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Come Rack! Come Rope!
BY
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
_Author of "By What Authority?" "The King's Achievement,"
"Lord of the World," etc._
New York
P.J. Kenedy & Sons
PREFACE
Very nearly the whole of this book is sober historical fact; and by far
the greater number of the personages named in it once lived and acted in
the manner in which I have presented them. My hero and my heroine are
fictitious; so also are the parents of my heroine, the father of my
hero, one lawyer, one woman, two servants, a farmer and his wife, the
landlord of an inn, and a few other entirely negligible characters. But
the family of the FitzHerberts passed precisely through the fortunes
which I have described; they had their confessors and their one traitor
(as I have said). Mr. Anthony Babington plotted, and fell, in the manner
that is related; Mary languished in Chartley under Sir Amyas Paulet; was
assisted by Mr. Bourgoign; was betrayed by her secretary and Mr.
Gifford, and died at Fotheringay; Mr. Garlick and Mr. Ludlam and Mr.
Simpson received their vocations, passed through their adventures; were
captured at Padley, and died in Derby. Father Campion (from whose speech
after torture the title of the book is taken) suffered on the rack and
was executed at Tyburn. Mr. Topcliffe tormented the Catholics that fell
into his hands; plotted with Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert, and bargained for
Padley (which he subsequently lost again) on the terms here drawn out.
My Lord Shrewsbury rode about Derbyshire, directed the search for
recusants and presided at their deaths; priests of all kinds came and
went in disguise; Mr. Owen went about constructing hiding-holes; Mr.
Bassett lived defiantly at Langleys, and dabbled a little (I am afraid)
in occultism; Mr. Fenton was often to be found in Hathersage--all these
things took place as nearly as I have had the power of relating them.
Two localities only, I think, are disguised under their names--Booth's
Edge and Matstead. Padley, or rather the chapel in which the last mass
was said under the circumstances described in this book, remains, to
this day, close to Grindleford Station. A Catholic pilgrimage is made
there every year; and I have myself once had the honour of preaching on
such an occasion, leaning against the wall of the old hall that is
immediately beneath the chapel where Mr. Garlick and Mr. Ludlam said
their last masses, and were captured. If the book is too sensational, it
is no more sensational than life itself was to Derbyshire folk between
1579 and 1588.
It remains only, first, to express my extreme indebtedness to Dom Bede
Camm's erudite book--"Forgotten Shrines"--from which I have taken
immense quantities of information, and to a pile of some twenty to
thirty other books that are before me as I write these words; and,
secondly, to ask forgiveness from the distinguished family that takes
its name from the FitzHerberts and is descended from them directly; and
to assure its members that old Sir Thomas, Mr. John, Mr. Anthony, and
all the rest, down to the present day, outweigh a thousand times over
(to the minds of all decent people) the stigma of Mr. Thomas' name. Even
the apostles numbered one Judas!
ROBERT HUGH BENSON.
_Feast of the Blessed Thomas More, 1912.
Hare Street House, Buntingford._
PART I
CHAPTER I
I
There should be no sight more happy than a young man riding to meet his
love. His eyes should shine, his lips should sing; he should slap his
mare upon her shoulder and call her his darling. The puddles upon his
way should be turned to pure gold, and the stream that runs beside him
should chatter her name.
Yet, as Robin rode to Marjorie none of these things were done. It was a
still day of frost; the sky was arched above him, across the high hills,
like that terrible crystal which is the vault above which sits God--hard
blue from horizon to horizon; the fringe of feathery birches stood like
filigree-work above him on his left; on his right ran the Derwent,
sucking softly among his sedges; on this side and that lay the flat
bottom through which he went--meadowland broken by rushes; his mare
Cecily stepped along, now cracking the thin ice of the little pools with
her dainty feet, now going gently over peaty ground, blowing thin clouds
from her red nostrils, yet unencouraged by word or caress from her
rider; who sat, heavy and all but slouching, staring with his blue eyes
under puckered eyelids, as if he went to an appointment which he would
not keep.
Yet he was a very pleasant lad to look upon, smooth-faced and gallant,
mounted and dressed in a manner that should give any lad joy. He wore
great gauntlets on his hands; he was in his habit of green; he had his
steel-buckled leather belt upon him beneath his cloak and a pair of
daggers in it, with his long-sword looped up; he had his felt hat on
his head, buckled again, and decked with half a pheasant's tail; he had
his long boots of undressed leather, that rose above his knees; and on
his left wrist sat his grim falcon Agnes, hooded and belled, not because
he rode after game, but from mere custom, and to give her the air.
He was meeting his first man's trouble.
Last year he had said good-bye to Derby Grammar School--of old my lord
Bishop Durdant's foundation--situated in St. Peter's churchyard. Here he
had done the right and usual things; he had learned his grammar; he had
fought; he had been chastised; he had robed the effigy of his pious
founder in a patched doublet with a saucepan on his head (but that had
been done before he had learned veneration)--and so had gone home again
to Matstead, proficient in Latin, English, history, writing, good
manners and chess, to live with his father, to hunt, to hear mass when a
priest was within reasonable distance, to indite painful letters now and
then on matters of the estate, and to learn how to bear himself
generally as should one of Master's rank--the son of a gentleman who
bore arms, and his father's father before him. He dined at twelve, he
supped at six, he said his prayers, and blessed himself when no
strangers were by. He was something of a herbalist, as a sheer hobby of
his own; he went to feed his falcons in the morning, he rode with them
after dinner (from last August he had found himself riding north more
often than south, since Marjorie lived in that quarter); and now all had
been crowned last Christmas Eve, when in the enclosed garden at her
house he had kissed her two hands suddenly, and made her a little speech
he had learned by heart; after which he kissed her on the lips as a man
should, in the honest noon sunlight.
All this was as it should be. There were no doubts or disasters
anywhere. Marjorie was an only daughter as he an only son. Her father,
it is true, was but a Derby lawyer, but he and his wife had a good
little estate above the Hathersage valley, and a stone house in it. As
for religion, that was all well too. Master Manners was as good a
Catholic as Master Audrey himself; and the families met at mass perhaps
as much as four or five times in the year, either at Padley, where Sir
Thomas' chapel still had priests coming and going; sometimes at Dethick
in the Babingtons' barn; sometimes as far north as Harewood.
And now a man's trouble was come upon the boy. The cause of it was as
follows.
Robin Audrey was no more religious than a boy of seventeen should be.
Yet he had had as few doubts about the matter as if he had been a monk.
His mother had taught him well, up to the time of her death ten years
ago; and he had learned from her, as well as from his father when that
professor spoke of it at all, that there were two kinds of religion in
the world, the true and the false--that is to say, the Catholic religion
and the other one. Certainly there were shades of differences in the
other one; the Turk did not believe precisely as the ancient Roman, nor
yet as the modern Protestant--yet these distinctions were subtle and
negligible; they were all swallowed up in an unity of falsehood. Next he
had learned that the Catholic religion was at present blown upon by many
persons in high position; that pains and penalties lay upon all who
adhered to it. Sir Thomas FitzHerbert, for instance, lay now in the
Fleet in London on that very account. His own father, too, three or four
times in the year, was under necessity of paying over heavy sums for the
privilege of not attending Protestant worship; and, indeed, had been
forced last year to sell a piece of land over on Lees Moor for this very
purpose. Priests came and went at their peril.... He himself had fought
two or three battles over the affair in St. Peter's churchyard, until he
had learned to hold his tongue. But all this was just part of the game.
It seemed to him as inevitable and eternal as the changes of the
weather. Matstead Church, he knew, had once been Catholic; but how long
ago he did not care to inquire. He only knew that for awhile there had
been some doubt on the matter; and that before Mr. Barton's time, who
was now minister there, there had been a proper priest in the place, who
had read English prayers there and a sort of a mass, which he had
attended as a little boy. Then this had ceased; the priest had gone and
Mr. Barton come, and since that time he had never been to church there,
but had heard the real mass wherever he could with a certain secrecy.
And there might be further perils in future, as there might be
thunderstorms or floods. There was still the memory of the descent of
the Commissioners a year or two after his birth; he had been brought up
on the stories of riding and counter-riding, and the hiding away of
altar-plate and beads and vestments. But all this was in his bones and
blood; it was as natural that professors of the false religion should
seek to injure and distress professors of the true, as that the foxes
should attack the poultry-yard. One took one's precautions, one hoped
for the best; and one was quite sure that one day the happy ancient
times his mother had told him of would come back, and Christ's cause be
vindicated.
And now the foundations of the earth were moved and heaven reeled above
him; for his father, after a month or two of brooding, had announced, on
St. Stephen's Day, that he could tolerate it no longer; that God's
demands were unreasonable; that, after all, the Protestant religion was
the religion of her Grace, that men must learn to move with the times,
and that he had paid his last fine. At Easter, he observed, he would
take the bread and wine in Matstead Church, and Robin would take them
too.
II
The sun stood half-way towards his setting as Robin rode up from the
valley, past Padley, over the steep ascent that led towards Booth's
Edge. The boy was brighter a little as he came up; he had counted above
eighty snipe within the last mile and a half, and he was coming near to
Marjorie. About him, rising higher as he rose, stood the great
low-backed hills. Cecily stepped out more sharply, snuffing delicately,
for she knew her way well enough by now, and looked for a feed; and the
boy's perplexities stood off from him a little. Matters must surely be
better so soon as Marjorie's clear eyes looked upon them.
Then the roofs of Padley disappeared behind him, and he saw the smoke
going up from the little timbered Hall, standing back against its bare
wind-blown trees.
A great clatter and din of barking broke out as the mare's hoofs sounded
on the half-paved space before the great door; and then, in the pause, a
gaggling of geese, solemn and earnest, from out of sight. Jacob led the
outcry, a great mastiff, chained by the entrance, of the breed of which
three are set to meet a bear and four a lion. Then two harriers whipped
round the corner, and a terrier's head showed itself over the wall of
the herb-garden on the left, as a man, bareheaded, in his shirt and
breeches, ran out suddenly with a thonged whip, in time to meet a pair
of spaniels in full career. Robin sat his horse silently till peace was
restored, his right leg flung across the pommel, untwisting Agnes' leash
from his fist. Then he asked for Mistress Marjorie, and dropped to the
ground, leaving his mare and falcon in the man's hands, with an air.
He flicked his fingers to growling Jacob as he went past to the side
entrance on the east, stepped in through the little door that was beside
the great one, and passed on as he had been bidden into the little
court, turned to the left, went up an outside staircase, and so down a
little passage to the ladies' parlour, where he knocked upon the door.
The voice he knew called to him from within; and he went in, smiling to
himself. Then he took the girl who awaited him there in both his arms,
and kissed her twice--first her hands and then her lips, for respect
should come first and ardour second.
"My love," said Robin, and threw off his hat with the pheasant's tail,
for coolness' sake.
* * * * *
It was a sweet room this which he already knew by heart; for it was here
that he had sat with Marjorie and her mother, silent and confused,
evening after evening, last autumn; it was here, too, that she had led
him last Christmas Eve, scarcely ten days ago, after he had kissed her
in the enclosed garden. But the low frosty sunlight lay in it now, upon
the blue painted wainscot that rose half up the walls, the tall presses
where the linen lay, the pieces of stuff, embroidered with pale lutes
and wreaths that Mistress Manners had bought in Derby, hanging now over
the plaster spaces. There was a chimney, too, newly built, that was
thought a great luxury; and in it burned an armful of logs, for the girl
was setting out new linen for the household, and the scents of lavender
and burning wood disputed the air between them.
"I thought it would be you," she said, "when I heard the dogs."
She piled the last rolls of linen in an ordered heap, and came to sit
beside him. Robin took one hand in his and sat silent.
She was of an age with him, perhaps a month the younger; and, as it
ought to be, was his very contrary in all respects. Where he was fair,
she was pale and dark; his eyes were blue, hers black; he was lusty and
showed promise of broadness, she was slender.
"And what news do you bring with you now?" she said presently.
He evaded this.
"Mistress Manners?" he asked.
"Mother has a megrim," she said; "she is in her chamber." And she smiled
at him again. For these two, as is the custom of young persons who love
one another, had said not a word on either side--neither he to his
father nor she to her parents. They believed, as young persons do, that
parents who bring children into the world, hold it as a chief danger
that these children should follow their example, and themselves be
married. Besides, there is something delicious in secrecy.
"Then I will kiss you again," he said, "while there is opportunity."
* * * * *
Making love is a very good way to pass the time, above all when that
same time presses and other disconcerting things should be spoken of
instead; and this device Robin now learned. He spoke of a hundred things
that were of no importance: of the dress that she wore--russet, as it
should be, for country girls, with the loose sleeves folded back above
her elbows that she might handle the linen; her apron of coarse linen,
her steel-buckled shoes. He told her that he loved her better in that
than in her costume of state--the ruff, the fardingale, the brocaded
petticoat, and all the rest--in which he had seen her once last summer
at Babington House. He talked then, when she would hear no more of that,
of Tuesday seven-night, when they would meet for hawking in the lower
chase of the Padley estates; and proceeded then to speak of Agnes, whom
he had left on the fist of the man who had taken his mare, of her
increasing infirmities and her crimes of crabbing; and all the while he
held her left hand in both of his, and fitted her fingers between his,
and kissed them again when he had no more to say on any one point; and
wondered why he could not speak of the matter on which he had come, and
how he should tell her. And then at last she drew it from him.
"And now, my Robin," she said, "tell me what you have in your mind. You
have talked of this and that and Agnes and Jock, and Padley chase, and
you have not once looked me in the eyes since you first came in."
Now it was not shame that had held him from telling her, but rather a
kind of bewilderment. The affair might hold shame, indeed, or anger, or
sorrow, or complacence, but he did not know; and he wished, as young men
of decent birth should wish, to present the proper emotion on its right
occasion. He had pondered on the matter continually since his father had
spoken to him on Saint Stephen's night; and at one time it seemed that
his father was acting the part of a traitor and at another of a
philosopher. If it were indeed true, after all, that all men were
turning Protestant, and that there was not so much difference between
the two religions, then it would be the act of a wise man to turn
Protestant too, if only for a while. And on the other hand his pride of
birth and his education by his mother and his practice ever since drew
him hard the other way. He was in a strait between the two. He did not
know what to think, and he feared what Marjorie might think.
It was this, then, that had held him silent. He feared what Marjorie
might think, for that was the very thing that he thought that he thought
too, and he foresaw a hundred inconveniences and troubles if it were so.
"How did you know I had anything in my mind?" he asked. "Is it not
enough reason for my coming that you should be here?"
She laughed softly, with a pleasant scornfulness.
"I read you like a printed book," she said. "What else are women's wits
given them for?"
He fell to stroking her hand again at that, but she drew it away.
"Not until you have told me," she said.
So then he told her.
It was a long tale, for it began as far ago as last August, when his
father had come back from giving evidence before the justices at Derby
on a matter of witchcraft, and had been questioned again about his
religion. It was then that Robin had seen moodiness succeed to anger,
and long silence to moodiness. He told the tale with a true lover's art,
for he watched her face and trained his tone and his manner as he saw
her thoughts come and go in her eyes and lips, like gusts of wind across
standing corn; and at last he told her outright what his father had said
to him on St. Stephen's night, and how he himself had kept silence.
Marjorie's face was as white as a moth's wing when he was finishing, and
her eyes like sunset pools; but she flamed up bright and rosy as he
finished.
"You kept silence!" she cried.
"I did not wish to anger him, my dear; he is my father," he said gently.
The colour died out of her face again and she nodded once or twice, and
a great pensiveness came down on her. He took her hand again softly, and
she did not resist.
"The only doubt," she said presently, as if she talked to herself, "is
whether you had best be gone at Easter, or stay and face it out."
"Yes," said Robin, with his dismay come fully to the birth.
Then she turned on him, full of a sudden tenderness and compassion.
"Oh! my Robin," she cried, "and I have not said a word about you and
your own misery. I was thinking but of Christ's honour. You must forgive
me.... What must it be for you!... That it should be your father! You
are sure that he means it?"
"My father does not speak until he means it. He is always like that. He
asks counsel from no one. He thinks and he thinks, and then he speaks;
and it is finished."
She fell then to thinking again, her sweet lips compressed together, and
her eyes frightened and wondering, searching round the hanging above the
chimney-breast. (It presented Icarus in the chariot of the sun; and it
was said in Derby that it had come from my lord Abbot's lodging at
Bolton.)
Meantime Robin thought too. He was as wax in the hands of this girl, and
knew it, and loved that it should be so. Yet he could not help his
dismay while he waited for her seal to come down on him and stamp him to
her model. For he foresaw more clearly than ever now the hundred
inconveniences that must follow, now that it was evident that to
Marjorie's mind (and therefore to God Almighty's) there must be no
tampering with the old religion. He had known that it must be so; yet he
had thought, on the way here, of a dozen families he knew who, in his
own memory, had changed from allegiance to the Pope of Rome to that of
her Grace, without seeming one penny the worse. There were the Martins,
down there in Derby; the Squire and his lady of Ashenden Hall; the
Conways of Matlock; and the rest--these had all changed; and though he
did not respect them for it, yet the truth was that they were not yet
stricken by thunderbolts or eaten by the plague. He had wondered whether
there were not a way to do as they had done, yet without the disgrace of
it.... However, this was plainly not to be so with him. He must put up
with the inconveniences as well as he could, and he just waited to hear
from Marjorie how this must be done.
She turned to him again at last. Twice her lips opened to speak, and
twice she closed them again. Robin continued to stroke her hand and wait
for judgment. The third time she spoke.
"I think you must go away," she said, "for Easter. Tell your father that
you cannot change your religion simply because he tells you so. I do not
see what else is to be done. He will think, perhaps, that if you have a
little time to think you will come over to him. Well, that is not so,
but it may make it easier for him to believe it for a while.... You must
go somewhere where there is a priest.... Where can you go?"
Robin considered.
"I could go to Dethick," he said.
"That is not far enough away, I think."
"I could come here," he suggested artfully.
A smile lit in her eyes, shone in her mouth, and passed again into
seriousness.
"That is scarcely a mile further," she said. "We must think.... Will he
be very angry, Robin?"
Robin smiled grimly.
"I have never withstood him in a great affair," he said. "He is angry
enough over little things."
"Poor Robin!"
"Oh! he is not unjust to me. He is a good father to me."
"That makes it all the sadder," she said.
"And there is no other way?" he asked presently.
She glanced at him.
"Unless you would withstand him to the face. Would you do that, Robin?"
"I will do anything you tell me," he said simply.
"You darling!... Well, Robin, listen to me. It is very plain that sooner
or later you will have to withstand him. You cannot go away every time
there is communion at Matstead, or, indeed, every Sunday. Your father
would have to pay the fines for you, I have no doubt, unless you went
away altogether. But I think you had better go away for this time. He
will almost expect it, I think. At first he will think that you will
yield to him; and then, little by little (unless God's grace brings
himself back to the Faith), he will learn to understand that you will
not. But it will be easier for him that way; and he will have time to
think what to do with you, too.... Robin, what would you do if you went
away?"
Robin considered again.
"I can read and write," he said. "I am a Latinist: I can train falcons
and hounds and break horses. I do not know if there is anything else
that I can do."
"You darling!" she said again.
* * * * *
These two, as will have been seen, were as simple as children, and as
serious. Children are not gay and light-hearted, except now and then
(just as men and women are not serious except now and then). They are
grave and considering: all that they lack is experience. These two,
then, were real children; they were grave and serious because a great
thing had disclosed itself to them in which two or three large
principles were present, and no more. There was that love of one
another, whose consummation seemed imperilled, for how could these two
ever wed if Robin were to quarrel with his father? There was the
Religion which was in their bones and blood--the Religion for which
already they had suffered and their fathers before them. There was the
honour and loyalty which this new and more personal suffering demanded
now louder than ever; and in Marjorie at least, as will be seen more
plainly later, there was a strong love of Jesus Christ and His Mother,
whom she knew, from her hidden crucifix and her beads, and her Jesus
Psalter--which she used every day--as well as in her own soul--to be
wandering together once more among the hills of Derbyshire, sheltering,
at peril of Their lives, in stables and barns and little secret
chambers, because there was no room for Them in Their own places. It was
this last consideration, as Robin had begun to guess, that stood
strongest in the girl; it was this, too, as again he had begun to guess,
that made her all that she was to him, that gave her that strange
serious air of innocency and sweetness, and drew from him a love that
was nine-tenths reverence and adoration. (He always kissed her hands
first, it will be remembered, before her lips.)
So then they sat and considered and talked. They did not speak much of
her Grace, nor of her Grace's religion, nor of her counsellors and
affairs of state: these things were but toys and vanities compared with
matters of love and faith; neither did they speak much of the
Commissioners that had been to Derbyshire once and would come again, or
of the alarms and the dangers and the priest hunters, since those things
did not at present touch them very closely. It was rather of Robin's
father, and whether and when the maid should tell her parents, and how
this new trouble would conflict with their love. They spoke, that is to
say, of their own business and of God's; and of nothing else. The frosty
sunshine crept down the painted wainscot and lay at last at their feet,
reddening to rosiness....
III
Robin rode away at last with a very clear idea of what he was to do in
the immediate present, and with no idea at all of what was to be done
later. Marjorie had given him three things--advice; a pair of beads that
had been the property of Mr. Cuthbert Maine, seminary priest, recently
executed in Cornwall for his religion; and a kiss--the first deliberate,
free-will kiss she had ever given him. The first he was to keep, the
second he was to return, the third he was to remember; and these three
things, or, rather, his consideration of them, worked upon him as he
went. Her advice, besides that which has been described, was,
principally, to say his Jesus Psalter more punctually, to hear mass
whenever that were possible, to trust in God, and to be patient and
submissive with his father in all things that did not touch divine love
and faith. The pair of beads that were once Mr. Maine's, he was to keep
upon him always, day and night, and to use them for his devotions. The
kiss--well, he was to remember this, and to return it to her upon their
next meeting.
A great star came out as he drew near home. His path took him not
through the village, but behind it, near enough for him to hear the
barkings of the dogs and to smell upon the frosty air the scent of the
wood fires. The house was a great one for these parts. There was a small
gate-house before it, built by his father for dignity, with a lodge on
either side and an arch in the middle, and beyond this lay the short
road, straight and broad, that went up to the court of the house. This
court was, on three sides of it, buildings; the hall and the buttery and
the living-rooms in the midst, with the stables and falconry on the
left, and the servants' lodgings on the right; the fourth side, that
which lay opposite to the little gate-house, was a wall, with a great
double gate in it, hung on stone posts that had, each of them, a great
stone dog that held a blank shield. All this later part, the wall with
the gate, the stables and the servants' lodgings, as well as the
gatehouse without, had been built by the lad's father twenty years ago,
to bring home his wife to; for, until that time, the house had been but
a little place, though built of stone, and solid and good enough. The
house stood half-way up the rise of the hill, above the village, with
woods about it and behind it; and it was above these woods behind that
the great star came out like a diamond in enamel-work; and Robin looked
at it, and fell to thinking of Marjorie again, putting all other
thoughts away. Then, as he rode through into the court on to the cobbled
stones, a man ran out from the stable to take his mare from him.
