“How you do hate Archbishop Laud,” said Hilary, with a gleam of amusement in her eyes as she looked at him. “For my part, if the older Waghorn is like the younger I think he can have been no great loss to the Church. Come, why vex yourself thus over the misfortunes of this poor vicar? I thought you had no great liking for parsons.”
Her tone jarred on him. “I don’t understand,” he said, “how you can be so little moved by a tale like that. It makes one’s blood boil; and ’tis not only parsons who suffer. Remember how Mr. Shirfield, a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, was treated by the Star Chamber.”
“What was his crime?” asked Hilary.
“Merely that as Recorder of Salisbury he permitted the taking down of a blasphemous window in St. Edmund’s Church—its removal had been agreed to by a vestry when six justices of the peace were present.”
“But a window cannot be blasphemous,” said Hilary, looking perplexed.
“Indeed it can,” replied Gabriel. “Why, this one had seven pictures of God the Father in the form of a little old man in a blue and red coat, with a pouch by his side and an elbow chair. The people used to bow to this as they went in and out. Merely to speak of it sickens one.”
Hilary still looked puzzled. She could not feel that it mattered much. “And what did Dr. Laud do to Mr. Shir-field?” she asked, anxious to understand why Gabriel’s indignation was so hot.
“He stood up and moved the Court that the Recorder should be fined £1,000, removed from the Recordership and thrown into the Fleet Prison till the fine was paid. And still worse was the fate of my father’s friend Gellibrand, Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College, Oxford, who, for encouraging the printing of an almanack in which the names of the martyrs from Foxe’s book were mentioned and the black letter saints omitted, was literally hounded to death by Dr. Laud. My father was present at the trial in the Court of High Commission, and the Professor was acquitted by Archbishop Abbott and the whole Court except Dr. Laud, who was full of wrath at the acquittal, and urged that the Queen desired him to prosecute the author and to suppress the book. Then when the Court still persisted in acquitting the accused, Dr. Laud turned upon him in fury, saying that he ought to be punished for making a faction in the Court, and vowing that he would sit in his skirts, for he heard that he kept conventicles at Gresham College after his lectures. Afterwards a second prosecution in the High Commission was ordered, and this so affected the Professor’s health and spirits that it brought a complaint on him, of which he afterwards died.”
“Oh,” said Hilary, with a little impatient sigh, “let us have no more doleful tales; these things have nought to do with us. Let us enjoy this happy day while we can.”
Gabriel’s whole face changed at her appeal. The indignation gave place to love and tenderness, and a mirthful look came into his eyes; when, as if in response to her words, they heard the voices of some little village children singing,
“Then to the maypole let us away,
For it is now a holiday.”
The ardent, generous spirit which made him quick to resent any sort of cruelty or oppression also gave him the power to be such a lover as might well content the most exacting of maidens, and there were probably no happier people in England that day than these two lovers as they sat under the shadow of Bosbury Cross.
Meanwhile in the tiled cottage to the east of the churchyard an old clergyman, in the last throes of a lingering and painful death, faintly gasped the words, “Lord, how long?”
The physician sorrowfully watched the havoc wrought by man-inflicted ill, from time to time speaking a word or two of comfort and good cheer, or gently raising the dying man into an easier posture. And at the foot of the bed, his face buried in his hands, knelt Peter Waghorn, his frame shaken with sobs, his heart consumed with hatred of Dr. Laud, and in his mind the psalmist’s passionate cry, “Let there be none to extend mercy unto him! . .. Because that he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart.” A last faint gasping sigh made him raise his head. The physician was gently laying down the worn-out body and closing the sightless eyes.
From the open casement the wind wafted into the quiet room the glad sound of children’s voices, and as the little people ran down the road the words and the clear high notes floated back to the lovers by the cross, and to the bereaved, sore-hearted man:
“. . . let us away!
For it is now a holiday.”
Dr. Harford noted the strange contrast within the room and without. He laid his hand kindly on Peter Waghorn’s shoulder.
“Your father, too, keeps holiday,” he said; “be comforted, he has entered into rest.”
CHAPTER VI.
“England, it has been said, has been saved by its adventurers—that is to say, by the men who, careless whether their ways were like the ways of others,... have set their hearts on realising first in themselves and then in others, their ideal of that which is best and holiest. Such adventurers the noblest of the Puritans were. Many things existed not dreamed of in their theology, many things which they misconceived, or did not conceive at all; but they were brave and resolute, feeding their minds upon the Bread of Heaven, and determined within themselves to be servants of no man and of no human system.”—S. R. Gardiner.
Gabriel quitted Hereford the next day, carrying with him the lock of dark hair and the ribbon with the motto as the outward and visible symbols of his betrothal, and deep in his heart the spiritual presence of the mingled love of two souls. These, together with the vigorous and sincere Christianity which had been the result chiefly of his father’s, example and training, were the best equipments he could have had for his London life.
Yet, perhaps, had the Bishop of Hereford known how strangely trying the next two years were to be, he would not have imposed on his granddaughter’s lover a test so excessively severe. Never had the country passed through such a grave crisis.
