For Faith and Freedom

The first news we learned was joyful indeed. It was that the Prince of Orange himself was about to invade England, with intent to drive his father-in-law from the throne. (He had indeed already sailed, but his fleet was driven back by a storm.) It was also stated that he had with him a great army of Dutch and English, and such preparations of arms and ammunition as (it was hoped) would make such a failure as that of our unhappy Duke impossible.

We also confirmed Barnaby's information that Monmouth's men could now go about without fear or molestation.

As to the position of affairs at Bradford Orcas, we could learn nothing.

There was one point on which I was curious – namely, as to what Barnaby would do in the matter of the villain Penne. On the one hand it was certain that Barnaby would not forget this man, nor was he likely to sit down with his arms folded after he had been robbed of so great a sum.

Therefore, I was not surprised when, the evening before we rode out of Bristol, he brought a big bag of blue stuff in his hands and poured out the contents – a vast shower of gold pieces – into the lap of his astonished sister.

'Alice,' he said, 'I bring you back your money. You will find it all here, and Mr. Boscorel's money to boot. He hath disgorged.'

With that he sat down and laughed, but as one who hath a joke in secret and would tell us no more.

For a day or two after this he would (on the road to Bradford Orcas) begin to laugh at intervals, rolling about in his saddle, shaking his sides, choking with laughter; insomuch that I presently lost patience with him, and, as a physician, ordered him instantly to make full confidence, or I would not answer for it but he would have a fit.

Then he told us what he had done.

Towards five in the afternoon, when the autumn day is ended, he repaired to the man Penne's counting-house (a place easily found on inquiry), having with him one of those fellows who bawl at fairs, selling medicines and charms, drawing teeth, letting blood, and so forth. At the sight of a sea captain, many of whom came to this place, the worthy merchant's servant, without suspicion, opened the door of the private office, or chamber, where Mr. Penne transacted his affairs. Barnaby found him dozing by the fire, his wig on the table, a silk handkerchief over his head, and the candles already lighted.

He awoke, however, on the opening of the door.

'Friend,' said Barnaby, 'I am Captain Barnaby Eykin, commanding the ship Pilgrim, from Boston – at your service. I am also brother to the young woman Alice Eykin, whom you robbed ('twas my money) of two hundred and fifty pounds, and afterwards kidnapped.'

Mr. Penne looked about him, and would have cried out for assistance; but Barnaby clapped a pistol to his forehead. Then he sank in his chair and gasped.

'Stir not,' said his enemy, 'I am also one of the three rebels for whose ransom the Reverend Philip Boscorel, Rector of Bradford Orcas, paid the sum of two hundred and ten pounds – which you have also stolen.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Penne, 'upon my honour those moneys were sent to Barbadoes. Upon my honour, sir.'

'You will therefore,' said Barnaby, taking no heed of this assurance, 'pay over to me the sum of four hundred and sixty pounds, with interest at five per cent. for three years, which I have calculated; the whole amount is five hundred and twenty-nine pounds. Begin by paying this.' Well, to make a long story short, though the man protested that he had not so much in the world, yet he presently opened his strong box and counted out the money, all in gold. This done, he hoped to be let off.

'There now remains,' said Barnaby, 'the punishment – and I forgot sister's ring: I ought to have added fifty pounds for that. But time presses. Perhaps I shall come back. I did intend to kill thee, brother, for thy great villany. However – '

He then beckoned the man with him, who lugged out of his pocket an instrument which made Mr. Penne shake and quake with terror. Barnaby then informed his victim that, as he had been the means of inflicting grievous bodily suffering upon four undeserving people, it was meet and right that he himself should experience something which, by its present agony, should make him compassionate for the future, and by its permanence of injury should prevent his ever forgetting that compassion for the rest of his life.

He therefore, he told him, intended to draw from his head four of his stoutest and strongest grinders.

This, in a word, he did; the man with him dragging them out with the pincers; Barnaby holding the pistol to the poor wretch's head, so that he should not bellow and call for assistance.

His laughter was caused by the remembrance of the twisting of the man's features in this agony, and by his moanings and groanings. The grinders he had brought away with him in his pocket, and showed them in triumph.