"Master Babington is here," he said. "He came half an hour ago."
"He is in the hall?"
"Yes, sir; they are at supper."
* * * * *
The hall at Matstead was such as that of most esquires of means. Its
daïs was to the south end, and the buttery entrance and the screens to
the north, through which came the servers with the meat. In the midst of
the floor stood the reredos with the fire against it, and a round vent
overhead in the roof through which went the smoke and came the rain. The
tables stood down the hall, one on either side, with the master's table
at the daïs end set cross-ways. It was not a great hall, though that was
its name; it ran perhaps forty feet by twenty. It was lighted, not only
by the fire that burned there through the winter day and night, but by
eight torches in cressets that hung against the walls and sadly smoked
them; and the master's table was lighted by six candles, of latten on
common days and of silver upon festivals.
There were but two at the master's table this evening, Mr. Audrey
himself, a smallish, high-shouldered man, ruddy-faced, with bright blue
eyes like his son's, and no hair upon his face (for this was the way of
old men then, in the country, at least); and Mr. Anthony Babington, a
young man scarcely a year older than Robin himself, of a brown
complexion and a high look in his face, but a little pale, too, with
study, for he was learned beyond his years and read all the books that
he could lay hand to. It was said even that his own verses, and a
prose-lament he had written upon the Death of a Hound, were read with
pleasure in London by the lords and gentlemen. It was as long ago as
'71, that his verses had first become known, when he was still serving
in the school of good manners as page in my Lord Shrewsbury's household.
They were considered remarkable for so young a boy. So it was to this
company that Robin came, walking up between the tables after he had
washed his hands at the lavatory that stood by the screens.
"You are late, lad," said his father.
"I was over to Padley, sir.... Good-day, Anthony."
Then silence fell again, for it was the custom in good houses to keep
silence, or very nearly, at dinner and supper. At times music would
play, if there was music to be had; or a scholar would read from a book
for awhile at the beginning, from the holy gospels in devout households,
or from some other grave book. But if there were neither music nor
reading, all would hold their tongues.
Robin was hungry from his riding and the keen air; and he ate well.
First he stayed his appetite a little with a hunch of cheat-bread, and a
glass of pomage, while the servant was bringing him his entry of eggs
cooked with parsley. Then he ate this; and next came half a wild-duck
cooked with sage and sweet potatoes; and last of all a florentine which
he ate with a cup of Canarian. He ate heartily and quickly, while the
two waited for him and nibbled at marchpane. Then, when the doors were
flung open and the troop of servants came in to their supper, Mr. Audrey
blessed himself, and for them, too; and they went out by a door behind
into the wainscoted parlour, where the new stove from London stood, and
where the conserves and muscadel awaited them. For this, or like it, had
been the procedure in Matstead hall ever since Robin could remember,
when first he had come from the women to eat his food with the men.
"And how were all at Booth's Edge?" asked Mr. Audrey, when all had
pulled off their boots in country fashion, and were sitting each with
his glass beside him. (Through the door behind came the clamour of the
farm-men and the keepers of the chase and the servants, over their
food.)
"I saw Marjorie only, sir," said the boy. "Mr. Manners was in Derby, and
Mrs. Manners had a megrim."
"Mrs. Manners is ageing swifter than her husband," observed Anthony.
There seemed a constraint upon the company this evening. Robin spoke of
his ride, of things which he had seen upon it, of a wood that should be
thinned next year; and Anthony made a quip or two such as he was
accustomed to make; but the master sat silent for the most part,
speaking to the lads once or twice for civility's sake, but no more. And
presently silences began to fall, that were very unusual things in Mr.
Anthony's company, for he had a quick and a gay wit, and talked enough
for five. Robin knew very well what was the matter; it was what lay upon
his own heart as heavy as lead; but he was sorry that the signs of it
should be so evident, and wondered what he should say to his friend
Anthony when the time came for telling; since Anthony was as ardent for
the old Faith as any in the land. It was a bitter time, this, for the
old families that served God as their fathers had, and desired to serve
their prince too; for, now and again, the rumour would go abroad that
another house had fallen, and another name gone from the old roll. And
what would Anthony Babington say, thought the lad, when he heard that
Mr. Audrey, who had been so hot and persevered so long, must be added to
these?
And then, on a sudden, Anthony himself opened on a matter that was at
least cognate.
"I was hearing to-day from Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert that his uncle would
be let out again of the Fleet soon to collect his fines."
He spoke bitterly; and, indeed, there was reason; for not only were the
recusants (as the Catholics were named) put in prison for their faith,
but fined for it as well, and let out of prison to raise money for this,
by selling their farms or estates.
"He will go to Norbury?" asked Robin.
"He will come to Padley, too, it is thought. Her Grace must have her
money for her ships and her men, and for her pursuivants to catch us all
with; and it is we that must pay. Shall you sell again this year, sir?"
Mr. Audrey shook his head, pursing up his lips and staring upon the
fire.
"I can sell no more," he said.
Then an agony seized upon Robin lest his father should say all that was
in his mind. He knew it must be said; yet he feared its saying, and with
a quick wit he spoke of that which he knew would divert his friend.
"And the Queen of the Scots," he said. "Have you heard more of her?"
Now Anthony Babington was one of those spirits that live largely within
themselves, and therefore see that which is without through a haze or
mist of their own moods. He read much in the poets; you would say that
Vergil and Ovid, as well as the poets of his own day, were his friends;
he lived within, surrounded by his own images, and therefore he loved
and hated with ten times the ardour of a common man. He was furious for
the Old Faith, furious against the new; he dreamed of wars and gallantry
and splendour; you could see it even in his dress, in his furred
doublet, the embroideries at his throat, his silver-hilted rapier, as
well as in his port and countenance: and the burning heart of all his
images, the mirror on earth of Mary in heaven, the emblem of his piety,
the mistress of his dreams--she who embodied for him what the courtiers
in London protested that Elizabeth embodied for them--the pearl of great
price, the one among ten thousand--this, for him, was Mary Stuart, Queen
of Scotland, now prisoner in her cousin's hands, going to and fro from
house to house, with a guard about her, yet with all the seeming of
liberty and none of its reality....
The rough bitterness died out of the boy's face, and a look came upon it
as of one who sees a vision.
"Queen Mary?" he said, as if he pronounced the name of the Mother of
God. "Yes; I have heard of her.... She is in Norfolk, I think."
Then he let flow out of him the stream that always ran in his heart like
sorrowful music ever since the day when first, as a page, in my Lord
Shrewsbury's house in Sheffield, he had set eyes on that queen of
sorrows. Then, again, upon the occasion of his journey to Paris, he had
met with Mr. Morgan, her servant, and the Bishop of Glasgow, her
friend, whose talk had excited and inspired him. He had learned from
them something more of her glories and beauties, and remembering what he
had seen of her, adored her the more. He leaned back now, shading his
eyes from the candles upon the table, and began to sing his love and his
queen. He told of new insults that had been put upon her, new
deprivations of what was left to her of liberty; he did not speak now of
Elizabeth by name, since a fountain, even of talk, should not give out
at once sweet water and bitter; but he spoke of the day when Mary should
come herself to the throne of England, and take that which was already
hers; when the night should roll away, and the morning-star arise; and
the Faith should come again like the flowing tide, and all things be
again as they had been from the beginning. It was rank treason that he
talked, such as would have brought him to Tyburn if it had been spoken
in London in indiscreet company; it was that treason which her Grace
herself had made possible by her faithlessness to God and man; such
treason as God Himself must have mercy upon, since He reads all hearts
and their intentions. The others kept silence.
At the end he stood up. Then he stooped for his boots.
"I must be riding, sir," he said.
Mr. Audrey raised his hand to the latten bell that stood beside him on
the table.
"I will take Anthony to his horse," said Robin suddenly, for a thought
had come to him.
"Then good-night, sir," said Anthony, as he drew on his second boot and
stood up.
* * * * *
The sky was all ablaze with stars now as they came out into the court.
On their right shone the high windows of the little hall where peace now
reigned, except for the clatter of the boys who took away the dishes;
and the night was very still about them in the grip of the frost, for
the village went early to bed, and even the dogs were asleep.
Robin said nothing as they went over the paving, for his determination
was not yet ripe, and Anthony was still aglow with his own talk. Then,
as the servant who waited for his master, with the horses, showed
himself in the stable-arch with a lantern, Robin's mind was made up.
"I have something to tell you," he said softly. "Tell your man to wait."
"Eh?"
"Tell your man to wait with the horses."
His heart beat hot and thick in his throat as he led the way through the
screens and out beyond the hall and down the steps again into the
pleasaunce. Anthony took him by the sleeve once or twice, but he said
nothing, and went on across the grass, and out through the open iron
gate that gave upon the woods. He dared not say what he had to say
within the precincts of the house, for fear he should be overheard and
the shame known before its time. Then, when they had gone a little way
into the wood, into the dark out of the starlight, Robin turned; and, as
he turned, saw the windows of the hall go black as the boys extinguished
the torches.
"Well?" whispered Anthony sharply (for a fool could see that the news
was to be weighty, and Anthony was no fool).
It was wonderful how Robin's thoughts had fixed themselves since his
talk with Mistress Marjorie. He had gone to Padley, doubting of what he
should say, doubting what she would tell him, asking himself even
whether compliance might not be the just as well as the prudent way. Yet
now black shame had come on him--the black shame that any who was a
Catholic should turn from his faith; blacker, that he should so turn
without even a touch of the rack or the threat of it; blackest of all,
that it should be his own father who should do this. It was partly food
and wine that had strengthened him, partly Anthony's talk just now; but
the frame and substance of it all was Marjorie and her manner of
speaking, and her faith in him and in God.
He stood still, silent, breathing so heavily that Anthony heard him.
"Tell me, Rob; tell me quickly."
Robin drew a long breath.
"You saw that my father was silent?" he said.
"Yes."
"Stay.... Will you swear to me by the mass that you will tell no one
what you will hear from me till you hear it from others?"
"I will swear it," whispered Anthony in the darkness.
Again Robin sighed in a long, shuddering breath. Anthony could hear him
tremble with cold and pain.
"Well," he said, "my father will leave the Church next Easter. He is
tired of paying fines, he says. And he has bidden me to come with him to
Matstead Church."
There was dead silence.
"I went to tell Marjorie to-day," whispered Robin. "She has promised to
be my wife some day; so I told her, but no one else. She has bidden me
to leave Matstead for Easter, and pray to God to show me what to do
afterwards. Can you help me, Anthony?"
He was seized suddenly by the arms.
"Robin.... No ... no! It is not possible!"
"It is certain. I have never known my father to turn from his word."
* * * * *
From far away in the wild woods came a cry as the two stood there. It
might be a wolf or fox, if any were there, or some strange night-bird,
or a woman in pain. It rose, it seemed, to a scream, melancholy and
dreadful, and then died again. The two heard it, but said nothing, one
to the other. No doubt it was some beast in a snare or a-hunting, but it
chimed in with the desolation of their hearts so as to seem but a part
of it. So the two stood in silence. The house was quiet now, and most of
those within it upon their beds. Only, as the two knew, there still sat
in silence within the little wainscoted parlour, with his head on his
hand and a glass of muscadel beside him--he of whom they thought--the
father of one and the friend and host of the other.... It was not until
this instant in the dark and to the quiet, with the other lad's hands
still gripped on to his arms, that this boy understood the utter shame
and the black misery of that which he had said, and the other heard.
CHAPTER II
I
There were excuses in plenty for Robin to ride abroad, to the north
towards Hathersage or to the south towards Dethick, as the whim took
him; for he was learning to manage the estate that should be his one
day. At one time it was to quiet a yeoman whose domain had been ridden
over and his sown fields destroyed; at another, to dispute with a miller
who claimed for injury through floods for which he held his lord
responsible; at a third, to see to the woodland or the fences broken by
the deer. He came and went then as he willed; and on the second day,
after Anthony's visit, set out before dinner to meet him, that they
might speak at length of what lay now upon both their hearts.
To his father he had said no more, nor he to him. His father sat quiet
in the parlour, or was in his own chamber when Robin was at home; but
the lad understood very well that there was no thought of yielding. And
there were a dozen things on which he himself must come to a decision.
There was the first, the question as to where he was to go for Easter,
and how he was to tell his father; what to do if his father forbade him
outright; whether or no the priests of the district should be told; what
to do with the chapel furniture that was kept in a secret place in a
loft at Matstead. Above all, there hung over him the thought of what
would come after, if his father held to his decision and would allow him
neither to keep his religion at home nor go elsewhere.
On the second day, therefore, he rode out (the frost still holding,
though the sun was clear and warm), and turned southwards through the
village for the Dethick road, towards the place in which he had
appointed to meet Anthony. At the entrance to the village he passed the
minister, Mr. Barton, coming out of his house, that had been the
priest's lodging, a middle-aged man, made a minister under the new
Prayer-Book, and therefore, no priest as were some of the ministers
about, who had been made priests under Mary. He was a solid man, of no
great wit or learning, but there was not an ounce of harm in him. (They
were fortunate, indeed, to have such a minister; since many parishes had
but laymen to read the services; and in one, not twenty miles away, the
squire's falconer held the living.) Mr. Barton was in his sad-coloured
cloak and round cap, and saluted Robin heartily in his loud, bellowing
voice.
"Riding abroad again," he cried, "on some secret errand!"
"I will give your respects to Mr. Babington," said Robin, smiling
heavily. "I am to meet him about a matter of a tithe too!"
"Ah! you Papists would starve us altogether if you could," roared the
minister, who wished no better than to be at peace with his neighbours,
and was all for liberty.
"You will get your tithe safe enough--one of you, at least," said Robin.
"It is but a matter as to who shall pay it."
He waved good-day to the minister and set his horse to the Dethick
track.
* * * * *
There was no going fast to-day along this country road. The frosts and
the thaws had made of it a very way of sorrows. Here in the harder parts
was a tumble of ridges and holes, with edges as hard as steel; here in
the softer, the faggots laid to build it up were broken or rotted
through, making it no better than a trap for horses' feet; and it was a
full hour before Robin finished his four miles and turned up through the
winter woodland to the yeoman's farm where he was to meet Anthony. It
was true, as he had said to Mr. Barton, that they were to speak of a
matter of tithe--this was to be their excuse if his father questioned
him--for there was a doubt as to in which parish stood this farm, for
the yeoman tilled three meadows that were in the Babington estate and
two in Matstead.
As he came up the broken ground on to the crest of the hill, he saw
Anthony come out of the yard-gate and the yeoman with him. Then Anthony
mounted his horse and rode down towards him, bidding the man stay, over
his shoulder.
"It is all plain enough," shouted Anthony loud enough for the man to
hear. "It is Dethick that must pay. You need not come up, Robin; we must
do the paying."
Robin checked his mare and waited till the other came near enough to
speak.
"Young Thomas FitzHerbert is within. He is riding round his new
estates," said the other beneath his breath. "I thought I would come out
and tell you; and I do not know where we can talk or dine. I met him on
the road, and he would come with me. He is eating his dinner there."
"But I must eat my dinner too," said Robin, in dismay.
"Will you tell him of what you have told me? He is safe and discreet, I
think."
"Why, yes, if you think so," said Robin. "I do not know him very well."
"Oh! he is safe enough, and he has learned not to talk. Besides, all the
country will know it by Easter."
So they turned their horses back again and rode up to the farm.
* * * * *
It was a great day for a yeoman when three gentlemen should take their
dinners in his house; and the place was in a respectful uproar. From the
kitchen vent went up a pillar of smoke, and through its door, in and out
continually, fled maids with dishes. The yeoman himself, John Merton, a
dried-looking, lean man, stood cap in hand to meet the gentlemen; and
his wife, crimson-faced from the fire, peeped and smiled from the open
door of the living-room that gave immediately upon the yard. For these
gentlemen were from three of the principal estates here about. The
Babingtons had their country house at Dethick and their town house in
Derby; the Audreys owned a matter of fifteen hundred acres at least all
about Matstead; and the FitzHerberts, it was said, scarcely knew
themselves all that they owned, or rather all that had been theirs until
the Queen's Grace had begun to strip them of it little by little on
account of their faith. The two Padleys, at least, were theirs, besides
their principal house at Norbury; and now that Sir Thomas was in the
Fleet Prison for his religion, young Mr. Thomas, his heir, was of more
account than ever.
He was at his dinner when the two came in, and he rose and saluted them.
He was a smallish kind of man, with a little brown beard, and his short
hair, when he lifted his flapped cap to them, showed upright on his
head; he smiled pleasantly enough, and made space for them to sit down,
one at each side.
"We shall do very well now, Mrs. Merton," he said, "if you will bring in
that goose once more for these gentlemen."
Then he made excuses for beginning his dinner before them: he was on
his way home and must be off again presently.
It was a well-furnished table for a yeoman's house. There was a linen
napkin for each guest, one corner of which he tucked into his throat,
while the other corner lay beneath his wooden plate. The twelve silver
spoons were laid out on the smooth elm-table, and a silver salt stood
before Mr. Thomas. There was, of course, an abundance to eat and drink,
even though no more than two had been expected; and John Merton himself
stood hatless on the further side of the table and took the dishes from
the bare-armed maids to place them before the gentlemen. There was a
jack of metheglin for each to drink, and a huge loaf of miscelin (or
bread made of mingled corn) stood in the midst and beyond the salt.
They talked of this and of that and of the other, freely and easily--of
Mr. Thomas' marriage with Mistress Westley that was to take place
presently; of the new entailment of the estates made upon him by his
uncle. John Merton inquired, as was right, after Sir Thomas, and openly
shook his head when he heard of his sufferings (for he and his wife were
as good Catholics as any in the country); and when the room was empty
for a moment of the maids, spoke of a priest who, he had been told,
would say mass in Tansley next day (for it was in this way, for the most
part, that such news was carried from mouth to mouth). Then, when the
maids came in again, the battle of the tithe was fought once more, and
Mr. Thomas pronounced sentence for the second time.
They blessed themselves, all four of them, openly at the end, and went
out at last to their horses.
"Will you ride with us, sir?" asked Anthony; "we can go your way. Robin
here has something to say to you."
"I shall be happy if you will give me your company for a little. I must
be at Padley before dark, if I can, and must visit a couple of houses on
the way."
He called out to his two servants, who ran out from the kitchen wiping
their mouths, telling them to follow at once, and the three rode off
down the hill.
Then Robin told him.
He was silent for a while after he had put a question or two, biting his
lower lip a little, and putting his little beard into his mouth. Then he
burst out.
"And I dare not ask you to come to me for Easter," he said. "God only
knows where I shall be at Easter. I shall be married, too, by then. My
father is in London now and may send for me. My uncle is in the Fleet. I
am here now only to see what money I can raise for the fines and for the
solace of my uncle. I cannot ask you, Mr. Audrey, though God knows that
I would do anything that I could. Have you nowhere to go? Will your
father hold to what he says?"
Robin told him yes; and he added that there were four or five places he
could go to. He was not asking for help or harbourage, but advice only.
"And even of that I have none," cried Mr. Thomas. "I need all that I can
get myself. I am distracted, Mr. Babington, with all these troubles."
Robin asked him whether the priests who came and went should be told of
the blow that impended; for at those times every apostasy was of
importance to priests who had to run here and there for shelter.
"I will tell one or two of the more discreet ones myself," said Mr.
Thomas, "if you will give me leave. I would that they were all discreet,
but they are not. We will name no names, if you please; but some of them
are unreasonable altogether and think nothing of bringing us all into
peril."
He began to bite his beard again.
"Do you think the Commissioners will visit us again?" asked Anthony.
"Mr. Fenton was telling me--"
"It is Mr. Fenton and the like that will bring them down on us if any
will," burst out Mr. FitzHerbert peevishly. "I am as good a Catholic, I
hope, as any in the world; but we can surely live without the sacraments
for a month or two sometimes! But it is this perpetual coming and going
of priests that enrages her Grace and her counsellors. I do not believe
her Grace has any great enmity against us; but she soon will, if men
like Mr. Fenton and Mr. Bassett are for ever harbouring priests and
encouraging them. It is the same in London, I hear; it is the same in
Lancashire; it is the same everywhere. And all the world knows it, and
thinks that we do contemn her Grace by such boldness. All the mischief
came in with that old Bull, _Regnans in Excelsis_, in '69, and--"
"I beg your pardon, sir," came in a quiet voice from beyond him; and
Robin, looking across, saw Anthony with a face as if frozen.
"Pooh! pooh!" burst out Mr. Thomas, with an uneasy air. "The Holy
Father, I take it, may make mistakes, as I understand it, in such
matters, as well as any man. Why, a dozen priests have said to me they
thought it inopportune; and--"
"I do not permit," said Anthony with an air of dignity beyond his years,
"that any man should speak so in my company."
"Well, well; you are too hot altogether, Mr. Babington. I admire such
zeal indeed, as I do in the saints; but we are not bound to imitate all
that we admire. Say no more, sir; and I will say no more either."
They rode in silence.
It was, indeed, one of those matters that were in dispute at that time
amongst the Catholics. The Pope was not swift enough for some, and too
swift for others. He had thundered too soon, said one party, if, indeed,
it was right to thunder at all, and not to wait in patience till the
Queen's Grace should repent herself; and he had thundered not soon
enough, said the other. Whence it may at least be argued that he had
been exactly opportune. Yet it could not be denied that since the day
when he had declared Elizabeth cut off from the unity of the Church and
her subjects absolved from their allegiance--though never, as some
pretended then and have pretended ever since, that a private person
might kill her and do no wrong--ever since that day her bitterness had
increased yearly against her Catholic people, who desired no better than
to serve both her and their God, if she would but permit that to be
possible.
II
It would be an hour later that they bid good-bye to Mr. Thomas
FitzHerbert, high among the hills to the east of the Derwent river; and
when they had seen him ride off towards Wingerworth, rode yet a few
furlongs together to speak of what had been said.
"He can do nothing, then," said Robin; "not even to give good counsel."
"I have never heard him speak so before," cried Anthony; "he must be
near mad, I think. It must be his marriage, I suppose."
"He is full of his own troubles; that is plain enough, without seeking
others. Well, I must bear mine as best I can."
