CHAPTER I.
“Can this be HE—
That hath no privilege of gentle birth,
Beauty, nor grace, nor utterance sublime
Of words persuasive, nor the blood-bought skill
That wins i' the foughten field?”
“But even as you will, fair sir—even as you
will! Though, an' you ride for Huntingdon this
night, and wish not, ere it be two hours the later,
that you had tarried here at the White Dragon,
then am not I called Walter Danforth, nor have I
drawn good ale in Royston these forty years and
better.”
With this prophetic sentence did the lord of cup
and can wind up a long narration of roads impassable,
and bridges broken, and “all the moving accidents
of flood and field,” with which, according
to time-honoured usage among the heroes of the
spigot, he was endeavouring to beguile the lated
wayfarer. In the present instance, however, it
would seem that the ominous warnings of the worthy
Boniface were destined to be of none effect,
for with a cheery smile the traveller answered—
“'Tis like enough, good host of mine—'tis like
enough—so all the cates of the White Dragon
vie with this puissant Bourdeaux;” and, as he
spoke, he proffered to the landlord's grasp the
mighty flagon of bright pewter, which, despite his
eulogy, he had left still mantling with its generous
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liquor,—“but, were the venture deeper, I must on
to-night; and, in good sooth, too often have I jour
neyed through the midnight passes of the wild Abruzzi,
and the yet wilder Pyrenean hills of Spain,
to ponder gravely on a late ride or a sprinkled
doublet among these chalky wolds of Hertford
shire.”
“Ay! were that all—” returned the other,
heaving a long breath after the potent draught
with which he had exhausted the flagon, and eying
wistfully the coins which had dropped with so
sweet a jingle into his greasy palm,—“Ay, were
that all—but there are worse customers on Ermine-street
than darkness, or storm either, though the
clouds be mustering so black in the west yonder,
over the woods of Potton. Wise men ride not
forth nowadays an hour after sundown, nor earlier,
save in company.”
“Then must Old England be sore changed since
last I left her,” replied the traveller, a shade of
thought or sorrow, for it might be either, crossing
his features, and not entirely effaced by the frank
smile which followed it. “And if she be—” he
paused, unwilling, as brave men ever are, to utter
sentiments which might, however justified by the
occasion, sound boastfully.
“And if she be?” inquired the interested Walter,
seeing that his guest hesitated to complete his
sentence, “and if she be sore changed?”
“Why, then hath brown Bess borne me though
worse frays than I am like to meet, I trow, on this
side Huntingdon; nor will it be small peril that
shall arrest her now; and so good e'en, fair landlord.”
“A bold bird and a braggart!” muttered the disconcerted
publican, as the horseman, giving the
spur to the highbred mare of which he had just
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spoken, rode briskly off. “But if he meet with
those I wot of, he may yet crow craven.”
Who those were to whom his words so pointedly
alluded, is not perhaps a question of more than
ordinary moment, unless it be from the vast conception
of their prowess which appears to have
been entertained by the landlord of the White
Dragon; for, in truth, the gentleman who had
earned his ill-will merely by a natural reluctance
to tarry in Royston when his occasions called him
elsewhere, was of very different mould from one of
whom it would be said that he was like to fall an
easy or unresisting prey to any who should dare
dispute his progress. Removed alike from the
greenness of inconsiderate youth and from the inactivity
of an advanced age, the rider might be
looked upon as exhibiting a specimen of manhood,
in the full vigour of its endowments, both mental
and corporeal, as fair as is permitted by the imperfections
of humanity. Considerably above the ordinary
height of men, broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
and thin-flanked, he sat his charger with
an ease and firmness resulting more from natural
grace and flexibility of limb than from the practised
art of the manége. His eye was clear and
even quick, though thought and calmness seemed
to belong, rather than energy or fire, to its general
expression,—qualities belied neither by the broad
imaginative forehead, nor by the firm and slightly
compressed outline of his chiselled lips. He wore
a small mustache, but neither beard nor whiskers,
although both these were common in the last years
of the unhappy monarch who at that time swayed
the destinies of England. His hair, as was the
wont among the higher classes of society, flowed
in loose curls, trained with peculiar care, far down
the neck and over the collar of the doublet, while
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a single ringlet, longer and more assiduously cherished
than the rest, seemed to indicate that the
wearer was not of one mind with the pamphlet
lately published by the notorious Master Prynne
on the “unloveliness of love-locks.” The dress
of this cavalier, a loose velvet jerkin of that peculiar
shade which, from being the favourite colour of
the greatest painter of his day, has been dignified
with the immortal title of Vandyke, was slashed
and broidered with black lace and satin; tight
breeches of buff leather, guarded with tawny silk,
high boots, and massive spurs, completed his attire;
all save a broad-leafed hat of dark gray beaver,
with one black ostrich feather drooping from the
clasp which held it over the left eyebrow. His
military cloak of sable cloth and velvet was buckled
to the croup of his war-saddle, while from
beneath the housings of the bow peered out the
heavy pistols, which had not long before supplanted
the lance as the peculiar weapon of the horseman.
