Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low—
To vice industrious;—Yet he pleased the ear.”
—Milton.
Throughout the winter and the early spring Herefordshire was in a state of misery and unrest. The people, frantic at the ill-treatment they received from the Royalist garrisons at Hereford, Canon Frome and other places, rose in open insurrection. The sturdy men in the Forest of Dean, seeing their country wasted with fire and sword, their sons impressed to serve in the King’s army, and their wives and daughters brutally ill-used by the merciless troops of Rupert, and by such well-known tyrants as Lunsford and Langdale, would endure such doings no longer, and the rising of the Clubmen became a new and serious element in the strife.
Massey, the Governor of Gloucester, sought to win them over definitely to the Parliament, and entered into negotiations with the leaders at Ledbury, where some 2,000 of them had gathered; but they would bind themselves to neither party, and in the end were dispersed by Prince Rupert, who, having hanged three of the leading men, withdrew to Hereford.
Hilary’s heart had been also in the strangest state of unrest; it was impossible to be in the immediate neighbourhood of all these cruelties and confusions and to remain unmoved. She grieved over the horrible sufferings of the people, and yet now and then the false glamour of war and the halo of romance which invested Norton and the brave and fiery Rupert, resumed its sway over her. Moreover, though no thought of love had entered into her mind, her pride was subtly gratified by the attentions Norton paid her. That a man of his age and standing should hang upon her words, should show her every mark of respect, and even consult her on occasion, was pleasant enough. From open compliments, from praise of her beauty, she would at once have shrunk, but this more delicate flattery ministered to the weakest point in her character—her unconquerable pride.
It was on the morning of the 20th April, nearly two years after her mother’s death, that she laid aside her black garments and took from the big oak chest, where it had been all this time laid up in lavender, the grey gown, with its grey and pink hood and cape, which had for her so many memories of the past. She sighed a little as she donned them, but Durdle looked well pleased when she appeared in the kitchen in her spring attire.
“How many eggs do you want this morning?” asked the girl, lightly. “I shall start early and gather primroses on the way.”