Come Rack! Come Rope! Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  I

  "I will speak to you to-night, sir, after supper," said his fathersharply a second day later, when Robin, meeting his father setting outbefore dinner, had asked him to give him an hour's talk.

  * * * * *

  Robin's mind had worked fiercely and intently since the encounter in thehall. His father had sat silent both at supper and afterwards, and thenext day was the same; the old man spoke no more than was necessary,shortly and abruptly, scarcely looking his son once in the face, and therest of the day they had not met. It was plain to the boy that somethingmust follow his defiance, and he had prepared all his fortitude to meetit. Yet the second night had passed and no word had been spoken, and bythe second morning Robin could bear it no longer; he must know what wasin his father's mind. And now the appointment was made, and he wouldsoon know all. His father was absent from dinner and the boy dinedalone. He learned from Dick Sampson that his father had riddensouthwards.

  * * * * *

  It was not until Robin had sat down nearly half an hour later thansupper-time that the old man came in. The frost was gone; deep mud hadsucceeded, and the rider was splashed above his thighs. He stayed at thefire for his boots to be drawn off and to put on his soft-leather shoes,while Robin stood up dutifully to await him. Then he came forward, tookhis seat without a word, and called for supper. In ominous silence themeal proceeded, and with the same thunderous air, when it was over, hisfather said grace and made his way, followed by his son, into theparlour behind. He made no motion at first to pour out his wine; then hehelped himself twice and left the jug for Robin.

  Then suddenly he began without moving his head.

  "I wish to know your intentions," he said, with irony so serious that itseemed gravity. "I cannot flog you or put you to school again, and Imust know how we stand to one another."

  Robin was silent. He had looked at his father once or twice, but now satdowncast and humble in his place. With his left hand he fumbled, out ofsight, Mr. Maine's pair of beads. His father, for his part, sat with hisfeet stretched to the fire, his head propped on his hand, not doingenough courtesy to his son even to look at him.

  "Do you hear me, sir?"

  "Yes, sir. But I do not know what to say."

  "I wish to know your intentions. Do you mean to thwart and disobey me inall matters, or in only those that have to do with religion?"

  "I do not wish to thwart or disobey you, sir, in any matters exceptwhere my conscience is touched." (The substance of this answer had beenpreviously rehearsed, and the latter part of it even verbally.)

  "Be good enough to tell me what you mean by that."

  Robin licked his lips carefully and sat up a little in his chair.

  "You told me, sir, that it was your intention to leave the Church. Thenhow can I tell you of what priests are here, or where mass is to besaid? You would not have done so to one who was not a Catholic, sixmonths ago."

  The man sneered visibly.

  "There is no need," he said. "It is Mr. Simpson who is to say massto-morrow, and it is at Tansley that it will be said, at six o'clock inthe morning. If I choose to tell the justices, you cannot prevent it."(He turned round in a flare of anger.) "Do you think I shall tell thejustices?"

  Robin said nothing.

  "Do you think I shall tell the justices?" roared the old maninsistently.

  "No, sir. Now I do not."

  The other growled gently and sank back.

  "But if you think that I will permit my son to flout and to my face inmy own hall, and not to trust his own father--why, you are immeasurablymistaken, sir. So I ask you again how far you intend to thwart anddisobey me."

  A kind of despair surged up in the boy's heart--despair at thefruitlessness of this ironical and furious sort of talk; and with thedespair came boldness.

  "Father, will you let me speak outright, without thinking that I mean toinsult you? I do not; I swear I do not. Will you let me speak, sir?"

