For Isabel, too, it was strange to be riding up again towards the battlefield of her desires—that battlefield where she had lived for years in such childish faith and peace without a suspicion of the forces that were lurking beneath her own quiet nature. But to both of them the sense of home-coming was stronger than all else—that strange passion for a particular set of inanimate things—or, at the most, for an association of ideas—that has no parallel in human emotions; and as they rode up the darkening valley and the lights of the high windows of the Hall began to show over the trees on their right, Anthony forgot his treason and Isabel her conflicts, and both felt a lump rise in the throat, and their hearts begin to beat quicker with a strange pleasurable pulse, and to Isabel’s eyes at least there rose up great tears of happiness and content; neither dared speak, but both looked eagerly about at the pool where the Mayflies used to dance, at the knoll where the pigeons nested, at the little low bridge beneath which their inch-long boats used to slide sideways into darkness, and the broad marshy flats where the gorgeous irises grew.
“How the trees have grown!” said Anthony at last, with an effort; “I cannot see the lights from the house.”
“Mrs. Carroll will have made ready the first-floor rooms then, on the south.”
“I am sorry they are not our own,” said Anthony.
“Ah, look! there is the dovecote,” cried Isabel.
They were passing up now behind the farm buildings; and directly afterwards came round in front of the little walled garden to the west of the house.
There was a sudden exclamation from Anthony; and Isabel stared in silent dismay. The old house rose up before them with its rows of square windows against the night sky, dark. There was not a glimmer anywhere; even Mrs. Carroll’s own room on the south was dark. They reined their horses in and stood a moment.
“Oh, Anthony, Anthony!” cried Isabel suddenly, “what is it? Is there no one there?”
Anthony shook his head; and then put his tired beast to a shambling trot with Isabel silent again with weariness and disappointment behind him. They passed along outside the low wall, turned the corner of the house and drew up at the odd little doorway in the angle at the back of the house. The servants had drawn up behind them, and now pressed up to hold their horses; and the brother and sister slipped off and went towards the door. Anthony passed under the little open porch and put his hand out to the door; it was quite dark underneath the porch, and he felt further and further, and yet there was no door; his foot struck the step. He felt his way to the doorposts and groped for the door; but still there was none; he could feel the panelling of the lobby inside the doorway, and that was all. He drew back, as one would draw back from a dead face on which one had laid a hand in the dark.
“Oh, Anthony!” said Isabel again, “what is it?” She was still outside.
“Have you a light?” said Anthony hoarsely to the servants.
The man nearest him bent and fumbled in the saddle-bags, and after what seemed an interminable while kindled a little bent taper and handed it to him. As he went towards the porch shading it with his hand, Isabel sprang past him and went before; and then, as the light fell through the doorway, stopped in dead and bewildered silence.
The door was lying on the floor within, shattered and splintered.
Anthony stepped beside her, and she turned and clung to his arm, and a sob or two made itself heard. Then they looked about them. The banisters above them were smashed, and like a cataract, down the stairs lay a confused heap of crockery, torn embroidery and clothes, books, and broken furniture.
Anthony’s hand shook so much that the shadows of the broken banisters waved on the wall above like thin exulting dancers.
Suddenly Anthony started.
“Mrs. Carroll,” he exclaimed, and he darted upstairs past the ruins into her two rooms halfway up the flight; and in a minute or two was back with Isabel.
“She has escaped,” he said in a low voice; and then the two stood looking about them silently again. The door leading to the cellars on the left was broken too; and fragments of casks and bottles lay about the steps; the white wall was splashed with drink, and there was a smell of spirits in the air. Evidently the stormers had thought themselves worthy of their hire.
“Come,” he said again; and leaving the entrance lobby, the two passed to the hall-door and pushed that open and looked. There was the same furious confusion there; the tapestry was lying tumbled and rent on the floor—the high oak mantelpiece was shattered, and doleful cracks and splinters in the panelling all round showed how mad the attack had been; one of the pillars of the further archway was broken clean off, and the brickwork showed behind; the pictures had been smashed and added to the heap of wrecked furniture and broken glass in the middle.
“Come,” he said once more; and the two passed silently through the broken archway, and going up the other flight of stairs, gradually made the round of the house. Everywhere it was the same, except in the servants’ attics, where, apparently, the mob had not thought it worth while to go.
Isabel’s own room was the most pitiable of all; the windows had only the leaden frames left, and those bent and battered; the delicate panelling was scarred and split by the shower of stones that had poured in through the window and that now lay in all parts of the room. A painting of her mother that had hung over her bed was now lying face downwards on the floor. Isabel turned it over silently; a stone had gone through the face; and it had been apparently slit too by some sharp instrument. Even the slender oak bed was smashed in the centre, as if half a dozen men had jumped upon it at once; and the little prie-dieu near the window had been deliberately hacked in half. Isabel looked at it all with wide startled eyes and parted lips; and then suddenly sank down on the wrecked bed where she had hoped to sleep that night, and began to sob like a child.
“Ah! I did think—I did think——” she began.
Anthony stooped and tried to lift her.
“Come, my darling,” he said, “is not this a high honour?Qui relinquit domos!”
“Oh! why have they done it?” sobbed Isabel. “What harm have we done them?” and she began to wail. She was thoroughly over-tired and over-wrought; and Anthony could not find it in his heart to blame her; but he spoke again bravely.
“We are Catholics,” he said; “that is why they have done it. Do not throw away this grace that our Lord has given us; embrace it and make it yours.”
It was the priest that was speaking now; and Isabel turned her face and looked at him; and then got up and hid her face on his shoulder.
“Oh, Anthony, help me!” she said; and so stood there, quiet.
He came down presently to the servants, while Isabel went upstairs to prepare the rooms in the attics; for it was impossible for them to ride further that night; so they settled to sleep there, and stable the horses; and to ride on early the next day, and be out of the village before the folks were about. Anthony gave directions to the servants, who were Catholics too, and explained in a word or two what had happened; and bade them come up to the house as soon as they had fed and watered the beasts; meanwhile he took the saddle-bags indoors and spread out their remaining provisions in one of the downstairs rooms; and soon Isabel joined him.
“I have made up five beds,” she said, and her voice and lips were steady, and her eyes grave and serene again.
The five supped together in the wrecked kitchen, a fine room on the east of the house, supported by a great oak pillar to which the horses of guests were sometimes attached when the stable was full.
Isabel managed to make a fire and to boil some soup; but they hung thick curtains across the shattered windows, and quenched the fire as soon as the soup was made, for fear that either the light or the smoke from the chimney should arouse attention.
When supper was over, and the two men-servants and Isabel’s French maid were washing up in the scullery, Isabel suddenly turned to Anthony as they sat together near the fireplace.
“I had forgotten,” she said, “what we arranged as we rode up. I must go and tell her still.”
Anthony looked at her steadily a moment.
“God keep you,” he said.
She kissed him and took her riding-cloak, drew the hood over her head, and went out into the dark.
