CHAPTER III.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"_Rouen_.--We have not yet been able to enter Paris. The city is in great excitement with the wars of the Fronde. The queen-mother, Anne of Austria, and the young king Louis XIV., have been compelled to fly to St. Germains. It is strange to be exiled from one Civil War to another. The French Court is so poor in consequence of these tumults, that they have had to dismiss some of their pages; and it is reported that our own youngest princess, Henrietta, was obliged to stay in bed to keep herself warm for lack of fuel to light a fire.

"I have not had to wait long for the fulfilment of my murmuring wish, that some simple, homely woman's duty were separating me from Roger, instead of a political crime.

"When my father returned from paying such farewell courtesies as he might to Mistress Dorothy, he said, fixing a penetrating look on me (who, if I cast down my eyes, could not hide from him my eyelids swollen with weeping),--

"'Master Roger Drayton was longer than need be in fetching Mistress Dorothy's mantle. I trust, Lettice, thou gavest him no cause.'

"Then I told him all, as well as brief words might tell it.

"'Thou hast done well,' said he. 'Could I think daughter of mine would have felt otherwise to one of those who have made England a reproach and a curse on the earth, I would sooner she had died. For to eternity my curse would rest on her, and never would I see her face again.'

"Then seeing me grow pale, he added, in a cheery voice,--

"'But what need to speak of curses? Thou art a true maiden, Lettice, as true as fair. And many a hand there is that would be glad to be linked with this little hand, none the less that it has rejected a traitor.'

"Then I gathered courage once for all, and said,--

"'Father, they were good as angels to mother and to me. I shall always love them better than any in the world, save thee; I shall always think them holier and wiser, and more true and good than any in the world, save mother. For my sake, father, say no ill of them. It wounds me to the heart. And, father, say no more of any other wooer. I will live for thee and for no other.'

"He was not moved as I hoped by my pleading. He only smiled and said,--

"'No need for me to say anything of other wooers, child. They may speak for themselves. But as to living for me, I fear thou wilt find me a rough old tyrant enough to live with, say nothing cf living for. See already, when I meant to cheer thee I have made thee weep. Maidens are mysterious,' he added, going to the window and whistling uneasily. Then returning, he laid his hand kindly on my shoulder, saying, 'Come, come child. Thou shalt be as good to me as thou wilt. And I will say as little evil of any thou carest for as I can, though as to picking my words it is what I am little used to. Only no tragedy, Lettice, and no heroics! Your mother knew I had no capacity for the heroics, and she never troubled me with them. I knew that she loved the mountain-tops, and now and then I should hear her singing there as it were like a lark or an angel. But she never expected me to climb. She had her divine songs, and her heroic epics, and her lays, and her romaunts, and I loved her all the better for them, but to me she always talked in prose, so that we understood each other. Thou and I will do the same."

"And then the horses were ready, and we rode away together to Rouen.

"But his words are very mournful to me. Are only the streets and market-places, as it were, of our souls to be open to each other, and the inmost places, the hearth and the church, always to be closed?

"Yet there is a kind of unreasonable consolation in the prohibition of my father's as to Roger. It is a terrible strain to have to keep that door closed myself; whilst, at the same time, the barrier of another's will seems less impenetrable than that of my own purpose.

"_May_ 3_rd_.--I am not sure that my father's words were not the best medicine in the world for me. It is so much better to have to meet others than to expect them to meet us.

"I have not to erect my cross into an idolatry, serving it with a ritual of passionate kisses and tears. I have to carry it; and to do my work carrying it.

"'_Si tu crucem portas; ipsa te vicissim portabit_,' saith my mother's A Kempis.

"Shall I indeed ever prove that? Not as a sufferer only, but as a conqueror? Then how? Not surely by looking at my cross, but by bearing it. Not by bearing it with downcast eyes, but with eyes upward to the redeeming Cross now empty;--to the living Conqueror who once suffered there!

"_May_ 4_th_.--Mistress Dorothy left a sermon of Dr. Owen's with me. It was preached on occasion of a Parliament victory over the king at Colchester and Romford. She asked my forbearance with the occasion. 'Not difficult to exercise (I said), since victor and vanquished, King and Parliament, are both banished now before this new usurpation.'

"I read it with interest. Little of the cant some think characteristic of the Puritan speech there. Dr. Owen calls Colchester, Colchester, and not Gilead or Manasseh; and England, England, not Canaan; and Naseby, Naseby, not Jezreel or Armageddon; and his enemies their own English names, not bulls of Bashan, or Amorites, or Edomites, or Hagarenes.

"But it is for what he saith therein on trouble, that she gave it me. The text is the prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth. Shigionoth, saith the doctor, means 'variety, a song in various metres.' 'Are not God's variable dispensations held out under these variable tunes, not all alike fitted to one string? Are not several tunes of mercy and judgment in those songs? "_By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us_." Nothing more refreshes the panting soul than an "answer" of its desires; but to have this answer by "_terrible things_"--that string strikes a humbling, a mournful note.

"'We are clothed by our Father in a party-coloured coat; here a piece of unexpected deliverance, and there a piece of deserved correction. The cry of every soul is like the cry of old and young at the foundation of the second temple. A mixed cry is in our streets.

"'A full wind behind the ship drives her not so fast forward as a side wind that seems almost as much against her as with her; and the reason, they say, is, because a full wind fills but some of her sails, which keep it from the rest that they are empty, when a side wind fills all her sails, and sends her speedily forward.

"'Labour to have your hearts right tuned for these variable songs, and sweetly to answer all God's dispensations in their choice variety. It is a song that reacheth every line of our hearts, to be framed by the grace and Spirit of God. Therein hope, fear, reverence, with humility and repentance have a space, as well as joy, delight, and love, with thankfulness.

"'That instrument will make no music that hath but some strings in tune. If, when God strikes on the string of joy and gladness, we answer pleasantly; but when He touches upon that of sorrow and humiliation, we suit it not; we are broken instruments that make no melody unto God. A well-tuned heart must have all its strings, all its affections, ready to answer every touch of God's finger. He will make everything beautiful in its time. Sweet harmony cometh out of some discords. When hath a gracious heart the soundest joys, but when it hath the deepest sorrows? When hath it the humblest meltings, but when it hath the most ravishing joys?

"'In every distress learn to wait with patience for the appointed time. Wait for it believing, wait for it praying, wait for it contending. Waiting is not a lazy hope, a sluggish expectation.