They were just parting--Anthony to ride back to Dethick, and Robin over
the moors to Matstead, when over a rise in the ground they saw the
heads of three horsemen approaching. It was a wild country that they
were in; there were no houses in sight; and in such circumstances it was
but prudent to remain together until the character of the travellers
should be plain; so the two, after a word, rode gently forward, hearing
the voices of the three talking to one another, in the still air, though
without catching a word. For, as they came nearer the voices ceased, as
if the talkers feared to be overheard.
They were well mounted, these three, on horses known as Scottish nags,
square-built, sturdy beasts, that could cover forty miles in the day.
They were splashed, too, not the horses only, but the riders, also, as
if they had ridden far, through streams or boggy ground. The men were
dressed soberly and well, like poor gentlemen or prosperous yeomen; all
three were bearded, and all carried arms as could be seen from the flash
of the sun on their hilts. It was plain, too, that they were not rogues
or cutters, since each carried his valise on his saddle, as well as from
their appearance. Our gentlemen, then, after passing them with a salute
and a good-day, were once more about to say good-bye one to the other,
and appoint a time and place to meet again for the hunting of which
Robin had spoken to Marjorie, and, indeed, had drawn rein--when one of
the three strangers was seen to turn his horse and come riding back
after them, while his friends waited.
The two lads wheeled about to meet him, as was but prudent; but while he
was yet twenty yards away he lifted his hat. He seemed about thirty
years old; he had a pleasant, ruddy face.
"Mr. Babington, I think, sir," he said.
"That is my name," said Anthony.
"I have heard mass in your house, sir," said the stranger. "My name is
Garlick."
"Why, yes, sir, I remember--from Tideswell. How do you do, Mr. Garlick?
This is Mr. Audrey, of Matstead."
They saluted one another gravely.
"Mr. Audrey is a Catholic, too, I think?"
Robin answered that he was.
"Then I have news for you, gentlemen. A priest, Mr. Simpson, is with us;
and will say mass at Tansley next Sunday. You would like to speak with
his reverence?"
"It will give us great pleasure, sir," said Anthony, touching his horse
with his heel.
"I am bringing Mr. Simpson on his way. He is just fresh from Rheims. And
Mr. Ludlam is to carry him further on Monday," continued Mr. Garlick as
they went forward.
"Mr. Ludlam?"
"He is a native of Radbourne, and has but just finished at Oxford....
Forgive me, sir; I will but just ride forward and tell them."
The two lads drew rein, seeing that he wished first to tell the others
who they were, before bringing them up; and a strange little thing fell
as Mr. Garlick joined the two. For it happened that by now the sun was
at his setting; going down in a glory of crimson over the edge of the
high moor; and that the three riders were directly in his path from
where the two lads waited. Robin, therefore, looking at them, saw the
three all together on their horses with the circle of the sun about
them, and a great flood of blood-coloured light on every side; the
priest was in the midst of the three, and the two men leaning towards
him seemed to be speaking and as if encouraging him strongly. For an
instant, so strange was the light, so immense the shadows on this side
spread over the tumbled ground up to the lads themselves, so vast the
great vault of illuminated sky, that it seemed to Robin as if he saw a
vision.... Then the strangeness passed, as Mr. Garlick turned away again
to beckon to them; and the boy thought no more of it at that time.
They uncovered as they rode towards the priest, and bowed low to him as
he lifted his hand with a few words of Latin; and the next instant they
were in talk.
Mr. Simpson, like his friends, was a youngish man at this time, with a
kind face and great, innocent eyes that seemed to wonder and question.
Mr. Ludlam, too, was under thirty years old, plainly not of gentleman's
birth, though he was courteous and well-mannered. It seemed a great
matter to these three to have fallen in with young Mr. Babington, whose
family was so well-known, and whose own fame as a scholar, as well as an
ardent Catholic, was all over the county.
Robin said little; he was overshadowed by his friend; but he listened
and watched as the four spoke together, and learned that Mr. Simpson had
been made priest scarcely a month before, and was come from Yorkshire,
which was his own county, to minister in the district of the Peak at
least for awhile. He heard, too, news from Douay, and that the college,
it was thought, might move from there to another place under the
protection of the family of De Guise, since her Grace was very hot
against Douay, whence so many of her troubles proceeded, and was doing
her best to persuade the Governor of the Netherlands to suppress it.
However, said Mr. Simpson, it was not yet done.
Anthony, too, in his turn gave the news of the county; he spoke of Mr.
Fenton, of the FitzHerberts and others that were safe and discreet
persons; but he said nothing at that time of Mr. Audrey of Matstead, at
which Robin was glad, since his shame deepened on him every hour, and
all the more now that he had met with those three men who rode so
gallantly through the country in peril of liberty or life itself. Nor
did he say anything of the FitzHerberts except that they might be relied
upon.
"We must be riding," said Garlick at last; "these moors are strange to
me; and it will be dark in half an hour."
"Will you allow me to be your guide, sir?" asked Anthony of the priest.
"It is all in my road, and you will not be troubled with questions or
answers if you are in my company."
"But what of your friend, sir?"
"Oh! Robin knows the country as he knows the flat of his hand. We were
about to separate as we met you."
"Then we will thankfully accept your guidance, sir," said the priest
gravely.
An impulse seized upon Robin as he was about to say good-day, though he
was ashamed of it five minutes later as a modest lad would be. Yet he
followed it now; he leapt off his horse and, holding Cecily's rein in
his arm, kneeled on the stones with both knees.
"Your blessing, sir," he said to the priest. And Anthony eyed him with
astonishment.
III
Robin was moved, as he rode home over the high moors, and down at last
upon the woods of Matstead, in a manner that was new to him, and that he
could not altogether understand. He had met travelling priests before;
indeed, all the priests whose masses he had ever heard, or from whom he
had received the sacraments, were travelling priests who went in peril;
and yet this young man, upon whose consecrated hands the oil was
scarcely yet dry, moved and drew his heart in a manner that he had never
yet known. It was perhaps something in the priest's face that had so
affected him; for there was a look in it of a kind of surprised timidity
and gentleness, as if he wondered at himself for being so foolhardy, and
as if he appealed with that same wonder and surprise to all who looked
on him. His voice, too, was gentle, as if tamed for the seminary and the
altar; and his whole air and manner wholly unlike that of some of the
priests whom Robin knew--loud-voiced, confident, burly men whom you
would have sworn to be country gentlemen or yeomen living on their
estates or farms and fearing to look no man in the face. It was this
latter kind, thought Robin, that was best suited to such a life--to
riding all day through north-country storms, to lodging hardily where
they best could, to living such a desperate enterprise as a priest's
life then was, with prices upon their heads and spies everywhere. It was
not a life for quiet persons like Mr. Simpson, who, surely, would be
better at his books in some college abroad, offering the Holy Sacrifice
in peace and security, and praying for adventurers more hardy than
himself. Yet here was Mr. Simpson just set out upon such an adventure,
of his own free-will and choice, with no compulsion save that of God's
grace.
* * * * *
There was yet more than an hour before supper-time when he rode into the
court at last; and Dick Sampson, his own groom, came to take his horse
from him.
"The master's not been from home to-day, sir," said Dick when Robin
asked of his father.
"Not been from home?"
"No, sir--not out of the house, except that he was walking in the
pleasaunce half an hour ago."
Robin ran up the steps and through the screens to see if his father was
still there; but the little walled garden, so far as he could see it in
the light from the hall windows, was empty; and, indeed, it would be
strange for any man to walk in such a place at such an hour. He
wondered, too, to hear that his father had not been from home; for on
all days, except he were ill, he would be about the estate, here and
there. As he came back to the screens he heard a step going up and down
in the hall, and on looking in met his father face to face. The old man
had his hat on his head, but no cloak on his shoulders, though even with
the fire the place was cold. It was plain that he had been walking up
and down to warm himself. Robin could not make out his face very well,
as he stood with his back to a torch.
"Where have you been, my lad?"
"I went to meet Anthony at one of the Dethick farms, sir--John
Merton's."
"You met no one else?"
"Yes, sir; Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert was there and dined with us. He rode
with us, too, a little way." And then as he was on the point of speaking
of the priest, he stopped himself; and in an instant knew that never
again must he speak of a priest to his father; his father had already
lost his right to that. His father looked at him a moment, standing with
his hands clasped behind his back.
"Have you heard anything of a priest that is newly come to these
parts--or coming?"
"Yes, sir. I hear mass is to be said ... in the district on Sunday."
"Where is mass to be said?"
Robin drew along breath, lifted his eyes to his father's and then
dropped them again.
"Did you hear me, sir? Where is mass to be said?"
Again Robin lifted and again dropped his eyes.
"What is the priest's name?"
Again there was dead silence. For a son, in those days, so to behave
towards his father, was an act of very defiance. Yet the father said
nothing. There the two remained; Robin with his eyes on the ground,
expecting a storm of words or a blow in the face. Yet he knew he could
do no otherwise; the moment had come at last and he must act as he would
be obliged always to act hereafter.
Matters had matured swiftly in the boy's mind, all unconsciously to
himself. Perhaps it was the timid air of the priest he had met an hour
ago that consummated the process. At least it was so consummated.
Then his father turned suddenly on his heel; and the son went out
trembling.
CHAPTER III
I
"I will speak to you to-night, sir, after supper," said his father
sharply a second day later, when Robin, meeting his father setting out
before dinner, had asked him to give him an hour's talk.
* * * * *
Robin's mind had worked fiercely and intently since the encounter in the
hall. His father had sat silent both at supper and afterwards, and the
next day was the same; the old man spoke no more than was necessary,
shortly and abruptly, scarcely looking his son once in the face, and the
rest of the day they had not met. It was plain to the boy that something
must follow his defiance, and he had prepared all his fortitude to meet
it. Yet the second night had passed and no word had been spoken, and by
the second morning Robin could bear it no longer; he must know what was
in his father's mind. And now the appointment was made, and he would
soon know all. His father was absent from dinner and the boy dined
alone. He learned from Dick Sampson that his father had ridden
southwards.
* * * * *
It was not until Robin had sat down nearly half an hour later than
supper-time that the old man came in. The frost was gone; deep mud had
succeeded, and the rider was splashed above his thighs. He stayed at the
fire for his boots to be drawn off and to put on his soft-leather shoes,
while Robin stood up dutifully to await him. Then he came forward, took
his seat without a word, and called for supper. In ominous silence the
meal proceeded, and with the same thunderous air, when it was over, his
father said grace and made his way, followed by his son, into the
parlour behind. He made no motion at first to pour out his wine; then he
helped himself twice and left the jug for Robin.
Then suddenly he began without moving his head.
"I wish to know your intentions," he said, with irony so serious that it
seemed gravity. "I cannot flog you or put you to school again, and I
must know how we stand to one another."
Robin was silent. He had looked at his father once or twice, but now sat
downcast and humble in his place. With his left hand he fumbled, out of
sight, Mr. Maine's pair of beads. His father, for his part, sat with his
feet stretched to the fire, his head propped on his hand, not doing
enough courtesy to his son even to look at him.
"Do you hear me, sir?"
"Yes, sir. But I do not know what to say."
"I wish to know your intentions. Do you mean to thwart and disobey me in
all matters, or in only those that have to do with religion?"
"I do not wish to thwart or disobey you, sir, in any matters except
where my conscience is touched." (The substance of this answer had been
previously rehearsed, and the latter part of it even verbally.)
"Be good enough to tell me what you mean by that."
Robin licked his lips carefully and sat up a little in his chair.
"You told me, sir, that it was your intention to leave the Church. Then
how can I tell you of what priests are here, or where mass is to be
said? You would not have done so to one who was not a Catholic, six
months ago."
The man sneered visibly.
"There is no need," he said. "It is Mr. Simpson who is to say mass
to-morrow, and it is at Tansley that it will be said, at six o'clock in
the morning. If I choose to tell the justices, you cannot prevent it."
(He turned round in a flare of anger.) "Do you think I shall tell the
justices?"
Robin said nothing.
"Do you think I shall tell the justices?" roared the old man
insistently.
"No, sir. Now I do not."
The other growled gently and sank back.
"But if you think that I will permit my son to flout and to my face in
my own hall, and not to trust his own father--why, you are immeasurably
mistaken, sir. So I ask you again how far you intend to thwart and
disobey me."
A kind of despair surged up in the boy's heart--despair at the
fruitlessness of this ironical and furious sort of talk; and with the
despair came boldness.
"Father, will you let me speak outright, without thinking that I mean to
insult you? I do not; I swear I do not. Will you let me speak, sir?"
His father growled again a sort of acquiescence, and Robin gathered his
forces. He had prepared a kind of defence that seemed to him reasonable,
and he knew that his father was at least just. They had been friends,
these two, always, in an underground sort of way, which was all that the
relations of father and son in such days allowed. The old man was curt,
obstinate, and even boisterous in his anger; but there was a kindliness
beneath that the boy always perceived--a kindliness which permitted the
son an exceptional freedom of speech, which he used always in the last
resort and which he knew his father loved to hear him use. This, then,
was plainly a legitimate occasion for it, and he had prepared himself to
make the most of it. He began formally:
"Sir," he said, "you have brought me up in the Old Faith, sent me to
mass, and to the priest to learn my duty, and I have obeyed you always.
You have taught me that a man's duty to God must come before all
else--as our Saviour Himself said, too. And now you turn on me, and bid
me forget all that, and come to church with you.... It is not for me to
say anything to my father about his own conscience; I must leave that
alone. But I am bound to speak of mine when occasion rises, and this is
one of them.... I should be dishonouring and insulting you, sir, if I
did not believe you when you said you would turn Protestant; and a man
who says he will turn Protestant has done so already. It was for this
reason, then, and no other, that I did not answer you the other day; not
because I wish to be disobedient to you, but because I must be obedient
to God. I did not lie to you, as I might have done, and say that I did
not know who the priest was nor where mass was to be said. But I would
not answer, because it is not right or discreet for a Catholic to speak
of these things to those who are not Catholics--"
"How dare you say I am not a Catholic, sir!"
"A Catholic, sir, to my mind," said Robin steadily, "is one who holds to
the Catholic Church and to no other. I mean nothing offensive, sir; I
mean what I said I meant, and no more. It is not for me to condemn--"
"I should think not!" snorted the old man.
"Well, sir, that is my reason. And further--"
He stopped, doubtful.
"Well, sir--what further?"
"Well, I cannot come to the church with you at Easter."
His father wheeled round savagely in his chair.
"Father, hear me out, and then say what you will.... I say I cannot come
with you to church at Easter, because I am a Catholic. But I do not wish
to trouble or disobey you openly. I will go away from home for that
time. Good Mr. Barton will cause no trouble; he wants nothing but peace.
Father, you are not just to me. You have taught me too much, or you have
not given me time enough--"
Again he broke off, knowing that he had said what he did not mean, but
the old man was on him like a hawk.
"Not time enough, you say? Well, then--"
"No, sir; I did not mean that," wailed Robin suddenly. "I do not mean
that I should change if I had a hundred years; I am sure I shall not.
But--"
"You said, 'Not time enough,'" said the other meditatively. "Perhaps if
I give you time--"
"Father, I beg of you to forget what I said; I did not mean to say it.
It is not true. But Marjorie said--"
"Marjorie! What has Marjorie to do with it?"
Robin found himself suddenly in deep waters. He had plunged and found
that he could not swim. This was the second mistake he had made in
saying what he did not mean.... Again the courage of despair came to
him, and he struck out further.
"I must tell you of that too, sir," he said. "Mistress Marjorie and I--"
He stopped, overwhelmed with shame. His father turned full round and
stared at him.
"Go on, sir."
Robin seized his glass and emptied it.
"Well, sir. Mistress Marjorie and I love one another. We are but boy and
girl, sir; we know that--"
Then his father laughed. It was laughter that was at once hearty and
bitter; and, with it, came the closing of the open door in the boy's
heart. As there came out, after it, sentence after sentence of scorn and
contempt, the bolts, so to say, were shot and the key turned. It might
all have been otherwise if the elder man had been kind, or if he had
been sad or disappointed, or even if he had been merely angry; but the
soreness and misery in the old man's heart--misery at his own acts and
words, and at the outrage he was doing to his own conscience--turned his
judgment bitter, and with that bitterness his son's heart shut tight
against him.
"But boy and girl!" sneered the man. "A couple of blind puppies, I would
say rather--you with your falcons and mare and your other toys, and the
down on your chin, and your conscience; and she with her white face and
her mother and her linen-parlour and her beads"--(his charity prevailed
so far as to hinder him from more outspoken contempt)--"And you two
babes have been prattling of conscience and prayers together--I make no
doubt, and thinking yourselves Cecilies and Laurences and all the holy
martyrs--and all this without a by-your-leave, I dare wager, from parent
or father, and thinking yourselves man and wife; and you fondling her,
and she too modest to be fondled, and--"
The plain truth struck him with sudden splendour, at least sufficiently
strong to furnish him with a question.
"And have you told Mistress Marjorie about your sad rogue of a father?"
Robin, white with anger, held his lips grimly together and the wrath
blazed in an instant up from the scornful old heart, whose very love was
turned to gall.
"Tell me, sir--I will have it!" he cried.
Robin looked at him with such hard fury in his eyes that for a moment
the man winced. Then he recovered himself, and again his anger rose to
the brim.
"You need not look at me like that, you hound. Tell me, I say!"
"I will not!" shouted Robin, springing to his feet.
The old man was up too by now, with all the anger of his son hardened by
his dignity.
"You will not?"
"No."
For a moment the fate of them both still hung in the balance. If, even
at this instant, the father had remembered his love rather than his
dignity, had thought of the past and its happy years, rather than of the
blinding, swollen present; or, on the other side, if the son had but
submitted if only for an hour, and obeyed in order that he might rule
later--the whole course might have run aright, and no hearts have been
broken and no blood shed. But neither would yield. There was the fierce
northern obstinacy in them both; the gentle birth sharpened its edge;
the defiant refusal of the son, the wounding contempt of the father not
for his son only, but for his son's love--these things inflamed the
hearts of both to madness. The father seized his ultimate right, and
struck his son across the face.
Then the son answered by his only weapon.
For a sensible pause he stood there, his fresh face paled to chalkiness,
except where the print of five fingers slowly reddened. Then he made a
courteous little gesture, as if to invite his father to sit down; and as
the other did so, slowly and shaking all over, struck at him by careful
and calculated words, delivered with a stilted and pompous air:
"You have beaten me, sir; so, of course, I obey. Yes, I told Mistress
Marjorie Manners that my father no longer counted himself a Catholic,
and would publicly turn Protestant at Easter, so as to please her Grace
and be in favour with the Court and with the county justices. And I have
told Mr. Babington so as well, and also Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert. It will
spare you the pain, sir, of making any public announcement on the
matter. It is always a son's duty to spare his father pain."
Then he bowed, wheeled, and went out of the room.
II
Two hours later Robin was still lying completely dressed on his bed in
the dark.
It was a plain little chamber where he lay, fireless, yet not too cold,
since it was wainscoted from floor to ceiling, and looked out eastwards
upon the pleasaunce, with rooms on either side of it. A couple of
presses sunk in the walls held his clothes and boots; a rush-bottomed
chair stood by the bed; and the bed itself, laid immediately on the
ground, was such as was used in most good houses by all except the
master and mistress, or any sick members of the family--a straw mattress
and a wooden pillow. His bows and arrows, with a pair of dags or
pistols, hung on a rack against the wall at the foot of his bed, and a
little brass cross engraved with a figure of the Crucified hung over it.
It was such a chamber as any son of a house might have, who was a
gentleman and not luxurious.
A hundred thoughts had gone through his mind since he had flung himself
down here shaking with passion; and these had begun already to repeat
themselves, like a turning wheel, in his head. Marjorie; his love for
her; his despair of that love; his father; all that they had been, one
to the other, in the past; the little, or worse than little, that they
would be, one to the other, in the future; the priest's face as he had
seen it three days ago; what would be done at Easter, what later--all
these things, coloured and embittered now by his own sorrow for his
words to his father, and the knowledge that he had shamed himself when
he should have suffered in silence--these things turned continually in
his head, and he was too young and too simple to extricate one from the
other all at once.
Things had come about in a manner which yesterday he would not have
thought possible. He had never before spoken so to one to whom he owed
reverence; neither had this one ever treated him so. His father had
stood always to him for uprightness and justice; he had no more
questioned these virtues in his father than in God. Words or acts of
either might be strange or incomprehensible, yet the virtues themselves
remained always beyond a doubt; and now, with the opening of the door
which his father's first decision had accomplished, a crowd of questions
and judgments had rushed in, and a pillar of earth and heaven was shaken
at last.... It is a dreadful day when for the first time to a young man
or maiden, any shadow of God, however unworthy, begins to tremble.
* * * * *
He understood presently, however, what an elder man, or a less childish,
would have understood at once--that these things must be dealt with one
by one, and that that which lay nearest to his hand was his own fault.
Even then he fought with his conscience; he told himself that no lad of
spirit could tolerate such insults against his love, to say nothing of
the injustice against himself that had gone before; but, being honest,
he presently inquired of what spirit such a lad would be--not of that
spirit which Marjorie would approve, nor the gentle-eyed priest he had
spoken with....
Well, the event was certain with such as Robin, and he was presently
standing at the door of his room, his boots drawn off and laid aside,
listening, with a heart beating in his ears to hinder him, for any sound
from beneath. He did not know whether his father were abed or not. If
not, he must ask his pardon at once.
He went downstairs at last, softly, to the parlour, and peeped in. All
was dark, except for the glimmer from the stove, and his heart felt
lightened. Then, as he was cold with his long vigil outside his bed, he
stirred the embers into a blaze and stood warming himself.
How strange and passionless, he thought, looked this room, after the
tempest that had raged in it just now. The two glasses stood there--his
own not quite empty--and the jug between them. His father's chair was
drawn to the table, as if he were still sitting in it; his own was flung
back as he had pushed it from him in his passion. There was an old print
over the stove at which he looked presently--it had been his mother's,
and he remembered it as long as his life had been--it was of Christ
carrying His cross.
His shame began to increase on him. How wickedly he had answered, with
every word a wound! He knew that the most poisonous of them all were
false; he had known it even while he spoke them; it was not to curry
favour with her Grace that his father had lapsed; it was that his temper
was tried beyond bearing by those continual fines and rebuffs; the old
man's patience was gone--that was all. And he, his son, had not said one
word of comfort or strength; he had thought of himself and his own
wrongs, and being reviled he had reviled again....