It was with the keenest relief that, half an hour later, Anthony heard her footstep again in the red-tiled hall outside. The servants were gone upstairs by now, and the house was quiet. She came in, and sat by him again and took his hand.
“Thank God I went,” she said. “I have left her so happy.”
“Tell me all,” said Anthony.
“I went through the garden,” said Isabel, “but came round to the front of the house so that they might not think I came from here. When the servant came to the door—he was a stranger, and a Protestant no doubt—I said at once that I brought news of Mr. Maxwell from Rye; and he took me straight in and asked me to come in while he fetched her woman. Then her woman came out and took me upstairs, up into Lady Maxwell’s old room; and there she was lying in bed under the great canopy. Oh, Anthony, she is so pretty! her golden hair was lying out all over the pillow, and her face is so sweet. She cried out when I came in, and lifted herself on her elbow; so I just said at once, ‘He is safe and well’; and then she went off into sobs and laughter; so that I had to go and soothe her—her woman was so foolish and helpless; and very soon she was quiet: and then she called me her darling, and she kissed me again and again; and told the woman to go and leave us together; and then she lifted the sheet; and showed me the face of a little child. Oh Anthony; Hubert’s child and hers, the second, born on Tuesday—only think of that. ‘Mercy, I was going to call her,’ she said, ‘if I had not heard by to-morrow, but now I shall call her Victory.’”
Anthony looked quickly at his sister, with a faint smile in his eyes.
“And what did you say?” he asked.
Isabel smiled outright; but her eyes were bright with tears too.
“‘You have guessed,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘call her Mercy all the same,’ and she kissed me again, and cried, and said that she would. And then I told her all about Hubert; and about his little wound; and how well he looked; and how all the fighting was most likely over; and what his cabin looked like. And then she suddenly guessed who I was, and asked me; and I could not deny it, you know; but she promised not to tell. Then she told me all about the house here; and how she was afraid Hubert had said something impatient about people who go to foreign parts and leave their country to be attacked, ‘But you know he did not really mean it,’ she said; and of course he did not. Well, the people had remembered that, and it spread and spread; and when the news of the Armada came last week, a mob came over from East Grinsted, and they sat drinking and drinking in the village; and of course Grace could not go out to them; and all the old people are gone, and the Catholics on the estate—and so at last they all came out roaring and shouting down the drive, and Mrs. Carroll was warned and slipped out to the Hall; and she is now gone to Stanfield to wait for us—and then the crowd broke into the house—but, oh Anthony, Grace was so sorry, and cried sore to think of us here; and asked us to come and stay there; but of course I told her we could not: and then I said a prayer for her; and we kissed one another again; and then I came away.”
Anthony looked at his sister, and there was honour and pride of her in his eyes.
The ride to Stanfield next day was a long affair, at a foot’s-pace all the way: the horses were thoroughly tired with their journey, and they were obliged to start soon after three o’clock in the morning after a very insufficient rest; they did not reach Groombridge till nearly ten o’clock, when they dined, and then rode on towards Tonbridge about noon. There were heavy hearts to be carried as well. The attempt to welcome the misery of their home-coming was a bitter effort; all the more bitter for that it was an entirely unexpected call upon them. During those six years abroad probably not a day had passed without visions of Great Keynes, and the pleasant and familiar rooms and garden of their own house, and mental rehearsals of their return. The shock of the night before too had been emphasised by the horror of the cold morning light creeping through the empty windows on to the cruel heaps within. The garden too, seen in the dim morning, with its trampled lawns and wrecked flower-beds heaped with withered sunflowers, bell-blossoms and all the rich August growth, with the earthen flower-bowls smashed, the stone balls on the gate overturned, and the laurels at the corner uprooted—all this was a horrible pain to Isabel, to whom the garden was very near as dear and familiar as her own room. So it was a silent and sorrowful ride; and Anthony’s heart rose in relief as at last up the grey village-street he saw the crowded roofs of Stanfield Place rise over the churchyard wall.
Their welcome from Mr. Buxton went far to compensate for all.
“My dear boy,” he said, “or, my dear father, as I should call you in private, you do not know what happiness is mine to-day. It is a great thing to have a priest again; but, if you will allow me to say so, it is a greater to have my friend—and what a sister you have upstairs!”
They were in Mr. Buxton’s own little room on the ground-floor, and Isabel had gone to rest until supper.
Anthony told him of the grim surprise that had awaited them at Great Keynes. “So you must forgive my sister if she is a little sad.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Buxton, “I had heard from Mrs. Carroll last night when she arrived here. But there was no time to warn you. I had expected you to-day, though Mrs. Carroll did not.”
(Anthony had sent a man straight from Rye to Stanfield.)
“But Mistress Isabel, as I shall venture to call her, must do what she can with this house and garden. I need not say how wholly it is hers. And I shall call you Anthony,” he added—“in public, at least. And, for strangers, you are just here as my guest; and you shall be called Capell—a sound name; and you shall be Catholics too; though you are no priest, of course, in public—and you have returned from the Continent. I hold it is no use to lie when you can be found out. I do not know what your conscience is, Father Anthony; but, for myself, I count us Catholics to bein statu bellinow; and therefore I shall lie frankly and fully when there is need; and you may do as you please. Old Mr. Blake used to bid me prevaricate instead; but that always seemed to me two lies instead of one—one to the questioning party and the other to myself; and so I always said to him, but he would not have it so. I wondered he did not tell me that two negatives made an affirmative; but he was not clever enough, the good father. So my own custom is to tell one plain lie when needed, and shame the devil.”
It was pleasant to Anthony to hear his friend talk again, and he said so. His host’s face softened into a great tenderness.
“Dear lad, I know what you mean. Please God you may find this a happy home.”
A couple of hours later, when Anthony and Isabel came down together from their rooms in the old wing, they found Mr. Buxton in his black satin and lace in the beautiful withdrawing-room on the ground-floor. It was already past the supper-hour, but their host showed no signs of going into the hall. At last he apologised.
“I ask your pardon, Mistress Isabel; but I have a guest come to stay with me, who only arrived an hour ago; and she is a great lady and must have her time. Ah! here she is.”
The door was flung open and a radiant vision appeared. The door was a little way off, and there were no candles near it; but there swelled and rustled into the room a figure all in blue and gold, with a white delicate ruff; and diamond buckles shone beneath the rich brocaded petticoat. Above rose a white bosom and throat scintillating with diamonds, and a flushed face with scarlet lips, all crowned by piles of black hair, with black dancing eyes beneath. Still a little in the shadow this splendid figure swept down with a great curtsey, which Isabel met by another, while the two gentlemen bowed low; and then, as the stranger swayed up again into the full light of the sconces, Anthony recognised Mary Corbet.
He stood irresolute with happy hesitation; and she came up smiling brilliantly; and before he could stay her dropped down on one knee and took his hand and kissed it; just as the man left the room.
“God bless you, Father Anthony!” she said; and as he looked at her, as she glanced up, he could not tell whether her eyes shone with tears or laughter.
