At length the time arrived when my dark ages of mystery and adoration
were to to close. The pestilence so constantly hovering over the
wretched wastes of devastated Germany had been brought to Netherby by
a cousin of my mother's, who had come on a visit to us. He fell sick
the day after his arrival, and died on the third day. That evening
Tib, the dairywoman, sickened, and before the next morning, Margery,
her daughter. A panic seized the household. My father accepted Lady
Lucy's generous offer, to take charge of Roger and me, we happening
to have been from the first secluded from all contact with the sick.
Aunt Dorothy made a faint remonstrance. There were, said she,
contagions worse than any plague. If her brother would answer for
it, to his conscience, it was well. She, at least, would wash her
hands of the whole thing. But my father had no scruples. "He only
hoped," he said, "that Lady Lucy might touch us with the infection of
her gracious kindliness; Olive would be only with her, and as to
Roger and the rest of the household, if he was ever to be a true
Protestant, the time must come when he must learn, if necessary, to
protest."
So much to Aunt Dorothy. To Roger himself, he said, in a low voice,
as we were riding off, with his hand on the horse's mane,--
"Remember, my lad, there is no true manliness without godliness."
Aunt Gretel watched and waved her hand to us from the infected
chamber window where she sat nursing Margery; and when I opened my
bundle of clothes that evening, I found in the corner a little book
containing my mother's favorite psalms copied in English for us, the
46th (Dr. Luther's own psalm), the 23d, and the 139th.
Thus armed, Roger and I sallied forth into our enchanted castle.
To be disenchanted. Not to be repelled, but certainly to be
disenchanted. Not by any subtle spell of counter-magic, or rude
shock of bitter discovery, but by the slow changing of the world of
misty twilight splendours, of dreams and visions, guesses and
rumours, into a world of daylight, of sight and touch.
My first disenchantment was the Lady Lucy's artificial curls. She
allowed me to remain with her while her gentlewoman disrobed her that
evening. I shall never forget the dismay with which I beheld one
dainty ringlet after another, of the kind called "heart-breakers,"
disentangled from among her hair--itself still brown and
abundant--and laid on the dressing-table. The perfumes, essences,
powders, ointments, salves, balsams, crystal phials, and porcelain
cups, among which these "heart-breakers" were laid, (mysterious and
strange as they were to me who knew of no cosmetics but cold water
and fresh air,) seemed to me only so many appropriate decorations of
the shrine of my idol. But the hair was false, and perplexed me
sorely, Puritan child that I was, brought up with no habits of subtle
discernment between a deception and a lie.
The next morning brought me yet greater perplexity, I slept in a
light closet in a turret off the Lady Lucy's chamber. The Lady
Lucy's own gentle woman came in to dress me, but before she appeared
I was already arrayed, and was kneeling at the window-seat of my
little arched window, reading my mother's psalms.
I thought she came to call me to prayers, with which we always began
the day at home; my father reading a psalm at daybreak and offering a
short solemn prayer in the Hall, where all the men and maidens were
gathered, after which we sat down at one table to breakfast as the
family had done since the days of Queen Elizabeth. But when I asked
her if she came for this, she smiled, and said it was not a saint's
day, so that it was not likely the whole household would assemble,
though no doubt my Lady and Mistress Lettice would attend service
with the chaplain in the chapel. But she said I might attend Lady
Lucy in her chamber before she rose, I gladly accepted, and Lady Lucy
invited me to partake of a new kind of confection called chocolate,
brought from the Indies by the Spaniards, which finding I could not
relish, she sent for a cup of new milk and a manchet of fine
milk-bread on which I breakfasted. Then she began her dressing; and
then ensued my second stage of disenchantment. Out of the many
crystal and porcelain vases on the table, her gentlewoman took
powders and paints, and to my unutterable amazement actually began to
tint with rose-colour Lady Lucy's checks, and to lay a delicate
ivory-white on her brow. She made no mystery of it; but I suppose
she saw the horror in my eyes, for she laughed and said,--
"You are watching me little Olive, with great eyes, as if I were Red
Riding Hood's wolf-grand-mother. What is the matter?"
I could not answer, but I felt myself flush crimson, and I remember
that the only word that seemed as if it could come to my lips, was
"Jezebel." I quite hated myself for the thought; the Lady Lucy was
so tender and good! Yet all the day, through the service in the
chapel, and my plays with Lettice, and my quiet sitting on my
favorite footstool at Lady Lucy's feet, those terrible words haunted
me like a bad dream: "and she painted her face and tired her head and
looked out at a window." A thousand times I drove them away. I
repeated to myself how she loved my mother, how my father honored
her, how gracious and tender she was to me and to all. Still the
words came back, with the visions of the false curls, and the paint,
and the powder. And I could have cried with vexation that I had ever
seen these. For I felt sure Lady Lucy was inwardly as sweet and true
as I had believed, and that these were only little court customs
quite foreign to her nature, to which she as a great lady had to
submit, but which no more made her heart bad than the washed hands
and platters made the Pharisees good. Yet the serene and perfect
image was broken, and do what I would I could not restore it.
My third disenchantment was more serious.
At the ringing of the great tower bell for dinner, summoning the
household and inviting all within hearing to share the hospitality of
the Hall, a cavalcade swept up the avenue, consisting of the family
of a neighbouring country gentleman. Lady Lucy who was seated at her
embroidery frame in the drawing-chamber, was evidently not pleased at
this announcement. "They always stay till dark," she said, "and
question me till I am wearied to death, about what the queen wears,
what the princesses eat, or how the king talks, as if their majesties
were some strange foreign beasts, and I some Moorish showman hired to
exhibit them. Lettice, my sweet, take them into the garden after
dinner, or I shall not recover it."
