“Humph!” said Massey. “There’s little doubt that he is an able leader, but he’s too religious by half. The man’s a mystic, a seventeenth-century Enoch, with the soldierly zeal of a David to boot. By the bye, you may as well take over a detachment of the men from Waller’s army to Bosbury to-morrow. I’m as likely as not to forget that fellow’s request, and I think you have done that sort of business before, eh?”
“Yes, sir, we hewed down Abingdon Cross,” said Gabriel. And when the next day he found that the rest of the forces were to witness the hanging of an unhappy scout of Prince Rupert’s, who had shot a sentry in the early morning, he was glad to have had the Bosbury work entrusted to him.
“I would rather hew down fifty crosses than stand by and see a poor wretch hanged,” he reflected, as they marched along the rough country lanes. “A fair fight is one thing—every man takes his chance, but hanging is a hateful business.”
Then he remembered with deep regret that this despatchbearing that Massey meant to entrust to him would probably rob him of the eagerly-desired glimpse of Hilary, and also of the visit to his home at Hereford. He wondered whether it would not be possible to let his father know of his near neighbourhood, longing sorely to see him and to learn from him more than the few and long-delayed letters he had received could tell. Even if he did not see Hilary he might learn through Dr. Harford how she fared. After all if he did see her, she might possibly refuse to speak to him, as she had done in very cruel fashion at Hereford two years ago. His heart ached even now at the memory of the scene in the Cathedral porch. How was it that although the pain of his wound at Edgehill could never be vividly recalled, the anguish of remembering that last interview remained always so keen? Was it because the body was a mere garment presently to be laid aside, while love, which belonged to the soul and spirit, was eternal and changeless?
But to serve Cromwell in some real, though unknown fashion, was worth suffering for; moreover, he should see Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Commander-in-Chief, and he was naturally eager to learn more about this New Model Army, which was the main hope of his party.
He fell to thinking of the three men who had most influenced his life; his father, Falkland and Cromwell. What was it that had specially attracted him to such opposite types? He tried to think what characteristics they shared, and came to the conclusion that it was a certain breadth of mind and a habit of looking at the inner realities, not the externals, of religion.
He was curiously free from the usual habit of judging men by mere outward appearance, and the fact that both Falkland and Cromwell had been handicapped by nature, and were without form or comeliness had from the first been no hindrance to him. Their largeness of soul had irresistibly drawn him to them; for Falkland, with his wide charity, his philosophic Christianity, had been centuries in advance of his contemporaries; while Cromwell stood now revealed as the foremost of that band of Independents who most nearly reached the level of toleration for those of other religious views. He was ready to tolerate all sorts and conditions of men, save only the Papists and the rigid Episcopalians; the former because they would fain have handed England over once more to the Pope’s jurisdiction, the latter because the recent tyranny of Laud and the servile adulation with which the bulk of the clergy justified the King’s misrule had made them for the time a danger to the State.
But his musings were cut short by a sudden glimpse of an orchard by the roadside, and the first sight they had yet had of apple-trees in blossom.
“What an early spring!” he thought to himself. “’Tis but the 21 st of April and here’s apple blossom! And there are the poplars at Bosbury already green, and the old tower which Hilary asked me about all those years ago. Well! ’tis a mercy we can’t see in life what lies before us. And to point the moral of that reflection here comes Peter Waghorn, like a blot on the fair picture.”
“Good-day, sir, good-day!” said the wood-carver, his dark face lighted by a gleam of triumph. “I thank the Lord you have come. My prayers have been heard, and we shall accomplish His work!”