RICHARD HEYWOOD.
So things looked ill for the puritans in general, and Richard Heywood
had his full portion in the distribution of the evils allotted them.
Following lord Fairfax, he had shared his defeat by the marquis of
Newcastle on Atherton moor, where of his score of men he lost five, and
was, along with his mare, pretty severely wounded. Hence it had become
absolutely necessary for both of them, if they were to render good
service at any near future, that they should have rest and tending.
Towards the middle of July, therefore, Richard, followed by Stopchase,
and several others of his men who had also been wounded and were in need
of nursing, rode up to his father's door. Lady was taken off to her own
stall, and Richard was led into the house by his father--without a word
of tenderness, but with eyes and hands that waited and tended like those
of a mother.
Roger Heywood was troubled in heart at the aspect of affairs. There was
now a strong peace-party in the parliament, and to him peace and ruin
seemed the same thing. If the parliament should now listen to overtures
of accommodation, all for which he and those with whom he chiefly
sympathised had striven, was in the greatest peril, and might be, if not
irrecoverably lost, at least lost sight of, perhaps for a century. The
thing that mainly comforted him in his anxiety was that his son had
showed himself worthy, not merely in the matter of personal courage,
which he took as a thing of course in a Heywood, but in his
understanding of and spiritual relation to the questions really at
issue,--not those only which filled the mouths of men. For the best men
and the weightiest questions are never seen in the forefront of the
battle of their time, save by "larger other eyes than ours."
But now, from his wounds, as he thought, and the depression belonging to
the haunting sense of defeat, a doubt had come to life in Richard's
mind, which, because it was born IN weakness, he very pardonably looked
upon as born OF weakness, and therefore regarded as itself weak and
cowardly, whereas his mood had been but the condition that favoured its
development. It came and came again, maugre all his self-recrimination
because of it: what was all this fighting for? It was well indeed that
nor king nor bishop should interfere with a man's rights, either in
matters of taxation or worship, but the war could set nothing right
either betwixt him and his neighbour, or betwixt him and his God.
There was in the mind of Richard, innate, but more rapidly developed
since his breach with Dorothy, a strong tendency towards the
supernatural--I mean by the word that which neither any one of the
senses nor all of them together, can reveal. He was one of those young
men, few, yet to be found in all ages of the world's history, who, in
health and good earthly hope, and without any marked poetic or
metaphysical tendency, yet know in their nature the need of conscious
communion with the source of that nature--truly the veriest absurdity if
there be no God, but as certainly the most absolute necessity of
conscious existence if there be a first life from whom our life is born.
'Am I not free now?' he said to himself, as he lay on his bed in his own
gable of the many-nooked house; 'Am I not free to worship God as I
please? Who will interfere with me? Who can prevent me? As to form and
ceremony, what are they, or what is the absence of them, to the worship
in which my soul seeks to go forth? What the better shall I be when all
this is over, even if the best of our party carry the day? Will Cromwell
rend for me the heavy curtain, which, ever as I lift up my heart, seems
to come rolling down between me and him whom I call my God? If I could
pass within that curtain, what would Charles, or Laud, or Newcastle, or
the mighty Cromwell himself and all his Ironsides be to me? Am I not on
the wrong road for the high peak?'
But then he thought of others--of the oppressed and the superstitious,
of injustice done and not endured--not wrapt in the pearly antidote of
patience, but rankling in the soul; of priests who, knowing not God,
substituted ceremonies for prayer, and led the seeking heart afar from
its goal--and said that his arm could at least fight for the truth in
others, if only his heart could fight for the truth in himself. No; he
would go on as he had begun; for, might it not be the part of him who
could take the form of an angel of light when he would deceive, to make
use of inward truths, which might well be the strength of his own soul,
to withdraw him from the duties he owed to others, and cause the heart
of devotion to paralyze the arm of battle? Besides, was he not now in a
low physical condition, and therefore the less likely to judge truly
with regard to affairs of active outer life? His business plainly was to
gain strength of body, that the fumes of weakness might no longer cloud
his brain, and that, if he had to die for the truth, whether in others
or in himself, he might die in power, like the blast of an exploding
mine, and not like the flame of an expiring lamp. And certainly, as his
body grew stronger, and the impulses to action, so powerful in all
healthy youth, returned, his doubts grew weaker, and he became more and
more satisfied that he had been in the right path.
Lady outstripped her master in the race for health, and after a few days
had oats and barley in a profusion which, although far from careless,
might well have seemed to her unlimited. Twice every day, sometimes
oftener, Richard went to see her, and envied the rapidity of her
recovery from the weakness which scanty rations, loss of blood, and the
inflammation of her wounds had caused. Had there been any immediate call
for his services, however, that would have brought his strength with it.
Had the struggle been still going on upon the fields of battle instead
of in the houses of words, he would have been well in half the time. But
Waller and Essex were almost without an army between them, and were at
bitter strife with each other, while the peace-party seemed likely to
carry everything before them, women themselves presenting a petition for
peace, and some of them using threats to support it.
At length, chiefly through the exertions of the presbyterian preachers
and the common council of the city of London, the peace-party was
defeated, and a vigorous levying and pressing of troops began anew. So
the hour had come for Richard to mount. His men were all in health and
spirits, and their vacancies had been filled up. Lady was frolicsome,
and Richard was perfectly well.