A long rapier, with its steel scabbard and
basket-hilt of silver delicately carved, hung from a
shoulder-scarf of the same colour with his doublet,
matched by a poniard of yet more costly fabric in
his Cordovan leather girdle.
When it is added that the mare which he had
styled “brown Bess” was an animal that might be
pronounced unrivalled for the rare union she displayed
of strength and beauty, of English bone and
high Arabian blood—the latter manifested in the
clean limb, full eye, and coat glancing like polished
copper to the sunlight—naught will be wanting to
the picture of the traveller who was now journeying
right onward, undismayed, if not incredulous of
all that he had heard, across the bleak and barren
hills which skirt the southern verge of Cambridgeshire.
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The season was that usually the most delicious
of the English year—the bright and golden days
of early autumn—when the promises of spring and
summer are fulfilled in the rustling harvest-field
and the rich orchard, and before the thoughts of
change, decay, and death are forced upon the mind
by the sere leaf and withered herbage. The day
had been mild and calm, and, though evening was
far advanced, the sun was still shooting his slant
rays over the rounded summits and grassy slopes
of the low hills through which the ancient Roman
way holds its undeviating course. Ere long, however,
the clouds of which the landlord had spoken
as gathering so darkly to the westward, though at
that time visible only in a narrow streak along the
edge of the horizon, began to rise in towering
masses, until the light of the declining day-god
was first changed to a dark and lurid crimson, and
then wholly intercepted. After a while the wind,
which had been slight and southerly, veered round
and blew in fitful squalls, now whirling the dust
and stubble high into the air, and again subsiding
into a stillness that from the contrast seemed unnatural.
Such was the aspect of the night when
the sun set, and the little light which had hitherto
struggled through intervals of the increasing storm-cloud,
waned rapidly to almost utter darkness. To
render the traveller's position yet less enviable, he
had already passed the open country, and was now
involved in the mazes of scattered woodland, which
in the seventeenth century overspread so large a portion
of that country. The way too, which had thus
far been firm and in good order, now running between
deep hollow banks, resembled rather a water-course
deserted by its torrent than a public throughfare;
so that his progress was both slow and painful
until he reached the banks of the Cam—at that
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place, as throughout much of its course, a strong
and turbid stream, wheeling along in sullen eddies
between shores of soft black loam. Here daylight
utterly deserted him, its last glimpse barely sufficing
to show that the bridge had been carried away,
and that the river was apparently unfordable; since
a miry track wandered away from the brink to the
left hand; as though in search of a place where it
might pass the current, and resume its natural direction
to the northward. While he was considering
what course it would be most advisable that he
should pursue, a few large heavy drops of rain
plashed on the surface of the gloomy stream, warning
the stranger to hasten his decision. Then, as
he turned to follow, as best he might, the devious
and uncertain path before him, the windows of the
heavens were opened, and down came the thick
shower, pattering on the thirsty earth, and lashing
the river's bosom into a sheet of whitened spray.
