"Aubrey, what God sees good for thee, now, is the old home at Selwick
Hall. May He bless it to thee, and fit thee for it!"
"What mean you?" asked the bewildered Aubrey.
A few minutes put him in possession of the facts. Nothing which had
passed convinced Hans of a radical change in Aubrey's heart, so
completely as the first sentence with which he greeted the news of his
altered fortune.
"Then my dear old grandmother can go home!"
"Thou wilt be glad to hear," added Hans, quietly, "that Mrs Joyce
Morrell hath sent her a caroche and horses wherein to journey at her
ease. Mrs Temperance and Lettice go back to Keswick."
"Not if I know it!" was the hearty response. "I lack Aunt Temperance to
keep me straight. Otherwise I should have nought save soft south-west
airs playing around me, and she is a cool north breeze that shall brace
me to my duty. But how quick, Hans, canst thou get free of Mr Leigh?
for we must not tarry Grandmother at her years, and in this summer
weather when journeying were least weariful."
"Wilt thou have me, then, Aubrey?"
"Hans, that is the worst cut thou hast ever given me. I have a mind to
say I will not turn back without thee."
Hans smiled. "I thank thee, my dear brother. I dare say that I can be
quit with Mr Leigh as soon as thou canst shake thee free of Mr
Whitstable."
Mr Whitstable smiled rather cynically when the matter was laid before
him.
"Well, young gentleman!" said he to Aubrey. "Methinks you shall make a
better country squire than you should have done three months gone, and
maybe none the worse for your tarrying with the old bookseller."
"Mr Whitstable, I con you hearty thanks for your good and just
entreatment of me," said Aubrey, "and if ever your occasions call you
into Cumberland, I promise you a true welcome at Selwick Hall."
That night, Aubrey seemed to be in a brown study, and the sagacious Hans
let him alone till his thoughts should blossom forth into words of
themselves. They came at last.
"Hans, thou wist it is customary for chaplains to be entertained in
great houses?"
"Ay," said Hans, smiling to himself.
"I desire not to ape the great: but--thinkest thou we might not have a
prophet's chamber in some corner at Selwick--the chamber over the east
porch, belike?"
"Truly, if the prophet were to hand," said Hans, looking as grave as if
he were not secretly amused.
"The prophet is to hand rather than the chamber," was the answer.
"Couldst thou not guess I meant Mr Marshall?"
Hans had guessed it some seconds back.
"A good thought, truly," he replied.
"That will I ask my grandmother," said Aubrey.
It was the evening after Aubrey's return to the White Bear when that
proposal was suggested to Lady Louvaine. A light of gladness came to
the dim blue eyes.
"My dear lad, how blessed a thought!" said she.
"But what should come of Mrs Agnes, then?" suggested Temperance.
"Oh, she could easily be fitted with some service," answered Mrs
Louvaine, who for once was not in a complaining mood. "Hans, you might
ask of Mr Leigh if he know of any such, or maybe of some apprenticeship
that should serve her. She can well work with the needle, and is a
decent maid, that should not shame her mistress, were she not over high
in the world."
"Mother!"
The indignant tone of that one word brought the handkerchief instantly
out of Mrs Louvaine's pocket.
"Well, really, Aubrey, I do think it most unreasonable! Such a way to
speak to your poor mother, and she a widow! When I have but one child,
and he--"
"He is sorry, Mother, if he spake to you with disrespect," said Aubrey
in a different tone. "But suffer me to say that if Mr Marshall come
with us, so must Mrs Agnes."
"Now, Faith, do be quiet! I've been counting on Mrs Agnes to see to
things a bit, and save Edith,--run about for my Lady Lettice, see you,
and get our Lettice into her good ways."
"You don't say, to spare _me_," wailed Mrs Louvaine.
"No, my dear, I don't," replied Temperanoe, significantly. "I'll spare
you when you need sparing; don't you fear."
