CHAPTER VIII.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

It was not till mid-day on Monday the 24th of October 1642, that the first tidings reached us of Keinton Fight, or, as some call it, the Battle of Edgehill. Tidings indeed they scarcely were, only rumours, as of far-off thunder faintly moaning through the heat and stillness of a summer's noon, mysterious, uncertain, scarcely louder than the hum of insects in the sunshine, yet almost more awful than the crash of the thunder-peal overhead. "Wars and rumours of wars." Until that Monday I had no conception of the significance of that word "rumours." I had anticipated the sudden shocks, the ruthless desolations of war; I had not thought of its terrible uncertainties, its heart-sickening suspenses.

At noon, when the few men left in the village were all away in the fields at work, a travelling tinker passed by who that morning about daybreak had done some work at a farm where the swineherd keeping his swine the evening before, on the edge of a beech-forest some miles to the south, had heard the sounds far off in the south-west, in the direction of Oxford, like the thunder of great guns, and the sharp cracking of musketry.

The tinker did what tinkering was needed in the village, in the absence of Job the village smith, and went on his way. Just after he left, Aunt Gretel and I went to take broken meat and broth to two or three sick and aged people, and we found all the women gathered around the black and silent forge, or rather around Rachel, while she sat quietly patching in the porch of the cottage; the latticed, narrow cottage-windows letting in too little light for any work that required to be neatly done.

An eager excited crowd it was, the scanty measure of the text only furnishing wider margin for the commentary. Rachel, meanwhile, sat quietly in the middle, like a mother among a number of eager chattering children.

As we reached the group, poor Margery, Dickon's young wife, with her child in her arms, half-sobbed,--

"I wonder, Rachel, thee can bear to go on stitch, stitch. Since the news came I have been all of a tremble thinking of my goodman, who went off with yourn. I couldn't bring my fingers together to hold a needle, do what I would."

"I don't know that I could well bear it without the stitching, neighbour," said Rachel, softly. "When trouble is come, we may well sit still and weep. The Lord calls us to it. But in the waiting-times I see nought for it but to brace up the heart and work."

When we came, all turned to tell us of the dread rumour. Aunt Gretel brought one or two cheering stories of providence and deliverance out of the eventful histories of her youth; and then we went on our errands, Aunt Gretel thinking we should do more to soothe and quiet these agitated hearts by the example of steadily pursuing our task, than by the wisest talking in the world.

"For," said she, "the true tidings have yet to come; and they are like to be sad enough to some. And how will they bear it, if all the strength is wasted before-hand in vain and mournful guesses?"

The result proved her right, for when our baskets were emptied, and Aunt Gretel returned home, while I went to see Rachel again, the village was stirring as usual with quiet sounds of labour in house after house, and the excited group around the porch had dispersed. Only poor Margery lingered, Rachel having found her occupation in lighting the fire and preparing supper, to save her returning to her lonely cottage; while the baby crowed and kicked on the ground at Rachel's feet.

"But, Rachel," I said, "would it not have quieted the neighbours to pray together, you with them?"

"Maybe, sweetheart," she said. "But I did not feel I could. If the news is true, the fight is over. It's over hours since. The dead are lying cold, out of the reach of our prayers. And the living are saved and are giving thanks; and the wounded are writhing in their anguish, and we know not who is dead, or wounded, or whole. And when we look to the earth to think, it comes over us like a rush of dark waters when the dykes are pierced. So I can but look to heaven and work. It's light and not dark where He sitteth. And beyond the thunders and the lightnings He is caring for us in the great calm of the upper sky. Caring for us, sweetheart, as the poor mother cares for this babe; not sitting on a throne and smiling like the king in the picture, with both hands full of his sceptre and his bauble; but with both hands free, to help and to uphold. So I try to do the bit of work He sets me, and to look up to Him and feel, 'There is no fear but that Thou wilt do the work Thou hast set Thyself; and that is, to care for us all.' And I told the neighbours they had best try the same."

The words were scarcely out of her lips, when a horseman came clattering down the village and stopped at Job's well-known forge.

"What news?" asked a score of voices one after another, as the women crowded round him.

"Dismal news enough for some, and glorious for others," he said. "The king's army and Lord Essex's met yesterday. Lord Essex below in the Vale of the Red Horse, and the king on Edgehill above. Prince Rupert charged down on the Parliament horse, under Commissary-General Ramsay, broke them in a trice, and pursued them to Keinton, killing and plundering. I heard it from one of the routed horsemen who escaped. Everything is lost, he said, for Lord Essex, and I hasten to carry the news to one who loves the king."

Hastily draining Rachel's can of home-brewed ale, he was off in a minute, and out of sight.

All through the afternoon confused and contradictory news continued to drop in from one and another. But it was not till the next day (Tuesday) that we could collect anything like a true account of the battle,--how for hours, all through the noon-tide of that autumn Sunday, the two armies had couched, like two terrible beasts of prey, watching each other; the king on the height, and Essex in the plain--as if loth to break with the murderous roar of cannon our England's two centuries of peace.

Prayers, no doubt, there were, many and deep, breaking that silence, to the ear of God; but few, perhaps, better than that of gallant Sir Jacob Ashley, one of the king's major-generals: "Lord, Thou knowest I must be busy this day; if I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me."

