"Within the last six months."
"How does she at Chaillot?"
"The nuns say she is killing herself with austerities, and she looks as though she might be. She has her salvation to make, you see."
"What a dreadful delusion!" sighed Celia.
"One of man's hundred usurpations of the prerogative of God. If man may not save himself wholly, he will save himself in part; he will do anything rather than let Christ do everything. 'Tis just the world, the flesh, and the devil, in a peculiar shape, and of a very fair color. 'Puffed up by his fleshly mind,'[2] saith St. Paul of this manner of mortifying of the flesh. The subtlest serving of the devil lies, I think, in this kind of renouncing of the world. And the world, in whatever shape, 'passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.'"[3]
As Edward spoke the last word, the old clock in the hall struck nine. Both rose, and Edward, drawing Celia to him, kissed his last farewell.
"God be brother and sister to you, dear," he said, "and keep thee in all thy ways;[4] set thee in the secret place of the Most High, that thou mayest abide under the shadow of the Almighty.[5] Christ be with thee! Amen!"
They went softly down to the door opening into the well, outside of which was Harry with a ladder. There was another figure there beside Harry's, but the moonlight was not sufficient to show who it might be.
"Say farewell to Patient for me," said Edward. "I wish I could have seen her. Adieu!"
In another minute Edward was safely landed. As soon as he touched the ground, the second figure came forward and threw its arms round his neck.
"Eh, my bairn! my bairn!" sobbed a voice which both Edward and Celia knew well. "I could never bear to let you go but a word. The Lord bless thee and guide thee! My ain bit laddie, that I nursed!"
Edward returned the embrace very warmly. Patient had always been far more of a mother to him than Lady Ingram. He seemed disposed to hesitate for a moment, but Harry urged him away, and motioned to Celia to return. She left the three on the outside of the well. Harry and Edward hastening to the place where the horse waited, and Patient, silent and motionless, watching her darling pass from her sight.
Celia was early down-stairs the next morning. Harry met her in the hall, and contrived to whisper along with his morning kiss, "All right." Further communication was impossible, for the Squire was just behind them, and the three entered the parlor together. They found Captain Wallace looking out of the window.
"Good-morning, Captain," said the Squire. "I suppose you have heard nothing of your man?"
"Nothing whatever, Mr. Passmore."
"Well, I'll have the house searched again by daylight. First thing after breakfast"—
"Your energy is most laudable, Mr. Passmore; but really, after two previous searches—is it necessary?"
"Necessary or unnecessary, it shall be done, Sir," said the Squire, warmly. "No man on earth shall have the shadow of reason for suspecting any concealment of rebels in Ashcliffe Hall. You will do me the favor to accompany me, and Harry and Charley shall come too."
"I shall be most happy, Sir," responded Harry.
"'Tis splendid fun!" commented Charley. "I only wish we could find him!"
The search took place, and not a corner was left an examined, except only the undiscovered hiding-place, which alone needed examination. The Squire pressed Captain Wallace to be his guest for another day, and so, for a different reason, did his eldest son. Captain Wallace accepted the offer, after a decent show of reluctance to save his conscience. Harry no longer pressed him to stay after the following morning, and he left the next day.
"Father," said Harry, in the evening, "I fear I am about to draw your displeasure upon me, but I have done what I thought right, and I must bear it. Sir Edward Ingram left this house at nine o'clock yesterday evening."
"Left this house!" cried the Squire and Madam Passmore, in a breath—the former adding some very powerful language, which shall not be reproduced here.
"Left the house," Harry repeated, calmly.
The Squire exploded a second time, telling his son, among other equally pleasant assertions, that he was a disgrace to his family and his country, and would come to the gallows before he was much older.
"Father," was Harry's dignified reply, "I am sorry for nothing, except that I have angered you. This man whom Wallace was seeking is a gentleman and a Protestant, and at the battle of Denain he saved my life, and gave me my liberty without ransom. Would you, as a man of conscience and honor, have advised me to give him up after that?"
The Squire growled something inaudible.