It was late in the afternoon when we rode into Bradford Orcas. The November sun, now setting, lay upon the woods, yellow and red with the autumn leaves not yet fallen. As we neared the village the sun went down, and a mist began to rise. All the doors were closed, and no one looked forth to greet us; the old cottage where Alice was born and where she lived so long was empty still; the door was open, the shutter hung upon one hinge; the honey hives were overturned, the thatch was broken; the garden was neglected.

'Why, Sis,' said Barnaby, 'thy mother is not there; nor Dad, – is he? – poor old Dad!'

We rode up the village till we came to the church, and the Manor House beside it. Alas! the house itself was closed, which had formerly stood open to all. There was no smoke from its chimneys, and the grass grew in the courtyard. We dismounted and opened the door, which was not locked. We went into the house: all was cold, and empty, and deserted. The twilight falling outside made the rooms dark. Beside the fireplace stood Sir Christopher's great chair, empty! his tankard was on the table and his tobacco-pipe, and – strange! – there lay, forgotten, the unhappy Duke's Proclamation.

Then a truly wonderful thing happened. Barnaby says that I must have dreamed it, for he saw nothing. Suddenly Sir Christopher himself appeared sitting in the chair; on his knees lay the Bible open. Beside him stood, with upraised forefinger, as if commenting on some knotty point, the Rev. Dr. Comfort Eykin. I declare that I saw them plainly, as plainly as I now behold the paper on which I write. They were but as shadows in the dark shadows of the empty room, and they appeared but for a moment, and then vanished, and I saw them no more.

'Come to the Rectory,' said Robin; 'it chokes us to be here.'

'Listen,' said Alice, outside the house.

From the Rectory there came the sound of a violoncello. Then was the good Rector himself there, comforting his soul.

We opened the garden-gate and walked softly across the lawn and looked in at the window ('twas made after the foreign fashion, to open upon the lawn). Beside the fire sat Madam, her hands clasped, thin, pale, and prematurely aged. Thus had she sat for three long years, still waiting for news of her son.

The Rector laid down his bow, crossed the room and sat down to the spinnet (on which he played prettily, but not with such command as he possessed over the other instrument). He played – I caught Alice's hand – an air of my own making to which I had set certain words, also of my own.

Then, while he played, we began to sing outside the window, Alice singing treble, or first, I the second part, and Robin the bass, as I had taught him in Providence Island the words of that little song. We sang it piano, or softly, at first, and then crescendo, or louder: —

As rides the moon in azure skiesThe twinkling stars beside;As when in splendour she doth rise,Their lesser lights they hide.So beside Celia, when her face we see,All unregarded other maidens be.

When we began, softly as I said, the Rector looked round him, playing still and listening. He thought the voices were in his own brain – echoes or memories of the past. Madam heard them too, and sat up listening as one who listens in a dream. When we sang louder Madam sprang to her feet, and held out her arms – but the Rector played the verse quite through. Then he opened the window for us.

'My son! my son!' cried Madam.

CHAPTER L.

THE GREAT LORD CHANCELLOR

But the Prince of Orange had already landed.

We learned this news next day, and you may be sure that we were in the saddle again and riding to Exeter, there to join his standard.

This we did with the full consent of Madam and of Alice. Much as we had suffered already, they would not deter us, because this thing would have been approved by Sir Christopher and Dr. Eykin. Therefore we went. As all the world knows, this expedition was successful. Yet was not Barnaby made an Admiral, nor was I made a Court physician; we got, in fact, no reward at all, except that for Barnaby was procured a full pardon on account of the homicide of his late master.

