OLIVE'S STORY.
The first trustworthy tidings we had of the battle of Naseby were
from Dr. Antony. I saw him coming hastily across the fields from the
direction of Davenant Hall.
It was very early in the morning. The village had been stirring
through the previous afternoon with uneasy rumours, and I had not
slept. I was watching the light in the window of Lady Lucy's
oratory, and thinking how she and Lettice had watched there together
that terrible night so long ago, saying collects for Roger, and how
Lettice had hastened to us in the morning, on her white palfrey with
the welcome tidings that Sir Launcelot would recover. And now how
far we were from each other! What a sea between us! Two moats, (the
moonlight was shining on ours just below me,) drawbridges, and
fortifications. But deeper and stronger than all the moats and walls
in the world lay between us the memories of those bitter years of
war, and ever-widening misconception and division. Yet I felt sure
Lettice loved us still.
And as I was thus looking and thinking, I saw Dr. Antony coming
hastily down the road from the stile which led across the fields to
the Hall, where I had parted from Harry Davenant that night when he
brought the tidings of Lord Strafford's execution, and would not come
in.
My first impulse was to rush down the stairs and unbar the door. But
many things held me back. A presentiment that the news he brought
might be such as there was no need to fore-date by hurrying to meet
it; an uncomfortable recollection of Job Forster's letter, and of
that conversation in which I had said nothing right.
I went, therefore, to summon Aunt Dorothy as head of the household.
She had so many preparations to make, that Dr. Antony's hand was on
the great house-bell long before she was ready. Nothing so slow she
said as hurry, besides its being a proof of the impatience of the
flesh. She would even fold up scrupulously the clothes she took off,
faithful to her maxim, that we should always leave everything as if
we might never return to it.
The bell rang again.
I went to see if Aunt Gretel was more capable of being hastened.
She, dear soul, was sympathizing, excited, and agitated beyond my
utmost desires, for she could lay her hands on nothing she wanted.
So that I had to return to Aunt Dorothy, who, by that time, was
ready; and feeling how cold and trembling my hand was as she took it
to lead me downstairs, she laid her other on it with an unwonted
demonstration of tenderness, and said,--
"Child, we can neither hasten the Lord's steps nor make them linger.
But He will do right." There was strength in her words, but almost
as much to me in the tones, which were tremulous, and in the cold
touch of her hand, which showed that the blood at her heart stood as
still as mine.
We went down together in time to meet Dr. Antony just as he entered
the Hall.
My Father was wounded, not dangerously, only so as to render him
incapable of further service in the field, at least at present. His
right arm was broken. Roger was coming home with him.
I wondered that Dr. Antony seemed so heavy at heart, to bring tidings
which made my heart leap with thankfulness. What could be better
than that Roger was unhurt, and that my Father had received a slight
wound just sufficient to keep him at home with us?
Then it flashed on me in what direction I had seen him coming.
"Dr. Antony!" I said, "there is sorrow for the Davenants!" And then
he told us how Harry Davenant had fallen.
We had little time for bewailing him, for the household had to be
roused, and refreshment and a bed prepared for my Father.
I had scarce ever seen Roger so cast down as he was about Harry
Davenant's death. One of the noblest gentlemen the king had on his
side, he thought so pure, and true, and brave. If all had been like
him there had been no war, and no need for it. "And," said Roger, "I
always looked for the day to come when Harry Davenant would
understand us. For we were fighting for the same thing, though on
opposite sides--for England and her old laws and liberties; for a
righteous kingdom. And I always thought one day he would see where
it could be found, and where it could _not_."
Roger could not stay with us long. But before he went, Harry
Davenant was buried, very quietly in the old vault of the Davenants
in Netherby church.
It was at night, for the liturgy had been abolished six months
before, and was unlawful, and the Vicar risked something in suffering
it to be read even by Lady Lucy's chaplain, as it was. And we
honoured him and Placidia for the venture. Roger had asked to be one
of the bearers. Aunt Gretel, Rachel Forster, and I, waited for them
in the church-porch. Slowly through the silent summer-night came the
heavy tramp of the bearers, until they paused and laid their burden
down under the old Lych Gate. Then, while they came up the
churchyard, we crept quietly back into the church, dark in all parts
except where the funeral torches lit up a little space around the
open vault, and threw strange flickering shadows on the recumbent
forms of the dead of Harry Davenant's race, knight and dame, priest
and crusader. It made them look as if they moved, to meet him; for
none of the living men of his house were there, although of all his
race none had fallen more bravely.
Behind the bier followed four women closely veiled. The first, by
the height and movement, I knew was his Mother, and at her side, as
the sacred words were read, knelt Lettice. I think in times of
overwhelming joy or sorrow, when no words could fathom the depths of
the heart, when almost every human voice would fall outside it
altogether, or jar rudely if it reached within, there is a wonderful
comfort in the calm of those ancient immutable liturgies. They are a
channel worn deep by the joys and sorrows of ages. Their
changelessness links them to eternity, and seems thus to make room
for the sorrow which overflows the narrow measures of thought and
time.
"Delivered from the burden of the flesh," "are in joy and liberty,"
"not to be sorry as men without hope for them that sleep in Him, that
when we shall depart this life, we may rest on Him as our hope is,
this our brother doth." How tranquilly the simple words sank into
the very depths of the heart.
All the more precious and sacred, doubtless, for the tender sanctity
which ever invests a proscribed religion.
Not that our Puritan faith is without its liturgies. Older than
England, and older than Christendom, fused in the burning heart of
the king of old, warrior, patriot, exile, conqueror, and penitent.
But it is a perilous thing to make services like those of the Church
of England, dear enough already to every faithful heart who has used
them from infancy, dearer still by making them dangerous. I never
knew how I loved them till we lost them.
And as that night the sacred, simple, time-honoured words fell like
heavenly music among the shadows of the dim old church, I felt as if
the decree which made them unlawful, and the grave of the brother
slain at Naseby, were slowly mining a gulf which could never be
crossed between the Draytons and the Davenants.
Alas, alas for truth! or at least for us who fain would ever
recognise and be loyal to her, when she changes raiment with error,
when the crown of thorns is transferred to the brows of her enemies,
and the martyrs are on the wrong side. But such transformations have
not hitherto lasted long, and meantime the crown of thorns may
imprint its lessons even on those who wear it by mistake.
There was no sound of loud weeping. But when, for the last time,
before the coffin was lowered out of sight, Lady Lucy knelt once more
to embrace it, she did not rise until Lettice went gently to lift her
thence; when it was found that she had fainted, and had to be borne
away. But for this, Lettice would probably never have known we were
there. I went at Roger's bidding to see if I could render any
assistance. And then for a moment Lettice drew aside her veil, and
with a suppressed sob clasped my hands in hers, and murmured,--
"Thank God, Olive. I knew you would all feel with us. Pray for her
and for me, Olive; we have no one like him left."
Then she kissed me once, and hastened on after the rest; as they
silently went back through the fields, bearing instead of the corpse
of the son the almost lifeless form of the mother.
The day after the funeral Roger left us to go back to the army. I
told him what Lettice had said. And he seemed more hopeful than he
had been for a long time about her not misunderstanding or forgetting
us.
"We must never distrust her again, Olive," he said. "She has trusted
us all through."
It was strange that he should thus admonish me, for it was only Roger
who ever had distrusted her caring still for us. But such little
oblivions are the common lot of sisters situated as I was. I was far
too satisfied with his conclusion to dispute as to the way he reached
it.
Yet for many weeks after he left we heard nothing from any one of the
Davenants.
Sir Launcelot Trevor came and stayed there some days at the beginning
of July; and again I was tormented with fears that he had been
poisoning their hearts with some evil reports of us. And as I sat
watching by my Father's bed-side, many a time I rejoiced that Roger
was away, so that he could not share my anxieties.
It so happened that most of the nursing fell on me, to my great
thankfulness. Aunt Dorothy's sphere was governing every one outside,
and Aunt Gretel's more especially preparing food and cooling drinks.
Dr. Antony was pleased to say there was something in my step which
fitted a sick-room. Quiet and quick, and not hasty. And in my
voice, he fancied, too; cheerful, he said, as a bird singing, yet
soft and low.
