WITHIN-DOORS.
When in the afternoon Judith sought out her gentle gossip, and with much
cautious tact and discretion began to unfold her perplexities to her,
Prudence was not only glad enough to hear nothing further of the
wizard--who seemed to have been driven out of Judith's mind altogether
by the actual occurrences of the morning--but also she became possessed
with a secret wonder and joy; for she thought that at last her dearest
and closest friend was awaking to a sense of the importance of spiritual
things, and that henceforth there would be a bond of confidence between
them far more true and abiding than any that had been before. But soon
she discovered that politics had a good deal to do with these hesitating
inquiries; and at length the bewildered Prudence found the conversation
narrowing and narrowing itself to this definite question: Whether,
supposing there were a young man charged with complicity in a Catholic
plot, or perhaps having been compromised in some former affair of the
kind, and supposing him to appeal to her father, would he, Judith's
father, probably be inclined to shelter him and conceal him, and give
him what aid was possible until he might get away from the country?
"But what do you mean, Judith?" said Prudence, in dismay. "Have you seen
any one? What is't you mean? Have you seen one of the desperate men that
were concerned with Catesby?"
Indeed, it was not likely that either of these two Warwickshire maidens
had already forgotten the terrible tidings that rang through the land
but a few years before, when the Gunpowder Treason was discovered; nor
how the conspirators fled into this very county; nor yet how in the
following January, on a bitterly cold and snowy day, there was brought
into the town the news of the executions in St. Paul's Churchyard and at
Westminster. And, in truth, when Prudence Shawe mentioned Catesby's
name, Judith's cheek turned pale. It was but for an instant. She
banished the ungenerous thought the moment that it occurred to her. No,
she was sure the unhappy young man who had appealed to her compassion
could not have been concerned in any such bloody enterprise. His speech
was too gentle for that. Had he not declared that he only wanted time to
prove his innocence? It is true he had said something about his friends
in Flanders, and often enough had she heard the Puritan divines
denouncing Flanders as the very hot-bed of the machinations of the
Jesuits; but that this young man might have friends among the Jesuits
did not appear to her as being in itself a criminal thing, any more than
the possibility of his being a Catholic was sufficient of itself to
deprive him of her frank and generous sympathy.
"I may not answer you yea nor nay, sweet mouse," said she; "but assure
yourself that I am not in league with any desperate villain. I but put a
case. We live in quiet times now, do we not, good Prue? and I take it
that those who like not the country are free to leave it. But tell me,
if my father were to speak openly, which of the parties would he most
affect? And how stands he with the King? Nay, the King himself, of what
religion is he at heart, think you?"
"These be questions!" said Prudence, staring aghast at such ignorance.
"I but use my ears," said Judith, indifferently, "and the winds are not
more variable than the opinions that one listens to. Well you know it,
Prue. Here is one that says the King is in conscience a papist, as his
mother was; and that he gave a guarantee to the Catholic gentry ere he
came to the throne; and that soon or late we shall have mass again; and
then comes another with the story that the Pope is hot and angry because
the King misuseth him in his speech, calling him Antichrist and the like
and that he has complained to the French King on the matter, and that
there is even talk of excommunication. What can one believe? How is one
to know? Indeed, good mouse, you would have me more anxious about such
things; but why should one add to one's difficulties? I am content to be
like my father, and stand aside from the quarrel."
"Your wit is too great for me, dear Judith," her friend said, rather
sadly; "and I will not argue with you. But well I know there may be a
calmness that is of ignorance and indifference, and that is slothful and
sinful; and there may be a calmness that is of assured wisdom and
knowledge of the truth, and that I trust your father has attained to.
That he should keep aside from disputes, I can well understand."
"But touching the King, dear cousin," said Judith, who had her own ends
in view. "How stands my father with the King and his religion? Nay, but
I know, and every one knows, that in all other matters they are friends;
for your brother has the King's letter----"
"That I wish you had yourself, Judith, since your heart is set upon it,"
said her companion, gently.
Judith did not answer that.
"But as regards religion, sweet Prue, what think you my father would
most favor, were there a movement any way?--a change to the ancient
faith perchance?"
She threw out the question with a kind of studied carelessness, as if it
were a mere matter of speculation; but there was a touch of warmth in
Prudence's answer:
"What, then, Judith? You think he would disturb the peace of the land,
and give us over again to the priests and their idol-worship? I trow
not." Then something seemed to occur to her suddenly. "But if you have
any doubt, Judith, I can set your mind at rest--of a surety I can."
"How, then, dear mouse?"
