PRIDE.
Alice, full of A. and E., received the humble Master Cavendish in
even a more cold and distant manner than he had ever seen her put on
before.
'Thy master is dead? I know it! Dost thou come to claim ought of
me?'
'No, lady, I want nothing; I did but think, knowing thy former
interest in my poor lord, and my close attachment to his person, that
some little information of his latter end might be acceptable to the
Lady Alice, from her humble servant.'
'Another time it might have been. I have only one question to ask of
thee: was he shriven by a priest before he died?'
'He was, by Doctor Palmes.'
'Then I ask no more. He died a Catholic.'
'He did, lady; and recommended his royal master to look well after
these heretics and heresies so prevalent.'
'Then why did he not order Lord De Freston to be burnt!'
Even Cavendish, with all his knowledge of her character, little
expected this; but when he afterwards heard her speak of those
hospitable friends, and all connected with them, as if she would joy
to see them tortured upon the rack, flayed alive, or burnt at the
stake, his blood chilled within him, and he truly thought within
himself: 'This is Cold Hall indeed!'
'I ask no questions,' she added, 'of thy master's fortunes. The
great Cardinal died before he departed for York. He died as soon as
I left him. His was but a pitiful struggle afterwards. Had he been
as firm to Rome as I would have had him, he might now have been his
master's lord. But vengeance yet awaits the enemies of Rome, and
weak instruments may be used for their overthrow. Are you a staunch
friend to the Pope?'
This was a leading question to Cavendish, who, at that time, neither
wished to be thought a heretic by denying the Supremacy of the Pope,
nor to be disloyal to his new master by denying his supremacy in the
visible church in matters purely temporal. But he knew well that the
Papacy must have the jurisdiction of temporalities as well as
spiritualities in the church, and that Alice held the foreign pontiff
to be her supreme idol.
He had a difficult question to answer, but one which his tact alone
could elude, so as not to create bitter animadversion against him.
He therefore replied--
'The Pope, lady, has so many staunch advocates like thyself, that the
friendship of such insignificant beings as I am could redound but
little to his greatness. Thou, lady, art, I am sure, his warm
friend, and thine influence in this neighborhood must be paramount.
Has the Pope lost any power hereabouts?'
'If he has it shall be restored to him. The great patron of the
divine arts, the illustrious advocate of public singers, the glorious
supporter of divine architecture, the magnificent exhibitor of all
that is great, noble, praiseworthy, and splendid in the worship of
the Virgin, the angels, and the saints, shall not want a friend in
me, though hereabouts there may want an example of fire and faggot to
exterminate his enemies. Where is thine abode in these parts, Master
Cavendish?'
'I am but a traveller, a visitor, a mere bearer of a message to my
lord's friend.'
'And what was it, Master Secretary, what was it? Ha! did the little
man want anything from Alice De Clinton?'
Cavendish marvelled indeed at the hauteur of this quondam subservient
mistress of the Cardinal, his master; and within his soul, faithful
as it was to a kind-hearted individual who was ever gracious to him,
it revolted at the contumacy with which she, the exalted lady of
Wolsey's notice, now dared to treat his memory. His memory of his
master rose triumphant, and his remembrance, too, of the estimation
in which Ellen was held by him came with lively impression to his
mind, and he could not help punishing the haughty Alice with a
declaration which he little expected she would so quickly resent.
With gratitude in his heart, a far more active agent at that moment
than political prudence or cautious wisdom, he replied--
'I am upon a visit to Lord De Freston, the Lady Ellen, and Latimer.'
The haughty lady looked as if she would annihilate him with one
fierce glance of her serpent eye. She rose without forgetting for a
moment that she was treating a stranger, or a former friend, in her
own house. She rose stately, coolly, slowly, erected her head just
as a serpent of the most stupendous kind might do previous to her all
determined rush upon her victim, and something more than a hiss from
her forked tongue issued from her throat:
'Then how darest thou to tread the threshold of Goldwell Hall?
Knowest thou not that between the daughters of Rome and those of the
Devil there can be no alliance? and darest thou to contaminate with
thy polluted feet the hall of the faithful, after having been an
inmate of the tomb of an heretic?
'Perish, traitor, perish!--back, go back to Freston Tower! Look
thence upon the birth-place of thy master; but know thou that ere
another year shall sweep over the heads of those whom now thou dost
call thine host, hostess, and friend, their power shall perish if
they be not themselves departed.'
The very words, gesture, and cold-blooded determination of the
impenetrable marble then before him, had an effect of creating a
chill upon his whole frame; and he felt how truly his friends on the
opposite bank of the Orwell had described the being who then stood
before him.
He was so astonished at her whole bearing, that he made no attempt to
retire; and had not Alice, with inconceivable scorn, pointed to the
door, and without any kind of respect bade a servant show him the way
out, he would have remained even longer spell-bound by the very
extravagant and extraordinary manner of the speech of Alice De
Clinton. He departed, however, with much less pleasant sensations
than those with which he had entered; and as he looked back upon that
solitary mansion, he exclaimed in a distich, which afterwards, years
afterwards, changed the name of the place,
'Goldwell is cold, and colder far than all
This living corpse, a tenant of Cold Hall.'
He returned to his cheerful friends at Freston, to narrate the
adventure of his reception. They were not surprised at his
declaration,
'That never in the face of woman did he see so cold-blooded a feature
as that of Alice De Clinton.'
Little did any of them at that time suspect the plot hatching against
their peace.
It was determined that the usual festivities of Christmas should be
observed by De Freston as his ancestors had done before him; and
Cavendish was invited to see the tenantry of the hospitable lord do
justice to the long beloved and venerated old man.
Latimer had declined living in the mansion of Humphrey Wingfield in
Brook Street, Ipswich; and was looked upon as the future owner of
Freston Castle and all its wide spread domain. He richly merited
respect, and was as happy in the acknowledgment of every friend of De
Freston and his daughter, as Albert, Prince of Great Britain, is at
this moment in the hearts of Victoria's loyal subjects. But none are
without enemies.
Alice had managed to hire Wingfield House as her town residence, and
strange did people think the difference between the lively possessor
who left it, and the stern occupier who occasionally, with rigid cold
pomp, occupied the state apartments.
It was said, however, that she intended to move into the town at
Christmas, and to leave _Cold Hall_ (as it is called to this day);
and consequently she had wood conveyed from her own groves to the
yards of the mansion, and made every preparation to have at least the
rooms well warmed.
But Alice had a burning within which few knew anything of, except her
father confessor, Duncan, and those priests of Rome who worked upon
her fanatic disposition. This was inflamed against all heretics,
even to detest their abodes, and she had secretly resolved that the
flame of Ellen--the E. of her consecrated candles--should be put out.
How this was done may be better narrated in another chapter. This is
sufficient to show how weak minds may be acted upon to do deeds,
under the imagination of devotion, which are abhorrent to all truth,
and such as pure religion would revolt at.
'Oh who can tell what prejudice may call
Devotion, when the devil doth enthral?'