It was towards the end of September that Gabriel arrived with his companions at Sir Robert Harley’s lodgings in Little Britain. Only a short time before, London had been given over to demonstrations of joy on hearing that the King’s army had been utterly routed by the Scots, for the English, who had always detested the Bishops’ War, felt that the cause of the invaders was the cause of the invaded, and were rejoiced to hear that Newcastle and the two northern provinces were in the hands of the Covenanters. Scotch and English alike were sternly resolved no longer to endure the intolerable misgovernment of Charles, and the people crowded to sign the petition to the King which complained of the grievances of the military charges, of ship-money, of the rapine caused by lawless troops, of the Archbishop’s innovations, the unbearable growth of monopolies, and, above all, of the unlawful government without a Parliament.
The city seethed with exasperated discontent, and the very day after the travellers arrived they found themselves in the heart of the struggle. It was Sunday, and they had gone to morning service at one of the City churches, where all had seemed tranquil enough. But at the time of giving out notices the Bishop’s Chancellor roused the congregation to fury by calling upon the churchwardens to take the oath to present offenders against the ecclesiastical law.
All the wrath which had been gathering through the long years of tyranny, all the hatred of Laud’s unwise revival of obsolete lawrs and punishments seemed to concentrate itself in the shouts of “No oath! no oath!” which burst from the congregation. Gabriel was startled, but the next moment all his sympathies were with the people, for an apparitor stood up angrily haranguing the objectors and most foolishly dubbing them “A company of Puritan dogs.” This was too much to be tamely endured; the people rose in wrath and hustled the apparitor, while the Sheriff, who had been called to restore order, had the good sense to do so by taking the obnoxious apparitor to gaol, the Chancellor making his escape in such haste that he left his hat behind him.
Gabriel, remembering how galling the prosecution of his own father had been, remembering, too, how Peter Waghorn’s old father lay dead at Bosbury, a victim of the same overbearing régime, could not but rejoice in the people’s triumph. The only marvel was that they had so long endured the intolerable tyranny—a tyranny which, during the last eleven years, had driven twenty thousand English Puritans to seek a new home in America.
Meanwhile the King had found himself between the devil and the deep sea; Strafford’s infamous scheme of debasing the coinage had been checkmated by the firmness of the London merchants in the summer. It was impossible to raise money anymore after the illegal fashion of the past eleven years, and, hemmed in by his angry Scotch subjects in the north and his indignant English subjects in the south, Charles at length, in his speech to the great Council assembled in the hall of the Deanery at York, announced the issue of writs for a Parliament to meet on November the third.
Sir Robert Harley lost no time in establishing his son and Gabriel Harford in chambers at Lincoln’s Inn, then returned once more to Brampton to be again elected one of the Members for Herefordshire.
It was the turn of the tide, and during October, before the Parliament met, the impatience of the people was no longer to be restrained. The High Commission Court, where so many cruel sentences had been passed, was invaded on the 22nd by an angry mob; sentence was about to be pronounced on a separatist, but the proceedings were not allowed to be carried on, the angry populace seized the books, broke down the benches and flung the furniture out of doors. It was all in vain that Laud called on the Court of Star Chamber to punish these disturbers; his influence over the Court had been utterly swept away by the passion of an outraged people.
It was not until November that Gabriel rode down to the house at Notting-hill, where old Madam Harford lived, for on his arrival in London she had been taking the waters at Tunbridge. In some trepidation he drew rein before the doorway of a square red-brick mansion standing on the crest of the hill, and was ushered into a very pleasant room where the lady of the house sat, not at her spinning-wheel or her embroidery-frame, but at a well-contrived reading-desk, poring over a great folio.
There was no doubt that report had spoken rightly in terming old Madam Harford “a very formidable personage.” Her greeting was kind, but curiously silent, and there followed a pause while she scrutinised her visitor very closely, as though to take his measure before committing herself.
“You have your father’s features,” she said at length, making room for her grandson on a carved oak settle beside her. “What news do you bring from Hereford?”
Gabriel was glad enough to talk on this subject, and they naturally spoke, too, of Bosbury, and of his ride there in September. Then the case of Peter Waghorn’s father was mentioned.
“I remember the name in old times,” said Madam Harford, her face lighting up. “There was a skilled carver in wood who lived nigh to the church, and he had a very clever son who went to college and took holy orders.”
“That must be the very man,” said Gabriel. “One of Dr. Laud’s victims.”
“The Archbishop will soon be called to his account,” said Madam Harford, her shrewd, wrinkled face expressing no vindictiveness, but a quiet, strong conviction. “My Lord Strafford’s high-handed and tyrannical doings have brought him very justly to a prison and, if I mistake not, Dr. Laud also will be impeached.”
“Sir Robert Harley says that Mr. Pym has damning evidence against Lord Strafford which will startle all men at the trial,” said Gabriel.
