Faith can raise earth to heaven, or draw down
Heaven to earth, make both extremes to meet,
Felicity and misery, can crown
Reproach with honour, season sour with sweet.
Nothing’s impossible to Faith: a man
May do all things that he believes he can.
—Christopher Harvey.
He hath but swooned,” said the Colonel, after a brief pause “Come, Harry, the game is up and we’ll e’en be off to bed. Lord! but this Hereford maid hath thrice the beauty of Nell. I’ve a mind to woo her myself!”
With a last glance at the miniature he turned haughtily to the sentry. “Bolt the church door after us and then dash some water over this prisoner; he will soon come round. And look that you leave him bound, as he is; none of your cursed Irish sentiment. If you loose him I’ll have you flogged within an inch of your life.”
He walked rapidly down the aisle, Lord Harry blundering after him and protesting that it had been rare sport, but that he was heavy with sleep and would like to snore the clock round.
When Gabriel came to himself all was very still. The night had closed in, but, by the light of a lantern in the angle of a high pew hard by, he saw the little side chapel and the outline of the windows. His head ached miserably, and the sharp pain caused by the cords which bound him reminded him of all that had passed. Glancing round he gave a sigh of relief on finding his tormentors gone. There was no one but the sentry, and he stood as though watching gravely a rare and unusual spectacle. In his hand he held a chalice full of water, and he now lifted this to the prisoner’s lips.
“God save you kindly,” he said, with a friendly look in his Irish blue eyes. “I’d be glad to unloose you, sir, if the Colonel hadn’t forbidden it.”
Gabriel drank thirstily, and thanked his friendly guard.
“Are you a Scot?” he asked, puzzled by the man’s accent.
“No, sir. Praised be St. Patrick! I am Irish,” said the soldier, with a good-natured smile.
“Irish!” exclaimed Gabriel in amazement. For to his fancy all the Irish were wild, bloodthirsty Papists, whose chief amusement was the wholesale massacre of Protestants. The incident did more to widen his mind than the study even of such a broad-minded book as Lord Brooke’s “Treatise on Toleration.”
“How is Major Locke?” he asked, anxiously.
“I have given him water, sir,” said the man; “but there’s death in his face—he’ll not last long.”
And with that he went on his round, leaving the prisoner to reflect over the events of the day, and to endure as best he could the increasing torture of his position.
Slowly the hours crept on, and when at length the sentry opened the great door and admitted Captain Tarverfield and two others that accompanied him, Gabriel was too much exhausted to take any notice of the sounds which echoed distinctly enough through the quiet church.
“Take the surgeon to Major Locke,” said Captain Tarverfield. “Is he still living?”
“Yes, sir,” said the Irishman, “he lies in the chancel. And perhaps, sir, you’ll do something for Lieutenant Harford up yonder—as for me, yer honour, the Colonel vowed he’d half murther me if I unloosed him.”
“If ’tis the Colonel’s doing I must ask your help, my Lord,” said the Captain, turning to his worn and weary-looking companion.
“Lieutenant Harford is the gentleman you mentioned to me anon?” said Lord Falkland. “He told you I saved his life at Edgehill? Well, let us see what the sentry means.”
While the Irishman lighted the surgeon up the middle aisle to the chancel, Tarverfield, carrying his own lantern, led the way up the south aisle, wondering what trick Norton’s malice had devised. A sudden ejaculation from Falkland made him pause.
“Look!” said the Secretary of State, his pale, melancholy face transfigured by a glow of wrathful indignation, as he pointed to the pillar and to the slight form of the lieutenant. The Captain, familiar as he was with the horrors of the battle-field, could hardly understand why the sight of this piece of wanton cruelty should anger them both so strangely. Perhaps it was the boyish face of the victim, or some subtle contrast between the nobility and strength of his expression and the cruel helplessness of his attitude.
As they drew nearer, the prisoner, whose head had drooped on his breast, looked up with a gleam of hope in his wide, weary eyes.
“Have you brought help for Major Locke?” he asked, eagerly.
“The surgeon is now with him,” said Tarverfield. “What devil’s trick have the Colonel and Lord Harry been up to? Have you been bound all these hours?”
Gabriel assented, but his eyes were fixed on Falkland’s face; the indignation in it had changed to a look of rare delight, the delight of one who has at last found congenial work.
“Hold the lantern nearer, Captain,” cried the Secretary of State, drawing his sword; and going to the farther side of the pillar he severed the cords and the rope, then stepped swiftly back.
“Have a care,” he said, as Gabriel, in the first agony of moving his stiffened muscles, gave an involuntary exclamation, and then hastily apologised.
“The rope was pressing all the time on that old wound got at Edgehill the day you rescued me, my lord,” he said, colouring. “You have twice made me your debtor.”
“’Tis I that would thank you, sir,” said Falkland, “for twice giving me an opportunity of doing work in this distracted time without scruple or misgiving. Here comes the surgeon. ’Twere well he should see to your wrists.”
“Major Locke?” asked Gabriel, looking anxiously at the surgeon’s face.
“’Twas too late,” he replied, gravely. “The Major drew his last breath just as we approached.”
Gabriel made a step or two forward in the direction of the chancel, then suddenly reeled and would have fallen to the ground had not the surgeon caught him.
“He hath swooned,” said Tarverfield; “and no wonder, after the way in which his muscles have been cramped all these hours.”
“With your leave he had best be carried to the vestry,” said the surgeon, and, lighted by the Irishman, they carried the lieutenant out of the church.
Falkland, with a sigh, picked up the lantern and walked slowly on, glancing now and then into the high pews where lay the wretched prisoners, roped in couples, and most of them sleeping from sheer fatigue, in spite of hunger and discomfort. Reaching the chancel, he paused for some minutes beside the body of the Major. The dead face, with its majestic calm and its strange smile, contrasted curiously with the faces of the sleeping prisoners.
“Happy man!” murmured Falkland. “He is free, and has died for what he deemed his country’s good, like my old friend John Hampden.” Then, with a deep sigh that was almost a groan, he passed on, breathing the cry that was ever now in his heart, and often on his lips, “Peace! peace!”
When he entered the vestry he found that the leech had dressed the wounds on Gabriel’s wrists, but had not yet succeeded in reviving the prisoner.
“’Tis food the poor fellow stands in need of,” said Tarver-field. “I can testify that he has had nothing since sunrise yesterday, and doubtless little enough since early the day before, for Waller was too busy preparing to attack Devizes.”
“With your permission, my lord, I will fetch him food from my own house,” said the surgeon, who, like most of the inhabitants of Marlborough, sympathised with the Parliament. Indeed, since many of the houses had been burnt and plundered in December by the Royalists, and the town had been constantly harassed on market days by bodies of plundering Cavaliers from Oxford, it was natural enough that the feeling was all in favour of the prisoners and against Prince Maurice’s men.
“I will wait here,” said Falkland, as the Captain prepared to follow the surgeon, “I wish to speak to the prisoner when he comes to himself.”
The Irishman, whose guard had just been relieved, was about to follow Captain Tarverfield, when Falkland detained him, putting a few brief questions as to what he had heard while Lord Harry Dalblane and Captain Norton were with the prisoner. From the replies of the sentry he gathered enough to enable him to judge pretty accurately what had really passed, and when the man had gone he stood beside the unconscious prisoner, watching him intently and with compassion, for he was able to guess at much of his story. Presently he took a small gold pin from his lace cravat, and stooping over the prisoner restored the miniature to its place and pinned together the shirt collar.
Gabriel, opening his eyes, looked in bewilderment at the pale, sad-eyed face bending over him; then recognising it as he regained his faculties, sat up and looked round the dimly-lighted vestry in a dazed way. Some one had laid him down on a long wooden chest, the same which the Irishman had rifled for the cope. On the opposite wall hung an old board on which were painted the ten commandments, and the light from the lantern shone specially upon the words, “Thou shalt do no murder.”
He shivered, for that night he had for the first time felt the deadly hatred that is akin to murder, and he knew that he had longed for the chance of taking Norton’s life.
“You are cold,” said Falkland. “Take this,” and he put a short brown cloak he was wearing about the prisoner’s shoulders. “Nay,” as Gabriel thanked him, but hesitated to accept the loan, “I have no need of it, and it will be of service to you in Oxford Castle, where I fear your quarters will be comfortless enough.”
“My lord,” said Gabriel, “you have shown me such kindness that I will make bold to ask your help in letting Mistress Helena Locke know of her father’s death.”
“Where doth the lady live?” asked Falkland.
“She is at Gloucester, at the house of Alderman Pury.”
“I will see that the news is sent to her, and I will do what I can, Mr. Harford, to obtain your release, for they have treated you very scurvily, and I shall see that his Majesty hears all the details. Here comes the friendly surgeon with food for you.”
“You are fatigued, my lord,” said Tarverfield, looking at Falkland’s haggard face. “Will you not sleep before the day dawns?”
“Sleep, sir, hath long forsaken me,” said Falkland, wearily. “I shall sleep when peace is declared in this unhappy country. Leave me to see Mr. Harford discuss his supper; and do you retire, for doubtless you will be early on the march.”
The kindly captain, who was a good soldier, but one who rarely troubled to think of the right or wrong of the cause he defended, gladly enough returned to his quarters at the nearest inn; and the surgeon, having promised to make arrangements for the Major’s burial, for which Gabriel advanced the money, walked back to his house, his mind haunted by Falkland’s weary, sleepless eyes.
“’Tis not for me to ‘minister to a mind diseased,’” he reflected. “As the poet hath it—
‘Therein the patient
Nust minister to himself,’
But I fear ’tis over late; the sorrows of this war have broken his heart—he is far gone in melancholy.”
His reflections were only too true, yet for a brief time something of the old geniality and charm insensibly returned to the Secretary of State as he watched the hungry young lieutenant forgetting his troubles in the relief of a good meal. In the rare delight of such sympathy as Falkland knew well how to bestow, Gabriel’s reserve was broken down, and before the supper was ended he had revealed to his companion the story of his gradual awakening in London, had spoken of Bishop Coke’s kindness to him, of one connected with the Bishop to whom he had been betrothed, and of the havoc the war had wrought in his happiness.
Instinctively his hand went to Hilary’s miniature as he recalled with a shudder what had passed about it a few hours before; and then finding the way in which his shirt had been fastened, his eyes sought Falkland’s with a gratitude that touched the State Secretary. With the incomparable gentleness characteristic of him, he said a few words to the boy, which by their reverent sympathy seemed to blot out the memory of the moral torture he had undergone.
Then, promising to do what he could for the prisoner in the future, he left him to sleep, and slowly paced down the street to his quarters. He had merely joined Lord Wilmot’s expedition for the relief of Devizes as a volunteer, and now in his restless mood grudged the delay at Marlborough, and by break of day was riding with a couple of his servants to Oxford, leaving the two troops of cavalry and the long train of prisoners to follow later.
“One of the greatest clauses in Magna Carta is that which asserts in legal form the legal rights of Englishmen to withstand oppression. If the King broke his promises, he was to be resisted in arms in the name of the powers which Englishmen held to be greater than the King—in the name of God, the law and the great Council.”
—History of the English Parliament, Barnett Smith.
On the afternoon of the 15th July, a crowd of courtiers, lounging and chatting in Tom Quad, paused for a moment to glance at the figure of the State Secretary as he passed swiftly through the merry throng on his way to the King’s apartments.
Oxford was looking its brightest. On the 14th the Queen had returned, and on the same day despatches announcing the great victory at Roundway Down and the relief of Devizes had been received. The church bells had pealed, and it seemed to most of the Royalists that the King’s cause was now certain to triumph throughout the land, and that the Parliamentarians would be utterly crushed. Never had there been more confident boasting, more light-hearted laughter than on that summer afternoon, and the sudden apparition of Falkland, with his pale sorrow-laden face, seemed curiously ill-timed.
“What the plague does my Lord Falkland mean by wearing such dismal looks on this gala day?” said a boisterous young Cavalier, who was about as capable of appreciating the philosopher of Great Tew as of recognising the beauty of a Raphael.
“He volunteered in my Lord Wilmot’s troop t’other day,” replied his companion. “They say, you know, that he is always thrusting himself into dangers which there is no call on him to face, because he is stung by the report that his efforts for peace spring from cowardice.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the first speaker. “He’s found that in this world peacemakers have devilish hard times, and always win the hatred of both sides. I’ll warrant you he will have but a chilly reception from His Majesty, who, they tell me, is downright afraid of him, and can’t endure his plain speaking, and that inconvenient custom he hath of scrupulous truthfulness.”
“He will be ill-pleased that a Council was held last night in his absence, and the siege of Bristol determined on,” said the other.
A third courtier strolled up. “Did you see my Lord Falkland’s face?” he said, with a sneer. “Is he grieving over the slaughter at Roundway Down, think you? or is it, perchance, that he finds his beloved Mistress Moray is undoubtedly in the last stage of consumption?”
There was a general laugh as the ill-natured gossips made merry over the State Secretary’s friendship with this good and high minded lady, and, according to their own foul and depraved nature, judged one of the most spiritual and helpful influences that can be had in an evil world.
Falkland, perfectly well aware of the way in which his private affairs were discussed, and conscious of the hostile atmosphere which surrounded him at the Court, passed gravely on to the King’s apartments, to be received by Charles much as the courtiers had prophesied, with very little warmth and no comprehension.
The King in prosperity was never at his best. His arrogance and narrowness were apt then to become apparent, whereas in adversity his courage and a very noble patience were noteworthy. The prospect of speedy triumph, and the unhappy influence always exerted over him by the presence and counsel of the Queen, made him now more than ever antagonistic to his Secretary of State.
He was seated in an elbow chair beside the open window, and on the oaken table beside him was spread a map of the Southern counties, which he had been studying. On the window seat lay a remarkably fine white poodle which Falkland noticed with a feeling of annoyance, knowing that the dog belonged to Prince Rupert, and betokened his near neighbourhood.
“We received yesterday the good news of the victory,” said the King. “I trust you bring no worse report of Sir Ralph Hopton, my lord?”
“He remains at Devizes, sire,” said Falkland, “and is steadily recovering from his injuries.”
The King put several questions as to the doings at Roundway Down, and Falkland having replied to them, was debating how he could suggest that the victory made this a fitting time for the opening of negotiations with Parliament, when the King asked what was being done with the prisoners.
“Some were left at Devizes, sire,” replied Falkland, “but a great number are being marched hither, and I am anxious that your Majesty should be in possession of the truth respecting one of Prince Maurice’s officers—Colonel Norton—who hath been guilty of very gross cruelty to two of the prisoners, Major Locke, who died last night for lack of a surgeon, and Lieutenant Harford.”
“Let me have the particulars,” said the King, coldly. “People are over-fond of bringing accusations against my nephew’s officers. Scarce a day passes but I have some idle tale of Prince Rupert’s men, and he hath but this morning assured me that the men are the best soldiers in our army, and hath told me of his clemency towards the lady of Caldecot Manor.”
Falkland’s face was a study. Prince Rupert was not without a certain generosity, but in the main he knew only too well that the troops commanded by the two German princes had done much by their burnings and plunderings and wanton devastation of the crops to exasperate the English. The people were not likely soon to forget the cruel burning of the eighty-seven houses in Birmingham which Prince Rupert had ordered in the spring.
“I will tell you, sire, precisely what I saw last night in St. Peter’s Church at Marlborough,” he said. And, graphically, but without any comment, he described to the King what had taken place.
“Bound to one of the church pillars, you say!” said the King, with a shudder, “and the guard had actually brought him water in the chalice! Horrible profanation! I cannot endure the misuse of the churches in this war, yet they assure me they must at times use them for troops and for prisoners.”
Falkland, with something like despair in his heart, marvelled at the extraordinary way in which the King missed the point he had wished to urge, and, in thinking of the church fabric and the communion-plate, failed to realise what cruelty to man really means.
“For my part,” he replied, “I am bound to own, your Majesty, that the kindly thought of the guard in fetching the cup of water seemed the one redeeming touch in the whole miserable business. That and the way in which he had wrapped a cope about the feet of the dying Major in the chancel.”
“He had actually used a cope for such a purpose?” said the King. “Well, my lord, I regret to hear that any cruelty was shown to the prisoners, but it seems to me you do not the least understand the sin of sacrilege. ’Tis as I ever told you, you care nothing for the Church.”
His brow grew dark as he remembered that, little more than two years before, Falkland had made a speech in Parliament in which, report said, he had accused the Bishops of having “brought in superstition and scandal under the titles of reverence and decency, and of labouring to introduce an English, though not a Roman, Popery; not only the outside and dress of it, but, equally absolute, a blind dependence of the people upon the clergy.”
The King’s reproach had been made before, and Court etiquette forbade Falkland to justify himself to his Sovereign; moreover, he had long ceased to expect his position to be understood. The Laudian practices were hateful to him, but in the narrow dogmatism of the Presbyterians he saw grave danger to intellectual liberty. He stood aloof from both systems, but cherished beneath an outer mask of philosophic calm a passionate yearning for that Church of the future which should be wide enough to embrace all sincere men who took Christ as their ideal, and spiritual enough to dispense with those elaborate outer shows which had so often proved stumbling-blocks.
Stifling a sigh, he caught at the one phrase in the King’s remarks of which he might avail himself.
“I well know,” he replied, “that any sort of cruelty is repugnant to your Majesty, and therefore make bold to plead the cause of this young prisoner who hath been put to physical and moral torture, and hath claims on your Majesty’s clemency, for he was not taken during the battle, but on the following day while endeavouring to save the life of his wounded friend, Major Locke.”
Falkland had used no false flattery, but had appealed to the best side of the King’s character. Though very limited in his sympathies, and without any genial love for his people, Charles was far from being cruel or merciless; the enormous amount of suffering for which he was responsible sprang partly from his duplicity, partly from his habit of allowing himself to be ruled by unworthy favourites, and drawn into rash courses by his wife. He might often from absorption in other matters fall into cruelty as so many of us do, fatally hurting others because not actively kind to them; but cruelty such as Norton’s was abhorrent to him, and he would probably have yielded to the suggestion of his Secretary of State, had not the white poodle suddenly sprung down from the window-seat and, with whines of delight, bounded towards the door.
Falkland knew too well what would follow, and there was bitterness in his heart as he bowed to the handsome young Prince who entered the room.
