I
Marjorie was sitting in her mother's room, while her mother slept. She
had been reading aloud from a bundle of letters--news from Rheims; but
little by little she had seen sleep come down on her mother's face, and
had let her voice trail away into silence. And so she sat quiet.
* * * * *
It seemed incredible that nearly a year had passed since her visit to
London, and that Christmas was upon them again. Yet in this remote
country place there was little to make time run slowly: the country-side
wheeled gently through the courses of the year; the trees put on their
green robes, changed them for russet and dropped them again; the dogs
and the horses grew a little older, a beast died now and again, and
others were born. The faces that she knew, servants and farmers, aged
imperceptibly. Here and there a family moved away, and another into its
place; an old man died and his son succeeded him, but the mother and
sisters lived on in the house in patriarchal fashion. Priests came and
went again unobserved; Marjorie went to the sacraments when she could,
and said her prayers always. But letters came more frequently than ever
to the little remote manor, carried now by some farm-servant, now left
by strangers, now presented as credentials; and Booth's Edge became
known in that underworld of the north, which finds no record in history,
as a safe place for folks in trouble for their faith. For one whole
month in the summer there had been a visitor at the house--a cousin of
old Mr. Manners, it was understood; and, except for the Catholics in
the place, not a soul knew him for a priest, against whom the hue and
cry still raged in York.
Derbyshire, indeed, had done well for the old Religion. Man after man
went in these years southwards and was heard of no more, till there came
back one day a gentleman riding alone, or with his servant; and it
became known that one more Derbyshire man was come again to his own
place to minister to God's people. Mr. Ralph Sherwine was one of them;
Mr. Christopher Buxton another; and Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Garlick, it was
rumoured, would not be long now.... And there had been a wonderful
cessation of trouble, too. Not a priest had suffered since the two, the
news of whose death she had heard two years ago.
* * * * *
Marjorie, then, sitting quiet over the fire that burned now all the
winter in her mother's room, was thinking over these things.
She had had more news from London from time to time, sent on to her
chiefly by Mr. Babington, though none had come to her since the summer,
and she had singled out in particular all that bore upon Father Campion.
There was no doubt that the hunt was hotter every month; yet he seemed
to bear a charmed life. Once he had escaped, she had heard, through the
quick wit of a servant-maid, who had pushed him suddenly into a
horse-pond, as the officers actually came in sight, so that he came out
all mud and water-weed; and had been jeered at for a clumsy lover by the
very men who were on his trail.... Marjorie smiled to herself as she
nursed her knee over the fire, and remembered his gaiety and sharpness.
Robin, too, was never very far from her thoughts. In some manner she put
the two together in her mind. She wondered whether they would ever
travel together. It was her hope that her old friend might become
another Campion himself some day.
A log rolled from its place in the fire, scattering sparks. She stooped
to put it back, glancing first at the bed to see if her mother were
disturbed; and, as she sat back again, she heard the blowing of a horse
and a man's voice, fierce and low, from beyond the windows, bidding the
beast hold himself up.
She was accustomed now to such arrivals. They came and went like this,
often without warning; it was her business to look at any credentials
they bore with them, and then, if all were well, to do what she
could-whether to set them on their way, or to give them shelter. A room
was set aside now, in the further wing, and called openly and freely the
"priest's room,"--so great was their security.
She got up from her seat and went out quickly on tiptoe as she heard a
door open and close beneath her in the house, running over in her mind
any preparations that she would have to make if the rider were one that
needed shelter.
As she looked down the staircase, she saw a maid there, who had run out
from the buttery, talking to a man whom she thought she knew. Then he
lifted his face, and she saw that she was right: and that it was Mr.
Babington.
She came down, reassured and smiling; but her breath caught in her
throat as she saw his face.... She told the maid to be off and get
supper ready, but he jerked his head in refusal. She saw that he could
hardly speak. Then she led him into the hall, taking down the lantern
that hung in the passage, and placing it on the table. But her hand
shook in spite of herself.