Be that as it might, my Father naturally liked best to have me about
him; me and Rachel Forster, in whose presence he found that repose
she seemed to breathe on every one. As if she had wings invisible,
which enfolded a warm, quiet space around her, like a hen brooding
over her chickens. Rachel Forster and Lady Lucy, of all the women I
ever knew, had most of this. And my Father felt it.
One day Rachel had a letter from Job, written a few days after the
battle of Naseby.
"We began marching at three o'clock in the morning of the 14th of
June," he wrote. "The day before we, the Ironsides, had come with
General Cromwell from the eastern counties to our army. They had
gathered after him like Abi-Ezer after Gideon. The horse already
there gave a mighty shout for joy of his coming to them. By five we
were at Naseby, and saw the heads of the enemy coming over the hill.
Such a thing as they call a hill in these parts. A broad up and down
moor. We fought it out in a fallow field, a mile broad, near the
top, from early morning till afternoon. It began somewhat like the
day at Marston Moor. They came on first up the hill. Prince Rupert
and the plunderers were on our left, charging swift and steady,
crying out: 'For God and Queen Mary.' 'God our strength,' cried we.
They broke our left, though this we did not know till afterwards.
Our right, that is we, General Cromwell's horse, fell on their left
and drove them back, flying down the hill through the furze-bushes
and rabbit-warrens. The main body, horse and foot, fought hard,
breaking and gathering again, like the sea at Lizard at turn of tide.
This raging back and forward lasted till Prince Rupert's horse and
ours came back from the chase.
"The difference between keeping the Ten Commandments and breaking
them tells in the long run. Plundering, firing villages, and
slaughtering innocents, shrinks up the courage of men after a time.
Prince Rupert's men could charge to the end like devils, but they
could not rally like ours. Neither the prince's nor the king's word
can bind their men together again to stand a second shock, as
Oliver's word can rally the Ironsides. This difference turned the
day. The difference between keeping the Ten Commandments (as far as
mortal men can) and breaking them. The king rode about fearless as a
lion to the last. 'One charge more and we recover the day,' quoth
he. But there was no power in his word to rally them, and the sun
was still high when he and they fled headlong into Leicester, and we
after them.
"But the Ten Commandments fought against them there too. 'The stars
in their courses fought against Sisera.'" There was no night's rest
for the king in the houses he had seen rifled and dishonoured but a
few days before, and never lifted up his voice to hinder it. And on
and on he had to fly, to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Wales, and who knows
where? The plunder of Leicester lay strewn about the fallow field at
Naseby, where we camped that night, with six hundred of the
plunderers dead. Yet God forbid I slander the dead. They fought
like true men. And brave, young Master Harry Davenant was among
them. Belike the true men fell; and the plunderers fled off safe, as
such vermin do. Until the Lord and the Ten Commandments take them in
hand and bring them to account, whether in the body or out of the
body.
"A hundred Irish Papist women were found hanging about the
battle-field, armed with long knives, and speaking no Christian
tongue. Poor benighted savages! Very strange to think such have
husbands, and children, and hearts, and souls. Yet belike so had the
Canaanites. These things are dark to me. I have wrestled sore there
about, but can get no light on them.
"Two or three days after the battle a young gentleman, a preacher,
aged some thirty years, came amongst the army. His name was Richard
Baxter, a puny feeble body, marked with small-pox, and bowed and worn
at thirty like an old man. Yet had the puny body good quality of
courage in it. Courage of the soul, burning out of his dark eyes.
Courage, surely, he had of his kind. For he came amongst our men,
flushed and strong from the victorious fight, and exhorted us as if
we had been a pack of school-boys. Called us--the Ironsides, and
Whalley's and Rue's regiments of horse--'hot-headed, self-conceited
sectaries,' Anabaptists, Antinomians, and what not--us who had been
fighting the Lord's battles for him and the like of him these two
years! Took our camp jokes ill, about 'Scotch _dryvines_,'
'Dissembling men at Westminster,' and '_priest_byters.' Called us
profane; us who had paid twelve-pence fine for one careless oath ever
since we came together.
"Argued with us, dividing his discourse into as many heads as
Leviathan, and using words from every heathen tongue under the sun.
If we had the best of it, called us levellers and fire-brands. If we
were silent under his flood of talk, thought we were beaten, as if to
have the best in talk were to win the day. As if an honest
Englishman was to change his mind, because he could not, all in a
moment, see his way out of Mr. Baxter's Presbyterial puzzles.
Scarcely grateful, I think, seeing our men had once asked him to be
their chaplain. Some of us reminded him of it, and he said he was
sorry he had refused, or we should not have come to what we are. And
he rebuked us sore, and called us out of our names in a gentlemanly
way, in Latin and Greek, as if we had been plunderers and malignants;
us of General Cromwell's own regiment. Of his courage there can
after this, I think, be no doubt. Nor forsooth of our patience. And
he hath gone back to Coventry and spoken slanders of the 'sad state'
of the army!
"Sad state of the army indeed, where every morsel we put in our
mouths is paid for, through which every modest wench, if she were as
fair as Sarah, can walk, if she had need, as safe as past her
father's door. An army which had just won Naseby, by the strength of
the Lord and the Ten Commandments--where not an oath is heard--where
psalms and prayers rise night and morning as from the old Temple--and
where a young gentleman like Mr. Richard Baxter, could come and go,
and call the soldiers what ill names he chose, without hurt. For a
godly young gentleman we all hold him to be, and a scholar, and
honour him in our souls as such, and for the chastening hand of the
Lord on the poor suffering, puny, brave body of him, although in some
ways he and the likes of him cost me more wrestlings than even the
Irish Papist women with their knives."
Wherever General Cromwell was throughout that summer, there continued
to be a series of successes. Job's letters and Roger's were records
of castles stormed or surrendered, sieges raised and troops
dispersed, in Devonshire from Salisbury to Bovey Tracey.
On the 4th of August, Roger wrote of the dispersing of the poor
mistaken Clubmen; a new force of peasants who had gathered to the
number of two thousand on Hambledon Hill, in Surrey. Blind, as my
Father says peasant armies mostly are. Aunt Gretel turned pale when
she heard of them, and talked of dreadful peasant wars in Dr.
Luther's time in Saxony; Dr. Luther dearly loving and fighting, in
his way, for the peasants, but not being able to make them understand
him, like Oliver Cromwell now.
These poor fellows had gathered like brave men in the West to defend
their homes from Lord Goring's band--"the child-eaters" as some
called them, the most lawless and merciless among the Cavalier
troops, surpassing even Prince Rupert's, whom one of their own called
afterwards, "terrible in plunder, and resolute in running away."
"If ye offer to plunder or take our cattle,
Be you assured we'll give you battle,"
was the clubmen's motto. A good one enough. But in time they became
hopelessly involved in political plots, of which they understood
nothing, demanded to garrison the coast-towns, picked out and killed
peaceable Posts, fired on messengers of peace sent by General
Cromwell, who had much pity for them, and finally had to be fallen
upon and beaten from the field. "I believe," the General wrote to
Sir Thomas Fairfax, "not twelve of them were killed, but very many
were cut, and three hundred taken--poor silly creatures, whom if you
please to let me send home, they promise to be very dutiful for time
to come, and will be hanged before they come out again." So men and
leaders were taken, and the army dispersed, and came not out again;
and the land all around had quiet.
But, as Job Forster said, it was the Ten Commandments that fought
best for us.
The king's cabinet at Naseby, with all the false and traitorous
letters found therein in his handwriting, did more to undermine his
power than a hundred battles. For in it was shown how, while
solemnly promising to make no treaties with Papists, and speaking
words of peace at Uxbridge, he was negotiating for six thousand
Papist soldiers from Ireland, and for more than ten thousand from
across the seas; that he had only agreed to call the Parliament
Parliament "in the treating with them, in the sense that it was not
the same to call them so, and to acknowledge them so to be." He
spoke, moreover, of the gentlemen who gathered around him loyally at
Oxford, as "the mongrel Parliament." So that many of his old friends
were sorely aggrieved, and many neutrals began to see that, call men
by what titles you will, there can be no loyalty where there is no
truth.