Who began the fight at last, we could not well make out. The most part said Lord Essex, directing a sally up the hill, which Prince Rupert answered by dashing down like a torrent, from the royal vantage-ground to the plain, on the left wing of the Parliament army. The men fell or fled on all sides before his furious charge; and he pursued them to the village of Keinton, where Lord Essex had encamped the day before. Deeming the day won, his men gave themselves up to plundering the baggage, and slaughtering the wagoners and unarmed labourers. But meantime Sir William Balfour, on the right wing, charged the king's left, broke it, seized and spiked many of the king's guns, took the royal standard after a struggle which left sixty brave men dead in sixty yards around it, and drove nearly the whole royal army to their morning's position up the hill. There they rallied. Prince Rupert returned, laden with his blood-stained plunder, to find the king's army in confusion. But darkness was setting in; it is said the Parliament gun-powder began to fail; so no further pursuit was made, and on Sunday night again both armies encamped on the ground where they had begun the battle. The king's camp-fires blazed on the hill, and the Parliament's in the Vale of the Red Horse. But between them lay four thousand dead Englishmen,--that Sabbath morning full of life and courage, now lying stiff and helpless on the quiet slopes where they had fallen in the tumult of the mortal conflict.

It is said, most of those who fell on the king's side fell standing firm, and of ours running away; which means, I suppose, that they lost their bravest, and we our cowards.

I found my Father, and many of the soldiers I know, always loth to speak much of the battle-field after a battle. My Father and Roger would discuss by the hour the handling of troops and the strategy of the commanders, and all which related to war as an art or a science, and regarded the troops as pieces on a board. But of the after-misery, when the terrible excitement and the skillful manœuvres of the day were over, and the troops and regiments had again become only men, wounded, weary, dead, I never heard them to speak save in a few broken words.

The difference of language served a little to veil the common humanity in the German wars, my Father said; but to hear the fallen entreating for quarter, or the dying calling on God and on dear familiar names, or the wounded praying for help which, in the rush of the battle, could not be given, in the old mother-tongue, was enough, he said, to take all the pomp and glory out of war, and to leave it nothing but its agony and its horror.

Both sides claimed the victory,--Lord Essex by right of encamping on the field, and the king (some said) by the weight of Prince Rupert's plunder.

However that might be, neither side pursued the advantage they both boasted to have gained.

The king, who was between the Parliament army and London, to the great anxiety of the city, did not advance, but retired on Oxford,--the Parliament garrison of Banbury, however, surrendering to him without a struggle.

Lord Essex made no pursuit, but withdrawing to London, left the country open to Prince Rupert's foragers.

But victory or defeat were scarcely the chief questions to us women that day at Netherby.

Margery's anxieties were the first relieved. Her husband Dickon being in the king's army, sent her an orange scarf taken from a Parliament horseman at Keinton, in token of his safety.

Then, on Wednesday, poor Tim, Gammer Grindle's half-witted grandson, who would, in spite of all that could be said, follow Roger to the war, came limping into the village, emaciated and footsore, with his arm bound up in a sling. He stopped at Rachel Forster's door, and began stammering a confused account of Master Roger and Job lying wounded at Keinton, and the prince's men murdering some of the wounded, and carrying off Roger and Job, pinioned, in a cart to gaol, and Tim's trying to follow on foot, and having his arm broken by a musket-shot, and his leg wounded, and so, being left behind, having limped home to tell Mistress Olive.

But where the gaol was, or how severe Roger's wound was, or Job's, could in no way be extracted from poor Tim's confused brain and tongue! "Poor Tim!" he said, apologising with broken words, as a faithful dog might with wistful looks, for having escaped without his master, "Poor Tim tried hard to follow Master Roger--tried hard! Master Roger knows Tim did not wish to leave him; Master Roger knows. Master Roger said, 'Tim, you've done all you could. Go home. And tell them Master Roger's all right.'" When first he saw Rachel, he said, "Poor Job said, 'Take care!'" And then clenching his hand, with a smile, "Poor Tim took care!" But he never repeated or explained it. It was quite useless to question him. That one purpose of obeying Roger possessed the whole of his poor brain. The poor creature was faint from pain and weariness, and loss of blood. Rachel would have made him a bed in the cottage, and not one of us at Netherby but would have counted it an honour to have nursed him for his love to Roger; but he shook his head: 'Master Roger said, 'Tim, you've done all you could. Go home.'" And nothing would satisfy him but to go on to the hovel by the Mere, were his grandmother lived.

Gammer Grindle was a poor, wizened, old woman, soured by much trouble and by the constant fretting of a sharp temper against poverty and wrong, until few in the village liked to venture near her. Indeed, there were dark suspicious afloat about her. Many a labouring-man would have gone a mile round rather than pass her door after dusk, and many a yeoman-farmer and goodwife who had lost an unusual number of sheep or poultry would propitiate her by the present of a lamb or a fat pullet. And, in general, in the neighbourhood she was spoken of with a reverent terror much akin to that of the man who, after hastily using the name of the devil, crossed himself, and said, "May he pardon me for taking his holy name in vain."

But Roger and I happened to have come across her on another and very different side. In our fishing expeditions on the Mere her grandson Tim had often followed us with the fish-basket or tackle; and the rare contrast of Roger's kindly tones and words with the jeerings of the rough boys in the village, had won him in Tim's heart an affection intense, absorbing, disinterested, and entirely free from demand of return or hope of reward; more like that of a faithful dog than of a human being with purposes and interests of his own.

This had given us access to his grandmother's hovel, and many a time she had saved me from the consequences of Aunt Dorothy's just wrath by kindling up her poor embers of fire to dry my soaked shoes, and cleaning the mud from my clothes. Simple easy services, but such as made it altogether impossible for Roger and me to regard the poor, kind, shrivelled hands that had rendered them as having signed a compact with Satan. Besides, did we not see how good she was, with all her scoldings, to Tim, and know from broken words which had dropped now and then how she had loved her only daughter, the mother of Cicely and Tim, and how sore her heart was for the poor, lost girl, and what a power of wronged and disappointed love lay seething and fermenting beneath the sour sharp words she spoke?

Roger and I knew that Gammer Grindle was no outlaw from the pale of humanity by seeing it; and Rachel Forster knew it, I believe, by seeing Him at whose feet so many outcasts from human sympathy found a welcome. And so it happened, that of all the village no one but Rachel, Roger and I sought access, or would have had it, to Gammer Grindle's hovel, so that Rachel that day accompanied Tim home, and was permitted to share his grandmother's watch that night.