"'Ye must be weary and thirsty, ye must be led into the wilderness before the rock-waters come. Yet (to those who wait) they shall come. Though grace and mercy seem to be locked up from them like water in a flint, whence fire is more natural than water,--yet God will strike abundance out of Christ for their refreshment with His rod of mercy.

"'He would have His people wholly wrapt up in His all-sufficiency. Have your souls never in spiritual trial been drawn from all your outworks to this main fort? God delights to have the soul give up itself to a contented losing of all its reasonings even in the infinite unsearchableness of His goodness and power. Here He would have us secure our shallow barks in this quiet sea, this infinite ocean whither neither wind nor storm do once approach.

"'Those blustering temptations which rage at the shore, when we are half at land and half at sea, half upon the bottom of our own reason and half upon the ocean of Providence, reach not at all into this deep. Oh, that we could in all our trials lay ourselves down in these arms of the Almighty, His all-sufficiency in power and goodness. Oh, how much of the haven should we have in our voyage; how much of home in our pilgrimage, how much of heaven in this wretched earth!'

"Words of strong consolation, Dr. Owen, to reach even to us 'malignant' exiles in this foreign land.

"_May_ 4_th_.--It was well I copied these words out; for my father, seeing the superscription of the pamphlet, grew very fierce at it, called it a firebrand and a seditious libel, and bade Barbe, our servant, light her next fire therewith.

"And to-day he hath brought me the 'Icon Basilike,' daintily bound like a missal.

"'Here is reading fitter for a loyal maiden,' quoth he. Since which I have done little else but lament ever the sorrows and heavenly patience of His Sacred Majesty.

"If Olive and the rest could but see this, they would surely be melted to repentance, and enkindled to counterwork their sad misdoings. And who shall say any repentance is vain?

"My father is full of hope at present. We have had fearful accounts of the disorders in the city of London and in the army; the very strongholds of the rebels. The whole country seems to be in a blaze. Executions, funeral processions in honour of the people executed, mutiny suppressed only by the strongest measures. Surely this tumult must spend itself, or exhaust the nation soon. And, as if smitten with madness, they say the substance of the army and its greatest chiefs are to depart for Ireland, leaving this half-suppressed conflagration behind them.

"These things nourish great hopes among us.

"Meanwhile, from Scotland there are the most encouraging tidings, the whole nation seeming to be awaking to their duty. His Majesty the young king will depart before long, to be a rallying point for this reviving loyalty."

_August_ 20, _Paris_.--The tumults of the Fronde are over. The French Court has returned to Paris, and it is my work at present to give as much a look of home as I can to these four or five great rooms on one floor of an hotel belonging to one of the ancient decayed nobility, where we are to make our sojourn. (_Abode_ is a word I will never use in relation to this land of our exile.)

"These rooms open into each other, and command an inner courtyard, where a fountain flows all day from a classical marble urn held by a nymph. The cool trickle is very pleasant to hear in this great heat. On this nymph and on other classical statues, the cook of the French family who live below us irreverently hangs his pots and pans to dry singing, meanwhile, snatches of chansons, which end high up in the scale, with all kinds of unexpected and indescribable flourishes.

"Our family is enlarged. Besides our own cook, we have a French waiting-maid, who also does work about my rooms. She has wonderfully lissom fingers, turning everything out of her hands, from my coiffure to my father's chocolate, with a finish and neatness which give to our little household arrangements such a grace and order as if we had a splendid establishment. Indeed, few of our fellow-exiled have the comforts we have. Our revenues come to us regularly, my father knows not (or will not know) how. But I feel little doubt to whose hands and hearts we owe them. They enable us to keep something like an open table in a simple way for our countrymen, so that we hear much of what is going on.

"_August_ 26_th_.--Our rooms do begin to have something of a home feeling. My youngest brother, Walter, has joined us. Roland, now our eldest, is not hopeful as to the king's prospects while Oliver Cromwell lives, and has offered his sword to the Spanish Court. But Walter is a marvellous solace and delight to us. He was always the gayest and lightest-hearted of the band of brothers, and (except Harry) the kindest and gentlest. In all other respects he resembled my mother more than any of us. The bright auburn hair (such a crown, when flowing in the Cavalier love-locks); the soft eyes. And, next to Harry, he was most on her heart. In a different way--Harry as her stay and rest; Walter as her tenderest anxiety. So much she thought there was of promise in him, yet so much to cause solicitude. None amongst us were so moved in childhood by devotional feeling. As a child, he said lovely things to her, having an angelic insight, she deemed, into the beauty of heavenly truth. She would weep in repeating these sayings, and say she feared ('but ought to hope') it betokened early death. But this passed away with early childhood. As a boy, he was the merriest, and, in some ways, the wildest of all; the oftenest in difficulties, though the soonest out of them. But she had ever the strongest influence over him. And up to her death, although he had done many things to make her anxious, he had done nothing to make her despond.

"In her last illness she spoke of him more than of any one, and charged me to care for him.

"And now he is once more at home with us, and seems to cling to me with much of the fond reverence he had for her. In the twilight on Sundays he likes me to talk of her, and sing the heavenly songs she loved.

"And for his sake mainly I tune my lute, and sing old English songs, and learn some new French ones, and mind the fashions of the Court; not that for my own sake I like to have ill-made or miscoloured clothes. (I think, too, there is one who would care; and whether he ever see me again or not, I have a kind of self-regard due to him. Who can tell if Oliver might repent, or die, and England be England once more?)

"_August_ 27_th_.--This day my father has presented me to a sweet aged French lady, Madame la Motha St. Rémy. She knew my mother, in long past days, at the English Court, and for her sake has welcomed me as a child (having none of her own), embracing me tenderly, kissing me on both cheeks. A most lovely lady, with a sweet grandeur in her demeanour, which made me feel as if I had been given the honour of the Tabouret at Court, when she seated me on a low seat beside her, clasping my hands in hers.

"When we were left alone together, after some conversation on indifferent topics, pushing my hair back from my forehead, she said,--

"'The same face, my child! but different tints; and a different soul. More colour, I think, without and within. The brown richer, the gold brighter, the eyes darker, and a look in them which seems to say, life will not easily conquer what looks through them. Of colour here,' she said, stooping and kissing my cheek, 'perhaps I must not judge at this moment. Pardon me, my child, that I spoke as if I was speaking to a picture. When we see the children of those whom we loved in early years, we see our youth in their faces. To me thou art not only Mademoiselle Lettice, thou art a whole lost world of love and delight. When I look at thee I see not thee only, I see visions and dream dreams. Ah, pardon, my child, I have made thee weep; I have brought back her image indeed into thine eyes.'

