dorothy, "if they would only punish the right people."

"But sometimes we learn we have been mistaken ourselves," said

Father. "How can we be sure we are absolutely right about

everything?"

"_I am_," said Aunt Dorothy, emphatically. "Thank Heaven I have not

a doubt about anything. Heresy is worse than treason, for it is

treason against God; and worse than murder, for it is the murder of

immortal souls. The fault of the Pope and Archbishop Laud is that

they are heretics themselves, and punish the wrong people."

This was a point often reached in discussions between my Father and

Aunt Dorothy, but this time it was happily closed by the clatter of a

horse's hoofs on the pavement of the court before the house.

My father's face brightened, and he rose hastily, exclaiming, "A

welcome guest, Sister Dorothy--the Lord of the Fens--sot the table in

the wainscoted parlour."

He left the room, and we children watched a tall, stalwart gentleman,

well known to us, with a healthy, sunburnt face, alight from his

horse.

"The Lord of the Fens, indeed!" said Aunt Dorothy in a disappointed

tone, as she looked out of the window. "Why, it is only Mr. Oliver

Cromwell of Ely, with his coat as slovenly as usual, and his hat

without a hat-band. I am as much against gewgaws as any one. If I

had my way, not a slashed doublet, or ribboned hose, or feather, or

lace, should be seen in the kingdom. But there is reason in all

things. Gentlemen should look like gentlemen, and a hat without a

hat-band is going too far, in all conscience. The wainscoted

parlour, in good sooth! Why, his boots are covered with mud, and I

dare warrant it, he will never think of rubbing them on the straw in

the hall. And they will get talking, no one knows how long, about

that everlasting draining of the Fens. I can't think why they won't

let the Fens alone. They did very well for our fathers as they were,

and they were better men than we see now-a-days; and if the Almighty

made the Fens wet, I suppose he meant them to be wet; and people had

better take care how they run against His designs. And they say the

king is against it, or against somebody concerned in it, so that

there is no knowing what it may lead to. All Scotland in a tumult,

and the godly languishing in prison, and our parson putting on some

new furbelow and setting up some new fandango every Sabbath; and a

godly gentleman like Mr. Oliver Cromwell (for he is that, I don't

deny) to have nothing better to do than to try and squeeze a few

acres more of dry land out of the Fens!"

But Roger whispered to me,--

"Mr. Hampden says Mr. Cromwell would be the greatest man in England

if things should come to the worst, and there should be any

disturbance with the king."

At that moment my father called Roger, and to his delight he was

allowed to accompany him and our guest over the farm.

And the next entry in my Journal is this,--

"Mr. Oliver Cromwell of Ely was at our house yesterday. Roger walked

over the farm with him and my father. Their discourse was concerning

twenty shillings which the king wants to oblige Mr. Hampden of Great

Hampden to lend him, which Mr. Hampden will not, not because he

cannot afford it, but because the king would then be able to make

every one lend him money whether they like it or not, or whether they

are able or not. They call it the ship-money. Concerning this and

also concerning some good men, ministers or lecturers, whom Mr.

Cromwell wishes to set to preach the Gospel to the people in places

where no one else preaches, so that they can understand, but whom

Archbishop Laud has silenced with fines and many threats, Aunt

Dorothy thinks it a pity godly men like Mr. Hampden and Mr. Cromwell

should concern themselves about such poor worldly things as shillings

and pence. Regarding the lecturers, she says that they have more

reason. Only, she says, it is a wonder to her they will begin with

such small insignificant things. Let them set to work, root and

branch (says she), against Popery under false names and in high

places, and these lesser matters will take care of themselves. But

father says, 'poor worldly things' are just the things by which we

are tried and proved whether we will be faithful to the high

unworldly calling or not. And 'small insignificant things' are the

beginnings of everything that lives and endures, from a British oak

to the kingdom of heaven."

CHAPTER II.

_May Day_, 1638.

"This morning, before break of day, I went to bathe my face in the

May dew by the Lady Well. There I met Lettice Davenant with her

maidens. She was dressed in a kirtle of grass-green silk, with a

blue taffetas petticoat, and her eyes were like wet violets, and her

brown hair like wavy tangles of soft glossy unspun silk, specked and

woven with gold, and she looked like a sweet May flower, just lifting

itself out of its green sheath into the sunshine, and all the colours

changing and blending into each other, as they do in the flowers.

And she laid her soft, little hand in mine, and said her mother loved

mine, and she wished I would love her, and be her friend. And she

kissed me with her dear, sweet, little mouth, like a rosebud--like a

child's. And I held her close in my arms, with her silky hair

falling on my shoulder. She is just so much shorter than I am. And

her heart beat on mine. And I will love her all my life. No wonder

Roger thinks her fair.

"I will love her all my life, whatever Aunt Dorothy says.

"Firstly, because I cannot help it. And secondly, because I am sure

it is right--right--right to love; always right to love--to love as

much, as dearly, as long, as deep as we can. Always right to love,

never right to despise, or keep aloof, or turn aside. Sometimes

right to hate, at least I think so; sometimes right to be angry, I am

sure of that; but never right to despise, and always--always right to

love.