“This is very charming and proper, Mistress Corbet, and like a true daughter of the Church,” put in Mr. Buxton, “but I shall be obliged to you if you will not in future kiss priests’ hands nor call them Father in the presence of the servants—at least not in my house.”
“Ah!” she said, “you were always prudent. Have you seen his secret doors?” she went on to Anthony. “The entire Catholic Church might play hare and hounds with the Holy Father as huntsman and the Cardinals as the whips, through Mr. Buxton’s secret labyrinths.”
“Wait until you are hare, and it is other than Holy Church that is a-hunting,” said Mr. Buxton, “and you will thank God for my labyrinths, as you call them.”
Then she greeted Isabel with great warmth.
“Why, my dear,” she said, “you are not the little Puritan maiden any longer. We must have a long talk to-night; and you shall tell me everything.”
“Mistress Mary is not so greatly changed,” said Isabel, smiling. “She always would be told everything.”
It was strange to Anthony to meet Mary again after so long, and to find her so little changed, as Isabel had said truly. He himself had passed through so much since they had last met at Greenwich over six years ago—his conversion, his foreign sojourn, and, above all, the bewildering and intoxicating sweetness of his ordination and priestly life. And yet he felt as close to Mary as ever, knit in a bond of wonderful good fellowship and brotherhood such as he had never felt to any other in just that kind and degree. He watched her, warm and content, as she talked across the polished oak and beneath the gleam of the candles; and listened, charmed by her air and her talk.
“There is not so much news of her Grace,” she said, “save that she is turning soldier in her old age. She rode out to Tilbury, you know, the other day, in steel cuirass and scarlet; out to see her dear Robin and the army; and her royal face was all smiles and becks, and lord! how the soldiers cheered! But if you had seen her as I did, in her room when she first buckled on her armour, and the joints did not fit—yes, and heard her! there were no smiles to spare then. She lodged at Mr. Rich’s, you know, two nights; but he would be Mr. Poor, I should suppose, by the time her Grace left him; for he will not see the worth of a shoelace again of all that he expended on her.”
“You see,” remarked Mr. Buxton to Isabel, “how fortunate we are in having such a friend of her Grace’s with us. We hear all the cream of the news, even though it be a trifle sour sometimes.”
“A lover of her Grace,” said Mary, “loves the truth about her, however bitter. But then I have no secret passages where I may hide from my sovereign!”
“The cream can scarce be but sour,” said Anthony, “near her Grace: there is so much thunder in the air.”
“Yes, but the sun came out when you were there, Anthony,” put in Isabel, smiling.
“But even the light of her glorious countenance is trying,” said Mary. “She is overpowering in thunder and sunshine alike.”
“We have had enough of that metaphor,” observed Mr. Buxton.
Then Anthony had to talk, and tell all the foreign news of Douai and Rome and Cardinal Allen; and of Father Persons’ scheme for a college at Valladolid.
“Father Robert is a superb beggar—as he is superb in all things,” said Mr. Buxton. “I dare not think how much he got from me for his college; and then I do not even approve of his college. His principles are too logical for me. I have ever had a weakness for thenon sequitur.”
This led on to the Armada; Anthony told his experience of it; how he had seen at least the sails of Lord Howard’s squadron far away against the dawn; and this led on again to a sharp discussion when the servants had left the room.
“I do not know,” said Mary at last; “it is difficult—is not the choice between God and Elizabeth? If I were a man, why should I not take up arms to defend my religion? Since I am a woman, why should I not pray for Philip’s success? It is a bitter hard choice, I know; but why need I prefer my country to my faith? Tell me that, Father Anthony.”
“I can only tell you my private opinion,” said Anthony, “and that is, that both duties may be done. As Mr. Buxton here used to tell me, the duty to Cæsar is as real as the duty to God. A man is bound to both; for each has its proper bounds. When either oversteps them it must be resisted. When Elizabeth bids me deny my faith, I tell her I would sooner die. When a priest bids me deny my country, I tell him I would sooner be damned.”
Mary clapped her hands.
“I like to hear a man talk like that,” she cried. “But what of the Holy Father and his excommunication of her Grace?”
Anthony looked up at her sharply, and then smiled; Isabel watched him with a troubled face.
“Aquinas holds,” he said, “that an excommunication of sovereign and people in a lump is invalid. And until the Holy Father tells me himself that Aquinas is wrong, I shall continue to think he is right.”
“God-a-mercy!” burst in Mr. Buxton, “what a to-do! Leave it alone until the choice must be made; and meanwhile say your prayers for Pope and Queen too, and hear mass and tell your beads and hold your tongue: that is what I say to myself. Mistress Mary, I will not have my chaplain heckled; here is his lady sister all a-tremble between heresy and treason.”
They sat long over the supper-table, talking over the last six years and the times generally. More than once Mary showed a strange bitterness against the Queen. At last Mr. Buxton showed his astonishment plainly.
“I do not understand you,” he said. “I know that at heart you are loyal; and yet one might say you meditated her murder.”
Mary’s face grew white with passion and her eyes blazed.
“Ah!” she hissed, “you do not understand, you say? Then where is your heart? But then you did not see Mary Stuart die.”
Anthony looked at her, amazed.
“And you did, Mistress Mary?” he asked.
Mary bowed, with her lips set tight to check their trembling.
“I will tell you,” she said, “if our host permits”; and she glanced at him.
“Then come this way,” he said, and they rose from table.
They went back again to the withdrawing-room; a little cedar-fire had been kindled under the wide chimney; and the room was full of dancing shadows. The great plaster-pendants, the roses, the crowns, and the portcullises on the ceiling seemed to waver in the firelight, for Mr. Buxton at a sign from Mary blew out the four tapers that were burning in the sconces. They all sat down in the chairs that were set round the fire, Mary in a tall porter’s chair with flaps that threw a shadow on her face when she leaned back; and she took a fan in her hand to keep the fire, or her friends’ eyes, from her face should she need it.
She first told them very briefly of the last months of Mary’s life, of the web that was spun round her by Walsingham’s tactics, and her own friends’ efforts, until it was difficult for her to stir hand or foot without treason, real or pretended, being set in motion somewhere. Then she described how at Christmas ’86 Elizabeth had sent her—Mary Corbet—as a Catholic, up to the Queen of the Scots at Fotheringay, on a private mission to attempt to win the prisoner’s confidence, and to persuade her to confess to having been privy to Babington’s conspiracy; and how the Scottish Queen had utterly denied it, even in the most intimate conversations. Sentence had been already passed, but the warrant had not been signed; and it never would have been signed, said Mistress Corbet, if Mary had owned to the crime of which she was accused.
“Ah! how they insulted her!” cried Mary Corbet indignantly. “She showed me one day the room where her throne had stood. Now the cloth of state had been torn down by Sir Amyas Paulet’s men, and he himself dared to sit with his hat on his head in the sovereign’s presence! The insolence of the hound! But the Queen showed me how she had hung a crucifix where her royal arms used to hang. ‘J’appelle,’ she said to me, ‘de la reine au roi des rois.’”