Thoroughly drenched, and almost hopeless of recovering
the true direction of his journey until the
return of daylight, it was yet not a part of that
man's character to hesitate, much less to falter or
despair. Having once determined what it would
be for the best to do, he went right onward to his
purpose, though it oftentimes required the full exercise
of spur and rein to force the gallant animal
which he bestrode against the furious gusts and
pelting storm. For a weary hour or more he plodded
onward, feeling his way, as it were, step by
step, and guided only by the flashes of broad lightning
which from time to time glared over the desolate
scene, with an intensity that merely served to
render the succeeding gloom more dreary. At
length, by the same wild illumination, he discovered
that his path once more turned northward, sinking
abruptly to the verge of that black river. Of
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the farther bank he could distinguish nothing; and
though for many minutes he awaited the return of
the electric light before attempting to stem the unknown
ford, with that singular perversity which
even things inanimate and senseless at times seem
to exhibit, the flashes returned no more. Still no
word of impatience or profanity rose to his lip, as
he spurred the reluctant mare resolutely down the
steep descent, holding his pistols, which he had
drawn from their holsters, high above his head. At
the first plunge, as he had well expected, all foot-hold
was lost, and nothing remained but a perilous swim,
not without considerable risk of finding an impracticable
bank at the farther side; but whether it was
the result of skill or of fortune, or, more probable
than either, a combination of the two, after a few
rough struggles and a scramble through the tenacious
mire, horse and man stood in safety on the
northern verge. Not yet, however, could the adventures
of that night be deemed at an end; for,
having once deviated from it during the hours of
darkness, it was no easy matter to recover the line
of the high road. The storm, it is true, after a
while abated; and the by-path into which he struck
was sufficiently hard to enable the cavalier to travel
at a pace more rapid than he had tried since quitting
Royston; but notwithstanding this, so much
time had been lost, and so small did the prospect
seem of reaching his destination, or indeed any
other village at which to pass the night, that the
merciful rider was beginning to occupy himself
in searching for such temporary shelter as a cattleshed,
or the lee-side of some lonely haystack might
afford, when his eye was attracted by a distant
light—now seen, now lost among the young plantations,
or scattered stripes of forest which checkered
everywhere the scenery. It required but a
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moment's pause to discover that the light was in motion,
and at a smaller distance than he had at first
conjectured; and though there might have been
grounds for suspicion and distrust to the weak or
timid in the place and manner of its appearance,
quickening his pace to a gallop, and somewhat altering
his course, he rode straight for the object.
Five minutes brought him to a bank and ditch,
evidently skirting the road of which he was in
quest; the clatter of the horse's hoofs as he leaped
the trifling obstacle, and landed safely on the rough
pavement of the Roman way, was, it should seem,
the first intimation of his approach that reached the
bearers of the light; for ere he could distinguish
more than the figures of two or three rude-looking
countrymen, one of them bearing on his shoulders
what resembled the carcass of a deer, it was either
extinguished altogether or suddenly veiled from
sight.
“They are upon us,” cried a hoarse voice,
“shoot, Wilkin!” and instantly the clang of a steel
crossbow, and the whistle of the heavy bolt, as it
narrowly missed the rider's ear, showed that the
mandate was complied with as promptly as delivered.
“Hold! hold your hands!” he shouted, “or ye
will fare the worse. Ye know me not, nor care I
aught for ye.”
“Fare the worse, shall we?” interrupted the
other,—“that shall we see anon. Come on, brave
boys, and down with this proud meddler!” and
with a loud fierce cry, some six or seven ruffians,
as he judged from the sound of their footsteps,
rushed against him. In the moment which had
elapsed since the first outrage, he had prepared his
weapons, and was already on his guard; but it was
not destined that he should this time need their
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service; for just as he reined up his steed, and parried
the first blow aimed at him with a crowbar or a
quarterstaff, the quick tramp of coming horsemen
was heard upon the road behind him; and with
their swords drawn, as if excited by the shout of
the ruffians, two or three persons galloped rapidly
to his assistance.
“What knaves be these?” inquired a loud and
dissonant voice from the foremost of the new-comers,
as the cavalier fell back toward his welcome
rescuers. “What knaves be these that raise this
coil on the highway?”
“Down with the thieving Girgashites!” shouted
another of the riders, ere an answer could be rendered
to the querist; and, at the word, he fired a
petronel at random, its momentary flash displaying
the marauders struggling, as best they might,
through a strong blackthorn fence, which parted the
road from a wild tract of coppice, glade, and woodland.
“Deer-stealers, Master Oliver,” he continued,
reslinging his now useless weapon, “after the
herds of my Lord De la Warr. But I have scared
them for the nonce!”
“More shame to thee, Giles Overton,” cried the
same voice which had first spoken, “and more sin
likewise, to use the carnal weapon thus in causeless
strife; setting the precious spirit of a being
like to, or it may well be better than thyself, upon
the darkling venture of chance-medley, and bartering
a human life against the slaughter of a valueless
and soulless beast. Go to, Giles Overton, see
that thou err not in the like sort again! But art
thou hurt, good sir?” proceeded the speaker, turning
in his saddle toward the traveller, for whose
safety he had come up so opportunely,—“or have
we, by the mercy of the Lord, who may in this—
if it be not presumptuous in me, considering how
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unprofitable I am, and the mean improvement of
my talent, so to judge of his workings—vouchsafe
to preserve thee for a chosen vessel. Have
we, I would say, come in season to protect thee
from these sons of Ammon?”
“Thanks to your timely aid, fair sir,” replied
the cavalier, not a little astonished at the strange
address of his preserver; for he had but recently
returned to his native land after protracted absence,
and, at the time of his departure, the reign of the
saints had not yet commenced on earth—“I am
uninjured; and now, I pray you to increase yet
farther this your kindness, by informing me the
straightest road for Huntingdon; it cannot be, I
do suppose, far distant.”