"I will tell you the manner of it. No longer ago than yesterday evening
I was seated at the window reading--it was the volume that Dr. Hall
brought me from Worcester, and that I value more and more the longer I
read it--and your father came into the house asking for Julius. So I put
the book on the table, with the face downward, and away I went to seek
for my brother. Well, then, sweet cousin, when I came back to the room,
there was your father standing at the window reading the book that I had
left, and I would not disturb him; and when he had finished the page,
he turned, saying, 'Good bishop! good bishop!' and putting down the book
on the table just as he had found it. Dear Judith, I hope you will think
it no harm and no idle curiosity that made me take up the book as soon
as my brother was come in, and examine the passage, and mark it----"
"Harm!--bless thee, sweetheart!" Judith exclaimed. And she added,
eagerly: "But have you the book? Will you read it to me? Is it about the
King? Do, dear cousin, read to me what it was that my father approved.
Beshrew me! but I shall have to take to school lessons, after all, lest
I outlive even your gentle patience."
Straightway Prudence had gone to a small cupboard of boxes in which she
kept all her most valued possessions, and from thence she brought a
stout little volume, which, as Judith perceived, had a tiny book-mark of
satin projecting from the red-edged leaves.
"Much comfort indeed have I found in these Comfortable Notes," said she.
"I wish, Judith, you, that can think of everything, would tell me how I
am to show to Dr. Hall that I am more and more grateful to him for his
goodness. What can I do?--words are such poor things!"
"But the passage, good Prue--what was't he read? I pray you let me
hear," said Judith, eagerly; for here, indeed, might be a key to many
mysteries.
"Listen, then," said her companion, opening the book. "The Bishop, you
understand, Judith, is speaking of the sacrifices the Jews made to the
Lord, and he goes on to say:
"'Thus had this people their peace-offerings; that is, duties of
thankfulness to their God for the peace and prosperity vouchsafed unto
them. And most fit it was that He should often be thanked for such
favors. The like mercies and goodness remain to us at this day: are we
either freed from the duty or left without means to perform it? No, no;
but as they had oxen and kine, and sheep and goats, then appointed and
allowed, so have we the calves of our lips and the sacrifice of
thanksgiving still remaining for us, and as strictly required of us as
these (in those days) were of them. Offer them up, then, with a free
heart and with a feeling soul. Our peace is great; our prosperity
comfortable; our God most sweet and kind; and shall we not offer? The
public is sweet, the private is sweet, and forget you to offer? We lay
us down and take our rest, and this our God maketh us dwell in safety.
Oh, where is your offering? We rise again and go to our labor, and a dog
is not heard to move his tongue among us: owe we no offering? O Lord, O
Lord, make us thankful to Thee for these mercies: the whole state we
live in, for the common and our several souls, for several mercies now
many years enjoyed! O touch us; O turn us from our fearful dulness, and
abusing of this so sweet, so long, and so happy peace! Continue thy
sacred servant'--surely you know, Judith, whom he means--'the chiefest
means under Thee of this our comfort, and ever still furnish him with
wise helps, truly fearing Thee, and truly loving him. Let our heads go
to the grave in this peace, if it may be Thy blessed pleasure, and our
eyes never see the change of so happy an estate. Make us thankful and
full of peace-offerings; be Thou still ours, and ever merciful. Amen!
Amen!'"
"And what said he, sweet Prue--what said my father?" Judith asked,
though her eyes were distant and thoughtful.
"'Good bishop! good bishop!' said he, as if he were right well pleased,
and he put down the book on the table. Nay, you may be certain, Judith,
that your father would have naught to do with the desperate men that
would fain upset the country, and bring wars among us, and hand us over
to the Pope again. I have heard of such; I have heard that many of the
great families have but a lip loyalty, and have malice at their heart,
and would willingly plunge the land in blood if they could put the
priests in power over us again. Be sure your father is not of that
mind."
"But if one were in distress, Prudence," said the other, absently,
"perchance with a false charge hanging over him that could be
disproved--say that one were in hiding, and only anxious to prove his
innocence, or to get away from the country, is my father likely to look
coldly on such a one in misfortune? No, no, surely, sweet mouse!"
"But of whom do you speak, Judith?" exclaimed her friend, regarding her
with renewed alarm. "It cannot be that you know of such a one? Judith, I
beseech you speak plainly! You have met with some stranger that is
unknown to your own people? You said you had but put a case, but now you
speak as if you knew the man. I beseech you, for the love between us,
speak plainly to me, Judith!"
"I may not," said the other rising. And then she added, more lightly,
"Nay, have no fear, sweet Prue; if there be any danger, it is not I that
run it, and soon there will be no occasion for my withholding the
secret from you, if secret there be."
"I cannot understand you, Judith," said her friend, with the pale,
gentle face full of a tender wistfulness and anxiety.
