"Nothing, but the falling of a full-ripe fruit, that began to blossom two years agone," says the old gentleman cheerfully; "it hath been long a-ripening, "twas time it should fall."
"Give me none of your parables, good friend; I want plain speech,"
cries our aunt; and Master Harry said bluntly,--
"Madam, it"s all along of the new Act for Uniformity which was printed and set forth this last May. You were too full at that time of your apprehensions for these young ladies to be curious to read that mischievous Act; but, since it touches my father nearly, he mastered its meaning with great pains, and has thought of little else for many days; and the upshot of all this is, that next Bartholomew-tide he will go forth, like Abraham of old, to wander he knows not whither;" at which words Mrs. Golding sighed deeply, and sat as one amazed.
"It is even so, my kind friend," said Mr. Truelocke, smiling.
"Well, I can"t tell what you may think here of the matter," went on Master Harry; "but in my conscience, I think my father"s conscience something too tender."
"You speak like a man of this world, Harry," says Andrew, who had come in, and was looking at the young man with frowning brows and angry eyes.
"How else would you have me speak?" says Harry. "I am but a plain sailor, and I pretend not to know any world but this work-a-day world that I have to get my bread in. I leave the new worlds in the moon, or beyond it, to poets and madmen; and I"ll tell you my mind of the matter, if you will hear me.
He stopped, and Mrs. Golding said, "Speak your mind, Master Harry, it"s ever an honest mind, and full of goodwill."
"I will venture then," said he, "and do you bear with me, Andrew, and father too. I take it the Church of this country is a good ship that has to sail whither her owners will. A while since they were all for steering her straight to the Presbyterian port; now that voyage likes them not, and they would have her make for Prelacy. It"s pity that the good ship has owners of such inconstant minds; but why should not the crew obey orders, and sail the ship as they are bid?"
"Wrong, all wrong, all wrong, Harry, my boy," said the old man, with a groan; "thou hast no spiritual sense of these things. How dare Christ"s liegemen take their orders from the carnal rulers of this or any other country? Have I not seen the government of England change like the moon, ay, and more strangely? and shall I follow the changing moon as doth the faithless sea, ebbing and flowing in my zeal for truth like the tide?
Nay verily! what was G.o.d"s truth in Oliver"s days is the truth of G.o.d still; and I will cleave to it."
As I gazed at the old man"s face, pale and wrinkled and awful, I thought that so might have looked the prophet Moses when he brake the tables of the Law. Mr. Truelocke"s deepset dark eyes flashed fire under his long white eyebrows, which themselves seemed to stir and to rise and fall, as he spoke with great pa.s.sion, and he struck his staff against the floor.
Althea was looking from one to another, something puzzled; presently her silver voice broke the silence that had fallen upon us; she said, "All that you say is so dark to me, it makes me feel like a fool for my lack of comprehension; will you, madam, tell me in a few words what it is that troubles you and Mr. Truelocke?"
"It"s our new masters, dear heart, who have been making of new laws,"
said Mrs. Golding; and Andrew added instantly,--
"Our pastors, madam, must consent to renounce the Covenant, and must use the Common Prayer-Book as newly set forth by authority of King Charles the Second and his Parliament; or they must leave to preach and to pray in the churches called of England, and must renounce their livings too; and this by the twenty-fourth of August next, which the Papists and such-like cattle call St. Bartholomew"s Day. That is the story in little of the doings which afflict our good mother and our reverend friend."
"It"s a dry short setting forth of the matter, friend Andrew," said the old man.
"But is it a true one?" asked Althea.
"Yea," said he, "too true, this is the new law; but I shall, as I think, follow after the footsteps of G.o.dly Mr. Baxter; he hath already ceased preaching, that his weaker brethren, such as I, may be in no manner of doubt as to what he thinketh. I shall not change my mind twice, once having seen the great error of my early prelatical opinions,--as your good aunt knoweth I have seen it."
"Well," said Mrs. Golding, sighing heavily, "we will pray you may have illumination from above. I cannot tell how we shall do, bereft of our father in Christ. But I dare not urge any man against his conscience.
And now am I ashamed that you have been so long within my doors and I have yet set nothing before you. Lucy, Althea, come help me;" and she bustled about, and presently with our help had set a dish of strawberries and cream, with nuts and cakes and wine, before our guests.