Mistress Corbet went on to tell of the arrival of Walsingham’s brother-in-law, Mr. Beale, with the death-warrant on that February Sunday evening.
“I saw his foxy face look sideways up at the windows as he got off his horse in the courtyard; and I knew that our foes had triumphed. Then the other bloodhounds began to arrive; my lord of Kent on the Monday and Shrewsbury on the Tuesday. Then they came in to us after dinner; and they told her Grace it was to be for next day. I was behind her chair and saw her hand on the boss of the arm, and it did not stir nor clench; she said it could not be. She could not believe it of Elizabeth.
“When she did at last believe it, there was no wild weeping or crying for mercy; but she set her affairs in order, queenly, and yet sedately too. She first thought of her soul, and desired that M. de Preau might come to her and hear her confession; but they would not permit it. They offered her Dr. Fletcher instead, ‘a godly man,’ as my lord of Kent called him. ‘Je ne m’en doute pas,’ she said, smiling. But it was hard not to have a priest.
“Then she set her earthly affairs in order when she had examined her soul and made confession to God without the Dean’s assistance. We all supped together when it was growing late; and I thought, Father Anthony—indeed I did—of another Supper long ago. Then M. Gorion was sent for to arrange some messages and gifts; and until two of the clock in the morning we watched with her or served her as she wrote and gave orders. The court outside was full of comings and goings. As I passed down the passage I saw the torches of the visitors that were come to see the end; and once I heard a hammering from the great hall. Then she went to her bed; and I think few lay as quiet as she in the castle that night. I was with her ladies when they waked her before dawn; and it was hard to see that sweet face on the pillow open its eyes again to what was before her.
“Then when she was dressed I went in again, and we all went to the oratory, where she received our Saviour from the golden pyx which the Holy Father had sent her; for, you see, they would allow no priest to come near her....
“Presently the gentlemen knocked. When we tried to follow we were prevented; they wished her to die alone among her enemies; but at last two of the ladies were allowed to go with her.
“I ran out another way, and sent a message to my Lord Shrewsbury, who knew me at court. As I waited in the courtyard, the musicians there were playing ‘The Witches’ Dirge,’ as is done at the burnings—and all to mock at my queen! At last a halberdier was sent to bring me in.”
Mary Corbet was silent a moment or two and leaned back in her chair; and the others dared not speak. The strange emotion of her voice and the stillness of that sparkling figure in the porter’s chair affected them profoundly. Her face was now completely shaded by a fan.
“It was in the hall, where a great fire was burning on the hearth. The stage stood at the upper end; all was black. The crowd of gentlemen filled the hall and all were still and reverent except—except a devil who laughed as my queen came in, all in black. She was smiling and brave, and went up the steps and sat on her black throne and looked about her. The—thethingswere just in front of her.
“Then the warrant was read by Beale, and I saw the lords glance at her as it ended; but there was nought but joyous hope in her face. She looked now and again gently on the ivory crucifix in her hand, as she listened; and her lips moved to—to—Him who was delivered to death for her.”
Mary Corbet gave one quick sob, and was silent again for an instant. Then she went on in a yet lower voice.
“Dr. Fletcher tried to address her, but he stammered and paused three or four times; and the queen smiled on him and bade him not trouble himself, for that she lived and died a Catholic. But they would not let her be; so she looked on her crucifix and was silent; and even then my lord of Kent badgered her and told her Christ crucified in her hand would not save her, except He was engraved on her heart.
“Then she knelt at her chair and tried to pray softly to herself; but Fletcher would not have that, and prayed himself, aloud, and all the gentlemen in the hall began to pray aloud with him. But Mary prayed on in Latin and English aloud, and prevailed, for all were silent at the end but she.
“And at last she kissed the crucifix and cried in a sweet piercing voice, ‘As thine arms, O Jesus, were spread upon the Cross, so receive me into Thy mercy and forgive me my sins!’”
Again Mistress Corbet was silent; and Anthony drew a long sobbing breath of pure pity, and Isabel was crying quietly to herself.
“When the headsmen offered to assist her,” went on the low voice, “the queen smiled at the gentlemen and said that she had never had such grooms before; and then they let the ladies come up. When they began to help her with her dress I covered my face—I could not help it. There was such a stillness now that I could hear her beads chink at her girdle. When I looked again, she was ready, with her sweet neck uncovered: all round her was black but the headsman, who wore a white apron over his velvet, and she, in her beauty, and oh! her face was so fair and delicate and her eyes so tender and joyous. And as her ladies looked at her, they sobbed piteously. ‘Ne criez vous,’ said she.
“Then she knelt down, and Mistress Mowbray bound her eyes. She smiled again under the handkerchief. ‘Adieu,’ she said, and then, ‘Au revoir.’
“Then she said once more a Latin psalm, and then laid her head down, as on a pillow.
“‘In manus tuas, Domine,’ she said.”
Mary Corbet stopped, and leaned forward a little, putting her hand into her bosom; Anthony looked at her as she drew up a thin silk cord with a ruby ring attached to it.
“This was hers,” she said simply, and held it out. Each of the Catholics took it and kissed it reverently, and Mary replaced it.
“When they lifted her,” she added, “a little dog sprang out from her clothes and yelped. And at that the man near me, who had laughed as she came in, wept.”
Then the four sat silent in the firelight.
CHAPTER IV
STANFIELD PLACE
Life at Stanfield Place was wonderfully sweet to Anthony and Isabel after their exile abroad, for both of them had an intense love of England and of English ways. The very sight of fair-faced children, and the noise of their shrill familiar voices from the village street, the depths of the August woods round them, the English manners of living—all this was alive with a full deliberate joy to these two. Besides, there was the unfailing tenderness and gaiety of Mr. Buxton; and at first there was the pleasant company of Mary Corbet as well.
There was little or no anxiety resting on any of them. “God was served,” as the celebration of mass was called, each morning in the little room where Anthony had made the exercises, and the three others were always present. It was seldom that the room was not filled to over-flowing on Sundays and holy-days with the household and the neighbouring Catholics.
Everything was, of course, perfection in the little chapel when it was furnished; as was all that Mr. Buxton possessed. There was a wonderful golden crucifix by an unknown artist, that he had picked up in his travels, that stood upon the altar, with the bird-types of the Saviour at each of the four ends; a pelican at the top, an eagle on the right supporting its young which were raising their wings for a flight, on the left a phœnix amid flames, and at the foot a hen gathering her chickens under her wings—all the birds had tiny emerald eyes; the figure on the cross was beautifully wrought, and had rubies in hands and feet and side. There were also two silver altar-candlesticks designed by Marrina for the Piccolomini chapel in the church of St. Francis in Siena; and two more, plainer, for the Elevation. The vestments were exquisite; those for high festivals were cloth of gold; and the other white ones were beautifully worked with seed pearls, and jewelled crosses on the stole and maniple. The other colours, too, were well represented, and were the work of a famous convent in the south of France. All the other articles, too, were of silver: the lavabo basin, the bell, the thurible, the boat and spoon, and the cruets. It was a joy to all the Catholics who came to see the worship of God carried on with such splendour, when in so many places even necessaries were scarcely forthcoming.
