CHAPTER VII.

“We sin against our dearest not because we do not love, but because we do not imagine.” —Ian Maclaren.

“And so Master Gabriel be at home again,” said Mrs. Hurdle, glancing across the kitchen at Hilary one September morning as she made the pastry with deft hands. “Home again, and quite the man. I reckon his mother be thankful to you for bringing him to Hereford just now.”

“What do you mean, Durdle?” said Hilary, colouring. “Of course he comes home to see his father and mother.”

Durdle, with an expressive shake of the head, sprinkled flour on her board and took up her rolling pin.

“My dear, you don’t throw dust in my eyes,” she said, “being that I’ve known you both from cradle days. Depend upon it, if it wasn’t for your pretty face, Master Gabriel would be off like my Lord Scudamore’s sons and all the other gentry to fight for the King.”

“Maybe he will yet go,” said Hilary, with a vision of girding him for the fight like the maidens of olden time—a vision that was at once painful and inspiring. How bravely he would face the foe, how chivalrous he would be to the weak and defenceless!

She took a basket on her arm and strolled slowly down the garden to gather apricots for preserving; the housekeeper’s words had turned her thoughts to the war, the topic that now engrossed all England. She had not greatly heeded the rumours which for many months had been current, but when it was known that the Queen had sold the Crown jewels to raise troops in Holland, and that the Parliament was putting the kingdom into a state of defence, then, indeed, the prospect of war began to kindle in her heart that fire of eager interest which the duller details of the long struggle between opposing principles had never been able to quicken. By the time the King had raised his standard at Nottingham, Hilary, like almost every other dweller in Herefordshire, had become a most devoted Royalist, and it never occurred to her that in other parts of England, people just as well bred, just as honest, were equally devoted to the Parliamentary cause.

Her basket was about half full when a merry voice greeted her.

“‘Go tie me up yon dangling apricocks,’ as said the gardener in Shakspere’s play.”

“Nay, I want them pulled down,” said Hilary, laughing, as she glanced round into her lover’s mirthful eyes. Gabriel, having made his conditions and received payment in kisses, worked with a will, and before long the tree was stripped. Then he called a truce, and induced her to rest for a while on the old stone bench under the briar bush.

It was now three days since his return, and they had been days of almost unmixed happiness. Their long waiting had been bravely borne, and each had matured during the time of absence; in Hilary, Gabriel saw more clearly than ever his ideal of all that was beautiful and good, while she was quick to note in him a manliness and a strength of character, the result of the life he had lived during the two years in London. How they laughed as they spoke of the troubles of the past, and recalled the wooing of Mr. Geers, and the kindly offices of Mrs. Joyce Jefferies.

“You would never believe how hard it has been for dear Mrs. Joyce to tell no one of our betrothal,” said Hilary, gaily. “She had the greatest longing to tell Eliza Acton, and laugh with her over that memorable dinner when you were all so discomfited.”

“The time for telling outsiders is close at hand,” said Gabriel, blithely. “If only the Bishop were at the Palace the waiting would be over.”

“Whitbourne suits him better in the summer, and in truth he needs more air after his imprisonment, and all his anxiety about my grandmother,” replied Hilary. “You’ll never know how grateful we were to you for what you did for him while he was in the Tower; he told me that no grandson could have been more attentive and thoughtful.”

“It was little enough I could do,” said Gabriel, “and everybody must love one like the Bishop.”

“Do you know what Durdle said just now?—she has, you know, a very shrewd notion of the truth about us, though she has never been told in so many words—she protested that had you not wanted to come back here and see me you would have been riding off to offer your services to His Majesty.”

Gabriel started, a strange look dawned in his eyes; the suggestion had evidently awakened a train of thought that was far from pleasant. Hilary fancied that he shrank from the idea of leaving her, and only loved him the better for it, even though that thought of fastening on his armour still allured her.

“Had you no longing to take part in this war?” she asked, watching his thoughtful face.

“Such a notion never occurred to me,” he said. “My hope is that one great battle may be fought within the next few days, which will decide the vexed question once for all.”

In this he only expressed the anticipation of most people.

“Yet somehow I should have expected you to want to have your share in fighting for the right,” said Hilary.

