A little sidelong eddy, it seemed, from the great tide of public
events had washed up into our quiet backwater or creek of country
life, setting us all agog with the tragic issues of death and
dishonor. But the flutter and swirl of it had now drifted back into
the main stream, leaving us, not indeed the same as we had been, but
by contrast quieter than before. During some three years, for us at
Drayton it might be said, with a measure of truth, that nothing
happened. Yet of those things which I have recounted there were
several consequences, so notable in effect upon our hearts and minds,
that it were perhaps more true to say, in that same metaphor, that,
after the first commotion, the tide maintained a steady though hourly
imperceptible rise.
When I knew that Kirke and all his men were safely on their way for
Taunton, I lost no time in riding across country in a bee-line to
Royston Chase, which I found shut up in charge of three old servants.
From these I learned that Ned's gray had that morning been discovered
cropping a breakfast from the grass about his own stable door, and,
while assuring them of their young master's safety, beyond, perhaps,
what I truly felt myself, I bade them keep quiet tongues both about
the horse and his master, who lay for safety, I said, in these
perilous times, at the city of Oxford. Nor did I in truth lie to
these good people, who from my manner of speaking did well perceive
this was but the tale they must tell, I knowing what it were best
they should not. Of the chief among them I had the promise that on
the expected arrival of the Lady Mary my father should at once be
advertised of it. And thence home, a little lighter in spirit to
know that his horse was safe, and found my father musing heavily in
his great chair in the hall, where the night before he had so feasted
our enemies. At first it was a hard matter to bring him to talk, but
at last, under stress of coaxing and such tricks of blandishment as I
have practised from a child to win him from this heaviness of spirit,
he broke silence.
"The times are hard when a Drayton must in his old age take to lying,
little daughter Phil," he said.
"And his daughter in the days of her youth," I answered merrily.
"But in truth 't is little I trouble myself for the falsehood.
Whose, sir, upon the Day of Judgment, will be the blame of those
untruths that were told to save from a death both cruel and contrary
to law so kind and Christian a gentleman as my Ned?"
Sir Michael smiled and rallied me on that word of possession.
"Ho, ho!" said he; "'my Ned,' indeed! He is by this in Holland,
little lass, and already, it is like enough, hath seen much that may
put an unbroke filly out of his mind." Then, growing grave, "'There
is something rotten,'" he said, quoting from Mr. Shakespeare's
tragedy of _Hamlet_ (for this play, and others of that writer, were
his chief reading), "'There is something rotten in the state of
Denmark,' when honest youths must needs kill soldiers of their
sovereign, and old men and young maids must trump up a pack of lying
tales to save a good lad from rope without jury. I would I had died
when the late King did come again to his own."
"And what, then, of poor Philippa?" I piteously asked.
"Why, then," said my father, smiling on me with a countenance of
great benignity, "poor Philippa had not been, and poor Michael had
missed his best gift of God. So let us leave it to Him, dear maid,
both for what is to be and for how much thy father shall see of it."
And it was long thereafter before he would again talk to me of public
matters; but I knew by his face, which to me was ever print of an
open character, that he thought much, and that a strife was in his
soul, waged between his life-long loyalty to the house of Stuart and
the new thoughts born of his pity for the land that he loved as they
had never loved but themselves.
If my father had hated in his life any man, it was Oliver, the late
Protector. Yet thrice within the year that followed, when some
neighbor would speak of the low opinion into which we were come upon
the continent of Europe, or when the news-letter would drop some
covert hint of the subservience of St. James to Versailles, he said:
"It had not been thus, or so, if Old Noll were alive." And once to
Mr. Greenlow: "Say what you will, Parson, Cromwell was an Englishman,
and a brave one. I would he had been born of a queen."
And if the circumstances of Ned's evasion brought some change to Sir
Michael's way of thinking, they caused no less an alteration in the
value set upon his daughter by one whose good opinion I had much
desired and was now at last to obtain.
Three days after that vain inquest upon the body of the dead ensign
word came from Royston that my Lady Mary was arrived, and, thinking
there to have found her son, and finding neither him nor his news,
was fallen into great distress of mind. Sir Michael, being now
somewhat better of his indisposition, made shift to ride back with
the servant, and straightway gave her, I think, full account of all
that had been done by her son and for him. But, his tale ceasing
with Ned's departure upon Skewbald Meg, it can scarce be imagined he
brought much of comfort to that proud lady and doting mother.
