LETTICE'S DIARY.
"Davenant Hall, _October_, 1664.--The blow has fallen on us at last.
Aunt Dorothy and Annis Nye are together in prison at Newgate.
"Annis was the first taken. Olive being for a time in London,
nothing could keep the maiden from attending the forbidden meeting of
Quakers, held at the Bull and Mouth, Bishopsgate. And so it happened
that, one night, they looked for her return in vain, and Dr. Antony
going to search for her, found that the assembly had been broken up
by the soldiers with violence, and that among those seized and thrown
into prison was Annis Nye. They would have paid anything, or taken
any pains to rescue her, but the peculiar difficulty in the case of
the imprisonment of the Quakers is, that they will do nothing and
suffer nothing to be done, which would in any way recognize the
justice of their sentence. The magistrate in this case (as in
another which occurred at the same time) was willing to have set
Annis free, if she would have given any pledge to abstain from
attending such meetings in future. But she said,--
"'Ask me not to do aught against my conscience? If I were set free
to-day I must go to-morrow, if the Lord so willed me, to meet the
Friends at the Bull and Mouth.'
"Nor would she suffer bail to be given. And so she was sentenced to
be carried beyond seas to the plantations in Jamaica--she and divers
other Quakers, men and women; the men being sentenced to Barbadoes,
and the women to Jamaica.
"Aunt Dorothy's heart was moved for the maid; but, nevertheless, she
shook her head, and said she had always prophesied such willfulness
could have no other end.
"'It was a pity,' said she, 'the rashness of such disorderly people
should throw discredit on the sufferings of sober Christians.'
"For she still clung to the belief that there was a legal submission,
a conformity to the furthest limit possibly compatible with fidelity
to conscience, which must be a safeguard for the personal liberty of
those who, like Mr. Baxter and herself, rigidly kept within it.
"But she was soon to be driven from this last point of hope. In July
the Conventicle Act came into action, ordering that any religious
meetings in private houses, or elsewhere, of more than five people
besides the household, rendered those who attended them liable to
imprisonment or fines.
"And from that time no Puritan gentleman, who had an enemy base
enough to inform against him or happened to come in the way of a
common mercenary informer, could be safe. Some even deemed it unsafe
to say a grace when five strangers were present.
"At Netherby, a few of the villagers had always been wont to join our
family-prayer from time to time.
"At the time of the coming of the Conventicle Act into operation,
Aunt Dorothy chanced to be alone in the house, the rest of the family
being in London, and she scorned to make any change.
"On Sunday morning, an ill-looking suspicious stranger dropped in on
their morning exercise. And on the next the constables made their
appearance at the same hour, and arrested Aunt Dorothy in the king's
name.
"The servants talked of resistance, and the constables suggested
bail, but Aunt Dorothy refused either: the first, from loyalty to the
king; the second, from loyalty to truth. She was guilty of no
offence against God or the king, said she, and was ready to stand her
trial.
"Accordingly she is in Newgate, and Roger is in London, doing all he
can, in conjunction with Mr. Drayton and Dr. Antony, to effect her
liberation.
"_Twelfth Night_, 1665.--I little thought that ever again, while we
are both on earth, anything should separate Roger and me.
"I had gone over, as I thought, all possible dangers, and resolved
that, in all, duty must keep me by his side. Exile, war,
imprisonment, all I would share. What duty could ever arise so
strong as my duty to cleave to him?
"And yet now Roger lies in prison in London, and I am imprisoned
here, kept from him by soft ties of duty stronger than bolts of iron.
"For in the cradle by my side, breathing the sweet even breath of an
infant's sleep, lies our little Harry Davenant Drayton.
"And in the next chamber, with the door open between, lies my father,
sleeping the feverish broken sleep of sickness, from time to time
calling me to his side by an uneasy moan or a restless movement;
scarcely able to bear me out of his sight.
"Roger was arrested for speaking some words of good cheer to a little
company who had gathered at early dawn in a solitary place to hear
their ancient pastor. The pastor had been thrown into prison, and
the poor flock waited in vain. Roger came to tell them of their
pastor's imprisonment, said a short prayer and a few words of good
counsel, and would thus have heartened and then dismissed them, when
the officers came and seized him. Strange that he, so little given
to overmuch discourse, should be in prison for speaking.
"There were no bonfires or festivities to-day, as on that
Twelfth-night, all but a quarter of a century since, when all
Netherby, and my own brothers, and I made merry around the winter
bonfires; that night which was nigh costing Roger so dear; all life
and all the Civil War before us, then as unknown as to-morrow now!
"How scattered the company who met then! On battle-field, and lonely
heath, and in the silent church; in this old house (which feels
almost as lonely and silent now), and in prison.
"Yet better now than then, in many ways, and for most of us. Some of
the dearest who could never have rested here, at rest for ever above.
Roger with a rest in his heart no prison can rob him of. And my
father nearer my mother, I think, than ever before in heart and soul.
"I read the Prayer-book to him often, and the Bible. He makes little
comment, but loves to listen, and asks for the chapters and hymns my
mother loved best. And sometimes he asks me what comforted her most
when she thought of dying. And I tell him,--
"'Christ our Lord. The thought of Him; all He said, did, and
suffered on earth; Himself living now in heaven. All else, she said,
was Hades, the Invisible. But Christ had become Visible; had been
manifested, seen, touched, and handled. "God refuses us all such
poor pictures," (said she,) "as Pagans and Mussulmans have of their
paradises and elysiums; all pictures, except such as it is plain are
not pictures, but symbols; either because they contradict
themselves--as 'gold like transparent glass,' and seas 'mingled with
fire'--or, because we are told they are symbols, like the living
water and the Tree of Life. The other world remains to us Hades.
But Christ the Lord has been seen by mortal eyes, held in the mortal
arms of a mortal mother. His feet bathed with tears and kissed by
the lips of an adoring, penitent woman. His hand laid with healing
touch on the leper none else would touch. His hands nailed to a
cross, and His feet; the prints of the nails seen by Thomas; His
voice heard on the slopes of Olivet, by the sea-side, by the well.
