Part 15

“Verily, thou art a trouble to me, Abel, and makest me a reproach among the people wheresoever I go: it was only last week, at the hostel of the Pied Bull in Tewksbury, thou didst raise a brawl about thy victuals at the buttery hatch: thou makest a god of thy belly. Remember that man liveth not by bread alone:--a good soldier must endure hardness, and never strike but in battle, and then home. I fear that thou art sensual, and it were not for thy godly grand-mother, and this, thy God-fearing uncle Gabriel, the man of my right hand, I would send thee back to thy ditching and delving.”

Abel muttered out that the children of Belial were making a mock of his master, and that he struck Peter in pure zeal for Sir Roger’s honour; this Gabriel affirmed of his own knowledge to be true, and Sir Roger was pacified: but an opportunity of preaching, so favourable as it seemed to his weak judgment, was not to be neglected; he therefore proceeded to deliver a long rambling discourse on prophecy; and directed his looks and words with all the persuasive expression that he could possibly command towards the distressed parson and his good wife. He flattered himself that he had brought salvation to that house, and that all which had befallen him was in the order of Providence to that end. He had taken for his text, “Come out of her, my people;” and these words were repeated at the close of every passage, with all the varieties of intonation that his voice admitted. All efforts to induce him to stop or return up stairs till he had finished this wearisome preachment were vain. He stood half an hour with naked feet upon the kitchen stones, and was listened to even by Peter with a wonder so great, and with so painful a sense of his craziness, as forbade even a smile. He closed by so earnestly invoking peace on that house, and enjoining the exhibition of a quiet and an orderly spirit so forcibly upon the offending Abel, that during the rest of the day nothing disturbed the household.

The hardy old Puritan nothing the worse for this exercise of his lungs, and very little so for the bruise and cut in his encounter with the robbers the evening before, took his seat at Noble’s dinner table at noon, and seemed very sensible of the truly Christian hospitality of his host.

As arguments or any appeals to reason would so evidently be thrown away upon a man under the prejudices and delusions of Sir Roger Zouch, Noble dexterously avoided inflaming the mind of his guest with a discussion on grave matters, and led him to speak on other topics. He found that he had travelled a great deal, and had in his youth served in the Low Countries. Upon these subjects he conversed rationally and pleasantly enough; and, as they walked after their meal into the garden, he showed an acquaintance with plants and flowers, and a knowledge of the various methods of laying out a garden, which in so stern a fanatic would seem strange; but what is there so variable, so inconstant, as man?--he is “some twenty several men in every hour;” not that either the dinner or the walk in the garden passed over without sundry efforts to spiritualise and improve the subjects which those occasions offered. In the garden especially, after talking a while like any other rational and well informed gentleman, he suddenly broke out in a rhapsody about the approaching millennium, and the personal reign of the Messiah upon this earth. His politics were violent; but in this they differed not from many able and patriotic men of the time. Against the church, however, his wrath evidently burned, and he affected to disbelieve the possibility of so pious a minister, as Noble plainly was, being sincerely resolved to remain in her communion. Upon this point, however, Noble was too bold and too honest to conceal his resolutions.

It so happened that the next morning, before Sir Roger Zouch left the parsonage of Cheddar, there came to Noble a summons to attend the Committee of Inquiry into Church Matters, of which old Blount had warned the worthy parson on the evening of his return from Wells. Of this Noble informed his guest, and asked him if, as he saw the name of Zouch among the commissioners, it was any relation of his? The knight replied in the affirmative, and told Noble not to trouble himself to attend; for that as he was himself going to Axbridge he would make known to the committee his wish that no molestation might be given him. To this Noble would by no means consent, till he had received a solemn promise from Sir Roger that he would not represent him as less opposed to their proceedings against the church than he truly was, or less attached to that sacred institution which they sought to destroy.

Thus was the trial of Noble for another brief season deferred, and the malicious designs and interested hopes of the meddling and hypocritical Daws were for the present disappointed. However, the gold was yet to be put into the fire at the appointed time.

All these circumstances were related by Noble in a letter to his son Cuthbert, exactly as they occurred, with very little comment, and thus, as he rightly judged, they would make a forcible impression on his mind. They did so: a due consideration of them delivered him from some of his own delusions, and opened his eyes to those of a few of his companions; and though he was not at all more separated from the Non-conformists, yet he attached himself to the most sober among them.

CHAP. XIX.

In thee, faire mansion, let it rest, Yet know, with what thou art possest; Thou entertaining in thy brest But such a mind, mak’st God thy guest. BEN JONSON.

What time the primroses were beginning to spread palely over the green and sunny banks in the neighbourhood of Milverton House, in the spring of 1642, the grimed armourers of England were busy in their smoky workshops; and there was no hall in the land, whether private or civic, in which the arms were not taken down from the walls and put in order. Every where notes of preparation were heard, and eyes of settled resolve might be seen.