Yet when the ladies entered she received them with a manner as
gracious as if they had been anxiously expected friends. I reasoned
with myself that this graciousness was an inalienable quality of
hers, as little voluntary or conscious as the soft tones of her
voice; or that probably she repented of having spoken hastily of her
visitors and compensated for it by being more than ordinarily kind.
But when it proved that they had to leave early, and she lamented
over the shortness of the visit, and yet immediately after their
departure threw herself languidly on a couch, and sighed, "What a
deliverance!" I involuntarily shrank from her to the farthest corner
of the room, and watching the departing strangers, wished myself
departing with them.
I stood there long, until she came gently to me and laid her hand
kindly on my head. I looked up at her, and longed to look straight
into her heart.
"Tears on the long lashes!" said she, caressingly. "What is the
matter, little one?"
My eyelids sank and the tears fell.
"What ails thee, little silent woman?" said she, stooping to me.
I threw my arms around her and sobbed, "You are _really_ glad to have
me, Lady Lucy; are you not? You would not like me to go?"
She seemed at first perplexed.
"You take things too much to heart, Olive, like your poor mother,"
she said at last, very gently. "Those ladies are nothing to me; and
your mother was dear to me, Olive, and so are you."
But in the evening when I was in bed she came herself into my little
chamber, and sat by my bedside, like Aunt Gretel, and played with my
long hair in her sweet way; and then before she left, said tenderly,--
"My poor little Olive, you must not doubt your mother's old friend.
I am not all, or half I would be, but I could not bear to be
distrusted by you. But you have lived too much shut up in a world of
your own. You wear your heart too near the surface. You bring heart
and conscience into things which only need courtesy and tactics. You
waste your gold where beads and copper are as valuable. I must be
courteous to my enemies, little one, and gracious to people who weary
me to death; but to you I give a bit of my heart, and that is quite a
different thing."
And she left me reassured of her affection, but not a little
perplexed by this double code of morals. That one region of life
should be governed by the rules of right and wrong, and another by
those of politeness, was altogether a strange thing to me.
Meantime Lettice and I were rapidly advancing from the outer court of
courtesies into the inner one of childish friendship, spiced with
occasional sharp debates, and very undisguised honesties towards each
other; as Lettice and her brothers initiated me and Roger into the
various plays and games in which they were so much superior to us,
and we became eager on both sides for victory. A very new world this
play-world was to us, who had known scarcely any toys but such as we
made for ourselves, and no amusements but such as we had planned for
ourselves.
Very charming it was to us at first, the billiard-table, the
tennis-court, or pall-mall; and great delight Roger took in learning
to vault and throw the dart on horseback, to wheel and curvet, or
pick up a lady's glove at full speed, and in the various courtly
exercises and feats, Spanish, French, or Arabian, which the young
Davenants had learned from their riding-master. Naturally agile, he
had been trained to thorough command of his horse, by following my
Father through flood and fen, while his eye had learned quickness and
accuracy from hunting the wild fowl, and tracking hares and foxes
through the wild country around us, and these accomplishments came
easily enough to him. Yet with all these ingenious arrangements for
passing the time, it seemed to hang more heavily on hand at the Hall
than at Netherby; it came, indeed, to Roger and me as something
completely new that any arrangements should be needed to make the
time pass quickly. What with spinning, and sewing, and my helping my
Aunts, and his learning Greek, and Latin, and Italian of my Father,
and helping him about the farm, our holiday hours had always seemed
too brief for half the things we had to do in them. Every morning
found an eager welcome from us, and every evening a reluctant
farewell; and it was not until we spent those days at the Hall that
the question, "What are we to do next?" ever occurred to us, not in
hesitation which to select of the countless things we had to do in
our precious spare hours, but as an appeal for some new excitement.
Moreover, while in outward accomplishments and graces we felt our
inferiority, in many things we could not but feel that our education
had been far more extensive than that of the Davenants.
Allusions to Greek and Roman history, and to new discoveries in art
and science, and even to stories of modern European wars, which were
as natural to us as household words, were plainly an unknown tongue
to them. Even on the lute and the harpsichord, Lattice's
instructions had fallen short of those my father had procured for me,
although her sweet clear voice, and her graceful way of doing
everything, made all she did seem done better than any one else could
have done it.
The brothers, for the most part, laughed off their deficiencies, and
often made them seem for the moment a kind of gentlemanlike
distinction, bantering Roger as if learning were but a little better
kind of servile labour, beneath the attention of any but those who
had to earn their bread. All that kind of thing, they said, was
going out of the mode. The late King James had tired the court out
with overmuch pedantry and learning; the present king indeed was a
grave and accomplished gentleman, but merrier days would come in with
the French queen's court and the young princes, when the "gay
science" would be the only one much worth cultivating by men of
condition. Meantime the elder brothers paid me many choice and
graceful compliments on my hands and my hair, my eyes and my
eye-lashes, my learning and my accomplishments, jesting now and then
in a courtly way on my sober attire; and, child that I was, sent me
looking with much interest and wonder at myself in the long glass in
Lady Lucy's drawing-chamber, to see if what they said was true. I
remember, one noon, after a long survey of myself, I concluded that
much of it was, and thanked God that evening for having made me
pleasant to look at. A few years later, the danger would have been
different.