There was a little hiding-hole between the chapel and the priest’s room, just of a size to hold the altar furniture and the priests in case of a sudden alarm; and there were several others in the house too, which Mr. Buxton had showed to Anthony with a good deal of satisfaction, on the morning after his arrival.
“I dared not show them to you the last time you were here,” he said, “and there was no need; but now there must be no delay. I have lately made some more, too. Now here is one,” he said, stopping before the great carved mantelpiece in the hall.
He looked round to see that no servant was in the room, and then, standing on a settee before the fire, touched something above, and a circular hole large enough for a man to clamber through appeared in the midst of the tracery.
“There,” he said, “and you will find some cured ham and a candle, with a few dates within, should you ever have need to step up there—which, pray God, you may not.”
“What is the secret?” asked Anthony, as the tracery swung back into place, and his host stepped down.
“Pull the third roebuck’s ears in the coat of arms, or rather push them. It closes with a spring, and is provided with a bolt. But I do not recommend that refuge unless it is necessary. In winter it is too hot, for the chimney passes behind it; and in summer it is too oppressive, for there is not too much air.”
At the end of the corridor that led in the direction of the little old rooms where Anthony had slept in his visit, Mr. Buxton stopped before the portrait of a kindly-looking old gentleman that hung on the wall.
“Now there is an upright old man you would say; and indeed he was, for he was my own uncle, and made a godly end of it last year. But now see what a liar I have made of him!”
Mr. Buxton put his hand behind the frame, and the whole picture opened like a door showing a space within where three or four could stand. Anthony stepped inside and his friend followed him, and after showing him some clothes hanging against the wall closed the picture after them, leaving them in the dark.
“Now see what a sharp-eyed old fellow he is too,” whispered his host. Anthony looked where he was guided, and perceived two pinholes through which he could see the whole length of the corridor.
“Through the centre of each eye,” whispered his friend. “Is he not shrewd and secret? And now turn this way.”
Anthony turned round and saw the opposite wall slowly opening; and in a moment more he stepped out and found himself in the lobby outside the little room where he had made the exercises six years ago. He heard a door close softly as he looked about him in astonishment, and on turning round saw only an innocent-looking set of shelves with a couple of books and a little pile of paper and packet of quills upon them.
“There,” said Mr. Buxton, “who would suspect Tacitus his history and Juvenal his satires of guarding the passage of a Christian ecclesiastic fleeing for his life?”
Then he showed him the secret, how one shelf had to be drawn out steadily, and the nail in another pressed simultaneously, and how then the entire set of shelves swung open.
Then they went back and he showed him the spring behind the frame of the picture.
“You see the advantage of this,” he went on: “on the one side you may flee upstairs, a treasonable skulking cassocked jack-priest with the lords and the commons and the Queen’s Majesty barking at your heels; and on the other side you may saunter down the gallery without your beard and in a murrey doublet, a friend of Mr. Buxton’s, taking the air and wondering what the devil all the clamouring be about.”
Then he took him downstairs again and showed him finally the escape of which he was most proud—the entrance, designed in the cellar-staircase, to an underground passage from the cellars, which led, he told him, across to the garden-house beyond the lime-avenue.
“That is the pride of my heart,” he said, “and maybe will be useful some day; though I pray not. Ah! her Grace and her honest Council are right. We Papists are a crafty and deceitful folk, Father Anthony.”
The four grew very intimate during those few weeks; they had many memories and associations in common on which to build up friendship, and the aid of a common faith and a common peril with which to cement it. The gracious beauty of the house and the life at Stanfield, too, gilded it all with a very charming romance. They were all astonished at the easy intimacy with which they behaved, one to another.
Mary Corbet was obliged to return to her duties at Court at the beginning of September; and she had something of an ache at her heart as the time drew on; for she had fallen once more seriously in love with Isabel. She said a word of it to Mr. Buxton. They were walking in the lime-avenue together after dinner on the last day of Mary’s visit.
“You have a good chaplain,” she said; “what an honest lad he is! and how serious and recollected! Please God he at least may escape their claws!”
“It is often so,” said Mr. Buxton, “with those wholesome out-of-door boys; they grow up into such simple men of God.”
“And Isabel!” said Mary, rustling round upon him as she walked. “What a great dame she is become! I used to lie on her bed and kick my heels and laugh at her; but now I would like to say my prayers to her. She is somewhat like our Lady herself, so grave and serious, and yet so warm and tender.”
Mr. Buxton nodded sharply.
“I felt sure you would feel it,” he said.
“Ah! but I knew her when she was just a child; so simple that I loved to startle her. But now—but now—those two ladies have done wonders with her. She has all the splendour of Mary Maxwell, and all the softness of Margaret.”
“Yes,” said the other meditatively; “the two ladies have done it—or, the grace of God.”
Mary looked at him sideways and her lips twitched a little.
“Yes—or the grace of God, as you say.”
The two laughed into each other’s eyes, for they understood one another well. Presently Mary went on:
“When you and I fence together at table, she does not turn frigid like so many holy folk—or peevish and bewildered like stupid folk—but she just looks at us, and laughs far down in those deep grey eyes of hers. Oh! I love her!” ended Mary.
They walked in silence a minute or two.
“And I think I do,” said Mr. Buxton softly.
“Eh?” exclaimed Mary, “you do what?” She had quite forgotten her last sentence.
“It is no matter,” he said yet more softly; and would say no more.
Presently the talk fell on the Maxwells; and came round to Hubert.
“They say he would be a favourite at Court,” said Mary, “had he not a wife. But her Grace likes not married men. She looked kindly upon him at Deptford, I know; and I have seen him at Greenwich. You know, of course, about Isabel?”
Mr. Buxton shook his head.
“Why, it was common talk that they would have been man and wife years ago, had not the fool apostatised.”
Her companion questioned her further, and soon had the whole story out of her. “But I am thankful,” ended Mary, “that it has so ended.”
The next day she went back to Court; and it was with real grief that the three watched her wonderful plumed riding-hat trot along behind the top of the churchyard wall, with her woman beside her, and her little liveried troop of men following at a distance.
The days passed by, bringing strange tidings to Stanfield. News continued to reach the Catholics of the good confessions witnessed here and there in England by priests and laity. At the end of July, three priests, Garlick, Ludlam and Sympson, had been executed at Derby, and at the end of August the defeat of the Armada seemed to encourage Elizabeth yet further, and Mr. Leigh, a priest, with four laymen and Mistress Margaret Ward, died for their religion at Tyburn.