"Such timid eyes!" said Judith, laughing good-naturedly. "Indeed,
Prudence, I have seen no ghost, and goodman Wizard has failed me
utterly; nor sprite nor phantom has been near me. In sooth I have buried
poor Tom's bit of rosemary to little purpose. And now I must get me
home, for Master Parson comes this afternoon, and I will but wait the
preaching to hear Susan sing: 'tis worth the penance. Farewell, sweet
mouse; get you rid of your alarm. The sky will clear all in good time."
So they kissed each other, and she left; still in much perplexity, it is
true, but nevertheless resolved to tell the young man honestly and
plainly the result of her inquiries.
As it turned out, she was to hear something more about the King and
politics and religion that afternoon; for when she got home to New
Place, Master Blaise was already there, and he was eagerly discussing
with Judith's mother and her sister the last news that had been brought
from London; or rather he was expounding it, with emphatic assertions
and denunciations that the women-folk received for the most part with a
mute but quite apparent sympathy. He was a young man of about
six-and-twenty, rather inclined to be stout, but with strongly lined
features, fair complexion and hair, an intellectual forehead, and sharp
and keen gray eyes. The one point that recommended him to Judith's
favor--which he openly and frankly, but with perfect independence,
sought--was the uncompromising manner in which he professed his
opinions. These frequently angered her, and even at times roused her to
passionate indignation; and yet, oddly enough, she had a kind of lurking
admiration for the very honesty that scorned to curry favor with her by
means of any suppression or evasion. It may be that there was a trace of
the wisdom of the serpent in this attitude of the young parson, who was
shrewd-headed as well as clear-eyed, and was as quick as any to read the
fearless quality of Judith's character. At all events, he would not
yield to any of her prejudices; he would not stoop to flatter her; he
would not abate one jot of his protests against the vanity and pride,
the heathenish show and extravagance, of women; the heinousness and
peril of indifferentism in matters of doctrine; and the sinfulness of
the life of them that countenanced stage plays and such like devilish
iniquities. It was this last that was the real stumbling-block and
contention between them. Sometimes Judith's eyes burned. Once she rose
and got out of the room. "If I were a man, Master Parson," she was
saying to herself, with shut teeth, "by the life of me I would whip you
from Stratford town to Warwick!" And indeed there was ordinarily a kind
of armed truce between these two, so that no stranger or acquaintance
could very easily decide what their precise relations were, although
every one knew that Judith's mother and sister held the young divine in
great favor, and would fain have had him of the family.
At this moment of Judith's entrance he was much exercised, as has been
said, on account of the news that was but just come from London--how
that the King was driving at still further impositions because of the
Commons begrudging him supplies; and naturally Master Blaise warmly
approved of the Commons, that had been for granting the liberties to the
Puritans which the King had refused. And not only was this the
expression of a general opinion on the subject, but he maintained as an
individual--and as a very emphatic individual too--that the prerogatives
of the crown, the wardships and purveyances and what not, were monstrous
and abominable, and a way of escape from the just restraint of
Parliament, and he declared with a sudden vehemence that he would rather
perish at the stake than contribute a single benevolence to the royal
purse. Judith's mother, a tall, slight, silver-haired woman, with eyes
that had once been of extraordinary beauty, but now were grown somewhat
sad and worn, and her daughter Susanna Hall, who was darker than her
sister Judith as regarded hair and eyebrows, but who had blue-gray eyes
of a singular clearness and quickness and intelligence, listened and
acquiesced; but perhaps they were better pleased when they found the
young parson come out of that vehement mood; though still he was sharp
of tongue and sarcastic, saying as an excuse for the King that now he
was revenging himself on the English Puritans for the treatment he had
received at the hands of the Scotch Presbyterians, who had harried him
not a little. He had not a word for Judith; he addressed his discourse
entirely to the other two. And she was content to sit aside, for indeed
this discontent with the crown on the part of the Puritans was nothing
strange or novel to her, and did not in the least help to solve her
present perplexity.
And now the maids (for Judith's father would have no serving-men, nor
stable-men, nor husbandmen of any grade whatever, come within-doors; the
work of the house was done entirely by women-folk) entered to prepare
the long oaken table for supper, seeing which Master Blaise suggested
that before that meal it might be as well to devote a space to divine
worship. So the maids were bidden to stay their preparations, and to
remain, seating themselves dutifully on a bench brought crosswise, and
the others sat at the table in their usual chairs, while the preacher
opened the large Bible that had been fetched for him, and proceeded to
read the second chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, expounding as he went
along. This running commentary was, in fact, a sermon applied to all the
evils of the day, as the various verses happened to offer texts; and the
ungodliness and the vanity and the turning away from the Lord that
Jeremiah lamented were attributed in no unsparing fashion to the town of
Stratford and the inhabitants thereof: "Hear ye the word of the Lord, O
house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel: thus saith
the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are
gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?"
