CHAPTER XXXII.
"So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.—"
Shakspere.
One bright June morning, a few weeks after the events recorded in this little chronicle, the large audience chamber of the palace of Whitehall is thronged with a brilliant company, in whose midst are seated King Charles and his Queen. With curious eager glances the fine lords and ladies jostle each other to obtain a closer view of the dark-eyed handsome young fellow, and the girl standing beside him, apparently some few years his junior, with whom their majesties are absorbed in conversation.
The young man's eyes, when he can spare them from the queen, turn admiringly on his companion, around whose slender neck, white as alabaster, except indeed where the saucy sun has just bestowed his touches of tan upon it—his majesty has just cast a chain of exquisitely wrought gold, from which hangs a double pendant, set with diamonds encircling the miniatures of himself and Queen Catharine. "'Tis a souvenir of our regard and affection," the king is saying. "Requital for your noble service, gold nor diamonds cannot make. These gems are but poor shadows of truth and fealty like yours, fair Mistress Ruth."
He paused, he had been about to institute some worn-out comparison between the beautiful jewels and Ruth's eyes, but a look from the queen checked him, she saw those eyes were too brimful of tears for any trifling, and as they welled over, dropping fast upon the basket on her arm, she made an attempt to speak. "This—" she faltered, slowly drawing down the handles over her arms.
"Ay?" said the king graciously, as he looked with rather expectant eyes at the basket. Could it be a present of eggs or cream or such like, from the farm?
A converted courtier.
"Médor!" he exclaimed as he lifted the lid, and the snubby muzzle, and two velvet brown eyes of the little dog peered forth. "Poor Médor! Ods-fish! we had been near forgetting thee altogether!" Notwithstanding which piece of self-confessed royal shortcoming, the small creature bestowed a lick or two on his master's hands; though it was a trifle carelessly, and he set up a whine, and vigorous efforts to wriggle back into Ruth's arms.
"Your kindness in this instance has been very cruel, Mistress Ruth," smiled the king, as he let the little creature have its way. "You have given him such hospitable entertainment since he and I parted company in the burning room at Newmarket, that now he is loth to be separated from you. Médor loves you."
Nothing could be more clear than that the dog's sentiments were fully reciprocated, judging from Ruth's caress, and the wistful look her eyes bestowed on the little creature.
"Not better than she loves Médor," said Lawrence.
"Say you so? Why then, 'twould be the breaking of two hearts to part them! A crime no conscience could endure," cried the king. "Say, fair Mistress, will you keep the little jackanapes for your own?"
Would she? Would she not? Well, as Maudlin always would have it, Ruth was a strange incomprehensible creature; and if pleasure shone in her face at the gift of that costly carkanet, what comparison did that bear to the content brightening it, as she clasped Médor her own, her very own, in her arms!
Marriage bells.
Benefits of a more substantial sort were conferred on Lawrence Lee; and the estate of Nether Hall was widened by many a broad acre, so that Farmer Lee came to be accounted one of the wealthiest landowners of the shire, and the marvel of it was, that few begrudged him this worldly good fortune; though it would be too much to say none envied his lot, when one fine morning a year or two later, old Stanstead Church bells rang a joyous peal, as he led his wife Ruth along the flower-strewn way to her new home.
Something, nay very much of the old content shines again, now at last in Ruth's face; though its placid light-hearted look is gone for ever, and the shadow of past griefs will linger on it, till, herself an aged woman, they will lay her to her rest, to wait the time when all shadows flee away.
Patriots and plotters.
Still, very bright and blessed was Ruth's future, with the love of Madam Lee, warm and deep as own mother's love could be; and the devotion of her husband, and the music of small voices that by and by began to ring about the old house, and the mysterious alleys of the hornbeam maze; but no happiness could ever efface for her the memory of her father's fate.
Stern and implacable, yielding only to the gentler side of his nature, to stifle it down again, he had deeply loved Ruth, and been loved by her with a child's heart-felt affection. Honest in his convictions, loyal to his leader the famous Argyle, bravely as he had lived, Richard Rumbold, maimed and tortured by his captors, died an ignominious death at the Market Cross at Edinburgh, two years after the exposure of the Rye House Plot.
Cruel as these tidings of his end were, it was rendered ten times crueller by the thought of all those noble hearts that perished for the cause which had exasperated more desperate, and less disciplined minds to devise the hideous lengths of bloodshed and assassination; bringing all alike to the scaffold; patriot and lofty spirits like Sydney and Russel, grovelling, revengeful self-seekers like so many of the plotters. Few escaping with their lives, excepting such scum as those who turned king's evidence like Richard Rumsey, and bought their evil breath at the price of their old hand-in-glove comrades' death.
Upon all this, Ruth in the coming years would oftentimes sit and ponder. Ardent, unshaken little Stuart royalist as she remained to her latest day, and as Master Lawrence under her good guidance came to be, it is doubtful whether either was ever brought to declare with good Madam Lee, that "the king could do no wrong." That question, however, they left uncontested, and, content with trying to do as little of it as possible themselves, did so much good as to call down upon their heads in life and in death the blessings of all the country side.
Good company.
The grandfather's part which the roll of time brought into request at Nether Hall, was excellently represented by good old bachelor Master Alworth, who was its frequent guest, and of the many tales he used to tell the little ones, they liked very much that one of the brave, dear, real grandfather who died fighting for the king on Worcester field.
Of old Maudlin, what more can be said than that she passed her uneventful later years in the snug ingle nook at Nether Hall, made much of by every member of the establishment.
Adam Lockit, being of another turn of mind, declined to forsake his quarters in the gatehouse. New masters of the old mansion might come and they might go. Maltster or magnifico, peasant or peer, but monarch of his trophy-hung little domain he remained; bequeathing it, when at last he went the way of all flesh, with his well-seasoned tales of flood and field, and hobgoblinry, to Barnaby Diggles, who superadded in fair writing (an accomplishment, by the way, for which he was beholden to his old master's daughter), that tradition of his own times, of the famous plot and conspiracy against his gracious majesty King Charles the Second—known as the Rye House Plot—and whose valuable assistance towards the putting together of this present record, it well behoves this chronicler gratefully to recognize.
The author of this story.
Need it be added that the substantial marks of the king's gratitude which were bestowed on the hostess of the King's Arms, entirely converted Master Sheppard to his wife's way of thinking? and they subsided into the happiest peacefullest pair you could find in Hertfordshire; but then Master Sheppard never again put his fingers in what his wife called "pies that weren't baked for his eatin';" and when sea-coal was wanted for the King's Arms' hearth-places, honest sea-coal it might be, but Mistress Sheppard took good care it should be conveyed overland in a proper decent wagon; and always stood by in person, to count the sacks, and to see to the bottom of them too.
As to oysters, she steadily set her face against the things, and refused ever again to admit the ghost of a shell of one inside her doors. "If chub and barbel and trout—trout such as his sacred majesty King Charles, not to speak of the renowned Master Isaak Walton before him, had partaken of under her roof, was not good enough for common wayfarin' folks, why, let 'em go farther," she said, "an' fare worse."
The end.
Spiked atop of the spiral chimney of the gatehouse, there hung for many a year the ghastly decapitated head of one of the arch conspirators, but long ago it crumbled to nothingness, and no blot now mars the scene that is as goodly and fair as old England has to show. Side by side in sweet converse, like old friends, the two rivers still wander on amid the green pastures. Still round about, and in and out of the red battlemented walls, the rooks flit, and caw their never-ending chorus, and the tall trees wave their long arms day and night, and whisper to those who list to hear it, the story of the Old Rye House.
THE END.