CHAPTER XII.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

Netherby, _May_, 1647.--They have given us the best upper chambers in the house, one for a withdrawing-chamber, the other for my Mother's and my sleeping-chamber. This last has a broad embayed window commanding the orchard, at the bottom of which is the pond where the water-lilies grow that Roger gathered for me on that night when Dr. Taylor and Mr. Milton discoursed together on the terrace, in speech like rich music, about liberty of thinking and speaking.

"England has been echoing another kind of music all these years since, on the same theme; but it seems as if we had drawn but little nearer a conclusion. The Presbyterians seem as convinced of the sin of allowing any one else to think or speak freely as the poor martyred Archbishop was. The Presbyterians, it seems, are for the Covenant (meaning Presbytery), King, and Parliament; the Covenant first. We for King without Covenant and with Bishops. But the Presbyterians are against conventicles and all sectaries (except themselves). Herein, so far, we and they agree, and herein, some think, may be a hope for the good cause. If we could make a compromise, order might, it is thought, be speedily restored. This, however, seems very hard. They would have to sacrifice the Covenant, which seems nigh as dear to them as the Bible. We, the Church by law established; the sacred links, my Mother says, which bind us to the Catholic Church of all the past, which the king will die, she thinks, rather than do. The only chance, therefore, of agreement seems to be, if the Presbyterians ever reach the point of hating or fearing the Independents more than they love the Covenant. Then, some think the King and the Presbyterians, Scottish and English, might unite and overpower the Independents; and--what then?

"I cannot at all imagine. Because, when the common enemy is gone, Episcopacy and the Covenant still remain, and in the face of each other. Sir Launcelot said the king thinks he has a very plain 'game' to play. 'He must persuade one of his enemies to extirpate the other, and then come in easily and put the weakened victor under his feet.' This he has in letters declared to be his intention. I trust the royal letters have been misread. For such a 'game' seems to me very far from paternal or kingly; and, except on far better testimony, I will not credit it. But for me there is an especial grief in all these matters. Olive, who takes her politics mostly from Roger, seems to lean to the Independents, who constitute the strength of the army, and to General Cromwell, who is their idol; so that whatever cause triumphs, nothing is likely to bring peace between the Davenants and the Draytons.

"At present, however, our peace in this house is much increased. My Mother and Mistress Dorothy have concluded a treaty on the ground of their common loyalty to His Majesty, and their common abhorrence of 'sectaries.'

"Moreover, Mistress Dorothy is marvellous gentle and kind to us. Having delivered her conscience, she treats my Mother with a tender consideration and deference that go to my heart, although sometimes I think it is only from the pity a benevolent jailer would feel for sentenced criminals. They have been condemned. Justice will be satisfied. And meantime, mercy may safely satisfy herself by keeping them fed and warmed.

"She says little; but she watches my Mother's tastes, and supplies her with unexpected delicacies in a way which binds my whole heart to her.

"I scarce know why; but I always liked her. She is so downright and true; manly, as a man may be womanly. She is most like Roger in some ways of any of them, only he, being really a man and a soldier, is gentler. And when she loves you, it seems to be in spite of herself, which makes it all the sweeter. For she does love me. I am sure of it, by the way she watches and exhorts, and contradicts me. Especially, since I read her those sermons that afternoon when we were waiting. I asked Olive, and she told me Mistress Dorothy said, that afternoon, she thought I had gracious dispositions. That meant, I opine, that she liked me. She wanted to excuse herself for liking so worldly and Babylonish a young damosel as she believed me to be. And, therefore, she has invested me with 'gracious dispositions,' and believes herself commissioned to bring me out of Babylon, and to be a 'means of grace' to me, which, I am sure, I am willing she should be. For my heart is too light and careless, I know well. Except on one or two points. And, meantime, I flatter myself I may be an 'ordinance and means of grace' in some little measure to her, little as she might acknowledge it. It does good people so much good to love (really love I mean, not take in hand merely like patients) people who are not so good as themselves. It sets them planning, praying for others, and takes them away from looking within for signs, and forward for rewards; by filling the heart with love, which is the most gracious sign, and the most glorious reward in itself.

"Sweet Mother, mine! we all have been great means of grace to her in that way.

"Think what she may, she would not have been a greater saint at Little Gidding, although she had chanted the Psalter through three hundred and sixty-five times in the year.

"I think she and Mistress Dorothy help each other. They make me think of the two groups of graces in the Bible. St. Paul's,--'Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.' I picture these as sweet maidenly or matronly forms white-robed, radiant, with low sweet voices. They represent my Mother and the holy people of Mr. Herbert's school. Then there are St. Peter's,--'Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly-kindness, charity.' These rise before me like a company of knights in armour, valiant, true, and pure. In the kind of plain, manly armour of the Ironsides, as Roger looked in it that morning at Oxford, when he turned back and waved farewell to me in the court of the College. And these represent Mistress Dorothy and the nobler Puritans. They are the same, no doubt, essentially; love and charity, the mother of one group, the king and crown of the other. Yet they seem to represent to me two diverse orders of piety, the manly and the womanly. Together, side by side, in mutual aid and service, not front to front in battle, what a church and what a world they might make.

"But the great event in the house now is the bethrothal of Olive and Dr. Antony, which took place on the very morning after Mistress Dorothy's grand Remonstrance.

"Dr. Antony left a day or two afterwards. And over since we have been as busy as possible preparing for the wedding, which is to be in July. Not a long betrothal-time. But they needed not further time to try each other.

"It is very pleasant to be all of us occupied for her, who is so little wont to be occupied with herself. She seems in a little tumult of happiness, as far as any Puritan soul can be in a tumult.

"Many of these Puritan ways seem to me wondrous innocent and sweet.

"They have their solemnities, I see, and their ritual, and ceremonial; and their symbolism and sacred art, moreover, say what Mistress Dorothy may to the contrary.

"Tender sacred family rites and solemnities. They have, indeed, no chapel or chaplain. But the family seems a little church; the father is the priest. Not without sacred beauty this order, nor without sanction either from the fathers of the Church (fathers older than Archbishop Laud's), the fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

"For instance, when Olive and Dr. Antony were betrothed, Mr. Drayton led them into his room, and laid his hands on them, and blessed them. And that was the seal of their betrothal. Every Sunday morning, Olive tells me, when she and Roger were children, after family prayers, they used to kneel thus for their father's blessing. Sacred touches, holy as coronation sacring oil, I think, to bear about the memory of through life. But then there is this to be remembered. When the consecrating touch is from hands which work with us in daily life, they need to be very pure. No pomp of place, and no mist of distance glorifies the ministrant. He had need, indeed, to be all glorious within.

"Family solemnities must be very true to be at all fair. I can fancy Puritan hypocrisy, or a mere formal Puritanism, the driest and most hideous thing in the world.

