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Title: Caleb Field
Author: Mrs. Oliphant
Release date: November 13, 2024 [eBook #74734]
Language: English
Original publication: NYC: Harper Brothers, Publishers
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALEB FIELD ***
CALEB FIELD.
A Tale of the Puritans.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
“PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF MRS. MARGARET MAITLAND,”
“MERKLAND,” &c.
“Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do;
Not light them for ourselves: for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch’d,
But to fine issues: nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.”--MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET. 1851.
TO
ROBERT BARBOUR, ESQ.,
MANCHESTER,
AS ONE OF THE MOST LIBERAL AND WISE SUPPORTERS
OF THAT CHURCH IN ENGLAND
WHICH CLAIMS TO REPRESENT
THE BRAVE AND GENTLE PRESBYTERIANS OF 1665,
THIS TALE
OF THE TRUE CHIVALRY OF THOSE TIMES
Is respectfully Inscribed.
PREFACE.
On no period of English history has so much been written, as on that
singular age in which this kingdom acknowledged the sway of the Stuarts.
Rife with controversies, which still are alive and strong, its every
inch of ground contested, as vehemently almost by modern pens, as when
the chivalry of England were met by the only army which could meet their
high-born courage--the godly soldiers of Cromwell--the party feeling of
its civil wars exists still among us. But we fight no longer with rapier
and dagger; when death is braved, there is always a certain dignity in
the warfare; but in these days we fall upon a safer mode of carrying on
the struggle. We are not called upon to measure swords with the fiery
Royalist, or the stern Ironside: so we betake ourselves to more ignoble
weapons, which they did not at all times scorn to use--we call names.
And whereas the Royalist forces had decidedly the advantage of their
graver antagonists in the use of these offensive weapons, it is
perfectly natural, and in keeping, that this superiority should
continue; and that as we find the hosts of epithets applied to the
rulers of the Commonwealth and their followers, with all the
accumulation of adjectives naturally conjoined to these, met only by the
one stern word “malignant,” so by legitimate succession, the inheritors
of Royalist opinions bring out the old projectiles still in all their
original abundance, while those who represent the Roundheads, and
fanatics of those days, not choosing to retain their own epithet of
reproach, find little in the ancestral armory to meet these arrows
withal. The more pacific mode is, perhaps, in this case the better
policy, for there is little profit, and less honor, in maintaining a war
of retaliation.
The Cavaliers! they have retained as advocates and special pleaders, the
most gifted of modern writers; high birth, high courage, and the still
more potent spell of misfortune has thrown magic over their names. Let
us say no evil of the dead--
“The knights are dust,
And their good swords rust,
Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
We will call them no names; but their honor stands in no need of
vindication; they have had ample justice done them. Let the generous
world look gently on another picture, and say to whom belongs the
purest renown of chivalry:--to those who fighting for their King’s
crown, fought also for their own inheritance, and for the dazzling
chance of greater rank and riches; or to those, who, following the
banners of a higher King, encountered poverty, reproach, and hardship
for the sake of One who offered them no tangible reward, nor any visible
glory on this side death.
* * * * *
When the reign of Charles II. began, the Church of England, with a fate
which seems to pursue her like her shadow, contained within her ample
breast the greatest variety of opinions. The High Church clergy were at
the head of the greater bulk, which softened down, as it does still,
into the indifferent mass who take color and fashion from the times; and
on the opposite side were a body of Presbyterians, who, during the reign
of the Commonwealth, had been able to set up their peculiar
ecclesiastical organization, and to rule themselves in tolerable
quietness. A floating background of individuals holding other views,
Independents and Baptists, completed the tale; and, singular enough,
when we leave the political histories of the time, and come to the story
of these separate men, we find a strange amount of good-will and
gentleness subsisting among the differing divines. The very noticeable
national feature, the individuality or sectarianism--for the words come
to be nearly identical--which set these men afloat, each on his several
voyage, can not fail forcibly to strike any one who studies the history
of this great Church in England. A careful student, we should almost
fancy, must find himself compelled to conclude, that there is wisdom in
the latitude which leaves so wide a space between the “high” and the
“low” of English churchmanship, and gives the genius of the people so
much room to develop itself, while still within the consecrated bounds.
On the other side of the Border we find divisions enough. Churches
separate from each other, and bearing separate names; but all cling with
like tenacity to the same standards, the same forms, the same doctrine,
and the same discipline. There is nothing in which the national
characteristics are more clearly displayed. The intense Scottish mind
moves on strongly in one direction--unanimous in all the greater
points--aiming always when it marches to march as a nation. The English
mind asserts its individuality, and strikes out alone, breaking into
sections even in the one Church which professes to be undivided; and out
of that pale, in the freer regions of Dissent, multiplying in constant
diversity.
It was thus with the church when the Restoration intoxicated the
kingdoms with its brief joy. Among the best friends of Charles were the
Presbyterians. The death of his father had shocked and horrified them,
and none had shown themselves more eager to celebrate his return.
Holding London as their stronghold, they were scattered in very
considerable numbers throughout the whole country, were held in much
esteem by the people, and dwelt quietly among their brethren, holding
their diverse views in peace and charity, protected, as they thought, by
the royal proclamation, and strong in the King’s promise of religious
liberty to all.
Their dream of safety was destined to have but a short existence. Two
years after the memorable Restoration, the Act of Uniformity expelled
from the Church two thousand of her most exemplary clergymen; not
bigots--not fanatics--not the bold, strong, uncompromising men, who in
Scotland denounced their successors as hirelings, and proclaimed
themselves lawful pastors still of the parishes from which they had been
driven. The English Nonconformists did not so; meekly they laid down
their arms, uncomplainingly withdrew themselves, with their last words
bidding their parishioners receive in all honor and respect those
appointed to succeed them, and retaliating no otherwise than by quiet
good works, and an occasional sigh or lament, upon their persecutors.
One almost marvels at the romance of conscientiousness which displays
itself in the lives of these quaint divines. Many of them could receive
and approve of the greater part of the service-book enforced upon them;
many remained as lay members and communicants, in the churches which
they could no longer serve as pastors; many used voluntarily the Liturgy
which caused their expulsion; and yet, with all worldly benefits and
comforts weighing down the scale, the delicate conscience which, while
it approved of much, could not “assent and consent” to all, asserted its
superior importance, and triumphed. It is a singular history. We can
understand--intensely distasteful as these observances of the Episcopal
Church were to Scotland--how the men who strongly resisted them all,
should have been able to cast away every thing earthly, rather than
submit to their imposition; but when we look upon these milder men--when
we see Philip Henry leading his family to worship in the little church
at Worthenbury, which so lately had been his own--and hear Wesley’s
gentle self-defense before the not unfriendly Bishop, and observe the
reluctance which they had to do any thing that looked like
resistance--it becomes a matter more difficult to understand. Yet they
did it--peaceful, unobtrusive, gentle men, on whom the bitter nicknames
of their adversary fall so strangely inappropriate.
The consequences of this English Bartholomew’s Day were hard upon those
ministers. Some forsook the high vocation, in which they could no
longer have the simple maintenance they needed; some fell upon the usual
resource of poor clergymen, and taught schools; while very many were
received into the households of gentlemen who favored their views, or
honored their piety, and a very comfortable number retired to the
happier provision of their own private resources. But no attempt was
made to organize a church, no resistance offered to the acknowledged
law. The good men, prohibited from addressing a greater audience than
five individuals in addition to their own households, preached three or
four times in a day within their houses, to congregations of that scanty
number, laboring with simple painstaking to make the frequent repetition
of their teachings atone for the limited assembly to which each sermon
was delivered. So straightforward in their obedience, so devout in their
simplicity, so charitable in their diversities of opinion, one can not
help but smile at the singular blindness which upbraids these gentle men
with the name of fanatic.
This state of matters continued until the great scourge, known as the
Plague of London, had come and gone. As it is endeavored in the
following chapters to sketch something of that singular calamity, we do
not need to do more than mention it here. It has been often painted, but
few have cared to look under the noisome vail of it for the heroisms of
the time, though these were not wanting. The visitation passed away;
the panic abated. The Nonconformists who had ventured forth in the heat
of the day, to bear the burden which many of their successors feared to
bear, were cast out from the city for which they had labored in the
utmost peril; and a still more severe enactment sent the ejected
ministers wandering over the face of the country in which there seemed
no rest for them. The Five-Mile Act of Oxford made it penal for any of
the silenced preachers to be found within five miles of any corporate
town, or of any parish in which they had formerly officiated--a law most
hard for the competent, most miserable for the poor.
And then there began to be resistances and imprisonments, the bolder
spirits being roused to courage; but still the many submitted. Quietly
they left their homes; with touching gentleness refused to be persuaded
into rebellion by the voice of their oppressor; and so in their meekness
lived on, at war with no man, until indulgences were grudgingly granted
to them, and until the Stuarts, with their hereditary aptitude for
persecution, had in their turn succumbed.
Let those who are unacquainted with this by-way of history, glance over
the somewhat monotonous pages of the Nonconformists’ Memorial. They will
find no hard words or denunciations there; the bitterness, so much as
there is of it, slumbers innoxiously in the foot-notes of the
dissenting editor; the first Dissenters breathed another atmosphere. The
tones of the picture are subdued and mellow, the foreground full of
quiet figures; smiles about the lips of some of them, tell of the old
quaint jesting which, like themselves, is now dead and out of date. Some
sit, with thought upon their faces, writing unweariedly, toiling to
produce those great volumes which are piled up, like masses of
mason-work, behind. Some are going happily, like the sower, about the
fields, scattering their winged seed, or by the side of waters, casting
forth the bread which many days hence shall return to them. Some with
children clambering about their knees, speak to the little ones, with
scarce less simplicity than their own, of the Gospel which maketh the
simple wise. The sky above them is dim with soft clouds, yet there is
sunshine on the picture--the quiet light of peace.
It is pleasant to come into the atmosphere of this old-world devoutness,
humility, and quiet--to read how Lord Bishops reasoned with these
non-conforming Presbyters, and yet remained no less their very good
friends, that their kindly eloquence proved unavailing. How knights and
noble gentlemen did honor to the good men in their poverty--how one,
whose life was evil, acknowledged that he had no creditable point about
him save the love he bore to one of these--and how the little provision
they had, like the widow’s cruse of old, seemed to multiply under the
blessing of the Master to whom they looked up with so vivid faith. It is
true that there was the clang and din of polemic arms abroad in the same
England, but the broader, calmer atmosphere does only on that account
deserve notice the more.
There were two thousand of them, the greater part being Presbyterians.
Where are they now? In their own country there remains little trace of
their footsteps: here and there an old scantily endowed chapel, long ago
fallen into Socinian hands, marks where they once were; but name and
fame of them as a Church have long since departed. The Presbyterianism
of England is now an exotic, scarcely yet taking kindly to the soil;
and, save in the far away Border counties, there are no ecclesiastical
descendants remaining to the Presbyterian Nonconformists of 1662.
For their very virtue and patience made these good men weak. Had they
been bigots, as they are called--had they been more fanatical and
warlike, more decided in their love, and more capable of hatred, the
result we fancy must have been different. As it is, the fact is
noticeable. Nearly two thousand devout and able ministers were ejected
by the Act of Uniformity. Now, two hundred years later, there scarcely
remains, out of the old Whig county of Northumberland, a single
native-born Presbyterian preacher, in the whole extent of England.
It is pleasant, we say, to rest the eye upon them, in the midst of those
turbulent scenes of history--the quaint, patient, unresistent men, with
their voluminous books, and manifold commentaries, and pious pains of
working. A different picture waits us if we look over the Border into
that heaving, agitated Scotland, fighting for its faith, as for bare
life. Bigot, fanatic--the names are not desirable--but it seems that
these human spirits of ours can never have a necessary good, without an
attendant evil. When we go far enough, the righteous impulse does
oftenest carry us a little too far. We must accept the evil with the
good; for men are rarely embarked heart and soul in any enterprise,
without a little bigotry and prejudice. Too tolerant, too gentle, to
leave any “footprint on the sands of time,” the Presbyterian Divines
have passed away, leaving behind them only books innumerable, and a
memory devout and holy. While the more violent spirits in the northern
quarter of the empire have left the stamp of their mind upon their
country still.
There is another singular anomaly, as it seems to us, in the times of
those Puritans. In scarcely any other age, do we find so great an amount
of devotional piety--in scarcely any other age, was vice so rampant. The
severe self-examination of the friend of Evelyn, the maid of honor, Mrs.
Godolphin, comes strangely to us, out of the impure court of Charles.
Mystic and contemplative, this religion of vows and prayers, breathed
the same air with the boldest and most daring sin; and abroad in the
country, more healthy and life-like, the piety of the time bore still
the same guise. Like the Divine charity, hoping and believing all
things, esteeming itself little, abounding in fasting, in meditation,
and in prayer, it yet seems to have been powerless to restrain the might
of evil which possessed the land. The question is a difficult one. It is
true that we judge the morality of the time by the standard of the
Court, and in that we do wrong; but the fact remains, that even in the
Court, and its immediate vicinity, this gentle piety lived and
flourished, and that the royal iniquity flourished with it, side by
side.
There has been much written on this crisis of the national existence,
and there is room, we fancy, for still more. These contradictions that
meet us as we venture into the depths--this wayward, changeful, human
mood, which seems to make it impossible to have great principles brought
into immediate contact without those strange anomalies--he would do
well, who should treat of those on a broader ground than that of
vindication or reproach of the actors on either side. We ourselves, at
this day, are producing contradictions and paradoxes as strange as
these; and many combining circumstances point us back to the days of the
Stuarts, the climax of the old world--the seed-time of the new.
For the little story subjoined, the Author has nothing to say, unless it
were to beg for it that gentle consideration which the lovers of art do
sometimes extend to those sketches, which the artist intends only as
studies for a larger painting.
APRIL, 1851.
CALEB FIELD.
CHAPTER I.
“Behold
Beneath our feet a little lowly vale.
A lowly vale, and yet uplifted high
Among the mountains; even as if the spot
Had been from eldest time, by wish of theirs,
So placed to be shut out from all the world!
Urnlike it was in shape, deep as an urn
With rocks encompassed, save that, to the south,
Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge
Supplied a boundary less abrupt and close--
A quiet, treeless nook, with two green fields,
A liquid pool that glittered in the sun,
And one bare dwelling, one abode, no more!
It seemed the home of poverty and toil,
Though not of want: the little fields made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years,
Paid cheerful tribute to the moorland house.
The small birds find in spring no thicket there
To shroud them--only from the neighboring vales,
The cuckoo, straggling up to the hill-tops,
Shouteth faint tidings of a gladder place.”
WORDSWORTH.
The May sun shone hopefully over the fair heights of Cumberland. Wide
slopes of far-stretching hills, with that indescribable soft blue mist
hovering about them, which one can fancy the subdued and silent
breathing of those great inhabitants who dwell upon the northern border,
lay many-tinted below the wayward sky of spring--breaking out into soft
verdure here and there, while tracts of dry heather, with the wintry
spell not yet departed from them, made the swelling hill-sides piebald.
Far up in a lone valley of those hills stood a herdsman’s cottage--a
rude and homely hut, with mossy thatch and walls of rough red stone,
scarcely distinguishable from the background of dark heather, on which
it appeared an uncouth _bas-relief_. Surrounding it, on the sunniest
slope of the little glen, was a garden of tolerable dimensions, in which
the homely vegetables which supplied the shepherd’s family were
diversified with here and there a hardy flower or stunted bush. A
narrow, winding thread of pathway ran from the entrance of the glen,
down the hill-side, to the low country; it seemed the only trace of
communication with the mighty world without.
A troublous world in those days! Over the Border the demon of
persecution was abroad in Scotland. Within this merry England--sadly
misnamed, alas! at that time--was oppression also, cruel and fierce, if
shedding less blood than in the sister country. Enmity and contention
were in the land--worse than that, and more fatal, foul pollution and
sin; for the second Charles reigned over a distracted and unhappy
empire, in which the rival forces of good and evil, light and darkness,
had measured their strength already on various fields of battle, and had
yet intervening, before there could be any peace, a time of bitterest
and hottest strife.
Very still, below the changeful sky, the cot-house of the Cumberland
shepherd stood secure in the fastness of its solitude. Some half-dozen
miles away, far down in the low country, the farmer whose flocks he
managed had his substantial dwelling. In the extreme distance were
visible the towers and spires of Carlisle; and saving the occasional
descent of Ralph Dutton to his employer’s house, or the half-yearly
pilgrimage of his good dame for the few household stores which she
needed to purchase, there were few footsteps trod the lonely pathway
over the hills.
At this time, however, while Dame Dutton hobbled busily about her
earthen-floored apartment preparing her good-man’s dinner, a slight
young figure hovered on the watch about the entrance of the glen.
Woman-grown and grave, as girls become in times of trial, this watcher
wore the soberest of Puritan dresses, dark, plain, and simple as of some
youthful nun. Her face had an earnest, devout simplicity about it, the
product of such times; for the Puritan maidens of those days, with
fathers and brothers in constant peril, holding by their faith at the
risk of all things else, had need to be prompt and clear of eye, as they
were single-minded, and strong of faith. She was looking anxiously down
the winding foot-road, the lines of her soft, girlish forehead curved
with graver care than is wont to sit upon such brows. It was no gay
wooer’s visit she looked for--it was the coming of an imperiled,
banished man, the expelled minister of antique Hampstead, a wanderer
now, having no certain home. He had found a refuge for his daughter
here, in the house of the leal old Presbyterian shepherd, while he
himself followed his high vocation, in peril and fears, as he could. On
the previous morning his daughter had received a message from him, that
this day at noon he would visit her.
The unusual warning had alarmed her; it seemed to portend some especial
crisis in their eventful history. She had been on the watch a full hour,
though it was not yet noon; her dark dress pressing the bed of faded
heather she leaned upon; her small head, with its hood of black silk,
bending out under shadow of an overhanging bush of furze; her clear
hazel eyes fixed upon the way--very anxious, very grave, entirely
absorbed in anticipation of this interview, yet with only a clear
atmosphere of truth, and honor, and purity round about her, and spite of
plain dress, and grave face, nothing perceptible of the unnatural
austerity and gloom with which men upbraid these, our strong and brave
predecessors in the faith.
At last she saw him quickly ascending the hill, and ran to meet him.
There was a greeting of subdued and yet overflowing tenderness--it did
not express itself in any exaggeration of word or action, as intense
feeling seldom does; but drawing his daughter’s arm within his own, the
stranger turned into a lonely ravine of those hills where human footstep
seldom passed.
He was a tall, athletic man, spare and strong, such an one as you would
choose from a crowd to endure and do to the uttermost, for whatever was
dear to him. Happily the thing dear above all others to the stout soul
of Caleb Field, was the Evangel of Jesus Christ in the simplicity of its
unassisted might. “Thy kingdom come,” was the continual prayer of his
life--spoken in words, morning and night, as the strong current of his
days flowed on; but graven in deeds hour by hour upon his history, and
upon every span of earth he trod on. “For the Lord’s sake,” Caleb
Field, praying, preaching, scheming, struggling, like a good soldier
taking no rest, had labored all his days.
The father and the daughter were alone in the narrow pass of the hills.
“Edith,” said the minister, gravely, “I have somewhat to say to you.”
He paused. He had been in great haste to make the communication,
whatever it was, and yet he hesitated now.
“Yes, father.”
“We are alone in the world, Edith,” said her father, dwelling on the
words with a sad cadence in his voice. “We two, alone--and earthly
comfort I have sought none else, thou knowest, since thy mother left
thee in my arms; yet, Edith, there is One demanding closer service from
me than thou canst, and better love from thee than I can. For His sake,
and for his royal and holy cause I must go forth again--Edith, at peril
of my life--at peril of leaving thee, a helpless orphan maiden in this
inclement world, alone. What sayest thou?”
She clasped his arm with a tremulous, clinging motion--she looked up
wistfully into his face.
“Father, what is this? tell me.”
“It is the last trial,” said the Puritan; “heretofore I have been ever
in danger, living so much a life of peril that I heeded it
not--perchance, Edith, that I gave not due thanks for manifold and oft
deliverance; but now this last peril into which I go, is sure, as men
say, and parts not with its victim. As men say--it is not for me, a
servant of Him who ruleth all things, to think that any created
desolation carries in it certain fate; but where he sends this scourge
of His anger, there straightway departs all hope. Edith, I am lingering
on these words, thou seest--I would have thee make up thy mind to this,
and yet I would not. It is hard to part with thee, my little one! and
yet--for the Lord’s sake, Edith, bid thy father God-speed. If I leave
thee alone, He is yet with thee.”
“Father,” exclaimed Edith Field, “you speak to me in parables, what is
this? You can trust me, father; I am ready to bear any thing--to do any
thing; father, you can trust me.”
“I can trust thee, Edith,” said the minister, sadly, “if it concerned my
life only--if it concerned His cause for whom we labor. In every thing
needing honor and truth, a brave young heart, and a pure spirit, I can
trust thee, Edith; but can I trust thee alone, poor child, in this
troublous and evil country? can I leave thee without one living heart
whose blood is kindred to thine own in all this earth? Edith, Edith! the
tempter assaileth us through our nearest and dearest. He would have me
choose--choose between my Lord and thee--thee, my sole child! my little
one!”
