years, to a servant of the Lord, like my Oliver, this land might be redeemed in its swift course to perdition. I do not speak as of anything probable, and by your countenance one might see that I was speaking folly. But there have been times when kings have been of the Lord’s appointing,—by the head and shoulders taller than other men, as Saul, when the Lord gave a king first to His people. There have been things more strange than that a man who obtains a natural obedience as Lord of the Fens, while living in the fens, should be the ruler of the country when he shows his strength through the whole country.”
Henrietta was in fact smiling. She smiled again at the idea when Cousin Oliver appeared at the supper table in time to say the long grace, and when he returned thanks, in the evening prayer, for the power which the Word had had through his poor utterance, in strengthening the people to stand for their liberties. He prayed for the King, however; for his long life, and his rescue from the snares which would make him an enemy to the pure reformed Church. Henrietta could only hope that aunt Cromwell could join in this prayer as sincerely as her son evidently offered it.
Henrietta, heavy at heart as she was, smiled again at the same image when Cousin Oliver put her on her horse early the next morning. She had been to the old lady’s bedside to bid her farewell, and had received her well-meant injunctions not to be ensnared by the graces of old Sir Oliver, or by the conversation of any Royalists she might meet at his house. If she should hear a word in defence of ship-money, or of the late meddling with the religion of Scotland, she had only to ride over to Huntingdon, and take refuge with her old aunt. She would know when to flee to this refuge, by hearing her own father disrespectfully spoken of—
“That will never happen in my presence, in any one of the family houses,” Henrietta declared.
“Perhaps not,” the dame said. “But there is the other case. You have heard of Jenny Geddes, and what she did about the collects—”
“Took the collect to be colic; and administered her joint-stool as a cure?”
“It is an over-serious case for a jest,” the dame remarked. “I was about to say that if Jenny Geddes is made a mock of in your presence, you will find a refuge here for your wounded feelings. While your father stands up against them that trouble the Lord’s people, every child of his may look upon my house as a home.”
Henrietta kissed the old lady’s hand, thanked her, and was departing, when she was recalled for one more exhortation. Her hostess had not been insensible to the depression which had appeared in her countenance and manner. It was dutiful to grieve for a parent’s troubles; but such grief should be swallowed up in joy that a father should be honoured by being made a confessor in a great cause; so that if John Hampden should be this day consigned to prison, to die there like his friend Eliot, a dutiful daughter ought to give thanks on that very account every day of her life.
Henrietta could not bear this,—her heart knowing its own bitterness, and her dutifulness being by no means of the supposed quality. When she appeared in the court, her colour was high, and her eyes were full of tears; but again she smiled at the thought of Cousin Oliver enacting royalty. His grim face, his yeoman’s suit, and his abrupt manner, were as opposite as possible to all the notions she had gathered from Lady Carlisle, and her aunt Carewe, and from her own fancy as to the bearing of a king.
Yet there was something kingly in Cousin Oliver’s position in his own district. Without apology to his companions, he stopped where it pleased him, and diverged from the road where it suited him. He examined the embankments; he dismounted to measure the depth of the water; he tried the firmness of the soil wherever it looked suspicious. As if by magic, people collected wherever he halted for a moment. On casting a glance over the wide plain, so lately under water, and still glistening here and there with meres and full watercourses, it seemed as if the whole area was uninhabited, except where a farmstead or a group of cottages stood forth conspicuously. Yet men and women collected by scores and by hundreds. They came up from the decoys; they came out from behind the embankments; they sprang ashore from the boats on the Ouse;—there were men from the ploughtail; there were women from the dairies and poultry yards; there were boys with their birding-traps, and their dogs from hunting vermin. Little children with rushen helmets and bows and arrows ran along to keep up with the horses, in hope of a word or a look from the Lord of the Fens. For everybody who, as Cousin Oliver said, had ears to hear, he had one exhortation to give—to pay no penny of the new taxes till the case was settled; but to stand fast in refusal, even as Mr. Hampden who was tried to-day in London for refusing to pay ship-money.
The journey became slower from mile to mile; and by mid-day Cousin Oliver declared that this would not do. He commissioned some of the people to spread the tidings along the road, and back among the farms, that he would return before night, and hear those who had aught to say to him, at certain stations. He must now ride straight for Biggin House. This settled, the party set forward at a good pace.
Cousin Oliver was not to reach Biggin House to-day. From a cross road, five miles short of it, he saw a party approaching, and presently distinguished the livery of the Mashams, who were cousins of his. The servants who bore it were escorting their young mistress, Helen Masham, who was on her way to Biggin House, where she was to be Henrietta’s companion. The damsels, formerly playmates, were delighted to meet; and Cousin Oliver perceived that he was no longer wanted. He sent a dutiful message to his uncle, gave his blessing very devoutly to his young kinswomen, turned his horse’s head, and rode away at speed.
Biggin House did not look very tempting from the outside, on this foggy November day. The grass in the park was coarse and dank; the dead leaves lay thick in what had been the avenue; the trees stood irregularly, as the best of them had been felled: some were lying on their sides,