It was impossible to conceive a greater contrast than that between the fiery Rupert, with his soldierly instincts, his rough, over-bearing manner, his full-blooded, dashing impetuosity, and the grave, far-seeing statesman ten years his senior. Falkland greeted the Prince with the quiet courtesy which was one of his characteristics, but with a disapproval which revealed itself by an indefinable air of strength and resistance not usually apparent in the singularly gentle face.
“So, my lord,” said Rupert, gaily, “you have returned from the slaughter of the redoubtable ‘Lobsters,’ and have made William the Conqueror hide his diminished head! His Majesty will now be able to make short work of Bristol, and when Bristol hath fallen London will soon follow—eh, Boye?” stooping to fondle the poodle’s long ears.
The dog licked his master’s hand and whined with delight.
“Boye is more eager to crush the Roundheads than is my Lord Falkland,” said the Prince, glancing with a smile at his uncle.
“He doth take after his master,” said the King, looking with fond admiration at Rupert’s soldierly bearing. “You have doubtless heard, my lord, that a Council was held last night and that we have determined that Prince Rupert shall join forces with the victors of Roundway Down and lay siege to Bristol.”
“I had heard that it was so determined, sire,” said Falkland. “Had I been present at the Council, I would earnestly have begged your Majesty, after having annihilated Sir William Waller’s army, to offer to treat with the Parliament. Bloodshed might thus be avoided, and the end of hostilities might well be hoped for.”
“My lord, you are no soldier,” broke in Rupert, impetuously. “These rebels must be crushed and altogether subjugated before His Majesty can be King indeed.”
“You will never crush the national love of liberty, your Highness,” said Falkland. “The British nature demands freedom as a right, and the only hope of adjusting our unhappy differences is in recognising those rights which are in accordance with the law.”
“Law!” interrupted Rupert, who could never endure remarks contrary to his own views, especially when they came from the Counsellors of civil affairs. “Tush! we will have no law in England henceforward but of the sword!”
“My lord,” said Charles, “we are aware that you ever speak on behalf of peace, but those at Westminster do not desire it.”
“I do not forget that your Majesty’s secret message to Parliament ere hostilities began proved, unhappily, fruitless of good results,” said Falkland; “but you will recollect, sire, that since then Parliament hath made many overtures of peace, and that every overture hath been rejected by your Majesty. Might it not be the part of true wisdom to take advantage now of this happy tide in affairs? Surely, sire, this great victory, and the return of Her Majesty after fifteen months’ absence, make the present a very fitting time for a gracious offer of terms which the Parliament could accept.”
“My lord, our determination is already made,” said the King, coldly. “Your suggestions do not seem to us practical, and we are confident that our cause is better served by Prince Rupert.”
Falkland bowed gravely. No man could equal him in humility, yet it cost him a pang to be thus set at naught, and to see how the King was dominated by the young German Prince of four-and-twenty, who knew absolutely nothing of the English or of Constitutional law.
Boye, the white poodle, broke the uncomfortable silence which followed, by bounding to the door and barking furiously at the sound of approaching steps. A young courtier entered.
“May it please your Majesty, the two troops in charge of the prisoners from Roundway Down are approaching the city,” he announced.
“They will expect you to see the entrance, sire,” said Rupert, “as you did when we returned with the prisoners from Cirencester.”
“We will not disappoint our brave men,” said the King, rising. “And you, my lord, will accompany us,” he added, turning graciously to Falkland, as though to make up for the snub he had just given him.
Falkland, sick at heart, followed the King and the Prince, and before long was riding in the royal train to see what he well knew would prove a painful spectacle.
Hundreds of the citizens were flocking out of Oxford to see the return of the victors and Waller’s vanquished soldiers. The day was insufferably hot, and the Court party did not care to ride far on the road, but drew rein under a clump of trees by the wayside. As they waited the approach of the troops, the King discussed with Prince Rupert some of the details of the battle which Falkland had mentioned to him, and spoke also of Colonel Norton’s conduct at Marlborough.
“I have met the Colonel,” said Rupert. “He hath a merry wit and a sharp tongue, and is the very man to enjoy a rough jest at the expense of one who had crossed his path. He is an excellent soldier though. My lord,” he said, turning to Falkland, “you must show us this young Lieutenant Harford as the prisoners go past. The fellow must be worth his salt if he has dared to withstand a hectoring officer like Colonel Norton.”
By this time the troops were in sight, and loud cheers rose from the spectators as they rode by.
Then in striking contrast came the weary prisoners on foot, escorted by a second troop of cavalry. As the line passed by, tied together in pairs, many of them wounded, and all of them suffering acutely from thirst, they might have inspired pity in the hardest heart. Falkland noted, however, that the courtiers around him looked on, either with utter indifference, or with derisive smiles, as their fellow-countrymen were beaten and driven along the road like dogs.
“Yonder comes the young lieutenant you bade me point out to your Highness,” he said to Prince Rupert. “The nearest to us behind the gun, and tied to a man with a bandaged head.”
Both the King and the Prince glanced at the prisoner.
“In good sooth the fellow is sunburnt till he is the colour of an Italian!” exclaimed Rupert. “He hath an undaunted air and looks like a man of mettle though.”
“Copper metal, your Highness,” interjected a shallow-brained fop behind him with a laugh.
The laugh reached Gabriel; he glanced to the left, and catching sight of Falkland saluted him, a look of reverence and gratitude lighting up his tired eyes. His pace had involuntarily slackened a little, and the wounded man tied to his right arm, had throughout the march been a heavy drag upon him; a smart blow across his shoulders from the swynfeather, or spiked pole, of the nearest soldier made his eyes flash, and added a touch of dignity to his bearing. But his salute to the King, though courteous, was merely formal, while the rapid, searching glance that accompanied it had none of that deep reverence with which he had returned Falkland’s gaze.
He saw for a moment the well-known handsome features, the cold impassive expression, and remembered how, when he had last looked upon the King, it had been on that memorable January day, at the entrance to Westminster Hall, when Charles had been on his way to arrest the five Members. Now Hampden, the patriot, had been slain; thousands of Englishmen had fought, and bled, and died, and he himself was a prisoner, just when the cause he held at heart most needed service.
Something approaching despair seized him as he marched on, with that vision stamped on his brain—the King in his purple riding suit and white-plumed hat, his attention divided between the remarks of Prince Rupert, and the orange stuffed with cloves, which he smelt as a remedy against infection, as the troops and the long line of weary prisoners made the dust rise. Was the country again to be at the mercy of a ruler who so little understood or loved his people?
“Poor beggar!” said Rupert, following the young lieutenant with his eyes. “I know too well what military captivity will mean to one of his years. Curse me! if I ever pardon the Emperor who kept me mewed up so long! I can see, too, that yonder rebel is a good officer wasted, and with your permission, sire, would fain have the fellow in my troop.”
“He shall be pardoned, and set free on consenting to serve under you,” said the King. “We depute you, my lord Falkland, to see to the matter.”
Falkland bowed low.
“I will convey your Majesty’s pleasure to Mr. Harford, but I doubt his acceptance of a post under the Prince, for he is not one of those who entered into this struggle without grave thought,” said the Secretary of State, convinced in his own mind that Gabriel would decline pardon bought at the cost of his convictions.
“Then he must pay the penalty of his disloyal obstinacy,” said the King, annoyed even by the suggestion that some of his opponents had conscientiously thought out their position before taking arms against him. “He hath brought this misery on himself.”
“Look you, my lord,” said Rupert, good-naturedly, “make not the offer of release till to-morrow. ’Tis but fair the fellow should know what he chooses if he elects to stay in the clutches of Provost-Marshal Smith. They don’t pamper Roundheads at the Castle, I hear.”
The talk was interrupted by the huzzas of the spectators as the last contingent of cavalry rode by. Falkland heard one of the courtiers mention the name of Norton, and gave that officer a keen, penetrating glance, perceiving at once that there was a force of character in the Colonel’s face which would make him a dangerous enemy, and one likely to pursue the young lieutenant with untiring animosity.
“Religious ideas and religious emotions, under the influence of the Puritan habit of mind, seek to realise themselves, not in art, but, without any intervening medium, in character, in conduct, in life. It is thus that the gulf between sense and spirit is bridged; not in marble or in colour is the invisible made visible, but in action public and private—‘ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost.’”—Professor E. Dowden.
It was something of a relief to Gabriel to see the well-known spires and towers of Oxford, but he had lived through so much since his undergraduate days that he felt like a returned ghost—aloof from all his past interests, alone in a crowd, remorselessly stared at and criticised by the inhabitants.
At the city gate they were halted while arrangements were made as to their reception. Gabriel was thankful enough for the brief respite; for Norton’s treatment at Marlborough had set up keen pain in his old wound, while the thirty miles’ march from Devizes, bareheaded under a blazing sun, had given him a racking headache.
The last time he had passed out of Oxford by this gateway, three years before, he had been riding home to Herefordshire with Ned Harley, little dreaming of the future that lay before them. He fell now to wondering whether Ned had recovered from the wound he had got at Lansdown, and whether the letter he had left with him had by this time reached his father at Hereford.
Just then the sound of a mellow voice, with a mocking ring about it which spoilt its pleasantness, roused him from his reverie.
“Well, Mr. Harford!” said Norton. “’Tis warm work, isn’t it? You seem exhausted.”
Gabriel at once drew himself up with the undaunted look which had taken Prince Rupert’s fancy. He glanced at the prisoner with the bandaged head who leant heavily upon him, utterly spent with the march. The poor fellow, Passey by name, was one of his own men, and had been wounded and taken in the pursuit.
“This man is in far worse case,” he said. “But I know it is waste of breath to ask mercy of you, sir.”
Norton laughed. “You know me better than the day we spoke together at the gate of Wells. I told you I was not one to be baulked, and mark my words, Mr. Harford, the rest of my prophecy will follow in due time. I shall yet have the hanging of you.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Gabriel, stung into a bitter retort, “you seem better fitted to play the part of a hangman, sir, than that of an English gentleman.”
“Bravely said, Ecclesiastes! You have clearly studied under the most virulent Puritan preachers of the day,” said Norton, regarding his victim with an amused smile.
“Pardon me, sir,” said Gabriel, ashamed of his words, “I should have held my tongue, for, truth to tell, on first sight of you at Gloucester, I thought you——”
He broke off, puzzled by that same hint of a better nature which made itself visible in his enemy’s face, as if in response to his unspoken idea.
“You thought me as generous and good-hearted a man as ever you had clapped eyes on,” said Norton, laughing. “They all do on occasion, but quickly discover their mistake.”
He strolled away from the prisoners, and entering the alehouse hard by, called for a cup of claret.
“A second,” he said, when he had drained it. “Here, Tarverfield, you are always for pampering these rebels, take this to Mr. Harford, I’ll warrant his throat is as dry as a lime-kiln.” The Captain was willing enough to undertake the errand, and Norton saw the look of surprise on the prisoner’s face when he heard who had sent the claret.
But the next minute an oath burst from the Colonel’s lips. “Curse the fellow! doth he fancy himself at the Sacrament? He but tastes it and passes it on to that wounded wretch beside him, and he again to his neighbour.”
For the third time a twinge of shame dragged him for a little while out of the slough of brutality which threatened to engulph him, and once more there rose before him the vision of the dead wife he still loved, though his profligacy had broken her heart and brought her to the grave.
The incident drove from Gabriel’s mind the despair he had felt since passing the King. He insensibly learnt that in the most unlooked-for ways good would manifest itself in those who seemed most uncongenial, and thus with a brave heart went to meet the troubles that awaited him in Oxford Castle.
Prince Rupert had very truly observed that the prisoners of war were not pampered. The cruelties of Provost-Marshal Smith, the Governor, had been revealed by the Lady Essex, who had been called into the House of Commons some six months before, and had given evidence on her return from Oxford of what the prisoners had to undergo. This had been fully confirmed by Captain Wingate, who after months of imprisonment at Oxford had obtained an exchange.
Still bound to Passey, Gabriel was ordered up to the highest room in one of the towers of the Castle with four other officers and six of the rank and file. The place seemed already full of men, and the exhausted prisoners looked round blankly enough, wondering how they were to find room in these wretched quarters.
The unhappy inmates, however, gave them a warm welcome, and it was pitiful to see the way in which these half-famished men crowded round them, eager to gain some news from the outer world.
“Where do you come from?” demanded a grey-haired prisoner, seizing upon Gabriel.
“We lay at Marlborough last night, sir,” he replied, looking with something like awe at the emaciated face of the speaker.
“Marlborough!” cried the prisoner, his eyes lighting up; “I was carried off from Marlborough last winter.”
And he poured out question after question in the vain hope of gaining news of his family.
“But may you not receive visitors?” asked Gabriel, knowing that even criminals were not debarred from this privilege.
“We may see no one,” said the poor lawyer, for such he proved to be. “Come, you are unbound now, sit here and I will tell you what to expect.”
“With your permission, sir, I will first find some place for my companion to lie; he is wounded, and well-nigh spent.”
“I should stow him in yonder corner, next to the man with the fever,” said the lawyer, bitterly. “The air is so foul there that he’ll get a few inches more space.”
Gabriel went to reconnoitre the ground, but was fairly beaten back by the pestilent atmosphere.
“Any crowding is better than that,” he said. “Here, Passey, stretch yourself by the wall; maybe they will give us food presently.”
“Not till to-morrow morning,” said the lawyer; “and then the Provost-Marshal will not overfeed you, my friend. For though the King allows sixpence a day for the prisoners—a fair enough sum—this miserable governor of ours keeps for himself all but five farthings a head.”
“And what doth that furnish?” asked Gabriel, beginning to understand the lean and hungry looks of his companions.
“A pennyworth of bread, and a little can of a most vile mixture of beer and water,” said the lawyer.
Gabriel reflected that by the next morning hunger and thirst would probably be so keen that any diet would be endurable. To him the worst trial at present was the sickening atmosphere of the overcrowded room, which, to one accustomed to sleeping more often than not in the open air, seemed on this hot July night well-nigh insufferable. In a space measuring, perhaps, twenty feet square, some fifty prisoners were pent up night and day.
“’Twas here that Mr. Franklyn, Member of Parliament for Marlborough, died,” said the lawyer, in his melancholy voice, “and yonder man with the fever will scarce recover, I think. But hark! there is the curfew ringing, we shall have prayers before settling for the night.”
The prisoners all stood, and a short service, led by one of the captive officers, was held. It was this habit which kept the place from becoming the hell on earth which most prisons of the day were apt to become. And that grand simplicity which is the strength of Puritanism made its mighty influence felt, for all present, from the highest to the lowest, held the same religious ideal, and were ready to die for their conviction that each individual soul should have direct communion with God.
Wearied by all that he had undergone in the last few days, Gabriel soon slept with Falkland’s cloak wrapped about him, and though stretched on the bare boards of the prison floor, his sleep was more profound and restful than any that for many months had visited the careworn Secretary of State.
It was sheer hunger that at last disturbed him, and feeling stiff and miserable he raised himself, looking in a bewildered way round the room. The moonlight shone in patches on the grim stone walls, and on the strange spectacle of the prisoners lying in rows on the bare floor. The dismal sound of clanking fetters echoed through the place, when some of the men, who for attempted escape were heavily ironed, stirred in their sleep. The man with the fever was muttering and groaning horribly.
A sudden wave of realisation swept over Gabriel. He was in prison, and must starve and pine, and as likely as not die, in this horrible place, no longer a free agent, but wholly at the mercy of tyrants. The bitterness of death seemed already to overwhelm him.
“Let me out! Let me out!” moaned the sick man in his delirium “My house is burning—my children—my wife! How can you do it, you fiends? Let me go home, I say! Let me out!”
Gabriel roused himself from the despair into which he had fallen, and picking his way cautiously across the forms of the sleeping prisoners, sat down beside the man with the fever. There was still a little water left in the earthenware mug near him, and, raising the poor fellow into an easier posture, he held this to his parched lips.
“Where do you come from?” he asked.
“From Marlborough,” said the man, speaking rationally for a minute. “I was one of the wealthiest of the burgesses; my name is Rawlyns.” Then suddenly relapsing into his fevered ravings, “Let me out! Let me out! They are burning my home.”
“I came from Marlborough yesterday, and there was no house burning,” said Gabriel soothingly. “Come, be at rest, you’ll need all your strength.”
His quiet words, and perhaps some subtle magnetism in his hands as he smoothed back the sick man’s hair, certainly calmed the poor fellow. The Hereford people always declared that Dr. Harford had what they called “the healing touch,” and possibly Gabriel had inherited a similar power. At any rate, the patient fell into a sound sleep, and his sore need had done much to chase despair from the mind of his helper.
Noiselessly he stole back to his former place and once more lay down, and as he mused over past and future there suddenly flashed into his mind the perception that here and now in this distasteful present the wish of his childhood had been granted. He had longed to be like his hero Sir John Eliot, and to give his life for the country’s freedom; and now, like Eliot, he was to languish in prison, debarred from air and exercise and all that makes life sweet.
Gazing at the sharp contrasts of shadow and moonlight on the Castle wall, an indescribable sense of strength and consolation came to him; for he grasped the truth that, however the war ended, even if for awhile utter defeat and ruin should overwhelm the cause, in the future Justice was bound to triumph, being Divine, and every sacrifice honestly made in her cause would prove to have been infinitely worth while, and would hearten future generations to resist everything which threatened the liberties so dearly bought.
Musing over Eliot’s imprisonment of nearly four years and his lonely death, musing over the eleven years’ imprisonment of Valentine and Strode, who still valiantly fought against the despotism of the King, he fell asleep once more, and never woke until the surly gaoler, Aaron, brought the day’s rations, when, as he had foreseen, desperate hunger and thirst made the pennyworth of bread and the can of beer-and-water welcome enough.
But the unutterable tedium of the long, hot day in the stifling room seemed to him well-nigh unendurable, and when in the afternoon the gaoler threw open the door and shouted his name, he felt that even if the summons meant death he would hail it as a relief.
Without a word, Aaron fastened a pair of shackles round his ankles, and signed to him to follow up the steps leading to the top of the tower.
“I shall await you below,” he said, pushing the prisoner through the small opening on to the leads.
Gabriel drew in a deep breath of the fresh, sweet air. The tower was not battlemented in the ordinary way, but the high wall surrounding it was pierced on the north and south sides by openings. Standing by one of these, he perceived the short and somewhat insignificant-looking Secretary of State, and hurried forward with an eager exclamation of pleasure.
