Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/559

 . 7, 1863.] “Be it so!” her future parents said. This was a day on which conscience must be supreme and free: there should be no interference with it in that house.

Next, every preparation must be made for the removal of the family to their old refuge, Malachi Dunn’s farm. Unless the order was countermanded by noon, the women and children were to be dispatched, under the gardener’s care. The other men must stay: and the Squire expected, whenever he should return, to find the house clear of all but those men. A smile between him and his wife showed that she was not included in the decree. They were one, and the wife did not come within the terms of the order.

Many hours might have passed without news, if the boys had not played scout on the cliff beyond the grounds. They saw the militia ranged along the rocks overlooking the bay; and the wind occasionally brought the word of command of their officers. The soldiers did not seem to be doing anything; and there was little or no noise from the town. Not a shot was fired; and, except that two horsemen were riding away rapidly on the London road over the downs, and that two or three mounted messengers were galloping away in different directions, it might have seemed like a mistake that anything unusual had happened at all. Anthony was just turning into the grounds to beg permission to run down to the market-place for news, when some confusion among the soldiers made him return to his post. What had taken place there was no knowing; but the militia went through some evolutions in a very unsteady way, and were disappearing on the descent to the town, when a roar, as of a mob, seemed to set them flying. Their order was completely broken, and several came running as for their lives,—some plunging down the little path to the beach, some continuing their flight as straight as they could go, and three or four leaping the Squire’s fence, and hiding in his shrubbery. Little Will naturally caught the panic and fled shrieking to his mother; and his brothers turned at first; but they saw no appearance of any foe.

The militia-men talked of an invasion, and of the enemy: but it could not be ascertained that more strangers had landed than the eighty whom Anthony had counted on the beach. There was a rumour that all the authorities had been captured and carried off to the ships: but this was not true. There was going to be a fight which should have driven the invaders into the sea; but when the Dorset militia should have come down in full force on the strangers, somebody set the example of running; and when so many ran, there was no use in others staying; and so they all dispersed. They would have done anything in reason: but when the mayor ordered a gun to be posted on the cliff, and another on the ridge of the road, commanding the passage from the town, it was found that the two guns were unserviceable, and that there was no ammunition.

The Squire found that the state of affairs in the town was pretty much in correspondence with this representation. At the Mayor’s Office there was no Mayor. Where was he? Gone to London, nearly an hour ago. As if another man could not as well have ridden to London with the news! Where was the Port-surveyor? He had gone off to the ships at sunrise; and he had been detained on board. Who was to take the direction of affairs? That was the most embarrassing of all questions at the moment. While the Duke was at the George Inn, holding a reception of citizens favourable to his cause, the municipal functionaries were wrangling in the Mayor’s Office with one another, and with the citizens who had assembled there in obedience to his Worship’s summons.

The Quakers were not likely to take arms on either side; but, being suspected of being Jesuits in disguise, they must be kept within their own houses. Lyme was sorely afflicted with dissenters; and no one of them,—not Squire Battiscombe himself, who offered to help to keep the peace of the town,—must be free to do mischief. Lest they should burn the church, or slay the Tory gentry, all the people of that stamp should be put into jail. Somebody proposed to forbid trade of all sorts for the time, lest the invaders should obtain supplies: but it was already too late for this,—the shopkeepers having, almost to a man, gone to the George Inn, to offer themselves and their goods to King Monmouth, as the pretender to the crown was now called. Word was brought in, that more and more scribes were offering themselves as clerks; and yet they could not register fast enough the names of the volunteers who thronged to Monmouth’s standard.

“Mr. Battiscombe, this will never do!” said a neighbour, who in ordinary times would scarcely speak to a Nonconformist; and especially to one in his own line of life. Sir Henry Foley was vexed and harassed out of his habitual pride by the miserable misconduct of the hour. “This is treason, Mr. Battiscombe. There is not ranker treason going on at the George at this moment. The Mayor has disappeared; and everybody else, I think. What can be done? What do you advise?”

“That we do not lose our time here, but do the best we can, in the absence of authority. We might easily learn what part the citizens will take; and then ”

“What part the citizens will take!”

“Even so, Sir Henry. The strangers might at first have been kept out; and next they might have been driven out. As neither has been done, the citizens are in fact appealed to to choose their own part.”

“This is intolerable!” cried Sir Henry, turning to leap on the horse his groom held. “I shall bring down the militia on my own authority to drive these traitors out.”

The groom grinned, knowing more of the quality of the militia than his master.

“On which side shall I find you, Mr. Battiscombe?” asked Sir Henry, before he rode off. “Perhaps I thought too well of you from finding you among us here. Perhaps you came on behalf of the traitors. Perhaps you came as a spy.”

The Squire looked him full in the face, and then turned away contemptuously. Sir Henry, he knew, was as well aware as himself of the bearings of the spy system of the time—that God’s people did not spy, but were spy-ridden.