CHAPTER VI.

The six mouths of the year 1641, from early May till November, shine back on me beyond the stormy years which part them from us, like a meadow bright with dew and sunshine on the edge of a dark and heaving sea. Beyond those months, in the further distance, stretches the dim Eden of childhood, with its legends and its mysteries, and its gates of Paradise scarcely closed. Bordering them, on the further side, glooms the broad shadow of Roger's temptation and bitter repentance. On the hither side heaves the great intervening sea of civil war. But through all, that little sunny space beams out, peaceful, as if no stormy waves beat against it; distinct, as if no long space of life parted it from us.

Did I say childhood was the Eden? Then youth is the "garden planted eastward in Eden," the Paradise which "the Lord God plants" in the outset of the dullest or stormiest life, where the river which compasseth the land flows over golden sands, "and the gold of that land is good." Not childhood, surely, but early youth, "the youth of youth," is the golden age of life. Childhood is the twilight. Youth is the beautiful dawn. Childhood is the dream and the struggling out of it; youth is the conscious, joyful waking. If childhood has its fairy robes spun out of every gossamer, its fairy treasures in every leaf; it has also its eerie terrors woven of the twilight shadows, its overwhelming torrents of sorrow having their fountains in an April shower, as it steps uncertainly through the unknown world. And neither its joys, nor its sorrows, nor its terrors, nor its treasures, can it utter.

Childhood is the dim Colchis where the Golden Fleece lies hidden; youth is the Jason that brings thence the "Argosy." Childhood is the sweet shadowy Hesperides, lying dreamily in the tropic sunshine, where the golden fruit ripens silently among the dark and glossy leaves. Youth is the Hero who penetrates the garden and makes it alive with human music, and wins the fruit and bears it forth into the free wide world. If childhood is the golden age, youth is the heroic age, when the heart beats high with the first consciousness of power, and the first stir of half-conscious hopes; when the earth lies before us as a field of glorious adventure, and the heaven spreads above us a space for boundless flight; before we have learned how mixed earth's armies are, how slow the conquests of truth; how seldom we can fight any battle here without wounding some we would fain succour; or win any victory in which some things precious as those borne aloft before us in triumph, are not trailed in the dust behind us, dishonoured and lost.

Not that the most vivid and golden hopes of youth are delusions. God forbid that I should blaspheme His writing on the heart by thinking so for an instant! It is but that the Omniscient, who knows the glorious End that is to be, sets us in youth on the mountain-tops to breathe the pure air of heaven, foreshortening the intervening distance from these heights of hope and by its sunny haze, as eternity foreshortens it to Him; that, forgetting the things that are behind, and overspanning the things that are between, every brave and trusting heart may go down into the battle-field strong in the promise of the End, of the Triumph of Truth that shall yet surely be, and of the Kingdom of Righteousness that shall one day surely come.

Such, at least, was youth to us; to Lettice Davenant, and Roger, and me. And, looking back, this sunny time of youth seems all gathered up into those six months before the beginning of the Civil War.

For we were continually meeting through that summer; and the land was quiet. At least so it seemed to us at Netherby.

The king had granted Triennial Parliaments; had granted that this Parliament should never be dissolved like its predecessors by his arbitrary will, but only with its own consent; had seemed, indeed, ready to grant anything. Strafford, the strong prop of his despotism, had fallen; Archbishop Laud, his instigator to all the petty irritations of tyranny, which had well-nigh driven the nation mad, lay helpless in the Tower; the unjust judges, who had decreed the evil decrees about ship-money, had fled, disgraced, beyond the seas. What then might not be hoped, if not from the king's active good-will, at least from his passive consent? There had, indeed, been an attempt to bring Pym and Hampden into the royal councils, and if this had not quite succeeded, at least the patriot St. John was solicitor-general.

During much of the summer, after assenting to everything the Parliament proposed, the king sojourned in Scotland. It was true that the reports that reached us thence were not altogether satisfactory. There were rumours of army-plots encouraged in the highest quarters; rumours of some dark plot called "The Incident," intending treachery against Argyle and others; of His Majesty going with five hundred armed men to the Scottish Parliament, to the great offence of all Edinburgh; rumours that the English Parliament, hearing of "The Incident," had demanded a guard against similar outrages, if any "flagitious persons" should attempt them.

But for the most part, hope predominated over fear with us at Netherby. One thing was certain; a Parliament alive to every rumour stood on guard for the nation at St. Stephen's, vowed together by a solemn "Protestation" to do or suffer ought rather than yield our ancient rights and liberties, and until the note of warning came thence, the nation might peacefully pursue its daily work; not asleep, indeed, and with arms not out of reach, but for the present called not to contend, but to work and wait.

There was just enough of stir in the air, and of storm in the sky, to quicken every movement without impeding it; to take all languor out of leisure, to make moments of intercourse more precious, and friendships ripen more quickly.

We were still one nation, we owned one law, one throne, one national council. We were still one national Church, gathering weekly in one house of prayer; kneeling, at least at Easter, although with some scruples, around one Holy Table; together confessing ourselves to have "gone astray like lost sheep;" together giving thanks for our "creation and redemption;" kneeling reverently, and with one voice saying, "Our Father which art in heaven;" together standing as confessors of one Catholic faith, and with one voice repeating the ancient creeds; together praying (in the words ordered in King James' reign) for our sovereign lord King Charles, and (in the form his own reign first appointed) for the High Court of Parliament, under him assembled.

There were indeed words and postures and vestments which were not to the liking of all, which to some were signs of irritating defeat and to others of petty triumph; but in general--especially since the Book of Sports had been silenced, and Archbishop Laud had been kept quiet (and Mr. Nicholls had forsaken his more novel practices)--there was a strong tide of truth and devotion in the ancient services, which swept all true and devout hearts along with it.