"For Roger and I have looked well all through the Gospels to see.

And the Pharisee despised, the Priest and the Levite passed by, and

the disciples said once or twice, send her away. But the Lord drew

near, called them to Him, touched, took in His arms, loved, always

loved. Loved when they were wandering--loved when they would not

come; loved even when they 'went away.'

"And Aunt Gretel thinks the same. Only I sometimes wish we had lived

in the times she speaks of, told of in certain Family Chronicles of

hers, a century old. For then it was the people with the wrong

religion who despised others, and were harsh and severe. And they

went into convents, which must have been a great relief to the rest

of the family. And now it seems to be the people with the right

religion who do like the Pharisees. And they stay at home, which is

more difficult to understand, and more unpleasant to bear."

A very vehement utterance, crossed through with repentant lines in

after times, but still quite legible, and of interest to me for the

vanished outer world of life, and the tumultuous inward world of

revolt it recalls.

For that May morning, on my way home through the wood, I met the

village lads and lasses bringing home the May; and when I reached the

house, it was late; the serving men and maidens had finished their

meal at the long table in the hall, and Aunt Dorothy sat at one end

on the table, which crossed it at the top, and span; and Cousin

Placidia sat silent at the other end and span, the whirr of their

spinning-wheels distinctly reproaching me in a steady hum of

displeasure, until I was constrained to reply to it and to Aunt

Dorothy's silence.

"Aunt Dorothy, prithee, forgive me. I only went to bathe my face in

the May dew by the Lady Well. And there I met Lettice Davenant."

"I never reproached thee, child," said Aunt Dorothy. "There is too

much license in this house for that. But this, I will say, the

excuse is worse than the fault. How often have I told thee not to

stain thy lips with the idolatrous title of that well? And as to

bathing thy face in the May dew, Olive, it is Popery--sheer Popery."

"Not Popery, sister Dorothy," said my Father, looking up from his

sheet of news just brought from London. "Not Popery; Paganism. The

custom dates back to the ancient Romans, probably to the festival of

the goddess Maia, mother of Mercury, but here antiquarians are

divided."

"And well they may be," said Aunt Dorothy, "what but sects and

divisions can be expected from such tampering with vanities and

idolatries? For my part, it matters little to me whether the custom

dates to the modern or the ancient Romans, or to the Hittites, the

Perizzites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites. Whoever painted the

idol, I have little doubt who made it. And of the two I like the

unchristened idols best."

"Not quite, sister Dorothy, not always," remonstrated my Father, "it

is certainly a great mistake to worship the Virgin Mary. But the

Moloch to whom they burned little children was worse, much worse."

"If he was, the less we hear about him the better, Brother," said

Aunt Dorothy. "But as to the burning I see little difference. You

can see the black sites of Queen Mary's fires still. And Lettice

Davenant has been up at the court of the new Queen Marie (as they

call her);--an unlucky name for England. And little good she or hers

are like to do to our Olive."

On which I turned wholly into a boiling caldron of indignation; and

to what it might have led I know not, had not Aunt Gretel at that

moment intervened, ruddy from the kitchen fire, and with the glow of

a pleasant purpose in her kindly blue eyes.

"They are like to have the blithest May to-day they have seen for

many a year," said she. "Our Margery, the daughter of Tib the

dairywoman, is to be queen. And a better maiden or a sweeter face

there is not in all the country side. And Dickon, the gardener's son

at the Hall, is her sweetheart, and the Lady Lucy Davenant has let

them deck the bower with posies from her own garden, and they are

coming from the Hall, the Lady Lucy and Sir Walter, and Mistress

Lettice and her five brothers, to see the jollity."

"Tell Tib's goodman to broach a barrel of the best ale, sister

Gretel," said my Father, "and we will go and see."

This was said in the tone Aunt Dorothy never answered, and she made

no remonstrance except through the whirr of her spinning-wheel, which

always seemed to Roger and me to be a kind of "_famulus_," or a

second-self to Aunt Dorothy (of course of a white not a black kind),

saying the thing she meant but would not say, and in a thousand ways

spinning out and completing, not her thread only, but her life and

thought.

My Father soon rose and went to the farm. Aunt Dorothy span silent

at one end of the table, and Cousin Placidia at the other; while I

sat too indignant to eat anything, and Aunt Gretel moved about in a

helpless, conciliatory state between.

"The Bible does speak of being merry, sister Dorothy," said she at

length, metaphorically putting her foot into Aunt Dorothy's spiritual

spinning, as she was wont to do.

"No doubt it does," said Aunt Dorothy. "'Is any merry among you, let

him sing psalms.'"

"I am sure I wish they would," said Aunt Gretel, "there is nothing I

enjoy so much. And," pursued she, waxing bold, "after all, sister

Dorothy, the whole world does seem to sing and dance in the green

May, the little birds hop and sing, (sing love-songs too, sister

Dorothy), and the leaves dance and rustle, and the flowers don all

the colours of the rainbow."