"Tell me," she whispered.
He sat down heavily on a bench.
"It is all over," he said. "The bloody murderers!... They were gibbeted
three days ago."
The girl drew a long, steady breath. All her heart cried "Robin."
"Who are they, Mr. Babington?"
"Why, Campion and Sherwine and Brian. They were taken a month or two
ago.... I had heard not a word of it, and ... and it ended three days
ago."
"I ... I do not understand."
The man struck his hand heavily on the long table against which he
leaned. He appeared one flame of fury; courtesy and gentleness were all
gone from him.
"They were hanged for treason, I tell you.... Treason! ... Campion!...
By God! we will give them treason if they will have it so!"
All seemed gone from Marjorie except the white, splashed face that
stared at her, lighted up by the lantern beside him, glaring from the
background of darkness. It was not Robin ... not Robin ... yet--
The shocking agony of her face broke through the man's heart-broken
fury, and he stood up quickly.
"Mistress Marjorie," he said, "forgive me.... I am like a madman. I am
on my way from Derby, where the news came to me this afternoon. I turned
aside to tell you. They say the truce, as they call it, is at an end. I
came to warn you. You must be careful. I am riding for London. My men
are in the valley. Mistress Marjorie--"
She waved him aside. The blood was beginning again to beat swiftly and
deafeningly in her ears, and the word came back.
"I ... I was shocked," she said; "... you must pardon me.... Is it
certain?"
He tore out a bundle of papers from behind his cloak, detached one with
shaking hands and thrust it before her.
She sat down and spread it on the table. But his voice broke in and
interrupted her all the while.
"They were all three taken together, in the summer.... I ... have been
in France; my letters never reached me.... They were racked
continually.... They died all together; praying for the Queen ... at
Tyburn.... Campion died the first...."
She pushed the paper from her; the close handwriting was no more to her
than black marks on the paper. She passed her hands over her forehead
and eyes.
"Mistress Marjorie, you look like death. See, I will leave the paper
with you. It is from one of my friends who was there...."
The door was pushed open, and the servant came in, bearing a tray.
"Set it down," said Marjorie, as coolly as if death and horror were as
far from her as an hour ago.
She nodded sharply to the maid, who went out again; then she rose and
spread the food within the man's reach. He began to eat and drink,
talking all the time.
* * * * *
As she sat and watched him and listened, remembering afterwards, as if
mechanically, all that he said, she was contemplating something else.
She seemed to see Campion, not as he had been three days ago, not as he
was now ... but as she had seen him in London--alert, brisk, quick. Even
the tones of his voice were with her, and the swift merry look in his
eyes.... Somewhere on the outskirts of her thought there hung other
presences: the darkness, the blood, the smoking cauldron.... Oh! she
would have to face these presently; she would go through this night, she
knew, looking at all their terror. But just now let her remember him as
he had been; let her keep off all other thoughts so long as she
could....
II
When she had heard the horse's footsteps scramble down the little steep
ascent in the dark, and then pass into silence on the turf beyond, she
closed the outer door, barred it once more, and then went back straight
into the hall, where the lantern still burned among the plates. She
dared not face her mother yet; she must learn how far she still held
control of herself; for her mother must not hear the news: the
apothecary from Derby who had ridden up to see her this week had been
very emphatic. So the girl must be as usual. There must be no sign of
discomposure. To-night, at least, she would keep her face in the shadow.
But her voice? Could she control that too?
After she had sat motionless in the cold hall a minute or two, she
tested herself.
"He is dead," she said softly. "He is quite dead, and so are the others.
They--"
But she could not go on. Great shuddering seized on her; she shook from
head to foot....
Later that night Mrs. Manners awoke. She tried to move her head, but the
pain was shocking, and still half asleep, she moaned aloud.
Then the curtains moved softly, and she could see that a face was
looking at her.
"Margy! Is that you?"
"Yes, mother."
