"My spirit heats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory glides,
And mingles with the stars."
TENNYSON.
The year 1660 had come, and in the autumn, just as harvest was over, and
the trees on the slopes were taking tints of red, yellow, and brown, an
elderly clergyman, staff in hand, came slowly up the long lane leading
to Elmwood, whence he had been carried, bound to his horse, seventeen
years before.
He had not suffered as much as some of his fellow priests. After a term
of imprisonment in London, he had been transported to the plantations,
namely, the American settlements, and had fallen in with friends, who
took him to Virginia. This was chiefly colonized by people attached to
the Church, who made him welcome, and he had ministered among them till
the news arrived of the Restoration of Charles II, and likewise that the
lawful incumbents of benefices, who had been driven out, were reinstated
by Act of Parliament. Mr. Holworth's Virginian friends would gladly have
kept him with them, but he felt that his duty was to his original flock,
and set out at once for England, landing at Bristol. There, however, he
waited, like the courteous man he was, to hold communication with his
people, till he had written to Mr. Elmwood, and made arrangements with
him and Master Woodley.
They were grieved, but they were both men who had a great respect for
law and parliament, so they made no difficulties. Mr. and Mrs. Woodley
retired to the hall and left the parsonage vacant, after the minister
had preached a farewell sermon in the church which made everyone cry,
for he was a good man and had made himself loved, and there were very
few in the parish who could understand that difference between the true
Church and a body without bishops. Mr. Holworth had in the meantime gone
to Wells to see his own Bishop Piers, an old man of eighty-six, and it
was from thence that he was now returning. He had not chosen to enter
his parish till the intruded minister had resigned the charge, but he
had been somewhat disappointed that none of his old flock, not even
any Kentons, who had so much in charge, had come in to see him. He now
arrived in this quiet way, thinking that it would not be delicate to
the feelings of the squire and ex-minister to let the people get up any
signs of joy or ring the bells, if they were so inclined. Indeed, he was
much afraid from what he had been able to learn that it would be only
the rougher sort, who hated Puritan strictness and wanted sport and
revelry, who would give him an eager welcome.
So he first went quietly up to the church, which he found full of
benches and pews, with the Altar table in the middle of the nave, and
the squire's comfortable cushioned seat at the east end. He knelt on the
step for a long time, then made a brief visit to his own house, where
the garden was in beautiful order, but only a room or two were furnished
with goods he had bought from the Woodleys, and these were in charge of
a servant he had hired at Bristol.
Thence the old man went out into the village, and his first halt was
at the forge, where Blane, who had grown a great deal stouter and more
grizzled, started at sight of his square cap.
"Eh! but 'tis the old minister! You have come in quietly, sir! I am
afraid your reverence has but a sorry welcome."
"I do not wonder you are grieved to part with Master Woodley."
"Well, sir, he be a good man and a powerful preacher, though no doubt
your reverence has the best right, and for one, I'm right glad to see
an old face again. We would have rung the bells if we had known you were
coming."
"That would have been hard on Master Woodley. I am only glad they are
not melted. But how is it with all my old friends, Harry? Poor Sir
George writ me that old clerk North died of grief of the rifling of the
church; and that John Kenton had been killed by some stragglers. What
became of his children?"
"That eldest lad went off to the Parliament army, and came swaggering
here in his buff coat and boots like my Lord Protector himself, they say
he has got a castle and lands in Ireland. Men must be scarce, say I, if
they have had to make a gentleman of Jeph Kenton."
"And the rest?"
"Well, sir, I'm afraid that poor lad, Stead, is in poor plight. You
mind, he was always a still, steady, hard-working lad, and when his
father was killed, and his house burnt, and his brother ran away, the
way he and his sister turned to was just wonderful. They went to live
in an old hut in the gulley down there, and they have made the place so
tidy as it does your heart good to look at it. They bred up the young
ones, and the younger girl is well married to one of the Squire's
folks, and everyone respected them. But, as ill-luck would have it, some
robbers from Bristol seem to have got scent of their savings. Some said
that the Communion Cup was hid somewhere there."
Mr. Holworth made an anxious sound of interrogation.