"As to the flowers," said Aunt Dorothy, "they did not choose their

own raiment, so no blame to them, poor perishing things. I hold they

were clothed in their scarlet and purple, like fools in motley, for

the very purpose of shaming us into being sober and grave in our

attire. The birds, indeed, may hop and sing if they like it. Not

that I think they have much cause, poor inconsiderate creatures, what

with the birds'-nesting, and the poaching, and Mr. Cromwell draining

the fens. But they have no foresight, and they have not immortal

souls, and if they're to be in a pie to-morrow they don't know it;

and they are no worse for it the day after."

"But," said Aunt Gretel, "we have immortal souls, and I think that

ought to make us sing a thousand-fold better than the birds."

"We have not only souls, we have sins," said Aunt Dorothy; "and there

is enough in sin, I hold, to stop the sweetest music in the world

when the burden is felt."

"But we have the Gospel and the Saviour," said Aunt Gretel, "glad

tidings of great joy to all people."

"Tell them, then, to the people," said Aunt Dorothy; "get a godly

minister to go and preach them to the poor sinners in the village,

and that will be better than setting up May-poles and broaching beer

barrels."

"I do tell them whenever I can, sister Dorothy," said Aunt Gretel

meekly, "as well as I can. But the best of us cannot always be

listening to sermons."

"We might listen much longer than we do if we tried," said Aunt

Dorothy, branching off from the subject. "In Scotland, I am told,

the Sabbath services last twelve hours."

Aunt Gretel sighed; whether in compassion for the Scottish

congregations, or in lamentation over her own shortcomings, she did

not explain.

"But," she resumed, "it does seem that if the good God meant that

there should have been no merry-making in the world he would have

arranged that people should have come into the world full-grown."

"Probably it would have been better if it could have been so

managed," said Aunt Dorothy; "but I suppose it could not. However

that may be, the best we can do now is to make people grow up as soon

as they can, and not keep them babies with May games, and junketings,

and possetings."

"But," said Aunt Gretel timidly, "after all, sister Dorothy, the

Bible does not give us any strict rules by which we can judge other

people in such things."

"I confess," replied Aunt Dorothy, "that if there could be a thing to

be wished for in the Bible (with reverence I say it), it is just that

there were a few plain rules. St. Paul came very near it when he was

speaking of the weak brethren at the idol-feasts; but I confess I do

think it would have been a help if he had gone a little further while

he was about it. Then, people would not have been able to pretend

they did not know what he meant. I do think it would have been a

comfort if there could have been a book of Leviticus in the New

Testament."

"But your Mr. John Milton," said Aunt Gretel, "in his new masque of

Comus, which your brother thinks beautiful, introduces music and

dancing."

"Mr. Milton is a godly man," said Aunt Dorothy "but, poor gentleman,

he is a poet; and poets can not always be expected to keep straight,

like reasonable people."

"But Dr. Martin Luther himself dearly loved music," said Aunt Gretel,

driven to her final court of appeal, "and even sanctioned dancing, in

a Christian-like way, without rioting and drunkenness."

"Dr. Luther might," rejoined Aunt Dorothy. "Dr. Luther believed in

consubstantiation, and rejected the Epistle of St. James. And,

besides, by this time he has been in heaven, it is to be hoped, for

nearly a hundred years, and there can be no doubt he knows better."

Aunt Gretel was roused.

"Sister Dorothy," she said, "Dr. Luther does not need to be defended

by me. But I sometimes think if he came to England in these days he

would think some of you had gone some way towards painting again that

terrible picture of God, which made the little ones fly from Him

instead of taking refuge with Him, and which it took him so much toil

to destroy."

And she fled to the kitchen, rosier than she came, but with tears

instead of smiles in her eyes.

"If people could enjoy themselves harmlessly, without rioting and

drunkenness," said Aunt Dorothy, half yielding, "there might be less

to be said against it.

"What is rioting, Aunt Dorothy?" asked Placidia from her

spinning-wheel.

"Idling and romping, and doing what had better not be done nor talked

about."

"Because, Aunt Dorothy," said Placidia solemnly, "I saw Dickon trying

to kiss our Tib's daughter, Margery, behind the door; and she would

not let him. But she laughed and did not seem angry. Is that

rioting?"

"Dickon may kiss Margery as often as he likes without hurting you or

any one, Placidia," said Aunt Dorothy, incautiously. "Margery is a

good honest girl, and can take care of herself. And you have no

right to watch what any one does behind doors. You, at least, shall

not go to the May-pole to-day, but shall stay with me and learn the

thirteenth of First Corinthians."

"I do not wish to go to any rioting or May games," said Placidia. "I

like my spinning and my book. I never did care for dancing and

playing and fooling, Aunt Dorothy, I am thankful to say."

"Don't be a Pharisee, Placidia," said Aunt Dorothy, turning hotly on

her unwelcome ally. "Better play and dance like a flipperty-gibbet,

than watch what other people do behind doors, and tell tales."