“Truly it must have been a strange scene in the House of Lords, when one so haughty and powerful as the Earl was called on to kneel while the order was read which sequestered him from his place in the House, and gave him into custody,” said the old lady, musingly. “They tell me that the Lords hated his system of government even more than the Commons.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of a visitor, the servant announcing Sir John Coke. Gabriel looked with great interest at the old white-haired man who entered, for was he not great uncle to Hilary?
“I bring you a startling piece of news, ma’am,” said Sir John, sinking down into the elbow chair which Gabriel had placed for him. “We have fresh evidence of the great Popish plot, for to-day, when Mr. Heywood, a justice of the peace, was crossing Westminster Hall, a man rushed at him and tried, with a knife, to stab him to the heart. He was known to have a list of Papists marked out for removal from the neighbourhood of the Court and of the Houses.”
Now, in the existence of this great Popish plot the whole country firmly believed, and the attempted assassination of Mr. Heywood was quite enough to rouse the people to anger and to something very like panic. Pym and Hampden, who two years later were fighting against the King, and Falkland and Capel, who afterwards fought for him, were at one on this point. The truth probably was that the great bulk of the English Papists were only anxious to live in peace, but for some time a small number of them had made the Queen’s rooms at Whitehall a nest of intrigue. Sir John Coke had known this well enough when he had been Secretary of State, and Gabriel listened now with interest to what he was telling his old friend. It was, indeed, what he told all the world, and possibly his annoyance at having been dismissed from office on the score of his age, made him a little more ready to reveal what he knew to the Queen’s discredit.
“Count Rossetti, the new Papal agent at Court,” explained Sir John, “was full of fears last winter that the Short Parliament would demand his dismissal. The Queen therefore obtained a promise from the King that if objections were made he would say that her marriage-treaty secured her the right to hold correspondence with Rome. Now this, ma’am, was a lie; the marriage-treaty, as the King and Queen knew well enough, contained nothing of the sort. Never was there a sadder day for England than that which brought to her shores a French princess of the Popish religion to be the wife of a Protestant prince. All our worst troubles have come out of this luckless marriage. ’Tis very well known that the Queen hath begged the Pope to send men and to advance money to aid the King in governing the people against their wishes.”
The old man’s words lingered long in Gabriel’s mind; he began to understand something of the gravity of the situation, and scarcely a week passed without bringing fresh evidence that the country was in the gravest peril.
It was inevitable that with all the ardour of youth he should side with the Parliament which was reforming bit by bit the evils of the past.
To stand in a crowded London street and to hear the shouts of joy as Burton was brought back from prison, to look on the haggard face so cruelly mutilated, and to know that this awful punishment had been incurred because the man had spoken and written against turning communion-tables into altars, against bowing to them, against crucifixes, and against putting down afternoon services on Sunday—this was indeed an object-lesson which would last a lifetime. While the wrath kindled by the piteous condition of Dr. Leighton, another of Laud’s victims, who had been so barbarously treated in prison that when brought forth he could neither walk, see, nor hear, filled his heart with that intolerable resentment of cruelty and oppression which made many in those days feel no sacrifice to be too great if it did but stop such doings.
There has always been in Englishmen a vigorous and healthy hatred.= of clerical domination, and it was this which united men of widely differing views in their attack on Laud’s system and on the new canons which Convocation had issued when it had continued sitting after the dissolution of the Short Parliament. These were now declared to be illegal, and on December 18 Archbishop Laud was impeached of high treason, and committed to custody by the House of Lords. Not a voice was raised on his behalf; so cordially was he detested that, in spite of his many virtues and his sincere love of the Church, men rightly felt that he was “the root and ground of all their miseries,” and that his rigid, unsympathetic rule, his preferment of such men as Strafford and Windebank, and of many tyrannical Bishops—the hated Bishop Wren among them; above all, his merciless determination to crush Puritanism and to make Parliamentary government impossible, constituted grave dangers to the country. Was the entire teaching power of England to be left in such hands? Was Laud to have the training of all those to whom each Sunday the people were compelled to listen? The idea was not to be borne.
At Sir Robert Harley’s rooms in Little Britain Gabriel naturally heard much of what was passing during those two eventful years. In May London was stirred into the wildest excitement by the discovery of the Army plot, and although the full details were not generally published, it was known to all that the scheme concocted by the Queen and her evil counsellors, and certainly in the knowledge of the King, had been to bring in French troops from the south, to which end the Queen was about to go to Portsmouth. Meanwhile the English army was to join with the Papists against London and Parliament, and the Irish army was to attack the Scots. Gabriel learnt from Sir Robert that the plot had been revealed by Goring, Governor of Portsmouth, and also by a merchant who had received news of the intended attack on the city and the Tower of London from an acquaintance at Paris.
The discovery of the King’s intrigues and the absolute hatred of the Queen which now prevailed, robbed Strafford of his last hope of escape: Charles knew that to refuse to sign the Earl’s death-warrant would be to expose his wife to the gravest peril; the choice was a most cruel strain upon him, and at length, worn out with agony of mind, he stifled his conscience, and to screen his wife, sacrificed his friend.
