CHAPTER IX.

NOTES BY MAGDALENE ANTONY.

The first public event of which I have any recollection, or rather the first time I can clearly recollect having a glimpse beyond our own little world in London and Netherby, was one warm evening in August, 1658.

My mother was coming home with me and Dolly from the house of Mr. John Milton in Bird-Cage Walk, past Whitehall, when we noticed many people clustering like bees around the doors of the palace; and I remember my mother lifting up her finger, and saying to Dolly and me, who were discussing some of our small affairs eagerly:--

"Hush, children, the Protector is there, in sore sickness."

And then I remember noticing that the groups of people through which we were passing were all speaking low and walking softly, as people do in sick-chambers, and every now and then looking up anxiously to the palace-windows.

I recollect a hush and awe creeping over me, and a guilty feeling, as if Dolly and I had been chidden for talking in church.

And all spoke in murmurs, and no one said anything I could hear distinctly, until, as we were leaving the space in front of the palace, from the last point at which we could see the windows, my mother turned back to look. It happened that at that moment two men were standing close to us, and one pointed to the palace, and said: "It was _there!_ the murderers set up the black scaffold there, just under those windows. I see it now; and so, I trow, does the murderer on his sick-bed inside. And so will more than one when the black pall comes out at those doors. The day of vengeance always comes at last."

The words went through me like a shudder. They were spoken in a deep hissing whisper, more like the gnashing of teeth than speaking.

I did not venture to tell my mother of them. I did not know if she had heard them. I never told anyone of them. They lay seething and working in my brain, as so many perplexities do in children's minds--half-shaped, half-shapeless, altogether voiceless, like ghosts waiting to be born--and tormented me greatly.

For in a few days the terrible black train did leave those palace-doors. My mother took us to see it. And my mother wept, and Aunt Gretel, which was not so wonderful, because Aunt Gretel would weep as easily at anything that moved her as we, children. But my father wept, and even Uncle Roger; and Annis, the nurse, was stiller than ever. And there was great silence and quiet weeping among the people as the black train passed from the Palace to the Abbey. It was a great day of mourning; and my father told us we must never forget it. For all the people of England, said he, that day had lost their best friend. But all the time I could not get it out of my head that somebody had called him a murderer, and had called this day of mourning a day of vengeance.

It puzzled me exceedingly, more especially as Dr. Rich, the quiet clergyman who lived in the little house at the end of our garden, and Austin his son, our playfellow, would not, I knew, have anything to do with the procession; and, indeed, would never call the Protector anything but Mr. Cromwell. And Annis, our nurse, never called him anything but Oliver Cromwell (although in her that was not remarkable, since she called even our father and mother Leonard and Olive); and I had heard her say often, no man was to be called a "Protector" who let hundreds of poor Friends languish in prison. Also Aunt Dorothy, I knew, would not come to stay with us on account of something that had to do with the Protector. All which things made a great tumult and chaos in my brain.

But I must confess that the result was, that we grew up with a great tenderness for the Royalist side.

There was little in the shows and titles of the Commonwealth to enkindle the imaginations of children.

In all the fairy tales and romaunts and poems we knew, there was no such prosaical title as Lord Protector. Indeed, we agreed that the Bible history itself became much more interesting after the judges were changed into kings, however wrong it might have been of the Jews to wish for the change. We felt that the threat of his taking our "sons" to be his horsemen and charioteers, and our "daughters" to be his cooks and confectionaries, would certainly not have deterred us from demanding a king. We thought it would be undoubtedly more glorious to be my Lady Confectionary to a queen, or my Lord Charioteer to a king, than to be anything in the sober untitled train of a protector. Queen Esther was to us a far more romantic personage than Deborah, who was only a mother in Israel. And on Sundays, when the sermons were very long and we were allowed to read the Bible to keep us from going to sleep, we found great solace in expatiating upon Shushan the palace, among the courts of the gardens with mysterious splendours of fine linen and purple--beds of gold and silver--pavement of red, blue, white, and black marble--silver rings and pillars of marble, between which were to be caught glimpses of fair ladies in robes fragrant with perfumes--of a crown royal and a golden sceptre.

But besides these enchantments for our earthly imaginations, the Royalist cause, as expounded to us by Austin Rich and his brothers, laid hold on our hearts by the irresistible charm of suffering majesty. Over the story of the young orphan Princess Elizabeth, dying in the castle where her father had been imprisoned, with her head pillowed on the Bible she loved, we wept many tears. The young Duke of Gloucester, who had declared to the king just before his execution that he would let them tear him in pieces rather than accept his brother's throne, was one of our earliest heroes.

And, above all, the name of King Charles was sacred to us. Our mother always spoke of him with a tender respect. We knew how he had worn the portrait of the queen his wife next his heart, and only parted with it with his life. We thought it quite natural that Archbishop Usher, seeing from the roof of Lady Peterborough's house the king's coat laid aside and his hair bound up for the fatal stroke, should have been able to see no more, but been led fainting away. Moreover, Austin Rich had sundry pathetic stories of Episcopal clergymen plundered, and their parsonages pillaged by Parliament troopers, because they would not deny the king or refuse to pray for him.

So that we were quite prepared to welcome the next great public event which made an impression on us after the funeral of the Protector. This was the entry of King Charles II. into London. A king was actually coming through our streets! Our king; who had passed his youth in exile! He was coming to be crowned in the Abbey, and to reign over us. And if a king, then of course the queen would come, and princes, and princesses, with all the splendours belonging to them.

We were sorry our kindred did not seem quite happy about it. But we had been told to speak respectfully of the king, and we had heard the minister in one of the churches pray for him. So that, on the whole, Dolly and I came to the conclusion that it would not be very wrong for us to enjoy the magnificence as much as we certainly did. Especially as Aunt Dorothy (who, our mother told us, was as good as Aunt Gretel, and Aunt Gretel we well knew was better than any one else) was coming to town for nothing else but to see the face of His Majesty and do him honour.

The previous festivities had excited our expectations to a high pitch. There had been heralds, in coats of many colours, proclaiming the king at different places in the streets; and crowds shouting, "The king, God bless him!" and bells breaking out into peals of joy; and bonfires--we could count thirty one evening from our upper windows--along the high road from Westminster to the City, in the streets, on the bridges, by the water-side.