And I left them to settle the controversy, while I went to join Aunt

Gretel, who was in my Father's chamber preparing for me such sober

decorations in honor of the festivities as our Puritan wardrobes

admitted of. It was a great day for me; chiefly for the expectation

of meeting the Lady Lucy and the sweet maiden Lettice.

I was starting full of glee when the sight of Aunt Dorothy, spinning

silently in the hall as we passed the door, with Placidia beside her,

threw a little shadow over my contentment. Aunt Dorothy so

completely represented to me the majesty of law, and at the bottom of

our hearts both Roger and I so trusted and honored her, that in spite

even of my Father's sanction, something of misgiving troubled me at

the sight of her grave face. With a sudden impulse I ran back, and,

standing before her, said--

"Aunt Dorothy, you are not angry? I shall not dance, only look, and

soon be at home again, and all will go on the same as ever."

She shook her head, but more sorrowfully than angrily.

"Eve only looked," said she, "but nothing went on the same evermore."

At that moment my father came back to seek me, and, catching Aunt

Dorothy's last words, he said kindly but gravely, "Do not let us

trouble the child's conscience with our scruples. It is a serious

danger to force our scruples on others. When experience of their own

peculiar weaknesses and besetments has led them to scruple at things

for themselves, it is another matter. But to add to God's laws is

almost as tremendous a mistake as to subtract from them. Our

additions, moreover, are sure to end in subtractions in some other

direction. Indifferent things done with a guilty conscience lead to

guilty things done with an indifferent conscience. In inventing

imaginary sins you create real sinners."

"Well, brother, it is as you please," said Aunt Dorothy, "but I

should have thought our new parson reading from that blasphemous

'Book of Sports' from the pulpit, commanding the people to dance

around the May-poles on the Sabbath afternoons, was enough to turn

any serious person against them."

"Nay; that is exactly one of the strongest reasons why I go to-day,"

said my father. "I go to show that it is not the May-poles we

scruple at, but the cruel robbing of the poor by the desecration of

the day given them by God for higher things."

And he led me away. But my free, innocent gladsomeness was gone.

Conscience had come in with her questionings, and her discernings and

her dividings. I was not sure whether God was pleased with me or

with any of us. Even when I looked at the garlanded May-pole, I

thought of the old tree in Eden with its pleasant fruit, which I had

embroidered with a serpent coiled round it, darting out his forked

tongue at Eve. I wondered whether if my eyes were opened I should

see him there, writhing among the hawthorn garlands, or hissing

envenomed words into the ear of our Tib's Margery as she sat in her

royal bower of green boughs crowned with flowers, or gliding in and

out among the dancers, as hand in hand they moved singing around the

May-pole, wreathing and unwreathing the long garland which united

them, and making low reverences, as they passed, to their blushing

Queen. I wondered whether the whole thing had some mysterious

connection with idolatry, and heaven itself were after all watching

us with grieved displeasures like Aunt Dorothy, and secretly

preparing fiery serpents, or a rain of fire and brimstone, or a

thunder storm, or whatever came instead of fiery serpents and fire

and brimstone in these days when there were no more miracles.

These thoughts, however, all vanished when the family appeared from

the Hall. The Lady Lucy was borne by two men in a sedan-chair which

she had brought from London, a thing I had never seen before. It so

happened that I had never seen the Lady Lucy until that day. The

family had been much about the court, and on the few occasions on

which they had spent any time at the Hall, the Lady Lucy's health had

been too feeble to admit of her attending at the parish church with

the rest of the family. From the moment, therefore, that Sir Walter

handed her out of the chair and seated her on cushions prepared for

her, I could not take my eyes from her, not even to look at Lettice.

So queenly she appeared to me, such a perfection of grace and dignity

and beauty. Her complexion was fair like Lettice's, but very

delicate and pale, like a shell; and her hair, still brown and

abundant, was arranged in countless small ringlets around her face.

On her neck and her forehead there was a brilliant sparkle and a

glitter, which must, of course, have been from jewels; and her dress

had a sheen and a gloss, and a delicate changing of gorgeous colours

on it which must have been that of velvet and brocade and rare laces.

But in my eyes she sat wrapped in a kind of halo of unearthly glory.

I no more thought of resolving it into the texture of any earthly

looms than if she had been a lily or a star. All around her seemed

to belong to her, like the moonbeams to the moon or the leaves to a

flower. Not her dress only, but the green leaves which bent lovingly

down to her, and the flowery turf which seemed to kiss her feet. If

I thought of any comparison, it was Aunt Gretel's fairy-tale of the

princess with the three magic robes, enclosed in the magic

nut-shells, like the sun, like the moon, and like the stars.

Even Sir Walter, burly, and sturdy, and noisy, and substantial as he

was, seemed to me to acquire a kind of reflected glory by her

speaking to him. And her seven sons girdled her like the planets

around the sun, or like the seven electors Aunt Gretel told us about

around the emperor. But when at last her eyes rested on me, and she

whispered something to Sir Walter, and he came across and doffed his

plumed hat to my father, and then led me across to her, and she

looked long in my face, and then up in my father's, and said, "The

likeness is perfect," and then kissed me, and made me sit down on the

cushion beside her with her hand in mine, I thought her voice like an

angel's, and her touch seemed to me to have something hallowing in it

which made me feel safe like a little bird under its mother's wing.