“And if it is so,” said Edith, firmly, “if it is so, father, choose!
I--I owe all things to thee, but thou owest all things to Him, and there
is naught to make thee waver. I also, who can do little, would do all
for His cause; but thou, father, choose!”
There was a pause--they went on together in silence, the solemn hills
rising over them on either side--the still air stirred by no mortal
breath but theirs, alone before God. The strong man, moved with some
deep struggle, was contending with himself--the girl, with her clear
eyes fixed upon him, looked on anxiously, yet with the thrilling,
youthful enthusiasm of resolve, shining in her face. She did not
speak--she left the elder spirit, scarce stouter, bold and manlike
though it was, than her own, to fight its battle out in silence.
It ended at last. The lips of the Puritan moved; he looked at his
daughter, and then, lifting his hat reverently from his head, gazed with
a yearning, solemn look upward into the sky--the soft, balmy, spring
sky, serene and calm and beautiful, undimmed by all those angry vapors,
which darkened the human air below--and as he looked he became calm. He
had committed his one treasure into the keeping of his King.
“Now, Edith,” he said, “let me tell you whither I go, and why. I have
come from Hampstead. Edith, from our old home. It would grieve you
sorely to see it now.”
“Have they made so great a change, father?” said Edith, following this
sudden turn of the conversation with an anxious smile, though she
wondered why he avoided telling her the nature of the solemn errand to
which he had devoted himself.
“They have changed it, Edith; it is sorrowfully changed, and you may
trace, alas! the steps of the rejected Gospel, which they have cast out
from among them, but I meant not that. The Lord is among them, Edith, a
man of war. The king and his flatterers, it is said, are about to flee
from the terror of His presence. The hireling to whom they gave my flock
has fled, and I go back, Edith, to meet the great messenger of the
Lord’s anger--the Plague!”
“The Plague!” The light, and hope, and enthusiastic youthful firmness
faded from her face, like the latest sunbeams from the sky of even.
Peril, want, labor, hardship, she was prepared to meet, but not this
deadly certainty; the young soul was stricken down in a moment before
that terrible name.
“The plague! Edith,” said her father, calmly; “the heavy scourge of
God’s well-earned indignation. As yet it hath not entered our old home,
but in London it has begun its reign, a terrific life in death; it slays
its thousands day by day; it is not to be intimidated, or bribed, or
bought. Steadily it is cutting down, godly and ungodly, green and ripe.
It is our just meed; we have sinned, and He afflicts us. Ah! that it may
be but chastisement, and not destruction.”
“And, father, why do you go? What is your call to this certain death?”
“Edith,” said the Puritan, “I am vowed, as thou knowest, by stronger
oaths than bind any temporal soldier, to the service of my King; and
where men are perishing--blaspheming, godless, unrepentant men--there is
my place. For what cause have I the sword of the Spirit put into my
hand, Edith, if it is not to defy the enemy where he is most potent? For
what is God’s message of sovereign grace and mercy committed to me, if
it is not for the succor of my own people stricken by God’s terrible
retributive hand? Edith, I must pursue them to the grave’s brink with my
Gospel. I must go plead with them, strive with them, suffer with them.
If I save but one it is hire enough.”
The flush of hopeful enthusiasm had altogether departed from her face;
instead of it there was a steadfast, resolute whiteness. This was no
slight matter to be undertaken hastily, and the young spirit bowed in
solemn awe, even while its determination was formed.
“Father,” she asked, “do you go alone?”
“Nay, Edith, not so; we are all ready; the brethren, I thank God, do not
falter. Master Chester and Titus Vincent are in the field already. There
are others who only wait for me to set out upon the way. Young Janeway
is at Greenwich; he will have entered on the labor before us; we have
not a day to lose. Alas! Edith, those terrible streets of the city! the
paleness in all faces--the hurrying away of the dead--men hastening to
bury their best beloved, their dearest, the desire of their eyes--out of
their sight. Ah! Edith, it is not in our bright days that we think of
the import of that word--mercy; but now, when He is visibly among us, a
Great Avenger, fulfilling that fearful word of His, ‘I will repay,’ lo!
men are opening their terror-stricken souls _now_, to think what it
means, and to cry for it, with the voices of despair. God save us! it is
a terrible time.”
“And father, do all die?” said Edith, with a shudder of natural terror;
“is there no hope where it comes?”
“Alas! I can not tell,” said the Puritan, “for thou may’st think, Edith,
how it would fare with one stricken with any sickness, if those about
him rushed forth from his bedside in affright, and fled from his
presence in terror of their lives. It is thus now--for where this
fearful malady goeth, he carrieth another spectre behind him--fear,
Edith, terror, panic--fear, which brings our humanity down, and strips
it of its boasting--so great cowards are we all, and with so much
thought of self. Whither this plague comes, Edith, it snaps all tender
bands of kindred; and when a man is stricken, he is straightway, as we
say in our worldly speech, without hope, for all forsake him.”
They proceeded on in silence--the pale girlish face was changing--her
lips quivered, her nostril dilated, her eyes were looking far into the
clear blue air of the hills, in the vacant earnestness of thought--but
her father observed not the change. He himself was mightily absorbed.
Some such swelling of the heart as the brave soldier may have on the eve
of a great battle--a noble, grave, chivalrous bravery, that yearned to
be in the thickest combat, the deadliest jeopardy, if need were, for his
Lord’s sake, and his people’s, was rising within the stout breast of the
Puritan--nor was it unmingled with the “climbing sorrow,” the “hysterica
passio,” of the old king. His strong affections were but intensified by
their concentration, and to leave his one child, his sole treasure, in
the world, alone!
“And now, Edith,” he said gently, as they paused at the end of the
ravine, and turned toward the cottage, “I must speak to these humble
guardians of thine. It is a sad lot for thee, my poor child, in thy
first youth--but we must yield us, Edith, to His will who knoweth our
weal best. They are very kind, and very true, and thou hast the hills
and the heavens to commune withal, and the word and presence of our
Lord--blame not thy father, Edith, that he can add nothing more. I would
have thee keep thyself from the maidens of the village yonder--save in
so far as thou canst serve them, they are not fellows for thee. I can
leave thee with but One sure companion, Edith; and thou wilt seek Him,
my child, continually?”
Her head was bent--she did not answer.
“Nay, nay,” said the minister, his lip quivering as he tried to smile,
“I can not have thee make thy sacrifice grudgingly, Edith, or with
weeping. The Lord’s soldier must depart hopefully, with joy and trust
in the magnificent name of his king. Thou knowest that men march to
temporal battles with the gay sounds of music, and if mirth would ill
become us, Edith, hope is fittest of all moods for a servant of the
Lord. Let us go down to speak to this good dame of thine, and then,
Edith--then we must part.”
She lifted her head--she had not been weeping--there were traces in her
face of an emotion too great for tears.
“Father,” she said, “we are but two of us in the world alone--no
kindred--no brethren--if we have friends they are strangers; we have
none of our own blood. We are two--only two--in this great world alone.”
Her father raised his hand in appeal--he feared her entreaties. This
trial was the greatest of all--his Lord’s cause and his sole child--how
painful was the choice that lay between them.
“Only two,” said Edith, with nervous haste. “If thou were taken away,
father, ah! then I should rebel against the Lord; my heart would not
submit, if my words did. Father, what wouldst thou say in heaven, if thy
sole child were shut out for this blasphemy? for I would be alone,
alone! Thou hast not thought what a terrible word that is.”
“Edith! Edith!”
“Listen to me, father. If the Lord called us both home, who would weep
for us? who would be tempted to this rebellion because we had fallen
asleep? Father, if thou wentest up alone, would not my mother ask thee
for her child? Ah! the Lord knoweth, surely the Lord knoweth best; but
alone, father, alone, a stranger and an exile, when ye are all in
heaven--is this meet?”
“Spare me, Edith,” said the minister; “I am vowed to render up all for
His cause--all. My people, whom the Lord gave me to watch for their
souls night and day, can I let them die, with no man caring for them, no
man pointing them to heaven? Remember, Edith! thou hast prayed for them;
they are those who shall be my joy and crown if they be brought to
righteousness. It is thy grief blindeth thee; think of this.”
“I think of it, father. Yea, I see them, stricken down, and no man
caring for their souls; stricken down, and no hand to tend them in their
sickness. Ah! father, so desolate it must be, that forsaken sick-bed; so
forlorn, so miserable, with only pain living there, and the dark death
drawing near in the silence, stealing among the shadows. Father, I have
a petition to you; let me go to this labor also? I am here only to pine
and brood, and forget our Lord, who will not be served in slothfulness,
and yonder they are dying who have need of me--even of _me_. Father, I
will go also; you will not deny me?”
“I feared this,” said the Puritan; “it must not be, Edith; speak not of
it again.”
“Father, it is not your wont to be more merciful to yourself than to me.
I, too--have not I somewhat to answer for in the sight of Him who
judgeth righteously. You would have me dwell here in sloth, receiving
all mercies and returning no thankful service. But look at me, father, I
am strong; I do not fear. We will go together. If He wills it so, we
shall return in peace; if He wills it not so, then shall we travel
together to his own country in joy. Be it as He wills; I am ready,
father. Let us go.”
The Puritan was overcome; his voice trembled.
“Edith, I can not bear this; the Lord demands no martyrdom of thee, my
poor child. Rememberest thou not how even He, the Lord, our Holy One,
refused in His wondrous patience to tempt God? And why thrust thyself
into this deadly peril, Edith? I am called to the labor, not thou; speak
not any more of this, it must not be.”
“Yea, father,” said Edith, hurriedly, “but it was to a vain temptation
that he answered: ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord.’ It was not to a call
to render service to the dying, to comfort the stricken, to minister to
the sick. Hitherto I have never rebelled against thy kind will; now,
father, I rebel! I also am one responsible to God. I also must go to
help in thy ministry. Do not say me nay, but sanctify this my dedication
with thine approval--with thy blessing.”
And so he did at last. The girl Edith was a woman now, taking her first
step in the checkered life on whose threshold she stood: a strange
beginning, yet made in modest boldness, and with a resolute youthful
gravity, against which entreaties and expostulations could not stand.
Her humble guardian was less easily satisfied; it was mere madness, as
she thought; and Dame Dutton clung to the youthful gentlewoman, who had
brought into the shepherd’s homely cottage a grace of high culture and
tender nurturing, which threw its magic over even them, and wept and
apostrophized the blessed mother of her sweet Mistress Edith to stay the
rash steps of her child.
And Edith fought her battle over again, less effectively than
before--for Dame Dutton would listen to no representations; while the
minister stood by in grave silence, repenting of his hasty consent. But
it was arranged at last. Master Field agreed to remain behind his
companions; and on the next morning Edith and he were to set out alone
on their momentous journey.
He had to leave the cottage immediately to meet with his brethren, and
make the necessary arrangements. Early on the morrow the good dame
herself was to conduct Edith to a hostel in Carlisle, from whence they
would set out; a duty which the kindly shepherd’s wife undertook with
much reluctance, and had even laid some simple schemes to prevent, such
as darkening the chamber of her gentle guest, and forbearing the usual
cheery call with which she was wont to awaken her to a new day. But
Edith, in the promptitude of excitement, was beforehand with her
affectionate hostess, and left her apartment, dressed in her plain
traveling hood and mantle, while Dame Dutton was still donning her
homely gown in stealthy silence, fearful of disturbing her.
They had a walk of ten miles to Carlisle, and not a smooth one. Ralph
had been out on the hill-side with his flocks since earliest dawn; and
at six o’clock, when Dame Dutton had broken her fast after the
substantial fashion of the time--for _she_ was not overbrimming with
high youthful resolve and subdued excitement--they set out.
It was a very clear, bright, hopeful day; and the breath of the great
mountains rose up to heaven, and the undulating breadths of the green
country lay fair below the sunshine--peace, and health, and gentle
security. Edith Field lifted up her eyes to the pure sky, and
sighed--to relieve her full heart not for sorrow; for what very
different scenes was she about to exchange these!
“Ay, thou wilt go, wilt thou?” said good Dame Dutton, as they reached
the level highway. “Well-a-day! young folk are willful; but I would fain
ask thee, Mistress Edith, what Master Field will be the better o’ the
like o’ thee? a gentle lady-thing, that’s liker a down bed, and a silk
mantle, and folk serving thee hand and foot, than aught else. If
thou’dst been a handy lass, wi’ an arm like our Raaf’s, and cheeks like
the miller’s maiden o’er the fell, thou might’st have thought on’t; but
thou, that ever wast liker a lily in a garden than a stout heatherbloom
on the hills, that thou should’st stir thee on such an errand!
Well-a-day! but I have telled thee; thou know’st my mind.”
“But I am strong, dame,” said Edith, tremulously. “Cicely Whitbread at
the mill, can work better than I, but she could not bear so well. When
we left Hampstead--you do not know what a hard journey it was, Dame
Dutton--I was not a burden on my father; he will tell you, if you ask
him. I rode behind him for whole days, traveling down to Cumberland, but
I never wearied. I never felt myself weak until I was safe in the
cottage, and my father away again laboring dangerously, when I could not
go forth with him. So you must not speak so to me, Dame Dutton, because
I am sure I go justly, and will be no hindrance to my father; and here
we are at Thornleigh now, half-way to Carlisle, and you have never told
me yet, dame, why this house is so desolate.”
“It is none so desolate this fine morning,” said the dame; “thou
would’st have me believe, I reckon, that thou did’st not mark the brave
gentleman and his train that rode out of the old gate as we came round
the shoulder of the fell? Ah! Mistress Edith, thou’s none so still, for
all thy sad apparel, as to take no note of young Sir Philip, and his
serving-men behind him.”
“I thought no one lived here,” said Edith; “and I never saw Sir Philip,
dame, that I should know yonder horseman was he.”
“Nay, I say not thou knowest,” said the shepherd’s wife; “but prithee
make thy pace slower, Mistress Edith, for my breath fails me. I had a
light foot enow in my day; alack, but that bides not forever! But, as I
say, it is e’en as well that we be behind yonder gallant, for an thou
knowest him not, it is as well for thee; and thou might’st, if thou
did’st see him near at hand; and there is a wrong done between his house
and thine, Mistress Edith, that it would but grieve thee to hear of.
Alas, thy blessed mother! Well, surely it is a dark world, for yonder
proud lady hath all she lacks, and does naught in this earth, but waste
and spend, and harden the heart of her;--and the other gentle face is in
its grave many a year ago. Well-a-day!”
“What is that, Dame Dutton?” asked Edith, eagerly.
“An thy father told thee not, Mistress Edith,” said the Dame, “it is
none of my business to tell thee; and forsooth it is just and right that
there should be little mentioning of old wrongs among folk that strive
to fear God; for thou knowest the carnal mind is fain to have something
against its neighbor, and it is not aye we do well to be angry. He was
but an ill body, that prophet Jonah, that could set up his face to say
the like.”
“But I am not angry, dame,” said Edith. “Tell me this--tell me about my
mother.”
“Ay, and what could I tell thee of her, sweet soul, but what was good
and pleasant? She was like thee, Mistress Edith--nay, for that matter,
the other lady was well favored enow. Thou could’st see at a glance they
were gentlefolks, and come of good blood, but they were none like each
other, for all their kindred. Alack! folk thought it a poor lot for her,
when she wedded the minister, but it might have been a good lot if there
had been no bad laws. Well, we know not who may be hearing us, but this
is a distressed land and a dark; and I would there might come better
times in my day, for it’s hard upon old folk to have to go dozens of
miles ere they can hear a preaching, and Raaf gets to limp now when the
road’s long, and I’m sadly hampered with the breath. But any way we may
be thankful that there’s no word of such a scourge as that plague coming
hereaway, or of us canny Cumberland folk being cut down upon the hills,
as they do the Scots. But we mind our troubles more than our mercies!”
CHAPTER II.
“When I view abroad both regiments,
The world’s and thine,
Thine clad with simpleness and sad events,
The other, fine--
Full of glory and gay weeds,
Brave language--braver deeds!”
GEORGE HERBERT.
The Carlisle hostel was full of guests--a singular circumstance--for the
quaint and humble suburban inn was out of the ordinary road of
travelers. The landlady, an honest, ruddy, bustling dame, with a strong
leaning to the persecuted Presbyterians, hastily led Edith and her
guardian up-stairs into a little bright bed-chamber, whose latticed
window looked out through embowering foliage, over the well-filled
garden, upon the road they had just traversed.
’Tis but an homely place,” said Mrs. Philpot, “to put a gentlewoman in;
but, forsooth, Mistress Edith, we be often put to our wit’s-end that
live in a public way, for there’s young Sir Philip Dacre below, with all
his serving-men--and wherefore he came hither I wot not, for we’re none
such light folks as to put up with the ways of wild young gallants like
him, that would have their gentle blood cover all. No, no, says I, we’ll
have none of your gay doings here--you must e’en tramp off to old Roger
Whittaker’s that never wants room for such as would do themselves or
other folk a mischief. A plague on him! it’s e’en him, and such like as
him, that has driven canny customs from the Border; and the curate no
less--and that’s a meet place for a minister--drinking and dribbling at
his ingle-side, morn and even. Let’s have done with them, I say! they’re
a worse set than the old priests with their mass-books, and their
women’s garments!”
“And my father,” said Edith, “is he not here?”
“And in truth, Mistress Edith, with my clatter I had nigh forgotten the
message the good gentleman gave me. He will be here ere noon; it is ten
of the clock now; and if thou wilt content thee in this poor place I’ll
bring thee something thou’st not tasted afore since thou cam’st to
Cumberland; and somewhat to comfort thee also, Dame Dutton, though I
reckon thou hast no sweet tooth for dainties any more than mysel’; but
I’ll have thee a comfortable snack afore thou’st gotten thy hood undone.
Sit thee down, dame, thou’s kindly welcome.”
“And it’s little business Sir Philip Dacre can have in Joe Philpot’s
hostel, I trow,” said Dame Dutton, suspiciously, as the landlady left
the little apartment. “Did’st never see this gallant, Mistress Edith? I
did fancy there were lace and feathers at the great window below; but my
old eyes serve me not as they once did--and certain there were idle
grooms enow; but I marked not the Dacre coat. Thou would’st see who sat
at the great window, sweetheart?”
“Nay, truly, Dame Dutton,” said Edith: “I marked no great window, for I
was eager to see my father.”
“That wert thou! t’would be a false heart that doubted thee,” said the
old woman, repentant of her momentary suspicious fear. “Yet I know
naught ill of the lad, for all I speak, if it were not that he is his
mother’s son--and, lo! you now, Mistress Edith, my hood hath been
loosened these five minutes, and there is no tidings of Dame Philpot and
her good cheer.”
“She will be here anon, dame,” said Edith, opening the lattice.
Standing where she did, she could see a corner of the court-yard of the
inn, busy as it was, beyond its wont. The great window, where sat the
unconscious object of Dame Dutton’s fears, was immediately below.
She had been standing thus for some time, conscious of the sweet air and
sunshine, and vacantly watching the figures in the yard, when a
cavalier, dressed in the fantastic fashion of the time, rode briskly in
at the gate. His rich dress was travel-soiled, his attendants looked
dusty and fatigued, and calling hurriedly for refreshments, he waited
the return of the servants who ran to obey his orders, as if he did not
mean to alight.
“Ha, Sir Jasper!” exclaimed some unseen person below, whose voice had a
finer modulation than belonged to the Border. “What makes you so far
from town?”
“From town!” echoed the new comer; “in what hyperborean region have you
hidden yourself, gentle Sir Philip, that your happy ignorance needs to
ask? From town! why the town itself, I fear, ere long will take to
traveling:--the matter is who shall get furthest away in these days.”
“A marvel!” said Sir Philip Dacre, laughing. “I fancied you courtiers
could breathe no air less dainty than the perfumes of Whitehall.”
“Faith, there are odors abroad less delectable,” said the cavalier,
shrugging his shoulders. “Hast not heard of the enemy who hath
established his garrison--for longer, I fear me, than the bivouac of a
night--in yonder unhappy London?”
“Enemy! what mean you?”
“Truly what I say, good Philip--the leader of yonder forces suffers no
equivoque; the roads are covered with fugitives who never learned to fly
before. Myself am not apt to turn my back on an enemy’s line of battle;
but yonder grim rascal is not to be faced. The king himself has fled.”
“Now pray heaven it be not Oliver risen again,” exclaimed Dacre, in a
tone of anxiety.
“Oliver! nay, it is another incarnation of the evil one frightfuller
than he. Hark thee, Sir Philip--the plague!”
“The plague!”
Edith could hear the ring of the young man’s sword and spurs as he
sprang to his feet. The bystanders in the yard began to form a circle
round the cavalier and his servants, eager to hear, and yet afraid to
press upon those who had so lately left the neighborhood of the
pestilence.