"Well, I did see the corporal, when the Parliament soldiers were at
Bristol, flog Stead shamefully to know where it was, and never get a
word out of him, whether or no; and as he was a boy who would never tell
a lie, it stands to reason he knew where they were."
"But how did anyone guess at his knowing?" asked Mr. Holworth.
"His brother might have thought it likely, poor John being thick with
your reverence," said Blane. "After that I thought, myself, that he
ought to give them up to Master Woodley, if so be he had them; but I
could never get a hint from him. The talk went that old Dr. Eales, you
mind him, sir, before he died, came out and held a prelatist service,
begging your pardon, sir, and that the things were used. Stead got into
trouble with Squire about it."
"But the robbers, how was that? You said he was hurt!"
"Sore hurt, sir; and he has never got the better of it, though 'tis nigh
upon four years ago. There was a slip of a wench he picked up as a child
after the fight by Luck's mill, and bred up; a fair lass she grew up
to look on, but a light-headed one. She went to service at Bristol, and
poor Stead was troth plight to her, hoped to save and build up the house
again, never knowing, not he, poor rogue, of her goings on with the
sailors and all the roistering lads about her master's house. 'Tis my
belief she put those rascals on the track, whether she meant it or not.
Stead made what defence he could, stood up like a man against the odds,
three to one, and got a shot in the side, so that he was like to die
then. Better for him, mayhap, if he had at once, for it has been nought
but a lingering ever since, never able to do a day's work, though that
wench, Patience, and the young lad, Ben, have fought it out wonderfully.
That I will say."
Mr. Holworth had tears in his eyes, and trembled with emotion.
"The dear lad," he said. "Where is he? I must go and see him."
"He bides in the gulley, sir; he has been there ever since the
farm-house was burnt."
Ere long Mr. Holworth was on his way to the gulley. What had been only a
glade reaching from rock to stream, hidden in copsewood, was now an open
space trodden by cattle, with the actual straw-yard more in the rear,
but with a goat tethered on it and poultry running about. It was a sunny
afternoon, and in a wooden chair placed so as to catch the warmth, with
feet on a stool, sat, knitting, a figure that Mr. Holworth at first
thought was that of an aged man; but as he emerged from the wood, and
the big dog sprang up and barked, there was a looking up, an instant
silencing of the dog, a rising with manifest effort, a doffing of the
broad-brimmed hat, and the clergyman beheld what seemed to him his
old Churchwarden's face, only in the deadly pallor of long-continued
illness, and with the most intense, unspeakable look of happiness and
welcome afterwards irradiating it, a look that in after years always
came before Mr. Holworth with the "Nunc dimittis."
Dropping the knitting, and holding by the chair, he stood trembling and
quivering with gladness, while, summoned by the dog's bark, Patience,
pail in hand, appeared on one side, and Ben, tall and slight, with his
flail, on the other.
"My dear lad," was all Mr. Holworth could say, as he took the thin,
blanched hand, put his arm round the shoulders, and reseated Stead,
still speechless with joy. Patience, curtseying low, came up anxiously,
showing the same honest face as of old, though work and anxiety had
traced their lines on the sun-burnt complexion, and Ben stood blushing,
and showing his keener, more cultivated face, as the stranger turned to
greet them so as to give Steadfast time to recover himself.
"Oh! sir, but we are glad to see your reverence," cried Patience. "Will
you go in, or sit by Stead? Ben, fetch a chair."
"And is this fine strapping fellow, the sickly babe that you were never
to rear, Patience?"
"God has been very good to us, sir," said Patience.
"And this is best of all," said Stead, recovering breath and speech. "I
thank Him that I have lived to see this day! It is all safe, sir."
"And you, you faithful guardian, you have suffered for it."
If it had not been for Blane's partial revelations, Mr. Holworth never
would have extracted the full story of how for that sacred trust,
Steadfast Kenton had endured threats and pain, and had foregone ease,
prosperity, latterly happiness, and how finally it had cost him health,
nay life itself, for he was as surely dying of the buccaneer's pistol
shot, as though he had been slain on the spot.