For Tim's exhaustion soon changed to delirious fever, as his wound began to be inflamed, and it was as much as both the women could do to keep him from rushing out of the hovel to "follow Master Roger."

All the time, they noticed he kept the hand of his unwounded arm firmly clenched over something. But no coaxing or commands, even from his grandmother's voice, which he was so used to obey, would induce him to unclasp his hand or let it go.

All that night and the next day the two women watched by the poor lad, bathing his head, and trying vainly to keep him still. But towards evening his strength began to fail, and it was plain that the fever, having done its work, was relinquishing its hold to the cold grasp of Another stronger than it.

The poor lad's delirious entreaties ceased, and he lay so still, that Rachel could hear the cold ripples of the Mere outside plashing softly among the rushes, stirred by the night wind; and they sounded to her like the slow waters of the river of Death.

Only now and then he said, in a low voice, like a child crooning to itself, "Poor Tim, Master Roger knows. Master Roger said, you have done all you could. Go home."

Once also his eye brightened, and he said, "Cicely, sister Cicely! Tell her to come soon--soon. I have watched for her so long!"

Rachel tried to speak to him about Jesus, the loving Master of us all; he did not object, but whether he understood or not, she could not tell. He did not alter the words which had been so engraven on his poor faithful heart. Only they grew fainter and fainter, and fewer and more broken, until, with one sigh, "Master--home," the poor feeble spirit departed, and the poor feeble body was at rest.

But Rachel said it seemed to her as if the blessed Lord would most surely not fail to understand the poor lad who could not understand about Him, yet had served so faithfully the best he knew. And she almost thought she heard a voice from heaven saying, "Poor Tim! the Master knows. You have done the best you could. Come home!"

It was not until the poor lad was dead that they found what he had been so tightly clasping in his hand.

It was a fragment of paper containing a few words written by Job Forster, of which Tim had indeed "taken care," as the clasp of the lifeless hand proved too well.

The words were,--

"Rachel, be of good cheer, as I am. I am hurt on the shoulder, but not so bad. They are taking me with Roger to Oxford goal. His wound is in the side, painful at first, but Dr. Antony got the ball out, and says he will do well. Thee must not fret, nor try to come to us. It would hurt thee and do us no good. The Lord careth."

Rachel read this letter, with every word made emphatic, by her certainty that Job would make as light as possible of any trouble, by her knowledge that his pen was not that of a ready writer, and by her sense of what she would have done herself in similar circumstances.

"Rachel!"--the word, she knew, had taken him a minute or two to spell out, and it meant a whole volume of esteem and love; and by the same measure, "hurt" meant "disabled;" and "not so bad," simply not in immediate peril of life; and "thee must not come," to her heart meant "come if thou canst, though I dare not bid thee."

It was not Rachel's way to let trouble make her helpless, or even prevent her being helpful where she was needed. God, she was sure, had not meant it for that. She lived at the door of the House of the Lord, and therefore, at this sudden alarm, she did not need a long pilgrimage by an untrodden path to reach the sanctuary. A moment to lay down the burden and enter the open door, and lift up the heart there within; and then to the duty in hand. She remained, therefore, with Gammer Grindle until they had laid the poor faithful lad in his shroud; then she gave all the needful orders for the burial, so that it was not till dusk she was seated in her own cottage, with leisure to plan how she should carry out what, from the moment she had first glanced at her husband's letter, she had determined to do.

Half an hour sufficed her for thinking, or "taking counsel," as she called it; half an hour more for making preparations and coming across to us at Netherby, with her mind made up and all her arrangements settled.

Arrived in the Hall, she handed Job's letter to Aunt Dorothy.

"What can be done?" said Aunt Dorothy. "How can it be that we have not heard from my brother or Dr. Antony? The king's forces must be between us and Oxford, and the letters must have been seized. But never fear, Rachel," she added, in a consoling tone. "At first they talked of treating all the Parliament prisoners as traitors; but that will never be. A ransom or an exchange is certain. Stay here to-night; it will be less lonely for you. We can take counsel together; and to morrow we will think what to do."

"I have been thinking, Mistress Dorothy; and I have taken counsel. I am going at day-break to-morrow to Oxford; and I came to ask if I could do aught for you, or take any message to Master Roger."

"How?" said Aunt Dorothy. "And who will go with you? Who will venture within the grasp of those plunderers?"

"I have not asked any one, Mistress Dorothy. I am going alone on our own old farm-horse."

"You travel scores of miles alone, and into the midst of the king's army, Rachel!" said Aunt Dorothy.

"I have taken counsel, Mistress Dorothy," said Rachel calmly, and, looking up, Aunt Dorothy met that in Rachel's quiet eyes which she understood, and she made no further remonstrance.

"We will write letters to Roger," she said, after a pause.

In a short time they were ready, with one from me to Lettice Davenant.

Neither my Aunts nor I slept much that night. We were revolving various plans for helping Rachel, each unknown to the other.

I had thought of a letter to a friend of my Father's who lived half-way between us and Oxford, and rising softly in the night, without telling any one, I wrote it. For I had removed to Roger's chamber while he was away; it seemed to bring me nearer to him.

Then, before daybreak, feeling sure Rachel would be watching for the first streaks of light, I crept out of our house to hers.

She was dressed, and was quietly packing up the great Bible which lay always on the table, and laying it in the cupboard.

"Happy Rachel!" I said, kissing her; "to be old enough to dare to go."

"There is always some work, sweetheart," said she, "for every season, not to be done before or after. That is why we need never be afraid of growing old."