And besides, there was, at this period, with some of the Puritans, a hope of peacefully affecting some slight further reformation, so that even Aunt Dorothy was less controversial than usual; contenting herself with an occasional warning against going down to Egypt for horses, or against Achans in the camp, and an occasional hope that, while his words were smoother than butter, the enemy had not war in his heart. But she did not distinctly explain whether by these Achans and Egyptian cavalry she meant Mr. Nicholls, Placidia, Lady Lucy, Lettice and the king; or, on the other hand, the little band of Separatists or Brownists whom we met from time to time coming from their worship in a cottage on the outskirts of the village, against whom she considered my Father not a little remiss in his magisterial duty. These apparently inoffensive people were suspected of Anabaptist tendencies. Aunt Gretel even associated them in her own mind with some very dangerous characters of the same name at Münster. It was, indeed, the utmost stretch of her toleration, to connive at our Bob and Tib's occasional attendance at their assemblies; but the consideration of Tib's discreet years, and Bob's discreet character, and Aunt Dorothy's somewhat indiscreet zeal, had hitherto induced her to do so, her conscience being further fortified by my Father's solemn promise to bring these sectaries to justice if ever they showed the slightest tendency towards polygamy or homicide. They consisted chiefly of small freeholders and independent hand-workers, the tailor, the village carpenter, and at the head, Job Forster, the blacksmith; Tib and Bob were, I think, the only household servants among them. They were few, poor, and quiet, doing nothing at their meetings, it seemed, but read the Bible, listen to one reading or explaining it, and praying: some among them having scruples as to whether it might not be a carnal indulgence to sing hymns. Occasionally they were strengthened by the visit of a preacher of their way of thinking from Suffolk, where the sect was more numerous. They were good to each other; not hurtful to any one else. They would certainly, every one of them, have died or gone into destitute exile for the minutest scruple of their belief or disbelief, being satisfied that every thread of the broidered work of their tabernacle was as divinely ordered as the tables of the law written with the finger of God. But as yet there was nothing to show what their enthusiasm would do when it was enkindled to action, instead of smouldering in passive endurance; nothing to show what germs of vigorous life lay dormant in that little company, each holding his commission, as he believed, direct from God. Yet from these, and such as these, at the touch of Oliver Cromwell, sprang into life that crop of Ironsides terrible as Samsons, chaste as Sir Galahad, unyielding as Elijah before the threats of Jezebel, unsparing as Elijah with the prophets of Jezebel on Carmel, which overthrew power after power in the state; made England the greatest power in the world; and if the only human hand that could command it had been immortal, might have ruled England and the world to this day.

So many hidden germs of life lie around us undeveloped everywhere. In the primeval forests of this, our New England, when the pines are felled, a succession of oaks springs up self-sown in their stead. If the pines had not been felled what would have become of the acorns? Would they have perished, or waited dormant through the ages, till their hour should come?

But I am creeping back to Roger's ancient puzzle of Necessity, wherewith he bewildered me of old as we sat in the apple-tree at Netherby.

And after all, however these things be, it is only the king's ministers that are changed in the universal government of the nations. The King never dies.

Meantime these sectaries were the only outward schism in the unity of the Church and Nation, as represented at Netherby. Korahs, Dathans, and Abirams, Aunt Dorothy called them, or (when she was most displeased) "Anabaptists," and would (theoretically) have liked them to be made examples of in some striking and uncomfortable way; harmless enthusiasts my Father called them, and let them alone; well-meaning persons with dangerous tendencies, Aunt Gretel considered them, and made them possets and broth when they were ill. In Lady Lucy's eyes they were misguided schismatics; in Sir Walter's, self-conceited fools; in Harry Davenant's, vulgar fanatics. Of all our circle, I thinkj none cared to find out what they really meant and wanted, except Roger, who, especially after his great trouble, had always the most earnest desire not to misjudge any one; or, indeed, to judge any one as from a judgment-seat above them. And Roger said they believed they had found God, and were living in His Presence, as truly as Moses, or Elijah, or any to whom He appeared of old, which made everything else seem to them infinitely small in comparison; that they wanted, above all things, to do what God commanded, whenever they knew what it was, which made every homeliest duty on the way towards that end seem to them part of the "service of the sanctuary," any mountain of difficulty but as the small dust of the balance; every obstacle as the chaff before the whirlwind. Convictions which gave an invincible power of endurance, and could give a tremendous force of achievement, as events proved.

To this better estimate of them, Roger was, no doubt, partly led by his friendship for Job Forster. Job, indeed, through the whole of these six months, so calm and full of hope to us at Netherby, continued to forebode storms. "The weather was brewed," he said, "on the hills and by the sea; and folks who were bred on the flats, out of sight of sea and hills, and who only knew one-half of the world, could not reasonably be expected to understand the signs of the sky. The Lord, in his belief, had plenty of work to do on his anvil yet, before the swords were beaten into ploughshares and the spears into pruning-hooks. It was more likely the ploughshares would have to be beaten into swords, and priming-hooks into spears."

And the village coulters, spades, and mattocks, received from Job's hammer treatment all the more vigorous on account of the warlike figures they supplied.

Moreover, Rachel, his wife, looking out from her chamber-window one stormy night across the Fens, had seen wonders in the heavens, black-plumed clouds, marshalled like armies, rolling far away to the east, till the rising sun smote them to a blood-red; while high above, from behind these, one white-winged arm, as of an archangel swept across the sky untouched by the red glow of battle, raised majestically, as if to warn or to smite.

"There is something terrible going on somewhere," she had said, "or else something terrible to come."

And Job, to whom Rachel's words had always a tender sacredness in them, woven of the old reverence of our northern race for the prophet-woman; of sacred memories of the inspired songs of Deborah and Hannah, interpreted by his belief that the people of the Bible were not exceptional but typical; and of his own strong love for her--believed Rachel's visions with entire unconsciousness how much they were reflections of his own convictions. "How," he would say, "could a feeble creature like her, nurtured and cherished like a babe, and busy all her life in naught but enduring sicknesses or doing kindnesses, know aught of wars and battlefields, unless it was of the Lord?" So Job foreboded, and we hoped, and the summer months passed on.

Scarcely a day passed on which we and the Davenants did not meet, especially Roger, and Lettice, and I; for Roger had taken his degree, and having overworked at it, was constrained to be idle for a while; and the boy Davenants were most of the time in London. At church, at the Hall, at the Manor, riding, coursing, hay-making, nutting, boating on the Mere; on rainy days, hunting out wonderful old illuminated manuscripts in Sir Walter's library, or by the organ in my Father's, singing glees and madrigals; making essays at Italian poetry, generally resulting in translations, metrical or otherwise, by Roger, for Lettice's benefit. Lettice reigning in all things, by a thousand indisputable royal rights; as pupil; as sovereign lady; as the youngest; as the most adventurous; as the most timid; by right of her need of care, and her clinging to protection; by right of minority, she being one, and we two; by right of her true constancy and her little seeming ficklenesses; by right of her brilliant, ever-changing beauty, and all her nameless, sweet, tyrannical, winning, willful ways; by right of all her generous self-forgetfulness, and delight to give pleasure; and firstly and lastly, by right of the subtle power which, through all these charms, stole into Roger's heart, and took possession of it, unchallenged and unresisted, then and for ever.

