“Some day the soft ideal that we wooed
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued,
And cries reproachful, ‘Was it, then, my praise,
And not myself was loved? Prove now thy truth;
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth;
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase,
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!’
Life may be given in many ways,
And loyalty to truth be sealed,
As bravely in the closet as the field,
So bountiful is fate;
But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and not to yield,
This shows, methinks, God’s plan,
And measure of a stalwart man.”
—Lowell.
It was on Wednesday, October 19, that the main body of Essex’s army set out from Worcester, and after making slow progress, owing to the terrible state of the roads, they reached the little market town of Kineton between nine and ten o’clock on the Saturday evening. The people, who in those parts were favourable to the Parliament, received them with no little kindness, and Gabriel soon found himself in comfortable quarters in the house of a certain Manoah Mills, a saddler, whose wife, Tibbie, was eager to bestow the good supper she had provided on six of the soldiers she thought most in need of it.
The worthy couple stood in their doorway to make choice of their guests. “We will have naught but knowledgeable men,” said Manoah, shaking his bald head shrewdly. “Good talkers that can tell us the news, and good men that can argue a point in theology.”
“Nay,” said Tibbie, “but I will have for one yon lad with the sad eyes, he’s sore in need of mothering, by the look of, Pshaw! a mere boy, and not even an officer,” protested Manoah.
But Tibbie had a will of her own, and while her husband brought in some shrewd and knowledgeable men to his taste, she beckoned to Gabriel. “Me and my husband can give you shelter for the night, sir, and a good supper, if you’ll step in. ’Tis hard if those who are fighting for us can’t get food and lodging on a cold night like this,” she said.
Gabriel thanked her, and gladly sat down to the excellent supper of fried eggs and bacon, and rye bread which the good woman provided; but when the “knowledgeable men” passed from the events of the day to a warm argument on a difficult point in theology, he fell far below Manoah’s standard, not being able to take any interest at all in the discussion, but growing more and more sleepy, till at length, when he had nodded violently in the middle of his host’s eager remarks on election and fore-ordination, Tibbie kindly pointed to an old oak settle by the fire. Here he stretched himself in great content, and leaving the theologians to edify themselves with their favourite pastime, was soon lulled by their voices into dreamless sleep.
Sunday was to be a day of rest, and he woke with a relieved consciousness that there would be no more ploughing their way knee deep in mud through the country lanes. Tibbie provided them with an excellent breakfast, and was just expressing her admiration of the way in which they all prepared to attend morning service at the Church, when the bugle sounded “to arms,” and like wild-fire the news ran through Kineton that the King was only two miles from them. Already the Royalist cavalry were forming on the top of Edgehill, a high hill overlooking the little market town, and Essex promptly drew out his forces in the open ground between, lining the hedges and enclosures which lay upon one side with musketeers.
Gabriel, in the Lord General’s regiment under Sir Philip Stapleton, found himself on the right wing next to Lord Brooke’s purple-coated troop, on the one side, and to Cromwell’s troop on the other.
Then came the apparently interminable waiting which most severely tries those who have never before been under fire. The day was cold and windy, moreover, and much rain had fallen during the night; to wait hour after hour while the King’s army massed itself on Edgehill was far from inspiriting.
At length, about one o’clock, when it became apparent that Essex was too good a general to scale heights guarded by a far more numerous army, and intended to wait in the admirable position he had chosen, at some little distance from the foot of the hill, the Royalist forces were brought down into the plain, and somewhat before three o’clock the dull roar of the cannon began. Then the Royalists advanced to the charge, and the left wing of the Parliamentary army, thrown into utter confusion through the treachery of Sir Faithful Fortescue, who had previously arranged with Prince Rupert to change sides on the field, broke and fled before Rupert’s fiery charge. Their panic, though partly checked by Denzil Holies, would certainly have ruined the hopes of the Parliamentary army had not Rupert been carried away by his usual impetuous zeal, and hotly pursued them as far as Kineton, where the sight of the valuable baggage waggons proved irresistible to him, and he and his troopers, totally ignoring the battle, lingered over the plunder till they were perforce driven back to the field by the advance of the Parliamentary rear-guard under Hampden and Grantham.
Meanwhile, Gabriel, who had had the good fortune to be in the admirably steadfast right wing, had passed through some strange experiences.
During the first exchange of cannon shots after those long hours of waiting, and before the first Royalist charge, a sickening imagination of what awaited them, for a minute half-paralysed him. He was grateful to a rugged-looking Scotsman beside him, who, understanding his sudden pallor, said: “Hoots, laddie, a’ that will pass by; think that the Cause has muckle need o’ just yer ain sel’.”
And at that minute, glancing towards the next troop, Gabriel perceived Cromwell a little in advance of his men, not looking harassed, as he had often seen him in London on his way to the House of Commons, but with an indescribable light in his strong, noble face—the light of one inspired: while from the manly voices of his troopers there rang out the psalm which, for Gabriel, would be for ever associated with Hilary and the morning in the cathedral when both had been so full of heaviness.
In trouble and adversity
The Lord God hear thee still,
The majesty of Jacob’s God
Defend thee from all ill.
What followed was more like some wild nightmare than like real waking existence; for awhile it seemed that the Parliamentary right wing was to be annihilated as the left had been, for beneath the splendid charge of Wilmot’s men Fielding’s regiment suffered grievously. By a rapid and clever movement Balfour and Stapleton slipped aside, that they might outflank the enemy, but Wilmot made precisely the same mistake made by Prince Rupert, and pursued the remnant of Fielding’s men, failing utterly to reckon with the men led by Cromwell, Balfour and Stapleton, who with great skill hemmed in the Royalists and fought with a desperate courage that carried all before it.
Of how matters were going Gabriel had scarcely a thought; he could realise only his near surroundings. He saw his Scotch neighbour drop to the ground, killed instantly by a ghastly injury of the head, and he sickened at the sight, till the memory of the dead man’s words came back to him. “The Cause has muckle need o’ just yer ain sel’.”
The next minute, with a horrible shriek, his horse reared wildly, and he found himself on the blood-stained turf. Struggling to his feet, still half-stunned by the shock, he snatched at the bridle of the dead Scot’s horse, and, mounting it, pressed eagerly forward, fighting now with an ardour and an impassioned zeal which he had not before felt. The Royalists were making a strenuous resistance, but they could not stand against the splendid charge of the Parliamentary troops, who, utterly undaunted by the line of pikes, pushed on with a steadfastness that was destined to retrieve their fortunes.
For Gabriel, however, it was soon merely a matter of blocking the way with his body, his second horse fell a victim, and as he leapt to the ground a pikeman ran him clean through the thigh; then came a crash and a sudden darkness, after which for some time he knew no more.
When he slowly revived and became conscious of the confused din of battle he for a moment thought himself in hell; the most horrible and unearthly screams close by made him shudder, and the pain of his wound, of which till then he had only been dully aware, became intolerable agony, as his shrieking horse in its dying struggles plunged on to him.
“God!” he cried, in his torture, “let me die!”
His words were heard. At that moment a horseman close by sharply reined back his galloping steed, put a pistol to the head of the plunging horse and ended its death agony, then, swiftly dismounting, bent for a moment over Gabriel, with a look of ineffable pity as he dragged him into a less torturing position.
He was a short man, and to Gabriel’s astonishment he wore the dress of a Royalist officer. Where had he before seen that broad-browed, kindly-eyed, yet decidedly plain face?
“Poor lad, I can do no more for you,” said a quiet voice which could scarcely be heard in the uproar.
“My Lord Falkland!” cried Gabriel, in amazement. “You!”
And then before he could say a word of gratitude, the black cloud began to steal over him once more and his eyes closed.
Falkland thought him dead, and remounting, rode back to rejoin Wilmot and urge him to attempt a decisive charge, for, like so many, he clung to the hope that the war might be ended by one great battle. At the same moment Hampden was urging a similar request to Essex, but the Generals on either side refused to venture a further attempt, and the gathering twilight gave them some excuse. The King’s standard-bearer, Sir Edward Verney, had been killed; the Royal Standard was taken; thousands of men lay dead or dying on the blood-stained plain, and the drawn battle of Edgehill was over.
Gabriel’s swoon must have lasted long, for it was quite dark when he again came to himself, he was too weak from loss of blood to wish definitely to live, though still the dead Scotsman’s words sounded in his ears and braced him to a certain extent, kept him, at any rate, from voluntarily letting go his precarious hold on life. Then a memory of Falkland’s pitying face came back to him, and he tried to think how it could have been possible that the Secretary of State should be there just at that minute. Early in the afternoon he had seen him with Wilmot’s men and had been surprised that one in his position should have exposed himself so needlessly. It must, he imagined, have been while returning with Wilmot from the pursuit of Fielding’s routed troop that he had chanced to ride in his direction. He moved a little, longing to make out where he lay, and how the day had gone, but the frightful agony of the attempt quickly made him desist; he sank down with his head propped up a little on the dead body of the horse which Falkland had put out of its pain.
And now he could make out here and there fires at some little distance on his left, while two or three fires on the top of Edgehill led him to think that the Royalists had retired again up the heights, and that Essex’s army intended to remain on the field throughout the night. Doubtless, in the morning, hostilities would be resumed.
The far away sound of a psalm raised him for a time above his pain; he prayed silently for the cause that had cost him so dear, and his thoughts wandered back to his home and to Hilary. How her face would have lighted up if he could have told her about Lord Falkland! Somehow, he could almost fancy the same pitying tone in her voice, had she come upon him in so terrible a plight. The thought gave him no little comfort.
But what was this horrible cold creeping over him? This icy chill which made the torture of his wound almost intolerable? Was this how death came when men were left to bleed on the battle-field? Was the death he had once so ardently desired coming to him now? All the youth within him rose up as if in protest. He longed, with an agony of longing, to live, and be once more physically strong.
Very quickly, however, the lifelong habit of direct and most simple communion with the Unseen came to his aid. And in answer to his cry he heard the comforting words, “The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by Him.” What did it matter whether life went on here or in some other world, since neither death, nor life, nor principalities, nor powers, could separate him from the love of God?
The sharp frost and the bitter, nipping cold of that autumn night killed some of the wounded, but saved many by the painful process of freezing their wounds and thus staunching the blood. When the age-long hours had been lived through, and the next day dawned, Gabriel was quite unable to move, even when he heard footsteps and voices close by, he was too dull and exhausted to call for aid; it was not until a young, vigorous-looking man, with a mass of wavy golden hair, stooped over him, that he raised himself to see whether he had fallen into the hands of friend or foe. The green coat and orange scarf told him in a moment that this was one of Colonel Hampden’s men.
“What of the battle?” he asked, faintly.
“Neither side was wholly victorious, but in the main they say that we made the best fight, as our infantry and cavalry acted better together. But doubtless the finest charge of the day was Prince Rupert’s.”
The momentary light in Gabriel’s face died out. The speaker broke off hurriedly and moistened the dry lips of the wounded man with water.
“You are badly hurt,” he exclaimed. “We will get you carried to Kineton, where the surgeons will attend to you.”
“Let me be!” said Gabriel, wearily. “The war has robbed me of all I value in life; for God’s sake, let me die in peace.”
“That will I not,” said the other, firmly. “You are but worn out with suffering; remember that the country yet needs you.”
He beckoned to two soldiers with a roughly extemporised litter, and then went on to look for others in need of help.
“Who is yon officer?” asked Gabriel, as the men set down the litter beside him.
“’Tis Cornet Joscelyn Heyworth,” replied the soldier, and without any loss of time he lifted Gabriel with little care and less skill from the ground, a process fraught with such hideous pain that a cry was wrung from his lips.
Joscelyn Heyworth hastily rejoined them.
“Take your water bottle to yonder man by the carcase of the white horse,” he said. “I will help to carry this gentleman to Kineton.”
Gabriel gave him a grateful look, but he was past speaking, and could with difficulty strangle his groans through the long rough journey.
At last he saw the church and the welcome sight of the houses in the little market town. His bearers hesitated for a minute as to where to take him.
“Try the house of Manoah Mills, the saddler,” he said, with an effort. Somehow the recollection of Tibbie’s motherly face carried with it a world of comfort.
“Here, lad,” said Joscelyn Heyworth, beckoning to a small boy who was playing hop scotch as unconcernedly as though there were no such things as wars and fightings amongst them, “guide us to the house of Manoah Mills and serve one who suffers that you may live in safety.”
The boy looked with awe at the bloodstained soldier on the litter and leading the way up the street knocked at the door of a gabled house, then stood aside as Tibbie appeared, and pointed her to the little group in the road.
“Woe worth the day!” she cried, running out with a face of pity. “Why,’tis Mr. Gabriel Harford that was our guest.”
“Can you tend him and give him a bed to lie on while I fetch the surgeon?” said Joscelyn Heyworth. “He’s badly hurt, and hath lain out in the frost all night.”
“Bring him in, sir,” said Tibbie. “He shall have the best bed in the house. Lord ha’ mercy on us! To think that one so young should lie at death’s door.”
“Don’t tell him that,” said Joscelyn Heyworth. “An he thinks he’s lying at the door, he will be minded to step inside.” Very gently he set down his comrade in the room that Tibbie showed him, and took it as a good omen that his words called up an amused look in the dark hazel eyes which mutely thanked him for his help.
He had great hopes that the battle would be resumed and a more decisive action promptly fought out, but in this he was doomed to be disappointed. The day was spent in burying the dead and attending to the wounded and then the Royalist forces withdrew, while the Parliamentary army rested that night at Kineton.
Joscelyn Heyworth, finding himself with free time on his hands, went to the saddler’s house again. Tibbie reported well of the patient, who, having had his wound attended to by the surgeon, had spent the greater part of the day in sleep, but was now, as she expressed it, “Turning contrairy, just like a man, and thinking himself worse when in truth he was mending.”
“I will take a turn at watching by him,” said Joscelyn. “You have had a hard day’s work.”
“Well, sir,” said Tibbie; “I’ll not deny that I’d as lief have a night’s rest. My man’s with him now; I’ll show you up.”
She led the way to the room to which the wounded man had been carried, and as she opened the door the voice of Manoah was heard discoursing on his favourite topic of election and foreordination. Gabriel lay wearily listening, and even the submissive Tibbie was roused by his look of patient endurance.
“Man!” she exclaimed, putting her hand on her husband’s shoulder, and gently shoving him from his chair, “I do believe you’d talk the hind leg off a donkey! Theology’s not for sickrooms, Manoah; go and discourse with them that’s not been wounded.”
Manoah made no objection, for what was the pleasure of arguing if there was no one to take the opposite side? He had never been able to drag more than a reluctant “possibly” or “perchance” from Mr. Harford. And theology, as he had severely told him, knew nothing of such vague words, but was a matter of “yea, yea,” and “nay, nay.”
However, he was somewhat mollified by Gabriel’s courteous thanks for his hospitality and great anxiety to give as little trouble as possible. And he never noticed the look of relief with which the patient heard Joscelyn Heyworth’s proposal to remain on night duty.
It seemed to Gabriel a long time since he had had a comrade of his own age and standing to talk to, and that strong link of contemporary life, in itself did him good, while naturally he was drawn to one so frank and friendly as his rescuer. There was a strength, too, about Cornet Heyworth which appealed to him; young as he was he nevertheless had the look and bearing of a man who had suffered for his convictions.
“How long have you been saddled with the saddler?” he asked, taking Manoah’s vacant chair.
“For an hour by the clock,” said Gabriel, “and never wished more for the use of my legs, that I might flee from his long tongue.”
Joscelyn laughed.
“Oh! you are mending,” he said, cheerfully. “Last time I saw you, you were not wanting to run but to die.”
“A man’s not responsible for what he says in extremity,” said Gabriel. “’Twas an award’s wish, and I’m ashamed of it now that I can think clearly.”
“A wish to be fought and conquered,” said Joscelyn, musingly. “But one that comes to us all in moments of the greatest suffering.”
Then, with a little hesitation, he told Gabriel that the war had robbed him also in cruel fashion, and in listening to what he was willing to tell of his story, the wounded man forgot his own troubles, and the two began a friendship that was to stand them in good stead.
“I owe my life to you,” said Gabriel, gratefully. “To you, and strangely enough, to my Lord Falkland.”
He told of the incident on the previous day and of his amazement that the Secretary of State should be there.
“In truth,” said Joscelyn Heyworth, “I heard from no less a person than Colonel Hampden’s cousin, Cromwell, that my Lord Falkland had ridden about the field more as one that wished to spare life than to take it, and he had heard from others that the Secretary of State intervened several times when the Royalists would have slain the fugitives, and urged that they should have quarter on throwing down their arms.
“But as Secretary he was not bound to fight at all,” said Gabriel.
“No, but ’twas well known that he ever counsels the King to make peace and, like all peacemakers, he is misunderstood and miscalled a coward; therefore, no doubt, he loses no chance to give the lie to those that taunt him, by throwing himself fearlessly into an unnecessary peril. Never has man been in harder case, for he is disliked now by both parties, and very scurvily treated, they say, by the King, who doth not like his plain-speaking and his scrupulous truthfulness.”
“Why did he ever desert the Parliamentary cause to which he was once true?” said Gabriel.
“Colonel Hampden, who hath a great regard for him, says that he distrusted Archbishop Laud’s teaching and his narrow intolerance, but dreaded the narrowness of the extreme Puritans even worse. Being thus in a strait betwixt two parties he, to Colonel Hampden’s great sorrow, cast in his lot with our opponents.”
“May God keep us from all evil passion in our fighting and make us as merciful foes as Lord Falkland has proved,” said Gabriel, sorely perplexed in his mind as he recalled the fiery spirit which had possessed him after he had seen the ghastly death-wound of his Scottish comrade. With what a strange, fierce joy he had hurled himself and his steed against the Royalist pikes, and with what burning heat the blood had coursed through his veins! Yet now the mere remembrance of the awful sights he had seen turned him positively faint.
Joscelyn Heyworth made him take some of Tibbie’s strongest cordial.
“I am but an ill nurse,” he said, “and have let you talk over much. Remember that the noblest men on both sides have tried their very utmost for years to settle matters peacefully; this is a last stand for freedom and truth against kingly despotism which, in the end, would leave England a prey to Rome, for the King is ruled by the Queen, and the Queen is ruled by her confessor.”
Gabriel remembered the dead Scotsman’s words, and they rang in his ear in very comforting fashion as at last he fell asleep.
His rescuer watched him thoughtfully. He had spoken of his home and his parents, clearly the war had not robbed him of them; it must, then, be some yet dearer tie that had been severed. And long before the morning dawned Joscelyn knew practically the whole story, for all through the night the feverish wanderings of the wounded man took the form of last interviews and broken-hearted partings with a maiden named “Hilary,” who refused to remain betrothed to one she thought a rebel and a traitor.
Love doth unite and knit, both make and keep
Things one together, which were otherwise,
Or would be both diverse and distant.
—Christopher Harvey.
It was not until the latter part of October that Hilary and her mother returned to Hereford. The news of the occupation of the city by the Earl of Stamford had kept them longer at Whitbourne than had been expected; but the cold of the country did not suit Mrs. Unett, and both mother and daughter were glad to settle down once more in their own home.
Unfortunately, all the girl’s gentle thoughts had been banished by hearing of the occupation of Hereford by the Parliament’s army. She was once again a vehement little hater, and was revelling in the thought of the resolute way in which she would keep Gabriel at a distance, refusing even to notice him if they passed in the street.
As a matter of fact, the city looked exactly as usual on their return, not a shot had been fired, no harm had been done to the cathedral, and except for the discomfort of having soldiers in the place, few people had complaints to make. Even Durdle shocked her young mistress by the favourable way in which she spoke of the army.
“They do say there was some mischief done to Mrs. Joyce Jefferies’ house,” she admitted, “for she and Miss Acton they fled to Garnons in a panic. But had they stayed here all would have been well, for Mr. Gabriel Harford would have taken care of them as he did of us.”
Hilary’s face flamed, but she was too proud to question the housekeeper.
