“Arthur Montressor,” she would say, “why do you go forth alone to gather flowers for me? Must I not accompany you, and gather the most beautiful for your own auburn locks? Ah! there is an old venerable man enters. How beautiful are those white locks, and that meek, meek face. Go, Arthur. I must stay here, alone, with the headless man! headless, look at him,—gory neck! Ha, ha!”
Spring came, and the good dame brought flowers and strewed them upon the pillow. They were steeped in the morning’s dew, and as Mary applied them to her burning forehead, and parched lips, she smiled and seemed to be pleased. But she played with them, and their heads came off.
“Yes, yes,—he was beheaded!”
After this she daily became calmer, until she was herself again; the beautiful and blushing Mary Evelyn. Yet, think not that the madness had departed! Reason is like a mirror; break it,—you may replace the fragments,—still it is broken. She loved to wander forth along the glen, or into the cave. Her soul was like a harp, which every spirit of Nature could touch. Madness had sublimed many a thought and feeling, until they seemed to hold converse with the spiritual world.—Nature is more personal than is generally thought. She has a soul as well as senses. The latter are the pleasant sights, the sweet fragrance, and the music of voices, but the soul of Nature is that deep internal working every where, whose will operates upon the senses. Have we not felt the throbbing of its pulse of life, and can she live without a soul? Nature, therefore, is earth’s best comforter to the lonely, because she feels and acts—a free agent.
Mary Evelyn could now also enjoy the conversation of the miller and his wife.
“Miss Evelyn,” Hans once in good humour remarked, “we thought that you never would speak to us. But, as my mother used to observe, ‘persons may carry an egg long in their pocket, and break it at last.’”
Whenever Miss Evelyn wished to be alone, she could retire to her own little apartment, which opened into the back of the glen, or wander into the cave, where the various sounds of the brook falling amidst the rocks and cavities, and the notes of the birds, whose nests were there, beguiled her melancholy.
Meanwhile active hostilities between the King and Parliament had commenced. The sword had been unsheathed, and blood was already on its edge. Counter acts, threats, and impeachments, ceased, and the field was taken. Lancashire, echoing the voice of Lord Strange, declared for Charles, and engaged in the struggle. A few of the principal towns had been seized upon, and held by the Royalists, in spite of the assaults of the Parliamentary forces; but the latter, under the command of the most able generals, and fresh with the enthusiasm of a new-born liberty, were soon to be successful.
The inmates of Dunald Mill were not altogether ignorant of these troublous times. The clapper made a constant noise, and Rachel’s speech, of which she naturally had a great fluency, was incessant: still, these combined agencies could not deafen their ears to all the reports. On the sabbath, when they repaired to Lancaster, although it was the day of peace, there were no subjects of conversation afloat, except rumours of war. In the church, many a seal had the parson opened, amidst thunderings and lightnings, and black horses, and white horses, and red horses, and riders bearing bows, conquering and to conquer, had spurred forth. Then he would, from Scripture prophecy, delineate the character of the opposite leaders in the war. When Lord Strange planted the royal standard in the county, the parson’s text was, “Who is this that cometh from Edom?” Edom, he very judiciously considered, as synonymous with Lathom, the family seat of his lordship. When Oliver Cromwell was reported to be marching into Lancashire, at the head of a body of men, whom he had himself levied and disciplined, he travelled into the Apocalypse, and gave out the following;—“And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails, and their power was to hurt men, five months. And they had a king over them, who is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon.”