friends, and there was a good deal of conversation about other members
of the family: and Barbara heard, to her surprise, that a cousin of
Clare, a child rather older than herself, was shortly coming to live at
the parsonage. Lysken van Barnevelt [a fictitious person], like Clare,
was an only child and an orphan; and Mr Tremayne purposed to pay his
debt to the Averys by the adoption of Frances Avery's child. But
Barbara was rather dismayed when she heard that Lysken would not at
first be able to talk to her cousin, since her English was of the most
fragmentary description.
"She will soon learn," said Mrs Tremayne.
"And until she shall learn, I only can talk to her," added Mrs Rose,
laughing. "_Ay de mi_! I must pull up my Flemish out of my brains. It
is so deep down, I do wonder if it will come. It is--let me see!--
forty, fifty--_ma foi_! 'tis nigh sixty years since I talk Flemish with
my father!"
"And now, tell us, what manner of child is Clare?" asked Mrs Tremayne.
"The sweetest little maid in all the world, and of full good conditions
[disposition], saving only that she lacketh breeding [education]
somewhat."
"The which Mistress Rachel shall well furnish her withal. She is a
throughly good teacher. But I will go and see the sweeting, so soon as
I may."
"Now, Mrs Thekla, of your goodness, do me to wit what manner of folk be
these that we be fallen in withal? It were easier for me to govern both
Mrs Clare and mine own self, if I might but, know somewhat thereof
aforetime."
"Truly, good friend, they be nowise ill folk," said Mrs Tremayne, with
a quiet smile. "Sir Thomas is like to be a good father unto the child,
for he hath a kindly nature. Only, for godliness, I fear I may not say
over much. But he is an upright man, and a worthy, as men go in this
world. And for my Lady his wife, you know her as well as I."
"Marry La'kin, and if you do love her no better!--"
"She is but young," said Mrs Tremayne, excusingly.
"What heard I?" inquired Mrs Rose, looking up from her cookery. "I did
think thou hadst been a Christian woman, Barbara Polwhele."
"Nay, verily, Mistress Rose!--what mean you?" demanded the astonished
Barbara.
"_Bon_!--Is it not the second part of the duty of a Christian woman to
love her neighbour as herself?"
"Good lack! 'tis not in human nature," said Barbara, bluntly. "If we be
no Christians short of that, there be right few Christians in all the
world, Mistress mine."
"So there be," was the reply. "Is it not?"
"Truly, good friend, this is not in nature," said Mrs Tremayne, gently.
"It is only in grace."
"Then in case it so be, is there no grace?" asked Barbara in a slightly
annoyed tone.
"Who am I, that I should judge?" was the meek answer. "Yet methinks
there must be less grace than nature."
"Well!--and of Mistress Rachel, what say you?"
"Have you a care that you judge her not too harshly. She is, I know,
somewhat forbidding on the outside, yet she hath a soft heart, Barbara."
"I am thankful to hear the same, for I had not so judged," was Barbara's
somewhat acrid answer.
"Ah, she showeth the worst on the outside."
"And for the childre? I love not yon Lucrece.--Now, Mistress Rose, have
a care your cakes be well mingled, and snub not me."
"Ah! there spake the conscience," said Mrs Rose, laughing.
"I never did rightly understand Lucrece," answered her daughter. "For
Margaret, she is plain and open enough; a straightforward, truthful
maiden, that men may trust. But for Lucrece--I never felt as though I
knew her. There is that in her--be it pride, be it shamefacedness, call
it as you will--that is as a wall in the way."
"I call it deceitfulness, Thekla," said her mother decidedly.
"I trust not so, Mother! yet I have feared--"
"Time will show," said Mrs Rose, filling her moulds with the compound
which was to turn out _pain d'epices_.
"Mistress Blanche, belike, showeth not what her conditions shall be,"
remarked Barbara.
"She is a lovesome little maid as yet," said Mrs Tremayne. "Mefeareth
she shall be spoiled as she groweth toward womanhood, both with praising
of her beauty and too much indulging of her fantasies."
"And now, what say you to Master Jack?" demanded Barbara in some
trepidation. "Is he like to play ugsome [ugly, disagreeable] tricks on
Mrs Clare, think you?"
"Jack--ah, poor Jack!" replied Mrs Tremayne.
Barbara looked up in some surprise. Jack seemed to her a most unlikely
subject for the compassionate ejaculation.