"Move my head; move my head. I cannot bear--"
She felt herself lifted gently and strongly. The struggle and the pain
exhausted her for a minute, and she lay breathing deeply. Then the ease
of the shifted position soothed her.
"I cannot see your face," she said. "Where is the light?"
The face disappeared, and immediately, through the curtains, the mother
saw the light. But still she could not see the girl's face. She said so
peevishly.
"It will weary your eyes. Lie still, mother, and go to sleep again."
"What time is it?"
"I do not know."
"Are you not in bed?"
"Not yet, mother."
The sick woman moaned again once or twice, but thought no more of it.
And presently the deep sleep of sickness came down on her again.
* * * * *
They rose early in those days in England; and soon after six o'clock, as
Janet had seen nothing of her young mistress, she opened the door of the
sleeping-room and peeped in.... A minute later Marjorie's mind rose up
out of black gulfs of sleep, in which, since her falling asleep an hour
or two ago, she had wandered, bearing an intolerable burden, which she
could neither see nor let fall, to find the rosy-streaked face of Janet,
all pinched with cold, peering into her own. She sat up, wide awake, yet
with all her world still swaying about her, and stared into her maid's
eyes.
"What is it? What time is it?"
"It is after six, mistress. And the mistress seems uneasy. I--"
Marjorie sprang up and went to the bed.
III
On the evening of that day her mother died.
* * * * *
There was no priest within reach. A couple of men had ridden out early,
dispatched by Marjorie within half an hour of her awaking--to Dethick,
to Hathersage, and to every spot within twenty miles where a priest
might be found, with orders not to return without one. But the long day
had dragged out: and when dusk was falling, still neither had come back.
The country was rain-soaked and all but impassable, she learned later,
across valley after valley, where the streams had risen. And nowhere
could news be gained that any priest was near; for, as a further
difficulty, open inquiry was not always possible, in view of the news
that had come to Booth's Edge last night. The girl had understood that
the embers were rising again to flame in the south; and who could tell
but that a careless word might kindle the fire here, too. She had been
urged by Anthony to hold herself more careful than ever, and she had
been compelled to warn her messengers.
* * * * *
It was soon after dusk had fallen--the heavy dusk of a December
day--that her mother had come back again to consciousness. She opened
her eyes wearily, coming back, as Marjorie had herself that morning,
from that strange realm of heavy and deathly sleep, to the pale phantom
world called "life"; and agonising pain about the heart stabbed her wide
awake.
"O Jesu!" she screamed.
Then she heard her daughter's voice, very steady and plain, in her ear.
"There is no priest, mother dear. Listen to me."
"I cannot! I cannot!... Jesu!"
Her eyes closed again for torment, and the sweat ran down her face. The
slow poison that had weighted and soaked her limbs so gradually these
many months past, was closing in at last upon her heart, and her pain
was gathering to its last assault. The silent, humorous woman was
changed into one twitching, uncontrolled incarnation of torture.
Then again the voice began:
"Jesu, Who didst die for love of me--upon the Cross--let me die--for
love of Thee."
"Christ!" moaned the woman more softly.
"Say it in your heart, after me. There is no priest. So God will accept
your sorrow instead. Now then--"
Then the old words began--the old acts of sorrow and love and faith and
hope, that mother and daughter had said together, night after night, for
so many years. Over and over again they came, whispered clear and sharp
by the voice in her ear; and she strove to follow them. Now and again
the pain closed its sharp hands upon her heart so cruelly that all that
on which she strove to fix her mind, fled from her like a mist, and she
moaned or screamed, or was silent with her teeth clenched upon her lip.
"My God--I am very sorry--that I have offended Thee."
"Why is there no priest?... Where is the priest?"
"Mother, dear, listen. I have sent for a priest ... but none has come.
You remember now?... You remember that priests are forbidden now--"
"Where is the priest?"
"Mother, dear. Three priests were put to death only three days ago in
London--for ... for being priests. Ask them to pray for you.... Say,
Edmund Campion pray for me. Perhaps ... perhaps--"
The girl's voice died away.
