ON THE TERRACE.
Months had passed. On the 6th of February, 1685, died Charles II., and
James, Duke of York, succeeded to the throne. At once, through England,
the story was spread that he had been poisoned by the Jesuits to secure
the succession for James, and forestall the purpose of the King to
declare the legitimacy of his son, the Duke of Monmouth. So great was
the suspicion entertained against James, that this slander was very
widely believed, and alarm and resentment grew in the hearts of the
people. On the very first Sunday after his father's death James went in
solemn state to Mass, and at his Coronation refused to receive the
Sacrament at the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
When the crown was set on his head it slipped, and nigh fell on the
floor; and this little incident was whispered, then bruited, through
England, and was regarded as a token from heaven that he was not the
rightful Sovereign, but an usurper.
Then came the punishment of that scoundrel, Titus Oates, richly
deserved; but Oates was a popular favourite, and his chastisement raised
him to the pedestal of a Protestant martyr.
It was well known that James aimed at the repeal of the Habeas Corpus
Act, and at the toleration--even promotion--of Popery, and the country
was in fevered agitation and brooding anger at what was menaced.
Such was the condition of affairs in the spring of 1685.
There had been catching weather, a few days of bright sunshine, and then
thunder-showers. Then the sky had cleared, the wind was well up to the
north, and, though the sun was hot, the air was fresh. It was scented,
everywhere except on the moor, with the fragrance of hay.
Julian Crymes was out of doors enjoying the balmy air and the sloping,
golden rays of the evening sun. She had some embroidery in her hands;
but she worked little at it. Her eyes looked away dreamily at the
distant moor, and specially at a little grey patch of sycamores, that
seemed--so remote were they--against the silvery moor, to be a
cloud-shadow. Behind that grey tuft rose Ger Tor, strewn with granite
boulders; and on one side opened the blue cleft of the Tavy, where it
had sawn for itself a way from the moor-land into the low country. The
dark eyes of the girl were full to spilling--so full that, had she tried
to continue her needlework, she would have been unable to see how to
make her stitches.
Her breath came short and quick, for she was suffering real pain--that
gnawing ache which in its initiation is mental, but which becomes
sensibly physical.
Julian had loved Anthony. She loved him still. When he had come that
evening of the fair to Kilworthy, her heart had bounded: her head had
been giddy with pleasure at seeing him again--above all, at seeing him
without his wife. Towards Urith she felt implacable, corroding hatred.
That girl--with no merit that she could see, only a gloomy beauty--a
beauty as savage as the moors on the brink of which she lived, and on
which Anthony had found her--that girl had shaken to pieces at a touch
her cloud-castle of happiness, and dissolved it into a rain of salt
disappointment.
Anthony was taken from her, taken from her for ever, and her own hopes
laid in the dust. Julian had battled with her turbulent heart; her
conscience had warned her to forget Anthony, and at times she really
felt as if she had conquered her passion. No sooner, however, did she
see Anthony again, than it woke up in full strength; and whenever she
saw Urith, her jealous rage shook itself and sharpened its claws.
Her father was away in London, and on the seat beside her lay a letter
she had that day received from him. He had written full of uneasiness at
the political and religious situation. Recently the Earl of Bath had
been down in the West of England with new charters to towns in Devon
and Cornwall, constituting new electoral bodies, or altering the former
bodies, and a hurried election had ensued, in which great pressure had
been used to obtain the return of the Court party, of Catholics and
Tories, by intimidation on the one side and by bribery on the other. Mr.
Crymes, however, supported by the authority of the Earl of Bedford, had
been returned for Tavistock in the Protestant interest, and he was now
in London, sitting in the first Parliament summoned by James II.
Titus Oates, whom the Protestants, or at all events the more ignorant
and prejudiced among them, believed in as a faithful witness, had been
whipped from Aldgate to Newgate one day, and two days after, again from
Newgate to Tyburn, for having revealed the Popish Plot, which was
declared to be a fabrication of his own imagination. He and Dangerfield,
another of these witnesses, had been pilloried. The King meditated the
repeal of the Habeas Corpus and the forcible introduction of the Roman
Catholic religion. It was rumoured that there was a rising in Scotland,
headed by the Duke of Argyle; there was a great uneasiness in London,
and a disturbance of spirits throughout the country. Though the Members
of Parliament had been elected in a questionable manner, so as to bring
together an undue preponderance of creatures of the Court; yet it had
not proved itself as submissive as the King expected. The letter
concluded with the words:--"How this will all end, God knows. For
myself, I doubt whether there will not be great troubles again even as
there were in the times of His Sacred Majesty King Charles I. For mine
own part, I would resist even unto blood, rather than see our religion
set at naught, and our liberties trampled under foot by Jesuits; and my
daily prayer is that the Lord will avert such things from us, and yet
with such extravagance and determination do things appear to be pressed
forward with this end, that I have not hope myself of a peaceable
issue."
