LETTICE'S DIARY.
_August_ 19.--My father's wide-embracing schemes of correspondence
and reconciliation have been somewhat narrowed. My brother Roland
has been with us, and one or two of his friends about the Court; and
he has possessed my father with dark and chilling thoughts of the
Puritans.
"Indeed, there is an icy touch of cynical doubt in Roland which seems
to take the glow out of everything. He does not assail any person,
or any party, or any belief. All parties, he protests, are good, to
a certain extent, in their measure, and for their time. But he makes
you feel he scorns you as a fond and incredulous fool for believing
in any person, any party, or any truth, with the kind of faith which
leads to sacrificing oneself.
"The king, he says, declares that '_nothing_ shall ever part him
again from his three kingdoms;' and the king never says a foolish
thing.
"According to Roland, all enthusiasm is either in foolish men,
fanaticism, or, in able men, the hypocrisy of fanaticism, put on to
deceive the fanatics.
"When my father declaims against Oliver Cromwell as a wild fanatic,
and records instances of the destruction of painted windows and the
desecration of churches, Roland shrugs his shoulders, slightly raises
his eyebrows, smiles, and says:--
"'No doubt, that is what he would have had Job Forster and his
fellows believe. For himself, his fanaticism had the fortunate
peculiarity of always constraining him to climb as high as he could.
But he should not be too severely blamed. What can a shrewd man do,
when he sees every one taking the same road, but travel a little
faster than the rest, if he wishes to keep first?'
"'Surely,' said I 'you cannot deny that the Puritans were sincere?'
"'At first, probably, many of them,' he said, 'When they had only two
mites to give, doubtless they gave them. It is the destiny of mites
to be spent in that manner. Happily for the widow in the New
Testament, her subsequent history is not told.'
"'For shame, sir!' said my father. 'Say what you like of the
Puritans of to-day; I will suffer no profane allusions to the good
people who lived at the Christian era.'
"'Pardon me, sir!' retorted Roland. 'Anno Domini has no doubt made
those who lived near it sacred; except, of course, the Pharisees and
a few other reprobates, who are fair mark. But I assure you, nothing
could be further from my intuition than to cast the slightest
imputation on that excellent widow. I only suggest that if her
circumstances improved, no doubt her views enlarged with them. She
would naturally feel that while two mites might be bestowed without
regard to results, larger possessions involved wider
responsibilities, and must, therefore, be dispensed with more
prudence; as the Rabbis (who, no doubt, we should charitably suppose,
started with intentions as pure) had found out before.'
"'Speak plainly,' said my father; 'none of your Court riddles for me.
Do you mean to say the Puritans were like that good widow or like the
Pharisees?'
"'Sir,' replied Roland, 'you must excuse me if my charity reaches to
a later century than yours. You forbid any imputations on the early
Christians; I decline to make any against those of a later date. I
would leave the sentence to events. Before long there is reason to
hope that many of the Puritans will once more have an opportunity of
proving their principles, and, if they like, of returning to the
exemplary condition of the widow with the one farthing.'
"'What do you mean? There are to be no confiscations.'
"'I mean that the Savoy Conference will, I think, issue otherwise
than Mr. Baxter and his friends desire. Presbyterian shepherds,
Independent lions, and Episcopal lambs will, I think, scarcely at
present be made to lie down in the ample fold of the Church; and the
sheep to whom the fold naturally belongs, cannot, of course, be
expected to withdraw, especially after having tried the tender
mercies of the outside world as long as they have.
"'It is all the clergy!' said my father, provoked into
indiscriminating irritation with some one, as he always is in
discussions with Roland. 'It is always the parsons and the preachers
who won't let the people be quiet. Banish them all to the
plantations, and we should have peace to-morrow.'
"'And twice as many parsons and preachers to break it the day after
to-morrow,' said Roland. 'They have been trying it in England for
these eleven years; and I think you will find that has been the
result.'
"'Roland,' said my father, changing the conversation, 'we must find
some way of showing our gratitude to the Draytons. Every corner of
the demesne is in better order than I left it.'
"'Mr. Drayton is a clear-sighted man,' was the reply, 'and no doubt
foresaw that the rightful owners would return. However, we cannot be
too grateful; and no doubt circumstances will give us opportunities
of returning his kindness. He will scarcely escape some little
fines, which we can get lightened. Besides, they are sure, sooner or
later, to get entangled with some of the laws against conventicles;
Mistress Dorothy, or some of them. It is the way of the family. And
then we can be the mouse to nibble the lion's net.'
"'At least,' I said, 'you cannot accuse the Daytons of hypocrisy.'
"'Scarcely,' he replied, coolly, 'they are on the other side of the
balance, where conscience weighs heavier than brains. But at all
events,' he added, turning to my father, 'we are sure to be able to
assist Mr. Drayton's son; for, from all I hear, he is scarcely out of
the circle of those who are liable to the punishment of treason, so
that you may set your mind quite at rest, sir, as to having
opportunities of showing our gratitude.'
"I know he said this to silence me. And it did silence me. I dared
not defend the Draytons, for fear of further rousing my father
against them.
"But Walter, who had been listening to the debate hitherto with some
amusement, here broke in.
"'Roger Drayton is no traitor,' said he. 'He took the wrong side,
unfortunately for him, and you the right side; but a more loyal
gentleman does not breathe.'
"'That depends on the construction the crown lawyers set on loyalty,'
retorted Roland.
And the conversation ceased.
"_August_ 20_th_.--After that discussion, Roland had a walk with my
father round the estate, and the next morning he said to me:--
"'I will not have the family disgraced, Lettice, by Walter's reckless
ways. If he must beg or borrow, let him beg or borrow of some of
those gay courtiers who help him to spend. Not of a man like Roger
Drayton, to whom we already owe too much--a Puritan, too, a soldier
of the usurper; and, for aught I know, a regicide.'
"'Did Walter borrow of Roger Drayton?' I said, and this time I could
not help flushing crimson.
"'Yes, yes!' he replied, angrily; 'and Roland says, moreover, child,
it was thou who introduced them to each other. I will have no
clandestine intercourse, Lettice. Thou shalt see I will not!'
"'Father,' I said, rising, 'has Roland's poisonous tongue gone as far
as that? Does he dare to accuse me or Roger Drayton of that? If you
wish to know what the understanding between Roger Drayton and me is,
it is this--I thought you knew it; my mother did. We have promised
to be true to each other till death, and beyond it, for ever. And
the promise was scarce needed. For the love that makes it sacred was
there before.'
"For they had called Roger a traitor. And it was no time to measure
words.
"I write these down, because I like to see them, as well as to
remember that I said them.
"My father drew a long breath.
"'Pretty words,' he said, 'for a lady who recognizes the divine right
of kings, parents, and all in authority.'
"He paced up and down the room for some time, speaking to himself.
"'Very strange, very strange,' he said; 'up to a certain point as
gentle as her mother; and once past that, like a lioness. Very
strange.'
"And then still to himself,--
"''Tis a pity; 'tis a thousand pities. If he had been anything but
what Roland says every one says he is; if he had been only a little
misled! But now impossible; of course, impossible!
"''Tis a pity, Lettice,' he then said to me in a vexed tone, but very
courteously. 'Roland told me of a neighbour of ours, a good and
loyal gentleman, who would be but too proud of the honour of my
daughter's hand. As fine an estate as any in the country, and
marching with our own. 'Tis a pity, child, for I should not have
lost thee. And I should do ill without thee.'
"'You will not lose me, father,' I said.
"'Nay, nay,' he said, 'thou art one to be trusted, I know that well.