My second campaign, as everybody knows, was bloodless. To begin with, we had an army, not of raw country lads armed indifferently and untrained, but of veteran troops, fifteen thousand strong, all well equipped, and with the best General in Europe at their head. At first, indeed, such was the dread in men's minds caused by Lord Jeffreys' cruelties, few came in; yet this was presently made up by what followed, when, without any fighting at all, the King's regiments melted away, his priests fled, and his friends deserted him. This was a very different business from that other, when we followed one whom I now know to have been a mere tawdry pretender, no better fitted to be a King than a vagabond actor at a fair is fit to be a Lord. Alas! what blood was wasted in that mad attempt! – of which I was myself one of the most eager promoters. I was then young, and I believed all that I was told by the conspirators in Holland; I took their list of well-wishers for insurgents already armed and waiting only for a signal; I thought that the roll of noble names set down for sturdy Protestants was that of men already pledged to the Cause; I believed that the whole nation would rise at the first opportunity to turn out the priests; I even believed in the legitimacy of the Duke, and that against the express statement of his father (if King Charles was in reality his father); and I believed what they told me of his princely virtues, his knowledge of the art of war, and his heroic valour. I say that I believed all these things and that I became a willing and zealous tool in their hands. As for what those who planned the expedition believed, I know not; nor will any one now ever learn what promises were made to the Duke, what were broken, and why he was, from the outset, save for a few days at Taunton, so dejected and disappointed. As for me, I shall always believe that the unhappy man – unwise and soft-hearted – was betrayed by those whom he trusted.

It is now an old tale, though King Monmouth will not speedily be forgotten in the West Country, nor will the memory of the Bloody Assize. The brave lads who followed him are dead and buried; some in unhonoured graves hard by the place where they were hanged, some under the burning sun of the West Indies. The Duke himself hath long since paid the penalty of his rash attempt. All is over and ended, except the memory of it.

It is now common history, known to everybody, how the Prince of Orange lingered in the West Country, his army inactive, as if he knew (doubtless he was well informed upon this particular) that the longer he remained idle the more likely was the King's Cause to fall to pieces. There are some who think that if King James had risked an action he could not but have gained, whatsoever its event – I mean that, the blood of his soldiers once roused, they would have remained steadfast to him, and would have fought for him. But this he dared not to risk; wherefore the Prince did nothing, while the King's regiments fell to pieces and his friends deserted him. It was in December when the Prince came to Windsor, and I with him, once more Chyrurgeon in a rebel army. While there I rode to London – partly with the intention of judging for myself as to the temper of the people; partly because, after so long an absence, I wished once more to visit a place where there are books and pictures; and partly because there were certain notes and herbs which I desired to communicate to the College of Physicians in Warwick Lane. It happened to be the very day when the King's first flight – that, namely, when he was taken in the Isle of Sheppey – became known. The streets in the City of London I found crowded with people hurrying to and fro, running in bands and companies, shouting and crying, as if in the presence of some great and imminent danger. It was reported and currently believed that the disbanded Irish soldiers had begun to massacre the Protestants. There was no truth at all in the report; but yet the bells were ringing from all the towers, the crowds were exhorting each other to tear down and destroy the Romish chapels, to hunt for and to hang the priests, and especially Jesuits (I know not whether they found any), and to shout for the Prince of Orange. I stood aside to let the crowds (thus religiously disposed) run past, but there seemed no end to them. Presently, however (this was in front of the new Royal Exchange), there drew near another kind of crowd. There marched six or eight sturdy fellows bearing stout cudgels and haling along a prisoner. Round them there ran, shrieking, hooting, and cursing, a mob of a hundred men and more; they continually made attacks upon the guard, fighting them with sticks and fists; but they were always thrust back. I thought at first that they had caught some poor, wretched priest whom they desired to murder. But it proved to be a prize worth many priests. As they drew nearer, I discerned the prisoner. He was dressed in the garb of a common sailor, with short petticoats (which they call slops), and a jacket; his cap had been torn off, leaving the bare skull, which showed that he was no sailor, because common sailors do not wear wigs; blood was flowing down his cheek from a fresh wound; his eyes rolled hither and thither in an extremity of terror; I could not hear what he said for the shouting of those around him, but his lips moved, and I think he was praying his guards to close in and protect him. Never, surely, was seen a more terror-stricken creature.

I knew his face. Once seen (I had seen it once) it could never be forgotten. The red and bloated cheeks, which even his fear could not make pale; the eyes, more terrible than have been given to any other human creature: these I could not forget – in dreams I see them still. I saw that face at Exeter, when the cruel Judge exulted over our misery and rejoiced over the sentence which he pronounced. Yea, he laughed when he told us how we should swing, but not till we were dead, and then the knife – delivering his sentence so that no single point of its horror should be lost to us. Yes; it was the face of Judge Jeffreys – none other – this abject wretch was that great Judge. Why, when we went back to our prison there were some who cast themselves upon the ground, and, for terror of what was to come, fell into mere dementia. And now I saw him thus humbled, thus disgraced, thus threatened, thus in the last extremity and agony of terror.

