“Strafford had offered his brain and arm to establish a system which would have been the negation of political liberty. Laud had sought to train up a generation in habits of thought which would have extinguished all desire for political liberty.”

S. R. Gardiner.

History of the Great Civil War, Vol. II.

Norton found only one occupant of the snug tap-room of the inn, and this was a severe-looking man, who seemed absorbed in a news journal. His prominent ears, the closely-cropped dark hair, and the austerity of his whole manner tickled the Royalist’s sense of humour, and though certain that to draw information from those thin compressed lips would be like drawing water from a dry well, he greeted him pleasantly.

“Good day, Sexton,” he said.

Waghorn lifted his piercing eyes and regarded him with grave disapproval.

“I am no sexton, sir, you mistake my calling,” he said.

“Your pardon! but, in truth, you look like a sexton, there is an air of graves and mould about you, of skulls and crossbones,” replied Norton, laughing. “Perhaps, however, sexton or no, you can tell me the name of the Vicar, for I am a stranger here, and have just spoken with him and his daughter.”

“The Vicar is the son of that vile prelate, Bishop Coke, who lives in palaces while the poor starve, one of the hirelings that devour the flock, one of those twelve prelates who sought to break the law of the land, and were justly cast into the Tower. Would that they had remained there,” said the Puritan, bitterly.

“And this son of his, your Vicar, doth he share the Bishop’s views?”

“I know not,” said Waghorn, and an expression of genuine perplexity dawned in his eyes. “He did feed Massey’s men t’other day when they were cold and hungry.”

“The devil he did?” exclaimed Norton. “Doth he then side with the Parliament?”

“In truth, sir, he is one that hates the war, but whether he thinks one side better than the other I know not. As for the lady, she is no daughter of his, but his niece, Mistress Hilary Unett, and she, I understand, hates all godly Puritans, and favours such godless men as Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice. I speak over-freely, however, for I see you are a King’s officer.”

“Nay, man, I like the freedom of your speech,” said Norton, with a laugh. “Judging by your looks I took you for a man of few words, but, beshrew me! you are as good a talker as I have met in these parts.”

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh,” said Waghorn. “My thoughts are ever of how to thwart those who are half-hearted in the work of the Lord, those who would keep crosses standing because, forsooth, they are old. Many things are old yet have to be utterly destroyed. The brazen serpent was old, yet, when the people bowed down to it, then it had to be ground to powder. And so shall it be now, in spite of the Vicar. All he cares for is its great antiquity—if a heathen idol were brought across the seas, and if it were curiously wrought, I trow the Vicar would be right proud to place it among his hoards, and he and Mr. Silas Taylor would try to make out its age and its history, as they do with their vain stones, and their bones of those that be dead and gone.”

Norton’s eyes twinkled, with amusement.

“So the Vicar is an antiquary,” he said. “Well, I care not a doit for the churchyard cross, or the church itself for that matter.” And with a careless “good-day” he strolled out to the door, where his horse awaited him.

“He cares for little but success,” reflected Waghorn, shrewdly. “An ambitious pagan, a carnal man who would ride to his own evil desires through thick and thin. Yet methinks he might serve as a tool in the good cause. I will mark his movements closely, and use him when the time serves.”

With a deep sigh he returned to the perusal of the paper. It was an old number of the “Mercurius Aulicus,” a most bitter Royalist sheet published at Oxford, and notorious for the lies and the opprobrious language it employed. To read it always stirred the Puritan into a fiery indignation, which would have been excusable had he not afterwards found a secret pleasure in the excitement. He then sought refuge in the denunciatory psalms, and went back to his work breathing threatenings and slaughter against the opponents of all that he deemed right. Waghorn was one of the vast number of well-meaning people who call themselves followers of Christ, but jealously demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and conveniently skip the commandment, “Love your enemies.”

Meanwhile a momentary gleam of hope had come to Hilary. She had at first leapt to the conclusion that Norton had seen Gabriel during the campaign of the present year, but now she suddenly remembered that after the siege of Hereford Waller’s forces had retired to Gloucester. Was it not possible that he had met him there? If so, it was almost immediately after the cruel rebuff she had given him in the cathedral porch. Could she honestly blame him if after that he had taken her at her word? Was he not perfectly free to fall in love with this Gloucestershire lady?