I gave her my letter. She took it gratefully; but she said--

"Too fine folks for a plain body like me, Mistress Olive. God bless you for the thought. But in one village I must pass there is a humble godly man who has oft tarried with us for a night, and has expounded the word to us, and no doubt he will give me a token to another. And if not, the seven thousand are always known to the Lord. The prophet Elijah, indeed, did not know; but after he was told about it once for all, none of us ought ever to say again, 'I only am left alone.'"

"But how will you manage when you get to Oxford?" I said.

"God forbid I should presume to say, sweet-heart," said she. "Oxford is many steps off. And the Lord has only shown me the next step. Job is wounded and in prison and wants me, and will my God, and his, fail to show me how to get to him?"

As she spoke these last words, the force of repressed passion, and of faith contending in them, gave her voice an unwonted depth, which made it sound to me like another voice answering her.

At that moment Aunt Gretel arrived, laden with a small basket containing spiced cordials and preserved meats for Rachel's journey.

And not a quarter of an hour afterwards, Aunt Dorothy, on horseback, bent on protecting Rachel through some portion of her way.

And then Margery and the babe, who had come at Rachel's request.

Before mounting her horse, Rachel said,--

"You will have thought of being at poor Tim's burying, Mistress Olive?"

We promise all to be there.

And Rachel from the mounting-steps climbed up on the patient old horse, and was gone, only turning back once to smile at us as we watched her.

She was not a woman for after-thoughts, or last lingering words. She had always said what she wanted before the last.

She had left us the heavy key of the cottage-door, that we might give away the little stores which she had divided the night before into various portions for her poor neighbours. She had intended committing them to Margery, but as we were there first, we undertook the charge. How simply and how unheralded events come which hallow our common tables and chambers with the tender solemnity as of places of worship or of burial. The sound of Rachel's horse-hoofs was scarcely out of hearing when the empty cottage had become to us as a sacred place. The little packets her neat hands had arranged so thoughtfully were no common loaves, or meat, but sacred relics hallowed by her loving touch. And it was hard to look at the firewood Job had piled by the fire for her, and the little stone channel he had made to bring the water near the door, without tears.

LETTICE DAVENANT'S DIARY.

"_Oxford, November_ 1, 1642.--Victoria! The first step is gained; the first lesson given, though at some cost of noble lives to us and to the king. Lord Essex is fain to retreat to London to console the affrighted citizens, leaving the whole country open to the king. Yet my Father saith privately to us, this victory of Edgehill might have been far more complete had it not been for Prince Rupert's rashness. Indeed, after the fight there had well-nigh been a duel in the king's presence between the prince and a gentleman who expressed his mind pretty freely on the matter. The prince, after pursuing the rebels to Keinton, lingered there, plundering the baggage, and returned with his horses laden with the spoils to find the royal army not in such order as it might have been had his troops kept with it. 'We can give a good account of the enemy's horse, your Majesty,' he said. 'Yes,' said this gentleman standing by, 'and of their carts too.' For which jest the haughty hot-blooded prince would have had severe revenge, had not the king with much ado brought them to an accommodation.

"_Note_.--The young Princes Charles and James, of but ten or twelve years old, had a narrow escape. Their governor, Dr. Harvey, a learned man, was sitting quietly with them on the grass reading his book, and never perceived anything was amiss until the bullets came whizziug round him. I wonder royal persons should be trusted to the care of people whose wits are always at the ends of the earth, like philosophers. Who knows how different things might have been in the world if Dr. Harvey and the young princes had sat there a few minutes longer!

"However, the best fruits of victory are beginning to appear. Gentlemen, whose loyalty had been somewhat wavering, are riding in from all quarters, well accoutred, abundantly attended, finely mounted, to offer their services to His Majesty.

"This grave and stately old city is gorgeous with warlike array, and echoing with warlike music.

"My Father, Mother, and I are lodged in Lincoln College. A distant cousin of ours, Sir William Davenant, who hath writ many plays and farces, and now fights in the army, being of this college, and also others of our kindred from the north country. I feel quite at home in the rooms with their thick walls, and high narrow arched windows like those in the turret-chamber at the Hall, more at home than the old quadrangles and walls themselves can be with all this clamour and trumpeting to arms.

"Not that there is much to be seen in the great inner court on which my chamber-window looks. An ancient vine climbs up one side of the walls, encircling the entrance arch, and its leaves, brown and crimson with the autumn, stirred with the breeze, are making a pleasant quiet country music as I write. This vine is held in high honour in the college, having illustrated the text of the sermon, 'Look on this vine,' which inspired good Bishop de Rotheram, more than two hundred years since, to become the second Founder of the College.

"Through this entrance-arch I look beyond its shadow to the sunny street, crossed now and then by the flash of arms, and gay Cavaliers' mantles, or the prancings of a troop of horse. That is all the glimpse I have of the outer world. But I think my Mother were content to live in such a place for ever. Every day she resorts more than once to a quiet corner of the new Chapel to pay her orisons, taking delight in the stillness, and in the brilliant colours of the painted windows Bishop Williams (once the antagonist of Archbishop Laud, and now with him in the Tower) had brought but a few years since from Italy.

"Outside this chapel there is a garden, where we walk, and discourse of the prospects of the kingdom, and of those friends at Netherby from whom we are now so sadly parted.

"For Roger and Mr. Drayton are in the rebel army--alas! there is no longer doubt of it--and any day their hands and those of my seven brothers, all in the king's army, may be against each other.

"_November_ 8th.--The king and the army are away at Reading, with my Father and my brothers; and the city is quiet enough without them.

"Sir Launcelot is now on service about the Castle. I would he were on the field, and one of my brothers here. However, I am not like to see much of him at present. He will scarce venture to come after what I had to say to him this morning.