They had discovered him, thus disguised and in hiding, at a tavern in Wapping, and were dragging him to the presence of the Lord Mayor. It is a long distance from Wapping to Guildhall, and they went but slowly, because they were beset and surrounded by these wolves who howled to have his blood. And all the way he shrieked and trembled for fear!

Sure and certain is the vengeance of the Lord!

This Haman, this unjust Judge, was thus suffering, at the hands of the savage mob, pangs far worse than those endured by the poor rustics whom he had delivered to the executioner. I say worse, because I have not only read, but have myself proved, that the rich and the learned – those, that is, who live luxuriously and those who have power to imagine and to feel beforehand – do suffer far more in disease than the common, ignorant folk. The scholar dies of terror before ever he feels the surgeon's knife, while the rustic bares his limb, insensible and callous, however deep the cut or keen the pain. I make no doubt, therefore, that the great Lord Chancellor, while they haled him all the way from Wapping to Guildhall, suffered as much as fifty ploughboys flogged at the cart-tail.

Many thousands there were who desired revenge upon him – I know not what revenge would satisfy the implacable; because revenge can do no more than kill the body, but his worst enemy should be satisfied with this, his dreadful fate. Even Barnaby, who was sad because he could get no revenge on his own account (he wanted a bloody battle, with the rout of the King's armies and the pursuit of a flying enemy, such as had happened at Sedgemoor), was satisfied with the justice which was done to that miserable man. It is wonderful that he was not killed amidst so many threatening cudgels; but his guards prevented that, not from any love they bore him; but quite the contrary (more unforgiving faces one never saw); for they intended to hand him over to the Lord Mayor, and that he should be tried for all his cruelties and treacheries, and, perhaps, experience himself that punishment of hanging and disembowelling which he had inflicted on so many ignorant and misled men.

How he was committed to the Tower, where he shortly died in the greatest torture of body as well as mind, everybody knows.

CHAPTER LI.

THE CONFESSION

Now am I come to the last event of this history, and I have to write down the confession of my own share in that event. For the others – for Alice and for Robin – the thing must be considered as the crown and completion of all the mercies. For me – what is it? But you shall hear. When the secrets of all hearts are laid open, then will Alice hear it also: what she will then say, or what think, I know not. It was done for her sake – for her happiness have I laid this guilt upon my soul. Nay, when the voice of conscience doth exhort me to repent, and to confess my sin, then there still ariseth within my soul, as it were, the strain of a joyful hymn, a song of gratitude that I was enabled to return her to freedom and the arms of the man she loved. If any learned Doctor of Divinity, or any versed in that science which the Romanists love (they call it casuistry), should happen to read this chapter of confession, I pray that they consider my case, even though it will then be useless as far as I myself am concerned, seeing that I shall be gone before a Judge who will, I hope (even though my earthly affections do not suffer me to separate my sin from the consequences which followed), be more merciful than I have deserved.

While, then, I stood watching this signal example of God's wrath, I was plucked gently by the sleeve, and, turning, saw one whose countenance I knew not. He was dressed as a lawyer, but his gown was ragged, and his bands yellow; he looked sunk in poverty; and his face was inflamed with those signs which proclaim aloud the habit of immoderate drinking.

'Sir,' he said, 'if I mistake not, you are Dr. Humphrey Challis?'

'The same, Sir; at your service,' I replied with some misgivings. And yet, being one of the Prince's following, there needed none.

'I have seen you, Sir, in the chambers of your cousin, Mr. Benjamin Boscorel, my brother learned in the law. We drank together, though (I remember) you still passed the bottle. It is now four or five years ago. I wonder not that you have forgotten me. We change quickly, we who are the jolly companions of the bottle; we drink our noses red, and we paint our cheeks purple; nay, we drink ourselves out of our last guinea, and out of our very apparel. What then, Sir? a short life and a merry. Sir, yonder is a sorry sight. The first Law Officer of the Crown thus to be haled along the streets by a howling mob. Ought such a thing to be suffered? 'Tis a sad and sorry sight, I say!'

