The Lion's Whelp

CHAPTER XIV

A LITTLE FURTHER ON

The settlement of the affairs of Anthony Lynn occupied Sir Thomas much longer than he expected, and the autumn found the family still at de Wick. For other reasons, this delay in the retirement of the country had seemed advisable. Stephen had escaped, as had also his companion conspirators, Mason and Blythe; and Matilda could not but compliment herself a little on her share in securing their safety. But the plot and its consequences had kept London on the alert all summer. Little of this excitement reached them. Sir Thomas was busy laying out a garden after a plan of Mr. Evelyn's; Lady Jevery was making perfumes and medicinal waters, washes for the toilet and confections for the table. Matilda was out walking or riding with Cymlin Swaffham, or sitting with him in the shady garden or in the handsome rooms of de Wick. Her uncle had presented her with a fine organ, but her lute suited her best, and she knew well what a beautiful picture she made, singing to its tinkling music.

If Cymlin was in the hall, she came down the stairway – flooded with coloured lights from its painted windows – lute in hand, singing – singing of young Adonis or cruel Cupid; her rich garments trailing, her white hands flashing, her face bent to her adorer, her voice filling the space with melody. Or she sat in the window, with the summer scents and sun around her, musically mocking Love, as if he never had or never could touch her. Cymlin knew all her entrancing ways, and followed her in them with wonderful prudence. No word of his great affection passed his lips; he let his eyes and his actions speak for him; and there had been times when Matilda, provoked by his restraint, had used all her fascinations to compel his confession. But she had to deal with a man of extraordinary patience, one who could bide his time, and he knew his time had not yet come.

Towards the middle of September Sir Thomas roused himself from his life among flowers and shrubs, and said he must go back to London. He was expecting some ships with rich cargoes, and the last flowers were beginning to droop, and the rooks were complaining, as they always do when the mornings are cold; the time for the outdoor life was ended; he had a sudden desire for his wharf and his office, and the bearded, outlandish men that he would meet there. And as the ladies also wished to return to London, the beautiful home quickly put on an air of desertion. Boxes littered the hall; they were only waiting until the September rain-storm should pass away, and the roads become fit for travel.

At this unsettled time, and in a driving shower, Cymlin and Doctor Verity were seen galloping up the avenue one evening. Every one was glad at the prospect of news and company, Sir Thomas so much so, that he went to the door to meet the Doctor. "Nobody could be more welcome," he said; "and pray, what good fortune brings you here?"

"I come to put my two nephews in Huntingdon Grammar school. I want them to sit where Cromwell sat," he answered.

Then he drew his chair to the hearth, where the ash logs burned and blazed most cheerfully, and looked round upon the company – the genial Sir Thomas, and his placid, kindly lady, and the beautiful girl, who was really his hostess. Nor was he unmindful of Cymlin at her side, for in the moment that his eyes fell on the young man, he seemed to see, as in letters of light, an old description of Englishmen, and to find in Cymlin its expression – "a strong kind of people, audacious, bold, puissant and heroical; of great magnanimity, valiancy and prowess."

As he was thinking these things, Sir Thomas said, "You must make us wise about events. We have had only the outlines of them, and we are going into the midst of we know not what. As to the great plot, was it as black as it was painted?"

"Like all the works of the devil, it grew blacker as it was pulled into the light. It was soon an indisputable fact, that de Baas, Mazarin's envoy extraordinary in London, was head over heels in the shameful business. I can tell you, de Baas had a most unpleasant hour with the Protector; under Cromwell's eyes and questions, he wilted away like a snail under salt."

"What did Cromwell do to him?"

"Sent him back to King Louis and to Mazarin with a letter. They have done the punishing, I have no doubt. He would better have thrown himself on Cromwell's mercy than face Mazarin with his tale of being found out. More like than not he is at this hour in the Bastile. No one will hear any more of M. de Baas."

"Then you think Mazarin was really in the plot to assassinate?"

"No doubt of it; de Baas was only his creature. Both of them should be rolled into their graves, with their faces downward."

"And King Louis the Fourteenth?"

"He knew all about the affair. Kings and Priests! Kings and Priests! they would trick the world away, were it not that now and then some brave yeoman were a match for them."

"And Prince Rupert?"

"Neck deep. That was fortunate, for he is a luckless blackguard, and dooms all he touches."

"If a man is unfortunate, he is not therefore wicked, Doctor. These men were plotting for what they believed a good end," said Matilda with some temper.

"Good ends never need assassination, my lady; if evil is done, evil will come from it."

"I think we ought to pity the men."

"Pity them, indeed! Not I! The scaffold and the halter is their just reward."

"Forty, I heard, were arrested."

"Cromwell had only three brought to trial. Gerard was beheaded, Vowell hung, Fox threw himself on Cromwell's mercy and was pardoned."

