agreed that Sir Oliver was aged, and that age became him. The rural squire was merged in the ancient gentleman.
In the evening it was certain that Sir Oliver had not drunk too much, nor had the chaplain. The sporting gentlemen perhaps had, for they were not present. They had retired to their apartments from the dining-room. Thus, while the chaplain sat in the west window, reading the news-letter of the week by the last light, the other three sat by the little wood fire talking over some family matters. Sir Oliver said he burned a little billet every evening in the year now. Old bones are chilly; and besides, there was no knowing, in such times, that one would not be glad to burn the contents of one’s pocket or escritoire at any moment.
Henrietta told him that till this day she had supposed the country gentry of the Fen safe from such disturbance: and she was proceeding to relate the adventure of the morning, when the chaplain put down his news-letter, the butler entered the room, and Harry put on an air of listening. Sir Oliver was dull of hearing; but when Henrietta started up from his side, and Harry opened a window, he cried out that Helen was about to arrive, no doubt: he had been sure she would come to-night.
The butler and the chaplain held a brief parley; and then they informed Sir Oliver that a party of armed men had entered the park at several points, and that they were surrounding the house.
“Pull up the drawbridge!” shouted Sir Oliver.
The servants had tried to do it; but the structure was very crazy, and some of the strangers had levelled their muskets at the porter and his aids; and before they could effect anything, several horsemen were on the wrong side of the moat.
“Here they are!” said the chaplain from his window; and several figures passed backwards and forwards in the garden, their armour shining in the yellow light from the sky.
“They may be friends,” Sir Oliver observed.
“They may be,” said the chaplain: “but there is a puritanic cut about them, to my eyes. If any of you have anything to hide or burn, you may have time, for I expect to see them go down on their knees and pray before they cross a Royalist threshold.”
Henrietta turned red and pale. Her uncle comforted her, and her husband bent over her, tenderly assuring her there was nothing to fear. It wounded him deeply that she shook him off, laid her head on Sir Oliver’s breast, and drew his arm round her.
“Do not flutter so, my little bird,” said the old man. “Nobody shall ruffle a feather of my little bird while I am on the nest. Heigho! whom have we here? Cousin Oliver, unless my old eyes deceive me. It is long since we met, but I believe I see my kinsman Oliver.”
It was Cousin Oliver; and very great was the relief to everybody in the room. The chaplain, it is true, looked haughtily on the Puritan, and settled down again to his news-letter in the window; but the Carewes greeted Oliver in cousinly fashion, and the old uncle was always courteous as a host. He would have been as polite to Jenny Geddes in his own house, as to any lady in the Queen’s train. Cousin Oliver, however, was not to be outdone in manners by the old cavalier. He entered, hat in hand, as a sign that he was not going to stay. He bent as low to the old man as he had ever bent to the King. He declined to sit down.
“You will not sit!” exclaimed sir Oliver. “Then what are the rest of us to do?”
They were all on their feet at the moment, except the distant chaplain, who now felt himself obliged to rise.
Cousin Oliver desired that no one might be incommoded by his presence: he would but testify his respect for grey hairs.
“Grey hairs! pshaw!” cried the old man. “That is out of Scripture; and the Scripture people did not wear wigs, I suppose. Where is the use of keeping your feet on pretence of my grey hairs, when you see I don’t wear my hair grey. If you have no better reason, take your seat, and make yourself at home in your kinsman’s house.”
“I have another reason, sir Oliver. I am come, if not as an enemy,—and I am an enemy to no man who is not his country’s enemy,—yet am I not come altogether as a friend. I am not come of my own will at all. In a work like ours, our own wills are the last to be consulted; but I am sent on an errand which I am in no way free to refuse.”
“Let us hear what it is without more beating about the bush. What does my kinsman want of me?”
“Your poor kinsman wants nothing of the reverend chief of his house. Nevertheless the cause needs—.”
“Aha! you are come on parliament business. Your troop of armed men might have shown us that. What! you are come to turn us out of the old house, because Mr. Pym wants it, or my Lord Brook fancies it, or some of your new-fangled colonels think it is time to be garrisoning the Fens? If the Lord of the Fens bids me quit, I suppose I have only to obey. It is the fashion to obey now. His Majesty yields up his prerogative and obeys his subjects; so old Oliver must yield up his old house, and the uncle must obey the nephew. How long will you give us to remove?”
“It pleases sir Oliver to jest,” said the grave nephew. “He has the choice of all England where to live,—under this roof or any other; and no one desires to trouble him. These armed men shall not enter his presence. All that is asked of him is to permit me to stand in his presence till my men have discharged their office.”
“What office? If you will not speak out, kinsman, I must learn otherwise what this means. Carewe, oblige me by seeing what those fellows are doing.”
Harry declined to interfere, in the present stage of the affair. He trusted Cousin Oliver would explain it fully. Sir Oliver then desired the chaplain to make inquiry. His reverence was evidently not sorry when Cousin Oliver intercepted him on his way to the door, and plainly intimated that he must not leave the room. It were best, he said, for the avoidance of brawls,