"And dost thou marvel that I say, `Poor Jack'? It is because I have
known men of his conditions aforetime, and I have ever noted that either
they do go fast to wrack, or else they be set in the hottest furnace of
God's disciplining. I know not which shall be the way with Jack. But
how so,--poor Jack!"
"But what deem you his conditions, in very deed?"
"Why, there is not a soul in all the village that loveth not Jack, and I
might well-nigh say, not one that hath not holpen him at some pinch,
whereto his reckless ways have brought him. If the lacings of satin
ribbon be gone from Mistress Rachel's best gown, and the cat be found
with them tied all delicately around her paws and neck, and her very
tail,--'tis Jack hath done it. If Margaret go about with a paper pinned
to the tail of her gown, importing that she is a thief and a traitor to
the Queen's Highness,--'tis Jack hath pinned it on when she saw him not.
If some rare book from Sir Thomas his library be found all open on the
garden walk, wet and ruinated,--'tis Jack. If Mistress Rachel be
astepping into her bed, and find the sheets and blankets all awry, so
that she cannot compass it till all is pulled in pieces and turned
aright, she hath no doubt to say, 'tis Jack. And yet once I say, Poor
Jack! If he be to come unto good, mefeareth the furnace must needs be
heated fiercely. Yet after all, what am I, that I should say it? God
hath a thousand ways to fetch His lost sheep home."
"But is he verily ill-natured?"
"Nay, in no wise. He hath as tender a heart as any lad ever I saw. I
have known him to weep bitterly over aught that hath touched his heart.
Trust me, while I cast no doubt he shall play many a trick on little
Clare, yet no sooner shall he see her truly sorrowful thereat, than Jack
shall turn comforter, nor go not an inch further."
Barbara was beginning another question, of which she had plenty more to
ask, when she saw that the clock pointed to a quarter to eleven, which
was dinner-time at Enville Court. There was barely time to reach the
house, and she took leave hastily, declining Mrs Tremayne's invitation
to stay and dine at the parsonage.
When she entered the hall, she found the household already assembled,
and the sewers bringing in a smoking baron of beef. At the upper end
Lady Enville was delicately arranging the folds of her crimson satin
dress; the little girls were already seated; and Mistress Rachel, with
brown holland apron and cuffs, stood with a formidable carving-knife in
her hand, ready to begin an attack upon the beef. The carving was
properly Lady Enville's prerogative; but as with all things which gave
her trouble, she preferred to delegate it to her sister-in-law.
Sir Thomas came in late, and said grace hastily. The Elizabethan grace
was not limited to half-a-dozen words. It took about as long as family
prayers usually do now. Jack, in his usual style, came scampering in
just when grace was finished.
"Good sooth! I have had such discourse with Master Tremayne," said Sir
Thomas. "He hath the strangest fantasies. Only look you--"
"A shive of beef, Sister?" interpolated Rachel, who had no notion of
allowing the theoretical to take precedence of the practical.
Lady Enville languidly declined anything so gross as beef. She would
take a little--very little--of the venison pasty.
"I'll have beef, Aunt!" put in unseasonable Jack.
"Wilt thou have manners?" severely returned Rachel.
"Where shall I find them, Aunt?" coolly inquired Jack, letting his eyes
rove about among the dishes. "May I help you likewise?"
"Behave thyself, Jack!" said his father, laughing.
The rebuke was neutralised by the laughter. Rachel went on carving in
dignified silence.
"Would you think it?" resumed Sir Thomas, when everybody was helped, and
conversation free to flow. "Master Tremayne doth conceive that we
Christian folk be meant to learn somewhat from those ancient Jews that
did wander about with Moses in the wilderness. Ne'er heard I no such a
fantasy. To conceive that we can win knowledge from the rotten old
observances of those Jew rascals! Verily, this passeth!"
"Beats the Dutch, Sir!" said incorrigible Jack.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. All members of the Enville family and household are fictitious
persons.
CHAPTER THREE.
BREAKERS AHEAD.
"Our treasures moth and rust corrupt:
Or thieves break through and steal; or they
Make themselves wings and fly away.
One man made merry as he supped,
Nor guessed how, when that night grew dim,
His soul should be required of him."
_Ellen Alleyn_.