“So I e’en bethought myself of seeing what cheer my noble kinsman holds
in Naworth,” said the cavalier, with an affectation of carelessness.
“When old London hath shaken herself free of her spectral visitant, she
will have the greater zest for the contrast. Thou should’st hie thee to
Court. Sir Philip: never better chance for thee, man. His Majesty goes
to Oxford--where all the learning of merry England will overshadow him.”
“Nay, nay,” said Dacre, hastily. “Fenton, make ready to proceed; let
those only go with us who do not fear; take no man against his will. I
have but newly touched English ground, Sir Jasper, and was on my way to
greet my mother. Know you if she is still in London? I must hasten now
to bring her home.”
“Then hast thou less philosophy than I gave thee credit for, Sir
Philip,” said the stranger, emptying as he spoke a goblet of wine; “for
in good sooth I know no noble lady more entirely able to care for her
own safety, and her household’s, than the Lady Dacre; and bethink thee,
good friend, _she_ hath but to escape out of the danger she is already
in, whereas thou would’st thrust thyself into what affects thee not.
Tush, man, think of it again--it is an enterprise savoring of his
conceit who went forth a knight-errant in the Spanish story; thou
knowest him of La Mancha? If thou hadst been among yonder fair ladies of
Lisbon, I should warrant thee to hear of his exploits full plenty.”
“I crave your pardon, Sir Jasper,” said Dacre, gravely. “I am no
Quixote, nor am I used to depart from my purposes at stroke of wit or
jesting. I pray you alight and share my meal with me: it will detain you
little on your journey, and I would fain hear further of this
pestilence.”
“Hear to him--hear to him!” exclaimed the landlady, concealing her
pleasure under a semblance of annoyance as she touched Edith on the
shoulder, and showed her the little table spread with refreshments. “He
will bring the other swaggering cavalier over my honest threshold, and
what will Dame Whittaker say to that, I trow! I know not when she had as
many plumed caps in her court-yard, Round-heads and Puritans as they
call us. Well-a-day! and you would hear of that woeful plague and how
the cavalier yonder--lo! now he is alighting and yonder does my goodman
hold the stirrup--was flying from the face of it. Ah, Mistress Edith!
look at his sword and that scar on his brow was gotten in the wars; and
what a mighty man he is, like the giant in the Scripture that David
slew, and yet the like of him flies before the pestilence and thinks no
shame to tell it! To think of that now.”
“But he is not a minister of the Word,” said Edith to herself
unconsciously.
“A minister! bless you, who would fancy that? Nay, truly, he is a wolf
in his own proper hide; and that is none so ill as the sheep’s clothing
of yon poor dazed curate, that keeps muddling his brains from Sabbath to
Saturday with Roger Whittaker’s sour ale. And see you, Mistress Edith,
here is a cup of chocolate for you, the very same that the great ladies
of the court break their fast withal. I got it from Tom Blackstone, a
lad of this country, that’s gotten to be a skipper from Newcastle, when
he came to see his old mother that lives nigh by the Scots gate; and I’d
take a taste mysel’ for company, though, an it were not just newfangled.
Well, Dame Dutton, look at the beer how it sparkles in the cup, as
bright as the wine that my good man has been drawing for the gentle
company in the great parlor. Thou never saw better ale I warrant thee.”
“Nor tasted,” said Dame Dutton, heartily, “and I would, my poor Raaf,
had but this to warm his old blood when he comes in from the hills o’
nights; for it’s a hard life, Mistress Philpot, and a dull night will
this be, with thy chair empty. Mistress Edith, and thy sweet self gone
among perils. Well-a-day! but Master Field is a bold man.”
“Ay, truly,” said the landlady, looking inquisitively at Edith, “it must
be urgent business that carries him to London e’enow; but there will be
company on the road, Mistress Edith, for I chanced to hear young Sir
Philip say as much to the other noble gentleman, as that he was on his
way: and when he heard of that fearful plague, he would bring home his
mother, he said. Bring home his mother, I trow! as if the Lady Dacre
ever did one deed in this blessed world for any body’s will but her
own.”
’Twould be a strange will, Mistress,” said Dame Dutton, “if she chose to
stay among the sick folk in the stricken city; for Master Field would
make thy blood cold to tell thee of it; but the Lady Dacre likes not
Thornleigh, and wherefore should she?”
“Ay, wherefore, indeed?” echoed Mistress Philpot, looking at Edith.
These looks and hints made Edith uneasy; she resolved to ask her father
what their meaning was, but she wisely forebore questioning the kindly
dames beside her, both of whom, good-humored, honest, affectionate
matrons, as they were, had no objections to a little innocent gossip.
“But Thornleigh has never been inhabited since I came to Cumberland, has
it, Dame Dutton?” said Edith, “and yet this gentleman seemed to come
from it to-day!”
“Ay, Sir Philip has been in foreign parts,” said the hostess, “traveling
here-away, there-away. I can scarce tell you where: in France and a long
away further off than France: in the countries, I reckon, where snow
lies summer and winter, where they have that queen that is so wise, like
the Queen of Sheba in the old times; and wonderful tales Master Fenton
was telling of them, when you came in, Mistress Edith. So, from thence,
the young knight came in a ship to Scotland, and after he had tarried
awhile there (and Master Fenton do say it be dreadful to see how they
torture decent folk yonder, for hearing a preaching or singing a psalm)
he traveled up through the country, and came to Thornleigh last
night--and this morning he was for starting again, but because his men
could get naught decent from the old crazed housekeeper, he came to get
them a right meal afore they should start on their journey. Does any
thing ail you, Mistress Edith?”
Edith had risen from the table, and stood at the window.
“No, no,” she said, fastening her hood and mantle, nervously; “but
yonder comes my father.”
A stout horse, with a pillion attached to its saddle, was led out as she
spoke. Master Field crossed the court-yard hastily, and ascended the
stairs. When he entered the room he drew his daughter to the window, and
pointing to where an hostler led the animal about, made a last attempt
to dissuade her from accompanying him. Edith said nothing in return: she
only slid her hand through her father’s arm, and holding by him firmly,
bade her kind friends farewell.
“Now father, I am ready; let us go.”
And after another very brief delay, they went forth upon their perilous
journey.
The strange cavalier, with his train, rode from the gate at the same
time--a singular contrast. The much-lauded, gay, graceful, gallant
cavalier, with his noble blood, his inheritance of chivalrous feeling,
and honor, his peculiar attribute of personal bravery, on prancing steed
and with clang of spur and warlike sword, went out, holding his noble
head high, a fugitive flying before the Plague. And beside him rode
forth the grave man and the delicate girl, traveling with their lives in
their hands, for their Lord’s sake, and their people’s, to meet the
great enemy in its stronghold; making no vaunt of their resolve, having
no presumption in their stout hearts--grave, heroic, silent--loyal to a
king who hath more thrones in his wide dominion than that of England.
The father and the daughter conversed little; it was a solemn journey.
Along those peaceful highways, past those homely cottages, in the
abundance of their rude health and security, skirting the draped feet of
those serene and everlasting hills, while perchance this same May
sunshine should fall upon some fearful indiscriminate grave in yonder
distant city, which alone could record that there they died.
It was no time for speech--in awe and grave valor they traveled on.
They had proceeded thus for some few hours on their way, when the sound
of a horse’s feet behind, made Master Field turn his head. Sir Philip
Dacre was riding in haste after them, considerably in advance of his
attendants. He was a young man of moderately good looks, with a mien
more scholar-like than courtly. Edith had heard his name mentioned only
in the must cursory manner before this day; but it seemed from the
conversation that ensued, that her father knew him.
“Master Field,” said Sir Philip, eagerly, as he joined them, “you also
must have heard of this scourge which has entered London. I pray you
tell me if those who are flying from it do not aggravate its terrors. Is
it indeed as fatal as men say?”
“I fear me, Sir Philip,” was the grave answer, “that men know not yet a
tithe of those terrors they speak of; but it is true that a universal
panic hath seized the city, and without doubt the servile passion of
fear is one of its many allies, and doth prepare its way.”
“I am hastening thither,” said Dacre. “I fear over-boldness more than
panic--and I must endeavor to bring my mother away.”
The Puritan made no answer; Edith felt a slight thrill through his
strong frame, and he quickened his horse’s pace.
“Master Field,” said Sir Philip, with emotion, “long ago, when I met
with you at Oxford, you returned good for evil; now, in the face of
death, shall we not be at peace? Yonder hostess told me you were bound
for London. I divine your errand; you go to face this Plague. Ah, sir!
shall I bid you then forget what your magnanimous heart forgave so
nobly, when the power to protect and help was on your side? Since that
time, I have seen other laws than those of England. Evil deeds of men to
whose party I belong by inheritance and hereditary right, I repudiate
heartily and with sincerity. I have no share with this impure court,
this arbitrary government. Your personal wrong, Master Field--”
“Mention it not--mention it not!” said the minister, waving his hand; “I
am a man, Sir Philip, subject to like temptations of passion as other
men. Heartily, and in all humbleness, I have endeavored to forgive; but
try me not again by bringing my first bitterness to my remembrance--my
personal wrong is a dead wrong--disturb not the oblivion of its peace.”
“And yet,” said the young man, gently, “and yet I have wept for it ere I
well knew what sorrow meant. Yonder old walls of Thornleigh could bear
me witness how bitterly the boy lamented over that cruel deed; but, to
speak of other matters less private than this--I have no sympathy,
Master Field, with the injustice which has banished you from your place.
My desires and hopes are more with you than against you. We are both on
our way to face death--it may be we shall never see these hills again;
let us go together, and in peace.”
The Puritan extended his hand; the young man grasped it heartily.
Greater difference of rank or faith, birth or years, could not have
hindered the infallible brotherhood of those twain--alike stout,
generous, and manful, loving their fellows and their God!
CHAPTER III.
“You look pale and gaze,
And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder,
To see the strange impatience of the heavens:
But if you would consider the true cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,
Why all these things change, from their ordinance,
Their nature, and pre-formed faculties
To monstrous quality, why, you shall find
That Heaven hath infused them with these spirits
To make them instruments of fear, and warning
Unto some monstrous state.”
JULIUS CÆSAR.
They had at last entered London; it was a genial May day, warm and
balmy, and the sun was beginning to descend the western sky. As they
approached the city, numberless little companies, carefully avoiding
contact with each other, met them on the road, leaving the vicinity of
the pestilence; on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, with heavy
wagons loaded with household stores and furniture, citizens, nobles,
clergymen, and laborers, were alike flying for their lives.
But in the quaint outskirts of the town there was still little
difference perceptible. Men went about plying their ordinary business;
shops were open; the stream of traffic had not yet received its final
check. Only various features of change, singular and ominous, presented
themselves here and there. Apothecaries’ booths abounded on every side,
full of all manner of nostrums--remedies, and preventives for the fatal
disease, before whose acknowledged presence London trembled. Almost as
plentiful at street-corners and ends of alleys, were the brazen symbols
of the astrologer, the mysterious signs of fortune-tellers, and other
spiritual quacks, vending their perilous stuff for the relief of that
craving, coward appetite of fear, at once foolhardy and timorous, which
seeks to investigate the hidden fate of its own selfish future.
Sometimes the twin empiricisms united in one person, were signified in
signboard, or notice, at some much-frequented door. The singular
excitement of the time was evident every where.
Passengers warily walking in the middle of the street--sudden shrinking
and confusion here and there, when some invalid, with bandaged throat
and pale face, was descried limping among the common stream--struck
Edith with an indefinite pang as they rode slowly onward. They had
parted with their fellow-traveler a short time before, having themselves
made a considerable circuit, in order to visit the family of an ejected
minister in Surrey. Sir Philip had gone on without delay to his mother’s
house, in Westminster, and Caleb Field and his daughter, with as much
speed as their wearied horse would permit them, were pursuing their way
to the residence of an old parishioner, on the Hampstead Road, who had
offered to receive them.
The first church they passed was open; from its doors poured a stream of
people, newly dismissed from one of the many solemn services of that
fear-stricken time. The preacher, a dark, grave man, wearing over his
black dress the Geneva band, was last of all. He was passing on, without
lifting his eyes, eagerly conversing with a youth who walked beside him.
“Master Vincent,” said Field, as he passed by, “does the work prosper
with you in this evil time?”
“Ah! is it thou, good brother Field?” cried the preacher, greeting him
cordially; “thou art welcome to a troublous place. Doth the work
prosper, say you? Alas! brother, where is it that we can do other than
echo that lamentation of the prophet: ‘Who hath believed my report?’”
“Nay, but let us hope for better things,” said the stouter-hearted
Puritan; “surely we may look that many brands shall be plucked from this
burning. The people are earnest, as I hear, in seeking the Word and
prayer, and I wot well these have been blessed symptoms, brother
Vincent, since it was said of Saul, the persecutor in old times, ‘Behold
he prayeth.’”
“Fear--fear, only fear,” answered Vincent, despondingly, with a nervous
twitching of his mouth; “fear--not of the Lord, brother, but of the
Plague.”
“And who shall say when the twain may join?” said Field. “Ah! brother,
think’st thou it is the _death_ they fear, and not the after judgment,
and yonder wondrous life beyond? An it were not for these, trust me, the
material grave would lose its terrors.”
“And thou hast ventured thy child in this doomed city?” said Vincent,
hurriedly. “I will not bid thee welcome, gentle Mistress Edith, for this
is no place for thee. Know’st thou the very air is heavy with the
pestilence? I marvel, Master Field, that thou broughtest thy daughter
into this peril.”
“It is her own wayward will, not mine,” was the answer. “Now there is no
way of amending it, we must have the issue with our Master in heaven.
What do men say of the pestilence? Does it diminish or increase?”
“Diminish! think’st thou God’s judgment on iniquity passeth away so
lightly? Nay, it increases hour by hour. It begins to advance eastward,
as they tell me. Citizens are flying from the wealthiest houses in the
city; the magistrates are concerting severe means of prevention, binding
the flame with flaxen band. Men talk fearfully of some plan for shutting
up the infected houses; yet who can tell? What are such precautions as
these against the fierce flame of the Almighty’s anger?”
“Yet it is right to use all means,” said Field, mildly “and Edith and I
are scarce taking the best for our own comfort after our journey, and we
keep you from your companion, Master Vincent.”
“A singular youth,” said the preacher, hurriedly, the twitching of his
upper lip giving him, while he spoke, an unusual expression of
melancholy earnestness, as he glanced at the young man, who stood
respectfully out of hearing behind; “the enemy trieth him with strong
delusions, persuading him that he hath committed the sin unto death. I
have made him my special charge. He is like that young ruler whom the
Lord loved; I hope well of the lad. I ask thee not to my lodging,
brother Field, for the pestilence is near me. Good even, and peace and
our Father’s presence be with you. I will see you again ere long.”
They passed on. Along the street, thrusting the very few passengers on
the footpath aside in his precipitous career, a man thinly clad, with
horror in his pale face and wild eyes, came dashing forward. They heard
his cry indistinctly before he approached.
“What is it, father, what is it?” whispered Edith, fearfully. She
thought him some unhappy lunatic escaped from confinement.
But the passers-by showed no signs of terror; they looked at him with
compassionate eyes; they uttered ejaculations of prayer, strange to hear
in that public place and time. The unhappy wanderer rushed on, uttering
his sharp, monotonous cry: “Oh! the great and terrible God!” and men
looked on in solemn quietness, not marveling. The healthful blood ran
cold in the young veins of Edith Field. What cries were these for the
streets of a mighty city!
They proceeded on--so many deserted houses frowning dark with their
closed doors and windows upon the life around--so many signs of panic
and terror, from wild apprehensions of God’s wondrous vengeance, like
that of the maniac who had passed them, to the helpless, tremulous
anxiety of those serving maids and laboring men who crowded about the
apothecary’s door--combined to throw a cold blight of despondency upon
the strangers. Up in the clear sky before them, Edith’s eye had been
caught by the glorious golden hue of a singular cloud. The heavens were
flooded with the light of the setting sun; in beautiful relief against
the blue sky, the cloud turned forth its mellow roundness to the gentle
summer breeze, gliding onward stately and slow, as you may see a full
sail sometimes on the verge of the far horizon, with the sunshine in
its bosom. As Edith observed it, they came up to a knot of people
gathered in the middle of the street.
“Lo!” exclaimed a female voice, “how he stretches forth his sword, and
his eyes like fire gazing over the city--and his face terrible, and yet
so fair--and his garments like a wondrous mist, with the sunshine below!
Ah! sirs, do ye not see him? Lo! now he bends to the east and to the
west, with his sword gleaming like a diamond stone, awful to see! Can ye
not see him?--can ye not see him? or hath his glory blinded your eyes?”
She was gazing up with passionate earnestness at the cloud as it floated
above.
“Yea, yea, yonder is the flashing of his sword over St. Paul’s!” cried a
man beside her.
“I see him! I see him!” said another; “what a glorious creature he is!”
A thin, mild, contemplative man, on whose lip a habitual smile of gentle
pensiveness seemed to hover, stood on the outskirts of the crowd,
looking up with serene blue eyes, toward this wondrous object in the
heavens.
“Dost see him, sir?” exclaimed the first speaker, jealous, as it seemed,
of the gentle smile. “Dost see the angel?”
“Nay, truly, good neighbor,” said the meditative man, “I see but a
singular fair cloud.”
“Out, thou profane mocker!” cried another; “Dost not see how the Lord
sends forth his signs and wonders upon us? Woe’s me for us--a doomed
people! Woe’s me! woe’s me!” and the speaker wrung his hands.
“Master Defoe,”[A] said Caleb Field, addressing this bystander, who
seemed in some danger of suffering from his gentle and mild expression
of skepticism, “may I beg a word with you? You remember Caleb Field?”
[Note A: There are certain ugly dates which thrust themselves in the
way of this encounter; but without doubt so good and honest a citizen as
he who wrote the “History of the Plague,” may be permitted to give
evidence as to his own state and dwelling-place in a time so remarkable,
as well as those troublesome chronologists with whom the parish register
is supreme authority.]
“Most pleasantly, Master Field,” said the famous dreamer, whose wondrous
island solitude, so many youthful souls have dwelt in since those times,
“though I can scarce say I have pleasure in welcoming thee back to
London. If thou wert safe in a healthful place, good friend, why put
thyself in needless peril?”
“And if you question me thus,” said Master Field, “may I not turn upon
yourself? When so many fly, why does Master Defoe remain within the
fated bounds of London?”
“Truly, for what men would call fantastic reasons,” said the author,
with his thoughtful smile: because there were various guidings of me, in
my humble way, that pointed, as I thought, to my tarrying. In the Lord’s
hands is the issue; but you, Master Field, and this youthful
gentlewoman, whom I hold to be the fair little maiden, your daughter,
whose countenance I remember long ago--good even, Mistress Edith--I
marvel to see you here in this perilous place, where men must tremble
lest the very air we breathe be poison.
“Ah! good friend, give you the preachers of the gospel so little
credit,” said the Puritan, “that what men can dare for their goods and
traffic, ye think we would shrink from, for the name of our King? Trust
me, Master Defoe, it is far otherwise. He who supplanted me in my charge
has fled, and can I leave them in their extremity, without counsel, and
without instruction? Nay, nay, it is not the shepherd who should flee!”
“It is a righteous errand,” said Defoe; “and howsoever we differ in our
bright times, it joys me, that in the face of this peril we are all
brethren, which shows us happily what it shall be when we have suffered
the passage of death, and are met in the fair land beyond, as we know
not, truly, how soon we shall be. You see the singular frenzy of this
people, and how their vehement fancy, hath skill to make visions for
them. I know not any thing more noticeable than even this; for methinks
it is less terror for than certainty of God’s judgment.”
“And it is not suddenly sprung up, but hath risen slowly and universally
as I hear,” said the minister.
“Since the first notice of that hapless Frenchman’s decease,” said
Defoe, “in the close of the by-gone year--he who died in the parish of
St. Giles--the sword has been hanging over our heads ever since, waving
hither and thither as yonder woman described the angel’s of her fancy.
Saw’st thou aught in the heavens, Mistress Edith, like what she said?”
“I saw a beautiful golden cloud,” said Edith, on whose mind the
description of the angel had made a deep impression, “and I know
not--perchance, it might have a clearer form to her.”
The author turned to her smilingly.
“It was a beautiful thought; and a young soul sees not superstition in
so fair garments.”
“Nay, nay,” said Edith, with diffidence, “but, the Word says not
certainly, that such visions shall not be.”
“Yea, Edith,” said her father, “the sword of the Spirit is quick and
powerful. The Lord has given us a sufficient weapon in giving us his
Word--and this is not the age of miracles.”
“Yet it is a wondrous time,” said Defoe, “much sin provoking this
terrible judgment, and withal, though we look for this judgment so
certainly, so great continuance in sin. There is need of you, Master
Field; there is need of all faithful men who will speak the truth in
boldness; and I pray God you be preserved to see the ending of this
visitation.”