“He was down in the garden the night the soldiers was clamouring at Byster’s Gate,” resumed Durdle, after a pause, “and hearing Maria screaming, he came to the door to ask if aught was amiss, and no one could have been kinder like, nor did he ever let a soldier come nigh the house. And he came to bid me farewell on the fourth of October, when he went away to Worcester to join the army, and spoke that civil and pleasant just as though he’d been naught but a lad still.”
Hilary’s brain seemed to reel; she made a pretence of stooping to pick up a tortoiseshell cat which dozed by the kitchen fire.
“Bad puss, have you been eating blackbeetles, to grow so thin?” she exclaimed, stroking her pet with well-assumed indifference.
“What was that you were saying about Worcester, Durdle?”
The good-natured housekeeper gasped, her simple mind could not in the least understand the subtle workings of Hilary’s more complex nature.
“Talk about pussy’s bowels being injured by beetles,” she said to herself, “’tis my belief the lassie has no bowels at all. Was ever such a heartless speech!”
“Well, Mistress, I was saying how Mr. Gabriel Harford had gone to join the Earl of Essex’s army, along with his friend Mr. Edward Harley that was at Oxford with him.”
“Oh, indeed,” said Hilary, carrying her head high. “Dr. Rogers tells me the troopers stabled their horses in the nave and cloisters at Worcester. Send up Maria to fetch my cape and hood, Durdle; they got crushed in the coach, and had best be ironed.”
Then humming a cheerful song, she quitted the kitchen and sauntered out into the garden, her heart throbbing as if it would choke her.
“He has joined the rebel army, and ’tis my fault,” she thought, in anguish. “If he is killed, his death will be my doing! Oh, why was I so cruel? Naught I could say would have changed his views, but at least he would have gone quietly back to his studies had I not taunted him.”
Every nook in the garden seemed haunted by memories of lost happiness, she could not pass the sunny wall to which the apricot trees were fastened, or look towards the stone bench by the briar bush, without seeing in fancy her lover’s face; and she knew very well why he had wandered into that special place on the night of the servants’ alarm about the soldiers.
The sound of the gardener singing, as he gathered the apples, smote discordantly on her ear, and specially when drawing nearer she caught the doleful words of an old ballad called “The Wife of Usher’s Well,” in which the ghosts of the three dead sons return to their home, but can only remain for the briefest of visits. The gardener sang with stolid cheerfulness as he filled his basket:
“The cock doth craw, the day doth daw
The channerin’ worm doth chide;
Gin we be mist out o’ our place,
A sair pain we maun bide.
Fare ye weel, my mother dear!
Fareweel to barn and byre!
And fare ye weel, the bonny lass,
That kindles my mother’s fire.”
Turning hastily away to escape this dismal ditty she reentered the house, and was glad to encounter her favourite uncle, Dr. William Coke, who, during Gabriel’s absence in London, had been appointed to the living of Bosbury, vacant on the death of old Mr. Wall. He had not been among the very few who had been told of Hilary’s betrothal, and this fact made her now more at ease with him than with her grandfather or her mother. For a minute she forgot her troubles.
“We have but just returned from Whitbourne, sir,” she said, cheerfully. “’Tis indeed good of you to come to us.”
“I thought, maybe, your mother would be disturbed at today’s news, and rode over to have a chat with her,” said Dr. Coke, his genial face clouding a little.
“We have heard no fresh news,” said Hilary, eagerly. “What has happened, sir?”
“There has been a great battle in Warwickshire, nigh to Kineton, and though at first all thought the King’s troops would be victorious, in the end it proved but a drawn battle, both sides suffering grievously, and naught gained to either. They tell me that thousands lie dead on the field.”
His sorrowful face made Hilary realise more than she had yet done what war meant; her head drooped as she remembered her exultation over the fifty Parliament men killed at Powick Bridge, and recalled Gabriel’s look of reproach. Very few details had as yet been learnt, and when she had heard all her uncle could tell her she left him to talk with Mrs. Unett, and for the sake of being free and undisturbed sought the cathedral—the only place, save the garden, to which she was allowed to go without an attendant.
Entering by the great north porch, she walked through the quiet, deserted building to the north-east transept, and went to a little retired nook by an arch in the north wall, where lay the effigy of Bishop Swinfield. Here she had often come for quiet during the two years of her betrothal, partly because it was a place where no one was likely to notice her, and partly on account of her recollections of the snow effigy which she and Gabriel had once fashioned after this pattern, in honour of Sir John Eliot. Behind the tomb was a beautifully sculptured bas-relief of the Crucifixion, and Hilary saw, with satisfaction, that it had not been injured at all by the Earl of Stamford’s soldiers, who, according to Durdle, had only visited the cathedral on Sunday morning, when they had been somewhat disorderly, and had grumbled that prayers were said for the King, but never a word for the Parliament.
She knelt long in the quiet, and when she once more turned her steps homeward her remorse was less bitter and more practical, and at last, after a hard struggle, she conquered her pride, and knocked at Dr. Harford’s door, asking whether she could see Mrs. Harford.
Now Gabriel’s mother was one of those women whose affections are strictly limited to their own families. In so far as outsiders were useful to her husband or her son, she liked them; but if they caused her beloved ones the least trouble or pain, she most cordially hated them.
So when Hilary conquered herself sufficiently to pay this visit, Mrs. Harford, unable to see any point of view but her own, received the girl in a most frigid way.
“We have but just returned from Whitbourne,” said Hilary, blushing, “and I called to inquire after you, ma’am.”
“I am as well as any of us can hope to be in these troubled times,” said Mrs. Harford, coldly.
There was an awkward pause, broken at last by an inquiry for Mrs. Unett. Hilary tried desperately to prolong her answer. At the close came another pause.
“We have but just heard from my uncle, Dr. Coke, of the great battle in Warwickshire,” she said, falteringly. “Have you had any news, ma’am?”
The mother looked searchingly into the girl’s blushing face. “Yes,” she replied, “only an hour or two since a messenger brought me a letter from Lady Brilliana Harley, who had heard from her husband. He wrote the day after the battle.”
The silence that followed almost maddened Hilary. “Were Sir Robert and Mr. Harley safe?” she asked.
“Quite safe!” said Mrs. Harford, resolved not to spare the girl or help her out in any way. It was some slight satisfaction to her to see this proud maiden suffer.
“And Gabriel?” she faltered. “He was safe, too?”
“Alas, no!” said the mother, with a sigh.
Hilary turned white, but asked no more questions. As if from a great distance she heard the silence at length broken by Mrs. Harford’s voice.
“They gave him up for lost that night, but the next morning a young officer, Mr. Joscelyn Heyworth, found him on the field and there was still life in him. They carried him to Kineton, and he lies there grievously wounded.”
The girl rallied her failing powers and became obstinately hopeful. “He is young and strong,” she said, with forced cheerfulness. “He is sure to recover. My mother will be very sorry to hear your ill news, and—and—if you should again have tidings, she would be glad to hear, I know.”
“We cannot hope to hear again,” said Mrs. Harford. “It was only by great good fortune that Sir Robert Harley was able to get a letter to Lady Brilliana, and we are little like to hear from Gabriel himself, even if he were well enough to write. This is the hard part of war, the terrible waiting for news.” After formally polite farewells Hilary found herself going down the broad oak staircase with dim eyes; but Neptune, Gabriel’s favourite spaniel, stood wagging his tail in most friendly fashion in the entrance-hall, and her sore heart was a little comforted when he bounded up to lick her hand as if he recognised the fact that she was still in some subtle way connected with his master.
Unwilling to pass through the street with eyes brimming over with tears, she went back through the garden and by the little wicket gate. But the sight of the sunny south walk did not raise her spirits, and with the terror that even now Gabriel might be lying dead at Kineton, she could hardly endure the sound of the gardener’s dismal ditty. He still toiled away at the apple gathering, and still chanted, in lugubrious tones, the gruesome words:
“The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,
The channerin’ worm doth chide-”
Hurrying away from this unbearable song and half blinded by tears, she suddenly found herself brought to a pause by Dr. William Coke, who was standing at the door that he might more closely inspect in the sunshine a fossil which they had brought back from Whitbourne.
“Whither away so fast, little niece?” he said in his genial voice. Then catching sight of the wet eyelashes, “Eh, what is amiss, my dear?”
“’Tis only that the stupid gardener will sing gruesome ballads about graves and channerin’ worms just on this special day when we have heard how thousands are dead and dying at Kineton,” said Hilary.
He sighed as he patted her shoulder, caressingly.
“True, child, it is indeed a dark day for England. May God send us peace! But dwell not on that thought of the grave. Remember rather the words, ‘The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God.’”
“But they were not all righteous,” said Hilary, in a choked voice.
“True, yet all belong to Him.”
“Many were rebels,” she said, “and Dr. Rogers thinks that all rebels will burn for ever in hell.”
“My dear, though Dr. Rogers is a learned man, he knows no more than the rest of us about the future state. I would even venture to say,” and here Dr. Coke’s eyes twinkled, “that he knows less than many, for his heart is not dominated by love but by zeal for orthodoxy, a thing which some folk mistake for the following of Christ. And though, as you know, I am loyal to His Majesty, I am bound to own that there has been much in his rule which rightly roused the indignation of free Englishmen, and I see that even in my own parish many of the best and the most God-fearing men have felt it to be their duty to resist the King and to join the Parliamentary forces.”
Hilary was comforted by these words, and through that weary autumn, while they vainly hoped for news of Gabriel, she often thought of them, and something of her uncle’s wider and nobler way of looking at things began to dispel the bitter and contemptuous spirit which’ Dr. Rogers’s teaching had fostered in her. Happily for her, he was not just then in residence, and in his absence her heart had some chance of softening and expanding.
At length Christmas came and with it the question whether, for the first time in her life, she should ignore her next-door neighbours. She had not dared to approach Mrs. Harford since the day she had heard that Gabriel was wounded at Edgehill. But she had once or twice encountered the doctor, and he had always paused to greet her kindly and to tell her that, as yet, no further news had reached them. He quietly assumed that she still took some interest in Gabriel, and by his tact and courtesy steered her safely through the difficult renewal of friendly relations.
On Christmas Eve she summoned up her courage and carried to the next-door house a basket full of orange cakes of her own making, which for years she had been in the habit of taking to Dr. Harford for the festival.
She found him in his study, looking less careworn than he had done of late. “So you have not forgotten your old friend?” he said, saluting her with more than his usual kindliness of manner. “Here are holly and mistletoe to remind us of Pagan and Druid rites, now happily at an end, and
‘Here’s rosemary; that’s for remembrance.’
I am right glad that the maiden I have known from cradle days hath a kind remembrance of her old neighbour, who is yet not too old to enjoy orange cakes of her making.”
“My mother sends you the season’s greeting, sir,” said Hilary; “and she would have visited Mrs. Harford, but she keeps the house to-day with a very great cold.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” said the doctor. “You must have a care of her this winter, Hilary, and let her run no risks. She will, I know, rejoice with us that we have at length heard good news of Gabriel.”
He carefully avoided looking at the girl, but was glad to hear the tremor in her voice as she exclaimed, “Oh! have you indeed heard from him? Then there is no need to wish you a happy Christmas, for I am sure you have it.”
He turned away and made a pretence of searching for the letter, all the time knowing perfectly well where it was. “Take this with you and read it to Mrs. Unett,” he said, still avoiding the girl’s eyes. “She will be glad to know that he hath made a good recovery.”
Hilary thanked him and made haste to depart. She did not pause to analyse her feelings—life was more simple in those days; but in her glowing face, and even in her quick, eager step as she entered the withdrawing-room, Mrs. Unett read the truth. She had dismissed Gabriel in hot anger, but love for him still lingered in her heart. Would its flickering light kindle once more into lasting warmth and brightness, or would the icy-cold breath of political strife in the end prevail, and finally extinguish it?
She knelt in the ingle nook close to her mother’s armchair, and together they read the letter:
“My Dear Sir,—You will doubtless have heard through Sir Robert Harley that I was left at Kineton, with other wounded men, after the fight. Thanks to the rescue of one Mr. Joscelyn Heyworth, and the care of Tibbie Mills, wife of a worthy saddler of Kineton, my wound—a pike wound through the right thigh—healed by the end of November, and learning that my Lord of Essex’ army was in the neighbourhood of London, I rode there by easy stages and sought out Sir Robert. I found that Ned, who had been serving under Sir William Waller, hath himself now command of a regiment of foot, and as fresh men were being sent down to Sir William the second week in December, I was ordered to go with them. This left me some days in London, which I spent at Nottinghill; my grandmother gave me a very hearty welcome, and was glad to hear the latest tidings of you and of my mother. Who should I find staying in her house, and painting her portrait, but M. Jean Petitot, the miniature painter? Whereupon she insisted that he should paint my portrait also on enamel, and she intends, when a fit chance arrives, to send it by some trusty bearer to you, for she was right glad, she said, that you had not grudged your only son to the good cause. When you see the miniature, I fear you will quote the scurrilous satire put forth by the Royalists:
This is a very Roundhead in good truth!’
For Tibbie acted the part of Delilah, and shaved off my long hair at Kineton, to the great satisfaction of her husband, Manoah, a very strict Puritan, and to my great comfort as I lay ill. However, she hath left enough to curl over the head and round the nape of the neck, so that I do not take after the fanatic section, who shave their locks in a fashion that shows the very skin of the head, and reduces hair to bristles. There was a man in the Farnham garrison—a vile, sanctimonious hypocrite—who affected this style, and whose ears stuck out most horridly from his close-cropped skull.
“We quitted London the second week in December, and by night march reached Farnham Castle early one morning. You can judge how great my pleasure was to encounter again Mr. Joscelyn Heyworth, now appointed galloper to Sir William Waller. He is a little my senior, and a man that would be after your own heart—strong and vigorous and of a merry humour, though now somewhat downcast on account of family divisions, all his kinsfolk being of the King’s party. Spite, however, of their differing views, he remains on very loving terms with some of them, though I learnt from one of Waller’s officers that his father, Sir Thomas Heyworth, treated him with great harshness and severity, disinheriting him and disowning him. His friendship is the greatest boon I could have, and the sole thing in which I have found pleasure since the day we heard of the rout of Powick Bridge. We rested for ten hours at Farnham Castle, and then pushed on with the rest of Sir William Waller’s force to Winchester, which yielded to us after a very short siege. We are now marching to attack Chichester, and have had a rough time, for the rain has come down in torrents for some days, and to lie in the wet fields o’ nights doth not give much rest to such of us as have old wounds much prone to making themselves felt. To-morrow I have an opportunity of sending this to you, as a despatch-bearer is riding to Colonel Massey at Gloucester. I hope it may reach you by Christmas, and carry to you and my mother the season’s greetings, and remembrance to any former friends who will receive such greeting from one of Sir William Waller’s lieutenants.—I rest, dear sir,
“Your son to serve you,
“Gabriel Harford.
“Written this 17 th day of December, 1642, at Petersfield.”
Christmas, with its unfailing call to realise the unity of the one great family, cannot be joyless, however sad its surroundings. Both to Gabriel, marching to besiege Chichester, and to Hilary in the quiet of the old home at Hereford, there came a sense of rest and peace which was not to be marred even by the miseries of a civil war.
But, unfortunately, with Easter came Dr. Rogers’s term of residence, and there is no influence so deadly as that of a bitter and unscrupulous priest who, forgetting his ordination vow to maintain and set forwards quietness, peace, and love, among all Christian people, fans the flame of war, or upholds a tyranny that will ultimately ruin his nation.
“I know I love in vain, strive against hope,
Yet in this captious and intenible sieve,
I still pour in the waters of my love.”
—Alls Well That Ends Well.
Gabriel Harford was not a man who made many friends, his great reserve, and a certain fastidious taste gave him an undeserved reputation for pride and exclusiveness. Moreover, all that he had gone through since Hilary’s angry dismissal had tended to bring out the sterner and sadder side of his nature. He was respected as an indefatigable worker, but few really appreciated him.
Fortunately, he had found his complement in Joscelyn Hey-worth, a cheerful, buoyant and extremely sociable young officer, whose friendship had done much to save him from falling a prey to the bitterness too apt to overtake those who defend an unpopular truth.
He had also one other firm friend in the regiment—Major Locke, a grey-haired, middle-aged man, who had served in the German wars.
The Major was a character, and anyone looking at him as he sat one cold April evening in the chimney corner of a snug room at Gloucester would have fancied from his melancholy voice and long, grave face that he was a most strait-laced Puritan. Voice and face alike belied him, however, for he was, in truth, the wag of the regiment; and an occasional twinkle in his light grey eyes led a few shrewd people to suspect that he usually had a hand in the practical jokes which now and then relieved the tedium of the campaign. His jokes were always of a good-natured order, and had done much to keep up the men’s spirits through that hard winter, with its arduous night marches, its privations and its desultory warfare.
Town after town had yielded to Sir William Waller, but the net result of the war was at present small.
On this evening the officers had dispersed soon after supper, weary with thirty-six hours of difficult manoeuvring, and one or two sharp skirmishes but they had been triumphantly successful in cutting through Prince Maurice’s army, owing to Waller’s skilful tactics, and all were now inclined to snatch a good night’s rest in the comfortable quarters assigned them at Gloucester.
Gabriel, dead beat with sheer hard work, had fallen sound asleep in a high-backed arm-chair by the fire long before the others had satisfied their hunger; he woke, however, with a start as they rose from the table, responding sleepily to the general “good night,” but loth to stir from his nook.
“Come, my boy,” said the Major, “why sleep dog-fashion when, for once, you may have a bed like a good Christian?”
“I will wait till Captain Heyworth comes back,” said Gabriel stretching himself and yawning in truly canine fashion.
“And that will not be over soon, for he will linger at Mr. Bennett’s house, chatting to pretty Mistress Coriton, his promised bride.”
“’Tis like enough,” said Gabriel, with a sigh, recalling a glimpse he had had of Clemency Coriton’s love-lit eyes as her betrothed had marched past the gabled house in the Close that evening. How they contrasted with those dark grey eyes which had flashed with such haughty defiance as Hilary had spoken her last hard words to him—“I will look on your face no more!”
“H’m,” said the Major, “here he comes an I mistake not just as I had hit on a first rate trick to play him. No, ’tis one that knocks—see who it is, my boy, we want no visitors at this hour.”
Gabriel crossed the room and threw open the door. A tall, handsome man, apparently about thirty, stood without, his long, tawny red hair, his fawn-coloured cloak, lined with scarlet, his rakish-looking hat with its sweeping feathers, together with the scarlet ribbons which were the badge of the Royalists, made him rather a startling apparition in the Puritan city of Gloucester, and especially at Sir William Waller’s headquarters.
“Is Major Locke within? they told me I should find him here,” he said in a voice which had something peculiarly genial in its mellow tones..
“The Major is here, sir,” said Gabriel, ushering him in and wondering much who he could be.
“What, you, Squire Norton!” exclaimed Major Locke in astonishment, as he greeted him civilly, but with marked coldness—“Colonel Norton, at your service,” said the visitor, with a short laugh that entirely lacked the pleasantness of his voice in speaking. “You are surprised to see me in the godly city of Gloucester.”
“Well, sir, you are certainly the last person I should have desired as a visitor,” said the Major, bluntly.
“Major Locke was my most frank and outspoken neighbour,” said Norton, turning with one of his flashing smiles to Gabriel. “Next to a good friend commend me to a whole-hearted enemy who hates with a righteous and altogether thorough hatred. But, my worthy Major, you, as one of the godly party, should really obey all Scriptural injunctions. Is it not written, ‘If thine enemy thirst, give him drink’?”
“Lieutenant Harford,” said the Major, in his most lugubrious voice, “see that this gentleman has all that he requires. And in the meantime, Colonel Norton, I must ask you to explain your presence here.”
“I accompanied a friend of mine who was allowed to pass the gates to-night with a letter from Prince Maurice to Sir William Waller. Your General is now writing the answer, and I had leave to seek you out on a private matter.”
“I desire no private dealing with you, sir,” said the Major, stiffly.
