Arrah Neil; or, Times of Old

by G. P. R. James

It was not sullenness, reader; it was no gloomy bitterness of spirit; it was no impatience of the ills that are the lot of all; it was no rebellions murmuring against the will of God: neither was it madness, nor anything like it, though she acted sometimes strangely, and sometimes wildly, as it seemed to the common eyes of the world, from a strong and energetic determination of accomplishing her object at the time, joined with the utter want of that experience of the world which would have taught her how to accomplish it by ordinary means. What was it then? you will ask, and may think it strange when I say--memory. But so it was: memory, confused and vague, of things long gone before, which formed so strong a contrast with the present, that whenever sorrow or disappointment fell upon her, some former time, some distant scenes of which she knew not the when nor the where, rose up before her eyes, and made even herself believe that she was mad. She recollected bright looks and kind words, and days of happiness and nights of peace and repose, to which she could not give "a local habitation and a name." Were they visions? she asked herself; were they dreams? where could they have occurred? what could they have been? Was it from some book which she had read, she often inquired, that such fanciful pictures had been gleaned, and had then fixed themselves as realities in her mind?

She could not tell; but when such memories rose up, they took possession of her wholly--bewildered, confused, overpowered her. For a time she was a creature of the past; she scarcely believed in the present; she knew not which was the reality--the things gone by, or the things that surrounded her.

During the whole time that she remained at Coventry, this cloud was upon her, and she paid little attention to anything but the continual questioning of her own heart and mind. She attempted, as we have said, to escape--indeed, more than once; but it was by impulse rather than by thought; and when frustrated, she fell at once back again into meditation. She did not remark that Dry treated her in a very different manner from that which he had ever displayed towards her before; that he called her "Mistress Arrah;" that he tried to soothe and to amuse her. She noticed, but without much attention, that different clothing had been provided for her from that which she had been accustomed to wear; but whenever her mind turned from the past towards the present again, her thoughts busied themselves with Charles Walton and his sister, and she would have given worlds to know how it fared with those she loved.

That the victory had been won by the Cavaliers she was aware, but at what price it had been bought she could not tell, and she trembled to think of it. No one, indeed, spoke to her upon the subject; for Dry was silent, and for reasons of his own, he took care that she should be visited by none but the landlady of the inn.

At length two pieces of intelligence reached him on the third day after their arrival in Coventry, which made him resolute to pursue his journey into Yorkshire immediately.

The first of these was communicated to him by one of his own servants, to whom he had sent shortly after the skirmish, and was to the effect that the great majority of the people of Bishop's Merton had espoused the royalist cause, and that messengers had arrived from Lord Walton, ordering him to be apprehended immediately, if he made his appearance in the place. With this news, however, came the money he had sent for; and on the evening of the same day, Dr. Bastwick brought him the second piece of information, which was merely that a troop of the parliamentary horse would pass through Coventry the following day, on their road to Hull, where Sir John Hotham was in command for the parliament. It was added that Master Dry might march safely under their escort, and he accordingly spent the rest of the evening in buying horses and equipage for himself and Arrah Neil, and set out the following day on his journey.

The tedious march towards Hull need not be related; during the whole of the way the old man rode beside his charge, plying her with soft and somewhat amorous words, mingled strangely and horribly with texts from Scripture, perverted and misapplied, and graced with airs of piety and devotion, which those who knew him well were quite aware had no share in his dealings or in his heart.

Arrah Neil paid little attention to him, answered seldom, and then but by monosyllables. To escape was impossible, for he had now too many abettors with him, and she was never left alone for a moment, except when locked into a room during a halt. Yet she looked anxiously for the opportunity; and whenever any objects were seen moving through the country as they passed, her heart beat with the hope of some party of Cavaliers being nigh, and giving her relief. Such, however, did not prove the case, and about noon of an autumnal day, they entered the town of Hull.

Here Mr. Ezekiel Dry separated himself from the troop, with thanks for their escort, and made his way towards the centre of the town, where stood the house of a friend with whom he had often transacted business of different kinds. The friend, however, had since he saw him married a wife, and was absent from the town; and though Mr. Dry assured a demure-looking maid-servant, who opened the door, that his friend Jeremiah had always told him he might use his house as his own, the maid knew Jeremiah better than Mr. Dry, and demurred to receiving any guest during her master's absence.

When the worthy gentleman had finished his conversation, and made up his mind that he must seek an inn, he turned round to remount his horse, and was somewhat surprised to see Arrah Neil gazing round her with a degree of light and even wonder in her look, for which he perceived no apparent cause. The street was a dull and dingy one; most of the houses were of wood, with the gables turned towards the road; and from the opposite side projected a long pole, from which swung a square piece of wood representing, in very rough and rude style, the figure of a swan the size of life. Yet over the dark and time-stained face of the buildings, up the line of narrow street, round the windows and doors carved with quaint figures, ran the beautiful eyes of Arrah Neil, with a look of eager satisfaction which Ezekiel Dry could in no degree account for. They rested principally upon the figure of the swan, however, and as that emblem showed that it was a house of public entertainment, thither Mr. Dry turned the horses' heads, and bade her alight at the door.