Never believe I doubt that, Lettice, for any hasty word I speak.
Never believe I doubt that.'
"And he kissed me and went his way.
"No, he does not doubt me. But there is something in Roland which
tempts one to doubt everything and every one.
"Did I say his touch was icy? Would it were only that. Frost rouses
nature to a vigorous resistance, or checks it with strengthening
repression. There is a healthy frost of doubt which kills the
insects which infest piety, and checking the too luxuriant growths of
faith with a wholesome cold, braces them from mere leafage to solid
stem and fruit.
"But Roland's influence is not the wholesome winter of doubting and
inquiring, which seems to interpose between the successive summers of
advancing faith, testing its roots. It is a languid atmosphere of
doubt, in which everything is alike uncertain; every thing alike
mean, worthless, earthly. The disbelief in goodness itself, and
truth itself, which, like a pestilential malaria, rises from the
sloughs of a wicked life, such as our Court encourages. In the
depths of its degradation I believe he himself scorns to soil the
sole of his foot. But he stands on the edge and breathes the poison
into his brain, and breathes it out again in bitter and cynical talk.
"While poor reckless Walter, capable not merely of creeping safely
along the dull wayworn ways of life, but of soaring to its noblest
heights, plunges into the midst of the pollution; until the very
wings with which he was meant to soar upward are clogged with the
evil thing; and instead of buoying him upwards, drag him downwards,
helpless, blinded, so that he can not only no longer soar, but
scarcely even creep.
"What will the end be?
"Often this weighs on me more than even Roger's peril. For that is
not for the soul, which is the man; and that is but for the moment.
"Sometimes my spirit sinks, sinks as if its wings, too, were all
clipped and broken. And I have dreadful visions of one precious life
ending in dishonour before man here, in this England, in this age;
and the other in dishonour before God and good men for ever. And
Roland standing by and observing both, and saying, with a lifting of
his eyebrows, between pity and scorn,--
"Yes, that is the issue of passion, for syrens--or for clouds. That
is the result of giving the reins to enthusiasms; religious or
otherwise. Poor Walter; and poor Roger! With a few grains more of
self-interest and common sense, they might both have stood where I
stand, and learned the vanity of everything in the world or out of
it, except, as the preacher says, getting well through it."
_August_ 27_th_.--The minister who succeeded Placidia Nicholls'
husband during the Commonwealth has been superseded by Dr. Rich, a
scholar who seems to have lived through those stormy times scarce
hearing their tumult; so near and so much more important seem to him
the tumults and controversies of former times. He will scarce assert
that Monday is the day after Sunday, without proving it by citations
from a catena of fathers and schoolmen; which sets one piously
questioning, whether what needs so many authorities to sustain it is
itself substantial. Otherwise, the matter of his statements seem so
free from everything every one does not believe, that one would have
thought no proof needed.
"A most friendly, blameless, and harmless gentleman, however, he is;
although weighed down a little as to thinking by the authority of so
many ancients, and as to living by the necessities of eleven
motherless children, who have to be fed and instructed; since,
unfortunately, the children of such a learned man came into the world
as destitute of patristical lore as if they had been born in the
first century, or their father were a Leveller.
"It does seem hard that so much learning cannot become hereditary,
like pointing, or retrieving. It is such a great hindrance in the
way of the moderns being so much wiser than the ancients as they
ought to be.
"On one page of modern ecclesiastical history, however, it is easy to
make Dr. Rich, or any of his eleven, eloquent. And that is the
record of the good deeds of Olive and Dr. Antony, who seem to have
maintained and lodged the whole family throughout the times of the
Commonwealth. They are worthy, he says, to have lived in the days of
the Apostolic Fathers; and tears come into his eyes when he speaks of
Olive's little devices for delicately helping him. 'She thought I
was too buried in my books to see,' he said. 'But, in truth, I was
too much overwhelmed with their kindness to speak.'
"The elder girls, too, have endless stories of Olive's motherly
counsels and succour. From their account, Maidie and Dolly must be
the blithest little un-Puritanical darlings in the world; and the
boys bold little Cavaliers.
"_August_ 30_th_.--At our first return I felt almost more an exile in
some ways than while we were in France. People had fitted into each
other so closely as to leave no room for us but a kind of show-place
out of every one's way. The myriads of fine inter-lacing fibres
which bind communities together, and root each in its place, can only
grow slowly, one by one, as storms straining the boughs, or summers
overlading them with fruit, made them needed.
"Even eleven years of mere Time almost place you in another
generation. Those we left babes are shy lads and lasses; the
children are young mothers at their cottage doors, with their own
babes in their arms, courtesying and wondering we do not know them;
the youths and maids are sober men and matrons, giving counsel on the
perils of life to the youths and maidens we left babes. And the
changes of these eleven years have not been those of mere Time.
"Not the people only have changed, but the country:--the whole way in
which every one looks at every thing. In our youth King and
Parliament were the powers which ruled and divided the world. Men of
forty now scarcely remember a king really reigning. Men of twenty
scarcely remember a Parliament, save the poor mockery of a 'Rump'
which Oliver 'purged,' and which the London butchers roasted in
effigy--that is, in beef--at the Restoration.
"The names honoured and dreaded in our youth, names scarce uttered
without the eye flashing, and the cheek flushing with admiration or
indignation, have passed from the regions of popular enthusiasm to
the sober and silent tribunals of history. Many which seemed to us
indelibly engraven on the hearts of men for renown or for abhorrence,
Sir John Hotham, 'the first traitor,' Sir Bevil Granvill, Sir Jacob
Astley, are--except among those who personally recollect
them--unknown; whilst around the loftier heights still in sight
strange mists of legend already begin to gather, especially among the
peasantry. Prince Rupert is the 'black man' with whose name men of
twenty have been spellbound into submission in the nursery.
Archbishop Laud and Strafford, in our Puritan village, have well-nigh
taken the place of the Spaniard and the Pope of our childhood, and
rise before the imagination of the people as fiery-eyed giants,
rattling chains, and thirsting for the blood of Englishmen.
"Hampden, Pym, Falkland, Eliot, are mere grand, silent shades,
walking the Elysian fields of the past, far-off, among the heroes,
Leonidas, Brutus, or the Gracchi, but in no way disturbing the
pursuits or influencing the thoughts of the present.
"Instead, people speak frequently and familiarly of Lambert,
Fleetwood, and others, whose names to me sound as strange as those of
the combatants of the Fronde. And, besides these, there are the
names which have shifted from side to side, until they seem to have
lost all meaning.
"The names of religious influence among the Puritans--John Howe, Dr.
Owen, Vice-chancellor of Oxford, and Richard Baxter--are, through
Mistress Dorothy, less unfamiliar to me. Our good Bishop Hall is
dead. But Dr. Jeremy Taylor, whose discourse my mother loved so
well, still lives, and fills the church with the music of his
thoughts.
"The one English name which, on the continent of Europe, overshadowed
(or outshone) all the rest--he whom the young King Louis (the
Fourteenth) called 'the greatest and happiest prince in Europe'--is
one men scarce utter willingly now. The emotions which his name
calls out have indeed still a perilous fire in them.
"The other name, of which we used to hear most in foreign parts,
until it seemed at times as if, to the outer world, the Doing of
England were alone manifest in Oliver Cromwell, and her Thought in
John Milton--is also proscribed. The poet's treasonable 'Defences,'
which scholars abroad admired (on account of the Latin I suppose),
have been burned in public. But he himself will, it is thought, be
spared; although for the present he is in concealment. A poet of our
name and kindred, to whom they say he showed kindness, is doing his
utmost to save him. His blindness, and the great genius and renown
he hath, also give him a kind of sacredness. Some say Heaven hath
punished him enough already; others that Heaven shields him, and
makes his head sacred from violent touch by a crown of sorrow.