The silent smile of her soft eyes under her smooth, broad, unfurrowed

brow, as she turned every now and then and looked at me, fell on my

heart like a kiss. And I thought no more of Eve and the serpent, or

Aunt Dorothy, or anything, until she rose to go. And then she kissed

me again. But I scarcely seemed to care that she should kiss me.

Her presence was an embrace; her smile was a kiss; every tone of her

voice was a caress. A tender motherliness seemed to fold me all

round as I sat by her. As she left me she said softly,--

"Little Olive, you must come and see me. Your mother and I loved

each other." Then holding out her hand to my father, she added,--

"Politics and land-boundaries, Mr. Drayton, must not keep us any

longer apart."

He bowed, and they conversed some time longer; but the only thing I

heard was that he promised I should go and see her at the Hall.

I think every one felt something of the soft charm there was in her.

For, quiet and retiring as she was, when she left, a light and

gladness seemed to go with her. Before long the dancing and singing

stopped, the tables were set on the green, and the feasting began,

and we left and went home.

"Oh, Roger," said I, when we were alone that evening, "there can be

no one like her in the world."

"Of course not," said Roger decisively. "Did I not always say so?"

"But you never saw her before."

"Never saw her, Olive? How can I help seeing her every Sunday? She

sits at the end of the pew just opposite mine."

"She never came to church, Roger."

"Never came to church? Who do you mean?"

"Mean? The Lady Lucy, to be sure."

"Oh," said Roger, "I thought, of course, you were speaking of

Mistress Lettice."

But when we came back to Netherby, full as my heart was of my new

love, there was something in Aunt Dorothy's manner that quite froze

any utterance of it, and brought me back to Eve and the apple. Yet

she spoke kindly,--

"Thou lookest serious, Olive," said she. "Perhaps thou didst not

find it such a paradise after all. Poor child, the world's a shallow

cup, and the sooner we drain it the better. I think better of thee

than that thou wilt long be content with such May games and vanities.

Come to thy supper."

But my honesty compelled me to speak. I did not wish Aunt Dorothy to

think better of me than I deserved.

"It _was_ rather like paradise, Aunt Dorothy," I said.

"Paradise around a May-pole," said she compassionately. "Poor babe,

poor babe!"

"It was not the May-pole," said I, my face burning at having to bring

out my hidden treasure of new love; "not the May-pole, but Lady Lucy."

"Lady Lucy took a fancy to the child, Sister Dorothy," said my

father, "and asked her to the Hall." And lowering his voice he

added, "She thought her like Magdalene."

I had scarcely ever heard him litter my mother's Christian name

before, and now it seemed to fall from his lips like a blessing.

Aunt Dorothy's brow darkened.

"Thou wilt never let the child go, brother?"

He did not at once reply.

"Into the very jaws of Babylon, brother? The Lady Lucy is one of the

favourites, they say, of the Popish Queen."

"Very probably," said my father dryly, "I do not see how the Queen or

any one else could help honouring or favouring the Lady Lucy."

My heart bounded in acquiescence.

"They say she has a chapel at the Hall fitted up on the very pattern

of Archbishop Laud, and priests in coats of no one knows how many

colours, and painted glass, and incense. Thou wilt never let the

poor unsuspecting lamb go into the very lair of the Beast?"

"There are jewels in many a dust-heap, Sister Dorothy, and the Lady

Lucy is one," said my father a little impatiently, for Aunt Dorothy

had the faculty of arousing the latent wilfulness of the meekest of

men. "Let us say no more about it. I have made up my mind."

Had he known how deep was the spell on me, he might have thought

otherwise. For, ungrateful that I was, having lost my heart to this

fair strange lady, I sat chafing at Aunt Dorothy's injustice, in a

wide-spread inward revolt, which bid fair to extend itself to

everything Aunt Dorothy believed or required. All her life-long care

and affection, and patient (or impatient) toiling and planning for me

and mine, blotted out by what I deemed her blind injustice to this

object of my worship, who had but kissed me twice, and smiled on me,

and said half-a-dozen soft words, and had won all my childish heart!

And yet, looking back from these sober hours, I still feel it was not

altogether an infatuation. Such true and tender motherliness as

dwelt in Lady Lucy is the greatest power it seems to me that can

invest a woman.

All mothers certainly do not possess it. On some, on the contrary,

the motherly love which passionately enfolds those within is too like

a bristling fortification of jealousy and exclusiveness to those

without. Or rather (that I dishonour not the most sacred thing in

our nature), I should say, the mother's love which is from above is

lowered and narrowed into a passion by the selfishness which is not

from above. And some unmarried women possess it, some little maidens

even who from infancy draw the little ones to them by a soft

irresistible attraction, and seem to fold them under soft dove-like

plumage. Without something of it women are not women, but only

weaker, and shriller, and smaller men. But where, as in Lady Lucy,

the whole being is steeped in it, it seems to me the sweetest,

strongest, most irresistible power on earth, to control, and bless,

and purify, and raise, and the truest incarnation (I cannot say

anything so cold as image), the truest embodying and ensouling of

what is divine.