So at last the great festival came. Banners hidden for years waving from the windows all down the streets; fountains flowing with wine; bells clashing all together in sudden peals, as if they had gone wild for joy; and all the people as mad for joy as the bells--some shouting, some weeping; strangers greeting each other like old friends. And such dresses! Old Cavalier wardrobes brought to light again; and some ladies and gentlemen in the new French fashions, with dresses gilded, slashed, tasseled, plumed, laced; every one trying to show their loyalty by going as far from the old Puritan plainness as possible, in materials as rich as could be purchased, and of every colour of the rainbow. We thought it almost as splendid as Shushan the palace in the days of Esther the queen. Trumpets, bells, drums, songs, wild shouts; colour and music everywhere, May-day everywhere,--in dresses, in banners, in the budding trees, in the blue skies; all the city, all the world seemed to us gone wild with joy.

And Aunt Dorothy, the soberest and gravest of all our kindred, as wild as any one; crying out, "The king, God bless him!" kissing Dolly and me again and again in a way which surprised us exceedingly, as we were not aware of having done any thing remarkably good; and even at bed-time the caresses exchanged between us usually went no further than our courtesying and kissing her hand, and being told to be good children.

And then the king!

On horseback, as a king should be; in gorgeous apparel, smiling and bowing right and left, as if he felt we were all friends; acknowledging every courtesy with the easy grace natural to him.

And as he passed by, Aunt Dorothy actually sank down on one knee and clasped her hands as if in prayer, while the tears streamed over her face; and we thought we heard her murmur, "Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace." For she told us the salvation of England had come.

So the king went on to his palace; and the loyal lords and ladies followed him in their coaches, brilliant with jewels and smiles. And Aunt Dorothy, Dolly, and I looked on, when suddenly, while the procession was pausing for a minute, one of the loveliest of the ladies turned towards us; and when she saw Aunt Dorothy, her face, which was graver and paler than most of those in that gay company broke into smiles and into a sudden glow; and she seemed looking on beyond us, and then her eyes came back and rested on us again, a little sadly.

Aunt Dorothy exclaimed,--

"Lettice Davenant!"

And I looked, and loved her face at once, and yet wondered. For our mother had talked to us of her as the brightest creature in the world; and we had always pictured our loveliest fairy princesses as like what our mother had told us of Lettice Davenant, with eyes like diamonds, and teeth like pearls, and a colour like fresh roses, and a brilliant changing face, with a flash and play like precious stones about it.

And now she sat there quietly dressed, unlike the ladies round her; bedecked with few jewels; with a sweet, calm face, rather like the good women in New Testament pictures, than a princess in a fairy tale.

So she also passed on, following the king to the palace. And the people rejoiced, and sang and feasted far into the night.

We were wakened from our first sleep by sounds of revelry and wild songs echoing through the streets. Strange sounds to us.

We crept close to each other, Dolly and I; and I said, "Dolly, do you think it was as good as the Book of Esther?"

But Dolly confessed to being a little disappointed. The king in the fairy tales was so different from other people, she said; you always knew him from any one else, even when he was dressed like a beggar. How, she could not quite tell; perhaps his face actually shone, and his clothes, instead of being only shone upon, like other people's.

But our king was dressed like a king in a fairy tale, there was nothing to complain of in that; and yet, if Aunt Dorothy had not told us, we might not have known him from the gentlemen with him. We agreed that it would be convenient, since the faces of real kings did not shine, that they should always wear crowns. Otherwise one might make mistakes, which would be such a pity.

Perhaps, when our king was crowned, however, it would be all right.

But we concluded that it certainly was a very delightful thing to have a king of our own, whether his face shone, or whether he was a head and shoulders taller than other men, or not. It made every one dress so beautifully, and seem so glad, and set all the bells and trumpets going so gloriously. And we hoped very soon there would come also the queen, and the princes and princesses.

And then the world would be something like fairy-land indeed. Our father and mother, and Uncle Roger, and all the good people, would of course be rewarded, and made happy all the rest of their days, when our king found them out, as he would be sure to do in time. Of course, they were not expecting to be rewarded. On the contrary, they would be exceedingly surprised when the king found them out, and embraced them, and made them sit on his right hand. The good people in the fairy tales always were. But there was sure to be no mistake in the end. The good people always had their due when the true prince came. And it was not to be thought of that England was to be worse governed than a kingdom in fairy-land.

The next week we were still more satisfied that we had entered on this fairy world. For as Isaac, Dolly, and I were passing Westminster Abbey, we heard an unwonted sound issuing from it, and crept in to listen. Then, for the first time, we heard the organ, with the chant of the choristers. But we no more thought of its being an earthly instrument, made of wood and metal, than of the golden streets of the New Jerusalem being made of gold like one of our coins.

The wonderful sounds rolled up and down the aisles, and wound in and out among the arches, and wreathed the old stone pillars, and seemed to lose themselves in far-off shrines and mysterious endless recesses like those in a forest, and then to come back again changed and intertwined with earlier echoes to mingle with the new tides of music that kept streaming forth; until we found that all the while the wondrous tones had seemed wandering at their own sweet will, they had been building a temple within the temple--a temple of melody within the temple of stone. And the Abbey was no more a sculptured edifice, but a living body with a living soul. And when this temple was built, angels came and sang in it--voices such as we had never heard on earth--clear as bells, and free as winds, without a touch of the struggle and sadness in them which common human voices have.

Thus Isaac, Dolly, and I walked home, with the gates of paradise all open around us.

The next morning we crept out again to listen if these heavenly gates were open still.

But on our way we met a noisy, riotous crowd dragging along a bear which was to be baited in the Spring Gardens. Isaac said "baiting" meant that it was to be torn in pieces by dogs for the amusement of the people, after killing and gashing as many dogs as it could, meantime, in its own defence. This was an amusement which the Protector had not permitted. The thought of it closed the gates of paradise to me, at least for that day.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

They laid him in the Abbey among the kings.

For two years the dust of Tudors and Plantagenets was honoured (so Roger thought) by the neighbourhood of the mortal part of the man who had served England as any of her kings might have been proud to have served her--had loved her, as we believe, more than home or life, or even the esteem of good men--had made her greater than any king or prince had ever made her, from Alfred to the Elizabeth whom he called "that great queen."

