John Enderby

II

Seven years went by before John Enderby saw his son again or set foot in Enderby House. Escaping to Holland on a night when everything was taken from him save his honour and his daughter, he had lived there with Mistress Felicity, taking service in the army of the country.

Outlaw as he was, his estates given over to his son who now carried a knighthood bestowed by King Charles, he was still a loyal subject to the dynasty which had dishonoured him. When the King was beheaded at Whitehall he mourned and lamented the miserable crime with the best of his countrymen.

It was about this time that he journeyed into France, and there he stayed with his daughter two years. Mistress Falkingham, her aunt, was with her, and watched over her as carefully as when she was a child in Enderby House.

About this time, Cromwell, urged by solicitous friends of the outlaw, sent word to him to return to England, that he might employ him in foreign service, if he did not care to serve in England itself. Cromwell’s message was full of comforting reflections upon his sufferings and upon the injustice that had been done to him by the late King. For his daughter’s sake, who had never been entirely happy out of England, Enderby returned, and was received with marked consideration by Cromwell at Whitehall.

“Your son, sir,” said Cromwell, “hath been a follower of the man of sin. He was of those notorious people who cried out against the work of God’s servants when Charles paid the penalty of his treason at Whitehall. Of late I have received news that he is of those children of Belial who are intriguing to bring back the second Charles. Two days ago he was bidden to leave Enderby House. If he be found among those who join the Scotch army to fight for the Pretender, he shall bear the penalty of his offence.”

“He has been ill advised, your Highness,” said Enderby.

“He shall be advised better,” was the stern reply. “We will have peace in England, and we will, by the help of the Lord’s strong arm, rid this realm of these recalcitrant spirits. For you, sir, you shall return to your estate at Enderby, and we will use you abroad as opportunity shall occur. Your son has taken to himself the title which the man of sin conferred upon you, to your undoing.”

“Your Highness,” replied Enderby, “I have but one desire, and that is peace. I have been outlawed from England so long, and my miseries have been so great, that I accept gladly what the justice of your Highness gives thus freely. But I must tell your Highness that I was no enemy of King Charles, and am no foe to his memory. The wrong was done by him to me, and not returned by me to him, and the issue is between our Maker and ourselves. But it is the pride of all Englishmen that England be well governed, and strong and important in the eyes of the nations; and all these things has your Highness achieved. I will serve my country honourably abroad, or rest peacefully here on my own estate, lifting no hand against your Highness, though I hold to the succession in the monarchy.”

Cromwell looked at him steadily and frowningly for a minute, then presently, his face clearing, he said: “Your words, detached from your character, sir, would be traitorous; but as we stand, two gentlemen of England face to face, they seem to me like the words of an honest man, and I love honesty before all other, things. Get to your home, sir. You must not budge from it until I send for you. Then, as proof of your fidelity to the ruler of your country, you shall go on whatever mission I send you.”

“Your Highness, I will do what seems my duty in the hour of your summons.”

“You shall do the will of the Lord,” answered the Protector, and, bowing a farewell, turned upon his heel. Enderby looked after him a moment, then moved towards the door, and as he went out to mount his horse he muttered to himself:

“The will of the Lord as ordained by Oliver Cromwell—humph!”

Then he rode away up through Trafalgar Square and into the Tottenham Court Road, and so on out into the Shires until he came to Enderby House.

Outside all was as he had left it seven years before, though the hedges were not so well kept and the grass was longer before the house. An air of loneliness pervaded all the place. No one met him at the door. He rode round into the court-yard and called. A man-servant came out. From him he learned that four of Cromwell’s soldiers were quartered in the house, that all the old servants, save two, were gone, and that his son had been expelled the place by Cromwell’s order two days before. Inside the house there was less change. Boon companion of the boisterous cavaliers as his son had been, the young man’s gay hours had been spent more away from Enderby House than in it.