He returned the same afternoon, telling me in words less of his
converse with Lady Mary than his face had already betrayed ere his
feet were out of the stirrups.
Now, about the hour of ten the next morning, I was idling on the
south terrace, feeding our doves and playing with the dogs, when my
eye was caught by a strange fellow most uncouthly dressed that led a
horse up the avenue. Nor did it take long gazing to see from the
large maculation of its sides that the horse was Skewbald Meg; the
man proving, on closer observation and his own rough introduction, to
be a petticoated seaman of Bridport. But to our enquiries after him
who had lately ridden the mare he would answer nothing. He knew, he
said, naught but that one who was no longer this side the water had
told him the horse was owned at Drayton, in Somerset, and he would
get twenty shillings for the bringing it home; that he had done his
best to con the craft from the poop, but found she would ever move
_starn_ foremost when he went on deck, and so had taken her in tow;
and he hoped the lady would, an the patchwork quilt of a beast were
indeed hers, not forget that he had walked all the way but two miles,
which two were indeed the sorest of the road; had forgot (on further
question) what town he was from, had forgot how far it was, but
thought he could find his road again; had forgot the gentleman's name
that sent him, and even, he thought, his own. And Sir Michael
laughed at the cunning of the fellow's folly, paid him well, and bade
him go home and find his memory. So, having drunk his ale, he
trudged off with a sea bow and a twinkle in his eye more knowing than
his words, but paused to twist his face over his shoulder and his
thumb significantly toward the mare, saying he thought her mane in
sore need of a good combing; and so off, leaving me sick at heart for
news, that, pulling through the knots of Meg's matted neck-hair, I
did speedily encounter in form of a letter securely tied beneath the
tangled mass. And, the string cut, seal broken, and paper unfolded,
this is what we read within:
"_To my very dear Friends and Saviors both, SIR MICHAEL DRAYTON and
MISTRESS PHILIPPA, his most sweet Daughter_.
"I write within thirty hours of leaving you, having already found a
ship to set me beyond reach of harm.
"Good Meg did carry me well, and is, I hope, little worse of the
twenty mile she ran in her never-changing stride, with never a false
step and scarce one sweat drop; and I do truly think she hath eyes of
a cat. 'T is not her fault if her back be first cousin to a handsaw,
nor mine that saddles grow not in the hedgerows hereabout.
"It was two of the morning when I roused from his sleep old Jeremiah
Soames, that I have known since Lady Mary did bring me, a sickly
child, to Bridport for the sea-bathing. His boat is now about
sailing for the fishing, and in the meantime Meg has been well hid in
his curing-shed, and I in his little upper chamber. He would not,
for caution, advance his hour to drop out of harbor, but once he has
a fair offing will make a course for the French coast, or, if the
wind serve, up Channel through the Straits for a Dutch port--Flushing
perhaps, or Rotterdam. I have yet no clear purpose for the future,
but already some thought to obtain a commission to serve under the
great John Sobiesky against the Turk. It were some pleasure, in
these days when Christians will be ever cutting each the other's
throat for cause of heresy, to rise a little above the policy of
dog-eating dogs, and to stand with men of all opinions for Christ
against the Infidel.
"To my mother I must not now run the danger of writing, for since I
know not surely where she is, whether in London or at Royston, the
letter might well fall into other hands. So I will ask you, my two
friends (the two best I do suppose that ever man had), by some means
to advise her of all that has happened, and to convey to her my great
love and duty. To her at Royston I will write so soon as I shall be
landed, and in certainty of what is best to be done.
"To you, Philippa, my old comrade, the letter all for your private
perusal that is in my mind must remain unwritten. 'T is not fit I
should now ask more of you than the life I have received at your
hands in the moment when my own were stained with blood. For, though
I do piously trust it is rather the stain that a soldier must bear
than the murderer's, sinking through till the soul itself is spotted,
yet will I now say no word but what your kind father's eyes may read
in the same moment with your own. Yet, even with a price, 't is very
like, set on my head, let me be in thought your old comrade, that do
in exile most bitterly regret I saw not your face of late, guessing
from the mellow notes of your voice how fair it has become.