Mr Marshall and Agnes were as glad as they were astonished--and that
was no little--to hear of the provision in store for them. To pass from
those three rooms in Shoe Lane to the breezy hills and wide chambers of
Selwick Hall--to live no more from hand to mouth, with little in either,
but to be assured, as far as they could be so, among the changes and
chances of this mortal life, of bread to eat and raiment to put on--to
be treated as beloved and honoured friends instead of meeting with
scornful words and averted looks--this was glad news indeed. Mr
Marshall rejoiced for his daughter, and Agnes for her father. Hers was
a nature which could attain its full happiness only in serving God and
man. To have shut herself up and occupied herself with her own
amusement would have been misery, not pleasure. The idea of saving
trouble to Lady Louvaine and Edith, of filling in some slight degree the
empty place of that beloved friend whom Selwick Hall called "Cousin
Bess" and Agnes "Aunt Elizabeth"--this opened out to Agnes Marshall a
prospect of unadulterated enjoyment. To her father, whose active days
were nearly over, and who was old rather with work, hardship, and
sorrow, than by the mere passage of time, the lot offered him seemed
equally happy. The quiet rest, the absence of care, the plenitude of
books, the society of chosen friends who were his fellow-pilgrims,
Zionward,--to contemplate such things was almost happiness enough in
itself. And if he smothered a sigh in remembering that his Eleanor
slept in that quiet churchyard whence she could never more be summoned
to rejoice with him, it was followed at once by the happier recollection
that she had seen a gladder sight than this, and that she was satisfied
with it.
It was but natural that the journey home should be of the most enjoyable
character. The very season of the year added to its zest. The five
ladies and two girls travelled in the coach--private carriages were much
more roomy then than now, and held eight if not ten persons with
comfort--Mr Lewthwaite, Aubrey, Hans, and the two maids, were on
horseback. So they set forth from the White Bear.
"Farewell to thee!" said Charity to that stolid-looking animal, as she
rode under it for the last time. "Rachel, what dost thou mean, lass?--
art thou crying to leave yon beast or Mistress Abbott?"
"Nay, nother on 'em, for sure!" said Rachel, wiping her eyes; "I've
nobut getten a fly into my eye."
Mrs Abbott, however, was not behindhand. She came out to her gate to
see the cavalcade depart, followed by a train of youthful Abbotts, two
or three talking at once, as well as herself. What reached the ears of
the ladies in the coach, therefore, was rather a mixture.
"Fare you well, Lady Louvaine, and all you young gentlewomen--and I hope
you'll have a safe journey, and a pleasant; I'm sure--"
"I'll write and tell you the new modes, Mrs Lettice," said Prissy;
"you'll have ne'er a chance to--"
"Be stuck in the mud ere you've gone a mile," came in Seth's voice.
"And where tarry you to-night, trow?" demanded Mrs Abbott. "Is it to
be at Saint Albans or--"
"Up atop of yon tree," screamed Hester; "there she was with a kitten in
her mouth, and--"
"All the jewels you could think of," Dorcas was heard to utter.
The words on either side were lost, but nobody--except, perhaps, the
speakers--thought the loss a serious one.
Under way at last, the coach rumbled with dignity up King Street,
through the Court gates, past Charing Cross and along the Strand--a
place fraught with painful memories to one at least of the party--past
the Strand Cross, through Temple Bar, up Fetter Lane, over Holborn
Bridge and Snow Hill, up Aldersgate Street, along the Barbican, and by
the fields to Shoreditch, into the Saint Alban's Road. As they came out
into the Shoreditch Road, a little above Bishopsgate, they were equally
surprised and gratified to find Lady Oxford's groom of the chambers
standing and waiting for their approach. As he recognised the faces, he
stepped forward. In his hand was a very handsome cloak of fine cloth,
of the shade of brown then called meal-colour, lined with crimson plush,
and trimmed with beaver fur.
"Madam, my Lady bids you right heartily farewell, and prays you accept
this cloak to lap you at night in your journey, with her loving
commendations: 'tis of her Ladyship's own wearing."
It was considered at that time to add zest to a gift, if it had been
used by the giver.
Lady Louvaine returned a message suited to the gratitude and pleasure
which she felt at this timely remembrance, and the coach rolled away,
leaving London behind.