But Lettice was of a different nature from all her brothers except
one. Generously alive to whatever was to be loved or admired in
others, and ready to depreciate herself, she wanted Roger and me to
teach her all we knew. She made him hunt out the books which would
instruct her in Sir Walter's neglected library. She sat patiently
three sunny mornings trying to learn from Roger the Italian grammar,
which she had pleaded hard he should teach her, she made him read the
poetry to her, and said it was sweeter than her mother's lute. But
on the fourth morning her patience was exhausted;--she declared it
was a wicked prodigality to waste the sunny hours in-doors, and
danced us away to the woods; and all Roger's remonstrances could not
bring her back to such unwonted work. Indeed the more he
remonstrated, the more idle and indifferent she chose to be,
insisting instead on showing him some new French dance or singing him
some snatch of French song she had learned from the Queen's ladies,
until he gave up in despair; when she declared that but for his want
of patience she had been fairly on the way to become a feminine
Solomon.
It was Monday when our visit commenced, so that we were no longer
strangers in the house by the following Sunday. But we were not
prepared for the contrast between the Sundays at Davenant Hall with
those at Netherby. At our own home, grave as the day was, there was
always a quiet festival air about it. The hall was fresh swept, and
strewn with clean sand. My Father and my Aunts, the maids and men,
had on their holiday dresses. That morning at prayers we always had
a psalm, and the mere thrill of my voice against my Father's rich
deep tones was a pleasure to me. Then after breakfast Roger and I
had a walk in the fields with him, and he made us hear, and see a
hundred things in the ways of birds and beasts and insects that we
should never have known without him. One day it was the little brown
and white harvest-mouse, which, by cautiously approaching it, we saw
climbing by the help of its tail and claws to its little round nest
woven of grass suspended from a corn-stalk. Another day it was a
squirrel, with its summer house hung to the branch of a tree with its
nursery of little squirrels; and its warm winter house, lined with
hay, in the fork of an old trunk; or a colony of ants roofing their
dwellings in the wood with dry leaves and twigs. Or he would turn it
into a parable and show us how every creature has its enemies, and
must live on the defensive or not live at all. Or he would watch
with us the butterfly struggling from the chrysalis, or the
dragon-fly soaring from its first life in the reedy creeks of the
Mere to the new life of freedom in the sunshine. Or he would point
out to us how the field-spider had anticipated military science; how
she threw up her bulwarks and strengthened every weak point by her
fairy buttresses, and kept up the communication between the citadel
and the remotest outwork. Or he would teach us to distinguish the
various songs of the birds, the throstles, the chaffinches, the
blackbirds, or the nightingales. God, he said, had filled the woods
with throngs of sacred carollers, and melodious troubadours, and
merry minstrels; some with one sweet monotonous cadence, one
bell-like note, one happy little "peep" or chirp, and no more, and
others overflowing with a passion of intricate and endlessly varied
song; and it was a churlish return for such a concert not to give
heed enough to learn one song from another. Or, together, we would
watch the rooks in the great elm grove behind the house, how strict
their laws of property were, the old birds claiming the same nest
every year, and the young ones having to construct new ones. Or he
would tell us of the different forms of government among the various
creatures; how the bees had an hereditary monarchy, yet owned no
aristocracy but that of labour, killing their drones before winter,
that if any would not work neither should he eat; and how the rooks
held parliaments. Everywhere he made us see, wonderfully blended and
balanced, fixed order, with free spontaneous action; freaks of
sportive merriment, free as the wildest play of childhood, with a
fixedness of law more exact than the nicest calculations of the
mathematicians; "service which is perfect freedom;" delicate beauty
with homely utility; lavish abundance with provident care. And
everywhere he made us feel that the spring of all this order, the
source of all this fullness, the smile through all this humour and
play of nature, the soul of all this law, was none other than God.
So that often after these morning walks with him we fell into an awed
silence, feeling the warm daylight solemn as a starry midnight, with
the Great Presence; and entered the church-porch almost with the
feeling that we were rather stepping out of the Temple than into it;
that, sacred as was the place of worship and of the dead, it was not
more sacred or awful than the world of life we left to enter it.
The other golden hour of our golden day (for Sunday was ever that to
us), was when in the evening he read the Bible with Roger and me in
his own room. I cannot remember much that he used to say about it.
I only remember how he made us reverence and love it; its fragments
of biography which make you know the people better than volumes of
narrative; its characters that are never mere incarnations of
principles, but men and women; its letters that are never mere
sermons concentrated on an individual; its sermons that are never
mere dissertations peculiarly applicable to no one time or place, but
speeches intensely directed to the needs of one audience, and the
circumstances of one place, and therefore containing guiding wisdom
for all; its prayers that are never sermons from a pulpit, but brief
cries of entreaty from the dust or flaming torrents of adoration
piercing beyond the stars, or quiet asking of little children for
daily bread; its confessions that are as great drops of blood, wrung
slowly from the agony of the heart; its hymns that dart upward
singing and soaring in a wild passion of praise and joy.
I can recall little of what my father said to us in those evening
hours, but I remember that they left on our minds the same kind of
joyous sense of having found something inexhaustible which came from
our morning walks. They made us feel that in coming to the Bible, as
to nature, we come not to a cistern or a stream or a ponded store,
though it might be abundant enough for a nation; but to a Fountain,
which, though it might seem at times but a gentle bubbling up of
waters just enough for the thirsty lips which pressed it, was,
nevertheless, living, inexhaustible, eternal, because it welled up
from the fullness of God.
The usual name for the Sabbath in our home was the Lord's Day,
because of our Lord's Resurrection. On other days my Father read to
us, and made us read and love other books--books of history and
science as well as of religion, Shakespeare, Spenser, the early poems
of Mr. John Milton, and, when we could understand them, the Italian
poet Dante, or Davila, and other great Italians who spoke nobly of
order and liberty.
Bui on this day of God he never read but from these two divine books,
Nature and the Holy Scriptures.