"To you, Sir Michael, I would say, knowing not what report has run of
the deed I did, that I truly believe yourself had done no less,
placed as I was placed. I meant not indeed to kill the man, but,
when I remember, can scarce find it in my heart to be sorry that he
died.
"To both of you I am grateful beyond any proof of words. If the
chance come you will know I speak truth, and am indeed the true
servant of you both till death and after.
"E. ROYSTON."
At another time the approach of a thing so rare among us as a coach
had taken my mind off the most ingenious tale or history ever
printed. But the tale is not written, nor like to be, that could for
me vie in interest with this simple letter. Being then in my second
reading of it, while Sir Michael, content with one perusal over my
shoulder, had in kindness walked away along the terrace to the steps
of the great door, leaving me to squeeze a second cup of sweetness,
as it were, for my sole drinking, out of that letter, I neither knew
that a coach had come, nor that my father was leading from it in my
direction the Lady Mary Royston. And I, looking up in great joy of
the letter, encountered with my eyes, in which I doubt not the light
of my happiness was plain, her noble and austere countenance frowning
upon me in manifest displeasure. But I was not dashed in my spirits,
as perhaps she intended, by the gloom of her regard, partly because
in serious things my father had long ceased to use me as a child, and
partly because I guessed that, with his habit of kindness that was
ever mindful of the small matters that do please women, he had left
to me the pleasant task to tell of the letter. So I dropped my lady
the finest courtesy I was mistress of, very freely thereafter smiling
in her face, the letter whipt behind my back.
"Mistress Drayton seems but little cast down with all these terrible
doings, Sir Michael," said her ladyship.
My father smiled grimly, but left reply to me, who answered: "Nay,
dear madam, for we have but now received this news of Mr. Royston,
which I believe as much intended for your ladyship as for my father
and me." And, seeing by his face my father was willing, I handed her
the letter.
With little courtesy she seized, and with great greediness perused,
the letter, and her face was the face of a woman that tears at food
after a great fasting; yet midway, at that passage, as I suppose,
wherein I was peculiarly addressed, she looked from the letter to me
in a manner to call to my mind those words which, in my eagerness to
give ease to the mother's anxiety, I had forgotten the son to have
used. With that memory, and under her gaze, the blood came hotly to
my face, and I was glad when her eyes speedily fell again to the
letter, which when she had finished, the heart of the woman within
broke down the iron gates of pride and jealousy that had shut in the
mother, even as they had so long shut out the friends of her son; for
she now opened her arms to me, taking me to her bosom, and weeping
over me tears of joy, while she blessed us, father and daughter, for
the saving of her boy's life, declaring herself to be a jealous and
wicked old woman, but, now she knew him safe, a very happy one, if
her friends and Ned's would but forgive her.
When after a while she was soothed to a calmer temper of mind, Lady
Mary turned her regard to my person and countenance, saying to Sir
Michael that I had grown out of all knowledge, which I thought little
wonderful, since it was some eight years since she had set eyes upon
me.
"So this young madam," she said, patting me on the shoulder kindly
enough, yet still with the grand air of the Court dame to a rustic
damsel, "this is the child I have all these years envied and feared!
I do trust, my dear, we shall be fast friends." Then after a little
pause she added, as if in fear she had said too much: "But I would
not have you think too gravely, Mistress Philippa, of what is said in
that letter."
"That, madam, I could not do," I replied, leaving her in some doubt,
it seemed, of my meaning. For, after a moment's musing:
"I will be plain with you, my child," she said. "I mean, although I
am much your debtor, and do desire your love, I would not have you
look to marry my son. He is yet but a lad, and I have a different
purpose for him."
"Indeed, madam," I said with a little courtesy, "that must be, I
think, as he wills."
"But you, my dear, who risked your good name of late to save his
life, must be, I believe, of the mettle to deny your own happiness,
were such denial plainly for his good," said her ladyship; and I was
glad that the last week had taught me in some measure to conceal my
thought.
"Nay, dear madam," I answered, holding my anger close within my
heart, "I cannot believe that you think any woman will deny your son."