Christ the Lord was heard and seen,' she said. 'And that makes all
the Hades a place not of darkness, but of light to me, where the
human heart can long to be, to adore Him, and yet remain human.'"
"'Did she say that?' my father says. 'Did she say that? Then that
is what I can understand too. Even she could have seen nothing but a
blank of darkness in it but for Him; but for Him. Then, sweetheart,
no wonder I seem like groping in the dark sometimes. I who have so
much more sin to be forgiven, and so much less faith to see.'
"Then once I told him how that horror of thick darkness came on me
when she died, and how it was shone away by the Apostles' Creed. And
he listened, gazing at me as if his soul were living on the words.
Then I read him the gospels; the stories of the resurrection.
"And then often, again and again, he asks me to repeat what my mother
said. And each time, instead of growing dull by repetition, it seems
to grow living to us both.
"So I can have no doubt that my place is here, and not in the prison
with Roger, where otherwise it would be liberation to me to go.
"_January_ 30_th_, 1665.--No word from the prison for some days. The
snow is white on all the breadths of the Fens, bounded only like the
sea by the gray sky, broken only by the Mere, black with ice, and by
the dark limbs of the trees which have stripped themselves 'like
athletes' to fight the winter storms.
"Sixteen years since they laid the king amidst the falling snow,
among his fathers, in the Chapel at Windsor.
"How little our sentences avail!
"Executed this day sixteen years as a murderer and traitor!
Celebrated to-day in every church throughout the land as a martyr of
blessed memory; while the bones of those who put him to death lie
mouldering under the gallows.
"Yet who shall say that the final sentence is given yet? Higher and
higher the cause is carried from tribunal to tribunal, from the angry
present to the calm-judging generations to come, from these again to
the Tribunal above, from which there is no appeal.
"Of what avail for us to judge?
"The sentence is given there already; given, and known to those whom
it most concerns.
"What matters it what we are prattling about it here below?
"My husband has left among his papers some letters and journals from
the other side of the sea, which are well worn by much reading, and
noted in the margin in many places, so that in reading them I
converse with him, and find much comfort every way, both in the text
and the comment.
"The simple story goes straight to my heart, nerves and braces it at
once. Never, I think, were sufferings borne with more of courage and
less of repining.
"Frost, famine, salt water freezing on their scanty clothing till it
was hard as the Ironsides' armour. Then 'vehement' coughs came on,
'hectic,' and consumption; still they bore cheerfully on. Out of the
hundred, seventeen died in the first February after their landing,
sixteen in March, sometimes three die in a day. At last, at the end
of the winter, of one hundred persons, scarce fifty remained; the
living scarce able to bury the dead; the well not sufficient to tend
the sick. And in a notice which touches me to the quick, the journal
says:--
"'While we were busy about our seed, our governor, Mr. Carver, comes
out of the field very sick, complains greatly of his head; within a
few hours his senses fail, so as he speaks no more, and in a few days
after, dies, to our great lamentation and heaviness. His care and
pains were so great for the common good, as therewith 'twas thought
he oppressed himself, and shortened his days; of whose loss we cannot
sufficiently complain; and his wife deceases about five or six weeks
after.'
"She, belike, did not complain of his loss. She endured; and died.
"And shall I complain while Roger lives? and of bodily hardship I
know nothing; though that, indeed, is scarce the hardest.
"Half the exiles dead, yet the rest never lost heart or distrusted
God; but went on, and toiled and conquered;--and made a home and a
refuge for their brethren;--began a New World.
"The sorrows were borne in unrepining silence, as knowing God the
Father would not try them on many that could be spared. The mercies
are recorded with grateful minuteness.
"After their first harvest from seed saved from half-starving mouths,
they appointed an annual Thanksgiving Day; afterwards, after a time,
an annual fast. But the thanksgiving came first. And they made it a
right merry day: preparing for it by a holiday of hunting game for
the feast. A wholesome and not gloomy piety theirs seems to me, like
John Bunyan's. Moreover, they have eyes to see. The journal tells
of forests 'compassing about to the very sea, with oaks, pines, ash,
walnut, birch, holly, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet wood;' of
forest paths and sweet brooks; of quiet pools and deep grassy
valleys; of vines, too, and strawberries; and sorrel and yarrow, and
cherry trees and plum trees.
"Deer range the forests, and wilder animals. One poor man whose feet
were 'pitifully ill' with the cold, crept abroad into the woods with
a spaniel. A little way from the plantation, two wolves ran after
the dog, who fled between his legs for succour; he had nothing in his
hand, but took up a stick and threw at one of them and hit him. They
ran away, but came again; he got a pale-board in his hand, and 'they
sat on their tails grinning at him a good while, and then went their
way, and left him.'
"Cranes and mallards waded about the marshy places and plashed in the
pools; and now and then they started partridges and 'milky-white
fowl;' and birds sang pleasantly among the trees.
"The world seems so wholesome there, so adventurous, so full of life.
Sometimes I think if Roger were out of prison, one day I should like
to go there with him and our babe, and all the rest; away from the
conflicts of this distracted land; out of the way of courts and
prisons and Conventicle Acts, to conquer some more homes from the
wilderness.
"But, perhaps, this is only restlessness and repining; in which case
I should be no worthy member of such a company.
"I wonder if Roger ever thought of this, and never liked to mention
it to me, knowing how I love the old country and the old church? The
pages are so well-worn and so carefully noted. When we meet again,
at all events, I will show him I am ready for anything he deems good.
'Thy country shall be my country; whither thou goest I will go; where
thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried.'
"Yes, none can rob me ever more of that sacred right.
"_February_ 2_nd_.--A letter from Roger from the prison.
"Brief enough, as his letters and speeches for the most part are, yet
marvellously lengthy for him.
"'Our case is but little to be commiserated,' he writes, 'being so
much lighter than that of others, and we trust soon to be ended.
"'I might, indeed, have as fair a room as at Netherby, and as good
eggs, cheese, butter, and bacon as a soldier could wish for sold here
in the prison.
"'But no man, hale and strong (as I am, sweet heart, so never be
downcast), could know that hundreds of men and women, imprisoned for
much the same cause as we, are under the same roof, ill-clad,
ill-fed, and worse lodged, and enjoy his feast alone.