In church we had not always any sermon at all. Preaching had not
been much encouraged since the days of Queen Elizabeth. Occasionally
one of the lecturers, or gospel preachers, whom Mr. Cromwell and
other good men were so anxious to supply at their own cost, used, in
our earlier days, to enter our pulpit and arouse us children with
bursts of earnest warning or entreaty (our parish minister then being
a meek and conformable person). But Archbishop Laud soon put a stop
to this, and sent us a clergyman of his own type, who fretted Aunt
Dorothy by changing the places and colours of things, moving the
communion-table from the middle of the church, where it had stood
since the Reformation, to the East End, wearing white where we were
used to black, and coats of many colours where we were used to white,
and in general moving about the church in what appeared to us Puritan
children, uninstructed in symbolism, a restless and unaccountable
manner; standing when we had been wont to sit, kneeling when we had
been wont to stand, making little unexpected bows in one direction
and little inexplicable turns in another, in a way which provided
matter of lively speculation to Roger and me during the week, since
we never knew what new movement might be executed on the following
Sunday. But to Aunt Dorothy these innovations were profanities,
which would have been utterly intolerable had she not consoled
herself by regarding them as signs of the end of all things. For
what to Mr. Nicholls, the parson, was the "beauty of holiness," and
to our father "personal peculiarities of Mr. Nicholls," and to Aunt
Gretel but one more of our "incomprehensible English customs," were
to Aunt Dorothy the infernal insignia of the "Mother of abominations."
She therefore remained resolutely and rigidly sitting and standing as
she had been wont, a target for fiery darts from Mr. Nicholls' eyes,
and a sore perplexity to Aunt Gretel, who, never having mastered our
Anglican rubric, had hitherto had no ceremonial rule, but to do what
those around her did, and was thus thrown into inextricable
difficulties between the silent reproaches of Aunt Dorothy's
compressed lips if she did one thing, and the suspicious glances of
the Parson's eyes if she did another.
On our return Aunt Dorothy frequently made us repeat the sixteenth
and seventeenth chapters of the Revelation. We understood that she
regarded both these chapters as in some way directed against Mr.
Nicholls. In what way--we discussed it often--Roger and I at that
time could never make out. The great wicked city, with ships, and
merchants, and traders, and pipers, and harpers, seemed to us more
like London town, with the Court of the King, than like the parish
church at Netherby. However that may be, I am thankful for having
learned those chapters. Many and many a time, when in after life the
world has tempted me with its splendours, or straitened me with its
cares, and I have been assailed with the Psalmist's old temptation at
seeing the wicked in great prosperity, the grand wail over the doomed
city has pealed like a triumphal march through my soul, and the whole
gaudy pomp and glory of the world has lain beneath me in the power of
that solemn dirge, like the tinsel decorations of a theatre in the
sunbeams, whilst above me has arisen, snow-white and majestic, the
vision of the Bride in her fine linen "clean and white,"--of the City
coming down from heaven "having the glory of God."
Aunt Gretel, on the other hand, would frequently quiet her ruffled
spirits after her perplexities, by making Roger and me read to her
the fourteenth chapter of the Romans, ending with, "We then that are
strong ought to bear with the infirmities of the weak. Let every one
of us please his neighbour for his good to edification. For even
Christ pleased not Himself."--A rubric which secretly seemed to us to
have two edges, one for Aunt Dorothy and one for Mr. Nicholls, but of
which Aunt Gretel contrived to turn both on herself.
"You see, my dears," she would say, "that is a rule of which I am
naturally very fond. Because, of course, I am one of the weak. And
it certainly would be a relief to me if those who are strong would
have a little more patience with me. But then it is a comfort to
think that He who is stronger than all does bear with me. For He
knows I do not wish to please myself, and would be thankful indeed if
I could tell how to please my neighbours." Which seemed to us like
the weak bearing the infirmities of the strong.
After this learning and repeating our chapters from the Bible, while
my Father and my Aunts were going about the cottages and villages
near us on various errands of mercy, Roger and I had a free hour or
two, during which we commonly resorted in summer to our perch on the
apple-tree, and in winter to the chamber over the porch where the
dried herbs were kept, where we held our weekly convocation as to all
matters that came under our cognizance, domestic, personal,
ecclesiastical, or political. Placidia was not excluded, but being
four years older, she preferred "her book" and the society of our
Aunts. Then came the sacred hour with our Father in his own chamber.
Afterwards in winter, we often gathered round the fire in the great
hall, we in the chimney-nook, and the men and maidens in an outer
circle, while my Father told stories of the sufferings of holy men
and women for conscience' sake, or while Dr. Antony (when he was
visiting us) narrated to us his interviews with those who were
languishing for truth or for liberty in various prisons throughout
the realm.
And so the night came, always, it seemed to us, sooner than on any
other day. Although never until our visit at Davenant Hall did I
understand the unspeakable blessing of that weekly closing of the
doors on Time, and opening all the windows of the soul towards
Eternity; the unspeakable lowering and narrowing of the whole being
which follows on its neglect and loss. To us the Lord's Day was a
day of Paradise; but I believe the barest Sabbath which was ever
fenced round with prohibitions by the most rigid Puritanism, looking
rather to the fence than the enclosure, rather to what is shut out
than to what is cultivated within, is a boon and a blessing compared
with the life without pauses, without any consecrated house for the
soul built out of Time, without silences wherein to listen to the
Voice that is heard best in silence.
It was a point of honor and a badge of loyalty with many of the
Cavaliers to protest against the Puritan observance of the Sabbath.
The Lady Lucy, indeed, welcomed the sacred day, as she did everything
else that was sacred and heavenly. She sang to her lute a lovely
song in praise of the day from the new "Divine Poems" of Mr. George
Herbert, and told me how he had sung it to his lute on his death-bed
only a few years before, in 1632.