In the North affairs went not so prosperously, though there, too,
reckless ravaging wrought its own terrible cure in time. For six
weeks Montrose with his Irish, and Highlanders, and some English
adventurers, laid Argyleshire waste, killing every man who could bear
arms, plundering and burning every cottage. It was not like the war
in England, save where Prince Rupert and Lord Goring brought the
savage customs of foreign warfare in on us. It was a war of clans,
bent on extirpating each other like so many wild beasts, and of
mountain-robbers set on carrying away as much spoil as they could
from the Lowland cities, and on inflicting as much misery as they
could by the way to inspire a profitable terror for the future.
Perth was sacked by them, and Aberdeen, and Dundee.
At Kilsyth, near Stirling, Montrose and his men killed ten times as
many of a Covenanted army, against which they fought, as fell of the
Cavaliers at Naseby. Six hundred lay slain at Naseby; at Kilsyth,
six thousand.
And the king, meanwhile, speaking of this robber chief as the great
restorer of his kingdom and support of his throne, with never an
entreaty to spare his countrymen and subjects.
Can any wonder that the sheep he commissioned so many hirelings to
fleece, robbers to plunder, and wolves to slay, would not follow him?
In person, indeed, throughout that summer of 1645, His Majesty was
pursuing a kind of warfare too similar to that of Wallenstein or
Montrose. It was in the August of this year, scarce two months after
the victory of Naseby, that the war surged up nearer us at Netherby,
than at any other time.
The king had fled from Naseby to Ragland Castle, the seat of the
Marquis of Worcester (an ingenious gentleman who spent his living in
seeking out many inventions). There he held his court for many
weeks; entertained with princely state in the halls of the grand old
castle, and hunting deer gaily through the forests on the banks of
the Wye, as if his subjects were not themselves in his quarrel
hunting each other to death in every corner of his kingdom.
Whilst there tidings came to him of the successes of Montrose, and he
endeavored to go northward to join him in Scotland. From Doncaster,
however, he fell back on Newark, turned from his purpose by the
Covenanted army of Sir David Leslie, which threatened him from the
North. And then he turned his steps to us, to the Fens and the
Associated Counties, which General Cromwell's care, and their own
fidelity to the Parliament, had kept hitherto high and dry out of
reach of the war, save for some few stray foraging parties. During
this August 1645 we learned, however, at His Majesty's hands, the
meaning of civil war. The eastern counties lay exposed to attack,
having sent their tried men westward with Cromwell and Fairfax; so
that we had nothing but our own more recent foot-levies to defend us.
The king dashed from Stamford through Huntingdonshire and
Cambridgeshire, ravaging the whole country as he passed, and
detaching flying squadrons to plunder Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire,
as far as St. Albans. Several times he threatened Cambridge.
On the 24th of August, he took Huntingdon by assault, and four days
afterwards, by the 28th, was safe again within the lines of Oxford,
with large store of booty seized from the very cradle and stronghold
of the Parliamentary army.
No doubt the Cavaliers had fine triumphing and merry-making over the
spoils at Oxford. But to us, around whom lay the empty granaries and
roofless homesteads, and the wrecked and burned villages from which
these spoils came, the lesson was not one of submission or of terror,
but of resistance more resolute than ever. Prince Rupert had been
teaching this lesson for three years in every corner of the realm.
His Majesty taught it us in person. A lesson of resistance not
desperate but hopeful; for we could not but deem that a king who
would indiscriminately ravage whole counties of his kingdom, must
look on it as an alien territory already lost to his crown.
Many sins, no doubt, may be laid to the charge of the Parliament and
its army. But of two sins terribly common in civil strife they were
never guilty; indiscriminate plunder and secret assassination. The
ruins and desecrations the Commonwealth soldiers wrought in churches
and cathedrals, will tell their tale against us to many a generation
to come. The ruins the Royalist troopers wrought were in poor men's
homes long since repaired. The desecrations they wrought were also
in homes, ruins and desecrations of temples not made with hands, and
never to be repaired, but recorded on sacred inviolable tables, more
durable than any stone, though not to be read on earth, at least not
yet.
The village of Netherby lay just beyond the edge of the royal
devastations. But the cattle all around us were seized, with all the
corn that was reaped. And at night the sky was all aglow with the
flames of burning cottages, and corn and hay-stacks. Our own barns
were untouched, but my Father gave orders at once to begin husbanding
our stores by limiting our daily food, looking on what was spared to
us as the granary of the whole destitute neighbourhood through the
coming winter, and as the seed-store for the following spring. Our
sheds and out-houses, meantime, were fitted up for those who had been
driven from their homes. Every cottage in Netherby gave shelter to
some homeless neighbour. Rachel Forster's became an orphan-house.
Yet it was the private lesson which was taught our own family through
this foray of His Majesty's that is engraven most deeply in my memory.
Throughout the summer, Cousin Placidia had been more than ever a
subject of irritation and distress to Aunt Dorothy. The successes of
Montrose in Scotland, followed by the plunderings of the king's
troops in our own counties, had once more caused her to feel much
"exercised" as to which was the right side. In February, after the
execution of Archbishop Laud, Mr. Nicholls had obediently substituted
the Directory of Worship for the Common Prayer, sorely trying thereby
Aunt Dorothy's predilections for unwritten, or rather unprinted
prayers; Mr. Nicholls' supplications not having, in her opinion,
either unction or fire, being in fact, she said, nothing but the old
Liturgy minced and sent up cold. Her only comfort was in the trust
that sifting days were at hand. (The Triers had not yet been
appointed.) But what vexed Aunt Dorothy's soul even more than any
ecclesiastical "trimmings," was what she regarded as the gradual
eating up of Placidia's heart by the rust of hoarded wealth.
Placidia had at that time an additional reason to justify herself for
any amount of straitening and sparing, in the expectation of the
birth of her first child. This prospect opened a new field for her
economies and for Aunt Dorothy's anxieties. Even the general
devastations of the country, which opened every door and every heart
wide to the sufferers, only effected the narrowest possible opening
in Placidia's stores. Her health, she said, obviously prevented her
receiving any strangers into the house; and it was little indeed that
a poor parson, with a family to provide for, and nothing but income
to depend on, and the certainty of receiving scarcely any tithes the
next season, could have to spare. Such as she had, said she, she
gave willingly. There was a stack of hay but slightly damaged by
getting heated. And there was some preserved meat, a little strong
perhaps from keeping, but quite wholesome and palatable with a little
extra salt. These she most gladly bestowed. Aunt Dorothy was in
despair, and made one last solemn appeal.
"Placidia," she said, "a child will shut up your heart and be a curse
to you, if you let it shut your doors against the poor; until at last
who knows what door may be shut on you?"
But Placidia was impregnable.
"Aunt Dorothy," she said, with mild imperturbability, "everything may
be made either a curse or a blessing. But to those who are in the
covenant everything is a blessing."
"Sister Gretel," said Aunt Dorothy, afterwards, "I see no way of
escape for her. The mercies of God's providence and the doctrines of
His grace freeze on that poor woman's heart, until the ice is so
thick that the sunshine itself can do nothing but just thaw the
surface, and make the next day's ice smoother and harder."
Aunt Gretel looked up.
"Never give up hope, sister," said she. "Our good God has more
weapons than we wot of, and more means of grace than are counted in
any of our Catechisms and Confessions. Sometimes He can warm the
coldest heart with the glow of a new human love until all the ice
melts away from within. And the touch of a little child's hand has
opened many a door, where the Master has afterwards come in and sat
down and supped. When the Saviour wanted to teach the Pharisees, He
set in the midst of them a little child."
Aunt Dorothy shook her head.
"Children have dragged many a godly man back again to Egypt," said
she. "Many a rope which binds good men tight to the car of Mammon is
twisted by very little hands."
And the proposition being unanswerable, the discussion ended.
A few nights afterwards we were roused by a suspicious glare in the
direction of the Parsonage. The next morning early we went to see if
anything had happened there.
As we passed through the village, we heard the news quickly enough.
