"Good heart, if she think not they be all of a sort! Why, look you
here--this is a riding gown, and this a junketing gown, and this a
night-gown [evening dress]. Two left over, quotha!"
"I would fain, Niece," said Rachel gravely, "you had paid as much note
unto the adorning of your soul as you have to that of your body. You
know 'tis writ--but may be 'tis not the fashion to read God's Word now
o' days?"
"In church, of course," replied Gertrude. "Only Puritans read it out of
church."
"You be no Puritan, trow?"
"Gramercy! God defend me therefrom!"
"Good lack! 'tis the first time I heard ever a woman--without she were a
black Papist--pray God defend her from reading of His Word. Well,
Niece, may be He will hear you. Howbeit, 'tis writ yonder that a meek
spirit and a quiet is of much worth in His sight. I count you left that
behind at Chester, with Audrey and the two gowns that lack?" [That are
wanting.]
"I would you did not call me Niece!" responded Gertrude in a querulous
tone. "'Tis too-too [exceedingly] ancient. No parties of any sort do
now call as of old [Note 2],--`Sister,' or `Daughter,' or `Niece'."
"Dear heart! Pray you, what would your Ladyship by your good-will be
called?"
"Oh, Gertrude, for sure. 'Tis a decent name--not an ugsome [ugly]
old-fashioned, such as be Margaret, or Cicely, or Anne."
"'Tis not old-fashioned, in good sooth," said Rachel satirically; "I
ne'er heard it afore, nor know I from what tongue it cometh. Then--as I
pick out of your talk--decent things be new-fangled?"
"I want no mouldy old stuff!--There! Put the yellow silk on the lowest
shelf."
"'Tis old-fashioned, I warrant you, to say to your sister, `An' it
please you'?"
"And the murrey right above.--Oh, stuff!"
The first half of the sentence was for Clare; the second for Rachel.
"'Tis not ill stuff, Niece," said the latter coolly, as she left the
room.
"And what thinkest of Gertrude?" inquired Sir Thomas of his sister, when
she rejoined him and Lady Enville.
"Marry!" said Rachel in her dryest manner, "I think the goods be mighty
dear at the price."
"I count," returned her brother, "that when Gertrude's gowns be paid
for, there shall not be much left over for Jack's debts."
"Dear heart! you should have thought so, had you been above but now. To
see her Grace (for she carrieth her like a queen) a-counting of her
gowns, and a-cursing of her poor maid Audrey that two were left behind,
when seventeen be yet in her coffers!"
"Seventeen!" repeated the Squire, in whose eyes that number was enough
to stock any reasonable woman for at least half her life.
"Go to--seventeen!" echoed Rachel.
"Well-a-day! What can the lass do with them all?" wondered Sir Thomas.
"Dear hearts! Ye would not see an earl's daughter low and mean?"
interposed Lady Enville.
"If this Gertrude be not so, Orige,--at the least in her heart,--then is
Jennet a false speaker, and mine ears have bewrayed me, belike.
Methinks a woman of good breeding might leave swearing and foul talk to
the men, and be none the worse for the same: nor see I good cause
wherefore she should order her sisters like so many Barbary slaves."
"Ay so!--that marketh her high degree," said Lady Enville.
"I wis not, Orige, how Gertrude gat her degree, nor her father afore
her," answered Rachel: "but this I will tell thee--that if one of the
`beggarly craftsmen' that Jack loveth to snort at, should allow him,
before me, in such talk as I have heard of her, I would call on Sim to
put him forth with no more ado. Take my word for it, she cometh of no
old nor honourable stock, but is of low degree in very truth, if the
truth were known."
Rachel's instinct was right. Lady Gertrude's father was a _parvenu_, of
very mean extraction. Her great-uncle had made the family fortune,
partly in trade, but mostly by petty peculations; and her father, who
had attracted the Queen's eye when a young lawyer, had been rapidly
promoted through the minor grades of nobility, until he had reached his
present standing. Gertrude was not noble in respect of anything but her
title.
Lady Enville, with a smile which was half amusement and half contempt,
rose and retired to her boudoir. Sir Thomas and Rachel sat still by the
hall fire, both deeply meditating: the former with his head thrown back,
gazing--without seeing them--at the shields painted on the ceiling;
while the latter leaned forward towards the fire, resting her chin on
both hands.
"What saidst, Tom?" asked Rachel in a dreamy voice.
