CHAPTER XXXVI.
“Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
We should agree as angels do above.”
—Edmund Waller.
The churchyard, which during Norton’s visit had looked so peaceful, had become, before the Colonel had ridden halfway back to Canon Frome, the scene of an extraordinary gathering. With bewildered astonishment the Vicar saw the villagers hurrying in from all directions—men in their smock frocks, women fresh from their household work in cap and apron, and eager children pressing to the front that they might the better see the soldiers in their glittering steel helmets and corslets, their buff coats and orange scarves. A cornet carried the blue banner of the Parliament, with its motto, “God with us,” and the Captain brought up the rear. The Vicar, glancing at him, saw that he was young, slight and alert-looking; but his attention was quickly drawn away to Waghorn, who, springing up on the steps of the cross, turned with a vehement gesture towards the leader of the detachment.
“There it stands, Captain, just as I told you!” he cried. “There is the accursed Popish idol! Down with it! Down with it! even to the ground! So may all Thy enemies perish!”
Anything more violent and frenzied than his manner it was impossible to conceive; his dark eyes blazed, his sombre face was transformed.
But the ludicrous inappropriateness of his quotation tickled Gabriel’s sense of humour, and under the violence of the attack he grew restive.
“Your text seems to me ill-chosen,” he said. “But if this be indeed an idol, then by all means let it come down. An idol is a visible object which men bow down to or worship. Do any of you people of Bosbury bow down to this cross?”
There was a quiet force in his tone which instantly arrested the villagers’ full attention.