Whereat my dear father laughed softly, and my lady looked upon me
searchingly, as wondering what animal this might be that looked so
tender, and yet was not wholly innocent of claws. Her good humor,
however, was speedily recovered, although it was long before she
spoke again on that delicate subject.
But she kept her purpose of friendship, giving me constant and kindly
welcome when I would ride over to Royston, and coming herself once or
more in a month to us at Drayton. And in the two or three years that
followed her son's departure it was to her kind instruction and
wholesome advice that I owed what advance I made in manner, bearing,
and knowledge of a greater world than I had seen; she was, in short,
just such a friend as my father's daughter had need of; for there be
many things women learn only from each other; and, knowing by some
intuition of nature the need I was in, I was glad indeed, for all her
intermittent asperities, that it was Ned's mother that did take up
the task of leading me from the way of the hoyden into something of
the grace of womanhood.
As a pupil, indeed, she found in me little food of complaint, but
would be out with me for weeks at a time if Sir Michael received a
letter from Ned out of his turn, as she counted, or one that covered
more paper than her last. But I fearing her not at all, and she
being a lady of high courage and loving fearlessness in another, by
degrees she came to love me, and to forego much of her privilege of
unreasoning displeasure.
The manners in which she was bred were more akin to the severer model
of the reign of the first Charles than proper to this lighter age;
but she had never been wholly cut off from the great world, and,
knowing well what was doing and what changes making, she professed
inculcating a judicious modification of old and new, that should
leave a young woman open neither to the ridiculous charge of aping
her grandmother nor to the censure of shaping herself upon the frail
and beautiful women of a dissolute Court. My wardrobe, too, at my
father's desire, she took in hand. And I confess that this was my
favorite branch of study with my new teacher; and when I remember the
gowns that were made in Taunton and the two that were fetched all the
way from London, and the changing, turning, fitting, shaping, and
trying done at Royston by my lady, her woman, and myself, I am free
to admit that this matter of gowns was perhaps for more in bringing
about our lasting friendship than any other thing that passed between
us. For here my lady was not, as in the more serious domain of
manners, under a desire of reverting to the days of her own
upbringing, displaying rather the perennial youth that, behind the
deepening wrinkles of age, lurks ever fresh in the feminine heart.
She was in the choice of my attire all for the newest mode, holding,
she would say, each fashion as it arose right and seemly, if set out
upon the person of one that had the wit and discretion to fit new
forms to her own needs and the counsels of modesty. I wish I may
have done a little to lighten for Lady Mary the tedium of those days
while Ned was from home, since I am deeply her debtor, as a maid must
be to her who takes up, in how slight soever a manner, the office of
the mother she has lost.
During the months of September and October of that same year we lived
in great horror and dread of my Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, whose
terrible circuit, I thank God, it does not fall to me even in part to
describe. For this storm passed us in Drayton and Royston safely by,
though we both saw and heard, as it were, the flash of its lightning
and roll of its thunder. The doings, however, of that wicked and
shameless man, so terribly disgracing his high office and that of him
from whom he derived it, seemed to hold a ghastly and irresistible
attraction for my father. Every report, printed, written, or spoken,
that he could come at he devoured. The concern he showed in all this
cruel travesty of justice began with the report that reached him in
September of the trial and execution in Winchester of the Lady Alice
Lisle--a case too well known to need my telling, except in so far as
it affected Sir Michael.
John Lisle, a man high in the military service of the Protector
Cromwell, had once done great kindness to my father, who had come to
know both him and his wife, and to regard them with an affection
saddened only by the part the husband had adopted in the affairs of
the nation. The news of what he called her murder moved him
profoundly, and he pursued the Chief Justice in his mind, as it were,
throughout his Bloody Assize, as one who waits to see a bolt fall
from Heaven on a malefactor beyond the reach of justice merely human.
Of that martyred lady I heard him one day speak in accents of deep
sorrow to Madam Royston, who, though going with him heartily in
abhorrence of the crime done in the name of justice, took quick
exception to the title commonly bestowed on Mistress Lisle.
"For I do marvel, dear Sir Michael," she said, "that you, being of
such principles as you are, should make use of a title bestowed by
Cromwell in blasphemous parody of that ennobling power which on earth
is granted to the Lord's Anointed alone."