Norton laughed as he replied, “If Lieutenant Harford, who has so courteously heaped coals of fire on my head by filling me this excellent cup of sack, will withdraw, I will explain to you what I mean, Major. I assure you my intentions are wholly honourable.”
The Major made an expressive gesture of the shoulders, evidently doubting whether he and his visitor put the same construction on that last word. Gabriel bowed and was about to leave the room when his friend checked him.
“Do not go, Lieutenant,” he said, decidedly. “I wish to have you present as long as Colonel Norton remains.”
“As you will,” said Norton, easily. “I am here entirely in your interest, sir.”
The Major drummed impatiently on the table.
“You seem to doubt that I have an eye to your interests,” said Norton, laughing.
“Well, sir, I have known you all your life, and I dare swear ’tis the first time you have considered anyone except yourself,” said Major Locke, sententiously.
“You have a cursed long memory,” said Norton, cheerfully. “But look you, Major, I know for a certainty that, early to-morrow, Prince Maurice will send troops to besiege your house. The Manor is in a position which will serve his purpose, and he intends to have a garrison there. Your property will be ruined, your household turned out, or should they resist, made prisoners, or mayhap, slaughtered. With one word you can save such a disaster.”
“And pray what word may that be?” said the Major, frowning.
“Your word of honour that you will give me your daughter Helena in marriage.”
The Major flushed angrily.
“Sir,” he said, indignantly, “to that request you have already had your answer.”
“But the times have changed, Major, and I warn you that your answer had best change with them. Do you not see that I have your whole property in my power? Speak only this word and I will contrive that the Manor shall not be attacked, the Prince will easily be diverted from his plan, and I will get a special letter of protection for your whole household.”
“Rather than see my daughter wedded to you,” said the Major, sternly, “I would kill her with my own hand.”
“I believe you would, my sturdy Virginius,” said Norton, with a laugh. “However, I trust you will not come across her. To-morrow, when the Manor yields to Prince Maurice, my first thought shall be to take pretty Mistress Helena under my protection—no need in time of war for parsons or bridal ceremonies.”
At that the Major sprang forward white with anger, and struck Norton on the mouth.
“Curse you!” cried the Colonel, drawing his sword. “If you will force a quarrel upon me, let us fight it out at once; but I call the Lieutenant to witness that the provocation——”
“Hold your lying tongue, sir,” said the Major, pushing back the table and whipping out his sword, and the next moment the sharp clash of the blades rang through the room.
Gabriel was entirely absorbed in watching the combatants; he did not notice that a stalwart gentleman, with long, light brown hair and a short, pointed beard, had quietly opened the door behind him, and he started violently when Sir William Waller strode across the room, Joscelyn Heyworth closing the door as he followed his chief.
“Gentlemen!” exclaimed the General, striking up their swords. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Sir,” said the Major, “I was bound to avenge a gross insult to my daughter.”
“You must not fight a duel here,” said Sir William, sternly. “Colonel Norton has a free pass, and I am bound to see that he returns in safety to Prince Maurice.”
“It is an entirely private matter, sir,” said Norton. “It will be a satisfaction to us both to carry the matter through.”
“Very possibly,” said Waller, giving Norton a keen glance with his blue-grey eyes, and quickly taking the measure of the man. “But private affairs, sir, must ever yield to public duties. Your companion awaits you, with my letter in reply to the Prince. I wish you good night, sir.”
Norton, with a shrug of the shoulders sheathed his sword, donned his doublet and cloak, and, with a sweeping bow, waved his hat in farewell.
“Good-night, gentlemen,” he said, with easy courtesy. “Major, to our next merry meeting!” and with an ironical smile and a mockingly profound bow to his enemy he strode out of the room.
“I crave your pardon, sir,” said Major Locke, “but when that wolf in sheep’s clothing shamelessly proclaimed his wicked designs on my child I could not restrain myself.”
“Well, Major, we will say no more of the matter,” said Waller. “I can well understand that your feelings as a father overpowered all remembrance of your duty as an officer.”
“Sir, I implore you to let me ride home at once and place my daughter out of this villain’s reach. He tells me that early to-morrow Prince Maurice intends to attack my Manor House, with a view to having a garrison there.”
“These outlying garrisons are the curse of the country,” said Waller, stroking his moustache meditatively. “Is your house capable of standing a siege if we sent a detachment to help them?”
“No, sir, not at such short notice, though it could be made a formidable place had we time.”
“I cannot let you go off on a private errand to-night, Major. You are indispensable to me, and I have given my word to Massey that I will join him at Tewkesbury early tomorrow morning. We must march from here in three hours’ time.”
The poor Major moved away with a look of such despair that Waller, always a most kindly and considerate man, hastily turned over in his mind two or three schemes for aiding him.
“You say you could place your daughter out of Norton’s reach. Where could you place her?”
“Here, sir, in Gloucester, under the care of my trusty friend, Alderman Pury. I know he would shelter her.”
“Well, let your servant ride home now and fetch the lady, rejoining you to-morrow evening at Tewkesbury.”
“My servant, sir, is the veriest dolt; I could not trust him with so risky a piece of work. Prince Maurice’s army is in the near neighbourhood.”
“Sir,” said Gabriel, coming forward, eagerly, “I beg you to let me serve Major Locke in this matter. I was at school at Gloucester and know the neighbourhood well.”
“So ho, young knight-errant!” said Waller, with his genial laugh. “You are in hot haste to rescue this fair lady, and I like you the better for it. But you are somewhat young for so hazardous a venture. We cannot tell what tricks this Colonel Norton may devise.”
“If there were two of us, sir,” said Joscelyn Heyworth, “we might the better outwit him.”
“So you would have me spare my galloper also? Well, tomorrow’s march is like to be a straightforward matter, not a difficult bit of manoeuvring like to-day. Rejoin the regiment to-morrow evening at Tewkesbury, and in the interval do what you can for Major Locke.”
“We must leave our horses in Gloucester until we return with Mistress Helena,” said Gabriel. “They are hackneyed out with all the work they have had.”
“True. Latimer was sore spent,” said Joscelyn Heyworth. “I will send my man Moirison to hire fresh horses, and by-the-bye, Major, I think we shall do well to take him with us, he is a shrewd fellow, and three horsemen will make a better escort for your daughter.”
“Well, gentlemen, I can only accept your help very gratefully,” said Major Locke. “To have my little Nell safely sheltered in Gloucester will ease my mind greatly. While you see to the horses, I will write her a letter telling her what I would have her do.”
“I would have spared you if I could rightly have done so, Major,” said Waller, pausing with his hand on the door. “But a man who has been through the German wars is worth his weight in gold, and I am bound to think first of the public weal.”
“But I am ty’d to very thee
By ev’ry thought I have;
Thy face I only care to see,
Thy heart I only crave.”
Sedley.
In an hour’s time the preparations were made, and, furnished with a pass from Waller, the two friends, with Morrison, Captain Heyworth’s servant, in attendance, rode through the sleeping city and, after a brief delay at the gate, passed out into the open country.
Gabriel forgot his fatigue in the excitement of this unexpected quest. The night was very still, and little fleecy white clouds floated in the moonlit sky; he began keenly to enjoy the prospect of thwarting Colonel Norton, whose brutal words to Major Locke had stirred up in him a resentment which was all the fiercer because he had at first been deceived by the pleasant voice and the buoyant cheerfulness of their visitor. Here was a man who might easily enough betray a young and ignorant girl. He could fancy only too well how Hilary would have been attracted by this light-hearted officer, with his ready smile and his merry-looking eyes; and the thought made him all the more eager to rescue little Helena Locke.
“Has the Major only this one child?” he asked.
“Ay,” replied Joscelyn Heyworth, “’tis a case of
‘One fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.’
She inherits the estate, and doubtless Colonel Norton has an eye to that.”
They had ridden for some two hours, when Gabriel pointed to a tower darkly outlined against the pale sky. “Yonder lies the church,” he said. “We take this turning to the right. What is that ahead? Surely I saw a light through the trees.”
“Corpse candles in the churchyard, maybe,” said Joscelyn.
“No, ’twas not near the church, but yonder. See, ’tis a light in a cottage; ’tis the gatehouse of the Manor.”
“All the better,” said Joscelyn, “they will be ready to open to us.”
Without replying, Gabriel dismounted and looked closely at the marks on the road near the gate. “A couple of horsemen have just entered, I should say by these hoof-prints,” he exclaimed. And picking up a pebble he threw it against the lighted window of the gate-house.
Immediately the door of the lodge was cautiously opened, and an old white-haired man put out his head. “Who goes there?” he cried.
“We have a message from your master, Major Locke, and have ridden in haste from Gloucester,” said Gabriel.
The old man, looking much perturbed, took up his lantern and came out to the gate. “Why, that be strange,” he said, scratching his head, as he noted the orange scarves with which their buff coats were girt, “you bring a message from master at Gloucester, and but ten minutes since I let in two gentlemen who brought a message from him at Little Dean, where they tell me he lies wounded and a prisoner.”
“Was the messenger you admitted Colonel Norton?” asked Joscelyn Heyworth.
“Ay, ’twas young Squire Norton that lives over at Crawleigh Park; known master all his life he has, and was willing to show him a kindness and take Mistress Helena to him ere he die.”
“Man,” said Gabriel, impatiently, “’tis all a pack of lies. We serve under Major Locke and have left him but now in sound health at Gloucester; he knows that Colonel Norton means to entrap his daughter, and, being unable to come, has sent us to escort her safely to Alderman Pury’s house. Here is a letter for her in your master’s own hand if you doubt me.”
The old man raised the lantern, but his eyes were fixed on Gabriel’s face, not on the letter. “I can’t read writing,” he said, “but the Almighty’s given me some skill in reading faces, and yours, sir, has truth in every line. I blame myself for trusting young Squire Norton, but the news that the master was at death’s door dithered me, and that’s a fact.”
“Let us lose no time,” said Gabriel, eagerly. “Will Colonel Norton have been long at the house?”
“Nay, sir; for it will take my son, who went with him, a bit of a time to rouse the household. Belike they may be still outside.”
“Good; then let us leave the horses without the gate in charge of Morrison,” said Joscelyn Heyworth, “and do you guide us to the house.”
“We must steal in without noise,” said Gabriel, quickly, “and, if possible, convey Mistress Helena away before Colonel Norton sees her. Where does that light come from?”
“It be in the window of the dining-hall,” said the gatekeeper, keeping up with the two young officers by means of a shambling trot, which made his words come in a series of jerks and gasps. “But as sure as my name’s Amos I don’t see how you are to get speech of Mistress Helena now that Squire Norton has the start of you.”
“I will see how the land lies,” said Gabriel, lowering his voice as they drew near to the house. “Should Colonel Norton be in the hall you can surely convey us upstairs without his knowledge?”
“I’ll do my best, sir, but ’twill be a difficult matter,” said Amos.
They were walking, not on the carriage road, but over the bowling-green, and Gabriel now hastened noiselessly forward, and, swinging himself up by a sturdy little hawthorn which grew close to the house, he looked anxiously into the hall. It was a great, bare place, wainscotted with black oak, and lighted only by a couple of candles. A flagon of wine stood on the long, narrow table in the centre, and the visitors were refreshing themselves after their long ride. The Prince’s messenger had his back to the window, and little was visible of him but his long dark lovelocks. Norton, at the opposite side of the table, lay back in a carved elbow-chair, a silver cup in his shapely hand, and the candle light full on his handsome, reckless face.
Gabriel saw at a glance that the hall was constructed on the usual plan of mediaeval houses, with a minstrels’ gallery at the end nearest the outer door of the mansion, and beneath the gallery two open archways leading through the wooden screen to a passage traversing the house from front to back. Across one of the archways hung a thick crimson curtain, but the archway nearest the main door was exposed to view, the curtain having evidently been half drawn back on the arrival of the midnight guests.
He dropped down noiselessly from his post of observation.
“The two of them are in there drinking,” he said, in a whisper. “Mistress Helena hath not yet come down. Is there any means of reaching her by the stairs leading to the gallery?”
“Ay, sir, the little stone stair leads up to the gallery, and on beyond to the upper rooms,” whispered Amos, his shrewd old face lighting up as he began to hope for a successful issue.
“Good; then let us off with our boots, and steal through to the gallery stairs without a sound.”
Amos stepped out of his broad low-heeled shoes easily enough, but the high riding-boots and spurs of the two young knights proved a more difficult matter, and Joscelyn Heyworth waxed so merry over their struggles that they came perilously near to an audible laugh. Their preparations made, the gatekeeper led the way up the steps to the main entrance, softly opened the door and admitted them into a flagged passage; a broad stream of light fell athwart the white stones from the archway on the right leading into the hall; they paused a moment before advancing, and to their relief heard that Norton and his companion were talking—under cover of their voices it would be easier to risk the perilous crossing to the stairs.
“This fair damsel takes a great deal of rousing,” said the Prince’s messenger. “Doth she intend to make a full toilette before coming down to hear of her father’s plight?”
“We won’t grudge her time to doff her nightcap,” said Norton, “for i’ faith, Tom, she hath the prettiest golden locks you ever saw. What shall I tell her of the old Major’s wound? Shot through the lungs, eh? Life hangs on a thread? By the Lord Harry! I only wish it did,” and he laughed boisterously.
Taking advantage of this noise, Gabriel put his hand on old Amos’ arm and walked swiftly past the archway, and on beyond to the spiral staircase which lay concealed behind a door in the wainscot.
“What’s that?” exclaimed Norton, “I thought I saw a shadow in the passage.”
“Patience, man,” said the other. “’Twas doubtless the fellow that let us in. I faith I begin to think your love for this pretty maid is hotter than most of your fancies. She will come all in good time; I drink to the success of your enterprise!”
“And I drink to fair Mistress Nell, the Queen of my heart!” said Norton.
He refilled his silver cup, and the three rescuers stole quietly up the dark staircase. Hardly, however, had they reached the level of the gallery when an exclamation from Norton crushed their hopes.
“And here in good sooth she comes!” he said, as sounds of approaching footsteps made themselves heard, and a flickering light began to play on the dark oak wainscot at the further end of the hall near the entrance to the main staircase.
Gabriel signed to his companions to pause on the spiral steps, and going down on his hands and knees crept cautiously into the gallery, which lay in deep shadow, but commanded an excellent view of the hall between the posts of the massive oak balustrade. He clenched his hands in hot anger when he saw how young and innocent and helpless was Norton’s victim.
She came into the hall bearing a silver candlestick, and the flickering light revealed a face of childlike beauty, the cheeks still flushed with the sudden awakening from sound sleep, the blue eyes wide with anxiety and alarm. She had hurriedly thrown on a pink flannel sacque, and her fair hair hung in disorder about her shoulders. Norton stood still for a moment feasting his eyes on her loveliness, then he noticed that close behind her came a certain poor relation who had lived for many years at the Manor, a worthy lady of fifty, known as Cousin Malvina.
“I grieve to be the bearer of ill news,” he said, saluting both ladies with great courtesy.
“Oh, sir, tell me all, and tell me quickly. How doth my father?” asked little Mistress Nell, her pretty eyes filling with tears.
“Nay,” said Norton, “be not so distressed. He was sorely wounded to-day in a skirmish—you may doubtless have heard that Sir William Waller cut his way right through Prince Maurice’s army in the forest; your father is now our prisoner, and lies at the Prince’s headquarters at Little Dean. If you will don your riding-gear at once I will have a pillion put on my horse and take you to him.”
“Sir,” said Cousin Malvina, “it is out of the question that Helena should go with you now. You must wait till morning, then I will bring her in the coach.”
“Dear madam, by morning it will be too late; her father lies at death’s door, and he himself implored me to bring her to him without delay. Can you not trust an old neighbour?”
“You were a neighbour that my kinsman sorely distrusted,” said Cousin Malvina, her grave face bearing an expression of great perplexity.
“But much is changed when we have but a short time to live,” said Norton, unblushingly. “Come, madam, let bygones be bygones. You shall ride to Little Dean with us behind my friend.”
“Dear Cousin Malvina, pray do not hinder us,” said Helena, eagerly. “Perhaps with good nursing we may yet save my father’s life. Come, let us go upstairs and dress. Come, please, come!”
The good lady was overpersuaded, and Norton, adjuring them to lose no time, accompanied them to the foot of the great staircase with so many signs of respect and kindly sympathy that Gabriel was fain to own him the cleverest as well as the most audacious villain he had ever encountered.
Creeping noiselessly back to the dim spiral stairs he begged Joscelyn Heyworth to keep a watch on Norton’s doings while Amos took him to the other floor to speak to the two ladies. The old gate-keeper, who was trembling with rage and excitement, whispered an assurance that he would return to Captain Heyworth when their plans were formed, and then led Gabriel to Mistress Malvina’s room. The ladies had not yet returned, for the main staircase and the corridors made a much wider circuit.
“You wait, sir, and I’ll prepare them,” said Amos, stealing along the passage, carrying his shoes in one hand, and raising a warning forefinger as little Mistress Nell approached.
“Hush, missie,” he said. “Yon wicked young Squire Norton has deceived you; here is a gentleman who hath brought you a letter from my master.”
“Did I not tell you, child, that your father ever mistrusted Squire Norton?” said Cousin Malvina, triumphantly.
Helena, looking utterly bewildered, allowed Amos to usher her into the room where Gabriel stood waiting her approach. She lifted up her candle the better to see him, and something in his clear honest eyes brought her instant relief.
“Sir,” she exclaimed, “Amos says my father sent you hither.”
“Yes, madam,” he said, bowing low and handing her the Major’s letter. “You will recognise his handwriting, and pray read this quickly, for if we are to save you from Colonel Norton’s vile plot we must lose no time.”
“Read, child,” said Cousin Malvina, “and let us know at once what your father bids you do.”
Gabriel took the candle from the girl’s trembling hand, and held it for her while she read aloud the Major’s brief note.
“Dear Daughter,—This letter is borne to you by Lieutenant Harford, who is accompanied by his friend, Captain Heyworth. I am unable to fetch you myself, but you must ride with them without a minute’s delay to Gloucester, where Alderman Pury will shelter you. We have learnt of a probable attack to be made by the Prince’s troops on the Manor; do not let the servants attempt a defence, it will be useless. A worse danger threatens you yourself from that vile profligate, Squire Norton. I had thought him safely disposed of during the war, but since he is in your neighbourhood, I dare not leave you at the Manor. Come at once to Gloucester, or I shall not have a moment’s peace of mind. I shall be gone to the attack of Tewkesbury when you arrive, but Lieutenant Harford will place you safely under Alderman Pury’s care. May God direct you.—Your loving father,
“Christopher Locke.
“Written at Gloucester, this evening, April 11, 1643.”
“Is there a third staircase in the house?” asked Gabriel, turning to Amos.
“Ay, sir, there be the kitchen stairs, but they be plaguy steep and apt to creak.”
“They are further from the hall,” said little Mistress Nell, “and we can slip out of the back door and through the shrubbery to the gate ere Squire Norton thinks us ready. Haste, haste, Cousin Malvina, here is your Lincoln green cloak and hood, do not let us lose a moment.”
“Summon Captain Heyworth,” said Gabriel to Amos, “and if possible get a couple of pillions, we will meet you by the back entrance. I will guard your door, ladies, while you don your wraps, but pray lose no time.”
He stood without in the corridor, each minute seeming agelong in the darkness and silence. Presently a faint sound of stealthy steps at a little distance warned him that Joscelyn and the gatekeeper were moving towards the back staircase, then came silence, broken only by the low tones of Mistress Malvina’s agitated voice.
At length, when his patience was well nigh exhausted,
Helena in a long blue cloak and a close Puritan hood, opened the door.
“We are ready, sir,” she whispered.
“Can you find your way down in the dark?” he asked.
She nodded, blew out the candle, and with a child’s ready confidence slipped her hand into his.
“Take care,” she said, beneath her breath, “there are little steps up and down in this corridor, two up here, now one down, now turn to the left and tread softly, there are twenty-six stairs—very steep ones. Don’t forget, Cousin Malvina, that the twenty-fourth step creaks.”