"Tell me of her, madame,' I said.

"How shall I tell thee of her? She was a St. Agnes--a beautiful soul lent for a season to this world never belonging to it. Some called her an angel; that she never was. When first I knew her, she was simple, joyous, guileless as a child, but always tender, with tears near the brim, a heart sensitive to every touch of delight or pain; not strong, radiant, triumphant, like the angels who have never suffered.'

"'She had suffered even then,' I said, 'when you knew her, madame?'

"'She never told thee? Ah then, perhaps, I make treacherous revelations. What right have I to lift the veil she kept so faithfully drawn?'

"'You can tell me nothing of my mother, madame,' I said, 'which will not make her memory more sacred.'

"'Again, that look is not hers! Your face bewilders me, my child. This moment soft like hers; now all enkindled, full of fire; to do battle for her, I know,'--she added. 'But, as thou sayest, there is nothing which needs to be concealed.'

"'Madame,' I said, 'her life belongs to me, does it not? any recollection of her is my legacy and treasure. I also may have to endure. Most women have.'

"'It was my brother, my child,' she said. 'The sorrow was half mine, which perhaps gives me some right to speak. He was in the embassy in London, and I, recently married, was there also. They loved each other. They were all but betrothed. But they were separated. Calumnious cabals, I know not what. The misery of these things is, that one never knows how they go wrong. A bewildering mist, a breath of gusty rumour, and the souls which saw into each other's depths with a glance, which revealed to each other life-secrets in a tone, which were as one, which are as one, lose each other on the sea of life, drifting for ever further and further apart, beyond reach of look, or tone, or cry of anguish. So it was with them. He came back to France, bewildered, despairing; sought death on more than one battle-field; at last found it. And then we learned how true she was to him; what a depth of passionate love dwelt in the child-like heart. But two years afterwards your father entreated and your grandfather insisted, till at length she yielded and was married. They thought the old love was dead. But when I &aw her afterwards, pale, meek, and passive, like the ghost of herself, I thought it was not the love that was dead, but the heart.'

"'But her heart was not dead, madame,' I said. 'She loved us all at home with a love tender, and living, and fervent as ever warmed heart or home.'

"'Without doubt, my child,' said madame. 'Duty was a kind of passion with her always. She was ardent in goodness, as others are in love. There is the passion of maternal love, and there is the flame of devotion. A great passion may leave fuel for other fires in a pure heart, but it leaves no place for a second like itself. But why should I speak to thee thus? thou who art but a child. After all, have I been a traitor?'

"'It is my English fairness and colour, perhaps, which make madame think me younger than I am. Do not repent what you have told me; I may need such memories yet to strengthen me.'

"She smiled, one of those smiles which always bring youth into the faces that have them; a smile from the heart, which lit up her dark eyes so that my heart was warmed at their light--and turned the wrinkles into dimples, and seemed to bring sunshine on the silky white hair.

"'No, no, my friend,' she said, 'thou wilt never suffer as she did. Thou wilt conquer thy destiny.'

"'She conquered,' I said; 'she was the joy and blessing of every heart that knew her.'

"'As to heaven and duty, yes, my child; she was a saint. But thou wilt conquer as to earth also; I see it in thine eyes.'

"How little she knows!

"This history has made so many things clear to me. I know now what my mother meant when she said I could never save Sir Launcelot by marrying him, unless I loved him. I know now how it was she bore so passively some things which I could have wished otherwise at home. She felt, I think, that, give what she might in patience, and duty, and loyal regard, she could not give my father what he had given her. And therefore, perhaps, she could not, as he said, help him to 'climb.' She could come down to him in all loving, lowly ministries and forbearances; but love only (I think), in that relationship, can have that instinctive sympathy, that secret irresistible constraint which, with a thousand wilfulnesses and blunderings, yet could have drawn his soul up to hers. When so much of the strength of the nature is spent in keeping doors of memory rigidly closed, perchance too little is left to meet the little daily difficulties of life with the play and freedom which makes them light. And this awakens a new strong hope in my heart, binding me as never before with a fond, regretful reverence to my father. Something she has left me to do.

"Something, perhaps, which she could never have done for him. I (so far beneath her!) may, by virtue of there being no locked-up world of the past between us, help a little more to lead him to those other heights which he protested to her he could never climb. By virtue, moreover, of not having to stoop from any heights to him, but being in the valley with him, so that I can honestly say and feel, 'we will try to climb together.'

"For in this at least I am sure the Puritans are right. The up-hill path is no exceptional supererogatory excursion for those who have a peculiar fancy for mountain-tops; it is the one necessary path for every one of us, and it is always up-hill to the end; the only other being, not along the levels, but downward, downward, every step downward, out of the pure air, out of the sun-light; downward for ever!

"_August_ 23_d_.--To-day I kissed our queen's hand. She embraced me, and said gracious words about my mother. She was in deep mourning; and with her was the little Princess Henrietta, a child cf marvellous vivacity and grace. Her Majesty graciously have taken me into closer connection with her Court, and with the French Court also. But my father seems not solicitous for this. He is all the more an Englishman for being an exile; and he misliketh their Popish doings, and some other doings of which probably the Pope would disapprove as much as the Puritans. He saith the French courtiers, many of them, seem to think of nothing but making love, without sufficiently considering to whom; not making love and settling it once for all like reasonable people, but going on making it the amusement of their lives all the way through, which is quite another thing. And he thinks the less I hear of all this the better.

"He saith, moreover, that the company around the young king, if fit enough for His Majesty and for young men like Walter, who 'must sow their wild oats on some field,' is not the fittest for me.

"But it seems to me I should be ten thousand times safer in such company than Walter, impetuous and gay, and easily moved, and with no great love in his heart to keep it pure and warm. I would I could find him some such French maiden as Madame la Mothe must have been when she was young. Are these wild oats, then, the only seeds in the world that yield no harvest? My heart aches for Walter in that bad world where I cannot follow him, and whence he so often comes back flushed, and hasty, and impatient, and unlike himself.

