Chapter XII: Lettice's Diary (2)

On December the 2d the quiet of Mr. Henry's house and of the royal orchard was broken, by the arrival of a portion of the Parliament army at Whitehall, trampling down with heavy armed tread the grass which had grown in the deserted palace-court.

On Sunday there was much preaching in many quarters, of a kind little likely to calm the storm. In the churches the Presbyterian preachers declaimed fervently against the atrocity and iniquity of seizing the person of the king. In the parks Independent soldiers preached on the equality of all before the law of God. "Tophet is ordained of old," one of them took for his text. For the king it is prepared. A notable example, my husband said, of that random reading of the Sacred Scriptures which turns them into a lottery of texts to conjure with, like a witch's charms.

In the Parliament my old hero Mr. Prinne, with his cropped ears and his branded forehead, stood up and boldly pleaded for the king, never braver, I thought, than then.

On the 5th of December came another invasion of the Parliament House, Colonel Pride and his soldiers turning all the Presbyterian and Royalist members back from the doors. "Pride's Purge."

It was a sorely perplexed time. Had the very act of despotism which first roused the nation to the point of civil war now to be repeated in the name of liberty for the ruin of the king?

"What are we fighting for? I used to ask myself. The battle-cries, as well as the front of the armies, had so strangely changed. For the king and Parliament? The king was in prison. The Parliament was reduced to fifty members. For the nation? The nation was half in insurrection. For liberty? No party seemed to allow it to any other.

Roger and the Ironsides alone seemed clear as to the answer. "We are fighting--not under six hundred members of Parliament, nor under fifty, but under one leader given us by God; under General Cromwell," he said. "And he is fighting for the country, to save it and make it free and righteous, and glorious in spite of itself. When he has done it, it will be acknowledged. Till then he must be content to be misjudged, and we must content he should be, as the heroes have been too often, and the saints nearly always, until their work, perhaps until their life, is done."

I lay awake much during those nights of December. My little Magdalene was often restless, and I used to listen to the flow of the river through the silence of the sleeping city and think how the sea was washing the walls of the king's desolate prison, praying for him, and for General Cromwell, and all, and thanking God that my lot was the lowly one of submitting instead of that of deciding, in these terrible times.

But a sorer sorrow was advancing slowly on us all. On the 10th of December came an imploring letter from Lettice, saying that her mother had failed sadly during the last week, that she and her mother longed for Dr. Antony, and her mother even more for me and the babe.

The next day we were on the road to Netherby, Aunt Gretel, my husband, the babe, and I.

It was late in the evening of the second day when we reached the dear old house.

We were met with a hush, which fell on me like a chill. The Lady Lucy had fallen into one of those quiet sleeps which of late had become so rare with her, and the whole household was quieted so as not to disturb her.

The subdued tone into which everything falls, in a house in which there has been long sickness, and where everything has been ordered with reference to one sufferer, fell heavily on us, coming in from the fresh autumn air with voices attuned to the bracing winds, and hearts eager with expectations of welcome. It was like being ushered into a church hushed for some mournful ceremony; and we stepped noiselessly, and spoke under our breath, until an unsubdued wail from the only creature of the company unable to understand the change, the baby waking suddenly from sleep, broke the dreary spell of stillness.

The Lady Lucy heard the little one's cry, and sent to crave a glimpse of us all that night.

In her chamber alone, throughout the house that anxious hush was absent. She spoke in her natural voice, though now lower than even its usual sweet low tones, from weakness. She had a bright welcoming word for each, and while gratefully heeding my husband's counsel, declared that baby would be her head physician. The very touch of the soft little fingers and the sound of her little cooings and crowings had healing in them, she said.

She looked less changed than I had expected. But my husband shook his head and would give little promise. Lettice seemed to me more altered than her mother. Her eyes had a steady, deep, watchful look in them, very unlike her wonted changeful brilliancy. She said nothing beyond a few words of welcome to me that night. But the next morning the first moment we were alone together she took my hands, and pressing them to her heart, she said,--

"Tell me Olive; I have been afraid to ask any one else, but I must know. What do they mean by Petitions from the army for justice on the King?"

I was so startled by her sudden appeal, I could not meet her eyes nor think what to say. I could only murmur something about there having been so many Petitions, Remonstrances, and Declarations, which had ended in talking.

"True," said she, "but the army are like no other party in the state. They do not end with talking. They know what they want, and mean what they say, and do what they mean. What do they mean by Petitions against the Chief Delinquent?"

"Many do think, Lettice," I said, "that the king himself, and not only his counsellors, began all the evil."

"I know," she replied. "But they have had justice enough on the king, I should think, to satisfy any one. They have deprived him of all power, separated him from the queen and the royal children, and all who love him, and shut him up behind iron bars. And now, they petition for justice on him. What would they do to him worse, Olive? What can he suffer more? What has the king left but life?"

I could not answer her.

"To touch _that_, Olive," she continued, looking steadily into my eyes, and compelling me by the very intensity of her gaze to meet them, "to touch that would be crime, the worst of crimes. It would be regicide, parricide."

"But how could it ever be, Olive?" She went on. "They have assassinated kings I know before now. But a king brought to justice (as they call it) like a common criminal! Since the world was, such a thing was never known. It can never be, Olive, she added in a trembling voice, "I have heard the king dreads assassination. Do you? Could his enemies descend to that depth?"

"Never, Lettice," I replied, "never." And in saying thus I could meet her eyes frankly and fearlessly.

Her face lighted up.

"Never! no, I believe not. Then there can surely be little fear. There is no tribunal which can judge the king. No bar for him to stand arraigned before but the judgment-seat of God. A king was never condemned and put to death deliberately and solemnly in the face of his own people, and of all the nations. Never since the world was. And it never could be. From assassination you are sure he is safe. Be honest with me, Olive. There are base men in all parties. You are _sure_?"

"As sure as of my life," I said, "as sure as of my father's word, or Roger's."

"Then there can be no reason to fear," she said. "I will cast away this awful dread. Oh, Olive," she exclaimed, bursting into tears, "you have brought me new life. Do you know that sometimes during these last few days, since I heard of those Petitions, I have almost prayed that if such a fearful crime and curse could be hanging over England, my Mother might be taken to God first, and learn about it first there, where we shall understand it all. But you have comforted me, Olive. I need make no such prayers. What I have so dreaded can never be."

I felt almost guilty of falsehood in letting her thus take comfort. Yet if my husband's fears about Lady Lucy were well-founded, there was little need for such a prayer. And to Time I might surely leave it to unveil the horrors that after all might be averted.

But no intervention from above or from below came to avert the steady unfolding of the great tragedy on which the nation's eyes were fixed.

The king went on to his doom, as the doomed in some terrible old tragedy of destiny, tremblingly watchful for the storm to break from the side whence there was no danger, but all the time advancing with blind fearlessness to confront the lightnings which were to smite him.

In the solitary sea-washed walls of Hurst Castle he listened for the stealthy tread of the assassin. And when at midnight, on the 17th of December, the creak of the drawbridge was heard between the dash of the waves, and then the tramp of armed horsemen echoing beneath the castle-gate, the king rose and spent an hour alone in prayer. Colonel Harrison, who commanded these men, had been named to him as one likely to be employed to assassinate him. "I trust in God who is my helper," said the king to his faithful servant, Herbert; "but I would not be surprised. This is a fit place for such a purpose," and he was moved to tears; no unmanly tears, and no groundless fears. He was not the first of his unhappy race who had been the victim of treacherous midnight murders. But when on the morrow he recognized in Colonel Harrison's frank countenance and honest converse one incapable of such baseness, his spirits rose, and he rode away almost gayly with his escort of gallant and well-mounted men, courteous enough in their demeanour to him. In the daylight, and in the royal halls of Windsor, where they lodged him, he felt strong again in the sacredness of the king's person, and alas he fancied himself strong in those false schemes of policy which, and which only, had divested his royal person of its sacredness in the hearts of his people. "He had yet three games to play," he said, "the least of which gave him hope of regaining all."