Falkland, who had always been entirely free from the arrogance of manner which characterised his class in those days, greeted the prisoner with his usual simplicity, and with that gentle sweetness of expression which was peculiarly his own.
“You must not hope much from my visit, Mr. Harford,” he said. “I have tried my best to plead for you, but I fear you will not see your way to accepting the conditions imposed. Prince Rupert, pleased with your soldierly bearing yesterday, begged to have you in his troop, and His Majesty deputed me to offer you his pardon on your consenting to serve under the Prince.”
As he spoke he looked searchingly at the prisoner, and read in his clear, undaunted eyes exactly what he had expected. The offer was not even a temptation to him—to accept it would have been a sheer impossibility.
“My lord,” said Gabriel, “for your kindness in remembering me amid all your arduous work I thank you heartily; but for this offer—I feel sure you did not expect me to accept it.”
“In truth I did not, and told His Majesty as much with a bluntness he did not altogether like,” said Falkland. “Yet I can see that this prison life proves a hard trial to one of your temperament.”
“’Tis hard for all of them,” said Gabriel. “Some of the poor fellows have already been cooped up in the room for seven months, having been taken at the siege of Marlborough, and they say the winter proved fatal to many, for they were allowed neither light nor firing. Just now the suffocating heat is the worst part of it, for the overcrowding is terrible.”
He pulled himself up abruptly, not wishing to trouble his kindly visitor with complaints, but Falkland could well imagine what a purgatory the prison would prove to a man of refined tastes and of great natural reserve.
“Have you written any letters?” he asked. “If so, I will gladly have them sent for you. We must try to get you an exchange.”
“Paper and ink and books are all forbidden,” said Gabriel.
“There is literally nothing to do the livelong day, except, indeed, to try to slaughter the vermin. One of our officers managed to smuggle in his copy of Cromwell’s ‘Soldier’s Pocket Bible, but it is doubtful if he will be able to keep it, for the gaoler is a very dragon.”
“I brought you a couple of books,” said Falkland. “You will find them in the pockets of this coat, which you had best don here before the gaoler sees you again. Whether you elected to stay in prison or to fight under Prince Rupert I knew you would stand in need of a garment to replace the one they robbed you of.”
“My lord——” faltered Gabriel, touched inexpressibly by the thoughtful kindness which contrasted so sharply with the harshness he had lately encountered, “I wish I could thank you as I would—— He broke off, unable to find the words he wanted, and Falkland, with the smile that since the opening of the war had scarcely been seen, took advantage of the silence.
“Nay, no thanks,” he said. “But you shall do this for me, Mr. Harford; you shall tell me something I am eager to know. With your General hopelessly beaten and yourself a prisoner, made to suffer moral and physical torture, how was it that we found you tied up to the pillar in that church bearing the look of a conqueror? Of what were you thinking?”
“One does not think much in pain,” said Gabriel. “I believe I thought most of Burton when he had his ears cut off.”
“Of Burton!” exclaimed Falkland, in astonishment; for, though he disliked Archbishop Laud’s fussiness and disapproved of his system, he held men like Burton, Bastwick and Prynne in yet greater abhorrence. Himself liberal-minded and moderate, both extremes offended his taste. It startled him to find that the prisoner, who was clearly not the type of man to interest himself in dogmatic theology, should speak of the ardent Puritan controversialist in such a way.
“What can have attracted you at such a time to Burton?” he asked.
“The words he used while he suffered,” said Gabriel, his colour rising a little.
“What were they?” said Falkland, gently.
“‘Seeing I have so noble a Captain that hath gone before me with so undaunted a spirit, shall I be ashamed of a pillory for Christ, who was not ashamed of a cross for me?’” quoted Gabriel, his eyes fixed on the gleaming river down below as it sped on its way to freedom and the sea.
Falkland watched in silence, coming nearer than he had ever done before to a comprehension of the true power of Puritanism, its direct appeal to the individual soul, the force, and simplicity, and strenuousness with which it laid siege not to the intellect and fine taste of the cultivated and learned few, but to the highest and noblest part in the nature of the mass of men.
He sighed heavily, only too conscious of the cruel loneliness that must always be the portion of those in his position during times of strife.
“Think yourself a happy man, Mr. Harford,” he said. “You believe in your Cause.”
There was something in the sadness and isolation of the speaker that strongly appealed to Gabriel; he knew how bitterly the Parliamentarians condemned Falkland for forsaking his old allies, and he had learnt of late to understand how intolerable to a high-minded and scrupulously honourable man the office of Secretary of State to King Charles must be. It was impossible to be in Falkland’s presence without realising that he was, indeed, as commonly reported, “so severe an adorer of truth that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal as to dissemble.” The same deep admiration and love which he had learnt to feel for the Bishop of Hereford stirred in his heart now, as he felt the strong but indescribable influence of one who has the power of forming the highest ideals, and the courage to strive for their attainment. There was, moreover, already in Falkland’s dark eyes, the pathos which tells of latent disease and an early death. He would strive for peace to the last, but the long and seemingly hopeless struggle had broken his heart.
“My lord,” said Gabriel, with some hesitation, “there is a great favour I would ask at your hands.”
“If I can in any way serve you,” said Falkland, “nothing would please me more. But little enough seems permitted in Oxford Castle. Could you conceal more books? If so, I will gladly bring you more, for books are friends that bite no man’s meat or reputation.”
“It is that I cannot endure to think that Lord Harry Dalblane should have my favourite horse, Harkaway. If he could be in your hands——”
“A doubtful blessing for the horse,” said Falkland, smiling as he noted the eager, boyish face of his petitioner. “For I tell you frankly, Mr. Harford, I ever ride where the danger is the hottest, and am in the case of Job when he cried, ‘Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul: which long for death but it cometh not, and dig for it more than for hid treasures.’”
Gabriel was too thoroughly healthy in body and mind to grasp the full import of the words; he thought the speaker only referred to that brief and natural craving for freedom which assails everyone in the extremity of pain, whether mental or physical. He himself had so quickly overcome the craving at Hereford and at Edgehill that it never occurred to him that one so immeasurably his superior could not also overcome it.
But the surgeon at Marlborough had surmised rightly enough; Falkland, handicapped in the race by months of sleeplessness, could only see that his present position was untenable, could only yearn to exchange the prolonged and thankless suffering of one who metaphorically stands between two fires, for a literal and brief riding forth alone between the two armies, welcoming a bullet in the heart from Royalist or Parliamentarian, since with both alike he was out of harmony.
“I shall be sending a messenger to the West to-morrow,” he said, after a minute’s silence. “If you will give me your father’s address I will myself write to him and tell him what has befallen you. Since you are known to Sir Ralph Hopton and Sir William Waller, and since your father and Sir Robert Harley are lifelong friends, it will assuredly be possible in time to get you exchanged. And for your horse, I will speak to Lord Harry about it ere he goes to the siege of Bristol. An you wish it, I will myself ride Harkaway.”
So they parted, the prisoner to return to his stifling and noisome quarters, the Secretary of State to the equally uncongenial atmosphere of the Court and the presence of a King whose obstinacy and insincerity made it hard, even for Falkland, who was noted for the sweet graciousness of his manners, to refrain from sharp words and caustic comments.
Return him safe; learning would rather choose
Her Bodley or her Vatican to lose,
All things that are but writ or printed there,
In his unbounded breast engraven are.
And this great prince of knowledge is by Fate
Thrust into th’ noise and business of a State.
He is too good for war, and ought to be
As far from danger as from fear he’s free.
“Lines on Lord Falkland.”—Cowley.
Little Helena Locke was made happy one day towards the end of July, by receiving a letter from her father. That it had been long upon the road did not surprise her, for letters naturally led a hazardous existence in war time, and she never knew how nearly she had missed receiving this one; never guessed that for many days it had lain securely in Colonel Norton’s pocket, that it had been through the battles of Lansdown and Roundway Down, and had finally been given by Norton, at Marlborough, to the first messenger he came across.
Whether the sight of the Major’s dead face had pricked his conscience, or whether he deemed it most to his own interest to have the little heiress safely bestowed at Notting-hill Manor, it would be hard to say. For a minute or two Helena’s fate had hung in the balance, but chancing to come across a man who was riding westward, Norton had entrusted him with the letter, and after many vicissitudes it had been delivered.
The very day after she had received it came tidings that Prince Rupert had taken Bristol, and the news so appalled the citizens that Alderman Pury determined to lose no time in sending his charge to London, for it was now almost certain that the Royalists would besiege Gloucester.
Helena, glad of any change, and heartily tired of the somewhat sombre atmosphere of the Pury household, made her preparations in high glee, and was singing a cheerful ditty that evening as she packed up her belongings, when a knock at the door of her bedroom recalled her from dreams of Gabriel Harford to the facts of real existence.
To her surprise, she found pretty Mistress Clemency Coriton standing without.
“How good of you to come and see me; ’tis a sure sign that Captain Heyworth is on the high road to recovery,” she said, gaily, “or you would never have quitted him.”
“Yes, in truth, he is recovering fast,” said Clemency, yet her face remained grave and sad, and something in her tone puzzled Helena.
“Will you not come to the parlour?” she said. “My room, as you see, is all in disorder.”
“They gave me leave to seek you out here, because I wanted to see you alone, dear Helena,” replied Clemency. “Alderman Pury has received a letter from Lord Falkland, and he tells him that Major Locke was sorely wounded at Roundway Down. You remember Sir William Waller could give us no news of him when he passed through Gloucester a few days since.”
“No, for the whole army was dispersed,” said Helena, her face growing white. “But what more does Lord Falkland say, and how came he to know? Oh! I understand! My father is a prisoner.”
Clemency put her arms round the girl.
“He is not a prisoner now, dear Nell. He is safe and at rest.”
Helena’s grief was speechless; she only clung to her friend in the numbing, paralysing shock of a first great sorrow.
“The letter,” she said at last. “I want to see it.”
And Clemency put it into her hands, knowing that Lord Falkland’s delicately worded and thoughtful kindness would be the best means of conveying to her the details of her father’s death. She guessed, moreover, that the news of Gabriel Harford’s imprisonment at Oxford would rouse her, and fill to some extent the terrible blank that had come in her life.
“I must do what my father bids me, and go at once to London,” said Nell, her childlike face looking all at once years older under the strain of this sudden grief and desolation. “Madam Harford may be able to help her grandson, and at least I can tell her of his sore need.”
“Yes, you see what Lord Falkland says about trying to effect an exchange,” said Clemency, glad that she had turned to this practical thought. “Alderman Pury bid me ask whether you knew who was your father’s trustee.”
“It is his cousin, Dr. Twisse, the rector of Newbury; he told me so when we parted; and his attorney is Mr. Corbett, here in Gloucester,” said Helena.
“I will go and take him word,” said Clemency, “for he is anxious that no time should be lost; we are in great danger, they say, now that Bristol hath fallen.”
“But what will become of you if Gloucester is besieged?” said Helena. “If you could but come with me to London, you would be far safer.”
“My brother-in-law is against it,” said Clemency; “and, indeed, I could not bear to be parted just now from Joscelyn. It hath been settled that we shall be married next Saturday.” Promising to return, she went down in search of the master of the house, and poor Helena, still with a dazed look of hopeless grief, went on mechanically with her preparations, her mind haunted now by a vision of her father lying dead, now by a vivid picture of Gabriel Harford in Oxford Castle, and again by the thought of Joscelyn Heyworth and Clemency Coriton hurriedly married ere the perils of the siege began.
When the next day she set off on her journey, under the charge of her cousin and an escort which Alderman Pury had provided, she was far more composed than Mistress Malvina, said her farewells without any emotion, and, like one in a dream, quitted Gloucester for the long and dangerous journey to London, caring very little what happened to her.
It had been arranged that they should visit Dr. Twisse, the Puritan rector of Newbury, and her only surviving kinsman, on the way; and Cousin Malvina found some comfort in this plan, for as they journeyed Helena’s looks began to alarm her. By day she was silent and pale, at night flushed and feverish, and when at length they reached Newbury, and dismounted at the Rectory, it was quite clear that the girl was very ill.
The rector, however, proved a kindly host, and his wife, though secretly dismayed when the next day the physician plainly told her that weeks must elapse before their guest could travel, was an indefatigable nurse, and never let Helena feel that she was giving trouble.
And so the poor little heiress fought her way through sorrow and suffering, helped on by an illusion, dreaming of Gabriel Harford and of how she could best gain his release, dreaming also—not of the marriage of Captain Heyworth and her friend Clemency—but of that other marriage which her father had twice suggested to her. Had it, she wondered, ever been mentioned to Lieutenant Harford? And if so, had he perhaps thought of her when he so gallantly tried to save her father? And did he now at Oxford call to mind the maid he had so gallantly rescued from Colonel Norton’s villainy? Alas! she knew nothing of Gabriel’s grave words at West Kennet, and never dreamed that at this very time his red-letter days were the ones when, while others slept, he found a chance of looking at the carefully concealed miniature of a dark-eyed, darkhaired maiden, whose sweet yet wilful lips were the only lips in the world he cared to kiss.
By the time Helena had recovered from her illness, news had reached them that Lord Essex had relieved Gloucester, and was endeavouring to return with his victorious army to London, while the King was concentrating all his efforts on the attempt to block his road. To let two ladies travel while the country was in such a disturbed state seemed out of the question, and though it was now past the middle of September, Dr. Twisse insisted on keeping his visitors. Nor was Helena at all averse to staying, for she was still very far from strong, and shrank from the idea of the tedious journey still before them.
Yet Dr. Twisse half wished he had let them go when on the 18th September it seemed likely that the two armies would encounter each other in the near neighbourhood of Newbury. A sharp skirmish was reported from Aldbourn Chase, and on the 19th the King’s forces took possession of Newbury, to the great disgust of the inhabitants, who were strongly in favour of the Parliament. In their breasts bitter memories still lingered which made them little inclined to favour a king who was swayed by his “popish” wife. Some of the old people could well recall the burning of the Newbury martyrs, and all the grown folk had heard from their fathers and mothers details which had sown in their hearts an unconquerable Protestantism, just as past persecutions have firmly established in Ireland an unconquerable Catholicism.
With what feelings Helena watched the entry of the King’s forces may easily be imagined, but it was at least some satisfaction to her to learn that Prince Maurice’s troop was not in that part of the country, and that she ran no danger of seeing Colonel Norton.
The window of the Rector’s study commanded a good view of the street, and she sat looking out at the busy throng below, while Dr. Twisse worked at his Sunday sermon, pausing now and then to ask some question of his sad little kinswoman, more for the sake of breaking the monotony for her than because the movements of the soldiers interested him.
Presently a knock at the front door aroused him.
“Who comes hither, Nell?” he asked. “’Tis late for visitors.”
“It is the gentleman you spoke with as we walked to church on Sunday, sir,” said Nell.
“What! good Mr. Adam Head, of Cheap-street? I trust he does not want us to lodge any of the King’s officers.”
“There is an officer with him, sir,” said Helena. “A gentleman with lank black hair.”
Before more could be said the two visitors were shown into the room, and the good Rector was courteously receiving them with bows, and no apparent lack of hospitality, though in the dim recesses of his mind there lurked a troubled consciousness that the guest rooms were already full.
“I must present you, sir, to my noble guest, Lord Falkland,” said Mr. Head.
(“After all he does not want to lie here this night,” reflected the Rector, his manner becoming still more cordial.)
“My lord, this is Dr. Twisse, who will, I am sure, be ready to serve your lordship.”
Falkland’s greeting was full of charm. He bowed low to Helena as she was about to glide quietly by them to the door, but the Rector put his hand on her arm and stayed her.
“Wait, Helena,” he said, “I am sure my Lord Falkland will spare a moment to let us thank him for the very kind trouble he took in sending you the last details as to your father. This, my lord, is the daughter of Major Locke, whose death at Marlborough you notified to us.”
Falkland gave a glance full of kindness and pity at the delicate, fair-haired girl; the colour had risen in her pale face, and her blue eyes were bright with tears. He bent down and kissed her hand, vividly recalling as he did so the face of the dead Parliamentary officer lying in the church at Marlborough.
“It was through Mr. Harford, madam, that I learnt your address; being unable to write to you himself while a prisoner, he begged me to send you word of what had passed.”
As he spoke he saw the colour deepen and spread in Helena’s pretty face, and knew by the tone of her voice that she was far from indifferent to the young lieutenant. Remembering the miniature of the beautiful dark-haired girl, and Gabriel’s own words as to a kinswoman of the Bishop of Hereford, he guessed that there were all the materials for a tragedy in this little maid’s romance.
“Is it true, my lord, that the prisoners in Oxford Castle are cruelly treated?” asked Helena. “We have heard such shocking tales of their sufferings.”
“I fear the tales are o’er true,” said Falkland, sadly. “I did what little was possible for Mr. Harford, and have spoken to those in authority as to his exchange, but at present there is nothing for it but patience, and that he has—the patience of a man who believes in his cause.”
“We owe Lieutenant Harford a debt of gratitude, my lord,” said the Rector, “not only for rescuing Helena from the vile scheme of Colonel Norton, an ill-conditioned neighbour of her father’s, but for all that he did for my dead kinsman. Helena hopes shortly to be in London under the charge of her godmother, Madam Harford, a kinswoman of the lieutenant’s, and she will do her utmost to obtain his exchange. But we trouble your lordship too much with our affairs. In what can I serve you, my lord?”
“In truth, sir, I came to ask if you would administer the sacrament to me and to the family of my kindly host, Mr. Head, to-morrow morning, before I go forth to the expected battle,” said Falkland.
The Rector gladly consented, and the time having been arranged the two visitors withdrew, Falkland pausing for a few words aside with Helena, regretting that he could tell her so little with regard to her father, since all that he knew had been already put in his letter.
Nevertheless his sympathy was no small comfort to the girl, and did much to take the sting from her grief.
Unable to sleep, partly from excitement, partly from the disturbed state of the town, she rose early and joining the Rector as he was about to go to the church, begged leave to accompany him. The quiet service over, she was waiting at the church door for Dr. Twisse, when Mr. Head and his guest passed out. She looked in astonishment at Lord Falkland’s face, for the deep sadness which had struck her so much on the previous night had utterly gone, his dark eyes were radiant, his manner cheerful and buoyant; even in his dress, which had before been somewhat disordered and neglected, she noticed a change. Recognising her, as Mr. Head bowed in passing, he paused, and in his gentlest and most winning manner said, “There is a favour I would ask at your hands, Mistress Locke. By Mr. Harford’s express wish I have in my possession his horse Harkaway. I do not propose, however, to ride it this morning, and will give orders that it is to be sent to the Rector’s stables. Perhaps you will be good enough to use it on your journey to London, so that it may await its owner on his release.”