'Sir,' I replied hotly, 'ought such villains as Judge Jeffreys to be suffered to live?'

He considered a little, as one who is astonished and desires to collect his thoughts. Perhaps he had already taken more than a morning draught.

'I remember now,' he said. 'My memory is not so good as it was. We drink that away as well. Yes, I remember – I crave your forgiveness, Doctor. You were yourself engaged with Monmouth. Your cousin told me as much. Naturally you love not this good Judge, who yet did nothing but what the King, his master, ordered him to do. I, Sir, have often had the honour of sitting over a bottle with his Lordship. When his infirmities allowed (though not yet old, he is grievously afflicted) he had no equal for a song or a jest, and would drink so long as any were left to keep him company. Ha! they have knocked him down – now they will kill him. No; he is again upon his feet; those who protect him close in. So – they have passed out of our sight. Doctor, shall we crack a flask together? I have no money, unhappily; but I will with pleasure drink at your expense.'

I remembered the man's face now, but not his name. 'Twas one of Ben's boon companions. Well; if hard drinking brings men so speedily to rags and poverty, even though it be a merry life (which I doubt), give me moderation.

'Pray, Sir,' I said coldly, 'to have me excused. I am no drinker.'

'Then, Doctor, you will perhaps lend me, until we meet again, a single guinea?'

I foolishly complied with this request.

'Doctor, I thank you,' he said. 'Will you now come and drink with me at my expense? Sir, I say plainly, you do not well to refuse a friendly glass. I could tell you many things, if you would but drink with me, concerning my Lord Jeffreys. There are things which would make you laugh. Come, Doctor; I love not to drink alone. Your cousin, now, was always ready to drink with any man, until he fell ill' —

'How? is my cousin ill?'

'Assuredly; he is sick unto death. Yesterday I went to visit him, thinking to drink a glass with him, and perhaps to borrow a guinea or two, but found him in bed and raving. If you will drink with me, Doctor, I can tell you many curious things about your cousin. And now I remember, you were sent to the Plantations; your cousin told me so. You have returned before your time. Well, the King hath run away; you are, doubtless, safe. Your cousin hath gotten his grandfather's estate. Lord Jeffreys, who loved him mightily, procured that grant for him. When your cousin wakes at night he swears that he sees his grandfather by his bedside looking at him reproachfully, so that he drinks the harder; 'tis a merry life. He hath also married a wife, and she ran away from him at the church door, and he now cannot hear of her or find her anywhere, so that he curses her and drinks the harder. Oh! 'tis always the jolliest dog. They say that he is not the lawyer that he was, and that his clients are leaving him. All mine have left me long since. Come and drink with me, Doctor.'

I broke away from the poor toper who had drunk up his wits as well as his money, and hurried to my cousin's chambers, into which I had not thought to enter save as one who brings reproaches – a useless burden.

Benjamin was lying in bed: an old crone sat by the fire, nodding. Beside her was a bottle, and she was, I found, half drunk. Her I quickly sent about her business. No one else had been attending him. Yet he was laid low, as I presently discovered, with that kind of fever which is bred in the villainous air of our prisons – the same fever which had carried off his grandfather.

Perhaps, if there were no foul and stinking wards, jails, and clinks, this kind of fever would be banished altogether, and be no more seen. So, if we could discover the origin and cause of all diseases, we might once more restore man to his primitive condition, which I take to have been one free from any kind of disease or infirmity, designed at first by his Creator so to live for ever, and, after the Fall, enabled (when medicine shall be so far advanced) to die of old age after such prolongation of life and strength as yet we cannot even understand.

'Cousin,' I said, 'I am sorry to find thee lying in this condition.'

'Ay,' he replied, in a voice weak and low, not like his old blustering tones. 'Curse me and upbraid me, if thou wilt. How art thou come hither? Is it the ghost of Humphrey? Art thou dead like my grandfather? Are we on the Plantations of Barbadoes?'