On the 5th of January he gave orders for sowing melon-seed at Wimbledon; and dwelt on Lord Ormond's work for him in Ireland. He made a jest of the threat of bringing him to a public trial. Kings had been killed in battle, treacherously put to agonizing deaths in dungeons whose walls tell no tales, and let no cries of anguish through, secretly stabbed at midnight. But the rebels it seemed plain were not foes of that stamp. Even the example three of his Cavaliers had lately given them in treacherously assassinating Rainsborough, one of Cromwell's bravest officers at Doncaster, kindled in the most fanatical of the Roundheads no emulation, but simply a burning indignation and contempt. Save the sword of battle, or the dagger of the murderer, no weapon was known wherewith to kill a king. The Roundheads did not number assassination among their "instruments of justice." The war was over. What then was there for His Majesty to fear?

Strafford, indeed, had been almost as confident up to the last. And neither gray hairs or consecration had saved the Archbishop's head from the scaffold. But between an anointed king and the loftiest of his subjects, according to the royal and the royalist creed, the distinction was not of degree but of nature.

All the courts of Europe surely would rise and interfere ere a king should be tried before a tribunal of his lieges, of creatures who held honour and life by his breath.

Nor only earthly courts. Would the One Tribunal before which a sovereign alone could be summoned, suffer such an infringement of its rights?

So the king went on jesting at the thought of his subjects bringing him to trial, playing his "three games," and peacefully sowing seeds for more harvests than one.

And meanwhile Cromwell came back slowly advancing from Scotland to London; Petitions for Justice on the Chief Delinquent lay on the table of the House of Commons not unheeded; on the 6th of January, Colonel Pride, with his soldiers, guarded the door of the House of Commons, and sent thence every member who disposed still to prolong treaties with the king; in the afternoon of that same 6th of January, General Cromwell was thanked by the "purged" house, or Rump, of fifty members, for his services, and the High Court of Justice was instituted for the trial of "Charles Stuart, for traitorously and tyrannically seeking to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people." And on the 19th of January, not three weeks after he had been tranquilly planning at Westminster for his summer garden crops, and sowing seed for other harvests in Ireland, the king was sitting in Westminster Hall arraigned before this Court as a "tyrant, traitor, and murderer."

And still only were the heavens unmoved, but not a word of remonstrance or of generous pleading had come from one crowned head in Europe.

But meantime over our little world at Netherby that awful Presence was hovering to which all the outward terrors that may, or may not surround it, the midnight dagger, the headsman's axe, the crowds of eager gazers around the scaffold, are but as the trappings of the warrior to his sword, or the glitter of the axe to its edge. Death was silently wearing away the little remaining strength of Lady Lucy Davenant.

There was one amongst us nearer the beginning of the new life than any of us knew, so near that the roar of the political tempest around us was hushed ere it reached her chamber, and she lay on the threshold of the other world almost as unconscious of the storms of this as our little infant Magdalene, whose cradle she used to delight to have beside her.

I can remember, as if it were yesterday, the dim tender smile with which she used to watch the babe asleep beside her.

Once she said to me,--

"There seems to me something strangely alike, Olive, in the darling's place and mine, though to all outward seeming so different. I lie and look at her and think of the angels in the Percy Shrine at the Minster at Beverly, how they bear in their arms to Jesus a little helpless new-born soul, and He stretches out His hands to take it to His bosom--a soul new-born from death, to the deathless life with Him.

"Sometimes it seems like that, Olive, what is coming to me; so great and perfect the change. Sometimes so easy and simple; more like laying aside garments we have worn through the night bathing in the water of life, and stepping refreshed, strong, and 'clothed in raiment clean and white'--into the next chamber, to meet Him who awaits us there. So little the change, for we have in us the treasure we shall bear with us. The new eternal life is in our Lord, and not in any state or time; and since we have him with us, both here and there, it seems only like stepping a little further into the Father's house--from the threshold to the inner chambers--and hearing Him nearer and seeing Him more clearly. Tell Lettice I had these comforting thoughts, Olive," she would say; "I cannot speak to her, she is too much moved; and she wants me to say I long to stay on earth, and I cannot, Olive. I cannot feel at home any more here since Harry is gone. And I am so weak and sinful, I may do harm, as well as good by staying longer, even to Lettice, poor tender child. The world--at least the world here in England--is very dark to me. And sometimes I think it will all soon end, not this war only, but all wars, and the kingdom come for which the Church prayed so long, and the glorious Epiphany."

One thing I remarked with Lady Lucy, as with others whom since I have watched passing from this world of shadows into the world of real things. The lesser beliefs which separate Christians seemed forgotten, fallen far back into the distance and the shade, in the light of the great truths which are our life--which are Christianity. The spontaneous utterances of such Christian deathbeds as I have watched, have had little of party-beliefs, and of party-politics nothing. As Lady Lucy herself once said,--

"Oh, if all could only see Him as He is! We are divided because we are fragments: the whole race is fallen and broken into fragments. But in Him, in Christ, all the broken fragments are one again and live. Truth is no fair ideal vision: it is Christ."

And again she would speak of her death with infinite comfort. "He died really--really as I must," she said; "the flesh failed, the heart failed, but he overcame. He offered Himself up without spot to God, and me, sin-stained as I am, in Him--the Son, the Redeemer, the Lord. And the Father was in Him, reconciling the world to Himself. And we are in Him, reconciled, for ever and ever."

Now and then she would ask if we had heard news of the king. And we gave her such general and vague accounts as we dared, deeming it unmeet to distress her with perplexities which would so soon be unperplexed to her. And this was easy, her attention being seldom now fixed long on any subject.

On the 6th of January Roger came on his way to London from the North--on the old Christmas day, which Lady Lucy had continued to keep.

In the morning Lettice had read her the gospel for the day.

In the afternoon when she saw Roger, connecting him with the army and the king, she asked at once for his Majesty.

"The king is at Windsor," Roger said.

"At home!" she said with a smile; "at home again for the Christmas. That is well."

Roger made no reply, and, to the relief of all, her mind passed contentedly from the subject. She took Lettice's hand and Roger's in hers, and pressed them to her lips, and murmured, "My God, I thank Thee." And then, as a faintness came over her, we all withdrew but Lettice.

Roger and I were alone in the ante-room. He was waiting to bid Lettice farewell. When she came out of her mother's chamber she sat down on the window seat, her eyes cast down, her trembling mute lips almost as white as her cheeks.

Roger went towards her, and stood before her; but she made no movement and did not even lift her eyelids, heavy and swollen as they were with much weeping.

"Lettice," he said, "let me say one word before I go. Let me say one word to comfort you in this sorrow, for is not your sorrow mine?"

"Of what avail?" she said. "You are taking the king to London to die. The greatest crime and curse is about to fall on the nation, and you will go and share and sanction it, and make it your own. No word of mine will move you--how can word of yours comfort me? You will, if you are commanded by him you have chosen for your priest and king, keep guard by the scaffold while the king is murdered. Did not you tell me so two hours since? Did not I entreat and implore and tell you you were digging a gulf, not only, between me and you, but between you and heaven?"

He stood for a few moments silent and motionless, and then he said: "And did I not tell you, that, as a soldier I could do no otherwise unless I deserted my chief, nor as a patriot unless I betrayed my country? It is the king who has betrayed us, Lettice; who has refused to let us save him and trust him. The hand that could have stopped all the oppression and injustice at the source--from the beginning--and _did not_, must be the guiltiest hand of all. It is _falsehood_ that is leading the king to this end, not the country, nor the Parliament, nor General Cromwell."

At last she looked up,--"Do not try to persuade me, Roger," she said, "God knows I am too willing to be persuaded. I cannot reason about it any more than about loving my Mother or obeying my Father. I dare not listen to you. I am untrue," she added, bursting at length into passionate tears, "I have been a traitor, to let my Mother be deceived--to let her thank God for what can never be!"

"Lettice," he said in a tone of anguish, "if you reproach yourself, if you call yourself a traitor, what am I?"

"You are as true as the Gospel, Roger," she said, her sobs subsiding into quiet weeping; "as true as heaven itself. You would never have done what I did. You would break your own heart and every one's rather than utter or act one falsehood, or neglect one thing you believe to be duty. That is what makes it so terrible."

His voice trembled as he replied,--"You trust me, and yet you think me capable of a terrible crime."

"I know that to lay sacrilegious hands on the king is an unspeakable crime," said she; "but to trust you is no choice of mine. I cannot tear the trust of my heart from you if I would, Roger, and God knows I would not if I could."

A light of almost triumphant joy passed over his face, as, standing erect before her, with folded arms, he looked on her down-cast face,--

"Then the time must come when a delusion that cannot separate us in heart can no longer separate us in life," he said, in tones scarcely audible. "Your Mother said the truth, Lettice, when she joined our hands. Such words from her lips at such a time are surely prophecy."

Lettice shook her head.

"My Mother saw beyond this world," she said, mournfully; "where there are no delusions, and no divisions, and no partings."

He bent before her for an instant, and pressed her hand to his lips. And so they parted.

That night Lettice and I watched together by Lady Lucy's bedside. And all things that could distract and divide seemed for the time to be dissolved in the peace of her presence.

She revived once or twice and spoke, although it seemed more in rapt soliloquy than to any mortal ear.

"Everything grows clear to me," she said once; "everything I cared most to see. The divisions and perplexities which bewilder us here are only the colours the light puts on when it steps on earth. On earth it is scarlet and purple and bordered work; in heaven it is fine linen, clean and white, clean and white."

Often she murmured in clear rapid tones, very awful in the silence of the sick-chamber at night, the words,--

"The king, the king!"

Lettice and I feared to go to her to ask what she meant, dreading some question we dared not answer. We thought belike her mind was wandering, as she did not seem to be appealing to us or looking for an answer.

But at length the words came more distinctly, though broken and low, and then we knew what they meant,--

"The King! King of kings! Faithful and true. Mine eyes shall see the King in His beauty. He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, King of the poor, King of the nations, King of kings, Faithful and true. I am passing beyond the shadows. I begin to see the lights which cast them. Beyond the storms--I see the angels of the winds. Beyond the thunders--they are music, from above. Beyond the clouds--they are the golden streets, from above. Mine eyes shall see the King--as He is; as thou art; no change in Thee, but a change in me. In Thy beauty as Thou art."

All the following day the things of earth were growing dim to her, but to the last her courtesy seemed to survive her strength. No little service was unacknowledged; even when the voice was inaudible, the parched lips moved in thanks or in prayer.

And on the early morning of the 21st of January she passed away from us, her hand in Lettice's, her eyes deep with the awful joy of some sight we could not see.

On the evening of that very day came the tidings that the king had been brought, on the 19th of January, as a criminal, before the High Court of Justice in Westminster Hall, to be tried for his life as the "principal author of the calamities of the nation."

When Lettice heard it, the first burst of tears came breaking the stupor of her sorrow, as she sobbed on my shoulder, "Thank God she is safe, beyond the storms of this terrible distracted world. She is gone where she will never more be perplexed what to believe or what to do."

"She is gone," said my Father, tenderly taking one of her hands in his, "where loyalty and love of country, and liberty and law are never at variance; where the noblest feelings and the noblest hearts are never ranged against each other. And we hope to follow her thither."

"But oh," sobbed Lettice, "this terrible space between!"

"Look up and press forward, my child," he replied, "and the way will become clear. Step by step, day by day; the space between is the way thither."