"If God ever sent a lady on this sinful earth," said the old man,
with a kind of holy exaltation in his countenance, "Alice Lisle was
she. And by this, Lady Mary, she bears higher title and brighter
crown than the highest of her murderers. And I pray that the fate of
Gomorrah may not fall on the land where such things are done." And
Lady Mary, perceiving well who was intended by that word _murderer_,
dared not reply, but marvelled much afterwards, as I knew by words
she would from time to time let fall, whither my father's musings
were leading him. Which was, indeed, but to the same goal to which
the tide of events was leading us all.
Now ever since the hanging of those two men in Drayton village,
although Peter Emmet had continued to heat and hammer iron in the
usual way, nothing had been heard of Simon, his father, nor of
Prudence, his daughter. But one fine morning in mid-October, when my
Lord Chief Justice was well back in London, receiving much honor and
reward for the evil he had wrought and the grief he had left among
us, but no thanks from any man for the only good thing he ever did by
us in the west (I mean the leaving us), as I was going to the
kitchen, my father being not yet out of his chamber, I passed by that
little dark room we did use to call the steward's. But whether it
were butler's pantry, museum of weapons out of all date and fashion,
or the place where a steward should hold his audits, pay his wages,
and keep his books, a stranger had been hard put to it to tell. I
marked that the door stood partly open, a thing unusual since we had
none to use it, and, peering within, perceived old Simon poring over
a book of accounts the most naturally in the world. Indeed, had it
not been for some trembling of the hand that held the pen, and the
great emaciation of his countenance, I might almost have forgotten he
had been absent at all, so fit and proper was his presence there.
And the thought of this put in my head, I think, the best and kindest
manner of welcoming his return; for I just nodded my head to him, and
said: "Ah, Simon, 't is a fair morning, is it not? I trust the old
Naseby wound and the rheumatism are better." And the old man turned
to me a face full of gratitude, that showed a fresh-healed scar upon
the forehead and a shaking smile about the lips.
"I am well recovered, pretty mistress," he said; then perceiving,
perhaps, that in both dress and manner I was grown deserving of a
more formal address, he added, "Madam Philippa, I would say."
And so I left him in haste to persuade my father to accept this aged
prodigal's return even as I had done. And thus it came about that
Simon Emmet slipped back into his old place among us without question
asked; and I at least should never certainly have known he had been
with Monmouth, nor that he was the man that did escape that night
from the barn, if I had not, no long time after his return, taken his
granddaughter Prudence into the house to be my handmaid, and in some
sort, as it proved, my companion. For she came to me, having
returned to her father's house on the same day as Simon to us, and
begged me, in pretty rustic manner, and with tears in her pretty
eyes, that I would take her into my service, being determined, she
said, to serve, if she might, her who had saved the brave gentleman
that had so nearly given his life for her protection. And she proved
indeed a good servant, a merry companion, and afterwards, upon a
great occasion, as will be seen, a friend not to be despised.
In the month of November there came to Sir Michael a long letter from
Mr. Edward Royston. It was dated from The Hague, and contained
matter of much interest to us all. I see that I have here written
his name in style more formal than I have hitherto generally used.
And I let it so stand, to serve as a sign of the reserve to which I
had by degrees found myself obliged, at least in speaking of him.
For to Lady Mary, as was but natural after those words of hers which
I have already given, I never mentioned him if it could in any way be
avoided, while of Prue I was too proud to seek sympathy, although I
loved best her prattle when it was of Ned.
And I knew that Sir Michael had been hurt more than a little in his
pride by that same speech of Lady Mary, and sought to make me forego
all thought of her son by speaking of him only in the rare and
painful manner that some use of the dead. Yet when he saw my face,
eager, I doubt not, against my will, as he looked up from the last
words of this letter, he rose and left the room, the letter lying
there before me on the table, muttering reluctantly some words to the
effect that I should read it if I pleased, an the subject had
interest for me. So read it I very speedily and hungrily did,
learning that after his safe arrival in Holland (of which we had a
month before been advised through a letter to his mother) he had made
his way to The Hague; that there he had sought out a good old
merchant that had been a correspondent in business of the late Mr.
Nathaniel Royston, and remembered him, as did many another, with much
kindness, on account as much of his great sobriety of judgment and
honesty of dealing as of the many successful ventures they had
together undertaken.