Just after dusk, on the evening before, a party of Royalist troopers
had appeared at the Parsonage gates. The house stood alone, at some
little distance from the village, at the end of the glebe-fields.
The captain of the little troop said they were on their way to join
His Majesty at Oxford; but seeing a light, they were tempted to seek
the hospitality of Mistress Nicholls, of which they had heard in the
neighbourhood.
Poor Placidia's protestations of poverty were of little avail with
such guests. They politely assured her they were used to rough fare,
and would themselves render any assistance she required towards
preparing the feast. Whereupon they put up their horses in the
stables, supplied them liberally with corn from, the granaries,
seized the fattest of the poultry, and strung them in a tempting row
before the kitchen fire, which they piled into huge dimensions with
any wooden articles that came first to hand, chairs and chests
included; the contents of these chests being meanwhile skillfully
rifled, and all that was most valuable in them of plate, linen, or
silk, set apart in a heap "for the king's service."
The supper being prepared, they insisted on their host drinking His
Majesty's health in the choicest wines in his cellar. The captain
had been informed, he said, that Mr. Nicholls had been induced
(reluctantly, of course, as he perceived from the fervent
protestations of loyalty) to disuse the Liturgy, and even to
contribute of his substance to the rebel cause. He felt glad,
therefore, to be able to give him this opportunity of proving his
unjustly suspected fidelity, and of contributing, at the same time,
of his substance to His Majesty's service, by means of the portion of
his goods which they would the next day convey to His Majesty's
head-quarters in the loyal city of Oxford, and thus save it from
being misapplied in this disaffected country, in a manner which Mr.
Nicholls' loyal heart must abhor. This we heard from one of the
frightened serving-wenches, who had escaped towards morning, and
spread the news through the village.
As the night passed on, they grew riotous, and were with difficulty
roused from their carouse by the captain, to see about getting their
plunder together before dawn. They poured on the ground what wine
they could not drink, set fire (whether by accident or on purpose was
not known) to the large corn-stack whilst hunting about the sheds and
stables for cattle and horses; till finally the inmates were thankful
to get them away early in the morning, although they took with them
all the beasts they could drive and all the booty they could carry.
The sympathy in the village was not deep, and Aunt Dorothy and I went
on in silence to the Parsonage, to give what help and comfort we
could. Neither Aunt Dorothy nor I spoke a word as we hastened up the
rising ground towards the house.
The homely ruins of the farm-yard moved me more than many a stately
ruin. The remains of the corn-stack, the flames of which had alarmed
us in the night, stood there black and charred; the stables were
empty and the cattle-sheds; the house-dog was hanged to the door of
one of them; the yard was strewn with trampled corn, which the
sparrows and starlings, in the absence of the privileged poultry,
were making bold to pick up; and the silence of the deserted court
was made more dismal by the occasional restless lowing of a calf,
which was roaming from one empty shed to another in search of its
mother.
We went into the house. The kitchen was full of the serving-wenches,
and of some of the more curious and idle in the village, who were
condoling with each other, by making the worst of the disaster. The
hearth was black with the cinders of the enormous fire of the night
before, and the floor was strewn with broken pieces of the chairs and
chests which had helped to kindle it, and with fragments of the
feast. In a corner of the settle by the cold hearth sat Placidia, as
if she were stupified, with her hands clasped and her eyes fixed upon
them.
When she saw Aunt Dorothy, she turned away, and said,--
"Don't reproach me, Aunt Dorothy; I can't bear it."
"Didst thou think I came for that?" said Aunt Dorothy. "But belike I
deserve it of thee."
And with a voice a little sharpened by the feeling she strove to
repress, Aunt Dorothy sent the curious neighbours to the right-about,
and disposed of the two serving-wenches, by telling them the very
fowls of the air were setting such lazy sluts as they were an
example, and despatching them to gather up the scattered corn in the
yard.
Then she came again to Placidia, and taking her clasped hands in
hers, said,--
"I've learnt many things, child, this last hour. I judged thee a
Pharisee, and belike I've been a worse one myself. I've sat on the
judgment-seat this many a day on thee. But I'm off it now. And may
the Lord grant me grace never to climb up there again. I've wished
for some heavy rod to fall and teach thee. And now it's come, it
can't smite thee heavier than it does me. Forgive me, child, and let
us both begin again."
Placidia looked up, and meeting the honest eyes fixed on her, not in
scorn but in entreaty, she sobbed,--
"I shall never have heart to begin again, Aunt Dorothy."
"To begin what again?" said Aunt Dorothy.
"Contriving and saving to make up all the things I have lost,"
replied Placidia. "I've been years heaping it together, and it's all
gone in a night!"
Aunt Dorothy looked sorely puzzled, between her desire to be
charitable and her horror of Placidia's misreading of the
dispensation.
"Begin that again, my dear," she said, at last. "Nay; thou must
never begin that again. It will never do to fly in the face of
Providence like that."
Placidia uncovered her face, but as her eyes rested on the desolation
around her, she covered them again, and sobbed,--
"Just when there was to be one to save it all for, and make it worth
while to deny oneself."
"Nay," said Aunt Dorothy; "that's the mercy. That's precisely the
mercy. The Lord will not let the child be a curse to thee. He will
have it a blessing; so He says to thee as plain as can be, I give
thee a treasure, not to make thee rage and stint and grudge, but to
teach thee to love and serve and give, not to make thee poor, but to
make thee rich. And He will go on teaching thee till thou openest
thy heart and learnest, and thy burden falls off, and thy heart leaps
up, and thou shalt be free. I know it by the way my heart is
lightened now. He's smitten me down for my sitting in judgment on
thee. Not that I'm safe never to climb that seat again. One is
there before one knows, and the black-cap on in a moment. Some one
is always near, I trow, to help us up."
And turning from Placidia, she proceeded to a quiet survey of the
ruins, which, under her brisk and discriminating hands, with such
help as I could give, soon began to show some signs of order.
The fire was lighted; the calf despatched to Netherby to be fed;
sundry fragments of chairs and chests to the village carpenter, to be
mended; the broken meat put into two baskets.
"This is for the household," said Aunt Dorothy, "and that for the
fatherless children at Rachel Forster's. One of the maids can take
it at once, Placidia, when she leads away the calf."
Placidia was at length quite roused from her stupor. She looked at
Aunt Dorothy as if she thought she were in league with the plunderers.
"Me send meat to Rachel Forster's orphans!" she said faintly; "a poor
plundered woman like me!"
"Better begin at once, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "the fatherless
are God's little ones. Better give the treasure to them. You see
our bags have holes in them."
At that moment Mr. Nicholls returned. Placidia appealed to him for
his usual confirmation of her opinions.
"Dear heart," he said ruefully, "Belike Mistress Dorothy is right.
It's of no use fighting against God. Who knoweth if He may turn and
repent and leave a blessing behind Him."
"Nay, Master Nicholls," said Aunt Dorothy, "not that way. It's of no
use trying to escape in that way. You must let go altogether first,
or the Almighty will never take hold of you. It's hoping for nothing
again. If thou and Placidia will send this to the orphans, ye must
send it because it has been given to you, and because they want it
more than you do. Because thou wast an orphan, Placidia," she added,
tenderly, "and He has not failed to care for thee. Take heed how ye
slight His staff or His rod. Both have been used plainly enough for
thee. I'll divide the stuff," she concluded, "and you must settle
what to do with it yourselves, afterwards."
And insisting on Placidia's resting up-stairs while she subjected the
contents of the chests strewn about the chamber-floor to the same
process of division, she left the house before dusk restored to
something like order, with two significant heaps of clothing on the
bed-chamber, and two significant baskets of provisions in the
kitchen, to speak what parables they might during the night to the
consciences of Placidia and Mr. Nicholls.