There stood against the wall between the windows a table and an oaken
desk that held the estate-bills and books; and beside the desk were laid
clean sheets of paper, an ink-pot, a pounce-box, and three or four
feather pens. It was here that he wrote, being newly from school, at his
father's dictation, or his father sometimes wrote himself, with pain and
labour, the few notices or letters that were necessary. So he went to
this and sat down at it; he pondered a little; then he wrote a single
line of abject regret.
"I ask your pardon and God's, sir, for the wicked words I said before I
left the parlour. R." He folded this and addressed it with the proper
superscription; and left it lying there.
III
It was a strange ride that he had back from Tansley next morning after
mass.
Dick Sampson had met him with the horses in the stable-court at Matstead
a little after four o'clock in the morning; and together they had ridden
through the pitch darkness, each carrying a lantern fastened to his
stirrup. So complete was the darkness, however, and so small and
confined the circle of light cast by the tossing light, that, for all
they saw, they might have been riding round and round in a garden. Now
trees showed grim and towering for an instant, then gone again; now
their eyes were upon the track, the pools, the rugged ground, the soaked
meadow-grass; half a dozen times the river glimmered on their right,
turbid and forbidding. Once there shone in the circle of light the eyes
of some beast--pig or stag; seen and vanished again.
But the return journey was another matter; for they needed no lanterns,
and the dawn rose steadily overhead, showing all that they passed in
ghostly fashion, up to final solidity.
It resembled, in fact, the dawn of Faith in a soul.
First from the darkness outlines only emerged, vast and sinister, of
such an appearance that it was impossible to tell their proportions or
distances. The skyline a mile away, beyond the Derwent, might have been
the edge of a bank a couple of yards off; the glimmering pool on the
lower meadow path might be the lighted window of a house across the
valley. There succeeded to outlines a kind of shaded tint, all worked in
gray like a print, clear enough to distinguish tree from boulder and sky
from water, yet not clear enough to show the texture of anything. The
third stage was that in which colours began to appear, yet flat and
dismal, holding, it seemed, no light, yet reflecting it; and all in an
extraordinary cold clearness. Nature seemed herself, yet struck to
dumbness. No breeze stirred the twigs overhead or the undergrowth
through which they rode. Once, as the two, riding a little apart, turned
suddenly together, up a ravine into thicker woods, they came upon a herd
of deer, who stared on them without any movement that the eye could see.
Here a stag stood with two hinds beside him; behind, Robin saw the backs
and heads of others that lay still. Only the beasts kept their eyes upon
them, as they went, watching, as if it were a picture only that went by.
So, by little and little, the breeze stirred like a waking man; cocks
crew from over the hills one to the other; dogs barked far away, till
the face of the world was itself again, and the smoke from Matstead rose
above the trees in front.
Robin had ridden in the dawn an hundred times before; yet never before
had he so perceived that strange deliberateness and sleep of the world;
and he had ridden, too, perhaps twenty times at such an hour, with his
father beside him, after mass on some such occasion. Yet it seemed to
him this time that it was the mass which he had seen, and his own
solitariness, that had illuminated his eyes. It was dreadful to him--and
yet it threw him more than ever on himself and God--that his father
would ride with him so no more. Henceforward he would go alone, or with
a servant only; he would, alone, go up to the door of house or barn and
rap four times with his riding-whip; alone he would pass upstairs
through the darkened house to the shrouded room, garret or bed-chamber,
where the group was assembled, all in silence; where presently a dark
figure would rise and light the pair of candles, and then, himself a
ghost, vest there by their light, throwing huge shadows on wainscot and
ceiling as his arms went this way and that; and then, alone of all that
were of blood-relationship to him, he would witness the Holy
Sacrifice....
How long that would be so, he did not know. Something surely must happen
that would prevent it. Or, at least, some day, he would ride so with
Marjorie, whom he had seen this morning across the dusky candle-lit
gloom, praying in a corner; or, maybe, with her would entertain the
priest, and open the door to the worshippers who streamed in, like bees
to a flower-garden, from farm and manor and village. He could not for
ever ride alone from Matstead and meet his father's silence.
One thing more, too, had moved him this morning; and that, the sight of
the young priest at the altar whom he had met on the moor. Here, more
than ever, was the gentle priestliness and innocency apparent. He stood
there in his red vestments; he moved this way and that; he made his
gestures; he spoke in undertones, lit only by the pair of wax-candles,
more Levitical than ever in such a guise, yet more unsuited than ever to
such exterior circumstances. Surely this man should say mass for ever;
yet surely never again ride over the moors to do it, amidst enemies. He
was of the strong castle and the chamber, not of the tent and the
battle.... And yet it was of such soldiers as these, as well as of the
sturdy and the strong, that Christ's army was made.
* * * * *
It was in broad daylight, though under a weeping sky, that Robin rode
into the court at Matstead. He shook the rain from his cloak within the
screens, and stamped to get the mud away; and, as he lifted his hat to
shake it, his father came in from the pleasaunce.
Robin glanced up at him, swift and shy, half smiling, expecting a word
or a look. His father must surely have read his little letter by now,
and forgiven him. But the smile died away again, as he met the old man's
eyes; they were as hard as steel; his clean-shaven lips were set like a
trap, and, though he looked at his son, it seemed that he did not see
him. He passed through the screens and went down the steps into the
court.
The boy's heart began to beat so as near to sicken him after his long
fast and his ride. He told himself that his father could not have been
into the parlour yet, though he knew, even while he thought it, that
this was false comfort. He stood there an instant, waiting; hoping that
even now his father would call to him; but the strong figure passed
resolutely on out of sight.
Then the boy went into the hall, and swiftly through it. There on the
desk in the window lay the pen he had flung down last night, but no
more; the letter was gone; and, as he turned away, he saw lying among
the wood-ashes of the cold stove a little crumpled ball. He stooped and
drew it out. It was his letter, tossed there after the reading; his
father had not taken the pains to keep it safe, nor even to destroy it.
CHAPTER IV
I
The company was already assembled both within and without Padley, when
Robin rode up from the riverside, on a fine, windy morning, for the
sport of the day. Perhaps a dozen horses stood tethered at the entrance
to the little court, with a man or two to look after them, for the
greater part of their riders were already within; and a continual coming
and going of lads with dogs; falconers each with his cadge, or
three-sided frame on which sat the hawks; a barking of hounds, a
screaming of birds, a clatter of voices and footsteps in the court--all
this showed that the boy was none too early. A man stepped forward to
take his mare and his hawks; and Robin slipped from his saddle and went
in.
* * * * *
Padley Hall was just such a house as would serve a wealthy gentleman who
desired a small country estate with sufficient dignity and not too many
responsibilities. It stood upon the side of the hill, well set-up above
the damps of the valley, yet protected from the north-easterly winds by
the higher slopes, on the tops of which lay Burbage Moor, where the
hawking was to be held. On the south, over the valley, stood out the
modest hall and buttery (as, indeed, they stand to this day), with a
door between them, well buttressed in two places upon the falling
ground, in one by a chimney, in the other by a slope of masonry; and
behind these buildings stood the rest of the court, the stables, the
wash-house, the bake-house and such like, below; and, above, the
sleeping rooms for the family and the servants. On the first floor,
above the buttery and the hall, were situated the ladies' parlour and
chapel; for this, at least, Padley had, however little its dignity in
other matters, that it retained its chapel served in these sorrowful
days not, as once, by a chaplain, but by whatever travelling priest
might be there.
* * * * *
Robin entered through the great gate on the east side--a dark entrance
kept by a porter who saluted him--and rode through into the court; and
here, indeed, was the company; for out of the windows of the low hall on
his left came a babble of tongues, while two or three gentlemen with
pots in their hands saluted him from the passage door, telling him that
Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert was within. Mr. Fenton was one of these, come
over from North Lees, where he had his manor, a brisk, middle-aged man,
dressed soberly and well, with a pointed beard and pleasant, dancing
eyes.
"And Mr. John, too, came last night," he said; "but he will not hawk
with us. He is ridden from London on private matters."
It was an exceedingly gay sight on which Robin looked as he turned into
the hall. It was a low room, ceiled in oak and wainscoted half-way up, a
trifle dark, since it was lighted only by one or two little windows on
either side, yet warm and hospitable looking; with a great fire burning
in a chimney on the south side, and perhaps a dozen and a half persons
sitting over their food and drink, since they were dining early to-day
to have the longer time for sport.
A voice hailed him as he came in; and he went up to pay his respects to
Mr. John FitzHerbert, a tall man, well past middle-age, who sat with his
hat on his head, at the centre of the high table, with the arms of Eyre
and FitzHerbert beneath the canopy, all emblazoned, to do the honours
of the day.
"You are late, sir, you are late!" he cried out genially. "We are just
done."
Robin saluted him. He liked this man, though he did not know him very
well; for he was continually about the country, now in London, now at
Norbury, now at Swinnerton, always occupied with these endless matters
of fines and recusancy.
Robin saluted him then, and said a word or two; bowed to Mr. Thomas, his
son, who came up to speak with him; and then looked for Marjorie. She
sat there, at the corner of the table, with Mrs. Fenton at one side, and
an empty seat on the other. Robin immediately sat down in it, to eat his
dinner, beginning with the "gross foods," according to the English
custom. There was a piece of Christmas brawn to-day, from a pig fattened
on oats and peas, and hardened by being lodged (while he lived) on a
boarded floor; all this was told Robin across the table with
particularity, while he ate it, and drank, according to etiquette, a cup
of bastard. He attended to all this zealously, while never for an
instant was he unaware of the girl.
They tricked their elders very well, these two innocent ones. You would
have sworn that Robin looked for another place and could not see one,
you would have sworn that they were shy of one another, and spoke
scarcely a dozen sentences. Yet they did very well each in the company
of the other; and Robin, indeed, before he had finished his partridge,
had conveyed to her that there was news that he had, and must give to
her before the day was out. She looked at him with enough dismay in her
face for him at least to read it; for she knew by his manner that it
would not be happy news.
So, too, when the fruit was done and dinner was over (for they had no
opportunity to speak at any length), again you would have sworn that the
last idea in his mind, as in hers, was that he should be the one to help
her to her saddle. Yet he did so; and he fetched her hawk for her, and
settled her reins in her hand; and presently he on one side of her, with
Mr. Fenton on the other side, were riding up through Padley chase; and
the talk and the laughter went up too.
II
Up on the high moors, in the frank-chase, here indeed was a day to make
sad hearts rejoice. The air was soft, as if spring were come before his
time; and in the great wind that blew continually from the south-west,
bearing the high clouds swiftly against the blue, ruffling the stiff
heather-twigs and bilberry beneath--here was wine enough for any
mourners. Before them, as they went--two riding before, with falconers
on either side a little behind and the lads with the dogs beside them,
and the rest in a silent line some twenty yards to the rear--stretched
the wide, flat moor like a tumbled table-cloth, broken here and there by
groups of wind-tossed beech and oak, backed by the tall limestone crags
like pillar-capitals of an upper world; with here and there a little
shallow quarry whence marble had been taken for Derby. But more lovely
than all were the valleys, seen from here, as great troughs up whose
sides trooped the leafless trees--lit by the streams that threw back the
sunlit sky from their bosoms; with here a mist of smoke blown all about
from a village out of sight, here the shadow of a travelling cloud that
fled as swift as the wind that drove it, extinguishing the flash of
water only to release it again, darkening a sweep of land only to make
the sunlight that followed it the more sweet.
Yet the two saw little of this, dear and familiar as they found it;
since, first they rode together, and next, as it should be with young
hearts, the sport presently began and drove all else away.
The sport was done in this way:
The two that rode in front selected each from the cadge one of his own
falcons (it was peregrines that were used at the beginning of the day,
since they were first after partridges), and so rode, carrying his
falcon on his wrist, hooded, belled, and in the leash, ready to cast
off. Immediately before them went a lad with a couple of dogs to nose
the game--these also in a leash until they stiffened. Then the lad
released them and stepped softly back, while the riders moved on at a
foot's-pace, and the spaniels behind rose on their hind legs, choked by
the chain, whimpering, fifty yards in the rear. Slowly the dogs
advanced, each a frozen model of craft and blood-lust, till an instant
afterwards, with a whir and a chattering like a broken clock, the covey
whirled from the thick growth underfoot, and flashed away northwards;
and, a moment later, up went the peregrines behind them. Then, indeed,
it was _sauve qui peut_, for the ground was full of holes here and
there, though there were grass-stretches as well on which all rode with
loose rein, the two whose falcons were sprung always in front, according
to custom, and the rest in a medley behind. Away then went the birds,
pursued and pursuers, till, like a falling star the falcon stooped, and
then, maybe, the other a moment later, down upon the quarry; and a
minute later there was the falcon back again shivering with pride and
ecstasy, or all ruffle-feathered with shame, back on his master's wrist,
and another torn partridge, or maybe two, in the bottom of the lad's
bag; and arguments went full pelt, and cries, and sometimes sharp words,
and faults were found, and praise was given, and so, on for another
pair.
It was but natural that Robin and Marjorie should compete one against
the other, for they were riding together and talked together. So
presently Mr. Thomas called to them, and beckoned them to their places.
Robin set aside Agnes on to the cadge and chose Magdalen, and Marjorie
chose Sharpie. The array was set, and all moved forward.
It was a short chase and a merry one. Two birds rose from the heather
and flew screaming, skimming low, as from behind them moved on the
shadows of death, still as clouds, with great noiseless sweeps of
sickle-shaped wings. Behind came the gallopers; Marjorie on her black
horse, Robin on Cecily, seeming to compete, yet each content if either
won, each, maybe--or at least Marjorie--desiring that the other should
win. And the wind screamed past them as they went.
Then came the stoops--together as if fastened by one string--faultless
and exquisite; and, as the two rode up and drew rein, there, side by
side on the windy turf, two fierce statues of destiny--cruel-eyed,
blood-stained on the beaks, resolute and suspicious--eyed them
motionless, the claws sunk deeply through back and head--awaiting
recapture.
Marjorie turned swiftly to the boy as he leaped off.
"In the chapel," she said, "at Padley."
Robin stared at her. Then he understood and nodded his head, as Mr.
Thomas rode up, his beard all blown about by the wind, breathless but
congratulatory.
III
It fell on Robin's mind with a certain heaviness and reproach that it
should have been she who should have carried in her head all day the
unknown news that he was to give her and he who should have forgotten
it. He understood then a little better of all that he must be to her,
since, as he turned to her (his head full of hawks, and the glory of the
shouting wind, and every thought of Faith and father clean blown away),
it was to her mind that the under-thought had leapt, that here was their
first, and perhaps their last, chance of speaking in private.
It was indeed their last chance, for the sun already stood over
Chapel-le-Frith far away to the south-west; and they must begin their
circle to return, in which the ladies should fly their merlins after
larks, and there was no hope henceforth for Robin. Henceforth she rode
with Mrs. Fenton and two or three more, while the gentlemen who loved
sport more than courtesy, turned to the left over the broken ground to
work back once more after partridges. And Robin dared no more ride with
his love, for fear that his company all day with her should be marked.
* * * * *
It was within an hour of sunset that Robin, riding ahead, having lost a
hawk and his hat, having fallen into a bog-hole, being one mask of mud
from head to foot, slid from his horse into Dick's hands and demanded if
the ladies were back.
"Yes, sir; they are back half an hour ago. They are in the parlour."
Robin knew better. "I shall be riding in ten minutes," he said; "give
the mare a mouthful."
He limped across the court, and looking behind him to see if any saw,
and finding the court at that instant empty, ran up, as well as he
could, the stone staircase that rose from the outside to the chapel
door. It was unlatched. He pushed it open and went in.
* * * * *
It was a brave thing that the FitzHerberts did in keeping such a place
at all, since the greatest Protestant fool in the valley knew what the
little chamber was that had the angels carved on the beam-ends, and the
piscina in the south wall. Windows looked out every way; through those
on the south could be seen now the darkening valley and the sunlit
hills, and, yet more necessary, the road by which any travellers from
the valley must surely come. Within, too, scarcely any pains were taken
to disguise the place. It was wainscoted from roof to floor--veiled,
floored and walled in oak. A great chest stood beneath the little east
window of two lights, that cried "Altar" if any chest ever did so. A
great press stood against the wooden screen that shut the room from the
ladies' parlour next door; filled in three shelves with innocent linen,
for this was the only disguise that the place stooped to put on. You
could not swear that mass was said there, but you could swear that it
was a place in which mass would very suitably be said. A couple of
benches were against the press, and three or four chairs stood about the
floor.
Robin saw her against the light as soon as he came in. She was still in
her blue riding-dress, with the hood on her shoulders, and held her whip
in her hand; but he could see no more of her head than the paleness of
her face and the gleam on her black hair.
"Well, then?" she whispered sharply; and then: "Why, what a state you
are in!"
"It's nothing," said Robin. "I rolled in a bog-hole."
She looked at him anxiously.
"You are not hurt?... Sit down at least."
He sat down stiffly, and she beside him, still watching to see if he
were the worse for his falling. He took her hand in his.
"I am not fit to touch you," he said.
"Tell me the news; tell me quickly."
So he told her; of the wrangle in the parlour and what had passed
between his father and him; of his own bitterness; and his letter, and
the way in which the old man had taken it.
"He has not spoken to me since," he said, "except in public before the
servants. Both nights after supper he has sat silent and I beside him."
"And you have not spoken to him?" she asked quickly.
"I said something to him after supper on Sunday, and he made no answer.
He has done all his writing himself. I think it is for him to speak now.
I should only anger him more if I tried it again."
She sighed suddenly and swiftly, but said nothing. Her hand lay passive
in his, but her face was turned now to the bright southerly window, and
he could see her puzzled eyes and her down-turned, serious mouth. She
was thinking with all her wits, and, plainly, could come to no
conclusion.
She turned to him again.
"And you told him plainly that you and I ... that you and I--"
"That you and I loved one another? I told him plainly. And it was his
contempt that angered me."
She sighed again.
* * * * *
It was a troublesome situation in which these two children found
themselves. Here was the father of one of them that knew, yet not the
parents of the other, who should know first of all. Neither was there
any promise of secrecy and no hope of obtaining it. If she should not
tell her parents, then if the old man told them, deception would be
charged against her; and if she should tell them, perhaps he would not
have done so, and so all be brought to light too soon and without cause.
And besides all this there were the other matters, heavy enough before,
yet far more heavy now--matters of their hopes for the future, the
complications with regard to the Religion, what Robin should do, what he
should not do.
So they sat there silent, she thinking and he waiting upon her thought.
She sighed again and turned to him her troubled eyes.
"My Robin," she said, "I have been thinking so much about you, and I
have feared sometimes--"
She stopped herself, and he looked for her to finish. She drew her hand
away and stood up.
"Oh! it is miserable!" she cried. "And all might have been so happy."
The tears suddenly filled her eyes so that they shone like flowers in
dew.
He stood up, too, and put his muddy arm about her shoulders. (She felt
so slight and slender.)
"It will be happy," he said. "What have you been fearing?"
She shook her head and the tears ran down.
"I cannot tell you yet.... Robin, what a holy man that travelling priest
must be, who said mass on Sunday."
The lad was bewildered at her swift changes of thought, for he did not
yet see the chain on which they hung. He strove to follow her.
"It seemed so to me too," he said. "I think I have never seen--"
"It seemed so to you too," she cried. "Why, what do you know of him?"
He was amazed at her vehemence. She had drawn herself clear of his arm
and was looking at him full in the face.
"I met him on the moor," he said. "I had some talk with him. I got his
blessing."
"You got his blessing! Why, so did I, after the mass, when you were
gone."
"Then that should join us more closely than ever," he said.
"In Heaven, perhaps, but on earth--" She checked herself again. "Tell me
what you thought of him, Robin."
"I thought it was strange that such a man as that should live such a
rough life. If he were in the seminary now, safe at Douay--"
She seemed a shade paler, but her eyes did not flicker.
"Yes," she said. "And you thought--?"
"I thought that it was not that kind of man who should fare so hardly.
If it were a man like John Merton, who is accustomed to such things, or
a man like me--"
Again he stopped; he did not know why. But it was as if she had cried
out, though she neither spoke nor moved.
"You thought that, did you, Robin?" she said presently, never moving her
eyes from his face. "I thought so, too."
"But I do not know why we are talking about Mr. Simpson," said the lad.
"There are other affairs more pressing."
"I am not sure," said she.
"Marjorie, my love, what are you thinking about?"
She had turned her eyes and was looking out through the little window.
Outside the red sunlight still lay on the crags and slopes beyond the
deep valley beneath them, and her face was bright in the reflected
brightness. Yet he thought he had never seen her look so serious. She
turned her eyes back to him as he spoke.
"I am thinking of a great many things," she said. "I am thinking of the
Faith and of sorrow and of love."
"My love, what do you mean?"
Suddenly she made a swift movement towards him and took him by the
lapels. He could see her face close beneath his, yet it was in shadow
again, and he could make out of it no more than the shadows of mouth and
eyes.
"Robin," she said, "I cannot tell you unless God tells you Himself. I am
told that I am too scrupulous sometimes.... I do not know what I think,
nor what is right, nor what are fancies.... But ... but I know that I
love you with all my heart ... and ... and that I cannot bear--"
Then her face was on his breast in a passion of weeping, and his arms
were round her, and his lips on her hair.
IV
Dick found his master a poor travelling companion as they rode home. He
made a few respectful remarks as to the sport of the day, but he was
answered by a wandering eye and a complete lack of enthusiasm. Mr. Robin
rode loosely and heavily. Three or four times his mare stumbled (and no
wonder, after all that she had gone through), and he jerked her
savagely.
Then Dick tried another tack and began to speak of the company, but with
no greater success. He discoursed on the riding of Mrs. Fenton, and the
peregrine of Mr. Thomas, who had distinguished herself that day, and he
was met by a lack-lustre eye once more.
Finally he began to speak of the religious gossip of the
countryside--how it was said that another priest, a Mr. Nelson, had been
taken, in London, as Mr. Maine had been in Cornwall; that, it was said
again, priests would have to look to their lives in future, and not only
to their liberty; how the priest, Mr. Simpson, was said to be a native
of Yorkshire, and how he was ridden northwards again, still with Mr.
Ludlam. And here he met with a little more encouragement. Mr. Robin
asked where was Mr. Simpson gone to, and Dick told him he did not know,
but that he would be back again by Easter, it was thought, or, if not,
another priest would be in the district. Then he began to gossip of Mr.
Ludlam; how a man had told him that his cousin's wife thought that Mr.
Ludlam was to go abroad to be made priest himself, and that perhaps Mr.
Garlick would go too.
"That is the kind of priest we want, sir," said Dick.
"Eh?"