The House of Commons had petitioned the King for the militia, and they were already active in raising men. Sir Oliver Heywood, refusing to act in this matter, resigned his office of magistrate and justice of the peace, and took a decided part for the King. But although he had good will to the royal cause, and spoke his sentiments loudly and bitterly, although he was ready to make some personal exertions and some pecuniary sacrifices for his party, he was, as has been observed before, an indolent, self-indulgent old gentleman, a lover of ease and of his own way; methodical in all his habits, and obstinate in all his prejudices. The frequent visits of those hard and active men of business, who were employed to forward the royal cause by negotiating with all the Cavalier gentry for supplies of men and money, before the commission of array was actually issued, disturbed him sadly, and his temper became very irritable. Sir Charles Lambert had been long re-established in his good graces, and to the deep sorrow of Katharine had become once more a constant guest at Milverton. It is true that a great improvement had apparently taken place in his outward conduct, but Katharine disliked, mistrusted, feared him. She saw that he again entertained hopes of accomplishing his purposes upon her weak father, and of thus obtaining possession of her hand in marriage. It was an inconceivable mystery to her that any human being should desire to be united to another, when aware that his very touch was evaded with a shudder, and that from his gaze the face was averted with loathing.

Some changes had taken place at the Hall within the last year, which had glided away with the swiftness of a shadow. In the January immediately preceding the season of which we are now writing, Mistress Alice had been summoned by that call, which, sooner or later, all must obey, and laid in a peaceful grave:--the snows that fell upon it were not more pure and spotless than had been her kind and innocent life, and her dissolution had been as gentle and as soft as their quick and silent melting.

The family and household were still in their mourning for her; and had any stranger gazed upon Katharine Heywood, as in her sad robes of black she paced the terrace alone with slow and thoughtful steps, he would have wept for sympathy, and deemed her one of those silent mourners for the dead who refuse to be comforted, and cherish the sweet memory of a vanished image; but it was far otherwise,--her griefs were those of doubt and apprehension about the living. If ever a glance of the mind looked after the departed Alice, it did so with affection and complacency; with a calm joy that she was taken from the evil to come, and with an envy of her quiet tomb. But such movements of impatience at the difficulties of her path and the dreariness of that waste which lay before her in her appointed pilgrimage were never of any long continuance. She knew them to be wicked, and she knew them to be vain: she wore divine and secret armour, and she neither fled nor fainted in her hours of trial. The occasional, though less frequent, visits of George Juxon were a great relief to her,--and Jane Lambert continued to be her constant friend and beloved companion. Over the character of Jane there had come a change, which, though at times it was viewed with serious anxiety by Katharine, did upon the whole suit far better with those habits of her own soul which care had begotten.

Jane Lambert’s eyes, which were used to be lighted up with bright and joyous expression, and a certain lively and winning archness, did now often fill with unbidden tears, or were fixed gravely upon vacancy.

One day, as the friends were walking together in a silent mood, the hand of Katharine resting gently upon the shoulder of Jane, and their steps slow as those of vestals in their groves, Juxon came suddenly upon them in their path; and so deep was the abstraction of both, that he was not seen of either till they met closely.

“I am sorry,” he observed, “to break the spell by which you are both bound, but I could not turn back, for I have business with Sir Oliver; however, it was to all seeming a spell so black and melancholy that perhaps it is better broken.”

“It is a good omen for us that it is broken by you, Master Juxon, for you are always a prophet of good, and misfortune never makes choice of such a messenger,” said Katharine, with an effort at cheerfulness. Jane, too, suddenly recollecting herself, endeavoured to put on a careless smile, of welcome, but the effort failed her, and she burst into a flood of tears.

Juxon, distressed and affected by the sight, made no reply to Katharine, but stood rivetted to the spot, hesitating whether he should proceed towards the house, and leave Jane to recover herself under the care of her friend, or whether he should remain to render what service he could, by diverting and calming a sorrow, the secret cause of which he fancied that he knew.

Meanwhile, Katharine pressed Jane to her heart, and, covering her from observation, as though she were a child, said, “This is the natural effect of a night without sleep, and a nervous headache: it will do her good; you need not stay with us; we shall do very well, and Jane will be all the brighter for it at supper. You will find my father in the vineyard.”

Jane, however, in part relieved by these tears, quickly raised her head, and, with one of her most natural smiles dimpling her wet cheeks, said, “Pray do not let me drive you away: this is just nothing at all but what my old nurse used to call the mopes and the megrims: there, it is all over; that’s one advantage we women have over you lords of the creation; that is, such of us as are not heroines, which I shall never be for one: we may now and then have a good cry; and, take my word for it, it is a fine cure for all nonsenses,--another favourite noun plural of my dear old nurse when I was little and naughty.” This flash of affected gaiety did only light up her features, however, for a passing moment, and ere her few words were uttered an air of extreme depression returned upon her.