The house of Master Field’s parishioner upon the quiet road to
Hampstead, was an antique building of wood, with picturesque gables and
low-roofed, angled rooms. It had a considerable garden round it, and was
bright with the fresh suburban look, trim and well-cared for, which
strikes the eye so pleasantly in contrast with crowded streets, and
noise and bustle. The inmates were a brother and sister, ancient,
lonely, widowed people. John Goodman was childless, and had been
faithful all his lifetime to the memory of a girlish wife whom he had
buried, long years ago. His sister, Dame Rogers, was a widow, having one
sole daughter, who bore the gracious name of Mercy, a simple girl of
sixteen years. John Goodman was a gardener, supplying with his vegetable
stores, the chief dealers in one of the large city markets, and was able
to sustain himself and his family comfortably. It was a religious,
godly house, simply pure, and observant of the worship and ordinances of
God.
In a little fresh bed-chamber, with budding honeysuckle and young roses
looking in at its small lattice, Edith took grateful rest, the first
night after their arrival.
“Has it come near you yet?” she asked, as Dame Rogers and the bashful
Mercy attended her into her apartment, on a little pallet in which Mercy
herself was to sleep.
“Nay, thank goodness, it hasn’t come thus far,” said Dame Rogers, “but
forsooth, Mistress Edith, it comes further every day, and one can’t
reckon on an hour. ’Twas but yesternight that Alice Saffron, the
laundry-woman’s daughter came in, as white as that sheet, to tell us how
her mother had gone to carry home the clean linen to Master Gregory’s,
the great silk mercer in Eastcheap. There were ten of a fair family,
besides apprentices and porters, and such like; and all were as
life-like as you or I (save us, we know not when it may be our turn)
when she went with the great basket for the things a week afore. And
look you, Mistress Edith, when Dame Saffron came to the house
yestermorning, they were all gone; every one of the fair children, and
the mother, dead of the plague; and Master Gregory himself, poor man,
wandered out raving into the fields, mayhap to die there by himself as
like as any thing; and the serving people fled. Lord bless us! it makes
one’s blood freeze to hear such tales; and they say ’tis but beginning
yet.”
“And the people are all afraid?” said Edith.
“Afraid! bless you, Mistress Edith, that’s but a quiet word for it. The
folk are clean out of their wits with the panic that’s upon them; and
seeking to false helps, lackaday! in their darkness, when there is but
One that can deliver. Tell Mistress Edith, Mercy, of yonder evil place
that Alice Saffron beguiled you to, when you were last at market. The
Almighty keep us! I know not if there will be any market ere long, and
what will become of us then?”
“Please you, Mistress Edith,” said Mercy, bashfully, “it was a dark
room, with a little fire in a brazier, and perfumes like what Dr. Newton
gave to my uncle to keep evil smells away burning in it, and the smoke
and the good scent going through the room. And there was a tall man with
a cap of black velvet upon his head, and a long robe, like what the
great ladies wear, with embroideries upon it; and he could read the
stars like the words in a book and told fortunes by them the way they
were shining in the sky. So Alice asked if the plague would be long, and
he said, ‘Yea, yea, mighty and great, such as was never seen in this
world before.’ And Alice said, would it come to Hampstead, and he made
answer, ‘It will go every where, thou fool, till it slay its thousands
in the sunshine, and its tens of thousands in the night.’ And with that
Alice began to weep, and so did I, for I was afraid; and Alice said,
‘Ah, sir, and shall we die?’ and then he told her she should be saved,
but he would say naught for me. And Alice said mayhap if I had given him
somewhat, he might have told me some good tidings, but I had naught; and
perchance if he knew I was to die, it was best not to tell me, for I
should have fallen down with fear.”
“Ah! Mercy, my sweet child, speak not so,” exclaimed Dame Rogers, as an
involuntary tear slid over Mercy’s round, smooth cheek, “an he had
known evil tidings he would have told thee to have frighted thee. Break
not thy poor mother’s heart with such a terror.”
“Nay, he knew not aught,” said Edith gently, laying her hand on the
shoulder of Mercy, who sat on a low stool beside her. “Doth God reveal
who shall die, and who shall live to man? Let us not fear, Mercy, while
all things are in His hands.”
“Well, I know not,” said Dame Rogers, after a pause; “they have their
learning from the Evil One, I wot, yet full oft it comes true; and
certain the enemy hath great power and wisdom, as I have heard thy own
worthy father say, Mistress Edith.”
“Nay, that is sure,” said Edith; “but he hath not the power to slay and
to make alive, Dame Rogers; and the Lord shows not his secret counsel to
a fallen spirit.”
“And in good sooth it is pleasant to talk to thee, lady,” said the dame;
“and thou seest, Mercy, how Mistress Edith can clear thee of those
foolish doubts of thine, for all that she hath been little longer in the
world than thine own silly self. And that is truth-like, without doubt,
for the Lord taketh counsel with no one, and with the adversary least of
all, not to say that he is the father of lies and deceitfulness. Well, I
will think no more on’t. And thou art weary, Mistress Edith, and we do
but keep thee from rest: do thou bestir thee, Mercy, and help. A fair
good even, and good rest, and peace; and if the Lord will, I will call
you early on the morrow.”
That precautionary clause, “if the Lord will,” was any thing but a form
in those days: solemn and seemly at all times, it had an especial weight
in that season of singular peril, when those who parted for the night
had before them the fatal probability that they should never receive
mortal greeting again, upon an earthly morrow.
Below, the Puritan sat with his humble host: their conversation was of
ecclesiastical matters--the silenced ministers, the persecuted
church--and, in the narrower parochial circle, of the wants and
necessities of their own especial people. Upon the morrow, which was the
Sabbath, Master Field intended to resume his place in his own pulpit,
the conforming vicar who had supplanted him having already removed to a
safer distance from the stricken city.
“No fear of any hindrance, sir,” said John Goodman, in answer to a
question from the minister; “we’ll be all but too glad to see you in the
old place again: and for the other side, no fear of them, Master Field:
for why? as many of them as could do aught in the way of shutting the
church on you have gone away, or buried themselves in their own houses,
for fear of this judgment; and for the rest, bless you! they’re in that
state of trouble and trembling, that they’d listen to any man that spoke
the Gospel to them, an’ he was but solemn and earnest enough; and,
saving them that be solemn and earnest, there’s few other remaining in
these parts to preach: the like of this terror sifts out the
faint-hearted as you would sift seed. But whatever they hold for,
they’ll be all glad to welcome you, sir, for they do all have a kind
memory of you of old.”
And the next day, a brilliant Sabbath, when May had well-nigh ripened
into June, the ejected minister again preached in his former pulpit. The
church was filled to overflowing. The air within was heavy with the
perfumes used by the worshipers; a universal awe and solemn attention
sat upon all faces; no longer a listless lounge, no longer a piece of
necessary form, but a brief space instinct with momentous businesses--a
swift crowd of weighty moments, which those earnest men and women,
looking death in the face, discovered now, were all too short for
special dedication to the wondrous interests of yon unseen eternity. The
Lord was among them--a man of war!
CHAPTER IV.
“The bounteous hand--I would ’most envy it;
And more, the heart that’s bountiful. Oh, rich men!
Be glad that God does make you bankers for Him,
And bids ye sanctify your increase thus
By the brave usuries of mercy.”
OLD PLAY.
Upon the following Monday, Master Field was visited by the preacher
Vincent, whom he had met on his arrival. He came to invite the stranger
to a meeting of “the brethren,” especially convoked for the purpose of
arranging, with all possible wisdom, the position of their compact and
brave forces upon this forlorn hope, and for solemn mutual prayer--a
Presbytery meeting, in short. Caleb Field was a man of note among his
brethren; they held his wisdom and counsel in high esteem.
They were sitting in grave conversation when a messenger handed in at
the door of the cottage a letter, and a small, well-secured box for
Master Field. Edith started in involuntary alarm as her father passed
the former through the strong fumes of a pungent perfume which he had at
hand.
“We must use all precautions, Edith,” he said, calmly, as the fragrant
smoke curled through the apartment: “that we are in great danger, none
can doubt.”
The letter was noticeable, expounding another feature of those times.
“REVEREND SIR--
“Hearing, from various hands, that you were returning to Hampstead,
I make bold to ask of you a singular favor. I hear that in
aggravation of this great calamity of the pestilence, tradesmen,
merchants, and other persons are discharging from their service (as
I also have been forced to do) much serving-people and
handicraftsmen, whereby extreme poverty and famine is like to be
brought to many who have hitherto earned their own bread honestly
in the sweat of their brow; wherefore being myself able to
accomplish little, if I had remained in the city, having much fear
of this dreadful judgment, I earnestly beg your good offices in
distributing to poor, honest households, in dread of this plague,
or afflicted by it, in the parishes of Hampstead, to which I am
native, and Aldgate, where I plied my business, the accompanying,
being certain moneys specially laid by out of the abundant increase
wherewith the Lord hath blessed me, for needful charities of this
calamitous time. I prefer my request with the greater boldness as
knowing that you will otherwise risk yourself in endeavors for the
welfare of this stricken people; nevertheless, I venture also to
beseech, for the sake of our faith and persecuted Sion, that so far
as may be, without hindrance to your mighty work, you would
remember that your life is no common matter, to be hazarded
lightly; but one for whose strength and continuance many pray who
own you their spiritual father in Jesus Christ our Lord. Wherefore,
praying that his angel may encamp round about you,
“I rest, Reverend Sir,
“Your obliged friend and servant,
“NICHOLAS GODLIMAN.”
The box contained a considerable sum of money in small coins. The care
of the merchant had provided his bounty in the form most easily
distributed.
“Father,” said Edith,” here is a Providence for me. I will be Master
Godliman’s almoner. Your work is not with the bread that perisheth.”
“Truly,” said Master Vincent, “the maiden speaks wisely, brother. There
are various gentlewomen of repute, to mine own knowledge, engaged in
like work already. But Mistress Edith, bethink you first of the
peril--it is no trope in these days to say we go with our lives in our
hands, and you are young.”
“I am ready; indeed, Master Vincent, I am ready,” said Edith, hastily.
“I came here almost in rebellion against my father’s will, but I did not
come to be idle, and this office is sent for my using. Father, think you
not so?”
“I think you are over youthful to calculate all the perils,” said her
father, “but I must trust you now--only remember to use all needful
caution; you started at my care of this charitable letter; but remember,
Edith, that there are dangers in the very air, and that where I would
use needful measures for mine own safety, I would do tenfold more for
thine. Stir not abroad to-day, I have other counsel to give thee ere
thou makest a beginning; and now, Master Vincent, it is the hour for the
meeting of the brethren.”
So they went forth together. Their meeting was in a vestry attached to
the old church of St. Margaret’s, in Westminister. The Presbyterian
ministers of London were assembling in their classis when Vincent and
Field entered the room.
In the chair sat a little, quick, lively man, with small vivacious
features and keen dark eyes. He was one of that peculiar class, whose
names are redolent of solemn quip and quaint antithesis, balanced with a
nice art and dexterity forgotten in our times. A study chair in some
fair vicarage, in “the leisure of the olden ministry,” elaborating
courses of quaint sermons, and decking his beloved Bible with the
flowery gathering of an antique philosophy, somewhat artificial it may
be, yet having life in its veins withal, would have better realized the
abstract idea of suitability in the case of Master Chester, than did the
Moderator’s chair of this small but solemn assembly within the bounds of
stricken London. But that race of quaint commentators was a race fearing
God truly and faithfully, and their representative here, strengthened by
such loyal love and reverence, had risen to the top of this bitter wave;
and relaxing the scrupulous cares of composition which formed his most
congenial work, was now laboring in the fervent inspiration of that dire
and solemn necessity, no less zealous and manful than any there.
Beside him sat a good-looking, portly, middle-aged man, with a ruddy and
healthful face. He belonged to another distinct class. Master Franklin
had not the gift of originating or suggesting; but he had in an
especial manner, in that docile, laborious, patient strength of his, the
gift of carrying out. An unobtrusive, placid, humble man, he
accomplished heaps of work unwittingly, and went on day by day in a
series of dumb, unthought-of heroisms, appreciated by few men, least of
all by himself; for there was little light, save the quiet radiance of
goodness to set off his labor withal, and in the unfeigned humility of
his honest heart, he himself would have been the first to repudiate the
praise due to his constant devotion.
The preacher, Vincent, had an individuality strikingly distinct from
these. Prone to examine the depths of his own sensitive spirit, he had
endured at the outset of his career a fiery ordeal akin to that of the
famed dreamer of Bedford; and fighting through spiritual perils, like
the pilgrim of that wondrous vision, had become at last a great master
in all the subtle processes and unseen movements of the heart. “Cases of
conscience,” such as formed no unimportant part of the ministerial
labors of those zealous times, were referred to him from all places. In
probing the wounds, disentangling the twisted threads of motive and
design, elucidating the hidden working, and evolving the secret
struggles of the soul, he was at home and strong; and joined with this
peculiar gift was a melancholy bias of mind, a tendency to despondency
and speculative grief, a mood akin to that of the preacher of old, who,
as the conclusion of his experience, leaves the sorrowful record to us,
that all is vanity. A certain melancholy vivacity of expression and
overwhelming earnestness made him, as it makes his class still, an
especially effective preacher, and in this time of singular distress the
effect was proportionably increased.
Caleb Field was less a man peculiar to that age than any of all these.
No youthful cavalier in the gay court of Charles, had a more gladsome
enjoyment of life than this sombre Puritan minister of doomed London. No
tender-hearted maiden or loving mother had a sympathy more quick, a
compassion more gentle than was his. So full of joyous congenial life
with all that was true and honest, lovely and of good report, and withal
in his strong vitality, having so great a fountain of deepest pathos
within--a truly human man, akin to all who wear the wondrous garment of
this mortality.
And so it happened that this man’s influence was less subject to ebbs
and flowings of popular appreciation than the rest. It was as perennial
and constant as life itself, for, in all that pertains to life,
many-sided and various, his warm humanity made itself a part.
The other members of the Church-Court were but different phases of those
various kinds of man, devoted with all their differing individualities
to the one fervent, solemn work, upon which lay the awe of martyrdom,
the almost certain conclusion of death.
The meeting was opened solemnly with prayer, and constituted in the name
of the Lord Jesus, King and Head of His Church, and then the
arrangements followed. Most of the ministers present had been ejected by
the Act of Uniformity, four years before, and had again resumed the
pulpits which were deserted by the conforming preachers who succeeded
them, a step which they had been permitted to take without obstruction
or hindrance. One by one they gave in their report.
“And thou, good brother Field,” said the moderator of the small
assembly, “thou hast a quiet people in a quiet church, as I hear. Take
heed their stillness lulls them not into deadness, for albeit men are
quiet when they are safe, it is not always safety to be quiet. This
terror has not come nigh you yet.”
“The terror has, but not the judgment,” answered Field. “My people are
paralyzed with fear, although the pestilence hath not entered their
bound.”
“A universal evil,” said Vincent. “Ah! brethren, would that we did but
fear iniquity, as this people fears suffering. Would that we, God’s
dedicated servants, had but such a lively fear of His displeasure as
those have of his judgment. But, alas! in the mightiness of the temporal
evil, they forget the spiritual; for what heedeth a man, if I speak to
him of sin when his whole soul is engrossed with the plague.”
“In his terror, brother, speak to him of hope, and he will hearken to
thee,” said Field. “When he thinks but of death, show him the Lord who
hath conquered it, and he will look, and see. When he is busied with
himself, tell him of that One who forgot himself for our deliverance,
and he also will forget. What! is there naught but calamity here, and
shall we carry our people no tidings of joy? then are we Gospellers no
more. I tell you, brethren, it is the Lord--in whom is all hope, all
joy, all omnipotence--that we must proclaim without ceasing at this
time; men’s hearts are failing them for fear, and so it should be, for
grievously hath this nation sinned; but while the Gospel remaineth on
the earth, there is always occasion to rejoice. Let us lift their hearts
to the heavens where He sitteth in His Godhead, who wears a humanity
there akin to ours--the first fruits of them that sleep--and so I say to
you, brethren, shall you deliver your people from this deadly terror,
and let them meet God’s judgments in brave humility, and penitence, as
becometh Christian men.”
“Yea, brother Field,” said Master Franklin, “you speak well.”
“There shall no man question that,” said Master Chester, “but God not
only sendeth us seeds various for our fields, but fields various for our
seed; and though the cold hill beareth not fruit, like the rich valley,
there are yet vegetable kinds in their kingdom, which love the valley
less than the hill. And this, thou seest, brother, is a time of panic
which it becometh us, as good husbandmen, to improve into a time of
penitence--sowing seeds of godly fear for the second death, even as the
enemy soweth tares of terrors for the first.”
“Under favor, sir,” interposed a lay member of the court, one of the few
elders present, “if I may speak before these fathers, and brethren, of
what toucheth my own profession. As Master Field hath well said, this
fear being a servile passion, enfeebleth the body in respect of disease,
no less than the mind; and I know no greater boon that these reverend
and worthy gentlemen could render to a singularly excited and troubled
people, than by encouraging them to an holy boldness, by the strong
consolations of the Gospel; which might be well conjoined, as humbly
seemeth to me, with the especial mourning and sorrow which becomes the
time, taking good heed that the natural fear overcometh not the Gospel
hope.”
“Dr. Newton saith well,” repeated Master Franklin.
“The natural fear!” exclaimed Vincent, “yea, the natural fear is like to
overwhelm us; so that neither spiritual hope, nor spiritual trembling,
can be nourished into life, because of it. But think you I differ from
my good brother, who biddeth us proclaim the Lord, the sole Lord, from
whom cometh all spiritual radiance, as the light comes from the sun?
Nay, truly I differ not--for wherefore do we preach, if it be not for
His cause? and wherefore do they hear, if it be not for their salvation?
and how are they saved, but by Him? But while I preach joy and
deliverance to all who believe on His magnificent name, what can I but
denounce woe, woe, woe unspeakable upon all who will reject His grace.
Yea upon this sinful land, and this city which hath forgotten His name,
unless they turn, and repent.”
“The Lord move them,” said Field, bowing his head reverently; “the Lord
avert His judgments, and return in His loving kindness to this land; for
what are we that thou should’st strive with us, oh, thou holy Lord God.”
There was an interval, during which the classis engaged in solemn
devotional exercises, conducted by Vincent and Field; very fervent, in
deep humility, reverence, fear, supplicating that the outstretched sword
might be removed from the afflicted city.
“The people crave frequent services,” said Vincent, when these had
concluded. “I desire, sir, to know if any brother will aid me. My parish
is already attacked by the pestilence, and being so populous as it is,
and with many poor, is likely to be sorely visited.”
“And I also, in Whitechapel,” said Master Franklin.
“I am at the command of the brethren,” said Field. “While my own people
are not threatened, and besides are few, I am ready wheresoever I am
needed.”
So said the youthful Janeway, who as yet was not an ordained minister,
set over any especial charge; and so said others also, whom the swelling
tide of the pestilence had not yet reached.
“Burroughs, the Independent, is at work near me,” said Master Chester.
“I give him the right hand of fellowship, joying that though we choose
us different chambers in the house of God, we yet serve alike the God of
the house. In these times we are all brethren.”
“All, all!” echoed the Presbyters round him.
“Bradford, the conformist, is with me,” said Vincent. “He is faithful at
his post, where so many have been unfaithful--he is a good man, though
he seeth not the right way as we see it.”
“Ha!” said Franklin, “is he not one of those who forswore the Covenant?”
“He never took it, brother,” was the answer, “therefore he hath not the
sin of forswearing it on his conscience.”
“Brethren,” said the Moderator, “I crave your forbearance--ye forget the
due order of our assembly. Now, while we are men, I fear me it is
well-nigh impossible to take into our hearts as brethren those who have
sent us forth from our pulpits as preachers of Christ’s Evangel. Also if
this church established in the land, be in all points faithful to the
Word, then are we guilty of the sin of schism; and having a humble
confidence that we are free from any love of division, but rather hold
it a great and sore evil to be avoided by all means, and at all risks,
save the sacrifice of the truth, I am constrained to hold that the
conformed church is unfaithful. Nevertheless, we are met in One Name to
uphold one great cause, and though we be in differing bands, yet are we
joined in the sure bonds of one Gospel; wherefore, I recommend to you,
brethren, with all charity and brotherly kindness at this time, and
remembering only, as I wot well we all desire to do, Jesus Christ and
Him crucified, that we labor in concert with those who differ with us on
other points, but not on this, and at all times count them heartily for
brethren.”
The low hum of the “Agreed, agreed,” ran round the grave assembly, and
committing one another to the care of the Divine protector, in whom they
trusted, the London Classis separated.
CHAPTER V.
“She had a treasure
Of wondrous coin--stamped with His gentle image
Who is in heaven, and was on earth and spake
As man ne’er spake but He.
Ah, gentle words! kind utterance of pity!
There are, who being poor, unto the poorer
Are rich, having this wealth. Also there are
Who being rich and bountiful, do lack
Both thanks and love, because their naked alms-deeds
Have no fair human robes of kindness on them.”
“And, please you, Mistress Edith,” said Mercy Rogers, as she reverently
contemplated a handful of silver coins which Master Field had taken from
the box, before he left the house with Vincent, “please you, Mistress
Edith, is it for the poor?”