"It is from Isaac Nicholls, Mistress Placidia's son, I hear most of
Mr. John Milton. Isaac is a strange sprout from such a stock. He
careth scarce at all for the world as a place to get on in; and
almost infinitely as a theatre to contemplate, with its scenes
painted by divine hands. He seems as familiar with the past as Dr.
Rich; but in a different way. To Dr. Rich the past seems a book, and
the present another book--a commentary on it. To Isaac the past
seems not a book, but a life, and the present a life flowing from it.
"The names of the heroes seem as the names of friends to him, from
Leonidas to Falkland. The voices of the poets seem all living, from
Homer to Milton. And while Mistress Nicholls wears out heart and
brain in anxious cares to make him an inheritance, he finds a king's
treasury in a book, or in a carpet of mosses and wild-flowers, such
as clothes the sweet old glade by the Lady Well.
"Of all the people I remember, no one seems to me to have grown so
old as Mistress Nicholls; and of all the new people, none seems to me
so delightfully new as Isaac Nicholls.
"The prohibition laid by my father (through Roland's influence)
against all intercourse with the Draytons, does not extend to
Mistress Nicholls' home. She is the nearest link I have with the old
Netherby home. Isaac comes often to the Hall, and spends long days.
The library is a new world to him. And he is a new world to me; or,
rather, his mind is to me a mirror in which all the black, blank
England of these eleven years lives and moves, and has voice and
color.
"It was a warm evening early in July when I first saw Isaac.
Mistress Nicholls was sitting spinning in the porch of her neat
house, on the outskirts of the village.
"'As diligent as ever, Mistress Nicholls,' I said.
"'Yes, Mistress Lettice,' said she, in a voice which had fallen into
an habitual whine (such as is thought by some characteristic of the
Puritans in general). 'Ah, yes, these are no times for a lone woman
to slacken her hands. It is not by folding of the hands that body
and soul are kept together in these days.'
"As she spoke she led me to a chair in the parlor. In the window was
sitting a lad with round shoulders and long hair falling ever his
forehead, as he pored over a large folio on the window seat.
"He turned round suddenly at her words, and said, in an abrupt, shy
way, yet with a gentle, cheerful voice:
"'Oh, mother, don't speak of body and soul, we have much more than
food and raiment.'
'"I do not deny,' she replied to me in a voice half querulous, half
apologetic, 'that the Lord has been merciful, far above my deserts,
no doubt. We have never yet been suffered to want, I freely
acknowledge, and we ought to be very thankful, Mistress Lettice; very
thankful, no doubt.'
"Hearing my name the boy rose, and in a quiet, nervous way, came
forward, held out his hand, and then drew back, blushing, and made an
awkward bow.
"'My Isaac has heard of you,' said his mother, 'from his cousins.
Isaac thinks no one fit to be compared with his cousins, Maidie and
Dolly Antony.'
"'Olive's children!' I said. And I took his hand and held it in both
mine. It seemed to bring me nearer them.
"'Maidie and Dolly think no one fit to be compared with Mistress
Lettice,' he said.
"It touched me much. And with so much in common, friendship between
Isaac and me waxed apace.
"Yes, it was I, Lettice Davenant, whom Olive's fond recollections had
made her children's queen of beauty and love; the fairy princess of
their fairy tales; the Una of their 'milk white lamb.' They knew all
about me; the adventures of our childhood were their nursery stories;
the love of our youth was the ideal friendship of their childhood.
"And now I come back to them no longer their cotemporary in the
perpetual youth of fairyland, but their mother's; and here were these
boys, Isaac and Austin Rich, thinking no one in the world so sweet
and fair as Maidie and Dolly Antony.
"Over again, the old story! Yet it does not make me feel old, but
young again. For our old friendships,--our old faithful love,--are
not dead, nor like to die; 'incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth
not away.' That is a heavenly inheritance which the heart enters on
here, or never there.
"Not years nor sorrows make us old, but selfish cares. As Rachel
Forster said, when I asked her whether Mistress Nicholls had suffered
from any uncommon griefs or necessities, that she looked so old, and
seemed to feel so poor.
"Nay, Mistress Lettice, nay! To my recollection Mistress Placidia
was never young; and all the riches of the Spanish main could not
make her rich. She has such a terrible empty space inside to fill.
Not even the Almighty, the possessor of heaven and earth, can make
her rich, at least not with riches. And, sure enough, He has tried,
to my belief, near all the ways He has. But it is of no use. But I
do think He has begun to make her poor. And that is something.'
"'What do you mean, Rachel?' I said.
"'Time was, though, poor soul, when she was never able to think that
she _had_ anything, she thought great store of what she _was_,' said
Rachel. 'But now that is broken down. I do believe the Lord took
her down that step when her boy was born. And that step, the
emptying and going down into the depths, in my belief, begins to make
us Christians. Then comes the step up again into the light. And,
poor soul, it seems to me, ever since, the good Lord has been trying,
by all manner of ways, to lead her up that stair. But she has never
had the heart to come. And so, down there, out of the light, her
poor wisht soul has grown old, and white, and withered like; and her
voice has got a moan in it, like a voice tuned in a sick-chamber, and
never lifted up in the fresh air, in a good hearty psalm. 'Tisn't
years or griefs that make us old, nor poverty that makes us poor, to
my seeing, but looking down instead of up, and being shut up alone
with self, instead of with God.'
"And Job looked up, and said, with a smile and a nod:--
"'She knows well enough, wife; she knows it isn't anything the Lord
sends that makes us old or poor; but what the devil sends. The loss
of all the world can't make us poor, and the rolling by of all the
ages can't make us old, any more than the angels. But there's no
need to tell. She knows. Mistress Lettice knows.'
"Job did not look up from the tool he was repairing as he spoke. But
I felt that his heart had seen into mine.
"And it is a wonderful comfort to me to think that that good old
Puritan blacksmith knows.
"For he has camped many a night on the field with Roger, as Rachel
has often told me. And, no doubt, he must have seen into Roger's
heart as well as into mine. And, no doubt, those two, who have loved
each ether so well, have a warm corner in their prayers for us.
"_September_ 1_st_.--Isaac Nicholls has wonderful stories of the
settlers in the American Plantations. The wilderness across the
Atlantic seems to have been to him and Olive's children a kind of
Atlantis, and Fairy or Giant land;--what the Faery Queen or the
stories of Hercules or the Golden Fleece were to us.
"He has tales of daring and endurance concerning those Pilgrims to
the West which seem to me worthy of the old heroic days. Of weeping
congregations parting on the sea-shores of the old world, reluctantly
left. Of congregations, free and delivered, praising God in the
midst of danger and distress on the shores of the new. Of a hundred
English men and women forsaking land and friends for religion, and
going in a little ship across the ocean, landing among the wooded
creeks, half of them perishing in the cold of the first winter; but
the fifty who survived never murmuring and never despairing. Of
toils to till the new fields by day, and watchings at night against
the Indians. Of exploring parties going through trackless forests
till they found a habitable nook by the borders of some lake or
stream. Of green meadows and golden corn-fields slowly won from the
wilderness; and pleasant gardens springing up around the new homes,
with strange fruits and flowers, and birds with song as strange as
the speech of the Indians. Of old Puritan psalms sung by the
sea-shore, till the homely villages arose, with their homely
churches, as in Old England on the village greens.