“But, my lord,” said Helena, hesitatingly. “If he wished you to have the horse——?”
“Tell him I have ridden Harkaway ever since quitting Oxford,” said Falkland. “And if,” he added, gently, “I may venture a word to you in your bereavement, I would bid you not to weep for the dead, but for those who live on in these grievous times. It needs no prophet to foresee much misery to our unhappy country. But I do believe I shall be out of it ere night.”
Then, with a kindly and courteous farewell, he walked on with his host, and, mounting at the door of the house in Cheap-street, rode to join Sir John Byron’s brigade of horse.
All noticed the cheerfulness of his manner and bearing in, the charge across Wash Common; every hedge in the neighbourhood was lined by the Parliamentary Musketeers, and the guns on the heights in front of them were doing their utmost to decimate the troop. But still in the front rank Falkland rode unscathed; it seemed as if death shrank from taking one whose noble heart and great intellect so far surpassed all others on that fatal field, destined to see the slaughter of well-nigh three thousand Englishmen.
At the end of the Common there came a pause, for it was necessary that Sir John Byron should reconnoitre the enclosed ground. Finding that the Parliamentary foot were drawn up at the further side of a large field, fenced on all sides by high, quickset hedges, and that the only entrance into this field was far too narrow to allow of the safe passage of the cavalry, Sir John gave orders that the gap should be widened, and even as he gave the word it was evident that the whole fire of the foot soldiers would be concentrated on this spot directly any should-pass it, for his horse was shot in the throat. Springing to the ground, he called for another, and in that moment Falkland—ever the first to rush upon danger—spurred his horse forward.
There was a happy light in his face, as was always the case in moments of peril.
Here was the chance he had long looked for! He passed through the gap—one man alone betwixt the two armies; the next instant horse and rider fell riddled with bullets.
The narrow entrance had proved for the heart-broken hero the gate of life.
All through the day the battle raged; the Parliamentary troops under Essex and Lord Roberts, with starvation staring them in the face, knew that they must conquer their foes or die and leave the city unprotected; the Royalists were determined to block the road to London, cost what it might.
At last darkness made further fighting impossible, and it was evident that the Parliamentary army had gained ground; moreover, the men could starve another day, but the King, whose ammunition had failed, was in a worse plight.
At midnight, Helena, lying sleepless in her room at the Rectory, heard the rumbling of gun carriages, and the tramp of armed men, and sprang up to hear what had passed. Dr. Twisse could only learn that the King’s troops were falling back on Newbury, and it was not until the next morning that they learnt that the London road was free. Later in the day Mr. Head brought them the news of Lord Falkland’s death.
“His body hath but now been recovered from the field,” he said; “and is to be borne to Oxford and thence to Great Tew. The peace of which he was a passionate promoter will be long in dawning for England, but it hath dawned for him.”
Helena’s own grief was too new, however, to endure listening to further details; she stole from the room, and ran for comfort and quiet to the stables, where in Harkaway’s stall she could cry unmolested, finding some comfort in leaning her aching head on the neck of the horse which Gabriel had ridden when he had gallantly tried to rescue her father.
It seemed to her that all the great and good were dying; her own father, Hampden the patriot, Lord Brooke and a host of others within the last few months—and now the noble-hearted Falkland, with whom only the day before she had received the sacrament. Who in that generation would rise to fill the terrible gaps which this great struggle betwixt opposing principles had caused?
I cannot mount to Heaven beneath this ban,
Can Christian hope survive so far below
The level of the happiness of man?
Can angels’ wings in these dark waters grow?
A spirit voice replied, “From bearing right
Our sorest burthens comes fresh strength to bear!
And so we rise again towards the light,
And quit the sunless depths for upper air!
Meek patience is as diver’s breath to all
Who sink in sorrow’s sea, and many a ray
Comes gleaming downward from the Source of day,
To guide us reascending from our fall:
The rocks have bruised thee sore, but angels’ wings
Grow fast from bruises, hope from anguish springs.”
—A. Tennyson Turner.
With incredible slowness the summer months passed by in the stifling atmosphere of the Saxon tower of Oxford Castle. Many times Gabriel cheered himself by a resolute dwelling on the old motto written in Elizabethan handwriting in the great family Bible at Hereford which had belonged to his grandfather, “Hope helpeth heavie hartes, sayeth Henry Harford.”
He remembered that the same motto appeared in neat printing characters when the Bible had been handed down to his father, and had become “Bridstock Harford, his Book.” Apparently the Harfords had always had troubled times, but had known how to win their way through them, and he tried desperately not to disgrace the family traditions of fortitude and constancy.
It must, however, be owned that his surroundings were enough to discourage the bravest heart. The youngest of about fifty men of various ranks and different callings, but all of them prisoners of war, he found his natural reserve and fastidiousness tried in a hundred galling ways. While the miserably inadequate food and the total deprivation of the exercise to which all his life e had been accustomed, not only affected his health, but made it daily a greater effort to fight against the evil tendencies of his own nature. Solomon, in the days of his wisdom, set it on record that the man who could rule himself was greater than the victorious general who captured a city, but the world still gives the praise and glory to the military conqueror, and reserves sneers and hard words for the man who hates and boldly fights evil—a reflection only too apt to occur to people in moments of temptation.
Gabriel struggled on, however, through July and August and the greater part of September, saved by hope, and always persuading himself that his father would assuredly effect his exchange before another week of this dreary life was ended. He dwelt often, too, on the thought that perhaps his letter to Hilary after her mother’s death might reach her heart and awaken his Princess Briar-Rose to love once more. Happily he never dreamt that Norton had waylaid the messenger, and that the fragments of the letter had been trodden down into the mud of Marshfield-street. Like poor little Helena, he was for the time helped by an illusion.
On September the 23rd, while he was poring over the tiny volume of Plato which Falkland had given him, his attention was drawn to a general tolling of bells throughout the city, and when Aaron, the brutal gaoler employed to look after the war prisoners by Provost-Marshal Smith entered with the day’s rations, he was beset by eager questions.
“What hath chanced? Hath a battle been fought?” asked the prisoners, for once failing to snatch without delay at the penny loaves dealt out to them from a basket by Sandy, Aaron’s half-witted helper.
“A battle,” growled Aaron, setting down the buckets from which the cans were refilled with beer and water. “Ay, to be sure, and a victory for the king; but it has cost him my Lord Carnarvon, and my Lord Falkland, and a host of other noblemen beside, all for the trouble of slaying Puritan dogs like yourselves.”
Gabriel was well used to the taunt, but at the news of Falkland’s death he turned pale.
“Did you say my Lord Falkland was slain?” he asked, hoping against hope that his rescuer might only be wounded.
“Ay, to be sure, don’t you hear the bells tolling? He’s being borne through Oxford to Great Tew this very moment, though for the matter of that they ought to bury him at night with a stake through his heart at the crossing of the roads, for they say ’twas sheer suicide—he rode out alone betwixt the two armies! just the fool’s act one would look for from a bookish coward, always trying to make peace! A pox on all peace-loving cravens say I. Don’t stand staring at me like that, you mongrel cur! What was my Lord Falkland to you?” and he emphasized the question with a brutal kick.
All these weeks Gabriel had borne with patience and dignity the galling words and petty cruelties practised by the gaoler, but in the overwhelming shock of these grievous tidings his strength suddenly deserted him. Stung to the quick by the man’s coarse attack on the dead hero he turned upon him in fury.
“Don’t dare again to take on your foul lips a name you’re not worthy to breathe,” he cried, with such passionate wrath and a look so threatening that for a moment Aaron quailed.
But anger merely begot anger, and with a fierce laugh the gaoler eyed his victim derisively.
“You will come before the Provost-Marshal for that, you numskull,” he exclaimed, and amid a general silence he seized Gabriel by the arm, and grimly escorted him from the room.
To be out of the close, crowded prison was for a minute the most intense relief, and as he went down the steps Gabriel’s wrath cooled. Longingly he looked about him with the keen eyes of one whose spare time was chiefly employed in futile plans of escape.
Aaron took him across the courtyard to the Governor’s apartments, where they found the redoubtable Smith busy with pen and ink and a huge ledger. He glanced at them as they entered with an expression of annoyance.
“What do you mean by bringing a prisoner into my presence without leave?” he said; “I’ll not have them brought straight to my room from that fever-den.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said Aaron, saluting, “but it was a bad case of insubordination.”
“Sir,” said Gabriel, “the only insubordination lay in this, that, forgetting he was my gaoler, I forbade him to speak evil of my Lord Falkland.”
“Forbade!” repeated the Provost-Marshal, raising his eyebrows. “You are quite right, Aaron, these rebels must learn their place. You are condemned, Mr. Harford, to thirty days in irons and to be flogged—the number of the strokes not to exceed thirty.”
Gabriel bowed in silence; his lips closed in a hard line; a curious look came into his eyes—the same look which had dawned there years ago in the Archdeacon’s Court at Hereford, when he had heard his father condemned. As Aaron in brutal triumph escorted him to the whipping-post, he could hear the church-bells tolling drearily, and a sense of blank despair filled his heart as he realised fully what a friend and helper he had lost in Lord Falkland; but beneath that lay the deep, burning sense of wrong—the fierce and bitter resentment of a personal wrong which seemed to change his whole nature.
Many speculations were made by the prisoners as to the punishment that would be meted out to him. He was absent for some time, and when Aaron at length readmitted him the first thing that attracted everyone’s attention was the ominous clanking of the irons. He seemed to cross the room with some difficulty, but that was well understood by all who had experienced the weight of the fetters. What no one did understand was the extraordinary change which had come over his face and bearing.
“How long are you condemned to wear irons?” said the lawyer, making room for him on the bench at his side.
“Thirty days,” said Gabriel, and his voice had deepened in a strange way. The lawyer looked searchingly into the white, set face, and fierce eyes of the speaker.
“Come, eat,” he said, kindly. “You have not yet dined. That brute Aaron haled you away just as he had brought the food.”
But Gabriel waved aside the bread, for in truth the thought of eating sickened him.
“You put yourself in the wrong, sir, by seeking to extenuate Lord Falkland’s rash act,” said one of the officer who was a strait-laced Presbyterian. “Ill fare those who are neither cold nor hot; had his lordship not deserted his old friends and sought Court favour he might now have been a useful and an honoured man. Aaron, though brutal, hath the wit to see how worthless is the man who is true to neither party.”
Throughout this pompous speech the lawyer had furtively watched his neighbour, and he was the only man in the room who was not startled when Gabriel suddenly stood up, the colour all at once flushing his pale face, his eyes blazing.
“Sir,” he said, angrily, “Lord Falkland never sought Court favour, he loathed the Court, but from a sense of duty tried to save the country by urging moderation on the King. All men know what sort of treatment he received from the vile courtiers. Are we sunk so low that we cannot see the virtues of a great man because in matters of State he opposes us?”
“I repeat,” said the Presbyterian, “that you were wrong to espouse the cause of one who had thrown away his life. You should not have sought to gloss over the sinfulness of his suicidal end. Aaron was right—he ought not to have had funeral honours. Lord Falkland was a weak man and sorely misguided, as was natural enough, for his religion was merely an intellectual pursuit, and wholly unorthodox. Hell is now his portion.”
“Then I will have no more to do with what you call religion,” said Gabriel, passionately. “It is these; accursed systems that are at the root of all our misery—there’s not a pin to choose betwixt your bigotry and the bigotry of the Archbishop. England is going to the dogs because Churchmen wrangle over ceremonies and trappings, and Puritans squabble over Holy Writ. You say my Lord Falkland is doomed to hell? Then if so there was never One who called peacemakers blessed, or ordered us to love our enemies and serve them. But he is not doomed. It is a lie! It is this country that is in hell, with its blind bigots and its beasts calling themselves men, and its blood and its boastful tyranny. ’Tis I myself that am in hell, mad with the thirst for vengeance, longing to kill with my own hands the brutes down yonder.”
Quite suddenly his voice faltered, he reeled backwards, and would have fallen to the ground had not the room been crowded. As it was, he fell against Passey, who, aghast at the wild words he had uttered, was nevertheless mindful of Gabriel’s kindly help in the past, and allowed the head of the unconscious prisoner to rest on his knee.
“A most blasphemous young man,” remarked the Presbyterian. “Strange that one who hath hitherto been well reported among us and of modest bearing should suddenly change in this unseemly fashion. He erred in saying he was in hell while the day of grace is yet unspent, and he is permitted to remain in our godly company; but there can be no doubt that he will ultimately go there unless he speedily repents.”
There was a silence in the room. A good many of the prisoners felt that there was some truth beneath the fierce words of the lieutenant which was beyond their reach. Others had liked him, and were sorry to see such an extraordinary change in him. It was a relief when the key was turned in the lock and the door cautiously unbarred by Sandy. The half-witted lad, a great, awkward-looking fellow of fifteen, came shambling in guiltily, and locked the door after him.
“Aaron never saw me!” he whispered, grinning from ear to ear. Then, catching sight of Gabriel on the floor, “What, he hath swooned at last? Then belike he’ll be crying out a bit when he comes to himself. There was no sport at all for us at the whipping-post, for he never once shrieked for mercy, as some of ’em do. What’s the good of sport if you don’t hear the prey squeak?”
“Did they dare to flog him for what he said to Aaron?” asked the lawyer, his face darkening.
“Why, yes, gentlemen, to be sure; and as I’m telling you, ‘twas poor sport, cursed poor sport. I’d as lief not have seen it. When they unbound him he never spake a word, but just looked as though he could have murdered Aaron, and he never seemed to heed at all when I did what I could to staunch the blood.”
“’Tis this that hath changed him,” said Rawlyns, the Marlborough burgess; and while the others drew off a little, discussing the matter eagerly, he and Passey did the best they could for Gabriel, Sandy supplying them with certain rough remedies which he had contrived to smuggle up the tower steps during Aaron’s absence.
Strangely enough, the half-witted lad had more heart than his brutal chief, and though, as he honestly admitted, he liked “to hear the vermin squeak,” he was quick to respond to kindness, and retained a memory of a few pleasant words Gabriel had once spoken to him. So little but curses and blows had come to him throughout his wretched life that he was always hoping to win again some sort of recognition from the young lieutenant, and for the next few days it was pathetic to see the efforts he made to extort something more from Gabriel than the curt thanks which rewarded all his attempts at help. Gabriel did not, indeed, disguise the fact that the mere sight of the idiot’s face, the mere touch of his dirty and clumsy hands, repulsed him. Nor did he respond any more graciously to the sympathy of his fellow-prisoners; the brutal punishment had called out all the worst side of his nature, and for days he lay in his corner, ill in body and mind, bereft of all hope for himself and for the country, without faith in God or man, and, as he had very truly said, “in hell.”
Every time Aaron entered the room his hatred of the man seemed to increase, and the maddening sense of being wholly at the mercy of this brutal tyrant grew upon him until it seemed to dominate everything else. Even the nightly psalms and prayers of the prisoners became unendurable to him; he turned his face to the wall and tried not to listen, convinced in his mind that they were praying at him, and so wrapped round in himself and his wrongs that it seemed impossible his character should ever recover what it had lost.
At last one October evening, when the Presbyterian was saying a psalm, a few of the familiar words entered his mind with a force and freshness which compelled him, against his will, to turn his thoughts away from his misery.
Through the old tower room there rang the verse: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein.”
From his earliest childhood his father had taught him to see God in nature, and the first light that came now to him in the outer darkness was the truth which had really become part of his very being when, as a little fellow, he rode with the doctor through the Herefordshire lanes, learning to observe, and learning to love birds and insects and flowers. God was in His creation and the world was not at the mercy of fate and chance.
Yet it was not until this autumn evening that the breadth of the assertion struck him, or that he in the least grasped the thought that the grand climax, welcoming the entrance of the King of Glory, was the prophecy of the entire ultimate triumph of the Lord strong and mighty—the Conqueror in the battle of love against hate, of righteousness against sin.
Sickened and utterly wearied with the stormy theological disputes of the age, he reached now beyond the clamouring voices, and sought refuge in the living realities wherein alone peace can be found.
Moreover, as he lay that evening in the dark prison room, for spite of the cold and the short days the prisoners were allowed neither fire nor light, there returned to him in helpful fashion the remembrance of the last talk he had had with his friend Joscelyn Heyworth.
They had sat late together in their quarters at the “Nagg’s Head” in Bath, and Joscelyn had told him of his visit to his old tutor Whichcote, at North Cadbury, during which the recent death of Hampden had been the chief topic, and in his bitterness of soul the young Captain had found relief in telling an older and wiser man the despair he felt for the country under its grievous loss. A memory returned to Gabriel of some words of Whichcote’s as to heaven, which his friend had quoted, and he fell to musing over them. “Heaven is first a temper and then a place; and both heaven and hell have their foundations within us.” He knew only too well that the last statement was true, knew it by the brutal thirst for vengeance which was consuming him; by the hatred of his enemies which had changed his whole character, by the harsh judgments he silently passed on the failings and petty weaknesses of his fellow-prisoners. But the tutor had said that heaven also had its foundation within us, and the thought linked itself now to that startling assertion that the world and they that dwell therein are God’s, which had first lightened his gloom. Musing over it all, he presently fell into a sounder and more refreshing sleep than any he had of late known.
He was roused at last, not as had been usually the case, by the discomfort of the heavy irons he wore, but by the soft, light brushing of something across his forehead. In the light of the early morning he saw a robin fluttering over him, and only one long shut up in a single room, away from all the interests of outer life, could understand the intense pleasure of the sight. In the sheer happiness of watching the bird he forgot his aching limbs, and the blank despair which for so long had clouded his mind was gone.
What was that quaint legend which he had once heard little Bridstock’s Welsh nurse tell in the old nursery at Hereford? The robin had won his red breast because, being the kindest of the birds, it flew every night to hell with a drop of water wherewith to slake the thirst of those tormented in the flame. The bird had been true to its nature when it flew through the narrow unglazed window and came to the desolate prisoner of war in Oxford Castle. And as, perched on one of the old beams, it flooded the place with its blithe song, Gabriel escaped altogether from the dreary prison. Once more he was in the wood in Herefordshire, with the sunshine turning the brake fern into silver and the carpet of russet leaves into gold, once more the sweetest eyes in the world were lifted to his, once more the musical voice told him that all things seemed more beautiful because of love, while the bird of hope sang in the tree overhead.
