Come Rack, Come Rope Page 7

  He lifted her hands and stood up.

  “I see that I understand nothing that you say after all,” he said with a fine fatherly dignity. “I must talk with your mother.”

  II

  It was an hour before sunset when Marjorie came out again into the walled garden that had become for her now a kind of sanctuary, and in her hand she carried a letter, sealed and inscribed. On the outside the following words were written:

  “To Mr. Robin Audrey. At Matstead.

  “Haste, haste, haste.”

  Within, the sheet was covered from top to bottom with the neat convent-hand. It began with such words as you would expect from a maid to her lover; it continued to inform him that her parents were willing, and, indeed, desirous, that he should come to them for Easter, and that her father would write a formal letter later to invite him; it was to be written from Derby, that it might cause less comment when Mr. Audrey saw it, and was to be expressed in terms that would satisfy him. Finally, it closed as it had begun, and was subscribed by his “loving friend, M. M.” One paragraph, however, is worth attention.

  “I have told my father and mother that we love one another, my Robin; and that you have asked me to marry you, and that I have consented should you wish to do so when the time comes. They have consented most willingly; and so Jesu have you in His keeping, and guide your mind aright.”

  It was this paragraph that had cost her half of the hour occupied in writing; for it must be expressed just so and no otherwise; and its wording had cost her agony. The love of Robin was there—that she knew; and the love of Christ was there—so she thought; and yet where the divine and the human passion mingled, she could not tell; nor whether, indeed, for certain, it were the love of Christ at all, and not a vain imagination of her own as to how Christ, in this case, would be loved. Only she knew that across her love for Robin a shadow had fallen; she could scarcely tell when it had first come to her, and whence. Yet it had so come; it had deepened rapidly and strongly during the Mass that Mr. Simpson had said, and, behold! in its very darkness there was light. And so it had continued till confusion had fallen on her which none but Robin could dissolve. It must be his word finally that must give her the answer to her doubts; and she must make it easy for him to give it. He must know, that is, that she loved him more passionately than ever, that her heart would break if she had not her desire; and yet that she would not hold him back if a love that was greater than hers could be for him or his for her called him to another wedding than that of which either had yet spoken. A broken heart and God’s will done would be better than that God’s will should be avoided and her own satisfied.

  It was this kind of consideration, therefore, that sent her swiftly to and fro, up and down the path under the darkening sky—if they can be called considerations which beat on the mind like a clamour of shouting; and, as she went, she strove to offer all to God; she entreated Him to do His will, yet not to break her heart; to break her heart, yet not Robin’s; to break both her heart and Robin’s, if that will could not otherwise be served.

  Her lips moved now and again as she went; but her eyes were downcast and her face untroubled.…

  As the bell in the court rang for supper she went to the door and looked through. The man was just saddling up in the stable-door opposite.

  “Jack,” she called, “here is the letter. Take it safely.”

  Then she went in to supper.

  CHAPTER VI

  I

  IT WAS a great and solemn day when the squire of Matstead went to Protestant communion for the first time. It was Easter Day, too, but this was less in the consideration of the village. There was first the minister, Mr. Barton, in a condition of excited geniality from an early hour. He was observed soon after it was light, by an old man who was up betimes, hurrying up the village street in his minister’s cassock and gown, presumably on his way to see that all preparations were complete for the solemnity. His wife was seen to follow him a few minutes later.

  By eight o’clock the inhabitants of the village were assembled at points of vantage; some openly at their doors, others at the windows; and groups from the more distant farms, decked suitably, stood at all corners; to be greeted presently by their minister hurrying back once more from the church to bring the communion vessels and the bread and wine. The four or five soldiers of the village—a couple of billmen and pikemen and a real gunner—stood apart in an official group, but did not salute him. He did not speak of that which was in the minds of all, but he waved a hand to this man, bid a happy Easter to another, and disappeared within his lodgings leaving a wake of excitement behind him.

  By a quarter before nine the three bells had begun to jangle from the tower; and the crowd had increased largely, when Mr. Barton once more passed to the church in the spring sunshine, followed by the more devout who wished to pray, and the more timid who feared a disturbance.

  The bells ceased at nine o’clock, and upon the moment, a group came round the churchyard wall, down from the field-path and the stile that led to the manor.

  First, walking alone, came the squire, swiftly and steadily. His face was flushed a little, but set and determined. He was in his fine clothes, ruff and all; his rapier was looped at his side, and he carried a stick. Behind him came three or four farm servants; then a yeoman and his wife; and last, at a little distance, three or four onlookers.

  There was dead silence as he came; the hum of talk died at the corners; the bells’ clamour had even now ceased. It seemed as if each man waited for his neighbour to speak. There was only the sound of the squire’s brisk footsteps on the few yards of cobbles that paved the walk up to the lych-gate. At the door of the church, seen beyond him, was a crowd of faces.

  Then a man called something aloud from fifty yards away; but there was no voice to echo him. The folk just watched their lord go by, staring on him as on some strange sight, forgetting even to salute him.