"On Sunday heaven's gates stand ope,"
she sang; and I am sure they stood ever open to her.
But the rest of the family, whilst reverencing her devout and
charitable life, seemed to have no more thought of following it than
if she had been a nun in a convent. Indeed, in a sense, she did
dwell apart, cloistered in a hallowed atmosphere of her own.
Her husband and her sons requested her prayers when they went on any
expedition of danger, as their ancestors must have sought for the
intercessions of priest or canonized saint. The heavier oaths,
except under strong provocation, were dropped (by instinct rather
than by intention) in her presence; and mild adjurations, as by
heathen gods or goddesses, or by a lover's troth, or by a cavalier's
honor, substituted for them. They would listen fondly as she sang
"divine poems" to her lute, and declare she had the sweetest warbling
voice and the prettiest hands in His Majesty's three kingdoms. But
it never seemed to occur to them that her piety was any condemnation,
or any rule to them. Indeed, she had so many minute laws and
ceremonies that, easily as they suited her, it would have been
difficult to fit them into any but a lady's life of leisure. She had
special prayers and hymns for nine o'clock, mid day, three o'clock,
six o'clock. And once awakening in the night I heard sounds like
those of her lute stealing from the window of the little oratory next
her chamber. She had what seemed to me countless distinctions of
days and seasons, marked by the things she ate or did not eat, which
she observed as strictly as Aunt Dorothy her prohibitions as to not
wearing things. Only in one thing Lady Lucy was happier than Aunt
Dorothy; for whilst Aunt Dorothy fondly wished for a book of
Leviticus in the New Testament, and could not find it, Lady Lucy had
her book of Leviticus,--not indeed exactly in the New Testament, but
solemnly sanctioned by the authority of Archbishop Laud.
A complex framework to adapt to the endless varieties and inexorable
necessities of any man's life, rich or poor, in court, or camp, or
city; or indeed of any woman's, unless provided with waiting
gentlewomen.
In fact, the Lady Lucy herself sometimes spoke with wistful looks and
sighs of Mr. Farrar's Sacred College at Little Gidding (not far from
us), between Huntingdon and Cambridge, where the voice of prayer
never ceased day nor night, and the psalter was chanted through in a
rotatory manner by successive worshippers once in every
four-and-twenty hours.
Sir Walter and her sons never attempted to imitate her. She floated
in their imagination, in a land of clouds, between earth and heaven.
Her religion had a dainty sweetness and solemn grace about it most
becoming, they considered, to a noble lady; but for men, except for a
few clergymen, as inapplicable as Archbishop Laud's priestly
vestments for the street or the battle-field.
In our Puritan homes there was altogether another stamp of religion.
Whatever it might lack in grace and taste, it was a religion for men
as much as for women, a religion for the camp as much as the oratory.
Rough it might be often, and stern. It was never feeble. It had no
two standards of holiness for clergy and laity, men and women. All
men and women, we were taught, were called to love God with the whole
heart; to serve him at all times. If we obeyed we were still (in our
sinfulness) ever doing less than duty. If we disobeyed, we were in
revolt against the King of heaven. There were no neutrals in that
war, no reserves in that obedience.
And unhappily the Lady Lucy's family, in surrendering any hope of
reaching her eminence of piety, surrendered more. For, it is not
elevating, it is lowering, to have constantly before us an image of
holiness which we admire but do not imitate.
In the morning the household met in the Family Chapel (the Parish
Church being for the present avoided until danger of the infectious
sickness was over). In the afternoon, Sir Walter and his sons
loyally played at tennis and bowls with the young men of the
household. And in the evening there was a dance in the hall, in
which all joined.
The merriment was loud, and reached Lettice and me where we sat with
the Lady Lucy and her lute.
Yet now and then one of the boys would come in and complain of the
tedium of the day. It was such an interruption, they said, to the
employments of the week, and just at the best season in the year for
hunting, and with their father's hounds in perfect condition and
training. Tennis they said, was all very well for boys, and
Morris-dancing for girls, but there was no real sport in such things
after all, except to fill up an idle hour or two. The next day there
was to be a rare bear-baiting at Huntingdon, and the day after a
cock-fight in the next village. And at the beginning of the
following week Sir Walter had promised to give them a bull to be
baited. And the Book of Sports, in their opinion, let the Puritans
say what they like, was too rigid by half in prohibiting such true
old English sports on Sundays.
The Lady Lucy said a few pitiful tender words on behalf of Sir
Walter's bull, which they listened to without the slightest
disrespect, or the slightest change of mind--kissing her hand and
laughingly vowing she was too tender and sweet for this world at all,
and that if she had had the making of it she would certainly have
left bears and bulls altogether out of the creation.
It was without doubt a long and dreary Sunday to Roger and me. It
would naturally have been long and melancholy anywhere without our
Father.
I missed the busy work of the week, which made it not only a sacred
day but a holiday. I missed Aunt Dorothy's laws which made our
liberty precious.
But to Roger the day had had other trials.
In the evening he and I had a few minutes alone together in the
window of the drawing-chamber.
"Oh, Roger," said I, "I am afraid it cannot be right; but I am so
glad Sunday is over."
"So am I--rather," he said.
"Has it seemed long to you? I thought I heard your voice in the
tennis-court all the afternoon."
"You did not hear mine," he said.
"You did not think it right?" I asked, "I wondered how they could."
"I am not sure about its being right or wrong for other people," said
Roger. "But I was sure it was wrong for me. My Father would not
have liked it, and, therefore, I could not think of doing it;
especially when he was away."
"Were they angry?" I asked.
"Not exactly," he said. "They only laughed."
"_Only_ laughed!" said I. "I think that is worse to bear than
anything."
