Sir John derived the utmost pleasure from the young man’s company, who bore himself towards his host with a respectful courtesy that had gone out of fashion after the murder of the King, and was rarely met with in an age when elderly men were generally spoken of as “old puts,” and considered proper subjects for “bubbling.”
To Denzil the old campaigner opened his heart more freely than he had ever done to any one except a brother in arms; and although he was resolute in upholding the cause of Monarchy against Republicanism, he owned to the natural disappointment which he had felt at the King’s neglect of old friends, and reluctantly admitted that Charles, sauntering along Pall Mall with ruin at his heels, and the wickedest men and women in England for his chosen companions, was not a monarch to maintain and strengthen the public idea of the divinity that doth hedge a King.
“Of all the lessons danger and adversity can teach he has learnt but one,” said Sir John, with a regretful sigh. “He has learnt the Horatian philosophy—to snatch the pleasures of the day, and care nothing what may happen on the morrow. I do not wonder that predictions of a sudden end to this globe of ours should have been bruited about of late; for if lust and profaneness could draw down fire from heaven, London would be in as perilous a case as Gomorrah. But I doubt such particular judgments belonged but to the infancy of this world, when men believed in a Personal God, interested in all their concerns, watchful to bless or to punish. We have now but the God of Spinoza—a God who is in all things and everywhere about us, of whom this Creation in which we move is but the garment—a Universal Essence which should govern and inform all we are and all we do; but not the Judge and Father of His people, to be reached by prayer and touched by pity.”
“Ah, sir, our life here and hereafter is encompassed with mystery. To think is to be lost on the trackless ocean of doubt. The Papists have the easiest creed, for they believe that which they are taught, and take the mysteries of the unseen world at second hand from their Priests. A year ago, had I been happy enough to win your daughter, I should have tried my hardest to wean her from Rome; but I have lived and thought since then, and I have come to see that Calvinism is a religion of despair, and that the doctrine of Predestination involves contradictions as difficult to swallow as any fable of the Roman Church.”
“It is well that you should be prepared to let her keep her religion; for I doubt she has a stubborn affection for the creed she learnt in her childhood. Indeed, it was but the other day she talked of the cloister; and I fear she has all the disposition to that religious prison in which her great aunt lived contentedly for the space of a long lifetime. But it is for you, Denzil, to cure her of that fancy, and to spare me the pain of seeing my best-beloved child under the black veil.”
“Indeed, sir, if a love as earnest as man ever experienced—”
“Yes, Denzil, I know you love her; and I love you almost as if you were my very son. In the years that went by after Hyacinth was born, before the beginning of trouble, I used to long for a son, and I am afraid I did sometimes distress my dear wife by dwelling too persistently upon disappointed hopes. And then came chaos—England in arms, a rebellious people, a King put upon his defence—and I had leisure to think of none but my royal master. And in the thick of the strife my poor lamb was born to me—the bringer of my life’s great sorrow—and there was no more thought of sons. So, you see, friend, the place in my heart and home has waited empty for you. Win but yonder shy dove to consent, and we shall be of one family and of one mind, and I as happy as any broken-down campaigner in England can be—content to creep to the grave in obscurity, forgotten by the Prince whose father it is my dear memory to have served.”
“You loved your King, sir, I take it, with a personal affection.”
“Ah, Denzil, we all loved him. Even the common people—led as they were by hectoring preachers of sedition, of no more truth or honesty than the mountebanks that ply their knavish trade round Henry’s statue on the Pont Neuf—even they, the very rabble, had their hours of loyalty. I rode with his Majesty from Royston to Hatfield, in ’47, when the people filled the midsummer air with his name, from hearts melting with love and pity. They strewed the ways with boughs, and strewed the boughs with roses. So great honour has been seldom shown to a royal captive.”
“I take it that the lower class are no politicians, and loved their King for his private virtues.”