Eleven years had passed away since the events of the previous chapters,
and in the room where we first saw her, Rachel Enville sat with the four
girls around her. Little girls no longer,--young ladies now; for the
youngest, Blanche, was not far from her fifteenth birthday. Margaret--
now a young woman of four-and-twenty, and only not married because her
betrothed was serving with the army of occupation in the Netherlands--
was very busily spinning; Lucrece--a graceful maiden of twenty-two, not
strictly handsome, but possessed of an indescribable fascination which
charmed all who saw her--sat with her eyes bent down on her embroidery;
Clare--seventeen, gentle, and unobtrusive--was engaged in plain sewing;
and Blanche,--well, what was Blanche doing? She sat in the deep
window-seat, her lap full of spring flowers, idly taking up now one, and
now another,--weaving a few together as if she meant to make a wreath,--
then suddenly abandoning the idea and gathering them into a nosegay,--
then throwing that aside and dreamily plunging both hands into the
fragrant mass. Blanche had developed into a very pretty picture,--
lovelier than Lady Enville, whom she resembled in feature.
"Blanche!" said her aunt suddenly.
Blanche looked up as if startled. Rachel had changed little. Time had
stiffened, not softened, both her grogram and her prejudices.
"What dost thou?" she demanded.
"Oh! I--well--I know not what I did, Aunt Rachel. I was thinking, I
reckon."
"And where were thy thoughts?" was the next searching query.
Blanche smelt at her flowers, coloured, laughed, and ended by saying
lightly, "I scantly know, Aunt."
"Then the sooner thou callest them to order, the better. She must needs
be an idle jade that wits not whereof she thinketh."
"Well, if you must needs know, Aunt Rachel," said Blanche, laughing
again, and just a trifle saucily, "I thought about--being wed."
"Fie for shame!" was the prompt comment on this confession. "What hast
thou to do withal, till thy father and mother bid thee?"
"Why, that is even what I thought, Aunt Rachel," said Blanche coolly,
"and I would I had more to do withal. I would fain choose mine own
servant." [Suitor.]
"Thou!--Poor babe!" was the contemptuous rejoinder.
"Well, Aunt Rachel, you wot a woman must be wed."
"That's a man's notion!" said Rachel in her severest manner. "Blanche,
I do marvel greatly that thou hast not more womanfulness than so. A
woman must be wed, quotha! Who saith it? Some selfish man, I warrant,
that thought women were create into the world for none other cause but
to be his serving-maids!"
"I am sure I know not wherefore we were create," muttered Blanche, loud
enough for her sisters to hear but not her Aunt.
Rachel stopped her carding. She saw a first-rate opening for a lecture,
and on her own special pet topic.
"Maidens, I would fain have you all list me heedfully. Prithee, take
not up, none of you, with men's notions. To wit, that a woman must
needs be wed, and that otherwise she is but half a woman, and the like
foolery. Nay, verily; for when she is wed she is no more at all a
woman, but only the half of a man, and is shorn of all her glory. Wit
ye all what marriage truly meaneth? It is to be a slave, and serve a
man at his beck, all the days of thy life. A maid is her own queen, and
may do as it like her--"
"Would I might!" said Blanche under her breath.
"But a wife must needs search out her lord's pleasure."
"Or make him search out hers," boldly interposed Blanche.
"Child, lay thou down forthwith that foolish fantasy," returned Rachel
with great solemnity. "So long time as that thing man is not sure of
thee, he is the meekest mannered beast under the sun. He will promise
thee all thy desire whatsoever. But once give leave unto thy finger to
be rounded by that golden ring the which he holdeth out to thee, and
where be all his promises? Marry, thou mayest whistle for them,--ay,
and weep."
Rachel surely had no intention of bringing her lecture to a close so
early; but at this point it was unfortunately--or, as Blanche thought,
fortunately--interrupted. A girl of nineteen came noiselessly into the
room, carrying a small basket of early cherries. She made no attempt to
announce herself; she was too much at home at Enville Court to stand on
ceremony. Coming up to Rachel, she stooped down and kissed her, setting
the basket on a small table by her side.
"Ah, Lysken Barnevelt! Thou art welcome. What hast brought yonder,
child?"
"Only cherries, Mistress Rachel:--our early white-hearts, which my Lady
loveth, and Aunt Thekla sent me hither with the first ripe."
"Wherefore many thanks and hearty, to her and thee. Sit thee down,
Lysken: thou art in good time for four-hours. Hast brought thy work?"