"That is the kind of priest we want, sir," repeated Dick solemnly. "We
should do better with natives than foreigners. We want priests who know
the county and the ways of the people--and men too, I think, sir, who
can ride and know something of sport, and can talk of it. I told Mr.
Simpson, sir, of the sport we were to have to-day, and he seemed to care
nothing about it!"
Robin sighed aloud.
"I suppose so," he said.
"Mr. John looked well, sir," pursued Dick, and proceeded to speak at
length of the FitzHerbert troubles, and the iniquities of the Queen's
Grace. He was such a man as was to be found throughout all England
everywhere at this time--a man whose religion was a part of his
politics, and none the less genuine for that. He was a shrewd man in his
way, with the simplicity which belongs to such shrewdness; he disliked
the new ways which he experienced chiefly in the towns, and put them
down, not wholly without justice, to the change of which religion formed
an integral part; he hated the beggars and would gladly have gone to see
one flogged; and he disliked the ministers and their sermons and their
"prophesyings" with all the healthy ardour of prejudice. Once in the
year did Dick approach the sacraments, and a great business he made of
it, being unusually morose before them and almost indecently boisterous
after them. He was feudal to the very heart of him; and it was his
feudality that made him faithful to his religion as well as to his
masters, for either of which he would resolutely have died. And what in
the world he would do when he discovered, at Easter, that the objects of
his fidelity were to take opposite courses, Robin could not conceive.
As they rode in at last, Robin, who had fallen silent again after Dick's
last piece of respectful vehemence, suddenly beat his own leg with his
whip and uttered an inaudible word. It seemed to Dick that the young
master had perceived clearly that which plainly had been worrying him
all the way home, and that he did not like it.
CHAPTER V
I
Mr. Manners sat in his parlour ten days after the beginning of Lent,
full of his Sunday dinner and of perplexing thoughts all at once. He had
eaten well and heartily after his week of spare diet, and then, while in
high humour with all the world, first his wife and then his daughter had
laid before him such revelations that all the pleasure of digestion was
gone. It was but three minutes ago that Marjorie had fled from him in a
torrent of tears, for which he could not see himself responsible, since
he had done nothing but make the exclamations and comments that should
be expected of a father in such a case.
The following were the points for his reflection--to begin with those
that touched him less closely.
First that his friend Mr. Audrey, whom he had always looked upon with
reverence and a kind of terror because of his hotness in matters of
politics and religion, had capitulated to the enemy and was to go to
church at Easter. Mr. Manners himself had something of timidity in his
nature: he was conservative certainly, and practised, when he could
without bringing himself into open trouble, the old religion in which he
had been brought up. He, like the younger generation, had been educated
at Derby Grammar School, and in his youth had sat with his parents in
the nave of the old Cluniac church of St. James to hear mass. He had
then entered his father's office in Derby, about the time that the
Religious Houses had fallen, and had transferred the scene of his
worship to St. Peter's. At Queen Mary's accession, he had stood, with
mild but genuine enthusiasm, in his lawyer's gown, in the train of the
sheriff who proclaimed her in Derby market-place; and stood in the
crowd, with corresponding dismay, six years later to shout for Queen
Elizabeth. Since that date, for the first eleven years he had gone, as
did other Catholics, to his parish church secretly, thankful that there
was no doubt as to the priesthood of his parson, to hear the English
prayers; and then, to do him justice, though he heard with something
resembling consternation the decision from Rome that compromise must
cease and that, henceforth, all true Catholics must withdraw themselves
from the national worship, he had obeyed without even a serious moment
of consideration. He had always feared that it might be so,
understanding that delay in the decision was only caused by the hope
that even now the breach might not be final or complete; and so was
better prepared for the blow when it came. Since that time he had heard
mass when he could, and occasionally even harboured priests, urged
thereto by his wife and daughter; and, for the rest, still went into
Derby for three or four days a week to carry on his lawyer's business,
with Mr. Biddell his partner, and had the reputation of a sound and
careful man without bigotry or passion.
It was, then, a shock to his love of peace and serenity, to hear that
yet another Catholic house had fallen, and that Mr. Audrey, one of his
clients, could no longer be reckoned as one of his co-religionists.
The next point for his reflection was that Robin was refusing to follow
his father's example; the third, that somebody must harbour the boy over
Easter, and that, in his daughter's violently expressed opinion, and
with his wife's consent, he, Thomas Manners, was the proper person to do
it. Last, that it was plain that there was something between his
daughter and this boy, though what that was he had been unable to
understand. Marjorie had flown suddenly from the room just as he was
beginning to put his questions.
It is no wonder, then, that his peace of mind was gone. Not only were
large principles once more threatened--considerations of religion and
loyalty, but also those small and intimate principles which, so far more
than great ones, agitate the mind of the individual. He did not wish to
lose a client; yet neither did he wish to be unfriendly to a young
confessor for the faith. Still less did he wish to lose his daughter,
above all to a young man whose prospects seemed to be vanishing. He
wondered whether it would be prudent to consult Mr. Biddell on the
point....
* * * * *
He was a small and precise man in his body and face, as well as in his
dress; his costume was, of course, of black; but he went so far as to
wear black buckles, too, on his shoes, and a black hilt on his sword.
His face was little and anxious; his eyebrows were perpetually arched,
as if in appeal, and he was accustomed, when in deep thought, to move
his lips as if in a motion of tasting. So, then, he sat before his fire
to-day after dinner, his elbow on the table where his few books lay, his
feet crossed before him, his cup of drink untouched at his side; and
meantime he tasted continually with his lips, as if better to appreciate
the values and significances of the points for his consideration.
* * * * *
It would be about half an hour later that the door opened once more and
Marjorie came in again.
She was in her fine dress to-day--fine, that is, according to the
exigencies of the time and place, though sober enough if for a
town-house--in a good blue silk, rather dark, with a little ruff, with
lace ruffles at her wrists, and a quilted petticoat, and silver
buckles. For she was a gentleman's daughter, quite clearly, and not a
yeoman's, and she must dress to her station. Her face was very pale and
quite steady. She stood opposite her father.
"Father," she said, "I am very sorry for having behaved like a goose.
You were quite right to ask those questions, and I have come back to
answer them."
He had ceased tasting as she came in. He looked at her timidly and yet
with an attempt at severity. He knew what was due from him as a father.
But for the present he had forgotten what questions they were; his mind
had been circling so wildly.
"You are right to come back," he said, "you should not have left me so."
"I am very sorry," she said again.
"Well, then--you tell me that Mr. Robin has nowhere else to go."
She flushed a little.
"He has ten places to go to. He has plenty of friends. But none have the
right that we have. He is a neighbour; it was to me, first of all, that
he told the trouble."
Then he remembered.
"Sit down," he said. "I must understand much better first. I do not
understand why he came to you first. Why not, if he must come to this
house at all--why not to me? I like the lad; he knows that well enough."
He spoke with an admirable dignity, and began to feel more happy in
consequence.
She had sat down as he told her, on the other side of the table; but he
could not see her face.
"It would have been better if he had, perhaps," she said. "But--"
"Yes? What 'But' is that?"
Then she faced him, and her eyes were swimming.
"Father, he told me first because he loves me, and because I love him."
He sat up. This was speaking outright what she had only hinted at
before. She must have been gathering her resolution to say this, while
she had been gone. Perhaps she had been with her mother. In that case he
must be cautious....
"You mean--"
"I mean just what I say. We love one another, and I am willing to be his
wife if he desires it--and with your permission. But--"
He waited for her to go on.
"Another 'But'!" he said presently, though with increasing mildness.
"I do not think he will desire it after a while. And ... and I do not
know what I wish. I am torn in two."
"But you are willing?"
"I pray for it every night," she cried piteously. "And every morning I
pray that it may not be so."
She was staring at him as if in agony, utterly unlike what he had looked
for in her. He was completely bewildered.
"I do not understand one word--"
Then she threw herself at his knees and seized his hands; her face was
all torn with pain.
"And I cannot explain one word.... Father, I am in misery. You must pray
for me and have patience with me.... I must wait ... I must wait and see
what God wishes."
"Now, now...."
"Father, you will trust me, will you not?"
"Listen to me. You must tell me thus. Do you love this boy?"
"Yes, yes."
"And you have told him so? He asked you, I mean?"
"Yes."
He put her hands firmly from his knee.
"Then you must marry him, if matters can be arranged. It is what I
should wish. But I do not know--"
"Father, you do not understand--you do not understand. I tell you I am
willing enough, if he wishes it ... if he wishes it."
Again she seized his hands and held them. And again bewilderment came
down on him like a cloud.
"Father! you must trust me. I am willing to do everything that I ought."
(She was speaking firmly and confidently now.) "If he wishes to marry
me, I will marry him. I love him dearly.... But you must say nothing to
him, not one word. My mother agrees with this. She would have told you
herself; but I said that I would--that I must be brave.... I must learn
to be brave.... I can tell you no more."
He lifted her hands and stood up.
"I see that I understand nothing that you say after all," he said with a
fine fatherly dignity. "I must talk with your mother."
II
He found his wife half an hour later in the ladies' parlour, which he
entered with an air as of nothing to say. With the same air of
disengagement he made sure that Marjorie was nowhere in the room, and
presently sat down.
Mrs. Manners was well past her prime. She was over forty years old and
looked over fifty, though she retained the air of distinction which
Marjorie had derived from her; but her looks belied her, and she had not
one tithe of the subtlety and keenness of her daughter. She was, in
fact, more suited to be wife to her husband than mother to her daughter.
"You have come about the maid," she said instantly, with disconcerting
penetration and frankness. "Well, I know no more than you. She will tell
me nothing but what she has told you. She has some fiddle-faddle in her
head, as maids will, but she will have her way with us, I suppose."
She drew her needle through the piece of embroidery which she permitted
to herself for an hour on Sundays, knotted the thread and bit it off.
Then she regarded her husband.
"I.... I will have no fiddle-faddle in such a matter," he said
courageously. "Maids did not rule their parents when I was a boy; they
obeyed them or were beaten."
His wife laughed shortly; and began to thread her needle again.
He began to explain. The match was in all respects suitable. Certainly
there were difficulties, springing from the very startling events at
Matstead, and it well might be that a man who would do as Mr. Audrey had
done (or, rather, proposed to do) might show obstinacy in other
directions too. Therefore there was no hurry; the two were still very
young, and it certainly would be wiser to wait for any formal betrothal
until Robin's future disclosed itself. But no action of Mr. Audrey's
need delay the betrothal indefinitely; if need were, he, Mr. Manners,
would make proper settlements. Marjorie was an only daughter; in fact,
she was in some sort an heiress. The Manor would be sufficient for them
both. As to any other difficulties--any of the maidenly fiddle-faddle of
which his wife had spoken--this should not stand in the way for an
instant.
His wife laughed again in the same exclamatory manner, when he had done
and sat stroking his knees.
"Why, you understand nothing about it, Mr. Manners," she said, "Did the
maid not tell you she would marry him, if he wished it? She told me so."
"Then what is the matter?" he asked.
"I know no more than you."
"Does he not wish it?"
"She says so."
"Then--"
"Yes, that is what I say. And yet that says nothing. There is something
more."
"Ask her."
"I have asked her. She bids me wait, as she bids you. It is no good, Mr.
Manners. We must wait the maid's time."
He sat, breathing audibly through his nose.
* * * * *
These two were devoted to their daughter in a manner hardly to be
described. She was the only one left to them; for the others, of whom
two had been boys, had died in infancy or childhood; and, in the event,
Marjorie had absorbed the love due to them all. She was a strain higher
than themselves, thought her parents, and so pride in her was added to
love. The mother had made incredible sacrifices, first to have her
educated by a couple of old nuns who still survived in Derby, and then
to bring her out suitably at Babington House last year. The father had
cordially approved, and joined in the sacrifices, which included an
expenditure which he would not have thought conceivable. The result was,
of course, that Marjorie, under cover of a very real dutifulness, ruled
both her parents completely; her mother acknowledged the dominion, at
least, to herself and her husband; her father pretended that he did
not; and on this occasion rose, perhaps, nearer to repudiating it than
ever in his life. It seemed to him unbearable to be bidden by his
daughter, though with the utmost courtesy and affection, to mind his own
business.
So he sat and breathed audibly through his nose, and meditated
rebellion.
* * * * *
"And is the lad to come here for Easter?" he asked at last.
"I suppose so."
"And for how long?"
"So long as the maid appoints."
He breathed louder than ever.
"And, Mr. Manners," continued his wife emphatically, "no word must be
said to him on the matter. The maid is very plain as to that.... Oh! we
must let her have her way."
"Where is she gone?"
She nodded with her head to the window. He went to it and looked out.
* * * * *
It was the little walled garden on which he looked, in which, if he had
but known it, the lad whom he liked had kissed the maid whom he loved;
and there walked the maid, at this moment with her back to him, going up
the central path that was bordered with box. The February sun shone on
her as she went, on her hooded head, her dark cloak and her blue dress
beneath. He watched her go up, and drew back a little as she turned, so
that she might not see him watching; and as she came down again he saw
that she held a string of beads in her fingers and was making her
devotions. She was a good girl.... That, at least, was a satisfaction.
Then he turned from the window again.
"Well?" said his wife.
"I suppose it must be as she says."
III
It was an hour before sunset when Marjorie came out again into the
walled garden that had become for her now a kind of sanctuary, and in
her hand she carried a letter, sealed and inscribed. On the outside the
following words were written:
"To Mr. Robin Audrey. At Matstead.
"Haste, haste, haste."
Within, the sheet was covered from top to bottom with the neat
convent-hand she had learnt from the nuns. The most of it does not
concern us. It began with such words as you would expect from a maid to
her lover; it continued to inform him that her parents were willing,
and, indeed, desirous, that he should come to them for Easter, and that
her father would write a formal letter later to invite him; it was to be
written from Derby, (this conspirator informed the other), that it might
cause less comment when Mr. Audrey saw it, and was to be expressed in
terms that would satisfy him. Finally, it closed as it had begun, and
was subscribed by his "loving friend, M. M." One paragraph, however, is
worth attention.
"I have told my father and mother, that we love one another, my Robin;
and that you have asked me to marry you, and that I have consented
should you wish to do so when the time comes. They have consented most
willingly; and so Jesu have you in His keeping, and guide your mind
aright."
It was this paragraph that had cost her half of the hour occupied in
writing; for it must be expressed just so and no otherwise; and its
wording had cost her agony lest on the one side she should tell him too
much, and, on the other, too little. And her agony was not yet over; for
she had to face its sending, and the thought of all that it might cost
her. She was to give it to one of the men who was to leave early for
Derby next morning and was to deliver it at Matstead on the road; so she
brought it out now to her sanctuary to spread it, like the old King of
Israel, before the Lord....
* * * * *
There was a promise of frost in the air to-night. Underfoot the moisture
of the path was beginning, not yet to stiffen, but rather to withdraw
itself; and there was a cold clearness in the air. Over the wall beside
the house, beyond the leafless trees which barred it like prison-bars,
burned the sunset, deepening and glowing redder every instant. Yet she
felt nothing of the cold, for a fire was within her as she went again up
and down the path on which her father had watched her walk--a fire of
which as yet she could not discern the fuel. The love of Robin was
there--that she knew; and the love of Christ was there--so she thought;
and yet where the divine and the human passion mingled, she could not
tell; nor whether, indeed, for certain, it were the love of Christ at
all, and not a vain imagination of her own as to how Christ, in this
case, would be loved. Only she knew that across her love for Robin a
shadow had fallen; she could scarcely tell when it had first come to
her, and whence. Yet it had so come; it had deepened rapidly and
strongly during the mass that Mr. Simpson had said, and, behold! in its
very darkness there was light. And so it had continued till confusion
had fallen on her which none but Robin could dissolve. It must be his
word finally that must give her the answer to her doubts; and she must
make it easy for him to give it. He must know, that is, that she loved
him more passionately than ever, that her heart would break if she had
not her desire; and yet that she would not hold him back if a love that
was greater than hers could be for him or his for her, called him to
another wedding than that of which either had yet spoken. A broken heart
and God's will done would be better than that God's will should be
avoided and her own satisfied.
* * * * *
It was this kind of considerations, therefore, that sent her swiftly to
and fro, up and down the path under the darkening sky--if they can be
called considerations which beat on the mind like a clamour of shouting;
and, as she went, she strove to offer all to God: she entreated Him to
do His will, yet not to break her heart; to break her heart, yet not
Robin's; to break both her heart and Robin's, if that Will could not
otherwise be served.
Her lips moved now and again as she went; but her eyes were downcast and
her face untroubled....
* * * * *
As the bell in the court rang for supper she went to the door and looked
through. The man was just saddling up in the stable-door opposite.
"Jack," she called, "here is the letter. Take if safely."
Then she went in to supper.
CHAPTER VI
I
It was a great day and a solemn when the squire of Matstead went to
Protestant communion for the first time. It was Easter Day, too, but
this was less in the consideration of the village. There was first the
minister, Mr. Barton, in a condition of excited geniality from an early
hour. He was observed soon after it was light, by an old man who was up
betimes, hurrying up the village street in his minister's cassock and
gown, presumably on his way to see that all preparations were complete
for the solemnity. His wife was seen to follow him a few minutes later.
By eight o'clock the inhabitants of the village were assembled at points
of vantage; some openly at their doors; others at the windows; and
groups from the more distant farms, decked suitably, stood at all
corners; to be greeted presently by their minister hurrying back once
more from the church to bring the communion vessels and the bread and
wine. The four or five soldiers of the village--a couple of billmen and
pikemen and a real gunner--stood apart in an official group, but did not
salute him. He did not speak of that which was in the minds of all, but
he waved a hand to this man, bid a happy Easter to another, and
disappeared within his lodgings leaving a wake of excitement behind him.
By a quarter before nine the three bells had begun to jangle from the
tower; and the crowd had increased largely, when Mr. Barton once more
passed to the church in the spring sunshine, followed by the more devout
who wished to pray, and the more timid who feared a disturbance. For
sentiments were not wholly on the squire's side. There was first a
number of Catholics, openly confessed or at least secretly Catholic,
though these were not in full force since most were gone to Padley
before dawn; and there was next a certain sentiment abroad, even amongst
those who conformed, in favour of tradition. That the squire of Matstead
should be a Catholic was at least as fundamental an article of faith as
that the minister should be a Protestant. There was little or no
hot-gospel here; men still shook their heads sympathetically over the
old days and the old faith, which indeed had ceased to be the faith of
all scarcely twenty years ago; and it appeared to the most of them that
the proper faith of the Quality, since they had before their eyes such
families as the Babingtons, the Fentons, and the FitzHerberts, was that
to which their own squire was about to say good-bye. It was known, too,
publicly by now, that Mr. Robin was gone away for Easter, since he would
not follow his father. So the crowd waited; the dogs sunned themselves;
and the gunner sat on a wall.
* * * * *
The bells ceased at nine o'clock, and upon the moment, a group came
round the churchyard wall, down from the field-path and the stile that
led to the manor.
First, walking alone, came the squire, swiftly and steadily. His face
was flushed a little, but set and determined. He was in his fine
clothes, ruff and all; his rapier was looped at his side, and he carried
a stick. Behind him came three or four farm servants; then a yeoman and
his wife; and last, at a little distance, three or four onlookers.
There was dead silence as he came; the hum of talk died at the corners;
the bells' clamour had even now ceased. It seemed as if each man waited
for his neighbour to speak. There was only the sound of the squire's
brisk footsteps on the few yards of cobbles that paved the walk up to
the lych-gate. At the door of the church, seen beyond him, was a crowd
of faces.
Then a man called something aloud from fifty yards away; but there was
no voice to echo him. The folk just watched their lord go by, staring on
him as on some strange sight, forgetting even to salute him. And so in
silence he passed on.
II
Within, the church murmured with low talking. Already two-thirds of it
was full, and all faces turned and re-turned to the door at every
footstep or sound. As the bells ceased a sigh went up, as if a giant
drew breath; then, once again, the murmuring began.
The church was as most were in those days. It was but a little place,
yet it had had in old days great treasures of beauty. There had been,
until some ten or twelve years ago, a carved screen that ran across the
chancel arch, with the Rood upon it, and St. Mary and St. John on this
side and that. The high-altar, it was remembered, had been of stone
throughout, surrounded with curtains on the three sides, hanging between
posts that had each a carven angel, all gilt. Now all was gone,
excepting only the painted windows (since glass was costly). The chancel
was as bare as a barn; beneath the whitewash, high over the place where
the old canopy had hung, pale colours still glimmered through where,
twelve years ago, Christ had sat crowning His Mother. The altar was
gone; its holy slab served now as the pavement within the west door,
where the superstitious took pains to step clear of it. The screen was
gone; part lay beneath the tower; part had been burned; Christ's Cross
held up the roof of the shed where the minister kept his horse; the
three figures had been carted off to Derby to help swell the Protestant
bonfire. The projecting stoup to the right of the main door had been
broken half off.... In place of these glories there stood now, in the
body of the church, before the chancel-steps, a great table, such as the
rubrics of the new Prayer-Book required, spread with a white cloth, upon
which now rested two tall pewter flagons of wine, a flat pewter plate as
great as a small dish, and two silver communion-cups--all new. And to
one side of this, in a new wainscoted desk, waited worthy Mr. Barton for
the coming of his squire--a happy man that day; his face beamed in the
spring sunlight; he had on his silk gown, and he eyed, openly, the door
through which his new patron was to come.
* * * * *
Then, without sound or warning, except for the footsteps on the
paving-stones and the sudden darkening of the sunshine on the floor,
there came the figure for which all looked. As he entered he lifted his
hand to his head, but dropped it again; and passed on, sturdy, and (you
would have said) honest and resolute too, to his seat behind the
reading-desk. He was met by silence; he was escorted by silence; and in
silence he sat down.
Then the waiting crowd surged in, poured this way and that, and flowed
into the benches. And Mr. Barton's voice was raised in holy exhortation.
"At what time soever a sinner doth repent him of his sin from the bottom
of his heart, I will put all his wickedness out of remembrance, with the
Lord."
III
Those who could best observe (for the tale was handed on with the
careful accuracy of those who cannot read or write) professed themselves
amazed at the assured ease of the squire. No sound came from the seat
half-hidden behind the reading-desk where he sat alone; and, during the
prayers when he stood or kneeled, he moved as if he understood well
enough what he was at. A great bound Prayer-Book, it was known, rested
before him on the book-board, and he was observed to turn the pages more
than once.
