"Come in! Come in! Indeed I am fain and glad to see you!" and all the way through the great hall, and into her parlour, she was beaming and uttering welcomes. "First of all, you must have a bit of eating and drinking," she said, "and then you will tell me about my boy."
"Thank you. I will take a gla.s.s of ale, if it will please you."
"It will please me beyond everything. You shall have it from the Squire"s special tap: ale smooth as oil, sweet as milk, clear as amber, fourteen years old next twenty-ninth of March. And so you know my son Edgar?"
"I know him, and I love him with all my heart. He is as good as gold, and as true as steel."
"To be sure, he is. I"m his mother, and I ought to know him; and that is what I say. How did you come together?"
"We met first at Cambridge; but we were not in the same college or set, so that I only knew him slightly there. Fortune had appointed a n.o.bler introduction for us. I was in Glasgow nearly a year ago, and I wandered down to the Green, and was soon aware that the crowd was streaming to one point. Edgar was talking to this crowd. Have you ever heard him talk to a crowd?"
The mother shook her head, and Kate said softly: "We have never heard him." She had taken off her hat, and her face was full of interest and happy expectation.
"Well," continued North, "he was standing on a platform of rough boards that had been hastily put together, and I remembered instantly his tall, strong, graceful figure, and his bright, purposeful face.
He was tanned to the temples, his cheeks were flushed, the wind was in his hair, the sunlight in his eyes; and, with fiery precipitance of a.s.sailing words, he was explaining to men mad with hunger and injustice the source of all their woes and the remedy to be applied. I became a man as I listened to him. That hour I put self behind me and vowed my life, and all I have, to the cause of Reform; because he showed me plainly that Parliamentary Reform included the righting of every social wrong and cruelty."
"Do you really think so?" asked Kate.
"Indeed, I am sure of it. A Parliament that represented the great middle and working cla.s.ses of England would quickly do away with both black and white slavery,--would repeal those infamous Corn Laws which have starved the working-man to make rich the farmer; would open our ports freely to the trade of all the world; would educate the poor; give much shorter hours of labour, and wages that a man could live on. Can I ever forget that hour? Never! I was born again in it!"
"That was the kind of talk that he angered his father with," said Mrs.
Atheling, between tears and smiles. "You see it was all against the land and the land-owners; and Edgar would not be quiet, no matter what I said to him."
"He _could not_ be quiet. He had _no right_ to be quiet. Why! he sent every man and woman home that night with hope in their hearts and a purpose in their wretched lives. Oh, if you could have seen those sad, cold faces light and brighten as they listened to him."
"Was there no one there that didn"t think as he did?"
"I heard only one dissenting voice. It came from a Minister. He called out, "Lads and la.s.ses, take no heed of what this fellow says to you.
He is nothing but a Dreamer." Instantly Edgar took up the word. "A Dreamer!" he cried joyfully. "So be it! What says the old Hebrew prophet? Look to your Bible, sir. Let him that hath a dream tell it.
Dreamers have been the creators, the leaders, the saviours of the world.
And we will go on dreaming until our dream comes true!" The crowd answered him with a sob and a shout--and, oh, I wish you had been there!"
Kate uttered involuntarily a low, sympathetic cry that she could not control, and Mrs. Atheling wept and smiled; and when North added, in a lower voice full of feeling, "There is no one like Edgar, and I love him as Jonathan loved David!" she went straight to the speaker, took both his hands in hers, and kissed him.
"Thou art the same as a son to me," she said, "and thou mayst count on my love as long as ever thou livest." And in this cry from her heart she forgot her company p.r.o.noun, and fell naturally into the familiar and affectionate "thou."
Fortunately at this point of intense emotion a servant entered with a flagon of the famous ale, and some bread and cheese; and the little interruption enabled all to bring themselves to a normal state of feeling. Then the mother thought of Edgar"s clothing, and asked North if he could take it to him. North smiled. "He is a little of a dandy already," he answered. "I saw him last week at Lady Durham"s, and he was the best dressed man in her saloon."
"Now then!" said Mrs. Atheling, "thou art joking a bit. Whatever would Edgar be doing at Lady Durham"s?"
"He had every right there, as he is one of Lord Durham"s confidential secretaries."
"Art thou telling me some romance?"
"I am telling you the simple truth."
"Then thou must tell me how such a thing came about."
"Very naturally. I told Lord Grey and his son-in-law, Lord Durham, about Edgar--and I persuaded Edgar to come and speak to the spur and saddle-makers at Ripon Cross; and the two lords heard him with delight, and took him, there and then, to Studley Royal, where they were staying; and it was in those glorious gardens, and among the ruins of Fountains Abbey, they planned together the Reform Campaign for the next Parliament."
"The Squire thinks little of Lord Grey," said Mrs. Atheling.