We spoke little of politics. Lettice never had any, except loyalty to the king; and at this time her loyalty was sorely tried by reason of her perplexity and distress at what seemed to her the ungenerous desertion of Strafford in his need.

There were no forbidden topics between us. There was one, indeed, which by tacit mutual consent we always avoided, and that was all that concerned Sir Launcelot Trevor. Lettice, always scenting from afar the least symptom of what could pain, never approached what had been the cause of so much anguish to Roger; and me she never freed from the suspicion of a certain sisterly injustice in my sentiments towards my brother's enemy. But a very insignificant and unnecessary chamber indeed was this to be locked out of the palace of delights through which we three roamed at will together. Nor can I remember one pang of vexation at my own falling from the first place to the second in Roger's thoughts. If I had not loved Lettice on my own account as I did, there was nothing in Roger's love for her that could have sown one miserable seed of jealousy in my heart. If he loved her most, he was more to me than ever before. The reflection of his tender reverence for her fell like a glory on all women for her sake. He was more to all for being most to her. Mean calculations of more or less, better or best, could not enter into comparison in affections stamped with such a sweet diversity. All true love expands, not narrows; strengthens, not weakens; anoints the eyes with eye-salve, not blinds; opens the heart, and opens the world, and transfigures the universe into an enchanted palace and treasure-house of joys, simply by giving the key to unlock its chambers, and the vision to see its treasures.

This was the innermost heart of the joy of those our halcyon days, that Roger and Lettice and I were together. We three made for ourselves our new Atlantis. We should have made it equally in the dingiest street of London city. Only, there the joy within us would have had to transform our world into a paradise. At Netherby, riding over the fields with the fresh air in our faces, or roaming the musical woods, or skimming the Mere while Roger rowed, and dipping our hands in the cool waters, or talking endlessly on the fragrant garden terraces of the Manor and the Hall, it had not to transform, only to translate.

Outside this inner world of our own lay a bright and friendly world all around us. First, our Father, sweet Lady Lucy, and Aunt Gretel--scarcely indeed outside, except by the fact of their not quite understanding what we had within, regarding us, as they fondly did, as dear happy children not yet out of our paradise of childhood; next Aunt Dorothy, Job Forster, and Rachel, guarding us as fondly, though anxiously, as on the unconscious eve of encounter with our dragons and leviathans; and beyond, the village, of which we were the children; the country, which was our mother; the world, of which we were the heirs. For to us in those days there were no harassing Philistines, no crushing Babylon; no Egyptians behind, nor Red Sea before. The world was to be conquered, but not as a prostrate foe, rather as a willing tributary to Truth and Right. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles were to bring presents; Sheba and Seba were to offer gifts. The wilderness and the solitary place were to be glad for us, and the desert was to rejoice and blossom as the rose.

Meanwhile Lady Lucy came back to her old place in my heart. Her sweet motherliness seemed to brood like the wings of a dove over our whole happy world.

Harry Davenant came more than once to the Hall, and stayed a few days, to Lady Lucy's perfect content, and entered into our pursuits as keenly as any of us. Only with him there was always an undertone of sadness, a despondency about the country and the world, a bitterness about the times, a slight cynicism about men and women, inevitable, perhaps, to a noble spirit like his, which (as it seems to me) has lost its way, and strayed into the backward current, contrary to all the generous forward movements of the age; but strongly contrasted with the steadfast, hopeful temper no danger could daunt and no defeat could damp, which characterized the nobler spirits on the patriot side. The noble Sir Bevil Grenvill had bitter thoughts of his contemporaries; the generous Lord Falkland craved for peace and welcomed death. Eliot, Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, Milton, looked for liberty; believed in the triumph of truth; thought England worth fighting for, living for, if needful, dying for; they braved death indeed like heroes, they met it like Christians, but they did not long for it like men sick and hopeless of the world. If God had willed it so, they had rather have lived on, because of the great hopes that inspired them, because they believed that not fate nor the devil were at the heart of the world, or at the head of the nations; but God.

Yet about such men as Harry Davenant there was an inexpressible fascination. There is something that irresistibly touches the heart in heroism which, like Hector's of Troy, is nourished, not by hope, but by duty; which sacrifices self in a cause which it believes no courage and no sacrifice can make victorious, and bates no jot of heart when all hope has fled.

And to me he was always so gentle a friend. We had so many things in common; our love for his Mother, his reverence for my Father's goodness, justice, and wisdom; his generous appreciation of Roger; a certain protecting, shielding tenderness we both had for Lettice, who was, indeed, a creature so tender, and dependent, and willful, so likely to rush into trouble, so sure to feel it, that no womanly heart could help feeling motherlike toward her.

Yet there always seemed a kind of half-acknowledged barrier between us, even from the first, more distinctly acknowledged afterwards, which gave a strange mixture of frankness and reserve, of nearness and separation, to our intercourse; wherein, perhaps, lay something of its charm.

And across this world of ours flashed from time to time during those months lofty visions of nobleness and wisdom from other spheres; especially during the last six weeks when the Parliament was in recess, and many a worthy head found a night's shelter in the guest-chamber at Netherby.

Mr. Hampden was in Scotland as Parliamentary Commissioner, keeping watch over the king; Mr. Pym, at his lodgings in Gray's Inn Lane, keeping guard for the nation. But Mr. Cromwell went home in the recess to his family at Ely, and spent some hours with us on his way back to London. He was forty-two years old then, my Father said, and his hair was not without some tinge of gray; tall, all but six feet in stature, and firmly knit. Many things seemed to lie hidden in the depths of his grave eyes; a subdued fire of temper flashing forth at times sufficiently to show that at the heart of this gravity lay not ice but fire; a hearty humour, as of a soul at liberty, grasping its purpose firmly enough to be able to give it play--keen to descry likenesses in things unlike, inner differences in things similar, absurdities in things decorous, and the meaning of men and things in general through all seemings. Yet withal, capacities and traces of heart-deep sorrow, as of one who had looked into the depths on many sides and found them unfathomable. Moreover, above all, his were eyes which saw; not merely windows through which you looked into the soul. Aunt Gretel said there was a look in him which made her think of a portrait of Dr. Luther which she had seen in her youth. He loved music, too, which was another resemblance to Dr. Luther. He was always kind to us children, and now he spoke fondly of his two "little wenches" at home--Bridget (afterwards Mistress Ireton), a little beyond my age, and Elizabeth (Mistress Claypole), then about eleven, his dearly-loved daughter; and the two blithe little ones, Mary and Frances, about five and three. Methought his eyes rested with a sorrowful yearning on Roger; and my Father told us, after he left, he had only two years before, in May, buried his eldest son Robert, about nineteen, which was Roger's age. This son was buried far from home, at Felsted Church in Essex; a youth whose promise had been so great that the parson of the parish where he died had inserted a record of him in the parish register, which reads like a fond epitaph amidst the dry unbroken list of names and dates. Mr. Cromwell spoke also with much reverence of his aged mother, who dwelt in his house at Ely.

Mr. Cromwell was full of a firm confidence in the future of the church and the country; but, like Job Forster, he seemed to think there was much to be done and gone through before the end was gained. On his way through the village he had held some converse with Job Forster while having his horse shod; and he said something of such men as Job being the men for a Parliament army, if ever such an army should be needed.

Whilst Job, on his part, as he told us afterwards, was deeply moved by his interview with Mr. Cromwell. "He was a man," said Job, "who had been in the depths, and had brought thence the sacred fire, which made two or three of his words worth a hundred spoken by common men."

Then towards the close of that happy time there was one evening in October which lingers on my memory as its golden sunset lingered on the many-coloured autumn woods.

We were standing on the terrace at Netherby, overlooking the orchard, Roger, Lettice, and I, in the fading light; Lettice twining some water-lilies Roger had just gathered from the pond. Through the embayed window of the wainscoted parlour, which stood open, poured forth the music of my Father's organ, in chords rich and changing as the colours of the sunset on wood, and meadow, and Mere.

Mr. John Milton was the musician, and as the intertwined harmonies flowed from his hands

"In linked sweetness long drawn out, His melting voice through mazes running, Untwisted all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony."

As we listened, enrapt by the power of the music, which seemed

"Dead things with imbreathèd sense, able to pierce, And to our high-raised phantasy present That undisturbed song of pure concent Aye sung before the sapphire-coloured throne To Him that sits thereon."--

the lilies dropped from Lettice's fingers, and she sat like the statue of a listening nymph; the knitting fell from Aunt Gretel's lap, and the tears came into her eyes, and, thinking of my mother, she murmured "Magdalene!" Roger and I were leaning on the window-sill, and all of us were so unconscious of anything present, that Lady Lucy had advanced from the other end of the terrace near enough to touch me on the arm without my hearing a footstep.

By her side stood a courtly-looking young clergyman, with dark hair flowing from under his velvet cap, and dark, meditative eyes, yet with much light of smiles hidden in them, like dew in violets. Him she introduced as "Dr. Taylor, one of His Majesty's chaplains." He was not yet eight-and-twenty years of age, but was in mourning for his first wife, but lately dead.

Mr. Milton joined us soon with my Father. He was a few years older than Dr. Taylor, but in appearance much more youthful; with his brown un-Puritan love-locks, his short stature, his face determined, almost to severity, yet delicate as a beautiful woman's.

And then between these two, while we listened, ensued an hour's converse, like the antiphons of some heavenly choir.

Names of ancient heroes and philosophers--Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Latin--dropped from their lips like household words. Until at last they rose into a chorus in praise of liberty, of conscience, and of thought; Dr. Taylor, I thought, basing his argument more on the dimness of human vision, and Mr. Milton on the inherent and victorious might of truth. Dr. Taylor pleading for a charitable tolerance for error, Mr. Milton for a glorious freedom for truth; the which converse I often recalled when, in after years, we read the Liberty of Prophesying by the one, and the Liberty of Printing by the other.

As they spoke, the glory faded from the sky and the golden autumnal woods, and when they ceased, and we stepped from the terrace into the gloom of the dark wainscoted parlour, it seemed to me as if we had stepped out of a fragrant and melodious elysium into a farm-yard, so homely and unmeaning, like the cacklings or lowings of animals, did all common discourse seem afterwards.

The next day, when Mr. Milton had left us, and we were speaking together of this discourse, Aunt Gretel said it was like beautiful music, only, being mostly in a kind of Latin, was, of course, beyond her comprehension. Aunt Dorothy only consoled herself for what she regarded as the dangerous licence of their conclusions, by the thought that their path to them was too fantastic and fine for any common mortals to tread. And my Father said afterwards that it seemed to him as if Dr. Taylor's learning and fancy hung around his reason like the jewelled state-trappings of a royal palfrey; you wondered how his wit could move so nimbly under such a weight of ornament; whilst Mr. Milton's learning and imagination were like wings to the strong Pegasus of his wisdom, only helping him to soar. When Dr. Taylor alluded to the lore of the ancients, it seemed like a treasury wherewith to adorn his fancies or to wing his airy shafts. But to Mr. Milton it seemed an armory common to him and to the wise men of whom he spoke, and to which he had as free access as they; to draw thence weapons for his warfare and theirs, and to add thereto for the generations to come.

Yet brilliant and glowing as their speech was, Roger would have it that Mr. Cromwell's brief and rugged words had in them more of the red heat that fuses the weapons wherewith the great battles of life are fought. For we spoke often of that evening, Roger, and Lettice, and I, in the few short days that remained of our golden age of peace.

Scarcely a fortnight after that evening at Netherby, tidings of the Irish massacre thrilled through all the land with one shudder of horror and helpless indignation for the past; awakening one bitter cry for rescue and vengeance in the future.

On the 20th of October the Parliament had met again.

It was a gray and comfortless evening early in November when a Post spurred into the village of Netherby, and stopped at Job Forster's forge to have some slight repair made in the gear of his horse.

Rachel was there immediately with a jug of ale for the weary rider and water for his horse. The horseman took both in silence.

