The Lions Whelp 3

The Lions Whelp 3

"I ever think of rosemary for burials," said Jane.

 

"And I for bridals, and for happiness; but it

 

"’Grows for two ends, it matters not at all,

Be it for bridal, or for burial.’"

 

 

"That is true, "answered Jane. "I remember hearing my father say that

when Queen Elizabeth made her joyful entry into London, every one

carried rosemary posies; and that Her Grace kept in her hand, from the

Fleet Bridge to Westminster, a branch of rosemary that had been given

her by a poor old woman."

 

"That was a queen indeed! Had she reigned this day, there had been no

Cromwell."

 

"Who can tell that? England had to come out of the Valley and Shadow of

Popery, and it is the Lord General’s sword that shall lead her into the

full light—there is something round your neck, Matilda, that looks as if

you were still in darkness."

 

Then Matilda laughed and put her hand to her throat, and slipped into

her bosom a rosary of coral and gold beads. "It was my mother’s," she

said; "you know that she was of the Old Profession, and I wear it for

her sake."

 

"It is said that Charles Stuart also wears one for his mother’s sake."

 

"It is a good man that remembers a good mother; and the King is a good

man."

 

"There is no king in England now, Matilda, and no question of one."

 

"There is a king, whether we will or no. The king never dies; the crown

is the crown, though it hang on a hedge bush."

 

"That is frivolous nonsense, Matilda. The Parliament is king."

 

"Oh, the pious gang! This is a strange thing that has come to pass in

our day, Jane—that an anointed king should be deposed and slain. Who

ever heard the like?"

 

"Read your histories, Matilda. It is a common thing for tyrannical

kings to have their executioners. Charles Stuart suffered lawfully and

by consent of Parliament."

 

"A most astonishing difference!" answered Matilda, drawing on her gloves

impatiently, "to be murdered with consent of Parliament! that is lawful;

without consent of Parliament, that is very wicked indeed. But even as

a man you might pity him."

 

"Pity him! Not I! He has his just reward. He bound himself for his

enemies with cords of his own spinning. But you will not see the truth,

Matilda——"

 

"So then, it is useless wasting good Puritan breath on me. Dear Jane,

can we never escape this subject? Here, in this sweet room, why do we

talk of tragedies?"

 

Jane was closing the still-room door as this question was asked, and she

took her friend by the arm and said, "Come, and I will show you a room

in which another weak, wicked king prefigured the calamity that came to

his successor in our day." Then she opened a door in the same tower,

and they were in a chamber that was, even on this warm harvest day, cold

and dark. For the narrow loophole window had not been changed, as in

the still-room, for wide lattices; and the place was mouldy and empty

and pervaded by an old, unhappy atmosphere.

 

"What a wretched room! It will give me an ague," said Matilda.

 

"It was to this room King John came, soon after his barons had compelled

him to sign the Great Charter of Liberties. And John was only an earlier

Charles Stuart—just as tyrannical—just as false—and his barons were his

parliament. He lay on the floor where you are now standing, and in his

passion bit and gnawed the green rushes with which it was strewed, and

cursed the men who he said had ’made themselves twenty-four over-kings.’

So you see that it is not a new thing for Englishmen to war against

their kings."

 

"Poor kings!"

 

"They should behave themselves better."

 

"Let us go away. I am shivering." Then as they turned from the

desolate place, she said with an attempt at indifference, "When did you

hear from Cymlin? And pray in what place must I remember him now?"

 

"I know not particularly. Wherever the Captain-General is, there Cymlin

Swaffham is like to be."

 

"At Ely, they were talking of Cromwell as near to Edinburgh."

 

"Then we shall hear tidings of him soon. He goes not anywhere for

nothing."

 

"Why do you not ask after Stephen’s fortune—good or bad?"

 

"I did not at the moment think of Stephen. When Cromwell is in the mind

’tis impossible to find him fit company. It is he, and he only."

 

"Yet if ever Stephen de Wick gets a glimpse of home, it is not home to

him until he has been at Swaffham."

 

Jane made no answer, and they walked silently to the door where

Matilda’s carriage was waiting. Mrs. Swaffham joined them as Matilda

was about to leave, and the girl said, "I had come near to forgetting

something I wished to tell you. One of those men called Quakers was

preaching his new religion at Squire Oliver Leder’s last night. There

was much disputing about him to-day."