For, for a full minute, an extraordinary sensation rested on her. It
began with a sudden shiver of the flesh, as sharp and tingling as water,
dying away in long thrills amid her hair--that strange advertisement
that tells the flesh that more than flesh is there, and that the world
of spirit is not only present, but alive and energetic. Then, as it
passed, the whole world, too, passed into silence. The curtains that
shook just now hung rigid as sheets of steel; the woman in the bed lay
suddenly still, then smiled with closed eyes. The pair of maids,
kneeling out of sight beyond the bed, ceased to sob; and, while the
seconds went by, as real as any knowledge can be in which the senses
have no part, the certain knowledge deepened upon the girl who knelt,
arrested in spite of herself, that a priestly presence was here
indeed....
Very slowly, as if lifting great weights, she raised her eyes, knowing
that there, across the tumbled bed, where the darkness of the room
showed between the parted curtains, the Presence was poised. Yet there
was nothing there to see--no tortured, smoke-stained, throttling
face--ah! that could not be--but neither was there the merry, kindly
face, with large cheerful eyes and tender mouth smiling; no hand held
the curtains that the face might peer in. Neither then nor at any time
in all her life did Marjorie believe that she saw him; yet neither then
nor in all her life did she doubt he had been there while her mother
died.
Again her mother smiled--and this time she opened her eyes to the full,
and there was no dismay in them, nor fear, nor disappointment; and she
looked a little to her left, where the parted curtains showed the
darkness of the room....
Then Marjorie closed her eyes, and laid her head on the bed where her
mother's body sank back and down into the pillows. Then the girl
slipped heavily to the floor, and the maids sprang up screaming.
IV
It was not till two hours later that Mr. Simpson arrived. He had been
found at last at Hathersage, only a few miles away, as one of the men,
on his return ride, had made one last inquiry before coming home; and
there he ran into the priest himself in the middle of the street. The
priest had taken the man's horse and pushed on as well as he could
through the dark, in the hopes he might yet be in time.
Marjorie came to him in the parlour downstairs. She nodded her head
slowly and gravely.
"It is over," she said; and sat down.
"And there was no priest?"
She said nothing.
She was in her house-dress, with the hood drawn over her head as it was
a cold night. He was amazed at her look of self-control; he had thought
to find her either collapsed or strainedly tragic: he had wondered as he
came how he would speak to her, how he would soothe her, and he saw
there was no need.
She told him presently of the sudden turn for the worse early that
morning as she herself fell asleep by the bedside; and a little of what
had passed during the day. Then she stopped short as she approached the
end.
"Have you heard the news from London?" she said. "I mean, of our priests
there?"
His young face grew troubled, and he knit his forehead.
"They are in ward," he said; "I heard a week ago.... They will banish
them from England--they dare not do more!"
"It is all finished," she said quietly.
"What!"
"They were hanged at Tyburn three days ago--the three of them together."
He drew a hissing breath, and felt the skin of his face tingle.
"You have heard that?"
"Mr. Babington came to tell me last night. He left a paper with me: I
have not read it yet."
He watched her as she drew it out and put it before him. The terror was
on him, as once or twice before in his journeyings, or as when the news
of Mr. Nelson's death had reached him--a terror which shamed him to the
heart, and which he loathed yet could not overcome. He still stared into
her pale face. Then he took the paper and began to read it.
* * * * *
Presently he laid it down again. The sick terror was beginning to pass;
or, rather, he was able to grip it; and he said a conventional word or
two; he could do no more. There was no exultation in his heart; nothing
but misery. And then, in despair, he left the subject.
"And you, mistress," he said, "what will you do now? Have you no aunt or
friend--"
"Mistress Alice Babington once said she would come and live with me--if
... when I needed it. I shall write to her. I do not know what else to
do."
"And you will live here?"
"Why; more than ever!" she said, smiling suddenly. "I can work in
earnest now."