And sitting down, he drew Johnny on his knee, and taking from his pocket a small book, he said: "Here, my friend, let us see how you can read in this."
It was the Phaedo of Plato, which Johnny knew nearly by heart, and he immediately began, with almost breathless rapidity, to construe with, here and there, considerable freedom, till the gentleman stopped him with a laugh. "Gently, gently, my friend. I saw you were a scholar, but not that you were a complete Platonist! I fear your master is one who looks more to the Divine sense than to the grammar! But never mind, you and I shall be much together, and as you are so fond of Plato, you shall read him with me. You shall go to your brother, who, if he cannot read 'In Phaedone,' can tell you many wonderful things of the Court and the city that no doubt you will hear very gladly;" and letting Johnny go, he turned to his father, saying, in an undertone, which, however, the boy heard; "The lad is apt, indeed! more so than any of us could have dreamt; no fitter soil, I could wager, we could have found in England!"
Johnny went to his brother, and they left the room together. The two boys,—as the two children had been,—were remarkably alike; the more so as this likeness of form and feature, which to a casual observer appeared exact, was consistent with a very remarkable difference of expression and manner—the difference being, as it were, contained in the likeness without destroying it. Their affection for each other, which continued through life, was something of the same nature, arising apparently from instinct and nature, apart from inclination. Their tastes and habits being altogether different, they pursued their several courses quite contentedly, without an effort to be more united, but once united, or once recalled to each other's presence or recollection even in the most accidental manner, they manifested a violent and overpowering attachment to each other. On the present occasion they wandered through the gardens and neighbourhood of the Priory; and as the strange gentleman had foretold, Johnny took the greatest interest in the conversation of his brother, whom, indeed, he both now and afterwards most unfeignedly admired, and to whose patronage he invariably submitted with perfect satisfaction. Eustace, who had lately been admitted one of the junior supernumerary pages to the King, talked incessantly of the King's state and presence chamber, of the yeomen of the guard, of the pageants and masques, and of banquets, triumphs, interviews, nuptials, tilts, and tournaments; the innumerable delights of the city; of the stage players, tumblers, fiddlers, inn-keepers, fencers, jugglers, dancers, mountebanks, bear-wardens; of sweet odours and perfumes, generous wines, the most gallant young men, the fairest ladies, the rarest beauties the world could afford, the costly and curious attire, exquisite music, all delights and pleasures which, to please the senses, could possibly be devised; galleries and terraces, rowing on the Thames, with music, on a pleasant evening, with the goodly palaces, and the birds singing on the banks.
All this Johnny listened to with admiration, and made little reply to his brother's disparaging remarks on the miserable life he had led in the country, or to his sage advice to endeavour, by some means, to come to London to the Court.
Johnny remembered his master's counsel, and was silent on his own pleasures and pursuits. His pleasant walks by the brook side, pleasant shade by the sweet silver streams, good air, and sweet smell of fine, fresh meadow flowers, his walks among orchards, gardens, green thickets, and such-like pleasant places, in some solitary groves between wood and water, meditating on some delightful and pleasant subject—he thought his brother would only ridicule these things. It is true the next day when they went to the Avon to see an otter hunted, Johnny occupied the foremost place for a time; he was known to the keepers, and to two or three gentlemen who were at the sport, and was familiar with the terms in tracing the mark of the otter, and following through all the craft of the hunting, tracing the marks in the soft and moist places to see which way the head of the chase was turned. He carried his otter spear as well as any of the company, while the hounds came trailing and chanting along by the river-side, venting every tree root, every osier bed and tuft of bulrushes, and sometimes taking to the water, and beating it like spaniels. But as soon as the otter, escaping from the spears, was killed by the dogs, or, having by its wonderful sagacity and craft avoided the dogs, was killed by the spears, Eustace assumed his superior place, coming forward to talk to the gentlemen, who were delighted with him, while Johnny fell back into the quiet, dreamy boy again.
The two brothers were left together for several days, their father, with the strange gentleman—whose name Eustace told Johnny was Hall—having departed on horseback, on a visit to a gentleman in Gloucestershire. Eustace observed great caution in speaking of Mr. Hall, telling Johnny he would know all about him soon from himself. The boys passed the time happily enough. Johnny's affection for his brother increased every day, and withstood not only Eustace's patronage, but—what must have been much more hard to bear—the different way in which the servants treated the two boys. Eustace, who, though only a few minutes older than his brother, was the heir, was treated with great deference and respect; which might possibly also be owing to his being a stranger and to his Court breeding. Johnny, on the contrary, though he was quite as tall as his brother, they treated like a child: the housekeeper took him up to bed when it pleased her; the old butler would have caned him without hesitation had he thought he deserved it; and the maids alternately petted and scolded him, the first of which was more disagreeable to him than the last. The hard condition of children, and especially of younger brothers, is a common theme of the writers of the period, and Johnny's experience was not different from that of others. His disposition, however, was not injured by it, though it may have made him still fonder of retirement and of day-dreaming than he would have been. This hard discipline made him resolve to be silent on those wonderful secrets and the learning that his master had taught him, and to meditate increasingly upon them in his heart. He delighted more and more in wandering by the river-side, building castles in the air, and acting an infinite variety of parts. When his brother left him, this became still more delightful to him, and but for other influences he might have gone on in this fascinating habit till he realised Burton's terrible description, and from finding these contemplations and fantastical conceits so delightful at first, might have become the slave of vain and unreal fancies, which may be as terrible and dismal as pleasing and delightful.
