"Dearest fret not, sigh not so,
For it is not time nor place
That can much divide us two;
Though it part us for a space."
And she did not know that, at the very same moment, Cluny Neville was solacing the loneliness of his ride by the same writer's "Hymn for Victory" giving to its Hebraic fervour a melodious vigour of interpretation admirably emphasised by the Gregorian simplicity of the tune to which was sung—
"It was alone Thy Providence,
Which made us masters of the field.
Thou art our castle of defense,
Our fort, our bulwark, and our shield.
And had not Thou our Captain been,
To lead us on and off again;
This happy day, we had not seen,
But in the bed of death had lain."
CHAPTER IV
SO SWEET A DREAM
"To judge events, or actions, without connecting them with their causes, is manifestly unjust and untruthful. Such judgments may make inflexible justice to appear tyranny; righteous retribution to wear the guise of cruelty; and virtue itself to have the likeness of vice."
"All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever."
Peace was now confidently predicted, but hope outruns events, and the winter slowly settled down over the level dreariness of the land without any apparent change in the national situation. People grew tired of expecting, and turned almost sullenly to the daily duties of life. For in the North, the winter weather would certainly bring the winter truce, and they must bear the inaction and suspense as well as they were able.
In de Wick, the situation was pitiably forlorn and desolate. The great trees around it stood with dripping leaves motionless in the thick fog; the long grasses lay withered and brown; the livid waters of the lake were no longer enlivened by the scream of the kingfishers, and about the house were silence and desolation. Matilda would gladly have escaped its depressing atmosphere for a little while every day, but she could not, for the roads leading from it were almost quagmires unless steadied by frost, and it was only rarely on such occasions that the horses could be spared to take her as far as Swaffham. These visits were eagerly expected by both girls, and yet were usually regretted; for Matilda could not help saying many hard things, and Jane could not conscientiously quite pass them over. Much was excused for the sake of her sorrow and loss and visible poverty, but even these excuses had limitations and every interview brought with it many sharp words not quite washed out by reconciling tears and promised forgetfulness.
Even the atmosphere of Swaffham, though grateful and cheering, was exasperating to the poor royalist lady. There was such cheerfulness in its comfortable rooms, such plenty of all the necessaries of life, such busy service of men and maids, such active, kindly hospitality to herself, and such pleasant companionship between Jane and her mother, that Matilda could not help a little envious contrasting, a little backward thought of the days when her own home had been the light of its neighbourhood, and her father and mother had entertained in splendid fashion nobles and beauties and famous men whose names were familiar as household words to all England. In those happy days the rooms had shone with a hundred lights; her handsome mother had moved as a queen in them, and her father and brothers had made the place joyful with all the masculine stir of hunting and hawking, the racket of balls in the bowling-alley and tennis court, the excitement of the race, the laughter and love-making of the ballroom. All these, and far sweeter and dearer things, had been cast into the gulf of civil war, and Matilda spent her days counting the cost of such sacrifices—a terrible sum total which she always reckoned with one reflection: "if only mother had been left! I could bear all the rest."