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In the hurry of their change of place, Joanna sprang from her seat and ran like an arrow to her lover's side. "Here, Dick!" she cried, as she clasped his hand in hers. But Dick still stood irresolute; he was yet young to the more deplorable necessities of war, and the thought of old Lady Brackley checked the command upon his tongue. His own men became restive.
The Countess had been ten years dead; Lord Brackley, the heir of the house, and the elder of the boy-brothers in Comus, had wedded, in July 1642, when only nineteen years of age, the Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the powerful Royalist Earl, afterwards Marquis and Duke, of Newcastle; and one or two of his sisters, unmarried in the Comus year, had since found husbands.
'The country was exquisite that last week, he wrote; and it struck me that 'exquisite' was a word he must have caught from some one else's lips. I heard from him again in the following January. He wrote from the Isle of Wight, and informed me that in the spring he was to be married to Miss Ethel Armitage, second daughter of Humphrey Armitage, Esq., of Brackley Hall.
Neither do I purpose to explain it farther. Suffice it, that if ye be weary of your old gossip, Daniel Brackley, publish it abroad that y' are to wed Joanna Sedley, and I give you my word ye will be quit of him right soon. Ye will find him with an arrow in his back."
Following the apprentice into the shop, on the promise of a handsome reward, he instantly commenced his relation. "Last night," he said, "I was keeping watch at the door of Mr. Brackley, a saddler in Aldermanbury, whose house having been attacked by the pestilence is now shut up, when I observed two persons, rather singularly attired, pass me.
To the Comus there is prefixed Henry Lawes's eulogistic Dedication of it, in the edition of 1637, to Viscount Brackley, and also Sir Henry Wotton's cordial letter to Milton, with its praise of the poem in that edition, when Milton was on the start for his continental tour in the spring of 1638. To the Latin Poems as a whole there is even a more formal vestibule of encomiums.
Buckingham walked alone, as if he had been a prince of the blood; but after him came a throng of nobles, consisting of the Earl of Pembroke, high chamberlain; the Duke of Richmond, master of the household; the Earl of Nottingham, lord high admiral; Viscount Brackley, Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord Zouche, president of Wales; with the Lords Knollys, Mordaunt, Conipton, and Grey of Groby.
Nor could he believe that his hearing was not playing tricks with him, for there were two policemen in his room, bending over him and asking where "she" was. He shook his head. "This woman Bengough... goes by the name of Miss Elsie Bengough... d'ye hear? Where is she?... No good, Brackley; get him up; be careful with him; I'll just shove my head out of the window, I think...."
Presently, little by little, the tumult began to subside; and soon after, files of men in armour and bodies of archers began to assemble and form in line of battle in the market-place. A large portion of this body were in murrey and blue, and in the mounted knight who ordered their array Dick recognised Sir Daniel Brackley.
The next moment they had disappeared within the house; and Dick, slipping through the crowd of loiterers in the shed, was already giving hot pursuit. "The taller of these twain was Lady Brackley," he thought; "and where Lady Brackley is, Joan will not be far."
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