And then, in the September after the Restoration, (by order of the king who sold Dunkirk to the French, and spent the money like the prodigal in the parable), the noble dust was taken out of its resting-place, with the remains of the aged mother, and that daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, whom the Protector had loved so dearly; and of Blake, the great admiral, who had made the name of England a renown from the shores of Italy and Algiers to Teneriffe and the western islands of the Spanish main, to be cast contemptuously into a pit in the neighbouring churchyard of St. Margaret's.

I think, when he was gone, most good men in England--at least most Puritan good men--felt something was lost our generation was scarce likely to recover. The Scottish ministers said that God's goodness had marvellously caused true piety to flourish more under this usurper than under her rightful kings; "turning bitter waters into sweet by a miracle." And so thought Mr. Richard Baxter; acknowledging, moreover, that he believed the Protector, misled as he had been, "meant well in the main."

Good Mr. Philip Henry (who kept the day of the late king's death as a fast day) wrote, that though during the years between forty and sixty, "the foundations were out of course, yet in the matter of God's worship thing went well; there was freedom and reformation."

Mistress Lucy Hutchinson acknowledged that he had much natural greatness, and well became the place he had usurped, and that "his personal courage and magnanimity upheld him against all enemies and malcontents." And Mr. John Maidstone, his faithful "gentleman and cofferer," wrote (when nothing but dishonour could come to any for honouring him): "In the direst perils of the war, and the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when it had gone out in others." And he described him thus: "A body well compact and strong; his stature under six feet (I believe two inches); his head so shaped as you might see it both a _storehouse_ and a _shop_" (full for every need, ready for all occasions); "a vast treasury of natural parts; his temper exceeding fiery (as I have known), but the flame of it kept down, for the most part, or soon allayed, with those moral endowments he had; naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure, though God had made in him a heart wherein was left little room for fear. _A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was_."

But he was gone. And all the people in England who thought they could govern England better than he had governed her, were at liberty to try.

They did try, for a little more than a year. And at the end of that time the whole nation, distracted to madness from end to end by the disorders they brought about, threw itself at the feet of Charles the Second, in a frenzy of loyalty, without conditions, simply entreating, like a child wearied with its own wilfulness, to be forgiven and governed and kept quiet, yielding every precious right--the fruit of our forefathers' blood and toil--into his hands, content, if he had been strong, to be made as servile as he pleased; ready, alas, he being not strong, but weak and profligate, to be made as base as (for the time) he could and did make it.

"Such," said Roger, "was the Aceldama from which that strong faithful arm had saved us."

"Such," sighed my father, "was the end of the most beneficent of despotisms that could not be immortal."

Roger never ceased, during the few months of the Commonwealth, to do all he could to carry out what he believed would have been the Lord Protector's wish, doing his utmost to serve my Lord Richard, the new Protector, and, after his resignation, to keep order and discipline in the army. But he worked with little hope. During all the times of trial before or since, I never saw him so downcast and desponding as then.

When once the Restoration came his spirits seemed, strangely, to rise again.

He had done his best; and the worst had come. The hopeless struggle without a chief was over, and henceforth he, and those who thought with him, must gird on a new courage, not to contend but to endure. I well remember how, on the evening of the day of the king's entry into London, he came into our parlour, and unlaced his helmet, and quietly ungirding his sword, laid it on a shelf behind the great Family Bible.

He said nothing, but the action spoke; and we understood, and also said nothing.

Then he left the room, and after a time came down, with every vestige of the old armour of the Ironsides gone, in the plain dress of a Puritan gentleman, and sitting down, he took Maidie on his knee, and began to talk to her cheerily.

It overcame me altogether to see him so, for I knew it meant that he had given up all hope for himself, and well-nigh for England, and the tears fell fast on my sewing. He saw them, and gently setting Maidie down, he came and sat down close by me, and said,--

"Let us thank God, Olive. The old army has been true to itself, and to him who made it what it was, to the last.

"We were gathered on Black Heath to-day, thirty thousand of us; enough to have swept the king and his courtiers, and London and its citizens, into the Thames. We had done more than that before, I think, with fewer of us. And we know, most of us, that this day is as our last; the last of the old army he made. Many of us see nothing left to fight for, and will go back quietly to farm and home, to honest toil and trade, that is, if they will let us; for there are not a few of us that look for a halter rather than a home when the king enjoys his own again in security. They will hardly trust us together in force again. The discipline which won Naseby and gained Dunbar never wavered. But we let the royal party pass quietly, as if the Lord General had given the word of command. And that, I think, is something to give thanks for. It would not have been well to tarnish his memory by disorders he would have reproved."

After that, the great army of the Commonwealth died away, as Roger had expected, and was heard of no more, except when aged yeomen and tradesmen, on village greens and in city homes, now and then enkindled, as they spoke to each other of Naseby, Dunbar, Worcester, and Dunkirk, into an enthusiasm strange to the next generation, who had only known them peacefully labouring in the field, the workshop, or at the forge.

But the bones of the Protector had not yet reached their last resting-place. On the 3rd of January 1661; the anniversary of the "martyrdom of His Sacred Majesty" eleven years before, the body of the "great prince" was once more disinterred, with that of Bradshaw, hanged throughout the day on a gibbet at Tyburn, and at night thrown like that of a dog into a pit at the foot of the gallows.

It was a marvellous proof of the just judgments of God, some of the Royalists thought, slow but sure.

Roger only said, when he could speak of it all, which was not for long, "'_After that, have no more that they can do_.' They have done the worst. And how little it is, that even the basest vengeance could add to the dishonour of the dust, and the worm, which awaits what is mortal of us all! The distance between Tyburn and the royal tombs in the Abbey is little indeed, measured from heaven. Nor will it take longer time from the one than from the other to hear the trumpet when it sounds, and to obey its summons."

"But England is dishonoured by the deed."

"I think not," he replied; "or not chiefly by _that_ deed. The men of England may be dishonoured that they did not acknowledge him living. But no grave in England can dishonour him dead, or can take his dust from the faithful keeping of his native earth; nor, I think, can all men may do keep the day from coming when England shall feel that not one spot only, but every inch of English earth is made more sacred by his feet having trodden it, and by his dust being mingled with it."

Little indeed can human vengeance add to the dishonour of death, when once death is past.

But alas, on this side, how much is possible to human cruelty!