Then with a sense of relief she recalled Dr. Harford’s talk when he had visited them on his return from London. Had he not quoted to her Gabriel’s own words—his conviction that her message had brought him back to life? He might perhaps have had a passing admiration for the Puritan maid, but had it amounted to anything more she was certain that he would never have sent her such a message.

With that, however, the cold wave of doubt returned. What if Waller had been this year in Gloucestershire? He was frequently in the West, and what more likely than that long absence, the tedium of the campaign, and possibly the malign influence of the arch-rebel, Cromwell, had gradually wrought a change in Gabriel’s character? She remembered how greatly the two years’ absence in London had altered him. Was it not only too probable that this apparently endless war had changed him yet more?

“If only I had asked Colonel Norton when he had encountered him,” she reflected, miserably, “but in the agony of the moment all I thought of was how to hide everything. He can never have guessed, that is one comfort; and I’ll never, never speak of the matter again should he come here. Yet if only I could know for certain when it was! I will, at any rate, see if Uncle Coke knows.”

So, after dinner, when the Vicar was filling his pipe, she asked, with well-assumed indifference, “did Captain Bayly give you much news of Gloucester, sir, the other night? Had he been there in the siege?”

“Nay; I gathered that he had only quitted his home at Poole, in Dorsetshire, a short time ago. Governor Massey had persuaded him to come into Herefordshire because he had seen something in Dorset of the movement of the Clubmen, which they say is now spreading to our county.”

“What are the Clubmen?” asked Hilary.

“They are those country-folk who are determined to have nothing to do either with Royalists or Parliamentarians, but league themselves together to defend their homes and families.”

“In truth, then, sir, I think you yourself are one,” said Hilary, smiling. “For you certainly hold aloof from both parties in one sense, and feed the hungry without respect of persons or opinions.”

“Child, my first duty is to obey the Prince of Peace,” said the Vicar. “I do not understand the violent warlike spirit of most of our clergy, or the bitter words of the Puritan preachers. But it hath never been my fortune to agree well with parsons; the bulk of them seem to me absorbed in the little interests of their parishes, wrapped up in their own narrow opinions and unmindful of greater things.”

Hilary was silent; she wondered what it was that made her uncle so unlike such a parson as Prebendary Rogers, of Stoke Edith, and she tried to understand why he was always at his best when with men of other callings. Much as she loved him, and greatly as she had been influenced by his gentle, kindly spirit, and by the quiet humour which had done so much to cheer her sadness, he was still something of an enigma to her. But she had a suspicion that the true key to his life lay in the old saying, “The liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand.”

But a long digression had been made, and she was deter mined to bring back the conversation to the question she had at heart before the Vicar lighted his pipe.

“When was Sir William Waller’s army last in Gloucestershire?” she asked.

“Well, it must have been just six months ago, I should say,” said the Vicar. “Yes, for I remember we were haymaking in the glebe when Mr. Taylor told me how Waller’s army had twice well-nigh succeeded in capturing His Majesty, who was chased from one county to another. You must remember hearing of Sudeley Castle being taken, and of how scores of bridges in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire were broken down by the two armies, so that they said it would cost £10,000 to make them good again. That was last June, my dear.”

“Colonel Norton said something about it,” said Hilary, steadily, and the Vicar was too much engrossed in the difficult operation of lighting his pipe to notice that she had grown white to the lips.

“Ah, a pleasant-spoken man,” he remarked, “but I don’t like what I hear about the doings of his garrison. Maybe he only carries out his orders, but it is a grievous strain on the people.”

Hilary stole quietly away and would gladly have been alone, but Mrs. Durdle besought her so earnestly to come into the kitchen that she could not refuse.

“Come, dearie, and stir the Christmas pudding,” said the housekeeper, “just for old times’ sake. I’m sadly behindhand this year, but there was no getting the currants from Ledbury with all them soldiers infesting the place. Stir and wish, my dear, stir and wish.”

“There’s nothing left to wish for,” said Hilary, sadly.

“Oh! my dear, how you do talk, and you so young and fair to see.”