The next triumph of the Parliament was the abolition in July of the hated Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission. But, on the question of religion, signs of disunion in the Parliamentary ranks began to be evident. Bishops were then the nominees of the King, and those who wished to retain them were tending to become supporters of the independent authority of the monarch, while the opposite party, who feared to retain the bishops in the Church lest they should prove hostile to Parliamentary government, were gradually becoming, not without good reason, more and more distrustful of Charles.
All through this eventful time Gabriel had heard but little of Hilary. In each letter which he received from home she was allowed to send him some message; but it was an understood thing that the lovers should not correspond, and, somehow, ere long, the messages grew formal and unsatisfactory. More cheering than these occasional words from afar was the great kindness of the Bishop of Hereford, who often invited Gabriel to visit him at his London residence.
Truth to tell, politics were not in the Bishop’s line; his thoughts were far more with his work on the Epistle to the Colossians than with his work in the House of Lords; and when one day late in December he invited Gabriel to dine with him, their talk never once turned on the topics which absorbed the rest of the nation.
Gabriel had now spent his second Christmas in London, and was eagerly looking forward to his return home in the following September. It was a keen delight to him to listen to Bishop Coke’s description of his recent visit to Hereford, and the kindly old prelate spoke at some length about his granddaughter.
“She cheered us all with her sweet voice on Christmas night,” he remarked as he rose from the table and led his guest into the library; “and better than all her other songs was a carol which she told me you had taught her as a child.”
“That must have been the Bosbury carol which I learnt from my father,” said Gabriel. And back into his mind there flashed a vision of the past—a snow-effigy of Sir John Eliot lying in the old garden, and a perception that had come to him that the words, “All for to make us free,” were perhaps the best words that could be said of any man.
The Bishop at that moment caught sight of his manuscript, and, to Gabriel’s disappointment, said no more about Hilary. “My commentary on the Colossians is complete,” he remarked, turning over the leaves with a loving touch. “This afternoon I place it in the printer’s hands.”
Gabriel was saved a reply, for the door was opened, and the servant announced Lord Digby. Withdrawing a little into the oriel window, he watched the entrance of a fine-looking man, with eager eyes and impetuous manner. In his hand he carried a parchment roll, and Gabriel, knowing that he was generally considered to be the King’s evil genius and most rash counsellor, wondered on what errand he could have come. A greater contrast than this young, hot-headed nobleman and the gentle, dreamy-eyed Bishop could not be conceived—they might have stood for ideal representatives of the worldly and the heavenly mind.
“I will not detain you a minute, my lord,” said Digby, declining a chair. “I am in the greatest haste and only came to beg you to set your signature to this Protestation. They tell me you are but to-day returned from Hereford, and doubtless you have not heard what has passed. The mob at Westminster saw fit to shout ‘No Bishops!’ and the Archbishop of York, clutching at a ’prentice to silence him, was set upon by the crowd and hustled on his way to the House. Luckily Colonel Lunsford and some of his men drove back the dogs when they passed into Westminster Hall, and a free fight followed, when many of the rogues were wounded. ’Tis no longer safe for the Bishops to venture to the House—this parchment is a protest against such conduct, and I am sure you will gladly aid us by lending your name.”
Gabriel wondered what intrigue lay beneath this apparently simple request. That the matter was of considerable importance in Digby’s eyes he felt convinced, for his expression as he looked at the saintly old Bishop was at once anxious and wily.
“Do not trouble, my lord, to read the document through,” urged Digby; “’tis a mere recital of the wrong under which the Bishops are suffering through this ill-conduct of the mob. I am sure you will agree that such an insult is not to be tamely endured.”
“I see that Bishop Hall has signed,” said the old prelate; “I have a deep respect for Bishop Hall.”
And after a little more talk on Digby’s part the Protestation was signed and the noble lord bowed himself out.
He had only just gone when the servant came to say that the Bishop’s coach was waiting, and Gabriel hastened to make his farewell.
“Nay,” said the Bishop, “I have yet much to tell you as to Hereford matters. If you will come with me we can speak of them as I drive down to the City.”
The precious manuscript was to be conveyed to the printers, and Gabriel was much afraid that the Bishop would be too much occupied with it to talk of his granddaughter. However, in the course of the drive he heard many little details which the home letters had failed to give him, and as he parted with the kindly old man he felt more than ever drawn to him. His dismay was, therefore, all the greater when, happening to be with Ned Harley in Sir Robert’s room late the next day, he heard that the Protestation which Bishop Coke had signed inadvertently was very far from being the simple matter that Digby had represented it to be.
“It seems,” explained Sir Robert, “that Archbishop Williams took it to the King at Whitehall last night, that his Majesty without reading it handed it to Nicholas, who gave it to the Lord Keeper to place before the House of Lords. Doubtless his Majesty knew beforehand what it contained.”
“What did it contain, sir?” asked Gabriel, curiously.