As victim after victim proved, led forth to the ignominy and the protracted anguish of the traitor's death, patiently giving up their souls to God amidst such agonies as the torturer's knife could inflict.

Some were in the prime of life and strong to feel; others aged and weak to bear. But I never heard that any of the ten who so suffered dishonoured either themselves, what they deemed "the good old cause," England, or the God who sustained them, by one unworthy word or moan.

The savage punishment of treason had never been inflicted once during the Commonwealth. It was suffered eleven times in the first year after the Restoration. It came back with the May-poles, and the beautiful coats of many colours, and courtly manners.

The king was present at some of these executions. He went from them to hear the beautiful heavenly music in the Royal Chapel; or to listen to other music, not heavenly, in the palace.

But the people grew weary of this soon. It was feared that if these executions were too often repeated, the minds of the Commonwealth might once more become confused about the enormity of the crime, illogically forgetting it in the enormity of the punishment. And it was recommended they should not be continued; at all events, not so near the royal residence.

But amidst all the restorations--which to us seemed not going forward and upward, but backward and downward--there was one which brought me some peaceful and hallowed hours.

It was the restoration of the old Liturgy.

There was comfort in creeping into some quiet corner of the Abbey, or of the great churches of the city, to join in the old familiar sacred words.

It was rest to kneel in silent adoration, and be certain one's heart would not be turned aside from lifting itself up to God, by any allusions to the triumphs or the reverses, the wrongs or the revenges, of to-day.

It was joy, in the _Te Deum_, to lose sight of divisions and factions, and with the glorious company of apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, the holy Church throughout all the world, to praise Him of the majesty of whose glory all the earth is full.

It was strength to stand up, and say with the Church of all ages and lands: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; in the forgiveness of sins, in the holy Catholic Church, and in the resurrection from the dead."

To stand up above the graves, and under the heavens, and say this to God; in the words I used in my childhood, and Lady Lucy, and so many of our holy dead all their lives, and the Church for so many ages; words which had outlived so many wars, and which flowed from calm depths so far beneath them all.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

Davenant Hall, _June_ 1660.--The country seems in a delirium of delight to see us back again, and to have a king once more.

"The Usurper, or the people who followed him, must, one would think, have made England very wretched, that the restoration of her old state should drive her well-nigh wild with joy.

"At Dover, where His Majesty landed, and all along the road to London, sober men and women knelt and sobbed out blessings on him! Old men thanked God they saw this day before they died; Mothers held up their children to look at him, that they might be able to carry on to children and grandchildren the tradition of this glorious day!

"Arches of triumph across the sober old streets; banners from the windows, mad huzzas from the sober crowds, in whose costume tarnished relics of old Cavalier gaieties struggled to kindle the Puritan sobriety into colour. Oh, the thrill all through the heart of the old English shout of welcome and triumph, the old English cheer! No wonder Marshal Turenne asked what it meant at Dunkirk.

"Dear, sober, solid, silent old England, when she goes wild, she does it with a will. Bells, bonfires; dumb, patient crowds waiting, well content, for hours, just for the moment's sight and the moment's shout of welcome. The attempts to utter this joy in speeches and processions, so hopelessly stiff and clumsy and inadequate, that laughter and tears are kept in close neighbourhood all the time, so delightfully inadequate to utter the welcome and delights in the deep, dumb ocean of the nation's heart.

"So glad, so crazy with joy, to see us back again! Patient, blind, hopeful, wilful, loyal old mother of us all; and why?

"Eleven years ago she suffered her king to die on the scaffold; and this king, I think, is scarce like to be better.

"It is strange to be made so much of as we are by all the neighbours here. No one has been very glad to have us for so many years. And now we are all heroes and heroines, we who have been with the king in his exile. They cannot hear enough of what we did and suffered in foreign parts, and of the bearing of the royal family in their adverse fortunes.

"And, in truth, we have come rather soon to the end of what we like to say about His Majesty.

"Yet His Majesty also cannot fail but be swept on with the joy and hope of the nation.

"Surely, surely the very welcome must be ennobling to him so welcomed. The very love and trust of a whole people, such as this, must inspire His Majesty to be worthy of the feeling he inspires; must consume in its pure fires all that we had fain see consumed of the past; must enkindle in his heart a returning glow of kingly patriotism, which shall hallow it into an altar on which all falser and baser fires shall be extinguished.

"I had scarce thought we should have had so much to regret in leaving France. We had always felt it so completely a land of exile, and had always so hoped our sojourn in it must be drawing to a close, that it was not until we had to sever them we learned how many ties had slowly been weaving themselves around us, and binding our hearts to the strange country.

"Even the lofty rooms in the old palace, which had seemed such mere prison-chambers when we entered them; even my father's old enemy 'the stone woman, who could never empty her pitcher,' seemed to have acquired a kind of right in us.

"Madame la Mothe made a vain attempt at softening the parting with congratulatory little pleasantries. They broke down into tears and tender reproaches, her heart being much moved at the time, moreover, by the death of her nephew, for the sake of whose young widow she consented to remain in 'the world' to manage the family estates.

"'Thou shouldst, indeed, have a heavy weight on thy conscience,' she said to me, 'with all thine innocent looks. My poor nephew would have been so happy with thee, if thou wouldst have wedded him; he would never have gone to the wars and left this poor little helpless widow to my guardianship. Then my nephew, still happily surviving, and thou making his life good and pleasant, I should at last, perhaps, have had leisure and grace to make a thorough conversion. I should have gone to Port Royal, and thou, being brought in this way more intimately acquainted with the exemplary piety of those saintly ladies, wouldst once more have considered thy heresies, and at last taken that little step--that one little step which divides thee from the True Fold. Thus I should have made my own salvation and thine; thou the salvation of my nephew. So all might have ended like a romance composed for the edification of youth. And now see the contrast! I remain in the world, bound to it by this poor young widow (with whom otherwise I have no fault to find); thou returnest to thine unbelieving England. My heart feels desolate for thee, as if I lost thy mother and a second youth in losing thee. And, alas, these gentlemen the Jesuits threaten to overwhelm Port Royal. Thus every thing goes on to the wrong end. Or, if the romance is ever to end right, there must be another volume, another volume not yet even begun, quite out of my sight; which Heaven grant there may be! Heaven grant there be, my child, here or hereafter. For me, certainly, not here; but, if Heaven wills, I pray for thee, here and hereafter also.'

