“What are the Clubmen?” asked Hilary.
“They are those country-folk who are determined to have nothing to do either with Royalists or Parliamentarians, but league themselves together to defend their homes and families.”
“In truth, then, sir, I think you yourself are one,” said Hilary, smiling. “For you certainly hold aloof from both parties in one sense, and feed the hungry without respect of persons or opinions.”
“Child, my first duty is to obey the Prince of Peace,” said the Vicar. “I do not understand the violent warlike spirit of most of our clergy, or the bitter words of the Puritan preachers. But it hath never been my fortune to agree well with parsons; the bulk of them seem to me absorbed in the little interests of their parishes, wrapped up in their own narrow opinions and unmindful of greater things.”
Hilary was silent; she wondered what it was that made her uncle so unlike such a parson as Prebendary Rogers, of Stoke Edith, and she tried to understand why he was always at his best when with men of other callings. Much as she loved him, and greatly as she had been influenced by his gentle, kindly spirit, and by the quiet humour which had done so much to cheer her sadness, he was still something of an enigma to her. But she had a suspicion that the true key to his life lay in the old saying, “The liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand.”
But a long digression had been made, and she was deter mined to bring back the conversation to the question she had at heart before the Vicar lighted his pipe.
“When was Sir William Waller’s army last in Gloucestershire?” she asked.
“Well, it must have been just six months ago, I should say,” said the Vicar. “Yes, for I remember we were haymaking in the glebe when Mr. Taylor told me how Waller’s army had twice well-nigh succeeded in capturing His Majesty, who was chased from one county to another. You must remember hearing of Sudeley Castle being taken, and of how scores of bridges in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire were broken down by the two armies, so that they said it would cost £10,000 to make them good again. That was last June, my dear.”
“Colonel Norton said something about it,” said Hilary, steadily, and the Vicar was too much engrossed in the difficult operation of lighting his pipe to notice that she had grown white to the lips.
“Ah, a pleasant-spoken man,” he remarked, “but I don’t like what I hear about the doings of his garrison. Maybe he only carries out his orders, but it is a grievous strain on the people.”