"So do I," he said.
"But you did not hesitate?"
"Not after they laughed, certainly," said he. "That set my blood up,
naturally; for it was not so much at me as at my Father and all of
us. They said I was too much of a man for such a crew."
"They laughed at Father!" said I, in horror.
"Not by name," said he, "but at all he thinks right--at the Puritans,
or Precisians, as they call us."
"What did you do, Roger?" I said.
"Walked away into the wood," he replied.
"Why did you not come to us?" I asked.
"Because they told me to go to you," he said, flushing.
"That was a pity; we were singing sweet hymns."
"I heard you," he said. "But I do not think it was a pity I did not
come."
"What did you find in the wood, then?" said I.
"I do not know that I found anything," he said.
"What did you do then, Roger?"
"I went to the Lady Well, and lay down among the long grass by the
stream which flows from it towards the Mere, and separates my
Father's land from Sir Walter's, at the place where you can see
Davenant Hall on one side and Netherby among its woods on the other.
And I thought."
"What did you think of?" said I.
"I thought I had rather live as a hired servant at my Father's than
as master here," said he.
"Was that all?" said I.
"I thought of our talk in the apple-tree about our being puppets, or
free."
I was silent.
"And Olive," he continued, "I seemed like some one waking up, and it
flashed on me that God has no puppets. The devil has puppets. But
God has free, living creatures, freely serving him. And I thought
how glorious it would be to be a free servant and a son of his. And
then I thought of the words, 'Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy
blood;' not from God, Olive, but to God, to be his free servants for
ever."
"That was a great deal to think, Roger," said I. "I think you did
find something in the wood."
"I found I _wanted_ something, Olive," he said very gravely; "and I
thought of something Mr. Cromwell once said when people were talking
about sects and parties,--'To be a seeker is to be of the best sect
next to being a finder.' He meant to be seeking happiness, or
wealth, or peace, or anything in the world, Olive, but to be seeking
God."
We were looking out across the woods to the Mere, which we could also
see from Netherby. The water was crimson in the sunset, and beyond
it the flats stretched on and on, dark and shadowy except where the
rows of willows and alders in the distance, and some cattle on an
enbankment, stood out distinct and black, like an ink etching,
against the golden sky.
And something in Roger's words made the sky look higher and the world
wider to me than ever before.
The next week, Lady Lucy's eldest son, Harry, came from London to the
Hall with an acquaintance of his, Sir Launcelot Trevor.
I thought Harry Davenant the most polished gentleman I had ever seen.
He was the first person who ever called me Mistress Olive, and
treated me with a gentle deference as if I had been a woman. I
admired his manners exceedingly. His voice, though deep and strong,
had something of the soft cadence of Lady Lucy's. He always saw what
every one wanted before they knew it themselves. He always seemed to
listen to what you said as if he had something to learn from every
one. His whole soul always appeared to be in what he was saying or
what you were saying, and yet there seemed to be another kind of
porter-soul outside, quite independent of this inner soul, always on
the watch to render any little courtesy to all around. I supposed
these courtly attentions had become an instinct to him, so that he
could attend to them and to other things at the same time, as easily
as we can talk while we are eating or walking.
He was his mother's greatest friend. Sir Walter never was this. He
was always almost lover-like in his deference and attention to her,
stormy and soldier-like as his usual manner was. But into her
thoughts he did not seem to care to enter, any more than into her
oratory. They had some portion of their worlds in common, but the
largest portion, by far, apart. And the younger boys were like him,
more or less. But whatever Lady Lucy might have missed in him was
made up to her in her eldest son.
He was a cavalier to her heart,--grave, religious, cultivated,--a
soldier from duty, but finding his delight in poetry and music, and
all beautiful things made by God or by man. It was a great interest
to me to sit at Lady Lucy's feet and listen to their discourse about
music and painting,--about the great Flemish painter Rubens, who had
painted the ceiling of the king's banqueting-house at Whitehall, the
grand building which Mr. Inigo Jones had just erected; and about the
additions the king had lately made to his superb collection of
pictures. He and Lady Lucy spoke of the purchase of the cartoons of
Raffaelle and of other pictures by this great master, and by Titian,
Correggio, and Giulio Romano, or by Cornelius Jansen and other
Flemish painters, with as much triumph as if each picture had been a
province won for the crown. He spoke also with the greatest
enthusiasm of the painter Vandyke, who was painting the portraits of
the Royal Family, and the great gentlemen and ladies of the Court.
He had brought a portrait of himself by Vandyke as a present to his
mother, (only, he said, as a bribe for her own by the same hand); and
it seemed to me that Mr. Vandyke must be as fine a gentleman as Harry
Davenant himself, or he never could have painted so perfectly and
nobly the noble features, the grave almost sad look of the eyes, the
long chestnut-coloured love-locks, the courtly air, and the dress so
easy and yet so rich.
All this was very new discourse to me; paintings, especially
religious paintings such as the Holy Families and Crucifixions by the
foreign masters which Harry Davenant described, never having been
much encouraged among us.
When he spoke of music and poetry I was more at home, and when he
alluded with admiration to the Masque of Comus by Mr. John Milton, I
felt myself flush as at the praise of a friend.
For the names revered at Davenant Hall and at Netherby were usually
altogether different. For instance, of Archbishop Laud and Mr.
Wentworth (afterwards Lord Strafford), whom Lady Lucy and her son
seemed to regard as the two pillars of church and state, I had only
heard as the persecutors of Mr. Prynne, and the subvertors of the
liberties of the nation.
But indeed the nation itself seemed to be little in Harry Davenant's
esteem, except as a Royal Estate with very troublesome tenants who
had to be kept down; and liberty, which in our home was a kind of
sacred word, fell from his lips as if it had been a mere pretext for
every kind of disorder.
