“Beyond all question,” replied Juxon, “they are wrong in many things; and push their severity against things innocent and pernicious with little or no distinction, with a strained application of Scripture prohibitions, and with a profound ignorance of human nature; and they seem only to discern God in clouds, and to hear him in the thunder. But there are men of great and stern virtues among them; and, it may be, of gentler hearts and gentler views than we give them credit for.”
“I don’t believe a word of it. They are fanatics in religion, and knavish traitors in their politics: you think of them with more charity than I do, and it is a false charity, Master Juxon. There was one of my own name and kin among them: he turned republican, forsooth; old England, forsooth, had no liberty; our good church was a harlot, and all the rest of it; and he would seek true freedom in the forests and swamps of New England; and away he went with wife and daughters, and a son, whom he had made as great a fool as himself. A youth, sir, that bearded me with his treason at my own table. I sent him packing at midnight, sir, and would not let him sleep the night under my roof; and, in good truth, he was as ready to go as I to bid him; and now he and his father are felling trees in America for aught I know, or care, indeed.”
Katharine Heywood proposed to her aunt and the Lamberts that they should go into the Lime Walk, and Juxon would have turned the conversation; but Sir Oliver, with the images of his absent cousins before him, went on venting his feelings, as if in soliloquy. “The son of a clergyman, too, sir, a younger brother of mine, long dead, and he himself having been the faithful servant of a king, well accounted of for valour and discretion in the camp of the great Gustavus, where he commanded a regiment of musketeers. He to turn against kings and good order! He that punished a fault against discipline like a sin against Heaven, and taught his son that obedience was the first duty of a soldier, to come home, with his brave boy to his own country, and teach him to flout at the majesty of the crown! Troth, sir, the king was quit of bad subjects, and I of troublesome relations, when they took ship for the Plantations. I wish all that are as fantastic in their notions would follow them.” At the close of this burst, the old gentleman took a cup of wine with an eagerness that sought relief, and a trembling hand, that betrayed how deeply he was agitated by angry feelings.
Juxon, very unwilling to hear him further on so painful a subject, asked permission of the knight to go and visit Cuthbert Noble for half an hour, and promised to join him afterwards in the bowling green for their customary rubber. As he passed out of the hall, a serving man was coming in with Sir Oliver’s pipe and tobacco-box; and leaving the strange weed to perform its calming office, Juxon, happy to escape, ran up stairs to the chamber of Cuthbert.
The surgeon was seated by his side; and from the conversation, which, although they concealed not the subject or the tenour of it at the entrance of Juxon, they soon dropped, it was evident to him that they had a mutual understanding in matters of religion and politics, and were both of them friendly to the cause of the parliament. It had so chanced that, during the whole of his confinement, Cuthbert had, in the person of the surgeon who attended him, been daily in contact with a mind very deeply imbued with serious and severe principles. By this man Cuthbert’s heart had been probed to the quick; and, under his influence, combining with a strong predisposition in itself, was made sad and heavy.
CHAP. IX.
Passions are likened best to floods and streames;