"Thou art scant of greetings to-day, good-master," said Job, as he busied himself about the broken bit, without looking in the rider's face.

But Rachel, who had caught in an instant the weight of heavy tidings on the stranger's face, laid her hand with a silencing gesture on her husband's arm.

Then Job looked up, and meeting the horseman's eye, dropped the bit, and said abruptly,--

"What tidings, master? We are not of those who look for smooth things."

"Rough enough," was the reply. "A hundred thousand Protestants,* men, women, and children, surprised, and robbed, and massacred in Ireland, scarce more than a sennight agone. At morning, met with good-days and friendly looks by the Papists around them; before evening, driven from their burning homes, naked and destitute, into the roads and wildernesses. Thousands murdered amidst their ruined homes; happy those who were only murdered, or murdered quickly; no mercy on age or sex, no memory of kindness; treachery and torture; women and little children turning into fiends of cruelty. Dublin itself only saved by one who gave warning the evening before. But the worst was for the women, and the little helpless tortured babes."

* This was the number commonly believed among us at the time. Since I have heard it disputed. But that the slaughter and the atrocities were terrible, there can be no doubt.

"Softly, softly, master," said Job; for Rachel had fallen on his shoulder fainting. "She can bear to hear any dreadful thing, or to see any dreadful sight, if she can be of any help; but this is too much for her."

Gently he bore her in and laid her on the bed, and hesitated an instant what to do, not liking to leave her.

"She always seems to know whether it's me or any one else, even when she's clean gone like this," he said; "but yet I dare not hinder the Post."

"Leave her to me, Job," I said; "she'll not feel strange with me."

And after a moment's further pause, lifting her into an easier position, he went out.

Sprinkling water on her face and chafing her hands, breathing on her lips and temples, as I had seen Aunt Gretel do in such a case, I had the comfort of soon seeing Rachel languidly open her eyes. For a moment there was a bewildered, inquiring look in them, but quickly it gave place to a mournful collectedness.

"I knew it--I knew it, Mistress Olive!" she said, "I knew something must come. But I thought the judgment would fall on the Lord's enemies; and Job and I have been pleading with Him for mercy, even on them. I never thought the sword would fall on the sheep of His pasture. Least of all on the lambs," she added; "on the innocent lambs. But maybe, after all, that was His mercy. They are but gone home by a cruel path, poor innocents--only gone home." Then a burst of tears came to her relief; a neighbour came in to help; and I left to go home without further delay.

The few minutes which I had spent at Rachel Forster's bedside had sufficed to gather all the village around the forge; women with babies in their arms and little ones clinging to their skirts; men on their way home from the day's labour with spades and mattocks on their shoulders; the tailor needle in hand; the miller white from the mill; women with hands full of dough from the kneading-trough; none waiting to lay aside an implement, none left hehind but the bedridden, yet none asking a question, or uttering an exclamation, as they passed around the messenger, drinking in the horrible details of the slaughter. Only, in the pauses, a long-drawn breath, or now and then a suppressed sob from the women.

Job meanwhile continued, as was his wont, working his feelings into the task he had in hand, so that long before the villagers were weary of listening while the Post told the cruel particulars, heightening the excitement and deepening the silence, the bit was mended, every weak point of hoof or harness had undergone Job's skillful inspection, and offering the messenger another draught at the beer-can, he said to him in his abrupt way,--

"Whither next, master? We may not delay such tidings."

"I have letters for Squire Drayton of Netherby Manor," was the reply.

"Trust them to me," said Roger.

"The best hands you can trust them to," said Job.

In consideration of the urgent need of haste, the Post gave us a letter in Dr. Antony's writing to Roger, and in another minute was out of sight beyond the turn of the village street.

A little murmur arose among the village-gossips. "No need for breaking a Post short like that, goodman Forster," said the miller's wife; "sure he knows his own business best."

"What did we need to hear more, good wife?" was Job's reply. "All England has to hear it yet! Thousand of prayers have to be stirred up throughout the land before night. And haven't we heard enough to make this night a night of watching? Hearkening to fearful tales helps little; and talking less. For this kind goeth not out but with prayer and fasting."

And Job turned away into his cottage. But as Roger and I hastened up the street, the village had already broken into little eager groups, and the words, "the Irish Popish Army," and "the Popish Queen," came with bitter emphasis from many voices.

Deep was the excitement at home when we brought the terrible tidings. Dr. Antony's letter too dreadfully confirmed them, telling how the House of Commons received the news, brought in by one O'Conolly, in an awe-stricken silence; how nearly all Ulster, the head-quarters of the Protestants, was still in the hands of the insurgents; the towns and villages in flames.

"Tilly and Magdeburg!" were the first words that broke from my Father's lips. "The same strife, the same weapons, the same fiendish cruelty, in the name of the All Pitiful. If such another conflict is indeed to come, God send England weapons as good wherewith to wage it; soldiers that can pray; and, if such can be twice in one generation, another Gustavus!"

Fervently he pleaded that night together with the gathered household for the robbed and bereaved sufferers in Ireland. Far into the night Roger saw the lamp burning in his window. No doubt he had sought Job Forster's Refuge.

But the next morning, when we came in to breakfast, he had taken down the old sword he had worn through the German wars; and was trying its edge.

"The good God keep us from war, Brother!" said Aunt Gretel, trembling at the thoughts that old weapon recalled, "I was thinking we might search out our stores for woolseys and linseys. They will be sure to be sending such to the poor sufferers, and they will be building orphan houses."

"Citadels have to be built and kept first!" said my Father. "There are times when war is as much a work of mercy as clothing the naked and feeding the hungry."

"But war with whom, Brother?" said Aunt Dorothy, pointedly. "It is little use lopping the branches and sparing the tree. What has become of the Irish Popish army the king was so loth to dismiss? Of what avail is it to smite a few poor blind fanatics, when the Popish queen and her Jesuits rule in the Palace? It wearies me to the heart to hear of honest men like Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, and all of them impeaching Lord Strafford and imprisoning Archbishop Laud, who, I believe (poor deluded man), thought himself doing God's service; and yet kissing the hand that appointed Laud and Strafford, and would sign death-warrants for every patriot and Puritan in the kingdom to-night, if it were safe."