After about a fortnight's absence, Mr. Inglesant and Mr. Hall returned from their visit, or visits, for they appeared to have stayed at several places; and the next day Eustace and his father departed for London. His father displayed more affection than usual on leaving Johnny behind him, assuring him of his love, and that if he heard a good account of him from Mr. Hall, he should come up to London and see the Court. Eustace's grief at losing his brother again was much lessened by his joy at returning to his congenial life in London; but Johnny watched him from the old gatehouse in front of the Priory with a sad heart.
While he is standing looking after his father and brother, as they ride up the hill by the same path which the Prior came down that fine summer morning long years before, we will take a moment's time to explain certain events of which he was perfectly ignorant, but which were about to close about him and involve him in a labyrinth from which he may have been said never to have issued during his life. We call ourselves free agents;—was this slight, delicate boy a free agent, with a mind and spirit so susceptible, that the least breath affected them: around whom the throng of national contention was about to close; on whom the intrigue of a great religious party was about to seize, involving him in a whirlpool and rapid current of party strife and religious rancour? Must not the utmost that can be hoped,—that can be even rationally wished for—be, that by the blessing of the Divine guidance, he may be able to direct his path a little towards the Light?
The laws oppressing the Roman Catholics, which had been stringently enforced during the greater part of James's reign, had been considerably relaxed when he was negotiating with the Spaniards for the marriage of his son, and again on King Charles's marriage with Henrietta Maria of France. From that time greater and greater leniency was shown them, not only by the exertion of Catholic influence at Court, but also through Puritan jealousy; the juries refusing to punish Popish recusants, because Puritan separatists were included in the lists. Spasmodic exertions of severity were made from time to time by the King and the Church party; but, on the whole, the Papists enjoyed more and more liberty, especially between 1630 and 1640. Advantage was taken by the party of this freedom to the fullest extent; money was amassed abroad, an army of missionary priests poured into England, agents were sent from the Pope, and every effort made in every part of England to gain converts, and confirm uncertain members. Many Papists who had conformed to the authority of the English Church beginning to entertain hopes of the ultimate success of the old religion, fell away and became recusants—that is, ceased to attend their Parish Church. Mr. Inglesant, who—through all his life—had watched the progress of affairs with a careful and far-reaching penetration, had, from the first, been in communication with chiefs of the popish party; but he was far too important a friend where he was to allow of any change in his behaviour, and he still rigidly conformed to the Established Church. The Roman Catholics were divided into two parties, holding two opinions, which, under different aspects, actuate all religious parties at the present day. The one viewed the English Church and its leader Archbishop Laud with hatred, regarding him, and doubtless with great truth, as their most formidable opponent, as occupying a place in the country and in the allegiance of the majority of Englishmen which otherwise could only have been filled by the older Church: the other looking more at the resemblances between the two Churches, held the opinion that little was needed to bring the Established Church into communion and submission to the Papal See, and by that means, at once, and without trouble, restore the papal authority in England. The efforts of this party were of a more political nature than those of the other; they endeavoured to win over Archbishop Laud to a conference, and a Cardinal's hat was offered to him more than once. To this party Mr. Inglesant belonged. Occupying a neutral position himself, and possessed of the confidence of members of both Churches, he was peculiarly fitted for such negotiations, and was in constant communication with those Churchmen, very numerous at Court, and among the clergy and the country gentry, who were favourably disposed to the Papists, though at the same time sincere members of their own Church. The value of emissaries possessing in this way the confidence of Church people and Papists alike was so obvious, that Mr. Inglesant and his friends did all they could to add to their number, especially as they were not very easy to procure, great jealousy existing, among nearly all Church people, of any foreign or armed interference in England on the part of the Romanists, who were always suspected of such intentions. Mr. Inglesant, therefore, whom nothing escaped, had marked out his younger son's temperament as one peculiarly fitted to be trained for such a purpose, and had communicated this idea to his intimate associate among the Papists, Father Sancta Clara, as he was called, of an English family named St Clare, a Jesuit missionary priest who travelled in England under the name of Mr. Hall. The latter was a man of great influence, unbounded devotion to his order, and unflinching courage; a profound scholar, and, according to the knowledge of that day, a man of science, trained, indeed, in every variety of human learning, and taking advantage of every scrap of knowledge and information for the advancement of his purpose. Of elegant and fascinating manners, and accustomed to courtly life abroad, he was, perhaps, the most influential agent among the thousand mission priests at that time scattered through England. His time, of course, was fully taken up with his difficult embassy, but he was interested in the account Inglesant gave of his son; and the idea of training him to such usefulness in three or four years' time, when their plans might be expected to be ripe, commended itself exceedingly to his peculiar genius and habit of mind. He was at this time Superior over part of the south-west of England, and was much engaged among the gentry in those parts—a position of peculiar difficulty, as the people of the greater part of that district were strongly Puritan, and the gentry hostile to Rome. So secluded and convenient a position as Westacre Priory was exactly adapted to aid him in his mission, and he resolved to take up his quarters there, from whence he could, with great hopes of escaping observation, continue his work in the adjoining country. Mr. Inglesant, with an eye to such a contingency, had purposely omitted to appoint a chaplain at the Priory for some time, and now nominated a Mr. ——, a graduate of Oxford, a man who was "ex animo" a Papist, and who only waited a suitable time to declare himself one. The number of such men was very great, and they were kept in the English Church only by the High Church doctrines and ceremonies introduced by Archbishop Laud; affording one out of numberless parallels between that age and the present. It is perhaps not necessary to say more in this place to explain the presence of Mr. Hall (otherwise Father Sancta Clara) at Westacre, nor the future that lay before Johnny Inglesant as he stood by the gatehouse of the old Priory looking after his father and Eustace as they rode up the hill.
CHAPTER III.