"Last Sunday we attended the English service, which our queen has obtained permission to be held in a hall at the palace of the Louvre. Bishop Cosins officiated.

"It was the happiest hour I have spent in this strange land. The sacred old words, how they come home to the heart. Not heaven alone is in them; but England, home, childhood.

"Unhappy Puritans! to have banished the old prayers from parish-church, hall, and minster.

"Unhappy Papistical people! to banish them into a dead ancient language. The other day I went with my father into the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The priests were chanting in Latin at the altar. Those Catholic children can have none of the memories so dear to us of the gradual breaking of the light into the dear old words, as in our childhood we wake up to them one by one to see they are not music only, but words: to find a joyful significance in each sentence of the creeds and hymns and prayers.

"I wonder what they have instead?

"_September_ 8_th_.--To-day Madame la Mothe came into my bed-chamber. Seeing the little table with the picture of the Crucifixion my mother loved, resting on it, and her Bible and A Kempis on it (with the 'Icon Basilike'), she crossed herself and embraced me, pointing to the picture.

"'It was my mother's,' I said.

"'Had she then come back to the Church?'

"'She was always in the Church, madame,' I said; 'she was no Sectary.'

"'Excuse me, I do not understand your English terms. I mean the true, the ancient Church,' she rejoined.

"'My mother believed ours to be the ancient Church, madame,' I said. 'We are not mere Calvinists or Lutherans.'

"'No doubt, my child, I would not give you offence; but it is not to be expected a Catholic should recognize those little distinctions among those we must consider heretics. You understand, I mean no offence, it is simply that I am ignorant. Perplex me not with those subtleties, my child; I ask, can it be possible that thou and thine are returning to allegiance to His Holiness the Pope, and the holy Roman Church?'

"'Our Church does not indeed acknowledge the Pope, madame, nor the Roman Church,' I said, trying to recall some of the debates I had heard on the matter, which had in itself never much occupied me. 'We are English, not Roman. But I have heard our chaplain speak with the greatest respect of some popes who lived, I think, a little more than a thousand years ago, and say he would gladly have received consecration from them.'

"'No doubt, my friend, no doubt,' said madame, becoming a little excited, 'but the priests of to-day cannot be consecrated by popes who lived a thousand years ago. I would ask, are any of you willing to return to the popes of to-day? We used to hear your Bishop Laud well spoken of, and were not without hopes of you all at that time. It was once reported he had been offered a Cardinal's hat--of course on conditions. Have you advanced a little nearer since then? Are you coming back to the fold in earnest?'

"'To the Pope who lives now, madame?' I said; 'I do not think the archbishop or our chaplain ever dreamed of that. Our chaplain was always hoping the Church of Rome would come back towards us.'

"'Towards you! towards heresy, my child! You speak of what you know not,' she replied, waving her hands rapidly, as if to brush away a swarm of insects. 'Any one of us, our priests, His Holiness himself may indeed move towards a Protestant, as the good Shepherd towards the wandering sheep, to bring it back. But the Church, never! She is the rock, my friend, on which the world rests. She moves not. The world moves, the sand shifts, the sea beats, but she is the rock.'

"'But, madame, pardon me,' I said, 'the chaplain thought the Church of Rome _had_ changed. There is a Rock, he thought, on which all the Churches rest. All we want (he said) is to remove some accumulations with which the lapse of time has encumbered this rock; and then he thought we might all be one again.'

"'My child,' she replied, 'the Church does not move; but most surely she _builds_, or rather she grows. She is living, and all things living grow. She is as one of our great cathedrals. Age after age adds to its towers, its chapels, its side aisles. Heart after heart adds to its shrines. But it is still one cathedral. We do not need to hunt out obsolete books to see if we are building according to the oldest rules. New needs create new rules. When we want to know what to believe, we do not need to send for antiquaries. We do not need to grope back among the far-off centuries and see what those excellent popes, of whom your good chaplain spoke, said a thousand years ago. We have a living Pope now. He is the vicar of Christ; we listen, he can speak, he can teach, he can command. We do not need to go to ancient worm-eaten books for our creeds. They were living voices in their age, and spoke for it. We have the living voice for our age, and we listen to it. Tell me then, quite simply; are your English people, or any of them, coming back to the true ancient Catholic Church?'

"'Many among us have sighed for a union with the rest of Catholic Christendom,' I said. 'Our chaplain used to speak much of it. We are not of the sects, he said, who have overrun Germany and other Protestant countries, Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist, Huguenot. He used to speak much of their errors. One or two little concessions, he said, and all might be one again.'

"'Concessions from us, my child!' said madame, shaking her head. 'What would you have? The doors of the Church stand open. You have but to enter. The arms of His Holiness are outstretched. You have but to fly to them. You have pardon, welcome, reconciliation, not a reproach for the past, all forgotten! What would you have more?'

"'Madame,' I said, 'we think we _are_ in the Catholic Church.'

"'Ah, my charming child,' she said, smiling compassionately. 'I see it is in vain to speak of these things. In your island you have the ideas of an island. You have so many things to yourselves that you think you may have everything to yourselves. You have your constitution, your seas, your mountains and plains, your clouds, your skies, all to yourselves. But the Catholic Church! Ah, my child, that is impossible; you are a remarkable people, and have remarkable ambitions. But there are things possible and things impossible. You cannot have a Catholic Church all to yourselves. It is not a thing possible.'

"Then the slight excitement there had been in her manner passed away, and she said,--

"'My child, we will not perplex ourselves much with these difficult things. I have a very holy cousin among the ladies of Port Royal. Perhaps one day I may introduce her to you. For women, happily, if they can help to welcome each other within the sacred doors, have not the keys to close them. And with regard to thy mother, all this has nothing to do. Heavenly beings are not subject to earthly laws. And that among the heathen there were such, my director assures me there is no doubt. I trust even there were such among the Huguenots; for some of my ancestors were unhappily 'gentlemen of the religion.'"

"'Did any of them suffer in the St. Bartholomew?' I asked; 'and do you know if any among them took refuge in London?'

"'I have heard there is one of their descendants established in London as a physician,' she said.

"'I know him, madame,' I said. And it made me feel a kind of kindred with the gentle French lady that a connection of hers, however remote, had married Olive.

