Gabriel gave a gasp of relief when once more they breathed the fresh outer air. He ran to Joyce and patted her neck and fondled her soft ears before mounting. Then in silence the father and son rode away together, not speaking at all until they had left the city and had had a good gallop over the broad strip of grass that bordered the road to Brampton Bryan.
“That has refreshed you, lad,” said the doctor, glancing at the grave face beside him, “and yet you look as though you had something on your mind.”
“Father,” said Gabriel, vehemently, “I hate Archbishop Laud with my whole heart! Yet you said he was a good man!”
“Indeed I believe him to be a very good man, but he hath more zeal than discretion, and forgets that ‘the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart.’ Dr. Laud will one day find that he is making a great mistake. He is trying with all his might to make folks better by outward observances, by making clean the cup and the platter; that is to put the cart before the horse. You must first make them pure within, or you will but breed up a generation of ceremonious hypocrites and Pharisees.”
“It is because of the discourteous way he spoke to you, sir, that I hate him,” said Gabriel, fiercely.
“Nay, hate him not; I fared much better than I should have done had I been a parson. They tell me that twenty clergy have been deprived of their livings, only for this refusal to bow. As for the Archbishop’s discourtesy, which makes him so much disliked by the gentry of the land, that is not altogether his fault, perhaps, for he had neither good birth nor good breeding. He said that ‘Knowledge puffeth up,’ and I was much minded to quote him the rest of the verse—‘but love buildeth up.’ Depend on it, my son, ’tis that love alone which can save our unhappy country in these difficult times.”
“Will they still be difficult when I am a man?” asked Gabriel.
“I fear they will,” said the doctor, gravely. “Therefore remember that you hate no man, howsoever his sayings and doings may offend you. Have your own faith, but see that you force it not on others, as is too much the custom; for Dr. Laud is wrong—compulsion never yet helped the good cause. What would you think of a physician who thought all men’s ailments were to be treated alike? Men’s souls are as different as their bodies, and their minds are cast in many moulds. The wise servant of Christ knows this, and seeks not to browbeat all men till they conform to one method. Never forget, lad, that your meat may be another man’s poison. There is only one infallible remedy, and as the proverb hath it, ‘Amor vincit omnia!”
By this time they had reached the house of the first patient, and Gabriel was sent on with the groom to the neighbouring inn to order their noontide meal. When this had been discussed, and he had listened to the cheerful talk between his father and the landlord on the prospects of the crops, he had altogether forgotten Dr. Laud and his harsh words, and thought the world once more a pleasant place.
There was much, too, to divert his mind when they reached Brampton Bryan Castle. He quickly fraternised with Ned, the eldest son, and quite lost his heart to sweet-faced Lady Brilliana, Sir Robert’s wife. She had travelled much, and had lived for many years in Holland, so that her talk was infinitely more easy as well as more interesting than that of any other lady he had met. Moreover, while Sir Robert was of the somewhat hard and narrow Puritan school, she was surely the gentlest Puritan dame that ever breathed, and seemed full of kindness to all, whatever their views. He began on that day, as they wandered about the castle, a friendship with Ned which was to last all through his life, and his pity for his father was great when, on returning from the most delightful scramble about the battlements, they found Sir Robert Harley still discoursing on the vestments—and what he indignantly called the ‘altar-ducking’—which Archbishop Laud had ordered in Hereford Cathedral.