When I awoke again, the cheerful stir of life had begun within and
without the house--the ducks splashing in the pond in the front
court; the unsuccessful swine and poultry grunting and cackling out
their bill of grievances against their stronger-snouted or
quicker-witted rivals; Tib's cheery voice instructing her cows and
calves; and at intervals the pleasant regular beat of the flail in
the barn, where they were thrashing the corn,--striking steady time
to all the busy irregular sounds of animal life, and bringing them
into a kind of unity.
All these homely, quiet sounds seemed stranger to me than the howling
of the winds, and fitful clattering of the hail, through the night.
They made me feel impatient with the animals, and with Tib, and with
the inflexible every-day course of things. Was not Roger--our own
Roger--in agony worse than mortal sickness, in suspense whether or
not his hand had dealt a death-blow. Were not we in dreadful
suspense whether his whole life might not be overshadowed from this
moment as with a curse?
And yet the calves must be fed, and the swine snuff at their troughs
and grudge if they be not satisfied, and the ducks splash and preen
themselves as if nothing was the matter.
There are many seasons in life when the quiet flow of the stream of
every-day life, as it prattles past our door among the familiar
grasses and pebbles, falls on the heart with a sense of inflexibility
more terrible than the storm which ploughs the waves of the Atlantic
into mountains, and snaps the masts of great ships like withered corn
stalks.
But that morning was the first on which I learned it.
The storm had quite passed. The dawn was still struggling with the
cold winter moonlight. Far off the gray morning shone with a steely
gleam on the creek of the Mere, were I used to sit quite still for
hours while Roger angled, holding his fish-basket, amply rewarded at
last by his dictum that there was one little woman in the world who
knew when to hold her tongue, and by the reflecting glory of his
triumph when he brought the basket of fish to Tib for my father's
supper. Only last autumn, and now it seemed as if it had happened in
another life.
Close to us in the high-road the moonlight still glimmered on the
pools.
Aunt Gretel was dressed and gone. My last sleep had been sound. I
reproached myself for my hard-heartedness in sleeping at all.
It was still dusk enough to show the faint red light in my Father's
chamber. Was he still watching?
My question was answered by the sound of the psalm coming up from the
hall, where the household were gathered for family prayer. This
reminded me that it was the Sabbath-day, the only day on which we
used to sing a psalm at morning prayers. I knelt at the window while
they sang. I heard my father's voice leading the psalm, and Aunt
Dorothy's deep second, and Aunt Gretel's tremulous treble; but not
Roger's. I felt so strange to be listening, instead of joining in
the song. Such a thing had never happened to me before. Aunt Gretel
must have thought it good for me to sleep on, and have crept down
stairs like a ghost. But the feeling of being _outside_ was terrible
to me that morning. It brought back my old terror about being "on
the wrong side of the tree." But not so much for myself. For Roger!
for Roger! What if he should be feeling left outside like
this!--outside the prayers, outside the hymns, outside the holy
family gatherings, outside the light and the welcome! That morning I
felt something of what must be meant by the _outer_ darkness. The
darkness outside! Even the "darkness" did not seem to me so terrible
as the being _outside_! For it showed there was a within--a home;
light within, music within, the Father's welcome within and we
outside! Could it be that Roger was feeling this now?
All this rushed through my heart as I knelt to the music of the
family psalm.
Then, dressing hastily, I went down.
"Roger has been here, Olive," said my Father, answering my looks.
"He brought the chirurgeon to the Hall, and came home an hour since,
and then went back again to watch."
"Then Sir Launcelot is not out of danger," I said.
"No," he replied; "but there is hope."
There was no morning walk for us that day. My Father went to his
chamber, my aunts to theirs, and I to the chamber where the dried
herbs lay, partly because it was Roger's and my Sunday
parliament-house, and partly because from it I could see the towers
of Davenant Hall.
In our Puritan household we were brought up with great faith in the
virtues of solitude. A very solemn part of our ritual was, "Thou,
when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door, and pray
to thy Father which is in secret." "The one minute and unmistakable
rubric," my Father called it, "in the New Testament." For he used to
say, "not only is the solitary place the place for the Redeemer's
agonies and the apostle's bitter weeping; it is the place of the
largest assemblies. For therein passing the barriers of the
congregation, we enter into the assembly and Church of the
first-born, and into the temple not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens. Any religion," said he, "whose secret springs do not exceed
its surface waters, will evaporate in the burden and heat of the day."
We went to church as usual, and slowly and silently we were coming
away, avoiding as much as possible the usual greetings with
neighbours, and I feeling especially anxious to escape Placidia's
sympathy.
But that was impossible. However, as she joined us she looked really
anxious; too anxious even to find an appropriate text. She took my
hand kindly, and said--
"We must hope for the best, Olive."
And there was something in the "we," and the briefness of her words,
which brought tears into my eyes, and made me think I might still
have been keeping a hard place in my heart which would have to be
melted.
But we had only just left the church-yard, and gone a few steps
beyond the gate on the field-path to Netherby (I walking behind the
rest), when a soft hand was laid on my shoulder, and my face was
drawn down to Lettice Davenant's kisses, as in a low voice she said--
"Oh, Olive, I am sure Sir Launcelot will get well. My Mother has
been saying prayers all night. And Roger is so good. Indeed, it was
not nearly half Roger's fault. Sir Launcelot did say terribly
provoking things about the Precisians, and hypocrisy, and your
Father."
"_What_ did he say, Lettice?" I asked, passionately.
"My Mother says we ought to forget bitter words," she said; "and I
think we ought--at all events, until he gets better."
"Oh, Lettice," I implored, "tell me, only me! That I may know, if he
should not get better. Roger told my Father it was all his fault;
but I know--I always knew--it was not. I shall know this if you will
not tell me another word, and perhaps think even worse things than
were said."
"It was not so much the words--they were ordinary enough--it was the
tone," said she. "And, besides, it is so difficult to repeat any
conversation truly; and it was all in such a moment, I can scarcely
tell. It began about Lord Strafford, and about Mr. Hampden and Mr.
Pym being canting hypocrites, and Mr. Cromwell being a beggarly
brewer; and then Sir Launcelot muttered something in a whining tone
about wondering that Roger's Father permitted him to indulge in such
ungodly amusements as bonfires; and Roger said it was not fair to
attack when he knew there could be no retort (meaning because I was
there); and Sir Launcelot said he believed the Precisians never
thought it fair to be attacked except behind some good city walls.
