CHAP. XVIII.
He nothing common did nor mean
After that memorable scene;
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try:
Nor call’d the gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right;
But bow’d his comely head
Down as upon a bed.
Marvell.
From the hour of his brother’s untimely death Cuthbert led a life of crazed care and religious melancholy. He retired to London, but he avoided all his former acquaintances. He lodged in an obscure alley, and wandered about during the day without any apparent aim or object, when not compelled to some slight exertion to provide bread for the passing day. His resource on these occasions was a Puritan printer, to whom his Cambridge tutor, now dead, had very favourably introduced him before the breaking out of the war, and who, from compassion to his troubled state of mind, gave him such small and easy employments as might not only contribute to his support but might avail to divert his melancholy, and to restore the strength of his shattered intellect. He was not, however, to be engaged in any undertaking which long confined him at home or to a house. He had become one of those rueful objects, of which a few may be found in all large cities, and in the fields and parks in their vicinity. They stray about at will; stand near the crowded pageant; and though they seem to look upon it earnestly, are perfectly unconscious whether it is a funereal procession or the lord mayor’s show. They gaze fixedly at buildings and at persons; but the former are to them as clouds, and the latter as trees walking. From frequent and careless exposure to chilling rains, and from his long fasts and the scantiness and irregularity of his meals, his health had suffered seriously: he had a settled cough; and he was so emaciated and altered in the face that hardly any body would have recognised him. Moreover, the change in his appearance had extended to his dress, which was old, threadbare, and torn. Such was the melancholy figure that came into churches, and sat down upon the benches of the middle aisle, not conscious why he was avoided by the more decent poor, why none but some Lazarus full of sores would take a seat beside him. He hung as a blighted leaf upon the social tree,—a sad memento that man is born to trouble, and that sooner in sorrow, or later in death, all the leaves must fade.
Upon that black day in the calendar of England’s history, the 30th of January, 1648, when the last act in the tragic drama of the civil war was presented in public before an afflicted and indignant people, Cuthbert stood among the gloomy and anxious crowd which was gathered round the scaffold at Whitehall. Several regiments of horse and foot were posted near the place of execution, as much to keep the people from hearing their king’s last words as to observe and control their temper. The mind of Cuthbert had been roused from its long lethargy by the various news and rumours connected with the trial of the King, which had been circulated within the last fortnight around him; and he came along with the multitude on this day, not believing that they would dare execute Charles, and that if it were attempted, a rescue would be effected. The day was piercing cold, and the keen wind searched through his threadbare cloak; and he leaned back against a wall, a pale shadow of misery, feeble and trembling. He knew not why he was there, or what he was to do, but when he had seen the strong populace hastening to Whitehall, he had followed a helpless expectant of some strange judgment or deliverance. His view of the place of execution was intercepted by the tall men who stood in front of him and by a trooper on horseback; and he remained still and silent, lost in thought and in confused prayers, till a movement and murmurs in the crowd awakened him to a consciousness of the dread scene which was going forward at a little distance.
“That’s his Majesty,” said one: “how noble he looks.”—“He’s speaking now,” said another.—“See how grand and straight he stands up, and how he looks them all in the face.”—And from other voices came such remarks,—“See! the clergy is speaking to him.”—“Who is that parson?”—“’Tis a bishop, man.”—“Which?”—“Why honest old Juxon.”—“Look! the King has got his doublet off. God help his blessed Majesty! O for a few thousand good men and true!”—“Nay, nay, he’s saved. Look! they’re putting on his cloak again! Thank God! thank God!”—But the voice that had uttered this hope was soon hushed, and there was a dread silence,—the people held their breath. Suddenly there arose a loud and universal wail. At the sight of the royal head held up dripping with blood in the hands of the executioner, lamentations, and groans, and tears, and wringing of hands, did make a wild mourning such as became a nation’s remorseful woe. Cuthbert smote on his breast, and fell upon his knees, and lifted up his voice, and wept scalding tears, calling himself a murderer and an abetter of the King’s death,—one that had, like Judas, sold his master, and that his end would be the same, and everlasting fire his portion. A knot of persons gathered about him; some of whom, as they heard his ravings, did half believe that he had been more particularly concerned in betraying the King, and looked upon him with horror, as on one suffering the just judgment of Heaven, while others pitied him, and thought him mad. But the troopers being now called upon to dismiss the crowd, two large bodies of horse moved up and down from King Street to Charing Cross, dispersing the folk that had gathered in the middle of the way, while a few single dragoons moved towards the various knots and groups, that still lingered near the walls and in corners, to drive them also away. One approached the small crowd which had collected around Cuthbert in his bewildered agonies; and, either really taking him for an impostor or for a designing person wanting to create a disturbance, came close and gave him a brutal blow with the flat of his sword, bidding him away to his own dunghill, and play his tricks with his fellow-beggars in Rosemary Lane. Upon this, a stout man near, who, from his knit bonnet and coarse grey coat, looked like a woodman or a warrener from the country, struck the sword out of the trooper’s hand, and knocked him off his horse; and the mob would have had his life but for the prompt assistance of his comrades, a few of whom came up led by a sergeant, who, being a reasonable man that felt ashamed for the unsoldierly services of that sad morning, contented himself with releasing the soldier and advising the people to go quietly to their homes. The trooper had been so startled and stunned by the assault that he could not point out the person who struck him first, nor did the sergeant seize upon any one.
