LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

one loves. Kiss and be friends, Jane. I came to get your receipt for lavender conserves, and this is nothing to it."

      "Jane was conserving, yesterday," answered Mrs. Swaffham, "and she has a new receipt from her sister Armingford for brewing a drink against sleeplessness. It is to be made from the blue flowers picked from the knaps."

      "That is fortunate," said Matilda. "You know that my father has poor health, and his liking for study makes him ailing, of late. He sleeps not. I wish that I had a composing draught for him. Come, Jane, let us go to the still-room." She spoke with an unconscious air of authority, and Jane as unconsciously obeyed it, but there was a coldness in her manner which did not disappear until the royalist lady had talked with her for half-an-hour about the spices and the distilled waters that were to prevail against the Earl's sleeplessness.

      When the electuary had been prepared, the girls became silent. They were as remarkably contrasted as were the tenets, religious and civil, for which they stood. But if mere physical ascendency could have dominated Jane Swaffham, she was in its presence. Yet it was not Matilda, but Jane, who filled the cool, sweet place with a sense of power not to be disputed. Her pale hair was full of light and life; it seemed to shine in its waving order and crown-like coil. Her eyes had a steady glow in their depths that was invincible; her slight form was proudly poised; her whole manner resolute and a little cold, as of one who was putting down an offense only half-forgiven.

      Matilda was conscious of Jane's influence, and she called all her own charms forth to rival it. Putting out of account her beautiful face and stately figure as not likely to affect Jane, she assumed the manner she had never known to fail—a manner half-serious and wholly affectionate and confidential. She knew that Swaffham was always a safe subject, and that a conversation set to that key went directly to Jane's heart. So, turning slowly round to observe everything, she said,

      "How cool and sweet is this place, Jane!"

      "It is, Matilda. I often think that one might receive angels among these pure scents."

      "Oh, I vow it is the rosemary! Let me put my hands through it," and she hastily pulled off her white embroidered gloves, and passed her hands, shining with gems, through the deliciously fragrant green leaves.

      "I have a passion for rosemary," she continued. "It always perfigures good fortune to me. Sometimes if I wake in the night I smell it—I smell miles of it—and then I know my angel has been to see me, and that some good thing will tread in her footsteps."

      "I ever think of rosemary for burials," said Jane.

      "And I for bridals, and for happiness; but it

      "'Grows for two ends, it matters not at all,

      Be it for bridal, or for burial.'"

      "That is true, "answered Jane. "I remember hearing my father say that when Queen Elizabeth made her joyful entry into London, every one carried rosemary posies; and that Her Grace kept in her hand, from the Fleet Bridge to Westminster, a branch of rosemary that had been given her by a poor old woman."

      "That was a queen indeed! Had she reigned this day, there had been no Cromwell."

      "Who can tell that? England had to come out of the Valley and Shadow of Popery, and it is the Lord General's sword that shall lead her into the full light—there is something round your neck, Matilda, that looks as if you were still in darkness."

      Then Matilda laughed and put her hand to her throat, and slipped into her bosom a rosary of coral and gold beads. "It was my mother's," she said; "you know that she was of the Old Profession, and I wear it for her sake."

      "It is said that Charles Stuart also wears one for his mother's sake."

      "It is a good man that remembers a good mother; and the King is a good man."

      "There is no king in England now, Matilda, and no question of one."

      "There is a king, whether we will or no. The king never dies; the crown is the crown, though it hang on a hedge bush."

      "That is frivolous nonsense, Matilda. The Parliament is king."

      "Oh, the pious gang! This is a strange thing that has come to pass in our day, Jane—that an anointed king should be deposed and slain. Who ever heard the like?"

      "Read your histories, Matilda. It is a common thing for tyrannical kings to have their executioners. Charles Stuart suffered lawfully and by consent of Parliament."

      "A most astonishing difference!" answered Matilda, drawing on her gloves impatiently, "to be murdered with consent of Parliament! that is lawful; without consent of Parliament, that is very wicked indeed. But even as a man you might pity him."

      "Pity him! Not I! He has his just reward. He bound himself for his enemies with cords of his own spinning. But you will not see the truth, Matilda——"

      "So then, it is useless wasting good Puritan breath on me. Dear Jane, can we never escape this subject? Here, in this sweet room, why do we talk of tragedies?"

      Jane was closing the still-room door as this question was asked, and she took her friend by the arm and said, "Come, and I will show you a room in which another weak, wicked king prefigured the calamity that came to his successor in our day." Then she opened a door in the same tower, and they were in a chamber that was, even on this warm harvest day, cold and dark. For the narrow loophole window had not been changed, as in the still-room, for wide lattices; and the place was mouldy and empty and pervaded by an old, unhappy atmosphere.

      "What a wretched room! It will give me an ague," said Matilda.

      "It was to this room King John came, soon after his barons had compelled him to sign the Great Charter of Liberties. And John was only an earlier Charles Stuart—just as tyrannical—just as false—and his barons were his parliament. He lay on the floor where you are now standing, and in his passion bit and gnawed the green rushes with which it was strewed, and cursed the men who he said had 'made themselves twenty-four over-kings.' So you see that it is not a new thing for Englishmen to war against their kings."

      "Poor kings!"

      "They should behave themselves better."

      "Let us go away. I am shivering." Then as they turned from the desolate place, she said with an attempt at indifference, "When did you hear from Cymlin? And pray in what place must I remember him now?"

      "I know not particularly. Wherever the Captain-General is, there Cymlin Swaffham is like to be."

      "At Ely, they were talking of Cromwell as near to Edinburgh."

      "Then we shall hear tidings of him soon. He goes not anywhere for nothing."

      "Why do you not ask after Stephen's fortune—good or bad?"

      "I did not at the moment think of Stephen. When Cromwell is in the mind 'tis impossible to find him fit company. It is he, and he only."

      "Yet if ever Stephen de Wick gets a glimpse of home, it is not home to him until he has been at Swaffham."

      Jane made no answer, and they walked silently to the door where Matilda's carriage was waiting. Mrs. Swaffham joined them as Matilda was about to leave, and the girl said, "I had come near to forgetting something I wished to tell you. One of those men called Quakers was preaching his new religion at Squire Oliver Leder's last night. There was much disputing about him to-day."

      "I wonder then," said Mrs. Swaffham, "that we were not asked. I have desired to hear some of these men. It is said they are mighty in the Scriptures, and that they preach peace, which—God knows—is the doctrine England now needs."

      "Many were there. I heard of the Flittons and Mossleys and the Traffords and others. But pray what is the good of preaching 'peace' when Cromwell is going up and down the land with a drawn sword. It is true also that these Quakers themselves always bring quarreling and persecution with them."

      "That is not their fault," said Jane. "The preacher can only give the Word, and if people will quarrel about it and rend it to and fro, that is not the preacher's fault. But, indeed, all testify that these people called Quakers

Скачать книгу