"That is not to be wondered at," answered North. "Lord Grey is the head and heart of Reform. When he was Mr. Charles Grey, and the pupil of Fox, he presented to Parliament the famous Prayer, from the Society of Friends, for Reform. That was thirty-seven years ago, but he has never since lost sight of his object. By the side of such leaders as Burke, and Fox, and Sheridan, his lofty eloquence has charmed the House until the morning sun shone on its ancient tapestries. He and his son-in-law, Lord Durham, have the confidence of every honest man in England. And he is brave as he is true. More than once he has had the courage to tell the King to his face what it was his duty to do."
"And what of Lord Durham?" asked Kate.
"He is a masterful man,--a bolder Radical than most Radicals. All over the country he is known as Radical Jack. He has a strong, resolute will, but during the last half-year he has leaned in all executive matters upon "Mr. Atheling." Indeed, there was enthusiastic talk last week at Lady Durham"s of sending "Mr. Atheling" to the next Parliament."
"My word! But that would never do!" exclaimed Mr. Atheling"s mother.
"His father is going there for the landed interest; and if Edgar goes for the people, there will be trouble between them. They will get to talking back at each other, and the Squire will pontify and lay down the law, even if the King and the Law-makers are all present. He will indeed!"
"It would be an argument worth hearing, for Edgar would neither lose his temper nor his cause. Oh, I tell you there will be great doings in London next winter! The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel will have to go out; and Earl Grey will surely form a new Government."
"The Squire says Earl Grey and Reform will bring us into civil war."
"On the contrary, only Reform can prevent civil war. Hitherto, the question has been, "What will the Lords do?" Now it is, "What must be done with the Lords?" For once, all England is in dead earnest; and the cry everywhere is, "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but The Bill!" And if we win, as win we must, we shall remember how Edgar Atheling has championed the cause. George the Fourth is on his death-bed," he added in a lower voice. "He will leave his kingdom in a worse plight than any king before him. I, who have been through the land, may declare so much."
"The poor are very poor indeed," said Mrs. Atheling. "Kate and I do what we can, but the most is little."
"The whole story of the poor is--slow starvation. The best silk weavers in England are not able to make more than eight or nine shillings a week. Thousands of men in the large towns are working for two-pence half-penny a day; and thousands have no work at all."
"What do they do?" whispered Kate.
"They die. But I did not come here to talk on these subjects--only when the heart is full, the mouth must speak. I have brought a letter and a remembrance from Edgar," and he took from his pocket a letter and two gold rings, and gave the letter and one ring to Mrs. Atheling, and the other ring to Kate. "He bid me tell you," said North, "that some day he will set the gold round with diamonds; but now every penny goes for Reform."
"And you tell Edgar, sir, that his mother is prouder of the gold thread than of diamonds. Tell him, she holds her Reform ring next to her wedding ring,"--and with the words Mrs. Atheling drew off her "guard" of rubies, and put the slender thread of gold her son had sent her next her wedding ring. At the same moment Kate slipped upon her "heart finger"
the golden token. Her face shone, her voice was like music: "Tell Edgar, Mr. North," she said, "that my love for him is like this ring: I do not know its beginning; but I do know it can have no end."
Then North rose to go, and would not be detained; and the women walked with him to the very gates, and there they said "good-bye." And all the way through the garden Mrs. Atheling was sending tender messages to her boy, though at the last she urged North to warn him against saying anything "beyond bearing" to his father, if they should meet on the battle-ground of the House of Commons. "It is so easy to quarrel on politics," she said with all the pathos of reminiscent disputes.
"It has always been an easy quarrel, I think," answered North. "Don"t you remember when Joseph wanted to pick a quarrel with his brethren, he pretended to think they were a special commission sent to Egypt to spy out the nakedness of the land?"
"To be sure! And that is a long time ago. Good-bye! and G.o.d bless thee!
I shall never forget thy visit!"
"And we wish "The Cause" success!" added Kate.
"Thank you. Success will come. They who _care_ and _dare_ can do anything." With these words he pa.s.sed through the gates, and Mrs.
Atheling and Kate went slowly back to the house, both of them turning the new ring on their fingers. It was dinner-time, but little dinner was eaten. Edgar"s letter was to read; Mr. North to speculate about; and if either of the women remembered Lord Exham"s expected call, no remark was made about it.
Yet Kate was neither forgetful of the visit, nor indifferent to it. A sweet trouble of heart, half-fear and half-hope, flushed her cheeks and sent a tender light into her star-like eyes. In the very depths of her being there existed a feeling she did not understand, and did not investigate. Was it Memory? Was it Hope? Was it Love? She asked none of these questions. But she dressed like a girl in a dream; and just as she was sliding the silver buckle on her belt, a sudden trick of memory brought back to her the rhyme of her childhood. And though she blushed to the remembrance, and would not for anything repeat the words, her heart sang softly to itself,--
"It may so happen, it may so fall, That I shall be Lady of Exham Hall."
CHAPTER THIRD