It was, indeed, a heavy task that Mr. Barton had to do. For first there
was the morning prayer, with its psalms, its lessons and its prayers;
next the Litany, and last the communion, in the course of which was
delivered one of the homilies set forth by authority, especially
designed for the support of those who were no preachers--preceded and
followed by a psalm. But all was easy to-day to a man who had such cause
for exultation; his voice boomed heartily out; his face radiated his
pleasure; and he delivered his homily when the time came, with excellent
emphasis and power--all from the reading-desk, except the communion.
Yet it is to be doubted whether the attention of those that heard him
was where their pastor would have desired it to be; since even to these
country-folk the drama of the whole was evident. There, seen full when
he sat down, and in part when he kneeled and stood, was the man who
hitherto had stood to them for the old order, the old faith, the old
tradition--the man whose horse's footsteps had been heard, times and
again, before dawn, in the village street, bearing him to the mystery of
the mass; through whose gate strangers had ridden, perhaps three or four
times in the year, to find harbourage--strangers dressed indeed as plain
gentlemen or yeomen, yet known, every one of them, to be under her
Grace's ban, and to ride in peril of liberty if not of life.
Yet here he sat--a man feared and even loved by some--the first of his
line to yield to circumstance, and to make peace with his times. Not a
man of all who looked on him believed him certainly to be that which his
actions professed him to be; some doubted, especially those who
themselves inclined to the old ways or secretly followed them; and the
hearts of these grew sick as they watched.
But the crown and climax was yet to come.
* * * * *
The minister finished at last the homily--it was one which inveighed
more than once against the popish superstitions; and he had chosen it
for that reason, to clench the bargain, so to say--all in due order; for
he was a careful man and observed his instructions, unlike some of his
brethren who did as they pleased; and came back again to the long north
side of the linen-covered table to finish the service.
He had no man to help him; so he was forced to do it all for himself; so
he went forward gallantly, first reading a set of Scripture sentences
while the officers collected first for the poor-box, and then, as it was
one of the offering-days, collected again the dues for the curate. It
was largely upon these, in such poor parishes as was this, that the
minister depended and his wife.
Then he went on to pray for the whole estate of Christ's Church militant
here on earth, especially for God's "servant, Elizabeth our Queen, that
under her we may be godly and quietly governed"; then came the
exhortation, urging any who might think himself to be "a blasphemer of
God, an hinderer or slanderer of His Word ... or to be in malice or
envy," to bewail his sins, and "not to come to this holy table, lest
after the taking of that holy sacrament, the devil enter into him, as he
entered into Judas, and fill him full of all iniquities."
So forward with the rest. He read the Comfortable Words; the English
equivalent for Sursum Corda with the Easter Preface; then another
prayer; and finally rehearsed the story of the Institution of the Most
Holy Sacrament, though without any blessing of the bread and wine, at
least by any action, since none such was ordered in the new Prayer-Book.
Then he immediately received the bread and wine himself, and stood up
again, holding the silver plate in his hand for an instant, before
proceeding to the squire's seat to give him the communion. Meantime, so
great was the expectation and interest that it was not until the
minister had moved from the table that the first communicants began to
come up to the two white-hung benches, left empty till now, next to the
table.
* * * * *
Then those who still watched, and who spread the tale about afterwards,
saw that the squire did not move from his seat to kneel down. He had put
off his hat again after the homily, and had so sat ever since; and now
that the minister came to him, still there he sat.
Now such a manner of receiving was not unknown; yet it was the sign of a
Puritan; and, so far from the folk expecting such behaviour in their
squire, they had looked rather for Popish gestures, knockings on the
breast, signs of the cross.
For a moment the minister stood before the seat, as if doubtful what to
do. He held the plate in his left hand and a fragment of bread in his
fingers. Then, as he began the words he had to say, one thing at least
the people saw, and that was that a great flush dyed the old man's face,
though he sat quiet. Then, as the minister held out the bread, the
squire seemed to recover himself; he put out his fingers quickly, took
the bread sharply and put it into his mouth; and so sat again, until the
minister brought the cup; and this, too, he drank of quickly, and gave
it back.
Then, as the communicants, one by one, took the bread and wine and went
back to their seats, man after man glanced up at the squire.
But the squire sat there, motionless and upright, like a figure cut of
stone.
IV
The court of the manor seemed deserted half an hour before dinner-time.
There was a Sabbath stillness in the air to-day, sweetened, as it were,
by the bubbling of bird-music in the pleasaunce behind the hall and the
high woods beyond. On the strips of rough turf before the gate and
within it bloomed the spring flowers, white and blue. A hound lay
stretched in the sunshine on the hall steps; twitching his ears to keep
off a persistent fly. You would have sworn that his was the only
intelligence in the place. Yet at the sound of the iron latch of the
gate and the squire's footsteps on the stones, the place, so to say,
became alive, though in a furtive and secret manner. Over the half door
of the stable entrance on the left two faces appeared--one, which was
Dick's, sullen and angry, the other, that of a stable-boy, inquiring and
frankly interested. This second vanished again as the squire came
forward. A figure of a kitchen-boy, in a white apron, showed in the dark
doorway that led to the kitchen and hall, and disappeared again
instantly. From two or three upper windows faces peeped and remained
fascinated. Only the old hound remained still, twitching his ears.
All this--though there was nothing to be seen but the familiar personage
of the place, in his hat and cloak and sword, walking through his own
court on his way to dinner, as he had walked a thousand times before.
And yet so great was the significance of his coming to-day, that the
very gate behind him was pushed open by sightseers, who had followed at
a safe distance up the path from the church; half a dozen stood there
staring, and behind them, at intervals, a score more, spread out in
groups, all the way down to the porter's lodge.
The most remarkable feature of all was the silence. Not a voice there
spoke, even in a whisper. The maids at the windows above, Dick glowering
over the half door, the little group which, far back in the kitchen
entrance, peeped and rustled, the men at the gate behind, even the boys
in the path--all these held their tongues for interest and a kind of
fear. Drama was in the air--the tragedy of seeing the squire come back
from church for the first time, bearing himself as he always did,
resolute and sturdy, yet changed in his significance after a fashion of
which none of these simple hearts had ever dreamed.
So, again in silence, he went up the court, knowing that eyes were upon
him, yet showing no sign that he knew it; he went up the steps with the
same assured air, and disappeared into the hall.
* * * * *
Then the spell broke up and the bustle began, for it was only half an
hour to dinner and guests were coming. First Dick came out, slashing to
the door behind him, and strode out to the gate. He was still in his
boots, for he had ridden to Padley and back since early morning with a
couple of the maids and the stable-boy. He went to the gate of the
court, the group dissolving as he came, and shut it in their faces. A
noise of talking came out of the kitchen windows and the clash of a
saucepan: the maids' heads vanished from the upper windows.
Even as Dick shut the gate he heard the sound of horses' hoofs down by
the porter's lodge. The justices were coming--the two whose names he had
heard with amazement last week, as the last corroboration of the
incredible rumour of his master's defection. For these were a couple of
magistrates--harmless men, indeed, as regarded their hostility to the
old Faith--yet Protestants who had sat more than once on the bench in
Derby to hear cases of recusancy. Old Mrs. Marpleden had told him they
were to come, and that provision must be made for their horses--Mrs.
Marpleden, the ancient housekeeper of the manor, who had gone to school
for a while with the Benedictine nuns of Derby in King Henry's days. She
had shaken her head and eyed him, and then had suffered three or four
tears to fall down her old cheeks.
Well, they were coming, so Dick must open the gate again, and pull the
bell for the servants; and this he did, and waited, hat in hand.
Up the little straight road they came, with a servant or two behind
them--the two harmless gentlemen, chattering as they rode; and Dick
loathed them in his heart.
"The squire is within?"
"Yes, sir."
They dismounted, and Dick held their stirrups.
"He has been to church--eh?"
Dick made no answer. He feigned to be busy with one of the saddles.
The magistrate glanced at him sharply.
V
It was a strange dinner that day.
Outwardly, again, all was as usual--as it might have been on any other
Sunday in spring. The three gentlemen sat at the high table, facing down
the hall; and, since there was no reading, and since it was a festival,
there was no lack of conversation. The servants came in as usual with
the dishes--there was roast lamb to-day, according to old usage, among
the rest; and three or four wines. A little fire burned against the
reredos, for cheerfulness rather than warmth, and the spring sunshine
flowed in through the clear-glass windows, bright and genial.
Yet the difference was profound. Certainly there was no talk, overheard
at least by the servants, which might not have been on any Sunday for
the last twenty years: the congratulations and good wishes, or whatever
they were, must have been spoken between the three in the parlour before
dinner; and they spoke now of harmless usual things--news of the
countryside and tales from Derby; gossip of affairs of State; of her
Grace, who, in a manner unthinkable, even by now dominated the
imagination of England. None of these three had ever seen her; the
squire had been to London but once in his life, his two guests never.
Yet they talked of her, of her state-craft, of her romanticism; they
told little tales, one to the other, as if she lived in the county town.
All this, then, was harmless enough. Religion was not mentioned in the
hearing of the servants, neither the old nor the new; they talked, all
three of them, and the squire loudest of all, though with pauses of
pregnant silence, of such things as children might have heard without
dismay.
Yet to the servants who came and went, it was as if their master were
another man altogether, and his hall some unknown place. There was no
blessing of himself before meat; he said something, indeed, before he
sat down, but it was unintelligible, and he made no movement with his
hand. But it was deeper than this ... and his men who had served him for
ten or fifteen years looked on him as upon a stranger or a changeling.
CHAPTER VII
I
The same Easter Day at Padley was another matter altogether.
As early as five o'clock in the morning the house was astir: lights
glimmered in upper rooms; footsteps passed along corridors and across
the court; parties began to arrive. All was done without ostentation,
yet without concealment, for Padley was a solitary place, and had no
fear, at this time, of a sudden descent of the authorities. For form's
sake--scarcely for more--a man kept watch over the valley road, and
signalled by the flashing of a lamp twice every party with which he was
acquainted, and there were no others than these to signal. A second man
waited by the gate into the court to admit them. They rode and walked in
from all round--great gentlemen, such as the North Lees family, came
with a small retinue; a few came alone; yeomen and farm servants, with
their women-folk, from the Hathersage valley, came for the most part on
foot. Altogether perhaps a hundred and twenty persons were within Padley
Manor--and the gate secured--by six o'clock.
Meanwhile, within, the priest had been busy since half-past four with
the hearing of confessions. He sat in the chapel beside the undecked
altar, and they came to him one by one. The household and a few of the
nearer neighbours had done their duty in this matter the day before, and
a good number had already made their Easter duties earlier in Lent; so
by six o'clock all was finished.
Then began the bustle.
A group of ladies, FitzHerberts and Fentons, entered, so soon as the
priest gave the signal by tapping on the parlour wall, bearing all
things necessary for the altar; and it was astonishing what fine things
these were; so that by the time that the priest was ready to vest, the
place was transformed. Stuffs and embroideries hung upon the wall about
the altar, making it seem, indeed, a sanctuary; two tall silver
candlesticks, used for no other purpose, stood upon the linen cloths,
under which rested the slate altar-stone, taken, with the sacred vessels
and the vestments, from one of the privy hiding-holes, with whose secret
not a living being without the house, and not more than two or three
within, was acquainted. It was rumored that half a dozen such places had
been contrived within the precincts, two of which were great enough to
hold two or three men at a pinch.
* * * * *
Soon after six o'clock, then, the altar was ready and the priest stood
vested. He retired a pace from the altar, signed himself with the cross,
and with Mr. John FitzHerbert and his son Thomas on either side of him,
began the preparation....
It was a strange and an inspiriting sight that the young priest (for it
was Mr. Simpson who was saying the mass) looked upon as he turned round
after the gospel to make his little sermon. From end to end the tiny
chapel was full, packed so that few could kneel and none sit down. The
two doors were open, and here two faces peered in; and behind, rank
after rank down the steps and along the little passage, the folk stood
or knelt, out of sight of both priest and altar, and almost out of
sound. The sanctuary was full of children--whose round-eyed, solemn
faces looked up at him--children who knew little or nothing of what was
passing, except that they were there to worship God, but who, for all
that, received impressions and associations that could never thereafter
wholly leave them. The chapel was still completely dark, for the faint
light of dawn was excluded by the heavy hangings over the windows; and
there was but the light of the two tapers to show the people to one
another and the priest to them all.
It was an inspiriting sight to him then--and one which well rewarded him
for his labours, since there was not a class from gentlemen to labourers
who was not represented there. The FitzHerberts, the Babingtons, the
Fentons--these, with their servants and guests, accounted for perhaps
half of the folk. From the shadow by the door peeped out the faces of
John Merton and his wife and son; beneath the window was the solemn face
of Mr. Manners the lawyer, with his daughter beside him, Robin Audrey
beside her, and Dick his servant behind him. Surely, thought the young
priest, the Faith could not be in its final decay, with such a gathering
as this.
His little sermon was plain enough for the most foolish there. He spoke
of Christ's Resurrection; of how death had no power to hold Him, nor
pains nor prison to detain Him; and he spoke, too, of that mystical life
of His which He yet lived in His body, which was the Church; of how
Death, too, stretched forth his hands against Him there, and yet had no
more force to hold Him than in His natural life lived on earth near
sixteen hundred years ago; how a Resurrection awaited Him here in
England as in Jerusalem, if His friends would be constant and
courageous, not faithless, but believing.
"Even here," he said, "in this upper chamber, where we are gathered for
fear of the Jews, comes Jesus and stands in the midst, the doors being
shut. Upon this altar He will be presently, the Lamb slain yet the Lamb
victorious, to give us all that peace which the world can neither give
nor take away."
And he added a few words of exhortation and encouragement, bidding them
fear nothing whatever might come upon them in the future; to hold fast
to the faith once delivered to the saints, and so to attain the heavenly
crown. He was not eloquent, for he was but a young man newly come from
college, with no great gifts. Yet not a soul there looked upon him, on
his innocent, wondering eyes and his quivering lips, but was moved by
what he saw and heard.
The priest signed himself with the cross, and turned again to continue
the mass.
II
"You tell me, then," said the girl quietly, "that all is as it was with
you? God has told you nothing?"
Robin was silent.
* * * * *
Mass had been done an hour or more, and for the most part the company
was dispersed again, after refreshment spread in the hall, except for
those who were to stay to dinner, and these two had slipped away at last
to talk together in the woods; for the court was still filled with
servants coming and going, and the parlours occupied. In one the ladies
were still busy with the altar furniture; in the other the priest sat to
talk in private with those who were come from a distance; and as for the
hall--this, too, was in the hands of the servants, since not less than
thirty gentle folk were to dine there that day.
Robin had come to Booth's Edge at the beginning of Passion week, and had
been there ever since. He had refrained, at Marjorie's entreaty, from
speaking of her to her parents; and they, too, ruled by their daughter,
had held their tongues on the matter. Everything else, however, had
been discussed--the effect of the squire's apostasy, the alternatives
that presented themselves to the boy, the future behaviour of him to his
father--all these things had been spoken of; and even the priest called
into council during the last two or three days. Yet not much had come of
it. If the worst came to the worst, the lawyer had offered the boy a
place in his office; Anthony Babington had proposed his coming to
Dethick if his father turned him out; while Robin himself inclined to a
third alternative--the begging of his father to give him a sum of money
and be rid of him; after which he proposed, with youthful vagueness, to
set off for London and see what he could do there.
Marjorie, however, had seemed strangely uninterested in such proposals.
She had listened with patience, bowing her head in assent to each,
beginning once or twice a word of criticism, and stopping herself before
she had well begun. But she had looked at Robin with more than interest;
and her mother had found her more than once on her knees in her own
chamber, in tears. Yet she had said nothing, except that she would speak
her mind after Easter, perhaps.
And now, it seemed, she was doing it.
* * * * *
"You have had no other thought?" she said again, "besides those of which
you talked with my father?"
They were walking together through the woods, half a mile along the
Hathersage valley. Beneath them the ground fell steeply away, above them
it rose as steeply to the right. Underfoot the new life of spring was
bourgeoning in mould and grass and undergrowth; for the heather did not
come down so far as this; and the daffodils and celandine and wild
hyacinth lay in carpets of yellow and blue, infinitely sweet, beneath
the shadow of the trees and in the open sunshine. (It was at this time
that the squire of Matstead was entering the church and hearing of the
promises of the Lord to the sinner who forsook his sinful ways.)
"I have had other thoughts," said the boy slowly, "but they are so wild
and foolish that I have determined to think no more of them."
"You are determined?"
He bowed his head.
"You are sure, then, that they are not from God?" asked the girl, torn
between fear and hope. He was silent; and her heart sank again.
He looked, indeed, a bewildered boy, borne down by a weight that was too
heavy for his years. He walked with his hands behind his back, his
hatless head bowed, regarding his feet and the last year's leaves on
which he walked. A cuckoo across the valley called with the insistence
of one who will be answered.
"My Robin," said the girl, "the last thing I would have you do is to
tell me what you would not.... Will you not speak to the priest about
it?"
"I have spoken to the priest."
"Yes?"
"He tells me he does not know what to think."
"Would you do this thing--whatever it may be--if the priest told you it
was God's will?"
There was a pause; and then:
"I do not know," said Robin, so low she could scarcely hear him.
She drew a deep breath to reassure herself.
"Listen!" she said. "I must say a little of what I think; but not all.
Our Lord must finish it to you, if it is according to His will."
He glanced at her swiftly, and down again, like a frightened child. Yet
even in that glance he could see that it was all that she could do to
force herself to speak; and by that look he understood for the first
time something of that which she was suffering.
"You know first," she said, "that I am promised to you. I hold that
promise as sacred as anything on earth can be."
Her voice shook a little. The boy bowed his head again. She went on:
"But there are some things," she said, "more sacred than anything on
earth--those things that come from heaven. Now, I wish to say this--and
then have done with it: that if such should be God's will, I would not
hold you for a day. We are Catholics, you and I.... Your father--"
Her voice broke; and she stopped; yet without leaving go of her hold
upon herself. Only she could not speak for a moment.
Then a great fury seized on the boy. It was one of those angers that for
a while poison the air and turn all things sour; yet without obscuring
the mind--an anger in which the angry one strikes first at that which he
loves most, because he loves it most, knowing, too, that the words he
speaks are false. For this, for the present, was the breaking-point in
the lad. He had suffered torments in his soul, ever since the hour in
which he had ridden into the gate of his own home after his talk in the
empty chapel; he had striven to put away from him that idea for which
the girl's words had broken an entrance into his heart. And now she
would give him no peace; she continued to press on him from without that
which already pained him within; so he turned on her.
"You wish to be rid of me!" he cried fiercely.
She looked at him with her lips parted, her eyes astonished, and her
face gone white.
"What did you say?" she said.
His conscience pierced him like a sword. Yet he set his teeth.
"You wish to be rid of me. You are urging me to leave you. You talk to
me of God's will and God's voice, and you have no pity on me at all. It
is an excuse--a blind."
He stood raging. The very fact that he knew every word to be false made
his energy the greater; for he could not have said it otherwise.
"You think that!" she whispered.
There, then, they stood, eyeing one another. A stranger, coming suddenly
upon them, would have said it was a lovers' tiff, and have laughed at
it. Yet it was a deeper matter than that.
Then there surged over the boy a wave of shame; and the truth prevailed.
His fair face went scarlet; and his eyes filled with tears. He dropped
on his knees in the leaves, seized her hand and kissed it.
"Oh! you must forgive me," he said. "But ... but I cannot do it!"
III
It was a great occasion in the hall that Easter Day. The three tables,
which, according to custom, ran along the walls, were filled to-day with
guests; and a second dinner was to follow, scarcely less splendid than
the first, for their servants as well as for those of the household. The
floor was spread with new rushes; jugs of March beer, a full month old,
as it should be, were ranged down the tables; and by every plate lay a
posy of flowers. From the passage outside came the sound of music.
The feast began with the reading of the Gospel; at the close, Mr. John
struck with his hand upon the table as a signal for conversation; the
doors opened; the servants came in, and a babble of talk broke out. At
the high table the master of the house presided, with the priest on his
right, Mrs. Manners and Marjorie beyond him; on his left, Mrs. Fenton
and her lord. At the other two tables Mr. Thomas presided at one and Mr.
Babington at the other.
The talk was, of course, within the bounds of discretion; though once
and again sentences were spoken which would scarcely have pleased the
minister of the parish. For they were difficult times in which they
lived; and it is no wonder at all if bitterness mixed itself with
charity. Here was Mr. John, for instance, come to Padley expressly for
the selling of some meadows to meet his fines; here was his son Thomas,
the heir now, not only to Padley, but to Norbury, whose lord, his uncle,
lay in the Fleet Prison. Here was Mr. Fenton, who had suffered the like
in the matter of fines more than once. Hardly one of the folk there but
had paid a heavy price for his conscience; and all the worship that was
permitted to them, and that by circumstance, and not by law, was such as
they had engaged in that morning with shuttered windows and a sentinel
for fear that, too, should be silenced.
They talked, then, guardedly of those things, since the servants were in
and out continually, and though all professed the same faith as their
masters, yet these were times that tried loyalty hard. Mr. John, indeed,
gave news, of his brother Sir Thomas, and said how he did; and read a
letter, too, from Italy, from his younger brother Nicholas, who was fled
abroad after a year's prison at Oxford; but the climax of the talk came
when dinner was over, and the muscadel, with the mould-jellies, had been
put upon the tables. It was at this moment that Mr. John nodded to his
son, who went to the door, to see the servants out, and stood by it to
see that none listened. Then his father struck his hands together for
silence, and himself spoke.
"Mr. Simpson," he said, "has something to say to us all. It is not a
matter to be spoken of lightly, as you will understand presently.... Mr.
Simpson."
The priest looked up timidly, pulling out a paper from his pocket.
"You have heard of Mr. Nelson?" he said to the company. "Well, he was a
priest; and I have news of his death. He was executed in London on the
third of February for his religion. And another man, a Mr. Sherwood, was
executed a few days afterwards."
There was a rustle along the benches. Some there had heard of the fact,
but no more; some had heard nothing of either the man or his death. Two
or three faces turned a shade paler; and then the silence settled down
again. For here was a matter that touched them all closely enough; since
up to now scarcely a priest except Mr. Cuthbert Maine had suffered death
for his religion; and even of him some of the more tolerant said that it
was treason with which he was charged. They had heard, indeed, of a
priest or two having been sent abroad into exile for his faith; but the
most of them thought it a thing incredible that in England at this time
a man should suffer death for it. Fines and imprisonment were one thing;
to such they had become almost accustomed. But death was another matter
altogether. And for a priest! Was it possible that the days of King
Harry were coming back; and that every Catholic henceforth should go in
peril of his life as well as of liberty?
The folks settled themselves then in their seats; one or two men drank
off a glass of wine.