“Nay, Mistress Jane,” said Juxon, “these are no child’s tears, neither are they fantastical like the melancholy of your fine lady: the fountain of them is deeper than any of these; you are unhappy. Here, before your noble friend, I must say that I have seen this for a long time: for more than a year I have witnessed with deep pain your altered manners and your failing health. Tell her the sad cause of your trouble; pour out your heart to her; she will safely advise and surely comfort you.”

“Really, Master Juxon,” replied Jane, “you are a very strange person; and when you take a fancy into your head you are like good Sir Oliver, and truth would not drive it out again, though spoken by an angel, therefore a poor silly girl like me may not make the attempt.”

“For that matter, lady, you can look and speak persuasively as ever angel did: where do you hide your wings?”

“Wings!--well, really now, if I were a court lady instead of a rustic, and had that magic mirror that hides all freckles, and gives every body that looks into it the face of a beauty, that fine compliment would win my heart; but as it is, I must e’en be content to walk the earth on two serviceable feet; on which I shall very soon run from your words and looks, if you do not speak about a more entertaining subject than me and my megrims.”

The gravity of her eyes contradicted the gaiety of her lips, as she thus spoke; and the unuttered wish in the deep recesses of her heart was, “Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that I might flee away, and be at rest!”

Juxon looked upon her, for a moment, with a tender manly expression of countenance, in which were blended respectful pity and warm admiration; then turning to Katharine, he changed the subject, and diverted all further attention from Jane by telling the former upon what matter he was seeking Sir Oliver.

“I have just received a letter,” said he, “from Oxford, from that fine youth Arthur: it is both conceived and expressed in a spirit worthy the days of chivalry and of a man of mature age. He desires me to urge upon Sir Oliver his brave request, which is, that he may be permitted to come down instantly and take the field with whatever men Sir Oliver can raise for the King’s service. He says that it is useless to compel him to remain at the University and pursue his studies in the present distracted state of public affairs, and that his age is not younger than that at which many a person renowned in history has appeared in arms for his country. The reason, it seems, of his preferring this request through me is, that he has been sharply reprimanded by Sir Oliver for even thinking of it; for he has already decided to place all the horsemen which he can raise under Sir Charles Lambert. Arthur truly observes, that as the infirmities of Sir Oliver now forbid his going to camp himself, it is right that a representative of his name should ride at the head of his tenants and yeomen; and that, although too young for a responsible charge, he can at least share their danger, and set a good example of devotion to the King’s service. That he is quite willing to be under the command of Sir Charles Lambert; but that, if his present wish is refused, he will, at the risk of the worthy knight’s displeasure, join the banner of the lords Falkland or Carnarvon as a simple volunteer.”

To this statement Katharine listened with a generous admiration of the gallant boy, and a hearty approval of his conduct; moreover, she felt that, by this arrangement, she should have a young protector, not only for the family, but whom she could depend upon as a shield from the dreaded importunities of Sir Charles, and whose presence would take away one of her father’s excuses for urging upon her an abhorred connection. Of Arthur’s conduct and character she felt sure: he looked up to her with the reverence of a son and the affection of a brother; and though her heart beat with a regretted fondness for another Heywood, a cousin separated from her by fate and fortune, towards this youth Arthur she entertained the composed and quiet affection of a young mother or an elder sister; therefore she rejoiced at the prospect of his return to Milverton, and promised to say every thing to her father which could move him to consent to this proposal.

Juxon now left the ladies, and walked on at a faster pace towards the house.

As soon as he was out of hearing, Katharine took Jane by the hand, and looking steadfastly into her face, said,--

“My dear, dear friend, it is the privilege of friendship, and it is the enjoined duty of Christians, to weep with those that weep:--Juxon is right--you are unhappy--some secret sorrow is devouring your inward peace--reveal it to me.”

“Nay, Katharine, urge me not:--every heart knoweth its own bitterness--to every one is appointed some inward cross, which is better borne in silence.”

“Yet the sympathy of a friend is as a balm to the wounded spirit--a balm, Jane, which you have often poured gently and sweetly into mine, to the refreshment of my soul and the comfort of my aching heart;--besides, Jane, we must not let our private and inward griefs prey upon and consume our vital strength at a period like the present:--great trials are coming upon us, and severe duties will soon demand all our energies.”

“I know it, beloved Katharine,--and by your side I can meet them all. You are to me, all things: I have nothing on earth but you to whom I can cling: the stream of my heart would run to waste if it might not flow forth on you.”

“Hush! beloved,--hush!--these words are vain,”--and pointing to the blue sky and the fleecy clouds above them, Katharine silently conveyed to Jane her soft reproof and gentle admonition.

