The Draytons and the Davenants

CHAPTER XI.

OLIVE'S STORY.

The first trustworthy tidings we had of the battle of Naseby were from Dr. Antony. I saw him coming hastily across the fields from the direction of Davenant Hall.

It was very early in the morning. The village had been stirring through the previous afternoon with uneasy rumours, and I had not slept. I was watching the light in the window of Lady Lucy's oratory, and thinking how she and Lettice had watched there together that terrible night so long ago, saying collects for Roger, and how Lettice had hastened to us in the morning, on her white palfrey with the welcome tidings that Sir Launcelot would recover. And now how far we were from each other! What a sea between us! Two moats, (the moonlight was shining on ours just below me,) drawbridges, and fortifications. But deeper and stronger than all the moats and walls in the world lay between us the memories of those bitter years of war, and ever-widening misconception and division. Yet I felt sure Lettice loved us still.

And as I was thus looking and thinking, I saw Dr. Antony coming hastily down the road from the stile which led across the fields to the Hall, where I had parted from Harry Davenant that night when he brought the tidings of Lord Strafford's execution, and would not come in.

My first impulse was to rush down the stairs and unbar the door. But many things held me back. A presentiment that the news he brought might be such as there was no need to fore-date by hurrying to meet it; an uncomfortable recollection of Job Forster's letter, and of that conversation in which I had said nothing right.

I went, therefore, to summon Aunt Dorothy as head of the household. She had so many preparations to make, that Dr. Antony's hand was on the great house-bell long before she was ready. Nothing so slow she said as hurry, besides its being a proof of the impatience of the flesh. She would even fold up scrupulously the clothes she took off, faithful to her maxim, that we should always leave everything as if we might never return to it.

The bell rang again.

I went to see if Aunt Gretel was more capable of being hastened. She, dear soul, was sympathizing, excited, and agitated beyond my utmost desires, for she could lay her hands on nothing she wanted. So that I had to return to Aunt Dorothy, who, by that time, was ready; and feeling how cold and trembling my hand was as she took it to lead me downstairs, she laid her other on it with an unwonted demonstration of tenderness, and said,—

"Child, we can neither hasten the Lord's steps nor make them linger. But He will do right." There was strength in her words, but almost as much to me in the tones, which were tremulous, and in the cold touch of her hand, which showed that the blood at her heart stood as still as mine.

We went down together in time to meet Dr. Antony just as he entered the Hall.

My Father was wounded, not dangerously, only so as to render him incapable of further service in the field, at least at present. His right arm was broken. Roger was coming home with him.

I wondered that Dr. Antony seemed so heavy at heart, to bring tidings which made my heart leap with thankfulness. What could be better than that Roger was unhurt, and that my Father had received a slight wound just sufficient to keep him at home with us?

Then it flashed on me in what direction I had seen him coming.

"Dr. Antony!" I said, "there is sorrow for the Davenants!" And then he told us how Harry Davenant had fallen.

We had little time for bewailing him, for the household had to be roused, and refreshment and a bed prepared for my Father.

I had scarce ever seen Roger so cast down as he was about Harry Davenant's death. One of the noblest gentlemen the king had on his side, he thought so pure, and true, and brave. If all had been like him there had been no war, and no need for it. "And," said Roger, "I always looked for the day to come when Harry Davenant would understand us. For we were fighting for the same thing, though on opposite sides—for England and her old laws and liberties; for a righteous kingdom. And I always thought one day he would see where it could be found, and where it could not."

Roger could not stay with us long. But before he went, Harry Davenant was buried, very quietly in the old vault of the Davenants in Netherby church.

It was at night, for the liturgy had been abolished six months before, and was unlawful, and the Vicar risked something in suffering it to be read even by Lady Lucy's chaplain, as it was. And we honoured him and Placidia for the venture. Roger had asked to be one of the bearers. Aunt Gretel, Rachel Forster, and I, waited for them in the church-porch. Slowly through the silent summer-night came the heavy tramp of the bearers, until they paused and laid their burden down under the old Lych Gate. Then, while they came up the churchyard, we crept quietly back into the church, dark in all parts except where the funeral torches lit up a little space around the open vault, and threw strange flickering shadows on the recumbent forms of the dead of Harry Davenant's race, knight and dame, priest and crusader. It made them look as if they moved, to meet him; for none of the living men of his house were there, although of all his race none had fallen more bravely.

Behind the bier followed four women closely veiled. The first, by the height and movement, I knew was his Mother, and at her side, as the sacred words were read, knelt Lettice. I think in times of overwhelming joy or sorrow, when no words could fathom the depths of the heart, when almost every human voice would fall outside it altogether, or jar rudely if it reached within, there is a wonderful comfort in the calm of those ancient immutable liturgies. They are a channel worn deep by the joys and sorrows of ages. Their changelessness links them to eternity, and seems thus to make room for the sorrow which overflows the narrow measures of thought and time.

"Delivered from the burden of the flesh," "are in joy and liberty," "not to be sorry as men without hope for them that sleep in Him, that when we shall depart this life, we may rest on Him as our hope is, this our brother doth." How tranquilly the simple words sank into the very depths of the heart.

All the more precious and sacred, doubtless, for the tender sanctity which ever invests a proscribed religion.

Not that our Puritan faith is without its liturgies. Older than England, and older than Christendom, fused in the burning heart of the king of old, warrior, patriot, exile, conqueror, and penitent. But it is a perilous thing to make services like those of the Church of England, dear enough already to every faithful heart who has used them from infancy, dearer still by making them dangerous. I never knew how I loved them till we lost them.

And as that night the sacred, simple, time-honoured words fell like heavenly music among the shadows of the dim old church, I felt as if the decree which made them unlawful, and the grave of the brother slain at Naseby, were slowly mining a gulf which could never be crossed between the Draytons and the Davenants.

Alas, alas for truth! or at least for us who fain would ever recognise and be loyal to her, when she changes raiment with error, when the crown of thorns is transferred to the brows of her enemies, and the martyrs are on the wrong side. But such transformations have not hitherto lasted long, and meantime the crown of thorns may imprint its lessons even on those who wear it by mistake.