“Yes,” was the answer; “know you any, Mercy, that are in need of it?”
“Did you say _any_, lady?” asked Mercy, wonderingly. “Alas! they say
there be multitudes in London, now who are nigh starving, for the
gentlefolk need not their servants any longer, and the masters have no
work for their men; and I think, if it please you, Mistress Edith, that
mayhap that is why they are ever thinking of the plague, for when I am
idle, I think upon it also, and then I am frighted, and feel that I
shall surely die--but indeed no one knows.”
“Nay, if we be but ready for what God sends, Mercy,” said Edith, “that
is in His hand, and not in ours. But now you must tell me who they are,
that be in want.”
“There are the poor men, madam, that weave ribbons for the great
gentlemen in Spitalfields; there is Ralph Tennison, and William, his
brother, and Leonard Forster, who is married to their sister; they live
all together in two cottages on this road, nigh to London, and Alice
Saffron says there is no more work for them, and she saw Dame Forster
and Ralph’s wife yester-morning crying over the little children, because
in another week there would be no bread to give them, and they knew not
what to do; and they say that poverty and want bring on the plague all
the faster. And then there is Robert Turner and his daughters, who used
to work for Master Featherstone, that makes the grand hangings and
furnishings for gentlefolks’ houses; and Master Featherstone is fled
away out of the city, and there are no other masters left, for Dame
Saffron says folk dare not hang their houses with grand silk and damask
now, for fear of a judgment. And there is Edward Overstone, that is a
builder to his trade; and Alice Saffron, Mistress Edith, could tell you
of so many more, that you would weep to hear of them.”
“Then you must bring Alice Saffron, Mercy,” said Edith, “and she will
tell me their names, for now, you know, in this calamity we must help
them all we can.”
Alice Saffron was a hardy, curious, enterprising girl, a little older
than Mercy; she came readily at the call, and was eager to volunteer
her information and aid. A sadly long list of names was completed by her
help. Operatives of all classes, whom the flight of their masters, and
the sudden cessation of traffic, had either thrown, or instantly
threatened to throw into entire destitution, and hosts of servants, male
and female, discharged from countless terror-stricken households, and
now accumulating, a great, idle, despondent, hopeless mass, standing
between the twain gulfs of famine and pestilence, with that fearful,
unaccustomed leisure hanging heavy upon their hands, and full of
terrified broodings over the deadly shadow that lowered upon them, and
the inevitable evils of their lot.
“I preach in Aldgate to-morrow, Edith,” said Master Field, as they sat
together that night in grave consultation; “the people are eager for
daily services, and when every day is the last day of this world for
many, it befits us to grant them their wish. We know not how long we may
be able to continue our meetings; but even fear of the contagion, thank
God, is less than their fear of His displeasure--their eagerness to hear
the Word. I have engaged to undertake one day weekly; the rest, Master
Vincent takes upon himself.”
“Daily preaching, father?” asked Edith.
“Yes, in this, and in other parish-churches through the city. He feels
no weakness; he knows no fatigue in this necessity; he is like a man
born for this special duty, Edith. It is not well to speak of
presentiments, yet it seems as if, at this post of his, he were resolved
to live and die. Master Franklin labors as incessantly, but the labor is
different; there is a vehement, passionate energy in Titus Vincent.
Well, the Lord spare him, I pray! he is a faithful workman.”
“And, father, do you visit the sick?” said Edith, anxiously.
“They tell me it is impossible, Edith. Master Vincent endeavored it at
the first, and yet does so in some cases; but if it increases, as is now
terribly threatened, I fear me it would be madness.”
“But, father, there are nurses, are there not?” said Edith, “and men
whose office is about the dead; and if they venture thus--”
“Wherefore should not we?” said her father, as she paused; “indeed I
know not, save that in the blunted sense of those attendants of the dead
and dying, there seemeth a singular armor, Edith, which other mortals
have not. But fear not for my shrinking. Wheresoever I am called, if it
is not in foolhardiness, I shall go boldly; but it is said they have a
hard measure in contemplation, which shall bar us forth from all sick
beds. The Lord Mayor and Council, men say, will have all houses into
which the plague enters, shut up.”
“Shut up, father?”
“It means divided by a rigorous watch from all intercourse with the
world without: a hard thing--terrible to think upon. When the plague
appears on one of a household, the whole must be excluded from all
blessings of external life, from air, from breath, from means of
escape--shut up within their own narrow walls, with the deadly foe
beside them, polluting their very breath. A terrible measure, Edith, yet
inevitable, as men say.”
“And, father, look at this,” said Edith, showing her notes of many
names of poverty-stricken households; “I fear me, Master Godliman’s
treasure will soon be expended among these.”
“And this is thy chosen work, Edith,” said her father, sadly. “Woe is
me! my child, that I grudge thee to this dedication! Edith! Edith! I
would thou hadst more thought of thyself!”
“Nay, I have even too much,” said Edith, smiling; “for see you how I
have robbed Dame Rogers of her perfumes; and see you further, father,
what a great flask of vinegar I have gotten for myself withal, so that I
shall even do what they say of the Morning in the poets’ books, and
scatter odors when I go abroad. And I would fain begin, if it please
you, father; wherefore will you give me the counsel you promised for my
errand?”
Master Field was deeply moved: he needed some moments to compose
himself. “I can give you no special counsel, Edith; I can only pray you,
as you value God’s precious gift of life, given us for other ends than
the pleasure of our own wayward will, that you use all caution in your
work. Be careful of entering any house: be careful of speaking to any
stranger whom you need not to speak withal; keep those odors you spoke
of about you continually. Edith, I say I can give you no special
counsel; only remember that, save thyself, I have naught in this wide
earth, and be tender of thy young health, of thy fragile ability, my
sole child!”
So the next morning (it was the second day of June), the youthful
Puritan donned her black silk hood and mantle with a beating heart, and
prepared to begin her labor. Her father had positively forbidden her
accompanying him to church; there was no duty there, as he truly said,
that she should thrust herself into peril. So she filled the little
leathern bag, which was Dame Rogers’s purse on market-days, with Master
Godliman’s silver coins, and fortified with her perfumes, and having her
handkerchief slightly wetted from her vinegar-flask--more from the
youthful excitement of novelty than any serious reason--she left her
apartment to set out on her errand.
Below, a controversy was going on between Dame Rogers and her daughter.
When Edith descended the stairs, she found Mercy standing with her hood
in her hand. Her mother was remonstrating,
“And wherefore should’st thou, my child Mercy? And why would’st thou go
break thy poor mother’s heart, because the young lady will put herself
into danger? I trow it is none of thy blame; and would’st thou leave us
desolate in our old age, all for the sake of Mistress Edith? Ah! Mercy!
Mercy!”
“But mother, there will be no danger. Please you, Mistress Edith to tell
my mother, how you have promised to Master Field to have care and
caution; and there will be no peril; I am sure there will not, mother. I
do not fear.”
“Hush! Mercy,” said Edith, gently; “you must not go, be there danger, or
be there none. I desire not to peril your daughter, Dame Rogers. I pray
you believe me so.”
Dame Rogers’s heart smote her. “I would go with thee myself, Mistress
Edith, but indeed I am frighted; and I would do thee more harm than
good, truly, for I am but a weak body; and Mercy--I have but one,
Mistress Edith--none but she! and the two of ye, girls that might be
dealing with gentler matters than this life and death. Ah! Mistress
Edith!”
“Do not fear, dame,” said Edith; “Mercy must not go with me. I will
peril no life but my own.”
But therewith the timid and tender-hearted Dame Rogers, burst into a
flood of tears, bewailing feebly the danger into which the young lady
was about to thrust herself, in the midst of which Edith withdrew, eager
to begin her labor, and adding to the good dame’s tears and
remonstrances, her own injunction to Mercy, not to follow her.
The ribbon-weavers, were a full mile away, nearer the bounds of the
stricken city. Edith had a general knowledge of all her father’s
parishioners, though the two years which she had spent in Cumberland had
made her less familiar with them individually; but Ralph Tennison, a man
more intelligent than his class generally were in those days, had always
been a favorite with Master Field. Looking through the open doors of
those cottages, as they stood on the margin of the hot and dusty
high-road, she could see the painful marks of listless indolence within.
In one of the little gardens, indeed, Ralph Tennison, the
stouter-hearted of the three, was gravely at work, tending some simple
flowers, now that there was nothing else to tend; but within, unshaven,
unwashed, and slovenly, she saw the other men. One was lounging over the
fire, hot June morrow as it was, in the busy housewife’s way as she went
about preparing their homely meal; while the other, leaning upon the
window-frame, was poring over one of those uncouth broadsheets,
threatening unheard-of calamities to the city and nation, which had so
considerable a part in exciting the fears of the common people of
London. Edith could hear the rising of a quarrel as she approached,
“For goodness sake, I tell thee, Lennard,” cried the irritated
house-mother, as for the third or fourth time she had nearly fallen over
her husband’s lazy length of limb, “take thy long body somewhere else,
and be not always in the gate! What good canst thou do, gazing into the
pot with thy hungry eyes? Thou won’t keep it long boiling, I trow; for
where thou’s to get another meal I wot not. God help us!”
“I believe thou wouldst rather I went out into the streets and died,
than trouble thee,” said the husband bitterly.
“Hear him, hear him!” cried the injured wife; “an’ he thought not so of
me, wherefore should he fancy that I could have such an evil thought of
him?”
“Hold your peace, ye fools,” said her brother, sullenly. “Is not the
judgment at our very doors, and will ye quarrel which shall be first
taken?”
Edith had entered Ralph’s trimmer garden, and began to speak to him.
“It is true she says,” said the man, sadly. “An’ it were not for the
terror we’ve all gotten of it, I’d be almost glad to welcome this
plague, Mistress Edith; for it’s a pitiful sight to see hungry children;
and where they’re to get another meal I know not.”
“And is there no hope of work?” said Edith.
“None, none,” said the man, with a kind of stern derision; “for what are
gentlefolk like to care for such wares as ours, when they’re flying for
their lives? and for us that can’t fly--why we must e’en stay and
starve, for aught I see, till the plague comes and frees us, and that
won’t be long, as men say.”
Some gentle words of kindness melted this rough mood. Ralph Tennison
turned away his head, and faltered in his speech; for what he said was
true--they were stationary between famine and the plague, all the more
liable to the attack of the one, because they were weakened by the
other.
The wives came to the doors, one by one, as they perceived Edith. She
inquired after the health of their families--the inquiry meant something
in those days--and gave them money. They received it in eager joy and
gratitude. A little longer she remained with them; and giving them
gentle counsel, and one kind word of warning more solemn than that, went
on her further way.
The next name on her list was that of Robert Turner, an old man with a
large family of daughters, who had earned his bread by working for a
famous and fashionable manufacturer of furniture, patronized by the
luxurious courtiers of Charles. The door was jealously closed when she
reached the house. Edith knocked gently. The eldest of the daughters, a
faded, thin, pale woman, growing old, cautiously opened it, and, holding
it ajar, stood, as it seemed, guarding the entrance.
“Are you all well, Dorothy? We have newly come home again, and I called
to see you,” said Edith, with some shyness.
“I thank you, Mistress Edith, we are well,” said Dorothy, gravely; “and
even right glad we were, for all so sad as the cause is, to see your
good father in his own place once more.”
“But they tell me this great pestilence is bringing trouble on you,
Dorothy,” began Edith, with embarrassment.
“And if it bring trouble, Mistress Edith, we must e’en seek strength to
bear it,” said the woman, with a spasmodic motion of the head. “I know
not that we have been heard to complain.”
“Nay, nay, I meant not so,” said Edith; “it was, I heard--and pray you
think I only speak of it in all kindness--I heard that because the great
masters and the court were flying from town, there was like to be lack
of labor, and perchance want; and so I came to say, Dorothy, that if you
wanted aught, or your father, or your sisters, that I have wherewith to
help you; and that was all.”
“And truly I crave your pardon, Mistress Edith,” said Dorothy, her
features moving hysterically, “if I did speak in haste, not thinking
what I said--for it is a sad time--ay, doubtless, a time of great fear,
and trouble, and darkness; and it is true that Master Featherstone has
gone away, and there is no more work for us; and our Phœbe, who was in
the great house, up by Westminster, has come home to us this morning,
because her lady hath fled into Kent, and could not take all her women
with her; and without doubt it is a hard time. I will think upon your
kindness, Mistress Edith, and heartily thank you, that had the thought
of coming to us, who deserved not any remembrance at your hands: but
now, I thank Providence, we need not any thing. God forgive me! I meant
of silver or gold--for we have yet enough of that; and truly for such
things as health and safety, they are not to be got in mortal gift.”
“But you have not heard of the distemper coming hither, Dorothy?” asked
Edith.
“The Almighty knows; who can answer for it, whether it will come or
stay.”
“Dorothy!” cried a sharp voice in the passage behind her, shrill and
broken with excitement and fear, “look to Phœbe. Lord have mercy! what
is coming upon us?”
“It is naught,” said Dorothy, with forced composure, looking fixedly in
Edith’s face. “She is grieved for the loss of her mistress, foolish
girl, and hath made her head ache with weeping. I thank you heartily,
Mistress Edith, and bid you good-morrow.”
The door was closed; with a thrill of fear, which she could not
suppress, Edith went on.
The day was considerably advanced before she returned home. She had met
with much poverty, but no traces of the pestilence, and had been
followed by many thanks and blessings from miserable households to whom
her gifts imparted some new hope. She found her father busied with plans
for his especial work, and beside him lay another letter from Master
Godliman, intimating that his gift should be renewed from time to time.
All that these men could do of Christian zeal and liberality, patience
and fortitude, were at work to mitigate the severity of the judgment,
and they did much; but what was it all before the mighty advancing tide
of God’s wrath and vengeance?
CHAPTER VI.
“The tokened pestilence
Where death is sure.”
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
The next day--this time with a little less excitement, a quieter
knowledge of what was likely to be required of her, Edith Field again
went forth to her labor. In so little time as the one previous day, Dame
Rogers had bewailed herself into familiarity with the danger to which
the young lady was exposed, and roused to the honor of having so
beneficent a visitor issuing from her humble house, by an application
from Alice Saffron, pleading to be received as Mistress Edith’s
attendant in her missions of charity, Dame Rogers withdrew her
interdict, and falteringly bade Mercy go. So, in despite of Edith’s
reluctance, Mercy Rogers accompanied her on the second day.
Master Field was preaching again in the pulpit of another over-burdened
brother, whose eager people craved the word more constantly than one
man’s strength could administer it. He had been already called to visit
many families, still free of the infection but trembling for it, who
begged his instructions and sympathy and prayers. The Puritan’s hands
were full.
Edith and Mercy had gone far and seen many people--much poverty, misery,
hopelessness--but nothing yet happily of the plague. Listless want and
indolence ripe for it and waiting, some overborne with unmanly terror,
some profanely bold, some subdued, penitent, and humble, while every
where there was the same fear, every where a deadly certainty of its
coming. Much, too, they heard of this stern measure for shutting up
infected houses, which the people, in the selfishness of their terror,
considered only as a means of safety for themselves and applauded
highly, and many stories, often grotesquely horrible, of those frightful
details of the pestilence, which the vulgar mind of the time delighted
to dwell on.
They had reached the bounds of the city in their visitation; they were
returning at last by the high road. A short time before they reached the
house of the Turners, at which Edith had called the previous day, they
met a singular group, about whose rear, as they proceeded with some pomp
toward London, a little crowd eager and yet afraid, tremulously hovered.
The two principal persons wore the garb of respectable citizens; grave,
thoughtful, important men. A slight red rod was in the hand of each; and
there was a subdued solemnity and pomp about their mien, the importance
of office in its first novelty overcoming the fear of the terrible
occasion which brought them hither.
“Who are they, Mercy?” asked Edith, anxiously, as she with difficulty
kept her young companion from the crowd.
“Oh! heaven save us!--the examiners!--the examiners! it has come!”
cried a woman beside them, wringing her hands.
Edith shrank back hastily to the foot-road, holding Mercy’s hand.
“Oh, what will become of us!” said Mercy, with a suppressed scream,
“look, Mistress Edith, look!”
Edith looked up. Upon the house at whose door they were standing,
appeared the terrific red cross, and solemn supplication, “Lord have
mercy upon us,” of which they had heard so much as the sign of those
places shut up, infected with the plague. It was no longer fear but
certainty: the pestilence had come!
Near the door, sullenly reserved and silent, stood the man appointed to
watch. Edith perceived, as she recoiled from its vicinity in terror,
that it was Ralph Tennison.
“Who is it, Ralph?” she asked.
“Speed ye away from this, Mistress Edith,” said the man hastily;
“wherefore should ye be in peril more than ye need? It is Phœbe Turner,
that came yestermorn from Westminster; she has brought it into the midst
of us. But haste ye home, Mistress Edith, I say.”
It was indeed the house which Edith had left the day before, with such a
thrill of fear.
“And why are you here, Ralph?” she said. “For the little children’s
sake, go home.”
“Better earn honest wages than live on good folks’ charity, when there’s
enow widows and helpless to take it all,” said Ralph; “and better die
like a man, doing work while there’s breath in me, than starve yonder
idle like a dog. I’m watchman here, Mistress Edith, and here I must
needs stay, die or live.”
“But the children, Ralph?” said Edith.
The man’s strong features moved convulsively.
“They must take their chance with the rest,” he said, with a stern
composure; “they can but die--and God knows who will be left, child or
grown man, afore all is done!”
The window above was thrown open as he spoke; the father of the stricken
household, altered in this one night, to a paralyzed, broken fatuous
man, looked out in feeble despair.
“Good neighbors,” cried the old man, wringing his shriveled hands, “pray
for my child--my Phœbe--my youngest-born! Oh, the Lord have mercy! I
have sinned--I have sinned these seventy years--and now it has come!”
He was drawn in from behind. Edith saw Dorothy’s faded, thin face, stern
and calm in the gravity of its despair, look down upon her for a moment;
then there was a hasty motion of her hand, warning her away, and then
the window was carefully closed.
“Ah, mother!” cried Mercy Rogers, rushing in breathlessly to her
mother’s cottage; “it has come! it has come!”
“What has come, child?” said the dame, rising hastily, “and where hast
thou left Mistress Edith--sweet lady--and what ails thee, that thou art
so pale? Thou art not ill, Mercy? My child! my child! say not thou art
sick!”
“Not yet, mother,” said Mercy, sadly, “and Mistress Edith is on the way,
only I fled from her because I was frighted; for, oh, mother! it has
come! the Plague! the terrible Plague!”
“The Lord have mercy upon us!” exclaimed Dame Rogers, pressing her hands
upon her heart; “what shall we do? what shall we do?”
“Only be calm, and do not be afraid,” said Edith, entering the cottage,
very grave, and very pale. “Know you, Dame Rogers, that this panic
inviteth the pestilence? Sit down and be still; it is not near us yet,
and surely we know, dame, that this plague hath no power to slay one
more than those appointed of God.”
Dame Rogers sat down, overawed by the command, and Mercy turned away,
ashamed and penitent, while Edith calmly shut the door, and sitting
down, loosed her hood.
“And please you, lady, who is it?” asked Dame Rogers, humbly, as she
endeavored in vain to conceal the quick and frightened coming of her
breath.
“Will you let me tell you first, Dame Rogers, what Doctor Newton said to
my father? Fear, he said, made us feeble, so that, when the evil came,
we could but sink, like as straw sinks before a flame, and could not
resist; but when we were bold, and of good hope, alway having a strong
confidence in Him who can kill and make alive, and waiting what he shall
send, that then the pestilence had less might, and there was liker to
come deliverance. Wherefore I pray you, good dame, have courage and
hope, and remember how mighty He is, who doth save us.”
“I thank thee, Mistress Edith,” murmured Dame Rogers.
“It is Phœbe Turner,” continued Edith; “I remember she was wont to have
fair hair, and a merry face, and was something of your years, Mercy; is
it not so?”
“Nay, Mistress Edith,” said Dame Rogers, eagerly, “she’s a good five
year older than my Mercy, I warrant you. It’s nineteen year--ay,
nineteen year come Lammastide, since Dame Turner died (and she was an
old woman then to have young children), and my Mercy is but sixteen.”
“But Mistress Edith hath not seen them, mother,” said Mercy,
apologetically, “since she went away from Hampstead, and Phœbe hath been
with the great lady in Westminster, I know not how many years. Alas,
poor Phœbe! they say she came home but yestermorning, and she had gotten
the plague before she came; and now they be all shut up with her, and
Dame Saffron says they are sure to die, for Ralph Tennison is watching
by the door, and no one dare go out or come in, and all of them sound
but she, shut in with the plague!”
And Mercy sat down in renewed terror and sorrow, and began to weep. Dame
Rogers would fain have joined her, but the awe of Edith’s presence and
command restrained the weakness. Edith was burning a handful of
perfumes, and sprinkling her own dress and Mercy’s with vinegar, the
little commotion made by this, diverted the anxious dame from her
brooding, and roused her to prepare necessary refreshment for her two
youthful heroes--her own Mercy, alas! being by this time, an exceedingly
timid and wavering one.