But before the morning other teachers had been there. Death and
Anguish--those merciful curses sent to keep the world, which had
ceased to be Eden, from becoming a sensual Elysium, idle, selfish,
and purposeless--visited the house that night. Another life was
ushered into the world under the shadow of Death itself. In the
morning Placidia lay feebly rejoicing in the infant-life for which
her own had been so nearly sacrificed. Rejoicing in a gift which had
cost her so much, and which was to cost her so much more of patient
sacrifices, toil and watching, sacrifices for which no one would
especially admire her, and for which she would not admire herself;
rejoicing as she had never rejoiced in any possession before. Not by
any supernatural effort of virtue, but by the simple natural fountain
of motherly love which had been opened in her heart. One of the
first things she said was to Rachel, who was watching with her
through the next night. Very softly, as Rachel sat by her bed-side
with the baby on her knee, Placidia said,--
"Strange such a gift should have been given to me and not to thee."
"And," said Rachel (when she told me of it), "I could not answer her
all in a moment, for there are seas stronger and deeper than those
outside our dykes around our hearts. And it's not safe, even in the
quietest weather, opening the cranny to let in those tides. So I
said nothing. And in a few moments Mistress Nicholls spoke again,
'For thou art good and worthy, Rachel,' said she, 'and it would be no
great wonder if the Lord gave thee the best He has to give.'
"Then I understood what she meant, and my heart was nigh as glad as
if the child had been given to me. For I thought there was a soul
new born to God as a little child, meek and lowly. The Lord had led
her along the hardest step on the way to Himself, the first step
down. And she said no more. I smoothed her pillow, laid the babe
beside her, and she and it fell asleep. But I sat still and cried
quietly for joy. And the next morning, when the light broke in,
Mistress Nicholls looked up and saw those two heaps Mistress Dorothy
had set apart, and then she looked down on the babe, and murmured as
if to herself,--
"'Poor motherless little ones! God has given me thee and spared me
to thee. The poor motherless babes, they shall have the things.'
"And then," pursued Rachel, "I turned away and cried again to myself
half for gladness, and half for trouble. For I thought sure the
Lord's a-going to take her, poor lamb, if she's so changed as that."
But Aunt Dorothy, when Rachel narrated this, although she wiped her
eyes sympathetically, at the same time gave her head a consolatory
shake and said,--
"Never fear, neighbour, never fear, not yet. Depend on it, the old
Enemy will have a fight for it yet. Depend on it, there's a good
deal of work to be done for her in this world yet, before she's too
good to be left in it."
LETTICE'S DIARY.
"_Davenant Hall, Twelfth Night_, 1645-6.--Only four years since that
merry sixteenth birthday of mine, when all the village were gathered
in the Hall, and Olive and I gave the garments to the village maidens
of my own age, and in the evening Roger stayed to help kindle the
twelve bonfires.
"And now we are walled and moated out from the village and from the
Manor as we were in the old days of the Norman Conquest, when the
Davenants first took possession of these lands, and built the old
ruined keep, where the gateway is (whence they afterwards removed to
this abbey), to overawe the Saxon village, where the Draytons even
then lived in the old Manor. I wonder if there is anything left of
the old contentions in Saxon and Norman blood now. The rebel army is
so much composed, they say, both of officers and men, of the stout
old Saxon yeomanry, and the traders in the towns; whilst ours is
officered from the old baronial castles, by gentlemen with the old
Norman historical names. How many of the higher gentry and nobility
are loyal has been proved these last six months, since fatal Naseby,
by the sieges (and, alas! by the stormings and surrenders) of at
least a score of old castles and mansions, from Bristol, surrendered
on the 11th of September by Prince Rupert to Bovey Tracey in the
faithful West. Thank Heaven, they gave Oliver Cromwell and Sir
Thomas Fairfax much trouble, Basing Hall especially. In future days,
when the king shall enjoy his own again (as he surely will), I hold
such a blackened ruin will be a choicer possession to a gentleman's
family than a palace furnished regally. The rebels called Basing
House _Basting_, for the mischief it did them. And our men called it
_Loyally_.
"Roger Drayton hath shared, no doubt, in many of these sieges. So
stern in his delusion of duty, I suppose, if this brewer of
Huntingdon commanded him, he would not scruple to plant his reble
guns against us. 'Thine eye shall not spare,' they say, in their
hateful cant. Sir Launcelot says they have been chasing His Sacred
Majesty from place to place like a hunted stag; that Mr. Cromwell,
whom Roger loves above king and friend, never sets on any great
enterprise without having a '_text_' to lean on! That before
storming Basing Hall, he passed the night in prayer, and that the
text he especially 'rested on' for that achievement was Psalm cxviii.
8: '_They that make them are like unto them, so is every one that
trusteth in them!_' as if we Royalists were Canaanites, idolaters,
Papists, I know not what. Fancy burning down a corn-stack to a
psalm-tune, or setting out on a burglary to a text. Yet what is it
better to burn down loyal gentlemen's houses about their ears, from
one end of England to another. It is all Conscience; this dreadful
Moloch of Conscience! It was the one weak point of the Draytons
always.
"Sir Launcelot Trevor came here a week since to see if anything can
be done to strengthen the fortifications. My Father was in Bristol
when it was stormed, and has followed the king ever since; two of my
brothers are in Ireland, seeing what can be done there; two fled
beyond the seas after the defeat of the gallant Marquis of Montrose
last September at Philipshaugh, near Selkirk; and two lie on that
fatal Rowton Heath, where on September the 23rd the king's last army,
worth the name, was broken and lost.
"We have made sacrifices enough to endear the royal cause to us. I
suppose this old house will be the next. For Harry said it would
never stand a siege. But, oh, if I could only be sure Sir Launcelot
is mistaken in what he says about Roger giving Harry his death-blow,
much of the rest would seem light. I have never yet told my Mother
of this dread. Sometimes when I think how Roger looked and spoke
that morning, I feel sure it cannot be true. But he always said it
was so wrong to believe things because I wished them true. And now
the more I long to believe this false, the less I seem able.
"Only four years since that merry sixteenth birthday, when I was a
child. And then that happy summer afterwards, when the world seemed
to grow so beautiful and great, and it seemed as if we were to do
such glorious things in it.
"First the birthdays seem like triumphal columns, trophies of a
conquered year. Then like mile-stones, marking rather sadly the way
we have come. But now I think they look like grave-stones, so much
is buried for ever beneath this terrible year that is gone. Not
lives only, but love, and trust, and hope.
"I said so to my Mother to-night, as I wished her good-night. It was
selfish. For I ought to comfort her. But she comforted me. She
said, 'The birthdays will look like mile-stones again, by-and-by,
sweetheart. They will be marked on the other side, "so much nearer
home," and perhaps at last like trophies again, marking the conquered
years.'
"On which I broke down altogether, and said,--
"'Oh, Mother, don't speak like that, don't say you look on them like
that. Think of me at the beginning of the journey, so near the
beginning.'
"'I do, Lettice,' said she. 'I pray to live, for thy sake, every
day.'
"For my sake; only for my sake. For her own she longs to go. And
that is saddest of all to me.
"For, except on days like these, when I think and look back, I am not
always so very wretched. It is very strange, after all that has
happened. But I am sometimes--rather often--a little bit happy.
There is so much that is cheerful and beautiful in the world, I
cannot help enjoying it. And pleasant things might happen yet.
"I did love Harry, dearly; nearly better than any one. I do. But to
my Mother losing him seems just the one sorrow which puts her on the
other side of all earthly joys and sorrows, with a great gulf
between, so that she looks on them from afar off, like an angel.
"I suppose there is just _the one thing_ which would be the darkening
of the whole world to most of us, making it night instead of day.
Other people leave that sepulchre behind. It is grown over, and in
years it becomes a little sacred grass-grown mound, or a stately
memorial to the life ended there.
"But to one, it has made _the whole earth_ a sepulchre, at which she
stands without, weeping and looking on.
"_There is only one_ Voice which can quiet the heart there.
"_The day after_.--Sir Launcelot and I have had high words to-day.
We were looking from the terrace towards Netherby, and I said
something about old times, and that the Draytons would probably
resume the lands they had lost in old times at the Conquest.
"I fired up, and said not one of the Draytons would ever touch
anything that did not belong to them. '_They_ were not of Prince
Rupert's plunderers,' said I.
"'No doubt,' said he, 'they hold by a better right than the sword.'
And with nasal solemnity, clasping his hands, he added, 'Voted, it is
written the saints shall possess the land; voted, we are the saints.'