The stout man who had resented the blow inflicted on poor Cuthbert raised him up, and led him aside to a more private place, where, they two being alone together, he tried to make himself known, for he had already recognised the voice of Cuthbert; and his soul could, even on that day of public calamity, be filled with pity for this unhappy sufferer. It was George Juxon. Cuthbert, already in a kind of stupor, produced by great mental excitement on a weak and exhausted frame, and the action of the severe cold of the day upon his naked head, looked vacantly at him, with incredulity and alarm; and Juxon saw that he was not only very ill but that his senses were wandering. He immediately took him home to his own lodgings in a quiet street near St. Paul’s Cathedral, and procured the help of a skilful and humane physician.
It was a week before Cuthbert was sufficiently restored to strength either of body or mind to recognise his protector; but when he did so, the face and voice of Juxon appeared to give him the power of recovering his scattered memories and unravelling his tangled thoughts. Nor were the features of Juxon the only ones he was enabled to recall among those kind preservers with whom he had been thus mercifully thrown at so critical a moment of his life.
Jane Lambert, now the wife of Juxon, was one of those who ministered to him in his sickness; and the countenance of Katharine Heywood, no longer radiant with youth, and health, and hope, but still majestic and merciful as those of guardian angels, shone upon him with a mild and Christian pity. They all viewed Cuthbert as an erring child of a heavenly Father brought back to him by affliction; and they felt that to minister to his sorrows and his need, and to lead him gently to the green pastures and the still waters of Christ’s flock, was a sacred duty, and a sweet privilege.
The circumstances of those around him were sufficiently easy, considering the times, to enable them to place him again in his relative station as regarded temporal matters; and he learned with thanksgiving that his father and mother were safe and well, and had been so far assisted as to be comparatively comfortable in the small cottage in which they dwelt.
But it was long before Juxon prevailed with him to return to his father. At every mention of this duty he became silent and gloomy: from this trial he seemed to shrink with dejection and almost despair. His faith in the gracious promises of Scripture failed him,—and he thought his crimes of too black a dye for forgiveness. One evening, especially, a man coming before the parlour windows and crying certain relics for sale, offered with a loud hoarse voice,—“Most precious remains of his late sacred Majesty of pious memory, warranted genuine, and dipped in his own blood.”
“Here be two locks of hair, master, and three strips of a handkerchief, all bloody, as you see,” said the knave, thrusting them across the rails towards the window where Mrs. Juxon and Cuthbert were sitting. At this sight the poor convalescent fainted, and suffered a relapse, which again disturbed his reason. But as the spring opened, his mind was restored to the vigour of his best days. He saw and embraced his privileges as a pardoned penitent, and he willingly prepared to return to his parents. It was plain, indeed, to himself as well as to Juxon, that his earthly pilgrimage could not be long, for consumption had set her deadly mark upon his cheek; and he was oppressed with a cough which he knew he must carry to the grave with him: but, grateful for the blessings of restored peace and hope, he took his last farewell of Juxon, and set forward on his journey home.
He travelled down with a train of return pack horses to Bristol, and was five days upon the road. It was the middle of April, but the weather was cold, snowy, and ungenial;—as in some springs there is a brief season of summer heat, so in this there was that sharp and bitter check known among shepherds and countrymen by the name of the black thorn winter.