And then followed a fire of words about cowardice, and hypocrisy, and
treason; and then something about your father having taken care to
leave the German wars in good time for his own safety. Then I saw
Roger's hand up, thrusting Sir Launcelot away, rather than striking
him, I thought. But the next instant Sir Launcelot lay on the
ground, with his head against a jagged log, the other end of which
was in the bonfire, and Roger was pulling him back, and Sir Launcelot
swearing something about a "Puritan dog" and being "murdered." And
then I saw the blood flowing from a wound in his head. I gave Roger
my veil to staunch it with. But it would not stop. Sir Launcelot
fainted; and Roger told me to run to my Mother. In five minutes all
the people were on the spot, and Roger was on horseback riding of for
the physician. There! I have told you all I know," she said,
"whether I ought or not. But don't tell Roger. For I tried to
comfort him by saying how he had been provoked. But it did not
comfort him in the least. He looked quite fierce at rue--at me!"
said little Lettice, the tears overflowing, "when he was always so
kind! And he said there was no excuse for murder. He was wild with
trouble," she continued, sobbing, "not a bit like himself, Olive; and
since that I cannot tell what to say to him. Your ways and ours are
not exactly the same, you know. So I have been with my Mother in her
oratory. It is so hard to understand anybody. But I hope God
understands us all. I do hope He does. My Mother could not find one
of the church prayers that quite fitted. But she joined two or three
together, in the Collects, and the Visitation of the Sick, and the
Litany, which seemed to say all she wanted wonderfully. I never knew
how much they meant before. And it does seem as if God must hear;
and Roger always so good. He may say what he likes, always so good,
to me and to every one!"
Lettice's tears opened the sluices of mine, and were a great comfort;
and it was a comfort, too, to think of those dear kind voices joining
in Lady Lucy's oratory.
When we reached home, the great table was spread in the hall, and the
serving-men and maidens were standing round it.
My Father moved to the head and asked the blessing on the meal, then
he said,--
"Friends, the hand of God is heavy on me to-day, and you will not
look that I should eat bread while a life is in peril through deed of
one who is to me as my own soul. I might brave it out, and put on a
cheerful countenance. But I would have you know I am humbled. The
blows of an enemy we may face as men. Beneath the rod of the Lord we
must bow like smitten children. And I would have you know I do. Yet
I cannot refrain from telling you also that it was for bitter words
against good men that the blow was struck. So much I must say for
the boy, though God forbid I should hide the sin."
He left the hall, and every eye was moist as it followed him.
The general judgment was anything but harsh against Roger, as was
easy to see from the few low broken words which interrupted the
silence of that sorrowful meal, and from the response of Tib, to whom
I secretly ventured to tell how sorely Roger had been provoked.
"No need to tell me, Mistress Olive!" said she. "That Sir Launcelot
is enough to rouse a saint, his groom told my Margery's Dickon. And
they may say what they like, but I wouldn't give a farthing for any
saint that can't be roused."
It was not the public verdict Roger had to fear. Aunt Dorothy took
my Father's place at the head of the table, her face white and rigid,
carving the meat, but eating not a morsel, nor uttering a word. Aunt
Gretel moved about on one pretence and another, holding
half-whispered discourse with the elder servants of the house, from
the broken snatches of which I gathered that she fell into great
historical difficulties in her double anxiety to say nothing harsh of
the wounded gentleman, and at the same time to prove that Roger had
meant no harm. And I, meantime, could scarce have sat through that
terrible meal at all, but for Roger's stag-hound Lion, who nestled in
close to me, pressing his great head under my hand, and calling my
attention by a soft moan, and from time to time secretly relieving me
of the food I could not touch, bolting it in a surreptitious manner,
regardless of consequences, which said as plainly as possible, "Thou
and I understand each other. Our hearts are in the same place. I
eat, not because I care a straw about it, but to please thee and help
_him_." Only once, when my tears fell fast on his nose, as I stooped
over him to hide them, his feelings betrayed him, and his great paws
appeared for a moment on the clean Sabbath cloth, as with an
inquiring whine he started up and tried to lick my face, which I
supposed was his way of figuratively wiping away my tears. But at
the gentlest touch on his paws he subsided, casting one anxious
glance at Aunt Dorothy, who, however, neither saw him nor the brown
foot-prints on the tablecloth. Always afterwards he maintained his
gentlemanlike reserve, limiting all further expression of his
feelings to spasmodic movements of his tail, and to his great soft
wistful eyes, which he never took off from me, For dogs always know
when anything is the matter. Their misfortune is they can never make
out what it is. Roger's ancient foe, the old gray cat, meantime made
secretly off with a piece of meat which Lion had dropped. And I
caught sight of her slowly luxuriating over it in a corner, entirely
regardless of the family circumstances.
Every most trivial incident in that day glows as vividly and
distinctly in my memory, in the fire of the passion that burned
through it all, as every detail of the carving of Davenant Hall in
the flames of the twelve bonfires.
The meal passed in a silence so deep that every whisper of Aunt
Gretel's and every moan of Lion's were clearly heard. But afterwards
the men slunk hastily away to the farm-yard and stables, and Tib with
bones and fragments to her hens and pigs, and the maidens began to
clear away the wooden trenchers and our pewter dishes, the clatter
and rattle sounding singularly noisy without the cheerful talk which
generally accompanied it.
Aunt Dorothy, Aunt Gretel, and I, went, at his summons, into my
Father's justice-room. "Where two or three are gathered together,"
said he; and without further preamble we all knelt down while he
prayed, in a few words and quiet (to the ear). For he seemed to feel
the great, loving, omnipotent Presence; not far off, where cries only
could reach, but near, close, overshadowing, indwelling, too near
almost for speech. And we felt the same.
When he ceased, it was some minutes before we rose. And the silence
fell on me like an answer like an "Amen," like one of those "Verilys"
which shine through so many of the Gospel words, and illumine them so
that they may read in the dark; in the dark when we most need them.
Before we left, I told him of Lady Lucy and Lettice praying the
Collects for Roger in her oratory.
My Father turned away with trembling lips to the window. Aunt Gretel
sobbed, Aunt Dorothy said, with a faint voice,--
"God forgive me if I said anything of Lady Lucy I should not have
said."
We had not left the room when Lettice's white palfry flashed past the
door, and in another moment she had met us in the porch.
"Sir Launcelot will live!" she said. "The physician says there is
every hope; and he sleeps. If he wakes better, all will be right;
and Roger waits to see, because he still fears. But I am sure all
will be well. And I could not bear you should wait; so my mother let
me come."
In his thankfulness my Father forgot the stately courtesy with which
he usually treated Lettice, and stooping down, took her in his arms,
as if she had been me, and kissed and blessed her, and called her
"God's sweet messenger and dove of hope!" and prayed she might be so
all her life. And Aunt Gretel disappeared to tell every one. But
Aunt Dorothy stood still where she was, and covered her face with her
hands and wept unrestrainedly in a way most uncommon with her.