Had Mr. Crymes been then beside his daughter, he might have supposed
that the sad political outlook had disturbed her mind, and had brought
the tears to her eyes and the flush to her cheeks; but she had read his
letter with indifference. His gloomy forecasts had hardly affected her
at all, for her heart was filled with its own peculiar bitterness.
What prospect of happiness opened before her? She cared for no one; she
could care for no one after having given up her heart to Anthony. From
childhood she had looked up to him as her allotted husband--she had
grown up with a daily-increasing devotion to him. His good looks, his
frankness had helped to make of him an idol before whom she bowed down
and worshipped. He was swept out of the horizon of her ambition, and it
had left that prospect utterly blank and colourless. She had valued her
fortune, her home, only as means of enriching Anthony, and giving him a
worthy position in the county. Her fortune was now wholly without value
to her. She would have been contented to be a beggar with him, if she
could have possessed him wholly as her own.
Suddenly she started, and lost her colour; she saw Anthony coming up the
drive to the house. He also saw her on the terrace, in her white gown
under the yew-trees, and he waved his hat to her. She beckoned to him;
she could not help herself. She knew that it would have been right for
her to fly up the steps and hide in the walled garden which occupied the
slope of the hill above the terraces, but she was powerless to move--to
withhold her hand from signing to him to draw near.
He obeyed at once, and came up the steps to the first terrace with a
shouted salutation.
How handsome he was! What dark, sparkling eyes! What wavy long hair,
that fell over his brow and cheeks as he took off his broad-brimmed hat,
so that he was forced to put his hands to his face and brush the thick
curly locks back.
Julian did not rise; she sat on her bench as though frozen, and her
blood stood still in her arteries. She looked at him with eyes large and
trembling between the lashes. Then he came striding towards her, with
his hearty salutation, and at once all the blood that had been arrested
in her veins, as Jordan when the Ark stood in its course, rushed back in
pent-up, burning floods, and so blinded and stunned her that for a
moment or two she could neither see nor speak.
After a few moments, during which he stood respectfully by her, hat in
hand, she looked up into his eyes, and asked why he had come.
He was warm with walking, and the drops stood on his brow, and he had a
heightened glow in his face. He was handsomer than ever, she exclaimed
inwardly, and then thought, "Oh! if he had been mine! been mine! as he
ought to have been--as he would have been but for----" Then she checked
herself, assumed a coolness she did not feel, and asked, "Has anything
else brought you here than the desire to give us honest pleasure at
seeing again an old friend?"
"Indeed, Julian," answered Anthony, "I have come on more self-seeking
purposes. We are behind with our hay at Willsworthy. The place lies so
high, and is so bleak, that we are a fortnight behind you here; and then
the weather has played us tricks, so that none has as yet been saved. I
want additional help; there are none save our two men and myself.
Solomon Gibbs counts naught, and I cannot ask help from Hall, as you
well know. I do not desire to ask a favour elsewhere, and so I have come
here to see Fox, and ask his help."
"Fox is away--I believe he is at Hall. But I can answer your question,
and grant your petition, which I do with a ready heart. How many men do
you want? I will send all you desire--I will come myself and help toss
the hay--No," she checked herself, as the thought of Urith rose within,
"no, I will not go near Willsworthy myself, but I will send the
workmen."
"I thank you," answered Anthony. "We do not grow rich shears of hay as
you do here; but what does grow is said to be sweet. I hope it may be
so, for it is not over-much."
There was a tone of disparagement in reference to Willsworthy that
struck Julian.
"I have heard Fox comment on the place," she said, "and he thinks well
of it."
"A thing may look well at a distance, that won't bear looking into close
at hand," said Anthony.
She looked at him, and his eyes fell. He had not meant more than he had
said, but when she thus glanced up with a query in her eyes, he thought
that perhaps his words might apply to other things than grass fields and
tumble-down farm buildings.
Julian took up the letter from the seat by her, and passed her hand
lightly over the seat, as a sign to him to take it.
He did so, without more ado. He was heated and tired with his walk.
Then Julian resumed her embroidery, and bowed her head over it. She
waited for him to start some topic of conversation. But he was silent.
He who had formerly been full of talk and mirth, had become reserved and
grave.
After a long and painful silence, Julian asked, in a low voice, "What is
Urith about?"