But that night it so chanced that I, who had fallen asleep lapped in

sweet memories of Lady Lucy and in the protection of Aunt Gretel's

presence, awakened by the long roll of a thunder-peal which seemed as

if it never would end.

For some time I tried to hide myself from the flash and the terrific

sound under the bed-clothes. But it would not do. At length I

sprang speechless from my little bed to Aunt Gretel's. She took me

in close to her. And there, with my head on her shoulder, speech

came back to me, and I said, in a frightened whisper (for it seemed

to me like speaking in church),--

"Aunt Gretel, will the last trumpet be like that?"

"I do not know, Olive," said she quietly. "More awful, I think, yet

plainer, for we shall all understand it, even those in the graves;

and it will call us home."

"O Aunt Gretel," I said at last, "can it have anything to do with the

May-pole?"

"What, sweet heart! the thunder?"

"It is God's voice, is it not? Does not the Bible say so? And it

does sound like an angry voice," I whispered, for the windows were

rattling and the house was quivering with the repeated peals, as if

in the grasp of a terrible giant.

"There is much indeed to make the good God angry, my lamb, much more

than May-poles."

"Yes," said I, "there were the three gentlemen in the pillory! That

must have been worse certainly. But do you think God can be angry

with me, Aunt Gretel?"

"For what, sweet heart?"

"For loving Lady Lucy," said I; "she is so very sweet."

"God is never angry with any one for loving," said Aunt Gretel, "only

for not loving. But there is a better voice of God than the thunder,

Olive," added she. "A voice that does not roar but speaks, sweet

heart. Hast thou never heard that?"

I was silent, for I half guessed what she meant.

"'_It is I, be not afraid,_'" she said, in a low, clear tone,

contrasting with my awe-stricken whisper. "Whenever thou dost not

understand the voice that thunders, sweet heart, go back to the voice

that speaks, and that will tell thee what the voice that thunders

means."

"Aunt Gretel," said I, after a little silence, "it seemed to me as if

Lady Lucy were like some words of our Saviour's. As if everything in

her were saying in a soft dove's voice, 'Suffer the little children

to come unto Me.' Was it wrong to think so? It seemed as if I were

sitting beside my Mother, and then I thought of those very words.

Was it wrong?"

"Not wrong, my poor motherless lamb," said she, "no, surely not

wrong. Remember, Olive, from Paradise downwards the worst heresy has

been slander of the love of God; distrust of His love, and disbelief

of the awful warnings His love gives against sin. Whenever we feel

anything very tender in any human love, we should feel as if the

blessed God were stretching out His arms to us through it, and

saying, 'That is a little like the way I love thee. But only a

little, only a little.'"

And the thunder rolled on, and the lightning that night cleft the

great elm by the gate, so that in the morning it stood a scorched and

blackened trunk.

And Aunt Dorothy said what an awful warning it was. But to me, if it

was an "awful warning," it stood also like a parable of mercy. I

could not exactly have explained why; but I thought I could read the

meaning of the Voice that thundered by the Voice that spoke.

I thought how He had been scathed and bruised for us.

And I pleaded hard with my father that the old scathed tree might not

be felled. For to me its great bare blackened branches seemed to

shelter the house like that accursed tree which had spread its bare

arms one Good Friday night outside Jerusalem, and had pleaded not for

vengeance, but for pity and for pardon.

I think the resentment of injustice is one of the first-born and

strongest passions in an ingenuous heart. And to this, I believe, is

often due the falling off of children from the party of their

parents, They hear hard things said of opponents; on closer

acquaintance they find these to be exaggerations, or, at least,

suppressions; the general gloom of a picture being even more produced

by effacing lights than by deepening shadows. The discovery throws a

doubt over the whole range of inherited beliefs, and it is well if in

the heat of youth the revulsion is not far greater than the wrong; if

in their indignation at discovering that the heretic is not an

embodied heresy, but merely a human creature believing something

wrong, they do not glorify him into a martyr and a model.

For Roger and me it was the greatest blessing that our father was

just and candid to the extent of seeing (often to his own great

distress and perplexity) even more clearly the defects of his own

party which he might correct, than of the other side, which he could

not; and that Aunt Gretel was apt to see all opinions and characters

melted into a haze of indiscriminate sunshine by the light of her own

loving heart.

Our indignation, therefore, during the period of our lives which

followed on this May-day was almost entirely directed against Aunt

Dorothy.

My idol remained for some time precisely at the due idolatrous

distance, enshrined in general behind a screen of sweet mystery, with

occasional flashes of beatific vision; the intervals filled up with

rumours of the music, and breaths of the incense of the inner

sanctuary, enhanced by what I deemed the unjust murmurs of the

profane outside.