Lettice, with her own sweet instinct when to come and when to go, was
on the steps by the door in a moment (anticipating her groom's ready
hand), on her white pony, waving her hand to us as we watched her in
the porch, and away out of sight, escaping our thanks, and leaving us
to our hope.
Slowly the dispersed household, who had all been invisibly bound to
the centre they nevertheless would not approach, gathered in the hall
from stall, and shed, and field.
And then my Father said,--
"Friends, God has given us hope. Therefore let us pray." And for a
few minutes we all knelt together while he prayed, in brief trustful
words, ending with the Lord's Prayer, in which all the voices joined,
at least all that could, for there were many tears.
Then my Father read Luther's Psalm, "God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in time of trouble."
And we felt it was true. And so the service ended. And once more
the household scattered. For Roger had yet to return, and we all
felt a family-gathering would be a welcome he could ill bear. So
Aunt Dorothy went to her chamber, and Aunt Gretel to her German
hymn-book by the fireside, and I to my place at her feet, and then to
watch from the porch. For my Father went out to meet Roger.
And of that meeting neither of them ever spoke.
They came back together, my Father's hand on Roger's shoulder, half
as on a child's for tenderness, half as an old man's on a son's for
support.
"Sir Launcelot is out of danger!" said my Father, when he came into
the hall.
Roger kissed me and Aunt Gretel as he passed, and took my hand and
tried to say something; but said nothing, only let me sob a minute on
his shoulder, and then went up to his chamber.
We were used rather to repress than to give utterance to feeling in
our Puritan households. And Lion was the only person who made much
show of what he felt, twisting and whining and fondling round Roger
in a way very unsuited to his giant bulk. We heard him pacing after
Roger to the foot of the great staircase. Upstairs no dog under Aunt
Dorothy's rule would venture, under the strongest excitement; so
after lying expectant at its foot for some time, Lion returned to
express his satisfaction in a more composed manner to me.
At family-prayer that night, my Father made one brief allusion of
fervent thankfulness to the mercy of the day. More neither he nor
Roger could have borne.
And so that Sabbath of unrest ended. To us, but not to Roger;
although I only learned this long afterwards. For no lamp marked the
watch of agony he kept that night. And on his haggard countenance,
when he came down the next morning, no one dared question nor comment.
For while others rejoiced in the deliverance, he writhed in agony
under the burden and in the coils of his sin. The accident of the
log being at hand, that might have made it murder, and the other
accident, that the wound had not been an inch nearer the temple or a
barley-corn deeper, made absolutely no difference in the burden that
weighed on him. If Sir Launcelot had died, the punishment would have
been heavier; but not the remorse. And although his living was the
deepest cause of thankfulness, yet it was no lightening of the sin.
For it was the fountain of the sin within that was Roger's misery;
the fountain deep in the heart.
Now he began to feel the meaning of the words, "Out of the heart."
Now the old difficulties he and I had discussed in the apple-tree and
in the herb-chamber rushed back on him. Now he began to feel that it
was no mere entertaining question in metaphysical dynamics whether he
was a free agent or not, but a question of moral and eternal life or
death.
Could he have resisted the temptation to strike Sir Launcelot? Or
could he not? His hand had stirred to deal that blow, at the bidding
of the bitter anger in his heart, as instinctively and almost as
unconsciously as the indignant blood had rushed to the cheek. What
had stirred the sudden movement of anger in his heart? Far bitterer
words from the lips of a stranger had not moved him as those mocking
tones of Sir Launcelot's. The strength of that fatal impulse was but
the accumulated force of the irritation of countless petty
provocations, not retaliated outwardly, but suffered to ferment in
the heart. Nor was that last sin altogether rooted in sin. Roger's
search into his own heart was made with too intense a desire of being
true to himself and to God for him to fall into that blind passion of
self-accusing. It had been more than half-rooted in justice, just
anger against injustice, generous indignation against ungenerous
slander, truth revolting against falsehood. And so gradual (and in
part so just) had been the growth of deep-rooted detestation of Sir
Launcelot's character, that the last act--which might have been crime
in the eyes of man, which was crime in the eyes of God, whose
judgment is not measured by consequences--had become almost as
irresistible and instinctive as the movement of the eyelid to sweep a
grain of dust from the eye.
When, then, could he have begun to resist? When would it have been
possible to stem the little stream which had swollen into a torrent
that had all but swept his life into ruin? Where was the point where
sin and virtue, hatred which leads to murder, and justice which is
the foundation of all virtue, began to intertwine until they were
ravelled inextricably beyond his power to sever or distinguish? Had
there ever been such a point? Must not all, he being as he was by
nature, and things being as they were, and Sir Launcelot being as he
was, have necessarily gone on as it had, and led to the result it led
to?
But here came in the low inextinguishable voice of conscience.
"This anguish is no fruit of inevitable necessity. It was sin--it
was sin. I have sinned." And then--
"I have sinned, because there is sin _in me_. Sin in me; no mere
detached faults, no isolated wrong acts, but a fountain of evil
within me, from which every evil thing proceeds. Out of the
heart--out of the heart; not from without, not something merely in
me. It is _I myself_ that am sinful, that have sinned. This one
evil thing, which, unlike all other seemingly evil things, storms or
frosts, or corruption and death itself, never produces good fruit,
but only evil fruit, is springing is an inexhaustible flow from the
depths of my innocent being."
"Free? I am _not_ free! I am in bondage. I am a slave. I am tied
and bound. Yet this bondage is no excuse; it is the very essence of
my sin. I cannot explain it; but I feel it. I feel it in this
anguish which I cannot escape any more than we can escape from
anguish in the bones by writhing. For this is not the anguish of
blows or of wounds, but of disease within, growing from my inmost
heart, preying on my inmost life. O God, I have sinned, I am a
sinful man. In me is no help. Is there none in the universe, none
in Thee?"
Then from the depth of the anguish came the relief. The thought
flashed through him--
"Unless one worse than the worst conception man ever formed of the
devil is the Maker of man and the Omnipotent Ruler of the world, it
is impossible that we should be so powerless in ourselves to overcome
sin, and so agonized in remorse for it, and yet that there should be
no deliverance."
That thought made a lull in his anguish for a time, a silence; that
thought, and the mere exhaustion of the conflict. For his thoughts
had whirled him round until thought, with the mere rapidity of
motion, became imperceptible. In the centre of the whirlwind there
was stillness, and therein he lay prostrate, dumb, and exhausted.
But not alone.
On his mind, wearied out with vain thinking, on his heart, numb with
suffering, fell in the pause of the storm old sweet, familiar words,
still small voices, soft echoes of sacred hymns learned in childhood;
those old familiar, simple words, wherewith the Spirit, moving like a
dove on the face of the waters, knows how to win entrance into souls
tempest-tossed, when new words, though wise and deep as an
archangel's, would only sweep past its closed doors undistinguished
from the wail of the winds, or the raging of the seas on which it
tosses.