"Father!" said Celia, rising in her turn, very white and trembling, "this was my brother whom we concealed in your house last night. I will take half, or more than half, of whatever blame is due. Harry concealed him, but it was in my bed-chamber, and I brought him food, and assisted in his escape. Could I have delivered up my brother to death—the only brother I have left? Father, have you the heart to say so?"
"No, my dear!" said Madam Passmore, pouring a little oil upon the turbulent waters; "no, I am sure he never would—never!"
Madam Passmore's gentle deprecation of his wrath appeared to set the Squire free to explode a third time.
"Lucy!" he exclaimed, turning to his wife, in one of the severest tones he had ever used to her, "I am a Whig, and my father was a Whig before me, and my grandfather fought for King Charles at Edgehill and Naseby: and I have brought up these children to be Whigs, and if they aren't, 'tis a burning shame! A murrain on the day that sent my Lady Ingram here after our Celia! But, hang it all! how can I help it?" said the Squire, suddenly breaking down. "If this fellow be Celia's brother, and have saved Harry's life, as a man of honor I could not bid them do otherwise than try to save his—no, not if he were the Pope himself! 'Tis not nature for a man to take sides against his own children. Botheration!" he concluded, suddenly veering round again; "that isn't what I meant to say at all. I intended to be very angry, and I have only been an old fool—that's what I am!"
"You are a dear old father, who can't be cross when he thinks he ought to be—that's what you are!" said Lucy, coaxingly.
"Get along with you, hussey!" returned the Squire, shaking his fist at her in a manner which Lucy very well knew was more than half make-believe. "And pray, Colonel Passmore, after allowing me to search the house three times and find nothing, I should like, if you please, to know where you hid your refugee?"
"You shall see that, Father," said Harry, rising.
And he led the way to the hiding-place, followed by the whole family, Cicely bringing up the rear when she heard the noise they made. Each member expressed his or her amazement in a characteristic manner.
"Oh, my buttons! isn't that capital!" said Charley. "I wish I had known last night! It would have been ten times better fun!"
"I think you enjoyed yourself sufficiently," returned his brother, gravely.
"What a horrid, dark hole, Harry!" said Lucy.
"I never knew of such a place here!" exclaimed his mother.
"Well, Mr. Henry Falkland Passmore, you are an uncommon cool hand!" asserted his father. "And who helped you to get your Jacobite safely away, I wonder?"
"Celia and Patient Irvine."
"Did Patient know where he was, Harry?" asked his mother, gravely.
"Not when Wallace questioned her. I told her afterwards."
But the astonishment of the whole group faded before that of old Cicely Aggett.
"Well, I do declare!" was what she said. "If ever anybody did! No, nobody couldn't never have guessed the like of this—that they couldn't! I've lived in this house three-and-thirty years come Martlemas, and I never, never did see nor hear nothing this like in all my born days! Only just to think! And them things I took for rats and ghosteses was Papishes? Eh, but I'd a cruel deal rather have a hundred rats and mice nor one of them wicked Papishes, and ghosteses too, pretty nigh! Well, to be sure, my dears, the Lord has preserved us wonderful! and 'tis uncommon thankful we'd ought to be."
"You will sleep to-night, Madam, I trust," said Patient, that evening, as she bound up Celia's hair.
"And you, my poor Patient!" said Celia. "I fear you slept not much last night."
"No, Madam," answered Patient, quietly; "I watched unto prayer."
"Well, I hope Edward is quite safe by this time," sighed Celia.
"You will never see him again, Madam," said Patient, solemnly.
"Patient!" exclaimed Celia, in sudden terror lest she might have heard some bad news.
"Best, my bairn," said Patient, reading her thought in her face. "I have heard nothing. But 'tis borne in upon me—'tis borne in upon me. The Lord hath said unto me, 'He shall surely die.'"
Celia listened in awe and wonder. "Patient, you are not a prophetess!" she said.
"Ah, Madam! I think more than one of us hath been a prophet where our heart's beloved are concerned. Was it not revealed unto Alexander Peden that he should die in Scotland? And did he not say unto the captain of the ship appointed to carry him unto the American plantations, 'The ship is not launched that shall carry me thither?'"