"Then as to symbols and sacred art. What else are these Scripture texts, carved over door-ways, graven on chimney-stones, emblazoned on walls? 'They are not graven images,' saith Mistress Dorothy. But what are words but images within the soul, or images, rightly used, but children's words? Not that even as to 'holy pictures' and 'images' they are quite destitute. What else are the paintings from Scripture on the Dutch tiles in Mr. Drayton's room, where Olive and Roger learned from Mistress Gretel's lips their earliest Bible lore? It is true, they are chiefly from the Old Testament. But Adam and Eve delving, the serpent darting out his forked tongue from the tree, Noah and the animals walking out of the ark, are as much pictures as St. Peter fishing, or the blessed Virgin and the Babe, on church windows? What difference, then, except that the Puritan pictures are on tiles at home instead of on glass at church? 'They are for instruction, and not for idolatry,' saith Mistress Dorothy. But did not the monks in old times paint their pictures also for instruction, and not for idolatry? 'Centuries of abuse make the most innocent things perilous,' saith Mistress Dorothy. 'When the brazen serpent had become an idol, Jehoshaphat called it a piece of brass, and broke it in pieces.' I can see something in that. The sacrilege, then, is the idolatry, not in the destruction of the idol. But alas, if we set ourselves to destroy all things that have been, or can be made into idols, where are we to stop? Some people made idols of the very stones of their houses, without any scriptures thereon, or of their firesides, without the sacred pictures. There are two things, however, which fill me with especial reverence in these Puritan ways. First, this sweet and sacred family piety. Second, or rather first, for it is at the root of all, the intense conviction that every man, woman, and child, in every word and work, has to do directly with God, and that he, by virtue of being divine, is nearer us than all the creatures; that to Him each one is immediately responsible, and that, therefore, on his word only can it be safe for each one to believe or do anything. Such conviction gives a power which ceases to be wonderful only when you think of its source. But alas, alas! what if this Divine word be misunderstood.

"_July_.--Roger Drayton has come, on a few days' leave, to be present at his sister's wedding.

"He hath brought the strange news that the king is in the keeping of the army. We scarcely know whether to mourn or rejoice. It came about on this wise, as Roger told my Mother and me:--

"It was reported in the army that the Presbyterian party in the Parliament designed to remove the king from Holmby, where he was, to Oatlands, near London, there to make a separate treaty, in which the soldiers were not to be consulted or considered.

"On the fourth of June, therefore, Cornet Joyce, without commission, it seems, from any one, but simply as knowing that it would be agreeable to the army; and to prevent this design of a separate Presbyterian treaty, went, with some seven or eight hundred men, to Holmby House, where His Majesty had remained since we saw him in April.

"The Commissioners of the Parliament, who were His Majesty's jailers, were very indignant at this interference of Cornet Joyce, and commanded the gates to be closed, and preparations to be made to resist an assault. Their own soldiers, on the contrary, were of the same mind with the army and the Cornet, and threw open the gates at once to their comrades. Nor was the king himself, it seems, unwilling. When Cornet Joyce made his way to the royal presence, the king spoke to him with much graciousness. He asked the Cornet if he would promise to do him no hurt, and to force him to nothing against his conscience. Cornet Joyce declared he had no ill intention in any way; the soldiers only wanted to prevent His Majesty being placed at the head of another army, and that he would be most unwilling to force any man against his conscience, much less His Majesty. The king, therefore, agreed to accompany him the next day, this happening at night.

"The next morning, at six o'clock, His Majesty condescended to meet the soldiers.

"He again demanded to know the Cornet's authority, and if he had no writing from the general, Sir Thomas Fairfax.

"'I pray you, Mr. Joyce,' he said, 'deal ingenuously with me, and tell me what commission you have.'

Said Joyce,--

"'Here is my commission.'

"'Where?' asked the king.

"'Behind me,' said the Cornet, pointing to his troopers; 'and I hope that will satisfy your Majesty.'

The King smiled.

"'It is as fair a commission,' he said, 'and as well written as I have ever seen in my life; a company of as handsome and proper gentlemen as I have seen a great while. But what if I should yet refuse to go with you? I hope you would not force me! I am your king. You ought not to lay violent hands on your king. I acknowledge none to be above me but God.'

"Cornet Joyce assured His Majesty he meant him no harm; and at length the king went with the soldiers as they desired, they suffering him to choose between two or three places the one he liked best.

"So, by easy stages, they conducted him to Childerley, near Newmarket. And it is said the king was the merriest of the company. Heaven send it to be a good augury.

"Roger said, moreover, that His Majesty continues to be of good cheer, and the army to be friendly disposed towards him. They have hope yet that Sir Thomas Fairfax, General Cromwell, and Ireton may make some arrangement to which His Majesty may honourably accede.

"And, meantime, they allow him not only the attendance of his faithful servants, but his own chaplains to perform the services of the Church, which the Presbyterians refused him at Holmby. Englishmen, especially the common people, and most of all, I think, English soldiers, have honest hearts after all; safer to trust to than those of men armed _cap-a-pie_ in covenants, and catechisms, and confessions. Surely the king will yet win the hearts of the army, and all will yet go right. Roger, meanwhile, is as stately in his courtesy to me as a Spanish hidalgo, listening and assenting to all I say in a way I detest. For it means that he feels our differences too deep to venture on."

"_July_ 2_nd_.--Roger has begun to contradict and controvert me again delightfully. This morning we had our first serious battle.

"Yester eve I said something about abhoring all middle states of things. It was in reference to the poor peasants flocking around the king. I said there was no poetry in mid-way things, or times, or states, in mid-day, mid-summer, middle-life, or the middle-station in the state.

"He took this up earnestly after his manner, and went into a serious argument to prove me wrong. It was but a weakling and half-fledged poesy, quoth he, which must needs go to dew-drops, and rosy clouds, and primroses, and violets, for its smiles and decorations, and could see no glory and beauty in summer or in noon. Summer with its golden ripening harvests, and all its depths of bountiful life in woods and fields; noon-tide with its patient toil or its rapturous hush of rest; manhood and womanhood with their dower of noble work and strength to do it. He could not abide (he said), to hear the spring-tide spoken pulingly of as if it faded instead of ripened into summer, or youth as if it set instead of dawned into manhood. And as to the middle station in a nation, its yeomanry and traders, nations must have their heads to think and their hands to work; but the middle order was the nation's heart. If that was sound, the nation was sound, if that was corrupt and base, the nation's heart was rotten at the core. Which (ended he) he thought these last years, with all their miseries, had proved the heart of England was not.

"Roger Drayton has a strange way of his own in discourse, of putting aside all your light skirmishing forces, and closing with the very kernel and core of the people he has to do with. The way of the Ironsides, I suppose. I have been used to little but skirmishing in discourse among the younger Cavaliers; light jesting talk whether the heart or the subject be grave or gay. Even serious feelings being hidden for the most part under a mask of levity. But Roger seldom, perhaps never, exactly jests. His mirth, like a child's laughter, is from the heart, as much as his gravity. He will know and have you know what you really honour, or love, or want, or dread.

"So it happened that to-day on the terrace we came on the very subject I had intended always to avoid; General Cromwell.

"I chanced to allude in passing to some of the reports I had heard against the General, some careless words about his praying and preaching with his men.

"I had no notion until then how Roger reveres this man, like a son his father, or a loyal subject his sovereign.

"He said, quietly, but with that repressed passion which often makes his words so strong, that no man who had ever knelt at General Cromwell's prayers would jest at his praying, any more than any man who had ever encountered him in battle would jest at his fighting. That his word could inspire his men to charge like a word from heaven, and could rally them like a re-inforcement. That after the battle his strong utterance of Christian hope and faith could hearten men to die, as it had heartened them to fight; that after such a battle as Marston Moor, while directing the siege-works outside York, he could find time to go down into the depths of his own past sorrows to draw thence living waters of comfort for a friend (Mr. Walton) whose son had been slain, writing him a letter of consolation (which Roger had seen) containing words deep enough 'to drink up the father's sorrow.'