 

"I wonder then," said Mrs. Swaffham, "that we were not asked. I have

desired to hear some of these men. It is said they are mighty in the

scriptures, and that they preach peace, which—God knows—is the doctrine

England now needs."

 

"Many were there. I heard of the Flittons and Mossleys and the

Traffords and others. But pray what is the good of preaching ’peace’

when Cromwell is going up and down the land with a drawn sword. It is

true also that these Quakers themselves always bring quarreling and

persecution with them."

 

"That is not their fault," said Jane. "The preacher can only give the

Word, and if people will quarrel about it and rend it to and fro, that

is not the preacher’s fault. But, indeed, all testify that these people

called Quakers quake at nothing, and are stiff and unbendable in their

own way."

 

"So are the Independents, and the Anabaptists, and the Presbyterians,

and the Fifth Monarchy Men, and the Root and Branch Men, and——"

 

"The Papists, and the Episcopalians," added Jane.

 

"Faith! No one can deny it."

 

"What said Lady Heneage of the preacher?" asked Mrs. Swaffham.

 

"She thought he ought to be put in the stocks; and her sister Isabel

said that he was a good man, and had the root of the matter in him.

Madame Flitton was of the same opinion, though she did not feel at

liberty to approve entirely. Others considered him full of temper and

very forward, and the argument was hot, and quite Christian-like. I

heard that he was to preach again at Deeping Den. Now I must make what

haste I can; my father will be angry at my delay. Good-bye! faithful

till we meet again."

 

"She says ’faithful,’ yet knows not how to be faithful."

 

Mrs. Swaffham did not answer Jane’s remark. She was thinking of the

Quaker sermon at Oliver Leder’s, and wondering why they had not been

asked to hear it. "We ought to have been asked," she said to Jane as

they turned into the house. "Leaving out Swaffham was bad treatment,

and when I say bad, I mean bad. Did Matilda take the electuary for her

father?"

 

"She was very little in earnest, and had forgotten it but for my

reminding."

 

"She is much changed."

 

"It would be strange indeed if she was not changed. Before these

troubles she was a girl living at her mother’s knee, petted by her

father, and the idol of her brothers. Two of her brothers fell fighting

by the side of Prince Rupert, her mother wept herself into the grave for

them, her father is still nursing the wound he got at Naseby, and her

only brother, Stephen, is with Charles Stuart, wherever he may be. If

such troubles did not change a girl, she would be hewn from the very

rock of selfishness. Matilda is far from that. She loves with a whole

heart, and will go all lengths to prove it. We do not know the new

Matilda yet."

 

Jane would have made this remark still more positively, if she could

have seen her friend as soon as Swaffham was left behind. She sat

erect, lost in thought, and her eyes had a look in them full of anxiety

and sorrow. The sadness of an immense disillusion was over her. But

she belonged to that imperial race who never lose heart in any trouble.

To the very last she must hope; to the very last believe even against

hope and against reason. Her life had gone to ruin, but she trusted

that some miracle would restore it. Not for long could any mood of

despair subdue her; infallibly she must shake it away. For there was no

egotism in her grief, she could suffer cheerfully with others; it was

her isolation that hurt her. All her old friends had departed. The

grave had some; others had taken different ways, or battle and exile had

scattered them. By the side of her sick father she stood alone, feeling

that even Jane—her familiar friend—doubted her, no longer took her at

her word, called in question what she said, and held herself so far

aloof that she could not reach her heart. Oppressed by such

considerations, she felt like a child that suddenly realises it has lost

its way and is left alone in a wilderness.

 

Nothing in her surroundings offered her any help. The road was flat and

dreary; a wide level intersected with deep drains and "droves"—a poor,

rough, moist land, whose horizon was only broken by the towers of Ely,

vast and gray in the distance. Large iron gates admitted her to de Wick

park, and she entered an avenue bordered with ash trees, veiled in mist,

and spreading out on either hand into a green chase full of tame deer.

The House—pieced on to the broad walls of an Augustine monastery—was

overshadowed by ash trees. It was a quadrangular building of various

dates, the gray walls rising from trim gardens with box-edged flower

plots and clipped yew hedges. There was a large fish pond teeming with

perch, and pike, and eels; and black colonies of rooks filled the

surrounding trees, and perched on the roof of the mansion. An old-world

sleepy air, lonely and apart and full of melancholy, pervaded the place.