"Weel, God be wi' thee and all thine!" said Charity, looking back at the
great metropolis: "and if I ne'er see thee again, it'll none break my
heart."
"Nay, nor mine nother!" added Rachel. "I can tell thee, lass, I'm fair
fain to get out o' th' smoke and mire. Th' devil mun dwell i' London, I
do think."
"I doubt it not," said Hans, who heard the remark, "but he has country
houses, Rachel."
"Well!" said that damsel, in a satisfied tone: "at any rate, we shalln't
find him at Selwick!"
"Maybe not, if the house be empty," was Hans's reply: "but he will come
in when we do, take my word for it."
"Yo're reet, Mestur 'Ans," said Charity, gravely.
Four days' travelling brought them to the door of the Hill House at
Minster Lovel. They had had no opportunity of sending word of their
coming.
"How amazed Aunt Joyce will be, and Rebecca!" said Edith, with a happy
laugh.
"I reckon they'll have some work to pack us all in," answered
Temperance.
"Let be, children," was the response of Lady Louvaine. "The Hill House
is great enough to hold every one of us, and Aunt Joyce's heart is yet
bigger."
For a coach and six to draw up before the door of a country house was
then an event which scarcely occurred so often as once a year. It was
no great wonder, therefore, if old Rebecca looked almost dazed as she
opened the door to so large a party.
"We are going home, Rebecca!" cried Edith's bright, familiar voice.
"How fares my Aunt?"
"Eh, you don't mean it's you, mine own dear child?" cried the old
servant lovingly. "And your Ladyship belike! Well, here is a blessed
even! It'll do the mistress all the good in the world. Well, she's
very middling, my dear--very middling indeed: but I think 'tis rather
weariness than any true malady, and that'll flee afore the sight of you
like snow afore the warm sun. Well, there's a smart few of you!--all
the better, my dear, all the better!"
"You can hang one or two of us up in a tree, if you can't find us room,"
said Aubrey as he sprang from his saddle.
"There's room enough for such good stuff, and plenty to spare," answered
old Rebecca. "If you was some folks, now, I might be glad to have the
spare chambers full of somewhat else--I might! Come in, every one of
you!"
"We'll help you to make ready, all we can," said Rachel, as she trudged
after Rebecca to the kitchen.
"Ay, we will," echoed Charity.
Warmer and tenderer yet was the welcome in the Credence Chamber, where
Aunt Joyce lay on her couch, looking as though not a day had passed
since she bade them farewell. She greeted each of them lovingly until
Aubrey came to her. Then she said, playfully yet meaningly,--"Who is
this?"
"Aunt Joyce," replied Aubrey, as he bent down to kiss her, "shall I say,
`A penitent fool?'"
"Nay, my lad," was the firm answer. "A fool is never a penitent, nor a
penitent a fool. The fool hath been: let the penitent abide."
"This is our dear, kind friend, Mr Marshall, Joyce," said Lady
Louvaine. "He is so good as to come with us, and be our chaplain at
Selwick: and here is his daughter."
"I think Mrs Joyce can guess," said the clergyman, "that the true
meaning of those words is that her Lady ship hath been so good as to
allow of the same, to our much comfort."
"Very like you are neither of you over bad," said Aunt Joyce with her
kindly yet rather sarcastic smile. "I am glad to see you, Mr Marshall;
hitherto we have known each other but on paper. Is this your daughter?
Why, my maid, you have a look of the dearest and blessedest woman of all
your kin--dear old Cousin Bess, that we so loved. May God make you like
her in the heart, no less than the face!"
"Indeed, Mistress, I would say Amen, with all mine heart," answered
Agnes, with a flush of pleasure.
There was a long discussion the next day upon ways and means, which
ended in the decision that Aubrey and Hans, Faith and Temperance, with
the two maids, should go forward to Selwick after a few days' rest, to
get things in order; Lady Louvaine, Edith, Lettice, Agnes, and Mr
Marshall, remaining at Minster Lovel for some weeks.
"And I'm as fain as I'd be of forty shillings," said old Rebecca to
Edith. "Eh, but the mistress just opens out when you're here like a
flower in the sunlight!"