There was no sound of loud weeping. But when, for the last time, before the coffin was lowered out of sight, Lady Lucy knelt once more to embrace it, she did not rise until Lettice went gently to lift her thence; when it was found that she had fainted, and had to be borne away. But for this, Lettice would probably never have known we were there. I went at Roger's bidding to see if I could render any assistance. And then for a moment Lettice drew aside her veil, and with a suppressed sob clasped my hands in hers, and murmured,—

"Thank God, Olive. I knew you would all feel with us. Pray for her and for me, Olive; we have no one like him left."

Then she kissed me once, and hastened on after the rest; as they silently went back through the fields, bearing instead of the corpse of the son the almost lifeless form of the mother.

The day after the funeral Roger left us to go back to the army. I told him what Lettice had said. And he seemed more hopeful than he had been for a long time about her not misunderstanding or forgetting us.

"We must never distrust her again, Olive," he said. "She has trusted us all through."

It was strange that he should thus admonish me, for it was only Roger who ever had distrusted her caring still for us. But such little oblivions are the common lot of sisters situated as I was. I was far too satisfied with his conclusion to dispute as to the way he reached it.

Yet for many weeks after he left we heard nothing from any one of the Davenants.

Sir Launcelot Trevor came and stayed there some days at the beginning of July; and again I was tormented with fears that he had been poisoning their hearts with some evil reports of us. And as I sat watching by my Father's bed-side, many a time I rejoiced that Roger was away, so that he could not share my anxieties.

It so happened that most of the nursing fell on me, to my great thankfulness. Aunt Dorothy's sphere was governing every one outside, and Aunt Gretel's more especially preparing food and cooling drinks. Dr. Antony was pleased to say there was something in my step which fitted a sick-room. Quiet and quick, and not hasty. And in my voice, he fancied, too; cheerful, he said, as a bird singing, yet soft and low.

Be that as it might, my Father naturally liked best to have me about him; me and Rachel Forster, in whose presence he found that repose she seemed to breathe on every one. As if she had wings invisible, which enfolded a warm, quiet space around her, like a hen brooding over her chickens. Rachel Forster and Lady Lucy, of all the women I ever knew, had most of this. And my Father felt it.

One day Rachel had a letter from Job, written a few days after the battle of Naseby.

"We began marching at three o'clock in the morning of the 14th of June," he wrote. "The day before we, the Ironsides, had come with General Cromwell from the eastern counties to our army. They had gathered after him like Abi-Ezer after Gideon. The horse already there gave a mighty shout for joy of his coming to them. By five we were at Naseby, and saw the heads of the enemy coming over the hill. Such a thing as they call a hill in these parts. A broad up and down moor. We fought it out in a fallow field, a mile broad, near the top, from early morning till afternoon. It began somewhat like the day at Marston Moor. They came on first up the hill. Prince Rupert and the plunderers were on our left, charging swift and steady, crying out: 'For God and Queen Mary.' 'God our strength,' cried we. They broke our left, though this we did not know till afterwards. Our right, that is we, General Cromwell's horse, fell on their left and drove them back, flying down the hill through the furze-bushes and rabbit-warrens. The main body, horse and foot, fought hard, breaking and gathering again, like the sea at Lizard at turn of tide. This raging back and forward lasted till Prince Rupert's horse and ours came back from the chase.

"The difference between keeping the Ten Commandments and breaking them tells in the long run. Plundering, firing villages, and slaughtering innocents, shrinks up the courage of men after a time. Prince Rupert's men could charge to the end like devils, but they could not rally like ours. Neither the prince's nor the king's word can bind their men together again to stand a second shock, as Oliver's word can rally the Ironsides. This difference turned the day. The difference between keeping the Ten Commandments (as far as mortal men can) and breaking them. The king rode about fearless as a lion to the last. 'One charge more and we recover the day,' quoth he. But there was no power in his word to rally them, and the sun was still high when he and they fled headlong into Leicester, and we after them.

"But the Ten Commandments fought against them there too. 'The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.'" There was no night's rest for the king in the houses he had seen rifled and dishonoured but a few days before, and never lifted up his voice to hinder it. And on and on he had to fly, to Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Wales, and who knows where? The plunder of Leicester lay strewn about the fallow field at Naseby, where we camped that night, with six hundred of the plunderers dead. Yet God forbid I slander the dead. They fought like true men. And brave, young Master Harry Davenant was among them. Belike the true men fell; and the plunderers fled off safe, as such vermin do. Until the Lord and the Ten Commandments take them in hand and bring them to account, whether in the body or out of the body.

"A hundred Irish Papist women were found hanging about the battle-field, armed with long knives, and speaking no Christian tongue. Poor benighted savages! Very strange to think such have husbands, and children, and hearts, and souls. Yet belike so had the Canaanites. These things are dark to me. I have wrestled sore there about, but can get no light on them.

"Two or three days after the battle a young gentleman, a preacher, aged some thirty years, came amongst the army. His name was Richard Baxter, a puny feeble body, marked with small-pox, and bowed and worn at thirty like an old man. Yet had the puny body good quality of courage in it. Courage of the soul, burning out of his dark eyes. Courage, surely, he had of his kind. For he came amongst our men, flushed and strong from the victorious fight, and exhorted us as if we had been a pack of school-boys. Called us—the Ironsides, and Whalley's and Rue's regiments of horse—'hot-headed, self-conceited sectaries,' Anabaptists, Antinomians, and what not—us who had been fighting the Lord's battles for him and the like of him these two years! Took our camp jokes ill, about 'Scotch dryvines,' 'Dissembling men at Westminster,' and 'priestbyters.' Called us profane; us who had paid twelve-pence fine for one careless oath ever since we came together.

"Argued with us, dividing his discourse into as many heads as Leviathan, and using words from every heathen tongue under the sun. If we had the best of it, called us levellers and fire-brands. If we were silent under his flood of talk, thought we were beaten, as if to have the best in talk were to win the day. As if an honest Englishman was to change his mind, because he could not, all in a moment, see his way out of Mr. Baxter's Presbyterial puzzles. Scarcely grateful, I think, seeing our men had once asked him to be their chaplain. Some of us reminded him of it, and he said he was sorry he had refused, or we should not have come to what we are. And he rebuked us sore, and called us out of our names in a gentlemanly way, in Latin and Greek, as if we had been plunderers and malignants; us of General Cromwell's own regiment. Of his courage there can after this, I think, be no doubt. Nor forsooth of our patience. And he hath gone back to Coventry and spoken slanders of the 'sad state' of the army!

"Sad state of the army indeed, where every morsel we put in our mouths is paid for, through which every modest wench, if she were as fair as Sarah, can walk, if she had need, as safe as past her father's door. An army which had just won Naseby, by the strength of the Lord and the Ten Commandments—where not an oath is heard—where psalms and prayers rise night and morning as from the old Temple—and where a young gentleman like Mr. Richard Baxter, could come and go, and call the soldiers what ill names he chose, without hurt. For a godly young gentleman we all hold him to be, and a scholar, and honour him in our souls as such, and for the chastening hand of the Lord on the poor suffering, puny, brave body of him, although in some ways he and the likes of him cost me more wrestlings than even the Irish Papist women with their knives."

Wherever General Cromwell was throughout that summer, there continued to be a series of successes. Job's letters and Roger's were records of castles stormed or surrendered, sieges raised and troops dispersed, in Devonshire from Salisbury to Bovey Tracey.

On the 4th of August, Roger wrote of the dispersing of the poor mistaken Clubmen; a new force of peasants who had gathered to the number of two thousand on Hambledon Hill, in Surrey. Blind, as my Father says peasant armies mostly are. Aunt Gretel turned pale when she heard of them, and talked of dreadful peasant wars in Dr. Luther's time in Saxony; Dr. Luther dearly loving and fighting, in his way, for the peasants, but not being able to make them understand him, like Oliver Cromwell now.

These poor fellows had gathered like brave men in the West to defend their homes from Lord Goring's band—"the child-eaters" as some called them, the most lawless and merciless among the Cavalier troops, surpassing even Prince Rupert's, whom one of their own called afterwards, "terrible in plunder, and resolute in running away."

"If ye offer to plunder or take our cattle,
Be you assured we'll give you battle,"

was the clubmen's motto. A good one enough. But in time they became hopelessly involved in political plots, of which they understood nothing, demanded to garrison the coast-towns, picked out and killed peaceable Posts, fired on messengers of peace sent by General Cromwell, who had much pity for them, and finally had to be fallen upon and beaten from the field. "I believe," the General wrote to Sir Thomas Fairfax, "not twelve of them were killed, but very many were cut, and three hundred taken—poor silly creatures, whom if you please to let me send home, they promise to be very dutiful for time to come, and will be hanged before they come out again." So men and leaders were taken, and the army dispersed, and came not out again; and the land all around had quiet.

But, as Job Forster said, it was the Ten Commandments that fought best for us.

The king's cabinet at Naseby, with all the false and traitorous letters found therein in his handwriting, did more to undermine his power than a hundred battles. For in it was shown how, while solemnly promising to make no treaties with Papists, and speaking words of peace at Uxbridge, he was negotiating for six thousand Papist soldiers from Ireland, and for more than ten thousand from across the seas; that he had only agreed to call the Parliament Parliament "in the treating with them, in the sense that it was not the same to call them so, and to acknowledge them so to be." He spoke, moreover, of the gentlemen who gathered around him loyally at Oxford, as "the mongrel Parliament." So that many of his old friends were sorely aggrieved, and many neutrals began to see that, call men by what titles you will, there can be no loyalty where there is no truth.

In the North affairs went not so prosperously, though there, too, reckless ravaging wrought its own terrible cure in time. For six weeks Montrose with his Irish, and Highlanders, and some English adventurers, laid Argyleshire waste, killing every man who could bear arms, plundering and burning every cottage. It was not like the war in England, save where Prince Rupert and Lord Goring brought the savage customs of foreign warfare in on us. It was a war of clans, bent on extirpating each other like so many wild beasts, and of mountain-robbers set on carrying away as much spoil as they could from the Lowland cities, and on inflicting as much misery as they could by the way to inspire a profitable terror for the future. Perth was sacked by them, and Aberdeen, and Dundee.

At Kilsyth, near Stirling, Montrose and his men killed ten times as many of a Covenanted army, against which they fought, as fell of the Cavaliers at Naseby. Six hundred lay slain at Naseby; at Kilsyth, six thousand.

And the king, meanwhile, speaking of this robber chief as the great restorer of his kingdom and support of his throne, with never an entreaty to spare his countrymen and subjects.

Can any wonder that the sheep he commissioned so many hirelings to fleece, robbers to plunder, and wolves to slay, would not follow him?

In person, indeed, throughout that summer of 1645, His Majesty was pursuing a kind of warfare too similar to that of Wallenstein or Montrose. It was in the August of this year, scarce two months after the victory of Naseby, that the war surged up nearer us at Netherby, than at any other time.

The king had fled from Naseby to Ragland Castle, the seat of the Marquis of Worcester (an ingenious gentleman who spent his living in seeking out many inventions). There he held his court for many weeks; entertained with princely state in the halls of the grand old castle, and hunting deer gaily through the forests on the banks of the Wye, as if his subjects were not themselves in his quarrel hunting each other to death in every corner of his kingdom.

Whilst there tidings came to him of the successes of Montrose, and he endeavored to go northward to join him in Scotland. From Doncaster, however, he fell back on Newark, turned from his purpose by the Covenanted army of Sir David Leslie, which threatened him from the North. And then he turned his steps to us, to the Fens and the Associated Counties, which General Cromwell's care, and their own fidelity to the Parliament, had kept hitherto high and dry out of reach of the war, save for some few stray foraging parties. During this August 1645 we learned, however, at His Majesty's hands, the meaning of civil war. The eastern counties lay exposed to attack, having sent their tried men westward with Cromwell and Fairfax; so that we had nothing but our own more recent foot-levies to defend us.

The king dashed from Stamford through Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, ravaging the whole country as he passed, and detaching flying squadrons to plunder Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, as far as St. Albans. Several times he threatened Cambridge.

On the 24th of August, he took Huntingdon by assault, and four days afterwards, by the 28th, was safe again within the lines of Oxford, with large store of booty seized from the very cradle and stronghold of the Parliamentary army.

No doubt the Cavaliers had fine triumphing and merry-making over the spoils at Oxford. But to us, around whom lay the empty granaries and roofless homesteads, and the wrecked and burned villages from which these spoils came, the lesson was not one of submission or of terror, but of resistance more resolute than ever. Prince Rupert had been teaching this lesson for three years in every corner of the realm. His Majesty taught it us in person. A lesson of resistance not desperate but hopeful; for we could not but deem that a king who would indiscriminately ravage whole counties of his kingdom, must look on it as an alien territory already lost to his crown.

Many sins, no doubt, may be laid to the charge of the Parliament and its army. But of two sins terribly common in civil strife they were never guilty; indiscriminate plunder and secret assassination. The ruins and desecrations the Commonwealth soldiers wrought in churches and cathedrals, will tell their tale against us to many a generation to come. The ruins the Royalist troopers wrought were in poor men's homes long since repaired. The desecrations they wrought were also in homes, ruins and desecrations of temples not made with hands, and never to be repaired, but recorded on sacred inviolable tables, more durable than any stone, though not to be read on earth, at least not yet.

The village of Netherby lay just beyond the edge of the royal devastations. But the cattle all around us were seized, with all the corn that was reaped. And at night the sky was all aglow with the flames of burning cottages, and corn and hay-stacks. Our own barns were untouched, but my Father gave orders at once to begin husbanding our stores by limiting our daily food, looking on what was spared to us as the granary of the whole destitute neighbourhood through the coming winter, and as the seed-store for the following spring. Our sheds and out-houses, meantime, were fitted up for those who had been driven from their homes. Every cottage in Netherby gave shelter to some homeless neighbour. Rachel Forster's became an orphan-house. Yet it was the private lesson which was taught our own family through this foray of His Majesty's that is engraven most deeply in my memory.

Throughout the summer, Cousin Placidia had been more than ever a subject of irritation and distress to Aunt Dorothy. The successes of Montrose in Scotland, followed by the plunderings of the king's troops in our own counties, had once more caused her to feel much "exercised" as to which was the right side. In February, after the execution of Archbishop Laud, Mr. Nicholls had obediently substituted the Directory of Worship for the Common Prayer, sorely trying thereby Aunt Dorothy's predilections for unwritten, or rather unprinted prayers; Mr. Nicholls' supplications not having, in her opinion, either unction or fire, being in fact, she said, nothing but the old Liturgy minced and sent up cold. Her only comfort was in the trust that sifting days were at hand. (The Triers had not yet been appointed.) But what vexed Aunt Dorothy's soul even more than any ecclesiastical "trimmings," was what she regarded as the gradual eating up of Placidia's heart by the rust of hoarded wealth. Placidia had at that time an additional reason to justify herself for any amount of straitening and sparing, in the expectation of the birth of her first child. This prospect opened a new field for her economies and for Aunt Dorothy's anxieties. Even the general devastations of the country, which opened every door and every heart wide to the sufferers, only effected the narrowest possible opening in Placidia's stores. Her health, she said, obviously prevented her receiving any strangers into the house; and it was little indeed that a poor parson, with a family to provide for, and nothing but income to depend on, and the certainty of receiving scarcely any tithes the next season, could have to spare. Such as she had, said she, she gave willingly. There was a stack of hay but slightly damaged by getting heated. And there was some preserved meat, a little strong perhaps from keeping, but quite wholesome and palatable with a little extra salt. These she most gladly bestowed. Aunt Dorothy was in despair, and made one last solemn appeal.

"Placidia," she said, "a child will shut up your heart and be a curse to you, if you let it shut your doors against the poor; until at last who knows what door may be shut on you?"

But Placidia was impregnable.

"Aunt Dorothy," she said, with mild imperturbability, "everything may be made either a curse or a blessing. But to those who are in the covenant everything is a blessing."

"Sister Gretel," said Aunt Dorothy, afterwards, "I see no way of escape for her. The mercies of God's providence and the doctrines of His grace freeze on that poor woman's heart, until the ice is so thick that the sunshine itself can do nothing but just thaw the surface, and make the next day's ice smoother and harder."

Aunt Gretel looked up.

"Never give up hope, sister," said she. "Our good God has more weapons than we wot of, and more means of grace than are counted in any of our Catechisms and Confessions. Sometimes He can warm the coldest heart with the glow of a new human love until all the ice melts away from within. And the touch of a little child's hand has opened many a door, where the Master has afterwards come in and sat down and supped. When the Saviour wanted to teach the Pharisees, He set in the midst of them a little child."

Aunt Dorothy shook her head.

"Children have dragged many a godly man back again to Egypt," said she. "Many a rope which binds good men tight to the car of Mammon is twisted by very little hands."

And the proposition being unanswerable, the discussion ended.

A few nights afterwards we were roused by a suspicious glare in the direction of the Parsonage. The next morning early we went to see if anything had happened there.

As we passed through the village, we heard the news quickly enough.

Just after dusk, on the evening before, a party of Royalist troopers had appeared at the Parsonage gates. The house stood alone, at some little distance from the village, at the end of the glebe-fields. The captain of the little troop said they were on their way to join His Majesty at Oxford; but seeing a light, they were tempted to seek the hospitality of Mistress Nicholls, of which they had heard in the neighbourhood.

Poor Placidia's protestations of poverty were of little avail with such guests. They politely assured her they were used to rough fare, and would themselves render any assistance she required towards preparing the feast. Whereupon they put up their horses in the stables, supplied them liberally with corn from, the granaries, seized the fattest of the poultry, and strung them in a tempting row before the kitchen fire, which they piled into huge dimensions with any wooden articles that came first to hand, chairs and chests included; the contents of these chests being meanwhile skillfully rifled, and all that was most valuable in them of plate, linen, or silk, set apart in a heap "for the king's service."

The supper being prepared, they insisted on their host drinking His Majesty's health in the choicest wines in his cellar. The captain had been informed, he said, that Mr. Nicholls had been induced (reluctantly, of course, as he perceived from the fervent protestations of loyalty) to disuse the Liturgy, and even to contribute of his substance to the rebel cause. He felt glad, therefore, to be able to give him this opportunity of proving his unjustly suspected fidelity, and of contributing, at the same time, of his substance to His Majesty's service, by means of the portion of his goods which they would the next day convey to His Majesty's head-quarters in the loyal city of Oxford, and thus save it from being misapplied in this disaffected country, in a manner which Mr. Nicholls' loyal heart must abhor. This we heard from one of the frightened serving-wenches, who had escaped towards morning, and spread the news through the village.

As the night passed on, they grew riotous, and were with difficulty roused from their carouse by the captain, to see about getting their plunder together before dawn. They poured on the ground what wine they could not drink, set fire (whether by accident or on purpose was not known) to the large corn-stack whilst hunting about the sheds and stables for cattle and horses; till finally the inmates were thankful to get them away early in the morning, although they took with them all the beasts they could drive and all the booty they could carry.

The sympathy in the village was not deep, and Aunt Dorothy and I went on in silence to the Parsonage, to give what help and comfort we could. Neither Aunt Dorothy nor I spoke a word as we hastened up the rising ground towards the house.

The homely ruins of the farm-yard moved me more than many a stately ruin. The remains of the corn-stack, the flames of which had alarmed us in the night, stood there black and charred; the stables were empty and the cattle-sheds; the house-dog was hanged to the door of one of them; the yard was strewn with trampled corn, which the sparrows and starlings, in the absence of the privileged poultry, were making bold to pick up; and the silence of the deserted court was made more dismal by the occasional restless lowing of a calf, which was roaming from one empty shed to another in search of its mother.

We went into the house. The kitchen was full of the serving-wenches, and of some of the more curious and idle in the village, who were condoling with each other, by making the worst of the disaster. The hearth was black with the cinders of the enormous fire of the night before, and the floor was strewn with broken pieces of the chairs and chests which had helped to kindle it, and with fragments of the feast. In a corner of the settle by the cold hearth sat Placidia, as if she were stupified, with her hands clasped and her eyes fixed upon them.

When she saw Aunt Dorothy, she turned away, and said,—

"Don't reproach me, Aunt Dorothy; I can't bear it."

"Didst thou think I came for that?" said Aunt Dorothy. "But belike I deserve it of thee."

And with a voice a little sharpened by the feeling she strove to repress, Aunt Dorothy sent the curious neighbours to the right-about, and disposed of the two serving-wenches, by telling them the very fowls of the air were setting such lazy sluts as they were an example, and despatching them to gather up the scattered corn in the yard.

Then she came again to Placidia, and taking her clasped hands in hers, said,—

"I've learnt many things, child, this last hour. I judged thee a Pharisee, and belike I've been a worse one myself. I've sat on the judgment-seat this many a day on thee. But I'm off it now. And may the Lord grant me grace never to climb up there again. I've wished for some heavy rod to fall and teach thee. And now it's come, it can't smite thee heavier than it does me. Forgive me, child, and let us both begin again."

Placidia looked up, and meeting the honest eyes fixed on her, not in scorn but in entreaty, she sobbed,—

"I shall never have heart to begin again, Aunt Dorothy."

"To begin what again?" said Aunt Dorothy.

"Contriving and saving to make up all the things I have lost," replied Placidia. "I've been years heaping it together, and it's all gone in a night!"

Aunt Dorothy looked sorely puzzled, between her desire to be charitable and her horror of Placidia's misreading of the dispensation.

"Begin that again, my dear," she said, at last. "Nay; thou must never begin that again. It will never do to fly in the face of Providence like that."

Placidia uncovered her face, but as her eyes rested on the desolation around her, she covered them again, and sobbed,—

"Just when there was to be one to save it all for, and make it worth while to deny oneself."

"Nay," said Aunt Dorothy; "that's the mercy. That's precisely the mercy. The Lord will not let the child be a curse to thee. He will have it a blessing; so He says to thee as plain as can be, I give thee a treasure, not to make thee rage and stint and grudge, but to teach thee to love and serve and give, not to make thee poor, but to make thee rich. And He will go on teaching thee till thou openest thy heart and learnest, and thy burden falls off, and thy heart leaps up, and thou shalt be free. I know it by the way my heart is lightened now. He's smitten me down for my sitting in judgment on thee. Not that I'm safe never to climb that seat again. One is there before one knows, and the black-cap on in a moment. Some one is always near, I trow, to help us up."

And turning from Placidia, she proceeded to a quiet survey of the ruins, which, under her brisk and discriminating hands, with such help as I could give, soon began to show some signs of order.

The fire was lighted; the calf despatched to Netherby to be fed; sundry fragments of chairs and chests to the village carpenter, to be mended; the broken meat put into two baskets.

"This is for the household," said Aunt Dorothy, "and that for the fatherless children at Rachel Forster's. One of the maids can take it at once, Placidia, when she leads away the calf."

Placidia was at length quite roused from her stupor. She looked at Aunt Dorothy as if she thought she were in league with the plunderers.

"Me send meat to Rachel Forster's orphans!" she said faintly; "a poor plundered woman like me!"

"Better begin at once, my dear," said Aunt Dorothy; "the fatherless are God's little ones. Better give the treasure to them. You see our bags have holes in them."

At that moment Mr. Nicholls returned. Placidia appealed to him for his usual confirmation of her opinions.

"Dear heart," he said ruefully, "Belike Mistress Dorothy is right. It's of no use fighting against God. Who knoweth if He may turn and repent and leave a blessing behind Him."

"Nay, Master Nicholls," said Aunt Dorothy, "not that way. It's of no use trying to escape in that way. You must let go altogether first, or the Almighty will never take hold of you. It's hoping for nothing again. If thou and Placidia will send this to the orphans, ye must send it because it has been given to you, and because they want it more than you do. Because thou wast an orphan, Placidia," she added, tenderly, "and He has not failed to care for thee. Take heed how ye slight His staff or His rod. Both have been used plainly enough for thee. I'll divide the stuff," she concluded, "and you must settle what to do with it yourselves, afterwards."

And insisting on Placidia's resting up-stairs while she subjected the contents of the chests strewn about the chamber-floor to the same process of division, she left the house before dusk restored to something like order, with two significant heaps of clothing on the bed-chamber, and two significant baskets of provisions in the kitchen, to speak what parables they might during the night to the consciences of Placidia and Mr. Nicholls.

But before the morning other teachers had been there. Death and Anguish—those merciful curses sent to keep the world, which had ceased to be Eden, from becoming a sensual Elysium, idle, selfish, and purposeless—visited the house that night. Another life was ushered into the world under the shadow of Death itself. In the morning Placidia lay feebly rejoicing in the infant-life for which her own had been so nearly sacrificed. Rejoicing in a gift which had cost her so much, and which was to cost her so much more of patient sacrifices, toil and watching, sacrifices for which no one would especially admire her, and for which she would not admire herself; rejoicing as she had never rejoiced in any possession before. Not by any supernatural effort of virtue, but by the simple natural fountain of motherly love which had been opened in her heart. One of the first things she said was to Rachel, who was watching with her through the next night. Very softly, as Rachel sat by her bed-side with the baby on her knee, Placidia said,—

"Strange such a gift should have been given to me and not to thee."

"And," said Rachel (when she told me of it), "I could not answer her all in a moment, for there are seas stronger and deeper than those outside our dykes around our hearts. And it's not safe, even in the quietest weather, opening the cranny to let in those tides. So I said nothing. And in a few moments Mistress Nicholls spoke again, 'For thou art good and worthy, Rachel,' said she, 'and it would be no great wonder if the Lord gave thee the best He has to give.'

"Then I understood what she meant, and my heart was nigh as glad as if the child had been given to me. For I thought there was a soul new born to God as a little child, meek and lowly. The Lord had led her along the hardest step on the way to Himself, the first step down. And she said no more. I smoothed her pillow, laid the babe beside her, and she and it fell asleep. But I sat still and cried quietly for joy. And the next morning, when the light broke in, Mistress Nicholls looked up and saw those two heaps Mistress Dorothy had set apart, and then she looked down on the babe, and murmured as if to herself,—

"'Poor motherless little ones! God has given me thee and spared me to thee. The poor motherless babes, they shall have the things.'

"And then," pursued Rachel, "I turned away and cried again to myself half for gladness, and half for trouble. For I thought sure the Lord's a-going to take her, poor lamb, if she's so changed as that."

But Aunt Dorothy, when Rachel narrated this, although she wiped her eyes sympathetically, at the same time gave her head a consolatory shake and said,—

"Never fear, neighbour, never fear, not yet. Depend on it, the old Enemy will have a fight for it yet. Depend on it, there's a good deal of work to be done for her in this world yet, before she's too good to be left in it."

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"Davenant Hall, Twelfth Night, 1645-6.—Only four years since that merry sixteenth birthday of mine, when all the village were gathered in the Hall, and Olive and I gave the garments to the village maidens of my own age, and in the evening Roger stayed to help kindle the twelve bonfires.

"And now we are walled and moated out from the village and from the Manor as we were in the old days of the Norman Conquest, when the Davenants first took possession of these lands, and built the old ruined keep, where the gateway is (whence they afterwards removed to this abbey), to overawe the Saxon village, where the Draytons even then lived in the old Manor. I wonder if there is anything left of the old contentions in Saxon and Norman blood now. The rebel army is so much composed, they say, both of officers and men, of the stout old Saxon yeomanry, and the traders in the towns; whilst ours is officered from the old baronial castles, by gentlemen with the old Norman historical names. How many of the higher gentry and nobility are loyal has been proved these last six months, since fatal Naseby, by the sieges (and, alas! by the stormings and surrenders) of at least a score of old castles and mansions, from Bristol, surrendered on the 11th of September by Prince Rupert to Bovey Tracey in the faithful West. Thank Heaven, they gave Oliver Cromwell and Sir Thomas Fairfax much trouble, Basing Hall especially. In future days, when the king shall enjoy his own again (as he surely will), I hold such a blackened ruin will be a choicer possession to a gentleman's family than a palace furnished regally. The rebels called Basing House Basting, for the mischief it did them. And our men called it Loyally.

"Roger Drayton hath shared, no doubt, in many of these sieges. So stern in his delusion of duty, I suppose, if this brewer of Huntingdon commanded him, he would not scruple to plant his reble guns against us. 'Thine eye shall not spare,' they say, in their hateful cant. Sir Launcelot says they have been chasing His Sacred Majesty from place to place like a hunted stag; that Mr. Cromwell, whom Roger loves above king and friend, never sets on any great enterprise without having a 'text' to lean on! That before storming Basing Hall, he passed the night in prayer, and that the text he especially 'rested on' for that achievement was Psalm cxviii. 8: 'They that make them are like unto them, so is every one that trusteth in them!' as if we Royalists were Canaanites, idolaters, Papists, I know not what. Fancy burning down a corn-stack to a psalm-tune, or setting out on a burglary to a text. Yet what is it better to burn down loyal gentlemen's houses about their ears, from one end of England to another. It is all Conscience; this dreadful Moloch of Conscience! It was the one weak point of the Draytons always.

"Sir Launcelot Trevor came here a week since to see if anything can be done to strengthen the fortifications. My Father was in Bristol when it was stormed, and has followed the king ever since; two of my brothers are in Ireland, seeing what can be done there; two fled beyond the seas after the defeat of the gallant Marquis of Montrose last September at Philipshaugh, near Selkirk; and two lie on that fatal Rowton Heath, where on September the 23rd the king's last army, worth the name, was broken and lost.

"We have made sacrifices enough to endear the royal cause to us. I suppose this old house will be the next. For Harry said it would never stand a siege. But, oh, if I could only be sure Sir Launcelot is mistaken in what he says about Roger giving Harry his death-blow, much of the rest would seem light. I have never yet told my Mother of this dread. Sometimes when I think how Roger looked and spoke that morning, I feel sure it cannot be true. But he always said it was so wrong to believe things because I wished them true. And now the more I long to believe this false, the less I seem able.

"Only four years since that merry sixteenth birthday, when I was a child. And then that happy summer afterwards, when the world seemed to grow so beautiful and great, and it seemed as if we were to do such glorious things in it.

"First the birthdays seem like triumphal columns, trophies of a conquered year. Then like mile-stones, marking rather sadly the way we have come. But now I think they look like grave-stones, so much is buried for ever beneath this terrible year that is gone. Not lives only, but love, and trust, and hope.

"I said so to my Mother to-night, as I wished her good-night. It was selfish. For I ought to comfort her. But she comforted me. She said, 'The birthdays will look like mile-stones again, by-and-by, sweetheart. They will be marked on the other side, "so much nearer home," and perhaps at last like trophies again, marking the conquered years.'

"On which I broke down altogether, and said,—

"'Oh, Mother, don't speak like that, don't say you look on them like that. Think of me at the beginning of the journey, so near the beginning.'

"'I do, Lettice,' said she. 'I pray to live, for thy sake, every day.'

"For my sake; only for my sake. For her own she longs to go. And that is saddest of all to me.

"For, except on days like these, when I think and look back, I am not always so very wretched. It is very strange, after all that has happened. But I am sometimes—rather often—a little bit happy. There is so much that is cheerful and beautiful in the world, I cannot help enjoying it. And pleasant things might happen yet.

"I did love Harry, dearly; nearly better than any one. I do. But to my Mother losing him seems just the one sorrow which puts her on the other side of all earthly joys and sorrows, with a great gulf between, so that she looks on them from afar off, like an angel.

"I suppose there is just the one thing which would be the darkening of the whole world to most of us, making it night instead of day. Other people leave that sepulchre behind. It is grown over, and in years it becomes a little sacred grass-grown mound, or a stately memorial to the life ended there.

"But to one, it has made the whole earth a sepulchre, at which she stands without, weeping and looking on.

"There is only one Voice which can quiet the heart there.

"The day after.—Sir Launcelot and I have had high words to-day. We were looking from the terrace towards Netherby, and I said something about old times, and that the Draytons would probably resume the lands they had lost in old times at the Conquest.

"I fired up, and said not one of the Draytons would ever touch anything that did not belong to them. 'They were not of Prince Rupert's plunderers,' said I.

"'No doubt,' said he, 'they hold by a better right than the sword.' And with nasal solemnity, clasping his hands, he added, 'Voted, it is written the saints shall possess the land; voted, we are the saints.'

"'Sir Launcelot,' I said, 'you know I hate to hear old friends spoken of like that.'

"(When I had written bitter things myself of them but yesterday! But it always angers me when people are unfair.)

"Here he changed his tone, and spoke seriously enough. Too seriously, indeed, by far. He said something about my opinion being more to him than anything in the world. And when I went back into the garden-parlour, not desiring such discourse, he was on his knees at my feet, before I could raise him, pouring out, I know not what passionate protestations, and saying that I could save him, and reclaim him, and make him all he longed to be, and was not. And that if I rejected him, there was not another power on earth or heaven that could keep him from plunging into perdition, which perplexed and grieved me much. For I do not love him. Of that I am sure. But it is terrible to think of being the only barrier between any human soul and destruction. And I am half afraid to tell my Mother, for fear she should counsel me to take Sir Launcelot's conversion on me. Because she thinks everything of no weight compared with religion. But I cannot think it would be a duty to marry a person for the same reason from which you might become his godmother. Besides, if I did not love, what real power should I have to save?

"At night (later).—I have told my Mother, and she says that last consideration makes it quite clear. I could have no power for good, unless I loved. And I do not love Sir Launcelot; and I never could.

"At the same time, when I opened my heart to her about this, I ventured at last to tell her what Sir Launcelot had thought about Harry and Roger Drayton. I wish I had told her weeks ago.

"For she does not believe it. She says Roger would never have come and told us had it been so. She has not the slightest fear it can be true. It has lightened my heart wonderfully. Roger is not quite just in saying I can believe in anything I wish.

"March.—A biting March for the good cause. On the 14th brave Sir Ralph Hopton surrendered in Cornwall. On the 22nd brave old Sir Jacob Astley (he who made the prayer before Edgehill fight, 'Lord, if I forget Thee this day, do not Thou forget me'), was beaten at Stow in Gloucestershire, as he was bringing a small force he had gathered with much pains, to succour the king at Oxford. 'You have now done your work and may go to play,' he said to the rebels who captured him, 'unless you fall out among yourselves.' Gallant sententious old veteran that he is!

"May.—His Majesty has taken refuge with the Scottish army at Newark.

"We marvel he should have trusted his sacred person with Covenanted Presbyterians. But in good sooth he may well be weary of wandering, and may look for some pity yet in his own fellow-countrymen. Not that they showed much to the sweet fair lady his father's mother.

"We hear it was but unwillingly he went to them at night, between two and three o'clock in the morning, on the 27th of April. A few days since he left the shelter of Oxford, faithful to him so long; riding disguised as a servant, behind his faithful attendant Mr. Ashburnham. Once he was asked by a stranger on the road if his master were a nobleman. 'No,' quoth the king, 'my master is one of the Lower House,' a sad truth, forsooth, though spoken in parable. It is believed amongst us that he would fain have reached the eastern coast, thence to take ship for Scotland, to join Montrose and the true Scots with him. For his flight was uncertain, and changed direction more than once—to Henley-on-Thames, Slough, Uxbridge; then to the top of Harrow Hill, across the country to St. Albans, where the clattering hoofs of a farmer behind them gave false alarm of pursuit; thence by the houses of many faithful gentlemen who knew and loved him, but respected his disguise and made as though they knew him not; to Downham in Norfolk; to Southwell, and thence, beguiled by promises some say, others declare throwing himself of his own free will like a prince on the ancient Scottish loyalty, he rode to Newark into the midst of the Earl of Leven's army.

"August, 1646.—The civil war, they give out now, is over. Every garrison and castle in the kingdom have surrendered. In June, loyal Oxford; and now, last and most loyal of all, on the 19th of August, Ragland Castle, with the noble old Marquis of Worcester, who hath ruined himself past all remedy in the king's service, and in this world will scarce now find his reward.

"In June, Prince Rupert rode through the land, and embarked at Dover. Well for the good cause if he had never come. His marauding ways gave quite another complexion to the war from what it might have had without him. His rashness, Harry thought, lost us many a field. His lawlessness infected our army. The king could not forgive him his surrender of Bristol a few days after he was led to believe it could be held for months. But in this some think perchance he is less to blame than elsewhere. Cromwell and the Ironsides were there and they stormed the city, and it seems as if this Cromwell could never be baffled.

"With Prince Rupert went three hundred loyal gentlemen, some despairing of the cause at home, others, and with them my Father, on missions to seek aid from foreign courts.

"February, 1647.—The Scottish army has yielded him up ('Bought and sold,' His Majesty said; others say the two hundred thousand pounds the Scotch received was for the expenses of the war,) into the hands of the English Presbyterians at Newcastle.