When young Enderby was driven from his father’s house by Cromwell, he determined to join the Scotch army which was expected soon to welcome Charles the Second from France. There he would be in contact with Lord Rippingdale and his Majesty. When Cromwell was driven from his place, great honours might await him. Hearing in London, however, that his father had returned, and was gone on to the estate, he turned his horse about and rode back again, travelling by night chiefly, and reached Enderby House four days after his father’s arrival there.

He found his father seated alone at the dinner-table. Swinging wide open the door of the dining-room he strode in aggressively.

The old man stood up in his place at the table and his eyes brightened expectantly when he saw his son, for his brain was quickened by the thought that perhaps, after all his wrong-doing, the boy had come back to stand by him, a repentant prodigal. He was a man of warm and firm spirit, and now his breast heaved with his emotions. This boy had been the apple of his eye. Since the day of his birth he had looked for great things from him, and had seen in him the refined perpetuation of the sturdy race of the Enderbys. He counted himself but a rough sort of country gentleman, and the courtly face of his son had suggested the country gentleman cast in a finer mould. He was about to speak kindly as of old, but the young man, with clattering spurs, came up to the other end of the table, and with a dry insolence said:

“By whose invitation do you come here?”

The blood fled from the old man’s heart. For a moment he felt sick, and his face turned white. He dropped his head a little and looked at his son steadily and mournfully.

“Shall a man need an invitation to his own house, my son?” he said at last.

The arrogant lips of the young man tightened; he tossed up his head. “The house is mine. I am the master here. You are an outlaw.”

“An outlaw no longer,” answered the old man, “for the Protector has granted me again the home of which I was cruelly dispossessed.”

“The Protector is a rebel!” returned the young man, and his knuckles rapped petulantly upon the table. “I stand for the King—for King Charles the Second. When you were dispossessed, his late martyred Majesty made me master of this estate and a knight also.”

The old man’s hands clinched, in the effort to rule himself to quietness.

“You are welcome to the knighthood which I have never accepted,” said he; “but for these estates—” All at once a fierce anger possessed him, and the great shoulders heaved up and down with emotion—“but for these estates, sir, no law nor king can take them from me. I am John Enderby, the first son of a first son, the owner of these lands since the time my mother gave me birth. You, sir, are the first of our name that ever was a traitor to his house.”

So intent were the two that they did not see or hear three men who drew aside the curtains at the end of the room and stood spying upon them—three of Cromwell’s men. Young Enderby laughed sneeringly and answered:

“It was a King of England that gave Enderby Manor to the Enderbys. The King is the source of all estate and honour, and I am loyal to the King. He is a traitor who spurns the King’s honour and defies it. He is a traitor who links his fortunes with that vile, murderous upstart, that blethering hypocrite, Oliver Cromwell. I go to Scotland to join King Charles, and before three months are over his Majesty will have come into his own again and I also into my own here at Enderby.”

The old man trembled with the fierceness of his emotions.

“I only am master here,” he said, “and I should have died upon this threshold ere my Lord Rippingdale and the King’s men had ever crossed it, but for you, an Enderby, who deserted me in the conflict—a coward who went over to the enemies of our house.”

The young man’s face twitched with a malignant anger. He suddenly started forward, and with a sidelong blow struck his father with the flat of his sword. A red ridge of bruised flesh instantly rose upon the old man’s cheek and ear. He caught the arm of the chair by which he stood, staggering back as though he had received a mortal wound.

“No, no, no!” he said, his voice gulping with misery and horror.—“No, no! Kill me, if you will—I but cannot fight you. Oh, my God, my God!” he gasped scarcely above a whisper. “Unnatural-unnatural!” He said no more, for, upon the instant, four men entered the room. They were of Cromwell’s Ironsides. Young Enderby looked round swiftly, ready to fight, but he saw at once that he was trapped. The old man also laid his hand upon his sword, but he saw that the case was hopeless. He dropped into his chair and leaned his head upon his hands.

        ......................

Two months went by. The battle of Dunbar was fought, and Charles had lost it. Among the prisoners was Garrett Enderby, who had escaped from his captors on the way from Enderby House to London, and had joined the Scottish army. He was now upon trial for his life. Cromwell’s anger against him was violent. The other prisoners of war were treated as such, and were merely confined to prison, but young Enderby was charged with blasphemy and sedition, and with assaulting one of Cromwell’s officers—for on the very day that young Enderby made the assault, Cromwell’s foreign commission for John Enderby was on its way to Lincolnshire.

Of the four men who had captured Garrett Enderby at Enderby House, three had been killed in battle, and the other had deserted. The father was thus the chief witness against his son. He was recalled from Portugal where he had been engaged upon Cromwell’s business.

The young man’s judges leaned forward expectantly as John Enderby took his place. The Protector himself sat among them.

“What is your name, sir?” asked Cromwell. “John Enderby, your Highness.”

“It hath been said that you hold a title given you by the man of sin.”

“I have never taken a title from any man, your Highness.”

A look of satisfaction crossed the gloomy and puritanical faces of the officers of the court-martial. Other questions were put, and then came the vital points. To the first of these, as to whether young Enderby had uttered malignant and seditious libels against the Protector, the old man would answer nothing.

“What speech hath ever been between my son and myself,” he said, “is between my son and myself only.” A start of anger travelled round the circle of the court-martial. Young Enderby watched his father curiously and sullenly.

“Duty to country comes before all private feeling,” said Cromwell. “I command you, sir, on peril of a charge of treason against yourself, to answer the question of the Court. ‘If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy foot cause thee to stumble, heave it to the shambles. The pernicious branch of the just tree shall be cloven and cast into the brush-heap.’ You are an officer of this commonwealth, sir?” asked Cromwell, again.

“By your Highness’s permission,” he replied.

“Did your son strike you upon the face with the flat of his sword upon the night recorded in this charge against him?”

“What acts have passed between my son and myself are between my son and myself only,” replied Enderby, steadily. He did not look at his son, but presently the tears rolled down his cheeks, so that more than one of his judges who had sons of their own were themselves moved. But they took their cue from the Protector, and made no motion towards the old man’s advantage. Once more Cromwell essayed to get Enderby’s testimony, but, “I will not give witness against my son,” was his constant and dogged reply. At last Cromwell rose in anger.

“We will have justice in this realm of England,” said he, “though it turn the father against the son and the son against the father. Though the house be divided against itself yet the Lord’s work shall be done.”

Turning his blazing eyes upon John Enderby, he said: “Troublous and degenerate man, get gone from this country, and no more set foot in it on peril of your life. We recalled you from outlawry, believing you to be a true lover of your country, but we find you malignant, seditious and dangerous.”

He turned towards the young man.

“You, sir, shall get you back to prison until other witnesses be found. Although we know your guilt, we will be formal and just.”

With an impatient nod to an officer beside him, he waved his hand towards father and son.

As he was about to leave the room, John Enderby stretched out a hand to him appealingly.

“Your Highness,” said he, “I am an old man.”

“Will you bear witness in this cause?” asked Cromwell, his frown softening a little.

“Your Highness, I have suffered unjustly; the lad is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I cannot—”

With an angry wave of the hand Cromwell walked heavily from the room.

Some touch of shame came to the young man’s cold heart, and he spoke to his father as the officers were about to lead him away.

“I have been wrong, I have misunderstood you, sir,” he said, and he seemed about to hold out his hand. But it was too late. The old man turned on him, shaking his shaggy head.

“Never, sir, while I live. The wrong to me is little. I can take my broken life into a foreign land and die dishonoured and forgotten. But my other child, my one dear child who has suffered year after year with me—for the wrong you have done her, I never, never, never will forgive you. Not for love of you have I spoken as I did to-day, but for the honour of the Enderbys and because you were the child of your mother.”

Two days later at Southampton the old man boarded a little packet-boat bound for Havre.