"And where did he die?"
"In Scotland, Madam, as the Lord had showed him; and they laid his dust on the Gallows' Hill of the city. I reckon the Lord can see it as easily there as in the kirkyard. It is a kirkyard now. One after another came and laid their dead beside Peden, and from a gallows' hill 'tis become a burying-place.[6] It was said, indeed, that Mr. Renwick saw further than many, but he was not known unto me, and I can say nought thereanent. But that, 'The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him'[7] may be a deeper word than we ken. And as to George Wishart, all knew that he was called to be a prophet of the Lord, and John Knox likewise; but there were giants in their days. We be smaller men now. Yet the Lord is the same now as then, and He doeth whatsoever He will. 'Tis not the worthiness nor holiness of the man that maketh a prophet, but the breath and Spirit of the Lord within him. And I, being less than the least of all His, do know of a surety that I shall never see Master Edward any more."
Patient's lips quivered, and some seconds passed ere she could speak again.
"Ay, the will of the Lord be done!" she said, presently. "'He knoweth them that are His,'[8] and He will not let us fail of a meeting in our Father's house. Rest, my bairn; you need it!"
Two months afterwards came a letter to Squire Passmore, bearing neither date nor signature. Though Edward's hand was unknown to her, Celia claimed the precious paper at once.
"DEAR SISTER,—Last night I landed at Corunna. I shall be safe for the present, and the Lord is ever with me. Thank better than I could all who helped me. You will know from whom this comes. Love to both of you. God keep you!"
Celia carried the paper to Patient, whom she guessed to be included with herself in the "both of you."
"Thank you, Madam!" said Patient, when she had read it. "'Tis a comfort to hear that he is in safety. Yet I cannot forget that the Lord hath showed unto me that he shall die in the flower of his age."
The 5th of June 1721, was Celia's thirtieth birth-day. She was seated at work in the parlor with Madam Passmore and Lucy, when a ring at the great bell summoned Robert to the front door, and was followed by his announcement of "Mr. Colville." Celia looked up in surprise to see if Philip's friend had sought her out. No; this was certainly not her pantheist adversary. He was a smaller and slighter man, with a much pleasanter expression of face than his namesake, yet with the same pale blue eyes and flaxen hair, and some resemblance in the features.
"Mrs. Ingram?" he asked, a little doubtfully, with a smile and a low bow. "Mrs. Celia Ingram?"
Celia rose to receive him, wondering all the time who he was and what he wanted with her.
"That is my name, Sir," she said, a little timidly. "I once knew a Mr. Colville in Paris"—
"Who was my brother," said the visitor, in explanation. "It was Arthur Colville whom you met in Paris. I am David Colville. I have been commissioned to give something into your hands, and none other's, the signification of which I believe you know. I received it at Barcelona on the 18th of January last."
And he drew a pocket-book from his breast-pocket, out of which he took and held forward to Celia something which brought a pang to her heart and a cry of pain to her lips. It was the Ingram heirloom, Lady Griselda's ruby ring, which was to be the signal to Edward Ingram's sister that he had entered into his rest.
"When was this?" she faltered at last.
"At Barcelona, on the 18th of January," David Colville repeated. "I had met him, for I also was journeying in Spain, three weeks before. I saw the end was near, and I stayed with him and tended him till he died."
"Where is he buried?"
"The Spaniards allow no burial to heretics, Madam—not more than they allow to a horse or a dog. He lies in a quiet meadow near the inn at Barcelona. I took care of that."
"Thank you!" murmured Celia; "but no burial-service—O Edward!"
The soft answer from David Colville almost startled her—"'Thy brother shall rise again.'"[9]
"Yes, I know," she said. "And you, Mr. Colville—you do not share your brother's philosophical views?"
"God forbid!" was the uncompromising reply. "I have yet hope that Arthur may see the error of his ways."
"May I ask if Mr. Arthur Colville is well?"