“It protested that all laws, orders, votes and so forth made in the absence of the Bishops were null and void. Clearly it was got up by my Lord Digby, who was in high ill-humour because a day or two since he had been worsted in his effort to obtain the assent of the Lords to a declaration that Parliament was no longer free. It would have suited him very well that this vote should be treated as null and void. The unfortunate Bishops will pay dearly for their protest.”
“Why, sir, what has been done to them?” asked Gabriel, with some anxiety in his tone.
“The Lords at once acquainted the Lower House that the Protestation entrenched on the fundamental privileges and being of Parliament, and Mr. Pym told them that a scheme for seizing the Parliamentary leaders was on foot; he then moved that the Bishops who had signed the Protestation should be impeached of treason for having tried to subvert the very being of Parliament. I believe that they are all by now in the Tower.”
Gabriel, having mixed of late with men of every shade of opinion, had learnt to hold his tongue. He said not a word as to having been present when Digby visited Bishop Coke. But the next day he hurried off to the Tower, where he found the Bishop of Hereford in sore distress.
“You well know that I had no treasonable intention in signing,” said the old man. “I merely wished for order in Palace Yard, and that we might be able to go to and from our duties in Parliament unmolested. Well,’tis after all my own fault. I ought to have read the document through instead of yielding to my Lord Digby’s haste. Truth to tell, my thoughts were more with my manuscript—and now what will become of it?”
“My lord, if you will trust me as a messenger, I would bear your wishes to the printers, who saw me of late with your lordship,” said Gabriel.
And thus it came to pass that the proofs of the Commentary on the Colossians went to and from the Tower in the charge of Dr. Harford’s son, and that the Bishop’s tedious weeks of imprisonment were cheered by the work he loved.
It happened one day early in January that Gabriel, crossing Tower-green with the second batch of proofs, caught sight of no less a person than Archbishop Laud himself. He was standing in converse with a friend, and laughing very heartily over a caricature which the other held. Gabriel saw at a glance that it was a picture which represented Archbishop Williams as a decoy duck leading his eleven brethren into prison. On his return from Bishop Coke’s room he saw that Dr. Laud had parted with his friend, and was pacing the green alone with bent head and an air of great dejection. Remembering the pomp of his entry into Hereford years ago, Gabriel could not help feeling great pity for the captive; what a contrast did he now present! Feeble, bent and sad, he seemed another being from the haughty overbearing prelate who had roused his wrath as a child by that harsh rebuke to his father. Even the bitter enmity between the two Archbishops which had scandalised people, was now a thing of the past, though, perhaps, there had been a little malice in Dr. Laud’s laughter over the caricature representing Dr. Williams’s mischance. The Archbishop had turned and was pacing slowly back again, when his leg suddenly gave way beneath him, and he fell to the ground. Gabriel ran forward and helped the old man to rise.
“I thank you, sir,” said Laud, feebly, giving him a long look out of his inscrutable eyes. “They have taken all my attendants from me save one, and my strength is failing.”
A warder approached them, and, again thanking Gabriel, the Archbishop bade the man take him back to his room in the Bloody Tower.
But, nevertheless, though it was impossible not to feel compassion for the forlorn plight of one who a short time before had enforced his will on the whole country, there rang in Gabriel’s ears the words that had been spoken to him in Bos-bury churchyard, and he could not but think of the far worse plight of Waghorn’s father in Bridewell, heavily ironed, and chained for months to a post in a foul, damp dungeon.
His thoughts were grave enough as he was rowed up the river that cold afternoon, and the recollection of the startling news he had heard on the previous day as to the King’s impeachment of the Parliamentary leaders, and his illegal demand for their arrest, filled him with uneasiness; it seemed to him that they were all living on the brink of a volcano.
Bidding the boatman set him down at the Parliament stairs, he sprang ashore, and was just paying his fare, when he chanced to notice two gentlemen getting into the next boat. He recognised them at once as Hazlerigg and Holies; as he mounted the steps he had to stand aside to make room for two more gentlemen who seemed in haste to join them; the first was Mr. Pym, with his usual air of strength tempered with bonhomie, and close behind him came Mr. John Hampden, his fine genial face no longer cheerful as it was wont to be, but sad and stern, with the expression of one who is steadily confronting some grievous national danger.
Gabriel took off his hat and bowed low; he had met the Member for Buckinghamshire more than once at Sir Robert Harley’s.
“This is a dark day for England, Mr. Harford,” said Hampden, returning the young man’s salute. “But God reigns—with His help we will take no step backward.”
The boat was pushed off, and Gabriel saw that the four Members were being rowed in the direction of the city.
Hurrying up the steps, he walked towards the Houses of Parliament, and as he approached Westminster Hall, it was very clear that most unusual work was on hand. Fighting his way through the crowd he gained the doorway, gathering as he did so that the King was close by, coming, men said, to arrest the Parliamentary leaders. The notion seemed too wild to be believed; yet it was, alas! true.