By the end of September the news of the hopeless defeat and disappearance of the Armada had by now been certified over and over again. Terrible stories had come in during August of that northward flight of all that was left of the fleet over the plunging North Sea up into the stormy coast of Scotland; then rumours began of the miseries that were falling on the Spaniards off Ireland—Catholic Ireland from which they had hoped so much. There was scarcely a bay or a cape along the west coast where some ship had not put in, with piteous entreaties for water and aid—and scarcely a bay or a cape that was not blood-guilty. Along the straight coast from Sligo Bay westwards, down the west coast, Clew Bay, Connemara, and haunted Dingle itself, where the Catholic religion under arms had been so grievously chastened eight years ago—everywhere half-drowned or half-starved Spaniards, piteously entreating, were stripped and put to the sword either by the Irish savages or the English gentlemen. The church-bells were rung in Stanfield and in every English village, and the flame of national pride and loyalty burned fiercer and higher than ever.
On the last day of September Isabel, just before dinner in her room, heard the trot of a couple of horses coming up the short drive, and on going downstairs almost ran against Hubert as he came from the corridor into the hall, as the servant ushered him in.
The two stopped and looked at one another in silence.
Hubert was flushed with hard riding and looked excited; Isabel’s face showed nothing but pleasure and surprise. The servant too stopped, hesitating.
Then Isabel put out her hand, smiling; and her voice was natural and controlled.
“Why, Mr. Hubert,” she said, “it is you! Come through this way”; and she nodded to the servant, who went forward and opened the door of the little parlour and stood back, as Isabel swept by him.
When the door was closed, and the servant’s footsteps had died away, Hubert, as he stood facing Isabel, spoke at last.
“Mistress Isabel,” he said almost imploringly, “what can I say to you? Your home has been wrecked; and partly through those wild and foolish words of mine; and you repay it by that act of kindness to my wife! I am come to ask your pardon, and to thank you. I only reached home last night.”
“Ah! that was nothing,” said Isabel gently; “and as for the house——”
“As for the house,” he said, “I was not master of myself when I said those words that Grace told you of; and I entreat you to let me repair the damage.”
“No, no,” she said, “Anthony has given orders; that will all be done.”
“But what can I do then?” he cried passionately; “if you but knew my sorrow—and—and—more than that, my——”
Isabel had raised her grave eyes and was looking him full in the face now; and he stopped abashed.
“How is Grace, and Mercy?” she asked in perfectly even tones.
“Oh! Isabel——” he began; and again she looked at him, and then went to the door.
“I hear Mr. Buxton,” she said; and steps came along through the hall; she opened the door as he came up. Mr. Buxton stopped abruptly, and the two men drew themselves up and seemed to stiffen, ever so slightly. A shade of aggressive contempt came on Hubert’s keen brown face that towered up so near the low oak ceiling; while Mr. Buxton’s eyelids just drooped, and his features seemed to sharpen. There was an unpleasant silence: Isabel broke it.
“You remember Master Hubert Maxwell?” she said almost entreatingly. He smiled kindly at her, but his face hardened again as he turned once more to Hubert.
“I remember the gentleman perfectly,” he said, “and he no doubt knows me, and why I cannot ask him to remain and dine with us.”
Hubert smiled brutally.
“It is the old story of course, the Faith! I must ask your pardon, sir, for intruding. The difficulty never came into my mind. The truth is that I have lived so long now among Protestants that I had quite forgotten what Catholic charity is like!”
He said this with such extreme bitterness and fury that Isabel put out her hand instinctively to Mr. Buxton, who smiled at her once more, and pressed it in his own. Hubert laughed again sharply; his face grew white under the tan, and his lips wrinkled back once or twice.
“So, if you can spare me room to pass,” he went on in the same tone, “I will begone to the inn.”
Mr. Buxton stepped aside from the door, and Hubert bowed to Isabel so low that it was almost an insult in itself, and strode out, his spurs ringing on the oak boards.
When he half turned outside the front door to beckon to his groom to bring up the horses, he became aware that Isabel was beside him.
“Hubert,” she said, “Hubert, I cannot bear this.”
There were tears in her voice, and he could not help turning and looking at her. Her face, more grave and transparent than ever, was raised to his; her red down-turned lips were trembling, and her eyes were full of a great emotion. He turned away again sharply.
“Hubert,” she said again, “I was not born a Catholic, and I do not feel like Mr. Buxton. And—and I do thank you for coming; and for your desire to repair the house; and—and will you give my love to Grace?”
Then he suddenly turned to her with such passion in his eyes that she shrank back. At the same moment the groom brought up the horses; he turned and mounted without a word, but his eyes were dim with love and anger and jealousy. Then he drove his spurs into his great grey mare, and Isabel watched him dash between the iron gates, with his groom only half mounted holding back his own plunging horse. Then she went within doors again.
CHAPTER V
JOSEPH LACKINGTON
It was a bitter ride back to Great Keynes for Hubert. He had just returned from watching the fifty vessels, which were all that were left of the Great Armada, pass the Blaskets, still under the nominal command of Medina Sidonia, on their miserable return to Spain; and he had come back as fast as sails could carry him, round the stormy Land’s-End up along the south coast to Rye, where on his arrival he had been almost worshipped by the rejoicing townsfolk. Yet all through his voyage and adventures, at any rate since his interview with her at Rye, it had been the face of Isabel there, and not of Grace, that had glimmered to him in the dark, and led him from peril to peril. Then, at last, on his arrival at home, he had heard of the disaster to the Dower House, and his own unintended share in it; and of Isabel’s generous visit to his wife; and at that he had ordered his horse abruptly over-night and ridden off without a word of explanation to Grace on the following morning. And he had been met by a sneering man who would not sit at table with him, and who was the protector and friend of Isabel.
He rode up through the village just after dark and in through the gatehouse up to the steps. A man ran to open the door, and as Hubert came through told him that a stranger had ridden down from London and had arrived at mid-day, and that he had been waiting ever since.
“I gave the gentleman dinner in the cloister parlour, sir; and he is at supper now,” added the man.
Hubert nodded and pushed through the hall. He heard his name called timidly from upstairs, and looking up saw his wife’s golden head over the banisters.
“Well!” he said.
“Ah, it is you. I am so glad.”
“Who else should it be?” said Hubert, and passed through towards the cloister wing, and opened the door of the little parlour where Isabel and Mistress Margaret had sat together years before, the night of Mr. James’ return, and of the girl’s decision.
A stranger rose up hastily as he came in, and bowed with great deference. Hubert knew his face, but could not remember his name.
“I ask your pardon, Mr. Maxwell; but your man would take no denial,” and he indicated the supper-table with a steaming dish and a glass jug of wine ruddy in the candlelight. Hubert looked at him curiously.
“I know you, sir,” he said, “but I cannot put a name to your face.”
“Lackington,” said the man with a half smile; “Joseph Lackington.”
Hubert still stared; and then suddenly burst into a short laugh.
“Why, yes,” he said; “I know now. My father’s servant.”
The man bowed.