"I have not seen him for many years," said David. "Madam, may I ask, in my turn, if Patient Irvine be yet here? I think she would remember me as an old playmate of Ned and Philip, in the days long ago when we were all boys at Paris."
Patient received David Colville very affectionately, and his news very quietly.
"I knew it would be so," she said. "'With Christ, which is far better.'"[10]
David Colville left an agreeable impression of himself on the minds of both Celia and Patient when he shook hands with them at parting.
There was sore mourning for Edward Ingram at Ashcliffe.
"If it would please the Lord to ask me also!" sighed Patient.
"No, dear Patient! I want you," said Celia, lovingly.
"So long as you really want me, Madam, I shall be kept here; but the Lord knoweth better than you what you need, and our work is done when He calleth us. Yet so much, there! My father, my mother, Roswith, Mr. Grey, and Lady Magdalene, and Mr. Philip, and now my ain bairn Maister Edward"—and Patient broke down.
"Now, Patient, my dear!" said Cicely, from her chair, for she was infirm now—"now Patient, my dear, don't you go to fret over the Lord's mercies. Can't you see, child, that He is but taking all your jewels to keep them safer than you can, and that He'll give them all back to you up yonder? 'Tis such a short time here—such a short time!"
"Ay, I ken that," said Patient; "but you're a deal further on than I am, Cicely."
"Why, my dear, if you mean I shall die sooner, I don't know who told you; and if you mean that I know more about the Lord than you, I'm sure 'tis the first time I've heard of it. Maybe, children, we can't tell which of us is the furthest—the Lord knows. The one nearest Him is the furthest on."
"And we are always straying from Him," said Celia, sighing. "It scarce seems in us to keep always near Him."
"When you were a little babe, my dear," said Cicely, "I remember, if you were frighted at aught, you used to make-believe to throw your bits of arms about my neck, and cling close to me; but after all, it warn't your clinging as kept you from falling, but me holding of you. We are all as babes in the Lord's arms, my clear. 'Tis well, surely, for us to keep clinging to Him; but, after all, it ben't that as holds us—'tis His keeping of us. It ben't always when we are looking at Him that He is closest to us. He may be nearest when we can't see Him; and I'm sure of one thing, child,—if the Good Shepherd didn't go a-seeking after the lost sheep, the lost sheep would never turn of itself and come home to the Good Shepherd;—it would only go farther and farther in the great wilderness, until it was wholly lost. 'He calleth His own sheep by name'—ben't that it?—'and leadeth them out.'[11] Deary me! what was we a-talking about? It seems so natural like to get round to Him."
Celia smiled sadly as Philip's remark occurred to her—"There you come round to your divinity!"
For eleven years longer George Louis of Hanover sat on the throne of England. Every year he sank lower and lower in the estimation of his subjects. When he first landed, in 1714, in tones more deep than loud, England had demanded her Queen, and had no answer. Now, through these thirteen years, she had seen her King, chosen out of all the Princes of Europe, living apart from every member of his family, and keeping up a Court which only the complete demoralization of her nobles made them not ashamed to visit. And though very dimly and uncertainly, yet reports did reach England of a guarded prison in Hanover, and of a chapel in it where, every Communion Sabbath, a white-robed prisoner knelt down before the holy table, and, laying her hand upon it, solemnly protested in the presence of God that she had done no wrong deserving of that penalty. And England began to wonder if she had spoken well in summoning to her helm the husband and gaoler of this woful, white-robed captive. If the grand question of Protestantism had not been at stake—if she could have retained that and yet have had back her old line—the throne of George Louis would have trembled and fallen under him. Not "The Fifteen," nor "The Forty-five," brought so near a second Restoration as the evil and miserable life of that crowned sinner from Hanover.
So early as 1716, George had persuaded Parliament to repeal that clause of the Act of Settlement which made obligatory the perpetual residence of the Sovereign: and no sooner had the clerk[12] saidLe Roy le veutto the repeal, than George set out for Hanover, with extreme delight at his release. After that, he spent as little time in England as was possible.