"He came in laughing, saying he had just seen an encounter between an old rebel woman at the gate and four of Prince Rupert's plunderers. 'She was contending with them for the possession of a sober Puritanical-looking old horse,' said he. 'They claimed it for the king's service. She said 'that might be, but in that case she chose to give it up herself unto the care of one of His Majesty's court, to whom she had a letter.'

"'Did you not give her a helping word?' said I.

"'I am scarcely such a knight errant as that, Mistress Lettice,' said he; 'I should have enough to do, in good sooth. Moreover, the godly generally make good fight for their carnal goods, and in this instance the woman seemed as likely as not to have the best of the debate, to say nothing of her being wrinkled and toothless.'

"That made me flash up, as speaking lightly of aged women always does. 'Poor chivalry,' said I, 'which has not recollection enough of a mother to lend a helping hand to the old and wrinkled. We shall be wrinkled and toothless in a few years, sir, and our imagination is not so weak but that we can fore-date a little while, and transfer all such heartless jests to ourselves. I have been used to higher chivalry than that among the Puritans.

"He laughed, and made a pretty pathetic deprecation. His mother had died (quoth he) when he was too young to remember. Some little excuse, perchance. However, Roger Drayton's mother also died when he was in infancy. But be that as it might, I was in no mood to listen. And as we were speaking, a serving-man came to tell me a poor woman from Netherby was in the ante-room craving to see me or my Mother.

"It was Rachel Forster.

"Her neat Puritan hood, so dainty, I think around her pale worn-looking face, was rather ruffled, and although her eyes had the wonted quiet in them, (only a little loftier than usual,) she was trembling, and willingly took the chair I offered her.

"'You did not find it easy coming through the royal lines,' I said.

"'Nothing but a few rude jests at the gate, Mistress Lettice,' said she; 'but I am not used to them, or to going about the world alone. But I have been taken good care of. And I am _here_,' she added, fervently; 'which is all I asked.'

"'Did they try to take your horse from you?' I said.

"'They took him,' she said. 'But that matters little. He was a faithful beast, and I am feared how they may use him. But the beasts have only now, neither fore nor after, which saves them much.' Then without more words she gave me a letter from Olive.

"From this I found that Roger is a prisoner in the Castle here, with Job Forster.

"I went into the other chamber, and asked Sir Launcelot had he known of this.

"'I learned it a day or two since,' he replied, hesitating, 'but I did not tell you or Lady Lucy, because you are so pitiful, I feared to pain you uselessly.'

"'_We_ might have judged whether it was uselessly or not, Sir Launcelot!' said I.

"'Can I do anything for you?' he asked, in confusion.

"'Nothing,' said I. 'You might have helped an aged woman, a friend of mine, whom you found in difficulties at the gate this morning. But now, excuse me, I have no time to spare--I must go to my Mother.' And I withdrew to the inner room, to bring my Mother out at once to see what could be done; leaving him to retire through the ante-room, where Rachel Forster sat.

"I trow he will not be in a hurry to visit us again.

"My Mother and Rachel had always been friends. They both live a good deal at the height where the party-colours blend in the one sunlight; and they neither of them ever speak half as much as they feel about religion.

"There was not much to say, therefore, when my Mother understood her errand. My Mother's word had weight, and in a few hours she had procured a permit for Rachel to see her husband, provided the interview was in her presence.

"It was a noisome place, she said--many persons crowded together like cattle in dungeons, with scant light or air, and none to wait on them but each other. Job was on some straw in a corner, looking sorely altered--his strong limbs limp and emaciated, and his eye languid. But it was wonderful how his face lighted up when he saw Rachel.

"'I thought thee would come', said he, 'though I bid thee not. I knew thee had learned how "all things are possible."'

"My Mother's intercessions procured for them the great favour of a cell, which, though narrow, low, damp, and underground, they were to have to themselves. And before she left, Rachel's neat hands had made the straw and matting look like a proper sick-bed, while her presence had lighted the cell into a home.

"Then my Mother went to see Roger Drayton. His wound was not so severe as Job's, and his lodging was better, though wretched enough. Great complaints were made about the prisons. But, I fear, all war-prisons, suddenly and not very tenderly arranged, are hard enough.

"'Have you seen Job Forster?' was his first question after greeting her.

"She told him what had been done.

"'I begged hard to be allowed to share his prison. But they would not let me,' said Roger.

"Roger, though far less suffering, looked less tranquil than Job, my Mother said. He did not ask for me until he had read Olive's letter, and then he said abruptly,--

"'Olive says she has written to Mistress Lettice.' And his face flushed deeply as he added, 'Olive is but a child in such things, Lady Lucy, and cannot know the hard laws of war. You will not be offended if she pleads, fancying you could do anything for us. You must not let anything she says trouble you, you are so kind. For I know nothing can be done.'

"'Only one thing troubles me,' my Mother said, evasively, 'I would give much if _that_ could be changed.'

"She did not think it generous to say more, but he understood, and answered,--

"'_That_ can _not_ be changed, unless all could be changed. It makes me restless enough to be shut up here, Lady Lucy, but it does not make me _doubt_.'

"'Those Draytons are like rocks--as firm, and almost as hard. No, not hard. Nothing they ought not to be, if only they were on the right side!

"And Roger called Olive a child. I wonder, then, what he thinks me, who am two years younger!

"However, my Mother thinks something can be done for Roger. Exchanges can be made. Little comfort in that. He is less dangerous to himself and every one else where he is, than in the field again. Yet my Mother says the air and food of the prison are none of the most wholesome. And, of course, Olive wants to have him free. These are most perplexing times. One cannot even tell what to wish.

"I would send him a message when my Mother goes again, but that he scarcely even asked for me; only defended himself against joining in Olive's pleadings for himself. So proud! I will send him no message, not a word. Nothing but a few sweet autumn violets from the college garden; because the air of the prison is so bad.

