When Gabriel had watched the last glimpse of the pale puco gown as Hilary turned the north-west corner of the cathedral, he went despondently enough into the building itself to see whether any mischief had been done by Waghorn and his adherents.
At first he could see no slightest trace of damage, but in the north-east transept he encountered Major Locke, pacifying one of the vergers who seemed much concerned at the prospect of “such a mort o’ clearin’ up,” as he expressed it.
“It shall be reported to Sir William Waller,” said the major; “but in truth ’tis very hard to prevent the men from being stirred up and led into mischief by these fanatic preachers.”
“What on earth induced them to attack Bishop Swinfield’s monument?” exclaimed Gabriel, genuinely vexed to see that the old Bishop’s effigy had been literally hacked to pieces.
“Well, it seems that Waghorn, this crazy carpenter fellow, lured them on with tales of a crucifix, and it proved to be a bas-relief just above this tomb. The men have scarce left a trace of it, but you can see the outline on the wall. Then, quite against the Parliamentary order for respecting the monuments of the dead, they must needs go and hew in pieces this effigy. Hearing that mischief was afoot, I was fortunately in time to order them out of the building before they grew more unruly.”
“I see they have hewn off the head without harming it,” said Gabriel, stooping to pick it up from the corner into which it had been tossed. “With your permission, sir, I will bear it to the Palace. Bishop Coke will value it, and here it would but be cast away as rubbish.”
“Ay, sir, do,” said the verger. “The Bishop, God bless’un, he do set great store by all old statutes, and so do his son, Dr. William Coke; and Mistress Hilary Unett she takes after ’m; seems to run in the family like. For my part, I be glad Waghorn set the soldiers on useless stocks and stones and spared the glass windows, for the cathedral do be mortal cold on windy days at service time.”
This, then, explained in part Hilary’s angry mood. Perhaps had they met under less trying circumstances, she might have been less cruel. Very sore at heart, Gabriel went out again, encountering Joscelyn Heyworth not far from the Palace.
“What plunder are you carrying away, you sacrilegious man?” exclaimed the young Captain, with his genial laugh. “When an honest man turns thief he always betrays himself. What are you hiding under your scarf ends?”
“A bishop’s head,” said Gabriel, grimly.
“Oh! so this explains some of the lady’s wrath.”
“Yes, no wonder she was angry. I am taking this to her grandfather—Bishop Coke.”
“You would do much better to throw it down on the green, and give up the whole connection. What have you to do now with bishops, either in stone or in the flesh? And as to their granddaughters—may heaven preserve me from ever again escorting home an episcopal lady. Like Benedick, ‘I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.’”
“You don’t know her,” said Gabriel. “To-day she was very naturally incensed.”
“Now be a sensible man, Gabriel, and cast that head into the kennel, for I assure you its stony curls are not more stony than the heart of Mistress Hilary.”
“Be silent!” said Gabriel, hotly. “I tell you that you do not know her. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, as the proverb hath it.”
“Then let us hope the lady will apply that sentiment to the cure of her pride. For truly she knows much more of you than she did before I crossed her path.”
“What do you mean?” said Gabriel, aware that Joscelyn was often daringly outspoken and unconventional, and fearing that he might only have angered Hilary the more.
“I told her of the night at Kineton, when, in your delirium the name of Hilary was eternally on your lips.”
“So you have known all this time?”
“To be sure; and now she knows one or two eminently wholesome truths.”
“I fear you but annoyed her yet more. What did she say?”
“Well, she turned whiter than this old prelate’s head, and I could have sworn she was going to soften. But nothing of the sort; she remained as stony as this effigy, and so we parted with freezing politeness and ceremony. Give her up, Gabriel; why let her make your life a misery?”
“You don’t understand her,” said, Gabriel, in a choked voice. “You have not yet really seen her true self. As to giving her up—why, how should I do that? I have loved her since we were children, and we Harfords do not change.”
“So it seems,” said Joscelyn, ruefully. “Well, I’m hanged if anybody should trouble my peace who had treated me with the consummate cruelty she showed you to-day.”
Gabriel, without reply, turned in at the gateway of the Palace, feeling that even his best friend somehow failed to help him, and quite prepared to be refused an interview with the Bishop.
Strangely enough, however, it was the saintly old man who differed from him on so many points in politics and theology who best understood him at that time. He received him as if nothing had happened since their last meeting, bidding him welcome with the same warmth and the same perfect courtesy he had always shown him.
“They may abolish bishops,” thought Gabriel, “yet somehow the best description of Bishop Coke will always be the title, ‘Right reverend father in God?’”
The head of Bishop Swinfield, half-concealed by the ends of the broad orange scarf which girded Gabriel’s buff coat, quickly attracted the old prelate’s attention.
“I had heard of the mischief done just now,” he said. “I see you bring me an unharmed fragment; I am glad you rescued that.”
“I thought, my lord, you would value it, and perhaps have it in safe hiding till quieter times.”
“I will give it to my son, ’twill be safer in his care; and to tell the truth, Mr. Harford, I cannot expect to live till quieter times. These troubles are breaking my heart.”
“My lord, indeed ’twas scarce the fault of the soldiers that harm was wrought in the cathedral; they were led on by a poor fanatic fellow whose father was grievously misused by Dr. Laud.”
“And therein lies my worst sorrow,” said the Bishop, with a long sigh. “Our system seemed to us right and good, yet it hath alienated the people, and wholly failed. Believe me, Mr. Harford, I am not thinking of the misguided zeal of your soldiers, but of my own mistaken zeal in the past. Yet we meant well—God knows we meant well.”
Gabriel was silent. Before a humility and sorrow such as this words seemed a profanation.