"It sounds, as he tells it, like a story of some old Grecian colony,
with church bells through it;--a curious mosaic of a Greek legend
(such as Roger used to tell me), and the Acts of the Apostles. But
the colonists were not Athenians nor Spartans, but Englishmen. And
it all happened only forty years ago. Or, as Isaac believes, it is
all happening still. For although the great tide of Puritan
emigration has ceased during the Commonwealth, there are always a few
joining the numbers.
"'And,' saith Isaac, 'Maidie says Uncle Roger thinks the tide will
set in again for the wilderness, if things go on as they are going
now at Court.'
"But here Isaac halts abruptly, as treading on forbidden ground, and
the conversation is turned; he little knowing how gladly I would have
it flow in the same current, and I scarce deeming it keeping faith
with my father to make an effort that it should.
"The two living men who seem to fill the largest space in Isaac's
admiring gaze, are Mr. John Milton, whom all the world knows, and a
John Bunyan (not even a Mr.), a poor tinker and an Anabaptist, whom
no one knows, I should think, out of his own neighbourhood or sect,
but whom Isaac declares to have a way of making past things present,
and far-off things near, and unseen things visible, as only the poets
have.
"Mr. John Milton one can understand being the hero of a boy like
Isaac; losing his sight, as believes, in the 'Defence of the People
of England'; filling all Europe with his song, shaking the thrones of
persecuting princes by his eloquent pleadings for the oppressed
Christians of the Alps, seeming to find in his blindness (as a saint
in the darkness of death) the unveiling of higher worlds; a gentleman
with a countenance which my mother thought noble and beautiful as Dr.
Jeremy Taylor, or any about the late king's Court; a scholar whose
taste and learning the scholars of Italy send to consult, and whose
birth-house they come to see in London as of their own Petrarch or
Dante Alighieri; a poet whom men who can judge seem to lift
altogether out of the choirs of living singers, into a place by
himself among the poets who are dead.
"But this Anabaptist tinker! It is a strange delusion. I cannot
wonder at Mrs. Nicholls' aversion from such guidance for her son,
especially as it leads into the most perilous religious path he can
tread.
"_October_.--I have seen the Anabaptist tinker and heard him preach,
and I wonder no more at Isaac's enthusiasm.
"It was in a barn a mile or two out of Netherby. Isaac persuaded me
to go, and I went; and wrapping myself in a plain old mantle, crept
into a corner and listened.
"And there I heard the kind of sermon I have been wanting to hear so
long.
"Heaven brought so near, and yet shown to be so infinite; the human
heart shown so dark and void, and yet so large and deep, and capable
of being made so fair and full of good. Grace, the 'grace which
over-mastereth the heart;' not something destroying or excluding
nature, but embracing, renewing, glorifying it. Christ our Lord
shown so glorious, and yet so human; more human than any man, because
without the sin which stunts and separates. Yes, that was it. This
tinker made me see Him, brought me down to His feet; not to the
Baptist, or Luther, or Calvin, or any one, but to Christ, who is all
in one. Brought me down to His feet, rebuked, humbled, emptied; and
then made me feel His feet the loftiest station any creature could be
lifted to.
"He began, as I think all highest preaching does, by appealing not to
what is meanest, but what is noblest in us; not by showing how easy
religion is, but how great.
"He began thus:--'When He had called the people, Jesus said,
"Whosoever will come after Me let him deny himself, and take up his
cross and follow Me." Let him count the charge he is like to be at;
for following Me is not like following some other masters. The wind
sets always on my face, and the foaming rage of the sea of this
world, and the proud and lofty waves thereof, do continually beat
upon the bark Myself and My followers are in; he therefore that will
not run hazards, let him not set foot in this vessel."
"Then he spoke of the greatness of the soul that could be lost and
should be saved. God breathed it. 'And the breath of the Lord lost
nothing in being made a living soul. O man! dost thou know what thou
art? Made in God's image! I do not read of anything in heaven or
earth so made, or so called, but the Son of God. The King Himself,
the great God, desires communion with it. He deems no suit of
apparel good enough for it but one made for itself.'
"Then he spoke of the wonderful beauty of the body. This 'costly
cabinet of that curious thing the soul.' The more it is thought of
and its works looked into, the more wonderfully it is seen to be
made. Yet is the body but the house, the raiment, of that noble
creature the soul. It is a tabernacle; the soul, the worshipper
within. Yet we are not to forget the body is a tabernacle, no common
dwelling, but a holy place, a temple.
"Then he spoke of the powers of this 'noble creature:' of Memory, its
'register;' of Conscience, its seat of judgment; of the Affections,
the hands and arms with which it embraces what it loves. God's anger
is never, he said, against these powers--'the natives of the
soul'--but against their misuse.
"But the soul being so noble, it is the soul that sins. Not the
body; that is passive. And it is the sinful impenitent soul which
suffers, 'when the clods of the valley are sweet to the wearied body.'
"A whole world of wisdom, the wisdom I had been longing to hear,
seemed to me to lie in the words of this tinker. How many dark
hearts would be cheered, and downcast hearts lifted up and closed
narrowed souls opened and expanded to embrace the light around, if
this could be understood! The body is not vile, it is God's curious
costly cabinet; His tabernacle to be kept holy. The body sins not.
Sin is not in matter but in spirit. Conversion is a liberation of
all the '_natives_' from the intrusive tyranny of sin and Satan, a
making the whole man every whit whole. God's anger is not against
the natural affections or understanding. They are not to be
destroyed, crushed, or fettered. They are to be liberated, expanded,
quickened with the new life.
"How many of the dark pages of Church history already written, and
now being written, might never have been, if the theology of this
tinker could be understood!
"Luther, they say, also knew these things (and Roger used to declare
Oliver Cromwell did, but of this I know nothing). Strange it is to
see how from height to height these souls respond to each other, like
bonfires carrying the good news from range to range, throughout the
ages. These are the wise; wise like angels; wise like little
children. Half way down it seems to me, walk the smaller ingenious
men of each generation, laboriously building elaborate erections
which all the ingenious men on their own hill-side and on their own
level admire, but which those on the other side cannot see. And
below, in the valleys, the reapers reap, and the little children
glean, and the women work and weep and wait, and wonder at the skill
of the builders on the hill-side, so far above them to imitate. But
when they want to know if the good news from the far country is still
there for them, as for those of old, they look not to the hillsides
but to the hill-tops, where the bonfires flash the gospels--plainer
even in the night than in the day--and where the earliest and latest
sunbeams rest. And so the eyes of the watchers on the mountain tops,
of the children and the lowly labourers in the valleys, and of the
angels in the heavens, meet. And when the night comes--which comes
to all on earth--the ingenious builders on the hill-sides, no doubt,
have also to look to the mountain-tops, where the watch-fires burn,
and the sunset lingers and the sunrise breaks.
"This tinker seems to have a soul ordered like a great kingdom, all
its powers in finest use and in most perfect subordination. But
Isaac says this kingdom sprang from a chaos of war, and conflict, and
anguish, such as scarce any human souls know.
"In this also like Luther, who had his terrible civil wars to pass
through ere the Kingdom came within. (And Roger said Oliver Cromwell
had.) To John Bunyan (Isaac told me), the finding of an old thumbed
copy of Luther on the Galatians was like the discovery of the spring
in the wilderness to Hagar. 'I do prefer that book,' he said,
'before all others, except the Holy Bible, for a wounded conscience.'
"So they meet--these simplest, wisest, widest, humblest, highest
souls, and understand each other's language, and take up each other's
song in antiphons from age to age.