"Now, don't you go to want Faith to tarry behind," observed Temperance,
addressing the same person: "the dear old gentlewomen shall be a deal
happier without her and her handkerchief. It shall do her good to
bustle about at Selwick, as she will if she's mistress for a bit, and
I'll try and see that she does no mischief, so far as I can."
Aunt Joyce, who was the only third person present, gave an amused little
laugh.
"How long shall she be mistress, Temperance?"
"Why, till my Lady Lettice comes," said Temperance, with a rather
perplexed look.
"For `Lady Lettice,' read `Mrs Agnes Marshall,'" was the answer of Aunt
Joyce.
"Aunt Joyce!" cried Edith. "You never mean--"
"Don't I? But I do, Mistress Bat's-Eyes."
"Well, I never so much as--"
"Never so much as saw a black cow a yard off, didst thou? See if it
come not true. Now, my maids, go not and meddle your fingers in the
pie, without you wish it not to come true. Methinks Aubrey hath scarce
yet read his own heart, and Agnes is innocent as driven snow of all
imagination thereof: nevertheless, mark my words, that Agnes Marshall
shall be the next lady of Selwick Hall. And I wouldn't spoil the pie,
were I you; it shall eat tasty enough if you'll but leave it to bake in
the oven. It were a deal better so than for the lad to fetch home some
fine town madam that should trouble herself with his mother and
grandmother but as the cuckoo with the young hedge-sparrows in his
foster-mother's nest. She's a downright good maid, Agnes, and she is
bounden to your mother and yon, and so is her father: and though, if
Selwick were to turn you forth, your home is at Minster Lovel, as my
child here knows,"--and Aunt Joyce laid her hand lovingly on that of
Edith--"yet while we be here in this short wilderness journey, 'tis best
not to fall out by the way. Let things be, children: God can take
better care of His world and His Church than you or I can do it."
"Eh, I'll meddle with nought so good," responded Temperance, heartily.
"If the lad come to no worse than that, he shall fare uncommon well, and
better than he deserveth. As for the maid, I'm not quite so sure: but
I'll hope for the best."
"The best thing you can do, my dear. `We are saved by hope'--not as a
man is saved by the rope that pulleth him forth of the sea, but rather
as he is saved by the light that enableth him to see and grasp it. He
may find the rope in the dark; yet shall he do it more quicklier and
with much better comfort in the light. `Hope thou in God,' `Have faith
in God,' `Fear not,'--all those precepts be brethren; and one or other
of them cometh very oft in Scripture. For a man cannot hope without
some faith, and he shall find it hard to hope along with fear. Faith,
hope, love--these do abide for ever."
The party for Selwick had set off, with some stir, in the early morning,
and the quiet of evening found the friends left at the Hill House
feeling as those left behind usually do,--enjoying the calm, yet with a
sense of want.
Perhaps Mr Marshall was the least conscious of loss of any of the
party, for he was supremely happy in the library over the works of
Bishop Jewell. In the gallery upstairs, Lettice and Agnes sat in front
of the two portraits which had so greatly interested the former on her
previous visit, and talked about "Aunt Anstace" and "Cousin Bess," and
the blessed sense of relief and thankfulness which pervaded Agnes's
heart. And lastly, in the Credence Chamber, Aunt Joyce lay on her
couch, and Lady Louvaine sat beside her in the great cushioned chair,
while Edith, on a low stool at the foot of the couch, sat knitting
peacefully, and glancing lovingly from time to time at those whom she
called her two mothers.
"Joyce, dear," Lady Louvaine was saying, "'tis just sixty years since I
came over that sunshine afternoon from the Manor House, to make
acquaintance with thee and Anstace. Sixty years! why, 'tis the lifetime
of an old man."
"And it looks but like sixty days, no doth it?" was the rejoinder.
"Thou and I, Lettice, by reason of strength have come to fourscore
years; yet is our life but a vapour that vanisheth away. I marvel, at
times, how our Anstace hath passed her sixty years in Heaven. What do
they there?"
