Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/589

 . 14, 1863.] and others were in an exaltation of hope and triumph, the day was one of intense enjoyment to the ignorant and thoughtless, wherever Monmouth’s name was on the lips of the crowd. Three-year old children remembered the day for ever afterwards, by the processions at noon and the bonfires at night, and the tumult of bells, and hurrahs, and trumpet-calls, and singing of songs in the streets and roads: and the most sensible citizens found themselves liable to be carried away by the general impulse.

Among other odd things, rumour said, all over Lyme, that the Mayor had not come home, and was not coming. His own town must take care of itself; for he was going to stir up the country westwards. His messengers had spread the news of the invasion all over Somersetshire and Devon, while he was posting to London; and now it was said that he would not stop short of Exeter, where he knew he should find the best friend of the Stuarts in that region—the son of their restorer, General Monk. That son, the Duke of Albemarle, was in Exeter for the purpose of reviewing the militia; and the idea of reaching him and his forces at the first possible moment seemed to be so much too acute for a Mayor who never thought of sending a messenger to London when he himself was wanted in Lyme, that it was settled by rumour in a trice that Gregory Alford, citizen of Lyme, was commissioned by the King himself, or his council, to act as envoy to the Duke of Albemarle. All Lyme went to look at the Mayor’s house, and to express its feelings, whether of spite, contempt, and rage at the partisan magistrate, or of deference and admiration. The Mayor’s wife and daughters carried themselves high, and considered it the greatest day of their lives,—though much greater ones might follow: and while they sat at the lower windows, grandly dressed, the servants flaunted out at the attic windows, or lounged in the doorways, parading their insolence before the crowd. Before night their insolence would have risen much higher.

Christopher knew the country well: but to-day he saw it with new eyes, and it was truly a new scene. It was no uncommon thing to ride thirty miles without seeing a dozen people, or more than three or four inhabited houses; and there were intervals to-day where nobody was in sight, and where he caught glimpses of the red deer in the woods. He saw a boy trapping wheatears on the Down, as if nothing unusual was happening. He saw a pedlar resting under a hedge, and the fellow either knew nothing, or pretended to know nothing, of any commotion in the countryside. But elsewhere it was otherwise. At every forge the blacksmith was over-busy; for the gentry were in a hurry to raise the militia; and every saddle-horse must be sure of its shoes when messengers were going forth in all directions. There were yeomen at the forges too,—always the first to be served when the smith had his way, and eager to be off on some business which might perhaps be something else than raising the militia. There were groups about the posts where roads met; groups about each public-house; and sometimes groups where there was no house at all, but where some ridge of the down afforded a good prospect westward or northward. These were people from the farms. The farm-horses were all carried off in the Duke’s service; and the men stood idle. There were loud complaints to the same effect at each house of entertainment for miles round, the post-horses also having been seized in the Duke’s service. It was clear that the complainants were neither angry nor sorry; and Christopher could see that many of them would fain be where their horses were. He was told that he had better spare his own steed, as he would not get another; and his answer was that men of his profession rode horses which would carry them on occasion a couple of hundred miles in a shorter time than posting. He understood the significance with which he was asked where he was going; and he was understood when he answered that it depended on what he might find the state of the country before him.

Elsewhere he came on some rendezvous where the gentry were mustering and exercising the militia. When he steered clear of such an obstruction as this, he found women or old men spying from afar; and the comment they had to make was that they did not believe those fellows would fight, and that they were mustered just to hinder their following King Monmouth. In more retired spots at some ruined church, where there was good hiding for a few till a sufficient number arrived to make it safe to show themselves, he saw gatherings in the interest of the Duke. The fathers had dismantled the church in the wars of the last generation; and now their sons were crouching behind the grave-stones, or in the tall weeds of the churchyard, or in the damp shadows within the walls, glorying that the day of a Protestant king had come at last, and watching impatiently for such an accession of numbers as would justify them in launching their blue flag, and marching to overtake King Monmouth. There was no difficulty in learning from anybody he met in what direction to ride to overtake the insurgent force. The people going one way had an appointment with the Duke; and those who came the other way had seen or heard something of him. A carrier with a couple of pack-horses looked a shrewd fellow enough; and he and Christopher came to an understanding without much loss of the time which was so precious to them both. His horses had not been spared to him without a reason: he carried something besides what was in his packsaddles,—namely, important news for worthy ears. From him Christopher learned that the Duke of Albemarle and his militia force had actually met the insurgents a few miles behind, after a wonderfully rapid march from Exeter. Christopher thought, as he rode on, of his father’s question,—what he supposed that he, a lawyer, could do with a company of ploughboys and shopkeepers against the trained bands that would be brought up against Monmouth in every county. He had replied by something more than an appeal to the goodness of the cause,—by going back to the beginning of the war of the Commonwealth, when the humblest of the citizens grew into soldiers almost in a day, under the inspiration of a clear mind and settled will. Still he was anxious;