My father fulfilled his promise of taking me to the Hall. On our way

to Lady Lucy's drawing-chamber I caught a glimpse through a half-open

door into her private chapel, which left on my memory a haze and a

fragrance of coloured light falling on the marble pavements through

windows like rubies and sapphires, of golden chalices and

candelabras, of aromatic perfumes, with a rise and fall of sweet

chords of sacred music, all blended together into a kind of sacred

spell, like the church bells on Sunday across the Mere. The Lady

Lucy herself was embroidering a silken church vestment with gold and

crimson; skeins of glossy silk of brilliant colours lay around her,

which thenceforth invested the descriptions of the broidered work of

the tabernacle for me with a new interest. She received my father

with a courtly grace, and me with her own motherly sweetness. She

made me sit on a tabouret at her feet, while she conversed with my

father, and gave me a French ivory puzzle to unravel. But I could do

nothing but drink in the soft modulations of her voice without

heeding what she said, except that the discourse seemed embroidered

with the names of the King and the Queen, and the Princes and

Princesses, which seemed as fit for her lips as her rich dress was

for her person. She seemed to speak with a gentle raillery,

reminding him of old times, and asking why he deserted the court.

But his words and tones were very grave. Then, as he spoke of

leaving, she unlocked a little sandal-wood cabinet, and took out a

locket containing a curl of fair hair, and she said softly, "This was

Magdalene's!" and held it beside mine. And then, as she carefully

laid it aside again, the conversation for a few moments rose to

higher things, and a Name higher than those of kings and queens was

in it. And she said reverently, "In whatever else we differ, that

good part, I trust, may be mine and yours! as we know so well it was

hers." And my father seemed moved, took leave, and said nothing more

until we had passed through the outer gate, when in the avenue

Lettice met us, cantering on a white palfrey, in a riding coat laced

with red, blue and yellow; and springing off, left her horse to go

whither it would, as she ran to welcome me, saying a thousand pretty,

kindly things, while I, in a shy ecstasy, could only stand and hold

her hand, and feel as if I had been transported, entirely unprepared,

straight into the middle of a fairy tale.

After that for some weeks there was a stream of courtly company at

the Hall, and Roger and I only saw Lettice and occasionally the Lady

Lucy at church, or met them now and then in our rides and rambles by

the Mere or through the woods. But whenever we did meet there was

always the same eager cordial greeting from Lettice, and the same

affectionate manner in her mother. And from time to time we heard,

through Tib's sweetheart Dickon, of the gracious little kindnesses of

both mother and daughter, of their thoughtful care for tenant and

servant, of the honour in which they were held by prince and peasant.

And so on me and on Roger the spell worked on.

The Draytons were of as old standing in the parish as the Davenants.

Indeed, if tradition and our family tree spoke true, many a broad

acre around Netherby had been in the possession of our ancestors,

maternal or paternal, when the forefathers of the Davenants had been

holding insignificant fiefs under Norman dukes, or cruising on very

doubtful errands about the northern seas. Our pedigree dated back to

Saxon times; the porch of the oldest transept of the church had, to

Aunt Dorothy's mingled pride and horror, an inscription on it

requesting prayers for the soul of one of our progenitors; and the

oldest tomb in the church was ours. But while our family had

remained stationary in place as well as in rank, the Davenants had

climbed far above us. Our old Manor House had received no additions

since the reign of Elizabeth, when the third gable had been built

with the large embayed window, and the three terraces sloping to the

fish-pond and the orchards, while on the other side of the court

extended, as of old, the cattle-sheds and stables. Meantime, the old

Hall of the Davenants had been degraded into farm-buildings, whilst a

new mansion, with sumptuous banqueting halls and dainty ladies'

withdrawing-chamber like a palace, had gradually sprung up around the

remains of the suppressed Priory, which had been granted to the

family; the ancient Priory Church serving as Lady Lucy's private

chapel, the monks' refectory as the family dining-hall, whilst all

signs of farm life had vanished out of sight, and scent, and hearing.

During the same period, the new transept of our parish church, which

had been the Davenants' family chapel, had become enriched with

stately monuments, where the effigies of knight and dame rested under

decorated canopies. The titles and armorial bearings of many a noble

family were mingled with theirs on monumental brass and stained

window; whilst the plain massive architecture of our hereditary

portion of the church was not more contrasted with the rich and

delicate carving of theirs than were we and our servingmen and

maidens, in our plain, sad-colored stuffs, unplumed, unadorned hats,

caps or coifs, and white linen kerchiefs, with the brocades, satins,

and velvets, ostrich feathers and jewels, ribboned hosen and buckled

shoes of the Hall.

The contrast had gone deeper than mere externals, as external

contrasts mostly do, in this symbolical world. In the Civil Wars,

when no political principle was involved, it had chanced that the

Draytons and the Davenants had seldom been on the same side. But at

and after the Reformation the difference manifested itself plainly

and steadily.