Old familiar words,--
"Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee."
Words of healing to so many!
Forgiveness; not as a far-off result of a life of expiation, but
free, complete, present. Peace; not after years of doubtful
conflict, but now, to strengthen for the conflict. Yet these were
not the words he most wanted then. It was not so much that guilt
pressed on him as a burden, as that sin bound him like a chain. Not
peace he most wanted, but power; freedom to fight, power to overcome.
It seemed to him as if what he longed for was not so much "Go in
peace," as "Come! and I will chasten thee, smite thee low, humble
thee in the dust; but make thee whole."
Not soft words of comfort, but strong words of hope and promise, were
what he needed, and they did not seem to come.
He crept out of the house before dawn to obtain tidings at the Hall
of Sir Launcelot, and to quiet the restlessness of his heart by
outward movement.
On his way he passed the forge where Job Forster, the blacksmith,
lived alone with his wife at the edge of the village opposite to
ours, on the way to the Hall.
There was a light in Job's window; a strange sight in his orderly and
childless home. The red glare it cast across the road was struggling
with the growing dawn. As Roger approached, it was put out; and just
when he reached the door it was opened, and Job's tall figure issued
forth.
Job strode forward and grasped Roger's hand.
"Thee had best not be roaming about the country by theeself in the
dark like a ghost," said he. "It's wisht!"
"Is anything the matter?" asked Roger, diverting the conversation
from himself.
"There's nought the matter with us," said Job.
"There was a light in your window, so I thought Rachel might be ill,"
said Roger.
"There's nought ailing with us," repeated Job; and after some
hesitation he added, "We were but thinking of thee."
"You used not to need a lamp to think by," said Roger, touched more
than he liked to show.
"No, nor to pray by," said Job. "But we wanted a promise, she and
I." (Job seldom called his wife anything but she.) "We wanted a
promise, Master, for thee. For she thought the devil would be sure
to be busy with thee just now, and so did I."
"Did you find one?" asked Roger.
"They are as plenty as the stars," said Job, "but we couldn't light
on the one that would fit. And it's bad work hammering them promises
to fit if they don't go right at first."
"As many as the stars, and not one that fits me!" said Roger,
unintentionally betraying the struggles of the night. "Peace, and
pardon, and everything every one wants, but not what I want. You
found none, Job! Then, of course, there was nothing more to be done.
You and Rachel wouldn't give in easily."
"Well, Master Roger," said Job, "we didn't. But we came to a stand,
and for a while gave up looking altogether. And I sat down on one
edge of the bed and she on the other, and we said nothing. But she
wept nigh as bitter as Esau, for she ever had a tender heart for
thee, having none of her own, and thee no mother. When all at once
she flashed up through her tears, and said, 'Why, Job, we've gone
a-hunting for a promise, and we've got them all to our hand. All in
Him! Yea and amen, in Him! We've forgotten the blessed Lord!' Then
it struck me all of a heap what fools we were; and I could have
laughed for gladness, but that she might have thought I'd gone mazed.
So I only said, 'Why, child, here we've been chattering like cranes,
as if we'd been all in the twilight, like poor old Hezekiah. We've
been hunting for the promises, and we've got the Gift! We've been
groping for words, and we've got the Word.' So we knelt down again,
and begged hard of the Lord to mind how He was tempted and forsaken,
and to mind thee, Master Roger, and help thee any way He could. And
we rose up wonderful lightened, she and I. And then the promises
came falling about us as thick as hail; and uppermost of them all,
'If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed;'
'Reconciled to God by His death; saved by His life;' and, 'I am come
that they might have _life_.'"
"Job," said Roger, "I think that will do; I think that will fit me."
"Maybe, Master Roger," said Job. "They're mighty words. But, please
God, thee and she and I never forget what we learnt to-night. Words
are not so strong always the thousandth time as the first. But His
voice goes deeper every time we hearken to it. And every sore needs
a fresh salve. But His touch is a salve for all sores. Never you be
such a fool as we were, Master Roger. Never you go creeping back
into the dark hunting for a promise and forget that they are all, yea
and amen, in the Lord. No more if's or maybe's, or peradventure's,
but yea and amen in Him for us all for ever."
Roger grasped Job's hand in silence, and went on to hear tidings of
Sir Launcelot.
The night had been quiet; the fever had subsided, and the danger was
over. And Roger came back to his chamber at Netherby to give thanks
to God. For danger averted from others, for a curse averted from
himself, but above all, for the glorious promise of freedom now and
for ever--freedom to overcome sin, freedom to serve God. Freedom in
the liberating Saviour, life in the Life, sonship in the Son, now and
for ever.
The various streams of the various lives which had been flooded into
one by the common anxiety about Roger and Sir Launcelot soon shrank
back into their various separate channels.
Ah! if we could all keep at the point, "_I will arise_," or better
still, at the place where the Father meets us, how good, and lowly,
and tender-hearted we should be! No, "_thou never gavest me a kid;_"
no, "_this thy son, which hath devoured thy substance!_" Strange
that the memory of such moments (and what Christian life can be
without such?) should not keep the heart ever broken and open. The
best way towards this, no doubt, is to have such an arising and such
an embracing every day we live. I am sure we need it. However, we
did not exactly do this at that time at Netherby.
Aunt Dorothy, on thinking matters over with her "sober judgment,"
thought it a duty to warn us against the "spirit of bondage," which,
with all her sweetness, had restrained poor Lady Lucy's prayers to
the limits of the Prayer-Look. Cousin Placidia, the immediate
anxiety having subsided, could not but feel that Roger's vehemence
had added another step to the distance which already separated them.
Once on that Pharisaic height, to which, alas! we so easily rise
without any trouble of climbing, being puffed up thither by windy
substances within and without, other people's falls necessarily
increase our comparative elevation above them; and whether this is
caused by their descent or by our ascent is difficult to determine;
just as in the case of one boat passing another, it is difficult by
the mere sense of sight to ascertain which is moving. Not that
Placidia asserted this conscious superiority by reproaches. Did she
need to descend to speech? Was not her life a reproach? That placid
life, unbroken by any movement deeper than the soft ripples of an
approving conscience; or a calm disapproval of any one attempting an
encroachment on her rights,--which of course she never permitted.
Had she not heard of Archbishop Laud's cruelties to the three
gentlemen in the pillory with no further emotion than a gentle regret
that the three gentlemen could not have held their tongues? Had she
not, on the other hand, heard the tidings of Lord Stratford's arrest,
and the destruction of the Star-Chamber Court, with no more vehement
feeling than a remark on the vanity of human greatness, and a gentle
hope that it might lead to the abolition of the very inconvenient
monopolies on pepper and soap?