Spite of all that had intervened, there was gladness in the remembrance, for his love for Hilary was the most divine part of his nature, no fleeting passion to be changed to bitterness by change in her. It was that rare love which war, death or sickness may lay siege to, but which is by its quality eternal.
And thus, through love, he gradually came back to life, and once more the old family motto, “Hope helpeth heavie hartes,” strengthened him to endure the sorrows of division and the countless horrors which the war had brought in its train.
The robin did much to cheer all the prisoners. It became the pet and plaything of everyone in the place; to listen to its blithe song, to tame it, and to conceal it safely before the brutal Aaron entered, was a daily occupation, and not a man in the place failed to provide it with crumbs, so that the bird was ere long the one plump and prosperous creature in the tower-room.
With November came a return of the gaol fever, the new fever as it was called, one of the visitations which resulted from the privation and unhealthy overcrowding among the unhappy prisoners. It spread throughout England, sparing neither rich nor poor, and presented such unusual symptoms that no doctor understood how to deal with it.
This, however, made little difference to the Oxford prisoners, for no one troubled to think about doctoring them. It went to Gabriel’s heart to see how they suffered, and his whole time was now given to a desperate attempt to relieve the sick. Cure was out of the question, for no medicine was to be had, and all through the month and on into December men were stricken. Those with good constitutions pulled through, the others raved in delirium for a few days, then died. It became quite a usual occurrence to see Aaron and Sandy removing the dead, and at length their numbers were reduced to thirty-nine.
“There’s a lot of waste space here,” remarked Aaron brutally, as he dragged out the corpse of the Presbyterian who in September had reprimanded Gabriel, but of late had been his best friend. “I shall have to bring you some more prisoners to fill the gaps.”
“When once this hateful war is over,” thought Gabriel, “I will follow in my father’s steps and be a physician. I will fight disease and pain, and bring hope to heavy hearts. For of all terrible things the worst is to watch men dying for want of proper aid.”
And then he fell to musing, as he had often done of late, on the strange problem of war. It was easy to account for the extraordinary influence which Falkland had had over him by the largeness of mind and the passionate generosity of the dead hero. And now more and more as he thought of his death, it seemed to him that Falkland was the forerunner of a vast multitude who, in future generations, would band themselves together and resolutely stand for peace, permitting only such force as was needful for the protection of hearth and home, and the maintenance of the just laws of their own country. As he recalled Prince Rupert’s favourite saying, “We will have no law in England, save that of the sword,” he could not but remember the words of One whom both Royalists and Parliamentarians professed to obey, “They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.”
“To say kings are accountable to none but God, is the overturning of all law and government. For if they may refuse to give account, then all covenants made with them at coronation, all oaths are in vain, and mere mockeries; all laws which they swear to keep, made to no purpose. Aristotle, whom we commonly allow for one of the best interpreters of nature and morality writes that ‘monarchy unaccountable is the worst sort of tyranny, and least of all to be endured by free-born men.’”—Milton.
Towards Christmas the fever abated, but the sufferings of the prisoners from the intense cold were very great. Gabriel, whose vigorous youth had hitherto withstood better than the rest the rigours of the life in the Castle, began now to show signs of all the long vigils he had kept with the sick and the dying, and Sandy, who was really fond of him, watched him with wistful eyes, feeling sure that he would before long succumb.
It was not until Christmas Eve that Aaron’s threat of filling up the gaps was fulfilled. Then, about two o’clock in the afternoon the door was flung open and the gaoler pushed in a young, active-looking man, dressed in mourning attire which had evidently seen hard service.
“Good-day to you, gentlemen,” he said, pleasantly. “I am sorry to add to your number, and fear you will scarcely welcome a new-comer.”
“On the contrary, sir,” said Rawlyns of Marlborough, “though sorry for the evil plight you find yourself in, we are right glad to welcome any visitor who can give us news.” Gabriel made room on his bench for the new-comer, looking with a sense of relief at the well-clad figure, and at the refreshing cleanliness of his ruddy face and well-kept light-brown hair.
“You are a prisoner of war, sir?” he inquired, doubtfully.
“‘Pon my life! I know not what I am,” said the visitor. “Save that I am one Humphrey Neal, burnt out of house and home at Chinnor last summer by the Royalists, and since then a wanderer. To-day, having business to see to in Oxford I rode into the city, and was promptly arrested as a spy.”
“Are you for the Parliament?” asked Rawlyns.
“Well, sir, I have never meddled with matters of State, and have thought more of hawking and hunting than of politics; but it is true that since the wanton destruction of my house, the robbery of all my live stock, and the devastation of my crops I bear no good-will to the Royalists.”
“I heard of the burning of the village of Chinnor from my friend, Captain Heyworth,” said Gabriel. “It was, if I remember right, on the night before Colonel Hampden got his death-wound at Chalgrove Field.”
“Oh, you are a friend of Captain Heyworth,” said Humphrey Neal. “’Tis a small world, where we are for ever coming across unlooked-for connections. Your friend hath lately wedded a pretty kinswoman of mine, heiress to Sir Robert Neal, of Katterliam Court House.”
Gabriel’s face lighted up.
“I have heard naught of him since the battle of Lansdown, when we knew that he was grievously wounded. He recovered then?”
“Ay, he not only recovered, but served all through the siege of Gloucester, and as I say, wedded my cousin. I saw her at Katterham but a se’nnight since.”
“And met her husband also?”
“No, he had rejoined Sir William Waller, and was at Farnham, and by this time will most like be laying siege to Arundel Castle, which had been seized by my Lord Hopton.”
“Sir Ralph Hopton has been raised to the peerage, then?” said Gabriel, remembering vividly his last sight of the Royalist general when he had saved him from bleeding to death after the explosion.
“Ay, the King was anxious, they say, to show him some mark of favour to make up for the scurvy fashion in which Prince Rupert treated him at Bristol.”
“We have heard little of the outer world,” said Gabriel, “save some account of the fight at Newbury.”
“Belike you have not heard, then, of the death of Mr. Pym?”
There was a suppressed exclamation of grief and dismay through the room, for in the death of the great Parliamentary Leader they all knew that the country had sustained an irreparable loss. Great soldiers were left to them, but the greatest statesman of the age had passed away.
“He had been failing throughout the autumn, and died of an internal abscess the eighth night of this month,” said Humphrey Neal. “In company with my kinsman, Sir Robert, I was present at his funeral in King Henry VII.‘s chapel at Westminster—a great gathering it was, too, the Lords and Commons, the Assembly of Divines, and a host of people besides being there.”
“Perchance your presence there was noted by some of the King’s spies, and may account for your arrest to-day,” said Gabriel. “Your kinsman, Sir Robert Neal, hath all his life opposed the Court party.”
“That is true. Years ago he was imprisoned for refusing to pay one of the loans which the King illegally enforced, and hath ever since been a marked man. Doubtless, that explains the matter. What are the chances of escape here?”
“The only hope would be through Sandy, the half-witted lad who helps the gaoler,” said Gabriel. “He hath a curious liking for me, which might prove of use. Otherwise, I see no possible way, though I have made many plans to wile away the time.”
The advent of this fresh, vigorous, well-fed man seemed to raise the spirits of all the half-starved prisoners, and Christmas Day found them almost cheerful. The friendly robin had never afforded them more amusement, and they were so intent on showing off his many tricks and accomplishments to Humphrey Neal that they never noticed the entrance of Aaron the gaoler. It was too late to conceal the bird, and certain that the brutal fellow would, if possible, kill it, Gabriel deliberately let it fly, and with satisfaction watched it perch on one of the rafters.
“What mischief are you hatching?” said Aaron, angrily.
“We did but watch a bird that hath harboured here,” said Gabriel, watching the robin rather apprehensively as it flew about overhead. Aaron made ineffectual efforts to reach it with his rod, growing more surly with each failure.
“Drat the bird,” he said. “I can’t waste my time over it; but you can spend your Christmas in the sport of taking its life, and I shall expect you to hand it over to me when I next come in.”
Gabriel made no reply, but secretly resolved to let the bird out of the window rather than place it in the hands of the gaoler. Aaron turned to vent his ill-humour on Humphrey Neal.
“And as for you, sir, you’d better make the most of this day, for ’tis like to be your last. We give spies short shrift in Oxford.”
“I am no spy,” said Humphrey, indignantly.
“Men say that the gentleman that journeyed from London t’other day had only come on a matter of business about moneys due to him; but the Governor of Oxford, Sir Arthur Aston, had him racked nathless and hung him the day after,” said Aaron, with a chuckle.
Humphrey muttered an imprecation and turned away.
Whereupon Aaron burst into a fit of laughter.
“You’d better have a care, sir, your fellow-prisoners don’t allow profane words, and come from the ranks where twelve-pence is the fine for every oath. Oh, yes, I know you well, you dogs. And pray where is now your God, you Roundhead rogues? You prayed to the Lord to deliver you, and you see how He hath delivered you, ye rebels!”
The prisoners maintained a resolute silence, but Gabriel’s heart was cheered when, as if in reply to the taunt, the robin overhead burst into a song full of hope and glad confidence.
The daily dole of food having been left, Aaron and Sandy withdrew, and the prisoners spent the greater part of the morning in discussing the possibility of escape for the newcomer, whose life was evidently in danger. About noon Gabriel reluctantly fed the tame robin for the last time, then climbing with Humphrey’s aid up to the narrow, deeply splayed window, he let the bird out into the open, and with a sad heart watched it fly away over the snowy country.
“I see the mill stream is frozen,” he said, scrambling down again.
“Would the ice bear, think you?”
“Yes, the frost hath held these four days past,” said Humphrey. “But we can scarce look for skating,” and he laughed forlornly.
“Yet if we could only get hold of Sandy without Aaron, I think we might prevail on him to let you pass—and then to find the Castle ditch frozen might make all the difference to you. There is sure to be feasting among the guard on Christmas Day, and the watch will not be strictly kept.”
“Why should you not all make a bold push for freedom?” said Humphrey.
“What, forty of us at one time?” said Gabriel, his breath coming fast. “Oh! if we could but do it! Yet I doubt most of the prisoners are overweak with illness and starvation. And then again all would hinge on Sandy’s coming again ere night, and coming alone, which doth not often happen.”
Nevertheless the matter was generally discussed, and though some were absolutely hopeless, others thought it might possibly be carried through. The lawyer was not among the sanguine ones, however.
“You are young, you are young,” he said to Gabriel. “Mr. Neal merely plans what is the first thought of every prisoner. I made such schemes myself once, but they availed naught Do me the favour, sir, to lend to me one of your books that I may solace myself with reading till the light fails.”
Gabriel, somewhat damped by his friend’s words, produced the little 12mo copy of the earliest edition of Owen Felltham’s “Resolves,” which Falkland had given him, then again withdrew to his bench to talk with Humphrey Neal.
In the afternoon, a little before sunset, the door was suddenly yet stealthily opened. Gabriel looked up hopefully, for sure enough Sandy appeared, but the next moment the unwelcome sight of Aaron close at his heels robbed him of all hope. The fellow had evidently been drinking, and was in his most dangerous humour.
“Now then, you rogues, hand over the bird,” he said, glancing round the ward and eyeing the lawyer with special suspicion, for he had not failed to note that his hand had hastily sought his pocket. Gabriel stood up.
“The bird is not here it has flown away these two hours or more.”
“You lie, you dog. I saw that traitor from Marlborough conceal it as I entered.”
“The bird has gone, we all saw it go,” maintained the other prisoners unanimously.
Aaron was not, however, to be convinced. He pounced on the lawyer, dragged the coat from his back, and plunging his dirty hands into the pockets drew forth—not, indeed, the bird—but Falkland’s little book.
“You dare to conceal books against the Provost-Marshal’s rule!” he exclaimed. “You shall be soundly beaten for this, you numskull.”
But Gabriel, unable to bear the thought of such a punishment for the haggard and wan invalid who had but lately recovered from the fever, strode forward.
“The book is mine,” he said, deliberately taking it from the gaoler and boldly thrusting it into his pocket. This, as he had foreseen, wholly diverted the furious Aaron from the lawyer.
“’Tis yours, is it?” he cried, tearing off Gabriel’s doublet, and with one vigorous pull splitting in half his ragged shirt. “You’ve tried the hangman’s whip, you Roundhead rogue, and we will see now if a sound drubbing from my rod will tame you. Ho! Sandy! give me your broad back for a whipping post, and if you don’t hold this vile traitor’s wrists fast, I’ll flog you to a jelly yourself.”
Sandy slouched forward whimpering and reluctant, yet not daring to disobey his tyrant. A sob rose in his throat as he felt the prisoner leaning on his shoulders, and gripped the thin wrists fast about his neck as Aaron had bidden him.
Meanwhile Humphrey Neal had stood by intently watching all that passed. The sight of Gabriel’s back, however, scarred for life by the flogging he had received that autumn, sent such a storm of rage through him that for a moment he was not calm enough for action. Aaron’s rod was raised once, and a violent blow fell on the scarred shoulders. The rod was raised a second time, but Humphrey, knowing now how to intervene, sprang forward, seized it in his strong grasp, and flinging his left arm about the gaoler’s throat suddenly tripped him up by an unexpected lunge at the back of his knee. Springing aside he let the half-tipsy fellow fall heavily on to the ground, and a thrill of relief passed through every man in the place when they heard the resounding crash with which this brutal tyrant’s head met the floor.
Humphrey Neal bent over him for a moment.
“The fellow is not dead, but I’ll warrant him not to stir for the next three hours—he’s not the first villain I have tripped up in that fashion.”
“Oh! Lord! Oh! Lord! whatever will become of me?” whimpered Sandy. “He’ll beat me to a jelly when he comes to himself.”
“Look you here, Sandy,” said Gabriel, hastily putting on his doublet and cloak. “No one shall harm you if you will but help us to escape. We will take you with us, and you shall never clap eyes on Aaron again. Come, let us down the steps, there’s a good fellow.”
He put his hand on the lad’s shoulder kindly, and Sandy, like a dog that has been caressed by his master, was ready to dare anything in his service.
“They will be feasting and gaming by now, will they not? and the guard will be but slight,” suggested Gabriel.
“Ay, sir, but there be a sentry at both the gates,” said Sandy, scratching his head.
“Help us, then, on to the Castle wall, the key of the entrance will surely be on this bunch. I know well there is a way from this tower on to the outer wall. Do you seize the keys, and lock Aaron safely into this room while we steal quietly down.”
Sandy began to look more hopeful. “You’ll be needing ropes,” he suggested. “And where be I to find them?”
“I saw a big coil of rope at the top of the tower the day my Lord Falkland came here,” said Gabriel. “I will come with you to search for it, and we will leave the rest to follow, bringing the keys with them.”
Sandy obeyed blindly, and before long the two had returned with the coil of rope. Never had the old walls of St. George’s Tower seen a more extraordinary sight than the escape of the forty prisoners of war in the dusk of that wintry afternoon. The white, haggard faces of the half-starved men bore an indescribable air of grim resolution. Silently as ghosts, they made their way down the tower, and with marvellous self-control crept one by one on to the outer wall.
This was the most dangerous moment, for it seemed only too possible that the guard at the main entrance might see them. From the Osney Gate they were partially screened by St. George’s Tower itself, and, crouching as low as was possible, they devoutly hoped that the Christmas feasting would have made the guard more or less drowsy.
Humphrey Neal and Rawlyns of Marlborough were the first to emerge, and they busied themselves with making the rope fast to the battlements; then one ghost-like figure after another glided forth, until, last of all, Sandy and Gabriel appeared, locking the entrance after them and pocketing the bunch of keys.
It was agreed that Humphrey Neal should be the first to test the rope. If it would bear his weight it would certainly bear the lean and fever-worn prisoners.
Breathlessly they watched him slide down and alight safely on the snowy slope beside the millstream.
“Let us not wait for each other,” said Gabriel, “but each cross the ice and seek safety beyond in whatever quarter seems to him best.”
To this they all agreed, and without risking another word to each other they one by one let themselves over the wall, and crossing the frozen millstream escaped in various directions, mostly going in groups of three or four.
Now and then Gabriel, as he awaited his turn, heard sounds of merriment from within the Castle walls, and as Sandy slid down the rope a distant echo of “The Boar’s Head” chorus floated up to him. His hearing seemed to have become preternaturally acute, and he shivered a little when through the frosty air he heard the guard at the main entrance whistling the refrain.
And now at length Sandy stood on the bank below and Gabriel’s turn had come. With a heart beating high with hope and excitement he let himself over the wall, and grasping the rope swung in mid air, descending hand over hand, while the distant sound of the singers within floated back to him:
The Boar’s head, as I understand,
Is the bravest dish in all the land.
He alighted safely in the snow, and found his arm gripped by Humphrey Neal, then as the chorus of the carol was shouted out they cautiously made their way over the frozen millstream, and were just scrambling up the opposite bank when the sharp barking of a dog startled them into anxious listening once more.
Crouching among the bushes, they heard a discussion being held by the guard, and trembled lest a sentry should pass along to the spot on the walls where their rope was made fast. It was now that Sandy came to their aid, for he knew the dog and coaxed it to his side, fondling it into quiet and good humour.
By this time the other prisoners had safely disappeared in the gathering twilight of the short December day. They resolved to linger no more, but, bidding Sandy follow, began to walk rapidly to the other side of the city, choosing, as far as might be, the back streets and alleys.
Some wandering minstrels on a round of carol-singing before long attracted their notice, and they observed that one of the company lingered far behind the others, rolling about unsteadily as he walked, and tipsily twanging his lute. When by-and-by his companions trooped into an alehouse, he wandered aimlessly along by himself, swearing profusely, yet occasionally chanting a boisterous refrain of “Noel—Noel,” in a fashion that made Humphrey laugh heartily.
“In ten minutes the fellow must fall into the kennel,” he said, gaily, “and, if so, he may prove of use to us. Ay, to be sure! I knew he couldn’t stagger on much longer.”
“Don’t belabour me like that,” groaned the minstrel, apostrophising the stones, “I was keeping the best of time. ‘Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel!’ my throat’s on fire. We’ll have a stoup at the ‘Pig and Whistle.’”
“As many as you please,” said Humphrey, cheerfully. “But, in the meantime, we will do your carolling for you. I’ll trouble you for the lute, and—yes, you may as well spare your hat, too!”