The Davenants had recognized Henry VIII.'s supremacy to the extent of

receiving from him a grant of the lands belonging to the neighbouring

abbey. But it had probably cost them little change of belief to

return zealously to the old religion, under the rule of Queen Mary;

whereas the Draytons, adhering with Saxon immobility to the Papal

authority when Henry VIII. discarded it, had slowly come round to the

conviction of the truth of the reformed religion by the time it

became dangerous; and we hold it one of our chief family distinctions

that we have a name closely connected with us enrolled among the

noble army in "Fox's Book of Martyrs." Indeed, throughout their

history, our family had an unprosperous propensity to the dangerous

side. The religious convictions, so painfully adopted and so dearly

proved, had throughout the reign of Elizabeth given our ancestors a

leaning to the Puritan side; deep religious conviction binding them

from generation to generation to the noblest spirits of their times,

whilst a certain almost perverse honesty and inflexibility of temper

naturally drove them to resist any kind of pressure from without, and

a taste for what is solid and simple rather than for what is elegant

and gorgeous, whether in life or in ritual, inclined them to the

simplest forms of ecclesiastical ceremonial.

It was this strong hereditary Protestantism which had led my Father

to join the religious wars in Germany. He held King Gustavus

Adolphus, the Swede, to be the noblest man and the greatest general

of ancient or modern times. And he held that the fearful conflict by

which that great king turned the tide against the Popish arms was

little less than a conflict between truth and falsehood, barbarism

and civilization, light and darkness. It was enough to make any one

believe in the necessity of hell, he said, to have seen, as he had,

the city of Magdeburg, ten days after Tilly's soldiers had sacked it,

when scarce three thousand corpse-like survivors crept around the

blackened ruins where lay buried the mangled remains of their

fourteen thousand happier dead. To see that, said my Father, would

make any one understand what is meant by the wrath of the Lamb; and

that there are things which can make a gospel of vengeance as

precious to just men as a gospel of mercy. And some foretaste of

that merciful vengeance, he said, had been given already. For after

Magdeburg it was said Tilly never won a battle. My Father fought

with the Swedish army till the death of the king, on the sixth of

November, 1632; and that day of his victory and death at Lützen, was

always kept in our household as a day of family mourning.

Had Elizabeth been on the throne, my Father used to say, and Cecil at

the helm of state, it would not have been the little northern kingdom

of Sweden which should have stemmed the torrent of Popish and

Imperial tyranny, while England stood by wringing helpless womanish

hands, beholding her brethren in the faith tortured and slaughtered,

her own king's daughter exiled and dethroned, and, at the same time,

her brave soldiers and sailors trifled to inglorious death by

thousands at the bidding of a musked and curled court favourite at

Rhé and Rochelle.

It was in Germany that my Father met my mother. She was a Saxon from

Luther's own town, Wittemberg. Her name was Reichenbach, and her

family retained affectionate personal memories of the great Reformer,

as well as an enthusiastic devotion to his doctrines. She and Aunt

Gretel (Magdalene and Margarethe) were orphan daughters of an officer

in the Protestant armies. And I often count it among my mercies that

our family history linked us with more forms of our religion than

one, and extended our horizon beyond the sects and parties of

England. Our mother died two years after my father's return to

England, leaving him us two children, and a memory of a love as

devoted, and a piety as simple, as ever lit up a home by keeping it

open to heaven.

It was during these years she made the acquaintance with Lady Lucy.

They had been very closely attached, although political differences,

and the long absences of the Davenants at Court, had prevented much

intercourse between the families since her death.

Roger recollected her face and voice and her foreign accent, and one

or two things she said to him. I remember nothing of her but a kind

of brooding warmth and care, tender caressing tones, and being

watched by eyes with a look in them unlike any other, and then a day

of weeping and silence and black dresses and sad faces, and a

wandering about with a sense of something lost. Lost for ever out of

my life. As much as by any possibility could be, Aunt Gretel made up

the tenderness, and Aunt Dorothy the discipline; and my father did

all he could to supply her place by a fatherly care softened into an

uncommon passion by his sorrow, and deepened into the most sacred

principle by his desire to remedy our loss. Yet, in looking back, I

feel more and more we did indeed inevitably lose much. All these

balancing and compensating cares and affections and restraints from

every side yet missed something of the tender constraints and the

heart-quickening warmth they would have had all living, blended, and

consecrated in the one mother's heart. Yet to Roger, perhaps, the

loss was at various points in his life even greater than to me.

If she had lived, perchance the lessons we had to learn after that

May Day would have been learned with less of blundering and heat.

Yet how can I tell? It seems to me the true painter keeps his

pictures in harmony not by mixing the colours on the palette, but by

blending them on the canvass, not by painting in leaden monotonous

grays, but by interweaving and contrasting countless tints of pure

and varied colour. And in nature, in history, in life, it seems to

me the Creator does the same.

Yes, God forbid that in lamenting what we lost I should blaspheme the

highest love--the love which, as Aunt Gretel says, takes every image

of human affection, and fills and overfills it, and casts it away as

too shallow; in its unutterable intensity putting as it were a tender

paradox of slander on even a mother's love for her babes, and saying,

"They may forget, yet will not I."

For that love, we believe, gave and took away, and has led us through

fasting and feasting, dangers and droughts, Marahs and Elims,

chastenings and cherishings, ever since.