Lysken pulled out of her pocket a little roll of brown holland, which,
when unrolled, proved to be a child's pinafore, destined for the help of
some poverty-stricken mother; and in another minute she was seated at
work like the rest. And while Lysken works, let us look at her.
A calm, still-faced girl is this, with smooth brown hair, dark eyes, a
complexion nearly colourless, a voice low, clear, but seldom heard, and
small delicate hands, at once quick and quiet. A girl that has nothing
to say for herself,--is the verdict of most surface observers who see
her: a girl who has nothing in her,--say a few who consider themselves
penetrating judges of character. Nearly all think that the Reverend
Robert Tremayne's partiality has outrun his judgment, for he says that
his adopted daughter thinks more than is physically good for her. A
girl who can never forget the siege of Leyden: never forget the dead
mother, whose latest act was to push the last fragment of malt-cake
towards her starving child; never forget the martyr-father burnt at
Ghent by the Regent Alva, who boasted to his master, Philip of Spain,
that during his short regency he had executed eighteen thousand
persons,--of course, heretics. Quiet, thoughtful, silent,--how could
Lysken Barnevelt be anything else?
A rap came at the door.
"Mistress Rachel, here's old Lot's wife. You'll happen come and see
her?" inquired Jennet, putting only her head in at the door.
"I will come to the hall, Jennet."
Jennet's head nodded and retreated. Rachel followed her.
"How doth Aunt Rachel snub us maids!" said Blanche lazily, clasping her
hands behind her head. "She never had no man to make suit unto her, so
she accounteth we may pass us [do without] belike."
"Who told thee so much?" asked Margaret bluntly.
"I lacked no telling," rejoined Blanche. "But I say, maids!--whom were
ye all fainest to wed?--What manner of man, I mean."
"I am bounden already," said Margaret calmly. "An' mine husband leave
me but plenty of work to do, he may order him otherwise according to his
liking."
"Work! thou art alway for work!" remonstrated ease-loving Blanche.
"For sure. What were men and women made for, if not work?"
"Nay, that Aunt Rachel asked of me, and I have not yet solute [solved]
the same.--Clare, what for thee?"
"I have no thought thereanent, Blanche. God will dispose of me."
"Why, so might a nun say.--Lysken, and thou?"
Lysken showed rather surprised eyes when she lifted her head. "What
questions dost thou ask, Blanche! How wit I if I shall ever marry? I
rather account nay."
"Ye be a pair of nuns, both of you!" said Blanche, laughing, yet in a
slightly annoyed tone. "Now, Lucrece, thou art of the world, I am well
assured. Answer me roundly,--not after the manner of these holy
sisters,--whom wert thou fainest to wed?"
"A gentleman of high degree," returned Lucrece, readily.
"Say a king, while thou goest about it," suggested her eldest sister.
"Well, so much the better," was Lucrece's cool admission.
"So much the worse, to my thinking," said Margaret. "Would I by my
good-will be a queen, and sit all day with my hands in my lap, a-toying
with the virginals, and fluttering of my fan,--and my heaviest
concernment whether I will wear on the morrow my white velvet gown
guarded with sables, or my black satin furred with minever? By my
troth, nay!"
"Is that thy fantasy of a queen, Meg?" asked Clare, laughing. "Truly, I
had thought the poor lady should have heavier concernments than so."
"Well!" said Blanche, in a confidential whisper, "I am never like to be
a queen; but I will show you one thing,--I would right dearly love to be
presented in the Queen's Majesty's Court."
"Dear heart!--Presented, quotha!" exclaimed Margaret. "Prithee, take
not me withal."
"Nay, I will take these holy sisters," said Blanche, merrily. "What say
ye, Clare and Lysken?"
"I have no care to be in the Court, I thank thee," quietly replied
Clare.
"I shall be, some day," observed Lysken, calmly, without lifting her
head.
"Thou!--presented in the Court!" cried Blanche.
For of all the five, girls, Lysken was much the most unlikely ever to
attain that eminence.
"Even so," she said, unmoved.
"Hast thou had promise thereof?"
"I have had promise thereof," repeated Lysken, in a tone which was lost
upon Blanche, but Clare thought she began to understand her.
"Who hath promised thee?" asked Blanche, intensely interested.
"The King!" replied Lysken, with deep feeling. "And I shall be the
King's daughter!"
