Lord Beverley knelt down and gently took her hand: it was cold as ice; but there was a keen frost, and he touched her cheek, removing the rich ringlets of her hair, which had fallen over her face. There was some warmth left; and raising her in his arms he directed her to be carried into the little town of Kineton, now in possession of the royalist cavalry, with the body of her husband.
But Arrah never spoke again. It was evident that she had come in time to receive the last breath of him she loved, for the fingers of Lord Walton's left hand were found tightly closed upon her garments; but how she had found him, or when, could not be discovered. All that was ever learned was, that one of the ploughmen of the farm at Newington had guided her to Edgehill, and that from the summit she had witnessed the battle below; but at night, as she would not return, the man had left her, and all the rest was darkness. Every effort was made to recal her to herself, but all was in vain; and in about two hours after she had been removed to Kineton, the last feeble spark of life that was left went out; and she was buried in the same grave with her husband, in less than a week from her marriage-day.
Such was the fate of one of the fairest and the gentlest of human beings. It would be a sad fact, that virtue and good conduct, that the highest qualities of the mind and the heart, cannot always command success or ensure happiness but that we have the grand assurance, both in God's Word and in God's goodness, that there is a place where there is compensation and reward. That the very brightest and the very best of human efforts often do not obtain their recompense here, has been admitted by the most sceptical of philosophers as a strong evidence of a future state. Our hopes and expectations are founded on a higher and better basis, and we are permitted to see, even in the sorrows of the good, the trial of that faith which is the assurance of immortality.
We might well close our history here, and close it in sadness; but, as there are almost always some mitigating circumstances in the course of disastrous events, we may be allowed to take off a little from the tragic character of the conclusion of this tale by speaking of the after history of other persons who have figured in the scene; and the reader is always anxious more or less to hear the ultimate fate of those in whom he has taken an interest.
To speak of the more important personages, then:--In the first place, it may well be supposed that the Earl of Beverley mourned sincerely for his friend, and his grief was somewhat aggravated by the powers of imagination; for the fact that his persuasions had been the immediate cause of Lord Walton joining the royal standard connected itself closely with the dream which he had had in prison, and brought a shadow over him whenever the events of the day gave him time for thought. He himself went safely through all the scenes of the civil war, remaining uninjured, except from a slight wound which he received at Long Marston Moor. His fair lady followed him as closely as was possible throughout the whole of those eventful times, and she was as happy as unchanging love and affection could make her amidst the disasters of her country and the overthrow of the royal house to which she was attached. The fall of her brother and the death of his gentle bride affected Annie Walton deeply, and it was long ere she regained the original cheerfulness of her character; but that cheerfulness depended as much upon principle as upon mood, and instead of encouraging grief, she made every effort to regain her serenity.
After the total ruin of the Cavalier party, the earl and his wife retired to France, and continued to live there in almost total seclusion till the restoration of the house of Stuart brought them back to their native land, where, though they met with the neglect which, in those days, as it is in all, was too frequently the reward of good services, they bore it with perfect indifference, happy in mutual affection, and requiring nothing else to complete their felicity.
A short time before they quitted England, Lady Margaret Langley had left the troublous scene in which they were still moving, for the repose of that quiet mansion which she had long looked to only as a place of rest. But there is still one personage of whose after history we must say a few words. Captain Deciduous Barecolt continued to serve the king as long as any services could be available, and in no point or particular did he derogate from his high-established character. He fought as well, he drank as deeply, he lied as vigorously as we have seen him do in the past narrative; and, though in the succeeding wars he got into a thousand scrapes, in which it required all the genius of a Barecolt to extricate his neck from the halter or his throat from the knife, he contrived, with marvellous ingenuity, to find his way out of circumstances which would have overwhelmed any common man. Nor was he absent from Worcester field; on the contrary, some have asserted that he was taken prisoner on that occasion, and contrived to deceive the keenness of Cromwell himself. Certain it is, that after the restoration of Charles II. Barecolt returned to England, presented himself at Bishop's Merton, put in a claim to the property of Mr. Dry, of Longsoaken, as the direct heir of old Nicholas Cobalter, and having proved that the will under which Mrs. Cobalter had possessed his uncle's property was a forgery, he established such a debt against the estate of Mr. Dry as speedily rendered him the master of Longsoaken. There he continued to reside with an elderly man named Falgate, who played the character, partly of dependant, partly of attached friend, till he had well-nigh reached the age of eighty years, when, with a form somewhat bowed, a face somewhat white, and a nose which had gradually turned from red to blue, Colonel Barecolt, of Longsoaken, sank quietly into the grave, his last words being, "The pottle-pot's empty, Diggory."
FOOTNOTES
[Footnote 1]: We do not always remember that in the reign of Charles I. the cavalry were in general defended by casques with moveable visors. The dragoons, indeed, had usually an open helmet.