There was a heavy fall of snow on the very day that he rode from Bristol to Glastonbury; and when he alighted at the small hostel where he was to leave his hired horse, all was dull, still and silent. He had passed through empty streets, and he came to an empty yard, where it was long before a lame hostler, with a sack over his shoulder, and a pair of wooden shoes on his feet, came out to take his hack. It was long, again, before he could procure any one to guide him to Priest Hill Cottage;—at last an urchin with a blue face, and his hands in his breeches pockets, was driven out, by a scolding landlady, to show Cuthbert on his way. The north-east wind blew keenly, and drove the snow into his face and neck as he followed the awkward and floundering steps of the stupid and unwilling boy: the distance seemed long; and when they stopped before the wicket of the small cottage, it had a most poor and desolate appearance.
Cuthbert paid and dismissed his guide; and now he was alone on the threshold of that father, whose bosom he had pierced through with many sorrows; he was soon to meet the mother on whose breasts himself and Martin had both hanged in the innocent days of infancy. He had one secret in his bosom, which it would be his duty to keep from those parents—that they might not be grieved above measure in their declining years. He was only come for their pardon and their blessing before he died; but he could not open the wicket and go in. In silent agony he raised his eyes to the God of heaven, to implore strength for that solemn meeting. Then came the tempter, and showed him Martin in boyhood, with sunny curls, and an arm about his neck, running with him down the green slope of the garden to the arbour where their father and mother sat—and then a change came—and he saw the pale corpse, and the bright hair dabbled with blood—and frowning faces looked out on him from the black and laden sky. He felt chill as death and very giddy, and then came a merciful swoon.
What hands were these chafing him as he awoke to consciousness, lying on warm blankets before a fire?—his mother’s. What man was this upon his knees, with earnest and moist eyes, that was giving him a cordial with a gentle care?—it was his father: the wanderer was at home again. Words may not tell his happiness; earth has no language to express it: there, near the throne of mercy, to which his grateful heart throbbed up its thanksgiving, there it was intelligible; there good angels heard it, and struck their golden harps to hymns of joy.
There was not in broad England a fireside more sweetly blessed with the spirit of peace and love than that by which old Noble and his wife and their child Cuthbert sat now for many weeks in quiet company. Not a single look of upbraiding even from old Peter shaded one hour of Cuthbert’s life, from the moment when he was brought in from the wicket in the arms of his father and of that faithful old servant. Though quaint, and rough in manner, the man was true and tender at heart. It was enough for him that Master Cuthbert was come home again; and when he saw his hollow cheeks, and listened to his churchyard cough, all the same feelings which he had once had for him during a dangerous sickness of his childhood returned, and he was as gentle and kind in all he had to do for him as a nurse; but this was little,—for a mother was ever at his side: by her hands his pillow was smoothed, by her his back was propped, and his chair placed nearer to the fire; while his father sought to share in all these services, and read to him, and prayed with him, and communed with him through long and precious hours about their common faith, their common hope, and that future and abiding world, where they should dwell as pardoned and perfected spirits, in sinless felicity, and in the pure service of praise and love for ever.
They all sat together one afternoon, about the close of May, when it was so warm that even the invalid had his chair moved out of doors for half an hour, and sat well wrapped up, to look at the flowers and the bee-hive. Cuthbert was silent, but a tear stole down his cheek; and turning suddenly to his father, he asked, “Did you see any thing?”
“Nothing,” replied Noble, calmly.
“It was a vision then; the mere creature of my own brain: but it was very beautiful. I thought I saw our dear departed Martin.”
“That is not surprising, Cuthbert, we have talked together so much about him lately, and you think of him, I know, a great deal; I myself often in my fancy see the dear boy, and probably shall continue to do so as long as I live.”
“Yes, that is the natural way to account for it; but yet I have never before pictured him to my mind as I saw him just now. He stood in shining raiment, by the bank of a river that seemed to flow between us, and beckoned me to come over; and behind him I saw a field of light, and far off, a city that was bright as alabaster.
“Father, I have one last request to make—I do not think that I shall be much longer with you—read me the fourteenth chapter of St. John now: there my hope as a Christian was first clearly revealed to me; there I first cast anchor. O that I had never put out into the stormy sea of controversy! But it is all well—it is all over now. By the Divine alchemy good hath been drawn out of evil.
“‘O Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under thee!
Resume thy spirit from this world of thrall
Into true liberty.’”
“You are not, dear Cuthbert, impatient, I hope? We must all wait God’s time.”
“I hope not; but it is better to depart.”
He now listened with the most devout and prayerful attention as his father read to him; but before the chapter was finished, his head suddenly sunk upon his bosom, and his spirit departed.