While she was thus employed, some one knocked at the door. Mercy and her
mother started in fear. Edith went cautiously to open it.
The rich dress of the person who stood without; the sudden doffing of
his bonnet, the long plumes of which swept over Dame Rogers’s budding
roses, as its owner bowed low and reverently to the young Puritan,
standing in her nun-like simplicity of apparel within, bewildered her
for a moment. Then she recognized Sir Philip Dacre, the companion of
their journey from Cumberland, and gravely bade him enter. Her father,
for whom he asked, she expected very soon.
Dame Rogers withdrew herself and her daughter into another apartment in
jealous fear.
“Save us! one knows not where the cavalier may have been--and an he be a
lord, he might carry the pestilence as ready as a serving-man. Get thee
to thy chamber, Mercy; if he is known to Mistress Edith she must even
take the peril to herself.”
“But, mother,” hesitated Mercy, “Mistress Edith is so good and gentle,
it is hard-hearted to leave her.”
“Thou would’st not have staid in yonder grand cavalier’s presence, I
trow?” said her mother. “I will tarry here lest Mistress Edith call, and
there is the perfume burning in the chamber that will be a protection to
her, but thou wouldest not have had us tarry to listen to all the noble
gentleman might say?”
Mercy went up-stairs, scarcely deceived by her mother’s elaborate
sophisms; and the good dame remained timidly in her kitchen, bathing her
hands and forehead with vinegar, and ejaculating under her breath,
fears, prayers, wishes, and resolves--very natural if not the most
coherent in the world, while Edith, with a good deal of embarrassment,
remained alone with the stranger.
The unexplained connection subsisting between his family and hers--the
wrong so mysteriously alluded to, which since their coming here, with so
many matters of more immediate weight to occupy them, she had had no
opportunity of speaking of to her father--increased the natural shyness,
which in spite of her ready devotion and fearless carrying out of the
dangerous work she had begun, ever reasserted its girlish pre-eminence
in all matters of common life. So Edith drooped her head as she bade the
young cavalier seat himself, and cast furtive glances from the window
upon the road, looking for her father, much as other maidens of her
years would have been likely to do.
“It is a sad peril this, Mistress Edith, for one so young as you,” said
Sir Philip, with a kindred hesitation. “Yonder lonely dell in Cumberland
would be thought a blessed refuge by many in these times, who might bear
more than you, if years made courage.”
“Nay, we are together now,” said Edith, quickly; “and there is none
other of our blood in all the world to weep for us.”
“Ah, Mistress Edith, say not so,” said the young man, a flush of deep
shame covering his face.
Edith could only wonder--she did not answer.
“My mother--but it becomes me not to speak to you of my mother--”
“Wherefore, Sir Philip?”
Edith forgot her shyness so far as to turn from the window, and look at
him in astonishment.
“Because it must be pain to you to hear her name spoken in love and
kindness; and she _is_ my mother.”
“Nay,” said Edith, earnestly, “in sooth I know not aught of the Lady
Dacre save her name, and wherefore should there be pain to me in that?”
“Is it so?” exclaimed Sir Philip, rising from his seat, “is it indeed
so? Then you know not that there is a kindred between--you know not. Ah,
Mistress Edith, I believed not there could be charity so great as this!”
Edith was startled.
“I pray you be seated, Sir Philip; my father will be here anon: and
truly I know not what you say, nor what is this that my father hath
hidden from me; but indeed he hath said naught to me at any time of the
Lady Dacre, and it is but of late that I have heard so much as her name.
And has she left this terror-stricken place, that you speak of her thus,
Sir Philip?”
“Nay, nay,” said the young man, checking himself as he resumed his seat.
“She is proud and bold, Mistress Edith, and defies this deadly enemy,
who will not brook mortal defiance. I have urged her with all my might
to escape this peril, but she will not hear me; and the more I entreat,
she doth but stand the firmer, and I must submit.”
“And you?” said Edith--there was beginning to spring up a confidence of
youthful friendship between the twain.
“I also must surely stay,” said Sir Philip; “not that I would choose it,
but that I will not leave my mother here alone; and I came to Master
Field to ask if I could serve in any way--for you shame us, Mistress
Edith, with your gentle valor.”
“Ah, yonder is my father,” said Edith, “and Master Chester, Sir Philip,
who is in Westminster; “I will tell them of your coming,” and she went
forth hastily to meet them.
“And is it thou, gentle Philip Dacre, mine old pupil,” said Master
Chester, entering, his trim dress not a whit less particular than when
all was prosperous health and peace in London; “and where hast thou been
spending thy green years, my good youth? preparing for thy grave years,
as I shall trust, and laying up stores that shall not fade, for the
solace of those times that shall fade; thou art well met, Sir Philip.
And what say they in old Oxford to those changes? They will bethink
themselves, doubtless, of how they were clouded at our rising, and will
e’en deem it rare justice that we should be clouded at our falling; but
we live yet, thou seest.”
“And will, I trust, in better times,” said the young man, pressing
warmly the hand of his old tutor, whom he had last seen in the classic
halls of Oxford, and breathing a still atmosphere of academic ease and
leisure, very different from the present scene.
“At our Master’s will--as He pleaseth shall be best,” was the answer.
“But what doest thou in this peril, gentle Philip? Truly there is much
to learn, but the school is hard; and if I do rightly remember thou
didst of old affect most such lessons as were brief, and that in a
school right easy for those of blood like thine. But get thee away to
thy hills, good youth, with such speed as thou may’st, for here is
naught but men dying, and men dreading, and oftentimes, alas! men dying
for very dread.”
“Nay, Master Chester,” said his former pupil, “here I must remain. My
mother is in Westminster, and will not leave it, and without her I am
resolute not to return to Cumberland. I did but come to offer my
services, if I can do aught, to Master Field--for you would not have me
shrink, good sir, from perils which this youthful gentlewoman braves
without trembling.”
“And in sooth, this youthful gentlewoman is a wayward child withal,”
said Master Chester, laying his hand caressingly on Edith’s dark hair,
“and truly it were better that thou should’st convey her with thee to
the shelter of yonder healthful Cumberland hills, than that her willful
example should keep thee within the pestilent bounds of this doomed
London. What sayest thou, Mistress Edith? My good sister, Magdalene
Chester, hath taken my little ones into her house in Surrey. My Mary is
thine elder by a year, and wont to have a childish charge of thee, when
thou wert over-young to be undutiful, as thy father remembereth well, I
warrant him. But now, little maiden, be but a dutiful child and I will
delegate to thee my authority over her, in yonder quiet house in Surrey.
Thou wilt not say me nay, Mistress Edith? Thou wilt take the charge I
give thee of my little ones, yonder in Surrey?”
“Nay, nay, reverend sir,” said Edith, hastily; “I must not leave my
father.”
“I hear it gathers strength day by day,” said Master Field to Sir
Philip, as Master Chester continued his unavailing remonstrances with
Edith; “and I pray you linger not, Sir Philip, until flight may nothing
avail you; for unless you had a special charge of these perishing
people, as I have and my brethren, it is but tempting God to tarry. It
is in His hand, surely; but save those who can minister healing to their
stricken bodies, and those who have it in charge to speak of grace and
deliverance to their sad souls, I would bid all who may, withdraw
themselves from this afflicted place; for an’ they do not good they do
evil, seeing that every man smitten with this plague, who might have
timely withdrawn himself, is but another loss to this impoverished
nation.”
“But my mother!” said Sir Philip, looking dubiously at the Puritan.
“Thy mother! Is she so eager then to meet with yonder multitude in the
heavens? is she so ready to stand before yonder pure throne? Ah! for the
sake of one whose gentle heart, methinks, even there, would bleed to
accuse her, pray her to fly!”
“Thy daughter, brother Field, is over-strong for me,” said Master
Chester, turning from Edith with some moisture glistening in his keen
dark eye. “Pray God she be not over-weak to try conclusions with a
bitter adversary. Truly, brother, when these little ones grow valorous,
I have a hope in me that God meaneth them to be victorious; and true it
is that what doth but overcome our weaker parts, bringing womanish
tears, doth oftentimes overcome the stronger parts of those afflictions,
bringing deliverance--wherefore, we must e’en suffer her will, trusting
that in it the Lord may manifest His will, and committing the little one
whom God has given us, to the keeping of the God who gave her to us.
Amen, and amen.”
CHAPTER VII.
“It is the business of a gentleman to be hospitable, following
those noble gentlemen Abraham and Lot. It is his business to
maintain peace, whereto he hath that brave gentleman, Moses,
recommended for his pattern. It is his business to promote the
welfare and prosperity of his country with his best endeavors, and
with all his interest; in which practice the Sacred History doth
propound divers gallant gentlemen (Joseph, Moses, Nehemiah, and all
such renowned patriots), to guide him.”--BARROW.
Sir Philip Dacre was of a class uncommon in those times. His father,
whom report called a weak and ordinary man, with only the one gift of
personal courage to distinguish him--and it scarcely did distinguish him
among the host of cavaliers, whose sole standing-ground was this same
gift of bravery--had fought his last at Worcester. Philip, a studious
boy, dwelling alone in his earlier youth in the old, dark library at
Thornleigh, and finally sent to spend long solitary years in Oxford, a
stranger to all home or family enjoyments, had grown up a grave,
imaginative student, with a sound and strong intellect, which rejoiced
scarce less in those mighty things which Newton had but lately brought
forth from the great ocean of the unknown, than in those wonderful human
folk, with whom the poets of Elizabeth’s golden time had peopled many
countries. He was of the class (scarce so courtly perhaps as the quaint
olden gentleman, who has put it on record, that the history of Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark, was not sufficiently refined for the Court of
Charles) of Evelyn, and his brother philosophers; not devoted to any one
especial science, but with lively interest in, and considerable
knowledge of them all--a youthful neophyte, who had not quite penetrated
into the charmed circle of the juvenile Royal Society, then being
formed; but who hung with eager curiosity and interest in its outer
round. His travels in the simple North, and his late visit to Scotland,
had given the Oxford scholar a strong leaning to the persecuted
Presbyterians; and having had enshrined in his remembrance all his days,
the object of his boyish sympathy and tears, the gentle memory of the
young wife of Caleb Field, her story threw a charm over her people, and
her faith, counteracting the prejudices in which he had been bred, and
shining with a steady light round the stout head of the husband, who had
mourned for her so truly. From which causes it resulted that Sir Philip
Dacre, kept in London by the bold hardihood and temerity of his mother,
chose to put himself under the guidance of the Puritan. As a youth he
had, in youthful curiosity, advanced some considerable way in the study
of medicine. Master Field’s steady friend, Dr. Newton, when it was found
impossible to induce the young man to leave London, made some use of his
willing services; for the office of physician was an office of strenuous
never-ceasing labor in those perilous times.
The terrible days went on; the plague grew round them, spreading like
wild-fire. Phœbe Turner, and three of her sisters, were laid in the
indiscriminate grave, which was all now that could be given to the
victims of the pestilence. The old, fatuous, broken-hearted father, and
the faded, despairing elder sister, were all that remained of the
household. Dorothy, sad and calm, and outwardly unmurmuring, had become
a nurse, and going from death-bed to death-bed in stern impunity, earned
bread for the helpless old man, at peril of her life. Other households
in Hampstead had rendered the best-beloved to that dread enemy. Other
houses had been emptied of their inhabitants by his stroke; the red mark
of his presence was already upon many dwellings.
But Edith’s heart did not fail. Strong in her girlish devotion, she
remembered not the danger, for pity of those hosts of dying, suffering
poor, who, utterly broken down with want and terror, lay helpless and
hopeless, waiting for the plague. Many of them already, like Ralph
Tennison, were earning a weekly pittance at deadly risk, as watchmen of
infected houses; but many more received from her constant ministrations
their principal sustenance. The good citizen, Godliman, himself afraid
to peril his life in the vicinity of the contagion, sent his gold
liberally for their relief, little knowing that the administrator was a
delicate girl; and many other such benefactors there were, and other
such almoners. No longer food only, but medical attendance, the service
of nurses, medicines; all these Edith had to provide for. She entered
few houses; she used all the ordinary means of prevention, and so her
daily labors had yet produced no evil effect.
She was seated in her chamber one evening, preparing to retire to rest,
when that month of June was drawing to a close. Mercy, lying on her
little pallet near her, was looking up to her with youthful admiration,
and some slight tinge of tear. The soft, full moonlight streamed
through the latticed window; the whole world lay silvered in it, at
peace and very still.
The wheels of some heavy vehicle, solemn and slow, were passing along
the deserted road; then the clear echoes gave forth the hoarse tinkling
of a bell. The silvery night-air seemed to soften it; yet the two girls
in their quiet chamber shrank and trembled, and looked fearfully, in
silent terror, into each other’s faces.
Then there followed a voice, inarticulate in the distance. Alas! they
knew too well what those terrible words would be. The sound came
nearer--nearer; and Mercy started from her bed, and throwing herself at
Edith’s feet, clasped her arms round her in the convulsive dependence of
fear, as the voice rang sharp into the silent house: “Bring forth your
dead!”
A monotonous _usual_ cry to which the men had become terribly familiar,
forgetting its horror--the sign of their sad vocation. It was the first
time it had been heard in Hampstead, and the calamity was now fully
come.
Preaching day by day, fervent, untiring, strong, laboring in concert
with his daughter in her mission of charity, venturing to speak comfort
to the stricken at their very death-beds, the Puritan minister of
Hampstead rested not, night nor day. And thus it advanced, by gradual
degrees, and raged upon every side around them, while from the eastern
quarters of the city, tidings came quick and frequent, of parish after
parish smitten; now here, now there, marching on, resistless and
omnipotent, breaking the feeble barriers set up to restrain it; cutting
down, in dread rapidity, its thousands in a night, until at last the
maddened people threw off all the restraints of prudence, and going
about in a wild despair, more terrible than their former fears,
proclaimed the blind confidence they had in the final extermination of
all life from London. It was but a question of time, they said. Churches
which had been shut when the pestilence reached to so fearful a height
that men could not stir abroad without the deadliest peril, were opened
again, and crowded with solemn congregations fearlessly despairing. The
same spirit, in a less profane degree, came upon the two devoted
faculties--physicians and clergymen. They began to have no
hope--scarcely any expectation of surviving, and the great matter with
them was, how to accomplish the most labor before the call should come.
But, if all his brethren were bold and unwearying, the preacher,
Vincent, was inspired. With the desperate energy and daring of a doomed
man, he labored. No case so terrible that he refused to visit it; no
sinful dying man so dangerous, but he would carry him those burning,
living words, which could come from no lips but those of one who himself
stood upon the very brink, and was conversant with the Powers of the
world to come. Praying only to be taken last, that he might labor to the
end, he preached, and prayed, and exhorted, through well-nigh every hour
of those long days of summer; in the churches, in the streets, wherever
men would pause to listen, the overwhelming torrent of his earnestness
poured itself forth--impetuous, vivid, bold--the apostle of the time.
Less known, and less observed, his neighbor, Master Franklin, labored
with stubborn Saxon perseverance, and an obstinacy of purpose altogether
his own. The _afflatus_ of enthusiastic zeal--the prophet-like might
and vehement eloquence of the man who felt that on this forlorn hope he
must die, was wanting in the case of his honest, laborious brother; and
the duller man was the greater hero--because his work was done for the
sole love of the Master who gave it, and not because itself was dear to
the plain and loyal soul who made head bravely against all surrounding
evils, for his Lord’s sake.
And, strangely trim and dainty amid all these horrors, the gentle Master
Chester held on valorously upon his own especial way. Something more
cautious, perchance, than those--no whit less manful and courageous; the
diverse moods laboring alike under the guidance of the One Divine and
beneficent Spirit.
It needs not that we should dwell upon the dark details of a picture
never equaled in our country for the magnitude of its miseries; how
households disappeared, leaving behind no survivor to mourn for the
dead; how grass grew green, and lonely echoes took up their dwelling in
the once crowded streets of olden London; and how, from the
consideration of earth’s most mighty city, there suddenly vanished all
subjects of mortal interest, shriveling up like faded leaves before the
fiery breathing of that universal Death. How, in the dreadful silence,
the voice of God fell audibly upon the tingling ear of the distressed
and trembling city, and how men came to know in those days--whatsoever
they may have dreamed or doubted before--that beyond that present death
stood a throne of righteous judgment, from whose tribunal their coward
souls shrank and faltered, having a consciousness within less easily
silenced than the voice of any other preacher--of sin. They could not
shirk the knowledge then; old truths stood out so eternally alive and
solemn, under the tracing of that dull, leaden light of death.
When the household parted at night in the Hampstead cottage, there were
solemn farewells said; none knew if they should meet again upon the
morrow. The youthful Mercy, more ardent than her mother, had overcome
her first fears; she still waited upon Edith with eager reverence and
admiration; but she went forth with her no more, Edith desiring this as
heartily as did Dame Rogers herself. Hitherto, the plague had not
approached them, and John Goodman cherished his guests as the olden
prince and patriarch cherished the angels whom he entertained unawares.
They were a blessing to the humble house that sheltered them--and so
thought his kindly, timid sister, though she feared these frequent
visitations, which exposed her young guest to all manner of perils, and
scarcely thought the danger of dwelling beside one who relieved many
smitten households every day, counterbalanced by the efficacy of the
good man’s prayers--the daily supplications in which the minister craved
the protection of God.
July, August--serene and beautiful--the brightest time of all the year,
passed on, drawing out its long, fair days in torment, rising and
sinking on such woeful sufferers as never English skies beheld before.
The mellow days of September had begun. Upon one soft harvest evening,
when the moon was already in the sky, though the heavens were still
bright with ruddy sunshine, Edith was returning weary from her labor.
The pestilence was reaching its height--still rising, alas! Her road lay
between two fields, along the extreme verge of one of which, was the
highway to London. It was a very lonely, quiet by-way, a little raised
from the level of the fields, bordered with old hawthorns bending down
over them; and the air about her was fresh, and sweet, and healthful,
hushed with the calm of the sunset.
She was not far from home when Sir Philip Dacre joined her; the rich
dress of his rank was laid aside; he wore plain apparel, like some
humble scholar, or member of the grave profession, to which, in reality,
in this exigent time he belonged. He had not been sparing of his time or
strength; but at even greater peril than his ministerial friends, had
labored faithfully as an assistant to Doctor Newton ever since he made
up his mind to remain in London.
“Is the Lady Dacre still dwelling in Westminster?” asked Edith, when,
after some conversation on the one great matter which occupied all minds
and thoughts, they had walked on for some time in silence.
“My mother!” said Sir Philip. “Alas! Mistress Edith I find it impossible
to move her. She knows not fear; and now when she has remained so long
in safety, her over-boldness is increased; so that I hope only for the
ebbing of this evil tide, which as learned men of the faculty
calculate--if we may dare to calculate that which hath its rising and
its falling in the good-will of God--should reach to its highest flood
ere long. God send it were but ebbing, or surely the despair of this
people will make them mad.”
“What is that?” said Edith, anxiously: “heard ye not a moan?”
They paused to listen; it was repeated; a low cry of infinite agony
scarcely to be borne.
Sir Philip advanced to the edge of the pathway; there, low down under
cover of an old, drooping tree of hawthorn, lay a smitten woman,
writhing in the torments of the plague.
“Come not near me,” she exclaimed, as they stood together, looking down
upon her in pity and terror. “Come not near me, I say, but let me die in
peace. Ah! they say it is I who have carried it in my blood; they say it
is I who have brought the poison to my little ones. I that would have
died--would to God that I had died!--to save them from a pang--oh! the
Lord have mercy; they say it is I--I when I came here to tend them, that
have slain my children.”
And extending her arms with a wild cry, she threw herself forward on the
grass, burying her face in her hands.
“What can we do?” said Edith. “I dare not carry her home; what can we
do?”
“I will go to see, if there is any hope,” said Sir Philip, gravely.
She was moaning lower, and with an exhausted, feeble voice. He
descended, and lifted her from the ground, while Edith stood leaning on
the tree, looking on in anxious silence.
“She is saved,” said the young physician, as he laid the fainting,
feeble woman softly back on the turf, and pointed to where the sharp
edge of a flint had cut open a tumor in her neck. “Her violence and
despair have saved her. I pray you hasten home, Mistress Edith. I will
have her conveyed to some place of safety, but come not into this
peril; ye have over many without this.”
“I will bring you help,” said Edith, as she turned quickly away.
She had not gone far when she met Dorothy Turner; and to her Edith told
the story.
“I came forth even to seek for her, Mistress Edith,” said Dorothy. “It
was a rash apothecary did tell the poor gentlewoman that she had carried
the pestilence to her children; they are all dead, the little ones--all
but the least of all--and the agony crazed her; no marvel! and she fled
out thus to die. But says the gentleman that she is saved? God help us,
how He worketh! I never thought to have heard that word of one smitten
with the plague. Speed thee home, Mistress Edith, and come not nigh her.
She is saved!”
And such terrible wanderers in those suburban fields were fearfully
usual during those fatal days of summer; lying down in their madness to
die.