Laughing at the placid way in which the minstrel fell asleep on his stony bed, Humphrey tucked the lute under his arm, clapped the felt hat on to Gabriel’s bare head and hurried down the street.
“We will pass the guard on Magdalen Bridge as minstrels on our way to perform at Cowley. Do you by chance know any carols?”
“I know one,” said Gabriel, beginning to hum the air of the Bosbury Carol.
“That will do. I know the tune, and will catch up the words of the chorus, and, with the lute to twang an accompaniment, we shall make a brave show. Sandy, you will pick up any money that the good Christians throw to us.”
“But sir, I see the watchman coming,” said Sandy, apprehensively; “for Heaven’s sake, let us hide in yon archway.”
“Nay; no skulking,” said Humphrey, “let us put a bold face on it, and say we have come to sing.”
So saying, he turned in at the gateway of Merton, cheerfully twanging his lute.
The porter encountered them with a face of astonishment.
“Now then, you fellows, what are you about? Don’t you know that His Majesty the King visits the Queen’s apartments?”
“Why, to be sure, master,” said Humphrey, assuming the dialect of a countryman. “And we have orders to sing in the quad. You’ll not be denying us poor folk our chance of earning a groat in these cruel hard times.”
“Well, well,” said the porter, good-humouredly, “Christmas is Christmas, and as you say, the times are hard. But see there’s no brawling or drinking or unseemly noise.”
“Master we be the most mannerley minstrels in the shire,” said Humphrey, touching his hat obsequiously as he passed on. “And that be true as the Gospel.”
“This will stand us in good stead when we get to the Bridge by-and-by,” he added, in a low voice. “Let us cross to yonder window above the archway, the lights are brightest there, and doubtless the Queen holds her Christmas festivities within.”
Gabriel, feeling after his long imprisonment in the Castle like one in a dream, fearing every minute lest he should wake and find this strange adventure unreal, crossed the snowy quad, and at a nod from his companion began to sing the Bosbury Carol, Humphrey cleverly putting in an effective accompaniment on the lute. Out into the still frosty air rang the quaint old words, and feverish excitement gave strength to the voice of the half-starved prisoner.
When we were all, through Adam’s fall,
Once judged for to die;
And from all mirth brought to the earth,
To dwell in misery;
God pitied then His creature man,
In Scripture as you may see,
And promised that a woman’s seed
Should come for to make us free.
Oh! praise the Lord with one accord,
All you that present be;
For Christ, God’s Son, has brought pardon,
All for to make us free.
As he sang he noticed the shadows of those within the room moving fantastically on the ceiling, and when Sandy in a startlingly sweet treble caught up the air of the refrain, the figure of a lady approached the window and looked forth. The light gleamed on her bare white shoulders, and on the pearl necklace about her slender throat. Gabriel instantly recognised the Queen, and for a minute scarcely wondered at the thraldom in which she contrived to hold her husband, so radiantly beautiful was her face, so full of charm and vivacity her whole bearing. She turned her head now and imperiously beckoned to some one within.
Gabriel, still with the strangest sense of unreality, sang another verse, half-fancying himself once more in the snowy garden at Hereford, half expecting to catch sight of brave Sir John Eliot’s snow effigy.
He thought no scorn for to be born
Of a birth both low and small;
Betwixt ox and ass in a crib He was
Laid poorly in a stall;
To the shepherds in fold the thing was told,
In Luke as you may see,
Who sang glory to the Lord on high
That did come for to make us free.
As once again the chorus rang out, he saw the King join his consort at the window, and, watching the two, could not but reflect how amiable a gentleman His Majesty might have been had he not been fated to fill a position wholly unfitted for him. But then his face grew stern, for back into his mind there came a memory of the long, long list of grievous acts of tyranny and injustice for which the King was responsible; and he thought of Eliot done to death in prison, of Hampden laying down his life in the struggle to free the country, and of Falkland, contemned and misjudged by all, striving in vain to make peace, and dying broken-hearted in the saddest isolation.
Haunted most of all by this memory of Falkland, he stumbled somehow into the final verse of the carol.
And thus in death yielded up His breath,
Saying, consecrated, just,
All this was done by Christ, God’s Son,
To bring men’s souls to rest.
Therefore you all, both great and small,
That here now present be,
Serve him always, with diligent praise,
The Lord God that made us free.
In the chorus one of the courtiers at a sign from the Queen opened the window and threw down a few coins to the minstrels, after which their Majesties withdrew. Sandy groped in the snow for the money, Humphrey Neal courteously raised his hat, but Gabriel stood motionless, gazing intently up at the brightly-lighted windows.
The weird shadows moving to and fro on the ceiling looked to his fancy like the nodding plumes on a funeral-car, and he shivered as he heard the laughter and merriment of those within, for it sounded to him as hollow and mirthless as the wintry wind which sighed and moaned through the archway below.
Just in that fashion had the wind raged and moaned when His Majesty had entered Westminster Hall nearly two years before on his rash attempt to arrest the five members.
“What are you staring at?” said Humphrey Neal, astonished at the expression on his companion’s face. “We had better hasten on.”
Gabriel made no reply, but with one lingering look at those strange funereal shadows on the ceiling, he turned away, following his companions across the quiet quad and out into the street.
He had looked his last on the King.
“Whatever harmonies of law
The growing world assume,
Thy work is Thine. The single note
From that deep chord which Hampden smote
Will vibrate to the doom.”
—Tennyson.
By the time they approached Magdalene Bridge the twilight had faded into darkness, but the stars shone brightly in the frosty atmosphere, and the snowy ground glimmered white through the pervading gloom. Some temporary fortifications, not of a very effective order, had lately been made to protect the bridge, and a strict guard was kept. It was the endeavour to pass through at this late hour of the afternoon which was like to prove their greatest peril.
More than once Humphrey Neal looked with anxiety at his two companions. From Sandy nothing but a dog-like obedience could be expected; and it seemed to him that Gabriel’s overbright eyes and feverishly flushed face told their own tale. The lieutenant, whose fortitude and intrepid courage had carried him in a masterly fashion through the escape from the Castle, stood now on the verge of utter collapse. Clearly it rested with him to take the initiative and to pioneer the others through this dangerous attempt to pass the sentries.
“Sing a snatch of some carol as we walk,” he suggested.
And Gabriel obeyed, chanting, to a tune he had known all his life, the words:
“The God of love doth give His Son,
The Prince of Peace, to quell
The sin and strife that mar man’s life;
With us He deigns to dwell.
On earth be peace,
Bid strife to cease,
To all men show goodwill.”
By this time they had reached the first sentry.
“Halt, there!” said the man. “None leaves the city after sunset.”
“Good master sentry, let us pass; the sun hath set but an hour, and we be bound to reach Cowley by supper-time,” said Humphrey in his countryman’s drawl.
The sentry summoned one of the guard.
“Leave the city!” said the burly fellow, with a laugh. “You’re too late, my man.”
“We should ha’ been here sooner, sir,” said Humphrey, “but we had to sing in the quad at Merton to Her Majesty. You’ll never be denying us when we tell you that we’ve been carol-singing to the King and Queen.”
“Well, well, you seem a harmless fellow, but I don’t remember your coming into the city.”
“I came in yesterday, sir; and for the love o’ heaven let us pass through now to the Cowley road, for it be cruel cold here, and we have but this night to earn a few coins by our minstrelsy.”
“Well, go through with you, then,” said the guard, carelessly, “and you may thank your stars that it be Christmas night, or I’d not have let you by.”
“God bless you, sir, for a good Christian,” said Humphrey, touching his hat. “Come, mates, we’ll e’en give them a tune as we go.”
Then raising the lute he sounded the refrain of the Bosbury carol, and they passed out of Oxford singing the old familiar words which for one of them had so many memories. Once Gabriel glanced back to the bridge, and the dim outline of the towers and spires of the beautiful city, with its lights shining out here and there like glowworms; and most fervently did he hope never again to enter the place where he had suffered such torments.
For some minutes they walked rapidly on, but when at length they were out of earshot the sense of their good fortune in escaping thus far successfully made them forget everything in a rapturous sense of relief. They laughed and shouted like schoolboys released from work, and it was as much as Sandy could do to keep pace with them.
“No more gruesome thoughts of racks and halters!” said Humphrey. “And for you no more months of slow starvation in that fever den. Farewell, a long farewell to Aaron and his rod!”
“I wonder if by now he has recovered his senses,” said Gabriel. “’Tis more like that our rope has been discovered by the guard and the escape found out in that fashion—I wish we could have brought it off with us.”
“We will press on as fast as may be for fear of pursuit,” said Humphrey. “There’s a house I know at Cowley where we can get food. ’Tis owned by an old retainer of ours who can be trusted.”
They toiled on as fast as might be over the rough road, with its treacherous ruts frozen hard, and all were thankful enough when they saw the outline of St. Bartholomew’s leper-house looming into sight, for the frosty air and the exercise had sharpened their appetites.
Old Nicholas, the farmer, gladly gave them food, and they were sitting in his chimney-corner feasting on cakes and hot ale, when to their dismay the tramp of horses and the voices of men without made them fear that already they were pursued.
“Never heed, Master Humphrey,” said old Nicholas. “I’ll put them on the wrong track, and do you all step up the stairs behind yon door, for maybe they’ll be thrusting their heads into the house place.”
They obeyed their host, and Humphrey, knowing well that he was a shrewd old man, had faith in his discretion. The others heard in no small trepidation the tramp of feet on the flagged path leading to the door; then came a peremptory knock.
Nicholas opened promptly enough, anxious to keep his questioners in a good temper.
“Have you seen aught of three carol singers here?” asked a voice which clearly reached the fugitives on the staircase.
“Bellringers did you say?” asked Nicholas, feigning deafness. “Up at the inn, sir, supping at the inn.”
“Three carol singers,” shouted the man.
“Oh! to be sure,” nodded Nicholas. “Yes, sir, and one of them had a lute, oh! yes to be sure, I saw them a while ago, and they was singing like archangels.”
“Which way did they take?” shouted the pursuer. “Are they like to be at the inn?”
“No, sir, not at the inn,” said Nicholas, shaking his head vigorously.
“Which way did they go?”
Nicholas stepped out into the garden and pointed and gesticulated with much energy.
“Where does that lead to?” questioned the officer.
“Where does it lead to?” repeated Nicholas, as though not quite sure that he had heard aright. “It leads to Thame, sir, you’ll soon get there; Thame the market town.”
“Oh, they have taken the road there, have they. The villains have escaped from Oxford Castle and one of them is a spy. Now then, my boys, set spurs to your horses, we shall soon run the quarry to earth, and the first that comes up with them shall have the hanging of the vile rebels. Keep to the left and press on.”
The sound of the horses’ hoofs died away in the distance; then Nicholas returned to the house place, and the three hunted men came out of hiding.
“That was a close shave, Nicholas,” said Humphrey Neal, shaking the old man’s hand gratefully. “Thanks to your ready wit we are safe, but we must press forward without delay or these wolves will be the death of us yet.”
“Where do you escape to, sir?” asked Nicholas.
“To London,” said Gabriel. “There will be a warm welcome for Mr. Neal at Notting Hill Manor, the home of my grand dame. ’Tis thanks to him I have escaped.”
“Thanks to your own courage,” said Humphrey. “But we will hasten on, Nicholas, without delay, and at Watlington I will get old Parslow to speed us on our journey.”
Nicholas with many good wishes bade them farewell, and, taking the precaution of leaving the road, they went across country, shortening the distance and running less risk of capture.
“I have hunted so often in this part of the country that I know every inch of the ground,” said Humphrey, as he pioneered his two companions across the snowy fields and frozen brooks. “’Tis not so pleasant a matter, though, to be hunted oneself, especially on foot. Perhaps at Watlington we can get a mount from Parslow, he is the landlord of the ‘Hare and Hounds,’ and I’ve known him all my life.”
The bitter wind blew in their faces as they toiled on; and, at length, Sandy began to whimper that he could go no farther. They tried their utmost to cheer the lad.
“We shall soon be at Watlington,” said Humphrey, “and I’ll get Parslow to give you a berth as stable boy; you shall be as happy as a King, and maybe happier, with plenty to eat and a motherly old cook who’ll see you’re not bullied. Oh! you’ll think yourself in paradise after the life you’ve led with Aaron.”
Sandy grinned placidly, but soon remarked again that he was “cruel footsore.”
“This is Chalgrove field, where Colonel Hampden got his death wound,” said Humphrey, and Gabriel looked over the snowy ground, gleaming white in the starlight, and tried to think how it had looked on that fatal day when a deadly fight had been fought, and the waving corn had been trampled underfoot and dyed crimson with the blood of the noblest of Englishmen.
By this time the excitement which had carried him on had subsided, and though he said nothing, it was evident to Humphrey that only dogged resolution and an indomitable will enabled him to drag one foot after the other. But he came of a stock that was not easily daunted, and it was not till they reached the “Hare and Hounds” at Watlington that he would admit that he was dead beat.
“Come round to the back entrance,” said Humphrey. “I’ll get a word with old Mogg the cook.”
Softly lifting the latch, he took them into the kitchen of the inn, where an old crone, with a most good-natured face, sat alone by the fire.
“Mogg,” said Humphrey, stealing across the room, “a happy Christmas to you, and of your charity take us into hiding, for we stand in peril of our lives.”
“Larka mercy, Master Humphrey, how you do startle a body,” exclaimed the old woman, beaming with pleasure at the sight of one she had known from babyhood. “What’s amiss with yonder gentleman? Methinks he is but ill-fitted for travelling. ’Tis in bed you should be, sir, with a good sack posset and warm blankets.”
“In truth, ’tis where I would fain be,” said Gabriel, dropping on to the nearest bench. “Yet I would crave leave to have a wash first.”
Sandy stared at him, that anyone should actually wish to be clean on this cold winter’s night seemed to him the most extraordinary thing he had ever heard.
“Ay, Mogg, the brutes have treated my friend most scurvily,” said Humphrey; “do you furnish him with one of your master’s shirts and a pair of hose, and look well to him, for he’s worn out and half-starved. But first take me to the master’s room and let me have speech of him in private, for we will keep our coming quiet if possible.”
Parslow, the landlord, who had known Squire Neal, of Chinnor, for many years, gladly undertook to help Humphrey, and Sandy was promised work in the stableyard on the understanding that the two gentlemen he had helped so greatly should start him in life with money for his outfit. By nine o’clock, thanks to Mogg’s kindly offices, Gabriel found himself in a state of drowsy cleanliness and comfort in a great four-post bed, and when Parslow ushered his friend into the room and stayed for awhile chatting he was too blissfully sleepy to open his eyes.
“Then, should there be any signs of pursuit, you will let us know,” said Humphrey, setting down his candle and pulling off his boots. “Meanwhile we’ll sleep.”
“’Tis the bed on which Colonel Hampden lay the night before Chalgrove fight,” said Parslow. “Well do I remember it.”
“And I’ve good cause to remember it, too, Robin, for ’twas the very night Prince Rupert’s men set our house ablaze and brought us to ruin. Well, good-night to you, and many thanks for your aid. We will be up by four, and, as you suggest, go with Jock the carrier to Henley. Once out of Oxfordshire we shall be safe. My friend sleeps already I see. Poor fellow, after lying for months on bare boards, I’ll warrant he thinks himself in clover.”
They slept soundly for some three hours, then Humphrey was roused by hearing a peremptory knocking without. He started up in bed and listened; someone was going downstairs to the front entrance, and again a thundering knock descended on the door.
Stealing across to the window, he looked cautiously down and descried the dark forms of four or five horsemen—there were sounds of unbolting the door, and then the question he had expected: “Have you seen a party of minstrels from Oxford pass through here?”
“No, sir,” said the landlord, with truth.
“Curse the fellows! How can we have missed them? Do you and a couple of men ride on, sergeant, you may yet overtake them on the London-road. Everton, you and I will get some food and a few hours’ sleep here.”
“I can give you food, gentlemen, but being Christmas night we are fuller than usual,” said Parslow.
“Oh, anything will do,” said the officer, dismounting. “Everton, see the horses fed and stabled while the landlord makes ready for us, it will be the quickest way in the end.” Humphrey whistled softly to himself, dismayed to think of the risk they now ran of being trapped. The notion of being taken in bed and being dragged back to Oxford to be hung was not to be borne. He groped in the dark for his clothes and hastily dressed. His companion still slept, though uneasily, now and again talking and moaning in a way which alarmed Humphrey, who thought it highly probable that the new fever had already attacked him.
Presently there was a soft knock at the door and the latch was lifted by the landlord, who stole in cautiously, candle in hand.
“Sir,” said Parslow, “you are not safe here. I’ve left the King’s officers down below supping, and have promised to make a room ready for them. I will put them in here if we can safely manage to take the two of you down to the stableyard. Once there I can hide you among the sacks in the carrier’s cart, and will rouse Jock when the officers are abed and bid him drive you with all speed to Henley.”
“’Tis our only hope,” said Humphrey; “yet I don’t know but my friend is too ill to travel. Look at him.”
In truth the sleeper’s flushed face and burning hands were not reassuring, but they were obliged to rouse him and try to explain matters.
He started up, staring at them in a dazed, bewildered way.
“We are within an ace of being caught,” whispered Humphrey. “Don your clothes with all speed and the landlord will help us to escape.”
With an effort Gabriel forced himself to attend, though it seemed to him that a couple of sledge-hammers were pounding remorselessly on his brain. He began to dress without a word, but staggered and all but fell when he attempted to cross the room. Humphrey took him by the arm.
“What of Sandy?” he asked. “Let us leave the money for him.”
“To be sure,” said Humphrey, placing some gold pieces in the landlord’s hand. “I know you’ll have the poor fellow provided for, Robin, and for your help to us you shall be well recompensed. We’ll follow you on tiptoe without more delay.”
The landlord had hurriedly re-arranged the bed, and now, candle in hand, crept down the stairs, pausing once or twice to make sure that the officers from Oxford were still chatting over their supper. Humphrey was relieved to see that the sense of danger had for the time restored Gabriel. With admirable selfcontrol he rallied his failing powers, stole softly after the landlord, and left the inn by the back door at which they had made their entrance a few hours earlier. In the stableyard stood a carrier’s cart piled up with sacks of corn. Into this the two fugitives climbed, the landlord arranging the sacks round them and covering the whole with a bit of sail-cloth.