On the 7th of June 1727, George Louis landed from England on the Dutch shores. He was travelling onwards towards Osnabrück, when, on the night of the 11th, an unknown hand threw a letter into his carriage. The King, who was alone, opened it in the expectation of seeing a petition. There were only a few lines in the letter, but they came from the dead, and were written as with fire. What met his eyes was a summons from Sophia Dorothea of Zelle, written on her death-bed in the preceding November at Ahlden, calling on him in God's name to meet her before His tribunal within a year and a day. The King was intensely superstitious. What more happened in that carriage where he sat solitary, holding in his hand the open letter from his dead wife, none ever knew: but when the carriage stopped at the gates of the Palace of Osnabrück, George Louis was dead.
There were no mourners. Least of all could England mourn for the man who had so bitterly disgraced her, and had made her feel ashamed of her choice before all the world. On the contrary, there were bonfires and bell-ringings and universal rejoicings for the accession of George Augustus, whom England welcomed with hope in her heart that he would restore the honor which his father had laid in the dust.
A vain hope, and a groundless joy.
It is on that summer day, the 11th of June 1727, that I take leave of the Passmores. A quiet family party—Lucy growing into another and a livelier Celia; Charley toning down into a second Harry; Isabella, when she condescends to shine upon Ashcliffe in her glories of carriage and Nero, being the only discordant element. She and John Rowe get on very well, by reason of the lady being mistress, and John her obedient servant. Squire and Madam Passmore have grown more white and infirm; and on one quiet summer night in the preceding year, without sound or forewarning, the angels of God came down from heaven to bear Cicely Aggett home to the Father's house. But Patient lives on, for her work is not yet over.
On that afternoon Celia and Harry had rung the bell at the gate of Sainte Marie de Chaillot, and had asked for an interview with Soeur Marie Angélique. And in the guest-chamber there came to them a pale, slender, worn-looking woman in a nun's garb, who assured them, as she had done before on several occasions, that she was making her salvation; that she trusted she had by this time nearly expiated all her sins, and that a very short time in Purgatory would suffice to purify her. Only once during the interview did her stoic calmness give way, and that was when she said of the Purgatory she anticipated, "And there I shall see Philip!" And Celia felt that nearly all she could do was to pray earnestly that this wandering sheep might see Philip elsewhere. Then they took leave of Claude Ingram, and she went back to the convent chapel, and tried to make a little more of her salvation by kneeling on the cold stones and repeating interminable Litanies and Ave Marias. So we leave her to her hard task—hardest of tasks in all the world—to stand before God without a Mediator, to propitiate the Judge by the works of the law. For "without shedding of blood is no remission."[13]
The summer evening is drawing to a close, as outside the convent Harry and Celia pause to watch the sunset.
"How beautiful God has made this world!" says one of the travellers. "How much more beautiful it must be in that other land very far off,[14] the Heavenly Jerusalem, where is no need of the sun,[15] for the Lord is their everlasting light."[16]
And the answer, associated to her with the dead lips of Edward, comes in Celia's quietest and softest tones—
"For 'the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.'"[17]
[1] James Ratcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, eldest son of Francis, first Earl and Lady Mary Tudor, natural daughter of Charles II.; beheaded on Tower Hill, February 24, 1716.
[2] Col. ii. 18.
[3] 1 John ii. 17.
[4] Ps. xci. 11.
[5] Ibid. 1.
[6] A fact.
[7] Ps. xxv. 14.
[8] 2 Tim. ii. 19.
[9] John xi. 23.
[10] Phil. i. 23.
[11] John x. 3.
[12] George Louis of Hanover was the first who resigned to a mere official the grandest act of the royal prerogative. Before his accession, the Kings of England "sceptred" every Act of Parliament, and the royal assent was really given, every bill being solemnly presented to the Sovereign in person, seated on the throne. Anne Stuart was the last Sovereign who dared on her own personal responsibility to say,La Royne s'avisera.
[13] Heb. ix. 22.
[14] Isaiah xxxiii. 17.
[15] Rev. xxi. 23.
[16] Isaiah lx. 20.
[17] 1 John ii. 17.