"Barbe was sorely distracted between me and her seven sisters and brothers. At length she decided, with many tears, that duty bound her to her family.

"'My father is an excellent man, mademoiselle, also a great politician, and religious as a pastor; but in the affairs of the earth, mademoiselle, he is a child, blameless--but a child.

"'And there are these seven other children. I call them still children, because I am five years older than any of them, and because they were children when I left them to attend mademoiselle, and gain a living for the rest. The youngest is not yet eleven. The oldest is scarcely twenty. He is a student, learned and "eloquent (my father says) as Demosthenes." But, unhappily, not endowed with those talents which earn bread. As yet I alone have developed these inferior capacities; transitory, but, alas, so necessary in a world where our corn has to be baked before it can be eaten, and one's flax to be spun before it can be worn. What then can I do? If my father should at last obtain that appointment he is always expecting from some appreciating statesmen, or one of the children should develop these inferior gifts for earning bread; and if then mademoiselle should not, in the splendour of the establishment she was born to and so well deserves, have forgotten her poor little French Huguenot maid--'

"But here Barbe's eloquence broke down, and she wept.

"'I shall never forget thee, Barbe,' I said, 'nor the ten thousand lessons of self-denial and sweet temper and cheerful diligence I have learned from thee.'

"'But mademoiselle will then have ladies for her attendants,' sighed Barbe, who, in spite of all I could say, had formed very exalted ideas of our destinies.

"'Never one with such fingers as thine, or with a better heart,' I said.

"'Then,' sighed Barbe, as she delicately arranged my hair in long tresses, 'it might yet be. History, my father says, is more romantic than the romances. I might even yet arrange again this luxuriant hair.'

"'Scarcely luxuriant then, Barbe; or, if luxuriant gray, and only fit to be soberly bound beneath some simple coif in some homely fashion, quite unworthy of thy skilful fingers. You found three white hairs yesterday.'

"'Sorrow, not years!' she said, quietly. 'Mademoiselle has allowed me sometimes to know how it was she understood our sorrows so well.'

"'Sorrows partly, and partly years, Barbe,' I said. 'This Book tells us the years are leading us on to the end of the sorrows, and the sorrows training us to enjoy the harvest of the years.'

"And we shed tears together as she read the inscription I had written on the large French Bible I had bought her as a souvenir.

"'Ah, mademoiselle,' she said, 'I shall always hear your voice reading it; your voice and my mother's, the kindest I have ever known or shall ever know till I meet you both again.'

"I saw Mistress Dorothy in the crowd at the entry into London. She seemed half-kneeling--an unspeakable mark of honour from her dear inflexible Puritan knees. She seemed a little aged; but her face was all aglow with enthusiasm. And with her were two fair rosy children, not like city children, who gazed at me with wide-open wondering eyes--those of the eldest dark and flashing, like Dr. Antony's; the other has Olive's eyes. I think she has told them something of Lettice, little wild Lettice Davenant. They looked pleased, and yet so puzzled.

"My eyes went past them, but in vain. None else of the old Netherby friends was there. Alas, I fear, they are not all swept into this tide of welcome.

"Roger's 'king,' I fear, lies silent underground. Like mine. His, buried in state (they say), among the kings he supplanted, at Westminster. Mine, laid in silence among the kings, his fathers, at Windsor.

"The great gulf between us is hardly bridged over yet.

"Netherby is empty. Mr. Drayton and Mistress Gretel are in London with Olive.

"This old place is in such order as if we had left it yesterday, which is more, I think, than any other of the exiled Cavaliers can say of their restored homes.

"I know how. I see the hands that did it all, at every turn, in every nook, in every flower in my mother's terrace-garden so neat and trim, in every grove and arbour of the Pleasaunce, where we used to ramble in the old days.

"Ungrateful that I am! I could almost wish they had left it neglected. I could almost wish the roses had run wild, that the flower-beds had returned to the possession of forest weeds, the smooth turf run up into long wild grasses, that the terrace walls were green and moss-grown, that nature had been suffered to run into the elfish kind of revels she likes to play when she finds her way once more into gardens stolen from her domain, that time had been suffered to weave the tangled garlands wherewith, as with a lavish funereal pomp, he is wont to strew deserted places which have been dear to human creatures.

"So much has run wild, has run to seed, has blossomed and shed its bloom since then! So much is gone for ever and for ever, it is almost more than I can bear to find these familiar things so much the same. Ungrateful, diseased thoughts, I will not give them a minute's voluntary entertainment.

"Gone? _Nothing_ worth keeping has really gone, not one blossom worth living has really faded. They have not faded, they have fruited. They have fruited, or they are ripening into fruit, sunbeam by sunbeam, shower by shower, day by day. Rich summer-time, golden harvest-time of life! God forbid that I never speak 'pulingly' (as he said), as if spring faded and not ripened into summer, or dawn died instead of glowed into day.

"And most of all this is so with thee, mother, mother! with thee, whose lost presence makes garden, terrace, chamber, so sacred and so sad. I know it--I know it! Thy dawn was full of tears, and has glowed indeed into the day. I know it; and when I think of thee, of thee and Harry, I rejoice in it.

"As to myself, I cannot rejoice at it. Nor need I try. Thank God, I need not freeze my heart by vainly trying to make sorrow not sorrow. The sorrow is my share of it now, and the joy is to come _through that_, through opening our hearts patiently to that, not by closing them and trying to make some wretched artificial sunshine out of the shadow of the cloud. The cloud is sent to bring us not light, but shadow and rain. Behind and after it the sunshine, when the time comes for that!

"I thought I saw Job Forster among the thirty thousand on Blackheath; the terrible thousands which kept France and Spain and Europe in awe all these years, and kept us out of England. Why they let us come back at all is the wonder. For they were not broken nor disordered, but compact and strong as ever. And I scarce think they share in the welcome the nation gives us. I think most of us breathed more freely when that dread host was passed.

"I thought I saw Job Forster among them. Yet when I went into Netherby, there he was at the old forge, working away as steadily and soberly as if he had never left it, instead of roaming all over the world at the beck of Oliver, beating army after army--English, Royalist, Irish, Scottish, Spanish, on field after field.