With all his refinement, however, it did seem strange to me that
Harry Davenant should enter with apparent zest into the bull-baiting,
bear-baiting, and cock-fighting which were the festivities of the
next week. But he said these were fine old English amusements, and
it was right to show the people that the polish of the court did not
make the courtiers dainty or womanish, or prevent their entering into
these manly sports.
Sir Launcelot Trevor was a man of a different stamp. He had bold
handsome features, black hair, black eyes, and low forehead, a face
with those sharp contrasts of colour some people think handsome. But
there was something in him from which, even as a child, I shrank,
although he paid the most finished compliments to the Lady Lucy,
Lettice, and me, and to everything we did or said. His compliments
always seemed to me like insults. When Harry Davenant spoke of
Beauty in women, or pictures, or nature, he made you feel it
something akin to God and truth, to reverence and give thanks for.
When Sir Launcelot spoke of Beauty, he made you feel it a thing akin
to the dust, to be fingered and smelt and tasted, and then to fade
and perish.
Harry Davenant's was a polish bringing out the grain, as in fine old
oak. Sir Launcelot's was like a glittering crust of ice over a
stagnant pond, with occasionally a flaw giving you a glimpse into the
black depths beneath.
But I suppose it was the way in which he behaved to Roger that more
than anything opened my eyes to what he was. So that, behind all his
bland smiles on us, I always seemed to see the curl of the mocking
smile with which he so often addressed Roger. From the first they
seemed to recognize each other as antagonists.
Two days after his coming Sir Walter's bull was to be baited in a
field near the village. Lettice and I were standing in the hall
porch, debating whether we ought at once to report to Lady Lucy a
dangerous adventure from which we had just escaped, or whether it
would alarm her too much, when we heard voices approaching in eager
and rather angry conversation. First Sir Walter's rather scornful,--
"Let the boy alone. If his father chose to bring him up as a monk or
a mercer it is no concern of yours or mine."
Then Sir Launcelot's smooth tones.
"Far from it. Is there not indeed something quite amiable in such
compassion as Mr. Roger displays for your bull? In a woman it would
be irresistible. Should we not almost regret that the hardening
years are too likely to destroy that delightful tenderness?"
Then Roger's voice, monotonous and low, as always when he was much
moved.
"I see nothing more manly, Sir Launcelot, in tormenting a bull than a
cockchafer, when neither of them can escape. My Father says it is
not so much because it is savage, as because it is mean, that he will
have nothing to do with cock-fighting or bear and bull baiting."
Then a chorus of indignant disclaimers of the comparison from the
boys.
"If you are too tender to stand a bull-baiting, how would you like a
battle?"
But the next moment little Lettice, sweet, generous Lettice (herself
Roger's prime tormentor when he was left to her), confronting the
whole company--the five brothers and Sir Launcelot--and seizing her
father's hand in both hers, exclaimed,--
"For shame on you all, Robert and George, and Roland, and Dick, and
Walter" (Harry was not there, and she scornfully omitted Sir
Launcelot); "you are all baiting Roger. And that is worse than
baiting a dozen bulls. Don't let them, Father. He has done a braver
thing this very day for us than baiting a hundred bulls. This very
morning he faced that very bull in the priory meadow; not an hour
ago. We were crossing it, Olive and I, and the bull ran at us, and
Roger saw him and leapt over the hedge and fronted him, holding up my
scarlet kerchief, which I had dropped, and then moved slowly
backward, never turning till we were safe over the paling beyond the
bull's reach."
Sir Walter's eyes kindled as he turned and held out his hand to Roger.
"Why did you not tell me of this, my boy?" he said.
"I did not think it had anything to do with it," said Roger quietly.
"I did not know any one thought I was a coward."
Sir Launcelot took off his plumed hat and bowed low to Lettice.
"Heaven send me such a fair defender, Mistress Lettice, when I am
assailed."
She looked up in his face with her large deep eyes, and said
indignantly,--
"I am not Roger's defender. He was mine."
He laughed, but not pleasantly.
"Few would take much heed of such a danger for such a reward," he
said.
After this he professed to treat Roger with the profoundest deference.
"A hero and a saint, a Don Quixote and one of the godly, all in one,"
he said, "and such a paragon at sixteen! What might not England
expect from such a son?"
He was, moreover, continually referring questions of conscience to
Roger; asking him whether it was consistent with Christian compassion
to play at tennis; he had heard of a tennis-ball once hitting a man
in the eye, and who could say but that it might happen again? or
whether he seriously thought it charitable to ride horses with sharp
bits, since it was almost certain they did not like it! or whether
certain equestrian feats were not positively profane, since they were
brought to Europe by the Moors; or whether indeed there was not a
text forbidding the riding of horses altogether.
He did not venture on these taunts when Harry Davenant was present.
But he generally contrived to make them with such a quaint and
good-humoured air that the boys joined in the laugh, and Roger,
having neither so nimble nor so practised a wit, could only flush
with indignation, and then with vexation at himself that he could not
control the quick rush of blood which always betrayed that he felt
the sting.