Had she not always warned Roger and me against severity on Sir
Launcelot? Had she not even gone the length of pronouncing him a
very fine gentleman? And what could be more striking than the
subsequent justification of her warnings by the revengeful act to
which Roger had been betrayed?
Under all these circumstances, Placidia's forbearance must have
seemed to herself remarkable. She uttered no rebuke, she pointed no
moral, by reminding us of her prophetical sayings. She merely
towered above us on her serene heights, a little higher, a little
more serene--a very little--than before. And she called me "Olive,
my dear," and Roger "poor Roger." But that was partly, no doubt, on
account of her being married.
Roger bore her superiority most meekly. Indeed, I believe he felt it
as much as she did. For Roger _did_ remain at that point of
penitence and pardon where the heart keeps sweet, and lowly, and
tender. Which, most certainly, I very often did not. For Placidia's
condescension, especially to Roger, chafed me often past endurance.
Only once I remember his being roused.
She had been saying (I forget in what connection) that she hoped
Roger would not be too much cast down. "It was never too late to
turn over a new leaf; and then there was the consoling example of the
Apostle Peter. There was reason to believe that the Apostle Peter
was a wiser and better man all his life from his terrible fall. And
we know that 'all things work for good,'" said she, "'to them that
are called.'"
Then Roger, sitting at the other end of the hall cleaning his gun, as
we believed out of hearing, suddenly rose, and coming to where we
were sitting, stood before Placidia with compressed lips and arms
folded tightly on his breast,--
"Cousin Placidia," he said, "never, never say that again. St. Peter
was not wiser and better, or even humbler for denying Christ. No
doubt he was wiser, and better, and tenderer for that look, for ever
and ever; and better for the bitter weeping; but not for the denial,
not for the sin."
Said my Father, who came in behind Roger as he spoke, laying his hand
on Roger's shoulder,--
"True, Roger, true; but though sin can never work for good, the
memory of sin may; and at any point in the lowest depths where we
turn our back on the husks and our face to the Father's house, God
will meet us, and from that moment make the consequences, bitter as
they may be, begin to work for good to us."
"To us! Father, to us," said Roger, "but to others--how to others?
To those our misdoing may have misled or confirmed in evil? We may
stop a rock hurled down a precipice. But who can stop all it has set
in motion, or undo the ruin it has wrought in its way?"
"Nothing works for good," said my Father mournfully, "to those whose
faces are turned from God. But He can help us, and will, if we set
our whole hearts to it, to counter-work the evil we have wrought.
Counter-work, I say, not undo; for to undo a deed done is impossible
even to Omnipotence. And that makes sin the one terrible and
unalterably evil and sorrowful thing in the world, and the only one."
The words fell heavily on my heart. Was this the gospel? I thought.
Evil never, never to be undone, sin never to be the same as if it had
not been? Placidia said no more until Roger and my Father went out
on the farm together, and we were left alone with Aunt Gretel, and
then she observed in her deliberate way, with a slow shake of her
head,--
"I hope Cousin Roger is not still in the dark. I trust he
understands the gospel--"
"What do you mean by the gospel, Placidia?" said I, half roused on
Roger's account and half troubled on my own.
Placidia, always ready (at that time) with a theological definition,
neatly folded and packed, entered into a disquisition of some length
as to what she understood by "the gospel." In a deliberate and
business-like manner she undertook to explain the purposes of the
Almighty from the beginning, as if she had, in some inexplicable way,
been in the confidence of Heaven before the beginning, and
comprehended not only all the purposes of the Eternal, but the
reasons on which these purposes were founded. The effect produced on
my mind was as if the whole life-giving stream of redeeming love
flowing from the glorious unity of the living God, the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit, had been frozen into a rigid contract
between certain high sovereign powers for the purchase of a certain
inheritance for their own use, in which the utmost care was taken on
all sides that the quantity paid and the quantity received should be
precisely equivalent. It was as if the whole living, breathing
world, with its infinite blue heavens, its abounding rivers, its
waving corn-fields, its heaving seas, and all that is therein, had
been shrivelled into a map of estates, in which nothing was of
importance but the dividing lines. These "dividing lines" of her
system might, for aught I knew, be correct enough, might be those of
the Bible itself; but the awful Omnipresence, the real holy
indignation against wrong, the love, the life, the yearning, pitying,
repenting, immutably just, yet tenderly forgiving heart which beats
in every page of the Bible, had vanished altogether. All the while
she spoke, as it were in spite of myself, the words kept running
through my head, "They that make them are like unto them."
At the close she said, turning to Aunt Gretel,--
"I think I have stated the gospel clearly. I only hope Cousin Roger
understands it."
"I am sure I do not know, my dear," said Aunt Gretel (for Aunt
Gretel, being always afraid of in some way compromising Dr. Luther by
any confusion in her theological statements, seldom ventured out of
the text of Scripture). "I am sure, my dear, I do not know. I am no
theologian. And it is a blessing that the Holy Scriptures provide
what Dr. Luther calls a gospel in miniature for those who are no
theologians: 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have
ever-lasting life.' That is my gospel, my dear. It is shorter, you
see, than yours, and I think rather better news; especially for the
wandering sheep and prodigal sons, and all the people outside, and
for those who, like me, trust they have come back, but still feel, as
I do, very apt to go wrong again."
"Mr. Nicholls always says I have rather a remarkably clear head for
theology," said Placidia. "But gifts differ, and we have none of us
anything to be proud of."
"No doubt, my dear," said Aunt Gretel. "At least I am sure I have
not. But I cannot say I think the punishment, or at least the sad
consequences of sin are all exactly taken away for us, at least in
this life. For instance, there is Gammer Grindle's grandchild, poor
Cicely, as pretty a girl as ever danced around the May-pole, that
people say Sir Launcelot Trevor tempted away to London, and left to
no one knows what misery there. (If it was not Sir Launcelot, may I
be forgiven for joining in an unjust accusation; but he was seen
speaking to her the evening before she left.) Now if Sir Launcelot
were to repent, as I pray he may, that would not bring back the lost
innocence to little Cicely; nor do I see how the thought of her could
ever bring anything but a bitter agony of remorse to him."
("Ah," interposed Aunt Dorothy, who had joined us, "_I did_ speak my
mind, I am thankful to say, about those May-poles.")
"What is forgiveness, then?" resumed Placidia. "And what is the good
of being religious, if we are to be punished just the same as if we
were not forgiven?"
"The blessing of forgiveness," said Aunt Dorothy, "is _being
forgiven_; and the good of being godly is, I should think, being
godly."