"I beg your pardon?" asked Anthony, roused out of a reverie.
"Urith--what about Urith?"
"I asked what she was about."
"I cannot tell. Nothing in particular, I suppose."
The same tone as that in which he had spoken about Willsworthy.
"Your marriage does not seem to have improved your spirits. I miss your
olden gaiety."
"I have enough to take that out of me. There is my father's continued
ill-humour. What think you of that, Julian? Is there any immediate
prospect of his coming to a better mind?"
"My brother could answer this question better than I, for I have no
occasion or opportunity for speaking with your father, whereas Fox is
over at Hall twice or thrice in the week."
"What makes him go there?"
"There you ask me what once more I cannot answer. But let us say he goes
in your interest. He is your friend."
"About the only friend I have left," said Anthony, with bitterness.
"Fox is not the man I would choose if I had the selection," said Julian.
"I should know him better than most, as he is my brother--that is to
say, my half-brother. I thank God--only my half-brother. Take heed to
yourself, Anthony, that he does not play you a scurvy trick."
"What can he do?"
"You are generous and forgiving. Fox is neither. He has not forgiven you
that blow with the glove that injured his eye."
"You wrong him, Julian."
"All I can say to you is--do not trust him. I never--never trust him.
If he says one thing he means the contrary. Did he tell you that he went
to Hall with the end of persuading your father to forgive you?"
"He did not even mention to me that he saw my father often."
"Well," said Julian, drawing a long breath, "whilst we are together,
which is not often now, not as it was, let us talk of matters more
pleasant than the habits and ways of action of Fox."
"What shall we talk about?"
"There!" said Julian, putting her father's letter into his hand. "Read
that. If you cannot find a topic, I must help you to one."
Anthony read the letter with an elbow on each knee and his legs wide
apart, so that his head was bent low. As he read, Julian's eyes were on
him. Involuntarily a sigh escaped her bosom. If he thought of it at all
he attributed it to sympathy with her father's anxiety; had he looked up
and seen her face, he would have been undeceived. It was well for him
that he did not.
The letter interested him greatly. Like the bulk of the young men of the
West, he was keenly alive to the political situation, and was a hot
partisan. The gathering together of the men in taverns led to eager
discussion of politics; the orderly Government of the Protector, and the
extravagance and exactions of the restored Royalty, had aroused
comparison. Under Old Noll the name of England had been respected
abroad, and the English people could not forget and forgive the
humiliation of the Dutch fleet in the Medway and the burning of Chatham.
Those who had no love for Puritanism were, nevertheless, ardent
supporters of Liberty, and firmly resolved that their country should not
be brought under Roman Catholic despotism. The ill-treatment of the
Waldenses had roused great feeling in England, collections for them had
been made in every parish church, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
was not forgotten, the exiled Protestants filled all England with the
tale of the cruelties and oppression to which they had been subjected,
and had helped to deepen to a dogged determination in men's hearts the
resolve never to suffer the Roman religion to obtain the mastery again
in the land.
Anthony's brow darkened and his lips tightened as he read. When he had
done the letter he started to his feet, planted his hat on his head, and
exclaimed:
"My God! I wish it would come to blows, and that I could carry a pike."
"Pshaw!" said Julian; "what excitable creatures you men are concerning
matters that move us not a whit. I have forgotten what my father wrote
about. Against whom would you trail a pike? With whom come to blows?"
Anthony did not answer, for it was not easy to reply to these questions.
He would fight for liberty and religion. But against whom? He dare not
breathe even to himself the thought that it would be against his King.
"And, pray, why come to blows?"
"If you had read your father's letter with attention, you would know.
For my part, I should hail war, if there were a chance of it, that I
might have some occupation for my hands."
"You have the hay," said Julian, ironically.
"I want space to move, air to breathe. I am cramped. I--I do not know
what I want," he said, and dashed his hat on the ground again, and threw
himself into the seat by Julian.
"How would Urith relish you taking the pike for any cause?"
Anthony did not answer. He was looking sullenly, musingly before him. He
had found out what troubled him--what took the brightness out of his
life. The circle in which he moved, in which his energies were expended,
was too cramped. To make hay! Was that a fitting work to occupy his mind
and powers of body? His world--was that to be the little
two-hundred-acre estate of Willsworthy?
"You have not been married above two months, and you are already sighing
with impatience to be away in a battle-field--anywhere but at home, poor
Anthony!" Her face was turned from him that he might not see how her
cheeks flamed.
He said nothing. He did not even bid her a good-by; but he rose, resumed
his hat, and walked away, with his head down, absorbed in his thoughts.