"Yet, I fear, this can scarce be so with John Bunyan. His voice can
scarce reach beyond his own time, deep as it is. For how could an
unlearned tinker write a book which ages to come would read?
"And, withal, he is a true Englishman. That also pleased me well in
him. I think the greatest men who are most human, most for all men,
are also most characteristically national; it is the smaller great
men who are cosmopolitan. Even as St. Paul was a Hebrew of the
Hebrews, Martin Luther was German to the core, they say (and Roger
said Oliver Cromwell was English to the core). And so is John Bunyan.
"A square, solid brow; a ruddy, healthy, sensible countenance; a body
muscular, strong-boned, tall, compact; eyes keen, calm, quick,
sparkling, observant, kindly, with twinklings of humour in them, and
tears, and anger, but not restless or dreamy; a mouth firm, capable
of rebuke or of quiet smiles. In company, Isaac says, not 'given to
loquacity or much discourse, unless some urgent occasion required
it;' and then 'accomplished with a quick discerning of persons, being
of a good judgment and an excellent wit.' The dumbness (natural to
all Englishmen worth anything) not absent in him; speech being with
him not for ornament but for use.
"_November_, 1660.--Isaac is in great trouble. John Bunyan has been
cast into prison. Mistress Nicholls also is in great trouble,
fearing Isaac may be involved in John Bunyan's disgrace, seeing he
loves so much to hear him.
"'It is a very peculiar trial,' saith she, 'that her boy should
embrace the most perilous form of all the perilous religions of the
day.'
"'Not the most, mother,' said Isaac. 'The Quakers are worse.'
"Indeed everyone seems to agree that of all the sects which have
sprung up during the Commonwealth, the Quakers are the worst. I
should like to see one.
"_February_, 1661.--I am grieved to the heart at these ungenerous
revenges. It was an ill way to celebrate the martyrdom of His Sacred
Majesty, to drag the bodies of brave men from the graves in the
Abbey, and hang them on gibbets.
"Senseless, mean, and barbarous revenges! They should have heard
John Bunyan the tinker preach. It was not the body that sinned.
They should have let it rest.
"My father thinks Oliver Cromwell deserved anything; but he is not
pleased at their having disturbed the bones of his mother and
daughter, and of Robert Blake, and cast them into a pit in St.
Margaret's churchyard.
"'A peaceable old gentlewoman, who never did any harm that I heard,'
said he, 'except bringing the usurper into the world; and a young
gentle lady too good for such a stock. Their dust would not have
hurt that of the kings'. Doubtless it was insolence to lay them
there; but it was scarce an English gentleman's work to molest them.'
"But about the violation of Blake's tomb his anger waxed hot. 'A
good old Somersetshire family,' he said. 'They might have let him
rest; if only for the fright he gave the Pope, the Turk, and the
Spaniard.'
"I was afraid to go near Job Forster's for some days after I heard of
these desecrations. When at last I went, Rachel could not altogether
restrain her indignation. Job only said, "Never heed, never heed.
_He_ they sought to dishonour doesn't heed. What is all the world
but a churchyard? In "the twinkling of an eye" will anyone have time
to see where the bodies rise from? Or dost think the gold and jewels
on kings' tombs will have much of a shine when the Gates of Pearl are
open, and the poor body they have thrown like a dog's beneath the
gibbet shall enter them shining like a star?'
"But then something broke down his fortitude, and he added, in a
husky voice,--
"'Yet England might have found him another grave. He did his best
for her; he did his best.'
"_January_, 1662.--A long break in these pages. There has not been
much very cheerful to write. And I would never write moans. These
it is better to make into prayers.
"Our house is not altogether at unity with itself.
"Roland has brought home his wife.
"From the first, my father did not affect her.
"She took her new honours more loftily and easily than he liked.
"'A pretty Frenchified poppet,' he called her.
"I have done my best to smooth matters, although it is a little
vexatious to the temper, sometimes, to be counselled with matronly
airs, and consoled for my single state by this young creature.
"It has been often difficult to keep the peace.
"Naturally, the old associations of the old place are nothing to her,
and she offends my father continually, by laughing at the old
servants, the old furniture, and what she calls our old-fashioned
ways in general.
"But to-day she kindled him into a flame which, for the time, will
probably keep her at a distance.
"She ventured to propose that she should change my mother's oratory
into a cabinet for herself, 'to be draped,' said she, 'with silk, and
adorned with statues, and be like the apartments of the "Lady" at
Whitehall.'
"Which brought out some very plain English from my father concerning
the 'Lady,' and all who favored her.
"'The king,' he vowed, 'might degrade his palaces, if he pleased, and
if he dared. But he would see the Hall and everything in it burned
to the ground, rather than have the place where my mother had lived
the life and prayed the prayers of an angel, polluted by being
likened to the dwelling of a creature it was a dishonour for a man to
tolerate or for a woman to name.'
"So, for the time, the controversy ended. And, in a few days, Roland
and his wife went back to the Court.
"But my father is more and more uneasy and irritable. 'In his
youth,' he said, 'in the days of the good of sacred memory, all were
noble, rebels, royalists, all. Eliot, Pym, Hampden, Essex, were
gentlemen and true Englishmen, as well as Falkland, Bevil Granvill,
or Sir Jacob Astley. And all, however deluded, feared God, and
honoured all true men and women. But now,' says he, 'all are base
together--Court, Royalists, Roundheads--all. Why could not Roger
Drayton have kept to such politics as Hampden's or his own father's,
and not disgraced himself by joining these furious traitors and
sectaries?"
"By which I know that my father has relentings towards the Draytons,
though he will by no means confess it.
"_June_, 1662.--I have seen a Quaker. And a very soft and mild kind
of creature it seems to be.
"Olive's children are at Netherby. To-day I met her little girls at
Mistress Nicholls's. Maidie is a darling little elfin queen. And
Dolly is a sweet, little Puritan angel. And with them was Annis Nye,
their nurse, a Quaker maiden, with a heroical serene face, and a
voice even and soft, like a river flowing through meadows. She
attracted me much; a harmless dove of a maiden she seemed.
"But when I said so to Job Forster, on my way home, he shook his head
and muttered,--
"'Soft enough, and deep enough! You would find what kind of
gentleness she has if you saw her take the bit between her teeth and
make straight for the pillory, and you had to hold her in and keep
her safe, if you could. Why, I'm always expecting, morn and night,
that poor maid'll get a 'concern' to go and testify against the
king's mistresses, or the Popish bishops' surplices. To say nothing
of the chance of her setting off to preach in New England, or to the
Turks, or to the Pope cf Rome, as some of them do when they are well
persuaded it is more dangerous than anything else. And say what
George Fox may of the Protector, she'd find the tender mercies of the
Court scarce so tender as he was. If you want to make your life a
burden to you, Mistress Lettice,' he concluded dolefully, shaking his
head, 'you've nought to do but to get your heart tender to a Quaker
(as no man or woman with a heart in them can help getting it to that
wilful maid), and try to keep her out of harm's way. You'll find
you've no rest left, day nor night. I've had hard things to do in my
time, but never one that beat me over and over like trying to keep a
Quaker safe.'
"_July_, 1662.--My father, a few days since, met Maidie and Dolly in
the village, and asked whose children they were.
"In the evening he said to me,--
"'Those children of Olive Drayton's, at least, are guilty of no
crimes, political or other. Have them to the house, Lettice, if thou
wilt.'
"And, since, the old house and the gardens have grown musical with
the frolics of these young creatures, Isaac and Maidie, Austin Rich
and Dolly. It makes me young again to see their story of life
beginning.