"_February_ 10.--Job Forster all but sank. He must have died if my Mother had not pleaded hard and got permission at last for him to be taken home to Netherby in one of our Hall wagons. She thought it would scarce be more than to die. But to-day we have had a letter from Rachel, saying, the very sight of the forge and smell of the fields seemed to work on him like a heavenly cordial, and she doubts not he will rally. Dr. Antony hath been to see him, and Olive, and Mistress Gretel, and Mistress Dorothy, and brought him meats and strong waters, and read him sermons, saith she, and they say he could not be doing better. But, she adds, she hopes Lady Lucy will not think it thankless that he should use his liberty to fight for the Parliament, as no condition was made on his return; and he thinks the Covenant under which he fights must stand good, and dares not break it. So my sweet Mother hath on her conscience the guilt of tenderly nourishing a viper to sting what she loveth best!

"But Roger Drayton is to be exchanged for one of our Cavaliers, and is to leave Oxford to-morrow. All these weeks he hath been here, and never a word between us, except some cold thanks for those violets. So proud is he! And it was not for me to begin.

"_February_ 11.--Roger Drayton had the grace to pay us his devoirs before he left, at Lincoln College. But he would scarce sit down. I trow he was afraid of being vanquished if he ventured into debate concerning his bad cause. He did not say anything to me. If he had, I felt tempted to say something angry. But he did not begin; and why should I? Until at last, as he was leaving, he said,--

"'Mistress Lettice, I am going to join Colonel Cromwell at Cambridge. But I may see Olive by the way. May I say a word to her from you? Sometimes a message is better than a letter.'

"I could not think of anything to say. It took me so by surprise after his silence. For it was just like his old tone by the Mere, or in the woods, or on the terraces at Netherby, and at the Hall. And it so brought poor old Netherby back to me, and all the old happy days, that I was afraid my voice would tremble if I spoke. I could only think of Mistress Dorothy's sermons; things come into one's head so strangely. So, after a little while, I said very abruptly, 'I sent Olive dear love--and to tell Mistress Dorothy I had read her sermons.'

"But his voice trembled a little as he wished us good-bye; I certainly think it did. And he was not out of the door when I thought of ten thousand messages to send to Olive. But I could not go after him to say them. I could only go to the window and watch him through the court. I was almost sorry I did. For he looked up and saw me, and seemed half inclined to turn back. But, instead, he made a strange little reverence, as if he did not quite know whether to seem to see me or not. I wonder if he also had thought of a few things he would have liked to have said! He was always rather slow in speech; I mean, his words always meant about ten times as much as any other man's.

"And so he strode across the court and under the shadow of the archway into the sunny street outside. To join Colonel Cromwell. Colonel, indeed! By whose commission? Roger might at least have spared us that. If it had been Mr. Hampden even, or Lord Essex, it would not have been so bad. But this fanatic brewer!

"However, I am glad I said nothing angry. One never knows in these days where or when the next word may be spoken. And then alack, this Mr. Cromwell, they say, is sure to be just where the fighting is.

"He did not look amiss in that plain Puritan armour. The cap-a-pie armour of the 'Ironsides,' as some begin to call them. It seems to me more martial and more manly than the gay trappings of our Cavaliers. Gallant decorations are well enough for a dance or a masque; but in real warfare I think the plainest vesture looks the noblest. At Edgehill His Majesty must have looked most stately in his suit of plain black velvet, with no ornament but the George.

"_March_ 1643.--There is a Dr. Thomas Fuller lodging here at present, who is a great solace to my Mother, and also to me, being a kind of cousin of ours through his maternal uncle Dr. Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury.

"He is tall and athletic, with pleasant blue eyes, full of mirth, and withal of kindness, of a ruddy complexion, with fair wavy locks. He hath wit enough for a play-wright, and piety enough,--I had almost said for a Puritan--I should rather say for an archbishop.

"He was in London a few weeks since, and preached a sermon to incline the rebels to peace, which is all his desire. But they did not relish it, and would have him sign one of their unmannerly Covenants; which not being able to do, he has fled hither. Yet am I not sure that he is more at home among our rollicking Cavaliers.

"I would I could remember half the wise and witty things he saith. I like his wit, because is often cuts both ways--against Puritan and Cavalier; and more especially at present against the younger sort of the latter, whose reckless manners suit him ill. The poor Puritans are so hit on all sides with the shafts of ridicule, that in fairness I like to see some of the darts flying the other way, especially against such as assume to themselves the monopoly of wit.

"'Harmless mirth,' said Dr. Fuller the other day, 'is the best cordial against the consumption of the spirits, but jest not with the two-edged sword of God's word. Will nothing please thee to wash thy hands in but the font? Or to drink healths in but the church-chalice?'

"He is very busy, and is abstemious in eating and drinking, and is an early riser. Sir Launcelot, liking not, I ween, to feel the jest so against himself, calls him a Puritan in disguise; but Harry and he are good friends, and to my Mother he behaveth ever with a gentle deference, as all men, indeed, are wont to do. With her his wit seems to change its nature from fire to sunshine. So tenderly doth he seek to brighten her pensive and somewhat self-reproachful spirit into peace and praise. She on her part hath her sweet returns of sympathy for him, drawing him forth to discourse of his young wife lately dead, and his motherless infant boy.

"Religion with my Mother is a life of affections, not merely a code of rules; and, I suppose, like all affections, brings its sorrows as well as its joys. Otherwise I could scarce account for the heaviness she so often is burdened withal.

"One day, when she was fearing to embrace the cheering words of Scripture, Dr. Fuller encouraged her by reminding her how in the Hebrews the promise, 'I will not leave thee, nor forsake thee,' though at first made only to Joshua, is applied to all good men. 'All who trust the Saviour, and follow him,' said he, 'are heirs-apparent to all the promises.'