Just as the clocks struck three the King’s coach, surrounded by some three or four hundred armed men, drove up to Westminster Hall; the guard filed into the great building, while the King, alighting, wrapped his fur-lined cloak about him, for the bitter January wind blew gustily, as though it would have protested against his entrance. Gabriel was swept by the throng inside the Hall, but he could see well enough, and watched intently as the King strode rapidly through the armed ranks, towards the entrance which led to the House of Commons; here he turned and bade his retinue wait outside, then once more moved forward to enter that door which no English King had ever passed.
Apparently his command to the retinue to wait without only applied to a certain number, for Gabriel observed that some eighty of them flung off their cloaks and left them in the hall, then, with their sword arms free and provided also with pistols, they passed on into the lobby. Gabriel noticed that the first to pass in after the King was Captain David Hide, the husband of one of the Coningsbys of Herefordshire, a notorious scoundrel, with a savage and uncontrollable temper; he was one of the officers who had drawn their swords on the people a few days before, and was said to be the inventor of the opprobrious term of “Roundhead,” which during the last week had come into vogue as applied to supporters of the Parliament.
Then followed a long time of waiting, which chafed the King’s followers sorely.
“I warrant you,” said one standing within earshot of Gabriel, and cocking his pistol as he spoke, “I am a good marksman, I will hit sure.”
The lad’s blood grew hot. What would happen when the King found the Members he sought absent? That he had contemplated using force if the House refused to give them up was evident. What would happen now?
As he mused a thrill of expectation passed through the waiting people; the King appeared in the doorway—his brow was dark, it was plain to all that he had been baffled, and the disgust of his retinue would have amused Gabriel had not his heart burnt within him at the thought of the grievous wrong that had been intended. He learnt afterwards that Mr. Strode, the fifth Member, had refused to quit the House, and had only been forcibly dragged out by a friend a moment before the entrance of the King.
For days after the whole of London rang with the angry cry, “Privileges of Parliament!” It was in vain that the King ordered Gurney, the Lord Mayor, to proclaim Lord Mandeville and the five Members of the House of Commons as traitors. Gurney, loyal man as he was, sturdily replied that the proclamation was against the law, and the King, thus hopelessly beaten, could only save the Queen from the consequences of her rash intrigues by hastily quitting Whitehall, and making preparations for her departure from England.
It was not until May that the imprisoned prelates were released, but when the King had consented to the Bishops’ Exclusion Bill, and there was no longer anything to dread from their political interference, they were allowed to quit the Tower. Bishop Coke had indeed received a special permit to go to his wife during her illness, and early in June he returned to Hereford, never again to visit London.
Hilary, who not unnaturally laid the blame of her grandfather’s imprisonment on the Parliamentary leaders, and hated them accordingly, was entranced to hear the Bishop’s warm words of appreciation as to Gabriel Harford, nor did it once occur to her that her lover had learnt to look on almost every disputed subject from a point of view exactly opposite to her own.
CHAPTER VII.
“We sin against our dearest not because we do not love, but because we do not imagine.” —Ian Maclaren.
“And so Master Gabriel be at home again,” said Mrs. Hurdle, glancing across the kitchen at Hilary one September morning as she made the pastry with deft hands. “Home again, and quite the man. I reckon his mother be thankful to you for bringing him to Hereford just now.”
“What do you mean, Durdle?” said Hilary, colouring. “Of course he comes home to see his father and mother.”
Durdle, with an expressive shake of the head, sprinkled flour on her board and took up her rolling pin.
“My dear, you don’t throw dust in my eyes,” she said, “being that I’ve known you both from cradle days. Depend upon it, if it wasn’t for your pretty face, Master Gabriel would be off like my Lord Scudamore’s sons and all the other gentry to fight for the King.”
“Maybe he will yet go,” said Hilary, with a vision of girding him for the fight like the maidens of olden time—a vision that was at once painful and inspiring. How bravely he would face the foe, how chivalrous he would be to the weak and defenceless!
She took a basket on her arm and strolled slowly down the garden to gather apricots for preserving; the housekeeper’s words had turned her thoughts to the war, the topic that now engrossed all England. She had not greatly heeded the rumours which for many months had been current, but when it was known that the Queen had sold the Crown jewels to raise troops in Holland, and that the Parliament was putting the kingdom into a state of defence, then, indeed, the prospect of war began to kindle in her heart that fire of eager interest which the duller details of the long struggle between opposing principles had never been able to quicken. By the time the King had raised his standard at Nottingham, Hilary, like almost every other dweller in Herefordshire, had become a most devoted Royalist, and it never occurred to her that in other parts of England, people just as well bred, just as honest, were equally devoted to the Parliamentary cause.
Her basket was about half full when a merry voice greeted her.
“‘Go tie me up yon dangling apricocks,’ as said the gardener in Shakspere’s play.”
“Nay, I want them pulled down,” said Hilary, laughing, as she glanced round into her lover’s mirthful eyes. Gabriel, having made his conditions and received payment in kisses, worked with a will, and before long the tree was stripped. Then he called a truce, and induced her to rest for a while on the old stone bench under the briar bush.
