not moved by misgivings such as were haunting more than one mind about him. He endured sore pain of body; and he concealed neither that nor the anguish of his mind. His country’s fate was dark to his eyes. If Mr. Pym died,—as was but too probable,—who was to guide affairs, and how was the valour of the people to be led? He was too religious a man to doubt that the kingdom would be cared for by the Ruler of the world; and he was too upright and generous a gentleman to doubt now of his own part in what had been done for the preservation of the liberties of England, or to repent of any sacrifice made in the cause. He was clear that if the people and their parliament had not withstood the King, worse miseries would have overtaken the nation. Yet, while neither doubting, repenting, nor distrusting, he mourned with a bitter grief. “Confound and level in the dust, O Lord!” he prayed, “those who would rob the people of their liberty and lawful prerogative. Save my bleeding country! Have these realms in thy special keeping!”
The same words were uttered in prayer, with the change of one word, on the King’s side. So it is in all civil wars.
Not all the sweet and solemn strains that she was afterwards wont to hear overpowered in Henrietta’s heart the echoes which came to her ear from her father’s grave;—the muffled drums, the volley fired over his coffin, and the rise and fall of the psalm sung by the troop as they marched back from the churchyard—
Why go we mourning,—mourning,—mourning,
Because of the oppression of the enemy?
CHAPTER XV. ROYALIST FAREWELLS TO MERRY ENGLAND.
That sweet and solemn music which Henrietta heard daily for the rest of her life was in France. When Uncle Oliver had passed from dotage to death, when the King lay in his bloody grave, and Cousin Oliver vexed all pious souls by sitting in the King’s seat, Henrietta was still on the rack of her misery. She had murdered her husband, after failing in every duty she had undertaken, and disappointing every expectation she had encouraged; and her remorse corroded her soul. But she could not die, and she dared not pray for death. At length, Queen Henrietta Maria came over to England for a time: and Lady Carlisle, impelled by some sense of duty towards the young creature whose enthusiasm she had fostered, brought her under that notice from the Queen which she avoided for herself. The Queen’s griefs, with all the trials of sore poverty in addition, had not worn her so low as Henrietta’s; and the compassionate gaze which the Queen cast on the image of woe before her was a strong hint to her priestly followers.
The result was natural enough; and Henrietta was soon in retreat for life in the Queen’s nunnery at Chaillot. She felt how great the mercy was; and the relief was beyond all previous conception. Her new guides satisfied her, in due time, that she was in no way guilty, though singularly unfortunate. She had sinned, indeed, so far as that everybody sins; but with the particular guilt which she mourned she was in no way chargeable. She learned to see—what was so very clear to Catholic eyes—that her whole life had been a conflict between her personal instincts of loyal duty and the delusions of her education, and of the people about her. Her very strifes with her husband had been a divine voice protesting against the impiety of her nation and her family, and asserting her own higher intelligence and virtue. Her Puritan relatives were answerable for all that had happened: and she had only to give thanks, day and night, for her rescue from perplexity and misery, and for the complacency and peace in which she was now resting at last.
There was one trouble still,—a pain which did not die out as her understanding sank to the level of the minds of her sister-recluses. She was in pain for the souls of her father and her husband,—so dreadfully guilty as they had been of rebellion, and cut off from salvation by their making the Bible and not the Church the anchor of their hope. She did what she could: she prayed for them as long as she lived, and when they were dead, obtained as many masses as possible for the repose of their souls.
Thus Henrietta passed her life, up to the age of grey hairs,—her own having been grey from the week of the Chalgrove fight. Her son was in no danger as to his faith and his prospects in life, however it might be about his morals. He was first a page of the Queen’s, and then of the young King’s. When too old for a page he became a courtier, and was liked none the less for being a Catholic, even after the Restoration.
Before Henrietta breathed her last, she heard some awkward news from England: but it did not trouble her very deeply. She was cured of her keenness of feeling; and she lived and died peacefully in the assurance that if men do but revere and obey their King without reserve, it rests with Heaven to see to the quality of the King.
If her countrymen had but been aware of this in time, whatever else might have happened, there would have been no middle-class heretic, like Cousin Oliver, thrust in upon the line of English Kings, to make the nation blush to its latest day at the comparison between him and the Stuarts,—the family evidently appointed to reign over Old England for ever.
Such was the view in which Henrietta lived and died.
(Concluded.)
A BRITISH FRIENDSHIP.
At this time thirty years ago there were three young men at Christ Church, Oxford,—almost of the same age, all good students, all interested in matters which lay outside their books, and all cordially respecting and admiring each other. Two of the three were of a reserved cast of character, while the third was frank and fluent, though perhaps as discreet at bottom as his prouder-looking friends. Each desired to do something to distinguish his name, and benefit his generation: and each had high expectations of what the other two would do. In February last, some memorable observances took place which have brought back some moving old associations with those three youths.