"March.—We have seen the king once more. My Mother has heard for certain the true cause why the king was given up by the Scotch to his enemies. He would not sign their blood-stained Covenant. He would not sacrifice the Church of these kingdoms, with her bishops and her sacred liturgy, though nobles, loyal men and true, nay the queen herself, by letter, entreated him. My mother saith he is now in most literal truth a martyr, suffering for the spotless bride—our dear Mother, the Church of England—and for the truth. We heard he was to arrive at Holmby House in Northamptonshire, and, weak as my Mother is, nothing would content her but to be borne thither in a litter to pay him her homage. I would not have missed it for the world. Numbers of gentlemen and gentlewomen were there to welcome him with tears and prayers and hearty acclamations. It did our hearts good to hear the hearty cheers and shouts, and I trust cheered his also. The rebel troopers were Englishmen enough to offer no hindrance. And we had the joy of gazing once more on that kingly pathetic countenance. He is serene and cheerful, as a true martyr should be, my mother says, accepting his cross and rejoicing in it, not morose and of a sad countenance as those who feign to be persecuted for conscience sake. He scorns no blameless pleasure which can solace the weary hours of captivity, riding miles sometimes to a good bowling-green to play at bowls, and beguiling the evenings with chess or converse on art with Mr. Harrington or Mr. Herbert.

"He will not suffer a Presbyterian chaplain to say grace at his table, and the hard-hearted jailers will allow no other.

"Thank heaven the common people are true to him still, as they took him from Newcastle to Holmby House the simple peasants flocked round to see him and bless him, and to feel the healing touch of his sacred hand for the king's evil. Sir Harry Marten, a rebel and a republican, made a profane jest thereon, and said, 'The touch of the great seal would do them as much good.' But no one relished the scurrilous jest. And the blessings and prayers of the poor followed the king everywhere. Yes; it is the common people and the nobles that honour true greatness. The Scribes and Pharisees, I am persuaded, sprang from the middle-order yeomen, craftsmen, chapmen. "Tithing mint and devouring widows' houses," are just base, weeping, unpunishable middle-station sins. The troubles of this middle class are wretched, low, carking money-troubles. The sorrows of the high and low are natural ennobling sorrows; bereavement, pain, and death. It is the sordid middle order that envies the great. The common people reverence them when on high places, and generously pity them when brought low. My Mother says, belike the sorrows of their king shall yet move the honest heart of the nation to a reverent pity, and thus back to loyalty, and so, as so often in great conflicts, more be won through suffering than through success.

"April, 1647.—We are to pay our last penalty. Our old hall is declared to be a perilous nest of traitors and cradle of insurrection. A rebel garrison is to be quartered on us.

"Our expedition to Holmby, has led to two results; it offended some of the people in authority among the rebels, and thereby caused them to take possession of the hall; and it so taxed my mother's wasted strength that she is unfit for any journey, so that we must even stay and suffer the presence of these insolent and rebellious men in our home.

"April, Davenant Hall.—Mr. Drayton hath been here to-day. He looked pale and thin from the long imprisonment he has had, and he hath lost his right arm—a sore loss to him who ever took such pleasure in his geometrical instruments, and played the viol-di-gambo so masterly.

"He gave a slight start when he saw my mother, and there was a kind of anxious compassionate reverence in his manner towards her which makes me uneasy. I fear he deems her sorely changed, and ofttimes I have feared the same. But then this mourning garb which she will never more lay aside, and her dear gray hair, which I love, put back like an Italian Madonna from her forehead, in itself makes a difference. Although I think her eyes never looked so soft and beautiful as now. The golden hair of youth, and all its brilliant colour, seems to me scarcely so fair as this silver hair of hers, with the soft pale hues on her cheeks.

"Mr. Drayton asked us to take asylum at Netherby Hall till such time as we join my father elsewhere. My mother knows what Harry thought, and seems not averse to accept his hospitality. I certainly had not thought to enter old Netherby again in such guise as this."

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

The old house seemed to gain a kind of sacredness when it became the refuge of that dear bereaved Lady and sweet Lettice. Lady Lucy was much changed. Her voice always soft, was low as the soft notes in a hymn; her step, always light, was slower and feebler; her hair, though still abundant, had changed from luxuriant auburn to a soft silvery brown; her cheeks were worn into a different curve, though still, I thought, as beautiful, and the colour in them was paler. Everything in her seemed to have changed from sunset to moonlight. Her voice and her very thoughts seem to come from afar; from some region we could not tread, like music borne over still waters. It was as if she had crossed a river which severed her far from us, which she would never more recross, but only wait till the call came to mount the dim heights on the other side. Not that she was in any way sad or uninterested, or abstracted, only she did not seem to belong to us any more.

I wondered if Lettice saw this as I did. And many a time the tears came to my eyes as I looked at those two and thought how strong were the cords of love which bound them, and how feeble the thread of life.

Aunt Dorothy welcomed Lady Lucy with as true a tenderness as any one. The silvery hair in place of those heart-breakers—the hair silvered so suddenly by sorrow—softened her in more ways than one. One thing, however, tried her sorely. And I much dreaded the explosion it might lead to if Aunt Dorothy's conscience once got the upper hand of her hospitality.

The Lady Lucy always had a little erection closely resembling an altar, in her oratory at home, dressed in white, with sacred books on it; the Holy Scriptures, A Kempis, Herbert, and others, and above them a copy of a picture by Master Albert Durer, figuring our Lord on the Cross, the suffering thorn-crowned form gleaming pale and awful from the terrible noonday darkness. Before this solemn picture stood two golden candlesticks, which at night the waiting gentlewomen were wont to light. I shall never forget Aunt Dorothy's expression of dismay and distress when she first saw this erection, one evening soon after Lady Lucy's arrival. She mastered herself so far as to say nothing to Lady Lucy then, beyond the good wishes for the night, and directions as to some possets which she had come to administer.

But the solemn change that came over her voice and face she could not conceal. And afterwards she solemnly summoned us into my Father's private room to make known her discovery.

"An idol, brother!" she concluded, "an abomination! At this moment, probably, idol-worship going on under this roof, drawing down on us all the lightnings of heaven!"

"I should not use such a thing as a help to devotion myself, Sister Dorothy," said my Father; "but what would you have me do?"