It was now three days since his return, and they had been days of almost unmixed happiness. Their long waiting had been bravely borne, and each had matured during the time of absence; in Hilary, Gabriel saw more clearly than ever his ideal of all that was beautiful and good, while she was quick to note in him a manliness and a strength of character, the result of the life he had lived during the two years in London. How they laughed as they spoke of the troubles of the past, and recalled the wooing of Mr. Geers, and the kindly offices of Mrs. Joyce Jefferies.
“You would never believe how hard it has been for dear Mrs. Joyce to tell no one of our betrothal,” said Hilary, gaily. “She had the greatest longing to tell Eliza Acton, and laugh with her over that memorable dinner when you were all so discomfited.”
“The time for telling outsiders is close at hand,” said Gabriel, blithely. “If only the Bishop were at the Palace the waiting would be over.”
“Whitbourne suits him better in the summer, and in truth he needs more air after his imprisonment, and all his anxiety about my grandmother,” replied Hilary. “You’ll never know how grateful we were to you for what you did for him while he was in the Tower; he told me that no grandson could have been more attentive and thoughtful.”
“It was little enough I could do,” said Gabriel, “and everybody must love one like the Bishop.”
“Do you know what Durdle said just now?—she has, you know, a very shrewd notion of the truth about us, though she has never been told in so many words—she protested that had you not wanted to come back here and see me you would have been riding off to offer your services to His Majesty.”
Gabriel started, a strange look dawned in his eyes; the suggestion had evidently awakened a train of thought that was far from pleasant. Hilary fancied that he shrank from the idea of leaving her, and only loved him the better for it, even though that thought of fastening on his armour still allured her.
“Had you no longing to take part in this war?” she asked, watching his thoughtful face.
“Such a notion never occurred to me,” he said. “My hope is that one great battle may be fought within the next few days, which will decide the vexed question once for all.”
In this he only expressed the anticipation of most people.
“Yet somehow I should have expected you to want to have your share in fighting for the right,” said Hilary.
He seemed about to speak but checked himself, and Hilary, with a puzzled consciousness that something she did not understand was troubling him, watched him anxiously.
“You are shivering!” she exclaimed the next minute. “What is amiss?”
But Gabriel did not easily put his deepest feelings into words; he could not explain to her at that moment what fighting for the right might mean for him, any more than years ago he could have told her of his childish wish to follow in Eliot’s steps. The torture of the sudden perception that the cause he had learned to hold sacred would assuredly lose for him Hilary’s sympathy and approval made him silently turn to her and clasp her in his arms with a passion far too deep for speech. Then, releasing her, he hastily rose, and picking up the basket of apricots, resumed with an effort his usual manner.
“Do you not want these carried to the still-room?” he asked. “Stoning is the next process, if I remember right.”
“Why, to be sure,” said Hilary, laughing. “Stoning with a good deal of eating intermixed. I think one in twenty used to be Durdle’s allowance.”
“Here she comes to set the limit,” said Gabriel, with a smile. “She bustles about more briskly than ever; and look how her face beams!—something extraordinary must have happened.”
“Miss Hilary, such news!” cried the housekeeper, her fat face wreathed in smiles. “Haste, my dear, and hear it all from the Bishop’s secretary who is talking to the mistress at the front door. He is going to ride straight over to Whitbourne and tell his lordship.”
“But what is it, Durdle? What has happened?”
“Why, thank God! the Roundheads have been beaten near Worcester—go and hear what Mr. Jenkinson is telling of the rout.”
Hilary clapped her hands with delight.
“Good new’s, indeed! come, Gabriel, let us hear all about it,” and she ran into the house eagerly.
“Let me take the basket, sir,” said Durdle, expecting Gabriel to follow her.
But he shook his head, and himself carried the fruit to the still-room, leaving the housekeeper to bustle after Hilary, all agog to hear the details of the fight.
The still-room was cool and shady; great bunches of lavender were hanging from the ceiling, and a tray full of dead rose petals spread to dry was on the window seat. He set the basket of apricots on the spotless deal table and began to pace to and fro in miserable agitation. All desire to know the details of this battle was held in check by the perception that the parting of the ways had come, and that from henceforth the sympathy between him and the woman he loved was gravely broken. Who could have thought that Hilary of all people would be so deeply stirred by any public news? She had never been roused to take interest in the wrongs and grievances under which England had so long groaned. How was it that the news of fighting should awake, not only her interest, but her keen partisanship?
It was with a pang that he saw her radiant face as she rejoined him. He had known her too long and too well to imagine that she was faultless, but her rapture now gave the first shock to his belief in her perfect womanliness.
“Why did you not come and hear for yourself?” she cried, gaily. “Prince Rupert has beaten the Roundheads at Powick Bridge, near Worcester. None of our men are killed, but fifty of theirs, and the rest have fled helter-skelter, like the cowardly traitors they are.”
“Nay, an you gloat in that fashion over the slaughter of your own countrymen, I will not stay to listen,” said Gabriel, his eyes flashing with anger.
Hilary had thrown aside her sun-bonnet, and was drawing a chair to the table that she might sit down and begin the stoning of the apricots. She paused, however, aghast at his look and tone. “I disown them for my countrymen,” she said quickly; “they are traitors.”