Silently and with infinite care they went down the long descent, thankful for a gleam of moonlight from the window of the house-keeper’s room down below. But, alas! Cousin Malvina, half paralysed with terror as they heard Norton’s voice in the hall, lost count of the steps.
The twenty-fourth stair creaked ominously as she trod on it, and the next moment to their horror, Norton’s voice grew louder and clearer.
“They are coming at last!” he exclaimed. “I hear steps in the passage. What! no lights? Curse those servants! Why can’t they bring a lamp? Hullo! who goes there? a petticoat an I mistake not. Tom, bring one of those candles; here’s sport to pass the time of waiting.”
Unluckily, as Norton’s eyes grew more accustomed to the semi-darkness, he caught sight of three people rapidly crossing a patch of moonlight in the kitchen. He hurried forward, and was just in time to sec the little group of dusky figures stealing out of the house. Then the door closed behind them, and though he pulled with all his might at the handle, he could not make it yield, for Joscelyn Heyworth held on to it like grim death.
Meanwhile, Gabriel had hurriedly pulled on his boots, and was half-leading, half-carrying, little Mistress Nell through the dark shrubbery, while Amos panted after him with Mistress Malvina.
When Joscelyn rejoined them, the poor chaperon seemed almost at her last gasp, and the sound of Norton’s steps gaining upon them took all the strength from her limbs.
“Take a turn to the right and double back to the house with the lady,” said Joscelyn; “you will outwit them thus, and can ride later on to Gloucester.”
It was no time to hesitate. Amos blindly obeyed, and dragged Mistress Malvina into the depths of the shrubbery, where she sank on to the ground unable to take another step, but listening in terrible anxiety to hear what would happen.
Joscelyn, running like the wind, overtook his companions, and caught Helena’s other hand in his, then, leaving the shrubbery, the fugitives rushed across the bowling-green. The moon shone only too brightly, but they were forced to risk shots from behind, for to drag the girl along the narrow half-overgrown path proved slow work, and their capture would have been certain.
Surely Norton would hesitate to shoot. His feelings as a gentleman would probably be stronger than the savage lust of conquest, and the brute instincts which had prompted him to this night’s work.
But they had yet to learn his character; as long as his mind was fully bent on any desire, nothing could baffle him.
A bullet whistled through the air, missing Joscelyn Hey-worth only by a hair’s breadth. Little Nell gripped the hands of her rescuers with the intensity of one whose nerves are strained to the utmost, but otherwise she made no sign, and ran bravely on. A second bullet followed, but it glanced aside from Gabriel’s corslet. Helena felt the shock of it in the hand which he grasped, and a stifled cry of horror escaped her. Had not her two protectors borne her on more and more swiftly she felt that she must have given up, and have thrown herself on Squire Norton’s mercy.
But now at last they were nearing the lodge, and, to their relief, at the sound of their approach, Morrison threw open the gate for them. Gabriel hastily mounted his horse and bade the man lift little Mistress Nell in front of him, for the pillions had been left with Amos in the shrubbery, and he dared not let her ride behind, when at any moment Norton or his companion might again shoot.
“It’ll take the gentlemen a few minutes to find their horses,” said Morrison, lifting the trembling girl in front of Gabriel. “They’d left them on the other side of the gatehouse, and I’ve put ’em down by yon pollard willow, and hobbled their hind legs with a bit of rope in a way that will make their riders swear.”
He chuckled softly to himself, and glanced at his master, who laughed outright as he mounted.
“You’re worth your weight in gold to me,” he said. “We shall baffle this villain yet, Gabriel.”
And setting spurs to their horses, the little cavalcade started at a sharp trot, which changed as soon as they heard sounds of pursuit, to a gallop. When at length they drew rein for a moment to breathe their panting horses, all was still, and it became clear that Norton and his companion had abandoned the chase.
Joscelyn Heyworth glanced at the little slender figure which clung so closely to his comrade; in the moonlight her girlish face looked pale, but absolutely tranquil, and in her eyes he could read perfect trust in her rescuer. He felt convinced, that ere long such confidence would develop in the girl’s heart into the utter devotion of love.
“Now, an’ my friend could but rid his heart of old memories, and forget that Mistress Hilary he raved about at Kineton in his fever, here is as winsome and sweet a bride for him as man could desire,” thought Joscelyn.
But Gabriel’s expression was grave, and his eyes had an absent look in them. He paid very little heed to the Major’s daughter when once assured of her safety and comfort, for the clasp of her arms about his neck only made him crave Hilary’s presence the more, and he was dreaming his own dream
“A mighty pain to love it is,
And ’tis a pain to miss it;
But of all pains, the greatest pain
It is to love, but love in vain.”
—Cowley.
The city of Hereford, which had been evacuated by the last remnants of Lord Stamford’s army shortly before Christmas, was once more in the hands of the Royalists, and throughout the winter, reprisals had been the order of the day. Price, the Mayor, who had admitted Stamford’s troops, was thrown into gaol, his house was plundered, and there was a keen desire to hang him in front of his own door, happily frustrated by the more moderate citizens. Sir Richard Hopton, also, had his house at Canon Frome plundered, while Dr. Harford would probably have suffered imprisonment for his bold advocacy of the Parliamentary cause had not the citizens been loth to lose the services of their first physician.
None needed these services more than Mrs. Unett, who all through the cold weather had been grievously ill, and Hilary could not but feel grateful for his skill and helpfulness, even when the virulent tongue of Prebendary Rogers was kindling the flame of vindictive hatred in her heart, and fanning that fierce resentment of Gabriel’s actions which had made such havoc in her life.
On the morning of April the 24th she was roused by Mrs. Durdle’s agitated voice, and, opening her drowsy eyes, started up in alarm as she saw the genuine terror in the housekeeper’s fat face.
“Is my mother worse?” she asked, anxiously.
“Nay, mistress, she is still sleeping, but I stole up to bid you keep the ill news from her as long as may be.”
“What news? What is amiss?” cried Hilary.
“The Parliament soldiers are marching from Ross to attack Hereford,” said Durdle. “Hark to the ringing of the common bell! It summons all citizens, my Valentine tells me, to come and help with making earthworks at the gates and by the river.”
“Doth Lord Stamford come hither again, then?” asked Hilary.
“Nay, mistress, they do say ’tis Sir William Waller’s army—William the Conqueror the folks do call un and they say the city can never hold out.”
Hilary’s heart began to throb.
“We shall see about that,” she said, proudly, her face aflame as she realised that Gabriel served under Waller. “We have gallant Sir Richard Cave to defend us, and only last night the Bishop told me that he had, to protect the city, a hundred of the King’s foot guards and many dragoons, beside some three hundred soldiers under Colonel Conyngsby, Colonel Price and Colonel Courtney. Depend upon it, we shall make the rebels fly.”
Durdle shook her head despondently, this hopeful view was not shared by many of the citizens; the very sound of Sir William Waller’s name made them quake, and Sir Richard Cave found, to his dismay, that they would not respond to the summons to help with the earth-works.
It was impossible to carry out his scheme of defence, and all that he could contrive was to dam up Byster’s Gate, while his spirits were much depressed by the arrival that afternoon of a letter from Sir William Russell saying that he could spare no troops from Worcester, and that no help could come from Prince Maurice, who had set out to march towards His Majesty.
Few people slept much in Hereford on that Monday night, and when day dawned on the 25th, Sir Richard Cave, making observations from the Castle, found that Waller’s formidable army was within a mile of the city.
The soldiers were at once summoned, and the place resounded with the roll of the drums and with trumpets sounding the alarm. Hilary hastened to her mother’s room, no longer able to keep from the invalid the danger in which they stood.
“Child,” said Mrs. Unett, in terror, “what does it all mean?”
“Only that Sir William Waller is marching on Hereford, ma’am,” said Hilary, “but as the citizens were too panic-stricken yesterday to cast up earth-works near the bridge, as they were ordered to do, we run little risk of bombardment in this house, I fancy.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Unett, with a look of relief. “If it is Sir William Waller’s army we shall be safe enough, for Gabriel Harford will, I well know, protect us.”
Hilary flushed with anger at these words, and making an excuse to carry the night lamp into the dressing-room, gave a little impatient stamp of the foot the moment she was alone.
“Gabriel, indeed! Rather than be protected by him I would throw myself on the mercy of any other man in England! Dr. Rogers says I did well and loyally in vowing never to see ‘my old friend,’ as he calls him, again, and if he dares to seek me out, I will make him suffer as he has not suffered yet.”
Her eyes flashed as she conjured up a scene pleasing enough to the perverse spirit of pride which at the moment dominated her; but soon all the hardness died out of her face, and she was again her sweet womanly self, for her mother called out to her in alarm as the first sound of firing made itself heard.
“There is naught to fear, ma’am,” she said, running into the sick-room and caressing the invalid like a child. “Oh! they must be a great way off, and will not trouble us at all. To my mind”—and she laughed gaily—“’tis not near so terrifying as a thunderstorm.”
Nevertheless, though her words were brave the sharp rattle of musketry made her pulses beat uncomfortably. It was not for herself that she feared, but from some dim recess of her heart there awoke a flicker of the love she thought wholly extinguished, and a dumb cry began to ring in her ears, “Gabriel is there in the thick of the fray. That shot, or that, or that, may cause his death-wound.”
After a time there came a lull in the firing; then it was renewed, but at a greater distance. While they were both longing to know what had happened Durdle announced Dr. Harford, and the physician, who rarely let a day pass without seeing his patient, entered with his usual quiet, kindly manner and cheering smile.
“I trust all this commotion has not upset you, madam?” he said, “but I think you will not be troubled with any close firing after this. I hear that the main body of Sir William Waller’s army is drawn up without Widemarsh Gate, but feints have been made in two or three other quarters, and there has been a sharp little skirmish close by here at the bridge.”
“Is it true that your son is with Sir William Waller?” asked Mrs. Unett, revelling, poor lady, in the mere comfort of the good doctor’s presence.
“Ay, I have seen him in the distance,” said Dr. Harford, his eyes lighting with a look of fatherly pride which could not be hid. “I was standing in the south walk of our garden when he, with a detachment of men in boats, rowed across towards the bridge, and made good their landing hard by, but after a brisk fight Sir Richard Cave’s musketeers beat them back to their boats. ’Twas clearly meant only as a feint. You will not probably hear any more near firing and stand in no danger here.”
“It must have been strange indeed for you to see your son in that fashion, after a six months’ absence,” said the invalid, gently. “Hath he greatly altered?”
“Yes; he hath grown from boy to man,” said Dr. Harford; and then, happening to catch a glimpse of Hilary’s face, he hastily changed the subject, for no one better understood her varying moods, and he saw that directly she was assured of Gabriel’s safety her old resentment against him had sprung to life again. Nevertheless, beneath all her faults he could always discern the deeply-loving nature which she, in truth, possessed, and held fast to his conviction that she would conquer the arrogance that at present bid fair to wreck her happiness.
“If the city be taken,” he thought to himself as he quitted the sick room, “and that pestilent priest, Dr. Rogers, called to account for the mischief he hath done, then there will be very good hope that the daughter of my old friend may come to take the same calm and just view held by such Royalists as the Bishop and his son.”
Meanwhile Gabriel, greatly cheered by the glimpse he had caught of his father, had returned from the skirmish at the Bridge to the neighbourhood of St. Owen’s Gate, where, under a sharp fire from the walls, they succeeded in taking St. Owen’s Church. This church being within pistol shot of the gate was like to prove of great service to the besiegers, and Captain Grey gave Gabriel orders to take a party of musketeers up the tower.
The terrified verger was at first too much dazed to produce the keys of the tower door, “and the men, annoyed at the delay, were disposed to deal roughly with him.
“Here, you great oaf,” cried one, “unfasten the door, or we will hang you to one of your own bell ropes.”
“Mercy! mercy!” cried the poor old man, as half-a-dozen stalwart soldiers laid hold of him, hustling him in a fashion which scattered the few wits he still retained.
“Stand back, there,” said a firm voice. “Why, Martin! don’t you remember me?”
And Gabriel laid a kindly hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Oh, Mr. Harford, don’t ye let them hang me,” said the verger, clutching at the young lieutenant.
“No one shall touch a hair of your head,” said Gabriel, “but out with the keys, my friend, for we must lose no time.”
Martin obeyed, trembling like a palsied man, and Gabriel, unlocking the door, rushed at full speed up the crumbling and worn steps, then up a crazy and tottering ladder which led to the trap-door in the leads. Springing through this, he emerged on to the top of the tower and had quickly arranged his musketeers on the side from which they could best harass the men on the walls and at St. Owen’s Gate. The church stood in the centre of the road which passed round it on the north and south sides, and the musketeers not only carried on a very effective warfare from the tower, but drew the attention of the besieged from the main attack which was made by Massey on Widemarsh Gate.
His onslaught proved so vigorous that the terrified citizens ere long sounded a parley, and, Waller consenting to treat, the rest of the day passed in tedious arrangements about hostages, and proposals as to the terms of surrender.
Gabriel had little fear that the citizens of Hereford would have any just cause of complaint, for Sir William Waller was noted for his forbearance and courtesy, and the people had no reason to fear the looting or plundering too often the sequel to a victory. The entry was made quietly enough that evening and two of the articles dictated by Sir William Waller were specially pleasing to Gabriel: All ladies and gentlewomen were to have honourable usage; and the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and the collegiates were likewise to be free in their persons from violence and in their goods from plunder.
That so ardent a Royalist as Hilary should be sore and angry at the easy way in which the Parliamentary troops had taken possession of the place was natural enough. She was in her hardest mood the next morning when Durdle came up to the sick-room with a beaming face.
“Mr. Gabriel Harford is below, come to inquire after Mistress Unett’s health,” she exclaimed, her little grey eyes beaming with the pleasure of again seeing the lad she had known so long. “And he craves a word with you, Mistress Hilary. I have shown him into the dining-room.”
Amazed at his temerity in calling, Hilary did not pause to think of the long years of friendship that had preceded their betrothal.
“It is just like his audacity to come here now that his side has conquered, and we are in trouble,” she reflected. “I will show him how little I care for his rebel comrades and their chief.”
And with her coldest manner she turned to the housekeeper.
“Tell Mr. Harford that my mother hath had a disturbed night and that I cannot leave her room.”
“My dear!” remonstrated Mrs. Unett, “you had best go down and thank Mr. Harford for his courteous inquiries.”
“Pray, ma’am, send your thanks by Durdle,” said Hilary, holding her head high. “I prefer not to leave you.”
So poor old Durdle had no choice but to go down again to the visitor, and not being blessed with tact she could not even soften his disappointment.
“’Tis sorry I am, sir,” she said, smoothing her apron, “but Mistress Hilary will not leave her mother’s room.”
“Is Mistress Unett worse?” asked Gabriel, anxiously.
“Oh, no, sir. Maybe she did not sleep as well as usual, but she tried hard to persuade Mistress Hilary to see you and thank you for your kind inquiries. But, lor’, sir, you must remember well enough that when once she was angered by aught, she was ever an ill-relished maid. Don’t you take it to heart, sir,” said the good woman, grieved to see the look cf pain in his eyes, “maybe some other day she will see you.”
He went away in very low spirits; for though it had been hard enough to live through the long months of absence, there was a keener torture in being so near to the woman he loved, yet, alas! so far removed from her heart.
He took the old housekeeper’s advice and called to inquire again later in the week, only to meet with a similar rebuff. Nor could he bring himself to speak at home of the purgatory he was passing through. His mother hoped from his silence that he had outgrown his love to Hilary. His father guessed something of the true state of the case, but feared that words, however well meant, might only increase his suffering.
Joscelyn Heyworth, however, rallied him on his depression, not knowing that “the lady named Hilary” was a citizen of Hereford.
“Why are you in the dumps?” he asked, one sunshiny afternoon, as the two walked together down Broad Street. “You should be in high spirits now that you are among your old friends once more, and with your parents as keenly interested in the campaign as you are yourself. I would give something to stand in your shoes.” And for a moment his bright face was clouded with bitter memories.
“Many of my old friends look on me as a traitor for whom hanging were too good,” said Gabriel. “You forget that Hereford has ever been devoted to the King’s cause, and that such of us as fight against his tyranny are here but a small and unpopular minority.”
“’Tis to be hoped the army will not long be kept here,” said Joscelyn. “The men need to be in active service; already they seem to be waxing unruly,” and he glanced at some boisterous soldiers gathered about a fanatical dark-browed man who harangued them from the vantage ground of an inverted barrow, and with bawling voice and vehement gestures was attracting quite a crowd.
“Why!” exclaimed Gabriel, “that is none other than Peter Waghorn, the fellow I saw at Bosbury. What a frenzy the man is working himself into! See how he points to the Cathedral as though he wished to destroy the whole place!”
“Oh, don’t linger,” said Joscelyn Heyworth. “I loathe these fanatic preachers. What was that he said? The pious work of destruction? Have they been urging on the mob as they did at Winchester? Sir William Waller will be ill pleased if they have done as much damage here. Let us come in and see.”
Gabriel told him Waghorn’s story as they crossed the green, and approached the beautiful parvise porch at the north-west. They had just entered it when the inner door leading into the cathedral was hastily opened, and the figure of a girl clad in pale puce, with a hat and cloak of tan-coloured velvet, suddenly appeared. Her rich brown curls, her exquisite colouring, but above all, her dark expressive eyes, made Joscelyn look at her a second time; she was evidently in a state of suppressed indignation, and when she caught sight of Gabriel Harford, her wrath flashed into a sudden flame.
He saluted her with great respect, but averting her face she declined to acknowledge him even by the most distant curtsey, and would have passed rapidly through the porch had he not stood in front of her, blocking her way.
Joscelyn saw the look of almost intolerable pain in his face, and instantly knew that this must be Mistress Hilary. But for a moment it seemed that her lover could not speak.
“Sir!” exclaimed the girl, indignantly, “let me pass.”
Only too well she knew that old gesture of his, when, with head thrown back, he seemed to wrestle with words which would not be uttered. Only too well she knew, moreover, the low, passion-choked voice, in which at length he spoke.
“You cannot go that way,” he said. “There is a noisy crowd of men near the west front.”
“Cannot!” she said, contemptuously. “Do you think I care for a few rebels and traitors?”
By this time he had mastered himself, and in his manner there was all the force which is gained by self-repression. “You had better go out by the other door and through the Palace,” he said.
“I shall do no such thing,” she replied perversely. “I shall go the way I choose, and see what these comrades of yours are like. Let me pass, sir.”
“I cannot let you go alone,” he said. “If you insist on going through the crowd, I shall attend you to your door.”
The quiet determination of his tone almost maddened her.
“And I utterly refuse your escort,” she said, with an angry scorn that cut him to the heart. “Rather than walk with you I would have as escort any other man in Hereford.”
“Then I will present to you my friend, Captain Heyworth,” said Gabriel, steadily, but with an irrepressible note of pain in his voice. “Joscelyn, do me the favour of attending Mistress Hilary Unett to her home.”
Joscelyn saluted her gravely. She longed to decline his company, but something in Gabriel’s tone made refusal impossible. She gave him one last glance, half from defiance, half from curiosity. What was it that still gave him his power over her? Physically he lacked the height and the fine physique of his friend, mentally she felt that she was more than his match, yet in moral and spiritual force he would always, as she well knew, tower above her. Was it fair that he, a traitor, as she honestly deemed him, both to Church and King, should yet live, as it were, on the heights? The thought stung and irritated her, and so did the unfading picture she carried away with her of that well-known parvise porch, and Gabriel standing just beneath the finely-moulded archway, his hazel eyes full of dumb suffering, his face sad but resolute, and lit up by a radiance which seemed to her, not of this earth at all.
However, her musings were quickly put to flight by the bawling of the fanatic near the west front, whose violent tirade against what he alternately termed, “this House of Dagon,” and “this den of thieves crammed with popish idols,” made her lip curl scornfully.
“These are your comrades!” she said, with bitter contempt.