"Mr. Hampden, Mr. Pym, and Mr. Cromwell are doing their best to make it not safe, Sister Dorothy," was my Father's reply. "And meantime there is more strength in silence than in invective."

"A Parliament of women," said Aunt Dorothy, "would have gone to the point months since, and let the king understand what they meant."

"Probably," said my Father, "but the great thing is to gain the point."

Unusually early in the day for her, Lady Lucy appeared at the Manor, with Harry and Lettice walking beside her horse.

She looked very pale as my Father led her into the wainscoted parlour.

"Mr. Drayton," she said, "who ever could have dreamed of such tidings! The only ray of comfort is that they may help to unite our distracted country. There can be but one mind throughout the land about such deeds as these. The king went at once to the Scottish Parliament with the news, to seek their counsel and aid. Now at least the king, parliament, and nation, will be one in their indignation."

"It would be well if the king had dismissed before this the Irish Catholic army which Lord Strafford raised for him," said nay Father. "It is well known that its officers have been in communication with the assassins."

"The king did send orders to disband it long since," she said.

"Yes, _public_ orders," my Father replied; "but there are rumours of secret instructions having accompanied, not precisely to the same effect."

"Rumours!" she said eagerly; "Mr. Drayton, mere rumours! You are too just and generous to listen to a vulgar report, with the king's word against it."

"Madam," he replied, very gravely, "it would have been the salvation of the country long since if the king's word had been a sufficient reply to attacks on his policy. There is nothing so revolutionary as falsehood in high places."

"You call the king a revolutionist?" she said.

"I call untruth the great revolutionist," he replied. "Without truth and trust all communities must ultimately fall to pieces, with more or less noise, according as they are assailed by a strong hand from without, or simply crumble from within. The ruin is certain."

"But all good men must be agreed in detesting these barbarous deeds," she said. "Even the Earl of Castlehaven, a Catholic, has said that all the water in the sea would not wash off from the Irish the stain of their treacherous murders in a time of settled peace."

"No doubt there are Catholics, madam, who speak the truth and hate injustice," said my Father.

"You are unjust, you are cruel to His Majesty," she said, with tears in her eyes, "if you could be unjust or cruel to any one."

"Lady Lucy," he replied, "this is a time for all men who fear God and love England to be united. Would Lord Strafford (could he come back among us) contradict the words wrung from him when the king signed his death-warrant? Would he say, 'Put your trust in princes?'"

Harry Davenant passionately interposed.

"It is too bad to drive the king to actions he detests, and then to reproach him for them. He would have saved Lord Strafford, as all men know, if he could. It is the distrust of the country that has compelled the king to have recourse to subtleties no gentleman would choose."

"Harry Davenant," said my Father, "I am confident no measure of unjust distrust would drive you to the policy of making promises you never meant to keep."

"My life is simple, sir," was the mournful reply, "and it is my own. If I choose any evil to myself, rather than go from my word, or imply the thing I do not mean, I am at liberty to do so. But the king's life is manifold. He stands before the Highest with the nation gathered up into his single person. He stands above the nation as the anointed representative of the King of kings. God himself is only indirectly King of nations by being King of kings. He stands between the past and the future with a sacred trust of prerogative and right to guard and transmit. It is not for us to apply the standards of our private morality to him."

"Apply the standards of Divine morality to all!" said my Father. "Truth is the pillar of heaven as well as of earth. There is no bond of society like a trusted word."

"At least, sir," rejoined Harry Davenant, gently but loftily, "it is not for me who eat the king's bread to say or hear ought disloyal to him. Nor will I." And he rose to leave.

My Father held out his hand to grasp his.

"One word more," he said, "disloyalty is a terrible word, and we may hear more of it in these coming years. Let me say to you, once for all, the question is not of loyalty or disloyalty, but to whom our loyalty is due. I believe it is to England and her laws; to the king if he is faithful to these."

"What tribunal can judge the king?" Harry Davenant replied.

"More than one," said my Father, solemnly. "The English laws he has sworn to maintain; the eternal Lawgiver from whom you say he holds his crown, whose laws of truth and equity are no secret, and are as binding on the peasant as the prince."

Lady Lucy's manner had a peculiar tenderness in it to me as she wished me good-bye.

"Very difficult times, Olive!" she said, kissing me; "but we will remember women have one work at all times; to make peace and pour balm into wounds."

And Lettice whispered to me and Roger,--

"Don't believe those wicked things about the king, or I shall not be able to come to Netherby."

Roger looked sorely perplexed.

"But how can we help believing them," he said, "if we find them true?"

"I can always help believing things I don't like," she said. "Wishing is half way to believing." And she slipped away, leaving a very heavy shadow on Roger's face as he turned back to the house.

"Not quite so clear, Olive," said Aunt Dorothy, when I repeated to her Lady Lucy's words as a proof of her good will. "There are times when Deborah is as necessary as Barak, and more so. And then there was Judith, a valiant and godly woman, although she is in the Apocrypha. And there are times when the knife is kinder than all the balm in Gilead."

"Knives are never safe, however," added my Father, "except in hands that use them for the same purpose as the balms."

The intercourse of the two families did not cease after that little debate. It rather became more frequent. The uneasy consciousness of the many public differences that might at any time sever us only made us cling the more tenaciously, although with trembling, to the private ties that united us For a fortnight after the Irish tidings reached us, Lady Lucy, Aunt Gretel, and even Aunt Dorothy, found a practical bond of union in collecting all the clothes and provisions they could send to the sufferers by the Irish massacre.

Then came the news of divisions in the patriot party in the Parliament, with reference to the framing and printing of the Grand Remonstrance, voted to be printed on the 8th of December. Lady Lucy dwelt much on the conciliatory intentions of the king, on the feastings and welcomes prepared for him in the city of London, and especially on the defection of the gallant Sir Bevil Granvill, Lord Falkland, and Mr. Hyde, from the popular cause. "All moderate men," she said, "felt it was becoming the cause of disorder, and were abandoning it; and my Father, the most moderate and candid of men, would not, she was sure, remain with a little knot of fanatics and levellers."

That Christmas-tide the Grand Remonstrance, with its long list of royal and ecclesiastical oppressions, and its statement of the recent victories of Parliament over evil laws and evil councillors, was read and eagerly debated at every fire-side in the kingdom.