"Then Roger spoke of the unflinching justice, which was only the other side of this same sympathy and care; how General Cromwell had two of his men hanged for plundering prisoners at Winchester, and sent others accused of the same offence to be judged by the royal garrison at Oxford, whence the governor sent them back with a generous acknowledgment.

"'It is _loyalty_ you feel towards General Cromwell,' I said, 'such a disinterested, ennobling, self-sacrificing passion as our Harry felt for the king.'

"He paused a moment,--

"'If God sends us a judge and a deliverer what else can we feel for him?' he said, at length; 'I believe General Cromwell is the defender of the law, and will be the deliverer of the nation, and if he will suffer it,' he added, in a lower voice, 'of the king.'

"'Is it true,' I asked, 'that, as you once told us, General Cromwell and the army are courteous to His Majesty, and anxious to make good terms with him? Can it be possible that there may yet be an honourable peace?' 'I believe,' he replied, 'that all things else are possible, if only it is possible for the king to be true. But if a word, king's or peasant's, is worth nothing, what other bond remains between man and man? Forgive my rough speech. I know your loyalty is a sacred thing to you. If the king will deal truly, I believe General Cromwell will make him such a king as he never was before. But who can twist ropes of sand? For one who is untrue seems to me not to be a real substance at all, not even a shadow of a substance, but simply a dream or phantasm, simply _nothing_.'

"I felt myself flush. We have sacrificed too much for His Majesty, not to believe in him. Yet I fear he has other thoughts as to the double-dealing to be permitted in diplomacy than Harry had, or many gentlemen who serve him.

"I could only answer Roger by saying,--

"Adversity makes a king sacred if nothing else can. If the king's cause were once more to prosper, we might debate such things as these. But not now, Roger. I dare not now.'

"He looked as if words were on his lips, he could scarcely, with all his reserve and courtesy, hold back. But he turned away, and calling Lion from the pond where he was chasing some wild-fowl, we went into the house.

"_July_ 4_th_.--Dr. Antony has come for the wedding. He brought us a moving account of the two days spent by the Royal children. James the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Princess Elizabeth, with His Majesty, at Caversham, near Reading. The Independent officers of the army permitted it. And they say General Cromwell himself, having sons and daughters of his own, shed tears to see the affection of the king and the innocent playfulness of the children, knowing so little of the dangers around them.

"_July_ 5_th_.--Olive looked wondrous fair as a bride, in her plain spotless dress, without an ornament, partly from Puritanical plainness, and partly because the family jewels went long since with the thimbles and bodkins of the London dames into the treasury at the Guildhall. So grave and serene, pure and young, with her fair pale face, and her smooth white brow and soft true eyes.

"She was married in the church, with some fragments of the marriage-service, the whole being forbidden.

"It was sweet afterwards to see her kneel while my Mother kissed her forehead, and placed a string of large pearls round her neck, with a jewel.

"They had always a singular love for each other, Olive and my Mother. The bride and bridegroom rode away together after noon-tide towards their London home.

"_July_ 6_th_.--This morning I rose early and went down to the pond in the orchard, and being led back by the sight of it to the thought of Olive and old times, strayed on towards the Lady Well where first we met.

"By the way I passed old Gammer Grindle's cottage, and finding the door open, early as it was, went in to tell her about the bride.

"And there I saw Cicely and the child again; and heard her terrible story of wrong and sorrow.

"It made me very sad, and as I went on towards the Well, it set me thinking of many things.

"Why did Olive never tell me? But then I thought how I had more than once wilfully refused to believe evil of Sir Launcelot, choosing to believe what I liked. And a cold shudder came over me as I sat by the Lady Well, to think how near danger I had been, and how terrible it would have been if I had cared for him (not indeed that I ever could). I meditated also whether it was not yet possible to get right done to Cicely. And I resolved as far as I could for the future never to believe anything because I wished, but because it was true; that is, to try not to wish about things being true, but to search out honestly if they are. And I was standing looking into the Well, sunk deep in these thoughts, wondering if any one ever really did quite do this, when I heard a footstep and glancing upwards, I met Roger Drayton's eyes.

"And then he told me of his love. I cannot say I had never thought of it before. I had sometimes even thought it might one day come to something like this, and had even imagined a little, what I should say, or perhaps, not so much what, as how I would say many wise things to him and manage it so ingeniously that in some marvellous way all the difficulties about the Civil wars would vanish, he would see he had made some mistakes, and I would acknowledge candidly that our side had not been blameless, and then I might admit, that, perhaps, one day he might speak to me again on the other subject. At least I know these dreams of mine always ended in my being left in perfect certainty that Roger would one day join in the good cause, and Roger perhaps in a very little uncertainty as to the rest.

"But everything went quite the other way. Roger was so much in earnest about what he had to say, that what I had to say about politics unfortunately went entirely out of my head. Roger has left me with anything but a certainty or probability of his ever being a Cavalier, as things are at present. And I have left him in no uncertainty at all about the rest.

"I am afraid it was a golden opportunity lost. But how could I help it? When he showed all his heart to me, how could I help his seeing mine? And since I am sure there is no one in the world to be compared with Roger, how could I help his seeing that I feel and think so? Besides, after all, there is something base in such conditions. It might have been trifling with his conscience. And that would have been almost a crime.

"Wherefore, I am sure I could not have done otherwise, and I think I have done right.

"Yet we made no promises. We know we love each other. That is all. And I know he has loved me ever since he can remember. And I know, with such a heart as his, once is for ever?

"And I know that now, if it were possible, that the whole world could come between us; a world of oceans and continents, a world of war and politics and calumnies, it would always be outside, it would never come between our hearts.

"My Mother thinks so too. I feel now, for the first time, in some ways what it is to have a Mother's heart to rest on. Although through all her tender silence, I feel she sees more difficulties in the way than I do.

"_July_ 10_th_.--A world of oceans and continents no separation! How boldly I wrote! Roger is gone back to the army; gone not half an hour, barely a mile away, scarcely out of sight. If I listen I fancy I can almost hear his horse hoofs in the distance. And it seems as if that mile were a world of oceans and continents, as if these moments since he left were the beginning of an eternity, altogether beyond the poor counted minutes and hours and days of time. But a minute since, his hand in mine, and what may happen before I see him again? How do I know if I shall ever see him again? In love such as ours, ever and never so terribly intertwine!

"Unbelieving that I am. Now I shall have to learn if I understand really anything of what it is to trust God and to pray.

"Prayer and trust must be as deep as _this love_, or they are nothing.

"They must be _deeper_, or they are no support."

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

We began our home in London in troublous times.

As we came near our house which was not far from the river and from Whitehall, we saw something which moved me not a little, a coach being drawn to St. James's Palace, guarded by Parliament soldiers. A few people turned and gazed as it passed; and two children were looking out of the window. These were the Royal children being taken back to St. James's Palace after their two days with the king at Caversham. There was something very mournful in beholding these young creatures, born to be children of the nation as well as of the king, taken to their royal home as to a prison, dwelling in their own land as exiles, their Mother a fugitive in France, their Father a captive among his own people.

There is a terrible strength in the pathetic majesty which enshrines a fallen king; a well-nigh irresistible power in the crown which has become a crown of thorns. A captive monarch is a more perilous foe than a victorious army to the subjects who hold him captive. How often during those sad years, 1647 and 1648, I had to go over all the causes of the civil war again and again; Eliot slowly murdered in his unlawful and unwholesome prison; the silenced Parliaments; the tortured Puritans; the imprisoned patriots. How often I had to recall all its course--Prince Rupert's plundering; the king's repeated duplicity, slowly wearing out the nation's lingering trust in him, and baffling all attempts at negotiation. I had to repeat these things to myself, by an effort of will again and again, in order to keep true to our principles at all.