Long illness, with all the thought and reflection it had brought, had so
far changed and refined Stead that his awkward bashfulness and lack of
words had passed from him, and when he saw the clergyman overcome with
emotion at the thought of all he had undergone he said,
"Never heed it, your reverence, it has come to be all joy to me to have
had a little to bear for the Master! 'Tis hard on Patience and Ben, but
they are very good to me; and being sick gives time for such comforts as
God sends me. It is more than all I could have had here."
"I am sure of that, my dear boy. I was not grieving that I gave you
the trust, but thinking what a blessed thing it is to have kept it thus
faithfully."
Two Sundays later, the Feast was again meetly spread in Elmwood Church,
the Altar restored to its place, and all as reverently arranged as it
could yet be among the broken carved work.
In some respects it was a mournful service, few there were who after the
lapse of seventeen years even remembered the outlines of the old forms;
and the younger people knew not when to kneel or stand. There were
few who could read, and even for those who could there were only four
Prayer-books in the church, the clergyman's, the clerk's, the Kentons',
and one discovered by an old Elmwood servant. The Squire's family
came not; Goody Grace was dead, and though Rusha tried to instruct her
husband and her little girl, she herself was much at a loss.
To Mr. Holworth it was almost like that rededication of the Temple when
the old men wept at the thought of the glory of the former house, but
there were some on whom his eye rested with joy and peace. There were
Blane and his wife, good and faithful though ignorant; there were the
old miller and his son, who had come all that distance since there
had as yet been no restoration in their church, and the goings on of
Original-Sin Hopkins and his friends had thoroughly disgusted them, and
made the old man yearn towards the church of his youth, and there was
the little group of three, the toil-worn but sweet-faced sister, calm
and restful, though watchful; the tall youth with thoughtful, earnest,
awe-struck face, come for his first Communion, for which through those
many years he had been taught to pray and long, and between them the
wasted form and wan features lighted up with that wonderful radiance
that had come on them with the sense that the trust was fulfilled, only
it was brighter, calmer, higher, than even at the greeting of the vicar.
Did Steadfast see only the burnished gold of the Chalice and paten he
had guarded for seventeen years at the cost of toil, danger, suffering,
love, and life itself? Did he not see and feel far beyond those outward
visible signs in which others, who had not yet endured to the end, could
only as yet put their trust by faith?
Mr. Holworth, as he stood over him and saw the upturned eye, was sure it
was so. No doubt indeed Ben thought so too, but poor imaginative Ben
had somehow fancied it would be with his brother as with the King
who guarded that other sacred Cup, and when all was over, was quite
disappointed that Stead needed his strong arm as much as ever, nay more,
for on coming out into the air and sunshine a faintness and exhaustion
came on, and they had to rest him in the porch before he could move.
"O Stead, I thought it would have healed you," the lad said.
Stead slightly smiled. "Healed? I shall soon be healed altogether, Ben,"
he said. He had with great difficulty and very slowly walked to church,
and Mr. Holworth wished him to come and rest at the Vicarage, but he was
very anxious to get home, and after he had taken a little food, Andrew
Luck offered to share with Ben and Rusha's husband the carrying him back
between them on an elbow chair.
This pleased him, and he looked up to Andrew and said, "You are in the
same mind as long ago?"
"I never found anyone else I could lay my mind to, since my poor Kitty,"
said Andrew.
"She will come to you--soon," said Stead. "She'll have a sore heart, but
you will be good to her."
"That I will. And little Bess and Kate shall come and tell her how they
want her."
Stead smiled and his lips moved in thankfulness.
"And if Ben would come with her," added Andrew, "I'd be a brother to
him."
"Parson wants Ben," said Stead. "He says he can make a scholar of him,
and maybe a parson, and it will not be so lonesome in the vicarage."
"And your farm?"
"Rusha and her man take that. They have saved enough to build the house.
Yes, all is well. It is great peace and thankfulness."
Patience returned with the cushions she had borrowed and they brought
Steadfast home, very much exhausted, and not speaking all the way.
Perhaps the unusual motion and exertion had made the bullet change its
place, for he hardly uttered another word, and that night, as he had
said to Ben, he was healed for ever of all his ills.
The funeral sermon that Mr. Holworth preached the next Sunday, was on
the text so dear to all the loyal hearts who remembered the White King's
coronation text--
"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."
THE END