"Forgiveness, my dear," added Aunt Gretel, "What is forgiveness? It
is welcome back to the Father's heart. It is the curse borne for us
and taken from us out of everything, out of death itself. It is God
with us against all our sins, God for us against all our real foes.
It is the broken link reknit between us and God. It is the link
broken between us and sin. What would you have better? What could
you have more? Once on the Father's heart, can we not well leave it
to Him to decide what pain we can be spared, and what we can not be
spared, without so much the more sin, which is so infinitely worse
than any pain."
"My theology," Aunt Dorothy continued, "is the doctrine Nathan taught
when he said to David, 'The Lord hath put away thy sin, but the child
shall die,'--and to the Apostle Paul when he wrote, 'God is not
mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap:' the
theology our fathers taught us; no gospel of _tolerating_ sin, but of
_forgiving_ and _destroying_ it. 'Christ has redeemed us from the
curse of the law, being made a curse for us.' He has brought us
under the rod of the covenant, having Himself 'learned obedience
through the things which He suffered.' There is as much mercy and as
much justice in one as in the other. I hope, my dear," she
concluded, "you and Mr. Nicholls do indeed understand the gospel.
But, I confess, people who get into the Covenant so very easily do
puzzle me. They say the anguish all but cost Dr. Luther his life,
and Mr. Cromwell his reason."
Placidia, from her double height of spiritual serenity and
semi-clerical dignity, looked mildly down on Aunt Dorothy's
suggestions.
"Aunt Dorothy," said she, "I have often thought, you scarcely
comprehend Mr. Nicholls and me. But it is written, 'Woe unto you
when all men speak well of you.' And as to Cousin Roger's Gospel, I
should call it simply the Law."
Soon after Placidia rose to leave. But as she was putting on her
mufflers, she remarked, as if the thought had just occurred to her,--
"Aunt Dorothy, those three beautiful cows Uncle Drayton gave me, I am
a little anxious about them: the glebe farm is on high ground, and
the grass is not so rich as they have been used to, and I was saying
to Mr. Nicholls yesterday morning that I was sure Uncle Drayton would
be quite distressed if he saw how much less yellow and rich the
butter was than it used to be. And Mr. Nicholls said he quite felt
with me. And Uncle Drayton is always so kind. So I said I thought I
had better be quite frank with Uncle Drayton. You know I always am
frank, and speak out what I think. It is no merit in me. It is my
nature, and I cannot help it. And Mr. Nicholls said he thought I
had. And yesterday evening it happened that we were passing the
meadow by the Mere, and there were no cattle on it. And I said to
Mr. Nicholls at once, what a pity that beautiful grass should run to
seed, and our butter be such a poor colour. And Mr. Nicholls saw it
at once. And he advised me--or I suggested and he approved of it, I
cannot be certain which (and I am always so anxious to report
everything exactly as it happened)--at once to go to Uncle Drayton
and ask him if he would allow our three cows just to stand for a
little while in that meadow, while there are no other cattle to put
in it, just to prevent the pasture running to waste, which I know
would be quite a trouble to Uncle Drayton if he thought of it, only
no one can be in every place at once, and no doubt he had forgotten
it."
"_Very few_ people's eyes can be in every place at once, certainly,
Placidia," said Aunt Dorothy, with point. "But it so happens that
your uncle had not forgotten that meadow. And this morning Bob drove
all our cows there."
"Oh," said Placidia, "that is quite enough. I only felt naturally
anxious that nothing should be wasted, especially when we happened to
be wanting it. But, of course, a poor parson's wife cannot expect
such butter as you have at Netherby; only I always remember the
'twelve baskets,' and how important it is 'nothing should be lost,'
and the virtuous woman at the end of the Proverbs. I shall always
have reason to be grateful to you, Aunt Dorothy, for making me learn
so much Scripture."
"Thank you, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy, "you always had an excellent
memory. But it is very important with the Holy Scriptures, at least
the English version, not to read them from right to left."
So Cousin Placidia departed, leaving Aunt Dorothy with a comfortable
sense of having defeated a plot.
But half an hour afterwards my Father came in.
"Poor Placidia," said he, "I met her on her way home, and I really
was quite touched by her gratitude for those few cows I gave her, and
also by the feeling she expressed about Roger. It seems the glebe
pasture does not agree with the beasts as well as ours, and she had
been rather troubled about the butter, but had not liked to speak of
it, especially when we were in such anxiety about Roger. It really
shows more delicacy of feeling than I thought Placidia possessed,
poor child. And it shows how careful we ought to be not to form
uncharitable judgments. So I ordered Bob to put those three cows
with ours in the Mere meadow for a little while."
"Did Placidia mention the Mere meadow?" said Aunt Dorothy.
"Well, I cannot be sure, but I think she did; and I think it was a
very sensible notion."
"What did Bob say?" said Aunt Dorothy, grimly.
"Bob spoke rather sharply," said my Father; "he is apt to be very
free-spoken at times; he said he had like to look well to our
pastures if we were to give change of air to all Mistress Nicholl's
cattle. It was not likely, Bob thought, they would be in any hurry
to change back again."
"Well, there _are_ men," murmured Aunt Dorothy, "who are as harmless
as doves, and there are women who are as wise as serpents. And the
less the two meet the better. I don't care a rush who feeds
Placidia's cows; but it is almost more than I can bear that she
thinks no one sees through her schemes."
But Placidia had triumphed. And the parsonage cows never needed any
further change of residence.
It irks me somewhat to intertwine these rough dark threads with the
story of those so dear to me, but the whole would drop into
unmeaningness without them. Placidia and Mr. Nicholls made many a
calumny of the enemy's comprehensible to me. For in later days it
became the fashion to assert that characters of that stamp formed the
staple of our Commonwealth men and women. Characters of this stamp
win Naseby and Worcester! save the persecuted Vaudois! make England
the reverence of the world! conceive the "Pilgrim's Progress," the
"Areopagitica," and the "Living Temple!" sacrifice two thousand
livings for conscience sake!
No! Pharisees, doubtless, there were among us, as, alas, doubtless
there is the root of Pharisaism within us. But they were of the make
of Saul the disciple of Gamaliel, not of those who tithed the "mint,
anise, and cummin."
At first it seemed to me that Placidia's "Gospel" was more likely to
be fulfilled in Roger's case than his own forebodings.
Good seemed to come out of that hasty act of his rather than evil.
The feeling he, usually so self-repressing, had shown about Sir
Launcelot, revealed him in a new light to Lady Lucy.