"And it is pleasant to feel there is so much of youth left in my
heart to respond to the youth in theirs, so that they see and feel my
being with a sunshine, not a shadow.
"Sometimes I feel as if I could be content to take this on-looker's
place in life, and be a kind of grandmother to every one's children.
If I could only be sure that Roger and the old friends were also
content and secure.
"But the times press hard on them, and are like, they say, to press
harder yet.
"_August_ 30.--The harder times for the Puritans have come, or have
begun. A week since, on St. Bartholomew's Day, two thousand of their
ministers resigned their benefices, rather than do what was commanded
by the Act of Uniformity.
"My father is angry with the 'parsons' all round; with the bishops
for driving the Puritans out, with the Puritans for going.
"Mistress Dorothy writes from Kidderminster:--
"'Mr. Baxter and sixteen hundred of His Majesty's most loyal
subjects, and the Church's most faithful ministers, banished from
their pulpits. We had looked for another return when, like Judah of
old, we hastened to be the first to bring back our king. But return,
or no return, let not any think we repent our loyalty. We will pray
for His Majesty by twos or threes, if, by his command, we are
forbidden to assemble in larger numbers. Pray that his throne may be
established, and his counsellors converted.'
"Job Forster smiles grimly under the gray soldierly hair on his upper
lip, and says, sententiously, between the strokes on his anvil,--
"'They are finding it out. One after another. The four thousand
Quakers in the jails. The Scottish Covenanted men, with the choice
between the bishops and the gallows. Jenny Geddes will scarce rise
from the dead to help them now. They are learning how the king
remembers their sermons, to which they made him hearken so many
hours. And how he keeps their Covenant, to which they had him swear
so many oaths. The French, and the Dutch, and the Spaniards found it
out long ago. And now the two thousand parsons are finding it out.
And by-and-by, nigh the whole country will find it out. But Rachel
and I will scarce be here to see.'
"'Find out what?' I said.
"'That the Lord Protector's death was no such great blessing to any
but himself,' said Job. And he became at once too absorbed in his
work to pursue the conversation.
"_October_ 29_th_.--To-day, the Post brought tidings which, when my
father read, he dashed the letter from him, and started to his feet
with an anathema, brief but deep.
"Then he paced up and down the room once or twice in silence, and
then he said suddenly to me,--
"'Lettice, where is Roger Drayton?'
"The abrupt question startled me for an instant, so that I could not
reply. I did not know what new calamity had come, or was coming.
And I suppose the color left my face. For at once my father added
very gently,--
"'I should not have asked thee. I know well thou hast kept my
prohibition but too loyally. I will send a messenger to Netherby
with the letter.'
"He wrote a few rapid lines, and despatched a servant, with the
letter without delay.
"Then deliberately and quietly he took his sword from his side and
hung it up beside my grandfather's in the hall.
"'For the last time!' he said. 'The honor of England is gone for
ever. _The king has sold Dunkirk to the French_.'
"And with a restless impatience he went on,--
"'Come, come, child! We will make no babyish moans. Get on thy
mantle and come round the old place. A man may still serve the
country by making two blades of grass where one grew before. But by
bearing arms under traitors who sell the honor of England to pay for
the paint and gewgaws of wicked women, never again. Henceforth call
thyself a husbandman's daughter; but never again a soldier's. In
name and in arms England is disgraced, child, dishonored, made a
bye-word and a laughing-stock to the whole world. But we may still
make the corn grow thicker and the sheep fatter. So who shall say
there is not something worth living for yet?
"'Something worth doing yet,' he added, 'for the country of Eliot and
Falkland, and Robert Blake, who made the Pope and the Turk quake in
their castles, and now lies tossed like a dog into a pit in St.
Margaret's churchyard!'
"But he did not tell me what was in the letter he sent to Netherby.
"_October_ 31_st_.--The autumn wind was softly drifting the brown
leaves into heaps round the roots of the trees, by the Lady Well, and
softly adding to them by loosening one by one from the branches. I
was thinking he was God's gardener, tenderly, though with rough
hands, folding warm coverlids over the roots of the flowers. I was
thinking how wilder winds would come, and with icy breath heap the
snows above the dead leaves; and yet still only be God's gardeners to
keep His flowers housed against the spring, and not to shelter only,
but to feed and enrich them whilst sheltering. For sleep is not only
a rest, but a cordial of new life. I was listening to the dropping
of the water into the Holy Well the monks had made so long ago, and
thinking how Olive and I had listened to it long ago, and thought it
like church music from a kind of sacred Fairy land. The old well,
and the fresh spring; always fresh, always living, always young; when
there came a rustling among the leaves which was not the wind,
nearer, nearer, and before I could look, his hand on my hand, and his
voice, low as the dropping of the water, on my heart, and deep as the
spring from which it flowed.
"'Lettice, your father told me I might come back. Do you say so?'
"I could scarcely speak, still less could I meet his eyes, which I
felt through the heavy lids I could not raise.
"'My heart has never changed, Roger,' I said at last, 'nor misdoubted
you one instant.'
"'Has your determination changed, Lettice?' he said, gently
withdrawing his hand.
"'Has yours?' I said. 'If you can but say you grieve for one
irrevocable deed, and would recall it if you could?'
"'I repent of much, and would undo much,' he replied. 'But I can
never say I repent of following him who saved England; and to whom
England cannot even return the poor gratitude of a grave.'
"We went silently home side by side, the dead leaves crumbling under
his feet in the still woodland paths, till we came to my mother's
garden, one side of which bordered on the wood.
"There he unlatched the little garden gate, and held it for me to
pass. The click sounded startling in the silence. I passed through,
but did not look up, until my hands were suddenly seized in my
father's, and his face shone down on me beaming with smiles I had not
seen there for many a day.
"'How now, child,' said he, 'whither away, pale and downcast as a
white violet?'
"'Dost fear I distrust thee Lettice?' he added softly; 'I never did,
I never could.'
"Then I looked up and met his eyes for a moment, but the softness in
them overcame me, and I could not speak.
"'What does all this mean, Roger Drayton?' he resumed, impatiently.
'Does not she know I sent for thee? Surely she has not changed?'
"'Mistress Lettice says she has not changed,' said Roger
despondingly, 'and never can.'
"'Then what is all this coil about? She told me months since, in the
teeth of prohibitions and entreaties to bestow her hand elsewhere,
that you had exchanged troth, and would be true to each other till
death.'
"'And after,' said I. 'Death cannot separate us for ever. Only that
terrible death, and that only in life.'
"'It was because I guarded the scaffold at the king's beheading,'
said Roger.
"'Tush, tush, child,' my father replied, hastily. 'We have been
through a wilderness, and which of us has not lost his way? We have
been through the fire and smoke of a hundred battles, who expects us
to come out with face and hands washed like a Pharisee's?'
"Then suddenly turning to Roger and taking his hand, he said
solemnly,--
"'If thou hadst known, Roger Drayton, for what a king that scaffold
was in clearing the way, I trow thou hadst rather laid thy head on
the block thyself.'
"This Roger did not deny. Was not his silence a confession? And so,
when my father laid our hands together in his, could I refuse? The
sacred irresistible touch of another hand which had once before so
joined them, seemed on us all, and a tender voice from heaven seemed
to float above like church music. And still as I listened to-night,
in the oratory alone, it seemed to say,--
"'My children, the way is rough, tread it together. The burdens are
heavy; share them all. Sorrows, fears, fruitless regrets, fruitful
repentances, share them all. Bear each other's burdens, and in so
bearing, make them sometimes light and always helpful. To you it is
given to love; not with the poor timid transitory love which dares
not see, but with the love which dares to see because it helps to
purify. My children, the way will not be smooth. Tread it together.
