CHAPTER VI.—ORDEAL.

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      Frances made her way to the North as her father had directed, and everywhere found the news of his arrest in advance of her; the country ablaze with excitement because of it. The world would go well once Strafford was laid low. He had deluded and misled the good King, as Buckingham did before him. Buckingham had fallen by the knife; Strafford should fall by the axe. Then the untrammelled King would rule well; quietness and industry would succeed this unhealthy period of fever and unrest.

      The girl was appalled to meet everywhere this intense hatred of her father, and in her own home she was surrounded by it. Even her brother could not be aroused to sympathy, for he regarded his father not only as a traitor to his country, but as a domestic delinquent also, who had neglected and deserted his young wife, leaving her to die uncomforted without even a message from the husband for whom she had almost sacrificed her good name, bearing uncomplaining his absence and her father’s wrath. During the winter Frances saw little of her brother. Thomas Wentworth was here and there riding the country, imagining, with the confidence of extreme youth, that he was mixing in great affairs, as indeed he was, although he was too young to have much influence in directing them. The land was in a ferment, and the wildest rumours were afloat. Strafford had escaped from the Tower, and had taken flight abroad, like so many of his friends who had now scattered in fear to France or to Holland. Again it was said the King’s soldiers had attacked the Tower, liberated Strafford, and the Black Man was at the head of the wild Irish, resolved on the subjugation of England. Next, the Queen had called on France for aid, and an invasion was imminent. So there was much secret preparation, drilling and the concealing of arms against the time they should be urgently needed, and much galloping to and fro; a stirring period for the young, an anxious winter for the old, and Herbert Wentworth was in the thick of it all, mysteriously departing, unexpectedly returning, always more foolishly important than there was any occasion for. Yet had he in him the making of a man who was shortly to be tried by fire and steel, when greater wisdom crowned him than was at present the case.

      One by one the sinister rumours were contradicted by actual events; no French army crossed the Channel; the Irish did not rise; the grim Tower held Strafford secure in its iron grasp. Parliament seemed hesitating to strike, piling up accusations, collecting proof, but staying its hand. Everyone was loyal to the King, so grievously misled. The King could do no wrong, but woe to the Minister who could and did. So, this exciting winter passed and springtime came, ringing with news of Strafford’s approaching trial. A stern resolve to be finally rid of him, proof or no proof, was in the air, tinctured with the fine silken hypocrisy that all should be done according to the law; that the axe should swing in rhythm with a solemn declaration of judgment legally rendered. And there was no man to say to the hesitating King, “When that head falls, the brain of your government is gone.”

      Since the letter she had received on the night of his arrest, the daughter heard no word from the father. Had he again forgotten, or were his messages intercepted? She did not know and was never to know. She had written to him, saying she had obeyed him, but there was no acknowledgment that her letter had reached its destination. Thus she waited and waited, gnawing impatience and dread chasing the rose from her cheeks, until she could wait no longer. Her horse and the southern road were at her disposal, with none to hinder, so she set forth for London, excusing herself for thus in spirit breaking her father’s command, by the assurance that he had not forbidden her return. She avoided her father’s mansion, knowing that Lady Strafford and her children were now in residence there, and went to the inn where she had formerly lodged. She soon learned that it was one thing to go to London, and quite another to obtain entrance to Westminster Hall, where the great trial, now approaching its end, was the fashionable magnet of the town. No place of amusement ever collected such audiences, and although money will overcome many difficulties, she found it could not purchase admission to the trial through any source that was available. Perhaps if she had been more conversant with the ways of the metropolis the golden key might have shot back the bolt, but with her present knowledge she was at her wit’s end.

      Almost in despair, a happy thought occurred to her. She wrote a note to John Vollins, her father’s treasurer, and asked him to call upon her, which the good man did at the hour she set.

      “Your father would be troubled to know you are in London, when he thinks you safe at home,” he said.

      “I could not help it, Mr. Vollins. I was in a fever of distraction and must have come even if I had walked. But my father need never know, and you remember he wrote that you were to help me.’ I wish a place in Westminster Hall and cannot attain it by any other means in my power than by asking you.”

      “It is difficult of attainment. I advise you not to go there, for if his lordship happened to catch sight of you in that throng, who knows but at a critical moment it might unnerve him, for he is a man fighting with his back to the wall against implacable and unscrupulous enemies.”

      “Could you not get me some station where I might look upon my father unseen by him?”

      “Seats in the Hall are not to be picked or chosen.. If a place can be come by, it will be because some person who thought to attend cannot be present.”

      “Do you think that where there are so many faces a chance recognition is possible? I should be but an atom in the multitude.”

      “Doubtless his seeing you is most unlikely. I shall do my best for you, and hope to obtain an entrance for to-morrow.”

      And so it came about that Frances was one of the fashionable audience next day, occupying the place of a lady who had attended the trial from the first, but was now tired of it, seeking some new excitement, thus missing the most dramatic scene of that notable tragedy. Frances found herself one of a bevy of gaily dressed ladies, all of whom were gossiping and chattering together, comparing notes they had taken of the proceedings, for many of them had dainty writing-books in which they set down the points that pleased them as the case went on. It seemed like a gala day, animated by a thrill of eager expectancy; a social function, entirely pleasurable, with no hint that a man stood in jeopardy of his life. Although the body of the hall was crowded, draped benches at the upper end were still untenanted, except that here and there sat a man, serving rather to emphasize the emptiness of