CHAPTER IX.

“Speak not of grief till thou hast seen The tears of armed men.” MRS. HEMANS.

Upon the evening of that day, Caleb Field and his daughter sat in Dame Rogers’s better room alone. The minister had newly returned from the strenuous labors of his vocation, and Edith had just finished telling him of the strange meeting of the morning.

The simple evening meal stood untasted upon the table. The strong winds of deep emotion were sweeping over his face. The bitterest time of all his stout, laborious life was standing forth before him in its deadly coloring of cruel wrong and terrible bereavement. Not now the sanctity of tenderness wherewith her gentle memory made all things holy round it; but the bitter, blind agony of yonder dark hour of her death, was swelling in the heart of Edith Dacre’s forlorn and faithful husband.

The look of her wan face as she tottered up the bare paths of yonder hills, seeking a place to die in; the last faint whisper of her voice that forgave her hard and haughty kinswoman, and bade God bless him and the child; vivid, in bitter pain and anguish, they came into his heart, as he laid his face down into his clasped hands and wept--those few terrible tears of stern manhood which express to us the uttermost agony of grief.

After a time he grew calmer, though Edith started to see the pale face, still moved with its extremity of emotion, which her father raised to her before he spoke.

“Edith,” he said, hoarsely, “I have never dared to tell you--never dared for terror of myself: yet I say the Lord forgive her--the Lord pardon the proud woman, as _she_ did who is in His heaven long years ago. My Edith! my blessed one!”

“Father,” said Edith, “tell me not if it moves you thus: indeed I did not know any thing; but, father, spare yourself.”

“Edith,” said Master Field, proceeding with fixed composure, like one reading words which he had conned so often that he knew them at last ‘by heart,’ “they were near kinswomen, daughters of two brethren: yonder haughty lady was the heir; Edith had naught but the riches of her own noble heart. The proud cousin ruled with the strong hand of a tyrant; the gentle one was an orphan, alone in this chill earth: and in the house of her fathers Edith Dacre was a slave!

“Ah! Edith, thou knowest grief--thou knowest not the hard sorrows of thy sweet mother’s youth!

“And so she gave her gentle hand to me, and we were at peace and joyous for one blessed while. Thou wert born then, in our glad poverty, Edith: I dare not look back upon its wondrous sunshine--I dare not!

“But it was an evil time! Yonder hapless king and the archbishop were failing in their unrighteous power; and suddenly, when we thought no evil, we were driven, by some of the king’s followers, from our quiet home--for the war was raging then. It was a bitter winter--stern and cold, like the power that persecuted us; and underneath a chill sky, Edith, they drove us forth homeless: thy mother with the faint rose only budding in her cheek, and thou new-born!

“What could we do? I?--I would have toiled--I would have suffered; I would have taken upon me the uttermost yoke that mortal neck ever bore for ye both; but every door was closed upon us--no man dared shelter the forlorn Puritan; no kind heart offered refuge to the fainting fragile mother--the hunted Puritan’s wife.

“So we went forth upon the bleak road, Edith, if, perchance, we could have reached the humble shelter of Ralph Dutton’s cottage; I knew we might be safe and secret there; but thy mother’s strength failed her, and in despair I sat me down at the gate of Thornleigh, while my Edith went to the door of her hard kinswoman, to crave a shelter for herself and thee. The lady then had a little one of her own--this good youth Philip--and I believed not but her heart would melt to the young mother and the child.

“Edith, she came forth in her pride to the threshold, where stood my gentle one, and with the keen wind cutting over that blessed face, and the weariness of her way-faring bending her to the earth, the door of her fathers’ house was shut upon her! In the extremity of our distress, yonder evil woman had naught but reproach to say to her! her own kindred, her own blood--the young mother with the infant in her weary arms!

“She came out to me again, Edith, I had waited to see that she was but safe, ere I went upon my lonely way, she came out to me with a smile upon her lip, such a smile! thou sawest never the like. ‘We will go on, Caleb,’ she said, ‘we will go on!’ that was all. Edith, I was nigh maddened! I saw the cold striking into her heart, I saw her totter as she laid her hand upon my arm, and I--I could do naught, my soul was mad within me: I could scarce speak comfort to her.

“And we went on--how, I dare not try to think; yet we did toil up yonder hills, thou wailing on her bosom, and I carrying ye both in my arms--a dreadful journey! God save thee, Edith, from ever such agony as thou hadst an unconscious part in then!