The burdens will be heavy. Share them all.'"
OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.
They were married as quietly as might be on a quiet autumn day in the
old parish-church of Netherby.
We waited for them in the porch of the old church--the west porch,
which our forefathers had built--looking across the green graves of
the village churchyard, across the quiet village street to the arched
gate which opened opposite from one of the avenues of the hall; my
father, Aunt Dorothy (once more at Netherby), Aunt Gretel, my
husband, the children and I.
No stately procession issued thence, only Lettice; leaning on her
father's arm, wrapped closely in a mantle, with a few faithful old
servants following.
We saw them in the distance wending towards us among the grey stems
of the beech-trees. Their footsteps fell softly on the fallen leaves
as they crossed the church path. We met them at the churchyard gate.
So we entered the church, which we had not done before.
And there a sight met us which went deep to our hearts.
There had been no triumphal wedding arches, no banners, no flowers
strewn on the bride's path.
Netherby was a Puritan village, and we Puritans were at no time great
in pomps and ceremonials, Moreover, there was a weight of joy in the
crowning of this hope so long deferred, and a depth of content, which
moved rather to tears than to shouts of welcome. Nor were the times
very joyous to us. With two thousand deprived ministers to be kept
from starving, and thousands of those who believed as we did, not to
be kept from prisons, our festivities naturally took a sober
colouring.
We had not therefore been prepared to find the church full from door
to altar; full of people from the village and from all the country
round--old men and women, and the youngest children that could be
trusted to be quiet. (For, as one mother said afterwards, "I would
like them to be able to say to their children, 'I was there when Mr.
Roger and Mistress Lettice were married.'") They rose as we passed
up the aisle, and a soft murmur of benediction seemed to fill the
silent church.
For Roger and Lettice were dearly loved in the dear old place, with
an affection which had grown with their growth from infancy, and
which was strong through the intertwining roots of centuries. (It
will be long before the new roots in the New World strike so deep.)
And through all the generations of Davenants and Draytons this was
the first time the lines had met in marriage.
It was a solemn as well as a joyful thing to see those two stand with
joined hands at the altar, with the tombs of our fathers beside them
in the oldest transept, and the stately monuments of the Davenants
opposite, whilst the whole village of our tenants and servants
(children of generations of our tenants and servants) were gathered
behind.
As they knelt down side by side on the altar steps, a ray from the
autumn sun fell softly on her bowed head, slightly turned, on the
rich brown hair flowing beneath her veil, on the broad fair brow, the
drooping eyelids, with their long dark lashes, and the pale cheek.
In its repose her face shone on me as if it had been her mother's
looking down on her from heaven; so close seemed the likeness, so
angelic the calm. It brought my childhood, and all heaven before me,
and blinded my eyes with tears.
Good old Dr. Rich was so completely shaken out of his natural
dwelling-place in the past by his sympathy with them that he seemed
like another man. His voice was deep and tender, and the
benedictions fell from his lips with a power which resounded from
stone effigies of knight and dame, and thrilled back from every
living heart, in a deep echo, "Yea, and they shall be blessed."
The most rigid Puritan in the place conformed for the occasion.
Responses went up, not, as Mr. Baxter complains, "in a confused and
unmeaning manner," but hearty and clear as an anthem; and the Amens
rang through the church like a salute of artillery.
As the service closed and we followed Lettice and Roger down the
aisle, I noticed a cavalier wrapped in a large mantle, leaning
against one of the pillars near the door. Lettice saw him and
pointed him out to Roger, and both then went towards him. It was
Walter Davenant. He came forward and grasped their hands.
His voice was low, and had a tremor in it. But I heard him say,--
"If my being publicly here could have been any sign of honour to you,
Roger Drayton, I would have come with a cavalcade. But my coming is
an honour to none. I pray you think it not a disgrace."
Sir Walter coloured as he saw him (he had forbidden Walter to enter
his house), but Lettice placed their hands together, and there was no
resisting the entreaty in her sweet pleading face. So the old
cavalier went back to the hall leaning on his son's arm.
It seemed as happy an augury as could be given of the blessing to
flow from the marriage.
He was the only one of Lettice's kindred except her father who
vouchsafed his presence. And I believe it was to counterbalance this
cold reception, and testify how he honoured, as much as to show how
he loved, his child, that Sir Walter insisted on all the village
partaking of such a feast as Netherby had never seen, and on the
ringers of all the churches round ringing such peals as the
country-side had never heard.
So it came about that at last, after flowing so parallel, so close,
and so divided for so many centuries, the two streams of life at
Netherby blended in one.
Job Forster said,--
"I always knew it must be--I always knew. Do you think, Mistress
Olive, I've watched nightly with Master Roger by the camp-fires on
Scotch and Irish moors, on the hills and by the sea, and gone with
him into battle after battle, when neither of us knew who would ever
come back alive--without finding out where his heart was? and when
Mistress Lettice came back from beyond seas as a lily among thorns, I
knew she was all right, which made it plain. But I never breathed it
to a soul. _She_ (_i.e._ Rachel) of course always knew everything,
whether she was told or not. But she was unbelieving about
it--fearful and unbelieving. I never knew her so bad about anything.
I believe it was because she wished it so much. Scores of times she
has vexed me sore about it. 'There was no promise folks should be
happy,' said she, 'and have all they wished for.' I had to mind her
of the morning long ago, when we went hunting in the dark for a
promise for Master Roger when he was in that sore trouble, and no
promise came, till at last she found we wanted none, for we'd got
beyond the promises to Him who was the Promise of all promises. And
here she was standing up again for a promise! 'It was spiritual
inward blessing we were looking for then, Job,' said she (nigh as
perverse as that poor Quaker maid), 'and of course that's all plain.
This is _outward_, and that's another thing altogether. No doubt the
good Lord would have us all forgiven and made good. But it's by no
means clear to my mind He'd have us all married and made happy just
in the way we wish.' 'Well, said I, 'thou'rt a wise woman, a world
wiser than me. But thou'st never fought under Oliver. _He_ said he
knew not well to distinguish between outward blessings and inward.
_To a worldly man they are outward; to a saint, Christian_. The
difference is in the subject, if not in the object.' Nor," continued
Job, "do I know to distinguish, or care. Leastways thou'st been the
best means of grace the Lord ever sent to me. And why shouldn't
Master Roger and Lettice be like thee and me? Seems to me scarce
thankful, anyway, to put marriage among the outward blessings, like
meat!' Which, if it did not convince her (for the best of women
can't be always amenable to reason), anyways turned the conversation.
And now it's all come about as I said, wife, and thou must give in at
last," he concluded. "Sure, thou'lt never be as stiff-necked as
those poor wilful Scottish ministers, who were so wise they couldn't
even see what the Almighty meant after He had spoken in thunder at
Dunbar. Poor souls," he added, "poor stiff-necked souls; they're
learning it now on the other side of the book, by the gallows and the
boot, and the congregations scattered by the King's soldiers on the
hills."
Rachel did not plunge into the vexed question his words raised; as to
whether the event proved the equity of the cause. She only said,--
"Promise or no promise, Job; inward or outward, I've no manner of
doubt the good Lord minds whether we're happy or no, and makes us as
happy as may be, while being made as good as we can be. Which, of
course, He minds ten thousand times more; because the goodness is the
happiness, come which way it may, by the drought or the flood. But
if the happiness _will_ make us good, no fear of His stinting that.