"'The Quakers, as usual, provoke the charge, and bear the brunt of
it. The men's sleeping-room, till lately, was a great bare chamber
with hammocks hung between a pillar in the midst and the wall, in
three tiers, one above another; the air, by the morning, enough to
breed a pestilence. God grant it do not. For although this is
somewhat mended, these crowded prisons are little better than
pest-houses at the best. And pestilences do not stay where they
begin. Whitehall is not so far from Newgate but that the poison
might spread. The Friends outside do what they can to succour,
clothe, and feed those within, arranging their help with a singular
order and care. But much is left for us to aid in. Wherefore, sweet
heart, send what warm woolseys and wholesome country food thou canst.
Leonard Antony will bring it and see it well bestowed.
"'We have good hope of deliverance, by payment of sundry fines and
other moneys. Annis Nye, we fear, is sentenced to the plantations in
Jamaica. But Aunt Dorothy will, no doubt, speedily be free, and
bring thee tidings. So God keep thee and the babe. And be of good
cheer. I was never of better heart. Farewell.
"'_P.S._--Thy brother Walter hath been to see me. He was much moved.
And he is doing what he can for our release. But he looks sorely
aged and changed.'
"_February_ 10_th_.--Aunt Dorothy is at Netherby again.
"She looks thin and pale after such prison-fare and lodging. She
brings certain tidings that Roger will soon be free.
"Her wrath seems chiefly directed against the exactions of the
prison-officers.
"'Harpies!' said she, 'unconscionable harpies. I would not have
given a groat of good money to fill their unhallowed coffers, and to
buy the rancid lard and fetid oil they dare to call butter and bacon,
or demeaned myself to ask them the favour of a lodging separate from
the vagabonds and purse-pickers, had it not been for that poor wilful
maid, Annis Nye. She looked like a ghost or a corpse; a corpse with
the eyes of an angel, and the courage of a lion. Yea, the courage of
a lion more than the meekness of a martyr. Brave I say she is as any
woman ever was. And brave the Quakers are. But meek I never will
call them. One of them was imprisoned for "finishing a job," mending
shoes, on the Sabbath morning! On religious principles, quoth he;
breaking the Sabbath "on religious grounds!" And when in prison he
let them nearly whip him to death, rather than confess himself guilty
by doing the malefactors prison work. Indeed, he would have died but
for the tender nursing of Mr. Thomas Ellwood and the other Friends,
dressing his wounds with balsams. For that they are friendly to each
other, these fanatics, no one can deny, brave and friendly; but
meek'--surely they are not. I had almost to belie myself by
pretending to want a waiting-woman (a bondage I hate), before I could
prevail on that poor maid to let me have her in a room apart, and
nurse and cherish her as she needed. For she had been sorely bruised
and wounded in the scattering of the meeting, where the soldiers took
her; and had been busier since with her "concerns" and her
"callings," to all seeming, than with mollifying her wounds and
bruises. I am a woman of no weak nerve, niece Lettice, but my heart
sickened when I came to see how she must have suffered. And she as
patient as a lamb, dumb and patient those Quakers can be. I will
never deny that; dumb and patient, brave and friendly. And now there
she is again alone, without a creature in their sober senses near her
to keep her from her "concerns" and her "calls." There she is with
ever so many others, sentenced to "service" in Jamaica.'
"When Job Forster heard this sentence, he brushed his hand across his
eyes.
"'Poor maid! poor, pleasant, wilful maid!' said he.
"But before long he seemed to take a more cheerful view.
"'Perhaps it's for the best, after all, Mistress Lettice. Who knows
but she might have been seized with a concern to go to preach to the
Grand Turk, or the Pope, or the Dey of Algiers? Several of the women
Friends have done such things. Not that the Turks are the worst foes
for a Quaker. They listen to them as meek as lambs for they think
they are mad; and they think the Almighty speaks through mad people.
And then they escort them out of the country, as gracious as may be.
And I don't see what any saint could do better with a Quaker, poor
blind infidels though those Turks be. Nay, the Turks are not the
worst danger for a Quaker. She might have had a concern to go to New
England, to testify, as others of her sect have done, against the
severity of their treatment there. And New England, they do say, is
about the hottest place a Quaker can go to just now. They don't
listen to them, like the poor Turks. And they do escort them out of
the country; but not graciously. They beat them from town to town,
and threaten them with the gallows if they come back again, which
makes it a stronger temptation than any Quaker can resist to go back
as soon as they can.'
"This is a great perplexity to me. I thought the people in New
England had gone there on account of religious liberty. I must ask
Roger.
"_February_ 17.--Roger is with us again; scarce the worse for his
imprisonment, except a little hollow in the cheeks, and a good deal
of want of repair in his clothes. I see he did not use the clothes I
had made.
"'A little more in good campaigning order,' he says, if I attempt to
condole; 'a little relieved of over-abundance of flesh. That is all.'
"It is the way of the Draytons generally, and of Roger in particular,
that their spirits rise beyond the ordinary level in a storm. I
suppose the family has been used to stormy weather so long that they
feel it their element. They are at home in it, and like it.
"I have asked him about New England. His face quite beamed, and his
tongue seemed unloosed, when he found the thought of going to the
plantations was not so terrible to me.
"He confessed that he had often thought it might be the best
resource, if things do not mend here, but had shrunk from mentioning
it to me.
"'We are all cowards, in some direction,' he said, with a smile.
'How was I to know, sweet heart, I had married a Deborah, whose heart
would never fail?'
"'Thou dost not despair for England?' I said.
"'God forbid!' said he. 'But the lives of nations count by
centuries, and ours by years, and that but precariously. And,
meantime, while there is so little to be done here, I have sometimes
thought we might serve the old country best by extending her dominion
and anticipating her freedom in the new.'
"'But,' said I, 'I cannot make out about this freedom. Job Forster
says they are by no means gentle to Quakers.'
"He paused a little.