"'Sir Launcelot,' I said, 'you know I hate to hear old friends spoken
of like that.'
"(When I had written bitter things myself of them but yesterday! But
it always angers me when people are unfair.)
"Here he changed his tone, and spoke seriously enough. Too
seriously, indeed, by far. He said something about my opinion being
more to him than anything in the world. And when I went back into
the garden-parlour, not desiring such discourse, he was on his knees
at my feet, before I could raise him, pouring out, I know not what
passionate protestations, and saying that I could save him, and
reclaim him, and make him all he longed to be, and was not. And that
if I rejected him, there was not another power on earth or heaven
that could keep him from plunging into perdition, which perplexed and
grieved me much. For I do not love him. Of that I am sure. But it
is terrible to think of being the only barrier between any human soul
and destruction. And I am half afraid to tell my Mother, for fear
she should counsel me to take Sir Launcelot's conversion on me.
Because she thinks everything of no weight compared with religion.
But I cannot think it would be a duty to marry a person for the same
reason from which you might become his godmother. Besides, if I did
not love, what real power should I have to save?
"_At night_ (_later_).--I have told my Mother, and she says that last
consideration makes it quite clear. I could have no power for good,
unless I loved. And I do not love Sir Launcelot; and I never could.
"At the same time, when I opened my heart to her about this, I
ventured at last to tell her what Sir Launcelot had thought about
Harry and Roger Drayton. I wish I had told her weeks ago.
"For she does not believe it. She says Roger would never have come
and told us had it been so. She has not the slightest fear it can be
true. It has lightened my heart wonderfully. Roger is not quite
just in saying I can believe in anything I wish.
"_March_.--A biting March for the good cause. On the 14th brave Sir
Ralph Hopton surrendered in Cornwall. On the 22nd brave old Sir
Jacob Astley (he who made the prayer before Edgehill fight, 'Lord, if
I forget Thee this day, do not Thou forget me'), was beaten at Stow
in Gloucestershire, as he was bringing a small force he had gathered
with much pains, to succour the king at Oxford. 'You have now done
your work and may go to play,' he said to the rebels who captured
him, 'unless you fall out among yourselves.' Gallant sententious old
veteran that he is!
"_May_.--His Majesty has taken refuge with the Scottish army at
Newark.
"We marvel he should have trusted his sacred person with Covenanted
Presbyterians. But in good sooth he may well be weary of wandering,
and may look for some pity yet in his own fellow-countrymen. Not
that they showed much to the sweet fair lady his father's mother.
"We hear it was but unwillingly he went to them at night, between two
and three o'clock in the morning, on the 27th of April. A few days
since he left the shelter of Oxford, faithful to him so long; riding
disguised as a servant, behind his faithful attendant Mr. Ashburnham.
Once he was asked by a stranger on the road if his master were a
nobleman. 'No,' quoth the king, 'my master is one of the Lower
House,' a sad truth, forsooth, though spoken in parable. It is
believed amongst us that he would fain have reached the eastern
coast, thence to take ship for Scotland, to join Montrose and the
true Scots with him. For his flight was uncertain, and changed
direction more than once--to Henley-on-Thames, Slough, Uxbridge; then
to the top of Harrow Hill, across the country to St. Albans, where
the clattering hoofs of a farmer behind them gave false alarm of
pursuit; thence by the houses of many faithful gentlemen who knew and
loved him, but respected his disguise and made as though they knew
him not; to Downham in Norfolk; to Southwell, and thence, beguiled by
promises some say, others declare throwing himself of his own free
will like a prince on the ancient Scottish loyalty, he rode to Newark
into the midst of the Earl of Leven's army.
"_August_, 1646.--The civil war, they give out now, is over. Every
garrison and castle in the kingdom have surrendered. In June, loyal
Oxford; and now, last and most loyal of all, on the 19th of August,
Ragland Castle, with the noble old Marquis of Worcester, who hath
ruined himself past all remedy in the king's service, and in this
world will scarce now find his reward.
"In June, Prince Rupert rode through the land, and embarked at Dover.
Well for the good cause if he had never come. His marauding ways
gave quite another complexion to the war from what it might have had
without him. His rashness, Harry thought, lost us many a field. His
lawlessness infected our army. The king could not forgive him his
surrender of Bristol a few days after he was led to believe it could
be held for months. But in this some think perchance he is less to
blame than elsewhere. Cromwell and the Ironsides were there and they
stormed the city, and it seems as if this Cromwell could never be
baffled.
"With Prince Rupert went three hundred loyal gentlemen, some
despairing of the cause at home, others, and with them my Father, on
missions to seek aid from foreign courts.
"_February_, 1647.--The Scottish army has yielded him up ('Bought and
sold,' His Majesty said; others say the two hundred thousand pounds
the Scotch received was for the expenses of the war,) into the hands
of the English Presbyterians at Newcastle.
"_March_.--We have seen the king once more. My Mother has heard for
certain the true cause why the king was given up by the Scotch to his
enemies. He would not sign their blood-stained Covenant. He would
not sacrifice the Church of these kingdoms, with her bishops and her
sacred liturgy, though nobles, loyal men and true, nay the queen
herself, by letter, entreated him. My mother saith he is now in most
literal truth a martyr, suffering for the spotless bride--our dear
Mother, the Church of England--and for the truth. We heard he was to
arrive at Holmby House in Northamptonshire, and, weak as my Mother
is, nothing would content her but to be borne thither in a litter to
pay him her homage. I would not have missed it for the world.
Numbers of gentlemen and gentlewomen were there to welcome him with
tears and prayers and hearty acclamations. It did our hearts good to
hear the hearty cheers and shouts, and I trust cheered his also. The
rebel troopers were Englishmen enough to offer no hindrance. And we
had the joy of gazing once more on that kingly pathetic countenance.
He is serene and cheerful, as a true martyr should be, my mother
says, accepting his cross and rejoicing in it, not morose and of a
sad countenance as those who feign to be persecuted for conscience
sake. He scorns no blameless pleasure which can solace the weary
hours of captivity, riding miles sometimes to a good bowling-green to
play at bowls, and beguiling the evenings with chess or converse on
art with Mr. Harrington or Mr. Herbert.
"He will not suffer a Presbyterian chaplain to say grace at his
table, and the hard-hearted jailers will allow no other.
"Thank heaven the common people are true to him still, as they took
him from Newcastle to Holmby House the simple peasants flocked round
to see him and bless him, and to feel the healing touch of his sacred
hand for the king's evil. Sir Harry Marten, a rebel and a
republican, made a profane jest thereon, and said, 'The touch of the
great seal would do them as much good.' But no one relished the
scurrilous jest. And the blessings and prayers of the poor followed
the king everywhere. Yes; it is the common people and the nobles
that honour true greatness. The Scribes and Pharisees, I am
persuaded, sprang from the middle-order yeomen, craftsmen, chapmen.
"Tithing mint and devouring widows' houses," are just base, weeping,
unpunishable middle-station sins. The troubles of this middle class
are wretched, low, carking money-troubles. The sorrows of the high
and low are natural ennobling sorrows; bereavement, pain, and death.
It is the sordid middle order that envies the great. The common
people reverence them when on high places, and generously pity them
when brought low. My Mother says, belike the sorrows of their king
shall yet move the honest heart of the nation to a reverent pity, and
thus back to loyalty, and so, as so often in great conflicts, more be
won through suffering than through success.
"_April_, 1647.--We are to pay our last penalty. Our old hall is
declared to be a perilous nest of traitors and cradle of
insurrection. A rebel garrison is to be quartered on us.
"Our expedition to Holmby, has led to two results; it offended some
of the people in authority among the rebels, and thereby caused them
to take possession of the hall; and it so taxed my mother's wasted
strength that she is unfit for any journey, so that we must even stay
and suffer the presence of these insolent and rebellious men in our
home.
"_April, Davenant Hall_.--Mr. Drayton hath been here to-day. He
looked pale and thin from the long imprisonment he has had, and he
hath lost his right arm--a sore loss to him who ever took such
pleasure in his geometrical instruments, and played the viol-di-gambo
so masterly.