"But what do they want?" Lady Lucy would say. "They seem, from their own statements, to have gained all they sought."

"They want security for everything!" my Father would reply, "security for what they have won; a guard of their own appointing to keep them free, to secure them against the guard of his own appointing, with which they believe the king is endeavouring to surround and make them prisoners."

"Will no promises, no assurances of good-will satisfy them?" she said. "They have sent ten more prelates to keep the archbishop company in the Tower. What further guarantees would they demand?"

"It is hard indeed," he said, sorrowfully, "for all the concessions in the world to restore broken confidence. All the fortresses in England, or a standing army of a million, would not be such a safeguard to the king as his own word might have been. There is no cement in heaven or earth strong enough to restore trust in broken faith."

"It is not always so easy to be sincere," she said, "and God forgives and trusts us again and again."

"God forgives because he sees," he said. "Nations are not omniscient, and therefore cannot forgive, nor trust when they have been betrayed."

"The Parliament is unreasonable," she said, with tears in her eyes; "they judge like private gentlemen. Statesmen and princes cannot speak with the simple candour of private men. Politics are like chess. You would not confide every move beforehand to your enemy."

"The King and the Parliament do not profess to be on opposite sides of the game," he replied. "But if, in fact, it has come to that, can you wonder at any amount of mutual suspicion? Yet our Puritan faith is, that there is but one law of truth and equity in heaven and earth for prince, soldier, peasant, woman, and child. And I believe that, even with hostile nations, not all the diplomatic subtleties in the world would give us the strength there is in a trusted word. Let it once be felt of man or nation, 'They have said it, therefore they mean it;' and they have a strength nothing else can give. There must be two threads to weave a web of false policy. Withdraw one, and the other falls to pieces of itself. I believe the ruler who could make the word of an Englishman a proverb for truth, would do more for the strength of England than one who won her fortresses on every island and coast in the world."

"But see how the king trusts the people, Mr. Drayton," she said. "His presence in that very tumultuous disorderly city ought to make them believe him."

"I do not see that His Majesty has had reason to distrust the people," my Father replied.

"Ah!" she sighed; "if you had only seen His Majesty amidst his family, his chivalrous tenderness to the queen, his native stateliness all laid aside in playful fondness for his children."

"It might have made it more painful to have to distrust him as a king," my Father replied. "It could scarcely have made it more possible to trust."

"Well," she said, "either the nation will learn, ere long, to trust his gracious intentions as he deserves, or will learn to their cost what a sovereign they have distrusted!"

But scarcely a week afterwards the whole country was set in a flame by the tidings that His Majesty had gone in person--attended by five hundred armed men, many of them young desperadoes, feasted the night before at Whitehall--to arrest the five members (Pym, Hampden, Hazelrig, Denzil Hollis, and William Strode) in the inviolate sanctuary of the nation, the Parliament House itself.

And after that my Father and Lady Lucy ceased to hold any more political debates.

He simply said, when, on the evening of those tidings, we met in the village,--

"The meaning of His Majesty's promises seems plain at last."

And she replied,--

"But if all good men distrust His Majesty, will he not be driven to trust to evil men?"

"I am afraid the course of falsehood is ever downward," he answered, very sadly, "and the breaches of just distrust ever widening."

"But, for heaven's sake, Mr. Drayton," she said, with an imploring accent, as we returned with her to the Hall, "think before you plunge into these terrible divisions."

"I have thought long, madam," he said, "for I have fought in the Thirty Years' War, and seen how war can devastate."

"But that was easy," she said, "that was church against church, state against state, prince against prince. This will be the church divided against itself, the nation divided against itself, subject against king, one good man against another. Think, if you join Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym what noble and wise men you will have against you! (for you honour Sir Bevil Grenvill and Lord Falkland as much as we do); what violent and fanatical men with you!"

"If all good men were on one side," he said, sorrowfully, "there need be few battles in church or state."

"It seems to me," she added, "there is no party one would willingly join save that of the peace-makers."

"That indeed is the very party I would seek to join," said my Father. "But that seems to me the very party which, from ancient times, has been stigmatized as those who turn the world upside down. Since the Fall peace can seldom be reached save through conflict."

Meanwhile Roger had joined us, and Lettice, as we were about to separate, whispered to me, clasping my hands in hers,--

"They may turn the world upside down, Olive, but they shall not separate us! How happy it is for us," she said, turning to Roger, who was standing a little apart, "that, as Harry says, women have nothing to do with politics."

"I am afraid," he said, in his abrupt way, "women have often more than any to suffer from politics."

"You take things so gravely, Roger," she said. "Everything would be right if you would not all of you be so hard on people who have done a little wrong; and would only try and believe what we must all wish, and so bring it about."

"Everything will be _wrong_," said Roger, with melancholy emphasis, "if you will believe things and people because you wish, and not because they are true."

For Roger, true to every one, was truthful to scrupulousness with Lettice; what she was, or became, being of more moment to him than even what she thought of him.

But Lettice only laughed, and said,--

"I am not sixteen, and I have seen the country at the point of ruin, I cannot tell how many times. Other clouds have blown over, and so will this."

And she sped away to rejoin her mother, only once more turning back to wave her hand and say:

"To-morrow morning, Olive, at the Lady Well! The ice will be strong enough on the Mere for skating. To-morrow!"

But the next morning, when Roger and I went to the Lady Well, no Lettice was there.

Snow had fallen in the night.

The frozen surface of the Mere was strewn with it, except in places where it was sheltered by the overhanging brushwood, where it lay black as steel against the white banks. All the music was frozen in stream and wood. The drops, whose soft trickling into the well beneath, had floated Lettice and me into fairy-land last summer, hung in glittering silent icicles around the stone sides of the well.

And Roger and I went silently home.

"The snow has detained her," I said.

"She is not so easily turned aside from a promise," he said.

And when we reached home we found a messenger and a letter from Lettice, saying Lady Lucy had been summoned to attend the Queen at Windsor, that Lettice had accompanied her, and that Harry Davenant and Sir Walter, being engaged about the king's person, Sir Launcelot Trevor had come to escort them.

"The Princess Mary is about to be married to the Prince of Orange," Lettice wrote; "and as the queen is to accompany her to the Low Countries, she wishes to see my mother before she leaves the country."