"Lysken Barnevelt!" cried Blanche, dropping many of her flowers in her
excitement, "art thou gone clean wood [mad], or what meanest thou?"
Lysken looked up with a smile full of meaning.
"`Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you
faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,--to the
only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty.'--Do but think,--
faultless! and, before His glory!"
Lysken's eyes were alight in a manner very rare with her. She was less
shy with her friends at Enville Court than with most people.
"So that is what thou wert thinking on!" said Blanche, in a most
deprecatory manner.
Lysken did not reply; but Clare whispered to her, "I would we might all
be presented there, Lysken."
While the young ladies were thus engaged in debate, and Rachel was
listening to the complaints of old Lot's wife from the village, and
gravely considering whether the said Lot's rheumatism would be the
better for a basin of viper broth,--Sir Thomas Enville, who was
strolling in the garden, perceived two riders coming up to the house.
They were evidently a gentleman and his attendant serving-man, and as
soon as they approached near enough for recognition, Sir Thomas hurried
quickly to meet them. The Lord Strange, heir of Lathom and Knowsley,
must not be kept waiting.
Only about thirty years had passed over the head of Ferdinand Stanley,
Lord Strange, yet his handsome features wore an expression of the
deepest melancholy. People who were given to signs and auguries said
that it presaged an early and violent death. And when, eight years
later, after only one year's tenancy of the earldom of Derby, he died of
a rapid, terrible, and mysterious disease, strange to all the physicians
who saw him, the augurs, though a little disappointed that he was not
beheaded, found their consolation in the conviction that he had been
undoubtedly bewitched. His father, Earl Henry, seems to have been a
cool, crafty time-server, who had helped to do the Duke of Somerset to
death, more than thirty years before, and one of whose few good actions
was his intercession with Bishop Bonner in favour of his kinsman, the
martyr Roger Holland. His mother was the great heiress Margaret
Clifford, who had inherited, before she was fifteen years of age,
one-third of the estates of Duke Charles of Suffolk, the wealthiest man
in England.
"'Save you, my good Lord!" was Sir Thomas's greeting. "You be right
heartily welcome unto my poor house."
"I have seen poorer," replied Lord Strange with a smile.
"Pray your Lordship, go within."
After a few more amenities, in the rather ponderous style of the
sixteenth century, Sir Thomas ceremoniously conducted his guest to Lady
Enville's boudoir. She sat, resplendent in blue satin slashed with
yellow, turning over some ribbons which Barbara Polwhele was displaying
for her inspection. The ribbons were at once dismissed when the noble
visitor appeared, and Barbara was desired to "do the thing she wot of in
the little chamber."
The little chamber was a large, light closet, opening out of the
boudoir, with a window looking on the garden; and the doorway between
the rooms was filled by a green curtain. Barbara's work was to make up
into shoulder-knots certain lengths of ribbon already put aside for that
purpose. While the speakers, therefore, were to her invisible, their
conversation was as audible as if she had been in the boudoir.
"And what news abroad, my good Lord?" asked Sir Thomas, when the usual
formal civilities were over.
"Very ill news," said Lord Strange, sadly.
"Pray your Lordship, what so? We hear none here, lying so far from the
Queen's highway."
"What heard you the last?"
"Well, methinks it were some strange matter touching the Scottish Queen,
as though she should be set to trial on charge of some matter of
knowledge of Babington's treason."
Sir Thomas's latest news, therefore, was about seven months old. There
were no daily papers and Reuter's telegrams in his day.
"Good Sir Thomas, you have much to hear," replied his guest. "For the
Scottish Queen, she is dead and buried,--beheaden at Fotheringay Castle,
in Yorkshire, these three months gone."
"Gramercy!"
"'Tis very true, I do ensure you. And would God that were the worst
news I could tell you!"
"Pray your Lordship, speak quickly."
"There be afloat strange things of private import:--to wit, of my
kinsman the Earl of Arundel, who, as 'tis rumoured, shall this next
month be tried by the Star Chamber, and, as is thought, if he 'scape
with life, shall be heavily charged in goods [Note 1]: or the Black
Assize at Exeter this last year, whereby, through certain Portugals that
were prisoners on trial, the ill smells did so infect the Court, [Note
2] that many died thereof--of the common people very many, and divers
men of worship,--among other Sir John Chichester of Raleigh, that you
and I were wont to know, and Sir Arthur Basset of Umberleigh--"