“I know all that you would say to me,” answered the mournful girl; “but, when all is said, how much of our present being must ever remain a mystery--sunbeams shine upon our heads, and violets spring beneath our feet--and yet, Kate, the world which this God of love hath created is a scene of misery--you know it is. What have you ever done that your brow should be clouded with sorrow, and your cheek blanched by care----”

“Stop, Jane; for your life, not another word like this:--‘they build too low who build below the sky:’--a curse is on this earth--a recorded curse--we may not, must not, cannot make a heaven of it:--it is our school, our place of discipline--the infancy of our existence:--what have any of us done, or what can any of us do, that so many countless blessings should be poured upon us? that we should be invited and taught to acquaint ourselves with that Holy One, by whom came truth, pardon, and peace--through whom we may win an entrance to that heavenly city, where ‘all tears shall be wiped from all faces?’”

A light of hope beamed in her serious eyes as thus she spoke, and Jane beheld it with reverence. The friends walked slowly back towards the house--there was a long pause in their discourse. It was broken by Jane asking, “You surely admit, dear cousin, that there is a vast difference in the fortunes and the trials of mankind?”

“The seeming difference is vast, but not perhaps the real:--we see only the outward aspect of suffering and of prosperity--but the cup of life is mixed.”

“Surely to many, who are prosperous and happy, few trials are appointed:--they are pleasant in their lives, and honoured in their deaths; they appear even upon earth to be the favourites of Heaven.”

“If truly such, my love, their portion in this life will be little thought of; for they will know that in the bosom of Abraham the Lazarus of this world has his high place of honour as of comfort, and that the fashion of this world passeth away; nay, before the great change comes, one turn of the wheel may bring the loftiest fortunes to the dust, and crush them beneath it; even now, do we not see and hear the preparations of war?”

“There, again, Katharine,--how can we reconcile with the power of a God of love the existence of so dark and terrible a curse as war?”

“It is but one of many forms of death.”

“But the miseries in its violent and bloody path----”

“Are not so great as those of pestilence, or famine, or the hurricane.”

“Well, Katharine, why pestilence, or famine, or hurricane?--_why death?_--and _whence sin?_”

“Jane, we know not now--we shall know hereafter; let us not perplex ourselves with doubts and inquiries which none can solve; the origin of evil lies hidden from our eyes; it is a deep thing--enough for us that the Divine champion hath triumphed over sin--hath plucked the sting from death--and victory from the grave:--in and through him we may all be conquerors.”

“And can they so conquer if they be not followers of the Lamb?--and may the followers of the Lamb fight and shed each other’s blood in battle?”

“It is sad, very sad,” rejoined Katharine, with a shudder of her whole frame: “it seems a stern necessity in the condition of all the kingdoms of this world that they should be defended by the sword. Good men, great men, the holiest servants of Heaven have wielded earthly arms, and the weapons of death:--with his sword and with his bow the father of the faithful led his own household to the combat,--and the virtues of the warrior are the chosen illustrations of those required in the secret conflicts of the Christian.”

“I know it, Katharine--and that to the spirit of Christian children there must be joined the courage of sacred warriors. Alas! for me--my heart faints within me--my mind is confused:--I wish I were a man, for then, in the excitement of these struggles, I could escape those of the closet.”

“To suffer, Jane, requires a more enduring courage than to act; and in patient suffering the high constancy of woman’s mind hath ever shone most purely:--for the wives of England bitter trials are coming--ours will be light to theirs; and yours, dear girl, as you well know, less heavy than even mine.”

“Katharine, you do not know my trial, or you would not speak thus:--not a faithful and suffering wife in all England but I shall envy her the sweetness of her sufferings: it is in storms that we cling most closely to what we love.”

“True, fond girl, but remember that they may also divide us from what we love. Still there is a sweet truth in your melancholy words: I think you would be happy united to such a man as Juxon. He is evidently much attached to you; and I think you are not indifferent to him.”

“Cousin, he is worthy of a better fortune. He never can be mine.”

“What is the meaning of that strong emphasis? Is, then, the secret of your sorrow a concealed attachment to another?”

“Katharine, you see not clearly in this matter; I am pitied by Juxon, not loved.”

“I know not, dear Jane, for what he should pity you; but pity is akin to love.”

“And also to contempt:--Juxon despises me: yes, the pity of one so generous and noble hearted is heavy to bear.”

“Impossible! he knows your sterling worth; he knows that you could not do what was wrong: you utter many things that are idle; but I have heard him warmly express his regard for your frank character; his faith in your high principles, and his fear that you judged others by yourself, and might in the trials of life prove too confiding towards others.”

“Have you, indeed, Kate? what, lately?”

“Yes; not many days ago.”