Mr. Truelocke ate but little, which grieved my aunt; and he would drink nothing but spring water. But Harry was gay enough for two. We could get him to touch nothing until he had both of us girls served, he saying we were greater strangers than he. And since I chose to eat nuts, he would do the same, and would crack all mine for me. He had a clever way of doing this with his hands only, which were small, but like iron for strength; I made a cup of my hands that he might pour the sweet kernels into it, and so doing we scattered some on the floor, and both dropt on our knees to pick them up, when I, being nimbler than he, had them all s.n.a.t.c.hed up before he could touch one; then we both laughed heartily. I was startled to hear myself laughing, and looked at Althea; and she seemed to be regarding me with scorn as if she despised me perfectly, so I checked my laughing and sat down quite crestfallen.
Then Harry, sitting by me, half whispered, "Now, sweet madam, if you did but know what music a heart-free laugh is to mine ears, you would not stop yours in the middle. I have no quarrel with my father"s nor your aunt"s piety, but there"s too little laughing in it."
"It"s not piety that checks me now," I said; "do not credit me with more than I have; but a new-made orphan like me might well feel it something heartless to be very mirthful."
"That"s it, is it?" said he, looking comically from me to Althea, and then at me again. "Now tell me, sweet lady, if you know any good reason why mirth should be a thing forbid to those who have had a cruel loss?
If in the middle of a winter voyage, when the stormy winds do blow, we mariners should have one fair sunshine day, we don"t spend it in bemoaning the black days that went before and the black days that will come after."
"And what has that to do with me and my griefs?" asked I.
"Only this," said he, "that you should not be less wise than a sailor lad; think no shame to be glad when your heart bids you, whatever sorrows lie before or behind you. And I"ll keep you in countenance, whenever I see your fair mournful sister reproving your gaiety with her eyes; but you must do the same by me with my father and your aunt. Is it a bargain? strike hands on it!"
He held out his hand, and I put mine into it--I could not help it; though I stole a look at Althea, but her attention was drawn away by Andrew, who was half timidly urging her to eat some more of Mrs.
Golding"s dainties; she would not, however; and presently Mr. Truelocke, who had been talking apart with Mrs. Golding, got up and would be going; so when he and Harry were withdrawn, we all went shortly to our beds, being very weary; and for my part I felt that I was in a new world I could not half understand; but there seemed some pleasant things in it.
I liked it better still as the days ran on. Country life at West Fazeby was more to my mind than ever it had been at Milthorpe. There we were waited on dutifully by kind old servants, and might not soil our fingers by any coa.r.s.e work. Here I was taken into the dairy and the still-room, and instructed in their mysteries, and in many another useful household art; I might feed the pigeons and the other pretty feathered folk in the barnyard, and I got no reproof for my coa.r.s.e tastes when I was found learning from Grace Standfast how to milk a cow, and making acquaintance with young foals and calves. There were prettier works too; gathering and making conserve of roses, and sharing in the pleasant harvest of the strawberry beds and the cherry orchard, or tossing of hay in the meadows. I will not deny that all these things were more pleasant to me that year than they have ever been since; partly because I was so new to them, and partly because Harry Truelocke often took part in them also. My merry and kind playfellow, I wonder if you have yet any heart for such simple pleasures? or if, in the midst of miseries and perils, you can still jest and laugh?
Althea went with me and shared in these occupations, except in the haymaking and the milking; but she did so with a grave and serious air, seeming to give her whole mind to the work, as if it were a task she had to learn, whereas I thought it but a delightful pastime that I loved in spite of its being profitable.
Mrs. Golding took no note, as it seemed, of Althea"s sad and steadfast ways; but Andrew marked them, I could see, though, being daily busy with out-door matters and cares of our aunt"s estate, he was but little in our company. When he was with us, he surrounded Althea with a careful, watchful kindness, treating her so reverently as if she were some sacred thing, and indeed never venturing to say much to her unless she spoke first; all which she never appeared to notice.
Now it is a strange thing that in this pretty peaceful time the stormiest day and the fruitfullest of future mischiefs should have been a certain Lord"s Day, only a week or two after our coming. It was from Mr. Truelocke that I learnt to say "the Lord"s Day," Sunday, said he, being a heathenish, idolatrous word, nor would he allow of the fashion of calling the day of rest "the Sabbath." "We keep not holy," said he, "the seventh-day Sabbath of the people of Israel, but the first day made holy for us by the resurrection of our Lord;" and I saying idly to him, out of the poet Shakespeare, whom my father loved,--
"What"s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet,"--
he looked sternly, almost angrily on me, and said, "Madam, what have ends of stage-plays, and the idle talk of a lovesick girl about her lover"s name and the names of flowers,--I say, what have these vanities to do with a glorious divine thing like the Christian"s Day of Rest? And believe me, there is much in names, too much in names. What a spell to conjure with is the name of King! and the name of Priest may make wild work in our poor England yet."
I was dumb when he reproved me thus; and thinking of it after, I began to have some glimmering why this good man should resolve to give up his all, rather than use a Prayer-Book he deemed not according to right doctrine, since he was so earnest about the right name for one holy day.