“If you knew more about them you would see that they desire only to save the country from ruin and to save the King from his evil counsellors,” said Gabriel. “Do you think men like Mr. John Hampden and my Lord Brooke and Sir Robert Harley and the other leading Parliamentarians are to be dubbed traitors and overcrowed by a young German prince, who doth not in any way understand the liberties of England?”
Hilary faltered. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “To hear you speak, one would fancy you were a Roundhead yourself.”
“It is scarce worthy of you to use the new term of reproach,” he said. “You would think it unfair were I to term all in the King’s army ‘Malignants’ or ‘Cavaliers’; let us leave such spiteful party names to these who hate as well as differ. But you and I, though we may disagree, shall ever love, and therein lies a mighty difference.”
Hilary sank down on to the chair. She had turned very pale, and the suffering in her face made Gabriel’s heart ache. He drew nearer.
“My beloved, do not take it thus hardly. Here in Herefordshire you inevitably look on matters from a different point of view; but had you seen what I saw in London, did you but know of the abominable plots and intrigues hatched at Whitehall, you would, at any rate, understand why many Englishmen feel that, to defend our liberties, the King’s evil counsellors must be defeated, cost what it may. Don’t let these matters of State grieve you so sorely; our love, is surely proof against all such passing matters.”
She had listened to him intently, nor could she altogether hide the love which shone in her dark-grey eyes as they met his. He bent over her, his arm stole round her protectingly; but the sense of his strength and protectiveness was exactly what she could not at that moment endure to realise. With an impetuous gesture and a look which wounded him to the quick, she freed herself from him, and, springing to her feet, confronted him with such pale anger in her face as he had never before seen.
“Don’t touch me! You have deceived us!” she said. “Why did you not tell me before?”
“How was it possible when we were not allowed to write to each other?” said Gabriel. “And, indeed, had I been able to write I should scarce have thought you would take any interest in public affairs. The contest between King and people has been going on in reality for many years; why is it that you only care now that the bloodshed has begun?”
“You did deceive us,” said Hilary, ignoring his question because she could not answer it. “You won my grandfather’s favour and waited on him, while you in your heart sided with his enemies.”
“You do but show your injustice by urging that against me,” replied Gabriel, hotly. “I had no thought but to help one who had shown me kindness, and who had been most unfairly cosened into signing the Protestation when he knew not what it involved.”
“And now I can understand your frequent visits to the Tower,” she said, in the most bitter tone. “It was all part of your plan to deceive us—you even, I believe, tried to get into Archbishop’s Laud’s good graces, for he spoke of you to my grandfather.”
At this, spite of himself, Gabriel burst out laughing.
“Do you really think that any gentleman could have seen the poor old Primate fall to the ground and not have offered to help him up?” he said. “Long before I went to London you knew that I hated his system; and if the Royal Army indeed prevails now, the Archbishop, with all his tyrannies, will be brought back, the Puritans will be driven from the land or left to languish in gaol, and Mr. John Hampden—the patriot who tried to save us from the curse of ship-money—will probably die on the scaffold with the other Parliamentary leaders. Now, perhaps, you understand why some of us feel that we must defend our country.”
“Then you must choose betwixt what you call your country and me,” said Hilary, drawing herself up proudly. “For I will never be betrothed to a man who is a rebel.”
Gabriel breathed hard, his hands clenched and unclenched themselves like those of a man in mortal agony.
“And I,” he said at length, throwing back his head, as though choking for want of air—“I, with God’s help, will be true to the Great Charter which bids Englishmen resist any prince who seeks to rob them of their just privileges.”
She dropped him a curtsey—not mockingly, but in grave farewell. Then, taking up her sun-bonnet, she turned to leave the room. But Gabriel strode forward and intercepted her, “Hilary!” he cried, passionately, “you cannot end all betwixt us like this.”
“I both can and will,” she said, with quiet coldness very little in accordance with her throbbing heart.
“It is impossible that matters of State can part those who love,” he urged vehemently. “They are affairs of another sphere—what has our love to do with this hateful war?”
“It has this to do with it, that I will not love a man who is a rebel,” said Hilary, proudly.
“’Tis the thrice-accursed fighting that hath so changed you,” he said, despairingly. “You, who cannot bear to see a dog hurt, or a boy whipped for thieving, can glory over the fifty Englishmen killed at Powick Bridge!”
“Yes, for their rebellion is justly punished,” she said, “and I punish yours in the only way open to me. Go, sir! I will look upon your face no more.”
She drew back from the door and motioned to him imperiously to leave her.
Gabriel paused for a minute as though to gather his strength together. It was no time now to argue, to plead; words availed naught. The time for deeds had come, the call to be true to country and conscience. With a look of reproachful love that was to haunt her all her life long, he bowed low, and quitted the room in silence.
For a few minutes Hilary sat down calmly to her fruit-stoning: then all at once the pride that had upheld her gave way, and, burying her face in her hands, she sobbed as if her heart were broken.