"Was not that too much leniency?"

"No. Cromwell poked the fire to let them see he could do it; but he did not want to burn every one. He has made known to England and to Europe, and especially to France, his vigilance. He has escaped the death they intended for him. He has proved to the Royalists, by Gerard's and Vowell's execution, that he will not spare them because they are Englishmen. Beyond this he will not go. It is enough. Most of the forty were only tools. It is not Cromwell's way to snap at the stick, but at the cowardly hands that hold it."

"If he can reach them," muttered Matilda.

"Then, Sir Thomas, we have united Scotland to the Commonwealth. Kingship is abolished there; vassalage and slavish feudal institutions are swept away; heritors are freed from military service. Oh, 'tis a grand union for the Scotch common people! I say nothing of the nobles; no reparation has been made them – they don't deserve any; they are always invading England on one pretext or another. But they cannot now force the poor heritors to throw down their spades and flails, and carry spears for them. The men may sow their wheat and barley, and if it will ripen in their cold, bleak country, they can bake and brew it, and eat and drink it in peace."

"I do not believe Englishmen like this union, Doctor. I do not – it is all in favour of Scotland. They have nothing to give us, and yet we must share all our glory and all our gains with them. They do not deserve it. They have done nothing for their own freedom, and we have made them free. They have no commerce, and we must share ours with them. And they are a proud, masterful people; they will not be mere buttons on the coat-tails of our rulers. Union, indeed! It will be a cat and a dog union."

"I know, Sir Thomas, that Englishmen feel to Scotchmen very much as a scholar does to Latin – however well he knows it, it is not his mother tongue. What we like, has nothing to do with the question. It is England's labour and duty and honour to give freedom to all over whom her Red Cross floats; to share her strength and security with the weak and the vassal, and her wine and her oil and her purple raiment with the poverty-stricken. England must open her hands, and drop blessings upon the deserving and the undeserving; yes, even where the slave does not know he is a slave, she must make him free."

"And get kicked and reviled for it."

"To be sure – the rough side of the tongue, and the kick behind always; but even slavish souls will find out what freedom means, if we give them time."

"But, Doctor – "

"But me no buts, Sir Thomas. Are we not great enough to share our greatness? I trow we are!"

"I confess, Doctor, that in spite of what you say, my patriotism dwells between the Thames and the Tyne."

"Patriotism! 'Tis a word that gets more honour than it deserves. Half the wars that have desolated this earth have come from race hatreds. Patriotism has been at the bottom of the bloodiest scenes; every now and then it threatens civilisation. If there were no Irish and no Scotch and no French and no Dutch and no Spanish, we might hope for peace. I think the time may come when the world will laugh at what we call our 'patriotism' and our fencing ourselves from the rest of mankind with fortresses and cannon."

"That time is not yet, Doctor Verity. When the leopard and the lamb lie down together, perhaps. But all men are not brothers yet, and the English flag must be kept flying."

"The day may come when there will be no flags; or at least only one emblem for one great Commonwealth."

"Then the Millennium will have come, Doctor," said Sir Thomas.

"In the meantime we have Oliver Cromwell!" laughed Matilda, "and pray, Doctor, what state does his Highness keep?"

"He keeps both in Hampton Court and Whitehall a magnificent state. That it due to his office."

"I heard – but it is a preposterous scandal – that the Lady Frances is to marry King Charles the Second," said Lady Jevery.

"A scandal indeed! Cromwell would not listen to the proposal. He loves his daughter too well to put her in the power of Charles Stuart; and the negotiation was definitely declined, on the ground of Charles Stuart's abominable debauchery."

"Imagine this thing!" cried Matilda striking her hands together. "Imagine King Charles refused by Oliver Cromwell's daughter!"

"It was hard for Charles to imagine it," replied the Doctor.

"I hear we have another Parliament," said Sir Thomas.

"Yes; a hazardous matter for Cromwell," answered the Doctor. "All electors were free to vote, who had not borne arms against the Parliament. Most of them are Episcopalians, who hate Cromwell; and Presbyterians, who hate him still worse; and Republicans, who are sure he wants to be a King; and Fifth Monarchy men and Anabaptists, who think he has fallen from grace. Ludlow, Harrison, Rich, Carew, even Joyce – once his close friends – have become his enemies since he was lifted so far above them. And they have their revenge. Their desertion has been a great grief to the Protector. 'I have been wounded in the house of my friends,' he said to me; and he had the saddest face that ever mortal wore. Yet, it is a great Parliament, freely chosen, with thirty members from Scotland, and thirty from Ireland."

"After Cromwell's experience with the Irish," said Matilda, "I do wonder that he made them equal with Scotland."