"I spake not to know it, good Sister: but have what I said, an' thou so
wilt. I was thinking on that word of Paul--`Not many noble are called.'
I thought, Rachel, how far it were better to be amongst the called of
God, than to be of the noble."
"'Tis not the first, time that I have thanked the Lord I am not noble,"
said Rachel without changing her attitude. "'Tis some comfort to know
me not so high up that any shall be like to take thought to cut my head
off. And if Gertrude be noble--not to say"--Rachel's voice died away.
"Tom," she said in a moment later, "we have made some blunders in our
lives, thou and I."
"I have, dear Rachel," said Sir Thomas sighing: "what thine may be I wis
not."
"God knoweth!" she replied in a low voice. "And I know of one--the
grandest of all blunders. Thou settedst out for Heaven these few months
gone, Tom. May be thou shalt find more company on the road than thou
wert looking for."
"Dear Rachel!"
"Clare must be metely well on by this time," she continued in the dry
tone with which she often veiled her deepest feelings, "and Blanche is
tripping in at the gate, or I mistake. I would not by my goodwill have
thee lonely in the road, Tom: and I suppose--there shall be room for
more than two a-breast, no' will?" [Will there not?]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
During all this time, the once close intercourse between the Court and
the parsonage had been somewhat broken off. Arthur had never been in
the Squire's house since the day when Lucrece jilted him; and Clare was
shy of showing herself in his vicinity. Blanche visited Mrs Tremayne
occasionally, and sometimes Lysken paid a return visit; but very much
less was seen of all than in old times. When, therefore, it became
known at Enville Court that Arthur had received holy orders at the
Bishop's last ordination, the whole family as it were woke with a start
to the recollection that Arthur had almost passed out of their sphere.
He was to be his father's curate for the present--the future was
doubtful; but in an age when there were more livings than clergy to fill
them, no difficulty need be expected in the way of obtaining promotion.
Just after Jack and Gertrude had returned to London (to the great relief
of every one, themselves not excepted), in his usual unannounced style,
Mr John Feversham made his appearance at Enville Court. Blanche
greeted him with a deep blush, for she felt ashamed of her former
unworthy estimate of his character. John brought one interesting piece
of news--that his uncle and aunt were well, and Lucrece was now the
mother of a little boy.
Lady Enville looked up quickly. Then John was no longer the heir of
Feversham Hall. It might therefore be necessary--if he yet had any
foolish hopes--to put an extinguisher upon him. She rapidly decided
that she must issue private instructions to Sir Thomas. That gentleman,
she said to herself, really was so foolish--particularly of late, since
he had fallen into the pit of Puritanism--that if she did not look
sharply after him, he might actually dream of resigning his last and
fairest daughter to a penniless and prospectless suitor. If any such
idea existed in the mind of Sir Thomas, of John Feversham, or of
Blanche,--and since John had saved Blanche's life, it was not at all
unlikely,--it must be nipped in the bud.
Accordingly, on the first opportunity, Lady Enville began.
"Of course you see now, Sir Thomas, how ill a match Master John
Feversham should have been for Blanche."
"Wherefore?" was the short answer.
"Sith he is no longer the heir." [Sith and since are both contractions
of sithence.]
"Oh!--ah!" said Sir Thomas, as unpromisingly as before.
"Why, surely you would ne'er dream of so monstrous a thing?"
Sir Thomas, who had been looking out of the window, came across to the
fire, and took up the master's position before it--standing just in the
middle of the hearth with his back to the fire.
"Better wait, Orige, and see whereof John and Blanche be dreaming," said
he calmly.
"What reckoneth he to do now, meet for livelihood?"
It would be difficult to estimate the number of degrees by which poor
John had fallen in her Ladyship's thermometer, since he had ceased to be
the expected heir of Feversham Hall.
"He looketh," said Sir Thomas absently, as if he were thinking of
something else, "to receive--if God's good pleasure be--holy orders."
"A parson!" shrieked Lady Enville, in her languid style.
"A parson, Orige. Hast aught against the same?"
"Oh no!--so he come not anear Blanche."
"Wilt hold him off with the fire-fork?"
"Sir Thomas, I do beseech you, consider this matter in sober sadness.
Only think, if Blanche were to take in hand any fantasy for him, after
his saving of her!"
"Well, Orige--what if so?"