"But she, who being a saint (by any laws of canonization) ever bemoaneth herself as though she were a penitent weeping between the porch and the altar, put off his consolation with--

"'True, indeed, for all _good_ men.'

"To which he, unlike most ghostly comforters I have heard, replied with no honeyed commendation, false or true, but said,--

"'In the agony of a wounded conscience always look upward to God to keep thy soul steady. For looking downward on thyself, thou shalt find nothing but what will increase thy fear; infinite sins, good deeds few and imperfect. It is not thy faith, but God's faithfulness thou must rely on. Casting thine eyes down to thyself, to behold the great distance between what thou desirest and what thou deservest is enough to make thee giddy, stagger, and reel unto despair. Ever, therefore, lift up thine eyes to the hills whence cometh thine help.'

"'The reason,' quoth he afterwards, 'why so many are at a loss in the agony of a wounded conscience, is, that they look for their life in the wrong place--namely, in their own piety and purity. Let them seek and search, dig and dive never so deep, it is all in vain. For though Adam's life was hid in himself, yet, since Christ's coming all the original evidences of our salvation are kept in a higher office--namely, hidden in God himself. Surely many a despairing soul groaning out his last breath with fear to sink down to hell, hath presently been countermanded by God to eternal happiness.'

"His words brought tears to my Mother's eyes, but comfort, said she, to her heart.

"Yet, though she saw sunshine through the clouds, she feared to find the cloud again beyond the sunshine, whereon he heartened her further by saying, 'Music is sweetest near or over rivers, where the echo thereof is best rebounded by the water. Praise for pensiveness, thanks for tears, and blessing God over the floods of affliction, makes the most melodious music in the ear of heaven.'

"Good and fit words for her who needs and deserves such. To me these other words of his are more to the purpose.

"'How easy,' saith he, 'is pen and paper piety. It is far cheaper to work one's head than one's heart to goodness. I can make a hundred meditations sooner than subdue one sin in my soul.'

"He gave my Mother also a sermon of his 'on the doctrine of assurance,' which she much affects. 'All who seek the grace of assurance,' he writes, 'in a diligent and faithful life, may attain it without miraculous illumination. Yet many there are who have saving faith without it. And those who deny this will prove racks to tender consciences. As the careless mother killed her little child, for she overlaid it, so this heavy doctrine would press many poor but pious souls, many infant faiths, to the pit of despair.'

"_April_ 1643.--Dr. Fuller hath left us to be chaplain in the regiment of Lord Hopton, an honorable man, who will honour him, and give him scope to do all the good that may be to the soldiers.

"He took leave of us in the college-garden, and gave my Mother a book of his imprinted last year, when he was preacher at the Savoy in London. It is entitled the Holy State and the Profane State, and seemeth wise and witty like himself. As he parted from us, he begged her to remember that 'all heavenly gifts, as they are got by prayer, are kept and increased by praise.'

"_Note_.--I like well what he writes of anger. 'Anger is one of the sinews of the soul. He that wants it hath a maimed mind.' I would I had known this saying to comfort Roger Drayton withal, when Sir Launcelot provoked him to that blow.

"Yet another saying is perhaps as needful, at least for me, 'Be not mortally angry for a venial fault. He will make a strange combustion in the state of his soul who at the landing of every cock-boat sets the beacons on fire.'

"We miss Dr. Fuller sorely; my Mother for his words of ghostly cheer, and I for the just and generous things he dares to say of good men on the other side, and saith with a wit and point which leaves no opening for scornful jest to controvert.

"If Dr. Fuller had been the vicar of Netherby, and if the Draytons had known him, maybe many things had gone otherwise.

"Now, alack! there seems less hope of accommodation by this Christmas than I had felt sure of by the last.

"The Parliament Commissioners were here through March, and have but now left.

"Some Lords and some Commons. But nought could they accomplish. How, indeed, could aught be hoped from subjects who presume to treat with their liege lord as with a rival power?

"My Lord Falkland (now the king's secretary) comes now and then to converse with my Mother. Those who knew him before this sad rebellion began, say he is sorely changed from what he was. Whereas his mind used to be as free and open to entertain all wise and pleasant thoughts of others, as his mansion at Great Tew, near this was free and open to entertain their persons, so that they called it 'a college of smaller volume in a purer air;' now, they say, he is often preoccupied, and when in private will sigh and moan 'Peace! peace!' and say he shall soon die of a broken heart, if this dire war be prolonged. This especially since the royal army was driven back from Brentford on its way to London.

"But to us, who contrast him not with his former self, but with other men, he seems the gentlest and most affable of Cavaliers, ever ready to give ear and due weight to thought and wish of any, the least or the lowest.

"We had not known him much of old, because he leant to the Puritan party (being a close friend of Mr. Hampden), and thought ill of Archbishop Laud, and spoke not too well of bishops or episcopacy.

"But in this conflict I think the noblest on each side are those who are all but on the other; not, I mean, in affection--for lukewarmness is never a virtue--but in conviction and character.

"The queen is amongst us again, as graceful and full of charms as ever. But some think the king were liker to follow moderate counsels without her. He holds her as ever in a perfect adoration, and it is not likely to conciliate him that Parliament have actually dared to 'impeach' her. Blasphemy almost, if it were not more like the folly of naughty children playing at being grandsires and grandames!

"_June_ 26.--Mr. Hampden is dead! By a singular mark of the divine judgment (Mr. Hyde says), he was mortally wounded on Chalgrove Field, the very place where he began not many months since to proclaim the rebellious Ordinance Militia. It was in a skirmish with Prince Rupert. The same night the rumour spread among us that something beyond ordinary ailed him, for he was seen to ride off the field in the middle of the fight (a thing never before known in him), with his head low drooping, and his hands on his horse's neck. Less than a fortnight afterwards, he died in sore agonies, they say, but persevering in his delusion to the end, so that his heart was not troubled.