"I could scarce trust my eyes. I was half afraid to speak to him, fearing lest he should give me but a grim greeting as a fragment of the "malignant interest" wherewith they have dealt somewhat sternly. Beside him stood a lad in a blacksmith's apron, helping him at the forge, with a curious perplexing half-resemblance in his face, which perplexed me like a strain of some familiar tune interwoven into strange music.

"But before I passed, Job looked up at my footsteps, and seeing me, I suppose he forgot Naseby Worcester, malignancy, and everything, for he threw down his tools, and striding forward, took my hands in both of his, black as they were, and shook them till the tears ran down my face, mostly for gladness, and a little for the pain in my fingers.

"'Mistress Lettice, my dear,' he said, 'I am right glad to see thee back again. Come how ye may,' he added, to guard himself against any political concession--'come how ye may.'

"Then Rachel came out at the door of the old cottage, her dear quiet face little aged since I saw her at Oxford, when she made her way through the royal lines to find her wounded husband in the prison. Little aged, yet somewhat changed; ripened, not aged; less of outward suffering, more of protecting motherliness in her ways and looks and tones. And she, too, came forward and courtseyed, a little more mindful of good manners, and bade me welcome, in words like the Book of Ruth, to my country, and my people, and my father's house.

"How sweet it was! The old English country tongue; the old English welcome, shyly suppressing twice as much pleasure as it uttered, so sweet that I could say nothing, but could only take her hands in mine, and seek refuge in the cottage, and sit quiet, with my head on her kind old heart, until the crowding memories and joys and sorrows and love and loss which stifled each other into silence found their outlet in a burst of tears.

"It was soon over. And then a pale woman with a meek still face came forward at Rachel's bidding from a dark corner of the room, where she had been sitting sewing, and filled me a cup of fresh water from a little basin outside the window.

"When she came close to me she smiled, and made a little reverence. And the smile brought back for a moment the youth into her face. And I knew at once she was Cicely, Gammer Grindle's grandchild. Then it all flashed on me in an instant. I had found where the strain of the familiar tune came from; the lad outside was her son, and by Divine right, if not by human law, Sir Launcelot's heir.

"I shook her hand, and she lifted it to her lips and kissed it, with a grace which brought back the day when that pale woman had danced round the May-pole, laughing and rosy, and light-footed and light-hearted, with so many looking on whose faces we should not see again.

"I shall get used to it all in time. But now scarce a familiar old sight or sound but would move me to tears, if I did not repress them; as I do, of course. For I would not have the people think I came back among them with a sorrowful heart, or one left in foreign parts.

"And how can they understand how the paths they have been going up and down upon, and the doors they have been going in and out of every day these eleven years, to me are doors into a buried past, and paths trodden by feet that tread our earthly ways never more?

"Yet I think Rachel understands it, for as I was coming away she said,--

"'There has been One walking all the way with us all, Mistress Lettice, all the time. And He knows all.'

"It was just the strengthening word I wanted to turn me, from the past to the Ever-Present, from the dead to the Living, for all live unto Him. A glimpse into the heart of the Son of man, I think, such as Rachel Forster has, gives those who have it a vision into the hearts of all men.

"To my father, our home-coming is well-nigh unmixed delight. He is as frolicsome as a boy, full of schemes for re-uniting and reconciling the whole world, by means primarily of ale and roast beef. How pleasant it is to hear his great hearty voice ringing through the hall and court, among the stables, giving orders about the stud, the farm, the hounds; waxing warm over Roundhead insolence with the old servants; cracking jokes with the young ones; mistaking people for their grandfathers and grandmothers; and making his way out of all his entanglements by chivalrous old courtly compliments and hearty old English jokes; and through all never ceasing to be the courtier and the master, and scarcely ever losing his temper, except now and then with the cool mockeries of Roland, and the reckless carriage of Walter and the courtiers of the New Court whom he brings to see us. Indeed, it needs an occasional refreshing of my father's recollection of the days of the Roundheads to keep his loyalty to the Old Court very warm towards the new."

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

Aunt Dorothy was much with us during the months after the Restoration.

She was marvellously gracious and gentle all that time. She believed that we had suffered for our political sins, and must be convinced by the irresistible demonstration of failure of the vanity and folly of our conduct; and she was too magnanimous and too confident to demand confession. It must now be but too plain to us, she thought, that we had erred grievously, and she only hoped our retribution might not be too grievous. For herself, she forgave us our follies on the ground of their failure. The King himself, who had so much to forgive, had written a letter from Breda offering indemnity for the past and liberty of conscience for the future, and should she be more rigid than His Majesty? Far from it. She would take the whole family under her wing, and protect us as far as lay in her power from the consequences of our transgressions.

She had even some thoughts of extending toleration further than she had once deemed possible. Mr. Baxter deemed a church government possible which might include "Diocesans," Presbyterians, and Independents; and a Liturgy which might be joined in by moderate--very moderate--Arminians, and moderate (she feared lukewarm) Calvinists.

She scarcely saw her way to it. If any one could accomplish such a thing, Mr. Baxter might. Some indulgence ought, perhaps (if possible), to be extended to the Prelatists, on account of their loyalty. Some concessions might perhaps be made to the Independents (among whom she did not deny were some godly men) to prevent their straying further into the wilderness of the Fifth Monarchy party, the Quakers, and the Anabaptists. Much was doubtless due to charity. And when once the true Presbyterian order was established, the gates of Zion rebuilt, and her walls--though in troublous times--it was to be hoped that the sober beauty of her fair towers and palaces would root out the prelatical passion for Babylonish splendours, and the Independent predilection for new ways, and "holes and corners," from the hearts of all that beheld.

For that the day of Presbyterial triumph had at last dawned on this distracted England, she would not be so faint-hearted as to doubt.

Had not His Majesty three times signed the Scottish Covenant? Had not the divines who went to see him at Breda been suffered to listen (unsuspected of course by His Majesty) to his private devotions, until their souls were moved within them? Had not the excellent Countess of Balcarres told Mr. Baxter how satisfied the French Presbyterian ministers were with his religious dispositions? Had not Monsieur Gaches, pastor of Charenton, himself written to Mr. Baxter how His Majesty attended and appreciated the French Protestant services? Had not Mr. Baxter himself been appointed one of His Majesty's chaplains? And if this were insufficient grounds for confidence, what honest English heart, what loyal soul, could dare to doubt that a young king with such bitter lessons behind him, with such glorious hopes before him, trusted and welcomed as never king had been by the nation, brought back (as she believed) mainly by the agency of covenanted soldiers, and the prayers and loyal endeavours of Presbyterian pastors and their flocks, would be faithful to his oaths, more especially when to be faithful to his promises was to be faithful to his interests? Was there not, moreover, the solemn Conference actually going on among the divines of the various parties at the Savoy?

