CHAPTER IV.
THE PLEASANT ISLE OF AVÈS.
"And such a port for mariners I ne'er shall see again
As the pleasant Isle of Aves, beside the Spanish main."
C. KINGSLEY, The Last Buccàneer.
For a while Richard Harrison found safety in his old county, not indeed in his father's comfortable town-house, nor in the widowed Mrs. Harrison's county home, but lurking among the potters' huts on the Staffordshire moors, and only venturing to visit his friends under cover of night.
The colour which his unlucky presence among the congregation at Coleman Street on the day of General Harrisons execution, had given to his enemy's accusations, had made his position perilous in the extreme, for General Monck, and his other secret friends, considered that he had wilfully disregarded their warnings, and were not inclined to exert their influence in his behalf. During those miserable months of hiding he had but one sad satisfaction—that of knowing that Prince Rupert had kept his promise and the mangled remains of Thomas Harrison were restored to his widow, and laid in decency in Newcastle churchyard. The dead was safe from further outrage, but the living were still at the mercy of private malice and public panic, and Richard found that to linger any longer near his old home would be but to draw suspicion on his friends, and even involve them in the fate that threatened himself.
His best chance of escape was to reach some seaport, but it took all the efforts of his father and his relatives to rouse him to decide on trying to make for one. Sick at heart, hopeless for the future of the country, all that had made life worth living—ambition, work, love, and even religion, seemed lost. He was practically alone in the world. Those of General Harrison's friends who had not shared the Regicide's doom, were scattered to the four winds, and even if Richard had known of their places of refuge, he had nothing to unite him to them, but the bond of a common sorrow. His own comrades either believed in the accusations that his enemy circulated with such industry against him, or were too busy and too selfish to trouble themselves about a man who was under a cloud. There was no one left alive who had the power to rouse Richard from the torpor that possessed him; the numb misery that had fallen on him when he saw General Harrison die had never again lifted from his heart and brain.
Till that day he had never realized how completely the warmth and enthusiasm of General Harrison's character had dominated his own life. While their opinions diverged completely, their feelings were in harmony, or rather the glowing faith and single-hearted idealism of the elder man had illuminated the being of the younger. Now a glory had departed from the earth. Richard's youthful wisdom had often grown impatient of his uncle's wild fancies, or smiled with affectionate mockery on his Utopian dreams; but unconsciously the young man had always measured his own thoughts and actions by the unworldly standard of General Harrison's ideal. He, with all who lived near Harrison, had seemed to catch a reflected gleam of the radiance that shone on his path; now, a light was gone. Where Richard had seen that noble figure treading the path before him, a sudden gulf yawned, the leader had vanished, the path was lost, and the blank fog was around him. The warm clasp was gone, only the memory of the dead hand would be with him to the end.
Richard's life had been one of activity. Whether fighting or administrating or farming, his simple and practical nature had found its natural outlet in work. Speculations on religion or forms of government had little attraction for him; there was always some work to be done, and that he found more congenial than meditation. Now, his occupations were gone, his career wrecked, the only subject for his thoughts was how to preserve his own wretched life, a matter which soon grew to him one of complete indifference. His relations painted to him in glowing colours the future that still opened to him in the New England plantations where their friend Parson Perrient was sure to offer him a warm welcome, and to satisfy their wishes, he made his way eastward, hoping to find a ship bound for Holland at King's Lynn, and so to take passage for the New World from Rotterdam. But the new life in the West that had once seemed so attractive, the day dreams that had woven themselves about the log cabin in a forest clearing, faded almost before he began to desire them. He was too heart-sick to hope, too weary to devise new ambitions, or even to recall the old ones that had kept him company from his youth.
In the dusk of a winter evening, Richard Harrison's tired feet turned to the door of a shabby little inn on the outskirts of Northampton. He had grown skilful in picking resting-places where he was likely to meet none but creatures as wretched as himself, wanderers and beggars too much taken up with their own misery to waste curiosity on the history of others. Wet and weary, the fire was grateful to him, though the room it lit up was as dirty and mean as could well be. But the rickety settle at least kept the wind from the tired traveller, and the bulging rafters supported a roof that kept the rain out. Richard crouched over the hearth, drying his wet clothes and awaiting without much expectation of satisfaction the supper the slatternly hostess promised, when a heavy step without, and a violent rattle of the door-latch, told that another wayfarer was coming to share his wretched lair. A tall burly fellow swaggered into the room, and flung into the elbow chair with a weight that made it creak.
"Que tiempo maldito!" he growled, shaking the wet from his hat brim. "Hullo, good mother, food and drink as quick as may be, most especially drink, and none of your small beer for me," he shouted, jingling a few coppers in his hand with the air of an alderman ordering turtle and venison.