“We reached our shelter at last, when the gloom of night was on the hills, the bleak, chill gloom of night; and then, Edith, I tried to hope. God help me! I looked upon her face as she lay yonder, and tried to hope. But she had only come there in time to die! Edith--Edith! it was thus thy mother died!”

He could not go on; the strong man’s voice was choked--his breast heaved convulsively, and again he hid his face in his hands.

Edith was weeping silently by his side; the time passed by unnoted; he knew not how it went, until he looked up again when the twilight shadows were stealing through the room, and saw Sir Philip Dacre standing by his daughter’s side.

The young man was very grave. He looked wistfully into the Puritan’s face, “She is dead.”

Yes, in bitterer agony than that which carried the gentle Edith Dacre away from sin and oppression, into the holy peace of heaven--in deadly remorse and dreary hopelessness, rejecting the name of Him whose mercy she had spurned, and whose servants she had wronged, the haughty spirit of the Lady of Thornleigh had gone forth unrepentant and defiant to its doom.

The Puritan did not speak.

“The Lord pardon her,” said Edith; then she paused in painful haste: it was too late now to pray that prayer.

And so in the midst of panic and calamity, when solemn funeral honors could be paid to none, however noble, her son and the husband of her murdered kinswoman the sole mourners, they laid the Lady Dacre in an uncommemorated grave.

The pestilence ebbed and flowed again--in its capricious floods and falls cheating the sick hearts that watched its sinking with so tremulous a hope; and though it grew feeble with the feeble year, it still held its place until its close, and only went fully out at last when the wholesome cold of the mid-winter began to be touched by the breath of another spring.

But in December, the stricken who had been counted by thousands once, were reckoned in scanty hundreds only. The terror was gone, the atmosphere was cleared. Where men had been wont, under the pressure of this calamity, to stay upon the desolate streets and confess their sins before God aloud, men staid now in joyful wonder to give Him thanks who had spared them. But grim want and poverty were reigning supreme over those hollow-eyed, pale-faced citizens of the meaner sort whom the plague had spared, and there was yet abundant room for the labors of charity and kindness, and many calls for such--calls which were not unanswered.

Edith Field, with Mercy Rogers in attendance on her, was passing through Aldgate one chill December day, on her usual work of mercy.

“Mistress Edith,” said a voice behind them, “tarry, and say farewell to an ancient friend.”

Edith turned round hastily; behind her stood Master Vincent. His dark face had grown thin and emaciated, his form was bent as with a very weight of weakness, yet his step was light, and swift, and nervous, and his labors had known no abatement. His warfare was nearly over: no need of legislation to drive him once more from his post. He carried the sentence of removal in his face--here where he had labored he was to die.

“Farewell, reverend sir!” said Edith. “Do you then leave London?”

“Ay, maiden,” said the preacher, “the hour of my translation draweth nigh; and I thank God heartily who hath heard my petition, and hath spared me to the end. Fare thee well, gentle Edith Field--thou hast done thy work bravely, like one who feareth God. Greet thy father well from me, and tell him we shall hold fast our brotherhood till we meet in the presence of our Lord. Let him not envy that I be called up first, for there is need of him yet in this evil world.”

“Ah, Master Vincent, speak not so exceeding sadly,” said Edith, “for truly you do ill to hold life light which the master hath kept safely through all this peril.”

“Thinkest thou I hold it light, maiden?” was the answer. “Now God forbid; yea, I consider well it is a wondrous gladness to live under this sunshine of the Lord. But see you, Mistress Edith, yonder sun, that the eyes of our humanity may not look upon for the glory of his brightness, hath all his magnificence gathered yonder, albeit he doth part it into such rays as we can bear: and so doth our Holy One reserve His exceeding glory for yonder fair country, where he is forever; and surely it is better to be with Him, and lawful to desire it, for I have accomplished my warfare, and methinks the voice of His summons is in mine ear already.”

“But were it not well to take rest?” said Edith, “and wise, good sir, for thine own sake and the people’s.”

