“Good brother, I am a poor man, and alone,” was the answer; “and, in sooth, I see little to choose between a prison, and some distant village, where I could hide me, and earn a morsel of bread; so I will tarry truly, and will stay my preaching for no law. If they do lay violent hands on me, be it so; if I may not preach, I may suffer; for I have no daughter, Master Field—no household, good brother Chester—and surely it is a thing lawful to be resisted, that an Englishman may not speak God’s truth.”
So the stubborn Saxon man remained, in various places stoutly resisting the enacted injustice, and carrying his Master’s message without fear; a persevering, plain, laborious spirit, whose tenacious and obstinate strength had something noble in it—so little show as it made—so little transfusion as it had of the loftier light of genius. The brave and honest common stock, of whom, if there were many, it would be blessed for this land.
And leaving London, the terror of God’s judgment removed, rushing headlong again into its ancient sins, the other Puritans went forth houseless, with only poverty and pain before them, to seek shelter and daily bread. Of all the benefactors of the stricken city, the most bold and untiring, they, and no other, were cast out at its restoration, in hardship, in sorrow, and in reproach, persecuted for their Master’s sake.
While among the many graves of yonder city churchyard, with those around him to whom he had ministered in deadly peril, and for whom he had spent his life, the preacher Vincent, lay quiet and at rest.
Sadly met, and sadly parted, the little company of wayfarers spent the night in the house of Mistress Magdalene Chester; and there, in silent pity and tenderness, by the widowed Mary’s side, Edith Field saw the full cup run over, as she delivered the last greeting intrusted to her by the dead. A sad cloud it was, enveloping the young life in its blinding mist of sorrow, yet nobly borne and gravely, and with that solemn sad hope, of all hopes the deepest and most steadfast.
And so they traveled home—for to no shelter more secure or of higher pretension than the cottage of the Cumberland shepherd, could the Puritan minister direct his steps. The quiet moorland parish, from which he had been ejected long ago by the followers of the first Charles—that hardest of all his trials, as he had described it to Edith—was full five miles away. Carlisle, the nearest town, was further. So in Ralph Dutton’s house he was safe.
Sir Philip Dacre had arrived at Thornleigh some brief time before, and there Master Chester, after a few days’ experience of the lassitude and weariness which follows the excitement of grief, settled down, not unpleasantly, into possession of that grave old library with its rich stores of ancient learning and philosophy. The father of the Lady Dacre had somewhat prided himself on his knowledge of the budding science of his time, and had so much leaning to the stricter party of Reformers in the Church, as to have left on his shelves many old ponderous volumes, which gladdened the quaint divine as he began his most congenial work in the sanctum of the Cumberland baronet. His former pupil and he agreed well. The courtly olden gentleman, indeed, had little in common with those rude clowns—half fool, half fanatic—whom men of these latter days have foisted into the ancient Presbyterian Church of England; as if it were so easy a thing to give up worldly goods, and home, and ease, and kindred, and risk even life itself for the Master’s sake, or as if clowns and fools were the men to make such sacrifices.
They had not been many hours under Dame Dutton’s roof again, ere Edith took her good hostess aside, to ask from her the further details of her mother’s history. She feared to mention it again to her father, at the risk of renewing the agony which she had seen in Hampstead.
“And is she dead?” said Dame Dutton; “is she dead, sayst thou, yonder proud lady? and in the plague, with only thee to be merciful to her? Ah! dost mind, Mistress Edith, how I, a sinful woman as I am, marveled that she got leave to bide in all her grandeur, who had done so cruel a wrong? But it hath found her out. And she called thee angel, sweetheart? and so she might, I warrant her, and thy mother before thee. Truly, I fear there be few angels whither she hath gone.”
“Hush, Dame Dutton! say not so,” said Edith; “it is not our part to give doom.”