CHAPTER VIII.
“When all is done that mortal might can do,
And all that’s done is naught; when wisdom fails,
And the strong hand grows feeble, and the heart
That was most valiant sinks into the dust--
Then look ye upward--lo! He comes. Behold,
The Lord!”
On that September even, so soft and mellow and harvest-like, with the
full eye of its serene moon looking down peacefully upon the quiet
world, the inhabitants of London, such of them as were not stretched on
hopeless sick beds, or hopelessly watching by the same, lay down in
reckless and wild despair, assured of early death. On the next day the
weekly bill of mortality would be published, and the hearts of the
people sickened within them, as they anticipated the further progress of
the pestilence which its fatal record would make known.
That day was a fast-day in Master Chester’s church of St. Margaret’s in
Westminster, and Master Field was engaged to preach there. The little
household had assembled in Dame Rogers’s sitting-room for their morning
worship. The father and daughter sat side by side; their host was at a
little distance, and Dame Rogers and her child, Mercy, were timidly
withdrawn near the door.
They were about to commence their simple service. Suddenly there came a
low knock to the outer door of the cottage. They had all learned to know
the light hand of Sir Philip Dacre, and John Goodman rose to admit him.
He stood still on the threshold in their sight, with a strange quivering
look of joy about him, at which they marveled mightily. Joy! its very
name had become an unknown word in London. There were tears standing in
the young man’s eyes, and a tremulous, unsteady smile upon his lips,
which looked as though it would fain run over in the weeping of a glad
heart. He lifted up his hands, but he said nothing, except “Thank God!
thank God!”
“Amen!” said Master Field, gravely; “but for what special mercy, Sir
Philip? Enter and let us share your thanksgiving, as you have shared our
trouble.”
“It ebbs--it ebbs!” exclaimed the young man; “the tide has turned,
Master Field--the fury of the pestilence has abated--there is hope!”
They all rose; the timid Dame Rogers, who had shrunk from him before,
pressing nearest now to the bearer of good tidings--and gathered round
him in an eager ring, with the same fit of tremulous, uncertain
joyousness upon themselves, to learn the particulars of this unlooked
for gladness.
“Near two thousand less in this one week,” said Sir Philip, more
agitated now than he had been in the greatest horror of the darkness.
“The last wave was a mighty one, but the tide has receded far already.
Let us thank God! when there was neither help nor hope, He hath done it
of His own grace. The pestilence that hath stricken so many is itself
stricken, blessed be the day!”
And so they took their places again, and amid low sobs and silent
weeping, gave the Great Physician thanks. Strongly nerved and strained
to the uttermost, the sudden relaxation took the form of feebleness; and
even Caleb Field himself, whose stout soul had never quailed amid all
these terrors, did now, his daughter weeping delicious tears beside him,
with faltering voice and quickened breathing, pour out the flood of his
warm thanksgiving before his God.
And when they had taken their morning meal, they went out together to
St. Margaret’s with lightened hearts--hearts that began timidly to
resume their old functions of joy and hoping. As they approached
Westminster, they observed a group of men a little way before them,
whose mood was clearly evident by the congratulations they
exchanged--congratulations which were more of gesture than of speech.
They dispersed before Master Field, his daughter, and Sir Philip came
up; but one who met them, a stranger, paused to stretch out his hand,
and say:
“Have ye heard the news? God be thanked!”
“Yea, brother, and amen,” said Master Field, grasping the extended hand
of the stranger. “Let us not forget His goodness, lest a worse thing
befall us.”
The man passed on. The universal gladness, like the universal sorrow,
made all brethren.
They were passing through a narrow street. A woman stood at a high
window of one of those old picturesque gabled houses which exist among
us no longer.
“Neighbor,” she cried, “good neighbor Waterman, heard ye the news?”
An opposite window opened slowly; at it stood a languid old man, with a
girl’s face looking eagerly over his shoulder.
“What news, good dame?” said the old man. “Truly, when there can be none
but evil ones, it is best to have dull ears.”
“Good news, thank God,” said the other: “the bill is near two thousand
less, as my good man says; and an it rose swift, we may hope it will
sink swifter, I wot. God be thanked!--we e’en counted ourselves dead
folk; but the Lord is merciful.”
“Ah, grandfather,” cried the girl, “we will see my mother again. Thank
God! thank God!”
The old man’s lip was quivering; his eyelids drooped heavily.
“And is it so? Is there any hope? For the city, and for the young child!
God be praised, for He is very good.”
And as they went on, wherever two strangers met, wherever human life
remained, with tears and tremulous rejoicing, the people lifted up their
voices in thanks to God.
In front of the abbey, Master Chester met them. For the first time, the
quaint and courtly gentleman was discomposed; lights and shadows, in a
hundred shifting combinations, pursued each other over his vivacious
features. He was too greatly moved at first to speak; he only held out
his hands.
“And so ye be all come with the glad tidings,” he said at last, “which
truly are glad tidings for all; and our controversy concerning thy
dangerous labor, Mistress Edith, we will end now; for men think
otherwise in hazard than they do in hope; and the Lord of the poor will
remember thee, little maiden, because thou didst remember the poor of
the Lord. Thou wilt have many to hear thee, brother Field, on this fair
morrow, and, I pray God, many to heed thee also: for that which is
impressed but by disaster is in danger, I fear me, of being erased by
deliverance. The good Lord keep us from this evil; but in sooth we grow
wanton oft when it is fit we should grow wary, and are liker to lead
ourselves into deeds that need to be repented of, through the abundance
of God’s mercies, than to endeavor that God’s mercies should lead us to
repentance.”
“It is but too frequent,” said Master Field; “but this city hath been so
sorely smitten, that the remembrance of the stroke will not soon depart.
I trust only that the delirium of this joy will not intoxicate the
remnant, for indeed the penitence of deadly fear is but a frail trust to
lean upon. Nevertheless, brother, what saith thy poet?
“‘When the equal poise of hope and fear
Doth arbitrate the event, my nature is,
That I do ever hope rather than fear.’
“And truly, He who hath done this is the same Lord who hath bruised the
head of the enemy.”
“Without doubt,” answered Master Chester; “and in terror, even as in
tenderness, the same Lord. But thy poet, I pray thee note, is not _my_
poet, brother. Truly, a pestilent sectary, an he were also a noble
singer of Heaven’s own proper training. Yet thou knowest, this deadly
peril over, that I love not those who forsake order, and e’en would take
order with them, though I love them not; for a Church that lacketh
government is like to lack goodness, ere long, I fear me; and truthful
doctrine hath rightful discipline for its twin brother. An
evil-conditioned man this Milton, Mistress Judith; thinkest thou not
so?”
“Truly, sir, he maketh noble melody,” said Edith.
“Ah, little one, thine ear tingleth to sweet music; but these are
matters that fit us not thou thinkest, brother, and I doubt not thy
thoughts are busy with matters that will fit all. And lo! the people
that remain to us how they gather, and shall have gathered somewhat ere
they part, I doubt not, that will remain. Now the Lord send seed to the
sower, and bread to the eater.”
The church was full; a congregation more deeply moved never met
together. In their fear they had been solemn and grave, sometimes stern
in the austerity of new-born penitence; but now the flood-gates of their
souls were opened, and floating over the wrung hearts in the first
relief from their long tension, was every where that fluttering
tremulous joy.
After the service Edith returned home alone. Her father was occupied
with the peculiar work of his ministry, and detained Sir Philip beside
him. The young cavalier, even in those subdued times, was
over-conspicuous an attendant for the Puritan’s daughter.
She was passing through one of the silent streets in the neighborhood of
Whitehall. Most of the great, gloomy houses had been deserted at the
beginning of the plague, and now stood uninhabited, frowning in desolate
grandeur. They were the residences of people of high rank who could
fly, and had fled early, and so Edith saw the fatal mark on none of the
gloomy walls she passed. The street was short: its look of dark funereal
pomp oppressed her heavily.
She had nearly reached the end of it, when a low moan, painfully audible
in the profound stillness, fell upon her ear. She paused to listen.
After another moment of oppressive tingling silence, it was repeated--a
low, faint, dying moan.
The wide gate of the court-yard opposite her stood open. She entered,
impelled by a singular curiosity and interest. Upon the broad stone
steps lay a rich velvet mantle lined with costly furs. It had been
thrown down, as it seemed, by some one flying from the house; further in
upon the floor of the spacious hall lay some glittering trinkets,
reflecting the September sunshine strangely from the cold pavement.
Other articles lay scattered about, dropped by the fugitives in their
flight, and the cry of pain came ringing down the wide staircase,
raising hollow echoes in the great empty, deserted house.
Edith went up the stairs. Here was some one dying of the pestilence
alone, and the care and caution of less exigent cases could not now
stand in the way of needful succor; but she did not reflect so; she only
acted upon the irresistible impulse and hurried on.
The sound grew more distinct as she advanced; there was impatience in it
and strength. It was no worn-out sufferer, but some one struggling
desperately under the deadly poison. Edith entered an ante-chamber
furnished with stately magnificence, pompous and grand, without the
luxury of that voluptuous time. Through an open door the voice came
fretful in its anguish. Edith’s heart was beating high with the
excitement of youthful courage. She had never before been in such
immediate contact with the enemy: she went in.
Under rich curtains, upon a bed of state, lay a woman whose fine
features were convulsed and flushed with the pain against which her
proud will struggled for the mastery. She was half-dressed as if
suddenly attacked. Her dark hair had a sprinkling of gray, her face was
haughty and proud in its expression, and the voice of her pain was
making itself articulate in words:
“All gone from me--all fled. Just Heaven, must I die alone!”
Her eye fell upon Edith as she spoke. With a loud, shrill cry of fear
the lady raised herself from her bed, and shrank back to its furthest
bound.
“Thou Edith! thou spirit--thou angel! comest thou to torment me before
my time? Ah! have mercy, God, have mercy! hast Thou sent _her_ to see me
die!”
Edith paused in fear at this address, but recollecting herself, she
threw a handful of perfumes into the fire, which burned faintly upon the
hearth, and advanced to the bedside to see if any thing could be done.
In the simpler remedies for the pestilence she had become skilled.
But the patient shrank still further back, and gazing at her with wild
terrified eyes, extended her hand to keep her away.
“Come not near me--what have I to do with thee, thou dead! Ah! wilt thou
press upon me--wilt thou stifle me--thou--thou--Edith, I did not slay
thee!”
“Lady,” said her wondering visitor, “I do but seek to help if I can do
aught--I have with me what may do you service. Have you been long
stricken?”
“Keep back,” cried the lady, in wild fear, rising almost entirely from
the bed, while on her breast Edith saw the fatalest tokens of the
plague--the deadly marks which precluded all hope. “Keep back, I
say--leave me, thou spirit--why would’st thou tarry out of thy heaven.
Ah! thou cruel Almighty One, who hast sent her to see mine agony, carry
her hence--I will bear thy fires--thy torments--but not this--not this!”
Edith fell back before the extremity of terror shining in the stricken
woman’s face.
“Leave me,” she repeated, hoarsely, crouching close by the wall. “Edith,
thou wert gentle once, and I entreat thee. I have defied this plague--I
do defy yonder tortures--but thou--thou! wilt thou not leave me!”
“Have patience with me, lady!” said Edith, “I do but seek to serve you
if I may--I am no spirit--I am Edith Field, a poor maiden--if you will
but let me help you.”
“And thou darest say so to my face,” said the unhappy patient, wildly.
“Thou darest to call thee by yonder clown’s name; thou who wert once a
Dacre! Would’st thou kill me? dost thou come hither in my last hours to
rejoice over mine agony? Avoid thee, avoid thee, thou cruel spirit! What
have I to do with thee?”
Edith retreated in terror. The lady pressed her hands over her eyes as
if to shut out the unwelcome sight.
“Is she gone?” she muttered, “is she gone? Ah! this torment--ah! this
agony--to die, and none but her beholding me--is she gone?”
She removed her hands and looked fearfully round. Edith stood pale and
trembling at the door.
“Wilt thou not go?” exclaimed the lady, “wilt thou remain, thou spirit?
I slew thee not--thou did’st not say to me thou had’st no shelter--thou
said’st not thou wert homeless, thou false one, and who could tell me if
thou did’st not? I tell thee, Edith--Edith, thou Puritan--thou
pale-face--thou false Dacre, I tell thee, thou bearest witness to a lie,
for I did not slay thee!”
There was a pause--the sick woman fell back exhausted upon her bed,
keeping her large, dilated, unnaturally bright eyes fixed upon Edith.
“Where is her child?” she murmured. “Where has she left her child? she
had it in her arms yonder, when she stood by the door, and they say the
mark of her footsteps hath been ever there, since then--but where is her
child? has she killed her child?”
There were footsteps ascending the stairs. Edith turned in some fear to
see who was approaching.
“Ha!” cried the wild, shrill voice. “She trembles before me--she fears
mine eye. Thou coward, thou art lesser than I in thy very heaven. False
heart! Craven! I laugh thee to scorn--thou canst not stand before me.”
The step drew near. Edith looked anxiously from the door; she scarcely
heard the loud incoherent ravings of the sick woman’s voice. Through the
open door of the ante-chamber she saw a man approaching--it was Sir
Philip Dacre.
“Mistress Edith,” he exclaimed, hurriedly, “is my mother stricken? Ah, I
trembled for this--and thou hast come to her in pity. God reward
thee--for thou art like the angels of His own dwelling place.”
He hurried forward to the bedside.
“Art thou here, Philip?” said the raving Lady Dacre; “and did’st thou
meet yonder coward flying from before me? She came to exult over me; she
came to see me suffer; she, thou knowest, Edith, whom men say I helped
to slay; but she feared mine eye, Philip; she remembered, the craven,
how she was wont to quail before me, and she has fled!”
The lady raised herself and looked round once more.
“She is not gone? Edith--Edith--Philip, thou hast wept for her; she will
go if thou dost bid her go.”
“Mother,” said Philip Dacre, earnestly, “mother, think of thyself now;
there is none here but a mortal maiden of thine own kindred, who comes
to help thee in mercy. Mother, let us tend you. When were you stricken?
Oh! God, is there no hope?”
“See you,” said his mother, in a whisper. “See you how she steals
yonder? There is no footfall--thinkest thou, thou could’st hear the
footfall of a spirit? and lo! you, Philip, she looketh gentle, an angel
in heaven. Where is her child? Send her away,” she cried, suddenly
starting in wild passion, “send her away. Think ye I will die in her
presence? Nay, nay, nay, send her hence, she will go if you command
her.”
Edith hurriedly left the room; she heard, as she lingered in the
ante-chamber for a moment, the wild voice sink in its raving, and then
she left the house to seek a nurse.
Along the silent, echoing streets, with fear and wonder rising in her
mind tumultuously, Edith hastened to seek help. What this mysterious
connection was, she had never ascertained; but the melancholy light
which enshrined the memory of her young mother, threw its pale radiance
strangely over this death-bed; but Edith’s marveling shaped itself into
no definite question. She was too eager in her errand; her hasty search
for help to the Lady Dacre.
Dorothy Turner was engaged with her patient, the despairing woman whose
violent flight into the Hampsteadfields had saved her life; and Edith
sought Dame Saffron, who had also taken up, in extremity, the desperate
trade of plague-nurse. The laundry-woman was fortunately disengaged, and
with many inquiries after Edith’s own health, and much talk of the
calamities which had come under her own notice, which Edith, in her
haste and anxiety, scarcely heard, accompanied her to Westminster.
Sir Philip received them at the door. He was very grave and sad.
“I have brought Dame Saffron to tend the lady,” said Edith, “but
perchance it were better that I entered not.”
“Both for thine own sake and hers, gentle cousin,” said the young man.
“Start not, for we are truly kindred; but remember her in pity and in
tenderness, Edith, for she lies on a terrible death-bed, pricked to the
heart--have pity on her--have pity on her, gentle Edith.”
CHAPTER IX.
“Speak not of grief till thou hast seen
The tears of armed men.”
MRS. HEMANS.
Upon the evening of that day, Caleb Field and his daughter sat in Dame
Rogers’s better room alone. The minister had newly returned from the
strenuous labors of his vocation, and Edith had just finished telling
him of the strange meeting of the morning.
The simple evening meal stood untasted upon the table. The strong winds
of deep emotion were sweeping over his face. The bitterest time of all
his stout, laborious life was standing forth before him in its deadly
coloring of cruel wrong and terrible bereavement. Not now the sanctity
of tenderness wherewith her gentle memory made all things holy round it;
but the bitter, blind agony of yonder dark hour of her death, was
swelling in the heart of Edith Dacre’s forlorn and faithful husband.
The look of her wan face as she tottered up the bare paths of yonder
hills, seeking a place to die in; the last faint whisper of her voice
that forgave her hard and haughty kinswoman, and bade God bless him and
the child; vivid, in bitter pain and anguish, they came into his heart,
as he laid his face down into his clasped hands and wept--those few
terrible tears of stern manhood which express to us the uttermost agony
of grief.
After a time he grew calmer, though Edith started to see the pale face,
still moved with its extremity of emotion, which her father raised to
her before he spoke.
“Edith,” he said, hoarsely, “I have never dared to tell you--never dared
for terror of myself: yet I say the Lord forgive her--the Lord pardon
the proud woman, as _she_ did who is in His heaven long years ago. My
Edith! my blessed one!”
“Father,” said Edith, “tell me not if it moves you thus: indeed I did
not know any thing; but, father, spare yourself.”
“Edith,” said Master Field, proceeding with fixed composure, like one
reading words which he had conned so often that he knew them at last ‘by
heart,’ “they were near kinswomen, daughters of two brethren: yonder
haughty lady was the heir; Edith had naught but the riches of her own
noble heart. The proud cousin ruled with the strong hand of a tyrant;
the gentle one was an orphan, alone in this chill earth: and in the
house of her fathers Edith Dacre was a slave!
“Ah! Edith, thou knowest grief--thou knowest not the hard sorrows of thy
sweet mother’s youth!
“And so she gave her gentle hand to me, and we were at peace and joyous
for one blessed while. Thou wert born then, in our glad poverty, Edith:
I dare not look back upon its wondrous sunshine--I dare not!
“But it was an evil time! Yonder hapless king and the archbishop were
failing in their unrighteous power; and suddenly, when we thought no
evil, we were driven, by some of the king’s followers, from our quiet
home--for the war was raging then. It was a bitter winter--stern and
cold, like the power that persecuted us; and underneath a chill sky,
Edith, they drove us forth homeless: thy mother with the faint rose only
budding in her cheek, and thou new-born!
“What could we do? I?--I would have toiled--I would have suffered; I
would have taken upon me the uttermost yoke that mortal neck ever bore
for ye both; but every door was closed upon us--no man dared shelter the
forlorn Puritan; no kind heart offered refuge to the fainting fragile
mother--the hunted Puritan’s wife.
“So we went forth upon the bleak road, Edith, if, perchance, we could
have reached the humble shelter of Ralph Dutton’s cottage; I knew we
might be safe and secret there; but thy mother’s strength failed her,
and in despair I sat me down at the gate of Thornleigh, while my Edith
went to the door of her hard kinswoman, to crave a shelter for herself
and thee. The lady then had a little one of her own--this good youth
Philip--and I believed not but her heart would melt to the young mother
and the child.
“Edith, she came forth in her pride to the threshold, where stood my
gentle one, and with the keen wind cutting over that blessed face, and
the weariness of her way-faring bending her to the earth, the door of
her fathers’ house was shut upon her! In the extremity of our distress,
yonder evil woman had naught but reproach to say to her! her own
kindred, her own blood--the young mother with the infant in her weary
arms!
“She came out to me again, Edith, I had waited to see that she was but
safe, ere I went upon my lonely way, she came out to me with a smile
upon her lip, such a smile! thou sawest never the like. ‘We will go on,
Caleb,’ she said, ‘we will go on!’ that was all. Edith, I was nigh
maddened! I saw the cold striking into her heart, I saw her totter as
she laid her hand upon my arm, and I--I could do naught, my soul was mad
within me: I could scarce speak comfort to her.
“And we went on--how, I dare not try to think; yet we did toil up yonder
hills, thou wailing on her bosom, and I carrying ye both in my arms--a
dreadful journey! God save thee, Edith, from ever such agony as thou
hadst an unconscious part in then!
“We reached our shelter at last, when the gloom of night was on the
hills, the bleak, chill gloom of night; and then, Edith, I tried to
hope. God help me! I looked upon her face as she lay yonder, and tried
to hope. But she had only come there in time to die! Edith--Edith! it
was thus thy mother died!”
He could not go on; the strong man’s voice was choked--his breast heaved
convulsively, and again he hid his face in his hands.
Edith was weeping silently by his side; the time passed by unnoted; he
knew not how it went, until he looked up again when the twilight shadows
were stealing through the room, and saw Sir Philip Dacre standing by his
daughter’s side.
The young man was very grave. He looked wistfully into the Puritan’s
face, “She is dead.”