"'The Quakers are not quite content with quietly pursuing their own
way,' he said. 'With all their objections to war and teaching of
passive resistance, their warfare is certainly not on the defensive
but a continual assault on other sects. And at present the New
England plantations are struggling, not "for wellbeing, but for
being;" which is a struggle in which men are apt to make rough terms.
By-and-by, they will feel stronger, and be gentler; and the Quakers,
seeing that every man's hand is no longer against them, will cease to
set their tongues against every man.'
"'I scarce think,' he added, after a pause, in that low tone to which
his voice always naturally falls when he speaks of his old general,
'that the place is yet to be found on earth where such liberty exists
as the Protector would have had in England.
"'But it has scarce come to the alternative of exile yet. I cannot
think that England will be steeped much longer in this Lethe of false
loyalty, forgetting not Eliot and Hampden, and the Commonwealth
alone, but Magna Charta, and all her history: all that makes her
England.'
LETTICE'S DIARY.--(_Continued._)
"London, _April_, 1665.--The last weeks of watching by my father's
sick-bed are over. No bitterness mingles with the sorrow. At first
it seemed as if we could do nothing but give thanks for the peace and
patience of those last days; and the rest for the spirit, so weary
and hopeless as to this world and its future--so full of lowly,
trembling hope as to the other.
"Then came the ebbing back of the tide of affection in a tide of
grief, the sense of blank and loss that must come and Roger thought
it best I should leave the old scenes altogether for a while, and
come to Olive's home.
"For the old home at the hall can never be a home for us again.
"Roland and his wife took possession at once, with workmen from town,
and a train of new servants. Happily, my father had pensioned many
of the old household.
"My sister-in-law has remodelled my mother's oratory, and the old
places so sacred to me, as she wished, after the newest fashions at
Whitehall.
"But these changes in things, however sacred, are little indeed,
compared with the changes in people; the evil influences brought into
the household and the village by the dissolute train of serving men
and women, trained in the wicked manners of the Court.
"London, _May_, 1665.--The spring seems to unfold her robes slowly
this year, and feebly, like a butterfly I saw yesterday, in which
life was so low that it died whilst struggling out of its chrysalis.
There has been much drought. The scant foliage in the parks and by
the road-sides grows old and gray with dust and drought almost as
soon as it is out.
"There have been comets and strange sights in the sky this winter.
Aunt Dorothy thinks they are for the nation's sins; but Mr. Drayton,
who attends the lectures of the Royal Society at Gresham College,
says they have to do with the revolutions of the heavens, not with
the revolutions in England. 'The signs of the times,' says he, 'are
not in the sky, but in the Whitehall gaming-tables.' But Aunt
Dorothy shakes her head, and says the Royal Society, the Quakers, and
the Court together, are fast undermining the faith of the people.
"There are rumours that one or two poor folk in the villages of St.
Giles' and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, between Westminster and the
City, lie sick with a malady men like not well to name.
"But all just goes on as usual. The king feeds the wild-fowl and
plays pall-mall in the park, with the throng of idlers about him.
"There is little, indeed, at Whitehall to recall that it ever was
what Roger and the foreign ambassadors say it was in the days of the
Commonwealth; a virtuous princely home; still less to make it
possible to think the king recalls it as the scene of his father's
martyrdom. A gaming-house, where wicked women are lodged, and fill
the galleries night and day with licentious revelry; where the wife
sits apart, neglected and despised, while her husband spends her
fortune on the mistress with whom he compels her to associate!
"Is there no English gentleman left, no relic of old knighthood, that
these things can be?
"Queen was a sacred name to the cavaliers of my youth. Were there no
cavaliers left when the young queen, after patiently sitting apart
some time in her neglected corner of the room while the base throng,
with a king at their head, gathered around the mistress--at length
rose and withdrew to hide her bitter tears in her chamber;--were
there none of the old cavaliers left to rally indignantly round her
and shame the king back to her? Were there no English gentlewomen
left to uphold her in the courageous and womanly resistance she dared
at first to make to the degradation of such company as the king
forced on her?--To say to her, 'For his sake and your own, never
yield to such dishonour! Better weep alone, neglected for life, a
widowed wife, than stoop to be but the first of such a company!'
"Alas! now, poor lady, she has learned to hide her indignation, and
to converse freely with those any man with a spark of true manhood in
him, profligate though he might be, would have kept from her sight.
"And some still speak of the king as a model of grace and courtesy,
and extol his infinite jest and wit; comparing the polish of those
refined days with the rough, soldierly jokes of the Usurper!
"These days refined, and those coarse! Roger says there is more
coarseness in the most polished compliment of this hollow Court than
in the roughest joke a man like Cromwell could ever make. Just as
there is more coarseness in the theatre now established than in the
rudest jests in Shakspeare, whose plays the king's courtiers and
mistresses are too 'polite' to act, and the courtiers too 'polite' to
enjoy.
"For the royal favourites now are to be seen on the stage. The
'lady' now, they say, does not reign alone. The poor young queen has
this wretched revenge, at least, that the king can be constant to no
love, lawful or not.
"Bear and bull baiting, too, are restored among the 'refinements' of
the Court. But, perchance, I am the bitterer on this, in that this
degradation presses me so close. The gleam of better hope that broke
on us for Walter, when he appeared at our marriage and was reconciled
to my father, has long since vanished; and he is swept away again in
the whirlpool of the Court.
"It is this which obliges me to think of evils from which otherwise I
might turn my eyes.
"This Dance of Satyrs is to my brother, indeed, a Dance of Death.
These fires of sin are burning away his very life and soul, and none
can quench them.
"_June_ 3.--The numbers of poor sick folk in St. Giles' and St.
Martin's have increased fearfully. The nobles and rich men take
alarm; many houses are deserted; the roads crowded with coaches full
of fugitives.
"The Plague is amongst us! The Plague!
"To none of us not yet beyond middle life are the terrors of that
word fully known. Mr. Drayton, Aunt Dorothy, and the aged, know the
meaning of the word too well. In 1636, nearly thirty years ago, was
the last great desolation of the City. Before that it recurred, with
more or less force, every few years. Then it swept away a fifth of
the inhabitants. But for the last sixteen years it has been scarcely
seen in London; merely four or five people in the year, in the lowest
districts, dying of it, and so preventing its being altogether
forgotten.