And the conflict with this rebound of instinctive loyalty, which went on in my heart secretly, was going on in the city openly at the time when we took up our abode there.

So strong and general, indeed, was this rebound of loyalty, that in that August, 1647, which was our honeymoon, it seemed that the whole city of London--at the beginning of the war the Parliament's very strength and stay--was panting to return to its allegiance, led by the Presbyterian majority in the House of Commons. The conflict seemed altogether to have shifted its ground. The enemy now dreaded by the city was not the king, but the army which its own liberal contributions and persevering courage had done so much to create. Like the German magician, Dr. Faustus, of whom Aunt Gretel used to tell us, the city crouched trembling before the untameable spirit it had evoked, as from moment to moment it grew into more terrible stature and strength.

Sunday the 1st August, 1647, my first Sunday in London, was a memorable day to me.

Through all the hush of the Puritan Sabbath there was a deep hum of unrest throughout the city, a ceaseless stir of men walking in silent haste hither and thither, or gathering for eager debate at the corners of streets, in the squares, or in any public place. It was a notable contrast to the cheerful stir of animal life and the deep under-stillness at Netherby.

On the Friday before, the House of Commons had been invaded, not as once in the beginning of the strife by the king trampling on "Privilege" in quest of five "traitors," but by a crowd of 'prentices with hats on, clamouring for the king against the army.

Then the two Speakers of the Lords and Commons had fled to the army, with the mace, and all the Independent members.

The eleven banished Presbyterian members had returned; among them Denzil Hollis (one of the king's fated "five traitors" who had afterwards withstood the royal forces so gallantly at Brentford) and Sir John Clotworthy, whose zeal had pursued Archbishop Laud with theological questions even on the scaffold.

Recruitings, gatherings of men and arms, and drillings and gun-practice had been going on in all quarters of the city on the Saturday.

On Monday these were renewed with the earliest light of the summer morning. Drums beating, trumpets calling, 'prentices hurrahing on all sides, "No peace with Sectaries." The London militia, "one and all," against the factious army, then believed to be couching tranquilly near Bedford.

But on Tuesday the army rose from its lair, and advanced to Hounslow. Then all Southwark came pouring in terrified throngs across London Bridge, demanding peace with the army, and declaring they would not fight. The Presbyterian General Poyntz was indignant, and there was tumult and bloodshed in the streets.

Closer and closer that defied but dreaded monster of an army came, every step forward and every halt watched with fluctuations of hope and fear in the city. The army, meanwhile, strong in the presence of the king, the speakers, the mace, and Oliver Cromwell, looked on itself as not only representing but _being_ all the three powers of the state combined, inspired by an invisible power stronger than all states; and so it advanced majestically free from hurry or disorder. Not a provision-cart or pack-horse was stopped on its way into the city. And on Friday, August the 9th, the army appeared in the city, marching three deep through Hyde Park with boughs of laurel in their hats, through Westminster, along the Strand, through the City, to the Tower. In a day or two they were quietly established in the villages around, the headquarters being at Putney. The king was lodged the while at Hampton Court.

Not an act of vengeance nor of disorder, as far as I know, disgraced their triumph. Not that this was any matter of wonder to us. Our wonder was that sober and godly citizens should wonder at the soberness and godliness of the army, every regiment of which was a worshipping congregation, and the soul of it Oliver Cromwell.

Job Forster was sorely vexed at the evil reports spread concerning the soldiers. We saw him often during that autumn.

"Have they forgotten," he said, "that we have won Marston Moor and Naseby for them? that we have been marching through the land all these years, and not left a godly homestead nor a family the worse for us throughout the length and breadth of the country? A man might think it was we who sacked Leicester and plundered and burnt villages and farms far and wide. They should have heard the prayers our poor men poured forth by the camp-fires on the battle-fields where we shed our blood for them. Such prayers as might well-nigh lift the roofs from their great vaults of churches, and belike the great stone also from their hearts. Men creeping easily among streets, praying safely as long as they like behind walls, and sleeping every night on feather-beds, might be the better for a good stretch now and then in one of our Cromwell's marches, and a hard bed on the moors, and a good look right up into the sky, beyond the roofs, and the clouds, and the stars, and the Covenants and Confessions."

Roger also chafed much at the citizens, but most of all at their misunderstanding of General Cromwell. All that autumn, said Roger, the General, with Ireton, Vane, and Harry Marten, and other faithful men, were labouring hard to establish peace on a lasting foundation, as the proposals of the army proved. They would have provided that His Majesty's person, the queen, and the royal issue should be restored to honour and all personal rights; that the royal authority over the militia should be subject to the advice of Parliament for ten years; that all civil penalties for ecclesiastical offences (for instance, whether for using or disusing the Common Prayer), should be removed; that some old decayed boroughs should be disfranchised, and the representation be made more equal; that parliaments should last two years, not to be dissolved except by their own consent, unless they had sat one hundred and twenty days; that grand jurymen should be chosen in some impartial way, and not at the discretion of the sheriff. But no man would have it so. The Levellers in the army clamoured for justice on the "Chief Delinquent," and declared that General Cromwell had betrayed them to the king. There was a mutiny which Cromwell himself barely succeeded in quelling. The Presbyterians would not give up the right to enforce the Covenant. The king carried on negotiations at the same time with General Cromwell, with the Presbyterians, and with the Irish Papists; intending, as was showed, alas! too surely, from intercepted letters, to be true to none, except, perchance, the last.

On November the 12th, early in the morning, the news flashed through the city, cried from street to street, that the king had fled from Hampton Court; and Roger, who was with us, that morning, said,--

"Once more General Cromwell would have saved the king and the country. But the king will not be saved. Now he must turn wholly to the country."

"But what," replied my husband, "if the country also refuses to be saved by General Cromwell?"

"Then for a New England across the seas," said Roger. "But we are not come to that yet."

For even after the king's flight Roger clung to the hope of reconciliation, his hopes nourished by secret fountains flowing from the very icebergs of his fears. For with the bond which bound People and King, might be snapped for him the bond, not indeed of love, but of hope between him and Lettice.

Still throughout that dreary winter negotiations went on between the Parliament and His Majesty at the Castle of Carisbrook. More and more hopeless as more and more men became mournfully convinced of the king's untruth. Until, in April, 1648, when, from the upper windows of our house, I could see on one side the trees bursting into leaf in St. James' Park, and on the other the river shining with a thousand tints of green and gold with the reflection of the wooded gardens of the palaces and mansions from Westminster to the Temple; when the fleets of swans began to pass by on their way to build their nests in the reedy islets by Richmond or Kew, the news came from all quarters that, amidst all this sweet stir of natural life, the country was stirring with fatal insurrections from Kent to the Scottish borders.

The first outburst was in London itself.

A few 'prentices were playing at bowls on Sunday, April 9th, in Moorfields, during church time. The train-bands tried to disperse them. They fought, were routed by the train-bands, but rallied quickly to the old cry of "Clubs." All through that night we heard the tumult surging up and down through the city. The watermen, a powerful body of men, joined them. The cry was, "For God and King Charles." And not till the Ironsides charged on them from Westminster was the riot quelled.

Then came tidings that Chepstow and Pembroke were taken by the royalists, and that a Scottish army of forty thousand was coming across the borders to undo all that had been done and to restore the king.

