The Broken Font: A Story of the Civil War, Vol. 2 (of 2)Sherer, Moyle
History
The Broken Font: A Story of the Civil War, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Sherer, Moyle
Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
The stout man who had resented the blow inflicted on poor Cuthbert
raised him up, and led him aside to a more private place, where, they
two being alone together, he tried to make himself known, for he had
already recognised the voice of Cuthbert; and his soul could, even on
that day of public calamity, be filled with pity for this unhappy
sufferer. It was George Juxon. Cuthbert, already in a kind of stupor,
produced by great mental excitement on a weak and exhausted frame, and
the action of the severe cold of the day upon his naked head, looked
vacantly at him, with incredulity and alarm; and Juxon saw that he was
not only very ill but that his senses were wandering. He immediately
took him home to his own lodgings in a quiet street near St. Paul’s
Cathedral, and procured the help of a skilful and humane physician.
It was a week before Cuthbert was sufficiently restored to strength
either of body or mind to recognise his protector; but when he did so,
the face and voice of Juxon appeared to give him the power of
recovering his scattered memories and unravelling his tangled
thoughts. Nor were the features of Juxon the only ones he was enabled
to recall among those kind preservers with whom he had been thus
mercifully thrown at so critical a moment of his life.
Jane Lambert, now the wife of Juxon, was one of those who ministered
to him in his sickness; and the countenance of Katharine Heywood, no
longer radiant with youth, and health, and hope, but still majestic
and merciful as those of guardian angels, shone upon him with a mild
and Christian pity. They all viewed Cuthbert as an erring child of a
heavenly Father brought back to him by affliction; and they felt that
to minister to his sorrows and his need, and to lead him gently to the
green pastures and the still waters of Christ’s flock, was a sacred
duty, and a sweet privilege.
The circumstances of those around him were sufficiently easy,
considering the times, to enable them to place him again in his
relative station as regarded temporal matters; and he learned with
thanksgiving that his father and mother were safe and well, and had
been so far assisted as to be comparatively comfortable in the small
cottage in which they dwelt.
But it was long before Juxon prevailed with him to return to his
father. At every mention of this duty he became silent and gloomy:
from this trial he seemed to shrink with dejection and almost despair.
His faith in the gracious promises of Scripture failed him,--and he
thought his crimes of too black a dye for forgiveness. One evening,
especially, a man coming before the parlour windows and crying certain
relics for sale, offered with a loud hoarse voice,--“Most precious
remains of his late sacred Majesty of pious memory, warranted genuine,
and dipped in his own blood.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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