"I thought him rather stony, I must confess," she said; "but now I
see it was only a little of your Puritan ice, if I may say so without
offence; and that there is an ocean of feeling below. My dear, now
all has ended well, he really must not take it so much to heart. He
has grown too grave. We cannot have precisely the same standard for
young men, with all their temptations and strong passions, as for
sweet innocent girls sheltered tenderly in homes, with our softer
natures. I should always wish to be severe to myself. But young
men; ah, my child, the king is a good man, but if you had seen a
little even of our Court, you would think Roger an angel."
Compared with Sir Launcelot, I most sincerely believed he was. But
this double standard was unknown in our Puritan home. One law of
righteousness, and purity, and goodness we knew, and only one, for
man and woman. And in this I learned to think Aunt Dorothy's
grimmest sternness more pitiful than Lady Lucy's pity. I do not wish
to set down what seemed to me Lady Lucy's mistakes to any sect or any
doctrine. In theory all Christian sects are agreed as to the moral
standard. But I believe in my heart it was the high moral standard
set up, in those days, chiefly (never only) in our Puritan homes,
which will be the salvation of England, if ever that pest-house,
called the Court, is to be cleansed, and if England ever is to be
saved.
Lady Lucy's religion was one of tender, devotional emotions, minute
ceremonial, and gorgeous ritual. When braced up by Christian
principle, it was beautiful and attractive. The Puritan religion was
one of principle and doctrine. When inspired by Divine love, it was
gloriously deep and strong.
Meantime, with Sir Walter and his boys, Roger had manifestly risen
many degrees by his "spirited conduct." Sir Launcelot's jests, they
admitted, could bite, and it was just as well he should have a
lesson, though rather a severe one.
Sir Launcelot himself, moreover, took a far different demeanour
towards Roger. "Saints with that amount of fire in their temper," he
observed, "might be dangerous, but were certainly not despicable."
And as to Lettice, whose moral code was chivalrous rather than
Scriptural, and to whom generosity was a far more admirable virtue
than justice, and honour a more glorious thing than duty, she said
candidly she was delighted Roger had lost his temper for once, just
to show every one how much heart and spirit he had.
"You and I knew what he was, Olive," said she; "but I wanted the rest
to feel it too."
And yet there was something lost. Slowly I grew to see and feel it.
Firstly, in the relative position of Roger and Sir Launcelot. Deeds
of violence inevitably place the one who does them morally below the
one who suffers. There had been a real honour to Roger in Sir
Launcelot's previous mockery; there was a real dishonour in the
assumption he now made that Roger stood on his own level. Moreover,
Roger's own generous self-reproach deprived him of the power of
retort.
And secondly (but chiefly), in Lettice's altered feeling about Sir
Launcelot. Roger never spoke of him; but now that he had recovered,
I felt that I could not forget how, by Lettice's own account, he had
provoked the blow; nor could I see that the fact of his having
received a blow which he had provoked in any way made his character
different from what it had been. Many debates we had on the subject,
for we met often during those weeks--those weeks of winter and early
spring, when the whole nation was in suspense about Lord Strafford's
trial, watching during the ploughing and sowing of the year the
solemn reaping of the harvest he had sown. One of these debates in
particular I remember, because of the way in which it closed.
It was on Thursday, the 13th of May (1641). We had met in the wood
by the Lady Well. There seemed a marvellous melody that day in the
music of the little spring, as it bubbled up into its stone trough,
and echoed back from the stone roof of the little sacred cell the
monks had lovingly made for it seven hundred years ago. The
inscription could still be read on the front:--
"Ut jucundas cervus undas
Æstuans desiderat,
Sic ad rivum Dei vivum
Mens fidelis properat."
Lettice and I knelt and listened to it.
"It is as if all the bells in fairy-land were ringing," said she at
length, softly; "only hear how the soft peals rise and fall, and go
and come, and how one sound drops into another, and blends with it,
and flows away and comes back, and meets the next, until there is no
following them."
"Then," said I, "there must have been choirs and church-bells in
fairy-land, for there is surely something sad and sacred in the
sound. It sounds to me like those bells the legends tell us of,
buried beneath the sea, tolling up to us from far beneath the dark
waters of the past."
Then Lettice fastened back her long hair, and stooped down and drank
of the crystal water, bathing her face as she drank.
"Those Israelitish soldiers understood how to enjoy water," said she,
rising from her draught. "That is delicious."
For we were tired and thirsty with gathering lapfuls of the
blue-bells, of which the woods were full.
As she stood, her moist parted lips, the rich glow on her cheeks, her
eyes dancing with life, her arms full of flowers, she said,--
"It never seems enough to look at the beautiful world, Olive. I seem
to want another sense for it. I want to drink of it like this
spring; to take it to my heart, as I do these flowers. And I suppose
that is why I delight to gather them, just as when I was a little
child. Do you understand?"
I did; but I thought of the inscription on the Lady Well.
"I suppose we do want to get nearer, Lettice," I said; "we want to
drink of the Fountain. We want to rest on the Heart."
"Do you think that is what this strange unsatisfied longing means,"
said she, "which all great joys and all very beautiful things give
me?"
For a few moments she was silent. Then she said,--
"What life there is everywhere! Everything seems filled too full of
joy, and brimming over--the birds into songs, the fields into
flowers, and the trees into leaves, the oldest and gayest of them.
And I feel just like them all, Olive. On such a morning one must
love every one and everything, altogether regardless of their being
lovable, just for the sake of loving. Olive," she added, with one of
her sudden turns of thought, "to-day you must forgive Sir Launcelot
from the very bottom of your heart, once for all."
"Oh, Lettice," said I, "I do forgive him, I really think I did, long
since; at least for everything but his forgiving Roger in that
gracious way, as if Roger had nothing to forgive him. I have
forgiven him, but I cannot think him good."
"Ungenerous!" said she, half in jest and half in earnest; "you ought
to think every one good on such a morning as this. Besides, Sir
Launcelot always speaks so kindly and generously of you: he says you
are goodness itself."
"I cannot think what is not true, just because the sun shines and the
birds sing," said I, "and I certainly cannot think any one good
because they call me good, or goodness itself. How _can_ I, Lettice?
How can I believe a thing because I wish to believe it?"
"Truth, truth!" said she, a little petulantly "truth and duty, and
right and wrong, I wish those cold words were not so often on your
lips. There are others so much warmer and more beautiful--nobleness
and generosity, and loyalty and devotion, those are the things I
love. Yours is a world of daylight, Olive. I like sunshine, glowing
morning and evening like rubies and opals, veiling the distance at
noon with its own glorious haze. I hate always to see everything
exactly as it is, even beautiful things; and ugly things I never will
see, if I can help it."
"I love to see everything exactly as it is," said I; "I want, and I
pray, to see everything as it is. And in the end I am sure that is
the way to see the real beauty of everything in the world. For God
has made it, and not the devil. And therefore we need never be
afraid to look into things. And I shall always think truth and duty
the most beautiful words in the world."