“Good lack—a stranger, by your questioning,”
answered he who had been called Oliver; “Huntingdon
do I know right well—ay! even as one
knoweth the tabernacle of his abode, and the burial-place
of his fathers; but I profess to you that it is
distant by full thirteen miles, and those of sorry
road. But ride thou on with me to Bourne, some
three miles farther, and I will bestow thee at a
house where thou mayst tarry until morn—the
Fox Tavern, I would say—Phineas Goodenough,
my glove hath fallen; I pray thee reach it to me—
a clean house, truly, kept by a worthy man—yea,
verily, a good man, one that dwelleth in the fear
of the Lord alway.”
“A stranger am I doubtless,” returned the other,
“else had I not inquired of thee that which I then
had well known; and, of a truth, I know not now
that I can do aught better than to accept your proffer
frankly as it is made!”
“Be it so!” was the ready answer. “Will it
please you to ride somewhat briskly; for myself, I
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am bound an hour's ride farther to worshipful Master
Pym's, nigh Caldecote!”
“Ha! Pym, the friend of Hampden and John
Milton—I knew not he lived hereabout,” exclaimed
the cavalier.
“And what knowest thou, so I may ask it,”
queried Oliver, “of Hampden or John Milton?
Truly, I took thee for a carnal-minded person;
but, of a surety, it is not for a man to judge!”
“For what it liked your wisdom to mistake me,
I know not; nor, to speak frankly, do I care greatly,”
replied the other; “but, to satisfy your question,
of Hampden I know nothing, save that the
mode of his resistance to that illegal claim of ship-money
hath reached my ears, even where the
tongue of England would have sounded strangely.
John Milton, if it concerns you any thing to hear
of him, was, and that too for many months, my
chosen comrade of the road, and my most eloquent
tutorer in the classic lore of Italy!”
“In Italy, saidst thou? In Italy, and with John
Milton?” answered Oliver, after a long and meditative
pause; and, as he continued, his own voice had
lost much of its harshness, and his manner not a
little of its offensive peculiarity. “A better comrade
couldst thou not have chosen than that pure-minded
Christian, that most zealous patriot. Verily,
I say to you, that, in consorting with that sanctified,
elected vessel, you must needs have imbibed some
draughts more worthy than the profane and carnal
lore of those benighted heathens, whose bestial
and idolatrous rites are even now to be found corrupting
with their accursed stench the faith which
claims to be of Jesus, even as the stinking fly
poisoneth the salve of the mediciner. Verily I
will believe that he hath opened unto you the door
of that wisdom which is alone all in all! Ay! and
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as I find you here returning hard upon his heels,
even as he hath of late returned from the city of
her that sitteth on the seven hills, clothed in the
purple of the harlot, may I not humbly hope—I
would say—confidently trust, that you will also
draw the sword of truth to defend this sore-aggrieved
and spirit-broken people from the tyrannous
oppression of their rulers, and the self-seeking
idolatries of those that sit in the high places of
the land!”
“Fair sir,” replied the cavalier, “you question
somewhat too closely; and converse, methinks, too
freely for a stranger. That I come, summoned
homeward by the rumour of these unhappy broils
between our sovereign and his parliament, is not
less true than that I care not either to conceal or to
deny it! Beyond this—what part soever I may
play in that which is to come—pardon my plainness,
sir, I do not deem it wisdom to discourse
with a chance customer. Nor have I yet indeed
decided what that part shall be, until I search more
narrowly the grounds, and so find out my way
'twixt over license on the one hand, and, as it
seems to me, intemperance on the other, and too
fiery zeal!”
“Edgar Ardenne,” returned the puritan, his
naturally harsh voice subsiding into a hollow
croak, “Edgar Ardenne—for I do know you,
though, as you have truly spoken me, a stranger—
I tell you now, this nation totters on the brink
of a most strange and perilous convulsion! We
are the instruments—vile instruments, it is true,
but still instruments—in the hands of Him who
holds the end of all things. Watched have we,
and prayed; yea, wrestled with him in the spirit
for a sign, and lo! a sign was sent us. It may be
we shall achieve deliverance for our country—
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freedom from corporeal chains and spiritual bondage!
It may be we shall fail, and, failing, seek the shelter
of that New Jerusalem beyond the Western
Ocean, wherein there be no kings to lord it o'er
men's consciences, and to compel them how to
worship God! But fail we, or succeed, the sign
hath been given to us from on high, and therefore
shall we venture! and fail we, or succeed—mark
my words, Edgar Ardenne, for thou shalt think on
them hereafter—thy lot is cast with ours! Thy
spirit is of our order, thy heart is with us, and thy
tongue shall be, yea, and thy sword likewise!”