"It would be a good service to us all if the queen would stay away for ever," said Aunt Dorothy--and she expressed the feeling of a large part of the nation--"the king would lose the worst of his evil counsellors."

"That depends," said my Father, sadly, "on whether the king is not his own worst counsellor. If the evil has its origin in others, the queen may indeed injure him more by remaining here. But, on the other hand, she may succour him more on the Continent."

"Well, at all events," said Aunt Dorothy, "her absence may be a blessing to Lady Lucy and Mistress Lettice. For that child is not without gracious dispositions. Last week she called when every one else was out, and wishing to turn the time to account, I set her to read aloud from the sermons of good Mr. Adams; and she read two and part of the third, only twice going to the window to see if any one was coming, and never even looking up, after I once asked her if she was tired."

"Do you think she really enjoyed them, Aunt Dorothy?" I asked; knowing how difficult it was to ascertain Lettice's distastes, on account of her predominant taste of doing what pleased other people.

"I think better of the child than to deem she would seem pleased with aught she did not really like," said Aunt Dorothy; and, although unconvinced, I rejoiced that Aunt Dorothy had fallen under the spell.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"The first sermon was 'The Spiritual Navigator Bound for the Holy Land,' about the glassy sea; and she said it was near as pretty reading as Spenser's 'Faery Queen'--a remark which, though it showed some lack of spiritual discernment, was something, in that it showed she was entertained. The second was 'Heaven's Gate;' and when we came to the place about the gate being in our own heart,--'Great manors have answerable porches. Heaven must needs be spacious, when a little star fixed in a far lower orb exceeds the earth in quantity; yet it hath a low gate, not a lofty coming in.' And she said she had thought the Gate of Heaven was only opened when we die, not here while we live, and it was a strange thing to think on. The third sermon was 'Semper Idem, the Immutable Mercy of Jesus Christ,' and in that we did not read far; for when she read 'the sun of divinity is the Scripture, the sun of Scripture is the gospel, the sun of the gospel is Jesus Christ. Nor is this the centre of his word only, but of our rest. Thou hast made us for thee, O Christ, and the heart is unquiet till it rest in thee; seeking, we may find Him--he is ready; finding, we may still seek Him; he is infinite,'--her voice trembled, and with tears in her eyes, she looked up and said, 'I suppose that is what the other sermon means by _entering the Gate of Heaven now_.' And I deem that a wise thing for a child to say, brought up as she has been under the very walls of Babylon. And the poor young thing's ways pleased me so that I gave her the three sermons to keep. And she promised to set store by them, and treasure them in a cedarn box she hath, together with some books by Dr. Taylor. And although Dr. Taylor is an Arminian, I had not the heart to cross the child. Especially as books are not like us; they are none the worse for being in bad company."

But Roger made no comment. Only the next Sunday, as we were walking home from church together, he said sorrowfully--

"Oh, Olive, so ready to be pleased with everything as she is, so pleased to please every one, so sure to please, so true and generous, so ready to believe good of every one; that she should be launched into that false Court! I shall always dread to hear any one say, 'To-morrow.' If we could only have known, there were so many things one might have said or have left unsaid. The last thing I said to her seems to me now so harsh. She will always think of us as rebuking her. And her last look was a defiant little smile! If we could only know what days, or what words, are to be the last. To-morrow," he added, "she was to have met us at the old well, and now she is at the king's Court; and between us lies a great gulf of civil war; and the whole country in such tumult, it seems a kind of disloyalty to England to think of our own private sorrows."

And Roger spoke but too truly. For it is impossible to say how deeply that act of the king's in invading the Parliament had incensed the whole nation. It showed, as nothing else could have done, my Father said, that what was holy ground to the nation was mere common soil to the king. Men had borne to have soldiers illegally billeted on their homes; fathers torn, against law, from their families, and left to die in prisons. Each such act of tyranny was exceptional or partial, and might be redressed by patient appeals to our ancient laws. Much of personal liberty might be sacrificed rather than violate the order on which all true liberty is based. But the Parliament House during the sitting of the Parliament was the sacred hearth of the nation itself. Every man felt his own hearth violated in its violation. Henceforth nothing was sacred, nothing was safe, throughout the land. And from that day, my Father, dreading civil war as only a soldier can who knows what the terrors of war are, never seemed to have a doubt that it must come. Nor, candid as he was, to the verge of weakness (as Aunt Dorothy thought), in his anxiety to allow what was just to all sides, did he ever seem after that to doubt, if the strife came, on which side he must stand.

There was a strange mixture of rigid adherences to ancient forms, with the boldest spirit of liberty, in that scene in Parliament on the 3rd of January 1642.

Dr. Antony wrote us how all the members rose uncovered before the king, how the speaker on his knee beside his own chair, which the king had usurped, refused to answer His Majesty's questions as to the absence of the five members, whom his eye vainly sought in their vacant places, saying: "Please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor tongue to speak in this place, save as the House directs me." "Words," wrote Dr. Antony, "respectful enough for a courtier of Nebuchadnezzar, with a meaning as kingly as those of any Cæsar. Not a disrespectful word or gesture was directed against the king as he retired baffled from the House, saying, that he saw the birds had flown, and protesting that he had intended no breach of privilege. But before he descended the steps of the Hall to rejoin the armed guard outside, the civil war, my Father said, had begun."

The next day the king had returned baffled from another attempt to arrest the five members in the city. The aldermen, true representatives of the great merchants of England, were as resolute as the Parliament. They made His Majesty a great feast, but no concessions.

Within a week a thousand seamen from the good ships in the broad Thames had offered their services to guard the Parliament from their refuge in the city by water to Westminster, and as many 'prentices had entreated to be permitted to render a similar service by land; four thousand freeholders from Buckinghamshire (Hampden's county) had entered London on horseback with petitions against wicked councillors, and (on the 10th of January) the king had left Whitehall for Hampden Court.

But no man knew he would not return thither until seven years later, on another January day, never to leave it more.

So few last days come to us clothed in mourning announcing themselves as the last. We step smiling into the ferry-boat which is to carry us for a little while, as we think, across the narrow stream, and wave our hands and say to those who watch us from the familiar shore, "_To-morrow!_" and before we are aware the stream is a sea, the ferry-boat is the boat of Charon, the familiar shore is out of sight; the window of the Banquetting house has become the threshold of the scaffold, and to-morrow is eternity.