"But this evening, when Barbe, the waiting-woman, was arranging my hair, and I was consoling her with telling her some of Dr. Owen's thoughts about sorrow (for Barbe has lately lost her mother, and is a destitute orphan, and has had a sorrowful life in many ways), she said, in a choked voice,--

"'Ah, if mademoiselle could only hear the minister at the prêche. For the people of the religion are allowed to meet again, in a quiet way.'

"'You belong to the religion then, Barbe?'

"'Without doubt, mademoiselle. Have not my kindred fought and been massacred for it these hundred years? This is what made me so glad when the chevalier engaged me to wait on mademoiselle. I knew at once it was the good hand of God. For the English are also of the religion, my father said; and although they have sometimes perplexed our people by promising much and doing little for us, we always knew these were mere Court intrigues; and that in heart we were one.'

"'But, Barbe,' I said, with some hesitation, wishing not to mislead, nor yet to pain her, 'we are not exactly of "the religion." The English Church is not like yours. We are not Calvinists. We have bishops and a liturgy, and have changed as little as possible the old Catholic ritual.'

"'Ah, what does that matter?' replied Barbe, unmoved; 'to each country its customs! These little distinctions are affairs of the clergy. They aro not for such as me. And I have known from my infancy that the English are Protestant. They do not acknowledge the Pope nor the Mass. They do not burn for these things; on the contrary, they have been burned for them. They may, indeed, have their little eccentricities,' continued Barbe charitably. 'Bishops even, and a Book of Prayers! Do they not live on an island? Which in itself is an eccentricity. But they are Protestant. I have always known it, and now I see it. Mademoiselle does not go to Confession; she does not adore the Host. Every morning and evening she reads her Bible in her own language. She consoles me with the excellent words of a Protestant minister, as good as we hear at our prêche. Therefore mademoiselle is doubtless of "the religion." And to me it is a privilege, for which I thank God day and night, that I am called to wait on her.'

"It is very strange how differently things look a little way off. Neither Barbe nor Madame la Mothe seem able even to perceive the differences which to us have been so important. In spite of all I can say, Madame la Mothe regards me as outside; 'very good, very dear, very charming,' but still outside; as a heretic, as a Huguenot. And in spite of all I can say, Barbe regards me as within; of her community, of her Church, of her religion, of her family; as a sister.

"What are we to do?

"We offer our hands courteously to all the ancient Churches. And they turn scornfully away, saying, On your knees, as penitents, we will receive you, but, otherwise, never! You are outcasts, prodigals, in the 'far country.'

"On the other hand we turn away from the new Protestant Churches saying, In some respects you are right, but you have lost the ancient priesthood you have rent yourselves from Catholic antiquity. And nevertheless they persist in embracing us, in calling us kindred, sisters and brethren.

"What are we to do?

"In England it was in comparison easy. We had things to ourselves. Across the seas, where these foreign Churches loomed on our vision in rocky masses through the mist and distance, it was easy to maintain our theory about them. But here, where we are amidst them, and Churches break into communities of men and women, it is difficult to continue stretching out peaceable hands to those who scornfully pass by on the other side, and not to clasp in brotherly greeting the hands held out in welcome to us. Barbe and her Huguenots (since they have will it so) I must then acknowledge as kindred.

"Yet whether they heed or not, I must and will also honour as our brethren every Catholic who is just, and good, and Christian. Their treasures of goodness are ours, in as far as they are our delight and our example, and none can deprive us of the possession.

"It seems to me, if the English Church shuts her heart against the Protestants on one side, and the Roman Church on the other, her fold becomes the narrowest corner of Christendom a Christian can creep into. But if, on the contrary, she stretches out her hands to both, bound on one side by her creeds and liturgies to the Catholic past, and on the other free to receive all the truth yet to be revealed in the free Word of God, what field on earth so fertile and so free, enriched by all the past, free to all the future?

"It is those who exclude who are really the excluded. The more our hearts can find to love and honour, the richer they are.

"The outlaws, I think, in God's Church are not those who are cast out of the synagogue, but those who cast others out."

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

At five o'clock on the evening of the 10th of July, 1649, the trumpets sounded again in London streets, not for a soldier's funeral, and not for a triumph, but for an army going forth to war. To battle with a whole nation in insurrection, or rather in tumult; every man's hand practised in cruel and treacherous warfare against every man through those blood stained eight years since the massacre of 1641, now all combined against the Commonwealth and Oliver.

With hopeful hearts they went forth with Cromwell, as Lord-Lieutenant.

It was the first time General Cromwell had taken on him much show of outward state. But men said it seemed to fit him well, as I think state must which grows out of power, like the pomp of summer leaves around massive trunks. He rode in a coach drawn by six gray Flanders mares; many coaches in his train; his life-guard eighty gentlemen, none of them below the rank of an esquire; the trumpets echoing through the city, stirring the hearts of the Ironsides, who, when he led them, "thank God, were never beaten." His colours were white, as of one who made war to ensure peace; who was going not as a soldier only and a conqueror, but as a ruler and judge to bring order into chaos, and law into lawlessness. This state beseemed the occasion well.

The army went with a good heart, and in unshaken trust that he was leading them to a good work, and that it was "necessary and therefore to be done;" the most part, like Roger, proud of being the men who had never mistrusted him; a few, like Job Forster, all the more eager in their loyalty for the shame of having once mistrusted; and many, like the chief himself, all the stronger in this and every work for sharing his conviction that all earthly work (to say nothing of pleasure), compared with the inward spiritual work from which it drew its strength, was only done "upon the Bye."

But we women who watched them go, looked on them with anxious hearts. They were plunging into a chaos, which for hundreds of years no man had been able to bring into light and order. What they would do there seemed doubtful; who would return thence terribly uncertain; that all could never return terribly certain.

Poor Bridget Cromwell, then young Mistress Ireton, and many beside, could the veil have been lifted, would, instead of festive white banners, have seen funeral draperies, and for the call to arms would have heard the trumpets peal for the soldier's knell.

Mistress Lucy Hutchinson needed not to speak scornfully of the fine clothing which became General Cromwell's daughters "as little as scarlet an ape." They did not wear it long. And indeed holiday garments at the longest are scarcely worn long enough in this world for it to be worth while that any should envy or flout at them.

For the rest, the Lord-Lieutenant's life was no holiday; nor did he or his Ironsides look that it should be. Not for merry-making or idling, he thought, but "for public services a man is born." If victories and successes came, "these things are to strengthen our faith and love," he said, "against more difficult times."