“Formerly, sir; and now agent to Sir Francis Walsingham,” he said, with something of dignity in his manner.
Hubert saw the hint, but could not resist a small sneer.
“Why, I am pleased to see you,” he said. “You have come to see your old—home?” and he threw himself into a chair and stretched his legs to the blaze, for he was stiff with riding. Lackington instantly sat down too, for his pride was touched.
“It was not for that, Mr. Maxwell,” he said almost in the tone of an equal, “but on a mission for Sir Francis.”
Hubert looked at him a moment as he sat there in the candlelight, with his arm resting easily on the table. He was plainly prosperous, and was even dressed with some distinction; his reddish beard was trimmed to a point; his high forehead was respectably white and bald; and his seals hung from his belt beside his dagger with an air of ease and solidity. Perhaps he was of some importance; at any rate, Sir Francis Walsingham was. Hubert sat up a little.
“A mission to me?” he said.
Lackington nodded.
“A few questions on a matter of state.”
He drew from his pouch a paper signed by Sir Francis authorising him as an agent, for one month, and dated three days back; and handed it to Hubert.
“I obtained that from Sir Francis on Monday, as you will see. You can trust me implicitly.”
“Will the business take long?” asked Hubert, handing the paper back.
“No, Mr. Maxwell; and I must be gone in an hour in any case. I have to be at Rye at noon to-morrow; and I must sleep at Mayfield to-night.”
“At Rye,” said Hubert, “why I came from there yesterday.”
Lackington bowed again, as if he were quite aware of this; but said nothing.
“Then I will sup here,” went on Hubert, “and we will talk meantime.”
When a place had been laid for him, he drew his chair round to the table and began to eat.
“May I begin at once?” asked Lackington, who had finished.
Hubert nodded.
“Then first I believe it to be a fact that you spoke with Mistress Isabel Norris on board theElizabethat Rye on the tenth of August last.”
Hubert had started violently at her name; but did his utmost to gain outward command of himself again immediately.
“Well?” he said.
—“And with Master Anthony Norris, lately made a priest beyond the seas.”
“That is a lie,” said Hubert.
Lackington politely lifted his eyebrows.
“Indeed?” he said. “That he was made a priest, or that you spoke with him?”
“That I know aught of him,” said Hubert. His heart was beating furiously.
Lackington made a note rather ostentatiously; he could see that Hubert was frightened, and thought that it was because of a possible accusation of having dealings with a traitor.
“And as regards Mistress Norris,” he said judicially, with his pencil raised, “you deny having spoken with her?”
Hubert was thinking furiously. Then he saw that Lackington knew too much for its being worth his own while to deny it.
“No, I never denied that,” he said, lifting his fork to his mouth; and he went on eating with a deliberate ease as Lackington again made a note.
The next question was a home-thrust.
“Where are they both now?” asked Lackington, looking at him. Hubert’s mind laboured like a mill.
“I do not know,” he said.
“You swear it?”
“I swear it.”
“Then Mistress Norris has changed her plans?” said Lackington swiftly.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why she told you where they were going when you met?” said the other in a remonstrating tone.
Hubert suddenly saw the game. If the authorities really knew that, it would have been a useless question. He stared at Lackington with an admirable vacancy.
“Indeed she did not,” he said. “For aught I know, they—she is in France again.”
“They?” said Lackington shrewdly. “Then you do know somewhat of the priest?”
But Hubert was again too sharp.
“Only what you told me just now, when you said he was at Rye. I supposed you were telling the truth.”
Lackington passed his hand smoothly over his mouth and beard, and smiled. Either Hubert was very sharp or else he had told everything; and he did not believe him sharp.
“Thank you, Mr. Maxwell,” he said, with a complete dropping of his judicial manner. “I will not pretend not to be disappointed; but I believe what you say about France is true; and that it is no use looking for him further.”
Hubert experienced an extraordinary relief. He had saved Isabel. He drank off a glass of claret. “Tell me everything,” he said.
“Well,” said Lackington, “Mr. Thomas Hamon is my informant. He sent up to Sir Francis the message that a lady of the name of Norris had been introduced to him at Rye; because he thought he remembered some stir in the county several years ago about some reconciliations to Rome connected with that name. Of course we knew everything about that: and we have our agents at the seminaries too; so we concluded that she was one of our birds; the rest, of course, was guesswork. Mr. Norris has certainly left Douai for England; and he may possibly even now be in England; but from your information and others’, I now believe that Mistress Isabel came across first, and that she found the country too hot, what with the Spaniards and all; and that she returned to France at once. Of course during that dreadful week, Mr. Maxwell, we could not be certain of all vessels that came and went; so I think she just slipped across again; and that they are both waiting in France. We shall keep good watch now at the ports, I can promise you.”
Hubert’s emotions were varied during this speech. First shame at having entirely forgotten the mayor of Rye and his own introduction of Isabel to him; then astonishment at the methods of Walsingham’s agents; and lastly intense triumph and relief at having put them off Isabel’s track. For Anthony, too, he had nothing but kindly feelings; so, on the whole, he thought he had done well for his friends.
The two talked a little longer; Lackington was a stimulating companion from both his personality and his position; and Hubert found himself almost sorry when his companion said he must be riding on to Mayfield. As he walked out with him to the front door, he suddenly thought of Mr. Buxton again and his reception in the afternoon. They had wandered in their conversation so far from the Norrises by now that he felt sure he could speak of him without doing them any harm. So, as they stood on the steps together, waiting for Lackington’s horse to come round, he suddenly said:
“Do you know aught of one Buxton, who lives somewhere near Tonbridge, I think?”
“Buxton, Buxton?” said the other.
“I met him in town once,” went on Hubert smoothly; “a little man, dark, with large eyes, and looks somewhat like a Frenchman.”
“Buxton, Buxton?” said the other again. “A Papist, is he not?”
“Yes,” said Hubert, hoping to get some information against him.
“A friend?” asked Lackington.
“No,” said Hubert with such vehemence that Lackington looked at him.
“I remember him,” he said in a moment; “he was imprisoned at Wisbeach six or seven years ago. But I do not think he has been in trouble since. You wish, you wish——?” he went on interrogatively.
“Nothing,” said Hubert; but Lackington saw the hatred in his eyes.
The horses came round at this moment; and Lackington said good-bye to Hubert with a touch of the old deference again, and mounted. Hubert watched him out under the gatehouse-lamp into the night beyond, and then he went in again, pondering.
His wife was waiting for him in the hall now—a delicate golden-haired figure, with pathetic blue eyes turned up to him. She ran to him and took his arm timidly in her two hands.
“Oh! I am glad that man has gone, Hubert.”
He looked down at her almost contemptuously.
“Why, you know nothing of him!” he said.
“Not much,” she said, “but he asked me so many questions.”
Hubert started and looked suddenly at her, in terror.
“Oh, Hubert!” she said, shrinking back frightened.
“Questions!” he said, seizing her hands. “Questions of whom?”
“Of—of—Mistress Isabel Norris,” she said, almost crying.