“I wish, then, that this hateful war was over,” said Hilary, stirring the sticky yellow and black compound, which turned so reluctantly in the great basin.

“How I do remember that time when you and Mr. Gabriel was children at Hereford, and both sat on the table a-stirring the pudding,” said Durdle. “’Twas the day Sir Robert Harley’s dog bit his arm.”

“And I wished for a new doll,” said Hilary, smiling a little as she moved towards the door.

“And a very sensible wish, too, dearie, seeing that the dog had chewed and spoilt the old one,” said Durdle. “Don’t you be above takin’ on with new friends when the old friends leave you.”

“Which means,” reflected Hilary, as she sought her own room, “that Durdle has heard of gallant Colonel Norton’s appearance this morning, and is already weaving a romance in her foolish old head. No, no, I have done with all that!”

Through the days that followed, Hilary’s heart was very sore, but, to some extent, her pride provided an antidote to the pain. She knew that she herself was chiefly to blame for the change in Gabriel, but, nevertheless, his change angered her and wounded her to the quick. Before long she turned resolutely from all thought of him, and resolved to fill her life to the brim with work which should leave no leisure for vain regrets, and, having much’ strength of character, she carried out her intentions with more success than might have been expected.

It spoke something for Colonel Norton, that several days passed before he permitted himself to call at Bosbury. His passion for Hilary was no loftier than the rest of his amours. but something in the Vicar’s allusion to Lady Lucy had once more touched into life the better side of his nature, nor had he failed to note the womanly insight and sympathy in Hilary’s face when she had first heard of his loss. For very shame he could not just yet begin to weave his evil snaring net about her.

But on Christmas Day, when it would hardly do to permit the soldiers to go out on a foraging expedition, he rode over to Bosbury, greatly exciting the congregation by entering the church in the middle of the Te Deum. Sprigs of holly and box were stuck at the end of every seat, and amid the greenery Norton was not long in discovering the face he sought, though only a profile was visible, framed in a dainty black velvet hood, bordered with white swansdown.

He thought it was the most lovely face it had ever been his good fortune to see, and the pride plainly shown in the arched nostril and the poise of the head entranced him. Little Mistress Nell, with her pink-and-white prettiness and her fair hair, was altogether thrown into the shade by this beautiful Herefordshire maiden.

The Vicar, with a considerate care for the anxious housewives and the family dinners, did not preach a long sermon, but said a few practical words as to the possibility of striving, even now, for peace on earth and goodwill to men. Great boughs of fir and festoons of trailing ivy mitigated the ugliness of Waghorn’s “good honest white glass” window, and as the familiar Bosbury carol, which had served Gabriel so well the previous year at Oxford, rang out cheerfully, the very spirit of Christmas seemed to pervade the place.

Norton, who, with all his faults, responded quickly to some of the better influences in life, felt touched and softened. When he lingered in the porch to greet the Vicar and his niece, no one could have been more manly and attractive in tone and bearing, so that it was quite inevitable that the hospitable Vicar should press him to stay and dine at the Vicarage.

And thus it fell about that the fateful turkey which had been the cause of that first encounter with Hilary, again appeared upon the scene, and was pronounced by the Governor of Canon Frome to be the finest bird that had ever provided a good Christmas dinner for hungry mortals. In the afternoon Hilary sang to them, and then it conveniently happened that a parishioner wished to say a few words to the Vicar, and Norton to his great satisfaction found himself tÊte-À-tÊte with the singer.

“I wonder whether you can guess what a red-letter day this will always be in my life,” he said, drawing a little nearer to her. “’Tis years since I had a quiet home Christmas like this, never once since the first Christmas just after our marriage.”

She liked him for speaking of his dead wife—it set her wholly at her ease with him; moreover, his manner had been so careful that she had never felt the need of holding him at a distance, as was the case with several of the men she had come across.

They drifted now into a friendly little talk about his Gloucestershire home, about the Lady Lucy, and about the wretchedness of his life at the time of her death. He told her nothing but the truth, for his misery had been intense, and his love for his wife was genuine. But naturally he never allowed her to guess that his wickedness had broken Lady Lucy’s heart, and that her death was as truly his doing as if he had actually murdered her.