“How you have learned my name, I comprehend
not,” answered Ardenne, for so must he be
styled henceforth, veiling whatever of suspicion or
annoyance he might feel beneath the semblance of
a cold and dignified indifference; “but, were it
worth the while, I could assure you that, in learning
this, you have learned all! What part you play
in this wild drama,—whether you be hypocrite or
zealot, patriot or traitor, I care nothing; but, if we
meet hereafter, you will learn that neither sophistry
nor canting can affect my head, nor the dark phrensy
of fanaticism reach my heart!”
“We shall meet,” answered the stranger; “we
shall meet again, and shortly! and then shall you
too learn if I be saint or hypocrite—if I be patriot
or traitor!—and, above all, then shall you learn if,
in these things that I have spoken, I be a lying
prophet or a true! But lo you now—this is the
Fox at Bourne, and here comes honest Langton, to
whose good offices I do commit you!”
As he spoke, they drew up their horses before
the door of the little wayside hostelry, a low and
whitewashed tenement, imbosomed in deep woodlands,
and nestling, as it were, amid the verdant
foliage of jessamine and woodbine; while, warned
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already of their coming by the clatter of hoofs and
the sound of voices, the puritanic person of mine
host, bearing on high a huge and smoky flambeau,
which poured its red light far into the bosom of
the darkness, stalked forth to meet them. On his
lean and starveling form, however, Ardenne cast
but a passing glance, being employed in serutinizing,
by the wild illumination which streamed full
upon them, the features of his singular companion;
who had paused for a moment to allow his horse to
drink, and to hold a whispered conversation with
the landlord. There was, however, nothing familiar
to him, though he probed his memory to its
lowest depth of youthful recollections, in that
manly yet ungraceful figure, or in those lineaments,
harsh and ill-favoured to the verge of downright
ugliness. Ill-favoured was that countenance
indeed, with its deeply-furrowed lines and its sanguineous
colouring; its sunken eyes, twinkling
below the penthouse of the heavy matted brows;
and its nose, prominent, rubicund, and swollen.
Yet was there a world of thought in the expansive
temples and the massive forehead—an expression
of firmness that might restrain an empire in the
downward curve of the bold mouth—and a general
air of high authority and of indomitable resolution
pervading the whole aspect of the man. The head
of this remarkable-looking individual, at a period
when the greatest attention was lavished on the
hair by all of gentle birth, was covered with coarse
locks, already streaked with gray, falling in long
disordered masses on either cheek, and down the
muscular short neck, from underneath a rusty
beaver, steeple-crowned and unadorned by feather,
loop, or tassel. Instead of the cravat of Flanders
lace, he wore a narrow band of soiled and
rumpled linen; and his sword, a heavy iron-hilted
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tuck, was not suspended from a scarf or shoulderknot,
but girt about his middle, over a doublet of
black serge, by a belt of calf-skin leather, corresponding
to the material of his riding-boots, which
were pulled up above the knee to meet the loose
trunk hose, fashioned, as it would be supposed, by
some ill country tailor from the same unseemly
stuff with his cloak and doublet. The only part of
his appointments which would not have disgraced
the commonest gentleman was his horse, a tall
gray gelding of great power and not a little breeding;
yet even he was badly accoutred with mean
and sordid housings. Such was the appearance of
the person whose conversation had not been listened
to by Edgar Ardenne without deep interest;
and now—even while he confessed to himself that
the man's frame and features entitled him to no
regard as a person of superior caste or bearing—
there was still something in his air which produced
an indescribable effect on the mind of the cavalier,
forcing him, as it were, despite his senses, to admit
that he was in somewise remarkable, above, and at
the same time apart from, ordinary mortals, and not
unlike to one who might be indeed the mover of
great changes in the estate of nations.
While he was yet gazing on him with ill-dissembled
curiosity, the stranger, in his loud hoarse
notes, bade him adieu, and, striking at once into a
rapid trot, was swallowed up with his companions
in the surrounding gloom. Edgar, after a fruitless
effort at ascertaining from the saintly and abstracted
publican the name and quality of his late companion,
applied himself to creature comforts, as the
landlord termed them, of a higher order, and to a
bed more neatly garnished, than he could have
augured from the lowly exterior of the village inn.
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Herbert, Henry William, 1807-1858 [1838], Cromwell: an historical novel, volume 1 (Harper & Brothers, New York) [word count] [eaf137v1].