I found it to be a strong point with him, some of his flock murmuring at him about it, and saying how could we appeal to the Fourth Commandment if our holy day might not be called the Sabbath? But he cared not for their words; no, nor for king, nor for Parliament, compared with what he deemed right.
I used to wonder if his heart would have been so stout had he had wife and children to care for; but he had been many years widowed, and Harry, his only child, had carved his own way in the world, being now part owner of the ship he sailed himself.
But by whatever name folks called it, the Lord"s Day in West Fazeby was then a sweet, religious, holy day, and I loved it. Alas, to think of the changes wicked men have made!
CHAPTER III.
HOW MR. TRUELOCKE PREACHED HIS LAST SERMON IN WEST FAZEBY.
On that Lord"s Day of which I spoke, the weather was fair and bright when we went to worship in the church where Mr. Truelocke still ministered. Week after week more people came to hear him, for the time was growing short, and he was much loved; so this day the church was thronged, and we had some ado to get to our own places. As I said, the day was fair enough when we set forth, a little too hot, indeed; but we had not been long at our prayers before there came a gloom and a darkness, making the church full of shadows; and I saw the sky through the windows of a strange greenish and coppery colour.
We were singing the hymn before the sermon, when I was aware of a tall man in a whitish garment standing directly below the pulpit, still as a stone; it seemed to me I had seen him once before. When the singing was done, and we were all in readiness to hear the sermon, this man suddenly stood up on the bench, so that even in the dusky light every one could see his tall white figure, and, looking up to Mr. Truelocke in the pulpit, he said,--
"May I have liberty to speak a few words to this people?"
"You have liberty," said Mr. Truelocke; then, folding his arms on the desk, he leaned forward and looked very intently on the man, who had turned himself to face the people. They were all rustling and stirring in their places, very uneasy at the interruption. He stretched out his arms in the form of a cross, and began to speak in a full and rich voice, very musical, with strange changes in it; and always the sky grew darker in the great window behind him while he spoke.
"Friends," said he, "I have listened earnestly to your singing; and now I am constrained to speak to you and tell you the words you sang were very unsuitable to your state. For the words were those of holy, humble souls, who are athirst after G.o.d; and how many of you be there that could truly answer Yea, if one should ask whether you are come here because you hunger and thirst after righteousness? Is it not true that the best of you only take delight in the preaching of the man who stands in yon pulpit, because it is to you as a very lovely song of one that can play on a pleasant instrument? but you hear his words, and do them not. And there be some of you that only come here to display your gay apparel, caring not how foul you are within, if you are but fair without; and some of you appear here weekly, because it is a decent and seemly thing to be here, and you desire the praise of men, though you care not for pleasing G.o.d. Your religious worships and ways are vain, for they are made up only of speaking and singing other men"s words, which are not yours, nor do ye mean them truly. You were better to sit in humble silence before G.o.d, waiting till His Spirit, that enlighteneth every man, should speak in secret to your spirit.
"And I have a word to thee, Emanuel Truelocke," he continued, suddenly turning, lifting his long right arm and pointing his long finger towards Mr. Truelocke, whose pale countenance, framed in his long white hair, could still be seen looking quietly at him. "I desire to speak to thee in love, and show thee the secret of thy ill success in thy ministerings to this worldly people, who have not the excellent spirit that I gladly acknowledge in thyself. The canker of gold has been on these ministerings of thine, for thou hast yearly taken hire for them; and therefore it is that so many of these people are cold and sickly in divine things. But the Lord hath had mercy on thee, and will take away from thee the mammon whereby thou hast been deceived; and for thy sake I rejoice in thy coming downfall"--
Here there began a mighty hubbub in the place. Men stood up on benches, shaking their sticks and clenched fists against the speaker; women cried, "Shame on him! pull him down! have him away!" and many rushed upon him, struck him, dragged him down, and would soon have trampled him under their feet, but Mr. Truelocke spoke with a voice that rang like a trumpet, and said,--
"Do the man no harm; for shame, my brethren! Did not I tell him he had liberty to speak? Make me not a liar by your violence!" and then I saw several men, Andrew and Harry being foremost, raising up the stranger, for he had been felled to his knees pushing off those who were striking him, and leading him forth of the church. Then a mighty flash of lightning glared through the building, and a great peal of thunder roared and echoed after it, and the rain rushing down like a torrent drove and beat against the windows. The stranger, who had been got to the door, now turned round, crying,--
"Hearken, O people, to the voice of the Lord bearing witness against your madness!" with which words he vanished, friendly hands pulling him out of sight against his will.