We are always in a warfare, he believed; the scenes change, but the campaign ends not.

As Mr. John Milton wrote of him: "In a short time he almost surpassed the greatest generals in the magnitude and rapidity of his achievements. Nor is this surprising, for he was a soldier disciplined to perfection in the knowledge of himself. He had either extinguished, or by habit had learned to subdue, the whole host of vain hopes, fears, and passions which infest the soul; so that on the first day he took the field against the external enemy he was a veteran in arms, consummately practised in the toils and exigencies of war."

The portion of the army which went before the General gained a victory in July over the Marquis of Ormond, who was besieging Dublin; so that when Oliver landed, with hat in hand, and spoke gently to the people in Dublin, and told them he wished, by God's providence, to spread the gospel among them, to restore all to their just rights and liberties, and the bleeding nation to happiness, many hundreds welcomed him and vowed they would live and die with him.

Three letters are preserved among my old Diaries which came to us during that Irish Campaign. One was from Job not long after the storming of Wexford.

"We have had to do '_terrible things in righteousness_,'" he wrote. "For years the land has been like one of the wicked old Roman wild-beast shows in the Book of Martyrs; the wild beasts first tearing the Christians in pieces, and then in their fury falling on each other. This the General is steadfastly minded shall not any longer be. Whereon all the people of the land have for a time given over rending each other in pieces, to fall on us. We, how ever, praised be God, are not, like the ancient Christians, thrown to the wild beasts unarmed, nor untrained in fighting. For which cause, and through the mercy of God, the wild beasts have not slaughtered us, but we not a few of them. And the rest we hope in good time to send to their dens, that the peaceable folk may have rest, may till their fields in peace, and may have freedom to worship God.

"For peaceable folk there are in the land. It has lightened my heart to find that the natives are not all savages, like the Irish women with knives we found on the field at Naseby. Many of the more kindly creatures, well understand fair treatment, and generously return it. Their countenances are many of them open, and their understandings seem quick, to a marvel, for poor folks who have been brought up without knowing either the English tongue or the Christian religion. It seems as if they had been seduced with evil reports of us; for at first they ran away, and hid themselves in caves and dens of the earth, whenever we came near them. But since they understand that we are no persecutors nor plunderers, the common people begin to come freely to the camp, and bring us meat for man and horse, for which we pay.

"The Lord-General is very stern against all misuse or plundering of these poor folk. Two of ours have been hanged for dealing ill with them; which was a wonderful sight to the natives, and hath encouraged them much.

"The storm of Tredah was no child's-play. The Lord-General offered the garrison (mostly Englishmen) mercy. 'But if upon refusing this offer, what you like not befalls you,' he said, 'you will know whom to blame.' They refused mercy. Wherefore, after winning the place by some hard fighting (being once driven back, a thing we were not used to), the garrison had justice. They were three thousand. Scarce any of them survived to dispute on whom to lay the blame. It was not so bad as some of the things Joshua had to do; the judgment not going beyond the fighting men. But praised be God, that for the most part it pleases Him to work his terrible things by the stormy winds, the earthquakes, and pestilence, and not by the hands of men.

"The General saith, 'I trust this bitterness will save much effusion of blood, through the goodness of God.'

"And truly, after Tredah, few garrisons waited for our summons, and fewer still refused the Lord-General's mercy. We had but one piece of storming work since then. That was at Wexford. There was some confusion; the Lord-General wishing to save the town from plunder. His summons by words scorned, he summoned them by batteries. Then the captain would have yielded the castle, and the enemy left the walls of the town, whereon our men got the storming ladders, and scaled the walls. In the market-place there was again a hot fight, and near two thousand of the enemy fell; some were drowned in trying to escape in boats by the harbour. A notable judgment, we thought, for some eight score of poor Protestants, who had been sent out not long before in a ship into the harbour, then the ship scuttled, and they left to sink; also for other Protestants shut up in one of their mass-houses, and famished to death.

"Since then the enemy has been scattered before us like dust before the whirlwind. Their strong places yield to our summons one by one. Please God we may have no more of the work of the whirlwind and pestilence to do! For these poor towns, on the day after the storming, with the blackened walls and the empty houses, from which the poor foolish folks have fled away into the fields, are a sad desolation to behold. It hath cast some little light on the slaying of the women and little ones in the Bible; in that when the men are slain, the lot of the widows and orphaned little ones is sure to see. But war is not peace; and they who try to mix up the two, most times but put off the peace, and in the end make the war more cruel. The surgeon who laid down his knife at every groan of the patient, would make a sorry cure. The Lord-General has great hope of yet bringing the land to be a place for honest and godly men and women to live in, which, they say, it hath not been since the memory of man. But one thing will by no means be suffered; and that is the Mass. Some say this is cruel mercy (since the deluded people hang their salvation on it); and that it is contrary to the Lord-General's promises of freedom of conscience. But liberty to think is one thing, and liberty to do another. The poor folk may believe what lies they will; but that they should be suffered to act falsehoods in the sight of a godly Church and army is an abomination not to be borne."

The letter from Roger came later. In it he wrote much of the Lord-Lieutenant. It was dated February, from Fethard in Tipperary, which, with Cashe, and other towns in the west, had lately come under the Commonwealth.

"Six months since," Roger wrote, "only three cities were for the Commonwealth--Dublin, Belfast, and Derry, and Derry besieged. The Lord Lieutenant stormed two, after mercy refused, with severity of the severest--Tredah and Wexford, since which, none but have yielded in time to avoid the same fate: and in a little while, we have good hopes, if matters go on as they have, not a town or a stronghold will be left in the enemy's hands. The misery and desolation of the country is sore indeed; but it has not been the fruit of only these six months' war. Scarce, I think, of the terrible eight years' tumult since the massacre of 1641; rather, perhaps, of no one can say how many centuries of misrule, or no rule at all.

"The people united at first against us; loyal Catholics of the Pale, disloyal Catholics beyond the Pale, Presbyterian Royalists, and Papists of the massacre. Now their union seems crumbling to pieces again, being founded, not on love, but on hatred; and out of hatred no permanent bonds can, I think, be woven, even as my Lord-Lieutenant told them last month in his Declaration.