"Said Aunt Dorothy: 'The Commonwealth was not all a godly people
could wish. But during the Commonwealth the Plague did not visit the
City. That scourge, at all events, was not deemed needful. Now the
Court has come back--or I should not say come back--such a Court as
was never known has come to us from those wicked, foreign, Popish
parts: and with the Court comes the Plague.'
"'The real Plague has been among us some years,' said Mr. Drayton.
'Heaven grant this Plague may be the purification. But take heed,
sister Dorothy, take heed how we interpret Providence before the
time. The scourge has fallen on too many of late for us to say too
hastily this is the Father's rod, and that is the Lictor's; or this
is the King's accolade to smite his servant into knighthood, from the
lower place of service to the higher. What sayest thou, sister
Gretel?'
"'For me, brother,' she replied, 'there is little temptation of being
too quick to interpret, because I am so slow to understand. So I
find it the safest way, when the rod falls on others, to hope it is
the King's accolade; when it falls on myself, I know well enough it
is the Father's rod--the loving Father's loving chastening, yet
sorely needed.'
"But Aunt Dorothy set her lips rigidly.
"'Some men's sins are open beforehand,' said she, 'going before to
judgment. And all men say it does seem very notable just now that
death seizes most on the profane, and seems to pass the sober and
religious people by.'
"_June_ 3.--Rumours of a great victory over the Dutch Fleet. The
news scarce stirs up the smitten city to the faintest semblance of
joy or triumph. Yet are victories not so frequent now as to be made
common.
"_June_ 25.--The Court has fled to Oxford. Whitehall is empty and
silent. That mockery, at least, is gone out of sight of the people's
misery.
"The Court has fled, and the good Nonconformist ministers have come
back, and are allowed to preach in the churches from which they were
driven.
"_June_ 30.--We have held a family consultation to-day whether to
stay or go. Roger and Leonard Antony had no doubt of their duty.
"Many of the physicians have left (to attend their fugitive patients,
they say), which makes it all the more needful, Dr. Antony thinks,
for him to remain.
"Many of the clergy, also (though by no means all), have fled (to
tend their fugitive flocks, they say). And Roger deems it the plain
duty of a Christian man, who is here already by Providence placed in
the midst of the peril, to stay, and give what help he can to the
stricken and the bereaved, by counsel, alms, and words of Christian
hope. This is the kind of season that unlocks Roger's lips. He
grows eloquent, when dying men and women look to him to lift their
hearts to God. At least, the few words he speaks are eloquent, and
refresh the heart like cold water after a burning drought--cold and
fresh, because of the deep places from which it comes.
"They tried a little to persuade Olive and me and the children to
seek refuge elsewhere.
"But not much, seeing that all persuasion could be of no avail to
move us to this.
"Thank God, it is _not_ my duty to be parted from him now. God
spares us this agony.
"Indeed there is one mitigation to the anguish of this time of
terrors. Death comes to many households now almost as the Glorious
Epiphany for which my mother looked; as it were with a great trumpet,
in the twinkling of an eye, smiting whole families together, without
parting, from earth to heaven.
"For what richer mercy could we ask?
"_July_.--The sunny sky, unshaded by a cloud, still smiles its
terrible steady stony smile on the drooping city; like a countenance
which despair has smitten into idiotic vacancy; like an eye from
which madness has dried the tears.
"It is strange to have such leisure as we have now to listen and
think. For in one thing Roger and Dr. Antony are firm. They will
not suffer us to go into the infected streets, nor indeed to leave
the garden, save by the water-gate, to give the children fresh air in
the meadows by the river.
"We keep everything as much as possible in its wonted, even course.
Our family prayer and psalm have not been omitted once; Roger's
father leading it, for Roger and Leonard are seldom present.
"Maidie and Dolly sew and help us in the house, where there is much
to do; since we hold it duty by no means to suffer our servants to
remain in the infected city, unwilling as they were to depart.
Mistress Gretel, Mistress Dorothy, and Olive, therefore, do the
kitchen and the household work, and I and the young maidens help all
we can; although (being brought up too helplessly) I am not of half
the use I would be.
"This regular even living Dr. Antony deems the best precaution. He
believes a feverish convulsive kind of religion is as dangerous as
any other excitement, and that we have great need at such (as at all)
times of the exhortation, _Study to be quiet, and to do your own
business_.
"Much as he honours those who preach in the churches, he could desire
that their exhortations were sometimes less alarming. The people are
roused and alarmed enough, he says, by the pestilence. Death itself
is preaching the Alarm and the Call to the unconverted. What sermon
can preach 'Prepare' like Ten thousand Deaths in a week? The
preachers should preach Christ and His peace, he thinks. And so no
doubt many do.
"The magistrates do what they can to produce the same regularity in
the city. London is not wholly abandoned by all her rulers in her
sore need. Bread is as abundant and cheap as ever, though it must be
brought to us at some peril.
"There is a great quiet in the streets. No holiday processions now.
The merry-makers are all gone from the city or from the world. No
funeral processions. There are no burials, except by night. The
city is dying. But there are no tolling bells, no reverent slow
steps of the mourning train. The magistrates dare not let the
mourners go about the streets by day.
"Death is stripped of all the pomps with which we seek to hide its
terrors, and stands bare. The only funeral procession is the
dead-cart with its ghastly drivers; the dead-cart met at the head of
each alley with shrieks of despair which break the silence of the
night. Twice the drivers of that cart were lost, and the horses
rushed wildly on. But no one knows if the drivers died or fled. The
general tomb is that dread Pit in the fields where the dead are
thrown at midnight, of which we scarce dare even think.
"The pestilence makes no distinction that any of us can understand
now. Aunt Dorothy has well-nigh given up seeking to read God's
judgments, which at first she and many thought so distinct and
distinguishing.
"Yet amid all these horrors there are alleviations such as sometimes
do make the meaning shine through them, as if they were illuminated
from within.
"Divisions have ceased. Instead of disputing questions of precedence
as on a mock battle-field, Christians draw inward to the citadel,
which is the sole and common refuge of us all.