“No, madam,” replied Joscelyn Heyworth, with a little gleam of amusement in his eyes. “I learn that this is a carpenter from a village in your neighbourhood who was driven half demented by Dr. Laud’s cruelty to his father. We come across a good many of these victims up and down the country.”
The recollection of a day long ago in the first brief happiness of their betrothal came back overpoweringly to Hilary. Oh! how she longed to be sitting once more with Gabriel on the steps of Bosbury Cross before the parting of the ways!
‘Joscelyn saw the more gentle look dawning in her face, and hazarded a word on Gabriel’s behalf.
“’Tis a pity, madam,” he said, “if you will allow me to speak frankly with you, that you so grievously pained my friend just now.”
But at this plain speaking Hilary’s pride was at once up in arms.
“’Tis a pity, sir, that you presume to speak on matters about which you know absolutely nothing.”
“Pardon me, I know much as to Gabriel Harford’s past story,” said Joscelyn, not in the least disconcerted by her snub.
“What!” she exclaimed, angrily. “He had the effrontery to tell you, a perfect stranger, that we had been betrothed—when even my own uncle was not admitted to the secret? Oh, it is unbearable! I did well to refuse him a greeting.”
“No, madam,” said Joscelyn, bluntly. “In my opinion you did a very cruel thing. And you misjudge him now as you evidently have done in the past. He has never breathed your name to me. I found him almost in the last extremity on the battlefield, the morning after Edgehill—only begging to be allowed to die and quit a world that had dealt harshly with him. I bore him back to Kineton, refused to let him give up his life, and all through the next night kept watch over him. There are revelations, madam, that come before the day of judgment, and in the feverish ravings of a wounded soldier lying at death’s door, you may learn strange truths. I learnt then the agony of a man who has been jilted by the only woman he has ever loved.”
Hilary had grown white to the lips, but pride still held her love in chains. Though this knowledge of what Gabriel had passed through, sent a pang to her inmost heart, her self-love was ruffled and agitated by the fearless, outspoken words which this Parliamentary Captain had dared to speak.
“I thought, sir,” she said, with cold arrogance, “that one of the conditions specially guaranteed by your General, was that all gentlewomen should have honourable usage.”
“Madam, it is because I honour you and love my friend that I venture to speak as I would fain have any other man speak to my sister were she in like case,” said Joscelyn, marvelling at her hardness, but quite failing to understand that she was strenuously keeping back her better nature, which only longed to yield to his arguing.
“She is absolutely heartless, and Gabriel Harford has had a lucky escape,” he reflected, too young and impulsive to understand Hilary’s character. “If he had any sense he would wed pretty Mistress Nell, as sweet a little maid as heart could wish, and worth a thousand of this haughty, headstrong maiden.” Meanwhile the “haughty maiden” was pausing at the door of a grey, gabled house. She lifted her beautiful eyes to his, and swept him a stately curtsey.
“This is my home, sir. I regret that you should have been put to the very unnecessary trouble of escorting me.”
“Madam,” he said, saluting her with grave respect, “any service I can render to my friend is a pleasure; it was quite apparent to me, that at the very moment you were tying
Sharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture
to his heart, he was seeking to shield you from a momentary discomfiture. I wish you good-day.”
“Good-day, sir,” said Hilary, stung to the quick by the truth of his words, and by the calm, unsparing severity of his manner. She was well-used to devotion, and flattery, and admiration of every sort, but here was a man undazzled by her beauty, and only repelled by what Dr. Rogers termed her “high-spirited treatment of her old playmate, Dr. Harford’s rebel son.”
“The spiritual life is not an elaborate system, but a divine life—not a book of Leviticus, but a Gospel of St. John.” —Bishop Walsuam How.
When Gabriel had watched the last glimpse of the pale puco gown as Hilary turned the north-west corner of the cathedral, he went despondently enough into the building itself to see whether any mischief had been done by Waghorn and his adherents.
At first he could see no slightest trace of damage, but in the north-east transept he encountered Major Locke, pacifying one of the vergers who seemed much concerned at the prospect of “such a mort o’ clearin’ up,” as he expressed it.
“It shall be reported to Sir William Waller,” said the major; “but in truth ’tis very hard to prevent the men from being stirred up and led into mischief by these fanatic preachers.”
“What on earth induced them to attack Bishop Swinfield’s monument?” exclaimed Gabriel, genuinely vexed to see that the old Bishop’s effigy had been literally hacked to pieces.
“Well, it seems that Waghorn, this crazy carpenter fellow, lured them on with tales of a crucifix, and it proved to be a bas-relief just above this tomb. The men have scarce left a trace of it, but you can see the outline on the wall. Then, quite against the Parliamentary order for respecting the monuments of the dead, they must needs go and hew in pieces this effigy. Hearing that mischief was afoot, I was fortunately in time to order them out of the building before they grew more unruly.”
“I see they have hewn off the head without harming it,” said Gabriel, stooping to pick it up from the corner into which it had been tossed. “With your permission, sir, I will bear it to the Palace. Bishop Coke will value it, and here it would but be cast away as rubbish.”
“Ay, sir, do,” said the verger. “The Bishop, God bless’un, he do set great store by all old statutes, and so do his son, Dr. William Coke; and Mistress Hilary Unett she takes after ’m; seems to run in the family like. For my part, I be glad Waghorn set the soldiers on useless stocks and stones and spared the glass windows, for the cathedral do be mortal cold on windy days at service time.”
This, then, explained in part Hilary’s angry mood. Perhaps had they met under less trying circumstances, she might have been less cruel. Very sore at heart, Gabriel went out again, encountering Joscelyn Heyworth not far from the Palace.
“What plunder are you carrying away, you sacrilegious man?” exclaimed the young Captain, with his genial laugh. “When an honest man turns thief he always betrays himself. What are you hiding under your scarf ends?”
“A bishop’s head,” said Gabriel, grimly.
“Oh! so this explains some of the lady’s wrath.”
“Yes, no wonder she was angry. I am taking this to her grandfather—Bishop Coke.”
“You would do much better to throw it down on the green, and give up the whole connection. What have you to do now with bishops, either in stone or in the flesh? And as to their granddaughters—may heaven preserve me from ever again escorting home an episcopal lady. Like Benedick, ‘I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.’”
“You don’t know her,” said Gabriel. “To-day she was very naturally incensed.”
“Now be a sensible man, Gabriel, and cast that head into the kennel, for I assure you its stony curls are not more stony than the heart of Mistress Hilary.”
“Be silent!” said Gabriel, hotly. “I tell you that you do not know her. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, as the proverb hath it.”
“Then let us hope the lady will apply that sentiment to the cure of her pride. For truly she knows much more of you than she did before I crossed her path.”
“What do you mean?” said Gabriel, aware that Joscelyn was often daringly outspoken and unconventional, and fearing that he might only have angered Hilary the more.
“I told her of the night at Kineton, when, in your delirium the name of Hilary was eternally on your lips.”
“So you have known all this time?”
“To be sure; and now she knows one or two eminently wholesome truths.”
“I fear you but annoyed her yet more. What did she say?”
“Well, she turned whiter than this old prelate’s head, and I could have sworn she was going to soften. But nothing of the sort; she remained as stony as this effigy, and so we parted with freezing politeness and ceremony. Give her up, Gabriel; why let her make your life a misery?”
“You don’t understand her,” said, Gabriel, in a choked voice. “You have not yet really seen her true self. As to giving her up—why, how should I do that? I have loved her since we were children, and we Harfords do not change.”
“So it seems,” said Joscelyn, ruefully. “Well, I’m hanged if anybody should trouble my peace who had treated me with the consummate cruelty she showed you to-day.”
Gabriel, without reply, turned in at the gateway of the Palace, feeling that even his best friend somehow failed to help him, and quite prepared to be refused an interview with the Bishop.
Strangely enough, however, it was the saintly old man who differed from him on so many points in politics and theology who best understood him at that time. He received him as if nothing had happened since their last meeting, bidding him welcome with the same warmth and the same perfect courtesy he had always shown him.
“They may abolish bishops,” thought Gabriel, “yet somehow the best description of Bishop Coke will always be the title, ‘Right reverend father in God?’”
The head of Bishop Swinfield, half-concealed by the ends of the broad orange scarf which girded Gabriel’s buff coat, quickly attracted the old prelate’s attention.
“I had heard of the mischief done just now,” he said. “I see you bring me an unharmed fragment; I am glad you rescued that.”
“I thought, my lord, you would value it, and perhaps have it in safe hiding till quieter times.”
“I will give it to my son, ’twill be safer in his care; and to tell the truth, Mr. Harford, I cannot expect to live till quieter times. These troubles are breaking my heart.”
“My lord, indeed ’twas scarce the fault of the soldiers that harm was wrought in the cathedral; they were led on by a poor fanatic fellow whose father was grievously misused by Dr. Laud.”
“And therein lies my worst sorrow,” said the Bishop, with a long sigh. “Our system seemed to us right and good, yet it hath alienated the people, and wholly failed. Believe me, Mr. Harford, I am not thinking of the misguided zeal of your soldiers, but of my own mistaken zeal in the past. Yet we meant well—God knows we meant well.”
Gabriel was silent. Before a humility and sorrow such as this words seemed a profanation.
He glanced round the room, the very one in which he had offered his services to the Parliament during the Earl of Stamford’s occupation six months before. Again his eyes turned to the picture of Hilary as a child, and the Bishop, noting this, asked if he had seen her, and by his kindly sympathy gradually drew from him the whole story.
“’Tis no ill cure to set two sad folks to talk with each other,” he said, a faint smile playing about his lips. “I am breaking my heart over the direful strife betwixt Christian men, and you are breaking your heart over a difference of opinion with the maiden you love. We must both remember the apostle’s words, ‘Love never faileth.’ It seems to us to have wholly failed now, and for the night of this life it may seem so, but the day will dawn. For you, if God will, it may perchance, after all, dawn here on this earth, though scarce for me.”
He crossed the room to a beautifully carved cabinet, and opening one of the inner compartments, took out a miniature of Hilary.
“This,” he said, showing it to Gabriel, “was painted for me the autumn you first went to London, and I always intended that at my death it should be yours. I think you were right when that day in the cloisters you said to me that the Harfords do not change, and in these troubled times I shall like to know that you already have it in your keeping, for I have a feeling that we shall not again meet in this world.” Gabriel, with tears in his eyes, could only falteringly speak his thanks.
“Nay,” said the Bishop, cheerfully. “’Tis a pleasure to me to think it will be some slight comfort to you, my son. And,” he added, with a quiet laugh, “you were the first to make a presentation to me of good Bishop Swinfield’s head, knowing my special feeling for the past dignitaries of our Church. ’Tis but meet that I should acknowledge your courtesy by the gift of my granddaughter’s head—a wilful maid, yet methinks one that will some day ripen into a right noble woman. Believe me, my son, she is worth waiting for.”
“I will wait a lifetime, if need be,” said Gabriel, looking at the sweet face in the miniature—the Hilary that had been before the war. And then, remembering past times, he made an enquiry as to the treatise on the Epistle to the Colossians. The old Bishop shook his head, sadly.
“The war hath been the ruin of all books,” he said, ruefully. “They tell me people will read naught nowadays but the war pamphlets which are poured forth in shoals from the press. Or else they read the news books, which, so far as I can learn, vie with each other in lying, and are crammed with envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness. From the curse of such weapons of the evil one, good Lord deliver us!”
The words came with all the more force because spoken by one so habitually gentle, and Gabriel, watching the folded hands and the white head bent in this heartfelt ejaculation, felt more than ever drawn to the Bishop.
Never once had Bishop Coke repulsed him by the illogical arguments about the divine right of the King to govern wrongfully, which were hurled at the heads of the Parliamentarians by most Royalists. He kept altogether on a higher plane where meeting was quite possible, and Gabriel was glad enough to kneel for the old man’s blessing when they parted.
The citizens of Hereford had compounded with Sir William Waller for 拢3,000, and when the fines had been collected in money or plate nothing remained to detain the soldiers in the place.
On the evening of the seventeenth of May, therefore, Waller, hearing that he was needed elsewhere, and unable to spare men to garrison Hereford permanently for the Parliament, gave orders that the troops should be ready to march back to Gloucester early the next morning. By the time Gabriel was free from his duties it was already late, but seeing that lights still burned in Mrs. Unett’s house, he ventured to inquire at the door if she were worse.
“In truth, she is very ill, sir,” said Durdle, anxiously.
At the head of the stairs, in a nook where she could hear what passed, but could neither see nor be seen, Hilary waited with a beating heart. She was in grievous trouble, and the sound of her lover’s voice tempted her sorely to run down and speak to him.
“Give her my kind regards, and I trust she will soon be recovered,” said Gabriel. “’Tis late to knock you up, but I leave Hereford at dawn to-morrow.”
Hilary’s heart sank.
“Shall I tell Mistress Hilary?” inquired Durdle. “Belike she would come down.”
The girl waited in an agony of suspense for his reply.
“No, she hath thrice refused to speak with me,” he said, with a note of pain in his voice that brought a lump into her throat. “I will trouble her no further; good-bye, Mrs. Durdle.”
Like one struggling for life Hilary wrestled with her pride. “Go down and speak to him,” urged one voice within her. “I can’t before Durdle,” retorted another. “Go, go before it is too late!” “Nay, what could I say if I did go?”
And then she learnt that he who hesitates is lost, for the door was closed, and Durdle walked heavily back to the kitchen, and silence reigned again in the house.
Hilary sat down on the top stair, and burying her face in her hands, cried much after the fashion of a naughty child, who is half repentant and altogether weary and miserable. Again and again she had refused to see Gabriel, and had taken pleasure in the process; but now he had declined to see her, and she felt that she was indeed hoist with her own petard.
After this, with the kindest intentions in the world, Joscelyn Heyworth set about the dangerous process of match-making on his friend’s behalf. Supremely happy in the love of pretty Mistress Clemency Coriton, he no sooner found himself talking alone with her at Mr. Bennett’s house in the Close at Gloucester, than the remembrance of Gabriel Harford’s story came to trouble his peace.
“Faith, and I have seen much of little Mistress Helena Locke,” said Clemency. “She hath a dull time at Alderman Pury’s, and is ever glad to come here and chat about her gallant rescuers.”
“She had no liking, then, for Colonel Norton, and did not resent being carried off in that summary fashion?”
“Oh, she feared and detested Squire Norton, and to tell the truth—but be sure you breathe no word of this—I have a fancy that she lost her heart to your friend.”
“Ho! that is good hearing,” said Joscelyn, with a smile. “There is nothing that would please me more than to see them mated, for in truth he stands in need of just such a sweet-tempered gentle little woman, being over-reserved and apt to grow melancholy over the desperate plight the country is in.”
“Let us get my sister to invite the Major and his daughter and you and your friend to supper to-morrow,” said Clemency. “Even should the notion fail to come to anything, it can do them no harm to meet.”
So it came about that little Mistress Nell donned her prettiest white gown the next evening, arranged her fair curls with anxious care, and, with her blue eyes looking unusually bright, went with her father to the gabled house in the Close.
Her rescuers had already arrived, but Helena had hardly a glance to spare for Joscelyn Heyworth who, for all his six feet and his lion-like mane of golden hair, was, for her, quite eclipsed by a shorter, slighter man, with something in his sunburnt face and liquid hazel eyes which appealed to her.
Gabriel greeted her with the easy cordiality of one whose deeper feelings are not in the least touched.
“You suffered no ill-effects, I hope, from all your fatigues on the ride to Gloucester,” he said.
“Oh! no,” said Helena, eagerly. “When once we were out of pistol range it was enjoyable enough; but I hope I may never have to run again as we did that night. Had you not both dragged me on I must have given up.”
Gabriel laughed.
“We were cruel only to be kind, but I grant you that the feeling of being pursued is unpleasant. I had a longing to stay and fight it out with that dastardly Colonel. But it would have been over great a risk for you, and your safety was the main object. However, I have an instinct that I shall meet the fellow again, and then maybe shall have a chance of fighting him.”
At supper, in the panelled room below, Gabriel found himself between Mistress Nell and his hostess, and vis-脿-vis with Major Locke, who kept them all merry with his inexhaustible fund of stories.
“Who would think, to hear our laughter, that we were in the midst of a deadly civil war?” said Faith Bennett. “We owe you a debt of gratitude, sir. I have not made so merry for many a day.”
“Tell Mistress Bennett the story of the fisher-boy,” said Helena. “That mightily tickled my fancy.”
“Oh, that is but a simple tale,” said the Major. “We were crossing some wild country in Herefordshire, and, the day being foggy, had lost our bearings, so I sent one of the men to ask the way of a lad that was fishing in the Wye. He came back to say that he couldn’t understand the boy’s language, and knowing something of dialect, I went to him myself and said, ‘Which is the nearest way to Horn Lacy?’
“An unintelligible jabber was the response, so that I thought the lad an innocent until I chanced to notice that he was munching a mouthful of something.
“‘What have you got in your mouth?’ I asked, finding that he made no haste to swallow his meal.
“‘Wumsh for bait,’ he muttered, trying to indicate by signs the nearest road to Horn Lacy.”
There was a general laugh.
“Wasn’t it horrible?” said Mistress Nell. “Think of a mouthful of live worms!”
“Is not Horn Lacy one of my Lord Scudamore’s estates?” asked Mr. Bennett.
“Ay; he was taken prisoner in Hereford, but allowed to go to London on parole. Horn Lacy was taxed 拢10 15s. By the bye, Captain Heyworth, is there any truth in this report I hear, that Sir William Waller is sending you to London shortly concerning Lord Scudamore’s affairs?”
“Yes, sir,” said Joscelyn; “I am to bear a letter for Sir William Waller, who is in some fear that, spite of his assurances, Parliament is not treating Lord Scudamore as well as he deserves. I had private business that needed looking into, and am granted three weeks’ leave from Monday se’nnight.”
“I wish you would make an inquiry for me while you are in London,” said the Major, as the ladies left the room.
“The truth is, though I would not say it before Mistress Bennett, that Gloucester is not an over-safe place in which to leave my little maid, for like enough, they say, the King will lay siege to it. Now, I want to find out whether Helena’s godmother is still living. She is a very aged lady named Madam Harford, but ’tis years since we heard of her.”
“Why, sir,” said Gabriel, laughing, “they say in the regiment that you know well-nigh every family in England—perchance this lady is my grand-dame who lives at Notting hill Manor, some two miles from Tyburn by the Oxford road.”
“Upon my soul, that’s a strange coincidence,” said the Major. “But I had no notion she was of a Herefordshire family. She was a very kind friend to my late wife in London before our marriage, and stood sponsor for Helena. I thought of writing to ask her to advise some safe lodging in the city where my daughter may be sent in charge of Mistress Malvina.”
“If you will trust me with your letter, I will bear it to Madam Harford and bring you back her reply, sir,” said Joscelyn Heyworth; and he smiled to himself, thinking that fate was about to help his match making.
However, it was not his doing, but the Major’s own arrangement which, during the course of the next few days, threw Gabriel and little Mistress Nell into frequent intercourse. The girl lived through a midsummer dream of happiness, but Gabriel, though liking very much to talk to one who was both pretty and winsome, never said a word to her that might not have been proclaimed from the housetops, and never felt his pulses beat the faster when the innocent blue eyes were lifted to his.
Marriage arrangements were most matter-of-fact in those days and the Major, before leaving Gloucester, thought it as well to broach the subject with his daughter.
“Child,” he said one evening, when they were alone together in a gloomy little parlour at Alderman Pury’s house, “it may be long ere I see you again, for, as you know, we march into the West to-morrow. I have had no proposal for your hand save that from Squire Norton, which I was bound to decline. But if at any time it should chance that I might arrange a marriage for you with Lieutenant Harford, would he meet with your approval?”
“Yes, sir,” said little Mistress Nell, blushing.
“He is a man I would very gladly entrust you to” said the Major. “Yet think not over much of it, Nell, for the notion may come to nothing. I merely wished to know that such a plan would not be uncongenial to you.”