  His father growled again a sort of acquiescence, and Robin gathered hisforces. He had prepared a kind of defence that seemed to him reasonable,and he knew that his father was at least just. They had been friends,these two, always, in an underground sort of way, which was all that therelations of father and son in such days allowed. The old man was curt,obstinate, and even boisterous in his anger; but there was a kindlinessbeneath that the boy always perceived--a kindliness which permitted theson an exceptional freedom of speech, which he used always in the lastresort and which he knew his father loved to hear him use. This, then,was plainly a legitimate occasion for it, and he had prepared himself tomake the most of it. He began formally:

  "Sir," he said, "you have brought me up in the Old Faith, sent me tomass, and to the priest to learn my duty, and I have obeyed you always.You have taught me that a man's duty to God must come before allelse--as our Saviour Himself said, too. And now you turn on me, and bidme forget all that, and come to church with you.... It is not for me tosay anything to my father about his own conscience; I must leave thatalone. But I am bound to speak of mine when occasion rises, and this isone of them.... I should be dishonouring and insulting you, sir, if Idid not believe you when you said you would turn Protestant; and a manwho says he will turn Protestant has done so already. It was for thisreason, then, and no other, that I did not answer you the other day; notbecause I wish to be disobedient to you, but because I must be obedientto God. I did not lie to you, as I might have done, and say that I didnot know who the priest was nor where mass was to be said. But I wouldnot answer, because it is not right or discreet for a Catholic to speakof these things to those who are not Catholics--"

  "How dare you say I am not a Catholic, sir!"

  "A Catholic, sir, to my mind," said Robin steadily, "is one who holds tothe Catholic Church and to no other. I mean nothing offensive, sir; Imean what I said I meant, and no more. It is not for me to condemn--"

  "I should think not!" snorted the old man.

  "Well, sir, that is my reason. And further--"

  He stopped, doubtful.

  "Well, sir--what further?"

  "Well, I cannot come to the church with you at Easter."

  His father wheeled round savagely in his chair.

  "Father, hear me out, and then say what you will.... I say I cannot comewith you to church at Easter, because I am a Catholic. But I do not wishto trouble or disobey you openly. I will go away from home for thattime. Good Mr. Barton will cause no trouble; he wants nothing but peace.Father, you are not just to me. You have taught me too much, or you havenot given me time enough--"

  Again he broke off, knowing that he had said what he did not mean, butthe old man was on him like a hawk.

  "Not time enough, you say? Well, then--"

  "No, sir; I did not mean that," wailed Robin suddenly. "I do not meanthat I should change if I had a hundred years; I am sure I shall not.But--"

  "You said, 'Not time enough,'" said the other meditatively. "Perhaps ifI give you time--"

  "Father, I beg of you to forget what I said; I did not mean to say it.It is not true. But Marjorie said--"

  "Marjorie! What has Marjorie to do with it?"

  Robin found himself suddenly in deep waters. He had plunged and foundthat he could not swim. This was the second mistake he had made insaying what he did not mean.... Again the courage of despair came tohim, and he struck out further.

  "I must tell you of that too, sir," he said. "Mistress Marjorie and I--"

  He stopped, overwhelmed with shame. His father turned full round andstared at him.

  "Go on, sir."

  Robin seized his glass and emptied it.

  "Well, sir. Mistress Marjorie and I love one another. We are but boy andgirl, sir; we know that--"

  Then his father laughed. It was laughter that was at once hearty andbitter; and, with it, came the closing of the open door in the boy'sheart. As there came out, after it, sentence after sentence of scorn andcontempt, the b
olts, so to say, were shot and the key turned. It mightall have been otherwise if the elder man had been kind, or if he hadbeen sad or disappointed, or even if he had been merely angry; but thesoreness and misery in the old man's heart--misery at his own acts andwords, and at the outrage he was doing to his own conscience--turned hisjudgment bitter, and with that bitterness his son's heart shut tightagainst him.

  "But boy and girl!" sneered the man. "A couple of blind puppies, I wouldsay rather--you with your falcons and mare and your other toys, and thedown on your chin, and your conscience; and she with her white face andher mother and her linen-parlour and her beads"--(his charity prevailedso far as to hinder him from more outspoken contempt)--"And you twobabes have been prattling of conscience and prayers together--I make nodoubt, and thinking yourselves Cecilies and Laurences and all the holymartyrs--and all this without a by-your-leave, I dare wager, from parentor father, and thinking yourselves man and wife; and you fondling her,and she too modest to be fondled, and--"

  The plain truth struck him with sudden splendour, at least sufficientlystrong to furnish him with a question.