“You lie there, gentlemen, and you’ll be safe enough,” he said, “and when the officers are abed I’ll rouse Jock and bid him put in the horses and drive to Henley.”
The waiting seemed endless, but at last they heard cautious steps approaching and whispered remarks between Parslow and Jock, and finally there came the grinding of the wheels and a shaking and jarring of the cart which made Gabriel feel as if his last hour was come. He gasped for breath; to move was impossible, for the corn sacks were piled on every side, and on the top of them.
“I can never endure twelve miles of this—we shall be here for hours,” he reflected, desperately.
But just then, as the cart rumbled out of the yard and passed into the street, there were sounds of a window being thrust open, and a man’s voice shouted out.
“Ho! there! Which way are you going?”
The fugitives held their breath to listen; clearly their pursuers had heard the sounds of departure—were they even at this last moment to fall into the hands of their captors?
“Why, what a fool I was,” reflected Gabriel. “I could endure for days in this carrier’s cart if needful. Anything—anything rather than to be again a prisoner in Oxford Castle!” Meanwhile Jock was conveniently deaf, and drove placidly along the snowy street.
“Stop, you fellow,” roared the officer. “Which way do you go, and what’s your errand?”
Jock drew up, swearing vehemently.
“Where be I a-goin?” he shouted, in a surly voice. “To Henley with a load of corn.”
And to the horror of the fugitives he got down from his place and began in a leisurely way to alter something in the harness, lugubriously singing meanwhile a snatch of a tune which Gabriel thought would ring in his ears for ever.
The cramp is in my purse full sore,
No money will bide therein—a,
And if I had some salve therefore,
O lightly then would I sing—a.
The officer at the window above burst into a laugh.
“In truth a shrewd fellow!—here’s a groat to mend the purse, and if on the road you come upon three soldiers bid them wait on me here as they return, and fail not to tell them if you have clapped eyes on any of these cursed wandering minstrels.-”
The window was closed, and with a cheery word to the horses Jock climbed back to his place. They heard him chuckle to himself as he resumed the reins, and soon the cart had rumbled out of Watlington and was rolling and swaying and grinding its way among the frozen ruts.
“How do you fare?” said Humphrey, anxiously.
“I shall last out,” said Gabriel, philosophically. “’Tis better than a halter anyway. Is the driver trustworthy?”
“Yes, an honest old man, he’ll stand by us, I know him well. But I thought that fellow at the window smelt a rat and would stop us at the last moment. Heavens! How this road doth churn one up! we shall be knocked black and blue by the time we have got to the end of the journey.”
Gabriel was past speaking. He could only lie there in torment, half fancying that he had been sentenced to be pressed to death, so increasingly intolerable grew the weight of the corn-sacks above him. The only relief was from a chink between the sacks which chanced to come just where a rent in the sail-cloth let through a breath of air, and now and then as the cart swayed brought into view a starry patch of the dark blue vault above. He wondered what Hilary would have thought could she know of his dilemma; and then with a rush of hope and a renewed sense of life and strength, he remembered that freedom meant at least the possibility of seeing her again. And spite of his present misery he smiled to himself, and even perceived the humour of Jock’s song about the cramp in his purse, with the monotonous chorus of
Ay ho, the cramp—a! ay ho, the cramp—a!
They must have travelled some eight or nine miles when the sound of horsemen in the distance roused him to fresh anxiety. Doubtless the soldiers, finding their errand at Henley hopeless, were riding back. Now was the time when Jock’s fidelity and ready wit would be put to the test. There was a breathless pause; the groaning of the wheels slowly ceased and a harsh voice rang out into the night.
“Stand, in the King’s name!” shouted the sergeant, while his men seized the horses. Instinctively Humphrey gripped the hand of his sick comrade. The two lay listening in an agony of suspense to hear what questions would be put.
May heaven ne’er trust my friend with happiness
Till it has taught him how to bear it well
By previous pain.
—Young.
Good Lord, deliver us!” ejaculated Jock. “I’m right glad to see ye wearing red ribbons, for in truth I took ye for highwaymen.”
“What are you doing in the King’s highway at this hour of the night?” said the sergeant, whose temper had not been improved by the ill-success of his errand.
“Why, sir, as you see, I be a carrier, and be a-drivin’ my cart to Henley, same as I’ve done this many a year.”
“What’s in the cart?”
“Corn, sir, an’t please you,” said Jock, with humility.
“Why, yes, it pleases me very well,” said the sergeant, grimly. “The corn, I take it, is going by barge to London, eh?”
“Why, that’s a fact, sir, it be,” said Jock, scratching his head thoughtfully, and sorely perplexed as to what he could do.
“Then you can just turn about, my good man, and drive it to Oxford; our granaries are none too full, and we’ll store it in them instead. I annex that corn in the King’s name.”
The blood ran cold in the fugitives’ veins; they listened intently to Jock’s pleading voice.
“Oh! sir! for heaven’s sake don’t do that,” he cried. “I’m a ruined man if you take the corn, for I be answerable for it to the owner. And I’ve other orders for carting back from Henley. Have mercy, sir, on a poor old carrier that’s old enough to be your grandsire.”
“Curse you, I say we need the corn in Oxford; why should it go to feed those rebel dogs in London?”
“Why, now I think of it,” said Jock, “you must be the very man I’ve a message for. Doth not your officer lie at Watlington?”
“Ay! what of him?”
“Well, sir, he bade me tell you to wait on him at the ‘Hare and Hounds’ as you returned, and if so be I clapped eyes on some wandering minstrels I was to tell ye.”
“Why, yes, to be sure; have you come across them?” said the sergeant eagerly.
“Well, sir, I did hear a man a-singin’ as he journeyed along the road a matter O’ five miles from here, singin’ a ballad, he was, about the cramp in his purse.”
“Well, well; and was he alone?”
“Nay, I think there was a couple o’ men with him, but I only heard the one a-singin’,” said Jock, his honest face boldly confronting his questioner.
“Five miles back! then we shall soon come up with them. Since you have told us this I’ll not force you to drive back to Oxford with your load, but my men shall take a couple of sacks before them on their saddles as toll.”
Jock grumbled, and the prisoners shuddered, for now, indeed, they feared discovery was certain. But the carrier was equal to the emergency. He folded back a bit of the sailcloth and handed his whip and reins to the sergeant.
“I’ll ask you to hold them, sir, for I need both my hands; if the wind once gets hold of this plaguey cloth, there’ll be the devil to pay.”
With that he cautiously dragged out first one sack and then a second, tucking the cloth carefully round the remainder. As the cold wind blew upon the fugitives a violent shivering fit seized Gabriel; his teeth chattered, and it was all he could do to stifle the cough which threatened to choke him. Nothing but the strong instinct of self-preservation carried him through the agony of the struggle. But at length came the welcome sound of the departure of the soldiers, and Jock, with a cheery word to his horses, drove on.
“That was a narrow escape,” muttered Humphrey, “but I shall not feel safe till the barge is under weigh.”
Another hour brought them to their destination, and Jock drew up at the wharf, and told them he would seek out the bargee and get him to start with as little delay as possible.
“You are worth your weight in gold, man,” said Humphrey, when the carrier returned with a couple of men to unload the cart. “Had it not been for your ready wit, we should now be on our way back to Oxford Castle.”
“Eh, Master Humphrey, I’d gladly do more than that for your father’s son. But have a care of your friend, sir, for I think he be sore spent.”
Glancing at Gabriel by the light of the carrier’s lantern on that dark winter morning, Humphrey saw that Jock was right. And all through the long, weary hours on the barge, only sheltered from the piercing wind by the sacks of corn and a load of wood which was already stacked up on board, he watched over his companion, feeling very doubtful whether he would survive to the end of the journey.
It was quite late in the afternoon when the bargee set them down at Chiswick, and after much trouble Humphrey succeeded in getting his friend borne to Notting Hill. Gabriel was by this time quite indifferent to all that passed, and it was only when they actually reached the Manor that he roused himself to speak to the astonished butler who appeared in answer to Humphrey’s knock at the front door.
“Is your mistress within? If so, tell her I have made my escape from Oxford and would fain speak with her,” he said.
“Let me help you, sir,” said the man, shocked to note the change which the war had made in one he had seen a little more than a year ago in full health and vigour. “An’ you’ll rest in this room for a while I’ll go and prepare my mistress. Beg pardon, Mistress Helena, I did not know you were here.”
Humphrey, as he helped his friend into the room, saw a little fair-haired maiden whose heavy mourning robe only enhanced the delicate beauty of her face. Her blue eyes lighted up joyously at the sight of Gabriel.
“Oh! Mr. Harford, have you indeed got your exchange at length?” she exclaimed, greeting him with an eagerness and warmth that instantly sent a jealous pang to Humphrey’s heart. “We Legan almost to despair of getting you released.”
“Don’t come too near me,” said Gabriel, “for I have the new fever on me, an’ I mistake not.”
“Then I am well-fitted to nurse you,” she said, gaily, “seeing that I myself had it last September. Here comes my godmother to welcome you.”
Madam Harford’s greeting was almost wordless, but in her smile, and in the clasp of her strong hand, there was a world of expression.
“Thanks to my friend and fellow-prisoner, Mr. Humphrey Neal, we have contrived to escape, madam,” said Gabriel. “He will tell you of our adventures, but in truth I am scarce fit to ask your hospitality.”
“Nonsense, lad,” said Madam Harford, promptly silencing him. “To whom should you come but your grand-dame! Why, you are little more than a skeleton, and in a burning fever! Helena, my child, go and see that the fires are lighted in the blue-room, and in the turret-chamber, and bid Mrs. Malony wait on me at once.”
Helena needed no second bidding, but flew off in the best of spirits to prepare all things for the comfort of her knight-errant. But her midsummer dream, nevertheless, came to a sudden end that very night.
Cousin Malvina, an excellent nurse, had been left in charge of the patient while the others supped, but later on Madam Harford and Helena relieved guard. They found that Gabriel already slept, and the old lady, taking Cousin Malvina’s chair by the bed, bade Helena in a whisper to set the room in order.
Little Mistress Nell stole gently across to the fireplace, and began to fold the clothes which lay in a heap on the floor; then her eye happened to fall on a belt evidently containing money, which, with a small shagreen case, lay on the mantelshelf. Opening a drawer she stowed these safely away, and only then perceived that under the case lay the miniature of a darkeyed girl, whose radiant beauty filled her with admiration.
For a moment she could think of nothing but the loveliness of the picture. But very soon, with a start, she awoke from her dream to find herself in a cold and lonely world. Her knight-errant had a lady-love of his own, and the marriage her father had hoped for would assuredly never come about.
Taking up the miniature she laid it gently in the drawer beside the belt and the shagreen case, and, turning the key, drew it from the lock and handed it to Madam Harford.
“I have locked up some money and private things of Mr. Harford’s,” she whispered.
Madam Harford, whose quick eyes instantly detected a change in the girl, sent her on some errand, and then looked to see what the said private things consisted of. Although she had never heard of Hilary’s existence, she gave a shrewd little nod as she caught sight of the miniature.
“If the lad loves that maid,” she thought to herself, “he’ll never do for a husband for my sweet little god-daughter. We must seek a match elsewhere.”
But, in truth, for many days it seemed doubtful whether Gabriel would live to wed any one, and the Manor was pervaded by an atmosphere of gloom and of deep anxiety, which did not help poor Helena to rise above her troubles.
Humphrey Neal, who had been pressed to stay by his kindly hostess, watched the girl with much more sympathy and comprehension than she guessed. He listened to her account of the way in which Gabriel and Captain Heyworth had rescued her in the spring; he told all the details of their escape from Oxford, and often succeeded in persuading her to walk in the grounds of the Manor.
One day it happened that they were walking together in the garden when they saw a coach, drawn by two powerful black horses, approaching the house.
“That must be Sir Theodore Mayerne, the great physician,” said Helena in an awestruck voice. “Madam Harford wrote begging him to come, but she feared he would not be willing to make the journey, for he seldom goes to any, being very corpulent and unwieldy.”
“‘If the mountain cannot come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain,’” quoted Humphrey with a laugh. “Let us watch the great man dismount. In truth, report was right; he is a very Falstaff, and can scarce pass the door of his own coach.”
“But they say he is the greatest physician living,” said Helena. “If any one can save Mr. Harford’s life he is the man.”
“Madam Harford hopes that his own father, a noted physician of Hereford, will be here ere long,” said Humphrey. “She sent a messenger for him the very morning after our arrival. They would have done much better, in my opinion, if they had sent for this ‘Hilary’ he is ever calling for in his delirium—his brother, it may be.”
Helena blushed crimson.
“Nay, he hath but one brother—a mere child, named Brid-stock.”
“Ah! and now I think of it,” resumed Humphrey, “Hilary is a name that may be borne by either sex. Perchance he calls for the lady on whom his heart is set.”
“In truth I think he doth,” said little Nell, commanding her voice with an effort.
Humphrey walked for some paces in silence. He longed to make love to this little fair-haired maiden, with her pathetic eyes and her dainty air of womanly dignity and reserve, which somehow was scarcely in keeping with her girlish face and tiny figure. But he understood her well enough to hold his tongue for the present, treating her only with deference, and waiting upon her sedulously in a way which she soon learned to like.
They had just returned to the house when the physician’s voice was heard on the stairs talking to Madam Harford. Helena hastily retreated into the nearest room, but Humphrey, anxious to hear the latest report of his friend, lingered in the hall, and Madam Harford presented him to Sir Theodore Mayerne.
“This is Mr. Neal, who helped my grandson in his escape from Oxford,” she said.
“I wish the escape could have been made a couple of months sooner,” said the physician, glancing keenly at Humphrey. “The patient is worn out by want of food and air, and hath no strength left to fight this fever.”
“They told me in the prison that he did well enough till the last six weeks,” said Humphrey, “and that it was nursing those that fell sick of the fever that were him out. He went by the name of ‘doctor’ among them, and they told me that he saved several lives.”
“Brave fellow! I will do my utmost for him,” said the physician. “Let them try, madam, the remedies I have prescribed, and to-morrow I will see him again.”
With that he bowed himself out, leaving Madam Harford grateful for such an unusual concession, yet knowing well that it pointed to the gravity of the crisis.
All through the anxious days that followed, while Gabriel hung between life and death, subtle links were slowly forging themselves between the watchers at the Manor House. Instinctively they turned to those of their own generation for solace. Madam Harford found comfort in long confidential talks with Mistress Malvina, and Helena thought the only endurable hours of the day were those in which Humphrey Neal walked with her in the grounds. He was much in the sick room, but when released he invariably sought out little Mistress Nell, and with Lassie the retriever to act as duenna they would take a brisk walk, sometimes going to the village of Paddington, or visiting Kensington gravel pits, or now and then wandering as far as Hyde-park.
During those days Helena heard of the quiet times before the war, when the old house at Chinnor had been one of the happiest homes in England, and Humphrey, the only son of the house, had thought of little but hawking and hunting and fishing. His father, like many another squire, had taken neither side in the great dispute of the day, both parties had seemed to him in the wrong, and, as he truly said, he had not the knowledge to fit him to make choice betwixt them.
Helena heard now with indignation of Prince Rupert’s wanton cruelty in burning the entire village of Chinnor, and shed tears over Humphrey’s pitiful account of the way in which his parents both of them old and infirm, had been forced to fly from their burning house in the middle of the night. They had never recovered from the shock and from the ruin of the old family home. And Helena understood how much sadness was hidden beneath Humphrey’s cheerful manner, and knew that he assumed an air of light-hearted carelessness as a man dons a coat of mail in troubled times.
Another subject on which they liked to talk was of his kinsfolk at Katterham, and their mutual admiration of Sir Robert Neal’s granddaughter Clemency, now happily wedded to Captain Heyworth, proved a great bond of union. Humphrey was pleased and yet surprised to hear the girl’s warm tribute to Clemency’s charms, having the notion common to many men that one woman always tries to detract from another’s merits. He therefore set down Nell’s glowing words entirely to her credit, and thought they denoted a generosity altogether unique. In fact, day by day, he fell deeper and deeper in love with the god-daughter of his hostess, and Madam Harford watched the process contentedly, and left the two unmolested, hoping that Helena’s heart would be caught in the rebound.
But there came a day in January when the struggle to hold death at bay in the sick room absorbed every one’s thoughts. Sir Theodore, who took a special interest in the young lieutenant, had been for more than an hour at his bedside, and Helena had gathered that he had not much hope, when, about four o’clock, Madam Harford came downstairs to give some order to one of the servants.
“Yet I know the family constitution better even than this wise physician,” said the resolute old lady. “In all things the Harfords show wonderful tenacity, and I do not yet despair.”
“There is a horseman galloping up the avenue, ma’am,” said Helena, glancing from the window. “Could it be his father?” A gleam of joy and relief lit up the strong face of Madam Alice Harford; she walked firmly to the front door, regardless of custom, and quite ignoring the bitter cold, peered eagerly out into the twilight.
“My son,” she cried. “Now, indeed, shall we have good hope. He still lives, Bridstock—I can’t say more than that.”
“Thank God that I am in time to see him,” said the doctor, stooping to greet his mother with tender reverence. “Nay, in truth, ma’am, I fear to see you at the door in this nipping frost; come to the fire and tell me of Gabriel.”
“He is at death’s door with the new fever, and is terribly weakened by want of food all these months, and the poisonous air of his gaol. Sir Theodore Mayerne would have more hope were it not for his exhaustion; but, indeed, I still trust in his youth and his sound constitution.”
“Let me go to him now without delay,” said the doctor, and with a heavy heart he was led to the silent room above, where lay the son he had parted from in the spring, so wasted by starvation and suffering that his own father could scarcely recognise him. Gabriel was unconscious, and Dr. Mayerne was administering a strong stimulant, in the hope of fighting off death a little longer. He greeted Dr. Harford with kindly sympathy.
“Try if your voice will rouse him,” he said. “But I fear the pulse is failing.”
Dr. Harford knelt down by the bed and bent low over the dying man.
“Gabriel,” he sard, “I have reached you at last. Look up, my son.”
In terrible suspense they watched the eyelids quiver and slowly open; there was amazed recognition in the hazel eyes.
“Father,” he whispered, “you here in prison?”
“Here with you at Notting Hill Manor,” said the doctor. “Try to swallow this—it will strengthen you.”
Gabriel obeyed dreamily, glancing in some surprise at the portly form of Sir Theodore Mayerne, which certainly bore not the remotest likeness to any of the lean inhabitants of Oxford Castle. He began to grasp the idea that his father had journeyed from Hereford, and his lips framed the word, “Hilary!”