About that time Roger came into the chamber where I was busied with confections, and unlacing and laying aside his helmet, he sat down in silence.

His face was fixed and very pale.

"No ill-tidings?" I said.

"I ought not to think so," he replied.

And then he told me of a solemn prayer-meeting, held throughout the day before at Windsor Castle, by the army leaders. How some of them, being "sore perplexed that what they had judged to do for the good of these poor nations had not been accepted by them, were minded to lay down arms, disband, and return each to his home, there to suffer after the example of Him who, having done what He could to save His people, sealed His life by suffering." But others were differently minded, and striving to trace back the causes of their present divisions and weakness, they came at last to what they believed the root, those cursed carnal conferences which their own conceited wisdom had prompted them to the year before with the king's party.

Then Major Goffe solemnly rehearsed from the Scripture the words, "Turn you at my reproof, and I will pour out my Spirit unto you;" and thereupon their sin and their duty was set unanimously with weight on each heart, so that none was able to speak a word to each other for bitter weeping, at the sense and shame of their sins and their base fear of men." "Cromwell, Ireton, and his Ironsides weeping bitterly! It was a thing not to forget," said Roger, pausing.

"Then, Roger," said I, trembling, "if this was the sin they wept for, what is the _duty_ they see before them?"

Roger bowed his forehead on his hands as they rested on the table before him, and his reply came muffled and slow.

"'To call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that blood he hath shed and mischief he hath done to his utmost against the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations.' This is what they deem their duty," he said.

"Call the king to an account, Roger!" I said, "the king!"

I could scarce speak the word for horror.

"Kings have to be called to account," he said.

"Yes, in heaven," I said. "But on earth, Roger, on earth never."

"Herod was called to account on earth, Olive," said he.

"True, but it was by God, Roger," I said. "Not by man! never by man!"

"By the law, Olive," he said; "by God's law, which is above all men."

"But what men can ever have right to execute the law on a king?" I said; "on their own king?"

"Woe to the men who have to do it," said Roger; "but bitterer woe to the man who does not the work God sets him to do, whatever woe it brings on the doing. Olive, who gave," he added, mournfully, "sanction to Laud and Strafford's oppressions, and to Prince Rupert's plunderings?"

I could only weep.

"Oh, Roger," I said, "let the thunderbolt, or the pestilence, or any of God's terrible angels do this work in His time. They are strong and swift enough. It is not for men."

He made no reply.

"What lies between this terrible resolve and its execution?" I asked at length.

"Chepstow and Pembroke to be besieged and taken; Wales to be reconquered; the Scottish army of forty thousand to be driven back over the borders," he replied.

"Then there is a hope of escape for the king yet."

"There is an interval, Olive," he replied. "These things must take time. But they must be done. In a few days, General Cromwell is to lead us forth to do them. The order is given for the army to march to Wales."

I did not venture to mention Lettice's name to him. We both knew too well what a gulf this terrible resolve, if ever it came to action, must create between us. But before he left he said,--

"Olive, I don't think it is cowardice not to say anything of this to Lettice yet. Her mother, she writes to-day, is failing so sadly. And there are so many chances in battle. If I fall, I need not leave on her memory of me what would so embitter sorrow to her.

"And the king might escape," thought I. "His Majesty had all but succeeded in getting through the bars of his chamber-window not a month since. But I did not say this to Roger."

On the next day, the 3rd of May, the army marched forth, and with it Roger and Job Forster. And my husband went with them on his work of mercy.

So that this summer of 1648 was a very anxious and solitary one for me. I longed much to see my Father, but he was occupied in quelling insurrection in the North. And the city was so unquiet, I thought it selfish to send for either of my aunts.

Not that I was without friends. Now and then it fortified me greatly to have a glimpse of Mr. John Milton in his small house at Holborn; to hear his strong words of determination and hope for the English people; and, perchance, to catch some strains from his organ.

But my chief solaces were, first the morning exercises, between six and eight of the clock, at St. Margaret's Church near the Abby, where there was daily prayer, and praise, and reading of God's word, with comments to press it home to the heart, from divers excellent and godly ministers.

And next, a friendship I had made with good Mr. John Henry a Welsh gentleman who kept the royal garden and orchard at Whitehall, and lived in a pleasant house close on Whitehall Stairs. His wife had died scarce three years before, of a consumption, and it was edifying to hear him and his daughters speak of her virtue and piety; how she had looked well to the ways of her household, had prayed daily with them, catechized her children, and devoted her only son Philip to the work of the ministry in his infancy, and how a little before she died she had said, "My head is in heaven, my heart is in heaven; it is but one step more and I shall be there too."

This friendship solaced me for many causes; primarily for three: in that Mr. Henry was a godly gentleman; in that he lived in a garden by fair water, which reminded me of Netherby; and in that he was a Royalist. For it did my heart good to near some good words spoken for the captive king, poor gentleman; and I have been wont ever to gain benefit from good men who differ from us on party points. With such we leave the party differences, and fly to the common harmonies, which are deeper.

Many a delightsome hour have I spent in Mr. Henry's house in the orchard, by the river, watching the boats, and gay barges, and the fishers, and the white fleets of swans, and the flow of the broad river sweeping by, always like a poem of human life, set to a stately organ music, plying my needle meanwhile beside the young daughters of the house, with cheerful converse. But most of all I loved to hearken to the father's discourse concerning the king and the court in the days gone by. How the young princes used to play with his Philip, and gave him gifts, and had wondrous courtesy for him; and how Archbishop Laud took a particular kindness for him when he was a child, because he would be very officious to attend to the water-gate (which was part of his father's charge), to let the archbishop through when he came late from council, to cross the water to Lambeth; and how afterwards the lad Philip had been taken to see the fallen archbishop in the Tower, and he had given him some "new money."

It was strange to think how the great River of Time had borne all that stately company away, king, court, archbishop, council, like some fleeting pomp of gay barges beneath the windows, or like the masques and pageants they had delighted in, of which Mr. Henry told me. It was good, too, to have such touches of simple kindness, as remembering a child's taste for bright new money, thrown into the dark picture we Puritans had among us of the persecutor of our brethren. It is good for the persecuted to feel by some human touch that their persecutors are human; good while the persecuted suffer, good beyond price if ever they come to rule and judge.

Sometimes, moreover, Mr. Philip the son came home from Christchurch, Oxford, where he was a student, and his discourse was wondrous sacred and pleasant for so young a gentleman. One thing I remember he said which was a special solace to me. He would blame those who laid so much stress on every one knowing the exact time of their conversion. "Who can so soon be aware of the daybreak," quoth he, "or of the springing up of the seed sown? The blind man in the Gospel is our example. This and that concerning the recovering of his sight he knew not: 'But this one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.'" Which words have often returned to my comfort. In that, instead of sending me back into my past life, and down into my heart to look for tokens of grace, they set me looking up to my Lord, to see his gracious countenance; and in looking I am enlightened, be it for the first time, or the thousand and first.

Meantime the great tide of Time was flowing on, bearing on its breast to the sea royal fleets, and little row-boats such as mine.

In July the sailors of the fleet suddenly declared for the king, landed the Parliament admiral, and crossing the Channel, took on board the Prince of Wales, acknowledging him as their commander.