Now this Mynheer van Bierstenhagen belonged, in that country where
party spirit runs so high, to the faction that was the more
patriotically opposed to the influence and aggressions of His Majesty
King Lewis of France--to that party, I mean, which followed after the
Stadtholder, who was that Prince of Orange that had married, when I
was child of nine years, the Princess Mary, the eldest child of our
reigning King James. "And when it is remembered," wrote Mr. Royston,
"that the Prince is himself the grandson of King Charles I., 't is
little wonder that all the talk here among the exiled and malcontent
English and Scotch is of the Princess Mary and her husband, she being
next in succession to the throne and he so nearly allied." And the
letter went on to tell how he had secured, through the influence of
Mynheer van Bierstenhagen, a favorable introduction to the Prince,
had told him his story, and received from him a commission in one of
his regiments of horse. For this fat old Dutch merchant was held at
the Court of The Hague in high esteem for his wealth, his zeal for
the public good, and chiefly, no doubt, added Mr. Royston, for the
reason that a wealthy burgher on the Prince's side in politics was
not to be slighted, when most of his class were of French leanings,
the Stadtholder's chief support being among the common people.
But in all this not one word, beyond a civil message of regard, for
poor Philippa, who spent some tears and much thought to come at an
answer to the question, whether her old comrade began to forget what
she must ever remember, or was but obstinately adhering to his
resolve to say no word of those feelings which he held forbidden by
the cause of his flight out of England. No answer could I get to
this for all my vexing of my mind with questions, till one day Prue
did find me in tears, and contrived, my pride being a little weakened
with a consciousness of swollen and blubbered cheeks, to get some
part of my woes from me. Whereupon she nodded sagely her little
head, and asked if he was one wont to change.
"For sure, Mistress Phil," she said, "you have by all accounts known
him long enough to tell."
In some indignation I answered he was not.
"I thought he was not, indeed," says Prue; "and you may take my word
for it, madam, he but waits to become a great captain in this army of
the Dutch to come riding home and claim you, as great as a lord."
At this I was at first much pleased, perceiving how likely a thing it
was that Ned should so act; and next I was angry with Prudence for
her wisdom. But when I petulantly would know how she came to read
him more justly than I, she said a little sadly that it was not her
own case she was judging, and saw the clearer for being but an
onlooker. For which I kissed her, and so an end.
There is no need for me to tell ill what others have told well; the
history, I mean, of the three years before the coming of His Highness
of Orange. I suppose I had taken little note of the affairs of the
country had I not heard much talk of them between my dear father and
Mr. Telgrove. And as time went on it was curious to note how both
would make me a party to their discussion of public matters, the
reason being at first, I think, that their differences required an
arbiter, and an ignorant girl was better than none, having indeed
this advantage when fulfilling the office of judge, that there was no
need to abide by her decision; and later, when they had begun to
approach, if not an agreement, at least a temporary alliance, they
would still be drawing me in because it had become a thing of custom.
I learned then in this manner more of the state of the nation than if
I had read every word of the London _Gazette_ as it appeared in the
capital; and when, in the spring of the year 1687, the country was
deeply perturbed by the publication of the Declaration of Indulgence,
which my father and Mr. Telgrove abhorred in common, I was able to
bring the two old men at last to a position of sympathy--representing
to my tutor that my father could never wish him to forego such
liberties as the Indulgence offered; to my father that, in his heart,
Mr. Telgrove scarce grudged the same to those of my dear mother's
faith; and to both, that they were united to refuse a boon thus
illegally offered, lest a door should so be opened to greater evils
than the Indulgence pretended to cure. They said I was a little
stateswoman, kissed the one my face, and the other my hand, and
joined their own in the closest grip of friendship. Yet all this
time my father neither let drop nor allowed one word of changing the
head that wore the crown, while Mr. Telgrove was, I think, too wise
to press him in that direction.
And so, from London and all parts of the country, we heard week after
week that things went from bad to worse; while at home I was riding
new horses, prinking myself out in new dresses, and reading new books
when I could get them, and the old when I must; till I began at last
to fancy, I suppose, that I was grown a woman, and a person of no
little importance and consideration.