NULLA VESTIGIA RETRORSUM.
So they were married, and the alliance between simple hearts and Norman
blood was complete. It came to pass before many months that the
millionaire, pleased, it may be, to find his homely patronymic
transmitted to his grand-child, bought back Ripon House from the
mortgagees and gave it to his son-in-law. Mr. Windsor knew it was the
secret desire of his daughter that Geoffrey should return to England and
devote himself to aiding his countrymen in their struggle for liberty.
But Geoffrey was too content with his own happiness and too appalled by
the confusion which still overspread his native land to evince much
enthusiasm in this regard. "Wait a little, Maggie," he said, and Maggie
was shrewd enough to understand that this was the better way to attain
her purpose. She remembered how her husband had broken his sword and
renounced fealty to the perjured King. Give Geoffrey time, and he would
work out his own salvation.
But while individuals wedded and were happy and begat children, and
while patient women tarried for God's word to awaken in their lovers'
hearts, the great world, which is never happy and which never waits,
rolled on remorselessly. England still knew perilous days, but the hope
of better things to come glimmered through the mists of evil rule.
The bulwark of the nation's safety in that hazardous time, as history
well knows, was Richard Lincoln; and though we who have faith that God
is ever working for man's good, know that human nature must in the end
evolve into higher grades of truth and power, and that even the
sublimest soul is but a cipher in the eternal scale; yet England had
need of a rare spirit in that time of her sore distress to save her from
the rocks of revolution and anarchy. She found this in Richard Lincoln,
whose name will be ever famous in the gratitude of his countrymen.
In strange contrast to the career of which we have just been speaking
stands out the final pageant of the once splendid court of Britain.
George the Fifth died, leaving no son to inherit his foibles and his
title. The House of Hanover was shorn of male heirs in the nick of time,
for it is doubtful if the populace would have permitted exiled royalty
to indulge in the mimicry of another dynasty. But for the purposes of
our story the King is still alive, since his death took place, as many
of us know, in his eightieth year. There were but few of those whose
vicissitudes we have followed able to tell the tale when the last
Hanoverian, tenacious of vital breath as he had been of everything else,
descended to his fathers. _Le roi est mort_, but the old world cry,
"Long live the king," is silent forever.
Perhaps one of the keenest strokes at the self-esteem of the unfortunate
monarch was the matrimonial apostasy of his daughter. The Princess
Henrietta, contrary to the long-cherished traditions of her race, wedded
in her thirteenth year a commoner, as it was described at court. She
became the wife of L. Pierson Dana, a prominent dealer in hides and
leather, and a man of culture and standing in the community. King
George, with a senile confusing of terms, always insisted on speaking of
the marriage as morganatic.
Concerning those who composed his court little remains to be said. The
Duke of Bayswater was joined by his wife shortly after his escape to
America. They never returned to their native country, but lived very
exclusively in apartments near to the royal suite.
Colonel Featherstone, lured by hopes of fortune, organized a successful
corner in lard, and invested the proceeds in a vineyard in California.
The famous blue seal dry Hanover, which is even to-day regarded by
connoisseurs as a grand _vin_, is a monument to his reverence for
royalty as well as to his talent as a vine-dresser.
One day in late November, when little Abraham was about five years old,
signs of great activity were noticeable about Ripon House. For a week
past the environs had been rife with rumors concerning the return of
Geoffrey to the house of his ancestors and the wealth which had accrued
to him through his marriage with the daughter of the rich American who
had once rented the manor-house. London mechanics had been repairing and
furnishing the old-fashioned pile, striving withal to retain the flavor
of antiquity which hung about its towers. There had been employment,
too, for the artisans of the neighborhood, and even to-day, when the
guests were to arrive before sunset, a bevy of the people were running
hither and thither at the bidding of an old man with white hair and bent
figure. He was evidently merely an upper servant, but the expression of
his face betokened one whose joy and sorrow are an echo of his master's
fortune.
A few hours later a carriage drew up before the threshold. A young man
leaped to the ground and grasped with both of his the hand of the aged
servitor.
"How are you, Reynolds?"
"God bless you, Mr. Ripon; God bless you."
"And here is my wife, Reynolds. You remember her."
The old man doffed his hat with a respectful formality. It was still a
little against his grain to see an American his master's bride. "Welcome
to Ripon House."
Maggie shook him by the hand, and her father's bantering voice now
startled his dignified mood.
"So this is where you have been hiding all these years, Reynolds? You
look like the wandering Arab, with your gray beard!"
Mr. Windsor doubtless referred to the Wandering Jew, but he was no
scholar, as he would himself have been the first to acknowledge. All
laughed at the mistake, and none louder than the fourth member of the
party, a tall, middle-aged man, with a noble but genial countenance.
It was Richard Lincoln, to whom time had been generous during the six
years which had flown since he was last at Ripon House. Despite the
cares which had weighed upon his spirit, his brow was scarcely furrowed.
He had come to be Geoffrey's guest for a few days and enjoy the
tranquillity of the country. There were business matters also to be
talked over with his friend, for Geoffrey had promised to take an active
part in the public service of the country.
The friends sat long that evening around the dinner-table. There was
much pleasant talk, but every face wore a thoughtful look. The
intervening time since last they had gathered here was too full of
incident to be passed over lightly. Recollection stood beside the
hearth, and yet with a finger on the lips, as though loath to jar the
atmosphere of revery with a word. And yet there were references made to
the past. Lincoln asked what had become of that strange man Jawkins. But
no one knew further than that he had fled with the splendid beauty.
"Is that woman's husband still living?" inquired Maggie.
All shook their heads in doubt.
"And dear old Sydney, do you know anything of him, Richard?" said Ripon.
"Yes. Only a few weeks since he married an attractive little widow with
a snug property. I had him pardoned, you may remember, among my first
acts as Prime Minister. Prison life seemed to have agreed with him. He
had lost his dyspeptic air."
"That old scoundrel Bugbee had a curious end," observed Mr. Windsor. "To
think of being bitten to death by a tarantula. Ugh! It seems he used to
keep spiders under glass in his apartments, and this was one that
escaped. And what an enormous fortune he left!"
So the conversation proceeded, and by and by they all adjourned to the
library, where a wood-fire lighted up the huge fireplace. Richard
Lincoln seated himself in a deep arm-chair beside the hearth, and rather
avoiding talk gazed at the sizzling logs. His own thoughts sufficed him.
Maggie, whose seat was next to his, watched his expression, where a
shade of sadness lingered when his attention was not engrossed by
others. At a moment that Geoffrey and her father were out of the room
she leaned forward and said:
"Where is she buried?"
"They sleep side by side," was the quiet response. "Their love to-day
laughs alike at peasant and at noble. I try to think of it as a symbol
of what is to be," he continued. "Theirs is the first alliance in that
reconciliation between the few and the many on which the hopes of
posterity depend."