  As he entered he lifted his hand to his head, but dropped it again; and passed on, sturdy, and (you would have said) honest and resolute too, to his seat behind the reading-desk. He was met by silence; he was escorted by silence; and in silence he sat down.

  Then the waiting crowd surged in, poured this way and that, and flowed into the benches. And Mr. Barton’s voice was raised in holy exhortation.

  “At what time soever a sinner doth repent him of his sin from the bottom of his heart, I will put all his wickedness out of remembrance, saith the Lord.”

  II

  Those who could best observe (for the tale was handed on with the careful accuracy of those who cannot read or write) professed themselves amazed at the assured ease of the squire. No sound came from the seat half-hidden behind the reading-desk where he sat alone; and, during the prayers when he stood or kneeled, he moved as if he understood well enough what he was at. A great bound Prayer-Book, it was known, rested before him on the book-board, and he was observed to turn the pages more than once.

  It was, indeed, a heavy task that Mr. Barton had to do. For first there was the morning prayer, with its psalms, its lessons and its prayers; next the Litany, and last the communion, in the course of which was delivered one of the homilies set forth by authority, especially designed for the support of those who were no preachers—preceded and followed by a psalm.

  But all was easy to-day to a man who had such cause for exultation. There, seen full when he sat down, and in part when he kneeled and stood, was the man who hitherto had stood to them for the old order, the old faith, the old tradition—the man whose horse’s footsteps had been heard, times and again, before dawn, in the village street, bearing him to the mystery of the Mass; through whose gate strangers had ridden, perhaps three or four times in the year, to find harbourage—strangers dressed indeed as plain gentlemen or yeomen, yet known, every one of them, to be under her Grace’s ban, and to ride in peril of liberty if not of life.

  Yet here he sat—a man feared and even loved by some—the first of his line to yield to circumstance, and to
make peace with his times. Not a man of all who looked on him believed him certainly to be that which his actions professed him to be; some doubted, especially those who themselves inclined to the old ways or secretly followed them; and the hearts of these grew sick as they watched.

  But the crown and climax was yet to come.

  The minister finished at last the homily—it was one which inveighed more than once against the popish superstitions; and he had chosen it for that reason, to clench the bargain, so to say—all in due order; for he was a careful man and observed his instructions, unlike some of his brethren who did as they pleased; and came back again to the long north side of the linen-covered table to finish the service.

  He went on to pray for the whole estate of Christ’s Church militant here on earth, especially for God’s “servant, Elizabeth our Queen, that under her we may be godly and quietly governed”; then came the exhortation, urging any who might think himself to be “a blasphemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of His Word … or to be in malice or envy,” to bewail his sins, and “not to come to this holy table, lest after the taking of that holy sacrament, the devil enter into him, as he entered into Judas, and fill him full of all iniquities.”

  So forward with the rest. He read the Comfortable Words; the English equivalent for Sursum Corda with the Easter Preface; then another prayer; and finally rehearsed the story of the Institution of the Most Holy Sacrament, though without any blessing of the bread and wine. Then he stood up again, holding the silver plate in his hand for an instant, before proceeding to the squire’s seat to give him the communion.

  Then those who still watched, and who spread the tale about afterwards, saw that the squire did not move from his seat to kneel down. He had put off his hat again after the homily, and had so sat ever since; and now that the minister came to him, still there he sat.

  Now such a manner of receiving was not unknown; yet it was the sign of a Puritan; and, so far from the folk expecting such behaviour in their squire, they had looked rather for Popish gestures, knockings on the breast, signs of the cross.

  For a moment the minister stood before the seat, as if doubtful what to do. He held the plate in his left hand and a fragment of bread in his fingers. Then, as he began the words he had to say, one thing at least the people saw, and that was that a great flush dyed the old man’s face, though he sat quiet. Then, as the minister held out the bread, the squire seemed to recover himself; he put out his fingers quickly, took the bread sharply and put it into his mouth; and so sat again, until the minister brought the cup; and this, too, he drank of quickly, and gave it back.

  Then, as the communicants, one by one, took the bread and wine and went back to their seats, man after man glanced up at the squire.

  But the squire sat there, motionless and upright, like a figure cut of stone.

  III

  The court of the manor seemed deserted half an hour before dinner-time. Drama was in the air—the tragedy of seeing the squire come back from church for the first time, bearing himself as he always did, resolute and sturdy, yet changed in his significance after a fashion of which none of these simple hearts had ever dreamed.

  In silence he went up the court, knowing that eyes were upon him, yet showing no sign that he knew it; he went up the steps with the same assured air, and disappeared into the hall.

  Then the spell broke up and the bustle began, for it was only half an hour to dinner and guests were coming.

  First Dick came out and strode out to the gate. He was still in his boots, for he had ridden to Padley and back since early morning with a couple of the maids and the stable-boy. He went to the gate of the court, the group dissolving as he came, and shut it in their faces. A noise of talking came out of the kitchen windows and the clash of a saucepan: the maids’ heads vanished from the upper windows.