At this news my heart beat as high with hope as the fiercest royalist's. The Prince of Wales with a fleet in the Downs! the king his father in prison close to the shore at Carisbrook! what could hinder a rescue? But no rescue was attempted. Weeks passed on--the opportunity was lost; the fleet was won back to the Parliament, and the king remained at Carisbrook. I have never heard any attempt to explain why the prince neglected this chance of saving the king. It made my heart ache to think of the captive sovereign watching all those weeks for rescue, (for he sent to entreat it might be attempted) and listening for the sound of friendly guns, and the appearance of a band of loyal seamen, all in vain.

For all this time his doom was coiling closer and closer round him.

Pembroke and Chepstow were retaken. General Cromwell wrote from Nottingham for shoes for his "poor tried soldiers," wearied with a hundred and fifty miles hasty marching across the wild country of Wales towards the north. In August came the tidings of the total defeat of the Scottish army at Preston.

I had just received the news of this in a letter from my husband, and was sitting alone in my chamber, tossed hither and thither in mind, as was my wont during those anxious months, scarce knowing at any news whether to rejoice or to mourn, in that every victory of the army seemed but to bring a step nearer the fulfillment of that dreadful purpose of calling the king to account. By way of quieting these uneasy thoughts, I rose to go to good Mr. Henry's, when a little stir at the door aroused me, and in another minute I was clasped to Aunt Gretel's heart, sobbing out my gladness at seeing her.

"Hush, sweetheart, hush," she said, "that is the worst of surprises. I meant to save thee suspense, and to make as little disturbance as possible."

"I wanted thee so sorely," said I. "It is not thy coming that has so moved me; it was the trying to do without thee."

In half an hour she had unpacked her small bundle, and established herself in the guest-chamber, with everything belonging to her as quietly in its place, as if it had never known another. Her presence brought an unspeakable quiet with it. The solitary house became home again. And in another fortnight we were rejoicing together over my first-born, our little Magdalene; the fountain of delight opened for us in the desert of those dreary times.

And in September my husband returned to me.

Preston was the last battle of that campaign worthy the name. The Scottish royalist army was broken up, and General Cromwell was welcomed in Edinburgh, and by the Covenanters everywhere, as the deliverer of the land.

Throughout September the king was holding conferences at Newport with the Commissioners of the Parliament. All bore witness to the ability and readiness with which he spoke. His hair had turned gray, his face was furrowed with deep lines of care, but all the old majesty was in his port, and even those who had known him before were surprised at his learning and wit.

But, alas, it was mere speech. The king wrote to his friends excusing himself for making concessions, by the assurance that he merely did it in order to facilitate his escape.

And more than that, all the actors in that drama, sincere or not, were rapidly fading into mere performers in a pageant. The decisive conferences were held, the true work was done. The doom was fixed elsewhere.

By the middle of November the army, victorious from Wales and Scotland, and mindful of the prayer-meeting at Windsor, was again at St. Albans, calling for justice on the Chief Delinquent.

On the 29th of November the king was removed from Carisbrook to Hurst Castle, a lonely, bare and melancholy fort opposite to the Isle of Wight, whose walls were washed by the sea.

On December the 2d the quiet of Mr. Henry's house and of the royal orchard was broken, by the arrival of a portion of the Parliament army at Whitehall, trampling down with heavy armed tread the grass which had grown in the deserted palace-court.

On Sunday there was much preaching in many quarters, of a kind little likely to calm the storm. In the churches the Presbyterian preachers declaimed fervently against the atrocity and iniquity of seizing the person of the king. In the parks Independent soldiers preached on the equality of all before the law of God. "Tophet is ordained of old," one of them took for his text. For the king it is prepared. A notable example, my husband said, of that random reading of the Sacred Scriptures which turns them into a lottery of texts to conjure with, like a witch's charms.

In the Parliament my old hero Mr. Prinne, with his cropped ears and his branded forehead, stood up and boldly pleaded for the king, never braver, I thought, than then.

On the 5th of December came another invasion of the Parliament House, Colonel Pride and his soldiers turning all the Presbyterian and Royalist members back from the doors. "Pride's Purge."

It was a sorely perplexed time. Had the very act of despotism which first roused the nation to the point of civil war now to be repeated in the name of liberty for the ruin of the king?

"What are we fighting for? I used to ask myself. The battle-cries, as well as the front of the armies, had so strangely changed. For the king and Parliament? The king was in prison. The Parliament was reduced to fifty members. For the nation? The nation was half in insurrection. For liberty? No party seemed to allow it to any other.

Roger and the Ironsides alone seemed clear as to the answer. "We are fighting--not under six hundred members of Parliament, nor under fifty, but under one leader given us by God; under General Cromwell," he said. "And he is fighting for the country, to save it and make it free and righteous, and glorious in spite of itself. When he has done it, it will be acknowledged. Till then he must be content to be misjudged, and we must content he should be, as the heroes have been too often, and the saints nearly always, until their work, perhaps until their life, is done."

I lay awake much during those nights of December. My little Magdalene was often restless, and I used to listen to the flow of the river through the silence of the sleeping city and think how the sea was washing the walls of the king's desolate prison, praying for him, and for General Cromwell, and all, and thanking God that my lot was the lowly one of submitting instead of that of deciding, in these terrible times.

But a sorer sorrow was advancing slowly on us all. On the 10th of December came an imploring letter from Lettice, saying that her mother had failed sadly during the last week, that she and her mother longed for Dr. Antony, and her mother even more for me and the babe.

The next day we were on the road to Netherby, Aunt Gretel, my husband, the babe, and I.

It was late in the evening of the second day when we reached the dear old house.

We were met with a hush, which fell on me like a chill. The Lady Lucy had fallen into one of those quiet sleeps which of late had become so rare with her, and the whole household was quieted so as not to disturb her.

The subdued tone into which everything falls, in a house in which there has been long sickness, and where everything has been ordered with reference to one sufferer, fell heavily on us, coming in from the fresh autumn air with voices attuned to the bracing winds, and hearts eager with expectations of welcome. It was like being ushered into a church hushed for some mournful ceremony; and we stepped noiselessly, and spoke under our breath, until an unsubdued wail from the only creature of the company unable to understand the change, the baby waking suddenly from sleep, broke the dreary spell of stillness.

The Lady Lucy heard the little one's cry, and sent to crave a glimpse of us all that night.

In her chamber alone, throughout the house that anxious hush was absent. She spoke in her natural voice, though now lower than even its usual sweet low tones, from weakness. She had a bright welcoming word for each, and while gratefully heeding my husband's counsel, declared that baby would be her head physician. The very touch of the soft little fingers and the sound of her little cooings and crowings had healing in them, she said.

She looked less changed than I had expected. But my husband shook his head and would give little promise. Lettice seemed to me more altered than her mother. Her eyes had a steady, deep, watchful look in them, very unlike her wonted changeful brilliancy. She said nothing beyond a few words of welcome to me that night. But the next morning the first moment we were alone together she took my hands, and pressing them to her heart, she said,--

"Tell me Olive; I have been afraid to ask any one else, but I must know. What do they mean by Petitions from the army for justice on the King?"

I was so startled by her sudden appeal, I could not meet her eyes nor think what to say. I could only murmur something about there having been so many Petitions, Remonstrances, and Declarations, which had ended in talking.

"True," said she, "but the army are like no other party in the state. They do not end with talking. They know what they want, and mean what they say, and do what they mean. What do they mean by Petitions against the Chief Delinquent?"

"Many do think, Lettice," I said, "that the king himself, and not only his counsellors, began all the evil."