He glanced round the room, the very one in which he had offered his services to the Parliament during the Earl of Stamford’s occupation six months before. Again his eyes turned to the picture of Hilary as a child, and the Bishop, noting this, asked if he had seen her, and by his kindly sympathy gradually drew from him the whole story.
“’Tis no ill cure to set two sad folks to talk with each other,” he said, a faint smile playing about his lips. “I am breaking my heart over the direful strife betwixt Christian men, and you are breaking your heart over a difference of opinion with the maiden you love. We must both remember the apostle’s words, ‘Love never faileth.’ It seems to us to have wholly failed now, and for the night of this life it may seem so, but the day will dawn. For you, if God will, it may perchance, after all, dawn here on this earth, though scarce for me.”
He crossed the room to a beautifully carved cabinet, and opening one of the inner compartments, took out a miniature of Hilary.
“This,” he said, showing it to Gabriel, “was painted for me the autumn you first went to London, and I always intended that at my death it should be yours. I think you were right when that day in the cloisters you said to me that the Harfords do not change, and in these troubled times I shall like to know that you already have it in your keeping, for I have a feeling that we shall not again meet in this world.” Gabriel, with tears in his eyes, could only falteringly speak his thanks.
“Nay,” said the Bishop, cheerfully. “’Tis a pleasure to me to think it will be some slight comfort to you, my son. And,” he added, with a quiet laugh, “you were the first to make a presentation to me of good Bishop Swinfield’s head, knowing my special feeling for the past dignitaries of our Church. ’Tis but meet that I should acknowledge your courtesy by the gift of my granddaughter’s head—a wilful maid, yet methinks one that will some day ripen into a right noble woman. Believe me, my son, she is worth waiting for.”
“I will wait a lifetime, if need be,” said Gabriel, looking at the sweet face in the miniature—the Hilary that had been before the war. And then, remembering past times, he made an enquiry as to the treatise on the Epistle to the Colossians. The old Bishop shook his head, sadly.
“The war hath been the ruin of all books,” he said, ruefully. “They tell me people will read naught nowadays but the war pamphlets which are poured forth in shoals from the press. Or else they read the news books, which, so far as I can learn, vie with each other in lying, and are crammed with envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness. From the curse of such weapons of the evil one, good Lord deliver us!”
The words came with all the more force because spoken by one so habitually gentle, and Gabriel, watching the folded hands and the white head bent in this heartfelt ejaculation, felt more than ever drawn to the Bishop.
Never once had Bishop Coke repulsed him by the illogical arguments about the divine right of the King to govern wrongfully, which were hurled at the heads of the Parliamentarians by most Royalists. He kept altogether on a higher plane where meeting was quite possible, and Gabriel was glad enough to kneel for the old man’s blessing when they parted.
The citizens of Hereford had compounded with Sir William Waller for 拢3,000, and when the fines had been collected in money or plate nothing remained to detain the soldiers in the place.
On the evening of the seventeenth of May, therefore, Waller, hearing that he was needed elsewhere, and unable to spare men to garrison Hereford permanently for the Parliament, gave orders that the troops should be ready to march back to Gloucester early the next morning. By the time Gabriel was free from his duties it was already late, but seeing that lights still burned in Mrs. Unett’s house, he ventured to inquire at the door if she were worse.
“In truth, she is very ill, sir,” said Durdle, anxiously.
At the head of the stairs, in a nook where she could hear what passed, but could neither see nor be seen, Hilary waited with a beating heart. She was in grievous trouble, and the sound of her lover’s voice tempted her sorely to run down and speak to him.
“Give her my kind regards, and I trust she will soon be recovered,” said Gabriel. “’Tis late to knock you up, but I leave Hereford at dawn to-morrow.”
Hilary’s heart sank.
“Shall I tell Mistress Hilary?” inquired Durdle. “Belike she would come down.”
The girl waited in an agony of suspense for his reply.
“No, she hath thrice refused to speak with me,” he said, with a note of pain in his voice that brought a lump into her throat. “I will trouble her no further; good-bye, Mrs. Durdle.”
Like one struggling for life Hilary wrestled with her pride. “Go down and speak to him,” urged one voice within her. “I can’t before Durdle,” retorted another. “Go, go before it is too late!” “Nay, what could I say if I did go?”
And then she learnt that he who hesitates is lost, for the door was closed, and Durdle walked heavily back to the kitchen, and silence reigned again in the house.
Hilary sat down on the top stair, and burying her face in her hands, cried much after the fashion of a naughty child, who is half repentant and altogether weary and miserable. Again and again she had refused to see Gabriel, and had taken pleasure in the process; but now he had declined to see her, and she felt that she was indeed hoist with her own petard.
After this, with the kindest intentions in the world, Joscelyn Heyworth set about the dangerous process of match-making on his friend’s behalf. Supremely happy in the love of pretty Mistress Clemency Coriton, he no sooner found himself talking alone with her at Mr. Bennett’s house in the Close at Gloucester, than the remembrance of Gabriel Harford’s story came to trouble his peace.
“Faith, and I have seen much of little Mistress Helena Locke,” said Clemency. “She hath a dull time at Alderman Pury’s, and is ever glad to come here and chat about her gallant rescuers.”
“She had no liking, then, for Colonel Norton, and did not resent being carried off in that summary fashion?”
“Oh, she feared and detested Squire Norton, and to tell the truth—but be sure you breathe no word of this—I have a fancy that she lost her heart to your friend.”
“Ho! that is good hearing,” said Joscelyn, with a smile. “There is nothing that would please me more than to see them mated, for in truth he stands in need of just such a sweet-tempered gentle little woman, being over-reserved and apt to grow melancholy over the desperate plight the country is in.”
“Let us get my sister to invite the Major and his daughter and you and your friend to supper to-morrow,” said Clemency. “Even should the notion fail to come to anything, it can do them no harm to meet.”
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