  Even as Dick shut the gate he heard the sound of horses’ hoofs down by the porter’s lodge. The justices were coming—the two whose names he had heard with amazement last week, as the last corroboration of the incredible rumour of his master’s defection. For these were a couple of magistrates—harmless men, indeed, as regarded their hostility to the old Faith—yet Protestants who had sat more than once on the bench in Derby to hear cases of recusancy. Old Mrs. Marpleden had told him they were to come, and that provision must be made for their horses—Mrs. Marpleden, the ancient housekeeper of the manor, who had gone to school for a while with the Benedictine nuns of Derby in King Henry’s days. She had shaken her head and eyed him, and then had suffered three or four tears to fall down her old cheeks.

  Well, they were coming, so Dick must open the gate again, and pull the bell for the servants; and this he did, and waited, hat in hand.

  Up the little straight road they came, with a servant or two behind them—the two harmless gentlemen, chattering as they rode; and Dick loathed them in his heart.

  “The squire is within?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They dismounted, and Dick held their stirrups.

  “He has been to church—eh?”

  Dick made no answer. He feigned to be busy with one of the saddles.

  The magistrate glanced at him sharply.

  It was a strange dinner that day.

  Outwardly, again, all was as usual—as it might have been on any other Sunday in spring. The three gentlemen sat at the high table, facing down the hall; and, since there was no reading, and since it was a festival, there was no lack of conversation. The servants came in as usual with the dishes—there was roast lamb to-day, according to old usage, among the rest; and three or four wines. A little fire burned against the reredos, for cheerfulness rather than warmth, and the spring sunshine flowed in through the clear-glass windows, bright and genial.

  Yet the difference was profound. To the servants who came and went, it was as if their master were another man altogether, and his hall some unknown place. There was no blessing of himself before meat; he said something, indeed, before he sat down, but it was unintelligible, and he made no movement with his hand. But it was deeper than this … and his men who had served him for ten or fifteen years looked on him as upon a stranger or a changeling.

  CHAPTER VII

  I

  THE SAME Easter Day at Padley was another matter altogether.

  As early as five o’clock in the morning the house was astir: footsteps passed along corridors and across the court; parties began to arrive. All was done without ostentation, yet without concealment, for Padley was a solitary place, and had no fear, at this time, of a sudden descent of the authorities. For form’s sake—scarcely for more—a man kept watch over the valley road, and signalled by the flashing of a lamp twice every party with which he was acquainted, and there were no others than these to signal. A second man waited by the gate into the court to admit them. They rode and walked in from all round. Altogether perhaps a hundred and twenty persons were within Padley Manor—and the gate secured—by six o’clock.

  Meanwhile, within, the priest had been busy since half-past four with the hearing of confessions. He sat in the chapel beside the undecked altar, and they came to him one by one. The household and a few of the nearer neighbours had done their duty in this matter the day before, and a good number had already made their Easter duties earlier in Lent; so by six o’clock all was finished.

  Then began the bustle.

  A group of ladies, FitzHerberts and Fentons, entered, so soon as the priest gave the signal by tapping on the parlour wall, bearing all things necessary for the altar; so that by the time that the priest was ready to vest, the place was transformed. Stuffs and embroideries hung upon the wall about the altar, making it seem, indeed, a sanctuary; two tall silver candlesticks, used for no other purpose, stood upon the linen cloths, under which rested the slate altar-stone, taken, with the sacred vessels and the vestments, from one of the privy hiding-holes. It was rumored that half a dozen such places had been contrived within the precincts, two of which were great enough to hold two or three men at a
pinch.

  Soon after six o’clock, then, the altar was ready and the priest stood vested. He retired a pace from the altar, signed himself with the cross, and with Mr. John FitzHerbert and his son Thomas on either side of him, began the preparation.…

  It was a strange and an inspiriting sight that the young priest (for it was Mr. Simpson who was saying the Mass) looked upon as he turned round after the gospel to make his little sermon. From end to end the tiny chapel was so full, that few could kneel and none sit down. The two doors were open, and here two faces peered in; and behind, rank after rank down the steps and along the little passage, the folk stood or knelt, out of sight of both priest and altar, and almost out of sound.

  His little sermon was plain enough for the most foolish there. He spoke of Christ’s Resurrection; of how death had no power to hold Him, nor pains nor prison to detain Him; and he spoke, too, of that mystical life of His which He yet lived in His body, which was the Church; of how Death, too, stretched forth his hands against Him there, and yet had no more force to hold Him than in His natural life lived on earth near sixteen hundred years ago; how a Resurrection awaited Him here in England as in Jerusalem, if His friends would be constant and courageous, not faithless, but believing.

  “Even here,” he said, “in this upper chamber, where we are gathered for fear of the Jews, comes Jesus and stands in the midst, the doors being shut. Upon this altar He will be presently, the Lamb slain yet the Lamb victorious, to give us all that peace which the world can neither give nor take away.”

  And he added a few words of exhortation and encouragement, bidding them fear nothing whatever might come upon them in the future; to hold fast to the faith once delivered to the saints, and so to attain the heavenly crown. He was not eloquent, for he was but a young man newly come from college, with no great gifts. Yet not a soul there looked upon him, on his innocent, wondering eyes and his quivering lips, but was moved by what he saw and heard.