He seemed about to speak but checked himself, and Hilary, with a puzzled consciousness that something she did not understand was troubling him, watched him anxiously.

“You are shivering!” she exclaimed the next minute. “What is amiss?”

But Gabriel did not easily put his deepest feelings into words; he could not explain to her at that moment what fighting for the right might mean for him, any more than years ago he could have told her of his childish wish to follow in Eliot’s steps. The torture of the sudden perception that the cause he had learned to hold sacred would assuredly lose for him Hilary’s sympathy and approval made him silently turn to her and clasp her in his arms with a passion far too deep for speech. Then, releasing her, he hastily rose, and picking up the basket of apricots, resumed with an effort his usual manner.

“Do you not want these carried to the still-room?” he asked. “Stoning is the next process, if I remember right.”

“Why, to be sure,” said Hilary, laughing. “Stoning with a good deal of eating intermixed. I think one in twenty used to be Durdle’s allowance.”

“Here she comes to set the limit,” said Gabriel, with a smile. “She bustles about more briskly than ever; and look how her face beams!—something extraordinary must have happened.”

“Miss Hilary, such news!” cried the housekeeper, her fat face wreathed in smiles. “Haste, my dear, and hear it all from the Bishop’s secretary who is talking to the mistress at the front door. He is going to ride straight over to Whitbourne and tell his lordship.”

“But what is it, Durdle? What has happened?”

“Why, thank God! the Roundheads have been beaten near Worcester—go and hear what Mr. Jenkinson is telling of the rout.”

Hilary clapped her hands with delight.

“Good new’s, indeed! come, Gabriel, let us hear all about it,” and she ran into the house eagerly.

“Let me take the basket, sir,” said Durdle, expecting Gabriel to follow her.

But he shook his head, and himself carried the fruit to the still-room, leaving the housekeeper to bustle after Hilary, all agog to hear the details of the fight.

The still-room was cool and shady; great bunches of lavender were hanging from the ceiling, and a tray full of dead rose petals spread to dry was on the window seat. He set the basket of apricots on the spotless deal table and began to pace to and fro in miserable agitation. All desire to know the details of this battle was held in check by the perception that the parting of the ways had come, and that from henceforth the sympathy between him and the woman he loved was gravely broken. Who could have thought that Hilary of all people would be so deeply stirred by any public news? She had never been roused to take interest in the wrongs and grievances under which England had so long groaned. How was it that the news of fighting should awake, not only her interest, but her keen partisanship?

It was with a pang that he saw her radiant face as she rejoined him. He had known her too long and too well to imagine that she was faultless, but her rapture now gave the first shock to his belief in her perfect womanliness.

“Why did you not come and hear for yourself?” she cried, gaily. “Prince Rupert has beaten the Roundheads at Powick Bridge, near Worcester. None of our men are killed, but fifty of theirs, and the rest have fled helter-skelter, like the cowardly traitors they are.”

“Nay, an you gloat in that fashion over the slaughter of your own countrymen, I will not stay to listen,” said Gabriel, his eyes flashing with anger.

Hilary had thrown aside her sun-bonnet, and was drawing a chair to the table that she might sit down and begin the stoning of the apricots. She paused, however, aghast at his look and tone. “I disown them for my countrymen,” she said quickly; “they are traitors.”

“If you knew more about them you would see that they desire only to save the country from ruin and to save the King from his evil counsellors,” said Gabriel. “Do you think men like Mr. John Hampden and my Lord Brooke and Sir Robert Harley and the other leading Parliamentarians are to be dubbed traitors and overcrowed by a young German prince, who doth not in any way understand the liberties of England?”

Hilary faltered. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “To hear you speak, one would fancy you were a Roundhead yourself.”

“It is scarce worthy of you to use the new term of reproach,” he said. “You would think it unfair were I to term all in the King’s army ‘Malignants’ or ‘Cavaliers’; let us leave such spiteful party names to these who hate as well as differ. But you and I, though we may disagree, shall ever love, and therein lies a mighty difference.”

Hilary sank down on to the chair. She had turned very pale, and the suffering in her face made Gabriel’s heart ache. He drew nearer.