"I know," she replied. "But they have had justice enough on the king, I should think, to satisfy any one. They have deprived him of all power, separated him from the queen and the royal children, and all who love him, and shut him up behind iron bars. And now, they petition for justice on him. What would they do to him worse, Olive? What can he suffer more? What has the king left but life?"

I could not answer her.

"To touch _that_, Olive," she continued, looking steadily into my eyes, and compelling me by the very intensity of her gaze to meet them, "to touch that would be crime, the worst of crimes. It would be regicide, parricide."

"But how could it ever be, Olive?" She went on. "They have assassinated kings I know before now. But a king brought to justice (as they call it) like a common criminal! Since the world was, such a thing was never known. It can never be, Olive, she added in a trembling voice, "I have heard the king dreads assassination. Do you? Could his enemies descend to that depth?"

"Never, Lettice," I replied, "never." And in saying thus I could meet her eyes frankly and fearlessly.

Her face lighted up.

"Never! no, I believe not. Then there can surely be little fear. There is no tribunal which can judge the king. No bar for him to stand arraigned before but the judgment-seat of God. A king was never condemned and put to death deliberately and solemnly in the face of his own people, and of all the nations. Never since the world was. And it never could be. From assassination you are sure he is safe. Be honest with me, Olive. There are base men in all parties. You are _sure_?"

"As sure as of my life," I said, "as sure as of my father's word, or Roger's."

"Then there can be no reason to fear," she said. "I will cast away this awful dread. Oh, Olive," she exclaimed, bursting into tears, "you have brought me new life. Do you know that sometimes during these last few days, since I heard of those Petitions, I have almost prayed that if such a fearful crime and curse could be hanging over England, my Mother might be taken to God first, and learn about it first there, where we shall understand it all. But you have comforted me, Olive. I need make no such prayers. What I have so dreaded can never be."

I felt almost guilty of falsehood in letting her thus take comfort. Yet if my husband's fears about Lady Lucy were well-founded, there was little need for such a prayer. And to Time I might surely leave it to unveil the horrors that after all might be averted.

But no intervention from above or from below came to avert the steady unfolding of the great tragedy on which the nation's eyes were fixed.

The king went on to his doom, as the doomed in some terrible old tragedy of destiny, tremblingly watchful for the storm to break from the side whence there was no danger, but all the time advancing with blind fearlessness to confront the lightnings which were to smite him.

In the solitary sea-washed walls of Hurst Castle he listened for the stealthy tread of the assassin. And when at midnight, on the 17th of December, the creak of the drawbridge was heard between the dash of the waves, and then the tramp of armed horsemen echoing beneath the castle-gate, the king rose and spent an hour alone in prayer. Colonel Harrison, who commanded these men, had been named to him as one likely to be employed to assassinate him. "I trust in God who is my helper," said the king to his faithful servant, Herbert; "but I would not be surprised. This is a fit place for such a purpose," and he was moved to tears; no unmanly tears, and no groundless fears. He was not the first of his unhappy race who had been the victim of treacherous midnight murders. But when on the morrow he recognized in Colonel Harrison's frank countenance and honest converse one incapable of such baseness, his spirits rose, and he rode away almost gayly with his escort of gallant and well-mounted men, courteous enough in their demeanour to him. In the daylight, and in the royal halls of Windsor, where they lodged him, he felt strong again in the sacredness of the king's person, and alas he fancied himself strong in those false schemes of policy which, and which only, had divested his royal person of its sacredness in the hearts of his people. "He had yet three games to play," he said, "the least of which gave him hope of regaining all."

On the 5th of January he gave orders for sowing melon-seed at Wimbledon; and dwelt on Lord Ormond's work for him in Ireland. He made a jest of the threat of bringing him to a public trial. Kings had been killed in battle, treacherously put to agonizing deaths in dungeons whose walls tell no tales, and let no cries of anguish through, secretly stabbed at midnight. But the rebels it seemed plain were not foes of that stamp. Even the example three of his Cavaliers had lately given them in treacherously assassinating Rainsborough, one of Cromwell's bravest officers at Doncaster, kindled in the most fanatical of the Roundheads no emulation, but simply a burning indignation and contempt. Save the sword of battle, or the dagger of the murderer, no weapon was known wherewith to kill a king. The Roundheads did not number assassination among their "instruments of justice." The war was over. What then was there for His Majesty to fear?

Strafford, indeed, had been almost as confident up to the last. And neither gray hairs or consecration had saved the Archbishop's head from the scaffold. But between an anointed king and the loftiest of his subjects, according to the royal and the royalist creed, the distinction was not of degree but of nature.

All the courts of Europe surely would rise and interfere ere a king should be tried before a tribunal of his lieges, of creatures who held honour and life by his breath.

Nor only earthly courts. Would the One Tribunal before which a sovereign alone could be summoned, suffer such an infringement of its rights?

So the king went on jesting at the thought of his subjects bringing him to trial, playing his "three games," and peacefully sowing seeds for more harvests than one.

And meanwhile Cromwell came back slowly advancing from Scotland to London; Petitions for Justice on the Chief Delinquent lay on the table of the House of Commons not unheeded; on the 6th of January, Colonel Pride, with his soldiers, guarded the door of the House of Commons, and sent thence every member who disposed still to prolong treaties with the king; in the afternoon of that same 6th of January, General Cromwell was thanked by the "purged" house, or Rump, of fifty members, for his services, and the High Court of Justice was instituted for the trial of "Charles Stuart, for traitorously and tyrannically seeking to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people." And on the 19th of January, not three weeks after he had been tranquilly planning at Westminster for his summer garden crops, and sowing seed for other harvests in Ireland, the king was sitting in Westminster Hall arraigned before this Court as a "tyrant, traitor, and murderer."

And still only were the heavens unmoved, but not a word of remonstrance or of generous pleading had come from one crowned head in Europe.

But meantime over our little world at Netherby that awful Presence was hovering to which all the outward terrors that may, or may not surround it, the midnight dagger, the headsman's axe, the crowds of eager gazers around the scaffold, are but as the trappings of the warrior to his sword, or the glitter of the axe to its edge. Death was silently wearing away the little remaining strength of Lady Lucy Davenant.

There was one amongst us nearer the beginning of the new life than any of us knew, so near that the roar of the political tempest around us was hushed ere it reached her chamber, and she lay on the threshold of the other world almost as unconscious of the storms of this as our little infant Magdalene, whose cradle she used to delight to have beside her.

I can remember, as if it were yesterday, the dim tender smile with which she used to watch the babe asleep beside her.

Once she said to me,--

"There seems to me something strangely alike, Olive, in the darling's place and mine, though to all outward seeming so different. I lie and look at her and think of the angels in the Percy Shrine at the Minster at Beverly, how they bear in their arms to Jesus a little helpless new-born soul, and He stretches out His hands to take it to His bosom--a soul new-born from death, to the deathless life with Him.

"Sometimes it seems like that, Olive, what is coming to me; so great and perfect the change. Sometimes so easy and simple; more like laying aside garments we have worn through the night bathing in the water of life, and stepping refreshed, strong, and 'clothed in raiment clean and white'--into the next chamber, to meet Him who awaits us there. So little the change, for we have in us the treasure we shall bear with us. The new eternal life is in our Lord, and not in any state or time; and since we have him with us, both here and there, it seems only like stepping a little further into the Father's house--from the threshold to the inner chambers--and hearing Him nearer and seeing Him more clearly. Tell Lettice I had these comforting thoughts, Olive," she would say; "I cannot speak to her, she is too much moved; and she wants me to say I long to stay on earth, and I cannot, Olive. I cannot feel at home any more here since Harry is gone. And I am so weak and sinful, I may do harm, as well as good by staying longer, even to Lettice, poor tender child. The world--at least the world here in England--is very dark to me. And sometimes I think it will all soon end, not this war only, but all wars, and the kingdom come for which the Church prayed so long, and the glorious Epiphany."