"Mere religious talk has ceased.
"People whose talk is deeper than their life, do not dare to talk for
fear of having to prove their words the same hour in dying.
"People whose life lies deeper than their speech, do not need to talk
of what they feel. The peace which sets them free to serve and
comfort all around, speaks enough, with very few words.
"Persecution has ceased.
"The pestilence, with its cruel Act of Uniformity has altogether
annulled that of the king. Divers of the ejected ministers, now that
ten thousand are dying in a week, have resolved that no obedience to
the laws of mortal men whatever can justify them in neglecting men's
souls and bodies in such extremities. They therefore stay or return.
They go into the forsaken pulpits, unforbidden, to preach to the poor
people before they die; also to visit the sick, and get such relief
as they can for the poor, especially those who are shut up in the
smitten houses.
"The fear, and hope, which at first made people avoid each other,
have passed together. And the churches are crowded whenever any
preach who speak as if they testified what they knew.
"'Religion,' Roger says, 'is gaining such a hold of numbers of these
weeping, silent listeners, as, living or dying, will not be loosed
again.'
"And (unless the Puritan preaching is different from any I ever
heard, or thought to hear) the sermons are such as the evident
possibility of the preachers never preaching another, and the
certainty of many of the congregation never hearing another, alone
can make them.
"They are messages, not statements or arguments; scarcely so much
appeals as messages. The calmest allusion to danger penetrates the
heart like the archangel's trumpet, when ten thousand dying lips are
echoing it.
"'_You are lost--wandering and lost in sin_.'
"That has a strange power, when we know it to be true, and see before
us the edge of the abyss.
"'_The son of God has come to seek and to save the lost_.'
"He, Himself, not the plague, but the Saviour, is here, seeking the
lost now; not to judge but to save.
"_God has so loved the world_; not hated, let these horrors say what
they may--not forgotten--but loved; not willed this open world to
perish, let these grass-grown streets, and these shutters rattling
against the empty houses, these midnight burials of thousands, these
death-wails, this death-silence, say what they will, _not to perish_;
the true perishing, the perishing in sin, of sin, is not His will,
never His will, but the being saved, out of sin and from sin. _This_
salvation is as near you as the plague. Nay, the plague is only the
merciful thunder calling to it.
"Few words are needed to move men now; no new words. The older the
better. If the old forgotten words once lisped at a mother's knee,
better than all.
"O Walter! Walter! my brother! Art thou here still in this
plague-smitten city, or hast thou fled with that Court smitten with a
plague so infinitely more terrible? Would God thou wert here to hear
those sacred words of heavenly forgiveness and strength, echoed back
to thy heart once more, as from our mother's lips, from among these
congregations of dying men!
"_August_ 25.--It has come close to us at last.
"Our door is marked with the red cross now.
"The sweetest and ripest souls among us--Roger's father and Aunt
Gretel--have been stricken, and are gone home.
"Yesterday morning, before daybreak, I was resting on my bed, having
watched through the night, when I heard the latch of the garden-door,
which was left open for Roger and Dr. Antony, softly lifted. I
thought it might be Roger, and crept down-stairs.
"At the door I met Annis Nye.
"Her face was pale and worn, but serene as ever, and her voice as
calm.
"'I heard that you were all here, without any to serve you,' she
said, 'and I thought that was a call to me to come.'
"'Do you know into what peril you come?' I asked.
"'I saw the plague-sign on the street-door,' she said; 'so I came
round through the garden.'
"I clasped her in my arms, and kissed her, and wept. Tears are not
common with us now; but I could not help these. Generous deeds
always touch the spring of tears, I think, more easily than sorrow.
"What was stranger than my being thus moved, when Aunt Dorothy came
down and saw Annis, and heard why she had come, she did as I had
done; she took the maiden to her heart and wept.
"But what sounded stranger yet in that house and city of death, when
the children saw her, they made the hushed house ring for a moment
with their joyous welcomes.
"'Annis is at home again!' they said; 'Annis is safe. She will nurse
us all, and keep every one, quiet, and we shall all get well.'
"Meantime, Mistress Dorothy had busied herself preparing food, which
she set before Annis, and with difficulty persuaded her to take a
little bread and milk.
"She had a strange story to tell, and she told it in few words, as
was her wont, at our questioning.
"'I and other women Friends were sentenced to the plantations in
Jamaica,' she said. 'But the ship-masters refused to take us. They
held our sentence unjust, and feared the judgment of the Lord if they
meddled with us. At last one was found who took us, he being denied
a pass down the river from the plague-smitten city unless he
covenanted to carry us. They had trouble in getting some of us on
board. For they would not acknowledge their sentence so far as to
climb willingly into the ship. So they had to be hoisted on board
like merchandise. To this I was not called. For which I was
thankful. For it angered the sailors sorely. "They would hoist
merchants' goods," said they, "but not men and women." But the
officers took the ropes, saying, "They are the king's goods." So, as
chattels, we were shipped for the plantations. But we had scarce
reached the sea when the pestilence broke out among us. One and
another sickened and died. So that the ship-masters would proceed no
further, but cast us on shore, and me among the rest.'
"There was a kind of comfort in feeling that, coming thus from an
infected ship, the generous maiden had not really increased her risk
by devoting herself to our service, freely as she had dared to do so.
And our risk could scarce be increased.
"Having told her tale, Annis quietly folded her out-of-door garments,
laying them aside in the old places, and said to Aunt Dorothy, 'Which
way can I serve thee best?'
"We took her to Mr. Drayton's sick-chamber, Olive's eyes brightened
with the soft moisture of grateful tears as Annis entered, where she
sate by her father's bed.
"But that was no place or season for spoken thanks or questionings.
Annis at once fitted into her place among the nurses. And I know not
how any of us could have survived those days and nights of watching,
but for her help.
"Aunt Dorothy said,--
"'I will take heed how I speak lightly of Quakers and their calls
again.'
"Yes; the two readiest among us have been called home. Roger's
father and his mother's sister. Honoured and beloved beyond any.
"Yet we speak of them quietly, almost without tears.