Had not Mr. Baxter been encouraged to state all the Puritan objections to the Prayer-book to the full--to propound any number of "queries," and elaborate any number of alterations; and had he not embraced the privilege to the full, sparing not a vestige of the Babylonish vesture? Had he not, moreover, in a fortnight, drawn up an amended Liturgy, correcting all the mistakes of the ancient Prayer-book, and supplying all its omissions?--a form which, if there must be forms, might satisfy the most scrupulous. Had not even the learned Dr. Gauden, who had issued that most affecting Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty, called the Icon Basilike, shown himself most unfeignedly courteous and conciliating, and hopeful of an accommodation?

All these considerations set Aunt Dorothy on such a lofty pinnacle of hope, that she suffered even Annis Nye to call her Friend Dorothy without open rebuke, and was suspected of meditating a scheme which might even embrace Anabaptists ("if they would only rebaptise each other, and not blaspheme other people's baptism") and Quakers, if they would hold silent meetings.

The moment of triumph was not the moment for reproaches. Aunt Dorothy, triumphing over us all, in fact, tolerated us all in prospect.

I confess it was sometimes a little difficult to be thus loftily forgiven; and, indeed, I remember once when in a moment of unparalleled magnanimity Aunt Dorothy loftily extended her toleration to Dr. Martin Luther, saying that, although she could never think him justified about some things, yet that she believed after all "he was right in the main, poor man, and great allowance must be made for one so recently set free from Popery;" that Aunt Gretel herself was roused to say privately to me, "Olive, dear heart, I believe if St. Paul were to appear she would tell him that, after all, she believed he was right in the main, although she never could think he was justified in shaving his head at Cenchrea, but great allowances were to be made for any one only just set free from being a Pharisee.'"

There were, indeed, a few symptoms which ruffled even Aunt Dorothy's calm loyal confidence. It was unfortunate, she could not deny, that (in consequence of certain legal technicalities) Mr. Baxter was deprived of his living, the former vicar displaced by the Commonwealth having at once entered on it as his right. But these little perplexities were sure to be soon set right. All transferences of authority were sure at first to press unjustly on some.

In the meantime Mr. Baxter had been offered a bishopric. He had declined the bishopric, until the Comprehension for which the Conference was labouring was fully accomplished. But the bishopric had been offered, the chaplaincy accepted; and who could doubt that in time, if he wished, his living would be restored? the old vicar being, moreover, scarce able to preach at all, and sixteen hundred communicants having sent up a request from Kidderminster for the restoration of Mr. Baxter.

It was also unfortunate, she admitted, that many hundred "painful preachers" had been suddenly removed from their churches on the same grounds as Mr. Baxter; but the Protector and his triers (said Aunt Dorothy) had set an ill example, and ill fruit must be expected to grow of it.

Then there were some severe dealings with books. Mr. John Milton's "Defence of the English People" was burned at Charing Cross by the public hangman. But at that, said Aunt Dorothy, no loyal person could wonder, seeing that therein he had dared to speak of the late king's execution as a great and magnanimous act. Properly regarded, it was indeed a singular proof of His Majesty's clemency that Mr. Milton's book only was burned, and not Mr. Milton himself.

The public burning of the Covenant was a more doubtful act. This she saw with her own eyes at Kidderminster, in the market-place, before Mr. Baxter's windows. The king had signed it and sworn to it, and there were excellent things in it. But there was no denying it had been used to seditious ends. Some (concluded Aunt Dorothy, pressed hard for a Scriptural example) had ground the brazen serpent to powder because it had been made an idol. And she had little doubt, with reverence she said it, Moses would have done the same with the very Tables of the Law, if they had been similarly desecrated. The Ark itself was not spared, but suffered to fall into the hands of the Philistines when Israel would have used it like a heathen charm.

Nevertheless, with these arguments I believe Aunt Dorothy herself was not easy; she was driven to them by Job Forster, who had asked her one day, with a grim irony, how she liked the new doings in Scotland, the execution of Argyle, the forcing of Prelacy and the Prayer-book on the unwilling Presbyterian people, and the burning of the Covenant in Edinburgh.

But as the months of 1661 passed on, and the Conference stood still, whilst Mr. Baxter and the other deprived ministers were not restored, Aunt Dorothy's lofty confidence gradually changed into an irritable apprehension, which took the form of vehement indignation against all who refused to believe in the favorable issue of events, or who, as she believed, stood in the way of it. And it often moved me much to see how, with ingenious fondness, like a mother with a wild son, she laid the blame on the servants of the house, on the riotous company or grudging hospitality of the far country, on the very management of the home itself rather than on the royal prodigal.

A large portion of this diverted current of wrath was poured on the Queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, who held open celebration of Roman Catholic rites in her palace.

To any information concerning the appropriation of apartments in the king's palace to the king's "lady" or "ladies," she refused absolutely to listen. "It is written," said she, "thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people. But," she added, "if any one were to blame, it was the party that had exposed him to the seductions of his mother Jezebel, and the idolatrous foreign court. Indeed, who can doubt the pureness of the king's Protestant principle, which (even if his morals had been a little contaminated) had resisted Papistical enticements so long?"

The scene in Whitehall, where the king, under a canopy of state, laid his hands on those who were brought to him to heal them of "the king's evil," while the chaplain repeated the words, "_He laid His hands on the sick and healed them_," was indeed a sore scandal to her. It made her very indignant with the chaplain, who had misguided His Majesty.

"Mr. Baxter must be careful," she said, "how he conceded too much to the Prelatical party."

But the chief force of her wrath was directed against the Queen-mother, who, she said, had ruined one king and one generation of Englishmen, and was doing her best to ruin a second; against the Queen-mother and the Fifth Monarchy men.

To the insurrection of Venner, the winecooper, in January 1661, she attributed the delay and disappointment in the Conference. How was a young king, kept in exile so long, to learn in a moment to distinguish between the various sects, or not to be induced by such fanatical outbursts to believe the evil advisers who persuaded him that outside the ancient Episcopal Church lay nothing but a slippery descent from depth to depth?