The day before they were to start he took the mare out for a gallop
across the fields. Never had he known her so full of life. She rushed at
hedge and ditch as if they had been squares of royalist infantry. Her
madness woke the fervour of battle in Richard's own veins, and as they
swept along together, it grew until he felt like one of the Arabs of
old, flashing to the harvest field of God, where the corn to be reaped
was the lives of infidels, and the ears to be gleaned were the heads of
the fallen. That night he scarcely slept for eagerness to be gone.
Waking early from what little sleep he had had, he dressed and armed
himself hurriedly, and ran to the stables, where already his men were
bustling about getting their horses ready for departure.
Lady had a loose box for herself, and thither straight her master went,
wondering as he opened the door of it that he did not hear usual morning
welcome. The place was empty. He called Stopchase.
'Where is my mare?' he said. 'Surely no one has been fool enough to take
her to the water just as we are going to start.'
Stopchase stood and stared without reply, then turned and left the
stable, but came back almost immediately, looking horribly scared. Lady
was nowhere to be seen or heard. Richard rushed hither and thither,
storming. Not a man about the place could give him a word of
enlightenment. All knew she was in that box the night before; none knew
when she left it or where she was now.
He ran to his father, but all his father could see or say was no more
than was plain to every one: the mare had been carried off in the night,
and that with a skill worthy of a professional horse-thief.
What now was the poor fellow to do? If I were to tell the truth--namely,
that he wept--so courageous are the very cowards of this century that
they would sneer at him; but I do tell it notwithstanding, for I have
little regard to the opinion of any man who sneers. Whatever he may or
may not have been as a man, Richard felt but half a soldier without his
mare, and, his country calling him, oppressed humanity crying aloud for
his sword and arm, his men waiting for him, and Lady gone, what was he
to do?
'Never heed, Dick, my boy,' said his father.--It was the first time
since he had put on man's attire that he had called him Dick,--'Thou
shalt have my Oliver. He is a horse of good courage, as thou knowest,
and twice the weight of thy little mare.'
'Ah, father! you do not know Lady so well as I. Not Cromwell's best
horse could comfort me for her. I MUST find her. Give me leave, sir; I
must go and think. I cannot mount and ride, and leave her I know not
where. Go I will, if it be on a broomstick, but this morning I ride not.
Let the men put up their horses, Stopchase, and break their fast.'
'It is a wile of the enemy,' said Stopchase. 'Truly, it were no marvel
to me were the good mare at this moment eating her oats in the very
stall where we have even but now in vain sought her. I will go and
search for her with my hands.'
'Verily,' said Mr. Heywood with a smile, 'to fear the devil is not to
run from him!--How much of her hay hath she eaten, Stopchase?' he added,
as the man returned with disconsolate look.
'About a bottle, sir,' answered Stopchase, rather indefinitely; but the
conclusion drawn was, that she had been taken very soon after the house
was quiet.
The fact was, that since the return of their soldiers, poor watch had
been kept by the people of Redware. Increase of confidence had led to
carelessness. Mr. Heywood afterwards made inquiry, and had small reason
to be satisfied with what he discovered.
'The thief must have been one who knew the place,' said Faithful.
'Why dost thou think so?' asked his master.
'How swooped he else so quietly upon the best animal, sir?' returned the
man.
'She was in the place of honour,' answered Mr. Heywood.
'Scudamore!' said Richard to himself. It might be no light--only a flash
in his brain. But that even was precious in the utter darkness.
'Sir,' he said, turning to his father, 'I would I had a plan of Raglan
stables.'
'What wouldst thou an' thou hadst, my son?' asked Mr. Heywood.
'Nay, sir, that wants thinking. But I believe my poor mare is at this
moment in one of those vaults they tell us of.'
'It may be, my son. It is reported that the earl hath of late been
generous in giving of horses. Poor soldiers the king will find them that
fight for horses, or titles either. Such will never stand before them
that fight for the truth--in the love thereof! Eh, Richard?'
'Truly, sir, I know not,' answered his son, disconsolately. 'I hope I
love the truth, and I think so doth Stopchase, after his kind; and yet
were we of those that fled from Atherton moor.'
'Thou didst not flee until thou couldst no more, my son. It asketh
greater courage of some men to flee when the hour of flight hath come,
for they would rather fight on to the death than allow, if but to their
own souls, that they are foiled. But a man may flee in faith as well as
fight in faith, my son, and each is good in its season. There is a time
for all things under the sun. In the end, when the end cometh, we shall
see how it hath all gone. When, then, wilt thou ride?'
'To-morrow, an' it please you, sir. I should fight but evil with the
knowledge that I had left my best battle-friend in the hands of the
Philistines, nor sent even a cry after her.'
'What boots it, Richard? If she be within Raglan walls, they yield her
not again. Bide thy time; and when thou meetest thy foe on thy friend's
back, woe betide him!'
'Amen, sir!' said Richard. 'But with your leave I will not go to-day. I
give you my promise I will go to-morrow.'
'Be it so, then. Stopchase, let the men be ready at this hour on the
morrow. The rest of the day is their own.'
So saying, Roger Heywood turned away, in no small distress, although he
concealed it, both at the loss of the mare and his son's grief over it.
Betaking himself to his study, he plunged himself straightway deep in
the comfort of the last born and longest named of Milton's tracts.
The moment he was gone, Richard, who had now made up his mind as to his
first procedure, sent Stopchase away, saddled Oliver, rode slowly out of
the yard, and struck across the fields. After a half-hour's ride he
stopped at a lonely cottage at the foot of a rock on the banks of the
Usk. There he dismounted, and having fastened his horse to the little
gate in front, entered a small garden full of sweet-smelling herbs
mingled with a few flowers, and going up to the door, knocked, and then
lifted the latch.