“She is well,” said Dr. Harford, quietly. “On my way here I saw her at Whitbourne, where she was keeping Christmas with the Bishop. She was grieved to hear of your sufferings, and hopes you will soon recover.”
A look of content came into the eager eyes. Gabriel asked no further questions, but lay in a state of dreamy peace. If Hilary hoped for his recovery, why then the worst of his suffering was over. His hold on life grew strong once more, and he fell into a profound sleep.
“I have hopes of him now,” whispered Sir Theodore, “tomorrow I will visit him again,” and he stole out of the room with a quietness which seemed magical in a man of such bulk.
“When the Established Church of England forsook the spirit of Hooker for that of Laud, it made a false step which could only lead to painful defeat. Presbyterianism, with still less excuse, made a like aggression, and with like result. To a certain extent, therefore, Milton is the spokesman of the bulk of his countrymen. Priest and Presbyter alike he forbade in the name of England to fetter by force her free development, her realisation of her chosen ideals for the time being.”—Ernest Myers.
In after days it often seemed to Gabriel that his gradual recovery at Notting Hill was one of the happiest times of his life. The words from Hilary, though few and vague, gave him more reason to hope for a future reconciliation than he had as yet possessed. While the wonderful relief of having his father as his constant companion, after the severe sufferings of body and mind which he had undergone at Oxford, was indescribable.
There were countless things that he longed to hear about after his long deprivation of all news.
“Sir Robert Harley did his utmost to obtain your release,” said Dr. Harford, when one day the talk had turned on Gabriel’s old friend and schoolfellow, Ned. “But, besides his many duties in Parliament, he hath been himself in grievous trouble. Lady Brilliana, after bravely defending Brampton Castle during a six weeks’ siege by the Royalists, fell ill and died last October, not long after the raising of the siege.”
“What! was she alone, then?” said Gabriel. “Was not even Ned with her?”
“Neither husband nor son could be there,” said the doctor. “And you know how frail her health ever was.”
“Yet she had a great spirit, and was the sweetest and gentlest of ladies,” said Gabriel. “What hath befallen her children?”
“The six younger ones remain at Brampton, under the care of Dr. Wright and his wife, who were present during the siege and a great comfort to Lady Brilliana. ’Tis a sad household, though, and grievous harm hath been wrought in the village, for the King’s troops destroyed the church and parsonage and the mill, besides many dwelling-houses.”
“I can’t picture the place without its mistress,” said Gabriel. “All the noblest and the best seem to perish through this unhappy war. Do you think, sir, we are any nearer hopes of a settlement?”
The doctor shook his head sadly.
“Further than ever,” he said, with grave conviction. “Instead of an honourable and high-minded man like Lord Falkland, we have now the rash and unscrupulous Lord Digby as Secretary of State; and Cottington, who is almost openly a papist, has become Lord Treasurer.”
“And yet I don’t wish Lord Falkland back to the intolerable post he held,” said Gabriel. “There were few that shared my love for him among the prisoners at Oxford, but as long as I live I shall be thankful for having known him. I can better bear the degradation of these scars on my back by remembering that they were earned in seeking to shield his name.”
“In truth, I must ever hold his memory dear for the help he gave you, my son,” said the doctor, with a choking in his throat as he recalled all that Gabriel had borne since their last meeting. “He was a man centuries in advance of his age, and such must ever die broken-hearted.”
“Yes; war seemed to him a remedy so brutal that, spite of his natural love of adventure and his fearless and daring spirit, the misery and inhumanity of it drove him into a melancholy,” said Gabriel. “I understand him better since living through the hell of last October, and can see now what he meant by the words he let fall at Oxford when he visited me. Father, when my work with Sir William Waller is ended, I would fain follow in your steps and be a physician; for, in truth, the horrors I have seen make me long to save life and to heal as you do.”
“I am glad of your choice, lad,” said the doctor. “We will tell your good friend and physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, when next he sees you. Indeed, he seems to have a great regard for you, and has given you more of his time than he usually bestows on the highest in the land. What doth Mr. Neal purpose doing until he regains his property, or so much of it as the war hath left?”
“Indeed, I know not,” said Gabriel. “He is much to be pitied—being well-nigh alone in the world.”
“Humph!” remarked the Doctor, with a smile, “I’m not so sure that he will long be that. A most promising romance is being enacted down below while you lie here in this quiet room.”
“A romance?” said Gabriel.
“Ay, to be sure, there is naught like a mutual friend and a mutual anxiety for drawing hearts together. And then, when the friend recovers, why the two begin to realise that in joy there is need of close sympathy too.”
“Can it be that he hath fallen in love with Major Locke’s daughter?” asked Gabriel eagerly. “I should be right happy if so good a match could be found for her.”
“While your grandmother half wishes that you could have fancied the pretty little heiress yourself.”
Gabriel shook his head, with a smile that was more than half sad.
“That was what her own father desired. Ah, poor man! I can see him now lying on the grass on that burning July day with his ghastly wound, and his effort even then to jest with us. I promised him ever to be a friend to Mistress Helena, but told him I was not free to wed her.”
“Well, I shall be much surprised if she does not reward the devotion of Mr. Neal, and in truth it diverts me highly to watch his wooing. Now I shall leave you to rest in peace, for you have talked enough, and I purpose making one or two visits in the city. Bishop Coke implored me if possible to bear a letter from him to the Archbishop, and I have leave through Sir Robert Harley to visit him in the Tower. You’ll not, I think, grudge me for an hour even to your arch-enemy, Dr. Laud.” Gabriel smiled.
“I thought often of him as I lay in Oxford Castle,” he said, quietly, “and have lost all my rancorous hatred of him as a man. Now that the days of his tyranny and harsh government are ended I marvel that they do not let him go free.”
“I understand that the Parliament would be quite willing that he should escape,” said the Doctor thoughtfully. “But I will speak with you again on that point when I return.”
Provided with the necessary order, Dr. Harford found no difficulty in gaining access to Archbishop Laud, who, indeed, through the greater part of his imprisonment in the Bloody Tower, was allowed to receive visitors.
Ushered up the winding stairs and into the long, narrow cell, with its deeply-splayed window, the Doctor found himself once again in the presence of the little man who had rated him with such angry violence years before, and he was touched to find how greatly adversity had softened and mellowed the Archbishop. The real goodness of the man, the sincerity of his faith, shone out now like pure gold; his fussiness, his overbearing temper, his misguided zeal, were things of the past—the dross which had sadly marred his career, yet would not in the end triumph over him.
Always an unhealthy man, he was now worn and prematurely aged, seeming, indeed, to have the most precarious hold on life. The physician longed to see him released, for although he was permitted as much air and exercise as he pleased within the grounds of the Tower, and found great solace in the services of the Tower Church, yet the monotony and the inevitable restrictions of prison life were evidently preying on his feeble powers.
“I come as the bearer of this letter to your Grace,” said Dr. Harford. “Having occasion to journey from Hereford to London, I visited Bishop Coke at Whitbourne, and he charged me to deliver this into your hands.”
The Archbishop thanked him. “Your name seems familiar to me,” he said; “yet I think I have never before met you.”
“Your Grace would scarcely recall the occasion; it was many years ago in the Archdeacon’s Court at Hereford,” said Dr. Harford.
A light of remembrance kindled in the Archbishop’s face; he recalled the whole scene, the—to him incomprehensible—position sturdily maintained by the physician, and the way in which his little son, with eyes ablaze with indignation, had heard the sentence pronounced. He was as far as ever from understanding the inward and spiritual adoration which avoids everything that may possibly degenerate into mere ceremonialism, and which sees in deep reserve and stillness the truest reverence. But suffering and patient endurance had made him more loving towards humanity, and less engrossed in his favourite religious system.
“I remember your son,” he said, “and the love betwixt you. If I recollect right, he used to visit Bishop Coke during his brief imprisonment here; he once came to my aid when I had fallen while pacing Tower-green.”
“In truth, your Grace, it was to see my son Gabriel that I journeyed to London. He lay at death’s door after undergoing great hardships in Oxford Castle, from which on Christmas Day he, with thirty-nine of his fellow prisoners of war, contrived to escape.”
“And he hath recovered his health?” asked Dr. Laud.
“He is out of danger, thank God! Hearing that I was to visit you he told me that often in his imprisonment he had thought of your Grace, and he wished you were set at liberty.”
Dr. Laud smiled.
“I am over old to escape,” he said; “that is for the young and daring. With your permission, I will read Bishop Coke’s letter, and see if any immediate answer is needed.”
He read the letter hastily, then carefully destroyed it.
“For the Bishop’s sake and for yours, sir,” he remarked, “I will take that precaution, lest perchance I receive a visit from Mr. Prynne, who makes free with any papers he can lay hands on.”
Dr. Harford had heard that Prynne, whose cruel sufferings at the hands of the Archbishop in the past had aggravated a naturally stern and sour disposition, thirsted to mete out the measure that had been dealt to him, and was full of bitter enmity to Dr. Laud.
“I am sorry you are troubled by visits from Mr. Prynne,” he said. “His fierce zeal and the sufferings he hath undergone ill fit him for such an office.”
“I could pardon him for taking my papers,” said the Archbishop, “but I think he might have spared me the book of private devotions I had compiled, for I sorely miss it.”
“He would doubtless find it impossible to understand that written prayers could solace your Grace,” said Dr. Harford. “Folk are too apt to think all men are framed on one pattern, and must be fed with the same food; whereas we physicians know well enough that one man’s meat is another man’s poison.”
The Archbishop mused for a minute in silence. Had the system, which had seemed to him flawless, failed just in this particular? With a sigh he reverted to his lost manual of devotion.
“Mr. Prynne knew well enough how greatly I prized the book, for I pleaded hard to keep it. I even”—and he smiled pathetically—“made him a present of a pair of my gloves hoping to propitiate him. He took the gloves, but he took the manual as well.”
“That was hard measure,” said the physician. “Yet, who knows, some word in the book may perchance shame him for his lack of charity. He will not be the only Puritan who hath found comfort in the prayers of a devout High Churchman. There is my friend, Mr. John Milton, the scholar, whose works on ‘Reformation in England’ and ‘Prelatical Episcopacy’ do not keep him from being one of the most sincere admirers of Bishop Andrews—his Latin poem on that dead saint being, as all admit, most noteworthy.”
The Archbishop looked interested, and said he would like to see the poem could a copy be procured, an errand which the physician gladly undertook.
“But, your Grace,” he said, “something was hinted to me by Bishop Coke, as to the suggestion he had made in his letter, and in obtaining the order to come here I learnt from a Member of Parliament that the plan might very easily be carried out.”
“I know it,” said the Archbishop, with a long, weary sigh. “My friend, Hugo Grotius, who himself escaped from prison in Holland, would fain have me make a like attempt. I have long observed that my enemies would willingly permit me to fly, for every day a passage is left free in all likelihood for this purpose, that I should take advantage of it. But, sir, I am almost seventy years old, and shall I now go about to prolong a miserable life by the trouble and shame of flying?”
“In truth, your Grace, I see no reason why you should not pleasure your friends by making the attempt,” said Dr. Harford.
“Whither should I fly?” * said the Archbishop, sadly. “Should I go to France, or any other Popish country, it would be to give some seeming ground to that charge of Popery they have endeavoured with so much industry, and so little reason, to fasten upon me. If I should get into Holland I should expose myself to the insults of those sectaries there to whom I am odious. No! I am resolved not to think of flight, but continuing where I am, patiently expect and bear what a good and wise Providence has appointed for me, of what kind so ever it be.”
* These are Dr. Laud’s own words.
After that it seemed useless to urge the matter further, and indeed the physician was doubtful whether the physical energies of the Archbishop were sufficient to carry him through the toils and perils of an escape. His day had passed, and having in the time of success wielded the greatest power, not merely in the Church, but in secular matters, he had now only the strength left to endure with patience. Whether the past or the present was the time of his truest greatness, was a question upon which men and angels probably held different opinions.
Dr. Harford, being before all things a physician, and one who absorbed himself in trying to relieve suffering of any sort, thought mainly of the old man’s needs, suggested one or two remedies for the ailments to which the prisoner was subject, and left him a good deal cheered by the courtesy and consideration of his visitor.
It was late before he returned to Notting Hill Manor, and Gabriel, refreshed by sleep and food, was eager to hear how he had prospered.
“I should have been with you long ere this,” explained his father, “but on leaving the Tower I found the city completely blocked by a great concourse of people, proceeding from Mr. Stephen Marshall’s sermon to Merchant Taylors’ Hall, where the Sheriffs and Aldermen are giving a banquet to the Lords and Commons, the Scots Commissioners and the Assembly of Divines. While you have been lying ill here, a fresh plot of the King’s hath been discovered. It seems that the very day after your escape from the Castle a letter was despatched from Oxford which luckily fell into the hands of the Committee of Safety.”
“What did it reveal?” asked Gabriel, eagerly.
“It revealed a plot by which Sir Basil Brooke, the well-known papist, was to win over the City to the Royalist cause, and with it was seized a copy of the King’s proclamation to those who supported him, to come to what he terms a ‘Parliament’ at Oxford.”
“The plots seem endless,” said Gabriel. “Yet the King himself is no papist. Humphrey Neal tells me that at Oxford not long since, he interrupted the Communion Service, and expressly declared himself a protestant.”
“Yes, very like,” said Dr. Harford; “but he intrigues with men of all persuasions, promises everything, and holds faith with none. His shifty dishonesty will prove his ruin. Truly, I believe that one main cause of his failure to understand the people is that he lacks all national feeling, and ’tis scarce to be wondered at. Himself half Scotch, half Danish, and with a grandmother bred in France by a French mother, why, there is absolutely nothing national about him! The sturdy old English love of honest dealing will, however, in the end baffle his intrigues, I think. Colonel Hutchinson has many fellow countrymen who, rather than betray a trust, would refuse the King’s bribe of 拢10,000 and a peerage. But this is overserious talk for a sick man. I will tell you rather how, by good fortune, I came across an old friend of my youth, Mr. John Milton. He hath returned some three years from his tour in Italy, and as I perforce stood still in Cheapside, where the people were burning a pile of popish trinkets and pictures, I found myself pushed against him by the crowd.”
“I remember him,” said old Madam Harford, “in the days before your marriage, when he was a boy at St. Paul’s School, and truly the most beautiful boy ever seen, I take it.”
“He keeps his comely face and long light hair yet,” said Dr. Harford, “but hath grown sad and stern through the conduct of his wife; she quitted him when they had but been wedded a few weeks, and doth refuse to return.”
“Is it true, as the gossips say, that he wrote that ill-advised pamphlet on divorce, published anonymously, which hath so scandalised all people?”
“Ay, he wrote it in the first flush of his anger at his bride’s desertion, and himself told me that he hath now a second edition in the press, which will bear his name on the cover. I have some compassion for the foolish young wife, however, for John Milton doth not understand women. Maybe they will yet make up their quarrel, for ’tis but a matter of lack of understanding—there hath been no great offence on either side.”
“Had you much talk with him?”
“Yes, for he would have me go to his house in Aldersgale Street, I having asked him if he yet had the Latin poem he wrote on the death of Bishop Andrews. He hath also let me bring for your perusal two manuscript poems, which seem to me so full of beauty that they should, be published instead of lying unseen in his desk. Here is one, Gabriel, that will delight you, for it hath the very breath of the country about it, and will make you fancy yourself in Herefordshire once more.”
“What of the Archbishop, sir?” asked Gabriel.
Dr. Harford told him what had passed.
“I fear,” he added, “from what Mr. Milton tells me, that the discovery of Brooke’s Plot will make people the more determined to proceed with the Archbishop’s impeachment. The plot, will, however, tell favourably for the cause of freedom in this fashion, that it will assuredly alienate many of those who have hitherto supported the King.”
And how true this statement was, Gabriel had reason to discover as time passed by, for the so-called “Oxford Parliament” failed utterly, and a steady “stream of converts began to flow from Oxford to London.”
Just at present, however, the convalescent was much more inclined to enjoy the exquisite beauty of Milton’s “L’Allegro,” than to vex his soul over the problems of the day, and as his father read him the poem, he forgot war and strife and theological controversy, and was once more transported to his beloved Herefordshire, and the country life so dear to him.
After that first night of Dr. Harford’s arrival, Hilary’s name had not once been mentioned between them. Gabriel’s rereserve was great; moreover, he was not without an instinctive dread that further questioning might disturb the relief and comparative peace he had gained from those memorable words which had dragged him back from the very door of death. And his father understood the silence, and thought that it would be rash to break it. Only on the very eve of Dr. Harford’s departure did they venture to approach the subject which was seldom far from their thoughts.
Gabriel, now so far convalescent that he was able to sit in a great armchair by the hearth, asked if his father would see Bishop Coke on his return.
“Ay, I shall ride to Whitbourne and bear him the Archbishop’s message,” said Dr. Harford. “Those two will never again meet in this world, for Bishop Coke also grows old and infirm.”
“You will see Hilary?” said Gabriel, with an effort.
“Yes, if she is still at Whitbourne,” said the Doctor. “She is sometimes there, and sometimes with her uncle, Dr. William Coke.”
“I never met him,” said Gabriel. “When you see her, sir, tell her that her message had more to do with my cure than the skill of Sir Theodore Mayerne.”
Dr. Harford laughed.
“That is all the thanks we poor physicians get,” he said, lightly. “In happier times, my son, when you yourself are in the profession, I’ll recall that speech to you. Shall I tell Hilary that you wish to forsake the Bar and to tread in my footsteps?”’
“I fear that work will not find much more favour in her eyes, than my present work,” said Gabriel, ruefully. “She ever held that the Bar was the only profession worthy of a gentleman. I seem fated to displease her.”
“I should not trouble much on that score,” said the Doctor. “In sorrow or need, or when her heart is really reached, trifles of that sort make no difference to her, as I saw plainly enough at the time of her mother’s death. So courage, my son! Wait and see what time will bring forth. It seems likely that for those two young people below, Hymen will shortly appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,
and I yet hope, when this war is ended, that Whitbourne may be the scene of such
Pomp, and feast, and revelry,
as now you scarce dare think on.”
Gabriel did not reply, but a happier light dawned in his eyes, and as he gazed into the glowing depths of the wood fire he saw visions of a future that should make up for all the present suffering and separation.