Nor did he spare himself and his own calling: "The priests said not,
Where is the Lord? and they that should minister the law knew me not:
the pastors also offended against me, and the prophets prophesied in
Baal, and went after things that did not profit." And there were bold
paraphrases and inductions, too: "What hast thou now to do in the way of
Egypt, to drink the waters of Nilus? or what makest thou in the way of
Asshur, to drink the waters of the river?" Was not that the seeking of
strange objects--of baubles, and jewels, and silks, and other
instruments of vanity--from abroad, from the papist land of France, to
lure the eye and deceive the senses, and turn away the mind from the
dwelling on holy things? "Can a maid forget her ornament, or the bride
her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number." This
was, indeed, a fruitful text, and there is no doubt that Judith was
indirectly admonished to regard the extreme simplicity of her mother's
and sister's attire; so that there can be no excuse whatever for her
having in her mind at this very moment some vague fancy that as soon as
supper was over she would go to her own chamber and take out a certain
beaver hat. She did not often wear it, for it was a present that her
father had once brought her from London, and it was ranked among her
most precious treasures; but surely on this evening (she was saying to
herself) it was fitting that she should wear it, not from any personal
vanity, but to the end that this young gentleman, who seemed to know
several of her father's acquaintances in London, should understand that
the daughter of the owner of New Place was no mere country wench,
ignorant of what was in the fashion. It is grievous that she should have
been concerned with such frivolous thoughts. However, the chapter came
to an end in due time.
Then good Master Blaise said that they would sing the
One-hundred-and-thirty-seventh Psalm; and this was truly what Judith had
been waiting for. She herself was but an indifferent singer. She could
do little more than hum such snatches of old songs as occurred to her
during her careless rambles, and that only for her private ear; but her
sister Susanna had a most noble, pure, and clear contralto voice, that
could at any time bring tears to Judith's eyes, and that, when she
joined in the choral parts of the service in church, made many a young
man's heart tremble strangely. In former days she used to sing to the
accompaniment of her lute; but that was given over now. Once or twice
Judith had brought the discarded instrument to her, and said,
"Susan, sweet Susan, for once, for once only, sing to me '_The rose is
from my garden gone_.'"
"Why, then--to make you cry, silly one?" the elder sister would answer.
"What profit those idle tears, child, that are but a luxury and a sinful
indulgence?"
"Susan, but once!" Judith would plead (with the tears almost already in
her eyes)--"once only, '_The rose is from my garden gone_.' There is
none can sing it like you."
But the elder sister was obdurate, as she considered was right; and
Judith, as she walked through the meadows in the evening, would
sometimes try the song for herself, thinking, or endeavoring to think,
that she could hear in it the pathetic vibrations of her sister's voice.
Indeed, at this moment the small congregation assembled around the table
would doubtless have been deeply shocked had they known with what a
purely secular delight Judith was now listening to the words of the
psalm. There was but one Bible in the house, so that Master Blaise read
out the first two lines (lest any of the maids might have a lax memory):
"When as we sat in Babylon,
The rivers round about;"
and that they sang; then they proceeded in like manner:
"And in remembrance of Sion,
The tears for grief burst out;
We hanged our harps and instruments
The willow-trees upon;
For in that place men for their use
Had planted many a one."
It is probable, indeed, that Judith was so wrapped up in her sister's
singing that it did not occur to her to ask herself whether this psalm,
too, had not been chosen with some regard to the good preacher's
discontent with those in power. At all events, he read out, and they
sang, no further than these two verses:
"Then they to whom we prisoners were,
Said to us tauntingly:
Now let us hear your Hebrew songs
And pleasant melody.
Alas! (said we) who can once frame
His sorrowful heart to sing
The praises of our loving God
Thus under a strange king?
"But yet if I Jerusalem
Out of my heart let slide,
Then let my fingers quite forget
The warbling harp to guide;
And let my tongue within my mouth
Be tied forever fast,
If that I joy before I see
Thy full deliverance past."
Then there was a short and earnest prayer; and, that over, the maids set
to work to get forward the supper; and young Willie Hart was called in
from the garden--Judith's father being away at Wilmcote on some
important business there. In due course of time, supper being finished,
and a devout thanksgiving said, Judith was free; and instantly she fled
away to her own chamber to don her bravery. It was not vanity (she again
said to herself), it was that her father's daughter should show that she
knew what was due to him and his standing in the town; and indeed, as
she now regarded herself in the little mirror--she wore a half-circle
farthingale, and had on one of her smartest ruffs--and when she set on
her head of short brown curls this exceedingly pretty hat (it was a
gray beaver above, and underneath it was lined with black satin, and all
around the rim was a row of hollow brass beads that tinkled like small
bells), she was quite well satisfied with her appearance, and that she
was fairly entitled to be. Then she went down and summoned her
sweetheart Willie, to act as her companion and protector and ally; and
together these two passed forth from the house--into the golden clear
evening.