"I cannot bring you to a right mind, Sir Thomas!" said his wife
pettishly. "Blanche,--our fairest bud and last!--to be cast away on a
poor parson--she who might wed with a prince, and do him no disgrace!
It were horrible!"
"Were it?" was the dry response.
"I tell you," said Lady Enville, sitting up in her chair--always with
her a mark of agitation--"I would as soon see the child in her coffin!"
"Hush, Orige, hush thee!" replied her husband, very seriously now.
"It were as little grief, Sir Thomas! I would not for the world--nay,
not for the whole world--that Blanche should be thus lost. Why, she
might as well wed a fisherman at once!"
"Well, the first Christian parsons were fishermen; and I dare be bound
they made not ill husbands. Yet methinks, Orige, if thou keptest thy
grief until the matter came to pass, it were less waste of power than
so."
"`Forewarned is forearmed,' Sir Thomas. And I am marvellous afeared
lest you should be a fool."
"Marry guep!" [probably a corruption of _go up_] ejaculated Rachel,
coming in. "`Satan rebuketh sin,' I have heard say, but I ne'er listed
him do it afore."
After all, Lady Enville proved a true prophet. Mr John Feversham was
so obtuse, so unreasonable, so unpardonably preposterous, as to imagine
it possible that Blanche Enville might yet marry him, though he had the
prospect of a curacy, and had not the prospect of Feversham Hall.
"I told you, Sir Thomas!" said the prophetess, in the tone with which
she might have greeted an earthquake. "Oh that you had listed me, and
gat him away hence ere more mischief were done!"
"I see no mischief done, Orige," replied her husband quietly. "We will
call the child, and see what she saith."
"I do beseech you, Sir Thomas, commit not this folly! Give your own
answer, and let it be, Nay. Why, Blanche may be no wiser than to say
him ay."
"She no may," [she may not] said Sir Thomas dryly.
But he was determined to tell her, despite the earnest protestations of
his wife, who dimly suspected that Blanche's opinion of John was not
what it had been, and was afraid that she would be so wanting in worldly
wisdom as to accept his offer. Lady Enville took her usual resource--an
injured tone and a handkerchief--while Sir Thomas sent for Blanche.
Blanche, put on her trial, faltered--coloured--and, to her mother's deep
disgust, pleaded guilty of loving John Feversham at last. Lady Enville
shed some real tears over the demoralisation of her daughter's taste.
"There is no manner of likeness, Blanche, betwixt this creature and Don
John," she urged.
"Ay, mother, there is _no_ likeness," said Blanche calmly.
"I thank Heaven for that mercy!" muttered Rachel.
"Likeness!" repeated Sir Thomas. "Jack Feversham is worth fifty Don
Johns."
"Dear heart! how is the child changed for the worser!" sobbed her
disappointed mother, who saw the coronet and fortune, on which she had
long set her heart for Blanche, fading away like a dissolving view.
"Orige, be not a fool!" growled Rachel suddenly. "But, dear heart! I
am a fool to ask thee."
There was a family tempest. But at last the minority succumbed; and
Blanche became the betrothed of John Feversham.
From the day of Jack's departure from Enville Court with Gertrude, Sir
Thomas never heard another word of his debts. Whether Jack paid them,
or compounded for them, or let them alone, or how the matter was
settled, remained unknown at Enville Court. They only heard the most
flourishing accounts of everything connected with Jack and Gertrude.
They were always well; Jack was always prospering, and on the point of
promotion to a higher step of the social ladder. Sir Thomas declared
drily, that his only wonder was that Jack was not a duke by this time,
considering how many steps he must have advanced. But Lady Gertrude
never paid another visit to Enville Court; and nobody regretted it
except Jack's step-mother. Jack's own visits were few, and made at long
intervals. His language was always magniloquent and sanguine: but he
grew more and more reserved about his private affairs, he aged fast, and
his hair was grey at a time of life when his father's had been without a
silver thread. Sir Thomas was by no means satisfied with his son's
career: but Jack suavely evaded all inquiries, and he came to the
sorrowful conclusion that nothing could be done except to pray for him.
It was late in the autumn, and the evening of Blanche's departure from
home after her marriage. John Feversham's clerical labours were to lie
in the north of Cheshire, so Blanche would not be far away, and might be
expected to visit at the Court more frequently than Lucrece or Jack. By
the bride's especial request, the whole family from the parsonage were
present at the ceremony, and Lysken was one of the bridesmaids.