Yes, in bitterer agony than that which carried the gentle Edith Dacre
away from sin and oppression, into the holy peace of heaven--in deadly
remorse and dreary hopelessness, rejecting the name of Him whose mercy
she had spurned, and whose servants she had wronged, the haughty spirit
of the Lady of Thornleigh had gone forth unrepentant and defiant to its
doom.
The Puritan did not speak.
“The Lord pardon her,” said Edith; then she paused in painful haste: it
was too late now to pray that prayer.
And so in the midst of panic and calamity, when solemn funeral honors
could be paid to none, however noble, her son and the husband of her
murdered kinswoman the sole mourners, they laid the Lady Dacre in an
uncommemorated grave.
The pestilence ebbed and flowed again--in its capricious floods and
falls cheating the sick hearts that watched its sinking with so
tremulous a hope; and though it grew feeble with the feeble year, it
still held its place until its close, and only went fully out at last
when the wholesome cold of the mid-winter began to be touched by the
breath of another spring.
But in December, the stricken who had been counted by thousands once,
were reckoned in scanty hundreds only. The terror was gone, the
atmosphere was cleared. Where men had been wont, under the pressure of
this calamity, to stay upon the desolate streets and confess their sins
before God aloud, men staid now in joyful wonder to give Him thanks who
had spared them. But grim want and poverty were reigning supreme over
those hollow-eyed, pale-faced citizens of the meaner sort whom the
plague had spared, and there was yet abundant room for the labors of
charity and kindness, and many calls for such--calls which were not
unanswered.
Edith Field, with Mercy Rogers in attendance on her, was passing through
Aldgate one chill December day, on her usual work of mercy.
“Mistress Edith,” said a voice behind them, “tarry, and say farewell to
an ancient friend.”
Edith turned round hastily; behind her stood Master Vincent. His dark
face had grown thin and emaciated, his form was bent as with a very
weight of weakness, yet his step was light, and swift, and nervous, and
his labors had known no abatement. His warfare was nearly over: no need
of legislation to drive him once more from his post. He carried the
sentence of removal in his face--here where he had labored he was to
die.
“Farewell, reverend sir!” said Edith. “Do you then leave London?”
“Ay, maiden,” said the preacher, “the hour of my translation draweth
nigh; and I thank God heartily who hath heard my petition, and hath
spared me to the end. Fare thee well, gentle Edith Field--thou hast done
thy work bravely, like one who feareth God. Greet thy father well from
me, and tell him we shall hold fast our brotherhood till we meet in the
presence of our Lord. Let him not envy that I be called up first, for
there is need of him yet in this evil world.”
“Ah, Master Vincent, speak not so exceeding sadly,” said Edith, “for
truly you do ill to hold life light which the master hath kept safely
through all this peril.”
“Thinkest thou I hold it light, maiden?” was the answer. “Now God
forbid; yea, I consider well it is a wondrous gladness to live under
this sunshine of the Lord. But see you, Mistress Edith, yonder sun, that
the eyes of our humanity may not look upon for the glory of his
brightness, hath all his magnificence gathered yonder, albeit he doth
part it into such rays as we can bear: and so doth our Holy One reserve
His exceeding glory for yonder fair country, where he is forever; and
surely it is better to be with Him, and lawful to desire it, for I have
accomplished my warfare, and methinks the voice of His summons is in
mine ear already.”
“But were it not well to take rest?” said Edith, “and wise, good sir,
for thine own sake and the people’s.”
“Rest? ay, beyond the river, but not on this mortal side. Rest, maiden,
rest! ye do hear of naught else in this carnal time; but I tell thee
God’s servants have all to do but rest; their rest remaineth for them
where no man shall break its peace. Rememberest thou that when the
shadows of this day of storms be fully overpast, they will drive the
brethren hence into silence, and that this only is our working-time? Ah!
I pray the Lord for the brethren, that He be a guide unto them; that He
compass them about forever, as the mountains are round about Jerusalem.
Rest, saidst thou? yea, I have nearly gotten to the rest; the Lord’s
arrow was in mine heart long ago, before this city was stricken; and see
you the mercy of the Mighty One, who has lengthened out my feeble
thread, that I, with my death stealing over my heart, should preach to
the multitudes who have been hurried before me over the stream. Who can
know him? who can fathom the loving-kindness of the Lord?”
“But if thou wert in a healthfuller place?” said Edith. “Ah, Master
Vincent, it is lawful to take rest for the Lord’s sake.”
“I thank thee, Mistress Edith,” said the preacher, more calmly, “for thy
good and gentle wishes; and I think oft that I would I could look on the
broad sea once more ere I go hence; but that is of slight import, seeing
it concerneth no mortal thing save mine own longing. Thou hast done
bravely, Mistress Edith; the Lord give thee double for thy valor; but I
wist not wherefore gentle Mary Chester should be less brave than thou.”
“Less brave! nay, Master Vincent, say not so,” exclaimed Edith, eagerly;
“only I have naught in this wide earth but my father, and Mary hath the
little ones in charge. They have no mother, the little children; and
Mary Chester hath been braver in patience and waiting than I.”
“Sayest thou so?” said the minister, dreamily, “sayest thou so? Yet
shall we all meet in yonder fair land where the Lord dwelleth. Would it
were come: would we were all there! And thou wilt carry my greeting to
thy friend, Mistress Edith. The Lord be her dwelling-place! And so,
young sister, fare thee well.”
She stood still, looking after him. He was a young man, though worn with
toils and sorrows; no ascetic, but with a heart beating warm to all the
kindnesses of life; with human hopes vehement as his own nature; with
human affections ardent above most. Imprisoned in an unwholesome jail
because he could not choose but preach, the seeds of disease had been
sown in his delicate frame a year or two before; and it was thus he had
spent the remnant of his life. The delicate fire, that might have
burned on longer with careful tending, blazed up in one bright flash,
and only one, before it sank into darkness; and now he had but to die.
Gentle Mary Chester, in yonder quiet house in Surrey, knew all this.
What then? he had his labor, she had hers. It was no question of what
either wished or hoped; for who, born of those godly households, and
nurtured in that simple constancy of faith, could put mortal design, or
joy, or purpose, before the work of the Lord?
But Edith Field turned away with a heavy heart; so sad alway, be the
spirit strung ever so strongly, is that eclipse of human expectation, of
youthful joy and hope. The inner man in strong life, counting with stern
composure the last grains of his mortal existence, as they passed one by
one away--the falling of those numbered days which, but for that blight,
would have been the brightest. It was a sad sight to look upon.
“Please you, Mistress Edith,” said Mercy, when they had gone on some
little way in silence, “does the young cavalier dwell always at
Westminster?”
“Who is that, Mercy?” asked Edith.
“Sir Philip, madam; the gentleman that hath done so graciously, as
people say, to the sick and to the poor.”
“Nay,” was the answer; “he dwells in Cumberland, Mercy.”
“Because, an’ please you,” continued Mercy, “Dame Saffron do tell sad
tales of the great lady, the cavalier’s mother; and how she did speak of
you in her raving, Mistress Edith, and called you Edith Dacre, and
angel, and blessed one, and did not cease until she died.”
“Not I,” said Edith hastily; “it was not I the lady meant, but my
mother, who was her kinswoman.”
“Then Sir Philip is of kin to you, Mistress Edith?” said the curious
Mercy; “and truly that was what Dame Saffron said.”
“What did Dame Saffron say?” asked Edith.
“Nay, madam, nothing worth talking of--only that the young cavalier did
not come always to have counsel with Master Field; but she knew not he
was of kin to you, Mistress Edith; and forsooth she is but a gossip, and
a great talker, as my mother says.”
Edith went on in silence: the pure blood flushing to her face. Before
that great Death visibly present among them, who could think of the
brighter things that cluster about the brow of youth; but now the weight
was lifted off, and the young heart, strong in its humanity, began to
send its first timid glances forward into a new future--a future rich
with peradventures, and beautiful to look upon--fairer, perhaps more
real, in its joy of anticipation, than if its dreams were all
fulfilled.
CHAPTER X.
“Good brother rest--the toil is overpast
The weariness, the travail, and the tears--.
All that did trouble thee--and now beholding
From the high heaven how we lay up thy garments
In the safe treasure-house of Death, thou smil’st
Upon our pains. So, till we follow thee.
Farewell!”
It was a blustering, boisterous day in March; strong-handed winds,
errant and violent, were roaming waywardly through London. The city had
resumed its former look; the grass-grown streets were again filled with
busy crowds. The terror of the great enemy had passed into other places,
before himself was gone.
In the Hampstead cottage Edith Field, arrayed for a journey, sat waiting
for her father. She looked very sad and downcast, and there were tears
in her eyes. Dame Rogers went about her household business with loud
lamentations over the departure of her guests. Mercy sat in a corner,
silently weeping.
At that time the bells of Aldgate Church tolled mournfully for one dead.
By a new grave there, Master Chester and Master Field stood together.
The funeral procession had departed--the grave was closed; they were
looking down solemnly upon the resting-place of a brave captain in their
brotherhood; a manful and loyal servant of God.
By-and-by Master Chester put his arm through his friend’s, and silently
they turned away; they had emerged from the din and bustle of the city
before either spoke.
“We have left him to his rest, good brother,” said Master Chester then;
“and we who leave him, what remaineth for us? God knoweth--the Lord help
us I pray, for there seemeth nothing left for us but to become wanderers
and vagabonds on the face of the earth.”
“Yea, truly, God help us!” said Master Field, “for He knoweth that this
oppression is even too like to make wise men mad. To think of this--that
he, whom we have laid in quiet rest to-day, would have been hunted
through the country, had he lived one short month longer, after spending
life and strength for this people in their extremity. Who is sufficient
for these things?”
“It is well,” said the other, his voice faltering with the sorrow which
he restrained; “it is well that the Master hath carried him home, where
evil act or statute can harm him nevermore. Thou wert a good soldier,
Titus Vincent, brother and son of mine, and a faithful as ever served
King; and thou art gotten to thine inheritance; the Lord keep us till we
join thee. But, brother, pity me for my Mary--my poor girl.”
The pity was not spoken in words; but the two fathers, old and long
friends, understood each other not the less.
“I can but spend a night with my little ones,” said Master Chester,
after a long pause; “and God knoweth how many nights shall be spent ere
I look on them again. Is it to-morrow, brother, that this dark
oppression becomes law?”
“Lady-day--yes, to-morrow,” was the answer; “and then, brother Chester,
you join us in the North?”
“My sister Magdalene dwells in mine old parish,” said Master Chester,
“and so I may not take refuge with her, though she hath wherewith to
give my children bread; but, brother, thou sayest well--it is bitter and
hard that I should not dare venture to tarry with them a day, lest pains
of imprisonment and evil report come upon me. God strengthen us to bear
all. For Cumberland? Yes; thy kinsman, Philip Dacre, offers me shelter
in his house, for thy sake, and for mine own. God wot, a painful
shelter, brother Field; eating of that for which I have not labored; yet
to the Lord, who hath ordained this poverty, be all thanks, because He
hath ordained also succor for His poor. And thou, brother, goest thou
not also to Thornleigh?”
“Nay,” said Master Field, “my Edith goeth with me wherever I go; and,
albeit, Philip Dacre is her kinsman; it can not be to Thornleigh.”
“Our Father bless the little one; she hath a stout heart, and a
valiant,” said Master Chester; “and truly I admire and marvel how the
Lord bringeth the sweet out of the bitter, as truly, brother, it is oft
His good pleasure to bring the bitter out of the sweet. A dark dawn, and
a bright noonday, for thy twain, and as fair a morrow as ever broke, and
as sad an early even as ever fell for mine. So are our meetings and our
sunderings here; and, truly, for the brief joy of them, what better are
we than sundered in our very meetings; but the Lord’s will be done.”
“He will console thee, brother,” said Caleb Field. “Thy Mary is young,
and fresh, and hopeful. The blast will bend the youthful spirit, but it
will not break it.”
“Yea--yea,” said Master Chester, “it is even so, I know; but truly
painful it is, brother, to think that we shall some time forget our
pain--thou knowest? She is a good child--a blessed child, as ever made
mortal household glad; and I must carry sadness to her. Nevertheless,
surely it is well; and it had not been well, He had not sent it.”
An hour after, they were riding forth from the city, which, for a second
time, had rejected them, pursued by the rigorous cruelty of that famed
“Five-Mile Act,” which Charles and his counselors had devised in the
retreat of their cowardice at Oxford, while those very men, whom they
sentenced to perpetual banishment, wandering, and poverty, were laboring
for the people stricken by God’s judgment. Edith, protected from the
cold, as well as her scanty wardrobe would allow, rode behind her
father. Master Chester was beside them. As they reached the high road to
the north, they encountered Master Franklin.
“Brother Franklin,” said Master Chester, “what is thy destination, that
thou art still tarrying here?”
“Good brother, I am a poor man, and alone,” was the answer; “and, in
sooth, I see little to choose between a prison, and some distant
village, where I could hide me, and earn a morsel of bread; so I will
tarry truly, and will stay my preaching for no law. If they do lay
violent hands on me, be it so; if I may not preach, I may suffer; for I
have no daughter, Master Field--no household, good brother Chester--and
surely it is a thing lawful to be resisted, that an Englishman may not
speak God’s truth.”
So the stubborn Saxon man remained, in various places stoutly resisting
the enacted injustice, and carrying his Master’s message without fear; a
persevering, plain, laborious spirit, whose tenacious and obstinate
strength had something noble in it--so little show as it made--so little
transfusion as it had of the loftier light of genius. The brave and
honest common stock, of whom, if there were many, it would be blessed
for this land.
And leaving London, the terror of God’s judgment removed, rushing
headlong again into its ancient sins, the other Puritans went forth
houseless, with only poverty and pain before them, to seek shelter and
daily bread. Of all the benefactors of the stricken city, the most bold
and untiring, they, and no other, were cast out at its restoration, in
hardship, in sorrow, and in reproach, persecuted for their Master’s
sake.
While among the many graves of yonder city churchyard, with those around
him to whom he had ministered in deadly peril, and for whom he had spent
his life, the preacher Vincent, lay quiet and at rest.
Sadly met, and sadly parted, the little company of wayfarers spent the
night in the house of Mistress Magdalene Chester; and there, in silent
pity and tenderness, by the widowed Mary’s side, Edith Field saw the
full cup run over, as she delivered the last greeting intrusted to her
by the dead. A sad cloud it was, enveloping the young life in its
blinding mist of sorrow, yet nobly borne and gravely, and with that
solemn sad hope, of all hopes the deepest and most steadfast.
And so they traveled home--for to no shelter more secure or of higher
pretension than the cottage of the Cumberland shepherd, could the
Puritan minister direct his steps. The quiet moorland parish, from which
he had been ejected long ago by the followers of the first Charles--that
hardest of all his trials, as he had described it to Edith--was full
five miles away. Carlisle, the nearest town, was further. So in Ralph
Dutton’s house he was safe.
Sir Philip Dacre had arrived at Thornleigh some brief time before, and
there Master Chester, after a few days’ experience of the lassitude and
weariness which follows the excitement of grief, settled down, not
unpleasantly, into possession of that grave old library with its rich
stores of ancient learning and philosophy. The father of the Lady Dacre
had somewhat prided himself on his knowledge of the budding science of
his time, and had so much leaning to the stricter party of Reformers in
the Church, as to have left on his shelves many old ponderous volumes,
which gladdened the quaint divine as he began his most congenial work in
the sanctum of the Cumberland baronet. His former pupil and he agreed
well. The courtly olden gentleman, indeed, had little in common with
those rude clowns--half fool, half fanatic--whom men of these latter
days have foisted into the ancient Presbyterian Church of England; as if
it were so easy a thing to give up worldly goods, and home, and ease,
and kindred, and risk even life itself for the Master’s sake, or as if
clowns and fools were the men to make such sacrifices.
They had not been many hours under Dame Dutton’s roof again, ere Edith
took her good hostess aside, to ask from her the further details of her
mother’s history. She feared to mention it again to her father, at the
risk of renewing the agony which she had seen in Hampstead.
“And is she dead?” said Dame Dutton; “is she dead, sayst thou, yonder
proud lady? and in the plague, with only _thee_ to be merciful to her?
Ah! dost mind, Mistress Edith, how I, a sinful woman as I am, marveled
that she got leave to bide in all her grandeur, who had done so cruel a
wrong? But it hath found her out. And she called thee angel, sweetheart?
and so she might, I warrant her, and thy mother before thee. Truly, I
fear there be few angels whither she hath gone.”
“Hush, Dame Dutton! say not so,” said Edith; “it is not our part to give
doom.”
“Nay, truly, Mistress Edith, I’ll do naught to anger thee; but,
forsooth, what came upon yonder Lady Dacre was meet; that _thou_
shouldst go to succor her--thou, and no other; for, thou seest, she was
mistress of all this land of her own right, and was a Dacre born, and
wedded a kinsman--she could not help but wed him--it was none of her
choosing, I trow, to wed a poor knight. And thy mother was of kin to
them both--cousin-german to her, and a distant kinswoman to him also,
which made it the greater sin. Ah, Mistress Edith! I do so well remember
the sweet, white face that lay down on that pillow to die! and to think
that they had shut the door on her, who were of her own blood!”
Edith was thinking of all these things sadly; her own young mother, and
yonder gentle Mary--and contrasting their dim lot with the flashes of
youthful hope, the bright vistas of sunny life which now and then
through these last painful months had opened to herself. Might these not
be all illusions--shadows and mists destined only to condense into
darker gloom?
“Thou wouldst see yonder cavalier, I reckon, while thou wert in London?”
said Dame Dutton, inquisitively. “Truly I did marvel within myself what
the omen might be that ye were both journeying on one morrow--and they
tell me he is a gracious youth, yonder Sir Philip, and hath a savor of
godliness. He do begin to make the old house liker a dwelling for living
folk, ’tis certain; for if spirits came back--I know not, Mistress
Edith--the Word saith naught of whether they may--yonder dark rooms were
most like a place for them; and he is a good master to his serving folk,
and has a kind hand to the poor. How sayest thou of this gallant,
sweetheart? thou hast marked him, I wot.”
“Nay I know not, Dame Dutton,” said Edith, blushing. “He did well among
the sick, and served them; but in sooth no man, methinks, could have
held back when he saw their misery.”
“Ay, ye have done wonderful, truly, for young folk,” said Dame Dutton,
“a strange beginning I trow--but an it be to a good lot, Mistress Edith,
never think more of the evil say I, for if it were ever so bad, it be
past now, and should e’en be forgotten. But it glads me that thou dost
like this gentleman--for all men speak kindly of him.”
“Nay, Dame Dutton,” said Edith eagerly, “I said not I liked him, more
than it be needful. I like all who serve the one Lord--and as he is my
kinsman--”
“Yea, sweatheart, did I trouble thee?” answered the Dame. “What didst
think I meant, truly? and thou wouldst not _hate_ the gentleman
sure--why shouldst thou?”
But Dame Dutton went about her household work thereafter with smiles and
secret whispers--and Edith standing at the cottage door with a tremulous
gladness about her heart, to look out upon the far stretching slopes of
those blue hills of Cumberland, retreated to her own chamber, with a
nervous haste, for which she could not very well account, when she saw
her kinsman, Sir Philip Dacre, ascending the narrow pathway over the
hills.
And so it came to pass ere long, that a second Edith Dacre entered the
old halls of Thornleigh to be lady and mistress there, where her
mother’s clouded youth had past. A dim beginning--yonder sad time of the
plague in London, was indeed the dawning of a pleasant day.
And there followed sunny years--years of household quietness, of growing
wisdom, and of such generous labor, full of all bounties and kindnesses,
as doth become so well those gentlefolk of God’s appointing, whose
errand is to bind together the different circles of His earth in the
wide sympathies of one humanity. Never houseless man again sat vainly at
the gate of Thornleigh, waiting the issue of his wearied wife’s
petition, as he did once, whose manly head began to whiten within, under
the snow of peaceful years. Never wayfarer sought shelter vainly--never
poor turned without hope or help away. Gentle alms--deeds, and
charities--gentler words of brotherhood and kindness--gentlest and
highest, merciful teachings of the Gospel, fell pleasantly like summer
dew about the old house of Thornleigh!
With his full share of the troubles of the times, imprisoned and fined
for the Gospel he would not cease to preach, the Puritan minister yet
lived on until the dawn of brighter days; and ere he closed his eyes in
the third William’s lawful reign, saw both the blessings promised to the
good man by the old Hebrew King and Poet--his children’s children, and
peace upon Israel.
And brightening the dead array of olden titles in the ancestry of the
house of Thornleigh stands pleasantly the gentle name of that Lady Edith
whose time was the time of the plague; whose girlish valor does still
communicate a generous youthful radiance to the old record, and whose
fathers were of a stock of grave chivalry, nobler and of higher honor
than those cavaliers of Worcester, and of Naseby, to whom alone we give
the name. The haughty Lady Dacre, and all her pride and wealth, and
greatness lie buried long ago in the grave of superficial things; but
radiant in its purity of wisdom, godliness, and courage, the name of the
youthful Puritan holds its place like a star, in the pedigree of those
Dacres who dwell on the Border.
THE END.
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