"Divers priests met at the Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise, on the Shannon, to patch up this crumbling 'union' against us, if they could. Upon this was issued the 'Declaration for the Undeceiving of Deluded and Seduced People;' wherein the Lord-Lieutenant told these clergymen many things which, perhaps, they thought little to the point, but which to him (and to us) are the root of all things, and therefore must naturally be to the point, especially when it is a question of uprooting.

"'The terms "laity and clergy,"' he said, 'are dividing, anti-christian terms.

"'_Ab initio non fuit sic_. The most pure and primitive times, as they best know what true union is, so in all addresses unto the churches, not one word of this.

"'The members of the churches are styled "brethren," and saints of the same household of faith; and although they had orders and distinctions among them for administrating of ordinances (of a far different use and character from yours), yet it nowhere occasioned them to say _contemptim_, and by way of lessening or contra-distinguishing, "laity and clergy." It was your pride that begat this expression; and ye (as the Scribes and Pharisees of old did by their "laity") keep the knowledge of the law from them, and then be able in their pride to say, "This people that know not the law are cursed."

"'Only consider what the Master of the apostles said to them--"So shall it not be among _you_: whoever will be chief shall be servant of all." For He Himself came "_not to be ministered unto but to minister_." And by this he that runs may read of what tribe you are.

"'This principle, that people are for kings and churches, and saints are for the pope and churchmen, begins to be exploded.

"'Here is your argument. "The design is to extirpate the Catholic religion. But this is not to be done but by the massacring and banishing or otherwise destroying the Catholic inhabitants; ergo, it is designed to massacre, banish, and destroy the Catholic inhabitants." This argument doth agree well with your principles and practice, you having chiefly made use of fire and sword in all the changes in religion you have made in the world. But I say there may be found out another means than massacring, destroying, and banishing, to wit, the Word of God, which is able to convert.

"'Therefore in these words your false and twisted dealing may be discovered. Good now! Give us an instance of one man, since my coming into Ireland, not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished, concerning the massacre or destruction of whom justice hath not been done or endeavoured to be done.

"'If ever men were engaged in a righteous cause in the world, this will scarce be second to it. We are come to ask an account of innocent blood that hath been shed. We come to break the power of a company of lawless rebels, who, having cast off the authority of England, live as enemies to human society. We come, by the assistance of God, to hold forth and maintain the lustre and glory of English liberty; wherein the people of Ireland, if they listen not to seducers such as you are, may equally participate in all benefits; to use their liberty and fortune equally with Englishmen, if they keep out of arms.'

"Then the Lord-Lieutenant offers peace, their estates, and fortunes, to all except the leading contrivers of the Rebellion, to soldiers, nobles, gentle and simple, who will lay down arms and live peaceably and honestly; and promises justice on all soldiers or others who insolently oppress them.

"The which (Roger wrote) we have hopes the people will listen to; and so, some ringleaders being banished, some of the murderers of the massacre of 1641 having after fair trial been hanged, this terrible war end in order and blessing to all who will be orderly. It hath been no beating the air, this campaign in Ireland. Of courage there is no lack among this people. And many of ours have suffered by the country sickness, which, with the famine, came in the train of such wild lawlessness and fierce factions as have long desolated this unhappy country. The Lord-Lieutenant himself has been but crazy in health, and has been laid up more than once. But, as he said, _God's worst is better than the world's best_. He writes to the Parliament that he hopes before long to see Ireland no burden to England, but a profitable part of the Commonwealth. And we are not without hope that our rough work here has ploughed up the land for better harvests than it has yet yielded."

Then, some weeks later, another letter from Job to Rachel, mentioning the storming of Clonmel on the 10th of May, 1650, after many hours fiery fighting.

"Against the stoutest enemy," Job writes, "we have yet encountered in Ireland. Not that the Irish are enemies to be despised. Their faculty for fighting seems of the highest, indeed it seems their taste, and the thing they like best, since they are always ready, it seems, to be at it at the shortest notice, and for the smallest cause, or none--which is not the way of the Ironsides. We are peaceful quiet men, as thou knowest, and went into the fighting, not for the love of it, but for the love of what they would not let us have without fighting. Which is a difference.

"It is said our Oliver hath permitted such officers as lay down their arms to gather regiments of such as will join them and to cross the seas to Spain or France, there to fight for whoever will pay them, They say 45,000 of these Kurisees are going. Which seems to me pretty nearly the worst thing human beings can do. Worse than slavery, inasmuch as it must be worse for men to sell themselves than to be bought and sold. Who can say what such courses may end in? For the Almighty does not buy his soldiers; He has no mercenaries. But the devil has. And he pays; though not as he promises. However, no doubt the country is better without them."

We thought again often of Job's words, when three regiments of these "Kurisees" were found, in after years, massacring and torturing the peaceable Vaudois peasants in their valleys, in the pay of the Duke of Savoy, doing some of the direst devil's work that perhaps was ever done on this earth.

This letter reached us at Netherby, where about this time our little Dorothea was born.

I remember well how it cheered my heart as I sate at my open chamber-window in some of the soft days which now and then break the sharpness of our early spring, and are as like a foretaste of heaven as anything may be, to think that perchance the long night of tumult and disorder which had hung over that distracted land was passing away, and a new kingdom was arising of liberty and righteousness and truth.

Our little Magdalen (Maidie) playing at my feet with the first snowdrops she had ever seen, and the baby Dorothea (Dolly) asleep on a pillow on my knee. Spring-time, I thought, for the earth, and for these darling; and for the nations. When _life_ is given, who minds through what throes or storms?

The old home was much changed by the absence of Aunt Dorothy. I missed the force of her determined will and her sharp definite beliefs and disbeliefs. The music seemed too much all treble. I missed the decisive discords which give force and meaning to the harmonies. There seemed no one to waken us up with a hearty vigorous No!

In the village, too, her firm straight-forward counsels and rebukes were missed. Aunt Gretel and my father seemed to have grown quieter and older. Forcible, truthful, militant characters like Aunt Dorothy's make a healthy stir about them, which tends to keep youth alive in themselves and those around. They are as necessary in this world, where so much has to be fought against, as the frosts which destroy the destructive grubs. The foes of our foes are often our best friends; and none the less because they are the foes of our indolent peace.

My father had been, moreover, not a little shaken by the loss of his arm. He had withdrawn from war and politics, and had thrown himself with new vigor into his old pursuits, investigating the earth and sky and all things therein.

But the more we stay together the more needful we all grew to each other. Maidie especially so twined herself around her grandfather's heart, that we made a compact to spend the larger portion of the years henceforth together; we with them in the summers at Netherby, and they with us in the winters in London. In this way, moreover, my father would be able to attend the meetings and weekly lecturings of the association of gentlemen, for the prosecution of the "new experimental philosophy," which met during the Commonwealth chiefly at Gresham College, and was, after the Restoration, incorporated as the Royal Society.

Aunt Dorothy's absence, with the cause of it, was much on my mind during those quiet spring days. Every error, she thought, had seeds of death in it, and carried out to its consequences must lead to death; therefore no error ought to be tolerated. This perplexed me much, until I learned a lesson from the old beech tree outside my chamber window.

"Aunt Gretel," I said one day as we were sitting there quietly with the babes, "I have learned a lesson which makes me glad."

"From whom?" said she.

"From that old beech-tree," I said. "The old dead leaves are hanging on it still. Now, if the world were governed on Aunt Dorothy's principles, strong winds would have been sent to sweep every one of them away weeks ago. But God carries on his controversy with dead things, simply by making the living things grow. The young leaves are pushing off the old, one by one, and will displace them all when the hour is come when all things are ready. It seems as if the old things hold on just as long as they have any life left in them wherewith to serve the new."

"Yes, that is it, sweet heart," she said as if assenting to what she had long known. "I, at least, know no way of fighting with what is wrong, like helping everything good and true to grow."

So April grew into May. The snowdrops, hawthorns, and blue hyacinths, and all the early flowers were lost in the general tide of colour and song which suffused the earth. These "first-born from the dead" were succeeded by the universal resurrection which they prefigured and promised.

The first forerunners of spring which come one by one, like saints or heroes, bearing solitary witness to the new kingdom of life, which meanwhile is secretly and surely expanding round their roots, had fought the fight with snows and storms, had borne their testimony and then had vanished in the growing dawn of the year.

A thousand happy thoughts came to me as I wandered in the old gardens, and sat on the old terrace, with Aunt Gretel and Placidia, while Placidia's little Isaac and our little Maidie played around us; and none of them were happier than those suggested by little Isaac himself. Again and again he recalled to me Aunt Gretel's words, "The good God has more weapons than we wot of, and more means of grace than are counted in any of our catechisms and confessions. The touch of a little child's hand has opened many a door through which the Master has afterwards come in, and sate down and supped."

It seemed as if the child were ever leading his mother on (all the more surely because so unconsciously to him and to her,) opening her heart to love, and, what is not less essential, opening her eyes to see the truth about herself. For it in not only through their trustfulness and their helplessness that little children are such heavenly teachers in our homes. It is by their truthfulness, or rather by their incapacity to understand hypocrisy. They are simply unable to see the filmy disguises with which we cover and adorn our sins and infirmities. The disguises are invisible to them. They see only (and so help to make us see) the reality within; and thus confer on us, if we will attend, the inestimable blessing of calling our faults by their right names.

I remember one little incident among many.

I was sitting by the fireside in the Parsonage hall, and had just finished reading a letter from Roger, and telling my father about the Irish war.

"It is a conflict between light and darkness," said my father. "And the Mornings of the Ages do not dawn silently like the morning of the days, but with storms and thunders, like the spring, the morning of the year."

As he spoke, I looked out through the door to the sunshine. Placidia was sitting at the porch at her spinning-wheel, Maidie at her feet pulling some flowers to pieces with great purpose and earnestness, singing to herself the while, when little Isaac came running to her across the farmyard hugging a struggling cackling hen, which he plumped in a triumphant way into Maidie's lap. "I give it you, Maidie," said he, "for your very own." But Maidie, far more overwhelmed by the hen than by the homage; began to cry; whereon Placidia, leaving her spinning-wheel, rescued the hen and Maidie, and said--

"I was very foolish, Isaac. You should ask me before you give presents. Maidie is too little to understand hens. If you wanted to give her anything, you should have asked mother."

"But I was afraid you might say no," said Isaac. "And I had been planning it all night. I thought it would be so nice for Maggie."

"Maggie is a very little girl," rejoined Placidia; "and if you wanted to give her something, a very little thing would please her quite as much. There is your little gilt bauble, that you used to play with when you were Maidie's age. It is of no use to you now, and it would be nice for her."

"But," said Isaac scornfully, "that would not be giving, that would be only _leaving_. I want to give Maidie something. And I love Maidie dearly, and and so I want to give her the nicest thing I have. Don't you understand, mother," he continued, in the eager hasty way natural to him, knitting his brows with earnestness. "I want to _give_ something to Maidie. There is no pleasure in throwing old things away, to Maidie or any where else. It is giving that is so pleasant."

The colour came into Placidia's face. She said in a hesitating way,--

"But the hen will lay ever so many eggs, Isaac. You could give Maidie the eggs, and keep the hen, which would lay more."

"But I want the hen to lay the eggs _for Maidie_," he replied. "I have thought of it all. It is a great pity you don't understand, Maidie," he continued, seriously appealing to Maidie's reason in a way she could not at all appreciate. "It is the prettiest hen in the yard, and she will give you a new egg every morning, and it would be your very own, and you could give it Aunt Olive yourself."

But this extensive future was entirely beyond Maidie's powers of vision. She shook her head, apparently hesitating between encountering a fresh assault from Isaac and the hen, and sacrificing the precious bits of flowers she had so diligently pulled to pieces and thought so beautiful; until at length, as Isaac again approached, terror won the day, and gathering up her treasures as best she could, in her lap, she fled to me for protection, and hid her face in my skirt.

"It is a great pity Maidie cannot understand," murmured Isaac in the porch, not venturing, however, to follow and renew his homage. "But mother, don't you understand?"

It is not the mother, it was the child that did not understand. But she made no further explanation nor opposition. She only said softly,--

"Never mind, Isaac. You shall have the pleasure of giving. You shall keep the hen for Maidie, and give it her when she is old enough to know what it means."

She would not, for much, that her child should see into the dark place he had revealed to her in her own heart. So ennobling it is to be believed incapable of being ignoble.

I seemed to see the mother, through the coming years, led gently away from all that kept her spirit down, and on to the best of which she was capable by the hallowing trust of the child.

It seemed to me that a conflict between light and darkness was going on in the quiet parsonage at Netherby, as well as on the blood-stained fields in Ireland.

And I thought that hour had witnessed one of its silent victories.