The guests had been dancing in the hall; they were now resting, standing
or sitting in small groups, and conversing,--when Clare stole out of the
garden-door, and made her way to the arbour.
She could not exactly tell why she felt so sad. Of course, she was
sorry to lose Blanche. Such an occasion did not seem to Clare at all
proper for mirth and feasting: on the contrary, it felt the thing next
saddest to a funeral. They would see Blanche now and then, no doubt;
but she was lost to them on the whole: she would never again be, what
she had always been till now, one of themselves, an integral part of the
home. And they were growing fewer; only four left now, where there had
once been a household of eight. And Clare felt a little of the
sadness--felt much more deeply by some than others--of being, though
loved by several, yet first with none. Well, God had fixed her lot: and
it was a good one, she whispered to herself, as if to repel the sadness
gathering at her heart--it was a good one. She would always live at
home; she would grow old, ministering to father and mother and aunt--
wanted and looked for by all three; not useless--far from it. And that
was a great deal. What if the Lord had not thought her meet for work in
His outer vineyard?--was not this little home-corner in His vineyard
still?--She was not a foundation-stone, not a cornice, not a pillar, in
the Church of God. Nay, she thought herself not even one of the stones
in the wall: only a bit of mortar, filling up a crevice. But the bit of
mortar was wanted, and was in its right place, because the Builder had
put it there. That was a great deal--oh yes, it was everything.
"And yet," said Clare's heart,--"and yet!--"
For this was not an unlabelled sorrow. Arthur Tremayne's name was
written all over it. And Clare had to keep her heart stayed on two
passages of Scripture, which she took as specially for her and those in
her position. It is true, they were written of men: but did not the
grammar say that the masculine included the feminine? If so, what right
had any one to suppose (as Lady Enville had once said flippantly) that
"there were no promises in the Bible to old maids?"
Were there not these glorious two?--the one promise of the Old Covenant,
the one promise of the New.
"Even unto them will I give in Mine house and within My walls a place
and a name better than of sons and of daughters; I will give them an
everlasting name, that shall not be cut off." [Isaiah sixteen verse 5.]
"These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. These
were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the
Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile; for they are without fault
before the throne of God." [Revelations fourteen verses 4, 5.]
So Clare was content. Yet it was a sorrowful sort of content, after
all--for Clare was human, too.
She was absently pulling off some dead leaves from the arbour, and the
sudden jump which she gave showed how much she was startled.
"May I come in, Clare?" asked a voice at the entrance.
"Oh, ay--come in," said Clare, in a flutter, and trembling all over.
"I did not mean to fright you," said Arthur, with a smile, as he came
inside and sat down. "I desired speech of you, on a matter whereof I
could not well touch save in private. Clare,--may I speak,--dear
Clare?"
But of course, dear reader, you know all about it.
So Clare was first with somebody, after all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. A price which, about sixty years before, a vice-queen had
thought sufficient in presenting a new year's gift to Queen Anne Boleyn.
John Husee writes to his mistress, Honour Viscountess Lisle, in 1534,
that he has obtained the kersey for her gift to the Queen, eleven and a
quarter yards at 5 shillings the yard, "very fine and very white."
(Lisle Papers, twelve 90.) A few weeks later he writes, "The Queen's
grace liketh your kersey specially well." (Lisle Papers, eleven 112.)
Note 2. The disuse of this custom in England really dates from a rather
later period. `Sister' has somewhat resumed its position, but
`Daughter' and `Niece,' in the vocative, are never heard amongst us now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
"DIEU LA VOULU."
"Over himself and his own heart's complaining
Victorious still."
The bells were pealing merrily for the marriage of Clare Avery--I beg
her pardon--of Clare Tremayne; and the wedding party were seated at
breakfast in the great hall at Enville Court.
"The bridesmaids be well-looking," said Lady Enville, behind her fan, to
Sir Piers Feversham, who was her next neighbour,--for Sir Piers and
Lucrece had come to the wedding--"and I do hear Mistress Penelope
Travis--she of them that is nearest--is like to be the next bride of our
vicinage."
"Say you so?" responded Sir Piers. "I do desire all happiness be with
her. But there is one of yonder maids for whom in very deed I feel
compassion, and it is Mistress Lysken Barnevelt. Her May is well-nigh
over, and no bells be ringing for her. Poor maiden!"