This interview was the first of quite a series, for it was wonderful how often it chanced that the Governor of Canon Frome was obliged to ride over to Bosbury, and how admirably he timed his visits in order to snatch a talk with Hilary. Sometimes he brought rare curiosities for the Vicar’s collection, and would spend hours patiently listening to his remarks on the probable age and possible history of some bit of old oak; and if there was no better excuse he would ride over with a pamphlet or a news book, and linger to discuss the latest tidings.

The death of Archbishop Laud was a perfect Godsend to him, for on no less than three occasions was he able to bring news-books describing from different points of view the last sad scene on Tower Hill.

Hilary shed tears at the thought of the poor feeble old man brought out to die on that cold January day, and forgetting that Gabriel, though disapproving his system, would probably regret his execution, let her heart grow hot with wrath at the thought that he was allied to the party which had carried out the sentence, and hated him with the sort of hatred which can in some natures follow love. Norton’s sympathy and his real distress at the sight of her grief drew her much closer to him; she began to reflect that his companionship was the chief pleasure of her life just at present, and to own to herself that a visit from him was a wonderful relief in the grey monotony of that sad winter.

Norton quickly perceived the hold he was gaining on her, and was about to venture on a little very cautious love-making, when to his annoyance the Vicar, for whose return he was nominally waiting, strode into the room. He greeted him gravely, but from his agitated manner the Colonel at once perceived that something serious had occurred.

“Colonel Norton has brought another account of the Archbishop’s execution, sir,” said Hilary, rising to give him the news-book.

He took it absently and laid it down on the table among his fossils.

“The most horrible scene has just been enacted,” he said, in a voice that was tremulous with indignation; “and your soldiers from Canon Frome, sir, were the perpetrators of the outrage.”

Norton looked concerned; he had in truth more than once spared the inhabitants of Bosbury because he wished to keep his footing at the Vicarage.

“What hath chanced, sir?” he inquired.

“I walked to an outlying house in my parish,” said the Vicar; “Old Mutlow’s farm at Swinmore, Hilary, you know the place. To my horror, when I got there it was in flames, the poor old man half frantic, but far too infirm to attempt to save his goods, and your men, sir, protesting that they had the right to burn his home because he had not paid his contribution.”

“Well, sir,” said Norton, “I confess your tale relieves me. I feared that in my absence the men might have waxed as cruel as General Gerrard’s men t’other day in Montgomeryshire, who not only burnt the farm, but the mother and the children inside it. I am glad this old peasant fared better. As you will understand, we must punish those who refuse their aid, and we are bound to get money somehow.”

“And how much will your devilish house-burnings put into the King’s coffers? How far will they help him to victory?” said the Vicar, in such wrath as Hilary had not imagined him capable of. “I tell you, sir, this cruel and damnable practice will bring down the curse of the Almighty on His Majesty’s cause. Leave us for a moment, my child, I have a word or two to say to Colonel Norton in private.”

Hilary, with a smile of farewell to Norton, curtseyed and left the room, and a very grave talk between the two men followed. To judge by the expression of the Colonel’s face as he rode back to Canon Frome, he had not found it altogether to his mind.

“That old antiquary is a shrewder man of the world than I took him for,” he reflected, as he dug his spurs savagely into his horse and galloped over a stretch of unenclosed ground. “I must devise some means for getting him out of the way, or he will be seeing through my little game and suspecting that I am no better than the men he was abusing. He is too plain-spoken by half—actually protested that I was permitting the garrison to become a nursery of lawless vice! Well, I’ll avoid Bosbury for a week or two, and then pacify him with some rare old bone. How could I guess that the farm at Swinmore, miles away, was in his parish? He must be mollified with old remains for the present, and when a fitting opportunity arrives, by hook or by crook, I’ll have him snugly tucked up in Hereford Gaol. Prince Maurice is soon to be Major-General of the county, and I can do what I please with him. Then, when once the parson is safely clapped up, pretty Hilary will naturally enough be in my power.”

He laughed aloud at the prospect of the Vicar’s discomfiture, and by the time he had reached Canon Frome Manor was once more in excellent spirits.