“Oh, no, sir,” faltered Helena, “not uncongenial.”
And then she fell awondering whether it must ever be a choice between the fierce passion which terrified her in Squire Norton’s eyes, and the easy friendliness which somehow scarcely satisfied her in Gabriel’s expression. Was there, perchance, some happy mean betwixt these two, a love which had not yet come her way? If only her gallant rescuer would give her the supreme happiness of requiting in some way his service to her! She half wished herself a man that she might serve under him, and perhaps do for him on the battlefield what Captain Heyworth had done at Edgehill. And so she dreamt her innocent dreams, never knowing of the miniature that hung about Gabriel’s neck, or imagining that at Hereford a pair of dark grey eyes were shedding tears more bitter than any that could ever be shed by her.
For in Hilary’s home there was great sorrow; the physician’s skill could no longer keep at bay the mortal illness which was steadily sapping Mrs. Unett’s strength.
“If it were possible to induce Dr. Wright to come to Hereford I should like to consult with him,” said Dr. Harford one morning when he felt that Hilary must be prepared for the worst. “He and his wife are still residing at Brampton Bryan for the sake of being some protection to Lady Brilliana Harley, and I scarce know whether he would leave, for they stand in great danger of being besieged in the Castle.”
Hilary could not help reflecting that it was strange they should be forced to turn to Parliamentarians in their need, but Dr. Harford and Dr. Wright were by far the most eminent physicians in the neighbourhood, and she found that politics made no sort of difference when one was face to face with a grief and danger like this.
“Lady Brilliana is kindhearted and generous,” she said. “I am sure she would spare Dr. Wright, and he need not be away more than four-and-twenty hours.”
So the plan was proposed, and the two physicians held a consultation, and for a while Hilary hoped against hope. But at length the day came when she could no longer refuse to recognise the terrible truth—her mother was dying.
There was no great suffering; indeed, Mrs. Unett would have passed away in absolute peace had it not been for the thought of her child left behind in sorrow and loneliness, fortunately Dr. William Coke, her favourite brother, was able to ride over to Hereford on the day this was most troubling her.
“You see, Hilary cannot live on here, as she wishes to do, with no better protection than Mrs. Durdle,” sighed the mother. “And though my father would gladly have her at the Palace, she doth not agree with other members of the household, and such an arrangement would never work well. I would that I could have lived to see her married.”
“Too late for Mr. Geers of Garnons,” said Dr. Coke, with a gleam of merriment in his eyes. “They tell me he is just betrothed to Mistress Eliza Acton. And Hilary, I understand, did refuse his suit with great decision. But do not be troubled as to her future. Why should she not come and cheer her old bachelor uncle? I should most gladly welcome her, and I’ll warrant Mrs. Durdle would keep my untidy vicarage in apple-pie order.”
“That she would,” said Mrs. Unett, with a smile. “You are very good, brother, to suggest such a plan. To leave Hilary in your charge would be the greatest comfort to me.”
She longed sorely to tell of the hope she had once cherished of seeing her child wedded to Gabriel Harford, but she had promised secrecy, and felt that matters were now hopeless; moreover, Hilary would probably prefer that her uncle should never know that chapter of her life-story. The silence was the last sacrifice the mother was to make, and it was a very real sacrifice to one who always craved the comfort of a man’s opinion.
Even as she lay there musing over the possibilities of the future, Dr. Coke saw a change in her face which alarmed him. He went to the door and spoke in a low voice to his niece.
“You had better send for Dr. Harford, my dear,” he said. “I fancy I see a change in your mother.”
Hilary would not risk sending, she ran herself without ceremony by the garden way as she would have done in old times, and while the servant went in search of the doctor, waited in the study, looking round with an aching heart at the familiar place.
Very quickly she noted the only new thing in the room. It was the miniature by M. Jean Petitot which Gabriel had mentioned in his Christmas letter, and crossing to the mantelshelf on which it stood, she looked long and earnestly at the portrait of the man who loved her. The strong, clean-souled face appealed to all that was best in her, and the great artist had succeeded in reproducing that quiet spirituality in the eyes which had somehow dominated her in their last unhappy meeting.
An intolerable longing for his presence came over her. Most bitterly she needed him now in this time of her sorrow, and terrible was the shame and misery of realising that her own pride had wrecked his happiness as well as her own.
It was with difficulty that she could control her voice when Dr. Harford entered, and his all-observant eyes at once perceived that the sight of the miniature had been too much for her.
“My mother,” she faltered.
“I will come at once,” he said, taking her hand much as if she had been a child again.
The action comforted her, and she told him of her uncle’s visit, and of how at first the invalid had revived and had seemed better.
But when they reached the sick-room Hilary needed no words to tell her that her mother was at the point of death.
There was a minute’s silence while the doctor felt the failing pulse; a courteous word of thanks for his care; a tender farewell to her child, and a grateful glance at her favourite brother as he knelt at the bedside. Then consciousness failed; and after an interval, broken only by the voice of Dr. Coke as he read the commendatory prayer, she passed quietly away.
Hilary, dazed and tearless, let them take her out of the room unresistingly. The whole world seemed a blank to her, and her desolation was the more overwhelming because the one being who could have comforted her was, by her own fault, altogether out of reach. Her mother dead, her lover banished and rejected, and she herself crushingly conscious of her own sins and shortcomings, it seemed to her indeed that the burden of life was more than she could endure.
Dr. Coke went at once to the Palace to break the news to the Bishop, but Dr. Harford returned to the withdrawing room for a minute, feeling ill at ease as to Hilary. He found her restlessly pacing to and fro, trying not to hear Durdle’s heavy footsteps as she moved about in the next room, busy with the last offices to the dead.
“My dear,” he said, in his fatherly way, “you were up all last night and must rest now. Come,” and he himself arranged the cushions for her on the couch and insisted that she should lie down.
“I wonder that you can endure the sight of me,” said Hilary, “after all the trouble I have caused you.”
He thought that in calmer moments she might regret having spoken so openly, and did not allow himself to refer to Gabriel.
“You forget that your father was my best friend, and that to be of service to you must always be a pleasure to me,” he said, kindly. “Try, if possible, to sleep, my dear; your uncle and I will make all needful arrangements.”
“What is the use of resting?—all is over; no one needs me,” she said, wildly.
“Nay,” he said; “be very sure that there will be need of all your strength in a country as full of sorrow as ours is now. So rest, my child, and wait.”
And then he bade her good-bye, and went his way to comfort and cure others that were ill in body and sad of soul.
Loke who that is most vertuous alway,
Prive and apert, and most entendeth ay
To do the gentil dedes that he can,
And take him for the gretest gentilman.
—Chaucer.
While Hilary was learning at Hereford that in time of sore distress differences of opinion in matters of Church and State lose all hold on the mind, Gabriel was destined to meet in Somersetshire the noblest of the King’s Generals—Sir Ralph Hopton.
Waller, while awaiting reinforcements from London, had made his headquarters in Bath, and, though few days passed without skirmishes in the neighbourhood, he had been able to hold in check the combined forces of Hopton, Hertford and Prince Maurice, and to protect not only Bath but Bristol.
The citizens of Bath held him in high esteem, and when on the evening of the 16th June a messenger from the Royalist army was admitted into the city with a letter for the General, he had to run the gauntlet of some pretty sharp criticisms from the onlookers as he drew rein and dismounted at the door of the “Nag’s Head” in Northgate Street.
This the young man took in very good part, and Gabriel, who chanced to be leaning against the open door listening to one of Major Locke’s stories, felt drawn to him when he saw the imperturbable good humour with which he bore such taunts as:
“Let the barber shave your love-locks!” and, “Here’s a curled Court darling!”
“Take the gentleman’s horse,” said Gabriel, turning to one of the grinning ostlers, and then stepping forward he greeted the newcomer courteously.
“I have a letter from Sir Ralph Hopton, and am to place it in Sir William Waller’s own hands,” said the young officer. “Is he within?”
Something in his voice and face seemed curiously familiar, and as Gabriel led him to the General’s room he could not resist hazarding a question.
“An I mistake not, sir, you must be a kinsman of Captain Heyworth?”
The young officer laughed.
“Truth! I myself am Captain Heyworth—Richard Heyworth of Shortell. Tell me, is my brother Joscelyn here?”
“Unfortunately not. He hath three weeks’ leave, and hath gone to London on business.”
“A curse on my ill-luck!” said Dick Heyworth. “I made sure I should have seen him here.”
He seemed so grievously disappointed that Gabriel felt the more drawn to him and announcing “Captain Heyworth,” watched the General’s surprise and perplexity as the visitor entered the room. Waller signed to him to remain in attendance, and put one or two rapid questions to Richard Heyworth.
“I sent a letter to Sir Ralph Hopton after the fray at Chewton Mendip by the hands of Mr. Reginald Powell—a prisoner we had taken—did it reach him safely?”
“Ay, sir—a letter proposing an exchange of prisoners. This is the General’s reply, and he bade me say he earnestly hoped you would agree to the second proposal he makes.”
Waller read the letter thoughtfully.
“I will write a reply,” he said at length, “and in the absence of your brother will send it by Lieutenant Harford, who shall accompany you on your return. I see, Sir Ralph writes from Wells; both you and your horse will need rest and refreshment after such a ride. Lieutenant Harford will see that you are well cared for.”
“Shall I return for your reply, sir?” asked Gabriel.
“Come for it at sunrise to-morrow,” said Waller, glancing again at the letter. Then, looking up at Dick Heyworth, “I would fain comply with Sir Ralph’s request could I consult my personal wishes, but I am bound to think only of the Cause. I will wish you good-night, sir.”
It only remained for Dick Heyworth to bow and withdraw, but Gabriel noted his look of annoyance as they entered the adjoining room, where the remains of the officers’ supper were still on the table.
“’Tis ever ‘the Cause, the Cause,’ with you Parliament folk,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Now if our two Generals could have met there might be some hope of making an end of the war.”
“Was that your errand?”
“That and the reply as to the exchange of prisoners. You had best not tell it in Gath, however. Sir Ralph Hopton, as you doubtless know, was an old friend of your General’s, and they served together in the German wars. He had a great wish to meet him and discuss this accursed civil strife.”
“Of what avail would that be,” said Gabriel, “when the King will never offer terms that can be accepted, and when Parliament places no confidence in his promises.”
“Ay, there’s the rub,” said Dick.
“Your Cornishmen know how to fight,” said Gabriel. “They gave us a smart repulse at Chewton Mendip.”
“Yes,” said Dick, making great inroads on the plate of beef his companion had set before him. “They are the best soldiers we have, and are men after Sir Ralph’s own heart, for they are as little given to plundering as the best of your Puritan troops. Sir Ralph is like to break his heart over Prince Maurice’s men, for they plunder right and left.”
“It would be little to your General’s liking, specially in his own county of Somerset.”
“That is what irks him so sorely, for they ruin the property of all his old friends and neighbours. But tell me of my brother, for I have not clapped eyes on him since you took Winchester.”
“He hath been several times of late at Gloucester, and was in high spirits at encountering there Mistress Clemency Coriton, his betrothed.”
“He was ever a lucky dog,” said Dick, laughing.
“He came very near to being shot in the back t’other night, by a treacherous blackguard that serves under Prince Maurice,” observed Gabriel.
“Ha! I can guess who that is,” said Dick. “Now I understand the dark hints and innuendoes that Colonel Norton has thrown out once or twice of late. Tell me what really passed.”
Gabriel, though omitting Helena’s name, told the story of her father’s duel with Norton and of their subsequent errand.
“That was an affair after Joscelyn’s own heart,” cried Dick. “Did I not tell you he was a lucky dog? Such chances are for ever coming his way. Never mind, my turn will come.”
Just after sunrise the two young officers rode off together to Wells, and by the time they had reached Hopton’s quarters, an old house in the Close, they had become fast friends, united by their common affection for Joscelyn. Gabriel was taken into a panelled room, where the Royalist General sat writing at a table in the oriel window. He was a middle-aged man, with threads of grey already showing in his long dark hair, and there was something singularly noble in his clear, open face and dignified bearing. A man of stainless character, he found many of his co-workers very little to his taste, and he seemed grievously disappointed to learn that his old friend Waller had felt unable to agree to the proposed meeting. Gabriel could not help glancing at his expression now and then as he read the letter which he had eagerly opened.
It ran as follows:
“Sir,”—The experience which I have had of your worth and the happiness which I have enjoyed in your friendship, are wounding considerations to me, when I look upon this present distance between us; certainly, sir, my affections to you are so unchangeable, that hostilitie itself cannot violate my friendship to your person; but I must be true to the cause wherein I serve. The old limitation of usque ad aras holdeth still, and where my conscience is interested all other obligations are swallowed up. I should wait on you according to your desire, but that I look on you as engaged in that partie beyond the possibility of retreat, and consequents incapable of being wrought upon by anti-persuasion, and I know the conference could never be so close betwixt us, but that it would take wind and receive a construction to my dishonour. That great God, who is the Searcher of all hearts, knows with what a sad sense I go upon this service, and with what a perfect hate I detest this war without an enemie, but I look upon it as opus domini which is enough to silence all passion in me. The God of Peace send us, in His good time, the blessing of peace, and in the meantime fit us to receive it. We are both on the stage and must act those parts that are assigned to us in this tragedy, but let us do it in the way of honour and without personal animositie; whatsoever the issue of it be, I shall never resign that dear title of
“Your most
“Affectionate Friend
“and Faithful Servant,
“William Waller.
“Bath, June 16, 1643.”
Sir Ralph Hopton sighed as he refolded the letter; it had only made him crave more passionately for an end of the war which was dividing England. He glanced a second time at Gabriel, struck by something familiar in his face. “Are you not one of the Herefordshire Harfords?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” replied Gabriel, “son of Dr. Bridstock Harford, of Hereford.”
“I met him many years ago at Canon Frome, when he must have been of your age; you are his living image. How is my kinsman, Sir Richard Hopton?”
“He is well, sir, but hath suffered from the plundering of his house at Canon Frome by the Royalists, to revenge his having accompanied my Lord Stamford last year when he took Hereford.”
“These plunderings and robberies are hateful to me,” said Sir Ralph. “Nothing does so much to embitter the struggle as the wanton destruction of property. By-the-bye, an’ I mistake not, you are connected with the Hoptons through a marriage with Madame Martha Harford, so that in somewhat remote fashion you are also akin to me. I could wish you were with us in this contest, but as they tell me Sir William Waller often says, we will part as enemies that may live to be friends.” Then bidding Dick Heyworth show all hospitality to Waller’s messenger, he dismissed them and began to write his reply to the Parliamentary General.
A few hours later, when Gabriel, with the letter in his wallet, paused at the city gate to take leave of Dick Heyworth, it chanced that Colonel Norton, lounging at his ease at the open window of an alehouse hard by, was roused to sudden interest in the proceedings.
“’Tis the very man!” he exclaimed. “Now I shall get hold of his name, which hath slipped my memory, and will have some sport with the Puritan dog.”
He strolled out of the alehouse, carelessly greeted Dick Heyworth, and, with a mockingly profound bow and sarcastic smile, turned to Gabriel.
“Good day, sir!” he exclaimed. “Have you had any more midnight rides with the fair Helena?”
Dick Heyworth, seeing the angry flush which rose in his new friend’s face, hastily interposed, hoping to avert a storm.
“To name a lady in such a fashion in the open street, sir,——” he began, but there he was interrupted by Gabriel, who, furious at the insinuation and the insult conveyed in Norton’s look and tone, could no longer restrain his tongue.
“In her present abode she is little like to need protection from villainous assaults such as yours, sir,” he said, with that sudden fiery vehemence which comes with startling force now and then from the most self-controlled men.
“Ha!” said, Norton, with his short, harsh laugh. “I have no doubt you stowed her away very conveniently in the godly city of Gloucester, where, doubtless, all men are saints. Beggarly hypocrites that you are! But the King will soon triumph now, and I ask nothing better than to have the privilege of hanging you, you Puritan mongrel!”
“The King’s cause is ill served, sir, by such words,” said Dick, angrily. “You, perhaps, do not understand that Lieutenant Harford bears a letter from Sir Ralph Hopton, and cannot take up a personal quarrel.”
Norton burst into loud laughter.
“Bless you, my children!” he exclaimed, his eyes twinkling with genuine merriment. “’Twas precisely the name of this gentleman that I wished to discover—do not let me detain you longer now, Mr. Harford, we shall meet again, for I never allow myself to be baulked.”
With a derisive smile he returned to the alehouse, and Dick Heyworth rode on for a little way with his new friend.
“That fellow has a bitter grudge against you and my brother,” he said. “You had best beware of him, for he sticks at nothing. ’Tis men of that make who are the ruin of His Majesty’s Army.”
“But, on the other hand, you have men like my Lord Falkland and Sir Ralph Hopton and Sir Bevil Granville,” said Gabriel, his chivalrous nature readily sympathising with what was passing in his companion’s mind. “And, as you may guess, we have not a few narrow-minded zealots and fanatics who are ill to work with.”
“True, men like that Original Sin Smith that played Joscelyn false at Farnham,” said Dick, “Indeed, I think you are right, such a fellow revolts one even more than Colonel Norton, being both villain and hypocrite.”
Then, entrusting Gabriel with a letter for his brother, and many last messages, Dick Heyworth returned to Wells, and Gabriel rode back to Waller’s headquarters, his mind full of Sir Ralph Hopton’s last words, “We will part as enemies that may live to be friends.” If only Hilary would have given him as much comfort as that, how hopefully would he have faced the bitterness of this heart-rending strife!
The sun was setting when he rode into Bath, and the Abbey tower outlined against a saffron sky rose in solemn grandeur, which unconsciously soothed his troubled mind, though, like most of his generation, he had very little feeling for the beautiful. What he had was gained almost entirely from the poetry of the Bible—a Book which had been to him and to his father before him the great educator, and to which, in common with all the best of the Puritans, he owed the sterling honesty and the moral courage that characterised him. To the modern world he would have seemed primitive and unsophisticated. But there is a certain kind of simplicity that is very ill compensated by 忙stheticism, and sturdy Puritan uprightness is sorely needed in these latter days of luxury, lying and greed of gain.
Having delivered the letter from Sir Ralph Hopton, and Dick Heyworth’s letter to his brother, into the General’s keeping, he went in search of Major Locke, and to his great delight found the rare treat of a letter from home awaiting him. His father gave him the new’s of Mrs. Unett’s death, and overwhelmed with the sense of what Hilary’s desolation would be, he lost no time in writing to her. But it is one thing to write a letter in time of war, and quite another to send it safely to its destination.
The next night the troops were ordered into the Bradford Valley, and a strong position was taken up on Claverton Down, for scouts had brought word that the Royalists meant to attempt Bath from that quarter. Some days passed before Gabriel found any one to whom he could entrust the letter, but at last Major Locke’s servant Tobias, who was carrying a packet to Mistress Helena at Gloucester, consented to take charge of it. Tobias, however, though thoroughly honest, was not blessed with brains. Thinking to save himself, he made what he fondly hoped was a short cut across the down, instead of availing himself of the sheltered valley. To his utter dismay, he came across a Royalist officer and a couple of scouts who were reconnoitering to see whether it would be possible after all to capture the city from the Bradford Valley, and while Hopton’s men were making a vigorous attack on the position at Claverton, poor Tobias found that his venture was like to cost him his life.
The scouts seized him and one glance at the face of the officer told him that his last hour was at hand.
“You come from Waller’s camp,” said Colonel Norton, sharply. “Don’t deny it, I can read it in your craven face. What strength has he there?”
Tobias told the number of the troops.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was but on an errand,” faltered the poor fellow. “I am nought but a servant, sir.”
“Whose servant?”
“Major Locke’s, sir,” said Tobias, sealing his own doom by the words.
Norton chuckled gleefully.
“Ha! that’s good hearing. You are carrying his letters no doubt. Here string him up, men, and we’ll turn out his pockets afterwards, and save him the discomfort of a struggle. These Puritans have such consciences, he would doubtless scruple to part with his trust.”