“My beloved, do not take it thus hardly. Here in Herefordshire you inevitably look on matters from a different point of view; but had you seen what I saw in London, did you but know of the abominable plots and intrigues hatched at Whitehall, you would, at any rate, understand why many Englishmen feel that, to defend our liberties, the King’s evil counsellors must be defeated, cost what it may. Don’t let these matters of State grieve you so sorely; our love, is surely proof against all such passing matters.”

She had listened to him intently, nor could she altogether hide the love which shone in her dark-grey eyes as they met his. He bent over her, his arm stole round her protectingly; but the sense of his strength and protectiveness was exactly what she could not at that moment endure to realise. With an impetuous gesture and a look which wounded him to the quick, she freed herself from him, and, springing to her feet, confronted him with such pale anger in her face as he had never before seen.

“Don’t touch me! You have deceived us!” she said. “Why did you not tell me before?”

“How was it possible when we were not allowed to write to each other?” said Gabriel. “And, indeed, had I been able to write I should scarce have thought you would take any interest in public affairs. The contest between King and people has been going on in reality for many years; why is it that you only care now that the bloodshed has begun?”

“You did deceive us,” said Hilary, ignoring his question because she could not answer it. “You won my grandfather’s favour and waited on him, while you in your heart sided with his enemies.”

“You do but show your injustice by urging that against me,” replied Gabriel, hotly. “I had no thought but to help one who had shown me kindness, and who had been most unfairly cosened into signing the Protestation when he knew not what it involved.”

“And now I can understand your frequent visits to the Tower,” she said, in the most bitter tone. “It was all part of your plan to deceive us—you even, I believe, tried to get into Archbishop’s Laud’s good graces, for he spoke of you to my grandfather.”

At this, spite of himself, Gabriel burst out laughing.

“Do you really think that any gentleman could have seen the poor old Primate fall to the ground and not have offered to help him up?” he said. “Long before I went to London you knew that I hated his system; and if the Royal Army indeed prevails now, the Archbishop, with all his tyrannies, will be brought back, the Puritans will be driven from the land or left to languish in gaol, and Mr. John Hampden—the patriot who tried to save us from the curse of ship-money—will probably die on the scaffold with the other Parliamentary leaders. Now, perhaps, you understand why some of us feel that we must defend our country.”

“Then you must choose betwixt what you call your country and me,” said Hilary, drawing herself up proudly. “For I will never be betrothed to a man who is a rebel.”

Gabriel breathed hard, his hands clenched and unclenched themselves like those of a man in mortal agony.

“And I,” he said at length, throwing back his head, as though choking for want of air—“I, with God’s help, will be true to the Great Charter which bids Englishmen resist any prince who seeks to rob them of their just privileges.”

She dropped him a curtsey—not mockingly, but in grave farewell. Then, taking up her sun-bonnet, she turned to leave the room. But Gabriel strode forward and intercepted her, “Hilary!” he cried, passionately, “you cannot end all betwixt us like this.”

“I both can and will,” she said, with quiet coldness very little in accordance with her throbbing heart.

“It is impossible that matters of State can part those who love,” he urged vehemently. “They are affairs of another sphere—what has our love to do with this hateful war?”

“It has this to do with it, that I will not love a man who is a rebel,” said Hilary, proudly.

“’Tis the thrice-accursed fighting that hath so changed you,” he said, despairingly. “You, who cannot bear to see a dog hurt, or a boy whipped for thieving, can glory over the fifty Englishmen killed at Powick Bridge!”

“Yes, for their rebellion is justly punished,” she said, “and I punish yours in the only way open to me. Go, sir! I will look upon your face no more.”

She drew back from the door and motioned to him imperiously to leave her.

Gabriel paused for a minute as though to gather his strength together. It was no time now to argue, to plead; words availed naught. The time for deeds had come, the call to be true to country and conscience. With a look of reproachful love that was to haunt her all her life long, he bowed low, and quitted the room in silence.

For a few minutes Hilary sat down calmly to her fruit-stoning: then all at once the pride that had upheld her gave way, and, burying her face in her hands, she sobbed as if her heart were broken.