“And—and—what did you say? Did you tell him?”
“Oh, Hubert!—I am so sorry—ah! do not look like that.”
“What did you say? What did you say?” he said between his teeth.
“I—I—told a lie, Hubert; I said I had never seen her.”
Hubert took his wife suddenly in his two arms and kissed her three or four times.
“You darling, you darling!” he said; and then stooped and picked her up, and carried her upstairs, with her head against his cheek, and her tears running down because he was pleased with her, instead of angry.
They went upstairs and he set her down softly outside the nursery door.
“Hush,” she said, smiling up at him; and then softly opened the door and listened, her finger on her lip; there was no sound from within; then she pushed the door open gently, and the wife and husband went in.
There was a shaded taper still burning in a high bracket where an image of the Mother of God had stood in the Catholic days of the house. Hubert glanced up at it and remembered it, with just a touch at his heart. Beneath it was a little oak cot, where his four-year-old boy lay sleeping; the mother went across and bent over it, and Hubert leaned his brown sinewy hands on the end of the cot and watched him. There his son lay, with tangled curls on the pillow; his finger was on his lips as if he bade silence even to thought. Hubert looked up, and just above the bed, where the crucifix used to hang when he himself had slept in this nursery, probably on the very same nail, he thought to himself, was a rusty Spanish spur that he himself had found in a sea-chest of theSan Juan. The boy had hung up with a tarry bit of string this emblem of his father’s victory, as a protection while he slept.
The child stirred in his sleep and murmured as the two watched him.
“Father’s home again,” whispered the mother. “It is all well. Go to sleep again.”
When she looked up again to her husband, he was gone.
It was not often that Hubert had regrets for the Faith he had lost; but to-night things had conspired to prick him. There was his rebuff from Mr. Buxton; there was the sight of Isabel in the dignified grace that he had noticed so plainly before; there had been the interview with the ex-Catholic servant, now a spy of the Government, and a remorseless enemy of all Catholics; and lastly there were the two little external reminders of the niche and the nail over his son’s bed.
He sat long before the fire in Sir Nicholas’ old room, now his own study. As he lay back and looked about him, how different this all was, too! The mantelpiece was almost unaltered; the Maxwell devices, two-headed eagles, hurcheons and saltires, on crowded shields, interlaced with the mottoReviresco, all newly gilded since his own accession to the estate, rose up in deep shadow and relief; but over it, instead of the little old picture of the Vernacle that he remembered as a child, hung his own sword. Was that a sign of progress? he wondered. The tapestry on the east wall was the same, a hawking scene with herons and ladies in immense headdresses that he had marvelled at as a boy. But then the books on the shelves to the right of the door, they were different; there had been old devotional books in his father’s time, mingled strangely with small works on country life and sports; now the latter only remained, and the nearest to a devotional book was a volume of a mystical herbalist who identified plants with virtues, strangely and ingeniously. Then the prie-dieu, where the beads had hung and the little wooden shield with the Five Wounds painted upon it—that was gone; and in its place hung a cupboard where he kept a crossbow and a few tools for it; and old hawk-lures and jesses and the like.
Then he lay back again, and thought.
Had he then behaved unworthily? This old Faith that had been handed down from father and son for generations; that had been handed to him too as the most precious heirloom of all—for which his father had so gladly suffered fines and imprisonment, and risked death—he had thrown it over, and for what? For Isabel, he confessed to himself; and then the—the Power that stands behind the visible had cheated him and withdrawn that for which he had paid over that great price. Was that a reckless and brutal bargain on his side—to throw over this strange delicate thing called the Faith for which so many millions had lived and died, all for a woman’s love? A curious kind of family pride in the Faith began to prick him. After all, was not honour in a manner bound up with it too; and most of all when such heavy penalties attached themselves to the profession of it? Was that the moment when he should be the first of his line to abandon it?
Reviresco—“I renew my springtide.” But was not this a strange grafting—a spur for a crucifix, a crossbow for a place of prayer?Reviresco—There was sap indeed in the old tree; but from what soil did it draw its strength?
His heart began to burn with something like shame, as it had burned now and again at intervals during these past years. Here he lay back in his father’s chair, in his father’s room, the first Protestant of the Maxwells. Then he passed on to a memory.
As he closed his eyes, he could see even now the chapel upstairs, with the tapers alight and the stiff figure of the priest in the midst of the glow; he could smell the flowers on the altar, the June roses strewn on the floor in the old manner, and their fresh dewy scent mingled with the fragrance of the rich incense in an intoxicating chord; he could hear the rustle that emphasised the silence, as his mother rose from his side and went up for communion, and the breathing of the servants behind him.
Then for contrast he remembered the whitewashed church where he attended now with his wife, Sunday by Sunday, the pulpit occupied by the black figure of the virtuous Mr. Bodder pronouncing his discourse, the great texts that stood out in their new paint from the walls, the table that stood out unashamed and sideways in the midst of the chancel. And which of the two worships was most like God?...
Then he compared the worshippers in either mode. Well, Drake, his hero, was a convinced Protestant; the bravest man he had ever met or dreamed of—fiery, pertinacious, gloriously insolent. He thought of his sailors, on whom a portion of Drake’s spirit fell, their gallantry, their fearlessness of death and of all that comes after; of Mr. Bodder, who was now growing middle-aged in the Vicarage—yes, indeed, they were all admirable in various ways, but were they like Christ?
On the other hand, his father, in spite of his quick temper, his mother, brother, aunt, the priests who came and went by night, Isabel—and at that he stopped: and like a deep voice in his ear rose up the last tremendous question, What if the Catholic Religion be true after all? And at that the supernatural began to assert itself. It seemed as if the empty air were full of this question, rising in intensity and emphasis. What if it is true? What if it is true?What if it is true?
He sat bolt upright and looked sharply round the room; the candles burned steadily in the sconce near the door. The tapestry lifted and dropped noiselessly in the draught; the dark corners beyond the press and in the window recesses suggested presences that waited; the wide chimney sighed suddenly once.
Was that a voice in his ear just now, or only in his heart? But in either case——
He made an effort to command himself, and looked again steadily round the room; but there seemed no one there. But what if the old tale be true? In that case he is not alone in this little oak room, for there is no such thing as loneliness. In that case he is sitting in full sight of Almighty God, whom he has insulted; and of the saints whose power he has repudiated; and of the angels good and bad who have—— Ah! what was that? There had seemed to come a long sigh somewhere behind him; on his left surely.—What was it? Some wandering soul? Was it, could it be the soul of one who had loved him and desired to warn him before it was too late? Could it have been——and then it came again; and the hair prickled on his head.
How deathly still it is, and how cold! Ah! was that a rustle outside; a tap?... In God’s name, who can that be?...
And then Hubert licked his dry lips and brought them together and smiled at Grace, who had come down, opening the doors as she came, to see why he had not come to bed.
Bah! what a superstitious fool he was, after all!
CHAPTER VI
A DEPARTURE