Good measure pressed down and running over, that's His measure, and
that's the measure He's given Mistress Lettice and Master Roger at
last, and thee and me, this many a year. Good measure, with His sign
and mark on it to show it is good, and no counterfeit."
Aunt Dorothy was the only one among us who thought it necessary to
temper Roger and Lettice's content with dark forebodings.
"It is no smooth sea, dear heart," said she to Lettice, "thy bark is
launched upon, nor can ye remain long in any haven."
"I know that I have married a soldier," replied Lettice, "and a
soldier in a warfare which has no discharges. But I know his lot,
and I have chosen it for mine, Aunt Dorothy."
"Aunt Dorothy" fell from her lips for the first time like a caress.
There was always a kind of sweet easy majesty about Lettice, which
made her caresses seem a dignity as well as a delight, and Aunt
Dorothy for the time ceased her forebodings. Her love for Lettice
was stronger than she confessed or knew, and she was always more
easily led by Lettice than by any amongst us to take a brighter view
of things and men. Not that Aunt Dorothy was one given to moan or
whine. She did not dread suffering, but she believed it her duty to
dread joy and was therefore ever wont to shadow sunny days with the
severe foresight of evil days to come. Dark days indeed were her
bright days, since on these she permitted herself to enjoy such stray
sunbeams as rarely fail to break through the darkest.
During three years after Roger and Lettice's marriage we kept much at
Netherby. Sir Walter's failing health made him choose the quiet of
his country home. Moreover, the doings of that degraded court, which
the loyal Mr. Evelyn called "rather a luxurious and abandoned rout
than a court," displeased the old cavalier of the court of Charles
the First as much as it did any Puritan amongst us. Except for the
contrast which made it yet bitterer for us who had hoped much from
the Commonwealth, and remembered Milton dwelling at Whitehall, and
the blameless family of the Protector making a pure English home,
with dignified courtly festivities and family prayer, where now the
eager contests of the gaming-table and wretched French songs
resounded, on Sundays as well as on other days, through the
apartments where the King's mistresses reigned.
An alliance grew up between Aunt Dorothy, Sir Walter, and good Dr.
Rich. Aunt Dorothy could never so far forgive my father, Roger, my
husband, or Job Forster, for turning (as she believed) liberty into
license, and lawful resistance into rebellion, as to consort with
them again as of the same party. With Sir Walter she had a broad
common ground in their loyalty to the late king, their lamentations
over the present court, their general admiration of the nobleness of
the past, and their general hopelessness as to the future. But with
Dr. Rich her sympathies were deeper. He would bring her passages
from St. Austin, which she thought only second to St. Paul; and, in
return, she would acknowledge that there was one passage which she
had not once understood as she ought, and that was, "Resist not the
power, for they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."
She agreed with Mr. Baxter and Mr. Henry as to the duty of attending,
at least occasionally, the services in the church established by law.
And he agreed that from primitive times private assemblies for
edification in twos and threes were not forbidden.
Sometimes, indeed, they had debates.
"England also has now her St. Bartholomew," she said once, "and no
doubt she will have her retribution. Charles the Ninth of France
died in agonies of remorse soon after that fatal day of the execution
of the Huguenots."
"Anniversaries are not always wise to observe, madam," he replied.
"On the eve of St. Bartholomew's day seventeen years ago, the
Commonwealth prohibited the use of the Common Prayer even in private.
That also is an anniversary. And some might say this St. Bartholomew
is the retribution. God forbid I should accuse Him of punishing one
injustice by another. But by all means let us avoid predictions.
Even agonies of remorse are not the most hopeless end of guilty
souls."
"Yet," said my father, "nothing is more safe than predictions of
retribution. Most men being likely to suffer, and all men being sure
to die, what can be safer than to threaten either affliction or
death, or both, to those we deem guilty? It seems to me," he
continued, "an endless and fruitless toil to make up the balance of
accounts between the churches as to persecution. Perhaps all that
can be said is, that those who have had the least power have had the
privilege of inflicting the least wrong. He who ruled England once
said 'he never yet knew the sect who, when in power, would allow
liberty to the rest.'"
"He was for license," interposed Aunt Dorothy. "Heaven forbid we
should call that liberty."
"Ay, sister Dorothy, no doubt," said my father, smiling, "with many
sects liberty to any other is license. That was what the Protector
thought. Be thankful that you have no chance just now of making a
St. Bartholomew of your own."
"The Protector has had his retribution, brother," said Aunt Dorothy,
solemnly, "let us leave him and his politics in peace."
"But, sir," rejoined my father, turning to Dr. Rich, "after all, the
worst retributions are in our sins. The loss of the soul in sinning
must be greater than any subsequent loss in suffering; and I confess,
to me no severer retribution seems possible to the Church which
inflicts this present wrong than the wrong itself, the loss of two
thousand of her most fervent and holy pastors, and the rending from
her of the tens of thousands who revere and follow them. The losses
of churches, after all, are not in livings but in lives; not in money
but in men."
Bitter and biting, indeed, were the times around us, yet the prisons
of those days were more honourable than the palaces. Better beyond
comparison any disgrace and suffering that reckless Court could
inflict than the disgrace of belonging to it.
With two thousand good ministers and their families thrown destitute
on the world, it was impossible that any of those who honoured them
could feel their own possessions anything but a trust to be
scrupulously husbanded for their succour. Many hundreds also were in
prison, though none, I rejoice to think, of those two thousand, were
ever in prison for debt. Then there were the Quakers, who bore the
brunt of the battle, carrying passive resistance as close to action
as possible, and persisting in meeting in public assemblies, though
certain to be dispersed by constables or soldiers with wounds or loss
of life.
Indeed it was for this reason, amongst others, we kept away from
London during the years following the passing the Act of Uniformity,
in the hope of keeping Annis Nye out of the peril we knew she would
confront if near enough to attend a meeting of Friends.
It was not any one party in the state whose hearts began to fail, but
the good men of all parties.
It was no longer Royalists or Roundheads only that were sinking, but
England. It was not Puritanism or Presbyterianism only that the
Court affronted, but righteousness, purity, and truth.
Already the weapons of ecclesiastical or theological controversy, the
subtle and "unanswerable" arguments wherewith Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, Independents, Erastians, Calvinists, Arminians,
Semi-Arminians, and all the sixty sects Mr. Baxter had enumerated,
had been assailing each other during the past years, seemed to hang
rusting over our heads, as mere curious antiquities, such as the
bills and crossbows our ancestors had used in the wars of the Roses.
The contest was being carried to other ground; to the oldest
battle-field of all, and the most plainly marked.
As Job Forster said,--
"There's a good deal of the fighting that's been done these last
years, Mistress Olive, that's been a sore puzzle to a plain man like
me. I mean the wars with words as well as with swords. Friend and
foe used so much the same battle-cries, and fought under banners so
much alike, that when a man had gained a victory, it wasn't always
easy to see whether to make it a day of humiliation or of
thanksgiving. The safest way was to make it both. And after he who
could see for us all was taken from our head, things got clean
hopeless, and it was all shooting in the dark. But now there's a
kind of doleful comfort in putting by all the long hard words with
which Christians fight each other, and taking up for weapons the Ten
Commandments. A man feels more sure anyway they can't hit wrong.
There's been a deal of fighting and a deal of talking these last
years, and seems to me now as if the Almighty were calling us all to
a Quaker's silent meeting, to keep still a bit, and mind our own
business. Perhaps when the talking and the fighting begin again,
they'll both be the better for the silence."