"I have heard from a good friend of mine in London," went on the priest,
looking at his paper, "one who followed every step of the trial; and
was present at the death. They suffered at Tyburn.... However, I will
tell you what he says. He is a countryman of mine, from Yorkshire; as
was Mr. Nelson, too.
"'Mr. Nelson was taken in London on the first of December last year. He
was born at Shelton, and was about forty-three years old; he was the son
of Sir Nicholas Nelson.'
"So much," said the priest, looking up from his paper, "I knew myself. I
saw him about four years ago just before he went to Douay, and he came
back to England as a priest, a year and a half after. Mr. Sherwood was
not a priest; he had been at Douay, too, but as a scholar only.... Well,
we will speak of Mr. Nelson first. This is what my friend says."
He spread the paper before him on the table; and Marjorie, looking past
her mother, saw that his hands shook as he spread it.
"'Mr. Nelson,'" began the priest, reading aloud with some difficulty,
"'was brought before my lords, and first had tendered to him the oath of
the Queen's supremacy. This he refused to take, saying that no lay
prince could have pre-eminence over Christ's Church; and, upon being
pressed as to who then could have it, answered, Christ's Vicar only, the
successor of Peter. Further, he proceeded to say, under questioning,
that since the religion of England at this time is schismatic and
heretical, so also is the Queen's Grace who is head of it.
"'This, then, was what was wanted; and after a delay of a few weeks, the
same questions being put to him, and his answers being the same, he was
sentenced to death. He was very fortunate in his imprisonment. I had
speech with him two or three times and was the means, by God's blessing,
of bringing another priest to him, to whom he confessed himself; and
with whom he received the Body of Christ a day before he suffered.
"'On the third of February, knowing nothing of his death being so near,
he was brought up to a higher part of the prison, and there told he was
to suffer that day. His kinsmen were admitted to him then, to bid him
farewell; and afterwards two ministers came to turn him from his faith
if they could; but they prevailed nothing.'"
There was a pause in the reading; but there was no movement among any
that listened. Robin, watching from his place at the right-hand table,
cold at heart, ran his eyes along the faces. The priest was as white as
death, with the excitement, it seemed, of having to tell such a tale.
His host beside him seemed downcast and quiet, but perfectly composed.
Mrs. Manners had her eyes closed; Anthony Babington was frowning to
himself with tight lips; Marjorie he could not see.
With a great effort the reader resumed:
"'When he was laid on the hurdle he refused to ask pardon of the Queen's
Grace; for, said he, I have never yet offended her. I was beside him,
and heard it. And he added, when those who stood near stormed at him,
that it was better to be hanged than to burn in hell-fire.
"'There was a great concourse of people at Tyburn, but kept back by the
officers so that they could not come at him. When he was in the cart,
first he commended his spirit into God's Hands, saying _In manus tuas_,
etc.; then he besought all Catholics that were present to pray for him;
I saw a good many who signed themselves in the crowd; and then he said
some prayers in Latin; with the psalms _Miserere_ and _De Profundis_.
And then he addressed himself to the people, telling them he died for
his religion, which was the Catholic Roman one, and prayed, and desired
them to pray, that God would bring all Englishmen into it. The crowd
cried out at that, exclaiming against this _Catholic Romish Faith_; and
so he said what he had to say, over again. Then, before the cart was
drawn away from him to leave him to hang, he asked pardon of all them he
had offended, and even of the Queen, if he had indeed offended her. Then
one of the sheriffs called on the hangman to make an end; so Mr. Nelson
prayed again in silence, and then begged all Catholics that were there
once more to pray that, by the bitter passion of Christ, his soul might
be received into everlasting joy. And they did so; for as the cart was
drawn away a great number cried out, and I with them, _Lord, receive his
soul_.
"'He was cut down, according to sentence, before he was dead, and the
butchery begun on him; and when it was near over, he moved a little in
his pain, and said that he forgave the Queen and all that caused or
consented to his death: and so he died.'"
The priest's voice, which had shaken again and again, grew so tremulous
as he ended that those that were at the end of the hall could scarcely
hear him; and, as it ceased, a murmur ran along the seats.
Mr. FitzHerbert leaned over to the priest and whispered. The priest
nodded, and the other held up his hand for silence.
"There is more yet," he said.
Mr. Simpson, with a hand that still shook so violently that he could
hardly hold his glass, lifted and drank off a cup of muscadel. Then he
cleared his throat, sat up a little in his chair, and resumed:
"'Next I went to see Mr. Sherwood, to talk to him in prison and to
encourage him by telling him of the passion of the other and how bravely
he bore it. Mr. Sherwood took it very well, and said that he was afraid
of nothing, that he had reconciled his mind to it long ago, and had
rehearsed it all two or three times, so that he would know what to say
and how to bear himself.'"
Mr. FitzHerbert leaned over again to the priest at this point and
whispered something. Mr. Simpson nodded, and raised his eyes.
"Mr. Sherwood," he said, "was a scholar from Douay, but not a priest. He
was lodging in the house of a Catholic lady, and had procured mass to be
said there, and it was through her son that he was taken and charged
with recusancy."
Again ran a rustle through the benches. This executing of the laity for
religion was a new thing in their experience. The priest lifted the
paper again.
"'I found that Mr. Sherwood had been racked many times in the Tower,
during the six months he was in prison, to force him to tell, if they
could, where he had heard mass and who had said it. But they could
prevail nothing. Further, no visitor was admitted to him all this time,
and I was the first and the last that he had; and that though Mr. Roper
himself had tried to get at him for his relief; for he was confined
underground and lay in chains and filth not to be described. I said what
I could to him, but he said he needed nothing and was content, though
his pain must have been very great all this while, what with the racking
repeated over and over again and the place he lay in.
"'I was present again when he suffered at Tyburn, but was too far away
to hear anything that he said, and scarcely, indeed, could see him; but
I learned afterwards that he died well and courageously, as a Catholic
should, and made no outcry or complaint when the butchery was done on
him.
"'This, then, is the news I have to send you--sorrowful, indeed, yet
joyful, too; for surely we may think that they who bore such pains for
Christ's sake with such constancy will intercede for us whom they leave
behind. I am hoping myself to come North again before I go to Douay next
year, and will see you then and tell you more.'"
The priest laid down the paper, trembling.
Mr. FitzHerbert looked up.
"It will give pleasure to the company," he said, "to know that the
writer of the letter is Mr. Ludlam, from Radbourne, in this county. As
you have heard, he, too, hopes by God's mercy to be made priest and to
come back to England."
CHAPTER VIII
I
In the following week Robin went home again.
The clear weather of Easter had broken, and racing clouds, thick as a
pall, sped across the sky that had been so blue and so cheerful; a wind
screamed all day, now high, now low, shattering the tender flowers of
spring, ruffling the Derwent against its current, by which he rode, and
dashing spatters of rain now and again on his back, tossing high and
wide the branches under which he went, until the woods themselves became
as a great melancholy organ, making sad music about him.
When a mind is fluent and uncertain there is no describing it. He
thought he had come to a decision last week; he found that the decision
was shattered as soon as made. He had talked to the priest; he had
resisted Marjorie; and yet to neither of them had he put into formal
words what it was that troubled him. He had asked questions about
vocation, about the place that circumstance occupies in it, of the value
of dispositions, fears, scruples, and resistance. He had, that is,
fingered his wound, half uncovered it, and then covered it up again,
tormented it, glanced at it and then glanced aside; yet the one thing he
had not done was to probe it--not even to allow another to do so.
His mind, then, was fluent and distracted; it formed images before him,
which dissolved as soon as formed; it whirled in little eddies; it threw
up obscuring foam; it ran clear one instant, and the next broke itself
in rapids. He could neither ease it, nor dam it altogether, and he did
not know what to do.
As he rode through Froggatt, he saw a group of saddle-horses standing
at the inn door, but thought nothing of it, till a man ran out of the
door, still holding his pot, and saluted him, and he recognised him to
be one of Mr. Babington's men.
"My master is within, sir," he said; "he bade me look out for you."
Robin drew rein, and as he did so, Anthony, too, came out.
"Ah!" he said. "I heard you would be coming this way. Will you come in?
I have something to say to you."
Robin slipped off, leaving his mare in the hands of Anthony's man, since
he himself was riding alone, with his valise strapped on behind.
It was a little room, very trim and well kept, on the first floor, to
which his friend led him. Anthony shut the door carefully and came
across to the settle by the window-seat.
"Well," he said, "I have bad news for you, my friend. Will you forgive
me? I have seen your father and had words with him."
"Eh?"
"I said nothing to you before," went on the other, sitting down beside
him. "I knew you would not have it so, but I went to see for myself and
to put a question or two. He is your father, but he has also been my
friend. That gives me rights, you see!"
"Tell me," said Robin heavily.
It appeared that Anthony, who was a precise as well as an ardent young
man, had had scruples about trusting to hearsay. Certainly it was
rumoured far and wide that the squire of Matstead had done as he had
said he would do, and gone to church; but Mr. Anthony was one of those
spirits who will always have things, as they say, from the
fountain-head; partly from instincts of justice, partly, no doubt, for
the pleasure of making direct observations to the principals concerned.
This was what he had done in this case. He had ridden, without a word to
any, up to Matstead, and had demanded to be led to the squire; and there
and then, refusing to sit down till he was answered, had put his
question. There had been a scene. The squire had referred to puppies who
wanted drowning, to young sparks, and to such illustrative similes; and
Anthony, in spite of his youthful years, had flared out about turncoats
and lick-spittles. There had been a very pretty ending: the squire had
shouted for his servants and Anthony for his, and the two parties had
eyed one another, growling like dogs, until bloodshed seemed imminent.
Then the visitor had himself solved the situation by stalking out of the
house from which the squire was proposing to flog him, mounting his
horse, and with a last compliment or two had ridden away. And here he
was at Froggatt on his return journey, having eaten there that dinner
which no longer would be spread for him at Matstead.
Robin sat silent till the tale was done, and at the end of it Anthony
was striding about the room, aflame again with wrath, gesticulating and
raging aloud.
Then Robin spoke, holding up his hand for moderation. "You will have the
whole house here," he said. "Well, you have cooked my goose for me."
"Bah! that was cooked at Passiontide when you went to Booth's Edge. Do
you think he'll ever have a Papist in his house again?"
"Did he say so?"
"No; but he said enough about his 'young cub.'... Nonsense, man! Come
home with me to Dethick. We'll find occupation enough."
"Did he say he would not have me home again?"
"No," bawled Anthony. "I have told you he did not say so outright. But
he said enough to show he'd have no rebels, as he called them, in his
Protestant house! Dick's to leave. Did you hear that?"
"Dick!"
"Why, certainly. There was a to-do on Sunday, and Dick spoke his mind.
He'll come to me, he says, if you have no service for him."
Robin set his teeth. It seemed as if the pelting blows would never
cease.
"Come with me to Dethick!" said Anthony again. "I tell you--"
"Well?"
"There'll be time enough to tell you when you come. But I promise you
occupation enough."
He paused, as if he would say more and dared not.
"You must tell me more," said the lad slowly. "What kind of occupation?"
Then Anthony did a queer thing. He first glanced at the door, and then
went to it quickly and threw it open. The little lobby was empty. He
went out, leaned over the stair and called one of his men.
"Sit you there," he said, with the glorious nonchalance of a Babington,
"and let no man by till I tell you."
He came back, closed the door, bolted it, and then came across and sat
down by his friend.
"Do you think the rest of us are doing nothing?" he whispered. "Why, I
tell you that a dozen of us in Derbyshire--" He broke off once more. "I
may not tell you," he said, "I must ask leave first."
A light began to glimmer before Robin's mind; the light broadened
suddenly and intensely, and his whole soul leapt to meet it.
"Do you mean--?" And then he, too, broke off, well knowing enough,
though not all of, what was meant.
* * * * *
It was quiet here within this room, in spite of the village street
outside. It was dinner-time, and all were within doors or out at their
affairs; and except for the stamp of a horse now and again, and the
scream of the wind in the keyhole and between the windows, there was
little to hear. And in the lad's soul was a tempest.
He knew well enough now what his friend meant, though nothing of the
details; and from the secrecy and excitement of the young man's manner
he understood what the character of his dealings would likely be, and
towards those dealings his whole nature leaped as a fish to the water.
Was it possible that this way lay the escape from his own torment of
conscience? Yet he must put a question first, in honesty.
"Tell me this much," he said in a low voice. "Do you mean that this ...
this affair will be against men's lives ... or ... or such as even a
priest might engage in?"
Then the light of fanaticism leaped to the eyes of his friend, and his
face brightened wonderfully.
"Do they observe the courtesies and forms of law?" he snarled. "Did
Nelson die by God's law, or did Sherwood--those we know of? I will tell
you this," he said, "and no more unless you pledge yourself to us ...
that we count it as warfare--in Christ's Name yes--but warfare for all
that."
* * * * *
There then lay the choice before this lad, and surely it was as hard a
choice as ever a man had to make. On the one side lay such an excitement
as he had never yet known--for Anthony was no merely mad fool--a path,
too, that gave him hopes of Marjorie, that gave him an escape from home
without any more ado, a task besides which he could tell himself
honestly was, at least, for the cause that lay so near to Marjorie's
heart, and was beginning to lie near his own. And on the other there was
open to him that against which he had fought now day after day, in
misery--a life that had no single attraction to the natural man in him,
a life that meant the loss of Marjorie for ever.
The colour died from his lips as he considered this. Surely all lay
Anthony's way: Anthony was a gentleman like himself; he would do nothing
that was not worthy of one.... What he had said of warfare was surely
sound logic. Were they not already at war? Had not the Queen declared
it? And on the other side--nothing. Nothing. Except that a voice within
him on that other side cried louder and louder--it seemed in despair:
"This is the way; walk in it."
"Come," whispered Anthony again.
Robin stood up; he made as if to speak; then he silenced himself and
began to walk to and fro in the little room. He could hear voices from
the room beneath--Anthony's men talking there no doubt. They might be
his men, too, at the lifting of a finger--they and Dick. There were the
horses waiting without; he heard the jingle of a bit as one tossed his
head. Those were the horses that would go back to Dethick and Derby,
and, may be, half over England.
He walked to and fro half a dozen times without speaking, and, if he had
but guessed it, he might have been comforted to know that his manhood
flowed in upon him, as a tide coming in over a flat beach. These
instants added more years to him than as many months that had gone
before. His boyhood was passing, since experience and conflict, whether
it end in victory or defeat, give the years to a man far more than the
passing of time. So in God's sight Robin added many inches to the
stature of his spirit in this little parlour of Froggatt.
Yet, though he conquered then, he did not know that he conquered. He
still believed, as he turned at last and faced his friend, that his mind
was yet to make up, and his whisper was harsh and broken.
"I do not know," he whispered. "I must go home first."
II
Dick was waiting by the porter's lodge as the boy rode in, and walked up
beside him with his brown hand on the horse's shoulder. Robin could not
say much, and, besides, his confidence must be tied.
"So you are going," he said softly.
The man nodded.
"I met Mr. Babington.... You cannot do better, I think, than go to him."
* * * * *
It was with a miserable heart that an hour or two later he came down to
supper. His father was already at table, sitting grimly in his place; he
made no sign of welcome or recognition as his son came in. During the
meal itself this was of no great consequence, as silence was the custom;
but the boy's heart sank yet further as, still without a word to him,
the squire rose from table at the end and went as usual through the
parlour door. He hesitated a moment before following. Then he grasped
his courage and went after.
All things were as usual there--the wine set out and the sweetmeats, and
his father in his usual place, Yet still there was silence.
Robin began to meditate again, yet alert for a sign or a word. It was
in this little room, he understood, that the dispute with Anthony had
taken place a few hours before, and he looked round it, almost wondering
that all seemed so peaceful. It was this room, too, that was associated
with so much that was happy in his life--drawn-out hours after supper,
when his father was in genial moods, or when company was there--company
that would never come again--and laughter and gallant talk went round.
There was the fire burning in the new stove--that which had so much
excited him only a year or two ago, for it was then the first that he
had ever seen: there was the table where he had written his little
letter; there was "Christ carrying His Cross."
"So you have sent your friend to insult me; now!"
Robin started. The voice was quiet enough, but full of a suppressed
force.
"I have not, sir. I met Mr. Babington at Froggatt on his way back. He
told me. I am very sorry for it."
"And you talked with him at Padley, too, no doubt?"
"Yes, sir."
His father suddenly wheeled round on him.
"Do you think I have no sense, then? Do you think I do not know what you
and your friends speak of?"
Robin was silent.
He was astonished how little afraid he was. His heart beat loud enough
in his ears; yet he felt none of that helplessness that had fallen on
him before when his father was angry.... Certainly he had added to his
stature in the parlour at Froggatt.
The old man poured out a glass of wine and drank it. His face was
flushed high, and he was using more words than usual.
"Well, sir, there are other affairs we must speak of; and then no more
of them. I wish to know your meaning for the time to come. There must be
no more fooling this way and that. I shall pay no fines for you--mark
that! If you must stand on your own feet, stand on them.... Now then!"
"Do you mean, am I coming to church with you, sir?"
"I mean, who is to pay your fines?... Miss Marjorie?"
Robin set his teeth at the sneer.
"I have not yet been fined, sir."
"Now do you take me for a fool? D'you think they'll let you off? I was
speaking--"
The old man stopped.
"Yes, sir?"
The other wheeled his face on him.
"If you will have it," he said, "I was speaking to my two good friends
who dined here on Sunday. I was plain with them and they were plain with
me. 'I shall not pay for my brat of a son,' I said. 'Then he must pay
for himself,' said they, 'unless we lay him by the heels.' 'Not in my
house, I hope,' I said; and they laughed at that. We were very merry
together."
"Yes, sir?"
"Good God! have I a fool for a son? I ask you again, Who is it to pay?"
"When will they demand it?"
"Why, they may demand it next week, if they will! You were not at church
on Sunday!"
"I was not in Matstead," said the lad.
"But--"
"And Mr. Barton will not, I think--"
The old man struck the table suddenly and violently.
"I have dropped words enough," he cried. "Where's the use of it? If you
think they will let you alone, I tell you they will not. There are to be
doings before Christmas, at latest; and what then?"
Then Robin drew his breath sharply between his teeth; and knew that one
more step had been passed, that had separated him from that which he
feared.... He had come just now, still hesitating. Still there had been
passing through his mind hopes and ideas of what his father might do for
him. He knew well enough that he would never pay the fines, amounting
sometimes to as much as twenty pounds a month; but he had thought that
perhaps his father would give him a sum of money and let him go to fend
for himself; that he might help him even to a situation somewhere; and
now hope had died so utterly that he did not even dare speak of it. And
he had said "No" to Anthony; he said to himself at least that he had
meant "No," in spite of his hesitation. All doors seemed closing, save
that which terrified him....
"I have thought in my mind--" he began; and stopped, for the terror of
what was on his tongue grew suddenly upon him.
"Eh?"
Robin stood up.
"I must have time, sir," he cried; "I must have time. Do not press me
too much."
His father's eyes shone bright and wrathful. He beat on the table with
his open hand; but the boy was too quick for him.
"I beg of you, sir, not to make me speak too soon. It may be that you
would hate that I should speak more than my silence."
His whole person was tense and magnetic; his face was paler than ever;
and it seemed as if his father understood enough, at least, to make him
hesitate. The two looked at one another; and it was the man's eyes that
tell first.
"You may have till Pentecost," he said.
III
It would be at about an hour before dawn that Robin awoke for perhaps
the third or fourth time that night; for the conflict still roared
within his soul and would give him no peace. And, as he lay there, awake
in an instant, staring up into the dark, once more weighing and
balancing this and the other, swayed by enthusiasm at one moment,
weighed down with melancholy the next--there came to him, distinct and
clear through the still night, the sound of horses' hoofs, perhaps of
three or four beasts, walking together.
Now, whether it was the ferment of his own soul, or the work of some
interior influence, or indeed, the very intimation of God Himself, Robin
never knew (though he inclined later to the last of these); yet it
remains as a fact that when he heard that sound, so fierce was his
curiosity to know who it was that rode abroad in company at such an
hour, he threw off the blankets that covered him, went to his window and
threw it open. Further, when he had listened there a second or two, and
had heard the sound cease and then break out again clearer and nearer,
signifying that the party was riding through the village, his curiosity
grew so intense, that he turned from the window, snatched up and put on
a few clothes, groping for them as well as he could in the dimness, and
was presently speeding, barefooted, downstairs, telling himself in one
breath that he was a fool, and in the next that he must reach the
churchyard wall before the horses did.
It was but a short run when he had come down into the court, by the
little staircase that led from the men's rooms; the ground was soaking
with the rains of yesterday, but he cared nothing for that; and, as the
riding party turned up the little ascent that led beneath the
churchyard, Robin, on the other side of the wall, was keeping between
the tombstones to see, and not be seen.
It was within an hour of dawn, at that time when the sky begins to
glimmer with rifts above the two horizons, showing light enough at least
to distinguish faces. It was such a light as that in which he had seen
the deer looking at him motionless as he rode home with Dick. Yet the
three who now rode up towards him were so muffled about the faces that
he feared he would not know them. They were men, all three of them; and
he could make out valises strapped to the saddle of each; but, what
seemed strange, they did not speak as they came; and it appeared as if
they wished to make no more noise than was necessary, since one of them,
when his horse set his foot upon the cobblestones beside the lych-gate,
pulled him sharply off them.
And then, just as they rounded the angle of the wall where the boy
crouched peeping, the man that rode in the middle, sighed as if with
relief, and pulled the cloak that was about him, so that the collar fell
from his face, and at the same time turned to his companion on his
right, and said something in a low voice.
But the boy heard not a word; for he found himself staring at the
thin-faced young priest from whom he had received Holy Communion at
Padley. It was but for an instant; for the man to whom the priest spoke
answered in the same low voice, and the other pulled his cloak again
round his mouth.
Yet the look was enough. The sight, once more, of this servant of God,
setting out again upon his perilous travels--seen at such a moment, when
the boy's judgment hung in the balance (as he thought); this one single
reminder of what a priest could do in these days of sorrow, and of what
God called on him to do--the vision, for it was scarcely less, all
things considered, of a life such as this--presented, so to say, in this
single scene of a furtive and secret ride before the dawn, leaving
Padley soon after midnight--this, falling on a soul that already leaned
that way, finished that for which Marjorie had prayed, and against which
the lad himself had fought so fiercely.
* * * * *
Half an hour later he stood by his father's bed, looking down on him
without fear.
"Father," he said, as the old man stared up at him through sleep-ridden
eyes, "I have come to give you my answer. It is that I must go to Rheims
and be a priest."