"Very pretty!" said she perversely, "and under all those beautiful
words you bury the fact that you will never forgive poor Sir
Launcelot."
"I have long forgiven him," said I; "but I cannot think him good, if
I tried for ever, until he is. I cannot help thinking of poor little
Cicely, Gammer Grindle's grandchild, wandering lost in London."
"Hush, Olive, hush," said she passionately, "that is ungenerous and
unkind. I will not listen to village gossip. My Mother says we must
not be harsh in judging those whose temptations we cannot estimate.
But she means to do all she can in London to help poor Cicely."
"Oh, Lettice," said I, "it is not a question of more or less pity,
but of who needs our pity most."
"You are all alike," she rejoined; "yet I love you all, and I love
you, Olive, dearly. Without your Puritan training, Olive, you and
Roger would have been the best people and the pleasantest in the
world; but as my Mother says, all these severe doctrines about law,
and justice, and conscience, do make people harsh in judging others,
and bitter in resenting wrong."
I could say no more. She had taken refuge under the shadow of
Roger's hasty act, and the argument was closed.
When we reached Davenant Hall an unusual crowd was gathered at the
front door--a silent eager throng--around a horseman whose horse was
covered with foam, from the speed with which he had come. It was
Harry Davenant. And the tidings he brought were that on yesterday
morning Lord Strafford had been beheaded on Tower Hill, a hundred
thousand people gathered there to see; but through all the silent
multitude neither sighs of sympathy nor sounds of triumph.
The servants silently dispersed. Harry's horse was led to the
stables, and we went in with Lady Lucy, Sir Walter, and Sir
Launcelot, into the hall.
"That is what they were doing in London while we were gathering
blue-bells!" said Lettice. And she threw her flowers on the stone
floor. "I will never gather any more."
She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears--"Cruel,
cruel," she said, "of the king, of the queen, to let him die."
"It was the Parliament which hunted him to death," said Harry,
bitterly. "And the king did try to save him."
"The Parliament is wicked, and hated him, and I don't care what they
did," said Lettice, looking up with a flushed face; "but the king,
oh, Mother, you said the king would never let Lord Strafford die.
What is the use of being a king if kings can only _try_ to do things
like other people. I thought kings could _do_ the things they
thought right. He was faithful to the king, was he not, Mother?"
"A devoted servant to the king Lord Strafford surely was," said Lady
Lucy, "whether a good counsellor or no. I did not think the king
would have given him up. Did no one plead for him?" she asked.
"He pleaded with a wonderful eloquence for himself," said Harry
Davenant, "that might well-nigh have turned the heads of his
bitterest enemies, and did win the hearts of every one who heard him."
"But the king did try to save him?" said Lady Lucy, clinging to this.
"The king called his privy council together," said Harry Davenant,
"last Sunday, when the bill of attainder had passed through the Lords
and Commons, and said he had doubts and scruples about assenting to
it, and asked their advice. Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, counselled
him never to consent to the shedding of what he believed innocent
blood. But the rest of the council advised him to yield.-- And the
king yielded."
"Some people," he continued, "think the king was justified by a
letter the earl wrote him on the Tuesday before, wherein he offered
his life in this world to the king with all cheerfulness; nay, even
counselled the sacrifice to reconcile him to his people, saying, 'To
a willing man there is no injury done.'"
"Oh, Harry," said Lettice, "the king could give him up _after that_?"
"It is said the earl scarcely believed it when he heard it, and that
he laid his hand on his heart and exclaimed, 'Put not your trust in
princes.'"
"And well he might!" exclaimed Lettice, her tears dried by the fire
of her indignation.
"Hush, child, hush!" said Lady Lucy.
"The king made another effort to save him," Harry continued; "he
wrote to the Lords recommending imprisonment instead of death; and at
the end of the letter he added a postscript: 'If he must die, it were
charity to relieve him till Saturday.'"
"A miserable, cold request!" exclaimed Lettice, vehemently; "more
cruel than the sentence."
"I would have expected this from his father," murmured Sir Walter,
"but not from the king." Then turning from a painful subject, he
added, "The earl died bravely, no doubt."
"As he passed the windows of the chamber where Archbishop Laud was,
he bowed to receive his blessing, and he said, 'Farewell, my lord,
God protect your innocence.' He marched to the Tower Hill more with
the bearing of a general leading his army, than a sentenced man
moving to the scaffold. At the Tower Gate the lieutenant desired him
to take coach, fearing the violence of the people, but the earl
refused: 'I dare look death in the face,' said he, 'and I hope the
people do. Have you a care I do not escape, and I care not how I
die, whether by the hand of the executioner or by the madness of the
people. If that give them better content, it is all one to me.' And
so, after protesting his innocence, saying he forgave all the world,
and sending a few affectionate words to his wife and four children,
he laid his head on the block. There was no base triumphing in the
crowd, I will say that for them; they behaved like Englishmen. The
earl fell in silence. But in the evening the brutish populace cried
out in exultation, 'His head is off! his head is off!' and the city
was blazing with bonfires. The people feel they have gained the
first step in a victory. The Court thinks it has made the
furthermost step in concession, and that thenceforward all must be
peace. Would to heaven the king and the Court might be right; but it
is hard to say."
It was dusk before all this converse was ended and I left the Hall.
Harry Davenant persisted in guarding me across the fields to
Netherby, until we came to the high road close to the house. There
he took leave.
"My Father would like to see you," I said.
"Mr. Drayton would be courteous to his mortal enemy," said he.
"We are not enemies," I said, a little pained.
"Heaven forbid," he replied; "but I had better not come, not to-day.
The fall of the earl scarcely means the same thing in your home as in
ours."
"There will be no mean triumphing over Lord Strafford's death at
Netherby," I said, with some indignation.
"There will be no low, or ungenerous, or mean thing said by one of
the Draytons!" he said, warmly. "But I had better not see Mr.
Drayton this evening."
And waving his plumed hat, he vaulted over the stile; and I felt he
was right. Looking back at the turn leading to the house, I saw he
was watching me from the field. But as I turned the corner and came
in sight of the gables of the Manor, a foreboding came on me, as of
siftings and severings to come--of a few pebbles, or a few rushes,
gently giving the slightest turn to the course of the two little
trickling springs, and their waters flowing, ever after, by different
banks, and falling at last into the oceans which wash the shores of
opposite worlds. But not Lettice, never Lettice; the whole world, I
thought, should be no barrier to sever us from Lettice! Nor should
all the political or ecclesiastical differences in the world ever
check or chill the current of our love and reverence to all the true,
and brave, and just, and good, and godly. For politics, even
ecclesiastical politics, are of time; but truth, and courage, and
justice, and goodness, and godliness, are of God, and are eternal.