"I do wonder at it, also. John Verity would not have done it, not he! But the Protector treads his shoes straight for friend or foe. He will get no thanks from the Irish for fair dealing; that is not enough for them; what they want is all for themselves, and nothing for any one else; and if they got that, they would still cry for more."

At this point Matilda rose and went into an adjoining parlour, and Cymlin followed her. Lady Jevery, reclining in her chair, closed her eyes, and the Doctor and Sir Thomas continued their conversation on Cromwell and on political events with unabated spirit until Lady Jevery, suddenly bringing herself to attention, said —

"All this is very fine talk, indeed; but if this great Oliver has ambassadors from every country seeking his friendship, if he has the wily Mazarin at his disposal, why can he not find out something about that poor Lord Neville? It was said when we were in Paris that Mazarin knew every scoundrel in France, and knew also how to use them. Let him find Neville through them. Has Colonel Ayrton returned, or is he also missing?"

"He returned some time ago. He discovered nothing of importance. It is certain that Neville left the Mazarin palace soon after noon on the seventh of last November; that he went directly to the house in which he had lodged, eat his dinner, paid his bill, and gave the woman a silver Commonwealth crown for favour. She showed the piece to Ayrton, and said further that, soon after eating, a gentleman called on Neville, that in her presence Neville gave him some letters, and that after this gentleman's departure, Neville waited very impatiently for a horse which he had bought that morning, and which did not arrive on time; that when it did arrive, it was not the animal purchased, but that after some disputing, Neville agreed to take the exchange. The horse dealer was a gypsy, and Ayrton spent some time in finding him, and then in watching him. For Ayrton judged – and I am sure rightly – that if the gypsy had followed and slain and robbed Neville, he could not refrain himself from wearing the broidered belt and sapphire ring of his victim. Besides which, your jewels would have been given to the women of his camp. But no sign of these things was found – kerchief, or chain or purse, or any trifle that had belonged to the unfortunate young man."

"Was there any trace of him after he left Paris?"

"Yes. Ayrton found out that he stayed half-an-hour at a little inn fourteen miles beyond Paris to have his horse fed and watered. One of the women at this house described him perfectly, and added that as he waited he was singing softly to himself, a thing so likely, and so like Cluny, that it leaves no doubt in my mind of his identity; and that he was really there 'between gloaming and moonshine' on the eleventh of last November. Beyond that all is blank – a deaf and dumb blank."

"How far was it to the next house?"

"Only two or three miles; but no one there remembered anything that passed on that night. They said that horsemen in plenty, and very often carriages, were used to pass that way, but that unless they stopped for entertainment, no attention was paid to travelers."

"Who was the gentleman who visited Cluny and received his letters?"

"Menzies of Musselburg, an old friend of Neville's mother. Ayrton went to Scotland to question him, but to no purpose."

"Then I suppose we shall see no more of Lord Neville. I am very sorry. He was a good youth, and he loved Jane Swaffham very honestly. And my jewels, too, are gone, and if it were worth while, I could be sorry for them also; one set was of great value and singular workmanship. But they count for little in comparison with Neville's life and little Jane's sorrow."

A week after this evening the Jeverys were in their own house, and Matilda had sent word to Jane Swaffham that she wanted to see her. Why she did this, she hardly knew. Her motives were much mixed, but the kindly ones predominated. At any rate, they did so when the grave little woman entered her presence. For she came to meet Matilda with outstretched hands and her old sweet smile, and she expressed all her usual interest in whatever concerned Matilda. Had she met her weeping and complaining, Matilda felt she would almost have hated her. But there was nothing about Jane suggestive of the great sorrow through which she was passing. Her eyes alone told of her soul's travail; the lids drooped, and there was that dark shadow in them, which only comes through the incubation of some long, anxious grief in the heart. But her smile was as ready and sweet, her manner as sympathetic, her dress as carefully neat and appropriate as it had always been.

Matilda fell readily under the charm of such a kind and self-effacing personality. She opened her heart on various subjects to Jane, more especially on Anthony Lynn's dramatic life and death, and the money and land he had left her. "Of course," she said, "it is only temporary. When the King comes home, Stephen will be Earl de Wick, and I shall willingly resign all to him. In the meantime I intend to carry out Anthony's plans for the improvement of the estate; and for this end, I shall have to live a great deal at de Wick. Lynn often said to me, 'Some one must own the land, and the person who owns it ought to live on it.'"

When this subject had been talked well over, Jane named cautiously the lover in France. Much to her surprise, Matilda seemed pleased to enlarge on the topic. She spoke herself of Prince Rupert, and of the poverty and suffering Charles' Court, were enduring, and she regretted with many strong expressions Rupert's presence there. "All he makes is swallowed up in the bottomless Stuart pit," she said; "even my youth and beauty have gone the same hopeless road."