“Rest? ay, beyond the river, but not on this mortal side. Rest, maiden, rest! ye do hear of naught else in this carnal time; but I tell thee God’s servants have all to do but rest; their rest remaineth for them where no man shall break its peace. Rememberest thou that when the shadows of this day of storms be fully overpast, they will drive the brethren hence into silence, and that this only is our working-time? Ah! I pray the Lord for the brethren, that He be a guide unto them; that He compass them about forever, as the mountains are round about Jerusalem. Rest, saidst thou? yea, I have nearly gotten to the rest; the Lord’s arrow was in mine heart long ago, before this city was stricken; and see you the mercy of the Mighty One, who has lengthened out my feeble thread, that I, with my death stealing over my heart, should preach to the multitudes who have been hurried before me over the stream. Who can know him? who can fathom the loving-kindness of the Lord?”

“But if thou wert in a healthfuller place?” said Edith. “Ah, Master Vincent, it is lawful to take rest for the Lord’s sake.”

“I thank thee, Mistress Edith,” said the preacher, more calmly, “for thy good and gentle wishes; and I think oft that I would I could look on the broad sea once more ere I go hence; but that is of slight import, seeing it concerneth no mortal thing save mine own longing. Thou hast done bravely, Mistress Edith; the Lord give thee double for thy valor; but I wist not wherefore gentle Mary Chester should be less brave than thou.”

“Less brave! nay, Master Vincent, say not so,” exclaimed Edith, eagerly; “only I have naught in this wide earth but my father, and Mary hath the little ones in charge. They have no mother, the little children; and Mary Chester hath been braver in patience and waiting than I.”

“Sayest thou so?” said the minister, dreamily, “sayest thou so? Yet shall we all meet in yonder fair land where the Lord dwelleth. Would it were come: would we were all there! And thou wilt carry my greeting to thy friend, Mistress Edith. The Lord be her dwelling-place! And so, young sister, fare thee well.”

She stood still, looking after him. He was a young man, though worn with toils and sorrows; no ascetic, but with a heart beating warm to all the kindnesses of life; with human hopes vehement as his own nature; with human affections ardent above most. Imprisoned in an unwholesome jail because he could not choose but preach, the seeds of disease had been sown in his delicate frame a year or two before; and it was thus he had spent the remnant of his life. The delicate fire, that might have burned on longer with careful tending, blazed up in one bright flash, and only one, before it sank into darkness; and now he had but to die.

Gentle Mary Chester, in yonder quiet house in Surrey, knew all this. What then? he had his labor, she had hers. It was no question of what either wished or hoped; for who, born of those godly households, and nurtured in that simple constancy of faith, could put mortal design, or joy, or purpose, before the work of the Lord?

But Edith Field turned away with a heavy heart; so sad alway, be the spirit strung ever so strongly, is that eclipse of human expectation, of youthful joy and hope. The inner man in strong life, counting with stern composure the last grains of his mortal existence, as they passed one by one away--the falling of those numbered days which, but for that blight, would have been the brightest. It was a sad sight to look upon.

“Please you, Mistress Edith,” said Mercy, when they had gone on some little way in silence, “does the young cavalier dwell always at Westminster?”

“Who is that, Mercy?” asked Edith.

“Sir Philip, madam; the gentleman that hath done so graciously, as people say, to the sick and to the poor.”

“Nay,” was the answer; “he dwells in Cumberland, Mercy.”

“Because, an’ please you,” continued Mercy, “Dame Saffron do tell sad tales of the great lady, the cavalier’s mother; and how she did speak of you in her raving, Mistress Edith, and called you Edith Dacre, and angel, and blessed one, and did not cease until she died.”

“Not I,” said Edith hastily; “it was not I the lady meant, but my mother, who was her kinswoman.”

“Then Sir Philip is of kin to you, Mistress Edith?” said the curious Mercy; “and truly that was what Dame Saffron said.”

“What did Dame Saffron say?” asked Edith.

“Nay, madam, nothing worth talking of--only that the young cavalier did not come always to have counsel with Master Field; but she knew not he was of kin to you, Mistress Edith; and forsooth she is but a gossip, and a great talker, as my mother says.”

Edith went on in silence: the pure blood flushing to her face. Before that great Death visibly present among them, who could think of the brighter things that cluster about the brow of youth; but now the weight was lifted off, and the young heart, strong in its humanity, began to send its first timid glances forward into a new future--a future rich with peradventures, and beautiful to look upon--fairer, perhaps more real, in its joy of anticipation, than if its dreams were all fulfilled.