One thing I remarked with Lady Lucy, as with others whom since I have watched passing from this world of shadows into the world of real things. The lesser beliefs which separate Christians seemed forgotten, fallen far back into the distance and the shade, in the light of the great truths which are our life--which are Christianity. The spontaneous utterances of such Christian deathbeds as I have watched, have had little of party-beliefs, and of party-politics nothing. As Lady Lucy herself once said,--

"Oh, if all could only see Him as He is! We are divided because we are fragments: the whole race is fallen and broken into fragments. But in Him, in Christ, all the broken fragments are one again and live. Truth is no fair ideal vision: it is Christ."

And again she would speak of her death with infinite comfort. "He died really--really as I must," she said; "the flesh failed, the heart failed, but he overcame. He offered Himself up without spot to God, and me, sin-stained as I am, in Him--the Son, the Redeemer, the Lord. And the Father was in Him, reconciling the world to Himself. And we are in Him, reconciled, for ever and ever."

Now and then she would ask if we had heard news of the king. And we gave her such general and vague accounts as we dared, deeming it unmeet to distress her with perplexities which would so soon be unperplexed to her. And this was easy, her attention being seldom now fixed long on any subject.

On the 6th of January Roger came on his way to London from the North--on the old Christmas day, which Lady Lucy had continued to keep.

In the morning Lettice had read her the gospel for the day.

In the afternoon when she saw Roger, connecting him with the army and the king, she asked at once for his Majesty.

"The king is at Windsor," Roger said.

"At home!" she said with a smile; "at home again for the Christmas. That is well."

Roger made no reply, and, to the relief of all, her mind passed contentedly from the subject. She took Lettice's hand and Roger's in hers, and pressed them to her lips, and murmured, "My God, I thank Thee." And then, as a faintness came over her, we all withdrew but Lettice.

Roger and I were alone in the ante-room. He was waiting to bid Lettice farewell. When she came out of her mother's chamber she sat down on the window seat, her eyes cast down, her trembling mute lips almost as white as her cheeks.

Roger went towards her, and stood before her; but she made no movement and did not even lift her eyelids, heavy and swollen as they were with much weeping.

"Lettice," he said, "let me say one word before I go. Let me say one word to comfort you in this sorrow, for is not your sorrow mine?"

"Of what avail?" she said. "You are taking the king to London to die. The greatest crime and curse is about to fall on the nation, and you will go and share and sanction it, and make it your own. No word of mine will move you--how can word of yours comfort me? You will, if you are commanded by him you have chosen for your priest and king, keep guard by the scaffold while the king is murdered. Did not you tell me so two hours since? Did not I entreat and implore and tell you you were digging a gulf, not only, between me and you, but between you and heaven?"

He stood for a few moments silent and motionless, and then he said: "And did I not tell you, that, as a soldier I could do no otherwise unless I deserted my chief, nor as a patriot unless I betrayed my country? It is the king who has betrayed us, Lettice; who has refused to let us save him and trust him. The hand that could have stopped all the oppression and injustice at the source--from the beginning--and _did not_, must be the guiltiest hand of all. It is _falsehood_ that is leading the king to this end, not the country, nor the Parliament, nor General Cromwell."

At last she looked up,--"Do not try to persuade me, Roger," she said, "God knows I am too willing to be persuaded. I cannot reason about it any more than about loving my Mother or obeying my Father. I dare not listen to you. I am untrue," she added, bursting at length into passionate tears, "I have been a traitor, to let my Mother be deceived--to let her thank God for what can never be!"

"Lettice," he said in a tone of anguish, "if you reproach yourself, if you call yourself a traitor, what am I?"

"You are as true as the Gospel, Roger," she said, her sobs subsiding into quiet weeping; "as true as heaven itself. You would never have done what I did. You would break your own heart and every one's rather than utter or act one falsehood, or neglect one thing you believe to be duty. That is what makes it so terrible."

His voice trembled as he replied,--"You trust me, and yet you think me capable of a terrible crime."

"I know that to lay sacrilegious hands on the king is an unspeakable crime," said she; "but to trust you is no choice of mine. I cannot tear the trust of my heart from you if I would, Roger, and God knows I would not if I could."

A light of almost triumphant joy passed over his face, as, standing erect before her, with folded arms, he looked on her down-cast face,--

"Then the time must come when a delusion that cannot separate us in heart can no longer separate us in life," he said, in tones scarcely audible. "Your Mother said the truth, Lettice, when she joined our hands. Such words from her lips at such a time are surely prophecy."

Lettice shook her head.

"My Mother saw beyond this world," she said, mournfully; "where there are no delusions, and no divisions, and no partings."

He bent before her for an instant, and pressed her hand to his lips. And so they parted.

That night Lettice and I watched together by Lady Lucy's bedside. And all things that could distract and divide seemed for the time to be dissolved in the peace of her presence.

She revived once or twice and spoke, although it seemed more in rapt soliloquy than to any mortal ear.

"Everything grows clear to me," she said once; "everything I cared most to see. The divisions and perplexities which bewilder us here are only the colours the light puts on when it steps on earth. On earth it is scarlet and purple and bordered work; in heaven it is fine linen, clean and white, clean and white."

Often she murmured in clear rapid tones, very awful in the silence of the sick-chamber at night, the words,--

"The king, the king!"

Lettice and I feared to go to her to ask what she meant, dreading some question we dared not answer. We thought belike her mind was wandering, as she did not seem to be appealing to us or looking for an answer.

But at length the words came more distinctly, though broken and low, and then we knew what they meant,--

"The King! King of kings! Faithful and true. Mine eyes shall see the King in His beauty. He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, King of the poor, King of the nations, King of kings, Faithful and true. I am passing beyond the shadows. I begin to see the lights which cast them. Beyond the storms--I see the angels of the winds. Beyond the thunders--they are music, from above. Beyond the clouds--they are the golden streets, from above. Mine eyes shall see the King--as He is; as thou art; no change in Thee, but a change in me. In Thy beauty as Thou art."

All the following day the things of earth were growing dim to her, but to the last her courtesy seemed to survive her strength. No little service was unacknowledged; even when the voice was inaudible, the parched lips moved in thanks or in prayer.

And on the early morning of the 21st of January she passed away from us, her hand in Lettice's, her eyes deep with the awful joy of some sight we could not see.

On the evening of that very day came the tidings that the king had been brought, on the 19th of January, as a criminal, before the High Court of Justice in Westminster Hall, to be tried for his life as the "principal author of the calamities of the nation."

When Lettice heard it, the first burst of tears came breaking the stupor of her sorrow, as she sobbed on my shoulder, "Thank God she is safe, beyond the storms of this terrible distracted world. She is gone where she will never more be perplexed what to believe or what to do."

"She is gone," said my Father, tenderly taking one of her hands in his, "where loyalty and love of country, and liberty and law are never at variance; where the noblest feelings and the noblest hearts are never ranged against each other. And we hope to follow her thither."

"But oh," sobbed Lettice, "this terrible space between!"

"Look up and press forward, my child," he replied, "and the way will become clear. Step by step, day by day; the space between is the way thither."