"He gave a slight start when he saw my mother, and there was a kind
of anxious compassionate reverence in his manner towards her which
makes me uneasy. I fear he deems her sorely changed, and ofttimes I
have feared the same. But then this mourning garb which she will
never more lay aside, and her dear gray hair, which I love, put back
like an Italian Madonna from her forehead, in itself makes a
difference. Although I think her eyes never looked so soft and
beautiful as now. The golden hair of youth, and all its brilliant
colour, seems to me scarcely so fair as this silver hair of hers,
with the soft pale hues on her cheeks.
"Mr. Drayton asked us to take asylum at Netherby Hall till such time
as we join my father elsewhere. My mother knows what Harry thought,
and seems not averse to accept his hospitality. I certainly had not
thought to enter old Netherby again in such guise as this."
OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.
The old house seemed to gain a kind of sacredness when it became the
refuge of that dear bereaved Lady and sweet Lettice. Lady Lucy was
much changed. Her voice always soft, was low as the soft notes in a
hymn; her step, always light, was slower and feebler; her hair,
though still abundant, had changed from luxuriant auburn to a soft
silvery brown; her cheeks were worn into a different curve, though
still, I thought, as beautiful, and the colour in them was paler.
Everything in her seemed to have changed from sunset to moonlight.
Her voice and her very thoughts seem to come from afar; from some
region we could not tread, like music borne over still waters. It
was as if she had crossed a river which severed her far from us,
which she would never more recross, but only wait till the call came
to mount the dim heights on the other side. Not that she was in any
way sad or uninterested, or abstracted, only she did not seem to
belong to us any more.
I wondered if Lettice saw this as I did. And many a time the tears
came to my eyes as I looked at those two and thought how strong were
the cords of love which bound them, and how feeble the thread of life.
Aunt Dorothy welcomed Lady Lucy with as true a tenderness as any one.
The silvery hair in place of those heart-breakers--the hair silvered
so suddenly by sorrow--softened her in more ways than one. One
thing, however, tried her sorely. And I much dreaded the explosion
it might lead to if Aunt Dorothy's conscience once got the upper hand
of her hospitality.
The Lady Lucy always had a little erection closely resembling an
altar, in her oratory at home, dressed in white, with sacred books on
it; the Holy Scriptures, A Kempis, Herbert, and others, and above
them a copy of a picture by Master Albert Durer, figuring our Lord on
the Cross, the suffering thorn-crowned form gleaming pale and awful
from the terrible noonday darkness. Before this solemn picture stood
two golden candlesticks, which at night the waiting gentlewomen were
wont to light. I shall never forget Aunt Dorothy's expression of
dismay and distress when she first saw this erection, one evening
soon after Lady Lucy's arrival. She mastered herself so far as to
say nothing to Lady Lucy then, beyond the good wishes for the night,
and directions as to some possets which she had come to administer.
But the solemn change that came over her voice and face she could not
conceal. And afterwards she solemnly summoned us into my Father's
private room to make known her discovery.
"An idol, brother!" she concluded, "an abomination! At this moment,
probably, idol-worship going on under this roof, drawing down on us
all the lightnings of heaven!"
"I should not use such a thing as a help to devotion myself, Sister
Dorothy," said my Father; "but what would you have me do?"
"Help to devotion!" she exclaimed, "'Thou shalt not make any graven
image, nor the likeness of any thing.' Sweep them away with the
besom of destruction, and cast the idols to the moles and to the
bats."
"Sister Dorothy," he said, "you would not have me take a hammer, and
axe, and cords, and drag this piece of painted work from the Lady
Lucy's chamber before her eyes."
"Thine eye shall not spare," she replied, solemnly.
"But in the first place I must know that it is an idol to Lady Lucy,"
he said, "and that she does bow down to it."
"Subtle distinctions, brother; traffickings with the enemy. Heaven
grant they prove not our ruin, as of Jehoshaphat before us."
For Aunt Dorothy, although she had forsaken the judgment seat for
private offences, would still have deemed it an impiety to abandon it
in cases of heresy.
"Sister Dorothy," interposed Aunt Gretel, "in my country good men and
women do use such things and do not become idolaters thereby in their
private devotion and in the churches."
"Belike they do, sister Gretel," rejoined Aunt Dorothy, drily. "The
hand that would have pulled down the Epistle of St. James might well
leave some idols standing. An owl sees better than a blind man. But
it is no guide to those whose eyes are used to-day."
This profane comparison of Dr. Luther to an owl dismayed Aunt Gretel,
so as to throw her entirely out of the conflict, which finished with
an ordinance from my Father that liberty of conscience should be the
order of his household; and a protest from Aunt Dorothy that, be the
consequences what they may, she would not suffer any immortal soul
within her reach to go the broad road to ruin without warning.
Which threat kept us in anxious anticipation. We took the greatest
care not to leave the combatants alone; one so determined and the
other so unconscious of danger.
At last, however, the fatal moment arrived.
It was early in April, a fortnight after Lady Lucy and Lettice took
shelter under our roof.
Dr. Anthony had arrived from London with tidings which made us all
very uneasy.
The Presbyterian majority in the House of Commons, believing the
civil war ended, were very eager to disband the army which had ended
it, but which, being mostly composed of Independents, they dreaded
even more than the king.
In February, they had voted that no officer under Sir Thomas Fairfax
should hold any rank higher than a colonel, intending thereby to
displace Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, Ludlow, Blake, Skippon, and
Algernon Sydney, and, in short, every commander whom the army most
trusted, and under whom their victories had been gained.
They were to be disbanded, moreover, without receiving their pay, now
due for more than half a year. It was also proposed that such of the
soldiers as were still kept together should be sent to Ireland to
settle matters there, under new Presbyterian commanders, instead of
those whom they knew and trusted.
The indignation in the army was deep. But it was as much under the
restraint of law, and was expressed in as orderly a way, as if the
army had been a court of justice. The regiments met, deliberated,
remonstrated, and drew up a petition, demanded arrears of pay, and
refused to go to Ireland save under commanders they knew. "For the
desire of our arrears," they said, "necessity, especially of our
soldiers, enforced us thereunto. We left our estates, and many of us
our trade and callings to others, and forsook the contentments of a
quiet life, not fearing nor regarding the difficulties of war for
your sakes; after which we hoped that the desires of our hardly
earned wages would have been no unwelcome request, nor argued us
guilty of the least discontent or intention of mutiny."
No one, my Father said, could deny the truth of this. The Parliament
army had not eked out with plunder their arrears of pay.
On the 3d of April three soldiers--Adjutators (or Agitators, as some
called them)--had been sent with a respectful but determined message
to the House of Commons. General Cromwell (attending in his place in
the House in spite of the plots there had been during the past weeks,
as he knew, to commit him to the Tower) rose and spoke at length of
the danger of driving the army to extremities.
And now Dr. Antony came with the tidings that General Cromwell was at
Saffron Walden, bearing to the army the promise of indemnity and
arrears. He brought also a brief letter from Roger, saying that now
all was sure to go right.
This news drew us all together, and it was not until she had been
absent some time that it was discovered that Aunt Dorothy had left us.
Aunt Gretel was the first to perceive her departure, and to suspect
its cause. At once she repaired to Lady Lucy's chamber, whence, in a
minute or two, she returned, and pressing me lightly on the shoulder,
she said, in a solemn whisper,--
"Olive, it must be stopped; the Lady Lucy is looking like a ghost,
and Mistress Lettice like a damask rose, and your Aunt Dorothy is
talking Latin."
This was Aunt Gretel's formula for controversial language. She said
English was composed of two elements; the German she could
understand; we used it, she said, when we were speaking of things
near our hearts, of matters of business, or of affection, or of
religion, in a peaceable and kindly manner. But the Latin was beyond
her. There were long words in _ation_, _atical_, or _arian_, which
always came on the field when there was to be a battle. And then she
always withdrew. In this martial array Aunt Dorothy's thoughts were
now being clothed. And Aunt Gretel thought I had better summon my
Father to interrupt the debate.
I went at once and indicated to him the danger. He looked half angry
half amused.