Still she hoped on from month to month, or protested that she did, although her hopes made her less and less glad, and more and more irritable, until she tried all our tempers in turn. All except Roger's. His patience and gentleness with her was unwearied.

"I know what she is feeling, Olive," he said. "I went through it all between the Protector's death and the Restoration; hoping against hope. It strains temper and heart as nothing else does. She will have to give it up, and then she will be all right again."

"Give up hoping, Roger?" I said.

"Give up hoping against reason, give up trying to persuade oneself down hill is up hill, and evening morning," he said, "and going into the cloud coming out of it; giving up trying to see things as they are not, Olive. Seeing things as they are, and still hoping, that makes the spirit calm again. Hoping, knowing, that the end of the road is up the heights, not into the abysses; that the evening is only a foreshadowing of the morning that shall not tarry; that the sun and not the cloud abides. That the Lord Christ," he added, lowering his voice to tones which, soft as a whisper, vibrated through my heart like thunder, "and not the devil, has all power in heaven and in earth, and that His kingdom shall have no end."

"Your hope is for the Church, Roger, but not for England."

His face kindled as he answered,--

"Not for England? Always for England!--for England everywhere! Now; in the ages to come; on this side of the sea, on the other side of the sea; in the Old World and in the New; under the bondage of this profligate tyranny, which must wear itself out as surely as a putrifying carcass must decay; in the wilderness, where our people are beginning a story more glorious, I believe, than all the heroic tales of old Greece."

For at that time, whilst doing all in his power by promoting concord amongst Christians to aid Mr. Baxter and the ministers who were seeking for "healing and settlement," and whilst sharing my husband's labours among those in prison, Roger began to look with a new interest on the tidings which came to us from the Plantations, especially those concerning Mr. John Eliot, who was labouring to convert the poor Indian natives to Christianity. In this he and Aunt Dorothy had much sympathy. Mr. Baxter had always taken a lively interest in this missionary work. Collections had been made during the Commonwealth to aid in supporting evangelists, and aid in translating the Bible and good books into the languages of the natives; and now, in the midst of all his conferences and contentions, Mr. Baxter was labouring at obtaining a charter for a _Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts_. And in this he succeeded.

At that time a manuscript was much in Roger's hands, containing a copy of Journals of the early Puritan settlers of forty years before. He found it the best lesson of true hope he had ever read. And during the winter evenings of 1661 he would often recite passages aloud to us. Amidst the misunderstandings of good men and the conflicts of parties, it was like a breath of bracing wind to listen to those conflicts of our countrymen with rains and snows and storms, and all the hardships of the wild country peopled by wild beasts and wilder men. As in the Bible stories, there was little making of sermons or drawing of morals in this narrative. The whole story was a sermon, and engraved its own moral on the heart as it went on. In three months half the first noble pilgrim band died, of cold and wet, insufficient shelter and insufficient food. The original hundred were reduced to fifty. Fifty living, and fifty graves to consecrate the new country. Then the grave had to be levelled indistinguishably into the sweep of the earth around, lest the hostile Indians, seeing them, should violate them. Yet never a moan nor a murmur. Their trust in God revealing itself in their patience and courage, their cheerfulness and unquenchable hope. And now for the fifty were more than twenty thousand; and the wilderness had become a place of English homesteads and villages, fondly called by the old English names.

As Roger read and told us of these things the world grew round to me for the first time. I began to see there was another side to it. And the vision of this new world--this new English world--rose before me as a new Land of Promise, which if persecution ever made this England for the time "the wilderness," might be a refuge for our suffering brethren again.

Not indeed for us. I did not think so much of ourselves: our convictions were moderate and our lives peaceable; and the Star Chamber was not likely to be re-established within the memory of the generation that had destroyed it. But the Anabaptists, and the more decided Independents, who objected to all forms of prayer, and the Quakers, might find such an asylum yet very welcome. Already there were four thousand Quakers in prison. Some had been shut up, sixty in a cell, and had died of bad air and scanty food. For sober Presbyterians, like Aunt Dorothy and Mr. Baxter, or moderate people attached with few scruples to the Liturgy, like my father, my husband, and myself, there might not indeed be the triumph in store of which Aunt Dorothy dreamed. But of persecution or imprisonment we did not dream. The tide could never rise again in our lifetime as high as that.

It perplexed us much that during all these months we saw nothing of the Davenants. We did not chance to be at Netherby during the year 1661, or the beginning of 1662. My father had rheumatism, and was ordered not to winter on the Fens; my husband was much occupied; so that we did not have our usual summer holiday. Lettice and Sir Walter, we heard, were for a time in London, about the Court; but we saw nothing of them.

The children who were at Netherby brought back wonderful stories of the sweet lady at the hall; and Maidie especially was inspired with a love for her which reminded me of the fascination of Lady Lucy over me in my own childhood.

I felt sure Lettice's heart could not change. Had her will, then, grown so weak that she dared not make one effort to break through the barriers which separated us?

Or was it, rather, stronger and more immovable than I had thought? Did she indeed still refuse indemnity to the political offences of the Commonwealth? Could, indeed, no lapse of time efface, no shedding of traitors' blood expiate, the shedding of that royal blood which separated her from Roger?

Nothing but repentance?--the repentance he could never feel without desecrating the memory of that good prince who, as he believed, had been trained by God, through conflict within and without, anointed by wars, and crowned by victory after victory, to be such a ruler as England had never known, over such an England as the world had never seen.

What Roger thought, I knew not. He never mentioned the name of any of the Davenants, except that of Walter, the youngest, who seemed to come to him from time to time, and whom I saw once at his lodgings, and did not recognize till after he had left, when Roger told me who he was.

For I remember Walter Davenant a light-hearted boy, with frank face and bearing, and eyes like his mother's. And this Walter Davenant had a manner half reckless and half sullen; a dress which, with all its laces and plumes and tassels, looked neglected; and restless, uneasy eyes, which never steadily met yours.

"Is that Lettice Davenant's brother Walter?" I said.

"It is Walter Davenant, one of the courtiers of King Charles the Second."

"He is a friend of yours, Roger."

"He is Lettice's brother," he replied; "and she asked me to see him sometimes; and now and then he likes to come."