"Death is so around us--without, within, everywhere--that it seems
the most natural thing. We say, 'They are gone home,' with less
sense of separation than in ordinary times we say, 'They are gone to
Netherby,' with far less than we should have said, 'They have gone
across the seas.'
"It is so likely we may be with them again to-morrow--to-day!
"I look back a page or two in this Diary, and the words they spoke
and I wrote so lately have become sacred, dying, farewell words.
"'_The Father's rod_.' Yes, that was what _they_ thought. '_The
King's touch smiting them from the lower service to the higher_,'
That is what we think, and we say it to each other as their epitaph.
_September_.--No distinction, indeed, this pestilence makes as to
whom it smites.
"What I wished, yet scarce dared to wish, for Walter has come true.
"Could I have dared to wish it, had I thought it could come?
"Two nights since, Roger came to my bedside and said,--
"'Lettice, I dare not spare thee, even thee, from a call such as
this. Canst thou be ready to come with me quickly, to visit one
smitten with plague?'
"From any voice but his, the sudden, midnight summons would have set
my heart beating so as to rob me of the power to obey.
"But there is always a calm about him which nerves me to do anything.
Besides, he said, 'Come with me.' And that was strength itself.
"I did not waste time in questioning. He left me to tell Annis Nye
not to wake Olive.
"I was dressed in a few minutes. Then I went and kissed the babe.
It might be perilous for me to touch his soft cheek, rosy with sleep,
when I came back. If ever I came back to him! For that was a
probability which must be met in such a leave-taking.
"As I stood by the child's little bed, Roger came back.
"'We will kneel beside him,' he said.
"And in a few brief words he prayed, for strength to comfort, for
wisdom to guide, for balm to heal.
"Before we rose, I knew what he meant
"'It is Walter,' I said.
"He took my hand in his, and we spoke no more.
"Silently we went out, our steps echoing through the streets, the
great bonfires, kept up now in each street to purify the air,
lighting us on our way, now illuminating with tongues of fitful flame
the red cross and the closed door, now more drearily lighting up the
empty chambers of the houses of the dead, which needed no longer to
be closed, whose half-opened shutters creaked restlessly in the night
winds.
"We stopped at the steps of what had been a stately mansion.
"The door was ajar, as Roger must have left it. There were none to
usher us into the lofty hall or up the wide staircase, on whose stone
stairs our steps echoed so noisily through the deserted chambers,
step as softly as we might.
"Through one luxurious chamber after another we passed, our steps
hushed on soft Persian rugs, and softened by tapestried walls.
"In one lay virginals and lutes and song-books, as if from a recent
concert. In another, a table spread for a feast--the wine still
sparkling in the glasses, and summer-fruits mouldering on the
porcelain.
"And in the last chamber, upon a stately gilded bed with silk
curtains, he lay, my brother, with scarce open, half-vacant eyes,
which seemed as if their sight and meaning were gone, his hands
clenched in agony.
"Yet he saw and knew me, for he cried with an energy which pierced
the silence like a death-wail--
"'Take her away, Roger! take her away! I will not have that at my
door! Take her away!'
"But I went close to him, and gently unclasped his clenched hand, and
kissed his forehead, and said--
"'Two of us have been smitten already, Walter. We are past peril.'
"'Who have been smitten?' he asked suddenly. 'Not your child?'
"'No,' I said--and I felt my voice falter--'not our Harry.'
"Then his mind seemed to wander, for the far-off past came back so
vividly as to blot out the days that had intervened.
"'Harry, my brother Harry--don't speak to me of Harry,' he said. 'He
loved me, and sent a dying message that he looked to meet me. And he
never will--he never will.' And then,--
"'I am dying, Lettice, don't you see? dying--body and soul. For
mercy's sake don't come near me. If you can bear it, I can't. There
will be torments enough soon. Don't burn my soul thus with your
purity and your love.'
"I took his hand, and pressed it to my lips, for I could not speak.
But he drew it away with a convulsive energy.
"Take her away, Roger!--don't let her! She doesn't know what I am,
or who it was these hands touched last.'
"And then at intervals he told us how, when the Court left, a small
company of the more reckless young courtiers had persuaded him it
would be cowardly to go; and they had established themselves in this
house, belonging to a kinsman of one of them, and held wild revelries
there. How he had half intended, when he had heard we remained in
the City, to break with these dissolute associates, and find us out;
and had once or twice crept into churches by himself and heard
sermons, but had delayed and hesitated from week to week; until at
last, towards the end of August, a singing-girl, one of their
company, had been smitten with the plague. Then the door had been
closed and marked, and all the revellers had escaped through windows,
over the leads of other houses, or over the palings of gardens to the
river, and so into the country. But he could not shut his heart to
the dying shrieks of that poor lost girl, and abandon her to die
alone.
"'I meant to wait till she was dead,' he said. 'and leave the men of
the dead-cart to find her in the empty house and bury her, and then
to follow the rest. I had enough on my conscience without being
followed through life with those dying cries. But before she died I
began to feel ill myself. I tried to keep up my spirits with wine;
but that was of no use. And then I found half a dozen leaves of an
old Prayer-book--the sentences and the Confession, and the
Absolution, and one or two of the Gospels. I entreated her to let me
read to her, but she would not listen, but kept deliriously singing,
mixing up light songs, bad enough at any time from a woman's lips,
with strains of music from the Royal Chapel, and melodies of innocent
old Christmas village carols, in a way horrible to hear. And then
she died, and I was too ill to leave. And I crept into this bed.
That was yesterday. And at night-fall there was a rattling at the
door, and heavy steps up-stairs, and heavier down again. So I knew
they would bury her. But I lay still under the coverlet; for a
horrid dread came over me that they might find me, carry me down, and
bury me with her, to save time. There had been horrible jests among
us of such things happening. But the door shut, echoing through the
empty house like thunder.
"'And I knew I was left alone to die. And then another horrible
feeling came over me; that it would be better if they had found me,
and taken me out to die quietly among the dead, without thinking any
more about it, than leave me here lingering alone to think of it; to
look at death steadily, alone, no one knows how long; with nothing
but dying between me and it.