Then he turned again and went out of the room, without waiting.
CHAPTER IX
I
Mrs. Manners was still abed when her daughter came in to see her. She
lay in the great chamber that gave upon the gallery above the hall
whence, on either side, she could hear whether or no the maids were at
their business--which was a comfort to her if a discomfort to them. And
now that her lord was in Derby, she lay here all alone.
The first that she knew of her daughter's coming was a light in her
eyes; and the next was a face, as of a stranger, looking at her with
great eyes, exalted by joy and pain. The light, held below, cast shadows
upwards from chin and cheek, and the eyes shone in hollows. Then, as she
sat up, she saw that it was her daughter, and that the maid held a paper
in her hands; she was in her night-linen, and a wrap lay over her
shoulders and shrouded her hair.
"He is to be a priest," she whispered sharply. "Thank our Lord with me
... and ... and God have mercy on me!"
Then Marjorie was on her knees by the bedside, sobbing so that the
curtains shook.
* * * * *
The mother got it all out of her presently--the tale of the girl's heart
torn two ways at once. On the one side there was her human love for the
lad who had wooed her--as hot as fire, and as pure--and on the other
that keen romance that had made her pray that he might be a priest. This
second desire had come to her, as sharp as a voice that calls, when she
had heard of the apostasy of his father; it had seemed to her the
riposte that God made to the assault upon His honour. The father would
no longer be His worshipper? Then let the son be His priest; and so the
balance be restored. And so the maid had striven with the two loves
that, for once, would not agree together (as did the man in the Gospels
who wished to go and bury his father and afterwards to follow his
Saviour); she had not dared to say a word to the lad of anything of this
lest it should be her will and not God's that should govern him, for she
knew very well what a power she had over him; but she had prayed God,
and begged Robin to pray too and to listen to His voice; and now she had
her way, and her heart was broken with it, she said:
"And when I think," she wailed across her mother's knees, "of what it is
to be a priest; and of the life that he will lead, and of the death that
he may die!... And it is I ... I ... who will have sent him to it.
Mother!..."
Mrs. Manners was bethinking herself of a cordial just then, and how she
knew old Ann would be coming presently, and was listening with but half
an ear.
"It's not you, my dear," she said, patting the head beneath her hands.
(The wrap was fallen off, and the maid's long hair was all over her
shoulders.) "And now--"
"But our Lord will take care of him, will He not? And not suffer--"
Mrs. Manners fell to patting her head again.
"And who brought the message?" she asked.
* * * * *
Mrs. Manners was one of those experienced persons who are fully
persuaded that youth is a disease that must be borne with patiently.
Time, indeed, will cure it; yet until the cure is complete, elders must
bear it as well as they can and not seem to pay too much attention to
it. A rigorous and prudent diet; long hours of sleep, plenty of
occupation--these are the remedies for the fever. So, while Marjorie
first began to read the lad's letter, and then, breaking down
altogether, thrust it into her mother's hand, Mrs. Manners was searching
her memory as to whether any imprudence the day before, in food or
behaviour, could be the cause of this crisis. Love between boys and
girls was common enough; she herself twenty years ago had suffered from
the sickness when young John had come wooing her; yet a love that could
thrust from it that which it loved, was beyond her altogether. Either
Marjorie loved the lad, or she did not, and if she loved him, why did
she pray that he might be a priest? That was foolishness; since
priesthood was a bar to marriage. She began to conclude that Marjorie
did not love him; it had been but a romantic fancy; and she was
encouraged by the thought.
"Madge," she began, when she had read through the confused line or two,
in the half-boyish, half-clerkly hand of Robin, scribbled and dispatched
by the hands of Dick scarcely two hours ago. "Madge--"
She was about to say something sensible when the maid interrupted her
again.
"And it is I who have brought it all on him!" she wailed. "If it had not
been for me--"
Her mother laid a firm hand on her daughter's mouth. It was not often
that she felt the superior of the two; yet here was a time, plain
enough, when maturity and experience must take the reins.
"Madge," she said, "it is plain you do not love him; or you never--"
The maid started back, her eyes ablaze.
"Not love him! Why--"
"That you do not love him truly; or you would never have wished this for
him.... Now listen to me!"
She raised an admonitory finger, complacent at last. But her speech was
not to be made at that time; for her daughter swiftly rose to her feet,
controlled at last by the shock of astonishment.
"Then I do not think you know what love is," she said softly. "To love
is to wish the other's highest good, as I understand it."
Mrs. Manners compressed her lips, as might a prophetess before a
prediction. But her daughter was beforehand with her again.
"That is the love of a Christian, at least," she said. Then she stooped,
took the letter from her mother's knees, and went out.
Mrs. Manners sat for a moment as her daughter left her. Then she
understood that her hour of superiority was gone with Marjorie's hour of
weakness; and she emitted a short laugh as she took her place again
behind the child she had borne.
II
It was a strange time that Marjorie had until two days later, when Robin
came and told her all, and how it had fallen out. For now, it seemed,
she walked on air; now in shoes of lead. When she was at her prayers
(which was pretty often just now), and at other times, when the air
lightened suddenly about her and the burdens of earth were lifted as if
another hand were put to them--at those times which every interior soul
experiences in a period of stress--why, then, all was glory, and she saw
Robin as transfigured and herself beneath him all but adoring. Little
visions came and went before her imagination. Robin riding, like some
knight on an adventure, to do Christ's work; Robin at the altar, in his
vestments; Robin absolving penitents--all in a rosy light of faith and
romance. She saw him even on the scaffold, undaunted and resolute, with
God's light on his face, and the crowd awed beneath him; she saw his
soul entering heaven, with all the harps ringing to meet him, and
eternity begun.... And then, at other times, when the heaviness came
down on her, as clouds upon the Derbyshire hills, she understood nothing
but that she had lost him; that he was not to be hers, but Another's;
that a loveless and empty life lay before her, and a womanhood that was
without its fruition. And it was this latter mood that fell on her,
swift and entire, when, looking out from her window a little before
dinner-time, she saw suddenly his hat, and Cecily's head, jerking up the
steep path that led to the house.
She fell on her knees by her bedside.
"Jesu!" she cried. "Jesu! Give me strength to meet him."
* * * * *
Mrs. Manners, too, hearing the horse's footsteps on the pavement a
minute later, and Marjorie's steps going downstairs, also looked forth
and saw him dismounting. She was a prudent woman, and did not stir a
finger till she heard the bell ringing in the court for the dinner to be
served. They would have time, so she thought, to arrange their
attitudes.
And, indeed, she was right: for it was two quiet enough persons who met
her as she came down into the hall: Robin flushed with riding, yet
wholly under his own command--bright-eyed, and resolute and natural
(indeed, it seemed to her that he was more of a man than she had thought
him). And her daughter, too, was still and strong; a trifle paler than
she should be, yet that was to be expected. At dinner, of course,
nothing could be spoken of but the most ordinary affairs--in such
speaking, that is, as there was. It was not till they had gone out into
the walled garden and sat them down, all three of them, on the long
garden-seat beside the rose-beds, that a word was said on these new
matters. There was silence as they walked there, and silence as they sat
down.
"Tell her, Robin," said the maid.
* * * * *
It appeared that matters were not yet as wholly decided as Mrs. Manners
had thought. Indeed, it seemed to her that they were not decided at all.
Robin had written to Dr. Allen, and had found means to convey his letter
to Mr. Simpson, who, in his turn, had undertaken to forward it at least
as far as to London; and there it would await a messenger to Douay. It
might be a month before it would reach Douay, and it might be three or
four months, or even more, before an answer could come back. Next, the
squire had taken a course of action which, plainly, had disconcerted the
lad, though it had its conveniences too. For, instead of increasing the
old man's fury, the news his son had given him had had a contrary
effect. He had seemed all shaken, said Robin; he had spoken to him
quietly, holding in the anger that surely must be there, the boy
thought, without difficulty. And the upshot of it was that no more had
been said as to Robin's leaving Matstead for the present--not one word
even about the fines. It seemed almost as if the old man had been trying
how far he could push his son, and had recoiled when he had learned the
effect of his pushing.
"I think he is frightened," said the lad gravely. "He had never thought
that I could be a priest."
Mrs. Manners considered this in silence.
"And it may be autumn before Dr. Allen's letter comes back?" she asked
presently.
Robin said that that was so.
"It may even be till winter," he said. "The talk among the priests, Mr.
Simpson tells me, is all about the removal from Douay. It may be made at
any time, and who knows where they will go?"
Mrs. Manners glanced across at her daughter, who sat motionless, with
her hands clasped. Then she was filled with the spirit of reasonableness
and sense: all this tragic to-do about what might never happen seemed to
her the height of folly.
"Nay, then," she burst out, "then nothing may happen after all. Dr.
Allen may say 'No;' the letter may never get to him. It may be that you
will forget all this in a month or two."
Robin turned his face slowly towards her, and she saw that she had
spoken at random. Again, too, it struck her attention that his manner
seemed a little changed. It was graver than that to which she was
accustomed.
"I shall not forget it," he said softly. "And Dr. Allen will get the
letter. Or, if not he, someone else."
There was silence again, but Mrs. Manners heard her daughter draw a long
breath.
III
It was an hour later that Marjorie found herself able to say that which
she knew must be said.
Robin had lingered on, talking of this and that, though he had said half
a dozen times that he must be getting homewards; and at last, when he
rose, Mistress Manners, who was still wholly misconceiving the
situation, after the manner of sensible middle-aged folk, archly and
tactfully took her leave and disappeared down towards the house,
advancing some domestic reason for her departure.
Robin sighed, and turned to the girl, who still sat quiet. But as he
turned she lifted her eyes to him swiftly.
"Good-bye, Mr. Robin," she said.
He pulled himself up.
"You understand, do you not?" she said. "You are to be a priest. You
must remember that always. You are a sort of student already."
She could see him pale a little; his lips tightened. For a moment he
said nothing; he was taken wholly aback.
"Then I am not to come here again?"
Marjorie stood up. She showed no sign of the fierce self-control she was
using.
"Why, yes," she said. "Come as you would come to any Catholic
neighbours. But no more than that.... You are to be a priest."
* * * * *
The spring air was full of softness and sweetness as they stood there.
On the trees behind them and on the roses in front the budding leaves
had burst into delicate green, and the copses on all sides sounded with
the twittering of birds. The whole world, it seemed, was kindling with
love and freshness. Yet these two had to stand here and be cold, one to
the other.... He was to be a priest; that must not be forgotten, and
they must meet no more on the old footing. That was gone. Already he
stood among the Levites, at least in intention; and the Lord alone was
to be the portion of his inheritance and his Cup.
It was a minute before either of them moved, and during that minute the
maid felt her courage ebb from her like an outgoing tide, leaving a
desolation behind. It was all that she could do not to cry out.
But when at last Robin made a movement and she had to look him in the
face, what she saw there braced and strengthened her.
"You are right, Mistress Marjorie," he said both gravely and kindly. "I
will bid you good-day and be getting to my horse."
He kissed her gently, as the manner was, and went down the path alone.
PART II
CHAPTER I
I
It was with a sudden leap of her heart that Marjorie, looking out of her
window at the late autumn landscape, her mind still running on the sheet
of paper that lay before her, saw a capped head, and then a horse's
crest, rise over the broken edge of land up which Robin had ridden so
often two and three years ago. Then she saw who was the rider, and laid
her pen down again.
* * * * *
It was two years since the lad had gone to Rheims, and it would be five
years more, she knew (since he was not over quick at his books), before
he would return a priest. She had letters from him: one would come now
and again, a month or two sometimes after the date of writing. It was
only in September that she had had the letter which he had written her
on hearing of her father's death, and Mr. Manners had died in June. She
had written back to him then, a discreet and modest letter enough,
telling him of how Mr. Simpson had read mass over the body before it was
taken down to Derby for the burying; and telling him, too, of her
mother's rheumatics that kept her abed now three parts of the year. For
the rest, the letters were dull enough reading to one who did not
understand them: the news the lad had to give was of a kind that must be
disguised, lest the letters should fall into other hands, since it
concerned the coming and going of priests whose names must not appear.
Yet, for all that, the letters were laid up in a press, and the heap
grew slowly.
It was Mr. Anthony Babington who was come now to see her, and it was
his third visit since the summer. But she knew well enough what he was
come for, since his young wife, whom he had married last year, was no
use to him in such matters: she had lately had a child, too, and lived
quietly at Dethick with her women. His letters, too, would come at
intervals, carried by a rider, or sometimes some farmer's man on his way
home from Derby, and these letters, too, held dull reading enough for
such as were not in the secret. Yet the magistrates at Derby would have
given a good sum if they could have intercepted and understood them.
It was in the upper parlour now that she received him. A fire was
burning there, as it had burned so long ago, when Robin found her fresh
from her linen, and Anthony sat down in the same place. She sat by the
window, with the paper in her hands at which she had been writing when
she first saw him.
He had news for her, of two kinds, and, like a man, gave her first that
which she least wished to hear. (She had first showed him the paper.)
"That was the very matter I was come about," he said. "You have only a
few of the names, I see. Now the rest will be over before Christmas, and
will all be in London together."
"Can you not give me the names?" she said.
"I could give you the names, certainly. And I will do so before I leave;
I have them here. But--Mistress Marjorie, could you not come to London
with me? It would ease the case very much."
"Why, I could not," she said. "My mother--And what good would it
serve?"
"This is how the matter stands," said Anthony, crossing his legs. "We
have a dozen priests coming all together--at least, they will not travel
together, of course; but they will all reach London before Christmas,
and there they will hold counsel as to who shall go to the districts.
Eight of them, I have no doubt, will come to the north. There are as
many priests in the south as are safe at the present time--or as are
needed. Now if you were to come with me, mistress--with a serving-maid,
and my sister would be with us--we could meet these priests, and speak
with them, and make their acquaintance. That would remove a great deal
of danger. We must not have that affair again which fell out last
month."
Marjorie nodded slowly. (It was wonderful how her gravity had grown on
her these last two years.)
She knew well enough what he meant. It was the affair of the clerk who
had come from Derby on a matter connected with her father's will about
the time she was looking for the arrival of a strange priest, and who
had been so mistaken by her. Fortunately he had been a well-disposed
man, with Catholic sympathies, or grave trouble might have followed. But
this proposal of a visit to London seemed to her impossible. She had
never been to London in her life; it appeared to her as might a voyage
to the moon. Derby seemed oppressingly large and noisy and dangerous;
and Derby, she understood, was scarcely more than a village compared to
London.
"I could not do it," she said presently. "I could not leave my mother."
Anthony explained further.
It was evident that Booth's Edge was becoming more and more a harbour
for priests, owing largely to Mistress Marjorie's courage and piety. It
was well placed; it was remote; and it had so far avoided all suspicion.
Padley certainly served for many, but Padley was nearer the main road;
and besides, had fallen under the misfortune of losing its master for
the very crime of recusancy. It seemed to be all important, therefore,
that the ruling mistress of Booth's Edge, since there was no master,
should meet as many priests as possible, in order that she might both
know and be known by them; and here was such an opportunity as would not
easily occur again. Here were a dozen priests, all to be together at one
time; and of these, at least two-thirds would be soon in the north. How
convenient, therefore, it would be if their future hostess could but
meet them, learn their plans, and perhaps aid them by her counsel.
But she shook her head resolutely.
"I cannot do it," she said.
Anthony made a little gesture of resignation. But, indeed, he had
scarcely hoped to persuade her. He knew it was a formidable thing to ask
of a countrybred maid.
"Then we must do as well as we can," he said. "In any case, I must go.
There is a priest I have to meet in any case; he is returning as soon as
he has bestowed the rest."
"Yes?"
"His name is Ballard. He is known as Fortescue, and passes himself off
as a captain. You would never know him for a priest."
"He is returning, you say?"
A shade of embarrassment passed over the young man's face, and Marjorie
saw that there was something behind which she was not to know.
"Yes," he said, "I have business with him. He is not to come over on the
mission yet, but only to bring the others and see them safe--"
He broke off suddenly.
"Why, I was forgetting," he cried. "Our Robin is coming too. I had a
letter from him, and another for you."
He searched in the breast of his coat, and did not see the sudden
rigidity that fell on the girl. For a moment she sat perfectly still;
her heart had leapt to her throat, it seemed, and was hammering
there.... But by the time he had found the letter she was herself again.
"Here it is," he said.
She took it; but made no movement to open it.
"But he is not to be a priest for five years yet?" she said quietly.
"No; but they send them sometimes as servants and such like, to make a
party seem what it is not, as well as to learn how to avoid her Grace's
servants. He will go back with Mr. Ballard, I think, after three or four
weeks. You have had letters from him, you told me?"
She nodded.
"Yes; but he said nothing of it, but only how much he longed to see
England again."
"He could not. It has only just been arranged. He has asked to go."
There was a silence for a moment. But Anthony did not understand what it
meant. He had known nothing of the affair of his friend and this girl,
and he looked upon them merely as a pair of acquaintances, above all,
when he had heard of Robin's determination to go to Rheims. Even the
girl saw that he knew nothing, in spite of her embarrassment, and the
thought that had come to her when she had heard of Robin's coming to
London grew on her every moment. But she thought she must gain time.
She stood up.
"You would like to see his letters?" she asked. "I will bring them."
And she slipped out of the room.
II
Anthony Babington sat still, staring up at Icarus in the chariot of the
Sun, with something of a moody look on his face.
It was true that he was sincere and active enough in all that he did up
here in the north for the priests of his faith; indeed, he risked both
property and liberty on their behalf, and was willing to continue doing
so as long as these were left to him. But it seemed to him sometimes
that too much was done by spiritual ways and too little by temporal.
Certainly the priesthood and the mass were instruments--and, indeed, the
highest instruments in God's hand; it was necessary to pray and receive
the sacraments, and to run every risk in life for these purposes. Yet it
appeared to him that the highest instruments were not always the best
for such rough work.
It was now over two years ago since the thought had first come to him,
and since that time he had spared no effort to shape a certain other
weapon, which, he thought, would do the business straight and clean. Yet
how difficult it had been to raise any feeling on the point. At first he
had spoken almost freely to this or that Catholic whom he could trust;
he had endeavoured to win even Robin; and yet, with hardly an exception,
all had drawn back and bidden him be content with a spiritual warfare.
One priest, indeed, had gone so far as to tell him that he was on
dangerous ground ... and the one and single man who up to the present
had seemed on his side, was the very man, Mr. Ballard, then a layman,
whom he had met by chance in London, and who had been the occasion of
first suggesting any such idea. It was, in fact, for the sake of meeting
Ballard again that he was going to London; and, he had almost thought
from his friend's last letter, it had seemed that it was for the sake
of meeting him that Mr. Ballard was coming across once more.
So the young man sat, with that moody look on his face, until Marjorie
came back, wondering what news he would have from Mr. Ballard, and
whether the plan, at present only half conceived, was to go forward or
be dropped. He was willing enough, as has been said, to work for
priests, and he had been perfectly sincere in his begging Marjorie to
come with him for that very purpose; but there was another work which he
thought still more urgent.... However, that was not to be Marjorie's
affair.... It was work for men only.
* * * * *
"Here they are," she said, holding out the packet.
He took them and thanked her.
"I may read them at my leisure? I may take them with me?"
She had not meant that, but there was no help for it now.
"Why, yes, if you wish," she said. "Stay; let me show you which they
are. You may not wish to take them all."
* * * * *
The letters that the two looked over together in that wainscoted parlour
at Booth's Edge lie now in an iron case in a certain muniment-room. They
are yellow now, and the ink is faded to a pale dusky red; and they must
not be roughly unfolded lest they should crack at the creases. But they
were fresh then, written on stout white paper, each occupying one side
of a sheet that was then folded three or four times, sealed, and
inscribed to "Mistress Marjorie Manners" in the middle, with the word
"Haste" in the lower corner. The lines of writing run close together,
and the flourishes on one line interweave now and again with the tails
on the next.
The first was written within a week of Robin's coming to Rheims, and
told the tale of the sailing, the long rides that followed it, the
pleasure the writer found at coming to a Catholic country, and something
of his adventures upon his arrival with his little party. But names and
places were scrupulously omitted. Dr. Allen was described as "my host";
and, in more than one instance, the name of a town was inscribed with a
line drawn beneath it to indicate that this was a kind of _alias_.
The second letter gave some account of the life lived in Rheims--was a
real boy's letter--and this was more difficult to treat with discretion.
It related that studies occupied a certain part of the day; that
"prayers" were held at such and such times, and that the sports
consisted chiefly of a game called "Cat."
So with the eight or nine that followed. The third and fourth were
bolder, and spoke of certain definitely Catholic practices--of prayers
for the conversion of England, and of mass said on certain days for the
same intention. It seemed as if the writer had grown confident in his
place of security. But later, again, his caution returned to him, and he
spoke in terms so veiled that even Marjorie could scarcely understand
him. Yet, on the whole, the letters, if they had fallen into hostile
hands, would have done no irreparable injury; they would only have
indicated that a Catholic living abroad, in some unnamed university or
college, was writing an account of his life to a Catholic named Mistress
Marjorie Manners, living in England.
* * * * *
When the girl had finished her explaining, it was evident that there was
no longer any need for Anthony to take them with him. He said so.
"Ah! but take them, if you will," cried the girl.
"It would be better not. You have them safe here. And--"
Marjorie flushed. She felt that her ruse had been too plain.
"I would sooner you took them," she said. "You can read them at your
leisure."
So he accepted, and slipped them into his breast with what seemed to the
girl a lamentable carelessness. Then he stood up.
"I must go," he said. "And I have never asked after Mistress Manners."
"She is abed," said the girl. "She has been there this past month now."
She went with him to the door, for it was not until then that she was
courageous enough to speak as she had determined.
"Mr. Babington," she said suddenly.
He turned.
"I have been thinking while we talked," she said. "You think my coming
to London would be of real service?"
"I think so. It would be good for you to meet these priests before
they--"
"Then I will come, if my mother gives me leave. When will you go?"
"We should be riding in not less than a week from now. But, mistress--"
"No, I have thought of it. I will come--if my mother gives me leave."
He nodded briskly and brightly. He loved courage, and he understood that
this decision of hers had required courage.
"Then my sister shall come for you, and--"
"No, Mr. Babington, there is no need. We shall start from Derby?"
"Why, yes."
"Then my maid and I will ride down there and sleep at the inn, and be
ready for you on the day that you appoint."
* * * * *
When he was gone at last she went back again to the parlour, and sat
without moving and without seeing. She was in an agony lest she had been
unmaidenly in determining to go so soon as she heard that Robin was to
be there.