"The king would have sent him a chirurgeon of his own, had it been of any use.

"He was much on my Mother's heart, since she heard of his being wounded, for he was ever held to be a brave and blameless gentleman. She grieved sore that he uttered no one repentant word.

"(Yet the last word we heard he spoke was not so ill a word to die with; 'O God, save my bleeding country!')

"'But,' said she, 'there are Papists who die without ever seeing anything wrong in the mass, or in regarding the blessed Virgin as Queen of Heaven, who yet die calling on the blessed Saviour with such piteous entreaty as he surely faileth not to hear. And it may be trusted Mr. Hampden's heresy is no worse.'

"To most around us it is simply the rebels' loss in him that is accounted of. And that they say is more than an army. For he was the man best beloved in all the land. Some of us, however, speak of the loss to England, and say that his and my Lord Falkland's were the only right hands through which this sundered realm might have met in fellowship again.

"I see nothing glorious in the glories of this war, nothing triumphant in its triumphs, no gain in its spoils.

"It makes my heart ache to see Prince Rupert and his Cavaliers return flushed with success and laden with plunder from raids all over the country. I cannot help seeing in my heart the poor farmers wandering about their despoiled granaries and stalls, and the goodwife bemoaning her empty dairy, and the children missing the cattle and poultry, which are not 'provision' only to them, but friends; and soon, alack poor foolish babes, to miss provision too and cry for it in vain.

"These are our own English homes that are ravaged and wasted. What triumph is there in it for any of us? I would the hearts of these Palatine princes yearned a little more tenderly towards their mother's countrymen.

"The only hope is that all these horrors will bring the end, the end, the 'Peace, peace,' for which my Lord Falkland groans.

"But I know not; I think of Netherby and the Draytons; and I scarce deem English hearts are to be won back by terror and plunder.

"_August_ 28, 1643.--Better hopes! Something like a glimpse of the end, at last.

"Two memorable months.

"Everything is going prosperously for the king and the good cause, north, and south, and west.

"In the north, on June the 3rd, the Earl of Newcastle defeated Lord Fairfax and the rebels at Atherton Moor. A few days afterwards York and Gainsborough and Lincoln surrendered, and now not a town remains to the Parliament between Bewich and Hull.

"On the 13th of July, not a fortnight afterwards, Sir William Waller was defeated and his whole army scattered on Lansdowne Heath, near Devizes; the only offset to this advantage being the death of the brave and good Sir Bevill Grenvill, for whose wife, Lady Grace, bound to him in the truest honour and love, my Mother mourned much.

"The West, they say, is loyal; Cornwall fervent for the king.

"And on July 22nd, not a fortnight after this, Prince Rupert took Bristol, thus doing much to secure Wales, otherwise, moreover, well-affected.

"Our hopes are high indeed. In all the horizon there seems but one shadow like a cloud, and that so small I should scarce mention it but that an old friend is under it. Mr. Cromwell (or Colonel, as they call him now, forsooth) gained some slight advantage at Grantham and Gainsborough, and stormed Burleigh House. Indeed, wherever he is, they say, he seems just now to bring good fortune. But this, I think, bodes no ill. Little weight indeed can these unsuccessful skirmishes have to counterbalance victories, and captured cities, and reviving loyalty throughout the North and West and South. And if the rebels are to succeed anywhere, I had rather it were where Roger Drayton is, because it is in the nature of the Draytons to be more yielding in prosperity than in ill fortune.

"His Majesty has just set forth with the army, all in high feather, to besiege the obstinate and disloyal city of Gloucester.

"Lord Essex, they say, is collecting an army to meet him. But we could wish for no better. One decisive battle, my Lord Falkland and other wise men think, is the one thing to end the war.

"_September_ 22_nd_, 1643.--I cannot make it out. They say there has been a victory at Newbury, yet nothing seems to come of it. The king is here again, and the siege of Gloucester is given up, and our people begin to quarrel among themselves, treading on each other in their eagerness for places and titles and honours. I think they might wait a little, at all events, till the Court is at Whitehall again.

"One good sign is that three rebel Earls--Bedford, Holland, and Clare--have returned to their allegiance. The Earl of Holland raised the militia for the Parliament, so that he hath somewhat to repent of. There is much discussion how they should be received; the elder Cavaliers recommending a politic forgetting of their offence; but we, who are younger, desire they should be received as naughty children, if not with reproaches, at most with a cool and lofty indifference, to show we need them not. It would not look well to be too glad. And, moreover, they are three more claimants for the royal grace, and the faithful like not that the faithless should be better served than they who have borne the burden and heat of the day.

"I thought prosperity would have made us one, but it seems otherwise.

"And Harry says the noblest is gone. The noblest, he says, always fall the first victims in such conflicts as these, so that the strife grows more cruel, and baser from year to year.

"The Lord Falkland was slain at Newbury. He was missing on the evening of the fight, but all through the night they hoped he might have been taken prisoner. On the morrow, however, they found him among the slain, 'Only too glad to receive his discharge,' Harry said. On the morning of the battle he was of good cheer, as was his wont; his spirits rising at the approach of danger. His friends urged him not to go into the battle, he having no command, but he would not be kept away. He rode gallantly on in the front ranks of Lord Byron's regiment, between two hedges, behind which the Roundheads had planted their musketeers. 'I am weary of the times,' he said to those who urged him to withdraw; 'I foresee much misery to my country, but I believe I shall be out of it before night.'

"And so he was; and needeth now no more dolefully to moan for 'Peace, peace!' as so often in these last months. He is singing it now, we trust, where good men understand all perplexed things, and each other.

"Falkland and Hampden! Alas! how many more before the peace songs are chanted here on earth!

"The two right hands are cold and stiff through which the king and the nation might have been clasped together again in fellowship.

"Who, or what, will reunite us now?"