"'And to pass the time and break the silence I took up the old
Prayer-book and read aloud,--
"'_When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness_. But I
thought, I can never turn away from my wickedness. I can only turn
round and round in it for ever and ever. So I stopped, until the
silence was worse to bear than the words; and then I read on again.
But my own voice sounded to me like a parody. Dreadful jesting
voices seemed reading the sacred words after me, until I came to the
Confession.
"'Then the jesting voices vanished. And, instead, came my mother's
voice, and my own, as a boy, saying it after her, "We have gone
astray like lost sheep." I might have said it once, I knew, and have
_come back_; now I should have to _go on saying it_ for ever, with
her voice echoing it as if from heaven, and _never come back_. If I
could hear the voice of some one good reading this Confession and the
Gospels, I thought they might seem true, even for me, yet, but never
in my own.
"'So I flung the book from me, and lay still until I heard a man's
feet coming softly up the staircase; and I thought it was a thief
come to pillage, and then perhaps to murder me. And the insane
desire of life mastered me again; and I covered my face again and
hushed my breath, until I heard Roger's voice beside me saying,
"_There is no one living here_." And then I looked up. And all
night he has been speaking to me, Lettice--nursing me as my mother
might, and now and then reading out of the Gospels and the
Confession. And if the merciful words would seem true to me in any
voice sister, they would in his. If I had only gone to you all
before! But it is too late, Is it not too late? Is not my life
wasted, lost--lost for ever?'
"He gazed into my eyes with that wistful, thirsting look of the souls
who are departing. I knew nothing but truth would avail. So I said
as quietly as I could,--
"'Your life--this life, Walter--I am afraid it is lost--lost for
ever. Your _life_; but not you, Walter; not you.'
He kept his eyes fixed on mine, and said,--
"And there is no second, Lettice. God Himself cannot give us back
the lost life again.'
"Then all that he might have been, all my mother hoped he might be,
rushed over my heart, and I could not say any more. I could only
kneel down by his bedside and take his hand and sob out,--
"'O Father, Thou knowest all he might have been, all Thou wouldest
have had him be. And Thou seest the ruin they have made of him.
Have pity, have pity, and forgive.'
"He laid his hand on mine.
"'Hush, Lettice, hush!' he said; 'not _they--I_. I have ruined
myself. No one could have ruined me but myself. The sin is mine.'
"Then I rose. For I felt as if my prayer was answered. I felt as
if, weak, trembling woman that I was, a priestly voice was in my ears
pronouncing absolution, ready to breathe the gospel of forgiveness
through my lips. For it seemed to me these were the first words of
real repenting I had ever heard Walter utter. I had heard him again
and again speak of himself or his life with a passionate loathing.
But that was not repenting. Too often if any one admitted the
justice of such self-accusations, he would turn them into
self-excusing and accusings of others. But now, it seemed to me, he
was indeed coming to himself, coming home; and I said,--
"'Walter, you could not turn from the cries of that poor dying
creature. Will you set your pity above God's?'
"'I had none but myself to think of,' he said. 'It mattered nothing
to any one whether I did right or wrong about it. He is King and
Judge, and has the whole world to think of in forgiving any one.'
"'Our Lord did not say so,' I said. 'When the lost son arose to come
home to be forgiven, it seemed as if the father had nothing to do
with any one in the world but with him. He did not think of what the
servants would say, or the elder brother, or how any one else might
be tempted by the forgiveness to wander. He was watching the
wanderer! Oh, Walter, He was the first to see him turn--the first!
He was the first to see you. I know it by the parable; I know it
because, after all--after _all_, Walter--He has let you die at your
post. Think of the mercy of that! You might have died helping to
ruin some one. You die trying to help. Think of the mercy of being
suffered to do that!'
"A softer light came into his eyes, and after a minute he said,--
"'I cannot doubt His pity; no, I dare not. What I doubt is myself.
How can you know, Lettice, how can I know, that if life were given
back to me I might not waste it all again?'
"Then turning that intense searching gaze from me to Roger, he went
on,--
"'How can I know whether I am clinging to Him, as a dying man clings
to _anything_, or indeed as the repenting son to the Father? How can
you know or I?'
"Roger bent low over him and said,--
"'Neither you nor I can know. One only knows. He only can forgive.
He knew, on the cross, when He was dying for the world, and the thief
beside Him was dying for his own crimes, and dying He forgave the
dying. He knows now. He is as near as then, and not _dying; living_
for evermore; almighty to save. But even if you are clinging to Him,
as a drowning man to a rock, or to an outstretched hand, in mere
terror of the waves, is He one likely to wrench His hand even from
such a poor, desperate, selfish grasp as that? Did He on the Sea of
Galilee?'
"Walter drank in all Roger said, but made no reply.
"Roger's next words fell solemn as a summons from another world.
"'What do you want Him to save you from?'
"Walter's answer was a cry of agony.
"'From myself!--from myself!'
"Roger's voice was firm no longer, but low and broken as Walter's
own, as he replied,--
"That He died to do; that He lives to do. That He can never refuse
to do for any that ask Him, for ever and for ever.'
"Then, after a few moments, Roger said,--
"'If He sees no other way to save you but that you should lose your
life, that you should not be trusted with it again, could you be
content?'
"'How can I be content?' Walter answered, 'Think what my life might
have been, It might have been like yours! And I have no second. I
would not complain. It is no wonder I cannot be trusted. I cannot
trust myself. But you can never know how bitter it is to begin to
see what life might have been when it is all over, and when you begin
to see how well He you have grieved was worth serving.'
"He lingered some days. And then the lost life was over.
"The life those we had served not disloyally had done their utmost to
ruin.
"The spirit had departed, which He we have served so unworthily even
to the uttermost can save.
"It was beyond comparison the bitterest sacrifice we had ever made.
"Yet this sacrifice England is now making by hecatombs on the same
foul altar.
"A sacrifice not of life ennobled, and made infinitely worthier in
laying it down, but of honour, of virtue, of all that makes men men.
Of souls degraded in the sacrifice to the level of that to which they
are sacrificed. A sacrifice to devils, and not to God."