"Dr. Antony," he said, "your medical attendance is required
up-stairs. My sister has recommenced the Civil War."
I flew up to announce the coming of the gentlemen.
At the moment when I entered the room the controversy had reached a
climax. Lady Lucy was sitting very pale and upright, and on a
high-backed chair with tears in her eyes, and saying in a faint
voice,--
"Mistress Dorothy, I am not a Papist, and hope never to be."
Lettice, behind the chair, with her arm round her mother, and her
hand on her shoulder, like a champion, stood with quivering lips and
burning cheeks, and rejoined that "there were worse heretics than the
Papists, worse tyrants than the Inquisition." Whilst Aunt Dorothy,
as pale as Lady Lucy, and with lips quivering as much as Lettice's,
faced them both with the consciousness of being herself a witness or
a martyr for the truth struggling within her against the sense that
she was regarded by others in the light of an inquisitor and
tormentor of martyrs.
"An't please you, Lady Lucy," I said, "my Father thought Dr. Antony,
who is down-stairs, might recommend you some healing draught. He has
wonderful recipes for coughs."
And before a reply could be given, my Father and Dr. Antony were at
the door, and Aunt Dorothy was arrested in her testimony without the
possibility of uttering a last word.
Dr. Antony seemed to comprehend the position at a glance. With a
quiet courtesy which introduced him at once, and gave him the command
of the field, he went up to Lady Lucy, and, feeling her pulse,
observed that it was slightly feverish and uneven, ordered the
windows to be open, and recommended that as much air as possible
should be obtained, by means of all but Mistress Lettice leaving the
room. He had little doubt then that some cooling medicines, which he
had at hand, would do the rest. As I was going Lettice entreated me
to stay, which I was ready to do.
And ere long we were all three quietly gathered around Lady Lucy's
chair, Lettice on a cushion at her feet (where she best loved to be),
I on the window-seat near, and Dr. Antony leaning on the back of her
chair. She was discoursing to him in French, which she spoke with a
marvellously natural accent, and which I had never heard him speak
before. I know not why, it seemed as if the language threw a new
vivacity and fire into his countenance, and I felt very ignorant, and
humbled, not to be able to join. But this feeling did not last long,
Lady Lucy had a way of divining what passed in the mind, and she
called me near, and made me sit on a little chair beside her, and
drew my hand into hers, and encouraged me to say such words as I
knew, and praised my accent, and said it had just that pretty English
lisp in it that some of the countrymen of poor Queen Henrietta Maria
had thought charming.
She made Dr. Antony tell us moving histories still in French of his
ancestors, their daring deeds and hair-breadth 'scapes. So an hour
passed, and we were all friends, bound together by the easy charm of
her sweet gracious manner, and had forgotten the storm and everything
else, till we were summoned to supper.
"Ah, Monsieur!" said she, giving him her hand as she took leave of
him, with a smile, "re-assure Mistress Dorothy as to my orthodoxy,
and make her believe my sympathies are on the right side with the
sufferers of St. Bartholomew's Day. And Olive, little champion,"
said she, drawing my forehead down to her for a kiss, and stroking my
cheek, "never think it necessary again to interpose in a battle
between your aunt and your Mother's friend. I honour her from my
heart for her fidelity to conscience. And if she is more anxious
than necessary about my faith--we should surely bear one another no
grudge for that. I know it cost her more than it did me for her to
exhort me as she did. And I am not sure," she added, smiling, "if
after all she does not love me better than any of you."
"Mistress Olive," said Dr. Antony, as we sat that evening in the
dusk, by the window of my Father's room, while he wrote, "I would
that Christian women understood the beautiful work they might do if
they would take their true part as such."
"What would that be?" I said, thinking, after the experience of
to-day, it might probably be the part of the Mute.
"To see that Morals and Theology, Charity and Truth, are never
divorced," he replied. "To win us back to the Beatitudes when we are
straying into the curses. To lead us back to Persons when we are
groping into abstractions. For Books full of dogma, Orthodox,
Arminian supra-lapsarian, or otherwise, to give us a home, a living
world, full of the Father, the Son, and the Comforter, of angels and
brothers. To see that we never petrify the thought of the Living God
into a metaphysical formula, still less into a numerical term. Never
to let us forget that the great purpose of redemption is to bring us
to God; that the great purpose of the Church is to make us good.
When we have clipped, and stretched, and stiffened the living Truth
into the narrow immutability of our theological or philosophical
definitions, to breathe it back again into the unfathomable
simplicity of the wisdom that brings heavenly awe over the faces of
little children, and heavenly peace into the eyes of dying men. To
keep the windows open through our definitions into God's Infinity.
To translate our ingenious, definite, unchangeable scholastic terms
into the simple, infinite, ever-changing--because ever-living--words
of daily and eternal life; so that holiness shall never come to mean
a stern or mystic quality quite different from goodness; or
righteousness, a mere legal qualification quite different from
justice; or, humility, a supernatural attainment quite different from
being humble; or charity, something very far from simply being
gentle, and generous, and forbearing; and brethren, an ecclesiastical
noun of multitude totally unconnected with brother. When women rise
to their work in the Church, it seems to me the Church will soon rise
to her true work in the world."
"You speak with fervour," said my Father, rising from the table, and
smiling as he laid his hand on Dr. Antony's shoulder; "the womanhood
you picture is something loftier than that of Eve."
"Mary's Ave has gone far to transfigure the name of Eve," he replied.
"'Ecce concilia Domini' shall echo deeper and further and be
remembered longer than 'The serpent tempted me and I did eat.' But,"
he added, "we have a better type than Mary for woman as well as man,
in Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister. I was
chiefly thinking of the gifts most common, it seems to me, to women,
and least to controversialists, I mean, imagination and common sense.
Imagination which penetrates, from signs to things signified, which
pierces, for instance, into the depth and meaning of such words as
'eternity' and 'accursed'--which also penetrates behind the adjective
'Calvinistic or Arminian,' to the substantive men and women whose
theology they define. And common sense, which, when a conclusion
contradicts our inborn conscience of right and wrong, refuses to
receive it although the path to it be smoothed and hedged by logic
without a flaw.
"In other words," said my Father, "you would say that, with women the
heart corrects the errors of the head oftener than we suffer it to do
so with us. We must remember, however, that the heart and the
conscience also are not infallible, and that the same qualities which
can make women the best saints make them the worst controversialists.
Theology and morals being in their hearts thus closely intertwined,
they fight against a mistake as if it were a sin. They quicken
abstractions, and even rites and ceremonies, into personal life, and
are apt to defend them with a blind and passionate vehemence as they
would the character of a husband or a son."
"Best gifts abused must ever be worst curses," said Dr. Antony.
And I ventured to say,--
"Is it not just the lowliness of our lot that makes it high? Can we
help our voices becoming shrill, if we will have them loud?"
"Tune thine then, sweetheart, where first I learnt how sweet it was,"
said my Father, stroking my cheek. "By sick-beds, or by children's
cradles, or, in the house of mourning, or wherever good words are
needed only to be heard by the one to whom they are spoken; there
women's voices are attuned to their truest tones."
And the next morning I had that walk in the orchard with Dr. Antony,
when he told me the secret which my Father would persist in declaring
(most unwarrantably, I think) lay at the root of his high
expectations as to the future work and destinies of women.
And when, a few hours afterwards, after I had been alone a while, and
we had knelt together and received my Father's blessing, and I began
to understand my happiness a little, and went and said something
about it to Lady Lucy, and especially how strange it was that Dr.
Antony said he had thought of it so long, whilst I had not been
dreaming of it, she kissed my forehead, and said with a smile,--
"Very strange, my unsuspecting little Puritan. For it crossed my
thoughts the first hour I saw you together, and that was yesterday
evening. Ah, Olive," she added, very tenderly, in a faltering voice,
"I had fond thoughts once that it might have been otherwise. If my
Harry had lived, and this poor distracted realm had returned to her
allegiance, I had thought perchance some day to have the right to
call thee by the tenderest name. But God hath not willed it so. And
I try hard that his will may be mine. He hath given thee the great
gift of a good man's heart. And I have no fear but that thou wilt
keep it."