  "And have you told Mistress Marjorie about your sad rogue of a father?"

  Robin, white with anger, held his lips grimly together and the wrathblazed in an instant up from the scornful old heart, whose very love wasturned to gall.

  "Tell me, sir--I will have it!" he cried.

  Robin looked at him with such hard fury in his eyes that for a momentthe man winced. Then he recovered himself, and again his anger rose tothe brim.

  "You need not look at me like that, you hound. Tell me, I say!"

  "I will not!" shouted Robin, springing to his feet.

  The old man was up too by now, with all the anger of his son hardened byhis dignity.

  "You will not?"

  "No."

  For a moment the fate of them both still hung in the balance. If, evenat this instant, the father had remembered his love rather than hisdignity, had thought of the past and its happy years, rather than of theblinding, swollen present; or, on the other side, if the son had butsubmitted if only for an hour, and obeyed in order that he might rulelater--the whole course might have run aright, and no hearts have beenbroken and no blood shed. But neither would yield. There was the fiercenorthern obstinacy in them both; the gentle birth sharpened its edge;the defiant refusal of the son, the wounding contempt of the father notfor his son only, but for his son's love--these things inflamed thehearts of both to madness. The father seized his ultimate right, andstruck his son across the face.

  Then the son answered by his only weapon.

  For a sensible pause he stood there, his fresh face paled to chalkiness,except where the print of five fingers slowly reddened. Then he made acourteous little gesture, as if to invite his father to sit down; and asthe other did so, slowly and shaking all over, struck at him by carefuland calculated words, delivered with a stilted and pompous air:

  "You have beaten me, sir; so, of course, I obey. Yes, I told MistressMarjorie Manners that my father no longer counted himself a Catholic,and would publicly turn Protestant at Easter, so as to please her Graceand be in favour with the Court and with the county justices. And I havetold Mr. Babington so as well, and also Mr. Thomas FitzHerbert. It willspare you the pain, sir, of making any public announcement on thematter. It is always a son's duty to spare his father pain."

  Then he bowed, wheeled, and went out of the room.

  II

  Two hours later Robin was still lying completely dressed on his bed inthe dark.

  It was a plain little chamber where he lay, fireless, yet not too cold,since it was wainscoted from floor to ceiling, and looked out eastwardsupon the pleasaunce, with rooms on either side of it. A couple ofpresses sunk in the walls held his clothes and boots; a rush-bottomedchair stood by the bed; and the bed itself, laid immediately on theground, was such as was used in most good houses by all except themaster and mistress, or any sick members of the family--a straw mattressand a wooden pillow. His bows and arrows, with a pair of dags orpistols, hung on a rack against the wall at the foot of his bed, and alittle brass cross engraved with a figure of the Crucified hung over it.It was such a chamber as any son of a house might have, who was agentleman and not luxurious.

  A hundred thoughts had gone through his mind since he had flung himselfdown here shaking with passion; and these had begun already to repeatthemselves, like a turning wheel, in his head. Marjorie; his love forher; his despair of that love; his father; all that they had been, oneto the other, in the past; the little, or worse than little, that theywould be, one to the other, in the future; the priest's face as he hadseen it three days ago; what would be done at Easter, what later--allthese things, coloured and embittered now by his own sorrow for hiswords to his father, and the knowledge that he had shamed himself whenhe should have suffered in silence--these things turned continually inhis head, and he was too young and too simple to extricate one from theother all at once.

  Things had come about in a manner which yesterday he would not havethought possible. He had never before spoken so to one to whom he owedreverence; neither had this one ever treated him so. His father hadstood always to him for uprightness and justice; he had no morequestioned these virtues in his father than in God. Words or acts ofeither might be strange or incomprehensible, yet the virtues themselvesremained always beyond a doubt; and now, with the opening of the doorwhich his father's first decision had accomplished, a crowd of questionsand judgments had rushed in, and a pillar of earth and heaven was shakenat last.... It is a dreadful day when for the first time to a young manor maiden, any shadow of God, however unworthy, begins to tremble.

  * * * * *

  He understood presently, however, what an elder man, or a less childish,would have understood at once--that these things must be dealt with oneby one, and that that which lay nearest to his hand was his own fault.Even then he fought with his conscience; he told himself that no lad ofspirit could tolerate such insults against his love, to say nothing ofthe injustice against himself that had gone before; but, being honest,he presently inquired of what spirit such a lad would be--not of thatspirit which Marjorie would approve, nor the gentle-eyed priest he hadspoken with....

  Well, the event was certain with such as Robin, and he was presentlystanding at the door of his room, his boots drawn off and laid aside,listening, with a heart beating in his ears to hinder him, for any soundfrom beneath. He did not know whether his father were abed or not. Ifnot, he must ask his pardon at once.

  He went downstairs at last, softly, to the parlour, and peeped in. Allwas dark, except for the glimmer from the stove, and his heart feltlightened. Then, as he was cold with his long vigil outside his bed, hestirred the embers into a blaze and stood warming himself.

  How strange and passionless, he thought, looked this room, after thetempest that had raged in it just now. The two glasses stood there--hisown not quite empty--and the jug between them. His father's chair wasdrawn to the table, as if he were still sitting in it; his own was flungback as he had pushed it from him in his passion. There was an old printover the stove at which he looked presently--it had been his mother's,and he remembered it as long as his life had been--it was of Christcarrying His cross.

  His shame began to increase on him. How wickedly he had answered, withevery word a wound! He knew that the most poisonous of them all werefalse; he had known it even while he spoke them; it was not to curryfavour with her Grace that his father had lapsed; it was that his temperwas tried beyond bearing by those continual fines and rebuffs; the oldman's patience was gone--that was all. And he, his son, had not said oneword of comfort or strength; he had thought of himself and his ownwrongs, and being reviled he had reviled again....

  There stood against the wall between the windows a table and an oakendesk that held the estate-bills and books; and beside the desk were laidclean sheets of paper, an ink-pot, a pounce-box, and three or fourfeather pens. It was here that he wrote, being new
ly from school, at hisfather's dictation, or his father sometimes wrote himself, with pain andlabour, the few notices or letters that were necessary. So he went tothis and sat down at it; he pondered a little; then he wrote a singleline of abject regret.

  "I ask your pardon and God's, sir, for the wicked words I said before Ileft the parlour. R." He folded this and addressed it with the propersuperscription; and left it lying there.

  III

  It was a strange ride that he had back from Tansley next morning aftermass.

  Dick Sampson had met him with the horses in the stable-court at Matsteada little after four o'clock in the morning; and together they had riddenthrough the pitch darkness, each carrying a lantern fastened to hisstirrup. So complete was the darkness, however, and so small andconfined the circle of light cast by the tossing light, that, for allthey saw, they might have been riding round and round in a garden. Nowtrees showed grim and towering for an instant, then gone again; nowtheir eyes were upon the track, the pools, the rugged ground, the soakedmeadow-grass; half a dozen times the river glimmered on their right,turbid and forbidding. Once there shone in the circle of light the eyesof some beast--pig or stag; seen and vanished again.

  But the return journey was another matter; for they needed no lanterns,and the dawn rose steadily overhead, showing all that they passed inghostly fashion, up to final solidity.

  It resembled, in fact, the dawn of Faith in a soul.

  First from the darkness outlines only emerged, vast and sinister, ofsuch an appearance that it was impossible to tell their proportions ordistances. The skyline a mile away, beyond the Derwent, might have beenthe edge of a bank a couple of yards off; the glimmering pool on thelower meadow path might be the lighted window of a house across thevalley. There succeeded to outlines a kind of shaded tint, all worked ingray like a print, clear enough to distinguish tree from boulder and skyfrom water, yet not clear enough to show the texture of anything. Thethird stage was that in which colours began to appear, yet flat anddismal, holding, it seemed, no light, yet reflecting it; and all in anextraordinary cold clearness. Nature seemed herself, yet struck todumbness. No breeze stirred the twigs overhead or the undergrowththrough which they rode. Once, as the two, riding a little apart, turnedsuddenly together, up a ravine into thicker woods, they came upon a herdof deer, who stared on them without any movement that the eye could see.Here a stag stood with two hinds beside him; behind, Robin saw the backsand heads of others that lay still. Only the beasts kept their eyes uponthem, as they went, watching, as if it were a picture only that went by.So, by little and little, the breeze stirred like a waking man; cockscrew from over the hills one to the other; dogs barked far away, tillthe face of the world was itself again, and the smoke from Matstead roseabove the trees in front.

  Robin had ridden in the dawn an hundred times before; yet never beforehad he so perceived that strange deliberateness and sleep of the world;and he had ridden, too, perhaps twenty times at such an hour, with hisfather beside him, after mass on some such occasion. Yet it seemed tohim this time that it was the mass which he had seen, and his ownsolitariness, that had illuminated his eyes. It was dreadful to him--andyet it threw him more than ever on himself and God--that his fatherwould ride with him so no more. Henceforward he would go alone, or witha servant only; he would, alone, go up to the door of house or barn andrap four times with his riding-whip; alone he would pass upstairsthrough the darkened house to the shrouded room, garret or bed-chamber,where the group was assembled, all in silence; where presently a darkfigure would rise and light the pair of candles, and then, himself aghost, vest there by their light, throwing huge shadows on wainscot andceiling as his arms went this way and that; and then, alone of all thatwere of blood-relationship to him, he would witness the HolySacrifice....

  How long that would be so, he did not know. Something surely must happenthat would prevent it. Or, at least, some day, he would ride so withMarjorie, whom he had seen this morning across the dusky candle-litgloom, praying in a corner; or, maybe, with her would entertain thepriest, and open the door to the worshippers who streamed in, like beesto a flower-garden, from farm and manor and village. He could not forever ride alone from Matstead and meet his father's silence.

  One thing more, too, had moved him this morning; and that, the sight ofthe young priest at the altar whom he had met on the moor. Here, morethan ever, was the gentle priestliness and innocency apparent. He stoodthere in his red vestments; he moved this way and that; he made hisgestures; he spoke in undertones, lit only by the pair of wax-candles,more Levitical than ever in such a guise, yet more unsuited than ever tosuch exterior circumstances. Surely this man should say mass for ever;yet surely never again ride over the moors to do it, amidst enemies. Hewas of the strong castle and the chamber, not of the tent and thebattle.... And yet it was of such soldiers as these, as well as of thesturdy and the strong, that Christ's army was made.

  * * * * *

  It was in broad daylight, though under a weeping sky, that Robin rodeinto the court at Matstead. He shook the rain from his cloak within thescreens, and stamped to get the mud away; and, as he lifted his hat toshake it, his father came in from the pleasaunce.

  Robin glanced up at him, swift and shy, half smiling, expecting a wordor a look. His father must surely have read his little letter by now,and forgiven him. But the smile died away again, as he met the old man'seyes; they were as hard as steel; his clean-shaven lips were set like atrap, and, though he looked at his son, it seemed that he did not seehim. He passed through the screens and went down the steps into thecourt.

  The boy's heart began to beat so as near to sicken him after his longfast and his ride. He told himself that his father could not have beeninto the parlour yet, though he knew, even while he thought it, thatthis was false comfort. He stood there an instant, waiting; hoping thateven now his father would call to him; but the strong figure passedresolutely on out of sight.

  Then the boy went into the hall, and swiftly through it. There on thedesk in the window lay the pen he had flung down last night, but nomore; the letter was gone; and, as he turned away, he saw lying amongthe wood-ashes of the cold stove a little crumpled ball. He stooped anddrew it out. It was his letter, tossed there after the reading; hisfather had not taken the pains to keep it safe, nor even to destroy it.