“Sir, sir,” pleaded poor Tobias. “They can be naught to you—they be no despatches—they be but private letters, and both of them only to ladies, sir.”
At this, Norton burst into a roar of laughter. The two scouts, hating both the work and the officer in command, took advantage of his convulsions of merriment, to loose the prisoner.
“Chuck the despatches and run,” whispered one of them. And Tobias needed no second bidding.
Flinging the letters on the ground, he ran like a hunted hare to the shelter of a little coppice, and though Norton swore at the scouts as they made a feint of rushing in pursuit, and sent more than one shot after the terrified messenger, he was too eager to seize on the letters before the wind whirled them away to trouble much about his victim. Tobias gasping for breath ran madly down the slope, till at length catching his foot on a tree stump he fell violently to the ground, severely spraining his ankle. But a sprained ankle means little to a man who has been at death’s door; he lay patiently enough in the wood till next day, and then limped down to Claverton to learn from the villagers that Waller had retired to Bath, and that the Royalists had abandoned the Avon, and were to attempt the capture of Bath from the north.
What with skirmishes and intricate manoeuvring, it was not until the Royalist forces had encamped at Marshfield that Norton had time to open the letters he had seized. But his satisfied chuckle as he read the first, and the malicious merriment in his eyes, showed that the capture had been worth making. The Major’s letter was short, and ran as follows:
“Dear Nell,—Captain Joscelyn Heyworth hath returned from London, where, at my request, he visited your godmother, Madam Harford. Strangely enough, she proves to be a kinswoman of Lieutenant Harford, your trusty rescuer. Madam Harford desires that at the earliest opportunity you travel with Cousin Malvina to London, and that you make her house—Notting hill Manor—your home until these calamities be overpast. Mr. Bennett and Alderman Pury will let you know when the journey may be attempted, and will find you a proper escort. I write in great haste; a battle is imminent, Sir W. Waller hoping thereby to save Bath, and to prevent the army of the West from joining the King’s forces at Oxford. I am just exchanged into Sir Arthur Hazlerigg’s new regiment, known as the ‘Lobsters,’ and you would smile to see how fine we look, most thoroughly encased in armour, like the knights of old. Truth to tell, I find it mighty cumbersome, but it may serve. God keep you from all ill, and grant us in peaceful times a happy reunion. I could wish to have seen you safely wedded to such an one as Lt. G. H., but have not as yet broached the subject with him.
“Your loving father,
“George Locke.
“To Mrs. Helena Locke,
“at the House of Alderman Pury,
“Gloucester.”
Norton refolded this sheet carefully, and thrust it into an inner pocket, reflecting that later on it might suit his purposes to send it to little Mistress Nell. Then, with a smile of malicious enjoyment, he read the address on the second letter.
“To Mistress Hilary Unett,
“care of the Rt. Rev. the Bishop of Hereford.”
Unfastening the seal, he read with some surprise, the following words:
“I hesitate to break that silence which you most emphatically enforced when we last met, but the news of your bereavement, which I have just learnt from my father, so stirs my heart that write I must, and should this only offend you more deeply I must pay the penalty. That you are desolate and sad at heart I well know. My beloved, if only I could comfort you I would ask nothing more—but this is the sorest part of our unhappy difference as to the war, that I am cut off from the right of serving you, and am doubtful whether you will even be at the trouble to read these lines. But should you read them, then I pray you read betwixt the lines the love for you which fills my heart—a love that is ill at expressing itself in words, but which will always be longing to serve you while life lasts. It is some consolation to me to know that you are with your grandfather, whose kindness when last he parted with me I cannot forget. I have just had the pleasure of seeing Sir Ralph Hopton, the noblest of all His Majesty’s Generals, being sent (in the absence of Captain Joscelyn Heyworth) with a letter from Sir W. Waller. Sir Ralph was kind enough to call cousins with me on account of Mistress Martha Harford, who was afterwards wedded to Mr. Michael Hopton—you will remember smiling over her mistaken epitaph on the monument in Bosbury Church. Was it in some other life that we spent that happy day at Bosbury, when we were betrothed? Would to God we could find ourselves there once more with hearts united! Should you see my father, will you let him know that we are expecting a decisive battle in the neighbourhood of Bath? I will write to him after it is over.
“Dear Hilary, for the sake of old days, I pray you at least to accept my sympathy in your sorrow, and
“Believe that I rest ever
“Your faithful servant,
“Gabriel Harford.”
Norton’s face, as he read, was a curious study. Anything more unlike his notion of a love-letter it was impossible to conceive. He read it twice, and a new sense of shame began to steal over him. His eyes at length rivetted themselves on the one sentence, “for the sake of old days,” but he was looking, in truth, at some scene long ago in his own life—a scene which softened him strangely, and called out the better side of his nature.
“Curse it!” he cried, at length, beginning to pace the room restlessly. “I wish I had never meddled with that boy’s love-letter. God! if I could undo the past!”
With a hand that shook, he took up a tankard of ale and hastily drained it.
“Humph! that’s better,” he muttered. “A pox on such soft-hearted sentiment! It must be as the proverb hath it, ‘Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.’ I can no more undo my past than I can get this letter back into the messenger’s pocket, and there’s an end on’t.”
With that he tore up the sheet and flung the pieces out of the window, watching the rapid way in which the summer wind whirled them into space. Then, drawing out the Major’s letter, he once more perused it, and very soon was laughing heartily over the father’s matrimonial hopes for his daughter.
“‘Twill be hard if I can’t contrive to put a spoke in his wheel,” he thought. “I’ll be revenged on him before long, and on Mr. Gabriel Harford, too. What does the fellow mean by philandering with little Nell, when he is still courting this Hereford lady? I should have had her t’other night if it had not been for his cursed knight-errantry.”
And then once more that memory which had no connection at all with little Helena Locke came back to torture him.
With an impatient shrug of the shoulders he drew out his pipe and began to fill it, humming to himself meanwhile a song from The Queen of Corinth:
Weep no more, nor sigh, nor groan;
Sorrow calls no time that’s gone;
Violets plucked the sweetest rain
Makes not fresh nor grow again.
The next day one of the most obstinately contested battles of the campaign was fought on the slopes of Lansdown, and Norton, who with all his faults was an excellent soldier, had no time to think of past regrets or of private enmities. Again and again the Parliamentary troops charged down the hill, but Hopton’s Cornishmen with their deadly pikes pressed bravely on. The slaughter on both sides was terrible, the Royalists alone leaving fourteen hundred dead and wounded on the field, and Waller’s army, forced at length from their position on the brow of the hill by superior numbers, had to retire along the ridge to Bath about midnight.
The city was saved, for Hopton’s army was in no condition to attack it, and the noble-hearted Royalist General was full of sadness when, on the return of daylight, he visited the battlefield. He had himself been slightly wounded, but by sunrise he was in the saddle again, giving directions as to the relief of the injured, and by his kindly words bringing comfort to many of the poor fellows who had lain in torture on the hillside all through the night.
While he was thus occupied, Captain Nevill, the officer in attendance on him, drew his attention to a trumpeter from the Parliamentary army, accompanied by one of Waller’s officers. As the latter dismounted and came forward, Sir Ralph, scanning his face, saw that it was none other than Gabriel Harford, who, since Captain Heyworth had been left on the battle-field either dead or wounded, was acting as Waller’s galloper. He had come with a request from the Parliamentary General for a day’s truce in order to succour the wounded and bury the dead.
“’Tis needed indeed by us as well as by you,” said Hopton; and his words were spoken to that awful accompaniment of groans and piteous cries for water which Gabriel could so well recall after the battle of Edgehill.
“Sir William Waller bade me also ask if any surgeon from Bath should be sent to the aid of Sir Bevil Granville,” he said, watching the General’s face with interest.
“The offer does credit to his humanity. Sir Bevil was Carried to Cold Ashton Vicarage,” replied Sir Ralph; “but he was dying last night, I think by now he is past surgeon’s aid.”
The words had hardly left his lips when a tremendous explosion threw both speaker and hearers to the ground. Gabriel and Captain Nevill escaped unhurt, and were soon on their feet again, eagerly bending over the prostrate form of the General, while others rushed to the yet more terribly injured Major Sheldon, and lifted aside the bodies of those who had been actually killed.
“There is life in him yet,” said Captain Nevill, with his fingers on the General’s pulse.
“Yes,” said Gabriel, “but there won’t be long, unless we can check this. Quick! off with your scarf, sir, and bind it about his arm while I hold the artery.”
“I’ faith, sir, you’re as good as a leech,” said the Royalist Captain, unable even at that moment of anxiety to forbear a glance at the strangely attractive face of Waller’s envoy.
“A poor substitute, but the son of a physician,” said Gabriel, deftly guiding the rather clumsy efforts of Captain Nevill.
A moan from Hopton brought a look of relief to both his helpers.
“Who is it?” he groaned; “what hath chanced?”
“A powder-waggon accidentally exploded, sir,” said Captain Nevill.
“I can’t hear a word,” moaned Hopton; “it hath deafened and blinded me. Let the troops fall back on Marshfield.”
But here the agony becoming unbearable he lost consciousness, and naught remained for his saddened followers but to obey those last words, and carry him from the battle-field.
“I will ride back and send the best surgeon in Bath to wait upon him,” said Gabriel, longing to stay and search for his friend Joscelyn Heyworth, who must be lying somewhere on the hillside, though whether dead or wounded he could not tell. But his duty was to ride back to Waller with Hopton’s message, and personal wishes had to be stifled.
“Should Sir Ralph recover I shall tell him he owes his life to you, for assuredly he would have bled to death had it not been for your promptitude,” said Captain Nevill, warmly. “Doth he know your name?”
“Yes, sir, ’tis Gabriel Harford. Farewell, and may God preserve your leader.”
Then, remounting his horse at the too of the hill, he galloped along the Lansdown ridge, making all speed back to Sir William Waller, that help might be sent as soon as possible to those tortured soldiers, whose groans still rang in his ears.
The horrors of the campaign made his heart ache, yet if ever war was unavoidable he honestly believed that it was this war, which had only been undertaken after years of patient endeavour to combat by peaceful means the King’s misrule. Again and again, moreover, the disputants had paused during the hostilities and had tried to come to a peaceful settlement, but the fatal bar of the King’s insincerity and the repeated discovery of his underhand dealings while negotiations for peace were yet going on had always frustrated the hopes of the distracted country.
Gabriel was ready and willing to lay down his life for the freedom of England and the preservation of the Reformed religion. The recent death of John Hampden the Patriot, had, indeed, filled him with renewed eagerness to sacrifice everything for the cause. And, at the same time, he could not but feel, as his friend Joscelyn Hey worth had felt after the return from Chalgrove Field, a burning desire to call to account the main authors of all this woe. His Majesty and the Archbishop might personally be well-meaning men, but their tyrannical government had filled him with loathing, and he grieved to think of the thousands of homes which their policy had blighted. For Sir Bevil Granville and for the brave Cornishmen who had fallen on the previous day he could only feel admiration, but he would gladly have had in their stead those he deemed the cause of all the misery—the hard and aggressive Dr. Laud and the weak and untrustworthy King.
They say it was a shocking sight,
After the field was won;
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that you know must be
After a famous victory.
—Southey.
Never, perhaps, had the hopes of Waller’s army been higher than on the morning of the 13th July as they encompassed the town of Devizes, the attack upon which had been fixed for that evening. Throughout the march from Bath they had been able to harass the rear of Hopton’s army: they had intercepted a convoy of ammunition coming from Oxford; and though Prince Maurice’s convoy had contrived to escape, they held Hopton and all his foot cooped up in Devizes with no match and very little powder.
While still suffering terribly from the effects of the explosion, the brave Royalist General had the wit to devise on his sickbed a plan for supplying match. He ordered the townsfolk to give the ropes which held up the sacking of their beds, and these, when boiled in resin, served very well for the emergency. Still, he was heavy-hearted, for he knew that the unfortified town could not long withstand such an attack as Waller was like to make, and in great suffering of body and anxiety of mind he lay musing over the dire misfortunes which had followed this army of the West.
The hours passed slowly by, and at length early in the afternoon he was roused by the approach of quick footsteps.
“Sir, sir,” cried Captain Nevill, eagerly, “we are, I trust, saved. Prince Maurice hath returned from Oxford bringing fresh troops under my Lord Wilmot. They are massed on Roundway Down.”
“Massed where?” cried Hopton, still somewhat deaf from his accident.
“A mile off, on Roundway Down,” shouted Captain Nevill.
“Then, for the time, Devizes is saved,” said Hopton, with a sigh of relief, “for Sir William Waller will assuredly draw off his troops and give the Prince battle at the foot of the down.”
Such, indeed was Waller’s intention, but his plans were frustrated by the over-eagerness of his friend, Sir Arthur Hazlerigg. Remembering the gallant behaviour of the “Lobsters” at Lansdown and the terror they had struck into the hearts of the Royalists, he charged gallantly, but rashly, up the slippery and precipitous hill. The Royalists bore down upon them with crushing force, and, to the dismay of Waller and his troops on the plain below, the whole regiment thus sharply repulsed tore frantically down the hill.
It was the most appalling sight Gabriel had ever seen; the maddened horses, forced down perilous heights “where never horse went down or up before,” fell by scores, crushing their riders, and, to his horror, he saw his friend Major Locke first wounded in the thigh by a musket ball, and then thrown headlong to the ground with his horse on the top of him.
The sight of this was more than he could endure, for he knew only too well the horrible agony the Major would undergo. Receiving a word of permission from Waller, he set spurs to his horse, and rode in hot haste to the rescue, hoping to bring his friend to shelter. But by the time he had dragged him from beneath the horse and had contrived to lift him on to his own beast, he found, to his utter dismay, that the whole of Waller’s cavalry had been put to flight. The terrible sight of the destruction of Hazlerigg’s regiment had filled the men with panic, and, seeing that they were hemmed in on the side of Devizes by Hopton’s steadily advancing Cornishmen, they broke and fled in the wildest disorder.
To rejoin his routed comrades was for the present impossible; already they were riding pell-mell back to the west, hotly pursued by the Royalists, and all he could do was to try to find some sort of shelter for his wounded friend. Leading his horse cautiously along the side of the down, and supporting the Major as well as he could in the saddle, he gradually drew off from the scene of the disaster. At any moment, as he well knew, they might be seen by the enemy and shot down; but at length, thanks to the general absorption in the pursuit, he succeeded in gaining a little hollow scooped out of the hillside, where, sheltered by a few stunted trees he had the good fortune to find one of the rude huts used by shepherds in the lambing season.
“You shall rest here,” he said, helping Major Locke to dismount. “Then, later on, when the coast is clear I will try to get you to less comfortless quarters.”
“You have saved my life, lad,” said the Major, sinking down on to the mud floor of the hut with a groan. “The plungings of my poor Whitefoot would soon have crushed me to death. Now, an’ you love me, help me out of this armour.”
“Alas! ’twas the heavy armour that proved the death of many of our comrades,” said Gabriel, relieving the Major from his cumbrous burden. “The weight was too much for them to remount quickly if once unhorsed.”
Taking the orange scarf from his waist, he succeeded in bandaging the Major’s wound; then unrolling the cloak which was fastened on his saddle, he made the injured man fairly comfortable, and having secured his horse to a tree hard by, sat down and tried to form some plan for the future.
“Have you no water?” groaned the Major. “I am half mad with thirst.”
“There is not a drop,” said Gabriel; “but when dusk comes I will go out and reconnoitre. We must get you out of this filthy hut as soon as may be. I will fetch you water, and make some plan for your removal.”
The waiting seemed long, but at length, when all seemed quiet and twilight was coming on, Gabriel stole cautiously forth on his dangerous errand. At a distance he judged to be about a mile from the hollow he saw lights burning in a house, and since it lay in the opposite direction to Devizes, and away from the western quarter in which Waller’s flying cavalry had been pursued by the foe, he thought it might be possible to get safe shelter there for the wounded Major. He dared not, however, risk moving him until he had made sure, and hurrying across the open down, through a cornfield, and into a deep lane which led to a main road, he found on approaching nearer that the lights burnt in the windows of a substantial farmhouse.
Should he risk the chance of encountering Royalists, who would instantly make him prisoner? There was nothing whatever to indicate whether the house contained friends or foes. On the other hand, it was impossible to linger, or it would grow too dark to find his way back to Major Locke’s hiding-place. He must put a bold face on it and knock.
In response he heard the heavy bolts withdrawn, and the door was slowly opened by an old, grey-haired man, who peered suspiciously at the stranger standing in the gloom of the porch.
“I have come to crave water and, if possible, linen for a sorely wounded man,” said Gabriel, his heart sinking a little as he noticed the severity of the old man’s face. It was certainly not the face of one who cultivated the virtues of compassion and tender-heartedness.
“As grim an old fellow as I ever clapped eyes on,” he reflected, ruefully. “There’ll not be much help here.”
“Before I say ay or no to that I will hear who thou art for,” said the master of the house, sternly.
“Surely you would not refuse a cup of water to a wounded man whether he were friend or foe,” said Gabriel.
“Ay, that would I in good sooth, if the wounded man was one of the Amalekites, a foe to the truth,” said the veteran, with a gleam of indignant zeal in his hard eyes.
Gabriel gave a sigh of relief; he had not lighted on a fiery Royalist who would hand him over as a prisoner, but upon one of those stern and uncompromising Puritans who literally applied every word of the Old Testament to the troubles of their own day.
“Nay, we are not what you call Amalekites,” he replied, biting his lip to keep back a smile; “we were both in Sir William Waller’s army. An’ you could give shelter to my friend, Major Locke, you would be doing a good deed, and he will be well able to recompense you.”
“I cannot take him in now—the women-folk be all abed and asleep, and we be hard-working folk; but bring him at dawn to-morrow and my wife will tend him before she sets about her business in the dairy.”
Gabriel thanked him heartily, and gladly accepted half a loaf of rye bread which the farmer proffered with the flagon of water.
“Now if you could but spare me a bit of linen I should have better hope of bringing my wounded friend here in safety,” he said, glancing round the great kitchen to which he had been led.
“The women-folk would ha’ known what to give thee, sir,” said the farmer, in perplexity, “but beshrew me I can’t tell where——”
He broke off with an exclamation of relief, and crossing the room took down a long roller towel on which the household were wont to wipe their hands, apparently without much preliminary washing.
“Here, sir, use this,” he said. And Gabriel, treasuring up the story to amuse his father when next they met, but too well-seasoned a warrior after his nine months’ campaign to be in the least dainty, accepted the towel with genuine gratitude, and returned to his friend as fast as the fading light and the perplexities of the way would allow.
The Major was so much exhausted by the dressing of his wound that he fell asleep directly he had refreshed himself with the water and the rye bread. Gabriel, not daring to close his eyes lest he should sleep after daybreak, paced to and fro outside the hut, and thought sadly enough over the tragedy he had seen enacted that day. Now and then on the soft summer wind the distant sound of groans reached his ear, for many of the victims still lay as they had fallen on the hill side, and several times the piercing shriek of a wounded horse made him shudder.
He resolved that as soon as he had left the Major in safekeeping at the farmhouse, his best plan would be to rejoin Waller, who, in all probability, would make in the first instance for Bristol, and try to reorganise his shattered army. But as he thought of the desperate condition of the Parliamentary forces, and of the extraordinary conduct of Lord Essex in permitting the reinforcements from Oxford to escape him when, with his whole army, he was lying idle at Reading, his heart was sorely troubled; for it seemed to him that the Cause was being overborne, and that evil was like to triumph.
With a sigh, he stretched himself for a time on the sheep-cropped grass of the steep little hollow, watching the stars and the swaying of the branches in the group of trees hard by. The sight brought to his mind certain long-familiar words about one in olden days who had been troubled by the near approach of an overwhelming army, which threatened to ruin his country—
And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.. . . Then said the Lord to Isaiah, “Go forth now to meet Ahaz.... and say unto him, ‘Take heed, and be quiet; fear not, neither be faint-hearted.’”
And therewith he fell to thinking of the strange rise and fall of nations, and of the things which make a nation truly great. How transitory was all earthly glory and dominion—how eternal the glory of truth and righteousness, and the joy of struggling to right wrong!
Thus the night wore away; and at daybreak he saddled his horse, and, rousing Major Locke, helped him with great difficulty to mount. Then, slowly and carefully, he guided Harkaway along the slippery down, and, skirting the cornfield, came out into the lane below. The hedges rose high on either side, cutting off all view of the surrounding country; but as they paced slowly round the last turning and came into sight of the main road, a sound of tramping feet made Gabriel pause. Undoubtedly soldiers were approaching, and he cautiously led Harkaway into a shady nook, where they could see but were little likely to be seen.
For a minute his heart beat high with hope, for he was certain that the men wore orange scarves; then, with a pang, he saw that many had been stripped of their buff coats, while, from their dejected bearing, it was only too evident that they were prisoners.
“’Tis Sir William Waller’s foot soldiers,” whispered the Major, “they are marching them to Oxford.”
“Shall we turn back?” questioned Gabriel.
“Nay, lie low here in the shadow, they will never notice us,” said the Major.
The words had only just been uttered when, to their consternation, Harkaway, catching sight of the horses ridden by a couple of officers, whinnied loudly.
“The very beast we stand in need of,” said one of the officers, with a laugh, “and right willing to come with us, me-thinks.”
Setting spurs to their horses the two young fellows swooped down upon the little group in the lane, and Gabriel, seeing that escape was hopeless, stood his ground.
“By your leave, sir,” he said, as one that he afterwards learnt to be Captain Tarverfield, snatched at Harkaway’s bridle, “I do but carry a sorely injured friend to the farm hard by, and you are welcome to the horse then.”
They laughed, boisterously.
“Nay, but you will have to join our merry company yonder, my worthy Roundhead,” said the elder of the two. “Short hair and a well-bred accent mark you out as a traitor. ’Tis idle to pretend that you are a Cavalier’s serving-man.”
“I make no pretence, sir,” said Gabriel, angrily. “I do but ask you, out of common humanity, to let a wounded man pass.”
“Oh! Lord Harry Dalblane knows naught of humanity,” said Captain Tarverfield, laughing.
“So it seems,” said Gabriel, with bitterness.
“You must come out of this hole, and see what our Colonel has to say about it,” said Lord Harry, gripping Gabriel firmly by the arm and following his companion, who led Harkaway out to the main road. “Here, by good fortune, he comes. Sir, an’ it please you to call a halt, we have taken two more prisoners, and a horse that is well worth having.”
Gabriel, looking up in the dim light, gave a start of dismay when he perceived that the Colonel was Major Locke’s deadly foe.
“Why, Harry! you are worth your weight in gold,” exclaimed Norton, with a chuckle of satisfaction. “You have taken the two men I most desired to have.”
“’Twas the horse that I desired,” said Lord Harry, studying Harkaway’s points with the keen eye of one who made the training of horses the chief interest of life. “And this prating Puritan here vows that it must first carry this wounded gentleman to a farm hard by.”
“Nay, but Major Locke is coming to Oxford with me,” said Norton, with a laugh. “I’ll give him excellent safe quarters there in the Castle—surely a better place for you, Squire, than a mere farm.”
“I shall scarce reach Oxford,” said the Major, faintly.
“Sir,” broke in Gabriel, “Major Locke is grievously wounded in the thigh; a thirty-mile ride will be his death.”
“Well, an he cannot ride perchance you would prefer that he should walk,” said Norton, mockingly. “But rest assured, Mr. Harford, that to Oxford he will have to go. I warned you at Wells that I am a man that was never yet baulked. You robbed me of my ride with the fair Helena, and I shall solace myself with this journey with her father.”
There was a gleam of such devilish cruelty in his eyes, as he glanced at Major Locke to see how he was taking this, that Gabriel’s wrath could no longer be restrained.
“You have him now at your mercy,” he said, “and the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel; but be assured that, in another world, for every brutal deed and word you will have to pay to the uttermost farthing.”
Norton laughed till his merriment infected Lord Harry, but Captain Tarverfield looked grave and ill at ease.
“You hear him, gentlemen,” said Norton, still chuckling. “Methinks he had best be dubbed Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher. To-night, Lieutenant, you shall have an excellent opportunity for a sermon, but at present I will trouble you to hold your tongue and to tender me your sword.”
With great enjoyment he noted the spasm of pain that passed over his captive’s face as he reluctantly obeyed. Then, signing to one of his men to come forward, the Colonel gave sharp and peremptory orders:
“Strip the prisoner.”
And in a minute the man had robbed Gabriel of helmet and gorget, buff coat and vest.
“Stay,” said Captain Tarverfield, who had watched with some compunction the prisoner’s keen suffering under this degradation. “Though it is lawful to strip an officer Colonel, you would surely leave the preacher his shirt to serve as surplice.” Norton laughed, gaily.
“True. And since he is so devoted a friend to Major Locke we will rope them together, the one mounted and the other afoot. And you had better keep up the pace, Mr. Harford, or your own horse will kick you on.”
The prisoner, by a supreme effort, stifled a smart retort, and began to consider how best to spare the Major when they were bound together. By the time the cavalcade moved forward again the rosy glow of sunrise was making the whole countryside beautiful, and in the sore battle that Gabriel was waging with his own nature—in the manly effort to bring his own character and conduct into accord with the high ideal he held, the sight of the rising sun brought him no small comfort. None knew better than a single-hearted Puritan how to wage that strenuous inner warfare which makes men truly great, and the conflict was to Gabriel as real as any visible struggle. As he marched now he fought as he had done on many a battle-field to the well-known battle psalm:
Let God arise, and scattered
Let all His en’mies be;
And let all those that do Him hate
Before His presence flee.
“What thing is love, which nought can countervail?
Nought save itself, e’en such a thing is love.
All worldly wealth in worth as far doth fail,
As lowest earth doth yield to heaven above.
Divine is love, and scorneth worldly pelf,
And can be bought with nothing, but with self.”
—From “England’s Helicon,” 1600.
As they passed the farm in which he had hoped to leave the Major, he saw the master of the house standing at the gate, and, though they could not speak, an understanding glance passed between them, and Gabriel saw the eyes that had looked so hard and stern on the previous night soften in a marvellous fashion. He understood the strong bracing sympathy of the rugged old farmer, and went on his way with renewed courage.
The heat of the July day soon grew intense, and several times the cavalcade was forced to halt and rest. The Major could only just keep in the saddle, and Gabriel watched him anxiously, dreading every minute that he would succumb.
Once when they rested for a short time at West Kennet, Captain Tarverfield approached him, looking with not unkindly curiosity at the young lieutenant—his face burnt ruddy-brown by the sun, and great drops of perspiration falling on his forehead from his rough brown hair. His hazel eyes were extraordinarily clear and bright, and something in his straight, fearless glance attracted the Royalist Captain.
“You have had a hot march,” he said.
“I have a good pair of legs, sir,” said Gabriel; “but my arm is cramped and numb.”
The Captain then noticed that to save his wounded friend he had all these hours had his wrist roped up above his head in a posture that must have long since become torturing.
With a muttered imprecation, the Royalist proceeded to unloose the rope.
“Give me your parole not to escape, and for this hour, at any rate, you can go free,” he said.
Gabriel readily gave the promise, thanking the Captain warmly, and between them they then helped the Major from his horse and laid him on the grass by the roadside. The soldiers had contented themselves with stripping the younger prisoner, and had let the wounded man retain his helmet. Gabriel unfastened it now, and carried it down to the bank of the stream close by; then, returning with the water the Major was eagerly longing for, found Captain Tarverfield still in conversation with him.
“Had I known that Colonel Norton had a grudge against you both, I would have let you pass this morning,” he said. “For Norton is the very devil when once he has a quarrel with any man. ’Tis of no use to ask him for a surgeon’s aid, it would only make him the more brutal. We shall lie this night at Marlborough, however, and I will do what I can for you when Lord Wilmot and my Lord Falkland arrive with the next detachment.”
“Did Lord Falkland come with the Oxford contingent?” asked Gabriel, sudden interest lighting up his face. “I owe my life to his kindly help at Edgehill.”
And he told the young officer what had passed.
“He is greatly changed since then,” said Captain Tarverfield. “They say His Majesty fears and dislikes him, while he is like a fish out of water among the courtiers and fine ladies at Oxford, who spitefully invent evil tales as to his friendship with Mistress Moray. He should never have meddled with statecraft, his conscience is over-tender for the work he is expected to do.”
With that he went off to dine at the village inn, and the Major, reviving a little, began to think of the future.
“We may not again have such a chance as this,” he said, “and there is a matter I would fain broach with you. I know that I have got my deathblow and am sorely troubled as to Helena. I am leaving her well-nigh alone in the world, and have arranged no marriage for her.”
“But Madam Harford will have her in safe keeping, and when once she is in London you may surely rest content,” said Gabriel, suddenly becoming conscious of his friend’s desire.
“I would fain have had you as Lord of the Manor and husband to my child,” said the Major. “The estate hath like enough suffered from Prince Maurice’s troops, no details have yet reached me, but Helena’s dowry is large, and I would gladly see her wedded to you and safe from Squire Norton.”
“Sir,” said Gabriel, looking troubled, “I will do all that I can to shield and help your daughter. But I am not free to wed her; for though ’tis true my betrothal was ended by the war, yet my love remains where it was first given.”
The Major, accustomed to regard marriage chiefly as a matter of business, scarcely understood such an argument, and having found the very man he could trust—one, moreover, who shared most of his views—was very loth to relinquish hope.
“You will see what time brings forth,” he said. “I should rest better in my grave could I think that Nell would be your wife.”
But Gabriel, though moved by his friend’s eagerness, could not be false to himself.
“I will promise, sir, to be her friend and protector,” he said, “when I am out of prison. But to promise more than that would be no true kindness to her.”
“The bugle sounds,” said the Major. “Come, help me to mount for the last time. Most truly did the Psalmist sing, ‘A horse is a vain thing to save a man.’ We owe our capture to poor Harkaway’s friendly greeting of the enemy’s steeds.” Gabriel tried to smile at the jest.
“We must take the fortune of war,” he replied, cheerfully. But as the weary journey continued in the hot afternoon sun, the Major’s strength waned perceptibly, and when at last they reached Marlborough, and were halted in its wide street, he seemed scarcely conscious, though he still kept in the saddle.
A kindly-looking woman came out from one of the houses with a large earthenware mug of home-brewed ale, which she offered to him. He revived a little, thanked her courteously, and made one of his usual little jokes, but with so piteous an effort that Gabriel felt a choking sensation in his throat. He was glad that they were at that moment ordered to march to St. Peter’s Church, in which the prisoners were to be sheltered for the night.
The soldiers untied Major Locke and carried him into the building, putting him down on the chancel floor that he might be a little removed from the noise and confusion in the nave, into which the soldiers were driving the weary prisoners roped together in pairs.
Gabriel, relieved to find his right arm available again, dragged down an old moth-eaten cushion from the pulpit and placed it under the Major’s head, removed his helmet and chafed his cold, clammy hands. But the lack of all comforts baffled his efforts, and he knew that after the long, hot ride the mere chill of the flagstones was the very worst thing for one in his state. He raised him a little, propping up the grey head on his own shoulder.
“You will send the news to Nell,” said the dying man, faintly.
“Yes; but good news I hope,” said Gabriel. “Captain Tarverfield will, I think, remember his promise of help, and a surgeon may do much for you. I hear steps drawing near, maybe he hath already sent. No, ’tis but the sentry.”
The soldier approached them and looked down silently at the wounded man. He was a tall, powerful Irishman who had come over to England as one of Strafford’s grooms, and the Major would have shrunk from him in horror had he known his nationality or guessed him to be a devout Roman Catholic. His face bore an expression which gave Gabriel hope.
“Can you not fetch a surgeon?” he asked. “Surely you may do that much for a prisoner.”
“I would do it, sir,” replied the man, “but I am on sentry duty, and bound not to leave the church. But sure, then, before dark one of the officers will go the rounds, and it will be him you can be asking.”
He moved on, but returned presently with a garment which he had found in the vestry.
“Wrap it about the feet of him, sir,” he said. “That’s the best chance for him, for sure this place be as cold as any vault.”
Gabriel thanked him.
“Was popish vestment ever before of such use?” said the Major, smiling faintly. “Yet, beshrew me! there’s something that tickles my fancy not a little in the thought of quitting this world wrapped in a cope!”
“Talk not yet of quitting the world, sir,” said Gabriel. “I have seen worse wounded men recover.” But he argued against his own fears.
The church was now very quiet, the prisoners, hungry and depressed, were trying to forget their wretchedness in sleep, and only the steps of the sentry could be heard echoing at the west end of the building, until, in response to a peremptory summons, he opened the door and admitted Colonel Norton and Lord Harry Dalblane.
Gabriel at once recognised Norton’s voice, and his heart sank.
“Where have you borne the wounded prisoner?” said the Colonel.
“He lies yonder, sir, in the chancel,” said the sentry, “and is in sore need of a surgeon.”
“Mind your own business,” said the Colonel, sharply. “I shall provide him with all that he merits.”
“And where is our fiery friend, the lieutenant?” said Lord Harry, staggering a little as he followed Norton up the middle aisle, for he had been drinking heavily. “Where is the little preacher?”
“He is here,” said Norton, with his short scoffing laugh; “sitting like an angel on a monument supporting the effigy of a dead saint.”
“Sir,” said Gabriel, “I beg of you to let a surgeon wait upon Major Locke. If the ball were but removed from his wound I think he would recover.”
“Am I to be dictated to first by my own sentry and then by my prisoner?” said Norton, haughtily. “Get up, you vile rebel, or it shall be the worse for you. I see you are not even bound—you need a reminder that you are no free man. Get up, I tell you!”
Gabriel reluctantly obeyed, and laid the Major down as gently as he could on the moth-eaten cushion.
Then he stood silently awaiting his captor’s orders, taking meanwhile a rapid, comprehensive glance at the two officers, Norton with his short fawn and red cloak flung carelessly back over one shoulder, his wide hat and long drooping red feather cocked jauntily to the right side, his handsome, but malicious-looking, face lighted by the sunset glow which streamed through the windows; and Lord Harry laughing, foolishly, in semidrunken light-heartedness, at the thought of the amusement he had planned.
“Come, Colonel,” he said, “when is the sport to begin? But our preacher is scarce in parson’s habit, his knee-breeches and riding-boots are white with dust, and his shirt is like an end of Lent surplice—none of the whitest. I’ll e’en go and plunder the vestry for him.”
“Don’t be a fool, Harry,” said Norton, irritably. “Come, lieutenant, I promised you this morning you should have such a chance of preaching a sermon as had never fallen to your lot before. But I see the pulpit will scarce serve my purpose, you shall come here.”
And gripping him by the shoulder he dragged him to the first pillar in the south aisle.
“Now for your cords, Harry,” he said, with a chuckle. “For this gentleman is of an independent turn, and must be reminded that traitors and prisoners do not roam at large. I must trouble you, Mr. Harford, to stand with your back to the pillar, and to stretch your arms back as far as they will go; hold him steady in that hollowed-out moulding, Harry, while I make these knots fast.”
With fiendish delight in giving pain he tied the cords so tightly that they cut into the victim’s wrists, then he fastened the ends at the farther side of the pillar, and taking a rope tied it with the same vicious tightness a little above his knees; lastly, to make movement impossible he girdled both the prisoner and the pillar with a leathern bridle.
So far Gabriel had borne all in silence, for his mind was still taken up with the thought of his friend, and of the brutal way in which the Major was being left to die. But he was naturally sensitive to all sarcasm and ridicule, and the gibes and jeers of the half-tipsy Lord Harry, and the more biting cruelties of the tongue to which Norton subjected him, were sharper than swords.
Norton, disappointed at his failure to rouse him, turned presently with a laugh to his companion:
“They say, you know, Harry, that these Puritans will neither swear nor game nor drink. But here you see one who is giving us rare sport, and who would pledge all that he has for a drink—even of water—after the march, and who longs to swear. No, no, my fine fellow, there you stand till to-morrow—we’ll have no sentiment over dying traitors. Your friend will soon be safe in hell.”
This allusion to the Major at last broke down Gabriel’s control.
“’Tis you that are already there!” he exclaimed, the blood boiling in his veins. “Only one led by the devil could thus treat a dying man.”
“Preach away, my friend, preach away!” said Norton, with a sneer. “Your fellow prisoners are asleep, and you can’t harm anyone. Come! ’tis not every day you can discourse in a church!”
Just then, in an evil moment, Lord Harry noticed that Norton, in dragging his victim from the chancel, had pulled off the top button of his shirt, which had fallen open, giving to view two or three links of a gold chain and the corner of a shagreen case.
He stumbled forward.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed, snatching at the chain and dragging up the miniature attached to it. “Ha, ha! Here’s sport! See what the Puritan dog has got hanging from his collar?”
Gabriel, half maddened by feeling the sot’s fingers on Hilary’s picture, writhed in a frantic effort to free himself. To be forced to stand there helplessly, unable to stir hand or foot, was a torture he had never before felt.
“Oh, fie, Ecclesiastes! we named you well,” said Norton, with his scoffing laugh. “You deal, like Solomon, in numbers. Shame on you! the portrait of a fair lady of Hereford on your person all the time you were philandering with pretty Helena!”
“You lie in your throat,” said Gabriel, vehemently. “I did but rescue her from your fiendish trap.”
“What!” cried Lord Harry, thickly. “Do you give the Colonel the lie direct, you Puritan dog? Take that!”
And he dealt Gabriel a blow on the head which for a minute half stunned him.
Norton drew his friend back.
“Hold your peace, Harry,” he said. “You spoil sport. I understand how to bait this traitor.”
And going close to the prisoner he lifted the miniature and scrutinised it intently, then began to pour out a flood of ribald comment.
Beside himself with rage and disgust, Gabriel in vain struggled to get free, but he could neither silence his tormentors nor shut his own ears to the foul words which sought to pollute all that he held most sacred.
With cruel delight, Norton, as he held the miniature, could feel the throbbing of his victim’s heart, but he was startled when at length Gabriel’s voice was heard. It was low and faint, yet there was a vibration in it which rang through the church, and a note of appeal in its tone which arrested the Colonel against his will.
“God!” cried the tortured man, “deliver us from evil.”
Lord Harry burst into a roar of semi-drunken laughter. “Ay, preach and pray, my canting Puritan!” he cried.
But Norton let the miniature fall once more on Gabriel’s heaving breast, and with an expression of bewildered surprise moved back a pace or two, still, however, keenly watching his victim’s face. The fellow had such an extraordinary air of expecting to be delivered; and it suddenly occurred to Norton that it was not deliverance from pain that he looked for, but from something he deemed infinitely worse. For the first time he understood that this man hated evil, that he asked for deliverance from the vile imaginings, the foul suggestions that had been forced upon him. For a minute the sense of shame which had come to the Colonel as he read the letter to Hilary Unett gave him a second twinge of pain; for he recollected that the strange cry for help had not been “Deliver me,” but “Deliver us.”
It was with a start of superstitious fear that he saw a flickering light moving along through the fast darkening church. Gabriel noticed nothing, for his eyes had closed, his head had dropped forward.
As it drew nearer Norton saw with relief that the light came from the lantern which the Irish sentry had just kindled.
“Did you call me, sir?” said the man, approaching as if in response to a summons.
“No, I did not,” said Norton, irritably.
The man saluted and was about to retire, when he caught sight of Gabriel bound to the pillar, his head drooped on his breast, his frame hanging lifeless, supported only by the cords.
The Irishman’s eyes widened, he crossed himself rapidly. “The prisoner!” he stammered. “Why—yer honour—sure then he’s a dead man!”
“Hold the light nearer!” said Norton sharply, and with an uneasiness he could not have explained he put his ear to the heart that was now strangely still, though but a few minutes ago he had felt it throbbing with passionate indignation.