"Go to, now, what dolts be men!" quoth Mistress Rachel Enville,
addressing herself, to all appearance, to the dish of flummery which
stood before her. "They think, poor misconceiving companions! that we
be all a-dying for them. That's a man's notion. Moreover, they take it
that 'tis the one end and aim of every woman in the world to be wed.
That's a man's notion, again. And belike they fancy, poor patches! that
when she striketh thirty years on the bell, any woman will wed any man
that will but take compassion to ask her. That caps all their notions.
(Thou shalt right seldom hear a woman to make no such a blunder. They
know better.) Poor blockheads!--as if we could not be useful nor happy
without _them_! Lysken Barnevelt and Rachel Enville, at the least, be
not fools enough to think it."
"Neither is the Queen's Majesty, my mistress," observed Sir Piers,
greatly amused.
"Who e'er said the Queen's Majesty were a fool?" demanded Rachel
bluntly. "She is a woman, and no man--Heaven be praised for all His
mercies!"
"Yet if no man were," pursued Sir Piers, "methinks you gentlewomen
should be but ill bestead."
"Oh, should we so?" retorted Rachel. "Look you, women make no wars, nor
serve therein: nor women be no lawyers, to set folk by the ears: nor
women write not great tomes of controversy, wherein they curse the one
the other because Nell loveth a white gown, and Bess would have a black.
Is the Devil a woman? Answer me that, I pray you."
"Do women make no wars?" laughed Sir Piers. "What! with Helen of Troy,
and--"
"Good lack, my master!--and what ill had Helen's fair face wrought in
all this world, had there been no dolts of men to be beguilen thereby?"
was Rachel's instant response.
Sir Piers made a hasty retreat from that part of the field.
"But, my mistress, though the Devil be no woman, yet was the woman the
first to be deceived by him."
"Like enough!" snapped Rachel. "She sinned not open-eyed, as did Adam.
She trusted a man-devil, like too many of her daughters sithence, and
she and they alike have found bitter cause to rue the day they did it."
Sir Piers prudently discovered that Lady Enville was asking him a
question, and let Rachel alone thereafter.
Ay, Lysken Barnevelt adopted from choice the life to which Clare had
been only willing to resign herself because she thought it was the
Father's will. It amused Lysken to hear people pity her as one who had
failed to win the woman's aim in life. To have failed to obtain what
she had never sought, and did not want, was in Lysken's eyes an easily
endurable affliction. The world was her home, while she passed through
it on her journey to the better Home: and all God's family were her
brethren or her children. The two sisters from Enville Court were both
happy and useful in their corners of the great harvest-field; but she
was the happiest, and the best loved, and when God called her the most
missed of all--this solitary Lysken. Distinguished by no unusual habit,
fettered by no unnatural vow, she went her quiet, peaceful, blessed
way--a nun of the Order of Providence, for ever.
And what was the fate of Lady Enville?
Just what is generally the fate of women of her type. They pass through
life making themselves vastly comfortable, and those around them vastly
uncomfortable, and then "depart without being desired." They are never
missed--otherwise than as a piece of furniture might be missed. To such
women the whole world is but a platform for the exhibition and
glorification of the Great Me: and the persons in it are units with whom
the Great Me deigns--or does not deign--to associate. Happy are those
few of them who awake, on this side of the dread tribunal, to the
knowledge that in reality this Great Me is a very little me indeed, yet
a soul that can be saved, and that may be lost.
And Rachel?--Ah, Rachel was missed when she went on the inevitable
journey. The house was not the same without her. She had been like a
fresh breeze blowing through it,--perhaps a little sharp at times, but
always wholesome. Those among whom she had dwelt never realised all she
had been to them, nor all the love they had borne to her, until they
could tell her of it no more.
The winter of 1602 had come, and on the ground in Devonshire the snow
lay deep. The trees, thickly planted all round Umberleigh, drooped with
the white weight; and a keen North wind groaned among the branches. All
was gloomy and chill outside.
And inside, all was gloomy and mournful too, for a soul was in
departing. The ripe fruit that had tarried so late on the old tree, was
shaken down at last. Softly and tenderly, the Lady Elizabeth, the young
wife of Sir Robert Basset, was ministering to the last earthly needs of
Philippa the aged, the sister of her husband's grandfather. [Note 1.]
"'Tis high time, Bess, child!" whispered the dying woman, true to her
character to the last. "I must have been due on the roll of Death these
thirty years. I began to marvel if he had forgot me. And I am going
Home, child. Thank God, I am going Home!