Sir Launcelot had many of the qualities which command the regard of
boys--an indifference to expenditure sustained by the Fortunatus
purse of an unbounded capacity for getting into debt, which passed
for generosity ("if the worst comes to the worst," said he; "I can
but make interest with the king, for a monopoly"); a wit never too
heavily weighted to wheel sharp round on an assailant; skill and
quickness in all the accomplishments of a cavalier, from commanding a
squadron of horse to tuning a lady's lute; a dashing courage which
shrank from no bodily danger; (brave I could not call him, for to be
brave is a quality of the spirit, and spirit it was very difficult to
conceive Sir Launcelot had, except such as there is in a mettlesome
horse); a kindly instinct which would make him take care of his
horses or dogs, or fling a piece of money to a crying child; or in
the wars share his rations with a hungry soldier (plundering the next
Puritan cottage to repay himself). For cruel he was not, at least
not for cruelty's sake; if his pleasures, whether at the bull-baiting
or bear-baiting, or of other baser kinds proved cruelty to others,
that was not his intention, it was only an attendant accident, not,
("of course,") to be avoided, since life was short and enjoyment must
be had, follow what might.
But of all that went on in the tennis-court and the riding-ground I
knew little, except such glimpses as I have given, until long
afterwards, when Lettice, who heard it from her brothers told me;
Roger scorning to breathe a word of complaint on the subject, either
while at the Hall or after our return.
But oh! the joy when one morning my Father came up to the Hall with
two led horses following him, the speechless joy with which, rushing
down from Lady Lucy's drawing chamber, I met him at the great door
and threw myself into his arms as he dismounted.
"Why, Olive," he said, "you are like a small whirlwind."
Yet I shed many tears when the moment came to go. Lady Lucy, if no
more a serene goddess, and embodiment of perfect womanhood to me, was
in some sense more by being less. I loved her as a dear, loving,
mother-like woman. Her tender words that night by my
bedside--"Olive, I am not all or half I would be. But I could not
bear to be distrusted by you"--and all her frank, gracious,
considerate self-forgetful ways had made my heart cling with a true,
reverent tenderness to her, far deeper rooted than my old idolatry.
And Lettice, generous, eager, willful as the wind, truthful as the
light, now imperious as an empress, now self-distrustful and
confiding as a little child, her sweet changing beauty seemed to me
only the necessary raiment of the ever-changing, varying, yet,
constant heart, that glowed in the brilliant flush of her cheek, and
beamed or flashed through her eye.
Lettice and I were friends by right of our differences and our
sympathies, by right of a common antagonism to Sir Launcelot Trevor,
and our common conviction of our each having in Roger and in Harry
Davenant the best brothers in the world. Lettice and Harry royalist,
and Roger and I patriots to the core; they devoted to the King and
the Queen Marie, and we to England and her liberties; they persuaded
that Archbishop Laud was a new apostle, we that he was a new
Diocletian.
I shall never forget the joy of waking early the next morning in my
old chamber, and looking up and seeing the sheen of the morning in
the Mere, and watching Aunt Gretel asleep in the bed close to mine,
and hearing the first solitary crow of the king of the cocks, and
then the clacking of his family as they woke up one by one; the
bleating of the sheep in the orchard meadow, and the lowing of cows
in the sheds--the lowing of White-face, and Beauty my own orphaned
calf, and Meadow-sweet; and then the cheery voice of Tib, the
dairy-woman, recovered from the sickness, remonstrating with them on
their impatience; and the calls of Bob, Tib's husband, to his oxen,
as he yoked them and drove his team a-field; and mingled with all,
the deep soldierly bay of old Lion, the watch-mastiff, and the sharp
business-like bark of the sheep-dogs driving the flocks to fresh
pastures. It was such a delight to be among all the living creatures
again. It felt like coming out of an enchanted castle, drowsy with
perfumes and languid strains of music, into the fresh open air of
God's own work-a-day world--a world of daylight, and truth, and
judgment, and righteousness, and duty.
I was dressed before Aunt Gretel was fairly awake, and down among the
animals, eager to learn from Tib the latest news of all my friends in
field and poultry-yard.
But Roger was out before me. And before breakfast we had visited
nearly all our familiar haunts--the heronry by the Mere, the creek
where the waterfowl loved to build among the rushes, the swan's nest
on the reedy island, the shaded fish-ponds in the orchard, the little
brook below where he and I had made the weir, the bit of waste
low-ground which the brook used to flood, which with Bob's help we
had dyked and embanked into corn-ground for Roger's pigeons.
My very spinning task with Aunt Dorothy was a luxury. I could
scarcely help singing with a loud voice, as I span; my heart was
singing and dancing every moment of the day. The lessons for my
Father were a keen delight, like a race on the dykes in a fresh wind;
the Latin grammar was like poetry to me. It was such a liberation to
have come into a busy, every-day, working world again;--a world of
law, and therefore of liberty, where every one had his task, and
every task its time, and the play-hours were as busy as the
working-hours to heads and hands vigorous with the rebound of real
necessary labour.
All the world became thus again our play-ground, and all the
creatures our play-mates, by the mere fact that when not at play we,
too, were fellow-workers with them--working as hard in our way as ant
or bee, or happy building bird, or cleansing winds, or even the
glorious ministering sunbeams themselves, whose work was all joyous
play, and whose play was all world-helpful work.
An then it was inspiring to hear once more the great old honoured
names of our childhood--Sir John Eliot (honoured in his dishonoured
grave), and Hampden, and Pym, and Sir Bevill Grenvil (loyal then to
his country and his King, and afterwards, as he believed, to his King
for his country's sake), and Mr. Cromwell, who whether in Parliament,
in the Fens, or on the "Soke of Somersham," understood liberty to be,
liberty to restrain the strong from oppressing the weak--liberty to
speak the truth loud enough for all the world to hear.
I thought I began to understand what was meant by, "Thou hast set my
feet in a large room." For it seemed like coming forth from the
ante-room of a court presence-chamber, with low-toned voices.
perfumed atmosphere, constrained, soft movements, into our own dear,
free Old England, where we might run, and sing, and freely use every
free faculty to the utmost, beneath the glorious open heavens, which
are the Presence-chamber of the Great King.