"Dost thou mind, Joyce, Aubrey's once saying that we are told mainly
what they do _not_ there? Out of that, I take it, we may pick what they
do. There shall be no night--then there must be eternal light; no
curse--then must there be everlasting blessedness; no tears--then is
there everlasting peace; no toil--then is there perpetual rest and
comfort."
"Go on, Lettice--no sickness, therefore perfect health; no parting,
therefore everlasting company and eternal love."
"Ay. What a blessed forecast! Who would not give all that he hath, but
to be sure he should attain it? And yet men will fling all away, but to
buy one poor hour's sinful pleasure, one pennyworth of foolish delight."
"And howsoe'er often they find the latter pall and cloy upon their
tongues, yet shall they turn to it again with never-resting eagerness,
as the sow to her wallowing in the mire. There is a gentleman dwells a
matter of four miles hence, with whose wife and daughters I am acquaint,
and once or twice hath he come with them to visit me. He hath got hold
of a fancy--how, judge you--that man is not a fallen creature;
indiscreet at times, maybe, and so forth, yet not wholly depraved. How
man comes by this indiscretion, seeing God made him upright, he is
discreet enough not to reveal. `Dear heart!' said I, `but how comes it,
if so be, that man shall sell his eternal birthright for a mess of sorry
pottage, as over and over again you and I have seen him do? Call you
this but indiscretion? Methinks you should scarce name it thus if Mrs
Aletheia yonder were to cast away a rich clasp of emeralds for a piece
of a broken bottle of green glass. If you whipped her not well for such
indiscretion, I were something astonied.' Well, see you, he cannot
perceive it."
"Man's perceptions be fallen, along with all else."
"Surely: and then shall this blind bat reckon, poor fool, that he could
devise out of his disordered imagination a better God than the real.
Wot you what this Mr Watkinson said to me once when we fell to talking
of the sacrifice of Isaac? Oh, he could not allow that a loving and
perfect God could demand so horrible a sacrifice; and another time,
through Christ had we won the right notion of God. `Why,' said I, `how
know you that? Are you God, that you are able to judge what God should
be? Through Christ, in very deed, have we won to know God; but that is
by reason of the knowledge and authority of Him that revealed Him, not
by the clear discernment and just judgment of us that received that
revelation.' I do tell thee, Lettice--what with this man o' the one
side with his philosophical follies, and Parson Turnham on the other,
with his heathenish fooleries, I am at times well-nigh like old Elias,
ready to say, `Now then, O Lord, take me out of this wicked world, for I
cannot stand it any longer.'"
"He will take thee, dear Joyce, so soon as thou shalt come to the
further end of the last of those good works which He hath prepared for
thee to walk in."
"Well!--then must Edith do my good works for me. When our Father calls
this child in out of the sun and wind, and bids her lie down and fall
asleep, must that child see to it that my garden-plots be kept trim, and
no evil insects suffered to prey upon the leaves. Ay, my dear heart:
thou wilt be the lady of the Hill House, when old Aunt Joyce is laid
beneath the mould. May God bless thee in it, and it to thee! but
whensoever the change come, I shall be the gainer by it, not thou."
"Not I, indeed!" said Edith in a husky voice.
"`As a watch in the night!'" said Joyce Morrell solemnly. "`As a vapour
that vanisheth away!' What time have we for idle fooleries? Only time
to learn the letters that we shall spell hereafter--to form the strokes
and loops wherewith we shall write by and bye. Here we know but the
alphabet of either faith or love."
"And how often are we turned back in the very alphabet of patience!"
"Ay, we think much to tarry five minutes for God, though He may have
waited fifty years for us. I reckon it takes God to bear with this poor
thing, man, that even at his best times is ever starting aside like a
broken bow,--going astray like a lost sheep. Thank God that He hath
laid on the only Man that could bear them the iniquities of us all, and
that He hath borne them into a land not inhabited, where the Lord
Himself can find them no more."
"And let us thank God likewise," said Lady Lettice, "that our blessed
duty is to abide in Him, and that when He shall appear, we may have
confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming."